Speaker

Alex Adamopoulos
CEO, Emergn

Alex is a hands-on executive with more than 25 years experience and a successful track record in global professional services and technology organizations. Alex founded Emergn Limited in 2009. His work has spanned early stage and startup organizations and also Fortune 1000 companies.  Alex has extensive international experience with a deep understanding of culture, work, and life ethics especially in relation to establishing alignment and crossing cultural barriers.

Alex has served in several key leadership roles in his career with well known organizations always with a distinct focus on leadership  development, change management and international growth and expansion. Emergn‘s education led transformation approach is a culmination of a career centered on learning as a change agent.

Speaker

Simone Ahuja
Founder Blood Orange

Dr. Simone Ahuja is the founder of Blood Orange, a global innovation and strategy firm. The co-author of the international bestseller, Jugaad Innovation, the author of intrapreneurship playbook Disrupt-It-Yourself, and a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Simone is a keynote speaker and innovation advisor to global organizations including 3M, Procter & Gamble, Stanley Black & Decker, and the World Economic Forum.  She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Walker Art Center and a practitioner of improvisational comedy.  Simone resides in Minneapolis, USA with her family.

Speaker

Scott D. Anthony
Senior Partner, Innosight

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Mathis Bitton
Student of philosophy and political theory, Yale University

Mathis Bitton is a student of philosophy and political theory at Yale, currently working at the magazine Palladium. Hailing from Rabat, Morocco, he edits the Yale Historical Review and the Yale Herald, writes columns for the Yale Daily News, and serves as the Vice President of the Yale Political Union. A former intern at the American Enterprise Institute, the French National Assembly, and the Tikvah Fund, his work has appeared in National Review.

Speaker

Jeremie Brecheisen
Managing Consultant

Jeremie Brecheisen, Managing Consultant, works with Gallup clients to create behavioral economic solutions and to develop strong organizational identities that reflect their company’s purpose, culture and brand. He manages account project teams for some of Gallup’s most important and largest programs, spanning more than 300,000 employees.

As an executive consultant, Jeremie supports leaders and their teams to become more customer-oriented and more effective communicators. He applies his extensive knowledge of leadership and management principles to help Fortune 500 executive teams, mid-level leaders and frontline managers make better decisions based on objective data and predictive modeling. His consulting approach is engagement-focused, strengths-based and performance-oriented.

Jeremie is a strengths architect, consultant, practitioner, facilitator and coach. He has developed large-scale strengths interventions to help companies move from an initial focus on strengths assessment to developing a culture that leverages all employees’ strengths to improve business performance and increase growth. Jeremie has managed Gallup’s largest strengths client for several years, and his work has taken him all over the world, including North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Jeremie received his bachelor’s degree in modern Asian history from Brigham Young University. He received a master’s of business administration degree in the China International Program from the University of Hawaii; he spent the second year of the program studying and working in Guangzhou, China. Jeremie speaks conversational Mandarin Chinese. His Clifton StrengthsFinder talent themes are Learner, Ideation, Achiever, Belief and Woo.

Speaker

Richard Brem
Senior Advisor, Peter Drucker Society Europe

Richard Brem is a freelance journalist, working mainly for Austria's public radio station Ö1. He met Peter Drucker in 1999 on the occasion of Drucker's 90th birthday amd conducted a lengthy video interview with him, which is currently being re-edited and will be released under the title "Drucker Unplugged" on the Peter Drucker Society website later this year.

Speaker

David Champion
Senior Editor, Harvard Business Review

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Jean-Philippe Courtois
EVP and President National Transformation Partnerships, Microsoft Corporation

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Jenny Darroch
Dean, Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio

Jenny Darroch is the dean of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Prior to joining Farmer in 2020, Jenny held the position of dean at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California for four years.

At Drucker, Jenny successfully launched the Drucker School Global Family Business Institute and spearheaded three years of enrollment growth. She also championed the integration of Drucker’s philosophy around Management as a Liberal Art into curricular and co-curricular activities.

Jenny holds graduate degrees in marketing, international business, economics, innovation and knowledge management from New Zealand universities. In her role as Director of Entrepreneurship at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Jenny launched the nation’s first master’s degree in entrepreneurship, which focused on technology transfer from the university and job creation in the region.

She is passionate about preparing students for launching careers in business. Her research lies at the intersection of government policy, firm strategy and innovation.

Feel free to contact Jenny at darrocj@miamioh.edu

Speaker

Amy Edmondson
Professor of Leadership & Management, HBS

Amy C. Edmondson, PhD is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been ranked by the biannual Thinkers50 global list of top management thinkers since 2011 (most recently #13). She teaches and writes on leadership, teams and organizational learning.  Her most recent book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for leaders who are serious about building a thriving organization in the today’s uncertain environment. Her prior books, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy and Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2012, 2103) and Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016) explore teamwork in dynamic, unpredictable work environments.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on the design and implementation of transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller's mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design, all from Harvard University.

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, George Daley, a physician-scientist and Dean of Harvard Medical School, with their two college-age sons.

Speaker

Tamara J. Erickson
Leadership Advisor; top ranked management thinker, T50

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and a widely-respected authority on new approaches to leadership, the changing workforce, collaboration and innovation, and the nature of work in intelligent organizations.  At London Business School, Erickson has designed and directs the school’s leadership programme for senior-most executives, Leading Businesses into the Future, works with executives in a number of custom programmes, and teaches in the School’s Masters programmes.

She has five times been named one of the 50 most influential living management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, the respected ranking of global business thinkers. Her leading-edge work is consistently showcased in the prestigious Global Drucker Forum, an international conference of prominent business leaders. She has authored five books and numerous widely-cited articles.

An experienced executive and global advisor, Erickson has also served on the Board of Directors of two Fortune 500 corporations, where she served on Governance, Audit, and Compensation Committees and as the Lead Independent Director.

Erickson holds a BA degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where she was the recipient of the James Thomas Chirurg Fellowship.

Speaker

Hal Gregersen
Senior Lecturer in leadership and innovation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management

Hal Gregersen is executive director of the MIT Leadership Center and a senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at MIT Sloan School of Management. A Thinkers50 globally ranked management thinker, he is the author of the Harvard Business Review article “Bursting the CEO Bubble” and co-author of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Gregersen is also the founder of the 4-24 Project, an initiative dedicated to rekindling the provocative power of asking the right questions in adults so they can pass this crucial creativity skill onto the next generation. Putting his insight into practice, he is co-creator (with Sam Abell) of Leadership and the Lens: Learning at the Intersection of Innovation and Image-Making, an executive education experience through MIT Sloan Executive Education in association with Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.

Speaker

Ranjay Gulati
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school.

Professor Gulati studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous and caring execution). Professor Gulati was ranked as one of the top ten most cited scholars in Economics and Business over a decade by ISI-Incite. The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. His research has been published in leading academic journals of business, the Harvard Business Review, and a range of other outlets. He is the author of a number of books. He has been a frequent guest on CNBC and other media outlets.

Professor Gulati advises and speaks to corporations large and small around the globe. He also frequently leads small-group workshops focused on helping leadership teams of high-growth companies enhance the growth trajectory of their businesses. Some of his representative speaking and consulting clients include: Abbott Laboratories, Adidas, Aetna, Allergan, Bank of America, Bank of China, Baxter, Berkshire Partners, Blackrock, Boston Scientific, Bristol Myers Squibb, Brown Brothers Harriman, Caterpillar, Credit Suisse, Expedia, Ford, GE, General Mills, Google, Henkel, Hitachi, Honda, Hospira, IBM, Iron Mountain, Kellogg Company, Keybank, KPMG, LaFarge, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Metlife, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Novartis, Ochsner, P & G, Qualcomm, Sanofi, SAP, Target, Temasek, Unilever, and Vertex. He has served on the advisory boards of several entrepreneurial ventures and has appeared as an expert witness in business litigations.

Professor Gulati holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master’s Degree in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and two Bachelor’s Degrees, in Computer Science and Economics, from Washington State University and St. Stephens College, New Delhi, respectively. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

Speaker

Rita Gunther McGrath
Professor of strategy, Columbia Business School

Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, such as the Global Peter Drucker Forum.

She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

Follow Rita on Twitter @rgmcgrath. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

Speaker

Charles Handy
Social Philosopher and author

Charles Handy is a social philosopher and a writer and lecturer. He regularly features among the top names in Thinkers Fifty. His books on the changing shape of work and its effects on our lives and organizations have sold almost two million copies around the world - his most recent book is ”The Second Curve“, published in 2015.

With Elizabeth Handy, a photographer, he has collaborated on a number of books including ”The New Alchemists“ and ”A Journey through Tea“.

In his career, he has been an oil executive with Shell, a business economist, a professor at the London Business School, the Warden of St. George’s House in Windsor Castle (a study centre for social and ethical issues) and the Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts in London. He was appointed a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2000 in recognition of his contribution to the human Resource profession.

Charles is an Honorary member of the Peter Drucker Society Europe.

He is Irish and grew up in Kildare, but now lives in UK with his family.

Speaker

Julia Hobsbawm
Founder, Editorial Intelligence

Julia Hobsbawm writes about work culture, work-life balance, and the age of overload. She is Chair of The Demos Workshift Commission and Founder and Chair of Editorial Intelligence. She writes for Strategy + Business, and for outlets including the OECD network.  In 2021 she was listed in the HR Most Influential List. Her book The Simplicity Principle won Best Business Book of 2020 whilst Fully Connected was shortlisted for Management Book of the Year. She was awarded an OBE for services to business and regularly speaks to global audiences in government, public and private sectors.

Speaker

Whitney Johnson
CEO, Disruption Advisors

One of the "50 Most Influential Management Thinkers in the World", Thinkers50. Former award-winning Wall Street equity analyst. Linkedin Top Voice in 2018 with 1.7 million followers. Helps high growth organizations build high growth individuals. World authority on personal disruption.

Whitney Johnson, one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), is an expert on helping high growth organizations develop high growth individuals. She is an award-winning author, word class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning, and an executive coach and advisor to CEOs. Whitney is a popular contributor for the Harvard Business Review. She has 1.7 million followers on Linkedin where she was selected as a Top Voice in 2018, and her course on the Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times. In 2019, she was ranked #3 on the Global Gurus' Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals. In 2017, she was selected from more than 16,000 candidates as a “Top 15 Coach” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.

An innovation and disruption theorist, she is the author of the bestselling Build an A Team (Harvard Business Press, 2018), a Financial Times and CEO Read, Book of the Month, and the critically-acclaimed Disrupt Yourself (2015). Publisher's Weekly described it as "savvy...often counter-intuitive...superb" while the Boston Globe called it the "'What Color is Your Parachute?' career guide for the entrepreneurial age." In these books, she codifies her frameworks for developing high growth individuals and organizations––the Personal Disruption and the S Curve of Learning frameworks.

Whitney was the co-founder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard's Clayton Christensen, where they invested in and led the $8 million seed round for Korea's Coupang, currently valued at $9+ billion. She was involved in fund formation, capital raising, and the development of the fund's strategy. As a former award-winning Wall Street stock analyst, she understands momentum and growth. She was an Institutional Investor-ranked equity research analyst for eight consecutive years and was rated by Starmine as a superior stock-picker.

Whitney hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself Podcast, is married and has two children. For more information please visit www.whitneyjohnson.com.

Speaker

So-Young Kang
Founder & CEO, Gnowbe

So-Young has over 20 years of experience across strategy, leadership, transformation and technology. She helps organizations and individuals stay human in an increasingly digital world. She is the CEO and Founder of Gnowbe, an award-winning microlearning creator tool that is revolutionizing how creators teach and learn. By democratizing content creation, Gnowbe empowers creators to design, build and  share multimedia content in participatory ways. Gnowbe empowers creators from >70 countries to impact their communities.

With her background at McKinsey, Citigroup, and as the Founding Chairman  of Awaken Group, a human-centered transformation design firm, So-Young has been a strategic advisor to global leaders across the US, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa. She has been a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum since 2014.

So-Young is the author of 'Inside Out', global speaker and thought leader across multiple platforms including WEF, Forbes, Davos, TEDx, Huffington Post, Drucker Forum, etc. She is on the boards of Young Professionals' Group and founding member of SEA Founders.

So-Young holds a BA with Honors from the University of Pennsylvania and  an MBA from Harvard University.

Speaker

Carol Kauffman
Leadership Advisor at Egon Zehnder

Carol is known globally as one of the top leaders in the field of coaching. Thinkers 50 shortlisted her as one of the top 8 coaches for her contribution as a world renown thought leader and coach. Marshall Goldsmith named her the #1 Leadership coach in the world.

She is an Assistant Professor at Harvard, a Visiting Professor at Henley Business School, and a Senior Leadership Advisor at Egon Zehnder. Her Leader as Coach program won the Inaugural Award for Culture of Excellence at Harvard Medical School. It has been adopted nationally. Over 2,000 business leaders have had gone through her program directly or via team coaching engagements.

Carol was awarded $2,000,000 by the Harnisch Foundation to launch the Institute of Coaching, a community of 22,000. She also chairs the annual Coaching Conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School and co-sponsors the European School of Management and Technology Coaching Colloquia.

With over 40,000 hours of client contact and has been described as a lateral thinker who pushes the edges with a sense of humor and can disrupt someone out of their comfort zone. Carol’s first love is coaching C-level leaders to help create the impact they want and to develop high trust, high performing teams.

David Noble and Carol’s book: Real-Time Leadership: Find your winning moves when the stakes are high, will be published by Harvard Business Review Press, February,2023. She is published in many venues.

You can find her and resources at CarolKauffman.com

Speaker

Guila Clara Kessous
UNESCO Peace Ambassador, Executive coach

Dr. Guila Clara Kessous is a UNESCO Peace Ambassador and an executive coach using theatrical techniques to enhance corporate communication and help heal those who have suffered from prior trauma. She became Paul Ekman International Partner in 2021 and is using Ekman’s profiling and emotional intelligence techniques dedicated to coaching in leadership, negotiation, and humanitarian causes.

As a recipient of an Executive MBA from ESSEC Business School, a Ph.D. from Boston University under Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel’s direction, and a Post-Doc from Harvard University, she was invited to develop the communication course of the new certificate on « Situational Intelligence » at the Political Science Institute in Paris in 2021.

She has combined her artistic experience together with coaching methods such as positive psychology (Tal Ben Shahar), Leadership and Negotiation (William L. Ury), Executive Communication Skills (Marjorie North), and Emotional Intelligence (Associate Paul Ekman’s EIA). She is a certified coach ICC trainer (EMCC) and expert in assessment tools such as Leadership Effectiveness Analysis (MRG) and Hogan (Authentic Talent). As a certified coach, she has helped hundreds of senior executives (private sector: CAC 40, Nasdaq 500…) dealing with positive leadership. As a certified negotiator, she has been involved in peace negotiation working alongside her Ph.D. advisor, Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel, and Harvard Professor William L. Ury. She is the recipient of the Women Empowerment Award 2020 by Eva Longoria from the Global Gift Foundation for her work to help access education in Pakistan and in Burundi and has been knighted by the French government. In 2021, she became "Rising Talent" of the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society for her work to help women empowerment with her coaching skills notably with women refugees in Bangladesh.

Speaker

Philip Kotler
Emeritus Professor of International Marketing, Kellog School of Marketing

Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg™ School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Kellogg was voted the “Best Business School” for six years in Business Week’s survey of U.S. business schools. It is also rated as the “Best Business School for the Teaching of Marketing.” Professor Kotler has significantly contributed to Kellogg’s success through his many years of research and teaching there.

He received his Master’s Degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD Degree at MIT, both in economics. He did post-doctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

Professor Kotler is the author of 57 books including: Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, the most widely used marketing book in graduate business schools worldwide; Principles of Marketing; Marketing Models; Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations; The New Competition; High Visibility; Social Marketing; Marketing Places; Marketing for Congregations; Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism; The Marketing of Nations; Kotler on Marketing, Building Global Biobrands, Attracting Investors, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, Marketing Moves, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, and Confrontiing Capitalism. He has published over one hundred and fifty articles in leading journals, several of which have received best-article awards.

Professor Kotler was the first recipient of the American Marketing Association’s (AMA) “Distinguished Marketing Educator Award” (1985). The European Association of Marketing Consultants and Sales Trainers awarded Kotler their prize for “Marketing Excellence”. He was chosen as the “Leader in Marketing Thought” by the Academic Members of the AMA in a 1975 survey. He also received the 1978 “Paul Converse Award” of the AMA, honoring his original contribution to marketing. In 1989, he received the Annual Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award. In 1995, the Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) named him “Marketer of the Year.” In 2011, he was given the title of being a Legend in Marketing; in 2012, he was #1 on the Management A-List of Academics; in 2013 he became the first recipient of the William L. Wilkie American Marketing Association Foundation’s “Marketing for a Better World” Award for significant contributions to marketing theory and practice; also in 2013, he was inducted in the Management Hall of Fame; also in 2013, he became the first recipient of the Sheth Foundation Medal for Exceptional Contribution to Marketing Scholarship and Practice.

Professor Kotler has consulted for such companies as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Merck and others in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization and international marketing.

He has been Chairman of the College of Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a Director of the American Marketing Association, a Trustee of the Marketing Science Institute, a Director of the MAC Group, a former member of the Yankelovich Advisory Board, and a member of the Copernicus Advisory Board. He is a Member of the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Member of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Foundation. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from the Stockholm University, University of Zurich, Athens University of Economics and Business, DePaul University, the Cracow School of Business and Economics, Groupe H.E.C. in Paris, the University of Economics and Business Admininstration in Vienna, Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration, and the Catholic University of Santo Domingo.

He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and South America, advising and lecturing to many companies about how to apply sound economic and marketing science principles to increase their competitiveness. He has also advised governments on how to develop and position the skill sets and resources of their companies for global competition.

Education
PhD, 1956, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MA, 1953, Economics, University of Chicago

Academic Positions
S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1988-present
Harold T. Martin Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1973-1987
Montgomery Ward Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1969-1972
Associate Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1965-1968
Assistant Professor of Market, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1962-1964

Honors and Awards
Honorary Doctorate, Plekhanov Russian Academyu of Economics
16th Place in Ratings of Top Global Management Gurus, Global Gurus Organization and Management Gurus.Net
Marketing for a Better World, American Marketing Association
Wroe Alderson Distinguished Lecturer, Wharton School
Schaffner Award, Kellogg School of Management
Sheth Foundation Medal for Exceptional Contribution to Markeitng Scholarship and Practice, Sheth Foundation
Badge of Honor of Officer of the Order of Academic Palms, Order of the Academic Palms
Management Hall of Fame, www.thinkers50.com
Honorary Doctorate Degree, HHL, Leipzig, Germany, 2012
Ranked first on the A-List of Management Academics, 2011
Kellogg Alumni Professor of the Year Award, Kellogg School of Management, 1991

Speaker

Yō Makino
Freelance journalist and translator

A freelance journalist and translator. Formerly a reporter for the Nikkei newspaper for more than 24 years. Wrote several books on business and journalism while translating English-language books, including Chistopher Wyly's "Mindfu*ck."  Helped Peter Drucker write a series of articles on his life for Nikkei. Graduated from the Columbia Journalism School with M.S. and from Keio University with B.A. in economics.

Speaker

Roger L. Martin
Strategy advisor; former Dean, Rotman School of Management

In 2017, Roger Martin was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers. He was ranked 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th in the other ranking years over the past decade.

Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego and Ford.

Roger Martin is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, Academic Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship from 2004-2019 and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute from 2013-2019. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants.

Prior to his time at Rotman, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Strategy, Democratic Capitalism, Integrative Thinking, Design of Business, Incentives & Governance, and Social Innovation. His extensive writing includes 12 books and 28 Harvard Business Review articles. His newest book is When More is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). His previous 11 books include: Creating Great Choices written with Jennifer Riel (HBRP, 2017), Getting Beyond Better written with Sally Osberg (HBRP, 2015) and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley (HBRP, 2013); Fixing the Game (HBRP, 2011); The Design of Business (HBRP, 2009); The Opposable Mind (HBRP, 2007); and The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books, 2002). Both Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win won best book awards at Thinkers 50.

In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week 'B-School All-Star' for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven 'Innovation Gurus' in 2005.

He serves as Chair of The Good Jobs Institute and the I-Think Initiative, and on the Board of The Nine Dots Prize.

Roger received his BA from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. in 2018, he was awarded a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) by the Royal Military College of Canada. He lives in South Florida with his wife Marie-Louise Skafte.

Speaker

Mary Meaney
Board member at Beamery

Mary was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company where she served on McKinsey’s Shareholder’s Council (global Board of Directors) and led McKinsey’s Organization practice globally. 

She co-authored the book, Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths as well as McKinsey Global Institute’s recent report on The Future of Work after Covid-19. 

Mary currently invests and advises a range of start-up’s in the UK and serves on the Board of Beamery, a Talent Lifecycle Management company in the UK. 

Mary also serves on Imperial College Council and the Advisory Board of Imperial College Business School.  Previously, she was a Trustee of TeachFirst for almost a decade.

DOWNLOAD > CV

Speaker

Antonella Mei-Pochtler
Special representative of the Austrian Federal Chancellor; Head of Think Austria

Antonella Mei-Pochtler worked in international strategy consulting for 30 years, covering various top management positions. She gained extensive experience especially in the media, technology and digital transformation areas, helping both global corporates and public institutions develop and execute innovative strategies. In addition, the native Italian and mother of three is also involved in various charitable initiatives in the field of healthcare and education. She also serves on the board of various international public companies.

Since March 2018, Dr. Mei-Pochtler acts as a Special Advisor to the Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, and Head of Think Austria, the Federal Chancellor’s strategy and planning unit.

Speaker

Kevin Nolan
President & Chief Executive Officer, GE Appliances

Kevin Nolan is the President & Chief Executive Officer of GE Appliances, a Haier company, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. GE Appliances is the fastest growing appliances company in the U.S.

Mr. Nolan is a seasoned engineer and a passionate maker with 29 patent awards and a 30-year career at GE, including 10 years as GE Appliances’ Chief Technology Officer.

He took innovation to a new level when he conceived and co-founded FirstBuild, the first Corporate maker’s space in the world and global co-creation community that harnesses the power of the maker movement to change the way home appliances are conceived, designed and manufactured.

Originally from Connecticut, Mr. Nolan is an active voice in Louisville, KY, working directly and through several organizations to attract new investments to the area; promoting STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programs in schools and community centers; mobilizing resources to close the digital and educational gap in the city and personally participating in several community development organizations, including Metro United Way.

Currently as CEO of GE Appliances, Mr. Nolan is successfully leading the company’s transformation, redefining structures, promoting a new culture and shaping the future of an organization founded more than 100 years ago.

Moderator

Yvonne Pirkner
Chief Executive Pleasident, ON-Growth Mindset

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Jeffrey D. Sachs
University Professor of economics, Columbia University; Senior UN advisor

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID- 19 Commission, Co-Chair of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Sunway University.
He has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. Sachs spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees, and has received 38 honorary doctorates. In 2021, Sachs received the TÜBA Academy Prize from the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the Legion of Honor by decree of the President of the Republic of France, the Order of the Cross from the President of Estonia, and honorary doctorates from Amrita University in Kerala, India; Macau University of Science and Technology; and the University of Siena, Italy. His most recent book is “The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions” (2020).

Speaker

Christian Sarkar
Author, entrepreneur, artist, and consultant

Christian Sarkar is an author, entrepreneur, artist, and consultant. He is a co-founder of the Regenerative Marketing Institute along with Philip Kotler and Enrico Foglia. He is the editor of The Marketing Journal, an online publication which is continuously searching for new insights and next practices in marketing. He is also involved in numerous non-profit and public-education projects, including The Wicked7 Project, ActivistBrands.com, FIXCapitalism.com, and the $300 House Project. In 2021, Christian was named to the Thinkers50 Radar of global management thinkers primarily for his work on brand activism.

Christian is the co-author of “Regenerative Marketing: The Future of Community” (2022) with Philip Kotler and Enrico Foglia, and the co-author of “Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action” (2018) with Philip Kotler.

Speaker

Johnny C. Taylor Jr.
President and Chief Executive Officer of SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, is President and CEO of SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. With over 300,000 members in 165 countries, SHRM is the largest HR professional association in the world, impacting the lives of 115 million workers. A nationally bestselling author, Mr. Taylor is a sought-after voice on all matters affecting work. He is frequently asked to testify before Congress and authors the weekly USA Today column "Ask HR."

He is the author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval. Immediately upon its release in September 2021, RESET was in the top three of the Wall Street Journal’s list of best-selling hardcover business books. All author proceeds benefit the SHRM Foundation, which is committed to empowering HR as a social force for change.

He was appointed chairman of the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and served as a member of the White House American Workforce Policy Advisory Board during the Trump Administration. He is a Trustee of the University of Miami, Governor of the American Red Cross, and member of the corporate boards of Guild Education, iCIMS, and XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO).

Speaker

Gillian Tett
Chair Editorial Board, Editor-at-large, US, The Financial Times

Gillian Tett serves as the chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. She is also the co-founder of FT Moral Money,  a twice weekly newsletter that tracks the ESG revolution in business and finance which has since grown to be a staple FT product. In 2020 and 2021, Moral Money won the SABEW best newsletter.

Previously, Tett was the FT’s US managing editor from 2013 to 2019. She has also served as assistant editor for the FT’s markets coverage, capital markets editor, deputy editor of the Lex column, Tokyo bureau  chief, Tokyo correspondent, London-based economics reporter and a reporter in Russia and Brussels.

Tett is the author of “The Silo Effect”, which looks at the global economy and financial system through the lens of cultural anthropology. She also authored “Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe”,  a 2009 New York Times bestseller and Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards. Additionally, she wrote the 2003 book “Saving the Sun: A  Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from its Trillion Dollar Meltdown”. Her latest book, “Anthro-Vision, A New Way to See Life and Business” came out in June 2021.

Before joining the Financial Times in 1993, Tett was awarded a PhD in social  anthropology from Cambridge University based on field work in the former Soviet  Union. While pursuing the PhD, she freelanced for the FT and the BBC. She is a graduate  of Cambridge University.

Speaker

Jocelyne Vassoille
CHRO Vinci Group

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
Founder and CEO, 20-first

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is a potent mix of writer, entrepreneur, change agent, coach and consultant. She is a global expert on all things gender and generational balance. She is currently spending a year at Harvard as a 2022 Advanced Leadership Fellow researching all things related to longevity, gender differences in ageing, and navigating later life transitions into the Third and Fourth Quarters. Graphically summarised in her latest book Thriving to 100 – Through Life’s 4 Quarters.

As the CEO of 20-first, she works with organisations interested in capturing the competitive advantages of the future of work, talent and demographic trends. Her ground-breaking thought leadership is accessible through several seminal books and regular contributions to Harvard Business Review and Forbes. She’s done several TEDx talks, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for Gender Balanced Leadership by PWN Global, and was recently recognized as one of the world’s 40 Most Inspiring Women Over 40. Her book, Why Women Mean Business, was awarded the MANPOWER Best Book of the Year Prize.

In her own First and Second Quarters, she grew up in Toronto, attended the University of Toronto as a joint Computer Science/ Comparative Literature major, went to Paris for a year and stayed for 30, doing an MBA at INSEAD along the way. She has 3 passports (CDN, F, CH), lives in London with her sculptor/ magistrate husband and visits her two grown gender-balanced children, a son and daughter based in Dakar and New York.

On a more personal note, she is tracking her 60th year, back at school at Harvard, in a weekly newsletter called elderberries.

Speaker

Ruimin Zhang
The Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors, Haier Group

Zhang Ruimin, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Haier Group, is the creator of the Rendanheyi model and ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 50 management thinkers.

Over the past 33 years, Mr. Zhang has consistently helmed Haier with an innovative, entrepreneurial spirit and forward-looking strategies, transforming Haier from an insolvent collectively-owned factory into a world-renowned brand and multinational group of companies. In 2017, Haier achieved a global revenue of RMB 241.9 billion, ranking top among the world’s white goods brands for the ninth consecutive year.

Mr. Zhang has always believed in putting people first as a source of value. He has created Rendanheyi, a management model that draws inspiration from both traditional Chinese culture and modern business management practices. This new way of management thinking with Chinese characteristics represents a breakthrough for Chinese companies as they transform from followers into pioneers in management innovation. For his contribution to management thinking, Mr. Zhang has been ranked twice by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 50 leadership and management thinkers.