The Sweeney Agency

About Marvin Zonis:

Marvin Zonis is a sought-after global political economist and speaker on political risk, the global economy and leadership. As professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Marvin teaches courses on International Political Economy, Leadership, and E-Commerce. He was the first professor at the Business School to teach a course on the effects of digital technologies on global business. He also consults to corporations and professional asset management firms throughout the world, helping them to identify, assess, and manage their political risks in the changing global environment.

Zonis is a member of the Board of Directors of CNA Financial, the global insurance and financial services firm and a Fellow of Diamond Consultants, a global technology consulting firm. He is a member of the U.S. Comptroller General's Board of Advisers at the GAO and serves on the Board of the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fondation Etats Unis, Paris and on the Board of Advisers of the Centre for Business Management, Queen Mary University of London.

What unites these activities is Zonis' unique awareness of the intersections of politics, economics, emergent technologies and psychology. He argues that global economic decline generates pervasive feelings of humiliation, anxiety, and mistrust. Those, in turn, will generate widespread political instability. Governments will be toppled, the economic decline of those countries will accelerate and foreign investment will seek other investable countries, diminishing long-term economic growth. In a world of economic decline, technologies multiply the downward spiral while economically, cross border financial flows and business outsourcing to lower cost countries, for example, have begun to decline -- major factors driving the decline of the global economy. One result is the massive shrinking of cross border trade. The instability and humiliation, which in turn drives rage, will generate more recruits for terrorism. In the face of these global economic, political and financial challenges, business leadership, and a true understanding of what defines leadership, is more essential than ever.

Zonis has written extensively on globalization, digital technologies, emerging markets, Middle Eastern politics, the oil industry, Russia, and U.S. foreign policy. He is a leading authority on the Middle East, and has spent the last 40 years studying the volatile mix of Islam, terrorism, and the Middle East. He is the former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. He has lived in Iran, hitchhiked through Afghanistan in the 1960s, studied Islam in Iraq beginning in 1964, and has traveled extensively throughout other parts of the region, as well.

His writings have been published, among other places, in The Financial Times, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Chief Executive Magazine, La Vanguardia, The Boston Globe, and the Japanese journal Nikkei Weekly. His latest book is titled Risk Rules: How Local Politics threaten the Global Economy. Other books include The Kimchi Matters: Global Business and Local Politics in a Crisis Driven World, The Eastern European Opportunity, Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah, Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and The Political Elite of Iran.

Zonis has appeared on numerous network television news programs, including Nightline, and CNN's Larry King Live, as well as a commentator on National Public Radio. He was the International Editor of WBBM-TV, Chicago, and was the Middle East Consultant to ABC/Capital Cities television.

He was educated at Yale University, the Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in Political Science, and the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago, where he received psychoanalytic training.

What Marvin Zonis Talks About:

Marvin's delivery style is energetic, and his materials are full of substance. He understands the different needs of a variety of audiences and delivers presentations on many levels for the most impact. He is a stimulating and magnetic speaker whose qualities are best illustrated through examples of his speeches and presentations and the feedback from the numerous business executives who have heard him speak.

His Topics Include:

The Triumph of the Markets: Global Politics and Economics

Getting Globalization Right: Rules for Successful Global Investing
Despite the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing new terrorist threats, globalization is alive and well and slowly rebounding to pre-crisis levels. Businesses that seek success through globalization need to make better country bets. To determine where they should commit their businesses. They need to assess the prospects of countries for political stability and economic growth. Making better country bets offers the best prospects for prospering in the global economy. A set of 15 principles for getting globalization right, including estimates of corruption, leadership succession, external threats and others is offered to help businesses make effective assessments of country prospects.

Geo-Politics and Global Business in the New Decade
The twenty-first century will witness the most rapid changes in the history of the world. Technology is on an exponential growth curve. Powerful demographic trends have resulted in fewer births everywhere but especially in the rich countries and in dramatically ageing populations. Fears of climate change are driving public policy and private investments. A number of countries are achieving vast riches and enhanced national power. These and other forces will be identified and their effects on the global economy will be described. Companies that wish to succeed in this century must anticipate and prepare for these changes.

The Triumph Of The Markets: Global Politics And Economics
The gap between the rich countries and the poor countries is not widening. In fact, for the majority of the world's population, that gap is diminishing. Some 60 developing countries have adopted many of the features of market economies and are growing their economies faster than the 30 rich countries. These rapid developers include India and China with 40 percent of the world's population between them. As a result, the gap between a majority of the poor, living in these 60 countries, and the people in rich countries has been diminishing for a decade. But there are another 60 countries in the world that have not adopted the features of market economies and have not joined the trend towards globalization. Their populations are not only not getting richer, but are frequently actually getting poorer. The income gap between those failing states and the rest of the world is widening rapidly. It is from those countries that future global instability and threats to the US will emerge unless the rich countries take concerted and vigorous action to generate economic development in those countries. The implications for business of these changes will be identified.