Marcel Valenta
Chief Legal and Compliance Officer
Marcel is responsible for all legal, regulatory, and compliance matters for the company.
Prior to joining Risepoint, Marcel was General Counsel and Head of Enterprise Development at ASU Enterprise Partners, a nonprofit that supports Arizona State University. He previously served as Senior Corporate Counsel at Hewlett Packard and worked as a corporate transaction’s attorney at multinational law firms in Chicago and Silicon Valley.
Marcel completed undergraduate legal studies in Germany and Italy and holds a JD and an LLM from Northwestern University. Marcel and his wife, Kimberly, have three children. He played tennis competitively in Europe and enjoys fitness activities and traveling.
What traits do you admire in a leader?
Humility and an awareness that leadership is a great responsibility. You never want people to follow you blindly.
What are your core values?
Keep an open, critical mind, stay curious, and do the right thing. I’ve always sought challenges, and they have taken me a long way from the little town in Germany where I grew up.
What is your Risepoint moment?
After my first two years of law school in Germany, I wanted to study a year abroad and, very specifically, I wanted to be in Florence, Italy. The University of Florence, at the time, did not have any exchange programs with German universities. Other universities in Italy did, but not Florence. So, I went on a mission to convince university administrators in Florence that it did not make any sense not to admit me as a visiting student to their law school while, at the same time, convincing German university administrators that credit earned in Italy should count towards my law degree in Germany. This was in the early 1990s, long before the internet existed: I wrote letters, made phone calls, and the few in-person meetings I was able to schedule very much mattered.
I was able to pull it off. Many people could have said “no,” but in the end, no one did. It was a hugely empowering experience to spend a year in Italy and to be able to convince people to support me. And it shaped my outlook on life: if you have reasonable conversations with people almost anything is possible.
I was able to pull it off. Many people could have said “no,” but in the end, no one did. It was a hugely empowering experience to spend a year in Italy and to be able to convince people to support me. And it shaped my outlook on life: if you have reasonable conversations with people almost anything is possible.
