Dassault Systemes has named Laurence Montanari as Vice-President, Transportation & Mobility Industry. She replaces Olivier Sappin, who is now CEO of Dassault Systemes’ CATIA brand.

In this role, Montanari is responsible for helping manufacturers, suppliers and startups leverage the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to adjust, adapt and thrive in a dynamic, market-changing era defined by mobility as a service, sustainability priorities and consumer demands for new experiences. 

She brings nearly 30 years of automotive engineering and business experience to the largest of Dassault Systèmes’ 11 industries of focus, following a career at the French multinational automobile manufacturer Groupe Renault, where she began as a mechanical engineer in 1992. 

In her most recent role at Groupe Renault – senior innovation manager of its in-house LCI (Cooperative Innovation Laboratory) – she led experimental projects to address emerging trends and develop disruptive mobility solutions for urban areas, including an electric vehicle aimed to understand the last-mile delivery of goods, by creating an atypical innovation ecosystem.

This involved bringing together and spearheading a cloud-based virtual value network of project stakeholders from engineering, design and product marketing disciplines – each with their own challenges – to facilitate open innovation and collaboration around a vehicle’s digital model.  Project stakeholders had the opportunity and autonomy to engage in a new digital “test and learn” experience with dashboard managers, powerful realistic rendering images, urban delivery web monitoring, and virtual visualization with a headset and minimal data transfer or processing.

Laurence Montanari holds a mechanical engineering degree in robotics from the Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France.