Johan Vanderplaetse is Senior Vice-president of “Schneider Electric”, leading from Zurich globally the sales of the International Automation business of the group (8B euro P&L). Prior to this, Mr. Vanderplaetse was for many years living in Moscow where he worked as President Russia & Central Asia for the same company.
Johan Vanderplaetse graduated from the Ghent University where he studied law. He thereafter graduated from the College of Europe in Bruges with a Master degree in EU Law. Following this, he moved to Moscow to study in 1992 the Russian language and culture at the Pushkin Institute. Mr. Vanderplaetse worked between 1996 and 1998 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for a venture-capital fund set up by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and thereafter took senior positions in multinational companies (Alcatel and Emerson) leading their businesses in Central, Eastern Europe and Russia and was living in Vienna, Austria.
He is currently Chairman of the Association of European Business (AEB) in Russia, Chairman of the Belgian-Russian Business Club (BRBC) and holds non-executive board positions in a number of other companies.
Mr. Vanderplaetse is Honorary Professor of both the Novosibirsk and Samara Universities of IT&Telecommunications. He was appointed by Royal Decree Officer in the Order of the Crown of Belgium.
Born in Belgium, he fluently speaks Dutch, French, German, English and Russian.