Christophe and Philippe Gudin are building the future, thinking 50 years ahead

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It all started here in Gstaad. Philippe’s first day at Rosey. January 5 or 6, 1980, it must have been. Louis Johanot, preparing to hand over the reins to Gudin, welcomed him to Gstaad with the classic query, “Did you bring your dinner jacket?” “Of course,” young Philippe quipped, “never travelling without my dinner jacket!” However, he did not really have one. He would never have dreamt of meeting France’s leading pop star, who was giving a show at the Palace that night, who babbled away about his student years at Rosey during the dinner afterwards. “An absolutely charming man”, who promised the new Rosey director to come and sing at the school later that year – a promise he sadly was not able to keep as he passed away only a few months later. But this was a wonderful beginning for Philippe Gudin at Le Rosey and a fond memory he has of his first days in Gstaad.

Father Christmas and other roles
It is not merely a matter of parading in fancy dinner jackets; Philippe Gudin – and now Christophe – have been asked to don multiple hats also, as running a boarding school is an incredibly diverse profession, a business where you get to be an educator, a parent, a psychologist, an organiser, a lawyer, a disciplinarian and Father Christmas at the same time – and this for 14 to 16 hours a day. A village school is essentially about instruction; most of the education happens at home. Le Rosey, on the other hand, has a significant responsibility – not only in education – but also in the personal growth and the development of all human qualities of the young people who are entrusted to the boarding school.

Fifty years
Le Rosey is not raising idle young people. They train these youngsters to be intellectually impeccable. One of Le Rosey’s defining features is that it has always been at the forefront of progress, with a vision of education that goes far beyond simply preparing students for increasingly demanding university entrance exams. One pillar is purely academic, and then there is the whole aspect of music, arts and sports. Always thinking ahead, designing for the next 50 years. When the construction of the Carnal Hall on the Rolle campus was completed, Le Rosey students buried a time capsule for exactly 50 years, containing a whole series of memories from 2015 and the question, “What purpose has this building served?” Did it genuinely change the lives of the Roséens? “This is something that can only be judged in the long run”, Philippe explains. Time will tell!

Well, if Philippe Gudin had buried his dinner jacket in a 50-year time capsule on his first Rosey day in 1980, he would have a flashbackfabulous outfit for the inauguration of the new building near the Gstaad station within a few years from now. Times are changing, and this new building is fully dedicated to Rosey’s new vision of education today, integrating AI, personal research, one-to-one work between student and machine, modular classrooms, new ways of working in laboratories, fab-labs, demonstration rooms and spaces for start-ups to come and share their vision of the world. The Gstaad village campus will be a continuity of fundamental new organisation of the students’ intelligent work at the Rolle campus on a slightly smaller scale. On the Rolle campus, next to the Carnal Hall, the second dome, dedicated to sciences and entrepreneurship, will be inaugurated already next year.

The desire to anchor the school
“Anchor Le Rosey in something unique in the world”, Philippe expounds: Henri Carnal started coming up with his students 110 years ago to escape the winter fog lingering over the Rolle campus near Lake Geneva and the ties that have been created with Gstaad over all those years are significant. Former Roséens have an enormous attachment to Gstaad. There is something magical. “I believe that there is something infinitely intelligent, infinitely humane, and infinitely close to nature in the way this region, this area is managed”, Gudin continues. “This authenticity of the people, their lives, and their village is one of the reasons why Gstaad has such success. Beyond the gentleness and the beauty of the landscape, there is a balance in all of it.” Where the Rolle campus might be seen as a bit of a bubble, here in Gstaad the whole village becomes the campus. And it will be even more so tomorrow. The new village campus will also be an interface with the region, Christophe adds. Le Rosey only occupies it for half of the year – in summer and winter – the gymnasium is interested in using these modern science rooms. JFK could benefit from it, too. And why not some off-season events and conferences that would benefit the hoteliers also? After a profound study of many options, it was finally this plot of land, right in the middle of the village, opposite the station, that truly anchors Le Rosey in Gstaad, where the heart is.

An eccentric tradition
This colossal move to Gstaad every winter is a bit of an anomaly. It’s completely crazy to change campus in the middle of a school year. The relocation, the rescheduling, and the transfer of teachers and their families represent a huge effort. But you cannot fit 550 students in a tiny box. The current facilities can barely accommodate all the students and won’t allow to add any additional ones. Le Rosey remains a small school compared to today’s norm, but it is growing slowly, and they’ve seen this lack of space coming for the last 25 years. That’s why, in recent years, the eight-week sojourn in Gstaad became more of an interlude. Back in the 90s, the winter trimester in the mountains went up to 11–12 weeks. Fifty years ago, Le Rosey already came up in November! The new campus will potentially allow Roséens to come up longer.

Building at mid-altitude for the next 50 years
The question of whether leaving to a high-altitude resort to ensure snow coverage was an option did arise. While the president of the Wasserngrat (Philippe, that is) speaks very optimistically about the snow cover on that mountain, his son bursts into laughter. “It is clear that staying in Gstaad and building this facility for the next 50 years, we will have to experience the mountain differently than we do today.” Christophe develops. “New activities align perfectly with Le Rosey’s vision of Gstaad, this connection with nature: apart from the glacier probably offering snow a few years ahead, there are other sports like fat biking, climbing – hockey and ice skating that have always been deeply important elements at Le Rosey.” And then there is the academic side to it: Le Rosey students coming from countries all over the world, some in places where natural disasters are increasingly frequent, witnessing these signs of climate change in Gstaad year after year is striking. Christophe thinks, for example, of lessons on glaciology on site on the glacier.

Wally’s and other emotions
Christophe is grinning while he recalls how he and his friends used to slip away and slide down on their back, then cross the railway tracks and get to Wally’s for a treat, any hour of the day. Now, new chalets and today’s common sense do not really leave space for that kind of fun. “Le Rosey is a place connected to the emotions you grow through during adolescence”, adds Christophe. Growing up in a boarding school, both positive and negative emotions are in a pressure cooker and amplified. That is why so many alumni are so attached to Le Rosey and even call it their second home, whether in Rolle or Gstaad; they feel they belong there. Christophe Gudin, long before being the director of the school, first set foot (buttocks really, still wearing a nappy) on the campus in the very first months of his baby life. “The campus has always been a place where I take immense pleasure in being,” he says, beaming. “Le Rosey gave me the love for work.”

A Rosean experience at Carnegie Mellon
Christophe’s path took him to the States to continue his EPFL engineering studies. As the university forgot to sign the agreement with Berkeley that year, Gudin found himself in the – for a guy his age – not so attractive Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (no offence, he adds). This turned out to be an incredibly enriching experience: totally disconnected from the other Roséens, in the middle of the US, it plunged him into what many Rosey students experience when they arrive in Switzerland. That disorientation before finally adopting certain codes and finding both what you love in the culture while keeping your roots (What do I adopt? What do I mimic?) was very useful for his understanding of what Rosey students live through each year.

From pointless to purpose
After university, young Christophe first followed the path of his friends and ended up in a major US consulting firm for several years. One of the best “schools” he attended, as it really shaped his vision. Immensely enriching to learn to work with many different types of people. But the never-ending headcounts without any consideration for the humans in the process did not really appeal to him. And this is where he connects with Philippe’s beginnings: he found it deeply futile. Indeed, Philippe, at the end of the 70s, dropped into diplomacy, just like his dad, and concluded that all this was maybe fun but completely pointless and that he needed a more impactful activity. Philippe, who had been a very young scout leader and, at age 18 already, had organised summer camps, was fascinated by the relationship between education and youth. Christophe, many years later, took up a job in Le Rosey’s summer camps and realised that these moments with the students were ultimately the moments of work that stayed with him as good memories.

When you’re doing something you love, you can’t stop
From that point on, it was quite simple: It was a powerful confluence of factors when Christophe took over the directorship of the school while Philippe started concentrating more on the Rosey World, i.e. parallel initiatives to Le Rosey like the sister school in Mali, that has grown significantly and now has 1800 students, with both a university section and a vocational training section, giving the children access to jobs. Philippe is also very involved in developing the campus in the heart of Kenya, between Mount Kilimanjaro and the Chyulu Hills. “A magical place”, he adds, to introduce Roséens and many other children from schools worldwide to a largescale project on conservation, wildlife, carbon projects, and integrating African culture into the development of eco-tourism, among other things. Philippe also spends a lot of time in Crans-Montana developing Le Regent School. As for the new building project in Gstaad, Philippe was very much involved in the negotiation phase, whereas Christophe will now take over the construction while also taking full responsibility for the school.

Fifty years from now
In the middle of all that, Christophe finds time to enjoy his own family. His eldest daughter will soon start school at Rosey. And both Christophe and Philippe look forward with passion: for the first time, there may be a third generation of a family leading Le Rosey … Let’s talk about it fifty years from now.

GISELA VAN BULCK

I catch the Gudins on a very demanding day. Nevertheless, they sit back and talk. Their smiles radiate confidence and fulfilment, embracing the ambitious mission of educating and raising all the children entrusted to them. Christophe idly plays with wooden Kenyan objects on the desk while Philippe warmly shares his love for Gstaad. I can’t begin to express how enriching it is to listen to them