Roman Gutzwiller

Dr. iur. HSG, MBA (HEC Paris), Attorney-at-law

Dr. Roman Gutzwiller (born 1985, Swiss national) specialises in interdisciplinary issues at the intersection of law, strategy and management. He combines legal, managerial and entrepreneurial expertise to develop multidimensional solutions. His focus is on corporate governance (in particular board governance and shareholder governance) and strategic management.

In his capacity as a business lawyer in Zurich, Roman advises companies, entrepreneurs, members of the board of directors and executive management, shareholders and investors in the areas of corporate governance, public corporate governance, corporate law and contract law. He is also available to serve as a non-executive board member in Swiss companies and acts as an independent board advisor.

In addition to his legal practice, Roman is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of St.Gallen (HSG). He is a member of the core faculty of the Master in Strategy and International Management at the University of St.Gallen (SIM-HSG), repeatedly ranked the world’s best Master in Management programme by the Financial Times His research focuses on topics in the fields of shareholder governance, board governance, public corporate governance, corporate law and strategic management. He teaches university courses at bachelor’s and master’s level as well as in executive education and regularly publishes in his fields of expertise.

As a former entrepreneur, Roman has several years of entrepreneurial and leadership experience as well as managerial expertise, particularly in the areas of business management and organisational development, strategic management and business modelling, entrepreneurship, leadership and digital transformation.

Through his focus on digitalisation and strategy, Roman has developed an in-depth understanding of the entrepreneurial opportunities and risks inherent in emerging technologies and their impact on companies, value chains and business ecosystems. He continuously engages with digital business models, applications of artificial intelligence and the digitalisation of management or operational processes across all organisational levels. Combining legal, managerial and entrepreneurial expertise, he places technological developments in their wider context – a perspective increasingly sought after at board level.

Roman studied at the University of St.Gallen (B.A. HSG in Law, 2007; M.A. HSG in Law, 2009) and at HEC Paris (MBA with specialisation in Advanced Management, 2020) and completed his doctorate at the University of St.Gallen on the topic of “The state’s means of influencing the strategy of a corporate with state participation” (Dr. iur. HSG, summa cum laude, 2017), for which he was awarded the Walther Hug Award St.Gallen 2017 for the best legal Ph.D. thesis. He is currently conducting research on “say on strategy” as part of his habilitation project, systematically developing the foundations of shareholders’ strategy-related influence within the system of the Swiss corporation.

Roman is a Research Fellow at the Corporate Governance Competence Centre at the Institute for International Management und Diversity Management of the University of St.Gallen; since 2019, he has been serving at the Centre’s Advisory Board. In 2015, he was appointed as a member of the WEF Global Shapers Community, a network of young mission-driven leaders initiated by the World Economic Forum; from 2016 to 2018, he served as a member of the board of directors of the Zurich Hub, and from 2017 to 2018 as its president.

In his private life, Roman is a sports fan (football, tennis, padel, badminton and volleyball) and a committed advocate of the paperless office.

Roman shares some of his insights (about board goverance, shareholder governance, advanced management and other legal, business, entrepreneurial or productivity topics) on a separate blog website, on Substack as well as on his LinkedIn-Page.

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