Jean-Louis Beffa at EDHEC Business School

 The seminar gave the students precious insights into the everyday life of a company director, putting the lid on any preconceived ideas once and for all.

After Bertrand Collomb (Lafarge) in 2005, Franck Riboud (Danone) in 2006, Thierry Falque Pierrotin (Redcats Group) in 2007, this year it was the turn of Jean-Louis Beffa, Chairman of the Board of Saint-Gobain, to close the annual start-of-the-year seminar for EDHEC's 3rd year students.

 The keynote speaker answered questions from the floor about leadership in the context of governance. The Strategic Leadership seminar focuses on a novel issue, namely, company governance approached from its most managerial perspective, in other words, leadership, notably that of the CEO.  First launched in 2005, the seminar aims to raise students' awareness to the issues involved in company management, inciting them to take on managerial responsibility at the earliest opportunity.

With its original theme (governance) and design (intensive programme held over a few days that alternates courses, conferences, personal experience and presentations of research), the course promotes debate and encourages students to reassess the numerous preconceived ideas often held in this domain.

The Leadership gallery:  portraits of executives as leaders At the end of the conference, the students drew up the portrait of Jean-Louis Beffa, which will be hung in the Leadership Gallery, a unique exhibition of company managers with a focus on leadership. The exhibition can be visited on EDHEC's Lille and Nice campuses. Today there are over 40 portraits in the Gallery, including Jacques Attali, President of Planet Finance, Paul Dubrulle, Founder of the Accor Group, Richard Simonin, CEO of Etam Développement, Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone, etc.   In 2008, the gallery took on an international dimension with new portraits being drawn up for the prestigious Wall Street Journal.