Leadership

Alexandre Medvedowsky is a graduate of IEP Paris, holds a DEA (postgraduate diploma) in Macroeconomics (Paris I) and is an alumnus of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (Denis Diderot class, 1984-1986). A magistrate at the Council of State from 1986, he sat in the cabinet of Laurent Fabius, then President of the National Assembly, from 1990 to 1992. From 1998 to 2001, he was an associate professor at the University of Aix-Marseille III and taught at the IEP in Paris until 2006. He was a member of the Bouches-du-Rhône General Council from 1998 to March 2015. Appointed a member of the Council of State in July 2001, he joined ESL & Network Holding the same year and became a member of the Management Board of ESL & Network Holding. In 2005, he was appointed Chairman of ESL & Network France. He was appointed Chairman of the Management Board on 1 January 2013. He was Chairman of SYNFIE, the French trade association for business intelligence, between 2014 and 2022. He is Chairman of ESL Rivington. He is also Chairman of the ‘Influence’ division of ADIT.

Dorothée Pineau joined ESL & Network (France) as a senior advisor in September 2017. She provides ESL with her expertise in European and international issues, and her knowledge of French and foreign employer networks, and more broadly of French companies. Dorothée Pineau is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the ENA (promotion Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité), and the IEP of Paris, and holds a degree in economics and social sciences. She is a counsellor of state. She was a member of the cabinet of Alain Lamassoure and Alain Juppé at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993-1995) and then of Corinne Lepage (1995-1996). Appointed managing director of SA Financière Chevrillon and Santis in 2000, she became managing director of Picard Surgelés and managing director of Picard Surgelés Italy in 2001, then manager of DP Conseil in 2005 until her return to the Council of State in 2007. In 2009, she became Deputy Director General of the Assembly of French Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a position she held until 2011, then Director General of the Federation of Social Housing Enterprises from 2011 to 2012. She was Deputy Managing Director of MEDEF, in charge of the Public and International and Europe divisions, from 2013 to 2017, before joining the ESL & Network group. Dorothée Pineau also serves as Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of MEDEF, in charge of European and international affairs.

Dominique Leblanc is a graduate of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Paris and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA). In 1979, he joined the Ministry of Industry (Mechanical, Metallurgical and Electrical Industries Department) and, in 1984, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Treasury Department). In 1988, he joined the Société des Bourses Françaises, now NYSE-Euronext, as deputy director of products and operations, then director of market promotion, deputy general manager and managing director. In 2001, he became managing director of Viel et Cie, and in 2003, managing director of FinInfo SA. In May 2008, he set up the company Information & Finance Agency S.A.S, a consultancy specialising in market finance and company valuation, of which he is the chairman and CEO. Dominique Leblanc was also chairman of Wansquare and La Lettre de l'Expansion until 2021.

Olga Bélot is a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. She completed her studies with an MBA from the HEC business school (Paris, France) in 2003, specialising in international finance. She began her career at Lucent Technologies CIS, in the corporate finance department in Moscow. She later joined Motorola as a participant in the Motorola European Talent Pool Programme in Germany (1996–1998). She worked at Motorola EMEA (UK, Germany, Russia) for four years (1998–2002), as part of a select team of negotiators involved in Motorola's most significant contracts in EMEA. Olga Bélot was in charge of the CIS countries, Eastern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. She joined ESL & Network in 2004 to develop the group's activities in Russia and the CIS countries and neighbouring countries. Olga has extensive experience in the following sectors: Energy, Industry, Mining, Luxury Goods, Banking & Finance, Transport in the EU, CIS, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Central Asia and Africa. Olga Bélot has also led numerous cultural projects (museums, cinema) and projects in children's education (STEM).

Jean-David Levitte, a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and chairman of the board of trustees of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), has had a remarkable diplomatic career. Jean-David Levitte joined the Quai d'Orsay in 1970 and began his diplomatic career in Hong Kong and then Beijing, before being called upon by President Giscard d'Estaing to join the Élysée from 1975 to 1981. From 1995 to 2000, he was the diplomatic advisor and Sherpa to President Jacques Chirac. Previously, he was notably Director General of Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations, Director in charge of Asia and Oceania, Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Deputy Director of West Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2007 to 2012, he was the diplomatic advisor and Sherpa to President Nicolas Sarkozy. From 2003 to 2007, he was Ambassador to Washington during the difficult period of the Iraq War. From 2000 to 2002, he was Ambassador to the UN in New York, chairing the Security Council during the attacks of 11 September 2001, and negotiating the return of inspectors to Iraq in 2002. Jean-David Levitte joined the ESL Rivington group in September 2015.

Sami Baghdadi trained as an engineer (Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile) and went on to obtain a degree in economics. He has spent his career working for renowned high-tech companies (Texas Instruments, ST Micro, Nokia, Gemplus and Certplus) and as a management consultant at KPMG Peat Marwick, one of the world's leading business consultancies. As a director of Certplus, he played an active role in the implementation of major projects that laid the foundations for e-government in France. In a career spanning 30 years, including 20 years in senior management positions, he has held positions of responsibility in a number of operational areas, particularly in marketing and communications. He managed the ESL Morocco subsidiary for several years and is involved in both the public and private sectors in Morocco and North Africa.

Managing Partner of ESL-Rivington for the Middle East and North Africa region, Omar Alaoui has a degree in international relations from Queen Mary, University of London. He has served as Chief of Staff to the President of the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (Mr Salaheddine Mezouar). Omar Alaoui has also served as Special Advisor to the Presidency of COP 22, to the Moroccan-European Union Joint Parliamentary Committee, a joint body of the European Parliament and the Parliament of the Kingdom of Morocco, and to the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (MASEN). He has served on the Africa COVID 19 Response Fund public-private task force under the aegis of the African Union. He is also an alumnus of the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL), the US State Department and the UCLA Center for Middle East Development (CMED). He is currently head of the MENA division of ESL Rivington and Managing Partner of the ESL Morocco and ESL Dubai offices.

Bertrand Besancenot spent most of his career in the Middle East as a French diplomat. In 1977, he joined the Quai d'Orsay as Secretary for Foreign Affairs for the Middle East. At the age of 26, he became First Secretary at the French Embassy in Qatar. From 1981 to 1995, he was Deputy Consul in New York, Advisor to the Permanent Delegation to NATO in Brussels and Deputy Representative of France at the UN Conference on Disarmament. In 1998, he was appointed French Ambassador to Qatar. From 2002 to 2007, he was Diplomatic Advisor to the Minister of Defence Michèle Alliot-Marie, and was appointed French Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2007, a post he held until 2016. In February 2017, he was also appointed Diplomatic Advisor to the French government, special envoy of President Macron for Gulf affairs, from 2017 to 2019. He joined ESL Rivington in March 2019.

A specialist in European, national and regional public policy, she began her professional career at the European Parliament. She went on to manage European projects at the CNRS and the General Council of Côtes d'Armor, and worked in the office of Claudy Lebreton, President of the French Democratic Federation (ADF). She then joined the office of Damien Castelian, President of the Métropole Européenne de Lille, where she managed transport and economic development issues. In 2017, she was elected deputy for the Nord department. She sits on the Finance Committee of the National Assembly and was appointed special co-rapporteur for the transport infrastructure and services budget. She has been commissioned twice by the Prime Minister and has produced reports on the deployment of Industry 4.0 and on the future of forests and the timber industry in France. In July 2022, she joined the Rivington firm as Deputy Managing Director. She is Associate Director of ESL Rivington and Managing Partner of ESL Rivington Europe. Since January 2025, she has been Vice-President of the ‘Influence’ Division of ADIT.

Bruno Delaye, a senior minister plenipotentiary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, began his career as chargé d'affaires in Egypt. He was subsequently French ambassador to Togo, Mexico, Greece, Spain and Brazil. He has also held the positions of Africa advisor to the President of the Republic and Director General of International Cooperation and Development at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the head of Entreprise & Diplomatie (a wholly-owned subsidiary of ADIT) since its creation in 2014, he supervises a very large number of business diplomacy missions and brings 40 years of diplomatic experience to his clients. Bruno Delaye is Vice-President of ESL Rivington. He is also Executive Vice-President of the ADIT ‘Influence’ Centre.

Laurent Lotteau is a graduate of IEP Paris (1997) and ESSEC (1999). He first worked as a financial analyst at Paribas Belgium (Brussels) (1997-2000). In 2000, he joined Euro RSCG in Paris, where he was first a consultant and then account director (Lagardère Group, BNP Paribas, Crédit du Nord, Assystem, Accenture, Banque Populaire Group, Crédit Agricole Indosuez). In 2003, he worked as a development consultant for agencies in the Lowe Partners network (Dakar, Abidjan). On his return to France in 2004, he joined the M&M Conseil agency as consulting director, before becoming associate managing director in 2005. In 2008, Laurent LOTTEAU became associate director of the BLT Group (Boury-Lotteau-Tallon), the holding company of Boury & associés and M&M Conseil. In 2010, he became director of communications for the D&O Group, a major player in multi-professional social welfare, before creating the Rivington firm in 2011. Since the merger between ESL and Rivington, he has held the position of Vice-President of ESL Rivington. He is also Executive Vice-President of the ‘Influence’ division of ADIT.

Xavier Desmaison is CEO and co-founder of the Antidox Group (Antidox, ComCorp, Anseres, Choiseul Advisory). He is a member of the executive committee of the ADIT group and Managing Director of ESL Rivington. He is also Vice-Chairman of the Choiseul Institute, a lecturer at Sciences Po and a publisher. He was formerly a director of a consulting firm specialising in digital strategy and social listening. His previous work involved responsibility for strategy, business development and marketing at an Internet start-up, then a role handling content at Yahoo! France. Following this, he worked as a financial analyst at CAI Cheuvreux in London, then as a strategy analyst at Arcelor and with the Caisse d’Épargne’s Management Board. He is a graduate of the Sciences-Po and Essec institutions, and holds a DEA in economics and a history degree from the Université Paris-Dauphine.

A specialist in European business law and international public human rights law, Coralie Dubost began her professional life as a business lawyer at Eurovia Management. She then focused her career on foundations such as the Maison de l'Image Documentaire, and the FACE Foundation, where she is responsible for the CSR branch of the business club and public partnerships. At the same time, she is pursuing her doctorate, teaching fundamental freedoms and the philosophy of law, and publishing on civil and commercial mediation in Europe. She then joined Didier Jourdan at the management of Montpellier Business School, where she manages issues related to research, CSR and international affairs. In 2017, she was elected deputy for Hérault, and 1st Vice-President of the parliamentary majority group. She then sat on the Assembly's Law Committee and the European Affairs Committee. She was rapporteur for the PACTE law, the Bioethics law, the law on European elections, the relocation of medicine in Europe, and was responsible for the text on immigration and the state of health emergency. Coralie is Managing Partner of ESL Rivington France.

Audrey Bartouel holds a degree in Public Administration from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Lyon and a Master's degree in European Relations & Lobbying from the Institut Catholique de Paris. She began her career in European public affairs in 2008 at CLAN Public Affairs, a subsidiary of the ESL & Network group, where she assisted clients in defining and implementing lobbying and institutional communication strategies at the European level. Audrey joined ESL Rivington in Paris in 2015, where she specialises in supporting senior business leaders, working on strategic/political intelligence and public affairs assignments. She is now Associate Director of the firm and Special Advisor to the President of the ‘Influence’ Division of ADIT.

A specialist in international affairs and issues of influence, Pierre Estève has eight years' experience in advising executives within the ADIT group. He is an associate director of ESL Rivington and as such manages the projects of the international affairs division. In collaboration with the general management, Pierre advises major French and international groups on securing their projects on the African continent, analysing their political and security environment and their strategy for approaching local public authorities. He is a member of the ADIT group's ethics and economic sovereignty committee. Pierre Estève is a graduate of SciencesPo. Paris, the University of Paris II Assas and University College London (UCL).

André Parant is a graduate of IEP Paris and ENA. He successively held several diplomatic posts from the beginning of his career. He was posted to Morocco and the Central African Republic before joining the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1995 and being appointed Consul General in San Francisco in 1996. In 2002, he became technical advisor to the diplomatic unit of the Presidency of the Republic. In 2005, he was appointed French ambassador to Dakar, then to Lebanon in 2007. After serving as Africa advisor to the President of the Republic for three years (2009-2012), he became French ambassador to Algeria in May 2012. He then held the post of French ambassador to Egypt from 2014 to 2017 and then to Tunisia from 2020 to 2023. In October 2023, André Parant joined ESL Rivington and the Adit group as senior advisor.

Chantal Poiret is a career diplomat. She has been the French Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Norway and Latvia. Ms Poiret has also spent ten years in multilateral diplomacy, including three at the UN in New York and three as Deputy Director of the United Nations and International Organisations. She was Assistant Director for South Asia and worked on Russia and Eastern Europe. She was posted in Germany and Romania. She has also held several positions as a thematic ambassador, such as the first ambassador responsible for the international coordination of the fight against maritime piracy and ambassador for the French regions with the aim of attracting foreign investment and providing support for the development of exports. She joined the ADIT and Entreprise & Diplomatie group in 2014, then ESL Rivington in 2020.

Urban planner Emilie Chalas began her professional career in local government as the Director General of Services for a town hall in Isère. In 2017, she entered politics as a woman of the people and became a member of parliament for the 3rd constituency of Isère. She sat on the law commission, became rapporteur for the draft laws on water and sanitation, the transformation of the civil service, and then became a member of the special commission on Climate and Resilience. In 2020, she was the lead candidate in the municipal elections in Grenoble and has since sat on the municipal and metropolitan councils. In 2022, she joined the CARBON-SOLAR teams as project manager. She is in charge of the Made in France solar panel gigafactory project in Fos-sur-Mer. In January 2025, she set up BLEU05, a consultancy firm specialising in urban planning and public relations for companies, and joined ESL RIVINGTON as a senior adviser, drawing on her knowledge and experience of local authorities, the French administration, political networks and current issues in the industry in France.

A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and HEC, Benjamin Griveaux began his political career as an assistant to Dominique Strauss-Kahn (2003 to 2007), then special advisor to Marisol Touraine, Minister of Health and Social Affairs (2012 to 2014). He also held various local offices in Saône-et-Loire from 2008 to 2015 (Vice-President of the Department of Saône et Loire and Vice-President of Greater Chalon) and then joined the private sector as Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Unibail-Rodamco (2014-2016). Close to Emmanuel Macron, he participated in the founding of En Marche and became the movement's and candidate's spokesperson for the 2017 presidential election. During the 2017 legislative elections, he was elected deputy for the fifth constituency of Paris. At the same time, he was appointed Secretary of State to the Minister of the Economy and Finance. From November 2017 to 2019, he served as government spokesman, reporting to the Prime Minister. From 2019 to 2021, he sat on the Defence and Armed Forces Committee. In 2021, he announced that he would be ending his political career to set up a strategy consultancy firm dedicated to business leaders.

Bernard is a graduate of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Wharton Business School University of Pennsylvania and the Sloan Institute (MIT). Specialising in global risk and crisis management for companies and organisations, Bernard joined ADIT in 2022 as Senior Vice-President, before joining ESL Rivington in 2023. Bernard spent 25 years in the French Navy (Naval Aeronautics). He joined the private sector in 2008, first as an advisor to the family-owned FM Logistics Group, where he gained solid experience in business development and the protection of logistics flows, then in 2015 at Danone, where he held the position of VP in charge of ‘reserved’ matters (strategic security and economic intelligence) within the general management. He is a French Foreign Trade Advisor (VP of the IE Committee), a member of the MEDEF Economic Sovereignty Committee, and a member of the Board of Directors and its strategic committee of Centrale Danone in Morocco. Bernard is an Officer of the Legion of Honour.

A graduate of Arts et Métiers Paris Tech and ESCP Business School, Frédéric Garcia has spent most of his career in Mexico. He was notably the Managing Director of Airbus Mexico for 14 years, until 2018. He then founded his own consulting firm, Le Cercle, to assist Mexican and international companies with their conflict resolution and public affairs issues. At the same time, in 2019, he was appointed advisor on industrial policy, particularly in the aerospace sector, by the chief of staff of the President of Mexico.

Maurice Gourdault-Montagne is a career diplomat, and has alternated between high-level responsibilities abroad and in central administration. He has been French Ambassador to Japan (1998-2002), the United Kingdom (2007-2011), Germany (2011-2014), and China (2014-2017). In Paris, he was spokesperson for the Quai d'Orsay (1991-1993) and deputy director and then director of the cabinet of Alain Juppé, when the latter was Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993-1995) and then Prime Minister (1995-1997). He then became diplomatic advisor and G7/G8 Sherpa to Jacques Chirac at the Elysée (2002-2007), and finally Secretary General of the Quai d'Orsay (2017-2019). At the end of his diplomatic career, he joined the Boston Consulting Group and the Adit Group and ESL Rivington as Senior Advisor in October 2023.

Arnaud de Bresson is a graduate of the IEP in Paris and the University of Paris 1 and holds a master's degree in economics from the University of Paris X. Arnaud de Bresson has had a long career in finance. He was the director general of Paris Europlace, the organisation responsible for promoting Paris as a financial centre, from its creation in 1993 until December 2022. He is a member of the board of directors of the Institut du Capitalisme Responsable (ICR) and the Institut de Gestion Déléguée (IGD). He is Senior Advisor to the Institut de la Finance Durable (IFD) launched by Paris Europlace in January 2023, to Finance Innovation, the Paris Financial Start-ups Cluster, created by Paris Europlace in 2008 to support the development of Fintech in France, and to the Institut Louis Bachelier (ILB), which promotes research in finance by organising joint initiatives between professionals and academics. He joined ESL Rivington as Senior Advisor in July 2023.

Benoit Tamalet is an expert in international relations with more than 20 years of experience in the Middle East region. After starting his career as an economic attaché at the French Embassy in Riyadh in 2003, he was responsible for monitoring sensitive technology transfers to the IAEA for the Middle East region within safeguards. In 2007, he joined the Saudi government, where he managed technology transfers and investments between the Kingdom and Europe at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Paris. In 2011, he was appointed Regional Health Advisor for the Middle East at the French Embassy in Riyadh. In 2016, he set up GHA International, a market access consultancy. He joined ESL Rivington in 2022 as Senior Advisor and supports the firm's clients in the Gulf region.

Jonathan holds a Master 2 in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and an MBA in Business Strategy and European Intelligence from ISC Paris. He also specialised in business intelligence at the European School of Business Intelligence in Versailles. Working successively in two Economic and Strategic Intelligence consulting firms (Eurocrise and ADIT), he had the opportunity to work on various issues in Strategic Intelligence consulting for French and international clients. In addition to the various roles he has held, he was an auditor on the 49th Economic and Strategic Intelligence cycle at IHEDN and is also a founding member of Cercle K2 and Secretary General of the French Economic Intelligence Observatory (OIEF). He is a lecturer at Sciences-Po Paris where he is in charge of the elective course ‘Introduction aux métiers de l'Intelligence Stratégique’ and a speaker at the IHEDN. He joined ESL & Network in 2017 as Head of the Due Diligence and Compliance Department, then as Director and Associate Director. In January 2025, he was appointed Vice-President of the ADIT ‘Influence’ Division.