Banking & FinTech speakers

Why organisations work with Robert Peston He is one of a very small group of UK journalists who have held the top political and economic editorial roles at both the BBC and ITV, and senior banking and political roles at the Financial Times. Few speakers can map Westminster and the City from the inside in the same conversation. He broke the Northern Rock liquidity story in September 2007; the scoop Press Gazette ranks among the greatest in British journalism. Boards get a speaker who has personally reported the front edge of the UK financial crisis, not a commentator describing it. His co-authored 2024 book, How To Run Britain, sets out a specific reform programme for the UK economy and state. He arrives with a published thesis, not a generic talk. He brings a current, weekly read on the government, the opposition and the markets, drawn from his ITV programme Peston and the podcast The Rest Is Money. Briefings are framed for what leadership teams need to decide next quarter, not for general interest. He founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed thousands of senior speakers into UK state schools. Organisations working with him are working with a journalist who has built an institution. Biography highlights ITV Political Editor and presenter of Peston on ITV. Former BBC Business Editor, 2006 to 2014, and BBC Economics Editor, 2014 to 2015. Former Financial Times Political Editor, Banking Editor and founder of the FT investigations unit. Co-host with Steph McGovern of The Rest Is Money, a leading UK business and economics podcast. Author of seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, WTF?, The Whistleblower and How To Run Britain (with Kishan Koria, 2024). Founder of Speakers for Schools, rebranded Futures For All in 2025. Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and twice winner of Scoop of the Year; Wincott Prize winner for financial journalism. Biography The Northern Rock emergency loan from the Bank of England was reported on the BBC on 13 September 2007. The reporter on the story was Robert Peston, then Business Editor of the BBC, and Press Gazette later listed the scoop as one of the greatest in British journalism. It is the moment that defined a career already deep inside UK banking and government. Peston’s editorial track record is unusually broad for a UK journalist. He has held the top business and economics roles at the BBC, the Political Editor and Banking Editor roles at the Financial Times, and now the Political Editor role at ITV, where he also presents the weekly programme Peston. With Steph McGovern, he co-hosts The Rest Is Money, one of the most-listened-to business podcasts in the UK. The published work matters. Seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, How Do We Fix This Mess?, WTF? and the 2024 reform programme, How To Run Britain, written with Kishan Koria, set out a clear and specific argument about how the British government, banking and public finances need to change. He is one of the few national broadcast journalists who has paired live reporting with a substantive policy thesis. Outside journalism, he founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed senior business, political and cultural figures into thousands of UK state-school talks since 2010. The Royal Television Society named him Journalist of the Year and Specialist Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the credit crunch; he has also won the Wincott Prize for financial journalism. He is among the very few UK speakers who can describe the British political economy from inside the BBC, ITV, the FT and the Treasury press lobby. Key speaking topics UK political and economic outlook Westminster, government and policy direction Banking, financial regulation and financial crisis Public finances, tax and fiscal policy Inequality and the social contract in Britain Geopolitics and UK exposure Leadership in political and institutional reform Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting UK capital allocation, hiring and investment plans Banking, asset management and insurance leadership audiences Public affairs, policy and government relations leads Annual conferences seeking a senior, named UK political and economic read Audience outcomes A current, named read on the UK government, the opposition and the likely policy direction A clear view of where banking, fiscal and regulatory risk sits for UK-exposed organisations An informed sense of the political and social pressures shaping the British economy Direct answers to leadership questions through Q and A with a working political editor

Why organisations work with Robert Shiller He provides Nobel-level empirical authority on asset bubbles, housing cycles, and equity valuation, the questions a board faces when deciding whether to commit capital at the top of a cycle. He named the bubbles others missed. Irrational Exuberance warned of the dot-com peak in 2000 and the housing peak before the subprime crisis, both calls now in the public record. He gives leaders the indicators they can actually use, including the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the CAPE ratio, both of which sit inside the standard toolkit of professional investors. His work on Narrative Economics gives boards a structured way to think about how stories move markets and consumer behaviour, which matters when sentiment shifts faster than fundamentals. He is one of the few macroeconomists who built behavioural finance into the mainstream, co-authoring Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools with George Akerlof. Biography highlights Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and Fellow of the International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management. 2013 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen. Co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio (CAPE / Shiller PE). Author of Irrational Exuberance, Narrative Economics, Animal Spirits, Phishing for Phools, Finance and the Good Society, and The New Financial Order. Regular Project Syndicate columnist and former New York Times “Economic View” columnist. Narrative Economics named a Financial Times Best Book of 2019. Biography Asset prices have a habit of detaching from fundamentals long before anyone calls it a bubble. The challenge for boards and investors is recognising the moment, separating durable conviction from collective story, and acting on it. That problem has defined Robert Shiller’s working life as an empirical economist. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale and a Fellow at the Yale School of Management International Center for Finance. The 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, recognised his empirical analysis of asset prices, including the work showing that stock prices move far more than dividends justify. The implication for capital markets has shaped a generation of valuation thinking. His infrastructure sits inside the toolkit of serious investors. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, developed with Karl Case, became the reference series for US housing and the basis for CME futures. The Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio, built with John Campbell, gave equity investors a long-cycle valuation lens. Irrational Exuberance, first published in 2000, named the dot-com peak in real time and was updated to identify the housing bubble before the subprime crisis. The later work moved into territory most macroeconomists avoid. Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools, both with George Akerlof, brought behavioural and psychological forces into mainstream macro. Narrative Economics, a Financial Times Best Book of 2019, made the case that the stories people tell each other about money and markets shape outcomes as much as the numbers do. For senior leaders, that is the practical question: which narratives are moving capital right now, and which ones are about to break. Key speaking topics Asset prices and market valuation Housing markets and price cycles Behavioural finance Narrative economics Bubbles and financial volatility Macroeconomic risk and forecasting Innovation in finance and risk management Ideal for Boards and investment committees making capital allocation decisions under cycle and valuation uncertainty CFOs, CIOs, and treasury leaders in banks, asset managers, and insurers Senior policymakers, central bank audiences, and regulators working on financial stability Real estate, mortgage, and housing finance leadership Audience outcomes A clearer read on where current asset prices sit relative to long-cycle valuation benchmarks like CAPE A working understanding of how narrative and sentiment translate into measurable market behaviour A sharper framework for spotting bubble dynamics before they reverse Behavioural finance applied to specific decisions on housing, equities, and credit Direct exposure to the empirical evidence behind Nobel-recognised work on asset pricing

Why organisations work with Robin Speculand Direct, exclusive access to the inside story of DBS Bank’s transformation from “best bank in Singapore” to repeated “World’s Best Bank” winner, captured through C-suite interviews and translated into a method other organisations can apply. Proprietary implementation assessments and tools, including the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, that give leadership teams a structured way to diagnose where their strategy is breaking down. Co-author with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez of the Strategy Implementation Playbook, the most current step-by-step reference work in a field most consultancies still treat as adjacent to strategy. Two and a half decades specialising solely in the implementation problem at Bridges Business Consultancy, with foundational client engagements at Singapore Airlines and a global luxury group, and current work extending the same discipline into AI and digital transformation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Bridges Business Consultancy Int; co-founder, Strategy Implementation Institute; co-founder, Digital Leadership Specialists. Author of nine books, including World’s Best Bank (Amazon #1 bestseller, over 100,000 copies sold, translated into seven languages) and Excellence in Execution. Co-nominated for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award (2021) with DBS CEO Piyush Gupta. Educator for Duke CE and IMD; adjunct faculty at Singapore Management University and the National University of Singapore. Speaker at the Global Peter Drucker Forum (2023); featured on BBC, CNBC, Channel News Asia, and Forbes. Author of three Harvard-listed case studies on DBS Bank’s digital transformation. Biography DBS Bank was, for years, an unremarkable regional player. A decade later, it had been named World’s Best Bank by Euromoney, Global Finance, and The Banker in successive years, and Harvard had filed it among the most significant digital transformations of the era. Robin Speculand had direct access to the C-suite throughout. World’s Best Bank: A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation is the published account of how the change was actually executed, not a retrospective tribute. That access matters because most strategy literature stops at the decision. Speculand founded Bridges Business Consultancy in 2000 specifically because he saw executives talking about strategy with almost no operating language for implementation. Twenty-five years later, the field he helped name has its own institute, of which he is co-founder, and a body of work that includes nine books, six Harvard-listed case studies, and the Strategy Implementation Playbook co-authored with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. His 2024 book Implement: Doing it Right in a Digital World extends the same discipline into AI-era transformation. His proprietary tools, the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, give boards a way to locate where execution is breaking down: governance, pace, capability, behaviour, or measurement. Singapore Airlines was an early client. A global luxury group used the work to anchor its first digital programme. The teaching footprint, Duke CE, IMD, Singapore Management University, NUS, reflects how seriously serious institutions now take implementation as a discrete competence. He was co-nominated with then-DBS CEO Piyush Gupta for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award in 2021, the practitioner counterpart to the main Thinkers50 ranking. The point is not the recognition. It is what the nomination signals: that the lessons of one of the decade’s most-studied transformations have been codified in a form other organisations can use. Key speaking topics Transformation in an AI-driven world Strategy implementation Digital transformation Execution and operating discipline Lessons from the DBS Bank transformation Leadership in change programmes Organizational Agility Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and chief strategy officers leading enterprise-wide transformation Boards governing multi-year digital or operating-model change Banking and financial services leadership teams benchmarking against DBS Senior teams preparing strategy off-sites where implementation, not formulation, is the constraint Audience outcomes A clear language for diagnosing where their own strategy is breaking down in implementation The DBS playbook is a comparable, not a case study, with the levers their own organisation can pull A structured view of transformation as governance and capability work, not a technology purchase Specific instruments (Implementation Compass, Ticking Clock), leaders can take back into their next strategy review

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Sallie Krawcheck She has run wealth management at the largest scale in the industry, leading Smith Barney, Citi Private Bank, US Trust and Merrill Lynch, then built a venture-backed fintech from scratch around a gap she watched the incumbents miss. Her thesis on the gender wealth gap is quantified, not rhetorical. Ellevest’s portfolio construction takes gender-specific salary curves, career breaks and longevity into account, which gives her a concrete answer to the “what would you actually change” question that most diversity speakers cannot give. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for refusing to soften research calls and for reimbursing retail clients during a downturn. That reputation is what makes her credible to senior boards on questions of conflict of interest and product integrity. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) is a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, and her LinkedIn writing has built one of the largest executive followings on the platform. She arrives with a real audience and a real argument, not a stock keynote. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women. Former president of Global Wealth and Investment Management, Bank of America, overseeing Merrill Lynch and US Trust. Former CEO of Citi Global Wealth Management and former chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Author of “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017), Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Called “The Last Honest Analyst” by Fortune; multiple appearances on the Forbes “100 Most Powerful Women” list; named to Time “Global Influentials”. BA summa cum laude, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MBA with honors, Columbia Business School. Biography The gender wealth gap is wider than the gender pay gap, and for many cohorts, it is still moving in the wrong direction. Closing it is not a marketing problem for financial services. It is a product, advice and capital allocation problem, and the people best placed to solve it are the people who have run the businesses on the other side of the gap. Krawcheck spent two decades doing exactly that. She rose from equity analyst to chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co, then ran Smith Barney and Citi Global Wealth Management, then led Bank of America’s combined Merrill Lynch and US Trust wealth business. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for protecting research independence and reimbursing retail clients during a downturn, which remains the cleanest single line on her professional integrity. In 2016 she co-founded Ellevest, a digital investment platform built around the financial reality of women’s careers and lifespans. The investing algorithm factors in salary curves that peak earlier, more frequent career breaks and longer retirement horizons. Ellevest is the only modern fintech that uses gender as an input to portfolio construction rather than a marketing layer on top of a generic product. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) became a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Her LinkedIn following puts her among the most-read business writers on the platform, and Inc. has named her a Top Female Founder. She speaks to financial services boards, leadership teams and consumer brands on what it actually takes to design products and careers around a customer base the industry has historically underserved. Key speaking topics Closing the gender wealth gap Designing financial products for underserved customer segments Women, leadership and career capital Building a fintech inside a regulated industry Trust, conflict of interest and integrity in financial advice Entrepreneurship after a corporate career Capital, investing behaviour and the future of advice Ideal for Financial services CEOs, CMOs and heads of wealth and private banking are rethinking their women-client strategy. Boards and ExCos of consumer-facing businesses where female customer segments are under-monetised. Founders, investors and leadership teams in fintech and consumer finance. Senior women’s leadership programmes, CHRO sponsors and ERG executive sponsors at large enterprises. Audience outcomes A specific read on where the gender wealth gap actually sits in product design, pricing and advice, not in HR policy. A Wall Street insider’s honest account of how integrity, advice quality and conflicts of interest play out at the top of the industry. A practical view of what it takes to build a regulated fintech around an underserved segment, told by an operator who has done it. A direct, unhedged set of arguments on women, money and career capital that senior audiences can act on.

Why organisations work with Salvatore Cantale He directs IMD’s Finance for Boards programme, the sitting reference point for non-executive directors who need to challenge financial strategy with authority rather than deference to the CFO. His work sits at the intersection of strategy and finance, so leadership teams leave with a clearer view of which growth bets, acquisitions and restructurings will actually compound value, and which are expensive to justify. He has built a substantive ESG-finance practice covering green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments and climate tech, addressing the question most boards are quietly avoiding: what does sustainability policy do to the numbers. His consulting track record spans global banks (MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC, Development Bank of Japan, APG) and operating businesses (Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Pernod Ricard, Lacoste), which translates into sessions grounded in how the work is done, not how it is theorised. He teaches finance as a language of leadership, not a specialist function, which is what senior executives from non-finance backgrounds usually need and rarely receive. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at IMD Business School, Lausanne Directs IMD’s Finance for Boards, Business Finance and Driving Sustainability from the Boardroom programmes PhD in Finance and MSc in Management, INSEAD; BA in Economics and Finance, University of Catania Former faculty director of the Master’s in Finance at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business Recipient of the Global Finance Association Best Paper Award and the Southern Finance Association Outstanding Paper Award Contributor to I by IMD, World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal Biography Boards are being asked to sign off on strategies, acquisitions and ESG commitments whose financial consequences are only vaguely understood in the room. Salvatore Cantale’s work is built around the gap that opens when strategic ambition outruns financial literacy at the top of the organisation. As Professor of Finance at IMD, he runs the programmes, Finance for Boards and Business Finance among them, that senior leaders attend when they cannot afford to keep outsourcing that judgment. His intellectual territory is the join between strategy, business models and financial outcomes. The question that animates his teaching is practical: how does a stated strategy actually show up in the P&L, the balance sheet and the cost of capital, and what should a board be able to see that a management deck hides. That framing draws on research in value creation, capital structure and corporate financing choices, work that has been recognised by the Global Finance Association and the Southern Finance Association. A second stream of his work focuses on the relationship between ESG policy and financial performance. Green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments, climate tech investment, investor activism, these are presented to boards as moral or regulatory questions and funded as financial ones. Cantale treats them as both, so executives can defend their choices in either room. His writing on CFO roles, the CEO-CFO-board triumvirate and CSRD compliance sits in I by IMD, the World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review and the financial press. The consulting record gives the work texture. Cantale has advised APG, MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC and the Development Bank of Japan on the financial institutions side, and Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Pernod Ricard and Lacoste on the corporate side. That range is why senior audiences recognise themselves in his examples: the tension between a sustainability roadmap and a quarterly earnings call is not abstract when the person teaching it has sat on both sides of it. Key speaking topics Value creation and capital allocation Finance for boards and non-executive directors The strategic role of the CFO ESG, green finance and sustainability-linked instruments Business models and financial performance Mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring Governance and financial regulation Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors sharpening their ability to challenge management on financial strategy CEOs, CFOs and senior executive teams working through capital allocation, M&A or business model change Leadership teams translating ESG and sustainability commitments into credible financial plans Banks, asset managers and financial institutions navigating governance, regulation and investor expectations Audience outcomes A sharper read of how a given strategic choice will land in the financial statements and the cost of capital Clearer language for boardroom debate on value creation, capital structure and investment trade-offs Specific frameworks for assessing ESG and sustainability initiatives on financial as well as non-financial grounds A more confident view of the CFO’s role as strategic partner rather than scorekeeper Practical reference points drawn from named financial and corporate institutions Cantale has advised

Why organisations work with Sasha Qadri Her years as Senior Programming Director at Bloomberg Live mean she approaches moderation as an editorial problem: she understands what a discussion is supposed to achieve before she takes the stage to lead it – not just how to keep it moving. She started her career in investment banking and has worked extensively with financial institutions including Lloyds Bank and the Treasury – giving her genuine financial literacy that shows when chairing sessions on fintech, capital markets, and economic policy. Her live broadcast background – including breaking news on Sky News and production roles at CNN and CNBC – means she is rarely unsettled by format changes, difficult panellists, or unscripted moments in high-profile live environments. She has chaired the Innovate Finance Global Summit, co-hosted London Tech Week and its Global Leaders Summit, and emceed Money 20/20 in Europe: events where the participant list demands more than capable chairmanship. Her interviewee roster spans the Former UK Chancellor, the Head of GCHQ, leading technology CEOs, and AI researchers – giving her substantive range across the full landscape of technology, finance, and public policy that executive audiences expect a moderator to navigate. Biography highlights Anchored television news for Sky News; produced and reported for CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, and Channel 4 News Former Senior Programming Director, Bloomberg Live – curated and moderated flagship business and technology events Career began in investment banking (UBS cited by multiple bureau sources); subsequent commercial experience at lastminute.com during the dotcom era Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge; further study at The Sorbonne Recent events include: co-host, London Tech Week; chair, Innovate Finance Global Summit; emcee, Money 20/20 Middle East; main stage chair, Tech Show London; main stage chair and moderator, Global Health Exhibition; moderator, FII Institute and Cityscape Global Named interviewees include Rt. Hon. Philip Hammond (Former UK Chancellor), Anne Keast-Butler (Head of GCHQ), Mo Gawdat, Martha Lane Fox, Francesca Carlesi (Revolut UK CEO), and Mike Martin (Strava CEO) Recent corporate clients include Palo Alto Networks, Amazon, Akamai, Royal London, and Mastercard Biography Leadership events at the intersection of technology, finance, and business policy are only as good as the conversation they produce. Sasha Qadri is a broadcaster and event moderator whose career has run across two disciplines that rarely coexist: live television journalism – anchoring for Sky News, producing for CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg – and editorial leadership of major live events as Senior Programming Director at Bloomberg Live. That editorial role is what distinguishes her from the professional host market. At Bloomberg Live, she did not simply chair discussions – she curated them, shaping the content architecture of flagship business and technology events before taking the stage to lead them. The combination of knowing what a conversation is supposed to achieve, then making it happen with senior executives in front of a live audience, is the specific capability organisations are hiring when they book her. Her professional foundation adds further range. She began her career in investment banking and has since worked regularly with financial institutions including Lloyds Bank and the Treasury. A degree in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge gives her the grounding to operate across the full space where technology, finance, economics, and public policy intersect – and to interview figures including a former UK Chancellor and the Head of GCHQ with genuine comprehension, not just broadcast fluency. In 2025, she co-hosted London Tech Week and chaired its Global Leaders Summit, emceed Money 20/20 in Europe, and chaired the Innovate Finance Global Summit (the UK fintech sector’s flagship annual conference). The same year extended her chairing and moderation work across the Middle East, including FII Institute, Cityscape Global, and the Global Health Exhibition. Events that trust her with their main stage consistently feature participant lists where competent chairmanship is insufficient. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and digital transformation Financial services and fintech leadership Cybersecurity and technology risk AI adoption and generative AI Sustainability and energy transition Geopolitics, policy, and economic leadership Business strategy and technology innovation Ideal for CTOs, CISOs, and technology leadership conferences requiring a moderator with genuine sector depth, not just broadcast presence Financial services and fintech events – CFO, CEO, and C-suite panel formats where moderator literacy on capital markets, regulation, and digital disruption is material Public-private sector summits on technology, national security, and economic strategy, where interviewees include government officials and policymakers Major international conferences requiring anchor-standard broadcast experience combined with editorial event direction Audience outcomes Executive panel discussions that move past rehearsed positions into substantive exchange Clearer understanding of emerging intersections between technology, finance, and policy – framed for decision-makers, not technical specialists Confident navigation of complex or sensitive topics – AI ethics, geopolitical risk, fintech regulation – without losing audience accessibility A moderated session that maintains engagement and structure across multiple hours, formats, or speakers Conversations shaped by editorial intelligence that understands what the session is supposed to achieve before it begins

Why organisations work with Sheena Allen She built and ran a venture-backed US digital bank to closure and is willing to talk in detail about what the regulatory environment, capital cycle, and category timing did to it. Practitioner perspective, not commentary. She bootstrapped a five-app mobile studio to millions of downloads before raising a dollar, so her view of fundraising versus self-funding comes from having done both. She is a credible voice on financial inclusion grounded in market reality, not advocacy posture, having designed product for banking-desert communities and seen what compliance and unit economics impose. She speaks to the non-technical founder problem with authority because she has built tech companies as a psychology and film major, including her current AI-product work through MindFull AI. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CapWay, a Y Combinator Summer 2020 fintech and digital bank backed by Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures. Founder of Sheena Allen Apps, a bootstrapped mobile studio with five apps and millions of downloads. Currently leads CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio and research organisation, and builds AI-native products through MindFull AI. Co-host of the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor. Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree. Featured in Google’s Webby Award-winning documentary series Black Women in Tech and in the film She Started It; author of The Starting Guide. Biography CapWay was a venture-backed US digital bank built to serve customers in banking deserts. It raised from Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures, went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort, and closed in 2024 after the wider fintech regulatory environment turned against companies that depended on partner banks. Sheena Allen ran it from founding to wind-down. That arc is the spine of her work as a speaker. She talks about fintech not as a category to admire but as a category that punishes founders who underestimate compliance cost, capital cycles, and the dependency on infrastructure they do not own. After the Synapse collapse and the Evolve Bank breach, she was direct in the press about why the business could not raise another round. Before CapWay, she bootstrapped Sheena Allen Apps from her dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi into a five-app mobile studio with millions of downloads. She studied psychology and film, not computer science, and she has built every venture since by assembling technical teams around her rather than coding herself. That is the perspective behind her current work at CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio, and at MindFull AI, where she ships AI-native products as a non-technical founder. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, co-hosts the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor, and was featured in Google’s Black Women in Tech series and the film She Started It. Her book, The Starting Guide, walks first-time founders through the operational decisions she made early and would now make differently. Key speaking topics Building venture-backed companies in regulated categories Financial inclusion and the economics of banking deserts Bootstrapping versus venture capital as founder strategies Non-technical founders and how they actually ship product AI tools for small teams and solo operators Mobile product strategy and pre-development planning Women and underrepresented founders in fintech Ideal for Founder programmes, accelerators, and venture studios looking for an operator who has built and closed a regulated business. Financial services, fintech, and banking conferences seeking a practitioner voice on financial inclusion and partner-bank risk. Diversity and inclusion programmes inside banks, payment networks, and large tech companies that want substance over symbolism. Innovation and product audiences inside non-technical industries that want to hear how non-technical founders ship. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how capital cycles and regulatory shifts decide which fintechs survive. Specific lessons from inside a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that closed, including what she would do differently. A grounded read on financial inclusion as a market problem, not a campaign theme. Concrete examples of how a non-technical founder builds and runs product teams, including with AI tooling. A useable mental model for choosing between bootstrapping and venture capital at different stages.

Why organisations work with Simon Jack His position as sitting BBC Business Editor gives direct, current insight into how major financial and corporate stories are selected, framed and brought to national audiences – not historical analysis, but active editorial intelligence A decade in investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda means he interrogates market events and corporate decisions from inside knowledge, not observation; financial audiences notice the difference Uniquely placed to explain the mechanics of media-corporate accountability, how organisations end up on the wrong side of a headline, and what that process actually looks like from within a national broadcaster The Good Bad Billionaire podcast (Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024) demonstrates an ability to make wealth, power and business ethics accessible and genuinely engaging for broad audiences – a value signal for any organisation wanting sharp facilitation, not just informed commentary His BBC Panorama film on male suicide brings personal authority to mental health discussions in business contexts that few speakers in this space can match Biography highlights BBC Business Editor since 2016, holding the role previously occupied by Robert Peston, Jeff Randall and Kamal Ahmed Decade in corporate and investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda before joining the BBC PPE, St John’s College, Oxford Lead BBC correspondent for the 2008 financial crisis: Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG bailout, Lloyds TSB/HBOS Co-presenter of Good Bad Billionaire (BBC World Service) – Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024 Presented BBC Panorama «A Suicide in the Family» (2015), a personal investigation into male suicide and the death of his father Biography When a major financial institution collapses, a rate decision lands, or a FTSE company comes under scrutiny, the story that reaches boardrooms and living rooms alike passes through a small number of editorial gatekeepers. Understanding how that process works – what gets reported, what gets simplified, what gets missed – is increasingly relevant to any senior leader operating in a complex economic environment. Simon Jack has spent two decades sitting at that interface. Appointed BBC Business Editor in 2016, he leads the corporation’s coverage of business, markets and economic policy across television, radio and digital platforms (a role previously held by Robert Peston). Before entering journalism, he spent a decade in corporate and investment banking in London, New York and Bermuda, building a working understanding of how financial institutions operate, how risk is managed, and how decisions are made under pressure that journalists who came up through newsrooms simply do not have. The dual experience of practitioner then investigator, gives Jack a particular kind of credibility. He has reported from inside major market events, including the 2008 financial crisis across Lehman Brothers, the AIG bailout and the HBOS collapse. He co-presents Good Bad Billionaire for BBC World Service, which won Best Business Podcast at the 2024 British Podcast Awards, demonstrating an ability to make the economics and ethics of extreme wealth engaging for audiences well beyond the specialist. He also presented the BBC Panorama film «A Suicide in the Family» – a personal and investigative piece on male suicide – which established him as a credible voice on mental health in a way that is unusual for a business journalist of his seniority. His value to organisations is not analysis from a distance. It is the perspective of someone who has been inside the financial system, run editorial coverage of it, and understands how the story between those two worlds gets told. Key speaking topics Global financial markets and economic developments Banking, investment banking and institutional risk Media accountability and corporate reputation Business journalism and editorial decision-making Wealth, power and business ethics Male mental health in professional contexts Ideal for Financial services, banking and insurance sector conferences seeking credible external perspective on market dynamics and media coverage Senior leadership and board-level events where understanding the media-corporate interface is strategically relevant Corporate communications, investor relations and policy teams navigating how economic narratives are formed Organisations seeking a facilitator or moderator with genuine financial literacy and broadcast authority Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how major financial and economic events are selected, shaped and communicated by national media, and what that means for organisational decision-making Insight into the practical gap between financial reality and public narrative, drawn from experience on both sides Greater literacy in reading market events and economic signals, without requiring specialist background A more grounded perspective on how corporate institutions appear under editorial scrutiny, and what factors shape that For events that include the mental health strand: a serious, personally grounded framing of male wellbeing in high-pressure professional environments

Why organisations work with Simon Johnson The Nobel Prize-cited research demonstrates, with causal rigour, that institutions shape economic outcomes more decisively than market forces alone, giving boards a framework for evaluating political and regulatory risk that goes beyond scenario planning or macro-forecasting Power and Progress argues that AI and major technologies historically concentrate gains in the hands of those who direct their development, not those who use them – a counter-argument to standard innovation optimism that risk committees and executive teams are increasingly required to engage with His time as IMF Chief Economist during the 2007–08 financial crisis positions his analysis of systemic risk as empirical rather than theoretical: he was inside the global institutional response as it happened Named a UK Government AI Ambassador in December 2025, Johnson is an active participant in policy formation on AI and productivity – organisations engaging him access thinking that is shaping government strategy in real time, not retrospectively His analytical method – using historical variation in colonial institutions as a natural experiment – gives him an unusually precise way of explaining why structural constraints persist, cutting through ideological framing on both left and right Biography highlights 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity” – Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management; head of the Global Economics and Management group Chief Economist (Economic Counsellor) and Director of Research, International Monetary Fund, 2007–08 Co-author of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity (2023, with Acemoglu); 13 Bankers (2010); Jump-Starting America (2019) Named UK Government AI Ambassador, December 2025 Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research; board of directors, Fannie Mae Project Syndicate contributor since 2007; undergraduate PPE, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; PhD Economics, MIT Biography The question of why some economies generate broad prosperity while others stagnate – despite access to similar technologies and capital – occupied Simon Johnson, Daron Acemoglu, and James Robinson for more than two decades. Their answer: institutions. The political and economic rules that determine who can participate in growth are not neutral infrastructure – they are the primary driver of long-term economic outcomes. That conclusion, now validated by the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, has a direct implication for how senior leaders should read structural risk. Johnson’s position as IMF Chief Economist during the 2007–08 global financial crisis adds a dimension that academic credentials alone cannot. He was at the centre of the institutional response to a systemic collapse in real time. 13 Bankers, written in its aftermath, argued that the US financial sector’s political capture had created the conditions for catastrophic failure – a thesis that has since shaped how regulators, boards, and risk professionals think about the relationship between financial power and institutional design. His most recent major work, Power and Progress (co-authored with Acemoglu), extends the institutions framework to technology. The central argument is that technological progress – from the printing press to AI – does not automatically distribute its gains. Who benefits depends on who holds the power to direct how a technology is built and deployed. For organisations navigating AI investment decisions, that argument reframes the question: not “what will AI do?” but “who will AI benefit, and why?” Since December 2025 Johnson has served as a UK Government AI Ambassador, working on initiatives to direct AI development towards productivity gains that are broadly shared. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and contributes regularly to Project Syndicate. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester, and MIT. Key speaking topics Institutions, political economy, and long-term prosperity Systemic financial risk and banking reform AI, technology, and economic inequality Global economic governance and policy design Innovation-led growth and its distributional consequences Geopolitical risk and institutional resilience The political economy of financial crises Ideal for Board directors and executive leadership teams navigating political and regulatory risk Financial services organisations and risk committees Government, central bank, and public policy forums Chief Strategy Officers and scenario planning teams at global organisations Audience outcomes A research-grounded framework for understanding why institutions – not market dynamics alone – determine where economic value concentrates A clearer model for evaluating political and regulatory risk as a structural, not episodic, factor in long-term strategy A more critical lens on AI investment decisions, grounded in the historical pattern of how technologies distribute – or fail to distribute – their gains Direct insight into how systemic financial risk forms, drawn from IMF experience during the 2007–08 crisis Context for the current policy environment on AI and productivity, including where government thinking is heading

Why organisations work with Stephen Foerster Co-author with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press), a working intellectual map of modern finance built from direct interviews with ten of its pioneers, including six Nobel laureates. He can take a board through how its current investment frameworks were actually constructed, with the people who built them on the page. Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance, with more than fifty papers in outlets including the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics. The analysis is the kind that has to hold up to cross-examination. Has built and delivered executive finance programmes for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and Alcan, specifically for senior leaders without a finance background. A sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board and former chair of Foundation Western’s Investment Committee. The fiduciary discipline he teaches is one he has exercised. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987 PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; CFA designation since 1997 Co-author with Andrew Lo (MIT Sloan) of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press); featured in The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column; Axiom Business Awards silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing Author of Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor (Wiley, 2024); Axiom Book Awards bronze medal in Investing More than fifty published articles, including in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance; sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board Biography Most boards and investment committees making consequential capital decisions are not staffed by finance specialists. They sign off on portfolio risk and long-horizon investment choices with frameworks they have not built and a century of market history they have not had time to absorb. In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio, co-authored with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo and published by Princeton University Press, takes ten of modern finance’s most consequential figures, including six Nobel laureates. The book traces how investors actually came to be taught to think about risk and return. The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column featured the book; Axiom Business Awards gave it the silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing. The 2024 follow-up, Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks (Wiley), uses episodes drawn from a thousand years of market history to make the same lessons stick for senior decision-makers. That historical method runs through Foerster’s work with institutions. He has taught at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987. He holds a PhD from Wharton and the CFA designation, and has won Ivey’s Teaching Innovation Award and the Dean Carol Stephenson Excellence in EMBA Teaching Award. He has designed and delivered executive education for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and other major Canadian institutions. The focus is consistent: translating finance for senior leaders who do not come from a finance background. He has also sat on the other side of the table. He sits on Western University’s joint pension board and previously chaired the Investment Committee of Foundation Western. He is Federal Court qualified as an expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance. His more than fifty published papers appear in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal. He is currently writing the authorised biography of William F. Sharpe, the 1990 Nobel laureate whose Capital Asset Pricing Model still underpins how most institutions measure investment risk. Key speaking topics Portfolio management and asset allocation Capital markets and long-term investing Investment decision-making and risk management Modern portfolio theory in practice Behavioural traps in investing Lessons from market history Corporate finance for non-financial executives Ideal for Boards and investment committees with fiduciary responsibility for pensions, endowments, or corporate treasury CFOs, treasurers, and finance leaders responsible for portfolio and capital allocation decisions Senior executives without a finance background who oversee investment risk Asset managers and investment professionals interested in the intellectual lineage of their field Audience outcomes Where modern portfolio theory came from, and where its assumptions break down in real markets Sharper questions to put to investment managers and finance teams Which investment lessons from market history are durable, and which are products of their era Enough working knowledge to engage substantively with capital allocation and investment risk without a finance background

Why organisations work with Sung Won Sohn His forecasting record is one of the few in the economics profession that has been publicly audited. The Wall Street Journal has repeatedly ranked him the most accurate forecaster in the country, including first place in 2006 and a top-three ranking in 2012 as the only academic in the top ten. Analysis built from inside three institutions most economists only write about. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, as Chief Economist at Wells Fargo, and as President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles. A Pacific-rim lens that US-focused commentators rarely offer. Korean-born and long specialised in trans-Pacific trade, he reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has tracked those flows for four decades does. Constant presence in live financial coverage. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him regularly on Fed decisions, inflation prints, and tariff announcements. Audiences hear what is shaping markets this week, in the language of the data that week. Biography highlights Professor of Finance and Economics, College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University Former Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers at The White House Former Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at Wells Fargo Bank; former President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles Named the most accurate economic forecaster in the United States by the Wall Street Journal in 2006, with top-five rankings from the same publication in 2010 and 2012 Named to Time Magazine’s Board of Economists; one of the five most accurate US forecasters by Bloomberg News; most accurate forecaster for the Western States by Blue Chip Publications Author of Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy; Chair of the Investment Committee at LACERS, overseeing a multi-billion-dollar public pension fund; Director, Western Alliance Bancorporation Biography In 2006, the Wall Street Journal named its most accurate economic forecaster in the United States. The winner was running what he himself described as a one-man operation against forecasting teams at Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and Bank of America. His name was Sung Won Sohn. The Journal has returned to him in the years since, at one point ranking him the only academic in the country’s top ten forecasters. The forecasting record is built from a career that has sat on three different sides of the economic question. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, with a brief covering the Federal Reserve and financial markets. He then spent three decades inside Northwest National Bank as it became Wells Fargo, rising to Executive Vice President and Chief Economist. In 2005 he crossed the table entirely, becoming President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles. Today Dr. Sohn is Professor of Finance and Economics at Loyola Marymount University’s College of Business Administration and president of SS Economics, his own consulting firm. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him routinely on Fed decisions, jobs data, and tariffs. His books Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy address the questions that still sit on most board agendas. What sets the commentary apart from other US-based macro voices is a Pacific-rim lens. Korean-born and formerly chief executive of a Korean-American bank in Los Angeles, Dr. Sohn has tracked trans-Pacific trade flows for four decades. He reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has lived on both ends of those flows reads them. He also sits on the Board of Directors at Western Alliance Bancorporation and chairs the Investment Committee at LACERS, the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System. Key speaking topics US economic forecasting and the Federal Reserve Inflation, interest rates, and monetary policy International trade, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers The Pacific-rim economy and US-China relations AI and the future of business and productivity Digital currencies and the future of payments Competitive strategy in a volatile economy Ideal for CFOs, treasurers, and finance leadership teams needing a clear read on Federal Reserve policy and interest rate direction Board directors and investment committees making decisions sensitive to inflation, tariffs, and global trade flows CEOs and strategy leaders in manufacturing, retail, banking, and logistics with material exposure to US-China and Pacific-rim trade Asset managers, pension trustees, and financial advisers who need a macro voice with a publicly verified forecasting record Audience outcomes A forecast of where US growth, inflation, and interest rates are likely to move over the next two to four quarters, and the indicators that matter most A reading of US-China and US-Korea trade dynamics that goes beyond the headlines, including the non-tariff barriers that often matter more than the tariffs themselves A sharper sense of how AI is actually reshaping pricing, productivity, and labour markets, grounded in specific company examples A way to pressure-test their own planning assumptions against someone who has sat inside both the Council of Economic Advisers and a major bank’s forecasting team