Sudhir Venkatesh

Ten Things Great Leaders Do

In this story-driven talk, Venkatesh talks about the surprising qualities of great leadership. For example, great leaders will have a confidante—like Shakespeare’s “court jester” who tells the King the things no one else will say. Great leaders stop and reflect on their failures, and they tie their greatest successes to acknowledging their mistakes. The most active and busy leaders also manage to take a lot of naps. The talk is meant to change our view of the most accomplished executives by showing that successful leadership means being human, making mistakes, but learning how to redefine failure for yourself and your team.

The New American Worker

We’re in the middle of a jobless recovery, so we’re told. Behind the media punditry, there’s a real change in how Americans work. Americans are more and more likely to be self-employed, self-made, and moving between two and three jobs. For over a century, your economic position—union worker, CEO, etc.— determined how you voted and what causes you supported. Well, no more. Politics and political action now have strange bedfellows: Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are the new signs of the political voice in America. Venkatesh sheds light on who we are, what we do, and what it means for the election. He draws on his own study of American workers and his own research into Occupy Wall Street protests.

Risky Business: Is it all that bad?

Everyone wants to understand the minds of the creative investors—the hedge fund traders, the bankers, the ones most people think are at the bottom of our current economic meltdown. Venkatesh looks for some clues in un-conventional places. He spent a decade with traders in the legitimate economy and traders of a different kind—hi ranking drug dealers. They have not only have more in common than you think, but by looking at both, we can get some new insights into how investors and hi-risk capitalists really think about risk and business success.

Leadership Secrets to Performing in Hi-Risk Situations

How do great business leaders cope with high risk and uncertainty? To find their secrets to success, Sudhir Venkatesh spent time with more than 100 business leaders—from the tech sector to old-fashioned manufacturing to the FBI. He provides insights about the strategies that help executives stay calm and get the most of themselves and their team when situations become stressful and pressure-filled. He integrates stories of leaders who surprised themselves by performing beyond expectations.

Additional Speech Topics

Click Here

Offering Unique Leadership Insights

One of the most renowned young Sociologists and researchers in the U.S., Sudhir Venkatesh is known for his unorthodox, "reality-based" methods of research in a field where on-the-ground-research methodologies have fallen out of vogue. His in-depth observations of underground economies and leadership management of various communities and businesses have made him a sought-after voice on leadership and management issues. Sudhir is the Chair of the Academic Advisory Board at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, which provides MBA (and custom executive education) for people in media, advertising, and the creative arts. It is a leadership based program, but also addresses other aspects such as management, marketing, strategy, and finance. He also advised the Director’s staff at the FBI for two years, as the Bureau tried to use data more effectively to fight crime in the 21st century.

Bestselling Author

Venkatesh’s New York Times Bestseller, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, received a Best Book award from The Economist, and is currently being translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, French and Portuguese. He established his public presence with Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, a bestselling study of illegal economies that was awarded a Best Book prize by Slate.com, as well as the C. Wright Mills Award . His editorial writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. He also writes for Slate.com, and his stories have appeared in This American Life, WIRED, and on National Public Radio.