Terra Academia's Regional launch conference

Minister of Education, Chairman of Higher Education Council, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Bahrain and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Bahrain Polytechnic. 

Director General of Schools Affairs before taking over as Minister of Education. He also served as Bahrain Teachers College (BTC) Chairman and chair of the Undersecretaries’ Committee, an offshoot of the Ministry of Education.

He also held the following positions:

• Undersecretary for Resources and Services.
• Assistant Undersecretary for Human Resources.
• Assistant Professor,University of Bahrain.
• Research and Teaching Assistant, University of Bahrain.
• Teacher, Ministery of Education.

A qualified professor of public law, holder of a doctorate in law, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a graduate of Sciences Po, Jean-Michel Blanquer has taught at five French universities. A specialist in Latin America—particularly Colombia, where he lived for three years—he served as Director of the Institute of Higher Studies on Latin America and of the Institute of the Americas in Paris. He was Rector of the Academy of French Guiana from 2004 to 2006, then Deputy Chief of Staff to Gilles de Robien, French Minister of National Education, Higher Education and Research, in 2006. He was appointed Rector of the Academy of Créteil in 2007, and in 2010 became Director General for School Education in France. From 2013 to 2017, he was Director General of the ESSEC Group (France). He served as French Minister of National Education and Youth from 2017 to 2022, and in 2020 also took on the role of Minister for Sports. Jean-Michel Blanquer is the author of nearly twenty books. His most recent work, La Citadelle, was published in August 2024. Today, he is Professor of Public Law at Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas University, President of Terra Academia, and President of the Laboratory of the Republic.

French economist and Professor at the Collège de France and INSEAD. His pioneering work on innovation, economic growth, competition, and the process of “creative destruction” has reshaped modern growth theory. In 2025, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to understanding innovation-driven economic growth. 
 

Sony Kapoor is an influential macroeconomist, finance expert, geopolitics adviser and development advocate with a 25-year track record of successfully tackling policy, geopolitical, investment and societal challenges. His portfolio career uniquely spans investment banking, policymaking, strategy consulting, academia, board roles and civil society across five continents.

Currently, he is Chairman, World Benchmarking Alliance in the Netherlands, CEO, Nordic Institute for Finance, Technology and Sustainability in Norway, Trustee, Friends of Europe in Belgium, Commissioner for the Lancet Commission, on Global Governance for Health and was, until recently, the interdisciplinary Professor of Climate, Finance, and Geoeconomics at the European University Institute in Italy. Mr Kapoor has been a senior/strategy adviser to six G-20s, the EU, the UN, IMF, World Bank, many European & Emerging Market governments, large institutional investors and MNCs.

His leadership in tackling the Euro crisis, promoting financial reform, driving action on climate change, & improving development policy led to recognition as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, & as a European Young Leader by Friends of Europe.

Mr Kapoor is known for his insightful keynotes, influential reports & incisive  agenda-setting advisory work for governments, international institutions, MNCs and institutional investors. He has been invited to write for publications including The Economist, Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and has frequently been an on Camera expert for the BBC, Bloomberg TV, France 24 and others.

As CEO of ADIT since January 2023, he is in charge of business intelligence and business ethics activities. In this role, he advises many executives and provides strategic and operational support to ADIT clients around the world. He leads the daily work of ADIT's consulting teams to meet the needs of businesses. 

As Senior Vice President, he created and developed a Business Unit in 2016 in charge of compliance and due diligence activities in order to protect and secure ADIT's clients against all business non-compliance risks. He was also sovereign solutions architect for managing these risks. In 2021, he was also tasked with a coordination mission to participate in the growth of the various businesses in the group. 

After spending seven years in the service of the State (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prefectural Corps, Ministry of the Interior, and General Inspectorate of Finance), he joined the RATP Group where he successively held the positions of Chief of Staff to the CEO and then Secretary General of the Group. Before joining ADIT, he was Vice President in charge of strategy and business development for the CMA-CGM shipping group. He graduated from IEP Paris, and is a former student of the ENA national administrative school, as well as successful completion of the INSEAD executive program.  

Professor of Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, France. Her research lies in theoretical and computational chemistry, with a focus on molecular dynamics simulations of complex liquids and interfaces. Alongside her scientific activity, she has a strong and long-standing commitment to higher-education teaching and training. She teaches at undergraduate and graduate levels in physical chemistry and molecular modeling, and has held major responsibilities in curriculum design and program coordination. She has served as Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and is currently Vice-President for Education at the University of Strasbourg, where she oversees academic pathways, pedagogical innovation, and student support policies.

Since April 2021, Philippe Bourdeaux has been in post as Executive SVP Africa, Near & Middle East delegated zone, which includes  more than 13,000 Veolia employees in some 16 countries. A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique (Class of 92) and the Ecole Nationale du Génie Rural des Eaux et Forêts, he joined Veolia in 1998. At Veolia Eau France, he held positions in the contractual and commercial department of the Ile-de-France region, before taking on operational responsibilities within the same department, responsibilities that were extended in 2009 to the management of the drinking water service and customer relations for the city of Paris right bank.

In 2011, in the South-East regional department of Veolia Eau, he held the position of deputy director with responsibility for operations, then in 2014, organized the merger of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Languedoc-Roussillon regions, before becoming the deputy head of zone with responsibility for development.

Before heading up Veolia's Africa, Near and Middle East delegated zone, Philippe Bourdeaux was, from January 2018, regional director of Veolia Eau Méditerranée, which has 200 municipal public service water and wastewater delegations, and industrial clients.

Jean-Christophe Durand has an extensive leadership experience across the financial sector in the Middle East and Africa. He held CEO positions in international and regional banks,  serving as Regional CEO of BNP Paribas Middle East and Africa, based in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and as CEO of the National Bank of Bahrain Group.

He served on several boards in the financial sector, including as a board member of BICICI (Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie de Côte d’Ivoire), Chairman of BNP Paribas Investment Company in Riyadh, Vice-Chairman of Bahrain Islamic Bank, and Chairman of BEYON Money, a digital bank subsidiary of the BEYON group . 

 Jean-Christophe has held board positions in other sectors, including Gulf Air, BEYON (a telecommunications operator in Bahrain). He is also actively involved in the non-profit sector, serving as Chairman of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Bahrain and served on the board of the Bahrain Institute for Banking and Finance.