Business Strategy & Growth

Why organisations work with Martin Roll He wrote the reference text on Asian brand strategy. “Asian Brand Strategy”, named one of Strategy+Business’s Best Business Books on Marketing the year after publication, is still the credential boards reach for when they need someone who has thought seriously about brand building outside the Western frame. He sits inside the family enterprise field, not next to it. As INSEAD Distinguished Fellow at the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, he advises principals and next-generation leaders on succession, governance, and strategy with a practitioner’s view, not an academic’s distance. McKinsey retains him as a senior advisor on family business and family office mandates. That is a hard credential to fake, and a useful signal for boards that want strategy advice with the rigour of a tier-one firm and the candour of an outside operator. He moves credibly between two audiences most speakers cannot bridge: C-suites at multinational consumer companies looking at Asian growth, and principals of family-controlled enterprises wrestling with continuity. The same frame, branded value creation under contested ownership conditions, applies to both. Biography highlights Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD’s Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise; Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD. Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company on family business and family office strategy. Author of “Asian Brand Strategy” (Palgrave Macmillan), named a Strategy+Business Best Business Book on Marketing. Co-author of “The Future of Branding” with Kevin Lane Keller, Don E. Schultz and Rajendra K. Srivastava. Faculty across INSEAD, CEIBS and Nanyang Business School; guest lecturer at Harvard, Wharton, ESSEC, IE. Columnist at INSEAD Knowledge and Harvard Business Review; editor and host of the INSEAD Family Business Podcast. Biography Asian companies spent two decades being told that brand-building was a discipline they would eventually import. The argument in “Asian Brand Strategy” was the opposite. The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan and named a Best Business Book on Marketing by Strategy+Business, made the case that Asian firms would build global brands on their own terms, with their own founder dynamics, their own ownership structures, and their own customer logic. Two decades of work since then has tracked that thesis as it played out across consumer goods, luxury, and family-controlled conglomerates. That work runs through Martin Roll Company, the Singapore advisory firm Roll founded after 25 years of board and C-suite counsel to multinationals, Asian corporates, and global business families. He is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company on family business and family office strategy, and Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD’s Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, where he leads research and teaching on the strategy and governance questions that decide whether family enterprises survive succession. His teaching reach is unusually wide. He sits on the faculty at INSEAD, CEIBS and Nanyang Business School and guest lectures at Harvard, Wharton, ESSEC, and IE. His writing appears regularly in INSEAD Knowledge and Harvard Business Review, and he edits and hosts the INSEAD Family Business Podcast, which has become one of the more substantive channels for next-generation leaders working through governance and continuity in private. The combined record matters because the questions he answers, how to build a brand outside the Western default, how to professionalise a family enterprise without breaking what made it work, are the kind boards usually meet through three different specialists. Roll holds the brief in one place, and writes about it with the discipline of someone who has had to deliver on it. Key speaking topics Asian brand strategy and global brand building Family business strategy and succession Family office governance and capital strategy Luxury brand management Leadership of family-controlled enterprises Asia growth strategy for multinational corporates Brand-led value creation Ideal for Boards and CEOs of consumer and luxury businesses pursuing Asian growth Principals and next-generation leaders of family-controlled enterprises Family office leadership and investment committees CMOs and brand strategy leadership at multinationals expanding in Asia Audience outcomes A clearer view of how Asian brand-building actually works, including where Western playbooks fail and where they translate. A practical frame for the strategy and governance decisions that determine whether a family enterprise survives the next generation. A sharper read on brand as a commercial asset on the balance sheet, not a marketing line item. A grounded view of what professionalising a family business requires, beyond org-chart changes.

Why organisations work with James Sinclair He runs the playbook he teaches. The Partyman Group is a roughly GBP 40 million portfolio across childcare, leisure, food and beverage, and heritage brands that he owns and operates, not advises. He has a concrete thesis on why price-led consumer businesses fail, set out in The Experience Business, and can show operators how to apply it inside their own units. He has done the hardest part of growth through acquisition in public: the 2023 rescue of Party Pieces from administration is a documented case study in buying a broken consumer brand and absorbing it. He raised GBP 700,000 from 21 lenders at 20 years old without venture capital, and has built every subsequent business on cash flow. Founders who are bootstrapped or PE-averse hear their own constraints in his story. He is direct, funny, and pitched at operators rather than boardrooms. Audiences of SME owners, franchisees, and consumer brand teams tend to leave with something they can action on Monday. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Partyman Group: soft play centres, Twizzle Tops Day Nurseries, Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park, Rossi Ice Cream, a grade II listed hotel, and Party Pieces. Acquired Party Pieces from the Middleton family out of administration in May 2023. Author of The Millionaire Clown and The Experience Business: Why Price-Focused Businesses Fail And What Winners Do Instead. Host of James Sinclair’s Business Broadcast podcast and a long-running YouTube channel focused on business operating decisions. Built the group without venture capital, funded through cash flow and lender-backed acquisitions. Speaks regularly across the UK and Europe to entrepreneur, SME, and franchise audiences. Biography Party Pieces was insolvent and more than GBP 2.5 million in debt when James Sinclair bought it out of administration in May 2023, adding the Middleton family’s party supplies brand to a portfolio that already included soft play centres, nurseries, a farm park, and Rossi Ice Cream. That kind of deal sits at the centre of how he has built the Partyman Group: find a distressed consumer business, buy it cheaply, and fold it into an operating model designed around experience rather than discounting. The group now reports turnover in the region of GBP 40 million. Sinclair built it without venture capital, starting at 16 as a children’s entertainer and, at 20, raising GBP 700,000 from 21 separate lenders to open his first soft play centre in Basildon. The first location hit GBP 1 million turnover inside a year. Every subsequent acquisition has been funded on cash flow and operator credibility, not equity rounds. His book The Experience Business sets out the thesis that underpins all of it: price-focused consumer businesses lose because customers are buying a feeling, and the winners are the operators who invest in the moments that feeling depends on. The Millionaire Clown, his earlier book, is the operator’s version of the same argument told through the businesses he has bought, broken, and fixed. What buyers get when they book him is not a strategist commenting on a sector. It is an owner-operator describing, specifically, how he grew a multi-brand consumer group through acquisition, what he overpaid for, what he did not, and how he keeps experience from degrading as the portfolio scales. The register is closer to a founders’ workshop than a keynote, which is why he tends to land well with SME and franchise audiences. Key speaking topics Growth through acquisition in consumer businesses Buying and turning around distressed brands Experience-led differentiation over price competition Building multi-brand portfolios without venture capital Cash flow, profitability, and operator discipline Customer acquisition for consumer and leisure brands Entrepreneurship and founder-led scaling Ideal for SME founders and owner-operators scaling consumer businesses Franchise networks and multi-site leisure, hospitality, and childcare operators M&A and corporate development leads working on distressed consumer assets Entrepreneur conferences, business schools, and founder communities Audience outcomes A working mental model for when to compete on experience and when price still matters A concrete view of how to evaluate a distressed consumer business before buying it Operator-level tactics for protecting customer experience as a portfolio adds brands A bootstrapped founder’s case for funding growth through cash flow and lenders rather than equity Specific stories, including Party Pieces, that audiences can pattern-match against their own deals

Why organisations work with Jeannie Walters She gives operators a working method, not a slogan: the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks turn customer-experience strategy into something a leadership team can run, not just endorse. She translates CX from a contact-centre function into a board-level commercial lever, framed around retention, loyalty, and the cost of reactive service. The dual credential set (CCXP and CSP) is unusual: she is certified in the discipline she speaks on and in the craft of speaking itself, which means content holds up under scrutiny from CX practitioners. A 2026 book with Mission Driven Press and Simon and Schuster distribution gives her thesis a citable spine, with named tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take back into the business. Reach into operating teams runs deeper than most keynote speakers: more than 500,000 LinkedIn Learning participants, plus the Experience Action podcast, mean her language is already inside many client organisations before she arrives. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, a customer experience consultancy founded in 2009. Author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations” (Mission Driven Press, April 2026). Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. Host of the Experience Action podcast, recognised by CX Network among its leading CX podcasts. LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners; named clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate, and SAP Litmos. Biography Most companies that say they are customer-centric are not. They are service-centric, organised to absorb complaints, route tickets and react to survey scores. The decisions that actually shape loyalty, retention and willingness to pay sit upstream, in product, operations and leadership, and that is the gap Jeannie Walters has spent two decades closing. She is the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, the consultancy she launched in 2009 to help organisations design customer experience as a deliberate discipline rather than a reactive function. Her clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate and SAP Litmos, and the work tends to focus on the same problem: leadership intent that does not survive contact with the operating model. Her 2026 book, “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations”, published by Mission Driven Press with Simon and Schuster distribution, sets out the thesis. CX is treated as a business discipline with named tools, including a CX Mission Statement, a CX Success Blueprint, and the Four Cs of CX Culture, that give leadership teams something to run rather than something to admire. Her CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks structure the operating side of that work. Credentials reinforce the practice. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a Certified Speaking Professional, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners. The Experience Action podcast, named by CX Network among its top CX podcasts, extends her work into the day-to-day of leaders trying to put it into effect. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer loyalty and retention Proactive versus reactive customer experience Customer journey design Employee experience and CX alignment CX measurement and accountability AI in customer experience Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and CX leadership functions CMOs and Chief Revenue Officers responsible for retention and lifetime value Heads of operations and service in B2C and B2B businesses where churn is a board issue Senior leadership teams trying to convert customer-centric language into operating discipline Audience outcomes A working definition of customer experience as a commercial discipline, separate from customer service. A method for spotting where the journey is leaking value, drawn from the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks. A clearer link between CX investment and the metrics finance and the board care about: retention, lifetime value, churn cost. A practical view of how AI changes CX expectations, and where automation should and should not enter the journey. Language and tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take into the next operating review.

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Tony Perzow Twenty years on the operator side of the table, buying and selling closeouts to Walmart, Amazon, and Costco, before becoming a trainer. The frame is procurement and sales floor, not classroom. Former negotiation trainer at the Karrass Organization and former VP of negotiation training at Strategic Pricing Associates, giving him a structured pedagogical lineage in the most established commercial negotiation methodologies. His “Heart of the Deal” system is built around what happens to skilled negotiators when pressure rewires their judgement, not around tactic lists. Sessions are simulation-led. Teams negotiate, then get critiqued on the specific unconscious moves that cost margin, rather than walking out with a slide deck. Trained more than 20,000 commercial professionals, with a client roster spanning Apple, Red Bull, Rolls Royce, Pfizer, Panasonic, and Daimler Trucks. Biography highlights Former negotiation trainer at the Karrass Organization and former Vice President of negotiation training at Strategic Pricing Associates. Trained more than 20,000 sales, procurement, and commercial leadership professionals. Past corporate audiences include Apple, Red Bull, Rolls Royce, Pfizer, Panasonic, Daimler Trucks, and Starz Network. Built a procurement and sales operator background negotiating closeouts with Walmart, Amazon, and Costco. Creator of the “Heart of the Deal” methodology, structured around decision-making under pressure rather than tactic playbooks. Working on a book titled “You Suck at Negotiating, But You Don’t Have to with a Mindful Negotiation Practice.” Biography Negotiation training has a credibility problem. Most of it is built on tactic lists that hold up in role play and fall apart the moment a real buyer pushes back. Tony Perzow’s work starts where that gap opens: the behavioural moment where a skilled negotiator, under pressure, makes a decision they would not have made on paper. That framing comes from a career on the operator side of the table. Before training, Perzow spent close to two decades as a procurement specialist and sales lead, buying and selling closeouts with Walmart, Amazon, and Costco. The pedagogy came later, first as a trainer at the Karrass Organization, then as Vice President of negotiation training at Strategic Pricing Associates, two of the longest-running commercial negotiation institutions in the United States. His methodology, “Heart of the Deal,” is structured around pressure-triggered decisions rather than tactical repertoire. The training uses simulations followed by critique of the specific unconscious choices that leave margin on the table. The audience is sales, procurement, and commercial leadership; the deliverable is behaviour change in the room where contracts close, not a framework to read on a flight home. More than 20,000 commercial professionals have been through his programmes, with corporate audiences including Apple, Red Bull, Rolls Royce, Pfizer, Panasonic, and Daimler Trucks. His forthcoming book, “You Suck at Negotiating, But You Don’t Have to with a Mindful Negotiation Practice,” extends the same argument: that the failure mode in negotiation is rarely ignorance and almost always the negotiator’s own state under pressure. Key speaking topics High-stakes negotiation Sales negotiation and deal-making Procurement and price negotiation Behavioural decision-making under pressure Commercial leadership and revenue strategy Persuasive communication in client relationships Ideal for Chief revenue officers, sales leaders, and commercial directors briefing teams ahead of major deal cycles Heads of procurement and supply chain managing high-value supplier contracts Account management and key account teams in industries with concentrated buyers Sales kick-offs, commercial leadership offsites, and procurement summits Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the behavioural moves that compress margin in live negotiations The ability to diagnose, in their own deals, where pressure is driving suboptimal concessions A planning discipline that shifts power before the negotiation begins, not during it Techniques for managing hardball tactics without escalating or capitulating A framework for value creation in deals that would otherwise be priced as zero-sum

Why organisations work with Abishur Prakash He defined the geopolitics-of-technology field early and keeps naming what comes next. His 2016 book Next Geopolitics set out a scenario framework for state competition over AI and robotics that boards are now living through. His latest, The Great Fracturing, maps the broken order they operate in today. He gives executives a working vocabulary for the new operating environment. Concepts he coined, including Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI and Business Iron Curtain, name dynamics that buyers can otherwise only describe in fragments. His work at the Center for Innovating the Future has been cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signalling that policymakers and corporates draw on the same analysis. He briefs in two registers. He has testified to the Senate of Canada and writes regularly in CNBC, Nikkei Asia, BBC, Politico, Fortune and the WSJ, so he is fluent with both heads of state and operating executives. He runs an advisory firm, The Geopolitical Business, that is built specifically for corporate decision-makers, not academic audiences. The reading frame is always: what does this mean for your next investment, supplier, market or product launch. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Geopolitical Business, a Toronto-based advisory firm. Author of six books, including his latest, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World (2026), The World Is Vertical, and Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two. Former geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future; represented CIF in testimony to the Senate of Canada in 2017. Work cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bylines and commentary in CNN, BBC, CNBC, WSJ, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Politico, Fortune, The Telegraph, Scientific American and SCMP. Coined frameworks now used in corporate strategy discussions: Next Geopolitics, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain. Biography The intersection of state power and corporate strategy is where most boardroom assumptions are now breaking. Export controls on chips, sanctions regimes that shift quarterly, severed supply corridors and AI rivalry between Washington and Beijing are no longer macro context. They sit on the operating P&L. Abishur Prakash has been mapping this terrain since 2013, when he first set out the case that geopolitics and technology had become a single field. Six books built that argument in stages. Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two used scenario-based chapters to show how AI, robotics and biotech would force governments and companies into new postures. Go.AI examined the state-level race for artificial intelligence advantage. The Age of Killer Robots looked at autonomy in defence. The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization argued that the flat, integrated world of the 1990s and 2000s is being replaced by a layered, segmented one in which corporates choose blocs rather than markets. His latest book, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World, widens the lens from technology to the whole order. It traces how trade, ideology, connectivity and alliances are breaking into rival systems, reshaping everything from capital flows to how AI is deployed. His vantage point is built on both policy and corporate exposure. As a futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, his work was cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings and the UAE foreign ministry, and he testified to the Senate of Canada in 2017. He now runs The Geopolitical Business, a firm built to convert that analysis into decisions for executives, central banks and investors. His commentary appears regularly in CNBC, BBC, Nikkei Asia, the WSJ, Politico and Fortune. What boards take from him is not a worldview, but a working method. Concepts he coined, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain, give leadership teams a vocabulary for things they were already feeling on supply, capital and market access. The output is concrete: which corridors are closing, which blocs are forming, where the next sanction or subsidy is likely to land, and what that means for the next investment cycle. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and AI US-China strategic and technology competition Vertical Globalization and the end of flat-world supply chains Sanctions, export controls and the Business Iron Curtain Scenario planning for boards and investors Long-range geopolitical foresight Bloc formation and the future of trade corridors The fracturing of the global order Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CSOs setting strategy across multiple geopolitical blocs CFOs and treasury leaders running capital allocation under sanctions and currency volatility Heads of supply chain, procurement and manufacturing footprint Investors, central banks and policy leaders responsible for long-horizon risk Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how state-level technology rivalry is reshaping their specific industry Named frameworks for describing geopolitical change inside their own strategy process Sharper questions for the next board, investment committee or supply review A view of which corridors, blocs and choke points to watch over the coming cycle Confidence to act on geopolitical risk before it becomes a balance-sheet event

Why organisations work with Martin Newman He has run multichannel and digital operations inside Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport, so the customer-centricity argument lands as operating advice, not consultancy theory. He built and sold a 100-person global e-commerce consultancy, Practicology, acquired by Pattern in 2018, which gives him a P&L view of what customer experience is actually worth. His framework of new ROIs, set out in “ROI Reimagined”, gives leadership teams a concrete way to measure inspiration, integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention alongside conventional financials. “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019 and is used inside organisations as an operating reference, not a one-off read. He designed and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing, so the same content can be extended from a keynote into a structured learning programme for a leadership cohort. Biography highlights Founder of The Customer First Group and Customer Service Action, an independent platform for consumers to escalate service issues directly to CEOs. Founder of Practicology, scaled to around 100 staff across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia, sold to US-based Pattern in 2018. Author of “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” (Kogan Page, with Malcolm McDonald), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. Author of “The Power of Customer Experience” (Kogan Page) and “ROI Reimagined: 11 Bold New Ways to Measure What Really Matters”. Course director of the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity, delivered with Oxford College of Marketing. Senior multichannel, digital and e-commerce roles at Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport. Biography Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport all sat inside the same generation of UK retailers that had to rebuild their business around digital while keeping the store estate honest. Newman ran multichannel and e-commerce operations inside several of them, which is where his customer-centricity argument actually comes from. He then founded Practicology, an e-commerce consultancy he scaled to around 100 people across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia before selling it to Pattern in 2018. That experience gives him a commercial view of customer experience that most CX speakers do not have, namely what it is worth to a board, and where investment in it gets blocked. Two books with Kogan Page set out the framework. “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. “The Power of Customer Experience” makes the commercial case for customer-centricity as a growth strategy. His most recent book, “ROI Reimagined”, proposes eleven new measures of return, including return on integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention, intended to sit alongside the financial metrics that already run the business. Alongside the books and keynote work, Newman runs Customer Service Action, a platform that escalates unresolved consumer issues to CEOs, and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing. Both extend the same argument: that when service operating choices are visible at the top of the organisation, behaviour changes. Key speaking topics Customer centricity as commercial strategy Customer experience and brand loyalty The new ROIs of customer-led business Multichannel and digital retail operations Organisational culture and the customer Voice of the customer and service recovery Customer-led growth in consumer-facing sectors Ideal for Boards and executive teams in retail, consumer goods, hospitality, financial services and telecoms reviewing their customer strategy CMOs, Chief Customer Officers, CX directors and digital leaders Transformation leads working on culture, service and operating model alongside digital change Leadership development cohorts running CX or growth-focused programmes Audience outcomes A clearer commercial argument for treating customer experience as a board-level strategic lever, not an operational function A working vocabulary for the new ROIs that customer-centric organisations are measuring alongside financials Specific operating examples from inside Burberry, Harrods and other named retailers that translate to other consumer-facing sectors A sharper view of where the gap typically sits between stated customer strategy and the experience the organisation actually delivers Practical reference points from “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” that leadership teams can apply after the session

Why organisations work with Alex Depledge She has built, scaled and exited a venture-backed UK consumer marketplace, and is currently advising the Chancellor of the Exchequer on entrepreneurship policy. Few speakers can hold both a founder’s lens and a policy lens at once. She speaks to boards from inside the boardroom. Her FTSE-100 seat at Persimmon and NED role at Goodlord mean her advice on innovation, governance and growth is grounded in current PLC reality, not consultancy abstraction. She frames the gender funding gap and the women-in-tech question with hard numbers and self-implicating honesty rather than the standard talk-track, which is why programme committees book her for conversations they want to feel more honest than usual. She has a working view, formed through Hassle.com and Resi, on why corporates struggle to copy start-up behaviour, and what they can realistically take from it. She talks about regulation, sharing economy policy and UK scale-up barriers as a current operator and current government advisor, which gives those sessions weight that retrospective speakers rarely match. Biography highlights First ever Entrepreneurship Advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed by Rachel Reeves in June 2025. Independent Non-Executive Director, Persimmon PLC (FTSE 100), since May 2023; sits on remuneration and nomination committees. Founder of Resi.co.uk, the UK’s largest residential architectural practice, with over 10,000 home projects delivered. Stepped down as CEO in December 2025 and moved to the board. Co-founder and former CEO of Hassle.com, sold to Helpling in 2015 after Accel Partners-led funding. MBE for services to the Sharing Economy, 2016. Named in Computer Weekly’s 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech and Debrett’s 500 Most Influential People; FT 30 Female Founders to Watch. Biography Most established companies want to behave more like start-ups and very few succeed. The reason is rarely a shortage of ambition. It is that the operating habits, the speed of decision and the comfort with risk that actually produce scale-up growth get filtered out by the systems large organisations use to govern themselves. Alex Depledge has lived on both sides of that gap and now advises across it. She co-founded Hassle.com in 2012 with Jules Coleman, took Accel Partners funding, expanded across Europe and exited to Helpling in 2015. The next year the same partnership launched Resi.co.uk, now the UK’s largest residential architectural practice with more than ten thousand projects delivered. She led Resi as CEO for nearly a decade before stepping back to the board in late 2025. Her current portfolio is what makes her unusual on a stage. She is the first Entrepreneurship Advisor to HM Treasury, appointed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in June 2025 to work directly on the barriers UK companies hit when they try to scale. At the same time she sits as an independent non-executive director of Persimmon PLC, the FTSE-100 housebuilder, and joined Goodlord’s board in December 2025. That mix gives her audiences a rare combination of inputs: a founder who has banked an exit, a board member inside a UK plc, and a named voice in active conversation with the Treasury about why British scale-ups stall. She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to the sharing economy and writes and broadcasts regularly on entrepreneurship, technology policy and the gender funding gap. Key speaking topics Scale-up leadership and the founder operating mindset What large organisations can and cannot learn from start-ups UK entrepreneurship policy and barriers to scale Women, funding and structural bias in venture capital Innovation inside regulated and traditional sectors The future of work and platform-economy business models Proptech and the digitisation of legacy industries Ideal for CEOs, COOs and strategy leaders in incumbent businesses trying to behave more entrepreneurially Boards and Chairs commissioning sessions on innovation governance and growth CHROs and inclusion leads addressing gender, funding and pipeline questions in tech Industry conferences in property, financial services, professional services and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which start-up behaviours scale into a corporate environment and which do not A current operator’s view of UK entrepreneurship policy and the live Treasury debate on scale-up barriers An honest framing of the gender funding gap that names structural causes rather than rehearsing the symptoms A board-level perspective on innovation as a governance discipline, drawn from FTSE-100 practice A real example of building, scaling and exiting a venture-backed UK consumer marketplace

Why organisations work with Claire Harper She has run senior marketing inside three of the UK’s most scrutinised retail brands, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, and Argos, during periods of leadership change and digital pivot. She has also done the founder’s job: built IndiaCoco from a dining-table operation to an award-winning multi-channel children’s brand, with the cash-flow scars to prove it. She translates board-level brand strategy into the operating decisions marketing teams actually face the next morning, on pricing, range, channel mix, and acquisition. Her current commercial leadership at London Pulse Netball gives her live material on building a consumer brand in women’s sport, a sector under significant commercial expansion. One credential that travels: first female board director at Mamas & Papas, brought in to scale the brand domestically and internationally. Biography highlights First Head of Customer Acquisition and PR at Ocado, later Head of Marketing during the company’s grocery delivery breakthrough. Head of Online Marketing at Sainsbury’s during Justin King’s turnaround programme. First female board director at Mamas & Papas, with international brand remit. Founder of IndiaCoco childrenswear; winner of Theo Paphitis Small Business Sunday and Jacqueline Gold WOW awards. Non-Executive Director at Blue Diamond Garden Centres; former Marketing Director at Frosts Garden Centres. Currently leading commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball in the Netball Super League. Biography Ocado was a niche online grocer when Claire Harper joined at 26 as its first Head of Customer Acquisition and PR. By the time she had been promoted to Head of Marketing, the company was redrawing what UK households expected from a weekly shop. That early bet on customer behaviour, before the category had a name, set the pattern for the rest of her career. She moved into Sainsbury’s as Head of Online Marketing during Justin King’s “Make Sainsbury’s Great Again” turnaround, and into Argos during a hostile-takeover period that forced the brand to confront multi-channel reality. Both roles asked the same question: how do you keep a customer proposition coherent while the leadership and operating model are being rebuilt around it. At Mamas & Papas she became the first female board director, charged with scaling the brand internationally. She then founded IndiaCoco, a British childrenswear brand that grew from her dining room into a multi-channel business and picked up backing from Theo Paphitis and Jacqueline Gold. The founder years gave her the commercial discipline that corporate marketing budgets rarely teach. She now sits on the board at Blue Diamond Garden Centres and leads commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball, one of the fastest-growing franchises in the Netball Super League. Audiences get a speaker who has run the brand from inside the boardroom and from inside a single-founder profit and loss, in retail categories where the customer is the only honest scoreboard. Key speaking topics Customer-led brand strategy in multi-channel retail Marketing leadership through restructure and ownership change Building consumer brands from founder stage to scale Commercial growth in women’s sport Non-executive contribution to consumer businesses Women’s leadership in retail and consumer industries Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and customer experience leaders in consumer retail Boards and NEDs at consumer-facing businesses navigating ownership or strategic change Founders and scale-up leadership teams in DTC and consumer categories Sponsors, commercial partners, and leadership in women’s sport Audience outcomes A working view of how customer insight should sit at the centre of commercial decisions, not at the end of them Practical reference points from inside Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Argos, and Mamas & Papas during periods of strategic change A clearer sense of where founder discipline and corporate scale-marketing diverge, and what each can borrow from the other A current read on the commercial mechanics of women’s sport as a consumer category

Why organisations work with Lorraine Heggessey She has led turnarounds across three very different sectors: a flagship public broadcaster, a private-equity-backed independent producer, and a senior royal charity. Few speakers can compare an operating challenge across that range and be credible on each. She commissioned the decisions that defined a generation of British television, including the revival of Doctor Who and the launch of Strictly Come Dancing. Audiences trust her on risk because she has personally backed the calls that institutions hesitate to make. She built Boom Pictures from a private equity start into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer in three years, then exited to ITV. She speaks on scale-up and exit with operator detail, not investor abstraction. As CEO of The Royal Foundation, she professionalised a venture philanthropy model addressing mental health and veteran support, working directly with the principals. She is one of a small number of speakers credible on both commercial leadership and complex stakeholder organisations. She is forthright on the practical content of leading women into senior roles, drawing on her own progression to one of British broadcasting’s most scrutinised jobs. The argument is operational, not motivational. Biography highlights First female Controller of BBC One, 2000 to 2005, commissioning Doctor Who (revival), Strictly Come Dancing, Spooks, and Waking the Dead. CEO of TalkbackThames, 2005 onwards, launching Britain’s Got Talent and growing profits by more than 50% in two years. Executive Chair of Boom Pictures, founded in 2012, grown into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and acquired by ITV in 2015. CEO of The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, 2017 to 2019. Chair of the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre (since 2022) and Chair of The Grierson Trust (2014 to 2025). Fellow of the Royal Television Society; Woman of the Year, Women in Film and Television UK Awards, 2005; Peabody Award winner. Biography BBC One was losing to ITV1 in audience share when a new Controller took over in November 2000. Five years later the channel had recommissioned Doctor Who after a sixteen-year absence, launched Strictly Come Dancing, and reclaimed the position of Britain’s most-watched channel. Lorraine Heggessey, the first woman to hold the role, made the commissioning calls that shifted the institutional culture around risk. She left the BBC in 2005 to run TalkbackThames, where Britain’s Got Talent and Take Me Out drove a profit increase of more than fifty per cent inside two years. In 2012 she raised private equity to start Boom Pictures, which within three years was the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and was sold to ITV in 2015. Few UK operators have moved from running a public-service broadcaster to founding and exiting a commercial production business at that scale. In 2017 she became CEO of The Royal Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with a brief to professionalise its venture philanthropy approach to mental health, veterans, and conservation. She left in 2019, having institutionalised a model that the principals could continue to grow. Her current platforms are the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, which she chairs, and Channel 4’s Growth Fund, which she has advised for nearly a decade. She is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and a regular BAFTA and RTS judge. Her authority on change and on senior leadership is grounded in repeated operating experience, not in a single signature thesis. Key speaking topics Leading organisational turnaround Risk-taking and commissioning under public scrutiny Scale-up leadership and exit Intrapreneurial culture inside large organisations Women in senior leadership Mental health at work Stakeholder-heavy non-profit leadership Ideal for CEO, CHRO, and board audiences working through structural change or repositioning. Senior leadership programmes inside large public-service or regulated organisations. Women’s leadership and high-potential talent forums seeking operational, not motivational, content. Founders and scale-up leadership teams preparing for institutional growth or exit. Audience outcomes A direct account of how a senior leader changes the risk appetite of a cautious institution. A working view of intrapreneurial culture from inside organisations that have to deliver under public scrutiny. An operator’s perspective on building and exiting a media business, including the decisions that determine value at sale. A grounded position on women’s progression to the most senior roles, based on lived experience rather than advocacy. A practical frame for addressing mental health at work, drawn from involvement in the Heads Together campaign.

Why organisations work with James Hardy He has run growth on both sides of the platform divide, leading EMEA for Alibaba and now global retail at Flutterwave, so he can argue marketplace strategy from inside the operating model, not from a consultancy slide. He co-founded Avenue51, the platform that won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2020 and The Guardian Start Up of the Year in 2016, which gives him founder credibility on selling Western brands into China. He frames e-commerce as ecosystem competition, not site optimisation, which reframes how boards think about platform dependency, payments infrastructure and customer data. He is one of the very few speakers who can speak with operator authority on Africa as a commercial market, via Flutterwave’s role as the continent’s largest fintech. Biography highlights Head of Global Retail & Market Development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech. Former Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alibaba.com. Co-founder of Avenue51, the UK platform that helped Western brands enter China. Avenue51 won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020 and The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016. Named in the Financial Times Leap 100. MBA, Melbourne Business School; earlier career as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith, then General Counsel at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. Biography Alibaba and Amazon are not the same business and never have been. One is a vertical operator that buys, stocks and ships. The other is a payments-and-data ecosystem that lets merchants sell. Hardy ran EMEA for Alibaba, and the distinction shapes how he advises Western brands on international growth. Before Alibaba, he co-founded Avenue51, the UK platform that helped European brands build market share in China through Tmall and the Alibaba marketplaces. Avenue51 won The Guardian Small Business Showcase Start Up of the Year in 2016, and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade, in 2020. His Financial Times Leap 100 listing came out of that period. He now runs global retail and market development at Flutterwave, Africa’s largest fintech, which gives him a live operator’s view of where commerce, payments and platform competition are heading next. That perspective is rare on the speaker circuit. Most e-commerce speakers come from one platform, one geography, or one consultancy lens. Hardy has been an operator inside Alibaba, a founder selling Western brands into China, and is now building consumer and SME revenue across Africa. His earlier career was legal, with stints as a solicitor at Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith and General Counsel roles at Next 15, Bite Communications and Text 100. That background shows up in how he handles questions on platform terms, data sovereignty and the contractual asymmetry between brands and marketplaces. Key speaking topics International e-commerce and retail globalisation Alibaba and Amazon: comparative platform strategy Marketplace and ecosystem business models China market entry for Western brands African commerce and fintech infrastructure Data-driven decision-making in commercial strategy Corporate innovation and startup operating models Ideal for CCOs, CMOs and heads of ecommerce planning for international or marketplace expansion Boards weighing platform dependency, marketplace risk and channel strategy Brand and retail leadership teams entering China, the Gulf or Africa Corporate innovation leads to working on ecosystem and platform plays Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Alibaba and Amazon are genuinely different, and what that means for marketplace strategy A working model for assessing platform dependency as a board-level risk Operator-level perspective on entering China and African markets without ceding the customer relationship Sharper questions for the leadership team on payments, data and ecosystem economics

Why organisations work with Hans Diels Direct operator experience inside EU trade policy. He represented Belgium on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee on services and investment, which gives his read on sanctions, tariffs, and industrial policy a practitioner’s weight that pure commentators cannot match. A continental European lens on geopolitical risk, at a moment when Anglo-American analysis dominates the boardroom. For European leadership teams exposed to Russia, China, and US policy swings, his vantage point is scarcer and more relevant. Two published books that form a coherent argument: “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) sets out the scenario-thinking method; “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024) applies it to the economic consequences of political conflict. He works in the register executives need: translating sanctions regimes, trade wars, and energy shocks into decisions about where to produce, whom to sell to, and which contracts to stress-test. Dutch and English delivery across keynotes and workshops, with a track record in boardrooms, strategy offsites, and risk committees across the Benelux and wider Europe. Biography highlights Futurist and geopolitical expert at ETION, the Belgian entrepreneurial network and think tank. Former Belgian representative on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee (services and investment). Former researcher at the University of Antwerp, Department of Political Science. Prior roles at the US Embassy in Belgium, the Belgian Parliament, and EU institutions. Author of “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) and “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024). Master’s in Political Science (KU Leuven), International Relations postgraduate (UCLouvain), economics via LSE External Programme. Biography Sanctions, export controls, and industrial policy now set the boundary conditions for European business. Assumptions that underpinned strategy for two decades, open markets, cheap Russian gas, reliable Asian supply chains, a stable US security guarantee, are no longer reliable. That is the terrain Hans Diels works on. His perspective is built from inside the machinery. He represented Belgium on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee on services and investment, worked at the US Embassy in Belgium, served in the Belgian Parliament, and researched international governance at the University of Antwerp. He now sits at ETION, the Belgian entrepreneurial network, advising boards and executive teams on how political conflict translates into commercial exposure. Two books carry the argument. “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) sets out a method for strategy under deep uncertainty, built on horizon scanning and scenario testing rather than forecast precision. “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024) turns the lens on geopolitical disruption itself: how sanctions, cyber operations, and economic warfare reshape markets, and what companies can practically do in response. Diels is Dutch-speaking, trained in international relations at KU Leuven and UCLouvain, and read economics through the LSE External Programme. He writes regularly on futures and political disruption on Substack and in Belgian media. What he offers a board is a specific thing: the discipline of keeping strategy open to multiple plausible futures, without paralysing the decision to act in the present. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and corporate strategy Economic warfare, sanctions and export controls Scenario thinking and strategic foresight Global megatrends and systemic disruption Europe’s position between the US, China and Russia Supply chain exposure and industrial policy Strategy under deep uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive committees reassessing exposure to geopolitical shocks Strategy, risk and supply chain leaders at industrial and financial services firms European multinationals with significant US, China or Russia-linked revenue or sourcing Leadership offsites and strategy days where the macro picture needs to become a decision input Audience outcomes A sharper read on which geopolitical shifts genuinely move their P&L and which are noise A working vocabulary for scenario thinking that survives contact with the executive agenda Concrete pressure points to test in supply chains, contracts, and market strategies A realistic view of Europe’s structural position between the US, China and Russia, and what that means for their sector Confidence to make strategic commitments without waiting for the fog to clear