Our partner, Chantal Baer, in the spotlight in Bilan, the reference in economics, on Monday 20 December 2021
"The sustainability of the company will depend on its level of awareness"
Because more equality between men and women also means more women in representative and management bodies, each month Femmes Leaders by Bilan offers you a meeting with a woman member of a board of directors.
Each month, Femmes Leaders by Bilan brings you an interview with a woman member of a board of directors. A text produced in partnership with the Swiss Circle of Women Directors.
Chantal Baer
The art of strategically combining her passions as a linguist and marketing expert to create successful brands. Chantal Baer began her professional career with several multinationals before setting up her own naming and later branding and business development practice. Her clients range from multinationals to SMEs. Speaker and co-author of the book Les leviers de croissance à l'ère de l'économie numérique (2015).
How did you become an administrator?
My first mandate as a director was proposed to me within a leadership training company RTG SA. The shareholders asked me to sit on their Board of Directors following a brand building and business development mission. I was then selected to join the Vaud + Board of Directors for my brand expertise.
What interests you most about this job?
It is a function that provides the necessary distance for strategic and systemic thinking to
to align the company with a constantly changing environment and thus anticipate the levers of prosperity according to new market opportunities.
"Humanity has a collective challenge to meet and business is one of the pillars of that change."
What are the key skills, and the added value you bring to the board?
An insatiable curiosity that pushes me to always understand the context and to continuously train myself to strengthen my expertise of the brand as a key resource of the company strategy. Thus I combine a long experience with an excellent knowledge of the cognitive economy and its levers of prosperity.
What are the difficulties of this function, the challenges you have encountered
Sometimes the lack of an aspirational vision leaves too much room for resistance to change and certainly also for ego. This is often a damaging waste of time in a world where change has become the norm and where "the right moment" is a shrinking space of time.
What is your best practice in terms of getting a mandate in the ACs?
Apart from the fact that the role of director requires specific and continuous training, I think that a well-positioned expertise beyond this function is an asset for the diversity of a board. Not to mention a good potential for emotional intelligence, which allows one to engage in the prosperity of a company/organisation with people with whom one will have to form an esprit de corps.
What are the main concerns of strategic corporate bodies today?
Humanity has a collective challenge to meet and companies represent one of the pillars of this change. The major strategic challenge for companies is to lead the construction of sustainable prosperity, whatever their field of activity, because this has become an essential market parameter before it is even a state parameter. The durability of the company will depend on its degree of awareness and this is the reality today.
What is needed to get more women on the boards of Swiss companies?
It is clear that it is no longer a question of skill and I think it is more a meeting of minds that has yet to take place. In a male-dominated world, women have become accustomed to having to be first in class, perhaps a more 'attacker-at-centre' tactic might allow them to get on to the pitch more quickly.
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