Sigrid Johannisse

Sigrid Johannisse is Counselor for Innovation, Technology and Science at the Netherlands Embassy in Washington and in charge of the Dutch Innovation Attaché network in the USA and Canada with offices in San Francisco and Boston. Previously she was founder and director of the Dutch national private-public startup organization “StartupDelta” which she ran together with the first Dutch Special Envoy for startups, Neelie Kroes. Ms. Johannisse was the advisor of Vice-president Kroes at the European Commission in Brussels on the Digital Agenda and responsible for cyber security, e-government, e-health, smart cities, startups and innovation. Before her role at the European Commission, Ms. Johannisse held various managerial positions at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Netherlands, at the forefront of innovation policy making, with an emphasis on high tech, IT and bio based economy. She has developed various new innovation policy initiatives with public private partnerships at its core. Ms. Johannisse is originally an architecture historian. Her academic background is architecture history: she wrote a book about the Dutch architect Michel de Klerk of the Amsterdam School, published in three languages. As side activities she is in the advisory board of Utrecht Inc, a Startup Incubator ranked nr 10 in the global UBI ranking; advises on the upcoming national institute for Artificial Intelligence in the Netherlands; a member of the expert group of the European Commission on startup policy for Slovakia and a jury member of Inspiring Fifty to promote gender diversity in technology internationally.