On day one of the Global Boardroom we will be joined by Ivan Duque, President, Republic of Colombia in conversation with Michael Stott, Latin America Editor, Financial Times. President Duque has tried to position Colombia as a green leader in the region with toughened greenhouse gas emission targets, pledging a reduction of 51 per cent by 2030. However, some have called these plans unrealistic unless policies are changed. With the Colombian elections fast approaching we will hear President Duque's predictions for the future of the country.
Later in the day, Gillian Tett, Chair, Editorial Board, Editor-at-large, US, Financial Times will interview Eric Schmidt, Co-Founder, Schmidt Futures; co-author, The Age of AI. Eric is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist. As Google’s Chief Executive Officer, he pioneered Google’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. In 2021, Eric co-authored the WSJ-bestselling book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future with Henry Kissinger and Professor Daniel Huttenlocher.
Another fantastic keynote speaker joining the line-up is Gita Gopinath who is the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the situation in Ukraine continues, the unprecedented financial sanctions imposed on Russia threaten to gradually dilute the dominance of the US dollar and result in a more fragmented international monetary system. Gita anticipates the sweeping measures imposed by western countries following Russia’s invasion, including restrictions on its central bank, could encourage the emergence of small currency blocs based on trade between separate groups of countries.
On day three we will hear from Jennifer Doudna. A biochemist and Nobel Prize-winning co-inventor of CRISPR technology, Jennifer Doudna, PhD is a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 — a genome engineering technology that allows researchers to edit DNA — with collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier earned the two the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and forever changed the course of human and agricultural genomics research.