Vanessa Scherrer joined the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris on 8 February 2024. She was appointed to the position of Delegate General of the National Foundation on 11 January 2024 by a joint decision of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation, Jean-Marc Sauvé, and the Rector of the Île-de-France academic region, Rector of the Paris education authority, Chancellor of the Universities of Paris and Île-de-France, Christophe Kerrero, after receiving the opinion of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. She succeeds Guillaume Tronchet.
Since 2017, Vanessa Scherrer has been director of international affairs at Sciences Po, and a member of the institution’s executive committee and academic committee. Vanessa Scherrer has established herself as a major player in the international policy of universities at a time when the European higher education sector is undergoing profound geopolitical upheaval.
Driven by an unwavering commitment to the values of international openness and a strategic vision of France’s academic influence, she has implemented projects to attract and welcome international students and defended the importance of international student mobility, even at the height of the pandemic. Renowned for her diplomatic skills and her ability to form and lead groups and major networks, she steered the creation of the European University of the Social Sciences (CIVICA, Erasmus+), whose executive committee she has chaired since its creation in 2019, as well as the U7+ Alliance launched by a group of French universities during the French presidency of the G7. She also helped launch the Paris Peace Forum, of which she has been a member of the executive committee since 2018 and was one of its first two vice-presidents.
From 2010 to 2017, Vanessa Scherrer was the first Executive Director and Vice-Dean of Sciences Po’s School of International Affairs (PSIA), which today remains the world’s leading school in its field.
Vanessa Scherrer began her career in the United States (2001-2010), at Columbia University (New York), where she founded and then directed the “Alliance” programme, which since 2002 has united Columbia University with the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, the École Polytechnique and Sciences Po, with the support of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Vanessa Scherrer has a doctorate in political science from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris. A specialist in comparative political sociology, she has taught at Columbia University and Sciences Po.
She is also a member of the Board of Governors of the United Nations University (Council), to which she has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Director-General of UNESCO (2022-2028).