Céline Schillinger is the founder and CEO of We Need Social and the author of the award-winning Dare to Un-Lead; she helps organizations transform collective performance through relational leadership.

• Award-winning stakeholder & employee community engagement.

• Expert practice of Kotter, Living Systems and Action Learning approaches

• Successful field experience in complex multi-cultural, commercial & industrial settings

• Small and large organizations

• Asia, Europe, North America

My Journey

I grew up in Bordeaux, in a family passionate about art, culture and travel. After studying political science and corporate communications, I left France at 23 for Vietnam. I then spent ten years in business roles across Asia Pacific, ending as general manager of a radio business in China.

In 2001, I joined Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of Sanofi, drawn by the human values I sensed there. Over 17 years, I worked in international HR, business operations, strategic planning, marketing and quality. From 2011, I explored how activism, co-creation, social networks and new forms of leadership could improve business performance, in one of the most regulated industries there is. That work drove significant change across the company and earned multiple awards. My last role there was Head of Innovation and Engagement for Sanofi Pasteur Global Quality.

In 2018, I founded We Need Social to help organizations across sectors mobilize their people for change. I became a Kotter affiliate, continuing a collaboration with Dr John Kotter and his team that began in 2014. I also joined Emerging World as an associate coach and Emeritus as leadership faculty, teaching relational leadership to executives around the world. In 2022, I published Dare to Un-Lead, named Porchlight’s Leadership & Strategy Book of the Year.

Since then, I have supported leadership teams with bespoke change and leadership work. I have also developed new ways to listen at scale: internal podcasts and radio with the Community Studio, network mapping with the Network Activator, and AI for analysis and facilitation.