Business address
MAUD FONTENOY FOUNDATION – La Maison
Champs-Elysées – 8, rue Jean Goujon – 75008 Paris
Expertise and experience
Maud Fontenoy is a sailor, known for her multiple accomplishments and firsts for women in solo navigation, both in rowing and sailing. She is an Ambassador of the French Education and Youth Ministry, dedicated to ocean and coastline conservation and coastal school trips. She is President of the Maud Fontenoy Foundation, a former spokeswoman of UNESCO’s oceanographic commission, an expert in sustainable development, a lecturer and an author of books and documentaries devoted to the oceans and conservation. Maud Fontenoy is committed to the fi ght for environment protection and particularly the protection of oceans and coastlines. Her objective for more than 20 years has been to raise wide-scale awareness about protecting the planet.
Barely 7 days old, Maud Fontenoy embarked on the family schooner. The fi rst 15 years of her life were spent on the open sea, learning how to navigate, and getting to understand nature and the sea. At the age of 25, she decided to make her dreams come true by heading out to sea again. That was the beginning of five years of maritime and human adventures. In 2003, she embarked on a solo North Atlantic crossing without assistance – the fi rst woman to do so – that she completed in four months. Two years later, she carried out a similar feat in the Pacifi c crossing from Peru to the Marquesas Islands, following which she was
elected personality of the year by Time Magazine.
In 2007, Maud Fontenoy set off from Reunion Island to sail around the world against prevailing currents and without assistance. She completed her tour 150 days later having crossed three capes and narrowly escaping dismasting.
Having spent more time at sea than on land, she never ceases to talk about the visible effects of pollution and global warming on the oceans that she knows well. Supported by scientists, and through the actions she leads within the framework of her foundation, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Maud seeks to hand down values to the younger generation and give them a straightforward “user’s manual’ so that sustainable development can become part of everyone’s daily life and that ecology can go hand in hand with the economy.
She currently advises a number of companies on these issues and advocates a realistic and pragmatic approach to ecology.
In 2007, Maud was named Knight of the National Order of Merit and Knight of the Order of Maritime Merit.
Positions currently held
None
Other positions and offices held (in France)
Maud Fontenoy Foundation, President