Carole Picou-Katmann

Franco-German and Canadian, now residing between Lisbon and Amsterdam, my professional life has led me to work with over 30 countries across 4 continents.

For the past 18 years, I have worked within companies, as an intrapreneur to launch a product, a service, open new markets, build new departments, refresh a brand image, digitalize a company, or create new disciplines and areas of expertise.

A few years ago, I decided to transform this intrapreneur into an entrepreneur by developing my own D2C brand (eco-responsible Scandinavian-inspired furniture for cats), which was funded by a crowdfunding campaign (Kickstarter) alongside my corporate activity.

I consider myself a Swiss Army knife business-wise, because I started my career in luxury in New York as a buyer and operations manager. Then, I worked in the fashion, cosmetics and luxury sectors in digital marketing and e-commerce in Montreal before transitioning to work for technology companies (I was part of the founding team of UBER in Canada). In Europe, after working at UBER’s international headquarters, I joined PepsiCo’s incubator by launching their first purely D2C beverage. Then I returned to tech by working successively at TomTom (mobility tech), DiDi (Chinese equivalent of UBER), Clearco (Fintech) and GoStudent (Edtech).

Today, I work independently as a fractional/interim CMO and CGO serving startups and scale-ups.

In parallel, I am also a mentor and advisor for 3 impact-driven companies (CleanCycle, OJOA and Myria Design) in Amsterdam.

In addition to these activities, I am very interested in teaching : I lecture Marketing and Entrepreneurship classes at Erasmus University Rotterdam and I did the same at McGill and HEC Montreal.