2024 Greetings from the Dean

Dear Graduates,

Best wishes for the New Year! May it fulfil your personal and professional aspirations.

This year, 2024, marks a turning point for our school through the various projects we have launched since the end of the pandemic. These projects will help us consolidate our multinational structure and prepare for the developments decided with our Board of Directors, chaired by Jean-Philippe Courtois (SKEMA 1983) and made up of several SKEMA alumni. These alumni work alongside the school, on the International Board, the Business Board and the Transitions Board, to inform and support strategic decisions that enable us to make our mark, our strengths, and the scope of the SKEMA brand across the world.

Our school can look back on almost 180 years of history. SKEMA has developed with a DNA of innovation, adaptability, cultural diversity and support for major transformations. This ambition has remained unchanged since 1892. Generations of SKEMIANS have succeeded one another to carry forward the values of action, entrepreneurship, and learning throughout the world. We are proud of you because you embody the ambition to support the major social transitions!

Since its creation, SKEMA has continued to implement its strategy of disruption in management education. At the forefront in terms of structure and science, the school has extended the frontiers of learning by operating in innovative territories to provide you with the skills, knowledge, and expertise you need to not only adapt but act anywhere across in the world: Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and others to come.

The gradual creation of new schools to cross-fertilise knowledge and career paths enables our students and recent graduates to better understand the structural, strategic, and social issues that organisations are facing. SKEMA Law School for Business, SKEMA AI School for Business, SKEMA School of Geopolitics and SKEMA Design School for Business are currently being structured to give substance to these hybrid and multinational career paths.

SKEMA was created for students and around students. It was also created to be not only a springboard for our alumni but also a source of values and learning to help them take action. Your presence and strong support, and the links that have been built over time, clearly prove that it is together and side by side that we are building a society!

We have therefore decided to invest in major projects, including the development of new technologies and AI, the deployment of new autonomous campuses with high growth potential, a review of the content of our programmes to support the transitions, and the recruitment of world-class professors in our areas of expertise. We’re also working on new double degrees or partnerships with prestigious universities (NYU, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA in the United States, USTC and Xi'an Jiaotong in China, and others across the world), a new organisation for the learner experience, the launch of SKEMA Publika, the school’s think tank, and a new Corporate Office including Alumni Services and Fundraising. Thanks to your support, almost €2 million has been raised to fund scholarships for our students, entrepreneurship, and to promote inclusion and diversity.

Supporting the major challenges facing society is also an absolute necessity! SKEMA is a major asset, and therefore has an important role to play with the world's youth to go beyond wishful thinking and give our students and alumni real keys to action. Social changes can only be achieved on a global scale (ecological transition, for example) if all countries share the same observations and respect the actions that can only be taken collectively. Our credo is that young people must participate in social decisions. In 2024, how can we make decisions together if youth are never given a chance to be heard? SKEMA co-created Youth Talks, the backbone of our Transition policy, and collected over one million contributions from 45,000 young people (between 15 and 29 years of age) in 212 territories across the world. This study is the largest ever carried out among the world's youth. Armed with the information we gathered, we can take action to share the issues, visions and implementation difficulties and remove the obstacles blocking collective action. Your action to promote Transitions with schools will not only be active and have an impact but will also have a real structuring effect on the future. That's why we have defined a Transition policy that obviously embraces teaching, our scientific contribution, and your commitment to the school. The impact of SKEMA's students and alumni will reflect our strategy: global, real and measurable.

The year 2024 promises to be rich and dynamic, with you always on board to help us progress and offer the best to our students and the companies that place their trust in us.

Thank you for your support, thank you for your generosity.

I wish you again an excellent 2024!

Alice Guilhon
Directrice Générale
Dean & Executive President