The board of the association consists of the Chairman, the two vice-chairs, the treasurer and the managing director.
It watches on the implementation of the decisions of the board of directors and of the general assembly, monitors the implementation of the bylaws as well as the compliance with the chart of ethics.
It is in charge of the preparation of the board of directors meetings, rule on the standard communication topics and follow up the expenses.
Chairman
A chief civil engineer, Xavier Piechaczyk is a graduate of the state-run public works engineering school and holds a master’s degree in civil engineering, as well as possessing a doctoral degree in political science.
From 2007 to 2009, he worked for the Ministry of the Environment where he was in charge of developing and modernising road infrastructure. He was then appointed deputy director of transportation services, in charge of regulating land transport and the district authority.
In 2012, he was appointed Advisor to the Prime Minister in charge of energy, the environment, transport, housing and urban policy.
From 2014 to September 2015, he served as Advisor to the French President on the same topics.
1st Vice-Chair
An engineer from the Ecole Spéciale de Mécanique et d’Electricité, Hervé Champenois, began his career with EDF in 1991 in the Picardie area in operations, then held various operational positions in the regions over 15 years.
In 2005, he became EDF Deputy Director for the Guadeloupe region.
In 2009, he joined Enedis, where he spent 5 years as Regional Director in the Burgundy area, then 4 years as Principal Private Secretarty of the President’s Office.
In 2018, he took over the management of the Linky program.
In 2020, he joined the Enedis Managing Board as Director of the Performance Program and Simplification & Coordination of the Linky Program.
He contributed to move the public electricity distribution network towards greater digitalization, serving the ecological transition.
2nd Vice-Chair
Hugues de Bantel is the co-founder and CEO of the company Cosmo Tech.
He holds an MBA from IMD Lausanne and is graduated of Neoma Business School. He has worked in start-ups as well as large groups, in Europe, but also in North America and Asia. At Cosmo Tech, Hugues contributed to the emergence of enhanced intelligence solutions dedicated to energy networks, particularly in the context of smart energy planning, management and optimization of network assets. These solutions go beyond the limits of Big Data and artificial intelligence to help decision-makers take optimal decisions about more complex systems they have to manage.
Managing director
A graduate of the Institut Supérieur de l’Electronique et du Numérique, Régis Le Drézen began his career with the EDF group in 2000, in charge of protection systems for high and very high voltage lines and the RTE (French TSO) acoustics laboratory. Two years later, he joined the integrated company EDF GDF Services where he contributed to major telecom infrastructure projects linked to the deregulation of the energy market.
In 2011, he was appointed technical director of Smart Grid Vendée, then one of the most ambitious smart grid projects in France. In 2015, he was appointed Director of Enedis in the Vendée region, and in 2018 he joined the Enedis electric mobility project, where he was in charge of preparing the future, development and innovation, at the heart of a new ecosystem bringing together energy, digital and the automotive world. He was appointed General Delegate of Think Smartgrids in March 2022.
Treasurer
Rodolphe de Beaufort is Deputy General Delegate of Gimelec, a professional association of the electronic industry.
An engineer by training, Rodolphe de Beaufort worked at Alstom and then GE Grid Solutions, as Smart Grids marketing director. He then was appointed digital director at Tilia to work on digital transformation and ecological transition issues for heat and electricity network operators, as well as for local authorities. He joined Gimelec in June 2019.