\n<\/p>\n
\n\tPRAISING PATRICE:<\/strong> The French American Chamber of Commerce Foundation did more than honor Patrice Louvet, chief executive officer of Ralph Lauren Corp., at its annual gala in New York Monday night.<\/p>\n \n\tIt stirred up some clearly poignant memories for the CEO, who began his remarks at the event with a confession.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe first time I came to America, I actually did not want to come,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was 1974. I was 9. And my brother Didier, who is here tonight, was 6. Our father\u2019s work took our family from Saint-Cloud, just outside of Paris, to a little town in New Jersey called Princeton.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI had friends, a school, activities, a whole world I understood,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd all of it was staying behind.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlthough Louvet spoke no English, Princeton gradually became a home that offered a new angle on his native country.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLooking back across the Atlantic, I saw France more clearly than I ever had from inside it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no substitute for living, working and connecting in another culture. Sitting somewhere else in the world, your whole perspective shifts.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou learn resilience, because adversity is part of the journey,\u201d he said. \u201cYou learn agility, because you have to adapt. And above all, you learn to listen. That is empathy. All of that makes us better leaders and, I would argue, better people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLouvet left, but came back to the U.S. in his early 20s to get an MBA and then started his three-decade career at Procter & Gamble, which saw him working in seven countries across three continents.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEach one was foreign on the first day,\u201d he said. \u201cEach one with its unique challenges and lessons. Each one became home.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs CEO at Ralph Lauren, Louvet now oversees teams around the world that have been shaped by different cultures and he regularly uses a skill he started to learn as a 9-year-old in New Jersey: the ability to listen before he speaks.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis matters now more than ever,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have never been more connected, and it has never been easier to assume we understand one another. You can see the whole world on a screen. You can even create a companion with AI. But understanding another culture is still earned the good old-fashioned way. In person, in a classroom, around a dinner table, in a city that is not yet your own. That is what this foundation makes possible.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe event supports students in the Serge Bellanger French-American Business Scholarship Program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n PRAISING PATRICE: The French American Chamber of Commerce Foundation did more than honor Patrice Louvet, chief executive officer of Ralph Lauren Corp., at its annual gala in New York Monday night. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wom.beauty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"