HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, the first business school established in Germany, celebrates its 115th anniversary this year. The institution was founded in the Auditorium Maximum of Leipzig University on April 25, 1898, to train young merchants seeking to lead large companies in an appropriate manner. After World War II, it was absorbed into Leipzig University: in 1969, the GDR opened a business school with a focus on domestic trade. In 1992, today’s HHL was re-established as a private university by the Leipzig Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Association of Friends of HHL.
Teaching all its programs in English, HHL has been one of the trailblazers in Germany since the mid-1990s. Long before the financial crisis, HHL was one of the first business schools to focus on the conditions for responsible and sustainable leadership. HHL now responds to the new challenges of leadership in the 21st century through its innovate125 Future Concept, keeping in tune with a holistic approach and expanding the dimensions of effectiveness and responsibility, aided by the perspective of innovation.
On the occasion of the 115th anniversary of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, the school publishes the “11+5 HHL faces” series introducing personalities connected with HHL.
*** Lukasz Gadowski (*1977)
Lukasz Gadowski is one of the most influential online entrepreneurs, founders and venture capitalists in Germany. While studying at HHL, Gadowski founded Spreadshirt, an online shop offering customized printed apparel, in 2001. He started in a corner of the basement of HHL and built up a company with several hundred employees.
In 2005, Gadowski participated in the founding of the studiVZ social network which was sold to the Holtzbrinck publishing group for an estimated EUR 85,000,000 in early 2007. The same year, Gadowski moved to Berlin where he, together with several partners, founded Team Europe, an online holding company, in 2008.
His other start-ups and investments include the brands4friends online shopping club, which was sold to eBay for EUR 150,000,000 in late 2010, the madvertise advertising service provider, the Lieferheld pizza delivery service as well online optician Mister Spex, which he founded together with HHL alumnus Dirk Graber.
In 2010, Lukasz Gadowski founded the Point Nine Capital online venture capitalist together with HHL alumnus Pawel Chudzinski and other partners from Team Europe.
In January 2013, Lukasz Gadowski joined the “Young Digital Economy” Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi). The board counsels the Federal Minister of Economics in all matters concerning the digital economy. The BMWi is hoping to improve the economic framework conditions for the digital economy and better seize the opportunities of digital economies by this means.
Lukasz Gadowski has a close connection with HHL, which was ranked repeatedly among the leading universities by the Financial Times for its Entrepreneurship focus. Just like HHL graduates Dirk Graber (Mister Spex), Jochen Klüppel (Grazia Equity), Rolf Schrömgens (Trivago) and many others, Lukasz Gadowski speaks at HHL’s Entrepreneurship lectures, serving as an excellent example of successful entrepreneurship for the students.
*** HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management
HHL is a university-level institution and ranks amongst the leading international Business Schools. The goal of the longest standing business school in German-speaking Europe is to educate effective, responsible and entrepreneurially minded leaders. In addition to HHL’s international focus the combination of theory and practice plays a key role. HHL stands out for its excellent teaching, its clear research focus, its effective knowledge transfer into practice as well as its outstanding student services. The school offers an 24-month full-time als well as part-time Master program in Management leading to the degree Master of Science (M.Sc.) and also an 18 month Global Executive MBA.HHL’s program is complemented by the two-year Euro*MBA-Program, a program based on e-learning (electronically supported learning). A three-year doctoral program, which can be studied part-time as well, completes HHL’s courses of study. The department of Executive Education offers company specific and open training programs for advanced education for specialist and leading positions. HHL received the accreditation of AACSB International in April 2004 and was the first German private school to be re-accredited in April 2009. http://www.hhl.de Weitere Informationen:
http://www.hhl.de/115years/Lukasz-Gadowski/ http://www.hhl.de/115years http://www.hhl.de
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