Biographies

Chairs the Task Force on Emergency and Post-Crisis that brings together leading French NGOs. Was former President, then CEO of MSF, and former Director General of Fondation de France. Currently manages FCHconseil, which supports associations and foundations in the implementation of their strategic plan, and their leaders in the growth and management of their organizations. Publications: Long Live Philanthropy, Social Engagement for Dummies.

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Yvan Conoir, MBA, MA, is Researcher for the Chair Raoul Dandurand in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and teaches at the Master in International Development and Humanitarian Action of University Laval (Quebec).

He started his humanitarian career with the United Nations, later for Canadian institutions, more than 30 years ago. He now works as international consultant for the World Bank, the UN (UNHCR, OCHA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UN DPKO, UNV), the EU, CIDA, OAS, French, Canadian and Swiss Ministries of International Cooperation and other private entities.

He is the author of various publications “L’action humanitaire du Canada” (PUL-2002), “Faire la paix – concepts et pratiques de la consolidation de la paix” (PUL-2005) and “DDR – Désarmer, démobiliser et réintégrer – Défis humains, Enjeux globaux” (PUL-2006). His latest book which just got released at the Presses de l’Université Laval: “Gestion de projets de développement international et de développement humanitaire” (2016).

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Bruno-Georges David is President and founder of Communication Sans Frontières, creator of the Grand Prix de Communication Solidaire and the Observatoire de Communication Solidaire (OCS). He organizes annual meetings on the topic of public interest communication.

He is Director of Communications and Development at the humanitarian NGO Secours Islamique France, and formerly held this position, at the NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF-France). He been a member of the Board of Directors of the Comité de la Charte and of Don en Confiance, and a member of the Trade Council of France Générosité.

Bruno-Georges David is in charge of Communications at the Department of Social and Solidarity Economy at l’Ecole des Métiers et de l’Information (EMI) and teaches at the University Paris-Est-Créteil (UPEC-PARIS XII) in the Master’s program of Public Policies through Action Humanitaire International and the Magistère de Communication CELSA – Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication Paris-Sorbonne. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the review journal Humanitarian Alternatives, and a member of the Development Committee of the Institut Supérieur d’Economie et de Gestion (ISEG).

Bruno-Georges is co-founder of the humanitarian NGO Noir&Blanc and has been Vice-President of Logistique Médicale Humanitaire, and President and co-founder of the association Un Fauteuil à la Mer.

He has carried out work in communications with groundbreaking agencies, such as Roux-Séguéla-Cayzac et Goudard (RSCG) and Publicis. With the latter agency, he was in charge of launching marketing campaigns throughout Eastern and Western Europe for various trademarks, such as Coca-Cola, where he led operations in Russia, and L’Oréal. In the USA and India he planned the launch of many other products as well. He then joined the McCann-Erickson group where he developed one of the world’s first pioneering communication alternatives on the web. He also founded two consulting agencies in marketing and communication strategy, and then joined the TBWA group as Associate Director to specifically develop the merger between non-profit brands and commercial trademarks through partnerships between multinationals and NGOs.

Bruno-Georges has worked with many companies (Coca-Cola, Nestlé, L’Oréal, Renault, etc.) and with international NGOs, where he has gained valuable expertise in marketing and communications in the business and non-profit sectors both in France and abroad.

He is a graduate of the Diplomatic and Strategic Studies Center − Advanced International Relations, at the Institute for International Management in Wolfesse, The Netherlands, and of the FCB Advanced Advertising Program in Chicago, USA.

After studying business at the European Business Institute, law at the University of Paris X and working as an advertising executive for seven years, Thierry Mauricet co-founded the association Première Urgence in June 1992 to help the besieged population of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1994 to 2011, he was the association’s CEO.

Since April 2011, he is the CEO of Première Urgence Internationale, an association resulting from the merger of the NGOs Première Urgence and Aide Médicale Internationale.

Première Urgence Internationale aims to provide integrated aid in the fields of health, food security, nutrition, rehabilitation and construction of infrastructure, access to water, hygiene and sanitation, economic recovery, education and protection, for populations affected by humanitarian crises.

Karine Meaux is an International aid & Emergencies program manager at the Fondation de France since September 2017. She initiates and coordinates the Fondation’s responses to the major emergencies, such as the Nepalese earthquake of 2015 and the Caribbean typhoons of 2017. She also contributes to various discussions on humanitarian issues. This job also includes a collaboration with the French NGO, CFSI, to promote the family farming in West Africa (Pafao), as well as a partnership with other foundations (Italian and American) to support the farmers’ organizations in the same area.

Previously, Karine practiced several positions in the national coordination of French NGOs, Coordination SUD, where she specifically tried to promote an enabling environment and better working conditions for every kind of international solidarity associations. Her education in humanitarian law, history and languages led her initially, from 2000, to work in different continents within the Caritas network. At the headquarter, as an Asia/Oceania project officer, a Tsunami coordinator and an international action/quality coordinator. On the field, on long term missions, in Kosovo (2000-2001), Sri Lanka (2006-2007) and Chad (2008-2009), mainly in post-emergency contexts, supporting local partners to face the challenges of camp management and local civil society strengthening.

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Head of the Expertise and Advocacy department at ACF-France. A doctor by training, and a lecturer in social sciences at Paris 1 (IEDES), he joined ACF in August 2018, having previously worked for 10 years as the head of operations for the Committee for Exiles’ Health at Bicêtre hospital in France. Before that, and since 1991, he has worked on providing access to medicines and collaboration between healthcare providers in the context of the AIDS epidemic (Ensemble pour une solidarité thérapeutique hospitalière en réseau – ESTHER), universal health coverage and the development of carer-patient relationships, issues of environmental health (Research Group for Rural Development) and the protection of refugees and asylum-seekers (FNUAP-OMS).

Virginie has been involved in developmental aid and humanitarianism since her first professional experience with a local NGO in India. After eight years of managing international projects in biotechnology in the private sector in Germany, she shifted her focus towards the humanitarian sector as a volunteer activist for human rights with NGOs and social service organizations.

In 2004, she was put in charge of developing “business” partnerships with bureaus of the Handicap International (HI) network. In 2007, she joined the regional platform of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where she headed the fundraising and partnerships department. Upon her return to France in 2011, she resumed her studies in political science. Her research on “image and international aid” led her to accept an assignment with the French Development Agency lasting several months. In 2013, with Jean-François Mattei, she helped in the creation and development of the French Red Cross Fund as General Delegate. Virginie has been appointed Director of the French Red Cross Foundation for humanitarian and social research for 2018.

Virginie holds a Master’s degree in management from ESC Toulouse, a Master’s degree in political science from Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a degree in ethics from the Faculty of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University. She is a researcher and administrator of Handicap International France and a member of the Steering Council of the review journal Humanitarian Alternatives.

Joël Weiler began working in the humanitarian sector in 1992. After graduating from Bioforce, he joined various NGOs, such as Enfants du Monde-Human Rights (EMDH) and Santé Mali Rhône-Alpes (SMARA), as Head of mission in the Darfur, Vietnam, Mali, Burkina Faso, South Sudan, and Madagascar.

After this experience in development and emergency programs, his career with Médecins du Monde began in November 2010 when he joined the association as General Coordinator. He held this a position for three years, during which he covered emergencies in Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Zimbabwe.

Upon his return to France at the end of 2013, he assumed the position of Crisis Manager and then Deputy Director of International Operations. He has been the Director General of the association since April 1, 2017.

Director of the International Studies Institute of Montréal since March 2018, François Audet is also a professor at the School of Sciences and Management (ESG) of Quebec University in Montréal (UQAM) and is the Scientific Director of the Canadian Research Institute on Humanitarian Crisis and Action (OCCAH). He holds a doctorate from the National School of Public Administration (ENAP) of Quebec, which focuses on the decisional processes of international humanitarian organisations in accordance with the reinforcement of local capacities. Before embarking on an academic career, François Audet accumulated over fifteen years of experience in the humanitarian aid sector. His research interests focus on new practices in humanitarian relief, the effectiveness of humanitarian action towards refugees, and Canadian policies towards development assistance.

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Sophie Brière is a tenured professor in the Department of Management at the Faculty of Business at Université Laval. She earned a PhD at Quebec’s University of Public Administration (ENAP) and a post-doc at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies. She is now the director of Institut EDI2 (equity, diversity, inclusion, intersection) at Université Laval. Sophie Brière is in charge of the Master’s programme in International Development and Humanitarian Action at the Faculty of Business Administration. Her classes and research focus primarily on equity, diversity, and inclusion in organisations in all sectors and in project management. She co-authored with Yves Poulin, Yvan Conoir, Stéphanie Maltais and Isabelle Auclair the book La gestion de projets de développement international et d’action humanitaire (Presses de l’Université Laval, 2nd edition, 2021). She is a member of the Scientific Council of Humanitarian Alternatives.

Yvan Conoir conducts research at the Raoul Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and teaches in the Master’s program of International Development and Humanitarian Action at Laval University. Formerly a humanitarian working on every continent (UNHCR, UNICEF, CARE International, CECI), he has been engaged in an international consulting career for several years that has led him to conduct missions in more than sixty countries with the UN, the World Bank, the ministries in charge of foreign affairs in Canada and France, CIDA, the Organization of American States, and other private concerns. He is the co-author, with Gérard Verna, first of L’Action humanitaire du Canada (PUL, 2002) that was followed by other works on peacebuilding, the process of DDR (Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration), or the publication Gestion des projets de développement international et d’action humanitaire (PUL, 2016).

Dana Popescu-Jourdy is a lecturer at the Institute of Communication of the Université Lumière Lyon 2 and Head of the Master’s degree Communication, Humanitarian Aid and Solidarity.

She is a member of the Education, Cultures and Politics laboratory and is interested in the dynamics of public space in transition. Her research themes include the practices and discourses of the media and solidarity actors, as well as new forms of citizenship engagement and learning. She supports the development of action-research and multi-actor collaborative research projects.

She is the coordinator of the European consortium CODES – Communication, Diversity, Solidarity – , and also a member of several networks and research programs at the European and international level: RTV – Key Competences in Media Production for Radio, Film and Television, MEWEB – Media of East/West European border traffic in times of the Cold War, International Joint PhD in Social Representations, Culture and Communication.

Stéphanie Maltais is a doctoral student in International Development at the University of Ottawa and has a Master’s in Management of International Development and Humanitarian Action from Laval University in Quebec. She is a research assistant and teaches in both universities, all while remaining actively involved in Canadian NGOs. Her professional activities, mainly international in scope and focused on the Inuit communities in Northern Canada, led her to study more in depth the transition between humanitarianism and development, the resilience of populations, sustainability, and general health concerns.

Co-founder of Le Group’ (legroup-ess.org), of which he is the current director, Frédéric has worked in the international aid sector for over two decades, following a career in industrial restructuring project management for a multinational. From 1998, he worked with several organisations on international programmes in Africa, Central America, the Middle East, Asia and Central Asia, as a project coordinator, head of mission, and programme officer. In 2001-2005, he spearheaded the creation and management of Handicap International’s humanitarian action department. An independent consultant for over a decade, he works regularly with aid organisations, French and European international cooperation agencies, the EU, the United Nations, universities, graduate schools, and research and training institutes. Since 2019, he has also coordinated the RIACE France endowment fund (riacefrance.org), which financially supports associations providing unconditional assistance to exiles on national territory and at national borders.

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Stéphanie Tchiombiano holds degrees in Political Science and Public Health, and is an associate lecturer at the Political Science Department at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She is the co-director of studies for the “Développement et aide humanitaire” Master’s course. Stéphanie worked for over fifteen years in the health sector in West Africa. Her first post, lasting eight years, was as the representative of the French Red Cross (Niger, Togo, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso). She was notably involved in setting up several outpatient treatment centres. She then worked as Head of Mission for the NGO Solthis in Niger, Mali and Guinea for eight years, during which she mainly worked on access to antiretroviral drugs for HIV-positive patients and on strengthening healthcare systems. Stéphanie then spent three years with FEI/Expertise France, coordinating the 5% AIDS, TB and Malaria Initiative. She now divides her time between university teaching and coordinating the Santé Mondiale 2030 (www.santemondiale2030.fr) think tank.

Jean-Pierre Veyrenche graduated from the Science University of Avignon in Engineering and Water Management. Since his first humanitarian mission in Liberia with ACF in 1992, he has gained extensive experience in emergency response both to natural disasters and to conflicts, as well as in project development in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in the area of implementation, monitoring, and management of water resources and of complex projects affecting displaced persons and refugees in rural and urban environments. For the last two years, he has pursued his career providing his expertise and advice as an international consultant for the United Nations. For five years, he also worked as an educational coordinator and technical instructor at the Bioforce Institute in Lyon on a training course he launched that is now recognized for the Master’s I degree. He currently teaches for the project management and coordination program of the School of Business and Development 3A in Lyon and in Paris.)