Business Continuity and Crisis Management

Why organisations work with Frank Gardner Direct line into the security and intelligence conversation. Gardner is the BBC’s Security Correspondent, with three decades of sourced reporting across the Middle East, counter-terrorism and state conflict, and he brings that network into the room. Arabic fluency and a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies give him a reading of the region that most Western commentators cannot match, particularly on Gulf politics, jihadist movements and Iran. First-hand authority on the personal cost of political violence. He was shot six times by al-Qaeda gunmen in Riyadh in 2004 and returned to full-time reporting in 2005; when he speaks about risk, resilience and continuing to operate, it is from lived experience. A published thriller novelist whose Luke Carlton series (Crisis, Ultimatum, Outbreak, Invasion, Ballistic, published by Bantam and Penguin) is built on real tradecraft, which makes him unusually effective at making intelligence work comprehensible to non-specialist audiences. Credibility signals that serious buyers recognise: OBE for services to journalism, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, honorary doctorates from five UK universities, the McWhirter Award for Bravery, Spain’s El Mundo Prize and the UAE’s Zayed Medal. Biography highlights BBC Security Correspondent; previously the BBC’s first full-time Gulf correspondent (1997) and BBC Middle East correspondent based in Cairo (from 1999). Author of Blood and Sand (Bantam, 2006), a Sunday Times top-three bestseller covering 25 years of reporting from the Middle East, and Far Horizons. Author of the Luke Carlton thriller series, featuring a former SBS officer turned MI6 operative: Crisis, Ultimatum, Outbreak, Invasion and Ballistic, published by Bantam and Penguin. Shot and seriously wounded by al-Qaeda gunmen in Riyadh in 2004; returned to full-time BBC reporting in 2005. OBE (2005) for services to journalism. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Honorary doctorates of law from the University of Nottingham, Staffordshire University, the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia and the Open University. Awards: McWhirter Award for Bravery, El Mundo Prize for International Journalism (Spain), Zayed Medal for Journalism (UAE), UK Press Gazette Person of the Year. Biography The security environment that boards now have to plan against, terrorism, state conflict, energy disruption, cyber, looks less like a set of discrete issues and more like a single interconnected risk map. Reading that map is the work. For nearly three decades, Frank Gardner has done it in public, on air, for the BBC. As the BBC’s Security Correspondent, he has covered the War on Terror since 2002, having previously served as the corporation’s first full-time Gulf correspondent and then as Middle East correspondent based in Cairo. A fluent Arabic speaker with a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, he reports from inside the region rather than about it, with sourcing across security services, militaries and political leadership. That authority was sharpened by events. In June 2004, reporting from the Al-Suwaidi district of Riyadh, he was shot six times by al-Qaeda gunmen; his colleague, cameraman Simon Cumbers, was killed. After fourteen operations and seven months in hospital, Gardner returned to full-time BBC reporting in 2005 and has covered every major terrorism and security story since. He was appointed OBE that year for services to journalism. His published work tracks the same terrain from two angles. Blood and Sand, a Sunday Times top-three bestseller, is the non-fiction record of a reporting career built in the Middle East. The Luke Carlton thrillers, Crisis, Ultimatum, Outbreak, Invasion and Ballistic, use the mechanics of real intelligence tradecraft to dramatise the threats he covers on air, and have made him one of the few security commentators equally at home briefing a board and a mass readership. Key speaking topics Geopolitical and security risk Terrorism and counter-terrorism The Middle East and the Gulf Intelligence, espionage and tradecraft Iran, Saudi Arabia and Gulf politics Resilience after serious adversity Global risk and business decision-making Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting strategy against geopolitical and security exposure Chief Risk Officers, Chief Security Officers and Heads of Corporate Security Leadership teams in energy, financial services, defence, aviation and critical infrastructure with Middle East or Gulf operations Annual conferences, client events and internal leadership offsites where a credible read of the threat landscape is the main ask Audience outcomes A working read of the current geopolitical and terrorism threat map, not a headline recap Sharper understanding of Middle East and Gulf dynamics, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and jihadist movements, from someone who reports the region in Arabic A sense of how intelligence services actually work, and what that means for corporate security, travel risk and crisis response A human account of surviving a near-fatal attack and continuing to operate at the top of a demanding profession

Why organisations work with Dana Lewis Three decades of frontline reporting across more than 50 countries, including Moscow, Jerusalem, Iraq, and Afghanistan, bring first-hand authority to any panel on geopolitical risk. Twelve years based in Russia and fluent Russian give him context on Moscow, the Kremlin, and the wider post-Soviet space that few moderators in the market can match. Embedded assignments with the 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne, 10th Mountain Division, and U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan make him credible on military and security subjects that often defeat generalist hosts. Interviews with heads of state including Vladimir Putin, King Hussein of Jordan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Shimon Peres translate directly into the composure and pace required to hold a senior panel. Overseas Press Club awards for coverage of the Kursk submarine disaster and the Kosovo war, plus an Emmy nomination for his reporting on Russian orphans, back the billing with recognition from named bodies. Biography highlights Former Moscow correspondent for NBC News and Moscow Bureau Chief for Fox News, one of the longest-serving Western reporters based in Russia. Jerusalem-based Middle East Bureau Chief for CTV, covering Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the wider region. Correspondent credits with Fox News, NBC News, CBS News, CBC News, and CTV National News; contributor to Al Jazeera America. Embedded with U.S. forces for the 2003 Iraq invasion with the 101st Airborne and on multiple Afghanistan rotations including Helmand Province. Host of BACK STORY With DANA LEWIS, a world affairs podcast featuring interviews with former officials and subject experts. Overseas Press Club awards for the Kursk submarine disaster and the Kosovo war; Emmy nomination for Russian orphans reporting. Biography Moscow, Jerusalem, Kabul, and Baghdad are not datelines Dana Lewis covered from a hotel balcony. He lived in Russia for 12 years as NBC News Moscow correspondent and later Fox News Moscow Bureau Chief, one of the longest continuously based Western reporters in the country. Before that he ran CTV’s Middle East bureau out of Jerusalem through the 1990s. That grounding matters when a board is asked to think about Russia, Ukraine, Iran, or the Gulf. Lewis has interviewed Vladimir Putin, King Hussein of Jordan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Shimon Peres. He was embedded with the 101st Airborne for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and with the 82nd Airborne, 10th Mountain Division, and U.S. Marines across multiple Afghanistan tours including Helmand Province. He reports in English and Russian. The awards sit underneath the reporting, not in front of it. Overseas Press Club recognition for the Kursk submarine disaster and the Kosovo war, an Emmy nomination for a story on Russian orphans, and decades of assignments for Fox News, NBC News, CBS News, CBC News, CTV National News, and Al Jazeera America. Today he is based in London, hosts the BACK STORY With DANA LEWIS podcast on world affairs, and appears regularly on TRT World, LBC Radio, and ABC News Australia. For event organisers he works as a moderator, conference host, and interviewer, putting the same instincts that governed a live two-way from a war zone to work on a corporate stage. Key speaking topics Russia and the Kremlin Middle East conflict and security Geopolitical risk and foreign policy War reporting and frontline journalism International media and world affairs Event hosting, moderation, and executive interviews Ideal for Board and executive briefings on Russia, Ukraine, and the wider post-Soviet region Conferences requiring a moderator or host with authority on geopolitics and security Media panels and journalism programmes exploring war reporting and foreign correspondence Awards ceremonies and corporate events seeking a broadcast-trained presenter Audience outcomes A clearer read on the Kremlin’s logic and the constraints shaping Russian foreign policy A grounded sense of how Middle East conflicts connect to European and global risk An on-stage conversation moderated at the pace and standard of live network television First-hand colour from inside Moscow, Jerusalem, Kabul, and Baghdad that sharpens abstract risk discussions

Why organisations work with Brett Johnson He built ShadowCrew, the forum widely credited as the template for modern darknet marketplaces, and can walk a security team through the attacker logic he once ran at scale. The U.S. Secret Service publicly named him “The Original Internet Godfather” and embedded him in Operation Anglerphish; that cooperation history gives his sessions a provenance no academic or vendor speaker can match. He translates criminal tradecraft into board-level language: why a particular control matters, which fraud type is about to spike, where identity verification actually breaks down. Named advisory and client work spans the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, and AARP, which means his examples are not theoretical and his audience references are checkable. He is comfortable with the awkward part of his own story, which is what makes him credible to senior security and fraud leaders who have heard every generic “hacker keynote” already. Biography highlights Co-founder and administrator of ShadowCrew (2002-2004), widely cited as the precursor to modern darknet fraud marketplaces. Convicted of 39 felonies, placed on the US Most Wanted list, escaped federal custody, recaptured and served a federal sentence. U.S. Secret Service confidential informant under Operation Anglerphish, embedded on ScandinavianCarding and CardersMarket. Founder of Anglerphish Security, advising Fortune 500 financial services, retail, and technology firms on fraud and darknet intelligence. Host of The AnglerPhish Podcast on cybercrime, scams, and identity theft. Featured in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and covered by The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice. Biography ShadowCrew went live in August 2002 and ran for barely more than two years before the Secret Service shut it down. In that window it wrote the operating manual that darknet marketplaces still use. Brett Johnson, under the handle GOllumfun, was one of three co-founders and an administrator on the forum. After the 2004 takedown he avoided the first wave of arrests, was picked up in 2005 on separate charges, agreed to cooperate with the Secret Service, then continued committing tax fraud while working as an informant. He was placed on the US Most Wanted list, recaptured, sent to federal prison, escaped, recaptured again, and eventually served out a federal sentence. What separates him from the standard former-hacker speaker is the specificity of what he built. Modern identity theft, account takeover, card-not-present fraud, and organised tax-refund fraud all trace back through methods he helped industrialise. Security and fraud leaders at banks, payment networks, and retailers book him because he can describe, step by step, how an attacker selects a target and defeats controls the defenders thought were working. He now runs Anglerphish Security and advises named clients including the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, AARP, and Neustar. His story has been told in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and across The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice, which is a useful external check for buyers who want to verify the biography before the contract. Key speaking topics Cybercrime and the modern fraud economy Identity theft and account takeover Social engineering and phishing Darknet marketplaces and threat intelligence Insider perspectives on financial crime Fraud prevention for banks, payment networks, and retail Ideal for CISOs, heads of fraud, and heads of financial crime at banks, card networks, and fintechs Retail, e-commerce, and payments leadership teams exposed to card-not-present and account takeover fraud Boards and audit committees seeking an unvarnished attacker-side briefing Government and public-sector programme leaders responsible for benefits, tax, or identity systems Audience outcomes A clear picture of how organised cybercriminals select targets, test defences, and cash out. Named examples of where existing fraud and identity controls tend to fail in practice. A sharper sense of which internal signals to take seriously and which to stop paying for. Concrete language to brief a board or executive committee on fraud exposure without resorting to vendor slides.

Why organisations work with Benedict Allen He speaks from a deep body of work. Six BBC series and more than ten books, including the 2022 Canongate retrospective Explorer and a 2026 children’s title, sit behind every story he tells. He is one of the last working explorers in the classical mould. The Daily Telegraph placed him alongside Sir Ranulph Fiennes in its 2013 list of top British explorers, and the Royal Geographical Society elected him to its Council in 2010. His material is specific to a question leaders actually face: what does composure look like when the plan has failed and help is days away. He talks about the 2017 Papua New Guinea extraction, the Central Range crossing with the Yaifo, and the Skeleton Coast without turning them into metaphors. He pioneered solo self-filming on expedition in 1992, a decision that reshaped how remote travel is recorded on television. The instinct behind it, strip the crew, carry the risk yourself, is a credible jumping-off point for conversations about ownership and accountability. Corporate audiences he has worked with include Santander, IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, De Beers, NatWest and Google, across both board-level workshops and wider company events. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; elected a Trustee and Council member in 2010. Author of more than ten books across four decades, from Mad White Giant (1985) to his first children’s book, The Nine Times I Nearly Died (2026); editor of The Faber Book of Exploration. Six BBC television series self-filmed on a handheld camera from 1992, the technique that earned him recognition as the first TV adventurer to record solo expeditions without a crew. Underwent the Niowra “crocodile” initiation in the Sepik, the basis of Into the Crocodile’s Nest: scarred and beaten over six weeks to be made “a man as strong as a crocodile”. Subject of an international rescue operation in 2017 after going missing in Papua New Guinea on a solo return to the Yaifo community. Described by former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson as “part of the history of television”. Biography The Yaifo community first met Benedict Allen in 1987, when he was attempting a crossing of Papua New Guinea’s Central Range with no crew, no phone, and no GPS. Thirty years later he went back to find them. When he failed to make a pickup, an international search followed, and he was helicoptered out with malaria and dengue. That arc, the same territory three decades apart, captures how his expeditions actually work. His method has a single origin. As a young man in Papua New Guinea, Allen underwent the male initiation of the Niowra, the “crocodile people” of the Sepik. Initiates were scarred with crocodile markings and beaten over six weeks to be made, in the elders’ phrase, “a man as strong as a crocodile”. The ordeal taught him that a group is only as strong as its weakest member. That principle set the pattern for everything after. Rather than import equipment and companions, he immerses himself in local knowledge and carries a camera where most explorers bring a crew. The choice, made first in 1992, earned him the label of first TV adventurer and six BBC series of self-filmed footage from the Amazon, the Gobi, the Skeleton Coast, and the Arctic. The written record is as substantial. From Mad White Giant in 1985 to the 2022 retrospective Explorer, his books document journeys most people only read about, and he edited The Faber Book of Exploration. His latest, The Nine Times I Nearly Died (2026), is his first for children: true survival stories written to build resilience in a generation often called anxious. The Royal Geographical Society elected him to its Council in 2010, and The Daily Telegraph placed him among its top ten British explorers, alongside the same companies from Google to De Beers who keep booking him for what a leader learns from weeks alone in the rainforest. Key speaking topics Survival and judgement under pressure Leadership of small teams in hostile conditions Resilience and recovery after things go wrong Trust across cultural and linguistic distance Classical exploration and the ethics of adventure Self-reliance and solo performance Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and board dinners focused on resilience or crisis response CEO and executive team workshops exploring composure and judgement under pressure Company-wide events wanting a keynote that earns attention on substance rather than celebrity Organisations marking a milestone or change programme with a speaker whose story anchors the room Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what composure looks like when the original plan has failed Vivid reference points from real expeditions they can carry back into their own decision-making A reframed view of small-team trust, especially across language and cultural distance A memorable shared moment built around a working explorer rather than a recycled motivational story Renewed attention to self-reliance and preparation as leadership disciplines

Why organisations work with Alex Hibbert Holds a Guinness World Record for the longest unsupported ski expedition on the Greenland Ice Sheet, giving board-level audiences a verified rather than rhetorical reference point for endurance and risk. Works with a named concept he calls “coping headroom”, the margin a team needs before pressure turns into chaos, which maps directly onto how leaders think about capacity, reserves and pacing. Rejects motivational framing on record, building talks around stark assessment and realistic planning, which travels into strategy, risk and finance functions rather than only conference-style audiences. Combines first-hand expedition leadership with a science background from Oxford and an honorary doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, so credibility holds in technical and executive rooms. Repeat client list including Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker and Aberdeen Asset Management signals that the content lands with engineering, financial services and regulated industries, not only general audiences. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder for the longest unsupported ski expedition on the Greenland Ice Sheet, 2,211 km over 113 days with George Bullard. Founder of the Dark Ice Project, a multi-year expedition programme to reach the Geographic North Pole from northwest Greenland in winter. Author of four books on polar travel and the Arctic: The Long Haul, Maybe, Kalaallit Nunaat and Polar Eskimo. Honorary doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, 2017. Corporate speaking clients include Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker, Grant Thornton UK, Aberdeen Asset Management and Fresenius Medical Care. Guest speaker at the Oxford Union and Cambridge University, with media commentary for Sky News, the BBC and national newspapers. Biography In 2008, two young Britons skied 2,211 km across the Greenland Ice Sheet and back, unsupported, in 113 days. The journey still sits on the Guinness World Records list as the longest unsupported ski expedition on that ice cap. One of them was Alex Hibbert, then twenty-one, with an Oxford biology degree and a plan that did not depend on luck. What followed was not a career of flag-planting. Hibbert founded the Dark Ice Project, a sustained attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole from Qaanaaq in northwest Greenland during the Arctic winter, and has returned to that region across multiple iterations and years. More than five hundred days in cold regions, close to two hundred of them genuinely unsupported, sit behind the work he now does with leadership audiences. The speaking proposition is deliberately unsentimental. He argues that the adventure-story version of endurance, the triumphant narrative, is the least useful part for serious organisations. What boards and operating committees need is a way to think about pressure that accounts for reserves, changing conditions and the point at which capable people start making poor decisions. His concept of “coping headroom”, the margin a team carries before it starts losing grip on the plan, maps onto how senior leaders actually think about capacity, risk and pacing. Evidence of fit sits in the client list. Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Royal Bank of Canada, Stryker, Grant Thornton UK, Aberdeen Asset Management and Fresenius Medical Care have all booked him, alongside Oxford and Cambridge platforms. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Portsmouth in 2017, has authored four books on polar travel, and has been a BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year finalist on three occasions. Key speaking topics Decision-making under sustained pressure Risk assessment and operational margin Leadership of small teams in hostile conditions Endurance and the limits of preparation Polar exploration and unsupported travel Honest planning and the rejection of wishful thinking Ideal for Board and executive leadership gatherings where risk, judgement and reserves are on the agenda Strategy, risk and operational resilience functions in regulated industries Engineering, energy and financial services leadership forums where technical credibility is essential Audience outcomes A sharper working vocabulary for pressure, reserves and the point at which plans start to fail A practical sense of what honest risk assessment looks like before, during and after a high-stakes decision A reference case, drawn from a verified world-record expedition, that senior teams can return to in their own planning conversations A different register from typical adventure speakers, with content built for strategy rooms rather than conference-floor inspiration

Why organisations work with Alastair Campbell Direct experience of running government communications through general elections, war, and the daily pressure of Downing Street, applied to corporate equivalents: contested deals, regulatory crises, leadership transitions. A working method for handling hostile media and political environments that has been tested at the centre of UK government, not theorised about. Author of Winners: And How They Succeed, drawing named lessons from political, business, and sporting leaders that translate directly into how senior teams plan, decide, and execute. One of the UK’s most prominent voices on workplace mental health, with lived experience and the institutional credibility of an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. A platform that reaches senior decision-makers at scale: The Rest Is Politics runs at around eight million downloads a month, giving him a current read on the political and economic context boards are trying to interpret. Biography highlights Director of Communications and Strategy for Prime Minister Tony Blair, 1997 to 2003, after running Blair’s communications in opposition from 1994. Co-host with Rory Stewart of The Rest Is Politics, one of the most-listened-to political podcasts in the UK and the leading politics show on YouTube during the 2024 general election. Bestselling author of The Blair Years, Winners: And How They Succeed, Living Better, and But What Can I Do?, alongside the All In The Mind novels. Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; former Mind Champion of the Year; co-founder of Equality4MentalHealth. Editor-at-large of The New European and a long-standing political columnist and broadcaster. Senior journalism background at the Daily Mirror and Today before moving into political communications. Biography Communication inside government is judged on the days when something has gone wrong. For nine years from 1994, Alastair Campbell sat at the centre of those days for Tony Blair, first as press secretary, then as Director of Communications and Strategy, through the 1997 election, the early years of devolution, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Iraq. The job was not press handling. It was the operational core of how a government decided what to say, to whom, and when. That experience now sits behind a second career as an author, broadcaster, and advisor. Winners: And How They Succeed set out a working theory of strategic leadership drawn from named figures across politics, business, and elite sport. The Blair Years and his subsequent diaries are the most detailed account of decision-making inside a modern UK government. His work is read by leaders who have to make calls under the same kind of scrutiny, in different sectors. The mental health work is the second strand. Living Better is an account of his depression and the systems, clinical and personal, he has used to manage it. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a former Mind Champion of the Year, and a co-founder of Equality4MentalHealth, the cross-party campaign that secured an additional 600 million pounds for UK mental health services. For corporate audiences, this is not an add-on topic. It is a senior leader who has built a public discipline around a private struggle. The Rest Is Politics, his podcast with former Conservative minister Rory Stewart, reaches several million listeners a month and led the UK politics charts through the 2024 election. The podcast is an unusual asset for a speaker: a current, weekly read on the geopolitical and domestic context in which boards and executive teams are now operating. Key speaking topics Communications strategy under pressure Leadership and decision-making in crisis Political risk and the geopolitical operating context Workplace mental health and senior leader resilience Lessons from winners across politics, business, and sport Media, scrutiny, and reputation management Campaign strategy and persuasion Ideal for CEOs, chairs, and executive committees facing contested decisions, regulatory scrutiny, or leadership transitions Communications, public affairs, and corporate affairs leaders responsible for crisis and reputation HR and people leaders building senior-level mental health and resilience programmes Leadership development audiences and partner conferences in professional services, financial services, and regulated sectors Audience outcomes A clearer view of how to make and communicate decisions when scrutiny is hostile and information is incomplete. Specific, named lessons from inside government and elite performance environments on what separates winners from competent operators. A more honest framework for senior leaders to think about their own resilience, including mental health, as a strategic variable rather than a personal weakness. A current read on the political and geopolitical environment shaping commercial decisions over the next cycle. Practical reference points for handling media, public scrutiny, and internal communication under pressure.

Why organisations work with Jason Fox He speaks with the authority of someone who ran hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations at Sergeant rank in the Special Boat Service, not someone interpreting that world from outside it. His account of complex PTSD and recovery, set out in the Sunday Times number one bestseller Battle Scars, gives senior leaders a usable frame for talking about mental health with people who will not respond to standard corporate wellbeing language. He translates the team standards that kept SBS troops alive into the behaviours that hold a leadership team together during restructures, market shocks and public failure. The vocabulary is operational, not motivational. Organisations that have put him in front of their teams get a speaker who has also led a Guinness-record Atlantic row and a 1,980-mile unsupported Yukon kayak, which means the lessons on preparation, teamwork and composure come from current practice as well as past service. Biography highlights Royal Marine Commando from age 16; Sergeant in the Special Boat Service; approximately 20 years in UK Special Forces before medical discharge in 2012. Longest-serving directing staff on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; former directing staff on SAS Australia. Presenter of Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, filmed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Author of Battle Scars (Sunday Times number one bestseller, Bantam Press) and Life Under Fire (Penguin Random House). Co-founder of Rock2Recovery, providing mental health support to serving personnel, veterans and their families. Guinness World Record holder with Team Essence for the first unsupported east-to-west Atlantic row, Lagos to Venezuela, 50 days, 2016; led an unsupported 1,980-mile Yukon River kayak expedition in 2019. Biography Hostage rescue, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics work in the Special Boat Service demand a style of leadership that most organisations only discover they lack once something has already gone wrong. Fox spent two decades inside that environment, joining the Royal Marines at sixteen and reaching Sergeant rank in the SBS before a complex PTSD diagnosis forced a medical discharge in 2012. The second half of his career has been about translating that experience into language corporate leaders can actually use. His first book, Battle Scars, reached number one on the Sunday Times list and opened a serious conversation about how elite operators break, recover and rebuild. Life Under Fire, published by Penguin Random House, sets out the team habits and personal disciplines he saw work under fire. Audiences know him from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he has served as the longest-standing directing staff, and from the Channel 4 documentary series Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, in which he reported from cartel-affected communities across Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Alongside television and writing, he co-founded Rock2Recovery with fellow former Royal Marine Jamie Sanderson to give veterans faster routes into mental health support. The adventures reinforce the argument rather than decorate it. In 2016 Fox was part of Team Essence, which set the Guinness World Record as the first team to row the Atlantic unsupported east-to-west from mainland Europe to mainland South America, 3,308 nautical miles in fifty days. In 2019 he kayaked the Yukon River, 1,980 miles unsupported, in aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. Both are reference points he uses with leadership teams to make the case that composure, preparation and team trust are trained, not inherited. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes environments Resilience and recovery from operational trauma Mental health and PTSD in high-performing populations Risk assessment and mission planning Accountability and standards inside elite teams Ideal for Executive and senior leadership teams navigating restructures, crisis response or reputational pressure Boards and operating committees rebuilding trust after a serious incident Safety-critical and frontline-heavy organisations (defence, energy, logistics, emergency services) where team decision-making is the core asset CHRO and wellbeing leads building a mental health programme that needs credibility with male-heavy or frontline workforces Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite military teams run planning, rehearsal and after-action review, and where those practices map onto corporate leadership A usable vocabulary for discussing mental health with people who dismiss standard wellbeing language Sharper thinking on what individual composure and team standards look like when conditions actually deteriorate A first-person account of PTSD and recovery that makes the business case for early intervention concrete rather than abstract

Why organisations work with Kari Nixon She brings the historical pattern recognition of a literary scholar trained in 19th-century epidemic narratives to live problems of misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, and corporate trust collapse. Her published work, including “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” with Simon and Schuster, gives her a public platform that translates academic rigour into language a board can act on. She has worked the actual mechanics of disinformation as a Norway-based fact-checker for Logically Facts, not just commented on it from the outside. Fluency in Norwegian and English, plus a decade living between the United States and Scandinavia, makes her unusually credible on cross-cultural risk messaging for organisations operating across both markets. She trains scientists, executives, and communicators on the specific point most playbooks miss: framing decides whether data lands or rebounds. Biography highlights Author of “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” (Tiller Press, Simon and Schuster, 2021), a public-facing book drawing thirty lessons from past pandemics. Author of the academic monograph “Kept from All Contagion” (SUNY Press) on germ theory and Victorian narrative. Co-editor of “Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory” and “Theorizing Syphilis and Subjectivity,” both Palgrave Macmillan. PhD, English, Southern Methodist University, 2015. Former Assistant Professor of English at Whitworth University, specialising in medical humanities and Victorian literature. Norway-based fact-checker at Logically Facts; bylines at CNN, HuffPost, and YES! Magazine. Biography The way an institution names a risk shapes whether the public obeys, ignores, or revolts against it. Kari Nixon spent her academic career inside that question, reading how Victorian Britain talked itself through cholera, syphilis, and tuberculosis, then watched the same patterns repeat in real time during COVID-19. That double vantage, historical scholar and live observer, produced “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” with Simon and Schuster’s Tiller Press, a book that translates two centuries of epidemic communication failures into operating lessons for the present. Her academic monograph “Kept from All Contagion” with SUNY Press sits behind it, alongside two co-edited Palgrave Macmillan volumes on contagion theory and the cultural history of disease. She left a faculty role at Whitworth University to work in Norway, including as a fact-checker at Logically Facts, monitoring how disinformation moves on social platforms. The shift from English department to fact desk is the point. Her argument is that risk communication is not a science problem with a comms wrapper. It is a narrative problem with a science core, and the people best placed to fix it are the ones who can read both registers. Her writing has appeared in CNN, HuffPost, and YES! Magazine. She works with science labs on graduate communication training, with corporate teams on crisis framing, and with cross-Atlantic organisations on how a message built for an American audience tends to misfire in a Nordic one, and the reverse. Key speaking topics Risk and crisis communication Misinformation and disinformation in public discourse Public trust in institutions Health communication and vaccine hesitancy Cross-cultural communication between the United States and Europe Narrative framing of contagion and contagion-adjacent risks Media literacy training for organisations Ideal for Communications, public affairs, and corporate affairs leads preparing for reputational or regulatory shocks Health, life sciences, and public sector organisations facing trust deficits with the public they serve Cross-border leadership teams operating between North America and the Nordics Science and research institutions whose technical experts need to speak to non-technical audiences Audience outcomes A working diagnosis of where their current crisis playbook will break under speed, scale, or scepticism Specific historical analogues showing what worked and what backfired when institutions tried to correct misinformation A framework for assessing whether a given message will travel, mutate, or be rejected by its intended audience A clearer sense of how Nordic and Anglo-American audiences read trust signals differently Language they can use the next morning to reframe a contested fact for a sceptical public

Why organisations work with Eric O’Neill He has run the highest-stakes counterintelligence operation in modern US history. When he describes how a long-running insider threat actually unfolds, he is describing his own case file, not a model. His framing reorients cyber defence around the human, not the firewall. Hanssen was an FBI veteran with full system access. Most of today’s breaches still begin with someone trusted being manipulated. He translates espionage tradecraft into language CFOs, general counsel and HR leaders can act on. Deepfake CEO fraud, voice cloning, social engineering and ransomware are explained as familiar intelligence techniques running on new infrastructure. He brings two published books from major trade houses, Gray Day (Crown, 2019) and Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025), giving audiences a substantive body of work to follow up with. He is one of the few cybersecurity speakers buyers can hand to a non-technical executive audience without losing them. The Hanssen narrative carries the room; the security argument arrives inside it. Biography highlights Conducted the FBI undercover investigation that led to the arrest of Robert Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran convicted on 15 counts of espionage. Author of Gray Day (Crown, 2019) and Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025). Founder of The Georgetown Group, a Washington DC investigative and security consultancy, and Nexasure AI. Portrayed by Ryan Phillippe in the 2007 Universal Pictures film Breach. Honours graduate of Auburn University and the George Washington University Law School; admitted to the Maryland and DC bars. Featured across NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox, Newsweek and TechCrunch. Biography Robert Hanssen had been spying for Moscow for almost two decades when a 26-year-old FBI operative was placed in the office next to him. Hanssen was a 25-year bureau veteran with full clearance, deep technical fluency and a track record of compromising US assets. The operation that exposed him hinged on a single quiet act, the download of an encrypted Palm Pilot, returned to the desk before it was missed. The arrest came on 18 February 2001. That case sits at the centre of Eric O’Neill’s work, but it is not the product. The product is what the case taught him about how serious adversaries actually operate. They study the organisation. They build trust. They exploit the people closest to the asset, not the perimeter. The same logic now drives AI-generated deepfakes, voice-cloned executive fraud, synthetic identity attacks and supply chain compromise. He has built a second career around that translation. The Georgetown Group, his Washington DC consultancy, handles counterintelligence, economic espionage, internal investigations and security risk for corporate clients. Nexasure AI focuses on AI-era threat advisory. Gray Day (Crown, 2019) is the inside account of the Hanssen case. Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025) is the operating manual that followed it. He is also a lawyer, admitted to the Maryland and DC bars after law school at George Washington University. That matters in the room. He briefs general counsel, CISOs and boards on cyber and insider risk in language that lands legally as well as operationally, and he does it with the rare authority of someone who has actually run the case. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity and the human attack surface AI-enabled fraud, deepfakes and synthetic identity Insider threat and counterintelligence for corporates Economic espionage and intellectual property protection Ransomware and extortion economics National security lessons for private sector boards Social engineering in the age of generative AI Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CEOs reframing cyber as enterprise risk rather than IT spend CISOs, CIOs and CSOs briefing non-technical executives on insider threat and AI-era attack methods General counsel and CFOs exposed to deepfake fraud, business email compromise and wire authorisation risk Industry conferences in financial services, defence, technology, healthcare and critical infrastructure Audience outcomes A working mental model of how adversaries plan and execute insider compromise, drawn from a real FBI case A practical view of where AI is changing the cost and speed of social engineering, deepfake and identity attacks Specific behavioural and procedural defences against voice cloning, deepfake video and CEO fraud A board-level vocabulary for cyber and counterintelligence risk that does not depend on technical jargon

Why organisations work with Scott Parazynski He is the only person on record to have both flown in space and summited Everest, giving every preparation and recovery argument the weight of a verifiable case study rather than an analogy. His STS-120 solar array repair, 90 feet from the airlock on a live, energised structure, is a documented worked example of decision-making at the edge of available data. Few speakers can hand a board that kind of primary material. A Stanford-trained physician and Harvard-trained emergency clinician, he brings a clinician’s discipline to how teams triage information when something is genuinely going wrong. As founder of Fluidity Technologies and CEO of OnwardAir, he speaks about innovation and risk from inside two operating aerospace companies, not from a podium career. His material on calculated risk versus reckless risk is built from cases where the distinction was tested in real time, which lands with audiences who have heard the metaphor too many times. Biography highlights Five Space Shuttle missions and seven spacewalks across 17 years at NASA, including service as EVA Branch Chief. Performed the STS-120 repair of a live P6 solar array tethered on the OBSS boom approximately 90 feet from the airlock. First person to fly in space and summit Mount Everest, reaching the summit on 20 May 2009. Stanford University BS Biology; Stanford Medical School MD; Harvard emergency medicine training. Author of The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed, co-written with Susy Flory (Little A, 2017). Inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame, 2016; recipient of five NASA Spaceflight Medals and two NASA Distinguished Service Medals. Founder and CEO of Fluidity Technologies; currently leading OnwardAir, a hybrid-electric VTOL venture. Biography The fourth spacewalk of STS-120 in 2007 was not in any flight plan. A torn solar array on the International Space Station had to be repaired while still energised, and the astronaut sent to do it was tethered to a boom 90 feet from the airlock, further from safety than anyone had been before. The repair held. It is one of the most cited operational saves of the Shuttle era and the working example behind most of what Scott Parazynski now teaches leadership teams about decisions made on incomplete information. He spent 17 years at NASA, flying five Shuttle missions and conducting seven spacewalks for a total of around 47 hours outside the vehicle. He served as EVA Branch Chief, leading the office responsible for how astronauts work in vacuum. The clinical training behind that career, Stanford Medical School and Harvard emergency medicine, shapes how he describes preparation: as a structured rehearsal of failure, not as confidence-building. On 20 May 2009 he became the first person to have both flown in space and stood on the summit of Everest, after a ruptured lumbar disc forced him to abandon an earlier attempt and rebuild. The Sky Below, published with Susy Flory in 2017, is the long-form account. The book is useful here because it documents recovery and re-attempt, not just achievement. His current work is operational. He founded Fluidity Technologies, the single-handed 3D input controller spun out of his spacewalk experience, and now leads OnwardAir, a hybrid-electric VTOL venture. That gives boards a speaker who is currently running engineering teams under capital and regulatory pressure, not narrating a former career. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme adversity Calculated risk versus reckless risk Team performance in high-consequence environments Preparation, rehearsal and failure recovery Innovation inside engineering-led organisations Human performance at the edge of physiology Building a culture where innovation is permitted and expected Ideal for Boards and executive teams designing crisis-response and operational resilience capability CEOs and COOs in safety-critical sectors: aerospace, energy, healthcare, infrastructure Engineering and R&D leadership teams setting risk thresholds for novel programmes Leadership-development cohorts for newly senior operators Audience outcomes A clearer language for distinguishing calculated risk from reckless risk inside their own decisions A working model of pre-mission rehearsal that they can adapt to their organisation’s failure modes A primary-source view of how a small team executes a non-rehearsed repair on a live system A more honest account of recovery from setback at the individual and team level A higher bar for what counts as preparation rather than reassurance

Why organisations work with Chloe Colliver She has run live detection work across the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US elections, which means she can speak to election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour from operational experience rather than commentary. She has sat on both sides of the table, as a lead investigator at ISD naming tactics used against platforms, and in senior online safety policy at Ofcom shaping how UK regulation will actually be enforced. Her testimony to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and the Swedish, Canadian, French, German and New Zealand governments gives boards a direct line into how legislators are thinking about tech regulation. She co-authored the ISD reports that set the methodological vocabulary for this field, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage, cited by journalists, regulators and platform policy teams. She is fluent on camera, with sustained appearances on CNN, BBC Newsnight, Sky News and Channel 4, which translates into a keynote register that works for mixed executive and technical audiences. Biography highlights Head of Digital Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, leading a global team of analysts on disinformation and online extremism. Now in senior online safety policy at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, building the evidence base behind the Online Safety Act. Co-author of ISD reports including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle, The 101 of Disinformation Detection and Click Here For Outrage. Expert witness to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and to the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments. Contributor to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism alongside Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. BA History, Clare College, Cambridge; MA History, Yale, as a Mellon Fellow. Biography Coordinated manipulation online is no longer a fringe concern for communications teams. It is an operating risk that touches elections, public health, brand safety and regulatory exposure all at once. The field that studies it seriously is small, and Chloe Colliver has been at the centre of it for most of the last decade. At the Institute for Strategic Dialogue she led a global team mapping disinformation, hate speech and extremist content across major platforms. Her team ran live analysis during the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US election cycles, and co-authored the research reports that shaped how journalists, regulators and platform policy staff now talk about coordinated inauthentic behaviour, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage. She has given expert evidence to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and advised the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments on tech regulation. She also contributed to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the cross-platform body that includes Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. She now holds a senior online safety role at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, where she leads work on the evidence base for the Online Safety Act. That shift from platform-level investigator to regulator-side policy lead is what makes her rare on a stage: she has named the tactics, tested the interventions, and now sits inside the body writing the rules. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information integrity Online safety regulation and the Online Safety Act Election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour Platform governance and content moderation Digital policy and tech regulation Extremism and online radicalisation Crisis communications in a manipulated information environment Ideal for Boards, CEOs and comms leaders preparing for regulatory, reputational or election-year information risk. Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Heads of Trust and Safety navigating the Online Safety Act and wider platform regulation. Policy, public affairs and government relations teams tracking how UK, EU and G7 legislators are moving on disinformation and online harms. Security, intelligence and threat teams integrating platform-level signals into enterprise risk reporting. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how coordinated disinformation is actually built, distributed and monetised, with named examples from recent election cycles. A grounded read on where UK and EU online safety regulation is heading and what it will require from platforms, advertisers and large employers. A working vocabulary for discussing information integrity at board level, separating genuine risk from noise. A sense of which interventions have been tested and which have not, drawn from ISD research and regulator-side evidence work.

Why organisations work with Khadra Sufi Fifteen-plus years of live television means she handles unscripted moments, technical hiccups, and difficult guests the way a working broadcaster does, not the way an event host learns to. Bilingual moderation in German and English at a professional broadcast standard, useful for DAX-listed companies and international brands running mixed-language audiences from a single stage. A QVC track record selling on live retail television, which translates directly to product launches, brand reveals, and live commerce formats where pacing and credibility matter more than polish. A Spiegel bestselling memoir and a UN Refugee Aid ambassadorship give her a separate, bookable keynote on resilience and reinvention when the brief calls for personal-story content alongside hosting. Biography highlights Author of “Das Madchen, das nicht weinen durfte” (Sudwest Verlag, 2010), a Spiegel bestseller about her family’s flight from Somalia and asylum in Germany. UN Refugee Aid (UNO-Fluchtlingshilfe) ambassador since 2012. Reporter for Bild in Cologne (2008-2010) and live reporter and author for WDR Lokalzeit Ruhr (2009-2012). Brand ambassador and presenter at QVC Dusseldorf, including her own clothing line. Guest on national German television including Markus Lanz (ZDF), Hartaberfair (ARD), Menschen bei Maischberger (ARD), Plasberg in Person (WDR), and ZDF Mittagsmagazin. Biography A corporate gala, a press conference, and a livestreamed product launch all need the same thing on stage: a host who can read a room, talk to a stranger on camera, and not flinch when the autocue fails. That is broadcast craft, and it is what Khadra Sufi has done professionally for more than fifteen years. Her route in is unusual. The daughter of a Somali diplomat, she grew up between Yemen, Zambia, Saudi Arabia, and East Berlin before her family fled the Somali civil war in 1990 and arrived in Germany as asylum seekers. She trained as a medical assistant, completed her secondary education in Germany, and moved into journalism via Bild in Cologne and WDR Lokalzeit Ruhr, working as a live reporter and author from 2009 to 2012. The on-camera work expanded into national appearances on Markus Lanz, Hartaberfair, Menschen bei Maischberger, and Plasberg in Person, and into commercial broadcasting through QVC Dusseldorf, where she is a long-running brand ambassador and runs her own clothing line. She moderates corporate events, panels, and product launches in German and English, and is based in Hamburg. Her 2010 memoir “Das Madchen, das nicht weinen durfte” became a Spiegel bestseller and reissued through Penguin Random House. Since 2012 she has been an ambassador for UN Refugee Aid (UNO-Fluchtlingshilfe), which is also the foundation for her keynote work on displacement, resilience, and reinvention when an organiser wants more than a host on the bill. Key speaking topics Event hosting and moderation Panel facilitation Live product launches and brand reveals After-dinner and awards hosting Resilience and personal reinvention Refugee experience and integration Ideal for Corporate communications and brand teams running bilingual German-English galas, conferences, or product launches Marketing and retail leaders booking live commerce, brand reveals, or QVC-style on-camera formats DEI, CSR, and employee engagement leads commissioning a personal-story keynote on displacement, resilience, and reinvention Audience outcomes An event that holds together across a long-format agenda, with a host who keeps senior guests sharp and the audience present A bilingual stage that does not lose energy when switching between German and English speakers For keynote bookings: a first-person account of statelessness, asylum, and rebuilding a working life in a new country, told without sentimentality A practical reference point for what employee-facing communication on refugee and integration topics can sound like when it is delivered by someone who has lived it