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Changes to the Executive committee at AFP
Agence France-Presse is making changes to its management team, with the appointment of new directors at the helm of the Latin America, Africa, North America regions and the Brand and Communications department, effective between April and July 2021.
Maria Lorente, who has been the Buenos Aires bureau chief since 2019, will replace Pierre Ausseill as regional director for the Latin America region. Pierre Ausseill will replace Boris Bachorz as director for the Africa region. Boris Bachorz for his part has been named Brand and Communications Director. Finally, Marc Lavine will replace Brigitte Dusseau as regional director for North America.
Prior to Buenos Aires, Maria Lorente was regional editor-in-chief for Latin America for more than five years, based in Montevideo. She began her career at AFP in Montevideo in 2001 as a multimedia journalist before joining the Los Angeles bureau two years later as a Spanish-speaking correspondent. Maria was also a correspondent in Brussels and the Latin American desk chief in Montevideo.
Regional director for Latin America since 2017, Pierre Ausseill had headed the Rio de Janeiro bureau for five years, a period marked by the World Cup and the Olympic Games in Brazil. After working for the Sygma and Associated Press agencies, he joined AFP in 1996 in Paris in the justice division before joining the Libreville bureau. He also worked at the Madrid bureau, as a journalist and subsequently head of newsroom, and as deputy editor-in-chief in Paris, in charge of Africa.
Marc Lavine has held the position of Asia-Pacific Sales and Marketing Director, based in Hong Kong, since 2016, having spent most of his career at AFP as a journalist. He joined the Agency in 1994 in Hong Kong before working successively at the Kabul, Bangkok, Seoul and Los Angeles bureaus. In 2006, he was appointed Sydney bureau chief and then regional editor-in-chief for Asia-Pacific, a position he held for four years before taking up his current function. Marc was also editor-in-chief of SportAsia, the former sports news subsidiary of AFP.
The first director of the new Africa region, created in 2016, Boris Bachorz previously headed the East Africa bureau in Nairobi. He joined AFP in 1985, and was notably European affairs correspondent in Brussels, editor-in-chief for the London and Moscow bureaus, and head of the Society department in Paris.
About AFP:
AFP is a leading global news agency providing fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the events shaping our world and of the issues affecting our daily lives. Drawing from an unparalleled news gathering network across 151 countries, AFP is also a world leader in digital verification. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world in six languages, with a unique quality of multimedia storytelling spanning video, text, photos and graphics.