A conversation about Courage of Living and Living with Courage between Olivier Goy and Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson.
When French entrepreneur Olivier Goy wheeled himself into a Manhattan midtown boardroom, an East Village art gallery, onto the stage of a business conference, or into the lobby of a New York landmark, he somehow elevated everyone around him — even now, especially now.
New York felt it. The bold celebrity names — among them award-winning actor Jean Reno, bestselling author Marc Levy, illustrator and Paris Match cartoonist Pauline Lévêque, painter Paige Boller, Tastings‘ owner Alexandra Morris, French Morning editor Elisabeth Guedel, Fortune editor Diane Brady, Frenchfounders President Benoit Buridant, Paris Brain Institute America board member Zofia Reno. The anonymous ones too: Anissa, Ela, Anthony, Claire, Philippe, Jessica, Stéphanie, Julien — dozens really — including an NYPD officer who stopped to watch.
Did they know that Olivier, whose voice and movement were stolen a few years ago by an incurable disease, would make them ‘visibly’ invincible?
For two intense days, on November 18 and 19, 2025, Olivier Goy turned the city into a living laboratory of courage, feast, and purpose.
At Alphabet Studio in the East Village — Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine’s garage-turned-gallery — at the Transatlantic Leaders Forum hosted by frenchfounders, and inside CIC / Banque Transatlantique’s boardroom, he spoke (through his AI-recreated voice) about purpose and photographed New Yorkers for La Fresque Généreuse, the monumental mural he is building to fund brain research.
“‘Now let’s be crazy’! New Yorkers never disappoint when we ask them to let go at the end of a photo shoot,” he joked on Instagram. And they didn’t: during these two days, Olivier Goy and Paris Brain Institute America, led by publisher Martine Assouline, raised more than $50,000 in new donations to advance brain research.
What followed was not just inspiration. It was strategy. With his hands, his eyes and his smiles standing in for the sound of his voice, Olivier showed how vulnerability fuels leadership, how purpose scales, how love — yes, love — sustains every transformation worth making.
Below, you will find some of the black-and-white portraits of New York donors Olivier took, armed with his Leica SL2 — and the full transcript of his on-stage conversation with Emmy Award winner Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson at the Transatlantic Leaders Forum — a conversation Frenchfounders framed under a powerful theme: Courage of Living and Living with Courage.
“For a long time, I thought courage meant… fighting,” he told the hundreds of entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and investors in the room. “You know — staying strong, keeping control, never giving up. But then the illness came along — and it quietly rewrote the definition. ALS takes away your strength, your voice, bit by bit. And suddenly you understand, courage isn’t in the muscles. It’s somewhere else.”
Olivier Goy, a successful tech entrepreneur for whom life once mirrored the contours of an American dream — a loving spouse, two kind and brilliant children, a thriving company — saw his entire perspective change when the disease appeared. The first symptoms surfaced during a tennis game, and months later doctors delivered the verdict: ALS, also known in the United States as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The ice-bucket challenge — suddenly no longer symbolic. An awakening. A sentence to become gradually imprisoned within one’s own body.
A life punishment unlike any other.
Olivier Goy decided he would not be punished twice. He has engaged with his ALS in an infinite dance — a choreography of resistance, acceptance, and action that only he could inspire.
As the disease stole his voice, he refused silence and instead became one of the most vocal activists for living with a handicap, for ALS, and for brain research. He has raised over two million dollars, inspired a documentary (Invincible Été, premiered in New York in January 2024), co-authored a book (Invincible with Le Figaro journalist Anne Fulda), and is creating La Fresque Généreuse, a 200-square-meter mural composed of portraits of donors and scientists, designed with Vahram Muratyan, author of Paris Versus New York.
Seated in his wheelchair, Olivier — now an Ambassador for Paris Brain Institute — took portraits one after another. At Alphabet Studio, he lifted so many spirits that New York seemed to drift back into a time of endless, underground lightness. At the BNP Paribas tower on 7th Avenue, where the Transatlantic Leaders Forum was held, business leaders donated and stepped in front of his camera — moved by the words spoken through the AI-generated version of his voice. At
