[6][7][8] She also studied at Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration (ENA)[6] in 2000 (promotion Averroès, alongside Fleur Pellerin, Alexis Kohler and Nicolas Kazadi among others).

[3] Shey recalled having participated in demonstrations against the Devaquet bill in 1986 and against the Juppé plan in 1995, and against the candidature of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the 2002 French presidential election.

[citation needed] In 2000, Azoulay was appointed civil administrator, assigned to the general secretariat of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government.

During her time in office, she increased her department's budget by 6.6% to a total of €2.9 billion in 2017 – the largest amount of government money promised for the arts in the country's history.

[22] In the fourth round of balloting, the 58 members of the Executive Board nominated only one of the two finalists, Qatar's Hamad Bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari, who was first with 22 votes.

[27] Azoulay stressed in her first speech after her election, "At a time of crisis, it is more important than ever to get even more involved, to seek to strengthen [UNESCO], not to leave it", and that her first priority would be to restore the organisation's credibility and the confidence of its member states.

[28] On 10 April 2018, Audrey Azoulay made her first speech to the UNESCO Executive Board, detailing her vision for the organisation, her top priorities being Africa, gender equality, and education.

[29][30] In 2019, Le Monde outlined her achievements: in 2018, she succeeded in "demining crucial issues that for years had crystallized conflicts within UNESCO": she succeeded in having a text on the preservation of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem adopted by consensus, including by the Israeli representative, six months before his departure from UNESCO, and the Palestinian representative; she also reached an agreement between Japan and South Korea on the tragedy of the "comfort women" rounded up by the Japanese during the Second World War, and obtained a joint submission from North and South Korea for the inclusion of traditional Korean wrestling on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

[31] In February 2018,[32] she launched the Revive the Spirit of Mosul initiative to rebuild the historic center of Iraq's second-largest city destroyed during its occupation by the Islamic State.

[33] With completion planned for 2024, the initiative will have enabled the reconstruction of the Al-Saa'a Convent, the Al-Nouri Mosque and Al-Hadba Minaret, the Al-Tahera Church, as well as the rehabilitation of 124 historic houses.

[38][39] Three weeks after the double explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020, Azoulay visited the city and pledged that UNESCO would coordinate the rehabilitation of the 280 damaged educational institutions.

[41] UNESCO also provided assistance to the cultural sector, notably by rehabilitating the Sursock Museum and restoring 12 historic buildings and 17 paintings damaged by the explosion.

For Le Monde,[45] “under her leadership, highly sensitive Middle East issues, such as the heritage of Jerusalem, have been the subject of upstream negotiations to avoid pitfalls, even if it means postponing them.

On the other hand, "the UN agency has increased its number of unifying projects, such as the reconstruction of Mosul (recently visited by the Pope in Iraq), almost doubling its operating budget thanks to voluntary contributions (up 15% by 2020)", explained Le Figaro.