Criatividade

Why organisations work with Jeffrey Schnapp He has done the rare thing of building both a respected academic institution (metaLAB at Harvard, Stanford Humanities Lab) and a venture-backed hardware business (Piaggio Fast Forward, makers of the gita robot). Most innovation speakers have done one or the other. The gita robot, which he co-conceived, won the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. He can speak to product design as a senior operator, not as a commentator on other people’s products. His framework treats culture, narrative, and material design as part of the same engineering problem. For consumer brands, mobility companies, and cultural institutions, that is the integration most teams never manage internally. He sits at the centre of the most serious institutional conversations on the future of libraries, museums, archives, and AI-augmented knowledge work, with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, the Triennale di Milano, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture among his collaborators. Biography highlights Carl A. Pescosolido Chair in Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University; Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. Founder and faculty director of metaLAB (at) Harvard; faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Piaggio Fast Forward; former CEO 2015 to 2018. Founding director of the Stanford Humanities Lab, 1999 to 2009. Co-author of Digital_Humanities (MIT Press, 2012); author of FuturPiaggio (2017) and Storia rapida della velocita (2025), winner of the 2025 Premio di saggistica “Citta delle rose.” Speaker at TED, the United Nations, and the Royal Academy of Sweden; gita robot recipient of the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. Biography The gita robot, a two-wheeled cargo follower built by Piaggio Fast Forward in Boston, won the 2020 Red Dot Award Best of the Best. Its co-founder is a Harvard professor of comparative literature. That sentence is the simplest way to describe what Jeffrey Schnapp does: he runs serious cultural scholarship and serious product engineering as a single practice, and ships from both ends. At Harvard he holds the Carl A. Pescosolido Chair, chairs the Department of Comparative Literature, and founded metaLAB, an experimental research unit at the intersection of design, technology and the humanities. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Before Harvard he founded and ran the Stanford Humanities Lab, one of the earliest serious experiments in digital humanities infrastructure. In parallel, he co-founded Piaggio Fast Forward, the robotics arm of the Italian mobility group behind Vespa, and served as its CEO from 2015 to 2018 before moving into the Chief Visionary Officer role. PFF has shipped the gita and gita mini personal cargo robots and, in 2025, the kilo utility robot. His authored work, including FuturPiaggio and the prize-winning Storia rapida della velocita, treats mobility, speed and material culture as questions a serious product company needs to answer. The pattern across his career is a refusal to separate cultural intuition from operational delivery. He has curated exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, redesigned tunnels in Trento into a working history museum, and helped define what the next generation of libraries, archives and AI-augmented knowledge tools will look like. For corporate audiences working on brand, customer experience, mobility, or innovation portfolios, that integrated view is the asset. Key speaking topics Innovation at the intersection of design, culture and technology Mobility and the future of urban life Robotics and human-centred product design The future of libraries, archives and museums AI and the future of knowledge work Cultural history as a strategic asset for brands Design-led entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and executive teams in mobility, consumer products, and design-led brands Innovation, R&D, and design leaders integrating cultural insight into product development Cultural institutions, libraries, and museum leadership rethinking their operating model Universities and think tanks commissioning on the future of knowledge work and the humanities Audience outcomes A working model for treating cultural history and product design as one discipline rather than two budgets Concrete reference cases from Piaggio Fast Forward, metaLAB, and large-scale curatorial projects A clearer view of how AI is reshaping libraries, archives and knowledge institutions, from someone building inside both the academy and a venture A vocabulary for senior teams who want innovation programmes that produce shipped objects, not slide decks

Why organisations work with Jinsop Lee He gives commercial teams a usable grading method for sensory experience, the Five Senses framework, that translates design theory into something a marketer, product manager or operator can apply without a design background. His TED Talk on multisensory design has been viewed over 1.6 million times, which means audiences arrive primed for the argument and leave able to recall and reuse it. He has shipped work for LG and Jaguar Land Rover and exhibited at CES, 100% Design London and Light + Building Frankfurt, giving him operating credibility with product and brand functions, not just lecture-circuit credibility. Recognition from Red Dot and Good Design anchors the talk in professional design judgement, not opinion. He pairs serious craft with a comic, story-led delivery, which lands the substance with audiences who would tune out a more academic treatment. Biography highlights TED Global Talent Search winner, TED Long Beach 2013; “Design for All 5 Senses” has over 1.6 million views. Founder of design firm Uncle Oswald Is My Hero. Former Associate Professor of Industrial Design, Kyung-Il University, Korea. Red Dot Design Award and Good Design Award recipient. Work exhibited at CES Las Vegas, 100% Design London, Good Design Tokyo, and Light + Building Frankfurt. BA Industrial Design, Syracuse University; MBA, Yonsei University. Biography Most product categories now look the same across the price ladder. Visual design is solved, and customers have learned to scroll past it. What still separates one product from the next is the texture of the experience itself: the sound a car door makes when it closes, the resistance of a button, the smell of a packaged good when it is opened for the first time. This is the territory Jinsop Lee works in. His Five Senses framework, presented at TED Long Beach in 2013 and viewed more than 1.6 million times since, gives a usable way to grade any product or experience across sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. It is not a designer’s tool. It is a grading sheet that a brand or product team can run through in a meeting. The underlying craft is serious. Lee studied industrial design at Syracuse University, took an MBA at Yonsei, and served as Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Kyung-Il University. His commercial work has shipped through Uncle Oswald Is My Hero, his own design firm, and through engagements with LG and Jaguar Land Rover. His pieces have been shown at CES, 100% Design London, Good Design Tokyo, and Light + Building Frankfurt, and have collected Red Dot and Good Design awards. For commercial audiences, the value is that he can take a senior team through the same grading exercise they will see online from him, then turn it on their own products. Most buyers leave with two or three specific experiences they can no longer evaluate the old way. Key speaking topics Multisensory design Customer experience design Design thinking Creativity and innovation method Product development craft Brand and experience differentiation Ideal for CMOs and brand directors rebuilding around experience rather than awareness Heads of product and product design in consumer goods, automotive, hospitality and retail Innovation and R&D leaders running new product development programmes Customer experience leads in service-led businesses Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the Five Senses framework, applied to a product or experience the audience already owns. Specific examples of multisensory design done well and badly, drawn from familiar consumer categories. A sharper instinct for where current products under-deliver against customer expectation. A shared vocabulary that commercial, design and operations functions can use in the same meeting.

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 Julie Gautier A first-hand discipline of working under physiological pressure that few keynote speakers can credibly claim. Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 68 metres on a single breath, are evidence of a practice, not an anecdote. A creative body of work that translates the discipline into something an audience can feel. Ama, shot in a single breath in the world’s deepest pool, has reached a wide international audience and has become a reference point for how breath, focus and stillness are cultivated. Direct relevance to leadership audiences asking how to stay composed under public scrutiny, scrutiny markets, board pressure or crisis. The mechanism she describes is concrete: how the breath is trained, how attention is held, how panic is metabolised before it becomes decision. A second register of value for organisations working on creativity, environmental purpose, or the relationship between people and the natural world. Her films sit inside that conversation rather than next to it. Biography highlights Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 65 metres (2006) and minus 68 metres (2007). Co-founder of Les Films Engloutis, the production label behind her underwater work. Writer and director of Ama, performed in a single breath in the Y-40 deep pool, Italy. Co-director and writer of the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” (2015). Director of One Breath Around the World, featured in National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. TEDxLausanneWomen speaker, December 2019, “Inspiration in the Absence of Breath”. Biography Holding the breath is a trained skill, not a held-back reflex. Gautier worked on it for nine years as a competitive freediver, including two French national records in constant weight, before stepping out of the sport in 2009. The discipline she learned, working with the breath rather than against it, is the substance she now brings to leadership audiences. Her second career has been as a director and performer in underwater cinema. With Guillaume Néry, she co-founded Les Films Engloutis, the label behind films including Narcose, Ocean Gravity and One Breath Around the World, the last of which was carried by National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. She also co-directed and wrote the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. Ama, released on International Women’s Day in 2018, is the work that brought the practice into the cultural conversation. It is a single-breath performance in the Y-40 deep pool in Italy, choreographed and performed by Gautier herself. It has been read as a piece on grief, on women’s resilience, on the management of pressure, on the value of stillness. It is not a metaphor for any of those things. It is the discipline made visible. For a corporate audience, the relevance is direct. Senior leaders are working in conditions where composure has become a performance variable. Gautier’s contribution is not motivational language. It is a description of how a person who has practised breath and attention under real physiological constraint actually does it, and what transfers when the audience walks out of the room. Key speaking topics Breath, focus and composure under pressure Self-leadership and emotional regulation Creativity drawn from natural environments Personal discipline and long-form practice Ocean storytelling and environmental purpose Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under public pressure is a stated theme Cultural and inspirational segments of conferences for boards, executive committees and partner audiences Wellbeing, performance and people-function summits looking for substantive content on breath and attention Brand, creative and sustainability events where ocean storytelling has natural anchor Audience outcomes A concrete account of how breath is trained as a tool for focus, not as a wellness motif A vocabulary for talking about composure as a learned practice rather than a personal trait Visual material, drawn from her films, that audiences continue to discuss after the session A working frame for how stillness, patience and humility translate into professional performance

Why organisations work with Katherine Templar-Lewis She brings the science of uncertainty into the room with an evidence base, not a metaphor. The Uncertainty Experts, the programme she leads as chief scientist, was built with University College London and is one of the few interventions on the topic with published validation. Her material is designed to land on commercial teams, not academic audiences. She has translated the same research into work for Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit with Sam Conniff (Pan Macmillan), giving leaders a named, citable framework rather than a generic talk on resilience. A serious media operator: BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4 and The Today Show, with coverage in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and New Scientist. Boards get a communicator who can hold a stage and a camera. Co-founder of Kinda Studios, a neuroscience studio that runs applied research with UCL and Goldsmiths. The work she presents from the stage is the work she is doing with clients during the week. Biography highlights Cognitive scientist; co-founder and director of Kinda Studios, a creative neuroscience studio. Lead scientist and co-creator of The Uncertainty Experts, an interactive documentary developed with University College London and Sam Conniff. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit, published by Pan Macmillan. Co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses, an Audible Originals neuroscience series. Research collaborations with UCL and Goldsmiths; programme research validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. Recurring science contributor on BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4, The Today Show, The One Show and Start the Week. Speaker and consulting work with Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle, Netflix and TikTok. Biography Most leadership advice on uncertainty stops at metaphor. Katherine Templar-Lewis works on the underlying mechanism, the cognitive and neurological systems that decide whether a senior team holds its nerve, narrows its focus or freezes. As co-founder of Kinda Studios and lead scientist on The Uncertainty Experts, she has built one of the few evidence-based programmes on the subject, developed with University College London and validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. The work has commercial reach because the science is translated, not diluted. The Uncertainty Toolkit, her book with Sam Conniff for Pan Macmillan, sets out the operating moves leaders can make when conditions are unstable: how to read their own physiology, how to choose between options without false confidence, how to keep teams committed when the picture keeps changing. Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok have used the same material inside their own organisations. She is also a confident communicator outside the academic register. As co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses on Audible, and as a recurring contributor across BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN and Radio 4, she has spent years turning research into language that an audience can use the next morning. New Scientist has called her approach radically optimistic, which is unusual in a field that tends toward warnings. What she gives an executive audience is a more accurate map of what their own brains are doing during a hard quarter, and a small set of tools that hold up when the data does not. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Applied neuroscience for leaders Team performance and connection Cognitive resilience and recovery Neuroaesthetics, creativity and wellbeing Behaviour change and organisational learning Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through prolonged strategic uncertainty CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team resilience after sustained change Innovation, brand and customer experience leaders interested in neuroaesthetics Leadership development programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain handles uncertainty, and what that means for senior decisions Named techniques from The Uncertainty Toolkit that leaders can apply to their own routines Sharper recognition of the team behaviours that signal cognitive overload before performance drops A more confident posture toward ambiguity, grounded in research rather than mindset language

Why organisations work with Katie Derham Fifteen years anchoring national news at the BBC and ITV News, where she covered general elections, royal weddings and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That live-broadcast discipline is what shows up on stage when a panel goes off script. A working economics background. She read Economics at Cambridge and started at BBC Radio 4’s Money Box, which is why finance and business clients book her over generalist presenters. A serious arts and culture credential. Face of the BBC Proms on television since 2010 and presenter of Radio 3’s In Tune, with the cultural literacy that comes with both. Author of The Classical Music Book for DK’s Big Ideas Simply Explained series, and a 2017 judge on the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The reading and editorial work behind those credits informs the way she prepares and questions. A name that travels. Strictly Come Dancing finalist, Classical Brit Awards host, household-recognisable, which matters when the brief is a high-profile awards ceremony or televised gala. Biography highlights Presenter, BBC Proms television coverage on BBC One and BBC Two since 2010. Presenter, In Tune on BBC Radio 3. Former Media and Arts Editor and lead newscaster, ITV News (1998 onwards), the youngest ITN newsreader since the broadcaster’s launch in 1955. Host of the Classical Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall. Author, The Classical Music Book, DK Big Ideas Simply Explained series (2018). 2017 judge, Women’s Prize for Fiction. Strictly Come Dancing 2015 finalist (fourth place, partnered with Anton Du Beke). Patron of Eastside Educational Trust and ambassador of the Ashdown Forest Foundation. Biography The hardest part of any conference is not the keynote. It is the connective tissue: the on-stage interview that has to draw something new out of a CEO, the panel that has to land in 40 minutes, the awards ceremony that has to keep a room of 800 people on side from cocktails to the final trophy. That work belongs to the host. Katie Derham came to that work through 15 years of national news. She joined ITN in 1998 as Media and Arts Editor for ITV News and, at 27, became the youngest national newscaster the broadcaster had appointed since its founding in 1955. The roster from those years includes general elections, royal weddings, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is the schooling that produces a host who can hold a stage when the autocue fails. Her second act has been arts broadcasting at scale. She has presented BBC Proms television coverage from the Royal Albert Hall every season since 2010, fronts In Tune on BBC Radio 3, and authored The Classical Music Book in DK’s Big Ideas Simply Explained series. She has hosted the Classical Brit Awards and judged the 2017 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The economics is what differentiates her commercially. She read Economics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and started her career as a BBC Radio 4 Money Box researcher, which is why finance, business and brand clients book her over presenters who have only ever covered culture. That dual fluency, business credibility and arts authority, is the reason serious organisations put her in front of their leadership team. Key speaking topics Conference and event hosting On-stage CEO and leadership interviews Awards ceremony presenting Panel moderation Classical music and the arts Broadcast journalism and live media Women in broadcasting and media careers Ideal for CEOs and chairs who want their on-stage interviewer to do the briefing properly and ask the next question. Comms and brand teams running flagship customer events, awards ceremonies, or televised galas. Investor days, AGMs and finance sector conferences that need an economically literate host, not a generalist presenter. Cultural institutions, philanthropic galas and arts boards programming high-profile public events. Audience outcomes A room that stays with the agenda from the opening session through the closing remarks. Sharper, more candid contributions from senior interviewees, because the questions land. Smooth transitions across a complex run-of-show, with live recovery when timings slip. A stage presence the audience remembers and associates with the brand hosting the event.

Why organisations work with Kelly Hoppen She has run a creatively-led business across forty years of cycles, from private residential commissions to hotels, yachts, cruise ships and a direct-to-consumer product line, and can speak to the commercial trade-offs at each stage. Her Dragons’ Den seat on BBC Two gave her direct, public investor experience evaluating early-stage consumer brands, including portfolio names such as Skinny Tan and Reviveaphone. The “East meets West” design philosophy is a defined intellectual signature that has carried through books, product ranges and international commissions, demonstrating how a creative point of view translates into a brand asset. As chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group, she has represented British creative industries to overseas markets at a level few founders are asked to operate at. A CBE for services to the GREAT campaign and an MBE for services to interior design provide independent validation of contribution beyond the studio. Biography highlights CBE awarded in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the GREAT campaign; MBE awarded in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to interior design. Founder of Kelly Hoppen Interiors, with international projects including One Park Taipei, the Celebrity Edge cruise ship for Celebrity Cruises and LUX* Grand Gaube in Mauritius. Investor “Dragon” on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12 (2013 to 2015). Author of multiple interior design books, beginning with “East Meets West: Global Design for Contemporary Interiors”. Winner of the Andrew Martin International Interior Designer of the Year Award (1996) and the European Woman of Achievement Award (2007). Chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group and ambassador for The Prince’s Trust. Biography A single kitchen, designed for a family friend, was the first commission. Kelly Hoppen had left school at sixteen. The business that grew from that job now spans private residences, yachts, jets, hotels, cruise ships and a direct-to-consumer product range, and trades on a name that has become its own design vocabulary. The creative argument is “East meets West”, set out in her first book and carried through more than a dozen titles since. It gave the studio a recognisable signature long before personal brands were a formal commercial category. The same instinct shaped the move into product, retail and licensing, where the discipline is no longer a single client but a coherent offer at scale. Public-market judgement followed. Hoppen sat as an investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den across series 11 and 12, backing early-stage consumer companies including Skinny Tan and Reviveaphone, and speaking openly afterwards about which bets were working and which were not. That experience sits alongside four decades of running her own balance sheet. Recognition has come from outside the design world as well as inside it. An MBE for services to interior design in 2009, a CBE for services to the GREAT campaign in 2020, and the chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group, where she represents British creative industries to overseas markets and government counterparts. Key speaking topics Creative entrepreneurship and building a personal brand Design-led business and the commercial value of a distinctive aesthetic Women in business and founder resilience Investor judgement on early-stage consumer brands British creative industries and global market positioning Career reinvention across forty years of cycles Ideal for Founders and CEOs of design-led, consumer or lifestyle businesses considering brand expansion or licensing Senior marketing and brand leaders working on a defined creative signature Women’s leadership and founder networks across consumer industries Trade and government audiences focused on UK creative-industry exports Audience outcomes A working view of how a creative signature becomes a defensible brand asset, and the commercial decisions that protect or dilute it. Investor-side perspective on what makes an early-stage consumer brand fundable, drawn from public Dragons’ Den deals. Honest reflection on what forty years of running a name-led business teaches about cycles, partners and product extensions. A confident position on how British design and creative industries compete in international markets.

Why organisations work with Kelly Vero She has shipped AAA games (including credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises) and now runs an AI-powered digital fashion business, so she speaks about immersive technology from the inside of two different commercial stacks, not from a consultancy slide. As CEO and CTO of NAK3D, she gives leadership teams a concrete view of how 3D content, AI and consumer brands are starting to fit together at production scale. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals (Routledge) gives executives a structured way to read the metaverse as the natural extension of forty years of game technology, not a marketing fad. She has worked at policy and institutional level with the European Commission and Pro Helvetia, which means she can frame technology questions in terms a regulated board will recognise. Biography highlights CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion start-up. Chief Metaverse Officer at Aequaland, an educational platform for children. Author of How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge. Earlier edition nominated for the British Business Book Awards 2024. 30-year career in interactive entertainment, with credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises. Consultant to the European Commission, Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) and Confetti Media Group. Won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos, January 2024. Biography The metaverse arrived in the boardroom as a slogan and left as a question: where is the operational substance behind any of this. The honest answer is that it sits inside the games industry, where 3D worlds, real-time content pipelines and live-service economies have been working at scale for two decades. That is the world Kelly Vero has spent thirty years inside. Her credits stretch across the Lara Croft franchise and Hasbro’s Transformers games, taking her from script and character work into production at the heart of mass-market AAA development. The result is a deep, practitioner-level grasp of how immersive technology actually gets built, shipped and monetised. She now applies that experience as CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion company sitting between gaming, virtual platforms and consumer brands. NAK3D won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos in January 2024. Vero is also Chief Metaverse Officer of the children’s education platform Aequaland, and has consulted for the European Commission and Pro Helvetia on technology and creative policy. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge, treats the metaverse as the next chapter of a long technical lineage, not a sudden hype cycle. For boards trying to decide what to fund, what to ignore and what to build, that frame is more useful than any forecast. Key speaking topics AI and 3D commerce The metaverse as commercial infrastructure Digital fashion and virtual goods Generative AI in creative production Game design as a model for customer experience Web3 and immersive platforms Innovation strategy in deep tech Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders deciding how to commit to virtual goods, digital fashion and immersive customer experience CEOs and boards of consumer and entertainment businesses weighing AI and 3D investment CTOs and digital transformation leads scoping AI commerce, content pipelines and creative AI Investors and innovation teams in retail, fashion, media, gaming and adjacent sectors Audience outcomes A clear read on which immersive and metaverse claims are commercially serious and which are not Concrete examples of how AI and 3D content are already reshaping fashion, retail and entertainment commerce A working frame for treating game technology as the parent discipline of the metaverse, with practical implications for product and platform decisions Confidence to scope a first credible AI or 3D content initiative, rather than commission another exploratory study

Why organisations work with Kevin Olusola He performs the argument rather than narrating it. The “Foundation +1” idea (start with one simple element, add one layer at a time) is built live on stage through cello and beatbox, so the audience sees the method before they hear the framing. Three Grammys with Pentatonix and a Sony recording contract give him a credibility profile most innovation speakers cannot match, particularly with audiences sceptical of corporate creativity content. His route into music sits next to a Yale East Asian Studies degree and extended fellowship time in Beijing, which gives the cross-cultural innovation material genuine personal weight rather than a borrowed example. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was hand-picked by Quincy Jones for the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, alongside Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. He has worked at the level of stage where corporate audiences notice. Biography highlights Three-time Grammy winner with Pentatonix: Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella (2015 and 2016) and Best Country Duo/Group Performance (2017 with Dolly Parton). Won NBC’s The Sing-Off season three with Pentatonix, leading to a Sony Music Entertainment contract. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver with a celloboxing performance. Selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. Yale University, East Asian Studies, with pre-med coursework. Spent extended fellowship time in Beijing and became fluent in Mandarin. Pioneered celloboxing, the simultaneous playing of cello and beatboxing; his viral 2011 video of Mark Summer’s “Julie-O” led directly to his Pentatonix recruitment. Biography The first time most audiences see Olusola on stage they are watching a method, not a performance. A single scale on the cello, a single percussive sound, then another, then another, until a Daft Punk medley or a Pharrell track is built in front of them out of parts that were obviously small a minute ago. He calls the underlying idea “Foundation +1”, and it is the spine of his corporate keynote work. The performance credentials sit behind the method. Pentatonix have won three Grammys, signed with Sony Music Entertainment after winning NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011, and built one of the largest a cappella audiences on YouTube. Olusola opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. The cross-cultural material runs in parallel. Olusola read East Asian Studies at Yale with pre-med coursework, and spent extended fellowship time in Beijing where he became fluent in Mandarin. The idea of “celloboxing” itself came from a teacher in China, who asked him whether he had ever considered playing cello and beatboxing at the same time. The biographical detail is doing real work in the keynote: it gives a specific story for how stepping into an unrelated domain produced an original artistic form. For senior teams, Olusola is closer to a performing keynote than to a conventional management speaker. The intellectual content is light, the demonstration is heavy, and the value sits in how an audience leaves thinking about creative method and ambition. He suits openings, closings, and offsite moments where the brief is to shift the room rather than to teach a framework. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working method Cross-disciplinary innovation Ambitious goal-setting and execution Cross-cultural perspective and collaboration Team dynamics in creative work Performance keynote and corporate entertainment Ideal for Annual kick-off and conference opening or closing slots Leadership offsites focused on creativity, innovation, or culture Awards dinners and high-profile client events Internal events where a sceptical senior audience needs a non-standard creative input Audience outcomes A shared, memorable reference point for breaking ambitious goals into a starting move A concrete example of how cross-disciplinary thinking produces original output A genuine performance moment that anchors the rest of the agenda A reframing of creativity as practice rather than personality

Why organisations work with Kevin Roberts He led Saatchi and Saatchi globally for seventeen years, so brand and creative conversations land with the authority of someone who ran the network, not observed it. Lovemarks is one of the few brand frameworks from the 2000s still cited in marketing rooms; Advertising Age named it an Idea of the Decade in 2009. His operator track record covers Mary Quant, Gillette, Procter and Gamble, Pepsi-Cola and Lion Nathan, which gives commercial teams a counterpart who has run P&Ls, not only advised on them. 64 Shots gives leadership audiences a structured, opinionated playbook for operating in volatile markets, written from inside a creative business rather than a business school. Biography highlights CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi from 1997 to 2014; Chairman until 2016. CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East at 32, then President and CEO of Pepsi-Cola Canada. Chief Operating Officer and Director at Lion Nathan, the Australasian brewer, from 1989 to 1996. Author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, published in 18 languages, and 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World. Honorary Professor of Creative Leadership at Lancaster University, with parallel honorary chairs at the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada. Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business and the community. Biography Lovemarks reframed a question marketers had been answering badly for years. Instead of measuring respect and recognition, Kevin Roberts argued that the brands that survive are the ones customers actively love, and that emotion, not rational benefit, is the real driver of long-term commercial value. The book travelled into 18 languages and became one of the few brand frameworks from the period still in active use. The argument carries weight because of where it came from. Roberts spent seventeen years as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi, after running Pepsi-Cola in the Middle East and Canada, and serving as Chief Operating Officer at Lion Nathan. He has sat on the operator side of brand decisions at scale, including categories where price is brutal and differentiation is mostly emotional. 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World extended the work into leadership. The book is a set of sixty-four short, opinionated entries on running creative businesses in volatile conditions, drawn from his own career and the leaders he has worked with. It gives commercial audiences a way to talk about culture, decision-making and creative risk without the abstraction that usually surrounds those topics. Roberts now runs Red Rose Consulting and chairs My Food Bag and The Herdy Company. He holds honorary chairs in creative leadership and innovation at Lancaster University, the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada, and is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and emotional brand equity Creative leadership in commercial organisations Marketing transformation and customer loyalty High-performance culture Leadership in volatile markets Innovation inside legacy businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding loyalty in commoditised categories CEOs and boards of consumer-facing businesses where brand is the main commercial moat Marketing, creative and customer experience leadership teams Sales and growth conferences in retail, FMCG, media and advertising Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a brand customers respect from one they actively love, and why the second is worth more Language for talking about emotion as a commercial asset rather than a soft variable A clearer view of how creative organisations make decisions under pressure, drawn from inside one of the world’s largest networks Practical positions on culture, risk and leadership taken from 64 Shots that audiences can argue with rather than nod at

Why organisations work with Kim Davis Live broadcast experience that translates directly into stage presence: she presents The Travel Show on BBC News and writes regularly for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, so a panel or conference plenary in her hands feels editorially produced rather than improvised. A working marketer’s view of communication, not a theorist’s. Sarsaparilla, the consultancy she founded after moving from New York to London in 2004, operates inside campaigns, brand work and go-to-market decisions for commercial clients. Range across the unlovable formats. After-dinner, awards-night emcee, panel moderation, fireside interview and keynote, performed without the tonal mismatch that normally appears when speakers cross between them. A keynote thesis on arts-led achievement, given on the TEDxLukelyBrook stage in 2022, that gives leadership and culture audiences a route into creativity without the usual self-help register. Biography highlights Presenter, The Travel Show on BBC News. Contributing writer, CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph. Founder and CEO, Sarsaparilla Marketing, London. TEDxLukelyBrook speaker, “How The Arts Can Help You Achieve Anything”, 2022. New York native, London-based for over two decades; works across UK, US and EU markets. Stage and broadcast credits include Carnegie Hall, the O2 Arena and the TED platform (per speaker representation). Biography A live audience makes decisions about a speaker inside the first sentence. Davis was trained for that. Her day job is presenting The Travel Show on BBC News and writing for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, work that depends on getting a viewer or reader to lean in before a single fact has been delivered. That broadcast craft is what organisations are buying when they put her on stage. As a host and moderator she structures conversations the way an editor structures a segment: a clear thread, time discipline, and the ability to draw a usable answer out of an executive who would otherwise read from notes. The substantive content sits behind that. In 2004 she moved from New York to London and founded Sarsaparilla, a marketing and communications consultancy that runs campaign, brand and go-to-market work for commercial clients. Her keynote material draws from this practice and from her own performing background, including the TEDxLukelyBrook talk on arts and achievement she delivered in 2022. The combination is unusual. Most marketing speakers cannot present. Most broadcasters cannot speak credibly about commercial growth. Davis is booked when an event needs both in the same person. Key speaking topics Hosting, moderation and emcee craft Media and broadcast communication for executives Marketing and brand building Customer and audience engagement Arts-led approaches to creativity and achievement Female leadership in media, business and culture After-dinner speaking and awards-night presenting Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams looking for a working practitioner rather than a marketing academic Conference organisers and internal event leads who need a host or moderator with broadcast credibility Awards nights, gala dinners and customer events that need a confident emcee with editorial range Leadership and culture programmes wanting a session on creativity, communication and presence Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a journalist structures a story, and how to apply that discipline to a board narrative or all-hands talk Specific techniques drawn from broadcast and stage performance for holding attention in high-stakes settings A working framework for using arts and creative practice as a tool for executive communication For events: a tightly run room, a coherent through-line across sessions, and interviews that produce usable quotes rather than safe ones

Why organisations work with Kudzi Chikumbu He built TikTok’s creator marketing, education, and community functions from a small U.S. team into a global operation, so he speaks from inside the engine room rather than from the outside as a commentator. He teaches the operating logic of authenticity as a brand strategy, not as a values statement, with a specific framework brands can apply to product launches, executive presence, and creator partnerships. He carries dual credibility: a senior platform operator who has also built a personal creator brand (Sir Candle Man) at meaningful scale, with coverage in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD and The Economist. His perspective on diversity and representation is grounded in what actually moves engagement and trust on platform, which makes it usable for CMOs who need substance rather than signalling. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, which gives a structured curriculum behind what could otherwise be presented as anecdote. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Creator Marketing at TikTok; longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; current faculty at Stanford GSB. Began career as an accountant and management consultant at Deloitte. Author, Let It Burn: Illuminate Your Life with Candles & Fragrance (Chronicle Books). Creator of Sir Candle Man, featured in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, NY Mag, The Economist, and on The Rachael Ray Show. Fortune 40 Under 40, The Hollywood Reporter Next Gen 35 Under 35, Variety’s Hollywood’s New Leaders, AdWeek Experiential Executive of the Year, ADCOLOR Innovator Award. Biography The shift in marketing power from media buyers to creators happened faster than most brand teams adjusted. The companies that responded well treated creators as an operating channel with its own logic. The ones that didn’t treated TikTok like a new ad placement and underperformed on both reach and reputation. Kudzi Chikumbu spent the years that defined that transition inside TikTok, where he built the creator marketing, education, partnerships and community functions as the platform scaled from new entrant to global infrastructure. He was the longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team and rose to Global Head of Creator Marketing, working at the point where brand strategy, platform mechanics, and creator economics meet. His operating thesis is that authenticity functions as a commercial system, not a value statement. Audiences pay attention when a brand or executive shows up with a specific point of view, a clear identity, and a willingness to be legible as a person or a culture. He has tested that thesis on himself: as Sir Candle Man, he built a luxury fragrance creator brand recognised by The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, The Economist, and Chronicle Books, which published his book Let It Burn. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, the same institution where he earned his MBA after starting his career at Deloitte. The combination of platform operator, working creator, and faculty member is unusual, and gives him a vocabulary that translates between marketing teams, executive sponsors, and the creator partners they are trying to work with. Key speaking topics Creator marketing and partnerships Brand authenticity as a commercial discipline Niche communities and audience strategy The future of social platforms and digital content Diversity and representation in consumer brands Personal brand and executive presence online Career pivots and reputation strategy Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding their creator and platform strategy Communications and corporate affairs leaders preparing executives for visible digital presence Consumer brand, retail and lifestyle businesses where culture and creator influence drive purchase DEI, talent and culture leaders working on representation as a commercial, not symbolic, lever Audience outcomes A clearer model of how creator partnerships actually create commercial value, beyond reach metrics Specific tests for whether a brand’s content is platform-native or simply repurposed advertising A practical view of what authenticity means in marketing decisions, from product to executive voice Sharper understanding of how niche communities convert into durable audience relationships Renewed perspective on personal brand and online presence for senior leaders and emerging executives