Founder & Executive Director
Give Us The Floor
Valerie is an experienced advertising and television executive with an entrepreneurial itch and deep expertise in engaging teenagers. After studying teen behavior, reflecting on her own struggles as a young adult and helping her daughters through those torturous years, Valerie had an epiphany: teens are uniquely able to help each other deal with distress and reduce stigma. She founded San Francisco-based nonprofit Give Us The Floor in 2015 to help teens in distress. Previously, Valerie founded and led StoraLab, a company specializing in online and mobile experiences for teens and tweens. She also created and served as CEO and executive producer of Tipitina Films, a Paris-based joint venture with The Artists Company, an American production company. For more than 10 years, Valerie’s Tipitina Films team produced award-winning television commercials for advertisers, including L’Oréal, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Kraft Foods, and Samsung. Valerie was born to an Algerian Muslim father and a white Catholic mother and grew up in a diverse neighborhood in the suburbs of Paris. She studied physics at the University of Paris Jussieu.