Richard Attias

Richard Attias (born 19 November 1959) is a Moroccan events producer, founder and former chairman of PublicisLive and currently the executive chairman of Richard Attias and Associates. He is also the founder of The New York Forum and the co-founder of the Global Clinton Initiative and the Nobel Laureates Conference. From 1995 to 2008, he was the Executive Producer of the Davos Forum. Background Attias was born into a Moroccan Jewish family in the imperial city of Fes. He graduated as a civil engineer from the Institut national des sciences appliquées de Toulouse, and got a master in Mathematics and Physics from the Paris University. He began his career as a sales executive at IBM France and in 1986 became the general manager of Econocom France and Econocom Japan, a computer leasing company. During the 1990s, Attias founded an Event Management Company and produced various global events including the Zurich Insurances, Egypt Economic Development Conference for the Egyptian Government, IBM, conventions and Boris Yeltsin's visit to France. Attias sold part of his company to Publicis in 1998 and founded a company which produced events for various clients including IBM, l'Oreal, Unilever, BT, Avaya, Lenovo, EDF, Sanofi-Aventis, and different governments. Attias was named chairman of the board of Publicis Dialog which combined the operations of Publicis Events and a range of marketing services. In 2004, Attias moved to New York and became chairman of Publicis Events Worldwide.