Bénédicte de Montlaur is President and CEO of World Monuments Fund, the world’s foremost private organization dedicated to saving extraordinary places while empowering the communities around them. She is responsible for defining WMF’s strategic vision, currently implementing that vision in more than 30 countries around the world and leading a team that spans the globe. 

Her background mixes culture and the arts, politics, international diplomacy and human rights. Prior to joining WMF, Montlaur spent two decades working across three continents as a senior diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She served as Cultural Counselor at the French Embassy in the United States, where she led France’s largest international cultural advocacy network and its two partner foundations—Albertine and FACE—directing a team of 90 people in ten US offices. Previously, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary in charge of North Africa at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, United Nations Security Council Negotiator on Africa and the Middle East in New York, and French Embassy First Secretary in Damascus, Syria.