The engineer in the boardroom

I trained as an engineer at ENSEEIHT in Toulouse and expected to work in technology. In 2001 I joined Royal Air Maroc on the HR systems side, and I have been somewhere between technology and people ever since.

Since then I have implemented HR systems across a group and its subsidiaries, run recruitment and talent, led an HR department of more than 6,000 employees, started my own consulting business, helped build another, and created a regional transformation activity at Sopra HR. I teach and write as well now, which came later and changed how I think about all of it.

Looking back, each move was really the same problem in a new form: getting two groups who see a situation differently to agree on what to do. Engineers and HR people. HR and the business. The business and the people who will have to live with the decision. Teaching and writing came last, and they force me to be clearer than any project ever did.

It is probably why a CEO, a CHRO and a CIO can each find something of their own problem in the same conversation with me. Most of the difficulty in a large transformation sits between their three agendas rather than inside any one of them.

The mathematics is not decoration on a CV. It is where my working habits come from: state the problem precisely, separate what you know from what you are assuming, and distrust a solution that only holds if nobody looks too closely.

For most of my career, HR systems have described people through jobs, competencies and skills. Those models have been useful. AI is making me question where their limits are, and The Death of Skills (2026) came out of that question.

I also teach on HR Master's programmes and in executive settings, and speak at conferences on AI, HR transformation and how work is changing. I use the same material I work with during the week.