1995 KEDGE graduate Delphine de Corta (Destouches) launched WoM Consulting on 21 March 2019 after having been incubated by the Fondation Entreprendre in 2019

To begin, tell us about your educational background. What did you study, both before and at KEDGE?

I passed my leaving exams in sciences and then did a year of prep courses in Paris. I started at KEDGE and 1993 and specialised in audit and finance, which was the strongest subject at the time and had excellent teachers, Mr Regnard in Finance and Mr Alain Sussan in Accounting. When I returned to Paris, I continued went on and got a postgraduate degree in Corporate Finance and Financial Engineering at the University of Paris Dauphine. The AIESEC Chicago project at KEDGE planted two seeds in me:  an entrepreneurial fibre and a desire to work for entrepreneurs.

Tell us what you did after your studies were finished. What positions have you held? What did you learn in those positions?

I was lucky enough to have a series of very good internships which greatly contributed to completing my double degree with a lot of requirements from my bosses who came from the top schools and often had dual-degrees (engineering + MBA from Polytechnique, IEP, ENA, or an MBA from the US).

When my studies finished, the internship I had in private equity at Astorg turned into a fixed-term contract, it wouldn’t have been able to offer me a permanent contract in its foreseeable future. So I went to work in the finance department of Cegetel, the telecom subsidiary of Vivendi. My job was to develop the group's telecom division. After working 18 months at Cegetel, the partners at Astorg called me to ask me back to work on their first Leveraged buyout (LBO) and Leverage Build Up (LBU) funds and I was immediately enthusiastic about the project. I loved that job. I never got bored, but it was very demanding and sometimes incompatible with having a family. So I left them after my second child with dismay and got a job with Société Générale Assurances to select multi-management funds for various savings clients.

Then my husband was transferred from Holland and Belgium and we settled near Antwerp where I learned Flemish. For reasons related to one of our children, we had to move to Brussels where I immediately wanted to work. Unfortunately, the financial crisis shattered the company my husband worked for and we returned to Paris in a hurry around Easter 2009. I had wanted to set up my own company ever since I had left Astorg, but had imposed a lot of limitations on myself linked to the impostor syndrome suffered by a lot of women.

As my husband’s job was threatened, I preferred to take precautions and I went to work for AG2R LA MONDIALE as a manager in the financial department. I was in charge of implementing the Pillar 3 reporting requirements of Solvency II for the whole group, reintroducing real estate assistance in the unit-linked products, and launching a private equity offer in the unit-linked products for the private bank partners. I took part in an intrapreneurs' workshop to prepare for my departure, and by chance, I was chased by a large family office company for a marketing director position. That didn't work out but it paved the way for this opportunity to create my own consulting company.

WoM Consulting offers its clients, whom it calls its "companions on the road", its specialised expertise to help them roll out their projects, particularly in the strategic and financial areas. At the core of WoM Consulting is the selection of projects that are in line with the respect of People and the Planet with a 360° vision of their social, societal, environmental, patrimonial, and cultural impacts. Its goal is to transmit its expertise to the youngest of among us who will join this movement in the same spirit that I was given, as well as to share the expertise I gained during my different professional experiences. 

WOM CONSULTING BROCHURE     NEWSLETTER - APRIL 2021

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