Stéphane Israël

Stéphane Israël (born 3 January 1971 ) is a senior French civil servant. He was a magistrate at the Court of Audit, chief of staff at the French Minister of Economics, Arnaud Montebourg; worked in the aeronautics industry at Astrium, a subsidiary of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company. He was appointed CEO of Arianespace in 2013. He departed from his position as CEO at the end of 2024.

Early life and education Stéphane Israël is the son of a law professor and a psychoanalyst. He attended the Lycée Jean-Baptiste-Say and the Lycée Henri-IV (both in Paris). There he published a school newspaper entitled Le Même et l'Autre. As an admirer of François Mitterrand, he was active in his youth in the SOS Racisme association.

From 1994 to 1995 he was a teaching assistant at Harvard University in the United States.

He entered the École normale supérieure in 1991 where he studied history. He graduated with a DEA, which corresponds to a master's degree. He also graduated from the École nationale d'administration. Among his texts is a book from 2005 about the students of the École normal supérieure during the Second World War.

In 2007 he began his career in the aerospace industry as a consultant to Louis Gallois, then CEO of EADS. He spent four years as EADS subsidiary Astrium, This was publicly denied.

Following the appointment of Jean-Yves Le Gall, the previous CEO of Arianespace, as President of the French space agency CNES, Stéphane Israël was announced as his successor. On April 18, 2013, the Arianespace Board of Directors unanimously named him CEO. At the same time, he was named CEO of Starsem, a Euro-Russian company that launched the Soyuz launcher from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Boris Vallaud replaced him as Chief of Staff of Arnaud Montebourg.

After the restructuring of Arianespace in April 2017, he also became Executive Vice President of ArianeGroup, where he is responsible for all civil launchers.

He departed from his position as CEO and Executive Vice President at the end of 2024.