Tell us about your idea – what, how and why? 

MigraPort is an initiative dedicated to accelerating the labour market integration of migrants in Austria. To achieve this, we, my mother and I, tackle the problem from both fronts: developing the necessary services for beneficiaries (immigrants) to empower them and addressing the issues companies face when hiring immigrant workers.

The end result will be a digital and intelligent system that makes integration more efficient, creating better chances for more stable residency for immigrants while simultaneously helping to tackle the labour shortages Austria is currently facing. In other words, we are trying to make a system that works a little better for everyone. Revolutionary, I know.

What motivated you to start your own company? 

My personal “why” for bringing this to life is an overpowering sense of fulfilment and excitement. There is a potent feeling of admiration and awe behind developing this project because of its importance and potential. I find something genuinely beautiful in empowering an overlooked yet necessary group of individuals with a reformative spirit.

This point of view occurred to me after I made the decision to start my own project. I did so once I realised that one of the most rewarding things in life is using our skills to create something on our own accord. There is something incredibly satisfying about taking an idea that exists only in your head and deciding, rather recklessly, that it should exist in the real world. This fascination with bold, free-spirited, highly rewarding and, of course, risky endeavours is what motivated me to start my own project.

How did your impact journey begin? 

It all began about two years ago, when my mother used to come home from work and tell me about her experiences working with immigrants as a German teacher. Having realised the inefficiencies within the integration journey, I came up with MigraPort.

The only thing left to do was to convince my rather conservative mother to get on board with this wild startup idea. Which, naturally, was the easiest part. After all, nothing says “stable family relationship” quite like convincing your mother to invest her time and energy into your completely untested business idea.

Somehow, I succeeded.

Once this was done, we applied for the Vienna Business Agency incubator and were accepted to develop our endeavour further. In the meantime, we dedicated time and effort to building a community, hosting events, and helping immigrants improve their German proficiency. Slowly but surely, the idea stopped being just an idea and started becoming something tangible — which is both exciting and slightly terrifying.

In June, we got the chance to become a SIA finalist — and here we are.

What has excited you most about the SIA incubation process? 

With SIA, I got the chance to step away from the soloist position and move towards a communal level, which excites me every time. It’s one thing to work alone or as a duo; it’s another to work with a group of people for the sake of inventing ideas, challenging each other and solving problems. There is a completely different energy to it. More perspectives, more chaos, more ideas — and somehow, usually, better solutions. That’s just so much more fun.

If you had all the resources in the world, what would you want to change? 

If I had all the resources in the world, I would dedicate them to finding a cure for ME, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

Unfortunately, it is an illness that can twist your life 180 degrees, while remaining surprisingly invisible to the world around you. Anyone among us could become a victim of it, especially in the aftermath of COVID. It is a disease that can rob you of your life force, your independence and your ability to function, while offering remarkably little in return from the medical community — the very people who are supposed to help you.

I have the honour of confronting this condition with two options: living in pain or choosing assisted suicide.

Not exactly the menu of choices anyone hopes to be presented with.

So, to save myself and thousands of other people from this misfortune, investing all the time and money we need to understand this hell of an illness seems like a reasonable thing to do, right?

If you have made it this far and actually read this blog, please take a minute or two to inform yourself about this illness. Who knows? Maybe you or someone dear to you has it but is completely clueless about its existence.

Sometimes the most important problems are the ones we barely know exist.