Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Ian Khan He gives executive teams a diagnostic rather than a forecast. The Future Readiness Score, built from his research across hundreds of organisations, turns “are we ready for AI” into a scored view across seven operating pillars. His writing carries commercial weight. Undisrupted won the Bronze Medal at the 2025 North American Book Awards and the Non-Fiction category at the Goody Business Book Awards 2025; Metaverse For Dummies is a Wiley title. He reports on the future as a working journalist, not only a consultant. As executive producer and host of The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video, he has interviewed hundreds of global leaders on the record, which keeps his keynote content closer to evidence than to speculation. He separates AI hype from AI advantage in front of technical and non-technical rooms. His AIRS assessment gives boards a common language for where they sit on vision, use cases, data, governance, and adoption. Biography highlights USA Today bestselling author of Undisrupted, which introduces the Future Readiness Score across seven organisational pillars. Author of Metaverse For Dummies, published by Wiley. Executive producer and host of The Futurist, a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video across more than 45 regions. Director of the documentary Blockchain City and producer of additional films on AI and the future of work. Thinkers50 Future Readiness Award finalist and Thinkers360 Distinguished honoree. Media contributor and on-record commentator featured by CNN and Forbes. Biography Most AI strategy conversations stall at the same point. The executive team agrees the technology matters. Nobody can agree on what to do on Monday. Khan’s contribution is a working answer to that problem, built from research across hundreds of organisations and codified in his book Undisrupted and the Future Readiness Score that sits inside it. The Score moves the question from opinion to diagnostic. It measures an organisation across seven pillars, including engagement, learning, collaboration, culture, innovation, and execution, and returns a prioritised picture of where readiness is thin. His AIRS framework does the equivalent for AI specifically, covering vision, use cases, data, governance, and adoption. Boards use both as a shared map before they approve the next investment. Khan works across the commercial and editorial sides of technology. He is the author of Metaverse For Dummies, published by Wiley, and of additional titles on prompt engineering and value creation. As executive producer and host of The Futurist on Amazon Prime Video, he has interviewed hundreds of founders, scientists, and policy leaders on the record. Commentary work with CNN and Forbes sits alongside that. His keynote practice reflects that dual background. Audiences get a filmmaker’s feel for narrative and a consultant’s insistence on instrumentation, applied to the decisions leadership teams are actually trying to make about AI, automation, and emerging technology. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI strategy Future readiness and organisational diagnostics Digital transformation and enterprise technology adoption Emerging technology and disruption AI governance and responsible deployment Leadership in an AI-driven operating environment Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs sponsoring AI strategy across business units Boards and executive committees setting technology investment priorities Transformation and digital leaders responsible for moving pilots into production Government and public-sector leaders assessing AI readiness and governance Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for assessing where the organisation actually stands on AI and digital readiness. A prioritised view of which technology bets are worth compounding and which to retire. Sharper criteria for AI governance decisions, from data to adoption. Concrete patterns drawn from hundreds of documented executive interviews, not abstract predictions.

Why organisations work with Irita Marriott A working case study of starting from outside every advantage that business literature assumes, foreign-born, self-funded, self-taught, and still arriving at ownership of a regulated specialist business. Live commercial credibility: she runs an auction house in Melbourne, Derbyshire that trades weekly, not a personal brand built on past achievement. A direct view of how a specialist trade actually works, valuations, vendor relationships, buyer psychology, that translates well into wider commercial conversations about expertise and trust. One of a small number of women who own and run an auction house in the UK, which gives her observations on under-represented leadership a concrete operational base, not a panel-circuit one. An unusual combination for an after-dinner or inspirational slot: a recognisable BBC television face who is also the principal of an active SME. Biography highlights Expert on BBC One’s Antiques Road Trip, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt. Expert on Channel 4’s The Greatest Auction. Presenter of The Derbyshire Auction House on Really TV. Founder and principal of Irita Marriott Auctioneers and Valuers Ltd, Melbourne, Derbyshire (opened 2023). Seven years as salesroom assistant, cataloguer and valuer at a Derbyshire auction house before launching her own business. Self-taught in the antiques trade after arriving in the UK aged 20 from Latvia, via the United States. Biography Most successful entrepreneurs in British specialist trades inherit a network, a name, or both. Irita Marriott inherited neither. She arrived in the UK at twenty, having grown up on a self-sufficient farm in Latvia and worked as an au pair in the United States, and started in a Derbyshire garden centre as temporary Christmas staff. The route from there to ownership of a regulated auction house in the same county did not follow any of the standard patterns. The substantive credential is the seven years she spent inside a Derbyshire auction house as a salesroom assistant, then cataloguer, then valuer, while dealing antiques independently at fairs and car boot sales on her own time. That is the period in which the trade was actually learned. The television work began in 2021, when she sent a direct approach to the producers of Antiques Road Trip rather than waiting to be discovered, and she has since become a regular expert on Bargain Hunt, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Channel 4’s The Greatest Auction, alongside presenting her own Really TV series, The Derbyshire Auction House. In June 2023 she opened Irita Marriott Auctioneers and Valuers Ltd in Melbourne, Derbyshire, making her one of a small handful of women in the UK to own and run an auction house. The business runs regular sales, free public valuations and a working catalogue, which is a meaningful operational footprint rather than a personal brand exercise. For organisations, the value of her perspective is the texture of how a specialist business is actually built and run by someone who started without the conventional advantages. She is most useful to audiences who want to hear how confidence, credibility and clientele are constructed in practice, in a trade where reputation is the asset, by a principal who is still doing the work. Key speaking topics Building a specialist business from outside the industry Female ownership in male-dominated trades Reinvention across countries and careers Self-taught expertise and credibility The antiques and auction trade Combining a working business with a media profile Ideal for Founders, owner-managers and SME leadership audiences Women’s leadership networks and ERGs in commercial organisations Conferences on entrepreneurship, reinvention and career change After-dinner and awards audiences who want a substantive business story rather than a celebrity name Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what it actually takes to build a specialist business when starting without contacts, capital or industry training. A practical view of how reputation is constructed in a trust-driven trade. A direct example of how a public profile and an operating business can reinforce each other rather than compete. A perspective on under-represented leadership rooted in ownership rather than commentary.

Why organisations work with Adam Braun He is a working CEO, not a retired one. Clarasight’s carbon planning software is in active commercial deployment with clients representing over $1 trillion in market capitalisation, so his content reflects current operating reality. He has built three organisations across three categories: a nonprofit started with $25 that grew to hundreds of schools globally, a venture-backed education startup acquired by WeWork, and a B2B sustainability platform. The pattern recognition across founder modes is rare. His “Build For Where The World Is Headed” framework gives leaders a teachable structure for anticipating change and committing capital before consensus forms, rather than another model for reacting after the fact. His Pencils of Promise origin story translates cleanly into a corporate room. Audiences leave with a specific argument about how individual conviction scales into institutional outcomes, evidenced by a real organisation, not an analogy. He pairs commercial credibility with a published, bestselling book on purpose-driven leadership, which means leadership development and culture briefs can be served by the same speaker without a register switch. Biography highlights CEO and Co-Founder of Clarasight, carbon planning and intelligence software, formerly Climate Club Founder and Chairman of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit started with $25 that has built schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua Co-Founder and CEO of MissionU, acquired by WeWork in 2018; subsequently served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Promise of a Pencil, Simon & Schuster Selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the original ten Global Shapers; named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World” Brown University graduate; began his career at Bain & Company Biography The hard part of strategy is not seeing change. It is committing capital and people before the change is obvious to competitors. Most operating cultures are built to do the opposite. Adam Braun has spent his career sitting in that gap as a founder. Pencils of Promise began with $25 and grew into a nonprofit operating schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. MissionU, the income-share-agreement college alternative he co-founded, was acquired by WeWork in 2018, where he then served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business. Clarasight, his current company, sells carbon planning software into enterprise clients representing more than $1 trillion in market value. That arc gives him an unusual operating vocabulary. He has launched a category from zero capital, raised venture funding and exited through acquisition, and is now running a B2B SaaS business in a buyer-relevant category. The framework he teaches, “Build For Where The World Is Headed,” is the synthesis of those three founder modes into a structure leaders can use to evaluate where to deploy effort before the market rewards it. His book The Promise of a Pencil, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster, gives the same argument a leadership-development register. He was an original World Economic Forum Global Shaper, has been named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and built his early career at Bain & Company after graduating from Brown. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder leadership Building organisations for future operating conditions Innovation under uncertainty Corporate sustainability as commercial advantage Purpose-driven business strategy Social entrepreneurship and scaled impact Ideal for Founders, CEOs and executive committees setting growth or transformation agendas Heads of strategy, innovation and sustainability shaping medium-term capital decisions Leadership development programmes for high-potential operators and emerging executives Conferences focused on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, or corporate climate strategy Audience outcomes A working framework for committing to direction before market consensus forms A founder’s view of how scaled impact actually compounds, drawn from three different ventures A practical read on where corporate sustainability becomes commercial advantage rather than reporting overhead A renewed argument for individual agency inside large organisations, evidenced rather than asserted

Why organisations work with Brent Adamson He co-authored the two books that redefined how serious B2B organisations think about commercial effectiveness; the Challenger thesis is now the reference point most large sales transformations are measured against. His research at CEB and Gartner, conducted over nearly two decades with thousands of B2B sales organisations, gives him a dataset on buyer behaviour that almost no individual practitioner can match. He gives commercial leaders a specific diagnosis of why win rates fall in complex deals, decision complexity, information overload, implementation uncertainty and value opacity, and a vocabulary their teams can act on. He works at the boundary between sales and marketing, which is where most B2B revenue problems actually live, and addresses both functions as one commercial system. His sensemaking and buyer-confidence work has moved the conversation past closing technique into the harder question of how customers come to a decision they will defend internally. Biography highlights Co-author, The Challenger Sale (Portfolio, 2011) and The Challenger Customer (Portfolio, 2015), with Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner and Nick Toman. Chief storyteller for CEB, now Gartner’s, sales, marketing and customer service practices, 2003 to 2022; Distinguished Vice President at Gartner. Current Global Head of Research, Advisory and Communities at Ecosystems, a SaaS platform for collaborative customer value management. Harvard Business Review contributor, including “Sensemaking for Sales” (January to February 2022) and “Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete” (2022). Originator, with colleagues, of the Mobilizer profile, Buyer Enablement and Customer Decision Confidence as working concepts in B2B sales. MBA, University of Michigan Ross School of Business; PhD in Applied Linguistics, University of Texas; former faculty member at Michigan State University. Biography The Challenger Sale argued, on the basis of CEB research across thousands of B2B reps, that the best performers do not build relationships and then sell. They teach, tailor and take control of the conversation. Published in 2011, it became the reference text for a generation of sales transformation programmes. That book was the first chapter of a longer argument. With The Challenger Customer in 2015, Adamson and his co-authors turned their attention from the seller to the buyer, showing that the average B2B purchase now involves more than five stakeholders and that consensus, not persuasion, is the binding constraint. The Mobilizer, the stakeholder willing to drive change inside their own organisation, became the figure most B2B commercial teams now train to find. From 2003 to 2022, Adamson served as chief storyteller for CEB, later Gartner, where he held the role of Distinguished Vice President. His “Sensemaking for Sales” article in the Harvard Business Review set out the next step in the work: in markets saturated with information, the seller’s job is to help the buyer make sense of what they already know, not to add to the pile. He now leads research, advisory and communities at Ecosystems, a SaaS platform for collaborative customer value management. The throughline across two decades is the same question. What does an effective commercial organisation look like when the buyer has more information than they can use and less confidence than they need to act on it? Key speaking topics B2B sales effectiveness and the Challenger model Buyer enablement and customer decision confidence Sensemaking as a commercial discipline Mobilizers and consensus selling in complex B2B deals The sales and marketing operating system Commercial leadership for digital-first buyers Ideal for Chief revenue officers, chief sales officers and chief commercial officers leading B2B sales transformation Chief marketing officers in B2B environments aligning demand and revenue functions Sales enablement and sales operations leaders rebuilding methodology and training Boards and executive teams reviewing the commercial model in complex, multi-stakeholder markets Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of why complex B2B deals stall, framed around decision complexity, information overload, implementation uncertainty and value opacity A working vocabulary for buyer enablement, sensemaking and customer decision confidence that sales and marketing teams can apply together A concrete picture of the Mobilizer profile and what it changes about how teams qualify and pursue accounts A sharper view of where the commercial organisation needs to invest next, beyond seller skills, into how customers actually buy

Why organisations work with Andrew Ng His AI Transformation Playbook – a named, five-step framework derived directly from building AI teams at Google and Baidu – gives organisations a structured implementation path, not principles. It is the difference between a direction and a plan. He has operated on both sides of the AI adoption challenge: as the person responsible for making two of the world’s largest technology companies into AI-first organisations, and as the founder of platforms that have trained more than 8 million people in AI skills. The failure modes at both ends are not theoretical to him. His “AI is the new electricity” thesis reframes AI as general-purpose infrastructure rather than a feature or a product – a distinction that changes how boards allocate capital and how leadership teams structure accountability. Named to Time’s inaugural Time100 AI list (2023) – recognising active, current influence in the field – and to Amazon’s board of directors. The former signals peer standing; the latter signals boardroom credibility. Through AI Aspire, developed in partnership with Bain & Company, he advises enterprises moving from AI experimentation to scalable transformation – giving organisations access to a perspective tested across venture building, hyperscale operations, and mass education. Biography highlights Co-founded Google Brain – the research team credited with reshaping Google’s approach to artificial intelligence VP and Chief Scientist at Baidu, leading a 1,300-person AI team responsible for the company’s global AI strategy Co-founder and Chairman of Coursera (NYSE: COUR), now serving 150 million+ registered learners globally Founder of DeepLearning.AI – over 8 million people have completed AI courses through his programmes Named to Time100 Most Influential People (2012), Fast Company’s Most Creative People (2014), and Time100 AI (2023) Member of Amazon’s board of directors (appointed April 2024) Author of the AI Transformation Playbook and Machine Learning Yearning, both in wide circulation Holds a BSc from Carnegie Mellon, MSc from MIT, and PhD from UC Berkeley; co-authored over 200 research papers Biography Most AI pilot projects never become AI companies. Andrew Ng has spent years examining why – first as the founding lead of Google Brain and then as VP and Chief Scientist at Baidu, where he built a 1,300-person AI team. The gap between isolated AI experimentation and enterprise-wide capability is the problem he has studied from the inside. His AI Transformation Playbook – drawn directly from that experience – sets out a five-step framework for taking AI adoption from initial momentum to company-wide infrastructure. It circulates widely because it treats AI transformation as an operational challenge, not a technology question. His thesis that AI is infrastructure the way electricity was infrastructure gives boards a strategic frame that holds across industries and business models. Ng co-founded Coursera, which now serves over 150 million registered learners, and founded DeepLearning.AI, through which more than 8 million people have trained in AI skills. Building AI literacy at that scale – and measuring what works – gives him a concrete, tested perspective on what workforce transformation in practice actually requires. Few speakers can point to comparable operational evidence. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and UC Berkeley, has co-authored over 200 research papers, and sits on Amazon’s board of directors. Named to Time’s inaugural Time100 AI list in 2023 – recognising current influence rather than historical contribution – he continues to co-found AI companies through AI Fund and advise enterprises on AI strategy through AI Aspire, a firm he built in partnership with Bain & Company. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI adoption and transformation AI strategy for boards and C-suite leaders Agentic AI and the next phase of AI systems AI workforce development and capability building Responsible AI development and regulation Machine learning fundamentals and applied AI The economics of AI as general-purpose infrastructure Ideal for C-suite executives and boards setting AI strategy and capital allocation Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading enterprise AI programmes CHROs and people leaders responsible for AI upskilling and workforce transformation Transformation leads and innovation teams moving from AI pilots to scaled deployment Audience outcomes A structured framework for diagnosing where enterprise AI adoption is stalling and what to do next Clarity on how to build internal AI capability – teams, workflows, and governance – rather than relying on isolated project-by-project approaches A board-level frame for AI as infrastructure, with implications for investment, talent, and competitive positioning Practical understanding of what large-scale AI workforce development requires, drawn from programmes that have trained millions A more grounded view of responsible AI development – distinguishing credible risk from speculative concern – from a practitioner who has argued these positions in public and in policy

Why organisations work with Julie Holmes She gives leaders a way past the trap most AI programmes fall into. Second Story Strategy™, her framework, treats AI as a starting line for distinct new value, not a finish line for cost savings. She has built and sold technology, not just studied it. Two innovation companies and products in over 60 countries give her keynotes the texture of an operator, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients today. Her material works at two stages: helping teams who are still becoming AI-capable, and pushing teams who have already proven AI makes them faster toward the harder question of what they will do with it that no one else can. PSA-UKI Hall of Fame status puts her among 33 speakers recognised for sustained craft on stage, which matters when the brief is a high-stakes leadership audience with mixed AI fluency in the room. She lectures on innovation and AI at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut, keeping the material tested against faculty and students as well as paying clients. Biography highlights Hall of Fame Speaker, PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour Originator of Second Story Strategy™ and the Second Story Blueprint for building competitive advantage on top of AI Author of Little Big Bangs for Leaders and of the 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series for leaders and sales professionals Founder of two innovation companies with products distributed in over 60 countries Clients include Oracle, Expedia, American Express, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, VMware, US Bank, and LinkedIn Guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck (University of London), and the American University of Beirut Biography AI is raising the floor for everyone. The same models, agents, and automation reach every competitor in a category at roughly the same time. That makes it easy to be good, and good is no longer a position. It is the new baseline. Julie Holmes works on the question that follows: once everyone is faster, what will your organisation be that no one else can be? Her answer is Second Story Strategy™, a framework drawn from studying which companies actually pull ahead with AI and which simply run harder in place. The pattern she found was not about budget or engineering depth. The standouts treated AI as a foundation and built something distinct on top of it, working through four levels she maps as Build, Reimagine, Extend, and Lead, with the organisation’s own distinctiveness as the load-bearing element running through all of them. Her credibility comes from building, not commenting. Holmes founded two innovation companies and shipped products into more than 60 countries, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients. That operator history shapes how she talks to senior audiences. The diagnosis is practical, the language is plain, and her work extends into resources leaders can use directly, including the regularly updated 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series. Holmes is a Hall of Fame Speaker with PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour, and a guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut. Brands including Oracle, Expedia, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, and LinkedIn have brought her in for the same reason: to move AI from a tool that makes them cheaper to a foundation that makes them distinct. Key speaking topics Second Story Strategy™ and competitive advantage through AI AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI-empowered teams and workflows Innovation as a leadership discipline Sales and customer experience under AI Future of work and AI capability building Ideal for C-suite leaders setting enterprise AI direction Heads of department helping their teams level up with AI Sales and customer-experience leaders integrating AI into commercial workflows Company-wide events where AI fluency varies widely across the room Audience outcomes The five behaviours that set AI-savvy teams apart, framed as a Second Story Strategy™ they can act on A clear way to decide where to build genuine distinction and where keeping pace is enough Concrete examples of how AI is reshaping leadership, sales, and customer experience, with specific tools named Language for leading non-technical teams into AI with confidence rather than anxiety A sharper sense of which AI use cases build advantage and which only add speed

Why organisations work with Hatem Salem Operating perspective from running an integrated communication group across Cairo and Paris since 1991, including Media Hatem Salem, Brands & Branding, Act CSR, and Global Arabian Network. Few speakers on AI in marketing have built and led the full agency stack themselves. Practical fluency in MENA consumer markets that most Western marketing speakers do not have, useful for organisations looking at brand entry, expansion, or partner work across the Arab world. Track record of building owned platforms, including Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference, and the Blue Star Award. Useful for clients thinking about brand events as a channel, not a line item. Multiple Agency of the Year awards from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter, including for the Smart Village and Sharm El Sheikh public service campaigns. Concrete agency credibility, not a personal-brand claim. Current focus on neuromarketing and AI in advertising creativity gives buyers a speaker who can connect behavioural science, generative tools and brand strategy in the same talk, rather than picking one lens. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO, Hatem Salem Communication Group; founder of Media Hatem Salem (1991), Brands & Branding (2000), Act CSR (2010), and Global Arabian Network (2014). Founder and President of Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference, and the Blue Star Award. Multiple Agency of the Year awards from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter and from the American University in Cairo. BA in Mass Communication, Cairo University; MA in Mass Communication, Press, Publicity, New Media and Cinema Science, Stendhal Grenoble 3. Former journalist and press correspondent in Paris covering European and Middle Eastern media for over five years. Has taught media, marketing, branding and advertising at Cairo University, the French University in Egypt, the British University in Egypt and the University of Grenoble. Biography The marketing function is being rebuilt twice over. AI is reshaping how creative, media and customer experience are produced, and the audience side has changed too, with attention more fragmented and brand loyalty thinner than at any point in the past two decades. Most organisations are still reasoning about this as a set of tool choices, when the real question is which parts of the marketing operation hold their shape and which get redesigned. Salem has been running marketing and communication businesses through every prior wave of this shift. He founded Media Hatem Salem in Cairo in 1991, then built out an integrated group with Brands & Branding, Act CSR, and the Global Arabian Network, working across above the line, below the line and through the line channels for clients across Egypt and the wider Arab market. The group has earned multiple Agency of the Year honours from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter, including for the Smart Village and Sharm El Sheikh campaigns. Alongside the agency work, he has built owned brand platforms that operate as commercial assets in their own right. Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference and the Blue Star Award all sit inside the group, giving him a working view of brand events as a channel rather than a marketing line item. Earlier in his career he worked as a Paris-based press correspondent covering European and Middle Eastern media, and held research and teaching posts at Stendhal Grenoble 3, Cairo University, the French University in Egypt, and the British University in Egypt. His current work focuses on neuromarketing, AI in advertising creativity, AI in event management, and the future of media, cinema and social platforms. The connecting thread is operational: how generative tools, behavioural science and experience design change what marketing teams actually produce, and what stays human. Key speaking topics Neuromarketing and consumer behaviour AI in advertising and creative production AI in marketing and customer experience Brand strategy in MENA and emerging markets Event platforms as brand assets The future of media, cinema and social platforms Corporate social responsibility and brand reputation Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding the marketing operating model around AI. Boards and executive teams of consumer brands entering or scaling in MENA and the Arab market. Heads of communications, customer experience and creative agencies working through generative AI integration. Event, sponsorship and brand partnership leads rethinking the role of owned platforms. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which parts of the marketing operation are most exposed to AI redesign, and which parts hold. Working examples of neuromarketing and behavioural science applied to brand, advertising and event work. A practitioner read on the MENA market that most Western marketing voices cannot provide. A more concrete sense of how owned brand platforms function as a commercial channel. Sharper questions for CMOs and agency partners on AI in creative production, personalisation and customer experience.

Why organisations work with Isabel Garro She has held the policy seat, the multilateral seat, and the operating seat. Special Advisor to Spain’s High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, founding Director General of the UN Global Compact Network Spain, now Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos. Few ESG voices can read regulation, capital, and operations in one sitting. She built the institution that translates UN Global Compact commitments into corporate practice in Spain, then ran it for more than a decade. She speaks about ESG governance from the side that wrote the rules, not the side that complies with them. Her current operating role inside a major cement group means her view on climate transition is tested against one of the hardest decarbonisation problems in industry, not against a theoretical model. She is fluent in the gap between SDGs as communications and SDGs as commercial opportunity. The work is about which of the 17 goals contain a real margin, not which of them play well in a sustainability report. Biography highlights Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA, Votorantim Cimentos, since November 2023. Founding partner and CEO of 3a4b, a sustainability strategy advisory firm based in Madrid. Founding Executive Director and Director General, UN Global Compact Network Spain, for more than a decade. Special Advisor to the High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, Government of Spain, 2018 to 2020. President of the Local Networks Advisory Council of the UN Global Compact, the elected body that advises the Compact on regional decisions. Associate professor, Master’s in Competitive Social Transformation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and IE Business School. MBA, Brown University and IE Business School. Biography ESG arrived in the boardroom as a disclosure problem and is leaving as a capital allocation problem. The gap between what a company is required to say about sustainability and what it has to actually fund, build, and restructure to deliver on it has become one of the harder strategic questions of the decade. That gap is the territory Isabel Garro has worked in for more than twenty years, from the inside of government, the inside of the United Nations system, and now the inside of a major industrial group. She founded the UN Global Compact Network Spain in 2005 and led it for over a decade as Director General, building the institution that translates global sustainability commitments into Spanish corporate practice. She was then appointed Special Advisor to Spain’s High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, working on the integration of the SDGs into national policy. She has also chaired and now presides over the Local Networks Advisory Council of the UN Global Compact, the elected body representing networks in over 60 countries. Since November 2023 she has been Chief Sustainability Officer EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos, one of the largest cement and building materials groups in the world. That seat puts her inside one of the most operationally demanding decarbonisation problems in heavy industry, where the distance between net zero rhetoric and net zero engineering is unforgiving. She is also founding partner and CEO of 3a4b, advising organisations on sustainability strategy, and an associate professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and IE Business School on the Master’s in Competitive Social Transformation. What makes her useful in a room of senior leaders is the working hypothesis she brings: that sustainability is now a competitive variable, not an external compliance cost, and that the companies treating it as the former will allocate capital differently from those still treating it as the latter. She holds an MBA from Brown University and IE Business School. Key speaking topics ESG strategy and corporate governance The 2030 Agenda and SDGs as commercial opportunity Climate resilience and the decarbonisation of heavy industry Sustainable supply chains and stakeholder governance Sustainability reporting and regulatory change in Europe Regenerative business design and circular economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting ESG and climate strategy under tightening EU regulation Chief Sustainability Officers, Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Risk Officers building the operating layer behind sustainability commitments Industrial, infrastructure and capital-intensive groups facing real decarbonisation costs Public-private leadership forums on the SDGs, 2030 Agenda, and corporate-government cooperation Audience outcomes A clearer separation between ESG as disclosure and ESG as operating substance, with the questions a board should be asking about each A working view of which of the 17 SDGs contain commercial margin for a given business model An honest read on the gap between net zero communication and net zero capital expenditure A practical map of how European sustainability regulation is reshaping corporate strategy this decade

Why organisations work with Louis Gudema He has published an award-winning framework for the order in which B2B marketing should be built. The Bullseye Marketing model, set out in a 400-page second edition that won the 2023 Goody Business Book Award for Best Marketing/Branding Book, sequences fast-payback demand programs before brand investment rather than running them in parallel. He has run the playbook himself at scale. Gudema founded Magic Hour Communications, pivoted it from services into an early SaaS business with a Web CMS product, grew it into one of the top firms in its national market, and exited in 2009, so the operating advice is tested against a P&L he owned. He has worked across roughly 200 organisations from IBM down to early-stage MIT spin-outs, which means a CMO or founder gets advice calibrated to the actual stage of their business rather than a generic enterprise template. His MIT Venture Mentoring Service work, including ten consecutive years of the MIT marketing boot camp, gives him pattern recognition on what actually moves revenue for a young technology company versus what wastes founder time. He brings a behavioural-economics layer that most B2B marketers ignore. His brain-science talk applies seven named heuristics (anchoring, authority, availability, liking, loss aversion, reciprocity, scarcity) to live sales and marketing decisions. Biography highlights Author of Bullseye Marketing: How to Grow Your B2B Business Faster, second edition 2023. 2023 Goody Business Book Award winner for Best Marketing/Branding Book; finalist at the Book Excellence Awards; named to Book Authority’s Best Marketing Plan Books of All Time. Founder and former CEO of Magic Hour Communications, an early SaaS firm with the MagicWand Web CMS, sold in 2009. Founder of Revenue & Associates, LLC, a fractional CMO practice for B2B startups and growth-stage companies. Mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and leader of the annual MIT marketing boot camp, tenth edition in 2024. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, MarketingProfs, HubSpot, VentureBeat, Content Marketing Institute, Chiefmartec, and TechTarget. Biography Most B2B marketing budgets are spent in the wrong order. Brand campaigns get funded before the demand-generation programs that would have paid for them, and the pipeline arrives late. Bullseye Marketing, the book Louis Gudema published in its second edition in 2023, exists to fix that sequencing problem. The framework is built around three concentric rings. Start with the customers and prospects already in the system, where conversion is fastest. Move outward into demand capture and active-buyer programs, search, retargeting, and review sites. Then, with cash flow funding it, invest in the brand and awareness work that compounds over the years. The book won the 2023 Goody Business Book Award for Best Marketing/Branding Book and a Book Excellence Awards finalist nod, and was named one of the Best Marketing Plan Books of All Time by Book Authority. Gudema runs the playbook for a living. He founded Magic Hour Communications, pivoted it from a marketing-services agency into an early SaaS firm built around a Web CMS product, grew it into one of the top three or four firms in its market, and exited in 2009. He now operates revenue & associates as a fractional head of marketing, and has worked with roughly 200 organisations from IBM to early-stage MIT spin-outs. The MIT connection runs deep. Gudema mentors through the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and led the tenth annual MIT marketing boot camp in 2024. His writing in Harvard Business Review, MarketingProfs, HubSpot, and VentureBeat extends the same operating thesis: B2B growth comes from disciplined sequencing of programs with measurable ROI, not from creative reinvention. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and demand generation Bullseye Marketing framework Startup and scale-up growth marketing Behavioural economics in B2B sales and marketing Fractional and interim marketing leadership Account-based marketing and pipeline acceleration Ideal for CEOs and founders of B2B technology and SaaS companies under $50m in revenue CMOs and heads of marketing at growth-stage businesses need to defend program spend to a CFO Investor-backed startup cohorts and accelerator programs looking for a sequenced go-to-market playbook Sales leaders responsible for the pipeline who want to align marketing programs to revenue-cycle reality Audience outcomes A defensible order in which to run B2B marketing programs, with the fastest-payback work first A working knowledge of the three-ring Bullseye Marketing Framework and how to apply it to an existing budget Specific demand-generation tactics, search, retargeting, ABM, customer expansion, that map to short payback windows A view of how seven behavioural heuristics change conversion in real B2B sales and marketing assets A shared vocabulary for marketing, sales, and finance to evaluate program ROI on the same terms

Why organisations work with Andy Milligan Seven books across Kogan Page and Financial Times imprints, including Bold (CMI Management Book of the Year, e-book category, 2012) and On Purpose with Shaun Smith, give him a documented track record on brand-led growth that consultants without published evidence cannot match. He works the full chain from purpose to promise to operational delivery, which is rare. Most advisors stop at strategy or stop at touchpoint design. He has spent thirty years on the connection between them. Client work spans Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche and WWF across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The breadth of categories and geographies means his examples land with audiences in heavily regulated, consumer, and B2B sectors equally. His starting position is that brand lives in employee behaviour before it lives in customer perception. For leaders trying to align a fatigued workforce behind a customer promise, that is the more useful framing. Biography highlights Founding partner of The Caffeine Partnership, the UK brand and growth consultancy he co-founded in 2006. Began his career at Interbrand in London; ran the firm’s Singapore office and later led its Internal Brand Management practice. Co-author of On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) and Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win with Shaun Smith. Bold won the CMI Management Book of the Year award in the e-book category in 2012. Co-author of Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey (Kogan Page, 2017; second edition 2022). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; media commentator for BBC, Sky and CNN on brand issues. Biography Brand is an operating discipline, not a marketing one. That has been the thesis of Andy Milligan’s work since his time at Interbrand in the 1990s, where he ran the Singapore office and later led the firm’s Internal Brand Management practice. The argument is now unfashionable enough to be useful again: customers do not experience strategy decks, they experience employees, products and service moments. In 2006 he co-founded The Caffeine Partnership, a brand and growth consultancy that has advised Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche, WWF and Thai Airways across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The work moves between purpose definition, customer experience design and employee engagement, treated as one connected problem rather than three departmental ones. The same argument runs through seven books. Uncommon Practice and See, Feel, Think, Do with Shaun Smith examined the link between corporate culture and brand experience. Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win won the CMI Management Book of the Year in the e-book category in 2012. On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) set out a practical framework for translating purpose into a branded customer experience. Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey, now in its second edition with Kogan Page, dismantles the assumption that brand work is a logo problem. Milligan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and comments regularly for BBC, Sky and CNN. The reason senior teams bring him into commercial growth conversations is straightforward: he has spent thirty years arguing that organisations get the customers their employees deserve, and he can show them where the gap is. Key speaking topics Brand-led business growth Customer experience strategy Employee engagement and brand Purpose and commercial strategy Brand culture and organisational alignment Marketing and brand myths Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and brand directors aligning marketing with operational delivery CHROs and CPOs connecting employee engagement to customer outcomes CEOs and boards repositioning a business around a sharper purpose Customer experience and transformation leads moving from strategy to execution Audience outcomes A clearer view of where brand promise and customer experience are diverging in their own organisation A working definition of purpose that can be tested against employee and customer behaviour, not slogan Named case examples across consumer, financial services, automotive and sport that translate to the audience’s category A short list of brand myths their leadership team is probably still operating under

Why organisations work with Daniel Chappell A first-hand account of raising significant early-stage capital with no trading history, which is the situation most internal innovation teams quietly find themselves in when pitching new ventures to their own boards. A working operator’s view of UNTIL, a business that pairs physical premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone with a digital membership model. Useful for any leadership team thinking about hybrid product-and-place propositions. An unusually honest voice on neurodiversity from a founder who runs a company while managing dyslexia and dyspraxia, rather than a clinical or HR-led perspective. A high-performance sports background that translates the language of marginal gains, recovery, and team standards into the running of a commercial business, without leaning on tired sporting metaphor. Biography highlights Co-founder of UNTIL, a members business for freelance health, wellness and medical practitioners operating from three central London sites. UNTIL counts Steven Bartlett among its investors and co-founders, following a high-profile early funding round. MSc in Strength and Conditioning, Cardiff Metropolitan University. BSc in Sports and Exercise Science, St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Over a decade working inside high-performance sporting environments before launching his own ventures. Speaks publicly about dyslexia and dyspraxia, and treats neurodiversity as part of his founder identity, not a sidebar. Biography Service industries built on individual practitioners tend to share the same problem. The talent is excellent and the business model is fragile. UNTIL, the London business Daniel Chappell co-founded, was built around that gap: a members club and workspace that lets freelance health, wellness and medical professionals operate from premium premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone without carrying the cost of their own. The route in matters. More than a decade inside high-performance sport gave Daniel an instinct for how elite practitioners work, what they need around them, and where their time is wasted. An MSc in Strength and Conditioning from Cardiff Metropolitan University and a BSc in Sports and Exercise Science from St Mary’s University, Twickenham sit behind that view. The transition from working with athletes to building a company for the people who work with athletes is the spine of the story. UNTIL has since attracted Steven Bartlett as an investor and co-founder, and has built a community of more than 300 practitioners across more than 40 disciplines. For a buyer, the value of the talk is not the milestone list. It is what the talk reveals about persuading investors with no trading history, building a founding team that can scale, and running a young company in public. Daniel is also open about managing dyslexia and dyspraxia as a founder, and speaks to neurodiversity from the inside of a working business. That perspective is useful in any leadership conversation about how organisations actually get the best out of people whose minds are wired differently from the average hire. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding-team dynamics Early-stage fundraising and investor relationships Building a business in the health and wellness sector High performance applied to commercial environments Neurodiversity in leadership and at work Team culture in young companies Resilience and personal performance for founders Ideal for Leadership offsites for scale-ups and founder-led businesses Corporate innovation, ventures and intrapreneurship teams HR and people leaders building practical neurodiversity programmes Wellbeing, benefits and employee-experience conferences Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what early-stage investors actually respond to when there is no trading history to point at. A practical framing of how a young founding team divides work, makes decisions, and survives the first eighteen months. A working model for treating neurodiversity as a commercial asset inside a team, with examples from a live business. Language for translating high-performance habits into a corporate or scale-up context without resorting to sports cliché.

Why organisations work with Ozwald Boateng He rebuilt Savile Row’s relevance to a younger global market without abandoning its craft. Few living designers have shifted a 200-year-old category that decisively. He was the first black designer to lead menswear at Givenchy under LVMH, a working case study in taking a personal aesthetic into a heritage luxury house. He co-founded the Made in Africa Foundation and helped launch the $2bn Africa50 infrastructure fund with the African Development Bank, giving him a track record few creative figures can match on capital and continental development. His commercial collaborations span Coutts, Johnnie Walker, Virgin and British Airways, alongside film work for Marvel’s Black Panther. The brand reach is unusually broad for a fashion founder. Biography highlights First English tailor to present a catwalk show at Paris Fashion Week (1994). Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy, LVMH (2003 to 2007). OBE for services to the clothing industry (2006). Best Menswear Designer, Trophees de la Mode, Paris (1996); Best Menswear Designer, British Fashion Awards (2000). Subject of a V&A Fashion in Motion event (2005), one of a small group including Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Co-founder, Made in Africa Foundation; co-launched the $2bn Africa50 infrastructure fund with the African Development Bank. Biography Savile Row was a closed system when Boateng arrived. The category meant heritage, sober colour, and a customer his father’s age. He kept the cut and changed almost everything else. By 1994 he was the first English tailor to stage a catwalk show at Paris Fashion Week. By 1995 he had a boutique on Vigo Street, the south end of the Row, and a younger clientele was buying suits again. The category shift mattered commercially. In 2003, LVMH appointed him Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy, a role he held until 2007. He was the first black designer to lead menswear at the house. The OBE followed in 2006 for services to the clothing industry. A new flagship at 30 Savile Row, co-designed with the architect David Adjaye, opened in 2008. The second act is less expected. Boateng co-founded the Made in Africa Foundation in 2011 to finance large-scale African infrastructure. With the African Development Bank he helped launch Africa50, a $2bn fund aimed at closing the continent’s infrastructure gap. He has worked with several African governments on industrial and development policy, and the work has been covered by CNN, Bloomberg and Pan African Visions. The collaborations sit alongside the official roles. Coutts, Johnnie Walker, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have commissioned him; Ruth E. Carter put one of his teal mohair suits on screen in Black Panther. The throughline is consistent: a craft practice used as a lever on much bigger systems, from a London street to LVMH to continental capital allocation. Key speaking topics Luxury brand building and reinvention Creative entrepreneurship at scale Heritage brand leadership African economic development and investment Design, identity and cultural representation Diversity in luxury and creative industries Ideal for CEOs and CMOs of heritage brands considering category reinvention Boards and leadership teams of luxury, retail and consumer goods businesses Organisations with significant African market or investment exposure Senior creative and design leaders in fashion, hospitality and lifestyle Audience outcomes A working view of how one founder shifted a 200-year-old category and what that took commercially. A frank account of running a personal aesthetic inside a heritage LVMH house. A specific, named perspective on African infrastructure investment from someone who has helped raise it. A model for building cross-sector collaborations that compound a creative practice over decades.