William Louis-Marie

France

Director General of the International Squash Federation (World Squash)

After starting at Coca-Cola, William Louis-Marie notably worked at the Baku 2015 European Games, where he held the role of communications director, before joining AIBA in Lausanne, as communications director in initially, then as general manager. Since last December, he has held the position of Director General of the International Squash Federation (World Squash), a strong body of 150 member countries, in charge of a discipline which has 10 to 15 million regular practitioners around the world. .

1) Since you started professionally, what has been the most significant experience of your career? 

William Louis-Marie : My career was built around meetings or events linked to sport. I wanted to become a sports journalist, but my career began in communications. The events that had the most impact on me all have symbolic and historical value. My first Olympic Games, in 1996 in Atlanta, where I took care of the French-speaking press for Coca-Cola: Muhammad Ali, surely the greatest sportsman in history, lighting the Olympic flame, then the patriotic emotion of the Olympic medals. the gold of Marie-José Perec, or the world records of Michael Johnson (with whom I had the chance to have dinner 20 years later in Baku during the first European Games). Two years later, the 1998 Football World Cup and the immense joy and pride of having worked for Coca-Cola while supporting the France team. But the operations involving young people had an even greater impact on me: the programs around the first flag bearers and ball boys at the 1998 World Cup in France, a tennis exhibition with Yannick Noah in Ivory Coast for an association that I supported, the meeting of a young Scot with the world heavyweight champion Vladimir Klitschko when I was executive director of AIBA… I realized on these different occasions the full impact of sport on the lives of young people.

2) How do you understand, in your role within World Squash, the current economic situation and the uncertainty of the months to come? 

The sporting world has completely stopped. More than 23.000 events were postponed or canceled this past spring alone. All international federations have had to redefine their calendar, support their members in difficulty, reassure athletes, find innovative solutions to ensure continuity of their activities. We also had to review our way of working, using digital technology and videoconferencing. Squash, due to its specificity, will have a slower recovery, especially at the competition level. We immediately collaborated with our various commissions, but also with the Professional Players Association (PSA), to involve them and produce protocols allowing the resumption of our discipline in compliance with the restrictions imposed by local authorities. The difficulty for an international federation is to respond to all its members who are faced with very varied economic, health, political and regulatory contexts. A blanket approach no longer works. However, we must very quickly project ourselves and envisage our sport of tomorrow by listening to our partners, by collaborating with the organizers of multisport events and by being close to our members. Listen, evaluate, adapt and plan are our key words at the moment.

3) How would you define the way you exercise your leadership role?

I asked myself what the meaning of my role was, what are the values ​​of the federation that I represent, what the members of World Squash, my teams, expect of me, while we are dependent on the evolution of a virus unknown less than a year ago. And then, a question transcends our own functions: what is the role of sport in our society, when human lives are at stake. We must give meaning to our actions, be able to trust even more because the solution will not be not necessarily the one we had envisaged. Reassuring, understanding, supporting and guiding remain essential axes for a leader in this period of general doubt.

4) What are the three most important values ​​to you in your professional activity?

When you lead any company, you must be in tune with its values. However, today we are faced with a more global questioning of our universal values. The impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement also forces us to think about how sport helps make the world a better place. Sport has been a tremendous vector of emancipation for many men and women, but it has also been widely used for purposes of discrimination, the inferiorization of women and the racialization of individuals. The most important values ​​in my eyes are humility, exemplarity and tolerance. They must help us build an environment that is more respectful of our planet and more in tune with the evolution of our world and the expectations of its citizens.