Robert Reich
Political risk has come home. It sits inside developed economies, where rising inequality is rewriting regulation and producing the volatility that disrupts long-range strategy. Most boards still file this under social policy when it has become a question of market structure.
Robert Reich is a political economist and former US Secretary of Labor who helps senior leaders understand how inequality and political power are rewriting the rules of capitalism.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Robert Reich
- He has been both architect and analyst: cabinet-level policymaker under President Bill Clinton, and one of America’s most prolific public economists since the 1980s. Few speakers can read a regulatory environment from inside the cabinet room and from outside it, backed by three decades of published work.
- The “symbolic analysts” framework from The Work of Nations (1991), translated into 22 languages, was one of the earliest serious accounts of how globalisation stratifies labour markets. It anticipated the political and economic divisions now reshaping developed economies.
- He cuts through the false binary of “free market versus big government” that paralyses most boardroom debate on inequality and regulation. He shows that the real question is who the rules serve, and how that determines long-term commercial stability.
- Inequality Media’s videos and his daily Substack are read and watched by millions, including the political and policy actors whose decisions reshape corporate operating environments. That places him inside the conversation that shapes the political and regulatory climate executives plan around.
- For close to two decades he taught Berkeley’s largest undergraduate course in public policy, Wealth and Poverty. He brings that teaching ability into senior rooms, leaving audiences with a model they can apply directly to their own commercial environment.
Biography highlights
- 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton (1993-1997), implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act, raising the federal minimum wage, and leading the federal fight against sweatshops and illegal child labour
- Named by TIME magazine as one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, and ranked sixth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers (both 2008)
- Author of 18 books, including The Work of Nations (translated into 22 languages), Saving Capitalism, The Common Good, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America
- Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; recipient of the 2003 Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize
- Co-creator with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth of Inequality for All, winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and the 2017 Netflix original Saving Capitalism
- Columnist for The Guardian and Newsweek; co-founder of Inequality Media and the Economic Policy Institute; founding editor of The American Prospect magazine
Biography
Every market runs on rules: property, contract, bankruptcy, antitrust. Those rules are political artefacts, written by people with specific interests. The question of who writes them, and on whose behalf, has been the through-line of Robert Reich’s work for forty years.
Reich served as the 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. During that period he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, raised the federal minimum wage, and led the federal crackdown on sweatshops and illegal child labour. TIME magazine later named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century.
His thinking did not start there. The Work of Nations, published in 1991 and translated into twenty-two languages, set out a thesis that has aged unusually well: globalisation was stratifying labour into three groups, with a minority of “symbolic analysts” capturing most of the gains while routine production and in-person service workers fell behind. The book named the divide that now drives political volatility across developed economies.
Saving Capitalism (2015), the Netflix documentary of the same name, and the books that followed pushed the analysis into the politics of regulation: who writes the rules of property, contract, bankruptcy, and antitrust, and on whose behalf. The argument now places him in active conversation with senior policymakers and commercial leaders trying to read the political environment they operate in. His 2024 memoir Coming Up Short debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Key speaking topics
- Inequality and the future of capitalism
- Globalisation and the future of work
- US political economy and economic policy
- Regulation, antitrust and corporate power
- Authoritarian populism and democratic reform
- Labour markets and workforce policy
- Trade, tariffs and the global economy
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, technology, energy) where political-economic conditions directly shape strategic options
- Senior policy and government affairs leaders trying to understand the political environment they are planning around
- Investor and asset management audiences assessing political risk in developed market economies
- Corporate convenings and leadership programmes setting commercial strategy against a longer political-economic horizon
Audience outcomes
- A direct line drawn from current US political-economic conditions to the strategic decisions boards now face on regulation and long-term capital allocation
- An insider account of how the rules of property, contract, antitrust, and bankruptcy actually get written, and how those rules shape competitive position
- A historical comparison between the present moment and earlier US reform eras (the Progressive era, the New Deal), and the structural shifts each one produced
- The political-economic distinction between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, and what each path implies for the corporate operating environment
Talks
A read on the forces driving the global economy and the consequences for America’s economic position over the coming decade.
Key takeaways:
- The forces driving growth and risk in the global economy, read by someone who shaped US trade and labour policy at cabinet level
- America’s changing economic position relative to other major economies, and what it implies for long-range planning
- The strategic implications of operating across an economy where the rules of trade and capital are being rewritten in real time
The case for restoring a shared public ethic in American economic and political life, and why it matters to the institutions that depend on social trust.
Key takeaways:
- The historical record of how virtuous and vicious cycles in US public life have shaped economic outcomes
- Why the erosion of common public values is now a material risk to large institutions
- What patriotism and leadership look like in the current period, applied to corporate as well as civic life
An argument that the central political-economic question of the next decade is between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, with the implications for capitalism itself.
Key takeaways:
- Why widening inequality and stagnant wages are reshaping politics across developed economies
- The choice between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, and what each one produces in regulatory and market terms
- The reforms needed to sustain a market system that delivers broad-based prosperity, drawing on the Saving Capitalism thesis
A guide to the political-economic decisions that matter most when the news cycle makes everything feel urgent and equally important.
Key takeaways:
- The fundamental political-economic issues most likely to shape the next phase of US policy
- How to read past the noise of breaking news to identify decisions with structural consequences
- What policy changes leaders should be tracking, and why
An examination of how restoring economic opportunity could become a goal that crosses partisan lines, drawing on the analysis behind Inequality for All and Saving Capitalism.
Key takeaways:
- The thirty-year arc of widening inequality in income, wealth, and political power
- Where the boundaries of partisan division actually lie, and where they are softer than they appear
- The conditions under which durable economic reform becomes politically possible