Julia Binder is Professor of Business Transformation at IMD. She works with organizations worldwide to lead transformation and build future-ready businesses. A recognized thought leader, she helps senior executives translate signals of change into strategy, innovation, and leadership action.

Her teaching and research focus on how leaders can navigate disruption, reimagine their organizations, and create value in a rapidly changing world. Julia was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2025) and featured on the Thinkers50 Radar list (2022) for her work at the intersection of sustainability, innovation, and leadership.

As Director of IMD’s Center for Sustainable and Inclusive Business, she brings together IMD’s diverse expertise to help companies turn global challenges into strategic opportunities. The Center acts as a bridge between insight and action, supporting leaders in designing transformation pathways that drive economic success while contributing positively to society and the planet.

Julia’s core areas of expertise include business transformation, strategic innovation, and sustainability. Her thought leadership reframes circularity as one of the most strategic levers of competitiveness in the coming decade, a resource and innovation strategy central to building future-ready organizations. This perspective is brought to life in her book The Circular Business Revolution (Pearson, 2024), co-authored with Manuel Braun, which translates the concept of circularity into actionable strategies for growth and transformation.

Prof. Gudela Grote, a distinguished authority in work and organisational psychology, has been Professor at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zürich since 2000. With a focus on integrating psychological principles into job, organisational and technology design, Prof. Grote’s research addresses evolving demands of technology, economy, and society. Her impactful contributions are showcased in renowned journals, such as the premier outlet in management Academy of Management Review, and through collaborative initiatives with industry leaders. She spearheads efforts to foster uncertainty-as-enabling mindsets in individual, organisational and policy decision-making, applied among others to accountable AI development and use. She is Senior Fellow of the Geneva Graduate Institute  and co-chair of the TASC Platform hosted by the institute, member of the WEF expert network, and member of the research council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Sudhanshu Palsule is regarded as one of the leading thinkers in the fields of Complexity and Transformative Leadership. His work on 21st century leadership brings together the latest research emerging from neurology and cognitive psychology, and his own exploration of human thinking and behavior over the past thirty years. He is deeply passionate about re-humanizing leadership in a 21st century context of digital technology, complex global problems, and rapid change.

Sudhanshu teaches at several business schools around the world. He is an educator at Duke CE  and a Fellow at the University of Cambridge (CISL).  He consults to several global organizations, including the United Nations in the areas of leadership, change; and organization development. He also works as a coach to several C-suite executives around the world.

Trained as a scientist, Palsule draws upon principles of quantum mechanics and ecology in his work on building effective 21st century organizations and teams that can thrive in non-linear conditions. His notion of “Self-Ware”– the unconscious program of thinking, emotions, and beliefs that drives us, remains central to his work on leadership.

Author of several books, his two recent books are:  Rehumanizing Leadership: Putting Purpose Back Into Business (2020), and Guiding the Tide: The Call for Agency in 21^st Century Business Leaders (2025)

He has lived and worked in four continents, and considers himself to be a global citizen.

Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace.

His award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. He is particularly interested in the meaning and practice of leadership in the age of “nomadic professionalism,” an age in which people have deep  bonds to work but loose affiliations to organisations, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success.

The intent of all of Gianpiero’s work is to humanise leadership, that is, to account for the complexities and contradictions within and between people and organisations, and to help leaders be grounded as well as flexible, sustainable as well as effective, purposeful as well as portable. This work has earned him a spot among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world.

Vaughn Tan is a consultant, author, toolmaker, and Honorary Professor at University College London. He’s spent over a decade helping businesses, not-for-profits, and government agencies design themselves to adapt to and profit from uncertainty. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and Harvard Business School.
Vaughn advises businesses and not-for-profits as a consultant and board member, working at the intersection of innovation management, product strategy, and organizational design. His expertise is in designing (or redesigning) organizations to be more innovative and resilient to uncertainty in the operating environment. 
His first book, The Uncertainty Mindset (2020), is about how uncertainty can be used to drive innovation and adaptability. The book is based on nearly a decade working with some of the best R&D teams in cutting-edge cuisine, and it’s available worldwide from Columbia University Press. He’s currently working on his second book, about strategies for dealing with different types of not-knowing.
In a previous life, Vaughn worked at Google in California on special projects (including spaceflight and big structured data) and consumer products (including Earth, Maps, and Streetview).

Robert Ward is Director of Geo-economics & Strategy, Japan Chair at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), an organization that is a world-leading authority on global security, political risk and military conflict.
Robert was the Editorial Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, until recently, where he led the EIU’s country, industry and data analysis and forecasting teams, setting the direction for EIU’s global economic, political analysis and forecasts. As one of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s most seasoned speakers, for many years Robert played a leading role in articulating the EIU’s global view to business audiences around the world, through his lively and informal speaking style. Able to explain complex issues in an engaging and entertaining way, he is at home with audiences of all sizes and levels of seniority.

Robert is an expert on global, political and economic issues, Japan & China business, developed & emerging market economies and politics, political risk analysis, economic forecasting, advisory, new product development & strategy, subscription publishing, online publishing, change management in teams, large-team development and management.

A fluent speaker of Japanese, he regularly contributes to international and Japanese media and also appears frequently on the BBC, CNN, CNBC and other broadcast media.