Over nearly 30 years, Yann Fortunato has built a rare career: financier turned forest entrepreneur, leading industrial and commercial companies across the timber industry. In parallel, a dense civic and institutional life — from regional to European and international levels — has forged his unique ability to engage all territorial stakeholders.
He serves as an EU EIP Agri agricultural and forestry expert within the Common Agricultural Policy, also as a partner in the Horizon Europe programme ForestAgriGreenNudge, and contributes to one of France's PEPR FORREST living labs. He periodically advises the WWF on primary forest protection worldwide. His field experience spans Europe and multiple countries — Togo, Nigeria, Benin, Rwanda, Burundi, Lebanon, Morocco — bringing ground-level insight to global environmental challenges. He also serves as Vice-President of the IIEG (Institut International d'Études Géopolitiques).
In 2021, he founded Racines de France with a clear ambition: to demonstrate that the tree is the backbone of a balanced environment, and therefore of a resilient economy. Planting trees is not an end in itself — it is an essential element of the living chain: measurable, certifiable, and replicable.
As of April 2026, both of Racines de France's demonstrators hold a quadruple environmental certification — Carbon, Biodiversity, Water and Soil.