Martin GP Bernard

A Belgian citizen and father of two, Martin has extensive consulting and international experience across Europe and Latin America. Since 2009, he has specialized in retained executive search with a focus on industry, sustainability, and general management roles.

After 4 years as a controller in leading international companies in Europe and Latin America, he moved into management consulting in 1992, first in Europe and in 1997 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he lived until early 2000 and successfully established and developed the local office of a leading European management consulting firm, which he led until 2005.

As a retained executive search professional, Martin was a partner at Amrop until 2012, when he founded People 4 A Better World, a boutique consultancy focused on corporate sustainability through the lens of people and culture. From 2015 to 2019, Martin was dedicated to a family business in the contemporary art sector, before moving to Brussels and joining SIGNIUM in early 2020. Throughout his executive search career, Martin has worked with a wide range of clients, with a focus on basic and manufacturing industries, among others. He has a strong passion for cultural change, sustainable development, responsible leadership, corporate governance and entrepreneurship.

Martin currently co-leads SIGNIUM’s Global Industrial Practice and is a member of the Guberna Sounding Board Committee for Sustainability. He has also served on the AESC Europe and Africa Diversity Leadership Council. In addition, he has actively contributed to the Corporate Sustainability Studies Committee (CESE) and the Conduct Committee of the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance (IBGC) and served as a non-executive director of Alliance Française São Paulo from 2010 to 2012.

He holds an MSc in Business Administration from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and has pursued continuing education in sustainability, leadership, and corporate governance, among other areas. Martin is fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, with an intermediate proficiency in Dutch. Martin is married and lives in Brussels.