Business Leaders’ Critical Challenges
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This year’s MIT – Fundación Ramón Areces Symposium will feature three distinguished MIT faculty members who will address some of the most pressing challenges facing business leaders today.
Taking a top-down perspective, the program will begin with the impact of geopolitics on the global economy and business climate, followed by what leaders need to know about artificial intelligence, and conclude with how to prepare the workforce for the challenges ahead.
Key questions to be explored include:
We invite you to join us for this year’s MIT – Fundación Ramón Areces Symposium to hear the insights and reflections of these three thought leaders.
Raimundo Pérez-Hernández y Torra has been director of the Ramón Areces Foundation since 2008. He graduated in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid and entered the diplomatic career in 1976. Until joining the Ramón Areces Foundation, he developed his professional career in public administration, where he held the following positions: counselor at the Permanent Delegation of Spain to the United Nations Office; economic and commercial counselor at the Embassy of Spain in the French Republic; head of Protocol of the Presidency of the Government, with the rank of director general; Executive Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, with the rank of Undersecretary; Permanent Representative Ambassador to the United Nations Office and other international organizations based in Geneva; and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He has been Ambassador of Spain to the Republic of Austria and Introducer of Ambassadors, MAEC, with the rank of Ambassador.
Dr. Srinivasan is a distinguished scientist who received her PhD in Microbiology from The Ohio State University in 2004, where she contributed to the discovery of the 22nd amino acid, Pyrrolysine (2002). She first came to MIT as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Tom Rajbhandary’s lab, where her research focused on understanding protein synthesis mechanisms in Archaea.
Dr. Srinivasan subsequently moved into the business development and technology licensing space, serving in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, where she helped commercialize technologies in medical devices and alternative energies. She then moved to UMass Medical School’s Office of Technology Management in 2009 and to Emory University in Atlanta in 2014 as the Director of Public and Private Partnerships for the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. In 2019, Dr. Srinivasan joined Emory’s Office of Corporate Relations as Executive Director, and in 2021, she led the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.
Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Professor of Data Systems and Society, MIT School of Engineering Director, MIT Program on Emerging Technologies
Kenneth Oye is a Professor of Political Science (School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences) and Data Systems and Society (School of Engineering) and Director of the Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET), with work on international relations, political economy and technology policy.
His work in international relations includes Cooperation under Anarchy, Economic Discrimination and Political Exchange, and four “Eagle” monographs on American foreign policy, with advisory work for the Petersen Institute, UNIDO and US Treasury, Commerce and EXIM and the MIT Seminar XXI Program.
His current work in technology policy centers on adaptive management of risks associated with synthetic biology and pharmaceuticals and on equity in health policy, with recent papers in anNature, Science, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and advisory work with the UN BWC and WHO, NIH NExTRAC, and PCAST.
Professor Oye is the recipient of the Martore Award for Exceptional Educational Contributions (2018) and the Technology Policy Program Faculty Appreciation Award (2003, 2018) in the School of Engineering and the Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching (2011) and the Graduate Council Teaching Award in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
Before coming to MIT, Professor Oye taught at Harvard University, the University of California, Princeton University and Swarthmore College. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Swarthmore College with Highest Honors and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University with the Chase Dissertation Prize.
For five decades, business leaders took an open international economic system and a stable alliance system as givens. The United States, Europe, and Japan worked together to maintain the global order. Even as the power of the United States relative to China declined, the fundamental elements of the international system remained unchanged. In 2025, the international economic, political, and military order cannot be taken as a given. Tariffs and other restrictions on trade are rising, and bilateral and regional trade agreements and multilateral WTO rules are ignored. Fiscal imbalances and budget crises are undermining confidence in the dollar and producing turbulence in foreign exchange markets. Confidence in NATO commitments to mutual defense is declining. This talk will focus on the causes and implications of these developments. Are these changes likely to be enduring or transient? How will changes in geopolitics and geoeconomics affect businesses? What are the best-case and worst-case scenarios?
George Westerman is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum (http://gof.mit.edu).
George’s work bridges the fields of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world through the GOF and several research collaborations.
George is cochair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and member of the Board of Directors for Workcred. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.
The transformative potential and risks of AI go well beyond the technology itself. But senior executives can be forgiven if they can’t stay current with the fast-multiplying set of AI tools and capabilities. Happily, you don’t have to master the complex details of the AI landscape. But you do need to know enough to understand the challenges and opportunities arising from AI. In this session, we’ll provide an executive-level overview of key categories of AI. We’ll explore practical applications of digital transformation with AI. And we’ll delve into key challenges and considerations surrounding AI implementation. This is not a technical discussion; it’s a leadership one. By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to ask the right questions and make the right decisions about how to lead your organization through the AI revolution.
Research Scientist, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research
Dr. Nick van der Meulen is a Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR). He conducts academic research that targets the challenges of senior level executives at MIT CISR's nearly 100 global sponsor companies, with a specific interest in how companies need to organize themselves differently in the face of continuous technological change. His work on digital workplaces and the employee experience resulted in a range of academic and industry publications, in outlets such as the Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, and the European Business Review. Currently, he examines how decision rights are changing in the context of digital business transformation.
Nick earned his PhD in Business and Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Prior to joining MIT CISR, he was a faculty member at the University of Amsterdam.
In the face of relentless technological change, an organization's resilience hinges on its ability to adeptly transform its workforce. As such, bridging technical skills gaps and navigating shifting employee expectations have become necessities—not options. In this session, we'll unpack diverse strategies for addressing these challenges and explore the pivotal role of AI in redefining talent management strategies. You'll leave with practical insights into how organizations are handling the talent-related challenges and opportunities that AI brings.
Eduardo Garrido is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT.
Eduardo Garrido has a strong multicultural and multidisciplinary background, with deep expertise in higher education, banking and management consulting, acquired in Argentina, Spain and USA. He currently serves as Program Director at the Industrial Liaison Program, Office of Corporate Relations (MIT), the largest conduit between corporations and MIT.
Before joining MIT, Eduardo was the Director of Santander Universities at Santander Bank, N.A., based in Boston, MA. In this role, he managed the institutional and business relationship with 46 universities, mainly in the northeastern US. He also served as Santander US representative at President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative and the Woman for Africa Foundation, among other relevant global higher education projects, and as Member of the Global President’s Council at NYU and the Advisory Boards of the Deming Cup, ECLA (Columbia University) and Newcastle University Business School.
Before coming to the US, Eduardo had several roles at Banco Santander Rio (Argentina). As Director of Santander Universities, he started the first entrepreneurship initiative at Grupo Santander worldwide, including the launching of a business plan competition, the Technology Innovation Venture Capital Fund, and a national competitiveness development initiative. He also sponsored the first edition of MIT 50K in Argentina. As Director of Organization and Quality at Banco Santander Rio, he led the team that obtained the first Global ISO 9001:2000 certificate for a financial institution in Latin America, certifying all main processes and areas of the bank. He also steered the business process reengineering project for the whole Bank, partnering with Ernst & Young and McKinsey and Co and implemented the Retail Banking new operating model.
Before joining Banco Santander Rio, Eduardo was Senior Manager of the Financial Services and Capital Markets Group at Price Waterhouse Management Consultants in Madrid, Spain. He was the Practice Leader of Business Process Reengineering, Financial Risk Management and Risk Adjusted Profitability Measurement.
Before his assignment at Price Waterhouse he served as Director of Consulting Services at MSA International, Inc. and as Financial Control Manager at Citibank España, S.A.
Eduardo graduated as Industrial Engineer at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has a MBA degree from IE Business School.
Before coming to MIT, Professor Oye taught at Harvard University, the University of California, Princeton University and Swarthmore College. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Swarthmore College with Highest Honors and a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard University with the Chase Dissertation Prize.