Philippe LerchPhilippe Lerch is the Executive Director Surgeons of Hope Foundation, Inc.
Upon graduating from the Paris Business School (Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris), he took over responsibilities with the French Foreign Trade Board (CFCE) for the United States and Latin America for two years. He then naturally moved on to other foreign trade activities, rubber procurement coordination (Paris, London, Singapore) as Southeast Asia based Regional Director for a major European trading group for four years.
In-keeping with his career outline, foreign trade and project development and management, he then became Director in charge of international projects with subsidiaries of major European banks, Paribas and Societe Generale, in charge of transport programs, hotel and hospital engineering, and project development throughout the world (Africa, South-East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America) and implemented many projects from design and funding coordination to implementation supervision through to actual project running for many years.
Combining professional know-how and first-hand experience with an in-depth awareness of the overall human context of the countries (often developing countries) in which he worked, for over ten years now, he has been actively engaged in NGOs on first a personal and then a professional basis as well (SFPA, a Franco-Armenian solidarity NGO) and in 1996 took over the position of Executive Director of the Chaine de l’Espoir (CdE) in Paris.
In 2002 he became the Executive Director of the Surgeons of Hope Foundation, Inc. (SoH) and became heavily involved in the development and promotion of this non-profit US incorporated Foundation whose aim is to step up and broaden the surgical activities and medical staff training potential in favor of disadvantaged children throughout the world (Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America).
High professional expertise in project financing, development and implementation combined with humanitarian involvement in search of new approaches to transfer of skills and training.