Climate Action and Sustainability

Why organisations work with Peter Fisk He brings a structured framework for business reinvention. Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes drawn from deep work with senior leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas and Patagonia. Senior teams leave with a shared model to argue from. He sits in the rare overlap between marketer and strategist. As former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and now Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, he treats marketing, customer thinking and innovation as parts of one growth discipline. Most organisations still split them across separate functions and budgets. He has worked with senior leaders across more than 300 companies in over 55 countries, with particular depth in Asian innovation and emerging-market growth. The case material is current and varied, not the same handful of examples a leadership team has already seen. As former Thinkers50 Global Director and founder of the annual European Business Forum, he has unusual curatorial access to the leading management thinkers in the world. Sessions draw on what is actually moving across the field. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of GeniusWorks, a London-based strategy and innovation consultancy Professor of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School, Madrid; academic director of the Global Advanced Management Program Former Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Former Thinkers50 Global Director; founder of the annual Thinkers50 European Business Forum Author of nine business books, including Business Recoded, Gamechangers, and the Genius series, translated into 35 languages; Business Recoded shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year Earlier commercial career at British Airways, including responsibility for the Concorde brand Biography The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s largest professional marketing organisation. Peter Fisk ran it before founding GeniusWorks. He used the role to argue that marketing, customer and innovation belong inside growth strategy, where most organisations still treat them as separate functions. That argument has shaped his work since. His career started in physics, in a superconductivity lab. He moved into commercial roles at British Airways, including managing the Concorde brand, before consulting work at PA Consulting Group and Brand Finance. After CIM he founded GeniusWorks, a London consultancy, and joined IE Business School in Madrid as Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His 2020 book Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes for reinventing how a business creates value. It is built on deep interviews with leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas, Patagonia and Spotify. The Financial Times reviewed it as “the book you have to read now”. It was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Through the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, which he founded in 2017 as Thinkers50 Global Director, he convenes the world’s leading management thinkers each year. Recent stages have brought together Michael Porter, Rita McGrath, Erin Meyer and Alex Osterwalder. That curatorial position is unusual for a working consultant. The frameworks in his sessions are continually refreshed by direct contact with the academics and practitioners writing the next generation of management ideas. Key speaking topics Growth strategy in fast-changing markets Business model reinvention Innovation strategy and execution Customer strategy and brand growth The Business Recoded framework: seven shifts for reinventing the business Asian innovation and emerging-market growth Sustainable growth and purposeful business Ideal for CEOs and boards facing slowing growth in mature markets Strategy and innovation leaders responsible for new business models or category growth CMOs and customer experience leaders rethinking how marketing connects to commercial strategy Executive leadership teams running annual strategy or transformation offsites Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the seven shifts that separate business reinvention from incremental change Case material from Asian innovators and global category leaders that most leadership teams will not have seen A connected view of innovation, customer and marketing strategy as one growth discipline Specific direction on where to stop investing, alongside where to grow

Why organisations work with Neri Karra Sillaman Her eight-principle longevity framework in Pioneers (Wiley, 2025) is built on original academic research rather than case-study observation – it provides strategic leaders with a testable, applicable structure for long-term competitive positioning, not an anecdote collection. Pioneers was named Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025 and a Financial Times Readers’ Choice – the two most credible independent signals in management thinking, giving buyers a defensible basis for the engagement beyond the speaker bureau description. She runs a manufacturing business with 25 years of partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as both a B Corp and a Positive Luxury venture. The argument she makes about sustainable, values-driven longevity is one she has applied and revised under commercial pressure. Her Cambridge doctoral research used her own family business as a primary case study – an insider position on immigrant entrepreneurship that no other management scholar in this space holds, and which is the source of her most counterintuitive findings: that constraint, outsider perspective, and community cohesion function as durable competitive advantages. Her academic research has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, while her practitioner work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and the Financial Times – giving her credibility across board, executive, and academic settings. Biography highlights Professor of Practice and Entrepreneurship Expert at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford PhD from the University of Cambridge; doctoral research on born-global firms and immigrant entrepreneurship Author of Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs (Wiley, 2025) – Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025, Financial Times Readers’ Choice, and Next Big Idea Club Must Read Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and recipient of the Thinkers50 Radar Award 2025 Co-founder of Neri Karra, a luxury leather goods brand with 25+ years of manufacturing partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as a B Corp and Positive Luxury venture Founder of Moda Métiers, a fashion and luxury business consultancy Academic research published in Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Contributed articles to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company; covered by the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC, Newsweek, Monocle, Bloomberg, and Vogue Business Biography The question of why some companies survive for decades while others peak and fade is one of the most commercially consequential questions in strategy – and one of the least rigorously studied. Neri Karra Sillaman spent two decades approaching it through an unusual lens: the immigrant entrepreneurs behind brands including Chobani, WhatsApp, Duolingo, and PayPal, who built iconic and enduring businesses while starting with limited capital, no institutional networks, and no margin for failure. That research, rooted in her Cambridge doctoral work and developed across her faculty career at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, produced Pioneers (Wiley, 2025) – an eight-principle framework for business longevity drawn from the structural choices that explain immigrant entrepreneurial success. The book was named Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025 and a Financial Times Readers’ Choice. She holds roles as both Professor of Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship Expert at Oxford, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024. The practitioner dimension matters here. She is co-founder of Neri Karra, a luxury leather goods business with 25+ years of manufacturing partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as a B Corp and a Positive Luxury venture. The principles she applies in the boardroom and lecture hall – around purpose, constraint, community, and sustainable growth – are ones she has had to test, revise, and defend commercially over the same period she was researching them. Her writing appears in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Newsweek. Her academic research has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. She has contributed commentary to the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC, Monocle, Bloomberg, and Vogue Business, and has delivered TEDx talks on creativity, resilience, and entrepreneurship. Born in Bulgaria, she fled as a child refugee to Turkey before making her way through the University of Miami and Cambridge to the research that has defined her career – and which gives her a lived understanding of the very principles she argues make businesses last. Key speaking topics Business longevity and long-term competitive strategy Immigrant entrepreneurship and outsider advantage Sustainable growth and purpose-driven enterprise Fashion and luxury entrepreneurship Iconic brand building and brand durability Creativity and innovation in organisations Resilience as a strategic asset Ideal for CEOs, founders, and boards engaged in long-term strategy and business durability reviews Chief Strategy Officers and senior commercial teams seeking research-grounded frameworks for sustainable growth Fashion, luxury, and consumer goods executives navigating brand longevity, sustainability pressures, and global expansion Executive education and MBA audiences at business schools Audience outcomes A concrete eight-principle framework for what drives business longevity, applicable across sectors not limited to fashion or luxury A reframed understanding of constraint, outsider perspective, and community as structural competitive advantages rather than liabilities Specific strategic principles drawn from the companies behind Chobani, WhatsApp, Duolingo, and PayPal – examined analytically, not biographically Clearer language for board and leadership conversations about the gap between short-term performance and lasting competitive advantage A research-grounded basis for evaluating whether current strategic decisions are building for durability or optimising for the next cycle

Why organisations work with Mark Stevenson Two bestselling books, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and We Do Things Differently, that don’t theorise innovation but document it on the ground across four continents. Senior leaders get evidence of what already works, not opinions about what should. Operating experience to back up the advice. Stevenson is Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath, writing from inside a venture of the kind he asks boards to study. Cross-domain advisory range from the UK Ministry of Defence on peace and national security, to Médecins Sans Frontières on climate strategy, to GSMA on purpose. Few advisors hold credibility across that spread of rooms. A working stance on uncertainty for leaders who can no longer rely on prediction. The “reluctant futurist” framing names the discomfort buyers feel about boardroom forecasting and offers something more useful in its place. Stagecraft from a comedy and music background that makes serious material land. He gets a sceptical or hostile room engaged without softening the argument. Biography highlights Author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future (Profile Books, translated into 12 languages) and We Do Things Differently: The Outsiders Rebooting Our World Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath Co-founder of carbon removals firm CUR8 Global Ambassador for environmental law firm ClientEarth Former strategic advisor on peace, national security and climate change to the UK Ministry of Defence Has advised Médecins Sans Frontières (UK/Ireland) and the GSMA on long-term strategy Co-host of Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts podcast with comedian Jon Richardson and writer Ed Gillespie Biography Most boards still operate on a model of prediction. But the variables that shape strategy now move together and feed each other. Climate, geopolitics, technology and the failures of markets to price risk properly are not separate items on a register. They are aspects of the same problem. Mark Stevenson works the seam where senior leaders have to make confident decisions without the luxury of confident forecasts. His two books, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and the bestselling We Do Things Differently, are field reports rather than theory. Both document the people and ventures actually rebuilding broken systems in education, energy, healthcare, food and finance. His advisory practice spans governments, NGOs, investors and multinational organisations, and covers ground few in this category can match. He has been strategic advisor on peace, national security and climate change to the UK Ministry of Defence. He is ‘Futurist without Borders’ for Médecins Sans Frontières (UK/Ireland), strategic advisor to the GSMA, and Global Ambassador for environmental law firm ClientEarth. Alongside that, he is Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath, working on systems change from inside a venture rather than commenting on it from the gallery. Some of this is lived. Stevenson’s understanding of leadership under uncertainty is also shaped by his own recovery from Complex-PTSD, an experience of leading through profound personal disorientation. It is part of why his keynotes treat the emotional and relational dimensions of change as seriously as the strategic ones, and why he is unusually direct about what it costs leaders to hold composure when the ground moves. Key speaking topics Systems change and systems literacy Strategic foresight under deep uncertainty Innovation in failing systems Future of technology and society Climate, democracy and market risk as connected challenges Storytelling and stagecraft for serious material Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards Strategy, innovation and foresight functions Investors and capital allocators making long-horizon decisions Policy makers and public sector audiences Audience outcomes A way to look at climate, geopolitics, technology and trust in institutions as one problem rather than four Specific examples of innovators already rebuilding broken systems at scale, drawn from Stevenson’s own field research A working stance on uncertainty for leaders who can no longer rely on prediction-based planning A sharper view of where their organisation may be committing capital to outdated assumptions about how the world works

Why organisations work with Lucy Bullivant She has written the reference work on contemporary masterplanning. Masterplanning Futures (Routledge) won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, and her thinking influences design review panels that approve real projects in London. She bridges urban planning critique and operational place strategy. Most speakers in this space do one or the other; Bullivant publishes peer-reviewed research, curates major exhibitions, and runs a working consultancy commissioned by clients. Her work on deep retrofit, hyperlocal media, and co-design gives organisations a vocabulary for participatory urbanism that goes beyond consultation theatre and connects to measurable place outcomes. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA who has curated exhibitions for Roca London Gallery, the Shenzhen Biennale, and The Building Centre, evidence that her authority is recognised across professional, academic, and cultural institutions. Biography highlights PhD in adaptive planning, London Metropolitan University; MA Cultural History, Royal College of Art Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon FRIBA), elected 2010 Author of Masterplanning Futures (Routledge), winner of the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, 2014; and Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change (Routledge, 2026) Co-author of Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures (Routledge, 2015) with Thomas Ermacora Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Urbanista.org Curator of Urbanistas (Roca London Gallery), Remake-We Make (Shenzhen Biennale), and Phoenix Rising and Retrofit 23 (The Building Centre) Biography Masterplans rarely fail at the design stage. They fail at the point where ambition meets the politics, capital cycles, and community expectations of the neighbourhood or city the plan has to live inside. Bullivant’s career has been built around closing that gap, both as a critic of how cities get planned and as a practitioner working inside design review and consultancy. Masterplanning Futures, her Routledge book that won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year in 2014, set out a comparative reading of large-scale plans across cultures and remains a reference text for planning departments and architecture schools. Her follow-up, Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change, is published by Routledge in autumn 2026. Recoded City, co-authored with Thomas Ermacora, extended the argument toward participatory and bottom-up regeneration, the territory all cities have to operate in. Her credibility comes from working across the professional stack at once. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, founder of Urbanista.org, and a Design Council expert. She chaired the Lambeth Design Review Panel from 2019 to 2025, and has sat on review panels for Enfield and the London Legacy Development Corporation, the panels that shape which projects in London get approved and built. Her recent curatorial work, Phoenix Rising: Visions for Rebuilding Ukraine and Retrofit 23 at The Building Centre, and Urbanistas at Roca London Gallery, sits on the same axis: how to rebuild, retrofit, and reimagine cities under climate, conflict, and demographic pressures. The thread across her writing, consultancy, and curatorship is a single insistence, that liveability is the hard test of any urban strategy, and that planning systems still under-equip leaders and teams to meet it. Key speaking topics Adaptive planning and masterplanning Deep retrofit and adaptive reuse of existing building stock Liveable urbanism and place quality Co-design and participatory placemaking Design review and design governance Urban regeneration and post-conflict rebuilding Climate adaptation in city strategy Ideal for City and regional government leaders, planning directors, and chief design officers Property developers, masterplanning teams, and large-scale regeneration boards Architecture and engineering firm leadership commissioning urban strategy work Sustainability and ESG leads inside real estate, infrastructure, and built environment portfolios Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why masterplans succeed or fail, drawn from comparative international case material Specific principles for deep retrofit at scale rather than project-by-project A working vocabulary for participatory placemaking that goes beyond consultation A sharper view of how design review and governance shape long-term place quality Reference points from leading European, Asian, and post-conflict rebuilding programmes

Why organisations work with Shela Gobertina von Trapp She brings twenty years of sustainability operating experience to a story most people only know from the screen: founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership and a decade leading corporate sustainability at Office Depot across the US and Europe. She gives boards a usable frame for decisions whose payoff sits well beyond the current leadership’s tenure, which is the practical problem behind most long-term commitments. She is the one speaker who can connect a globally recognised family legacy directly to corporate questions of brand stewardship and long-term value, which makes the argument land rather than feel borrowed. Through the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she has worked inside the procurement standards and circular-economy roadmaps that large buyers actually use. Biography highlights Founder and President of Celebrity Legacy and co-founder of the Georg & Agathe Foundation, with the heritage project vonTrapp.org Founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP), the cross-industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030 Director of Global Relations at the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT environmental ecolabel Roughly a decade in corporate sustainability at Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, across the United States and Europe Master’s in Energy and Environmental Analysis from Boston University, with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Analysis and Policy awarded Magna Cum Laude Great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music Biography Most companies plan in quarters and report in years. The choices that shape a brand compound over decades, long after the leaders who made them have gone. Sustainability lives in that gap, judged on short cycles and paid for over much longer ones. Shela Gobertina von Trapp spent two decades working that gap from inside large organisations. At Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, she led corporate sustainability across the United States and Europe. At the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she became a founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership, an industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030. What makes her perspective unusual is its source. She is a great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and a granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music. She has spent years researching how that family held its identity through war, exile, and reinvention, and what allowed the name to outlast the people who carried it. She now puts the same question to companies in commercial terms: how does a brand earn the right to last? Drawing on the family archive and her sustainability work, she helps boards treat reputation and environmental commitment as assets that are stewarded across generations, the way the von Trapp name was. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability and the circular economy Long-term value and legacy thinking Brand longevity and stewardship Heritage and historical preservation Leadership lessons from the von Trapp family Values-based and purpose-driven leadership Sustainable procurement and electronics circularity Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG teams moving from reporting cycles to long-term substance Boards and family businesses weighing brand stewardship and succession across generations Heritage brands and organisations whose long-term reputation is itself a core asset Leadership and culture programmes wanting a substantive story about values that outlast their founders Audience outcomes A way to test today’s decisions against their consequences decades out, not just the current cycle A concrete account of how one family held its name through war and exile, and why that matters for institutions that want to last Sustainability reframed as a long-horizon asset that boards steward, illustrated with circular-economy examples from the electronics industry Reputation and brand understood as inheritances, built deliberately or eroded by default

Why organisations work with Louis De Jaeger He runs a working design practice, Commensalist, that has delivered regenerative projects from food forests and future-proof farms to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands, so the recommendations on stage are tied to built assets, not slideware. He frames regeneration as a financial proposition. Boards leave able to discuss soil, biodiversity and food systems as long-term yield and risk variables, not as CSR. He is one of the few sustainability voices who has also built infrastructure at scale, co-founding the Belgian night-train start-up Moonlight Express that merged into European Sleeper, which gives him direct credibility with leaders who care about how new green businesses actually get financed and operated. He brings a body of evidence from his own work: the FoodForest documentary, the book SOS: Save Our Soils, and over fifty opinion pieces in titles such as De Standaard, De Morgen and Knack. Audiences hear arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print and on screen. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Commensalist, a regenerative landscape architecture practice working on productive landscapes, regenerative farms and hospitality estates worldwide. Co-founder of the Food Forest Institute and of the ByeByeGrass biodiversity campaign in Belgium. Co-founder of Moonlight Express, the Belgian night-train start-up that merged into European Sleeper, now operating sleeper services from Brussels. Director of the award-winning documentary FoodForest (2022) and of the feature documentary Eat More Trees on the role of food forests in climate and food security. Author of SOS: Save Our Soils (2025) and of Design your own food forest, a technical reference on food forest design. Long-running opinion contributor to De Standaard, De Morgen, Knack, Knack Weekend and MO*, with more than fifty published columns since 2018. Biography Most boards now accept that climate, biodiversity and food security are material risks. Far fewer can describe what to actually do about the soil their supply chains depend on. Louis De Jaeger has spent the last decade closing that gap, designing the land and writing the case for it at the same time. He runs Commensalist, a Belgian landscape architecture practice that designs regenerative projects from productive farms and food forests to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands. The work is built, not theoretical. Clients come to him because they need an asset that will still hold value in thirty years under heat, drought and tighter nature regulation. Alongside the practice, he co-founded the Food Forest Institute and the ByeByeGrass campaign in Belgium, and made the documentaries FoodForest and Eat More Trees about the role of food forests in cooling the climate and rebuilding food systems. His 2025 book SOS: Save Our Soils sets out a direct argument that regenerative agriculture is the cheapest, most effective form of climate infrastructure available, and that current food and land policy is mispriced against it. What makes him useful in a leadership room is the second track. With Moonlight Express, the night-train start-up he co-founded that merged into European Sleeper, he has been on the inside of building a green infrastructure business from a deck to operating trains. So when he talks to investors and operators about regeneration as a long-term asset class, the argument carries the weight of someone who has had to finance, license and run one. Key speaking topics Regenerative agriculture and soil health Food forests and productive landscapes Climate, biodiversity and nature-based solutions Sustainable land use and food systems Regeneration as long-term asset strategy Sustainable hospitality and estate design Green infrastructure entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and investment committees pricing climate, nature and land-use risk into long-term portfolios CSOs, heads of sustainability and ESG leads moving beyond carbon accounting into soil, water and biodiversity Real estate, hospitality and agribusiness operators evaluating regenerative design for their own assets Founders and corporate venture teams backing food, agritech and green infrastructure businesses Audience outcomes A working definition of regeneration that boards can use, distinct from offsetting and from generic ESG language. A clearer view of which sustainability assumptions and assets are likely to age badly over the next decade. Practical reference points from built projects: food forests, regenerative farms, hospitality estates, biodiversity campaigns. A founder’s account of how a green infrastructure business actually gets financed and run, drawn from Moonlight Express and European Sleeper. A sharper internal narrative for connecting climate, food and land strategy to commercial decisions.

Why organisations work with Lucy Shepherd She has actually led teams through conditions where decisions carry physical consequence: a 50-day, 400km first-recorded crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, captured in Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild. Her credentials sit inside the institutions that historically define exploration: Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23, co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society, with a Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, that documents the thinking behind the expedition. She speaks credibly to mixed-team leadership in cultures and conditions she does not control, a closer analogy for senior leaders running global teams than the usual sports or military comparisons. She brings a current, on-camera profile, rather than a single-event story repeated for years. Each new expedition and broadcast updates the material she draws on. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, appointed at age 23. Co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society. Led the first recorded east-to-west traverse of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains, a 50-day, 400km expedition with an all-Indigenous team. Author of Into the Wild, published by Penguin Michael Joseph. Star and self-shooting subject of Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, a two-part series that aired in 2024. Described by The Times as «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers». Biography The first recorded east-to-west crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains took 50 days and roughly 400 kilometres on foot. Lucy Shepherd led it in 2021 with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, navigating jungle, river and uncharted terrain on outdated maps. Channel 4 turned the expedition into Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, broadcast in 2024. Shepherd’s credentials read like an older era of exploration. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23 and co-opted onto the council of the Scientific Exploration Society, the bodies that have historically vetted serious British expedition work. The Times has called her «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers,» a line that travels because it is uncharacteristically literal about what she does. The keynote material draws on a decade of leading and joining expeditions across Arctic plateaus, high mountains, deep jungle and desert. The themes that recur are practical: composure when conditions degrade, trust built across cultural and language boundaries, decisions made on incomplete information, and the discipline of carrying on when the plan no longer applies. Her Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, sets out the thinking behind those decisions in long form. Senior audiences tend to find the analogy useful because the field she works in is unforgiving in ways business rarely is. The leadership questions translate without softening, and the speaker bringing them has carried the consequences personally. Key speaking topics Expedition leadership in extreme environments Decision-making under physical and psychological pressure Leading mixed and cross-cultural teams Risk, preparation and the limits of planning Wilderness, biodiversity and environmental stewardship Resilience drawn from expedition fieldwork Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences seeking a substantive keynote on judgment under pressure Teams coming through restructure, sustained change, or operational shock who need a renewed sense of composure and trust Sustainability, ESG and conservation-themed audiences who want a credible field voice rather than a policy speaker All-hands and inspirational anchor slots where the standard sports or military keynote has worn thin Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what real decision-making under pressure looks like, told through a specific 50-day expedition rather than abstract framework. A more honest reading of risk, preparation and the point at which planning stops being useful. A practical model for building trust across a team when language, culture and authority are not stable. A renewed argument for protecting wilderness and biodiversity, made by someone who has spent time inside it.

Why organisations work with Claudia Bechstein A working chair for high-stakes technology and AI conversations, with the subject fluency to interrogate engineers, regulators and CEOs in the same panel without losing the room. Around 150 live appearances per year across IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival, Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit, which means she walks into a tech main stage already knowing the room and the operators in it. Bilingual delivery in German and English at the level required for a Bundesregierung digital summit and an English-language CEO panel on the same brief, with no drop in confidence between the two. Co-creator of the KI Palooza Festival, the Stuttgart AI platform for mid-market companies, which gives her a working view of where AI is actually being deployed below the FAANG and DAX 40 level. A trained business psychologist, so the moderation is built around how people answer under pressure, not around a presenter script. Biography highlights MSc in Business Psychology, FOM University of Applied Sciences Berlin and University of San Diego (2020). Co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart AI festival for mid-market companies. Moderates approximately 150 live events per year, in German and English, across congresses, fireside chats, press conferences and hybrid formats. Recurring chair for IAA Mobility, GreenTech Festival Berlin, Bitkom AI & Data Summit, the German Federal Government Digital Summit, ABB Robotics and the Lobster Data Hero Summit. Worked with Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Dell Technologies, Vodafone, Telekom, Volkswagen, Samsung, Hyundai, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, UBS, Julius Bär, Handelsblatt and ZDF. Investor in HealthTech and shareholder in a media production company. Biography The chair of a serious technology conference is doing real work. They are deciding which question gets asked, which answer gets pushed back on, and which CEO is allowed to retreat into talking points. Claudia Bechstein has built a fifteen-year career around that specific craft, in German and English, at the level of IAA Mobility, the GreenTech Festival, the Bitkom AI & Data Summit and the German Federal Government Digital Summit. Her route into the role is unusual. She trained as a business psychologist, completing an MSc at FOM Berlin and the University of San Diego in 2020, and the discipline shows in how she runs a panel. She is interested in how people answer under pressure, where they get vague, and where the room stops believing them. That is a different toolkit from broadcast presenting, and it is the reason she is booked repeatedly for technical panels where executives have rehearsed answers and operators have unrehearsed ones. The subject base is technology, AI, mobility and the energy transition. She is co-creator of KI Palooza, a Stuttgart festival built around how mid-market German companies actually deploy AI, and an active investor in HealthTech. The work for Bosch, Salesforce, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Dell, Vodafone, Telekom, ABB Robotics, Volvo and Hyundai is in the same territory: industrial, automotive, data, transformation. For organisations running an AI conference, a transformation summit or a board-level mobility conversation, the practical question is whether the chair can hold the room. Bechstein’s commercial proposition is that she has done so, in two languages, at roughly 150 events a year, for the German industrial economy and a growing list of international clients. Key speaking topics Conference and panel moderation for technology and AI events Artificial intelligence and digital transformation Future of mobility and the automotive industry Sustainability, climate and the energy transition Industry 4.0 and industrial transformation Innovation in mid-market and DAX companies Data and digitalisation HealthTech and FinTech Ideal for Conference organisers running technology, AI, mobility or sustainability summits who need a working chair, not a presenter DAX and mid-market communications and event leads commissioning bilingual (German and English) main-stage hosting Industry associations and federal bodies running policy-and-industry events where the chair has to credibly interrogate ministers and CEOs Boards and executive teams running internal AI, transformation or leadership conferences that include external operators and regulators Audience outcomes A conference programme that runs to time and reads as a strategic conversation, not a series of vendor pitches Panels where the senior speakers are pushed past their prepared answers without the room losing them Bilingual coverage of the same brief, in German and English, without a drop in pace or precision A working AI, mobility or sustainability discussion that the in-house team can use as source material after the event

Why organisations work with Anna Gumbau She arrives at the room already inside the file. Her day job is reporting on EU climate and energy policy for outlets including Euractiv, Energy Monitor, and FORESIGHT Climate and Energy, so panel guidance is editorial rather than scripted. She moves comfortably between Brussels institutions, industry associations, and consumer-side stakeholders, with named-client work for the European Commission, Eurelectric, SolarPower Europe, BEUC, and the European Committee of the Regions. She works in five languages, English, Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian, which makes her a single hire across pan-European events that would otherwise need swapped chairs. Her former role as Brussels correspondent for Carbon Pulse, covering the EU ETS and the Fit for 55 package, means she can chair sessions on carbon markets and Green Deal implementation without needing a translator into policy language. She runs The Green Light, a coaching initiative for women in climate and energy, which gives her a credible second register for women-in-leadership and inclusion sessions at energy-sector events. Biography highlights Brussels-based energy and climate journalist, with published work in Euractiv, Deutsche Welle, El Pais, Energy Monitor, FORESIGHT Climate and Energy, and Carbon Pulse. Former Brussels correspondent for Carbon Pulse on the EU ETS and Fit for 55, and former energy reporter at Interfax Global Energy Services in London. Member of the Moderating.EU roster and a listed moderator on Parliament Events for the 2024 and 2026 Circular Economy Forums. Moderation clients include the European Commission, European Committee of the Regions, EPP Group, Eurelectric, SolarPower Europe, BEUC, Volvo Cars, Booking.com, and EIT Raw Materials. Founder of The Green Light, a coaching initiative supporting women working in climate and energy. Working languages: English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian. Biography EU climate and energy policy now sets the operating envelope for entire industries, from power generation to mobility to consumer goods, and the events built around it have become harder to chair well. The room is mixed: Commission officials, industry associations, NGOs, and corporate sustainability leads, each with their own vocabulary and their own red lines. Holding that conversation requires a chair who can read the politics of the file in real time. That is the working surface Anna Gumbau has spent her journalism career on. As a freelance reporter she has written for Euractiv, Deutsche Welle, El Pais, Energy Monitor, FORESIGHT Climate and Energy, and Carbon Pulse, where she was Brussels correspondent covering the EU Emissions Trading System and the Fit for 55 package. Before that she reported on energy from London with Interfax Global Energy Services. The reporting is the source material she moderates from, not a credential separate from it. Her client list reflects that positioning. Sessions for the European Commission, the European Committee of the Regions, the EPP Group, Eurelectric, SolarPower Europe, BEUC, Volvo Cars, Booking.com, and EIT Raw Materials cover the full institutional and industry span of the EU energy and circular economy debate. The Parliament Magazine has used her as moderator for its Circular Economy Forum in both 2024 and 2026. A second strand sits alongside the policy work. Through The Green Light, an initiative she founded for women in climate and energy, she coaches and mentors women working in those sectors, and that lens carries into chair work on women’s leadership and inclusion in industry events. She works in English, Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian, which is what allows a single chair across the pan-European programme rather than a different name on each language track. Key speaking topics Energy transition and EU climate policy Circular economy and resource policy European Green Deal implementation Carbon markets and the EU Emissions Trading System Sustainability in industry and consumer sectors Women in climate and energy leadership Ideal for Corporate sustainability, public affairs, and regulatory affairs teams hosting EU-facing events Industry associations and trade bodies in power, mobility, and raw materials running policy conferences EU institutions, agencies, and political groups commissioning panels, forums, and award ceremonies Multilingual pan-European corporate events that need a single chair across English, Spanish, French, and Italian Audience outcomes A panel where the contested points in the file are surfaced and pressure-tested, not deferred Clearer separation between policy direction, industry positioning, and unresolved political risk on the topic Time held, speakers balanced, and questions from the floor handled inside a defined run order A read on how the Brussels conversation on the session topic is moving, from someone reporting on it day to day

Why organisations work with Christina Yan Zhang She co-writes the UN ITU standards her clients will eventually be measured against. Her CitiVerse evaluation framework spans 130 indicators across 14 domains, with input from more than 30 global authorities. She has converted that standards work into operational strategy for cities, including Tampere’s Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy adopted as a UN resource for governments. Her China innovation insight is grounded in direct operating experience, not commentary. As QS China Director from 2013 to 2020, she sat across hundreds of Chinese universities, national labs and science parks during the 13th Five-Year Plan. She holds advisory positions across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board, giving her unusually direct line of sight into where AI policy is heading. She was named in the 100 Global Women in AI 2025 list at Davos and chaired the jury of the 2024 Metaverse Entertainment World Awards under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco. Biography highlights CEO, The Metaverse Institute Vice Chair, UN ITU Metaverse Working Group on Sustainability, Accessibility and Inclusion Co-Chair, UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse Author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse China Director, QS World University Rankings, 2013 to 2020 100 Global Women in AI 2025 (announced at Davos) Biography The rules for AI in cities, public services and immersive environments are being written right now, mostly inside the UN ITU. Christina Yan Zhang is one of the people writing them. As Co-Chair of the UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse, she leads the evaluation framework that 30 plus global authorities have shaped and that hundreds of cities are expected to align to before 2030. That standards work feeds directly into operational strategy. Her team at The Metaverse Institute produced Tampere Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy commissioned by a city government and subsequently published by the UN as a resource for other administrations. She is also the author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse, which set out an 8-level entry framework for governments and operators moving into virtual environments. She arrived at this work through an unusual route. Her PhD in 2012 was on digital twin applications for the construction industry, well before the term entered mainstream board conversations. Between 2013 and 2020 she was China Director for QS World University Rankings, building the firm’s China operation from scratch and sitting close to the universities, science parks and national labs that drove the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan in research and innovation. She now advises across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board. The throughline is consistent: where AI, digital twins and virtual environments meet public infrastructure, she has been writing the standards before most boards have read them. Key speaking topics AI governance and the UN CitiVerse standards Digital twins for cities and critical infrastructure Responsible deployment of virtual environments People-centred AI strategy for governments and operators China’s innovation system and research capacity Future of work in AI-enabled cities Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting AI, digital and immersive technology strategy Government and city leadership teams designing smart city or CitiVerse roadmaps Heads of innovation, digital and infrastructure inside regulated industries Investors and operators positioning capital around AI-powered urban and built-environment plays Audience outcomes A working map of where UN ITU standards on AI and the CitiVerse are heading, and what that means for their own roadmap A clearer view of how digital twins move from technical pilot to citywide operating system Direct insight into China’s innovation engine from someone who operated inside it for seven years A framework for testing whether their current AI and virtual-environment plans will hold up against emerging international standards

Why organisations work with Kai Gondlach Brings academic foresight methodology (Master of Arts in Future Studies, Freie Universitat Berlin) into rooms that usually receive trend talks. The difference shows in how scenarios are constructed, not just how they are presented. Co-editor of Arbeitswelt und KI 2030, the Springer Gabler reference volume that pulled together 78 contributors on AI and the world of work. Few keynote speakers on AI sit on a publication of comparable academic weight in the German-speaking market. Built the scientific methodology behind a major commercial trend-research institute (2b AHEAD) before founding PROFORE. Boards get a foresight practitioner, not a generalist commentator. Works in both German and English, with sustained client traction in regulated sectors, insurance, mobility, energy, public administration, where foresight needs to survive contact with risk and compliance teams. Biography highlights Master of Arts in Future Studies, Freie Universitat Berlin; bachelor degrees in Sociology and Political/Administrative Sciences from Universitat Potsdam. Founder and Managing Director, PROFORE Gesellschaft fur Zukunft mbH, Leipzig. Co-editor of Arbeitswelt und KI 2030 (Springer Gabler), with Inka Knappertsbusch. Author and editor of further volumes including KI Jetzt! and Regenerative Zukunfte und kunstliche Intelligenz. Former Senior Research Fellow at 2b AHEAD ThinkTank, where he established the institute’s scientific foresight methodology. Member of the World Futures Studies Federation; founding member of the German Master of Future Science alumni network. Biography Strategic foresight is the discipline most often demanded and least often supplied at board level. Companies ask for a view of the next decade and receive a trend list. Kai Gondlach trained in the academic version of the discipline at Freie Universitat Berlin, where he completed the Master of Arts in Future Studies, before bringing that methodology into commercial practice. His four years as Senior Research Fellow at 2b AHEAD ThinkTank in Leipzig were spent translating academic foresight into work that industrial clients could act on. He built the scientific basis for the institute’s trend studies, then left in 2019 to found PROFORE, his own Leipzig-based foresight institute. The shift was deliberate. Clients increasingly wanted long-range scenarios that held up under board scrutiny, not headline trends. His publishing record sits on Springer Gabler. Arbeitswelt und KI 2030, co-edited with Inka Knappertsbusch, gathered 78 contributors across research and industry on how AI reshapes the structure of work; a second edition followed in 2024. KI Jetzt! and the Regenerative Zukunfte und kunstliche Intelligenz volumes extend the same method into operational AI and into the ecological and social dimensions of the technology. Gondlach is a member of the World Futures Studies Federation and a founding member of the German Master of Future Science alumni network. Boards in insurance, mobility, energy, and public administration use him when the question is not whether AI matters, but how to plan capital, talent, and operating model around a future that resists single-point forecasting. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and scenario planning Artificial intelligence in the world of work Future of work and workforce transformation Industry 5.0 and regenerative futures Mobility, energy and sustainability to 2050 Long-range megatrends for boards and executives Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting long-range AI and workforce strategy CHROs and transformation leads redesigning the workforce around AI capability CSOs and corporate strategy teams in regulated sectors (insurance, mobility, energy, public administration) Innovation and R&D leadership briefing senior stakeholders on long-horizon scenarios Audience outcomes A working method for thinking about long-range futures, not a memorable trend list Sharper distinction between trends, scenarios, and forecasts in their own strategy conversations A defensible language for talking about AI with boards that resists hype on either side Concrete reference points from German-speaking industry on how AI is restructuring the world of work

Why organisations work with Michelle Bachelet Has personally led major institutional reform inside a G20 economy, including pension overhaul, tax reform, and the creation of Chile’s Ministry of Women and Gender Equality. Held the UN’s senior human rights office at the moment human rights frameworks became binding inputs into corporate due diligence and sanctions risk. Built UN Women from the founding stage as its first Executive Director, which gives her a credible voice on gender equality as an institutional discipline. Brings personal moral authority to questions of democratic resilience: imprisoned and tortured under the Pinochet dictatorship, she returned from exile to become the first woman elected President of the country that had jailed her. Currently nominated as a candidate for the next UN Secretary-General, which keeps her active at the centre of debates on multilateralism and global governance. Biography highlights Twice elected President of Chile (2006-2010 and 2014-2018), the country’s first and only woman in the role. Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2018 to 2022. First Executive Director of UN Women, established 2010. First woman Defense Minister of Chile and of Latin America. Previously Chile’s Minister of Health. Recipient of the 2024 Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. Distinguished Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics. Biography Human rights frameworks have moved from political commentary into the substance of investor due diligence and regulatory scrutiny. Bachelet has been at the centre of that shift. She served two terms as President of Chile, then four years as the seventh United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her two presidencies delivered structural reform of a kind few G20 leaders attempt. Pension overhaul, tax reform, equal pay legislation, and Chile’s Civil Union Act for same-sex couples were each politically expensive inside a centre-right legislative environment. Her administrations also established the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, the National Institute for Human Rights, and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Between her presidential terms she served as the first Executive Director of UN Women, building the agency’s mandate from the founding stage. She returned to the United Nations in 2018 as High Commissioner for Human Rights under António Guterres, leading global human rights monitoring across country situations from Myanmar to Venezuela. Earlier in her career she had been the first woman to serve as Defense Minister of Chile and of Latin America, and Minister of Health before that. In 2018 she founded Horizonte Ciudadano, a civic foundation working on territorial democracy and climate adaptation in Chile. She is a Distinguished Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics and the recipient of the 2024 Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. In February 2026 she was nominated by Brazil and Mexico as a candidate to succeed António Guterres as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and political risk Democratic governance and institutional resilience Global human rights frameworks in business and policy Multilateralism and the future of the United Nations Gender equality and women’s leadership Social protection and public-sector reform Civil-military relations Ideal for Boards and CEOs facing political risk and democratic instability in their operating markets CHROs and ESG leaders integrating human rights and gender frameworks into corporate practice Governments, multilateral institutions, and development finance leaders working on social policy reform Sovereign and institutional investors with long-dated political and governance exposure Audience outcomes A first-hand reading of how political risk plays out inside a country’s executive The mechanics of how human rights frameworks now shape corporate due diligence and sanctions exposure A frank assessment of where multilateral institutions are working and where they are failing A perspective on gender equality as institutional discipline, drawn from building UN Women from the founding stage The case for democratic resilience, made by someone who returned from exile to be elected president of the country that had imprisoned her