Margaret Heffernan

Dr. Margaret Heffernan produced programs for the BBC for 13 years. She produced dramas and documentaries in radio and television and was the first producer to put Simon Schama on TV. She then moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company, and Standard & Poors. She served as Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation, and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the "Top 25" by Streaming Media magazine and one of the "Top 100 Media Executives" by The Hollywood Reporter.

The author of six books, Margaret's third book, "Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril" was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for "A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better," described as "meticulously researched... engagingly written... universally relevant and hard to fault." Her TED talks have been viewed by over fifteen million people, and in 2015, TED published "Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes." Her book, "Uncharted: How to map the future," published in 2020, quickly became a bestseller and was nominated for the Financial Times Best Business Book award, was one of Bloomberg’s Best Books of 2021, and was chosen as the "Medium Best of the Best" business book. Her new book, "Embracing Uncertainty," will be published in March 2025.

She is a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. She chairs the board of DACS, and has advised the Casey Review into the culture and standards of the Metropolitan Police and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse led by Alexis Jay. In 2023, Margaret was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame for her lasting contribution to management thinking.

She is a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and the author of many broadcast plays. She writes for the Financial Times and is a parish counselor. Additionally, Margaret holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath and is the Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme.