Personal Tragedy Sparks Global Brand

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Tuesday, January 05 2010

Claude Paoli, CEO, BPI Group, Paris, France
Claude Paoli is truly a woman of the world. But that’s not just an indication of her sophistication and extensive experience, although she has both. Paoli represents a new kind of worldly female, a woman executive who leads a successful international company, adeptly bridging cultural and linguistic challenges to build her brand on a global landscape.

Paoli runs BPI Group, a leading Paris-based consulting firm specializing in organizational change and human resources management. BPI focuses on building pragmatic and innovative solutions for companies during periods of major change. And, as BPI’s website describes, its operating philosophy always combines the economic and human dimensions.

As CEO and principal owner of BPI, Paoli could also be said to embody the human and economic dimensions needed to span boundaries of culture, language, and globalization. She oversees offices throughout Europe, as well as South America, Canada, the Midwestern United States, and most recently the South (and we don’t mean the south of France).

BPI has just acquired Executrack, an Atlanta-based human resources consulting firm that also has offices in Tampa, Birmingham, and Greenville. BPI plans to change the Executrack name to its own, but it won’t “make changes just to make changes,” Paoli told Womenetics in a recent interview.

Stephen W. Spires, founder of Executrack, will remain as managing director for BPI, Southeast.

Paoli was in America to ink her company’s latest deal. Despite a language barrier (this writer only speaks un peu de francais), the conversation with Paoli translated into a story of inspirational leadership that began in personal tragedy.

BPI was founded in 1984 by Bernard Paoli, Paoli’s husband. At the time, Claude Paoli was busy with her own 20-year career as an intellectual property lawyer, while raising two sons and a daughter. With a sudden and tragic twist one might find in a great French novel, Paoli’s husband died in 1999. Despite her grief and sorrow, she instantly found herself running her husband’s company and coping as a widow and single mother.

She movingly recalled the challenges she faced during those sad days. Despite her previous career as a successful attorney, she struggled to gain credibility among her employees and peers, who doubted her because she was a woman and a widow.

“I was full of sorrow at that time, and I sometimes showed it,” she said.

Her grief was not seen as “acceptable” or something a man would display, yet she bravely continued on to build her husband’s legacy into the international leader it is today.

“In France then as now, women are extremely underrepresented in large companies by at least four to one,” Paoli said. But today, with Paoli firmly in charge after many years of “proving herself,” BPI’s management committee is evenly divided between men and women.

In our translated conversation, Paoli displayed the wit and wisdom that surely contributed to her perseverance, despite the numerous obstacles. When asked about the differences she faces in her various multilingual, international offices, she discussed the legal, social, and cultural divides, as well as the common bonds.

“BPI works with organizational change via an ‘upstream’ methodology,” she said. “We begin working with companies as a partnership long before the corporate changes or announcements take place, to assure that all legal, economic, and human conditions are covered.”

Obviously, legal issues vary greatly from country to country. Although her training as an attorney might seem to be advantageous, Paoli said her training helps her in broader ways.

“As an intellectual property lawyer, I practiced a very different kind of law,” she said. “But the law taught me logical thinking, which has been a critical asset.”

Paoli also observed that employee expectations vary from country to country. “We are continually learning ourselves but there are major differences,” she said. “Americans expect much less from their employers; they are much more willing to move and are more independent in their thinking. Europeans are very emotional about their work and demand much more, sometimes too much. However, the U.K. and parts of Germany are becoming more American in their approach.”

And what about the notorious difference of the typical American two-week vacation vs. the usual six-to-eight-week holidays in France?

“We give all of our employees, regardless of where they live, four weeks of vacation,” Paoli said. And, she advocates for more of a balance between the two systems – arguing that two weeks is not enough.

“The long holidays in Europe work very differently than here,” she said. “Holidays are directed to be taken during specific time periods, for example the month of August in France.” According to Paoli, employer-directed holiday periods allow the company to plan for these times in a more organized, efficient way while giving employees much needed time to renew their energy.

Speaking of renewal, Paoli likes to spend her rare spare time reading and indulging in that most French of pastimes, drinking wine with friends. And, when asked how she has managed the time and energy to raise three children, run an international company, and expand it globally, she paused and then laughed gently.

“I never remarried,” said the male translator, also laughing.

A veteran of the marketing/advertising business, Melinda Ennis-Roughton is the principal and owner of an Atlanta-based marketing firm called MelWorks Inc., and a freelance writer specializing in women’s issues and film criticism. She was an on-going contributing film critic for the Atlanta Journal Constitution from 2004-2007.

Her career highlights include the position of Executive Director/Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Brand Atlanta, which was responsible for marketing the city under Shirley Franklin’s administration. She served as Global CMO for Church's Chicken, supervising marketing direction, from China to Costa Rica. And her career also includes executive positions at Atlanta ad agencies, including Fitzgerald & Co. Ennis-Roughton began her career with Arby’s Restaurants, where she stayed for ten years, eventually rising to the position of senior vice president, marketing and was the first female vice president of the organization.