SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS AND PUBLIC COMMENTARY
Anu Shah’s speaking engagements have developed alongside her professional career, reflecting invitations grounded in operating experience, global exposure, and subject-matter credibility. These engagements have spanned public idea platforms, academic institutions, business forums, and broadcast media, each requiring a distinct mode of contribution.
Public Platforms and Thought Leadership
Anu delivered a TEDx talk titled “Rejection Is Redirection,” which examined rejection not as failure, but as a catalyst for growth, course correction, and long-term alignment. The talk explored multiple dimensions of rejection — familial, professional, and personal — and how reframing these experiences can alter decision-making, resilience, and self-perception over time.
Rather than positioning rejection as a singular setback, the talk emphasized narrative agency: the idea that meaning is shaped less by the event itself and more by how it is interpreted. Drawing from lived experience across education, career transitions, geographic relocation, and personal adversity, the talk articulated how moments of rejection can function as structural redirections — pushing individuals out of comfort zones, reshaping ambition, and enabling trajectories that would not otherwise have been accessible.
The central theme focused on developing a disciplined internal framework for interpreting failure, grounded in self-compassion, accountability, and long-term perspective, rather than personalization or self-blame.
Academic and Institutional Engagements
Anu has also participated as a guest speaker at INSEAD, where she was invited in her capacity as a CEO and Managing Director within the Rocket Internet ecosystem. Her sessions focused on the rise of the gig economy in Southeast Asia and the role of technology platforms in shaping labor markets, logistics, and on-demand services across emerging economies.
The discussion examined how technology-enabled startups were accelerating adoption of gig-based models in Asia, how these markets differed structurally from Western counterparts, and what future trajectories were likely as regulatory frameworks, consumer behavior, and platform economics evolved. The engagement emphasized applied insight from operating within venture-backed, high-growth environments rather than academic abstraction.
Business and Industry Forums
Related themes were further explored in business forums, including speaking engagements with the French Chamber of Commerce Singapore. In these settings, Anu addressed audiences comprising senior executives, entrepreneurs, and cross-border operators, focusing on the expansion of the gig economy across Asia and Europe.
These discussions examined how technology was reshaping employment structures, how startups were navigating regulatory and cultural differences across regions, and how global businesses were adapting operating models in response to platform-led labor transformation. The format emphasized dialogue and experience-sharing rather than keynote-style presentation.
LATEST VIDEOS
Anu Shah of EFI Hub on how new entrepreneurship initiative can help spur gender parity in Africa
Media and Broadcast Commentary
Beyond live speaking forums, Anu participated in structured broadcast commentary as a retained guest speaker on CNBC Africa’s Closing Bell from 2018 through 2021. In this role, she appeared regularly rather than episodically, contributing perspectives across markets, macroeconomic trends, technology, investments, and leadership dynamics.
The retained nature of the role reflected an ongoing editorial relationship rather than one-off media appearances, requiring consistency, subject-matter preparedness, and the ability to respond to evolving economic and market conditions in real time. Contributions spanned discussions on global market movements, emerging-market dynamics, technology-driven business models, and broader economic signals influencing investment and growth.