SOF Discussion Reception: The Rules of the Game: Building Workplaces that Work
Join us for a conversation with organizational consultant and New York Times best-seller Simon Sinek on his book “Infinite Game.” Sinek will examine how great leaders keep their teams engaged for the long-term, give meaning and purpose to their work, and build strong, inspiring organizations that last. The conversation will be moderated by Joanne Lipman, inaugural Distinguished Journalism Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, CNBC on-air contributor, and author.
This program is part of our Society of Fellows Discussion Reception Series in New York, which is generously underwritten by Merilee and Roy Bostock and Ilona Nemeth and Alan Quasha.
**If you’re not a Society of Fellows member, but have an interest in joining, please contact the SOF team at sof@aspeninstitute.org or at (970) 544-7980 from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. MST.
Speaker:
Simon Sinek is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe at work and return home fulfilled at the end of the day. He is the author of five books:
- Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, a global bestseller (with over a 1 million books sold in the U.S. alone)
- Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller
- Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller
- Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team
- And his latest book, The Infinite Game, also a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller
A trained ethnographer, Simon is fascinated by the people and organizations that make the greatest and longest lasting impact in the world. Over the years, he has discovered some remarkable patterns about how they think, act and communicate and the environments in which people operate at their natural best. He has devoted his life to sharing his thinking in order to help other leaders and organizations inspire action. Simon may be best known for popularizing the concept of WHY, which he described in his first TED Talk in 2009. That talk went on to become the second most watched TED Talk of all time, and is still in the top five with nearly 50 million views. His interview on millennials in the workplace broke the internet in 2016. With over 80 million views in its first week, it has now been viewed hundreds of millions times. This led to Simon being YouTube’s fifth most searched term in 2017. His unconventional and innovative views on business and leadership have attracted international attention. From the airline industry to the entertainment industry, from finance to fashion, from big business to entrepreneurs to police forces, Simon has been invited to meet with a broad array of leaders and organizations in nearly every industry. He has also had the honor of sharing his ideas with multiple agencies of the US government and with the senior-most leaders of the United States Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Army and Coast Guard. Simon is an adjunct staff member of theRAND Corporation, one of the most highly regarded think tanks in the world. He is also active in the arts and in the non-for-profit world (though Simon prefers to call it the for-impact world).
Moderator:
Joanne Lipman, one of the nation’s most prominent journalists, is the inaugural Distinguished Journalism Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is also a CNBC on-air contributor and author of the No. 1 bestseller, THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: What Men and Women Need to Know About Working Together.
Lipman is the former Chief Content Officer of Gannett and Editor-in-Chief of both USA Today and the USA Today Network, encompassing the flagship publication plus 109 metro newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, the Des Moines Register, and the Arizona Republic. In that role, she oversaw more than 3,000 journalists and led the organization to three Pulitzer prizes.
She began her career as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, ultimately rising to deputy managing editor – the first woman to attain that post – and supervising coverage that won three Pulitzer Prizes. During her 22 years at the Journal, she also created Weekend Journal and Personal Journal, and oversaw creation of the Saturday edition. She subsequently was founding editor-in-chief of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, which won Loeb and National Magazine Awards.
Lipman’s work has been published in numerous outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Fortune, Newsweek and the Harvard Business Review. She has appeared as a television commentator on CNBC, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, among others. She is a frequent public speaker, with recent engagements including the World Economic Forum in Davos, the United Nations, the Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDx, the International Lean In conference, West Point Military Academy, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Milken Institute Global conference in addition to multiple companies. She also is co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the acclaimed music memoir “Strings Attached.”
A winner of the Matrix Award for women in communications, Lipman has served or is currently serving on boards including Yale University Council; the World Editors Forum; the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy; the Yale Daily News; Spirited Media; the Yale Alumni Magazine; and the advisory boards of Data.world, Breastcancer.org and the Yale School of Music. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She and her husband live in New York City.