John Kearns is the Chief Executive of Partas - a social enterprise. Partas has been helping clients develop their entrepreneurial and work-ready skills since 1984. Partas also operates with partners throughout Europe in promoting inclusive entrepreneurship, minority entrepreneurship, cross-border entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship under various EU projects.John’s qualifications are in financial services, where he was national sales manager for one of the largest financial services groups in the country. That career was interrupted by the explosive success of one of his many entrepreneurial sidelines when he conceived of and produced a concept album called ‘Faith of our Fathers’. In a matter of a few short weeks it became the fastest and largest selling album in Irish music history. From that he became an entrepreneur in the music business and has been responsible for some of the most successful recording and live events in Ireland over the last many years achieving multi platinum status. The success of those projects also spread to the US and Australia where his they have enjoyed popular acclaim. John has since achieved a first-class MBA in Entrepreneurship, published a book on his music successes, studied microenterprise in the US and until recently was the Irish representative as an expert adviser to the EU Commission on social entrepreneurship (GECES).In recent years he has spearheaded a new ‘Social + Local’ enterprise strategy promoting local artisan food and drink. Partas has already started two artisan coffee shops, an award-winning microbrewery and a shared kitchen business. In early 2025 they will launch a major 2500 sqm. food hub: 'Priory Market' - a social enterprise and a major 500 sqm. co-working kitchen. They also incubate some 80 startup businesses in the other enterprise centres they operate. John is also a founder-director of SERI - the network for social enterprise in Ireland - of which he is currently Chair. He is also a board member of the EUCLID European social enterprise network.