Biography of Marvin Zonis

Marvin Zonis is a professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he teaches courses on International Political Economy, Leadership, and Business Strategy in the Era of e-Commerce. He also heads Marvin Zonis + Associates, Political Risk Consultants. The firm works with corporations and professional asset management firms throughout the world to help them identify, assess, and manage their political risks in the constantly changing global environment.

Zonis writes and lectures frequently on the intersections of politics, economics, and emergent technologies. He argues that accelerating technological developments drive globalization both economically and politically. And, in the face of these global challenges, business leadership, and a true understanding of what defines leadership, is more essential than ever.

He has written extensively on theories of leadership, the intersection of digital technologies and globalization, emerging markets, Middle Eastern politics, the oil industry, Russia, and U.S. foreign policy. He has been published in The Financial Times, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Chief Executive Magazine, La Vanguardia, The Boston Globe, and the Japanese journal Nikkei Weekly. His books include The Eastern European Opportunity, Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah, Khomeini And The Islamic Republic of Iran, and The Political Elite of Iran.

Zonis speaks frequently to corporations and money management firms both in the US and internationally. Examples of recent speeches include, Economic Drivers of the Global Marketplace at the AXA Financial Services Investment Management Conference in France, Global Challenges Facing the Bush Administration for Kemper Insurance Companies, in New York, and Leadership in the Era of Globalization for the Partner Development Seminar, Arthur Andersen in Berlin.

He has appeared on numerous network television news programs, including Nightline, and CNN’s Larry King Live, and is interviewed regularly on National Public Radio. He has been Middle East Consultant to ABC/Capital Cities television and International Editor of WBBM-TV, Chicago.

Zonis was educated at Yale University, the Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in Political Science and the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago, where he received psychoanalytic training.