Speaker

Alex Adamopoulos
CEO, Emergn Limited

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

Asheesh Advani
President and CEO of JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide

Asheesh is the President and CEO of JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide, one of the largest youth-serving NGOs in the world focused on entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and work readiness. During his tenure leading JA Worldwide since 2015, the organization has been recognized as one of the ten most impactful NGOs in the world in annual rankings.

Prior to joining JA, Asheesh was a successful technology entrepreneur and led two businesses from start-up to acquisition. His entrepreneurial endeavors have been profiled in case studies at Harvard Business School and Babson College.

Asheesh is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and is also actively involved in the World Economic Forum (WEF) as a stewardship board member of the Center for the New Economy and Society. He started his career as a consultant at Monitor Company (now Monitor Deloitte) and at the World Bank.

In 2021, Asheesh received The Tony Hsieh Award as recognition for his leadership of JA Worldwide. In 2022, Asheesh was selected as an honoree from the United States for the YPO Global Social Impact Award. He is currently co-authoring Modern Achievement, a book the redefines achievement for today’s aspiring leaders with leadership expert, Marshall Goldsmith.

Asheesh holds degrees from the Wharton School and Oxford University, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.

Speaker

John Allan
Chair of the Council at Imperial College London; Regent of the University of Edinburgh

John Allan has served on public company boards for over 37 years continuously and has just stepped down as Chair of Tesco (the UK’s largest retailer) and Barratt (the UK’s largest housebuilder).

He was President of the Confederation of British Industry from 2018-2020 and subsequently chaired the COVID Recovery Commission.

Apart from a dozen U.K. plcs, he has served on the boards of 3 DAX 30 companies and has chaired several private equity businesses including Worldpay.

He is currently Chair of the Council at Imperial College London and a Regent of the University of Edinburgh - his alma mater.

His early career was in consumer products with Unilever, retail and business services.

Speaker

Guillaume Alvarez
Senior Vice President EMEA, Steelcase

Appointed to this role in Nov. 2011, Guillaume is responsible for Steelcase's sales activities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Previously, Guillaume was vice president of Global Client Collaboration (Nov. 2009-11), where he managed the company's refreshed approach to delivering unique value to our customers through a consistent structure and process. Prior to that, he was vice president of Global Alliances (May 2008-Nov. 2009), which include overseeing Steelcase's largest strategic global accounts, roughly $500 million a year in annual sales, and having responsibility for the sales teams for Vertical Markets, Applied Research and Architecture and Technology.

Guillaume was also vice president of Sales for the Central Region of Steelcase North America (appointed March 2006), overseeing all sales activity in his region, one of four in the United States.

Other roles he has held at Steelcase include president, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Middle East (appointed June 2000), where he was the head of all sales, marketing and dealer development efforts in those regions; director, International Marketing; general manager, Middle East, Africa and India (1996 to 1999); and vice president, United Kingdom, Eire, Benelux and Latin America, for Steelcase International (appointed September 2000), responsible for all aspects of sales and marketing in these countries, as well as dealer development for all markets outside of North America.

Born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 1959, Guillaume earned a diplome universitaire de technologie in marketing from the University of Paris in Paris, France, in 1981, and received his diplome d'etudes universitaire general in sociology a year later from the same institution. He also served in the French Army as an assistant advisory officer stationed in Freiburg, Germany.

Speaker

Carla Arellano
Partner, Greyhound Capital

Carla is a serial business builder and incessant problem solver – constantly exploring how people and organization come together to achieve enduring growth that transforms industries. A strong believer that people build companies, Carla partners with leaders to shape and execute bold strategies by getting people and organization side of business building right.

At Greyhound Capital she builds on her experience with McKinsey growing two businesses and counseling leaders to assess prospective CEOs, leadership teams and their organization for markers of Enduring Growth to inform investment go-no-go decisions.  Post investment, she partners with management teams to achieve successive S-curves of growth by embedding bold aspirations, resilience and adaptability into the organization’s fabric. This may include designing organization structure and roles, getting the right people into these, developing leadership skills, aligning culture and operating model to the strategy and/or developing pivotal growth capabilities such as product management or strategy.   

She continuously evolves the Greyhound playbook with qualitative and quantitative research into markers and drivers of enduring growth, with the aim of increasing the odds of success for each portfolio company. 

Chair

Christian Bason
Public Sector Innovation expert; CEO Danish Design Centre

Christian Bason, CEO, Ph.D. leads the Danish Design Centre (DDC), an independent non-profit foundation. Backed by the Danish government, DDC builds capacity for innovation and sustainable growth by design. By pursuing missions across green, digital and social transitions, the DDC activates ecosystems across sectors and opens new opportunities for business, organizations and designers. Previously, Christian was Director of MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation team, and business manager with Ramboll Management Consulting.

Christian is the author of seven books on innovation, design and leadership, including Leading Public Design (2017) and has published in amongst other Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review. He teaches executives at amongst others the Henley MBA, the European School of Administration and Copenhagen Business School. Christian is M.Sc. in political science and Ph.D. in design leadership.

Speaker

Margot Borden
Psychotherapist

Margot Esther Borden, M.A. has been working internationally as a psychotherapist and coach since 1986. She completed her M.A. in Humanistic Psychology at University of Durham, UK and has trained in many psycho-spiritual therapy and coaching techniques.

Margot’s passion is exploration of the underlying truths of human consciousness. Her work reflects her observation that the deepest underlying drive in humans is to evolve toward a life and livelihood that is in harmony with our inner Self.  Her professional and personal research and experience has its foundations in eastern and western psychology and spirituality.  Her work is substantiated by a long-term, grounded commitment to her integral development. A reflection of her lifelong passion for learning, Margot is currently working on a PhD in Wisdom Studies.

Originally from the US, Margot lives and works between North America, Europe and India.

Publications:

• Transcending the Black Swan: From Self to System in Humanities as a Resource and Inspiration for Humanizing Business: Beyond Homo Oeconomicus, Springer, 2023.
• Psychology in the Light of the East, Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2017.
• Spirituality and Business: Exploring possibilities for a new management paradigm, co-author, co-editor, Springer, 2010.
• Mindfulness and Business in Palgrave Handbook for Spirituality and Business, European SPES, 2010.
• Integral Leadership, European SPES Cahiers, 2010.

Speaker

Sabine Bothe
Group Head of People & Culture, Erste Group Bank AG

Dr. Sabine Bothe is the Head of People and Culture at Erste Group and Erste Bank Austria since January 2023. Throughout her career she has mainly worked at Deutsche Telekom and as the CEO of Magenta Telekom in Austria. Before transferring to Erste Group and Erste Bank Austria she works as SVP Employee Journey at Telekom in Bonn.

Chair

Tiffani Bova
Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist Salesforce

Tiffani Bova is the global growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the new book "The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth".

Her previous book "Growth IQ" was a Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into 10 languages. Bova is ranked on the current Thinkers50’s list of the world’s top management thinkers and has appeared on MSNBC, Bloomberg, BNN Bloomberg, Cheddar News and Yahoo! Finance. She also contributes her thoughts to publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Diginomica, Quora, Thrive, Rotman Journal and Duke Dialogue Review. As host of the podcast What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova, top ranked by Top Sales Magazine and in Management by iTunes, Bova has interviewed thought leaders including Arianna Huffington, Dan Pink, Seth Godin Tom Peters, Marshall Goldsmith, Roger Martin, Keith Ferrazzi, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly, Ritz Carlton CEO Horst Schulze, Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, and Medtronic CEO Bill George, among others.

Bova is a top Twitter influencer in the categories Business Growth, Customer Experience, Digital Transformation, the Future of Work, and Sales. On LinkedIn, she has over 43,000 followers, and was identified as a LinkedIn Top Sales Expert to follow in 2018-2022.

She was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 37 Sales Experts You Need to Follow on Twitter, a Top 100 Women in Tech, a Brand Quarterly Magazine Top 50 Marketing Thought Leader, and one of the most Powerful and Influential Women in California according to the National Diversity Council.

Speaker

Niklaus Brantschen
Jesuit/Zen Master

Niklaus Brantschen is a Swiss Jesuit, Zen master of the White Plum Sangha line and founder of the Lassalle-Institute within the Lassalle-House in Bad Schönbrunn/Zug, Canton Zug. He is co-initiator of the Jerusalem-Project.al development.

Chair

Eduardo P. Braun
Leadership expert, consultant and author

Eduardo Braun is a leadership expert and consultant, keynote speaker, and author. For more than 15 years Eduardo has traveled the globe and interviewed -both on-stage and before cameras- world-renowned management leaders, heads of state, and top academics and entrepreneurs, including personalities such as Pope Francis, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Jack Welch, among others. His new book "People First Leadership" is the result of these many conversations, where he shares intimate stories and practical life lessons of successful leaders who use culture and emotion to drive unprecedented results, and introduces a new vision of leadership where The New CEO -Chief Emotions Officer- establishes stronger connections that get better results and create a culture of inspiration and success. Eduardo is an industrial engineer from the University of Buenos Aires, he has an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He worked in the US, Europe and Latin America for more than two decades in companies such as Booz Allen & Hamilton, Etex Group, and The HSM Group -global multimedia management company and organizer of the World Business Forum. Eduardo lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with his 6 children.

Speaker

Tim Brown
Co-chair of IDEO, Vice Chair of the kyu Collective

Tim Brown is co-chair of IDEO the global design and innovation firm IDEO and Vice Chair of the kyu Collective. His best selling book Change By Design has introduced design thinking to business leaders worldwide. Tim has written for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Rotman Magazine and his TED talks Serious Play and Designers Think Big have reached millions. His work focuses on creative leadership and the strategic application of design across sectors such as health, education, technology, mobility and global development.

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Speaker

David Bryson
Non-Executive Director, Advisory Board Member, Executive Leadership Coach

David has held various leadership and command positions in the British Army and the Energy Industry. A Chartered Engineer, he holds an MSc and MBA and is a graduate of the Joint Services Command and Staff Course and the INSEAD Advanced Management Programme. 

During his 24 years military service he served in command positions on operations in Croatia, Bosnia and Iraq and worked in staff appointments in the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In the past 15 years in his civilian career, he has held various board positions in group companies and European Institutions. Most recently David was the Chief Operating Officer & Chief Sustainability Officer and a Member of the Executive Management Board of Uniper SE, an MDAX listed global power and gas company. He held that position during a strategic shift to commit the company to sector-leading Carbon Net-Zero commitments, the COVID crisis, a failed takeover bid by another European Utility, the global gas crisis and the Russia-Ukraine war, which resulted in the largest ever German support package negotiated with the State and the European Union to achieve energy security of supply for Germany. 

A passionate sailor and motorcyclist, he aims to finally ride the Moroccan Atlas Mountains in 2024 alongside building his new business which aims to help global leaders to achieve greater impact in their lives.  

Speaker

Thomas Bubendorfer
Solo climber and author

When he was only 16, Thomas became the youngest climber in history to solo climb the hardest rock faces of his time. At 20 he revolutionized extreme mountaineering by solo climbing without ropes the highest and hardest mountain faces in in the Alps in unprecedented, breath-taking speed. Many of his solo climbs stand unparalleled to this day.

While climbing remains the most important and influential activity in his life, Thomas, now 56, is not just a climber. He has always sought to balance his intense physical activities - training up to 400 hours per year, and climbing 120 days per year - by training his mind. He speaks four languages and has written seven books. Presently he is working on his first book in English. He keeps studying subjects as varied as chaos science, neurobiology, brain science, philosophy and history.

An international keynote speaker since 1985, Thomas has shared his views on performance, self-responsibility, goal-setting, quality, crisis, teamwork and many more related topics with audiences of many of the leading companies in the world.

Thomas is a father of three children and travels around the world giving a maximum of 30 keynote speeches in Asia, the US and Europe. He coaches and consults business leaders in the art of „intelligent performance" and is brand ambassador to Porsche.

Speaker

Marcus Buckingham
NYT Best-Selling Author and World’s Most Prominent Researcher on Strengths, Leadership and High-Performance at Work

Marcus Buckingham is a global researcher and New York Times best-selling author focused on unlocking strengths, increasing performance, and pioneering the future of how people work. He is the author of two of the best-selling business books of all time, First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths, and his tenth book, Love + Work (Harvard Business Review Press) is a WSJ bestseller and has been heralded by Forbes as one of the ten must-reads for career and leadership. Marcus’ 2019 Harvard Business Review cover article, "The Feedback Fallacy," was selected by HBR as one of the most influential articles of the last 100 years, and Marcus’ strengths assessments have been taken by over 10 million people worldwide.

Speaker

Curtis R. Carlson
Distinguished Executive in Residence, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Curt Carlson in an internationally recognized innovator and thought leader on the practice of innovation.

As CEO of SRI International in Silicon Valley from 1998 to 2014, SRI became a global model for the creation of high-value innovations worth tens of billions of dollars, such as HDTV, Intuitive Surgical for robotic surgery, and Siri on the iPhone.  Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the leading company in the world at converting its technology into commercial value.” 

His teams have won two Emmys, one for HDTV and one for optimized satellite broadcast image quality.  He has helped start over twenty-five new companies. 

Carlson is a professor at WPI and Northeastern Universities, where he teaches value creation and innovation.  Northeastern University has created an online program for Coursera that teaches his value creation methodology, Innovation for Impact (https://www.coursera.org/learn/valuecreation).  An article in the Harvard Business Review will be out this month describing his methodology. 

Carlson’s company, Practice of Innovation, works with companies, governments, and universities to improve innovative performance.  Services include workshops based on Carlson’s proven value-creation practices. These practices are used word-wide by leading companies and government agencies, including in Sweden, Finland, Chile, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan.

He served on President Obama's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He was also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Singapore.

With the National Academy of Engineering he helped develop improved U.S. R&D and innovation policies and practices for the National Science Foundation. He has served on many commercial and government boards, including the Air Force Science Advisory Board.

Carlson is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He won the Otto Schade Prize for Display Performance and Image Quality from the Society for Information Display and he received the Suffolk University’s first Global Leadership in Innovation Award. 

He has honorary degrees from the Malaysian Technical University, Stevens Institute, Kettering University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  He is an honorary Kobe, Japan Ambassador.

Carlson wrote with William Wilmot, Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want. That year Innovation was selected by BusinessWeek as a Top-10 Business Book.

Speaker

Niren Chaudhary
Chairman of the Board, Panera Brands

Niren Chaudhary is the Chairman of the Board of Panera Brands, one of the world’s largest fast casual restaurant companies with nearly 4,000 locations in 10 countries. Panera Brands is comprised of Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros Bagels.

Prior to becoming Chairman in 2023, Niren served as CEO of Panera Brands and Panera Bread. During his four-year tenure, Panera Brands strengthened its leadership in the fast casual segment by expanding its leading digital capabilities, which as of 2023 account for 51% of total sales at Panera Bread, while increasing its loyalty base to more than 53 million members and launching an innovative loyalty subscription model that resulted in 25% of all Panera transactions coming from Unlimited Sip Club members. Panera also increased its pace of innovation, strengthened franchisee partnerships and led the creation of a strong, people-first culture, resulting in industry-leading retention rates for GMs and associates, earning Black Box Intelligence’s Employer of Choice Award in 2022.

Previously, Niren served as Chief Operating Officer and President of Krispy Kreme where he implemented a new operating model to elevate consistency across the global brand and created a path for enterprise value growth of 3x over 5 years. Prior to that, he spent 23 years at Yum! Brands serving in global leadership positions including Global President of KFC and President of Yum! India.

Niren is guided by his deep passion for serving others and building future leaders. He spends his personal time sharing his personal and professional journey with students and professionals, often wielding a guitar to sing about his life or even a new Panera menu item. In addition, he dedicates his personal time serving on the Tufts Medical Centre Board and as an advocate for DKMS, a leading non-profit with the world’s largest stem cell donor registry.

As a lifelong learner, Niren focuses on both formal and informal education. Formally, Niren holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, an MBA in marketing from the University of Delhi, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. Informally, Niren speaks 4 languages – Hindi, English, Dutch and German. He holds a black belt in Shotokan karate and is an avid golfer, tennis player and musician with his own rock band.

Speaker

Laurent Choain
Chief People, Education & Culture Officer, Mazars

Laurent currently serves as Chief People, Education & Culture Officer of Mazars, an international, European-originating, integrated and independent organisation in professional services. Mazars can rely on the talent of 40,000 professionals, led by 1000+ partners in 90+ countries over 6 continents. 

Laurent has led a career at the crossroads of leadership in large companies (banking sector, luxury hospitality), consulting, entrepreneurship as well as business schools.  For more than thirty years, his vocation has been to develop executive education through innovative endeavours in both academic and corporate worlds, founding and leading corporate universities, launching post-graduate programmes for executives and chairing think tanks on the future of leadership education. In June 2011, he joined the board of EFMD as well as the EQUIS Awarding Body in 2014, and became in 2013 a member of the board of the Peter Drucker Society Europe. Laurent also sat on the French Regulation Authority of Business Schools (CEFDG) between 2011 and 2017. He is a professor of leadership at the University of Paris Pantheon Assas, and fellow of ESCP Europe.

Chair

Claudia Crummenerl
Managing Director Workforce & Organization, Capgemini Invent

Claudia is an expert in the people perspective of digital, automation and AI. She collaborates and support clients in how leadership in the digital age is evolving, how workforce and organizations transform through automation and AI, how the HR function is composed and how to engage with employees during the process. Her particular project expertise lies in the rollout of large transformation programs in an international context.

Claudia combines Industry and Consulting expertise. She started and spend half of her career in the automotive industry in various positions in Germany, US and Japan driving change and HR projects. Since joining Capgemini Invent for their reputation in organizational transformation and change management, Claudia has been part of the German consulting team and now is Managing Director for the global People and Organization capability.

With Capgemini Invent’s strategic focus on Digital Transformation, Claudia has focused her thought leadership on how digital is transforming leadership, workforce and organizations. She regularly authors studies with the reputed Capgemini Research Institute and speaks at conference and client events.

Speaker

Preeti D´Mello
Chief Diversity Officer, Tata Consultancy Services

biography upcoming soon.

Chair

Gemma D’Auria
Senior Partner McKinsey & Company

Gemma is a Senior Partner based in our Milan office and has over 15 years of consulting experience. She began her career at the Firm in our New York office and worked in the Middle East before moving to Italy, where she now leads our efforts with consumer retail, fashion, and luxury players in the Mediterranean.

She is also one of the global leaders of our People & Organizational Performance Practice, where her areas of focus are organizational learning and leadership development, two of the most critical levers in driving sustainable and long-lasting change.

She has coauthored a number of articles on organizational topics and is also one of the contributors to a book published by McKinsey called Leadership at Scale, which is focused on how to effectively enhance leadership skills in organizations.

Before joining McKinsey, Gemma worked in the investment banking division of a multinational investment bank in London, and she now lives in Milan with her husband and four children.

www.mckinsey.com/our-people/gemma-d-auria

Speaker

Steve Denning
Senior Contributor at Forbes.com, author and educator

Steve Denning is a former executive of the World Bank, and is the author of seven books on leadership, innovation, leadership storytelling, and Agile management, as well as a novel and a volume of poems.

His forthcoming book is entitled “Reinventing Capitalism In The Digital Age” and will be published by Cambridge University Press in December 2022.

Since 2011, he has been writing a popular  leadership column for Forbes.com, where he is a Senior Contributor. He has published nearly a thousand Forbes articles, with more than 10 million visitors and 20 million pageviews. (http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/)

He has also published more than forty  articles for the journal, Strategy and Leadership, including four articles selected as the “Outstanding Article Of the Year.”

Steve is a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board for the Cambridge University Press Element Series on “Reinventing Capitalism.” Steve conducts a series of online executive training courses on digital-age management both in public courses and private courses for individual firms.

Speaker

Emily M. Dickens
Chief of Staff, Head of Public Affairs, SHRM

Emily M. Dickens is Chief of Staff, Head of Public Affairs and Corporate Secretary for SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. An executive team member, Dickens is responsible for implementing the CEO's vision, corporate governance, global policy, government affairs, legal and the organization's real property.

As the Head of Public Affairs for the world’s largest human resources trade association, Dickens leads SHRM’s Advocacy Team — the “A-Team” — which is composed of nearly 19,000 HR professionals across the United States that are positioned front and center in efforts to advance the interests of the HR profession. Dickens has been a featured expert on workplace issues and business leadership – with commentary appearing in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Essence Magazine, Law 360, WTOP, HR Dive, among many others. In addition, Dickens has testified before Congress and the EEOC on worker and workplace topics like AI, gender bias, and paid leave.

Additionally, Dickens serves on the boards of the following industry organizations to maximize SHRM's impact and voice in global, national, and local business and labor policy debates: B20 Indonesia Women in Business Action Council (Deputy Co-Chair); USCIB-United States Council for International Business; The Bryce Harlow Foundation; and the National Foundation for Women Legislators. Dickens also serves as the Secretary-General for the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) and as a USA delegate for the North American Human Resources Management Association (NAHRMA).

Before joining SHRM, Dickens served full-time as a passionate advocate for access to higher education for minority students as the general counsel/head of policy for the DC-based Thurgood Marshall College Fund; Vice President of Public Policy for the Association of Governing Boards for Colleges and Universities; and the Assistant Vice President for Federal Affairs at the University of North Carolina System. Dickens leverages her higher education background to promote the importance of the education-to-employment pipeline. She has also worked at Duke University and Fayetteville State University in administrative and external affairs roles.

Actively engaged in board service, Dickens is also a member of the Strategic Education, Inc. HIRE Advisory Board and the North Carolina Central University Board of Trustees. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated where she has served as Chairman of the International HBCU Task Force, and Director on the board of the sorority’s Education Advancement Foundation.

Emily M. Dickens is a graduate of North Carolina Central University and North Carolina Central University School of Law.

Speaker

Yves Doz
Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management

Through his research, teaching and consulting over many years, Yves Doz has helped executives and their companies to develop and implement effective strategies that transcend inherent tensions and contradictions: Global vs. local in multinational innovations, value capture vs. value creation in alliances, and continuity vs. agility when facing external disruptions. Among other corporates, he has helped Airbus (and its precursors Aerospatiale, DASA and British Aerospace), Avery Dennison, GSK, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, P&G, Teva, Timken, Toyota and Xerox navigate through these tensions.

Yves’ publications and research have won numerous awards, including the first CK Prahalad Scholar-Practitioner Award from the Strategic Management Society for bringing research findings to management practice, and a Lifetime Distinguished Scholar award from the Academy of Management. He has written numerous articles and several books – most recently “Ringtone: The Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones”, with Keeley Wilson, published in 2018 by Oxford University Press, and winner of the 2018 George R. Terry Book Award for his outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge during the previous 2 years.

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

Mark Esposito
Professor, Hult Int’ Business School & Director Futures Impact Lab

Dr. Mark Esposito is Professor of Business & Economics at Hult International Business School, where he directs the Futures Impact Lab. He is also Professor of Public Policy at Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government; Teaching Faculty at Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education and Affiliate Faculty at the Microeconomics of Competitiveness Program at the Harvard Business School. He serves as Senior Advisor to the Strategy& group at PwC. He is cofounder of Nexus FrontierTech, the Circular Economy Alliance, and Excellere. He is coauthor of The AI Republic, Understanding How the Future Unfolds, and The Emerging Economies under the Dome of the Fourth Industrial Revolution ( Cambridge University Press) and The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Smarter Global Future (MIT Press). He holds fellowships with Digital Impact Alliance (UN Foundation) and as DLT Science Fellow.

Chair

Bill Fischer
Professor of Innovation Management, IMD

Bill Fischer has spent his entire career observing how innovation works, from a practicing engineer in the steel and aerospace industries, to advisory work on medical research institutions for the WHO, to being a partner in a startup project whose intellectual capital was ultimately sold to a leading consulting firm, to present-day engagements with corporate and several startup innovation activities involved in AI applications to invention, and work-life wellness.

He is presently a Senior Lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, at MIT, and Emeritus Professor of Innovation Management, at IMD, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has previously  held a chaired professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was the Executive President and Dean at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai.

Bill authors a regular column on “The Ideas Business,” for Forbes.com, and is the co-author of three recent books on innovation practices: “Virtuoso Teams,” “The Idea Hunter”  and “Reinventing Giants”. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 1999. Bill holds both Swiss and American nationalities.

Speaker

Bob Goodson
Cofounder and president of Quid

Bob Goodson is cofounder and president of Quid, a Silicon Valley company whose software is used by some 500 enterprises including a third of the Fortune 50. Before starting Quid he was part of the founding team at Yelp (NYSE: YELP). For the past decade Bob has focused on ways to apply AI to the world’s written content, in line with the themes of a 2015 talk he gave at Oxford on “The 100-Year Revolution In What It Is to Be Human.” In 2016, Quid received a Technology Pioneer Award from the World Economic Forum for “Contributions to the Future of the Internet.”

Bob is an angel investor and LP, with early-stage positions including AirBnB, Palantir, and Precision Neuroscience. He is a Venture Partner at Future Positive, a new VC fund backing system-level changemakers. While at the University of Oxford doing graduate research in language theory, he cofounded Oxford Entrepreneurs to connect scientists with business-minded students; the society is now in its eighteenth year.

Speaker

Patrick Guggenberger
Partner, McKinsey & Company

Patrick serves consumer-facing clients on a broad array of topics ranging from strategy to organizational design. He coleads our practice group focused on helping consumer-facing companies in unleashing organizational potential. Since joining the firm in 2012, Patrick has drawn on his expertise to reimagine organizations and has focused his advisory work on helping leading companies improve their organization design and pursue end-to-end operating model transformations. He is also coauthor of McKinsey’s State of Organizations report.

Examples of his recent client work include the following:

• guiding an operating model redesign effort for a leading consumer-goods company that included adjusting global, regional, and local structures and governance approaches
• directing an operating model transformation initiative for a retail e-commerce start-up
• helping a consumer-goods company shift its corporate portfolio to find new sources of growth, including entering new business areas and making acquisitions
• leading an end-to-end business model transformation for a global consumer-goods company that improved the performance of the corporate center and value chain processes, including consumer insights and digitization
• helping the leaders of a consumer company reorganize the enterprise to increase efficiency, speed, and agility
• leading a transformation program for a leading consumer-goods company that fostered faster decision making by putting new ways of working in place.

Keenly interested in industry-level dynamics, Patrick publishes frequently on how leaders can tailor their company’s operating approach to stay ahead of changing market conditions.

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

Gilma Teodora Gylytė
Co-Founder DO ARCHITECTS

Gilma Teodora Gylytė is an influential Lithuanian architect, driving force  of human-oriented architecture and spatial desovietization. She believes that everyday spaces shape our minds and actions and are powerful tools to bring people together.

In 2013, Gilma co-founded the award winning Do Architects office in Vilnius, Lithuania, and leads its creative teams. In 2022, she founded ‘Rebuild the Wonderful’, an initiative for soviet architecture humanization in CEE and particularly Ukraine.

With Do Architects, Gilma has been leading creative teams behind pioneering projects such as soviet kindergarten transformation near Vilnius, soviet street network humanization, conversions ranging from protected heritage to abandoned factories, and dozens of other human-centric contemporary architecture.

With Rebuild the Wonderful, Gilma is currently leading 5 typical soviet schools transformation project which become pilots and  show-cases for minimum 131 war damaged schools.

Together with Do architects, Gilma has been a 7 times nominee for Europe’s most prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award for Contemporary Architecture, and won 5 main prizes at annual Lithuanian Contemporary Architecture Awards „Žvilgsnis į save“. She is also the most nominated architect (5 times) in National Architecture Awards (NAA) in Lithuania and won the awards with 2 projects. Her team’s projects are regularly published in Lithuanian and foreign media.

Gilma is a frequent member of international juries such as Czech Architectural Awards 2023, Bulgarian Architectural Awards 2022, and others. She was also a key-note speaker at events such as in Lviv International Urban Forum 2023, Sofia Architecture Forum 2022, Architecture Forum in Romania, Iashi 2022, Nordic Wood Forum Riga 2022, ect. Gilma held personal lectures at Heritage days in Riga 2022, annual Architect Talk in Cyprus 2021.

Gilma also is an active columnist about everyday spaces and their influence on the people. Recently, she wrote the preface for Jan Gehl’s legendary book Cities for People Lithuanian translation.

Speaker

John Hagel III
Author; Faculty Member, Singularity University; Member Board of Trustees, Santa Fe Institute

John Hagel III has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill will be publishing in May his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact.

While at Deloitte, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO’s agenda.  Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice.  John has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

John is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum.

John is the author of The Power of Pull, published by Basic Books in April 2010.  He is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as general media like the New York Times, NBC and BBC. He has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles in that publication and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by a variety of publications and institutions, including the World Economic Forum and Business Week.

John has his own website at www.johnhagel.com, and for many years wrote personal blogs at www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com as well as contributing postings on the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Techonomy websites. He is active in social media and can be followed on Twitter at @jhagel and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhagel/

John holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University.

Speaker

Scott Handy
Theatre director

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.

Chair

Rahaf Harfoush
Digital Anthropologist, Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture

Rahaf Harfoush is a Digital Anthropologist and Best-Selling Author researching the impacts of emerging technologies on our society. She focuses on understanding the hidden behavioral shifts that are taking place as global digital infrastructures enable the unprecedented exchange of ideas, information, and opinions. She teaches “Innovation and Disruptive Business Models” at SciencePo’s School of Management & Innovation in Paris. Her third book, “Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity in a World Obsessed with Work,” was published in February 2019.

Rahaf is the Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, where she leads a team of researchers in exploring the implications of the first global digital culture on how we live our lives. Rahaf is a member of the German Marshall Fund’s Young Transatlantic Network of Leader. She has been named a top future thinker by the Hay Literary Festival, and was named a Young Global Changer at the G20 Think Tank Summit. In 2018, Rahaf was nominated as one of the most innovative people in France by the prestigious “Les Napoleons.”

Rahaf supports organizations in navigating our new constantly connected reality to strengthen their innovation, talent management, and foresight strategies as well as ensuring they are on top of the latest trends and best practices. Her clients include Starwood Capital Group, Estée Lauder, L’Oreal, UNESCO, The OECD, Cross Knowledge, A1, ING Direct, EuroRSG and more. Her other books include “The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers”, and “Yes We Did: An Insider’s look at how Social Media Built the Obama Brand.” Previously, she was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum.

Speaker

Scott Hartley
Co-founder and managing partner, Everywhere Ventures

Scott Hartley is co-founder and managing partner of Everywhere Ventures, a global venture capital firm that has invested in over 300 startups. He is the best-selling author of The Fuzzy and the Techie, a Financial Times Business Book of the Month and Finalist for the McKinsey & Company Bracken Bower Prize. The book, which is available in over a dozen versions, makes the case for human skills in the era of generative AI. Hartley previously worked at Google, Facebook, and the White House as a Presidential Innovation Fellow under President Obama. He holds three degrees from Stanford and Columbia University, and is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Chair

Anthony Howard
Global CEO mentor and coach

Dr. Anthony Howard, often referred to as the 'CEO Whisperer', is a philosopher, writer, entrepreneur, and acclaimed business mentor with twenty years of global experience. As a guide for CEOs across business, government, and civil society, he facilitates personal and organisational transformations, fostering a shift from instrumental values to virtue and transcendental values.

Anthony is the CEO & Founder of both The Confidere Group, where he leads a team of seasoned executives who provide independent counsel to Chief Executives in large publicly traded companies, private organisations, and associations, and The Socratic Leader Academy, which is on a quest to foster new models of leadership that promote the conditions for a new Renaissance.

He has engaged in reflective conversations with hundreds of leaders and influencers across various sectors over two decades. These dialogues have enriched his global perspective and deepened his insights on leadership, and the environments in which leaders operate, equipping him to guide his clients towards sustained exceptional performance.

Drawing from his extensive coaching, consulting, and dialogues with leaders worldwide, Anthony's writings and speeches cover a variety of domains, primarily focused on leadership, trends, and navigating change in the current era. His book, Humanise—why human-centred-leadership is the key to the 21st century, is a direct outcome of these global leadership conversations. His groundbreaking PhD research, which introduced a new model known as Personalist Leadership, significantly amplified his influence in the field. Currently, Anthony continues his academic research as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame (Australia).

Speaker

Herminia Ibarra
Charles Handy Chair in Organizational Behaviour, London Business School

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School. Prior to joining LBS, she served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties.

An authority on leadership and career development, Thinkers 50 ranks Ibarra among the top management thinkers in the world. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, a judge for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and one of the 100 most influential people in gender policy around the world, according to Apolitical.

Ibarra is the author of the best-selling Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business, 2015), which explains how managers step up to bigger leadership roles, and Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, which describes the process of reinventing one’s career. Her current research investigates enablers and barriers in the adoption and implementation of cognitive technologies in established organizations.

Author of numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review and leading academic journals, she also writes for business publications including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and speaks internationally on leadership and organizational transformation.

Ibarra received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where she was a National Science Fellow.

Speaker

Ekin Ilseven
Assistant Professor Strategy and Organizations,
School of Business and Economics Católica-Lisbon

Ekin is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations at Católica-Lisbon SBE. He received his MSc in Physics from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and a PhD in Management from INSEAD. His research addresses how organizations can be designed to be resilient against unexpected adversities and investigates the strategic trade-offs occurring in the process. For this, he relies particularly on formal modelling, simulations, and ML/AI techniques in data analysis. His research has been recognized with nomination as a finalist at the INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition. He further advises local municipalities in Turkey on building disaster resilience with an increasing emphasis on private-public collaborations.

DOWNLOAD > CV

Speaker

Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño
President, IE University

Santiago Iñiguez is the President of IE University and a recognized influencer in global higher education. He was the first recipient (2019) of the Founders Award by Thinkers50, the prestigious global ranking of thoughtful leaders in Management. He is the author of “The Learning Curve: How Business Schools Are Reinventing Education” (2011), “Cosmopolitan Managers: Executive Education That Works” (2016), and “In An Ideal Business: How the Ideas of 10 Female Philosophers bring value to the Workplace” (2020), as well as co-editor of “Business Despite Borders: Companies in the Age of Populist Anti-Globalization” (2018), and “Executive Education After The Pandemic. A Vision For The Future” (2021), and “Philosophy Inc.: Applying Wisdom to Everyday Management” (2023), all published by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer).

Iñiguez is a regular speaker at international conferences and frequently contributes in different journals and media on higher education and executive development. He is a Global LinkedIn Influencer and has been recognized as the leading Spanish influencer in Management.

Iñiguez is one of the founders and board member of Headspring, a joint venture between IE Business School and the Financial Times, offering custom programs for companies. He also serves on the boards of EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development), and the Aramco Foundation (Saudi Arabia). He is member of the advisory boards of Antai Business School (Jiao Tong University, China), LUISS Business School (Italy), Mazars University (France), and FGV- EASP Fundaçao Getulio Vargas (Brazil). He was the first European to become Chair of the Board of AACSB, the global association of business schools.

Iñiguez is the former Dean of IE Business School and has played a leading role in business education. He was portrayed by the Financial Times as “one of the most significant figures in promoting European business schools internationally”. He was the first European appointed as “Dean of the Year” by Poets & Quants (2017).

Iniguez is Professor of Strategic Management. He holds a Degree in Law, a Ph.D. in Moral Philosophy and Jurisprudence (Complutense University, Spain) and an MBA from IE Business School. He was a Recognized Student at the University of Oxford, UK.

Speaker

Michael Jacobides
Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, LBS

Michael G Jacobides is the Sir Donald Gordon Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation and Professor of Strategy at London Business School. He is Academic Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, Visiting Scholar at the New York Fed, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge. In 2019 he was selected as one of the Thinkers50, the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, and is a leading expert on business ecosystems, and how firms navigate shifting, digital environments. A frequent keynote speaker, he engages in corporate, industry, and broad-appeal events such as TEDx and the Global Drucker Forum. A winner of the 2018 Theory to Practice Award from the StrategieForum, he advises disruptive start-ups and Fortune500 firms alike in Europe, the US and Asia. He works on thought leadership with consultants such as McKinsey, IDEO, Accenture, PwC, Deloitte, Keystone and ECSi, and on strategy with corporates such as Haier, Huawei, Spotify, MasMovil, Vodafone, Nokia, SAP, Enel, Santander, Helvetia, Zurich, CS, Airbus, DeBeers, Burberry, MerckSerono and the NHS.  He has visited Harvard, NYU, Cambridge, Imperial, Bocconi and Wharton, where he obtained his PhD, after studying at Athens, Cambridge and Stanford. His work, which has received the Sloan Foundation Award, has appeared in the top academic journals such as SMJ, AMJ, AMR, OrgSci and Industrial & Corporate Change, where he is a co-Editor, as well as HBR and FT. He appears on CNN and BBC. On policy, he has worked with the UK parliament (on the future of financial services), the European Council (on innovation in Europe) and has spearheaded RedesignGreece. He served on the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, he is a co-author of the WEF’s White Paper on Digital Platforms and Ecosystems, and has presented in the Davos Annual meetings.

Speaker

Robert S. Kaplan
Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus at HBS

Robert S. Kaplan is Senior Fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He joined the HBS faculty in 1984 after spending 16 years on the faculty of the business school at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he served as Dean from 1977 to 1983. Kaplan has co-developed both activity-based costing (ABC) and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), widely recognized as seminal contributions to management theory and practice. His current research applies these two innovations to important problems at the intersection of business and society.

He introduced time-driven activity-based costing to health care, where it has become the global standard. In 2021, Kaplan partnered with Oxford professor Karthik Ramanna to create the E-liability method, the first system to accurately measure and report corporate greenhouse gas emissions across corporate supply and distribution chains. The approach, readily extendible to societal and other environmental outcomes, is the first rigorous approach for ESG reporting. A recent paper, with Ramanna, established the measurement and accounting foundations for trading of legitimate carbon offsets.

In a third research stream, conducted as Palladium thought leader, Kaplan extended the Balanced Scorecard strategy execution for inclusive-growth regional ecosystems. These generate strong financial returns while transforming the socio-economic and environmental conditions of residents in low-income communities around the world.

Kaplan has authored or co-authored 14 books and 250 papers, including more than three dozen in Harvard Business Review. He and David Norton have written five prize-winning, international best-selling books on the Balanced Scorecard. He co-authored Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing with Steve Anderson; Cost and Effect with Robin Cooper; and Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, with H. Thomas Johnson, which received the AAA Seminal Contributions to Literature Award in 2007.

Kaplan received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University, and honorary doctorates from four international universities. Elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2006, he received the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 1988 from the AAA, the 1994 CIMA Award from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK), and Lifetime Contribution Awards from the Management Accounting Section of the AAA (2006) and the Institute of Management Accountants (2008).

Speaker

Lalit Karwa
Head TCS PACETM, Europe

Lalit has over 20 years of experience in building new capabilities for organizations who are eager to respond to shifting customer needs, helping them get more value from their innovation and transformation investments. In the years that Lalit has worked for TCS, he has occupied several leadership roles. In his current role, Lalit is responsible for establishing PACE^TM, a TCS platform to drive innovation at speed and scale.

Lalit is passionate about ‘business-building’ with Innovation. He helps corporates in scaling innovation. He enjoys building, leading and inspiring teams to realize performance.

He lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands, with his wife Bharti and daughter Jiya.

Speaker

Michael Kaschke
President of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Former ZEISS Group President & CEO

President of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Association for the Promotion of Science and Humanities in Germany), Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology , Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Carl Zeiss Meditec AG, a company listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (MDax), as well as Member of the Governing Board of Deutsches Museum München, of the Supervisory Boards of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Deutsche Telekom AG, Robert Bosch GmbH as well as of the Governing Board of Ottobock Management SE. Member of Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences. Adjunct Professor at the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering of the Medical University of Vienna.

Moderator

Rebecca Kerr
Retired VP, Global Strategic Accounts: IBM Corp.
Founder: Global Creative Solutions Group

Rebecca Kerr is an experienced customer-facing General Manager, Global Client Partner, and Global Program Leader with a record of driving billion-dollar P&Ls, leading teams globally and executing complex, digital transformation programs and business turnarounds. She has successfully achieved the level of trusted advisor with clients and improves key business metrics using effective stakeholder communications, ethical leadership and practices, and enablement of consequential multi-cultural team experiences, where exceptional, strategic outcomes can be achieved. She retired from a 33-year expatriate career at IBM, after working in Russia, Brazil, France, Finland, Germany, and Australia, where she was repeatedly selected to serve as the key, senior executive partner for Fortune 100 IBM customers driving essential, strategic digital transformation programs.

As a founder of Global Creative Solutions Group, she provides business consulting and diagnostics for women-owned business start-ups and serves on the Boards of the Global Cyber Security Advisory Group and Soroptimist International in Washington State. At board level, Rebecca drives global business performance overall with an eye on essential digital transformation strategy, while guiding integration and stabilization of local operating entity performance results. She leverages decades of experience as a C-Suite advisor with a proven record of delivering digital and business transformations in the Financial Services, Manufacturing and Telecommunication Industries and guides strategy and design work to integrate the key pillars of successful digital transformations including Technology, Data, Process Engineering and Organizational Change using best practices and a portfolio of lessons learned.

Rebecca holds a BA and MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle and is passionate about continuing education and supporting the arts. In February 2023, Rebecca completed the Global Banking Program at Columbia University in NYC focused on Fintech, AI and Blockchain. 

Chair

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.

Chair

Julia Kirby
Senior Editor, Harvard University Press

Julia Kirby has been with Harvard Business Review for over a decade and in that time worked with hundreds of expert authors to bring their ideas to the magazine’s managerial audience. Marketing management and strategy are particular areas of interest; she stays on top of the issues facing marketers in leading firms and seeks out new academic research with important managerial implications. She is also the author of a book (with Christopher Meyer) on how the rules of capitalism will change as the center of gravity of global commerce shifts to emerging economies: “Standing on the Sun: How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere“ and Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines (with Thomas H. Davenport)

Speaker

Isabelle Kocher de Leyritz
Chairman and CEO of Blunomy

Isabelle Kocher de Leyritz has been Chairman and CEO of Blunomy since 2022.

Blunomy activates end-to-end solutions to speed up transitions towards decarbonized, circular and inclusive business models. It brings together a unique blend of strategic thinking, financial engineering, business structuring, supply chain and coalitions engagement experience, data science, impact analysis and multi-faceted technical expertise in energy, carbon and resources.

She was Chief Executive Officer of Engie between 2016 and 2020. Engie (formerly GDF-Suez) is one of world largest energy production and services group, with sales of €60bn, employing 160.000 people in 60 countries. Isabelle spent 18 years with Engie and was comprehensively prepared to address this tough industrial role : Head of strategy, CEO of the Suez Water business in Europe, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer.

Isabelle is widely credited for having successfully turned around the company. She set it back on track on a 6% organic growth trajectory (from a long term organic decrease), by fostering its transformation into an energy transition leader. During her tenure as CEO Engie combined Green energy transition with profitable growth: it reached a 50% TSR while cutting the CO2 emissions of the company by 50%.

Isabelle started her career as a senior civil servant, a member of the powerful engineering grand corps, « the Corps des Mines ». She held various positions in the Ministry of Finance, ultimately as the member of the Prime Minister’s staff, in charge of industrial affairs.

Isabelle Kocher has an extensive Board experience gained at Investor AB, AXA, Suez, Engie, Arkema. She also holds several non for profit board positions.
Isabelle Kocher is a graduate from Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm), among the world best known scientific academies, she holds a PhD (Agrégation) of Physics and is a graduate from the Ecole des Mines de Paris. Isabelle lives in Paris with her children.

Speaker

Hortense Le Gentil
Executive Leadership coach and author

Hortense le Gentil is a world-renowned executive leadership coach, speaker and author. Her coaching work focuses on CEOs and senior executives on their journey from hero leaders to human leaders.

Le Gentil is the author of two widely acclaimed books: Aligned -- Connecting Your True Self with the Leader You’re Meant to Be; and The Unlocked Leader -- Dare to Free your Own Voice, Lead With Empathy and Shine Your Light in the World (Wiley, September 2023). In her most recent book, she provides the keys to identifying and freeing ourselves from the mind-traps that hold us back. This makes The Unlocked Leader a very timely book for all leaders who are seeking to deal with a particularly challenging environment, as well as for executive coaches supporting these leaders.

Le Gentil’s thought leadership is informed by 30 years in business, working across industries—including media consulting and advertising—and as an entrepreneur. She was a 2021 and 2023 nominee for the Thinkers 50 Coaching and Mentoring Awards and has been ranked #5 on the Global Gurus list by World Management Global Gurus. She is a certified Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered™ coach and a member of MG100 Coaches. Her thought-leadership has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., Business Insider, and ThriveGlobal.com.

Le Gentil grew up in France, where she was a competitive showjumper during her youth.

Speaker

Pierre Le Manh
President and CEO of Project Management Institute (PMI)

Pierre Le Manh is the President & Chief Executive Officer of the Project Management Institute. As a global executive with a multi-cultural background, Pierre Le Manh brings a proven track record of delivering results and guiding organizations through complex transformations. He is passionate about leading teams in innovating and creating new ways to disseminate specialized knowledge, upskilling and education.

Pierre Le Manh most recently led Galileo Global Education’s expansion project in North America. Galileo is the European leading provider of higher education serving more than 170,000 students across an international network of 54 institutions and high-growth education technology platforms.

He previously served as Chief Executive Officer North America and Global Deputy CEO at Ipsos, one of the world’s largest data, analytics, and insights companies. Pierre Le Manh played a crucial role in taking Ipsos from a $700 million primarily European-focused organization in 2004 to a $2.5 billion global leader in its industry in 2021, growing to more than 18,000 employees operating in 90 countries.

Earlier in his career, Pierre Le Manh served as CEO of Consodata, a leader in first and third-party consumer data, precision, and digital marketing. He started his career at consulting giant Accenture before serving as CFO of performing arts non-profit Adami, CEO of digital publisher Encyclopaedia Universalis, and CEO of CFL Holding, a family office owning various assets in direct-to-consumer, marketing services, and real estate industries.

Pierre Le Manh was born and raised in France by a Vietnamese father and a French mother. He has lived in several countries before settling in New York City in 2013. He speaks English, French and Italian. He likes traveling the world to visit his very large family and his friends, watching Paris Saint-German soccer games and wandering around Manhattan on his electric scooter. He has two sons who live in Paris and London.

Chair

Zhike Lei
Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, IMD Business School

biography upcomig soon.

Speaker

Bernadette Luger
Bernadette Luger Head of Coordination Unit for Resource Conservation and Sustainability in the Construction Sector, City of Vienna

Bernadette Luger has been Head of the Coordination Unit for Resource Conservation and Sustainability in the Construction Sector in the City of Vienna since 2022. One of her tasks is to lead the programme “DoTank Circular City Wien 2020-2030” (DTCC30), which focuses on developing, coordinating and steering measures for the implementation of a circular economy in the built environment.

Bernadette Luger is an internationally trained architect and expert in the field of integrative urban development. After several positions in different architecture firms, she joined Urban Innovation Vienna, Vienna’s agency for climate and innovation, in 2019, where she dealt with trend analyses on sustainability and innovation, strategy development and various questions on urban future issues with a particular emphasis on establishing cross-references between the topics of architecture, urban development and circular economy.

Speaker

Daniela Mars
Trevor James Flutes Artist

Daniela Mars, a Trevor James Flutes Artist, is a Brazilian flautist raised in Japan, South Korea, Brazil and England. She is an inspiring soloist, composer,  educator,  and social media persona, enjoying a rich artistic life driven by a love of nature and travel. From the deepest caves of Vietnam to the mountains and waterfalls of her homeland in Brazil, Daniela loves to make music with her flutes and be immersed and connected with the natural world.

Daniela has a particular interest in extended flute techniques and specialises in performances with the low flutes. As such, she is passionate about working with living composers to create and bring to life new repertoire for these beautiful instruments.

In 2023-24, Daniela’s projects include ‘Reverence for the Moment’, a new album she has conceived and created for the low flutes. The album includes new recordings, commissions and collaborations by composers including Robert Patterson, Paul Smith, Rainer Berger and Ola Gjeilo. This music sits alongside her own compositions, which are released on record for the first time. This album follows the success of her debut on VOCES8 Records in 2022, ‘Intrinsic’. Her imaginative approach to recording projects saw her release this album as a series of singles across the year, and with a different music video inspired by nature connected to each release, filmed in various locations across Brazil. 

Other highlights as a soloist in the season include world premiere performances of concertos written for her by Philippe Truille (DiMenna Centre, NYC) and Isaiah Castro (California); performances at Mostly Modern Festival  (Netherlands); with Orquestra Sinfónica de Barra Mansa under the direction of Daniel Guedes; in France, the UK, China, and Germany. Appearances in Vietnam, Singapore and Australia complete a busy touring schedule.

Alongside her solo work, Daniela loves working in a small ensemble setting. Her performance work in small ensembles this season includes concerts in Europe and the US with Drei Pirouetten and BETA Quartet and a new collaboration connecting music to visual art installations with Paul Smith and world champion loop station artist, Mando Beatbox.

Daniela is passionate about the power of social media to connect people and as a space for discovery, creativity and learning. She uses her presence on platforms like Instagram and TikTok to encourage viewers and followers to discover more about the low flutes. With a winning combination of humour and beautiful music, her posts reach millions and have become an internet sensation. 

In her formative years, Daniela studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London under the tutelage of Rowland Sutherland, City University, and Prayner Konservatorium of Arts in Vienna with Reza Najfar. She was also a Straubinger Scholarship recipient, studying with Jasmine Choi during her International Masterclass in Bregenz, Austria.

Outside of her classical performance work, Daniela loves a wide range of other music and has given numerous performances with Latin music and Symphonic Orchestras including the Brazilian samba band ‘Rhythms of the City’, with whom she has performed in venues such as the Emirates Stadium, O2 Academy, Circo Voador, and toured in the UK, Poland and Brazil.

Daniela is delighted to be an ambassador for Trevor James Flutes. 

Chair

Mary Meaney Haynes
Social Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

Mary is a Board member of GBL (Groupe Bruxelles Lambert), Imperial College London and an angel investor and Board member of a range of Tech companies in the UK (e.g., Beamery).  Mary also serves on the Advisory Board of Imperial College Business School and is an Ambassador to the International Peter Drucker Forum.  She currently leads Solidarite Ukraine, an initiative of the St Omer Foundation which supports hundreds of Ukrainian women and children in France.

Previously, she was a Senior Partner at McKinsey where she served on McKinsey’s Shareholder’s Council (global Board of Directors) and led McKinsey’s global Organization practice. She co-authored a book, "Leading Organizations", as well as the McKinsey Global Institute report on "The Future of Work after Covid-19". 

She was a Trustee of TeachFirst for almost a decade and has lectured at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, and Tsinghua.

Speaker

Antonella Mei-Pochtler
Board member, Publicis and Generali

Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler is an Italian businesswoman and strategist with deep experience in the global media, technology and consumer sectors, both as advisor and executive. She was a member of The Boston Consulting Group‘s (BCG) global executive committee, and held a number of key management positions in Europe and globally with a focus on digital transformation, strategy, marketing and organizational development.

She was named amongst the top 25 consultants worldwide by Consulting magazine and was honored with the Women Leaders in Consulting Lifetime Achievement award in 2013.
In 2018 she left BCG to join the Austrian government where she served as Special Advisor to the Austrian Federal Chancellor and Head of ThinkAustria, the Austrian government’s think tank and strategy unit until 2022. On behalf of the Austrian government, she is the co-chair of the KofiAnnanAward for Innovation in Africa, a joint initiative of the African and European Union.

She currently serves as non-executive director on various international Boards: Generali Group S.p.A., Publicis SA, ProSieben Group SE, Westwing SE, Eni Plenitude SpA, iSi Automotive Holding and Pochtler Industrieholding. In the not-for- profit area she serves as board member of the European Forum Alpbach and of TUM Venture Labs. She was until recently an IFC nominated director for SIPRA in West Africa. She is also involved in a range of social causes and activities, particularly regarding equity in education as long-time advisory board member of Teach for All and co-founder of the award-winning education project Business@School. She also co-founded the Phorms School network in Germany.

Dr. Mei-Pochtler, an Italian citizen, was educated in the German School in Rome, studied economics and business administration in the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and at the Università La Sapienza in Rome, and at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, where she obtained her MBA with distinction. She is bilingual in Italian and German, and fluent in English and French. Her home base is Vienna, Austria, where she lives with her family.

Chair

Timo Meynhardt
Professor for Business Psychology and Leadership,
HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management

Timo Meynhardt is full professor and chairholder of the Dr. Arend Oetker Chair of Business Psychology and Leadership at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and managing director of the Center for Leadership and Values in Society at the University of St. Gallen. In his research, he links psychological and business management topics, especially public value management, leadership and competency diagnostics. He is strongly committed to research in the field of public value as well as to the application of the concept in business and administration. Timo was the first researcher to apply the concept to the private  sector. He developed a unique public value theory, which conceptualizes public value as “a necessary fiction” for individuals and groups.

Timo publishes the Public Value Atlas for Switzerland and Germany (www.gemeinwohlatlas.de, www.gemeinwohl.ch), which aims at ranking and making transparent the public value of companies and organizations. His Public Value Scorecard provides a management tool to measure public value creation along five basic dimensions. Timo co-initiated the Public Value Award for Start-ups, where he is chairing the jury. He is as well the chair of the jury of the public value award for public baths in Germany.

Chair

Corinna Milborn
Head of News, Puls 4

Corinna Milborn is Journalist and political scientist who has served as the editor-in chief of the human rights magazine Liga and the policy editor of the Austrian news magazine Format. She has also hosted news and interview shows like Café Puls and Puls 4 News.

She is currently head of news and member of the management committee for Puls 4 and Puls 24.

She received the Journalist of the Year award from Der Österreichische Journalist in 2017.

In 2022 she received the ROMY 2022 award for her engagement against fake news and in favor of serious and sound journalism.

Speaker

Anjana Mistry
Chief Financial and Operations Officer, Emergn Limited

Anj brings a deep motivation and desire to weave finance, HR and operational excellence throughout the organizations she’s been a part of through a style of servant leadership, empathy and trust.

In her role, Anj focuses on helping Emergn successfully execute its strategy, build better engagement across the business and a solid foundation for future growth.

For over 25 years, Anj has been a part of global leadership teams focused on improving the way businesses operate, integrate and transform.

Conference Chair

Katharina Moser
Conference Chair, Moderator & Executive Board Member, Inner Development Goals

Katharina Moser designs and moderates events that connect people.
Katharina has designed, organized, and moderated around 300 events, with a special focus on making them more human. In 2022 she joined the Executive Board of the Inner Development Goals, leading the summit 2023. She has been part of the Global Peter Drucker Forum since 2020 as a designer of the online experience, moderator and 2022, for the first time as conference chair.

Previously, she worked for the Austrian Foreign Ministry, the British Council, and the European Forum Alpbach, before she founded the creative agency MOSAIK in 2015. (one of her projects was awarded the State Prize on Europe).

She is on the board of Bürgerforum Europa; Austrian Society for European Politics, founding member of Alliance4Europe, and member of the BMW Responsible Leaders Network.

Speaker

Patricia Murphy
Palo Alto Networks

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Visiting Professor at Duke CE, Instituto de Empresa, Solvay, Vlerick, Ecole de Ponts
Former Global Chair of PMI, Founder of Brightline Initiative; Author

Author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook, the featured HBR article The Project Economy Has Arrived, and five other books, Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the creator of concepts such as the Project Economy. He is the most published author of project management articles in HBR. His research and global impact on modern management has been recognized by Thinkers50. Fellow and Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, he is the creator of the Brightline Initiative and founder of Projects&Co and the Strategy Implementation Institute. Born in Madrid, Spain, and educated in Germany, Mexico, Italy, and the United States, Antonio is fluent in five languages. He has an MBA from London Business School. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches. You can follow Antonio through his LinkedIn Newsletter - Lead Projects Successfully, his popular online course Project Management Reinvented for Non-Project Managers, and his website

Speaker

Kevin Nolan
President & CEO, GE Appliances, a Haier Company

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.

Speaker

Maria Norrman
Global Chief of Staff, EF & Chief of EF Procykling Team

Maria Norrman is the Global Chief of Staff with EF Education First, the world’s largest private education company with over 45,000 staff in over 50 countries. Within this role, she is in charge of HR globally for the group and is also the President of EF Educations Professional Cycling Team.

Maria started her career as a management consultant within McKinsey & Company in London. She then moved to Asia where she lived and worked for 10 years before moving back to Europe. Firstly, as the trading director for Hutchison Whampoa’s retail arm Watsons and subsequently as the CEO and Founder of DNA Beaute, a pan Asian beauty retail manufacturer and distributor with operations and offices across five Asian countries.

Speaker

Leoluca Orlando
former Mayor of Palermo

Leoluca Orlando, 76 years old, has been the Mayor of Palermo for most of his political life. He entered politics 42 years ago, and from the beginning, he dedicated his life to fighting against the mafia, for justice and rights, and for a cultural change in society with a humanitarian vision at the center of migration. He is the longest-serving Mayor of a major Italian city. His tenure as Mayor began a long time ago, in 1985, and ended in June 2022. Orlando made Palermo an active participant in that global journey and transformed the face of his city.

Leoluca Orlando served as a regional, national, and European parliamentarian multiple times and was the founder of Italy's first political movement, "La Rete" (The Network). He held the position of Mayor six times. He started his political career in 1980 when, in Sicily, not only did the mafia exist but it also sought to govern through the institutions, even assassinating the President of the Sicilian Region, Piersanti Mattarella, whom the young law professor Orlando advised.

Orlando, in his relentless fight against mafia rule, is closely associated with the era known as the "Spring of Palermo," a period of ethical, democratic, and social rebirth, and a peace process during the height of the Mafia war. He also exported, as a government consultant, the political model of liberation from organized crime and cross-party collaboration to various places in Central and South America, Europe, and Mediterranean countries. He combats all forms of discrimination against victims of crimes and injustices, while also advocating for human rights, including those of death row inmates and the LGBT community, both during and after the European migration crisis starting in 2014. He transformed the Port of Palermo into one of the major hubs on Mediterranean routes. He authored the "Palermo Charter," which upholds the right to citizenship, mobility, and humanitarian protection for all, and it has been signed and endorsed by dozens of cities in Europe and around the world.

Speaker

Daniel H. Pink
Best-selling author

Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind -- as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan's deeply-researched books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world.

Speaker

Helmut Reisinger
CEO, EMEA and Latin America, Palo Alto Networks

An internationally recognized business leader, as CEO of Orange Business Services, Reisinger led a global organization of 28,000 employees supporting the digital transformation of enterprise customers around the world. Before joining Orange Business Services in 2007, Reisinger held leadership positions across Europe at Avaya Inc, NextiraOne Germany and Alcatel Austria.

Reisinger will work closely with Palo Alto Networks' President BJ Jenkins to drive the acceleration of the company's global growth strategy, and will join CEO and Chairman Nikesh Arora's management team. 

"Helmut is a visionary executive who I've known as both a global business leader and close partner to our company," said Arora. "Given the recent rapid growth of the worldwide cybersecurity market, we see significant opportunities to accelerate our international business. Working together with BJ, Helmut's relentless focus on the customer and understanding of the international business ecosystem will help us drive our robust EMEA business to future growth, while developing our growing Latin American business."

"I am excited to join Palo Alto Networks' extraordinary leadership team at what is a critical time for the cybersecurity industry," said Reisinger. "As a longtime partner, I've had the privilege of seeing firsthand how Palo Alto Networks' continuous innovation is answering organizations' cybersecurity needs with its unique end-to-end, cloud- and platform-based approach. As demand to protect corporate and essential data escalates amid a growing threat landscape, there's no company better positioned to address these challenges around the globe."

"Helmut brings a deep understanding of our markets in EMEA and beyond, coupled with a strong track record of supporting the global enterprise with business-critical cybersecurity solutions," said Jenkins. "I look forward to working together to accelerate our go-to-market efforts around EMEA and LATAM."

Reisinger holds a Ph.D. from Vienna University for Economics and Business (WU), and speaks English, French, German and Spanish.

Chair

Marie Ringler
Ashoka Europe Leader

Marie Ringler is leading Ashoka‘s work in Europe. She founded Ashoka‘s Austrian office in 2011 and soon took over Regional Director for Central and Eastern Europe. In 2015 she became one of Ashoka‘s Europe Directors, in 2018 she was appointed European Leader of Ashoka. She was born in Vienna, studied Sociology, Political Science and Women`s Studies at the University of Vienna, and holds a degree from ESADE Business School, Spain and an MBA from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

In her role as Director of Ashoka in Central and Eastern Europe she led Ashoka’s relaunch efforts in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Israel. As Europe Leader Ringler is advancing Ashoka’s work in over 26 country offices who support more than 570 Social Entrepreneurs (“Ashoka Fellows”).

Ashoka is the world`s largest network of 3.600 Social Entrepreneurs, spanning across more than 90 countries, who are solving some of the world`s toughest social problems. Ashoka works to identify, elect and support leading social entrepreneurs financially and professionally.

Chair

Johan Roos
Chief Academic Officer & Professor, Hult Int’l Business School

I serve as Chief Academic Officer of HULT International Business School with campuses in London, Boston, San Francisco, and Dubai (hult.edu). Innovating management thinking and practice is a passion. Previously, I served as Dean/President and/or professor in several business schools and in a research foundation. Another passion is advancing the concept and practice of LEGO Serious Play, which I co-invented many years ago.

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

Reinhard Schlemmer
Member of the Executive Board, Vinci Energies S.A.

Born in 1967 in Tyrol in a typical Tyrolean farmer family with 10 siblings.
Equivaltent of master degree in Applied Computer Science at the University of Klagenfurt and PhD in Business Administration at Vienna University of Economics and Business. Work experience in the US and Europe in small and medium sized companies. Since 2003 at VINCI Group and since 2019 member of the Executive Board of VINCI Energies a division of VINCI with 16.5 bn turnover and 90’000 employees. I am the CEO for all the business in Europe east of France with 25’000 employees.

Managing people was already my area of interest in graduate studies in Software Engineering in Klagenfurt. My motto “Business is all about people”, despite my background as software engineer and strong in financial analysis.

Speaker

Dewi Schoenbeck
Member of the Steelcase AG board of directors and Vice President, German Speaking Markets

Dewi Schönbeck is dedicated to inspiring office environments that enable people do their best at work. Together with her team she supports leading organizations in their work transformation and develops customized space solutions. She holds a doctorate in architecture from the University of Stuttgart and taught as Associate Professor at the Art Center College of Design in California.

After professional stages at HENN architects, BMW Designworks and CSMM, Dewi joined Steelcase, the leading manufacturer of innovative work environments, in 2019. She is currently a member of the Steelcase AG board of directors and Vice President, German Speaking Markets. In this role, Schönbeck is responsible for all sales activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Speaker

Miriam Schwarz
Chair of the SD Learning Consortium, and Senior Vice President, Bank of West / BMO

Miriam is recognized for her outstanding work in the corporate industry, both in the United States and internationally. She is a senior delivery executive and transformation change agent dedicated to building a sustainable ecosystem for individuals and organizations.

Miriam’s leadership positions have focused on strategies to enhance business and technology outcomes aligned to Product Delivery, Process Improvement and Agility Transformation. She has worked for companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Paramount Pictures, PAREXEL, Health Net, Thomson, and Citizens Bank.

She is active in all things agile and lean, and continuous everything: continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous learning, and continuous improvement.

Miriam is the Board Chair of the SD Learning Consortium (the SDLC); a nonprofit organization whose members are committed to discovering together the world’s most advanced principles and practices and disseminate them globally.

Speaker

Matt Sigelman
President of the Burning Glass Institute, Chairman of Lightcast

Matt Sigelman is President of the Burning Glass Institute, Chairman of Lightcast, and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Social Policy. Matt has dedicated his career to unlocking new avenues for mobility, opportunity, and equity through skills. Situated at the intersection of work and learning, the Burning Glass Institute advances data-driven research and practice for the future of work and the future of workers.

Previously, as CEO of KKR-backed Lightcast, Matt and his team invented the field of real-time labor market data, a breakthrough innovation that transformed the way employers, education institutions, policy makers, and workers understand, plan for, and connect with the world of work. By mining billions of job openings and career histories, Matt led the company to become the global authority on the market for talent.

Previously, Matt worked at McKinsey & Company and at Capital One. He writes widely on the job market and is consulted frequently by public officials and global media. Matt holds an AB from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard and is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Speaker

Remigijus Simašius
Mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania

“Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito (Latin: Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it)”

BIOGRAPHY

Speaker

Manjit Singh
Senior VP & General Manager Knock at RealPage Inc.

Manjit Singh is an experienced and forward-thinking executive currently serving as SVP/GM Knock at RealPage Inc after RealPage acquired Knock, Inc. where he was Chief Operating Officer. Manjit is currently a Board member at Emergn, Inc, Board Member at Upstream Security, Board member at PetSmart Charities, and a Board Member at Soom, Inc., and was previously a member of the Audit Committee at Toyota Motors North America. Manjit is also an advisory board member for several startups and venture capital companies, including Tricentis, and Greylock Partners. He has expertise in digital innovation, cybersecurity, and business transformation and is frequently sought out as a speaker at various events on these topics.

Manijt is a highly accomplished Fortune 500 C-Suite executive with a long track record of transforming businesses to achieve industry leading growth. He has been Managing Director at Vista Equity Partners, a premiere enterprise software private equity company and has been Chief Information Officer at Toyota Motors North America, The Clorox Company, Las Vegas Sands, Inc. and Chiquita Brands, Inc. Additionally, Manjit led the go-to-market strategy while at Box, Inc.

Before joining Chiquita Brands, he spent several years at The Gillette Company leading the transformation of the Asia Pacific Information Technology group as regional Chief Information Officer. Prior to Gillette, he spent several years at Procter & Gamble, where he led key technology initiatives across Information Technology, R&D, Sales, and Marketing.

Manjit is known in the Technology community as a visionary, business transformation expert, and cybersecurity advocate, having been an earlier adopter of pivotal technologies including early adoption of the Internet at Procter & Gamble and the Public Cloud at Chiquita. He is a business transformation expert through his experiences helping organizations transform their operations through the application of digital technologies.

Manjit has been honored with several recognitions for his business accomplishments and support for diversity, including receiving the Consumer Goods Technology Chief Information Officer of the Year and the National Diversity Council Top 50 Chief Information Officers awards in 2017.

Speaker

Paul Smith
Musician, Composer, CEO of the VOCES8 Foundation

Speaker

Robin Speculand
CEO of Bridges Consultancy Int; Co-founder Strategy Implementation Institute

Robin Speculand is a recognized pioneer and expert in strategy and digital implementation. He is driven to transform strategy implementation by inspiring global leaders to adopt a different mindset and approach. The founder of three companies, Robin is CEO of Bridges Business Consultancy Int and co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute and Digital Leadership Specialists. A TEDx presenter and Thinkers50 nominee, he is a facilitator for IMD, Duke CE, and SMU, and part of Top 30 Global Guru. As a  best-selling author, he has written six books including his most recent, World’s Best Bank: A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation, and Strategy Implementation Playbook: A Step-By-Step Guide.

Speaker

Daniel Stelter
Founder of the German Discussion Forum Beyond The Obvious

Dr. Daniel Stelter is the founder of the forum beyond the obvious, which specialises in strategy and macroeconomics, and host of one of the most successful German economic podcasts "bto - Der Ökonomie-Podcast mit Dr. Daniel Stelter - featured by Handelsblatt". He is an expert on economic and financial crises and advises international companies and investors on the challenges of constantly changing global markets.

From 1990 to 2013, he was a management consultant at the international strategy consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG), most recently as Senior Partner, Managing Director and member of the BCG Executive Committee. From 2003 to 2011, Stelter was responsible for the global business of BCG's Corporate Development practice group (strategy and corporate finance).

After studying economics at the University of St.Gallen (1984 - 1988), he earned his doctorate under Fredmund Malik with his dissertation on "Deflationary Depression: Consequences for Management". Today, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung counts him as one of Germany's leading economists with the greatest influence on media, politics and business.

Stelter is a sought-after expert in the media and at congresses, who brushes common trends against the grain with an unconventional opinion. With his expertise, he often sets counterpoints in talk shows such as maybrit illner, hartaberfair, Lanz or the phoenix runde. TV stations such as WeLT or SAT.1 use his ability to get to the heart of complex issues in current news formats. He regularly publishes as a guest author in major business media such as Handelsblatt, manager magazin, Cicero, FOCUS or the Globalist.

As an independent voice in the ongoing financial and euro crisis, Stelter has also established himself as the author of several non-fiction books with an unbiased view and great clarity. In doing so, he does not allow himself to be guided by political pigeonholing but focuses on the pressing questions of our time. No political spectrum is left untouched in the answers in his books.

In February 2021, Campus Verlag published the book “A DREAM OF A COUNTRY: GERMANY 2040”. It is about setting the course for a prosperous future for our country at the end of the era of crisis chancellor Angela Merkel. Unmet challenges and great burdens for the future - not only since Corona - challenge politics and society. This book provides voters with orientation on how our country could finally succeed in moving forward on the crucial issues of our time and lists the essential tasks.

Chair

Allyson Stewart-Allen
Founder, International Marketing Partners Ltd.

Allyson Stewart-Allen is a renowned advisor, author, speaker, educator and NED whose expertise in brand internationalisation is sought by leading businesses globally through her consultancy, publications, appearances and corporate education.

A Californian based in Europe for over 30 years, Allyson applies her extensive international consulting experience, MBA education with Dr. Peter Drucker and languages (French, German) to the company she founded, International Marketing Partners.

Having advised over 260 organisations across 27 countries, Allyson helps leaders successfully and profitably span international and functional boundaries by giving them the tools to be more effective in a global arena.  Clients include Aegis, BAE Systems, Burberry, Cadbury, Chanel, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBC Universal, Ricoh, SAB Miller and Shell.

She is the creator of the LinkedIn learning programme Leading International Growth, as well as author of both editions of the best-selling book Working with Americans, the first-ever business manual exclusively about how to negotiate, communicate and influence in the US business culture.  Notably, it is the first business book to feature at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival.  Allyson is also a contributing author of The FT Handbook of Management, Win New Business and author of all 3 editions of Marketing in the USA for the UK Government’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT).  

Allyson is a very experienced and frequent commentator lending her insights to TV, radio, print and digital media across the globe.  Besides her 4-year slot for Sky News as The Muse of Marketing, she has appeared on several television shows including 5 seasons on BBC’s The Apprentice and CNBC’s The Business Class.  Other outlets applying her insights include BBC News, Bloomberg, Business Week, CNN, Deutsche Welle, Fortune, FT, France 24, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal amongst others.

As for recognitions, she is included in The Female FTSE Report 2014:100 Women to Watch list (Cranfield International Centre for Women Business Leaders), Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who Among Women.  

In addition, she is the first-ever two-time winner of the Excellence in Practice Award of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) recognising leadership programme innovation for those she conceived and delivered for Lufthansa (London Business School, 2009) and BAE Systems (Said Business School - Oxford University, 2012).

Allyson is engaged for her award-winning corporate education experience by Fortune 100 companies and the world’s leading leadership consulting firms and business schools including Said Business School Oxford University (Associate Fellow), London Business School, Emeritus, Moller Institute Churchill College Cambridge University (Associate Fellow), Duke Corporate Education, HEC Paris and Heidrick Consulting.

Allyson holds a BSc degree in International Business, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California as well as an MBA from The Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University.

Speaker

Richard Straub
Founder and President, Global Peter Drucker Forum

Richard Straub has drawn his ample experience of leadership and management from a 32-year career at IBM during which, among other things, he was instrumental in developing IBM’s PC business in Austria and Europe. As IBM Chief Learning Officer he oversaw the initial drive toward e-learning to enhance traditional education programs. Over the past decade, he and his wife Ilse have built up the Global Peter Drucker Forum. Its aim is the continuous improvement of the practice of management in business and in society. Today, the Drucker Forum is recognized globally as a leading management conference, as reflected in strategic partnerships with the likes of the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and the City of Vienna.

In 2012 Richard Straub was awarded the Heinz von Foerster Prize for Organizational Cybernetics and in 2019 he received the Grand Decoration of Honor for the Republic of Austria in recognition of the impact and reputation of the Drucker Forum.

Speaker

Sally Susman
Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Executive Vice President Pfizer

As Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Sally Susman leads engagement with all of Pfizer’s external stakeholders overseeing communications, corporate responsibility, global policy, government relations, patient advocacy and investor relations. She also serves as vice chair of The Pfizer Foundation. 

Before joining Pfizer in 2007, Susman held several senior communications and government relations roles at The Estée Lauder Companies and American Express. Earlier in her career, she spent eight years on Capitol Hill focused on international trade issues and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs in the Clinton Administration. 

Currently, Susman serves as co-chair of The International Rescue Committee, one of the world's largest humanitarian aid organizations, and on the board of UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2022, Forbes named Susman one of the World’s Most Influential CMOs for Pfizer’s efforts to combat vaccine misinformation and embrace new communications channels.

Susman is the author of Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World, published by Harvard Business Review Press in March 2023.

Visit SallySusman.com to learn more.

Speaker

Behnam Tabrizi
Consulting professor, Stanford University, Department of Management Science

Behnam Tabrizi has been teaching Leading Organizational Transformation at Stanford University and executive programs for more than 25 years.   He has written six books on leading innovation and change. Dr. Tabrizi coined the phrases “Rapid Transformation” that debunked the previous linear lengthy model of transformation and “Inside-Out Effect” which accentuated the critical role of personal transformation in organizational transformation. Further, in the early 90's his award-winning doctoral thesis at Stanford University was the research underpinning of design thinking and agile development.

Dr. Tabrizi served as an advisor to many large global companies, the U.S. President, and governmental agencies. He has helped thousands of CEOs and leaders in high-tech (Including Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft), banking and finance, retail, healthcare, etc. plan, mobilize, and implement transformational initiatives that have elevated organizational performance and created unprecedented results. His latest book, “The Inside-Out Effect: A Practical Guide to Transformational Leadership”, is an international bestseller and was featured in 2014 on The Washington Post website as Leadership Book of the Week reaching 10.4 million readers. His “Rapid Transformation” book, published by Harvard Business Review Press, was picked by Business Insider as the #1 book on leadership.

Tabrizi’s research with McKinsey & Co. on more than 100 global companies on “Accelerating Agile Innovation & Transformation” was featured in Forbes, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and the San Jose Mercury News as “pioneering work.” He has also been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, Economist and C-SPAN regarding his work on transformation. Dr. Tabrizi has served on the boards of Clever Sense (recently sold to Google), WebMBO (merged with Realm Corp.), Catapult Ventures, and has held positions at the Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Tabrizi received a B.S. in computer science, summa cum laude, and then earned a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Illinois-Urbana. He earned an M.S. degree in engineering management and a doctorate in strategy, organizations and digital transformation from Stanford University.

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

Julie Linn Teigland
EY EMEIA Area Managing Partner, EY Global Leader – Women

Julie is a member of the EY Global Executive and Area Managing Partner for Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA). As EY EMEIA Area Managing Partner, Julie leads a geographic area comprising member firms with more than 140,000 people across 97 countries.

In her role she is responsible for all four business units, including assurance, tax, strategy and transactions as well as consulting. Julie continues to serve clients as senior advisor, contributing to large scale transformations and change programs. Julie was recently named one of Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women International.

With three decades of experience in professional services for international clients, her focus is on transformation processes, in particular on the challenges of rebuilding purposeful growth, including the need to leverage digital, drive sustainability, navigate the volatility in tax and trade and replenish trust with stakeholders, all while addressing the human element of professional services, with talent at the center.

Julie joined EY in 2001, has served as lead partner for several Fortune 500 clients and previously held numerous leadership roles within the international practice. Julie is also the Global Sponsor for the EY Women. Fast forward initiative and is a key player in progressing gender equality with a focus on digital parity. She regularly comments on transatlantic and geo-economic issues and serves on several boards across Europe and the US.

Born in the US, Julie has spent over 30 years in Germany and is now living in the UK. She is married and has four children.

Speaker

Jennifer Tharp
President of Mastodon Consulting, Chair of the PMI Board of Directors

Jennifer Tharp is Chair of the Board of Directors of Project Management Institute.  Along with her fellow directors, she takes a guiding role in shaping the future of PMI with long-term strategic thinking and transformational leadership. Embracing a broad view of approaching issues through a global lens, Jennifer leads the board in guiding PMI to create new and better ways for the organization to be successful.

A long-time PMI volunteer, Jennifer previously served on the PMI Board of Directors for eight years as the Audit Committee chair and vice chair. During her PMI Board service, she has guided the Institute through global expansion and acquisitions, diversity efforts, rebranding, and organizational transformation. Jennifer has also previously served as PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter president and is a 2008 Leadership Institute Master Class (LIMC) graduate. She has also served on the boards of a financial institution and strategy organization.

As president of Mastodon Consulting, Jennifer Tharp works closely with boards, counsel, and the executive leadership of large, public companies and startup technology firms to increase fiduciary oversight, transparency, and accountability. She partners with companies worldwide to drive organizational transformation and leverages technology to meet the needs of communities and society. She has also developed strategic plans for public companies, municipalities, and the state of California.

She is an author and editor of the book “Sustainability Integration for Effective Project Management”, which examines how projects can be executed more sustainably. A popular keynote speaker, she has delivered presentations on six continents on topics including project leadership, privacy and security, diversity, strategy, and risk.

Jennifer holds a BSBA from Indiana Wesleyan University and has taught leadership and project management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an Institute of Directors (IoD) Chartered Director, National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Board Leadership Fellow, and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) qualified financial expert.

Speaker

Thuy Ngoc Tran
Co-founder, CTO, Astrid AI

Thuy Tran is an experienced manager — a tech lead with a focus on data, AI, and software engineering. Thuy is the Chief Technology Officer at Astrid Education, a Sweden-based EdTech company providing global AI-powered language learning products. Before Astrid, Thuy held senior roles in multiple tech companies, including Shopify, Zettle by Paypal, and Spotify. Her current interest lies in creating scalable technical innovation for the global workforce.

Thuy was born and raised in Hanoi, Vietnam. She has a degree in mathematics and informatics from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, and a Ph.D. in speech signal processing from the University of South Australia. She has a long-time interest in algorithms and won medals at several Informatics Olympiads. After completing her Ph.D., she moved to Germany to pursue a career as a Software Engineer that led to Big Data and AI.

Speaker

John Walsh
VP of Technology, CTO Fujitsu Europe

John has over 30 Years’ experience in the technology industry, particularly Architecture, Consulting and Software development. He has held multiple roles within Fujitsu creating solutions with Customers in Financial Services, Manufacturing, Law Enforcement, Retail, Telecommunications, and the Public Sector.

John has a keen interest in R & D having spent 3 years working on behalf of Fujitsu Laboratories in applied research (AI - ML, Graph Generation & Deep Tensor). This was followed by 2 years in Quantum inspired technologies and QUBO design. His current interest is in the combination of accelerating AI learning models using Quantum Techniques. He has a deep interest in the mathematics which underpins AI Ethics and the detection of bias in training data sets. He is an expert in the field of real-time computing and signalling processing.

John is at his best when given a business challenge and can apply technology to solve it, and a key element of his remit is to provide Customers with early insight and adoption to Fujitsu Laboratory applied research.

John is a Computer Scientist and a Mathematician. John is married with one child and when not being the European CTO works on the family horse farm in Ireland and is a keen motorcycle racer.

Speaker

David Weinberger
Senior Researcher, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

In books, articles, posts, classes, and talks, David Weinberger, Ph.D. explores the effect of technology on ideas. He is a senior researcher  at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and is currently serving as writer-in-residence at Google PAIR (People + AI Research). His latest book, Everyday Chaos (HBR Press) was named Best Business Commentary of 2020 by Axiom, among other international awards. He also edits the open access Strong Ideas book series for MIT Press.

In his varied career, he has been a marketing communications VP and consultant to hi-tech companies, co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab,  a journalism fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, an adviser to presidential campaigns, a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department, and a philosophy professor.

Beginning with the best-seller Cluetrain Manifesto, in five books he has explored the effect of technology on knowledge, on how we organize our ideas, on business, and on the core concepts by which we understand our world.

Dr. Weinberger has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Toronto and lives in the Boston area.

Speaker

Lothar H. Wieler
Chair of the Digital Health Cluster, Hasso Plattner Institut; Professor of Digital Global Public Health; Former President of Robert Koch Institute

DOWNLOAD > CV

Speaker

Ed Williams
President and CEO of Edelman EMEA

Ed Williams is the President and CEO of Edelman EMEA. Prior to that he led Edelman UK and Ireland for eight years.

Previously, he oversaw corporate affairs and communications for two global media companies: the BBC and Reuters. He advises senior executives on corporate communications and strategy and serves on a number of boards, including the Royal College of Art, the Woolf Institute in Cambridge and International Crisis Group’s Advisory Council.

He has an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmiths University and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s AMP programme. He started his career in newspaper and television journalism.

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 at Bloomberg Opinion

Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Before that he worked for The Economist for 32 years, writing, at various points, the Lexington, Schumpeter and Bagehot columns. He is the author or co-author of eleven books including, most recently, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and then All Souls College, Oxford, where he was awarded a prize fellowship and earned a PhD in modern history.

Chair

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

Nadya Zhexembayeva
Co-Founder, Reinvention Academy & Global Alliance of Reinvention Professionals

Called ‘The Reinvention Guru’ (InVentures magazine) & ‘The Queen of Reinvention’ (TEDx Navasink), Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a business owner, educator, speaker & author - specializing on thriving in turbulence through reinvention.

As a consultant, Nadya has helped such organizations as The Coca-Cola Company, ERG, Kohler, L'Oreal, IBM, CISCO, Erste Bank, Henkel, Knauf Insulation & many others to reinvent their products, processes, & leadership practices to meet the requirements of today's volatile, uncertain, and fast-changing world.

As an educator, Nadya taught courses in leadership, strategy & sustainability at IEDC-Bled School of Management, an executive education center based in the Slovene Alps, where she also served as the Coca-Cola Chaired Professor of Sustainable Development. In addition to IEDC, Nadya has been teaching in business schools around the world, including Case's Weatherhead School of Management (USA), IPADE Business School (Mexico), and CEDEP (France), where she also contributes to the Academic Committee of the school.

As a speaker, Nadya has shared her insights with audiences worldwide through keynotes, panel presentations, & workshops. She has delivered four TEDx talks in Austria, Slovenia, Romania & the US.

As an author, Nadya has written three books and contributed to six others. In an effort to reinvent corporate approaches to sustainability strategy, Nadya and her co-author Chris Laszlo coined the concept ‘embedded sustainability’, which was virtually non-existent when they started in 2009. Today, it produces 186 million Google search results & has become a staple for global sustainability efforts.

Nadya’s fourth and latest book, “The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos” is the a finalist in the American Book Fest Awards, the winner of the 2021 Axiom Business Books Awards, and the winner of the Kirkus Star, "one of the most coveted designations in the book industry, which marks books of exceptional merit."