About us

The Right Choice

Impact House provides tailor made, individual services in order to make room for testing, retesting and strictly needs-based development of innovation and positive social impact. From mentoring, services and short needs-based ad hoc support, to three year star project development and support, we have proven to be a space where great new ideas can be translated into real change – making our business but also out communities and societies better. Our job is to make the world better, and we need you to do it! Check out our impact commitment bellow and read about our impact business culture and how we measure the impact we generate in the society.

We satisfy the highest criteria for a social enterprise – generating 100% of income on the market and reinvesting it into the community.

We are social scientists, we base our work on scientific ethics and quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis.

We generate on average 3.17 EUR social return on investment. By employing us we significantly contribute to positive social change.

We tackle tough issues! Because they are tough for a reason. That is why we are often called a small company for big ideas.

We practice what we preach! We have a unique impact on business culture, including the right to make mistakes, planning for unplanned work so we don’t impose burnout and so we can be there when we are needed ad hoc.

We are the toughest on ourselves and we continuously re-examine and measure our own impact.

We make sure to keep important things in focus – that is why, each year we chose our internal and external Impact in Focus to guide our work.

We are all about positive social change. Check out our internal (business culture) and external (impact we create) impact commitments bellow. Our job is to make the world better, and we need you to do it!

We also act as an impact investor, investing resources into impact projects.

Tamara Puhovski

Chief

Tamara is the founder of both ProPuh and Impact House, led by a passion for social impact hacking and 20 year experience in innovating, managing and measuring positive social impact across all sectors. Tamara has worked with and in international institutions (UNDP), European institutions (EU Parliament) as well as the national government as an adviser to the Deputy Foreign Minister heading the Open Government Partnership and leading in open, innovative and impact policy revolution. Tamara has worked with large corporates in developing core business through the perspective of social impact as well as numerous startups as a mentor in the field of innovation and impact. She has worked as a researcher and professor at the university and has worked and continues to volunteer in several NGOs as project manager, trainer and community manager working with youth, Roma, migrants, women and other communities.Tamara was selected by the European Comission as 30 best social innovators in Europe.

SUPERPOWER:

Inovation

PROFESSION:

Sociology
Political Science

DAY JOB:

Social impact hacker

  • INNOVATION & IDEATION 50% 50%
  • RESEARCH & ANALYSIS 80% 80%
  • TEACHING & MENTORING 80% 80%
  • IMPACT MANAGEMENT 80% 80%
  • COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT 80% 80%

Danijela Paska

Captain

Danijela ​​studied sociology and anthropology at the University of Zadar. She is competent in the field of qualitative research and in the field of socio-humanistic topics of human rights and public policies, social inequality and power relations. Her master thesis in sociology focused on the evaluation of the institutional framework (university) in terms of counseling services and care for the mental health of students and their emotional work in the academic context. Also, in her master’s thesis in the field of anthropology, she analyzed the discourse of mental health, i.e. public policy in Croatia. Danijela works in Impact House as a junior impact specialist on projects such as Gender and Energy Innovation Facility as well as providing expert support in other policy, corporate and community impact activities.

SUPERPOWER:

Research and analysis

PROFESSION:

Sociologist and anthropologist

DAY JOB:

Junior impact specialist

  • ANALYSIS 100% 100%
  • ORGANISATION 85% 85%
  • IMPACT MEASUREMENT 50% 50%
  • PROJECT COORDINATION 70% 70%

Hrvoje Dragušica

Partner

Hrvoje dedicated his career to teaching, conservation, natural habitats, CSR and sustainability. He started his career as a GIS consultant for natural resources and after that moved on to become a sustainability manager. Hrvoje led IKEA’s waste management and sustainability processes as head of CSR and as a sustainability manager enjoying a multicultural, multilingual, multi-country working place with a very dynamic, innovative and open approach to work. The scope of work included development, planning, implementation, negotiation, monitoring, legal compliance, financial reporting, communicating with stakeholders, managing tenders in areas such as waste management, energy and water consumption, implementing new technologies (PV panels, geothermal energy, etc.) and developing social entrepreneurs as partners. From conducting workshops for customers to developing and implementing programs with global and local partners Hrvoje’s career evolved around promoting sustainable ways of living on various levels and through different forums resulting in bringing IKEA to recycle or reuse 83% of its waste. Continuing his passion for a clean planet, Hrvoje volunteers as a diving and first aid instructor and vice president in the Roniti se mora diving club.

SUPERPOWER:

Reducing waste

PROFESSION:

Geographer

DAY JOB:

Sustainability consultant

  • SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT 100% 100%
  • ORGANISATION 95% 95%
  • NATURAL RESOURCES & SUSTAINABILITY 90% 90%
  • WASTE MANAGEMENT 100% 100%

Michael Freer

Partner

Michael Freer is serial social entrepreneur with a strong love of travelling and the outdoors. He currently spends his time between Croatia and the UK, running workshops for youth, consulting social startups and developing a few of his own social enterprise ideas.
In 2010 he started working for a local charity – Druglink, where his passion for social entrepreneurship began. Firstly, implementing a mental health and substance misuse training arm, before developing, raising funds, opening and running ‘Links Drinks’, a cafe that employed people with substance misuse or mental health issues. His love of travel then pulled him away from the UK, and halfway across the world to Cambodia, where he worked at a local NGO. His time was split between teaching students and teachers, and developing their tailoring school to start generating revenue to part-fund the NGO. He was also recruited on a part time basis to develop and implement the SA8000 (social accountability) quality standards for Pactics, owners of a garment factory in Siem Reap.
He decided to head back to Europe in 2015, choosing Croatia as his main base. Since then he has worked to promote social entrepreneurship in Croatia, as well as supporting NGOs and individuals to develop and grow their social startups, looking at themes such as permaculture, art, education, food and fashion.  He has also consulted companies on how to become more socially and environmentally minded, and always challenges them to become a fully fledged social enterprise!

SUPERPOWER:

Turning ideas into actions

PROFESSION:

International Business

DAY JOB:

Early stage social enterprise or CSR consultant

  • BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT 90% 90%
  • BUSINESS STRATEGY 90% 90%
  • STARTUP FINANCE 70% 70%
  • IMPACT DEVELOPMENT 70% 70%
  • IDEA DEVELOPMENT 100% 100%

Stjepan Mikec

Partner

Stjepan has over 15 year of experience in management, and development, of social economy organisations. He is specialised in green economy, community development and new technologies.  His employment history includes a full mandate as the Executive Director of ACT Group, a consortium of social enterprises, as well as leading support organisation for entrepreneurs with positive social impact.  Before becoming the CEO, in said consortium (which employs over 70 people and are a leading example in the region) his roles were development and capacity building. As the CEO he founded an incubator and accelerator, brining networking, mentoring and access to finance to social enterprises and impact startups in Croatia. He mentors in areas of: strategic management, people management, project management, services development, social impact management, operations and processes.

SUPERPOWER:

Shaper & implementer

PROFESSION:

Business management

DAY JOB:

Farming & Strategy/operations consultant

  • STRATEGY 70% 70%
  • IMPACT MANAGEMENT 80% 80%
  • PROJECT MANAGEMENT 90% 90%
  • OPERATIONS/PROCESSES 80% 80%
  • TEACHING/MENTORING 70% 70%

Our Brands

We are very proud to have the following organisations as integral part of the Impact-House community

Propuh

Social impact hacking

Good lobby

Lobbying training and service for those who cannot afford it

ROUM

Upcycling through cooperation

Ensoco

Social enterprise consultants