Unternehmertum speakers

Why organisations work with John Hall He has built two commercial businesses around the problem he speaks on: Influence & Co., which scaled content as a managed marketing function for senior executives, and Calendar, which monetises the attention his first company taught leaders to capture. Top of Mind (McGraw-Hill) gives sales and marketing teams a named operating model for staying memorable to specific decision-makers, not a generic content playbook. Weekly Forbes and Inc. columns, plus contributions to Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Fast Company, mean his frameworks are tested in public against a senior business readership every week. Influence & Co. was ranked No. 72 on Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in America and won EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Best Emerging Company, so the underlying methodology has commercial proof, not only platform reach. He translates content marketing out of the marketing department and into a CEO and revenue conversation, which is where buying decisions about brand authority actually sit. Biography highlights Co-founder of Calendar, a scheduling platform used by millions of professionals. Co-founder and former CEO of Influence & Co., the content marketing firm ranked No. 72 on Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in America. Author of Top of Mind, published by McGraw-Hill in 2017. Weekly columnist for Forbes and Inc. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Mashable. EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Best Emerging Company) and Business Journals’ Top 100 Visionaries. Described by Inc. as “one of the most powerful people in media you’ve never met” and by Forbes as a “must-see keynote speaker”. Biography Most companies treat brand visibility as a marketing line item. Buyers experience it as the shortlist they already had in their heads before procurement opened a process. Closing that gap, between how visibility is funded internally and how it is consumed externally, is the commercial problem John Hall has worked on for more than a decade. Top of Mind, his McGraw-Hill book, sets out the operating logic. Trust is built by useful content delivered consistently to the specific people whose decisions matter, and it compounds. The book is not a content marketing manual. It is a framework for executive and corporate visibility, built from running Influence & Co., the agency that productised the discipline for senior leaders and was ranked No. 72 on Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in America. Hall scaled that thesis into a second business, Calendar, which sits on the other side of the equation. Once a leader has captured attention, time becomes the constraint. Together the two companies bracket the commercial problem his keynotes address: how to be the name buyers reach for, and how to manage the demand that creates. His weekly columns for Forbes and Inc., and contributions to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Mashable, keep the argument public and tested. EY named him Entrepreneur of the Year for Best Emerging Company. The Business Journals listed him among its Top 100 Visionaries. Key speaking topics Building executive and corporate visibility Content as a trust-building system Sales influence and decision-maker engagement Top-of-mind brand strategy Time management and executive productivity Talent attraction through company culture and content Ideal for CMOs, CROs and heads of brand reassessing how content drives pipeline CEOs and founders building personal and corporate authority in a contested market Sales leadership teams measuring trust as a leading indicator of revenue Marketing and communications functions inside professional services, B2B technology and financial services Audience outcomes A working definition of top-of-mind status and the specific behaviours that produce it inside their organisation Named criteria for deciding which content earns attention from senior buyers and which dilutes it A clearer line between brand spend and revenue contribution, framed for finance and board conversations Tactics for converting executive expertise into published authority without consuming executive time

Why organisations work with John Mackey He took one Austin store to 540 locations and $22B in annual sales over four decades, so his account of stakeholder strategy is operating evidence, not theory. He co-authored the book, Conscious Capitalism (HBR Press, 2013), that gave the stakeholder argument its working vocabulary inside boardrooms and business schools. Few founders have lived the full arc he describes: IPO, activist investor pressure, a $13.7B sale to Amazon, and a second venture built on the same philosophy. His Love.Life venture applies the same conscious-business model to preventative healthcare, giving audiences a current case in a different sector. He speaks to capitalism’s critics from inside the system, useful for boards under pressure on purpose, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate. Biography highlights Co-founded Whole Foods Market in 1978; served as CEO until September 2022, growing the business to 540 stores in the US, UK and Canada and over $22B in annual sales. Co-author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Author of Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business (2020) and the memoir The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism (2024). Co-founder and CEO of Love.Life, an integrated preventative healthcare and wellness venture, with its flagship centre in El Segundo, California. Inducted into the World Retail Congress Hall of Fame (2022); recognised by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year US Overall Winner. Board roles include Conscious Capitalism Inc., The Motley Fool, Cato Institute, Institute for Cultural Evolution and Students for Liberty. Biography Whole Foods Market began in 1978 as a single store on a side street in Austin, Texas. Forty-four years later, when John Mackey stepped down as CEO, it had 540 stores, 105,000 team members and $22 billion in annual sales. That trajectory is the spine of his authority on stakeholder capitalism. The argument he co-built around it became Conscious Capitalism (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller co-authored with Raj Sisodia. The book set out four operating tenets, higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture, that boards and business schools now use as a working vocabulary for purpose-led business. Mackey has also lived the harder parts of the case. He took Whole Foods through an IPO, public clashes with critics on both left and right, sustained activist investor pressure from Jana Partners, and the $13.7 billion sale to Amazon in 2017. His 2024 memoir The Whole Story sets out what those moments cost and what they confirmed. He now runs Love.Life, a preventative healthcare and wellness company he co-founded with former Whole Foods executives, applying the same conscious-business model to a sector he argues is structurally set up to manage disease rather than prevent it. The work positions him as a serious voice on stakeholder strategy, board-level purpose, and the next test of conscious capitalism in healthcare. Key speaking topics Conscious Capitalism and stakeholder strategy Founder-led growth and scaling a category-defining business Purpose, culture and the operating model behind them Leadership through activist pressure, acquisition and succession Preventative healthcare and the future of wellness Higher-purpose leadership at board level Entrepreneurship and long-horizon company building Ideal for Boards and CEOs reframing purpose as an operating model rather than a communications layer Founders and senior leaders scaling mission-led businesses through institutional capital and public-market pressure Retail, consumer, grocery and health sector leadership teams Conferences on capitalism, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate Audience outcomes A working account of how stakeholder strategy held together through four decades of growth, IPO, activism and acquisition The four-tenet architecture of Conscious Capitalism applied to current board and executive decisions A founder’s view of when to fight activist investors and when to sell A live case on building a second purpose-led business, this time in healthcare Sharper language for explaining purpose to investors, employees and customers without losing credibility on either side

Why organisations work with Jonas Kjellberg He has lived the full venture cycle at the level most leadership teams only theorise about: founding member of Skype’s leadership group, head of Internet Investments at Kinnevik backing Zalando and HelloFresh, then founder again at NORNORM. The Gear Up framework, developed with Stanford’s Tom Kosnik and Lena Ramfelt and published by Wiley, gives executives a structured way to diagnose where a business model will break before they commit capital. He brings the operator’s view on how Skype actually generated revenue and scaled commercially, not the founding myth. That distinction is what makes his sessions useful for boards thinking about commercial models, not just product. His current work at NORNORM puts him inside a circular, subscription-based business model with IKEA as a co-founder investor, which gives him a current case study on how subscription and sustainability economics interact. Biography highlights Co-creator and former member of the leadership team at Skype, with operating responsibility on the commercial side. Co-author of Gear Up (Wiley/Capstone, 2014) and Business Creation, with Stanford’s Lena Ramfelt and Tom Kosnik. Lecturer on entrepreneurship and sales culture at Stanford University and the Stockholm School of Economics. Former Head of Internet Investments at Kinnevik, leading roughly EUR 700m of investment into Zalando, Rocket Internet, Avito, Lamoda, Jabong, and HelloFresh. Founder and Chairman of NORNORM, a circular, subscription-based office furniture company co-founded with Inter IKEA, which raised EUR 110m in scale-up funding led by Verdane. Founder of Player:IO and former senior advisor at BCG Digital Ventures. Biography Skype was a small Stockholm team trying to work out whether voice-over-IP could ever be a real business. Jonas Kjellberg sat inside that team as part of the founding leadership group, focused on the commercial engine that turned a free product into a company eBay was prepared to pay for. That experience, of seeing exactly which business model decisions made the venture scalable and which nearly broke it, became the raw material for everything that followed. After Skype, he moved to the investor side as Head of Internet Investments at Kinnevik, deploying around EUR 700m into Zalando, Rocket Internet, Avito, Lamoda, Jabong, and HelloFresh. That seat gave him a comparative view across consumer internet bets that most operators never get. He saw which models survived contact with real markets and which collapsed under their own assumptions. Out of that operating and investing work came Gear Up, written with Stanford’s Tom Kosnik and Lena Ramfelt and published by Wiley in 2014. The book sets out a nine-component framework for testing whether a business model is actually viable before scaling it. It is now used in entrepreneurship classrooms at Stanford and the Stockholm School of Economics, where Kjellberg lectures on venture creation and sales culture. He is now back inside an operating business as founder and chairman of NORNORM, a circular, subscription-based office furniture company built with Inter IKEA as a co-founding investor and now backed by Verdane in a EUR 110m round. For executive audiences, this matters because it gives him a live case study on subscription economics and circular business models, drawn from a company he is currently running. Key speaking topics Business model innovation and venture design Scaling consumer technology businesses Sales culture and commercial growth Circular and subscription business models Corporate venturing and intrapreneurship Entrepreneurial decision-making under uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive teams evaluating new ventures, spin-offs, or commercial model changes Chief Strategy Officers and Heads of Innovation responsible for new business creation Corporate venturing units and incubators inside large companies Founders and senior operators inside scale-up companies preparing for the next stage of growth Audience outcomes A clear way to stress-test a business model against the nine components of the Gear Up framework before committing capital A first-hand account of the commercial decisions that made Skype a scalable business, useful as a reference case for current bets A working view of how subscription and circular models change unit economics, drawn from NORNORM A sharper sense of which venture decisions are reversible and which lock the business in Direct comparison points from a portfolio that includes Zalando, HelloFresh, and Rocket Internet

Why organisations work with Jonathan Reynolds His research framework on omnichannel retail – built over four decades at Oxford through direct partnerships with Tesco, the British Retail Consortium, Eurocommerce, and retail associations in eight countries, gives leadership teams a structural diagnosis of competitive change, rather than a trend description. Navigating the New Retail Landscape (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition 2025) draws on over 40 international case studies to make a specific argument: the retailers that win redesign the enterprise, not just the channel mix. Audiences leave with a reference framework, not just a perspective. Reynolds leads OXIRM, the UK’s only dedicated university research institute for retail management, giving him an institutional vantage point that neither management consultants nor industry analysts can replicate. His research consistently interrogates the “death of the high street” narrative and offers a more rigorous counter-argument: physical retail is not dying, but its strategic logic has changed fundamentally. That distinction matters to boards making long-term investment decisions. As a regular contributor to the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, and Wall Street Journal, he translates peer-reviewed research into language that executive teams and boards can act on directly. Biography highlights Associate Professor in Retail Marketing and Deputy Dean (External Relations), Saïd Business School, University of Oxford Founding member and Academic Director, Oxford Institute of Retail Management (OXIRM), since 1999 Co-author, Navigating the New Retail Landscape: A Guide for Business Leaders (Oxford University Press; 3rd edition, 2025) Deputy Director, ESRC Smart Data Research geographic data service (GeoDS) – joint initiative of Oxford, Liverpool, Edinburgh and UCL Vice-Principal and Governing Body Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford Keynote speaker, World Retail Congress Regular media contributor: BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal Visiting Professor, Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College Biography In 1985, a research commission from Tesco brought Jonathan Reynolds to Oxford to examine how new technology would reshape retail operations. Four decades later, Reynolds is Associate Professor in Retail Marketing and Deputy Dean at Saïd Business School. The structural question that commission raised of how a retail enterprise stays competitive when its environment is being redrawn, has never been more pressing. Reynolds is the founding Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management, a role he has held since 1999. OXIRM is the UK’s only dedicated university research centre for retail management. Reynolds uses it to run sustained research partnerships with practitioners and policymakers including the British Retail Consortium, Eurocommerce, and retail associations in Estonia, Finland, Greece, Malaysia, New Zealand and the UK, giving his analysis a data foundation that industry commentary rarely achieves. His central argument, developed across three editions of Navigating the New Retail Landscape (OUP, 3rd edition 2025), is that the retailers who survive the current period of disruption are not those who add channels most quickly. Drawing on over 40 international case studies, Reynolds and co-author Alan Treadgold show that success requires redesigning the enterprise: its capabilities, its leadership model, and its understanding of what physical stores are strategically for. The book is now a standard reference for senior retail executives and strategy teams internationally. Reynolds is a keynote speaker at the World Retail Congress and a regular analytical voice for the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal. His research sits inside peer-reviewed journals and inside boardroom conversations simultaneously: a combination that is less common than it should be, and that gives his arguments their particular authority. Key speaking topics Omnichannel and e-commerce strategy Retail business model innovation Technology adoption and digital transformation in retail The strategic role of physical stores Retail entrepreneurship and innovation Retail productivity and workforce capability Retail development, planning and location strategy Consumer data and retail intelligence Ideal for Chief Executive Officers and strategy directors of retail and consumer-facing enterprises Chief Commercial Officers and Chief Marketing Officers navigating channel complexity Real estate and property investors with significant retail exposure Policy teams and government bodies working on town centres, high streets, and retail planning Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing between channel complexity and genuine competitive strategy An evidence-based analysis of where physical retail creates value and where it no longer does, drawn from 40+ international case studies A more precise understanding of the organisational capabilities and leadership behaviours that separate retail winners from those adding digital layers without structural change Exposure to current Oxford research on consumer data, retail geography, and market evolution that does not typically reach practitioner audiences Language and reference points for board-level conversations about long-term retail investment and transformation

Why organisations work with Jo Fairley She built the first Fairtrade-marked product in the UK, in 1994, when ethical sourcing was a fringe argument rather than a procurement requirement. Few founders can speak to that arc with first-hand authority. She has run the full lifecycle most founders never see: kitchen-table launch, category creation, sale to a FTSE confectioner, and a continued ambassadorial role inside the acquirer. That makes her credible on what survives an acquisition and what does not. Beyond Green & Black’s she has built and exited multiple businesses, including Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre wellbeing facility, and The Perfume Society. The portfolio breadth gives her a useful pattern view across categories. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Kingston University and the Shackleton Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for leadership and citizenship. Recognition from a serious geographical body, not a marketing prize. Biography highlights Co-founder of Green & Black’s organic chocolate, 1991, with Craig Sams. Created Maya Gold, the first product to carry the UK Fairtrade Mark, in March 1994. Sold Green & Black’s to Cadbury in 2005; retained the role of Chocolate Ambassador. UK’s youngest-ever magazine editor at 23, editing Look Now and then Honey. Founder of Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre, and The Perfume Society. Honorary Doctorate in Business Studies, Kingston University; Shackleton Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Co-author of the Beauty Bible series and The Perfume Bible; long-running contributor to The Times, YOU Magazine and the Telegraph. Biography The first product in the UK ever to carry the Fairtrade Mark was a chocolate bar called Maya Gold. It launched in 1994, three years after Jo Fairley and Craig Sams started Green & Black’s at their kitchen table. At that point, ethical sourcing was a niche conviction. Today it is a procurement standard in most large grocers. Fairley sat at the start of that shift and helped force it. Green & Black’s grew into a category-defining brand and was acquired by Cadbury in 2005. Fairley stayed on as Chocolate Ambassador, which gave her an unusual vantage point: a founder watching her values-led business absorbed into a confectionery giant, and learning in real time which parts of the brand promise survived contact with corporate scale. Few founders speak with that experience attached. Her career started in publishing, where she became the UK’s youngest-ever magazine editor at 23, editing Look Now and then Honey. The journalist’s instinct is still visible in the work: a focus on what consumers actually want to be told, and a refusal to let mission language do the work that products and pricing have to do. Subsequent ventures, including Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre wellbeing facility in Hastings, and The Perfume Society, all follow the same pattern of category authorship rather than category entry. Recognition has come from serious bodies, not marketing prizes. An Honorary Doctorate in Business Studies from Kingston University. The Shackleton Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for leadership and citizenship. WorldAware and Soil Association awards across her businesses. The track record is not one of a single early hit; it is a thirty-year argument that values-led brands can be built, scaled, and sold without losing their reason to exist. Key speaking topics Ethical brand building Entrepreneurship and category creation Sustainability and Fairtrade in consumer business Founder experience through acquisition and post-acquisition life Women in entrepreneurship Brand consumer insight Portfolio entrepreneurship Ideal for CEOs and founders of consumer businesses navigating purpose, pricing and scale. Marketing and brand directors building ethical or values-led product lines. Sustainability and procurement leads working on Fairtrade, organic and ethical sourcing. Women’s leadership networks and entrepreneurship audiences. Audience outcomes A practical view of how a values-led brand survives an acquisition by a multinational. A first-hand account of how the UK’s first Fairtrade product reached supermarket shelves and what it took to keep it there. A clearer read on the difference between purpose as marketing language and purpose as supply chain decision. Specific lessons on category creation and the founder mindset across multiple businesses.

Why organisations work with Julia Gentry A coaching track record concentrated in growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band, where the founder and the leadership team are the same people and personal capacity is the binding constraint. A signature D.R.E.A.M. framework she uses with executive teams to close the gap between stated ambition and the daily decisions that contradict it. Direct authority with women leaders navigating the specific tension between professional ambition and the rest of their lives, written about in her book Dream – I Dare You. A strong following in the US residential real estate sector, where she is repeatedly booked back into the same firms and conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., leading a team of eight. Author of Dream – I Dare You: A Wake-Up Call to Greater Alignment in Your Faith, Family, Career, and Community and the companion Dream – Workbook. More than a decade coaching executive teams at companies grossing $10 to $100 million annually. Co-founder of six businesses across 16 years as an entrepreneur, including a real estate operation. Named client engagements include Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams agents and brokerages. Creator of the D.R.E.A.M. framework, used in keynote sessions, group coaching and an eight-week curriculum. Biography Most leadership burnout is not a wellness problem. It is a clarity problem. The leader knows what the next quarter requires, but cannot remember what the next decade is for. That is the gap Julia Gentry works in. She is the CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., a coaching practice she built after a career in residential real estate that ended, by her own account, in burnout in her early thirties. Over the past decade, she has coached executive teams at growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue range, where the leadership group and the founders are usually the same small set of people. Her book Dream – I Dare You is the written form of that work. It argues that alignment across professional ambition, family life, and personal conviction is the precondition for sustained senior performance, not a soft add-on to it. The companion Dream – Workbook turns the same argument into a working tool for leadership teams and small groups. Her commercial track record is strongest in the US residential real estate sector, where firms including Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams brokerages have brought her back to work with leaders and agents. The D.R.E.A.M. framework she developed is now used in keynote settings, in an eight-week curriculum, and in direct executive coaching with founders who have stopped enjoying the company they built. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and burnout recovery Women in senior leadership Purpose and alignment in growth-stage businesses Limiting beliefs in executive teams Leadership in real estate and entrepreneur-led firms Faith-aligned leadership Ideal for Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band Women leadership networks and senior women’s events Real estate brokerages, agent groups and franchise leadership conferences Faith-aligned corporate and entrepreneurial audiences Audience outcomes A clear read on where personal capacity is the bottleneck in the business, not the strategy Language for the gap between stated ambition and actual decision-making in the leadership team A practical structure, the D.R.E.A.M. framework, for resetting that gap Permission and a method for women leaders to redefine what success in the role looks like A direct challenge to grind-culture assumptions about what senior leadership requires

Why organisations work with Julia Streets Twenty-five years inside financial services, from senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet to founding Streets Consulting, gives her unusual fluency across the language of trading floors, regulators, fintechs and boards. DiverCity Podcast, which she launched in 2017 as the first DE&I podcast in financial services, has run 16 seasons with listeners in more than 50 countries and gives her a documented track record of holding industry leaders to specific commitments, not slogans. An MBE in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, awarded for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, is a credential almost no other speaker in her topic area carries. Her host and moderator craft, sharpened by years on the stand-up circuit, makes her a credible choice for conferences where the chair has to keep senior bankers, regulators and founders in the same conversation without flattening any of them. She advises fintech founders and global institutions on the same set of growth and communication problems, which means she can speak to both sides of the buyer-vendor relationship in the room. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Streets Consulting, advising fintech startups, scaleups and global financial institutions on growth, marketing and communications. MBE, 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology. Host and executive producer of DiverCity Podcast, the first DE&I podcast in financial services, with 16 seasons and listeners across 50 countries. Author of The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, published by Searching Finance. Former senior executive at NYSE Euronext (global head of communications, technology division) and Instinet (European marketing and sales development). Twice named a Global Diversity Champion in the Global Diversity List; three-time Brummell Magazine listee for women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. Trustee of Street Child; regular broadcast contributor on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Kent and City AM. Biography The first DE&I podcast in financial services launched in 2017 with no obvious commercial reason to exist. Sixteen seasons later, DiverCity Podcast has listeners in more than fifty countries and a back catalogue of named industry figures committing on the record to specific changes. The host and executive producer is Julia Streets, and the show is one piece of a wider body of work on how financial services actually changes, rather than how it announces it does. Streets Consulting, which she founded after senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet, advises fintechs and global institutions on growth, positioning and communications. The brief is the same on both sides: how does a firm explain what it does to people who are paid to be sceptical of it. Two decades inside trading-floor culture, and a 2012 satirical book on corporate jargon, The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, give her a low tolerance for the kind of language that lets executives avoid saying anything specific. The 2025 MBE, awarded in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, sits alongside two listings as a Global Diversity Champion and three appearances on Brummell Magazine’s lists of women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. The recognitions track a single argument across her work: that diversity in finance is a commercial question, not a compliance one, and that it should be measured by who gets hired, promoted and listened to. For an audience, the practical effect is a speaker and host who can move between fintech innovation, capital markets technology and DE&I without losing the room, because she has actually built a business in each. She is also a former stand-up comedian, which is why bankers tend to talk back to her on stage rather than at her. Key speaking topics Fintech innovation and capital markets technology Diversity, equity and inclusion in financial services Entrepreneurship in regulated industries Communication and influence for senior leaders AI and the future of financial services Conference chairing and panel moderation Women in fintech and technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams in banking, capital markets and fintech navigating technology adoption and regulatory change. CHROs and DE&I leads in financial services who need a credible external voice on inclusion that holds up to commercial scrutiny. Founders and investors at fintech scaleups working on positioning, growth and institutional credibility. Conference organisers in financial services who need a chair or moderator with subject fluency across innovation, regulation and culture. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where fintech innovation is genuinely changing financial services and where it is being oversold. Specific, named examples of how DE&I commitments translate into hiring, promotion and product decisions, drawn from sixteen seasons of recorded interviews. Direct, jargon-stripped language for talking about technology change inside regulated organisations. A working sense of how fintech founders and incumbents see each other, useful for anyone building or buying across that line.

Why organisations work with Juliet Mann Two decades anchoring live business news on CNN, CNBC, Sky News, Reuters, TRT World and CGTN Europe, which means she can chair a senior panel without rehearsal scaffolding and recover any conversation that starts to slide. A working interviewer’s instinct built on direct exchanges with EU policymakers, with CEOs at Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge, and with figures including Sir James Dyson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Comfortable across the editorial range a serious corporate programme actually demands: macroeconomics, geopolitics, sustainability, digital and entrepreneurship, rather than a single specialism that limits the brief. Current host of CGTN Europe’s The Agenda, a weekly current affairs talk show, which keeps her in daily practice with the format most conferences are trying to emulate on stage. Bilingual in English and French, which matters for pan-European audiences, multinational client events and continental press engagements. Biography highlights Host of The Agenda, CGTN Europe’s weekly current affairs talk show. Former anchor and correspondent for CNN’s Marketplace Europe, the network’s weekly European business programme. Newsroom postings with CNBC, Sky News, TRT World and Reuters in London, Paris, New York and Frankfurt. Interview credits include Sir James Dyson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (for the BBC), David Beckham (during London’s successful 2012 Olympic bid), and CEOs of Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge. Corporate broadcast credits with EY TV and HSBC TV; podcast A Week in my Flexible Working Life; freelance features for The Daily Telegraph and Economia. Politics degree, University of Bristol; works in English and French. Biography Live business television is the most exposed form of moderation there is. The anchor has to read an executive in real time, hold a line through interruptions, and translate a balance sheet, a geopolitical risk and a customer story into one coherent conversation, on air, with no edit. That is the practice Juliet Mann has been in for more than two decades. She has anchored from the London, Paris, New York and Frankfurt newsrooms of CNBC, CNN, Sky News, TRT World and Reuters. At CNN’s Marketplace Europe she sat opposite EU policymakers and the chief executives of Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge. At Sky News she interviewed David Beckham the morning London won the 2012 Olympics and rode the last transatlantic Concorde. For the BBC she interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Today she hosts The Agenda, CGTN Europe’s weekly current affairs programme, where the brief is to take a single international story, build a panel around it and keep the conversation tight enough to publish. That is the working repertoire she brings to the corporate stage: chairing a CEO interview, moderating a board-level panel on growth or sustainability, anchoring an awards ceremony, hosting a Brussels policy roundtable. She works in English and French. She prepares like a journalist, not like a host-for-hire, which is the difference clients notice in the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and moderation Executive interviews and on-stage CEO conversations Awards ceremonies and corporate compering Panel moderation on business, sustainability and entrepreneurship European policy and EU-facing discussion forums Bilingual English and French event hosting Ideal for Corporate conferences, AGMs and customer summits that need an experienced live business anchor in the chair. Awards ceremonies and gala dinners where presence and pace decide the evening. Board-level panels and CEO fireside formats on sustainability, growth, geopolitics or digital. Pan-European events and Brussels policy forums requiring bilingual English and French hosting. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time and lands its key messages. Executive interviews that produce substantive, quotable answers rather than rehearsed lines. Panels that stay on the topic the audience came to hear, with each contributor properly drawn in. A professional broadcast register on stage, suitable for filmed content and post-event clips.

Why organisations work with Karl Lillrud He speaks about AI from the seat of someone who has run digital commerce businesses since the late nineties and is currently building one. PodManager AI, his AI-driven podcast production platform, is shipping to paying customers as he speaks about AI to other operators. His work connects AI directly to revenue mechanics: pricing, conversion, retention, and customer acquisition, the parts of the P&L the C-suite is actually accountable for. Nine published books, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct», give leadership teams a shared language for the second-order effects of AI on work, governance, and customer trust, beyond the productivity headlines. Membership of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council and recognition in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings signal that the perspective travels at board level, not just at the developer conference. The client footprint, including Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, and 3, gives him pattern recognition across regulated and consumer-facing businesses that few AI speakers can match. Biography highlights Founder of PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform he is currently building. Founder of Pricelizer, a Swedish e-commerce startup named to CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. Author of nine books on AI and digital business, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct». Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council since August 2024. Two-time TEDx speaker. Recognised across multiple years in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings and Global Gurus’ Top 30 Motivational Speakers list. Public engagement footprint includes Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, 3, Tele2, and TUI. Biography Most AI keynote speakers have never run a checkout flow at scale. Karl Lillrud has. He has been building digital businesses since the late nineties, founded Pricelizer in 2013 to solve the abandoned-cart problem he kept hitting as an operator, and watched it land on CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. He is now building PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform shipping to paying customers. That operator history, still in present tense, is the through-line for everything he says about artificial intelligence. His books reflect the same instinct. «You, Me and AI» treats the technology across 54 chapters covering work, creativity, education, governance, and the human-machine boundary, rather than as a productivity story. «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct» focuses on how leaders and their teams should actually integrate the tools day to day. The two sit inside a wider catalogue of nine published books, written for people who have to make decisions, not people studying the field. The institutional signals followed the work. Thinkers360 has recognised him across its AI thought-leader rankings. Global Gurus has placed him repeatedly in its Top 30 Motivational Speakers ranking. In August 2024 he joined the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, and 3 sit on a public client list that runs across consumer retail, telecoms, and pharma. What a buyer is paying for is the translation layer between board ambition and operating reality. Lillrud has been the person trying to ship the next quarter’s numbers, and he is still in the chair, building an AI product while advising executives who have AI strategies they cannot yet execute. The argument lands because he has been on both sides of the table. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the C-suite agenda AI in retail and consumer experience Digital commerce and customer acquisition Innovation and business model reinvention Leadership in technology-driven organisations AI ethics and governance Future of work in the AI era Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy approval to execution. CEOs, CMOs, and chief digital or commerce officers in retail, telecoms, and consumer brands. Innovation, transformation, and AI leads inside large enterprises building the operating model for AI. Founder and growth-stage leadership teams using AI as a commercial wedge. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which AI use cases move commercial metrics and which are theatre. A vocabulary for discussing AI’s second-order effects on customers, employees, and brand trust at board level. Concrete reference points from operators who have shipped AI inside consumer-facing businesses. A clearer view of where leadership attention should sit next versus where it can wait. Confidence to challenge vendor narratives and refocus internal AI portfolios on revenue impact.

Why organisations work with Karren Brady She has actually done the job leaders are usually only asked to talk about: turning round a loss-making business, taking it public, and selling it for a reported 82 million pounds. Few speakers can talk credibly about boardroom decision-making, parliamentary scrutiny and front-page media pressure in the same session. She has lived all three at West Ham, in the House of Lords, and through a televised public role. She brings hard-edged commercial honesty to topics that often get softened, including women in leadership, where her position is built on a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business, not slogan. Her profile, sustained through 16 years on The Apprentice and weekly columns in The Sun and Women & Home, makes her one of the few UK business voices a non-business audience already trusts. Biography highlights Appointed Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club at 23; oversaw the 1997 London Stock Exchange flotation, the youngest MD of a UK plc at the time. Vice-Chair of West Ham United from 2010 to 2026; led the negotiation behind the move to the London Stadium. Conservative life peer; took her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Brady in November 2014. CBE in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship and women in business. Lord Sugar’s aide on BBC’s The Apprentice since 2009. Author of Strong Woman: The Truth About Getting to the Top and Playing to Win: 10 Steps to Achieving Your Goals; columnist for The Sun and Women & Home. Biography Birmingham City Football Club was loss-making and barely solvent when Karren Brady was made Managing Director in 1993. She was 23. Four years later, the club was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and she had become the youngest managing director of a UK plc. It was sold in 2009 for a reported 82 million pounds. That trajectory is the foundation of how she talks about leadership. The commercial discipline came first; the public profile came second. By the time she joined West Ham United as Vice-Chair in 2010, she was operating in one of the most politically exposed boardrooms in British sport. She negotiated and defended the club’s move from the Boleyn Ground to the London Stadium, a decision that drew sustained criticism from supporters, parliamentarians and the press, and held the role for 16 years. In 2014 she was made a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business and took her seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer. She had already served as the UK government’s Small Business Ambassador, sat as a non-executive director on the board of Channel 4, and would later chair Taveta Investments, the parent company of the Arcadia Group, before resigning in 2019 over governance concerns. Few UK business voices have operated across that range of corporate, political and public pressure. Her broadcast and editorial presence sharpens the commercial offer rather than dilutes it. She has been Lord Sugar’s aide on The Apprentice since 2009 and writes weekly for The Sun and Women & Home, with two business books behind her, Strong Woman and Playing to Win. Senior teams book her because she has run real organisations through real scrutiny, and she will say what she actually thinks in front of a room. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under public scrutiny Boardroom governance and accountability Women in business and routes to senior leadership Building and selling a business Commercial strategy in highly visible sectors Resilience and reputation in regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive committees navigating high-visibility decisions or external scrutiny. CEO and senior leadership offsites where the agenda is commercial discipline rather than inspirational content. Conferences on women in leadership, entrepreneurship and governance that want a speaker with named operating credentials. After-dinner, awards and panel formats where a recognised business name with broadcast presence is the brief. Audience outcomes A clearer view of what board-level decision-making actually looks like when stakeholders, media and politics are all in the room. A practical sense of how senior leaders defend commercial decisions publicly without backing away from them. A grounded read on women in senior leadership from someone who has been the only woman on the board, not the panel discussion about it. A sharper instinct for separating reputation management from substance when an organisation is under pressure.

Why organisations work with Katie Prescott She covers the AI infrastructure, capital and policy story as her day job for The Times, which means clients get a current read rather than a recycled keynote deck. Her book on Mike Lynch and the Autonomy sale to Hewlett-Packard is a working case study in how technology valuations, governance and cross-border legal exposure actually collide; few speakers can talk through that material with original reporting behind it. A decade at the BBC, including business news on Radio 4’s Today programme, gives her a rare ability to host and interview senior executives on stage without scripted stiffness. Tech Commentator of the Year at the 2024 UK Tech Awards confirms what bookers already use her for: trusted, named commentary at the level a board will quote back internally. She co-hosts The Times Tech Podcast with Danny Fortson, which keeps her sourced inside both London and Silicon Valley rather than reliant on second-hand briefings. Biography highlights Technology Business Editor, The Times, and weekly business columnist. Co-host, The Times Tech Podcast, with Danny Fortson, Sunday Times West Coast Correspondent. Author, The Curious Case of Mike Lynch (Macmillan Business, 2025); named a Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2025. Tech Commentator of the Year, UK Tech Awards, 2024. Approximately a decade at the BBC, including presenting business news on Radio 4’s Today programme and reporting from the BBC New York Bureau. Degree in Modern Languages, University of Oxford. Biography The 2011 sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for more than 11 billion pounds turned into a thirteen-year legal fight, two transatlantic trials and, in August 2024, the sinking of the Bayesian yacht off Sicily. The Curious Case of Mike Lynch, published by Macmillan Business in 2025, is the most detailed account of that story to date, and Katie Prescott reported and wrote it while running The Times’ technology business desk. That dual role is the point. Prescott covers AI capital flows, hyperscaler infrastructure, government and Big Tech relations, and UK technology policy as her standing brief, with a weekly column and The Times Tech Podcast co-hosted with the paper’s West Coast correspondent Danny Fortson. The reporting is current. It is also sourced; she is on the phone to founders, investors and regulators in the week she walks on stage. Before The Times, she spent roughly a decade at the BBC, presenting business on Radio 4’s Today programme and reporting from the corporation’s New York Bureau. That background shows on stage. She moderates senior panels, interviews chief executives in front of their own customers, and chairs board-level discussions with the timing of a working broadcaster rather than a guest speaker. The 2024 UK Tech Awards named her Tech Commentator of the Year, and her Mike Lynch book was selected as a Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2025. The combined record is what serious organisations are buying: a working journalist with the access to call the technology story accurately, and the platform to be quoted doing it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence, capital and infrastructure The technology business in 2026 Founders, fraud and governance lessons from the Autonomy case Government, regulators and Big Tech The UK and European technology sector Hosting, moderation and on-stage interviews Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI investment and vendor strategy CTOs, CIOs and chief digital officers needing an outside read on the sector Investor days, partner summits and customer conferences requiring a credible interviewer Communications and policy leadership preparing for greater regulatory and media scrutiny Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI capital is actually flowing and which infrastructure dependencies matter A working sense of how technology valuations, governance and litigation interact, drawn from the Autonomy and Hewlett-Packard case Named, current examples from The Times’ technology coverage rather than recycled trend material For hosted formats, executive interviews that get past prepared answers without becoming hostile

Why organisations work with Kavita Oberoi A first-hand account of selling into the NHS and global pharma as an outsider, including the specific moves that turned a Pfizer pilot into a multi-client healthcare consultancy. An OBE-recognised entrepreneur who is candid about the parts of company building that most founders gloss over: pricing the first big contract, hiring before revenue, and surviving the move from founder-led sales to a delivery team. A public profile shaped by The Secret Millionaire and ongoing BBC, Sky and ITV business commentary, which translates into audience trust before she opens her mouth. Genuine credibility on the diversity-and-resilience angle without the usual abstractions, drawing on a documented path from a 15-year-old taking a Saturday job against family expectation to chairing the Global Girls’ Fund. Biography highlights OBE for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses, Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours. Founder and Managing Director of Oberoi Consulting, healthcare IT and clinical audit firm working with the NHS and pharmaceutical industry since 2001. Founder of Oberoi Business Hub, Derby’s Pride Park, serviced and virtual office facility for start-ups, opened 2012. Named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Chair of the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising arm of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting. Honorary Doctorate, University of Huddersfield, 2013; BSc Applied Chemistry, First Class, University of Huddersfield, 1992. Television: Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, BBC’s The Apprentice You’re Fired, ITV News Business Club panellist, BBC Breakfast, Sky News. Biography The clinical audit gap inside UK general practice was the opening Kavita Oberoi spotted in 2001. GP surgeries needed structured data work that pharmaceutical companies and the NHS both wanted, and almost nobody was packaging it as a service. From a standing start she won a contract with Pfizer, and Oberoi Consulting grew from there into a healthcare support business serving GP practices, primary care groups, private healthcare providers and global pharma. The route to that point matters because it shapes what she actually says on stage. A first-class chemistry degree from Huddersfield, then a stint as one of Bayer’s highest-performing medical representatives, gave her the technical credibility to sell into clinical buyers. Leaving a corporate salary at 30 to start a consultancy without a network or a war chest gave her the rest. In 2012 she opened Oberoi Business Hub on Derby’s Pride Park, a serviced and virtual office facility built specifically for start-ups and small companies that need infrastructure they cannot yet afford to own. The wider portfolio now spans healthcare consultancy, shared workspace, commercial property and media work, and earned her an OBE in 2014 for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses. She chairs the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising body of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting, set up the Derby Breakfast Club to feed children before school, and was named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Her Channel 4 Secret Millionaire episode put a lot of that work in front of a national audience and continues to drive board, charity and conference invitations across the UK. Key speaking topics Building a services business in a regulated sector Founder-led sales into NHS and pharmaceutical buyers Scaling beyond the first major contract Entrepreneurship and start-up infrastructure Women in business and overcoming cultural barriers Philanthropy and corporate giving Ideal for Founders, owner-managers and aspiring entrepreneurs inside accelerator, incubator or membership programmes Sales and growth leaders selling complex services into healthcare, pharma or public-sector buyers Diversity and women-in-leadership audiences inside FTSE and professional services firms Awards hosting and after-dinner addresses where the brief is credibility plus warmth, not theoretical content Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of how a single enterprise contract can be turned into a sustainable services company, with the operational moves named. The questions a founder should be answering before they leave a corporate salary, drawn from someone who actually made that jump. A practical sense of what selling into the NHS and global pharma looks like from the supplier side, and where most start-ups misread the buyer. Renewed confidence in personal agency for audiences whose backgrounds are not typically reflected on the founder stage.