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Enio Jaco
Enio Jaco is an Albanian-American entrepreneur, business consultant and a public advocate for a strong investment climate as foundation for economic growth. He is the President of American Chamber of Commerce in Albania and the founder and CEO of Creative Business Solutions (CBS).

Jaco was born in Durres, Albania to a family with intellectual roots and a challenging past with the communist government. He graduated with Bachelors in Engineering from Tirana University. In 1994 he moved to United States for advanced studies, where he graduated from Cornell University with a Master degree in Engineering Management, specializing in advanced engineering and mathematical solutions to solving business problems.

He started his career in US, as a Management Consultant with American Management Systems (AMS). In 1998, he moved to Wall Street in New York, where he first worked as Manager with American Express. In 2001, Jaco became Vice President at JPMorgan Chase, leading the consumer card group on risk acquisition policies.

While at JPMorgan Chase, he became an Adjunct Professor at New York University, where he founded the Fundamentals of Financial Risk Management, a course that continues to be taught today.

In 2006 he returned to Albania where he first became head of SME division at Raiffeisen Bank. There he grew interested in solving economic problem

s for less-developed segments of society. In 2010 he became International Advisor with Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI Global) on a USAID project in Afghanistan to manage a $100M Fund to finance the agriculture sector in Afghanistan.

After 2 years in Afghanistan, he returned back to Albania in 2012, where he founded Creative Business Solutions (CBS), a business consulting and project development firm, specialized on helping businesses achieve economic growth. CBS grew quickly to became one of the fastest growing, local development organizations in the country.

Jaco formed project partnerships with international agencies such as USAID, European Union , World Bank, EBRD etc but also provided consulting services directly to SMEs. Since 2013, CBS mobilized $88M in capital funds and investments for its clients. The investments generated 2,500 new jobs in the local markets. The firm now operates in Albania with a cross-over impact in North Macedonia and Kosovo.

In 2019, Jaco was elected President of American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Albania, a business association of multinational and local companies, representing more than 220 companies and a combined $2.8 Billion annual turnover.

He aligned AmCham Albania with the US Chamber of Commerce structures and advocated for stronger regional economic trade among Western Balkans and a strengthening of transatlantic trade cooperation. Jaco supports a faster integration with European Union and a push for reform to improve the business environment and increase foreign direct investments in Albania.

Early Life and Education
Enio Jaco was born in May 30, 1967 in Durres, Albania. His mother was Nimfa Jaco, an artist, teacher, writer and women rights activist, known through her artistic creations, use of global ethnic compositions and public engagement campaigns against breast cancer. His father was Nesip Jaco, a Professor of epidemiology at the Agriculture University of Tirana, with a contribution in academic circles.

His grandfather, Fetih Selenica a judge who graduated with honors from Toulouse University and became a fierce critic of the communist regime in Albania, was later sentenced with 15 years as political prisoner.

As a student at Tirana University, Jaco embraced a contemporary modern movement as an open way of life against the current regime restrictions. He joined the student anti-communist movement in 1990s, which removed the single party system and started the democratic reform. Eventually he grew disillusioned with the pace of reforms in Albania and in 1994 moved to United States.

In US, he focused in his graduate studies, where he was captivated by application of advanced mathematical Technics and engineering methods to solving large, complex business problem. In 1998, Jaco graduated from Cornell University with a Masters degree in Engineering Management.

His main specialty became financial engineering and optimization methods to solving practical business challenges. He became a US citizen in 2000.

American Management Systems (AMS)
After graduating from Cornell, he started his career in Management Consulting. Jaco joined American Management System and worked in Lansing, Michigan to represent his firm to Michigan Department of Treasury. He became the on-site leader to implement a tailored Risk Management Information System to increase revenues and improve decision-making.

American Express
In 1999, Jaco started his career in Wall Street in New York as a Manager with American Express. He became specialized in applying experimental design techniques to improve collection strategies for Amex’s small business portfolio.

JPMorgan Chase
In 2001, he became Vice President of JPMorgan Chase managing risk policies for acquisition card portfolios. He led a quantitative policy analyst group developing and applying econometrics and probabilistic models to predict consumer credit card behavior. Jaco became a Six Sigma Black Belt, a certified process improvement method, where he optimized pricing techniques, leading to multi-million earning benefits. He remained with JPMorgan for five years.

New York University
During his career in Wall Street, he became an Adjunct Professor at New York University, School of Professional Studies, where he founded the Fundamentals of Financial Risk Management, a course that continues to be tough today. His course gained popularity with financial service practitioners for application of modern risk management techniques in the financial world.

Raiffeisen Bank
In 2006 Jaco returned to Albania and worked for a few years for Raiffeisen Bank. He led Raiffeisen’s SME banking operations and later developed the Premium segment of the banking. He also started Micro financing and established segment section of Retail Banking.

DAI (Afghanistan)
Jaco observed inequalities in economic opportunities especially related to rural areas and became interested in economic development for underprivileged segments of society. In 2010 he accepted a position as an International Advisor with DAI on a USAID project in Afghanistan to set up a $100M Fund to financing the agriculture sector in Afghanistan.

‘Afghanistan was a fascinating experience because I realized the huge impact that access to capital can make in the development of the entire country’ said Jaco. He led a team of international and local lending advisors to provide over $37M in new financing for investments, benefiting thousands of farmers. He also set up structural capacities of a future institution to continue operations beyond international development support.

CBS Creative Business Solutions
In 2012 Jaco returned to Albania to set up a development consulting firm to work with business segments with undeserving opportunities. He founded Creative Business Solutions (CBS), which grew from a single person firm to a portfolio of over $8 Million of implementing projects in 2020. CBS’ core service was to enable business clients to realize investments for economic growth. The firm, which specializes in economically driven solutions in agriculture, environment, tourism and private sector, is based in Albania with cross-country activity in North Macedonia and Kosovo. The firm activates an ecosystem of businesses, agents, third party suppliers and digital platform intermediaries, to enable the flow of finance from Financial Institutions to client beneficiaries.

Impact
By 2020, CBS had mobilized a combined $88 Million in capital investments on behalf of SMEs and created 2,500 new jobs in the local markets. Jaco formed project partnerships with international agencies such as USAID, EU institutions, World Bank, EBRD, GIZ, SIDA, SDC but also provided consulting services directly to businesses and SMEs. CBS employed 45 full time consultants and over 50 operating business partners in 2020.

Innovation and Digital Economy
Jaco gave innovation a focus at CBS by building a set of products for the digital economy. By 2020, CBS deploys four digital products including Agroweb.org, with a digital audience of over half a million, LORES a digital loan referral system, which has disbursed $15 Mill of new loans, IntoAlbania.com , a tourism portal site and Agrotrade , a B2B trade platform that connects wholesale local producers with international buyers. According to Jaco, ‘the need for digital services will accelerate in the near future and businesses must be prepared to increasingly embrace tools with no physical presence’.

Post COVID-19
During 2020, Jaco embarked the firm into a deep restructuring of its workforce to be better positioned for the post COVID-19 era. ‘The focus of CBS will be consulting services that helps our clients become successful in the new operating environment set by COVID-19. The pandemic has accelerated some existing trends, creating strong threats and opportunities to existing businesses. We want to ensure that our clients adopt to these threats and capture the opportunities says Jaco’. The reorganization of CBS envisions the expansion of consulting services with a post Covid focus into other Western Balkan countries, starting with Kosovo and North Macedonia.

American Chamber of Commerce
In 2019, Jaco was elected President of American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Albania, a large business network of 220 local and multinational companies, representing a combined $3.1 Billion in turnover. His new approach focused on enforcing the role of members in the organization activities and modernizing the lobbying process and the chamber’s performance.

He has aligned AmCham Albania with the structures of US Chamber of Commerce, supporting transatlantic trade cooperation and faster integration with European Union. He is a public advocate of improvements of business climate in Albania, arguing for further liberalization of market conditions and transparent government policies. Jaco issues frequent public pronouncements through AmCham conference, Business Index    and lobbies for policy proposals to improve the business environment.

Leadership Style
Jaco is a result-driven business leader, focusing on high goal achievements through a systemic, team approach. He believes in a comprehensive communication approach with stakeholders’, enabling communication at all levels, internal and external and conveys transparency, integrity and standards.

Personal Life
Jaco married his first wife Dina Ellen Siber in New York in 1994. The couple later divorced in 2002. In 2012, Jaco and Alda Shehu were married in Tirana. They have two sons, Jui and Iro.

A year after he returned from Afghanistan, Jaco’s personal life was shaped by two events, the premature birth of his son Jui and the death of his mother from breast cancer.

Jaco was influenced by Japanese culture and maintains a professional curiosity in visual art and its intersection with storytelling in business narratives. In 2005, he studied photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York.  He prescribed to modern thesis of Yale professor Edward Tufte, author of ‘Visual display of Quantitative Information’. He focused in information design and application data visualization to explain social and business phenomena. Jaco considers himself agnostic.