BYE BYE CATIA, HELLO SOLIDWORKS!

After 6 years discovering 3DS through its flagship brand CATIA, and rising through the ranks of the sales organization, I have now accepted the challenge of leading the worldwide Sales Organization for 3DEXPERIENCEWORKS.

I want to thank all the persons who helped me navigate our amazing company over these years, who made me learn so much from them and who got me to succeed in my different roles in CATIA.

"Execution Eats Strategy for Breakfast" (Peter Drucker)

I especially want to thank my 8 “lions” CATIA GEO leaders and their whole teams without who nothing could have happened since "our GEOs are our NEW CLIENTS" (Philippe Le Baron)

I want to thank "Leon the Lion", Dr Wen, Jerome, Bruce, Wilson, Shuguang, Zhijun, Ying,... and the whole CHINA Lions Team

I want to thank Vincent, Fabrice, Laurent, Eric, Sylvain, Gerald, Stephane, Philippe,... and the whole EWEST Lions Team,

I want to thank Peter(s), Simon, Jasmine, Alex, Elif, Casper, Jan, Eric, Colin, John,... and the whole ENORTH Lions team

I want to thank Peer-Philipp, Jasper, Evangelos, Joerg, Robert, Yannick, Christian, Arnaud, Ralf, Judith, Christine, Dominic,... and the whole ECAL Lions Team,

I want to thank Chiba san, Isomura San, Wasaka-san, Antoine san, Takahashi San, Toba-san, ... and the whole JAPAN Lions Team!

I want to thank Rajiv, Ravi, Mohammed, Ganesh, Varun, Deepak... and the whole INDIA Lions Team!

I want to thank Marco, Matteo, Michele, Francesca,...and the whole EMED Lions Team!

last but not least I want to thank my old US Team who started it all, Mark, Nicolas, Chuck, Rodolphe, Nicolas, Phil, Ian, Brady, Danny, Mark, Tony, Jim, Derik, Sanjay, Matthew, Alley, Sriram, Philippe, Neal, Stuart, Raj, David, Erik,... and the whole NAM Lions Team!

I also want to thank the LATAM, KOREA,APSOUTH and RUSSIA teams, but since we still need to invest in these geos for CATIA, I don't have a Lion cartoon for them yet (maybe some new "lion toons" coming soon with SOLIDWORKS though...)

Finally I want to thank my Global team at Global Sales level starting with Sasa and his team, Martin, Rose-Marie, David, Bernard, Yimeng, Frederic, Lionel, Fatmi, Claudia, Jean-Luc, Zaure, Prabhu and his team, Daniel and his team, Prasad and his team, Axelle and her team, Moy, Jason, Tarik and their teams,...

Last but not least I want to express my deep gratitude to my 2 CATIA CEOs Philippe and then Olivier who not only welcomed me into a very private club - the CATIA Lovers Club - but who also shared with me the history of Dassault Systemes with the success of CATIA, showed me how to bridge the gap between my sales mindset and my engineering mindset and got me to grasp faster how huge the value of our solutions can bring to our partners and customers IF we are willing to learn and IF we can disrupt the Famous King of the Status Quo:

"Walls turn sideways are Bridges" - Angela Davis

Now, as I had quite an emotional goodbye party last week -thank you to all my GEO Leaders, for that I was not expecting this- , I want to reiterate that I am not totally leaving CATIA since I am staying with Dassault Systemes and since CATIA is at the core of our DNA, but I am excited to discover soon our future 2B brand ( sorry CATIA lovers but I have to break it to you now … these guys are GROWING like CRAZY!!!)?and I am excited to learn - again- from new colleagues, to have fun - again- with new Lions disrupting - again- the King of the Status Quo (he is everywhere ain't he...?) , and to make happen what many of you - including Ken and Bertrand - have heard me say many times to our users and partners - : it’s not about CATIA or SOLIDWORKS alone, it’s about CATIA AND SOLIDWORKS TOGETHER...!

And the 3DXPlatform is how to make it happen...

Now, after only a couple of weeks with my new team they showed me quickly the extent of my new challenges and I am already very aware that we have lots of work ahead of us and still in COVID times to boot!

Let's tackle the obstacles together and most importantly, let us have FUN doing it!

I am looking forward to meeting Y'ALL at 3DEXPERIENCEWORLD next week!

Don't forget to register!