Press releases
Team Members
Management
Business Development
- Arthur Franse
- Bertrand Laborde
- Elias Faethe
- Geoffrey van IJzendoorn
- Joanna Tsakona
- Thijs van Vugt
- Tolga Dervish
- Vincent Verspaandonk
Client Services
Student value
Development
Bertrand Laborde - French quota of the business development team
Bertrand is the Sales Manager of StudyPortals for France and Spain. As StudyPortals was struggling to add a French touch to her team and hence pretend to reaching new highs, Bertrand arrived in Eindhoven as a gift from God (aka Zinedine Zidane) in August 2009.
Why someone from this incredible country would adventure himself beyond its borders? Bertrand was attending a double degree programme (from which he graduated in March 2011), a partnership between his engineering school Grenoble INP - Génie Industriel, and the Eindhoven University of Technology (Master of Operations Management & Logistics). StudyPortals jumped at the chance, and the first stone of this fruitful collaboration has been the launching of the French version of the MastersPortal at the end of September 2009. The second stone was reached in March 2011 when the exploited part-timer Bertrand has been upgraded to a full-time position of almost-respected Sales Manager for France and Spain. This is an opportunity for him to complete his fresh status of Industrial Engineer with a valuable commercial experience. The third and most recent (April 14th) stone has been the launching of the Spanish versions of the StudyPortals websites.
Key challenge:
Give students all the help they need to make the best choice for their future in matter of education, no matter if they want to stay in their own country or to expand their horizons, by making the database of StudyPortals as rich as possible.
Favourite StudyPortals element/experience:
The launching of the French version of the websites constitutes Bertrand´s best experience. It represents the first step of a long but worthy way to go to make StudyPortals as useful as possible for French speaking students, but also for their own universities in order for them to communicate efficiently at both an international and a national level. The way to go is a win-win situation: the more French speaking programmes in the database, the more StudyPortals will be used by students. The story repeated itself with the launching in April 2011 of the Spanish versions of the StudyPortals websites.
Favourite quote:
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn
Favourite activities:
Trying hard to understand Dutch humour is a very interesting activity, but unfortunately not very gratifying. Facing no improvements in almost a year, Bertrand decided to join the pony-water polo club of Eindhoven.
It consists in playing water polo but instead of swimming, you have to ride a pony. In spite of the fact that a pony cannot hold a snorkel nor swimming, this new activity is much easier than understanding a Dutch joke.
[Okay, maybe French humour is not better]