Everything Has Been Loaned To You

At a very young age, J.-Robert Ouimet was fascinated by the Parable of the Talents. “Why did I inherit such riches when others have nothing?” he would ask himself. Unsettled by his desire to abandon his wealth and give himself to his spiritual aspirations, he went to Calcutta and asked Mother Teresa: “Mother, should I give everything I have?” Her advice: “Nothing belongs to you,” she told him quite frankly in 1983. “Everything you have has been loaned to you.” In saying this, she presented him with a challenge more exacting and more exiting than he had ever imagined. He recalled the Lord’s words, “From the one to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” He was responsible to make it grow. This book is a testimonial to his incredible adventure in which he sought to put into practice, first of all in his own businesses and then in other enterprises throughout the world, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as expressed in various papal encyclicals. In doing so, he has given on three continents around 260 public presentations and personal testimony about “Our Project”, an original management model that he has developed, implemented and tested for more than 45 years. It is a model that reconciles economic profitability with the individual growth of those in management and the workforce in its goals is to make one’s work a source, not only of income, but of fulfillment and joy.

J.-Robert Ouiment is married and the father of four children and grandfather to six. He manages a financial holding company that includes the Ouiment-Cordon Bleu-Paris Pâté-Clark Foods Group, a business founded by his father some 75 years ago. He is a graduate of the HEC, the renowned business school of the Univerisity of Montreal. He has an MBA from Columbia University Business School and also holds a PhD in economics and social science from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. A Knight of both the National Order of Quebec and the Order of Canada, he was elected Mentor of the Century in 2007 by the MBA students of the HEC. In 2009 he received a doctorate honoris causa from Laval University in Quebec City, Canada.