KEY SPEAKERS
Keynote Speaker Profiles and Bios
KEYNOTE 1 > Architecture and design: what trends can we expect over the next five years?
François BELLANGER - Sociologist
François Bellanger is a sociologist. He directs his own consultancy firm, Transit-city, and runs five watchdogs (“observatories”) on town-related themes:
- "Transit(s) - the Observatory of Nomads", a socio-marketing watchdog that sets out to appraise the influence of mobility on our life styles and on the creation of new products and services.
- "Escale(s) - the Observatory of Distribution", a watchdog that tracks and forecasts evolutions in commerce. In the scope of this, F. Bellanger regularly conducts study trips abroad.
- "Habitat(s) - the Observatory of Habitat", a watchdog that tracks and forecasts evolutions in habitats and habitation modes.
- "Historic Cities", a resource centre on urban history revolving around themes debated in workshops.
- "Fiction Cities", a resource centre on the role of fiction in the construction of urban fantasy world.
For a number of years, François Bellanger has run future-oriented thinkshops on the town and its life styles. His programme sets out to construct bridges between fields as diverse as urbanism and marketing, large-scale retail and sociology, property development and transportation.
KEYNOTE 2 > Digital: a powerful development lever and time saver
Salah BENZAKOUR - Expert in marketing, innovation, and new technologies
Salah Benzakour is an expert in marketing, innovation, and new technologies. He guides and assists several companies in their web marketing, innovation, and digital transformation strategies.
Salah has a Master’s in Marketing from Paris X University and a Master’s in Project Management from Haute Alsace University, along with international professional experience in large corporations like Roche and Novartis laboratories as well as in a communication agency and with publishers.
He launched his Power E company in 2011 to aid industrial firms in their digital transformation. He is also the founder of TEDxAlsace (the second TEDx talks in France).
KEYNOTE 3 > Being an employer in 2022: what do the new generations look for?
Alexandra CAUCHARD - Entrepreneur & Professor of collaborative Innovation / Journalist and futurofwork & futurofschool explorer
Alexandra Cauchard is the founder of Shaker, a consultancy in collaborative innovation that provides assistance to businesses wanting to get employees involved in their transformation.
Alexandra began her journalistic career at Décideurs magazine. As editorial manager, she directed the media collection as well as conferences dedicated to education and management. Within the group, over the course of more than two years, she founded and ran a collaborative innovation laboratory dedicated to the development of intrapreneurship.
In 2016, she founded Shaker, a consultancy firm in collaborative innovation, which aids businesses wanting to involve employees in their transformation. She also founded the Nouvel oeil agency, whose mission is to create a bridge between companies and the artistic world.
As a specialist in new management methods and creativity, she lectures at the HEC business school, at the Sorbonne, and at the Ecole des Mines Telecom Management faculty. As a conference speaker, she often gives talks on the big management topics and on new forms of work.
As a trained lawyer and amateur actor, Alexandra is battle-hardened yet passionate about public speaking and coaches directors in mastering the oratory arts.
KEYNOTE 4 > What adaptations (in outlook and industry) to tackle climatic imperatives?
Nora GUERBI - Founder of WHo CAREs!? Chronicles
Nora Gherbi was Chief Representative for London in France until 2021. She had worked for 14 years as an economics diplomat for the French Government covering various sectors including the environment sector before being appointed Chief Representative in France for the British capital.
Nora is an international conference speaker and also founded the WHo CAREs!? Chronicles, a New York-based international aid initiative that sets out to promote good leadership practices based on empathy and compassion.
She argues in favour of a new leadership role in the world of business, the “Chief Care Officer”. WHoCAREs!? Chronicles gives a glimpse of everything touching on corporate social responsibility through conferences, content and content campaigns, and social media. In 2018, the WHoCAREs!? Chronicles published their first call to action aimed at content. A video short on this initiative was produced in July 2018, and screened for the first time at the CHANGE NOW summit during the first WHo CAREs!? festival, the Chronicles’ first such event (September, 2018).
Nora also sits on the advisory board of several nonprofit foundations and of others in the technology and fashion businesses. Since January, 2018, she has, on top of eveything else, been the Nexus organization’s ambassador for France. She is an editor of Conscious magazine. With dual Canadian and French nationality, she studied in Calgary, Alberta, has lived in Toronto, New York, and Paris, and shares her time between NY/London/Paris. At the start of her career path, Nora was in the fashion industry, working in product development and as a buyer for several Canadian retailers.She studied international relations, literature, the fine arts, and American ethnology in the Canadian province of Alberta. She adopted various ethnology theories to explain the relation between personal development and cultural identity. This led to her writing an essay on the development and preservation of the Canadian cultural identity.