Thinkers50 in collaboration with Deloitte presents:
Provocateurs offer fresh insights, novel perspectives and unique ways forward in the face of uncertainty. In a new series from Thinkers50 in collaboration with Deloitte, every month we will present a Provocateur in conversation.
A collaboration between Thinkers50 and Deloitte, the monthly Provocateurs podcast gives you direct access to the thoughts, experiences, stories and insights of remarkable leaders from around the world. The aim is simple: to provoke you to think and act differently through candid and thought provoking conversations with fantastic leaders.
Co-founder, Thinkers50
Des Dearlove & Stuart Crainer are the founders and directors of Thinkers50. For two decades, they have been the recognized masters of finding and promoting the most accomplished and promising business and management thinkers worldwide. Internationally recognized experts on business ideas, they are the authors of more than 15 books available in 20 languages, editors of The Financial Times Handbook of Management, and are both former columnists to The Times. They advise thinkers and organizations worldwide.
Co-founder, Thinkers50
Des Dearlove & Stuart Crainer are the founders and directors of Thinkers50. For two decades, they have been the recognized masters of finding and promoting the most accomplished and promising business and management thinkers worldwide. Internationally recognized experts on business ideas, they are the authors of more than 15 books available in 20 languages, editors of The Financial Times Handbook of Management, and are both former columnists to The Times. They advise thinkers and organizations worldwide.
Vice Chair and US Life Sciences and Heath Care Industry Leader, Deloitte
Kulleni is the US Consulting Life Sciences & Health Care Industry Leader and US Chief Health Equity Officer. She holds an MD from Harvard Medical School and an MBA from Johns Hopkins. Dr. Gebreyes has developed and implemented strategies for population health management and value-based care, physician alignment and patient activation, diversity, equity and inclusion, and the drivers of health. She is an active advocate for vulnerable and underserved communities. She is also a physician leader with more than 20 years of experience in the health care industry across the commercial and public sector. She drives care delivery transformation for health care organizations pursuing financially sustainable strategies for consumer centric care models that are data driven and digitally enabled. She has also developed strategies for population health management and value-based care that address payment reform, physician alignment and patient activation. In partnership with providers, payers, and employers, Kulleni has successfully developed and implemented clinical analytics tools and applications that reduce operating costs and promote appropriate utilization of resources.
US Sustainability Practice Leader, Deloitte
Steven Goldbach leads Deloitte’s Sustainability practice in the US. This practice serves the complex and novel challenges our clients face across issues such as climate change and other challenges associated with creating a more sustainable future. We help clients make measurable progress on all dimensions of these challenges by bringing to the table all areas of Deloitte’s expertise.
Prior to assuming the leadership of this practice, Steve served as Deloitte’s US Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) for 8 years. Over his time as CSO, the US firm made a major pivot in strategy, focusing on winning as an integrated firm. Prior to joining Deloitte, Steve was the head of the New York Office at Monitor Group, and head of strategy for Forbes.
Steve has co-authored two bestselling books – Detonate: Why – and how – corporations must blow up best practices (and bring a beginner’s mind) to survive (Wiley, 2018), and Provoke: How leaders shape the future by overcoming fatal human flaws (Wiley, 2021). Thinkers50 has nominated Steve as a finalist for the 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award in Strategy and in 2021 for the Distinguished Leadership Award. Steve and Geoff Tuff will be releasing their third book – Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift later in 2025.
Steve completed his BCom at Queen’s University and his MBA at Columbia University. He sits on the Advisory Boards of the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University and the New York Botanical Garden.
Global Sustainability Leader for Energy and Industrials, Deloitte
Geoff has almost 30 years of experience consulting to some of the world’s top companies on the subjects of strategy, growth, innovation, and adapting business models to deal with change. Currently, he is a Principal at Deloitte and holds various leadership positions across its Sustainability, Innovation and Strategy practices. Prior to this, he led the innovation firm Doblin and was a senior partner at Monitor Group, serving as a member of its global Board of Directors. He is currently based in Deloitte’s Boston office.
Geoff’s work centers around helping clients transform their businesses to grow and compete in nontraditional ways. Over the course of his career, Geoff has worked in virtually every industry and he uses that breadth of experience to bring novel, cross-sector insights about how things might operate to clients stuck in industry conventional wisdom. Geoff has a particular strength in using facilitation and personal intervention to help clients make hard choices and take action.
For his entire career, Geoff has focused exclusively on helping companies grow. He has been instrumental in developing many of Monitor’s – and now Deloitte’s – core methodologies related to driving profitable topline growth for clients. His expertise spans the domains of design-driven innovation, new business model development, product launch and growth strategy, and business transformation.
Geoff is valued for his integrative approach to solving problems. He combines deep analytic and strategic expertise with a natural orientation towards approaches embodied in design thinking. His belief that human behavior is still – even in the digital age – the fundamental driver of economic value for companies allows him to bring a unique perspective to his clients struggling to shift their business models.
He is a widely sought-after speaker and writer on the topic of growth through innovation. His writing has appeared in journals such as Marketing Management and Harvard Business Review and as a regular contribution to HuffPost. He is also co-author of the National Bestseller Detonate: Why – and How – Corporations Need to Blow up Best Practices (and Bring a Beginner’s Mind) to Survive, released in May, 2018. His new book, Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws launched in September, 2021 and quickly became a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. In 2019, Thinkers50 named Geoff as a finalist for the Distinguished Achievement Award in Strategy; in 2021, they did the same for the Leadership Award.
Geoff grew up in Canada and the UK, and came to the United States for university. He received his B.A., with honors, in English literature and creative writing, from Dartmouth College. He also holds a MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was an honors student. He currently lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife, Martha, and four sons.
Inspired by the book Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws; Wiley, 2021.
The 2024 Provocateurs series featured nine inspiring thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and business authors who challenged us to re-think conventional approaches to leadership and management.
Neri Karra Sillaman shared her remarkable story from refugee to building a multi-million-dollar sustainable fashion brand; Marcus Collins explored the hidden power of cultural influence in consumer behaviour; Lisa McKnight revealed how she transformed Barbie into a cultural phenomenon and billion-dollar success; and Andrew Winston redefined the role of business to create a thriving “net positive world”.
One of the key highlights of the 2024 series was recording live at New York Climate Week with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, who delivered an emotional and unequivocal call to action to address the “moral vacuum” in global leadership. We must cultivate leaders, he says, who are equipped to embrace restorative, reparative, and regenerative practices and lead with purpose.
We also learnt leadership lessons from Amy Chang on becoming an AI entrepreneur; Jeff Wetzler on leveraging the wisdom of the people around you; Dane Jensen on harnessing the positive power of pressure; and Atif Rafiq on driving innovation and digital transformation in traditional, legacy companies.
In this episode, Steve Goldbach, Geoff Tuff, and Kulleni Gebreyes of Deloitte, join Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50, to reflect on their key takeaways and thought-provoking insights from Provocateurs 2024.
#TheProvocateurs
This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.
Business Leader, Co-author of Net Positive
Paul Polman is a business leader, campaigner, and co-author (with Andrew Winston) of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take, a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Together with Andrew, Paul is ranked #3 on the Thinkers50 Ranking.
As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), Paul demonstrated that business can profit through purpose, delivering shareholder returns of 290% while the company consistently ranked 1st in the world for sustainability. Today he works across a range of organisations to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which he helped develop.
In New York for the 2024 Climate Week, Paul sat down with Thinkers50 co-founder, Des Dearlove, and Steve Goldbach, head of Deloitte’s Sustainability Practice in the US, to discuss how business can be a force for good, what it means to be ‘net positive,’ and how to develop the next generation of leaders.
He identified a fundamental moral vacuum in our current approach to global challenges and emphasised that addressing this void requires more than systemic reforms – it demands a profound transformation in how we think and lead. A new leadership mindset is called for, he argues; one that focuses on restorative, reparative, and regenerative practices and places cooperation above competition.
#TheProvocateurs
This podcast is part of an ongoing series of interviews with executives. The executives’ participation in this podcast are solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This podcast should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.
Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
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Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
United Kingdom
Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
United Kingdom
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