Witad Awards 2023: Support professional of the year (vendor)—Celia Auge, Symphony

Although she is based in the French technopole of Sophia Antipolis, the nature of Celia Auge’s multifaceted job at Symphony means that her working day includes meetings across multiple time zones. As COO for product and engineering, she runs the day-to-day operations of two of the collaboration platform provider’s critical divisions, accounting for more than 400 people across 12 locations.

This position has given her an insight into many different stages of the product development lifecycle—from design all the way to release. “What interests me in this role is that it covers the entire scope of activities: financials, the organization’s communication processes, governance, and a lot of other topics too,” Auge says.

In this wide-ranging role, Auge is the glue holding together all of the different groups that collaborate on product and engineering, making sure that they’re working together as effectively as possible to deliver the finished product.

Knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration are crucial in any technology company, but particularly in a distributed organization like Symphony. With this in mind, Auge is particularly proud of the work she has done in rationalizing the company’s footprint to ensure consistency and resilience. A transformation of the company’s R&D location strategy has seen the opening of a new location in India and a shift into Vietnam. This has concentrated the Symphony’s presence in four main R&D locations, contributing to reducing its operating costs by a third in just three years.

Last year, Auge also became the site lead for the Sophia Antipolis office, a thriving R&D hub where 150 employees from 25 different nationalities work. When she took on the role, Auge was keen to foster a sense of community at the office. “We have people that are very team-oriented, team players who like working together and who can work on projects that they want to, based on their personal interest. So, you’re really the actor of your destiny from a professional perspective,” she says.

For her part, Auge has organized a diversity week in Sophia Antipolis, including a series of five conferences with global representation. In 2022, she also led the creation of the Symphony Technical Advisory Group, comprising senior leaders from Symphony and its investor group, as well as Symphony Labs, an initiative that aims to conduct applied research in strategic fields for the company like confidential computing and voice management.

In the midst of these diverse projects and responsibilities, Auge is driven by a simple but powerful philosophy: Take the risk or lose the chance. “I’ve always tried to take as many risks as possible, because I see this as a chance to evolve, to contribute, and to have an impact on my colleagues and my teams,” Auge says.