In her new book Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business And Life, award-winning FT journalist and anthropologist Gillian Tett explains why every CEO and investor needs their ‘inner anthropologist’ to make informed decisions.

Drawing on her experiences from Tajik villages, Amazon warehouses, Japanese classrooms, and City trading floors, she reveals how the power of anthropology can help us to all learn to see the world – and the behaviours that shape it – more clearly.

Gillian spoke with The Conduit’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Paul van Zyl. This conversation will leave you with a deeper appreciation of how your business and your life can be enhanced by understanding organisations, consumers, and people in general through an anthropological lens.

Speakers:

Gillian Tett is Chairman of the US Editorial Board and America Editor-at-Large at the Financial Times. In her previous role at FT, she was Managing Editor (US) and columnist and also oversaw global coverage of the financial markets. Her twice-weekly column earned her recognition as Columnist of the Year at the 2014 Press Awards.

Tett has an unparalleled track record at predicting important trends that impact the world. In 2004, Gillian began building a team at the Financial Times to cover capital markets, correctly anticipating the need to watch an industry growing uncommonly fast. By 2007, a year ahead of the curve, she began issuing her news-breaking warnings of a looming financial crisis.

She is the author of The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers and the New York Times bestseller Fool’s Gold, the gripping tale of how a team of Wall Street bankers led by J.P. Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon created the world of ‘shadow banking,’ and then lost control of their creation. She also wrote Saving the Sun, about Japan’s financial collapse in the 1990s.

In recognition of her work, Gillian has won several awards, including the UK Speechwriters’ Guild Business Communicator of the Year 2012, the Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards 2009, British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008, and the Wincott prize in 2007. Gillian also received The British Academy President’s Medal 2011, which rewards service to the cause of the humanities and social sciences, specifically for her insightful journalism contributing to public understanding. She was recognized as Columnist of the Year at the 2014 Press Awards.

Gillian has a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, based on research conducted in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. She speaks French and Russian and has studied Japanese and Tajik.

Paul van Zyl is a Co-Founder of The Conduit and its Chief Creative Officer. The Conduit serves as a home for a diverse community of people passionate about social change.

Having grown up in apartheid South Africa, Paul trained as a human rights lawyer and went on to serve as the Executive Secretary of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He then co-founded the International Centre for Transitional Justice, an organisation that works in over 40 countries that have endured massive human rights violations under repression and in conflict.

Paul is also a Co-Founder and CEO of Maiyet, an ethical luxury fashion brand that cultivates traditional design and culture by partnering with global artisans.

He has received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and served on its Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, and is a London Tech Week Changemaker.

He holds a law degree from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, an LLM in international law from University of Leiden, an LLM from New York University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Santa Clara School of Law.

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