HEADLINE
Jean-Nicolas Girard
Chief of Staff | Digital Transformation | Strategy & Operations
Crisis-Ready Builder: rescue, build & optimize complex operations
Born in 1976 · French national · Married · Driving licence: B
Based: Clermont-Fd area, Puy-de-Dôme (63) – Auvergne, France
Available for fully remote roles
Open to on-site up to 4 days/month (travel included)
R&D PROJECT – April 2026 – present
Building automations and AI agent teams to solve real difficulties for small corporations to scale without big budgets, with 3 major constraints: sovereignty, resilience, and privacy.
CAREER PAUSE – September 2025 – March 2026
Deliberate reset after 25 years of intensive activity. Personal development work, psychometric self-assessment, and deliberate career direction setting. Fully concluded.
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Senior operations executive with 25 years building and optimizing complex systems in digital environments. Crisis-Proof Builder: enters broken or stagnant operations, diagnoses root causes, redesigns processes, assembles or restructures teams, and leaves systems capable of running without intervention.
Core operating model
- Player-coach mandate – solves hard structural problems personally (player) while developing 5–10 direct reports (coach).
- The Translator: converts executive vision into executable team tasks and field execution into strategic insight.
Founded and scaled Net-iris (legal digital media) to 2.3M monthly users with a 5-person team – no external funding. Led turnarounds, division builds, and multi-stakeholder transformations across B2B SaaS, LegalTech, HealthTech, and EdTech sectors. Practiced Scrum master across multiple mandates (self-trained, applied). GDPR/ePrivacy architect for Vivendi Group (CAC40 standards).
Target mandate: Build+Optimize role in 50–300 person mature scaleup (post-Series B). Remote-first. International or French market.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Ramp-Up Traffic / JN Girard Consulting – Independent Consultant | 2020-2025 (5 years)
Digital strategy, operations & transformation – 30+ clients – Remote
Senior advisor to scale-ups and growth-stage companies on digital operations, content strategy, and organizational performance. Operated as principal on all client relationships – always front-facing in meetings – with specialist subcontractors brought in selectively to scale delivery capacity, briefed and supervised directly.
Selected mandates (representative sample):
- Melty / Reworld Media (18 months – Media): rescued a partially failed platform migration (–25% audience); then built a proprietary editorial prioritization algorithm in direct collaboration with the CEO – became a reusable decision-support tool deployed across 10+ subsequent client engagements; Melty subsequently sold to a media group
- Aprovall (9 months – LegalTech): designed and deployed an AI-assisted content production system in a legally constrained sector – rigorous sourcing and validation process; zero quality rejections by the client’s legal reviewer
- SleepDoctor (21 months – HealthTech): scaled organic traffic from near zero to 60k+ monthly Google clicks; rebuilt the content production model from the ground up – convinced founders to shift from uncontrolled outsourcing to a quality-controlled editorial process, then designed and supervised the new framework with them
- Evaneos (8 months – Travel SaaS): deep competitive benchmarking (FR + DE markets), content asset mapping across a complex multi-technology platform – strategic recommendations adopted by leadership
- Serena Capital (2020–2025): SEO expert advisor to portfolio companies (Wecasa, Joy ex-Privateaser, Brigad, Descartes Underwriting, Work4)
Other notable clients: Adobe, Deel, Habitatpresto (Engie), Kotzilla, LegalPlace, Public, Pretto, Quandela, Sellsy
Simplebo – Head of Marketing & Business Angel | 2022–2023 (1 year)
B2B SaaS – web platform for independent professionals (70 people, 10,000+ clients) – Paris / Remote (hybrid, ~3 days/month on-site)
Joined as interim Marketing Director to build a marketing division from scratch in a company that had only one marketer and an intern. Participated in a funding round as a minor business angel – a deliberate commitment signal, not just a consulting engagement.
- Built the marketing division from zero: audited processes and org gaps, recruited 3 specialists, structured the team around clear roles (SEO, Paid, Content/Social, Automation/Data) – 5-person department fully operational within the mandate
- Cross-functional integration: bridged marketing, sales, business development, and IT – created joint working groups and aligned marketing output directly to commercial lead generation
- AI-assisted content factory: designed and deployed an AI-assisted content production system (human-in-the-loop model) to scale page creation across 10,000+ client sites
- GDPR compliance: extended ePrivacy expertise to Simplébo’s processes as a secondary mandate alongside the core marketing build
MyBestPro (Vivendi Group) – Deputy Director & Management Committee Member | 2012–2022 (10 years)
Digital marketplace group – Clermont-Ferrand / Paris, France
Joined as Deputy Director following the acquisition of Net-iris by MyBestPro, converting part of the sale proceeds into equity – and a seat on the Management Committee. Over 10 years, founded and led the SEM/Traffic division, turned around a loss-making international BU, restructured a 30-person team, introduced Agile methods across the organization, and deployed GDPR/ePrivacy compliance for 6 business units under CAC40 standards.
- Built the SEM/Traffic division from zero: recruited, structured, and led a multidisciplinary international team of up to 30 people; designed the operational model, tooling, and performance framework from scratch, led the strategy and manage professional development.
- Rescued Astrocenter BU (3→7 countries, 3 years): inherited a loss-making operation; changed the business model, redesigned the site and content strategy, renegotiated content and affiliate partnerships, rebuilt a team scattered across multiple projects into a functional unit – restored profitability.
- Restructured the 30-person Traffic division (2018–2019): diagnosed organizational dysfunctions, rebuilt the management layer, repositioned roles – turned a fragmented team into a functioning unit.
- Scrum rescue: introduced and adapted Agile/Scrum methods (self-trained) to resolve a web development delivery crisis; subsequently extended to non-technical teams across the organization.
- GDPR/ePrivacy group rollout (2016–2022): cross-functional project manager for 6 BUs, 30+ stakeholders, 3 domains (legal, IT, product); delivered to Vivendi Group (CAC40) standards with a 3-person core team; authored the Group Information Systems Security Policy (ISSP).
- Digital Evangelist (2019–2022): internal reference on SEM, ePrivacy, and digital transformation; coached key managers and led knowledge transfer across the group.
Net-iris – Founder & CEO | 2000–2012 (12 years)
Legal digital media – Clermont-Ferrand, France
Founded and scaled Net-iris from zero into a multi-brand legal digital media operation: #1 legal forum in France (1.5M monthly users, 150k registered members), 540+ customisable legal document templates, and a suite of niche B2B services – reaching 2.3M monthly unique visitors at peak. Core team of 5. No external funding. Sold in 2012.
Operating principle: automate everything automatable, build community as a structural asset, engineer every process for quality output at minimum marginal cost.
- Sole architect and operator of the full technical stack: custom PHP framework, relational database, front-end, back-office, emailing platform, e-commerce layer, sysadmin, and internal network – 12 years, zero external technical dependency.
- Scaled a self-sustaining legal community to 1.5M monthly users with a team of 2 professional moderators and 15 volunteer moderators: designed the process, automation, community architecture, rule management and platform sysadmin.
- Built brand reputation as the primary growth and defense mechanism: community advocacy replaced paid brand awareness entirely – users self-organized to defend and represent Net-iris in all public contexts.
- Managed platform migrations, deliverability crises, and infrastructure overhauls under cost and continuity constraints – consistently resolved without service interruption.
EDUCATION
Master 2 – International Management | ESC Clermont Graduate School of Management | 2000
Master 1 – Law & Judicial Careers | Université d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand | 1999
English Proficiency: EF SET Certificate – C1 Advanced (March 2026)
Google Certifications (2019–2020)
- Google Ads: Search · Display · Video · Mobile · Individual Qualification
- Google Analytics: Beginners · Advanced · Power Users
- Google Tag Manager Fundamentals · Google Data Studio · Google Digital Workshop
Additional
- Sistrix Toolbox Workshop | 2022
CORE STRENGTHS
Operating strengths
- Perspective & Critical Thinking – diagnoses root causes, filters noise, sets the 2-year horizon
- Love of Learning & Perseverance – masters new domains fast; doesn’t stop until it works
- Leadership & Honesty – removes ambiguity so teams execute without friction
Under pressure
- Duty, Prudence & Self-Control – the Safe Hands: regulates under pressure, stabilises the collective
Hard skills (background layer)
Digital operations · AI-assisted workflows · ePrivacy/GDPR · Agile/Scrum · Web analytics · Content strategy · SEO/SXO