TLS 2023 | Speaker

Prof Dr Tima Bansal

Tima Bansal | Professor of Strategy at the Ivey Business School

Tima Bansal is a Professor of Strategy at the Ivey Business School. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Hamburg and the Université de Montréal. She is also affiliated with the University of Cambridge and Monash University.

Tima leads Innovation North, which is reimagining business innovation to create better businesses and a more prosperous society. Tima also founded the Network for Business Sustainability and Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value. Tima is currently the Vice Chair of United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Education and is on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management.

Tima has received significant accolades for her scholarship. She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability; she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Academy of Management; she holds the Hellmuth Prize from Western University, the Distinguished Scholar Award by the Organizations and Natural Environment; and, was the first Canadian to be named a Faculty Pioneer for Academic Leadership by the Aspen Institute, a global forum for business and society headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Tima’s research investigates the interplay between business strategy and sustainability. She has published in several top research journals including the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and the Strategic Management Journal. She has co-edited two books about business and the natural environment and contributes to her own column in Forbes.com. Her research has also been cited in the popular press, including The Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Independent.

She has previously served as a Deputy Editor (2016-2019) and Associate Editor (2010-2013) for the Academy of Management Journal and has served on ten other editorial boards for a range of journals. Since 1999, she has raised over $11M in government grants and $2M in corporate funding for sustainability-related research.

Click here to visit Tima Bansal’s personal webpage.

Topic at the TLS: Keynote

Prof Dr Julika Baumann Montecinos

Prof Dr Julika Baumann Montecinos | Professor of Intercultural Management at Furtwangen University and member of the steering team of the Transcultural Caravan, Germany

Julika Baumann Montecinos graduated in Intercultural Business and Cultural Studies from the University of Passau, including various stays in China, India, the Dominican Republic and Brazil, and did her PhD at the University of Hohenheim’s Department of Business Ethics. She pursued a career in the automotive industry before moving into academia, where she headed a research group on Transcultural Competence at Zeppelin University’s Leadership Excellence Institute. As a developer of international teaching, training, research and networking formats, she focuses on a relational view on the success factors of cooperation in contexts of cultural complexity. 

Topic at TLS 2021 – 11^th November
Moderation panel discussion I How to prepare young leaders for cultural complexity?

Divy Bhagia

Divy Bhagia | Environmentally & socially committed filmmaker

Divy Bhagia is an environmentally and socially committed communicator
from India. Over 11 years, he has worked on diverse projects, from SBCC and
RCCE to commercials, documentaries, and even a Virtual Reality film. He
also led social development programs in Gujarat and proudly represents
India as a UNICEF South Asia – Climate Change Champion.
His academic journey spans Engineering, Psychology, and Development
Communication and he is passionate about using cinematic mediums to
promote a sustainable coexistence between humans, wildlife, and nature.

Dr Fernanda Carreira

Fernanda Carreira | Head of the Education for Sustainability Program at FGVces (Brazil)

Fernanda Carreira is the head of the Education for Sustainability Program at the FGVces in Brazil. Her areas of expertise are education for sustainability and organization strategies. Ms. Carreira has led projects of education for sustainability in Master and undergraduate courses, as well as applied research and projects in companies. At FGVces she has also coordinated a business platform called Companies for the Climate and was for 3 years the Executive Secretary of the Center, responsible for strategic planning, fundraising and institutional representativeness. Prior to FGVces, she had a six-year experience in advisory firms such as PwC and Edelman Significa, always in sustainability projects, and she has also worked at NGOs. PhD candidate in Organizational Studies at FGV EAESP, exploring how the theory of imaginaries can be brought to business education in the Anthropocene Era. She holds a MsC in Management with an emphasis on Sustainability at FGV EAESP, where she also has a postgraduate degree in Sustainability Management and has a degree in Business Administration.

Topic at the TLS: Panel Discussion | Leading towards sustainable futures

Prof Dr Willem Fourie

Willem Fourie | Associate Professor in Social Ethics at the University of Pretoria

Prof. Willem Fourie is widely acknowledged for his work on technology, leadership and the SDGs.  He founded the South African SDG Hub, which is now one of the world’s largest knowledge resources on the SDGs. The platform, hosted by the University of Pretoria, harnesses the power of machine learning to provide policy-makers with easy access to SDG-related research. Prof. Fourie has collaborated with several international organizations, including the United Nations, African Union, European Union, and OECD, on issues related to the SDGs, technology and leadership. 

Katharina Gihring

Katharina Gihring | Executive member of the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN)

Katharina is an executive member of the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) and has a key role in further operationalising ACEN to grow the success of the network. She coordinates and manages a multitude of projects such as Just2CE as well as Circular South Africa. Her background is in ecology, environmental management, capacitation and systems thinking with a MSc in Environmental Management (UJ – South Africa). Her main focus is on the circular economy and how this concept can be implemented in a just-way. Her experience reaches from multidisciplinary and mix-method research, research coordination, project management, event coordination, action plan development to educational facilitator.

Andreas Görtz

Andreas Görtz | President of Business Units Sustainable & Mobile of Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG

Andreas Görtz, President of Business Units Sustainable & Mobile of Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG, is responsible to built-up business for CO2 neutral products. He studied mechanical engineering and has 20 years of management experience, including international teams, as well as in-depth experience in international project management, expertise in implementation of new structures and processes and merger and acquisitions. Before joining Rolls-Royce Power Systems, he served as the Head of Micro Technologies Division at Rohwedder AG. After he joint Rolls-Royce Power Systems he was responsible for project system business and he was leading the global power generation business for over five years.

Tobias Grünfelder

Tobias Grünfelder | Moderator, Ph.D. candidate and project manger

Tobias Grünfelder is a research fellow and Ph.D. student at the chair of Institutional Economics at Zeppelin University’s Leadership Excellence Institute (LEIZ) and a project manager at the Transcultural Caravan. His research focus on transcultural management studies aims at understanding the conditions and determinants of productive transcultural cooperation, focusing on the related organisational and individual learning processes.
In addition to his research, he works as a facilitator, keynote speaker, magician and intercultural trainer. In cooperation with the German embassy and the Goethe-Institute he has traveled to various countries as a “magical ambassador” to promote cultural exchange.

Topic at the TLS: Moderation

Dr Michael Karrer

Michael Karrer | Senior Vice President Sustainability & EHS at ZF

Michael Karrer studied International Business Administration in Innsbruck (Austria) and Louvain (Belgium) and worked for 5 years as a research assistant. He received his doctor’s degree with a thesis on Supply Chain Performance Management.

He joined ZF in 2006 and worked for 5 years in the field of strategic logistics, leading projects on inventory optimization, delivery performance and lean logistics in several of ZF’s global sites. For three years, he served as project lead for the industrialization of a truck transmission in Hangzhou China. From 2014 to 2016, Michael was responsible for supplier management at ZF group, focusing on supplier quality performance, risk management and supply chain sustainability. Since January 2021, he is the global lead for sustainability and EHS. He is convinced that sustainability is not only about complying with regulations but must be an integral part of the business strategy. By embedding sustainability in processes and decision-making, it is possible to interlink long-term business success with a company’s responsibility for society and the environment.

Prof Dr Maria Fernanda Lemos

Maria Fernanda Lemos | Professor of Urban Planning and Design at PUC-Rio

Maria Fernanda Lemos is a Professor of Urbanism at PUC-Rio. She is the leader of the Urbanism Laboratory (U.Lab/PUC-Rio) and lead author of the Urban Areas in Coastal Zones (ARC3-2) and Equity and Justice (ARC3-3) chapters, UCCRN (Urban Climate Research Network).

In addition, she is the lead Author Coordinator of the Central and South America chapter, AR6/WGII/IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

Gian Luca Lunau

Gian Luca Lunau | TLS Student Lead

Meet Gian Luca, a student at Zeppelin University, where he is pursuing a multifaceted academic journey in sociology, politics, and economics. Amidst this diverse field of study, Gian Luca has a profound focus on economics, particularly delving into the realm of corporate responsibility. He also actively contributes to the academic community through his role at the Transcultural Caravan. Since April of this year, Gian Luca is committed to fostering cross-cultural understanding and collaboration as a student lead for the Transcultural Leadership Summit. Having ventured to numerous countries, he has had the privilege of immersing himself in diverse cultures. For Gian Luca, cultural exchange has always been a source of enrichment, and he firmly believes that it holds the key to a more interconnected and understanding world. This conviction has driven him to actively seek out projects and initiatives that promote positive cross-cultural scholarship.

Dr Matthias Niedenführ

Matthias Niedenführ | Head of Centre for Leadership and Innovation in Asia at Zeppelin University

Matthias Niedenführ is an expert on business ethics and political economy in East Asia. As a Senior Research Fellow at the Leadership Excellence Institute (LEIZ) of Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, he focuses on leadership and innovation in Asia, especially business culture, sustainable entrepreneurship and best practices in East Asia.

Niedenführ was founding vice-director of the China Centrum Tübingen (CCT), junior professor for Chinese business ethics at the University of Tübingen and Managing Director of the European Centre for Chinese Studies (ECCS) at Peking University for many years. He worked on the ground in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan and Japan for over a decade and established the discussion platform ThinkINChina (Beijing). Niedenführ is interested in topics at the interface between business, politics and society and intensively builds bridges in both directions for young professionals, experts, institutions and companies between Germany/Europe and China/Asia. He advises local companies on their engagement in the region and regularly comments on current developments as a keynote speaker and expert.

Prof Dr Florentina Paraschiv

Florentina Paraschiv | Professor of Financial Economics

Florentina Paraschiv studied International Economic Transactions (diploma) and Banking and Capital Markets (Master’s) at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg). This was followed by a teaching assistantship at her alma mater and a grant as a visiting researcher at the Institute of Economics at the University of Zurich. She then completed her PhD at the Institute for Operations Research and Computational Finance at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Subsequently, she was awarded an assistant professorship there, at the end of which she successfully earned her post-doctoral qualification. Florentina Paraschiv then moved on to the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, where she was initially an Associate Professor and later Professor of Financial Economics and Head of the newly founded NTNU Centre for Banking and Finance. At the same time, she remained associated with the HSG as a lecturer.

In her research, Professor Paraschiv aims at understanding how businesses and governments facilitate the transition towards a sustainable economy. Her research proposes solutions to respond to business risks posed by sustainability issues, including Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing. She analyzes which actions firms can undertake to mitigate ESG regulatory challenges and the role played by the institutional framework. In her research, she further analyzes the capital market in relation to climate risk, and ways in which the capital market, businesses and regulators can accelerate the transition towards addressing climate issues. Her research results in energy finance have earned her multiple awards.

Dr Olebogeng Selebi 

Dr Olebogeng Selebi | Deputy Director of the Centre for the Future of Work (CFoW)

Dr Olebogeng Selebi is a strategic communication expert from the Department of Business Management at the University of Pretoria. She is also the Deputy Director of the Centre for the Future of Work (CFoW) and former Associate Co-ordinator for the South African SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Hub. Dr Selebi believes in the use of research-based, academically sound, real-world communication strategies that facilitate business  development and success by getting to the root of stakeholder expectations and delivering mutually-beneficial communication solutions. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at Momentum FundsAtWork (overseeing various funds), as well as a member of the Board of Directors at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). Dr Selebi completed a PhD in Communication Management from the University of Pretoria. Her PhD research culminated in the development of a communication framework for South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP). She holds qualifications in the fields of communication, media and economics from the University of Graz (Austria), the University of Porto (Portugal), and the University of Milan (Italy). She has extensive teaching experience in Business Communication Skills, Corporate Communication Management and Reputation Management, having lectured approximately 2000 undergraduate and postgraduate students every year. Her professional career also involved visiting lectureship at HAN University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. Before her career in academia, she worked as a Junior Communication Consultant at Burson-Marsteller Africa. She also had the pleasure of hosting the first Nobel Prize Dialogue event ever to take place on African soil.

Manav Sumara

Manav Sumara |TLS Student Lead

Manav Sumara is an International Relations Master’s student at ZU with a passion for making a positive difference in the world. He has worked with Indian non-profits partnering with International Institutions, and wishes to pursue his multidisciplinary research in long-termism, and social movements. In addition, he has hosted and moderated conferences, both national and international, on topics such as climate change, youth in politics, volunteerism, and gender equality. He is dedicated to using his knowledge and experience to create meaningful change and foster a better future.

Gys du Toit

Gys du Toit | Organisational psychologist and behavioural scientist

As an organisational psychologist and behavioural scientist, I help leaders develop and implement strategies that translate into tangible workforce experiences and positive changes. I use practices of organisation- and leadership development, talent management, transformation and change to unlock the potential of people and business. I have extensive experience in various roles in the private sector, working as a specialist and a manager in listed companies across different industries. My work gave me the opportunity to live and work in different countries around the world, such as Qatar, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Mozambique, UK and the USA. My studies include a M.Com, B.Com (Hons) and B.Com in Human Resources Management and
Industrial and Organisational Psychology from the University of Pretoria. I also have a Post Graduate Diploma in Futures Studies from Stellenbosch Business School. I am currently pursuing a PhD with a research focus on leadership.

Being passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, I have been a volunteer at the Institute for Futures Research (IFR) at Stellenbosch Business School, doing strategic foresights scanning. Currently I am involved at the Transcultural Leadership Research Group – Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin (LEIZ), as well as the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) from Stockholm Sweden representing Southern Africa.
I am fascinated by the future of life and work, to create sustainable, inclusive solutions for the social and environmental challenges we face. As a professional futurist, I explore the possible, probable, and preferable futures. Using this knowledge, I support leaders and organisations to anticipate and adapt to change.

I enjoy working with diverse and multidisciplinary teams to tackle complex challenges, such as transforming organisational culture, designing workforce experience or navigating digital transformation. I use scenarios, strategy and planning to make sense of complex situations, connect the dots between different factors and put structures in place to guide action and change. I am a lifelong learner and an avid experimenter. In my work I test different hypotheses, measure outcomes and learn from feedback. In my personal life, I have experimented with off-the-grid solutions while living in a city. I am always looking for new ways to challenge myself and grow. I invite you to join me on this journey of discovery and transformation. If you are interested in knowing more about me and my work, I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Prof Dr Josef Wieland

Prof Dr Josef Wieland I Director of the Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin and Founder of the Transcultural Caravan

Prof. Josef Wieland holds the Chair of Institutional Economics, Organisational Governance, Integrity Management and Transcultural Leadership and is the Director of the Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin | LEIZ. An expert in the field of compliance and business ethics for more than 30 years, he initiated the Forum Compliance & Integrity (FCI) and chairs the Advisory Board of the German Network of Business Ethics (DNWE). He is a member of, inter alia, the national CSR Forum, the jury for the German government’s CSR Award, and the Advisory Council for Sustainability of the government of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Josef Wieland developed the theory of Relational Economics, and he is the founder and academic director of the “Transcultural Caravan”.

Topic at the TLS: Keynote