Thinkers50 Hall of Fame: Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox has been inducted into the
Thinkers50 Hall of Fame 2023.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is a Harvard 2022 Advanced Leadership Fellow who researches gender and generational balance, as well as longevity. Author of Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution (Jossey-Bass, 2009), 7 Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business (HBR Press, 2014), and Thriving to 100 – Through Life’s 4 Quarters (20-first Publishers, 2022), Avivah studies the impacts of changing demographic trends on talent and markets. 

Women Mean Business addresses the implications of ignoring women in business and the importance of getting gender right. Women aren’t diverse, she argues; they make up much of the market and most of the talent pool. In 7 Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business, she lays out proven actions designed to make gender balance a sustainable reality.

Thriving to 100 challenges the notion that there are three stages to life (0-15, 14-64, then retirement), arguing that life development now consists of four quarters. Q1, Avivah explains, is when we learn and grow through childhood to 25 years; Q2 encompasses the achievement years between the ages of 25 and 50, when we establish work, family, and relationships; from 50 to 75 is the new stage, Q3, which she labels the “becoming years” of post-children and post ego-development; while Q4 is the stage of “harvesting” – when we gather together the lessons of a long life and pass them on to future generations.

As the CEO of consultancy 20-first, Avivah works with organisations focused on capturing the competitive advantages of the future of work. She’s an ambassador for the Stanford Center of Longevity and an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

In this conversation with Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer, Avivah reveals the inspiration for her work and how she makes sense of her career.

Full press release