Speaker Biography
Jens Manke
Director Germany and Central Europe
OCO Global
Jens Manke is Director Germany and Central Europe with OCO Global based in the Frankfurt Region, Germany. In this role he is responsible for the operational management and support of ongoing projects for Central Europe, especially the German-speaking market. Jens has more than 10 years of experience in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and international trade relations. He advises economic development organisations with their strategic positioning for FDI and related trade and investment advisory programs.
Jens has supported leading investment promotion agencies such as Invest Victoria (Australia), Tunisia Investment Authority (TIA), Bahrain EDB or Maryland Department of Commerce in their positioning and representation in the German-speaking market. He also supports organizations within the DACH- region on various issues relating to investment attraction, including Baden-Württemberg International, Berlin Partner, NRW.Global Business, Invest in Mecklenburg-Pomerania, the Ministry of Economics in Schleswig-Holstein and the Austrian Business Agency. He also advises private companies on their expansion into new markets and on topics such as growth and market entry strategies and entrepreneurial business development.
Before joining OCO, Jens worked for NRW.Global Business, the economic development agency of the German Federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. There he was responsible for FDI lead generation, investment facilitation and aftercare services to foreign companies in North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition, he developed strategies and concepts along the investment promotion value chain, such as strategic FDI attraction, aftercare and key account management as well as strategies for cross-industry innovation topics such as Industry 4.0, digital economy and e-commerce. In this role, Jens was a frequent speaker at investment attraction events across Europe but also overseas, especially in China.
Prior to that, he worked for Metro Group (Düsseldorf) on location assessments and real estate and property scorings for portfolio analysis. He also worked as research assistant at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and contributed significantly to the economic impact study of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Jens completed a degree in economic geography (M.Sc.) at RWTH Aachen University and obtained an MBA from the FOM University of Economics and Management. He spent a semester abroad at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
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