Claire Isnard can trace her 40‑year career—including 17 years at fashion house Chanel—back to one bad exam. Had she passed, she’d likely still be in a classroom, grading essays on Italian literature.
Looking back, in her first-ever sit-down interview ahead of her retirement, Isnard says she feels like she’s come full circle. Despite having zero HR qualifications, she wound up as Chanel’s chief people and chief organization officer. “When you draw my story back, the first compelling and meaningful thing that would end up spread across everything I’ve done is helping people become who they didn’t think they can become,” she told Fortune.
“For me, teaching was not about the speciality of French or Italian, it was about helping those young people—especially the ones who were having difficulty unleashing their skill set and couldn’t find themselves internally, I could help them become larger, bigger than what they thought,” she said. “And I loved it very much.”
At the time, Isnard took that career plan “very, very seriously” and was giving language lessons to teenagers in both Italy and France while studying, which made the final exam failure that would have cemented a lifelong academic career all the more confusing.
“Not only I failed,” Isnard said, “but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had no clear path ahead of me. I had no clear goal.”
With no plan B, she went back to school and threw herself into student forums and networking events. It led to a chance encounter that would drag her from the classroom into consulting—and eventually, right into Chanel’s corner office.
Gen Z: Failure might be your lucky break—but not if you don’t get out
40 years later, Isnard still remembers how crushing that first experience of failure was—but she refuses to let younger generations see similar setbacks as the end of the story.
Now, the lesson she reminds her millennial children (who are 30 and 33) is that failure is simply “a roadblock on the road, not the end of the road.”
“It hurts, it’s very uncomfortable,” Isnard said. “It can be very frustrating because you worked hard. Although it may not feel like it in the moment, this pause could be a blessing in disguise.”
Isnard recommends using failure as an opportunity to reassess the direction you’re going down—as well as whether you’re even enjoying it.
“There is a signal here that either you’ve not worked enough—if you really want to do it again, work harder, and you will get it—or maybe there was something that was not for you,” she said. “Look at what you enjoyed in doing that, but also look at the thing you don’t enjoy, and go where your passion is… I’m really convinced that we cannot be good at something we don’t like doing.”
Of course, passion alone is not enough to land a big break after a failure. It doesn’t matter how much you love talking about luxury brands or coding—if you don’t get out of your comfort zone and show them, no one will know. That’s why Isnard recommends Gen Zers simply get out into the world.
“If you stay in your room, or behind your computer, you just don’t get those moments of connection that spark a different conversation, or open your mind to possibility, or let you meet someone who finds something interesting in you,” she said.
She would know. Just one “lucky” conversation with the founder of a boutique consultancy at a student forum turned into a two-decade career in the industry, including climbing up Aon Hewitt’s ranks (formerly known as Hewitt Associates) to managing director.
“I was present in all forums, in all networks, where I could meet people that I would not meet otherwise, and it was a series of encounters that brought me to the woman who hired me,” she said. “So I really believe in connection. I really believe in going outside of your comfort zone—open that door, be curious, meet with people, enter the conversation.”
Isnard says you don’t need a slick five-year plan, or even a full-to-the-brim contacts book—just the courage to start up conversation in a room full of strangers.
“Everyone knows someone,” she said. “So I didn’t hesitate to say, I’m hungry for work and I would like to do something that has to do with writing, thinking and being helpful to others.”
The brutally honest answer that got her poached by Chanel
Being courageous worked out in Isnard’s favour when Chanel was a client of hers. Soon after the company had hired its first-ever global CEO, Maureen Chiquet, she directly asked Isnard one tough-to-answer question: Do I have what I need to act as a global CEO?
The answer, Isnard gave her, was brutally honest: No.
For eight years, she had partnered with the fashion brand on “different, strategic problems.” And that proximity became vital when its new boss asked her to carry out a no‑nonsense diagnosis of her leadership and how to bring the luxury brand out of an outdated, fragmented structure.
“So we designed together a global model for the future,” Isnard said. “It’s easier for a consultant to tell [the harsh truth] because you have objectivity, you don’t have the emotion of being inside. I was not losing anything; I was helping my client to see through what she needed for the future.”
But what Isnard perhaps didn’t expect was to get poached by the CEO herself, just two years later in 2008: “I was very surprised, because I’ve never been an HR in my life before,” Isnard recalled, before adding she didn’t think twice before accepting despite feeling a mixture of honoured, intimidated, and frankly, a bit scared.
“I had to move with my family to New York from France,” she said. “I had to learn how to be an insider—I knew everybody, all the leaders, but from the outside. I had to build a team. There was no global team in HR. I had to do everything from scratch.”
Despite her lack of formal HR credentials, Chanel’s global footprint has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. Today, the brand operates in roughly 70 countries worldwide with over 600 boutiques. Under Isnard’s watch, its workforce has more than tripled, growing to 38,400 employees worldwide.
“It’s another story of someone placing trust in you,” she added. “Take risk, pivot, but do it with people you trust—who trust you too. And check that you have the passion for what is to come.”
What comes after Chanel’s corner office?
Now, as she prepares to step down after over 17 years as Chanel’s chief people and organization officer, Isnard faces a familiar uncertainty—the same feeling she had after that first failed exam. Only this time, she’s looking forward to it.
“The next chapter for me is to be invented, which is also back to the first conversation, how will I take risk—or not? Am I going to meet with other people? It’s all about the new possibilities that will unfold.”
The outgoing exec, who says she’s been reflecting on what her purpose is and will take some more time to ponder, already knows she wants to “continue being contributive,” even in retirement.
“The worst is if you feel lost and you feel abandoned. But I think the other worst is that you get another kind of frenetic, but it has no meaning. It’s just a bunch of activities for the sake of not being by yourself. These are the things that I want to absolutely avoid,” she said.
In the end, she hints she may just go back to where it all began: In teaching, some way or another.
