Reunion's Business School Launches 41 New Managers Into Island Economy

Forty-one newly qualified managers walked out of EGC Business School in Reunion on Friday, August 21, 2026, ready to join an island economy that increasingly depends on locally trained talent to navigate the pressures of a fast-changing world.

The graduation, the school’s 34th, took place under the theme “36 years of history, 36 years of impact.” Since EGC opened in 1990 under the guidance of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Reunion (CCIR), it has produced nearly 1,400 alumni now active across the island’s private sector, public institutions, and entrepreneurial landscape. For the families in the room that evening, the ceremony represented something more immediate: a son or daughter, a partner or sibling, stepping into a professional life built close to home.

Additional reference context is available at https://imazpress.com/zoom/l-egc-business-school-de-la-reunion-celebre-une-nouvelle-generation-de-diplomes.

The 2026 cohort achieved an 82 percent success rate. Some graduates are continuing toward master’s programs; others have already taken up roles in Reunion-based companies. The school describes this generation as “managers des transitions,” professionals trained not merely to maintain existing operations but to anticipate change, make decisions under uncertainty, support organizational transformation, and develop innovative solutions while staying grounded in local and regional realities.

That framing matters for the island’s workforce. Reunion faces the same economic, digital, environmental, and geopolitical shifts reshaping economies everywhere, and the territory needs managers who can respond from within rather than import expertise from elsewhere. EGC’s relationship with more than 200 partner businesses keeps its curriculum calibrated to what employers actually need, ensuring graduates arrive in the workforce with skills that reflect current demands rather than yesterday’s syllabus.

The evening drew a wide circle of institutional support. Regional Reunion, the Rotary Club, BFC Ocean Indian, and GBH all participated in honoring the graduates, signaling a shared civic investment in youth training and professional integration. Patrick Verguin, an elected official with the CCIR, attended alongside school leadership. David Barthe, General Director of the EGC Business School network, traveled to Reunion specifically to congratulate the cohort in person and to discuss with the local team how each campus can continue developing according to its territory’s specific characteristics. The national network now counts 28,000 alumni, giving Reunion’s graduates a substantial professional community while preserving their roots in the island’s economy.

What gave the ceremony its most direct human weight was the return of former students. Charline Conti, now a presenter at Antenne Reunion; Pierre Nativel, account manager for local authorities and institutional clients at Credit Agricole; Severine Nirlo, deputy general director for economic development and innovation at Regional Reunion; and Melissa Agapet, founder of CrossFit Sainte-Marie, each spoke about their trajectories since leaving EGC. Their careers span media, finance, public administration, and entrepreneurship, a spread that illustrates how broadly the school’s graduates have embedded themselves in the life of the island.

Thirty-six years in, EGC’s core proposition remains unchanged: develop the managers, sales professionals, and future decision-makers that Reunion needs to sustain its own economic growth. The institution evolves alongside that economy, adapting its programs as the landscape shifts. With 41 new graduates now in the workforce, the question the school leaves open is how many of them will one day return to the ceremony stage to tell the next cohort what they built.