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Lewis Dartnell

Most leadership teams cannot articulate the basic scientific systems that their business depends on. When resources tighten, supply chains fracture or new technologies arrive faster than the strategy cycle, the gap between executive intuition and physical reality becomes a serious commercial risk. Foresight at this depth is rare, and almost never delivered with clarity.

Why organisations work with Lewis Dartnell Translates planetary-scale science into commercial foresight that leadership teams can actually use in strategy work. Author of The Knowledge, a Sunday Times bestseller built around a question every operator should be able to answer: which technologies in your value chain are foundational, and which are replaceable. Connects geology, biology and climate to the present-day shape of supply chains, geopolitics and consumer behaviour, drawing on the Origins thesis translated into thirty languages. Brings broadcast-grade communication craft from BBC Horizon, Stargazing Live and a main-stage TED talk, calibrated for board and executive audiences, not lecture rooms. One of a small number of working research scientists who can hold a 45-minute keynote at the level required by a CEO offsite without losing scientific rigour. Biography highlights Professor of Science Communication, University of Westminster. PhD in Astrobiology, University College London. Former UK Space Agency Research Fellow at the University of Leicester. Author of The Knowledge, Origins, and Being Human, plus Life in the Universe and a guide to the solar system; Sunday Times bestsellers translated into more than thirty languages. Main-stage TED speaker (TED2015) and regular BBC presenter across Horizon, The Sky at Night and Stargazing Live. Bylines and contributions in The Guardian, The Times, New Scientist and The Daily Telegraph. Scientific consultant on HBO Max’s Station Eleven and on Brian Cox documentaries. Biography Modern organisations sit on top of scientific systems that almost no one in the room can explain. Energy, materials, communication networks, food chains, the climate envelope they operate within. When those systems shift, the strategic consequences arrive quickly, and the executive team often lacks the language to see them coming. Lewis Dartnell’s work attacks that gap directly. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, a Sunday Times bestseller, asks which technologies a civilisation would have to recover first, and why. It is a thought experiment with a hard commercial edge. Strip away the assumptions, and what is actually foundational? A copy sits on the surface of the moon. The book has been adopted as a thinking tool in industries that depend on long-horizon decisions. Origins extended the argument to geology, plate tectonics and climate as drivers of human history, and has been translated into thirty languages. Being Human, his most recent book, examines how human biology and psychology continue to shape political, economic and consumer behaviour. The through-line is consistent: deep scientific structure explaining surface-level outcomes that boards spend their time arguing about. He holds a chair in science communication at the University of Westminster after research roles at University College London and the UK Space Agency programme at Leicester. His broadcast work for the BBC, his TED talk and his scientific consultancy on shows such as Station Eleven mean he speaks at a register designed for general audiences without losing the underlying rigour. For a senior leadership team trying to think clearly about technology, resources and the next twenty years, he is one of a small number of speakers who can hold both ends at once. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and first-principles thinking Resilience and civilisational technology Long-range science and the future of business Geopolitics, resources and climate Space exploration and the commercial space economy Astrobiology and the search for life Human biology and behaviour as commercial forces Science communication and clear thinking Ideal for Board offsites and CEO leadership summits requiring scientific perspective on long-range risk CSOs, heads of strategy and corporate development teams running scenario work Innovation, R&D and technology leadership groups CHRO and leadership development audiences building first-principles thinking capability Audience outcomes A sharper view of which technologies and resources are foundational to the business, and which are substitutable A grounded understanding of the planetary and biological forces shaping geopolitics, supply chains and consumer behaviour A working vocabulary for long-range scientific risk that senior teams can use in their own strategy conversations A more disciplined first-principles approach to questioning assumptions inside the organisation Genuine intellectual engagement from senior audiences who normally tune out of “future trends” content

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Lewis Pugh

Climate and ocean commitments now sit on the desk of every chair, CEO, and board risk committee, but the gap between stated targets and credible action keeps widening. Capital allocators, regulators, and employees are no longer satisfied with pledges. Leaders need a clearer view of how high-stakes environmental commitments actually get converted into policy, partnership, and measurable protection.

Why organisations work with Lewis Pugh He has helped secure formal protection for more than two million square kilometres of ocean, including the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, the largest in the world. That is a track record on environmental policy outcomes very few private-sector advisors or speakers can match. He brings a working maritime lawyer’s grasp of treaty, sovereign negotiation, and multilateral process. His framing of climate and ocean commitments is grounded in how rules actually move, which lands with boards wrestling with regulatory and ESG risk. As the UN’s first Patron of the Oceans, he carries institutional weight inside the system most companies are now being judged against, including UNEP, COP processes, and national governments. He converts physical expeditions into specific decisions about preparation, team selection, and changing course under hostile conditions. Audiences leave with a usable account of how leaders behave when the plan stops working, sourced from the North Pole, Mount Everest, the Red Sea, and Antarctica. Biography highlights UN Patron of the Oceans, appointed by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2013. Founder of The Lewis Pugh Foundation, established in 2015 to drive the creation of Marine Protected Areas worldwide. First person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world; first across the North Pole, the length of the English Channel, the Red Sea, and around Martha’s Vineyard. Maritime lawyer trained at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town; former practitioner at Ince and Co in the City of London; former Reservist in the British SAS. Author of Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster, 2010) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo (2014); twice a TEDGlobal speaker. Awarded South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga (Gold Class); named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame; named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Biography The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, off Antarctica, is the largest protected ocean reserve on the planet, larger than the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy combined. Lewis Pugh swam in its near-freezing waters in a Speedo to push 25 nations, including Russia, into signing the agreement that created it. Few advocates working on the ocean and climate file have that kind of policy outcome attached to their name. Pugh trained as a maritime lawyer at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town, and practised at Ince and Co in the City of London. During those years he served as a Reservist in the British SAS. The combination matters for the work he now does. The legal training shapes how he reads treaties, jurisdiction, and sovereign behaviour. The military background shapes how he plans expeditions and assembles teams. The endurance swimming is the public-facing instrument that pulls governments to the table. In 2013 the UN appointed him as its first Patron of the Oceans. In 2015 he founded The Lewis Pugh Foundation, dedicated to Marine Protected Areas, the ocean equivalent of national parks. Through that work he has helped secure protection for more than two million square kilometres of marine ecosystem, an area the size of Western Europe, and is campaigning for 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be formally protected by 2030. His books, Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo, sit alongside two TEDGlobal talks that TED’s editors describe as the work of a “master story-teller”. For corporate audiences, the substance is not the swimming. It is the working method behind it: how a small team prepares for hostile conditions, how an advocate moves sovereign signatories, and how leaders decide when to keep going and when to change course. Key speaking topics Ocean and climate policy Sustainability and ESG commitments at board level Marine Protected Areas and treaty negotiation Resilience and leadership in hostile conditions Team preparation and decision-making under pressure Purpose-driven leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting climate, ocean, and ESG strategy Sustainability leaders, chief sustainability officers, and ESG committees Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, preparation, and decision-making under pressure Public-sector and multilateral audiences working on environment and oceans policy Audience outcomes A clearer view of how high-level environmental commitments are converted into binding agreements and protected areas. A working account of how small teams plan for, and recover from, conditions where the original plan fails. A direct line of sight into the UN, COP, and Marine Protected Area processes that increasingly shape corporate disclosure and risk. A sharper sense of what credible, evidenced advocacy looks like, drawn from named expeditions and named outcomes.

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Linda Mabhena-Olagunju

Net zero commitments and renewable capacity targets sit on every board agenda. Almost none of them survive contact with the capital, grid, and regulatory reality of building generation assets in emerging markets. Boards and investors need someone who has actually closed the financing, secured the permits, and brought a wind farm online, not a consultant describing the problem.

Why organisations work with Linda Mabhena-Olagunju She has actually built and operates a 244MW utility-scale wind farm in the Northern Cape, not advised on one. Her authority on the energy transition comes from owning the asset, raising the capital, and running it. A legal foundation in oil and gas law from Aberdeen, applied to renewable energy operations in Africa. That sequence gives her a sharper view than most operators on how regulation, project finance, and offtake contracts actually shape what gets built. Direct line of sight on what local ownership looks like in practice. DLO acquired the engineering services and operations capability behind its plants, making it the rare African IPP with both equity and technical control. Sits at the table where African energy policy is shaped: advisor to South Africa’s Minister of Energy, University of Oxford International Advisory Board, founder of the DLO Africa Power Roundtable. Recognised by named bodies, not bureau hype: Choiseul 100 (multi-year), Forbes Woman Africa, CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award, Veuve Clicquot. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, DLO Energy Resources Group, owner and operator of a 244MW wind farm in South Africa’s Northern Cape. LLB, University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List); LLM in International Commercial Law with oil and gas specialisation, University of Aberdeen (First Class). Admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Member of the University of Oxford International Advisory Board since 2018. External contributor to Institut Montaigne on African energy and infrastructure. Recognition: Choiseul 100 Africa Economic Leaders for Tomorrow (multi-year); Forbes Woman Africa Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award; Veuve Clicquot Businesswomen Award; Oprah Power List of 20 most powerful women in Africa. Biography Africa’s renewable energy build-out is shaped less by technology than by who can hold a project together long enough to reach financial close. DLO Energy Resources Group, founded by Linda Mabhena-Olagunju and now the operator of a 244MW wind farm in the Northern Cape, is one of the few independent power producers on the continent that owns both the equity and the engineering capability behind its assets. Her route into the sector is unusual. She read law at the University of Cape Town, then took an LLM in International Commercial Law at Aberdeen with a specialism in oil and gas. She is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. That legal grounding, in the contracts and regulation that govern energy projects, is what allowed DLO to acquire an EPC and O&M operation and bring operational control in-house, a step most African IPPs never take. The recognition has followed the work, not the other way round. The Choiseul 100 has listed her among Africa’s economic leaders of tomorrow across multiple years. Forbes Woman Africa named her Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC named her Young Business Leader for Southern Africa. She sits on the University of Oxford International Advisory Board, contributes to Institut Montaigne on African energy policy, and advises the South African Minister of Energy. For audiences working on energy transition strategy, climate-related disclosures, or capital allocation to emerging markets, she is one of the very small group who can describe the path from policy ambition to a generating asset, with the receipts to back it up. Key speaking topics Africa’s energy transition Renewable energy project finance and ownership Independent power producers in emerging markets Local content and black ownership in energy Women in energy and infrastructure Climate policy and capital allocation in Africa Ideal for Boards and investment committees with African or emerging-market energy exposure CFOs, treasury, and capital allocators reviewing climate transition strategy Energy, utilities, and infrastructure executives planning African projects DEI sponsors and women-in-leadership programmes in capital-intensive sectors Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes for an African renewable project to reach financial close, told by someone who has done it. A working understanding of where policy ambition on energy transition diverges from project finance reality on the continent. Concrete answers on how local ownership, EPC control, and offtake structures change the economics of a generation asset. A sharper view of where African renewable capacity is actually being built, by whom, and at what cost of capital.

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Liz Earle

Half the workforce will go through menopause, and most organisations still have no usable answer for how to support them through it. Generic wellbeing programmes do not reach the women losing confidence, sleep, and sometimes careers in their forties and fifties. The gap is credibility: a voice senior employees actually trust on women’s health, delivered without clinical detachment or wellness-industry gloss.

Why organisations work with Liz Earle A 30-year track record as a trusted public voice on women’s health, built through ITV’s This Morning, more than 30 books, and the Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine and podcast Authorship of The Good Menopause Guide and the Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller A Better Second Half, giving her a defined body of work that women’s networks and ERGs already recognise Co-founder credibility from Liz Earle Beauty Co., a brand she built with Kim Buckland from 1995 and sold to Avon in 2010, is useful for entrepreneurship and women-led business audiences An MBE for services to business and ambassador roles with The Menopause Charity and The Soil Association, evidence that she is taken seriously beyond the consumer brand Hosting fluency that lets her chair panels, lead Q&A, and run on-stage conversations on health and sustainability, not only delivers a fixed keynote Biography highlights Co-founder, Liz Earle Beauty Co. (1995, sold to Avon in 2010) Founder, Liz Earle Wellbeing (magazine, podcast, digital platform) Author of more than 30 books, including The Good Menopause Guide and A Better Second Half (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller) MBE for services to business; Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Portsmouth University and Staffordshire University Long-running broadcaster on ITV’s This Morning since the late 1980s; podcast host of the Liz Earle Wellbeing Show Ambassador, The Menopause Charity; founder of the LiveTwice charity Biography Most large employers now agree that menopause is a workplace issue. Far fewer have a credible voice that women in their forties and fifties will actually listen to. That is the gap Liz Earle has spent three decades filling on national television and in print, and increasingly inside corporate audiences. Earle co-founded Liz Earle Beauty Co. with Kim Buckland in 1995 and sold the business to Avon in 2010, by which point the brand had become a benchmark for botanical, ethically sourced skincare. She left the company in 2017 and built Liz Earle Wellbeing into a magazine, podcast and publishing platform focused on midlife women’s health. Her writing extends the same authority. The Good Menopause Guide became a defining popular reference on the subject, and A Better Second Half reached No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list, with more than 30 books behind it on nutrition, beauty and women’s health. She holds an MBE for services to business and Honorary Doctorates of Law from Portsmouth and Staffordshire. For an audience of senior HR leaders, women’s network sponsors or wellbeing buyers, what Earle offers is rare in the speaker market: a public figure with the longevity, broadcast skill and named body of work to make a women’s health agenda land inside an organisation, rather than another clinical talk that the people most affected will not show up to. Key speaking topics Menopause and midlife women’s health Wellbeing and healthy ageing Women in business and entrepreneurship Nutrition and gut health Sustainable and ethical sourcing Building a consumer brand and a trusted public profile Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI, and women’s network sponsors are building menopause and midlife policies Employee wellbeing leads and benefits buyers commissioning credible women’s health programming Female-leadership conferences, ERG summits, International Women’s Day platforms Consumer brands and retailers seeking a trusted host or panel chair on health, beauty or sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer view of menopause as a workplace and leadership issue, not only a personal health one Practical, evidence-grounded reference points on midlife health that audiences can act on without clinical jargon Confidence that women’s health content has been delivered by a voice their workforce already trusts A more honest conversation about ageing, energy, and performance for women in senior roles

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Lizzie Carr

Sustainability commitments rarely fail at the level of intent. They fail at the level of evidence: the data needed to act, the proof needed to report, and the public trust needed to defend the work. Leaders need climate and pollution voices who can speak to operating reality, not slogans, and who can translate environmental conviction into measurable action.

Why organisations work with Lizzie Carr She has built and runs an operating environmental non-profit, not a campaign. Planet Patrol’s app turns volunteer activity into structured pollution and water-quality data, which is a usable model for any organisation thinking about citizen-led evidence gathering. Her record-setting expeditions (England’s waterways solo, the English Channel, the Hudson) gave the work its primary dataset. The endurance story is inseparable from the environmental method, which makes for a sustainability talk that actually contains a method. A cancer diagnosis at 26 sits behind the whole trajectory. That gives audiences a credible voice on personal resilience and reinvention without it being a separate, bolted-on talk. Recognition from the Crown (MBE, 2021) and from the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award gives the profile institutional weight that bureau-built activist profiles often lack. Authored Paddling Britain (2018) and hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, with regular media presence on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 and national newspapers. The platform is real. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Planet Patrol; nearly 500,000 pieces of litter recorded by volunteers across 113 countries. MBE, 2021, for services to environmental work and activism. First person to paddleboard England’s connected waterways solo and unsupported (400 miles, 22 days). First woman to solo paddleboard the English Channel; also crossed the Hudson River (170 miles, 8 days). Author, Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018); host, Earth Shakers podcast. Named in Top 10 Female Climate Activists lists by Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour; Stylist Inspiration of the Year, 2020. Biography Most environmental campaigners describe a problem. Carr built a tool that measures it. Planet Patrol began as one woman with a paddleboard and a phone, plotting every piece of plastic she could see along England’s 400 miles of inland waterway, and has become a citizen-science platform with volunteers in more than 100 countries logging pollution and water-quality data into a single app. The origin matters because the method does. Carr was diagnosed with cancer at 26 and took up paddleboarding during recovery. Three world firsts followed, each a research expedition as much as an endurance feat. The English waterway crossing produced over 20,000 plastic data points. The English Channel and Hudson River crossings extended the platform internationally. The expeditions gave the non-profit its data, its public profile and its operating logic. That logic is what makes the talk land in a corporate room. The argument is that environmental action becomes credible when it produces evidence, that citizen science is a legitimate route to that evidence at scale, and that personal conviction holds up when it has a measurement framework underneath it. Carr’s MBE in 2021, the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, and her place in the Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour lists of leading climate activists are recognitions of an operating contribution, not just a story. She is the author of Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018), hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, and writes and broadcasts regularly across UK national press and television. Audiences leave with a story they remember and, more usefully for a sustainability or purpose programme, a working example of how community action becomes data and how data becomes accountability. Key speaking topics Citizen science and environmental data Plastic pollution and freshwater health Sustainability leadership and purpose Building and scaling a non-profit Personal resilience and reinvention after illness Adventure, endurance and mental performance Activism without perfectionism Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leads designing employee or community engagement programmes with measurable outcomes. CSR, foundation and purpose teams looking for a credible activist voice with operating substance. Leadership and culture programmes wanting a resilience and reinvention narrative with verifiable proof points. Conferences and offsites where a sustainability or wellbeing keynote needs a memorable lead voice. Audience outcomes A clear example of how citizen-led data collection translates environmental concern into evidence organisations can use. A working model for turning a single expedition or campaign into a long-term operating platform. A vivid case for personal reinvention after a serious health setback, told without sentiment. Language and arguments senior leaders can take back into their own sustainability and purpose conversations.

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Lizzie Daly

Sustainability commitments are easier to write than to defend in front of an informed audience. Boards, employees and customers are asking sharper questions about what an organisation actually does for nature, water, oceans and climate, and generic ESG language no longer holds. Leaders need someone who can translate scientific evidence and field experience into a clear, credible story that moves people without overstating the case.

Why organisations work with Lizzie Daly She brings working scientist credentials, not commentator credentials. Her PhD research at Swansea University tracks animal movement with tag technology, including fieldwork on African elephants in Kenya and a male jaguar in the Pantanal. She has the broadcast craft to land a sustainability message with a non-specialist audience, with on-screen credits across BBC One, BBC Two, CBeebies, CBBC, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Love Nature. Conservation organisations trust her platform: ambassador for the Marine Conservation Society and the Jane Goodall Institute UK, and the first female patron of ORCA. She has a track record of hosting and moderating high-stakes industry moments, including the Wildscreen Panda Awards in 2018 and 2022 and over 50 hours of live content during Wildscreen 2020. Her expedition record, including a 140km solo run in the Finnish Arctic Circle at minus 35C, gives a credible second register on resilience and decision-making in extreme environments. Biography highlights Honorary Fellow of Swansea University and part-time PhD researcher there, with a research focus on animal movement through tag technology. Academic Teaching and Outreach Fellow at Swansea University. Undergraduate degree from the University of Exeter; research Masters from the University of Bristol. Author of Life in the Wild (DK, 2024), a children’s wildlife book illustrated by Chiara Fedele. Presenter credits include Weatherman Walking (BBC One), Curious Creatures (BBC Two), Winterwatch (BBC Two), The One Show (BBC One), Solved: Nature’s Greatest Mysteries (Animal Planet), Jaguar Journals (Love Nature) and Deep Dive Australia (Love Nature). Hosted the Wildscreen Panda Awards in 2018 and 2022, and live-hosted the Wildscreen festival in 2020. Ambassador for the Marine Conservation Society and the Jane Goodall Institute UK, first female patron of ORCA, and ambassador for the Norwich Science Festival. Biography A barrel jellyfish the size of a human, filmed off the Cornish coast during Wild Ocean Week 2019, became one of the most-shared marine wildlife clips on the BBC that summer. The biologist in the water was Lizzie Daly, then mid-way through a seven-day expedition raising funds for the Marine Conservation Society. The clip travelled because the science was real and the storytelling was clean. Both qualities define how she now works with organisations on sustainability and conservation. Her academic base is Swansea University, where she is a part-time PhD researcher studying wildlife movement with tag technology and an Academic Teaching and Outreach Fellow. The fieldwork is specific and physical: deploying tracking tags on African elephants in Kenya, on a male jaguar in the Pantanal, and joining a 2022 scientific expedition to the Peruvian Amazon. Swansea has since named her an Honorary Fellow. The broadcasting CV runs in parallel. Recent series include Jaguar Journals and Deep Dive Australia for Love Nature, alongside earlier credits on BBC One, BBC Two, CBeebies, CBBC, National Geographic and Animal Planet. She has hosted the Wildscreen Panda Awards twice, in 2018 with Lewis Pugh and in 2022 with Dan O’Neill, and live-hosted more than 50 hours of Wildscreen festival content in 2020. For a corporate audience, this combination matters. A sustainability or ESG narrative that has to survive scrutiny needs a voice with field credibility, scientific training, and the storytelling judgement to keep a non-specialist audience with the argument. In September 2024 she published Life in the Wild with DK, a children’s title built on the same instinct: real animals, real movement data, told without hype. Key speaking topics Sustainability and environmental responsibility Marine conservation and ocean health Wildlife biology and animal movement science Climate communication for non-specialist audiences Conservation storytelling and public engagement Resilience and performance in extreme environments Hosting and moderation of awards, conferences and live formats Ideal for Chief sustainability officers, ESG leads and corporate affairs teams shaping external sustainability narratives. Boards and leadership offsites adding scientific credibility to climate, ocean and biodiversity discussions. Conference and awards organisers who need a host who can carry a science-led programme on stage. Internal events focused on purpose, employee engagement and connecting people to environmental commitments. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what current wildlife and ocean science actually shows, beyond headline narratives. Practical reference points for talking about sustainability with employees, customers and stakeholders without resorting to slogans. A vivid set of field stories, from Arctic expeditions to jaguar tracking, that audiences can recall and retell. Renewed conviction about the role organisations can play in marine and wildlife conservation, grounded in named partner organisations.

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Louis De Jaeger

Boards now treat climate and nature risk as material, but most still cannot link soil, food and land use to portfolio decisions in any concrete way. Sustainability strategy stops at carbon accounting and supplier audits, while the underlying assets, farmland, water, biodiversity, continue to degrade. The leaders who get this right turn regeneration into long-term yield. The ones who do not are quietly underwriting losses they have not yet booked.

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.

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Louise Laing

Fashion businesses run on a development model that was already strained before AI changed what was possible. A typical garment moves from sketch to production through six to eight weeks of manual pattern work, multiple physical samples, and inventory commitments made months before a customer is asked anything. The operational question is no longer whether to automate. It is whether the leadership team understands which parts of the cycle can now be compressed, what the supply chain looks like when production becomes on-demand, and how to integrate digital and physical product lines without losing brand identity.

Why organisations work with Louise Laing She has run the operating model she now sells advice on. As CEO of Shrimps she grew revenue by 240% and brought the business into positive EBITDA within three years, with senior prior roles at Burberry and Reiss in sourcing, development and supply chain. PhygitalTwin and Phygen give her a working technical view of how AI compresses pattern engineering and digital-to-physical production, not a consultant’s overview of the field. She translates between creative directors, production heads and technology teams. Heritage fashion businesses lose months because those three functions speak different languages; she has worked inside all three. Recode the Curriculum, the foundation she leads, gives her a credible voice on closing the technology confidence gap among young women, which connects her commercial work to a wider workforce question senior buyers care about. Biography highlights Founder, PhygitalTwin (2022), an AI platform converting 3D designs into game-ready digital assets and production-ready physical files. Founder, Phygen, AI-native pattern engineering platform. Former CEO, Shrimps (London fashion brand). Drove 240% revenue growth and positive EBITDA within three years. Senior leadership roles previously held at Burberry and Reiss, in sourcing, product development and supply chain. Founder, Recode the Curriculum, a foundation supporting girls into technology and entrepreneurship. Speaker at the World Economic Forum, Davos (January 2024, Phygital Wednesday with CV Labs and Phygicode). Contributor to The Interline. Biography Pattern engineering is the part of the fashion supply chain almost no one outside the industry sees. It is also where six to eight weeks of every new garment is spent. Louise Laing has built her last decade of work around the question of what happens when that cycle collapses to hours. PhygitalTwin, the company she founded in 2022, is an AI SaaS platform that converts a single 3D design into two commercial outputs: a rigged, game-ready digital skin and a print-ready file for physical merchandise. Phygen, a parallel venture, automates the pattern, grading and tech-pack work that traditionally sits between designer and factory. Both are built on a thesis she has lived inside: fashion’s waste problem is structural, and the solution sits in the production model rather than the marketing one. Before founding either company, she ran a fashion business. As CEO of Shrimps she grew revenue by 240% and took the company into positive EBITDA within three years, while protecting the brand’s creative identity. Earlier senior roles at Burberry and Reiss gave her direct operational experience of sourcing, product development and supply chain at scale, which is the operating context most heritage brands now have to redesign. Her wider work includes Recode the Curriculum, a foundation introducing girls to technology as a creative and entrepreneurial pathway. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and writes for The Interline on fashion, gaming and brand strategy in virtual environments. Key speaking topics AI in fashion design and product development 3D and on-demand production Phygital fashion and the digital-to-physical product chain Supply chain optimisation in heritage and emerging brands Sustainability through production model redesign Entrepreneurship and scaling a fashion business Women and girls in technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams in fashion, retail and consumer brands considering operational redesign around AI. Heads of product, sourcing and supply chain looking for a working view of digital-to-physical workflows. Innovation, transformation and digital leaders in adjacent industries (consumer goods, luxury, sportswear) studying fashion as a sector ahead on phygital. Programme leads building gender-balanced technology talent pipelines. Audience outcomes A clearer operating picture of where AI compresses real cost and time in product development. Specific examples of how 3D, on-demand and digital twin technology change unit economics in a brand business. A view of phygital fashion as a commercial category, with the brand and IP questions it raises. An entrepreneur’s perspective on running a creative business through an operational reinvention.

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Lucy Bullivant

Cities are being asked to decarbonise, densify, and absorb new populations through infrastructure that was not designed for any of those things. Most planning systems still optimise for delivery, not for long-term liveability or social cohesion. The hard question is no longer whether to retrofit and rebuild, but how to do it without producing places people will struggle to live in twenty years from now.

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

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Lucy Shepherd

Most leadership advice is written by people who have never had to make a decision their team’s life depends on. Senior teams now operate in conditions of compounded uncertainty, where preparation runs out and judgment under pressure becomes the variable that matters. The harder question is what composure, trust, and decision-making actually look like when the plan stops working.

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.

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Luiz Barroso

Energy transition is now a capital allocation problem, not a policy aspiration. Boards are committing to net zero pathways while financing, regulation and grid reality move at different speeds in every market they operate in. The question is no longer whether to decarbonise, but how to invest, price and hedge through a transition that looks completely different in Brazil, Europe and Southeast Asia.

Why organisations work with Luiz Barroso He has held three seats that almost no one else holds together: national energy planner (CEO of Brazil’s EPE), market designer and consultant across 30 countries, and partner in Latin America’s largest investment bank. That gives him a view of energy decisions from the policy desk, the operator’s desk and the capital allocator’s desk simultaneously. His work answers the question most energy speakers avoid: how does decarbonisation actually get financed and priced in markets that do not look like Western Europe? Investors and regulators in Latin America, Asia and Africa book him for that reason. He sits inside the IEA conversation on emerging-economy transition, having been a visiting researcher in Paris on exactly that question. That places him close to where international finance and national policy intersect. IEEE Fellow status, granted for contributions to electricity market design, signals a rare technical depth for an industry speaker. Most transition commentators cannot model what they recommend. Biography highlights CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, the BTG Pactual-owned firm Former CEO of Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica (EPE), Brazil’s national energy planning agency Visiting researcher, International Energy Agency, Paris Associate researcher, Institute for Research in Technology, Comillas University, Madrid IEEE Fellow; IEEE PES Outstanding Young Engineer Award recipient Author of one book, three book chapters and more than 70 peer-reviewed papers on electricity and gas market design Biography The energy transition has stopped being a question of ambition and become a question of capital. Boards have set decarbonisation targets; the harder problem is financing them through power markets that work differently in every country an investor touches. Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia do not have the same grid, the same regulation or the same risk pricing. Luiz Barroso has spent his career inside that problem. As CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, a BTG Pactual-owned firm, he advises private investors, public lenders, governments and regulators in around 30 countries on market design, financing and risk in electricity and gas. Before that, he ran Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica, the Brazilian government body responsible for national energy planning, a role equivalent to deputy minister. His research credentials are unusual for someone operating in industry. He is an IEEE Fellow, recognised specifically for contributions to electricity market regulation and design, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas University in Madrid. In 2018 he spent a year at the International Energy Agency in Paris, working on the question of how energy transition unfolds in emerging economies. That combination matters because most senior leaders hearing about energy transition are hearing from policy commentators, academic modellers or industry executives. Barroso has held all three roles. His work helps capital allocators, board directors and regulators see where the transition narrative meets the actual structure of power and gas markets, and where the money has to go for it to function. Key speaking topics Energy transition in emerging economies Electricity and gas market design Investment and financing under decarbonisation Regulation and policy in liberalised power markets Risk management in energy infrastructure Power system economics Ideal for Board directors and investment committees with energy exposure outside Western Europe and North America Infrastructure investors, development banks and sovereign wealth funds allocating to the transition Energy regulators, system operators and policy bodies in emerging markets Senior leaders in utilities, oil and gas, and large industrial energy buyers Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how energy transition is actually financed and priced in emerging-economy power and gas markets A working understanding of why decarbonisation pathways diverge across jurisdictions, and what that means for cross-border capital Practical exposure to the trade-offs regulators face when designing markets that must attract investment and deliver reliability simultaneously A grounded view of which transition assumptions hold up when tested against grid reality and which do not

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Malaika Vaz

Most boards now report on environmental risk, but very few have seen what their supply chains, sourcing decisions and pollution footprints actually look like at the other end. The distance between an ESG dashboard and a trafficking route, a fenceline community or a poached species is enormous, and it is where reputational and regulatory exposure quietly accumulates. Closing that gap requires people who have stood inside those systems and can describe, with evidence, what is really happening.

Why organisations work with Malaika Vaz She has gone undercover inside wildlife trafficking networks across India, Myanmar and China, and can speak to environmental crime as a live operational and reputational risk, not a policy abstraction. Her documentary Sacrifice Zone, made in association with the National Geographic Society, reported pollution exposure across New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira, giving boards a concrete picture of what fenceline impact looks like in four very different jurisdictions. She has built Untamed Planet into a production house whose work reaches National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France audiences in more than 150 countries, which means her storytelling is calibrated for global, non-specialist viewers, not insiders. The credentials are independently verified: Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent (2024), Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Earthshot Prize Advocate, and UNEP recognition as one of six environmentalists changing the world. For a sustainability or risk audience used to consultants, she offers something different: a reporter who has been in the room with traffickers, regulators and affected communities, and can connect those scenes to the decisions executives are making. Biography highlights National Geographic Explorer and presenter; films broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France in more than 150 countries. Co-founder and creative director of Untamed Planet, an independent documentary production company. Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent, 2024 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, for Sacrifice Zone. Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Media category. Earthshot Prize Advocate; named by UNEP as one of six environmentalists changing the world. Presenter of On the Brink (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet) and Living with Predators (National Geographic), and lead reporter on Peng Yu Sai, a Green Oscar-nominated investigation into the illegal manta ray trade. Biography Manta rays were disappearing from the waters off the coast of Goa. Tracing why led Malaika Vaz, on camera and undercover as a seafood trader, from Indian fishing vessels to the Indo-Myanmar border and into the wildlife trafficking hubs of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The resulting documentary, Peng Yu Sai, was nominated for a Green Oscar and aired on National Geographic India. That is the kind of reporting Vaz does. As a National Geographic Explorer and co-founder of the documentary production company Untamed Planet, she has built a body of work focused on environmental crime, industrial pollution and the human-wildlife interface. Her films have been broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France, reaching audiences in more than 150 countries. Her 2024 documentary Sacrifice Zone, produced with the National Geographic Society, examined the human cost of industrial pollution in New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira. It won the Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent at the 2024 Wildscreen Festival in Bristol. She has also presented Living with Predators, a three-part National Geographic series on coexistence with India’s big cats, and On the Brink for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Forbes named her to its 30 Under 30 North America list in 2025, in the Media category. She is an Earthshot Prize Advocate and was named by the United Nations Environment Programme as one of six environmentalists changing the world. For an executive audience, the value she brings is specific: an investigator who has stood inside the trafficking routes, fenceline communities and ecosystems that sit underneath their environmental and supply chain risk reports. Key speaking topics Environmental crime and illicit wildlife trade Industrial pollution and frontline community impact Supply chain exposure to environmental risk Investigative environmental journalism Biodiversity and human-wildlife coexistence Documentary storytelling for non-specialist audiences Field reporting in fragile and high-risk environments Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG leads and risk committees responsible for environmental and supply chain exposure Boards and executive teams setting climate, biodiversity and human rights priorities Communications, brand and public affairs leaders translating environmental commitments into credible external narrative Investor and asset management forums focused on natural capital, biodiversity and climate-related disclosure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how wildlife trafficking and environmental crime intersect with global supply chains Specific case material from frontline reporting in India, Myanmar, China, the United States and Latin America A sharper sense of where ESG narratives diverge from on-the-ground reality, and what that means for credibility A working model for using storytelling and visual evidence to move non-specialist stakeholders Renewed urgency, grounded in named places and named systems, not abstract climate framing