Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen has built a life and career on bringing together different professional fields and sectors, thereby creating new types of partnerships. By carefully and deliberately mixing diverse experts and interests, he has built new ventures and created impactful partnerships — especially within the field of supply chains and global trade. For the last 8 years he has taken up different roles within A.P. Moller — Maersk including launching a new e-trade platform for Africa, forged a partnership with a large bank to develop financial trade services with focus on emerging markets, co-founder of a public-private partnership with focus on trade facilitation including five governments, the ICC and the World Economic Forum. Within the field of CSR, he has launched human right initiatives and established a partnership with other logistic companies such as UPS and Agility supporting the UN World Food Programme, to deliver a rapid response to large natural disasters around the world.

In addition to his educational background in civil engineering and a master in Philosophy, Jens also holds an MBA from INSEAD. Jens is a Danish national living in London with his family.

On joining IOTA

Personally, I am very excited to join IOTA for three main reasons: 1) The Tangle solution has overcome intrinsic problems of traditional blockchain technology (with its fee-less and scalable transactions) thus radically raising the ambition level. 2) The open and collaborative approach to innovation and application of the technology, makes the IOTA Foundation one of the most exciting places to work right now. 3) Applying the Tangle into international trade and supply chains can make a serious dent in a future where many more farmers and producers can join the economy in a meaningful and self-sustainable way. The potential effects are equally large in the developed as the developing world. It is my hope, as a new team member, to apply my experience and expertise to sustain the momentum and the fulfilment of the IOTA vision. Before joining IOTA I was part of a team mapping the documents and processes involved in international trade. We used the sample example of a container of flowers from Kenya to Holland to better understand the number of documents and stakeholders involved in the shipping process. The result was surprising even to long-term experts within the shipping industries due to the cumbersomeness and share number of actors involved. We early on discussed using blockchain technology and the more I learned the more I understood the transformative potential of the distributed ledger technology.

Jens is a pioneer of digitizing the supply chain, which is in many ways the backbone of the modern international economy and industry. He has extensive experience dealing with authorities and companies, conveying new and sometimes complex topics. His experience with emerging markets will be of great value to IOTA’s global adoption, as these developing nations can leap frog a lot of the iterative steps that the developed nations has gone through and instead adopt the cutting edge of technology straight away. We are very excited to have him part of the IOTA Foundation to drive adoption as a vanguard in new fields. Give him a warm welcome!