Estelle Métayer is one of the world’s leading experts on competitive and strategic intelligence. She specializes in how leaders can build and improve their strategic decision-making, corporate governance, and competitive intelligence processes to avoid strategic blind spots. Her best work is done when companies need to drastically change the way they do business, grow aggressively, or both. A former consultant with McKinsey & Company, Métayer is fluent in several languages and skilled at communicating and simplifying complex business ideas and strategies to the needs of her audiences.
Métayer was the president and founder of Competia, a leading training organization for executives and analysts in strategic intelligence, prior to selling it in 2004. She began her career at ING Bank based in both the Netherlands and Poland, where she studied the financial risks of expanding into emerging countries. She then gained first-hand practical experience while managing competitive intelligence, business development, and strategic planning at CAE Inc.
Today, Métayer is a reputed public speaker and facilitates strategic workshops around the world. She is an adjunct professor at McGill University and has previously been a guest lecturer at IMD, IMB, INSEAD, and MIT. As the National Academic Director for the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors, Métayer spearheaded the Board Oversight of Technology program and has taught the Social Media Oversight module within the national certification curriculum for the past 10 years.
In 2000, Métayer received the Arista Sunlife Award for Entrepreneur of the Year and was a finalist in 2001 for the Women of Merit award from the YWCA. She is an experienced board member, having served on boards of both public and private companies across three continents. Her valuable expertise includes branding, international expansion, analytics capability building, new technologies, and digital transformation. Métayer’s current board positions include Audemars-Piguet and Martur Fompak. She also serves on advisory boards for family offices in Canada and Switzerland as well as Norea Capital and the David Johnston Center for Governance.
Previously, Métayer chaired the board of Nortera and held board positions at Bombardier Recreational Products, Ivanhoe Cambridge, Agropur, Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Blockstream, and Zag Bank, where she led various committees focused on governance, ethics, technology, and compensation.
Métayer was trained in the Netherlands, where she obtained her MBA and PhD from the University of Nijenrode. She is also a commercial pilot and flight instructor.