Iværksætteri

Why organisations work with Alex Polizzi She has walked into more than a hundred real struggling businesses on camera and named exactly what was failing – her credibility is documented and specific, not theoretical. Audiences working on customer experience get something rare: an operator who can describe the gap between management assumption and customer reality from both sides of the front desk. Her commercial advice carries a weight most speakers cannot match – she applies the same standards to The Polizzi Collection’s three boutique hotels as she applies to the businesses she advises, with her own balance sheet as the test. Her BBC Two series The Fixer took her diagnostic approach beyond hospitality into retail, manufacturing, and food service – making her relevant to any audience grappling with family-run or founder-led business performance, not only hotels. She founded and scaled Millers Bespoke Bakery from start-up to a supplier of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason, giving her genuine entrepreneur-to-operator credibility that extends beyond the family hospitality dynasty. Biography highlights Presenter of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector since 2008 – nineteen-plus series visiting and turning around struggling British hospitality businesses Presenter of BBC Two’s The Fixer (four series, 2012-2015) – extending the business turnaround model to family enterprises across retail, manufacturing, and food Co-owner and active operator of The Polizzi Collection: Hotel Tresanton (Cornwall), Hotel Endsleigh (Devon), and The Star, Alfriston (East Sussex, opened 2021) Trained at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong; worked for Marco Pierre White at the Criterion, London; held operational roles across Rocco Forte Hotels in Cardiff, Rome, and St Petersburg Read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford Co-founded Millers Bespoke Bakery; grew to supply Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason Author, Alex Polizzi’s Little Black Book of Hotels (2010) Granddaughter of Lord Forte; mother is Olga Polizzi CBE, Director of Design at Rocco Forte Hotels Biography Most owners of service businesses are certain they know what their customers experience. Nineteen series of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector suggest otherwise. Alex Polizzi has spent more than fifteen years walking into struggling British hotels and family enterprises and naming, clearly, what the management cannot see from the inside. Her authority comes from two directions. She trained at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, worked for Marco Pierre White at the Criterion, and held operational roles across Rocco Forte Hotels in Cardiff, Rome, and St Petersburg. She also co-founded Millers Bespoke Bakery with her then-partner Marcus Miller – building it from a start-up to a supplier of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason. She read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. That experience extends to The Polizzi Collection, three boutique hotels she co-owns and actively operates with her mother, the designer Olga Polizzi: Hotel Tresanton in Cornwall, Hotel Endsleigh in Devon, and The Star in Alfriston, East Sussex. Her advice to other businesses carries the weight of someone whose own commercial performance depends on the same standards she applies elsewhere. For BBC Two’s The Fixer (four series, 2012-2015), she extended the same diagnostic lens beyond hotels to family businesses in retail, manufacturing, and food – demonstrating that the tension between conviction and commercial reality is not a hospitality problem alone. The granddaughter of Lord Forte, she brings both the heritage of a three-generation hotel dynasty and the independence of someone who has built and operated alongside it on her own terms. Key speaking topics Hospitality leadership and operational improvement Business turnaround in service and family-run enterprises Customer experience and service standards Commercial positioning for independent and boutique businesses Entrepreneurship and scaling founder-led businesses Recruitment and performance in service industries Family business dynamics and succession Ideal for Hospitality industry conferences and hotel association events Family business forums and owner-managed business summits Customer experience and service excellence programmes (cross-sector) SME and entrepreneurial leadership events where founder perspective is central Audience outcomes A clearer framework for diagnosing the gap between what a business intends to deliver and what customers actually receive Practical understanding of the operational and cultural patterns that drive underperformance in service businesses Insight into how service standards, staff performance, and commercial positioning interact – and which lever to pull first Perspective on the specific challenges of running or advising family-owned enterprises, including how personal loyalty can mask business-critical problems Grounded confidence that improvement in service and commercial performance is achievable through process discipline, not wholesale transformation

Why organisations work with Alicia Asín She runs Libelium, the Spanish IoT company behind the Waspmote wireless sensor platform, deployed across smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring projects worldwide. Audiences get a working founder-CEO view, not a technology commentator. She was the first woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014) and received the Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship in 2017, a prize whose jury includes Nobel laureates. These are sovereign-level, externally adjudicated credentials. Second position in the 2018 European Commission Prize for Women Innovators reinforces the EU-level recognition. Her “Datacracy” argument, that data should strengthen democratic accountability rather than erode it, gives public-sector, smart-city and ESG audiences a specific vocabulary for the governance layer of IoT and AI deployment. She works in English and Spanish, which makes her directly useful for pan-European, Iberian and Latin American corporate and public-sector events. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Libelium; creator of the Waspmote IoT sensor platform First woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014) Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship, 2017 Runner-up, European Commission Prize for Women Innovators, 2018 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Named “Spanish with Talent” by Marca España; 2016 National Computer Science Prize Biography Sensors are the quietest part of the technology stack and the one that will most shape the next decade of public-sector decision-making. Alicia Asín co-founded Libelium in Zaragoza and has spent the intervening period building Waspmote, the company’s open-source IoT hardware platform, into a reference product for smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring deployments worldwide. The recognition record is sovereign-level. She was the first woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014). In 2017 she received the Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship, one of the most prestigious prizes in Spain, whose jury includes Nobel laureates. In 2018 she was named runner-up in the European Commission Prize for Women Innovators. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. The argument she brings to senior audiences is governance, not hardware. “Datacracy” is her shorthand for the idea that IoT and AI should strengthen institutional accountability, in cities, in food systems and in public services, rather than weaken it. That framing gives public-sector, smart-city and ESG audiences a specific lens on procurement, data ownership and the design of monitoring systems that people will actually trust. For technology leadership, smart cities, sustainability and European public-sector audiences, Asín offers the working view of a multi-award-winning founder who is still running the company. She speaks in English and Spanish, which makes her directly useful across Iberian, pan-European and Latin American programming. Key speaking topics Internet of Things and the Waspmote platform in practice Smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring at scale Datacracy: data, transparency and institutional accountability Women in technology and STEM education under AI Founder-CEO experience of scaling a European hardware company Ideal for Technology leadership, innovation and R&D audiences at European corporates Smart-city, public-sector and urban-policy conferences Sustainability, agri-food and environmental programmes evaluating IoT deployments Women-in-tech and leadership events at pan-European and Latin American programmes Audience outcomes A working founder-CEO view of IoT deployment in cities and food systems A vocabulary (“Datacracy”) for the governance layer of IoT and AI adoption Specific examples drawn from Libelium deployments in smart cities and precision agriculture A pan-European perspective on the policy and procurement context for sensor-led programmes

Why organisations work with Dr Alison Edgar MBE The intrapreneurship methodology addresses a specific organisational failure: talent hired to think and then trained to execute. It gives teams ownership inside the existing structure without asking for a reorg. Operator before author. She built her career inside Yell during the Yellow Pages collapse, founded her own training business in 2011, and advises UK government on small business policy. The frameworks on stage were built for a business she was running at the time. The work sits in the mechanics of accountability. The Intrapreneur Mindset and her Big Balls® prioritisation framework give managers a shared language for ownership and follow-through that outlasts the keynote. Designed to land in mixed rooms. Leaders, managers, and front-line teams leave a session with the same vocabulary and the same expectations, which matters when a change programme needs to move through every layer of the business. The back-story does work that a CV can’t. Clydebank council flat, undiagnosed dyslexia, no school qualifications, MBE in 2020, honorary doctorate in education from Bournemouth University in 2024. Senior leaders and front-line staff end up listening to the same talk for different reasons. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of SMASH IT!® Training. Appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business. Awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Bournemouth University, 2024. Author of Secrets of Successful Sales (WHSmith Top Ten business book; named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman) and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. Named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation; TEDx speaker; business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business; regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, CBRE, Specsavers, Currys, St James’s Place, Porsche and Renault. Biography Most change programmes are written to land in the boardroom. The work of making them stick sits three layers below, in the everyday decisions that keep standards consistent when the strategy slides have been filed away. That gap is where Alison Edgar does her work. SMASH IT!® Training was founded after twenty-five years in corporate sales at BT and Yell. The Yell years were the formative ones. She watched Yellow Pages, once a fixture in almost every UK home, lose its market because the leadership chose not to react to Google. Before that came an earlier career managing hotels in Cape Town and Sydney. The training business grew into something broader than sales. At the centre of the work today is the Intrapreneur Mindset: Edgar’s term for what it looks like when employees think and decide like owners inside a large organisation. The Big Balls® framework sits alongside it, giving managers a prioritisation language for work that all feels equally urgent. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. The credibility behind the frameworks is unusually well-documented. She was named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation, appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business, and awarded an honorary doctorate in education by Bournemouth University in 2024. Two books sit on the record: Secrets of Successful Sales, named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman, and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. She is a regular BBC contributor, including as a business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business, and is quoted across The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. The practical test of any speaker for a serious organisation is what survives the following Monday. Alison Edgar is booked repeatedly by Sky, the NHS and the European Commission because the language she gives a room keeps showing up in meetings weeks later. Key speaking topics Leadership accountability Leading change and change fatigue Intrapreneurship and ownership culture Standards and everyday execution Customer experience and service culture High-performance teams Sales leadership and commercial behaviour Ideal for Senior leaders accountable for consistent performance across transformation programmes. CHROs and CPOs building accountability and standards in hybrid or multi-site organisations. Commercial and sales leaders looking to raise conversion through team behaviour without expanding headcount. Organisations running large all-hands or leadership off-sites where the same message needs to reach the C-suite and the front line. Audience outcomes A working definition of accountability that lives in everyday behaviour and survives the next restructure. The Big Balls® prioritisation framework applied to real work, so teams stop treating every task as equally urgent. A shared language across leaders, managers and front-line staff for ownership and consistent standards. Intrapreneurship tools that let employees act like owners inside the existing structure. Language and tools for handling change fatigue, including what to do when a team has already checked out of the next transformation.

Why organisations work with Álvaro Vargas Llosa His “Five Principles of Oppression” framework – developed in Liberty for Latin America and recognised with the Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award – gives risk and strategy teams a structural model for diagnosing why reform fails in emerging markets, beyond surface political cycle analysis. His critique of statism and populism is applied equally to left and right administrations, making his assessments more defensible in polarised environments and more useful for boards that must operate above partisan interpretation. He brings first-hand political engagement – as press spokesman for one Peruvian presidential campaign and international relations adviser for another – to strategic conversations that frequently lack any understanding of how political institutions function from the inside. His parallel work on development entrepreneurship (the Templeton Freedom Award-winning Lessons from the Poor) and immigration economics (Global Crossings) extends his analytical scope into talent, trade, and demographic strategy – giving organisations a unified frame for markets that most advisers treat in isolation. Named by Foreign Policy as one of the top 50 public intellectuals in the Spanish-speaking world (2012), he carries credibility with government, regulatory, and C-suite audiences across Latin America, Spain, and the United States simultaneously. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, Center on Global Prosperity, Independent Institute, Washington DC; President, Fundación Internacional para la Libertad (FIL) and Cátedra Vargas Llosa B.Sc. International History, London School of Economics; M.A. Value Investing and Theory of the Economic Cycle, OMMA (Spain) Author of Liberty for Latin America (Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award, 2005); editor of Lessons from the Poor (Templeton Freedom Award, 2010); author of Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America Nationally syndicated columnist, Washington Post Writers Group; former op-ed editor and columnist, Miami Herald; contributor to Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, BBC World Service, and Time Named Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum, 2007; named one of the top 50 public intellectuals in the Spanish-speaking world, Foreign Policy, 2012; Thomas Jefferson Award, Association of Private Enterprise Education, 2021 Writer and presenter, four-part National Geographic Channel documentary series “Consecuencias” on contemporary Latin American history, broadcast in more than 100 countries Member, Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy; press and political advisory roles in two Peruvian presidential campaigns Biography For five hundred years, Latin American economies have cycled through liberalisation and state capture. In Liberty for Latin America, Álvaro Vargas Llosa offers a structural explanation for why – identifying five persistent institutional conditions he calls the “Principles of Oppression”: corporatism, state mercantilism, privilege, bottom-up wealth redistribution, and political law. It is one of the few analytical frameworks that diagnoses a pattern rather than merely describing events, and it won the Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award in 2005. Based at the Independent Institute in Washington DC, Vargas Llosa has spent his career at the intersection of political economy, journalism, and policy advisory work. He spent five years as a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the BBC World Service, and Time. His four-part National Geographic Channel documentary series “Consecuencias,” which aired in more than 100 countries, brought the same analytical frame to a mainstream global audience. His work extends beyond Latin American political history. As editor of Lessons from the Poor – recipient of the Templeton Freedom Award – he examined bottom-up entrepreneurship in Africa and Latin America, making the case that development is driven by individual agency, not state intervention. His book Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America applies a comparable structural lens to immigration, separating economic evidence from political narrative. Named one of the top 50 public intellectuals in the Spanish-speaking world by Foreign Policy (2012), Vargas Llosa carries credibility across Latin America, Europe, and Washington DC. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader in 2007; he also serves as President of the Fundación Internacional para la Libertad and sat on the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy. For organisations exposed to politically complex markets, his work offers something uncommon: a tested structural model for understanding risk, not simply informed commentary. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and political economy in emerging markets Populism and institutional fragility across the left-right divide Latin American politics and the conditions for durable market reform Immigration economics, cultural assimilation, and demographic change Development entrepreneurship and the structural limits of foreign aid Rule of law, state capture, and the business cost of institutional weakness US foreign policy and Western hemisphere strategy Ideal for Boards and senior executive teams of companies with material Latin American exposure, assessing political and institutional risk alongside commercial strategy Chief Risk Officers and geopolitical risk functions navigating political cycle uncertainty in emerging markets Investors and asset allocators active in Latin American, Ibero-American, or broader developing-economy markets Government affairs teams, policy-facing organisations, and trade bodies operating across the Americas, Spain, and Washington DC Audience outcomes A structural model – grounded in the “Five Principles of Oppression” framework – for explaining why market reform in emerging economies reverses, independent of which party holds power A clearer understanding of how populism operates across the ideological spectrum, and what this means for business exposure and investment sequencing Practical tools for distinguishing between political risk that is cyclical and risk that is structural – and the different responses each requires A contextualised, evidence-based account of immigration and demographic change as economic and strategic forces, separated from political rhetoric A sharper analytical basis for assessing the stability of institutional environments when entering, operating in, or exiting politically complex markets

Why organisations work with Álvaro Vizcaíno His central argument is specific and counterintuitive: fear is not an obstacle to performance but navigational data – a claim developed through post-event academic training in transpersonal psychology and Gestalt, which separates it from generic adversity narratives. The survival event underpinning his work is independently documented – recorded on IMDB, covered on Wikipedia, and dramatised in a Netflix feature film directed by Hugo Stuven – giving his framework an evidential base that most speakers on resilience cannot offer. El miedo es tu maestro, published by Ediciones Urano, translates the methodology into ten concrete keys, giving organisations a structured reference that outlasts the event itself. His live sessions include a participative, practical phase in which attendees apply the framework to their own context in the room – not a retrospective reflection exercise, but a live rehearsal of the method. He operates bilingually in Spanish and English, with verified client engagements including Vodafone Spain, Danone, and Mercedes Benz – directly relevant for multinational organisations running leadership events across European and Latin American markets. Biography highlights Real-life subject of Solo (2018), a Spanish drama film directed by Hugo Stuven, distributed by Filmax and available on Netflix, based on his 2014 survival ordeal in Fuerteventura Author of El miedo es tu maestro (Fear Is Your Master: 10 Keys to Convert Your Worries into Strengths), published by Ediciones Urano Formal academic training in transpersonal psychology, Gestalt, and coaching – undertaken following the 2014 accident Background in psychology and business administration; founded an e-commerce agency and operated hotels in the Canary Islands Client engagements include Vodafone Spain, Danone, Mercedes Benz, and BNI Bilingual speaker in Spanish and English Biography Fear is the emotion organisations are least equipped to use well. Leaders who freeze during a restructuring, teams that stall at the first sign of strategic collapse – these are not failures of training. They are failures of framework: nobody has shown them that fear, handled correctly, is information. Álvaro Vizcaíno came to this argument through necessity. In September 2014, a cliff fall on the Fuerteventura coast left him immobilised and alone – fractured hip, no food or water, no certainty of rescue. He survived approximately 48 hours before being found. The experience did not simply give him a story. It prompted a formal investigation: he subsequently trained in transpersonal psychology, Gestalt, and coaching to understand what had actually happened in his mind during those two days. That research produced a methodology and a book. El miedo es tu maestro (Fear Is Your Master), published by Ediciones Urano, sets out ten keys for converting fear from a paralysing force into a practical decision-making tool. The survival story behind it is independently documented in Solo (2018), a Spanish feature film directed by Hugo Stuven and available on Netflix – giving his framework a cultural reference point that most speakers in this space cannot claim. He has applied this methodology with organisations including Vodafone Spain, Danone, and Mercedes Benz. Working bilingually in Spanish and English, he is particularly effective for leadership teams navigating significant change across European and Latin American markets. Key speaking topics Fear as a decision-making tool Resilience under extreme pressure Adaptability and change management Personal and collective responsibility Leadership performance in crisis Mindset and psychological discipline under uncertainty Entrepreneurship and overcoming adversity Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for or navigating significant organisational change CHROs and people directors focused on workforce resilience and performance under pressure Sales, commercial, and operational teams in high-stakes, high-uncertainty environments Spanish-language or bilingual corporate events across European and Latin American markets Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of fear as a source of navigational information, not a signal to retreat or suppress A practical three-step method for maintaining direction and making decisions when certainty disappears Clearer insight into the relationship between personal responsibility and collective performance under pressure Greater awareness of the specific mental habits that distinguish functional from dysfunctional responses to organisational crisis A shared, memorable reference point – drawn from an independently documented survival event – that teams can apply and return to beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Amanda Wakeley She has lived the complete founder’s arc – from a self-funded Chelsea launch in 1990 to international retail distribution, a £1 million buyback from investors in 2009 to reclaim creative control, and ultimately administration in 2021. That full sequence, spoken about with candour, is a business case study that cannot be manufactured. Her client roster – Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen Rania of Jordan, Meghan Markle, Beyoncé, and Michelle Obama among them – is a direct, unanswerable proof of premium brand positioning. It gives her authority to discuss luxury aspiration in terms no white paper or case study can match. She offers a rare dual perspective on founder-investor dynamics: the 2009 buyback and the 2021 administration are two distinct data points on what happens when a founder’s vision and commercial structures diverge. For boards and investors in consumer brands, this is unusually instructive. Three British Fashion Awards and an OBE for services to fashion provide independently verifiable validation of her standing – relevant where audiences need assurance that the speaker’s authority is recognised beyond self-promotion. Having rebuilt her professional identity through podcasting, broadcasting, and speaking after brand closure, she brings a credible and specific account of reinvention that resonates with executives navigating their own pivots – professional, organisational, or strategic. Biography highlights Founded her eponymous luxury womenswear label in 1990; built international distribution through Harvey Nichols, Harrods, and more than 50 retailers across Europe, America, and the Middle East Three-time winner, British Fashion Award for Glamour OBE, 2010, for services to the fashion industry Co-chair of Fashion Targets Breast Cancer since 1996; the campaign has raised more than £16 million for Breast Cancer Now Sky News commentator, live coverage of the 2018 royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Host of the Style DNA podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, British Airways in-flight entertainment); 4.5 million listeners across its first four seasons, now in its ninth season Biography A luxury brand is only as durable as the proposition holding it together. Amanda Wakeley launched her womenswear label in 1990 with a £20,000 loan from her father, having taught herself design while working for a New York retailer. She built the business into a flagship in Mayfair and a presence across Harvey Nichols, Harrods, and more than 50 retailers spanning Europe, America, and the Middle East. Three British Fashion Awards and an OBE for services to fashion followed. Her clientele – Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen Rania of Jordan, Meghan Markle, Beyoncé, Michelle Obama – was itself an argument about what premium positioning can achieve. The business encountered every pressure a founder can face. Acquired by external investors in 2000, Wakeley fought to maintain creative control before buying the label back for £1 million in 2009. COVID-19 dismantled the occasion-wear market the brand depended on. In May 2021, the company went into administration; liquidation concluded in December 2023. Wakeley has spoken with unusual candour about that experience – what she got right, what she would change, and what it reveals about the relationship between a founder’s vision and the commercial structures built around it. Since then, she has rebuilt her platform through broadcasting and media. Her podcast, Style DNA, launched in 2022 and reached 4.5 million listeners within its first four seasons, securing a place on British Airways in-flight entertainment. She remains co-chair of Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, the campaign she helped found in 1996, which has raised more than £16 million for Breast Cancer Now. What organisations receive from Wakeley is something that cannot be taught through a framework: three decades of building a premium brand under real commercial conditions, the full weight of what it costs to maintain creative control, and a frank account of what happens when external forces overwhelm even a well-established brand identity. The reinvention that followed is part of the argument. Key speaking topics Luxury and premium brand building Founder-investor dynamics and creative control Entrepreneurship and self-funded growth Brand reinvention and recovery after setback Personal branding and creative identity Female entrepreneurship and leadership The evolution of the British fashion industry Ideal for Founders, entrepreneurs, and brand leaders in luxury, premium, or lifestyle sectors grappling with growth, investment, or identity decisions Senior marketing and commercial leaders where brand differentiation is a strategic priority Audiences at women’s leadership forums, female entrepreneurship conferences, and diversity summits Executive teams and boards in consumer brands navigating reinvention, restructuring, or recovery Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of the trade-off between scaling a brand and preserving the founding distinctiveness that gives it value First-hand perspective on founder-investor dynamics – the decision points Wakeley faced, what she did, and what she would do differently A specific, candid account of navigating business failure and professional reinvention, grounded in named decisions rather than generic resilience messaging Practical insight into how luxury positioning is built and maintained through choices about distribution, clientele, and product range An understanding of how personal identity and professional brand intersect, and how to manage that intersection deliberately under pressure

Why organisations work with Amar Latif He has spent twenty years running an inclusion business that makes commercial sense. Traveleyes pairs blind and sighted travellers worldwide and has twice been voted Best Accessible Holiday Company at the British Travel Awards, in 2019 and 2020. His corporate CV gives him credibility with a board. Before founding Traveleyes he was Head of Commercial Finance at BT, and he makes the commercial case for inclusion in the language a board expects to hear it in. The lived experience is specific and substantial. Amar has retinitis pigmentosa and lost 95% of his sight by 18, and has spent his career building and running an organisation inside that constraint. Mainstream media recognition earns audience attention before he speaks. Regular BBC presenter, first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK, and appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Executive of Traveleyes, the world’s first commercial tour operator pairing blind and sighted travellers on group holidays worldwide; established 2004. Appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship. President of The Ramblers, Britain’s largest walking charity, since April 2023; patron of SeeAbility and of the Rafiki Thabo Foundation. Inaugural recipient of the Stelios Disabled Entrepreneur Award (2007), presented by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in partnership with Leonard Cheshire Disability. Presenter across BBC and Channel 4, including Beyond Boundaries, River Walks (Royal Television Society Yorkshire Best Single Documentary, 2019), Travelling Blind, Pilgrimage: The Road to Istanbul, How to Get Fit Fast; first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK (2020). BSc (Hons) Mathematics, Statistics and Finance, University of Strathclyde; former Head of Commercial Finance at BT. Biography Traveleyes was founded in 2004 on a single commercial insight: that blind and sighted travellers could be paired on the same group holiday, with sighted guests receiving discounted travel in exchange for describing what they see. Twenty years later, the company has twice been voted Best Accessible Holiday Company at the British Travel Awards, and the insight has held up. Amar Latif built the business after leaving a role as Head of Commercial Finance at BT. The route from commercial finance into inclusive travel is unusual, and it gives him the language to make the commercial case for inclusion to a board. The authority on resilience comes from a specific set of circumstances. Amar has retinitis pigmentosa and had lost 95% of his sight by 18. After a BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Finance at the University of Strathclyde, he trained as an accountant and worked his way up to Head of Commercial Finance at BT before founding Traveleyes. A parallel broadcasting career runs across BBC One, BBC Two and Channel 4, including Beyond Boundaries, Travelling Blind, Pilgrimage: The Road to Istanbul, How to Get Fit Fast, and his appearance as the first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK. He was appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship, and serves as President of The Ramblers, Britain’s largest walking charity. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Disability inclusion as commercial strategy Entrepreneurial resilience Risk and decision-making under constraint Customer experience in underserved markets Purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief People Officers, CHROs and heads of diversity, equity and inclusion Boards and executive teams building the commercial case for inclusion Entrepreneurship and innovation forums Customer experience and service design leaders Audience outcomes A commercial case for inclusion built to hold up in a board or CFO conversation Specific examples of how inclusion shapes service design and customer experience in underserved markets A reset on how to think about risk when there is no stable precedent A narrative that changes how senior audiences talk about inclusion back in the business

Why organisations work with Amy Thomson A founder who has actually built and sold in consumer markets twice, once in brand communications with Nike, Microsoft and Instagram as clients, and once in femtech with a venture-backed app and a Penguin-published book underneath it. Specific operating knowledge of category creation in stigmatised territory: how to position, fundraise, and market around hormonal health without the wellness-industry shortcuts that erode trust. A published Penguin title grounded in research from gynaecologists, endocrinologists and nutritionists, which means consumer health and pharma teams get a speaker with editorial credibility, not just a founder pitch. A first-person account of hormonal burnout as a CEO that resonates with leadership audiences, then connects to a commercial argument about why workforce health is being misread by employers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Moody Month, awarded “Top Female Health App” by Apple Author, Moody: A 21st Century Hormone Guide, Penguin Founder, SEEN brand agency, clients including Nike, Microsoft, RBS, Instagram and Diageo; sold to Captivate Group Co-founder, Future Girl Corp, with Sharmadean Reid, partnered with Google and Diageo Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London Keynote engagements include Apple HQ and Vogue Biography Most consumer health products built for women have been designed without a serious commercial thesis attached to female physiology. Thomson started Moody Month to close that gap, building a venture-backed app that tracks hormonal and mental health across the menstrual cycle. Apple named it “Top Female Health App” and featured it on the App Store Today Tab. Her route to femtech was operational. She founded SEEN at 23, a brand and content agency working with Nike, Microsoft, RBS, Instagram and Diageo, before selling the company to Captivate Group. A hormonal burnout, driven by years of high-intensity client work, forced her to stop. The decision to study what had happened to her body became the foundation for Moody and for her Penguin book, Moody: A 21st Century Hormone Guide, which draws on gynaecologists, endocrinologists and nutritionists rather than wellness orthodoxy. That dual track, agency exit then femtech category creation, gives her a particular usefulness to consumer health, FMCG and pharma teams trying to build credibly in physiology markets. She has co-founded Future Girl Corp with Sharmadean Reid, partnered Google and Diageo into that programme, and raised institutional capital around a product category most investors still find awkward to underwrite. The commercial argument she makes is concrete: hormonal health is a consumer market that has been mispriced by incumbents and underserved by wellness branding. For leadership audiences, the burnout story carries a sharper edge than the wellness circuit typically allows. It is told by a founder who walked away from a profitable agency, rebuilt around a physiological problem her own body forced her to take seriously, and then commercialised the answer. Key speaking topics Femtech and women’s health as a commercial category Consumer brand building in stigmatised markets Founder-led category creation Hormonal health, data and machine learning Raising venture capital as a female founder Burnout, physiology and executive performance Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer innovation teams in FMCG, pharma and health Investor audiences in femtech, digital health and consumer technology Founder programmes and scale-up leadership networks Boards and leadership teams reviewing workforce health beyond standard wellbeing programming Audience outcomes A working commercial frame for women’s health as a consumer category, not a CSR line A founder’s account of fundraising in stigmatised markets, with the patterns that move investors A first-person view of hormonal burnout at CEO level and what it changed about her operating model A clearer read on why hormonal data is becoming a serious input for consumer product and workforce health

Why organisations work with Andreas Clenow He runs the strategies he teaches. ACIES is a working asset manager, not a consulting front. What audiences hear has been tested with real capital, not on a backtest deck. His books, Following the Trend, Stocks on the Move, and Trading Evolved, are reference texts on the CMT curriculum and inside multiple quant shops. Few practitioners can claim that level of influence on the field. He explains systematic investing in plain language that family offices, boards, and fintech founders can act on, without diluting the maths. He has done the operator’s job alongside the trader’s job: hedge fund co-founder, board member, fintech investor, former Reuters Global Head of quant analytics. He understands the business of asset management, not only the modelling. Biography highlights Chief Investment Officer and partner, ACIES Asset Management AG, Zurich Former Global Head of Equity and Commodity Quantitative Research, Reuters Author of Following the Trend (Wiley, 2012; 2nd edition 2022), Stocks on the Move (2015) and Trading Evolved (2019) Author of A Most Private Bank, a novel set inside Swiss private banking MSc Economics, School of Economics, Gothenburg University Keynote speaker at QuantCon NYC, QuantCon Singapore, Bloomberg events, and CMT Association programmes Biography Trend-following used to be a black box that institutional investors paid hedge funds to operate without ever seeing inside. Following the Trend, published by Wiley in 2012, opened the box. The book showed that the diversified managed futures industry runs on a small set of repeatable rules, and it remains a working reference inside CTA shops more than a decade later. Andreas Clenow wrote it as a working practitioner, not a commentator. He is Chief Investment Officer and partner at ACIES Asset Management AG in Zurich, having previously run global equity and commodity quantitative research at Reuters and co-founded hedge funds on both onshore and offshore structures. His follow-up books, Stocks on the Move on equity momentum and Trading Evolved on building strategies in Python, are now standard reading on the Chartered Market Technician programme and inside many quant teams. His argument with audiences is consistent. Most underperformance in capital allocation comes from discretion dressed up as analysis. The remedy is not more analysts. It is a rules-based process, tested across decades of data, with explicit risk budgets and an honest account of what the strategy will and will not do. That argument lands particularly well with family offices, boards of investment committees, and fintech founders trying to build scalable trading businesses, because Clenow has lived each of those roles. He has founded and sold companies, sat on boards, raised seed capital for a hedge fund, and managed institutional money through more than one cycle. The talks reflect that range: systematic investing, the economics of running a quant fund, and what separates a professional desk from a retail operation. Key speaking topics Systematic trend-following and managed futures Equity momentum strategies Quantitative trading and model design Asset management for family offices The business of running a hedge fund Risk budgeting and capital allocation under volatility Python and the modern quant stack Ideal for Family office principals, CIOs and investment committees Asset management and hedge fund leadership teams Fintech founders building systematic trading or wealth platforms Bank and brokerage quant and risk leadership Audience outcomes A clear view of how diversified trend-following actually works as a portfolio strategy, not as marketing language A working test for whether an internal strategy is systematic or discretion in a spreadsheet A realistic picture of the economics of running a quant fund: returns, drawdowns, capacity, and infrastructure Sharper questions to ask managers, vendors and internal teams about model risk and capital deployment

Why organisations work with Andy Ayim He works with leadership teams where the brief is not a keynote but a measurable shift in how the team makes decisions, handles conflict and holds each other to account. His track record sits on both sides of the table: senior product roles at WorldFirst and Zilch, then Managing Director at Backstage Capital running accelerators on three continents. He has been the executive being coached and the investor pushing portfolio leaders to grow. His MBE, awarded in 2020 for services to diversity in the technology industry, signals a substantive record on inclusion rather than a stated commitment. Clients booking inclusive-leadership work get an external voice the room cannot dismiss as marketing. Through the Angel Investing School he has trained over a thousand new investors and built the curriculum used by 100 senior Google executives who went on to raise a $70m fund. He brings that operator’s view of capital, ownership and opportunity into corporate rooms that rarely hear it. Biography highlights MBE for services to diversity in the technology industry, awarded 2020 (London Gazette, Issue 63135). Founder of the Angel Investing School, which has trained 1,000+ new angel investors and produced the Open Angel platform. Former Managing Director at Backstage Capital, helping run accelerator programmes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and London. Senior product roles at WorldFirst (acquired by Ant Financial for $700m) and Series C fintech Zilch. Trained 100 senior Black executives at Google who formed the Black Angel Group and raised a $70m fund. Named in the Financial Times Top 10 Most Influential BAME Leaders in Tech; HSBC and UK Black Business Show Top 25 Black Entrepreneurs to Watch. Opened the Venture programme at SXSW London 2026 (Christ Church Spitalfields). Biography Most senior teams are not short of intelligence or ambition. They are short of safety. People hold back the disagreement, the bad news, the half-formed idea that might change the decision. Andy Ayim’s work begins there. He is hired by leaders at Google, Stripe, Uber, Diageo, Novartis and Tesco to do the harder thing: change how a team behaves with each other in the room. His authority is built on doing the job, not describing it. He held senior product roles at WorldFirst before its $700m acquisition by Ant Financial, then at Series C fintech Zilch. In 2018 he joined Arlan Hamilton as Managing Director at Backstage Capital, designing accelerator programmes for underrepresented founders in Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and London. The pattern is consistent: operator credibility first, advisor work second. The inclusion record is documented. He was appointed MBE in 2020 for services to diversity in the technology industry, gazetted by the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood. In the same year he founded the Angel Investing School, which has since trained over a thousand new angel investors and built the curriculum that produced the Black Angel Group, 100 senior Google executives who went on to raise a $70m fund. What that means for a client is straightforward. When Ayim walks into a leadership offsite, he is not a consultant translating a theory. He is a former executive and active investor who has seen the same trust and capital problems from inside companies, inside portfolios and inside an honours system that has recognised the work. Key speaking topics Human-centred leadership Inclusive leadership and team performance Psychological safety in senior teams Diversity and inclusion in technology Angel investing and ownership Future of work and hybrid team design Talent and the next generation of leaders Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers commissioning inclusive-leadership and culture work for senior populations. ExCo and board offsites where the brief is honest conversation, trust and decision quality, not a standard keynote. Heads of Diversity and Inclusion looking for an external voice with a credentialled record rather than a generic DEI speaker. Investor and founder audiences inside corporate venture, accelerators and innovation functions. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of the specific behaviours that produce psychological safety in senior teams, and the ones that quietly destroy it. Language for naming the inclusion problems leaders are nervous to name, with examples drawn from operator and investor experience. A view of inclusion as a leadership capability tied to performance, not a compliance function bolted onto HR. An informed perspective on angel investing, ownership and wealth creation for audiences that rarely get it from a credible practitioner.

Why organisations work with Anil Gupta His research on China and India spans thirty years and six books: not a regional specialist’s tour d’horizon, but a body of work that produced frameworks now used by boards and strategy teams at major multinationals The «global mindset» framework distinguishing local depth from global connect gives leadership teams a diagnostic tool for identifying where strategic blind spots sit, not just a description of why diversity matters One of only three professors in the world elected a lifetime fellow of all three premier academic bodies in his field: the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business Organisations that have engaged Gupta have included GE, Walmart, IBM, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and SAP; his frameworks are tested against the operational complexity of companies with genuinely global footprints, not just emerging market theory He is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, the body convened by the World Bank and IMF to advise on global economic challenges, giving him line-of-sight into macro-structural debates that rarely reach corporate strategy teams Biography highlights Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland 2024 inductee, Thinkers50 Hall of Fame; ranked continuously in Thinkers50 since 2013; 2023 C.K. Prahalad Award for Scholarly Impact on Practice, Strategic Management Society One of only three professors worldwide holding lifetime fellowship from all three major academic bodies in the field: Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society, and Academy of International Business Co-founder and chairman, China India Institute, Washington DC; visiting professor of strategy, INSEAD Author or co-author of six books (Wiley), including Getting China and India Right (Axiom Book Awards Silver Prize) and The Silk Road Rediscovered; contributor to Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek PhD, Harvard Business School; MBA, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad; B.Tech, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Member, World Economic Forum Global Expert Network and Bretton Woods Committee; regular participant at WEF Davos Biography Anil Gupta holds the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Here, he has spent three decades building one of the most specific bodies of research in global strategy: the competitive dynamics of China and India, and what their rise means for organisations competing across the global economy. His 2024 induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame recognised that work, explicitly citing his contribution to understanding globalisation trends over thirty years. Most strategy advice on emerging markets treats China and India as a category. Gupta’s argument, developed across six books and more than seventy academic papers, is that they represent four distinct strategic realities simultaneously: mega-markets, cost platforms, innovation bases, and springboards for fearsome new global competitors. Getting China and India Right, the clearest statement of that argument, received the Axiom Book Awards Silver Prize and was shortlisted for the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award. The Silk Road Rediscovered extended that work into the competitive dynamics between the two economies themselves. What separates Gupta’s perspective from macro-commentary is its institutional background. He is one of only three professors in the world elected a lifetime fellow of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business simultaneously, a peer recognition that reflects the rigour of the underlying research, not its public profile. He was awarded the Strategic Management Society’s C.K. Prahalad Award for Scholarly Impact on Practice in 2023. He is also chairman of the China India Institute, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Expert Network, and sits on the Bretton Woods Committee convened by the World Bank and IMF. His work and opinion have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He holds a PhD from Harvard Business School, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, and a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur. Key speaking topics Global strategy and international competitive advantage China and India as strategic priorities Emerging markets and diverging economic trajectories Global mindset and cross-border leadership capability Geopolitical shifts and corporate strategy Global megatrends and scenario planning Globalisation, deglobalisation, and supply chain restructuring Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams with significant international exposure or expansion mandates Chief Strategy Officers and corporate strategy functions navigating market entry or competitive repositioning in Asia Investor and sovereign wealth audiences monitoring emerging market trajectories Executive education cohorts at graduate business schools focused on global strategy Audience outcomes A structured framework – the «global mindset» model – for diagnosing where an organisation’s international strategy assumptions are outdated or misaligned Clearer understanding of why China and India require distinct strategic logics, not a single emerging-markets approach Practical perspective on which emerging markets are better positioned for long-term growth and what that means for investment and competitive positioning Sharper criteria for evaluating when global expansion creates competitive advantage versus merely adding complexity An updated reading of the macro-structural forces – demographic, technological, environmental – reshaping international competition over the next decade

Why organisations work with Aniyia Williams She has built on both sides of the table. She founded and patented hardware at Tinsel, then moved into ecosystem leadership and capital strategy at Omidyar Network. Few responsible-tech voices have done both. Her work on Zebras Unite gave a vocabulary to a generation of founders who reject the unicorn default. That argument now shows up in boardrooms making real capital allocation decisions. Through Black & Brown Founders and the Black Innovation Alliance, she has spent years inside the operational detail of how 170+ organisations support entrepreneurs the standard system overlooks. The data is concrete. At Omidyar Network’s The Tech We Want, she shapes how a major philanthropic investor thinks about the next layer of technology infrastructure. Senior audiences hear primary-source thinking, not commentary. Biography highlights Director / Principal, Responsible Technology, Omidyar Network. Leads The Tech We Want initiative. Founder and board chair, Black & Brown Founders. Co-founder, Zebras Unite. Co-founder, Firefly Alliance. Convener, Black Innovation Alliance (170+ partner organisations). Founder and inventor, Tinsel. Patent holder for the world’s first audio necklace. 2019 Penn State Alumni Achievement Award (alumni aged 35 and under). Biography The venture model has produced an extraordinary generation of companies. It has also defined what a “real” company looks like in ways that exclude most of the operators who could build the next one. Aniyia Williams has spent the past decade arguing, in operating detail, that the model is one option, not the only one. She began as a fashion-tech founder. At Tinsel she designed, built and patented the world’s first audio necklace. The experience of raising hardware capital as a Black woman founder in Silicon Valley led to the work that followed: Black & Brown Founders, which she founded in 2017 to give Black and Latinx entrepreneurs the financial and community infrastructure that the standard system does not provide, and Zebras Unite, the co-founded movement that gave purpose-aligned founders a clear alternative to unicorn-chasing. That ecosystem work scaled. As convener of the Black Innovation Alliance, she now sits at the centre of a 170-organisation coalition working on the wealth gap for tech entrepreneurs of colour. At Omidyar Network, where she is a director on the Responsible Technology team, she leads The Tech We Want, an incubated initiative shaping how a major philanthropic investor backs the next layer of technology. For boards and executive teams, the value is concrete. She brings the founder’s view of capital, the funder’s view of portfolio strategy, and a working knowledge of governance for technology that has not yet been built. Penn State recognised the trajectory in 2019 with its Alumni Achievement Award. The substance behind the award is what makes her useful in a serious strategy conversation. Key speaking topics Responsible technology and the future of the innovation economy Alternatives to the venture capital model (the “zebra” thesis) Entrepreneurship and scale-up under different rules Inclusive innovation and access to capital Purpose-aligned business strategy Building and governing technology for the long term Ideal for Boards and investment committees rethinking how they back early-stage technology Innovation leaders, CSOs and corporate venture teams designing new operator models Heads of DEI, talent and ecosystem partnerships working on access to capital and supplier diversity Founder communities, accelerators and philanthropic funders Audience outcomes A sharper view of which startup orthodoxies are commercially load-bearing and which are not Working language for purpose-aligned business models that boards and investors can use A clearer map of the responsible-technology agenda and where it intersects with growth strategy Concrete examples of capital, governance and ecosystem design from operators outside the standard pattern A renewed argument for why inclusive innovation is a commercial question, not only a values question