The Sweeney Agency

About Ted C. Fishman - Author and Speaker on the International Economy and Global Trends:

Ted C. Fishman is an accomplished public speaker who has addressed gatherings worldwide. His talks reflect the intelligence and wit readers find in his writing. Most recently his talks have focused on the emergence of China and its impact of the lives of Americans as consumers, workers, managers and citizens. His presentations combine engaging story telling with a wide ranging knowledge about the world economy, putting into context the his audiences top concerns and exploring how they relate to big, global economic trends. His talks are lively and stimulating. Question and answer periods are inevitably engaging.

Fishman’s best-selling book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World has helped describe for the world the effects of China's momentous change on the lives and businesses of people everywhere. China, Inc., is a guidebook to the most important change in the world today, the rapid emergence of China as a world power whose size is unmatched by any rivals. In addition to its success in America, the book has been translated and published Japan, China, France, Taiwan, Korea, Spain, and Turkey.

Fishman’s new book Shock of Gray was released in October, 2010. The focus of the book is world's rapidly aging population—by the year 2030, one billion people will be sixty-five or older. As the ratio of the old to the young grows ever larger, global aging has gone critical: For the first time in history, the number of people over age fifty will be greater than those under age seventeen. Few of us under¬stand the resulting massive effects on economies, jobs, and families. Everyone is touched by this issue—parents and children, rich and poor, retirees and workers—and now veteran journalist Ted C. Fishman masterfully and movingly explains how our world is being altered in ways no one ever expected.

Fishman's essays and reports appear in many of the world's most prominent journals, including The New York Times Magazine, Money, Harper’s, Worth, INC, Business2.0, Esquire, USA Today, GQ, The Times of London, German GEO, and Chicago Magazine. His commentaries have been featured on Public Radio International’s Marketplace.

Fishman’s writing is noted for taking seemingly vastly complex topics and making them understandable and meaningful for a general audience. Fishman is particularly interested in how big global economic trends bare on people's everyday experience. He has been featured on ABC, CNN, Fox, the BBC, CNBC, PBS, NPR, Public Radio International, and Sky News (UK), among many others. Fishman also frequently consults to local, state and federal leaders concerned about how to navigate China’s economic rise. A former floor trader and member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Fishman ran his own trading firm until 1992.

Fishman has lived and worked in Japan and Indonesia. He is a graduate of Princeton University and currently lives in Chicago.

What Ted C. Fishman Talks About:

Shock of Gray
What happens when too few young people must support older people? How do shrinking families cope with aging loved ones?

What happens when countries need millions of young workers but lack them? How do compa¬nies compete for young workers? Why, exactly, do they shed old workers?

How are entire industries being both created and destroyed by demographic change? How do communities and countries remake themselves for ever-growing populations of older citizens?

Who will suffer? Who will benefit?

With vivid and witty reporting from American cities and around the world, and through compelling interviews with families, employers, workers, economists, gerontologists, government officials, health-care professionals, corporate executives, and small business owners, Fishman reveals the astonishing and interconnected effects of global aging, and why nations, cultures, and crucial human relationships are changing in this timely, brilliant, and important keynote.

The Urgency of China: How China's Next Act Changes Our World
No country--since the rise of the United States-- has ever challenged the rest of the world on so many fronts as the rise of China does today. Ted Fishman explores the dynamic behind China's rise and how the vast changes in that country change life for the rest of us as workers, managers, consumers, citizens and even as parents. In the wake of the global financial crisis, China has embarked on the most ambition stimulus plan and infrastructure building effort in the world. It is also vastly expanding it education system so help push the nation and its people to the top of world economy. The stakes are enormously high for people everywhere, and nothing about China's continual rise is assured.

Fishman explores the fundamental drivers of China's push and what the rest of the world must do to insure that China's drive creates prosperity at home, in the United States or wherever home may be. With urgency, humor and insight, Fishman brings China's next stage vividly home.

Small Places, Big Advantages
Smaller places can thrive in the global economy if they harness their best assets: strong community, committed boosters and close-knit networks. Ted C. Fishman whose book, China, Inc., describes the effects of changes in the world's most populous country on people everywhere, explores how smaller places are uniquely poised to profit as the needs of large economies propel globalization. Fishman matches the strengths of smaller places with the needs of the world's biggest economic actors. While not all small places thrive, nearly all of the world's richest places (per capita) are small-scale places, and nearly all of the world's most globalized economies, with highest skilled professional workforces are also small places. Fishman's talks build on interviews and research into the economy of his local audiences. He provides insights that can serve, among others, communities, local economic development bodies, workforce boards, educational institutions, chambers of commerce and local industries looking to provide thought leadership in their communities.