Listen Now

Nikki Davis Crump, Berliner from Class 6 of the Berlin School’s Executive MBA in Creative Leadership is the VP Account Director at Burrell Communications, a full-service marketing communications company known for its transcultural, multidimensional work. Listen in as Nikki explains how Burrell Communication’s ‘Black is Human’ campaign evolved from calling attention to the violence affecting young black boys to how the black community is disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. You can view the 'Black is Human' evolved campaign on YouTube. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Jihane Fadel, Berliner from Class 22 of the Berlin School’s Executive MBA in Creative Leadership, is an independent creative director and a constant fighter for human rights who practices resilience on a daily basis. Listen in on her story and that of her city, Beirut: an eye-opening anecdote about how unprepared we are to face the rapid changes in our own cities. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

“In 2015, in the major design hub of New York City, 67% of the population was non-White, yet non-Whites made up only 29% of those employed in creative occupations.” This is just one of the disturbing and eye-opening statistics that Shani Sandy, a Berliner of Class 14, cited in her 2016 thesis entitled, “Is Designing with the Same Colors, Yielding the Same Old Design? – Investigating The Perspectives Of Black Graphic Designers In A Search for New Canons”. In recent months, discussions about structural racism have been spreading through organizations, communities and the media like wildfire. On the surface, the conversation appears to have quieted – but so many burning questions remain, so many statistics continue to stun, so much still needs to fundamentally change. It was the perfect time to hear from Shani about what the experience of Black design practitioners, such as herself, has been in the past, is currently and might become, given the optimal working conditions for their creativity and a less Euro-centric design curriculum that expands the definition of where design’s history starts, who its icons are and even how it should look.

Karolien Koolhof, Berliner from Class 22 of the Berlin School’s Executive MBA in Creative Leadership, is the founder of Quiet Quality, a coaching and training company that empowers introverted professionals in their work and careers. She's also the author of a book on introvert leadership where she stresses the importance of neurodiversity in the workplace. Listen in on her expert insights on the lockdown’s positive and negative aspects for introverts, as well as how we can best shape our organizations in order that introverts feel more comfortable in the new normal and beyond. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Pepe Aguilar, Berliner from Class 21 of our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership, is a Mexican cultural artist and activist as well as the multi-award-winning Chief Creative Officer at Grey Wing New York. He launched his art and activism platform, Art Pepe, after having discovered more meaningful purpose for his visual work upon moving to New York four and half years ago. He recognized that capitalistic tools can be used for activism – in this case helping emerging majorities. With campaigns that empower culture and social action, his platform aims to bring Hispanic culture to a global stage to promote discussion around cultural innovation that strengthens the social fabric connecting us all. This is Pepe’s story on how the platform came to be and the force for good that can come out of a new era of tolerance and inclusion. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Chris Arning is a specialist in semiotics and cultural insight, with over 20 years of international experience as a planner, qualitative researcher and semiotician. Currently based in London, Chris founded his boutique semiotics consultancy, Creative Semiotics Ltd, in 2010, with the mission to make visible the meanings embedded within visual identity and communication in order to help business owners better manage the meaning of their brands. Over the years, he has designed and led semiotics projects for companies as diverse as Unilever, GSK, Paramount Pictures, Manchester City FC, Mini and the BBC. Originator and Co-Founder of the global Semiofest conference, ‘A Celebration of Semiotic Thinking’, as well as a writer, poet, speaker and thinker, Chris has taught at the University of Warwick and the University of Creative Arts and published essays in the Huffington Post, Admap, The Drum, New European and WARC. Chris views semiotics not only as a tool for brand strategy, but as an essential tool for helping us manage information, in his own words: “In a post-human world moving faster and faster, and filled with more data, meaning is the most precious commodity.”

The Vertical Social Club is a Berlin-based – and globally active – creative content and production studio all about ‘behind the sports’ storytelling. One of their most recent stories was that of Liverpool F.C.’s Sadio Mané, who’s life and career are featured in ‘Made in Senegal’ – the world’s first feature-length documentary about a black professional soccer player. In this Meet the Experts interview, Vertical Social Club members Lorenz Fendes, Founder and Managing Director; Jermain Raffington, Co-Founder and Head of Production; and Peta Jenkin, Senior Producer, take us behind the scenes to teach us about the two-year in the making-of story and what this new narrative in sports storytelling looks like.

Ethel Sanchez, Berliner from Class 22 of our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership, is a Brand Strategist, currently heading Strategy and Analytics for the Philippines' biggest independent agency, NuWorks Interactive Labs. She’s also a lecturer for the MBA program of the University of the Philippines and co-founder of Wheelhouse Collective PH, a consultancy group that specializes in micro-small to micro-medium scale enterprise strategy. Listen in to her mini-playbook on how she believes local micro-enterprises, born out of the pandemic, can survive the shift back to the new normal. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Andre Pulcino and Rodrigo Gonzalez, Berliners from Class 13 met earlier in their creative careers but rekindled their friendship and entrepreneurial spirits in our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership program. Andre is the founder and Rodrigo an investor of Tubites, which are healthy snacks made with nuts, fruits and other all natural ingredients, backed up by scientific and nutritional research. This is their meeting story. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Daniel Prianti, Berliner from Class 8, and Roberto Sirotsky, Berliner from Class 19 and our Cannes Creative Leaders Programme 2012, met at our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership’s Asia Module in 2017. Shortly after, together they founded BPool, a curated, pre-negotiated and transparent marketing services platform that connects companies with independent talent through one legal entity. This is their meeting story. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Craig Fagan is Programme Director at the Global Disinformation Index, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization based in the UK that aims to provide advertisers, ad tech companies and platforms with trusted and independent ratings of the disinformation risks of news sites with the aim to disrupt, defund and down-rank such sites. Although fake news has been a topic in the media since at least the 2016 US elections, the troubling pandemic of disinformation regarding possible treatments of COVID 19 and the rampant spread of conspiracy theories around the virus’ origins have been making big headlines of late. Disinformation has also played a key role in disseminating hate speech online, not only helping fund white supremacist websites, but spreading misleading information about organizations such as Black Lives Matter on social media and beyond.

Becky McOwen-Banks is a Berliner from Class 23 of our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership. She's the Executive Creative Director at VayernMedia and this is what she has to say on leading from a distance. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Aidis Dalikas is a Berliner from Class 25 of our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership. He's the Chief Growth Manager at SOMA agency and this is what he has to say on agency life after lockdown. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

Marília Lobo is a Berliner from Class 18 of our Executive MBA in Creative Leadership. She’s Director of Strategy and Learning Innovation at the Berlin School and this is what she has to say on how new ways of behaving and consuming have arrived with the pandemic, giving rise to new, unexpected rituals and ritual spaces. Bite-sized Berliners is our “short and sweet” podcast series serving up fresh, under-10-minute food for thought that’s perfect to chew on while enjoying your favorite beverage. Tune in as Berliners* – both participants and alums – offer up their juicy observations on life and work. *In Germany, a Berliner is also a jelly donut

As soon as the COVID-19 lockdown was put in place in the UK, Chrissy Levett, founder and CEO of Creative Conscience, as well as TEDx speaker, author and industry speaker, launched a free webinar series called ‘Help + Hope’, together with her team. Conceived to encourage people to remain positive, inspired and take meaningful action, ‘Help + Hope’ is one of the many purpose-driven initiatives Creative Conscience has spearheaded since their inception in 2012. A global movement and digital platform that offers creative thinkers support and training in, as well as viable channels for, putting their talents towards positive social and environmental change, Chrissy seemed the ideal person to talk with on the subject of Creativity For Good.

Dr. Tania Peitzker is CEO and Chief Technology Innovation Officer of the Munich-based company AI Bots as a Service. In the bots business for over 10 years, Dr. Peitzker’s projects have evolved from classic 2D chatbots to 3D AI bots. Her latest launch, Birgit am Bodensee, is a cognitive interface which appears in life-like human form using sophisticated hologram-technology. Designed as a prototype for deployment across numerous Smart Cities worldwide, in addition to speaking over 130 languages, Birgit can be completely transformed, renamed, re-gendered and otherwise customized to meet the needs of different clients and markets.

Wojtek Materka recently joined the ranks of the Berlin School’s visiting faculty. When he’s not teaching with us, he’s an Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, one of the world’s top-ranking business schools, as well as an executive coach and consultant. Materka wrote his PhD on the topic of Trust in the Digital Age – and with technology swiftly taking on a new role in our working lives under the Covid-19 isolation measures, we were keen to get his thoughts and impressions on the ways in which technology touches and alters our lives.

Wojtek Materka recently joined the ranks of the Berlin School’s visiting faculty. When he’s not teaching with us, he’s an Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, one of the world’s top-ranking business schools. He’s also a coach and consultant specialized in addressing how leaders can develop in the face of an increasingly complex and uncertain world. Given these credentials, he seemed ideally suited to address the topic of leadership in a crisis with Rose, Content Strategist at the Berlin School, as we continue to weather the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe.

Imagine a world where a simple test would tell you whether you’re at risk for cancer, and which types, so you could monitor and catch any growths in their early stages. This is the innovation Jo Bhakdi is on the brink of launching. He’s the Founder and CEO of Quantgene, a medical technology company based in Santa Monica and Berlin that’s disrupting the bio-tech ecosystem – using the power of the Deep Human Genome to create early detection precision technology ultimately for the better prevention of all genetic diseases. In this episode of our Meet the Experts podcast, Megan, Marketing Manager at the Berlin School, had the chance to sit down with Jo in-person in the school’s offices back on Monday, March 9th,  2020 – exactly 1 week before the coronavirus covid-19 lockdown started in Germany and the topic of innovation in medical technology became foremost in everyone’s minds.

Karyn Riegel is a creative business leader working for the impact investment unit of the global life sciences company, Bayer. Leaps by Bayer, as the unit is called, has a valiant mission to conquer the ten huge challenges it sees as having the greatest impact on humanity in the decades to come – challenges which include curing genetic diseases, reducing the environmental impact of farming, eradicating insect born infections and driving transformational digital business models. At times like these – when many of us are asking ourselves just where our world is headed, it has offered some hope to see the world’s brightest scientific minds battling side by side on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic – working at unprecedented speed to find ways to prevent the spread of the virus and treat those already infected. Karyn spoke to Rose, Content Strategist at the Berlin School, about the value of intellectual partnerships in science innovation, the responsibility of being a science communicator in these heady days of fear and misinformation and the tremendous potential that the Leaps’ projects offer for humans to enjoy a more sustainable and healthy future on our planet Earth.