Métayer, Estelle

Estelle Métayer is an expert in Competitive and Strategic Intelligence. Her research focuses on how managers, CEOs, and board members build and improve their strategic planning and/or competitive intelligence function to avoid strategic blindspots. Her best work is done when companies need to drastically change the way they do business and/or grow aggressively. She is a reputed public speaker in international conferences (for example in Davos in 2012) and facilitates strategic workshops around the world. An adjunct professor for McGill University, she teaches in the Advanced Leadership Programs, the International Masters for Health Leadership, The Analytics Leadership Program and the Executive MBA among others. For the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors’ certification and training programs, she leads modules around strategic blindspots, technology oversight, governance of technology and social media crisis management. Estelle is or has also been a guest lecturer in programs led or co-led by IMD (Lausanne), the IMB (India), INSEAD (France) or MIT (United States).

Prior to selling the company in 2004, Estelle was the president and founder of a leading training organization for executives and analysts in Strategic Intelligence. A former consultant at the international Strategic Consulting firm McKinsey & Company, she gained first-hand practical experience while managing the competitive intelligence, business development and strategic planning function at CAE Inc. She started her career at the ING Bank in the Netherlands and in Poland, studying the financial risks of expanding into emerging countries, and in the French Conglomerate Bouygues in France and the United Kingdom. She received in 2000 the Arista Sunlife Award for “Entrepreneur of the Year”.

Estelle is an independent member of the board of BRP inc ($DOO on the TSX, $DOOO on the NASDAQ) and a member of the audit committee. She is an independent director for Audemars-Piguet (Swiss luxury watches), a private family business in Switzerland, is a member of the strategy committee, the HR and compensation committee and chairs the investment committee. She is a member of board of Agropur, a dairy co-op (Canada), a member of the governance, and of the environment committees. She serves on the advisory boards of Ricardo Media (Media- Montreal, Canada), LifeScore (UK) an AI music software start-up, and Groupe Sélection (Retirement homes-Montreal, Canada). She is also a member of the board of the Institut des Administrateurs de Société (Quebec Chapter of Institute of Corporate Directors) where she chairs the technology committee. Previously, she was a member of the board of Zag Bank (a Charter 1 Canadian online bank)(Calgary, Canada), Blockstream (blockchain technology) (Mountain View)and video-game developer Ubisoft ($UBI on Euronext) where she chaired the compensation committee.

Estelle was trained in the Netherlands, where she obtained her MBA and Drs. from the University of Nijenrode. She speaks French, English, German, Dutch, Italian and is learning Arabic. She is also a mother, a commercial pilot and flight instructor.