Business Strategy & Growth speakers

Why organisations work with Sung Won Sohn His forecasting record is one of the few in the economics profession that has been publicly audited. The Wall Street Journal has repeatedly ranked him the most accurate forecaster in the country, including first place in 2006 and a top-three ranking in 2012 as the only academic in the top ten. Analysis built from inside three institutions most economists only write about. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, as Chief Economist at Wells Fargo, and as President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles. A Pacific-rim lens that US-focused commentators rarely offer. Korean-born and long specialised in trans-Pacific trade, he reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has tracked those flows for four decades does. Constant presence in live financial coverage. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him regularly on Fed decisions, inflation prints, and tariff announcements. Audiences hear what is shaping markets this week, in the language of the data that week. Biography highlights Professor of Finance and Economics, College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University Former Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers at The White House Former Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at Wells Fargo Bank; former President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles Named the most accurate economic forecaster in the United States by the Wall Street Journal in 2006, with top-five rankings from the same publication in 2010 and 2012 Named to Time Magazine’s Board of Economists; one of the five most accurate US forecasters by Bloomberg News; most accurate forecaster for the Western States by Blue Chip Publications Author of Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy; Chair of the Investment Committee at LACERS, overseeing a multi-billion-dollar public pension fund; Director, Western Alliance Bancorporation Biography In 2006, the Wall Street Journal named its most accurate economic forecaster in the United States. The winner was running what he himself described as a one-man operation against forecasting teams at Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and Bank of America. His name was Sung Won Sohn. The Journal has returned to him in the years since, at one point ranking him the only academic in the country’s top ten forecasters. The forecasting record is built from a career that has sat on three different sides of the economic question. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, with a brief covering the Federal Reserve and financial markets. He then spent three decades inside Northwest National Bank as it became Wells Fargo, rising to Executive Vice President and Chief Economist. In 2005 he crossed the table entirely, becoming President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles. Today Dr. Sohn is Professor of Finance and Economics at Loyola Marymount University’s College of Business Administration and president of SS Economics, his own consulting firm. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him routinely on Fed decisions, jobs data, and tariffs. His books Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy address the questions that still sit on most board agendas. What sets the commentary apart from other US-based macro voices is a Pacific-rim lens. Korean-born and formerly chief executive of a Korean-American bank in Los Angeles, Dr. Sohn has tracked trans-Pacific trade flows for four decades. He reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has lived on both ends of those flows reads them. He also sits on the Board of Directors at Western Alliance Bancorporation and chairs the Investment Committee at LACERS, the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System. Key speaking topics US economic forecasting and the Federal Reserve Inflation, interest rates, and monetary policy International trade, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers The Pacific-rim economy and US-China relations AI and the future of business and productivity Digital currencies and the future of payments Competitive strategy in a volatile economy Ideal for CFOs, treasurers, and finance leadership teams needing a clear read on Federal Reserve policy and interest rate direction Board directors and investment committees making decisions sensitive to inflation, tariffs, and global trade flows CEOs and strategy leaders in manufacturing, retail, banking, and logistics with material exposure to US-China and Pacific-rim trade Asset managers, pension trustees, and financial advisers who need a macro voice with a publicly verified forecasting record Audience outcomes A forecast of where US growth, inflation, and interest rates are likely to move over the next two to four quarters, and the indicators that matter most A reading of US-China and US-Korea trade dynamics that goes beyond the headlines, including the non-tariff barriers that often matter more than the tariffs themselves A sharper sense of how AI is actually reshaping pricing, productivity, and labour markets, grounded in specific company examples A way to pressure-test their own planning assumptions against someone who has sat inside both the Council of Economic Advisers and a major bank’s forecasting team

Why organisations work with Talya Miron-Shatz Trained directly under Daniel Kahneman at Princeton, with a research output of more than 60 peer-reviewed papers anchoring every commercial recommendation in published evidence. Translates behavioural science into specific design decisions on consent forms, patient journeys, adherence programmes and customer communications, not abstract nudges. Operating credibility with global pharma and consumer brands including Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, BMS, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim and Samsung, where she has worked on advisory boards, customer outreach and behaviour-change programmes. Author of Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books, 2021), a book-length argument for why even motivated customers fail to act on the information they are given, and what producers of products and information can do about it. Biography highlights Full Professor, Ono Academic College, Faculty of Business Administration. Visiting Researcher, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge. Postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University with Daniel Kahneman; former adjunct lecturer in consumer behaviour at the Wharton School. Author of Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books, 2021); over 60 peer-reviewed publications on decision-making and behaviour change. CEO of CureMyWay, advising pharmaceutical companies, insurers and digital health firms on patient and customer behaviour. Senior Fellow, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, New York. Biography Most customer decisions are not made the way product strategy assumes. People skim consent forms, default to inaction, misread probabilities and disengage at the precise points a business model depends on them showing up. Closing that gap is the practical job of behavioural science in commercial settings, and it is the question Talya Miron-Shatz has spent two decades answering. Her research training came from inside the field that defined the question. After a PhD in psychology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she spent four years at Princeton as a postdoctoral fellow under Daniel Kahneman, then taught consumer behaviour at the Wharton School. She is now a full professor at Ono Academic College and a visiting researcher at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge, with more than 60 peer-reviewed publications on decision-making, risk communication and patient comprehension. The applied work matters as much as the academic record. As CEO of CureMyWay she has advised Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, BMS, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim and Samsung on how to design products, communications and customer pathways that line up with how people actually process information. Her 2021 book Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books) sets out the underlying argument: even highly motivated customers fail to act when the choice architecture is wrong, and the responsibility sits with the organisation that designed it. What this gives a leadership team is a behavioural lens with operating teeth. Pricing, product, marketing and customer experience decisions get tested against published evidence on attention, comprehension and choice, and the recommendations come back as specific design changes a team can ship. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making Choice architecture and customer experience Risk communication and information design Patient and consumer behaviour in healthcare Decision-making under uncertainty Behaviour change and adherence Wellbeing and the science of life satisfaction Ideal for Pharmaceutical, medtech and health insurance leadership teams designing patient and physician journeys CMOs, CX leaders and product heads in regulated consumer markets Strategy and innovation teams using behavioural insight to shape pricing, communication and service design Boards and executive committees commissioning customer behaviour-change programmes Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for diagnosing where customer decisions break down and why Specific design moves to apply to communications, consent flows, choice menus and adherence programmes A clear separation between behavioural insight that holds up in published research and the looser claims of the broader nudge industry Evidence-based ways to align product, marketing and operations around real customer cognition rather than assumed rationality

Why organisations work with Terry Lundgren He executed one of the largest retail mergers in US history and rebranded more than 400 regional stores under a single national brand inside twelve months, a case study in integration that boards rarely get to hear from the person who ran it. He led a Fortune 100 retailer through the early omnichannel transition, making capital and organisational decisions that other CEOs were still debating. He sits on the board of Procter and Gamble and chairs its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, which gives him a current view of how blue-chip boards are thinking about CEO succession and operating performance. His Deming Cup citation from Columbia Business School recognises sustained continuous improvement at scale, not a single transformation moment, which is the harder leadership question for most enterprises. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. from 2003 to 2017; executive chairman until January 2018. Led the 2005 Federated/May acquisition, the largest US retail transaction at the time, creating a single national Macy’s brand from more than 400 regional stores. Director of The Procter & Gamble Company since 2013; chair of the Compensation and Leadership Development Committee. Executive in Residence, Columbia Business School; namesake of the Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona. Recipient of the National Retail Federation Gold Medal Award (2008) and the Columbia Business School Deming Cup (2012). Named one of Barron’s Top 30 CEOs in the World (2015) and WWD Newsmaker of the Year (2014). Biography Federated’s USD 11 billion acquisition of The May Department Stores Company in 2005 was, at the time, the largest retail transaction in US history. Inside a year, more than 400 regional department stores across the country had been rebranded under the Macy’s name. Terry Lundgren was the CEO who ran that integration. He had joined Federated in 1975, run Bullocks Wilshire at 35, served as Chairman and CEO of Neiman Marcus, and returned to Federated in 1994. By the time he became CEO of Macy’s, Inc. in 2003, he had spent almost three decades inside the operating layer of American retail. The fourteen years that followed are the substance of his speaking work. He launched the “My Macy’s” localisation programme in 2008, an early answer to the question of how a national chain competes with category specialists. He made the capital and organisational decisions that pulled Macy’s into omnichannel before most peers had committed. By his final year as CEO in fiscal 2016, the company was running sales of roughly USD 26 billion with about 140,000 employees. Since stepping down he has sat on the board of Procter and Gamble, chairing its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, and served as an Executive in Residence at Columbia Business School. The Deming Cup citation from Columbia, awarded for continuous improvement at scale, is the credential that distinguishes him from CEOs known for a single defining moment. Key speaking topics Large-scale merger integration CEO leadership through structural change Omnichannel and the reinvention of retail Continuous improvement at enterprise scale Brand strategy and national brand building CEO succession and board-level talent decisions Ideal for CEO and board audiences working through merger integration or major restructuring. CHROs and Chief Talent Officers focused on CEO succession, executive development, and operating discipline. Retail, consumer, and consumer-adjacent leadership teams navigating channel transitions and brand consolidation. Senior leadership programmes inside large enterprises where the case studies need to come from someone who ran the company. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what merger integration costs an organisation operationally, culturally, and in customer experience. A clearer view of the decisions a CEO actually faces when committing capital to a channel transition. Reference points from a fourteen-year tenure for how continuous improvement is institutionalised, not just announced. A board-level perspective on what compensation, succession, and leadership development look like inside a current Fortune 50 company.

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

Why organisations work with Tim Sanders He sits inside G2’s data on how millions of business buyers actually evaluate and adopt software, which gives his AI commentary an evidence base most keynote voices do not have. His Harvard Business School Digital Data Design Institute fellowship pairs that operator view with formal research on AI and digital innovation, so the argument lands with both the CIO and the CFO. He has run the playbook before: as Yahoo!’s Chief Solutions Officer through the original platform shift, and at Upwork on digital transformation and talent strategy, he has lived the gap between platform promise and operating reality. Five books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor,” give him a thirty-year track record of translating shifts in how technology changes commercial behaviour into language operators can use. “Dealstorming” gives sales and revenue audiences a structured method for unsticking high-value deals, named in case studies at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Biography highlights Chief Innovation Officer at G2, the world’s largest software marketplace Executive Fellow, Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School Former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and head of Yahoo’s in-house think tank Former Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork Author of five business books, including New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” Author of “Dealstorming,” with referenced sales work at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast Biography The hard problem inside most AI programmes is no longer the model. It is the operating decision: which workflows to rebuild, which software to back, which vendors are quietly underdelivering. Tim Sanders works on exactly that question, with two unusual vantage points behind him. The first is G2, where he is Chief Innovation Officer. G2 holds the largest first-party dataset on how business buyers evaluate software, which gives him a live read on what is actually being bought, abandoned, and renewed across the SaaS and AI stack. The second is Harvard Business School’s Digital Data Design Institute, where he is an Executive Fellow translating research on AI and digital innovation into material business leaders can act on. Earlier in his career, he was Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! during the original web platform shift and led its internal think tank. He went on to serve as Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork, working with enterprises on digital transformation and the talent side of technology change. That sequence of operator roles is what gives his keynote work its bite: he has been the executive on the receiving end of the slide that says “AI will change everything.” He has also written through every one of these shifts. “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” became New York Times bestsellers and remain mainstays of corporate reading lists. “Dealstorming” is used by sales organisations as a structured method for breaking through high-value deal blockers, with named work at companies including CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Key speaking topics AI adoption and return on AI for the enterprise Software buying behaviour and the SaaS market Sales strategy and revenue collaboration Customer experience and modern buyer behaviour Digital transformation and the future of work Leadership in technology-driven organisations Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers running enterprise AI programmes CROs, CCOs, and sales leadership teams under pressure on revenue productivity Boards and ExCo sessions weighing AI capital allocation and software portfolio decisions SaaS, technology, and professional services organisations rethinking go-to-market in an AI buyer environment Audience outcomes A clear read on where enterprise AI adoption actually is, based on first-party SaaS buyer data rather than vendor narrative A sharper view of which AI use cases are creating measurable operating advantage and which are stuck in pilot Practical moves for sales and revenue teams to work with, not against, an AI-augmented buyer A repeatable method for breaking through stalled high-value deals through cross-functional collaboration Renewed confidence at the leadership level that AI strategy is a decision domain, not a technology domain

Why organisations work with Tim Smit He does not make the case for sustainability in principle. Instead, he has built one of Britain’s most visited destinations on the premise that ecological purpose and economic return are the same project. The Eden Project’s contribution to the Cornish economy exceeds £1.9 billion. His KBE was awarded specifically for services to public engagement with science, recognition that his primary skill is making complex environmental challenges legible and motivating to non-specialist audiences, including sceptical ones. Where most ESG speakers work from frameworks or research, Smit works from operations: active international development projects in Colombia, Australia, China, and Northern Ireland, each built on the Eden model of derelict land, public-private partnership, and ecological purpose that also generates revenue. He reframes the internal sustainability conversation from risk mitigation and reporting into a question of commercial imagination, which is a materially different starting point for a leadership team than most ESG speakers offer. The Lost Gardens of Heligan, his account of the first restoration project, was voted Sunday Times Book of the Year in 1997, evidence of an unusual ability to make environmental ambition into a story that reaches well beyond specialist audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Vice-Chair, Eden Project, Cornwall: former china clay pit transformed into one of Britain’s most visited destinations, contributing over £1.9 billion to the regional economy Director, Lost Gardens of Heligan: co-led restoration of the neglected Tremayne estate; his account of the project was voted Sunday Times Book of the Year, 1997 KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire), awarded 2011, substantive 2012, for services to public engagement with science RSA Albert Medal, 2003; Morgan Stanley Great Britons Award (Environment category), 2007; Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year special award, 2011 Speaker at TEDxKingsCross, 2021 – «How We’re Going to Solve Climate Change» (COP26 countdown event) Author of two books: The Lost Gardens of Heligan and Eden (Penguin, updated 15th anniversary edition, 2016) Biography The Eden Project began as a derelict china clay pit in Cornwall. It now attracts over a million visitors a year and has contributed more than £1.9 billion to the regional economy. Sir Tim Smit KBE conceived it in 1995, opened it in 2001, and has spent the intervening years using it as a working proof: that environmental ambition and commercial success are the same project, not a trade-off between them. Smit’s central argument is about courage as much as strategy. Most organisations approach sustainability as a compliance function; obligations to manage, metrics to report. Eden was built to demonstrate something more radical: that a project rooted in ecology, science communication, and community investment could produce a destination business with private financing, a £1.9 billion economic footprint, and a KBE from the Crown for services to public engagement with science. The model is now being replicated globally. Through Eden Project International, formally launched in 2017, Smit has secured partnerships with national governments in Colombia – working with the Humboldt Institute on a biome in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, alongside active development projects in Australia, China, and Northern Ireland. The ambition is an Eden presence on every inhabited continent. For executives navigating the gap between ESG commitment and meaningful action, Smit’s contribution is specific and uncomfortable in equal measure. He has spent three decades demonstrating that the starting point for a new business model can be a landscape others have written off. The barrier, in his view, is not knowledge or resource; it is a failure of commercial imagination, and he has built institutions to fill it. Key speaking topics Environmental regeneration as a commercial business model ESG strategy and the economics of sustainability Entrepreneurship and large-scale transformational project delivery Science communication and public engagement with environmental issues Multi-stakeholder project leadership across public, private, and community sectors Climate action and biodiversity: the business opportunity framing Place-based and regional economic regeneration Ideal for CEOs and executive teams building or pressure-testing sustainability and ESG strategy Boards facing investor, regulatory, or employee pressure on environmental commitments Transformation and programme directors overseeing large-scale environmental, infrastructure, or regeneration initiatives Public sector and civic leaders working on regional development and post-industrial recovery Audience outcomes A reframe of sustainability from reporting obligation to genuine business model, with specific, quantified evidence from Eden’s own track record Practical understanding of how to structure and sustain multi-stakeholder projects at transformational scale A more ambitious and commercially grounded vocabulary for internal ESG conversations Exposure to a model of science communication that moves non-specialist audiences to change behaviour, not just awareness Confidence that large-scale environmental projects can attract private capital and deliver measurable economic returns alongside ecological impact

Why organisations work with Timothy Armoo He has actually sold Gen Z attention to the buyers in the room. Fanbytes ran creator campaigns for Apple, McDonald’s, Nike, Samsung, Deliveroo and the UK Government before exiting to Brainlabs. Two exits before 28 give him an operator’s view of scale-up commercial discipline that most Gen Z marketing voices cannot match. His Penguin book What’s Stopping You? gives commercial audiences a structured language for the founder mindset he is asked to transfer into corporate teams. He sits inside Brainlabs as VP Influencer Marketing, which keeps his read on creator platforms, CPMs and Gen Z behaviour current rather than retrospective. He brings a credible answer to the multigenerational question: not a generational stereotype deck, but a working view of how Gen Z employees and customers behave once incentives are on the table. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes; sold to Brainlabs in 2022 in an eight-figure deal. Sold his first business, EntrepreneurXpress, to Horizon Media at 17. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2021, Media & Marketing. Named in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 list of London’s most influential figures in advertising and media. Author of What’s Stopping You? 11 Cheatcodes to Unlock the Life You Want, published by Penguin. Currently Vice President of Influencer Marketing at Brainlabs, the global digital agency that acquired Fanbytes. Biography The hardest commercial question facing many consumer brands is no longer awareness. It is whether the under-30 customer takes them seriously at all. Influencer budgets are climbing, internal teams are stretched between TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and most boards have no operator in the room who has actually run those campaigns at scale. Fanbytes was built to sit in that gap. Co-founded by Timothy Armoo in 2017 with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya, the agency ran creator campaigns for Apple, McDonald’s, Nike, Samsung, Deliveroo, Boohoo and the UK Government. In May 2022, Brainlabs acquired the business in an eight-figure deal. Armoo was 27. He stayed on as Vice President of Influencer Marketing at Brainlabs, which keeps his commercial view of Gen Z platforms current, not retrospective. The track record was not a single lucky exit. He sold his first company, EntrepreneurXpress, to Horizon Media at 17. Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Media and Marketing in 2021. The Evening Standard Progress 1000 listed him among London’s most influential figures in advertising and media. His Penguin book What’s Stopping You? extends the same operator’s logic into a wider audience of commercial leaders and early-career professionals. For senior buyers, the value is specific. He is the rare voice on Gen Z marketing who can speak to a CMO with the discipline of a founder who had to make a P&L work, sell to a procurement team, and exit to a global agency. That is a different conversation from a panel on creator culture. Key speaking topics Gen Z consumer behaviour and brand decisions Influencer and creator-led marketing strategy Entrepreneurship and scale-up commercial discipline Building, scaling and exiting a venture-backed business The multigenerational customer and workforce Social platforms and the modern media landscape Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer marketing leadership rethinking creator and Gen Z strategy Founders, scale-up CEOs and growth leaders preparing for raise, scale or exit Boards and exec teams of consumer-facing businesses with under-30 customer exposure Talent, employer brand and graduate recruitment leads who need a sharper read on Gen Z employees Audience outcomes A clearer commercial map of how Gen Z actually decides on brand, employer and product Specific operator lessons from building, scaling and selling a creator-economy agency A framework for evaluating influencer and creator spend as a measurable channel, not a content experiment A more honest read on the gap between how senior teams talk about Gen Z and how Gen Z behave Conviction to back internal entrepreneurial bets that conventional governance tends to slow

Why organisations work with Tom Barton He has the rare combination of operator and supply chain reformer. Honest Burgers is a 39-site casual dining brand that buys whole carcasses directly from regenerative farms, a structural decision most restaurant groups have not been willing to make. His sustainability content carries weight because it is paid for. Honest absorbed the cost of switching to regenerative British beef rather than passing it to customers, a commercial decision a buyer can interrogate, not a marketing claim. He speaks credibly on building a brand from a market stall to a national footprint, with named milestones: the Brixton opening, the Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group) award, and the 2026 National Burger Awards win for “The Honest”. He is a useful voice for boards weighing ESG commitments against margin: the Honest Farming programme is a working example of procurement volume being directed at climate-smart agriculture, not a pledge. Biography highlights Co-founder, Honest Burgers, opened first site in Brixton Market in 2011 Honest Burgers now operates 39+ UK restaurants across London, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Reading Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group), with Phillip Eeles and Dorian Waite Created “The Honest”, named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards 2026 Built the first regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain in UK restaurants, in partnership with the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative Founder of the Honest Farming programme, supporting six regenerative farming families through premium pricing and whole-carcass procurement Biography A small marquee with a griddle and fryer at festivals in 2010 became one of the UK’s most respected casual dining brands. Tom Barton and Phillip Eeles ran outdoor catering for a year before raising investment with restaurant operator Dorian Waite and opening a first site in Brixton Market in 2011. The interesting story is what happened after the brand worked. Honest Burgers grew to 39 sites without selling to a private equity roll-up and without losing its product position. The Cateys 2021 award for Restaurateur of the Year (Group) recognised that scale, particularly through the pandemic. In 2026, “The Honest”, a recipe Barton created, was named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards. The more substantive contribution is a supply-chain one. Honest Burgers became the first UK restaurant group to build a regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain, buying whole carcasses directly from a small group of farming families through the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative. The company absorbed the cost rather than passing it to customers, on the argument that volume procurement is the lever climate-smart agriculture actually responds to. That is the practical content of what Barton brings to a senior audience. Casual dining is a low-margin, high-velocity category. Doing the harder thing on sourcing inside it, at scale, and paying for it out of margin, is a credible operating example for any board that has signed an ESG commitment and is now looking at the bill. Key speaking topics Brand building from start-up to national scale Regenerative agriculture in commercial supply chains Sustainability as an operating decision, not a marketing position Founder leadership through rapid growth Hospitality, food culture and consumer brand Procurement and whole-carcass sourcing Company culture under expansion Ideal for Founders and operating teams scaling consumer brands beyond their first ten sites or stores Boards and CEOs reviewing ESG commitments where supply chain is the largest source of emissions Procurement, sourcing and category leaders in food, retail and hospitality Investor and accelerator audiences interested in entrepreneurship in regulated, low-margin categories Audience outcomes A working example of a regenerative supply chain inside a competitive high-street category, with the commercial trade-offs named A first-hand account of how brand discipline is maintained as a hospitality business moves from one site to forty A clearer sense of where sustainability claims become operating substance, and where they remain marketing Specific decisions about pricing, procurement and farm partnerships that other operators can pressure-test against their own model

Why organisations work with Tom Cheesewright The Intersections methodology maps incoming macro trends against the specific stress points inside an organisation or sector; producing prioritised decision-points with the analysis behind them, not a generic forecast that leadership teams have to interpret themselves. The framework is teachable and licensable. Organisations leave with a repeatable process they can run internally, not a dependency on a single advisor. His published credentials – Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin; FT business book of the month) and High Frequency Change (Business Book Awards shortlist, 2020) – mean audiences arrive already oriented to his thinking. He does not need to spend the first third of a session building the intellectual case. A decade-plus of broadcast experience across BBC, Channel 4, and national press makes him unusually effective at translating complex AI and technology change for non-technical board audiences without losing analytical precision. Named clients across sectors – Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Virgin Media, Visa – give procurement teams confidence in sector-agnostic credibility. This is not a speaker whose framework only works in one industry. Biography highlights Creator of the Intersections foresight methodology, now licensed and delivered to third-party organisations Author of High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019) shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2020, ‘Leadership for the Future’ category Author of Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020), Financial Times business book of the month Clients include Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Visa, HSBC, Accenture, and Virgin Media and more than 30 Global 500 companies Regular contributor and broadcaster: BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4 Sunday Brunch, The Guardian, The Times, Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph BEng in Mechatronics, Lancaster University; established as a full-time applied futurist in 2012 Biography Most organisations know they need to anticipate change. Very few have a structured way to do it. The annual strategic planning cycle and the technology roadmap were not designed to connect incoming macro trends to the specific decisions a leadership team faces this quarter. Tom Cheesewright built the Intersections methodology to close that gap. It maps macro trends, from AI capability shifts to demographic and regulatory change, against the existing pressures inside an organisation or sector, identifying the points where disruption will hit hardest and where meaningful opportunity sits. More than 30 Global 500 companies and government bodies, including NASA, HMRC, Google, and Barclays, have put the framework to work. His two business books establish the intellectual foundation. High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019; shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2020) sets out why organisations feel overwhelmed by the pace of change and what structural responses actually work. Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020; Financial Times business book of the month) translates the methodology into practical tools for strategy teams. His sustained media presence – BBC Breakfast, Radio 4, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Times – means he is not an unknown quantity when he walks on stage. A mechatronics engineer by training, Cheesewright spent years in technology marketing and digital business before establishing himself as a futurist in 2012. That background – engineering logic, commercial experience, years of public communication about technology – is what keeps the Intersections work grounded. The output is not prediction. It is a structured process for stress-testing an organisation’s assumptions against what is actually coming. Key speaking topics AI and automation in strategic decision-making Scenario planning and applied foresight methodology Organisational agility and adaptive strategy Technology-driven disruption and competitive positioning The future of consumer behaviour and business models Change management in high-frequency environments Long-range strategic planning under uncertainty Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards preparing long-range or scenario-based strategy Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Technology Officers navigating AI investment decisions Industry associations and sector bodies facing structural disruption from technology or regulation Conference audiences drawn from finance, technology, retail, government, or professional services sectors Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Intersections methodology and how to apply it to their own organisation’s planning process Clarity on which AI and technology developments are commercially significant in their sector, and which can be deprioritised A revised set of strategic questions, not just better answers to the existing ones Stronger language and frameworks for briefing boards and senior stakeholders on emerging technology risk and opportunity A clearer view of where their organisation is most exposed to macro-level disruption over the next three to five years

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

Why organisations work with Tom Roach He originated the “performance plateau” framework, a specific, named diagnosis of the growth ceiling that confronts brands over-indexed on performance channels, developed in collaboration with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and published in Marketing Week. His IPA Effectiveness Gold Awards span McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, among the most analytically rigorous advertising effectiveness cases in UK industry history. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, he worked directly alongside Les Binet, the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research, placing him at the centre of the field’s most serious practitioner thinking. He is one of the few voices making the commercial case for brand investment from inside a performance-first agency group, giving his arguments about the brand/performance divide an operational credibility that consulting positions rarely carry. His “Share of Model” framework addresses an unmapped emergent risk: how large language models represent brands, and what that means for commercial visibility as AI increasingly mediates discovery and purchase intent. Biography highlights VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group; prior roles at adam&eveDDB, BBH London, Leo Burnett, and AMV BBDO – a career spanning over two decades at the leading edge of UK advertising Multiple Gold IPA Effectiveness Awards across campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB working directly alongside Les Binet Key contributor to BBH London’s designation as IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year 2018–19 Marketing Week columnist; regular speaker at Cannes Lions, SXSW, Google Firestarters, and IPA Effweek Originator of the “performance plateau” concept (with Dr Grace Kite) and associated “Bothism” brand/performance integration framework, widely adopted in marketing practice Biography Many marketing organisations are measuring the right things in the wrong sequence. Brands that concentrated investment in performance channels – search, social, display – often found their growth curve flattening at precisely the moment leadership expected it to accelerate. Tom Roach named this pattern the “performance plateau,” developing the concept with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and publishing it in Marketing Week, where it has since entered mainstream marketing vocabulary. The credibility behind that argument is operational. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Roach worked directly alongside Les Binet – the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research – before that, spending seven years driving BBH London’s effectiveness practice to IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year status in 2018–19. The IPA Gold Awards he contributed to, across McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, represent some of the most analytically demanding advertising cases in UK industry history. At Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group, Roach holds a position that few brand effectiveness thinkers occupy: making the case for long-term brand investment from within a digital-first, performance-oriented agency. That vantage point has produced frameworks with real institutional friction behind them, “Bothism” (the philosophy of ending the false choice between brand and performance), a revised model of how people enter and move through markets, and “Share of Model,” which addresses what large language models say about brands and why this matters commercially. He writes regularly for Marketing Week and speaks at Cannes Lions, SXSW, and IPA Effweek, using those platforms to pressure-test frameworks with practitioners rather than simply advocate positions. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness Brand and performance marketing integration The performance plateau Brand building in fragmented media Creative effectiveness Generative AI and brand strategy AI brand visibility and Share of Model Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams whose growth from performance channels is flattening CFOs and senior leaders challenged to build the internal case for long-term brand investment Brand and performance marketing teams operating in organisational silos Agency leadership and strategy teams working across integrated client portfolios Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for identifying whether their organisation has hit the performance plateau, and a framework for addressing it Clearer understanding of how brand building and performance marketing are commercially interdependent rather than competing priorities A framework for evaluating creative effectiveness across fragmented, platform-native media environments Practical thinking on what AI-mediated search and discovery means for brand visibility (Share of Model) Language and commercial evidence to make the case for brand investment to boards and finance leadership

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