Laure Toupas Darmon

Hello everyone. Today we are with Laure Toupas Darmon from SEGRO. We are here for you to explain your job and how you got there. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your role? Because I do not actually know at all what you do.

Hello everyone, thank you for having me, Laura, in these lovely studios. Yes, so I am Laure Toupas Darmon, an engineer by training; I went to ESTP, the special school of public works, dedicated to construction. After that engineering degree I spent 5 years in financial auditing in the real estate field. That is when you got into real estate. Exactly. In fact I had a specialization in my final year of engineering school to go into auditing. After that, I wanted to do a more hands-on, field-based job in construction. And that is when I joined Icade Conseil, where I became a real estate valuation expert, valuing all types of assets: shopping centers, offices, warehouses. In parallel I was taking courses at the ICH, the CNAM institute, where I specialized in real estate financing, urban planning and judicial expertise. And that is where I discovered this mix and told myself: combining my job with this training, could I do something? Yes, asset manager. That is when the idea of becoming an asset manager came as a revelation, and I applied to Icade, this time on the property-owner side, because before I was on the advisory side. I see. And I joined Icade as a property owner in 2010, where I managed offices and logistics warehouses. Because of my training, they told me: you master the technical concept of ICPE, so these assets are for you. So ICPE, explained in a couple of words. It is the concept of a classified facility that provides protection for both people and the environment related to the building, the construction measures we put in place. To protect. Exactly. When there is a fire, typically, it is putting all the measures in place to prevent it from spreading. Absolutely. I see. That is the kind of thing.

Fairly technical, so as you were saying, your somewhat dual background allowed you, with your current job, to bring the two ends together.

Absolutely. Exactly. So at that point I kept working at Icade. Then my personal life shifted a bit, since I met my husband, who is from Nice, so I moved down to the south of France for a little break, but I came back very quickly to the professional world. I was hired while pregnant at AEW to manage warehouses, which shows you can give someone their chance. I really loved hearing that, so that is pretty good. I managed warehouses and business parks. I worked for 6 years at AEW before joining SEGRO nearly 3 years ago.

I see. And so today, at SEGRO, do you have a particular area of focus?

Today I am director of business parks for urban distribution and courier logistics across France, which represents roughly half the portfolio in France, 800,000 square meters under management. That is quite a lot. There are three types of activity. So it is both development, land sourcing, trying to do turnkey builds for future users on bare land.

Can you explain that term, which is fairly technical and specific?

It is a building really designed for the user, made to measure. It is like tailoring. Our clients are top quality, so they deserve that level of care. And so I also do lease management, asset management, that is everything to do with marketing and leasing the assets, the vacant spaces, typically renegotiating with sitting tenants under their leases. And technical management, which is the phase after the leases are signed, where we handle day to day the tenants' little aches and pains, in inverted commas, there is a leak, they have small issues of all kinds, technical matters. And so, in all these teams I manage, there are 14 people doing property management, asset management and development, across all of France. Very complete.

And that is incredible. There is this question I get asked: do you think your path would have been different if you were a man?

I think a woman's path, unlike a man's, is not linear. That is, there are little jolts in the story because of maternity leave. It is true it slows you down a little, let us say, compared with a promotion a man might get. So there is a gap, but I think it can still be caught up.

Even though today, as we were saying with Anne, where men take more and more leave, which can ease, I would say, women's paths, do you still feel there is a difference at that level?

Yes, absolutely.

And precisely, through the initiatives as part of Women4Warehouse, at SEGRO, in terms of parity, is it fairly equal, I would say, in terms of representation? Are there initiatives that have been put in place by the company?

Well, first, SEGRO fully champions gender parity. We have a charter called Responsible SEGRO, in France and everywhere, which says parity must be put in place. The figures are quite striking, since today we have almost 50% women, 50% men, with 55% of employees in France. That is a record. And we do put a lot of actions and initiatives in place to reach parity, to try to help female talent progress where they are a little intimidated by certain roles that might be management positions. I think it sometimes holds back some people who are afraid, but even so, we try to motivate them, to promote them so they can reach that kind of role.

Yes, a bit of that impostor syndrome, like we discussed with Severine, which is fairly female, I would say, and so you personally encourage them to move up.

Absolutely, absolutely. In my team I do indeed help develop talent. At SEGRO we call it nurturing talents, where we develop precisely these actions.

OK. And would there be an initiative, one that does not exist yet, that you would like to see appear at your company or in other organizations?

I think, to help women progress and to have a perfect balance between professional and personal life because of children, it might be to help with everything around the works council, daycare, really to have well-developed arrangements that genuinely make a woman's daily life easier.

And can I ask you, in terms of balance between professional and personal life, was it fairly simple? Did you manage to find your rhythm in your job, which is quite demanding, I would say?

Yes, indeed, very demanding. I am the mother of three children, including a 10-month-old baby, so I was also lucky thanks to SEGRO, because I have worked at SEGRO for 3 years, and I got pregnant almost a year and a half ago. Really, when I announced it to my director, she was very happy, very moved, and it touched me enormously, and there I really saw a marker at SEGRO, thinking honestly... It is reassuring. It is reassuring, and we truly give a woman the same chance as a man. And that, honestly, is a gift.

Not feeling discriminated against, or that personal fulfilment counts against you, I think that reinforces the professional side of your job even more. Absolutely. And it makes us want to work in the company even more, in the end.

Exactly, you are all the more motivated once the announcement was made to my director and to everyone else.

Great news, by the way. Thank you so much for this interview. My pleasure. It was very interesting. See you soon. See you soon.

Laure Toupas Darmon

Louise Roger

Cyril Bergerault