Agnès Touraine holds a degree in Law and graduated from the Paris Institut d'Etudes Politiques in 1978. She obtained an MBA from Columbia University Business School, New York, in 1980.
She joined McKinsey in 1981 and spent five years with the firm. From 1985 to 1995, she pursued her career at Hachette (Lagardère group) where she was successively Sr Vice President of Strategy for the Lagardère group and Head of Hachette's Consumer Publishing division.
In 1995, Agnès joined CEP Communication to launch Liris Interactive as Chairman and CEO. Liris Interactive, one of France's first start-ups in multimedia, became Havas Interactive at the end of 1997.
In 1998, Havas Interactive significantly expanded its scope with the acquisition of Cendant Software, the US leader in edutainment and interactive games. As a result, Agnès became Executive Vice President in charge of the Consumer division of Havas.
In 2000, within the context of the merger between Vivendi and Universal, she was appointed Vice Chairman and CEO of Havas, which became Vivendi Universal Publishing. Immediately afterwards, Agnès Touraine was appointed Chairman and CEO of Vivendi Universal Publishing.
VUP, third-largest consumer publisher world-wide, generated revenues of €4.7 billion in 2001 and EBITDA of €827 million. In its five business sectors—education (no. 2 world-wide), reference (no. 1 world-wide), literature (no. 1 in France), games (no. 2 world-wide in PC), edutainment (no. 1 world-wide), and consumer magazines—VUP reinforced its market share, international presence, and profitability.
At the end of 2003, further to Vivendi Universal’s decision to sell most of the Vivendi Universal Publishing activities, Agnès Touraine left the Group and created Act III Consultants, a management consulting firm.
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Emmanuel Schalit holds a Master’s degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and a PhD in Computer Science from Université de Toulouse. He also attended the Executive Education program at the Harvard Business School in Cambridge.
He joined Alcatel in 1989 at the Marcoussis Research Lab where he worked for 3 years on experimental Robotics programs. In 1992, Emmanuel Joined Astek SA, a leading IT consulting firm where he led major IT programs for clients such as Thomson and CNP.
In 1995, he joined CEP Communication to take part in the launch of Liris Interactive as Production SVP, and subsequently COO of Liris Interactive.
Following the acquisition of Cendant software in 1998, He relocated to Los Angeles to become SVP and Chief Strategy Officer of Havas Interactive Inc, the newly formed leader in edutainement and interactive games.
After initiating the acquisition of Prize Central Inc. in early 2000, Emmanuel relocated to San Francisco to become President and COO of Flipside Inc. Vivendi’s Online Games division, where he subsequently led the acquisition of Uproar Inc. (NASDAQ:UPRO) at the end of 2000. He was then appointed Chief Executive Officer of the combined company. This acquisition allowed Flipside to become the worldwide leader in Online Games. Emmanuel led Flipside until the last quarter of 2001, when the business delivered its first profitable quarter.
In 2002, he relocated to Paris to become Senior Vice President of Vivendi Universal Publishing in charge of it’s $1400M global K-12 publishing activity. VUP was then the second largest K-12 publisher worldwide.
In March 2003, following Vivendi Universal’s decision to sell most of its publishing activities, Emmanuel Schalit left the group and co-founded Act III Consultants with Agnès Touraine and Alexandra Ananides.
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Alexandra Ananides holds a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and a bachelor’s degree in Communication Design from the Art Center College of Design. She obtained an MBA from INSEAD in 1995.
Prior to her MBA she worked in corporate communication in Switzerland, in global FMCG branding and packaging in Paris at Dragon Rouge and was Art Director in advertising for the BBDO group in Athens.
In 1996 Alexandra joined Johnson & Johnson to work in the newly acquired RoC brand’s strategic development and repositioning and to manage RoC’s make-up range international re-launch.
She then joined EuroDisney’s strategic planning to manage the company’s existing technology corporate alliances and to expand their scope in line with the Disneyland Paris resort’s new theme park development.
In 2000 she was appointed by Agnès Touraine as Marketing Vice President of Havas’ Consumer division and became Sr Vice President of Marketing and Synergies of Vivendi Universal Publishing following the Vivendi Universal merger.
She was in charge of world-wide business and brand development and cross-fertilisation of the publishing business units, of marketing studies and practices international coordination, of the children’s books businesses world-wide management and of new revenue streams development between Publishing and the other Vivendi Universal divisions.
Following Vivendi Universal’s divestment of its publishing activities, Alexandra Ananides left the group and co-founded Act III Consultants with Agnès Touraine and Emmanuel Schalit
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