As a 1999 UTC grad­u­ate in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, today Claire Blondel is Glob­al Head of Qual­i­ty at Decathlon, a com­pa­ny with 110 000 employ­ees present in 70 coun­tries world­wide. She is the God-Moth­er of the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the class of 2024.

Claire Blondel is Decathlon’s Head Qual­i­ty Direc­tor, a posi­tion she has held since July 2023, after a career that has tak­en her through a vari­ety of pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­ments. As a young UTC grad­u­ate, Claire Blondel began her career at Plas­tic Omni­um, where she had car­ried out her end-of-stud­ies project, before quick­ly mov­ing on to dif­fer­ent coun­tries and com­pa­nies. For per­son­al rea­sons, she moved to Hong Kong, where she joined the local Decathlon out­let. Two years lat­er, the com­pa­ny called her back to France to take up a posi­tion as Qual­i­ty Man­ag­er for pro­duc­tion at its French sites, a post she held for three years. At the age of 29, she was appoint­ed Qual­i­ty Man­ag­er in Shang­hai for all pro­duc­tion in Asia.

The sto­ry with Decathlon seemed to come to an end in 2007 when she left for Japan, once again for per­son­al rea­sons. It was a choice she was deter­mined to make the most of. “I took a year’s inten­sive Japan­ese lan­guage course because I want­ed to work in indus­try in Japan, a coun­try renowned for being at the top of the qual­i­ty game. A choice stymied by the fact that our visa didn’t allow us to hire a nan­ny for my young chil­dren. So I decid­ed to train in Montes­sori ped­a­gogy at my daugh­ters’ school and became a teacher for 3–6 year-olds,” she recounts.

Three years lat­er, she returned to France, to Lyon to be pre­cise, where she tried to set up a Montes­sori school. The project failed and she joined Car­ri­er, an Amer­i­can group spe­cial­iz­ing in air con­di­tion­ing for indus­tri­al build­ings. But, once again, the call of “great beyond” proved strongest. First stop was India, as qual­i­ty man­ag­er in a local ser­vice com­pa­ny, sec­ond Cana­da, where she joined the edu­ca­tion­al inno­va­tion depart­ment of a school that trains stu­dents from kinder­garten to bac­calau­re­ate + 2. This lat­ter expe­ri­ence enabled her to indulge her oth­er pas­sion: edu­ca­tion, in addi­tion to her inter­est in the qual­i­ty approach that formed the basis of her train­ing and her many pro­fes­sion­al experiences.

On her return to France, she rejoined Car­ri­er on a part-time basis to take care of the edu­ca­tion­al inno­va­tion con­sul­tan­cy she had set up in Lyon, before return­ing to Decathlon in 2022.

When Claire Blondel was cho­sen to be the God- Moth­er of the Class of 2024, she made no secret of her feel­ings. “My first reac­tion was sur­prise. Then I felt a surge of pride, because I’ve always kept in touch with the UTC, a uni­ver­si­ty with incred­i­ble val­ues. I’m a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to UV SP22 (SP22 — S’apprendre pour mieux gér­er A UTC per­son­al per­for­mance enhance­ment course)” she assures us.

Among her mes­sages to stu­dents? “First of all, rather than set­ting a career for the next 30 or 40 years, they should broad­en their hori­zon. A pre­de­fined career plan can mean miss­ing out on many reward­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s also about reliev­ing the guilt of stu­dents who don’t have a spe­cif­ic project in mind at the end of their stud­ies, and encour­ag­ing them to think about their future chances,” con­cludes Claire Blondel.

MSD