Mise en œuvre des critères ESG

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 Jonathon Porritt Three decades inside the rooms where government, business, and civil society negotiate climate policy, including nine years chairing the UK Sustainable Development Commission for three prime ministers. Co-founder of Forum for the Future, the consultancy that has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE boards on serious sustainability strategy rather than reporting compliance. Author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, a book that argues capitalism is the only viable vehicle for sustainability and sets out what reshaping it actually demands; cited as a foundational text in corporate sustainability curricula. Independence from any single corporate paymaster; willingness to tell senior teams what their own sustainability advisors will not. A long view that connects climate, biodiversity, inequality, and population; useful for boards trying to understand how environmental risks compound across a strategic horizon. Biography highlights Co-founder and Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1996-2023), one of the world’s leading sustainability charities, with offices in the UK, US, India, and Southeast Asia. Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, 2000-2009, advising the Blair and Brown governments on environmental policy. Director of Friends of the Earth (UK), 1984-1990; former Co-Chair of the UK Green Party. Co-founder of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, delivered through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Author of Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), The World We Made (Phaidon, 2013), and Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan, 2005). CBE for services to environmental protection (2000); Chancellor of Keele University, 2012-2022. Biography The corporate climate agenda has run into its first credibility test. A decade of net-zero pledges, ESG reporting, and sustainability committees has not closed the gap between what boards say and what their capital plans deliver. Porritt has spent his working life inside that gap. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996 with Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins, and ran it as Founder Director for nearly thirty years. Forum has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE-100 boards on the harder questions of business model change, not the softer ones of disclosure. Before that, he ran Friends of the Earth (UK) through the late 1980s and co-chaired the Green Party. For nine years he chaired the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising Tony Blair and Gordon Brown directly. He also co-founded the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, now part of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where senior executives go to interrogate their own sustainability strategies. Few people have spent as much time on both sides of that table. His books map the argument. Capitalism as if the World Matters made the case that capitalism is the only viable engine for a sustainable future, and set out the reforms that case requires. The World We Made imagined 2050 as if those reforms had landed. Hope in Hell, written into the climate emergency, is sharper and more impatient. Read together, they explain why he is taken seriously by chief executives and climate activists alike, even when he is telling each of them something they would rather not hear. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy and ESG governance Climate risk and the energy transition Reforming capitalism for environmental limits Net-zero credibility and corporate accountability Long-term scenario planning and systems change Biodiversity, nature, and business Intergenerational responsibility and the next decade Ideal for Board directors and CEOs reviewing the credibility of their net-zero and ESG commitments Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building serious, board-ready strategy Investor relations and capital allocation teams under increasing scrutiny on transition planning Strategy and risk leaders trying to integrate climate and biodiversity into long-range planning Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their own organisation’s climate strategy is exposed to investor, regulator, and employee scrutiny A working understanding of what credible, board-level sustainability looks like beyond reporting compliance A sharper sense of how climate, biodiversity, inequality, and capital allocation compound as connected risks Direct, unflattering challenge from someone with no commercial interest in their answer

Why organisations work with Joseph Stiglitz His Nobel Prize work demonstrated that markets systematically mis-price when participants have unequal access to information – a finding that maps directly onto corporate governance failures, credit risk models, and regulatory blind spots that boards encounter in practice. He is among the very few economists to have held operational control over both US domestic economic policy (Council of Economic Advisers) and global financial architecture (World Bank Chief Economist) – his critique of institutions carries authority because it comes from inside them. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy in 2008 produced the framework now being advanced by the OECD as a formal alternative to GDP. Organisations engaged in ESG reporting, long-term value creation, and sustainability governance are already operating within the measurement landscape he helped design. The Price of Inequality (2012) and The Road to Freedom (2024) make the specific, evidence-based case that inequality is a structural drag on growth, market stability, and democratic governance – giving senior leaders a rigorous foundation for treating social outcomes as financial risk, not reputational noise. His analysis of globalisation – grounded in direct experience of how the IMF and World Bank made their most consequential decisions – gives organisations operating across emerging markets a more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001), shared with Akerlof and Spence, for the theory of markets with asymmetric information – a finding that reshaped economics and became standard in policy analysis University Professor at Columbia University, the institution’s highest academic rank, with appointments in Economics, SIPA, and Columbia Business School Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers (1995-97) under President Clinton; Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997-2000) Chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2008-09) at President Sarkozy’s request; published as Mismeasuring Our Lives; continues to chair the successor High-Level Expert Group at the OECD John Bates Clark Medal (1979); more than 40 honorary doctorates, including from Cambridge and Oxford; named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (2011) Author of more than 10 books for general audiences, including Globalization and Its Discontents (2002), The Price of Inequality (2012), and The Road to Freedom (2024) Lead author of the 1995 IPCC Report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; regular contributor to Project Syndicate; regular coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian Biography The strategic blind spot in most boardrooms is not a lack of data – it is a set of inherited economic assumptions that have been treated as fact. Markets clear. Prices reflect value. Deregulation improves outcomes. Joseph Stiglitz has spent five decades building the evidence against each of these claims, from the insurance market to the credit system to the global financial architecture. His Nobel Prize in 2001 recognised the foundational work. In markets where some participants know more than others, the outcomes that standard models predict do not materialise. Credit gets rationed below efficient levels. Insurance markets produce worse aggregate outcomes than pooling would allow. Labour markets generate unemployment that wage adjustments alone cannot resolve. These are not edge cases – they are the structural features of every market senior leaders navigate. Beyond the academy, Stiglitz has held the positions where those theories met consequences. He served as Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and as Chief Economist of the World Bank. His subsequent criticism of those institutions – in Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) and The Price of Inequality (2012) – carries weight precisely because it was written by someone who watched the decisions being made. His more recent work extends the argument into measurement and institutional design. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy produced Mismeasuring Our Lives (2009), a formal challenge to GDP as a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. That work now underpins the OECD’s ongoing effort to develop performance metrics beyond output. His 2024 book, The Road to Freedom, argues that the economic assumptions embedded in most policy and business planning are deliberate choices – with identifiable costs. For organisations navigating inequality risk, regulatory exposure, and ESG pressure, the distinction matters. Key speaking topics Information economics and market failure Economic inequality and structural risk Globalisation and its institutional consequences Beyond-GDP measurement and performance metrics Progressive capitalism and regulatory design Global financial architecture and reform Political economy of growth and distribution Ideal for Boards, CFOs, and chief economists assessing macroeconomic risk and long-term structural exposure Policy-facing organisations, government affairs functions, and institutions engaged in regulatory strategy Organisations navigating ESG, sustainability reporting, and long-term value measurement Financial services and investment institutions operating across global and emerging markets Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why standard economic metrics – GDP, market efficiency assumptions, deregulation as growth driver – systematically obscure real performance and risk Insight into how information failures produce predictable market outcomes that corporate governance frameworks routinely miss A framework for interpreting the structural forces – inequality, regulatory shift, political backlash against globalisation – now reshaping the operating environment for large organisations Familiarity with the alternative performance metrics emerging from the OECD and the international standards community, and how they apply to strategic decision-making A more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why – grounded in direct institutional experience at the World Bank and within the US government

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 Juan Verde Holds first-hand US trade policy experience across three administrations (Clinton, Obama, Biden), including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia with commercial responsibility for 52 countries. Operates fluently on both sides of the Atlantic, giving executives a practical read on how US and European policy environments shape the same investment decision differently. Frames sustainability as a commercial question, showing boards how climate strategy connects to capital access, pricing power, regulatory positioning, and export competitiveness. Brings live board-level context from HISPASAT and the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors, alongside advisory work with Google, Cisco, Banco Santander, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Currently serves on the President’s Export Council under President Biden, the White House advisory body whose members include the chief executives of Ford, Disney, Citibank, and Starbucks. Biography highlights Member of the President’s Export Council, the White House’s principal advisory committee on international trade and US competitiveness. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the US Department of Commerce, with commercial policy responsibility across 52 countries. Earlier international trade roles at the US Department of Commerce during the Clinton Administration. Founder and President of the Advanced Leadership Foundation, which has trained over 10,000 emerging green leaders across more than 10 countries. Board of Directors at HISPASAT, the satellite communications operator for Spain, Portugal, and Latin America; member of the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors. Master’s in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; BA in Political Science and International Relations, Boston University. Biography Trade policy used to move slowly enough that executives could treat it as weather. That no longer holds. Tariff regimes, export controls, and climate-linked regulation now reshape commercial plans in quarters, not decades, and the decisions are made in rooms Juan Verde has spent three decades working in. Appointed by President Obama in 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the US Department of Commerce, with commercial policy responsibility across 52 countries. Under the Clinton Administration he held earlier international trade roles at Commerce. In 2023 President Biden appointed him to the President’s Export Council, the White House’s principal advisory committee on trade competitiveness, alongside the chief executives of companies including Ford, Disney, Citibank, and Starbucks. The through-line in his commercial work is a specific argument about sustainability. He treats climate action as a commercial question, which is the organising idea of his Profit Meets Planet keynote series on corporate climate, geopolitical arbitrage, and leading through disruption. That thesis draws on co-founding Climate Reality Project chapters with Al Gore in Spain and Argentina, and on advisory engagements through Alamo Solutions with Google, Cisco, Banco Santander, and the Inter-American Development Bank. His doctoral research at Universidad Camilo José Cela, on green economy strategies for small island nations, gives the argument academic grounding. For senior leaders, this translates into a speaker who can move between a boardroom question about European market entry and a policy question about US trade posture without losing commercial specificity. He sits on the Board of Directors of HISPASAT, the satellite communications operator for Spain, Portugal and Latin America, and on the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors. His keynote platforms include the World Economic Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, the World Bank, and successive UN Climate Conferences, most recently COP25 and COP26. Key speaking topics International trade policy and market access Transatlantic economic relations Sustainability as commercial advantage Foreign direct investment and green export strategy Geopolitical risk for global businesses Public-private collaboration in international markets Ideal for Boards and CEOs planning international expansion or transatlantic market entry Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads connecting climate commitments to growth strategy Investment attraction agencies, trade bodies, and government ministers Corporate delegations at policy summits, sustainability events, and international conferences Audience outcomes How Washington and Brussels are reshaping what corporate sustainability commitments actually cost in commercial terms Why climate strategy should be treated as an export competitiveness question, with examples drawn from specific national markets Where the next flows of green foreign direct investment are likely to move, and what that means for growth planning Language that links trade policy shifts to board-level decisions on capital allocation and market entry

Why organisations work with K D Adamson She has named and framed the shift. Her concept of “nobleization” – the argument that the next phase of business is not globalisation but morally accountable, purpose-led value creation – gives leadership teams a precise, shareable thesis rather than a trend briefing. She challenges the techno-optimist default from a position of intellectual rigour. When AI, automation and digital transformation dominate the conversation, Adamson’s argument that tomorrow is a value problem, not a technology problem reframes the strategic question at board level. This is a harder case to make but her broadcast record on BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN and the Financial Times confirms it holds up under interrogation. Her “Seismotectonic” model gives leaders a practical foresight tool, not just a perspective. The three-movement framework of what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, what appears not to change at all is actionable in strategic planning contexts and transfers directly from a keynote into workshop and executive briefing formats. Her client base spans sectors where the future-of-value argument has immediate strategic urgency including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, and PwC, which gives her the commercial credibility to speak to mixed leadership audiences without being narrowed to a single industry vertical. Her ecocentrist positioning is analytically distinct. Placing ecological systems rather than human enterprise at the centre of value creation is not rhetorical positioning. It is the foundation of her ESG and circular economy arguments, and it produces conclusions that differ meaningfully from those of speakers whose sustainability work begins and ends with reporting frameworks. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO, Futurenautics Group; former Futurist, The Futures Agency Author of Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), the foundational foresight text on digital transformation in the shipping and maritime industry Broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, Financial Times, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, and BBC R4 Today Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts; stated member of Chatham House, The Aristotelian Society, the Society of Antiquaries, CERN Open Quantum Institute, and the International Society for the Circular Economy Global client roster includes Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, PwC, Deloitte, Capgemini, Rolls-Royce, Vodafone, Oracle, and Pfizer Biography The thesis K D Adamson has built over two decades is a direct challenge to the most widely held corporate assumption about the future: that it is, above all, a technology problem. In a landscape where most foresight is organised around what AI, automation, or quantum computing will do to a given industry, Adamson argues that what actually determines where organisations end up is what they believe about value, about purpose, and about who business is ultimately for. Her concept of “nobleization” names this argument precisely. Where globalisation provided the operating logic of the late twentieth century, Adamson contends that the defining shift of the current era is from a global business to a noble one, where ESG, the circular economy, and purpose-led strategy are not peripheral compliance exercises but the competitive architecture of the world arriving. The implication for leadership is significant: the strategic planning tools built for the previous era are no longer sufficient guides. Adamson founded and led Futurenautics Group, where her work on the digital transformation of the shipping and maritime industry made her the sector’s authoritative futurist – a standing substantiated by Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), which set the analytical agenda for how one of the world’s most conservative global industries understood its own disruption. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a regular broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, the Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, which means her frameworks are tested in real time against the hardest current questions, not only in controlled conference settings. Her “Seismotectonic” model of change, mapping three simultaneous rates of disruption: what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, and what appears not to change at all, gives senior teams a working tool for strategy under deep uncertainty. It is this combination of named intellectual frameworks, commercial range across clients including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, and CHANEL, and the ecocentrist perspective that places ecology rather than enterprise at the centre of value analysis, that separates Adamson from speakers covering adjacent territory. Key speaking topics Future of business value and sustainable transformation The limits of techno-optimism ESG as competitive strategy, not compliance Geopolitics and the end of globalisation AI: belief, systemic risk, and organisational response Leadership beyond control Strategic foresight and scenario planning Ideal for C-suite and board audiences navigating how to reframe business strategy as stakeholder expectations, geopolitical pressures, and ecological imperatives converge Chief Sustainability Officers and strategy leads responsible for translating ESG from reporting obligation into organisational design Global leadership conferences convening senior executives across multiple sectors and geographies, where a macro-systemic perspective is required rather than a sector-specific one Executive leadership teams of multinationals at significant inflection points – where the question is not only operational but concerns organisational identity and the long-term logic of value creation Audience outcomes A named conceptual framework, “nobleization”, for articulating why business strategy must move beyond profit primacy, framed as competitive logic rather than ideology Clarity on why the next wave of disruption is a value problem rather than a technology problem, and what that distinction means for strategic planning and capital allocation A working model for reading simultaneous, differently-paced change: the Seismotectonic framework, applicable in strategy sessions and scenario planning processes A more rigorous way to frame AI risk: focused on collective belief and systemic dependency rather than technical capability alone Greater confidence in articulating an alternative vision of organisational purpose to boards, investors, and internal leadership audiences

Why organisations work with Kailash Satyarthi He is the only living Nobel Peace Laureate whose work targets the exact intersection of supply chain, child labour, and corporate accountability that ESG committees now have to defend. He built GoodWeave, the first voluntary certification system that traced child labour out of the South Asian carpet industry, giving him operational experience of what works and what fails when companies try to clean a supplier base. His 1998 Global March seeded ILO Convention 182, the most ratified convention in the organisation’s history, which means he can speak to the policy frame that regulators and procurement teams now have to align with. Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the movement he founded in 1980, has freed more than 130,000 children in India, giving his arguments the weight of measurable on-the-ground results rather than advocacy alone. He raises the moral altitude of a leadership conversation in a way few speakers can, which is why boards bring him in when they want a corporate purpose programme to feel earned rather than performative. Biography highlights 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded jointly with Malala Yousafzai for the struggle against the suppression of children and the right of every child to education. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (1980), credited with freeing more than 130,000 children in India from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Founder of GoodWeave International (1994), the first independent certification system for child-labour-free carpets in South Asia. Architect of the 1998 Global March Against Child Labour across 103 countries, whose demands directly shaped ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate; recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (1995) and the Defenders of Democracy Award (2009). Author of Every Child Matters and Will for Children (Prabhat Prakashan); co-author with the Dalai Lama of The Book of Compassion. Biography In 1980, an electrical engineer in India walked away from his profession to free children locked inside brick kilns, carpet looms, and quarries. The organisation he founded that year, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has since liberated more than 130,000 children from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Kailash Satyarthi has spent forty-five years turning that work into a system. The system has three layers that matter to corporate audiences. The first is rescue and rehabilitation, run through a network of activists and shelters in India. The second is certification: in 1994 he founded GoodWeave, which built the first credible voluntary label proving that a carpet was made without child labour, an early prototype for the supply chain audit regimes that are now standard in apparel, cocoa, and electronics. The third is policy. The Global March he led in 1998 covered 103 countries and 80,000 kilometres, and its demands fed directly into ILO Convention 182, now the most ratified convention in ILO history. The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Malala Yousafzai, gave his argument a global platform. He uses it to press a single point at boards and policy bodies: child labour is not a problem of poor countries, it is a problem of global procurement, and any company with a multi-tier supplier base owns part of it. That framing is uncomfortable for executives who treat human rights as a CSR line item, which is exactly why it lands. His books, Every Child Matters and Will for Children with Prabhat Prakashan, and The Book of Compassion co-authored with the Dalai Lama, sit alongside his role as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate. The through-line is consistent: moral authority backed by operational evidence, applied to the supply chains and policy systems that decide whether a child works or goes to school. Key speaking topics Child labour in global supply chains Ethical sourcing and supplier certification Human rights and corporate accountability Education as an economic and rights agenda ESG, purpose, and moral leadership Civil society movements and policy change Ideal for Boards and ESG committees defining human-rights and supply-chain commitments Chief procurement officers and CSR leaders auditing supplier networks Investor groups and policy bodies setting standards on labour and human rights Purpose, values, and culture programmes for global organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where child labour actually lives inside multi-tier supplier networks, and what credible mitigation looks like. A working understanding of the certification, audit, and policy levers that have moved the needle, and where they have not. A direct account of how ILO Convention 182 came to exist, and what it now requires of buyers and regulators. The moral and strategic case for treating human rights as a board-level commitment rather than a reporting category.

Why organisations work with Karl Schmedders He brings a computational finance lens to ESG, climate risk, and carbon pricing, so net zero plans get tested as financial decisions, not as messaging. His public position on the “just transition” gives executive teams a defensible way to talk about the social and governance side of ESG, without retreating into either greenwashing or culture war. He directs IMD’s Strategic Finance program and has taught finance to senior executives at Kellogg and IMD for over two decades, which means complex valuation and risk arguments arrive in language a non-finance board can act on. His research record in journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies makes him a credible counterweight when consultants and asset managers are pitching the same story to the room. Board roles at LPX Group and SYLVA AG, plus advisory work with firms including ABB, Airbus, Maybank, and Julius Baer, mean the examples land in operating reality. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at IMD; Director of the Strategic Finance program. PhD in Operations Research, Stanford University; Walter J. Gores Award for teaching at Stanford. Former Associate Professor at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year, 2002. Former Professor of Quantitative Business Administration at the University of Zurich. Published in Econometrica, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science. Co-editor, Handbook of Computational Economics (Elsevier). Board member, LPX Group and SYLVA AG; Advisory Council member, Reward Value. Regular columnist on ESG and climate finance in I by IMD. Biography ESG has spent a decade as a marketing layer over corporate strategy. Karl Schmedders treats it as a finance problem. He starts from the externality, works through the price signal, and asks whether the company’s capital allocation reflects the climate position it has publicly committed to. That move, from narrative to numbers, is what most boards still find uncomfortable. His authority for that move comes from a long career in computational finance. After a PhD in Operations Research at Stanford, he taught at Kellogg School of Management for over a decade, where he was named L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year. He was Professor of Quantitative Business Administration at the University of Zurich before joining IMD in 2019, where he now directs the Strategic Finance program and teaches across the Executive MBA portfolio. His research has appeared in Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies. The applied work follows the same logic. As a board member of LPX Group and SYLVA AG, and an advisor to firms including ABB, Airbus, Maybank, and Julius Baer, he tests claims about climate strategy, executive pay, and financial risk against the underlying economics. His writing in I by IMD argues that carbon taxes are still too low to price the “mother of all externalities,” that climate financial risk is being understated on corporate balance sheets, and that companies are quietly admitting their net zero promises were unrealistic. He is also one of the few finance economists making a public, technical case for the “just transition.” His argument is that ignoring the social and governance side of ESG, the cost borne by lower income households and developing economies, is the fastest way for the political consensus on climate to collapse. For a board that is being told ESG is either everything or a fraud, that is a more useful framing than either. Key speaking topics Climate financial risk Carbon pricing and the economics of net zero ESG strategy and capital allocation Just transition and the social side of climate policy Strategic finance for non-finance executives Executive compensation and sustainability incentives Computational finance and quantitative decision making Sustainable investing and stranded assets Ideal for Boards and CFO offices stress testing climate commitments against capital allocation Investment committees, asset owners, and asset managers reviewing ESG and sustainable investing strategies CSOs and Heads of Sustainability who need a finance-grounded counterpart to the consulting view Executive education audiences in Strategic Finance, EMBA, and senior leadership programs Audience outcomes A clearer view of where their organisation’s net zero plan does and does not survive financial scrutiny. Concrete vocabulary for separating ESG substance from ESG narrative when investors and regulators ask. A working sense of how carbon pricing, stranded assets, and climate risk feed into corporate valuation. An economist’s case for the “just transition” that holds up in front of a sceptical board. Sharper questions to take into the next investment committee or strategy meeting.

Why organisations work with Kirsty Lang She has interviewed at the highest level for BBC Radio 4 Front Row, BBC World News and Channel 4 News, which means she can pressure-test a CEO, minister or artist on stage without losing the room. Her foreign-correspondent grounding, including covering the 1989 revolutions and the Balkans wars from Budapest for the BBC World Service, gives her real authority on geopolitics, conflict and Europe. She brings governance credibility from the inside of major institutions: Chair of Global Witness, Chair of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, and two full terms as a Trustee and Non-Executive Director of the British Council. She is fluent across two often-separated worlds, hard news and the arts, which makes her the right chair for philanthropy, soft power and cultural-diplomacy conversations that cross both. She has chaired and moderated for organisations including EY, IBM, the WHO, NICE, the Bosch Foundation and the British Medical Association, so the moderating brief is familiar territory rather than a stretch. Biography highlights Lead presenter, BBC Radio 4 Front Row, for 19 years (2003 to 2022). Host, BBC Radio 4 Round Britain Quiz, from 2022. Chair of the Board, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Chair of the Board, Global Witness, from January 2024. Trustee and Non-Executive Director, British Council, 2014 to 2020 (two full terms). Chair of judges, Orange Prize for Fiction, 2008. Visiting professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, 2012. Biography The Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. Kirsty Lang was the BBC World Service’s Central European correspondent in Budapest, reporting the revolutions across the region and, soon after, the wars in the former Yugoslavia. That decade of foreign reporting, including a stint as Paris correspondent for The Sunday Times, sits underneath everything she does on a stage today. She moved into anchor roles at Channel 4 News between 1998 and 2002, then returned to the BBC to launch BBC Four’s evening news. For 19 years, from 2003 to 2022, she was a lead presenter of Front Row on BBC Radio 4, the network’s flagship arts and culture programme, interviewing writers, artists, film-makers and policymakers nightly. Since 2022 she has hosted Round Britain Quiz on the same network. Her governance record gives her an unusual second register. She chairs the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, served two full terms as a Trustee and Non-Executive Director of the British Council between 2014 and 2020, and in January 2024 became Chair of the Global Witness Board, the international NGO investigating environmental and human rights abuses linked to natural-resource exploitation. That mix is what organisations book her for. She moves between hard news, the arts, and institutional governance with equal command, which is why she is asked to chair conferences for clients including EY, IBM, the World Health Organization, NICE, the British Medical Association and the Bosch Foundation. Key speaking topics International affairs and Europe Soft power and cultural relations Philanthropy and the third sector The arts and cultural policy Storytelling and narrative Conference moderation and panel chairing Media interview craft Ideal for Boards and senior leadership convenings on international affairs, soft power or cultural diplomacy. Foundations, NGOs and cultural institutions running flagship donor, trustee or stakeholder events. Multi-stakeholder conferences in healthcare, professional services and policy that need a chair who can hold expert panels to account. Awards ceremonies, literary festivals and high-profile interview formats with named guests. Audience outcomes A conference programme that surfaces the actual argument, because the chair has read the brief and can press the panel. On-stage interviews that reach the difficult questions without alienating the guest. Audience engagement sustained across long-form sessions through pace, follow-up and editorial judgement. Cross-disciplinary conversations, including geopolitics with culture, or policy with philanthropy, kept coherent for a senior audience.

Why organisations work with Kumi Naidoo He is the only person to have led both Greenpeace International and Amnesty International – giving him an institutional authority on climate accountability and human rights that no commentator or academic can match. His argument that climate justice and human rights are operationally inseparable – not just rhetorically linked – gives ESG and sustainability leaders a more defensible intellectual framework under stakeholder and regulatory scrutiny. He led Greenpeace’s shift from a single-issue environmental organisation toward a broader justice and equity platform, a strategic reorientation directly relevant to organisations navigating the social dimensions of net-zero transition. His current presidency of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative means he speaks from inside active diplomatic and civil society negotiations – not from the sidelines of the energy transition debate. His memoir Letters to My Mother (2022), which won the HSS 2023 Non-Fiction Award from South Africa’s National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, demonstrates a capacity to make complex moral and political arguments compelling to general audiences – a quality that translates directly to boardroom and conference settings. Biography highlights Rhodes Scholar; DPhil in Political Sociology, Magdalen College, University of Oxford First person from the Global South to lead Greenpeace International, serving as International Executive Director (2009-2015) Secretary-General, Amnesty International (2018-2019) Secretary-General and CEO, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation (1998-2008) President, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (appointed 2024) Professor of Practice, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University; Payne Distinguished Lecturer, Stanford University; Visiting Fellow and Honorary Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker (Jacana Media, 2022) – winner, HSS 2023 Non-Fiction Award, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Five honorary doctorates, including from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Adelaide Biography Kumi Naidoo has led Greenpeace International and Amnesty International, consecutively, and at their most consequential periods. That combination of institutional authority, across the two domains most directly challenging corporate environmental and human rights claims, is what makes him a different kind of voice in board and executive conversations on accountability. His argument is a structural one. Climate change is not an environmental problem with equity implications. It is a justice problem with environmental consequences – and the organisations most exposed are those that have separated their sustainability commitments from their human rights responsibilities. He made this case from inside two of the world’s largest civil society institutions before it became the language of regulators and investors. The trajectory behind that argument runs from anti-apartheid organising in Durban at age fifteen, through a Rhodes Scholarship and doctorate in political sociology at Oxford’s Magdalen College, to a decade building civil society infrastructure at CIVICUS across more than a hundred countries. Each stage added a different kind of institutional credibility – as a practitioner of civil disobedience, as a builder of global coalitions, and as a senior executive managing large, politically exposed organisations in contested environments. Today, as President of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative – a live diplomatic campaign to create binding international commitments on fossil fuel phase-out – Naidoo brings organisations not a retrospective perspective but an active one. His work sits at the point where corporate strategy, geopolitical risk, and civil society pressure intersect. His memoir Letters to My Mother (2022), winner of the HSS Non-Fiction Award, adds a further dimension: the capacity to communicate urgent, uncomfortable arguments with clarity and human force. Key speaking topics Climate justice and the geopolitics of energy transition Human rights accountability in corporate strategy ESG beyond compliance – from commitment to consequence Civil society, civic space, and the future of advocacy Ethical leadership under political and institutional pressure The Global South and the terms of a just transition Activism, storytelling, and the power of “artivism.” Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG leads, and boards navigating net-zero commitments under stakeholder scrutiny Senior executives in energy, extractives, finance, and supply chains are facing civil society and regulatory pressure CHROs and governance leaders working at the intersection of human rights due diligence and business operations Conferences focused on responsible business, global risk, or the political economy of climate transition Audience outcomes A clearer framework for understanding why climate and human rights accountability are operationally connected, not just rhetorically linked Concrete perspective on how civil society assesses and challenges corporate climate commitments – from someone who has led those challenges at the highest level Greater awareness of how the energy transition is being experienced and contested in the Global South, and what that means for organisations with global exposure A more grounded understanding of what “accountability” means when it moves from annual reports into legal, diplomatic, and activist arenas Insight into how to communicate complex moral and political arguments in ways that move people to action – drawing on Naidoo’s experience leading large institutions through contested public debates

Why organisations work with Kunle Barker He runs a construction firm. Illustrious Homes has delivered thousands of residential refurbishments, school refits, and sports-centre projects since 2004, so his views on retrofit and net zero are grounded in what is actually buildable. He sits inside the policy conversation. He has advised the House of Lords and the Church of England on housing strategy and is the lead masterplan consultant on the Brent Cross Town regeneration scheme. He is a recognised voice on UK net zero in the built environment. He was the first Unlock Net Zero Ambassador and a CIOB Client Champion, with a regular column in the Architects’ Journal and frequent commentary on Sky News and Times Radio. He works comfortably at the front of a stage. Presenter and curator credits at Grand Designs Live with Kevin McCloud, plus Channel 4 and ITV property shows, mean he can host, moderate, and translate technical content for non-technical audiences. Biography highlights Founder of Illustrious Homes (2004), a construction and design management firm specialising in residential refurbishment, education and sports facility projects. Lead Masterplan Consultant on Brent Cross Town, the multi-billion-pound regeneration scheme led by Related Argent. 2022 inaugural Unlock Net Zero Ambassador; 2023 Unlock Net Zero Ambassador for Inside Housing. CIOB Client Champion for the Chartered Institute of Building. Broadcasting credits include ITV’s “Save Money: My Beautiful Green Home” and “Love Your Home & Garden” with Alan Titchmarsh, “Renovate Don’t Relocate” with Sarah Beeny, “Project Home” (Channel 4, 2023) with Nick Grimshaw, and presenter/curator at Grand Designs Live with Kevin McCloud. Regular columnist for the Architects’ Journal and Grand Designs Magazine; property commentator for Sky News and Times Radio. Biography UK housing accounts for roughly a fifth of national carbon emissions, and the country has more than 28 million existing homes. The retrofit problem is not abstract; it is a question of which walls, which boilers, which planning rules, and which budgets, on which streets. Kunle Barker has spent two decades inside that problem. He founded Illustrious Homes in 2004 and has since delivered thousands of residential refurbishments alongside school and sports-centre projects. That operating base gives his commentary on net zero, retrofit, and sustainable construction something most built-environment speakers lack: a working site to test the argument against. The advisory work followed. He has briefed the House of Lords and the Church of England on housing policy, sits on a round table on UK future housing strategy, and is the lead masterplan consultant on Brent Cross Town, the Related Argent regeneration scheme. He is the inaugural Unlock Net Zero Ambassador and a CIOB Client Champion, and writes regularly for the Architects’ Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. The broadcasting work is where most audiences first meet him. He has co-presented with Alan Titchmarsh and Sarah Beeny on ITV, fronted “Project Home” on Channel 4 with Nick Grimshaw, and presents at Grand Designs Live alongside Kevin McCloud. The reason that matters here, beyond profile, is that he can take a board-level argument about decarbonising housing stock and make it land with a non-specialist room without losing the technical substance. Key speaking topics Sustainable building and retrofit Net zero in the built environment UK housing policy and the housing crisis Urban regeneration and placemaking Future of housing and home design Construction industry transformation Ideal for Property, construction, and real-estate boards setting retrofit and net zero strategy Housing associations, developers, and local authority leadership teams working on regeneration or decarbonisation programmes ESG, sustainability, and building-products organisations needing a credible external voice on UK housing Conference and awards organisers who need a host or moderator who can carry technical built-environment content Audience outcomes A clearer sense of where UK net zero ambition collides with the reality of building, retrofitting, and financing housing. A practitioner’s view of which sustainable building practices actually scale on real projects and which stall. Familiarity with the policy and regeneration conversations shaping the next decade of UK housing. A confident framing of how organisations in property, construction, and adjacent sectors should talk about climate action with customers, residents, and regulators.

Why organisations work with Lars P Feld He helped design the constitutional framework leaders are now operating under. As an expert to Federalism Commission II in 2007, he contributed directly to the architecture of Germany’s debt brake, and his subsequent empirical work is the standard reference on its effects. He sat at the centre of German economic policymaking for a decade. Ten years on the German Council of Economic Experts, ending as chairman, and then three years as personal advisor to Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, give him a working knowledge of how German fiscal decisions actually get made. He brings ordoliberal economics to questions where most macro commentary is purely Keynesian or markets-driven. His co-authored work on ordoliberalism and the eurozone crisis is the reference text for understanding why Berlin negotiates the way it does. His authority is institutional, not media-built. Gustav-Stolper-Prize, Leopoldina membership, Kronberger Kreis, an honorary doctorate from Lucerne and the Friedrich-List-Medal place him in a small group of economists whose published positions move German policy debate. Biography highlights Chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Economics, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, since 2010. President of the Walter Eucken Institute, Freiburg. Member of the German Council of Economic Experts, 2011 to 2021, and chairman in 2020 to 2021. Personal economic policy advisor to Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, February 2022 to November 2024. Scientific Advisory Board, Federal Ministry of Finance, since 2003; Minimum Wage Commission member since 2020. Gustav-Stolper-Prize (2021); honorary doctorate, University of Lucerne (2017); Friedrich-List-Medal (2023); member of Leopoldina, Kronberger Kreis and Mont Pelerin Society. Biography Germany rewrote its constitution in 2009 to limit federal borrowing. Feld was one of the academic experts who fed that reform, sitting on Federalism Commission II and arguing the case for a binding fiscal rule. His later empirical work, including a synthetic-control evaluation co-authored with researchers at the Walter Eucken Institute, is now the reference analysis of what the debt brake actually did to German public finances in the decade that followed. That mix of constitutional design and quantitative evaluation runs through his career. From the Chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Economics in Freiburg, and as President of the Walter Eucken Institute, he works inside the ordoliberal tradition that has shaped how Berlin negotiates inside the eurozone. His co-authored paper on ordoliberalism, pragmatism and the eurozone crisis is one of the more cited explanations of why German positions on Greek debt, Italian deficits and ECB intervention took the shape they did. He has spent a decade in the centre of German policymaking. Ten years on the German Council of Economic Experts, ending as chairman in 2020 to 2021, gave him a direct hand in the Council’s annual reports to the federal government. From February 2022 to November 2024, he served as personal economic policy advisor to Finance Minister Christian Lindner, a role that sits at the intersection of the ministry, the coalition and the Bundesbank. The institutional recognition has followed. The Gustav-Stolper-Prize in 2021, regarded inside the Verein fuer Socialpolitik as the most prestigious German economics award, sits alongside Leopoldina membership, the Kronberger Kreis, the Friedrich-List-Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne. For a boardroom audience trying to understand where German and European fiscal policy is going, he is one of the small number of economists whose published positions still move the debate. Key speaking topics The German debt brake and European fiscal rules Sovereign debt sustainability in the eurozone Ordoliberalism and German economic policy Macroeconomic outlook for Germany and the EU Public finance and federalism Minimum wage policy and labour market regulation The political economy of EU reform Ideal for CFOs, group treasurers and chief economists making capital allocation decisions exposed to eurozone sovereign risk. Bank and asset manager boards with material German or EU government bond exposure. CEOs and strategy leads of industrial groups whose investment cases turn on German fiscal trajectory and energy and infrastructure spending. Policy and government relations leads tracking the German coalition, the EU Stability and Growth Pact, and ECB policy. Audience outcomes A clear read on where the German debt brake debate is heading and what changes are politically feasible. A working model of how Berlin will negotiate inside the EU on fiscal rules, common debt and ECB policy. A sharper view of which sovereign and quasi-sovereign exposures are most sensitive to the next phase of European fiscal reform. An informed account of the ordoliberal tradition behind German policy positions, useful for anyone modelling counterparty or political risk in the eurozone.