Creation of EDHEC America in Berkeley: EDHEC steps up its development in California

EDHEC Business School announces the creation of EDHEC America. The School has set up a permanent structure located in the heart of the University of Berkeley in California in order to develop its educational activities, its impact in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship, its relations with US universities and companies, and its proximity with the school’s alumni network in North America.

Closer ties with Berkeley for an enhanced international student experience

The creation of EDHEC America represents a new lever for strengthening the School’s footprint in the USA, and builds on an already solid network of partners, universities, alumni and companies. The School intends to develop an enhanced learning experience and new services for students, while also setting up a presence in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area’s cutting-edge entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Among other initiatives, EDHEC will offer a new range of certificate programmes, as explained by Richard Perrin, International Director of EDHEC Business School, “we want to enable our students to learn in California about the drivers of innovation and the issues of climate change, particularly in relation to technology and fintech.”

As a strategic partner of Berkeley SkyDeck, EDHEC will offer its students privileged access to the services offered by the prestigious American university’s incubator, via the HotDesk Program (Incubator) and the Cohort Program (Accelerator), e.g. classes, mentoring, workshops, pitch competitions as well as access to a large network of professionals and social and environmental impact venture capital funds. “We are considering how to create programmes that act as a gateway between our start-ups incubated by EDHEC Entrepreneurs at Station F, and the Bay Area ecosystem and Skydeck. Lastly, we’ll have a base camp to develop future co-operations, particularly in terms of online classes and joint programmes with our partners in California,” explains Richard Perrin.

In a symbol of these closer relations between the two institutions, EDHEC America’s offices are located in the SkyDeck building. The new structure will be chaired by Emmanuel Métais, Dean of EDHEC Business School, and managed by Patricia Vinant, a graduate of the EDHEC Master in Management who has been Country Manager for the USA since 2019.

“EDHEC America is going to enable us to further improve our support for the many students in our Master and BBA programmes based in California, to develop our relations with US companies and universities, and to offer our future graduates revamped academic exchanges centred on innovation in an unrivalled ecosystem. It will also allow us to step up our fundraising activities in the US, particularly vis à vis the 1,200 EDHEC graduates working in the country,” says Emmanuel Métais.

Multiple academic and entrepreneurial opportunities

The creation of EDHEC America furthers the School’s longstanding ambitious and proactive partnership drive. EDHEC has significantly developed its academic partnerships in the USA. It now counts 24 partner universities, while some 200 of its future graduates study in California each year, thanks to agreements forged with UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, Stanford University, the University of San Diego, and Pepperdine University. These exchanges take multiple forms according to students’ curricula and aspirations, e.g., semester exchanges, double degrees, summer programmes, GETT Master or Global BBA.

“The creation of a permanent structure in California is important in two respects. Firstly, there is no other region of the world to which EDHEC sends so many students. Secondly, because it builds on the already-close cooperation established with UC Berkeley through the GETT Master and Haas School of Business’s Master in Financial Engineering and through EDHEC’s position as one of the SkyDeck incubator’s global strategic partners,” clarifies Richard Perrin.

For Emmanuel Métais, “internationalisation is one of the seven key goals included in our 2025 strategic plan. By creating EDHEC America, our School endows itself with a perfectly agile structure that can be modulated according to the growth of our activities in the US. EDHEC at Berkeley is a new type of facility for our School, in addition to our executive campuses in London and Singapore opened in 2010 and the presence of our country managers in Bombay, Shanghai, Singapore and London.”