Rebecca Theodore

Rebecca Theodore is an experienced international journalist, professional writer syndicated op-ed columnist and public speaker. A highly driven communicator, Rebecca is powered by purpose and is renowned for her conversationalist brilliance and coruscating writing and speaking abilities.

Rebecca’s passion for public speaking traces back to her early years in her Seventh-Day Adventist Church where she delivered her first speech at 12 years old.  From there Rebecca Theodore personifies what it means to ascend above adversity by using criticism as a tool of empowerment.

Rebecca’s abilities as a speaker and writer are celebratory. An award-winning public speaker, Rebecca Theodore sails among word reefs, her prose swells to near poetry at many stages of the journey as she deluges her audience with torrents of eloquence.

Known to vigorously defend and debate her views and opinions, Rebecca Theodore has successfully addressed the Harvard Caribbean Law School Conference, the Discoveries Mining Conference, The Peaceful Caribbean Conference and the Women in Leadership Conference among others.

As an articulate pro-Israel activist, Rebecca Theodore has held notable debates in universities and campuses on the Biblical mandate to support Israel, while platforming the agenda of political parties and social organizations at national conventions and gracing the pulpits of many churches in the US, Canada and the Caribbean in sharing her inspiring message of hope, perseverance and faith in the creator of the universe.

As an international journalist, Rebecca Theodore’s formidable intellectual powers are refreshingly direct, decorating the pages of the LA Times, The Jewish Voice, the Chicago Tribune, The Associated Press, The Baltimore Post Examiner, National Public Radio -NPR, The Nassau Guardian Caribbean News Service, The Cayman Observer, Caribbean News Now, The Root.com, The Freeport News, The Daily Me, The Caribbean Writer, The Washington Pan African, and Nation of Change among others.

Rebecca Theodore’s journalistic and writing credits include the United Nations General Assembly UNGA, The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals UNSDG, The US State Department, The   Bloomberg Global Forum, World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia International Forum, and the United Against Nuclear Iran.

In combining her liberal arts education with politics, public administration and journalism, Rebecca Theodore has mastered the art of speech writing, thus translating complex economic, political and policy issues into clear messages for the general public, and has been an outspoken advocate for gender equality on a global scale, earning recognition into the Encyclopedia of speakers as a prominent keynote speaker on gender equality and women’s rights.

In addition to authoring numerous op-eds on politics, national security, human rights, climate change and mining, Rebecca Theodore has been recognized as a key person of influence in the field of journalism and professional writing in Women of Distinction magazine in NY and is eager to initiate dialogues around mining’s contribution of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal UNSDG #7 and #9, as Rebecca Theodore believes  that mining plays a significant role in the green tech revolution, and is the next energy transition for sustainable development

Rebecca Theodore is the powerful voice behind the upcoming television interviews:  Mining, Metals and sustainable development in a post covid global environment.

Richard Florida

Richard Florida is the Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Global Research Professor at New York University, and the founder of the Creative Class Group, which works closely with governments and companies worldwide, Richard Florida is perhaps the world’s leading urbanist.

Combining in-depth analysis, cutting-edge trends, compelling personal stories and a touch of humor, it is no wonder Richard Florida is one of the world’s most sought after speakers, alongside luminaries such as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor.

As a leading public intellectual, Esquire Magazine named him one of their Best and Brightest. Richard has also been appointed to the Business Innovation Factory’s Research Advisory Council and recently named European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation.

Florida is the author of several global best sellers, including the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class (“one of the best business books of all time”—800-CEO-READ), and is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for Atlantic Cities, the world’s leading media site devoted to cities and urban affairs. Florida appears regularly on CNN and other news broadcasts and is a regular contributor to the op ed pages of major newspapers and magazines.

TIME magazine recognized his Twitter feed as one of the 140 most influential in the world. Florida previously taught at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Ishan Gupta

Ishan Gupta is the Managing Director, Udacity, India. Udacity is democratizing education to make it affordable and accessible for people around the world. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in China, Germany, India, and the UK, Udacity provides online education to millions of students in collaboration with top employers including Google, Facebook, AT&T, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, Mercedes, Didi Chuxing, FlipKart and more. Ishan’s role in Udacity as the Managing Director for India is to build a strong team, launch more India-focused courses and take the Indian business to new heights.

Ishan was until end of 2016, the Vice President (Business) at Paytm (India's largest mobile commerce company, valued at $6Bn). Before that, he was running EduKart in India, which he had founded in 2011. The company went on to become the largest education marketplace of India.

Ishan has earlier worked at Facebook as a growth manager for India and established a corporate development division for a telco services company.

With a philosophy, ‘good is the enemy of great’; Ishan’s passion about democratisation of education has allowed him to lead and contribute to various initiatives which have resulted in education being an equaliser.

He did his engineering from University of Delhi and MBA from Stanford University, California, USA. Besides that, Ishan has published a book on entrepreneurship titled “Make the Move- Demystifying Entrepreneurship” and has been invited to speak on topics of leadership, entrepreneurship and ed-tech at various prestigious venues in India and outside including TEDx, Stanford Graduate Business School, IITs (Delhi, Mumbai), IIM - Bangalore, ISB, India Conference at Harvard and many more.

Ishan frequently writes on topics pertaining to education, technology, entrepreneurship and business management for leading Indian publications like The Times of India, India Today, YourStory, Indian Express and more. Ishan has also been featured on prestigious global and Indian platforms like TechCrunch and The Economic Times among others.

For his contribution to education technology, Ishan has been featured twice on CNBC Young Turks in 2006 and 2018. Young Turks is one of CNBC - TV 18’s longest running shows for young entrepreneurs in India. He has also served as the chairperson of Education Technology Committee of Internet & Mobile Association of India.  

 

Hermann Simon

Hermann Simon is the Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners. He is an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing. He is the only German in the “Thinkers50 Hall of Fame” of the most important management thinkers in the world. In German-speaking countries he has been continuously voted the most influential living management thinker since 2005. The magazine Cicero ranks him in the top 100 of the 500 most important intellectuals.

Before committing himself entirely to management consulting, Simon was a professor of business administration and marketing at the Universities of Mainz (1989-1995) and Bielefeld (1979-1989). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, Stanford, London Business School, INSEAD, Keio University in Tokyo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1995 to 2009 he was CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners.

Professor Simon has published over 35 books in 27 languages, including the worldwide bestsellers Hidden Champions (Boston 1996, cover story of BusinessWeek in 2004) and Power Pricing (New York 1997), as well as Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share (Boston 2006). Hidden Champions of the 21st Century, Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders (New York 2009) investigates the strategies of little known market leaders. Confessions of the Pricing Man was published by Springer, New York in 2015. His newest textbook Price Management has been published in 2019.

Simon was and is a member of the editorial boards of numerous business journals, including the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Management Science, Recherche et Applications en Marketing, Décisions Marketing, European Management Journal as well as several German journals. For several decades he regularly wrote columns for the German business monthly Manager Magazin. As a board member of numerous foundations and corporations, Professor Simon has gained substantial experience in corporate governance. From 1984 to 1986 he was the president of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). Simon is co-founder of the first Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) listed on the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt, and the first search fund in Germany.

A native of Germany, he studied economics and business administration at the universities of Bonn and Cologne. He received his diploma (1973) and his doctorate (1976) from the University of Bonn. Simon has received numerous international awards and holds honorary doctorates from IEDC Business School of Bled (Slovenia), from the University of Siegen (Germany) and from Kozminski University Warsaw (Poland). He is a honorary professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. In China, the “Hermann Simon Business School” is named after him.

In 2022 Simon released his brand-new book Beating Inflation–An Agile, Concrete and Effective Corporate Guide, co-authored with Adam Echter, partner in Simon-Kucher’s San Francisco Office.

Chan Kim

W. Chan Kim is Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD, France (the world's second largest business school). Prior to joining INSEAD, he was a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, USA. He has served as a board member as well as an advisor for a number of multinational corporations in Europe, the U.S. and Pacific Asia. He is an advisory member for the European Union and serves as an advisor to several countries. He was born in Korea.

Kim is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. His Harvard Business Review articles, co-authored with Renée Mauborgne, are worldwide bestsellers and have sold over half a million reprints. Their Value Innovation and Fair Process articles were selected as among the best classic articles ever published in Harvard Business Review. They have co-authored articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Asian Wall Street Journal, amongst others.

Kim has published numerous articles on strategy and managing the multinational which can be found in: Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and others. The Journal of International Management recognizes Kim as one of the world’s most influential academic journal authors in global strategy. He is the co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). Blue Ocean Strategy has become an "International Bestseller," after reaching the "Wall Street Journal Bestseller," "BusinessWeek Bestseller," and "National (American) Bestseller" status. It has sold over two million copies and is being published in a record-breaking 42 languages. It is a best seller across 5 continents. Blue Ocean Strategy won the Best Business Book of 2005 Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair. It was also selected as the number one Strategy Book of 2005 by Strategy + Business, Booz Allen & Hamilton's leading business magazine, and as a Top Ten Business Book of 2005 by Amazon.com.

Kim received the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking 2008 and is a winner of the Eldridge Haynes Prize, awarded by the Academy of International Business and the Eldridge Haynes Memorial Trust of Business International, for the best original paper in the field of international business. After being among the top five most influential business thinkers in 2009, Professor Kim was ranked No. 2 on The Thinkers50 2011 list of the world's top management gurus. He also won the 2011 Thinkers50 Strategy Award for his research on Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy was recognized as the business book of the last decade. Professor Kim was selected for the 2011 Leadership Hall of Fame by FastCompany magazine for his book, Blue Ocean Strategy.

He is the winner of the Prix DCF 2009 (Prix des Dirigeants Commerciaux de France 2009) in the category of « Stratégie d’entreprise ». L'Expansion also named Kim along with his colleague Renée Mauborgne as "the number one gurus of the future". The Sunday Times (London) called them "two of Europe's brightest business thinkers. Kim and Mauborgne provide a sizable challenge to the way managers think about and practice strategy. The Observer called Kim and Mauborgne, "the next big gurus to hit the business world." Kim is the winner of several European Case Clearing House awards including 'Best Case in Strategy' and 'Best Overall Case' across all disciplines.

Kim co-founded the Blue Ocean Strategy Network (BOSN), a global community of practice on the Blue Ocean Strategy family of concepts that they created. BOSN embraces academics, consultants, executives, and government officers.