About International Business Today

Founding CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals John Maraganore discusses the twenty-year journey of turning RNA interference from an unproven scientific idea into six FDA-approved medicines. He describes the crisis that erased $4 billion in company value in a single day, the portfolio strategy that allowed Alnylam to recover, and the decisions behind intellectual property, FDA collaboration, and drug pricing that shaped the company. The conversation also covers his current ventures, City Therapeutics and Corsera Health, and his forthcoming book on building companies at the frontiers of science and medicine.

About the guest: John Maraganore, PhD, served as the founding CEO and a director of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals from 2002 to 2021, leading the company through the development and commercialization of the first RNAi therapeutics ever approved. He is now co-founder and executive chair of City Therapeutics, CEO of Corsera Health, and the author of the forthcoming book, “The Importance of Being Unreasonable.”

In this episode, Cameron Nili, Banking and Capital Markets Lead at LayerZero, joins Professor Ravi Sarathy to explain how blockchain interoperability works and why it matters for the future of global finance. The conversation covers the difference between public and private money, why early cross-chain bridges were vulnerable to hacks, how stablecoins became the first widely adopted onchain asset class, and how tokenization is reshaping collateral markets, central bank digital currencies, and capital markets trading. Cameron also discusses LayerZero's new blockchain, Zero, built to handle up to two million transactions per second for institutional trading.

About the guest: Cameron Nili is the Banking and Capital Markets Lead at LayerZero, where he helps institutions design compliant, multi-chain digital asset strategies. He previously served as an Executive Fellow at the World Economic Forum's Center for Financial and Monetary Systems and as a Senior Manager in Accenture's banking practice.

Is an MBA still worth it when AI is reshaping every job and the headlines keep telling people to skip the degree? In this episode, Ravi Sarathy talks with Kate Klepper about the real return on an MBA, who actually needs one and when, and why she believes the degree is built for exactly the kind of uncertainty we face now. They dig into career pivots, the critical skills employers still cannot automate, the role of co-op and experiential learning, the rise of flexible and stackable formats, and why today's students are pushing business schools to weigh social impact alongside profit.

About the guest: Kate Klepper is Dean of the Graduate School at Babson College, where she leads the College's graduate portfolio. She previously spent two decades as associate dean for graduate programs at Northeastern's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, and earlier served as Babson's dean of graduate admissions. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University and a BS from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

India is often described as the world's fastest growing major economy, but Dr. Amit Kapoor argues the real story is far more complicated. In this conversation, he and host Ravi Sarathy discuss why nearly half of India's population still lives near subsistence levels, why economic growth is concentrated in a small number of districts and states, and why graduate underemployment has become a structural challenge rather than a temporary setback. They also examine the government's aspirational district program, the risks and opportunities artificial intelligence presents for India's education system, and what business leaders should understand before treating India as a market, a manufacturing base, or an R&D hub.

About the guest: Dr. Amit Kapoor is Honorary Chairman of the Institute for Competitiveness, India, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, and affiliate faculty at Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. He is the author of several books on India's economic development, including The Age of Awakening and his latest work, The Elephant Moves, co-authored with former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

Host: Ravi Sarathy

Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $126,000 in October 2025, then fell more than 50% and spent months fluctuating between $60,000 and $70,000. In part two of his Crypto Chats series, Ravi Sarathy examines the forces behind this decline, including profit-taking, the unwinding of corporate Bitcoin treasuries at companies such as Strategy, speculative capital moving into AI, Bitcoin ETF outflows, and the behavior of long-term holders who control roughly 75% of supply. He closes with the case for Bitcoin as digital gold, a limited-supply, highly speculative asset that can also serve as a long-term hedge against inflation and currency devaluation. This episode is academic analysis of the crypto economy and is not investment advice.

About the guest: Ravi Sarathy is a Professor of International Business and Strategy at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business and co-host of International Business Today. He is the author of Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain: Lessons in Disruption from Fintech, Supply Chains, and Consumer Industries (MIT Press), and his research focuses on global strategy, technology management, and international business.

Blockchain has been in decline and stagnation for six to eight months, and the common story is that Bitcoin is failing. In part one of a two-part Crypto Chats series, Ravi Sarathy offers a different lens: the crypto economy has grown far more complex, and Bitcoin now occupies a smaller share of it. He walks through the ecosystem that has emerged since Bitcoin's 2009 debut, including stablecoins and their $310 billion market, programmable money on Ethereum and Solana, decentralized finance, interoperability layers such as Chainlink, and tokenized securities, and explains why Bitcoin performs fewer of these functions efficiently. The episode sets up part two, which examines what this shift means for Bitcoin demand and prices. This is academic analysis and is not investment advice.

About the guest: Ravi Sarathy is a Professor of International Business and Strategy at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business and co-host of International Business Today. He is the author of Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain: Lessons in Disruption from Fintech, Supply Chains, and Consumer Industries (MIT Press), and his research focuses on global strategy, technology management, and international business.

Bill George, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, joins Paula Caligiuri for a conversation on what authentic leadership really demands in today's world. Bill shares why courage is the most critical leadership quality — and why it cannot be taught in a classroom. He draws on his own crucibles, including personal losses and a decade leading one of the most mission-driven companies in global business, to illustrate how values-based leadership works under pressure. The conversation covers how to build a personal support team, how Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft's culture from know-it-alls to learn-it-alls, and why the human skills being sidelined right now will be the defining competitive advantage as AI reshapes work.

About the guest: Bill George is Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, where he grew the company's market capitalization from $1.1 billion to $60 billion. He is the bestselling author of True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace and has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, and the Mayo Clinic. He has taught leadership at Harvard Business School since 2004.

What happens when AI starts automating the knowledge worker, not the factory floor? Doug Atkinson, President and Founder of Solutions Review, argues that 52 million U.S. jobs rated highest for automation risk belong to degree-holders, and that most organizations are not being honest about what that means. In this conversation, Doug and Paula explore why curiosity, resilience, and perspective-taking are the durable skills that will define human value in an AI-driven economy, why entry-level jobs are disappearing faster than anyone acknowledges, and why AI agents, not chatbots, represent the real transformation still ahead.

About the guest: Doug Atkinson is the President and Founder of Solutions Review, a digital media organization covering enterprise technology and business innovation with over a million subscribers across its platforms. He is also the host of The Human Conversation podcast, which examines the human impact of artificial intelligence on work, education, and society.

The anti-ESG backlash has dominated headlines, but Trillium Asset Management CEO Matt Patsky argues the long-term trend in responsible investing is unchanged. In this episode, Patsky traces the backlash to its roots in the fossil fuel industry's response to rising capital costs, explains why the shift from greenwashing to “green hushing” is now the bigger challenge for accountable investors, and shares how coalition-based shareholder advocacy helped drive real corporate change, including the recognition of the Starbucks employees union across more than 500 US stores. He also addresses how the AI boom's energy demands are creating new dilemmas for sustainable investors who pushed tech companies toward low-carbon electricity commitments.

About the guest: Matt Patsky is CEO and Lead Portfolio Manager of the Trillium ESG Global Equity strategy at Trillium Asset Management, founded in 1982 as one of the first investment firms devoted exclusively to sustainable and responsible investing. With over four decades of experience, Patsky became the first sell-side analyst in the United States to publish on socially responsible investing in 1994 and has led Trillium as CEO since 2009.

Whether you're a supply chain executive navigating tariff uncertainty, a business leader evaluating AI investments, or a student preparing for careers in operations management, this episode reveals why the future belongs to humans who can partner with AI—not be replaced by it.

About the guest: Dr. Nada Sanders is Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. Ranked in the top 2% of world scientists by Stanford University, she is an internationally recognized expert in forecasting, global supply chains, and human-technology integration. She has served as President of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), sits on the Board of Economic Advisers of the Association of Industries of Massachusetts (AIM), and has consulted with Fortune 100 companies including Amazon, Dell, and Lego. She is the author of eight books, including the award-winning “The Humachine: Humankind, Machines, and the Future of Enterprise” (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2024). Find her most recent book, SCM with AI for Managers, here: https://www.prospectpressvt.com/textbooks/sanders-scm-with-ai

Learn more about Nada Sanders: https://damore-mckim.northeastern.edu/people/nada-sanders/ Nada Sanders website: https://nadasanders.com/ The Humachine on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Humachine-Nada-R-Sanders/dp/1032345683 New book coming soon: “Supply Chain Management With AI” (Prospect Press)