Strategia di marca speakers

Why organisations work with Howard Schultz He is one of the only major executives to have led a full crisis turnaround at the same global company twice. That longitudinal experience produces a very different quality of insight than a single transformation story. His 2011 number-one New York Times bestseller “Onward” presents a specific and testable argument: recovering a business means restoring what people came for, not restructuring around it. Within three years of his 2008 return to Starbucks, the stock had risen more than five times from its crisis low. His case for employee investment is built on commercial evidence, not values rhetoric. Starbucks under Schultz was among the first U.S. companies to extend healthcare to part-time workers and to offer equity participation to hourly employees. He presents attrition, service quality, and customer loyalty as the direct outputs. Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011 and included in Time’s “Time 200” most influential people, he holds ethics recognition from Columbia Business School, Notre Dame’s Mendoza College, and UCLA Anderson – providing academic validation of a practical executive record. As co-founder of Maveron, a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management, he brings pattern recognition on consumer brand durability well beyond the Starbucks story. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Starbucks across three leadership periods (1986-2000, 2008-2017, 2022-2023), growing the company from 11 stores to 28,000 locations across 77 countries Took Starbucks public in 1992; oversaw nearly $100 billion added to the company’s market capitalisation between 2008 and 2017 Author of four books including “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul” (2011), a number-one New York Times bestseller Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011; included in Time magazine’s “Time 200” most influential people Ethics and leadership awards from Columbia Business School (Botwinick Prize), Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business (Hesburgh Award), and UCLA Anderson (John Wooden Global Leadership Award) Co-founder of Maveron (1998), a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management and early investments including eBay and Zulily Biography The most destructive leadership decisions at scale are rarely made during crises. They accumulate during the growth years, when speed and efficiency gradually crowd out the cultural foundations that made a business worth building. Howard Schultz experienced this from the inside, as the architect of Starbucks’ global expansion and the executive who had to reverse the damage when it became visible. His 2008 return as CEO is documented in “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul,” a number-one New York Times bestseller. The argument at the centre of the book is precise: the path back to financial health ran directly through culture, not around it. Employee retraining, the restoration of the in-store experience, and a deliberate recalibration of what Starbucks stood for came before the financial metrics recovered. Within three years of his return, the stock had risen more than five times from its crisis low. His approach to employees follows the same logic. Starbucks under his leadership was among the first U.S. companies to extend healthcare benefits to part-time workers, and it offered equity participation to hourly employees through a programme called Bean Stock. Schultz presented these not as social obligations but as commercial decisions: loyalty, retention, and service quality are measurable outputs of how people are treated, not side effects of good intentions. Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011 and included in Time magazine’s “Time 200,” Schultz holds ethics recognition from Columbia Business School, Notre Dame’s Mendoza College, and UCLA Anderson. As co-founder of Maveron, a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management, he has extended this analysis of brand durability well beyond the Starbucks story. His perspective reaches audiences navigating growth, crisis recovery, and the sustained tension between operational efficiency and cultural health. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership at scale Crisis leadership and organisational recovery Brand culture and long-term commercial performance Global consumer brand strategy Employee investment as competitive strategy Entrepreneurship and growth Corporate responsibility and business ethics Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating rapid scaling decisions or organisational turnaround Chief People Officers and HR leadership examining employee value proposition at scale Brand, marketing, and commercial leadership in consumer-facing organisations Boards and senior leaders weighing cultural priorities against short-term commercial pressure Audience outcomes A tested framework for treating culture and commercial performance as mutually reinforcing, not competing priorities Concrete, sequenced lessons from a live turnaround at global scale – what decisions were made, in what order, and why A reframe of employee investment from a cost line to a commercial variable with traceable outcomes Perspective on how a brand’s identity is preserved or eroded through the decisions made at pace and scale Practical insight into leading across multiple organisational phases, including growth, institutional crisis, and recovery

Why organisations work with Hunter Tura His “22nd Century Brand” framework, developed publicly through DesignSingapore Council, gives leadership teams a precise vocabulary for what brand investment is actually supposed to deliver, reframing brand from a static identity asset to a dynamic participation platform that drives commercial affiliation. He has built and run design businesses at CEO level, which means his counsel on brand strategy is not advisory abstraction. Rather, it is the same kind of operational decision-making he is asking leadership teams to make. His client portfolio spans luxury (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (Victoria & Albert Museum, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation (Changi Airport), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung) providing a level of cross-sector pattern recognition that a single-sector brand consultant cannot offer. His formation in architecture under Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD gives him a systems-thinking approach to brand that most strategists, who are trained in marketing or communications, lack. It shows in how he diagnoses problems others misread. His work at Entro on experiential branding and the built environment addresses a dimension of brand strategy – how physical spaces communicate and shape participation – that is almost entirely absent from the mainstream brand conversation, but increasingly urgent for property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors. Biography highlights Chief Creative Officer, Entro Communications (appointed November 2025); previously President & CEO, Bruce Mau Design (2010–2019) and CEO, The Creative Organization Client work spanning Netflix, Samsung, GE, Unilever, Audi, Lululemon, Changi Airport Group, Lucid Motors, and the Victoria & Albert Museum Curator, Canada Pavilion, 2018 London Design Biennale; juror, Presidential Design Awards Singapore (2017) and Florence Design Biennale (2019) Commentator, “Design Canada” (2017 documentary) Creator of “The 22nd Century Brand” – a conceptual series produced with DesignSingapore Council and the National Design Centre, reframing brand evolution as a strategic and societal imperative March, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (thesis directed by Rem Koolhaas); Supermentor, Harvard Business School Field X/Y programme; Alumni Council, Harvard GSD Biography The organisations that use brand to create durable competitive advantage treat it as a design discipline, not a marketing function. Hunter Tura has spent 25 years at that boundary, running Bruce Mau Design as President & CEO for nine years, founding SYNDICATE X and The Creative Organization, and now serving as Chief Creative Officer at Entro Communications, where he leads creative strategy across experiential branding, wayfinding, and built-environment design at an international scale. His client work crosses sectors that rarely share a diagnostic framework: luxury goods (Prada, Chanel, Tiffany), cultural institutions (the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), aviation and hospitality (Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands), and technology (Netflix, GE, Samsung). The common strategic problem is consistent: how does an organisation make its brand do genuine commercial work rather than simply look credible? That question has a specific intellectual architecture in Tura’s hands. His “22nd Century Brand” framework traces how brand has evolved from static trademark to dynamic participation platform. The organisations ahead of their competitors have designed brand as a system. The ones falling behind have commissioned a refresh. Tura holds an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where his thesis was supervised by Rem Koolhaas, and a BA from Haverford College in the Growth and Structure of Cities. He has served on the Harvard GSD Alumni Council, is a Supermentor at Harvard Business School, and was curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale. He also appeared as a commentator in the 2017 documentary Design Canada. Key speaking topics Brand strategy as a driver of competitive growth Design-led business transformation Experiential branding and the built environment The evolution of brand from identity to participation platform Building and leading creative organisations at scale Cross-sector brand innovation The commercial case for design thinking Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership managing significant brand investment with unclear ROI CEOs and boards navigating brand repositioning, post-merger integration, or market repositioning Senior leaders in property, hospitality, aviation, and cultural sectors where physical environment is central to brand experience Executive education cohorts in innovation, design strategy, or competitive differentiation Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying why brand investment is not producing competitive returns – with named examples from luxury, tech, and cultural sectors A clear distinction between communications-led and design-led brand strategy, and what each produces Practical language for commissioning, evaluating, and challenging brand strategy work at leadership level An understanding of how experiential and environmental design is reshaping brand expectations across sectors Exposure to cross-sector patterns from a practitioner who has made CEO-level brand decisions across more than twenty years and four distinct industry categories

James Averdieck’s Background He built the brand with passion and sold it for £32 million. James is compelling and unique as a keynote speaker, as he delivers the message that at the heart of entrepreneurialism lies the idea, the journey, not the exit strategy, and not the final sale price. The entrepreneur, conveys a strong message about the value of loving your business. Speaking from experience, he shares his innovative ideas about entrepreneurship; simplifying business and using creative agility to make your dreams achievable. He shares the ups and downs of running a business with a raw candour, offering a true insight into the rocky road to success. The combination of James’ credibility and transparency, mean important and real lessons can be learned from his keynote speeches. Charismatic, intelligent and thoughtful, James is an ideal speaker for the business circuit. Born in Yorkshire in 1965, James was educated at Uppingham School before studying Economics at Durham University. Following University, James joined the graduate programme at strategy consultants Arthur D. Little, where he learnt about the key drivers to a successful business, this sparked a fire within him to learn more. James spent 9 years in the Food industry working for Safeway and St Ivel and learnt about Sales and Marketing and running businesses. With St Ivel he moved to Belgium and became a convert to Belgian gastronomy and, as he says, ‘went native on the chocolate front’. It was in Brussels that the seed was sown for his UK chocolate venture. James saw the opportunity of marrying high-quality chocolate patisserie with efficient UK supermarket distribution. Spotting a gap in the market, James saw that consumers wanted artisanal products and there was a backlash forming against mass produced big brands. He wanted to deliver high-quality products using the best raw materials. Gü, the brand, is about chocolate extremism – evoking nostalgic memories and magical smells of baking with chocolate. The brand was embraced with love by the supermarkets, launching first in Sainsburys and Waitrose with the others following apace. James has turned his attentions now to a healthier brand, The Coconut Collective, a non-dairy based brand. As a speaker, James’ knowledge combined with natural story-telling makes him an ideal choice for any audience looking to be inspired. James Averdieck is the man who built and sold Gü! A master entrepreneur who realised his dream, harnessed his strengths and pioneered a leading brand, his bumpy journey means he has invaluable lessons to impart.

Why organisations work with James McCabe He brings primary training in dramatic literature, not communications consulting, which gives the work a different starting point: structure, character, suspense and resolution as operating tools, not metaphors. His applied focus is the moments where corporate language usually fails most visibly, namely M&A integration, transformation programmes and AI roll-out, where employees disengage from the official storyline within weeks. He works directly with senior communication leaders at named global organisations including Allianz and Siemens, with engagement framed around outcomes for the business, not the comms function. His Fable workshop format compresses the craft into a working session that produces a usable narrative artefact for the leadership team, not a theory lecture. The intellectual lineage is unusually deep for the topic: an Oxford doctorate in literature, the British Council Millennium Prize, and twenty-five years of pattern recognition across European, American and Asian engagements. Biography highlights Doctorate in literature from St John’s College, Oxford, and a Double First from University College Dublin. British Council Millennium Prize for doctoral research. Twenty-five years applying classical narrative design at enterprise level across Europe, the US, and Asia. Engagements with Allianz and Siemens at Group Communications level. Founder of Fable, an artist collective of poets, designers, and filmmakers for corporate narrative work. Guest on industry storytelling podcasts including Business of Story and Storytelling for Business. Biography The standard corporate communication toolkit is rhetoric: slogans, value statements, change decks. It is designed to persuade in the moment and forgotten by the next quarter. Classical narrative is built differently. It is the form humans have used for three thousand years to make complex change feel inevitable, and most organisations are not using it. That gap is what McCabe has spent twenty-five years closing. He came to the work as a poet and literary scholar, with a doctorate from St John’s College, Oxford and the British Council Millennium Prize, before any of it touched the inside of a boardroom. The discipline he brought across is structural: how stories actually move audiences, why suspense and reversal matter more than messaging, and how character functions in a corporate cast. The applied work is concentrated in the moments where corporate language tends to break: mergers and acquisitions, restructures, AI roll-outs and sustainability programmes. Group Communications functions at organisations including Allianz and Siemens have used him to design the through-line of those programmes rather than the deck. His Fable workshop format takes a leadership team through a compressed version of that craft and produces a narrative artefact the team can use. What makes the offer unusual is the lineage. Most commercial storytelling consultants come from advertising or PR. McCabe’s frame of reference is dramatic literature, which is why the diagnosis tends to be sharper than the topic suggests: it is not about better stories, it is about whether the organisation has a structurally coherent one at all. Key speaking topics Corporate narrative strategy Storytelling for mergers and acquisitions Brand and reputation through narrative design Narrative for AI and digital transformation Sustainability storytelling Leadership communication and executive presence Culture and engagement through story Ideal for CCOs, Heads of Group Communications and brand leadership teams M&A integration leads and post-deal communication owners CEOs and CHROs running enterprise transformation or AI programmes Marketing and brand teams under pressure to differentiate in saturated categories Audience outcomes A working understanding of how dramatic narrative differs from corporate rhetoric, and why one travels and the other does not. The structural elements of a usable enterprise story: protagonist, stakes, reversal, resolution. A diagnostic for where the organisation’s existing story is failing, in M&A, AI roll-out, transformation or brand. A method for designing leadership communication around narrative architecture rather than message points.

Why organisations work with James Peach Twenty years of senior in-house brand work at Innocent, Coca-Cola, Uber and Vinted, including running a 120-person team across 18 countries through Vinted’s first profit milestone. He speaks from the operator’s seat, not the consultant’s chair. The Growth Project, his own framework, replaces the generic growth-mindset language most leadership programmes default to with a behavioural model built around how teams actually break and recover. A solo unsupported world cycle of 41,000km across 38 countries gives him a working laboratory for sustained performance under pressure that most performance speakers do not have. The expedition material is evidence, not metaphor. Active ambassadorship for CALM and visible mental health advocacy mean he can speak honestly about burnout and recovery without slipping into the wellness-industry register that senior audiences reject. Equally credible on brand and marketing strategy when the brief calls for it, drawing on direct accountability for some of the most-watched consumer brands of the last two decades. Biography highlights Former Global Brand Director, Vinted, leading a team of 120 across 18 countries during the platform’s path to first profit Former Head of Brand & Campaigns UKI, Uber, and former UK Senior Brand Manager, Innocent Drinks Career experience also includes Coca-Cola, alongside founder mentoring from seed to scale-up Founder of The Growth Project, a proprietary framework on resilience, performance and team growth Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; Ambassador for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably Cycled 41,000km solo and unsupported around the world over two years, across 38 countries; completed the UK’s first full-country triathlon spanning its length, width and height Biography Most senior teams are not short of strategy. They are short of the human bandwidth to execute it after three years of restructure, cost programmes and AI-driven redesign. Resilience, in that context, is not a wellness benefit. It is whether your leadership bench can still make sharp decisions on a Friday afternoon in month thirty of permanent change. That is the working problem James Peach addresses. Twenty years inside Innocent, Coca-Cola, Uber and Vinted, including a Global Brand Director role at Vinted leading 120 people across 18 countries through the platform’s first profit milestone, gave him a direct view of how brand-led businesses hold together when growth flattens and pressure builds. The Growth Project, his own framework, sits on that experience. The expedition record is the second source. Two years cycling 41,000km solo and unsupported across 38 countries, hikes across South and Central America and Scandinavia, and the first full-length, full-width, full-height triathlon of the United Kingdom are not anecdotes in his talks. They are case material on sustained performance, recovery cycles, and decision quality when conditions degrade. His Royal Geographical Society fellowship sits behind that work. The third strand is his ambassadorship for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It lets him speak about burnout, recovery and mental health in operator language, with the credibility of someone who has done the corporate hours and the physical extremes, and stayed honest about both. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under sustained pressure Team and culture leadership through change Brand-led business growth and reinvention Mental health, burnout and recovery in senior leadership Lessons from extreme endurance applied to commercial teams High-performance team behaviours Building cultures that compound growth Ideal for CHROs, transformation leads and senior HR teams running multi-year change programmes CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing functions for relevance and growth Executive teams entering a profitability or efficiency phase after a long growth cycle Leadership offsites and senior all-hands focused on team performance and wellbeing Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience that holds up in operating reviews, not only in HR comms A concrete read on what changes inside a high-performing team when pressure becomes constant Specific behaviours leaders can name and reinforce to stop quiet attrition and burnout in senior layers Honest language for talking about mental health with senior people without defaulting to wellness cliches A renewed argument for why brand and culture are operating assets, drawn from inside Innocent, Uber and Vinted

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Jana Azizi Her live broadcast range covers hard news, live morning television, entertainment magazines, and lifestyle formats, so she can shift register inside a single event without the audience registering the adjustment. She presents professionally in German, English, French, Spanish, and Russian at television standard, which is unusually rare in a single moderator and genuinely useful for events with multiple language markets in the room. Her Sky Sport News role included editorial team work, not only on-screen presenting. She arrives as a journalist who has already researched the guests and anticipated the angles. Thousands of hours of daily live broadcasting, including live sport, guest drop-outs, and technical failures, mean she has already encountered most of what can go wrong in a live room. A business administration degree from Mainz University of Applied Sciences lets her absorb a corporate brief quickly and translate dense business content for mixed audiences. Biography highlights Presenter at Sky Sport News from 2017 to 2020, working on the editorial team as well as on-screen Presenter across RTL flagship formats including RTL aktuell, Punkt 12, Guten Morgen Deutschland, Extra, Explosiv, and Explosiv Stories Presenter of Deluxe, the n-tv lifestyle and luxury format, from October 2020 Business administration degree from Mainz University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Mainz) Marketing communications training at Grey Worldwide, Dusseldorf; presenter training at Logo Institut, Frankfurt Works professionally in five languages: German, English, French, Spanish, and Russian Biography Seven years of daily live television at Sky Sport News, RTL, and n-tv shape a specific kind of professional. Jana Azizi reads a room mid-conversation, absorbs the unexpected, and keeps an audience with her through shifts the room never sees. Her Sky Sport News role ran from 2017 to 2020 and included editorial team work alongside on-screen presenting. That side of the job built a journalist’s instinct for interview structure and story preparation, rather than only camera presence. At RTL she presented across the broadcaster’s flagship formats including RTL aktuell, Punkt 12, Guten Morgen Deutschland, Extra, and Explosiv. From October 2020 she also fronted Deluxe, the n-tv lifestyle and luxury programme. Sport, hard news, morning television, entertainment, and lifestyle each demand a different register. A moderator who has worked across all five reads what a corporate audience actually needs in the moment. Azizi works professionally in German, English, French, Spanish, and Russian. The five-language range matters most for events that are genuinely multi-market in the room, not simply bilingual on paper. She holds a business administration degree from Mainz University of Applied Sciences, which gives her the vocabulary to move confidently through a corporate brief and carry dense content for a mixed audience. Key speaking topics Live event moderation and conference hosting Broadcast communication and on-camera presence Interview craft and panel facilitation Storytelling in a business context Multilingual event hosting Women in media and male-dominated industries Ideal for Corporate conferences and leadership summits requiring a professional moderator or host International events where facilitation in multiple languages is needed at broadcast standard Award ceremonies, galas, and high-profile company anniversaries Media, sport, and communications sector organisations that need a credible, broadcast-trained panel moderator Audience outcomes Events that run with broadcast-level control, professionally paced and clearly structured Panels and interviews driven by focused, well-prepared questions rather than generic facilitation Live sessions handled cleanly when guests go off-script, formats slip, or tech fails Multi-language audiences held by a moderator who moves between languages without losing authority

Why organisations work with Jay Baer He has built first-party research, not opinion, into the link between speed and revenue, including the finding that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. He treats complaints as a growth channel, with a working method (Hug Your Haters) used by service and CX teams inside large consumer and B2B brands. He gives marketing and CX leaders a named framework for engineering word of mouth on purpose, drawn from Talk Triggers and case studies including DoubleTree, Five Guys, and The Cheesecake Factory. He has advised more than 700 companies through Convince & Convert, including roughly 30 of the FORTUNE 500, so the boardroom examples are first hand, not borrowed. He is one of a small group of speakers in this category to hold both CSP and CPAE Hall of Fame recognition from the National Speakers Association, which is a useful signal for buyers booking high-stakes general sessions. Biography highlights Founder of Convince & Convert, a customer experience and marketing strategy firm advising 700+ brands since 2008. Author of seven business books, including the New York Times bestseller Youtility, Hug Your Haters, Talk Triggers, and The Time to Win. Inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association, holds CSP designation. Clients cited across his consulting and advisory work include Nike, Oracle, Salesforce, Caterpillar, Allstate, and the United Nations. Author of the proprietary Time to Win research on customer responsiveness, including the finding that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. Co-founder and editor of The Tequila Report, with a subscriber base above 50,000 and a substantial second-career media presence. Biography Most companies still treat customer service as a cost centre and word of mouth as a happy accident. Both assumptions are wrong, and both are expensive. The work that defines Jay Baer’s career has been to convert each of them into something a leadership team can actually manage. Through Convince & Convert, the strategy firm he founded in 2008, Baer has advised more than 700 companies on customer experience and marketing, including around 30 of the FORTUNE 500. Named clients include Nike, Oracle, Salesforce, Caterpillar, and the United Nations. The books carry the same operating logic into a wider audience: Youtility on help-as-marketing reached number three on the New York Times business list, Hug Your Haters reframed complaints as a retention asset, and Talk Triggers, written with Daniel Lemin, set out a structured method for engineering word of mouth using case studies from DoubleTree, Five Guys, and The Cheesecake Factory. His most recent book, The Time to Win, is the sharpest expression of the argument. It is built on proprietary research showing that two thirds of customers now rate speed as important as price, that more than half hire the first company to respond, and that customers will pay up to 50% more to avoid waiting. For CX and commercial leaders, the implication is direct: response time is a pricing variable. Recognition tracks the substance. Baer was inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association in 2018 and holds the CSP designation, two credentials held simultaneously by a small minority of working speakers. The practical consequence for buyers is reliability under pressure: he is one of the relatively few keynote choices in this category that large general sessions and senior leadership audiences both tend to find credible. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer responsiveness and speed to revenue Word of mouth as a managed marketing discipline Complaint handling and customer retention Practical AI for customer-facing teams Marketing as customer help, not interruption Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Customer Officers, and Chief Experience Officers setting CX or growth agendas Sales, service, and contact-centre leaders being asked to convert responsiveness into commercial outcomes Franchise, hospitality, retail, and B2B brands where word of mouth is a material growth lever Annual conferences and leadership offsites that need a senior keynote with general-session range Audience outcomes A defensible position on why response time should be treated as a commercial metric, not a service KPI A working method for converting customer complaints into a retention and acquisition channel A repeatable approach to engineering word of mouth, with named operational examples to adapt A clearer view of where AI plausibly belongs inside customer-facing workflows, and where it does not Specific, named case studies the audience can quote in their own internal conversations the next week

Why organisations work with Jenk Oz A live daily feed of Gen Z behaviour. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages across 220+ countries and territories, feeding his brand advice with first-party data instead of commissioned surveys. Consulting credibility built on named client work. Thred Media has advised Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, and Ogilvy on Gen Z strategy, so executive audiences engage with a working commercial operator. Primary-source Gen Z insight. Thred’s editorial team is almost entirely Gen Z, which grounds brand strategy work in lived cohort behaviour. A structural edge in data. The combination of publishing arm, Change Maker Discord community, and consulting practice generates zero- and first-party signals on emerging youth culture that traditional agencies do not hold. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Thred Media, the Gen Z publishing and consulting business headquartered in London. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages, reaches audiences in 220+ countries and territories, and generates approximately 350,000 monthly article reads alongside 200,000+ social followers. Consulting clients include Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, Hilton, Meta, Universal Music Group, and Epic Games. Named on Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), winner of Digiday’s Future Leader Award and Greater Good Award, and recipient of a Webby/Anthem Young Leader Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Member of the Google Z-Council, Oracle for Startups, and the Microsoft Surface young entrepreneur programme. Delivered three TEDx talks and has spoken at 90+ international conferences, including Amazon AWS Summit London (where he interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels), Forbes Summit Cincinnati, Vox YMS New York, Oxford University Model UN, and Brand Week Istanbul. Biography Most brand advice about Gen Z is produced from outside the generation it describes. Survey data and panel research reach brand teams after the fact, often long after the behaviour they track has moved on. Thred Media was built on the opposite principle. What became Thred Media began with a school show-and-tell by an eight-year-old Jenk Oz about the activities he was doing outside class. That project grew into iCoolKid, which was rebranded and repositioned as Thred Media in 2019. Today, Thred.com publishes in 17 languages and reaches audiences in 220+ countries, giving the business a live first-party read on what young consumers are actually doing and buying. The consulting arm applies that feed to commercial questions. Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, and Hilton have used Thred Media for Gen Z strategy work that draws on live behaviour from the Change Maker Discord community and the editorial desk. Recognition has followed: Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), the Digiday Future Leader Award, a Webby/Anthem Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. The commercial distinction is straightforward. He runs a functioning Gen Z business that advises major consumer brands, and he belongs to the generation he is paid to interpret. He has delivered three TEDx talks, interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels at AWS Summit London, and been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Fortune, and the Evening Standard. Key speaking topics Gen Z consumer behaviour Brand relevance and the Gen Z market Gen Z marketing strategy Youth culture and social change Digital activism and clicktivism Youth entrepreneurship The future of work through a Gen Z lens Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand directors, and consumer strategy teams are trying to close the relevance gap with Gen Z consumers. Agencies and consultancies whose clients are asking sharper questions about youth audiences than internal research can answer. Corporate innovation and growth teams are building commercial plans that depend on reaching emerging consumer cohorts. Board and executive audiences wanting a primary source on Gen Z behaviour, not secondhand interpretation. Audience outcomes A live view of how Gen Z is actually behaving across purchase and media decisions, drawn from Thred.com’s daily publishing feed and Change Maker community. Recalibrated assumptions about the signals brands use to judge youth relevance, with examples from named client work. Specific examples of where established brands are winning and losing Gen Z attention, drawn from Thred Media’s advisory engagements. A direct read on how social change and purpose shape purchase decisions in the generation that now accounts for the largest share of emerging consumer spend.

Why organisations work with Jeremy Heimans His intellectual authority is built on a named thesis. New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the “Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, and accompanied by a TED talk viewed over 1.5 million times. The operating credentials are rare. As co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out, and CEO of Purpose, he has built some of the most successful campaigning organisations and social movements of the last two decades, so he reasons about participation from live product experience. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, gives brand and marketing leaders a concrete equation rather than a worldview, which makes it easier to translate into campaign design and consumer engagement strategy. His recent work on AI participation, autonomous agents and governance scaffolding brings the New Power thesis into the question most executive teams are now actually wrestling with, how to build legitimacy around AI systems that are already in the building. The institutional recognition, Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Chair of its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award, means he opens doors for the organisations he speaks to as well as the audiences he addresses. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a public-benefit corporation building social movements for brands, NGOs and philanthropies Co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out Co-author of New Power with Henry Timms (Penguin Random House); FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist; HBR Big Idea feature TED talk on new power with over 1.5 million views World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation; Ford Foundation 75th Anniversary Visionary Award Educated at the University of Sydney and Harvard; earlier career at McKinsey Biography Power has changed shape. The argument that Jeremy Heimans built over two decades of campaigning and writing is that the organisations, brands and leaders who will matter in this century are the ones who understand participation as a structural force, not a communications channel. New Power, his book with Henry Timms, turned that argument into one of the most cited frames in contemporary leadership thinking, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, and anchored by a TED talk now viewed over 1.5 million times. The credibility behind the frame is operational. Heimans co-founded GetUp! in Australia in 2005, a political organisation that grew to more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and was a co-founder of the global campaigning platforms Avaaz and All Out. His company, Purpose, is the public-benefit corporation he built to carry that expertise into brands, NGOs and philanthropies, helping them design the participation models that command-and-control marketing no longer produces. Academically, he is a McKinsey alumnus with degrees from the University of Sydney and Harvard. Institutionally, he has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, chaired its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, is the simplest expression of what his advisory work delivers for consumer brands. The current edge of the work is artificial intelligence. Heimans’ thesis on how participation builds legitimacy is increasingly being applied to AI deployment, autonomous agents and the governance scaffolding companies are building for large-scale AI use. For leadership teams trying to work out how to retain brand trust, employee commitment and regulatory standing as AI reshapes their operating model, he is one of the few commentators whose framework was already built for this shift. Key speaking topics New power and the shift from broadcast to participation AI, autonomous agents and the governance of participation Brand building and consumer engagement under (Product + Purpose) × Participation Movement design for organisations, NGOs and advocacy Leadership and influence in hyperconnected systems The future of work and distributed authority Ideal for CEOs, CMOs and communications leaders redesigning brand and stakeholder strategy for a participatory environment Chief AI officers, governance leads and executive committees building legitimacy around AI systems NGO and philanthropy leadership teams scaling movements and civic participation programmes World Economic Forum, public affairs and policy forums where civic and corporate power converge Audience outcomes A working grasp of the New Power frame and how it changes marketing, leadership and governance decisions Concrete examples of brands, movements and platforms that have applied (or failed to apply) new power mechanics A clearer view of how participation can be designed into AI deployment and governance rather than retrofitted Practical models for civic, employee and customer engagement that work with the grain of hyperconnected systems

Why organisations work with Jo Malone She has built, sold, and rebuilt a luxury consumer brand from scratch. Few founders speaking on entrepreneurship can claim that arc twice. Her creative process is concrete: how a scent becomes a product, how a product becomes a counter, how a counter becomes a category. Useful for marketing, retail, and innovation teams who deal in intangibles. She speaks honestly about selling a business that carries your name, the non-compete years that follow, and the discipline of starting again. Rare territory for founder talks. Her story converts personal adversity into commercial argument without sentimentality. Dyslexia, leaving school at 13, and a cancer diagnosis at 40 are framed as inputs to how she built, not as motivational set pieces. She brings the credibility of a brand that defined a category, alongside the operator’s view of what it took to do it. Biography highlights Founded Jo Malone London in 1994; opened the first store in Walton Street, London; sold the company to The Estee Lauder Companies in 1999. Served as Creative Director of Jo Malone London after the sale, departing in 2006. Founded Jo Loves in 2011, building a second fragrance house from her kitchen table in London. Author of Jo Malone: My Story, published by Simon and Schuster UK in 2016. Co-presented BBC One’s High Street Dreams (2010) with Nick Leslau, mentoring small product entrepreneurs. Awarded MBE in 2008 and CBE in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the British economy and the GREAT campaign. Biography Jo Malone London opened on Walton Street in 1994 with a handful of scents and almost no marketing budget. By 1999 it had been acquired by The Estee Lauder Companies and built into one of the defining luxury fragrance houses of the next two decades. The founder stayed on as Creative Director until 2006, then left the brand that carried her name. Five years of non-compete agreement followed. In 2011 she launched Jo Loves, again from a kitchen, this time with the experience of having scaled a category leader and the constraint of building a fragrance brand without trading on her own name in the way she had before. Two distinct businesses, both rooted in the same craft of scent as a commercial proposition. The personal arc behind the businesses is unusually direct. Severely dyslexic, she left school at 13 and trained as a facial therapist. In 2003, two years after the sale to Estee Lauder, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and treated in New York. Both episodes appear in the 2016 memoir Jo Malone: My Story, and in her speaking work, as material rather than backdrop. For senior audiences the value is concrete. She has run the founder’s job at two different stages, knows what acquisition does to a brand and to its founder, and can describe the specific decisions, pricing, packaging, retail design, distribution, that translated an idea into a category. Her CBE in 2018 was awarded for services to the British economy and the GREAT campaign, recognising the export weight of what she built. Key speaking topics Founder craft and consumer brand building Scaling luxury from kitchen table to global counter Selling a business that carries your name Reinvention after acquisition and non-compete Creativity as commercial discipline Resilience under personal and commercial pressure British creative industries on the international stage Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and boards of consumer, retail, and luxury businesses Marketing, brand, and product leaders building or repositioning premium propositions Innovation and creative teams translating intangible craft into commercial outcomes Leadership audiences working through acquisition, integration, or post-exit founder questions Audience outcomes A founder’s account of how a category-leading brand is actually built, priced, and merchandised, told from inside the decisions A direct view of what selling and integration do to a business and its founder, useful to anyone preparing for or living through that transition A working example of creative discipline: how a scent, a candle, a counter become a coherent commercial proposition A grounded perspective on resilience, drawn from severe dyslexia, a cancer diagnosis, and starting twice from nothing Renewed conviction that craft and commercial scale are not opposites in consumer business

Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room. Before INSEAD he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, after more than a decade in strategy consulting. That operating background plus a senior faculty role is a combination very few digital strategy speakers credibly hold. His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes. The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work. Most AI and digital advice fixates on the technology. Niessing co-directs INSEAD’s Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme and leads instead with the question executive teams actually own: how do we turn AI and data investment into profitable growth? Biography highlights Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD. Former Partner, Prophet. Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer. Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner. Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy. Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. Has delivered executive education and keynotes in more than 40 countries for over 200 global organisations. Biography Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on. At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders. Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised. The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week. Key speaking topics Customer-centric digital transformation B2B digital transformation and growth AI strategy and transformation AI and data in marketing, brand and customer experience Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world Data and analytics as a commercial capability Business model innovation from product to solution Culture and leadership of transformation programmes Ideal for CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes. CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment. B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth. Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth. A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme. Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language. A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand. Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.