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Gitte Schober
(Programme manager, Wageningen University & Research)

Bio

Gitte Schober is the programme manager for activities related to entrepreneurship, food and food services. Together with businesses and interest groups, including the government, she designs learning and development programmes that vary from in-company business strategy courses to projects focused on knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship. In the 5 year initiative of the TechnoPartner Knowledge Exploitation funding programme, Gitte and her team helped founding over 35 high-tech companies and established a solid consortium and business network to foster tech transfer and entrepreneurship in a knowledge intensive and academic environment for the food and agro sector. Since 2008, Gitte and her team also create soft landing facilities for promising high-tech companies between USA, Canada and the Netherlands as the gateway to Europe. Gitte has more than 15 years of experience working within Wageningen UR and as a consultant, both in the specific plant and food subjects taught at WUR and in her own specialist field of human resources and competency management.

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Floris van Alkemade
(Founder/Partner Solid Ventures, Partner NeSBIC CTE Funds)

Bio

Floris van Alkemade has over 15 years of experience in venture capital, M&A, business development. In 2006 he co-founded Solid Ventures, a EUR 8M venture capital fund investing in early stage technology companies in The Netherlands. He currently manages the fund that already has invested in 6 promising companies. In 1998 and 2000 is co-founded and co-managed the NeSBIC CTe Funds, EUR 210M value added venture capital funds having invested in 38 early stage technology companies in Europe and US. In 2000 he managed the NeSBIC CTe Fund office in Silicon Valley, US. Before starting in venture capital Floris worked at Unisource NV, a pan-European telecommunications company, the investment bank MeesPierson NV and the consulting firm Andersson Elffers Felix BV. He has a Masters Degree in Business Econometrics from the Free University of Amsterdam. He is a member of the board of several companies, amongst which Scense and a director of the Communications Networking community TSOC.

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Martin Stutterheim
(Manager TechnoPartner)

Bio

Martin Stutterheim studied chemistry at Leiden University. After obtaining his degree in 1978, he worked at the marketing & sales department of EssoChemie NL and CIVI Consultancy. Then Martin worked as an independent interim manager/consultant from 1990 until 2000, when he joined Senter, currently SenterNovem. He worked on a loan scheme for technical development and schemes to stimulate high tech start-ups. Since 2004 he is responsible for the implementation of the TechnoPartner programme, a joint initiative of the Ministries of Finance and Education, Culture and Science.

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Charlotte Wansink
(Senior policy advisor at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, project manager Valorisation Programme)

Bio

Charlotte Wansink works at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Netherlands, DG Enterprise and Innovation. She is policy manager of the Dutch TechnoPartner Programme, which provides financial support and technical assistance in order to improve the entrepreneurial climate in the Netherlands, especially with regard to technological start-up companies. Charlotte Wansink has an extensive experience in developing, implementing and evaluating policy in the area of innovative start-ups, technology transfer and knowledge valorisation. Charlotte is responsible for developing the new Valorisation programme. This programme is an initiative of the Ministries of Economic Affairs, Education, Culture and Science and Agriculture and Food quality. The programme stimulates a coherent set of activities that boosts the Dutch valorisation infrastructure.     She has also worked as Science and Technology Officer at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Paris, where she focused on life sciences, nanotechnology and innovation.  Before this, Charlotte was seconded as a national expert to the European Commission, DG Justice, Freedom and Security. She holds a Master's degree in Business and Economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam.  

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Randy Mitchell
(International Trade Strategist for Venture Capital, Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship, U.S. Department of Commerce)

Bio

Randy Mitchell joined the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2001, from the private sector where he had a history of entrepreneurial development in Russia, Japan, and the United States. From 1997-2001 he was founder of a start-up e-commerce company exporting U.S. consumer goods to the Japanese. In that position he built a management team that included former Fortune 500 executives including the former Chairman, CEO and President of Avon Japan. Along with his team he raised $3.5 million in angel and venture capital financing and built strategic partnerships with some of the largest companies in Japan and the United States.

Mr. Mitchell resided in Russia from 1992 through 1996, where he built distribution networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg for U.S. and Scandinavian food and beverage brands such as Nestle (Findus), Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Tyson, Subway, Campbell Soup, and others. This included working with Russian entrepreneurs in distribution, retail, and food service.

Mr. Mitchell is currently the U.S. government official responsible for venture capital and is the United States Representative to the OECD for Entrepreneurship where he actively works to promote global entrepreneurship. He is an alumnus of the Venture Capital Institute and has represented the International Trade Administration on the Board of Advisors to the Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA). Mr. Mitchell has also served as organizer and U.S. Secretary on bilateral venture capital working groups with the governments of Australia, Brazil, and the European Union. Mr. Mitchell, a speaker of Russian, has traveled to 38 countries.

At the International Trade Administration, Mr. Mitchell is responsible for: Enhancing the competitiveness of the U.S. venture capital sector Supporting foreign investments of U.S. venture capital firms Increasing the exports of U.S. venture capital

Mr. Mitchell is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and venture capital, including the following for 2009:

• Washington, DC: National Council Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer Conference (Scheduled 3 December)
• Stockholm, Sweden: 6th US-Sweden Venture & Entrepreneurship Forum (Scheduled 15 September)
• Sao Paulo, Brazil: Getulio Vargas Center for Private Equity & Venture Capital (August)
• Chicago, Illinois: Dealmakers Summit of The Marathon Club (July)
• Chicago, Illinois: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Center for Private Equity (June)
• Ottawa, Canada: Re$earch Money—International Trends in Venture Capital (March)
• Miami, Florida: University of Miami—Global Business Forum on Entrepreneurship (January)

Mr. Mitchell organized more than 40 international bilateral or multilateral entrepreneurship and investment symposia from 2003 thru 2008.