Paris

Marie-Francoise Bechtel has become the first woman director of ENA, France's elite school of administration that trains high-fliers for the civil service. A former philosophy teacher and a graduate of ENA, she was appointed to succeed Raymond-Francois Le Bris. Until last August, she was an adviser to Jean-Pierre Chevenement, then interior minister, for whom she also worked in the mid-1980s when he was minister of education.