Kulturel intelligens speakers

Why organisations work with Onyeka Nubia Brings primary-source historical research to a conversation that has become dominated by opinion and ideology, giving inclusion content intellectual credibility rather than activist framing. Has spent a decade rewriting how British history teaches diversity, with seminars in roughly half of UK universities that teach history, so the methodology travels into corporate contexts with academic weight. Author of Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen, the two reference works most cited in debates on Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Reframes a contested topic on factual ground. Equally comfortable at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and on BBC and Channel 4 history programming, which means the register adjusts to the room without losing substance. Useful precisely because he does not sound like a DEI consultant. The frame is historical, cultural and intellectual, which is the register many boards now prefer. Biography highlights Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Nottingham Fellow of the Royal Historical Society Advance HE National Teaching Fellow, recognised for embedding diversity in university history curricula Author of Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England (2013) and England’s Other Countrymen: Black Tudor Society (2019) PhD by publication, University of East Anglia Keynote presenter at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland Television contributor for BBC’s Digging for Britain and History Cold Case, Channel 5’s Walking Victorian Britain, and Channel 4’s London’s Lost Graveyard and The Queens Who Changed the World Over fifty articles in History Today, BBC History Magazine, European History Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement Biography For most of the last decade, the inclusion conversation inside large organisations has been carried by HR language and political framing. That register is now strained. Boards want substance, not slogans, and the people leading inclusion work need a deeper well to draw from. Onyeka Nubia offers that well. As Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his research has rewritten what is known about Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen are now standard references on Tudor diversity, drawn from parish registers, court records and primary archives rather than secondary commentary. The Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship recognises a parallel achievement: a body of curriculum work, delivered in roughly half of the UK universities that teach history, that has changed how the subject is taught. The methodology, evidence first, identity later, is exactly what corporate audiences are reaching for as the DEI conversation moves out of advocacy and into substance. His broadcasting work, from Digging for Britain to The Queens Who Changed the World, sharpens the public-facing register. The audience he is most useful to is a senior leadership team that wants to keep talking about inclusion seriously, without the language that has stopped working. Key speaking topics Black British history and the Tudor period Cultural intelligence and national identity Diversity, equity and inclusion grounded in historical evidence Decolonising knowledge and curriculum Race, otherness and the British imagination Renaissance and pre-modern multiculturalism Storytelling and historical method Ideal for CHROs and heads of inclusion looking to reset the intellectual frame for their DEI work Boards and executive teams under pressure on the politics of inclusion who want substance over signalling Cultural and educational institutions reviewing how they curate history, identity and audience Leadership development programmes that want a serious treatment of cultural intelligence Audience outcomes A historically grounded language for diversity and identity that holds up to scrutiny A clearer view of how British national identity has been constructed, and what that means for inclusion now Confidence to lead inclusion conversations on evidence rather than ideology Exposure to the primary sources that reshape commonly held assumptions about race in British history A sharper sense of how curriculum and culture change actually happens inside institutions

Why organisations work with Peter Rios He brings a published research base on Latinx leadership in higher education that few DEI advisers can match. Untold Stories (Wipf & Stock, with Juan F. Martinez) is one of the first academic studies of Latinx administrators in Christian higher education and gives his diagnosis weight no consultant deck can. He works in two doctoral disciplines, intercultural studies (Fuller) and strategic leadership (Regent), so his prescriptions sit inside organisational structure and incentives, not alongside them. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for organisations with bilingual workforces or Latin American operations where translated DEI content typically loses its edge. His operator credibility is genuine. He held vice presidential roles at two universities and ran teams as a pastor for a decade before moving into consulting, so his sessions speak to leaders carrying P&L and people responsibility, not just HR. Biography highlights Author of Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education (Wipf & Stock, 2022), co-written with Juan F. Martinez. Author of Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential. Lecturer in leadership at Penn State University; former adjunct at Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University. PhD in Intercultural Studies, Fuller Graduate Schools; Doctorate in Strategic Leadership, Regent University School of Business and Leadership; doctoral coursework at USC Rossier School of Education; MA, Northeastern Seminary. Founder of Peter Rios Consulting, advising clients across business, government, higher education and faith-based institutions on leadership and inclusion. US Marine Corps veteran; bilingual in English and Spanish. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a value and treat it as a programme. The leaders who carry it inside the building, particularly Latinx leaders in white-dominated institutions, often experience something else: invisibility, code-switching, and a slow drain on the energy needed to do the job. Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education, written by Peter Rios with Juan F. Martinez and published by Wipf & Stock, was one of the first academic studies to document that gap inside Christian higher education. Rios writes from inside the systems he studies. He served as vice president at two universities, taught at Penn State, Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University, and built Peter Rios Consulting to advise organisations on leadership development, organisational change and DEI integration. Clients sit across business, government, higher education, non-profits and faith-based institutions. His credentials sit in two disciplines on purpose. The PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Graduate Schools gives him the language of identity, power and belonging. The Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Regent University gives him the language of structure, decision-making and organisational design. That dual lens is what allows him to translate inclusion from values statement into management practice. His second book, Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential, sits alongside the consulting work as a leadership development resource. He delivers in English and Spanish, draws on his US Marine Corps service and a decade in pastoral ministry, and is a frequent podcast guest on shows including Les Brown and Cafe con Pam. Key speaking topics Inclusive and values-based leadership Latinx leadership and representation Leadership development and executive coaching Organisational change and culture Identity, power dynamics and belonging at work Generational diversity in the workplace Personal leadership and peak performance Ideal for Heads of HR, CHROs and DEI leads in organisations where inclusion programmes are stalling at the leadership pipeline University presidents, provosts and trustees navigating Latinx student growth and faculty representation Bilingual or pan-American organisations seeking leadership development that works in English and Spanish Faith-based institutions and non-profits revisiting how leadership is identified and developed across cultural lines Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion language and leadership practice diverge inside their own organisation Specific moves leaders can make to retain and promote underrepresented talent rather than just hire it A framework drawn from Rios’s research and consulting for surfacing the lived experience of Latinx and other underrepresented leaders Personal leadership reflection grounded in the twelve principles of Maximize!

Why organisations work with Elena Boheme She has run the full development lifecycle, from hotel operator design management and fit-out contracting through to property M&A and family office advisory. That breadth is rare; most advisors sit on one side of the design, build, or operate split. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in the Kingdom, and sits on the advisory board of RED Summit KSA and the Modern Building Summit KSA. That places her inside the rooms where Saudi development decisions are made, not adjacent to them. She works credibly across the capital stack, advising AETOS MFO on luxury asset and yacht financing and Triversa Holding at executive board level. International family offices use her to translate Gulf real estate exposure into something they can actually govern. She operates in English, French, and Russian fluently, with working Arabic and Mandarin, and has executed projects in China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Cross-cultural deal structuring is a practised skill, not a claim. Biography highlights Co-founder and Development Director, Metrix Projects; co-founder, Metrix Advisory and AETOS MFO. Executive Board Member, Triversa Holding. Strategic Advisor on Project Management, Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. Advisory Board member, RED Summit KSA, and Advisory Board member plus moderator, Modern Building Summit KSA 2025. Speaker and moderator across AlMashtal Knowledge of Design 2024, Cityscape Saudi Arabia 2024, Hospitality Leadership and F&B Forum UAE 2025, Furtech Show Dubai 2025, and Women in Private Equity Forum London 2025. Host of LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues and author of the LinkedIn newsletter Project Within. Biography Saudi Arabia’s development pipeline is the largest in the world and the least forgiving. International capital arrives expecting Dubai and discovers a market with its own regulatory architecture, its own localisation requirements, and its own definition of what delivered means. Elena Boheme’s work sits inside that translation problem. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in Riyadh to do one specific job: take hospitality and residential developments from concept through to operational handover without the gaps that quietly consume budget. Before that, she spent a decade on hotel operator design management, fit-out contracting, and property development across China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, and the UAE, including hospitality projects valued at over two billion US dollars in Korea and Macau. A second strand of her work runs through capital. She co-founded AETOS MFO, a multi-family office advising on luxury real estate and yacht financing, and sits as an executive board member at Triversa Holding and strategic advisor on project management to Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. The combination matters: developers usually understand bricks, family offices usually understand money, and Saudi-bound investors need someone who can hold both sides of the conversation at once. She moderates and chairs across the Kingdom’s main industry platforms, including the RED Summit KSA advisory board, the Modern Building Summit KSA, Cityscape Saudi Arabia, and AlMashtal Knowledge of Design, and hosts the LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues. The track record is operational rather than academic. For a leadership team weighing a Vision 2030 entry, that is the more useful kind of credibility. Key speaking topics Project deliverability in Saudi Arabia Localisation and market entry strategy for the Kingdom Real estate development lifecycle, from design through operations Cross-cultural deal structuring in the Gulf Women in real estate development and leadership Family office exposure to Gulf real estate Ideal for International hospitality operators and developers planning entry into Saudi Arabia Family offices and private investors building Gulf real estate exposure Boards of project management, design, and construction firms expanding into the Kingdom C-suite teams at firms shifting from regional MENA presence to substantive KSA delivery Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what separates a signed Saudi deal from a delivered asset The localisation choices that decide whether a foreign operator can actually execute in the Kingdom A working map of how design, build, operate, and capital decisions interact across a Gulf development Specific failure modes she has seen at the hand-off between international design teams and local execution A perspective on Saudi development from someone embedded in it, not commenting from outside

Why organisations work with Elliot Barnes-Worrell A first-hand account of how inclusion plays out inside institutions known for being difficult to enter: the RSC, the National Theatre, the Almeida, and the BBC. Academic standing alongside the performance career. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a published interest in race and representation in Shakespeare. A writer-director’s view of how creative cultures actually commission and back new voices, drawn from his own films The Works (BBC) and DIGGING (Film4). Range across keynote, masterclass and panel formats, with a tone that works for senior corporate audiences and for early-career and graduate populations inside the same organisation. Biography highlights Royal Shakespeare Company company member, 2013 to 2014, with roles in Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre; Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre. Screen credits include ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, Dolittle, and Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. Writer and director of The Works (BBC, 2016) with Ralph Fiennes, and DIGGING for Film4, premiered at the London Film Festival. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard universities. Alan Bates Award (Actors Centre); Sir John Gielgud Award (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama). Biography Most institutional inclusion work fails on the same question. Once a new voice is in the room, does the institution actually let it shape the work, or does it ask the voice to fit in quietly? Barnes-Worrell has spent his career inside the institutions where that question is hardest to dodge: the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Almeida and the BBC. He trained at the BRIT School and at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he graduated with the Sir John Gielgud Award, and went on to win the Alan Bates Award at the Actors Centre. As an actor his stage work includes Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida and Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre, alongside an RSC company year covering Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. On screen he has appeared in ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, in Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, in Dolittle, and in Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. In 2016 he moved into writing and directing with The Works for the BBC, featuring Ralph Fiennes, and later wrote and directed DIGGING for Film4, which premiered at the London Film Festival. That second body of work gives him a working view of how creative organisations decide which voices to back, and on what terms. He also lectures inside the universities most associated with the canon he interrogates: Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a particular line of work on race and representation in Shakespeare. For corporate audiences, that combination of practitioner credibility and academic standing lets him discuss inclusion as a question of craft and culture, not slogans, in front of senior leaders who have become wary of both. Key speaking topics Inclusion as a cultural and creative discipline Race and representation in Shakespeare Storytelling and business communication Confidence and composure in high-scrutiny settings Talent development and emerging voices Mental health and wellbeing for performers and creative teams Ideal for Chief People Officers and Heads of DEI rebuilding inclusion programmes after a period of fatigue or political pressure Early-careers, graduate and apprenticeship leads designing development programmes for new entrants Internal communications and leadership development teams using storytelling as a working skill Universities, business schools and arts institutions running cross-disciplinary events on culture and representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where institutional inclusion efforts stall, drawn from someone who has worked inside the institutions most cited as case studies. Specific language for talking about race and representation without resorting to either compliance script or political signalling. A practitioner’s account of how creative confidence is built, tested and sustained under public scrutiny. A storytelling vocabulary that internal communicators and leaders can use in their own work.

Why organisations work with Eloïne Barry She runs the infrastructure, not just the advice. African Media Agency’s wire service was the first of its kind built for the continent, and it gives any organisation she works with direct distribution into hundreds of African newsrooms rather than a slide deck about how to reach them. Her client record is the proof point buyers care about: campaigns delivered for the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, not a pitch deck of hypothetical case studies. She translates between the European and North American boardroom and the African newsroom. That crossover, learned at PR Newswire across France, Germany and the EMEA region before she moved the operation south, is rare at a senior level. She has been recognised by the industry on its own terms: SABRE Africa, ASCOM Grand Prix Excellence, New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential, and Bizcommunity’s PR personalities to watch list for 2026. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, African Media Agency (AMA), Abidjan, with operations across 30+ African countries and hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Built the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck. Winner, SABRE Africa Western Africa award 2026 (Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” campaign); African SABRE Certificate of Excellence in Media Relations 2021; Grand Prix Excellence, ASCOM Abidjan 2019. Named in New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Africans 2022; recognised by MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) in 2018. Tony Elumelu Foundation mentor; board member, Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter. Biography Most multinationals that try to reach African audiences at scale run into the same problem. A campaign built for London or New York lands in Lagos, Nairobi or Abidjan and does not move. The media maps are different, the gatekeepers are different, and the ground truth changes by country. African Media Agency was built to close that gap, and Eloine Barry built African Media Agency. AMA is the Abidjan-headquartered firm behind the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. It now reaches hundreds of newsrooms across more than 30 African countries, with operational hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, alongside governments and African-founded organisations. The agency’s work sits across three arms: AMA Wire for distribution, AMA PR for campaigns and advisory, and AMA Academy for journalist and communications training. Her own route into the work matters. Born in Lyon to a Senegalese mother and a Guinea-Bissauan father, she began her career at PR Newswire, running media relations across France, Germany, and later the wider EMEA and India region. That trajectory is why she is effective with European and American boards and with African newsrooms in the same week; she has sat on both sides of the brief. The industry has recognised the operating record. AMA won a SABRE Africa Western Africa award in 2026 for its Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” mental health campaign, which scaled a Cameroonian-founded initiative into a partnership network spanning health ministries in Togo and Cote d’Ivoire and research groups at Paris Saclay and Santa Clara. Barry herself sits on the boards of Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter, mentors on the Tony Elumelu Foundation programme, and was named by Bizcommunity among the ten PR personalities to watch in 2026. Key speaking topics Growth strategy for African markets Pan-African media and communications Government and public-sector communications in Africa African diaspora and return-to-Africa strategy Cross-cultural leadership between European, North American and African organisations Building and scaling media infrastructure in emerging markets Ideal for CMOs and heads of corporate affairs at multinationals planning or expanding African operations. CEOs and country leads of development institutions, foundations and NGOs running continent-wide campaigns. Government communications directors and ministries engaging African diaspora audiences. Founders and boards of African-built companies preparing for international visibility. Audience outcomes A clear read on why standard global PR playbooks fail in African markets and what replaces them. A grounded view of the African media landscape across anglophone, francophone and lusophone regions. Practical starting points for building credibility with African newsrooms, diaspora audiences and local regulators. A sharper sense of how communications strategy sits inside a broader market-entry or growth plan for the continent.

Why organisations work with Fatima Bhutto New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) is a named, published, field-reported analysis of how non-Western cultural industries are displacing American soft power globally, giving leaders a specific, documented argument rather than a trend observation, backed by original reporting across three continents. Her personal biography; granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, and daughter of parliamentarian Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed by police in 1996, means her analysis of democratic fragility, political violence, and state power comes from inside those systems, not from a research library. As host of Reframe on Al Jazeera, she has conducted on-record interviews with heads of state and senior political figures, including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, placing her among interlocutors of consequence rather than commentators at a remove. Her track record across the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Foreign Policy, and Granta, as well as her current column at Zeteo gives her geopolitical analysis a verifiable, editorially scrutinised body of work that self-published commentary cannot replicate. Selected as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2012 (one of 192 from 59 countries), she holds credibility simultaneously in Global South contexts and at the international forums where Western business leaders set agendas; a pairing that is genuinely rare on the geopolitics circuit. Biography highlights Author of seven books published by Oxford University Press, Jonathan Cape, Penguin, Columbia Global Reports, and Simon & Schuster, spanning poetry, memoir, fiction, and narrative reportage New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was reviewed by the Financial Times as «razor sharp»; described by Shelf Awareness as a «starred» account of a fundamental shift in global pop culture The Shadow of the Crescent Moon (Penguin, 2013) longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction; Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape, 2010) a critically acclaimed memoir of Pakistani politics and political violence Host of Reframe on Al Jazeera (2024-2025), interviewing senior political figures including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2012), one of 192 from 59 countries Writing published in the Financial Times, The Guardian, Granta, The New Statesman, and Foreign Policy; current columnist for Zeteo; BA from Barnard/Columbia University, MA in South Asian Government and Politics from SOAS Biography Bollywood is the world’s largest film industry by output. Turkish dizi, a form of serialised drama, reaches 200 million viewers across 43 countries. South Korean K-pop commands fan communities on six continents. Fatima Bhutto’s New Kings of the World (Columbia Global Reports, 2019) was among the first serious analyses to document what this redistribution of cultural power means for the assumptions that sit beneath most global business strategy. Her argument is specific: American soft power was not dismantled by geopolitical rivals, but outpaced by cultural industries that offered billions of consumers something Hollywood could not; familiarity, traditional values inside modern formats, and aspirational content that matched their actual self-image. The book drew on original reporting, exclusive interviews with figures including Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, and field research across India, Turkey, and South Korea. The Financial Times called it «razor sharp.» Kirkus gave it a starred review. Fatima came to this argument through a life lived inside the geographies that Western strategy tends to flatten into abstractions. Born in Kabul and raised between Damascus and Karachi, she holds an MA in South Asian Government and Politics from SOAS and has reported from Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Cuba, and Israel. Her personal biography also gives her analysis of political risk a dimension that institutional research rarely carries. She is the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, executed in 1979. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, was an elected parliamentarian killed by police in Karachi in 1996. Her memoir Songs of Blood and Sword (Jonathan Cape, 2010) is as much a document of democratic fragility and state violence as it is a personal narrative. Her recent work has widened the frame. As host of Reframe on Al Jazeera (2024-2025), she has interviewed heads of state and senior political figures on record, including former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Her writing appears in the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Granta, and Foreign Policy; she is a current columnist for Zeteo. Her 2026 memoir The Hour of the Wolf, published by Simon & Schuster, extends her work on power, coercion, and resilience into the personal register. Key speaking topics Western soft power and the rise of non-Western cultural industries Geopolitics of the Global South Democracy, political violence, and state fragility Women’s leadership in contested political environments Cultural identity in a multipolar world Press freedom and the politics of narrative South Asia and the Middle East Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards navigating global market expansion in South Asia, the Middle East, and emerging economies Risk and strategy functions managing political instability, fragile democracies, and governance uncertainty in developing markets CHROs and DEI leads seeking perspectives on women’s leadership and voice from outside the Western corporate tradition International relations, communications, and policy teams at multinationals with significant exposure to the Global South Audience outcomes A specific, field-reported framework for understanding how cultural power has redistributed away from the West and what this means for where aspiration and consumer loyalty are actually formed A sharper reading of identity, aspiration, and brand relevance in South Asian, Middle Eastern, and emerging market contexts A more precise vocabulary for assessing political risk in environments where Western governance assumptions do not apply A first-hand account of navigating political violence, state failure, and democratic collapse that reframes organisational resilience beyond its corporate usage A challenge to the premise that Western cultural norms remain the universal benchmark for influence in global markets

Why organisations work with Fiona Armstrong Forty years of live broadcast experience means autocue, running-order changes and long awards formats hold no surprise. Organisers typically notice that reliability only after being burned by the alternative. Former ITN newscaster on News at Ten and News at 5:40, giving her automatic standing in front of senior business audiences who still recognise a national news face. As His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Dumfries, the King’s personal representative in the region, she brings genuine ceremonial weight to awards evenings, civic occasions and royal-linked events. Former foreign correspondent who has reported from Uganda on AIDS orphans, Cambodia on landmine clearance and West Africa with the Mercy Ships, able to moderate panels on international development from direct field experience rather than briefing notes. Holds a history doctorate from the University of Strathclyde and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow, which suits academic, cultural and heritage hosting roles where a celebrity presenter would feel out of place. Biography highlights Former ITN national newscaster, presenter of News at Ten and News at 5:45/5:40; launch team on GMTV. Presenter on the BBC News Channel from 2010; current presenter of Border Life and Lookaround for ITV Border. Outstanding Contribution award, Royal Television Society North East and Border Awards, 2017. His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Dumfries since 2016; royal representative across Nithsdale, Annandale and Eskdale. Honorary Doctorate, University of Glasgow; Honorary Fellowship, University of Cumbria; board member, University of Central Lancashire. Past President of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland; Chairwoman of the Clan Armstrong Trust; author of two fishing books and two cookbooks. Biography A long awards ceremony is one of the least forgiving stages in corporate life. Twenty prizes, tight timings, a room that cooled off an hour ago, and a single person at the lectern expected to keep it moving. Fiona Armstrong has hosted enough of them to know why organisers come back. She spent the late 1980s and early 1990s at ITN, presenting News at Ten and the 5:40 bulletin when those programmes still set the national news agenda. She covered the Lockerbie air disaster and filed a series on AIDS orphans from Uganda. Later assignments took her to Cambodia for landmine clearance and to West Africa with the Mercy Ships. The BBC News Channel brought her back as a network presenter in 2010; ITV Border has retained her in current affairs through Lookaround and Border Life. The Royal Television Society North East and Border gave her its Outstanding Contribution award in 2017, recognising a career closely associated with Border Television. The University of Glasgow has granted her an honorary doctorate; the University of Cumbria elected her an honorary fellow in 2018. She has served as His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Dumfries since 2016, representing the Crown across Nithsdale, Annandale and Eskdale. Alongside the newsroom work, she has written two fishing books, two cookbooks, and more than twenty films on Scottish clan history. She chairs the Clan Armstrong Trust, was President of the Royal Highland Show in 2020, and sits on the board of the University of Central Lancashire. Corporate clients typically book her to host awards evenings or moderate senior panels. Specialist subject matter, from international reporting to Scottish heritage and rural affairs, is available when a brief calls for it. Key speaking topics Event hosting and awards presentation Panel moderation and conference chairing Broadcast journalism and live news presentation International humanitarian and field reporting Scottish clan history and Borders heritage Civic leadership and royal representation Fly-fishing and rural life Ideal for Corporate awards organisers and event leads booking an experienced on-stage host Conference chairs and event directors are hiring a senior-panel moderator Civic, heritage and ceremonial occasions requiring a royal representative or recognised public service figure Cultural, agricultural and rural-sector organisations in Scotland and the Borders region Audience outcomes An evening kept on schedule, with prize categories moved at pace and all sponsors and winners given their due on stage. Panel conversations that stay on the brief, with questions that push participants past prepared answers without derailing the session. Inside accounts of covering major international stories, including Lockerbie, AIDS orphans in Africa and landmine clearance in Cambodia. Context on Scottish cultural life and clan history delivered with the specificity of a working historian, not a celebrity interest.

Why organisations work with Fons Trompenaars His Seven Dimensions of Culture model gives boards and integration teams a shared vocabulary for diagnosing where global strategies break down, drawn from research across more than a hundred thousand managers. Dilemma reconciliation moves leaders past the false choice between universal standards and local adaptation, which is the recurring failure mode in M&A integration, joint ventures, and global rollouts. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame status places him in the same tier as Drucker, Porter, and Peters, useful credibility when the audience is a sceptical executive committee. Three decades of advisory work with Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, General Motors, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer mean the case material is operational, not academic. He is one of the few cultural theorists whose framework is built around action: every dimension comes with a method for resolving the tension, not just naming it. That method now runs inside AI-enabled tools, including a Dilemma Solver trained on a proprietary database of more than 60,000 leadership dilemmas. Biography highlights PhD in social systems sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1983. Co-founder of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner with Charles Hampden-Turner in 1989; acquired by KPMG in 1998. Author of Riding the Waves of Culture, named to the Thinkers50 top ten Management Classics list in 2024 and translated into more than twenty languages. Co-author of Nine Visions of Capitalism, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Building Cross-Cultural Competence, and Servant Leadership Across Cultures. Co-authoring Tension to Traction with Bas Kemme, a forthcoming book built on CEO interviews that extends the reconciliation argument of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.” Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017; ranked among the most influential management thinkers in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Recipient of the ASTD International Professional Practice Area Research Award (1991) and the WFPMA George Petitpas Award (2023). Biography Most cross-cultural frameworks describe difference. They tell leaders that the Dutch are direct and the Japanese are deferential, then leave the leader to work out what to do about it. Trompenaars’ contribution is the next step: a method for reconciling competing cultural values rather than choosing between them. The Seven Dimensions of Culture, developed with Charles Hampden-Turner over a decade of empirical research, identifies the underlying tensions that surface when global organisations try to operate as one. Universal rules against particular relationships. Individual achievement against collective ascription. Sequential time against synchronous time. The model is built on data from over a hundred thousand managers and has anchored consulting engagements at Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer. The intellectual foundation runs deep. A doctorate from Wharton, nine years inside Shell across nine countries, and the 1989 founding of the consultancy that became Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, later acquired by KPMG. “Riding the Waves of Culture” is a Thinkers50 Management Classic. The Hall of Fame induction in 2017 placed him alongside Drucker, Porter, and Peters. What makes the work commercially useful is dilemma reconciliation. Competing values, results and relationships, standards and local fit, individual and collective, are not trade-offs to be balanced but tensions to be integrated. For boards working through merger integration, global expansion, or post-acquisition culture programmes, that shift in framing is what turns cultural awareness into operational performance. The method now runs inside AI-enabled tools and underpins Tension to Traction, a forthcoming book with Bas Kemme on how CEOs turn competing pressures into a path forward. Key speaking topics Cross-cultural leadership and global team effectiveness Dilemma reconciliation as a leadership method Cultural due diligence in mergers and acquisitions The Seven Dimensions of Culture Leading change across multinational organisations Servant leadership across cultures Cultural reconciliation in the age of AI and polarisation Ideal for Executive committees and boards leading multinational integration, joint ventures, or post-acquisition culture work CHROs and global HR leaders responsible for leadership development across multiple regions Transformation leads running global change programmes where local resistance is the recurring blocker Leadership development programmes for newly international senior leaders Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the seven cultural tensions that surface inside global teams A method for reconciling competing values rather than defaulting to head office standards Diagnostic clarity on why specific global initiatives have stalled or fragmented Case material from Shell, Heineken, Philips, and other multinationals that can be applied to the audience’s own integration challenges

Why organisations work with Fredrik Haren His formula IDEA = P(K+I) – a person combining existing knowledge with new information – converts creativity from an abstract value into a model that managers can act on; this is the foundation of how he runs workshops, not just a rhetorical device The Idea Book has been deployed as an internal training tool by HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE – demonstrating that his framework translates from conference platform to in-organisation application His research base is genuinely cross-cultural: 25 years of field interviews across 75 countries, including fieldwork in North Korea and Mongolia, gives him material that no Western-campus-based creativity theorist can replicate He holds the Global Speaking Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 and, at the time of his award, never previously to a non-native English speaker based in Asia – a peer-verified credential, not a self-declared one His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), entered for The Business Book Awards 2026, signals that his thinking continues to develop rather than recycle the same material Biography highlights Author of 10 books including The Idea Book, listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time Recipient of the International Ambassador Award from the Global Speakers Federation – awarded to fewer than 15 speakers globally since 2001 One of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows (CSPGlobal) worldwide Speaker of the Year, Sweden (2007); founder of interesting.org 2,000+ speeches delivered across 75 countries and 6 continents over a 25-year career Clients include KPMG, Grant Thornton International, HP, IKEA, BMW, Ericsson, GE, Volvo, and American Express Biography Fredrik Haren’s starting point is a question most organisations avoid asking directly: if you need a new idea tomorrow, where does it come from? His formula – IDEA = P(K+I), meaning a person combining existing knowledge with new information – strips creativity of its mystique and reframes it as something organisations can design for. The Idea Book, first published in 2004, applied that thinking in a concrete format: 150 pages of frameworks combined with 150 blank pages for working. It became an internal training tool at HP, Ericsson, Volvo, China Mobile, and GE, and was listed among the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His most recent book, The World of Creativity (Capstone/Wiley), draws on 25 years of field research – interviews with thousands of people across 75 countries including North Korea – to map how creativity is both universal and shaped by culture. That fieldwork is the differentiator. Where most speakers on innovation draw from research or theory, Haren’s material comes from direct observation across markets and contexts that Western organisations rarely access. It gives global conference audiences – whose reference points span multiple continents – a framework that holds across cultures rather than one that travels badly. His credentials within the professional speaking community are a useful proxy for depth: Certified Speaking Professional, one of approximately 30 Global Speaking Fellows worldwide, and recipient of the Global Speakers Federation’s International Ambassador Award – given to fewer than 15 speakers since 2001 and, at the time of his award, the first to a non-native English speaker based in Asia. Key speaking topics Business creativity and idea generation Innovation as a repeatable organisational process Cross-cultural creativity and global mindset Creativity in the age of AI Building creative capability in organisations Future skills and the innovation-ready workforce Ideal for Global conference audiences spanning multiple nationalities where a single Western-centric perspective will not land CHROs and Learning & Development leads seeking to build creative capability beyond individual talent acquisition Senior leadership teams of multinationals where innovation is a stated priority but no reliable process exists to support it Innovation and transformation executives accountable for sustaining competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A working model – IDEA = P(K+I) – for understanding how ideas are generated and how to apply it in their own context Practical techniques for stimulating idea generation individually and with teams, applicable on return to the office A cross-cultural perspective on how creative practice differs across markets – relevant for any organisation operating across geographies A reframe of creativity from personal talent to organisational skill, with direct implications for how teams are developed A clearer read on how AI changes – and does not change – the fundamentals of human creativity

Why organisations work with Furkan Karayel She speaks to engineering leaders as a former engineer. Ten years across multinational tech firms in Ireland gave her a working vocabulary for the room. Inclusive Intelligence, her book, gives line managers a behavioural framework rather than a values statement. It is the artefact she leaves with leadership teams. She lectures on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The academic grounding sits alongside the practitioner experience. She has been recognised by named bodies including the WomenTech Global Awards and the International Diversity Leadership Awards, and sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Diversein.com Author, Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Associate lecturer, EDI Master’s programme, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology Board member, Women For Election Ireland Speaker of the Year, WomenTech Global Awards Member, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Biography Most inclusion programmes inside technology companies are designed by people who have never written production code. That gap shows up in the language, the metrics and the interventions. Furkan Karayel started her career as a software systems test engineer in Athlone, then spent a decade across multinational tech firms in Ireland in DevOps, automation, integration and support roles. She founded Diversein.com when she realised that, in her words, the action piece behind the diversity vocabulary was missing. The work that followed is documented in Inclusive Intelligence, a book written for line managers rather than chief people officers. It treats inclusion as a leadership behaviour, observable and learnable, not a values position. The framework has carried into her teaching on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she lectures alongside her commercial work. Her credentials sit across academic, commercial and civic categories. She holds a seat on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, serves on the board of Women For Election Ireland, and was named in the EUClid Network’s Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise. Named awards include Speaker of the Year at the WomenTech Global Awards and the Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business honour from the International Diversity Leadership Awards. For technology businesses that have already invested in DEI and want a more useful conversation than the one they have been having, Karayel offers a practitioner’s argument rooted in the realities of engineering culture. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in technology organisations Women in tech retention and progression Cultural intelligence across multilingual teams Bias-free decision-making for line managers Authentic leadership development Female founder and entrepreneur enablement Ideal for Engineering and product leadership teams inside multinational tech businesses CHROs and heads of DEI under pressure to convert programme spend into behavioural outcomes Women-in-tech networks and ERGs seeking content with technical credibility Conferences serving founders, female entrepreneurs and STEM professionals Audience outcomes A behavioural definition of inclusion managers can apply on Monday Specific practices for reducing bias inside engineering and product decisions A clearer view of why technical women leave, and what changes the equation Language for inclusive leadership grounded in lived practitioner experience

Why organisations work with Hayley Barnard Two decades advising executive boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte and Lidl on how inclusion changes the decisions leaders actually make about hiring and promotion. Through Mix Works, her 2025 AI and culture transformation firm, she advises leaders on responsible AI adoption and on where bias enters both human and machine decisions. Treats bias as a decision-quality problem, so leaders leave with checks they can apply in the next hiring round or AI deployment rather than a values statement. Uses her own endurance record, a solo English Channel swim and a Baffin Island traverse, as working material on decision-making under pressure. Co-designed the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, a gender-balance campaign that ran as a verifiable all-female expedition. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Mix Diversity Developers (2014); founder and CEO, Mix Works (2025), an AI and culture transformation firm. Founder of MixLEARN, a digital DEI learning platform. Non-Executive Director, YHA; Trustee, UFI VocTech Trust (appointed March 2025). Clients include Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte, Capital One, Lidl, Diageo, GSK, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge across Baffin Island, a DEI campaign built on a live all-female expedition. Solo English Channel swim (14h 12m, no wetsuit); 20 Bridges 46km Manhattan Island swim. Biography A hiring manager shortens a shortlist. A committee weighs two candidates for promotion. Increasingly, a screening tool ranks the first round before any human sees it. The biases that shaped those calls for decades are now being trained into the systems meant to remove them. This is the territory Hayley Barnard has worked in for two decades. As founder and CEO of Mix Diversity, the consultancy she started in 2014, she advises boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz and Lidl on inclusive leadership, unconscious bias and gender balance. The brief is operational: change how decisions get made, not add another module to the intranet. In 2025 she founded Mix Works to take that question into AI. The firm helps enterprises adopt AI responsibly and examines where bias enters automated decisions, the issue leaders now face as hiring and performance tools move into machine hands. It extends twenty years of work on human judgement into how machines make the call. Her route in was unusual. She ran Sir Chay Blyth’s Challenge Business at 23 and co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, an all-female Baffin Island traverse that doubled as the company’s gender-balance campaign. The throughline is decision-making under fatigue and pressure, the same problem on an ice cap as in a promotion committee. She has since swum the English Channel solo, no wetsuit, in 14 hours and 12 minutes. Key speaking topics Bias in human and AI-driven decisions Responsible AI adoption and governance Inclusive leadership Decision quality and fairness Gender balance and women’s leadership pipelines Leadership resilience under pressure Cross-cultural team performance Ideal for Executive boards and CEO-level teams setting direction on inclusion and on responsible AI. CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent accountable for hiring and promotion outcomes. Leadership teams introducing AI into hiring, performance or customer decisions. International Women’s Day and gender-balance programmes at enterprise scale. Audience outcomes A read on where bias enters their decisions, including the ones now made by AI tools, with the moments named. Behavioural checks leaders can apply in the next hiring or promotion cycle. Questions to ask before trusting an AI-driven hiring or performance decision. A commercial case for gender balance that holds up in a board conversation. Language to challenge inclusion theatre without stalling real change.

Why organisations work with Ingo Zamperoni His understanding of US political polarisation is not academic. His American wife’s family includes Trump supporters – a dynamic he documented in the 2020 ARD film “Trump, meine amerikanische Familie und ich.” He has experienced the internal fault lines of American society from within a family, not as an observer from a distance. As an active anchor of Tagesthemen – Germany’s most-watched evening news programme – he offers current, institutionally grounded analysis. Organisations are not engaging a former journalist reflecting on what he once covered; they are engaging someone who continues to frame global events for a mass audience every week. His two Ullstein Verlag books on the US advance a specific, citable argument – that Europe systematically misreads America, and that correcting this misreading is a strategic necessity. That argument gives his presentations intellectual backbone that panel commentary rarely achieves. His Honorary Professorship at the Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, where he teaches critical interviewing and political broadcast journalism, signals analytical rigour and a commitment to standards – a differentiator from media personalities who speak about journalism without continuing to practise it at the highest level. Biography highlights Main anchor of ARD’s Tagesthemen, Germany’s most-watched evening news programme, since October 2016 ARD Washington D.C. correspondent 2014-2016, covering US politics, the 2016 presidential campaign, and transatlantic affairs Author of “Fremdes Land Amerika” (Ullstein Verlag, 2016, bestseller) and “Anderland – Die USA unter Trump, ein Schadensbericht” (Ullstein Verlag, 2018) Honorary Professor at the Hochschule der Medien (HdM) Stuttgart, appointed January 2022 by unanimous senate vote Fulbright scholarship alumnus; Master’s degree from Boston University; studied American studies, law, and history at the University of Konstanz and in Berlin Anchor of ARD Nachtmagazin (2007-2013); host of ARD programme “Die 100 – Was Deutschland bewegt” ARD documentary “Trump, meine amerikanische Familie und ich” (2020), examining US political polarisation through direct family experience Biography ARD’s Tagesthemen is the evening news programme that Germany’s senior decision-makers rely on to interpret global affairs. Ingo Zamperoni has been one of its anchors since 2016, returning from two years as the network’s Washington correspondent at the moment US politics turned in a direction that European observers were not equipped to understand. He came back with a specific position: that Europe’s assumptions about America had stopped being accurate, and that the consequences of this misreading were serious. That position runs through both his books. “Fremdes Land Amerika” (Ullstein Verlag, 2016), which became a bestseller, made the case that the transatlantic relationship rests on European projections rather than American realities. “Anderland” (Ullstein Verlag, 2018) argued that Trump was not a cause of American division but a symptom of structural fractures that predated him and would outlast him. These are not dispatches from the road. They are attempts to replace a failing European frame with something more accurate. His authority is personal as well as analytical. His American wife’s family includes Trump supporters – a dynamic he documented in the 2020 ARD film “Trump, meine amerikanische Familie und ich.” Where most European commentators analyse the US political divide from the outside, Zamperoni has navigated it inside a family. That gives his analysis a texture that briefings and geopolitical reports rarely achieve. Appointed Honorary Professor at the Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart in 2022, he teaches critical interviewing and political broadcast journalism to the next generation of German journalists. He is a practitioner who has been asked to codify the standards of his practice – a distinction that matters when boards and leadership teams need geopolitical analysis they can actually use. Key speaking topics US politics and political polarisation Transatlantic relations and the US-Europe strategic partnership Geopolitics and the shifting global order Political communication and narrative in democracies Media credibility, public trust, and information quality Democracy under pressure: institutional resilience and the populist challenge Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards with significant US or transatlantic business exposure Corporate strategy and political risk functions navigating US policy uncertainty Institutional, financial, or public-sector audiences requiring credible geopolitical framing Conference programmes focused on global affairs, political risk, or the future of the transatlantic relationship Audience outcomes A clearer framework for understanding what is structurally driving US politics, beyond the daily news cycle Concrete context for the fault lines in American society and what they mean for the transatlantic relationship over the medium term A more calibrated understanding of how political narratives are constructed in the US and why European coverage of America often misses the underlying dynamics Sharper awareness of the assumptions about the US that European organisations bring to their strategic decisions – and where those assumptions are no longer reliable