WoW Woman in FemTech | Lan Zuo Gillet, Deputy Managing Director of EPFL Innovation Park

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Lan Zuo Gillet is Deputy Managing Director of EPFL Innovation Park, heading start-up incubation and acceleration programs. She is also appointed as Expert of Swiss innovation Agency (Innosuisse) and Program Director for Innosuisse Entrepreneurship Training Western Switzerland. Lan has 28 years of professional experience and held senior management positions in the Swiss watch and financial industries, in various functional areas such as R&D, operational control, and business development.

EPFL Innovation Park is a major innovation hub in Western Switzerland, hosting about 150 high-tech start-up companies and 25 innovation labs of large corporations. The EPFL Innovation Park Foundation supports innovation and technology transfer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – Lausanne (EPFL) and regional universities. It provides flexible office space, training, coaching, acceleration, and other business services to entrepreneurs and innovators, in collaboration with a dynamic community of industry experts, business angels and VCs, governmental agencies as well as service providers.

Lan, tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.

I graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, earned an MBA from HEC Lausanne, a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and research experience as a postdoc at Stanford University. I am what people called “an intrapreneur”, always passionate about building something new in the workplace. While working as an R&D project manager with a prestigious Swiss watch brand, I brought computer-aided optimization in the watch design process in 2000 and the results have been published at the European Conference of Chronometry. In the financial industry with a well-known Swiss private bank, I created a Management Information System for operational control of different levels of management- a system that was acquired later by an IT company to develop into a commercial product. 

From 2008 to 2012, I was appointed as Consul for Consulate General of Switzerland in Shanghai and set up Sino Swiss governmental Science and Technology Cooperation Program and the swissnex China – Switzerland’s outpost for science and technology in China. From 2012 to 2014, I was running the Geneva Creativity Center – an innovation platform between Geneva-based universities and industries.

After I joined EPFL Innovation Park, I designed and implemented a highly hands-on, inter-university entrepreneurship training program in Western Switzerland, in collaboration with a large pool of entrepreneurs and industry experts. Over 1500 participants who have gone through the training in the past 6 years and over 100 have successfully created their start-up companies and many others are preparing to launch theirs.

How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?

I have been very fortunate to be able to enter many quite different industries that I am interested in and passionate about such as the Watch industry, the Banking industry, governmental agencies, and not-for-profit organizations. It has been full of challenges and excitement. Having both engineering and business training does help, but each time it required a lot of energy to quickly adapt and integrate myself. There have been always a lot of transferable skills and knowledge to leverage on. Most importantly, the network and understanding of one business helped me a great deal to be operational and effective in the next position. It has been an extraordinary learning and rewarding experience. 

How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in? 

My professional path is not linear, but rather circular. I feel I am in a constant learning and iteration process, regardless of the position/responsibility I am occupying. It is a never-ending journey. To answer your question: I have been in my current position since 2014. My previous professional experiences have prepared me for this new world of high-tech start-ups. The biggest challenge that I am facing remains the same: how to innovate, in a very crowded world full of existing offers and competitors? 

What are your biggest achievements to date?

Being able to navigate in different industries and able to innovate and bring tangible results

What are the projects you are currently working on?

Currently, I am working on two new programs in addition to my other duties: one is  Tech4Eva – a FemTech accelerator dedicated to the wellbeing and the health of women, in partnership with a Swiss insurance company Groupe Mutuel. Our ambition is to boost related Swiss and foreign start-ups by bringing corporate experts and investors and create a community of innovators, women and men alike, to work on new technologies or services for women’s health, in order to facilitate their professional career and family life. The second project Tech4Growth Health I am working on is a workshop series on how to build a win-win, impactful partnership between startups – corporates – academy. The workshop series is targeting start-up founders, senior executives in the corporates as well as university professors. The first series will be in the vertical of health. We have already got onboard high-level speakers/trainers from large corporates such as Ferring, Novartis, Merck, Medtronic, as well as successful start-up founders of Distalmotion, Oculis, Lunaphore, etc.

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Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why? 

#WomenInTech movement is extremely important for multiple reasons:

  • The #WomenInTech will help to raise the awareness of women’s role in science and technology and therefore the recognition of their work and their important contribution. It will contribute to the gender balance in terms of career promotion as well as decision-making power in society.

  • The #WomenInTech will contribute to the change of mindset in society, deliver the message that women are as well gifted and successful in learning and dealing with scientific/technological matters. The movement will encourage more girls to study science and technology and to embark on a tech career. It will also provide role models for women to strive for success.

What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?

Regarding the “industry” of the start-up ecosystem: I see that there will be a consolidation of various initiatives at private and public levels Start-up support will be also more sector-specific. I see closer collaboration between start-ups and corporates, the two organizations, despite their difference in structure and ways of operating, will eventually leverage each other’s strength to cope with the fast-paced market evolution and need for innovation. Regarding the education of the younger generation or the training of entrepreneurs or innovators, I feel that the trend will be more and more multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensions, combined with knowledge enhancement and soft skill development. I think also that the education of young people would become a cross-generation endeavor, with experienced senior people helping younger ones.

What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?

  • Acquire a first hands-on professional experience, in a corporate or in start-up to better understand the business environment and challenges. 

  • Be her/himself, someone having a passion for innovation, willing to go out of her/his comfort zone, trying to be multidisciplinary, not to be afraid of failure. 

  • Developing the capacity of execution: being able to materialize an idea into a program/service for start-ups.

  • Build /Multiply her/his professional network as it is an absolute asset when you want to support a start-up company.

 Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?

I admire all those women who shine or who operate in a male dominant world. 

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Find out more about EPFL Innovation Park on their website.

Follow EPFL Innovation Park on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Apply for Tech4Eva, the first Swiss program in the field of FemTech here.

This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.