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Jonathan Schmidt ’85

Jonathan Schmidt ’85

Member

Chancellor's Global Leadership Council

Jonathan Schmidt is co-founder and chief executive officer of Adtingo Ltd., a project incubator and development company. Adtingo partners with best-in-breed smart city and infrastructure technology players and supports financing institutions to brings these technologies to market (e.g. clean coal, water purification, energy efficiency), with a focus on India, the Middle East and Africa. He is also chief executive officer of LuminWorld International, an industrial and outdoor LED energy efficient lighting company that specializes in large-scale municipal and government agency retrofit projects financed via purchasing power parity schemes.

Schmidt served as a legislative assistant for the U.S. Congress after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s in biology in 1985. He went on to earn a master’s in Asian economics from George Washington University, and then relocated to Taiwan, where he became an editor at the China Post. Between 1994 and 1996, Jonathan served as co-founder and managing director of Asia Intelligence Wire, which was sold to the Financial Times Group in 1996. He subsequently served as managing director for Financial Times’ Asia Pacific businesses until 2000.

In 2000, he left Financial Times to pursue entrepreneurial interests. Following the establishment and sale of two financial publishing businesses, he worked at the World Economic Forum from 2005 to 2008 as director for Global Agendas and Regional Strategies in charge of Davos and other major WEF conferences, and launched the institution’s social media platforms.

Schmidt is a published author on Russian economics and holds and has for seven years served as a senior strategic advisor the Russian Ministry of Economic Development. He is a board advisor to economic publisher Caixin Media (China) and EXLhub, an artificial intelligence-powered start-up educating early stage computer programmers. In his capacity as chief executive officer of Adtingo, Schmidt has played an active role advising governments, including Russia, Jordan, and India on developing purchasing power parity financing standards and has advised the IFC, EBRD, and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on establishing technical standards for energy efficient and clean energy technology adoption.

Schmidt speaks English, Chinese (Mandarin), and Russian.