Nigel Coulthard was born in Wales and educated in Great Britain and France. He has also spent many years in Iran, as a youngster under the Shah in the 1970s, through the 1979 Islamic Revolution and more recently with his Persian wife during the Khatami and Ahmadinejad presidencies. He has held engineering and senior management positions in several large international industrial groups, notably in the Semiconductor and Power Engineering sectors, in both the UK and France and he served as Country President for a major European engineering group in Iran. After graduating in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bristol he was awarded a research doctorate in Applied Physics from the University Toulouse. Nigel later obtained an Executive MBA from HEC, the prestigious French Business School, and an Advanced Diploma in Persian Studies from INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations in Paris. He has also been an advisor to the French Ministry of Foreign Trade and presently manages an international management consulting activity. He is President of the Paris based association, “Le Cercle Iran Economie”.