François Gérin-Lajoie

Expert in business development and partnerships

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Idée éducation entrepreneuriale from 2016 to 2022, François Gérin-Lajoie has an MBA in economics and is the current Chairman of the Paul Gérin-Lajoie Foundation. He benefits from more than 40 years of experience in funding, marketing and cooperation at the international level. Throughout a period of over 20 years, he was involved in the field of education as a manager of an educational publishing company, for which he created Canadian-African partnerships in five African countries. At the same time, he was president of the Association Québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI). He later volunteered as president in Canada for the Research Foundation for childhood disease. Since 1977, this foundation gathered more than 50 billion dollars for paediatric research teams in four Québec hospitals.

In 1994, he joined the Paul Gérin-Lajoie team, a non-governmental organization. This NGO is dedicated to basic education as well as training for children and young adults in the less-favoured countries. The Foundation is also committed to improve the awareness of international issues in Canada’s elementary schools. In April 2001, he was made president of the Paul-Gérin-Lajoie Foundation. As an entrepreneur, he successfully orchestrated and conducted several North-South partnerships, entrepreneurship and commercial trade within large-scale international organisations and companies. He also facilitates technology and development programs transfer in less-favoured countries.

As a member of the board of directors of the Paul-Gérin-Lajoie University division and inspired by the masterful work in education of his father Paul Gérin-Lajoie, he is happy to have acted as the first president of the non-profit organisation Idea entrepreneurial education. His father and him share the firm belief that “the entrepreneurial community school (ECE) is a coherent and natural next step to the great education reforms of the 1960s”. Convinced that this 21st century school is truly adapted to its time, the ECE represents for them an answer to the United Nations 2030 agenda: a quality education for all serving the eradication of poverty and the safeguarding of our planet.