Passionate EdTech and social entrepreneur. Innovator. Speaker.
Sven Huber, born in 1970 in Frankfurt/Main (Germany), is an international business leader, entrepreneur and founder.
His company, Fiction Express, has developed an award-winning literacy resource designed to simultaneously improve all four levels of literacy skills: reading, grammar, speaking & listening, and writing.
Through his vision and leadership, Fiction Express has established a new category of literacy resources, called "Co-creative reading", improving poor reading habits by getting children excited about reading through the power of a deeply engaging experience of co-creation between students and authors.
A CEO for 15 years, Sven has an uncompromisingly positive, inspiring and participative leadership style, combined with a clear strategic vision, creativity, analysis and perseverance.
After graduating as a chemical engineer from Universität Karlsruhe (TH) in Germany, he started his career in the Munich office of global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, creating value for industry-leading clients across numerous sectors including banking, automotive, transportation and postal services.
In 1999, Sven moved to Barcelona (Spain) to study for his MBA at IESE Business School. During an exchange semester in 2000 at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, he was inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit characterising Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. This initial spark materialised a decade later when he decided to leave his well-paid job at a multinational company to become a social entrepreneur, dedicating his life to Education.
After finishing his MBA, he joined the German media company Bertelsmann, Europe's largest media business, working in different leadership positions both in the headquarters as well as in subsidiaries of Penguin Random House and DirectGroup in Germany, the US, Mexico, Spain and Portugal. In 2005, Sven was appointed CEO of Librerías Bertrand, a book retail start-up. During his ten years at Bertelsmann, he acquired a deep understanding and knowledge of the publishing industry.
In 2011, a passionate reader and father of two young children, Sven founded Boolino, an initiative to foster children’s learning ability by improving their reading habits and reading comprehension skills. After a four-year quest of searching for a scalable business model for his widely admired idea, and at the brink of closing Boolino, a business that had shown significant growth but lacked profitability, Sven convinced the Board of Directors to embrace the opportunity that digitalisation would bring to the publishing industry.
To kick-start a new digital business model, Boolino acquired the assets of UK-based company Fiction Express, which was founded in 2012 by independent publisher Paul Humphrey. Fiction Express had successfully piloted a unique idea to motivate UK primary school students to read, making them part of the creative book-writing process by guiding professional authors through weekly voting on the plot. After the acquisition in 2016, Sven, together with his co-founder and business partner Cristina Puig and their team, relaunched Fiction Express in 2017 with a new technology platform, introducing numerous new features. Fiction Express has become one of the most awarded global EdTech products in recent years, including the Education Resources Award 2019, the Teach Primary Award 2019, the Education Investor Award 2019 and the Bett Award 2020, considered the “Oscar” of Education. Today, hundreds of thousands of students in almost 50 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America use Fiction Express.
In response to the severe negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Education sector, in June 2020 Sven co-founded RE.SCHOOL, a collaborative initiative that aimed to help schools and teachers face the "new normal" ahead of school openings in September 2020. After the initial success (a two-day conference with over 4,000 participants held on June 24/25) and the launch RE.SCHOOL IdeaLab where teachers and school leaders can share best practices, Sven is now working with his team to envisage the school of the future. The leading question is how technology can help create better and more inclusive education systems that respond to the educational needs of the 21st century.
After living through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship during the past decade – including the 2008-12 global financial crisis and 2020 COVID-19 pandemic – today, Sven Huber is one of the leading thought leaders in EdTech in Europe. He regularly speaks at international conferences and business schools to share his passion for Education and social entrepreneurship.
Currently, he lives in Barcelona (Spain), enjoying the Mediterranean lifestyle, the sea, the close-by Pyrenees and Leo Messi's genius at Camp Nou (who knows for how long). While Education is his passion, his true love is his two children Lucas and Claudia, and his life partner Rocío.
Sven shares his thinking on www.svenhuber.education and tweets as @svenhuber.
Key Events:
2020 - Launch RE.SCHOOL
2017 - Launch Fiction Express
2011 - Foundation of Boolino SL, CEO
2006 - CEO Librerías Bertrand, Bertelsmann
2005 - M&A Direct Group, Bertelsmann
2003 - Marketing Director Círculo de Lectores, Bertelsmann
2001 - Strategic consultant at Bertelsmann
2001 - MBA IESE Business School & Haas School of Business – University of California Berkeley
1997 - Strategic consultant at McKinsey & Company
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/svenhuber