Imprenditorialità

Why organisations work with Ben Keene Twenty years of founding and running purpose-led ventures, from a crowdfunded Fijian island community to a climate startup platform, gives him a practitioner’s view of what actually holds communities together under pressure. A repeatable community-building method, the “5 R’s”, field-tested inside Rebel Book Club across 10 cities and 5,000 members, and translated for corporate audiences. Author of “Tribe Wanted” (Ebury Press, 2008), the book behind the BBC2 series, which gives his community thesis a public, documented origin story that most speakers in this space do not have. Equally comfortable hosting, facilitating, and running workshops, which means the same brief can be delivered as a keynote, a leadership offsite session, or a multi-day internal accelerator. Active founder work in climate and AI through Raaise and Good with AI, so his material on sustainability communication and responsible AI comes from current operating experience, not commentary. Biography highlights Founder, Tribewanted (2006-2016); built a crowdfunded sustainable-tourism community on Vorovoro, Fiji, later extended to Sierra Leone and Umbria. Author, “Tribe Wanted: My Adventure on Paradise or Bust”, Ebury Press, 2008. Subject of a five-part BBC2 series on the Fiji project, broadcast winter 2008. Co-founder, Rebel Book Club, a paid non-fiction reading community operating across 10 cities. Former lead of The Escape School at Escape the City; business advisor and mentor at Virgin StartUp. Founder of Raaise (climate startup fundraising platform) and Good with AI (AI education cohorts). Biography Building a physical community on a remote Fijian island with strangers recruited online is not a business-school case study. It is what Ben Keene did in 2006 when he co-founded Tribewanted, and the project ran for a decade across Fiji, Sierra Leone, and Umbria. It produced a BBC2 series, a book with Ebury Press, and several million dollars of investment into the regions it touched. The interesting part, for organisations, is what he took from it. Communities with paying members do not behave like audiences or customers. They need rhythm, roles, and a reason to return. Keene has spent the years since codifying how that works, most visibly in Rebel Book Club, the non-fiction reading community he co-founded in 2015 and grew to around 5,000 members in 10 cities. He applies the same lens to the commercial problems leaders actually bring him: why sustainability messaging lands with colleagues but not customers, why purpose programmes fade after the launch moment, why AI adoption stalls when it is framed as a tool rather than a practice. His current work through Raaise and Good with AI keeps him inside those problems as a founder, not a commentator. The through-line is specific. He is a founder who has repeatedly built communities that people pay to belong to, and he has turned the method into something organisations can use. Key speaking topics Community building inside organisations Purpose-driven business and impact entrepreneurship Sustainability communication and consumer behaviour Responsible AI and practical adoption Employee engagement through shared rituals and rhythm Founder lessons from climate and impact ventures Ideal for CHROs and internal communications leads designing engagement, belonging, or community programmes. Sustainability and ESG leads who need to translate strategy into language that customers and employees act on. Founders, innovation teams, and corporate venture units looking for a practitioner view of how purpose-led businesses scale. Learning and development leads building cohort-based programmes on AI, climate, or entrepreneurial mindset. Audience outcomes A clear method for building an internal or customer community, drawn from the “5 R’s” framework he has tested at scale. Honest distinctions between communities, audiences, and networks, and what each actually requires from the organisation. Concrete examples of where sustainability messaging fails with consumers and what reframing it around customer value looks like. A founder’s view of responsible AI adoption inside teams, grounded in his current cohort work rather than abstract policy. Renewed conviction that purpose and commercial outcomes reinforce each other when the community layer is built deliberately.

Why organisations work with Bernardo Hernandez Operator credibility on both sides of the Atlantic: a senior Google product role through the Zagat acquisition, then running Flickr at Yahoo, then founding and selling Verse to Block. Few European speakers have lived that arc. Investor pattern recognition across a portfolio that includes Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe. He talks about scaling consumer tech from inside the cap table, not from the outside. A working view of what AI is doing to product organisations through Pensero AI, his current company, which applies AI to engineering performance and management. Direct experience of the moves that matter to corporates: M&A integration at Google, platform repositioning at Yahoo and fintech exit to a US strategic acquirer. Biography highlights Co-founder of Idealista, Spain’s leading real estate platform. Director of Product Management at Google, 2005 to 2013; led the Zagat acquisition and team. Head of Flickr and Senior Vice President of Product at Yahoo, 2013 to 2015. Founder and CEO of Verse, the European payments app acquired by Block (Square) in 2020. Co-founder and Co-CEO of Pensero AI in New York. Board of Directors, Mapfre USA; trustee, Fundacion Princesa de Girona; jury member, Princess of Asturias Awards for Science and Technology. Recipient of Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award (2023, Ministry of Science). Biography Idealista was a small Madrid property site when Bernardo Hernandez co-founded it in 2000. Today it is the dominant real estate platform in southern Europe. That first venture set the template for a career spent building consumer internet businesses, then teaching incumbents how to think about the same problem. After five years as a portfolio manager at Fidelity, BBVA and Putnam, he joined Google in 2005 as Director of Product Management. He spent eight years inside the company, including leading the Zagat acquisition and integration. He then ran Flickr at Yahoo as Senior Vice President of Product before founding Verse, the European payments app that Block acquired in 2020. The operator track is matched by an investor track. He has backed Wallapop, Glovo, Fever, Paack, Citibox and Stripe, among others, and was an early investor in Tuenti before its sale to Telefonica. He sits on the board of Mapfre USA and is a trustee of the Fundacion Princesa de Girona under the Spanish Royal House. In 2023 he received Spain’s National Innovation and Design Award from the Ministry of Science. His current company, Pensero AI, applies AI to engineering management, giving him a live operating view of what generative AI is doing to product organisations rather than a theorist’s view. For corporate audiences this matters: he is currently building inside the technology shift he is invited to speak about. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the scale-up playbook Digital business models and platform economics Consumer fintech and mobile payments AI in product and engineering organisations Corporate venturing, M&A and integration Innovation portfolios and angel investing Building between Europe and the United States Ideal for CEOs and board directors weighing build, buy or back decisions on new digital businesses. Chief Strategy, Chief Innovation and Corporate Development leaders running venture and M&A activity. Banks, insurers and retailers facing fintech and platform challengers. Leadership groups at European corporates with US ambitions, or US groups expanding into Europe. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of how founders make speed and capital decisions that corporate processes typically slow down. A working framework for evaluating new business models against existing P&L economics. Concrete reference points from Idealista, Google, Flickr, Verse and the current Pensero AI build. A sharper read on where AI is creating leverage inside product and engineering teams right now.

Why organisations work with Bill Tolany He has run brand and marketing inside a category-defining grocer and operations inside Amazon’s ultra-fast delivery business, so he can talk about customer experience as both a marketing problem and a logistics problem. As Senior Director of Marketing at Whole Foods Market, he launched the integrated marketing team and grew alternative commerce sales by hundreds of millions of dollars; a specific commercial result, not a theme. His Amazon Prime Now experience as Regional General Manager gives him direct exposure to the operating model that consumer brands are now being benchmarked against. As Turnaround CEO of Greenling, he has carried the cost discipline and unit economics of a venture-stage e-commerce business, not just commentary on it. He moves easily between corporate transformation conversations and start-up advisory work, useful for buyers whose internal teams need to understand both worlds. Biography highlights Senior Director of Marketing, Whole Foods Market; founding leader of its integrated media team. Regional General Manager, Amazon Prime Now, during its launch and expansion phase. Turnaround CEO, Greenling, Inc., a mission-driven local food e-commerce business. Board Director, The Very Good Food Company Inc. and Caboo Paper Products. Advisor to multiple consumer and technology start-ups. US patent holder. Biography Whole Foods Market and Amazon were two of the most studied consumer businesses of the last decade. Bill Tolany held senior roles at both before they merged, which is unusual for any operator working in modern retail. At Whole Foods Market he served as Senior Director of Marketing and founding leader of the integrated media team. The brief covered brand, social and mobile; the result, according to the company’s own later disclosures, was the launch of an integrated marketing function and growth of alternative commerce sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. His public commentary on Whole Foods’ social strategy, where roughly 85% of corporate tweets were customer responses, became a reference point for retailers thinking about brand as service. He later ran Greenling, Inc. as Turnaround CEO, taking on the unit economics of a mission-driven local food platform. Amazon then recruited him as Regional General Manager for Prime Now, the ultra-fast local delivery business that pushed Amazon into the consumer experience grocers had previously owned. That role gave him direct exposure to how marketing, logistics and store operations have to be re-wired when a customer expects a one-hour window. He sits on the board of Caboo Paper Products, a sustainable bamboo paper products brand, and previously served on the board of The Very Good Food Company Inc., a plant-based food business. He also advises growth-stage companies in media, technology, and e-commerce. The throughline is practical: how a consumer brand sustains a relationship with its customer when the delivery model, the marketing channel and the competitor set all change at once. Key speaking topics Customer experience in modern retail Marketing and commerce integration Digital transformation in grocery and food E-commerce operating models Brand building through service and social Start-up and corporate innovation Plant-based and mission-driven consumer businesses Ideal for CMOs and customer experience leaders in retail, grocery and consumer brands Heads of digital, e-commerce and omnichannel inside consumer businesses Leadership teams at food, beverage and mission-driven consumer companies Corporate innovation and venture teams working with consumer start-ups Audience outcomes A clearer view of how marketing, operations and logistics combine to produce customer experience in modern retail. Specific reference points from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Prime Now on how brand and commerce can be run as one system. Sharper questions to ask about the unit economics of e-commerce and ultra-fast delivery models. Perspective on how legacy consumer brands can work with and learn from start-up operators.

Why organisations work with Billie Whitehouse She has shipped real wearable products at consumer scale, including the Nadi X haptic yoga pant and the Fan Jersey shown around Super Bowl 50, not concept renders or research prototypes. She runs a category-defining company on both sides of the Pacific. Wearable X has been one of the longest-surviving independent smart-apparel businesses in the market, giving her a working view of what the category can and cannot support commercially. She brings a fashion designer’s instinct to a hardware conversation. Her starting question is not what the sensor can do, but what the wearer will accept on their body, which reframes most internal innovation debates about wearables. She has been recognised by Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business and Business Insider’s 30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech, giving her credibility in both the technology and the design communities that organisations are trying to bridge. Biography highlights Founder, CEO and Creative Director of Wearable X, headquartered in New York with operations in Sydney. Creator of Nadi X, smart yoga apparel with embedded accelerometers and haptic feedback for posture correction. Designed the Fan Jersey haptic fan-engagement garment associated with Super Bowl 50, and the Foxtel Alert Shirt. Named to Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and Business Insider’s 30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech. Exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Limits of Humanity exhibition at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris (2021). Keynote speaker at The New Yorker TechFest, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Cannes Lions, Wired Retail UK and Wearable Technologies Conference. Biography Wearable computing has spent a decade trapped in the wrist. The watch became the default form factor because it was the easiest place to put a screen, not because it was the most useful place to put a sensor. Wearable X was built on the opposite premise: the garment itself is the device, and the body is where the interface actually lives. That premise has produced shipped products. Nadi X yoga apparel uses accelerometers and haptic modules sewn into the fabric to nudge the hip, knee and ankle into alignment during practice, with no phone in the user’s eyeline. The Fan Jersey, shown around Super Bowl 50, translated live game data into physical sensation on the wearer’s torso. Both products started from the wearer’s experience and worked backwards into the engineering, an order of operations that most hardware companies do not follow. The professional grounding behind that approach is design, not computer science. Whitehouse trained at the Whitehouse Institute of Design in Australia and studied Fashion as Art at Accademia Italiana in Florence before founding Wearable Experiments in 2013, later renamed Wearable X. She has been named to Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and Business Insider’s 30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech, and her work has been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. For leadership teams thinking about what comes after the smartphone, the most useful thing she brings is a working answer to a specific question: what does it take to make a piece of technology that a person will actually put on their body every day. That answer involves apparel, hardware, software and behavioural design at the same time, and very few operators have shipped against all four constraints at once. Key speaking topics Wearable technology and smart apparel Haptic feedback and ambient computing Fashion technology and consumer hardware Design-led product development Women founders in deep tech The future of human computer interaction Ideal for Chief product officers, CTOs and innovation leads at consumer goods, apparel, sportswear and consumer electronics businesses Corporate innovation and R&D teams exploring wearable, haptic or sensor-based product categories Investors and accelerator audiences focused on hardware, fashion-tech or female-founded deep-tech ventures Senior creative and design leadership inside organisations bringing physical and digital products closer together Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where wearable technology has stalled and where it is genuinely advancing beyond the wrist A working framework for thinking about the garment, not the device, as the next product surface A founder’s honest view of what it takes to commercialise hardware that crosses fashion and technology A more concrete sense of where haptics, sensors and ambient computing are likely to land inside the next consumer cycle

Why organisations work with Bjarke Ingels His “hedonistic sustainability” concept – coined in a 2011 TED talk with over two million views – gives leadership teams a credible, named argument against the assumption that environmental ambition and commercial performance are in tension. The Yes Is More manifesto argues against the choice between bold vision and practical delivery; it is taught beyond architecture because the logic is genuinely transferable to any organisation navigating competing strategic demands. BIG’s project portfolio – CopenHill’s waste-to-energy plant with a public ski slope, the BIG U flood-defence park in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore campus co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick – gives executive audiences proof that resolving sustainability and desirability through design produces outcomes superior to either goal pursued alone. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, TED, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street, meaning his frameworks have already been stress-tested in front of heads of government, technology leaders, and senior executives. Teaching at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice runs alongside leading a 400-person practice with major projects on four continents – his arguments carry the authority of both the seminar room and the construction site. Biography highlights Founder and creative partner of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), established 2006; offices in New York, London, and Copenhagen; team of 400+ Originator of “hedonistic sustainability,” introduced in a 2011 TED talk now viewed over two million times Author of Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2009) and HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation Named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (2016); WSJ Innovator of the Year in Architecture; Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business Awards include the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2004), ULI Award for Excellence (2009), Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize (2011); Honorary Fellow of the AIA (2020) and RIBA (2015) Featured as opening subject of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design; speaker at TED, the World Economic Forum, WIRED, and 10 Downing Street Has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice Universities; honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen Biography CopenHill is a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen that doubles as a public ski slope, climbing wall, and rooftop hiking trail. It is not a compromise between environmental performance and civic amenity. It is Bjarke Ingels’ most cited demonstration of what he calls “hedonistic sustainability” – the argument that reducing environmental impact and improving how people experience their city are the same design challenge. In his 2011 TED talk, now viewed over two million times, Ingels introduced the concept and set out the logic. His manifesto Yes Is More pushed the argument further, proposing “pragmatic utopianism” as a design principle: the deliberate rejection of the choice between visionary ambition and commercial delivery. The book was written for architects. It is now taught in business and strategy contexts because the core argument is transferable. Ingels founded BIG in Copenhagen in 2006, following earlier work at OMA under Rem Koolhaas and the co-founding of PLOT with Julien De Smedt. The firm now operates from New York, London, and Copenhagen with more than 400 staff. Its projects range from the BIG U – Manhattan’s Hurricane Sandy flood-defence infrastructure, redesigned as a continuous public park – to Google’s North Bayshore campus, co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick, where workplace performance and environmental targets were treated as a single design brief. TIME Magazine named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People in 2016. He holds the WSJ Innovator of the Year award, Honorary Fellowships from the AIA and RIBA, and has spoken at the World Economic Forum and 10 Downing Street. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice. Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design featured him as its opening subject. His discipline is architecture; his primary value to organisations is a framework for dissolving the trade-off between ambition and pragmatism. Key speaking topics Hedonistic sustainability and design-led climate action Pragmatic utopianism and innovation strategy Urban resilience and large-scale infrastructure design Architecture’s role in organisational and civic identity Creative leadership at scale The built environment and corporate space strategy Design thinking across disciplines Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams at real estate, infrastructure, and large-scale development organisations Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads seeking to reframe sustainability as a source of commercial advantage rather than compliance cost Corporate boards and transformation leads examining how built environment decisions affect organisational culture, talent, and long-term asset value Civic leaders and urban planners making large-scale public investment decisions Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework – “hedonistic sustainability” – for challenging the trade-off assumption in ESG, design, and innovation strategy conversations Concrete examples, drawn from BIG’s global project portfolio, of how resolving competing constraints through design produces outcomes that neither goal alone would generate A reframe of what “innovation” means in large-scale, long-horizon project environments where short-term pragmatism typically wins Greater confidence in presenting design ambition as a strategic argument rather than an aesthetic or cost preference Practical insight into building and leading a high-velocity creative organisation across multiple geographies and project scales

Why organisations work with Blake Mycoskie He built a consumer brand that sold 50% to Bain Capital at a $625 million valuation in 2014. When he talks about purpose-led growth, he is talking from the operator seat. His 2016 Harvard Business Review piece, “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission,” is one of the few founder accounts of what breaks when purpose meets scale and how to rebuild a mission after its original story stops working. TOMS famously ran on almost no traditional advertising, relying on customers as marketers and the Argentina origin story as the brand’s centre of gravity. For CMOs and brand leaders working on authentic purpose positioning, that is a working case from the person who ran the experiment. He speaks openly about the founder arc after the exit: loss of purpose and the long work of rebuilding. For senior leadership audiences where executive mental health has moved from taboo to agenda item, he is genuinely useful. He is currently building ENOUGH, a nonprofit-owned mental health brand launched in 2026, alongside his $100 million psychedelic research philanthropy anchored at Johns Hopkins. His material stays live. Biography highlights Founder of TOMS Shoes; creator of the One for One business model Sold 50% of TOMS to Bain Capital in 2014 at a reported $625 million valuation Author of the New York Times bestseller “Start Something That Matters” (Spiegel & Grau, 2011) Harvard Business Review contributor: “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission” (January/February 2016 issue) Recipient of the Secretary of State’s 2009 Award of Corporate Excellence from Hillary Clinton; invited by Richard Branson to join The B Team alongside Paul Polman and Muhammad Yunus Anchor donor to the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research; founder of ENOUGH (2026), a nonprofit-owned consumer brand supporting NAMI, Active Minds and other mental health partners Biography TOMS was one of the first consumer brands to make giving the centre of its commercial engine. For every pair of shoes sold, a pair was given away. The model scaled globally on the back of customer advocacy and almost no advertising spend, and TOMS gave more than 100 million pairs over its first decade. Blake Mycoskie built that company from a trip to Argentina in 2006. By 2014, Bain Capital had bought 50% of it at a $625 million valuation. What started as one founder’s shoe business had become a reference case for purpose-driven commerce, studied at Harvard Business School and written up across the business press. He has since been unusually open about what broke. In the January/February 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review, he wrote “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission.” It remains among the most candid founder accounts of what happens when a purpose-led business scales past its origin story. Operations become routine and the brand loses touch with its why. The whole thing has to be rebuilt from the inside, which is not a familiar subject for founders at that scale to publish on. The arc has pushed further since. After leaving TOMS in 2019, Mycoskie went through a serious depression, which he now discusses openly, and has pivoted his philanthropy and new ventures toward mental health. He is an anchor donor to the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and a member of Richard Branson’s B Team. His newest venture is ENOUGH, a 2026 nonprofit-owned consumer brand that directs 100% of profit to mental health partners including NAMI and Active Minds. For audiences working on purpose-led brand building, or on the long arc of founder leadership, he offers what most case studies stop before: what happens after the exit. Key speaking topics Social entrepreneurship and purpose-driven business One for One and buy-one-give-one business models Conscious capitalism and stakeholder value Purpose-led brand building and customer advocacy Founder journeys from startup to exit and beyond Mental health for senior leaders Catalytic philanthropy and mission investing Ideal for C-suite and founder audiences in consumer and brand-led B2C businesses thinking about purpose as commercial strategy CMO and brand leadership teams working on authentic purpose positioning and customer advocacy Business schools, executive education programmes, and founder/CEO cohorts working on venture creation and scale Leadership offsites where executive mental health and founder identity are on the agenda Audience outcomes An inside view of how One for One worked commercially: the role of customer advocacy in place of advertising spend, and the mechanics of scaling a purpose-led consumer brand An honest assessment of where the model hit its limits, including what Mycoskie published in Harvard Business Review about rebuilding TOMS’ mission after the original story lost its energy Language for talking about executive mental health and founder identity, drawn from a CEO who has put both on record publicly A reference case for putting giving at the commercial core of a consumer brand, from someone who built the category-defining example

Why organisations work with Bob Geldof He is one of the few people who has operated on both sides of the Africa debate: as a member of the policy commission whose recommendations shaped the G8 Gleneagles debt and aid package, and as the chairman of a private equity firm that has deployed capital into African agriculture, banking, and consumer goods. That combination is structurally un-replicable. His central argument – that aid and debt relief are necessary but insufficient, and that private investment in African businesses is what creates durable economic capacity – gives boards a concrete and politically coherent rationale for commercial engagement in the continent. Having designed the advocacy campaign that produced the G8 Gleneagles commitments, he offers a working understanding of how coordinated pressure on governments actually functions: useful for any organisation navigating policy engagement, coalition-building, or multi-stakeholder strategy. He engages honestly with the failures of the development consensus – the limits of aid, the contradictions of development finance, the gap between commitments and delivery – which produces more analytically useful content for a board audience than a promotional narrative of Africa’s rise. Biography highlights Co-founder of Band Aid (1984) and co-organiser of Live Aid (1985), which raised over $200 million for famine relief in Ethiopia Member of Blair’s Commission for Africa (2004–2005), whose recommendations on aid, debt cancellation, and trade reform became the basis of the G8 Gleneagles Africa package Chairman of 8 Miles, a private equity firm investing exclusively in Africa, with portfolio companies across agriculture, food processing, financial services, and consumer goods Former member of the Africa Progress Panel, which advocates at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa Adviser to the ONE Campaign, the global advocacy organisation co-founded by Bono Awarded an honorary KBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986; recipient of the Man of Peace award at the Nobel Peace Summit (2005), presented by Mikhail Gorbachev Author of the bestselling autobiography Is That It? (1986); subject of BBC documentary series Geldof in Africa Biography Band Aid, Live Aid, and Live 8 are the titles on the record. The less-visible work spans Blair’s Commission for Africa, the ONE Campaign, and the chairmanship of 8 Miles – the private equity firm that has deployed capital in African agriculture, banking, and consumer goods. Bob Geldof’s engagement with Africa has always operated on two tracks: advocacy and investment. The Commission for Africa (2004–2005) brought together seventeen commissioners – the majority active African political leaders – to examine the continent’s governance, debt, and trade architecture. Its recommendations became the blueprint for the G8 Gleneagles package on African aid and debt. Live 8, timed to precede the summit by days, was the pressure mechanism. This was sequenced campaign design, not a celebrity gesture. Geldof’s argument has remained consistent: aid and debt relief are necessary, but they are structurally insufficient. Private investment – particularly in agriculture, food processing, and consumer goods – is what builds economic capacity that lasts. 8 Miles was the practical expression of that argument: a fund investing exclusively in African businesses, from an Ethiopian winery to a Ugandan bank, in sectors that build domestic economic structures rather than extract natural resources. For boards navigating Africa – as a commercial geography, a policy context, or an ESG commitment – his perspective is useful because it has absorbed forty years of engagement, including the failures. He is not promoting a destination. He is explaining how the system works. Key speaking topics Africa’s political economy and investment landscape Sovereign debt, trade rules, and development finance Private equity and emerging market investment Large-scale advocacy and coalition-building G8 and multilateral policy architecture The intersection of political risk and commercial strategy Purpose and global accountability in business Ideal for Boards and C-suite leaders of multinationals with operations, investment interests, or ESG commitments in African markets Senior executives leading responsible investment, ESG strategy, or impact investing programmes Government affairs, public policy, and external affairs leaders navigating geopolitical complexity Conferences focused on global development, emerging markets, or the commercial case for sustainable investment Audience outcomes A clearer framework for integrating political risk, development economics, and ESG considerations into Africa-related commercial decisions First-hand insight into how the G8 Gleneagles Africa commitments were designed – and what the gap between political promise and delivery looks like in practice An honest account of where aid, debt relief, and private capital each have structural limits, and where they are complementary Greater confidence in distinguishing commercial opportunity from humanitarian obligation when assessing Africa as a business or investment geography A working understanding of how coordinated advocacy campaigns are designed to move governments – applicable beyond the African context to any multi-stakeholder policy challenge

Why organisations work with Brenda Romero Forty-plus years inside a creative industry as designer, studio CEO and educator, with credits on roughly 49 shipped titles including the Wizardry series, Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon and Empire of Sin. A working perspective on running an independent creative business: she co-founded Romero Games in Galway in 2015 and has built it through publisher deals, original IP and the realities of indie studio economics. An unusual record on the question of how design carries meaning. Her Train (2009) and the broader The Mechanic is the Message series are studied in academic literature as examples of game mechanics used to communicate difficult historical material. Formal industry recognition that buyers can reference without explanation: BAFTA Special Award (2017), GDC Ambassador Award (2015), Fulbright Scholar (2014). An educator’s clarity. As Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick (2016 to 2019) she taught the craft to a graduate cohort, and co-authored Challenges for Game Designers with Ian Schreiber, a standard text in the field. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Romero Games Ltd, Galway, Ireland (2015 to present). BAFTA Special Award, 2017, for creative contribution to the games industry. Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award, 2015. Fulbright Scholar, 2014. Director, MSc in Game Design and Development, University of Limerick, 2016 to 2019. Designer of Train (2009) and the The Mechanic is the Message series; works held by the Strong National Museum of Play; TED speaker on games for understanding. Biography Most discussions of innovation get stuck at the level of culture. Romero’s career is a sustained argument that it is really a question of craft. She began at Sir-tech Software in 1981 on the Wizardry role-playing series, and has since shipped credits on roughly 49 titles across PC, console and mobile, including Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon, Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes and Empire of Sin. In 2015 she co-founded Romero Games in Galway with John Romero, where she is CEO. The studio sits outside the conventional tech hubs, an operating choice rather than an aesthetic one, and a useful case study for any leader thinking about how to build a creative organisation away from the talent magnet cities. The work spans publisher partnerships, original IP and the day-to-day of running a creative business through cycles. Alongside the commercial work, Romero has used game design to address serious historical material. Train (2009) and the wider The Mechanic is the Message series treat the mechanics of a game, the rules players agree to follow, as the message itself. Train won the IndieCade Vanguard Award and is studied in academic literature on serious games and design ethics. The credentials line up around a consistent argument. BAFTA Special Award in 2017. GDC Ambassador Award in 2015. Fulbright Scholar in 2014. Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick from 2016 to 2019. Co-author with Ian Schreiber of Challenges for Game Designers, a standard text used in graduate programmes worldwide. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in technology and entertainment The discipline of design and managed innovation Building and running an independent creative studio Games as a medium for communicating complex ideas Women in technology and the games industry The economics of creative work and intellectual property Ideal for Leaders of creative, R and D, brand and product organisations. Boards and executive teams in entertainment, media and consumer technology. Innovation and transformation leads looking for a working studio perspective on creative output. Talent and learning leaders building creative capability inside a corporate environment. Audience outcomes A working operator’s view of how creative output is produced under commercial pressure. A clearer picture of what good design discipline looks like when the subject is hard or contested. Reference points from inside the games industry that translate into corporate creative function. A frank account of building a creative business outside the obvious geographies, with the trade-offs named.

Why organisations work with Brent Hoberman He has built and exited two unicorns, lastminute.com and Made.com, and can speak to scaling and to failure with equal credit. Through Founders Factory and firstminute capital, he has first-hand visibility of more than 400 early-stage companies and 12 seed-stage unicorns, giving corporate audiences a live read on where technology is moving. His corporate partner list at Founders Factory, including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva and Reckitt Benckiser, means he speaks the language of incumbent strategy as well as founder strategy. As Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain and an adviser to successive UK Prime Ministers, he frames growth inside the real policy and capital conditions leaders operate under. He is candid about what went wrong at Made.com, which gives senior audiences a working case study in IPO timing, governance and post-pandemic demand rather than a highlight reel. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of lastminute.com; sold to Sabre for approximately $1.1bn in 2005. Co-founder of Made.com; founding chairman until shortly before its 2021 IPO. Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Founders Factory, Founders Forum and firstminute capital. Appointed CBE in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship. Co-Chair of Enterprise Britain; has advised multiple UK Prime Ministers on entrepreneurship policy. Non-executive director roles have included Guardian Media Group, TalkTalk, Shazam, Time Out and The Economist. Biography Lastminute.com went public in March 2000, weeks before the dot-com market broke. The IPO was 43 times oversubscribed and remains one of the fastest company listings in European history. Brent Hoberman was its co-founder and CEO, and he ran the business through the crash and on to a $1.1bn sale to Sabre in 2005. That arc, from frenzy to survival to exit, sits under almost everything he says on stage. Since then he has built three platforms that back other founders. Founders Factory runs corporate-backed accelerators with partners including The Guardian, L’Oreal, easyJet, Aviva, Marks and Spencer and Reckitt Benckiser. firstminute capital is a global seed fund backed by more than 130 unicorn founders. Founders Forum is the community that connects the two. The combined portfolio gives him a working view across several hundred early-stage technology companies at once. He also co-founded Made.com in 2010 and was its founding chairman. He stepped down before the 2021 IPO, having questioned its timing, and the company later entered administration. He uses that outcome directly in corporate sessions on governance, category demand and IPO readiness, which is rare among founders at his level. Outside operating roles, he co-chairs Enterprise Britain with Stephen Fitzpatrick and has advised successive UK Prime Ministers on small business, scale-up and entrepreneurship policy. He was appointed CBE in 2015 for services to entrepreneurship. The policy work matters on the platform because it lets him connect founder behaviour, capital markets and government posture in a way most technology speakers cannot. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder psychology Scaling consumer internet and marketplace businesses Venture investing and early-stage capital Corporate innovation and startup partnerships AI and consumer technology trends UK and European tech policy Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing innovation strategy Corporate venture and M and A teams working with startups CEO and founder gatherings inside private equity and VC portfolios Senior leadership offsites at consumer, retail, media and financial services firms Audience outcomes A clear read on which early-stage technology categories are attracting serious capital and why A practical view of how corporates get useful work out of startup partnerships, from someone who structures them Frank lessons from a founder who has been through a record-breaking IPO, a billion-dollar exit and a public company collapse A sharper sense of how UK and European policy, capital and talent conditions shape what boards can realistically plan for

Why organisations work with Brian Brackeen He has run a face recognition company at commercial scale and publicly refused to sell that technology to law enforcement, which gives his arguments on AI governance a credibility most consultants cannot match. He can speak to algorithmic bias from inside the engineering stack, not from the outside as a critic, because he has shipped the models and seen where the failure modes sit. As General Partner of a $50M fund backing underrepresented founders, he brings a capital-allocation lens to questions of inclusion that boards typically hear framed only as workforce or culture issues. His 2018 TechCrunch op-ed against police use of facial recognition shaped industry debate ahead of formal regulation. Boards weighing AI policy get a practitioner who set a market precedent, not a commentator describing one. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Kairos, a face recognition AI company named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013. General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M Cincinnati-based venture fund backing women, founders of colour, LGBTQ+ founders, and founders with disabilities. Author of a June 2018 TechCrunch op-ed arguing that commercial facial recognition should not be sold to government or police use. Returned to Kairos in 2021 as chair of the scientific advisory board, focused on eliminating racial bias in face recognition datasets. Earlier career: Senior Project Manager at Apple and Senior Managing Consultant at IBM. Co-founder of Lightship Foundation, which owns Black Tech Week. Biography Face recognition is one of the few AI categories where a founder has publicly walked away from a commercial market on principle. In June 2018, the CEO of Kairos published an op-ed in TechCrunch refusing to sell the company’s technology to law enforcement, citing the accuracy gap for people of colour and the consequences of misidentification. The argument landed before the broader regulatory conversation caught up. That founder is Brian Brackeen. He had built Kairos from 2012, with prior operating roles at Apple as a Senior Project Manager and at IBM as a Senior Managing Consultant. Under his leadership, Kairos was named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013 and positioned alongside Microsoft and Face++ in the global face recognition market. A board dispute removed him as CEO in 2018; he returned in 2021 to chair the scientific advisory board, with a specific mandate on algorithmic bias. The work since has been about capital, not code. As General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M fund he runs with co-founder Candice Matthews Brackeen, Brackeen invests in underrepresented founders and in regions outside the coastal venture hubs. Lightship Foundation, the family’s parallel non-profit, owns Black Tech Week. The investing thesis treats inclusion as a market inefficiency, not a values exercise. For senior leaders, the value of his perspective is the combination of these two operating experiences. He can describe where bias enters an AI system at the dataset level, why a vendor might be the wrong place to outsource that judgement, and what the capital signal looks like when an entire founder population is being underwritten by the same narrow set of pattern-matching investors. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic bias Facial recognition and surveillance technology Responsible AI governance Venture capital and underrepresented founders Diversity in technology Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI governance policy CTOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers responsible for deployment decisions Investors, LPs, and corporate venture teams reviewing portfolio inclusion Innovation and DEI leaders working at the intersection of product and people Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of where bias actually enters AI systems, and why surface-level audits miss it A defensible framework for deciding which AI use cases an organisation should refuse, not just constrain A clearer view of how capital allocation patterns shape which technologies get built and by whom Direct exposure to the trade-offs faced by founders deploying AI in regulated and sensitive contexts

Why organisations work with Britteny Floyd-Mayo She built a recognised consumer wellness brand, Trap Yoga Bae®, that reaches audiences who feel ostracised by standard wellness content. That gives her credibility with employees who tune out the corporate version. Her work sits at the intersection of wellbeing and inclusion, two budgets that increasingly need to be defended together. She speaks to both without separating them. She delivers in formats most wellness speakers cannot: a 45-minute movement and music-led experience as comfortably as a keynote or workshop. That makes her useful for offsites, conferences, and ERG events where a talk alone would not move the room. She has been programmed alongside mainstream consumer brands (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Essence Festival), which signals she can hold a corporate stage without softening the cultural specificity that makes the work distinctive. Biography highlights Founder of Trap Yoga Bae®, a trademarked inclusive wellness brand combining yoga, hip-hop culture, and self-care. Studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University. Certified in Vinyasa yoga in India. Named in Forbes among the top 8 Black Wellness experts to watch. Featured in Issa Rae’s HBO Max series Sweet Life. Speaker and featured artist for Lululemon, Eventbrite, Brit + Co, Black Girls Code, Black Joy Parade, and the 25th Annual Essence Festival. Biography Most corporate wellness and inclusion programming is built for a default employee. The people it most needs to reach, those who already feel like outsiders in the room, are the ones who quietly opt out. Britteny Floyd-Mayo built her brand inside that gap. Trap Yoga Bae® started as a response to feeling unwelcome in standard yoga studios. It grew into a trademarked wellness movement that pairs yoga and meditation with hip-hop, cultural specificity, and direct language. The work is taken seriously enough that Forbes has named her among the top Black wellness experts to watch, and that Issa Rae cast her in the HBO Max series Sweet Life. The educational backbone is real. She studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University, and trained for Vinyasa certification in India. That foundation is why the talks travel beyond the yoga mat into burnout, boundary-setting, and the working conditions that shape mental health for women and employees of colour. For organisations, the practical question she answers is uncomfortable but useful. Why are the people your wellbeing and inclusion programmes were designed for the ones most likely to disengage from them, and what does a version look like that they would actually choose? She has built a partnership list (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Black Girls Code, Essence Festival) that suggests the answer travels. Key speaking topics Inclusive wellbeing and self-care Burnout prevention for women founders and leaders Boundary-setting at work Mental health and resilience Cultural relevance in DEI and wellness programming Entrepreneurship and personal brand-building Employee Resource Group (ERG) keynotes and experiences Ideal for Heads of DEI, ERG leads, and culture teams running inclusion or wellbeing programming for Black employees and other under-served groups. CHROs and benefits leaders looking to refresh wellbeing offerings that have stopped landing. Women’s leadership networks and founder communities focused on burnout and boundary-setting. Conference and offsite programmers needing an experiential keynote rather than a panel discussion. Audience outcomes Practical language for setting boundaries without apology, drawn from her No Is A Full Sentence framework. A different reference point for what inclusive wellbeing looks like in practice, not in policy. Specific tools from the From Pain to Paradise method for processing setback and burnout. An experience employees describe afterwards as theirs, not the company’s, which is the test most wellbeing programmes fail.

Why organisations work with Bruce Dickinson The “customers into fans” argument is drawn from 40 years of evidence. Iron Maiden has sold over 90 million albums across four decades without a conventional radio or streaming strategy. Dickinson frames this as the product of an operating philosophy – not a marketing achievement – giving commercial leaders a different lens on audience loyalty that few speakers can offer with this level of firsthand verification. His aviation credentials are professional-grade, not supplementary. Dickinson holds an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence and flew commercial Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines. He then founded, lost money on, restructured, and turned around a real aviation MRO business to profitability. His commentary on risk as a managed discipline – rather than a constraint to minimise – comes from the cockpit and the boardroom, not a consulting brief. His memoir is a documented argument, not a celebrity anecdote. What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins and No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list, is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously. It gives audiences and event organisers a readable reference point for the claims he makes on stage. He has lived a business turnaround, not studied one. Caerdav went from pre-tax losses of over £2 million to generating £400,000 net monthly profit after a restructure Dickinson led personally. This gives him direct credibility in conversations about founding companies, operational failure, and the discipline required to reverse course. His Honorary Group Captaincy of 601 Squadron RAF, his ranking as no.7 in Britain at fencing, and his eight-year BBC Radio 6 Music presenting career are all independently verifiable. They give the polymath narrative an evidential foundation that separates him from lifestyle speakers using the same positioning without the credentials to support it. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Iron Maiden since 1981; the band has sold over 90 million albums and performed more than 2,000 shows worldwide Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence holder; former Boeing 757 captain for Astraeus Airlines; personally piloted Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747-400 Ed Force One on multiple world tours Founder and Chairman of Caerdav (formerly Cardiff Aviation Ltd., founded 2012), a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company at St Athan, South Wales, operating with EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals Author of What Does This Button Do? (HarperCollins, 2017) – No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography and New York Times Bestseller Honorary Group Captain, 601 (County of London) Squadron, Royal Air Force – appointed January 2020 Ranked no.7 in Great Britain at fencing (foil); named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine (2009) BBC Radio 6 Music presenter, 2002–2010 Biography Building a global fanbase and selling over 90 million records across four decades – without conventional radio airplay – looks like a creative achievement. Bruce Dickinson frames it differently: as the outcome of an operating philosophy applied consistently, in which giving an audience something they cannot get elsewhere becomes a structural principle rather than a marketing ambition. Dickinson is Iron Maiden’s lead vocalist, a role he has held since 1981. He is also a qualified commercial airline captain holding an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence, who flew Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines and piloted the band’s Boeing 747-400, Ed Force One, on multiple world tours. When Astraeus collapsed in 2011, he founded Cardiff Aviation – later restructured as Caerdav – a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company operating from a former RAF base in South Wales. Holding EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals, the company now generates £400,000 net monthly profit after a turnaround Dickinson led personally following years of losses. His memoir, What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins in 2017, reached No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list and became a New York Times bestseller. It is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously – not a retrospective on fame, but a practical argument for how creative ambition and operational discipline coexist. The specific commercial lesson he draws from that experience – turning customers into fans, not merely buyers – is developed through Iron Maiden’s documented business model and translates directly to organisations trying to build durable audience commitment in any sector. Appointed Honorary Group Captain of 601 (County of London) Squadron RAF in 2020, ranked no.7 in Britain at fencing, and named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine in 2009, Dickinson brings to speaking engagements a range of firsthand disciplines that give his arguments about performance, precision and resilience direct evidential weight. Key speaking topics Turning customers into fans Entrepreneurship and business building Risk management and business turnaround Creative discipline in commercial performance Team cohesion under sustained pressure Corporate culture and long-duration performance Aviation and the travel industry Ideal for CEOs, commercial directors, and senior leadership teams working on customer loyalty and brand differentiation Entrepreneur and business founder audiences seeking firsthand perspective on building and restructuring real companies under pressure Marketing and brand strategy events where the relationship between internal culture and customer commitment is the central theme Aviation, travel, and logistics sector conferences Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of customer loyalty as an operating and cultural outcome rather than a marketing result Practical principles from commercial aviation and four decades of global touring enterprise applied directly to business discipline and team performance A firsthand account of business failure, restructuring, and turnaround drawn from Caerdav’s trajectory – directly applicable to leaders navigating operational difficulty Specific language and argument for what it means to build an audience that is genuinely committed rather than merely transactional A concrete case study in how creative ambition and operational rigour function as complementary rather than competing forces in high-performance organisations