James Post, PhD, John F. Smith, Jr. Professorship in Management, Boston University Questrom School of Business

Forum: Fostering Ethical Leadership

*Forum Hosts engage throughout the 60 hours at unscheduled times.

James E. Post holds the John F. Smith, Jr. Professorship in Management. He is a member of the Business Policy & Law Department and teaches courses in strategic management, professional ethics and responsibility, and corporate governance. He is the author or co-author of many books, including “Redefining the Corporation,” with L. Preston and S. Sachs, a study of governance and accountability.

 

See other Boston University VIPs:  Ken FreemanRobert A. Brown, Michael Salinger, N. Venkatraman

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L. Kevin Cox, Chief Human Resources Officer, American Express Company

Thurs 10/2, 7am – 8am EST
Forum: Supporting 21st Century Competencies

Kevin Cox is the Chief Human Resources Officer at American Express. He is the primary architect of the company’s human capital plan and related strategies that focus on making American Express one of the most financially successful and respected companies in the world.

Kevin has been a leader in Human Resources for more than two decades. His expertise lies in the fields of organizational effectiveness, talent management, and driving large-scale complex change.

He joined American Express in 2005 after 16 years at Pepsi-Cola and the Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG), where he held positions leading strategy, business development, technology, and Human Resources. He played a significant role in the successful initial public offering of PBG in 1999.

Kevin is a member of the board of directors of CEB as well as Kraft Food Group, where he is chair of the compensation committee.

He is active in a number of professional HR organizations, serving on the boards of the Human Resources Policy Association, the National Academy of Human Resources, and the Cornell University Center for Advanced Human Resources studies.

Kevin is a frequent speaker on strategy, building organizational capability and increasing the role and influence of Human Resources in global businesses.

He holds a Master’s of Labor and Industrial Relations from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Arts from Marshall University.

He is an active member of his community in Connecticut, where he and his family enjoy their involvement with a wide range of charitable organizations. His hobbies include golf, weightlifting, and listening to an eclectic collection of music.

 

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Ashwini Kakkar, PhD, Vice Chairman, Mercury Travels, Chairman of Via.com, Ambit Corporation and the Fight Hunger Foundation

Wed 10/1, 7am – 8am EST
Forum: Supporting 21st Century Competencies

Mr. Ashwini Kakkar is an Entrepreneur, Vice Chairman of Mercury Travels and Chairman of Via.com, Ambit Corporation and the Fight Hunger Foundation.

He is a Mechanical Engineer with a Post-Graduate from IIM Kolkata,  MBA from INSEAD France, and a Law Education from the Government Law College Mumbai.

A past President of Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also of Travel Agents Association of India, Chairman of World Travel and Tourism Council, he is a board Director of many companies including Pramerica, Europ Assistance India, Jai Medica and Himalayan Exploration.

A distinguished fellow of the Institute of Directors London, Kakkar was knighted by the French Government in 2007 with the “Chevalier De L’Ordre Merite”.

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Steve Denning, Forbes contributor, Board Member of the Scrum Alliance

Tues 9/30, 3pm – 4pm EST
Forum: Increasing the Value of Management Education

Chat: Thurs 10/2, 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Management Skills Necessary to Thrive in the Creative Economy

Steve Denning is the author of the award-winning books, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century(Jossey-Bass, 2010), The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007) and The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (Jossey-Bass, 2005).

From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he spearheaded the organizational knowledge sharing program.

In November 2000, Steve Denning was selected as one of the world’s ten Most Admired Knowledge Leaders (Teleos)

He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on leadership, innovation, business narrative and most recently, radical management.

His clients have included many organizations, large and small, around the world, including GE, IBM, Microsoft, McKinsey, Shell, Netflix, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Syngenta, Danfoss, McDonalds, Unilever, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories, MWH, Ernst & Young, CRM Learning, Xerox, Oracle, Maritz, Target, Burns & McDonnell, Mitre Corporation, Innovation Council, Deluxe, Fetzer Foundation, Diageo (UK), UK Parliamentary Ombudsman, Nestle (Switzerland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), International Energy Agency (Austria), Symbiosis (Austria), PMI (France), Ambrosetti (Italy), ARK group (UK, Asia, Australia), Air New Zealand, World Bank, UN, UNDP, US Army, USAID, CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NetHope, The Brookings Institution, American Institute of Architects, California Workforce Association, CIA, NSA, NIMA, FAA, NY State Government, Oregon State Government, Australian government ministries, New Zealand ministries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Norway).

In April 2003, Steve was ranked as one of the world’s Top Two Hundred Business Gurus by Davenport & Prusak, “What’s The Big Idea? (Harvard, 2003).

Steve’s most recent book, Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010), was selected by 800-CEO-READ as one of the best five books on management in 2010. It offers a comprehensive guide to the reinventing the organization for the 21st Century.

Steve’s book, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (October 2007) was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2007. It was also selected by the book distributor, 800-CEO-READ, as the best book on leadership in 2007. It is a comprehensive guide to transformational leadership, particularly how to use develop and use narrative intelligence to inspire enduring enthusiasm in any audience for your cause.

Steve’s book, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005) is a comprehensive guide to the various ways in which leaders can use of storytelling to achieve a variety of organizational purposes, including spark action, communicate who they are, transmit the brand, transfer values, share knowledge, inspire collaboration, tame the grapevine and lead people into the future.

Steve’s book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000) describes how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management.

Steve’s book, Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership and Storytelling was published by Jossey-Bass in June 2004. It discusses the seven highest value forms of organizational storytelling, about which there is already considerable advance praise.

Another book, co-authored by Steve Denning along John Seely Brown, Katalina Groh and Larry Prusak, was published in June 2004 by Elsevier. It is entitled Storytelling in Organizations: How Narrative and Storytelling Are Transforming Twenty-first Century Management

Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. Steve then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities and held various management positions, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank.

Steve was a Senior Scholar at the Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland from 2006-2009.

In the Fall of 2009, Steve was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls Colleges, Oxford University, UK.

Steve was a member of the Quality Council V of the Conference Board from 1993 to 1996.

He has published a novel, The Painter and a a volume of poetry Sonnets 2000.

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John North, Director of Global Operations, Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative

Wed 10/1, 4am – 5am EST
Forum: Fostering Ethical Leadership

John North is a next generation integrational entrepreneur operating across the boundaries of society, business and academia. Following an international strategy consulting career which included founding Accenture’s sustainability practice in Ireland, his passion to make a difference in his home country brought him back to South Africa where he combines local advisory work with an international role as Director Operations of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative. John is one of the lead contributors to the 50+20 vision “Management Education for the World” and recently directed the design and delivery of a 50+20 Innovation Cohort for Deans and Directors of Business Schools. He holds Information Science and MBA degrees from the University of Pretoria where he founded 2 online businesses during his undergraduate studies, and where he now holds an advisory board position. John and his family lives in the Garden Route of South Africa.

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Ananth Rao, PhD, Chief Academic Officer, Professor, University of Dubai

Wed 10/1, 5pm – 6pm EST
Forum: Producing Research with Impact

Dr. Ananth Rao is a Professor of Finance & Banking and Chief Academic Officer (CAO) at University of Dubai (UD). Dr. Rao obtained his PhD in Applied Economics-Banking from University of Minnesota (USA) in 1991, and MS in the same subject from Purdue University (USA) in 1985.

Prior to joining academics in 1997, Dr. Rao served State Bank of India – a premiere commercial bank in India in various Managerial roles for 15 + years. He passed the coveted Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Level 1 examination in June 2000 conducted by the CFA Institute (formerly Association of Investment & Management Research – AIMR) USA. He is an active professional member of Financial Management Association (FMA) International – USA and Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) – USA.

As CAO, he is involved in monitoring and controlling performance of all academic units at UD. Dr. Rao is an active researcher in the areas of Enterprise Risk Management, Investments, Bank Management, ALM, Corporate Finance, Stability of Emerging Financial Markets, Derivatives, and Efficiency of Financial Services Firms. He has more than twenty research publications in refereed international financial journals. Dr. Rao is currently teaching Risk Management, Investments & Portfolio Management, and Strategic Management to MBA students. He was instrumental in earning and maintaining AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) international accreditation to UD business school.

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Ben M. Bensaou, PhD, Professor of Technology and Operations Management, Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management, INSEAD

Thurs 10/2, 2pm – 3pm EST
Forum: Cultivating Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Ben M. Bensaou is Professor of Technology Management and Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School in 1998-1999. He holds a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan Questrom School of Business, USA; an MA in Management Science from Hitotsubashi University, Japan; a Diplôme d’Ingénieur (MSc) in Civil Engineering; and a DEA in Mechanical Engineering from respectively the Ecole Nationale des TPE, Lyon and the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France.

His research and teaching focuses on (1) a Process View of Value Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy deployment initiatives, (2) new forms of organizations, in particular networked corporations, (3) the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on organizations and Value Innovation. Professor Bensaou addresses these issues from an international comparative perspective, with a special focus on Japanese organizations. His research on supplier relations in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries won the best doctoral dissertation in the field of information systems and a finalist award for the Free Press Award for outstanding dissertation research in business policy and strategy. His case on the Circus Industry and the Cirque du Soleil won the 2006 ECCH Best Case Award (in Strategy – with Kim and Mauborgne). His publications include papers inManagement Science, Information Systems Research, Organization Sciencer, Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, , book chapters and conference proceedings. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and MISQ Executive. He has been listed in the Who’s Who in the World since 1998.

Professor Bensaou has been consulting for Asian, European and US corporations. He teaches courses on Corporate Strategy, Value Innovation/Blue Ocean Strategy, Information Technology and Comparative Management (in English and French). He has been a Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo and has taught (in Japanese) in Executive Programs at Keio Business School, Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Bensaou grew up in France. He has also lived and was educated in Japan. He and his wife Masako live in Fontainebleau, with their two younger sons Alexis and Lennon. Their elder son Sophian is pursuing his college education in Philadelphia, USA.

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Ambi M.G. Parameswaran, PhD, Advisor, FCB Ulka Advertising

Tues 9/30, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Engaging New-Generation Students & Employees

Ambi as he is known, is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Madras (Indian Institute of Technology) and a Management Graduate from IIM Calcutta (Indian Institute of Management).  In a career spanning three decades he has handled assignments in marketing, sales and advertising with companies like Rediffusion DY&R, Boots Company and UDI Yellow Pages before dropping anchor at FCB Ulka Advertising over two decades ago.  He has had a key role in the transformation of Ulka Advertising into FCB Ulka Group, one of India’s top three marketing communication group, with interests in advertising, media, consulting, digital, and healthcare. He has worked on numerous brands including Digene, Brufen, Santoor Soap, Sundrop Cooking Oil, TCS, ICICI Bank, Wipro, Tata Indica Cars, Zee TV among others, covering diverse categories such as automotives, healthcare, telecom, FMCG, corporate etc.

Ambi has been contributing articles to premier business publications, has conducted seminars and branding workshops for Indian/ MNC organizations and industry bodies. He has been a speaker at international forums including the Kellogg India Conference at Northwestern University and Cornell University; he has also been a guest faculty at several business schools including Indian School of Business and his alma mater, IIMC. He has also presented papers at international conferences of Association for Consumer Research and INFORMS.

Ambi now has seven books to his credit including: “FCB-Ulka Brand Building Advertising – Concepts and Cases”; “Building Brand Value – Five Steps to Building Powerful Brands” (Winner of 2007 NTPC – DMA Book Prize), and “For God’s Sake – An adman on the Business of Religion” (the last book was inspired by his research on “Religion and Consumer Behaviour”)

Ambi is involved in several industry organizations such as CII, IAA and has served as the President of Advertising Club Bombay. He successfully completed his PhD from Mumbai University in 2012, and the Advanced Management Programme from Harvard Business School in 2014. He was inducted into the Board of Governors of IIMC in 2007 and he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Madras in April 2009. Ambi was elected as the President of the apex advertising industry body, the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) in July 2014.

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Jamie P. Merisotis, President and CEO, Lumina Foundation

Wed 10/1 4pm – 5pm EST
Forum: Supporting 21st Century Competencies

Jamie P. Merisotis is president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation committed solely to enrolling and graduating more students from college.  Under his leadership, Lumina employs a strategic, outcomes-based approach in pursuing the Foundation’s mission of expanding college access and success particularly among low-income, minority and other historically underrepresented populations.  Lumina’s goal is to ensure that, by 2025, 60 percent of Americans hold high quality degrees, certificates and other credentials—up from the current level of less than 40 percent.

Before joining Lumina in 2008, Merisotis founded and served 15 years as president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Higher Education Policy, one of the world’s premier education research and policy centers.  He previously served as executive director of the National Commission on Responsibilities for Financing Postsecondary Education, a bipartisan commission appointed by the U.S. president and congressional leaders. Merisotis also helped create the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps), and serves on numerous national and international boards of directors, including Bates College in Maine, Anatolia College in Greece, the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

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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.

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