Blog
15 September 2009
50th Anniversary Celebrations are launched
Our 50th Anniversary year is off to a remarkable start. On Saturday 12 September, celebrations commenced with our Founders' event and we welcomed over 200 people to our Fontainebleau campus, including the Founders of the School, former and current Chairmen, Directors, Deans and faculty of INSEAD, 20 members of our first MBA promotion, as well as alumni leaders of both the IAA and the IAF and members of our current INSEAD Board, leadership team and key dignitaries.
We were honoured to have an outstanding list of speakers, including Olivier Giscard d’Estaing, Founding Dean and Director General of INSEAD and Chairman of the INSEAD Foundation, Claude Janssen, Honorary Chairman of the INSEAD Board and Chairman of the International Council, Jean-Paul Vermès, Vice Chairman Responsible for Education, Training and Research, Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris, Jean-Marie d’Arjuzon (MBA’60), Founding President of the INSEAD Alumni Association, Daniel Labreque (MBA’81), President of the INSEAD Alumni Association, Michel Gauthier (MBA’61), Founding Chairman of the INSEAD Alumni Fund, Rolf Abdon (MBA’70), Chairman of the INSEAD Alumni Fund, Anna Germanos (MBA'09D), MBA participant, Roger Godino, Professor and former Faculty Dean of INSEAD, Jean-Claude Larréché (MBA'70), The Alfred H Heineken Chaired Professor of Marketing, Peter Zemsky, The Eli Lilly Chaired Professor of Strategy and Innovation and Claude Rameau (MBA'62), Vice Chairman of the INSEAD Board and former Dean of INSEAD.
We all then enjoyed an impressive exhibition in the Fontainebleau Château which retraced INSEAD's history from 1959 to 2009 and brought back many memories for our guests, as they revisited the first MBA classroom and Olivier Giscard d'Estaing's office. In order to celebrate our 50th Anniversary through the year, this exhibition will be on display on our campuses during the year: in Fontainebleau for our October Alumni reunions, in Singapore in November for our INSEAD Leadership Summit Asia and in Abu Dhabi in January 2010 for our INSEAD Leadership Summit Middle East and it will return to Fontainebleau in May next year.
As part of the 50th Anniversary, we will be celebrating our alumni and we are pleased to inform you that our '50 INSEAD Alumni who changed the world' have been chosen and informed of their nomination.
Our objective was to choose 50 Alumni who best met our criteria: individuals who have not only had an exceptional career and a major impact on the world but have also touched lives and embody the values of INSEAD. It was a major challenge to select just 50 alumni from our network of nearly 40,000 worldwide. The complete selection of alumni chosen will be announced between September 2009 and May 2010. The first ten names were published publicly on our special 50th Anniversary microsite on 12 September, the day of our Founders' Celebration. The first 10 alumni we would like to honour are: Helen Alexander, Patrick Cescau, Paul Desmarais Jr, Adam Goldstein, Franz B. Humer, Ulysses A. Kyriacopoulos, Wolfgang Marguerre, Sir Lindsay Owen Jones, Jussi Pajunen and Lord Simon of Highbury.
We have also embarked on a new advertising programme for our 50th Anniversary year. I hope you will start to notice our advertisements and press coverage around our campaign 'Understand the world. Expand your world', which aim to raise the awareness of what makes INSEAD special and to really establish ourselves as The Business School for the World during this historic year. I will keep you up to date on our progress through my upcoming blogs.
12 September 2009
Welcome to INSEAD’s 50th Anniversary Microsite
This year is an important milestone for us as we celebrate half a century of success.
Fifty years ago, on 12 September 1959, our first MBA opening ceremony took place at the Fontainebleau Château. This year’s celebrations will begin on that same date, with a ceremony reuniting our first participants with INSEAD's founders, first faculty, staff members and other members of the INSEAD community who were involved in the early developments of the school.
During this Anniversary year, we want to celebrate our achievements and those of our past participants, but we also want to set out our vision for the future. 'The Business School for the World' has come a long way in fifty years and we are still innovating across all our programmes all over the world.
This microsite will be updated over the next year as we roll out our celebrations through our Leadership Summits in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, concluding events with our MBA graduation ceremony in July 2010. As well as providing updates about these key events, the site will introduce you to the 50 Alumni who have Changed the World, our 50th Anniversary Faculty and Champions and people who have helped shape the INSEAD of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
I will be updating my blog regularly to give you my personal views and comments about the 50th Anniversary. But please keep coming back to the site for the latest Anniversary news. I'm sure you'll learn plenty of interesting things about our community, both past and present.