IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award

Tim is the Vice President for Environmental Responsibility at LEGO. Based in Billund, Denmark he leads a global team responsible for the company's global sustainability strategy, performance, and the impact of its products.

Tim established and co-leads the new LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre which is a $150m project to find and implement sustainable raw materials by 2030, most recently seen in the launch of ‘Plants from Plants’ the new bio-based LEGO bricks.

He is also responsible for driving projects addressing renewable energy and sustainability impact in the value chain. The most recent is commitment to solar power across LEGO factories and working with KIRKBI who have invested over $800m in offshore wind farms in the UK and Germany in order to meet the LEGO Group target of 100% renewable energy by 2020.

Prior to joining LEGO Tim worked for Tesco, and led environmental R&D within its property division developing new environmental technologies, processes and systems.

He has nearly 20 years’ experience in sustainability, focusing on corporate sustainability strategy with particular knowledge of renewable energy technologies, sustainable buildings, and product manufacturing.

He started his career with the Building Research Establishment and has worked for international engineering consultancies, FTSE 100 companies, the Carbon Trust, and as an environmental policy advisor to the Mayor of London.

John is a writer, thought-leader and business strategist, a serial entrepreneur and, at heart, an environmentalist. He is the Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans, a certified B Corporation driving market-based solutions to the future’s greatest challenges.

John is also Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility, and sits on an A-Z of some 20 boards and advisory boards. He has written 19 books, and his latest is co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. The book, entitled "The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today’s Profits with Tomorrow’s Bottom Line" comes full circle from John’s 1997 "Cannibals with Forks", where he first introduced the Triple Bottom Line concept.

Benjamin is Executive Director of Impact Finance. He is based in Geneva where he is the Head of Investor Relations. He frequently travels to meet with investors. He also regularly trains new analysts to conduct financial and social due diligence of companies. Benjamin seats at the Investment Committee of the Impact Finance Fund which has disbursed, since October 2011, $190 million in agricultural value chains in Latin America. He developed Kharmax Impact Monitoring System, the company’s proprietary tool to enable portfolio companies to report on impact.

Benjamin is a member of the Firmenich Global Sustainability Exchange platform and he seats on the next gen committee of the Firmenich family. In 2014, he co-initiated the Geneva Nexus Salon, a local meetup of the Nexus Global Youth Initiative.

Benjamin also seats on the Advisory Board of the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth of the University of Zurich. He holds a Master of Science in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University and a Master of Arts in Political Sciences from the University of Geneva.

Iris is heading Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Biopharma Global Healthcare Operations at Ares Trading SA, an affiliate of Merck, and is based in Aubonne. She has joined Merck in 2014.

Iris graduated as Chemical Engineer from the University of Applied Sciences Isny (Germany) and has completed her education with a Diploma of Safety Engineer from the Swiss Insurance Institute for Accident and Prevention (SUVA), as well as with an Executive MBA from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). Before joining Merck Biopharma Iris held several leading positions – in R&D, Quality, Manufacturing and EHS functions - at Roche A.G. in Switzerland (Basel and Sisseln), in Novartis (Basel) and Givaudan (Geneva).

Iris is a German citizen, married, has a daughter and lives in Switzerland.

Professor Gail Whiteman joined the University of Exeter Business School’s Department of Management in July 2020.

She previously was the Rubin Chair, Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University, UK, and the Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.  She is an expert on global risk and her research analyzes how business makes sense of complex problems and build resilience across scales given environmental pressures and social inequities. 

She is the creator of the Arctic Basecamp at Davos (2017, 2018, 2019), an innovative science-outreach event concurrent with the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which calls for action from world leaders to address global risks from climate change.   

Professor Whiteman serves on numerous academic advisory boards and has over sixty peer-reviewed scientific publications in the Academy of Management Journal, Nature, Climatic Change, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Ecology & Society, among others.  She has recently co-authored an impactful article in Nature with Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, and leading scientists and business leaders: “Emissions are still rising: Ramp up the cuts.”  This is a follow up to their 2017 essay “Three years to safeguard our climate”, Nature 546, 593-595 (29^th June 2017).

Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD.

He is the co-director of IMD’s Negotiating for Value Creation program (NVC) and teaches in IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP).

Professor Abadir’s major research, teaching and consulting field of expertise is organizational behavior, particularly in the areas of stress management, leadership strategy, negotiation skills and business agility. He is the co-author of the book e-Negotiations.

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Abadir was an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD where he taught international negotiations and crisis management as well as directed a variety of executive programs.

In addition to his academic experience, Sameh Abadir was an executive at SODEXO from 1988 to 2003, one of the world's largest multinational corporations. He also served in the Egyptian Special Forces between 1985 and 1988.

His corporate and military experience has given him a unique perspective in the classroom and has informed his leadership of behavioral change and ability to acquire results under stress. He also specializes in building team agility and MENA geopolitics.

Sameh Abadir holds a PhD in Economics from Paris I University (France) and an MBA from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po, France). Sameh teaches in French, English and Arabic.

Jean-François Manzoni is the President of IMD, where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor.

His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.

At the organisational level, Professor Manzoni studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure and systems), the management of the change process and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles and over 30 cases, four of which received Case of the Year Awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House. He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At the individual level, Professor Manzoni studies how leaders can create a high-performance work environment and what they can do to modify their leadership style in that direction. This stream of research has led to several articles and a book entitled The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome: How good managers cause great people to fail (with Jean-Louis Barsoux). This book, which is built on Manzoni's and Barsoux's initial Harvard Business Review article introducing the term "set-up-to-fail syndrome", received two Book of the Year awards and is being discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Professor Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the Boardroom and between management and the Board. Ongoing research examining the impact of interpersonal dynamics on increasingly diverse Boards of Directors received the Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. A Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, Professor Manzoni is currently serving on the Board of Keppel Corp., an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange, and previously served on the Boards of Singapore's Civil Service College and of AACSB International, the world's largest business education alliance.

A citizen of Canada and France, Professor Manzoni received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Prior to re-joining IMD in 2016, Professor Manzoni had served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010. He also previously served on the faculty of INSEAD, in Singapore and in Fontainebleau. While at INSEAD he founded and directed for four years the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed the Global Leadership Centre supporting the school's leadership-related coaching, teaching and research activities throughout the world

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Professor Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker. He also performed consulting, top management team support and leadership development work for several international organisations, which has led him to work in more than thirty countries over the years.

He currently serves or served on several International Advisory Panels, including Digital Switzerland, Singapore's Public Service Division and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

Peter Vogel is Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship and holder of the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD Business School in Lausanne. He is also the Director of IMD Global Family Business Center.