Business Continuity and Crisis Management

Why organisations work with Helena Humphrey She is an active senior journalist, not a former one. Her BBC News Washington correspondent role gives her current, direct access to U.S. political decision-making at precisely the moment when those decisions carry the most immediate consequences for global business and investment. Before her broadcast career, she worked inside crises rather than covering them from the outside – serving as IFRC Spokesperson during the West Africa Ebola outbreak and as a UN Risk Communications Officer. That background gives her a practitioner’s understanding of how institutions behave under pressure, which is distinct from what a pure journalist or a geopolitical analyst typically brings. Her career across Deutsche Welle (Washington Correspondent), Euronews (Lead Anchor), NBC News (Global Correspondent), and BBC News gives her a genuinely transatlantic frame on political risk – she understands how events in Washington register in European capitals, and how European political shifts read in Washington. That dual lens is not standard among U.S.-focused political commentators. Fluent in English, French, and German, she can engage with primary sources across multiple political environments without translation – a practical differentiator when the nuances of language and framing carry analytical weight. Her professional specialism is translating fast-moving, multi-country political events into clear, structured narratives for non-specialist audiences. That is not a secondary skill – it is what she does professionally, at broadcast pace, every working day. Biography highlights Anchor and correspondent, BBC News Washington, from 2023 Former Washington Correspondent, Deutsche Welle; former Lead Anchor, Euronews; former Global Correspondent, NBC News IFRC Ebola Response Spokesperson, West Africa, 2014-2015; UN Risk Communications Officer, 2015 BA Joint Honours in French and German, University of Nottingham Moderated international journalism and geopolitics panel at UJANA Annual Conference 2024, alongside author and disinformation analyst Peter Pomerantsev Fluent in English, French, and German; career spanning Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States Biography A political decision in Washington can reorder global trade relationships within a news cycle. Leadership teams watching the same headlines face the same question: what does this mean for us, and how quickly does it need to drive action? Helena Humphrey works at that intersection daily, as anchor and correspondent for BBC News in Washington D.C. Her broadcast career has taken her through Deutsche Welle as Washington Correspondent, Euronews as Lead Anchor, and NBC News as Global Correspondent, before her current role at BBC News. That trajectory is not simply a list of employers – it has built a frame that moves between American and European perspectives on political risk in a way that neither a purely U.S.-focused analyst nor a European commentator typically achieves. Before her journalism career, Humphrey worked inside major humanitarian crises rather than reporting on them from the outside. She served as IFRC Spokesperson during the West Africa Ebola outbreak and as a UN Risk Communications Officer – managing institutional public information under emergency conditions. That operational experience shapes how she now interprets crisis events for business audiences: she understands how decisions get made inside large institutions when events move faster than plans. Fluent in English, French, and German, and with reporting experience across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, she offers senior leaders what most geopolitical commentary does not – current access combined with structural depth, and the professional discipline to make it immediately usable. Key speaking topics U.S. politics and global policy implications Geopolitical risk and political uncertainty Transatlantic relations and European political dynamics Crisis communications and institutional decision-making under pressure Global health emergencies and international coordination The information environment, disinformation, and media credibility Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders with significant U.S. or European political risk exposure Chief Risk Officers and strategic planning teams navigating periods of political volatility Financial and professional services organisations operating across transatlantic markets Global organisations building geopolitical literacy at senior leadership level Audience outcomes A practical framework for distinguishing durable geopolitical shifts from short-term political noise Clearer understanding of how U.S. policy decisions translate into risk and opportunity for global operations Context on how political instability and crisis events affect information flow, and how to make decisions under that uncertainty A transatlantic perspective on political risk that accounts for both American and European dynamics, rather than treating them as separate problems Greater confidence in engaging with geopolitical complexity as a routine part of strategic decision-making, rather than a specialist function

Why organisations work with Araceli Segarra A first-hand account of the 1996 Everest disaster from inside the rescue effort, used as a case study in how teams hold together when conditions, command, and information all degrade at once. A career of high-altitude expeditions on K2, Kangchenjunga, Nanga Parbat, and Broad Peak, which gives her authority on prepared decision-making that almost no corporate speaker can claim. The first Spanish woman to summit Everest and to complete the Seven Summits, filmed for the IMAX Everest documentary, which gives the work cultural reach without leaning on celebrity framing. Sessions delivered in Spanish, Catalan, French, or English are useful for multinational leadership offsites where a single speaker needs to land across language groups. Biography highlights First Spanish woman to summit Mount Everest, 1996, on the expedition filmed for the IMAX documentary Everest by David Breashears. Member of the rescue team during the May 1996 Mount Everest disaster, the deadliest single event on the mountain at the time. Summits include K2, Kangchenjunga, Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, Shishapangma, and a solo of Ama Dablam. Established new climbing routes in Oman, Iran, and Mali; technical climbs include El Capitan in Yosemite and Pomme d’Or in Canada. Author of Not That High and Not That Difficult, applying mountaineering decision frameworks to business, and the children’s series Los Viajes de Tina. Regular broadcast presenter on Catalan Radio and Barcelona’s Radio 1. Biography The 1996 Everest disaster killed eight climbers in a single afternoon. The IMAX expedition filming on the mountain that season included a climber called Araceli Segarra, who put down her oxygen and went into the rescue. She is credited with marking a helicopter landing zone with an X of red Kool-Aid powder because at altitude, the obvious solutions are usually the ones that work. That episode is the spine of the work she does with leadership teams. The substance is not the summit. It is what teams do when conditions collapse, when the chain of command is fragmented, and when the original plan is no longer a useful instruction set. She returns to the question of how a group of people who depend on each other under load make and revise decisions in real time. The technical record gives the argument weight. Segarra has climbed K2, Kangchenjunga, Nanga Parbat, and Broad Peak, soloed Ama Dablam, and opened new routes in Oman, Iran, and Mali. She is the first Spanish woman to summit Everest and to complete the Seven Summits. The credentials are not framing; they are the source of her position on preparation, role clarity, and the discipline of turning back. She has written Not That High and Not That Difficult, applying climbing decision frameworks to business, and a children’s book series, and she presents on Catalan Radio and Barcelona’s Radio 1. The leadership work draws on a body of named expeditions, a documented disaster, and a track record of technical climbing that almost no business speaker can match. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme conditions Team behaviour when plans fail Risk assessment and the discipline of turning back Expedition planning and execution Resilience and composure under load Leadership of small high-dependency teams Ideal for Executive leadership offsites focused on team performance under stress Boards and senior teams entering periods of restructure, crisis, or strategic reset Operational leaders responsible for high-stakes, low-margin-for-error environments Multinational meetings requiring delivery in Spanish, Catalan, French, or English Audience outcomes A working account of how a real team made decisions inside the 1996 Everest disaster, useful as a reference case for crisis behaviour Specific principles for risk assessment and the willingness to abandon a goal that is no longer survivable A framework for role discipline and communication in small interdependent teams A renewed appetite for the unglamorous parts of preparation that determine whether a team performs when conditions degrade

Why organisations work with Tim Willcox Two decades of live BBC anchoring on the stories boards now name as risk: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan crisis, Ukraine, Brexit. He has interviewed the principals, not just read the wires. Conference moderator credits at IATA World Aviation Day, World Travel and Tourism Council, World Science Forum, the Emirates Literature Festival and the ipSoft AI Conference. Senior international audiences, technical content, multilingual rooms. Media training and crisis-communication coaching for executives at Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Direct experience of how a board sounds, and fails to sound, under pressure from a journalist. Fluent Spanish and conversational French, with first-hand reporting from Chile, Spain, Argentina, Libya, Egypt, Japan and the Philippines. Useful in any conference room that is not solely Anglophone. A trained newsroom interviewer, not a celebrity host. He extracts content from senior executives rather than displacing them. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years as a BBC News anchor across BBC One, BBC World News, the BBC News Channel, BBC Four and BBC radio. Former ITN Arts and Media Correspondent whose field reporting ran from the 1994 Rwanda genocide to Iraq under Saddam Hussein; presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and was the first ITN journalist to break news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. Live BBC anchor on the 2010 Chilean mining rescue, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 Libyan civil war and the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Conference chair credits include IATA World Aviation Day (Mauritius), World Travel and Tourism Council (Buenos Aires), World Science Forum (Jordan), ipSoft AI Conference (Barcelona), Emirates Literature Festival (Dubai), Maritime Standard Awards (Dubai) and NHS Expo (Manchester). Media training and crisis-communications coaching for Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, Severn Trent Water, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Documentaries for Channel 4 and Channel 5; began on Fleet Street writing for The Times, The Telegraph, Mirror Group, the Financial Times and The Spectator. Biography The chair of a senior conference is the variable that decides whether a panel becomes a frank discussion or a sequence of pre-cleared talking points. Tim Willcox spent more than twenty years as a BBC News anchor running live interviews under deadline, including with sitting heads of state, and that is the craft he brings to a corporate room. His on-air career covered the stories that now sit on board risk registers: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan independence crisis, the Ukraine war, Brexit. Before the BBC he was ITN’s Arts and Media Correspondent, reporting from the front line of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and from Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and broke news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. That ground translates directly to international conference work. He has chaired at IATA World Aviation Day in Mauritius, the World Travel and Tourism Council summit in Buenos Aires, the World Science Forum in Jordan, the ipSoft AI Conference in Barcelona and the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai. He works in fluent Spanish and reasonable French, which matters when the audience is not solely Anglophone. The third strand is media training. Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office have used him to coach executives on hostile interviews and crisis communications. The value is the same as on stage: a trained newsroom interviewer who knows exactly how a board sounds when it is not ready. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and live news literacy for boards Crisis communications and executive media performance Leadership under live media scrutiny International conference moderation and panel facilitation Awards and after-dinner hosting Reporting on the front line: lessons from twenty years of breaking news Spanish and Latin American business and political coverage Ideal for Boards and ExCos commissioning a chair for senior off-sites on geopolitical, regulatory or reputational risk CEOs, CFOs and Chief Communications Officers preparing for hostile media or crisis press conferences International industry associations running multilingual flagship summits and awards Conference programmers needing a moderator who can carry a head-of-state interview as readily as a panel of operators Audience outcomes A moderated panel that produces actual exchange between senior speakers, not parallel monologues Sharper executive performance under journalist-style questioning A working sense of how a live news cycle interprets a corporate statement and where the pressure points sit Specific reporting examples (Egypt, Libya, Chile, Catalonia, Brexit) that connect macro events to commercial decisions A flagship event held to BBC interviewing standards from the chair

Why organisations work with Tim Collins He has commanded under live fire. The lessons on composure, communication, and accountability are drawn from running the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group in Iraq, not a leadership model. His eve-of-battle speech is one of the most studied pieces of leadership communication of the last twenty years, hung in the Oval Office and quoted in business schools. Few speakers can talk about leadership communication from that position. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, gives him a vocabulary on small-team performance, selection, and trust that very few corporate speakers can match credibly. He builds the talk around the audience’s actual leadership tension. The military stories are evidence, not the point. Biography highlights Commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including service as Operations Officer. Appointed OBE in 2003 for service in Iraq. Author of Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict (Headline, 2006). Co-founder and Chairman of New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security services firm working with government clients since 2006. Regular media commentator and columnist on defence and security, with bylines in the Telegraph and other UK national press. Biography The eve-of-battle address to the Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group, delivered in Kuwait on 19 March 2003, was extemporised and recorded in shorthand by a single journalist. President George W. Bush later had a copy hung in the Oval Office. It is now a fixture on leadership reading lists, taught for what it does in five minutes: set the moral frame, give the team something to hold onto, and accept the weight of command without flinching. The speech is not why senior leaders book Collins, but it explains what they get. He commanded a battalion in combat, with all that implies for accountability, communication, and the long shadow that command throws over a career. He came back to allegations of war crimes, cleared his name, and was promoted to colonel. That sequence, command, scrutiny, recovery, is the substance of what he teaches. Before Iraq, Collins served eight years in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, and led troops through Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Cyprus. The earlier work shapes how he talks about selection, small-team trust, and what actually holds a unit together when the plan fails. His memoir Rules of Engagement (Headline, 2006) is the long-form version. Since retiring from the army in 2004 he has built New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security firm working largely with government, and become a regular commentator on defence and security in the UK national press. The corporate keynote work draws on all of it: the command experience, the public scrutiny, the second career building a business with a payroll and contracts. Key speaking topics Command leadership under pressure Leadership communication in high-stakes moments Small-team performance and trust Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and the weight of command Resilience after public scrutiny Lessons from operational command for civilian leaders Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and divisional MDs preparing teams for high-stakes operational moments Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders taking on command-level accountability Sales and operations conferences where the central leadership question is composure under pressure Board offsites focused on crisis readiness, succession, or the human side of restructure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what leadership communication actually does in the moment that counts. Practical handles on composure, accountability, and team trust, drawn from command experience rather than theory. A more honest reading of what holds a team together when the plan changes. A reference point, the eve-of-battle speech, that audiences carry back into their own leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Terry Virts He has held command in an environment where a missed checklist item ends a mission. That experience reframes what risk discipline looks like inside a corporate operating model. His ISS tour was a multinational, multilingual command, including Russian, American, and European crew members during a politically tense period. He speaks credibly to leaders managing cross-border teams under strain. He filmed A Beautiful Planet from orbit and authored View From Above with National Geographic. The visual material is a working asset for keynote audiences, not a slideshow. The 2019 One More Orbit polar circumnavigation is a current, civilian, board-relevant case study in mission planning, contingency design, and small-team execution. He writes and speaks fluently on the practical content of command, not the metaphor of it. His book How to Astronaut is the operating manual version of his keynote material. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, US Air Force colonel, and former F-16 test pilot with over 5,300 flight hours across 40-plus aircraft types. Pilot of STS-130 aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, 2010. Commander of the International Space Station, Expedition 43, with 200 days in orbit and three spacewalks. Author of View From Above (National Geographic, 2017) and How to Astronaut (Workman Publishing, 2020). Lead astronaut cinematographer on the IMAX feature A Beautiful Planet, narrated by Jennifer Lawrence. Captain of the One More Orbit crew that set the FAI- and Guinness-certified world record for fastest pole-to-pole circumnavigation of Earth in July 2019. Biography A space station does not forgive a poorly briefed handover. Six people from three countries, in a structure travelling at 17,500 miles per hour, run on a checklist culture so disciplined it sounds bureaucratic until it saves a life. Terry Virts commanded that environment for Expedition 43, and the reason serious organisations book him is that the discipline travels. His route into that command is the spine of credibility. US Air Force Academy in Mathematics, F-16 pilot, test pilot, NASA selection in 2000, pilot of Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-130, then 200 days aboard the ISS with three spacewalks and the command of a multinational crew. A General Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2011 sits in the middle of that arc, which matters: he reads commercial decision-making in the language an executive audience uses. The post-NASA work is where the speaking proposition sharpens. He photographed and filmed the ISS for the IMAX feature A Beautiful Planet, published View From Above with National Geographic, and wrote How to Astronaut for Workman in 2020. In 2019, he led the One More Orbit crew that circled the planet over both poles in 46 hours 40 minutes, setting the FAI- and Guinness-certified world record. It is a civilian mission with a board-room shape: small team, hard constraint, narrow window. What sets Virts apart from the broader astronaut speaker pool is how specific his operational material is. He does not deliver awe. He delivers the structure beneath the awe, which is what senior teams come for. Key speaking topics Crisis leadership and command decision-making Risk discipline in high-consequence operations Cross-cultural team leadership under pressure Mission planning and contingency design Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Innovation in extreme environments Earth observation and the climate perspective from orbit Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and operating leaders running businesses with high-consequence decisions Boards and executive committees focused on crisis preparedness and operational resilience Senior teams managing cross-border or multinational workforces under political strain Aerospace, defence, energy, and engineering leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working model of how command-grade decision discipline operates when checklists run out A clearer view of what risk leadership looks like in environments where errors are irreversible Concrete examples of multinational team management under sustained operational stress A perspective on Earth, climate, and human capability that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with Richard Haass His “nonpolarity” framework – first published in Foreign Affairs and developed in A World in Disarray – gives leadership teams a structural vocabulary for geopolitical risk that goes beyond the U.S.-China binary and accounts for the dozens of state and non-state actors now shaping outcomes. He has not only analysed diplomatic crises – he has chaired them. His role as chair of the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which provided the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, gives him practitioner credibility that no purely academic or analytical peer can replicate. Twenty years at the head of the Council on Foreign Relations means organisations gain access to the framework that has shaped U.S. policy thinking across four administrations – not a commentary on that framework, but the source of it. He served inside U.S. foreign policy across four presidencies and both parties – at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House – and can translate the actual mechanics of how foreign policy decisions are made into the strategic implications for non-government actors operating across borders. His New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations demonstrates a capacity rare among foreign policy figures: the ability to make complex geopolitical argument legible and actionable for non-specialist audiences, including boards with no background in international relations. Biography highlights President of the Council on Foreign Relations (2003–2023); now President Emeritus – twenty years leading the United States’ most influential foreign policy institution Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell Senate-confirmed Ambassador; U.S. Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan Chaired the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement Presidential Citizens Medal; State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award; Tipperary International Peace Award; diplomatic decorations from South Korea and Japan Rhodes Scholar; DPhil, Oxford University; formerly on faculty at Harvard Kennedy School of Government Author or editor of sixteen books, including A World in Disarray, the New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations, and the originating Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners; Distinguished University Scholar, NYU School of Professional Studies Biography The post-war international order – the system of alliances, institutions, and rules that governed trade, security, and diplomacy for seven decades – is no longer doing what it was designed to do. For boards operating across borders, that is not an abstract observation. It changes what capital commitments are credible, which supply chains are secure, and which alliances will hold under pressure. Richard Haass led the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty years, shaping U.S. foreign policy debate across the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Before that, he was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. His government service spans four presidencies and both parties – beginning at the Pentagon under Carter, continuing at the State Department under Reagan, and reaching the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush, where he received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His intellectual contribution is specific. In his Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” and the book A World in Disarray, he argues that the current era is neither unipolar nor multipolar – it is nonpolar. Power is distributed across dozens of state and non-state actors, alliances are conditional rather than fixed, and the mechanisms that once imposed order are no longer sufficient. For organisations that have built strategy on the assumption of a rules-based international system, that argument has direct consequences for how risk is modelled and where long-term commitments are made. His experience is not only analytical. In 2013, he chaired the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland that formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement – making him one of the few people in the world who has both theorised about diplomatic complexity and navigated it at the table. His most recent book, The Bill of Obligations, a New York Times bestseller, extends the argument into democratic governance: what the erosion of civic responsibility means for the political stability on which international order ultimately depends. Key speaking topics Nonpolarity and the fracture of the post-war international order U.S. foreign policy and geopolitical risk Diplomacy, conflict resolution, and negotiation Transatlantic relations and the future of alliances Russia-Ukraine and the reshaping of European security Middle East dynamics and regional instability American democracy, civic obligation, and domestic political risk Geopolitical implications for global business and investment Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams with material exposure to geopolitical risk Financial services, asset management, and investment leadership requiring structured country and political risk assessment Global corporations navigating multi-market operations, trade exposure, or supply chain complexity Government affairs, public policy, and strategic foresight leadership Audience outcomes A structural framework – “nonpolarity” – for understanding why the old geopolitical playbook is no longer reliable, and what the distributed power landscape actually looks like Clarity on the strategic implications of specific flashpoints – Russia-Ukraine, U.S.-China competition, Middle East instability – beyond event-by-event commentary Understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is made, where it is likely to go, and what that means for organisations operating across borders A clearer picture of how domestic political instability in democratic societies feeds into international risk and affects the conditions under which institutions and agreements hold Frameworks for scenario planning in a nonpolar environment, where alliances and trade rules are situational rather than fixed

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Pete Goss He is one of very few speakers whose composure under pressure is documented in two state honours, the MBE and the Legion d’Honneur, awarded for a single named decision in the 1996 Vendee Globe. He has built and led multi-million pound sponsored projects with workforces of 100 plus, including Aqua Quorum, Team Philips and Spirit of Mystery, which gives him a working vocabulary for boards on stewardship, sponsor relationships and visible failure. The Team Philips abandonment in 2000 is part of his material, not edited out of it, so leaders get a credible account of what comes after a public, capital-heavy programme collapses. His teaching credentials sit inside serious institutions: Associate Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford, and regular lecturer at London Business School, which calibrates the content for senior audiences rather than after-dinner crowds. The Dinelli rescue is a teachable case, not a war story: a decision made on incomplete information, against the speaker’s own commercial interest, with a precise sequence of operational choices a board can interrogate. Biography highlights Skippered Aqua Quorum in the 1996/97 Vendee Globe; rescued Raphael Dinelli in a Southern Ocean hurricane on Christmas Day 1996. Awarded the MBE and France’s Legion d’Honneur for the Dinelli rescue. Named Yachtsman of the Year following the Vendee Globe. Author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), an account of the race and rescue. Built and skippered Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft Cornish lugger, on an 11,800 mile voyage from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009. Associate Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford; regular lecturer at London Business School; former Royal Marine. Biography The Vendee Globe is the hardest race in solo sailing: one boat, one person, no stops, around the world. On Christmas Day 1996, in 80 knot winds in the Southern Ocean, Pete Goss received a distress signal from Raphael Dinelli, a French competitor whose boat was sinking. Goss turned back, fought upwind for two days, and pulled Dinelli, near death, out of a life raft. The decision ended his race and won him the MBE from Queen Elizabeth II and the Legion d’Honneur from the President of France. Before that race, Goss was a Royal Marine. After it, he became one of the more credible voices on what leadership looks like when the plan stops working. He is the author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), the bestselling account of the race and the rescue, and was named Yachtsman of the Year. He is an Associate Fellow of Said Business School at Oxford and lectures regularly at London Business School, so the material reads to senior audiences as judgement work, not adventure storytelling. His later projects sharpen the case. Team Philips, a 120 ft catamaran built for a round-the-world record, was abandoned in mid-Atlantic in December 2000 after structural damage in heavy weather. Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft replica Cornish lugger, sailed 11,800 miles from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009 to recreate the 1854 voyage of the original lugger Mystery. One programme failed in public after large sponsor investment. The other succeeded after years of preparation in obscurity. Goss treats both as case material. What makes this useful in a boardroom is the specificity. The Dinelli decision is not a metaphor, it is a sequence of operational choices made against personal interest, with a paper trail. Senior leaders can interrogate it the way they would a real case, and most do. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Self-leadership and composure Recovery after public failure Sponsor and stakeholder leadership in capital-intensive programmes Team conduct in small, high-stakes crews Long-form planning and execution Risk and judgement at sea and in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a high-stakes call where the right answer is commercially costly Leadership programmes for senior operators who have not yet been tested in a public failure Capital project sponsors and programme directors managing visible, multi-year commitments Off-sites where the brief is judgement and resilience rather than motivation Audience outcomes A working reference case for what good looks like when a leader has to abandon a plan mid-execution. A clearer view of how to separate personal stake from organisational duty when the two diverge. A more honest account of what happens after a programme fails in public, drawn from Team Philips. Specific language for talking to sponsors, crews and boards in conditions of real uncertainty.

Why organisations work with Nik Gowing A research base built from hundreds of confidential interviews with corporate, political and military leaders, distilled in the book Thinking the Unthinkable, which gives boards a vocabulary for the failures of imagination they recognise but rarely name. Forty years of front-line international reporting, from martial law in Poland to 9/11, that lets him press senior audiences on geopolitical and operational risk without flinching or flattering. A moderator’s authority earned at BBC World News and across hundreds of senior international forums, used to host board offsites, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits where the conversation has to go somewhere uncomfortable. Standing inside the institutions buyers trust: Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, Visiting Professor at Kings College London, former council member at Chatham House and ODI. A track record of making leaders engage with what they have been avoiding, rather than rehearsing the slide they came to deliver. Biography highlights Main news presenter, BBC World News, 1996 to 2014. Diplomatic Editor, Channel 4 News, 1989 to 1996; bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw with ITN. BAFTA, 1981, for coverage of martial law in Poland. Co-author, Thinking the Unthinkable: A new imperative for leadership in the digital age (John Catt, 2018), and founder of the Thinking the Unthinkable project. Author, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Visiting Professor, Kings College London; Distinguished Fellow, Royal United Services Institute; Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter and Bristol. Biography The leaders Nik Gowing has spent four decades interviewing, in studios, at summits and behind closed doors, share a pattern. They saw the signal. They had the data. They did not act. Thinking the Unthinkable, the project he founded in 2014 and the book he co-authored with Chris Langdon in 2018, is built on hundreds of confidential conversations with senior figures in business, government and the military about why that keeps happening, and what could change it. The credibility for that conversation comes from the years before. Gowing was a main news presenter on BBC World News from 1996 to 2014, on air for the announcement of Princess Diana’s death and through the live coverage of 9/11. Before the BBC he spent 18 years at ITN, as bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and as Diplomatic Editor of Channel 4 News. A BAFTA followed his coverage of martial law in Poland in 1981. That broadcast career left him with a particular skill that boards now buy: the ability to chair a difficult conversation in front of senior people, on the record, without losing control of the room or the argument. He moderates regularly for institutions including the World Economic Forum, RUSI and Chatham House. The academic and institutional scaffolding is genuine, not decorative. He is a Visiting Professor at Kings College London’s School of Social Science and Public Policy, a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and a former council member at Chatham House and the Overseas Development Institute. The Reuters Institute at Oxford published his earlier study, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, on institutional vulnerability in the modern information environment. Few moderators bring that depth into the room with them. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Anticipating the unthinkable in board strategy Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Crisis communication and decision-making under pressure Institutional resilience in the digital information environment Senior conference moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees confronting strategic shocks they suspect they are under-rehearsing. Risk, strategy and corporate affairs leaders working on scenario planning, geopolitical exposure and institutional resilience. Convenors of senior international forums, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits who need a moderator who can hold the room. Audience outcomes A direct account of why senior teams systematically miss disruptive signals, drawn from confidential interviews with leaders who lived through it. A sharper read on geopolitical and information-environment risks, from someone who has reported them at first hand. The questions a board should be asking itself before the next unthinkable lands, not after. A working sense of what conformity costs at the top of organisations, and what it takes to break it.

Why organisations work with Nick Leeson He is the named primary actor in the most studied operational-risk failure in modern banking history, which means his account of how account 88888 was opened, fed and hidden carries weight no consultant can replicate. He breaks the polite fiction that rogue trading is rare. Subsequent losses at Allied Irish, Societe Generale, UBS and others have proved his core point that the conditions which produced Barings are still live in trading-floor and middle-office design. His 2023 appointment to Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit puts him on the investigator side of financial misconduct, giving compliance and audit audiences a rare voice that has worked both sides of the control line. He addresses the human variables that risk frameworks assume away: pressure, ego, fear of admitting a small loss, and the speed at which a contained problem becomes terminal. For boards and senior leaders, he is the named cautionary case, sitting in the room and answering questions, rather than a slide in an audit deck. Biography highlights Caused the £827m collapse of Barings Bank in February 1995 through unauthorised futures and options trades booked to error account 88888 on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. Convicted in Singapore and held at Changi Prison from December 1995 until July 1999. Author of Rogue Trader (1996) and co-author of Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress (2005, with psychologist Ivan Tyrrell). Subject of the 1999 film Rogue Trader, starring Ewan McGregor, with rights optioned by Sir David Frost. CEO of Galway United Football Club, 2007 to 2011. Investigator at Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm, since 2023, working financial misconduct cases for investors. Biography A 25-year-old derivatives trader on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange held the positions of chief trader and head of settlements at the same time, and used that conflict to bury an initial £20,000 error inside an account numbered 88888. Three years later, that account held £827m of concealed losses, and Barings, the bank that had financed the Louisiana Purchase, was insolvent. The mechanics of that failure remain the most cited operational-risk case study in financial services. The point of hearing it directly from Leeson is not the drama. It is the precision. He can describe the specific control breaches, the cultural signals that allowed them, and the day-by-day choices that kept the losses hidden, including the short straddle on the Nikkei placed the day before the Kobe earthquake of 17 January 1995. Risk and compliance teams use that detail to test their own supervisory architecture. The post-Barings career adds the second half of the argument. Six and a half years in Changi, a colon cancer diagnosis served out in prison, a psychology degree, the CEO seat at Galway United, and the books Rogue Trader and Back from the Brink with Ivan Tyrrell. The last of those titles is the one risk professionals tend to underestimate. Pressure, isolation and the fear of admitting a contained loss are the human inputs that no governance framework prices correctly. In 2023 Leeson joined Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm that investigates financial misconduct on behalf of wronged investors. For audiences in banking, insurance and regulated industries, that role is the salient point: the man who once defeated the controls is now being hired to detect the people doing it next. Key speaking topics Operational risk and rogue trading Compliance, supervision and the limits of policy Corporate governance and board oversight of trading risk Internal controls, segregation of duties and concealment behaviour Organisational culture in high-pressure environments Resilience, stress and decision-making under pressure Financial crime detection and investigation Ideal for Boards, audit committees and risk committees in banking, asset management and insurance Chief risk officers, compliance heads, internal audit leads and operational risk teams Regulators, supervisors and financial crime units Senior leaders in any business with material market, trading or treasury exposure Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how concealment actually works inside a trading operation, beyond the textbook description Specific signals that supervisors, risk teams and auditors should treat as warnings rather than reassurance A clearer view of the human conditions, pressure, ego, fear, that turn a recoverable error into a terminal loss A sharpened sense of where a control framework on paper diverges from the behaviour on the desk Renewed attention to segregation of duties, error-account governance and exception handling

Why organisations work with Misha Glenny He treats cybersecurity as a geopolitical and criminal-economy problem, not an IT one, which is the framing senior boards now need. McMafia and DarkMarket are built on direct fieldwork with traffickers, money launderers and hackers. The case material is his own, not borrowed from analyst desks. As former Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and incoming host of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, he brings institutional weight that few commercial speakers in this category carry. He can move between a finance board on sanctions exposure, a security committee on ransomware, and a leadership audience on Russia, China and the fracturing global order, without changing voice. Biography highlights Former BBC Central Europe Correspondent. Reported the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars. Rector, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, May 2022 to March 2026. Incoming presenter of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg from January 2026. Author of McMafia, DarkMarket, The Balkans 1804 to 2012 and Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio. Executive producer of the BBC One and AMC drama series McMafia. Sony Radio Academy Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. BT Information Security Journalist of the Year. Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, teaching Crime in Transition. Biography International organised crime is no longer a vice problem on the edge of the economy. It is woven into legitimate supply chains, banking flows and the cyber infrastructure that companies depend on. The argument that organised crime could account for a significant share of global GDP, first set out in McMafia in 2008, has aged into a description that finance, security and policy audiences now treat as a working assumption. Misha Glenny built that argument on direct reporting. As the BBC’s Central Europe Correspondent through the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars, he reported the collapse of the old order from inside it. McMafia and the follow-up book DarkMarket took the same method into the criminal economy itself, with sustained fieldwork among traffickers, money launderers and the hackers running early carding forums. The BBC One and AMC drama series of McMafia, which he executive produced, gave the analysis a second life with a much wider audience. The institutional record matches the reporting. Glenny served as Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna from 2022 to 2026, one of central Europe’s serious advanced research institutions, and held a visiting professorship at Columbia’s Harriman Institute teaching crime in transition. In December 2025 the BBC announced him as the next host of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg. For a leadership audience, the combination is unusual. Few speakers can talk about Russian power, Balkan history, Chinese strategy, ransomware economics and sanctions exposure as a single connected system. Glenny can, because he has spent thirty years reporting it as one. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global disorder Cybersecurity as a board and national risk Global organised crime and illicit finance Russia, the Balkans and post-Soviet power Cryptocurrency, dark markets and the criminal internet Critical minerals and the new resource competition China, the United States and the contested world order Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting sanctions, cyber and geopolitical exposure together CISOs, CROs and general counsel framing cyber and crime risk to the wider business Financial services, energy and industrial leadership teams exposed to sanctions, illicit flows and supply chain risk Policy, defence and intelligence audiences working at the seam of geopolitics and organised crime Audience outcomes A working model of how organised crime, cybercrime and state power now operate as one system A clearer view of where their own sector sits inside that system, from finance to energy to technology Specific case material from McMafia and DarkMarket that translates to live risk conversations Sharper questions to put to their security, legal and strategy functions on geopolitical exposure

Why organisations work with Michael Solomon His textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being is the most widely adopted course text on the subject worldwide, which means the conceptual vocabulary used by a generation of marketers traces back to his work. He has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, and United Airlines on consumer psychology applied to brand, retail, and product decisions. He brings academic discipline to fast-moving commercial questions: AI consumer trust, avatar identity, metaverse engagement, and post-pandemic spending behaviour, all grounded in published research. Holder of the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University and recognised among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications. Regular Forbes.com contributor, with commentary picked up by The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, and Time, giving clients a speaker whose framing is already in market. Biography highlights Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University. Author of more than thirty books, including the global bestselling textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being and The New Chameleons. Former faculty at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn University, and the University of Manchester. Forbes.com contributor; commentary in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Adweek, Time, and on Today, Good Morning America, and CNN. Cutty Sark Men’s Fashion Award recipient for research on the psychology of clothing. Client roster spanning Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, P&G, eBay, Subaru, United Airlines, Microsoft Advertising, and the U.S. Army. Biography The textbook that trained a generation of marketers in consumer behaviour, Buying, Having, and Being, sits on Michael Solomon’s CV. So does a Forbes column read by the executives who now run those marketers’ employers. That dual position, academic standard-setter and commercial commentator, is what brings serious brands to him for strategic reads on customer psychology. Solomon holds the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business, with prior faculty posts at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn, and the University of Manchester. His PhD in social psychology from UNC Chapel Hill anchors a research career that has placed him among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications, and the fifteen most cited in behavioural sciences and fashion. The applied work is where the academic record converts into commercial value. Solomon has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Subaru, and United Airlines on questions of brand identity, customer experience, and category disruption. His current speaking work centres on consumer trust in AI and avatars, the post-pandemic spending psychology he frames as G.A.S., and the dissolution of traditional consumer categories he treats in The New Chameleons. For senior marketing, brand, and customer-experience leaders, the value is access to a thinker who can defend a claim about consumer behaviour from the underlying psychology, then translate it into a brand or product decision a board can act on. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and decision-making Brand identity and customer experience Marketing implications of AI, avatars, and the metaverse Fashion psychology and the symbolic meaning of products Post-pandemic consumer behaviour Retail disruption and category evolution Cross-cultural consumer meaning-making Ideal for CMOs and brand directors rebuilding strategy after segmentation models stop working Retail and consumer goods leadership teams confronting category disruption Customer experience and insight leads in financial services, automotive, apparel, and FMCG Boards of consumer-facing businesses assessing exposure to AI-mediated commerce Audience outcomes A sharper read on the psychology driving current consumer switching, loyalty, and category exit. Specific frameworks for thinking about AI and avatars in brand and retail experience, not generic technology commentary. Named research and case examples that senior marketers can cite internally to defend a strategic shift. A more rigorous internal vocabulary for consumer behaviour, drawn from the academic standard text in the field.