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The Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development brings together 20 years of experience of the Local Economic and Employment Development Programme (LEED) together with the experience of the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) and Entrepreneurship Division created in 1993.
Director
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Sergio Arzeni
Director
Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development
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Mr. Sergio Arzeni is the Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development since 1st July 2004 and Head of the Programme on Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) since 1994.
His work focuses mostly on entrepreneurship and innovation, on job creation and social cohesion, on SME financing and internationalisation, on business clusters and area-based approaches to economic development and community capacity building.
Mr. Arzeni has worked at the OECD for over 25 years as a senior economist publishing several reports and supervising a wide range of publications on the areas under his responsibility. Prior to joining the OECD, Mr. Arzeni served as an economist for the Italian Parliament, the Italian Trade Unions and the European Commission. As an economic journalist he has contributed to several Italian and international newspapers.
He holds a First Class Honours Degree in Political Science from the University of Rome and specialised in Industrial Economics at the International University Institute of Luxembourg and in International Economic Relations at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., USA. He speaks French, Spanish, English, German and Italian.
Deputy-Director
Mme Marie-Florence Estimé is Deputy Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs & Local Development and has been responsible for the OECD Working Party in SMEs and Entrepreneurship since its foundation in March 1993.
She has developed the Working Party’s programme of activities and studies on issues and policies concerning SMEs in OECD countries, in particular in the area of employment and job creation, high growth SMEs, ICTs and e-business, competitiveness, globalisation, management training, and women’s entrepreneurship. She also has developed, whenever possible, an exchange of information and co-operation with non-member countries, international organization (in particular UNCTAD), the business sector and NGOs. Mme Estimé has managed the preparation of the 1st and 2nd OECD Ministerial Conference on SMEs (Bologna 2000 and Istanbul 2004) and the two OECD Conferences on Women Entrepreneurs in SMEs (Paris, 1997 and 2000).
Mme Estimé has an advanced economics degree (Development and International Relations) from the University of Paris (1972). Before joining the OECD, she worked at the French Ministry of Economics and Finance (Direction de la Prévision). At the OECD, Mme Estimé worked at the Development Centre, the Economics Department and the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry where she prepared and/or contributed to a number of studies.
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