TALK with Thomas FEVRE (EMBS 1), EMBS Alumni President
As the Alumni association is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Board invited Thomas Fevre, current EMBS Alumni President, and former Alumni co-founder, to present himself and the new Alumni network activities.
Alumni: Hello Thomas, you are the newly elected President of the EMBS Alumni and an Alumni as well, please can you present yourself and your passions?
Thomas Fevre: I am CEO of 2 Medtech start-ups, one provides B2B services (R&D, Industrial and Business Development) to the hyaluronic acid industry and the other one is aimed at developing innovative medical devices to treat pathologies of the ocular surface. I have entered the hyaluronic acid industry during my EMBS internship and did not exit it since… Magic molecule with huge medical potential, and which is particularly resilient to the economic crisis.
EMBS wise, I have the chance of having experienced the first promotion of the EMBS. I remember Stéphane Ganassali strongly advising us, a few months before EMBS started in September 2007, to apply to other IAE’s (IMUS at the time) masters, as the probability of the EMBS to start that year was so limited… And finally, nothing was impossible, we started being 14 students in Trento end of September 2017!
I am passionate at starting things from scratch, (probably the reason I liked EMBS from day 1), when everything must be understood, visualised, and created! This desire to make something out of nothing is reflecting both my business life, with several companies started up in various European countries and personal life, with various volunteer activities in several associations! I also love travelling, and always fascinated at the different culture’s history, architecture, and arts pieces. To me, history tells us how to understand current geopolitical dynamics.
I am also a happy husband of a wonderful French wife, and proud father of 2 boys, who are in a bilingual infant school in Annecy (yes, I’m preparing them early for the EMBS programme… 😉)
Alumni: What did motivate you to step in the Alumni association?
Thomas Fevre: To be honest, this is not the first time I step in the Alumni association, as I was one of the co-founders and the first president of the Alumni association 10 years ago… So, this is probably something I was missing and needed to feel again.
When we founded it on December 15th, 2010 with half a dozen other alumni and students, we had to build something on nothing, there was only the 2 promotions of the EMBS who finished, and third one was only starting… Therefore, our possibilities of activities and added value for the graduates and for the student was very restricted. Even though, we set up the principle of having an annual meeting at the same time as the annual seminar, we were editing a paper-based directory (yes!), and a magazine which was edited twice a year… This magazine was named TALK, standing for Trento, Annecy, Leon, and Kassel (our interviews on our today’s platform are therefore called TALK in memory)! I stepped out at some point to leave the place to other graduates to continue writing the story!
Earlier this year, I met a start up in Annecy who developed dedicated alumni platform, and it gave me the desire to come back and draft a new road for the alumni network. Setting up a new team, defining new ideas more in line with the size of the network now, and considering current communication tools! Aude Pommeret was also very enthusiastic about this idea, so it helped a lot.
Somehow restart from scratch, with a great team composed of Charles Nodot, Katharina Leypold, Marvyn Lambert, Giulio Bonanni, and Aitor Mirantes!
Alumni: What can we expect from the new format of the EMBS Alumni network?
Thomas Fevre: The overall idea of this new Alumni is to re-dynamise our network, develop the whole EMBS community interactions as much globally as locally, and make this network useful for all of us.
The cornerstone is this new platform on datalumni, on which every EMBS community member is invited: alumni, students, teachers, speakers, etc… We’ll invite partners’ companies to join the platform as well! This platform will be living, with a directory, job posts, and a news feed with interviews, articles… The objective is clear: make EMBS people of various generations discover and know each other’s, as to generate sustainable connections between us.
The innovation is also that we put in place a mentoring between graduates and students. The aim is to create connections, on the long term, between a graduate who can share her/his experience, and a student who can benefit from the graduate experience to understand an industry, a job, or simply to create friendship! Every mentor and mentoree will draw the contour of the mentorship as she/he wishes.
In addition to that, we will create local clubs in cities where there are at least 5 EMBS of different generations… Over the next weeks we will look for Alumni Ambassadors in Paris, Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, London, Barcelona, Geneva, Amsterdam, etc who will aim at organising quarterly EMBS events (lunch, drink, etc…). There will also be ambassadors in the 4 EMBS cities as to welcome students at each new semester! Do not hesitate to contact anyone of us if you are up to become an ambassador!
Last but not least, the annual meeting will be maintained and organised in coordination with the Seminar team.
Alumni: For you, what are the strengths of the EMBS network?
Thomas Fevre: We are now about 250 graduates, completed with 50-60 new EMBS people soon to be graduated… That becomes a critical mass, in which all industries are now represented, in every continent on the globe, having different jobs… This is a gold mine! Each of us can now benefit of it, find a resource we need, maybe development business partnerships, recruiting EMBS people… We have a specific profile which is always of high interest for companies who are working in international environment, our programme remains pretty unique, and we have an academic background which enables us to understand various activities of a company…
It is time we now make this network live, grow, and that we all take the measure of the value of this network, and make something of it!
Thomas’ EMBS Profile:
Entry year in the EMBS community: 2007
Your best EMBS souvenir: Leaving Kassel in the middle of the night with other EMBS to drive to Amsterdam, based on a minute decision coming back from an EMBS party…
Your preferred EMBS city: Trento
Your Master Thesis subject: “The success and the sustainability of the marketing strategies of the luxury industries: their application in the Champagne industry through the Grandes Maisons”.
The Top 3 cities where you would love to have an EMBS seminar: Praha, Warsaw, Bordeaux
