Speakers
Kurt April
Kurt April is Professor of Leadership, Diversity & Inclusion at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He also teaches at UCT's Graduate School of Business, where a new model of business school is being pioneered that is aiming for a shift toward responsible leadership. The school's programme and methodology has been fundamentally redesigned towards a systems thinking approach that imbues students with an understanding of the complex, interconnected world around them and the impact of their decisions on the world, as well as an understanding that their success is linked to the success of those around them.
At this Conference Kurt April will speak about global leadership and moral courage. He says that the current generation of leaders has failed our children. The challenge for those in charge is to become leaders who seek to be the best for the world, not only the best in the world.
Ben Verwaayen
Ben Verwaayen has been CEO of Alcatel-Lucent since 2008. His company delivers voice, data and video communication services. Alcatel-Lucent, a merger of French Alcatel and American Lucent Technologies, achieved revenues of €15.2 billion in 2009 with operations in more than 130 countries. The company had serious problems and posted a series of losses. Ben Verwaayen was brought in to regain the trust of customers and markets.
Previously, Ben Verwaayen was very successful as CEO of BT Group. Before joining BT Group, he was Vice Chairman of the Management Board at Lucent Technologies. He started his career at ITT and worked for KPN in the Netherlands as President and Managing Director of its subsidiary PTT Telecom. Mr. Verwaayen was appointed as Non-Executive Director of UPS in March 2005.
The nickname of Mr. Verwaayen is 'The Great Communicator'. He needs all the skills he has to establish Alcatel-Lucent as a world leader in its industry again. Mr. Verwaayen is also an active member of the Dutch political party VVD, for which he wrote the programme for the 2006 elections. At this Conference he will explain what he has to do to re-establish the trust in his company.
Alexander Rinnooy Kan
Alexander Rinnooy Kan is president of the Dutch Social-Economic Council, the SER. The Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' named him the most influential man in the Netherlands in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Before he joined the SER, Alexander Rinnooy Kan was amongst others Chancellor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, visiting professor at UCLA and MIT, President of VNO-NCW and Executive Board Member at financial group ING. He graduated in mathematics and is a bachelor in econometrics.
Alexander Rinnooy Kan holds a number of supervisory board memberships, amongst others as Chairman of The Concertgebouw and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. He is a member of the political party D66 and of the Innovation Platform, a national body designed to unite companies, knowledge institutes and government to promote innovation and encourage initiative.
At this Conference, Alexander Rinnooy Kan will address current economic and political issues for the Netherlands and Europe.
Twan van de Kerkhof
Twan van de Kerkhof is the founder and executive director of the European Leadership Platform. He founded the company in 2003, after having been a journalist for 15 years. Twan has written four books about leadership, one about China and one about Roundtable dialogues. He is an economist by education.
