As the leader of McKinsey’s global publishing for three years and counting, Raju Narisetti has a knack for helping businesses, media companies and journalists remain relevant in the digital age. His goal at McKinsey, a leader in the management consulting industry, is to triple the size of its audience over five years.

Raju’s 32-year career includes 14 years as a writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. He was both the youngest and first person of color to appear on the mastheads of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. (The masthead is a newspaper’s listing of its top editors, publisher and owners.) Raju also founded Mint, an Indian business newspaper, where was editor in chief for three years.

Raju and Bob Buday met each In November 2022 at Profiting From Thought Leadership, a conference that Bob has co-produced six times since 2016. At the event, Raju and McKinsey Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly spoke on their firm’s approach to thought leadership.

Today, Raju joins Bob on his firm’s “Everything Thought Leadership” video & podcast to discuss how McKinsey is able to produce so much high-quality content in high volume. Raju will also delve into how the firm has been using data visualization and digital tools to change the way it presents content, how he views the state of the thought leadership profession, and how he transitioned from journalism to professional services.

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Paul Roehrig has done it all as a thought leadership strategist, marketing officer, and more. Before he became Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Ascendion, the Syracuse University PhD graduate spent over 11 years at Cognizant in three VP roles, cultivating big ideas within the IT services giant’s Digital Business, Process Operations, and Center for the Future of Work business units. Previously, Paul served as a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Moreover, he has co-written three bestselling business books: Monster: A Though Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future , What To Do When Machines Do Everything , and Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules.

Alan Alper worked extensively with Paul while the latter was at Cognizant. The two reunited on this episode of “Everything Thought Leadership,” where Paul shared what he believes the future holds for thought leadership in gene_ral and its role within the code economy.

William S. Harvey is a professor of leadership and newly appointed Business School Education Director at the University of Bristol in the UK. He led a study on thought leadership at professional services firms in the late 2010s.

Specializing in corporate reputation, talent management, and leadership, the Durham University graduate has published in the Harvard Business Review and other leading publications. He has touched on subjects as varied as the role of tacit knowledge in research impact and the diverging experiences of work and social networks for immigrants in Singapore, Vancouver, and Boston. Harvey is also an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

In 2020, Harvey and his three co-authors (Vince-Wayne Mitchell, Alessandra Almeida Jones, and Eric Knight) published their research on thought leadership in a scholarly paper titled “The tensions of defining and developing thought leadership within knowledge-intensive firms.” In it, they redefined the often-misunderstood term of thought leadership and explained nine tensions that hamper its development and value for firms.

William Harvey and his co-authors saw clear value in the topic of thought leadership, leading them to their 2020 report and its key findings, which Harvey discusses in depth for this episode of “Everything Thought Leadership.” The leadership professor believes thought leadership should not be neglected by the world of academia, particularly in light of the challenges today with misinformation, disinformation, and fake news enabled by social media.

Prof. Hermann Simon is a bestselling author of more than 40 books and expert in pricing and marketing strategy. His accolades, to name but a few, include becoming the only German in the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame and having a Chinese business school built in his namesake (the Hermann Simon Business School in Shouguang). While Simon was as a business administration professor for over 14 years at the Universities of Bielefeld and Mainz in Germany, he is best known for what came after — when he founded Simon-Kucher & Partners with professors Eckhard Kucher and Karl-Heinz Sebastian. As CEO from 1995 to 2009, Simon was instrumental in helping the consultancy become what it is today: a $500 million player with more than 40 offices around the world.

Bob Buday worked with Simon-Kucher in the middle of the last decade, leading Bloom Group’s work in helping Simon-Kucher partners Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke develop the content for their book Monetizing Innovation.

In this episode of Everything Thought Leadership, Simon joins Bob to discuss the key factors behind Simon-Kucher’s rise to prominence, the value of publishing books in the thought leadership content and marketing mix, and other topics.

Sabrina Horn knows what it means to succeed in the harsh world of business leadership. She would tell you herself she has made no shortage of mistakes and failures. The best-selling author and current CEO of HORN Strategy arrived in Silicon Valley in the early 90s, founding the PR firm Horn Group, which Finn Partners acquired in 2015. Under Sabrina’s leadership, Horn Group grew to national renown: all the more impressive considering she came to Silicon Valley with only $500 in starting funds. Her journey as a leader has prompted Sabrina to realize the necessity of being humble, caring, and honest in the world of startups, even during financially strenuous times. This idea is the subject of her hot book, “Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success.”

Tune in as Sabrina joins Buday TLP’s Alan Alper to go over the principles and frameworks of her book, her perspective on thought leadership, and other lessons she has learned throughout her impressive career.

Thomas A. Stewart is a thought leader on intellectual capital and customer experience who has become renowned worldwide for his expertise. Over the last 50 years, he has led the Harvard Business Review, served as CMO of Booz & Company, and published several best-selling business books. He recently was chief knowledge officer for AchieveNEXT, leading research and benchmarking for emerging and mid-market enterprises. Before AchieveNEXT, Tom was executive director for the National Center for the Middle Market. When Robert Buday worked at CSC Index (1987-1997), he pitched a story on a concept unknown to Tom at the time: business re-engineering.

Tom joins Robert today, 31 years later, to discuss his illustrious career.

Mary McBride joins her long-time colleague Alan Alper to discuss the lessons she has learned in her decades of experience enhancing thought leadership through brilliant visual storytelling. A freelance graphic designer and brand consultant based out of New York, she has crafted detailed white papers, infographics, e-Books, research reports, animations, and many more forms of visual content. Corporate clients she has done projects for include Ernst & Young, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, and Bank of America. Mary has also crafted visual storytelling elements for dozens of law firms and non-profits.

Find her work on Behance: https://www.behance.net/MaryMcBride.

COO of Buday Thought Leadership Partners Alan Alper speaks with Julio Gomez, founder of Gomez Advisors, which later became part of the multimillion-dollar global software firm​ Dynatrace. Among his accolades, Julio was voted one of Time Magazine’s “Fifty Most Influential People Shaping Technology” and one of Wall Street’s “50 Most Influential People.” He currently works at the fintech Highnote as its Industry Evangelist and Thought Leader. Highnote provides businesses with the products, tools, and advice necessary to build their brands’ prestige and audiences.