10 Takes From Davos

I heard some very inspiring people in Davos this year.
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I heard some very inspiring people in Davos this year. Want to share with you my ten takes:

Amira Yahyaoui, Tunisian activist: Women who get to the top often forget the principles of gender parity they'd touted earlier. Some female CEO have scrapped gender parity projects. They want to show that they are as smart and tough as men.

Cathy Engelbert, CEO, Deloitte: I was born in a family of eight children. I have five brothers, I and learnt very early what competition means...it all started with the fight for cereals at breakfast. I don't know if women can have it all, but I am sure they can do it all.

Zhang Xin, CEO, SOHO Group in China: Mao said women can raise half the sky, and women thrive in China. Except at the top of politics where you have ten men, all with black hair. In the last decades, all the unthinkable things have been happening: two women Presidents in Asia today, the first-black American president, gay marriage etc etc.

Sebastien Bazin, CEO, Accor Hotels: I only have two women in my Excom. That's why I created a shadow executive committee with 12 millennials: six men and six women. This shadow Excom has the same exact access to information and data as the real one, but the latter won't be able to make any decision that hasn't first been discussed by the former.

Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever: Transparency drives trust. On Innovation: Innovation is creativity, and there is no creativity without diversity.

Adam Bain, COO, Twitter: My first bosses in Silicon Valley were two incredible women who showed me the way.

Ian Goldin, Oxford University: We are in the middle of a new Renaissance. We are facing the most rapid escape from poverty in human history. Diversity is key to drive change and accelerate evolution.

George Soros, Chair Open Society: None of us has lived in a deflation environment. Last time this happened was 1930 and we don't know how to manage it. Putin wants the EU to collapse and is using the refugee crisis to achieve this goal. He continues to bomb targets in Syria that are not ISIS. Donald Trump is doing the work of ISIS by using fear and boosting islamophobia.

Mohammed Yunus, Nobel Prize: We should be job creators and not job seekers. The concept of entrepreneurship is very convenient for women, as many of them continue to struggle to find the existing workspace accommodative to their needs.

Shobana Bhartia, Chair Hindustan Times Group: The media is exploding in India. The print industry will continue to thrive for at least 10 more years. Newspapers sales in Hindi continue to grow at a 15% rate annually.

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