Magali Barreau-Combeau

Magali grew up without a professional role model in her family and lost her father at the age of 10; no one ever really introduced her to higher education. Yet she discovered computing almost by chance, by opening a BASIC book for the Commodore 64 (the first personal computer model), without even having a working computer. She understood everything she read and had fun. In high school, she also discovered that she liked mathematics, but her baccalaureate, focused on literature and languages, did not give her a direct route into engineering schools.

To start working quickly, she chose a vocational diploma in management information systems, followed by a year of technical-sales training, where she learned communication and negotiation. She started in Microsoft support, then joined a start-up developing an ETL tool (software that collects data from multiple sources, cleans it, and stores it in a single, organized location) and contributed to R&D. At Siebel, she then took technical responsibility for Siebel Marketing worldwide and for a team of 20 engineers spread across three continents. She moved from support and development into coordination.

Her responsibilities grew at Siebel. Faced with highly dissatisfied clients, she understood that a solution was not always technical: sometimes the business need and strategy had to be reconsidered. When she later joined an IT services company, she encountered a new obstacle: as a woman with a two-year degree, her skills were not automatically recognized. She went back to school to study information systems management at the University of Compiègne and earned a five-year degree.

She then founded her own consulting firm, a venture that lasted about five and a half years and involved former clients, including Canal+ and Mondial Assistance. But managing administration and clients, staying up to date, and conducting research while raising her children became too much. After the birth of her second child, she chose a salaried position to regain time without giving up IT. She worked at Swiss Life, which allowed her to settle in the North.

An old colleague offered her a position at OVH, whose potential she already knew as a customer. She accepted a pay cut and a less senior role than she could have obtained elsewhere. Over roughly nine years, she worked on technical subjects, governance, and data, then managed a three-year data strategy program. This path has now led her to support the company's transition to AI.