Fashion’s higher-ups can often be aloof, self-obsessed and insular, concerned only with the season’s must-haves and blithe to the concerns of the world’s have-nots. Anna Zegna does not fall into this camp. The grand-daughter of the eponymous founder of the company where she serves as image director, Ermenegildo Zegna, Anna emanates a genuine warmth, brimming with a quality common to many of those I’ve met at her organisation: caring.
She clearly cares passionately when discussing the amazing craftsmanship, exquisite materials and cutting-edge design (now the province of the genius Stefano Pilati) of the product lines she oversees. She’s justly proud of the fact that the company founded by her forebears more than a century ago is now a luxury leviathan, with sales in excess of a billion dollars annually. But Anna’s eyes really light up, and her passion shines most brightly, when discussing the work of the Fondazione Zegna, the company’s charitable arm, which she was instrumental in establishing in 2000.
“Talking about the foundation, I don’t like to use the word ‘pride’. In a way it is exactly the opposite — you become very humble in understanding that you cannot solve everything,” Anna says of the Fondazione’s work. This includes: funding leukaemia research and treatment; bringing clean water to remote communities; supporting the arts; preserving the environments of endangered animals; providing microcredit, training and fostering self-sufficiency among the impoverished; and continuing the work of her grandfather, a corporate social responsibility pioneer who built for his workers the most remarkable infrastructure and natural landscape surrounding their homebase of Trivero, in the Italian Alps.




As a young girl, Anna dreamt of running off to volunteer with Mother Theresa in India, although her father forbade it. Now, as president of Fondazione Zegna, working in partnership with NGOs such as the WWF, AMREF, Care & Share, Cesvi, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and various grassroots organisations, she is able to make a far greater impact than she ever could’ve aspired to in those adolescent fantasies — particularly by bringing an experienced sense of social entrepreneurialism to the initiatives she’s involved in. “There are a lot of things that I learned from Zegna — the way we manage the business — that we try to apply in the foundation,” she says.



Jacques Attali (French: [ʒak atali]; born 1 November 1943) is a French economist, writer and senior civil servant.
Former adviser to President François Mitterrand and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance and was nominated President of the Commission for the Liberation of French Economic Growth. He is also Founder and President of A&A, a consultancy firm. He has published more than fifty books, including essays and novels.
He belongs to the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, according to the Foreign Policy Magazine (May/June 2008)


Gunter Pauli (born 1956 in Antwerp) is a self-styled "serial entrepreneur", author and initiator of The Blue Economy. Le Point, The Huffington Post and The Tasmanian Times have called him "The Steve Jobs of Sustainability" [1] [2] [3]

Life and Business[edit]

Gunter Pauli was born in 1956. He is a graduate from St. Ignatius Loyola's University in Belgium, Economics (1979) and obtained his MBA from INSEAD (1982) in Fontainebleau, France. He also has an honorary master in Systemic Design from the Instituto Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and an honorary doctorate in economics from the University of Pecs (Hungary). Pauli has lived on 4 continents, is fluent in 7 languages and is a resident of Japan since 1994. He is father of 5 sons, 1 daughter (adopted) and married to Katherina Bach.
He has been active as an entrepreneur, lecturer and commentator in culture, science, politics, sustainability innovation, and the environment.
He built the first ecological factory when Chairman and CEO of Ecover, that under his leadership became a worldwide acclaimed ecological building, being completed in 1992.

Literary career[edit]

His first book was the biography of Dr. Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, whose assistant he was from 1979 to 1984.[4] Since then he has written 20 books printed in 34 languages, and 125 fables for children. Some estimate that 90 million copies of his fables have been distributed worldwide.
In 1989 he was elected as an independent substitute to the European Parliament but never took up the seat.
In 1991 Gunter Pauli was the founder of the "Mozarteum Belgicum", founder (1988) and president of Worldwatch Europe (until 1992).
In 1994 Pauli initiated the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI), which was named Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives[5] in 1997. The ZERI work started in Tokyo with the support of the Japanese Government and the United Nations University (UNU) and targeted redesigning production and consumption into clusters of industries inspired by natural systems.
He later wrote the book The Blue Economy, which was originally a report to the Club of Rome that became a commercial book. He wrote this book with the twin aims of stimulating entrepreneurship while setting up new and higher standards towards sustainability, where the good for our health and the environment is cheap. The book includes the principles that support the Blue Economy concept and also one hundred business cases that follow the principles. The goals set for the Blue Economy as a Business Model are high: To create 100 million jobs and substantial capital value through 100 innovations in the 2010-2020 decade.
By 2014 he was written 200 fables reaching out to children. He converts the hundreds of implemented projects for which he mobilized €4 billion in investment capital into introductions to science, emotional intelligence, the arts, connected thinking and entrepreneurship.

Publications[edit]

  • International Marketing: The Importance of Image in Japan. Sophia University Press, 1983, ISBN 978-4-88168-094-0
  • Aurelio Peccei: Portrait of the Founder of the Club of Rome. Pergamon Press, 1987, ISBN 0-08-034861-0
  • Services: the driving force of the economy. Waterlow Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-08-033091-4
  • Towards a United Europe: 1992 and Beyond - Shaping Priorities for Successful Regional Integration. SRI International, 1990, OCLC Number 22733850
  • The Second Wave: Japan's Global Assault on Financial Services (with Richard Wright). Waterlow Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-312-01558-9
  • Steering Business towards Sustainability (with Fritjof Capra). United Nations University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-585-20025-5
  • Breakthroughs: What Business can Offer Society'. Epsilon Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1-900820-00-4
  • Upsizing: The Road to Zero Emissions. Greenleaf, 1998, ISBN 978- 1874719182
  • Out of the Box: 21 ways to be creative and innovative at work. Future Managers, 2004, ISBN 978-1-920019-40-2
  • Upcycling. Riemann Verlag (Munich), 1999, ISBN 978-3-570-50006-4
  • The Blue Economy. Paradigm Publishers, 2010, ISBN 978-0-912111-90-2 [6]