Jacqueline Fendt is emeritus professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School and founder and former Scientific Director of the school’s Chair of Entrepreneurship (now JB Say Institute). 

After teenage years as a national swimming champion Jacqueline Fendt founded and managed her first company at age 23 in Malta: a translation and interpretation service. Back in her native Switzerland she then embarked upon a corporate career with executive positions at Ciba-Geigy Basel (now Novartis), Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP) in Zurich and Siber Hegner Group (now DKSH) in Tokyo. In 1994 she was appointed CEO of Swiss Shipping and Neptune Co. Ltd (now Rhenus) in Basel, and radically restructured this mythical but deficitary European inland navigation group. In March 1997 Jacqueline Fendt was appointed by the Swiss Government to head Expo.01, a large once-in-a-generation national exhibition for which she raised several hundred million Euros before leaving the project in a highly mediated political clash. In 1999 she founded and chaired Business Angels Schweiz,www.businessangels.ch), an organization that identifies, finances and coaches promising seed and start-up companies, mainly in bio- and nanotech. From 2001-2004 she was Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration (www.gsba.ch). Jacqueline also serves on the boards of international companies in the life sciences and transportation industries and is a long-standing expert to the European Commission in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

She holds bachelors in organization science and business administration (distinction), an MBA from GSBA/Boston University, a Ph.D. in mathematics (cum laude) from Leiden University, Netherlands, a PhD in business administration from JCME Boston/Zurich and a Habilitation in Management Science from Strasbourg University, France.