Boris Kolev

Boris is a social and digital innovations entrepreneur and ia proud alumnus of JA Europe and JA Bulgaria. He took part in the Company Programme between 2002-2006, winning the Bulgaria Student Company of the Year Award twice and reaching third place in the 2005 Europe Finals. Boris started his first company at the age of 18 in Bulgaria and quickly succeeded into being recognized as one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs in Bulgaria and Europe in the next years of growth. Boris has extensive experience in the building and development of technology companies and projects in the sphere of digital innovations. One of his ventures, DigiMark, was recognized as the fastest growing software company in Bulgaria for 3 consecutive years and successfully growing to 3 continents. After the successful acquisition of DigiMark in 2018, Boris served two years as a Vice President in the global fintech development company Devexperts and founded the micro-VC fund DigiMark Ventures investing in series of innovative Eastern European startups. In November 2020, Boris joined the JA Europe team to lead the digital transformation of the organization after the challenging pandemic imposed the need of rapid technology improvement of the operations and educational programs delivery to continue serving the young generation of Europe. Boris has received the following honors: 2019 FERD’s List, 2013 Forbes 30 under 30″, 2007 BusinessWeek’s “Europe’s Best Young Entrepreneurs” and 2020 JA Global Business Hall of Fame. Email: boris@jaeurope.org