Wanis Kabbaj

Global citizen, transportation geek
UPS's Wanis Kabbaj seeks new ways of understanding the growing complexity of our congested cities and globalized world.

Why you should listen

When you spend a decade working as an international marketer for UPS, with its massive transportation network, its 454,000 employees, its 567 aircraft, its 119,000 trucks and vehicles, its 20 million packages delivered every day across 220 countries and territories, you get to see the world through a very interesting window. You see the considerable value of its interconnectedness. You develop an instinctive mistrust for simplistic solutions and ideas and you start embracing complexity and unorthodox ways to think it and tame it.

As the director of global strategy for healthcare logistics at UPS, Kabbaj finds ways for organizations to transport their temperature-sensitive medicines and biotechnologies safely around the world. For more than 18 years, Kabbaj's professional engagements have always revolved around globalization, transportation and innovation. Some of his ventures involved helping EADS Astrium use its satellite space transportation expertise in unexpected markets or participating in the global launch of Logan, a revolutionary low-cost vehicle, that helped Renault-Nissan harness a surprising growth in emerging markets.

Kabbaj is a dual citizen of Morocco and France and lived in four continents. Experiencing constant cultural transitions throughout his life gave him a real taste for analyzing problems through non-traditional lenses and blending disciplines that are usually kept separate.

Wanis Kabbaj’s TED talks