Rishad Tobaccowala
Founder, The Re-Thinking Work Platform
Rishad Tobaccowala was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him one of five “Marketing Innovators.” He is in the Ad Age Interactive Hall of Fame and has received a lifetime achievement silver medal award from the Chicago Ad Federation, an Inspire Award for motivating and building talent from the Advertising Education Foundation and the Association of National Advertisers and was named an Advertising Legend by the Advertising Club of New York.
Rishad’s best-selling book Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data and his recent second book, Re-Thinking Work: Seismic Changes in the Where, When and Why, were published globally by HarperCollins. The Economist Magazine called Restoring the Soul of Business perhaps the best recent book on stakeholder capitalism and Strategy Magazine named it among the five best business books and the marketing book of the year.
He spent nearly four decades at Publicis Groupe, a 100,000+ employee firm comprising companies like Epsilon, Sapient, Digitas, Leo Burnett, Saatchi and Saatchi, Starcom and Zenith. Before Rishad stopped being a full-time employee with Publicis Groupe (where he remains active as a Senior Advisor) he was Publicis Groupe’s Global Chief Strategist and Growth Officer and served on its Management Committee. Rishad has also been the Chairman of Digitas and Razorfish.
Rishad is also chairman of The Tobaccowala Foundation, which helps over 10,000 people gain better access to health and education in India. Tobaccowala holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.