Edhec Alumni of the Year 2010 and Edhec Entrepreneur of the Year E-Day - Saturday 9 October 2010

Normally, the Edhec of the Year awards are given out in June during the annual “Edhec Rendez-vous” in Paris. This year, however, the calendar was altered to coincide with the E-Day inauguration events, a day specially set aside for EDHEC alumni as part of the Lille campus inauguration events. 

This year, the Edhec of the Year Award went to Emmanuelle Guilbart (Edhec 1988). The prize is awarded to an Edhec alumnus whose career path or activities in their personal or public life have contributed to the excellence, development and reputation of EDHEC Business School, either at local, national or international level.

Emmanuelle Guilbart was obviously very moved as she stepped up to receive her prize, 22 years after graduating from EDHEC. After 15 years at Canal + and 5 years at the Lagardère group’s TV activity, she recently joined France Télévisions as Delegate General Director of Programmes to, as she put it, “launch new challenges.” She readily admits that while “a career is made up of both baggage and encounters,” she owes a lot to EDHEC which gave her “solid management foundations” thanks to its all-round academic programme that helped her to feel at ease with all her interlocutors. It gave her the confidence “to take risks, launch new projects and, above all, to dare.”

The Entrepreneur of the Year prize is awarded to an EDHEC alumni business owner in recognition for his or her exceptional career path and the performance of his or her company. In 2010, the prize went to Guillaume Richard who founded At Home with two business partners in 1999. The company merged with Unipôles one year later. It changed its name to O2, and positioned itself as a care services company. In 2007, Guillaume was appointed Chairman and Managing Director of the Group. After a difficult start, the company he believed in began to take off. The group then developed very quickly: from one agency in 2004, it boasted 125 subsidiaries in 2009, becoming the 7th employer in France in 2010. If the expansion in the last 14 years has been impressive, Guillaume puts a large part of his success down to EDHEC which has always been there to provide backing and support. “My heart is in Edhec because my wife is from Edhec, most of my friends are from Edhec, a large part of my Board of Directors is from Edhec, some of my shareholders are from Edhec, many of my consultants and partners are from Edhec, and a lot of my customers are from Edhec.”

Once again, we would like to extend a big thank you to all those who took part in the election:
Pierre Barbé (Edhec 1983), Director, Trading Shipping Total, Pascal Brier (Edhec 1985), Assistant General Director, Altran, Patrick Amiel (Edhec 1996), co-founder of Wengo, and Christophe Koziel (Espeme Lille 1996), founder of Koziel.

And finally, a big thank you to all those of you who voted!