About our organisation
Our Impact
SGEPT delivers timely and highly valued public goods to support international policy deliberation.
We address first-order global issues: in July 2022 the heads of five international organisations used our data on food supply chain disruption in their joint plea to governments.
Our findings regularly inform policymakers diplomats and international governmental organisations around the globe including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Our analyses benefit leading businesses and business associations including Daimler Benz, Google, the International Chamber of Commerce, Swiss Re, and the VDMA. Over 1600 media articles cite our work including The Economist, the Financial Times, Handelsblatt, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the New York Times, Nikkei, the South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Our Team
Board of Trustees
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Dr. Thomas Schmidheiny, Chairman of the Board.
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Prof. Bernhard Ehrenzeller, Vice-Chairman of the Board.
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Prof. Reto Föllmi, Board member.
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Andreas Kirchschläger, Board member.
Executive Board
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Prof. Simon Evenett, PhD, Founder.
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Johannes Fritz, PhD, Chief Executive Officer.
Leadership Team
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Patrick Buess, Associate Director of Technology.
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Ana Elena Sancho Calvino, Associate Director of the Global Trade Alert.
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Fernando Martín Espejo, Associate Director of Research.
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Tommaso Giardini, Associate Director of the Digital Policy Alert.
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Josse Jakobsen, Associate Director of the Global Trade Alert and Outreach.
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Kamran Nejad-Sattary, Senior Software and AI Engineer.
Our Setup
We leverage human digital, investment, and trade policy expertise with the latest technological tools and linguistic competencies.
Coordinated from St. Gallen, the Endowment is an all-remote organisation that thrives on cultural diversity by bringing together more than 25 nationalities based in more than a dozen countries. We leverage digital, investment, and trade policy expertise with the latest technological tools and linguistic competencies. Proprietary software developed in-house provides the IT infrastructure for rapid human processing of policy developments. Automated collection of official sources and global news sites ensures that our tracking remains consistent, comprehensive, and up to date.
The Global Trade Alert, the SGEPT’s foundational initiative, was launched in 2009, grew continuously, and was then spun off from the University of St. Gallen (HSG). The St. Gallen Endowment combines the lessons of over a decade’s experience with new resources and an agile organisational structure to maximise impact.
The St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade (SGEPT) was founded by Simon J. Evenett, the University of St. Gallen (HSG), and the Max Schmidheiny Foundation. The Foundation documents were signed at a ceremony in Jona, Kanton of St Gallen, on 25 November 2020. On 1 January 2021, the activities and personnel from the Global Trade Alert initiative transferred from the University of St. Gallen into the new Foundation.
As a Foundation under Swiss law, no profits or surpluses can be withdrawn from this organisation. Instead, all income and capital must be deployed in pursuit of the activities laid out in the Foundation’s statutes.