Magali Theveniault Prevet is Principal Travel & Hospitality at Capgemini Consulting. She participated in the Women Talent Pool 2nd Edition as one the Emerging Leaders. 

Could you please share with the Talents of the third Edition what were the main takeaways from this experience?

This experience really benefits me on both a personal and professional side. It helps me feel empowered as a woman in my job and gain self-confidence in my professional skills. In my current role, I feel more empowered to propose and take advantages of many opportunities. For instance, I have been launching Women@CC, the French Capgemini Consulting Women program. Our main objective is to help Capgemini Consulting female consultants to develop earlier their professional network and their involvement in consulting business development.

What did you like the most about the WTP? What sessions would you like to see more? What could be done differently?

I really appreciated both parts of the program.

On the one side, skill development training sessions and the mentoring program we had during the 18-month plan were concrete and helpful to improve my own soft skills. We had lively sessions with inspiring speakers (among those Marta Williams, Founding Partner & CEO at Williams and Associates, Avinash Chandarana, Group Learning and Development Director for MCI Group, Corinne Got-Camard, CEO of Hill & Knowlton and Thierry Derrien, Senior Account Director & Head of Corporate Practice, Hill & Knowlton ndrl), providing us with valuable advices to boost our skills. I also liked the mentoring program. Talking with the role models helped me step back and reflect on my career’s goals more clearly.

On the other side, participating in the regular WIL conferences was an amazing opportunity to have a step back about economic, social and business Key European issues. Great inspiring speakers gave us different points of view to debate and I really enjoyed these moments.

For the next editions of the Women Talent Pool though, I think it would be valuable to get better follow-up our progress in the WTP within our own company. For example, I suggest that once or twice a year, one of the WIL role model arrange a meeting with our manager to discuss about our advancement. It would contribute to make the program more integrated and valuable in the Talent management process of our companies.

You are currently Travel and Hospitality Principal for Capgemini Consulting. How would you describe your current role and what do you appreciate the most in current position?

My job consists in helping my clients succeed in their transformation projects, that is to say I’m responsible to sell and deliver them consulting services to transform their organization, process and IT. It is not only a sales job, but there is an important part about counselling and following up. I’m especially in charge of SNCF Mobilité account (the French Railway operator), and one of the main challenge I’m facing is to get my clients prepared for the upcoming opening competitor market in 2020. It means make them become more competitive, deliver a higher value service on board to their clients. I would say that is what I prefer in my job: making my personal convictions concrete by helping my clients lead their projects successfully. I’m involved in the business transformation of all the French mobility sector.

On the professional level, what are your plans for the next years? Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?

I’m about to change job in few weeks, to join Prosodie, which is another subsidiary of Capgemini in France. I will be in charge of developing Digital platforms business for this SME (quite a digital start-up for Capgemini Group!), which is a major business development priority for Capgemini in the next years.

Besides, thanks to the Women Talent Pool, I’ve come to better know myself and achieve self-awareness in regards to my career’s goals and expectations, and for the next 5 to 10 years, I know I want to reach a managing position, and manage a P&L on my own.

Last February, Capgemini Consulting have launched a study in collaboration with la French Tech and La Journée de la Femme Digitale about Career paths for women in our digital world. Could you tell us more about the study? Are there lessons to be learnt and key figures you would like to bring to our attention?

As you know, women are underrepresented in the digital sectors overall. So from 18 to 29 of February we carried out a study to know “Digital women’s” opinion about their career prospects thanks to digital (not only IT sector but also every digital business transformation). 757 women participated in this survey, mainly highly educated (mainly graduated from business schools rather than technical education) and 36 years old on average. What struck me the most is that more and more women consider the digital as a level up for their career. Digital is a matter of business and creativity and not only a technical issue. There is little need to possess technical skills or to be an IT girl to succeed in this field, you just have to understand well your business model and how to develop it quickly to accelerate time-to-market.

I noticed that half of the respondents work or wish to work in a start-up: Do you think this kind of structure offers further opportunities for women to grow in the digital sector?

Start-ups can be considered as glass-ceiling breakers for some of the respondents. When women are not allowed to meet their career’s aspirations within their company, they rather grow outside the company and start a business on their own than being stuck in an unfulfilling position. It also has to do with the working environment: young women (like most of Gen Y people) wish for more autonomy in their jobs, they prefer working in small teams with more collaborative management conditions (no more silos management). These working conditions could be difficult to apply in highly structured companies. That also means that to stay time-to-market with Digital, and be attractive for young talented women, big companies need to restructure their management process and organizations!

What piece of advice would you give to the Talents to help them take the most of the program?

My advice would be: make sure to attend all sessions! Do not find yourself excuses not to come, because all of them are important. You have to get involved in the program to take the most of it, that is to say to attend the session but also involve yourself in each session, be as active and responsive as possible.