A model student
Lea Toulet
During her studies, Léa Toulet scored all possible points. After a high school diploma obtained with honors, she followed the path of the preparatory class and the business school with a marketing specialization. “It was a clear path, quite classic, because I never asked myself too many questions,” she analyzes today. To perfect her CV, she joined the Atlantic group specializing in thermal comfort and stayed there for a year and a half as an assistant product manager.
The universe of creations
After a short period of unemployment, she decided to turn to communication: “I wanted to work with creative people, to have different projects and clients”. She joined the Extrem agency, specializing in packaging design, as an assistant project manager until becoming a senior project manager. For five years, she learned tons. “Working on a presentation, doing a recce, communicating, convincing clients, drawing inspiration from trends, reinventing other graphic charters… she continues. I love artistic directors and seeing their creative journey starting from a brief. No day was the same, I had customers in food, DIY, baby products and spirits”. Very proud, she tells her loved ones, with passion, the challenges that certain Monoprix packaging has represented when she sees them on the shelves.
But the communication sector is known to be as tough as it is interesting. With the extended hours, there is added stress and emergencies to manage. And Léa to detail: “I could work between 10 and 12 hours a day. I was invested but tired. I started wanting to change my work environment”.
The ecological transition
The years spent at Extrem, Léa Toulet began to take an interest in ecology a little more seriously. Starting by sorting her waste, she favors bulk shopping and AMAP (Editor’s note: Association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture), manufactures her cleaning products, reduces her consumption of meat and everything that comes from sea and chooses not to fly anymore. “Every time, I wonder what I can do to reduce my impact.” And then, the Covid passes by and provokes reflection.
I really felt the cognitive dissonance. I liked my job but it no longer matched my values because I realized that I was helping to produce waste… Why was I doing this job? What did it bring? My sister is a hospital pharmacist, it was essential, but me?
Loss of meaning and fatigue then accumulate.
A time to settle down
To find out what she wants, Léa turns to the skills assessment. “I needed to settle down because I felt that I had to change medium”. After 6 months, it’s almost obvious, it will be a profession linked to the environment, to sustainable development.
It was my coach who suggested to me that ecology was an important value for me, I hadn’t actually made it aware
She knows that without experience or a diploma, it can be complicated to work in this sector and quickly convinces herself to take a diploma.
I needed a work-study program to continue earning my living and online courses to progress at my own pace.
His choice is for the second promotion of the master 2 of the Green management school, “for his teaching which allows to have an overall vision”. On the salary side, she halves it with a little more than a minimum wage as an alternate and a small extension from Pôle Emploi. “But I had done my calculations, budgeted everything, without putting myself in danger either”. She starts in April 2021 and joins Ecotree as a customer relationship manager for individuals, a forest management company specializing in the regeneration of forest ecosystems, which finances him the Master of approximately 8000 euros.
A stone in the building
Today, Léa knows why she gets up in the morning:
Even if it’s a business, we know why we have to make a turnover. I don’t have my hands in the ground but I am in daily contact with our forest managers. Above all, I have the impression of bringing my stone to the building and doing something for French biodiversity
On the mission side, Léa Toulet does a little less operational work than when she started. If she considers support to be essential, she was able to free up time to develop another project, “a qualitative and quantitative survey to reflect on the BtoC offer”. Her alternation ends in August 2023 but at present, she is in talks to stay at Ecotree, in the same position with additional missions, “in particular with the innovation department”.