Christophe Gence – ETH CIRCLE

Christophe Gence
Delegate of the Board and CEO
Paprec Switzerland

I regularly see a lot of my friends from my student days here in Zurich. In addition, when I was in the US and in France, I was in touch with those local alumni groups. I think that keeping this connection to ETH Zurich is interesting because even though I have been working in many different countries and industries, where you don’t always have the same technical requirements, you need to be able to shift between different circumstances. I found the alumni I met abroad shared this point of view. I think it’s important to keep in mind that not all people coming out of ETH will work in research labs. The business world requires specific intercultural and relationship skills, which I believe are as important as the technical skills.

The ETH Circle can help pass on this feedback, and it can also help to keep members up to speed on the latest developments at the university. There are some great things going on that we just don’t know about. For example, I had the chance to attend the ETH Day recently, but before that I never had an interaction since I had graduated from ETH that taught me so much about what ETH is doing right now. Rankings are helpful, as are websites, newsletters and reports, but broader communication in Switzerland and abroad is paramount.

The presence of key stakeholders from ETH in the interactions with the ETH Circle is very important to me as a member of this group. In my case, I have been working in many countries, in different industries, and I am not sure I would have been able to do all of this without having attended ETH. It gave me a lot of international exposure, and I would be pleased to share my thoughts and experience with the members of the ETH Circle and the ETH community.