TED@BCG 2019 - Unlocking the Human Potential

Gaby Barrios is the associate director of the Center for Customer Insight at BCG, based in Paris.  She holds a master of science degree in management sciences and industrial engineering from Northwestern University and a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar.

Akiko Busch is the author of the 2019 book How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. Her previous essay collections include Nine Ways to Cross a River and The Incidental Steward, which won an honorable mention in the 2013 National Outdoor Book Awards. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years and her work has appeared in numerous national magazines, newspapers and exhibition catalogs. She is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Sougwen 愫君 Chung is an artist and researcher whose work explores the dynamics between humans and systems. She is a former research fellow at MIT’s Media Lab and a pioneer in the field of human-machine collaboration. In 2019, she was selected as the Woman of the Year in Monaco for achievement in the arts and sciences.

Amane Dannouni is a partner in BCG’s Casablanca office and a core member of the Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) practice. He’s worked in the BCG Paris, Singapore and Casablanca offices and has clients in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa. During his time in Singapore, he cofounded and led BCG’s Digital Transformation Enablement Center for Asia-Pacific. Dannouni has a deep interest in exploring how technology impacts established business models, and how digital can unlock greater economic and social value. He holds a master’s degree in engineering from École Centrale Paris.

Ipsita Dasgupta is a senior executive in digital media and sports, currently focused on growing an international digital app for entertainment and sports. She has spent her career working in multiple sectors, including technology, manufacturing and consulting, between the U.S. and emerging markets like China, India and South-East Asia. She’s held leadership roles in American multinationals GE, Cisco, and IBM, focusing on growing their businesses across Asia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Columbia University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

For more than 20 years, Lorna Davis served as the president of multinational consumer goods companies in Danone, Kraft and Mondelez. As CEO and chairwoman of Danone North America, she led the company to achieve B Corp status in 2018, making it the largest B Corp in the world. She is a global ambassador for the B Corp movement and is a member of the Social Mission Board of Seventh Generation. She has lived and led businesses in seven countries, including the UK, US, France and China.

Sylvain Duranton is the global leader of BCG GAMMA, a unit dedicated to applying data science and advanced analytics to business. He manages a team of 800 data scientists and has implemented more than 50 custom AI and analytics solutions for companies across the globe. Duranton has degrees from the French engineering schools Polytechnique and Mines Paris and holds an MBA degree from INSEAD. He is also an executive board member for Aurore, one of France’s largest NGOs, which aims to alleviate poverty and improve access to housing.

Based in BCG’s New Delhi office, managing director and partner Abhishek Gopalka is a core member of the Social Impact and Public Sector practices. He has deep expertise in large-scale transformation of public delivery systems to drive citizen outcomes, with a focus on education and public health. Gopalka holds a BE from RV College of Engineering and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Kavita Gupta is a visiting scholar and founding member of the Distributed Trust Initiative at Stanford University, currently teaching Beyond Bitcoin and Ethics for Engineers. Previously, Gupta was the Founding Managing Partner of the VC-hedge fund at ConsenSys, investing in next-gen blockchain technologies. In 2015, she received the UN Social Finance Innovator Award for helping found the green bond team at The World Bank. She’s set up innovative investment funds across East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and the US for the past 16 years, and advises the Vatican impact investing community, MIT Solve and the Mandela Trust, among others.

Jean-Manuel Izaret is a managing director and senior partner in BCG’s San Francisco office. He is the global leader of BCG’s Pricing practice and believes best-in-class pricing means much more than setting prices at an optimum level. Izaret holds a PhD in marketing and a master’s in engineering from École Centrale Paris, and a master’s in economics from the Paris Political Science Institute.

Toby Kiers is an evolutionary biologist studying cooperation between species. Her recent work focuses on resource trading in nature and how complex “biological markets” can emerge among plants and microbes. She is interested in when and why organisms defect from cooperation, and how cheating strategies emerge in nature. Kiers received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis, and is now a university research chair and professor of evolutionary biology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Dr. Chris Kutarna is an entrepreneur, writer and former BCG consultant. He's the bestselling co-author of Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of our Second Renaissance, and he holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford. He’s lived in New Zealand and spent several years in China, where he built and sold his first business. His Mandarin is still passable.

Markus Mutz is the CEO of OpenSC, a social venture cofounded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and BCG Digital Ventures. Prior to launching OpenSC, he was a director at BCG Digital Ventures in Sydney and a founding member of Digital Ventures Asia. Mutz previously worked with an early-stage VC in China on emerging technologies, with BCG on retail supply chains and with the World Food Programme in Laos on their school feeding program.

Fang Ruan is the regional leader of the People and Organization practice in Asia-Pacific, based in BCG’s Hong Kong office. Her work focuses on corporate reorganization, corporate governance, leadership and talent management. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a degree in English from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Deepa Unnikrishnan, known by her stage name Dee MC, is a 25-year-old rapper and singer-songwriter from Mumbai. She started her journey into hip hop through dance, fell in love with the genre's music and began writing her own raps in 2012. Today, Dee MC is a renowned voice in Indian hip hop, and her music has been featured in the films Gully Boy, URI and Article 15. She is also editor-in-chief of Desi Hip Hop, the leading South Asian hip hop digital media platform.

Gingger Shankar is a musician, composer and activist. Her most recent projects include the original motion picture soundtracks for Heartbeats, featuring Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, and for We Will Rise, which highlights former American First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let Girls Learn” initiative. She is currently working on the documentary and album Nari, which follows the untold story of her mother and grandmother, Lakshmi and Viji Shankar, as they brought Indian music to the West with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. She is also the producer of Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock, directed by Cody Lucich.

Pirashanna Thevarajah is a world-renowned percussionist, specializing in instruments including the mridangam, kanjira, ghatam and morsing, and is equally versed in the art of Konnakol (Indian spoken rhythm). He will perform alongside Gingger Shankar at TED@BCG.