Global Gurus

Dr. Goldsmith is a new member of the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. He is the only two-time Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach and Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years. Marshall was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching.

Dr. Goldsmith is the author or editor of 42 books, which have sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and become listed bestsellers in 12 countries.  Amazon.com recently recognized their ‘100 Best Leadership & Success Books’. His books, Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, were both recognized as being in the top 100 books ever written in their field.  Marshall is one of only two authors with two books on the list.  His recent book, How Women Rise, with lead author, Sally Helgesen, is a BookScan #1 book for Women.

Marshall’s other professional acknowledgments include:  Global Gurus – the inaugural Corps D ’Elite Award for Lifetime Contribution in Leadership and Coaching, Harvard Business Review – World’s #1 Leadership Thinker, Institute for Management Studies – Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership Education, American Management Association – 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years and BusinessWeek –  50 great leaders in America.

Dr. Goldsmith served as a Professor of Management Practice at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business.  His Ph.D. is from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management – where he was the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year.  His MBA is from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business – where he was the Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year.  He is one of a select few executive advisors who has worked with over 200 major CEOs and their management teams. He served on the Advisory Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years. He has been a volunteer teacher for US Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives, and leaders of the International and American Red Cross – where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.

Dr. Goldsmith has over 1.3 million followers on LinkedIn.  His YouTube videos have over 3 million views.  Hundreds of his articles, interviews, columns, and videos are available online at www.MarshallGoldsmith.com for viewing and sharing. Visitors have viewed, read, listened to, downloaded, or shared his resources tens of millions of times.

Rita Gunther McGrath has honored with the 2nd Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in the Management Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2020.

Rita is a world-renowned thought leader and a professor at Columbia Business School, where she directs the popular Leading Strategic Growth and Change program. She is widely recognized as a premiere expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. In her speeches and consulting, Rita works with Fortune 1,000 companies, helping boards, CEOs, and senior executives act strategically in rapidly changing and volatile environments. She has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s top ten management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking.

Rita is recognized as one of a small group of experts who have built today’s best-in-class innovation practices, and her tools for making innovation a managed proficiency was integral to the foundation of the “lean startup” movement. In 2009, she was elected as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society in recognition of her impact on the field. She has also been elected as a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and has received the “Theory to Practice” award at the Vienna Strategy Forum.

Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) and the upcoming Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept. 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed.

Rita is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive events around the globe, including the Global Peter Drucker Forum and various CEO summits. She regularly contributes articles and perspectives in business-oriented publications such as Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and Fortune.  One of the most published authors in the Harvard Business Review, Rita’s writing includes the breakthrough article “Discovery Driven Planning” (1995).

Her work is often cited in the press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, CNN Business, and NPR’s Marketplace. She has been rated one of the 25 smartest women to follow on Twitter by Fast Company and was voted HR Magazine’s “Most Influential International Thinker.”

Rita is the founder of Valize, a company focused on helping organizations go beyond innovation theater by developing tools to implement the Discovery Driven Growth approach.

Previously in her career, Rita served as an IT director, worked in the political arena, and founded two startups. She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She is married and is proud to be the mother of two delightful grownups. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

David Allen has honored with the 3rd Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in the Time Management Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2020.

David is the creator of GTD®, the popular Getting Things Done methodology.

David founded the David Allen Company, where he engineered Getting Things Done®. He is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. His 30-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and institutions has earned him Forbes‘ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the United States and Business 2.0 magazine’s inclusion in their 2006 list of the “50 Who Matter Now.” Timecalled his flagship book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, “the definitive business self-help book of the decade.” Fast Company called David “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” in the arena of personal productivity, for his outstanding programs and writing on time and stress management, the power of aligned focus and vision, and his groundbreaking methodologies in management and executive peak performance.

David is also the author of Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Lifeand Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life, continues to write articles and essays that address today’s ever-changing issues about living and working in a fast-paced world. For more information, visit gettingthingsdone.com

Subir Chowdhury has honored with the 4th Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in the Management Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2021.

Subir is chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC, a global leader on strategic initiatives, quality consulting, and training. Under Subir’s leadership, ASI Consulting Group has helped hundreds of clients around the world save billions of dollars and increase revenues. Subir has worked with many organizations, large and small, across diverse industries including manufacturing, healthcare, food, government, and nonprofit organizations. His client list includes global Fortune 100 corporations and industrial leaders such as American Axle, Berger Health Systems, Bosch, Caterpillar, Daewoo, Delphi, Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai Motor Company, ITT Industries, Johns Manville, Kaplan Professional, Kia Motors, Leader Dogs for the Blind, Loral Space Systems, Make It Right Foundation, Mark IV Automotive, Procter & Gamble, the State of Michigan, Thomson Multimedia, TRW, Xerox, and more.

Subir is recognized as one of the “50 Most Influential Management Thinkers in the World” by Thinkers 50 of London, UK. Hailed by the New York Times as a “leading quality expert” and by BusinessWeek as “The Quality Prophet,” Subir is the author of fifteen books, including several international bestsellers, The Ice Cream Maker (Doubleday Random House, 2005), The Power of Six Sigma (Dearborn Trade, 2001), and Management 21C (Financial Times, 1999). His books have sold more than a million copies and have been translated in more than twenty languages.

Subir is an honorary member of the World Innovation Foundation (WIF) and has been inducted into the Engineering, Science and Technology Hall of Fame and honored by the Automotive Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Gold Medal, the Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE) Henry Ford II Distinguished Award for Excellence in Automotive Engineering and the American Society of Quality’s first Philip Crosby Medal for authoring the most influential book on quality. The Society of Automotive Engineers established the Subir Chowdhury Medal of Quality Leadership, an annual award that recognizes those individuals who promote innovation and expand the impact of quality in mobility engineering, design, and manufacturing. The United States Department of Homeland Security presented the “Outstanding American by Choice Award” to Subir for his contributions to the field of quality and management.

In 2014, University of California at Berkeley established the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies–the first of its kind in any academic institutions in the United States. The center awards graduate fellowships, scholarships, and research grants that focus on ways to improve the quality of life for the people of Bangladesh. Each year the Subir Chowdhury Fellowship on Quality and Economics is awarded by both Harvard University and the London School of Economics and Political Science to doctoral and postdoctoral student respectively to research and study the impact of quality in the economic advancement of a nation. His philanthropic efforts through the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation focus on the education of those less fortunate in the world.

Born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Subir received his undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India, and his graduate degree in industrial management from Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. He has received distinguished alumnus awards from both institutions, as well as an honorary doctorate of engineering from the Michigan Technological University. Subir is frequently cited in the national and international media. He delivers keynote addresses around the globe sharing the stages with heads of state and business leaders. He lives with his family in Los Angeles, California. For more information, visit www.subirchowdhury.com

Fons Trompenaars has honored with the 5th Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in theOrganizational Culture Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2021.

He has published 13 books on all areas of culture and business, including the bestseller “Riding the Waves of Culture”. Listed regularly in the past decade as one of the world’s most influential living management thinkers, he has been awarded the International Professional Practice Area Research Award by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Recently inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame 2017, he is a well-respected speaker and author.

Fons began his career in the Personnel Division of the Royal Dutch Shell Group in 1981. Here he met his business partner, Charles Hampden Turner, with whom he pioneered the Seven Dimensions of Culture and Dilemma Reconciliation philosophy and turned it into a powerful approach for reconciling cultural differences. As founder and director of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, an intercultural management and consultancy firm, he and his team have spent over 20 years helping Fortune 500 leaders and professionals manage and solve their business and cultural dilemmas to increase global effectiveness and performance, particularly in the areas of globalisation, mergers and acquisitions, HR and leadership development. For more information, visit thtconsulting.com

Mark Thompson has honored with the 6th Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in Coaching Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2022.

Ram Charan has honored with the 7th Global Gurus Corps d’Elite Lifetime Achievement Award in Management Category of the world’s top thought leaders in 2022.

Lynda is a Professor of Management Practice at London Business School where she directs ‘Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies’ – considered the world’s leading programme on human resources.

Lynda is the founder of Hot Spots Movement and since 2008 she has led the Future of Work Research Consortium which has brought together executives from more than 100 companies.

Over the last 20 years Lynda has written extensively about the interface between people and organisations. Her eight books cover the link between business and HR strategy (Living Strategy), the new ways of

working (The Democratic Enterprise), the rise of complex collaboration (Hot Spots and Glow) and the impact of a changing world on employment and work (The Shift).

In 2012 The Shift received the business book of the year award in Japan and has been translated into more than 15 languages. In 2015 The Key won the CMI Management Book of the Year. This book looks at the impact of the changing world on corporate practices and processes and on leadership. In 2016, Lynda Gratton and co-author Professor Andrew Scott, published The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, which, translated into many languages, continues to generate significant interest across the world, also in Japan, where it quickly became a bestseller. It was shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year award.

Lynda’s work has been acknowledged globally – she has won the Tata prize in India; in the US she has been named as the annual Fellow of NAHR and won the CCL prize; whilst in Australia she has won the HR prize. Lynda is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and has chaired the WEF Council of Leadership. She has served as a judge on the FT Business Book of the Year panel, chairs the Drucker Prize panel and is on the governing body of London Business School. In 2017, Lynda became an Advisor for @GoogleOrg’s initiative to help people prepare for the changing nature of work and was also, as the only foreigner, invited by Prime Minister Abe of Japan to join a new advisory council “Council for designing the 100-year-life society”.

Vijay Govindarajan (VG) is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School. The Coxe Distinguished Professorship is a new Dartmouth-wide faculty chair. He was the first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric. He worked with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt to write How GE is Disrupting Itself, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that pioneered the concept of reverse innovation – any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world. HBR picked reverse innovation as one of the Great Moments in Management in the Last Century. In the latest Thinkers 50 Rankings, Govindarajan is rated the #1 Indian Management Thinker. VG writes about innovation and execution on several platforms including Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He is a co-leader of a global initiative to design a $300 House. Govindarajan has been identified as a leading management thinker by influential publications including: Outstanding Faculty, named by Business Week in its Guide to Best B-Schools; Top Ten Business School Professor in Corporate Executive Education, named by Business Week; Top Five Most Respected Executive Coach on Strategy, rated by Forbes; Top 50 Management Thinker, named by The London Times; Rising Super Star, cited by The Economist; Outstanding Teacher of the Year,voted by MBA students. VG received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School and was awarded the Robert Bowne Prize for the best thesis proposal. He also received his MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School where he was included in the Dean’s Honor List. Prior to this, VG received his Chartered Accountancy degree in India where he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for obtaining the first rank nationwide.