Francis Gagnon is the founder of Voilà: (2013), an information design company specializing in sustainable development. Their clients are in Washington, New York, London, Tokyo, Beijing, Brussels, Ottawa and Montreal. In addition to leading the work of the firm, he delivers training and gives talks on information design and data visualization.
His work has been cited by The Economist and Fast Company and has appeared several times in “The Best of the Visualization Web” at VisualisingData.com. He is also one of the founders of Visualization Montreal (2014), a Meetup group with more than 1,800 members.
Francis worked eight years (2005-2013) for the World Bank Group, in Washington DC. He led the design of the first standardized management reports for the advisory services of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on five continents. He also designed and implemented a data management system in addition to creating models of financial reports, human resources, project portfolio and results.
Francis trained in data visualization with Edward Tufte from Yale University, Hanspeter Pfister at the Extension School at Harvard University, Alberto Cairo at the Knight Center of Journalism at the University of Texas, as well as Jon Schwabish of the Congressional Budget Office in Washington DC, Cole Nussbaumer formerly of Google and Andy Kirk based in the United Kingdom. He was invited to Tapestry in 2014 and 2017, a conference for 100 leaders in data visualization. He attended Visualized, a conference in Manhattan on data and design in 2014 and at EyeO Festival in Minneapolis in 2018.
Before devoting himself to information design, Francis was responsible for intergovernmental relations at IFC for six years, managing contributions of more than $50 million for the sustainable development of the private sector in emerging markets. He has also worked at the Center for Practical Studies in International Negotiation (CASIN) in Geneva, at the North American Integration Forum in Montreal, and at the National Assembly in Quebec. He holds a master’s degree in international development from the London School of Economics and a master’s degree in political science from Laval University.
Francis now lives in Montreal and is a member of the Association of Quebec Economists.
