#5 - Florence Pennec "Sortir de ma zone de confort m'a fait gagner en confiance"

Helen Zhou was born in Shanghai, where she was raised by her grandmother. She graduated from the Sun Yat-sen University in English and Business and started her career at a beauty brand in Guangzhou. She is now General manager of Guerlain, China.

In 2013, she applied to Sephora, her first job within the LVMH Group. She had to be interviewed by the Group's President for China. To her great surprise, when she opened the door, the President turned out to be a woman, Anne-Véronique Bruel. 

Anne-Véronique, who is now CEO of FRESH, asked her to sit down not in front of her, but beside her: "And this has completely changed the relationship, because sitting on the opposite side as I used to do to report to my line manager, it gives some kind of hierarchy." Helen remembers.

This particular moment made her realize that women can reach the highest positions, while remaining true and authentic: "Being a female leader doesn’t request being a copycat of other leaders”.

Since then, Helen has completely changed her way of being a manager, she doesn't hesitate to express her feelings to her team, to talk about her own difficulties. Finally, Helen realized that « [she can be true to who [she is]”.

Masumi Suzuki's background is not common. As a graduate from the Gemological Institute of America, she worked most of her career in the highend jewelry and watchmaking industry. 

Masumi joined RIMOWA in 2016 and as Head of sales she now manages a team of 150 people to expand the brand. 

In December 2018, Masumi contributed to the opening of the RIMOWA flagship store in Ginza 7 in Tokyo, a huge store of 800 square meters on three floors. The project had only been launched eight months earlier :"It was quite challenging. We had very little time to do everything. At first, we thought we'd never make it." she remembers.

Yet Masumi and her team managed to tackle the obstacles and find solutions. A few months later, the store opened. From that experience, she has learnt to reach her full potential and encourage others to do the same. Before that, Masumi struggled to take credit for her accomplishments.Thanks to the support of her teams, she realized that it was important to speak out loud of her own contributions, although it felt uncomfortable for her – as for many women – to do so.

From that moment, she began to work on her state of mind and change her relationship to success:  "I realize how important it is to personally recognize your own achievements and talk openly about them so we can open the door to the next step".

Dominique Giovine is half French and half American. She grew up in Bordeaux, surrounded by great vineyards, then went on to university in the US where she studied advertising.

Dominique “felt enamored with Moët Hennessy” and has been working for the Maison for more than 20 years now. She started in sales and evolved through the years to become Vice-President and General Manager for the mid-south region of the USA, at Moët Hennessy.

Ten years ago, Dominique was just promoted head of the Georgian market for Moët Hennessy. At that time, her husband was trying to open a new restaurant and to raise funds. The financial pressure on the couple was high, with two young children to take care of: not exactly the perfect situation to start a new job. 

During the first year in her new job, Dominique held out. But at the end of the year, she admitted it wasn’t working. She wanted to quit, but her husband convinced her otherwise. At first, she panicked, then she had a click: she would find a solution because giving up was not in her DNA. She worked hard and succeeded once she accepted to stop trying to be perfect: "I needed to let go of this image of perfection, that everything is ok. You do what you can do".

Pour Séraphine Dhellemmes, depuis 2015 et la fin de ses études d’ingénieur, tout s’est enchainé très vite, naturellement, « avec de la chance et sans [qu’elle] l’ait vraiment cherché ». 

Quand son stage dans le secteur des cosmétiques pour LVMH Recherche se transforme en CDI, elle a le sentiment que ce qui lui arrive est un cadeau. Mais un cadeau qu’elle n’aurait pas eu le temps de désirer.

Alors après quelques années à son poste, elle s’autorise à réfléchir à ce qu’elle veut vraiment pour la suite de sa carrière.

En 2019, forte de ses expériences au sein de LVMH Recherche, elle trouve la confiance nécessaire pour s’affirmer. Elle entreprend alors une série de rencontres avec des personnes aux métiers qui l’inspirent en lien avec le secteur de la mode et de la maroquinerie et reçoit une proposition. C’est la suite logique de son parcours mais surtout, c’est son choix. Elle intègre alors les équipes de LVMH Métiers d’Art et devient leur Ambassadrice. 

En charge de la coordination du développement des tanneries des Maisons du Groupe, elle prend le temps de s’imprégner de leurs savoir-faire et traditions orales séculaires. Pour elle, c’est en confrontant « la naïveté d’un regard plus jeune et extérieur » à des traditions plus anciennes qu’on arrive à créer des nouveautés et à faire aboutir collectivement de beaux projets.

Aujourd’hui, elle se sent vraiment à sa place, elle est là où « [elle] voulait être »...Et ce n’est que le début d’une grande aventure. 

Luciana Farina grew up in a little village in Italy where working at Louis Vuitton, Dior or Celine was not an obvious career choice.

She was in her 20s when she went to a recruitment agency asking for a job. That is how she got hired at her first fashion house at the HR department.

At the end of her contract, there was no available position for her. She was quite upset because she would have liked to continue her career in this field, since she had developed a form of attachment to the Maison over time.

But one day, the Head of Digital came to her and offered her a job. At first, Luciana couldn’t believe it, she did not know if she had what it took or if her skills would fit the job, etc. But her boss trusted her. “Luciana, I know you can be the right person” he said. That’s how she started her career in digital. Today she is International E-Commerce Director at Christian Dior Couture.

She felt very grateful there was someone looking at her in a different way than she was looking at herself. And now, she is trying to be a manager that is motivating each member of her team to do things that they didn’t know they could do.

Valérie Dubois a passé 16 années dans l’industrie agro-alimentaire avant d’arriver chez Louis Vuitton en 2013, comme Directrice des ateliers de Vendée, en France.

Un jour, un chef d’équipe vient lui annoncer qu’un tout nouveau produit est en train de sortir de la ligne. C’est le sac Tote W. De ce produit, elle a vu la maquette quelques semaines auparavant. Mais le voir « naître » c’est tout autre chose. 

Les équipes sont fières de partager avec elle le savoir-faire pour concevoir ce sac, et notamment un fameux point qui, si mal exécuté, peut réduire à néant tout l’amont de la fabrication. À ce moment-là, Valérie a un déclic : elle comprend la dimension émotionnelle du produit, au-delà de sa technique, et que les sacs créés par ses équipes sont de véritables œuvres d’art. Elle se sent alors pleinement intégrée aux équipes des ateliers.

Depuis, Valérie est devenue la meilleure ambassadrice du savoir-faire de ses équipes lors des visites des ateliers et auprès des clients.

En 2015, Florence Pennec travaille chez Hennessy au sein du département Finance depuis quinze ans déjà, quand un jour son patron lui propose un poste à la production, sur le site du Haut Bagnolet.

Florence, expert-comptable de formation, est d’abord très surprise : c’est un secteur où n’évoluent traditionnellement que des hommes. Mais elle accepte tout de suite cette formidable opportunité. 

Au début, Florence sent des réticences dans le regard de certains. Puis elle décrète que ce n’est pas son combat. On lui a proposé ce poste parce qu’elle a des compétences et en est capable. 

Changement de poste, changement d’environnement, Florence est passée du siège social à un site de production, situé au milieu d’une forêt. Devenue ‘Directeur’ de production dans un univers d’hommes, Florence est sortie de sa zone de confort pour le meilleur : elle a gagné en confiance en elle et s’est ouvert de nouvelles voies de développement de carrière.

Since she was little, Mathilde Christiansen had always been interested in making clothes, but never really considered that maybe it could be a job. 

But when the choice came to study, she picked a foundation course in fashion, and has worked in the sector ever since.  

In 2013, Mathilde was senior designer at Kenzo when her boss left the Maison. No one amid the management team had approached her to offer her to replace him at the head of the menswear design team. And she, "as often women" as she said, was too afraid to ask. 

Then, one day... at the coffee machine, she dared to ask. At first, the Director was not very convinced, so he put her to the test for six months. 

Six months later, Mathilde had proven she was capable of being Head of Design for menswear at Kenzo, that she could be trusted. She has learnt how to manage a team and in the end, even if the collection she presented was not – in her opinion – the best she had built, she did it and got the job. 

It was quite a pivotal moment because she also realized that if she had not asked, they probably would never have considered her.

Now she's more confident. "It's worth asking. The worst thing that can happen to you is someone saying no”

Joyce Weng is UK Managing Director Bulgari. For Joyce, working at Bulgari is “faith”, as she called it. 

After a visit in France where she was fascinated by the colors of the bags and jewelry in a Bulgari store, she received a phone call to be interviewed as PR Director of the Maison in Taiwan. Later, back in China, she continued her way through the company and finally became UK Managing Director at Bulgari. 

One day, in 2009, Joyce was entrusted with the responsibility of organizing a Bulgari exhibition at the China Museum in Beijing, the largest in the country. It was a real challenge to convince local authorities to let her and her team expose more than 600 museum pieces of Bulgari for months.

Despite the many challenges they faced, the exhibition was a success. She has learned a lot about herself, about how to stay calm despite the obstacles, how to persist. Today, every time she remembers this story, she can't help but smile and be proud.

Karen Williams is Global Academy and Education Director at MAKE UP FOR EVER. Every day, she teaches young people how to become make-up artists. 

She came from a very polyglot family and lived all over the world: Germany, Africa, India, Portugal, wondering what she wanted to become. She dreamed herself as a make-up artist for horror films. Then she came to France and graduated from a make-up school. For twenty year, she has been working her way out to backstage, advertising, etc. in the make-up sector. 

One day, Karen Williams was working as a make-up trainer at Parfums Christian Dior, when she met with a neuroscientist researcher named Kate-Mary. Kate-Mary was working on people’s brain and how they learn. At first sight, she appeared to Karen as eccentric. But then she turned out to be her role model. 

Kate-Mary taught Karen how to be a better person and a much stronger manager. She checked Karen to be who she is today, including from a vocational perspective. She taught her about education. 

And when Karen became Global Academy and Education Director at MAKE UP FOR EVER three years ago, she wanted to pay tribute to Kate-Mary. Thanks to her she realized that education is everything.