Curriculum Vitae of Jean-Nicolas Girard

Photo by the blowup (source: Unsplash)

HEADLINE

Jean-Nicolas Girard
Head of Operations · Taking AI from pilot to production
Head of Digital Transformation | VP Strategy & Operations
Crisis-Proof Builder – Rescue, Build, and Optimize Complex Operations

French national
Based: Clermont-Ferrand area, Puy-de-Dôme (63) – Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Available for fully remote roles · Open to on-site up to 3 days/month (travel included)

🔗 linkedin.com/in/jngirard

AI OPERATIONS: self-directed build | April 2026 – present

  • Built and run a production AI stack on my own operation (three live websites): two curated daily digests, a server monitor, a scheduler and a newsletter pipeline, running unattended on EU infrastructure I administer myself.
  • Set up and run a team of AI agents (one orchestrator over six workers: mining, interviewing, drafting, strategy, audit, curation) that produces the articles on my two sites, under a written editorial policy and a production register; nothing publishes without the audit pass.
  • Build agents with separated roles (spec, build, review) and a mandatory review pass; deterministic scripts wherever a language model is not needed; a human decision at every point that carries a consequence.
  • Cost measured per unit of work: about $0.50 of inference per published article, with the writing round cut by a quarter through workflow redesign rather than a change of supplier. EU hosting, privacy by default, and a vendor-cutoff test so the stack survives losing any one supplier.
  • Documented in public: 30+ LABS articles, the stack page and the cost accounting at foozilla.net.

Career break, September 2025 – March 2026: deliberate reset, direction set, concluded.

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Senior operations executive with 25 years building and optimizing complex operations. 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.

Founded and scaled Net-iris (legal digital media) to 2.3M monthly users with a 5-person team and 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 role: Head of Operations in a remote-first scale-up, with the AI mandate as the first piece of work.

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.
  • AI in production: keeps the cost to what the business can carry and leaves the decision with a human.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Ramp-Up Traffic / JN Girard Consulting – Independent Consultant | 2020–2025 (5 years)
Operations & digital transformation – 30+ clients – Remote

Senior advisor to scaleups 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):

  • Aprovall (9 months – LegalTech): designed and deployed an AI-assisted production system in a legally constrained sector (sourcing rules, a human validation gate before publication); zero quality rejections by the client’s legal reviewer
  • Melty / Reworld Media (18 months – Media)
    • rescued a partially failed platform migration (–25% audience); Melty subsequently sold to a media group
    • built a proprietary editorial prioritisation algorithm in direct collaboration with the CEO; it became a reusable decision-support tool, deployed across 10+ subsequent client engagements
  • 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 (Search Engine Optimization) 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

Simplébo – Head of Marketing (interim) | 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; took a minority stake in the round.

  • 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 model: designed an AI-assisted content production model with a human-in-the-loop review gate, in a company serving 10,000+ client sites
  • GDPR compliance: extended ePrivacy expertise to Simplébo’s processes as a secondary mandate alongside the core marketing build

MyBestPro (then part of the Vivendi group) – Deputy Director (Operations & Digital Transformation), 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 taking a seat on the Management Committee. Over 10 years, turned around a loss-making international BU (business unit), founded and led the Traffic division, restructured a 30-person team, introduced Agile methods across the organization, and deployed GDPR/ePrivacy compliance for 6 business units under CAC40 standards.

  • 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; P&L owner (44% contribution margin in 2015)
  • Built the Traffic division from zero, starting from search engine marketing (SEM): recruited, structured, and led a multidisciplinary international team of up to 30 people, run as a shared service funded by the business units; designed the operational model, tooling, and performance framework from scratch, led the strategy and managed professional development
  • 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
  • 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); documented and handed over
  • 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

Net-iris – Founder & CEO | 2000–2012 (12 years)
Legal digital media – Clermont-Ferrand, France

Operating principle: automate everything automatable, build community as a structural asset, engineer every process for quality output at minimum marginal cost.

Founded and scaled Net-iris from zero into a multi-brand legal digital media operation: #1 legal forum in France (1.5M monthly users), 540+ customisable legal document templates, and a suite of niche B2B services; 2.3M monthly users at peak. Core team of 5. No external funding. Sold in 2012.

  • Ran the entire technical stack myself: PHP framework, database, front-end, back-office, emailing, e-commerce, sysadmin; twelve years, no 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)

SOFT SKILLS

  • Composure under pressure: I stabilize the team first, then fix the cause.
  • Leadership: by logic, not authority; no major decision without the people who will carry it out.
  • Remote collaboration: decisions and processes written down (runbooks, decision records), so a distributed team works from the same page.

Hard skills

Operations design · AI in production: agent pipelines, deterministic guards, human-in-the-loop · EU hosting and vendor sovereignty · GDPR/ePrivacy · Agile/Scrum · Cost and vendor management