Speakers >> Biography

Professor Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan is an authority on managing the risks, the financial impact and the business and public policy challenges and opportunities associated with catastrophic events. He teaches both in the MBA and executive programs at the Wharton School and serves as Managing Director of its Risk Management Center that was established 30 years ago.

Michel-Kerjan has advised several heads of state, multinationals and foundations around the world on how to build risk resilience and develop innovative solutions that create value; in France those include AXA, Veolia and SCOR (of which he joined the foundation’s Board in 2013) and the Prime Minister’s office. Since 2008 he serves as Chairman of the OECD Secretary-General Advisory Board on Financial Management of Catastrophes, an influential group that works closely with governments of its 34 member countries on these issues.

Winner in the United States of the prestigious Kulp-Wright award for the most influential book on risk management (At War with the Weather, MIT press, with H. Kunreuther), he has authored over 100 publications, given over 150 public speeches and his view regularly appears in popular outlets ranging from CNN, Huffington Post, The Economist, Les Echos, Le Figaro, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Wall Street Journal, Nature and Science.

Michel-Kerjan was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF-Davos), “an honor bestowed to recognize and acknowledge the most extraordinary leaders of the world under the age of 40”. In 2011 he co-led the WEF/G20 Paris Initiative on Global Risks under the high patronage of then-President Sarkozy and gave the opening keynote at the 2012 G20 meeting on disaster management under the Mexican Presidency.

He studied at École Polytechnique (France), McGill (Canada) and Harvard (USA).