Michel Bézy

Michel Bézy is an adjunct professor for Carnegie Mellon University-Africa.

He recently retired as distinguished service professor from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in June 2020. Prior to his retirement, he also served as associate director at Carnegie Mellon University Africa for eight years and played an instrumental role in its growth.

Other faculty positions held include, adjunct professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (2010-2011) and associate professor at the National University of Zaire (1982-1985).

He is the co-founder of the kLab Innovation Center in Kigali and the Industry Innovation Lab at CMU Africa. While in Africa, he also launched several startup projects with CMU graduates and continues to mentor a number of startups in Africa and in North Carolina, USA where he resides. He is frequently invited as an innovation evaluation judge in both the Africa and the US.

Bézy’s areas of expertise include:

• Business Strategy and Innovation Management
• Strategic Use of Digital Information in Enterprises
• Market Planning for High-Tech Innovation

Prior to joining CMU, Bézy worked at IBM Corporation for 25 years where he held different executive positions in the Software and Research divisions including: program director for cloud computing, business development manager in IBM Research, program director of strategy for IBM Autonomic Computing technology and for IBM WebSphere platform, and international marketing manager for IBM Digital Library.

He was also the CEO of a library automation software company based in Europe and delivering solutions to more than one hundred large corporations globally for three years. Bézy holds a Master of Engineering in Applied Mathematics from the Université Catholique of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, a Master of Science in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from the Université Catholique of Louvain.