The balance between professional and personal life is something very structured in my life. I'm passionate about both aspects: my family, a large and extended one, and my career, so my daily life is a constant juggling act. One of the defining moments in my life was meeting a coach, Pascale Faber, during my final thesis. Pascale helped me discover the necessary balance between professional and personal life. I have 5 children from two marriages, and a demanding yet exciting career, so it's a crucial issue for me and one that I often revisit. 

I studied agriculture and then discovered the path of innovation. I became interested in research and development and the business world. I worked in R&D and marketing in an agricultural cooperative, and then in business development in the milling industry, one that produces ready-to-use flours. Since 2005, I've been with my current company. 

What fascinates me are people. I love human relationships, understanding personal stories, understanding others' lives and to try to improve them.

There are different levers at our disposal to try to change the world; to make it better. For me, one of them is education. I give my children the tools and weapons that allow them to decode the very complex world we live in. For example, I instilled in them the interest in reading printed newspapers. They seek information in newspapers rather than on their phones. This education is also transmitted in daily actions, like sorting waste or using bikes for transportation. 

In my professional life, it's also a form of education that contributes to a better world. Integrating Ashoka programs into my company allows employees to become changemakers, or at least to understand what it means to be a systems changemaker. I think the seed is planted and it's starting to sprout.

Recently, we have really stepped up the pace. We're organizing an executive committee with an external speaker to anchor this notion of a regenerative company, that is a company capable of regenerating a certain number of things to have a positive impact in each of its actions. The genesis of this investment for the company dates back to my arrival in 2005. I came from the bakery sector, which I had to leave due to allergies but where I was very happy. I have a scientific background; I come from a scientific family; and that's how I approached things when I arrived here, from the angle of chemistry. I like this job, the people we work with, the breeders, the food industry, and home catering. I'm sensitive to the notion of food safety. People can die from food poisoning, like what happened with minced steaks fifteen years ago. We were incriminated at the time but came out completely cleared. 

Another event that marked me was five years ago, during a trip to Kenya. We were supervising the installation of a water purification solution in schools. I was in the outskirts of Nairobi, visiting an obviously very poor school. I understood that our mission was not only food safety, but also enabling children to go to school and to find drinkable water they don't have at home. In the evening, they go back home with several bottles of water that they bring to their surprised parents. That was a real eye-opener for me. 

In parallel with all this, we started to reflect on our CSR trajectory. I trained to develop a new perspective, seeing this step as common sense. We exchanged with external consultants. I realized that we were in a risky business since the business depends on an industry that in itself depends on fossil fuel energy. We said we had to change things and to see what was being done elsewhere to find sustainable alternatives. That's how we met Ashoka. We understood, by engaging with them, that it would be necessary to train a lot of people in the company to undertake systemic change. It's generally said that 15% of the population needs to be informed and prepared and trained to leverage and disseminate the message to the remaining 85%. 

So, I began this journey by taking the Ashoka training to the teams and to have legitimacy. It was an eye-opener. I discovered people. I discovered tools. I discovered an incredible ambition, a way of educating that was not necessarily in line with that of the company and had to be adapted. We started the first cohort and today we're on the third. We're going to have a fourth one. We trained more than fifty employees. We're really witnessing this snowball effect, and it's very satisfying. 

Among the people who have been trained, we observe a real evolution - an amplification of soft skills. That was really the objective of the training versus technical skills, inviting participants to question “what human qualities am I going to mobilize and develop, what human qualities will be necessary to address and lead change?”

The first change that I observed was on the ambassadors who had been trained in the program and constitute the community, which we call Committed & Different. They developed a new understanding of changemaking and empathy. Our CSR director, for example, completely changed her management style. I've known her for 17 years, and before, she would never have started a meeting by talking to me about kindness between colleagues. 

What this has brought to me are tools that allow for self-criticism. I'm naturally compassionate, perhaps a bit too much. In fact, when I entered the world of Leveraged Buyots (LBOs), I was coached. Everyone around me was saying, "You're too soft, if you don't toughen up, you're going to get torn apart." This coaching allowed me to decipher that world and to know myself better. Later, with the Ashoka training, I learned to look at management differently, to break down the process and to understand where it's stuck. We go back to the source of the blockage and get people on board with this way of seeing things.

I didn't have all this methodology before Ashoka. As a manager today, this is part of my strengths. Now, I feel like I’ve managed to reconcile the world of LBOs, a financial world where the goal is to return value to shareholders, with the world of social entrepreneurship, where employees are integrated and 200% invested.

We had to find a way to take everyone with us. Alone, it wouldn't have worked. We had to convince the managers around me, not only to join the project but also to invest. We gathered the members of the investment fund in Saint Malo at the Palais du Grand Large. I'll always remember that moment because it was exceptional. 80 people in an auditorium (that's quite a crowd!) The response was unanimous with everyone saying, "Let's do it." A few weeks later, we received the subscriptions and investments. The fund called me and said, "We've never seen this before. We've never done this in primary LBOs. We've never seen so much commitment.” 

Then, a few years later, we continued our approach by opening up investment to everyone and in all countries, including those where it was legally complicated. We had 44% of people, almost half of the employees, who invested their own money. We did something that no one does, something that rarely exists within a LBO company: the incentive system put in place for employee shareholders is the same for everyone regardless of their position in the company. That was another objective I had, a value-sharing objective, and to establish a way of saying to the world of finance, "You can't keep everything for yourselves." It was also a way of being in line with the values of the company, which are family and entrepreneurial values. This incentive system that we put in place changed the lives of some employees. The testimonies were incredibly moving. 

To unify all this and avoid misunderstandings from one culture to another or from one country to another, we implemented the process communication model training. It has become a mandatory step in our integration processes. Soon, the notion of changemaker will also be an integral part of our integration process. This is my way of installing systemic change within the company. To have an impact, people need to be trained but also able to exchange with each other and to communicate. 

I have five children, I'm naturally optimistic, and all this means that I refuse to leave them something I don't agree with and of which I wouldn't be proud.

A company like the one I work for, one that works with chemical products, I have the opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint… leaving something cleaner than what was left to me twenty years ago. I'm not just someone who looks at Excel spreadsheets, and neither are my colleagues. It's become a trademark for us – to focus on humanity and care. 

A large part of who I am and my ideals come from my grandmother. She was one of those ordinary heroes. She was very religious and always instilled messages of kindness and family cohesion in her eight children, and us, her grandchildren, which have endured. Just fifteen days ago, we had a family reunion. There were about a hundred of us, all so happy to be together. For two days, it was filled with joy, laughter, and happiness. In the world we live in today, having the ability to experience moments like that is exceptional. It's important for me to pass that on to my children, to explain to them, as well as to all future generations, where it comes from so they can perpetuate and replicate it. 

I try as much as possible to be true. I aspire to nothing more than being an ordinary hero. I would like it to be said of me, when I disappear, that this person has served a purpose and had a positive impact.