Michel
Deschapelles
Head of Talent Acquisition
,
Magic Leap, Inc

Michel Deschapelles is a results-driven leader specializing in recruiting diverse, innovative and disruptive talent to prime transformational efforts. As the head of a large TA team scaling the business, he currently helps Magic Leap solve the most critical talent issues – identifying, assessing, recruiting, and nurturing the best talent to innovate spatial computing.

With over twenty five years of business experience leading teams across sectors in both growth and turn-around phases, his focus on human capital was fine-tuned during his tenure as a leadership and human capital consultant. There, Michel worked with a wide range of clients advising re-organization and growth initiatives, both domestically as well as internationally. Michel has conducted several thousand executive-level candidate assessments across his career, with a focus on evaluation, placement, talent management, succession planning, and coaching. He co-developed a unique approach for the identification and assessment of innovative and transformational leaders, which top companies engaged for their disruptive change efforts with significant success. In addition, his talent and style have earned him a reputation as an expert on effective team dynamics, especially during times of radical change.

Prior to his time in HR, Michel had a distinguished ten year career at Lucent Technologies (now Nokia) where he held several roles including President of Lucent Central America, Venezuela, and Caribbean. He also held global roles as the Director of New Business Development and Sales for Lucent’s Worldwide Services organization. Michel drove strategic projects during all phases of Lucent’s global business and his efforts there leading complex groups are featured in the best-selling book Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman. Before joining Lucent, Michel served as the Systems Officer for the Republic National Bank of New York in Miami (now HSBC). There he led the information technology function and implemented systems and organizational changes.

He is an engineer by training, who is enamored of psychology. Earning a BS in Engineering and Psychology from Tufts University, Michel then pursued a Masters in Information Technology at the University of Miami. Subsequently, he obtained his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michel serves on the Board of LIFO Missions Group, a volunteer organization which builds clean water projects for remote villages in the Dominican Republic. Michel is fluent in English, Spanish, and French, and proficient in Portuguese. A Swiss-born American citizen, he has lived throughout Europe and Latin America. He now resides in Miami, Florida with his wife and three lovely daughters.