About Us

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Thomas Keil

Thomas is a Full Professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland where he teaches strategy and international management. Thomas holds a DSc (Tech.) and Lic. Tech. from Helsinki University of Technology and a Dipl. Wirtsch. Ing from TH Darmstadt. Previously he taught at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Canada and at Aalto University in Finland.

Thomas’ research focuses on the senior leader’s agenda in multinational corporations, specifically board design, CEO succession, leadership teams, transformation, mergers and acquisitions, and generally strategy.

Thomas’ research has won several awards and in addition to top scholarly journals has been published in leading practitioner journals, including the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review.

Thomas is a partner in The Next Advisors. An internationally recognized authority on CEO, leadership, and strategy topics, Thomas has taught executives from Asia, Europe, and North America and is a regular keynote speaker.

Thomas is an active advisor to CEOs, executives, and boards of small and large corporations across a wide range of industries.

Outside work, he enjoys a happy family life with his wife, their children and their dog.

For Thomas’ academic work go here.

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Marianna Zangrillo

Born in 1974, Marianna is a transformational leader, a business angel and an author.

She has spent the past 20 years working in senior roles across industries, where she has been driving significant transformation initiatives to drive operational excellence, higher ROI and increased corporate performance. In those roles, Marianna has led teams and projects in Europe, Middle East, Asia and North America.

Marianna has been teaching at leading European universities including Aalto University and the University of Zurich and board oriented exeuctive education programs. She also is a regular keynote speaker at various practitioners’ conferences.

In addition, she has conducted research on CEO succession, leadership teams, and board design which has been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, LSE Business Review, I by IMD, and her three books “The Next CEO”, “The Next Leadership Team”, and “The Next Board”.

Marianna holds a Master of Laws (Italy, 1999), a LLM in Contract and Commercial Law (Finland, 2000), a MBA in International Management (U.K., 2005) and a PhD in Supply Chain Management (Finland, 2017).

Marianna is a partner in The Next Advisors where she advises to CEOs, executives, and boards members in multiple industries.

Marianna believes in the importance of a good balance between personal and professional life and outside work, she enjoys spending time with her family.

Get in touch

Send us an email

Thomas: thomas.keil@business.uzh.ch
Marianna: mazangrillo@gmail.com

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