Politisches Risiko und Politik

Why organisations work with Herman Van Rompuy He chaired the European Council through the sovereign debt crisis and can explain, from the inside, how decisions on the euro, the Fiscal Compact, and the European Stability Mechanism were actually brokered between 27 national capitals. He is a trained economist, not a career politician alone; his National Bank of Belgium background means he reads monetary policy, bank regulation and fiscal governance with technical fluency most former heads of state lack. His 2012 report to the European Council laid the blueprint for Banking Union; leaders get direct authorship perspective on the supervisory and resolution architecture their treasury and risk teams now operate inside. He remains plugged into the current debate as President of the Board of the College of Europe and Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, so the analysis is live, not a memoir. The Charlemagne Prize is awarded for mediation and consensus-building in Europe, which is precisely what he does on stage: he translates a 27-country bargaining dynamic into language a corporate board can act on. Biography highlights First full-time President of the European Council, 2009-2014, re-elected unanimously for a second term in 2012. Prime Minister of Belgium, 2008-2009; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 2007-2008; Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Budget, 1993-1999. Recipient of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, 2014. President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe (Bruges); Honorary President of the European Policy Centre; visiting fellow at Bruegel. Author of nine books, including “Europe in the Storm: Promise and Prejudice” (Davidsfonds, 2014) on the eurozone crisis years. Holds a Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven; former economist at the National Bank of Belgium. Biography When the euro came close to breaking apart in 2011 and 2012, the meetings that kept it together were chaired by one man. Herman Van Rompuy had taken up the newly created post of permanent President of the European Council in January 2010, and within months the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts were on his desk. Over five years he presided over twenty-eight European Councils and eleven Euro summits, and emerged with the architecture that still governs the single currency. The substance of that period matters more than the title. Under his chairmanship the European Council agreed the European Stability Mechanism, the Fiscal Compact, and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack rules on national budgets. His June 2012 report, prepared with the Presidents of the Commission, the ECB and the Eurogroup, set out the blueprint for Banking Union; the Single Supervisory Mechanism and Single Resolution Mechanism followed. Companies doing business in Europe now operate inside the framework he helped draft. He came to the role as an economist first. A Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven and an early career at the National Bank of Belgium gave him a fluency in monetary and fiscal detail that distinguishes him from most former heads of government. Belgian voters knew him as a technocratic budget minister in the 1990s before he became Prime Minister in the 2008 financial crisis, and he brought the same style to Brussels: quiet, methodical, consensus-driven. That approach has kept him inside the European debate. He is President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe in Bruges, Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, and a visiting fellow at Bruegel. The International Charlemagne Prize, awarded in 2014, cited him as a mediator and driving force behind European unification, which is the working mode boards encounter when he sits with them on the state of the Union. Key speaking topics European Union governance and institutional reform Eurozone economic policy and monetary cooperation Banking Union and European financial stability Geopolitical risk in the European neighbourhood Crisis decision-making at heads-of-government level EU enlargement and the future of integration Belgium and the politics of coalition government Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with material euro-area exposure CFO and treasury leadership working under EU financial regulation Government affairs, strategy and political risk functions in multinationals Banking, insurance and asset management audiences operating inside Banking Union rules Audience outcomes A clearer read of how EU-level decisions are actually made between national capitals, institutions and the ECB A grounded view of where eurozone integration is heading and which political constraints are binding First-hand perspective on crisis leadership at the top of European politics Sharper framing of European political risk for board-level and investment committee discussions

Why organisations work with Hollie McKay She has reported from inside Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran’s borderlands, and Myanmar, and stayed in Kabul through and after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Her geopolitical analysis is built on direct access to actors most analysts only read about. Her work documenting ISIS atrocities against the Yazidi has been used as evidentiary material in war-crimes proceedings. That standard of source verification carries directly into how she briefs corporate audiences on risk. As Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting for a Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief and the Wall Street Journal. Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield, with a foreword by Jocko Willink, and the photo-led volume on the fall of Afghanistan with Jake Simkin. Both books work as primary-source material for executives trying to understand asymmetric threats. She is a 40 Under 40 Honoree of the Middle East Policy Council and a 2022 Media Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, two credentials that signal recognition from serious foreign-policy institutions, not media bureaus. Biography highlights Investigative and international affairs correspondent for Fox News Digital for more than fourteen years, covering Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Latin America. Research Director, GlobalStrat Ltd., Washington D.C., leading geopolitical risk, conflict analysis, and threat forecasting. Contributing writer at The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, regional conflict, and state security. Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield (Di Angelo Publications, 2021) and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule (Di Angelo Publications, 2022). 40 Under 40 Honoree, Middle East Policy Council; 2022 Media Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Honorary board member, EMERGENCY USA; human rights and cultural consultant to Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). Biography Geopolitical risk has moved from an annual board paper to a live operating variable. Most of what reaches the boardroom is filtered through several analytical layers before it gets there. Hollie McKay’s work sits at the other end of that chain. For more than fourteen years at Fox News Digital, she reported as an investigative and international affairs correspondent across Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. She embedded with US and allied forces, interviewed captured ISIS fighters, and documented sexual-violence cases against the Yazidi at the evidentiary standard used in war-crimes proceedings. When the Taliban returned to Kabul in 2021, she stayed. That body of work is now the foundation for her current role as Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., the Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm where she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, Iran, and state security, and in the Wall Street Journal. Her two books, Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule, are primary-source documents on how violent non-state actors behave once they hold ground. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She translates situations most executives only read about, sanctions regimes, supply-chain choke points, the operational reality of doing business in fractured states, into briefings grounded in named actors and verifiable events. The 40 Under 40 honour from the Middle East Policy Council and the 2022 Media Fellowship at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies are markers of credibility inside the foreign-policy institutions that serious organisations rely on. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and conflict forecasting Terrorism, insurgency, and the behaviour of violent non-state actors Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and Taliban rule The war in Ukraine and Russia’s strategic posture Iran, the Middle East, and nuclear deterrence War crimes, accountability, and post-conflict justice Reporting and truth-telling under hostile-regime pressure Ideal for Boards and risk committees with exposure to Middle East, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia operations Chief Security Officers, Heads of Geopolitical Risk, and General Counsel scoping country-level threat Defence, energy, and extractives leadership teams with personnel or assets in fragile states Strategy and corporate affairs functions briefing executive committees on sanctions and political risk Audience outcomes A grounded read on how the fracturing rules-based order is reshaping country-level risk, drawn from direct reporting rather than secondary analysis Specific case material on Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, and ISIS that audiences can apply to their own exposure mapping A clearer picture of how violent non-state actors, sanctioned regimes, and intelligence services actually operate, and what that means for corporate decision-making Sharper questions to put to internal risk and security functions after the session

Why organisations work with Horst Köhler Direct experience at the top of the IMF during the Brazil and Turkey debt crises, with operational responsibility for the response and for expanding debt relief to the poorest countries. Negotiator of the Maastricht Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union, giving boards a primary-source perspective on how the architecture of the eurozone was built and where its stress points lie. Sustained authority on Africa-Europe relations through the AU-EU High-Level Panel and the Partnership with Africa initiative he convened as Federal President. Rare combination of central-bank-adjacent technical credibility (EBRD presidency, IMF) with elected political legitimacy at head-of-state level. Biography highlights President of Germany, 2004 to 2010. Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board, International Monetary Fund, 2000 to 2004. President, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1998 to 2000. State Secretary, German Federal Ministry of Finance, and Germany’s chief negotiator of the Maastricht Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union. UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, 2017 to 2019. Co-founder, Eva Luise and Horst Köhler Foundation for rare disease research, established 2006. Recipient of the Global Economy Prize, Kiel Institute, 2017. Biography The institutions that defined the post-1990 economic order were built in a specific moment. The Maastricht Treaty, the IMF’s debt-relief frameworks, the G7’s coordination architecture were all designed for a world that assumed open trade, declining inflation, and the gradual integration of emerging economies. Köhler spent his career inside those institutions at the moments they were being built and stress-tested. As State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance he was Germany’s chief negotiator on the Maastricht Treaty and on the German-German monetary union, before moving to the presidency of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1998. From 2000 to 2004 he led the IMF through the Brazilian and Turkish debt crises and expanded debt relief for the world’s poorest economies. The technical brief and the political brief were the same brief. His presidency of Germany, 2004 to 2010, made the Africa-Europe relationship the centre of his public agenda. He convened the Partnership with Africa initiative as a sustained dialogue between heads of state, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals from both continents, and after leaving office co-chaired the African Union High-Level Panel on Africa-Europe relations and served as UN Personal Envoy for Western Sahara. The intellectual position underneath the work is that Europe still does not treat Africa as an independent political subject with its own agency and options. That argument, developed across two decades of speeches, is what made him a distinctive voice rather than a former office-holder on a circuit. Key speaking topics International monetary system and sovereign debt The Africa-Europe partnership The eurozone, Maastricht, and the architecture of EMU Global poverty reduction and development finance Multilateralism and the reform of international institutions Sustainability and climate finance Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, multinational industrials, and infrastructure with material exposure to emerging markets, especially African economies. Government, multilateral, and development-finance audiences working on debt, climate finance, or institutional reform. Foundations, family offices, and impact-investment platforms with an Africa or Global South thesis. Audience outcomes A primary-source account of how the IMF actually handles a sovereign debt crisis at executive-board level. An informed view on what the AU-EU relationship looks like from inside the panels that have shaped it. A grounded reading of where the post-1990 multilateral order is brittle and where it still functions. Direct exposure to the strategic case for treating Africa as a peer political and economic counterpart, not an aid recipient.

Why organisations work with Sir Howard Davies He is the only person to have both designed the UK’s single financial regulatory architecture – merging nine agencies into the FSA between 1997 and 2003 – and then governed a major commercial bank as its chair. That double vantage point is not replicable by any other speaker in this space. His 2022 book The Chancellors (Polity Press), based on direct interviews with UK Chancellors of the Exchequer, provides boards with a forensic account of how fiscal and monetary policy decisions are actually made under political constraint – directly relevant to any organisation calibrating its exposure to policy risk. He maintains current, published views on global regulatory fragmentation, ESG retreat in financial services, and the direction of financial supervision through his Project Syndicate column and Financial Times contributions – his perspective is live, not retrospective. His tenure as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry gives him a period in his career where he represented the commercial case in dialogue with regulators and government – meaning he understands regulatory negotiation from the business side as well as the supervisory side. As Chair of Inigo Limited at Lloyd’s of London and a member of a Chinese securities regulatory advisory council, he brings active, multi-jurisdictional board-level experience to questions about how regulatory divergence is reshaping global financial markets. Biography highlights Founding Chairman, UK Financial Services Authority (1997-2003) – created the UK’s single financial regulator by merging nine separate agencies Deputy Governor, Bank of England (1995-1997) Chair, NatWest Group (2015-2024) Director, London School of Economics and Political Science (2003-2011) Professor of Practice, Sciences Po, Paris – teaches financial regulation and central banking at master’s level Six published books on finance and economic policy, including Banking on the Future (Princeton University Press, 2010) and The Chancellors (Polity Press, 2022) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate and the Financial Times Director-General, Confederation of British Industry (1992-1995) Chair, UK Airports Commission (2012-2015) Knight Bachelor (2000) Biography Financial regulation is not a technical discipline that sits at the edge of the boardroom. It is a political process that reshapes the commercial options available to every regulated institution – and boards that treat it as a compliance matter, rather than a strategic one, tend to be late to the table when the framework shifts. Sir Howard Davies has operated at the centre of that process for three decades. As founding Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, he created the country’s single financial regulator from scratch between 1997 and 2003, merging nine separate agencies into one body. That work – designing supervisory architecture under political instruction, negotiating between commercial interests and public mandates – gives him a form of institutional authority that no amount of academic or advisory work can replicate. His earlier role as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and his preceding three years as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, adds the monetary policy and business lobby dimensions to a perspective that is genuinely triangulated across the full regulatory relationship. From 2015 to 2024 he served as Chair of NatWest Group, guiding the bank through a nine-year transformation from a state-aided institution to a commercially independent one. Governance under political scrutiny, board accountability in a regulated environment, and reputational risk in real time are not abstractions in his work – they are operational experience. His six published books, among them The Chancellors (Polity Press, 2022), based on direct interviews with UK Chancellors of the Exchequer, bring the same analytical rigour to economic policymaking that his regulatory career brought to financial supervision. He is currently Chair of Inigo Limited at Lloyd’s of London, a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and Professor of Practice at Sciences Po in Paris, where he teaches financial regulation and central banking. For boards in regulated sectors trying to read the direction of travel in financial supervision – across jurisdictions, not just domestically – his vantage point is without direct equivalent. Key speaking topics Financial regulation and regulatory reform Banking governance and board oversight Central banking and monetary policy Economic policy and the role of the Treasury Regulatory risk and political risk in financial services Global financial markets and cross-border regulatory divergence ESG strategy in financial services Ideal for Boards and audit/risk committees in banks, insurers, and asset managers Financial regulators, policymakers, and supervisory bodies CHROs and general counsel in highly regulated sectors navigating governance reform Senior leaders in institutional investment and sovereign wealth management Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how financial regulatory frameworks are made and how they change under political pressure – not just what the current rules are Practical framing of the governance responsibilities that sit above compliance, drawn from direct board experience at a major UK bank Perspective on the direction of global regulatory divergence, including between US, EU, and UK supervisory approaches A more calibrated view of how monetary policy decisions interact with fiscal policy, and what that means for strategic planning in financial institutions Insight into how the regulator-board relationship works in practice – and where it typically breaks down

Why organisations work with Huang Yiping He sits on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China, which puts him inside the conversation that shapes Chinese interest rate, credit, and currency decisions, not commenting on it from the outside. He runs the National School of Development at Peking University, the institution that has educated a generation of Chinese policy economists and whose research directly feeds government thinking. His digital finance research programme is the reference point for how platforms like Ant Group, WeChat Pay, and the state-run digital yuan system are reshaping Chinese banking and credit allocation. He built a career that bridges Wall Street and Beijing, with nearly a decade as Chief Asia Economist at Citigroup and a further stint at Barclays, so he reads Chinese policy with a market operator’s instinct. He is willing, as Bloomberg documented in 2024, to publicly challenge official economic strategy, which makes his private read on policy direction far more useful than the standard think tank commentary. Biography highlights Dean of the National School of Development, Peking University, and Boya Distinguished Professor. Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China, reappointed in March 2024 after serving 2015 to 2018. Director of the Institute of Digital Finance at Peking University. Former Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist, Citigroup; later Chief Economist for Emerging Asia, Barclays. Co-editor, with David Dollar, of The Digital Financial Revolution in China (Brookings Press, 2022). Columnist at Project Syndicate; contributor to East Asia Forum; PhD in Economics, Australian National University. Biography China’s economic team spent the decade after the global financial crisis building a credit-driven growth model that worked until it didn’t. Huang Yiping has spent that same decade arguing, from inside the system, that the model had to change. His seat on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China gives that argument unusual weight. As Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, Huang leads the country’s most influential economic policy school. The NSD trains senior officials and publishes much of the research that informs Chinese financial and macroeconomic decisions. Before Peking University, he spent nearly a decade as Chief Asia Economist at Citigroup and Chief Economist for Emerging Asia at Barclays, which is why his reading of policy still tracks to what markets actually need to know. His research focus has shifted with the economy. The Digital Financial Revolution in China, co-edited with Brookings’s David Dollar in 2022, set the frame for how platforms, mobile payments, and the digital yuan are rewiring Chinese credit. His Project Syndicate columns through 2024 pushed Beijing to rein in local government debt and to rebalance away from investment toward household consumption. In August 2024, Bloomberg singled out his critique of official policy as one of the sharpest to come from inside the PBOC advisory structure in years. For international leaders, the value is specific. Huang can tell a board what Beijing is actually weighing on interest rates, on the property sector, on capital controls, and on the structural rebalancing that will shape Chinese demand for the next decade. He does it with the vocabulary of someone who has worked in a trading room, not only in a seminar room. Key speaking topics Chinese macroeconomic policy and PBOC decision-making Financial system reform and capital market liberalisation in China Digital finance, platform regulation, and the digital yuan Rebalancing the Chinese economy from investment to consumption Local government debt and fiscal reform in China China’s role in global trade and emerging market capital flows Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material China exposure CFOs, treasurers, and CIOs at financial institutions allocating capital across Asia Strategy and policy leads in technology and payments businesses operating in or alongside Chinese platforms Senior government, regulatory, and multilateral audiences tracking PBOC direction Audience outcomes A clearer view of how Chinese policymakers are likely to weigh monetary, fiscal, and structural choices in the next twelve to twenty-four months. An informed read on where Chinese financial reform and platform regulation are heading, from someone inside that work. A sense of the real disagreements inside the Chinese policy community, rather than the official line. Sharper questions to bring to their own China strategy, credit exposure, and supply chain decisions.

Why organisations work with Hugo Dixon Direct access to the thinking behind the Ukraine Reparations Loan, a $300bn policy proposal he co-authored that has been endorsed at European Commission level. A founder’s view of financial commentary as a business: he built Breakingviews from a 350-word format into a global Reuters franchise and sold it for £13m. Two decades of senior FT and Reuters editorial perspective on European banking, sovereign debt, and macro risk, applied to the questions boards are actually asking now. A track record of converting analysis into political action, through InFacts and the People’s Vote campaign, that few commentators of his standing can match. Biography highlights Founder of Breakingviews; sold to Reuters in 2009 for £13m. Editor-at-Large / Commentator-at-Large, Reuters. Co-author, with Lee Buchheit and Daleep Singh, of the Ukraine Reparations Loan plan, endorsed by Ursula von der Leyen in her 2025 State of the Union. Former Head of Lex, Financial Times, after 13 years on the paper; began career at The Economist. Business Journalist of the Year (British Press Awards), 2000 and 2008; Decade of Excellence Award, 2008. Author, The Penguin Guide to Finance (Penguin). Biography The Ukraine Reparations Loan, the proposal to channel roughly $300bn of frozen Russian sovereign assets into Ukraine’s reconstruction without an outright seizure, was endorsed by Ursula von der Leyen in her 2025 State of the Union. Hugo Dixon is one of its three principal architects, with the sovereign debt lawyer Lee Buchheit and the economist Daleep Singh. That work sits at the seam he has occupied for two decades: where financial structure meets geopolitical decision. After thirteen years at the Financial Times, latterly as Head of Lex, Dixon left in 1999 to co-found Breakingviews, a financial commentary business he sold to Reuters in 2009 for £13m and continued to edit until 2012. He now writes as Reuters’ Commentator-at-Large, with a focus on Europe, Russia, sovereign assets, and the EU’s macro choices. He was twice named Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards and won the Decade of Excellence Award in 2008. He is the author of The Penguin Guide to Finance. Dixon also has a record of translating analysis into political infrastructure. He founded and edited InFacts, the fact-based campaign against Brexit, and was a co-founder and leader of the People’s Vote campaign. For boards weighing geopolitical exposure, EU policy direction, or the financial mechanics of supporting Ukraine, he offers the rare combination of an insider’s grasp of the instruments and an operator’s grasp of what moves in Brussels. Key speaking topics Russia, Ukraine and the frozen sovereign assets question The EU’s macro and policy direction European banking and sovereign debt Brexit and UK-EU relations Financial markets and capital allocation Geopolitical risk for boards Ideal for Boards and audit committees with exposure to Russia, sanctions, or EU policy shifts CFOs and treasurers tracking sovereign debt and frozen-asset developments Senior teams in banking, asset management, and insurance with European footprints Foundations, policy institutions, and corporate affairs leaders working on Ukraine reconstruction Audience outcomes A clear read of where the frozen Russian assets debate is heading and what the realistic European pathways look like. Sharper framing of EU policy direction post the 2024 to 2026 political cycle and what it implies for capital and regulation. An informed view of UK-EU relations beyond the headlines, drawn from the inside of the Brexit fight. Connections between geopolitical decisions and concrete financial mechanisms that most macro talks leave abstract.

Why organisations work with Ian Dunt He explains the mechanics of UK government, not the gossip: how a bill actually becomes law, where civil service capacity sits, why a policy lands or stalls. Useful to any team pricing regulatory or political exposure. His book How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t became a Sunday Times bestseller and is used as a reference text by people who work in and around Parliament. That is a stronger credibility signal than a television appearance count. He brings a second, distinct intellectual track on liberalism, populism and the condition of democratic institutions, drawn from How To Be A Liberal and the Origin Story podcast. Boards thinking about long-horizon political risk get more than a UK briefing. He writes and speaks for decision-makers, not commentators. The register is direct, argued, commercially relevant, and stays away from partisan theatre. Biography highlights Columnist for The i Paper, one of the UK’s main daily political columns. Former editor of politics.co.uk, the long-running UK politics analysis site. Author of How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller. Author of How To Be A Liberal (Canbury, 2020) and Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? (Canbury, 2016). Co-host of Origin Story with Dorian Lynskey, and a founding voice on Oh God, What Now? and The Bunker, all Podmasters productions. Appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist magazine in 2025. Biography Most UK political coverage describes the weather over Westminster. Dunt describes the building. How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2023 and an immediate Sunday Times bestseller, walked readers through the actual wiring: Number 10, the Cabinet Office, the civil service, the Commons, the Lords, the party machines, and the specific failure points in each. That is the unusual thing about him as a political voice. The subject is institutions, not personalities. Before the book, a long editorship of politics.co.uk gave him the beat, and a column at The i Paper gave him the public platform he still uses. He writes in plain, argued English, not lobby shorthand, which is part of why the book crossed over from political readers to the general ones. The second strand of his work sits further back from the news cycle. How To Be A Liberal, published by Canbury in 2020, is a history of liberal thought and a defence of it against nationalism and authoritarian revival. Origin Story, co-hosted with the journalist Dorian Lynskey on Podmasters, takes that same method, trace an idea to its root, then show what it has become, across subjects from neoliberalism to conspiracy theory. It is the part of his work that serious boards find most useful when the question is not what happens next week but what kind of political environment the organisation will be operating in for the next decade. In 2025 he was appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist, the 140-year-old rationalist magazine, which sits comfortably inside that longer-arc intellectual project. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster governance Political and regulatory risk for business UK-EU relations after Brexit Populism and the condition of democratic institutions Liberalism, public reason, and the information environment Media disruption and misinformation Ideal for Boards, executive teams and public affairs leads exposed to UK regulatory and political risk. Risk, compliance and government relations functions inside multinationals operating in the UK and Europe. Investor and membership audiences who want a serious read on Westminster rather than a news recap. Audience outcomes A working mental model of how UK government actually produces decisions, and where it breaks. Sharper judgement on which political stories matter commercially and which are noise. A clearer view of where populist politics is driving institutional change across Europe and the UK. An informed frame for conversations with policymakers, regulators and own-government-relations teams.

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

Why organisations work with Ingrid Betancourt Lived authority on operating under conditions no executive training can simulate: six and a half years in captivity, then a return to public life, politics, and scholarship. A first-hand account of how identity, values, and decision-making hold up when external structure is stripped away, told without sentimentality. Credibility across two worlds senior audiences rarely hear combined: frontline political leadership in a fragile democracy and sustained reflection on human dignity from inside a research fellowship at Oxford. The Prince of Asturias Award for Concord and the French Legion of Honour signal an argument about freedom and human rights that serious international audiences already recognise. A voice on resilience that does not traffic in motivational language: the material is concrete, specific, and consequential. Biography highlights Former Colombian senator (1998-2002) and two-time presidential candidate, first in 2002 and again in 2022. Held hostage by FARC for more than six years after her abduction on 23 February 2002; released on 2 July 2008 in Operation Jaque. Laureate of the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, awarded by the Princess of Asturias Foundation. Appointed to the French Legion of Honour following her release. Author of Even Silence Has an End (2010), a New York Times bestselling memoir, and The Blue Line (Penguin Press, 2016), a novel set during Argentina’s Dirty War. Research Fellow in Theology at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; DPhil in Theology awarded by the University of Oxford in 2023. Biography On 23 February 2002, a presidential candidate walked into FARC-controlled territory in southern Colombia and did not come out for six and a half years. That candidate was Ingrid Betancourt, then a sitting Colombian senator who had built her political career on a direct challenge to institutional corruption. Her release in July 2008, through the Colombian military intelligence operation known as Operation Jaque, returned her to a public life she had to rebuild in full view of an international audience. The 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord and her appointment to the French Legion of Honour recognised not the ordeal, but the argument she had begun to make about democracy, dignity, and the conditions under which human freedom survives. What she has produced since is a body of work that takes that argument seriously. Her memoir Even Silence Has an End became a New York Times bestseller. Her novel The Blue Line, published by Penguin Press, examined political violence in Argentina. In 2023 the University of Oxford awarded her a DPhil in Theology for a thesis on the concept of the non-person in the writings of the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, and she now holds a research fellowship at Harris Manchester College. For senior audiences, the relevance is practical. Leadership in normal conditions rewards competence and pattern recognition. Leadership when the structure breaks, when the information is hostile, when the horizon is no longer yours to set, rewards something else: a clear sense of what will not be traded, and the discipline to hold it. That is the ground Betancourt speaks from, and very few working speakers can speak from it with her authority. Key speaking topics Resilience and decision-making under extreme pressure Leadership when institutions and information fail Human dignity and democratic values Ethical conduct in high-stakes environments Freedom, captivity, and the inner life of leaders Political courage and anti-corruption Reconciliation after violent conflict Ideal for Board, CEO, and executive committee offsites focused on resilience and crisis leadership Leadership development programmes addressing judgement under sustained pressure International affairs, human rights, and public policy forums Values-led leadership summits at universities and foundations Audience outcomes A sharper sense of which commitments a leader needs to name before a crisis, not during one A concrete account of what resilience looks like when it is not a slogan A more honest reading of how authority, dignity, and ethical conduct interact when external structure disappears A frame for thinking about freedom and human rights that senior audiences can take into policy and strategy conversations Material for their own reflection on leadership character that does not rely on motivational abstraction

Why organisations work with Ivan Rogers He was in the room. As UK Ambassador to the EU from 2013 to 2017 and Cameron’s Chief EU Adviser before that, he led the UK side of the pre-referendum renegotiation and the opening phase of Brexit. He has worked every side of the Brussels-London axis: HM Treasury, Chef de Cabinet inside the European Commission, Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair, and senior public sector roles at Citigroup and Barclays Capital. His analysis has shaped the serious public record on Brexit, including the book 9 Lessons in Brexit and set-piece lectures at UCL, Cambridge and Glasgow that are now standard reading for political economists. He briefs on what actually happens in negotiations, not on slogans. Boards leave with a clearer view of timelines, trade-offs and the realistic range of outcomes on regulation, trade and political alignment. KCMG in the 2016 Honours for services to British, European and International Policy, and a seat on the Council of the European Council on Foreign Relations, give his reading of the field independent credibility. Biography highlights UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, 2013 to 2017. Prime Minister’s Adviser on Europe and Global Issues, and UK Sherpa to the G8 and G20, 2011 to 2013. Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2003 to 2006. Chef de Cabinet to European Commission Vice-President Sir Leon Brittan; Director of European Strategy and Policy at HM Treasury. Head of UK Public Sector Group, Citigroup; Head of Public Sector Industry Group UK and Ireland, Barclays Capital. Author of 9 Lessons in Brexit (Short Books, 2019); KCMG, 2016; Council member, European Council on Foreign Relations. Biography Few people alive have seen the UK-EU relationship from as many vantage points. Ivan Rogers has served inside HM Treasury, inside the European Commission as Chef de Cabinet to Sir Leon Brittan, inside Number 10 as Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair, and in Brussels as Britain’s Permanent Representative to the EU from 2013 until his resignation in January 2017. That sequence matters for a reason. Most commentary on Europe is written by people who have read the treaties. Rogers drafted the cables. He ran the UK side of Cameron’s pre-referendum renegotiation, prepared three Prime Ministers for summits as the UK’s G8 and G20 Sherpa, and was the senior British official in the first phase of the Article 50 machinery before he stepped down. Since leaving government he has become one of the most cited independent voices on Brexit and UK-EU relations. His book 9 Lessons in Brexit, set-piece lectures at UCL, Cambridge, Glasgow and the Institute of International and European Affairs, and podcast work with the European Council on Foreign Relations are built on the same discipline: strip out the politics, map the institutional machinery, tell the reader what is actually going to happen. For boards, that means usable judgement on trade terms, regulatory divergence, the Northern Ireland settlement, the Labour government’s posture toward Brussels, and the wider geopolitical setting in which all of this now sits. He was knighted KCMG in 2016 for services to British, European and International Policy. Key speaking topics UK-EU relations and the post-Brexit settlement Geopolitical and political risk for boards European regulation, trade and market access Government-business interface and Whitehall decision-making Negotiation inside complex multilateral institutions Scenario planning for UK and European political risk Ideal for Board and executive audiences in regulated industries exposed to UK-EU divergence, especially financial services, energy, pharma and manufacturing. Strategy, public affairs and government relations leaders calibrating political risk over a three to ten year horizon. Investors, law firms and advisory houses whose clients need a senior, independent read on UK and European policy direction. Audience outcomes A sharper read on where UK-EU relations are actually heading, stripped of political signalling. A practical sense of how Brussels, Whitehall and Number 10 make decisions under pressure, and where the leverage sits. A clearer view of the regulatory and trade fault lines that matter most to the audience’s sector. Questions answered by someone who has sat at the table with Commission Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors.

Why organisations work with J Bradford DeLong His “long twentieth century” thesis – the argument that humanity’s technological leap from 1870 produced unprecedented wealth but not stability, and that this tension is still unresolved – gives boards and strategy teams a historically grounded framework for understanding current inequality, political volatility, and stalling growth, rather than treating them as separate problems. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury under Clinton, he was directly involved in NAFTA, the Uruguay Round, and the 1993 federal budget – trade and fiscal decisions whose consequences are still shaping today’s policy environment. Few economic historians have that level of direct institutional access. Concrete Economics (co-authored with Stephen Cohen) makes a specific, evidence-based case that every major US growth episode was driven by deliberate government direction of investment, not free-market spontaneity – a framework that directly challenges assumptions many organisations have about industrial policy and the role of the state. Slouching Towards Utopia was named a Best Book of 2022 by the Financial Times, The Economist, and Fast Company, and endorsed by Paul Krugman, Martin Wolf, and the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England – giving his arguments a cross-disciplinary credibility that translates directly into senior executive and board conversations. His dual role as academic economist and active public commentator – via Project Syndicate and the “Grasping Reality” Substack – means his frameworks are continuously applied to live events, not confined to historical analysis. Biography highlights Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley – faculty since 1993, full professor 1997 Author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 2022) – instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller; Best Book of 2022, Financial Times, The Economist, Fast Company Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, Clinton Administration, 1993–1995 Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Fellow, Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Co-author, Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy (2016); co-editor, After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2017) Regular contributor, Project Syndicate; author, “Grasping Reality” Substack; BA and PhD, Harvard University Biography Brad DeLong spent twenty years working on a question that most economists consider settled: why did the most sustained period of technological and material progress in human history end in political dysfunction, rising inequality, and widespread loss of confidence in the institutions that produced it? His answer, developed in Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, is that the period from 1870 to 2010 – what he calls the “long twentieth century” – delivered more economic progress than all previous human eras combined, yet consistently failed to convert that progress into stable, broadly shared prosperity. The book was an instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named a Best Book of 2022 by the Financial Times, The Economist, and Fast Company. That argument matters to organisations because it reframes current instability. The political volatility, slowing productivity growth, and distributional conflict that leaders are navigating are not surprises or aberrations – they are the unresolved inheritance of the same forces that created modern economic life. DeLong’s contribution is to show how this happened, which forces were decisive, and which policy choices made outcomes better or worse than they needed to be. His policy experience is direct. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury under the Clinton Administration, DeLong worked on the 1993 federal budget, NAFTA, the Uruguay Round, and macroeconomic policy. That institutional experience underpins Concrete Economics (2016), co-authored with Stephen Cohen, which argues that the United States has achieved its most significant growth periods through deliberate, pragmatic direction of investment – not ideological commitment to free markets. For executive audiences, the implication is concrete: industrial policy, trade architecture, and fiscal choices are not background noise; they are the environment in which long-term strategy either succeeds or fails. DeLong holds a PhD from Harvard and has been Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley since 1993. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate and his “Grasping Reality” Substack, where his analysis engages with current events directly and accessibly. He is also a Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Key speaking topics Long-run economic growth and structural inequality Macroeconomic policy and fiscal strategy Trade, globalisation, and industrial policy The political economy of the liberal economic order Economic history as a strategic framework Government, markets, and the future of growth Scenario planning under structural uncertainty Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and boards navigating sustained political and economic volatility CFOs and finance leaders seeking a macro-level historical framework for long-term capital allocation and planning Government affairs, public policy, and regulatory teams in large organisations Executive education programmes requiring rigorous economic context for senior leadership cohorts Audience outcomes A historically grounded framework for understanding current economic volatility as a structural pattern – not a temporary disruption – enabling more durable strategic responses A clearer account of how trade policy, industrial policy, and fiscal choices are actually made, based on direct government experience at a senior level A practical corrective to standard free-market assumptions about growth, including a well-evidenced alternative drawn from Concrete Economics Sharper questions for stress-testing long-term strategy against macro scenarios – particularly around inequality, political instability, and the changing role of the state Familiarity with the “long twentieth century” thesis as a shared analytical reference point for ongoing internal strategic discussion

Why organisations work with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Five years running NATO through Afghanistan, the 2008 Bucharest summit, Russia-Georgia, and the alliance’s 60th-anniversary reset. Few living speakers can describe transatlantic decision-making from the chair. Direct line of sight into the machinery that shapes risk for multinationals: defence spending, sanctions architecture, Article 5, enlargement politics, EU-US friction. Dutch Foreign Minister during the Iraq War and OSCE Chair in 2003. He has operated at the national capital level and the multilateral level on the same files. Chaired the Netherlands’ Advisory Council on International Affairs for seven years, meaning his read on policy is current, not retrospective. Holds the Pieter Kooijmans Chair at Leiden and sits with the Trilateral Commission, Friends of Europe, and the European Leadership Network. The analysis is anchored in live institutional conversation, not memoir. Biography highlights 11th Secretary General of NATO, 2004 to 2009, and Chair of the North Atlantic Council. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2002 to 2003, and OSCE Chairman-in-Office during the Dutch chairmanship. Leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal, 1997 to 2001; Member of the House of Representatives, 1986 to 2002. Pieter Kooijmans Chair for Peace, Law and Security, Leiden University, from 2009; Distinguished Fellow, Leiden University College The Hague. Chair of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), 2014 to 2021; Minister of State of the Netherlands from 2018. Non-executive Director, Air France-KLM, 2011 to 2020; Trustee, Friends of Europe; European Group of the Trilateral Commission. Biography NATO took on the lead security role in Afghanistan in October 2006 under a Secretary General who had started the job two years earlier with a fractured alliance and a disputed war in Iraq still on the table. That was de Hoop Scheffer’s first decisive test at the head of the North Atlantic Council, and it set the pattern for how he ran the alliance through Bucharest, the Russia-Georgia war, and the 60th-anniversary summit. Before NATO he was Dutch Foreign Minister under Jan Peter Balkenende and Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE in the Netherlands’ 2003 chairmanship. That sequence, national capital to multilateral chair to alliance lead, is what gives his reading of geopolitics its weight: he has operated at each level on the same files, and made calls at each level that had consequences for the others. The post-NATO work has kept him inside the policy conversation rather than above it. He holds the Pieter Kooijmans Chair for Peace, Law and Security at Leiden University, chaired the Advisory Council on International Affairs for the Dutch government from 2014 to 2021, and sits with the Trilateral Commission’s European Group, Friends of Europe, and the European Leadership Network. He served as a non-executive director at Air France-KLM for nearly a decade, which is where the geopolitical view meets the board agenda in practice. What boards get is a former alliance chief who can map a specific decision, a specific summit, a specific red line, onto the risk exposure a company is carrying today. In 2018 he was granted the honorary title of Minister of State, a recognition reserved in the Netherlands for senior former officials whose judgement the state continues to draw on. Key speaking topics Transatlantic security and the future of NATO European defence, enlargement, and the Russia question Geopolitical risk for multinational business Afghanistan, intervention, and the lessons for alliances Multilateral diplomacy and the G7/OSCE system EU-US relations and the Indo-Pacific pivot Ideal for Boards and audit committees pricing geopolitical and sanctions exposure into strategy CEOs and executive teams in defence, aerospace, energy, and critical infrastructure Government affairs, political risk, and corporate security leaders Investor and shareholder forums needing a senior read on alliance and policy direction Audience outcomes A sharper map of where transatlantic security policy is heading and what moves it A direct account of how NATO decisions are made, from someone who made them Concrete read on Russia, Ukraine, enlargement, and the European defence build-out Named risks and inflection points a board can carry into its next strategy review Confidence in distinguishing signal from noise in a daily news cycle dominated by geopolitics