The world is moving faster than most analysis can track. Navigating the Vortex exists to change that — rigorous intelligence across geopolitics, governance, markets, leadership, technology, and ESG, from a global editorial position, with an ethical compass.
Most analysis tells you what happened. Navigating the Vortex tells you what it means — and what to do with it. Across every dimension of a complex world, across every connection between them, we give our readers the knowledge and the tools to navigate what comes next.
What We Publish
The Philosophical Lens
Applied philosophy for the present moment. We take a single philosophical framework and apply it rigorously to a contemporary figure or event. This is philosophy that is useful, not merely decorative.
The Overton Window
In-depth analysis of political and cultural shifts. Each report examines how far the Overton window has moved on a specific issue, in which direction, and whether different countries are converging or diverging. Twenty-eight topics mapped across politics, economy, culture, and sport.
Leadership Portraits
Multi-dimensional, morally honest assessments of real leaders. Genuine achievement and genuine moral complexity held in the same frame, without forced resolution. Covering business leaders, US presidents, UK prime ministers, and current world leaders.
True North
Practitioner intelligence from people who have been in the room — at the board table, the negotiating table, on the ground. Theory tested by practice. Practice illuminated by theory.
PDQ Analysis
Rapid analysis. Published within hours: The story before the consensus forms.
Podcast
Lucy Marcus and Stefan Wolff in conversation: geopolitics, governance, business, culture, and what it all means. 87 episodes and counting. Subscribe or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Who We Are
Lucy Marcus
Lucy Marcus is a board non-executive director, columnist, speaker, and co-founder of Navigating the Vortex. One of the most widely followed voices on leadership, governance, and business ethics, her written work has appeared in publications around the world, including Project Syndicate, the BBC, Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, Fortune, and BusinessWeek, and she hosted Reuters TV’s In the Boardroom with Lucy Marcus. She has been quoted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Newsweek.
She has served as a non-executive director and chair across life sciences, financial services, infrastructure, and the arts — including Atlantia SpA, Mobius Life Sciences, and Oxford Playhouse — has taught leadership and governance at institutions around the world, including as a professor at IE Business School, and is a sought-after keynote speaker and panellist on governance, leadership, and business ethics.
With over one million followers on LinkedIn, she has been named a Thinkers 50 Future Thinker, a Yale University Rising Star of Corporate Governance, a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow, and a LinkedIn Top Voice.
Stefan Wolff
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. A political scientist by background, he specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts, in post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies, and in contemporary geopolitics and great-power rivalry.
Wolff has extensive expertise in the post-Soviet space and has worked on conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Bridging the divide between academia and policymaking, he regularly advises governments and international organisations and has been directly involved in conflict settlement processes in Iraq, Moldova, Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen.
His publication record includes over 100 journal articles and book chapters and 24 books. He is the founding editor of Ethnopolitics, co-founder of Navigating the Vortex, and a regular international affairs contributor to The Conversation, where his work has reached approximately two million readers. Winner of the 2022 Sir Paul Curran Award for outstanding public communication.
