Sophie Heading | Lead, Global Risks

Saadia Zahidi | Managing Director, World Economic Forum

At the World Economic Forum, a debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Klaus Schwab (Founder and Executive Chairman) and Børge Brende (President), under whose guidance this report has been produced.

This report has relied heavily on the dedication and expertise of World Economic Forum colleagues: Attilio di Battista, Ellissa Cavaciuti-Wishart, Kateryna Karunska, Kevin Kohler, Ricky Li, Dorsey Lockhart, Gayle Markovitz, Cam Powers, Samuel Werthmüller, and Yann Zopf.

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We would like to thank our Strategic Partners, Marsh McLennan, and Zurich Insurance Group, and particularly John Doyle (President and Chief Executive Officer, Marsh McLennan) and Mario Greco (Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Insurance Group). Thanks also to Peter Giger (Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group) and Carolina Klint (Managing Director, Risk Management Leader Continental Europe, Marsh).

Special gratitude is due to John Scott (Head of Sustainability Risks, Zurich Insurance Group) and Richard Smith-Bingham (Executive Director, Marsh McLennan Advantage) for their contributions throughout the planning and drafting of the report.

The report has greatly benefited from the insight and expertise of the members of the Global Risks Advisory Board: Rolf Alter (Hertie School of Governance), Gabriella Bucher (Oxfam), Sharan Burrow (International Trade Union Confederation), Winnie Byanyima (UNAIDS), Marie-Valentine Florin (International Risk Governance Center), Charles Godfray (Oxford Martin School), Al Gore (Generation Investment Management), Pascal Lamy (Jacques Delors Institute), Robert Muggah (Igarapé Institute), Moisés Naím (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Carlos Afonso Nobre (University of São Paulo), Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University), Jonathan D. Ostry (International Monetary Fund), Carol Ouko-Misiko (Institute of Risk Management), Eduardo Pedrosa (Pacific Economic Cooperation Council), Danny Quah (National University of Singapore), Daniel Ralph (Cambridge Centre for Risks Studies), Samir Saran (Observer Research Foundation), John Scott (Zurich Insurance Group), Richard Smith-Bingham (Marsh McLennan), Effy Vayena (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), Charlotte Warakaulle (CERN), Beatrice Weder di Mauro (Graduate Institute Geneva), Ngaire Woods (University of Oxford) and Alexandra Zapata (New America).

We would also like to thank SalesForce (Justine Moscatello, Director of Customer & Executive Engagement) and Lovelytics for the design of the interactive global risks data visualization.

We also thank our Academic partners: the National University of Singapore, the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania.

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We are grateful to the following individuals from our Strategic Partners and Risk Communities.

Marsh McLennan: Amy Barnes, Kate Bravery, Helga Birgden, Rico Brandenburg, Erica Davis, Missy DeAngelis, Bruno Dotti, Liz Elliot, Gunes Ergun, Guillermo Franco, Lorna Friedman, Jason Groves, Kavitha Hariharan, Ben Hoster, Rachel Juay, Marshall Lee, Paul Mee, Luca Moneta, Shilpa Pankaj, Maurizio Quintavalle, Deepakshi Rawat, Graeme Riddell, Nick Salter, Reid Sawyer, Ben Simpfendorfer, Toshin Sequeira, Swenja Surminski, Daniel Tannebaum, and Rupert Watson.

Zurich Insurance Group: Paige Adams, Ines Bourbon, Laura Castellano, Matt Holmes, Stefan Kröpfl, Guy Miller, Pavel Osipyants, and Robert Wyse.

Chief Risk Officers Community: Fatma Al-Suwaidi (Qatar National Bank), Stacy Allen (Lord Abbott), Christian Bluhm (UBS AG), Brenda Boultwood (International Monetary Fund), Manoj Chawla (Emirates NBD), Adam Farber (Boston Consulting Group), Carlo Ferraresi (Generali), Sebastian Fritz-Morgenthal (Bain & Company Inc.), Peter Giger (Zurich Insurance Group), Jan Hansen (Novartis), Arun Hari (Gulf International Bank), Bahare Heywood (Clifford Chance LLP), Alfred Kibe (Mastercard), Giselle Lim (Takeda Pharmaceutical Company), Maria Martinez (McKinsey & Company), Domingo Mirón (Accenture), Jody Myers (US International Development Finance Corporation), Heike Niebergall-Lackner (International Committee of the Red Cross), Fiachre O'Neil (PayPal), Sarah Otte (Deloitte), Deepak Padaki (Infosys Limited), Hanne Raatikainen (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), Nidhi Seksaria (Mahindra Group), Taalib Shah (Barclays), Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder (World Bank), Richard Smith-Bingham (Marsh McLennan), Matthew Snyder (Centene Corporation), Iliyana Tsanova (European Commission), and Jacob van der Blij (GAVI).

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A special thanks to experts who contributed to our thematic consultations: Cindy Arnson (The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), Alison Bewick (Nestlé), Agnes Callamard (Amnesty International), Arne Cartridge (Yara), Era Dabla-Norris (IMF), David Edwards (Education International), Bridget Fawcett (Citi), Luca Gattinni (European Investment Bank), Florence Gaub (European Council), Charles Godfray (Oxford Martin School), Günter Hemrich (FAO), Anne Kreuger (John Hopkins School of Advanced international Studies), Charles North (Global Partnership for Education), Henk Ovink (Netherlands Government), Megan Palmer (Stanford University), Eric Parrado (InterAmerican Development Bank), Dan Rice (Walmart), Olaf Schulz (Nokia), Hersh Shah (Institute of Risk Management), Jen Sovada (SandboxAQ), Christian Spano (International Council of Mining and Metals), Richard Threlfall (KPMG), Andrew Williamson (Huawei Technologies), Ngaire Woods (University of Oxford), Eden Woon (Asian Institute of Technology).

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This report has relied on the expertise of our colleagues who contributed to our thematic consultations: Silja Baller, Filipe Beato, Emma Benameur, Kimberly Bennet, Felipe Bezamat, Morgan Booher, Kimberley Botwright, Sebastian Buckup, Gretchen Bueermann, Diego Bustamante, Kevin Doxzen, Liming Chen, Jaci Eisenberg, Genesis Elhussein, Kay Firth-Butterfield, Nancy Gillis, Fernando Gomez, Philipp Grosskurth, Guillaume Hingel, Rebecca Ivey, Ariel Kastner, Purushottam Kaushik, Rebecca King, Andrej Kirn, Benjamin Larsen, Espen Mehlum, Kelly McCain, Chido Munyati, Jayant Narayan, Kim Piaget, Jörgen Sandström, David Sangokoya, Miriam Schive, Grigory Shutko, Kristian Teleki, Federico Torti, Tim van den Bergh, Irene Varoli and Eric White.

We are grateful to the following colleagues for their time and help in review: Sean de Cleene, Daniel Dobrygowski, Abdellah Hmamouche, Anis Nassar, Supheakmungkol Sarin, Tania Strauss, Alessandro Valentini, and Priya Vithani.

In addition to those mentioned above, we extend our thanks to the following colleagues: Sakshi Bhatnagar, Beatrice Di Caro, Kateryna Gordiychuk, Jamie Mathew John, Gulipairi Maimaiti, Eoin Ó Cathasaigh, Robin Pomeroy, Vesselina Ratcheva, and Katja Rouru.

Design and Production: Thank you to all those involved in the design and production of this year’s report: Mike Fisher (editing), Jacopo Poletto (Design), and Beatrice Lattuada (Design).