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

John Allan
Chair of Tesco, Barratt's and Imperial

biography upcoming soon.

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. 

Speaker

Torry Berntsen
CEO Europe & Americas at Standard Chartered Bank

biography upcoming soon!

Speaker

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.

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.

> FULL BIO

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

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.

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.

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

Charles Handy
Social Philosopher and author

Charles Handy is a social philosopher, writer, broadcaster and lecturer. He regularly features among the top names in ‘Thinkers50’, the list of international management thinkers, and in 2011 was awarded his first Lifetime Achievement Award.

He was born and raised near Naas in Ireland and now lives in London. He has, in his career, been an oil executive with Shell, a business economist, a professor at the London Business School, the Warden of St. George’s House in Windsor Castle (a study centre for social and ethical issues) and the Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also known in Britain for his Thoughts for Today on the BBC radio breakfast show ‘Today’.

Charles was the first significant international authority on organisations and leadership, with over two million books sold around the world, mostly dealing with the future shape of work and life in our changing society. Among the ideas he has advanced are the “portfolio worker”, the “second curve” and the “shamrock organisation”. His books on management – including Understanding Organisations (1976) and Gods of Management (1978) – have changed the way we view business. His work on broader issues and trends – such as The Second Curve (2015) and 21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges (2019) – has changed the way we view society.

Charles’ wife Liz, who has sadly passed away, was a renowned photographer with many books and exhibitions to her name. Charles and Liz combined their skills to produce photo-documentaries celebrating the work of various charities around the world. At the 2022 Drucker conference, they were honoured by Ilse and Richard with the Charles and Elizabeth Handy Lecture series, in recognition of the unique relationship they had and have with the Drucker conference.

Speaker

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

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 PhD candidate in Strategy, INSEAD

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

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

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.

Speaker

Guila Clara Kessous
UNESCO Peace Ambassador, Executive coach

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

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

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

Speaker

Isabelle Kocher de Leyritz
Director at EGIS; former CEO of BLUNOMY and ENGIE

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Hortense Le Gentil
Executive Leadership coach and author

biography upcoming soon!

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

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

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.

Conference Chair

Katharina Moser
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

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

biography upcoming soon!

Speaker

Kevin Nolan
President & Chief Executive Officer, GE Appliances

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel H. Pink
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

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

biography upcoming soon!

Speaker

Dewi Schoenbeck
VP German Speaking Markets, Steelcase
Managing Director, Steelcase GmbH

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

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

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

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

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

Thuy Ngoc Tran
CTO, Astrid Education

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

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.