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Profile
Cristel joined ESI Group in 2019 as Group Chief Executive Officer. ESI is a pioneer and world-leading provider in virtual prototyping that takes into account the physics of materials.
Previously, she was a Entrepreneur in Residence, College Track at COLLEGE TRACK and before that a Independent Contractor at Webster Pacific.
She graduated from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in Economics and a Masters in International Policy Studies and from London School of Exonomics where she earned a PhD in Political Science, Economics.
At 43 years old, Cristel de Rouvray was appointed CEO of ESI Group in February 2O20 after more than 20 years of presence in the Board of the Group. Over the past 14 years, Cristel has successfully held Executive roles at College Track, an American non-profit organization. Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, this organization is recognized for its excellence in helping, to date, more than 3000 youth from low income neighborhoods to enter and graduate from college. She has partnered closely with the College Track CEO and Board of Directors on the organization’s strategy and execution, acting as a catalyst for tenfold growth over the past decade. Cristel is a leader that mixes hard and soft skills perfectly. ESI is a group in a middle of a deep transformation both in term of governance and business strategy. Cristel ability to ignite and lead that transformation while on-boarding all the teams despite the challenging context are crucial and a chance for the company. Cristel is also a leader who put the Human in the center of all interests whether they are customers, partners or employees. Directly from the beginning of the Covid crisis, she take rapid decision to maintain all her teams, in 20 different countries, safe and in a positive mindset to help them to deal with their personal situation but also to remain productive for all Group’s customers. While continue driving the business, she organized twice a month (once a month during summer time) talk with all the employees to share status about the situation, updates, decisions but also bright lights. She also reaffirmed to all the Group the necessary fight against all types of discrimination and reinforce this principle as a core value of ESI Group. To finalize, her economics skills and her business sense are key currently for the Group; to succeed its transformation. Just after her arrival, she launched a plan to focus the business around 4 main industries and 4 key solutions answering to specific outcome of the Group’s customers and focusing on sustainable performance. This strategy is ongoing and will last until the presentation of the new strategic plan of the Group in Nov 2020. To accompany it, Cristel changed the whole Group organization, historical organization to break all existing silos, to globalize all interactions and to ease and accelerate all data and information sharing. Cristel is a “chef d’orchestre”. She leads with a team and all leaders of the Group. This team-player mindset is in her DNA and as John Maxwell says “Leaders become great not because of their power but, because of their ability to empower others.”