Pippa Malmgren

Why organisations work with Pippa Malmgren

• She has sat inside the room where US economic policy is set. As Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council, she advised on the response to 9/11 from a financial markets and Pentagon technology procurement standpoint, which is a different vantage point from any academic economist.
• She bridges currency markets and geopolitics in a way few speakers can. She ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS, which means her geopolitical reads land with FX, fixed income and treasury audiences.
• She is a working operator, not just a commentator. Co-founding H Robotics, a CogX and National Technology Award winning industrial drone business, gives her a real seat at the table on industrial AI, autonomous systems and the defence-tech investment cycle.
• Her book The Leadership Lab won UK Business Book of the Year 2019 and her follow-up The Infinite Leader won the International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership 2021, which means leadership-track briefs are met with credentialed material rather than improvisation.
• She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, the UK defence and security institute, and judges the King’s Awards for Enterprise. Boards using her for geopolitics get an analyst whose reads are taken seriously inside the UK security and industrial establishment.

Biography highlights

• Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
• Former Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and head of Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia.
• Author of Signals (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), Geopolitics for Investors, The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader.
• Co-founder of H Robotics, winner of the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award.
• Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation 2022 to 2024.
• PhD and MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Biography

The job of reading geopolitics for boards used to belong to a small circle of former diplomats and bank chief economists. That circle is no longer wide enough. Currency moves now sit downstream of sanctions decisions, supply chain costs sit downstream of industrial policy, and AI capex sits downstream of export controls. Reading those linkages is a working discipline, not a generalist’s hobby.

Malmgren was inside that linkage early. She advised President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and served on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, including the post-9/11 work on terrorism risk to the economy and Pentagon technology procurement. Before the White House, she ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. The combination of policy seat and trading-floor seat is rare, and it shapes how she briefs.

The published work makes the argument visible. Signals reads consumer behaviour, magazine covers and shop fronts as evidence about inflation, social pressure and political risk. The Leadership Lab, co-written with Chris Lewis, won UK Business Book of the Year 2019. The Infinite Leader followed it with the 2021 International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership. None of these are commentator books. They argue specific theses about how decisions get made under volatile conditions.

She also runs an operating business in the territory she briefs on. H Robotics, the industrial drone company she co-founded, won the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, sits on the judging panel of the King’s Awards for Enterprise and was a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung from 2022 to 2024. When she briefs a board on industrial AI, defence-tech, the new space economy or the strategic-minerals fight, she is briefing as a participant, not a watcher.

Key speaking topics

• Geopolitics and the global economy
• Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation
• Industrial AI, autonomous systems and defence technology
• Currency markets and inflation signals
• The new space economy and strategic infrastructure
• Leadership under conditions of disruption
• Political risk and sovereign decision-making

Ideal for

• Boards, CEOs and CFOs setting capital allocation policy under sanctions, currency and supply chain pressure.
• Treasury, FX and asset management leadership teams whose mandates now hinge on geopolitical reads.
• Strategy and corporate development teams in defence, energy, industrials, semiconductors and infrastructure.
• Investment committees of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices reassessing global exposure.

Audience outcomes

• A working framework for translating geopolitical events into specific capital, currency and operating consequences.
• A clearer reading of where US, Chinese and European industrial policy is forcing reallocation of supply chains and capital.
• Specific signals to track in commodities, currencies and consumer behaviour as leading indicators of macro stress.
• A grounded view of where AI, autonomous systems and the space economy intersect with national security and corporate strategy.
• Confidence at board level that geopolitical scenarios have been pressure-tested by someone who has briefed at presidential level.