Julien Trehet

INSEAD

“Unlikely beginnings, a global journey, pushing my limits—always enjoying good wine along the way.”

Hometown: Trouville-sur-mer, France

Fun fact about yourself: Friends are convinced I’m a spy. I’ve lived in Armenia, Buenos Aires, Moscow, London and a handful of places in between, and I speak enough languages to be suspicious in most of them. I’ve never been able to fully convince them otherwise.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

• King’s College London, B.A.
• University College London, M.A.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Before INSEAD, I was an Associate at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, focused on sustainable infrastructure investments and mobilizing private capital into emerging markets. At the EBRD, closing a deal can mean a new rail line, a fleet of green buses, or a wind farm that replaces a coal plant that should have been retired years ago.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? During the summer of 2025, I worked full-time with the EBRD’s Banking team in the Bucharest Resident Office, supporting investment teams on infrastructure and corporate transactions across the region.

Where will you be working after graduation? After graduation, I plan to pursue opportunities in infrastructure investing or private equity, as well as in consulting firms with strong private equity practices.

The longer arc, though, is to build something of my own: an investment platform focused on mobilizing institutional capital into energy transition and sustainable infrastructure projects.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• Section Vice President (Class Representative)
• President, Investment Management Club
• Vice President, Private Equity & Venture Capital Club
• Co-Chair, Robin Hood Scholarship Campaign
• INSEAD Merit Scholar

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Without question, co-chairing the Robin Hood Scholarship Campaign.

During my studies, my family was going through a difficult period financially. I was able to stay in school because I won a scholarship on academic merit. It’s one of those things you don’t forget, not out of sentimentality, but because it’s a concrete reminder that opportunity is not evenly distributed, and that sometimes a single decision by a single institution can change the direction of life. I made a promise to myself that one day I would help give that same chance to someone else.

At INSEAD, being a Merit Scholar myself and then co-chairing the Robin Hood Campaign felt like that moment. The campaign funds scholarships for talented candidates who couldn’t otherwise afford the MBA. I went into this role because it felt like it could be one of the most meaningful things I could do with my time at INSEAD.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Being selected as a Young Leader for the Youth 20 (Y20) process during my time at the OECD stands out as one of the defining experiences of my early career.

The Y20 brings together delegates from across G20 countries to develop policy recommendations on issues affecting young people worldwide (education, employment, technology) that are presented directly to heads of state. Knowing the work would land in front of the most powerful leaders in the world added real weight to every session.

But getting there meant getting twenty national delegations to agree on something genuine, not just language everyone could tolerate. What I found myself doing, almost instinctively, was working the margins — pulling people aside between sessions, understanding where each delegation’s red lines actually were versus where they were just posturing — and finding the reframes that gave everyone a way to move without losing face. It rarely happened in the room. It happened in the conversations before and after. I left with a deeper understanding of negotiation than any formal training had given me.

Why did you choose this business school? There are reasons everyone knows to choose INSEAD: the hyper-global cohort, the multi-campus model, the extraordinary network of founders, and leaders the program has produced over decades. Those things are real, and they mattered to me.

But what sealed it happened during my interviews. Both my interviewers had careers that defied easy categorization: they created things, worked abroad, and pivoted their career more than once. Neither of them interviewed me like they were checking boxes. They were genuinely curious and engaging, and it struck me that this wasn’t a coincidence. You tend to get the culture you attract.

Coming from a career that had already taken me across several countries, I didn’t need to be convinced that international experience mattered. What INSEAD offered on top of that was a community of trailblazers who defy conventional paths and are genuinely driven to use business as a force for good. That’s precisely the kind of community I wanted to be part of.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite MBA professor was Marwan Sinaceur, who taught Organizational Behavior. What made his class particularly memorable was his engaging teaching style and his ability to make complex leadership and negotiation concepts immediately practical. His sessions were not just intellectually stimulating, but also highly applicable to real-world situations, whether in leadership, negotiation, or team dynamics. I could project myself and many situations I had lived through directly into the cases we were discussing. Marwan’s energy in the classroom and his ability to challenge students to think more deeply about how people make decisions made OB one of the most impactful courses of the MBA experience for me.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course during the MBA has been OB1 (Organizational Behavior), and I say that as someone who came into the MBA expecting to love the finance and quantitative courses most.

What surprised me was how much of what happens in organizations (be it in boardrooms, in negotiation rooms, or in crisis moments) comes down to things such as emotion, status, group pressure, or the stories people tell themselves about why they’re right. The course made those invisible forces visible.

The cases were extraordinary. Watching the jury dynamics in 12 Angry Men through the lens of organizational behavior is an entirely different experience than just watching the film. The Apollo 13 case is one of those rare classroom moments where you’re genuinely unsure what you would have done. And the live negotiation exercises with classmates had a way of revealing things about yourself that no amount of self-reflection quite manages.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? INSEAD has a particular gravitational pull toward doing everything. Every club sounds worthwhile. Every conference has the right speaker. Every dinner is with someone you’ll genuinely regret not knowing better. And the culture is warm enough that declining things feels like missing something real, because you usually are.

In hindsight, I spread myself thinner than I needed to in the first few months. Not recklessly, but enough that I was sometimes present in rooms where I wasn’t fully engaged. The activities I found most meaningful were the ones I committed to fully. I wish I’d identified those faster and protected the time around them more fiercely.

The irony is that the abundance is also what makes INSEAD what it is. I don’t think there’s a clean answer. But I’d be more honest with myself earlier about the difference between things I wanted to do and things I felt I should do.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? One of the most impactful cases for me was the Sabena case in Introduction to Management. The case puts you in the shoes of Erik Weytjens, a freshly-minted MBA walking into his first real assignment: a logistics problem in the dishwashing department of a Belgian airline. The case forces you to make decisions under exactly the conditions that make decisions hard: limited information, no established credibility, and a clock running. At no point does the right answer become obvious. You just have to act, and then live with the pattern of choices you’ve made. It reinforced the kind of leadership style I aspire to: one that is principled, courageous, and able to navigate difficult moments without avoiding hard choices.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? What I loved most about Fontainebleau was the balance it offers. It is a charming historic town that provides a calm and beautiful setting for intense learning and reflection. Having previously lived in busy global cities like London, Paris, Moscow, and Buenos Aires, I was used to high-energy environments. Fontainebleau offers a different rhythm. The smaller town setting naturally brings students together and makes it easier to be fully immersed in the INSEAD experience. At the same time, Paris is an hour away, which means you can always escape whenever you need a change of pace.

What business leader do you admire most? One business leader I admire is Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital. What I find particularly compelling about Marks is not just his success as an investor, but his role as an intellectual leader in the industry. His memos on market cycles, risk, and investor psychology have become essential reading for many in finance and beyond because they distill complex ideas into clear principles about discipline and long-term thinking. But what makes them unusual is the honesty. Marks writes about being wrong, the limits of forecasting, and the asymmetry between how much credit investors take for successes versus how much blame they accept for failures. The combination of world-class investor and generous teacher is what I find most inspiring. He has spent a career doing the work while sharing the thinking behind it openly. That’s the kind of leader I’d like to become.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? My experience in the classroom has been very different from the last time I was a student, when AI tools were not yet part of the learning environment. At INSEAD, AI has been integrated directly into several courses. In Introduction to Strategy, we used AI-powered scenario simulations and VR environments to test strategic decisions in ways that a traditional case study can’t replicate. You could iterate, make a different call, and see what changed. In Uncertainty, Data and Judgment, the course itself generated AI-produced summaries, videos, and podcasts as part of the material, which forced you to think critically about the output rather than just consuming it.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I have been incredibly impressed by all of my classmates. When people say that much of the MBA learning comes from peers, it truly could not be more accurate. One person that I would like to highlight though is Katie Anderson. Katie is an incredible all-around person and brings together a combination of qualities that are rarely found in the same person: leadership, accountability, humility, and a remarkable ability to ask the right questions while genuinely listening to others. What impressed me most was how naturally she stepped into a leadership role in a group with strong personalities and differing perspectives. During Master Strategist Day, she challenged assumptions and pushed the discussion forward while making sure every voice was heard. She is a truly outstanding person, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn alongside her.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? First, I would like to launch my own investment fund focused on long-term opportunities in infrastructure and real assets. I am particularly interested in investments that combine strong financial returns with meaningful economic impact, such as energy transition or infrastructure development in emerging markets. Building a platform that mobilizes capital toward these kinds of investments would be a long-term professional goal.

Second, I would like to develop a platform (whether through a newsletter or a podcast) to share ideas on investing and leadership. Some of the most influential investors have shaped the industry not only through their investments but also through their thinking. I would love to contribute to that tradition by sharing insights on risk, uncertainty, and long-term investing with a broader audience.

What made Julien such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Julien has been a valued member of the Class of 2026 thanks to his intellectual engagement, global perspective, and contributions to the community at INSEAD. He has lived in various countries, and brings a truly international outlook and an easy ability to connect with classmates from different backgrounds. His classmates elected him for a leadership position as the Section Vice President, a role he has been diligently delivering on by acting as a pivotal go-to peer. He has also been serving in various other capacities, including as the President of the Investment Management Club, taking on a leadership role in the Private Equity & Venture Capital Club, and co-chairing the Robin Hood Campaign. In class, he offered thorough and precise contributions, which helped organize discussions. Let me say this: we all benefit from great institutions, but some people go above and beyond to build great institutions. That’s an enormously important quality, because the spillovers stretch much beyond any single person. Julien stands out for his capacity as an institution and community builder and nurturer. It has been a pleasure to teach him and I can’t wait to see what he does next.”

Aldona Kapačinskaitė
Assistant Professor of Strategy

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