Marianne Poulsen
Director Education Practice
Global Innovation Solutions

Email:marianne.poulsen@gis-innovation.com

Marianne Poulsen has been deeply involved with innovation for many years. As a practitioner, an innovation diplomat, a consultant, a speaker and a professor.

Ms Poulsen spent 2 1/2 years in Silicon Valley developing the concept, implementing and running for Innovation Center Denmark, a visionary component of the Danish Globalization strategy launched by Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was Prime Minister at the time. This intense period gave Ms Poulsen a unique insight into the unique innovation ecosystem in the Valley. It also gave her a unique position to understand the missing components "back home".

She was on the team of Directors that started the first privately owned GSM company in 1992. This start-up basically changed the business model for the mobile sector in Denmark. She spent 3 years in Brussels as a lobbyist, worked as a Marketing Director for an engineering firm selling turnkey recombination dairy plants to the third world and was a McKinsey consultant in Houston and Copenhagen.

Ms Poulsen has mentored a number of high technology based start-ups and is on the Board of a number of high growth companies. She also represents the Ministry of Science and Technology on the Danish Board of Technology.
Since 2008 she has taught an executive MBA class in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the AVT Business School in Denmark, where the students give her very high scores for her deep knowledge, her hands on approach and her ability to bring clarity to complicated subjects.

Marianne Poulsen is also a popular speaker at conferences, seminars and workshops in the Nordic region. At a recent VIP seminar in Oslo with Sir Richard Branson as one of the co-speakers she was voted the best speaker of the day by participants.
Marianne's work with SRI has brought her into contact with a number of governments in Europe and has given her a unique insight into the different innovation ecosystems.

Marianne Poulsen holds an MS from Aarhus Business School and an MBA from University of Houston.

Previous to getting involved in innovation Ms Poulsen was a McKinsey consultant, held number of positions in marketing communications, served as a lobbyist in Brussels and started an advertising agency in Prague. Ms Poulsen has lived and worked in a number of countries around the globe and brings a true international perspective to the table.