First Impressions

In the year 2021 our first encounters with strangers are more likely to be made in videoconferences, but the importance of making a powerful first impression certainly hasn’t gone away.

Joining us are writer Malcolm Gladwell, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, host of the top-chart podcast ‘Revisionist History’, and author of the international bestselling books The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and, most recently Talking to Strangers; and Hubertus Kuelps, the Pictet Group’s Head of Group Communications.

Appearing in this episode

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five international bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is the host of the podcast Revisionist History and is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Timemagazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Previously, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business and science, and then served as the newspaper’s New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.

Hubertus Kuelps is Head of Communications at the Pictet Group. Before this role, he was Head of Communications and Branding at UBS since early 2013, after a two-year stint as Head of Global Communications at SAP. His move to UBS marked a return to the financial sector, following an 11-year tenure at Allianz prior to joining SAP. Kuelps is not only rated highly for broad operational expertise but also for his geographic experience, having worked across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Before joining Allianz, Kuelps was Head of Communications at the German-American Chamber of Commerce in New York. He holds a German law degree and a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College in the US.

Rosario Lebrija Rassvetaieff is Group New Media and Sponsoring Manager at the Pictet Group, where she hosts and produces the podcasts ‘Found in Conversation’ and ‘Prix Pictet: A lens on sustainability’. Born and raised in Mexico City, she holds a combined honours BA in Literature and International Relations (First Class) from the University of Southampton and an MSc in Communication and Media Studies (Distinction) from the London School of Economics. For more information, watch her TEDx talk ’The Future of the Image: Discover the Sublime’. 

References

• Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
• One on One by Craig Brown
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell