Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Danny Rensch Inside view of a bootstrapped consumer platform that reached a billion-dollar valuation with no venture capital, told by the operator who built its content, events and media strategy from the inside. Direct authorship of Chess.com’s signature commercial properties, including the Speed Chess Championship, the PRO Chess League, Titled Tuesday, and the PogChamps streamer events that opened chess to a non-chess audience. A working framework for using a 1,500-year-old game as a commercial asset: turning a niche pastime into a streaming category, an esports format, and a content engine for 40 million monthly users. Memoir-grade material on resilience and self-leadership grounded in a specific, publicly documented personal history, published by Hachette in 2025 and endorsed by Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Chess Officer, Chess.com, the platform with over 225 million registered members and roughly 40 million monthly active users. International Master (FIDE) and former Arizona youngest National Master (1999); 1998 Elementary National Champion, 2000 Junior High National Champion, 2004 National High School Co-Champion. Author of Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life (Hachette Book Group, 2025), reviewed by Kirkus as “A winning memoir” with endorsements from Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that became the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. Hosted PogChamps, the streamer chess tournament credited with bringing chess to mainstream Twitch and YouTube audiences during 2020. Speaker at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference; profiled by Fortune in 2025 on the Chess.com growth story. Biography Chess.com is one of the few consumer platforms of its scale that never took venture capital. Over fifteen years, the company grew from a small bootstrapped operation into a service with more than 225 million registered members, around 40 million monthly active users, and a valuation above one billion dollars by 2023. Danny Rensch co-founded the company in 2009 and built its content, events and media operations. The competitive layer of the business is his work. He created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that grew into the Speed Chess Championship. He hosted the first PogChamps in 2020, the streamer tournament that pulled a non-chess audience onto the platform and re-cast a 1,500-year-old game as a streaming category. The PRO Chess League and Titled Tuesday sit in the same portfolio. Before the company, there was a player. Rensch is a FIDE International Master and a former scholastic champion: Elementary National Champion in 1998, Arizona’s youngest National Master in 1999, Junior High National Champion in 2000, and National High School Co-Champion in 2004, the year he earned his first IM norm. His memoir, Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life, was published by Hachette in 2025 and describes a childhood inside the Church of Immortal Consciousness, an Arizona cult, and chess as the route out. Kirkus called it “A winning memoir.” The commercial argument and the personal argument reinforce each other. A board considering how a niche product becomes a global consumer category, or a leadership team studying the discipline required to operate without external capital for fifteen years, will find specific operating material in the Chess.com story. A management audience working on resilience and decision-making under pressure has, in the same speaker, a primary source. Key speaking topics Bootstrapped consumer platform growth Building category-defining digital products Content, community and commercial events strategy Lessons from chess for business strategy and decision-making Resilience and self-leadership through adversity Streaming, esports and the modernisation of legacy categories Ideal for CEOs and founders of consumer platforms, marketplaces and subscription businesses CMOs, CCOs and heads of content building community-led growth Boards and leadership teams of bootstrapped or founder-led companies Conferences on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, sports business and digital media Audience outcomes A concrete view of how a bootstrapped consumer platform compounds product, content and events decisions over fifteen years. Operating examples of turning a legacy category into a streaming-first business, drawn from the Speed Chess Championship and PogChamps. A working language for applying chess concepts (anticipation, calculated risk, pattern recognition) to commercial strategy without metaphor inflation. A grounded perspective on resilience, decision-making and personal recovery, sourced from a published memoir rather than generic motivational material.

Why organisations work with John Mackey He took one Austin store to 540 locations and $22B in annual sales over four decades, so his account of stakeholder strategy is operating evidence, not theory. He co-authored the book, Conscious Capitalism (HBR Press, 2013), that gave the stakeholder argument its working vocabulary inside boardrooms and business schools. Few founders have lived the full arc he describes: IPO, activist investor pressure, a $13.7B sale to Amazon, and a second venture built on the same philosophy. His Love.Life venture applies the same conscious-business model to preventative healthcare, giving audiences a current case in a different sector. He speaks to capitalism’s critics from inside the system, useful for boards under pressure on purpose, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate. Biography highlights Co-founded Whole Foods Market in 1978; served as CEO until September 2022, growing the business to 540 stores in the US, UK and Canada and over $22B in annual sales. Co-author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Author of Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business (2020) and the memoir The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism (2024). Co-founder and CEO of Love.Life, an integrated preventative healthcare and wellness venture, with its flagship centre in El Segundo, California. Inducted into the World Retail Congress Hall of Fame (2022); recognised by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year US Overall Winner. Board roles include Conscious Capitalism Inc., The Motley Fool, Cato Institute, Institute for Cultural Evolution and Students for Liberty. Biography Whole Foods Market began in 1978 as a single store on a side street in Austin, Texas. Forty-four years later, when John Mackey stepped down as CEO, it had 540 stores, 105,000 team members and $22 billion in annual sales. That trajectory is the spine of his authority on stakeholder capitalism. The argument he co-built around it became Conscious Capitalism (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller co-authored with Raj Sisodia. The book set out four operating tenets, higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture, that boards and business schools now use as a working vocabulary for purpose-led business. Mackey has also lived the harder parts of the case. He took Whole Foods through an IPO, public clashes with critics on both left and right, sustained activist investor pressure from Jana Partners, and the $13.7 billion sale to Amazon in 2017. His 2024 memoir The Whole Story sets out what those moments cost and what they confirmed. He now runs Love.Life, a preventative healthcare and wellness company he co-founded with former Whole Foods executives, applying the same conscious-business model to a sector he argues is structurally set up to manage disease rather than prevent it. The work positions him as a serious voice on stakeholder strategy, board-level purpose, and the next test of conscious capitalism in healthcare. Key speaking topics Conscious Capitalism and stakeholder strategy Founder-led growth and scaling a category-defining business Purpose, culture and the operating model behind them Leadership through activist pressure, acquisition and succession Preventative healthcare and the future of wellness Higher-purpose leadership at board level Entrepreneurship and long-horizon company building Ideal for Boards and CEOs reframing purpose as an operating model rather than a communications layer Founders and senior leaders scaling mission-led businesses through institutional capital and public-market pressure Retail, consumer, grocery and health sector leadership teams Conferences on capitalism, ESG credibility and the social licence to operate Audience outcomes A working account of how stakeholder strategy held together through four decades of growth, IPO, activism and acquisition The four-tenet architecture of Conscious Capitalism applied to current board and executive decisions A founder’s view of when to fight activist investors and when to sell A live case on building a second purpose-led business, this time in healthcare Sharper language for explaining purpose to investors, employees and customers without losing credibility on either side

Why organisations work with Mickey Wilson She runs a working brand consultancy, not a speaking practice with an agency name attached. The frameworks she presents are the same ones Firestarter applies inside Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado engagements. The DARE Formula gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for brand decisions: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression. It replaces the design-led conversation most boards default to with a commercial one. She works the B2B scale-up problem specifically. The advice is calibrated to founders who have product-market fit and need brand to do the next stage of commercial lifting, not to consumer giants polishing an existing position. Paired with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist, she brings behavioural insight into brand decisions where most agencies bring only aesthetic judgement. Biography highlights CEO and founder, Firestarter (est. 2015), a London-headquartered brand consultancy with a studio in Cape Town 30+ years in brand strategy and creative leadership; launched her first agency at twenty-one Client engagements include Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado Creator of the DARE Formula and Firestarter’s Brand Maturity Model Co-author of forthcoming book BRANDFIRE with Dr Chris Endersby Featured in Authority Magazine, Startups Magazine, BMmagazine, WeAreTheCity and Talented Ladies Club Biography Most B2B scale-ups treat brand as a downstream problem. They build the product, win early customers, then commission a logo refresh when sales plateau. Mickey Wilson’s argument is that the plateau is the brand problem, and that treating it cosmetically is what causes it to harden. Firestarter, the consultancy she founded in 2015, sells against that pattern. Working with clients including Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado, the firm built a proprietary framework, the DARE Formula, around four ingredients its analysts argue brand-led growth depends on: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance and Expression. It is the spine of how the firm diagnoses why a B2B business is not converting at the rate its product would predict. What separates her work from generic brand consultancy is the partnership with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist whose background sits in behavioural change rather than design. Together they pair brand strategy with cognitive insight into why buyers respond, hesitate, or commit. That joint authorship runs through Firestarter’s BrandSight:360 assessment and through BRANDFIRE, the book the two are preparing for publication. Wilson started her first agency at twenty-one and has spent more than three decades in brand strategy and creative leadership. The corporate client list is the credential most senior buyers will check first. The more telling proof is that scale-up founders, who tend to be sceptical of agency theatre, hire her to turn brand from a marketing line item into a commercial growth lever. Key speaking topics B2B brand strategy Differentiation in saturated markets Brand-led growth for scale-ups The DARE Formula Behavioural psychology in branding Brand resonance and emotional connection Founder-led brand building Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups in series A through C CMOs and brand directors at mid-market businesses Sales and marketing leadership teams aligning on positioning Industry conferences in B2B technology, professional services and SaaS Audience outcomes A diagnostic for where their brand is losing commercial ground to competitors The DARE Formula as a working vocabulary for cross-functional brand decisions A clearer view of how psychology shapes B2B buyer commitment Practical pointers on translating founder conviction into a brand position buyers remember A challenge to the assumption that brand is a marketing function rather than a commercial one

Why organisations work with Elena Boheme She has run the full development lifecycle, from hotel operator design management and fit-out contracting through to property M&A and family office advisory. That breadth is rare; most advisors sit on one side of the design, build, or operate split. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in the Kingdom, and sits on the advisory board of RED Summit KSA and the Modern Building Summit KSA. That places her inside the rooms where Saudi development decisions are made, not adjacent to them. She works credibly across the capital stack, advising AETOS MFO on luxury asset and yacht financing and Triversa Holding at executive board level. International family offices use her to translate Gulf real estate exposure into something they can actually govern. She operates in English, French, and Russian fluently, with working Arabic and Mandarin, and has executed projects in China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Cross-cultural deal structuring is a practised skill, not a claim. Biography highlights Co-founder and Development Director, Metrix Projects; co-founder, Metrix Advisory and AETOS MFO. Executive Board Member, Triversa Holding. Strategic Advisor on Project Management, Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. Advisory Board member, RED Summit KSA, and Advisory Board member plus moderator, Modern Building Summit KSA 2025. Speaker and moderator across AlMashtal Knowledge of Design 2024, Cityscape Saudi Arabia 2024, Hospitality Leadership and F&B Forum UAE 2025, Furtech Show Dubai 2025, and Women in Private Equity Forum London 2025. Host of LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues and author of the LinkedIn newsletter Project Within. Biography Saudi Arabia’s development pipeline is the largest in the world and the least forgiving. International capital arrives expecting Dubai and discovers a market with its own regulatory architecture, its own localisation requirements, and its own definition of what delivered means. Elena Boheme’s work sits inside that translation problem. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in Riyadh to do one specific job: take hospitality and residential developments from concept through to operational handover without the gaps that quietly consume budget. Before that, she spent a decade on hotel operator design management, fit-out contracting, and property development across China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, and the UAE, including hospitality projects valued at over two billion US dollars in Korea and Macau. A second strand of her work runs through capital. She co-founded AETOS MFO, a multi-family office advising on luxury real estate and yacht financing, and sits as an executive board member at Triversa Holding and strategic advisor on project management to Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. The combination matters: developers usually understand bricks, family offices usually understand money, and Saudi-bound investors need someone who can hold both sides of the conversation at once. She moderates and chairs across the Kingdom’s main industry platforms, including the RED Summit KSA advisory board, the Modern Building Summit KSA, Cityscape Saudi Arabia, and AlMashtal Knowledge of Design, and hosts the LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues. The track record is operational rather than academic. For a leadership team weighing a Vision 2030 entry, that is the more useful kind of credibility. Key speaking topics Project deliverability in Saudi Arabia Localisation and market entry strategy for the Kingdom Real estate development lifecycle, from design through operations Cross-cultural deal structuring in the Gulf Women in real estate development and leadership Family office exposure to Gulf real estate Ideal for International hospitality operators and developers planning entry into Saudi Arabia Family offices and private investors building Gulf real estate exposure Boards of project management, design, and construction firms expanding into the Kingdom C-suite teams at firms shifting from regional MENA presence to substantive KSA delivery Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what separates a signed Saudi deal from a delivered asset The localisation choices that decide whether a foreign operator can actually execute in the Kingdom A working map of how design, build, operate, and capital decisions interact across a Gulf development Specific failure modes she has seen at the hand-off between international design teams and local execution A perspective on Saudi development from someone embedded in it, not commenting from outside

Why organisations work with Ashwin Gulati A founder’s-eye view drawn from 100+ ventures in four countries, not a single startup story extrapolated into a thesis Hands-on experience as interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence inside companies in crisis, not commentary from the sidelines Author of Soul Venture, a 16-year project that documents the human and psychological mechanics of startup failure that most business books edit out Comfortable in the room with boards, family offices and first-time founders, and switches register accordingly Bilingual operator across US and European venture cultures, useful when expansion crosses regulatory and capital-market boundaries Biography highlights 30+ years guiding founders, CEOs and boards across 100+ ventures in the US, UK, Spain and France Founder of Match Point Ventures, working with boards, family offices and executive teams as strategic advisor, interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Author of Soul Venture: A True Life and Death Journey Into the Startup Culture (Match Point Press) Featured at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on the unspoken truths of entrepreneurship Quoted and published in Chief Executive, Authority Magazine, Grit Daily, StartupNation, CEO World and LeadershipNow BA in Economics and Mathematics from Claremont McKenna College, with study at King’s College London and the London School of Economics Biography Ninety-seven of every hundred startups fail. The interesting question is not why most fail, but what the survivors paid to get through, and why so little of that cost is ever named in public. Ashwin Gulati has spent three decades inside that question, working alongside founders, CEOs and boards through launches, pivots, expansions and exits in the US, UK, Spain and France. His work spans more than 100 ventures, from early-stage technology companies to family-office-backed operating businesses. Through Match Point Ventures he steps in as strategic advisor, interim executive or Entrepreneur-in-Residence, running diagnostic assessments on capital structure, business model, leadership alignment and market position. The role is not theoretical. It usually begins when something is breaking. Soul Venture, his debut book, took 16 years to write because it does what most entrepreneurship literature avoids. It traces the psychological and human costs that sit alongside the spreadsheet view of company building. The book is part memoir, part field guide, drawn from his own ventures and from the founders he has worked beside. It has been featured by Chief Executive, Grit Daily and Authority Magazine, and anchors his speaking on what he calls the X-factors that separate real builders from the rest. He addresses three moments in venture life with equal seriousness. The take-off, where most founders mistake hustle for traction. The flight, where scaling exposes who can actually lead. And the landing, where exits, succession and legacy decide what the work was for. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder journey Scale-up leadership across stages Venture launch and operational sustainability Exit, succession and founder legacy Self-leadership and founder resilience Cross-border venture building Ideal for Founder communities, incubators and accelerators briefing first-time and serial entrepreneurs Boards, family offices and investor networks evaluating venture portfolios Executive teams inside scale-ups confronting transition or crisis Business schools and entrepreneurship programmes building founder development tracks Audience outcomes A clearer map of the launch, scale and exit decisions that decide a venture’s outcome Specific failure mechanics drawn from 100+ companies, not founder mythology Language for the human cost of building, useful in boardrooms that usually avoid it A working frame for legacy and succession that goes beyond the financial exit

Why organisations work with Melica Moshiri Operating knowledge of the AI scale-up hiring market. SkillTorch places go-to-market, C-suite and technical leaders into companies across automation, robotics, semiconductors and enterprise AI. A founder’s view of what it takes to start and run a specialist business from cold, not a consultant’s view of someone else’s growth. A public platform built through BBC’s The Apprentice (2025) and a TEDxWorthing talk, giving her access to audiences beyond a typical recruitment specialist. A working perspective on how AI is changing recruiting itself, drawn from running an AI-focused search firm and hosting the SkillTorch Disrupt podcast with founders and operators in the field. Biography highlights Founder, SkillTorch, retained and embedded search for venture-backed AI companies across North America and Europe Host, SkillTorch Disrupt podcast on hiring, leadership and applied AI TEDxWorthing speaker, October 2025: “How to reconnect in a robotic world” BBC The Apprentice 2025 contestant, reached Week 8, won five tasks including Project Manager Speaking platforms include NBCUniversal, Spotify and the University of Brighton BA (Hons) Law with Business, University of Brighton Biography AI companies in their first scaling phase usually have two problems at once. The product is moving faster than the leadership team can hire for, and the executive roles they need most are the ones the founders have never personally done. SkillTorch was built to sit inside that gap. Melica Moshiri founded SkillTorch in 2022 after a decade in recruitment that took her from Pareto Law in the UK through executive search in advertising technology to Los Angeles and Orange County, where she opened a US office for a UK firm before launching her own. The firm runs retained and embedded search for venture-backed AI companies across the US and Europe, placing senior commercial, technical and operational leaders into businesses in automation, robotics, semiconductors and enterprise AI. In 2025 she became a contestant on BBC’s The Apprentice, reaching Week 8 and winning five tasks, including one as Project Manager. The platform extended her public reach across BBC News, BBC Radio 5 Live, the Daily Mail, The Mirror and Persian broadcaster Manoto TV, and led to a TEDxWorthing talk later that year on how technology is reshaping the way people connect at work. She also hosts SkillTorch Disrupt, a podcast with founders and operators building applied AI in real-world settings. The recurring theme across her client work, her broadcasting and her speaking is the same: how small, recently funded companies design leadership teams that can hold up when growth gets ahead of the org chart. Key speaking topics Building and scaling a specialist business in the AI sector Executive hiring for venture-backed technology companies AI’s effect on recruiting and talent strategy Resilience and reinvention as a first-time founder Women founding and leading in technology Personal brand and visibility for entrepreneurs Ideal for Founders and CEOs of early-stage and Series A to C technology companies Heads of Talent and CHROs scaling teams inside AI-native businesses Entrepreneurship programmes, accelerators and university enterprise audiences Conferences on women in technology, leadership and founding Audience outcomes A working picture of how senior hiring inside AI scale-ups actually runs, from brief to closed offer Specific examples of what goes wrong when founders hire too late or too senior, and how to read the signals earlier A candid account of the public, financial and personal exposure that comes with founding a business and a media profile at the same time Practical positioning for women entering or founding in technology, drawn from her own market

Why organisations work with Charlie Whyman A working B2B marketing operating model. The OTTER Framework gives commercial teams a five-step planning structure that ties objectives to tools, training, expectations and review, used inside her consultancy and her current managing director role. Operator credibility, not consultant theory. She runs a specialised aviation services business as managing director of TGIS Aviation, so her commercial advice lands as something already being applied at the top of a P&L. A point of view on customer curiosity as a commercial discipline. Her podcast, The Curiosity Key, and her speaker work argue that better questioning of customers is the input that most B2B marketing teams skip and most commercial strategies depend on. A direct route into the experience of women leading in male-dominated commercial sectors. She has built her career across automotive, mining, shipping and aviation, and speaks credibly to organisations trying to move that conversation past slogans. Biography highlights Managing Director, TGIS Aviation Ltd, appointed 2024 Founder, Curious B2B Marketing, 2017 Creator of the OTTER Framework, a five-step B2B marketing planning system Host, The Curiosity Key podcast Founder, Palmavera, an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business, 2006 Keynote speaker, BHBIA Annual Conference 2025 Biography Most B2B marketing functions are full of activity and short of insight. Campaigns get built before customer questions get asked. That gap is what Whyman has spent the last decade attacking, first through her consultancy Curious B2B Marketing and now through the OTTER Framework, a five-step planning structure that forces objectives, tools, training, expectations and review into one commercial conversation. She is unusual in pairing that practitioner work with an operating role. In 2024 she was appointed Managing Director of TGIS Aviation, a UK firm specialising in airworthiness management for aircraft and engine owners. The appointment came from inside the client base, after she ran the growth strategy as a consultant. It puts her on the board of a niche commercial business while she continues to teach and speak. Her career sits across sectors most marketers avoid: automotive, mining, shipping and aviation. She founded an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business in 2006, weathered redundancy twice, and built Curious B2B Marketing in 2017. She hosts The Curiosity Key podcast, where the recurring argument is that intentional curiosity about customers is the cheapest, most under-used commercial input available to B2B leaders. For organisations, the value is direct. She is a serving managing director with a structured method, a clear position on what marketing is for, and the lived experience of a woman leading in industries that do not naturally make space for her. She talks to commercial teams as one of them, and to leadership audiences as someone who has just come from the P&L. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and operating systems Customer curiosity as a commercial discipline Sales and marketing alignment for commercial leaders Courage and action in career and commercial decisions Women leading in male-dominated industries Growth strategy in specialist B2B firms Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors and B2B commercial leaders CEOs and managing directors of specialist or technical SMEs Sales and marketing leadership teams under pressure to prove pipeline impact Industry conferences in engineering, manufacturing, life sciences and aviation Audience outcomes A clear test for whether a current marketing plan is built on customer insight or assumption The OTTER Framework as a working structure for B2B marketing planning A sharper position on how curiosity, questioning and customer research feed commercial strategy Practical language for talking about courage and action when career or commercial decisions stall A perspective on visibility and influence for women operating in male-dominated commercial environments

About James Peach Award-winning global marketing leader (Ex-Uber, Ex-Coca-Cola, Ex-Vinted, Ex-Innocent), world cyclist and adventurer, leadership and performance coach. James has built some of the world’s most successful household brands in tech and consumer goods, leading award-winning marketing and creative teams across Europe and North America. James spent two years cycling a lap of the world solo and unsupported, covering over 41,000 kilometers across 38 countries. He has hiked solo across three continents, and even pioneered the first triathlon to span an entire nation. As the Founder of The Growth Project, James is redefining the way we think about growth and how we achieve ambitious goals – moving beyond the traditional ‘growth mindset’ to a new, more actionable framework. The Growth Project explores how we can use the lessons of the past and adopt a set of behaviours to accelerate future growth, unlocking new ways for individuals, teams and business cultures to thrive. A highly relatable, entertaining and sought-after speaker, James captivates audiences with humor, energy, and meaningful takeaways. His talks offer a refreshing departure from the every day and inspire audiences to think differently about life and work. “I’ve seen a lot of speakers over the years, and James is the best I’ve encountered—a normal person who has done extraordinary things.” — Nestlé

Why organisations work with Dr Alan O’Neill The 7-Steps to Profit is a named, proprietary framework built from a multi-year consulting engagement at Selfridges, where annual profit grew from £45m to £200m. Audiences leave with a structured path they can map to their own organisation, not a set of principles they have to interpret. His central argument, that culture and customer experience are a single commercial mechanism, not parallel HR and marketing initiatives, gives boards a specific reframing of a decision they are typically making in silos. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he draws content from active client engagements across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector. The material is current, not archival. Four published books provide a body of work that extends well beyond the session: “Premium Is the New Black” on customer experience as competitive differentiation; “Culture Matters” on the four values that underpin high performance; “Show Me the Lid on the Box” on reducing change resistance; and “The Leader’s Six-Pack” on balancing leadership competencies with emotional intelligence A business columnist for the Sunday Independent and Gulf based publications, his frameworks are tested continuously against live commercial situations across multiple sectors and geographies. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Kara Change Management Creator of the 7-Steps to Profit framework; deployed across client organisations including Selfridges, Toyota, Intel, Primark, Moët Hennessy, Dubai Duty Free, Getty Images, and the United Nations Author of three books: Premium Is the New Black, Culture Matters, and Show Me the Lid on the Box Business columnist, Sunday Independent (Ireland) and Gulf Business Non-executive director across multiple sectors in Europe and the Middle East 30+ years of consulting practice spanning retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, manufacturing, and public sector organisations across EMEA Biography Selfridges’ annual profit grew from £45m to £200m across several years of structured transformation, and the business went on to win multiple ‘Best Department Store in the World’ awards. The consulting framework behind that journey, Dr Alan O’Neill’s 7-Steps to Profit, is what organisations now bring him in to share. The 7-Steps to Profit is built on a specific argument: that culture, customer experience, and commercial performance are not parallel workstreams but a single, interdependent system. Culture is not the backdrop to strategy, it is the delivery mechanism. O’Neill formalised this thinking across three books: Premium Is the New Black addresses customer experience as competitive differentiation; Culture Matters defines the four values (Customer Centricity, Respect, Accountability, and Agility) that underpin a high-performance culture; Show Me the Lid on the Box provides a framework for leading change with reduced resistance. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he has applied the framework with organisations across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector, from Toyota and Intel to Dubai Duty Free and the United Nations. The Selfridges story transfers well: the structural argument it illustrates is as relevant to a B2B services firm or a public institution as it is to a department store. O’Neill continues to practise as an active consultant and non-executive director. He writes regular business commentary for the Sunday Independent and Gulf Business, keeping his frameworks in direct conversation with the commercial challenges organisations are currently navigating. Key speaking topics Change management and organisational transformation Culture as commercial strategy Customer experience and service excellence The 7-Steps to Profit Premium brand positioning and margin protection Values-led leadership Retail reinvention and the future of physical retail Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams managing a cultural transformation alongside a commercial or strategic pivot Chief Customer Officers and Chief Marketing Officers seeking to embed customer-centric behaviour across the full organisation CHROs and HR Directors designing culture programmes that connect directly to business performance Executive conferences in retail, hospitality, consumer goods, and financial services Audience outcomes A working understanding of the 7-Steps to Profit framework and how to map its logic to their own organisational context A reframing of culture and customer experience as a single commercial lever, not separate functional priorities Concrete examples drawn from the Selfridges engagement and other named client organisations that show how the framework operates under real conditions Greater clarity on where resistance to change typically originates and how structured approaches reduce it at scale A sharper diagnostic lens for identifying the gap between leadership intent and frontline behaviour

Why organisations work with Jim Carroll He builds each keynote around the client’s own industry data, not a generic deck. NASA, Pfizer, the World Bank, and the PGA of America have brought him in to map their specific sector horizon, from space to pharma acceleration to manufacturing in emerging economies. BusinessWeek named him one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity, a credential that travels well in C-suite rooms where buyers want an outside voice with editorial standing. He pairs futurist work with a CPA background and a decade inside large advisory firms. That combination tends to land with CFOs and operating leaders who push back on speakers without commercial grounding. Two million-plus attendees across thirty years of corporate, institutional, and conference platforms, including the World Government Summit and the Swiss Innovation Forum, give him a pattern library few peers can match. His column work for the Globe and Mail and trade titles such as Profit and Marketing established an independent public record of trend calls, useful when boards want a speaker whose views predate the engagement. Biography highlights Named by BusinessWeek as one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity. Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian New Media Awards (2002), for pioneering work in the digital industry. Named “One of 50 International Names to Know” by the Online Journalism Review. Keynote engagements for NASA, The Walt Disney Company, Pfizer, the World Bank, the PGA of America, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, BlackRock, the Swiss Innovation Forum, and the World Government Summit. Author of titles including “The Future Belongs To Those Who Are Fast”, “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast”, and “Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times”. Former national columnist for the Globe and Mail; columns in Profit, Marketing, and hiTech Careers; CPA with prior advisory, tax, and audit experience at predecessor firms of KPMG and EY. Biography The hardest call in any boardroom is timing. Most leadership teams can describe the trend lines reshaping their industry. Far fewer can say, with conviction, which curve bends in the next eighteen months and which is still a decade out. That gap is where Carroll’s work lives. He has spent more than thirty years building a library of industry-specific futurist research, then translating it into keynotes for the executive teams making capital and portfolio decisions. NASA brought him in twice for sessions on the future of the space industry. Pfizer engaged him on the acceleration of medical science. The PGA of America used him to rethink innovation in golf. The World Bank asked him to look at manufacturing in emerging economies. Each engagement is built from the client’s own sector data rather than a generic trends deck. The credentials behind that work matter. BusinessWeek named him one of four leading sources of insight on innovation and creativity. The Canadian New Media Awards gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. The Online Journalism Review listed him among “50 International Names to Know”. A CPA designation and roughly a decade in advisory, tax, and audit roles at predecessor firms of KPMG and EY underwrite the commercial register he speaks in. His books, from “The Future Belongs To Those Who Are Fast” through to “Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times”, argue a consistent line: the organisations that win in volatile decades are the ones that compress decision cycles, treat optimism as a strategy, and refuse to let the planning calendar set the pace of change. Key speaking topics Industry-specific trend forecasting Innovation and disruption Strategic foresight and scenario planning Acceleration and decision velocity Future of healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services Leadership in volatile markets Workforce and skills transformation Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting three-to-five-year strategy in industries facing structural disruption CEOs, CSOs, and innovation leads commissioning offsites that need an outside trend voice anchored in their sector Conference programmes for healthcare, manufacturing, energy, financial services, and technology that need a headline futurist with sector range Audience outcomes A clearer view of which trends in the audience’s specific industry are accelerating, which are overhyped, and which are mispriced by current strategy. A sharper internal language for talking about decision speed, with examples drawn from sectors as varied as space, pharma, and manufacturing. Confidence to challenge planning cycles and capital allocation assumptions that quietly assume a slower world. Concrete reference points from named organisations (NASA, Pfizer, the PGA of America, the World Bank) that have used the same lens.

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 Gabriela Salinas She converts brand into a number a CFO will defend. Her methodology training underpins valuations used in M&A, licensing, litigation, and tax disputes at companies including Bank of America, Telefónica, and Repsol. She sits inside the rulebook. Membership of ISO/PC 231, the committee behind the international brand valuation standard, means she can speak with first-hand authority on what counts as a credible valuation and what does not. Her sustainability research pushes back on the prevailing ESG storyline. Perceived sustainability lifts brand value only when customers see it improving the product, a finding that reframes how marketing teams should brief CFOs on ESG spend. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley reference manual cited across the discipline, give her a depth of source material that bureau speakers in marketing rarely match. She teaches the next generation of CFOs and CMOs at IE Business School, which means her frameworks are tested every term against live cases brought by senior executives. Biography highlights Senior Director, Brand Finance, and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute Adjunct Professor of Strategic Brand Management and Brand Valuation at IE Business School since 2011 Author of The International Brand Valuation Manual (Wiley, 2009) and two earlier brand valuation titles Member of ISO/PC 231, the international committee for the brand valuation standard Published in the Journal of Brand Management, Marketing Science Institute, and Harvard Deusto Business Review Previously Global Senior Brand Manager at Deloitte and Managing Director at Brand Finance Iberia Biography Brand is the largest single intangible on many corporate balance sheets, and one of the least understood by the people who sign off on its budget. Boards approve brand investment with little sense of how it converts to enterprise value. CFOs ask for a number and receive a story. Gabriela Salinas works at the seam between marketing and finance, where that confusion is most expensive. As Senior Director at Brand Finance and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute, she advises corporations on what their brand is worth, how to measure it, and how to manage it as a financial asset. Her client work has included Bank of America, Telefónica, Repsol, Mapfre, Iberia, LaLiga, and Johnson & Johnson. Her authority rests on three foundations. Twenty years of practitioner work across Brand Finance, Deloitte, and FutureBrand in New York, Madrid, Singapore, and Buenos Aires. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley manual that remains a standard reference in the field. And membership of ISO/PC 231, the international committee that wrote the global standard for brand valuation methodology. Her recent research with Carmen Abril at Complutense University tests a question CFOs have been asking quietly for years. Does sustainability add brand value? The finding: only when customers see it improving the product. That answer travels well in rooms where marketing teams are under pressure to justify ESG spend in financial terms. Key speaking topics Brand valuation and intangible asset measurement Brand as a financial asset on the balance sheet Sustainability and brand value Corporate reputation and brand architecture Strategic brand management Brand portfolio strategy in M&A and licensing Ideal for CFOs and CMOs working to align brand investment with measurable enterprise value Boards reviewing brand performance, M&A intangibles, or ESG capital allocation Marketing and finance leadership teams jointly accountable for brand strategy Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing brand in financial terms with CFOs, auditors, and investors Clarity on which brand metrics actually predict commercial outcomes and which are noise A defensible position on whether and how sustainability investment translates into brand value Familiarity with the ISO methodology that underpins formal brand valuation in M&A, tax, and litigation