Nicole Junkermann, the Entrepreneur Everyone Should Know About

Soon after graduating from university, Nicole Junkermann built and sold her first business. Since then, Nicole’s career has been an impressive story of success.

After selling her first business – the online football gaming platform Winamax – Nicole became a director of LDCOM, a fast-growing telecommunications business.  Here, Nicole’s strategic work laid the foundations for a future merger with Neuf Telecom to form Neuf Cegetel, which would become the second largest telecommunications company.

In 2002, Nicole then co-founded Infront Sports and Media and played a key role in developing the company into one of the world’s leading sports media rights businesses which was later sold for 650 million euros.

In a brave move, and attracted by the exciting commercial opportunities offered by an expanding Chinese middle class, Nicole moved to Shanghai in 2005 and forged lucrative ties with top sports brands such as Adidas and Nike.  Nicole then founded the private equity fund United in Sports, raising 240 million euros to focus on sports and media investments.

Nicole is now among a group of successful and well-connected entrepreneurs who share a vision that transformative technologies – in areas such as genomics, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence – will create major breakthroughs in healthcare, financial, and security services.

Now, at the head of her own investment firm, NJF Capital, Nicole oversees a substantial portfolio of companies and specialises in identifying and realising opportunities where the new and old converge; where innovation creates the potential to disrupt existing industries.  Nicole analyses her investments against the qualities required to turn a successful business into a market leader: a clear vision, openness to advice, and consistent execution.  This disciplined and rigorous approach, coupled with Nicole’s sound instinctive judgment, has been a recipe for continued success.

One example of operating with clear vision is one of Nicole’s most recent projects, Magnum Global Ventures.  Nicole serves as co-chair of the company which manages the assets of the legendary photography co-operative, Magnum Photos, and is widely considered to be one of the most important cultural organisations in the last 70 years.  This is in part due to Magnum’s extensive archive which contains the work of more than 90 photographers, including from one of its co-founders, Henri Cartier-Bresson and series such as 80 Years of Yves Saint Laurent, Photographing Balenciaga, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest.

When I asked Nicole how she perfected these skills, she quickly gave credit not only to the people she currently works with, but also those who she has learned from throughout her career, including her father, Heinz.  Nicole was also quick to express gratitude for the pioneering female entrepreneurs who fought to pave the way for women around the world to follow their dreams.

This article was written by Vanessa Arelle and published by Vogue Mexico.