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NEWS & FEATURES |
Interview of the Month - December 2002: Stephan Sigaud (ESSEC 1980) Q: What is your background? I am currently Executive Vice President at FIND/SVP where I head up the core business. If you know SVP (from SVP 11 11 in France) you know what we do – otherwise call me! I have full P&L responsibility for this $20 million business. Before that I was in charge of a smaller division, which was a more traditional market research business. I joined the company in 1994 when I sold my business to FIND/SVP. I had started that business as the American subsidiary of a French market research company that had been founded in 1981 by …two ESSEC’s! Before coming to the U.S. in 1986 I worked for four years in the “Recrutement des Cadres” department at Renault. And before that, I worked as Area Sales Manager for Eastern Africa for a French engineering firm. I had met the President of the firm while doing my “cooperation” at the French Trade Office in Madagascar (best years in my life!). Q: Why did you decide to come and stay here? Because of my wife – when I met her back in 1985 when she was an intern at Renault. As she is American she couldn’t stay and work in France so I followed her back here. I lived the first nine years in Manhattan and moved to the suburbs of New Jersey when our first son turned two. I love my life here, what can I say! Q: You told us that you recently got the US citizenship. Can you tell us more about what it represents and what was your process and reasons to get it. Honestly I don’t feel any particular pride about having become American. I applied for the citizenship because I wanted to be able to vote – I was mostly frustrated about having to watch presidential elections from the sidelines. The process took one year and was very easy – I did it all myself… Check out the INS website if you’re interested, it’s very well done. Q: What advice would you give to ESSEC graduates who would like to come to work here? Work for an American company and don’t hang out with the French crowd – you’ll learn a lot more and a lot faster! Q: How do you think your ESSEC background helped you to be where you are? The balance that the ESSEC graduate education provides in teaching you how to manage people, processes and numbers is tremendously useful in my current position. Also, it’s really thanks to my being exposed to living overseas during my cooperation that I’m here now, and I couldn’t have done it (at least at the time) if it hadn’t been for ESSEC. Q: What do you consider as your role in the ESSEC family? I consider my role as that of a “mentor on demand” for students and alumni and an occasional contributor to all ESSEC activities. Thank you...
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