[PROFILE] Violette and Cyriaque - Conciliate professional, familial and associative life

Can you introduce yourself in a few words?

I’m Violette, I’m 34 years old, and I’m a partner and intrapreneur at Ignition Program.

I’m married to Cyriaque, who is also graduated of IÉSEG, and we have two children—soon to be three! We live in Lille after spending a long time in Paris and discovering Portugal for a year and a half.

What was your journey at IÉSEG and what memories do you have of your studies?

I had quite a standard path, with a master’s in marketing and an exchange program in Lima, Peru! From IÉSEG, I keep amazing friendships, a beautiful love story, and academically, I remember an environment full of cross-functional projects that challenged us and taught us to work as a team (such as the two Co-projects), as well as a more customizable curriculum that allowed me to truly enjoy my classes. The school also allowed me to continue theater (through "cartes blanches" and even creating a play). There are plenty of great opportunities I didn’t take advantage of (conferences, the Junior Enterprise, hackathons…), but the offerings are numerous and very powerful, catering to various types of students with different profiles.

What have been the major steps of your professional career?

I started my professional life in a small event agency specialized in luxury, somewhat by chance, where I was drawn to the 360° aspect of the job. As a project manager in this type of small agency, the responsibility is to create an innovative concept, manage the budget, contact suppliers, present the event to the client while making them dream, all while staying grounded in reality. Then, it’s about executing the event by managing all the suppliers (and the setbacks :D), negotiating, sticking to the budget, maintaining the client relationship, and overseeing the day-of production to make sure everything goes smoothly. I did this for two years, which helped me realize that I loved the commercial, client relationship aspect, but that I didn’t want to spend my time serving luxury brands that spend huge budgets on press or public events.

I joined Ignition Program, an innovative 360° HR agency, which had only five employees at the time. I was very attracted by the “matchmaker” role they offered: matching profiles of people looking for an entrepreneurial adventure with companies. There was a commercial side, but it was very human in terms of creating relationships between people! I’m still with Ignition Program, and I’ve had the chance to live a very intrapreneurial path through our growth phases. I opened the Portugal office as a country opener, imagined and launched our management training business unit, which I developed, and more recently, I launched a community of HR professionals. In the meantime, I trained in lean management and helped guide our company’s transformation to refocus on the client. I’ve been with Ignition for almost 9 years, 6 of which as a partner, and despite the challenges related to growth crises and market reversals, I continue to find our mission exciting (turning human beings' desire to be useful into meaningful professional projects), irreplaceable by artificial intelligence, and constantly evolving.

I’m currently contemplating starting my own professional adventure to work on the topic of couples and their sustainability, but that’s a longer-term project.

Where did the desire to volunteer come from?

It’s funny, I’ve never really seen it as volunteering, and I’ve never called it that with Cyriaque. The idea of a project as a couple that’s a bit challenging has been around for a long time. For the past 6 years, I’ve been going to Bréhat every summer for 3 days to work on my vision for the year, surrounded by various professionals and coaches. Each year, when I return, I read Cyriaque a proposal for my vision of the upcoming years. This opens up great discussions and debates, and Cyriaque often ends up creating his own vision, and then we can see the convergences and how to make them work. For a long time, there had been a small part dedicated to a commitment as a couple, as a family, something that would go beyond us. I came back 18 months ago with this desire for a total commitment, in service of a project, and after discerning as a couple (bike project? project serving couples? something else?), Lazare appeared, encouraged by some friends from Nantes who knew the association (of course, former IÉSEG students ;)).

What is the Lazare association, and why did you choose this cause?

Since 2011, Lazare has been developing solidarity housing between people who are homeless and young professionals around the world. Simply put, these are shared accommodations of 8 to 10 people (50% homeless and 50% young professionals, supervised by 1 or 2 families) who live together, create strong friendships, and support each other during difficult times.

There are over 350 of us living this adventure worldwide, spread across 20 homes, and for almost 15 years, the association has prevented 200,000 nights spent on the streets.

When we were discerning, our only certainties were: 1) to put our energy into a project that is bigger than us, and 2) to choose something close to home, with the conviction that there are things to be done and experienced right at our doorstep.

What we really appreciated about the association was its comprehensive approach: it’s not about doing outreach every now and then, it’s about being anchored in a place, with a single invitation (and not a small one): an invitation to friendship. There’s something incredibly strong in that, because at Lazare, we don’t talk about reintegration—the focus is elsewhere. The priority is living together. And that’s a huge challenge for people who have experienced homelessness and for young professionals... Of course, we were touched by the issue of precariousness and poverty, but it’s the values of the project and how it’s run on a national level that convinced us. Finally, the fact that our children could be an integral part of the mission seemed crucial to me: I see it as an invitation from a very young age to consider Mohammed, Philippe, Mathias, as friends, and to have a worldview that is open and trusting.

How do you manage to balance professional, family, and volunteer life?

It’s quite a challenge, especially since we’re expecting our third child in just a few days, which will shake up the "pseudo-balance" we had found in our family life.

In practice, Cyriaque switched to a 4/5 schedule (this was a recommendation from Lazare, to have one part-time position per couple dedicated to the project), and I’m working at 90%. We now have half a day per week together to work on association matters, invite a roommate for coffee, or simply be together. That feels crucial for our couple’s balance!

The advantage of being on-site is that we can do things in the mornings or evenings after the kids are in bed, so it doesn’t impact our availability for the children too much, even though we have three wonderful babysitters who take care of them regularly. On the professional side, we both agreed not to have too much ambition for the next two years (no company creation, no major professional moves, no high-impact job changes), so we continue, of course, to give our best in our respective companies and bring value to them, but without the race for the "next step." It’s probably this Lazare experience that helps redistribute what we might have once projected as "a nourishing, challenging, exciting professional life" into other areas of our life!

What does it mean to be "responsible" for a house? What missions are associated with this role?

Our role is, first and foremost, to be present. This may seem simple, but it requires reorganizing our social life and focusing more around the house! Our main mission is to promote "living together" in simplicity.

Next, we are responsible for animating the house and making it thrive, particularly by handling recruitment (young professionals and people who have experienced hardship) and doing this by inviting people to come and discover the project whenever possible. This could mean introducing the project to young professionals or students nearing the end of their studies who are looking for a unique shared living experience (several IÉSEG alumni, for instance, have passed through the Lille house in recent years!), or fostering local corporate partnerships (McCain, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin…). On a more day-to-day level, it’s as simple as going on a bike ride with our roommates or suggesting we all go see a movie together.

Finally, our mission is to ensure a good living environment within the house (enforcing the rules, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence) and coordinating the house and the different people who help with the project locally, especially the medical-social workers. This might lead us to step in when necessary or even end the stay of a roommate if they jeopardize the collective harmony. It’s not the easiest part, but it’s incredibly educational! We find many elements of a manager’s job description here :) and it challenges us, helping us grow and overcome our limits. 

And any other information you think is relevant 😊

-> There’s a friendship tea every first Sunday of the month at 82 Rue Pasteur, Marcq-en-Baroeul, open to everyone! Come and join us! If you want to learn more, feel free to write to us at lille@lazare.eu. And by the way, there are houses all over France! Don’t hesitate to contact them to meet the roommates, and visit the website www.lazare.eu.

-> There’s a big expansion project for the house, as we’re going to create an additional men’s shared living space, a women’s shared space, and 3 studios. The project will begin in a few weeks. Our challenge will be to increase the visibility of the house, because new shared spaces mean new searches for young professionals and people in need. Currently, we’re still looking for a 4th young professional, male, aged 25-35, who’s eager to live an extraordinary and incredibly enriching adventure.