Tamzin Booth is The Economist’s Technology & Business editor. Prior to this she was Britain business editor. Earlier she was the Tokyo bureau chief for three years, writing about Japan’s politics, business and economy. Tamzin previously covered European business for the newspaper, based in Paris. Before that she was media editor, based in London. She joined The Economist in 2001 as a writer on finance, having previously worked for the Wall Street Journal. Before pursuing a career in journalism, Ms. Booth worked in equity research at Salomon Brothers in Hong Kong, specialising in banking, and prior to that she was a trainee chartered accountant at Coopers Lybrand in London. She studied English literature at Oxford University.

Dr Maren Schweizer is a technology-industry leader with a wide range of experience, having played key roles in spearheading reorganization processes, leading strategic turnarounds, and
building new ventures.

Although born in Germany, Dr Schweizer consider herself a member of the broader global community, having lived and worked outside Germany for more than ten years.

In her current role, she has been chartered to lead an organization that is building a portfolio of digital businesses in South East Asia with a focus on everyday everything ecosystems in AdTech, HealthTech, FinTech, and Mobility.

Before, she led an automotive electronics company as CEO while building strategic partnerships and business with blue-chip companies in Germany and Southeast Asia, such as Infineon
Technologies, and have served as a board member of JASDAQ listed Meiko Electronics in Japan.

Maren Schweizer serve on the advisory board of HDI Global SE, a leading insurer for industrial and commercial clients in 150 countries.

Naveen is the President for Cisco Systems in Southeast Asia and is responsible for driving profitable growth across 10 countries in the region.

Prior to joining Cisco, Naveen led the Communications, Media and Technology practice for the strategy consulting firm Kearney in Asia Pacific. He consulted to CEOs and Boards of the largest telecom service providers worldwide; public sector organizations and multiple hardware, software, ICT and media companies. Topics ranged from strategy, M&A/investments, digital transformation, operations improvement, public policy and organization restructuring.

Naveen is a knowledge adviser to the World Economic Forum and his work in the area of personal data has been featured at several public and private sessions at the Annual Meeting in Davos. He is currently a board member of Digital ASEAN and the Regional Action Group, World Economic Forum initiatives that aim to develop a single digital market, an enabling ecosystem, and an inclusive and upgraded system of digital infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Naveen is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Data Policy that is examining data architecture models that promulgate an appropriate balance of creativity, responsible use and efficiency.

Naveen has a deep passion on how technology can support social outcomes. Since 2012, he has worked with closely non-profits, social enterprises, industry associations and governments, on a wide range of topics across sustainability, diversity and inclusion, economic development and education. His CSR work in Cisco has focused on driving social impact across K-12 education, environmental programs (including conservation) and economic development (in particular gender parity and social entrepreneurship). From 2012-2017, he was the worldwide leader of Kearney’s Social Impact practice. Naveen serves on the Board of Trustees for the Cisco Foundation globally.

He is regularly featured on TV, print and in the online press, including BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg and Channel News Asia and is an experienced speaker and facilitator in large global conferences.

Naveen began his career at General Electric Corporation where he was part of the Corporate Audit Staff and was trained as a Six Sigma Black Belt. He has an MSc in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau/Singapore). He is a member of the Young President’s Organisation.

As a part of McKinsey’s global Operations and Organization Practices, Carey coleads the firm’s global work and helps companies implement zero-based productivity (ZBP).

Since joining McKinsey, Carey has driven broad-based efforts to set strategy, improve operating models, and achieve effective organizational design while advising global corporations across industries. He has guided leaders on financial planning, market entry, merger diligence, and postmerger management.

In recent years, Carey has focused on supporting organizational productivity, particularly through measuring and boosting sales-, general-, and administrative-expense efficiency. He applies the firm’s proprietary productivity-benchmarking tools and supports executives in rethinking their resource-allocation approach to manage costs better. A practitioner of the ZBP approach, he brings hands-on experience in leading ZBP transformations for Fortune 500 companies as well as variety of smaller companies. To extend this work beyond cost management, Carey also finds opportunities to apply ZBP to organizational design and productivity to help drive target-setting efforts for all corporate functions.

Examples of his recent client work include the following:

- directing a beverage company’s global ZBP-effort rollout that included resource-allocation work as the principal component of a multiyear productivity program

- leading a full-scale ZBP effort in the anchor North American market for an international food company, with results that included a global scale-up of the program after it achieved substantial savings

- guiding a global beverage manufacturer’s private-equity–style approach to setting granular cost benchmarks and targets that included addressing costs on a global basis

- leading cost-control and revenue-creation initiatives in multiple markets for consumer-facing companies across industries, including cable, chemicals, confectionary, and telecommunications

To raise awareness of the benefits of ZBP and other related approaches, Carey has contributed to several articles on cost management.

Simon Baptist is Editorial Director and Chief Economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit. Prior to his current role, he has held a number of other senior management and editorial positions in the business, including Managing Director for Asia, Regional Director of our Asia editorial team, Director of Global Forecasting, and Consulting Director in both Europe and Asia

Simon’s focus is on the global economy, national and international political developments, and public policy. He engages with business, government and international organisations, helping them to understand the operational and strategic implications of the EIU’s forecasts.

He has a doctorate in economics from and was a lecturer at Oxford University, along with degrees in economics and science from the University of Tasmania. His academic research investigated technology and the determinants of productivity in manufacturing firms.