Meet the co-chairs for Davos 2015

Six co-chairs will steer discussions at the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The meeting, to be held from 21 to 24 January, will be on the theme of The New Global Context and will bring together many of the world’s top leaders to share insights and discuss global, regional and industry agendas.

The co-chairs are:

Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder of the Jubilant Bhartia Group, based in New Delhi, India. The group has 35,000 employees and operates across diverse sectors.

Mr Bhartia is a chemical engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi. He has been associated in various capacities with the IIT system and with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Bhartia is a past President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and a member of several educational, scientific and technological programmes of the Government of India. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Raipur and Member of the International Advisory Board of McGill University, Canada.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International. She is a leader on women’s rights, democratic governance and peace-building. She was elected for three terms and served 11 years in the Ugandan Parliament. A world-recognized expert on women’s rights, she founded the still thriving civil-society organization Forum for Women in Democracy. She has served at the African Union Commission and at the United Nations Development Programme as Director of Gender and Development. She has also served on many international boards and commissions of the UN and other international bodies, and is currently an Executive Board Member of the Washington-based International Centre for Research on Women. She qualified as an aeronautical and mechanical engineer with degrees from the University of Cranfield and the University of Manchester in the UK.

Read blog posts by Winnie Byanyama
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Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, a post he has held since mid-2012. A physician and anthropologist, Dr Kim has worked in international development for more than two decades, helping to improve the lives of underserved populations. He joined the World Bank after serving as President of Dartmouth College, where he founded the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, a multidisciplinary institute dedicated to developing new models of healthcare delivery and achieving better health outcomes at lower costs. Dr Kim is a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and a former director of the HIV/Aids Department at the World Health Organization (WHO). He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2003, was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by US News & World Report in 2005, and was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2006.

Read blog posts by Jim Yong Kim
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Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, a business he joined in 2001 as CEO, overseeing its technical and business strategy alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled up its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings, while maintaining a strong culture of innovation. With degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, Schmidt has previously served in senior management roles with Novell and Sun Microsystems, Inc. He is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the US and the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council in the UK. Since 2013 he has served on the board of The Economist. He is co-author of two bestselling books on technology and business, and in his current role at Google is responsible for building business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership, as well as advising on business and policy issues.

Read a blog post by Eric Schmidt
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Roberto Egydio Setubal, currently the President and CEO of Itaú Unibanco SA and the Vice Chairman of the Board of Itaú Unibanco Holding S/A, the largest privately owned bank in Latin America. In his career at the bank, he has held several positions in the controlling, products and sales areas. From 1997 to 2000, he was the elected President of FEBRABAN, the Brazilian Banks Federation. He is also Vice Chairman of the Institute of International Finance and of its Steering Committee of Crisis Prevention and Capital Adequacy. In 2000 he became a member of the Trilateral Commission. Two years later he became a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also a Founding Member and President of the Executive Committee of Itaú Social Foundation, which has developed various social programmes in partnership with UNICEF and other NGOs. Setubal is also a Member of the Executive Committee of Instituto Itaú Cultural, responsible for strengthening the democratization of culture in Brazil. He has a degree in Production Engineering from Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo (USP) and has a Master of Science in Engineering from Stanford University.

Katherine Garrett-Cox CBE has been Chief Executive of Alliance Trust, one of Europe’s largest providers of sustainable and responsible investment funds, since 2008. She is a Member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank AG and is the Vice-Chair of the Baring Foundation. In 2011, she was appointed to the UK Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group and is a UK Trade and Industry Business Ambassador for Financial Services.

Katherine was nominated a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2005, appointed to the Foundation Board of Young Global Leaders in January 2014 and a member of the Executive Committee for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. She has worked in Financial Services for over 25 years and latterly was Chief Investment Officer and Executive Director at Morley Fund Management. She is listed in the Financial Times’ ranking of the Top 50 Women in World Business and the Financial News’ 100 Most Influential Women in European Business.

Read a blog post by Katherine Garrett-Cox 
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Author: Oliver Cann is Director, Media Relations, World Economic Forum

Image: Visitors are reflected in window of the congress center, venue of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, January 26, 2012. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann