James is a graduate of IMD Lausanne and the Harvard Kennedy School. 

 

He has worked as an auditor and senior manager at Price Waterhouse Coopers, as a director at NM Rothschild & Sons and as a managing director at Templeton Investment. In 1999, with the support of Sir John Templeton and other investors, he founded Naissance Capital, a Swiss boutique investment firm. 

 

James is the author of Swiss Made: The Untold Story behind Switzerland's Success and Too Small To Fail: Why Some Small Nations Outperform Larger Ones and How They Are Reshaping the World and co-author of Wirtschaftswunder Schweiz. 

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Inspired by his latest book, Too Small to Fail, James founded the non-profit organization S8nations in 2020 with headquarters in Zurich.

 

James' work is regularly published in The Economist, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among others.