17 Facts About Audrey Azoulay

Audrey Azoulay was born on 4 August 1972 in La Celle-Saint-Cloud to a Moroccan Jewish family from Essaouira.

Audrey Azoulay studied at Sciences Po and the Ecole nationale d'administration in 2000.

In 2000, Audrey Azoulay was appointed civil administrator, assigned to the general secretariat of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government.

In 2003, Audrey Azoulay was in charge of the conference on media strategy, audiovisual and cinema financing at Sciences Po.

In 2006, Audrey Azoulay joined the National Center of Cinematography and the moving image, successively holding the positions of Deputy Director for Multimedia Affairs, Chief Financial and Legal Officer and Deputy Director-General.

Audrey Azoulay succeeded Fleur Pellerin as Minister of Culture on 11 February 2016.

In 2017, Audrey Azoulay was one of the nine candidates seeking to succeed Irina Bokova as Director-General of UNESCO.

In 2021, Audrey Azoulay was elected to a second four-year term.

Audrey Azoulay was elected during a fifth and final round of voting by the 58 members of the Executive Board, with a majority of 30 votes against 28 for the Qatari candidate, who suffered from the division of the Arab world, exacerbated by the Gulf crisis.

Audrey Azoulay becomes the second woman to be elected to this position, after Irina Bokova whom she succeeds.

Audrey Azoulay is officially sworn in on 13 November 2017 at the Organization's headquarters in Paris.

Audrey Azoulay stressed in her first speech after her election, "At a time of crisis, it is more important than ever to get even more involved, to seek to strengthen [UNESCO], not to leave it", and that her first priority would be to restore the organisation's credibility and the confidence of its member states.

On 10 April 2018, Audrey Azoulay made her first speech to the UNESCO Executive Board, detailing her vision for the organisation, her top priorities being Africa, gender equality, and education.

Audrey Azoulay wanted to strengthen the prevention of violent extremism, particularly by initiating a prevention program "through youth empowerment in Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia", and by publishing a guide for educational communities to combat anti-Semitism.

Three weeks after the double explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020, Audrey Azoulay visited the city and pledged that UNESCO would coordinate the rehabilitation of the 280 damaged educational institutions.

On 9 November 2021, Audrey Azoulay was re-elected by a very large majority to a second term at the head of UNESCO during the 41st session of the Organization's General Conference in Paris.

In September 2024, Audrey Azoulay was awarded the Premio Sostenibilidad in the Premios Vanguardia in Barcelona, Spain.