Category: Campus Events

Thailand as a bridge builder: a conversation with Ambassador Nikorndej Balankura

On Thursday 24 September 2026, H.E. Mr. Nikorndej Balankura, Ambassador of Thailand to France and Permanent Delegate of Thailand to UNESCO, was the guest of HD Thursdays, the HD speaker series. His talk centred on middle power diplomacy: how a fragmented, multipolar world leaves countries such as Thailand and France room to choose their partners, and why he reads the international system through functional convergence rather than a binary lens.

Before taking up his post in Paris, the ambassador was the spokesperson of Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the 2025 border crisis with Cambodia. The Ambassador gave a short interview on strategic communication in the age of social media, Thailand’s bid to join the OECD, heritage and the work of UNESCO, and the traces that 170 years of diplomatic relations have left in both countries.

LDD: Before Paris, you were the Foreign Ministry spokesperson during the border crisis with Cambodia in 2025, at a time when much of the conflict was also fought on social media, with misinformation spreading faster than official statements. In that situation, what did that experience teach you about the place of communication in modern diplomacy and digitally evolving nations?

H.E. Mr. Nikorndej Balankura: It is a very good question. It taught me, and it gave me, a very important policy change during my time as spokesperson.

During that time there was a lot of misinformation and disinformation. Some of it was out of good intention, and some of it was intentionally meant to misinform people. So the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand became aware that, first, the speed of communication is one of the most important things. However, we cannot catch up with social media, because we have to be accurate, right? To be 100% accurate before you issue anything, you have to check, double check and triple check. So it was almost impossible to issue anything faster. My interviews had to be checked and double checked again, because they became the national position.

So what we developed at the time, and I think it is a very important thing, is strategic communication. Strategic communication is to have a narrative of what we believe in, from front to end. That gives you the tools to deal with misinformation and disinformation: you can counter it. We will not correct misinformation or disinformation that has no source, for example, or that does not come from an office, that does not have any official line in it. So that narrows it down.

But to have a strategic communication team, first, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot work alone. We have to work with the military and defence, we have to work with the communication ministry, we have to work with the Prime Minister’s Office and the foreign minister. That has helped us with speed and accuracy, because instead of me waiting for everyone to check their script before I say anything, we have a committee, which we call the committee on strategic communication. I will give them less than an hour to check and counter-check before I respond. So that is what we do.

France has said it fully supports Thailand’s bid to join the OECD, and Thailand could become one of the first Southeast Asian countries in an organisation long seen as a club of rich Western economies. Is this mainly about reforms to escape the middle-income trap, or also a statement about where Thailand wants to stand in the world, alongside its ties with China and the United States?

First, the middle-income trap: yes, it is. It will certainly help us, but that is not our main goal. And for the second part of the question, do we want to stand in the world alongside them? No, we don’t.

What we want, the main aim of the OECD, and what we have always told France (France has supported us very greatly in this endeavour), is to use the OECD to improve our standards. That is very important: writing new laws, adopting new environmental standards, a new government procurement system, labour law, to name but a few. These will make Thailand, first, more competitive in a world where competition is so fierce, more visible, and more attractive for foreign direct investment. And that will answer the middle-income trap.

Also, what we want from the OECD is a place to stand: the visibility of Thailand for the Western hemisphere, in terms of how our standards and our economy are ripe to partner with Western countries. I have to admit that when Western countries want to partner with, or invest in, a country, the first thing they look at is human rights standards. Thailand does not have that issue, but we have environmental standards issues, and we have labour law issues. If these are taken care of with the help of the OECD, France and many other OECD members like Japan or Korea, then Thailand would be on that level playing field with everyone else.

You are also Thailand’s Permanent Delegate to UNESCO. Heritage can connect countries, but in Southeast Asia it has also been a source of tension, as the Preah Vihear temple listing showed in 2008. Can UNESCO help countries in the region share their heritage rather than compete over it, and what would you like Thailand to bring to the organisation during your time here?

I am a true believer that UNESCO, with the spirit of UNESCO, to promote education, science and culture, can bring countries closer together, and has brought countries closer together.

On the Preah Vihear temple, it was not a conflict about the temple at all. It was a border misunderstanding, a border conflict, but the temple was brought into the conflict. And actually UNESCO has helped solve that, because Preah Vihear has now been listed as World Heritage by Cambodia, and Thailand has been on the committee that helps the restoration of Preah Vihear. UNESCO is also on that committee. So I think it is a very beneficial platform for countries to list archaeological or historical monuments. My answer to you is that UNESCO has brought, and is successful in bringing, countries closer together.

What can I, or Thailand, bring to the organisation? Right now, we think we are a bridge builder. We are the vice-chairman of the Asia-Pacific group in UNESCO, 44 countries. Next year we will be president of the Asia-Pacific group. We intend to bridge, you know, 44 countries; it is a very big group, the largest group. We have to find a common position for the Asia-Pacific group, and we will bring that to UNESCO: a common ground for the Asia-Pacific. That is what we can contribute to UNESCO.

Thailand and France have a long shared history, going back to the Siamese embassy of Kosa Pan to the court of Louis XIV in 1686, and this year marks 170 years of diplomatic relations. Beyond official visits and agreements, where do you still see traces of Thailand in everyday life in France, and of France in Thailand, whether in food, language, architecture or the way international politics is conducted?

Well, you know, Thailand and France go back a very long way. The trace of Thailand in France is very easy to see. You can go to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs today and you will see an exhibition where we showcase the dresses, the Thai textiles, made by French haute couturiers like Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain. And they are still being worn today, you know. Those are the dresses of the kings and queens of Thailand. We believe in the craftsmanship. We have the textiles, we have the raw materials, but we don’t have the skills, the craft of the French designers. That is just an example.

But the trace I see, and this goes beyond both Thailand in France and France in Thailand, is the art de vivre. We are both very similar in that sense. You have the best gastronomy in the world. We have a very strong food industry; you know Thai food very well. And we like to enjoy that, you know, the love of living. I think, as Thai ambassador, I see very similar things between us in this art de vivre.

Your Excellency, you have been in France for about six months now, which is quite long enough to start picking up some local habits. Which French habit have you already adopted without realising it, and which one do you think you will never adopt, however long you stay?

Firstly, coffee. I drink much more coffee. I loved coffee before I arrived in France, but I have adopted this French culture. I think I drink about seven espressos a day, which is not too much for French people. I enjoy coffee and I like to go to cafés, and I think I have absorbed that. And I take more time for lunch. When I was in Thailand, sometimes I had 15 minutes for lunch, during my time as spokesperson. Now you cannot rush me. I want to take my time: my lunch break is my lunch break. And I think that’s very French.

And what I will never adopt is, unfortunately, I don’t drink alcohol, so I will not ever be able to enjoy French wine. I’m allergic. So that’s one unfortunate thing, because I see people, you know, commenting on such great wine.

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Interview with Dean Lazarus

On the occasion of the rentrée solennelle of Sciences Po’s campus of Le Havre, LDD has the opportunity to interview Jeanne Lazarus. As the Dean of the undergraduate college, her role involves being in charge of academics for the bachelor program.

LDD: I am very glad to be meeting you, Dean Lazarus. First of all, I attended your conference with the 1As this morning: is there anything that you got from that conference that was new to you? How do you feel about the new cohort?

Dean Lazarus: Yes, well, it was a very interesting time for me. I’m always glad to meet the students— the new students— when they arrive in Sciences Po, and they have, um, a new vision of everything, and especially this year, because we’re implementing a reform of the curriculum. So it was very interesting to get their feedback. I also felt that the atmosphere was very calm and focused on studies; and also people seemed happy to be here. So I enjoyed that exchange with the students.

I’m very glad to hear that. Continuing on the new bachelor program, which is, I think, one of the main objects of your visit here. What do you think was the main challenge in the internal process of figuring out how to work out the new curriculum?

I think um, when we did that reform, the challenges moved along the way. The first challenge was to find a way to change the second year and to have more choices with the majors, the different disciplines. So it was, like, a really technical challenge. We wanted to change the architecture and also get many different things in the curriculum. So we had to find like a tetris, find ways to make everything enter in our programs. And then, I think there is also a diplomatic part because many of the things we are implementing depend on the professors. We need the professors to be on board and to agree on changing some of the courses, some of the assessment of the organisation of the curriculum. So I spent a lot of time discussing with the departments or with some professors. I also wanted to discuss with the students, with the administrative part. So it’s not only creating something new, it’s also taking people on board. So, it was, yes, it was quite interesting, but sometimes we had some difficulties because we thought that some new ideas would be great and that everybody would like them. But then some people raised organisational problems or intellectual problems. So, yes, I would say I really wanted to have a consensus, because it’s going to be for— I hope— a long time, that we’re going to have this curriculum. So I don’t want people to get into that in um, a bad mood. So, and I think that we’ve succeeded on that part. And yes, no, it is the real test; the reality test I would say, with the students starting this new curriculum. So we’ll see what is happening, but I feel that everything’s ready, all the campuses are ready, and until now the first two weeks seem to have been okay.

That’s a whole new reform that was implemented this year, but I also heard a lot about the new report on how to move Sciences Po and both the undergraduate and graduate programs towards a more European perspective. So, from the report of the Europe committee that was published, I think, yesterday or the day before, there is a lot of new information, axes of recommendations. And there’s one that, um, was brought to my attention specifically, which is the choice of having a new European track implemented in the undergraduate college. I saw that the different alternatives that were proposed were either to mix Dijon and Nancy, or to have Paris as a new European campus, but keeping Nancy and Dijon as distinct entities, but also a third one to have a new Brussels campus implemented. What I want to ask you is why were the choices of these alternatives pushed forward rather than simply strengthening the current European minors that were already on Dijon and Nancy, and offering simply more classes in English?

Yes, so this report, um, has been written by the two presidents of this group that has been decided by Luis Vassi or president. So he decided to have around 30 high-level people to think about Europe. And so we had many people who work on the European Commission, who had responsibilities within Europe, from many different countries, and also some deans, like me, who were involved in the discussion, and then they gave some thoughts and direction. But a report doesn’t mean that we’ve made decisions. So now we have those ideas, those directions, and we need to process them, to examine all the advantages and maybe weaknesses of some propositions. The first thing that I must say is that we don’t think about opening a Brussels campus for the bachelor. So if it happens, it’s going to be for the master level. And the question of having two campuses focusing on Europe, is a very old question for the bachelor. So it’s not a surprise that it’s been raised by the committee, and I think that’s something we need to think about, because sometimes for the candidates, it’s not completely clear. And we need to just examine what is working or not working. And for me, that’s very important to say what you said, strengthening what we already have, and that’s also how I did the reform. My idea has always been to keep what is working, and to deepen that, and to add other things. So that will be the spirit of how we will deal with those propositions.

I had a question that is kind of in the same theme. Many students are raising questions here, as well as in other campuses, about equality of opportunities across different campuses. Last year, when you and Luis Vassy were present in Le Havre for the inauguration of the new common room, you were asked about conferences being organised mainly on the Paris campus and scheduled mostly on Tuesdays, which is a day that is widely inaccessible for us to go to Paris on as accommodation for the night is very expensive for students. Is there any way that this could be resolved? How do you plan on balancing out those opportunities?

Well, I think equal opportunity is a bit different than that. Yeah, equal opportunities means to admit students from different social backgrounds, which is much more important than accessing some conferences.

Sorry, I meant it in general, as access to intellectual events.

And yes, that’s something different between Paris and the rest of the campuses; there are more events in Paris. But still, as we answered last time, for the bachelor students in Paris, it’s not always possible to go to those events because they are very crowded and there are also all the master students on the campus. So, on paper, you may think that the Paris campus students spend their time going to conferences and having access to everything, but it’s not the case for everybody; there are limits to what they get. And in the campuses, you got the proximity of the campus staff, the fact that the teachers are closer to you than in Paris. So, you have things in the [regional] campuses that are different than in Paris; and I won’t say that you lack opportunities. We also organise many conferences and events in the campuses, by the campus administration and also by the students. So there is a long list of speakers and interesting people who come to your campus. You can always invite people: the Sciences Po brand also works for the campus. So, when you invite people from Sciences Po, if you’re in Le Havre, they will come because it is Sciences Po. So you have this equal opportunity I think. But, yes, I know that some events are only in Paris; but then when you will have your bachelor’s, you will be able to come to Paris and to go to that.

Let me just check the time so that you don’t miss the [rentrée solennelle] opening conference. Maybe one last question. At different times where you were there talking in the last year, you emphasized a lot the role of having a secure environment for students’ mental and physical well-being. However you also claim to not be in favour of having credits attributed to students for their participation in sports or arts. How do you plan on getting more students to participate in arts, to participate in sports, and to engage in that student life that is so good for their mental well-being without having it institutionalised in the curriculum?

Yes, well, for the art, it is credited. In the first and second years, we have the artistic workshops that are worth three credits. So, it is completely

credited in the curriculum. For sports, you have credits, but they are optional credits. So it’s not mandatory to have sports. They have credits but those don’t really count for getting your degree.

I meant it more so in the context of associations and artistic BDA events, rather than the artistic workshops.

Yes, but that is, and we already had the discussion last year as you noticed, I think the limit is at one point it is still voluntary activities. So we can’t organize everything in students’ lives. We give a lot of help for student lives: you have rooms, you have money for that, you have organisational help from the campus. So at one point, this is about your will to participate or not. And, I can say also that sometimes, for the well-being of students, it’s also good not to have too many things. Some students are involved in four different associations and they’re exhausted by all the different projects that they have because they don’t want to miss anything; and sometimes it’s too much. But I don’t want to monitor that for you. You are young adults, so you have to do your own experiences on that. And, yes, that’s how we do things. We try to get a balance between what we organise ourselves and what is outside; but you know that you will always find help from us for this organisation. However, giving credits would mean that it is an academic requirement, which is not.

I think we are out of time, thank you so much for sitting down with me, and LDD today.

You’re welcome. Thank you for your questions.

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“It’s About Us”: Thibaut Bruttin Opens the Academic Year on Press Freedom

“Freedom of the press is not a privilege for journalists,” Thibaut Bruttin told students at this year’s Rentrée Solennelle.

“It’s about us,” he said. “Every one of us needs information.”

When Thibaut Bruttin, Director General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), stepped up to deliver the inaugural lecture at Sciences Po Le Havre on Sept. 2, 2026, he came with a warning: the free press is losing ground almost everywhere, and the public has the most to lose.

The afternoon opened the 2026-27 academic year before a packed amphitheater, under a theme that has never been more urgent: the reliability of information in an age of disinformation and foreign interference. Jeanne Lazarus, Dean of Sciences Po’s undergraduate college, gave the opening address, and the Bureau des Arts (BDA) followed with a music and dance performance on press freedom. “I was very moved by the music and dance around freedom of the press,” Bruttin said.

For Bruttin, the afternoon was also a return home. A Sciences Po alumnus, he joined RSF in 2014 and has led it since July 2024. “I am a student of Sciences Po, deep in my heart,” Bruttin said.

The organization he leads runs a large Asia-Pacific bureau in Taipei and publishes the World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries using a tally of abuses against journalists and a survey of experts on each country’s political, economic, legal, social and security conditions. The 2026 edition recorded the lowest global average in the index’s history. When the index began, the average country was 72 out of 100, compared with 54 today.

Violence against journalists is returning, with more than 200 killed in Gaza alone. “Donald Trump has not been elected despite the media; he’s been elected because he repeatedly assaults the media,” Bruttin said. Platforms favor posts from friends over news, newsrooms are shrinking, and polls rank the media among the least trusted institutions.

“We might be seeing the beginning of an extinction event for the press as we knew it,” Bruttin said. He compared journalism to jazz, which still has its clubs and magazines but no longer sits at the center of culture.

In the lecture, he identified two main recurrent trends. The first is a backlash against the universality of press freedom, a view that casts a free press as something for “a white dude in Europe, fairly wealthy, fairly bourgeois.” The Chinese Communist Party has used international forums to present it as a Western idea, he said. Against that claim, he presented the people RSF defends, including Jimmy Lai, founder of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily, sentenced in February to 20 years in prison under the National Security Law, largely for what his newspaper published.

The second trend is the confusion between freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Bruttin pointed to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which names the two separately. In his reading, press freedom carries a duty to gather facts and bring them to the public, and it gives neither journalists nor their employers a license to broadcast their beliefs.

Bruttin called his picture of the situation “fairly bleak,” then turned to remedies. RSF refuses to defend propaganda that poses as journalism, he said, recalling a request from Russia Today for support against legal action in Latvia. “Freedom of the press was not invented for foreign powers to intervene in national political debates,” Bruttin said.

When Russian networks circulated fake videos of Bruttin on X, the company refused to remove them because the man in them looked like him. “Yes, it looked like me because it was an impersonation,” Bruttin said. RSF wants democracies to guarantee “due prominence” for news media online and a “new deal for the press” to fund reporting. “Sometimes we have subscriptions to TV platforms, or Netflix, and we don’t access it, but we just pay for it,” Bruttin said. “Let’s do that with the media.” Both the Russia Today letter and the fake videos on X show foreign interference working through the language of liberty.

The image that lingered came from a story Bruttin told midway through. In Hong Kong, he once met a North Korean woman who realized that a foreign visitor knew more about her country than she did, and she cried from shame. Her ignorance had been imposed by the state. In democracies, nobody needs to impose it: the information is there, often only a click or a subscription away, and people still let it pass. That is the ignorance Bruttin fears, built up one autoplayed video and one unopened subscription at a time.

The index makes the stakes plain: fewer than 1% of the world’s people live in a country where press freedom is rated good, and France, ranked 25th, is not among them. Censorship is the loss everyone can see, with its jailed reporters and shuttered newsrooms; while indifference works quietly, through feeds that crowd out reporting, and it needs no law to take hold.

Bruttin said that as a Sciences Po student 20 years ago, he did not see the need to follow the news every day—a confession that carried particular weight in a room full of aspiring diplomats and policymakers who will depend on reliable information to do their jobs. If  free press is to outlast this decline, it will need readers who treat the news as a habit worth paying for. The students he addressed at the Rentrée Solennelle are among those who will decide whether that habit survives. 龍

Navigating Solidarity and Strategy: Daniel Peterson’s Lecture on Indonesia’s Support for Palestine

By Carmen Leong

Just over a year ago, nearly two million people gathered in the central Freedom Square of Jakarta, waving enormous flags in a spectacle of red and white, but also green and black. They were rallying to express solidarity with Palestine, in light of the war on Gaza that had devastated the state and slaughtered thousands. It was one of the most significant protests for Palestinian resistance in Southeast Asia, said regional law and politics scholar Daniel Peterson. Our campus had had the privilege of inviting him to give a lecture on Indonesia and the Palestinian cause at lunchtime on 28 January, in which he outlined the principles and narratives driving Indonesia’s support of this vastly distant state.

Indonesian support for Palestine stems from its own history of anti-colonial resistance and humanitarian principles – the latter of which is stated explicitly in its Pancasila state philosophy. But the massive scale of mobilisation for Palestine in the country can perhaps best be attributed to the sentiment of Islamic solidarity resonating among its people for their brothers and sisters across an ocean. The significance of this relationship can be traced back to the 1955 Bandung Conference; it not only secured Indonesia’s political presence on the international stage, but also marked the country’s diplomatic and moral pledge to Palestine. Although some dissent exists – for instance, a 2017 BBC World Service poll recorded that 9% of Indonesian survey respondents view Israel positively – most Indonesians take a pro-Palestinian stance, motivating the Indonesian government to do the same. For instance, Indonesia has refused to entertain Israel during international sporting events, most recently with Indonesia being stripped of its hosting duty for the FIFA Under-20 World Cup due to concerns over whether the Israeli team could compete there without disruption. Even so, some critics have argued that Indonesia can do more to ally itself with the Palestinian struggle; even if geographical distance and limited military power restricts its ability to intervene directly in the conflict, Indonesia can welcome Palestinian refugees. At this point, Peterson paused and directed the question at our audience: do we think Indonesia will welcome Palestinian refugees?

Image Credits: Melbourne Law School, Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

As LDD’s newspaper correspondent, I was lucky enough to catch him for an interview later that day, during which I asked his opinion on the very same question. His answer: it’s highly unlikely. There is firstly the argument that accepting Palestinian refugees is counterintuitive to the greater struggle; when refuting reports of Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians in Gaza to Indonesia, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserted that “any attempts to displace or remove Gaza’s residents is entirely unacceptable”, since “such efforts to depopulate Gaza would only serve to perpetuate the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and align with broader strategies aimed at expelling Palestinians from Gaza.” Secondly, Indonesia has not had the best track record for taking in refugees, with Rohingya from Myanmar facing hostile pushback from local communities when arriving on Indonesian shores in recent years, due to fears of competition over scarce resources and an increase in crime and inter-ethnic conflicts. 

Evidently, the Indonesian government must carefully take into account its domestic situation prior to undertaking any intervention in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This could explain its continued reluctance to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions against Palestine – a point that Peterson brought up in response to a student’s question during the Q&A segment of his lecture. Given Indonesia’s own violent history, such as the 1965-66 massacres of members of the Indonesian Communist Party (although the anti-Chinese sentiment behind this event has been refuted by some scholars as a myth), it may not be politically expedient to directly accuse Israel of “genocide”, since the definition of the word also varies and genocidal intentions are difficult to establish. That said, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has arguably asserted the same sentiment, by stating that “Israel’s ultimate goal [is] to wipe Palestine from the world map.”

In light of Indonesia’s steadfast, justice-oriented stance against Israel in the ongoing dispute, some may question why it has not adopted a similar position against China, especially considering the allegations against the latter of being complicit in the persecution of ethnic Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang. To this, Peterson points to Indonesia’s significant economic dependence on China. Just recently in November 2024, Indonesia signed $10 billion in deals with China; it is also the highest recipient of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and loans from China among Southeast Asian countries. In contrast to Israel, with whom Indonesia has minimal economic ties, China holds far greater influence over Indonesia’s economy, requiring the country to carefully balance its stance on human rights with the need to cultivate favorable relations for economic and development purposes.

Daniel Peterson’s lecture provided me – and, I’m sure, many other students – with a deeper understanding of how cross-border movements shape international relations. I now have a greater appreciation for how governments must carefully consider their own internal tensions and domestic situation before formulating foreign diplomatic strategies, particularly in the case of Indonesia’s approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Our team at LDD would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Peterson for taking the time to participate in the interview, and we hope that this article offers valuable insights to those students who were unable to attend the lecture.

Something to Put on Your LinkedIn: SciencesPo’s First Intercampus GRC Conference

By Syontoni Hattori-Chatterjee 

All photos credited to The Sundial Press, SciencesPo Reims’ campus newspaper.

SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Branch President, Aaryani Sahay, with conference speaker Álvaro Martín Sánchez, Associate at Boston Consulting Group.

From February 8th to 9th, I had the special opportunity to attend SciencesPo’s first intercampus Global Research and Consulting (GRC) conference. Fellow associates from the Le Havre, Menton, and Reims branches congregated in SciencesPo’s largest regional campus for a weekend of speakers, workshops, cases, exploring Reims, and, of course, networking. While I had some previous experience in education and nonprofit consulting, I was relatively unfamiliar with the wider field of social impact consulting before getting involved with GRC this year. Being immersed in this burgeoning consulting niche over the conference weekend helped me solidify my future career aspirations, a sentiment shared by other attendees from across the three campuses.

Viren Gemini, also a GRC Le Havre associate, commented that “The conference was quite intriguing because the guest speakers were very articulate and provided relevant and interesting insights on consulting and finance. The opportunity to ask the speakers questions and interact with them in person was very cool, and I felt like I gained a deeper understanding of consulting as a field and the lifestyle, skills and thought process of a consultant. I am excited to explore opportunities in this realm in the future!” 

Indeed, Álvaro Martín Sánchez from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Mariette Munier from McKinsey and EDF, and Bassem Snaije from Cosmos Advisors and SciencesPo each provided distinct, interesting perspectives on their work as consultants. I was surprised not just by the diversity of projects they were each able to take on, but also by their reflections on their responsibilities and purpose which showcased different mindsets and strategic thinking approaches. 

Viren remarked that “Bassem Snaije’s data-centric approach was truly fascinating, as his show-don’t-tell approach revealed the importance of finance in the modern world and introduced a lot of new key terms that I was not familiar with.” I also found Professor Snaije’s technique of leading with the numbers and then explaining their importance quite engaging. 

Mariette Munier had me hooked from the beginning of her talk when she boldly announced that she had just quit McKinsey the day before the conference. I agree with Viren that her emphasis on “honesty, authenticity and being open to feedback and learning as key attributes of all good consultants” and her passion for promoting economic inclusion of consultants from different income backgrounds was refreshing. 

What I appreciated the most, however, was the chance to talk to Ms. Munier in between speaker sessions. As a SciencesPo Nancy campus alumna herself, she had a warm and nostalgic familiarity towards my and my friends’ experiences that made her advice on pathways beyond SciencesPo all the more salient. I was very interested in the HEC-SciencesPo dual Masters program that she pursued after obtaining her Bachelor’s degree. This was in particular because she remarked that HEC had an entirely different university culture to SciencesPo and focused more on professional development. Nevertheless, I also valued her perspective on career opportunities gained through SciencesPo’s greatest strength: our peers and friends, who form not just our emotional but also professional support network. 

Lastly, Viren and I both took away the same key insight from Álvaro Martín Sánchez’ talk: “non-social consulting can also have a social goal.” Mr. Martín illustrated this by discussing his first project as a full time consultant at BCG during which he helped expand legal banking operations and access to credit cards on behalf of a bank in Venezuela, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. While the project’s intended outcomes were profit-focused and aimed principally to extend the reach of the bank’s activities, the project also  had positive externalities on the local and national level. Strategizing effective ways to encourage citizens to keep their money in banks enabled said citizens to develop a credit history that they could use for loans, and also lowered the influence of the mafia and underground economy while promoting tax collection for public services. It was encouraging to hear that more consulting work is slowly but surely moving into this higher degree of interconnection between profit-based and social outcomes. Additionally, Mr. Martín’s fun story about a colleague who had to literally get into a pig sty for a consulting project amusingly showed attendees that consulting provides the unique opportunity to have a career where you get your hands into a bit of everything. 

Viren Gemini (left) and Carmen Leong (right), SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Branch Associates. 

The collected composure of the SciencesPo GRC team throughout the weekend masked how much effort went into making this conference a success. I talked to Aaryani Sahay, the president of our SciencesPo Le Havre GRC branch, about the preparation involved in organizing the first event of this kind between the SciencesPo campuses. She shared that the initiative for this conference began between the three presidents of the Le Havre, Menton, and Reims GRC branches all the way back in September, and the full executive boards of each campus’ branches were working on this from late October onwards. “We all started having calls on Sundays. For like three or four hours, because I had to be on every call, I would be on calls and everyone else on the [Le Havre] executive board so Noelani, Armand, Elise would also join their teams and we’ve all been working on this for three months before the conference happened.”

I was moved by Aaryani’s dedication, passion, and commitment to making the idea of an intercampus consulting conference a reality. Over winter break, in order to secure conference panelists, she “stayed up until two a.m. most nights emailing, just cold emailing, speakers” and navigated scheduling changes, cancellations, and more logistical challenges. She admitted that “at some points it did feel like, you know, I was a bit overwhelmed. But I think I just had faith: I knew that this could be a good event and I just had to keep at it.” Aaryani exhibited some of this faith by putting herself out there and messaging consultants such as Mariette Munier, with whom she had no prior connections, on LinkedIn asking if they were interested in speaking to SciencesPo students. Indeed, during a quick chat before her panel, Ms. Munier herself encouraged me and fellow attendees to boldly make the first professional move and take chances utilizing our extended networks. 

Nevertheless, this GRC conference was also a success because it built on previously forged professional relationships. Álvaro Martín mentored Aaryani and other first-year GRC Le Havre associates last year during their first consulting project at SciencesPo. When Aaryani reached out to him asking if he had any connections in the Paris area that might be available for the conference date, he offered himself to come speak, despite living and working in Madrid. Aaryani and the GRC executive boards had to figure out and fund logistics, but ultimately Mr. Martín was able to fly into Paris from Madrid and go back on the same day just to talk with us. Following the conference, case competition winners earned a private mentoring session with him and another consultant, and Mr. Martín will be back as a GRC mentor this year. 

Georgia Langworthy (center), SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Insights Team Head

Speaking of the case competition, Fifi Zhao, a GRC SciencesPo Reims branch associate and member of the winning team, and our own Viren from the runner-up team generously shared their reflections on trying out this new activity. 

Fifi: “It was my first time doing anything like it, and I really went in with zero expectations and just the desire of getting some firsthand experience on the entire process of analyzing the prompt, conducting research, and presenting findings. I remember agreeing with my teammates that we wouldn’t cry of happiness if we won, but we wouldn’t cry if we lost either. It was a bit daunting because none of us had previous experience, so we tried interpreting the criteria to the best of our abilities. Winning was definitely unexpected but I’m so glad our hard work paid off! It did add some confidence that I can succeed in consulting, and the BCG session was a cherry on top. I’m thinking of using it to ask about skills I can develop to be more competitive in applications, as well as potential career paths and exit opportunities if I decide to change careers.”

Viren: “We started preparing for the case competition around six a.m. (two or three hours before the competition) as we had gone for dinner and then to the bar the previous night to celebrate my birthday. It was quite a productive session as we were able to work together remotely and split the work efficiently (I guess pressure can really make people thrive!). We were the second group to present, and after the first group it was clear to us that our approach was a bit unique and placed special emphasis on assessing the pre-existing conditions of fire-response in California. Fortunately, the judges took a liking to this approach and we came second! The feedback we received was that we fell short because we exceeded the given time and this was due to the last minute preparation, but overall we enjoyed the exposure and we were able to get a good experience out of the competition.”

“But I think I just had faith: I knew that this could be a good event and I just had to keep at it.” 

The GRC summit was also an occasion for some to return to once-beloved activities and gain a renewed sense of purpose. As I watched Aaryani on stage in conversation with Álvaro Martín, asking thoughtful questions and cultivating an effortlessly dynamic discussion, I truly felt like this was where she was meant to be. “I was a public speaker in high school: I spoke at the UN and I spoke at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. I feel like going to conferences was a huge part of me and I genuinely enjoyed it […] I hadn’t done public speaking for almost three years by this conference so I was really nervous. Two days before the conference, I was telling my parents that maybe I should ask someone else to [moderate the discussion] with Álvaro because what if I lost it, you know? But my parents were like ‘You just take a risk and see how it goes.’ And it just felt like coming home.” Aaryani also mused warmly on the impact of having her personal and professional support network there to help her: “Tamae was there, Armand was super helpful throughout the whole thing, he helped me make the speaker questions. So I think just having everyone there, having my friends there, and being able to do something that I love, I think it’s an experience that I’m really going to cherish.” 

Last but certainly not least, my favorite part of the conference was getting to know my peers from other SciencesPo campuses, something we still have too few opportunities to do. My coloc hosts were so generous and kind, and as Aaryani revealed the GRC Reims executive board worked tirelessly to ensure that us guests had a warm welcome to the city. “Eleni from Reims worked so, so hard to secure the accommodation […] Every day I would text her with two new people and she would be like, ‘Let me try to make it work.’ I would just like to say that she really played a role in accommodation and making sure that people from Le Havre could come.” As a 2A in a dual degree, I also welcomed the opportunity to meet people I would see again in the fall at Berkeley, a sentiment echoed by Fifi. “I was really happy to meet LH and Menton students, especially those also in the Columbia Dual degree! It was like a little preview of what’s to come next year :).”

I would like to end this article with Viren’s comments about celebrating his birthday during the conference weekend (the grind truly never stops): 

“It was a great birthday! I got to discover a new city in France (4th French city I have been to yet) and I got to hang out with a group of friends that I truly value! They surprised me with 2 cakes that were from my family back in India and a cookie cake from them, and we went for dinner to a great Thai restaurant. Afterwards, we went for the bar night and I had some really good conversations. Later, my amazing coloc host Simona cooked pasta for us as a late night supper. Overall, an amazing day!”

A big thank you to everyone involved: the Reims, Menton, and Le Havre GRC presidents and executive boards, all of the conference speakers, the Reims students who hosted us and showed us around the city, and fellow GRC and non-GRC members who attended the summit. Here’s to the next one!