Speakers
Kiyotaka Akasaka
Kiyotaka Akasaka was appointed Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information in 2007. He also serves as Coordinator of questions relating to multilingualism throughout the UN Secretariat.
Mr. Akasaka served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from 2003 to 2007.
He was Japan's Ambassador to the UN from 2000 to 2001; and a bureau member for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.
As Deputy Director-General of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Multilateral Cooperation Department, Mr. Akasaka was one of Japan's senior negotiators in the Kyoto Conference on Climate Change. He has also worked with the World Health Organization and the Secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Lyman W. Porter
Lyman W. Porter is Professor Emeritus of Management in the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, and was formerly Dean of that School. Prior to joining UCI in 1967, he served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, and, also, was a Visiting Professor at Yale University.
Currently, he serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Armenia. Previously, he has been a Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University, and has served on the Academic Advisory Board of the Czechoslovak Management Center, and as an External Examiner for the National University of Singapore.
Professor Porter is a past president of The Academy of Management. In 1983 he received that organization's "Scholarly Contributions to Management" Award, and in 1994 its "Distinguished Management Educator" Award. He has also served as President of the Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and in 1989 was the recipient of SIOP's "Distinguished Scientific Contributions" Award.
Professor Porter's major fields of interest are organizational psychology, management, and management education. He is the author, or co-author, of 11 books and over 90 articles in these fields.
Rakesh Khurana
Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School.
Professor Khurana received his B.S. from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and his A.M. (Sociology) and Ph.D. in Organization Behavior from Harvard University. Prior to attending graduate school, he worked as a founding member of Cambridge Technology Partners in Sales and Marketing.
Professor Khurana's research uses a sociological perspective to focus on the processes by which elites and leaders are selected and developed. His book on the CEO labor market, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton University Press) was published in October, 2002. Khurana's current research grows out of the same interests in the social context of business leadership and the allocation of leadership positions that motivated his research on the CEO labor market.
Khurana and Nitin Nohria have co-edited a forthcoming volume on advancing leadership studies as an academic field of study and scholarship that will be published by Harvard Business Press in 2010.
Richard Edelman
Richard Edelman is the president and CEO of the world's largest independent public relations firm with over 3,100 employees in 51 offices worldwide. Edelman was most recently named "PR Agency of the Year 2009," "Large Agency of the Year 2009" by PRWeek for the third year in a row, "Agency A-List 2008" by Ad Age and "2007 Global Agency of the Year" by the Holmes Report. Edelman has been a leader in public relations since it was founded in 1952.
Richard Edelman was named president and CEO in September 1996. Prior to that, he served as president of Edelman's U.S. operations, regional manager of Europe and manager of the firm's New York office.
He serves on the Board of Directors of the Ad Council, the Atlantic Council, The Children's Aid Society and the National Committee on U.S-China Relations. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum, the Arthur Page Society and PR Seminar.
Harald Zulauf
Harald Zulauf (born 1960) studied business administration, politics and international law at University of Cologne, Georgetown University Washington, London City University and HEC Paris. After already working as a freelance journalist for German television and newspapers he became a TV correspondent for politics and business with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk and the ARD in 1985.
From 1987 to 1989 he worked as a PR consultant for the Minister of Defence and later NATO Secretary-General Manfred Wörner. After the Fall of the Wall and the German Unification he worked for the German Government's Trust Agency in the privatisation of the former East German state medias. Since 1993 he has been managing director of MEDIA CONSULTA Deutschland GmbH in Cologne, and since 2001 also CEO of MEDIA CONSULTA International Holding AG, Berlin.
Dr. Jamshed Irani
Dr. Irani obtained a degree in M.Sc. (Geology) from Nagpur University in 1958. M.Met. in 1960 and Ph.D. in 1963 from the University of Sheffield, U.K. After holding the CEO's office for almost a decade in Tata Steel, Dr Irani retired in 2001. He continues to be a Director on the Board of Tata Steel. Besides Tata Steel, Dr. Irani is a Director on the Boards of several Corporates including Tata Sons Ltd., Tata Motors Ltd., and BOC (India) Ltd. He is Chairman of Tata Refractories Ltd., TRF Ltd. and Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd.
In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him an honorary Knighthood (KBE), for his contributions to Indo-British Trade and Co-operation. In 2007 he was honoured by the President of India who conferred on him the award of "Padma Bhushan" for his services to Trade and Industry in the country. Dr. Irani has been appointed with effect from 7th Jan 2010 as a member of the Expert Group to prepare a Strategy for Low Carbon Economy for India, which was constituted by the Planning Commission, Govt. Of India.
Philippe de Woot
Philippe de Woot was a Harvard Faculty Associate from 1958 to 1959 and Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain. His research centres on business strategy, strategic competitiveness of European companies and senior management roles and attitudes. He has been Secretary of the European Round Table of Industrialists' Education work group and has published a large number of books and articles.
He is also a member of the International Academy of Management, l'Académie Royale de Belgique, a founding member of the Strategic Management Society and board member of several European multinational companies. His book "Should Prometheus Be Bound" was published by Palgrave (London, 2005). The Belgian inter-university "Philippe de Woot Award" aims to promote sustainability Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
