Gillian Tett
Economic forecasts fail not because the data was wrong, but because the cultural assumptions shaping the analysis were invisible. Reading markets through numbers alone consistently misreads the human dynamics that move prices, shape policy, and generate systemic risk. The harder question is not what the data shows – it is what the cultural frameworks inside your organisation prevent you from seeing.
The gap between what economic data predicts and what actually happens is largely cultural; Gillian Tett, Financial Times columnist, Provost of King’s College Cambridge, and trained social anthropologist, helps organisations identify the human dynamics that models miss.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Gillian Tett
- Her track record on the 2008 crisis is specific and verifiable: she conducted ethnographic research into JPMorgan’s banking culture from 2005 to 2007, published FT warnings about derivative risk before the crash, and documented the analysis in Fool’s Gold – giving organisations a concrete, tested basis for trusting her read of current systemic risk.
- The Anthro-Vision framework translates anthropological field methods into a practical leadership tool: a way to surface the unstated assumptions, classification systems, and cultural dynamics that standard data analysis cannot reach.
- The Silo Effect provides boards with a specific diagnostic – that the most dangerous organisational failure modes are cultural, not structural – and a set of case-studied arguments for why addressing them requires a different kind of analysis than process redesign.
- As co-founder of FT Moral Money, she has tracked the ESG movement from its earliest institutional phase, giving her a longitudinal perspective on how sustainability commitments become financial and reputational risk that few analysts or advisers can match.
- Her simultaneous role as an active FT journalist and Provost of King’s College Cambridge produces a form of authority that is genuinely rare: live market intelligence, editorial independence, and academic standing, without advisory-firm positioning.
Biography highlights
- 45th Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, since October 2023
- FT editorial board member and weekly columnist; former US managing editor (2013-2019) and former Chair of the FT US Editorial Board
- Co-founder, FT Moral Money newsletter
- Author of four books: Fool’s Gold (New York Times bestseller), The Silo Effect, Anthro-Vision (Porchlight best business book award; Columbia Business School Eccles prize), and Saving the Sun
- PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
- Awards: Wincott Prize for financial journalism (2007); British Press Awards – Business Journalist of the Year (2008), Journalist of the Year (2009), Columnist of the Year (2014); British Academy President’s Medal (2011); American Anthropological Association President’s Medal (2022); OBE for services to journalism (2024)
- Chair of the board of trustees, Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism, Columbia University
Biography
Gillian Tett has spent thirty years at the Financial Times covering global markets. What she found, consistently, is that what moves them is cultural as much as numerical. The forces shaping systemic risk – tribal behaviour, unspoken institutional assumptions, rigid classification systems – are largely invisible in standard economic analysis.
Her most verifiable proof point came before the 2008 financial crisis. From 2005 to 2007, she studied JPMorgan’s banking culture ethnographically and published FT warnings about the systemic risks of credit derivatives – risks that most economists and regulators had not yet identified. Fool’s Gold – a New York Times bestseller – documented that analysis and became one of the definitive accounts of how cultural insularity inside banking created the conditions for the crash.
Her subsequent books formalised the method. The Silo Effect showed how cultural classification systems – not just structural inefficiencies – create the organisational blindness that precedes major strategic failures. Anthro-Vision – winner of the Porchlight best business book award and the Columbia Business School Eccles prize – translated this into a practical framework for applying anthropological field methods to business, markets, and geopolitical risk.
Her current position is what makes her singular. As the 45th Provost of King’s College Cambridge and an active FT columnist, she reports on markets while leading one of the world’s most significant academic institutions. She co-founded FT Moral Money and holds the OBE for services to journalism.
Key speaking topics
- Global economic risk and geopolitical uncertainty
- Financial markets and systemic risk
- Anthropological analysis in business and strategy
- Organisational silos and decision-making failure
- ESG and sustainable finance
- Political tribalism and social change
- Cultural dynamics of markets and institutions
Ideal for
- Board directors and C-suite executives navigating economic and geopolitical uncertainty
- CFOs, CROs, and investment audiences requiring independent analysis of financial market dynamics
- CHROs and transformation leads addressing structural silos, organisational culture, and decision-making quality
- Policy, government, and public sector leaders facing complex political and economic risk
Audience outcomes
- A framework for identifying the cultural assumptions and social dynamics that standard economic analysis tends to miss
- A clearer perspective on how organisational silos and cultural classification systems create the blindness that precedes strategic and financial failure
- Practical insight into how anthropological methods can be applied to risk assessment, market analysis, and organisational decision-making
- A grounded, independent reading of current global economic forces and geopolitical shifts, drawn from active FT journalism
- A reframing of ESG as a systemic risk discipline rather than a reputational management exercise
Talks
Uses a global analytical lens to decode the interconnected economic pressures currently shaping market instability and strategic uncertainty.
Key takeaways:
- How cultural and social forces interact with economic data to produce outcomes that models alone cannot predict
- The structural drivers of current global economic volatility and what they signal for the period ahead
- A framework for reading uncertainty without defaulting to either complacency or panic
Argues that organisations function as social systems with tribal behaviours and classification patterns, and that anthropological thinking is a practical tool for seeing past them.
Key takeaways:
- How tribal dynamics and insider assumptions shape decisions inside organisations and across markets
- Why tunnel vision develops inside even the most analytically sophisticated institutions
- How leaders can apply lateral thinking – borrowed from anthropology – to expand strategic perspective
Examines the intersection of economic instability, political fragmentation, and anti-expert sentiment, and makes the case for integrated analysis of the political economy.
Key takeaways:
- The structural forces driving economic and political disruption beyond the level of individual policy cycles
- How post-truth dynamics and the erosion of institutional trust alter the risk landscape for organisations
- Why joined-up political economy analysis is increasingly a strategic necessity rather than a specialism
An anthropological examination of political tribalism in the United States and internationally, tracing the forces reshaping global political order.
Key takeaways:
- How tribal identity formation drives political outcomes in ways that conventional polling and economic analysis miss
- The structural parallels between US and international political dynamics and what they suggest for stability
- Emerging forces that will shape geopolitical risk over the next political cycle
Makes the strategic case for diversity as an organisational health and risk management mechanism, using case studies of failure and recovery to evidence the argument.
Key takeaways:
- How the absence of diverse thinking – not just diverse representation – has produced some of the most costly organisational failures of recent decades
- The role of cognitive and cultural diversity in improving decision quality at board and leadership level
- Concrete approaches to identifying and dismantling the classification systems that entrench silo behaviour
Examines the structural dynamics of fintech and financial markets, with particular attention to the risks embedded in complex instruments and over-specialised expertise.
Key takeaways:
- The systemic risks that accompany innovation in financial instruments when cultural and organisational oversight lags behind technical development
- Why over-reliance on specialist expertise creates the conditions for the kind of blindness that preceded the 2008 crisis
- How leaders in financial services can build the lateral vision needed to govern increasingly complex market structures
Explores why some technology companies outperform over time while others fail, focusing on the cultural and social patterns that technical capability alone cannot explain.
Key takeaways:
- Why technical expertise is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustained success in technology organisations
- How social and cultural patterns – not product decisions – determine whether innovation compounds or stalls
- Practical frameworks for identifying and addressing the silo dynamics that constrain performance in technology firms