I've been trying to answer that question for more than twenty years. As a child, this question was deeply personal. I stuttered, had few friends, and struggled with social anxiety. Understanding people wasn't simply interesting to me. It felt necessary. Without realizing it, I became an observer.

I watched how people entered a room. How they built trust. How they created friendships. Why some people naturally attracted others while equally intelligent people did not. That curiosity never disappeared.

After completing my Master's degree in Management at HEC Lausanne in 2013, I decided to dedicate my career to these questions. I founded a company focused on communication, leadership, and social skills.

For the next thirteen years, I had the privilege of working with hundreds of thousands of participants through conferences, workshops, and online programs. Every interaction became another opportunity to observe how people communicate, influence one another, and build trust.

Working with such a diverse population revealed recurring patterns. Certain behaviors consistently seemed to create trust. Some leadership styles repeatedly inspired engagement. Some communication strategies appeared effective across different cultures. But the more I observed, the more I realized the limits of observation itself.

Observation allowed me to recognize patterns. It did not allow me to understand what truly caused those patterns. It could not distinguish what was genuinely causal from what merely appeared to be. The deeper I went, the more I realized how much remained unknown. That realization fundamentally changed the way I thought about my work.

I became increasingly interested in scientific research, not because I wanted to validate my own observations, but because I wanted to understand them more rigorously. I want to understand what truly causes leadership. What makes someone perceived as charismatic. Which behaviors genuinely create trust. Which explanations hold up when tested scientifically, and which do not.

I want to learn how knowledge is built, challenged, and refined through research. I want to learn how to produce knowledge, not only share it. Today, I hope to investigate the same questions that have guided me for most of my life through rigorous scientific research.