Speakers 2011
Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Cancer Historian When Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book The Emperor of All Maladies won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, it surprised no one. His eloquent book is lauded for ‘examining cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective and a biographer’s passion’. It chronicles human beings’ struggle with the disease for the past 4,000 years. Mukherjee, Read More…
Stuart L Hart
The Pyramid Tamer Stuart L. Hart is the President and Founder of Enterprise for a Sustainable World. He is also the Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University. Author of the book Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems, he is regarded as Read More…
Sudhir Kakar
The Shaman India’s best known psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar takes pleasure in describing himself as Mannheim’s best table tennis player. He studied mechanical engineering and business economics before having an epiphany that he wanted to follow psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s footsteps. Kakar went on to get a doctorate in economics and then trained at the Sigmund Freud Read More…
Tamara Abed
The Rooted Banker Tamara Abed received her MBA in Finance from Columbia University and B.Sc. (Econ.) from the London School of Economics. She started her career as an investment banker in Peregrine Capital Ltd. in Dhaka and then also worked in Goldman Sachs in New York in Mergers and Strategic Advisory. Then Abed’s career took Read More…
Thomas Friedman
The Great Explainer Thomas Friedman has won the Pulitzer thrice. Once for his coverage of the war in Lebanon 1988. Once for reporting in Israel and most recently for his commentary illuminating the worldwide impact of terrorism. Friedman has a global presence through his long-running and polarising foreign affairs column at the Times. He began Read More…
Thomas Pritzker
The Pillar Thomas J Pritzker is the chairman and chief executive officer at The Pritzker Organization. The 60-year-old billionaire is the chairman and chief executive officer at Hyatt Corporation. Pritzker is the chairman of Hyatt Hotels and Resorts and The Marmon Group, Inc. Pritzker is the chairman of the Art Institute of Chicago since November Read More…
Tina Brown
The Enterprising Editor Arguably America’s most high-profile editor, Tina Brown’s journalism career began in 1973, writing for the London Sunday Times, The New Statesman and The Sunday Telegraph. She became editor-in-chief of the near-extinct society magazine Tatler in 1979. With her irreverent, witty insider’s take on the merely well-heeled and the terribly well-bred she raised Read More…
VS Naipaul
The Caustic Chronicler The critic James Wood once said that Sir VS Naipaul has two voices: a saxophone and an oboe — a hard sound and a softer one. These two sides could be called the Wounder and the Wounded. The Wounder is by now well known—the source of fascinated hatred in the literary world Read More…
William Dalrymple
The Unconventional Literateur A recent profile of historian William Dalrymple began with his living situation — he ‘lives in a farmhouse on the outskirts of New Delhi with his wife, their three children, four incestuous goats, a cockatoo, and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city.’ It is Read More…
