Laurence Deschamps-Laporte, a professor, researcher and scientific director of Université de Montréal's Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM), has been named to the 2026 'Top 40 Under 40' list compiled by the Toronto-based executive search firm Caldwell.
At 38, Deschamps-Laporte has worn many hats. After earning an M.Phil. and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, she pursued a wide-ranging career, working as a policy advisor in the private sector and in the offices of three Canadian foreign ministers.
“I’ve worked in a variety of settings,” she said. “It’s not typical for someone with an academic background like mine, which usually leads to a career as a professor.”
A thirst for international experiences
Oxford wasn’t Deschamps-Laporte’s first stay abroad. Growing up in Quebec’s Lanaudière region, she seized every opportunity to see the world.
“In high school, I took part in an exchange program with a girl in Germany,” she recalled. “I also worked as an au pair in Poland and did an international cooperation internship in Nicaragua with Québec sans frontières.”
Her parents encouraged her, but she had to be resourceful in financing her studies, too.
While studying at her local cégep and preparing for university, she applied for Quebec merit-based scholarships, some with international partners. She eventually landed one that took her to the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to pursue a bachelor’s degree in international studies.
“These major American universities have a liberal-arts approach, which appealed to me,” said Deschamps-Laporte. “They’re very multidisciplinary. To earn a bachelor’s degree, you have to take courses in different fields, so I chose courses in sculpture, Arabic and Islamic law.”
She also convinced UNC to let her do a six-month exchange at a university in Damascus—no small feat, given that there was no exchange agreement between the two institutions. “As a Canadian, I was able to persuade the university to let me go there,” she recalled. “At the time, it was very difficult for Americans to go to Syria.”
Advisor to foreign ministers
Deschamps-Laporte’s attraction to the "road less traveled" continued after she graduated from Oxford. “I liked academe, but I had an appetite for varied experiences,” she recalled.
Returning to Montreal, she joined the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company and later Global Affairs Canada, where she advised three successive ministers of foreign affairs: Stéphane Dion, Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne.
“I provided support on foreign-policy issues and accompanied them to major diplomatic meetings,” she said. “I loved it, but at a certain point, I wanted to go back to doing more in-depth research on specific issues. I felt that, ultimately, academia might be where I was meant to be.”
From the corridors of power to the halls of academia
Deschamps-Laporte joined Université de Montréal as a visiting professor in 2021 and, the following year, became an assistant professor and scientific director of the CÉRIUM. Her experience supporting Canada’s foreign ministers gave her a unique perspective in this new role.
“I know how much influence researchers can have,” she said. “I hope that our work at the CÉRIUM can help both private and public organizations involved in international issues find the expertise they need to inform their decision-making.”
Deschamps-Laporte also believes researchers should play a more prominent role in the public sphere. The CÉRIUM prepares them to do just that.
“There aren’t many thinktanks in Canada to help shape public policy, and media organizations have limited resources to send reporters abroad,” she noted. “This creates a gap in the ecosystem, making the work of researchers with sources on the ground in places such as Afghanistan and Sudan all the more vital. Their expertise is important for conversations in Canada about what is happening elsewhere.”
The threat of military AI
Deschamps-Laporte’s current research projects include a study of the feminist shift in Canada’s foreign policy over the past decade. “This is something that occurred in about a dozen countries,” she said. “I’m comparing what happened in Canada and Mexico.”
Another focus is regulating the use of AI-powered weapons, which led her to a research residency this past summer at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden.
“In this age of global rearmament, I’m interested in finding ways to address this new threat through an international treaty,” she said. “The idea is indebted to the nuclear disarmament movement that emerged after World War II, which was largely driven by women. They saw that nuclear testing was affecting their children. I’m drawing on ideas from that era to see how they might apply to the weapons being developed today.”
Deschamps-Laporte isn’t ready to put away her suitcases anytime soon. She continues to be driven by her thirst for travel and her desire to put her unique expertise to use in confronting complex global challenges.
