Della Bradshaw, Business Education Editor, Financial Times

Wed 10/1, 6am – 7am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Della Bradshaw is the FT’s Business Education Editor and is responsible for all our business education coverage online, in the newspaper and in our magazines. She established the business education section in 1995 and devised and launched the first FT business school rankings in 1999. Before this, she was the Technology Lead Writer for the FT. She has previously lived and taught in Italy, Turkey and Japan.

Back to VIP Guests

John A. Byrne, President, Editor in Chief, Poets & Quants

Thurs 10/2, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Thurs 10/2, 3pm – 4pm EST
Forum: Evaluating Policy & Rankings

John A. Byrne is chairman and editor-in-chief of C-Change Media Inc., a digital media startup that is launching a network of websites for the global business community. C-Change currently has two highly successful sites, Poets&Quants.com and Poets&QuantsforExecs.com. Little more than two years old, P&Q generates more than one million monthly page views and boasts a book imprint division which published its first title in 2012. Byrne is also the author of “World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business As We Knew It,” his first book in ten years since the publication of his collaboration with General Electric Chairman Jack Welch. That book, “Straight from the Gut,” was a New York Times bestseller for 26 consecutive weeks.

Byrne’s collaboration with Mort Mandel, a self-made billionaire and highly successful entrepreneur in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds, will be published in December of 2012 by Jossey-Bass as part of its Warren Bennis leadership series. The book is entitled “It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead…and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader.”

Until Nov. of 2009, Byrne had been executive editor and editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com. He led BusinessWeek.com to record levels of reader engagement and traffic, oversaw the redesign of the site, and launched extensive new areas of coverage on management and lifestyle. Mr. Byrne initiated the site’s twice-daily executive news summary, weekly interactive case studies, multi-media classroom videos, as well as new blogs and podcasts. He helped to develop and launch a major Web 2.0 initiative called the Business Exchange, an innovative product utilizing social media and news aggregation.

Under his leadership, BusinessWeek.com won two consecutive National Magazine Awards, the most prestigious recognition in magazine publishing, an EPpy for Best Business Website with over one million unique visitors (over The Wall Street Journal), and second place honors as the Best Website of the Year for news and business by the Magazine Publishers Association. In 2008 alone, BW.com captured an unprecedented 21 awards and nominations for journalism excellence. His weekly podcast on Business Week’s cover story has been downloaded nearly 10 million times. Mr. Byrne’s views on the future of journalism have made him a popular speaker and essayist. In the past two years, he has spoken at more than a dozen conferences, has been frequently interviewed about the new world of journalism, and has been published by Harvard University’s Nieman Reports, The Christian Science Monitor, and MediaWeek magazine.

Prior to role at BusinessWeek.com, he was the executive editor for the print publication since 2005, during which he began three new annual franchises, including the highly successful Customer Service Champions and the Best Places to Launch a Career, and recruited to the magazine such popular weekly columnists as Jack and Suzy Welch, Maria Bartiromo, and renown wine critic Robert Parker.

Previously, Mr. Byrne was editor-in-chief of Fast Company magazine. He joined Fast Company in April 2003, succeeding founding editors Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, where he worked to reinvent the business magazine. Under his leadership, Fast Company won many coveted journalism awards, including its first Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. Mr. Byrne also made Fast Company the first business brand to launch an online blog and created, through a partnership with Monitor Group, an annual award competition for social entrepreneurs. More importantly, Mr. Byrne found and cultivated a buyer for the magazine, resulting in a $35 million purchase that saved the publication from an almost certain closure.

Before joining Fast Company, he worked for BusinessWeek for nearly 18 years, most recently holding the position of Senior Writer and authoring a record 57 cover stories for the magazine. His articles have explored the fairness of executive pay, the folly of management fads, and the governance of major corporations. Mr. Byrne’s magazine writing has won numerous awards and has been republished in collections of the best writing on business. He was named a National Magazine Award finalist as well as a Gerald Loeb award finalist twice. Among his more widely recognized cover stories are “Philip Morris: Inside America’s Most Reviled Company,” a provocative exploration of the men who ran the largest tobacco corporation in the world, “The Fall of a Dot-Com,” an investigative story on how big-name investors, blinded by Net fever, poured millions into a dot-com that fell into bankruptcy, “Joe Berardino’s Fall from Grace,” a narrative of how Arthur Andersen’s CEO presided over the demise of his legendary firm, “The Man Who Invented Management,” a reflective essay on why management guru Peter Drucker’s ideas still matter, and “Are CEOs Paid Too Much?,” an early examination (1992) of why executive compensation was out-of-control.

Mr. Byrne developed the idea of a monthly best-sellers list, launched the industry-leading business school rankings, established and managed the magazine’s ranking of the best and worst corporate boards, and created its annual list of the most generous philanthropists. He also built out the business education franchise online in the mid-1990s, setting the stage for a highly regarded online community and one that has reaped tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for BusinessWeek. He has been a frequent commentator on television, having appeared on CNN’s Moneyline and CNBC’s Squawk Box and Business Center.

Mr. Byrne is the author or co-author of more than ten books on business, leadership, and management, including two national bestsellers. World Changers, to be published by Penguin Books’ Portfolio imprint, is his first book in ten years. His previous book, published Sept. 11, 2001 by Warner Books, was Jack: Straight from the Gut, the highly anticipated collaboration with former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch. The book debuted at the very top of The New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list for 26 consecutive weeks. Mr. Byrne has written or co-authored seven other books, including Chainsaw (HarperCollins, 1999), the behind-the-scenes story of Al Dunlap’s rise and fall as a business celebrity. The book received widespread acclaim. Publishers Weekly called the book a “blistering saga” and a “sizzling tale.” The Street.com said Chainsaw “should be required reading in all business and accounting schools.”

Mr. Byrne’s other books include: Informed Consent (McGraw-Hill, 1995); The Headhunters (MacMillan, 1986); Odyssey (Harper & Row, 1987), the business biography of former Apple Computer chairman John Sculley; and The Whiz Kids (Currency/Doubleday, 1993), which explored the life and times of ten Army Air Force officers who helped to remake the Ford Motor Co. in the post-war period. Managment guru Tom Peters called The Whiz Kids “an important milestone in American management analysis. Warren Bennis has said the book is “the best history of American business from World War II to the present.” Mr. Byrne also wrote BusinessWeek’s Guide to the Best Business Schools (McGraw-Hill, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 1997) and co-wrote BusinessWeek’s Guide to the Best Executive Education Programs (McGraw-Hill, 1992).

As part of a new book imprint division at Poets&Quants, Byrne also is the co-author of “Handicapping Your MBA Odds: Profiles of 101 Applicants & Their Odds of Getting Into a Top Business School.” The book was published in the summer of 2012.

Back to VIP Guests

Fernando J. Fragueiro, PhD, President, Austral University

Wed 10/1, 2:30pm – 3:30pm EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Fernando is currently President of Austral University (School of Biomedical Sciences, Questrom School of Business Sciences, School of Communication, School of Law, School of Engineering, IAE Business School, Institute of Family Sciences, School of Education, Institute of Philosophy and Hospital Universitario Austral). Academic Director of “ENOVA Thinking”, Learning and Research Network to advance Regional Leadership for global competition in Latin America. It congregates Regional CEOs from more than 50 Multinationals and Latin-American companies as well as academics and experts on management in Emerging Markets. Fernando Fragueiro is former Dean of IAE Business School, Austral University (1995-2007), and former Vice President of Austral University (1998-2007). Under his deanship, IAE Business School achieved a remarkable positioning and growth. He mainly focused on the development of the Full-time Faculty up to 50 professors, followed by the funding and construction of the School’s four state of the art buildings, in the campus of Universidad Austral. Besides these achievements, the portfolio programmes were substantially expanded both, in Executive Education (participants grew from 700 up to 6000 executives attending each year IAE’s Executive Education activities) and at MBA level, launching the Full-time bilingual MBA in 1998. These significant accomplishments that also increased the scope of international activities of the school, contributed to position IAE among the world top Business Schools in Management Education, according to Financial Times since year 2000 (positioned 22nd in 2007). Finally, between year 2000 and 2006, IAE Business School also achieved accreditation of the three main international academic agencies: EU: EFMD (EQUIS); USA: AACSB; and UK: Association of MBAs.

Fernando Fragueiro is member of different Boards like the “Global Foundation for Management Development” and the “Academic Advisory Board” of ESE Business School, Universidad de los Andes in Chile. He has also created and chaired the “Business Board of Regional CEOs” (CEDI) joined by top executives responsible for the operation in Latin America of almost 40 multinationals and multilatinas such as: General Mills, Hewlett Packard, Kraft Foods, Danone, Siemens, Volkswagen, Falabella, Novartis, Telefónica Móviles, Dow Chemical, Eastman Chemical, Egon Zehnder Intnl.; The Walt Disney Comp.; Grupo Bimbo; SAP; Microsoft; Arcor; Ryder; Alcatel-Lucent; Nokia; Ingram Micro; I Basis; Agilent Technologies; Citibank; Assist-Card; Boehringer Ingelheim; Pan American Energy; Papelera del Plata (grupo CMPC); Dragados S.A.;  among others.

Full-time Professor of Organisational Behaviour at IAE since 1988, with particular focus on leadership, strategic leadership, and change management, Fernando got his first degree in Business Administration from Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA), secondly an Executive MBA from IAE Business School, and finally, a PhD in Industrial and Business Studies at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His dissertation on Strategic Leadership in Business Schools focuses on the political analysis of the strategic leadership process during the period 1990-2004, in three top European Business Schools: IMD, INSEAD, and London Business School.

Durin2008-2009, Fernando Fragueiro was Visiting Professor at Harvard Business School and IESE Business School (Spain), where he deepened the study of the role of the regional CEOs at their interface with global headquarters.

Back to VIP Guests

Vijay Govindarajan, PhD, Coxe Distinguished Professor, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business

Wed 10/1, 8pm – 9pm EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Vijay Govindarajan is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The Coxe Distinguished Professorship is a new Dartmouth-wide faculty chair. He was the first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric. He worked with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt to write “How GE is Disrupting Itself”, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that pioneered the concept of reverse innovation – any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world. HBR picked reverse innovation as one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century. In the latest Thinkers 50 Rankings, Govindarajan is rated the #1 Indian Management Thinker.

VG writes about innovation and execution on several platforms including Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He is a co-leader of a global initiative to design a $300 House.

Govindarajan has been identified as a leading management thinker by influential publications including: Outstanding Faculty, named by Business Week in its Guide to Best B-Schools; Top Ten Business School Professor in Corporate Executive Education, named by Business Week; Top Five Most Respected Executive Coach on Strategy, rated by Forbes; Top 50 Management Thinker, named by The London Times; Rising Super Star, cited by The Economist; Outstanding Teacher of the Year, voted by MBA students.

Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, VG was on the faculties of Harvard Business School, INSEAD (Fontainebleau) and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad, India).

The recipient of numerous awards for excellence in research, Govindarajan was inducted into the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame, and ranked by Management International Review as one of the Top 20 North American Superstars for research in strategy. One of his papers was recognized as one of the ten most-often cited articles in the entire 40-year history of Academy of Management Journal.

VG is a rare faculty who has published more than ten articles in the top academic journals (Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal) and more than ten articles in prestigious practitioner journals including several best-selling HBR articles. He received the McKinsey Award for the best article in HBR. He published the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Seller, Reverse Innovation.

VG has worked with CEOs and top management teams in more than 25% of the Fortune 500 firms to discuss, challenge, and escalate their thinking about strategy. His clients include: Boeing, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Deere, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, J&J, New York Times, P&G, Sony, and Wal-Mart. He has been a keynote speaker in the BusinessWeek CEO Forum, HSM World Business Forum, TED and World Economic Forum at Davos.

VG received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School and was awarded the Robert Bowne Prize for the best thesis proposal. He also received his MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School where he was included in the Dean’s Honor List. Prior to this, VG received his Chartered Accountancy degree in India where he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for obtaining the first rank nationwide.

Back to VIP Guests

Daniel Greenstein, DPhil, Director of Postsecondary Success Strategy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Thurs 10/2, 2pm – 3pm EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Dr. Daniel Greenstein serves as Director of Education, Postsecondary Success for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Greenstein oversees work to substantially increase the number of students that acquire a postsecondary degree or certificate.

Before joining the Foundation, Greenstein was Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Programs at the University of California Office of the President, a role in which he acted as the director for UC Online Education – a new effort to integrate online education into the university’s undergraduate curriculum, among other accomplishments.

Greenstein has led, in some cases founded, several internet-based academic information services in the US (the California Digital Library) and the United Kingdom (the Arts and Humanities Data Service), and served on boards and acted in strategic consulting roles for educational, cultural heritage, and information organizations.

He holds degrees from the Universities of Oxford (DPhil) and Pennsylvania (MA, BA) and began his professional life as a senior lecture in Modern History at Glasgow University. Current fascinations include sustaining models for public higher education, online undergraduate instruction, and models for supporting disruptive innovation in large well-established organizations.

Back to VIP Guests

Richard K. Lyons, PhD, Dean, Haas School of Business, University of California – Berkeley

Wed 10/1, 12pm – 1pm EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Rich Lyons began as Dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 2008. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1993, Rich was an Assistant Professor at Columbia Business School. He received his BS from Berkeley (finance) and PhD from MIT (economics). His research and teaching are mostly in international finance, though his more recent work explores how business leadership drives innovation, an area of strategic importance to Berkeley-Haas. In 1998 Rich received Berkeley’s highest teaching honor and from 2006-08 he was on leave at Goldman Sachs as their Chief Learning Officer, focusing on leadership development for managing directors.

Principal changes at Berkeley-Haas under Dean Lyons include culture, collaboration space and leadership. Long known for areas like technology, entrepreneurship, strategy and social impact, Berkeley-Haas drove its strengths more deeply into admissions and other critical processes with a set of four defining culture principles: Question the status quo, Confidence without attitude, Students always and Beyond yourself. Collaboration space is another area of heavy investment at the school, including a new courtyard, a new “active library” adjoining the courtyard, a new innovation lab, and a new education building for breakout, flexible-use, event, and gathering spaces. In a world where education is increasingly digital, some parts of education will always be best delivered face-to-face in cutting-edge spaces. On leadership, Berkeley-Haas has pulled together its advantage being in the SF/Silicon Valley area, its distinctive culture and its preeminent faculty into a curriculum designed to deliver a signature brand of more innovative and entrepreneurial leadership.

Back to VIP Guests

Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, Indian Business School

Tues 9/30, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Ajit Rangnekar is the Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB). Rangnekar leads the School’s vision to be among the globally top-ranked, research-driven management institutions. His role is to attract the best of research faculty to the School, create an

environment that promotes high quality research, strengthen its expertise on emerging markets issues, and to ensure the transformational development of the school’s students and alumni. Rangnekar has been associated with the ISB for close to a decade and has been instrumental in strengthening the School’s relationships with the external stakeholders – industry, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and experts. Rangnekar believes that education institutions have the responsibility to meet the needs of

government, business and society and envisions ISB playing its part in this transformation, not just in India, but all over the world. In line with this mission, he works closely with several international organisations and business school experts on improving the way management education is imparted across the world. He serves as a Director in the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). He is also a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools

of Business (AACSB). He is also involved in an advisory capacity with several educational, student and regulatory bodies in India. Rangnekar has a background spanning over thirty years in Consulting and Industry across different countries in Asia. Before joining the ISB, he was the Country Head, first for Price Waterhouse Consulting and then for PwC Consulting, in Hong Kong and the Philippines. He was head of the

Telecom and Entertainment Industry Consulting practice for PwC in East Asia (China to Indonesia). He worked with Associated Cements Companies, India prior to moving to Hong Kong. Rangnekar holds an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and completed his post graduation in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Back to VIP Guests

Jitendra V. Singh, PhD, Dean, School of Business and Management, Michael Jebsen Professor of Business Chair Professor, Department of Management, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Tues 9/30, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Jitendra Singh is currently Michael Jebsen Professor of Business and Management and Dean, School of Business and Management at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong after a long career at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

From 2007-2009, he was Dean of the Nanyang Business School (NBS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, one of the leading science and technology universities in Asia Pacific. During this period, he was Shaw Foundation Chair and Professor of Strategy, Management and Organization at Nanyang Business School. In addition, at the university level, he was a member of the University Cabinet of NTU, and Chief Adviser, India Strategy to the President of NTU. At the end of his term as Dean of Nanyang Business School (NBS), their MBA program was ranked #24 in the 2009 Financial Times rankings, and was rated as one of the leaders in the Asia Pacific region.

He has been a faculty member at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, since 1987 where he was the Saul P. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Management before moving to HKUST. During 1998-2001, he was Vice Dean, International Academic Affairs. In his Vice Dean role, he was a member of Wharton’s core administrative leadership team and was charged with shaping and implementing the global strategy of Wharton. These efforts culminated, in part, in the worldwide alliance between Wharton and INSEAD, the foundation of Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India and the creation of Singapore Management University in Singapore. Earlier, he was Director of the Emerging Economies Program at Wharton from 1996-98. From 1991-1995, he was Research Director, Entrepreneurship at the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Center at Wharton, the leading research center in entrepreneurship at any US business school.

He moved to Wharton in 1987 from University of Toronto, Canada where he was an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the (now) Rotman School of Business. In 1991, he received an M.A. (honoris causa) from University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford Business School in 1983. His earliest education was in natural and mathematical sciences and he received his B.Sc. (Physics, Mathematics, and Statistics) from Lucknow University, India. Subsequently, he received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. He worked as a line manager at Voltas Ltd., a Tata group company, in India for three years before coming to the US for his Ph.D.

His research and teaching interests focus on strategy and organization, with a specific current interest in emerging multinationals and business leadership in India.

Back to VIP Guests

Jonathan Spector, President and CEO, The Conference Board

Tues 9/30, 5pm – 6pm EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Jonathan Spector is president and chief executive officer of The Conference Board, the most widely cited private source of business intelligence. Previously, he served in several executive roles: as an adjunct professor and vice dean of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and as chief executive officer of several venture-funded companies. Spector began his career at McKinsey & Company, where he spent 20 years and was elected a senior partner.  He is the co-author of We Are Smarter than Me (2007), which highlights how businesses can harness the power of collective intelligence. Spector serves as Vice Chair of The Demand Institute and the March of Dimes Foundation. He also serves on the board of directors of The Conference Board of Canada, The Echo Design Group and is a member of the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) Executive Board. He is a Trustee Emeritus of Wesleyan University where he earned his BA in math/economics with honors and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

See other VIP guest from The Conference Board: Rebecca Ray
Back to VIP Guests

Richard Straub, PhD, President & CEO, Peter Drucker Society Europe, Senior Advisor IBM Global Education Industry, Director of Corporate Services & EU Affairs, EFMD

Wed 10/1, 9am-10am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

In his 32 years with IBM Dr. Richard Straub has held key international executive positions such as Deputy General Manager for PC Europe and Global Chief Learning Officer. Since 2006 he has started a new career working with non-profit organizations – as part time executive and as social entrepreneur. He is currently executive committee member at the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and Secretary General of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG).  In addition he holds a strategic advisory role for the IBM Global Education Industry.
 
In 2008 he founded the Peter Drucker Society of Austria and in 2010 the Peter Drucker Society Europe as non-profit organizations. He is the president of both. The Peter Drucker Society has as its mission to be a catalyst for the improvement of Management as a vital role in modern society. As the crystallizing yearly event the Drucker Society organizes the Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna – the sixth edition will be held in November 2014. 

Back to VIP Guests