The Provocateurs

Rescuing Levi’s A self-declared ‘brand guy’, Chip Bergh was appointed president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in 2011. During his tenure the company has experienced a dramatic turnaround marked by outstanding performance and reclaiming its cultural relevance. In short, Levi’s has become cool again! Along the way, Chip has shown himself to be a provocateur.   In this podcast with Des Dearlove,...

 Rare Breeds – Marching To A Different Drum  Leadership and brand expert Sunny Bonnell is the bestselling co-author of Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different (with Ashleigh Hansberger, 2019). Sunny and Ashleigh are also the creators of the Rare Breed Leadership Platform, and the hit YouTube show, Rare Breed TV.  In this Provocateurs podcast with Thinkers50 co-foun...

The author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity , Kim Scott joins Steve Goldbach of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to talk through the politics, practicalities, and purpose of feedback in the workplace.  In this discussion, part of The Provocateurs podcast series, Kim explains how her two-by-two framework fo...

Author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom , Morra Aarons-Mele is also founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online.  In this Provocateurs podcast episode, she joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to set the record straight on normalising anxiety. Data shows that high achievers manage more anxiety and depression, and Morra explains how to r...

Former professional poker player Annie Duke is a master of decision making. In this Provocateurs podcast, hosted by Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte, she challenges us to examine our own biases and self-narratives to focus on the things we can control, in order to make better choices.  By sharing practical insights and strategies for improving decision making and develop...

Self-confessed contrarian thinker and provocateur since childhood, Martin Lindstrom is an international branding expert and one of the world’s leading authorities on the metaverse. Here he joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50 in a fascinating conversation about branding as an emotional construct, the power of small data, and lying on a bed of Lego. In the 1990s, Lindstrom pi...

Shelley Zalis is a pioneer for online research, becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry’s top 25, and today she works with Fortune 500 companies, impact organizations, and conscious leaders to advance equality in the workplace. And she mentors women all over the world. Shelley is the CEO of The Female Quotient, an equality services company that creates platforms f...

Jim Stengel is the President and CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, which works to build brands and companies by activating their purpose. He has authored the books ‘Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies’ as well as ‘Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups.’ He is also a speaker with the Washington Speakers Bureau, the host of T...

Tiffani Bova: The Inside Track on Growth  Tiffani Bova is the global growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business . Tiffani is a true change maker whose thought-provoking and forward-thinking insights have brought her international attention. She also hosts her own excellent podca...

Stuart Crainer, Des Dearlove, Steve Goldbach, Stacy Janice and Geoff Tuff marshall their thoughts and make sense of our podcast episodes from the year. What have they learned? What has surprised them? Which guests really made them re-think and re-set?   There are plenty of inspiring stories to choose from. We have had some amazing guests: Valerie Rainford, who has championed talent and diversity i...

What is peanut butter and jelly leadership? And why does every business leader need a podcast? Ben Fanning is the host of the top ranked Lead the Team podcast, where he interviews world-class CEOs about their everyday success strategies that can apply to businesses of 1 to 100,000. In this fascinating episode, Ben, who is also a professional speaker, #1 bestselling author, and corporate trainer, e...

Tom van der Lubbe is the visionary and inspirational co-founder of Viisi, a Dutch financial services company that offers customized mortgage solutions. Founded in 2010 at the height of the financial crisis, Viisi is a remarkable company.  Its purpose is to change the world of finance, to make the industry better, more sustainable and more focused on the long term. Its open and transparent organiza...

It isn’t every day you get to meet a real-life astronaut! Dr Charles Camarda – (Charlie to his friends) was selected as an Astronaut Candidate in 1996 and flew as a Mission Specialist on STS-114, NASA’s Return-to-Flight mission immediately following the Columbia disaster of 2003, which claimed the lives of its seven crew. He was responsible for initiating several teams to successfully diagnose the...

Trained at Columbia, the National Institute of Health and Harvard before joining the faculty at Duke University in 1973, Bob Lefkowitz is a Nobel Prize winning scientist who is best known for showing how adrenaline works via stimulation of specific receptors. He is also a cardiologist and the author of the memoir, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline Fueled Adventures of...

Julie Carrier is a trailblazer in the field of young women’s leadership. The CEO of Girls Lead Worldwide and founder of The Leadership Development Institute for Young Women, she researches and brings evidence-based, applied-neuroscience leadership coaching and development to girls and young women in high school through a set curriculum. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award i...

Hubert Joly has been described as ‘a visionary’, and ‘one of the most gifted leaders of our time.’ As CEO of the electrical retailer Best Buy, Joly led a turnaround that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos described as ‘…remarkable – a case study that should be taught in business schools around the world.’   Now a lecturer at Harvard Business School and a member of the board of directors of Johnson & Johnson...

The Posse Foundation identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential and places them in supportive, multi-cultural teams.  Since 1989, Posse’s partner colleges have awarded $1.6 billion in scholarships and more than 10,000 scholars have so far been selected.  Posse scholars graduate at a rate of 90 percent.  Deborah Bial is the president and founder of P...

Dambisa Moyo is a true pioneer.  Zambian-born, she serves on the global corporate boards of the 3M Corporation, Chevron, and Condé Nast.  Her compelling combination of contrarian thinking with measured judgment, plus a uniquely wide ranging curiosity, can be seen in her succession of bestselling books: Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth and How to Fix It, Winner Tak...

Valerie Rainford: Passion Plus Purpose If passion and purpose are the currency of business, then Valerie Rainford has a lifetime of wealth from which to draw. Now, the founder and CEO of Elloree Talent Strategies, she is author of the award-winning memoir Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium . Her remarkable career is loaded with firsts: the you...

The Provocateurs , a collaboration between Thinkers50 and Deloitte , is a new podcast series profiling the world’s boldest leaders and the moves they make. These are people who have accomplished incredible things by ‘provoking’ the future they desire – in business and for society overall. Often overcoming human biases and acting with imperfect data along the way, each episode will profile a single...