Chris Gardner the key to the success

World renowned business thinker and management innovator

Gary Hamel is one of the world’s most influential and iconoclastic business thinkers who has led transformational efforts in some of the world’s most notable companies helping to create billions of dollars in shareholder value. For over four decades, Hamel has served on the faculty of the London Business School and he is the director of the Management Lab. Hamel is an author of landmark books such as Competing for the Future, The Future of Management and Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them.

The Wall Street Journal has ranked Hamel as the world’s most influential business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him “the world’s leading expert on business strategy.”

Groundbreaking leader and former CEO at AT&T Business

Anne Chow is a pioneering figure in the enterprise world, with a remarkable career spanning more than 30 years. She was the first woman of color CEO in AT&T’s 140+ year history, overseeing AT&T Business, a global operating unit with a workforce of 35,000 and a value of $35 billion.

Chow is currently Lead Director on the Board of Directors of FranklinCovey and also serves on the Board of Directors of 3M. Additionally, she is an Adjunct Professor of Executive Education at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

She has been widely recognized for her role model inclusive leadership, driving success at the intersection of people, culture, and technology.  She has been named to Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business twice, Forbes inaugural CEO Next List of Leaders set to revolutionize American business, and Light Reading’s Most Inspiring Woman in Communications. 

Former Director of the CIA and United States Army General

General David H. Petraeus is a pivotal figure in modern U.S. military history. His illustrious military career spanned over 37 years and included six command roles, five of which were during combat. Notably, Petraeus is recognized for orchestrating the “Surge” in Iraq, halting the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan, and reshaping American military doctrine with comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaigns. Often paralleled to eminent military leaders like Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Petraeus stands out as one of America’s “great battle captains.” A graduate with distinction from the United States Military Academy, General Petraeus is the only person in U.S. Army history to be the top graduate in both the U.S. Army’s challenging Ranger School and the year-long U.S. Army Command and General Staff College course.

Post-military, he steered the CIA, amplifying global counterterrorism efforts, expanding intelligence outreach, and instituting a strategic agency blueprint. His leadership at the CIA also saw the inception of an Economic Security Center. Petraeus has been lauded with a plethora of U.S. military and international accolades and has been honored by 14 foreign nations. Transitioning to the private sector, he currently holds positions as a Partner at KKR, chairman of the KKR Global Institute, and the Kissinger Fellow at Yale University. His scholarly endeavors also include co-authoring the bestseller, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine.”

One of the greatest directors and filmmakers of all time

Francis Ford Coppola is a highly renowned film director, producer, and screenwriter. He has won multiple prestigious awards, including five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d’Or, and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA). Coppola’s most notable films, such as The Godfather trilogy – which transformed the gangster genre – and Apocalypse Now, have established him as one of the most significant filmmakers in American history.

Apart from his filmmaking career, Coppola has expanded his horizons into the wine and hospitality industry, establishing the Francis Ford Coppola Presents brand, which offers various resorts, cafes, and wineries located in California, Guatemala, and Belize. 

He is currently working on his upcoming self-financed film Megalopolis.

Stephen M. R. Covey is the bestselling author of The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything. He is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world. Covey personally led the strategy that propelled his father’s book, Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to become one of the two most influential business books of the 20th Century, according to CEO Magazine. His latest book is titled Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. 

Former President of Tesla Motors

A visionary leader and serial entrepreneur, Jon McNeill teaches organizations how to exponentially scale businesses and drive disruptive innovation. As former President of Tesla, he oversaw a 10-fold increase in sales from $2 billion to $20 billion in just three years. In 2018, he became COO at ride-hailing app Lyft, where he helped prepare the company to go public, growing revenue from $800 million to $2 billion in the process.

Currently, McNeill is a Managing Director at DVx Ventures, a growth-stage venture platform, and serves on several boards of companies including General Motors, Lululemon and Stash Financial.

Columbia Business School Professor and authority on organizational performance and diversity

Modupe Akinola is a leading authority on organizational performance and diversity, and an Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. Her research on stress and discrimination has been published in numerous academic journals and media outlets, including The New York Times, Forbes, and The Economist. Akinola has received several awards, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management Journal. 

She advises leaders on managing stress, diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives and women’s leadership. Before becoming an academic, Akinola was the head of diversity at Bain & Co., where she contributed to the organization’s recruitment and retention framework for people of color. She earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Harvard.

Authority on Psychological Safety and Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School

Amy Edmondson is a Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. An authority on Psychological Safety, Edmondson has been consistently ranked as the #1 Management Thinker in the world over the past 4 years. Her research focuses on the fields of teaming, psychological safety, and leadership, having penned over 70 articles and case studies on these topics. Her work on leadership, teams, innovation, and organizational learning has earned her various accolades. Among them are the Accenture Award for her notable contribution to management practices, and a recognition by HR Magazine as one of the 20 Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources.

She is the author of bestselling books, including The Fearless Organization, and Right Kind of Wrong.

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business

Named by Poets & Quants as one of the world’s top business professors, Scott Galloway is an entrepreneur and Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Galloway has founded prominent companies such as Prophet, Red Envelope, L2, and Section4. Furthermore, Galloway has been a board member for organizations like The New York Times Company and Urban Outfitters. 

A New York Times-bestselling author, Galloway’s most notable books include The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, and Post Corona. His latest book Adrift: America in 100 Charts debuted on the New York Times bestseller list in October 2022.