EXPLORERS
PROGRAM
We aim to celebrate women and men who act every day with audacity and passion to drive change.
With the ChangeNOW Explorers Program, we bring our support to visionary adventurers, who are ambassadors for concrete action and are a source of inspiration for everyone.
In our mission to accompany those who are building a more sustainable and inclusive world, we aim to support multiple types of initiatives, be it entrepreneurial, cultural or scientific.
In 2020, in addition to our other activities, we have launched the first cohort of the ChangeNOW Explorers Program. This program gives more visibility to the actions carried out by social or environmental purpose-driven explorers.
Each year, we follow and share the adventures of the explorers with our community through our webpage, content creation, video relays and with the involvement of media partners.
Discover the first 3 explorers
of the 2020-2021 program
Alexia Barrier
Alexia, from the Mediterranean Sea, started sailing at a very early age. Sailing teacher at 15, she became a professional sailor, and top-level match-racer, to finally get into single-handed offshore racing.
In 20 years, she has already covered more than 120 000 nautical miles around the globe, and took part in 14 races across the Atlantic, including 4 single-handed crossings on Mini Transat, Figaro 2, 60-foot monohull and multihull.
In 2009 she created 4myplanet, and thus became the first woman to attempt a single-handed around-the-globe tour for the benefit of science. 5 months of navigation and 20 000 miles covered to bring back more than 1 million data on surface water to European ocean observation programs and more than 10 000 4myplanet kids followed this navigation in France, Monaco, South Africa, Brazil, NYC.
Today she is qualified for the Vendée Globe 2020 with her 1998 Lombard design, a legendary boat with 6 round-the-world races under her belt.
Romain Pilliard
Romain Pilliard is a sailor and entrepeneur. He fell in love with sailing whilst with his family in Britanny, competing in regattas during his studies at ESSEC Business School.
He participated in the Tour de France à la Voile as a crewmate with the selected team for the America’s Cup. He then sailed with Ellen MacArthur as a crewmate on the IMOCA sailing yacht, as well as the ORMA 60 multi-hull ship and MOD 70.
Travel after travel, deeply concerned by the pollution of the oceans and the air, he decided to commit himself to the protection of the environment.
In 2016 he created Use It Again!, a project and a fund recognized as being of public utility, dedicated to the promotion and development of the circular economy.
His first challenge? To restore Ellen MacArthur’s former 23m racing trimaran, with which she had broken the solo round-the-world record, to a state of abandonment! The objective is to renovate it while respecting the principles of circular economy (Reduce / Reuse / Recycle).
Heïdi Sevestre
10 years ago, as she was hiking from Chamonix to Zermatt, a mountain guide told her that it is possible to spend your life studying glaciers, and become a glaciologist. It became evidence!
Through her studies and her work she has had the chance to study glaciers all around the world, from the French Alps to Greenland, from the Arctic to Antarctica.
Today, she invests her time in science policy and science outreach. She believes researchers like her have the duty to communicate about our work and tell the world about the wonders of the cryosphere and the threats targeting it.
Discover more
about the explorers soon!
- May 19, 20, 21
- Paris (& online)
- Grand Palais Ephemere & Eiffel Tower