Valérie Berset-Price is a doctoral candidate at the Grenoble School of Management. Her research focuses on the understanding and interpretation of the impact M&A and stock buybacks have on chronic layoffs in the United States.
Valerie is a Swiss-American citizen who spent most of her adult life living on the West Coast of the United States. There, she discovered the harsh reality of the American Dream and was confronted to the “At Will Law” presiding in most U.S. states. Realizing how precarious relying on a corporate job can be, due to the series of layoffs she experienced, she decided to become self-employed. As such, she created a consulting firm that specialized in the cross-cultural integration of R&D teams post M&A amid multinationals, an activity she exercised from 2008 to 2022. Her direct contact with the chaotic world of M&A made her want to pursue a doctorate in business administration where the opportunity to research the role M&A plays in a hyper-financialized world became possible. Her research allowed her to connect the dots between M&A, stock buybacks are chronic layoffs, which became the subject of her thesis at the Grenoble School of Management in Grenoble, France.
Berset-Price decided to relocate to France in 2022 to experience a different form of capitalism and thus study through personal experience what it feels like to be a protected employee amid a more collective society still governed by strong rules and regulations. While pursuing her doctorate, she works full-time for a French company as a global business developer, bringing fresh innovation to market.
Valerie started her academic journey with a CFC (Certificat Federal of Competencies) in Business (Import-Export) in Switzerland through an apprenticeship. After a year living in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, she decided to study the role politics play in business by completing a Bachelor Degree in International Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Her fluency in French, English, and Spanish led her to a Master’s degree in International Negotiations at the University Grenoble Alps, followed by her current action research endeavor as a doctoral candidate at the Grenoble School of Management.
Her doctoral ambition is to help voters around the world better understand the role neoliberalism plays in eroding democratic values and propose alternative methods to reign in the current form of capitalism before it is too late.
Valérie Berset-Price
France: +33 7 49 26 61 02
