Our featured member this go around is Dominique Thevenon of France. Dominique is the Executive Secretary of AIGN®. She is also AIGN®’s representative for CIOPORA.
Dominique attained a Master Degree in Private International Law as well as English and Italian in 1977. From there she began her work career at Jourdan, a luxury shoe maker, as secretary of the President. She later moved to Ducros, a company that specializes in international trade of spices (a competitor of McCormick), and became the secretary of the owner. Dominique was also in charge of international relationships and thus made her first trip to Hong-Kong and mainland China (Canton to be exact). It was here that she experienced her first culture shock due to little sleep and the sight of soldiers lined throughout the border crossings with shotguns. Dominique recently travelled back to China in 2010 for AIGN®’s Annual General Meeting and was amazed at how things have since changed.
In 1983, Dominique integrated into Star Fruits and worked many important jobs for the company; most notably helping to develop the Pink Lady® brand apple in the E.U. She was also responsible for variety management, building relationships with breeders and searching for new varieties, accounting and labor charges, PBR applications, royalty collections, variety evaluation reports, and more during her time with the company.
Dominique began to attend CIOPORA meetings in 1998 on behalf of AIGN® and was nominated as a board member in 2005 and as Treasurer in 2008. Since 2008, Dominique has been self-employed and assists AIGN®, Star Fruits, Rene Nicolai, and 3-4 other customers.
Dominique currently holds many hats as board member and Treasurer of CIOPORA where she attends the TWF (Technical Working Party for Fruit Crops) as well as other UPOV meetings on behalf of CIOPORA fruit members, President of the AOHE (Breeders Association of Horticultural Europeans), and Executive Secretary of AIGN®.