Meet Guillemette Picard, Member of the National Council for AI and Digital Technology in France, and tech executive. With a career spanning healthcare, energy, and video games, she works at the intersection of technology and business transformation. In this interview, Guillemette reflects on AI's societal impact, navigating digital sovereignty in Europe, and the importance of female representation in tech leadership.

Interviewed by Nafisa Raihana

You have worked in tech across different sectors like energy, healthcare, and video gaming. What is your focus today?

While the sectors I have worked in are quite diverse, I have always been a tech executive. This is something I very much enjoy doing, whether it is with an incumbent company or with a challenger. What I’m really driven by is how technology fundamentally transforms business.

Technology has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, but the last four have been truly game-changing, with far-reaching social impacts. In this context, my work has expanded beyond operational deployment. Today, beside acting as an operating partner and board member for tech scale-ups, I have also joined France’s National Council for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology (Conseil de l'intelligence artificielle et du numérique or CIANum) to contribute to the analysis of societal and economic impacts of innovative technology on the country.

The council was formed in September 2025, operating as an independent, multidisciplinary body of 15 volunteers, co-chaired by Anne Bouverot, who is also a WIL Member, and Guillaume Poupard. We advise the French government on AI and digital policy and inform public debate to ensure citizens are well-informed and have a say in this conversation. As volunteers, members of the Council are able to provide independent opinions and recommendations on the societal, economic, and territorial impacts of new technologies. That’s how we contribute to shaping France’s position on AI both nationally and internationally.

As a member of France's National Council for AI and Digital, you are at the forefront of shaping AI adoption on a national level. How do you work with this college of experts to support France’s national AI adoption? What areas especially matter to you?

Among a variety of topics that the Council works on, digital sovereignty is one of our key priorities. The US government’s overnight suspension of foreign access to Anthropic’s “Fable 5” model, that happened the night before this, is another wake-up call for Europe and its businesses, exposing the dependence on non‑European systems. Europe, and particularly France, has the necessary talent, knowledge and investment capacity, but we need to move faster. As mentioned in the Draghi report on the future of EU competitiveness published in September 2024, Europe requires a roadmap that accepts the trade-offs, focuses on strategic investments and works together as a united front with a common voice, in order to invest fully in technology, nurture our talents and make sure that we have an “European preference” across the Union.   

The second topic that I would like to highlight, which is also a personal concern of mine, is the relationship between education and AI. On 22^nd June, the Council has published its latest Report –Harnessing AI for a new ambition of the educational system. Working on this report, I had the great opportunity to interview practitioners in education sciences, cognitive sciences, ed-tech, as well as teachers and members of national education systems, both in France and abroad. The report features 11 recommendations on how to prepare our education system in the new are, including ensuring that teachers are trained, deploying a “dual education” system with both AI-free and AI-supported learning, rethinking student evaluation, and establishing frameworks to assess Ed-Tech tools.

The third topic that has motivated me to join this Council is disinformation. This is expected to be a highly relevant topic and a real concern in the coming months as we enter the election year in France. This topic lies at the intersection of technology and socio-economic impacts and is moving extremely fast in terms of both attack and defense. Therefore, I am looking forward to dedicating more effort to addressing disinformation.

Europe requires a roadmap that accepts the trade-offs, focuses on strategic investments and works together as a united front with a common voice, in order to invest fully in technology, nurture our talents and make sure that we have an “European preference” across the Union. 

During your tenure as Senior Vice President of Production Technology at Ubisoft, generative AI fundamentally reshaped the gaming industry. How did this specific industry know-how inform your perspective on the deployment of AI in mature companies?

Having worked in digital transformation for 20 years in companies of different sizes, I find this to be one of the most challenging demands since this technology moves so fast and will drastically change the business. For mature companies, it is extremely difficult to ensure that they have the agility and capacity to integrate those technologies, while still maintaining business operations, industry know-how and employees' engagement.  

One of the important elements when integrating AI is ensuring the integrity of the company’s fundamental values.  For a news company, for example, those values lie in public trust, while for a creative company such as Ubisoft, the core value is creativity. Building the roadmap towards digital transformation is first based on this compass to preserve companies’ value.

Secondly, deploying AI across selected business activities will be driven by productivity and quality, as AI industrialized at scale can be a powerful lever to accelerate them. This has to be jointly developed with new products and new business models. They must be thought differently and given enough priority as they are the future of the company.

Last, companies must also maintain a systematic watch externally on the evolution of technology and offer necessary training for their employees in order to move beyond experimenting and to operate and deploy those technologies at scale. That requires strong involvement vertically across the company, from top management to individual employees. It is a challenging yet fascinating moment to be a tech leader in a mature company, as we have to navigate between the speed of AI development, the company’s own pace of adoption and sound decision-making in terms of the model in use.

One of the most important elements when integrating AI is ensuring the integrity of the company’s fundamental values.

Besides your work in the public sector, you have also acted as a board member for mature tech companies and an operating partner for emerging startups. How do you adapt your approach to different leadership teams when aligning technology strategies with business goals?

Mature companies and start-ups are two completely different environments to operate in, and that impacts how we approach and deploy AI.

For mature companies, AI is now a “board topic”, as any other strategic topic. It touches HR and deployment, AI  governance and  security , as well as business disruption.  They have to act as a strong supporter and a strong challenger of the CEO depending on different contexts of AI deployment.

Meanwhile, for emerging start-ups, especially those that are natively built on generative AI, they have no choice but to move really fast. The key challenge there is being extremely vigilant about the tech stack, fine-tuning the right model for the right use case, and staying on top of the search for computing power. From a governance point of view, the question over token optimisation and compute consumption monitoring is constituting a new and complex dynamic for board members.

You hold an engineering degree from École Polytechnique and a PhD from ESPCI Paris. How does this highly technical background help you translate rigorous data into actionable decisions with policymakers?

As technology develops, transdisciplinary is a necessary skill in order to be impactful today. It is important to sufficiently understand what is being deployed from a scientific and technical point of view. This can range from how an AI system works, what is the basis of a tech stack, the delivery cost of a data centre to broader knowledge of use cases and relevant regulations.

Grasping the full interdisciplinary complexity of AI is also a new necessity of the current time to deliver relevant advice to the government and the public sector. Being both an engineer and a doctor has certainly helped me do that.

Your career began internationally in the United States before transitioning to the French technology market and public policy sphere. From this global perspective, how can France and Europe attract and retain talents in STEM and empower the next generation of leaders, especially women?

Retaining our talents is highly critical, and we have an incredible pool of talents in France and across Europe. However, attracting and retaining women to the STEM sector is a more pressing concern now than ever.

Over my career, I have seen a slow but steady trend of more women coming into leadership positions. In the past few years, however, working with tech companies, scale-ups, and investors, I have observed that this trend is not as optimistic as it was. According to a 2025 report from McKinsey, female employees accounted for only 19% of core tech roles across Europe, which was a 3-point decrease from the year before. This gap continues to widen as women move up the organisational ladder, with just 13% of women in tech management roles and 8% in senior management roles.  

This is why I want to continue bringing female voices to the forefront of the technological and AI conversations and supporting this movement of empowering women in STEM via the National Council as well as a number of other initiatives including WIL Europe. For this trend to continue moving in a positive direction, we must adopt an inclusive mindset both locally and globally on a daily basis.

I want to continue bringing female voices to the forefront of the technological and AI conversations and supporting this movement of empowering women in STEM via the National Council as well as a number of other initiatives including WIL Europe.