Who Gets a Seat at the Table?
By Shlomi Selim “Sally” Benbasat
Salvator Mundi Café No. 6, Sunday 27 September 2026
Around the table: Mario Diel, Monika Mikac, Muhamet Catic, Björn Söderberg, Prof. Mirsad Hadžikadić, Ian Vickers Dalton, Ferda Kert and Ali Safa
Talent opens your eyes to opportunity. But very often, it is someone else who opens the door. At the sixth Salvator Mundi Café, our community asked who gets a seat at the table, and what we are willing to do about it.
Most Sundays, the Salvator Mundi Café hosts a guest: an ambassador, a founder, an economist, a spiritual leader. On Sunday, 27 September 2026, we did something different. There was no keynote and no stage. The table belonged to us, the community, and we used it to talk honestly about something that shapes every one of our lives, whether we admit it or not.
I opened with a lesson I have learned over many years of building businesses across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, working with companies, investors and governments. Talent opens your eyes to opportunity. But very often, it is someone else who opens the door. A phone call, an introduction, a name mentioned in the right room. These small moments decide careers, companies and sometimes the future of entire communities.
We like to believe the world runs on merit. Partly, it does. Yet where you were born, which passport you hold, which language you speak, which school you attended and who picks up your call still decide far too much. I did not want us to complain about the system, and I did not want us to congratulate ourselves either. I wanted us to be honest, and to answer from our own lives rather than from theory.
One Door, One Story
We began with a simple round: one door that someone opened for you. Just one.
Some of the most powerful answers were about doors that never opened. Mario Diel, our Founder and Chairman, grew up in a small village in Germany, the son of parents who had neither degrees nor wealth. “There were nearly no tables offered to me,” he said, “so I created the tables myself.” That experience, he told us, is exactly why he decided 30 years ago to help young people take their seat.
Ali Safa, Chairman of our Global Council on Cross Border Investment and Strategic Partnerships, went to boarding school before he was three. For him, most doors were ones he had to build, and make sure they opened both ways. Prof. Mirsad Hadžikadić admitted that in his life, doors were more often closed on purpose.
Other doors opened in the least likely places. Monika Mikac, joining from Zagreb, told us how, in the early days of Rimac, a university friend visiting a Chinese clinic in Hong Kong mentioned the company to the man running it. That man knew investors. A few weeks later, the team flew to Hong Kong and closed two investors in an 8 million euro round, the company’s first significant raise. Her advice to the next generation: keep your mind open, because you never know where the opportunity will come from.
Muhamet Catic, also in Zagreb, took us back to November 1976. As one of the youngest people in the room, he was invited by a Swedish adviser to an ad hoc meeting in Rome, chaired by Albert Heijn, that led to the European Article Number, the barcode now on almost every product we buy. He went on to serve on its executive committee in Brussels for 12 years and introduced barcodes in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Singapore, where, he smiled, the country was delighted to receive the prefix 888.
Björn Söderberg, our CEO and Co Founder, recalled a remote heart monitoring company refused a grant, until a professor at Karolinska said, “Gentlemen, you are doing the right thing.” Ethical approval came in a week instead of three months, a global innovation award from HP followed, and the company changed forever.
Mirsad remembered the host family paired with him as a Fulbright scholar in Dallas, who opened a door not to a career but to a deeper understanding of American society. Ian Vickers Dalton, Chair of our Environomics council, owed his first job to a neighbour who put in a good word. Ferda Kert, our Chief Strategy Officer, met a friend at the G20 who asked her to become founding president of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in Turkey, a door that set off a chain reaction of friendships across the world.
My own story was one of sliding doors. My grandfather told me to leave finance in the UK and study technology in Israel. Within ten days I had closed my house and moved. I sent my CV to every fund listed by the Israeli Venture Capital Association, and one said yes. I joined as an analyst at 25. Six months later I was a director, building a bridge fund for Israeli technology companies through the dot com years, and my former boss had become my partner. Was I talented? I will never know for sure. What I do know is that someone accepted me, and that door set my compass for the next 27 years.
Is Talent Enough?
We tell young people to work hard, be excellent, and success will follow. Yet we all know brilliant people who never got their chance, and others who went far mostly because of who they knew. So we tested the promise.
The table agreed: talent matters, but it is not enough. Mario was blunt: “You can have the best product in the world, but if you know nobody, you will never sell a single one.” Monika described talent as the tip of an iceberg, with knowledge, competitiveness and resilience beneath it. An introvert by nature, she learned networking because she had to, which convinced her it is a skill anyone can build.
Muhamet recalled Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and a definition of luck I will keep: readiness that meets opportunity. A young footballer in an African village may be fully ready, but never meet the opportunity. Björn told the story of the ski champion Ingemar Stenmark, who, when called lucky, replied that the more he trained, the luckier he became.
Ian offered an image from nature that stayed with me: talent is potential energy. It does nothing until it has a pathway to work.
“Nature wastes no potential, but institutions do.”
Mirsad warned against dividing the world into the connected and the unconnected. Nikola Tesla was hardly social, yet people sought him out. What matters, he argued, is a culture that hears the shy, the loners and the quiet ones, not only those who connect easily.
Ferda described networking as something that begins as privilege, through family, geography and school, but becomes a compounding skill: not who you know, but who trusts you, who picks up the phone and who stands with you in hard times. Ali took it one step further. People rarely trust serious responsibility to talent alone.
“Talent creates possibility. Trust converts it into opportunity.”
I agreed. My own talent, I discovered just before my final school exams, was memory. I scored 90 on an exam I barely expected to pass, and was accused of copying until I quoted the textbook back to them, page and paragraph. That memory served me for decades in business. But it was never enough. In my telecom ventures, I learned the hard way what happens when you trust partners who do not deserve it. Talent is a gift. Trust is the foundation.
Who Is Missing From the Table?
Look at the tables where big decisions are made: boardrooms, investment committees, negotiation rooms, international summits. Who sits there, and who does not? When women, young people, whole regions and people outside the major capitals are absent, decisions are made about them, without them.
Monika is frequently the only woman in the room, in automotive and in venture capital, and often the youngest too. A table without diversity, she said, loses different opinions and the middle ground where the best decisions are found. Muhamet named two missing groups: women, and senior people with proven experience. He reminded us of the line usually credited to Peter Drucker, that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and urged Salvator Mundi Global to remain a learning organisation that is open to outside knowledge.
Ferda named what is most often missing: wisdom. Homogeneity, she warned, is a trap. Being like minded in values does not mean thinking alike. Real collective value comes from plural perspectives and constructive dissent. Ali added the old saying that if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. A table full of people who think alike loses curiosity.
Mario raised an urgent point. Today’s young generation has plenty of doors opening for them, through social media, but many of them are the wrong doors. Björn agreed: young talent needs trusted mentors who bridge generations and help them see where each path leads. Monika’s answer was honest: sometimes we only learn which doors are wrong by walking through them. The freedom to fail is part of growing.
The Doors We Can Open
This was the heart of the conversation. If we already have access, which doors can we open for others?
Mario’s answer is Salvator Mundi Global itself: he brought his entire network into it, not for commercial success, but to bring every part of society to the table, including through SMG New Education. Monika said opening doors for others makes her happier than knocking on new ones for herself, and that small acts repeated every day, an email, an introduction, an hour of advice, add up to real impact.
Muhamet opens doors in two stages: first a test of character and integrity, then the door wide open. Ali shared how he gives back on the understanding that those he helps will do the same for others. Björn will open doors with universities across Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea, and to SMG’s work on fertility and longevity.
I shared a phone call I received in the middle of the night during the first months of COVID, while I was working around the clock to help governments obtain masks and gowns. A man I could not remember was crying on the line, thanking me for changing his life. All I had done, it turned out, was give him honest advice about his business when I could easily have nodded politely and moved on. I always tell people I am only a channel for my experience. They owe me nothing, not even a thank you. But that call reminded me that a single piece of good advice can be a door.
A Promise, Not a Question
We closed the way we began: one door each of us commits to opening before the end of the year. Monika is bringing local universities into our Sunday conversations, so students can ask questions and perhaps find mentors among us. Muhamet will keep bringing young people from around the world to the Sarajevo Pyramids project. Björn, with Jacqueline in Tanzania, will start even earlier, with diagnostics in primary schools after the learning lost during COVID. Ali will lead SMG’s advisory branch in opening doors for cross border deals. Ferda, true to form, took the question home to answer properly.
“The world will not become fair through speeches. It becomes fair one introduction, one invitation and one open door at a time.”
We came to this table as guests. Let us leave as hosts, ready to make room for others. So I leave you with the same question, this time as a promise: who will you invite to the table?
Watch the conversation
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Salvator Mundi Café meets every Sunday at 15:00 CET. Meet. Share. Connect.
About the Author
Shlomi Selim “Sally” Benbasat
Editor in Chief, Salvator Mundi Times
Serial entrepreneur and investor in B2B e-commerce, carbon markets and emissions reduction, chemicals and raw materials trading, EPC, technology, telecommunications, digital media and real estate, with ventures built and exited across Europe, LATAM, the Middle East and Asia.
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