For nearly 2 decades, Liu Yan has cofounded and taken lead in many innovation ecosystems and platforms in China, the Netherlands, Australia and Southeast Asia, to bring people from different sectors, disciplines and cultures together to listen, to dialogue and to co-create. She founded the first coworking center Xindanwei – listed by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in China, the first maker space in China Xinchejian, and China Australia Millennium Project – the first 100 days incubator program to gather 200 Australian and Chinese top young leaders and tackle 20 global challenges. In the past a few years, Yan dedicated herself to system leadership and community weaving practice to tackle many complexed challenges such as poverty alleviation and education. Currently she is co-leading the Amsterdam Hub of Systems Innovation with the focus on system inter-being as the core of driving systems change.

Liu Yan’s expertise is in mapping, designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration on systemic design, human center design, social entrepreneurship and future impact creation. She spent a significant amount of time mentoring and coaching at countless early-stage social enterprise startup founders. In parallel with her entrepreneurial work, Liu Yan also supports UNDP, fortune 500 companies, and top executive learning institutes with purpose-driven leadership and system innovation .

Liu Yan is the author of Coworking Manuel, the first book to introduce coworking practice to China. She is an international speaker featured in the Skoll World Forum, Amplify Festival and several TEDx conferences. Liu Yan is also a Theravada Buddhist meditation practitioner, an improv theater actrice, a contact improv dancer and an urban farmer.