Rishad Tobaccowala
Rishad Tobaccowala participated in the virtual interview about his professional career in Marketing and Advertising, the editing was done by the NoSeQueEstudiar team. Below you will find his profile, the interview videos and the visual summary.
Rishad Tobaccowala is a Global Strategist and Growth Advisor.
Rishad Tobaccowala
He is a leading figure in strategy and business transformation with more than 40 years of experience in marketing and business. He was Chief Growth Officer and Global Strategist at Publicis Groupe© (100,000+ employees), where he led growth initiatives and innovation. His impact on the industry has been recognized by BusinessWeek© as one of the top business leaders and by TIME© as a marketing innovator. He is also a member of the Advertising Hall of Fame.
His approach focuses on empowering the growth of individuals and organizations, helping them to develop new ways of thinking and acting to adapt to change.
Location: Chicago, United States
Featured experience:
Founder - The Rethinking Work Platform (2024 - Present): Initiative to help companies and leaders adapt to the transformation of the world of work.
Co-Founder - The Athena Project (2024 - Present): Exclusive community for the development of leaders in executive and board roles.
Creator and Speaker - "The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past" (2020 - Present): He has given more than 200 talks and 80 workshops at companies like Google©, Meta©, Amazon© and Disney©.
Publicis Groupe (2013 - 2019): Chief Strategy & Growth Officer, driving global growth and innovation strategies.
Best-Selling Author: Restoring the Soul of Business (2020) and Rethinking Work (2025).
Education:
MBA in Marketing and Finance – University of Chicago.
Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Economics – University of Mumbai.
Key skills:
- Strategy and digital transformation;
- Marketing and innovation;
- Leadership development.
Languages: English (native), Hindi (fluent).
Virtual interview with Rishad Tobaccowala
Can you give a brief introduction and tell us about your career?
My career has two parts.
The first thirty-seven years I worked full-time at Grupo Publicis, ending my career as chief strategist and growth director in a company of one hundred thousand people.
For the last six years, I have worked as a company of one, being a speaker, writer and advisor.
I have published two books:
Restoring the soul of business and staying human in the age of data, which is the first book.
Rethinking Work, which is my second book and came out about twenty-five days ago.
How did you discover your calling?
I discovered my career path when I was in business school and discovered that I was especially drawn to both analytics and storytelling.
I decided that advertising and marketing were where I could make the two work together.
Was there a mentor or close family member who influenced your decision?
There were many mentors and family members.
My parents were very inspiring in that they were hardworking professionals who continuously wanted to learn.
My career has been full of mentors from start to finish, where my mentors actually ended up being my bosses.
But at the beginning, there were many different mentors, including the first Indians who pioneered marketing in the country.
During the early years, how did you manage to overcome academic challenges?
Challenges happen all the time in one's career, and one basically has to overcome them in three ways:
By practicing resurrection, which means renewing and revitalizing yourself.
First, by trying to figure out why the challenge was a challenge and what you learned from the setback.
Actually, you don't learn through experience, but by reflecting on it.
Asking people for help.
Deciding whether you still want to follow that particular path. If you do, building on the learnings, you move forward.
Did you ever think about changing course?
My entire career is about continuously changing my professional trajectory, but basically in the broad area of marketing and advertising.
Although I worked for the same company for thirty-seven years, I went through different businesses:
- From media;
- To the digital business;
- To direct marketing;
- To the creative business;
- To the strategy business.
Throughout my career, I have continuously reinvented myself looking for three things:
- Where the next big opportunity is;
- Where the best bosses are;
- Where I can have the greatest impact and value.
How did you handle costs and financial challenges during your professional training?
One of the biggest advantages I had is that I left school with no debt, so I didn't have to worry about that.
However, I managed costs and other financial challenges by recognizing that I had to spend less than I earned.
Therefore, for many years I did not buy a house.
As my daughters were born, we invested in education and not in a house, which we did later.
The reality is that financial limitations exist for everyone. You have to decide:
a) What is important.
b) To live below and within your means.
c) If you decide to borrow money, do it to accumulate assets or skills that will eventually have a good return on investment.
What do you think are the skills you consider most valuable to develop during the degree?
Today we live in a completely new era.
As my book Rethinking Work points out, we are in a seismic shift in careers and work.
Today, everyone needs to focus on six skills:
- Cognition: Spend an hour a day learning.
- Creativity: Learn to connect dots in new ways.
- Curiosity: Ask questions.
- Collaboration: Work with other people.
- Persuasion: Know how to present and sell ideas, since all knowledge will be available for free.
- Communication: Especially writing and presentation skills.
What advice would you give to people who want to explore your field?
The best advice I would give people is to read a piece I wrote called Career Lessons Revisited.
You can find it for free at rishad.substack.com. It's basically a summary of my learnings from forty years of work, plus observing other people.
Some key lessons are:
- Find the least bad job you can.
- Align yourself with a trend.
- Make sure to choose your boss, because your boss or leader is more important than your company.
- Collaborate and work with everyone else.
- Recognize that in today's world, you compete with yourself to be better every day, more than against other people.
Are you working on any project or initiative you'd like to share with us?
Today, the three big initiatives I'm focusing on are:
The future doesn't fit in the containers of the past: Helping people to understand what the future is and making sure they succeed.
You can access my thinking at rishad.substack.com. You can also listen to my podcast What Next, where I talk to great people about what comes next.
The future of work:
I'm working on the Rethinking Work platform, where you can learn a lot. It's completely free and you can find it at rethinkingwork.io
Leadership:
I'm developing the Athena Project, which you can learn more about on my LinkedIn profile.
So my three key areas are:
- The future in general;
- The future of work;
- Leadership.
Finally, is there anything else you'd like to share or any message for the next generation?
What I'd like to share, besides being grateful for this opportunity to talk to everyone, is a message for those listening to us, especially young people (and we are all young at heart).
It's important to recognize that:
- The future doesn't fit in the containers of the past.
- But the future is extremely optimistic, and I am very optimistic about it.
- Don't pay too much attention to negative news.
- Work hard and recognize that the combination of globalization, science and technology will move us forward.
Thank you.
