Date & Time:

Thursday, December 4th, 2008, 12:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Speaker:

Matthew Kiernan

Matthew Kiernan is the author of Investing in a Sustainable World: Why Green is the New Color of Money on Wall Street. He is the Founder and Chief Executive of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc. Innovest's clients include the leading institutional investors in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, including APG, the second-largest in the world. Innovest has been rated the #1 firm in the world in its field.

Prior to founding Innovest, Matthew served as Director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva, serving as the Principal Business and Industry Advisor to the Secretary General to the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Matthew Kiernan is a frequent speaker at international investment conferences, and recently addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In 2007. he received a special executive award from the U.N. Environment Program's Finance Initiative for innovation and leadership in the emerging field of carbon finance.

Matthew holds degrees in political science and environmental studies, as well as Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of London.

Innovest      Buy the Book

Date & Time:

Thursday, November 6th, 2008, 12:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Speaker:

Josh Bernoff

Josh Bernoff is the coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, a comprehensive analysis of corporate strategy for dealing with social technologies like blogs, social networks, and wikis.

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, said of Groundswell, "This book will rock your world, if social technology hasn't rocked it already . . . This book will be your bible."

Josh has been a Forrester Research analyst for 13 years and is currently a vice president at the technology and market research company where his analysis aims at a deeper understanding of people, how they use technology, and how that affects business.

Josh has consulted on strategy with senior executives from global companies including ABC, Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Comcast, L’Oréal, Microsoft, Sony, TiVo, and Viacom.

Josh has a bachelor's degree from The Pennsylvania State University and was a National Science Foundation fellow in the graduate program in mathematics at MIT.

Speaker's Blog      Speaker's Book

Date & Time:

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008, 12:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Speaker:

John Polumbo

John Polumbo, Professional Business Development Consultant & Sales Trainer, has over 15 years of high-level corporate and small business experience. His areas of expertise include Sales and Sales Management as well as Marketing and Sales Organization consulting.

As owner of two companies and in key roles in corporate sales management, John has been critically involved in many stages of the sales process. He has performed top functions of large scale corporate selling, recruited and trained high-performed sales teams, and partnered with clients ranging in size from $1 to $600 million in annual sales.

For the past eight years, John has served as President & Owner of Strategic Sales Group, Inc. As an affiliate of the nationally recognized Sandler Sales Institute, he brings a completely unique approach to the sales strategy. John is a highly-regarded speaker, consultant and executive advisor to the best and brightest people and companies in 20 industries.

Strategic Sales Group      Amazon.com

Date & Time:

Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Omar Kahn

Omar Khan is the author of Liberating Passion: How The World’s Best Global Leaders Produce Winning Results. Omar shares real-world examples of how to summon peoples’ minds, hearts, and spirits for greater productivity, quality, effectiveness, and profitability.

Omar is the founder and senior partner of Sensei International, a global firm consulting in personal and leadership development. His firm’s clients include 3M, Motorola, Unilever, Microsoft, The Ritz-Carlton, Singapore Airlines, Standard Chartered Bank, Johnson & Johnson, KLM, Nestle, BusinessWeek, and American Express.

One of the early pioneers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Transformational Learning, he continues to open up new frontiers to summoning people’s mind, hearts, and spirits for greater productivity, quality, effectiveness and profitability.

Omar earned his BA and MA at University College, Oxford and attended Stanford Law School. His previous books are Synergy and Timeless Leadership.

Sensei International      Amazon.com

Date & Time:

Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Mario Moussa

Mario Moussa is the co-author of The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas. His book complements the intensive, personalized, down-to-earth Wharton program that he and his co-author lead. This workshop, The Art and Science of Selling Ideas, provides executives with critical tools to sell their ideas at work. Dr. Moussa also teaches negotiation and influence, strategy, change, and corporate culture.

Dr. Moussa is also a Principal of CFAR Inc., a management consulting firm and has led the development of programs at Wharton for corporate security managers, energy executives, physician leaders, health care and banking executives. His clients include United Health Group, PNC Bank, the Georgetown University Medical Center, and State Farm Insurance.

As a keynote speaker, Dr. Moussa has addressed executives in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Istanbul, Delhi, and Paris, as well as cities across the United States.

Dr. Moussa graduated from the Wharton MBA program and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

CFAR: Center for Applied Research      Amazon.com

Date & Time:

Wednesday, May 7, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Ed Valenti

Ed Valenti, co-author of The Wisdom of Ginsu: Carve Yourself a Piece of the American Dream, began his broadcast career as a disc jockey and rapidly rose through the ranks to attain key executive sales positions with Capitol Cities, ABC, Disney, and NBC Television.

Ed is widely recognized as a direct marketing industry pioneer, having introduced concepts such as credit card order-taking and the use of toll-free numbers on television. He is a recipient of numerous industry awards, including 11 International ECHO Awards

Ed is responsible for creating some of America's most well-known and profitable advertising campaigns, including the legendary Ginsu knife, which went on to become one of the most successful products in television advertising history. In addition, he has worked as a direct marketing consultant to the Independent Television Companies in London, England.

Ed is cofounder and COO of PriMedia Inc, a national media buying and marketing firm working on some of America's best-known companies and brand names.

PriMedia Inc. is located in Warwick, Rhode Island.

PriMedia Inc.      GinsuGuys.com      Amazon.com

Date & Time:

Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Ryan Mathews

Ryan Mathews, author of What's Your Story?: Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands, is a globally recognized futurist, speaker, strategist, storyteller, author, consultant, and the pioneer of the field of corporate cultural ecology.

Wired magazine has called Ryan a philosopher of e-commerce, and American Demographics named him “the futurist to watch” in a study of the 25 individuals who have made the greatest contribution to futuring. Red Herring said it was Mathews’s job “to ask the tough questions.”

Ryan, with Fred Crawford, coauthored The Myth of Excellence: Why Great Companies Never Try to Be the Best at Everything, which appeared on business best-seller lists at The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek and was honored by Amazon.com as one of the top twelve best business books of 2001.

Frederick W. Smith, chairman, president, and CEO of Federal Express, has called Mathews an “exceptional strategic thinker.” He is widely regarded as an expert on consumers and their relationships to brands, products, services, and the companies that offer them.

Ryan is also the founder and CEO of Black Monk Consulting.

Black Monk Consulting      Amazon.com

Date & Time:

Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, He writes and speaks on technology, business, and culture.

In 2005, Optimize magazine named Nicholas Carr one of the leading thinkers on information technology and in 2007 eWeek named him one of the 100 most influential people in information technology.

His 2004 book Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, published by Harvard Business School Press, set off a worldwide debate about the role of computers in business. His new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, examines the future of computing and its implications for business and society.

Nicholas has been a speaker at MIT, Harvard, Wharton, the Kennedy School of Government, Moscow State University, NASA, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas as well as at many industry, corporate, and professional events throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Earlier in his career, he was a principal at Mercer Management Consulting. Nicholas holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A. from Harvard University.

Nicholas Carr   Norton Books   Blog: Rough Type

Date & Time:

Wednesday, February, 13, 2008, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Bo Burlingham

Bo Burlingham, author of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big, Editor-at-Large of Inc. magazine, is a prolific writer and best selling author of books about leadership and business management.

Jim Collins, of Built to Last & Good to Great fame, says, Bo "rejects a mantra of growth-for-growth’s sake in favor of a passionate dedication to becoming the absolute best. Bo Burlingham reminds us of a vital truth: big does not equal great, and great does not equal big."

Bo joined Inc. magazine in January 1983 as a senior editor and became executive editor six months later. In 1990, he became "Editor-at-Large" to write books with Jack Stack, CEO of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. and the pioneer of open-book management. The Great Game of Business has sold more than 300,000 copies; A Stake in the Outcome has been called “the first management classic of the new millennium.”

Bo is a founder, with Tom Peters, of PAC World, an international networking group and has served on the board of The Body Shop Inc. He is also the co-author (with Norm Brodsky) of the popular monthly column in Inc. called “Street Smarts” and is currently working with Norm on yet another book entitled The Knack: How Street Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up.

Small Giants

Date & Time:

Wednesday, November 7, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Alan Deutschman

Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life, is one of America's leading writers on change and innovation.

Alan is the Executive Director of Unboundary, a strategy consulting firm whose clientele includes top executives at major companies such as FedEx and Charles Schwab.

In a 19-year career as a business journalist, Alan has been the Silicon Valley correspondent for Fortune; a senior writer at GQ, where he wrote the "Profit Motive" column; and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he has co-authored the "New Establishment" power list for the past decade. Most recently, he was a senior writer for Fast Company.

Alan, a Princeton University graduate, has interviewed and profiled many of the most influential and innovative figures in global business, including Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sergey Brin, and Virgin's Richard Branson, and he has studied the successful turnarounds and change efforts at companies such as Apple, IBM, and Yahoo.

Harper Collins   Alan Deutschman   Unboundary

Date & Time:

Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Peter Gloor

Peter A. Gloor, author of Coolhunting - Chasing Down The Next Big Thing, is a Research Scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT's Sloan School of Management where he leads a project exploring Collaborative Innovation Networks (www.ickn.org).

AMA Books    Peter A Gloor

Date & Time:

Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Jag Sheth

Dr. Jagdish N. Sheth, author of The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies ...And How to Break Them, is a world-recognized authority on global competition, strategic thinking, and customer relationship management.

Jag has published more than two dozen books including: The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets, Tectonic Shift: The Geoeconomic Realignment of Globalizing Markets, ValueSpace: Winning the Battle for Market Leadership, Clients for Life, and Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose.

Jag has served on the board of Norstan, Wipro, PacWest Telecomm, Cryo-Cell International, and Shasun Chemicals & Drugs. His consulting clients include AT&T, General Electric, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Citicorp, General Motors, Lucent, and Monsanto.

Dr. Sheth is the Chair of Marketing Strategy in the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He has served as a distinguished faculty member at the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois, Columbia University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Wharton Publishing      www.JagSheth.net

Date & Time:

Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Anthony F. Smith

Tony Smith is the author of The Taboos of Leadership: 10 Secrets No One Will Tell You About Leaders and What They Really Think. Tony is a co-founder and a Managing Director of Leadership Research Institute which focuses on executive development, leadership training and design, organizational change and assessment, and teambuilding.

Tony Smith is a coach and consultant with nearly 20 years’ experience in executive development, leadership training and design, organizational change and assessment, and teambuilding. His clients include American Express, The National Football League, Siemens AG, the Coca-Cola Company, Deutsche Bank, International Paper, The Walt Disney Company, ESPN, Spencer Stuart, and Goldman, Sachs.

Tony earned his PhD at the School of Leadership and Education Science at the University of San Diego. He also holds a B.A. and M.A. in the Behavioral Sciences. Smith has served on the teaching and research faculties of universities including the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and the prestigious EAP Graduate School (European School of Management) at Oxford.

The Taboos of Leadership   Jossey-Bass   Leadership Research Institute

Date & Time:

Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

William Taylor

Bill Taylor is the co-author of Mavericks at Work: Why the Original Minds in Business Win.  Bill Taylor is a provocative and inspiring voice on the future of business—an agenda-setting writer, speaker, and entrepreneur who has shaped the global conversation about the best ways to compete, innovate, and succeed.

As a cofounder and founding editor of Fast Company, Bill launched a magazine that won countless awards, and earned a passionate following among executives and entrepreneurs around the world.

Bill is an adjunct professor at Babson College and the co-author of three other books on strategy, leadership, and innovation: The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business, No-Excuses Management, and Going Global. Bill has published numerous essays and CEO interviews in The Harvard Business Review, and his monthly column, “Under New Management,” ran in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Mavericks at Work   HarperCollins   Fast Company

Date & Time:

Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 5:30 pm - 7:50 pm

Speaker:

Hon. Donald L. Carcieri, Governor

On January 7, 2003, Don Carcieri was inaugurated as Rhode Island's 57th Governor. A native Rhode Island and graduate of Brown University, Don started his professional life as a math teacher at Newport's Rogers High School and then at Concord Carlisle Regional High School in Concord, Massachusetts. Next he turned to business, where, over the course of ten years, he built a career at Old Stone Bank, reaching the position of Executive Vice President. In 1981 Don made an unusual career move, taking his family to Kingston, Jamaica, where he headed the Catholic Relief Service's West Indies operation. In 1983 Carcieri joined Cookson America as the president of a small start-up company in the group, and he and his family returned to Rhode Island. Rising through the ranks to the position of Chief Executive Officer of Cookson America, where he was instrumental in the growth of the business into a major manufacturer employing over 12,000 people worldwide. The company grew from an organization doing $30 million in sales to over $3 billion in sales in 1997 when he retired.  

Office of the Governor   RI Government   Rhode Island