The “Cercle des ambassadeurs” (the Ambassadors’ Circle)

The “Cercle des ambassadeurs” [Ambassadors’ Circle] is a working group, the result of a decision taken by our Board of Directors and is part of the initiatives launched by the “Napoleon 2026” project.
Its members have been chosen according to their speciality, their own professional network and, of course, their desire to participate in our activities: it is made up of two major donors to the Fondation, and about ten young people who are active in their professional or personal fields.

This advisory group :
– tests with us our ideas on how to reach out to young people ;
– advises us in general on our other actions;
– is a forum for general discussion about our surroundings and our dialogue with society.

Our ambassadors will also be entrusted with representation and public-relations missions, depending on their availability.

Posted : 9 May 2023 – Updated : 12 May 2023

Cédric Lewandowski
Executive Director Groupe EDF – Director of nuclear and thermic infrastructures
General secretart of the “Cercle des ambassadeurs” of the Fondation Napoléon
Cédric Lewandowski is the author of Lucien Bonaparte : Le prince républicain (Passés/Composés);  Le Nucléaire (Que sais-je ? – PUF), and of the preface of Guerre et eau – L’eau, enjeu stratégique des conflits modernes by Franck Galland. He is president of the board of  “Lire la Société” which organises prizes for books on economics, on gopolitics, on contemporary History and on politics. He is general secretary of the association “Les Amis de l’Hôtel de Brienne”, honorary president of the Musée Electropolis (Mulhouse) and member of the board of the Fondation EDF.

Olivier Aubriet
Phd in Pharmaceuticals, Quality controller of a large company
Major donor to the Fondation Napoléon
With a PhD of Pharmacy, a Master’s degree in Biological and Medical Sciences, HEC [Ecole des hautes études commerciales de Paris], and Sciences Po, Olivier Aubriet has worked for 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry in various capacities. He is a passionate collector of the works of Edmond Rostand, a major donor to the Musée Edmond Rostand [Edmond Rostand Museum] and the Fondation Napoléon, and a member of the Fondation Napoléon’s Circle of Ambassadors. He has been working for many years to promote a common cultural heritage that is accessible to all.

Florent Baracco
Journalist, executive assistant of the Figaro.fr
Since November 2022, Florent Baracco has been assistant to the director of Figaro.fr, in charge of the news section. During his time at Le Point, he coordinated a special edition devoted to Napoleon (in partnership with the Fondation), a historical-tourist guide dedicated to the bicentenary of the Emperor’s death, including fifty destinations, from Corsica to St Helena, via Waterloo and the island of Elba.

Pascal Brouard
Lawyer
Major donor to the Fondation Napoléon
Pascal Brouard has been a lawyer for 40 years, working in a partnership of lawyers mainly in the field of competition and distribution law. He is passionate about the Napoleonic period and more broadly about culture. He is a member of the Amis de l’Opéra de Versailles [Friends of the Versailles Opera].

Walter Bruyères-Ostells
Professor at the University of Sciences Po Aix
Director of historical research at the Ministère des Armées [Ministry of the Armed Forces]
Walter Bruyère-Ostells is professor of contemporary history at Sciences Po Aix. Among his various responsibilities, he is the director of research at the Service historique de la Défense [Historical Service of Defence] / History referent of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. As a specialist in the history of war from the 19th to the 21st centuries, he is particularly interested in the periods of the First and Second Empire, on which he has published extensively. He is notably the author of La Grande Armée de la Liberté (Tallandier, 2009), Combattre, souffrir et mourir dans les guerres de la Révolution et de l’Empire: approches croisées en histoire et en anthropologie (co-editor, PUP, 2020), Les maréchaux d’Empire: les paladins de Napoléon (Perrin, 2021) and is preparing Guerre de Crimée (Perrin, to be published in 2024).

Arthur Chevallier
Historian
Publisher
Arthur Chevallier is a writer and editor, born in 1990. After having been in charge of publications at the History section of “Editions du Cerf” from 2014 to 2019, in 2020 he became editor at “Passés/Composés”, (the History department of the Humensis group). The same year, he was appointed co-curator of the RMN-Grand Palais exhibition devoted to Napoleon, which was held at the Grand Halle de La Villette in Paris in April 2021. Since 2019, he has been writing a weekly column on history for the newspaper Le Point. Most of his research deals with the influence of literature on the writing of the history of the French Revolution and the First Empire. He has also written short stories published by “Editions Grasset” in Le Courage. He is also the author, again with “Editions Grasset”, of anthologies of history and literature published in the “Cahiers Rouges” collection. In 2018, he published an essay, Napoléon sans Bonaparte (Cerf), in which he contests the notion of “Bonapartism”, an idea taken up in another of his books, Napoléon et le Bonapartisme (Puf, Que sais-je?). In 2021, he founded, with Raphaël Doan and Baptiste Roger-Lacan, the Vestigia laboratory, devoted to history and new technologies. His latest book, Les Femmes de Napoléon (Grasset), was published in September 2022.

Raphaël Doan
Alumnus of  ENS de Paris and ENA
Agrégé de Lettres classiques [high-level teaching qualification in Classics]
Author of several history essays
Raphaël Doan is a senior civil servant, a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, and an agrégé of Classics. He is the author of Quand Rome inventait le populisme (Cerf, 2019), Le Rêve de l’assimilation (Passés/Composés, 2021), Le Siècle d’Auguste (Que Sais-Je, 2021) and Si Rome n’avait pas chuté (Passés/Ccomposés, 2023).

Georgina Letourmy-Bordier
PhD History of Art
Expert on the Art market
Georgina Letourmy-Bordier has a doctorate in art history and is an expert in the art market, and is a specialist of Europena fans. She has curated several exhibitions on this fashion accessory and art object, and on the history of the city of Paris in particular. She also writes regularly, and was the editorial coordinator of the book Napoléon intime: Les trésors de la collection Bruno Ledoux (éditions du Seuil, 2018).

Thibault Montbazet
History teacher
Author for Passés/Composés
Thibault Montbazet is a high school history teacher. His first book, Une année terrible, published by Passés/Composés in 2022, is a dive into the besieged Paris of 1870.

Baptiste Roger-Lacan
Historian
Member of the editorial team of Le Grand Continent
Baptiste Roger-Lacan, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and an agrégé [high-level teaching qualification] in History, defended his doctoral thesis in May 2023, for which he received a grant from the Fondation Napoléon. He is the author of several articles in peer-reviewed journals and is currently preparing a book for the Passés Composés publishing house. He is also a member of the editorial team of Le Grand Continent.

Charles-Éloi Vial
Historian
Curator at the Manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF)
Charles-Éloi Vial has a doctorate in history and is the author of several works on the Revolution and the Empire, including Les Derniers feux de la monarchie (Perrin, 2016), La Famille royale au Temple (Perrin, 2018), Napoléon: la certitude et l’ambition (Perrin/BnF, 2020), and Napoléon et les bibliothèques: livres et pouvoir sous le Premier Empire (CNRS, 2021). He is also director of the “Bibliothèque des illustres”, a collection of illustrated biographies co-published by Perrin and BnF Editions.