ENPC MBA Alumni Blog

Last March 20, General Assembly of the ENPC School of International Management Alumni Association was held at the « Maison des Ponts », headquarters of the ENPC MBA, 15 rue de la Fontaine au Roi.

Just last September, contacts were made, events and meetings were organized by a small group of Alumni in order to revive the association.  The updating of the Association Statutes, required before any other official action could be taken, was completed on March 20.

The vision behind the revival of the Association is to animate the rich existing network of  MBA  Alumni and to build a relationship and to find synergies with Ponts Alliance, the network for all Ponts alumni.

Above all, this unique and exclusive Alumni Association will unite Engineers with Businessmen and Women.  Many of our students already have this double profile because they are graduates of both the Ponts Engineering and MBA programs, and others because they come from the realms of Science, Economics, Medicine and other engineering schools.

This opportunity is only possible because of the uniqueness of the Ponts and Chaussées MBA program, the richness of the academic program and our affiliation with ParisTech.

The election of the new Board with the simplified Statutes, which has opened the association to the classes in progress, marks the beginning of a stronger network, driven by a desire to make this association a success.

The ENPC MBA Spring Alumni event was organized by Keyvan Ghandchi, last May 18th, 2009 at ENSCP (École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris), and hosted by Dean Jelassi.

Dean Jelassi speaking, Victor Gomes-Frias, Nemanja Marinovic and Xavier Drodzinsky

The theme for the event was “Sharing the Experience of some ENPC MBA Alumni” with four speakers who have kindly accepted to share their experience regarding their career path, the impact of the ENPC MBA on their professional development, and the challenges they faced with their increased job responsibilities.  The guest speakers were :
Mr. Victor Gomez-Frias (Class of 2002) – Deputy Acadmic Director – ENPC
Mr. Jean-Baptiste Fleury (Class of 2004)- Strategic Planning Executive – Ubisoft
Mr. Nemanja Marinovic (Class of 2004) – Business Development Manager – ArcelorMittal Projects
Mr. Christophe De La Fouchardière (Class of 2005) – Managing Director – Merck Médication Familiale

Abstracts of their testimonies…

Victor Gomez-Frias, whoses thesis was published, reminded us the strong link that the ENPC MBA has with the main campus, who relies a lot on our reputation in the world and the independance of our programmes.
For Jean-Baptiste Fleury, working in the attractive world of video games (Ubisoft is the 1st French publisher and the 3rd worldwide), the MBA changed his life. It brought him some credibility, actually what he called «cosmetics». Indeed, having an MBA not only creates the buzz around you, but also when you are working in a young industry, it helps to understand what is market research, value creation, competitors… It also brings the valuable training you need to communicate with any part of the company
Nemanja Marinovic, on his side, emphasized the value you get above the MBA when you build on professors relationships. This is a life-time relationship, network and learning.
Christophe De La Fourchardière, eventually stated how much the MBA reinforced his leadership, his vision, and how much it allowed him to be internationaly oriented, and to implement strategies.

Then we all took the chance to continue to share views around a cocktail offered by the ENPC MBA.

We would like to thank everyone for their efforts to allow the revival of the Alumni association.

The new team is highly motivated and started to work in projects mode: relationships with companies, relationships with ENPC partner schools’ Alumni, and communications are some of them. This will enable our Project Leaders to drive initiatives using the skills and time of dedicated volunteer project teams.

That said, all ideas and initiatives are most welcome and you can count on the Association to organize and communicate around your contributions. We currently need good wills for every project !

Our goals are definitely to set up actions, events, and communications’ means in order :
- to uphold our “brand name” reputation as MBA des Ponts Alumni,
- to value our profiles,
- to strengthen our networks worldwide,
and to create synergies with all Ecole des Ponts Alumni.

With 1000 MBA Alumni, and the MBA Association embedded in the Ponts Alliance association des anciens, we are putting together a wide and strong international network.
We encourage you to join the Ponts Alliances association online : www.ponts.org : it is important because everyone’s profile and contact details need to be updated, and because the more we bring the MBA Alumnis in our home school through Ponts Alliance, the more we will get from the network.