Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute

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Jean Wilcox

Dr. Jean Wilcox is a founding partner in Nenko Advisors International, LLC a management consulting firm that works with privately held companies to improve revenue, reduce costs and improve communications. Prior to founding Nenko, she was the CEO of CattLeLogos Brand Management Systems LLC, an entrepreneurial company that offered end-to-end marketing services with a focus on assisting companies to project a clear, consistent brand image both externally and internally.

Jean has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago. She began her career at Xerox, holding several technical positions before she moved into marketing and business development roles. Jean has over 20 years experience working in the international business arena. At Versatec, a Xerox subsidiary, she was Manager of Japanese business development. After leaving Xerox, Jean worked for Synergy Computer Graphics, a subsidiary of Nippon Steel Corporation, where she taught basic Japanese language classes to the employees.

On leaving Synergy she formed a consultancy called Ginkgo Enterprises that, among other strategic marketing services, offered cross cultural training workshops. Clients included National Semiconductor, among others, and training sessions ranged from 3 hour “Understanding Cultural Mindsets” seminars to intensive 3 day workshops in “How to Do Business Cross Culturally: Focus Japan.”

Ginkgo Enterprises also performed extensive product positioning for Sun Microsystems, with various Sun locations and customers in the US and Japan to clarify the customer value proposition of Sun workstations, Asian language operating systems and storage devices among other products.

A consulting contract with Bellcore to develop a strategy to focus on the emerging Internet led to a position as Executive Director of Market Strategy, Web Sites and Brand Management. She was Marketing VP for their Internet Business Unit. Subsequently she was team leader in the company’s name change to Telcordia Technologies, Inc. and subsequent rebranding effort and was responsible for managing the company’s complex web site incorporating multiple business units, research and e-commerce sites.

Jean left Telcordia to become VP of Marketing and Product Development for the Graphics Division of Hunt Corporation. In this role, she created a global marketing team with staff in the US, Europe, and Asia. Their efforts created a simplified and focused global brand strategy under a common design structure that eliminated redundant resources as well as market confusion resulting from multiple product brands.

Jean’s key strength is her ability to envision the big picture and to communicate it clearly to any type of organization. She has exceptional team building skills across functional lines and international boundaries, and has lead cross-cultural training workshops on three continents. She has a gift for color and design and has been active in both developing and using computer graphics for over 15 years.