Meet our keynote speaker

Olivier Ngo is the Higher Education and French Language Attaché at the French Consulate in Los Angeles (@FranceinLA) where he works to promote French language and to develop academic partnerships between the United States and France.

The mission of the French Embassy’s Cultural Services (@SpeakFrenchinLA) is to strengthen the presence of the French language in American primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools and to support research projects in Humanities and Social Sciences departments.

Meet our Panelists

Panel A

Scot T. Allen, Colorado School of Mines

Scot Allen serves Colorado School of Mines in upholding research integrity and research security. He has worked as a professor, an Air Force officer, a construction manager in the Middle East, and an administrator of international programs. Scot has led students on language immersions, humanitarian engineering projects, and cultural exchanges to Europe, Africa, and Latin America. French and a multicultural understanding have served him well in all these endeavors.

Angela Strange, French American School of Denver

Angela is a member of the founding team and Board Chair of the French American School of Denver. In college she studied French and participated in study-abroad programs. She attended law school and also had the opportunity to work in France.

Ann Williams, Language Teaching

Dr. Williams was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministre de l'Education nationale in May, 2016. She received the national 2013 CASE / Carnegie Foundation US Professor of the Year Award for Baccalaureate Institutions. She earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and also has a Diplôme d'Études Approfondies from the Université de Lyon II. She is currently professor of French and she teaches courses in language, literature and culture. She regularly presents conference papers and writes on contemporary culture and has co-authored four college-level French textbooks. She was the recipient of the MSCD Faculty Senate Teaching Excellence Award in 2010, the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers Kris Wells Creativity Award in 2008, a McGraw-Hill/Glencoe Teacher of the Year award in 2001, the Excellence in Teaching Award (Golden Key Honor Society) in 1994 and Young Educator of the Year in 1991 (Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers).

JR, Food / Distribution / Manufacture
CEO of La Belle French Bakery / President of the Rocky Mountain
French American Chamber of Commerce / Entrepreneur

https://labellefrenchbakery.com

Christophe Poulet, MS
Environmental Heath

Christophe Poulet is an Environmental Health Scientist with the Region 8 Office in the Division of Community Health Investigations, National Center for Environmental Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (DTHHS/NCEH/ATSDR) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In his role as a Regional Representative, he provides technical assistance to federal, state, and local partners, including health education and emergency response. Since 2017, he has served as the technical lead for the Comprehensive Disaster Assessment and Readiness Tools Project (CDART). Additionally, he is the technical lead for the Cancer Cluster and Regional Activity Tracker Project.

Mr. Poulet has served as a Region 8 Representative for over 20 years. During his tenure, he has been involved in several major projects, including serving as an ATSDR Regional Lead for the Libby Montana Asbestos Site and as the federal public health contact for the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. He has significant experience in domestic and international emergency response in the roles of public health SME, Health and Safety, operations and logistics, including the 2005 Hurricane Katrina Response, a 2006 chemical spill in Côte d’Ivoire, the 2009 H1N1 response in Mexico City, the 2014-2015 Ebola Response in Guinea, the 2015 Gold King Mine Spill in Silverton CO, and the Hurricane Maria Response and Recovery in Puerto Rico. In 2005 and 2006 he completed a detail with the French InVS Departement Sante Environnement (DSE) and Paris Regional Office (CIRE Region Parisienne). From 2005 to 2010 he coordinated InVS DSE and CIRE training visits to ATSDR for the Public Health assessment Training Course.

Contact information: cgp8@cdc.gov

Charles BailleHache
Business Angel & Investor
A former general counsel of a listed company in the hospitality sector for the regions of Asia, Middle East & Africa, Charles is currently an investor in and business angel for various businesses in Asia, Europe and recently in the USA.

Sandrine Ricote
Research in energy

Dr. Ricote is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at CSM. She earned her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France for her research on the characterization of high-temperature proton-conducting ceramic materials (BaCe0.9-xZrxY0.1O2.95) for use as electrolytes in Protonic Ceramic Fuel Cells (PCFCs).

Dr. Ricote completed a four-year appointment at the Technical University of Denmark/Risø National Laboratory in Roskilde, Denmark where she developed PCFCs electrode materials, among other projects.

Dr. Ricote joined Mines in 2012 and has been working since on the development of protonic ceramic fuel cells and membrane reactors.

She has been elected as Chair of the Colorado Section of the American Ceramic Society.

https://mechanical.mines.edu/project/ricote-sandrine/

Panel B

Connie Navarro, Denver Public Schools

Connie J. Navarro is proud to have served as President of Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers (CCFLT). As the Peer Observer for World Languages for Denver Public Schools since 2012, she has observed, evaluated, and coached hundreds of teachers seeking to go from good to great. With 20+ years of classroom teaching experience , Connie has taught French in state university, community college, and high school, Connie holds a BA in French from BYU, and an MA in Romance Languages, Literature and Linguistics from University of Washington. She loves the empanadas of her suegra cubana, tiny monkeys, and all things Star Wars.

Brian Decker
Madala, Non-profit

Brian has been developing partnerships in Francophone West Africa for over 15 years. He is the director of Madala (www.madala.us), a non-profit organization that funds humanitarian projects that bring improvement in the healthcare, education, economics and public health sectors. He holds a MA in Christian Studies.

Victor Ducoulombier
IT / Director oXya / Board member of the Rocky Mountain French American Chamber of Commerce

Victor brings 15+ years of experience in IT and the tech industry. He worked several years in Montreal and NYC, then Denver as a director for the company oXya/Hitachi. Victor is a board member of the Rocky Mountain French American Chamber of Commerce.

Jessica Weiss
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Academic art historian
Jessica Weiss is Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her research focuses on the artistic connections between Iberia and Northern Europe in the fifteenth-century, specifically the reception of French and Flemish objects and Spain. Publications include “The Economics of Aesthetics and the Financial Success of the Isabelline Artist Juan de Flandes” in the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (2018) and “Relics of Los Reyes Católicos: Spanish Habsburg Family Heirlooms and Dynastic Identity” in Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe (Brepols, 2018).

Pierre-Yves Leclercq
oil & gas and carwash industries

Pierre-Yves Leclercq is originally from the West Coast of France and spent most of his career in the oil & gas and carwash industry in operations, sales, and general management positions.

Pierre-Yves currently lives in Denver since 2017 after working several years in Toronto in Canada, Paris and Orléans in France and Libreville in Gabon.

He enjoys spending time with his family, playing golf and discovering the outdoor activities of our beautiful state of Colorado.

Reynald Bodeux
Originally from Lorraine in northeastern France, Reynald Bodeux has lived and worked in Colorado for over 20 years. His areas of expertise are Corporate Treasury and Finance and he has worked at fast growing international companies in both the public and private sectors. A Certified Risk Manager (CRM) since 2011, he has graduate degrees in Economics and Finance from the Université de Lorraine in France and an MBA from Colorado State University. He is a long-time board member of the Alliance Française de Denver, helping to promote French language and culture. He is active in the Colorado outdoors and can often be found skiing, hiking or biking in all kinds of weather.

Anne Redureau
La Bulle Designs (Creative)
Anne is an award-winning Design Manager and she is best-known in the creative community for serving as President of The One Club for Creativity – Denver (formerly known as the Art Directors Club Denver) and for being the Executive Producer of the legendary Paper Fashion Show from 2016 to 2018. In 2017 thanks to her leadership and her esteemed board of directors, the Art Directors Club Denver became the first authorized chapter of The One Club for Creativity, a global non-profit organization headquartered in New York City, which champions and rewards creative excellence year-round around the world in 61 countries. This merger was a significant step for the creative community in the State of Colorado as it continues to welcome more people from various parts of the nation and the world each year. One of Anne’s passion is for creativity to thrive in her local community by working with individuals and organizations that can benefit from different ideas, projects and partnerships. She particularly enjoys designing freelance for her various clients, as well as producing large scale fashion shows. When she’s not working, she enjoys cooking, drawing, exercising, spending time with her friends and mostly with her 12 year-old son, Louis Alexandre who inherited her passion for creativity.