[Success story] - Marie Sellier

07 February 2023 Portrait

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Hello 😊 My name is Marie, I am 27 years old and I spent 4 great years at Rennes SB from 2015 to 2019.

I joined after 2 years of classes préparatoires, an intensive course that prepares you to join a French Grande École, in Lille, my hometown. I also joined the communications department of the Junior-Enterprise Bretagne Conseil.

I did my university exchange in the first year of my Master in Taiwan, in the city of Tainan, with three other students from my class (Cohort 26). I found a flat share with my friend Camille, and we travelled all over the island and throughout South-East Asia for 6 months.

When I came back, I opted for a Master 2 in work-study format at Decathlon in Lille in the Communication France division. I helped the teams with 360° communication plans (TV, digital, in-store and 4x3 posters, leaflets in letterboxes) for Decathlon’s image as a whole, and its own internal brands.

I then moved to Paris and started working at Kantar Insights as a Data Analyst, helping brands understand new consumer behaviours. It was a great experience, but my environmental conscience was starting to take over and I felt that my job didn’t entirely align with my ideals, my role only served economic growth and didn’t question the sustainability of my clients' business models.

Can you introduce tell us a bit more about your job?

One year ago, I made a big change in my professional life and focused 100% on the climate. Today I work at Blue Choice, a consultancy firm specialising in ecological bifurcation strategies, created by Cédric Ringenbach, the inventor of the Climate Fresco. I help large companies to appropriate the right orders of magnitude and to spread a climate culture internally via the Climate Fresco tool. At the same time, I continue to train on climate-energy issues to make up for what I missed in my university studies! The road is long. 😉

How are you involved in the RSB Alumni network?

I started to "branch out" at the end of 2020 when, with 4 other Alumni, I set out to create an Alumni Club around the topics of ecological transition, energy sobriety and the protection of Life.

We launched RSB for Change in March 2021, just after the ESSEC and Audencia clubs. At the time, we were the first to launch the club, and it was very exciting to see that our desires and questions resonated with our counterparts!

The aim of RSB for Change is threefold:

To inform school stakeholders about the environmental issues and the scale of the current climate crisis
To inspire them to take action by sharing profiles, experiences and news
Commit collectively through concrete, high-impact actions at school and in our professions

Our manifesto, which sums it all up, can be found here

Since then, we've done about ten events: online conferences, round tables and workshop evenings around our topics and there are around twenty active participants in our Whatsapp group.

We are also members of ‘Ambition Transition’, a more 'meta' collective that unites all the Transition clubs in business and engineering schools. The flagship event of our union is a forum for companies and young graduates or alumni in the field of transition, it was held for the first time in April 2022. Another edition will take place in Spring 2023, don't hesitate to support us on LinkedIn! 😊

Tell us about a cool moment/opportunity you had within the network

On 16 November 2022 we organised a duplex evening in my office at Blue Choice for almost 30 people!

In one room, Julie and Jade (Rennes SB Alumni and fresco artists) were running a Climate Fresco workshop, in the other Marie (Rennes SB Alumni and facilitator) was running a 2Tonnes workshop.

It was a great evening that was intergenerational and inspiring for everyone.

What are the values you carry in your work?

Humility, benevolence, respect for Science and Life

What advice would you give to a young graduate who would like to follow your career path?

First of all, participate in an association to "do your training", try things out and find the cause that corresponds to you the most.
Then go to JobsThatMakeSense or Shift Your Job and find your dream job.

What worked well for me too:

Doing a lot of preliminary introspection to find out what drives me and what I want to do
Canvassing inspiring people on LinkedIn to tell me about their jobs over the phone (about 30 minutes each time).