M. Claire Chung

Claire is a pioneer at the crossroad of luxury and digital commerce with 25+ years experience in the luxury sector. She has been an entrepreneur founding start-ups to a senior executive in publicly listed companies. A citizen of the world, she has lived in New York, London, Milan, Hong Kong, & Shanghai. She is currently based between New York and Lisbon.

Claire started her career in New York at Citibank Private Banking and later launched Christie’s Art Advisory Services in Hong Kong. In 2009, Claire became an entrepreneur with her 1st start-up up Touch2Give.com to launch an online marketplace for European fashion brands and was championing sustainability and social responsibility by donating 10% of their sales to support Girls Education through their partnership with A Room to Read in the UK.

In 2012, Claire helped launch China’s 1st online luxury retailer, Shangpin and with the Co-Founders raised more than $145 million in venture capital from China’s leading VCs in the early days of the rise of luxury Chinese consumers. As Vice President of Global Business Development, she signed the deals to take more than 200 brands - from Valentino to Topshop- first online into China innovating new ways of partnership.

In 2015, she was appointed the General Manager of Net-A-Porter Group where she launched NET-A-PORTER in China and had the incredible experience of working with Net-A-Porter’s founder Natalie Massenet. Post-merger with Yoox, Claire was promoted to be the General Manager of the Yoox Net-A-Porter Group where she ran the group’s 2 subsidiaries and operated more than 15 websites.

In 2020, Claire joined the start-up skincare brand Ignae as CEO & Co-Founder and helped raise the initial capital to transform the brand clean beauty skincare brand powered by biotechnology and developing its own proprietary ingredients. In a short 2 years, the brand was sold in more than 20 countries.

Claire is a graduate of Barnard College, of Columbia University with a Major in History of Art. She continued her studies with an Executive Finance Degree from CEIBS (China European International Business School) in Shanghai and is a graduate of Cambridge’s first Executive Program in Circularity & Sustainability.

Claire is a supporter of Female Entrepreneurship through her work on the Advisory Board of Women Win Win (Lisbon), and mentoring female entrepreneurs at the Enterprise Lab at Imperial College and Lisbon MBA.