Sitting with an Alumni François

Dufond

Introduce yourself and your relationship with EHL

I am a French citizen. After growing up in Paris, I came to Switzerland in 1993 for my higher education. I graduated from EHL in 1997, then attended HEC Lausanne and, after a few years in the workforce, I passed the federal diploma in public accounting. I have been working in Geneva for over 20 years. Even as a child, I loved to cook and was destined to work in the hotel and restaurant industry. When I was old enough to go to university, my parents suggested that I take the EHL entrance exam, because at the time admission was by competitive examination! EHL has always been a lighthouse, a home base that is deeply rooted in me: it is an unbreakable link, an immense feeling of pride and belonging to a community that is both local and international, and I have experienced countless memories that are engraved in my memory for eternity. To this day, I am very proud to be a graduate of the school, and I will be very happy to have one of my children attend the school when they are old enough to go to college.

What was one of the most important lesson learned at EHL, and how does that affect you today?

François Dufond (AEHL 1997) Founder of MySwissCFO

For me, being a solitary person, EHL taught me to work in a team. Whether it was in the kitchen, in the dining room, through the TP groups or within the committee that organized the final party "A Night in Venice", EHL opened the way for me to realize that it is necessary to federate diverse skills, to learn from the personalities of others, their backgrounds, and their culture as well, in order to grow and advance a common backgrounds, and their culture as well, in order to grow and advance a common project. I have this deep belief that our differences enrich us much more than they distance us. From this experience acquired at EHL, I have learned that a good company director, in addition to his or her individual technical and human skills, must know how to surround himself or herself with a team of specialists, with diverse sensibilities, and unite them around a project.

What was your biggest motivation in starting a business in Finance?

I have been working in corporate finance for over 15 years. Creating a company active in this sector has never been an end in itself. However, there are two fundamental reasons why I decided to create my own company. Life had a few surprises in store for me on the private front, which meant that I had to move away from my children's place of residence, even though they were born in Annecy. Given my custody regime, it had become incompatible with a position of responsibility on a salaried basis in order to be a present father to my children. Professionally, after having held several positions in corporate finance management, I realized that I thrived much more in managing ambitious projects in very challenging environments than in positions where it was enough to simply run the systems in place. In the positions I held, once everything was running smoothly, I quickly got bored. Finally, I was betting that the job market would evolve towards a need for more flexibility on the part of recruiters, who would want to hire professionals on an assignment basis rather than as an employee.It is therefore in light of this threefold observation that I created my own structure in January 2020, offering financial management services à la carte.

In 5 years, what do you seek to achieve for yourself and for your business (MySwissCFO)?

Privately, you will have understood, I want to be a father for my children. This is the essential reason for the creation of my company. On a professional level, I will be simply happy to be able to live with dignity from my professional activity, and to make benefit from my competences a broad panel of customers who would be satisfied!