Margaret Heffernan

Margaret was Chief Executive of Information Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation and was named as one of the “Top 100 Media Executives” by The Hollywood Reporter as a result.

She is the author of five books. Her third, ‘Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril’, was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for ‘A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better’, described as “meticulously researched…engagingly written…universally relevant and hard to fault.”

Her TED talks – five to date – have been seen by millions and in 2015 TED published her book ‘Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes’, in which Margaret, reflecting on decades overseeing different organisations, comes to a counterintuitive conclusion: small shifts have the greatest impact.

Building the strongest organisation can be accelerated by implementing seemingly small changes, such as embracing conflict as a creative catalyst; using every mind on the team; celebrating mistakes; speaking up and listening more; and encouraging time off from work.

Margaret is Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organisations.

She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath and continues to write for the Financial Times, the New York Observer and the Huffington Post.