You probably know her name. You probably know her face. You probably know as well what she does, but you probably don’t know what she has done before. Drum rolling 🥁 I’m talking about Kat Borlongan.
Told you! This name might ring a bell. But if not, that’s ok, let us introduce her.

Born in the Philippines, Kat arrived in France at the age of 20 and graduated from Sciences Po Bordeaux. At this time, it is clear that she has not yet fallen in love with France since she is leaving for Canada. She spent some time in Montreal to work for Reporter sans frontières, and then as a communications consultant for the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Time flies, and Kat gets involved in subjects such as open data, goes to Google, and then founded Five by Five, an innovation office. A beautiful journey, you may say. But no, Kat doesn’t stop there. It was on May 24, 2018, that she was appointed director of La French Tech by Mounir Mahjoubi, at the time Secretary of State for Digital.

All those projects she got involved in made her become a key figure in our ecosystem! She partly represents France to the most important decision makers. In short, Kat has become a true female role model because of her background, but also because of her commitment to more diversity in the tech industry.

If this short bio has piqued your curiosity, we invite you to listen to our podcast. Kat tells us everything she and her team have been doing for the past 3 years with these hundreds of communities around the world, rankings, support programs, international attractiveness, as well as the challenges she has faced or still has to face! And you’ll see, Kat masters the language of Molière as well as you and I!

In the video we shot before doing the interview, Kat told us how she build da city for good: “I think we do it by making sure that hypergrowth always goes with hyperconsciousness, and that there is not on one side the evils Next40 and French Tech 120 who are just the dirty capitalists who want to make a quick exit and on the other side the Social and Solidarity Economy. At La French Tech, we try to ensure that the impact is horizontal and not vertical.”

And that is a great transition to invite you to listen to this lover of France and Tech during her next intervention at ChangeNOW on May 28. She will talk about Tech for change, in other words how tech can help the environmental and social transition.

Hope you enjoy our interviews!

Da yours,

The daphni Team