Dr. Vanessa Scherrer joined the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris on 8 February 2024 as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Foundation.
Before this, Dr. Scherrer was the Vice President for International Affairs of Sciences Po, and a member of the institution's executive committee and academic committee.
Driven by an unwavering commitment to the values of international openness and a strategic vision of France's academic influence, she has implemented projects to attract and welcome international students and defended the importance of international student mobility, even at the height of the pandemic. Renowned for her diplomatic skills and her ability to form and lead groups and major networks, she steered the creation of the European University of the Social Sciences (CIVICA, Erasmus+), whose executive committee she has chaired since its creation in 2019, as well as the U7+ Alliance launched by a group of French universities during the French presidency of the G7. She also helped launch the Paris Peace Forum, of which she has been a member of the executive committee since 2018 and was one of its first two vice-presidents.
Vanessa Scherrer began her career in the United States (2001-2010), at Columbia University (New York), where she founded and then directed the "Alliance" programme, which since 2002 has united Columbia University with the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, the École Polytechnique and Sciences Po, with the support of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Dr. Scherrer holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po (2006). She lives in Paris with her husband and their four children.