2020: Learnings & Perspectives

Over the course of the past 20 years, Alexandre has been working to support business transitions as a key advisor for owners and senior decision makers of privately held European companies: growth out of start-up stage, hyper-growth, business reinvention to address disruption (digital agencies & consulting businesses, music, media / press, fashion retail, higher education...)

Aside from advisory and board level positions, he also operated ad interim from internal executive management positions and has been part of due diligence teams for professional investors.

Always on the market side of the frontier between business and technology, Alexandre likes looking at a business "from right to left", i.e. with the market as guiding star. 

Alexandre is lecturer in the Solvay Executive Master in Management.

Philippe Leroy has been CEO of the Saint-Pierre University Hospital Center since 2018.

Philippe studied medicine from 2002 to 2005 at the Facultés Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur and from 2005 to 2009 at the UCL. During his medical studies, he notably participated in actions in Africa with the NGO "Défi Belgique Afrique" which aims to encourage Belgian citizens to better understand the mechanisms of global inequalities.

Philippe Leroy continued his studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he obtained an MBA and a degree in public and social management. Since 2011, he has mainly worked for The Boston Consulting Group in Brussels, an international management consulting firm and the world's leading corporate strategy consultant.

Since August 6 2018, he is one of the youngest hospital directors in Belgium.

Shéhérazade Semsar-de Boisséson is CEO of POLITICO in Europe, a joint venture between POLITICO and Axel Springer.

Shéhérazade was previously owner and publisher of European Voice, the leading media in Brussels covering EU policy, which she acquired from the Economist Group in 2013. In December 2014, POLITICO and Axel Springer jointly acquired European Voice and Paris-based Development Institute International (Dii), France’s leading event promoter in the public affairs space, a business Shéhérazade co-founded in 1993.

A native of Tehran, Iran and a French national, Shéhérazade graduated from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University in 1990 with a B.A. and a M.S. in International Finance. Shéhérazade served as a member of the Board of Directors of Georgetown University, Washington D.C. from 2013 to 2019. She is currently serving on the Advisory Board of Georgetown’s Master of Science in Foreign Service and on the Board of Directors of the French-American Foundation.

From 2008 to 2010, Shéhérazade served on the Board of Directors of Femmes Forums, a leading women’s club in Paris, France. She represents DII at the French think tank: Institut Montaigne.

In 2020, Shéhérazade joined the Faculty of the Solvay Executive MBA.

Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and Columbia University professor. He is also co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.