IFE is a French non-for-profit educational organization founded in 1987 by a Franco-American couple who sought a means to contribute to transatlantic understanding.

Since that time, IFE has grown and developed relations with a number of leading American colleges and universities, and it has diversified its programs of cross-cultural learning while remaining focused on its central area of expertise: helping students discover France and Europe from positions within French society.

In May 2005, IFE earned the honor of being placed under the "Haut Patronage" of the French Ministry of Education, in recognition of its achievements in favor of thoughtful, thorough cross-cultural education.

IFE today is fifty or more students each year enrolled in four programs and representing more than a score of top US institutions.

IFE as an organization is best understood as a series of concentric circles :

 Day-to-day operations and strategic development are carried out by an administrative staff.

 Administrators are in turn supported by a teaching staff composed principally of teachers from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris ("Sciences Po") and the University of Paris. They are informally affiliated with IFE and committed to its goals.

 Occasional lecturers (practitioners and professors), internship mentors, and host organizations make up a wider network of individuals on whom IFE depends and who support and encourage IFE in its work.

 Finally, as a not-for-profit organization IFE has a board of directors that reviews results, defines policy and sets goals.