Swiss Ashoka Fellow Jonas Staub awarded the Swisscom Entrepreneurship Award 2022

Fellow Jonas Staub posing with presenter and holding a trophy at award ceremony
Sorgente: Sandra Blaser

Jonas Staub, founder and CEO of Blindspot - Inclusion and Diversity Switzerland and Ashoka fellow since 2018, was awarded the Swisscom Entrepreneurship Award 2022 at this year's Swiss Diversity Awards for his inclusive entrepreneurship and business model. He is thus the first person to win at Switzerland's most prestigious inclusion award for the second time. 

Jonas holding a mic and giving his speech

The award, presented by Swisscom, is given annually to an individual or a group of individuals who, in recent years, have regularly and in a special way promoted diversity in an innovative way and with great impact on society and the economy.

For 17 years now, Jonas Staub has been living the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) on a daily basis. For twelve years, Jonas Staub worked pedagogically in various seperative structures with children and adults with mental, cognitive and social impairments.

Today, he describes seperative structures as system failures. With his model of an inclusive mindset he revolutionizes society and economy in the areas of work, living and leisure through pioneering projects. He is known as the inclusion expert in Switzerland and offers lectures at various universities and colleges to ensure the transfer of knowledge in the field of inclusion. He reports from his projects, shares his experiences and gives valuable tips based on various practical examples.

His goal: He wants to be copied. Because his vision is that all people can participate in life in a self-determined and active way. 

We must become aware that inclusion obliges us all, in the future even more. Inclusion is not an alternative, it is a human right that cannot be discussed... The UN CRPD demands nothing other than the dissolution of the past and the creation of the new. Normally, you don't deal with something until you are affected by it yourself. I want everyone to do it differently, to do it now.