 In this new world, I think it's very important to remain flexible because when things change, you don't want to box yourself in. So I think it's good to have a goal, but remain somewhat flexible. And I think that also for all kinds of professions, it's getting more important to sort of brand yourself. That is kind of a public image that needs to be very carefully curated. And maybe some people who go into academics say, this is not my thing. But today it's almost like if you Google someone and there's no information that almost evokes suspicion. I think for young professionals these days, it's more important than ever to carefully carve out a niche for themselves, position themselves, and then brand themselves, establish a brand opportunity because it doesn't matter how good you are if people don't know about it, won't help you much. My name is Sandra Navidi. I'm an attorney admitted to practice law in Germany and the United States. I have worked as a consultant, as general counsel, and now have my own company beyond global. In my book, Superhubs, I explain the financial system with the help of network science. I presented as a complex self-adapting system as a network in which the central nodes, the human Superhubs have the most power, but they don't have control over the system. And I explain what implication that has for our economy and our society. When I researched the book, what I realized mostly, and since it was published in 2017, sort of reality has corroborated that is the dynamics of a system that is sort of set for failure because corrective mechanisms that usually kick in to correct the system have been disabled by the human Superhubs because they have an vested interest in keeping the system going as is. In the end, this has led to increased polarization, populism, protectionism, and also the, if I wrote it today, I would also have to write about the Superhubs of the tech titans, the big tech companies, which I think are the next problem facing us. One of the greatest challenges that is facing America is the monopoly of the tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and so forth because they exacerbate inequality, polarization, and basically undermine our democracy. And so I think that they should be broken apart, they should be more regulated and supervised. The problem of the tech giants ties into many other problems that the United States faces. My second book, Does Future Proof Mindset? The English title will be Future IQ. I basically look at how digitization disrupts our world and look at the future of jobs because people who graduate from university today over the course of their careers will change their jobs up to 15 times. 60% of the jobs that they will retire from don't even exist yet. And a third of the qualifications that will be important for them are not even relevant yet. By the end of this decade, probably up to a billion people will have to be retrained. So we see there's a very dynamic development. When I started writing it, there wasn't even a pandemic yet. There was no war. While in my first book, Superhubs, I look at the system itself and uncover the problems in the Future Proof Mindset or Future IQ in English. I tell basically people how they can navigate the system to succeed in the system. There are still plenty of problems, but it's sort of a roadmap on how to basically Future Proof Your Mindset because we need to completely change. When we talk about progress and innovation, we generally always focus on companies so as to not become the next codec. You know, we now see Netflix is having problems and might be taken over by other companies. My point is it's not just companies that have to innovate. It's also people who have to, all of us have to disrupt our thinking and constantly innovate ourselves. It's not a comfortable position, but it's necessary. In my new book, my third book, the title of which I'm not at liberty to disclose yet, it will be published in November. I look at the United States and I try to explain it from my transatlantic perspective. During the presidency of Donald Trump, I gained the title of Trumpologist in Germany. I was like the go-to expert to explain what is going on in the United States, which is obviously not an easy task. So in my new book, I try to analyze culturally, historically, sociologically, how the United States got to this point of being so extremely polarized. Although we also have to say that all the developments we're seeing here in the United States, we of course also see in other parts of the world. The United States has been a major exporter of culture and trends that other parts of the world, Europe and Germany, not least have been very eager to adopt since the Second World War. But in my book, I explain that the sort of people that America attracted who are more open to risk and who are resilient and who passed on these traits to their offspring, and that's the way that also they raised them, how this culture and values like individualism and the exceptionalism, which is kind of like a national ideology, how that filters down to the self perception of every individual American, sort of the national character. And then of course I go into other things like why are Americans so prone to believing alternative effects? Again, a phenomenon that we see all over the world. But if we look back at the origins, what sort of people it attracted, how people needed to kind of survive in this new dangerous world, how they clung to religion, then we have other influences like Hollywood and plastic surgery and the media. So there's a lot of blurring between reality, fiction together. Fiction and reality blend into one basically. And I think that's part of the problem and why this issue is more pronounced here. For a system, the financial system especially to be resilient, it has to be diverse because diverse systems by nature are more resilient. And so there should be more women integrated, but despite efforts here in the United States and also in Europe, women haven't really been able to progress to the top levels. There are very, very few. Not much has changed since I wrote my book several years ago. And so what can women do? I think there's partially problems that rest in women. Like for instance, they are less self-confident. They suffer from the imposter syndrome. They feel like imposter is that they actually make it and self sabotage. And then also they're not part of established networks like the old boys' club. So to have their own networks, they have been efforts of establishing women-centric networks, but by their nature, they are more limited. So I think it has to be a cooperative effort between women and company society, but it's a very tough problem to solve. The fact that I've worked as an attorney and in investment banking, media, macroeconomics gives me sort of an overarching perspective, a bird's eye view and in our new quickly evolving world that is dominated by technology and by great uncertainty. It's very important to have a wide angle view to be able to see things within their context, but also to look beyond silos to get a perspective of the entire system. I think that is what my background has enabled me to do. I wish economics focused more on human behavior because ultimately finance and the economy are human systems and are directed by humans who are very unpredictable in their decisions and especially collectively. As we see in occurrences like corona, how that was handled or a war is breaking out. So I just wish it would think in a wider context, I guess. A dose of common sense would, I think, be helpful. In our increasingly digitized world, networking is almost more important than ever because the rarer human contact becomes the more sparse it becomes, the more valuable it is. So if everybody sits behind their computer and works from home, of course the person who goes to the office who networks with colleagues who learns from their bosses who can kind of exhibit what they do are those people are at an advantage but also just from a human perspective, our brain is basically evolved to thrive on human contact. It's necessary. We need it for our personal growth, for our happiness. So I think in every respect, it's a good thing. I think Americans are very good at it. It comes naturally to them. In my home country, Germany, people are more reserved and sometimes networking gets a bad rep as being kind of manipulative and self-serving but it doesn't have to be that way. Ideally, it helps everybody involved and you should contribute. That's the way actually to network is to build social capital and contribute to human relationships. I found my company beyond global over a decade ago because I always had the urge to go out on my own. Everybody in my family had been self-employed. Of course, when I considered doing that, everybody said, no, it's a bad time as the economic crisis you have to wait was 2011. So I figured I just do it and if it doesn't work out I can always go back and employ and I've really enjoyed the experience because it has afforded me the opportunity to realize my potential and to work with good people in terms of character and integrity and also, of course, who are very interesting and insightful so it's been an enriching experience. In this new world, I think it's very important to remain flexible because when things change you don't want to box yourself in. So I think it's good to have a goal but remain somewhat flexible and I think that also for all kinds of professions it's getting more important to sort of brand yourself that is kind of a public image that needs to be very carefully curated and maybe some people who go into academics say this is not my thing but today it's almost like if you Google someone and there's no information that almost evokes suspicion. I think for young professionals these days it's more important than ever to carefully carve out a niche for themselves, position themselves and then brand themselves, establish a brand opportunity because it doesn't matter how good you are if people don't know about it, won't help you much. So I think in this new world that we live in that's important and then also networking remains as important as ever. I enjoy doing media because it gives me an opportunity to sort of spread the message and I think it's very important in this world of fake news to give unbiased analysis and translate complex abstract concepts into easily understandable narratives because I feel there's so much misinformation out there if I can help get some clarity and some hard fact information and I think that hopefully is helpful. I primarily do media in Germany. I've been with NTV which is the equivalent to CNN and they actually have a cooperative agreement. It belongs to RTL. I've been with them for over 10 years but I've done all sorts of media, American media, Chinese media, all over the world. My greatest realization when I wrote Future IQ was that our greatest competitive advantage versus machine is our being human. So that's good news for all people who are not techies. Techies of course have job security but everybody else, it will remain important for us to employ our social skills be it in sales or teaching or personal attention jobs like in the medical field. So there's going to be a lot of demand still even with machines taking up increasingly more jobs.