Living in Paris, Philippe Valachs is a European by conviction and an economist by training (University of Paris-X-Nanterre, France; University of Madison, Wisconsin, USA).

He began his career in international consulting before joining the cabinet of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then French Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade, in 1991.

In 1993, Mr Valachs worked for the Compagnie Générale des Eaux (now the Vivendi Group) and in 1996 was appointed Chief of Staff to the President of the Group, Jean-Marie Messier.

He moved on from the group in 1999 to take part in the creation of CanalWeb, Europe’s first WebTV.

After the internet bubble burst, Philippe Valachs turned his energies towards providing consultancy services in Europe and in Canada through his own firm, Archimède Consultants, before joining the biotechnology group, Cellectis (specializing in genome surgery), as its General Secretary.

Since 2015, Philippe Valachs has been operating contracts for Parnasse International, a consulting firm specializing in economic and financial analysis for the benefit of governmental institutions. As such, he is mainly involved in the West and Central Africa area. At the same time, he continues to develop his own company, Archimède Consultants, which operates in the field of economic consulting.

In 2004, he was selected to be an Associate Director of the prestigious Cercle des Economistes.

From 2004 to 2011, he carried out the duties of a consular judge at the Commercial Court of Paris in addition to his professional activities. He was also a lecturer during this same period for the seminar on industrial economy organized by the École Supérieure des Mines de Paris (one of France’s most prominent engineering schools) and a jury member for the HEC Entrepreneurs Master’s programme at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris.