DIAFORA LEADERSHIP - About us, The Team

THE TEAM
DIAFORA's team consists of recognized professionals from diverse backgrounds, each having in depth experience of training and development in business and a proven track record dedicated to gender diversity.

Véronique Préaux-Cobti

Véronique Préaux-Cobti is Managing Partner of DIAFORA. She is a change management specialist and works with companies to understand and unlock the remaining barriers blocking women’s progression into senior management (talent) and to better read and respond to women as consumers and end-users (market). Her long professional experience and understanding of corporate strategy, change management and business allow her to address the diversity issue as a crucial business imperative.

Before creating DIAFORA, she was General Manager of the BIPE, a consulting firm specialised in economic forecasting for decision-makers. Previously, she spent 10 years at Stratorg, a strategic consulting firm, where she was responsible for the change management practice. She started her career with IBM in a sales function.

Véronique is a Certified Coach from the Coaches’ Training Institute. She is also the President of GEF (Grandes Ecoles au Féminin), a group representing women in France's grandes ecoles which bring together the graduates' associations of the Centrale paris, ENA, ENPC, ESCP-EAP, HEC, ESSEC, Insead, les Mines et Polytechnique.

JoAnne Freeman

JoAnne Freeman has been closely associated with DIAFORA since its creation and delivers several leadership seminars which she designed to help professional women win at the game of business.

A trainer with a strong track record, she specializes in techniques to improve personal impact and influence. Her personal trade name SWIM upstream is recognized for innovative approaches to professional development with a focus on practical skills for immediate application on the job. Elements of Dramatherapy and Transactional Analysis are integrated into her training for deeper learning. The unique techniques she has designed are remarkable in their usefulness and simplicity. Many participants have testified that they have earned respect and promotion at work by applying skills learned on these courses.

JoAnne is a graduate in Sociology and International Cooperation from the universities of Ottawa and Carleton in Ottawa, Canada. She managed executive education for a global IT company before launching SWIM Upstream in 1999 in Geneva.

She serves on the Executive Committees of a number of Professional Women’s Associations. JoAnne has dual bases in Geneva and the Cotswold’s UK.

Janne Møller Lambert

Janne Lambert is responsible for office management and marketing. Specifically, she is in charge of the organisation and piloting of DIAFORA's training programmes such as ‘Leadership’ and ‘Young Leaders’; courses designed to empower women to attain executive posts by developing their influence, visibility and impact.

Janne has a commercial background and has worked for several industrial companies.

She has been living and working in France since completing her education at a Danish Business. She is trilingual, speaking Danish, English and French fluently.

DIAFORA Partners Network

Jean-Marie Alméras

Jean-Marie Alméras brings to the team his experience in Training and Coaching of Executives (individually and in teams). As a Partner with P.A.C.T, a company which has accompanied managers for more than 20 years, his activities as a business and executive trainer and coach, led him to accompany hundreds of women either as from their becoming manager or, on occasion, as their career counsellor.

Prior to joining P.A.C.T, he was for six years the Managing Director of a cosmetics company having over 2500 employees, most of whom were women. Before that, he held various management posts within different business sectors (finance, quality assurance, industry, administration):

He holds an advanced accounting degree (having qualified as an ‘Expert Comptable’), he qualified as a Coach and Team Builder with ‘l’École Transformance’ (Paris) and trained with ‘l’École ATORG’( Paris) in Organisational behaviour.

He is the founding President of the Association ‘DG Focus’, which brings together managers and executives, both men and women, with the stated aim to put the individual at the heart of business.

Anne Damoiseaux

Anne Damoiseaux works as a consultant, a trainer and a coach in Diversity Management and Interpersonal Communication for large international groups since 2002. She aims at creating processes among diversity teams, defining and implementing strategies in order to gain efficiency and performance in sensitive environments when “facing the difference”.

Her main areas of expertise are interpersonal relationships, transversal remote and virtual management, change management. She helps her clients to unblock barriers to performance while developing the capacity to work with multiplicity, in order to establish a progressive context for Diversity leadership.

Anne gained her professional experience in many countries in Europe, USA, Latin America and Asia, managing during 19 years sales and marketing teams all over these areas.

Anne is accredited on MBTI, DISC and graduated from the Mental Research Institute (Gregory Bateson) of Palo Alto – European branch. She is a Certified Coach from the Coaches’ Training Institute UK. She graduated an MBA from Rheims Management School and a degree in Chinese from the Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris and Taipei.

Based in Brussels, Anne is playing as well an active role in women’s development with a very large women’s cooperative in India.

Elena Herdieckerhoff

Elena Herdieckerhoff collaborates with DIAFORA on gender and diversity projects for French and international companies. She brings to DIAFORA team her expertise on gender issue and her multicultural approach. She holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics in Gender Studies, and has developed an expertise on corporate diversity politics and best practices/ development of women's networks and has published several articles on gender theory.

She has a background in Executive Search & Selection and has worked as head of recruitment for a strategic consultancy in Paris. She has set up her own business as career consultant, and is currently advising clients in France, United Kingdom & Germany for career development and professional (re)orientation.

Elena is also an active member of many cultural and professional networks such as Accord-Philo, European Professional Woman's Network, Global Business Woman, University College London Alumni and the London School of Economics Alumni.

Elena has a Bachelors Degree in Modern European Studies (University College London), a Maitrise in Lettres Modernes (Sorbonne).

Born in Munich, she has lived both in London and Paris. She is trilingual German, English, and French.