Mayor Joanne Sanders to speak in Paris on joint entrepreneurial possibilities

As a leading panelist in the French American Conference of Entrepreneurs (www. Face-paris.com) in Paris, June 27 and 28,  Mayor Joanne Sanders will explore the possibilities of entrepreneurial benefit between France and Sonoma. Sanders, the founder of Bolt Staffing and an accomplished entrepreneur in her own right, is of French- American heritage and has ongoing ties to France and a desire to facilitate connections between the two cultures.
“I’ve always wanted to do business that would take advantage of my dual citizenship and being bilingual,” she said. “Sonoma Valley is very attractive to the French, too. We were hired this year by a French company to recruit an operations engineer to help with a food manufacturing plant here. They wanted someone who could run the plant and help grow it and be willing to travel back and forth to France.” There are some interesting language challenges – beyond simple translation. ”What they call an engineer is not [what we call] an engineer,” she said.  “Job identity is not the same.”  Sanders, with her family ties to both countries, understands the “world of work” in each. “I understand how people move through careers and I’m hoping to leverage some of that knowledge and put it to work.”
The conference, nicknamed “The Louvre Conference” for its auspicious setting, will be headlined by many Silicon Valley luminaries, among them Reid Hoffman of Linked In, Craig Newmark of Craig’s List and the journalist Mike Malone. The conference founder and sponsor, another Sonoman, Jerry Sanders – no family connection to Joanne Sanders (although their boys are best of friends) – is also the founder of San Francisco Science (www.sfsinvent.com), a San Francisco-based technology group, and of the French American Society of Entrepreneurs (www.frenchamericanentrepreneurs.com).