About

A French Canadian now living in the Hamburg region, the urge to explore and discover has followed me since my younger days. Perhaps that has to do with having to move to a new city every couple of years throughout childhood. In hindsight, constantly being the ‘‘new kid’’ might have had the added benefit of shaping my social skills and ability to adapt to new environments. Something I’ve relied on quite a bit over time.

My curiosity also led to an unusual career arc, one that started with a rather ‘‘vanilla’’ business degree from HEC Montréal back in the early 2000’s. However, right upon graduation, a radical move. Through AIESEC, I boarded a plane for the first time in my life and ended up in Hyderabad, India, where I worked for what would later become infamously known as the Indian Enron, Satyam Computer Services. What was meant to be a 6-month internship turned into a year, one of the most formative and enriching of my life.

The next chapter was a corporate one. For the five years that followed, I split my time between working as a market intelligence coordinator at CGI (Canada’s largest IT provider at the time) and as a marketing and communications specialist at KPMG. While those two experiences were tremendous learning opportunities and helped sharpen my business acumen, something was amiss. Too comfortable. Too big and bureaucratic. This culminated in me packing up everything once more and heading over to Europe to study geopolitics. a long-held passion of mine.

This is how I ended up living in both Prague and Istanbul over the next two years. Upon completing my Master’s degree (and meeting my future wife along the way), I got back to Montréal and found my professional home: startup ecosystems. I became project manager for the Quartier de l’Innovation, a now-defunct public-private initiative that aimed to bring startups, corporates and universities together to co-create innovation solutions. I fell in love with the mission of fostering collaboration and by extension, helping startup founders fulfill their aspirations.

I took this passion with me to Germany. There, I further deepened my expertise in this field at TechQuartier., Frankfurt am Main’s largest startup community and most prevalent innovation hub. I got to develop numerous skills, primarily around stakeholder management, community and ecosystem building, as well as strategic partnerships and account management. I had an amazing run for five years, built an incredible network, and helped the community grow from 100 members to more than 600.

Now well accustomed to the German ways, the next leap took me from Frankfurt to Hamburg, where I am now building my own thing. By thing, I mean a career and family that are well balanced, which allows me to work on various impact-driven projects I believe in.

If you are building an impact project within a complex business ecosystem with numerous stakeholders, or if you are looking to develop and leverage a community to have it contribute to your growth, I would be happy to exchange with you. Simply book a call with me by clicking the link at the top of the page.

I am a hands-on startup operator, community builder and a passionate communicator. What drives me is designing environments and curating experiences where like-minded professionals collaborate in inspiring ways.

I believe human ingenuity and collaboration can solve just about anything. I love the excitement that comes when value-driven people build companies around fresh, disruptive ideas. Hence my bias for working with founders and startups.

My approach

Closing in on 15 years in the tech industry, these are the values I stick by in handling my business:

  • Authenticity & Integrity. I wear my heart on my sleeve, for better or worst.

  • Collaboration. From my experience building founder communities and managing diverse sets of stakeholders within innovation ecosystems, I have seen how collaboration can be one of the greatest unlocks to generate long-lasting impact.

  • Versatility and creativity. By now it is cliché to say, but our world faces increasingly complex, fast-evolving challenges. I believe this means for those who wish to provide solutions that we must be lifelong learners, be adaptable and roll with the punches, while also bringing an increasingly transdisciplinary approach to how we work. Plus, innovation is often the result of marrying ideas from different fields in creative ways.

  • Clear communication. ‘‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’’ I take pride in not only presenting in a clear and concise manner, but also in my listening abilities, as they allow me to articulate the message in a way that makes sense to my collaborators.

  • Result-driven. In other words, allergic to overplanning, pointless bureaucratic processes and bullshit meetings.

CV

Professional practice

  • Role(s): Head of partnerships

    Dates: 2023 (Ongoing)

    Responsibilities: Define a partnership strategy from scratch while also contributing on operational side of community management

    ● Main areas of responsibility: explore partnership concepts with a wide range of potential partners/sponsors, support various events operationally, assist with idea and execution of various community operations upgrades, growth and related sales material/processes, international partnerships, commercialisation of a 300-person inaugural festival

    ● Key contributions: Partnership strategy, associated marketing collateral, sponsorship package for festival, CRM implementation, rollout of ambassador program across VOYAGERS chapters globally

  • Role(s): Head of marketing (2yr), then Head of Community (3yr)

    Dates: 2018 - 2023

    Responsibilities: Joined TQ one year into existence (2018) and helped to establish it as the epicenter of the Frankfurt startup ecosystem, first as head of marketing and then as community team lead.

    ● Helped grow the startup community from 130 members in 2018 to more than 600 as of December 2022.

    ● Main areas of responsibility: member experience and retention, startup/corporate matchmaking, community growth and related sales material/processes, international partnerships, event management.

    ● Key contributions: Key account management structure and reporting, community strategy and KPIs, website revamp, CRM rollout.

  • Role: Project lead, Neoshop

    Dates: 2016-2017

    Responsibilities: Launched and operated Neoshop Montreal, a physical and online concept store dedicated to innovative products from local startups. Managed a team of seven including sales staff, social media manager, e-commerce specialist and assistant store manager.

    • Oversee day-to-day operations ranging from accounting, inventory management, HR, merchandising, product sourcing, customer relations

    • Build brand awareness and credibility through social media, partnerships, TV and radio appearances (PR), print marketing, promotional events, networking and sponsorships

  • Role: Marketing and Communications specialist

    Dates: 2011-2013

    Responsibilities: Oversee various aspects of internal communications, from content creation and communication to events

    ● Supported partners with deployment of marketing and comm. efforts.

    ● Devised and applied the social media strategy for the Montreal office (e.g. manage social media presence of KPMG Montreal; LinkedIn 101 training seminars).

    ● Generated, collated, adapted and distributed marketing content both internally and externally.

  • Role: Market Intelligence coordinator

    Dates: 2008 - 2011

    Responsibilities: Coordination with a research and business analysis team (8) located in Bangalore, India Ensure efficient and seamless communication between said team and the business dev. units across North American offices.

    ● Design, update and maintain internal marketing material related to the intelligence services, as well as various information repositories.

    ● Track of all requests coming through our unit, log and organize that data and extract analytics and summaries. Use those metrics to evaluate our performance and establish strategies to increase process efficiency and value created.

Education

Master’s Degree, International Diplomatic Studies (Honors)
Prague School of Economics (VSE) - 2015

Erasmus Student Exchange
Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey) - 2014

Bachelor’s Degree, International Management & Marketing
HEC Montréal - 2006