Talk: Nizan Guanaes

CEO of N Ideias, Nizan Guanaes is one of Brazil’s leading communication strategists for major brands.
Named by the Financial Times as one of the five most influential Brazilians in the world, Nizan is a Global Ambassador for UNESCO and a columnist for the newspaper Valor Econômico.
He transformed Brazilian advertising with the iconic DM9 in the 1990s. In the 2000s, with Africa, he helped reshape the agency model and went on to build the country’s first major advertising and marketing holding company, placing Grupo ABC among the 20 largest in the world. The sales of DM9 and Grupo ABC were the two biggest deals in the Brazilian advertising market, also establishing Nizan as a prominent entrepreneur.
After turning 60, he returned to university and, in 2023, graduated from the OPM (Owner/President Management) program at Harvard Business School. Nizan supports Brazilian social entrepreneurship and invests in startups.
He co-authored the book “Você Aguenta Ser Feliz?” (“Can You Handle Being Happy?”) with Dr. Arthur Guerra, which reached the bestseller list of the newspaper O Globo. In 2025, in partnership with Meio & Mensagem, he launched the program “CEO’s Talk Show”.