Speaker’s Dinner at Le Sénat, A Lovely Night with Marie-Christine Levet

03 October 2017

BY JULIE COMPAGNY

It is 7:30 pm when the participants enter in the beautiful room of Le Restaurant du Sénat. Some are members of PWN Paris, others not, but rapidly, they all sit and start to network, a glass of wine in the hand, impatient to listen to the special guest: Marie-Christine Levet. While the first course is brought to table, Françoise Derolez, co-president of PWN Paris, and Corinne Albert, VP events, give a welcoming speech and introduce the speaker who is then invited to take the floor.

Proud mom of two young boys, Marie-Christine Levet describes herself as someone who has had three different professional lives. The first one starts right after her studies at HEC and refers to the time she works in big companies such as Andersen Consulting, Disney and Pepsi. She also pursues other studies at INSEAD, attracted by the international side. Soon enough, she understands that having a classic career is not made for her. In a confidence, she tells the assembly: “It was a good team but mainly composed by male. If we do not speak about football during lunch in some companies it is complicated… I think that there is some kind of consensus on certain topics that excludes us as women”. 

Thus, in 1997, when the Internet arrives, she decides to throw herself in this new sector led by start-ups, in which she shows a real interest. In her opinion, “being a woman was not a disadvantage, what mattered was having motivation and passion, even though the Internet was and still is a men’s sector”. She begins as CEO of Lycos and make her way through other organizations. Under the watchful eyes of the participants, Marie-Christine Levet follows her speech explaining that her third and current professional life comes out after a long-time working in the Internet sector.   It is underlined by the job she accepts in JAINA CAPITAL as an investor. She comments: “there is something essential of being an investor: you pass what you experienced on to other people so that they do not make the same mistakes”. Yet, little by little, she wishes to become her own boss and, at the same time, wants to make change in society. She realizes that the education and training sector did not evolve with time in France and “is digitalized only by 3%”. She studies the new school models that appear in the USA and China, where “97% of the digital education sector is” and develops two deep convictions: “1) the school system has to change, digital natives have to use digital tools to learn, 2) we will not have the same job our entire life anymore, we might have 2-3 jobs at the same time, the lifelong learning will be very important”. This is why this year, following her learning and beliefs, she launches EDUCAPITAL in collaboration with Litzie Maarek. It is the first investment fund created by two women in this sector. They aim to invest in fifteen companies that could be “the European leaders in the innovative education sector of tomorrow”. 

After the discourse, some time is dedicated to questions at which Marie-Christine Levet responds with precision and honesty. To conclude the night, some presents are given, accompanied by a lot of applauses from the participants. 

If her fantastic professional path will stay in our mind, what we will remember from this dinner in this great place is all the advice she gave us all the way long. Whether it concerned boards of companies (“find boards that make sense for your career: in a sector or function that you know or is linked to your experience”), success (“very often, success comes from a team and not a single person”) or money (“I never did it for the money, it was just because I wanted to do so”), we really appreciated knowing the opinion of this woman who “created [her] own job because [she] did not fit the box”. It really was a lovely night. 

September 27th 2017, Le Restaurant du Sénat.

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