Hanna Renaldi's Blog: IMD Announces New President

IMD campus in Lausanne, Switzerland

Jean-François Manzoni will assume the role of IMD president starting January 1, 2017 for a five-year term. Manzoni is a French and Canadian citizen with a PhD from Harvard Business School. He was the Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development at IMD from 2004 to 2011, and currently holds the Shell Chair for Human Resources and Organizational Development at INSEAD in Singapore.

On his appointment to this prestigious appointment, Manzoni said (in the IMD press release): “Being invited to lead an organization as successful as IMD is a great honor as well as a real challenge. The executive education world is facing increasingly crowded, global and intense competition. We have to keep innovating and finding new ways to create lasting value for executives and organizations. Building on the strong foundation handed over by my predecessor and his team, I will put all my skills, energy and passion into furthering IMD’s success.”

Manzoni will be succeeding Prof. Dominique Turpin, IMD’s president since 2010 who was responsible for strengthening the school’s client base, expanding its global footprint, setting up the Executive Learning Center in Singapore, and “rallying IMD to achieve revenue growth and positive financial results despite challenging macro-economic conditions globally and a massive appreciation of the Swiss franc against other currencies.”

According to a Financial Times article, Manzoni will be returning to Switzerland and to IMD this coming fall to being teaching full-time before taking on his role as president. “One of the things I like about Switzerland is that things work, people are nice and there is a strong work ethic,” he said.

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