It is said that dinosaurs exist at CERN. Laure says it. She defines herself as one of them. She started working here in July 1986. Now, almost 35 years later, she is the head of CERN Alumni Relations, but her road to it has had numerous bends.
She has worked in many different job positions for CERN, proportional to her working years. She started as a young engineer in telecommunications and computing with a fellowship, then she quite rapidly became a staff member. Less than two years later, she met and married a physicist, and she moved on to project leadership in administrative computing. She has two sons, and she spent less than a year at the LHC Budget Monitoring Office. Later on, she moved into the internal audit service and she became Head of Internal Audit. Laure had the immense pleasure and honor to work with Rolf-Dieter Heuer, in this position, during his seven years of mandate. It was in June 2017 when she became Head of the newly launched CERN Alumni programme.
Before starting at CERN, Laure was working in Canada. She was a 25-years-old recently graduate in Telecommunication Engineering. Because a friend of her, who had a fellowship at CERN, told her there was a job opportunity, and because she wanted to come back to France, she decided to apply. A couple of months later, her adventure as a CERNie started.
Laure comes from a labour family in Lyon, the ancient capital of Gaul. Also, la capitale mondiale de la gastronomie, according to the well-known food critic, Curnonsky. Lyonnaise delicious food, together with family, is what she misses the most from her childhood’s town.
In her desk, Laure has a quote that illustrates Voltaire’s philosophy: Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu’à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire.
Experience has taught her that this world is very small (it is a handkerchief, as Spanish people would say). Laure’s grandmother was from Spain, and she used to say that la beauté ne se mange pas en salade. And, genetics kept that in mind.
If Laure’s grandmother assured that hard work is what nourish us, and not beauty, for Laure, beauty comes unknowingly to humans. It comes to us whenever it wants, it is not us who decide that. It is something that strikes you and, irretrievably, you say: “Oh my God, this is beautiful”. But we can not create it. No way however hard you try, you can just create the conditions that may make it appear. When she was a student, Laure used to find beauty in mathematics.
Dinosaurs do not just exist. They also dream. They dream of passing their motorbike license and of having a last fantastic job at CERN, a very meaningful one because the more you get old, the more what is important is the meaning of things: what sense you find behind them.
They also yearn for remaining as children. Picasso said that it took him “four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”. And Laure would love to become this child in herself right to the end.
It is said that soon, dinosaurs will also ride motorcycles.