Business Model Innovation speakers

Why organisations work with Sarah Willingham She has run the full arc of a hospitality business: founding The London Cocktail Club, taking Nightcap to AIM as its founder-CEO, acquiring four bar groups under it, and steering the group back into private ownership. That gives audiences a working perspective on growth, M&A and capital markets in one voice. Her acquisition record is concrete: London Cocktail Club, Adventure Bar Group, Barrio Familia and The Piano Works rolled into Nightcap inside two years. Buyers booking on M&A integration get a CEO who has done it on a public balance sheet. She brings an operator’s view of consumer demand, not a consultant’s. Bombay Bicycle Club went from six sites to seventeen under her, Cocktail Club from one site to ten, before either was sold or absorbed. She speaks with credibility on building through downturns. Nightcap was floated and grown through pandemic trading and the cost-of-living squeeze, then taken private when the public-market route stopped working. Few founder speakers have lived that decision in real time. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Nightcap PLC, the bar group behind The Cocktail Club, Adventure Bar Group, Barrio Familia and The Piano Works. Co-founder of The London Cocktail Club (2010), grown to ten sites before acquisition by Nightcap in January 2021. Acquired The Bombay Bicycle Club through The Clapham House Group in 2004, expanded it to seventeen sites, exited in 2007. Investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, Series 13 and 14, from 2015. Previously a judge on Raymond Blanc’s BBC Two series The Restaurant. MBA, Cranfield School of Management. Honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University, Cranfield University and Oxford Brookes University. Business Leader of the Year, Publican Awards 2023. Biography The London Cocktail Club opened a single site on Goodge Street in 2011. A decade later it sat at the centre of a listed bar group that had also bought Adventure Bar Group, Barrio Familia and The Piano Works. Sarah Willingham co-founded the original chain and, with her husband Michael, founded Nightcap PLC to roll it up. That arc is unusual. Most founders in hospitality build one concept and stop. Willingham has built, sold, listed and acquired across consumer brands for two decades, starting with the purchase of Bombay Bicycle Club through The Clapham House Group in 2004 and a profitable exit three years later. The Cranfield MBA and the honorary doctorates from Staffordshire, Cranfield and Oxford Brookes followed the operating record, not the other way round. Her public profile is anchored in BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, where she invested through Series 13 and 14, and earlier in The Restaurant alongside Raymond Blanc. Inside the industry the credibility comes from running Nightcap as a listed CEO through pandemic trading, a cost-of-living squeeze, and the eventual decision to take the group private when the AIM listing stopped paying for itself. For audiences in growth, scale-up and consumer strategy, that record translates into specifics: how to evaluate an acquisition target, when to integrate and when to leave a brand alone, what listed life actually demands of a founder, and when to walk a company out of the public market. The 2023 Publican Awards Business Leader of the Year reflects the industry view of how she has handled it. Key speaking topics Founder-led scale-up Mergers, acquisitions and brand integration Hospitality and consumer growth strategy Listing, operating and delisting on AIM Investor decision-making and dealflow Building consumer brands through downturns Female founder leadership in consumer markets Ideal for Founder and CEO audiences in consumer, hospitality, retail and lifestyle Corporate M&A, integration and post-acquisition leadership teams Investor and private-equity events, family-office gatherings, scale-up programmes Women-in-business and female-founder networks at senior level Audience outcomes A working view of how a consumer business moves from one site, to a chain, to a listed group. Specific lessons from four hospitality acquisitions executed inside two years on a public balance sheet. A grounded perspective on what listing changes for a founder, and when to undo it. A direct read on investor decision-making, drawn from years on Dragons’ Den and on her own deals.

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

Why organisations work with Shiza Shahid She has built a global non-profit alongside a Nobel laureate and a viral consumer brand from the ground up, which gives boards a credible voice on what purpose looks like inside a P&L rather than on a slide. Our Place put a specific commercial bet on multicultural cooking and on cookware made without PFAS, PTFE and PFOA. She can speak about how a values position becomes a product specification and a category position. Through NOW Ventures and her AngelList partnership, she has seen hundreds of early-stage decks from mission-led founders. She can tell a corporate audience which purpose-led strategies are creating real growth and which are positioning. Her arc from McKinsey analyst to non-profit CEO to consumer founder to seed investor gives her language that translates across the room, from a CFO to a brand lead to an innovation team. Biography highlights Co-founder and founding CEO of the Malala Fund, established in 2013 with Malala Yousafzai to advance girls’ education in Pakistan and across Africa. Co-founder and Co-CEO of Our Place, the direct-to-consumer kitchenware brand behind the Always Pan, launched in 2019. Founder of NOW Ventures, an early-stage fund launched in 2017 in partnership with AngelList, backing mission-driven technology startups. Author of Dinner at Our Place: Recipes for Gathering, published by HarperCollins in 2025 with eleven chefs and tastemakers. BA, Stanford University, graduated with University Distinction; former business analyst, McKinsey & Company, Dubai. Named to TIME’s 30 Under 30 People Changing the World and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs; honoured as a Tribeca Disruptive Innovator. Biography A teenage activist in Islamabad set up a summer camp for Malala Yousafzai and other Pakistani girls in 2009. Three years later, after Malala was shot, that camp became the foundation for the Malala Fund. Shiza Shahid was the founding CEO, working alongside Malala and her father Ziauddin to build a global organisation focused on girls’ education in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone. The Malala Fund was a lesson in scaling a mission. The Our Place chapter, which started in 2019 with husband Amir Tehrani and co-founder Zach Rosner, was a lesson in scaling a product. The brand bet that multicultural cooking and toxin-free cookware were a commercial proposition, not a niche, and the Always Pan answered that bet with a 30,000-person waitlist on release. NOW Ventures, launched in 2017 with AngelList, is the third lens. Shahid writes early cheques into mission-led founders in technology, with an explicit emphasis on women and diverse entrepreneurs. The fund gives her a constant view of which purpose-led businesses are converting into commercial substance, and which are still positioning. Her cookbook, Dinner at Our Place, published by HarperCollins in 2025, sits on top of that body of work. The recipes are written with eleven chefs and tastemakers, and the book is structured around hosting as a cultural act. It is the most concrete expression yet of the conviction that drives her companies: that culture, commerce and care are not separate categories. Key speaking topics Mission-driven entrepreneurship and scale Purpose as a commercial proposition Building a consumer brand from launch Women and diverse founders in early-stage tech Girls’ education and social impact Inclusive brand and product design Investing in technology for global challenges Ideal for CEOs and founders building purpose-led consumer brands and DTC businesses Chief marketing, chief brand and chief sustainability officers in consumer goods Corporate venture, innovation and ESG teams designing new mission-led ventures Women in leadership programmes, founder networks and philanthropy boards Audience outcomes A grounded view of how a mission becomes a product specification, a brand position and a category bet, not a marketing line. A clearer read on which purpose-led commercial strategies are creating growth and which are signalling. A working vocabulary for backing women and diverse founders in early-stage technology, from someone who writes cheques. A direct account of how a non-profit at global scale and a consumer brand at viral scale are built from the same founder discipline.

Why organisations work with Simon Woodroffe He has founded and sold two category-defining hospitality brands, YO! Sushi, sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million in 2023, and YOTEL, the compact airport hotel now operating internationally. The founder story is specific and verifiable: Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, OBE in 2006, and a business built initially on extended supplier payment terms rather than venture capital. His appearance on the first series of Dragons’ Den gives him a recognisable profile with UK and Commonwealth audiences who grew up with the format. His career before entrepreneurship, stage design for major rock artists, extreme-sports TV production, gives his session a different register from the MBA-style founder speaker, more creative and more usable by brand and product audiences. His philanthropic work on prison rehabilitation with Make Justice Work adds a credible social-purpose thread for organisations running CSR or purpose-led events. Biography highlights Founder of YO! Sushi (1997), sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million in 2023 Founder of YOTEL (2007); over 1,000 rooms across three countries by 2016 Appeared as an investor on the first series of BBC’s Dragons’ Den Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (1999); OBE (2006) for services to the hospitality industry Earlier career as theatre stagehand and stage designer for Rod Stewart, Jethro Tull and others Author of The Book of Yo! Biography YO! Sushi was the first conveyor-belt sushi brand in the UK, and for most of a generation it was the restaurant that taught British diners what the category was. Simon Woodroffe founded it in 1997 with extended supplier payment terms rather than investor capital, and spent the following decade turning it into a national brand before selling the controlling stake in 2003. In 2023 the business was sold to Zensho Holdings for £494 million. His second brand, YOTEL, launched in 2007, took the compact airline cabin as the template for airport hotel rooms at Gatwick and Heathrow and has since scaled internationally. The route into hospitality was unusual. Woodroffe left Marlborough College at sixteen with two O-levels and worked as a theatre stagehand before moving into stage design for rock artists, including Rod Stewart and Jethro Tull, and later into television work selling concert rights and producing extreme-sports programming. The creative and production experience shows up in how his hospitality brands are designed: the tableside call buttons and self-heating plates at YO! Sushi, the airline-cabin compression at YOTEL. Public recognition followed the commercial record. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999, appointed OBE in 2006 for services to the hospitality industry, and appeared as one of the original investors on the first series of Dragons’ Den. His book The Book of Yo! codified his operating philosophy for entrepreneurs. For founder, hospitality, retail and brand audiences, Woodroffe brings a relatively rare combination: two category-defining consumer brands, a creative-industries background that informs the product design, and a direct, unguarded speaking style shaped by years in front of audiences on and off camera. His continuing work on prison rehabilitation rounds out the profile for CSR-oriented events. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and building consumer brands from nothing Creativity and business-model innovation in hospitality Financing growth with limited capital Customer experience and brand design Reinvention across creative and commercial industries Purpose, rehabilitation and business as a force for good Ideal for Entrepreneur and founder-focused events, particularly in hospitality, retail and consumer brands Corporate innovation, marketing and customer-experience conferences Leadership and all-hands events needing a main-stage creative-business voice Awards dinners and after-dinner engagements looking for a recognisable UK entrepreneur with a Dragons’ Den profile Audience outcomes A founder’s operating account of how YO! Sushi and YOTEL were actually built and financed Reference points from two category-defining hospitality brands applicable to the audience’s own brand or innovation agenda A creative-industries view of customer experience and design that is different from a standard consulting frame Direct material for founder and leadership cohorts on risk, reinvention and brand longevity

Why organisations work with Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes She brings the discipline of a long-term investor to the questions boards usually approach as innovation, strategy or M&A. The argument running through her work is that value compounds when capital, attention and design choices are aligned to long time horizons; few speakers can make that case from the operator, founder and investor seats at once. As Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, she has built a marketplace around an entirely new asset class, Enterprise Non-Operating Rights, that lets companies monetise dormant intellectual property without taking on debt or diluting equity. This gives her examples of capital allocation that audiences have not heard from other speakers. Her thesis on innovation, set out in Architecting Interaction (BIS Publishers), translates directly into how she thinks about wealth and value: that lasting outcomes are produced by the contexts and structures you build around them, not by isolated brilliance. She works fluently across institutional and entrepreneurial audiences, from DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and Dutch ministries on the corporate side, to the international value investing community at VALUEx and the World of Allocators. She speaks credibly to the behavioural side of long-term decisions: why patience, valuation discipline and time horizon are commercial advantages most organisations are structurally unable to use. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, the venture pioneering Enterprise Non-Operating Rights (ENORs) as a new asset class for monetising dormant intellectual property. Founder and CEO of AKKA Architects, the Amsterdam studio behind workplace and learning projects for DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and several Dutch ministries. Author of Architecting Interaction: How to Innovate through Interactions (BIS Publishers, ISBN 9789463450478). Five years at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam under Rem Koolhaas before founding AKKA in 2012. Active speaker on the international value investing circuit, including VALUEx Switzerland, VALUEx Middle East and the World of Allocators community. Multiple TEDx talks, including TEDxBelfastWomen, TEDxYouth@HNLBilthoven and TEDxAmsterdamED. Biography Most organisations are structured to optimise the next twelve months. Most investors are structured to optimise the next quarter. The discipline of designing for value that compounds over decades, in capital, in organisations and in the contexts that produce both, is the territory Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes has been working in for over a decade. Her route to it is unusual. Trained at the American University of Beirut and then at Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, she spent five years inside one of the most intellectually demanding studios in global architecture before founding her own practice, AKKA Architects, in Amsterdam in 2012. AKKA designs workplaces, public buildings and learning spaces for clients including DHL, Guardian Glass, Saint Gobain, the European Commission and a range of Dutch ministries. Her book, Architecting Interaction: How to Innovate through Interactions, sets out the thesis that runs through everything she has built since. Lasting outcomes are produced by the contexts you design around them, not by isolated talent or one-off effort. The same instinct now drives her work as Co-Founder and CEO of EdenMountain, the venture she co-founded around Enterprise Non-Operating Rights, a new asset class that lets companies monetise dormant intellectual property without debt or dilution. That intersection of operator, founder and investor seats shapes how she speaks to senior audiences today: on long-term capital allocation, on decision-making under uncertainty, and on the behavioural and structural conditions that let value compound across cycles. She is an active voice in the international value investing community, including VALUEx Switzerland, VALUEx Middle East and the World of Allocators. Key speaking topics Long-term value investing and capital allocation Decision-making under uncertainty Building value that endures: designing organisations and portfolios for the long term New asset classes and the monetisation of dormant intellectual property Behaviour, bias and patience in long-term commercial decisions Architecting Interaction: innovation as a designable practice Entrepreneurial leadership across architecture, fintech and capital Ideal for CEOs, founders and boards wrestling with how to allocate capital and attention against decade-long time horizons rather than quarterly cycles. Heads of innovation, strategy and corporate development looking at dormant IP and underused assets as a potential source of growth without dilution. Investor and family office audiences interested in long-term, fundamentals-driven approaches to capital allocation and decision-making. CHROs and heads of workplace responsible for offices and ways of working that have to produce more than seat efficiency. Audience outcomes A direct account of how patience and valuation discipline operate as commercial advantages, drawn from her practice as a private investor and active member of the international value investing community. A working definition of innovation as a property of designed contexts and interactions, not a property of individual talent, with the four-stage method from her book to test against. A concrete example of capital structuring in practice, through EdenMountain and the ENOR asset class, that audiences will not have encountered elsewhere. A vocabulary that lets strategy, innovation, capital and workplace functions argue for the same long-term outcome in the same terms.

Why organisations work with Stephen Attenborough He built the commercial foundation of an entirely new industry. Joining Virgin Galactic as employee number one in 2004, he created the customer journey, pricing, brand and trust architecture for a product that did not yet fly. He has held a customer base for almost two decades through delay, accident and regulatory scrutiny. Roughly 700 to 800 future astronauts from more than 50 countries committed deposits before commercial flights began. That retention pattern is unusual outside luxury and is rare in deep tech. His financial-services background, more than 15 years at Gartmore Investment Management working with sophisticated and high-net-worth clients, sits underneath the customer model at Virgin Galactic. He understands how serious buyers commit to long-horizon decisions. He saw the company through its NYSE listing in 2019, the first public commercial human spaceflight company, and through Richard Branson’s flight on Unity 22 in 2021. He can speak credibly about scaling a frontier brand inside public-market scrutiny. He now sits inside the next wave of the industry, as Strategic Advisor and European Lead at Space Perspective and Trustee of Virgin Unite US. His perspective on the commercial second space age is current, not archival. Biography highlights First full-time employee of Virgin Galactic, recruited personally by Sir Richard Branson in 2004 Commercial Director and later Chief Customer Officer, Virgin Galactic, 2004 to 2022 Built and led the team responsible for sales, marketing, customer care, PR and communications for the company’s future astronaut programme Oversaw the commercial side of Virgin Galactic’s 2019 NYSE listing, the first public commercial human spaceflight company Strategic Advisor and European Lead, Space Perspective, from October 2023 Board Member and Trustee, Virgin Unite US; Advisory Board member, Space for Humanity Earlier career: more than 15 years in investment management at Gartmore Investment Management, London, in roles serving institutional and high-net-worth clients Biography The commercial foundation of a new industry rarely gets written down. When Sir Richard Branson recruited Stephen Attenborough as the first full-time employee of Virgin Galactic in 2004, there was no product, no flight history, no regulatory category and no customer base. There was a proposition: that private individuals would one day pay to leave the atmosphere. Eighteen years later, when he left the company in 2022, Virgin Galactic was a NYSE-listed business with a deposit-paying customer base across more than fifty countries, and its founder had flown. That arc is the heart of his speaking work. As Commercial Director and then Chief Customer Officer, he led sales, marketing, customer care and communications for the future astronaut programme. The customer task was unusual. Buyers were committing significant sums for an experience that had never been delivered, would arrive years later than expected, and would be examined in detail by media and regulators every step of the way. Holding a customer base through that pattern, without losing trust, is the commercial discipline he can speak to in detail. His earlier career sits underneath that work. More than fifteen years at Gartmore Investment Management in London gave him a long apprenticeship in how sophisticated clients commit capital and what they expect from the relationship. The skill set translated cleanly: long-horizon decisions, high information asymmetry, and the need for the seller to behave as a long-term partner rather than a transactional one. He remains active in the sector. As Strategic Advisor and European Lead at Space Perspective from October 2023, and as a Trustee of Virgin Unite US and Advisory Board member of Space for Humanity, he sits inside the commercial conversation about what the second space age becomes once the novelty fades and the operating questions begin. Key speaking topics The commercial second space age Building a customer base for a category that does not yet exist Brand and trust at the frontier of technology Customer experience for high-net-worth and long-horizon buyers Sustaining entrepreneurial culture through public listing and public scrutiny Frontier innovation as a commercial discipline The Virgin Galactic story, from employee one to NYSE Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and customer experience leaders in luxury, financial services and frontier technology categories Boards and executive teams building or scaling brand-led businesses in deep tech, climate tech and space Founders and commercial leaders selling long-horizon, high-trust products to demanding customers Innovation and strategy audiences working at the edge of a new market category Audience outcomes A practical view of how to build a customer base for a product that does not yet exist A frame for keeping customers committed through delay, setback and public scrutiny Specific lessons from the commercialisation of Virgin Galactic, including the move into public markets An informed view of where the commercial second space age is heading and what it means for adjacent industries A way of thinking about brand and trust as load-bearing commercial assets in frontier categories

Why organisations work with Tim Calkins A practical authority on defensive strategy, a discipline most marketing teams do not formally teach. Defending Your Brand was named 2013 Marketing Book of the Year by Expert Marketer Magazine and remains one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to competitive attack A decade of operating credibility at Kraft Foods running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, with responsibility for more than two dozen new product launches A teaching record that boards take seriously: twice-winner of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, one of six faculty to do so in its 40-plus year history Direct, current consulting work with Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Kraft Heinz through Class 5 Consulting, which keeps the frameworks tested against live commercial pressure A specialism in biomedical and healthcare marketing that makes him useful to pharmaceutical and medtech leadership teams that find generic brand keynotes irrelevant Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Marketing and Associate Chair of the Marketing Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Almost 11 years at Kraft Foods leading brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell, Parkay and A.1. Steak Sauce; responsible for more than two dozen new product launches Author of Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Breakthrough Marketing Plans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 2012); co-editor of Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019) How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018) won Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies Two-time winner of Kellogg’s Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2006, 2013); also recipient of the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award and the Kellogg-WHU Top Professor Award Founder of Class 5 Consulting, advising Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst on brand and growth strategy BA History (cum laude), Yale; MBA, Harvard Business School Biography Most marketing teams are trained to launch and to build. Very few are trained to defend. That asymmetry is what Tim Calkins has spent two decades teaching against, first as a brand operator at Kraft Foods, then at Kellogg, where he holds the Associate Chair of the Marketing Department and is Clinical Professor of Marketing. His book Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) is one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to a credible competitive attack. Expert Marketer Magazine called it the 2013 Marketing Book of the Year. The thinking sits on top of close to 11 years inside Kraft, running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, and launching more than two dozen new products. Through Class 5 Consulting, his current clients include Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst, work that keeps his frameworks tested against live margin and share pressure. At Kellogg he teaches Marketing Strategy, Strategic Marketing Decisions, Biomedical Marketing and Marketing Strategy for Growth and Defense, and co-edited the school’s flagship branding texts, Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019). His standing inside the school is itself a credential. He is one of only six faculty in the 40-plus year history of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award to have won it twice, in 2006 and 2013. His later book, How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018), took Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies, and is read inside Fortune 500 communications and commercial teams as a practical text on how senior executives lose, and win, the room. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and brand building Defensive strategy and competitive response Marketing planning and growth strategy Brand portfolio management Healthcare and biomedical marketing Business presentations and senior executive communication Lessons from Super Bowl advertising Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and category leaders inside established consumer, healthcare and B2B brand businesses Pharmaceutical, medtech and biotech commercial leadership teams running launch or defence on a regulated product Senior executives preparing for high-stakes internal and external presentations Executive education and leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 marketing and commercial functions Audience outcomes A working framework for defending a brand position against a credible competitive attack, drawn from Defending Your Brand A clearer view of how to allocate marketing investment across the brand portfolio under pressure on margin Specific, named tactics for sharper marketing plans, applicable inside the audience’s own planning cycle Practical correction on the recurring failure modes of senior executive presentations, drawn from How to Wash a Chicken Sector-specific application for healthcare and biomedical audiences, where most generic brand content does not land

Why organisations work with Tim Cortinovis He treats AI in sales as an operating model question, not a tooling question. The conversation shifts from “which platform” to “what does revenue generation look like when the work itself is automated” His “single-handed unicorn” thesis names a specific argument that lands with founders, scale-up CEOs and corporate innovators: the unit economics of building large companies with very small teams have changed, and the strategic implication is concrete He is one of a small number of speakers genuinely fluent in agentic AI for revenue, recognised by Thinkers360 in both the AI and Sales categories, not one or the other He delivers in English, German and Spanish, which makes him commercially useful across European corporate audiences without translation overhead The frame is business-first and pragmatic. Forbes called him a tech visionary, but the room gets actionable economics, not a tour of model capabilities Biography highlights Top 10 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Top 10 Thought Leader in Sales, Thinkers360 Author of several books on AI in sales and revenue, including Agentic Revenue Systems and The Single-Handed Unicorn Named clients include Siemens, E.ON, ING, MSC Cruises, Edelman and YPO Master of Arts in Spanish and German Linguistics, University of Hamburg Member, Global Speakers Federation and German Speakers Association Keynote languages: English, German, Spanish Biography Most “AI in sales” content is still tooling content. It explains what platforms exist, how a model can draft an email, where automation removes a click. The harder argument, the one buyers are starting to ask for, is what the commercial organisation looks like when an autonomous agent owns the workflow end to end. Tim Cortinovis works in that argument. His ‘single-handed unicorn’ thesis names something specific: the unit economics of building a large business have changed, because agentic systems now do work that once required headcount. For corporate leaders, the implication is a redesign of how revenue and customer operations are staffed. His most recent book, Agentic Revenue Systems, carries that argument into the enterprise. It frames a three-layer model for revenue teams: human judgment, agentic execution, and governance. Thinkers360 places him in the top ten globally for both Agentic AI and Sales. The credentials sit on top of fifteen years of operating experience in international B2B sales and marketing, primarily in IT and automation. That history shows in the room. Named clients include Siemens, E.ON, ING, MSC Cruises and Edelman, and the work is delivered across English, German and Spanish for European audiences who want practical economics rather than a tour of model capabilities. In Forbes, Michael Ashley described him as a ‘tech visionary’. The more useful description is that he gives a sales leadership team a defensible answer to what AI is actually for in their organisation. Key speaking topics The Agentic Revenue Architecture Agentic AI in sales and revenue operations The single-handed unicorn thesis Sales and marketing automation AI-driven business model redesign Future of work in commercial functions Digital transformation in B2B sales Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers and Chief Commercial Officers running AI transformation in sales Founders and scale-up CEOs rethinking headcount under agentic AI Boards and ExCos asking what AI actually changes about commercial operating models Sales leadership offsites and B2B revenue conferences across Europe and the Americas Audience outcomes A clear position on what agentic AI changes about the structure of a revenue organisation, not just its tools A working vocabulary for the single-handed unicorn argument and where it does and does not apply Specific examples of AI-driven commercial models from companies already operating this way A sharper view of where their own sales function is automatable now versus 18 months out

Why organisations work with Tom Dixon A working founder and creative director, not a commentator: he runs a brand sold in more than 50 countries and speaks from inside the operating reality of product, manufacturing, and distribution A distinctive view on innovation as material experimentation, formed across four decades from welded scrap-metal pieces in the 1980s to lighting and furniture held in the V&A and MoMA Direct experience of corporate design leadership at Habitat, where he was Head of Design and then Creative Director from 1998 to 2008, alongside running his own studio Public recognition that signals durability rather than novelty: OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014, London Design Medal 2019 Candour about how the design industry actually works, including the limits of design education, the politics of large retailers, and the economics of running an independent brand at scale Biography highlights Self-taught British designer who began welding furniture from salvaged metal in the mid-1980s after working as a bass guitarist in the band Funkapolitan Head of Design then Creative Director at Habitat, 1998 to 2008 Founder and creative director of Tom Dixon, the brand established in 2002 in Kings Cross, London, with collections distributed across more than 50 countries Appointed OBE in 2001 and CBE in the 2025 New Year Honours list, both for services to British design Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014; recipient of the London Design Medal 2019 Work held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Centre Pompidou Author of Dixonary, a 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013 Biography The S-Chair was made by a designer with no formal training. Tom Dixon taught himself to weld while repairing motorbike frames, and the early pieces that ended up in production at Cappellini in Milan were built from scrap metal in a London workshop. The career that followed is unusual because the self-taught starting point was never quietly dropped; it became the operating thesis of the brand. Between 1998 and 2008, Dixon ran design at Habitat, first as Head of Design and then as Creative Director. He was attempting, inside a large retailer, the same problem most consumer businesses now face: how to keep a coherent design voice while scaling distribution and managing cost. He left in 2008 to put his weight behind Tom Dixon, the brand he had founded in 2002, now a manufacturer and retailer of lighting, furniture, and accessories sold in more than 50 countries. His honours track the long arc rather than a single moment. OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet in 2014, the London Design Medal in 2019, and permanent collections at the V&A, MoMA New York, and the Centre Pompidou. Dixonary, the 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013, sets out his working method in his own words: a project, an inspiration image, and a short paragraph on the connection. For a corporate audience the value is specific. Dixon speaks as an operator who has run product, brand, and distribution at scale, who has watched several rounds of industry change from inside a manufacturing business, and who is unusually direct about what works and what does not. He treats design less as a finishing layer than as an argument the company is making, repeated across decades, about why its products exist. Key speaking topics Design as commercial strategy Brand-building from a material idea Innovation through material experimentation The founder-creative director operating model Manufacturing, distribution, and the economics of an independent design brand Lessons from forty years of British design Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and product leaders considering how design contributes to commercial advantage Founders and CEOs of consumer, lifestyle, and design-led businesses Architecture, interiors, hospitality, and retail audiences working on environments and product Innovation, R&D, and creative leadership audiences interested in long-horizon brand-building Audience outcomes A working definition of design as a strategic asset rather than a styling layer applied late A founder’s account of building and sustaining a brand across four decades of industry change A direct view on how material experimentation translates into commercial product An operator’s perspective on the trade-offs between independent design and scaled retail distribution A more candid sense of how the design and manufacturing industries actually function

Why organisations work with Tom Goodwin His 2015 observation that Uber owns no vehicles and Airbnb no real estate became the standard way executives describe asset-light competition. He gives a leadership team the same lens on its own business: where value is moving, and who is positioned to own the customer. He has made technology bets inside two of the world’s largest advertising and media groups, as EVP and Head of Innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and before that as SVP of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. He advises others now on calls he has had to make himself. His read on AI cuts against both the hype and the gloom. Under the banner he calls “nowism,” he argues the technology to grow already exists and the constraint is nerve and imagination. Boards leave with something to act on, not another warning about the future. He has spent two decades translating technology for commercial audiences, as a columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, and Forbes and as host of the Euronews series The Edge. Operators follow the argument and can repeat it, without needing a specialist to decode it. Biography highlights Author of Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption, published by Kogan Page and translated into several languages Author of the 2015 TechCrunch essay “The Battle Is For The Customer Interface,” one of the most widely cited descriptions of platform business models Former EVP and Head of Innovation at Zenith Media, part of Publicis Groupe; earlier SVP, Strategy and Innovation at Havas Media Founder of the innovation consultancy All We Have Is Now, advising Fortune 500 companies and startups Named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing Host of The Edge, a technology series for Euronews; columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, Forbes, Adweek, and Marketing Week Biography In 2015, a single paragraph in TechCrunch changed how executives talk about competition. It pointed out that Uber owned no vehicles, Airbnb no real estate, Alibaba no inventory, and Facebook made no content. The author was Tom Goodwin, then senior vice-president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. The line stuck because it named something leaders could feel but had not put into words: value was moving from owning assets to owning the customer relationship. Goodwin had spent his career inside that shift, later running innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and advising large companies on where to place their bets. His argument now centres on artificial intelligence, and it runs against the prevailing mood. Most organisations, he contends, use new technology to make the old business run more smoothly, when the real opportunity is to rebuild what the business does. He calls the practical version of this “nowism”: the tools to grow already exist, and the limit is nerve and imagination. That case reaches a wide audience. Goodwin hosts The Edge, a technology series for Euronews, and has been named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing. He set out the full argument in his book Digital Darwinism, published by Kogan Page. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and business strategy Digital transformation Platform and asset-light business models The future of business Technology and consumer behaviour Marketing and the customer interface Ideal for CEOs and boards setting the direction of a digital or AI strategy Chief Marketing and Chief Digital Officers deciding where technology changes the customer relationship Innovation, strategy, and transformation leads under pressure to show a return on technology investment Senior leadership teams at large incumbents facing platform-native competitors Audience outcomes A way to judge which technologies change their business and which are noise A concrete test for their own model: what the company would look like if it were built today Language to explain asset-light and platform competition to their own teams and boards A more pragmatic read on AI that stays on what is usable today

Why organisations work with Tony Fernandes The AirAsia acquisition – a loss-making airline bought for one Malaysian ringgit and turned profitable within two years – is not an anecdote; it is a live case study in the structural conditions required to make a low-cost model work, and Fernandes can examine its mechanics from the inside His experience running Capital A across aviation, fintech (BigPay), logistics (Teleport), and digital platforms gives him direct exposure to the question of whether and how a low-cost operating logic translates to adjacent categories; a question most diversifying businesses cannot answer from first-hand evidence He operated through several serious crises – the QZ8501 crash, the COVID-19 near-collapse of the aviation industry, and regulatory probes. He can speak to crisis leadership and institutional transparency from personal rather than theoretical experience His trajectory from accountant to entrepreneur, with career foundations at Virgin and Warner Music, gives him the financial fluency to discuss growth strategy at a structural level, not just as an inspirational narrative Named Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010) and included in the TIME 100 (2015), providing credibility with senior international audiences Biography highlights Co-founder of AirAsia; acquired the airline in 2001 for MYR1 and MYR40 million in debt; turned it profitable within two years CEO of Capital A Berhad, the investment holding company whose portfolio spans aviation, logistics (Teleport), fintech (BigPay), and digital travel platforms Educated at the London School of Economics; Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants; member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Career foundations at Virgin Communications (financial controller) and Warner Music Group (VP Southeast Asia) Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010); included in TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list (2015) Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), conferred 2011; Commander of the Legion d’Honneur, awarded by the French government Author of Flying High (2017), an account of the AirAsia model and the entrepreneurial decisions behind it Biography Building a low-cost business is a specific discipline, not a general management philosophy. It requires a structural commitment to cost architecture that most organisations talk about but few maintain under the pressure of growth, competition, and investor expectations. The question of how that discipline is designed, defended, and scaled is one of the most practically useful strategic questions a senior leadership team can work through. And Tony Fernandes has lived it across one of the most scrutinised business turnarounds in Asian commercial history. Fernandes acquired AirAsia in December 2001 alongside three co-founders, taking on a government-linked airline carrying MYR40 million in debt. Within two years it was profitable. Within a decade it was Asia’s largest low-cost carrier by passengers carried, operating across multiple regulatory environments with a model that held its structural logic even as the network grew. The mechanics of that – cost discipline, people culture, regulatory negotiation, market sequencing – are what he brings to a conversation. His broader career adds analytical weight. Trained as an accountant at the London School of Economics and ACCA-qualified, he built his early career at Virgin Communications and as VP Southeast Asia at Warner Music before entering aviation. That foundation in financial control, combined with the scale of what he subsequently built, gives him a capacity to speak about growth strategy at the level of structure rather than story. The post-aviation chapter matters too. Capital A’s evolution from an airline group into a holding company spanning fintech, logistics, and digital travel platforms represents a live experiment in whether a low-cost operating logic can be applied beyond the category that originated it. Forbes Asia named him Businessman of the Year in 2010; he appeared on TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list in 2015. The CBE and Commander of the Legion d’Honneur reflect the international reach of what AirAsia built. Key speaking topics Low-cost business model design and defence Business turnaround and commercial restructuring Scaling across regulated, multi-market environments Entrepreneurial decision-making under constraint Crisis leadership and institutional transparency Diversification strategy and platform business models Southeast Asian market growth and aviation industry transformation Ideal for CEOs and boards of growth-stage or expanding businesses wrestling with cost discipline at scale Strategy and transformation leaders in capital-intensive or regulated industries Entrepreneurs and founders preparing for multi-market expansion Senior teams in aviation, logistics, travel, and adjacent industries benchmarking against proven low-cost operators Audience outcomes A structural understanding of what makes a low-cost business model sustainable, not as a cost-cutting exercise but as an operating architecture A clearer framework for thinking about diversification: when the core model’s logic translates to adjacent categories and when it does not Practical reference points from AirAsia’s expansion for organisations navigating multi-market regulatory complexity A more grounded view of crisis leadership: what transparency and accountability look like in practice when institutional reputation is at stake Sharper thinking about the relationship between people culture and commercial performance in high-growth, low-margin environments

Why organisations work with Uri Levine Two billion-dollar exits in the same category give him a working method, not a single-case story. Waze and Moovit were sold to Google and Intel using the same problem-first discipline he now teaches. His handbook Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution sets out a usable operating system for early-stage product, fundraising and hiring decisions. Steve Wozniak called it a bible for entrepreneurs. An active portfolio of 20-plus board seats and 50-plus advisory roles keeps his perspective current. He is reading live cap tables and product roadmaps, not recycling a 2013 exit. Levine teaches inside corporates as well as startups. The framing translates for innovation leaders trying to make corporate venturing and intrapreneurship behave more like founder-led businesses. Biography highlights Co-founder of Waze, acquired by Google in 2013 for approximately $1.1 billion. Early investor and board member at Moovit, acquired by Intel in 2020 for approximately $1 billion. Author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs (BenBella, 2023). Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Practice at IE University. Founder, chairman or board member at Pontera, FairFly, Refundit, SeeTree, Fibo and others; former Chairman of Zoomcar; independent board member at Infosys. Forbes contributor; interviewed in The New York Times, CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox News. Biography Waze and Moovit were built on the same wager. Drivers and commuters were the source of the data, the product, and the network effect, and the problem worth solving was the daily friction of getting somewhere. Google paid roughly $1.1 billion for the first company in 2013. Intel paid roughly another billion for the second in 2020. The method behind both exits is what Uri Levine now teaches. Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, published by BenBella in 2023, is the operating handbook he wrote for founders and the executives funding them. Steve Wozniak called it a bible for entrepreneurs. It covers product-market fit, fundraising, hiring, scaling internationally and exit decisions, treated as a sequence of choices a founder can get right or wrong. The portfolio behind the writing keeps the material current. Levine has founded nine companies, sat on roughly twenty boards including Infosys and HERE, and advised more than fifty startups. He chaired Zoomcar through its public listing in 2023 and returned as strategic and financial advisor in 2024. He teaches the same approach as Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at IE University and runs a workshop on building unicorns. For corporate audiences the value is structural. Innovation pipelines stall when teams pick solutions before they have stress-tested the problem. Levine’s argument, and the discipline behind it, gives senior leaders a way to challenge that habit inside their own organisations, whether they are running a venture arm, a transformation programme or a category business losing ground to insurgents. Key speaking topics Disruptive innovation and category creation Problem discovery and product-market fit Entrepreneurship and scaling to unicorn status Fundraising and investor strategy Corporate innovation and intrapreneurship Mobility and the future of transportation Founder leadership through hypergrowth Ideal for Founders and CEOs of growth-stage and scale-up businesses Corporate innovation, venture and transformation leaders Investors, LPs and board directors evaluating early-stage portfolios Senior leadership teams in incumbent categories under disruption pressure Audience outcomes A working test for whether a problem is large enough and clear enough to build a company around. Specific lessons from inside two unicorn exits on hiring, fundraising, international expansion and timing the sale. The mistakes Levine has watched founders and corporate innovators repeat across fifty advisory engagements, and how to spot them earlier. A sharper frame for board-level conversations about which bets to back, which to kill, and when to pivot.