© ULB, Institute of European Studies
Objective:
Thinking outside the Bubble: Innovation in EU policy-making.
Mission:
Stephen Boucher teaches a course at the ULB’s Institute of European Studies on ways to inject greater innovation in EU policy making as part of the Institute’s Executive Master in European Studies, attended by EU professionals working in Brussels.
Institution:
Université Libre de Bruxelles – ULB (Academia)
Territory:
Brussels (Belgium)
After 10 years of public affairs and lobbying in Brussels, primarily focused on industry’s interests in safety and sustainability issues, Pauline took a career break that led her to the Southwest of Madagascar. There, she first did voluntary full-time fieldwork for an environmental NGO.
The experience was life-transforming. Pauline fully realized how collective intelligence should be the beating heart of any attempt to address the complexity of our world and to build adequate processes to develop new solutions and make decisions collectively.
She then moved to the capital Antananarivo where she provided independent counsel in governance and advocacy to public and private organizations seeking to build innovative and sustainable natural resources management models.
A passionate advocate of people and organisations’ ability to conduct change, she has been back in Europe since 2023, working with Dreamocracy as a consultant in governance, change management and creative advocacy for the common good, bringing together a now 15 years of experience in policy making, community organizing and collective thinking.
Grégoire joined Dreamocracy in September 2023. As a Master’s student in Political Science at the Catholic University of Louvain, he chose for his final thesis to focus on “democratic innovations and transformations”, as he is very interested in new ways of doing democracy. Alongside his interests in democracy, Grégoire is also interested in policies related to the environment and agriculture.
Marie Bertrand specializes in strategy, collaborative governance and management for the public sector. She uses collective intelligence to help public and non-profit organizations set and achieve ambitious visions and contribute to the greater good.
She’s convinced that the only way our civilization can survive the current threats is through a strong dialogue between all stakeholders, of all levels, in which mutual comprehension and creativity are encouraged and rewarded. Therefore, and together with Dreamocracy, Marie mobilizes creativity and collective intelligence techniques to support the public institutions to do so, inside their administration or together with the outside world (such as citizens and fellow organizations).
Before that, Marie accompanied the public sector in various ways, first as an attorney at the Brussels Bar, then as deputy secretary general of a Brussels public administration. Marie has Master’s degrees in Public Law, in Business Coaching & Organizational Development, and a certificate in Political Ethics. She’s certified coach and Change Practitioner (Prosci ®). She notably consulted for the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, regional agencies and institutions as well as various local administrations.
Ralf helps people to find solutions for their complex challenges. Ralf loves to design tailor-made engagement processes that activate people and stimulate collaboration. Rather than providing smart advice from the outside, he lives the facilitation way of working, bringing out the potential of people and groups.
Having worked in more than 30 countries around the globe, Ralf easily navigates through intercultural work contexts. The focus is always on meeting each other as people. In his workshops and trainings, he is happily combining creativity with thoroughness. Ralf is applying and pionieering social transformation techniques such as Theory U as proposed by Otto Scharmer of MIT.
With a dual nationality of Germany and Belgium, Ralf happily lives in Brussels.
Pierre loves helping organisations and their leaders to understand and develop the culture and fundamental attitudes that foster collective intelligence, long lasting engagement and positive impact. He acts both as executive coach and collective intelligence grower.
A former manager, Pierre is an advisor and practitioner in collective intelligence of organizations in strategy and in communication. He has more than 20 years of experience for large Belgian and multinational organizations. He was trained in group facilitation through the Art of Hosting program, as well as in community animation and multiple techniques (World Café, OST, etc.).
The programs that he co-designs and runs promote the development of organizations, the development of innovative strategies, products or services, and solutions to complex societal challenges. As the co-organizer for the past 15 years of a summer university for business leaders, he also contributed a chapter to The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance.
Throughout his career, Pierre has carried out missions for many large international groups and smaller organisations.
Pierre is also a certified and experienced coach, trained in ANC (Neurocognitive and Behavioral Approach) and IFS (Internal Family System). He has published two self development books, on which he talks through regular conferences and workshops. His areas of expertise cover confidence and self-esteem, audacity, authentic benevolence, psychological safety for the sustainable performance of teams… He is also a practitioner of compassionate meditation to promote the taming of emotions.
John was born and raised in the Brussels region, and grew up in the Northwestern part of the region. He holds a joint Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels, and a joint Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Global Studies from the LUISS University in Rome. To add a more practical string to his bow, he completed his academic track record with a degree in management at the ICHEC – Brussels Management School. He now serves as an expert for a Swiss-based global leadership advisory and executive search firm, and joined Dreamocracy as an external advisor for HR-related matters and in support to specific projects, such as managing the scouting process for the BENELUX countries for the Innovation in Politics Awards.
After an engineering degree at Polytech Sorbonne, Victor Lauret started to work on environmental issues in Madagascar. First contributing on empowering the young generation on climate change, he then worked with the think-tank INDRI, mobilizing stakeholders and using collective intelligence to foster sustainable development. He is now advisor at Dreamocracy, where he keeps developing his passion for collective intelligence as a key ingredient for better public policies and environmental actions.
Elise has a background in European affairs and International relations and has mainly focused until now on the relations between the EU and the African continent. She previously worked for the Brussels-based think tank Egmont Institute designing and implementing training for civil servants, diplomats and civilian crisis management experts as part of Belgium’s diplomatic and foreign affairs policies. She then spent three years in Kigali, Rwanda as part of an international team of investigators looking at the role of France in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, a topic that led her to think about the common management of historical memory. She loves to look at the human factor in the different fields she specializes in and has strong quality of team and project management.
Stephen Boucher is the founder of Dreamocracy and of the non-profit Smarter Together. He specialises in combining deep understanding of politics and policy making with deep mastery of collective creativity and collective intelligence. As such, he currently advises and sits on the board of a number of organisations, notably the Council on Economic Policies and the European Citizen Action Service. He is also senior expert for the Egmont Institute, advising and training civil servants in Belgium, Ukraine, Mali, Guinea Conakry, Palestine, the DRC and other countries.
Before that, Stephen had a diverse career in public affairs and lobbying of ideas. He held in particular the following positions: Managing Director of Fondation EURACTIV, CEO of consoGlobe.com (at the time France’s largest online media on sustainable lifestyles), director for European policy at the European Climate Foundation (ECF), co-director of the Jacques Delors Institute, advisor on EU matters of a Belgian federal minister, lobbying consultant in London and Brussels, and lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Cairo.
With this wealth of experience in policy-making, notably at EU level, Stephen is particularly concerned about the threat that the lack of trust in quality media poses to the foundations of democracy, and how our lack of genuine creativity in policymaking undermines democracy and fosters populist movements.
A Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Sciences Po Paris graduate, Stephen Boucher has published several books and articles related to politics. He initiated and coordinated The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance (2023, with some 70 contributors), published Le petit manuel de créativité politique – Comment libérer l’audace collective (2023), as well as books on think tanks and energy policy matters. He also teaches on issues related to policy innovation, civic techs and political influence at Sciences Po in Paris, at the Solvay Brussels School and at the Institute of European Studies (ULB), and at the European Institute (CIFE).
Caroline R. Cullière has over 10 years experience as an accomplished ‘launcher’, working in both the profit and non-profit sectors, leading operations, general strategy and implementation methodologies to improve team performance in complex environments. She is an expert in entrepreneurship, innovation, business growth, negotiation, and crisis management. She has launched different successful startups. She created the Amiens Cluster, an incubator and accelerator in the French Picard region. She was full time partnership developer for Paris & Co, Europe’s first incubation network with 14 innovation hubs. She was COO for Obilab Music, a company that aims to spread music practice using affordable instruments. Caroline is also an experienced campaigner and local policy catalyst, with particular expertise in French and Middle East politics. She launched Agora, a Citizen engagement tool. She is a Diplomat member of the Jewish Diplomatic Corps, World Jewish Congress, working with permanent delegations to UNESCO on the Anti-Semitic problem, interfaith dialogues, and Israël advocacy. She is also a German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network Alumni ‘19.
Graduated from ESSEC Business School and from Tel Aviv University with a MA in Public Policy, she owns a certificate in counter-terrorism from Leiden University and is a certified mediator.
She currently also acts as New Financing Models Coordinator at Zero Waste Europe
Cécile works as Stakeholder Manager, Change Facilitator and Leadership Coach to accompany private and public structures in their capabilities for optimisation, transition and change. Commissioned by companies, federations, NGOs or associations, she manages socio-economic projects aiming at contributing positively to society on matters such as sustainability, employment, education, immigration, mobility, smart cities, European integration and federalism.
Cécile holds a Bachelor and a Master’s Degree in Politics from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She’s also Personal Certified Coach (PCC) trained by the Leading and Coaching Academy in Brussels, certified by the International Coach Federation (ICF). Next to specific expertise, such as Transactional Analysis (TA), Neuro Language Processing (NLP), Non-Violent Communication (NVC), Process Communication Model (PCM), and Neuro-Cognitive and Behavioural Approach, she also recently obtained the accreditation at Insights DiscoveryÆ.
She is continuously looking for inspiration through conferences and training programs related to transition management, personal development, and collective intelligence.
Cécile Poujade is a Design Strategist with 20 years of experience in leading design projects for various organisations in Europe, Japan, Brazil and beyond. Cécile was Partner at Saguez & Partners, one of Europe’s best design agency, for 15 years, with clients such as Vinci Airports, Nature & Découvertes, Aéroport de Genève, Aéroports de Paris, Salomon, GRU Airport, Nespresso, Fnac, Orange, Pernod-Ricard, SNCF, Groupe Casino… Experienced in aligning decision makers, boards and teams around a strategic and creative vision for the project, she’s an expert in developing powerful concept, whatever the « object »: a service, an airport, a store, a brand. With a strong interest in education and citizenship, she co-founded Design Act! in 2016, with Olivier Saguez and Strate Design.Somewhere between a school and a lab, Design Act! is a non-profit 5-month training programme fostering social innovation and design projects. She founded Les Relieurs in 2020, a start-up based on her conviction that creativity combined with a committed strategy are a powerful way to move organisations and people. Having worked with many different stakeholders on projects involving private companies, citizens, urbanism and state services, Cécile loves to bring people together around a shared interest. She’s involved in the development of Agir pour le vivant, a non-profit French event taking place in Arles, Liège and Medelin, founded by Comuna and Actes Sud, that initiates debates, conferences and decision making around life on this planet.Today, she both advises or facilitates projects, with a strong focus on social innovation and climate change, for which she deploys the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) approach.Trained both in applied arts at l’École Estienne in Paris and semiotics at Celsa Sorbonne, Cécile’s mindset always combines strategy with creativity, prospective with functionality.
As a dedicated sustainability professional with over 10 years of experience in various public policy related to climate, energy, environment, and mobility matters, Samuel has developed proven strategies to cultivate positive, forward-looking, and sustainable change.
With multifaceted leadership experience across non-profit and public sectors and considerable exposure to the private sector, Samuel has the skills and knowledge to foster innovative and sound solutions to overcome complex environment and energy-related challenges.
In addition to strong communication skills, he has a proven ability to identify and address challenges head-on, as well as capture opportunities within uncharted territories to support and accelerate the transition towards a sustainable economy.
Over the course of his career,
he has particularly focused on:
Over the past 20 years, one thing clearly characterizes Jean’s career: audacious entrepreneurship in developing innovative concepts. He was among the pioneers of the Internet in Belgium in the mid-1990s. He worked on the development of successful digital companies such as DAD (today Digitas LBI), Best Of Internet (Digimedia), Brussels Silicon Forest (startup incubator) and Yezzz (local Ebay’s challenger). He then set up the ‘First Tuesday’ Network in Belgium in 1999, which rapidly became the first networking forum for startups on a worldwide level. With events organized for more than 5 years, it has had a decisive impact on the emergence of the ‘Internet Economy’ in Belgium. First Tuesday Brussels thus received the prestigious ‘Insead Innovator Prize 2000’. In 2006, when mobile phones were equipped with their very first cameras, with barely a few hundred pixels, Jean launched Cinepocket, one of the first international ‘Mobile Film Festivals’. It received several thousand pocket films from 50+ countries and has contributed to the emergence of dozens of young talents. Jean has held a number of other positions in parallel, notably as Chief Editor of a mobile magazine (Comm’In), launched with Orange Belgium. He was also New Media Manager at Paperview Group, the European leader of content-based marketing solutions for the print and digital press (‘produit plus’). In 2016, he joined the Barefoot startup studio for a mission to support several projects, including ‘Blügle’, a digital platform linking brands and influencers on social networks. Always open to ‘new ways of working’ (NWOW), he launched Spacious Agency in 2018, an ecosystem and workspace development consultancy (coworking, accelerator, incubator, etc.) with clients active in real estate, retail, clubs and associations. A true citizen and entrepreneur, he collaborates (is strongly engaged) on various societal projects such as ‘303030 City Climate Challenge’, ‘Mo-Urban Mobility Movement’, Vocatio and the ‘Plateforme For Education and Talent’.
