[Episode 1] Avec Rami Baitiéh, ex CEO Carrefour France | Engage-moi !

Hello everyone, welcome to this wonderful set for a new show, 'Signer la Tribune', in co-production with the Mosaïque Foundation. 'Engagement: The New Codes of Success' is the title of this show. It's also an invitation for all those who move the lines, push the walls, and commit to more diversity and inclusion every day.

With me every month to present this program, a wonderful young entrepreneur who succeeds at everything and who doesn't hesitate to share his emotions. He's everywhere on social media. I present to you Youssef Coutary.

Hi, how are you?

Thank you so much for this great introduction.

I'm really happy to be hosting this with you. 'Succeeding at everything' — well, I've missed quite a few things, but let's move on. Let's get straight to the program.

So the first part will be with Saïd Hamouche, president of the Mosaïque Foundation, with a special guest you'll see shortly. Then we'll follow with Anthony Babkins from Diversité, who'll present a talented person with an impactful project transforming our society. After that, Florence Dauchère with Visible, presenting an inspiring and committed woman. And we'll finish with Sandrine Charpentier from Mix City presenting the top 3 best initiatives. Are we good on that?

As promised, we're starting this first part of the show with Saïd, founder and president of the Mosaïque Foundation. Hello Saïd.

Hello Sophie, how are you?

Very, very well. I'm very happy to be with you. Magnificent. Before we dive in and welcome our special guest, could you in a few words present your foundation and the incredible project you've been leading for several years?

With pleasure. The Mosaïque Foundation is the continuation of an experience we had with a rather special recruitment firm specialized in promoting diversity called Mozaïc RH. This firm was always focused on helping companies open up more to diversity by identifying candidates from working-class neighborhoods. This experience was a real success and led us to create a foundation to carry our messages on a broader level — to raise awareness, mobilize, sensitize. These are the keys to getting more companies, public authorities, and media on board. That's why the Mosaïque Foundation accepted to produce this show together.

Thank you for that, Saïd. La Tribune is delighted to be doing this show with the foundation and with you. It's time to tell us who you're receiving, we're listening.

Today we have the pleasure of receiving Rami Baitiéh. It's a name that probably evokes multiculturalism, but what we're going to talk about today is his role. He is the Managing Director of Carrefour France. It's a company with more than 150,000 employees and over 49 billion euros in revenue. It's very impressive.

Rami, we often say that economic performance is driven by diversity. Does that resonate with you? Is it something embodied at Carrefour?

So concretely, there are good results. What happened in the last semester?

Carrefour also worked on a strategic plan, Carrefour 2026, in which diversity and inclusion were at the heart of the company's strategic thinking. Can you tell us more, especially about this tool you want to implement around measuring diversity?

Let's stay on the subject of diversity. How do you measure the level of diversity within Carrefour? Do you have specific tools or methods?

I had another question I find very interesting: we embody diversity through salaried employment, but also through entrepreneurship. You have a franchise culture. Some Carrefour stores are franchised. Can you tell us about how you select the entrepreneurs who take over these franchises? Is there also investment around this diversity culture? What are the strategic choices around the franchise policy?

What's roughly the store size and expected revenue?

Maybe a word also about the acquisition of Cora and other distribution networks? What happened a few weeks ago?

What I also find remarkable is your entry into Carrefour. Can you tell us how you joined Carrefour?

What was your educational background at that point?

You invented software as an intern?

Bravo, bravo Rami, it's impressive and it's an inspiration for thousands of students and young people in France. Thank you so much. It's already time to close this interview, but you'll come back, Rami, because I'm sure you have many more things to tell us. Thank you so much for accepting this invitation. Thank you Saïd, see you next month with a new guest. Thank you both. It's time to move on to the next segment.

For this segment, Youssef, we're going to receive the emblematic, charismatic, and charming Anthony Babkins from Diversité, the equal opportunities association. Hi Anthony, welcome.

Hi Sophie.

Tell me, Anthony, you're here to talk about what drives you every day and to present a talent, a gem. Who are you going to talk about today?

First, thank you both for giving us this opportunity as an associative organization to present talents. This week I'm accompanied by Youssef. Hi Youssef, you're doing well? Listen, you're going well, I'm going well, we're doing great.

And I think you're going to quickly engage us, because what you're bringing today is an impact solution. To introduce yourself very briefly: your name is Youssef, you're from the 77 department, we're neighbors — I'm from the 91. We met in Évry-Courcouronnes. You launched a few years ago an AI to help students in their daily academic journey. But you'll tell us more. Before talking about your solution Adapted, my first question is: how did you come up with the idea of creating your company?

Very simply, Anthony, it started in the classroom. That's also where I met my co-founder Baptiste, with whom I co-founded Adapted. I was the student at the back of the class, and he was the one at the front. We had many differences, but in the end, it was those differences that were more like strengths that brought us together very quickly. After high school, we kept in touch. We always wanted to be entrepreneurs. We realized there was this problem of not necessarily having opportunities. Many students go through the same situation as us — him being a good student and me not — we experienced the same problems. And facing that, we decided to launch Adapted.

It's a bit of a teaser. In preparing this interview, we talked about singularities. You mentioned you weren't the best student in the class, and he also had singularities. Can you tell us about that?

Absolutely. My co-founder was diagnosed as HPI — highly gifted. He had great academic abilities. Yet the mold that was imposed on us didn't really fit either of us.

I know you pitch your company brilliantly — that's how Diversité spotted you. Can you pitch Adapted in less than a minute?

With pleasure. Adapted is an online platform based on artificial intelligence that aims to allow each student to be personally accompanied based on their profile and skills, so they can progress at their own pace.

Alright, it sounds simple like that. But concretely, if I'm a professor or a student, what do I find on it?

The student or professor uploads their course to the platform. They can interact with it — it starts by asking them questions, providing a summary, giving access to all course concepts as a list. Then the student can test themselves with auto-generated tests from the AI — multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and so on — tailored to the student's profile, of course. Following that, there's a grading part: based on the scores and results from the tests, there's a follow-up so the student can iterate and repeat to address their gaps.

We're already in the future, I like it. What are today's objectives for your company? It's still in early-stage development. What goals have you set for Adapted?

The main goal is to become the reference platform for students. What we want is for students to find all the educational resources they need in one place. Currently, based on studies we've conducted with different students and schools, there's a real centralization problem that wastes a lot of time and energy and tends to dilute information.

Sometimes startups say they want to be the Uber or Airbnb of something. Do you have an analogy?

We want to be — there isn't really another comparison, but we're going to be the reference in EdTech.

Great. Where are you concretely? We met not long ago, but I feel like you've accelerated quite a bit in recent weeks.

Concretely, we're still in the development phase. We have an MVP available that already includes the features I mentioned — course interaction and auto-generated tests.

My last questions would be more about your entrepreneurial journey and your ambitions in three years. Where do you position Adapted in three years?

With Adapted, we aim to have a minimum of 10 educational group partnerships and to enable every student to thrive in their studies — really restoring confidence through the app and simplifying things.

You didn't do it alone — you often say that. There were encounters, including with Diversité, and also with Station F. Congratulations on being accepted into the Fighterz program — that's the equal opportunities program at Station F. Do you want to tell us about those experiences?

With great pleasure. Station F, which was our first incubation experience when we started, was very important. When you begin entrepreneurship, you're a bit lost, a bit alone, and having access to a community —

We'll continue this next time. Thank you Anthony, thank you Youssef. This was Adapted — look it up, it's the future of education. See you next month for a new edition of La Tribune. Goodbye everyone.

Station F is very invested with resources for development, which is great at the beginning—it gives you confidence back, helps you find a network, and opens up an ecosystem you didn't necessarily have access to. That's what happened. At the beginning, development was rather complicated because we didn't know where we were stepping or how to do things. We really got the codes right at the start thanks to Station F.

So to talk about Diversidays and the cohort you were in at the beginning of the year in Essonne—I also have the feeling, when I met you while preparing this interview, you described it as a family. That's also what we need when we're starting out: meeting people who are like us and who can help us.

Well, the main strength I draw from Diversidays is exactly the feeling of having a real family. It's a family of entrepreneurs with beautiful, magnificent projects that have a lot of potential, and everyone pulls each other up. It's a significant force. There's a lot of mutual help, and that's what I like most—seeing everyone share advice and skills. It costs nothing to help each other, and maybe that's ultimately the message behind Engagement.

One last question—a word for those who doubt their place in entrepreneurship. And Youssef, from what we saw in your profile, it's also that maybe you can make it without a diploma, maybe you can do it on your own by learning with what you find online. That connects with Adapted's fight—that everyone has their own learning and development method.

I'm currently 20 years old, and just a few months ago I knew absolutely nothing about entrepreneurship. It was precisely by finding my different paths that I was able to develop and grow Adapted to where it is today.

And quite a few online resources too to help you. Do you have any advice for those listening today who want to get into social entrepreneurship?

In terms of advice, once again, Station F offers a training program called Launch that I strongly recommend when you're starting out. As for other resources, thinking about it, I don't think there are any—that's enough.

Thank you, Youssef, and thank you to the Engagement team. To both of you, congratulations—best of luck for everything ahead.

Well, listen—first of all, congratulations on this project, on its impact, on the energy, because frankly, we can feel the drive inside you, and that's really cool. We're now moving to the third segment, and I believe you're staying with us on the set where we'll welcome a journalist who is already very well known and who will present the Visible carte blanche.

So, let's go! Hello and welcome, dear Florence—thank you for being with us every month. Florence, you're the president and founder of a media outlet called Visible. So I'd like you to tell me, Florence—how do we make women more visible?

Hello Sophie, hello everyone. How do we make women visible? Well, we make them visible, and 'visible' implies images. We started from a very simple observation: incredible women were everywhere, it just wasn't seen and wasn't known enough. Making them visible seemed obvious. Video is a fantastic medium for conveying images and ideas. The video format was also inspired by digital media outlets like Brut, L'Upsider, AJ+ in the US, and NowThis, which are designed to be shared on social media.

Great—so today you're going to tell us about an obviously extraordinary woman. Who is this extraordinary woman?

It's amusing because I discovered Eva Ingall on LinkedIn—I read just two or three sentences and thought, this is absolutely brilliant. LinkedIn enables that kind of connection. She told me she lives in Chambéry and described what she does. She said she doesn't come to Paris often, so we waited three months for her to visit and met about two weeks ago. And about two weeks ago, I was at VivaTech and was asked to host the Women in Digital Award ceremony—the national heart award from La Poste group. And the laureate that day turned out to be Eva Ingall. So there was a brilliant alignment. Let me tell you about what she does. She's the founder of an app called Tiers, which aims to facilitate communication between separated parents in situations of domestic violence. When there are children, you need to keep communicating, and that creates tension even without violence—deciding who takes the child which day isn't always simple. But when there's violence, you need to find a way to ease the exchanges. In these conversations, when a word is somewhat violent, it's automatically replaced by stars. That lowers the stress level for the recipient. However, the conversation history is preserved so that in a court case, you can access the real words. That's brilliant because it lowers the tension enormously. The fact that both parties must agree to use the app probably also reduces spontaneous outbursts. Let's discover an excerpt from this interview with Eva Ingall.

One in three women in the workplace is a victim of domestic violence. This is something I experienced. My manager knew, my director knew, yet they never offered me anything to help—even though they saw me every day. They could see I wasn't well, that I wasn't focused, that I was always on my phone, and that I was always on sick leave. My name is Eva Ingall, and I created an app called Tiers for separated parents who have experienced domestic violence, so they can discuss things peacefully about their children. I've been separated for five years, and since I have a child with my ex-partner, we have to stay in contact. Except, as in many cases, he used that to send insults, threats—thousands of messages, thousands of calls. The idea came from being fed up with this situation. I was tired of living like this and had no other solutions. 76% is the number of people who continue to suffer harassment, threats, and insults after separation when there has been domestic violence. Sometimes it worsens with the separation. On my Instagram account where I tell my story, the first post—I received many messages from people living the same thing. I have Lucas's testimony: he had a very difficult separation, receiving more than 50 SMS per day from his ex-partner and countless calls. I also have Laure's testimony—she's a separated mother who says communication with her ex is extremely difficult. When she asked for custody of her son, she faced the father's anger and receives near-daily insults and threats by phone. There's a filter for violent words—insults, threats—and when one is detected, it's automatically replaced by stars. I initially thought about completely hiding them, but for safety, I think it's necessary to keep them. If you receive 4, 5, or 6 violent words in a day, you may need to take action—file a complaint, protect yourself. When you're ready to file a complaint, you need evidence. With messages, you'd have to take screenshots, reread everything, sort through it—which is incredibly difficult on top of what you've already experienced. The app provides a complete history you can download as a clear document, print or email to your lawyer or the police.

That was Eva Ingall from the Tiers app. What I find interesting about this entrepreneurial adventure is two aspects: first, she herself experienced domestic violence, so she identified a need and found a solution. Yet she's not an engineer—she's a woman moving toward tech, seeking out coding and development skills, but she's not the engineer herself. And that didn't stop her at all. We need to remove barriers for women regarding tech and digital—it's a huge topic. This is another example of someone who simply says: of course, this is for me—it's a tool that can answer the need I've identified. In that sense, she's a role model. I also want to mention the woman who developed the Dia app—who was a techie and developed it herself—but it addresses the same problem of how women can use their phones to connect with the first people who can help them. We see this with school bullying too. There's a real wave of solutions emerging on these issues.

What's also interesting is seeing how technology can bring solutions. We saw one solution, and with Dia that Florence just mentioned—on this topic of violence, algorithms could detect the frequency and intensity of violent words. That means we could do prevention, saying: we're reaching a threshold that's no longer tolerable and may be a real danger threshold—we need to act. These are truly wonderful tools. Thank you so much, Florence—we'll see you next month with a new Visible carte blanche.

Thank you, thank you.

The next step is with Sandrine Charpentier from Mixity, who will present the top 3 diversity and inclusion initiatives. After the jingle... Welcome to the set. Can you tell us about Mixity first?

Yes, so Mixity in two words: we support companies and schools on their diversity and inclusion policies. We help them measure, steer, and commit to diversity and inclusion.

Great—measure, steer, commit. I hear three words. So the top 3 initiatives—

I'll present the top 3 diversity and inclusion initiatives we've selected for you today. We'll talk about senior employment, fighting everyday sexism, and inclusion in tech. First: senior employment. Following the pension reform, many companies are questioning how to address longer careers and senior inclusion. I want to highlight Elior, a key player in collective catering—22,000 employees in catering and 20,000 in services. They recruit 2,500 permanent positions annually. What's remarkable is that 30% of these hires are people over 45—compared to a 7% average at companies we evaluate with Mixity. And 18% are over 50. This covers all roles—servers, dishwashers, managers, kitchen chefs. At Elior, the recruitment message is that seniors have the same chances as younger people. They emphasize the value each person brings, the richness of their career path, and intergenerational interaction to create value. To achieve these results, they trained recruitment teams on bias—since age is the leading discrimination factor in companies. France is also below the European average for employing people over 55—56% versus 60% EU average. Beyond recruitment, Elior invested in employability and skills development, offering certifying and diploma-granting training pathways. It's a complete journey of accompanying seniors from recruitment to inclusion. The second good practice addresses sexism at work. A recent study shows 60% of French employees have been exposed to at least one sexist or sexual behavior at work in the past 12 months. At SNCF, 57% of employees declared having witnessed sexist situations. After this honest assessment, SNCF launched a major 'Zero Tolerance' campaign internally, with the general management and employees speaking up together to say: enough, this is no longer acceptable. Having exemplary leadership convey this message is truly powerful. Let's watch a short video.

'Can you make us a coffee?' 'Obviously she got the job—did you see how she's dressed?' 'For a woman, it's already great to have this position—you should be happy. What, are you on your period?' 'You have to smile, miss—it was just a compliment.' 'It's not for you, it's a guy thing.' 'We can meet at my place, it'll be quieter.' 'Own it, honey—you chose to join a team of guys.' 'I don't think she just does photocopies.' You see these phrases? These aren't just phrases—they're sexist remarks, humiliating comments. These remarks are unacceptable. These behaviors—we must no longer endure them. Enough. Never again.

Our last good practice—I'm delighted to be next to Anthony today to discuss this. I'd like to finish with the startup world, because we project into tomorrow's economy and assume inclusion is improving, but it's not as inclusive as we'd like. France is full of talent, yet many remain invisible—discriminated against because of age, origin, background, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. In the tech world, there are 80,000 positions to fill. A Diversidays study shows startups recruit 60-61% young male profiles from elite schools, from major cities, without disabilities. We still have work to do. To provide a concrete response, Diversidays and the Mosaïque Foundation launched Take Your Place in 2020, a program promoting diversity and inclusion in startups. Today, 50 companies have joined. Anthony, since you're here, can you tell us more about this program?

If there's a wave building in this direction... The objective is simple: how do we make companies truly aware of an issue that goes beyond them—their recruitment practices and their impact on society. Startups raise funds, they're in hyper-growth, they have a responsibility that extends beyond them: who enters their companies? I often say that 10% of permanent job offers today come from startups. Growing startups become major groups, so they have a responsibility in recruitment and methods. That's how we started working with Mixity. The first step is assessment. We talk about visible and invisible diversity—disability, orientation—things not written on people's heads: where they come from, their neighborhood, social, ethnic, cultural origins. First, you need to map with legal public data. That's Mixity's advantage—no debate about permissions. All data collected is legal. It gives decision-makers a snapshot of their company on many dimensions—gender, geographic origin, disability, etc. From there, we build a real roadmap with movement members, helping with skills development. Are they trained in non-discriminatory practices? Do they know what diversity and inclusion means? This noon, we discussed inclusive recruitment—certain words on job postings exclude candidates. Specifying diploma levels, school types, or saying 'seeking young talent' without noting the position is accessible creates barriers. We do a whole range of things with this movement to help companies take action. Solutions exist—many interesting ones—but some are coercive. Our role as an associative actor is to make the path readable so the boss who wants to get started doesn't face an obstacle course, but rather a clear roadmap involving stakeholders like HR, social affairs managers, and board members—everyone who wants the company to better reflect society.

Thank you so much—it's a beautiful shared adventure. We have Diversidays, Mixity, the Mosaïque Foundation, everyone, and we're lucky to have you on this set. Youssef, the program is almost over already—it goes so fast. Before we leave, let's talk about key upcoming events. A particularly dear event is Woman for Future by La Tribune. After the Parc des Princes last year, we'll gather in beautiful Toulouse, Occitanie, welcoming women and men from around the world. We'll discuss futures, innovation, and the place of women in tech and tomorrow's jobs. An unmissable event at the Capitole and Palais Niel on October 18 and 19—mark your calendars. Also live on La Tribune.fr for free. Another piece of news—the Grand Prix Diversité Inclusion, organized by AFL Diversité with Mixity's collaboration, rewarding companies, communities, and organizations with outstanding diversity and inclusion practices. A grand jury will convene after the summer break. We'll discuss gender equality, professional equality, new talents, new initiatives, and welcome the same columnists every month. Let's thank everyone—the team behind the glass, the technical team, all the La Tribune teams, and the Mosaïque Foundation teams who worked so hard. Congratulations on making this show happen. Good luck to all of you—we won't let you go! Thank you for following us for this first episode. We're delighted to see you every month. Until then, take care. Bye!