About
A boutique advisory with global operating depth.
Altoria Partners brings senior executive rigour and boutique advisory intimacy to every engagement — the bridge between strategic ambition and operational execution.
The Founder
Experience transforming global operations.
Some careers are built inside org charts; others are forged on the ground, between a supplier negotiation room, a tense S&OP review spanning forty countries, and the counter of a Travel Retail store on the other side of the world. Emilien Papo belongs to the second kind. Fifteen years at P&G and then Coty placed him exactly at the point where corporate strategy meets its operational reality, where a decision made in an executive committee still has to win over a procurement team, align with an S&OP calendar, and survive contact with the shop floor.
That cross-functional experience, spanning procurement, operations, S&OP and retail, built inside complex, multi-country organizations, shaped his central conviction: value creation never comes from technology itself, but from the operational excellence that actually puts it in motion, the kind that turns a theoretical edge into a measurable competitive advantage.
The spark came more recently, through repeated conversations with leaders of companies across the Arc Lémanique, all converging on the same observation: ambitious AI projects, real budgets committed, and yet few success stories that ever reached industrialization. AI, everyone said, was going to change everything; on the ground, it mostly struggled to get past the demo stage.
For Emilien Papo, the urgent task wasn't to add one more tool to the catalogue, but to bring back the discipline that had proven itself elsewhere: an honest diagnostic, adoption designed from day one around the teams who will actually have to live with the solution, and technology consistently put at the service of people rather than the other way around. That conviction is what gave rise to Altoria Partners, a nimble, fast-growing firm whose portfolio of mandates and partnerships keeps expanding month after month, proof, in its founder's view, that between strategic vision and operational reality, only a bridge was missing, and that bridge now exists.
Professional Experience
2026 – aujourd'hui / present
Founder — Altoria Partners
Launch of an independent AI & data transformation advisory for businesses in the Lake Geneva region (retail, luxury, watchmaking, CPG) — agnostic positioning: diagnostic and solution selection, then operational execution through to industrialisation.
11/2024 – aujourd'hui / present
Advisor — AI & Operational Excellence (Independent, part-time) — Digital Transformation Advisory, remote
Designed AI use cases applied to business planning, retail execution and performance management. Regular engagement with vendors and startups to analyse operating models and adoption barriers. Active participant in the AI ecosystem (AWS Summit, Microsoft AI Tour, Swiss AI Observatory).
07/2018 – 03/2025
Digital Transformation Lead / Senior Project Manager, Global Travel Retail — Coty Inc.
Led deployment of a SaaS retail excellence solution: 120+ users, 30+ markets, 4 regions, 2,500 Travel Retail doors. Contributed to +12% sales growth on priority doors. Identified ~$2.7M in incremental margin and eliminated ~CHF 1M in structural costs. Managed 5 direct reports, coordinated 20+ international contributors.
04/2017 – 06/2018
Trade Marketing Manager & Partner Operations Lead, Greater Europe — Coty Inc.
Managed $20M in annual commercial investments (trade CAPEX) and coordinated 30+ international distributors. Deployed the Perfect Store strategy across Greater Europe.
07/2008 – 03/2017
Strategic Purchasing & Business Operations Planning Lead — Procter & Gamble International Operations SA
Business Operations Planning Leader S&OP across 40 countries, service rate >98%. Strategic Purchasing Manager Global Prestige: $50M sourcing portfolio. Purchasing Associate EMEA Flexible Packaging: reduced supplier panel from 40 to 3 on $30M scope, +28% cost-performance gain. Awards: Diamond (2016), Platinum (2013), Gold (2010).
07/2007 – 06/2008
Business Economist HES-SO — Raiffeisen Group
Operational management in the Swiss cooperative banking sector.
10/2002 – 06/2007
Junior Strategic Buyer — Liebherr Machines Bulle
Strategic purchasing in the heavy industrial equipment sector.
Education
MIT Professional Education — Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation, 2026
Business Incubator No Code, Automation & AI — Alegria Academy Paris, 2024–2026
Executive MBA — Strategic Marketing, With Honors — University of Geneva (GSEM), 2013–2015
BSc HES-SO in Business Administration — Haute École de Gestion, Fribourg (bilingual FR/DE), 2002–2006
Certifications
MIT Professional Education — Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation
July 2026
PMP® (Project Management Professional) — PMI
July 2026
Inside LVMH Certificate — Operations, Supply Chain & Retail Experience
Dec. 2025
Dataiku GenAI Practitioner
Dec. 2025
Google Cloud Certified — Cloud Digital Leader
Oct. 2025
Tools & Platforms
Languages
- 🇫🇷Français
- 🇬🇧English
- 🇩🇪Deutsch
Industries
Where Altoria creates the most value.
These are the industries where our track record runs deepest — but the diagnostic-first, execution-through-to-industrialization method is not industry-specific. We're equally ready to bring it to organizations outside these sectors.
"Altoria is the bridge between strategic ambition and operational execution."