Garance Wattez-Richard is the founder and CEO of AXA Emerging Customers, a business whose objective is to better protect low to middle income populations by contributing to closing the insurance gap across markets in both the emerging and mature worlds. She started her career at the European Commission in Brussels, went on to work within the Office of the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, to then spend several years working as a strategy consultant, for London Economics and Arthur D. Little. She joined AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) in 2005 as Executive Assistant to the CEO and has since held several positions within AXA. Garance Wattez-Richard is a post-graduate of the London School of Economics, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po.) and holds an MBA from INSEAD. She is an awardee of the Geneva Association’s Women in Insurance Award and of the Schwab Foundations’ Social Innovation Award.