Continuing our "Talent from ECAM" series, we wanted to share this seventh portrait with you.

Through this video and article, we'd like to highlight the profile and career path of Hervé KLECZWESKI (ECAM 86).

Hervé KLECZWESKI looks back on his career and experience as an ECAM engineer and entrepreneur, from his graduation to the success of his entrepreneurial project and the start of his career in the professional world, in an interview with Baptiste Montrocher.

Watch the video interview on our Youtube channel: https: //youtu.be/3J5idnyjuDc?si=z3Vefinfml5fepom

Enjoy your reading!

Baptiste Montrocher: Hervé, can you tell us about your background?

Hervé KLECZEWSKI: Hello, my name is Hervé KLECZEWSKI, and I'm actually from ECAM 86, back in the last century for those who remember, when there was no Internet, no computer, no cell phone.

That's how I started my career, and so I've had the chance to work on 1,000 projects, in many different industrial environments, to imagine and design new products with "design to cost", with innovation.

And that's how I came to create WAOUP, which is actually a company that makes boxes.

Baptiste: What does ECAM LaSalle engineering mean to you?

Hervé : First of all, it's being an engineer. I think we're a little quick to forget that we actually hold in our hands the knowledge that has been passed down to us for generations. "Jean Buisset used to say, "An engineer is someone who passes on everything he has been taught to the future and to young people.

That's very important to me, so it's the ability to move in a technological, technical and human world.

and to finally be able to assemble all these bricks to build, imagine the future and, above all, get all the people who collaborate behind us.

An extremely important point that is often overlooked is that ECAM training is profoundly humanistic.

Respect and benevolence towards others is fundamental.
I think this is undoubtedly a key differentiator from other schools.

When you spot, smell or meet someone, you know right away if they're ECAM LaSalle.

Baptiste: What role does networking play in your life?

Hervé : I don't know what other people are like, but I can only live through a relationship with others.

For me, a network is first and foremost the ability to exchange, build and collaborate. Whether it's with the ECAM alumni network, but also with young people who aren't yet ECAM alumni, or in fact with all the people around us.

We're constantly coming together to imagine, create and design things that will serve our future generations.

Collaboration and networking go hand in hand, and for me it's a fundamental part of my life and my whole life.

Baptiste: Who inspired you along the way?

Hervé : The first person who inspired me was the man who helped me become an engineer. Because without him, I couldn't have done it. It was none other than my grandfather, who, because I was a bit of a tinkerer, ingenious and always creative when I was little, always said "Hervé, you're terribly ingenious". As far as I'm concerned, when you're ten years old, ingenious-engineer, it's the same root. And for me, it means the same thing.

And very naturally, I ended up choosing to become an engineer, without really knowing what that meant. Especially at the age of ten. You know a bit more when you leave ECAM and after 25 or 30 years of professional life, you really know what an engineer is.

The second person who inspired me was undoubtedly the person who welcomed us to ECAM. His name was Jean Bouisset. What I loved about him was that he was always mixing theoretical input - he was an electrical engineering teacher, if you remember - with very humanistic input, giving us moral lessons.

And finally, I think that's the most sincere part of what I learned at ECAM, to have other people's experiences read to me through letters that he would read to us live, making us believe that alumni had written to him simply to tell us what life was like.

I think these are the two people who inspired me the most. In any case, they're the ones who built me up to get to you.

Baptiste: ECAM engineer but also co-founder of WAOUP?

Hervé : For those who don't know WAOUP yet, it's a movement of people committed to reinventing the world and overcoming all the crises and challenges that lie ahead.

So we created this with Emmanuel GONON, with the crazy idea of saying let's all get together, let's work together to imagine, in start-up mode, new businesses, new business models that are much more virtuous, much more responsible, to change this world.

And I think that's a bit of the WAOUP trademark, daring to do the impossible for real, to be as concrete as possible, whether inside a startup studio that enables us to imagine the missing links, the new businesses, those that will ultimately regenerate our world, or with companies, our activity, more consulting.

We're going to help these companies innovate in a different way, in a more responsible way, in a more sustainable way, to finally improve and change this dull and destroyed world for some, which seems rather wonderful to me: so many opportunities, so many things to do to decarbonize it, to make it more responsible, to make it greener.

And that's part of the WAOUP story: daring to take on challenges that seem impossible today.

Baptiste: What are you particularly proud of?

Hervé : In fact, we're all proud of it as individuals, but for me it's more collective.

First of all, as far as my family is concerned, I've been lucky enough to have a wife and three children, including a daughter who collaborates and works with me today. So I'm proud to be a dad.

I'm also proud to have created this desire and this approach around myself. We have collaborators at WAOUP, we have a whole ecosystem that we've built up around us. In fact, we don't surround ourselves. In fact, we provide services and give before we take. And that's how you end up creating your own network. The network of your life, the one that allows you to evolve and to help others evolve.

So I'm particularly proud of all the people I've attracted or drained around me and with whom I collaborate every day.

Baptiste: Do you have any advice for younger ECAM Alumni members?

Hervé : So I've got lots of advice for young people. Dare! Dare to change the world that's in front of you, don't accept anything against your values, don't trade any compromise for money. I think the world needs a lot more, and I think you're here, you're this new generation, you're here to reimagine, to reinvent. We're in a rather peculiar situation, coming on the heels of many crises. I think there are unimaginable opportunities for ECAM LaSalle engineers.

Come on, we need you and we'll always be there to help.

Baptiste: Any final words?

Hervé : To conclude, I think we're all aware that we're living in rather extraordinary times. We've been through a lot of crises over the last two or three years, which can turn a lot of people upside down. But I think there's one incredible thing, and that's humanity. And I think that if we manage to come together, if we manage to collaborate together and if we manage to reimagine a bit the world we want to have.

Well, actually, there are plenty of opportunities. We just have to decide to do it together.

Baptiste: Thanks Hervé!

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