[PORTRAIT] Laurence Giard, performer

Laurence Giard has the flaw of her contemporaries. Modest and discreet, she doesn't much like the exercise of introspection. A good student, she is nevertheless willing to recount a trouble-free childhood at the public high school in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. "In an uncompetitive environment, I didn't do too badly. While she dreamed of becoming an astronaut, the young woman instead embarked on a scientific and then commercial career, joining the benches of France's leading business school. Laurence Giard has no lasting memories of Essec. Not content to leave the school benches for the real world, she opened the doors of Ernst & Young in 1993. An internship that went on to give her her first consulting job. "I wanted to move from theory to practice. Consulting was made for me: a certain ability to absorb figures quickly, a taste for contextualization and a spirit of synthesis. It was a bit like school... without the school."