Ioanna Sapfo Pepelasis (born in the USA), a graduate of Harvard and the London School of Economics, is Professor Emerita in the Department of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) and currently a visiting Professor at the University of Athens.

She has co-edited Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, (Berg, 2005), Entrepreneurship in Theory and History (Palgrave, Macmillan 2005) and Country Studies in Entrepreneurship – A Historical Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). She has published articles –on diverse aspects of economic history and the history of enterprise/entrepreneurship of the Diaspora and Greece (18th-21st centuries)- in several international edited volumes and prestigious international refereed journals, among which: Business History, Business History Review, Financial History Review, Journal of European Economic History, Journal of Applied Economics, Managerial and Decision Economics .

She received in 2003 a prize from the Ottoman Bank Archive for an article on Greek Diaspora Bankers. She has served on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Maritime History and Business History and has been a referee for the aforementioned and other journals, as well as for Routledge and Oxford Bibliographies. She participated in the first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in Greece: ‘Entrepreneurship Beyond Silicon Valley: The Greek story’.

She heads the following two research projects at AUEB:  ‘Entrepreneurial history and History of Institutions’ and ‘The mapping of the startup ecosystem in Athens during the recent economic crisis years’. With her initiative and supervision a team of undergraduate, post graduate and young alumni of AUEB have created the largest historical data base in these areas.  She is also Scientific Coordinator for the Project of diaNEOsis on the Charting of the Greek  Startup ecosystem (forthcoming November 2021).

She has served as a member of: the Councils of The European Business History Association and the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. In addition, she has also served on the Board of Directors of the Greek Center for Planning and Economic Research and the National School of Dance.

She is the initiator and Co-founder of TAKEOFFGREECE,  an initiative for the support of 40+/60+ start-uppers in Greece that undertook mentoring and workshops (2015-2018  She is also a collaborator and mentor of the Athens Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at AUEB and Fashion Revolution Greece.