The 3-day online workshop on “Strategic Planning for Heritage Managers” took place from 14 to 16 May 2021.  

15 heritage managers from Africa (Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt) and Asia (Nepal) have been trained on the tools and methodologies to effectively address the topics of successful strategy formulation and implementation in organizations managing cultural heritage in the contemporary complex environment. At the end of the course, participants have been empowered to use methods and tools of strategic analysis to devise and evaluate alternative strategic choices, while they comprehended the demands of a strategy implementation project.

The workshop was conducted by Alexandros Papalexandris, an Assistant Professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business and a former senior consultant at Deloitte, while he has more than 15 years’ research and consulting experience in the areas of strategy development and implementation.

Bénédicte de Montlaur, President and Chief Executive Officer in World Monuments Fund (WMF) honoured us with her presence as a keynote speaker. She shared with the participants her long career in the strategic management of cultural heritage in the World Monuments Fund. 

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Bénédicte de Montlaur is President and Chief Executive Officer of World Monuments Fund (WMF), the world’s foremost private organization dedicated to saving extraordinary places while empowering the communities around them. She is responsible for defining and implementing WMF’s strategic vision, and leading a team in more than 30 countries around the world.

Her background mixes culture and the arts, politics, international diplomacy and human rights. Prior to joining WMF, Montlaur spent two decades working across three continents as a senior diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Most recently, she served as Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy in the United States, leading France’s largest international cultural advocacy network and its two partner foundations—Albertine and FACE—and directing a team of 90 people in ten US offices. In this role, Montlaur created and expanded numerous programs, including the French-American Dual Language Fund, the annual Festival Albertine featuring curators including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Gloria Steinem, and the podcast The Thing About France, which presented conversations with prominent Americans about their country’s relationship with France. Previously, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in charge of North Africa, United Nations Security Council Negotiator on Africa and the Middle East and French Embassy First Secretary in Damascus, Syria.

Montlaur studied sociology and Arabic at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and public affairs at Sciences Po, Paris. She was a Marshall Memorial Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She has served on the Boards of several cultural and educational institutions, and is currently a Trustee of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. Montlaur is a member of The New York Times literary critic Liesl Schillinger’s book club and created an original exhibition of photos entitled “Islam and the City.” Beyond her professional accomplishments, Montlaur is a polyglot—speaking French, English, Arabic and Spanish—and completed the New York City Marathon in 2011.