Marie-Christine Mahéas Book direction
Throughout her career in Canada and Europe, Marie-Christine Mahéas held executive sales and head of operations positions with the Canadian Armed Forces, Sabre, Carlson Wagonlit, Atos and CGI. A French-Canadian, she is the Director of the think tank ‘Women Entrepreneurs’ of PositivePlanet and founder of the PWN award ‘Responsible Entrepreneur’ and she has been active in supporting workplace gender balance for more than ten years. She specialises in gender dialogues between professional men and women. Marie-Christine Mahéas was PWN President from 2011 to 2013.
Margaret Milan English adaptation & coordination
A British businesswoman living in France for more than thirty years, Margaret Milan began her career with Procter & Gamble before creating the leading French educational toys company Éveil & Jeux (now Oxybul). After selling her company to FNAC in 2001, she returned six years later to oversee the implementation of its digital and omnichannel divisions. She now advises other businesses on these subjects and provides support to a number of start ups. Margaret Milan is a co founder and former president of PWN GLOBAL.
Valérie Rocoplan Editorial advisor
Founder of Talentis, leads a team of 60 senior coaching consultants in France and abroad. Talentis aims to boost leadership and optimise collective performance whiledeveloping female talent within organisations. After a 15-year career spent in marketing management positions at Cerruti, LVMH and Essilor, she now assists multinationalorganisations. She is the author of Oser être la chef [Dare to be the boss](S. Leduc, 3e éd. 2014) and lectures on this subject for a number of inter- and intra-business women’s networks.
Jérôme Ballarin has worked for multinational organisations such as Accenture and Danone. Founder of the French Corporate Parenthood Charter in 2008, he is also founding leader of the French Corporate Parenthood Observatory. As a member of the French Senior Advisory Committee on Gender Balance, in 2012 he presented the government with a report titled Parenthood and Gender Balance in Management: How To Get Men Involved. He created ‘1762 Consultants’ as a resource to assist businesses in transforming their culture, organisation and management.
Armelle Carminati enjoys 30 years of international top executive career, over 5 continents. She was recently Chief Resources Officer and member of the Management Board at Unibail Rodamco (listed in the CAC40-top 40 French companies). She formerly served Accenture as Global Managing Director, Human Capital & Diversity, and Managing Director of the Retail industry for Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. She founded the ‘Accent sur Elles’ network for female executives in France. She is today Chairman of the « Social & managerial innovation Commission » at the MEDEF (France’s professional association of businesses), also a qualified member of the government’s Board for Gender Balance and of the Board for Secularism.
Laurent Depond began his career in strategy consulting in large Anglo Saxon firms before joining the France Télécom group in 1999 as Director of Strategy of a mobile branch. He subsequently became Director of Quality and then Director of Internal Communications for Orange mobile. He has been Director of Diversity at Orange since 2007. He is also president of the Diversity and Equal Opportunities Committee of the French Companies Movement (MEDEF), vice president of the French Association of Diversity Managers and member of the board of directors of the Laboratory on Gender Balance.
Sandrine Devillard is a director at McKinsey & Company. She leads McKinsey’s Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail Practices in France and Europe. Sandrine Devillard launched and leads McKinsey’s “Women Matter” research program, which aims to promote gender diversity in large companies’ senior management. She is also a global leader of the McKinsey Women initiative, a program designed to attract, develop, and mobilize women’s talents through specific recruitment, training, coaching, flexibility, mentoring, and women’s networking programs.
François Fatoux has been executive director of the French Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility since 2000. He is also a member of the Senior Advisory Committee on Gender Balance and board of directors of the Laboratory on Gender Balance. Author of Et si on en finissait avec la ménagère ? [And what if we put an endto the notion of housewife?](Belin, 2014), a discussion on domestic work, he was also a co signatory of Patrons papas, paroles de dix dirigeants sur l’équilibre entre travail et vie privée [Ten bosses who are dads discuss work-life balance](Le Cherche Midi, 2010).
Antoine de Gabrielli
Founder and partner of Companieros – an organisation that provides training on management issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility and Diversity – Antoine de Gabrielli holds a number of positions related to diversity including president of the ‘Mercredi-c-papa’ [Wednesday is Daddy’s] association; founder of the ‘Happy Men’ project that involves men in policies on gender balance in management; and he is member of the French Association of Diversity Managers, the 21st Century Club and the MEDEF ‘Gender Balance in Management’ Committee, as well as a signatory of the French Diversity Charter. He is also a blogger, conference speaker and author of several articles on diversity issues.
Frédéric Georges
After starting his career at Quotidien de Paris, Frédéric Georges has been an economic and business journalist for more than fifteen years. He was deputy editor in chief of magazine L’Entreprise (groupe Express-Expansion) and Management (Prisma Presse). He is now the founding director of Freedom & Liberty, a communication agency specialising in consulting and editorial content for businesses and entrepreneurs. He is also the author of numerous management books as literary collaborator.
Alexandre Jost is executive director of The Fabrique Spinoza / Spinoza Factory, the think tank that analyses societal happiness which he created in 2011. He is a member of the French Presidential Committee, Attali II, on the positive economy, including co reporter for the positivity index. Prior to this, he was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co for seven years. He has also held various management positions (R&D, Strategy/G&A, etc.) at SOS (a consortium of medico-social associations and socially responsible businesses).
Cécile Kossoff
Director of Global Knowledge Dissemination and Communications Excellence at McKinsey & Company, Cécile Kossoff joined the consulting firm in 2007 as Director of Communications for the France office, where she started to co-lead the Women Matter series of research. Named Global Marketing Director in 2010, she led the development and roll out of a new brand value proposition. Prior to joining McKinsey, Cécile was Strategy, Marketing and Communications Director for a leading global information provider, and a member of its Global Marketing Council.
Kunal Modi is a strategy consultant based in San Francisco and participated in the movement LeanIn.org launched by Sheryl Sandberg. He began his career as a member of AmeriCorps assisting low income families. He co founded Campus Catalyst, a programme which brings students and local NGOs together for pro bono consulting services.
Jean-Michel Monnot
Vice president of the MEDEF ‘Richness in Diversity’ committee, Jean-Michel Monnot is Vice-President Group Diversity at Sodexo. The Group’s commitment to diversity encompasses five themes: gender balance, generations, the disabled, sexual orientation, cultures and ethnicity. A world leader in life quality services, Sodexo (428,000 collaborators in 80 countries) is the most female-centric company in France (SBF 120 ranking, 2014 and 2015) with women making up 43% of its executive committee and 38% of its board of directors. In 2012, the Sodexo Group was awarded the prestigious Catalyst prize.
Marie-Claude Peyrache co manages the Diafora-BoardWomen Partners programme that she co founded with Véronique Préaux-Cobti in 2007. A former employee with France Télécom/Orange where she served as director of several departments, she was the first woman to become a member of the executive committee. As a prolific contributor to the development of gender balance policy, she has been involved and often as a pioneer in the professional advancement of women for more than ten years (Cercle InterElles, European Professional Women’s Network-Paris…), she co wrote Réseaux – Le nouveau fil d’Ariane [Networks: Ariane’s New Path], PWN, 2008.
Patrick Scharnitzky is a social psychologist. A conference leader in social psychology for the past thirteen years, he is now a Diversity Consultant for Valeurs&Developpement (consulting, knowledge transfer and R&D). He is also a professor affiliated with ESCP Europe where he teaches the principles of management psychology; he is also the scientific co director of the study programme on stereotypes, in collaboration with IMS Entreprendre, for the city (the disabled in 2011, gender in 2012, ethnicity in 2014 and generations in 2015). He also published a reference book on stereotypes in the workplace in 2015.
Catherine Vidal is a Neurobiologist and Research Director at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She is a member of Ethics Committee of French Institute for Health (in charge of the »Gender and Health » group) and of UNO Women France. She is also a core member of the international NeuroGenderings Network. She has written many articles and books for the general public including : « The sexed brain: between science and ideology », Neuroethics (Springer) 2012, vol 5, « Cerveau, sexe et pouvoir » [Brain, gender and power] (Belin, 2015)
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is general manager of the consulting firm 20-first. As an international speaker on leadership, marketing and management skills, she also maintains a blog for the Harvard Business Review and was a conference speaker at INSEAD and HEC. The first female columnist of Manager Magazine published by Der Spiegel, she is the founder and honorary president of the Global Professional Women’s Network. Published by the Harvard Business Review in 2014, her latest work is called Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business.
Veronique Préau-Cobti co-manages the Diafora-BoardWomen Partners programme that she co founded with Marie-Claude Peyrache in 2007. Véronique is Founder and Managing director of DIAFORA. Over the past 10 years, Diafora has been working with international companies to help them achieve gender diversity and, in turn, improve performance and leadership. As change management specialist, Véronique works alongside companies to demonstrate the direct link between strategy and the gender make-up of management teams, most notably in terms of management and leadership techniques. She is the Honorary President of Grandes Ecoles au féminin.