Valérie Thion

Valérie Thion's career has been built around a twofold expertise: a solid command of construction law and spatial planning and of their practice, combined with proven experience as a senior manager within the building permits directorate of Geneva's Department of Territory.

She began her career in the private legal sector, first as a law clerk with Jacques Barillon, then as a certified law clerk with Didier Bottge. Over these years in practice, she specialised in administrative and construction law. Building on this expertise, she then joined the Geneva cantonal administration, where her commitment and skills enabled her to rise through every level to become a senior manager. In her management roles, she drew on her team-management skills and led, always as a team, the complete overhaul of building-permit procedures, while representing the department on the Commission for Public Establishments. In 2016, she chose to put this rich public-sector experience at the service of the private sector by joining NOMEA Avocats.

Thanks to her years within the department, she knows its inner workings perfectly. This allows her to act as a genuine facilitator of files with a unique profile: she is able to advise an architect, a developer or a private individual upstream, well before a file is submitted, to define the best strategy and analyse the risks. Her role also consists in knowing how to steer an application effectively, in unblocking files already submitted and under examination, while drawing on the strong network of contacts she has built up over the years. Today, ten years after her return to the private sector, it is only natural that she should decide to join FORI Avocat·e·s in this new venture.