Climate Action and Sustainability speakers

Why organisations work with Jochen Zeitz He originated the Environmental Profit & Loss Account at PUMA – the first methodology to assign monetary values to environmental impact across a full corporate supply chain. The UK government cited it in its 2011 Natural Environment White Paper as a best-practice case in sustainable business. He has led turnarounds at three global brands – PUMA, Kering, and Harley-Davidson – as the accountable executive. The sustainability work he is known for was built under genuine commercial pressure, not alongside it. His commercial record – approximately $4 billion in annual PUMA revenue, around 4,000% share price growth, and three Financial Times Strategist of the Year honours – separates his sustainability argument from advocacy. Boards engage with this material as strategy. His 4Cs framework – conservation, community, culture, commerce – is a tested model for aligning environmental accountability with long-term commercial viability, embedded in a live enterprise across 50,000 acres of wildlife habitat in Kenya. As co-founder of The B Team with Sir Richard Branson – a coalition of 24 global business leaders including Paul Polman and Mo Ibrahim – he has been central to building the most credible executive-led case for redefining the corporate bottom line. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of PUMA for 18 years (1993-2011); the youngest CEO in German history to head a publicly listed company, appointed at age 30 Led PUMA from near-bankruptcy to approximately $4 billion in annual revenue, with share price growth of approximately 4,000% Conceived and launched the Environmental Profit & Loss Account at PUMA (2011) – the first monetary valuation of environmental impact across a corporate supply chain; cited as a best-practice case in the UK government’s Natural Environment White Paper Chairman of Kering’s Sustainable Development Committee and CSO of Kering’s Sport & Lifestyle division; President, CEO and Chairman of Harley-Davidson (2020-2025) Financial Times Strategist of the Year three times; Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit (2004); ZSL Conservation Fellow; Honorary Warden of Kenya Co-author of The Breakthrough Challenge (with John Elkington, 2014) and The Manager and the Monk (2012, published in 15 languages); co-founder of The B Team with Sir Richard Branson and of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa Biography Until 2011, no major corporation had put a monetary value on what it cost the natural world. PUMA changed that. Jochen Zeitz conceived the Environmental Profit & Loss Account – the first framework to assign monetary values to environmental impact across a full corporate supply chain. It quantified PUMA’s 2010 footprint at €145 million and established a commercial language for environmental accountability that organisations across multiple sectors have since adapted. The EP&L came out of 18 years as PUMA’s CEO – a tenure that began when Zeitz was 30 and the company was near bankruptcy. He became the youngest CEO in German history to head a public company. Under his leadership, PUMA grew annual revenue to approximately $4 billion and share price by around 4,000%. That commercial track record is what makes the sustainability framework credible: it was built not alongside a turnaround, but as part of one. At Kering, Zeitz chaired the Sustainable Development Committee and served as CSO of the Sport & Lifestyle division, embedding the same approach across a portfolio of global luxury brands. He became President, CEO and Chairman of Harley-Davidson in 2020, leading the Rewire and Hardwire strategic resets that refocused the company on its most profitable segments and strongest brand identity. He retired from Harley-Davidson in October 2025. Beyond his executive roles, Zeitz co-founded The B Team with Sir Richard Branson, convening global business leaders to advance a redefined model of corporate accountability. He co-authored The Breakthrough Challenge (with John Elkington, 2014) and The Manager and the Monk (2012, published in 15 languages). The Financial Times has named him Strategist of the Year three times. His 4Cs framework – linking conservation, community, culture and commerce – underpins the Zeitz Foundation’s work across 50,000 acres of wildlife habitat in Kenya. Key speaking topics Environmental Profit and Loss accounting Corporate turnaround and brand transformation ESG integration into commercial strategy Responsible capitalism and redefined value creation Conservation-commerce models and the 4Cs framework Purpose-driven corporate governance Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams navigating ESG integration into commercial strategy Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building environmental measurement frameworks Corporate strategy and transformation teams leading large-scale brand or business model renewal Investor forums and governance audiences focused on long-term value creation and accountability Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how environmental impact can be quantified in commercial terms, using the EP&L as a working reference Practical perspective on the conditions under which sustainability can be embedded into core strategy rather than treated as a reporting obligation A framework for aligning conservation, community, culture and commerce as mutually reinforcing business priorities Insight into leading corporate turnarounds that require simultaneous commercial discipline and long-term accountability Grounded context for what responsible capitalism means at board level, drawn from governance experience across three major global brands

Why organisations work with Johan Rockstrom He is the originator, not the explainer, of the framework that now sits beneath the TNFD, Science Based Targets and a growing share of corporate climate disclosure. Organisations come to him for the source, not the summary. He connects nine specific Earth systems, from climate to freshwater to biogeochemical flows, to commercial decisions on capital, supply chain and product. Boards leave with a map of which limits actually constrain their business. He carries scientific authority that holds in regulator and investor rooms. The 2024 Tyler Prize, the 2009 Nature paper and the directorship of the Potsdam Institute mean his framing survives external scrutiny. He has spent two decades inside the policy process at Davos, the Club of Rome and UN climate negotiations. He speaks to executives in their language about decisions, trade-offs and time horizons, not in the language of an academic seminar. Biography highlights Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), since 2018 Professor of Earth System Science, University of Potsdam Lead author, “A safe operating space for humanity,” Nature, 2009 Co-founder and former Director, Stockholm Resilience Centre (2004 to 2018) 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; German Environmental Prize (2015); International Cosmos Prize (2015); Hillary Laureate (2017); Knight of the Legion of Honour (2016) Co-author, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (2022), the report to the Club of Rome marking 50 years since Limits to Growth Biography In 2009, a paper in Nature titled “A safe operating space for humanity” set out nine biophysical systems that keep the planet in the conditions civilisation grew up in. Johan Rockstrom led the team of 28 international scientists behind it. The framework, planetary boundaries, has since become the scientific foundation for the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, the Science Based Targets Network and a widening set of corporate and regulatory climate frameworks. That work is now the working definition of environmental risk in serious institutions. Boards, central banks and investors increasingly need a defensible answer to the question of where the limits actually lie, and his framework supplies it. The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often called the Nobel for the environment, recognised the framework as the field-defining contribution. He directs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the leading climate science institutions in Europe, and holds the chair in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Before Potsdam, he co-founded and ran the Stockholm Resilience Centre for fourteen years. He is a co-author of Earth for All, the 2022 report to the Club of Rome that revisits Limits to Growth fifty years on with concrete economic and policy turnarounds. The room he tends to be most useful in is the one where strategy meets disclosure: where leadership has to decide which targets to commit to, which trade-offs to accept and how to justify both to investors and regulators. He is unusually direct about the scale of action required and equally direct about what is still possible inside that window. Key speaking topics Planetary boundaries and Earth system risk Climate tipping points and resilience The science behind ESG, TNFD and Science Based Targets Food, land and water systems within planetary limits Net zero and the energy transition Sustainable economic transformation and the Earth for All agenda Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting climate, nature and ESG strategy under tightening disclosure regimes CSOs, Chief Risk Officers and Chief Sustainability Officers building defensible science-based targets Investors, banks and asset managers integrating climate and nature risk into capital allocation Government, multilateral and policy audiences working on energy, food and land system transitions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the nine planetary boundaries and which ones materially affect their sector A clearer view of how regulatory frameworks (TNFD, SBTN, EU disclosure) trace back to the underlying science A direct read on where global climate and nature trajectories sit relative to scientific safe limits Sharper questions for their own strategy and risk teams about which limits the business actually operates inside A grounded sense of what credible action looks like at the scale and pace the science requires

Why organisations work with Jonathon Porritt Three decades inside the rooms where government, business, and civil society negotiate climate policy, including nine years chairing the UK Sustainable Development Commission for three prime ministers. Co-founder of Forum for the Future, the consultancy that has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE boards on serious sustainability strategy rather than reporting compliance. Author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, a book that argues capitalism is the only viable vehicle for sustainability and sets out what reshaping it actually demands; cited as a foundational text in corporate sustainability curricula. Independence from any single corporate paymaster; willingness to tell senior teams what their own sustainability advisors will not. A long view that connects climate, biodiversity, inequality, and population; useful for boards trying to understand how environmental risks compound across a strategic horizon. Biography highlights Co-founder and Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1996-2023), one of the world’s leading sustainability charities, with offices in the UK, US, India, and Southeast Asia. Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, 2000-2009, advising the Blair and Brown governments on environmental policy. Director of Friends of the Earth (UK), 1984-1990; former Co-Chair of the UK Green Party. Co-founder of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, delivered through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Author of Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), The World We Made (Phaidon, 2013), and Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan, 2005). CBE for services to environmental protection (2000); Chancellor of Keele University, 2012-2022. Biography The corporate climate agenda has run into its first credibility test. A decade of net-zero pledges, ESG reporting, and sustainability committees has not closed the gap between what boards say and what their capital plans deliver. Porritt has spent his working life inside that gap. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996 with Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins, and ran it as Founder Director for nearly thirty years. Forum has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE-100 boards on the harder questions of business model change, not the softer ones of disclosure. Before that, he ran Friends of the Earth (UK) through the late 1980s and co-chaired the Green Party. For nine years he chaired the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising Tony Blair and Gordon Brown directly. He also co-founded the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, now part of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where senior executives go to interrogate their own sustainability strategies. Few people have spent as much time on both sides of that table. His books map the argument. Capitalism as if the World Matters made the case that capitalism is the only viable engine for a sustainable future, and set out the reforms that case requires. The World We Made imagined 2050 as if those reforms had landed. Hope in Hell, written into the climate emergency, is sharper and more impatient. Read together, they explain why he is taken seriously by chief executives and climate activists alike, even when he is telling each of them something they would rather not hear. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy and ESG governance Climate risk and the energy transition Reforming capitalism for environmental limits Net-zero credibility and corporate accountability Long-term scenario planning and systems change Biodiversity, nature, and business Intergenerational responsibility and the next decade Ideal for Board directors and CEOs reviewing the credibility of their net-zero and ESG commitments Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building serious, board-ready strategy Investor relations and capital allocation teams under increasing scrutiny on transition planning Strategy and risk leaders trying to integrate climate and biodiversity into long-range planning Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their own organisation’s climate strategy is exposed to investor, regulator, and employee scrutiny A working understanding of what credible, board-level sustainability looks like beyond reporting compliance A sharper sense of how climate, biodiversity, inequality, and capital allocation compound as connected risks Direct, unflattering challenge from someone with no commercial interest in their answer

Why organisations work with Jo Fairley She built the first Fairtrade-marked product in the UK, in 1994, when ethical sourcing was a fringe argument rather than a procurement requirement. Few founders can speak to that arc with first-hand authority. She has run the full lifecycle most founders never see: kitchen-table launch, category creation, sale to a FTSE confectioner, and a continued ambassadorial role inside the acquirer. That makes her credible on what survives an acquisition and what does not. Beyond Green & Black’s she has built and exited multiple businesses, including Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre wellbeing facility, and The Perfume Society. The portfolio breadth gives her a useful pattern view across categories. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Kingston University and the Shackleton Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for leadership and citizenship. Recognition from a serious geographical body, not a marketing prize. Biography highlights Co-founder of Green & Black’s organic chocolate, 1991, with Craig Sams. Created Maya Gold, the first product to carry the UK Fairtrade Mark, in March 1994. Sold Green & Black’s to Cadbury in 2005; retained the role of Chocolate Ambassador. UK’s youngest-ever magazine editor at 23, editing Look Now and then Honey. Founder of Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre, and The Perfume Society. Honorary Doctorate in Business Studies, Kingston University; Shackleton Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Co-author of the Beauty Bible series and The Perfume Bible; long-running contributor to The Times, YOU Magazine and the Telegraph. Biography The first product in the UK ever to carry the Fairtrade Mark was a chocolate bar called Maya Gold. It launched in 1994, three years after Jo Fairley and Craig Sams started Green & Black’s at their kitchen table. At that point, ethical sourcing was a niche conviction. Today it is a procurement standard in most large grocers. Fairley sat at the start of that shift and helped force it. Green & Black’s grew into a category-defining brand and was acquired by Cadbury in 2005. Fairley stayed on as Chocolate Ambassador, which gave her an unusual vantage point: a founder watching her values-led business absorbed into a confectionery giant, and learning in real time which parts of the brand promise survived contact with corporate scale. Few founders speak with that experience attached. Her career started in publishing, where she became the UK’s youngest-ever magazine editor at 23, editing Look Now and then Honey. The journalist’s instinct is still visible in the work: a focus on what consumers actually want to be told, and a refusal to let mission language do the work that products and pricing have to do. Subsequent ventures, including Judges Bakery, The Wellington Centre wellbeing facility in Hastings, and The Perfume Society, all follow the same pattern of category authorship rather than category entry. Recognition has come from serious bodies, not marketing prizes. An Honorary Doctorate in Business Studies from Kingston University. The Shackleton Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for leadership and citizenship. WorldAware and Soil Association awards across her businesses. The track record is not one of a single early hit; it is a thirty-year argument that values-led brands can be built, scaled, and sold without losing their reason to exist. Key speaking topics Ethical brand building Entrepreneurship and category creation Sustainability and Fairtrade in consumer business Founder experience through acquisition and post-acquisition life Women in entrepreneurship Brand consumer insight Portfolio entrepreneurship Ideal for CEOs and founders of consumer businesses navigating purpose, pricing and scale. Marketing and brand directors building ethical or values-led product lines. Sustainability and procurement leads working on Fairtrade, organic and ethical sourcing. Women’s leadership networks and entrepreneurship audiences. Audience outcomes A practical view of how a values-led brand survives an acquisition by a multinational. A first-hand account of how the UK’s first Fairtrade product reached supermarket shelves and what it took to keep it there. A clearer read on the difference between purpose as marketing language and purpose as supply chain decision. Specific lessons on category creation and the founder mindset across multiple businesses.

Why organisations work with Juan Verde Holds first-hand US trade policy experience across three administrations (Clinton, Obama, Biden), including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia with commercial responsibility for 52 countries. Operates fluently on both sides of the Atlantic, giving executives a practical read on how US and European policy environments shape the same investment decision differently. Frames sustainability as a commercial question, showing boards how climate strategy connects to capital access, pricing power, regulatory positioning, and export competitiveness. Brings live board-level context from HISPASAT and the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors, alongside advisory work with Google, Cisco, Banco Santander, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Currently serves on the President’s Export Council under President Biden, the White House advisory body whose members include the chief executives of Ford, Disney, Citibank, and Starbucks. Biography highlights Member of the President’s Export Council, the White House’s principal advisory committee on international trade and US competitiveness. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the US Department of Commerce, with commercial policy responsibility across 52 countries. Earlier international trade roles at the US Department of Commerce during the Clinton Administration. Founder and President of the Advanced Leadership Foundation, which has trained over 10,000 emerging green leaders across more than 10 countries. Board of Directors at HISPASAT, the satellite communications operator for Spain, Portugal, and Latin America; member of the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors. Master’s in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; BA in Political Science and International Relations, Boston University. Biography Trade policy used to move slowly enough that executives could treat it as weather. That no longer holds. Tariff regimes, export controls, and climate-linked regulation now reshape commercial plans in quarters, not decades, and the decisions are made in rooms Juan Verde has spent three decades working in. Appointed by President Obama in 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the US Department of Commerce, with commercial policy responsibility across 52 countries. Under the Clinton Administration he held earlier international trade roles at Commerce. In 2023 President Biden appointed him to the President’s Export Council, the White House’s principal advisory committee on trade competitiveness, alongside the chief executives of companies including Ford, Disney, Citibank, and Starbucks. The through-line in his commercial work is a specific argument about sustainability. He treats climate action as a commercial question, which is the organising idea of his Profit Meets Planet keynote series on corporate climate, geopolitical arbitrage, and leading through disruption. That thesis draws on co-founding Climate Reality Project chapters with Al Gore in Spain and Argentina, and on advisory engagements through Alamo Solutions with Google, Cisco, Banco Santander, and the Inter-American Development Bank. His doctoral research at Universidad Camilo José Cela, on green economy strategies for small island nations, gives the argument academic grounding. For senior leaders, this translates into a speaker who can move between a boardroom question about European market entry and a policy question about US trade posture without losing commercial specificity. He sits on the Board of Directors of HISPASAT, the satellite communications operator for Spain, Portugal and Latin America, and on the Airbus Foundation Board of Advisors. His keynote platforms include the World Economic Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, the World Bank, and successive UN Climate Conferences, most recently COP25 and COP26. Key speaking topics International trade policy and market access Transatlantic economic relations Sustainability as commercial advantage Foreign direct investment and green export strategy Geopolitical risk for global businesses Public-private collaboration in international markets Ideal for Boards and CEOs planning international expansion or transatlantic market entry Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads connecting climate commitments to growth strategy Investment attraction agencies, trade bodies, and government ministers Corporate delegations at policy summits, sustainability events, and international conferences Audience outcomes How Washington and Brussels are reshaping what corporate sustainability commitments actually cost in commercial terms Why climate strategy should be treated as an export competitiveness question, with examples drawn from specific national markets Where the next flows of green foreign direct investment are likely to move, and what that means for growth planning Language that links trade policy shifts to board-level decisions on capital allocation and market entry

Why organisations work with Juliet Mann Two decades anchoring live business news on CNN, CNBC, Sky News, Reuters, TRT World and CGTN Europe, which means she can chair a senior panel without rehearsal scaffolding and recover any conversation that starts to slide. A working interviewer’s instinct built on direct exchanges with EU policymakers, with CEOs at Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge, and with figures including Sir James Dyson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Comfortable across the editorial range a serious corporate programme actually demands: macroeconomics, geopolitics, sustainability, digital and entrepreneurship, rather than a single specialism that limits the brief. Current host of CGTN Europe’s The Agenda, a weekly current affairs talk show, which keeps her in daily practice with the format most conferences are trying to emulate on stage. Bilingual in English and French, which matters for pan-European audiences, multinational client events and continental press engagements. Biography highlights Host of The Agenda, CGTN Europe’s weekly current affairs talk show. Former anchor and correspondent for CNN’s Marketplace Europe, the network’s weekly European business programme. Newsroom postings with CNBC, Sky News, TRT World and Reuters in London, Paris, New York and Frankfurt. Interview credits include Sir James Dyson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (for the BBC), David Beckham (during London’s successful 2012 Olympic bid), and CEOs of Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge. Corporate broadcast credits with EY TV and HSBC TV; podcast A Week in my Flexible Working Life; freelance features for The Daily Telegraph and Economia. Politics degree, University of Bristol; works in English and French. Biography Live business television is the most exposed form of moderation there is. The anchor has to read an executive in real time, hold a line through interruptions, and translate a balance sheet, a geopolitical risk and a customer story into one coherent conversation, on air, with no edit. That is the practice Juliet Mann has been in for more than two decades. She has anchored from the London, Paris, New York and Frankfurt newsrooms of CNBC, CNN, Sky News, TRT World and Reuters. At CNN’s Marketplace Europe she sat opposite EU policymakers and the chief executives of Nestle, L’Oreal, Geox and Lafarge. At Sky News she interviewed David Beckham the morning London won the 2012 Olympics and rode the last transatlantic Concorde. For the BBC she interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Today she hosts The Agenda, CGTN Europe’s weekly current affairs programme, where the brief is to take a single international story, build a panel around it and keep the conversation tight enough to publish. That is the working repertoire she brings to the corporate stage: chairing a CEO interview, moderating a board-level panel on growth or sustainability, anchoring an awards ceremony, hosting a Brussels policy roundtable. She works in English and French. She prepares like a journalist, not like a host-for-hire, which is the difference clients notice in the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and moderation Executive interviews and on-stage CEO conversations Awards ceremonies and corporate compering Panel moderation on business, sustainability and entrepreneurship European policy and EU-facing discussion forums Bilingual English and French event hosting Ideal for Corporate conferences, AGMs and customer summits that need an experienced live business anchor in the chair. Awards ceremonies and gala dinners where presence and pace decide the evening. Board-level panels and CEO fireside formats on sustainability, growth, geopolitics or digital. Pan-European events and Brussels policy forums requiring bilingual English and French hosting. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time and lands its key messages. Executive interviews that produce substantive, quotable answers rather than rehearsed lines. Panels that stay on the topic the audience came to hear, with each contributor properly drawn in. A professional broadcast register on stage, suitable for filmed content and post-event clips.

Why organisations work with K D Adamson She has named and framed the shift. Her concept of “nobleization” – the argument that the next phase of business is not globalisation but morally accountable, purpose-led value creation – gives leadership teams a precise, shareable thesis rather than a trend briefing. She challenges the techno-optimist default from a position of intellectual rigour. When AI, automation and digital transformation dominate the conversation, Adamson’s argument that tomorrow is a value problem, not a technology problem reframes the strategic question at board level. This is a harder case to make but her broadcast record on BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN and the Financial Times confirms it holds up under interrogation. Her “Seismotectonic” model gives leaders a practical foresight tool, not just a perspective. The three-movement framework of what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, what appears not to change at all is actionable in strategic planning contexts and transfers directly from a keynote into workshop and executive briefing formats. Her client base spans sectors where the future-of-value argument has immediate strategic urgency including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, and PwC, which gives her the commercial credibility to speak to mixed leadership audiences without being narrowed to a single industry vertical. Her ecocentrist positioning is analytically distinct. Placing ecological systems rather than human enterprise at the centre of value creation is not rhetorical positioning. It is the foundation of her ESG and circular economy arguments, and it produces conclusions that differ meaningfully from those of speakers whose sustainability work begins and ends with reporting frameworks. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO, Futurenautics Group; former Futurist, The Futures Agency Author of Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), the foundational foresight text on digital transformation in the shipping and maritime industry Broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, Financial Times, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, and BBC R4 Today Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts; stated member of Chatham House, The Aristotelian Society, the Society of Antiquaries, CERN Open Quantum Institute, and the International Society for the Circular Economy Global client roster includes Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, PwC, Deloitte, Capgemini, Rolls-Royce, Vodafone, Oracle, and Pfizer Biography The thesis K D Adamson has built over two decades is a direct challenge to the most widely held corporate assumption about the future: that it is, above all, a technology problem. In a landscape where most foresight is organised around what AI, automation, or quantum computing will do to a given industry, Adamson argues that what actually determines where organisations end up is what they believe about value, about purpose, and about who business is ultimately for. Her concept of “nobleization” names this argument precisely. Where globalisation provided the operating logic of the late twentieth century, Adamson contends that the defining shift of the current era is from a global business to a noble one, where ESG, the circular economy, and purpose-led strategy are not peripheral compliance exercises but the competitive architecture of the world arriving. The implication for leadership is significant: the strategic planning tools built for the previous era are no longer sufficient guides. Adamson founded and led Futurenautics Group, where her work on the digital transformation of the shipping and maritime industry made her the sector’s authoritative futurist – a standing substantiated by Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), which set the analytical agenda for how one of the world’s most conservative global industries understood its own disruption. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a regular broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, the Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, which means her frameworks are tested in real time against the hardest current questions, not only in controlled conference settings. Her “Seismotectonic” model of change, mapping three simultaneous rates of disruption: what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, and what appears not to change at all, gives senior teams a working tool for strategy under deep uncertainty. It is this combination of named intellectual frameworks, commercial range across clients including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, and CHANEL, and the ecocentrist perspective that places ecology rather than enterprise at the centre of value analysis, that separates Adamson from speakers covering adjacent territory. Key speaking topics Future of business value and sustainable transformation The limits of techno-optimism ESG as competitive strategy, not compliance Geopolitics and the end of globalisation AI: belief, systemic risk, and organisational response Leadership beyond control Strategic foresight and scenario planning Ideal for C-suite and board audiences navigating how to reframe business strategy as stakeholder expectations, geopolitical pressures, and ecological imperatives converge Chief Sustainability Officers and strategy leads responsible for translating ESG from reporting obligation into organisational design Global leadership conferences convening senior executives across multiple sectors and geographies, where a macro-systemic perspective is required rather than a sector-specific one Executive leadership teams of multinationals at significant inflection points – where the question is not only operational but concerns organisational identity and the long-term logic of value creation Audience outcomes A named conceptual framework, “nobleization”, for articulating why business strategy must move beyond profit primacy, framed as competitive logic rather than ideology Clarity on why the next wave of disruption is a value problem rather than a technology problem, and what that distinction means for strategic planning and capital allocation A working model for reading simultaneous, differently-paced change: the Seismotectonic framework, applicable in strategy sessions and scenario planning processes A more rigorous way to frame AI risk: focused on collective belief and systemic dependency rather than technical capability alone Greater confidence in articulating an alternative vision of organisational purpose to boards, investors, and internal leadership audiences

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 Kailash Satyarthi He is the only living Nobel Peace Laureate whose work targets the exact intersection of supply chain, child labour, and corporate accountability that ESG committees now have to defend. He built GoodWeave, the first voluntary certification system that traced child labour out of the South Asian carpet industry, giving him operational experience of what works and what fails when companies try to clean a supplier base. His 1998 Global March seeded ILO Convention 182, the most ratified convention in the organisation’s history, which means he can speak to the policy frame that regulators and procurement teams now have to align with. Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the movement he founded in 1980, has freed more than 130,000 children in India, giving his arguments the weight of measurable on-the-ground results rather than advocacy alone. He raises the moral altitude of a leadership conversation in a way few speakers can, which is why boards bring him in when they want a corporate purpose programme to feel earned rather than performative. Biography highlights 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded jointly with Malala Yousafzai for the struggle against the suppression of children and the right of every child to education. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (1980), credited with freeing more than 130,000 children in India from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Founder of GoodWeave International (1994), the first independent certification system for child-labour-free carpets in South Asia. Architect of the 1998 Global March Against Child Labour across 103 countries, whose demands directly shaped ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate; recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (1995) and the Defenders of Democracy Award (2009). Author of Every Child Matters and Will for Children (Prabhat Prakashan); co-author with the Dalai Lama of The Book of Compassion. Biography In 1980, an electrical engineer in India walked away from his profession to free children locked inside brick kilns, carpet looms, and quarries. The organisation he founded that year, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has since liberated more than 130,000 children from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Kailash Satyarthi has spent forty-five years turning that work into a system. The system has three layers that matter to corporate audiences. The first is rescue and rehabilitation, run through a network of activists and shelters in India. The second is certification: in 1994 he founded GoodWeave, which built the first credible voluntary label proving that a carpet was made without child labour, an early prototype for the supply chain audit regimes that are now standard in apparel, cocoa, and electronics. The third is policy. The Global March he led in 1998 covered 103 countries and 80,000 kilometres, and its demands fed directly into ILO Convention 182, now the most ratified convention in ILO history. The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Malala Yousafzai, gave his argument a global platform. He uses it to press a single point at boards and policy bodies: child labour is not a problem of poor countries, it is a problem of global procurement, and any company with a multi-tier supplier base owns part of it. That framing is uncomfortable for executives who treat human rights as a CSR line item, which is exactly why it lands. His books, Every Child Matters and Will for Children with Prabhat Prakashan, and The Book of Compassion co-authored with the Dalai Lama, sit alongside his role as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate. The through-line is consistent: moral authority backed by operational evidence, applied to the supply chains and policy systems that decide whether a child works or goes to school. Key speaking topics Child labour in global supply chains Ethical sourcing and supplier certification Human rights and corporate accountability Education as an economic and rights agenda ESG, purpose, and moral leadership Civil society movements and policy change Ideal for Boards and ESG committees defining human-rights and supply-chain commitments Chief procurement officers and CSR leaders auditing supplier networks Investor groups and policy bodies setting standards on labour and human rights Purpose, values, and culture programmes for global organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where child labour actually lives inside multi-tier supplier networks, and what credible mitigation looks like. A working understanding of the certification, audit, and policy levers that have moved the needle, and where they have not. A direct account of how ILO Convention 182 came to exist, and what it now requires of buyers and regulators. The moral and strategic case for treating human rights as a board-level commitment rather than a reporting category.

Why organisations work with Karl Schmedders He brings a computational finance lens to ESG, climate risk, and carbon pricing, so net zero plans get tested as financial decisions, not as messaging. His public position on the “just transition” gives executive teams a defensible way to talk about the social and governance side of ESG, without retreating into either greenwashing or culture war. He directs IMD’s Strategic Finance program and has taught finance to senior executives at Kellogg and IMD for over two decades, which means complex valuation and risk arguments arrive in language a non-finance board can act on. His research record in journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies makes him a credible counterweight when consultants and asset managers are pitching the same story to the room. Board roles at LPX Group and SYLVA AG, plus advisory work with firms including ABB, Airbus, Maybank, and Julius Baer, mean the examples land in operating reality. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at IMD; Director of the Strategic Finance program. PhD in Operations Research, Stanford University; Walter J. Gores Award for teaching at Stanford. Former Associate Professor at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year, 2002. Former Professor of Quantitative Business Administration at the University of Zurich. Published in Econometrica, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science. Co-editor, Handbook of Computational Economics (Elsevier). Board member, LPX Group and SYLVA AG; Advisory Council member, Reward Value. Regular columnist on ESG and climate finance in I by IMD. Biography ESG has spent a decade as a marketing layer over corporate strategy. Karl Schmedders treats it as a finance problem. He starts from the externality, works through the price signal, and asks whether the company’s capital allocation reflects the climate position it has publicly committed to. That move, from narrative to numbers, is what most boards still find uncomfortable. His authority for that move comes from a long career in computational finance. After a PhD in Operations Research at Stanford, he taught at Kellogg School of Management for over a decade, where he was named L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year. He was Professor of Quantitative Business Administration at the University of Zurich before joining IMD in 2019, where he now directs the Strategic Finance program and teaches across the Executive MBA portfolio. His research has appeared in Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies. The applied work follows the same logic. As a board member of LPX Group and SYLVA AG, and an advisor to firms including ABB, Airbus, Maybank, and Julius Baer, he tests claims about climate strategy, executive pay, and financial risk against the underlying economics. His writing in I by IMD argues that carbon taxes are still too low to price the “mother of all externalities,” that climate financial risk is being understated on corporate balance sheets, and that companies are quietly admitting their net zero promises were unrealistic. He is also one of the few finance economists making a public, technical case for the “just transition.” His argument is that ignoring the social and governance side of ESG, the cost borne by lower income households and developing economies, is the fastest way for the political consensus on climate to collapse. For a board that is being told ESG is either everything or a fraud, that is a more useful framing than either. Key speaking topics Climate financial risk Carbon pricing and the economics of net zero ESG strategy and capital allocation Just transition and the social side of climate policy Strategic finance for non-finance executives Executive compensation and sustainability incentives Computational finance and quantitative decision making Sustainable investing and stranded assets Ideal for Boards and CFO offices stress testing climate commitments against capital allocation Investment committees, asset owners, and asset managers reviewing ESG and sustainable investing strategies CSOs and Heads of Sustainability who need a finance-grounded counterpart to the consulting view Executive education audiences in Strategic Finance, EMBA, and senior leadership programs Audience outcomes A clearer view of where their organisation’s net zero plan does and does not survive financial scrutiny. Concrete vocabulary for separating ESG substance from ESG narrative when investors and regulators ask. A working sense of how carbon pricing, stranded assets, and climate risk feed into corporate valuation. An economist’s case for the “just transition” that holds up in front of a sceptical board. Sharper questions to take into the next investment committee or strategy meeting.

Why organisations work with Kate Ancketill A ten-year run delivering the trends keynote at the NRF Big Show, the largest retail technology event in the world, makes her the reference voice for what major retailers are about to do next. Twenty-five years inside GDR Creative Intelligence working with P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Lego and Moet Hennessy, which means her examples are drawn from live client work, not desk research. A three-to-five year forecasting horizon that is short enough to commit budget against, longer than the next quarter, and grounded in case examples rather than abstract futures. 2025 Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, and a BizTech Top 30 IT Influencer listing, which gives buyers an external read on quality before they commission. Biography highlights CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, a London-based futures and innovation consultancy founded in 1992. Ten consecutive years as trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York. Named clients include P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. 2025 Speaker Awards: Best AI and Future Technology Speaker. BizTech Magazine Top 30 IT Influencers, 2024. Regular broadcast and conference commentator on AI, retail, high street decline, and consumer behaviour. Biography The retail and consumer industries are running two clocks. One is quarterly, governed by trading, footfall, and conversion. The other is the three to five year horizon on which AI, automation, and Gen Z consumer behaviour are quietly rewriting the operating model. Boards are being asked to commit capital against the second clock with the analytical habits of the first. Kate Ancketill has spent twenty-five years inside that gap. As CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, she has worked as the innovation partner to a roster of consumer brands that includes P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. The work is granular, weekly tracking of the innovations that are reshaping retail, hospitality, brand and technology, then translated into specific commercial implications for clients planning two and three product cycles out. That practitioner base is what makes her platform work. For ten consecutive years she has delivered the headline trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York, the industry’s most-watched stage for what major retailers are about to commit to. Martin Reardon, NRF’s CMO, attributes the repeat invitation to her audience scores. In 2025 she was named Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, the year after BizTech Magazine listed her among its top thirty IT influencers. Her current work centres on what consumer-facing AI does to customer experience, brand, and the economics of the store. The argument runs against both extremes: AI is not a productivity bolt-on, and it is not an existential threat, it is the substrate on which the next generation of retail and consumer business models will be built. The job for senior leaders is to read the early signal accurately enough to commit capital before the pattern is obvious. Key speaking topics Business futurism on a three to five year horizon Consumer-facing AI in retail and brand The future of customer experience Innovation and disruptive business models in consumer industries Gen Z and Generation Alpha consumer behaviour Sustainability and the future of consumer brands Trends and innovation at the NRF Big Show The future of the high street and physical retail Ideal for Retail, consumer goods and hospitality boards making three-to-five year capital and format decisions CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand and CX around AI Innovation and strategy leads inside major consumer brands Conferences where the audience is operators, not technologists, but the agenda is technology-driven Audience outcomes A clear read on which retail and consumer innovations are signal and which are noise Specific case examples of how named global brands are already deploying AI in customer-facing roles A working three-to-five year horizon for board and CMO planning, not a ten-year futurology piece A sharper view of Gen Z and Generation Alpha as commercial customers, not as demographic abstractions

Why organisations work with Kim Campbell She has held the top job. Few speakers can describe cabinet decision-making, defence policy, and the politics of succession from inside the Prime Minister’s office of a G7 country. She was the first woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state, which gives boards a substantive perspective on gender, authority, and security policy that does not collapse into commentary. She built a working leadership institution from scratch: the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, where she served as Founding Principal from 2014 to 2018. She has spent two decades inside the leading global networks for former heads of government and democratic reform, including Club de Madrid, where she was Secretary General, and the World Movement for Democracy, where she chaired the steering committee. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, recognising lifetime contribution rather than a single role. Biography highlights 19th Prime Minister of Canada and the first woman to hold the office. First woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state. Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; passed reforms to gun control and the law of sexual assault. Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, 1996 to 2000. Taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2001 to 2004. Founding Principal, Peter Lougheed Leadership College, University of Alberta, 2014 to 2018. Secretary General of Club de Madrid, 2004 to 2006; founding member of the organisation. Chair, Council of Women World Leaders, 1999 to 2003. President, International Women’s Forum, 2003 to 2005. Companion of the Order of Canada (2008); Order of British Columbia (2012). Author of Time and Chance: The Political Memoirs of Canada’s First Woman Prime Minister. Biography Most discussions of leadership skip the part that matters most to boards: what happens when authority meets resistance, and the leader is held accountable for the result. Kim Campbell has lived that sequence. She became Canada’s 19th Prime Minister in June 1993, lost the autumn election in one of the heaviest defeats in Canadian political history, and then spent the following three decades doing the harder work of building the institutions that produce the next generation of leaders. Before the premiership she ran two of the most demanding portfolios in any cabinet. As Minister of Justice and Attorney General she carried gun control reform and a substantive overhaul of sexual assault law through Parliament. As Minister of National Defence in 1993 she became the first woman to hold that role in any NATO country, attending the alliance’s defence ministers’ meetings during a period of rapid post-Cold War repositioning. The post-government work is what gives her current perspective its weight. She served as Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2001 to 2004, and chaired the Council of Women World Leaders. As a founding member and later Secretary General of Club de Madrid, she sits inside the world’s principal network of former heads of government working on democratic reform. She chaired the World Movement for Democracy’s steering committee from 2008 to 2015. Her most concrete recent project is institutional. From 2014 to 2018 she was Founding Principal of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, designing and launching an undergraduate leadership programme intended to compete with the best in the world. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Order of British Columbia. Key speaking topics Political leadership and executive decision-making Democratic institutions and the conditions for legitimacy Gender, authority, and women in political leadership Defence and security policy Climate change as a governance and stability problem Leadership formation and the design of leadership programmes Canadian and international politics Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against political risk Government, civil service, and public sector leadership programmes Audiences building or sponsoring leadership development institutions Conferences on women’s leadership where the brief calls for first-hand executive experience Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how cabinets, central government, and party politics actually decide A substantive view on gender and political authority from the first woman to lead a G7 country A working framework for what makes leadership legitimate when institutions are under strain A grounded read on democratic backsliding from someone who has worked inside the leading reform networks for two decades