EBiHS Administration

Le Président de l'association, Ludovic Mondongou

The International Bilingual School of Haute-Savoie is a non-profit association administered by a board of Directors which organizes meetings to elaborate the School strategies and ensure its mission is fulfilled.

On a daily basis, the school has an administrative and financial management, and the pedagogical Directors. Welcoming the students and leading them towards success is a top priority for the pedagogical team.

Committees and working groups allow for creative thinking on educational themes and they participate in making EBiHS an active school willing to take on major forward-looking educational issues of our time.

The 2019-2025 Strategic Plan gives the broad school goals and explains the major strategies that will be used to achieve them.

Vice-President, Nicolas Dermaux

Secretary, Thomas Joie

Treasurer, Christian Jarlov

Administrative team

Mathilde Mondongou

Co-founder and director

Dès son plus jeune âge, Mathilde a eu une véritable vocation pour l’enseignement. En parallèle avec ses études d’institutrice, elle a suivi un cursus universitaire en anglais. Après ses études, Mathilde a passé deux années à l’étranger, une en tant qu’assistante de français dans un collège-lycée du Pays de Galles, l’autre en tant qu’étudiante en traduction dans une université à Toronto au Canada. Grâce à ces deux expériences, elle a perfectionné ses connaissances en anglais et a enseigné dans des écoles bilingues au Canada, ce qui a renforcé son désir de travailler en milieu éducatif bilingue. Durant les 25 années qui ont suivi, elle a enseigné dans des milieux scolaires variés : écoles privées catholiques, écoles internationales, écoles bilingues, ainsi que dans des niveaux de classes différents. Mathilde est convaincue que le bilinguisme développe de nombreuses capacités chez les enfants, tout en leur donnant une ouverture d’esprit. Ses expériences professionnelles et ses convictions d’éducatrice ont joué un rôle important lors de la conception du projet pédagogique de l’Ecole Bilingue. Annecy, région dynamique et cosmopolite, à proximité de Genève, était l’endroit idéal pour ouvrir une telle école. C’était le début d’une nouvelle aventure, partagée avec Hélène Jager.Pendant plusieurs années, Mathilde a travaillé aux côtés d’Hélène comme directrice pédagogique, contribuant au développement du programme bilingue et à la coordination de l’équipe pédagogique qui s’est étoffée chaque année un peu plus. Après de départ d’Hélène début 2019, elle est devenue la directrice de l’EBiHS, avec la volonté que l’école continue à se développer harmonieusement. Les valeurs du travail et du sens de l’effort, du partage, de la coopération, du respect des autres et de l’ouverture à la diversité sont celles auxquelles elle est très attachée, et qui permettent à chaque enfant de s’épanouir pleinement dans le cadre bienveillant de l’Ecole Bilingue de Haute Savoie.

Nadège Caruso

Head of administration & finance

With an engineering degree from ENESAD in Dijon and a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Kentucky, Nadège spent seven years working in a university research laboratory in the United States. In 2004, she earned the DAEFLE (Diplôme d’Aptitude à l’Enseignement du Français Langue Étrangère), which allowed her to teach in language schools in Brazil, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Concurrently, she led a survey on child labor in rural areas in Mozambique for ECLT (Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing), a non-governmental organization based in Geneva. Returning to the United States in 2007, she worked as a project coordinator in a university medical research laboratory. In 2010, Nadège relocated to Annecy with her husband and two children. When the École Bilingue Internationale de Haute-Savoie opened that same year, she initially got involved as a parent. Her dedication led her to secure the position of Assistant Director in 2013. With the school’s expansion, she took on new responsibilities. Thanks to her relational skills, adaptability, rigor, and pragmatism, she assumed the administrative and financial management of the EBIHS starting in 2015. Fluent in English and Portuguese, Nadège’s extensive international experience makes her well-suited to the multicultural environment of the École Bilingue Internationale de Haute-Savoie. Nadège advocates for bilingualism, recognizing it as a valuable asset for children’s intellectual and personal development.

Emilie Lefebvre

Human ressources officer

Emilie is originally from Northern France. After obtaining her literary high school diploma, she joined Metz’s faculty of Law subsequently joining Paris’s faculty of Law and gaining a Master Degree in Private Law.

Attracted to the English language and British culture, she decided to spend 6 months in London before joining the Westford Graduate School of Business, located in Grenoble, where she was awarded a second Master Degree in HR Management.

Having graduated in both Private Law and HR Management, Emilie joined her future husband in Annecy and began her career as recruitment consultant in a major temporary recruitment agency.

Her next career move was to join a medium sized firm in serious difficulties as the Human Resource Executive and Administrator. Using her legal training, Emilie managed to extricate the company from proceedings which enabled the company to become competitive and successful. She was responsible for increasing the scope of the board of Directors and developing the human potential within the company.

With operational experience of more than 13 years, and convinced that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” (N. Mandela), Emilie joined EBIHS in March 2019 as the HR manager to contribute towards its continued development.

Nadine Wolff

Head of admissions

For as long as she can remember Nadine has been around many cultures: from her early childhood in Madagascar, Elementary and Middle School years in Reunion Island, High School in France, and the majority of her adult life in the United States. She has always been intrigued by the many cultures, languages, and customs surrounding her.

After her baccalauréat she had the opportunity to study in the United States where she finished a degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences while working at the French Consulate in San Francisco, organizing all the receptions at the Consul’s residence. Ready to take on a new challenge, she went on to study Marketing, Communication & Management and joined her first early-stage start-up. Over the years she built a successful Marketing and Communications career with tenures in several more start-ups as well as a few larger companies, ending with her dream international role on the LinkedIn Digital Marketing team.

Committed to raising their twins to be bilingual, Nadine and her husband joined the French-American School of Silicon Valley at the start of preschool, finding a kind and empathetic environment focused as much on academics as on children’s wellbeing and development. When a possible move to France became reality, their top criteria was finding a bilingual Middle School with similar values: they found this at EBiHS, which led them to beautiful Annecy.

Nadine strongly believes in the value of a bilingual education and the many opportunities it can provide children along the way, allowing them to cultivate their curiosity, build confidence, embrace the world with an open mind, and develop strong values and work ethic. She is excited to join the EBiHS team to continue to raise awareness of these benefits, and accompany new families, whether local or back from expatriation.

Catherine Lapierre

School secretary – Pré de Challes & club secretary

Catherine spent more than 21 years as an officer in the French army. She exercised administrative and operational responsibilities in regiments, headquarters as well as in a military high school. She hold positions in various fields such as, Intelligence, Training, Communication, operational management…In addition to this, she participated in an overseas operation in Bosnia as a chief of Staff.

She came back to her hometown, Annecy, in 2010, and ended her military career at the 27th Mountain Infantry Battalion. Then she worked for nearly 5 years in Geneva as an administrative assistant and receptionist for important international companies (HSBC, IATA, CATERPILLAR).

Catherine has a literary training and she’s graduated in foreign languages (english, portuguese), european studies and management of local governments. She was looking for an attractive mission where she could use her organizational and relational competences to serve a dynamic institution, in a multicultural environment and where quality of service and team spirit would be present.

The position of administrative assistant and receptionist in our Pré de Challes school, because of its versatile and central aspect, seduced her immediately!

Carole Griot-Pezzini

School secretary – Pré Faucon & head of communication

Specialized educator for 25 years (in Foyer de Vie for adults and then in ULIS-college for students with learning disabilities), Carole has always been keen to adapt and adapt her care to bring out the best in students.

Mother of 3 children and an active member of a parents’ association, she knows the school environment well, having worked with principals, municipal teams and, of course, many parents.

In order to give a new impetus to her professional life, she chose in 2019 to follow a reconversion training course to become an administrative assistant. From now on, she wishes to use all the knowledge and skills she has acquired over the years, both relational and technical, in a reception and secretarial mission.

Coralie Pereira

Communication Marketing assistant

Coralie, fraîchement diplômée en Bachelor Business International, est une étudiante passionnée par la découverte et l’apprentissage. Son éducation dans un environnement franco-portugais a façonné son intérêt pour la multiculturalité. Son séjour de quatre mois à Rotterdam spécialisé en marketing digital réalisé durant son Bachelor, lui a permis d’élargir son horizon en lui offrant une expérience pratique et immersive dans un environnement international.

Son alternance en tant qu’assistante communication dans le cadre de son Master en Marketing, Communication et Digital, lui permet d’allier son intérêt pour le domaine de la communication et sa passion pour l’anglais. Son désir de contribuer au développement de l’école ainsi qu’à l’épanouissement des jeunes et de leurs parents dans un contexte multiculturel l’anime également pleinement dans ce nouveau rôle.

En dehors de ses études, sa passion pour les voyages et les langues témoigne de son ouverture d’esprit et de son adaptabilité. Coralie s’applique toujours à apporter une contribution significative que ce soit dans ses études, son travail ou ses passions personnelles.

Pedagogical direction

Emilie Tarraf-Lescoffier

Pré de Challes director

Born in Paris as the child of an American mother and Syrian father, cultural diversity has been a central part of Emilie’s life since her earliest memories and a defining aspect of her personality. Languages – English, French and Arabic – have followed her from birth to adulthood, each one bringing with it a different culture. This particularity certainly contributed to Emilie’s open-mindedness and led her to teach despite her varied educational cursus.

Indeed, Emilie studied Political Science and Economics at the University of Illinois, during which time she completed a successful year at Sciences Po in Paris in the International Program there. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from the University of Illinois, Emilie returned to France as a Language Assistant at the Université de Bourgogne. In her free time, she taught as an English Assistant at a private middle school. During these two years, she spent her summers as a Language Assistant at the University of Homs, in Syria. These two years which included so many different teaching and cultural experiences encouraged her to pursue a career in teaching and she applied for and was accepted for Teach for America, a prestigious program in the United States which “enlists, develops and mobilizes…future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equality and excellence.”

Always searching for ways to perfect and grow, Emilie enrolled in a Master’s program in Education at Hunter College in New York. She specialized in Early Reading Instruction and defended a thesis in the Development and Measurement of Character Traits in children. Diploma in hand, Emilie participated in the opening of a new school. She taught and was promoted to Grade-Level Chair at a school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which has become one of the best in New York City. This school’s mission, which has proven more than successful, is to provide a good future through education to children in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the United States. Despite all the interesting ventures and challenges that Emilie undertook in Brooklyn, she decided to return to France, where she was offered a position to teach at Ecole Bilingue International de Haute-Savoie. She enjoyed several years of happiness, teaching several classes of wonderful students and working with their parents. With the growth of the school and opening of a new building, Emilie worked in parallel to her teaching as the Pré Faucon Coordinator. Seeing the personal and intellectual growth of each of her individual students confirms her choice to work and grow in Teaching.

Martine Ouellette

Pré Faucon Director

An atypical career path led this Canadian-born lover-of-life to take up the challenge of a job change. After graduating from the Université de Sherbrooke with a degree in Business Administration (Marketing branch), Martine worked in the field for around 8 years. Her lifelong passion for teaching led her to obtain a second degree in Preschool and Primary Education from the Université du Québec à Montréal, in order to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher! As soon as she graduated, Martine began her career in an English-language school district in Montreal, teaching French immersion to English-speaking first graders.

Constantly keen to learn more, she made a habit of attending further training courses. As a result, Martine set up long-term projects in her class, differentiating her instruction according to the needs of the students. She created and adapted the texts needed to teach the various subjects of interest to her students. Looking to create a happy and motivating environment for all pupils, Martine was involved in various school projects, such as artists at school and meetings with authors and illustrators. She sat on various committees to consult and implement new projects within the school district.

After arriving in France in 2008, Martine pursued her career teaching a diverse range of pupils before joining EBiHS when the school opened. She obtained a Diplôme universitaire (“DU”) in Neuropsychology, Education and Pedagogy from the University of Lyon, and these courses gave her the essential knowledge she needed to better understand learning difficulties and adapt her teaching to the specific needs of her pupils. And so the creation of a programme for gifted and talented students stemmed from this deepened understanding. Even though the programme is no longer in place, Martine remains a point of reference in the field for teachers, students and their parents.

At the start of the 2018 school year, with the success and well-being of as many children as possible at heart, Martine enthusiastically accepted the position of Primary School principal at Pré de Challes.

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Christian Jarlov

Collège Head of School

Teaching in International French schools gave Christian Jarlov the opportunity to travel around the world: USA, Africa, Asia and in the Middle-East. In Zimbabwe, he founded with his wife the first French International school. After teaching during three years in the Middle-East, he returned to Africa, in Dakar Sénégal, to work for the Ministry of Cooperation, teaching and creating newspapers and magazines for children. Besides teaching, he collaborated for more than 15 years with a publishing company, Bayard-Press as a journalist and advisor.

Christian then spent ten years in Singapore, working for one of the most prestigious school of the French International network. He was involved in many projects, including Art and Theatre, collaborating with professional artists and musicians.

In 1998, he moved to California and worked as a teacher and pedagogic Director for a French American school. From 2010 to 2017, before moving back to Annecy, he was the director ( or Head of school) of the San Diego French-American School.

Christian is passionate about bilingual and international education, Art and communication. He enjoys offering students opportunities to discover other cultures. He is convinced that bilingual and international education promotes essential values such as open-mindedness, tolerance and respect, preparing children for a world ever more complex and global.