Jürgen Griesbeck believes that football can be used as a force for social good and as an enabler of systems change. He believes that collaboration (team play) is probably the biggest innovation of our time and has invested the past 25 years in building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and mobilising the football industry to efficiently contribute to sustainably scale the impact. In 1994, Colombia captain Andrés Escobar scored an own goal that sealed his nation’s exit from the World Cup. Days later, he was shot dead in a Medellín car park. His murderers mocked his own goal as they pulled the trigger. Shocked by the senseless killing of a man admired for his commitment to fair play, Jürgen Griesbeck set out to investigate the escalating violence in Colombia and explore alternative approaches to conflict resolution. This, in turn, led him back to football, laying the foundations for a new dimension of the game and leading to the foundation of streetfootballworld (2002), Common Goal (2017 , The Third Half (2017) and The Game of our Lives (2020).

Jürgen has a Degree in Sports Sciences from the German Sports University in Cologne/Germany and studied Roman Languages at Cologne University followed by a master’s in social sciences at the University of Antioquia in Medellín/Colombia. Later during his career, he complemented his studies at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School as well as THNK Creative Leadership School in Amsterdam.