Guila KESSOUS

Bio

Guila Clara Kessous is a Peace Ambassador, UNESCO Artist for Peace and an executive coach specialized in women empowerment. As a recipient of an Executive MBA from ESSEC Business School, she has been coaching executive committees, senior executives and managers for more than 15 years in the context of leading change, taking over a position and developing strategy. She has coached more than 500 leaders in France and abroad in both private and public sectors on positive leadership issues. She taught at Harvard Kennedy School, the Political Sciences Institute of Paris and HEC Paris. Her current research focuses on Key Behavioral Indicators (KBIs) and burn out in the workplace. Women’s role and their relationship to leadership is her expertise that she develops and embodies as a Rising Talent of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. She has created her own methodology and offers dedicated coaching on the notion of “subtle skills that aim at fostering leadership from the heart” (“Heartificial intelligence“). She has published in the Harvard Business Review France and Forbes France. For her work in coaching organizations, she received the “International Thought Leader of Distinction” award 2021 by the prestigious MEECO Leadership Group. She has been nominated by Harvard Business Review France Woman of influence 2022. Dr. Kessous directs as well the International Women’s Rights Day under the high patronage of UNESCO or more than 5 years including prestigious participants such as Nobel Prizes winner Dr. Mukwege and Harvard University Dr. Claudia Goldin. She was knighted by the French government and for her humanitarian work she received the Global Gift Women Empowerment Award from actress Eva Longoria in 2020. In 2023, she met with Pope Francis as well as the Dalai Lama and created the diplomatic alliance called the “Sarah and Hajar Accords”, the feminist version of the Abraham Accords signed by women in the different governments. She is mentioned as the new face of feminist diplomacy and is working on the African Women in Diplomacy project and European Women in Diplomacy project as well.