Vita: Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 20 bestselling books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment,
which have been translated into more than 35 languages.

Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the leadership of the European Union since 2000. He has advised three presidents of the European Commission -Romano Prodi, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker -as well as the European Parliament, and numerous EU heads of
state, including Germany's Angela Merkel, on the ushering in of a smart green Third Industrial Revolution economy. Mr. Rifkin’s New York Times bestselling book, The Third Industrial Revolution, provided the blueprint for the economic transition to a post-carbon ecological
society across the European Union. He is advising the European Commission on the deployment of the Smart Europe initiative and will be working with the 350 formal regions of the EU in the
creation of road maps to deploy the new economic narrative and vision across Europe. Mr.
Rifkin is also advising the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet Plus Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure to usher in a sustainable low-carbon economy.

Mr. Rifkin is the President of the TIR Consulting Group, LLC comprising many of the leading renewable energy companies, electricity transmission companies, engineering companies, construction companies, architectural firms, ICT and electronics companies, transport and logistics companies, advanced manufacturing companies, and economic modelers. His global economic development team is working with cities, regions, and national governments to develop the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure for a Collaborative Commons and a Third
Industrial Revolution. The TIR Consulting Group LLC is currently working with the regions of Hauts-de-France, the Metropolitan Region of Rotterdam and The Hague, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in the conceptualization, build out, and scale up of a smart Third
Industrial Revolution infrastructure to transform their economies.

Mr. Rifkin is ranked 123 in the WorldPost / HuffingtonPost 2015 global survey of "The World's Most Influential Voices." He is also listed among the top 10 most influential economic thinkers in the survey. The survey was prepared at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and used collective intelligence to correlate the rankings.

Since 1995, Rifkin has lectured at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania where he instructs CEOs and senior management on transitioning their business operations into sustainable economies.

Topics (Selection):

• The Great Economic Revolutions in History
• The Science of Productivity
• A New Smart Infrastructure
• Zero Marginal Cost and the Rise of the Sharing Economy
• The Communication Internet
• The Renewable Energy Internet
• The Transportation and Logistics Internet
• Financing the Transition
• Two Generations of Mass Employment
• A New Consciousness for a New Era
• Rethinking Employment in an Automated Economy
• Peer-to-Peer Education
• An Empathic Counter-Narrative
• A Biosphere Trade Agreement
• Ecological Agriculture
• The Water Energy Nexus
• Leapfrogging Poverty in the Developing World
• The New Digital Monopolies

Publications (Selection):

• The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, 2014
• The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, 2011
• The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, 2009
• The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, 2005