Jean Todt has been the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015. He is also the chairman of the board of directors of the International Peace Institute (IPI), the chairman of the Suu Foundation, the Vice President of the Paris Brain Institute, and a board member of the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, the FIFA Foundation, and Gaumont.
He is the former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), first elected to this post in October 2009 and reelected in 2013 and 2017, serving until 2021. Between 2006 and 2009, Todt was chief executive officer of Ferrari.
Prior to that, he held senior level positions overseeing racing and sporting activities at Ferrari and PSA Group (Peugeot Citroën). He started his career in 1966 as a rally codriver and raced until 1981, when he won the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers with a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus.
He also devotes his time to several charitable causes as one of the founders and the vice president of the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière (ICM), which is devoted to medical research for brain and spinalcord disorders. Jean Todt received the Humanitarian of the Year Award by the United Nations Association of New York in 2016 and is a recipient of the GrandCroix de la Légion d’Honneur. Born in 1946 in Pierrefort, France, Todt studied economics, business, and marketing at the Ecole des Cadres in Paris. He is married to actress, film producer and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Michelle Yeoh, and has one son, Nicolas, and one grandson, Maxime.
