Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F, which is set to be the largest startup campus worldwide.

Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for 3 years.

Roxanne was born on February 8, 1985 in Palo Alto, California.

Her grandmother, Iranian lawyer by training, is a poet.

Roxanne's parents had to leave Iran after the revolution of 1979, and took refuge in the United States where her father studied at Stanford University.

Shortly after they became naturalized citizens.

Her father was a computer engineer and her mother is an English teacher for foreigners.

Roxanne studied French in high school and majored in French literature at UCLA in 2006, after an exchange year in Bordeaux.

Among her teachers was Franco-Congolese writer, Alain Mabanckou, who received the Prix Renaudot for his book Memoirs of porcupine in 2006.

After earning her bachelors degree, Roxanne decided to move to France and and go back to school.

From 2009 to 2011 she took a double major at Sciences Po Paris / London School of Economics and got a Masters in International Business and a Master of International Economic Policy.

However she was m ore interested in startup economic development, she chose Venture capital as the subject of her thesis .

Alongside her studies she created Techbaguette, a blog related to all aspects of the Start-ups, innovation and entrepreneurs, and to promote the French start-up with Anglo-Saxon investors .

She then was spotted by TechCrunch, the American information site specializing in news startups created by Michael Arrington, and became the editor of the French version of the website March 2010 to June 2011.

She also contributes to other sites like*The Telegraph,**The Kernel,**BetaKit andBusiness Insider *. In September 2012 Roxanne joined the Parisian incubator of Microsoft, situated Rue du Sentier (Paris 12e) , where she remained for three years in order to develop programs including Spark and BizSpark as part of Microsoft Ventures, a device designed to support the digital entrepreneurs.

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