As CEO of 20-first, Avivah has over 20 years experience as a consultant and coach helping companies adapt to major 21st century shifts. She has advised global CEOs, leadership teams and executive committees across more than 40 countries on gender, longevity and culture across a wide range of sectors — from FMCG and financial services to the pharmaceutical and tech sectors. She’s on the Boards of the UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) and the Chartered Management Institute’s Everyone Economy. She’s an Ambassador for the Stanford Center of Longevity and the Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna and an Adjunct Professor at DePaul University in Chicago. In 2023, she was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.
A regular contributor to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, Avivah is host of the longevity focused podcast 4-Quarter Lives, and substack Elderberries. She has lectured at INSEAD and HEC and has spoken at events ranging from Ted, to The Economist Conferences, The Drucker Forum, WIN and The Women’s Forum.
Avivah’s books range from those focused on strategic leadership issues, including Why Women Mean Business and Seven Steps to Leading Gender Balanced Businesses, to a graphic series for managers.
With a strong belief that the personal informs the professional (and vice versa), in 2022 Avivah completed a year at Harvard as an Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow, researching and writing about the longevity opportunity and navigating longer lives — at work and at home.
In her own first and second quarters of life, Avivah grew up in Canada, attended the University of Toronto as a joint Computer Science/ Comparative Literature major, went to Paris for a year (and stayed for 30), completing an MBA at INSEAD along the way. Avivah holds three passports (Canadian, French and Swiss), lives in London with her sculptor/consultant husband and visits her two grown, gender-balanced children, a son and daughter in Dakar and New York.
20-first works with C-suite teams around the world — from FMGC and financial services to the pharmaceutical industry and tech sector on Culture, Gender and Generational Balance.
20-first, Avivah’s consultancy arm, works with CEOs and Executive Committees who want to rethink and update their diversity approaches for the 21st century, and strategically balance their businesses to reflect today’s talent and market realities.
For a more in depth conversationHelping people and businesses navigate big societal change is core to Avivah’s passion for her work, and that includes making it better for the next generation.
Avivah supports four charities who are focussed on making a difference.
