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

Simone Ahuja
Founder Blood Orange

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

Speaker

Scott D. Anthony
Professor at Tuck School of Business; Managing Partner Emeritus, Innosight

Scott D. Anthony  is passionate about helping individuals and organizations develop the capacity to thrive in today’s world of never-ending change. He is a Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches a course called “Leading Disruptive Change,” and a Managing Director and Managing Partner Emeritus at Innosight, where he helps leaders design new growth strategies, build innovation capabilities, navigate disruptive innovation, and manage strategic transformation.

Scott has written eight books, including most recently Eat, Sleep, Innovate (2020) and Dual Transformation (2017), which describe how forward-thinking organizations can navigate disruptive change and own the future. His most recent Harvard Business Review article is “Persuade Your Company to Change Before It’s Too Late.” Scott lived in Singapore from 2010-2022, where he served as a member of the Committee on the Future Economy and as Board member of subsidiaries of Temasek (MediaCorp) and NTUC (LearningHub).He has given keynote addresses on six continents and is Harvard Business Corporate Learning’s most in-demand external subject matter expert.

In 2021 Scott was named the world’s seventh most influential management thinker by Thinkers50. He has been nominated for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award three times, winning the award in 2017. Scott received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Dartmouth College, an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an Executive Master in Change from INSEAD, where he graduated with distinction

Speaker

Linda Asplund
Global Head of Corporate Experience, Capgemini Invent

Recognising that strategy alone is not enough, but that purpose and ability to adapt and realize value fast is key, Linda works with organisations to define and execute the strategies that will transform them into organisations that are agile, resilient and able to take part in broader ecosystems. She uses her vast experience as advisor and executive to help enterprises understand that in order to unlock value through transformation and digitalisation they must take a holistic approach – addressing culture and operating model just as thoroughly as laying the foundation of tech and data capabilities.

Speaker

Maud Bailly
CEO Southern Europe, Accor

Speaker

Christine Darla Bautista
Co-founder & CMO, TRIZIE, Drucker Challenge Finalist

Darla Bautista is the Co-founder and the Chief Marketing Officer of TRIZIE and BFF Manila, rapidly-growing pandemic-born wellness and beauty start- ups in PH and TH. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from University of the Philippines, graduating Summa Cum Laude. In her free time, she actively advocates women empowerment through living alone and solo traveling advice on Tiktok (@darladventures).

Chair

Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review & VP Harvard Business Publishing

Amy Bernstein is the editor of Harvard Business Review, where she oversees the magazine and its team of editors, and Vice President and Executive Editorial Director for Harvard Business Publishing, responsible for the editorial strategy and content development of the learning and educator assets for HBP’s Corporate Learning and Higher Education businesses.

Before joining HBR in 2011, she was Vice President, Global Thought Leadership, at ManpowerGroup, the global employment-services company. There she oversaw Manpower’s signature Employment Outlook Survey and led development of white papers on emerging trends in the world of work. She also launched MyPath, the industry's first career-management website for professionals, and led the redesign of the company’s network of websites.

Prior to her stint at ManpowerGroup, Bernstein held senior editorial positions on both the print and digital sides at a variety of magazines including strategy+business, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Brill's Content, and U.S. News & World Report. She has developed and edited stories across the full range of business, tech, and management topics, contributing to several Loeb and National Magazine Award winners. She began her career at CBS News as a researcher.

She has served as president of the Journalism and Women Symposium, a national organization that supports the professional empowerment and personal growth of women in journalism and works toward a more accurate portrayal of the whole society. And she served as chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the San Francisco Bay Citizen, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, member-supported news organization dedicated to promoting innovation in journalism and catalyzing citizen engagement with the news. She is a graduate of Yale College.

Speaker

Joseph Cahill
Chief Customer Officer, PMI

As Chief Customer Officer (CCO), Joe Cahill is responsible for all of PMI's Global Customer Group. He oversees the Global Customer Engagement Team, the Global Customer Experience Team and PMI's eight geographic regions. Joe previously held the positions of COO, Interim CEO and SVP of Finance and Administration in his time with PMI.

Joe has over 20 years of senior leadership experience including digital transformation, strategic planning, enterprise system implementation and new business development. Across technology, manufacturing and energy sectors, he has effectively helped build companies and lead change in large organizations. Joe also serves as a UN Global Compact Network USA board member, representing NGOs, to help drive initiatives that further UNGC's mission and purpose.

Prior to joining PMI, Joe served as Chief Financial Officer for Priton, UgMO Technologies and Gamesa Technology Corporation, and served as Finance Director for Unisys Corporation.

Joe is a graduate of Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, USA, with a Bachelor of Science in accounting and finance, received an MBA with a concentration in international business from Villanova University, USA.

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

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

Jean-Philippe Courtois
Executive Vice President and President, National Transformation Partnerships at Microsoft

Jean-Philippe Courtois is Executive Vice President and President, National Transformation Partnerships. His focus is on transforming national economies by helping to create sustainable and inclusive growth through digital transformation, one country at a time. Through the executive sponsorship of key programs, he is responsible for accelerating Microsoft’s global investment in cybersecurity, sustainability, alliances, and skills for jobs, leveraging the world’s largest and most trusted cloud infrastructure network. As the executive sponsor of the Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact Initiative, Jean-Phillipe empowers social entrepreneurs and digital natives to scale their impact through access to Microsoft’s technology, expertise and ecosystem.

He is passionate about the practice of Positive Leadership, how purpose-led leaders can generate positive energy for greater commercial success, individual happiness, team well-being and positive societal impact, and hosts the Positive Leadership podcast.  On the podcast, Jean-Phillipe speaks with leaders who can energize and inspire people to bring their very best by connecting their personal missions to their organizations’ purpose and drive positive change in the wider world.

Outside of Microsoft, Jean-Philippe is the President of the Live for Good foundation, which he co-founded with his family in 2015. The foundation aims to unlock the potential of young people from all walks of life through social entrepreneurship, driving societal innovation through a purpose-led community.

Jean-Philippe joined Microsoft in 1984. He recently led Microsoft’s commercial business across 124 subsidiaries worldwide as Executive Vice President and President, Global Sales, Marketing & Operations. In this role, Jean-Philippe helped build vibrant ecosystems with small businesses, start-ups, public sector entities and partners, all the way to global industry leaders.

He is a SKEMA Business School graduate and has been chairman of the Board of Directors since 2017. He also served as co-chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Digital Divide Task Force and on the European Commission’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Task Force.

Jean-Phillipe sits on the Board of Directors for ManpowerGroup, the global workforce solutions organization.

Speaker

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.

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.

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

Amy Edmondson
Professor of Leadership & Management, HBS

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

Edmondson has been ranked by the biannual Thinkers50 global list of top management thinkers since 2011 (most recently #1). She teaches and writes on leadership, teams and organizational learning.  Her most recent book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for leaders who are serious about building a thriving organization in the today’s uncertain environment. Her prior books, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy and Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2012, 2103) and Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016) explore teamwork in dynamic, unpredictable work environments.

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

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

Speaker

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

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

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

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

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

Chair

Mark Esposito
Professor, Hult International Business School; Senior Advisor at Strategy& at PwC and CLO at Nexus FrontierTech

Dr. Mark Esposito is a Full Professor of Business and Economics at Hult International Business School, teaching across campuses in the area of Economics, Strategy, Foresights and Management of Technology, among some of his most common teaching areas. He recognized internationally as a top global thought leader in matters relating to The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the changes and opportunities that technology will bring to a variety of industries. He is Co-Founder & Chief Learning Officer at Nexus FrontierTech, an AI scale-up venture. In 2021, he co-founded the Circular Economy Alliance where he serves as Chairman of the Strategic Foresight Board. He was inducted in 2016 in the radar of Thinkers50 as one of the 30 most prominent rising business thinkers in the world. He is a Senior Advisor to the Ideation Center of Strategy& at PwC.

He is a global expert of the World Economic Forum and advisor to national governments and currently serves as Subject Matter for the Prime Minister Office in the UAE.

In his academic career, Mark has held academic appointments for some of the world’s leading institutions such as Harvard University, University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and IE Business School.

He served as Institutes Council Co-Leader, at the Microeconomics of Competitiveness program (MOC) at the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, at Harvard Business School under the mentorship of Professor Michael E. Porter.

In his career he has written hundreds of op-eds and professional publications, over 150 articles, several book chapters, over 40 case studies and 13 books, including two bestsellers.  Mark is indeed the co-author of the best seller “Understanding How the Future Unfolds: Using DRIVE to Harness the Power of Today's Megatrends”. In 2019, Mark's book on AI, The AI Republic, became #1 bestseller in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy and received global accolades. His next books are: “The Emerging Economies under the Dome of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” with Dr. Amit Kapoor, to be published by Cambridge University Press in summer 2022 and “The Great Remobilization: Designing A Smarter World” with Dr. Olaf Groth and Dr. Terence Tse, to be published in early 2023 by MIT University Press.

He holds a Doctoral Degree in Business Administration from Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, one of France’s most prestigious Grande Ecole.

Speaker

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

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

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Speaker

Andreas Fröhlich
Chief People and Organization Officer, GoStudent

Andreas Fröhlich is the Chief People and Organization Officer of the online education platform GoStudent, Europe’s highest valued EduTech Unicorn. GoStudent is on a mission to build the No. 1 global school by unlocking every child’s full potential. It offers one-to-one online tutoring for all school subjects and all school levels. GoStudent is on a steep growth path with a current valuation of 3bn Euros, 1600+ employees and a community of 20000+ tutors across 20 countries.

Andreas is passionate about building organizations with a distinctive culture and performance, and believes that this can be best achieved by combining a strong purpose with effective ways of organizing and a distinctive employee experience. Previously, he served as an Associate Partner with McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance Practice, helping clients across industries to achieve these objectives. Andreas also lectures at various universities and currently lives with his wife and two sons in Vienna.

Chair

Sarah Green Carmichael
Editor, Bloomberg Opinion

Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor and writer at Bloomberg Opinion. Previously, she was an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she led the podcast program, hosting the HBR IdeaCast and co-hosting Women at Work. She has also been a managing editor at Barron's, a baseball columnist, and a researcher for Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman at the Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University.

Speaker

Jordi Gual
President VidaCaixa

He holds a PhD in Economics (1987) from the University of California at Berkeley and he is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London.

Jordi Gual is Chairman of the Board of Directors of VidaCaixa since April 2021. He is member of the Advisory Board of Telefónica España and member of the Board of Directors of Telefônica Brasil. Since March 2022 he is Associate of OXERA Consulting LLP (London). He also serves on the board of CEDE Foundation and he has recently become a SUERF Fellow and member of the Advisory Board of Instituto Español de Analistas Financieros.

Between 2016 and 2021, he served as Chairman of CaixaBank. Prior to this appointment, he was Chief Economist and Head of Strategic Planning and Research for CaixaBank and Director-General of Planning and Strategic Development for CriteriaCaixa. Jordi Gual joined the “la Caixa” Group in 2005. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Telefónica, Erste Group Bank and Repsol. He also was Vice President of Círculo de Economía, Chairman of FEDEA and he served as an economics advisor for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs in Brussels and as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.

His work on banking, European integration, regulation and competition policy has been widely published.

In 1999 he was awarded the Research Prize from the European Investment Bank and in 1979 the Extraordinary Award for his degree in Economics and Business. He has also been a Fulbright Scholar.

Speaker

Mehran Gul
Author

Mehran Gul is currently writing a book on “The New Geography of Innovation” which charts the rise of new technology companies around the world. The book is based on an essay which won the Financial Times/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize. It will be published by HarperCollins in the UK and Simon & Schuster in the US. It has also been signed for publication in Japan, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and China.

He has previously worked at the World Economic Forum and the United National Industrial Development Organization. He went to graduate school at Yale where he was a Fulbright scholar, Fox International Fellow, and Teaching Fellow. He was an undergraduate at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He has been a visiting scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a regional fellow with the Acumen Fund.

www.mehrangul.com

Speaker

Ranjay Gulati
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

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

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

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

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

Speaker

Rita Gunther McGrath
Professor of strategy, Columbia Business School

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

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

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

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

Speaker

Marine Hadengue
Executive Director, Foundation Higher Education for the Good

Dr. Marine Hadengue is the Executive Director of the Higher Education for Good Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of the Peter Drucker Society.

Holding a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Polytechnique Montreal, her areas of expertise include responsible management education, entrepreneurship, and social innovation.

Marine is currently leading the development of the World Youth Observatory, the first project of the Higher Education for Good Foundation. This collective intelligence consultation, named Youth Talks and reaching out to more than 200 million young people worldwide, aims to collect their aspirations and needs to build a more sustainable society.

Marine is also a professor at SKEMA Business School, a global management school located in France, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, China, and the United States, as well as CEO of the Arbour Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Montreal, Canada that specializes in access to education.

Speaker

Gary Hamel
Director, Management Lab; Visiting professor, London Business School;

Gary Hamel is one of the world’s most influential and iconoclastic business thinkers. He has worked with leading companies across the globe and is a dynamic and sought-after management speaker. Hamel has been on the faculty of the London Business School for more than 30 years and is the director of the Management Lab.

Hamel has written 17 articles for the Harvard Business Review and is the most reprinted author in the Review’s history. His landmark books have been translated into more than 25 languages. His most recent bestsellers are The Future of Management and What Matters Now. In these volumes, Hamel presents an impassioned plea for reinventing management and lays out a practical blueprint for building organizations that are “fit for the future.”

Fortune magazine describes Hamel as “the world’s leading expert on business strategy,” and the Financial Times calls him a “management innovator without peer.” Hamel has been ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the world’s most influential business thinker and is a fellow of the Strategic Management Society and of the World Economic Forum.
Hamel’s groundbreaking concepts such as “strategic intent,” “core competence,” “industry revolution,” and “management innovation,” have changed the language and practice of management in organizations around the globe. 

Hamel’s work inside of organizations has been equally pioneering. Highlights include:

• Building one of the world’s first “idea markets” inside a global energy leader.
• Using crowdsourcing to help a European high tech company build a game-changing strategy.
• Orchestrating a comprehensive effort to turn a venerable durable goods manufacturer into one of the world’s most innovative companies.
• Helping a leading Korean company re-engineer its management practices around the principles of openness, community and meritocracy.
• Designing and deploying an online platform that allowed the employees of a top fashion house to share and develop ideas for strengthening their company’s core values.
• Developing innovation tools and platforms that have helped companies around the world de-commoditize mature industries and accelerate growth.
• Running an online “hackathon” in which more than 1,700 senior executives collaborated to reinvent the HR function.

In his work, Hamel has led transformational efforts in some of the world’s most notable companies and has helped to create billions of dollars in shareholder value.

Hamel is one of the world’s most sought-after management speakers on the topics of strategy, leadership, innovation and change.

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.

Speaker

Charles Handy
Social Philosopher and author

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker

Rahaf Harfoush
Executive Director, Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture

Rahaf Harfoush is a digital anthropologist and New York Times best-selling author who focuses on the intersection of leadership, creativity, and emerging technologies. She teaches Innovation and Disruptive Business models at SciencesPo school of Management and Innovation in Paris. Rahaf is the Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, where she supports leaders in understanding new trends and developing human-centric strategies for their organizations. Rahaf is a member of France’s National Digital Council and is a visiting policy fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Rahaf is the author of several books, her latest is Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work.

Speaker

Felix Häusler
Founder Infinity Vertigo, 4GAMECHANGERS and Global Shapers delegate

Felix Häusler is a serial entrepreneur who has built and consulted for software products all around the world. His recent company "Grape", a US/AT-funded business messenger, didn't survive Covid. Currently, he teaches product management, works with the Global Shapers on social impact projects, renovates a nuns retreat in lower Austria, and works on "the next big thing" in stealth mode.

Chair

Julia Hautz
Professor of Strategic Management, University of Innsbruck

Julia Hautz is a professor of strategic management at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, who’s work focuses on openness in organizational processes. She explores how digital technologies made corporate hierarchies and boundaries permeable to new knowledge thereby opening up strategy making to previously excluded actors. Julia is one of the leading scholars on open strategy substantially shaping academic debate and the emergence of a research community on this topic. But she also shows that Open Strategy not only changes strategy research but fundamentally transforms the strategist’s work along with the tasks and competencies associated with the strategy profession. She is co-author of  the book “Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite” (The MIT Press).

Speaker

Berta Herrero
Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Huawei EU

Berta Herrero is Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Huawei EU. She is also the Founder & Director of the company's Schools for Female Leadership in the Digital Age, which provide top students and young professionals with a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to acquire the skills needed to shape Europe's digital transition, under a full scholarship. Most recently she has launched The Women's Academy for Rural Innovation, a ground-breaking initiative designed to empower women from rural communities to shape the digital age.

Ms. Herrero has extensive experience in the field of European Union politics and policies in three different sectors (institutional, corporate and media), and in areas ranging from foreign affairs and enlargement to cohesion, new technologies and innovation.

Prior to joining the tech industry, Ms. Herrero served in the cabinet of a Vice-President of the European Parliament in Brussels, and previously as a journalist for Spain's newspaper El Mundo, reporting from different countries across the world. Ms. Herrero studied Journalism in Madrid, European Studies in Amsterdam and East European Studies in Berlin, and earned a certificate on 'Leveraging Diversity and Inclusion for Organizational Excellence' from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

She is personally invested in contributing to overcome the divide, be it digital, geographical or gender-related, that prevents the European society from moving forward in a fair and inclusive way. In 2021, she was honoured to be featured on the prestigious Santander-CIDOB '35 under 35' list, which recognizes the potential of emerging leaders who are shaping the digital era worldwide.

Speaker

Philipp Herrmann
Co- Founder & CEO, BRYCK

Philipp is co-founder and CEO of BRYCK (www.bryck.com). Prior to BRYCK, he was founder and CEO of etventure (www.etventure.com) as well as Partner at EY (www.ey.com). His motto: “Ideas are commodity. Execution is key.“

Between 2010 and 2012, he lived and worked in Silicon Valley, graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA) and became d.leader at the Design Thinking School at Stanford University. Philipp started his career at Bertelsmann, where he became Director of Corporate Development, focusing on new technologies and digital media. Subsequently, he built as Head of Product Strategy the online startup scoyo, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, which was eventually sold to a joint venture of Disney and RTL Group. He then continued his venture building activities as Partner for eBusiness at ClimatePartner, where he launched a completely new digital B2B business model from scratch. Based on his insights at Bertelsmann, scoyo, and ClimatePartner, he co-founded etventure in 2010. In 2012, the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche selected Philipp as one of 100 most important people of the Internet industry in Germany. In 2013, the German Minister of Economy and Technology selected Philipp as member of the official German business delegation of to Silicon Valley. In 2017, etventure was acquired by EY (Ernst & Young) and Philipp became Partner at EY. In 2022, Philipp co-founded BRYCK. Philipp is active mentor and advisor for several startup entrepreneurs as well as for CEOs of industrial companies that are facing digital transformation challenges.

Chair

Andrew Hill
Senior Business Writer Financial Times

Andrew Hill is senior business writer at the FT and consulting editor, FT Live. He is a former management editor and columnist, City editor, financial editor and comment and analysis editor. He is the author of ‘Leadership in the Headlines’ (2016), a collection of his columns, and ‘Ruskinland’ (2019), about the enduring influence of Victorian thinker John Ruskin. He joined the FT in 1988 and has also worked as New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.

Andrew was named Business Commentator of the Year at the 2016 Comment Awards and Commentator of the Year at the 2009 Business Journalist of the Year Awards, where he also received a Decade of Excellence award.

Speaker

Julia Hobsbawm
Founder, Editorial Intelligence

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

Speaker

Xavier Huillard
CEO, Vinci Group

Born in 1954, Xavier Huillard is a graduate of the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He has spent most of his working life in the construction industry in France and abroad. Mr Huillard joined Sogea in December 1996 as Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of international activities and specific projects, and then became its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1998. He was appointed Deputy General Manager of VINCI in March 1998 and was Chairman of VINCI Construction from 2000 to 2002. He was appointed Co-Chief Operating Officer of VINCI and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI Energies from 2002 to 2004, then Chairman of VINCI Energies from 2004 to 2005. Mr Huillard became Director and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI in 2006 and was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI on 6 May 2010. He served as Chairman of the Institut de l’Entreprise from January 2011 until January 2017. He was appointed Chairman of VINCI Concessions SAS on 20 June 2016.

Speaker

Adi Ignatius
Executive Vice President & Editor in Chief, Harvard Business Group Publisher, HBR Press

Adi Ignatius has served as Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group since January 2009. In this role, he has led the editorial reinvention and digital transformation of HBR into an award-winning, multiplatform media group. He also serves as Publisher of the HBR Press. Ignatius is the editor/producer of two books: President Obama: The Path to the White House and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Both were New York Times bestsellers.

Before coming to HBR, Ignatius was the No. 2 Editor at TIME magazine, overseeing business and international coverage, as well as franchise issues like Person of the Year and the TIME 100. He wrote frequently for TIME, including the 2007 profile/interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Prior to joining TIME, Ignatius worked for more than a decade at The Wall Street Journal, where he served as bureau chief in Beijing and Moscow.

Ignatius graduated from Haverford College in 1981, after studying Chinese at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, in 1980. He was awarded a Zuckerman Fellowship at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 1990, and he earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland’s Okinawa campus in 2002. Ignatius also completed an Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2016.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society and serves (or served) on the advisory boards of Foreign Affairs, The Wire, Climate & Capital Media, DocuSign, SUNY Journalism School, and the Stonington (CT) Historical Society.

Speaker

Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño
President, IE University

Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño 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.

Iñiguez serves on the boards of Headspring, a joint venture between IE Business School and the Financial Times, offering custom programs for companies, as well as on the boards of EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development), Renmin University Business School (China), Antai Business School (Jiao Tong University, China), LUISS Business School (Italy), Mazars University (France), the Russian Presidential Academy (RANEPA, Russia), and FGV-EASP Fundaçao Getulio Vargas (Brazil). He is a past Chair of the Board of AACSB, the global association of business schools.

Iniguez 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).

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), all published by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer).

Iniguez is a regular speaker at international conferences and frequently contributes in different journals and media on higher education and executive development. He is one of the 500 Global LinkedIn Influencers and in 2019 has been recognized as the leading Spanish influencer in Management by the Mexican magazine Entrepreneur.

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

Piyachart (Arm) Isarabhakdee
CEO, BRANDi and Companies

Piyachart (Arm) is the CEO of BRANDi and Companies, a brand-centric management consultancy that transforms conventional businesses (profit-centric) to future-ready organizations (profit, people, and planet). The company’s remarkable achievements are recognized by many global organizations such as World Economic Forum and United Nation Global Compact.  For more than 10 years, Arm has continuously engaged with private and public sector organizations from over 21 industries to sustainably create positive impact on the environment, society, and economy. He is also a university lecturer and a speaker on sustainable business transformation and management at various national and global forums. Moreover, he is the best-selling author of Business as UNusual and BRANDiNG 4.0 which have been translated into 5 languages. Arm is an engineer by degree, and consultant by choice. He received an MSc. in Space Technology and Planetary Exploration before acquiring multiple certifications from various world-renowned business schools.

Speaker

Michael Jacobides
Chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, London Business School

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

Yasmina Jaidi
Global Head, L'Oréal University for Leadership & Culture

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Garrick Jones
Adjunct Faculty, Hult EF Corporate Education

Curiosity, Open Innovation, Digital, Massive Systems Transformation

Garrick Jones is an author, academic, businessman and musician.

His books include:

Digital Humans: Thriving In An Online World (2022), Wiley – with Paul Ashcroft

The Curious Advantage: The Greatest Driver of Value in the Digital Age (2020), Laiki – with Simon Brown & Paul Ashcroft

Alive: Digital Humans and Their Organizations (2018), Novaro – with Paul Ashcroft

A co-founder of the renowned Ludic Group, he is an expert in digital transformation, digital learning and engagement of massive systems.

He advises on numerous projects for corporations and governments and state-of-the-art think tanks, including the award-winning Future Trends Forum (FTF). He works with Fortune 100 clients, governments, the UN and UNDP.

Garrick is interested in how very large systems are able to successfully transform themselves and he is an expert in Open Innovation.

Garrick is Adjunct Faculty at Hult EF and fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Garrick lives in London. As a musician he plays and composes – collaborating with the artist Urs Fischer on a book and performances at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Kunsthaus, Zurich and the Camden Arts Centre, London.  Garrick was educated at the University of Oxford.

Speaker

So-Young Kang
Founder & CEO, Gnowbe

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

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

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

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

Speaker

Amit Kapoor
Honorary Chairman, Institute for Competitiveness, India

Amit Kapoor, PhD, is Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; Lecturer at Stanford University and Editor-in-Chief of Thinkers. He is the chair for the Social Progress Imperative & Shared Value Initiative in India and sits on the board of Competitiveness initiatives in Mexico, Netherlands, Italy & France and University of Vermont’s SEMBA Advisory Board. He is an affiliate faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness & Value Based Health Care Delivery courses of Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School. He has been inducted into the Competitiveness Hall of Fame which is administered by Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School in addition to being the recipient of the Ruth Greene Memorial Award winner for writing the best case of the year, by North American Case Research Association (NACRA).

Amit is the author of the Competitiveness Roadmap for India@100 alongside Michael Porter and Christian Ketels the work that was done at the behest of the Prime Minister of India. Amit is the author of bestsellers “Riding the Tiger”, which he has co-authored with Wilfried Aulber and “The Age of Awakening: The Story of the Indian Economy Since Independence” published by Penguin Random House. His recent book “Disrupting Democracies” has been published by Bertelsmann Foundation. His next book on “India’s Competitiveness” that he is co-authoring with Amitabh Kant is to be published in 2023 by Penguin and on “Inequality” with Bibek Debroy in second half of 2023.

He has worked with NITI Aayog, Indian Prime Minister’s Think Tank, on developing the Ease of Living index for Indian districts (this drives the achievement of Ease of Living across Indian states and districts); Innovation Index for States of India; Export Preparedness Index, School Education Quality Index, District Potentiality Index et al. In addition he sits on the committee assessing the performance of R&D Institutions in India that is housed at NITI and headed by Shri V.K. Saraswat. He has as well worked with Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister to develop indices on Ease of Living for Elderly, Foundational Learning and Numeracy Index, Social Progress Index for Indian States and Districts.  He has developed the assessment frameworks for Municipal Performance Index and Ease of Living for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India that would be used to assess cities within the country. Detailed frameworks are available at https://smartnet.niua.org/eol19/.  He is also the author of India City Competitiveness Report, India State Competitiveness Report, India Manufacturing Competitiveness Report, India State Sustainability Report, Livability Report, Creative Economy of Indian Cities and States et al. that are published on periodic basis.

In the last few years he has delved significantly to understand the democratic upheavals the world is seeing with keynotes at important international gatherings in Washington DC, London, Toronto and Iceland. His body of work includes election prediction model, essays on democracy and producing documentaries on democratic shifts in countries like India, USA, UK and Brazil. He has been invited by Kennedy School of Government & Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, World Economic Forum to present his views on various issues and themes like strategy, outsourcing and economic development in addition to speaking at TEDx and Unreasonable Thinking Summit.

He is also a columnist with Economic Times, Business World and Business Standard. In addition his contributions have been published by Harvard Business Review Online, Economic Times, Hindu, Business Insider, Hindu Business Line, Mint, Financial Express, Outlook Business, Governance Now, Business Today, FirstPost et al. In all, he has written over 650 opinion pieces apart from publishing academic research (cases and articles). Based on his work three awards have been constituted within the country titled State Competitiveness Awards wherein the Chief Ministers are awarded; City Competitiveness Awards wherein City Heads are awarded and Institute for Competitiveness Strategy Awards wherein the corporates are awarded for their strategic acumen. He chairs the jury and curates Porter Prize in addition to curating events like National Competitiveness Forum, Shared Value Summit, Thinkers 50 (India) etc.  As for his interest in entrepreneurship, he is a keen investor and has funded enterprises like Mettl, SoulAce, Devtron Labs, Business World et al.

He tweets @kautiliya and can be contacted at amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in.

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

Carol Kauffman
Leadership Advisor at Egon Zehnder

Carol Kauffman is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and a Visiting Professor at Henley Business school. She is known globally as one of the top leaders in the field of leadership coaching. Thinkers 50 shortlisted her as one of the top 8 coaches in the world due to her impact on the field of coaching.

Harvard Business Review Press will be publishing her book, coauthored with David Noble , Real-Time Leadership: Find your winning moves when the stakes are high February 2023. Their article: The Power of Options: Always give yourself four ways to win, will be in HBR magazine, January 2023.

She is also a senior leadership advisor at Egon Zehnder and works with CEOs and their teams. Her work developing Leader as Coach won Harvard’s Inaugural Award for the Culture of Excellence in Mentoring and her programs have been rolled out and scaled for thousands of leaders and their teams in the public and private sector.

At Harvard Dr. Kauffman received a $2,000,000 grant to launch the Institute of Coaching which awards grants for coaching research, brings science to coaching and has a community of over 20,000 (InstituteofCoaching.org). She also chairs Harvard Medical School’s annual coaching conference, their most widely attended event. She also launched their Leadership Forum and has chaired numerous conferences and is the Co-Convener of the European School of Management and Technology Coaching Colloquia.

Kauffman was also the founding Editor in Chief of the first coaching academic journal from a major publishing house, Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice. She has written numerous academic and professional articles and is currently under contract with Harvard Business Review Press for the book: It’s Your Move: The Art of High Stakes, High Risk Leadership.

Of all her activities Carol most loves coaching her CEOs and C-level leaders to become their best selves and have the impact they want. She has accrued over 40,000 hours experience.

Dr. Kauffman is a board certified psychologist and an examiner for the American Board of Professional Psychology.

She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two adult children nearby. Her passions include prehistoric cave art and animal welfare.

Please visit CarolKauffman.com

Speaker

Guila Clara Kessous
UNESCO Peace Ambassador, Executive coach

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

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

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

Speaker

Elizabeth Kiehner
VP Enterprise Transformation VP of Workforce & Organization in North-America, Capgemini Invent

Elizabeth Kiehner is an enterprise transformation leader focused on workforce and organization. With human centered design at her core, Kiehner anchors organizations on a belief that to win more customers and market share, one must win internal customers first – employees.  A business and technology alchemist, Kiehner, spent much of her career creating customer facing products and marketing campaigns working at the nexus of innovation, brand, design, and purpose. Kiehner brings a diverse 25+ year background in the start-up, corporate and non-profit worlds with a passion for leading through change and expertise ranging from experience design to HR transformation to go-to-market strategy with a spotlight on the people, culture, and process side of a digital transformation.  This includes the strategic use of automation and AI and other exponential technologies to shape the way we create, deploy, and sustain new ways of working.

Her global experience includes engagements throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Kiehner leads the strategic offering Reinventing Work for Capgemini Invent globally and is based in NYC. Committed to generating a positive impact and inspiring others, Kiehner is a sought-after keynote speaker, and a published author in her previous leadership roles.

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

Martin Kocher
Federal Minister of Labour and Economy

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Kocher was born in 1973 in Salzburg and grew up in Altenmarkt/Zauchensee. After his studies in Economics at the University of Innsbruck, he worked there as Research Assistant at the Department for Public Finance. He continued to pursue an international academic career at universities in Munich, Amsterdam, Norwich and Goteborg.

From 2016 to 2021, Martin Kocher was Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna as well as Head of the Competence Centre for Behavioral Economics "Insight Austria" at the IHS. Kocher was also President of the Austrian Fiscal Advisory Council (FISK).

On 11 January 2021, Martin Kocher was appointed Federal Minister for Labour, Family and Youth by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen. With the amendment of the Ministerial Law (Bundesministeriengesetz), the areas of Family and Youth have been transferred to the Federal Chancellery. Since 1 February 2021, Martin Kocher is Federal Minister for Labour. Martin Kocher was appointed as Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs on 11 May 2022. Since 18 July 2022, Martin Kocher is Federal Minister of Labour and Economy.

Speaker

Eric Kohlmann
Kohlmann & Co AG

Eric Kohlmann is a New York based investor and entrepreneur. Through transatlantic Kohlmann Grünstein, he invests in early stage, scientifically driven companies. As an angel investor, he has previously invested in leading technology companies such as neuroscience startup CTRL-Labs, which announced its sale to Facebook in October 2019 in one of its largest acquisitions to date. He also co-founded Creatives Care, a New York based non-profit organisation supporting artists seeking mental health treatment. A classical music enthusiast, Eric is a regular at many concert halls and loves discovering new composers, venues and festivals.

As well as being a board member to several companies and advisor to family offices, Eric was also the founder of Trinnacle Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund, applying machine learning to algorithmic trading. Trinnacle since announced the acquisition of its IP in alternative data and machine learning by a large, international hedge fund.

Eric holds a Masters in Finance from IE Business School in Madrid and started his academic career at Eton College in the UK, going on to study at ETH Zurich and TU Munich where he completed his Bachelor in Physics, researching the electrochemical properties of titanium oxy carbide nanotubes in 2011. He lives in New York with his wife, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Alana Mendelsohn. They have one daughter.

Speaker

Georg Kopetz
Co-Founder and CEO at TTTech

Georg Kopetz is co-founder and member of the executive board at TTTech. He is responsible for the overall strategy of the corporation, marketing, sales, finance, human resources, the business units aerospace and industrial solutions as well as for the off-highway joint-venture company TTControl. He studied law at the University of Vienna and has comprehensive professional experience in the financial and legal field, having worked as a finance and law consultant in Austria and abroad.

Chair

Wolfgang Lassl
Peter Drucker Society and Qwinnt Management Institute

biography upcoming soon.

Speaker

Mickael Locoh
VP Southern Europe & Africa, Steelcase

Passionate about people, leadership and change management, Mickael Locoh, Vice President Southern Europe & Africa,  is with his team, helping companies all around the globe to have a workplace supporting their company’s strategic ambitions.

With a finance mathematics engineer background, he began his career in the financial sector at BNP Paribas as business continuity & crisis manager all around the world. Coordinating and dealing with the major crisis with the executive committee of the bank, he was in front line during key events like the subprime, Lehman Brother and all main ones impacting the business and image of the bank.

In 2011, to use his scientific background combined with more “soft skills”, he joined Steelcase. Part of the the EMEA leadership team, he is now in charge of the Southern Europe including countries like France, Luxembourg, Italy and also the African coutinent. He is also leading the team called “Clients without borders” working with fast growing companies expanding in Europe.

Speaker

André Loesekrug-Pietri
Executive Chair, Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI)

André Loesekrug-Pietri, French-German nationalities, held leadership positions in private equity, government, industry and as an entrepreneur. Starting as assistant to the CEO of Aerospatiale-Airbus, he then spent 15 years in private equity and venture capital, including 10 years in China, investing in European companies with global ambitions. In 2017, he paused from the private sector to become Special Advisor to the French Minister of Defence, responsible in particular for European Defense policy as well as technology and innovation. He is currently Chairman of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI), the European ARPA, to accelerate Europe’s leadership in disruptive innovations, and launched the first ‘Darpa-type’ GrandChallenge from Europe in 2020. HEC and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, he is lecturer at SciencesPo, member of the Innovation Board of the Munich Security Conference, jury of the Global Teacher Prize and regular columnist in several international media. He attended Sup-Aero aerospace engineering school, was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, is a private pilot, Business Angel and Colonel with the French Air Force People’s Reserve.

Speaker

Sharon MacBeath
Group Human Resources Director, Hermès International

Sharon MacBeath joined Hermès in June 2019 as Group Human Resources Director. She has spent her entire career in human resources, working for major international companies in the distribution, services, and industrial sectors. Sharon has also been a member of the Hermès’ Supervisory Board and its Governance committees.

In order to contribute to the sustainable growth of Hermès and the enduring development of its organisations around the world, Sharon MacBeath has instilled a new dynamic in human resources by initiating a major transformation of the function’s role, missions, and governance with the ambition to cultivate a collective and unique human project conducive to personal achievement and success. In March 2022, Sharon MacBeath was appointed to Hermès’ Executive Committee.

She is also President of COFACE’s Nomination & Remuneration Committee of and a member of it’s Supervisory Board since 2014.

Chair

Isabella Mader
Executive Advisor, Global Peter Drucker Forum CEO, Excellence Institute

Isabella Mader, MSc, is CEO of the Excellence Institute, Executive Advisor for the Global Peter Drucker Forum and lecturer at universities in the fields of information and knowledge management, IT- strategy and collaboration. 

2013 she was awarded “Top CIO of the Year“ (A).

Before her current position she built up a post graduate university programme that she then managed for several years. She also acted as the CEO of a software company (booking platform) and at the United Nations in the field of methodology development.

At the Excellence Institute she concentrates on knowledge management, information management, IT strategy, communities and networks as well as on network economy/sharing economy and New Work.

Chair

Astrid Maier
Editor in Chief, XING News

Astrid Maier is passionate about making the workplace a more humane place. Before joining XING, the business and tech journalist helped build the ada learning platform at Handelsblatt Media Group. She began her journalism career at the Financial Times Deutschland, later working at the business monthly Manager Magazine and the business weekly Wirtschaftswoche, where she headed various departments. Maier is a recipient of Stanford University's John S. Knight Fellowship and a co-founder of Dverse Media, an association that promotes greater diversity and innovation in journalism. She is also chair of the board of trustees of the Bonn Institute for journalism and constructive debates.

Speaker

Christian Marte SJ
Rector of the Jesuit College Innsbruck

I am a Jesuit and a priest.

Born in Feldkirch, Austria, in 1964, I studied Business and Management in Innsbruck. After receiving my doctorate in 1990, I worked for the Austrian Red Cross, most recently as deputy secretary general.

In 1999, I joined the Jesuits. After that, I studied Theology and Philosophy in Munich, London and Innsbruck. After my ordination as priest in 2008, I served as director of Kardinal König Haus in Vienna, a center for adult education and retreats run by Jesuits and Caritas, for almost ten years. From 2009 to 2017, I was also member of the Commission for Ecumenical Relations of the Archdiocese of Vienna.

Since 2018, I have been rector of the Jesuit College in Innsbruck, and since 2021 I also serve as Delegate of the Provincial for adult education and retreat centers of the Central European Jesuit Province. In Innsbruck, I work as prison chaplain as well.

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Speaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker

Jude Martin
Actor

After graduating from Eton College, Jude went straight into acting professionally working in immersive theatre venues in both London and Brighton. He has been in plays in England, Edinburgh, and France. During the pandemic, Jude found joy in short and student films, developing his screen skills in the absence of stage opportunities.

Chair

Mary Meaney Haynes
Social Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

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

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

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

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

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Speaker

Antonella Mei-Pochtler
Board member, Publicis and Generali

Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler is an international businesswoman and leader with many years of experience in the consumer goods, media, and technology sectors both as advisor and executive. She held a number of management positions at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Europe and worldwide with a focus on digital transformation, strategy and organizational development. She was a member of BCG‘s global executive committee, its top leadership team and it’s European leadership team.  Named amongst the top 25 consultants worldwide by Consulting magazine, she won the Women Leaders in Consulting Lifetime Achievement award in 2013.
 
She currently sits on various international Boards (Westwing AG, Generali Group, ProSieben Group and Publicis SA). 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 created the Brand Club, a platform for CEOs of international brands and media companies in Germany.
 
From 2018-2022 she was Special Advisor to the Austrian Federal Chancellor and Head of ThinkAustria, the Austrian government’s think tank and strategic planning unit.
 
Dr. Mei-Pochtler, an Italian citizen, was educated in the German School in Rome, in the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich 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.

Speaker

Heike Mensi-Klarbach
Head of Group People and Organisational Innovation, Raiffeisen Bank International AG

Heike Mensi-Klarbach has been responsible for Group People & Organisational Innovation at Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI) since 2019. In this role, she is covers innovation, organisational development and, last but not least, RBI's human resources agenda. Diversity and inclusion, the role of organisational culture, leadership and top management teams are among her focus areas. These are also topics that she has previously examined in the course of her research work at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, the Copenhagen Business School and the Leibniz University of Hanover, for example.

Speaker

Keri Mesropov
Founder, TRG Arts’ Talent Lab and Chief Talent Officer of TRG Arts

Keri Mesropov is the founder of Talent Lab, a TRG Arts’ incubator developing the next generation of arts administrators through live workshops and shared best practices.  Under TRG’s Talent Lab, Keri also devises and conducts work-life experiments designed to iteratively evolve the organizational culture of TRG, one of the world’s most influential consulting firms dedicated to the arts.

As Chief Talent Officer for TRG, Keri creates unique organizational culture initiatives that optimize productivity and creativity while motivating and retaining top talent. She has expanded the company’s human capital focus, bringing research and imaginative practices to employee onboarding, parental leave policies, performance reviews and high potential employee growth plans.

Before becoming TRG’s first-ever Chief Talent Officer, Keri served as Vice President of Client Service and as a senior consultant, presiding over consulting, database management and business intelligence services that have generated millions of revenue dollars for a variety of major performing arts organizations. As consultant and VP, she advised theater, ballet, orchestral and Broadway producing organizations on how to build resiliency through data-driven strategies in consumer relationships, financial stability, organizational frameworks and people-centric teams. She has led a VIP portfolio that includes New York City Ballet, the Chicago Symphony, Toronto International Film Festival, Boston Ballet and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Known for her expertise in developing Gen Z professionals, Keri is also a Professional in Residence at her alma mater, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications’ new Experience Lab. She also serves as an Advisory Council member for the Nebraska Women’s Leadership Network, and in 2022 she received the prestigious Woman of Courage, Character and Commitment award from UNL’s Women’s Center.

Keri’s twenty years of experience in arts administration has included executive leadership roles at Colorado Ballet, The Washington Ballet, Washington Performing Arts and the Trey McIntyre Project.

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.

Speaker

Laura Morgan Roberts
Frank M. Sands Sr. Associate Professor of Business Administration University of Virginia Darden School of Business

 Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts is an innovative global scholar, speaker and consultant on the science of maximizing human potential in diverse organizations and communities. Her thought leadership in diversity, authenticity and leadership development has been recognized by LinkedIn (Top 10 Voice in Equity; 2020); Thinkers50 (On the Radar, 2021); ThinkList #Amplify (2020), and the Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Award for Societal Impact (2020). Laura has published over fifty research articles, teaching cases, and practitioner-oriented tools for strategically activating best selves through strength-based development, workplace equity and inclusion. Laura has co-edited three books: Race, Work and Leadership (2019 Axiom Business Book Award winner); Positive Organizing in a Global Society; and Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations. She has also self-published The Alignment Quest™ Toolkit for Activating Best Selves and several poetry collections. Laura is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and the Academy of Management Review, and is regularly quoted in global media outlets.

Laura currently serves as Professor of Practice at her alma mater, the University of Virginia, in the Darden School of Business. She earned a BA in Psychology (highest distinction & Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Virginia, and an MA and Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan. She has served on the faculties of Harvard Business School, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change. She has also taught organizational behavior, psychology, negotiations, group dynamics, diversity, leadership and career development at the University of Michigan, the Wharton School of Finance, Tuck, Georgia State University, UCLA Anderson, Simmons School of Management, and AVT (Copenhagen). Laura’s family roots are in Gary, Indiana and Washington, DC, and she is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

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

James Mountford
Director of Quality, Royal Free London Hospital

James is Director of Quality at the Royal Free London, an academic hospital in north London, where his work focuses on developing and embedding improvement methods into routine work for patient, population and staff benefit. He is currently volunteering in northern France with Solidarité Ukraine, based in St Omer which provides shelter, support and integration into local society for people displaced by the war.

Before moving to the Royal Free, James was Director of Quality at UCLPartners, an academic health science partnership serving 3 million population in and around London. In Spring 2020, James was the Chief of Quality and Learning at the NHS Nightingale Hospital London, a field hospital built in response to the COVID-19 pandemic whose operating system was built as a learning system.

From 2020-2022 James was Director of National Improvement Strategy for NHS England, the central body for the NHS, where his work centred on embedding improvement and learning into national policy and daily work across the English NHS.

James worked initially as an NHS doctor, then in consulting. From 2005-2007, he was a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the IHI, both in Boston, USA. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal BMJLeader and a Senior Associate Tutor at Oxford University.

Speaker

Tina Müller
Member of the Supervisory Board, Douglas Group
Former Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Group

Tina Müller has been CEO of the Douglas Group from November 2017 to November 2022. She has more than 25 years of experience in the consumer goods industry and has held international executive positions at Wella and Henkel. Over the course of her 17 years at Henkel, she has been Corporate Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for the global Beauty Care Business, as well as Regional President for Western Europe. From 2013 to 2017, she was part of the Management Board at General Motors for Opel.

At Douglas, Tina Müller launched the company’s transformational strategy #FORWARDBEAUTY.DIGITALFIRST, leading the Douglas Group into a new era of profitable growth, driven by a successful digitization and a strong focus on the e-commerce business.

In 2021, Tina Müller was named one of the 100 most influential female managers in Germany for the fifth time by Manager Magazine. For her achievements, she has received various awards, such as “Brand Manager of the Year / Lifetime Award” (German Marketing Association), "Marketing Manager of the Year" (W&V), “Woman of the Year 2015” (HORIZONT).

Tina Müller studied Business Administration and Economics in Germany and France. As a co-author with Prof. Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff, she published the book “Warum Start Up’s und Produkte floppen – Die 10 Todsünden des Marketings" in 2013, with a re-edit published in 2021.

Speaker

Hiroshi Nishikawa
Senior Director Technology Strategy Design Division, Technology Strategy Unit, Fujitsu

Hiroshi Nishikawa is Senior Director of Technology Vision at Fujitsu Limited. Currently he plays a leading role in creating and promoting Fujitsu’s technology vision and developing its technology thought leadership.

Throughout 27 years of his career at Fujitsu, Hiroshi has acquired a deep knowledge of technology, from communication to computing, and gained broad international experience including five years based in Germany. He has also led strategic initiatives such as partner alliances and M&A, driving Fujitsu’s business to grow.

Today Hiroshi uses his experience of business and technology to engage with a wide range of customers and partners around the world.

He received his MBA from the Stephen M. R oss School of Business at University of Michigan, and a Master of Science in Physics from Osaka University.

Speaker

Kevin Nolan
President & Chief Executive Officer, GE Appliances

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

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

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

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

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

Moderator

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

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

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

Chair

Sharon Olivier
Professor of Practice in Leadership, Hult EF Corporate Education

 As Organisational Psychologist, senior Faculty in Leadership development and Discipline Lead for HR and Talent at Ashridge Hult Executive Education, Sharon teaches, researches & consults in Strategic HR; Leading in the 21^st century, Agile leadership, Engagement, Polarity Management, Diversity and Inclusion, The neuro-science of reframing unhelpful patterns, and Emotional Resilience.

Before joining Ashridge, Sharon gained valuable leadership and industry experience as a senior leader in Human Resources in the Motor Industry for 10 years and Director of the Development Division for 150 Dealerships. She then joined an international consulting organisation as head of Capacity building for 2 years, after which she led a successful OD development and Learning company based in Johannesburg, offering OD and learning services internationally for 17 years.

She has established a record of accomplishment as an inspirational speaker at conferences on the topics of Leadership Agility, the Future of HR and the new logics needed to lead the 21st century organisation. She has co-published a book on Personal Resilience “Diamonds in the Dust” and a chapter in the latest Ashridge leadership 2017 book “Inspiring Leadership” on The Engagement Dilemma and the use of Ego and Eco Leadership Intelligence. Sharon has recently led or co-authored research into Leadership Agility in Turbulent times, Engagement in Work Teams – shades of grey, and Mindful leadership (Academic Journal). Her latest co-authored book on Agile Leadership in Turbulent times was published by Routledge in January 2021.

Speaker

Muriel Pénicaud
Former Minister of Labour of France

Government and Diplomacy
Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the OECD (2020-2022)
Minister of Labour of France (2017-2020)
CEO of Business France agency and Ambassador for International Investments (2014-2017)

Boards of International Companies
Member of the Board of Directors of Orange, Chair of the Environmental, Social and Governance responsibility Committee (2011-2014)
Member of the Board of Directors of SNCF, Chair of the Freight and Logistic Committee (2013-2017)
Member of the Board of Directors of Airports of Paris (2014-2017)

International Business Executive Management
Senior Executive Vice President of Danone, in charge of Human Resources, and Chair of the Danone Ecosystem Fund (2008-2014)
Senior Executive Vice President of Dassault Systemes, in charge of HR, Organization and Sustainable Development (2002-2008)Vice President for Executive Development, Organization and Knowledge Management of group Danone (1993-2002).

Universities, foundations and NGO
Member of the Steering Committee of the Global Summit of Women (since 2015)
Vice President of the Governance Council of the School of Law and Business at Paris Panthéon-Assas/Sorbonne University, co-Founder and Vice President of Web TV DMA (2010-2017)
Member of the Board of directors of the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation (2014-2017)
Chair of the Board of AgroParisTech Engineering School (2013-2014)
Founder (in 2012) et Chair of of the Board of the Sakura Fund for Social Art

Author of « Push down the walls » (Editions de l’Observatoire, 2021)

Speaker

Florian Pollner
Partner, McKinsey & Company

Helps equipping leaders, people, and organizations to unleash sustained performance amid today’s workplace, talent, and tech revolution

Florian is a partner in our Zurich office and a leader in our People & Organizational Performance Practice in Switzerland. He is a cofounder of McKinsey Academy, and he leads our leadership and learning work in Europe as well.

For more than 20 years, Florian has advised clients internationally on significant opportunities in deep transformations of operating models, modernizing talent practices, strengthening performance cultures, and building modern people functions to power this change. One of his passions is in helping top teams, senior executives, and emerging leaders to become more effective and resilient to lead the transformation toward more human-centric, high-performing organizations.
Florian’s expertise with multinational firms is grounded in his extensive international experience advising clients in more than 30 countries, primarily with multinational or fast-growth companies in the banking, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and insurance space across Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.

Florian has extensively published on current topics of leadership and talent, organizational transformation, modern enterprise, and the future of the people function in corporations in the McKinsey Quarterly and McKinsey.com and has been cited among others in Economist, and Forbes Magazine. Florian is a contributor to “Leadership at scale: Better leadership, better results,” and is researching on current issues of human rights in business.

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.

Speaker

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.

Moderator

Johan Roos
Chief Academic Officer, Hult International Business School

I serve as Chief Academic Officer of HULT International Business School with campuses in London, Boston, San Francisco, Dubai and Shanghai (hult.edu). Driving quality and innovation in the dynamic HULT organization and its global higher education ecosystem is a passion. Before joining HULT in 2016, I served as leader and/or faculty member in several European business schools and a research foundation. Another passion is advancing the concept and practice of LEGO Serious Play, which I co-invented two decades ago. 

CV and publications at johanroos.se.

Speaker

Abakar Saidov
Co-Founder and CEO Beamery

Abakar Saidov is Co-Founder and CEO of Beamery, the leading Talent Lifecycle Management platform. Abakar leads Beamery’s mission to create equal access to work, skills and careers and unlocking the potential of the global workforce. Prior to Beamery, Abakar worked at Goldman Sachs and Francisco Partners.

His other interests are in climate change technology, robotics, behavioural psychology, development economics and education reform, as well as cycling, weight lifting and snowboarding.

He lives in London with his wife and daughter and they have a dog called Siri.

Speaker

Afke Schaart
SVP Global Government Affairs, Huawei

Afke is the Senior Vice President Global Government Affairs at Huawei HQ based in Shenzhen, China. She is leading the company’s Global Impact on Society’s Initiatives. Advancing partnerships with governments, NGOs and International Organisations, and covers topics on Sustainability and Business Ethics; Women in Tech and Digital Inclusion.

Before Afke joined Huawei in 2020 she was the VP and Regional Lead for Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for the GSMA. Here Afke was responsible for all Public Policy advocacy activities, Strategic Engagement, Mobile for Development and Technology Programmes (Digital Identity, Internet of Things, Future Networks (5G), Regulatory Modernisation and Spectrum).

Afke is also the former Vice-Chair of the Alliance of Europeans Telecoms and Automotive (EATA) promoting the wider deployment of Connected and Automated Driving in Europe.

Before joining the GSMA, Afke led Microsoft’s EU Institutional Relations Team in Brussels, responsible for Microsoft’s engagement with the EU Institutions, Council of Europe, the OECD and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Here she was also responsible for Microsoft Citizenship Programmes, BizSpark and YouthSpark.

Prior to this, Afke served as a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands and was the spokesperson for Economic Affairs and Innovation, Technology and ICT for the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

She started her professional career at KPN where she was responsible for its policy interests and governmental affairs in Europe.

Afke studied International Relations and European Law at the University of Amsterdam and has followed the Diplomatic Training Programme at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

Speaker

Dewi Schoenbeck
VP German Speaking Markets, Steelcase

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
Senior Vice President, Enterprise Agility Center of Excellence, Bank of the West; and Chair of the SD Learning Consortium.

Miriam Schwarz 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, Citizens Bank; where she held roles such as SVP - Head of Enterprise PMO and Agile Transformation Lead, Head of Portfolio Center of Excellence, SVP Head of Governance and Practice-Portfolio Delivery Lead, Global Project Management Office Leader and is now currently the SVP for the Enterprise Agility Center of Excellence at Bank of the West (part of BNP Paribas).

Miriam is a practicing Product Owner and a Scrum@Scale practitioner. She is the holder of various professional certifications such as: SSBB, Prosci-ADKAR Change Practitioner, DevOps, CSM, IDEO Design Thinking and CSPO.

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); which is a nonprofit organization whose members are committed to discover together the world’s most advanced agility goals, principles and practices and to disseminate them globally. The Consortium’s vision is to foster agility, bring humanity, discovery, and enlightenment to help organizations evolve into 21st Century practices; current members includes American Express, Bank of the West, C.H. Robinson, Ericsson, and Optum.

Chair

Alice Sherwood
Senior Visiting Research Fellow, The Policy Institute at King’s

Currently a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at The Policy Institute at King’s College London, director of an open-source intelligence company, and author of the award-wining Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture, Alice has worked as a management consultant for Accenture, in retail strategy consultancy and private equity, and for the BBC in multimedia and education.  She has undergraduate degrees in philosophy and in chemistry, an MBA from INSEAD, and an MA in literary criticism and narrative non-fiction. She chairs the Rising Tide women’s network, and lives in London and Wales.

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

Chair

Christian Stadler
Professor of Strategic Management Warwick Business School

Christian is a professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School and Forbes Contributor. He previously held visiting positions at Dartmouth College, Universita’ Cattolica, and Université Toulouse. 

Christian addresses fundamental strategic questions that enable companies to grow, adapt, and consistently beat their competitors . In his new book “Open Strategy. Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite” he explains how companies can craft strategy in a new unconventional way, one tailor-made for today's faster, more volatile business environment. His previous book “Enduring Success: What We Can Learn from the History of Outstanding Corporations” was the first one with a non-U.S. perspective on long-range success.

His work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Fast Company, Fortune/CNN, and the BBC, and has been translated into 11 languages.

Christian has been listed by Thinkers50 as a future thinker in 2013 and shortlisted for its strategy award in 2021. He regularly appears in the media, and has been quoted in over 7,000 media outlets including CNN, BBC, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker

Annika Steiber
Director for the Rendanheyi Silicon Valley Center at Menlo College

Dr. Annika Steiber is a professor, best-selling author, investor, and founder of, and Director at the RenDanHeYi Silicon Valley Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. The center focuses on management innovations for a digital and sustainable age and offers next-generation research projects, free webinars, certificate courses, and corporate programs in collaboration with world-thought leaders.

Dr. Steiber has worked as an executive in high-growth tech companies and in parallel conducted edge- research for three decades. Her latest management book “Leadership for a Digital World and the Transformation of GF Appliances” is providing the world one of the most detailed stories that currently exist about a transformation of a traditional company from zero to a double-digit growth rate by consciously abandoning the traditional industrial-age management model and invest in the new model for a digital and sustainable age.

For more information about the center visit: www.executive.menlo.edu or contact annika.steiber@menlo.edu

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

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

Ollie Taylor
Actor

Ollie is an actor, presenter and comedian. He recently graduated from Durham University, where he was a writer and performer with award-winning sketch comedy troupe ‘The Durham Revue'. He has acted in a great number of plays, in comic and serious roles, including at the Durham Drama Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.

Speaker

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

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 has built a reputation for operational excellence, innovative strategic thinking, working with the highest level of integrity and a deep and passionate commitment to customer needs.

She partners with companies worldwide to drive organizational transformation and leverages technology to meet the needs of communities and society. She has developed strategic plans for public companies, municipalities and the state of California.

Ms. Tharp is a long-time PMI volunteer, having served as president of the PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and is a 2008 Leadership Institute Master Class (LIMC) graduate. She served on the PMI Board of Directors from 2014–2020 as the Audit Committee chair and vice chair, helping guide PMI through global expansion and acquisitions, diversity efforts, rebranding and organizational transformation. She has also served on the boards of a financial institution and strategy organization.

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

Ms. Tharp holds a BSBA from Indiana Wesleyan University, and has taught leadership and project management at 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

Frauke von Polier
Frauke von Polier Chief People Officer & Member of the Executive Board, Viessmann Climate Solutions SE

Frauke von Polier has been appointed Chief People Officer and Member of the Executive Board at Viessmann Climate Solutions SE since March 2021. Previously, she was COO People at SAP and played a key role as Chief People Officer in the growth story of Zalando SE. She is passionate about people & organisation in a digital world and believes that all business challenges can be solved with the right people, leadership or culture.

Frauke lives with her husband and two sons in Berlin.

Speaker

Michael Watkins
Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

Michael Watkins is the co-founder of Genesis Advisers, an Inc. 5000-ranked, global leadership development consultancy based in Boston, MA (USA), specializing in transition acceleration for leaders, teams, and organizations, where he coaches C-level executives of global organizations. He is also Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at the IMD Business School, and a Thinkers 50-listed global management influencer, who has spent the last two decades helping executives — both corporate and public — craft their legacies as leaders.

Prior to joining IMD, Watkins was an adjunct professor at INSEAD, and an associate professor at the Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While on the faculty of these institutions, he designed and taught world-class programs for high-potential leader development, corporate diplomacy, and strategic negotiation.

Watkins is the international best-selling author of eleven books, and is best known for The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, which The Economist named “The Onboarding Bible.” With over 1.5 million copies sold in English and translations in 27+ languages, The First 90 Days is the classic reference for leaders in transition and a standard resource for leading change. Amazon named it one of its top 100 business books to read in a lifetime. Other works in the field of leadership include Master Your Next Move: The Essential Companion to The First 90 Days (HBR Press 2019), Shaping the Game: The New Leader's Guide to Effective Negotiating (HBS Press 2006) and Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming and How to Avoid Them (HBS Press 2004). Predictable Surprises was named one of the best business books of 2004 by Strategy + Business and won the 2006 annual Kulp-Wright ARIA Award.

Watkins is a regular contributor to leading business journals, including MIT Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review. Among his Harvard Business Review feature articles are: “How Insider CEOs Succeed” (2020), "Initiative Overload" (2018), "Onboarding Isn't Enough" (2017), "Leading the Team You Inherit" (2016), "It's All About Day One" (2013), "How Managers Become Leaders" (2012), "Picking the Right Transition Strategy" (2009), "The Leadership Team: Complementary Strengths or Conflicting Agendas" (2007), and "The Successor's Dilemma" (2000). A number of these articles have been selected for inclusion in the following guides: HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing People, Vol. 2 (2020), HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership, Vol. 2 (2020), HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives (2020), and the HBR Guide to Collaborative Teams (2021). He has also contributed numerous digital articles to HBR.org over the years, including: “How New CEOs Can Balance Strategy and Execution” (2021), “The Surprising Power of Peer Coaching” (2021), “When Do We Really Need Face-to-Face Interactions” (2021), “Onboarding a New Leader – Remotely” (2020), “How to Onboard New Hires at Every Level” (2019), “7 Ways to Set Up a New Hire for Success” (2019), “Five Questions to Ask When Starting a New Job” (2019), “When is Teamwork Really Necessary” (2018), and “Internal Hires Need Just as Much Support as External” (2016).

Originally from Canada, Michael Watkins received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, did graduate work in law and business at the University of Western Ontario, and completed his Ph.D. in Decision Sciences at Harvard University.

Speaker

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
Executive Advisor

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is a globally recognized expert on innovation and problem framing.

His latest book What’s Your Problem?, with Harvard Business Press, has been translated into 14 languages. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recommended it with the words “If you want the superpower of solving better problems, read this book.”

Thomas’s research has been featured in The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek and The Financial Times. HR Magazine listed him as a “Top 20 International Thinker”. Thinkers50 listed him on their 2021 Radar.

Thomas is Danish and lives in San Francisco. Prior to his current career, he served as an officer with the Danish Royal Guards. His first book, Innovation as Usual, also published by Harvard Business Press, shares how to make innovation happen in big organizations.

Speaker

Bart Weetjens
Social entrepreneur; Zen priest

Bart Weetjens is a Zen Buddhist monk, internationally celebrated social entrepreneur, and personal growth coach. He holds a Masters in Product Design from Antwerp University, Belgium, and was ordained a Buddhist monk in the Soto Zen tradition (Deshimaru lineage) in 2001.  

Based on his youth passion for pet rats and with a vision of appropriate technologies to empower vulnerable communities of subsistence farmers in post-war countries who are affected by the threat of landmines and unexploded ordinances, he took the initiative to develop detection rats technology (aka HeroRATs) in 1995. In 1998 he founded the Belgian charity APOPO to deploy and disseminate his technology in the South. Bart also initiated the use of his appropriate technology to address other humanitarian detection applications, including Tuberculosis screening, search and rescue operations after structural collapse, and customs applications. Thanks to APOPO’s mine action operations, the Mozambican government was able to declare the country free of landmines in 2015, two and a half years ahead of schedule. In the process, more than a million subsistence farmers were able to return to their villages to lead a life free from fear. When his organization reached a global scale in 2015, Bart transitioned from his executive role in the organization to focus on the practice and dissemination of Zen meditation. In the same year, he joined The Wellbeing Project, a catalyst movement to foster a culture of wellbeing for all changemakers.  

Bart received numerous recognitions for his humanitarian work, a.o. The World Bank Development Marketplace award in 2003 and Ashoka fellowship in 2007. He received the Global Social Entrepreneur of the year award at the World Economic Forum in 2008, and he won the prestigious Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship in 2009.  

Currently, Bart serves as a trusted sounding board for leaders who pursue their noble purpose. He facilitates Zen retreats and inspires various audiences through public speaking and wellbeing workshops.

Speaker

Falco Weidemeyer
Partner, Global Head of Turnaround and Restructuring Strategy, EY Parthenon

Profile

• Partner I Global Head of Turnaround and Restructuring Strategy
• Previously at Roland Berger GmbH as a Member of the European Board and Head of Corporate Performance & Transformation
• Special situations ranging from performance improvement to restructuring and turnaround
• CRO experience
• stakeholder communication and negotiation, esp. in the case of large scale hr measures
• Relevant experience in Consumer Goods, Retail, Automotive, Advanced Manufacturing
• Covering medium sized, family owned businesses as well as listed companies
• Leading EY Parthenon in EMEIA (> 220 Partners, 2.500 professionals)

Relevant experience

• Performance programs for large scale family owned businesses
• Refinancing programs
• Distressed M&A transactions
• Efficiency and transformation programs for various listed companies
• CRO assignments
• Management buy ins

Education and memberships

• European Business School (EBS)
• Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE)
• San Diego State University (SDSU)
• Guest Lecturer at the Frankfurt School of Finance

Chair

Ania G. Wieckowski
Executive Editor, Harvard Business Review

Ania G. Wieckowski is an Executive Editor at Harvard Business Review, where she focuses on organizational behavior, people management, and psychology. In previous roles, including Managing Editor of HBR Press, she led efforts around HBR’s content curation and digital transformation. She is an avid hiker and choral singer.

Speaker

Adrian Wooldridge
Global Business columnist, 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.