We live and breathe tech. Photos created with AI by Black Forest Labs.
Chemical engineer, founder, investor: obsessed with scaling breakthrough technology. Alina's career has spanned three chapters. Since August 2026, Alina is a Principal at Earlybird Venture Capital, focused on deeptech investing across Europe.
Before venture, she trained as a chemical engineer, designing offshore and onshore oil and gas facilities, engineering industrial plants at ThyssenKrupp from petrochemicals to pyrolysis, and then joining bio-bean to build the world's first biorefinery converting coffee waste into solid and liquid biofuels.
She then moved into entrepreneurship, founding Kleiderly, a startup focused on a patented technology turning textile waste into a plastic alternative, and co-founding Founderland, a non-profit community of over 1,000 women of colour founders/investors/partners across Europe, backed by Google.org. Her work has been recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Obama Foundation.
Her conviction: Europe has the science and the talent to lead the next industrial frontier. Venture is the fastest way to get there.
The first lesson I learned...
was at 14, when I made a short documentary about greed, pollution, and poverty and got to see it play in a cinema. It taught me not to be afraid to voice my perspective, to dream big, and to work just as hard to make those ideas happen.
Growing up I wanted to become...
an astronaut, until I discovered what kind of food they eat in space and quickly changed my mind. Then I wanted to become a film director, drawn to the power of storytelling. My path eventually led to chemical engineering, entrepreneurship, and venture capital, but that curiosity never left me.
I get up early morning because...
I truly believe venture capital is the absolute fastest way to scale frontier solutions. Knowing that every day is an opportunity to back the founders who are actually building our future is why I’ve dedicated my career to making that happen at scale.
