Interview in the July 2024 World Class Newsletter – Harvard Law School

The president of Albatross Foundation and Albatross Legal was interviewed for Harvard Law School’s World Class News Letter published in July 2024:

“Whatever we wanted to do was possible”

Ghislaine Bouillet Cordonnier LL.M. ’90

As an LL.M. student, Ghislaine was “very driven towards a career as a corporate finance lawyer,” focusing her coursework on finance, securities regulation and company law. These courses helped her to complete her Ph.D. in corporate finance and venture capital. Looking back, she feels that she should have taken courses to expand her spirit and openness, noting that at an LL.M. ’90 reunion last May in Madrid gathering classmates from 23 countries, several of them were still talking about the “Thinking about Thinking” class they took with Professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger LL.M. ’70 S.J.D. ’76. That said, Ghislaine greatly enjoyed the Negotiation Workshop course with Professor Roger Fisher LL.B. ’48, which included an intensive week-long collaboration between HLS and Harvard Kennedy School in which more than 100 participants, representing their home countries, read, analyzed, voted on, and defended their positions on the environmental questions that would be discussed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

“Of course, the LL.M. presented an incredible opportunity to learn both from great professors and from our classmates and opened doors to an unparalleled international network,” Ghislaine observes. “But we took away much more than that: we also became more daring. The people around us showed us that whatever we wanted to do was possible. That was a great lesson in life. It gave us tremendous energy to think outside the box and to never take ‘no’ as an answer.”

After graduation, Ghislaine passed the New York Bar and forged broader connections among alumni, practicing in Washington, D.C. Working closely with a classmate, Christian Buehling-Uhle LL.M. ’90, and with support from lawyers in her professional network (including former U.S. Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman, Jr. JD ’46, and Ibrahim Shihata S.J.D. ’64 and Herbert Morais LL.M. ’67 S.J.D. ’72 of the World Bank), she co-founded the International Section of the Harvard Law School Association, which was launched in 1991.

“I really wanted to travel around the world, in part because of my involvement with the International Section,” she recalls. Over the next 30 years, Ghislaine passed the Paris Bar and worked with a law firm in France, the World Bank in Africa, UNESCO in Cambodia, an electronic/nuclear company and INSEAD in Singapore, and ultimately as senior vice president and general counsel – Asia Pacific with Solvay, a Belgian multinational specialty chemical company, in China. Along the way, she and her husband adopted four children. “The children were complaining, because I was traveling all the time. And my oldest, Lucille, who was 10 at the time, said “Mommy, you are here with your environmental talk at home, but you work with a heavy industry company.’ So I followed her advice!”

Ghislaine launched her first CSR project at Solvay, training its employees to work with children and teach them about environmental issues. “We were getting some worldwide attention and creating momentum because of the launch of the initiative during World Expo 2010 in Shanghai under the auspices of the President of France himself,” she recalls. After that, she decided to devote herself to similar endeavors full time.

In 2014, Ghislaine and her family returned to France where she founded the Albatross Foundation, a non-profit focused on education of youth on sustainable development. Among its various projects, the foundation trains trainers on the environment, produces children’s books, teaches children about sustainable agriculture in its Eco-labelled garden, and has developed Saphir, a free mobile app (in collaboration with CNRS/National Research Centre of France and the King Beaudoin Foundation). It has engaged with more than 15,000 young people in France, China, and Brazil. Notably, many of Ghislaine’s LL.M. classmates have contributed to the foundation’s work, for example by supporting the multilingual translations, helping with the Saphir app and serving on the board and in advisory capacities.

Ghislaine has set up other enterprises, including Albatrosslegal.org, a probono legal platform that won the Pro Bono Trophy of the Paris Bar. She also founded Create2donate.org, a philanthropic e-commerce platform. Artists that have supported this work include the famous Paris jeweler Philippe Tournaire, who created an “Albacoin” pendant.

A once-vacant 17th-century chateau in the Loire Valley now serves as the family’s home, the Albatross Foundation’s headquarters, an Airbnb providing financial support for the foundation, and an educational garden where children come for programs on sustainable agriculture. Ghislaine’s work with the foundation reflects just how transformative the LL.M. is : “After all,” Ghislaine laughs, “it made me daring enough to quit my job as a senior VP, with expat amenities, to open a non-profit and of course with my husband adopt four fabulous children.”