Emmanuel Faber is a French businessman, born in 1964 in Grenoble. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Danone and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors. He has also been a member of the Executive Committee since the year 2000.
A graduate of HEC Paris, Faber began his career at Bain & Company (1986). He later worked for the investment bank Barings before joining Legris Industries as Chief Administrative and Financial Officer in 1993, and was appointed CEO in 1996.
He joined Danone in 1997 as Head of Finance, Strategy and Information Systems. In 2000, he became Chief Financial Officer of Danone and a member of the Executive Committee. In 2005, he was appointed Vice President of the Asia-Pacific region, overseeing operational activities.
Following the meeting between Franck Riboud and Muhammad Yunus, he initiated the joint venture Grameen-Danone Foods, Ltd. in Bangladesh. At the end of 2006, he supervised the creation of danone.communities, the first French mutual investment fund with a social purpose, and has served as director of the danone.communities SICAV since 2008.
From January 2008 to September 2014, he served as Deputy CEO of Danone, responsible for major corporate functions (finance, human resources, etc.), and was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors in April 2011.
Invited by Chico Whitaker, he attended the World Social Forum in Belém in 2009.
Faber is co-chair, along with Martin Hirsch, of the action group “Business and Poverty,” a social experimentation lab launched in 2010 by the “Social Business – Enterprise and Poverty” Chair at HEC Paris. This initiative brings together businesses, civil society organizations, and academia with the shared goal of reducing poverty and exclusion in France.
Since 2011, he has chaired the Strategic Orientation Committee of IEDES (Institute of Economic and Social Development) at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, which, among other activities, publishes the journal “Tiers-Monde.”
In 2013, at the request of French Development Minister Pascal Canfin, he co-authored a report with Jay Naidoo on reforming Official Development Assistance: “Mobilizing Stakeholders: A New Approach to Development Aid.”
Together with Michael Lonsdale and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, he was selected as one of the three French patrons of the 2011 World Youth Day.
In October 2014, he became CEO of Danone, succeeding Franck Riboud.
On January 1, 2015, he was appointed Chairman of Danone’s Executive Committee.
In June 2016, he delivered the commencement address to HEC graduates, speaking about the need for people to come together and break down barriers.