Clémentine Olivier
Clémentine Olivier is an international lawyer and cybersecurity expert with 30 years of experience in leading humanitarian organizations. She served as Deputy Legal Director at Médecins Sans Frontières and is a legal adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross, where she also mentors early-career professionals.
Her commitment began at 24, on the ground in Bosnia, then Rwanda, in the heart of active conflicts — shaping her ability to balance legal rigor, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence.
She believes that transmitting hard-won experience to the next generation is not just a responsibility — it is her deepest calling. It is this conviction that led her to become a certified Co-Active™ coach and to found BIVOUAC™ and BIVOUAC™ l'Odyssée — two coaching programs built on 30 years of fieldwork experience, designed to help professionals find their place in the humanitarian world.
Keynote
Before You Go: Why Knowing Your Limits Is the Most Professional Thing You Can Do
Friday, April 10 @6am EDT / 12pm CET / 1pm EAT
This is a talk for people drawn to humanitarian work — whether they're just starting out or already in the field.
Not a recruitment pitch. Not an inspirational story. Something rarer: an honest conversation about what it actually takes to last in this sector.
Drawing on 30 years of experience and interviews with senior figures from MSF, UNICEF and UNRWA, Clémentine Olivier dismantles three myths that put humanitarian workers at risk — the idea that it's a calling, that it will fix you, or that courage alone is enough.
She talks about the psychological risks nobody warns you about. She asks the questions most people only think to ask too late: What do I actually bring? What are my real limits? What is my life outside this work?
And she addresses something almost never said out loud in this sector — that your personal life is a project too, and that leaving it to chance is a choice with consequences.
The talk ends with a practical tool: a personal charter — three questions you can answer this week, before you commit to anything.
For who: aspiring humanitarian workers, people in mid-career transition, organisations that care about sustainable field deployments, and anyone who has ever wondered whether they are going for the right reasons.