Cornel Amariei - the CEO and co-founder of .lumen, which creates assistive systems for the blind, is the first Romanian to be inducted into the prestigious Global Business Hall of Fame.
The Global Business Hall of Fame was founded in 1975 and has awarded personalities such as Levi Strauss, the inventor of the blue jeans, or Estee Lauder, the founder of the company bearing her name.
It’s the first time that a Romanian reaches this esteemed list, which is comprised of 247 laureates so far, from founders or CEOs of successful companies to industry pioneers or brand editorialists.
In this year's edition of the Global Business Hall of Fame, Cornel Amariei was nominated in the innovators’ category along with Melanie Perkins, founder of the well-known company Canva.
Cornel Amariei comes from a family where both parents have locomotor disabilities, and his sister, cerebral disabilities. After holding the position of Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive Systems, he founded, in 2020, the company .lumen - a startup that creates glasses that empower the lives of the blind.
There are 40 million blind people in the world and yet, despite the accelerated pace of technological advancement, the only high-performance solution, when it comes to their mobility, is still the guide dog. Unfortunately, for 40 million blind people, there are only 20,000 guide dogs.
Using the latest technologies from autonomous driving and robotics, the .lumen glasses offer the same benefits as the guide dog in a scalable package - the only solution for the 39,980,000 blind people who do not benefit from the advantages of a guide dog.
Junior Achievement is a global NGO, present in over 100 countries, which deals with entrepreneurship, encouraging the financial education of over 12 million students, coordinated by over half a million members, through interactive and practical programs.