Alumni Network
A rich network of former club members
Alumni
Frederik Neuhaus
Post Doc
@University of Fribourg
Frederik has a Doctorate in Chemistry with a focus on phospholipids in drug delivery systems from the University of Fribourg. During his time in Fribourg he published several scientific papers as well as two patents. He climbed the ranks starting in March 2015 as team member with public relations as main task. After becoming our Vice President and co-founding the Association for Student Innovation (ASI) later that year, he followed Pascal as our new president in october 2016. He steered the club through some tough times with small size and initialized the growth period in 2017 with a new strategy and team structure.
During his time in the club he invited some great speakers like the former CEO of Doodle (Michael Brecht) or nobel-laureate and entrepreneur Alan J. Heeger. He initialized our Design Thinking workshop program, worked on the redesign of our club's appearance in the media and took part in the creation of a coordinator position between the Innovation Club and the ASI.
Pascal Gurtner
Senior Innovation Manager
@ Helvetia
Pascal holds a Master of Science degree in Business Administration with a major in Entrepreneurship (Innovation & Growth) from the HEG-FR. After being teammember for some time he was our president from March 2015 until October 2016. He had a strong influence on the shape of the Innovation Club like it is right now. Besides his work in the Club he is a Founding Board Member of our Association for Student Innovation (ASI).
During his time in the club he brought us some great speakers for the Speaker Series like the General Manager of UBER Switzerland (Steve Salom). Additionally to this, he brought his entrepreneurial style of work into the club and created new programs, which are lasting ever since like the Innovation Thursdays.
Mario Gstrein
Senior Business Consultant
@mm1 Schweiz AG
Mario received 2016 his PhD by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Fribourg. Joining Fribourg in 2011, Mario was one of the first Innovation Club members and managed the club during several years as its president.
As an Austrian with a lot of international experience, he always advocated for an open, creative and student-focused club. Next to the co-organization of several events, Mario created the first version of the Innovation Club homepage and led several Ideation-workshops for different students. His knowledge in the fields of ‘business model innovation’ and ‘value chains’ were especially appreciated by non-business students.
Manuel Burneo
Business Developer
@Younergy
Manuel holds an Executive MBA from the University of Fribourg. From November 2012 until January 2017, he has been one of our most experienced team members, during this time he has long been on the Club's executive board and is one of the founding members of the Club.
There is hardly any field he has not worked in or helped out. He promoted all our events with a lot of engangement and organised events like a visit of the Marly Innovation Center nearly single handedly. He has always been and still is a ressource for the Club's beginning and can be met at several of our events every year. Since he resigned his team position he is still the Auditor for the ASI's annual financial statement.
Divya Rajan
Co-Founder
@Swiss Learning Exchange
Divya holds a Bachelor's degree in Hotel Management from the Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration, Manipal University. From October 2014 until December 2016 she has been a member of the Innovation Club's executive board for marketing and communication. During this time she also mentored some of the more junior team members and brought some indian culture into the club.
Her cheerful personality and highly international background was an amazing benefit for the club and she helped making our events be well-known though out the campus. She was very strong in getting our social media presence off the ground.
Laurent Collet
Director
@Habaki
Laurent has a Master's degree in Telecom, Network and Services from Telecom Nancy and an Executive MBA from EM Lyon. From July 2015 until May 2017, he has been the club's webmaster. He worked on our first website revision and supervised everything that was concerning our webpresence.
His calm and down-to-earth nature made it a pleasure to work with him. Being an active member during most of our events during his time in the club, but also afterwards. Still being well connected in the club, Laurent can give ideas to the newer club members and his experience in a fast moving and developing club like ours helps a lot.
Francesca Cerza
Director of Sales Development
@Avrios
Francesca has a Master's degree in business administration from the HEG-FR with a major in entrepreneurship (Innovation & Growth). From Jan 2014 until Oct 2015, she has been a member of the Innovation Club's executive board. Her main responsibility were marketing and communication.
Her engaging and highly enthusiastic personality made her an asset to the Innovation Club through out her whole time with us. She helped kicking some of our largest programs off the ground. To mention some of the events she worked on with us: our Speaker Series with Steve Salom - General Manager @ UBER, or she organised hands-on events with Google Glass and Oculus Rift. Additionally she got a lot new members interested in the club and thus had a large impact on the development of our club.
Joel Allred
Senior Software Engineer
@DiffBlue
Joel holds a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from the University of Fribourg. He now leads the modelling team at Diffblue Ltd, an Oxford-based start-up that is a world leader in AI that understands code. Before that he was developing a model-checker at Systerel, - a company specialised in the safety of real time systems - in beautiful Aix-en-Provence.
As the Innovation Club's founding president, Joel went through all the hurdles involved in setting up a new association from scratch with whatever bits and pieces were to be found.
Gabriel de Andrade
Audit & Assurance Manager | Head of Singapore French Desk
@Mazars Singapore
As one of the earliest leaders of the Innovation Club, Gabriel actively turned a vision into an organization with direction and purpose, bringing together students from all over Fribourg’s campuses. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the School of Management in Fribourg with a Major in International Business Management. He also gained extensive exposure to entrepreneurship in Asia, through his university exchange in Zhejiang University in China.
Gabriel has over seven years of international experience at PwC across Switzerland and Singapore in providing professional services, including audit and corporate tax. He is now in charge of Mazar’s French Desk in Singapore and has expertise in assisting companies or their foreign subsidiaries to invest, operate, and stay compliant in Singapore and Asia-Pacific.