Dr. Kathrin DiPaola looks back at an impressive record of academic and industry endeavors and has worked for stellar institutions and companies in Europe and the U.S. She received a PhD from the University of Maryland with a dissertation on postcolonial literature in the South Pacific and a Master’s Degree from Arizona State University on Kafka’s fragment Amerika. Until 2010, she held appointments as Assistant Professor and was the youngest and first female Director of Deutsches Haus at New York University. In 2012, she left academia to pursue a career in mobility consulting, where she was responsible for the intersection between products/technologies in social and cultural processes. Clients included OEMs, city governments, suppliers, urban planners, and more.

In October 2018, she joined Business Sweden, the Swedish Trade and Invest Council, and took on an assignment as Senior Investment Advisor, helping German companies in different sectors to grow and partner with the Swedish innovation ecosystem. Until February 2021 and before joining the DWIH, Dr. DiPaola held the position of Managing Director Germany for the Swedish tech scale-up TechBuddy, with market presence in Sweden, Spain, Israel and Germany.