Richard Attias

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Richard Attias was born on November 19, 1959 in Fez, Morocco, and graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, a prestigious engineering school in France. Richard began his career as a sales executive at IBM France and in 1986 became the General Manager of Econocom France and Econocom Japan, a computer leasing company.

During the 1990's, Richard Attias founded an Event Management Company and produced various global events including the Zurich Insurances Convention and Boris Yeltsin's visit to France. Richard was awarded the contract for the signature of the GATT signature agreements in Marrakesh and for the Middle East and North Africa summit meeting in Casablanca.

A brief encounter with Klaus Schwab, President of the World Economic Forum, resulted in a long-standing partnership and the eventual creation of the Global Event Management Company. This joint venture agency went on to manage international conferences, including the International Telecoms Union Congress and the Middle East Peace Summit in Jordan and the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Joining Publicis Groupe in 1998, and selling his agency, provided Richard with an opportunity to establish a global enterprise producing events for various clients including IBM, l'Oreal, Uniliver, BT, Avaya, Lenovo, EDF, Sanofi-Aventis, etc.

Richard was named Chairman of the Board of Publicis Dialog which combined the operations of Publicis Events and a range of marketing services. In 2004, Richard moved to New York and became chairman of Publicis Events Worldwide, the first world wide events network with over 600 employees.

Shortly thereafter Richard combined the events company and team to form PublicisLive that specialized in the conception and production of international conferences and very high profile events such as the Clinton Global Initiative Forum, the Islamic Conference, The Petra Conference of Nobel Laureates, the Dalian Economic Summit in China, and the Monaco Media Forum.

Most recently, Richard has created the Experience – a U.S. based full service event management company with offices in Paris and Dubai, that supports government and non-government organizations worldwide. As Executive Chairman, Richard oversees the execution and management of global events. One of his most recent productions was the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the accession to the throne of the King of Jordan.

Richard also currently serves as Vice President for the Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women, a strategic platform for non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting women’s well being and equality worldwide. Richard is dedicated to promoting transparency for donors to ensure that donated funds serve their intended purpose. For more information please visit, <http://www.ceciliaattiasfoundation.org> .

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