Dominik Reinertz
While serving the International Business Development Department at Fraunhofer Headquarters and participating in WAITRO’s Management Programme (WMP) in Malaysia in 2017, Dominik had an epiphany. He remembered lessons he learned from the Fraunhofer for Development pilot (F4D), a program to strengthen global research collaboration for sustainable development, and came up with the idea of an Open Innovation Platform that facilitates R&D collaborations and tackles global challenges more efficiently. As one of the founders of SAIRA and Head of the WAITRO Office Germany, Dominik is responsible for the execution of the strategy designed to transfer technologies for sustainable development through open innovation.
What SAIRA means to Dominik: “SAIRA has the potential to contribute to global change that is needed more than ever.”
His professional path perfectly paved his way towards SAIRA. His drive to learn with and from others already started when he was working in international cooperation in Nicaragua and Ecuador. Combining theory and practice as well as internal and external perspectives, Dominik gained his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Economics at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and abroad at Universidad del Norte in Colombia. While obtaining his Master’s degree at the University of Cologne, he started his career at Fraunhofer and became very active within the Global Innovation Family – WAITRO. Ever since his first experience with WAITRO in 2015, Dominik has been passionately involved in WAITRO activities and is more than committed to its vision for the future.
He speaks German, English, Spanish and a little French and Portuguese.