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Diaspora & Press: From Polytechnique to BNP Paribas, the tenacious career of Cambodian Isabelle Loc

It's an event worth highlighting: the career path of a young Cambodian woman from the diaspora featured in Challenges.fr magazine. Isabelle Loc, 42, head of commercial banking in France at BNP Paribas, would probably never have imagined herself joining the most elitist French bank in the country.

Isabelle Loc, 42, head of commercial banking in France at BNP Paribas
Isabelle Loc, 42, head of commercial banking in France at BNP Paribas
“It seems that the majority of X students have parents who are either professors or polytechnicians, or sometimes both [...]. [...] Fortunately, I was unaware of these stereotypes before I decided to go to X.”

Had she known, Isabelle Loc, 42, head of commercial banking in France at BNP Paribas, would probably never have imagined herself entering France's most elitist institution. At the age of 16, the Créteil high school student, born to Cambodian refugee parents, had no idea what ‘preparatory’ classes were. But her precocious talent for mathematics and the determination of a teacher who believed in her meant that she ended up in seconde at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand in Paris.

Surrounded by her well-born classmates, who were already devising three-pronged strategies for their post-baccalauréat careers, Isabelle Loc began by navigating by sight. Will she go to business school? Or literature? I knew that my family wouldn't be able to afford higher education and all the expenses that would go with it’, she recalls in the X magazine, La Jaune et la Rouge.

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