As former Chairman and CEO of Danone, I’m happy to write this testimonial to Thierry Bonetto, paying a tribute to his incredible contribution to our business and people performance through innovative learning processes and programs.

During his tenure as learning director, Thierry  put in place a very innovative executive programme, « leading edge », to help Danone executives grow as leaders, make brave decisions and empower themselves to realize them. The spirit of the program is to challenge the status quo through “outside in” inspiration, be adventurers, and pioneer concretely new ideas  in their context and for Danone. As I joined the program in the 2nd module for a dialogue with participants, I was seeing the program as a tool to “shape the Group, help steer the boat”: “their questions, ideas, help me make decisions, reflect on managerial options … it’s a guide for action
Beyond executives, Thierry positioned learning as a powerfull vehicle to share and nurture Danone culture among all Danoners -   a critical theme for me as CEO. A unique & powerful example is the model of “Danone Campus”, a “nomade” & “temporary” learning campus – although with limited resources - full of learnings, networking, and inspiration. I appreciated to join regularly, as well as my collegues from comex, to share Danone way forward and more importantly discuss in proximity with all managers ;
Another example is the launch of our “Danone leadership model”, in a way that was simple (4 lettres: CODE ) and incredibly powerful, because of the strong anchor of the deployment in the reality of each Business Unit, the involvement of top management, and the “learning in action approach” – the teams working on their own challenges during the program. This program really implemented a strong leadership culture , and lead to breakthrough results in many businesses. 

For all those reasons, I really believe Thierry deserved to be awarded.

Dear Thierry,
Please find below my personal testimony on your contribution to Danone .

I had the chance to benefit of Thierry Bonetto’s professionalism and expertise for the last 20 years .
I have started learning from Thierry  and getting inspired by him when I was in LVMH . I was in charge of setting up an Executive Learning center for LVMH GMs and Directors and the excellent programs designed by Thierry in Danone were a benchmark and an best practice to follow. He already had a very high reputation in the Executive education world .

When I joined Danone, I could appreciate the high quality of the “Campus” programs his teams were designing and delivering for all our Managers and Directors all over the world .
Personally, as HRD I had the chance to participate to a very innovative and insightful program designed and implemented by Thierry in 2006 and 2007 for senior HRDs leveraging « learning expeditions », « design thinking », action learning & “collective intelligence”  . It ‘s still today the BEST programme I have ever experienced .
This program not only made a difference in the development of 70+ HRDs, but also served as an innovation process to co-build Danone HR strategies and deploy them; we got inspiration from outside, co-built a breakthrough HR vision through an action-learning approach,  and then embarked 200 + HR managers  to activate that vision through global & local initiatives.

More recently, as Talent Director in charge of Danone Executives career & development, I particularly appreciated Thierry’s strategic vision and passion for Learning & Development.
Thierry is recognized for 3 qualities :

• Strategic thinking: he has designed a leadership program to help Danone Executives become “transformational leaders”, with a combination of inspiration, personal development, peer coaching, and the experimentation of learnings on real business transformation challenges;
• Creativity in design: when he conceived & deployed development journeys for our “future Executives”  such as the “LION program” ; a learning journey combining a rich mix of partners – in particular GEL – and learning approaches: 360° and development center, leadership development, mentoring, shadowing, MOOC, and action-learning in teams, leveraging “learning expedition” and team work, as well as  the involvement of Comex and some senior leaders;
• Ability to propose a holistic approach linking learning, networking & action : in the “Leading Edge” program for top executives,  he was able, during the last 14 years , to connect the program with Danone strategic agenda, and create the conditions for Executive participants to identify  and experiment “unprecedented” ideas to address business challenges, pilot them and share the success and learnings with the Danone CEO.

I first met Chantal in 2016 when the Global Executive Learning team agreed to work with us in our effort to transform our senior leadership with a robust and immersive development program built around Business Driven Action Learning. In the beginning, I was a “Pie in the Sky” optimist that we would have our program pulled together and running within no time! However, a few additional months passed, and those months became years before we finally launched our first program in 2018. It was over that time that I had the great pleasure and honor to collaborate and become friends with my esteemed colleague Chantal Fleuret.
Chantal is a wonderful partner with deep knowledge, a passion for learning, empathy and consideration for others.  She is very organized, thorough, and exacting, while at the same time empathetic, and able to balance the process with the people. She is also a master of the art of listening, and has a cool approach when dealing with reluctant or impatient learners.
It was last year, during our LEX in Paris, that I first, knowingly, experienced Chantal’s “super power” to redirect disinclined attitudes and negative energy.  Her “super power” stems from her ability to listen, and listen hard. She then communicates her interest and understanding with little or no words at all. Her body language and a smile or nod of the head, accompanied with a simple phrase of “let’s try” or even more often used “we’ll see” and people find the change within themselves. It’s a remarkable sight to see in action, and yes, even though I know it’s happening, she successfully used it on me!
Chantal, I am thrilled at the opportunity to share your “super power” with the rest of the world and grateful to receive your generosity of friendship, mentorship, guidance and continuous support.  Congratulations on your receipt of the 2019 Dilworth Award, a great honor for a remarkable human being.

It is my great honour to say a few words for Chantal. She really deserves the Robert Dilworth Award with her all the contribution to the development of BDAL globally and the Global Forum community.
Chantal has more enthusiasm and energy than any other in applying BDAL to support various corporations globally as well as public sectors. Her energy and contributions made every Global Forum a great success for so many years.
Chantal is very quick in action, even quicker than Koreans. I could get a new perspective on French people by her speedy action. Global Action Learning has been progressed thanks to her quick actions.
Chantal has a superb memory even for details. She is a living dictionary. Chantal remembers all the participants to GF as well as what each person did. Her memory saved a log of memos and paper for GEL team and Yury.
At the same time, Chantal has a warm heart. She takes care of every member of Global Forum as well as BDAL project participant with big smiles. Many participants may forget about the topics or projects they worked, but will never forget about her big smile.
Congratulations to Chantal. We all really love you. Please stay healthy and wealthy, so we can meet you at every Global Forum in the future.

Thank you.
KR Yoon

Take one part organizational vision, another part business acumen, and a third part humanism, and what you get is Paul Nieminen, an HR professional whose work over the past two decades will leave an indelible mark and powerful legacy at one of the world’s largest logistics companies, United Parcel Service, or UPS.
Since 2013, I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with Paul on a number of projects at UPS. Our work has focused on leveraging the power of behavioral science to drive transformational culture change at a Fortune 500 company that’s over a century old and that has almost half a million employees spanning the globe. Our goal: to ensure that our culture supports a strategy calling for increased organizational agility and innovation – while maintaining our continued commitment to operational excellence.
To achieve this goal, Paul has been working tirelessly to bring together multiple work streams that all aim at one objective: driving the growth of a learning organization approach to people development at UPS. Embracing the systemic features of this approach, Paul has initiated and implemented a broad set of inter-related programs at our company, including Action Learning, Transnational Organizational Management, and Leading Behavior Change.
For Paul, learning is not limited to training. Rather, people development comprises a wide range of interactive human experiences, from simple one-on-one knowledge sharing sessions to ideas that rapidly go viral throughout the organization via ubiquitous internal and external social networks. According to Paul, individuals engaging in learning experiences with each other systemically drives adaptability and agility within the organization as a whole.
Paul has the remarkable ability to zoom out on visualizing the broad future of HR’s role in our large organization and then to zoom in on explaining how a specific one-on-one interaction will, tactically, help build that future. His legacy at UPS will be this: Paul made an invaluable contribution to the business sustainability of our organization, simultaneously maintaining a focus on humanistic caring about individual human growth, development, and learning.

I have worked with Paul for many years and on several projects.
The first project we worked on together was the planning of a transnational organizational structure. Paul’s understanding of the external factors and mega trends, changes in our industry, the business context and the theory behind the transnational model were impressive. It enabled us to create a new structure and a changed go-to-market strategy, key to our success in the years to come.
The biggest impact, however, was the implementation of Action Learning within UPS. Paul was advocating for it already for quite some time and could convince the European leadership to try it out. In 2015 Paul started to train facilitators and was co-facilitating the first action learning sets. I had the pleasure to be one of the first facilitators. And although there were some doubts with the participants and also myself on how this would work, Paul was enthusiastic, knowledgeable, convincing, inspiring and always trusting the process. The outcome of our first action learning set was a solid business solution- a new UPS service that was actually implement – but more importantly a visible development within the participants. Increasing their breath of perspective - gained through inside-ins and outside ins - as well as improving their leadership behavior – through working in a cross functional team, understanding their learning styles, questioning their assumptions and changing from judgers to learners where the most visible signs.
Under Paul’s leadership, we have since increased the number of action learning sets consistently including senior leadership. Paul applied the strategic concept of the learning organization and the implementation was operationalized through action learning - leading to the behavior change that aligns to our organizational strategy.
Over the past years, Paul was developing the vision of what action learning could do within our company, he then designed the models, obtained buy-in from our most senior leadership levels and broke down barriers to implement his vision.

Dear Sir or Madam,
It is my honour to provide this testimony on Paul Nieminen, from UPS to be recognized by the Global Forum on Action Learning and Leadership Development at your event.

For the past 2 decades, Paul Nieminen has linked organizational strategy to executive and leadership development, delivering results that had significant impact throughout UPS. Paul has the ability to understand what structure, process, behavioral, and learning interventions are needed to move the organization towards closing the gap between future state and current state. He brings models, processes, and interventions that resolve this gap within our fast passed and global market
environment.

Paul has brought organizational design and development models to our leadership, including culture
change models, transnational philosophy/structure/process models, and learning models that
specifically meet the need of where our organization is on its lifecycle. He carefully considers what our organizational culture will accept, and brings specific interventions that will produce significant impact.
Paul is able to apply models to the UPS environment in a way that resonates with organizational leaders, bringing theory to practice.
Further, Paul has designed and implemented interventions, including Business Driven Action Learning, that bring innovation, expedited learning, and skill development, aligning leadership behavior to business results, and to the larger vision of the organization. Paul interacts with whomever he needs to in the organization, from front line to the executive suite to fulfill the vision of creating a learning organization, and creating a culture of continuous transformation.

I have personally worked with Paul for over a decade and his aforementioned knowledge and
engagement in this body of work has had an enormous impact on our international business units.