Jean Todt
Building a winning culture in an organisation that has lost its edge is harder than building one from scratch. The incumbent leadership style, the entrenched rivalries, the inherited talent, and the public expectation of decline all work against change. Senior leaders charged with turning a serious institution back into a serious competitor need an operating model that treats people, process, and political pressure as a single problem.
Jean Todt rebuilt Scuderia Ferrari into Formula One’s dominant team, ran the FIA for twelve years, and now leads the United Nations’ global road safety mandate.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jean Todt
- He took over a Ferrari racing operation that had not won a Drivers’ Championship in twenty-one years and produced five consecutive titles for Michael Schumacher between 2000 and 2004. Few living executives can speak to a turnaround at that scale and that level of public scrutiny.
- He has run three different kinds of high-stakes organisation, a manufacturer racing programme at Peugeot, a listed sports car business at Ferrari, and a 145-country federation at the FIA. The leadership lessons translate across commercial, governance, and political environments.
- He holds a live UN mandate. As Special Envoy for Road Safety since 2015, he negotiates directly with heads of state on a public health crisis that kills roughly 1.19 million people a year. Boards working on ESG, public-private partnership, or regulated-industry strategy get a practitioner, not a commentator.
- He co-founded the Paris Brain Institute with neurosurgeon Gerard Saillant, putting institutional capital and racing-industry networks behind one of Europe’s largest neuroscience research centres. The pattern, building durable institutions from convening power, is rare.
Biography highlights
- Director of Peugeot Talbot Sport, 1981 to 1993, delivering four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories.
- General Manager of Ferrari’s Racing Division from 1993; CEO of Ferrari S.p.A. from 2004 to 2008.
- Ninth President of the FIA, 2009 to 2021, three full terms; now FIA Honorary President.
- UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015, reconfirmed under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
- Co-founder and board member, Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant.
- Author, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” Assouline. Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur. Recipient of the Olympic Order.
Biography
Scuderia Ferrari had not won a Formula One Drivers’ Championship since 1979 when Jean Todt arrived in 1993 as General Manager of the Racing Division. He brought in Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn, and Rory Byrne, rebuilt the technical organisation around them, and produced the most dominant run in modern Formula One: five consecutive Drivers’ titles between 2000 and 2004 and six Constructors’ titles in seven years.
In 2004 he was promoted to CEO of Ferrari S.p.A., responsible for the road car business as well as the racing operation, until 2008. The Ferrari work followed a twelve-year stint at Peugeot Talbot Sport from 1981, where he built the rally programme that produced four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. The pattern across both jobs was the same: take a manufacturer’s competition arm, set a clear technical direction, and hold it long enough for compounding to work.
Elected ninth President of the FIA in 2009, Todt served three four-year terms running motor sport’s global governing body across 145 national federations and 245 member organisations. He launched the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign in 2011, which became the platform for his next role: in April 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him Special Envoy for Road Safety, a brief he still holds, working with governments to halve road deaths by 2030.
Outside motor sport, Todt co-founded the Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant; the institute is now one of the largest neuroscience research centres in Europe. He is a Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur and a recipient of the Olympic Order. His most recent book, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” collects more than fifty road safety case studies from the partners and governments he has worked with as UN Envoy.
Key speaking topics
- Turnaround leadership in legacy organisations
- High-performance team building under public scrutiny
- Sports governance and federation reform
- Global road safety policy
- Public-private partnership for social outcomes
- Building institutions: from racing to neuroscience
- Crisis management and decision-making at speed
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive committees running multi-year turnarounds where culture and technical excellence both have to move
- Boards and chairs working on governance reform, federation oversight, or regulated-industry strategy
- ESG, public affairs, and sustainability leaders building credible public-private programmes
- Automotive, mobility, and insurance leadership audiences working on safety, risk, and the energy transition
Audience outcomes
- A working model for rebuilding a senior team when the inherited talent and the public narrative are both against you
- A clearer view of how political authority, technical authority, and commercial authority interact in regulated industries
- A first-hand account of negotiating with heads of state on a public health mandate, with the mechanisms that have moved policy and the ones that have not
- A serious answer to the question of how a leader sustains performance across forty years and three very different institutional roles