Top 50 Emerging Leaders 2022 (in alphabetical order by CVC unit): Andrea Course, venture principal, Shell Ventures
Andrea Course is a venture principal at Shell Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Netherlands-headquartered petroleum producer Shell.
In her role, she focuses on finding investment opportunities in innovative startup and scale-up companies that can help accelerate the energy transition, primarily across the robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence segments.
She also builds and maintains relationships with startups’ founders, management teams, venture capital houses, angel groups and accelerators.
Talking about her experience working in CVC, Course said: “Constantly being on the lookout for promising companies is very rewarding and allows me to be constantly learning about new things.
“Corporate venturing is really exciting because we get a chance to not only financially support the companies we work with but we are also in a position to help them scale by providing opportunities to deploy their technologies.”
Regarding her greatest success with the unit, Course added: “I am really proud of the strong focus on decarbonisation and renewable power Shell Ventures currently has, and how that is advancing the energy transition in the mobility and power sectors.
“On the personal side, I am very proud of having made the switch from engineering to the VC world and how this has allowed me to help others in the same position.”
Prior to joining Shell Ventures in April 2019, Course worked as venture principal at US-based oil and gas services provider Schlumberger for about two years, after eight years spent working on research and new product development.
