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.

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Maud Bailly
CEO South Europe, Accor

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

biography upcoming soon.

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 #1). 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

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz
Executive Fellow for Executive Education, Harvard Business School

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz is a top global expert on leadership and talent, family businesses, and personal growth. He was ranked by Bloomberg as one of the most influential executive search consultants in the world and selected by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s leading thinkers on talent.

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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

Jordi Gual
President VidaCaixa

biography upcoming soon.

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

Marine Hadengue
Executive Director at Higher Education for Good Foundation & CEO at Arbour Foundation

Marine Hadengue is currently a professor at SKEMA Business School. Holder of a Ph.D.  in industrial engineering from Polytechnique Montreal, she completed her postdoctoral work at Polytechnique Paris. Her areas of expertise include education, social and reverse innovation, as well as social entrepreneurship. She is in charge, with the general management of SKEMA, of the creation of the Foundation - Education for Societies, whose mission will be to rethink education for tomorrow‘s societies.

Marine is also the Arbour Foundation CEO, an organization located in Montreal and specializing in education access. She holds an engineering degree from Polytechnique Montreal and a master‘s degree in political science from the University of Montreal.

Speaker

Scott Handy
Director of Drama, Eton College; Actor

is an actor, director and teacher who has worked extensively in classical theatre including three years touring internationally with Cheek by Jowl and five seasons as a leading actor at the RSC.

He was a clarinetist with the National Youth orchestra and a choral scholar at Cambridge university as well as lead singer and saxophonist for the pop group Ice Cold in Alice with Revelation records.

He spent a year working with Peter Brook at the International Centre for theatre research in Paris on Hamlet, and later in New York with The Wooster Group on Troilus and Cressida (playing Ulysses and Helen of Troy).

He has worked extensively with the director Rupert Goold, and last collaborated with him as Antonio in The Merchant of Venice (opposite Patrick Steward as Shylock) and as Clarence in Richard III (with Ralf Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave).

His film credits include work with Richard Attenborough, Soren Karl Jacobson, Tim Burton, Peter Greenaway and Woody Allen. He has just finished filming on Apple TV thriller ‘Brussels’ with Eva Green and shooting on the film ‘Napoleon’ with Joaquin Phoenix for director Ridley Scott.

He has given workshops internationally on Shakespeare and has been a visiting director at Central school for speech and drama from 2001-2006, and from 2007 at the London Academy of Music and Drama.

He is currently Head of film at Eton college.

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

Andrew Hill
Senior Business Writer Financial Times, Consulting Editor FT Live

Andrew Hill is an award-winning columnist and senior journalist at the Financial Times. As Associate Editor and Management Editor, he writes a weekly column on business, strategy and management, as well as contributing longer features and taking part in video discussions and podcasts. He is a regular public speaker and chair of panels on leadership and management.

Since joining the FT in 1988, Andrew has worked in various roles, including editor of the daily Lombard column on British business and finance, Financial Editor, Comment & Analysis Editor, New York Bureau Chief, Foreign News Editor, and correspondent in Brussels and Milan. He is a member of the FT’s Editorial Board.

Andrew was named Business Commentator of the Year 2016 in the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards and Best Commentator at the 2009 Business Journalist of the Year Awards, where he also received the Decade of Excellence award for sustained achievement in business and financial journalism.

His latest book is Ruskinland (Pallas Athene, 2019), a personal exploration of John Ruskin’s life, work and enduring influence on our world, published to coincide with the bicentenary of the great thinker’s birth. He is also the author of Leadership in the Headlines (FT Publishing, 2016), a selection of his FT columns and insights about how leaders lead.

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

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

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

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.

Moderator

Mary Meaney Haynes
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

Moderator

Tony O'Driscoll
Adjunct Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

Tony O’Driscoll is an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Research Fellow at Duke CE. This dual-role affords Tony the opportunity to operate at the intersection of cutting-edge academic research in business and real-world business challenges faced by leaders.

During his 18-year corporate career, Tony held several strategic leadership positions. He was a founding member of IBM Global Service’s Strategy and Change consulting practice where he consulted at the highest level with business executives on creating sustainable competitive advantage in increasingly complex environments. He also served as a member IBM’s Almaden Services Research group where he investigated the changing roles of leadership, innovation, and collaboration as enterprises become more global, virtual, open and digitally mediated.
 
Tony has authored and co-authored articles for business periodicals such as Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, Strategy and Business, CLO Magazine and Dialogue. His current research examines how rapidly emerging technologies are disrupting existing industry structures and business models. He specifically focuses on how to develop leadership systems that enable organizations to adapt and evolve in increasingly unpredictable and turbulent business environments. 

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
Executive Vice President Human Resources, Vinci

Jocelyne Vassoille holds a degree in engineering, a Master in HR, and an MBA. She began her career in aeronautics and then in consulting.

With more than 20 years’ HR experience, both as a consultant and HR Director at Danone, LVMH and L’Oréal, she joined Vinci in 2020 as Group Executive Vice President, Human Resources and is member of the VINCI Executive Committee.

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

Adrian Wooldridge
Global Business columnist, Bloomberg Opinion

Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist’s political editor and writes the Bagehof column. He was previously based in Washington, DC, as the Washington bureau chief where he also wrote the Lexington column. Previously he has been The Economist’s West Coast correspondent, management correspondent and Britain correspondent.

He is the co-author of “The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea”, “A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation”, “Witch Doctors”, a critical examination of management theory, “The Right Nation”, a study of conservatism in America and “Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and their Ideas have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse”. His most recent book is “The Fourth Revolution - The Race to Reinvent the State”

Speaker

Michele Zanini
Co-founder, Management Lab

Michele Zanini is the co-founder of the Management Lab. Together with Gary Hamel, Zanini helps forward-thinking organizations become more resilient, innovative and engaging places to work. Zanini was previously an Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company and a leader in the firm’s organization, strategy and financial services practices. Zanini also spent five years as a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he conducted pioneering research on how terrorist and other insurgent groups were harnessing information-age technologies to operate as nimble networks. Zanini’s work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Zanini holds degrees from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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.