Business Strategy & Growth speakers

Why organisations work with Karl Pilny Three decades of operating inside Asian deal rooms, not commentary from the outside. He opened Coudert Brothers’ Berlin office in 1995 and has structured M&A and joint ventures between European, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian companies since the late 1980s. A published long-range thesis on Asia. Asia 2030 (Campus Verlag, 2018) sets out his case that four of the five most powerful economies will soon be Asian, with implications boards can act on. Legal and commercial fluency in the same person. PhD from the Max Planck Institute for International Intellectual Property, professorship at bbw Hochschule Berlin, and a working life spent advising entrepreneurs and family offices through asia21 GmbH. Delivery in German, English and Japanese. Few European Asia speakers can hold a Tokyo board conversation in the language of the room. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, asia21 GmbH, Zurich (since 2006). Professor of International Technology Transfer Management, bbw Hochschule Berlin (since 2018). Author of Asia 2030 (Campus Verlag, 2018), nominated for the getAbstract International Book Award 2020. Author of the Das asiatische Jahrhundert trilogy and the Investment Guide Asien. Former resident partner at Coudert Brothers, where he opened the Berlin office in 1995; later Managing Partner Germany at Travers Smith. PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Japan Department; former lecturer at the universities of Kyoto and Osaka. Biography Asia 2030 (Campus Verlag, 2018) argued that four of the five most powerful economies would soon be Asian, and that European companies were already late to price the shift. The book was nominated for the getAbstract International Book Award in 2020. It set out the case that Karl Pilny had been making for years in board rooms across Germany, Switzerland and Japan. That argument is anchored in unusual depth of practice. After a PhD at the Max Planck Institute for International Intellectual Property and a teaching post in German law at Kyoto and Osaka, he spent a decade as a partner at Coudert Brothers, opening the firm’s Berlin office in 1995. He went on to lead Travers Smith’s German practice before founding asia21 GmbH in Zurich in 2006, advising entrepreneurs, family offices and corporates on investment into and out of Asia. The work spans renewable energy, infrastructure, financial services and consumer goods, and the books span a wider field still: the Das asiatische Jahrhundert trilogy, the Investment Guide Asien, and the political thrillers Japan Inc. and Korea Inc. Since 2018 he has held a professorship in International Technology Transfer Management at bbw Hochschule Berlin, where he teaches on innovation leadership in Asian companies and on digitalisation. For European leadership teams the value is direct. He has structured the deals, written the long-range analysis and worked in the languages. He can take a board through the political risk in a China exposure, the cultural mechanics of a Japanese joint venture and the capital flows reshaping Southeast Asia in a single session. Key speaking topics Asia macroeconomic trajectories to 2030 China, Japan, Korea and India political risk Cross-border M&A and joint ventures in Asia Investment strategy for European corporates and family offices Renewable energy and infrastructure capital flows in Asia Technology transfer and IP between Europe and Asia Cross-cultural negotiation with Asian counterparties Ideal for Boards and executive committees of European corporates with material Asia exposure Chief strategy officers, corporate development and M&A leads working on Asian deals Family offices, foundations and institutional investors allocating into emerging Asia Industry conferences on energy transition, infrastructure and financial services touching Asia Audience outcomes A defensible read on where capital, technology and political weight are moving across Asia to 2030 Specific implications for European market entry, joint ventures and M&A in China, Japan, Korea and India A sharper view of cross-cultural risk in Asian deal structures, drawn from named cases A framework for sequencing Asia exposure across sectors, from renewables to consumer goods

Why organisations work with Karren Brady She has actually done the job leaders are usually only asked to talk about: turning round a loss-making business, taking it public, and selling it for a reported 82 million pounds. Few speakers can talk credibly about boardroom decision-making, parliamentary scrutiny and front-page media pressure in the same session. She has lived all three at West Ham, in the House of Lords, and through a televised public role. She brings hard-edged commercial honesty to topics that often get softened, including women in leadership, where her position is built on a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business, not slogan. Her profile, sustained through 16 years on The Apprentice and weekly columns in The Sun and Women & Home, makes her one of the few UK business voices a non-business audience already trusts. Biography highlights Appointed Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club at 23; oversaw the 1997 London Stock Exchange flotation, the youngest MD of a UK plc at the time. Vice-Chair of West Ham United from 2010 to 2026; led the negotiation behind the move to the London Stadium. Conservative life peer; took her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Brady in November 2014. CBE in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship and women in business. Lord Sugar’s aide on BBC’s The Apprentice since 2009. Author of Strong Woman: The Truth About Getting to the Top and Playing to Win: 10 Steps to Achieving Your Goals; columnist for The Sun and Women & Home. Biography Birmingham City Football Club was loss-making and barely solvent when Karren Brady was made Managing Director in 1993. She was 23. Four years later, the club was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and she had become the youngest managing director of a UK plc. It was sold in 2009 for a reported 82 million pounds. That trajectory is the foundation of how she talks about leadership. The commercial discipline came first; the public profile came second. By the time she joined West Ham United as Vice-Chair in 2010, she was operating in one of the most politically exposed boardrooms in British sport. She negotiated and defended the club’s move from the Boleyn Ground to the London Stadium, a decision that drew sustained criticism from supporters, parliamentarians and the press, and held the role for 16 years. In 2014 she was made a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business and took her seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer. She had already served as the UK government’s Small Business Ambassador, sat as a non-executive director on the board of Channel 4, and would later chair Taveta Investments, the parent company of the Arcadia Group, before resigning in 2019 over governance concerns. Few UK business voices have operated across that range of corporate, political and public pressure. Her broadcast and editorial presence sharpens the commercial offer rather than dilutes it. She has been Lord Sugar’s aide on The Apprentice since 2009 and writes weekly for The Sun and Women & Home, with two business books behind her, Strong Woman and Playing to Win. Senior teams book her because she has run real organisations through real scrutiny, and she will say what she actually thinks in front of a room. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under public scrutiny Boardroom governance and accountability Women in business and routes to senior leadership Building and selling a business Commercial strategy in highly visible sectors Resilience and reputation in regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive committees navigating high-visibility decisions or external scrutiny. CEO and senior leadership offsites where the agenda is commercial discipline rather than inspirational content. Conferences on women in leadership, entrepreneurship and governance that want a speaker with named operating credentials. After-dinner, awards and panel formats where a recognised business name with broadcast presence is the brief. Audience outcomes A clearer view of what board-level decision-making actually looks like when stakeholders, media and politics are all in the room. A practical sense of how senior leaders defend commercial decisions publicly without backing away from them. A grounded read on women in senior leadership from someone who has been the only woman on the board, not the panel discussion about it. A sharper instinct for separating reputation management from substance when an organisation is under pressure.

Why organisations work with Kavita Oberoi A first-hand account of selling into the NHS and global pharma as an outsider, including the specific moves that turned a Pfizer pilot into a multi-client healthcare consultancy. An OBE-recognised entrepreneur who is candid about the parts of company building that most founders gloss over: pricing the first big contract, hiring before revenue, and surviving the move from founder-led sales to a delivery team. A public profile shaped by The Secret Millionaire and ongoing BBC, Sky and ITV business commentary, which translates into audience trust before she opens her mouth. Genuine credibility on the diversity-and-resilience angle without the usual abstractions, drawing on a documented path from a 15-year-old taking a Saturday job against family expectation to chairing the Global Girls’ Fund. Biography highlights OBE for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses, Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours. Founder and Managing Director of Oberoi Consulting, healthcare IT and clinical audit firm working with the NHS and pharmaceutical industry since 2001. Founder of Oberoi Business Hub, Derby’s Pride Park, serviced and virtual office facility for start-ups, opened 2012. Named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Chair of the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising arm of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting. Honorary Doctorate, University of Huddersfield, 2013; BSc Applied Chemistry, First Class, University of Huddersfield, 1992. Television: Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, BBC’s The Apprentice You’re Fired, ITV News Business Club panellist, BBC Breakfast, Sky News. Biography The clinical audit gap inside UK general practice was the opening Kavita Oberoi spotted in 2001. GP surgeries needed structured data work that pharmaceutical companies and the NHS both wanted, and almost nobody was packaging it as a service. From a standing start she won a contract with Pfizer, and Oberoi Consulting grew from there into a healthcare support business serving GP practices, primary care groups, private healthcare providers and global pharma. The route to that point matters because it shapes what she actually says on stage. A first-class chemistry degree from Huddersfield, then a stint as one of Bayer’s highest-performing medical representatives, gave her the technical credibility to sell into clinical buyers. Leaving a corporate salary at 30 to start a consultancy without a network or a war chest gave her the rest. In 2012 she opened Oberoi Business Hub on Derby’s Pride Park, a serviced and virtual office facility built specifically for start-ups and small companies that need infrastructure they cannot yet afford to own. The wider portfolio now spans healthcare consultancy, shared workspace, commercial property and media work, and earned her an OBE in 2014 for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses. She chairs the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising body of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting, set up the Derby Breakfast Club to feed children before school, and was named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Her Channel 4 Secret Millionaire episode put a lot of that work in front of a national audience and continues to drive board, charity and conference invitations across the UK. Key speaking topics Building a services business in a regulated sector Founder-led sales into NHS and pharmaceutical buyers Scaling beyond the first major contract Entrepreneurship and start-up infrastructure Women in business and overcoming cultural barriers Philanthropy and corporate giving Ideal for Founders, owner-managers and aspiring entrepreneurs inside accelerator, incubator or membership programmes Sales and growth leaders selling complex services into healthcare, pharma or public-sector buyers Diversity and women-in-leadership audiences inside FTSE and professional services firms Awards hosting and after-dinner addresses where the brief is credibility plus warmth, not theoretical content Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of how a single enterprise contract can be turned into a sustainable services company, with the operational moves named. The questions a founder should be answering before they leave a corporate salary, drawn from someone who actually made that jump. A practical sense of what selling into the NHS and global pharma looks like from the supplier side, and where most start-ups misread the buyer. Renewed confidence in personal agency for audiences whose backgrounds are not typically reflected on the founder stage.

Why organisations work with Kemal Apaydin He speaks from the builder’s seat. He is currently building an AI product that prices and anticipates risk for health insurers, so his read on where agentic AI works and where it breaks comes from shipping it. He connects the frontier to the decision that follows it. His sessions take a live example such as the open-source agent OpenClaw and turn it into the choice leaders actually face: how much autonomy to delegate, and where to keep a human. He has built at the edge of more than one technology cycle. Before AI he founded one of Turkey’s early blockchain communities, which gives him a pattern-level view of how emerging technology moves from hype to infrastructure. He treats privacy and human agency as design questions, not disclaimers. That framing is useful for organisations that want the upside of autonomous systems without signing away control of their data or their decisions. Biography highlights Founder of Alon Health, an AI product that uses wearable-device data to help health insurers assess and anticipate risk, based in Berlin. Alon Health went through Y Combinator. Founder of ARTI Innovation and a TEDx speaker (TEDxOZU, Özyeğin University). Founder of Blockfellow, an early blockchain community and co-working initiative in Turkey. Co-founder and CEO of Chain Networking, and co-founder of Shelly Sleep, a privacy-oriented sleep-diagnostic wristband. Studied at Bilkent University and completed executive study with Harvard Business School Online. Biography An open-source project called OpenClaw spread to tens of thousands of developers within days of launch, letting an AI agent read your messages and act across your accounts. That shift, from software that answers to software that acts, is what Kemal Apaydin works on. He builds in it rather than watching it. His company, Alon Health, applies the same idea inside insurance. It reads signals from wearable devices to help insurers anticipate risk and shape decisions about pricing and cover. Building it has given him a grounded read on where autonomous systems earn trust and where they lose it. This is not his first frontier. Before AI, he founded Blockfellow, an early blockchain community in Turkey, and ran education programmes that pulled hundreds of students from Istanbul universities into the field. The pattern across his work stays the same: get inside a technology while it is still forming, then figure out what it will mean once it settles. He can take a live system like OpenClaw and walk leaders through the question underneath it: how much of a purchase or a decision they will hand to software, and what they keep for a human. That conversation matters for any organisation weighing how far to let autonomy run. The harder one sits right behind it. When an agent acts on someone’s behalf and gets it wrong, who is accountable? Key speaking topics Autonomous and agentic AI Personal AI assistants Enterprise AI strategy and adoption Designing and deploying autonomous AI workflows AI governance, safety, and responsible autonomy Privacy and human agency in AI systems Applied AI in insurance and risk Ideal for Chief technology and chief information officers weighing where to deploy agentic AI and where to hold back Innovation and digital transformation leaders who want a builder’s read on personal AI, not a vendor pitch Strategy teams and boards mapping how autonomous systems change products and accountability Insurance and financial services leaders looking at AI-driven risk and the data questions it raises Audience outcomes They leave knowing what today’s AI agents can actually do, and what the demos leave out, drawn from systems already in use. A working test for deciding which tasks to hand to autonomous software and which to keep under human control. The governance and accountability questions to settle before an agent acts on the organisation’s behalf. A builder’s view of where agentic and personal AI are heading, and what it changes for their sector.

Why organisations work with Kevin Gaskell He has led verifiable turnarounds at three named global brands – Porsche GB from near-bankruptcy to the UK’s most profitable car company, BMW GB to four years of record growth and 500% profitability improvement, and Lamborghini GB – which means his frameworks are grounded in a documented, repeated track record, not a single case. His book Catching Giants (Business Book Awards 2023 finalist) makes a specific, testable argument: that resource-constrained teams with clarity of goal and high belief can consistently outperform better-resourced opponents. Organisations working through transformation can put that directly to use. His portfolio of 15+ businesses across technology, data, and manufacturing – including taking Fairline Boats from ten years of losses to profit within 14 months – shows the same turnaround approach applied across sectors, which makes it credible to audiences outside automotive. The world-record Atlantic and Pacific rowing expeditions are not decorative biography. They are tested case material on exactly the leadership dynamics he teaches: small teams, constrained resources, extreme conditions, and the challenge of sustaining belief and performance when the goal feels unreachable. He has delivered keynotes and masterclasses in over 50 countries for clients including Google, Oracle, JP Morgan, P&G, and Airbus – a range that tests his frameworks against diverse industries, organisation sizes, and cultures. Biography highlights MD of Porsche GB: took the business from near-bankruptcy and bottom of UK customer satisfaction rankings to most profitable car company in the UK within five years MD of BMW GB: four years of record growth, 70% sales increase, 500% improvement in profitability MD of Lamborghini GB; CEO of Fairline Boats, leading the business from ten years of losses to profit within 14 months Founder, chairman, and investor across 15+ businesses in technology, data, manufacturing, and professional services; portfolio has created over £3 billion in shareholder value Author of Catching Giants (Right Book Press, 2022), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2023 Guinness World Record holder as part of the Ocean 5 team, fastest five-person Atlantic row (2020); world record Pacific row (2025); expeditions to both the North and South Poles Keynote and masterclass clients include Google, Oracle, JP Morgan, P&G, Airbus, and Accenture; delivered in over 50 countries Recognised as one of the UK’s Top 40 Managers under 40 Biography Turning round a failing business is one of the most demanding tests of leadership because it requires people to change their behaviour before there is any evidence the change will work. Kevin Gaskell has done that three times – at Porsche GB, BMW GB, and Lamborghini GB – and the mechanism in each case was the same: rebuilding team belief in a new direction ahead of any visible result. Appointed MD of Porsche GB at 32, he inherited a company close to bankruptcy and ranked at the bottom of UK customer satisfaction tables. Within five years it was the most profitable car company in the UK. At BMW GB, he led four years of record growth, including a 500% improvement in profitability. At Lamborghini GB, the same approach – refocusing the team on a clear goal, rebuilding culture from the inside – produced comparable results. Across these three brands, the pattern was never primarily about strategy. It was about belief. That same discipline has been applied outside automotive. At Fairline Boats, a business carrying ten years of losses was returned to profit within 14 months. Across a wider portfolio of technology, data, and manufacturing businesses, his teams have created more than £3 billion in shareholder value. His book Catching Giants, shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2023, formalises the core argument: that teams with limited resources and a clear goal, led well, can outperform better-equipped competition consistently. The expedition record – both poles, world-record Atlantic and Pacific rows – provides a parallel body of case material on the same dynamics. Small teams, constrained resources, extreme conditions, and the central leadership question: how do you sustain the belief and cohesion needed to reach an objective that looks, for most of the journey, unreachable. Key speaking topics Business turnaround and performance recovery High-performance team leadership Organisational culture as a performance lever Leading through disruption and uncertainty Brand building and repositioning Resilience and performance under pressure Entrepreneurship and business building Ideal for CEOs, MDs, and executive teams in businesses facing stalled performance, competitive disruption, or active turnaround Senior leadership teams initiating or sustaining large-scale transformation programmes Board-level and C-suite audiences exploring the human and cultural dynamics of sustained organisational performance Commercial and operations leaders responsible for driving step-change performance in established organisations Audience outcomes A specific framework for diagnosing why performance has stalled and what leadership change is needed to address it Practical tools for building team belief and shared purpose around an ambitious goal Case-based understanding of how cultural change typically precedes financial performance recovery in turnaround situations A working model for connecting leadership behaviour to commercial outcomes, drawn from multiple named business examples Perspective on sustaining high performance and decision quality under conditions of extreme pressure and limited resource

Why organisations work with Kevin Lane Keller He authored the framework most senior marketers were trained on. The Customer-Based Brand Equity model, his 1993 Journal of Marketing paper, is the reference point that brand equity conversations still anchor to. He co-authors the standard MBA marketing textbook. Marketing Management with Philip Kotler is in its 16th edition and sits on the syllabus of most top business schools, which means his vocabulary is already shared by the room. He has advised brand strategy at Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Nike, P&G, Samsung, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Google, so the case material is current rather than historical. He treats the tension between short-term performance marketing and long-term brand building as a capital allocation question, not a creative one, which lands with CFOs and CEOs as well as CMOs. He brings the academic credibility of 135+ peer-reviewed papers and a Tuck professorship without retreating into theory; the work has been pressure-tested in expert witness testimony for Amazon, Meta, Mercedes-Benz, and the NFL. Biography highlights E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Author of Strategic Brand Management, 5th edition, co-authored with Vanitha Swaminathan, widely referred to as the “bible of branding.” Co-author with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev of Marketing Management, 16th edition. Originator of the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model, 1993 Journal of Marketing. Former Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, 2013 to 2015. Previously held tenured marketing posts at Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley, and UNC Chapel Hill. Biography The argument over what brand investment is actually for has moved from the marketing function to the boardroom. Finance leaders want a defensible link between brand spend and enterprise value. Marketing leaders are negotiating between short-term performance metrics and the longer arc of customer preference. Keller’s work is the framework most of those conversations are still built on. His 1993 Journal of Marketing paper introduced the Customer-Based Brand Equity model, which redefined brand value as what customers know, feel, and recognise about a brand rather than as a balance-sheet residual. The CBBE pyramid remains a standard reference for measuring brand strength inside organisations like Accenture, American Express, Disney, Nike, P&G, and Samsung, all of which have drawn on his counsel. He co-authors Marketing Management with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev, now in its 16th edition, and Strategic Brand Management with Vanitha Swaminathan, now in its 5th. Both textbooks are core curriculum at most top business schools, which means most CMOs in the room were trained inside his vocabulary. He has held tenured positions at Stanford, Berkeley, and UNC before Tuck, and served as Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. Keller’s current work focuses on how brands hold their position when AI reshapes media buying, customer experience, and pricing simultaneously. He addresses the tension senior teams face directly: how to keep building the brand asset when every dashboard rewards the campaign. Key speaking topics Customer-based brand equity Building global power brands Brand strategy and brand architecture Integrated marketing communications The economics of brand investment AI and the future of brand management Marketing strategy at the CEO and CFO level Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders defending brand investment to boards and finance functions CEOs and CFOs evaluating how brand contributes to enterprise value Marketing leadership offsites and senior marketing development programmes Global brand and category teams in consumer, technology, and financial services Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, grounded in the CBBE framework, for discussing brand value across marketing, finance, and the executive team A clearer view of how short-term performance activity and long-term brand building reinforce or undermine each other Diagnostic tools for assessing where a brand is strong, vulnerable, or under-leveraged in current category dynamics A current perspective on what AI changes, and does not change, for brand strategy Case context from senior brand decisions inside Nike, Disney, P&G, Samsung, Google, and others

Why organisations work with Kevin O’Leary He has run the full founder cycle once, from boot-strapped start-up through hostile acquisitions to a multi-billion-dollar exit, and he speaks about growth from inside that experience rather than around it. His Shark Tank track record gives him one of the largest public corpora of investor-versus-founder negotiations on record, which translates directly into how he teaches deal discipline. O’Leary Ventures has invested across more than 30 private companies, so the commentary on emerging sectors is grounded in current capital allocation, not retrospective storytelling. The Cold Hard Truth book series with Penguin Random House Canada has built a financial literacy framework that travels well from boardroom audiences to all-employee events. His CNBC, Fox Business, and CNN presence means audiences arrive already familiar with the voice, which compresses the time it takes to land a serious argument. Biography highlights Founder of SoftKey Software Products, which acquired The Learning Company in 1995 and was sold to Mattel in 1999 for $4.2 billion. Investor on ABC’s Shark Tank since the 2009 launch, where he is known on screen as “Mr. Wonderful”. Chairman of O’Leary Ventures, the venture platform he founded in 2000, and of Beanstox, the automated investing service. Host of CNBC’s Money Court, the primetime business series adjudicating financial disputes. Author of the Cold Hard Truth series published by Penguin Random House Canada. MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario; honours bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo. Biography The Learning Company was bankrupt-adjacent in the early 1990s when SoftKey, Kevin O’Leary’s small Toronto software business, bought it through a hostile bid and adopted its name. Four years later, Mattel paid $4.2 billion for the combined company. That transaction sits at the centre of his commercial credibility, both the win and the post-deal collapse that followed at Mattel, and it shapes how he talks about capital. Since 2009 he has sat on ABC’s Shark Tank as a working investor evaluating live pitches. The show has accumulated multiple Primetime Emmy wins for Outstanding Structured Reality Program. For audiences, the relevance is not the entertainment, it is the public archive: hundreds of negotiations on the record, with the founder’s pitch, the investor’s questions, and the post-deal outcome all visible. Few business voices carry that volume of documented decision-making. Off camera he runs O’Leary Ventures, the platform he founded in 2000, and chairs Beanstox. He hosts CNBC’s Money Court and contributes regularly to CNBC, Fox Business, and CNN on markets and policy. The Cold Hard Truth book series with Penguin Random House Canada extends the same operating philosophy into personal finance, family business, and money behaviour. What organisations buy with him is the cold-eyed view of their own pitch. He treats a business the way a professional allocator does, judging it by cash, defensibility, and the quality of the operator, and he applies that lens with the bluntness that built the on-screen persona and the off-screen track record. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder discipline Investment decision-making and capital allocation Venture investing and start-up evaluation Personal finance and financial literacy Economic and market commentary Business media and brand building Ideal for CEOs and founders preparing for fundraising, M&A, or a strategic capital event Boards and senior investment teams looking at portfolio discipline and venture exposure Sales conferences and channel events where the audience is operating against revenue and unit-economics targets Banking, wealth management, and financial services audiences working with entrepreneur clients Audience outcomes A working sense of how a professional investor reads a pitch in the first three minutes. Sharper questions about cash conversion, defensibility, and operator quality inside their own portfolio or business unit. A direct, sometimes contrarian view of where capital is moving across sectors. Practical financial literacy points that hold up across a mixed audience of executives and front-line staff.

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

Why organisations work with Kjell A. Nordstrom The «Karaoke Capitalism» framework names a specific competitive failure – the institutional imitation produced by benchmarking and best practice – that most strategy teams recognise but lack precise language to challenge or dismantle. His «multi-urban corporation» thesis, developed in Urban Express, gives multinationals a practical alternative to national market segmentation: a model for deciding where to compete based on urban density, talent pools, and city-level economic power rather than country borders. His argument that urbanisation and the feminisation of skilled workforces are structural economic forces – not social policy questions – translates demographic change into a direct input for strategic planning and talent decisions. Three decades of advisory work with large multinationals and the UK government, grounded in academic research into the internationalisation of firms, means his structural arguments have been pressure-tested against real strategic decisions at board level. Funky Business, translated into 33 languages and ranked among the greatest business books ever published, demonstrates that his frameworks have been tested and adopted in every major market – giving leadership teams confidence the thinking travels beyond any single regional or cultural context. Biography highlights PhD in International Business, Stockholm School of Economics (1991); former Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Business (IIB), same institution Co-author of Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance, translated into 33 languages and ranked 16th greatest business book of all time; co-author of Karaoke Capitalism and Funky Business Forever with Jonas Ridderstrale Co-author of Urban Express and Momentum with Per Schlingmann; sole author of The Monkey and the Money: A History of Capitalism (Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2023) Ranked #9 in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers (2005); featured in multiple subsequent editions of the ranking Advisory and consulting work with large multinational corporations and the UK government Media appearances across CNN, CNBC, Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, and the Financial Times; keynote presentations delivered in over 100 countries Biography The rules of competitive strategy seemed settled for most of the twentieth century. Identify a national market. Deploy capital and scale. Benchmark against rivals. Kjell A. Nordstrom, a Swedish economist with a PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics, has spent three decades building the case that those rules are losing their purchase – and that the structural forces displacing them are more powerful than most boards have yet absorbed. His 2000 book Funky Business, co-authored with Jonas Ridderstrale, argued that talent, not capital, had become the decisive competitive input. The book became an international bestseller in 33 languages and was ranked among the 16 greatest business books ever published. The follow-up, Karaoke Capitalism (2003), named a specific organisational failure: benchmarking and best practice had trained entire industries to imitate rather than differentiate, producing what the authors called a karaoke economy of second-rate cover versions. Both books remain in active circulation in serious management conversations. His subsequent work extended the analytical frame outward. Urban Express (2014), co-authored with Per Schlingmann, argued that multinationals are becoming multi-urban corporations. Cities, not nations, are the primary economic units of the coming decades, and an educated, urban, female workforce is the dominant skilled labour pool of the near future. Momentum (2023) examined how pandemic, geopolitical rupture, and climate pressure are accelerating this structural shift and what it demands from the next generation of leaders. Ranked #9 in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers (2005), and a regular presence in Fortune, the Financial Times, and on CNN, Nordstrom has advised large multinationals and the UK government on strategy and globalisation. His value in a boardroom conversation is specific: not scenario planning or trend forecasting, but structural argument about which forces are deterministic, and which are merely plausible. Key speaking topics Globalisation and competitive strategy Urbanisation and the rise of the multi-urban corporation The karaoke economy: imitation as competitive liability Talent as the primary driver of competitive advantage Demographic change as structural economic force The long-run trajectory of capitalism Crisis, geopolitical rupture, and strategic response Ideal for Executive and board-level strategy sessions at multinational organisations Government and public policy leaders navigating structural economic transformation Strategy, corporate development, and planning functions reviewing long-term competitive positioning International leadership forums and global business summits Audience outcomes A structural framework for identifying which macro forces are actually reshaping competition in their sector Language for naming and challenging institutional imitation within their own organisation A working understanding of the multi-urban corporation thesis and its implications for market entry and talent strategy Clearer thinking on how urbanisation and demographic change translate into actionable strategic planning inputs A longer-range perspective on the current moment in capitalism’s evolution and what it demands from senior leadership

Why organisations work with Klisman Murati The Global Power Index, a proprietary quantitative model assessing 194 countries across ten dimensions of national power and 30 years of data. Clients drawing on it include NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, and HSBC. A documented forecasting record. The GPI signalled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession before consensus, and informs the way shipping, energy, and capital-allocation leaders read their geopolitical exposure. Two frameworks that give boards a shared language for hard problems: geo-risk, his term for reading political, technological, demographic, and capital forces as one compounding system, and segmented polarity, his alternative to the developed and emerging categories for seeing where capability is actually accumulating. A live read on where power is moving rather than a retrospective. He brings specific current calls, from Gulf capital as a new power centre to India’s climb from 24th to 6th on the index since 1994, and why blocs like BRICS cohere in some domains and fragment in others. A multidisciplinary lens that single-discipline analysts cannot replicate. His training spans anthropology, political economy, energy policy, security studies, and financial crime, which is what allows him to read AI, protectionism, capital flows, and demographic change as one connected system. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Pareto Economics, the London-based strategic intelligence firm behind the Global Power Index Creator of the Global Power Index, built on 88 variables and more than 500,000 data points, with a methodology developed alongside Dr Karim Abadir, Emeritus Professor of Financial Econometrics at Imperial College London Originator of the geo-risk and segmented polarity frameworks, the latter set out in his macro thesis How to Think in First Principles About Global Affairs and the basis of his forthcoming book, Segmented Polarity: Why the World’s Most Important Economies Are Being Dangerously Misread Forecasts arriving ahead of consensus include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession Clients include NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Telia, and Stena Bulk, with audiences in more than 120 countries Visiting Professor at the Helsinki Geoeconomics Institute; commentator across BBC, Al Jazeera, CGTN, the Financial Times, and Investment Week; author of more than 250 published articles Biography Pareto Economics called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s 2024 recession ahead of consensus. Behind those calls sits the Global Power Index, a proprietary model of 194 countries built on more than 85 variables and over half a million data points across 30 years. Klisman Murati founded the firm in 2017 to fix a specific failure in country-risk analysis. Conventional models rank economies by income thresholds and credit ratings. The GPI instead measures capability across ten structural dimensions, from energy and critical-minerals security to industrial capacity, technological leadership, human capital, and financial resilience, and reads each on two axes: where a country stands today, and how fast it is moving. The methodology was built with Dr Karim Abadir, Emeritus Professor of Financial Econometrics at Imperial College London. His work rests on two ideas. Geo-risk treats geopolitics, globalisation, technology, and societal change as a single compounding system rather than separate stories. Segmented polarity, the basis of his forthcoming book of the same name, replaces both the developed-and-emerging divide and the catch-all of multipolarity with a sharper read of how countries actually accumulate power, selectively, in the domains where they can compete. Both let leaders price change before it reaches consensus. That work has put him in the room with the people allocating capital under geopolitical exposure: NATO, the European Commission, Shell, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Stena Bulk, and Telia, with audiences in more than 120 countries. His current reads from the index include Gulf capital as a new power centre, India’s climb from 24th to 6th place since 1994, and why groupings like BRICS hold together in some domains and fragment in others. Key speaking topics Geoeconomic strategy and country risk The Global Power Index and quantitative country forecasting Geo-risk and the compounding of political, technological, and capital forces Segmented polarity and emerging-market reassessment Geopolitical risk and capital allocation Fragmentation of the global trade and investment order AI, protectionism, and the redistribution of global power Long-horizon strategic foresight Ideal for Boards, investment committees, and CIOs setting country and exposure strategy in a fracturing global order Asset managers and family offices repositioning capital ahead of geopolitical shocks Corporate strategy leadership in energy, shipping, financial services, and technology with material cross-border exposure Policymakers and government officials shaping long-horizon economic and security strategy Audience outcomes A clearer view of which forces will actually shape the next five to ten years, separated from headline noise A working framework for pricing geopolitical risk into specific capital allocation, market entry, and exposure decisions Specific signals to track in their own industry, sector, or geography, drawn directly from the GPI’s underlying data Replacement of outdated categories like “emerging markets” with a sharper, data-driven read of country capability

Why organisations work with Lars Sudmann He brings Fortune 500 operating weight to leadership work. A former P&G CFO and Business Unit Strategy Leader speaks to executive committees in their own language. His self-leadership framework, drawn from his TEDx talk that has crossed 1.9 million views, gives senior leaders a usable model for the personal habits that determine whether strategy actually lands. The Spaghetti Principle, the thesis of his book on innovation, gives organisations a structured way to run more experiments without losing strategic discipline. He is a 6-time Belgian and 2-time European Champion of Public Speaking. Executive presence and communication craft are not a sideline; they are a discipline he can teach. As Council Director at The Conference Board, he convenes CFOs and strategy leaders across Europe and the Gulf, so the room he walks into is one he already understands. Biography highlights Former CFO Belgium and Business Unit Strategy Leader at Procter & Gamble. Principal of Sudmann & Company, advising Fortune 500 leadership teams on strategy execution and change. Council Director at The Conference Board (Strategy & Transformation, Finance Transformation, Gulf councils). Lecturer on leadership and innovation at RWTH Aachen, Braunschweig University, and Lüneburg University. Author of “Innovation that Sticks: Reach Success as a Leader in your Field with the Spaghetti Principle”. Multiple TEDx talks on self-leadership and innovation, with combined viewership in the millions. 6-time Belgian and 2-time European Champion of Public Speaking. Featured in BBC, Fast Company, Inc., The Washington Post, and Manager Magazin. Biography Most leadership content treats execution as a structural problem. Sudmann treats it as a personal one. His TEDx talk on self-leadership, now past 1.9 million views, argues that the daily behaviour of senior leaders is what determines whether strategy moves through the organisation or stalls in the slide deck. The argument carries weight because of the chair he sat in. Sudmann was CFO Belgium at Procter & Gamble and led business unit strategy inside the same group. He has run the numbers, owned the plan, and watched what actually happens when a leadership team is asked to change while still hitting the quarter. That experience now shapes Sudmann & Company, his consulting and training practice, and his role as Council Director at The Conference Board, where he convenes strategy and finance leaders across Europe and the Gulf. He lectures on innovation and leadership at RWTH Aachen, Braunschweig, and Lüneburg, and his book “Innovation that Sticks” sets out the Spaghetti Principle: a disciplined way to run small experiments and keep only what holds. The communication craft is its own credential. Six Belgian and two European public speaking titles mean a Sudmann keynote is not a polished version of corporate decks. It is built to land, with senior audiences, on the first hearing. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and executive habits Strategy execution under pressure Change leadership in complex organisations Innovation discipline and the Spaghetti Principle High-performance leadership teams Executive communication and presentation craft Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams entering a major strategic shift. CFOs, strategy leaders, and transformation leads accountable for execution. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a credible voice on self-leadership and high-performance behaviour. Conferences with audiences of senior corporate leaders across finance, strategy, and operations. Audience outcomes A working model of self-leadership that senior leaders can apply on Monday morning. A sharper read on why their current strategy is or is not moving through the organisation. The Spaghetti Principle as a method for running more disciplined innovation experiments. Concrete language and structure for executive communication, drawn from competitive speaking craft. A vocabulary for leadership behaviour their team can adopt collectively, not just individually.

Why organisations work with Lars Ulrich He has run, with three bandmates, one of the most commercially successful independent creative businesses of the last forty years, with more than 125 million albums sold and full ownership of the master recordings. He led the Napster confrontation in 2000, the first artist-led legal challenge to peer-to-peer file sharing, which set much of the licensing groundwork that streaming platforms operate on today. He speaks from inside a band whose business model has been rebuilt at least three times, from major-label act to self-owned record company to direct-to-fan operator across a 60 million-strong social following. He chairs, with his bandmates, the All Within My Hands Foundation, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, useful only as evidence that the work has been recognised by serious institutions outside the music industry. Biography highlights Co-founder and drummer of Metallica, formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the first Danish artist to receive the honour. Ten Grammy Awards from 26 nominations, including six Best Metal Performance wins. Testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in Metallica v. Napster, 11 July 2000. Co-founder of the All Within My Hands Foundation, established 2017, supporting workforce education, food security and disaster relief. Awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2017. Biography Metallica has outsold most of the labels it has ever worked with. The band Lars Ulrich co-founded in 1981 has shipped more than 125 million records, won ten Grammy Awards, and now owns its entire master catalogue. It has done all of that without ever softening its sound to fit the commercial moment, and without ever being acquired, merged or absorbed. The interesting business question is how. Ulrich is one of the few people who can answer it from the inside. His account covers the decisions that mattered: refusing to chase trends with the Black Album, suing Napster in 2000 when the rest of the industry was paralysed, eventually buying back the masters, and rebuilding the band as its own record company, touring operation and direct-to-fan platform across more than 60 million followers. The Napster confrontation in particular is studied in business and law schools as a case in how an independent creative business defends its commercial rights against a technology shift. Ulrich’s Senate testimony in July 2000 became the artist-side argument that streaming services were eventually built around. He is candid about what the band got wrong in the public framing of that fight, and clear about what it preserved. Outside the band, he co-founded the All Within My Hands Foundation in 2017, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II in 2017, the same year the foundation launched. Key speaking topics Independent brand longevity Creative discipline at scale Business model reinvention Artist rights and the economics of digital distribution Partnership selectivity and brand integrity Philanthropy and foundation governance Team longevity and creative conflict Ideal for CEOs and founders running owner-led creative or brand-driven businesses CMOs and brand leads navigating partnership decisions and licensing Boards considering long-horizon brand strategy and succession Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is reinvention without losing identity Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a four-person creative business has stayed commercially independent for four decades. The reasoning behind Metallica’s decision to sue Napster, and what it produced for the wider industry. A clearer view of when to say no to brand partnerships, even profitable ones. A working sense of how creative conflict inside a senior team can be managed without breaking the team.