Leading B20 was an opportunity to transcend the traditional business arena and, as a global community, establish a set of recommendations that will accelerate socioeconomic development throughout the world.

By Adam Sylvain 

As his home country of Brazil prepared to host the 2024 G20 Summit this past November, Dan Ioschpe T’91 was honored to serve as B20 Chair—leading the G20’s official dialogue forum with the global business community.

It was a role Ioschpe spent many years preparing for as former CEO and current chairman at
Iochpe-Maxion, a Brazil-based automobile component manufacturer. The company’s international business grew substantially during his 16-year tenure as CEO and today it employs nearly 17,000 people in 14 countries. Since transitioning to his role as chairman, Ioschpe has served on the boards of several multinational corporations in Brazil, including Embraer, Marcopolo, and WEG.

“Leading the B20 coalition was an opportunity to transcend the traditional business arena and, as a global community, establish a set of recommendations that will accelerate socioeconomic development throughout the world,” says Ioschpe. “It’s important work that requires bringing a wide range of perspectives to the table to achieve consensus.”

By bringing together the world’s leading developed and emerging economies, the G20 Summit plays a critical role in strengthening global architecture and governance to address major international economic issues. This year’s B20 forum comprised roughly 1,200 business leaders from G20 member countries, select invited countries, and international organizations. Its mission is to build consensus and set priorities on actionable policies the G20 can enact to build toward a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world.

Under Ioschpe’s wise leadership, B20 Brazil established seven task forces and one action council, each dedicated to a specific focus area, from Trade & Investment to Energy Transition & Climate to Digital Transformation. Collectively, they developed 24 distinct policy recommendations that were formally presented to G20 leadership during their convenings. A record 15 of those recommendations were fully incorporated into the G20 agenda, while seven more were partially incorporated—an accomplishment Ioschpe credits to the group’s keen focus.

“In past cycles, it has been common for B20 to put forth a much longer list of recommendations, sometimes as many as 100 or 150,” says Ioschpe. “As a group, we were committed to fewer predominant themes—mostly centered around digitization, decarbonization, and food security—which made it easier to build consensus on a more concise set of recommendations.”

Ioschpe also opened the door for Tuck to join B20 Brazil as a network partner in the Trade &
Investment Task Force, giving students firsthand exposure to high-level discussions. In October, Tuck Center for Business, Government & Society (CBGS) Fellows Saad Shaukat T’25, Leen Ajlouni T’25, and Zac Seeber T’25 also received the rare opportunity to attend the B20 Summit in São Paulo, Brazil where Tuck was the only business school in attendance.

Seeber says the work of the B20 delegation offers hope at a time when many nations are adopting more protectionist and isolationist policies.

“[B20] highlighted the potential of multilateralism—countries working together to tackle complex, shared challenges,” he says. “In a world facing global issues like climate change, economic instability, and supply chain disruptions, such cooperation is not only promising but essential.”

In the following Q&A, Ioschpe shares more about his experience leading the B20 Brazil
coalition:

B20 Brazil convened roughly 1,200 business leaders from around the world. How did you build consensus and set priorities with such a large and diverse group?

We began with roughly 1,200 CEOs and chairpersons from some of the largest as well as medium-sized companies around the world. From there, we divided into eight groups—seven task forces and one action council. Each of these groups had a chair and they came together to ensure we had unanimous agreement on the recommendations we developed. McKinsey was a consultant for us in this process to make sure we had a good blend of diversity in terms of gender, the size of companies, and the countries represented. We also decided early on that each group had to focus on just three recommendations, 24 total among all the groups, that we would present to G20 leaders. Each recommendation had to be actionable and scalable with KPIs to track progress. This approach was key since it helped everyone see beyond their subjective differences to reach a common understanding based on objective measures. It was a highly collaborative process.

How were the B20 policy recommendations prepared and disseminated with G20 leaders?

The G20 was also being held in Brazil and as is customary, the leader of the host country is the leader of that cycle. So, the G20 president this year was Brazilian President Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva). In July, a few months before the B20 and Summit, we had arrived at some mature recommendations which we presented at that time to G20 diplomatic leaders in so-called “Global Sherpas” meetings. This was an environment, similar to the Tuck classroom, where we were able to present and receive some tough questions and feedback that allowed us to fine-tune our recommendations. Then, in August we met with President Lula and his leading cabinet in Brazil. Again, they asked questions and made recommendations which helped our work. By the time we presented during the G20 in Rio, the work was almost done. It was certainly to our benefit that we started the work early in the summer. I’m proud that most of our recommendations were either fully or partially embraced and adopted as part of the G20 agenda.

Can you share more about Tuck’s role as a Network Partner and what the experience was like for the three Tuck students who were able to attend the B20 Summit?

Each of the eight B20 groups (seven task forces and one action council) was assisted by a global consulting firm which we referred to as Knowledge Partners and we also had a group of about 15 Network Partners which included entities like the World Bank, the International Chamber of Commerce, and other leading institutions. Tuck had the distinction of being the only education institution represented in this group of Network Partners. Like the Knowledge Partners, each Network Partner worked with a specific group and Tuck chose the Trade and Investment Task Force. They were very much a part of the negotiations that went into forming that group’s recommendations. For the students who attended the Summit, certainly, they were
able to benefit from attending plenary sessions and conversations happening there, but I would say equally valuable were the parallel events happening on those days where they had the opportunity to meet and interact with a variety of business and world leaders.

What legacy do you hope B20 Brazil and the G20 Summit will create for the global business community and at home in Brazil?

Legacy is a topic we spent a lot of time thinking about and we broke this work into three pillars. The first was to document everything that we did from day one that could assist South Africa, which is hosting the next B20 cycle. We made sure they received the blueprint for our work. Second, we identified and set benchmarks for a series of seven legacy commitments based on the guiding themes of this cycle. This includes a pledge to increase the number of women representatives in B20 with the goal of 50 percent participation by 2030. And then thirdly, we focused on a pillar for Brazil specifically. Based on the scope of recommendations we developed; we came up with 10 decisive topics for the Brazilian agenda. Again, these priorities
overlap substantially with our broader recommendations and include the promotion of the circular economy; data centers, digitization, and AI development; and the mitigation of restrictive trade measures.

This story originally appeared in print in the Winter 2025 issue of Tuck Today magazine.