Insider Insights -- Barri Rafferty's Notes From Davos
Each year, global leaders converge in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss and analyze the world's most pressing issues, including inequity, changes in technology, sustainability, global trade, and more. Barri Rafferty, who is an Agenda Contributor to this annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, generously agreed to share her insights at a @BIC lecture on campus at The City College of New York.
It wasn't the first time she has done so. In 2014, Rafferty, who is CEO and President of Ketchum, presented her takeaways from Davos to the entire MCA department. It was an eye opening lecture. So we were eager to welcome her back to hear what she learned from this year's gathering of world and business leaders.
Because Rafferty has attended Davos regularly, she was able to not just pinpoint which topics are “hot” today but exactly what propelled them to center stage. For example, the ubiquity of AI and Blockchain has spawned urgent conversations around the need for regulation; techlash is forcing employers to consider how to retrain their workforce to solve future problems with technology we can't yet imagine; and gender parity, considered an HR topic just a few years ago has rocketed up to become a C-Suite topic - thanks in large part to the #MeToo movement.
A member of BIC’s Advisory Board, Barri Rafferty is CEO and President of Ketchum, a top-five, global PR firm, and member of Ketchum's Global Leadership Council where she oversees Ketchum’s global offices, Ketchum Digital and Ketchum Sports & Entertainment (KSE). A frequent speaker on the topic of gender parity and unconscious bias, Rafferty has spoken at TEDxEast, and the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. She is a founder of a women’s leadership network at Omnicom and a recipient of the Plank Center’s Milestones in Mentoring Award. Rafferty is on the PR Council’s board of directors and the national board of StepUp, an organization empowering girls from under-resourced communities to become confident, college-bound, and career focused. In 2017, she was inducted into the PR Hall of Fame.
