Jeffrey Garten
A frequent columnist for, Newsweek International, Jeffrey Garten is widely known in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs. He was the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under the Clinton administration and former Dean of Yale School or Management. He has worked on Wall Street as a managing director of Lehman Brothers.
Topics:
- Economy /
- Finance /
- Globalization /
- International Business /
- Leadership /
- Management /
- Professor/Teacher
Jeffrey E. Garten became the Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance and Business at the Yale School of Management on July 1, 2005. During the previous decade he was the dean of the School. While he held that position, the Yale SOM established an International Center for Finance; an International Institute for Corporate Governance; the Sachem Venture Capital Fund for Projects in New Haven; the Yale SOM - Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures; and an executive MBA program in Health Care Management. The number of student applications increased 75%, the size of the faculty grew by 42%, and the School's endowment increased from $137 million to $362 million.
Garten is also chairman of Garten Rothkopf, a global consulting firm which he co-founded in October 2005. The company's focus is adding shareholder value and enhancing risk management techniques for international companies.
Garten currently serves on the boards of directors of the Aetna Corporation, CarMax, Credit Suisse Asset Management, The International Rescue Committee, and The Conference Board. He is on the advisory boards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the Chicago Climate Exchange, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Prior to coming to Yale, Garten was the undersecretary of commerce for international trade in the first Clinton administration, where he focused on promoting American business interests in Japan, Europe and many big emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil. He was deeply involved in the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and in helping the U.S. and China negotiate Beijing's entry into the WTO.
From 1979 to 1992, he worked on Wall Street as a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group. During this time, he specialized in debt restructuring in Latin America, built up and directed the Asian investment banking business for Lehman from Tokyo, and restructured some of the world's largest shipping companies in Hong Kong. From 1973 to 1978 he served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy in the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance in the Ford and Carter administrations.
He is the author of A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany and the Struggle for Supremacy (1992), The Big Ten: The Big Emerging Markets and How They Will Change Our Lives (1997), The Mind of the CEO (2001), and The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders (2002). He has also edited and contributed to the anthology, World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy (2000). In 2000, he chaired a national task force of the Securities & Exchange Commission, comprised of leaders from business, finance and accounting, on the subject, "What Kind of Information Do Investors Need in the New Economy?" From 1997 to 2005, he wrote a monthly column for Business Week. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Affairs.
Garten holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College, 1968, and a Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, 1980, where he specialized in international economics and international organizations. From 1968 to 1972 he served as a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division and a captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces. In 1971, he was a military advisor to the Royal Thai Army.
He is married to Ina Garten, author of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, and lives in New York and Connecticut.
Where is the Global Economy headed and what will it mean for you?
Every person and every organization is being affected by what's happening in the global economy - the rise of China and India, the explosion of outsourcing of both low wage and sophisticated jobs, the prospects of pandemics, mind boggling flows of private capital in all directions, to name a few of the phenomena that are changing the world as we know it, creating many new opportunities, but also many daunting challenges, leading to the need for more information, more judgment and better risk assessment. Garten is among the very few commentators who understands these issues from all angles and who has a gift not just for explaining them but engaging you in a discussion of what they mean for the decisions you make - as a citizen, a consumer, an investor, a corporate executive. Formerly an aide to Henry Kissinger, an international investment banker, an undersecretary of commerce for international trade and a dean at Yale's business school, Garten's real world experience transcends any single discipline. He focuses on the intersection of politics and policy, the economy and business - forces that no longer act independently but must be considered as a whole. He will adapt his presentation to the specific interests of the audience at hand.
How will Business Leadership Change in the 21st Century?
It is no secret that the global environment for business is fraught with new challenges: globalization, rapid changes in technology, hypercompetition not just from companies in the developed world but from new ones in emerging markets, new strategies, new models of corporate organizations, new requirements for different leadership skills, etc. Drawing on a number of his previous books, including The Mind of the CEO and The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders, as well as on countless interviews over the past decade for his column in Business Week, Garten uncovers a number of critical issues that business leaders at all levels - CEO, CFO, CIO, vice presidents -- must know. He points to a new model for leadership for the next decade and beyond and explores such questions as: What will the "company of tomorrow" look like and how will it differ from what we know today? How should they be better organized to face ruthless competition from every angle, to gather the required information and make the best possible judgments about risks and opportunity, to find, hire and retain the best and the brightest? What are the traditional leadership traits that are in greater demand than ever and what new talents will be required? How should leaders prepare themselves for the challenges ahead - What will they need by way of training, education and experience?
Five Burning Questions
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Garten raises five burning questions, tailored to the interest and backgrounds
of the participants, and then orchestrates a vibrant discussion with the group.
Examples of the issues he can discuss are the following:
- How significant will China and India be in the global economy, and should we welcome or oppose some of the trends?
- How precarious is the global energy situation and what are our real choices for energy security at reasonable prices?
- What are the potential economic shocks on the horizon - political, economic, financial, social -- and can we prevent them?
- What is the best design for the highly adaptive organization of the future, given the pressures of rapidly changing trade and investment patterns, disruptive technologies, changing requirements for skills and talents in the workforce, etc?
Garten provides an overall introduction and then introduces each topic so that everyone is on the same map. The session is designed to bring the audience in from the beginning. It will encourage the sharing of knowledge among all those assembled, be they small groups or large, and it will create an awareness of the big trends in the global economy and ways to deal with them.
Emerging Markets: How They Will Change The World
One of the most powerful trends in the world is the rise of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Poland, South Korea, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. These nations are fraught with opportunity and risk. They are the fastest growing countries and hold the key to global growth. They are fueling global trade and investment, presenting companies and investors with growing markets, and supplying an increasing amount of the productive talent. On the other hand, they are also among the most volatile nations economically and politically. They present enormous challenges to the US in terms of everything from cheaper labor to human rights. In recent years, moreover, the emerging market economies have begun to spawn a new phenomena that will soon change the global map of great companies - they are producing their own multinational companies, from South Korea's Samsung to Mexico's Cemex, from Russia Gazprom to India's Infosys. Garten has extensive experience in all aspects of emerging markets. He specialized in this arena as a strategist in the State department; he advised many third world companies as an investment banker; he negotiated trade deals with them as undersecretary of commerce; he has written about them in many publications, such as Business Week and Newsweek, and has authored the path breaking book, The Big Ten: The Big Emerging Markets and How They Will Change Our Lives. No one is better positioned to enhance your understanding of one of the transforming trends of our times, and to help you figure out the decisions you must make to benefit from them.
