« As a former student (1989 L), I am deeply grateful to the school for having provided me with a unique blend of high-level academic training, openness to all disciplines, literary and scientific, and intellectual rigor. As a business manager and as an engaged citizen, I am convinced that the school, one of the main places in France capable of training free and passionate minds, can contribute today to understanding and better supporting some of the major challenges that we collectively face. I hope that many former students from around the world who share my attachment to the school will join us. The cause deserves it! »
Sophie Boissard
General Director of Korian
« Compared to university mammoths, our School is very small. But she was creative in all knowledge. She took a front-row seat to the discoveries that made our world, illustrated the mind and fundamental and applied science. This world is more competitive than ever. I fervently hope that the school maintains its rank. The gift responds to the debt. I could have allocated my contribution to a scholarship for a foreign candidate. I hesitated for a long time. I chose to go back as far as possible to the origin. I assigned her to the scientific exploitation of the archives of some of our great Elders. In memory of the lesson in humanity that the library itself is and the happiness it gave me, and to preserve this part of knowledge without which there is no conscience and true social utility. »
Alain Baudant
(1970 L)
« As a member of the Board of Directors of the ENS Foundation for 4 years, it was natural for me to also get involved in the campaign committee and donate to the Foundation. The École Normale Supérieure has a place to hold among the best international universities: the excellence of its research in science and literature, the abundant interdisciplinarity, the freedom for each student to build their own path are unique in France. To achieve this, it needs additional resources that only the private sector can now provide: alumni and businesses. The school has shaped my career and I am proud today to be able to give back what I received by supporting it and contributing to its development. »
Isabelle Kocher
Managing Director of the Engie Group, Member of the Board of Directors of the ENS Foundation
« Retired for seven years already, the time has come for me to contribute to helping the following generations. This is why I chose to support the École Normale Supérieure Foundation. I am particularly sensitive to operations promoting international exchanges, particularly scholarships granted to young researchers for long-term stays in foreign laboratories. I was able to observe, during all these years spent at the university, how beneficial such stays were for them and made them progress in originality, autonomy and maturity. »
Jean-Louis Vialle
Class of 1966 Sciences, former teacher-researcher in Paris (ENS) and Orsay
« Donating to the ENS is for me a way of showing my gratitude to an institution whose lessons continue to accompany me in my professional and personal life: independence of mind, a taste for learning, respect for human dignity. I want to help preserve this unique place where different avenues of knowledge flourish by coming together. »
Jean-Marie Guéhénno
(1968 L)
« I am very attached and very attentive to the projects supported by the Foundation, and very happy to see that the School is providing itself with sponsorship tools and developing a philanthropic culture, thanks to which the Normalien community can be directly involved in the financing of projects that make sense for everyone based on their history and personal experiences, prepare our future and have an impact on the evolution of the School and the diversity of its recruitment in particular. »
Hervé Ferrage
(1987 L)
” The school allowed me to become who I was. The place of improbable hybridizations of multidisciplinary openness and demand for detail that research work inspires. Always under the gaze of the deceased leaning on your shoulder. It was especially later, with the temporal and spatial distance, that I realized the perception and advantages of this difference. The trajectory as a practitioner that I took without completely moving away from where I knew I came from was yet another case of hybridization, and in this an ultimate loyalty to the school. I have always been sensitive and attentive to the necessary social mix of talents which remains for me both a historical asset and the future requirement. My commitment to setting up scholarships in this direction is also a promise kept to the institution which has already given me so much back. “
Pascal Blanqué
(1985 L)
” The school is a unique institution which takes up all the beautiful traditions of European intelligence and education. She gives all her students this happy opportunity to think and learn in the company of the greatest minds of the time. In doing so, it is a real promise for the future that it is up to us to keep. Granting a chance of access to school to less advantaged candidates is an essential condition for excellent recruitment and a guarantee against intellectual confinement. The sustainability of the school will only be ensured if it succeeds in attracting the best in conditions that are up to its missions and comparable to those offered by higher institutions of the same level in the rest of the world. ”