Spotlight on Annick Renaud-Coulon founder and chairwoman of GlobalCCU
Annick Renaud-Coulon shares her journey with Global Council of Corporate Universities
A strategist, visionary, passionate and creative, Annick Renaud-Coulon is the spearhead of the Corporate University sector that she has helped to structure for more than 20 years. She persistently fuels a dynamic of change and transformation in this profession, which is faced with increasingly numerous and complex systemic and technological developments and must remain fixed on fundamental values and principles of action always capable of offering real spaces of humanity in the world of work.
Born and living in France, Annick founded GlobalCCU (the Global Council of Corporate Universities) in 2005, which remains under her leadership, the cradle for Corporate Universities and L&D practitioners worldwide. Author in 2000-2001 of the first in-depth and global study on Corporate Universities (800 pages in three volumes), she is the author of six other books including two on Corporate Universities. She also participated in two American collective works on the subject. Annick has visited and worked with many Corporate Universities around the world, in the United States, Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, France to name a few. Speaker at international events, she also advises Organisations in the construction of their internal University.
Annick has designed all the GlobalCCU services, the GlobalCCU Awards and Forum, CU Certification, CU brand Certification, GlobalCCU Membership Community, Masterclasses, and the basis of reference common to all. Always ahead of the trends, in 2024 she led a study group with Corporate University leaders and wrote a white paper on the ‘Impact of Artificial Generative Intelligence on Corporate Universities’. Her credo since the creation of GlobalCCU is the necessary involvement of Corporate Universities in Corporate Social Responsibility and the fight against climate change and the ecological transition, no company can develop in an ocean of misery.
Annick Renaud-Coulon’s intelligence, tenacity, resilience and contagious energy put at the service of Organisations to encourage them to create value and innovate, continue to motivate and inspire corporate education practitioners from many countries. She was awarded the National Order of Merit medal in the Senate by the French government for her exceptional work.
Annick, what are your current biggest challenges and your most important achievements over the past 20 years?
To help structure the Corporate University profession which was born in its greatest empirical form under favourable semantics, but which at the time were often training centres with a new marketing packaging, has been so important to me.
I led this structuring through the GlobalCCU awards and CU certification, demonstrating that there was another approach than that of training, a term from the 20th century, used as a miracle cure to solve problems that go beyond the modest transformative power of individuals taken in isolation.
My biggest challenge has been, and still is, to help people understand the strength of a Corporate University positioned close to the general management, built with solid and effective principles of action, which, if well managed, has the necessary influence to share the challenges facing People, Business, Society and Planet and to work concretely and collectively to face them.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annickrenaudcoulon
The 2025 GlobalCCU Awards are now open to Corporate Universities/L&D structures in the Middle East and across the world for submissions (deadline is 28 February 2025). Find out more details in the GlobalCCU website: https://www.globalccu.com/the-prestigious-2025-globalccu-awards-now-open-for-submissions/
You can follow GlobalCCU in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-council-of-corporate-universities