Contacts

Gaëtan Bruel

Gaëtan Bruel has served as Villa Albertine’s first Director since the institution’s launch in fall 2021.

A graduate of École Normale Supérieure specializing in history, he has been Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy and Permanent Representative of French Universities in the United States since September 2019. In January 2020, the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs conferred upon him the mission of creating and opening Villa Albertine, the fourth French Villa abroad in the United States following Villa Médicis in Italy, Casa Velazquez in Spain, and Villa Kujoyama in Japan. Today, he leads the program across 10 major U.S. cities, which includes 80 artist residences, nationwide programming and grants, and the production of a magazine.

Having begun his career as a teaching fellow at Columbia University, he subsequently worked in three different French government ministries—Defense, Culture, and Foreign Affairs—first as a speechwriter, then specializing in cultural affairs. He created the cinema program at the Ministry of the Armed Forces and worked as an administrator on the Arc de Triomphe and the Panthéon during his time at the Centre des monuments nationaux. Before taking on his current role in New York, he was an advisor to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, in charge of the Americas and cultural diplomacy.

Judith Roze

Judith Roze joined the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in September 2021 as Deputy Cultural Counselor and Deputy Director of Villa Albertine.

A graduate of the École normale supérieure, Judith holds an MA in Classics from the Sorbonne. After studying and working in the UK for 3 years, she worked in Paris as a journalist and literary translator, publishing various works of fiction by American, Canadian, and British writers in French translation.

In 2010, she joined the Institut français, the French cultural relations agency, as Deputy Director and then Director of its French Language, Books and Ideas Department. In this position, she worked closely with the French cultural network around the world to foster intercultural exchange through intellectual debate, French-teaching activities, translation programs, and worldwide events like the Night of Ideas.

She now assists the Director in the management of Villa Albertine.

Laure Poupard

Aurore Rinchen

Tristan Cazes

Laëtitia Bassereau

Nicole Laguerre

Séverine Debets

Bertrand Chaminaud

Erin Glaser

Glenn Collie

Hadrien Jeanne

Blaise Tega

Cyprien Meslay

Anne Bourgois

Claire Abell

Cannon Williams

Kimberly Corliss

Kimberly Corliss, a native New Yorker, studied French language and literature at Barnard College of Columbia University and has since had the privilege of wearing many hats at the Cultural Services over the years, from Albertine bookseller to Director of Communications, her current role. In that position, Kim strives to introduce Villa Albertine to new audiences and help build a community of arts and ideas between the US and France while highlighting the multiculturalism of France today. As reported by The Art Newspaper, “we’re not here to wave the French flag” (Gaëtan Bruel).

Outside her interest in French and Francophone cultures, Kim writes; sings with a classical a capella group (the New Amsterdam Singers); and is on a perpetual search for her next afternoon goûter.

Mia Fierberg

Mia Fierberg’s professional background is in media and strategic communications across a number of sectors, including work with the US Department of State, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the boutique Manhattan public relations firm Rosen Group. A lifelong Francophile, all roads lead Mia to her current role as Press Officer, where she helps share Villa Albertine’s story with audiences around the world.

Mia has made her home in several Villa Albertine cities. Born and raised in San Francisco, she is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she earned degrees with honors in Global Studies and French Literature. Now a proud New Yorker, after hours you’re likely to spot her biking through Prospect Park or hunting down the perfect egg and cheese bagel.

Taylor Steinbruegge

Taylor Steinbruegge is thrilled to be a part of the Cultural Services team as a Communications Officer overseeing the Villa Albertine, France Culture, and Albertine Books websites and newsletters. Taylor has various professional experiences throughout the US and France, most recently working as a Trade Advisor with Business France in Houston, Texas. A graduate of Valparaiso University and the Professional French Masters Program of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Taylor is also an alumni of the TAPIF program teaching English in two primary schools in Tours, France.

A fan of all things French and film, most weekends she’s catching an afternoon screening or finding a film festival to see the latest and greatest on the silver screen.

Dalia Rubinstein

Xavier Moquet

Fabrice Jaumont

Victoria Creux-Laroche

Yoël Kidane

Celina Jaffe

Yann Gaboriau

Olivier Boasson

Gwennaël Petillat

Claire Marteau

Anne Deblaciat

Jean-Christophe Dissart

Vincent Lepinay

David Do Paço

Elisa Alvarez

Charlotte Barrett

Emmie-Morgane Besombes

Jean-Christophe Dissart

Natalie Cox

Natalie Cox is Deputy Director of Campus France USA, based at the Embassy of France in Washington D.C.

Campus France USA is the US office of Campus France, a French public agency of the Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs that supports international students in France. She oversees a team devoted to providing orientation, advising, and pre-consular services to all students from the U.S. seeking to study abroad or pursue a degree in France.

Natalie has 10 years of experience managing large-scale educational and international mobility programs and has worked with organizations at the intersection of education, environment, and citizen diplomacy across France and the United States. Previously, Natalie managed the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF) and the French Teaching Intern Program. Drawing on a background in language education and philanthropy, Natalie has collaborated with the Embassy’s Attachés to design new graduate-level scholarship programs in collaboration with French and U.S. universities and contributed to the design and launch of the French Dual Language Fund. Natalie is an active member of NAFSA and the Forum on Education Abroad, has chaired the Forum on Education Abroad’s Working Group for Advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and is a volunteer evaluator for U.S. State Department-funded language education scholarship programs.

She holds a Master of Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a B.A. with honors in Linguistics and French from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also studied climate science and became a passionate advocate for the environment. Natalie spent her junior year at the Université de Toulouse and Sciences Po Toulouse and returned to France as a Teaching Assistant in Lyon. After hours in DC, you can find her kayaking on the Potomac, hitting the yoga mat, or hiking in the urban wilds of Rock Creek Park.

Aude Oubelkhir

Raphaëlle Esneault

Saajan Patel

Caroline Lowe

Malika El Garh

Xin Yan

Hamza DJIMLI

Louise Quantin

After studying history and literature, Louise Quantin worked for more than ten years in the publishing sector in France, in houses such as Belfond, Grasset, Julliard and Robert Laffont. Specialized in the transfer of foreign and audiovisual rights, she has contributed to the international success of many authors, including Gaël Faye, Olivier Guez, Virginie Despentes and Michel Bussi, and has helped launch many film, television series, and documentary adaptations of literary works.

Since November 2020, Louise Quantin has headed the Book and Debate of Ideas department of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. She oversees the promotion of French and Francophone authors and thinkers through the organization of residencies, tours, and events such as La Nuit des Idées and the Albertine Festival. She also manages translation assistance programs, and fosters collaboration between French and American professionals.

Louise Dodet

Valentine Richet

Vincent Florant

Nathalie Charles

Nathalie Charles serves as Program Officer for the Embassy of France’s Film, TV and New Media Department in the United States, as well as for Villa Albertine. She organizes Films on the Green, a free outdoor French film festival produced each year to bring classic and contemporary French movies to New York City parks. She is the founder of CinéSchool, a new program geared towards introducing French cinema and animation to children in the United States. In her previous role, she was lead coordinator for Mediamerica, a French and American professional network and online platform focusing on film and TV industry, VOD and new media. An avid reader and film buff, Nathalie is also engaged in several educational and non-profit organizations. She graduated from University of Montpellier in Arts Management and Programming.

Sandrine Neveux

Sandrine Neveux has worked in the film industry for 20 years in Paris, London and San Francisco, before joining Villa Albertine in NYC. She was involved with key European sales agents and distributors, including the British Film Institute (BFI), working on independent and classic films and creating an arthouse video-on-demand streaming service in the UK, Curzon Home Cinema. In 2017, she founded her own company in San Francisco, Novel Ciné, and organized screening events bringing a rising generation of French directors to the Bay Area, and collaborating with Unifrance and sffilm to introduce them to a younger audience. She is now coordinating the new French cinema program on campus, Albertine Cinémathèque, in collaboration with FACE Foundation, overseeing the festival grants and curating its virtual Film Club including Q&As with French filmmakers. She is working with universities/colleges on the Young French Cinema program, in collaboration with Unifrance, and alongside programmers in US movie theaters on presenting French directors and putting together film series and retrospectives highlighting the best of French cinema. She is coordinating the French filmmakers’ residencies all over the US.

Camille Jeanjean

François Bridey

François Bridey is an art historian, archaeologist, and museum curator. After graduating from the Ecole du Louvre, the ESCP Business School and the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, he entered the Institut national du patrimoine in Paris, from which he graduated in 2012. He began his career in museums as Deputy Director of the Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology of Evreux in Normandy, and in 2015, joined the department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Louvre as curator in charge of the collections of Ancient Iran where he devoted himself to the study of the rich archeological collections and their promotion to a wide audience. His research was focused on ceramic traditions of the Iranian world of the 5th and 4th millennia BC as well as the history of collections and French archaeology in Iran. He also worked on the renewal of cultural cooperation with Iran, curating a major  Louvre exhibition in 2018 at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran. During this time, he also taught Ancient Near East Archaeology at the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut catholique de Paris and participated in several archaeological missions in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkmenistan.

In November 2020, François Bridey joined the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York as head of the newly created Museums and Cultural Heritage Department. He oversees the promotion of French museums and cultural institutions, accompanies them in their American projects and developments, and fosters collaboration between French and American professionals, in particular through the Heritage residency program of the Villa Albertine.

Diane Josse

Diane Josse is the Cultural Attaché, Head of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, now known as Villa Albertine. Diane studied contemporary art and photography in France and Germany and was also involved for several years in a theatre company that performed at the Avignon festival in 1987.

She furthered her professional expertise through her long-term involvement in arts and culture in the context of soft power politics.

She’s been working extensively abroad for almost 25 years in the field of cultural bilateral cooperation, initiating and maintaining long-term partnerships with key organizations to anchor and develop artistic, cultural and university projects in Germany,Thailand, Japan, Korea, India, and the US.

Through her vast experience, she possesses a broad understanding of contemporary cultural matters, ranging from performing arts to visual arts, with a particular, but not exclusive, expertise on Asian cultural production.

Olivier Le Falher

Olivier Le Falher began his professional career with a PhD on the work of visual artists in residence (2010) followed by a post-doctorate degree in documentary photography and landscape. Additionally, he was involved in various missions in the visual arts field, especially coordinating the Marseille Expos network and the festival “Printemps de l’art Contemporain” from 2014 to 2019. In 2021, he was in charge of “Traversées,” a fund for visual artists organized by CIPAC and financed by the Ministry of Culture.

Louise Dodet

Louise Dodet is the Coordinator in the Arts Department & Book Department at Villa Albertine headquarters in New York. She has worked at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York since 2019, and actively supports the logistical and administrative coordination of the Villa’s residencies.

In France and then in New York, where she has lived for 10 years, Louise worked in the fields of both dance and theater, supporting companies with production and touring.

She has her degree in Arts from the University of Nice, where she specialized in dance.

Nicole Birmann Bloom

Nicole Birmann Bloom joined the Cultural Services of the French Embassy—now Villa Albertine—in 1995 and serves as Program Officer, Performing Arts.

Located in New York City, Nicole manages the development and the promotion of French cultural projects in Dance, Theater, Contemporary Circus, Puppetry and Street Theatre in the United States. She also organizes curatorial travel and professional consultations to foster the rich artistic dialogue between the United States and France. She has coordinated several key festivals in dance and in theater including France Moves (2001) and Act French (2005) and participated in the conception of several publications such as the recent Catalogue of Dance Films.

Since their inception, Nicole has managed the administration of two of the grant programs of FACE Foundation supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in education and the arts. FUSED: French US Exchange in Dance and FACE Contemporary Theater, which foster dialogue and artistic collaboration, and strengthen sustainable networks of professional partnerships.

For Villa Albertine, Nicole contributes insight and experience to development of artistic residencies in Performing Arts.

Nicole trained in dance, worked as a dance instructor, and participated in several arts events in France and the United States. She then worked for more than a decade in the public and private sectors, specifically for international relations, for a decade  prior to joining the Cultural Services.

Nicole is a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters (2010), and the recipient of the “Shining Star” Award from PS 122 — now Performance Space New York (2016).

She lives in New York.

Dylan Hadida

Dylan Hadida has been in the music industry for several years. A French-American from Texas, he studied jazz guitar at the University of North Texas for four years. He then worked as a musical adaptor for the Broadway MAD production company based in Paris. He adapted the show Madiba the musical, a musical about the life of Nelson Mandela, from French to English for an Australian and New Zealand tour in 2018-2019. He also worked on Anne Frank, a musical for off-Broadway dates in New York in September 2019 and upcoming in March 2022. He recently finished his Master’s degree in International Affairs at Sciences Po Toulouse.

He is currently in charge of music at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, where he accompanies the music residents of the Villa Albertine in their projects. He also supervises the Jazz & New Music program in collaboration with FACE Foundation, which, in recent years, has supported more than 40 Franco-American touring and creative projects.

David Ruffel

David Ruffel has been working in the fields of culture, books, and education for 20 years. He has taught at both secondary schools and universities, and co-edits a literature collection (the Chaoïd Collection) published by Verdier in France. Before becoming Book Attaché in Cairo for the French Embassy in Egypt, he created a contemporary art festival in Casablanca.

Notably, in the early 2000s, he co-directed a digital magazine devoted to thought and creation (Chaoïd Magazine); in 2020, the Chaoïd Collection won the Prix Inter in 2020 for Anne Pauly’s novel, Avant que j’oublie. He has led numerous programs between France and the Arab world, including exhibitions devoted to Lebanese comics, Arabic typography, and contemporary Egyptian graphic design, and has contributed to the translation into Arabic of authors like Bruno Latour, Maylis de Kerangal, and Alain Mabanckou. David Ruffel is currently Director of Villa Albertine in Atlanta and the Cultural Attaché in Atlanta. He is responsible for cultural, educational, and academic cooperation in the states of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. He is an associate professor of literature and a graduate of the University of Montpellier III.

Lillianne Daniels

Frederique Horn

Marceau Crespo de Nogueira

Axelle Moleur

A graduate of Sciences-Po Paris with a master’s degree in Hispanic-American literature, Axelle Moleur joined the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2005 as an assistant in the Temporary Exhibitions Production Department. From 2009 to 2012, she joined Agence France-muséums in Paris to work on the Franco-Emirati project of the Louvre Abu Dhabi as Administrative and Budget Manager.

From 2012 to 2017, she held the position of Financial and Legal Director at the Cinémathèque française, then from 2017 to 2021, she contributed to the definition and implementation of the institution’s strategy as Deputy Director General of the Centre national de la danse in Paris.

She joined the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Chicago as Cultural Attaché on September 1, 2021, and now serves as Director of Villa Albertine Chicago.

Nicolas Douay

Nicolas Douay is a Professor of Urban Planning. After completing his doctoral studies under the joint supervision of both the Université de Montréal and Aix-Marseille Université, Douay conducted his post-doctoral studies at the Centre of French Studies on Contemporary China in Hong Kong from 2008 and 2009, and then from 2015 to 2017 as part of a CNRS delegation. He has taught at the Université de Montréal the Université de Paris, the INET-CNFPT and the Université Grenoble Alpes, where he was responsible for the Erasmus Mundus English-speaking master’s degree International Cooperation in Urban Planning. Douay was also a member of the executive board of the CNRS laboratory of Social Sciences PACTE and was responsible for the management of the 60 persons as a part of the Cities & Territories team.

He obtained an accreditation to supervise research in 2016 (published by ISTE in 2018 Urban Planning in the Digital Age) at the Paris-Sorbonne University. His research relies heavily on comparative approaches and focuses on urban policies, territorial planning processes, and the use of digital technology in development.

He joined the Chicago branch of the cultural and university services of the French Embassy in the United States in 2020 as an attaché for educational and university cooperation, and is therefore involved in Villa Albertine in Chicago, where he participates in the organization of residencies in the Midwest. On the national level, he is also involved in architecture and the humanities, in particular with the City/Cité program.

Laurence Geannopulos

Bettina Gardelles

Bettina Gardelles has been working for more than 10 years in the fields of culture and innovation in various  French and foreign institutions: at the Terra Foundation for the American Arts, at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie, as well as at a publishing house in Vietnam.

She creates projects by creating transversal synergies: she has notably launched the Heritage Incubator for the Centre of National Monuments, a plan which incorporates start-ups into the world of historical monuments, the aim being to bring concrete and innovative solutions for showcasing cultural heritage, to the both the staff and visitors of the monuments. She was also responsible for the organization of a collaborative and creative event, which brought together more than one hundred participants and a dozen partners for three days at the Tau Palace in Reims, for the purpose of better involving visitors in the creation of innovative mediation tools for the monument’s visitor route.

She also regularly  gives lectures at French schools and universities (CELSA, Sorbonne, Universities of Bordeaux and Avignon, ESSEC, etc.) on innovation, entrepreneurship and heritage.

Bettina has both a double qualification in art history and museology from the Ecole du Louvre, as well as a degree in digital humanities from the Sorbonne.

Based in Houston, Bettina  now works as a cooperation and cultural action attaché and deputy director of Villa Albertine in Texas. Bettina and her team look forward to welcoming and working with residents in the vast and unique environment of Texas.

Amandine Castillo

Amandine Castillo has been a coordinator in the cultural department of the Embassy of France in Houston since 2017. She assists the Director of Villa Albertine in Houston in her various tasks of promoting, monitoring, and supporting Franco-American cultural, educational, and academic cooperation projects in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

She is in charge of the administrative follow-up of the various projects, communication, and has been coordinating the French Cultures Festival from 2017 to 2021. She was also involved in the organization of the Night of Ideas event in Houston in 2019 (ecology) and in 2021 (migration and space).

She has known Texas for more than 15 years, particularly Houston, where she moved in 2016, and the Rio Grande Valley, where she studied and carried out various studies on the local economy and life with the McAllen Chamber of Commerce. She earned a Master’s degree in Intercultural Management and Negotiation from the University of Bordeaux, and has worked on the coordination of international programs within French higher education institutions for 7 years.

She contributed to the establishment of Villa Albertine in Texas, and, alongside the Director of Villa Albertine in Houston, will welcome and support its new residents.

Aliénor Maxence

Aude Hesbert

Didier Dutour

After a stint at TF1 and at Le Monde, Didier Dutour, graduated from EM Lyon, the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and master’s degree in communication from ESCP, went to Romania for the first time as book officer at the French Embassy in Bucharest. He would return 15 years later as cultural attaché and deputy director of the Bucharest Institut français, the country’s main European cultural institution.

In the meantime, he has also developed a passion for Hungary, first as an attaché for audiovisual, book and debate of ideas, then as a cultural entrepreneur. Within his agency in Budapest, he launched with RFI and the BBC the first trilingual FM, the National Film Festival – the second most popular event in the country, became a correspondent for France Culture and worked for the international cultural cooperation of the Budapest City Hall .

During his stay London, where he was audiovisual attaché, he presented the Art of ARTE at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, convinced Martel cognacs to support French cinema in the United Kingdom and invented a cocktail with them. that Mick Jagger and Audrey Tautou found delicious.

Before coming to Los Angeles as cultural attaché and deputy director of the Villa Albertine Los Angeles, Didier Dutour, posted at the Institut français headquarter in Paris, worked in particular to develop the audiovisual adaptation of French books in the United States, in China and in India, to increase the number of translations of French books abroad, to set up a project around children’s literature in Africa with the French Development Agency and to promote comics from the Arab world as a medium for civil society.

Benoît Labat

Benoît Labat is in charge of promoting the  French language and developing cooperation between French and American universities from Los Angeles.  He previously worked for several years in Paris in the central administration. He first worked at the Ministry of Education, where he participated in the management of the network of private schools and then at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. He was there first interested in European policies before working on bilateral internationalization strategies and programs, as deputy head of the cooperation programs department. Prior to joining Los Angeles in 2021, Benoît Labat served as a Higher Education attaché at the French Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Christin Neary

Lise de Sablet

Anthoni Dominguez

Anthoni Dominguez worked for nearly eight years as an independent art critic for specialized magazines – Mouvement, L’Art Même, Fluxnews, Nouvelles de Danse, etc. – and art galleries, but also as an artist’s assistant, teacher, or even as an exhibit curator. After joining the Corps of Inspectors and Advisors of Creation, Artistic Education and Cultural Action in 2016, he worked as an  advisor for plastic arts, museums and higher education at the DAC Martinique until 2020, before becoming the Attaché of Cooperation and Cultural Action in Miami in 2021. Having first nurtured a keen interest in transdisciplinary forms of creation, at the crossroads of visual and performing arts, his appetite for the challenges of conservation and transmission has led him to also take interest in the savoir-faire, intangible cultural heritage, and cultural rights. In Miami, he coordinates the actions of the cooperation and cultural services, notably in connection with Villa Albertine, particularly around societal and environmental issues related to global warming and migration. Anthoni Dominguez is a former Master’s degree student in Conservation, Management and Distribution of 20-21st Century Works of Art at Paul Valéry University.

Kimberley Gaultier

Kimberley Gaultier has worked as a communications and cultural projects manager for the Director of Villa Albertine in Miami since 2003.

Over the years, Kimberley has led projects like the conference on Jean Rouch at the University of Miami in 2005, the “Tour de France/Florida” contemporary art exhibition at the Frost Art Museum in 2011, the Films the on the Beach festival from 2014 to 2019, the “Abecadarium” by French designer Alexandra Midal at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2016, and the Tout-Monde Festival from 2018 to 2020.

Practically a native of Miami, her personal relationship to the city began when her parents retired there in 1984. Passionate about architecture and urban history, she is fascinated by the city’s history and has been documenting its radical transformation for more than 20 years.

Born and raised in France from American parents, Kimberley Gaultier studied photography at San Francisco State University and the Ecole Nationale de Photo in Arles, France, then obtained a master’s in film at the Université Paris 8 in 1996. She then worked in film production in Paris, notably as a script reader, before joining the French Consulate in 2003.

Cécile Lacheteau

Jacques Baran

On September 1, 2021, Jacques Baran joined the French Consulate General in New Orleans as Cultural Attaché, after having spent 12 years working for the International Relations Department of the City of  Toulouse in Southern France, fostering international cooperation with local governments. As project officer, he worked with cities around the world, such as Montréal, Atlanta, Kiev, Düsseldorf and Tel Aviv, developing various projects in different fields. In particular, he worked to set up an exchange of graffiti artists between the cities of Toulouse and Atlanta as part of the Elevate Festival.

A native of Paris, Jacques completed an MA in American Civilization at the University of Paris Diderot before working as a French language teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He then started working as Educational Manager for Hachette, the largest publishing company in France, promoting French language textbooks in Europe and Africa.

Prior to coming to the US, Jacques was President of the Alliance Française in Toulouse, an organization that aims to promote the French language and francophone cultures around the world. He also co-founded and directed the film festival “Des Images Aux Mots” in Toulouse for 10 years.

Today, as Cultural Attaché and Director of Villa Albertine in New Orleans, he supervises the residencies of French artists in Louisiana and strengthens collaboration with American cultural and educational partners.

Gabi Grenier

Sabine de Maussion

Sabine de Maussion is the new Cultural Attaché for Villa San Francisco. She studied at the Sorbonne and Inalco as part of a master’s degree in comparative literature and then at Paris Dauphine University for a second master’s degree in the management of cultural institutions. De Maussion later joined the Ph.D. Curatorial / Knowledge program at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She spent several years in artistic programming and international relations at La Grande Halle de la Villette, at the Center Georges Pompidou, or at le CentQuatre, a cultural space in Paris. De Maussion worked in cultural diplomacy within the Institut Français in Cairo and Damascus. She then moved to Beirut, where she stayed for several years. Sabine de Maussion taught Visual Cultures at the American University, at Saint Joseph University with a master’s degree in “Curatorial and Art Criticism,” and at the Beaux-Arts.

It was also in Beirut that she let her entrepreneurial spirit emerge and participated in the creation of Urbacraft. She continued as a start-up co-founder in EdTech with Makerbrane, a 3D design education platform for school audiences. After years filled with many different experiences, she arrived in San Francisco to return to cultural diplomacy. In her new role, she merges a solid academic background, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a strong attraction for education and the transmission of knowledge.

David Do Paço

Nicole Lavay

Denis Quenelle

For 15 years, Denis Quénelle has worked as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs at the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. He has successively held the positions of Editor at the United Nations Directorate, Environment Attaché in Beijing, Deputy Cultural Attaché in Chicago and Head of Office in the Human Resources Department. In Chicago, he contributed to the creation of the Methode Room residency program in the city’s Southside, to the launch of the outdoor festival Films on the Lake, and to the development of Midwestern-wide programs such as the Marianne Series (conferences by French figures broadcast through the network of universities and Alliances françaises) and the French Art Discovery Midwest Network (an educational tool on major museum collections in the Midwest). Since September 2020, as cultural attaché in Washington DC, he has worked on cultural promotion, particularly in the fields of cinema, literature, debate, and visual and performing arts. In conjunction with the heritage attaché in New York, he will assist the residents of Villa Albertine in the development of their projects and will develop professional programs in the museum field.

Manon Simonin