Recipient of the 2024 Serge Bellanger Graduate Business Scholarship, Jennifer Flanagan, shares how the FACC Foundation “gave [her] the freedom to pursue [her] dream of becoming a global leader, with the confidence that the U.S.–France connection running through [her] life was recognized and supported.”
Read her story of financial hurdles overcome and opportunities unlocked.

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Just over a year ago, I was pacing my New York apartment when a +33 number lit up my phone. I froze, answered, and waited to hear if I had been admitted to the INSEAD MBA program in Fontainebleau. The yes brought immediate excitement, but also unease: accepting the offer meant taking on more debt after already spending most of my savings to move to New York as the first employee at a startup. INSEAD was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but without support I wasn’t sure I could take it on.

Still, I wanted to find a way. My mother, a photographer, had always taught me: don’t rely on zoom. If you care about a subject, get close and find the details. For me, that subject was France. At 21, I won a language grant to study in Tours, living with retired chef host parents who taught me the culture at their table as I learned the language in class. Later, I studied abroad in Angers and majored in French economics and culture. That closeness to France became my edge: translating cultures into stories that shaped my work as an intelligence analyst and media executive.

After five years, I realized that to grow into the global business leader I wanted to be, I needed an environment where I could engage directly, not at a distance. INSEAD was my dream: a classroom of 80+ nationalities and some of the sharpest minds, learning together in a small French town surrounded by forest, where tradition and progress meet. But the financial commitment was daunting.

Receiving the FACC Foundation’s Serge Bellanger Graduate Business Scholarship lifted the burden of loans and repayment. It turned a financial risk into a commitment I could embrace, with the confidence that the U.S.–France connection running through my life was recognized and supported. Because of the scholarship, I could share that connection, taking peers who had never experienced France on road trips to small towns and writing for the largest English-language French culture magazine about the people and places we discovered. With less financial worry, I was also able to follow INSEAD beyond France’s borders, studying and living on campuses in Singapore and the UAE and taking a course in China before returning to Fontainebleau.

Looking back, I see how much the world opened up. INSEAD gave me a global perspective, and the FACC Foundation gave me the freedom to pursue it fully. Along the way, I co-led a weekly program where classmates told their “origin stories” in ten minutes. We hosted over 60 sessions from speakers of dozens of nationalities across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and at commencement the Dean named it one of the defining parts of our community. Those stories will all stay with me, histories of lives across the world that continue to shape how I see my own.

Now, just a year later, I sit in my Paris apartment and see how much has changed. These experiences helped me believe in myself as a global leader in a way I hadn’t before and opened career paths that only became possible through this pivot. My favorite professor invited me to support her work at INSEAD’s Corporate Governance Centre, giving me a front-row seat to conversations shaping boardrooms. With a base in Europe, I built a professional network in media and technology that led to my next move, supporting AI in publishing in France. Thanks to a classmate, I also discovered road cycling and now spend most weekends exploring new villages across France. France, and the world, have never felt more open. I was able to share the U.S.–France connection with others while shaping myself into a globally connected business leader. None of this would have been possible without the Serge Bellanger Graduate Business Scholarship—for that, I am deeply grateful.

A special thank you to Jennifer Flanagan, INSEAD MBA Class of 2025, for sharing her experiences with us.

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