Biography
Born and bred by the banks of the Yangtze River, Dr. Wendy Wu is an entrepreneur, academic, and educator.
Wendy earned an ESRC-funded PhD in Management and an MSc by Research in Management from the University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom. She also holds an MSc in International Tourism from Edinburgh Napier University.
Her passion is creating integrated coaching methodologies and pedagogies to develop entrepreneurs’ business competence and creativity.
She works for Edinburgh Napier University, where she has a dual role – she as a lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and as a Business Adviser. She has advised more than 300 businesses from ideation to scale up.
Wendy has more than 20 years of experience in developing organisations, products/services, and businesses. She specialises in change management, entrepreneurship development, philanthropic funding strategy, and innovative business models. Her doctoral research explored social investment models. She has presented her academic work at conferences in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Prior to her academic career, she was Programme Manager for a multi-million-pound partnership educational programme in the Lothian area funded by the European Social Fund, an Education Officer for the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland), a CEO of London-based international charity, and a business owner in the service industry.
In 2020 Dr. Wu founded Edinburgh Napier University Impact Investment Symposium, which brings together leading investors, academics, philanthropists, social enterprises, and other change-makers to advance Impact Investment, ESG and purpose-driven business. She is also a strong advocate of experiential learning and is a senior fellow of a Higher Education Academy in the UK. Dr. Wu is also an accredited Team Coach with Tiimiakatemia in Finland and Akatemia in the UK.