A Natural Leader
Elodie launched her business as an independent consultant in 2024, after 25 years of experience between the energy industry and consulting world. Initially trained as a general engineer, Elodie began her career at Enedis and was quickly promoted to manager at age 25. Suddenly, she found herself in charge of a team of 20 men twice her age. “It was my first time as a manager, and it was extremely challenging…the problem was that they were operating in a silo, and stuck in their ways.”
For two years in that first managerial role, Elodie used her unique ability to build trust and bring people together to foster new habits for the team and improve their collaboration across the organization. When she left the position, many of her direct reports congratulated her for a job well done. “Everybody said, ‘Wow, you were so good.’ In the moment I realized, to my surprise, that I had actually managed to change their mindset.”
Bridging the Gap
After getting her start in the industry sector, Elodie wanted to try something a little different. She transitioned to the consulting world and spent three years with SIA Partners, focusing on projects with the energy industry. “That's where I realized that I really loved bridging the gap between business and IT; that I was quite gifted at speaking both languages.”
Following her time at SIA, Elodie took on a new role at AirLiquide, and ended up staying with the company for 16 years. With such a unique and valuable blend of soft skills and technical expertise, Elodie frequently changed roles within the organization, working a total of 8 different positions during her time there.
Why such frequent role changes? Elodie chalks it up to having a natural gift for changing the collective mindset, and was ready and willing to use her rare skillset in different parts of the company. “I know how to make things move, and I really believe that my job is not to do things alone - but to bring people together.”
Over the years, she took on side projects as a professor and trainer in order to share her knowledge with others. It was thanks to this experience that she decided to give it a go as an independent, continuing to teach as she took on independent consulting projects after leaving her full-time role at AirLiquide.
Overcoming Hurdles
How does Elodie deal with challenges such as difficult client expectations, or project roadblocks? She explains that unexpected delays need to be built into the roadmap from the start: “You must be able to anticipate that there will be blockers - the client will not necessarily emphasize or envision this when they give you the brief.”
In addition to a sharp understanding of technical projects and organizational change, Elodie believes that the human factor plays a huge part in her ability to tip the needle on transformational projects. “As the expert on a project, you need to offer the structure and framework. The rest, however, is really about human relations and creating trust.” She admits that, in most cases, her soft skills and emphasis on the human aspect make more of a difference than her technical skills. How exactly does she do it? When asked, Elodie smiles and says “That’s my magic touch, my added value,” and admits that a lot of it is intuitive and comes from honing her skills over years of experience.
When asked about her biggest accomplishments, Elodie cites an ambitious project she worked on at AirLiquide to automate industrial operations at production plants, while deploying AI and big data. Over a three-year period, her team automated every plant in France. This initiative redefined the organization’s approach and became a model for the entire group.
Agile to the Core
After leaving AirLiquide to launch her independent consulting business, Elodie developed a rhythm of networking and task prioritization to keep her momentum going until earning her first contracts. Every week, she was careful to prioritize specific items on her to-do list to stay organized. “Without meaning to, I realized that I was applying the Agile methodology of doing sprints on myself and my independent professional plans. After one month, I looked at my calendar and to-do list and realized, I’m doing weekly sprints just like on a project…” Elodie had even color coded her priorities and timeline as she would have in her previous roles.
Her first independent consulting project? It happened to be with her former colleagues at AirLiquide. With a laugh, she says “they called me, and the project sounded really interesting… so of course I could not say no.”
Since then, she has taken on a number of projects with various clients, and has also developed a professional training program for others who want to learn how to develop and deliver their own IT and digitalization projects.
Elodie’s path shows us that with the right mindset, you can achieve anything: especially with a focus on soft skills and the human aspect of a challenging, ambitious project. Throughout her career, she has managed to hone her skills to earn a fine-tuned knowledge of both the technical and human side of complex projects in global organizations. She translates her experience as an in-house manager of digital and data transformation in order to offer clients valuable external expertise on complex projects.
