Episode 10: Daniel Wagner – Geopolitics, Risk Agility, Country Risk – and Robert Plant

Today we talk geopolitics, career paths, and much more with my guest Daniel Wagner. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Country Risk Solutions and a veteran of country and political risk management. He has been a practitioner in this fascinating area of risk for many years – he has written a couple of books on the topic and several articles.  He frequently appears on CNN, RT, the Huffington Post, and other media outlets to offer his views on international affairs.

What is country and political risk? If you are new to this field, or don’t know much about it, it is basically the management of risks created by political actors or conditions So, it might be things like the prospect of war or political violence in a country in which your organisation is working, policy uncertainty, or things of that nature. I have worked in this area, and it is fascinating.

Like many great conversations however, this one starts with Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin. Daniel interviewed Robert Plant in the early 198os. From there, we move into how Daniel got into country risk and his career path to date. We also riff about a number of interesting topics such as the role of China, multilateral institutions, and the upcoming US elections (Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump). Daniel also offers his thoughts on risk management generally and we discuss his upcoming book Global Risk Agility and Decision-Making. We will have Daniel and his co-author Dante Disparte on a future episode to get more into the nuts and bolts of the book in a future episode.

Show notes:

Country Risk Solutions: http://www.countryrisksolutions.com

Daniel’s book, Country Risk, A Practitioner’s Guide: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Country-Risk-Practitioners-Cross-Border/dp/1466500476/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462225124&sr=1-3
Daniel’s forthcoming book: Global Risk Agility and Decision Making (Macmillan, July 2016): http://www.amazon.com/Global-Risk-Agility-Decision-Making/dp/1349948594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456840522&sr=8-1&keywords=global+risk+agility+and+decision+making

Articles written by Daniel:http://countryrisksolutions.com/publications.htmlFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Country-Risk-Solutions/206650596087696?sk=wallLinkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwagnercrsTwitter: http://twitter.com/countryriskmgmt
Daniel on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CountryRiskSolutions

Daniel’s interview with Robert Plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIvEBNf5TfA