Mario Varvoglis

Boosting innovation, empowering people through creative leadership and design

Paris, Île-de-France, France

About

Be creative! Think outside the box! Innovate! I help organizations move from discourse to practice - fostering the emergence of new ideas, their cross-pollination and maturation, their implementation as value-add innovations and sustainable transformations. I'm convinced that each and every one of us today needs to learn how to think, to see and to move forward differently. This is what led me to introduce Designing Your Life, Stanford University's self-leadership method, at the crossroads of Design Thinking and positive psychology, to France. It is a method that has changed the lives of thousands of students, independent professionals and organisations such as Google, Bain, Slack, Spotify, Pinterest and Continental. LifeDesign workshops are dedicated to what was once called soft skills, but that are in fact, 'power skills': empathy, creativity, the growth mindset, discernment, agility, resilience. I have worked with more than a hundred French and international organizations, both public and private: coaching executives, designing and facilitating innovation processes, training teams in collaborative creativity methods. I also teach innovation to executive networks (APM, Germe), universities and business schools (HEC, Paris-Descartes, EHESP). And, on another note... After obtaining my Ph.D. in experimental psychology, I spent a number of years conducting research at a prominent Princeton laboratory, focusing on topics that fascinated me - intuition, nonverbal forms of communication, and exceptional experiences. I've kept my original passion and research activities alive, as President of the Institut Métapsychique International, a 100-year old non-profit foundation and the sole French center dedicated to the scientific study of exceptional human experience.

Experience

  • Partner, Coach & Facilitator at Designing Your Life@Work
    Mar 2020 - Present · 6 yrs 4 mos

    Focused on empowering people to thrive through use of design tools, frameworks and mindsets, we create and teach workshops for people and companies around the globe. The world is changing fast, and Design Thinking is one of the best processes we know to tackle tough problems and hard choices. Our goal: to share the principles of the Life Design method, developed at Stanford University so that people can navigate a VUCA world with creativity, agency, and confidence. (VUCA = volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)

  • Founding Partner at Mario Varvoglis et Associés
    Jun 2011 - Present · 15 yrs 1 mo

  • Expert GERME - Groupes d'Entraînement et de Réflexion au Management des Entreprises at Germe, le réseau de progrès des managers
    Jan 2000 - Present · 26 yrs 6 mos

  • Senior Consultant CEN at CENTRE EUROPÉEN DE LA NÉGOCIATION
    Sep 2000 - Present · 25 yrs 10 mos

  • Expert APM - Association Progrès du Management at APM - Association Progrès du Management
    Jan 2001 - Feb 2025 · 24 yrs 2 mos

    Expert créativité organisationnelle, innovation participative. Plus de 120 interventions pour l'APM