Paris, France

I turn company priorities into human stories.

Executive & Corporate Communications Consultant — Speechwriter — Journalist

Fifteen-plus years across international TV journalism and corporate communications. I coach leaders for the moments that matter — speeches, media tours, town halls, investor meetings — and turn dense strategy into narratives people actually remember. Currently anchoring and reporting for France 24, while consulting for L'Oréal, Qonto, AXA, and other global brands.

Charli James

What I do

Five ways I help leaders communicate.

  1. 01

    Executive communications & C-suite coaching

    Preparing leaders for speeches, media tours, town halls, product launches, and international events.

  2. 02

    Strategic messaging & brand storytelling

    Turning dense technical, scientific, or financial initiatives into narratives global audiences actually retain.

  3. 03

    Speechwriting & talking points

    Writing in a leader’s own voice, not a generic corporate one — built to be said out loud, under pressure.

  4. 04

    Video & audio production

    Scripting, hosting, and interviewing for internal video, podcasts, and executive communications.

  5. 05

    Live events & performance coaching

    Production, scriptwriting, and on-stage coaching for multi-day conferences and high-stakes finals.

Selected work

Six engagements, six different rooms to read.

Garnier

2024–2025

Coaching a president through a biotech launch

Executive coachingBrand storytellingMedia tour prep

Garnier brought me in to coach its leadership team — including President Marc Balard — ahead of speeches, media tours, and product launches. The work ranged from long-term message development to hour-before-the-lights-go-up coaching.

Two moments stand out. The first was the launch of Garnier’s “High-Tech Nature” strategic vision: a biotech initiative dense enough to lose a general audience in the first sentence. I shaped the messaging so the science stayed accurate while the story stayed human — a narrative global press and employees could actually repeat back.

The second was preparing Marc Balard for the media tour announcing Gisele Bündchen as Garnier’s first-ever global ambassador — a high-visibility moment where the messaging had to hold up under real scrutiny, not just rehearsal.

Qonto

2024–2025

Getting a whole C-suite stage-ready, twice a year

SpeechwritingExecutive coachingPublic speaking training

Twice a year, Qonto’s C-suite — finance, marketing, technology, communications — has to stand on stage in front of the company and make strategy land as something people actually remember. I prepare that group for the Summits: scriptwriting, presentation skills, audience engagement.

The job isn’t one voice — it’s five or six different executives, each with a different comfort level on stage, all needing to sound confident and like themselves. Alongside the Summit prep, I run workshops for managers across Qonto’s European markets on public speaking and impactful communication, so the skill doesn’t stay locked at the top of the org chart.

VivaTech

2024–2026

Two newsletters a day, 180,000 readers, zero room for filler

Editorial writingAudience engagementSEO/GEO content

For more than three years I’ve written communications for VivaTech, Europe’s largest technology conference. During the event itself, that means producing newsletters twice a day for all 180,000 attendees — same news-writing discipline as a broadcast deadline, just with a “send” button instead of a countdown clock.

The work doesn’t stop when the show floor closes. Year-round, I write SEO and GEO articles, summary briefs of tech studies, and content for the Les Echos VivaTech supplement — keeping the event visible and relevant in the months between editions, not just during the four days everyone’s in Paris.

Servier

2025

Putting a face on 'quality' for a pharma workforce

Video productionInternal communicationsOn-camera hosting

“Quality” is easy to put on a slide and hard to make anyone feel. For Servier’s “World Quality Week,” I wrote the script, hosted, and interviewed four executives on camera to show — not tell — how quality shows up in the company’s actual day-to-day process and values.

The brief was internal communications, but the standard was broadcast: clear questions, tight edits, executives who sound like people rather than press releases. It’s the same instinct that shaped years of live TV interviews, aimed at a company’s own workforce instead of a global news audience.

AXA

2024–2025

A voice for 100,000 employees who'll never meet each other

Podcast hostingInternal communicationsInterviewing

A global workforce doesn’t get to know itself by accident. For AXA, I hosted multiple podcast series — Radio Go! and IM Talks — built to introduce employees to the teams and projects shaping the company, across offices that will likely never sit in the same room.

It’s a format that rewards the same skill honed over a decade of live interviews: get someone talking like themselves in the first thirty seconds, and the rest takes care of itself.

L'Oréal Brandstorm

2025–2026

Running the show for the world's largest youth innovation competition

Live event productionScriptwritingPerformance coaching

L’Oréal Brandstorm is the largest youth innovation competition in the world, and its finals are a multi-day live production with real stakes for the students on stage. For the 2025 and 2026 editions, I worked across production and scriptwriting for the event, and coached participants on performance before they walked out under the lights.

It’s live-event pressure in its purest form: no retakes, a script that has to hold together in real time, and people who’ve never been on a stage like this needing to look like they have.

“Charli’s professionalism, thorough preparation, and sharp journalistic insight played a key role in the success of our event. She has a remarkable ability to understand complex topics quickly and to highlight the most meaningful aspects of the discussion with clarity and relevance.”

Nicolas Lefebvre, CEO, AdEchoTech

“Working with Charli has been game changing for my ability to speak publicly with more clarity, precision, consistency and confidence.”

Also a journalist

Fifteen years of asking the next question on camera.

Since 2017 I've anchored and reported for France 24, interviewing diplomats, business leaders, and experts on the stories shaping global politics and economics — reaching a broadcaster in more than 500 million households. Before Paris, I spent a decade in New York and Tokyo as a digital correspondent for ABC News and a producer for Reuters, HuffPost Live, and MSNBC/Vocativ.

It's the same discipline that shows up in the corporate work above: distill a complex story fast, ask the question that matters, and stay composed when the cameras are rolling and there's no retake.

Get in touch

Let's talk about what your leaders need to say.