Meet Valérie Abehsera, entrepreneur at heart and corporate trainer. With a career marked by her stint as Marketing Director at Rue du Commerce, then by the founding of Balinea, which she sold to give life to her latest project, Sylex, Valérie has embodied an unwavering entrepreneurial spirit for 25 years! Her rich career path enables her to bring her management expertise to both executives and first-time managers, to help them develop their leadership skills and potential.

Can you tell us more about your background? 

After graduating from ESSEC, I worked in various companies (Rue du Commerce, Viadeo) in management and board positions, mainly in the startup world. I have a particular appetite for entrepreneurship and tech. In fact, my first entrepreneurial project was the creation of Balinea in 2010: a rich learning experience in terms of business, team management and myself.

Then in 2020, I created Sylex, an innovative and positive sexuality education platform for teenagers that I continue to develop today.

In parallel with my entrepreneurial career, I became involved in training, running leadership and management programs with NUMA. Since the start of our collaboration in 2020, I've run over 300 workshops for major companies in various sectors, including TF1, Orange, Richemont, MAIF, Groupama, Crit, Euronext and ManoMano. 

What are your areas of specialization? 

Ever since I started developing Sylex, I've been passionate about the development of psychosocial skills. Applied to the business world, subjects such as assertiveness, constructive feedback, identifying strengths and areas for development are of great interest to me .

I particularly enjoy working with first-time managers. I find these profiles very enriching, as they require me to work on self-confidence, on asserting one's posture, and on challenging the prejudices associated with the role of manager. It's fascinating to accompany them in their search for a balance between authority and collaboration, or between benevolence and firmness, while remaining true to themselves.

How did you discover NUMA and why did you choose to run our training courses? 

I was put in touch with NUMA four years ago by Younes El Garti, my former COO, who knew the team, to support Orange employees as part of a mentoring program, Engage Up. Initially focused on mentoring, my collaboration with NUMA began with this professional development program, during which I accompanied a cohort of a dozen sales managers for six months. I loved the experience! I then decided to broaden the scope of my involvement by running NUMA workshops. The content and formats are very well designed. I would have loved to have had access to this kind of training when I was employed. 

How do you draw on your professional experience to run training courses?

For more than twenty years in the various positions I've held, I've been involved in recruiting and developing the skills of junior profiles, particularly during the creation of Balinea. When I sold the company in 2019, some of the team were still there, having started out as trainees, aged just 20 and with no previous experience. Accompanying these young talents in their evolution towards managerial roles, or supporting managers in their development of managerial skills, is undoubtedly one of the achievements I'm most proud of. This collective dimension, where everyone contributes to the company's growth and develops personally, is very important to me. In fact, it's this philosophy that I apply on a daily basis, and that I find again as a trainer at NUMA.

What do you think is the key to successful training? 

I consider a training course to be successful when a genuine bond is formed between the participants, and they look forward to each session because they know they'll have the opportunity to exchange ideas in an open and transparent way. The fact that they are in the presence of a speaker from outside their company facilitates this openness, and enables them to share elements that they might be reluctant to broach in another context. It is this quality of exchange and transparency that makes a training course a success. 

Is there an approach that you usually favor in your training sessions?

I make the training materials my own and adapt them in my own way, using my own words and style. Then I create a real bond between the participants and make each session highly interactive. It's not uncommon for some people to be more inclined to express themselves than others, so it's a real challenge to actively involve all participants, even the most reserved. This sometimes means asking them specifically for their opinion or position on a subject. This approach is highly effective in encouraging their participation.