Profile : Lou d'Angelo, alumna and tutor for group projects

MEETING WITH LOU D'ANGELO, A 2017 GRADUATE OF THE "GOVERNING THE LARGE METROPOLIS" MASTER'S DEGREE, BACK AT SCIENCES PO AS A TUTOR FOR A COLLECTIVE PROJECT WITH NIUA AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT FOR GROUPE HUIT.

Each year, public or private partners call on the students of the Urban School to answer an operational and strategic question. They work together on a real-life challenges via the “group project” exercise. The students are coached by the school’s management, the partners and by a professional or academic tutor for regular methodological supervision.

Lou d'Angelo supervised the project proposed by The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) entitled "Framework for ecological transition through urban waterfront projects". The students of the project: Alejandro LERMA, André DA VILA, Clémence RAFFARD, Laurène LUCY, Mathilde ROUVILLOIS.

What has been your career path since graduation?

I did my Master 2 internship at the Groupe Huit design office, who then hired me. Since 2017, I have been working in this structure, which supports urban and territorial planning and the preparation of urban projects in developing cities. Our clients are generally donors (World Bank, French Development Agency...), or sometimes directly the cities or ministries of the countries where we work.

Tell us about some of the projects you have worked on

I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects, for example:

Preparation of multi-sectoral urban projects (parks, river renaturation, markets, roads, drainage, transport terminal...) in 4 secondary cities in Uganda;

The preparation of a major urban and rural investment programme in the western regions of Mongolia, as well as the territorial planning of the 21 Mongolian regions;

The preparation of multi-sectoral urban projects in secondary cities in Jordan.

How did you experience your return to the Urban School as a tutor?

I was delighted to be able to reconnect with the Urban School by being involved as a tutor in a group project. The partner was the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) in India, and the work consisted of capitalising on three major urban redevelopment projects around watercourses, carried out with funding from the AFD under the CITIIS programme. Expectations were high on the part of the partner and the team of students rose to the challenge with flying colours.

My role was to guide the students by providing methodological advice and explanations on the development aid sector, which I know well, and by regularly monitoring and critically reviewing the reports. This allowed me to take a step back from my practice by confronting it with the student's questions and remarks.

What did the role of tutor taught you?

I also find the tutor's role very interesting: it is not a question of leading a team by assuming the quality of the production and taking charge of the exchanges with the client, but of helping the students to progress while remaining in the background. In the end, we are more in the role of coaching and advising the students, who must assume the final quality of their work. This was not always easy for me (as I was used to being in production or directing studies), but it is much more enriching for the students, and I am also learning to adopt a new posture!

I also took great pleasure in seeing the progress of the students, their growth through the project and the pride they could take in their final output.

I am repeating this experience this year, supervising a group of students working on sobriety for the Palladio Foundation.