Climate Action and Sustainability speakers

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

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

Why organisations work with Manisha Tank Five years hosting the Singapore Fintech Festival, the largest fintech gathering in Asia, gives her live editorial command of a 7,000-seat stage and a working knowledge of the sector’s senior players. A 25-year anchoring career across Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International means she interviews from a position of subject fluency, not a script. She has put questions to CEOs, founders, policymakers and heads of state on live broadcast television. She moderates the Milken Institute Asia Summit and hosted Earthshot+ during The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in 2023. Both events demand a host who can move between climate finance, technology and policy in the same panel without losing the room. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, so corporate communications teams are buying a known editorial product, not an unknown. Based in Singapore. A buyer running a regional summit in Asia gets a host who understands the regulatory, political and capital context their senior speakers actually operate in. Biography highlights 25-plus years as an international broadcast journalist for Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International. Former anchor of CNN’s News Stream from Hong Kong (Asian TV Awards, Best TV News Programme) and Talk Asia. Host of the Singapore Fintech Festival for five consecutive years. Moderator at the Milken Institute Asia Summit and host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize Singapore 2023. Host of the podcast Tank Talks Asia, and producer of corporate podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture. Winner, Summerson Goodacre and Daily Telegraph Wealth Management Award for Best Industry Commentator, 2007. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. Biography Running a senior conference stage is a different craft from delivering a keynote on it. The host sets the editorial pace, frames the question the panel is actually there to answer, and decides when to press a CEO and when to move on. Get it wrong and a marquee event reads as flat. Get it right and the room produces the material that gets quoted for the rest of the year. That is the work Manisha Tank has done for two and a half decades. She spent the formative part of her career as a financial news reporter for Reuters Television, posted to New York to cover the Nasdaq and the NYSE in the late 1990s, then anchored business and main news bulletins for BBC News in London. She joined CNN International in the mid 2000s and fronted News Stream from Hong Kong, which won Best TV News Programme at the Asian TV Awards, and the long-form interview series Talk Asia. Now based in Singapore, she has built a second career as the editorial host of the region’s most senior business stages. Five consecutive years at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Recurring moderation work at the Milken Institute Asia Summit. Host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in November 2023, the investor-facing day of Prince William’s climate prize. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, and her own podcast, Tank Talks Asia, interviews senior figures from across the region. Her subject anchors are fintech, financial inclusion, sustainability and digital transformation. Her award for Best Industry Commentator from the Daily Telegraph and Summerson Goodacre dates back to 2007. The continuity is the craft itself: she remains one of the few hosts in Asia who can hold a CEO panel, a head-of-state interview and a climate finance session in the same programme without losing the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and main-stage moderation Panel moderation for senior leadership audiences Fintech and financial inclusion in Asia Net zero transition finance and sustainability Digital transformation and emerging technologies Corporate podcast hosting and branded audio Ideal for Senior business and finance summits in Asia that need an experienced editorial host on the main stage. CEO-level panel sessions on fintech, sustainability or digital transformation where the moderator needs to push without breaking the room. Corporate communications and marketing leads commissioning long-form branded podcast series with a recognisable broadcaster. Investor days, awards nights and after-dinner programmes that require an emcee with broadcast pedigree. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time, with sessions that end on the question the audience came to hear answered. Panels that get past prepared talking points, because the moderator knows the subject and the speakers. A senior audience that stays in the room for the second half of the day. A set of session clips and quotes the marketing team can use long after the event.

Why organisations work with Manuel Maqueda He teaches the working mechanics of circular and regenerative economics at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, and built the equivalent programmes at UC Berkeley Extension and UCLA Extension. The intellectual content has been tested on senior professional audiences for years. He co-founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition and runs SUPER, a certification programme that operationalises single-use plastics elimination inside real businesses. The advice is operator-grade, not lecture-grade. He bridges sustainability and AI through Viento.ai, applying machine learning to climate disaster response. Boards facing both decarbonisation and AI agendas get one voice across both. His client list includes Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell, Uber, Santander and the New Plastics Economy Conference. He is fluent across deep-tech, financial services and policy audiences. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for Iberian, Latin American and Pan-American programmes where most sustainability authorities are anglophone only. Biography highlights Special Program Instructor, Applied Circular Economics and Regenerative Economics, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education. Architect of the Circular Economy Program at UCLA Extension and the Circular Economy online course at UC Berkeley Extension. Co-founder, Plastic Pollution Coalition; CEO and co-founder, SUPER (Single-Use Plastics Elimination or Reduction). Co-founder, Viento.ai, applying machine learning to climate disaster response. Adviser to the Long Now Foundation; producer associated with the award-winning documentary Albatross on plastic pollution. Author of the forthcoming book The Meaning Economy on regenerative economics; speaking clients include Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell, Uber and Santander. Biography Most sustainability programmes inside large companies are still organised around doing less harm. They count carbon, swap materials, and add disclosures, while the core business model continues to extract, consume and discard. The leaders running them know the gap, and they are looking for a credible account of what an actual circular or regenerative business looks like. That account is the working content of Manuel Maqueda’s teaching at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, where he is Special Program Instructor in Applied Circular Economics and Regenerative Economics. He built the equivalent programmes at UCLA Extension and UC Berkeley Extension. The frame he uses is practical: maintain the value of materials, components and products in use; eliminate waste and pollution by design; and where possible restore natural capital rather than only protecting it. His authority is not only academic. He co-founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance on plastics, and runs SUPER, a tiered certification programme for businesses eliminating single-use plastics from their operations. Through Viento.ai he co-founded a venture applying machine learning to climate disaster response, which gives him a working view of where AI helps and where it does not in the climate agenda. Maqueda has advised the Long Now Foundation, contributed to the documentary Albatross, and speaks for clients including Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell and the New Plastics Economy Conference. His forthcoming book The Meaning Economy sets out his case that only regenerative thinking provides a serious framework for the next phase of climate action and commercial reinvention. Key speaking topics Circular economy strategy and implementation Regenerative economics and business models Plastic pollution and materials innovation Sustainability failure modes inside large organisations Supply chain redesign for circularity AI for climate resilience and disaster response Ideal for Boards and executive committees of consumer goods, retail, materials and industrial companies revisiting their sustainability strategy. Chief Sustainability Officers, Chief Supply Chain Officers and Chief Strategy Officers preparing the next ESG operating cycle. Innovation, R&D and product leaders responsible for materials choices and packaging redesign. Policy, public sector and city government audiences working on plastics, circularity and climate adaptation. Audience outcomes A working distinction between eco-efficiency, circular and regenerative business models, and where each one actually applies. The specific failure patterns that make corporate sustainability programmes stall, and what to do instead. A view of where AI changes the climate and resilience agenda for executives, and where it does not. Language and examples senior leaders can use with their board when proposing a more ambitious sustainability operating model.

Why organisations work with Marga Hoek She has run the institutions she now advises on. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the policy-side organisation that pushed Dutch business onto a sustainability footing, then took the same argument to the supervisory boards of Aegon, SUSI Partners and Earth Capital. Her three books have set a sequence: New Economy Business (2014) framed shared value, The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the SDGs as a business opportunity, Tech For Good (2023) translated Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate use cases. Both later books carry Axiom Business Book Awards. She speaks with operating credibility on sustainable capital, which is rare. Most ESG voices come from academia or activism. Hoek sits on the supervisory boards of institutions allocating billions into the energy transition, infrastructure and real estate. Her argument that “Business for Good is Good Business”, coined in 2014, has aged into the dominant board framing for ESG. She is one of the people who put it there. Biography highlights Three-time CEO across private and public sectors, including Thunissen (Dutch construction) and the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer. Founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, from 2009 to 2017. Author of three Routledge titles: New Economy Business (2014), The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) and Tech For Good (2023). Gold Axiom Business Book Awards for The Trillion Dollar Shift (2019) and Tech For Good (2024). Thinkers50-recognised; featured on the Thinkers50 podcast. Supervisory and advisory board roles at Aegon Nederland, SUSI Partners, Redevco, ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital. Media coverage in Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune. Biography The argument that sustainability is good business is now uncontested in principle and unevenly applied in practice. Marga Hoek has spent fifteen years closing that gap from inside the institutions that allocate the capital. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the body that pushed corporate Netherlands onto a sustainability footing between 2009 and 2017. That operating background is what differentiates her work. She sits on the Supervisory Board of Aegon Nederland, the Supervisory Board of SUSI Partners, the International Advisory Council of Redevco, and advisory boards at ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital. Each of these is a vehicle for capital flowing into the energy transition, sustainable infrastructure or climate technology. She is not describing the shift, she is helping govern it. Her three Routledge books form a sequence. New Economy Business (2014) won Management Book of the Year and established shared value as a commercial argument. The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals as named market opportunities and won the Gold Axiom Business Book Award in 2019. Tech For Good (2023) translated artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate applications against climate, biodiversity and inequality, and won Gold Axiom in 2024. Thinkers50 recognises her, and the Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune have covered the work. The reason senior buyers commission her is more specific. She has the rare profile of an operator who has been responsible for sustainability decisions at executive level, an author whose frameworks have been adopted by boards, and a non-executive sitting on the capital side of the transition. Key speaking topics Sustainable business and capital ESG and the Sustainable Development Goals Energy transition and climate finance Purpose-driven leadership Technology for good and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Sustainable investing and capital allocation Board governance of ESG Ideal for Boards and supervisory boards setting or reviewing ESG and net zero commitments CEOs, CFOs and Chief Sustainability Officers translating commitments into operating decisions Asset managers, institutional investors and family offices allocating into the transition Financial services, real estate and infrastructure leadership teams Audience outcomes A clearer view of where ESG narrative is failing to convert into capital allocation, and where it is. Named examples of companies and investors who have made the commercial case for sustainability work. A framework for using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies against specific sustainability outcomes rather than as generic transformation. A board-level vocabulary for distinguishing substantive ESG progress from disclosure activity.

Why organisations work with Mark Gallagher Fifteen years on the management boards of Jordan Grand Prix and Red Bull Racing, plus leadership of Cosworth’s F1 engine business. He has actually run the functions he describes. Author of The Business of Winning (Kogan Page) and co-author of The Future Business Formula with Sullivan & Stanley’s Adrian Stalham. His frameworks exist in print, with a track record in front of senior audiences since 1998. Direct experience on FIA technical working groups covering safety and sustainability, including the development of F1’s 2014 hybrid power unit. When he talks about decarbonisation or safety culture, he is describing rules he helped write. Close working relationships with current F1 drivers and teams through Performance Insights and Status Grand Prix, the A1 Grand Prix World Cup-winning outfit he co-owns. The paddock material he draws on is current. Biography highlights Former management board member of Jordan Grand Prix (1998 onwards) and senior figure in the commercial build-out of what became Red Bull Racing Former head of Cosworth’s Formula 1 engine business, which supplied roughly one-third of the grid under his leadership Founder and Managing Director of Performance Insights, his F1 consulting firm, and co-founder of Status Grand Prix, winner of the 2009 A1 Grand Prix World Cup of Motorsport Author of The Business of Winning (Kogan Page, 2014; 2nd edition 2021) and co-author of The Future Business Formula (Rethink Press, 2023) Member of FIA technical working groups on safety and sustainability, including the development of F1’s 2014 hybrid power-unit regulations Media contributor to BBC, Sky Sports, ESPN, CNN, Channel 4 News and Al Jazeera; columnist for GP Racing Magazine; lecturer at Cranfield University Biography Formula 1 is one of the few industries where an operational failure on Sunday becomes a balance-sheet issue by Monday. Regulations shift every season. Deadlines cannot be moved. Mistakes are broadcast to hundreds of millions, and the competitive gap between first and last is measured in hundredths of a second. That is the environment Mark Gallagher spent forty years inside. He sat on the management board of Jordan Grand Prix through its most competitive era, helped build the commercial arm of what became Red Bull Racing, and later ran Cosworth’s F1 engine business as it supplied around a third of the grid. His consultancy, Performance Insights, works with F1 teams and commercial partners today. His books give the method a shape outside the paddock. The Business of Winning, published by Kogan Page, sets out his lessons on leadership, safety, performance management and communication. The Future Business Formula, co-written with Adrian Stalham of the change consultancy Sullivan & Stanley, translates F1’s operating principles into twelve design rules for organisations built to change at speed. Mika Häkkinen wrote the foreword. He has also served on FIA technical working groups on safety and sustainability, including the shift to hybrid power units in 2014, and lectures at Cranfield University. For a senior audience, the value is specific: a practitioner who has run the commercial, engineering and regulatory sides of one of the world’s most publicly scrutinised high-performance businesses, and can describe what each of those jobs actually demanded. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture in elite sport Leadership under non-negotiable deadlines Data, telemetry and decision-making at the operational edge Safety, risk management and regulatory change Sustainability and the energy transition in global sport Technology partnerships and digital transformation Change management in regulated industries Ideal for Senior leadership teams, boards and C-suite audiences responsible for high-stakes operational performance Engineering, manufacturing and technology organisations facing regulatory change or digital transformation Commercial, sponsorship and partnership teams working across technology-heavy sectors Safety, risk and sustainability leaders looking for a real-world reference point on culture and governance Audience outcomes A working sense of how F1 teams hit immovable deadlines without compromising safety or commercial discipline Specific examples of how telemetry, simulation and real-time analytics translate into faster decisions at the operational edge A credible reference point for treating safety culture as a performance lever inside the business Examples and language from elite motorsport that senior leaders can carry into their own strategy and change conversations

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

Why organisations work with Matthew Gitsham Two decades of research focused on what CEOs of named multinationals actually do on sustainability, not what they say in annual reports. Direct experience advising the UN Global Compact, Business in the Community and corporates including Unilever, IBM, HSBC, GSK, De Beers, Cemex and Pearson on sustainable development strategy. Thinkers50 Radar recognition and the Aspen Institute Rising Star award give boards external validation when commissioning content on a contested topic. His Rio+20 report “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World” shaped how the UN framed corporate leadership on sustainable development, evidence that his frameworks travel beyond the classroom. Research on corporate modern slavery leadership, conducted with the Ethical Trading Initiative, gives him operating substance on supply chain ESG that most academic voices lack. Biography highlights Professor of Business and Sustainability, Hult Ashridge Executive Education. Director of the Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability. Thinkers50 Radar, Class of 2021. Cited as “global expert on CEOs and sustainability.” Aspen Institute and Academy of Business in Society European Faculty Pioneer Award, Rising Star category. Hult International Business School Researcher of the Year, 2016 to 2017. Lead author of “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World,” referenced at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Biography Most ESG conversations stop at the disclosure framework. The harder question, which Gitsham has spent twenty years researching, is what CEOs of Unilever, IBM, HSBC, GSK and similar companies actually do with sustainability once it leaves the sustainability report. His work tracks the decisions boards take on capital allocation, supplier governance and public policy advocacy when sustainability stops being narrative and starts being operating substance. That research base is what earned him Thinkers50 Radar recognition in 2021, with Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove naming him a “global expert on CEOs and sustainability.” His Rising Star award from the Aspen Institute and the Academy of Business in Society European Faculty Pioneer Awards reflects the same point. He is not a commentator on sustainability. He is one of the few academics with sustained, named access to CEOs of large multinationals on the subject. At Hult Ashridge, he directs the Centre for Business and Sustainability and teaches across the MBA and executive education programmes. His report “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World” was used to inform debate at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Current research partnerships include Business Fights Poverty on corporate SDG embedding and the Ethical Trading Initiative on corporate leadership on modern slavery, giving him an operating view of supply chain ESG that bridges academia and practice. His work appears in The Economist, Financial Times and Harvard Business Review. His corporate clients span Tesco, Bayer, Rolls Royce, Swarovski, Marks & Spencer and Pearson, alongside the UK Senior Civil Service. The throughline across all of it is the same question: how do leaders of large organisations make defensible sustainability decisions when the stakes are now financial, political and reputational at once. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability and ESG strategy CEO leadership on sustainable development The UN Sustainable Development Goals and corporate practice Modern slavery and supply chain governance Business and public policy advocacy Climate action in commercial strategy Executive development for sustainability Ideal for Boards and executive committees translating sustainability commitments into capital allocation and operating decisions Chief Sustainability Officers, CFOs and General Counsels handling ESG scrutiny and regulatory exposure Senior teams in companies with exposed supply chains are addressing modern slavery and human rights Corporate affairs and public policy leaders shaping CEO advocacy on climate, SDGs and sustainable development Audience outcomes A clearer view of what CEOs of large multinationals do differently when sustainability moves from narrative to operating substance. Named research evidence on corporate SDG embedding, modern slavery leadership and CEO public policy advocacy. A defensible framing for board conversations on ESG that withstands investor, regulatory and political scrutiny. Practical reference points from Unilever, IBM, HSBC and other named corporates, not generic sustainability case studies.

Why organisations work with Melissa Sterry She brings primary scientific research, not commentary. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group produced an original framework, Panarchistic Architecture, for designing wildland urban-interface resilience to wildfires. She runs Bionic City, the consultancy she founded in 2010 to ask how nature would design a city, and translates biomimicry, bioengineering and biotechnology into specific implications for buildings, infrastructure and utilities. She has briefed senior audiences at the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Schneider Electric, Balfour Beatty, McKinsey and the UK Ministry of Defence, and presented at the University of Oxford Climate Forum and the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Her work crosses architecture, materials, urban planning and corporate strategy without losing scientific rigour, which makes her credible to engineers, planners and procurement teams as well as to boards and marketing functions. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Biography highlights PhD from the AVATAR research group at the University of Greenwich on wildfire resilience for the wildland urban interface Founder of Bionic City (2010) and Bioratorium (2019), her biofuturism and biodesign consultancy practices Chartered Scientist (UK Science Council); Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology Contributor to The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking Presenter of Leonardo’s City for BBC Radio 4’s The Five Faces of Leonardo and interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award; Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network Hall of Fame inductee Biography Most sustainability strategy is written in the language of disclosure. The buildings, materials and supply choices it has to deliver against are physical, and they are increasingly exposed to fire, heat, water stress and biodiversity collapse. Melissa Sterry works in that gap. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group set out a framework she calls Panarchistic Architecture, which models wildland urban-interface resilience on the way fire-adapted ecosystems behave. From the same body of research she developed Pyrophytic and Xerophytic Architecture, design responses to wildfire and to extreme heat and aridity. The work is grounded in ecological systems theory, not in metaphor. Her practice connects this research to organisations. Bionic City, founded in 2010, applies biomimetics, bioengineering and biotechnology to urban planning and the built environment. Bioratorium, established in 2019, extends that into a wider biofuturism consultancy with an integrated biodesign lab. Through these vehicles she has briefed the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Interface, Schneider Electric, McKinsey, Balfour Beatty and the UK Ministry of Defence. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Her writing appears in publisher series from Routledge, McGraw-Hill and Hachette, including chapters in The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking. Key speaking topics Biofuturism and biodesign Climate and wildfire resilience in the built environment Bioinspired innovation in materials and manufacturing Future of cities and urban systems Sustainability strategy beyond disclosure Design science and complex systems thinking Ideal for Boards and CSOs setting sustainability and resilience strategy Real estate, infrastructure and built-environment leadership teams Heads of innovation, R&D and materials in industrials and consumer goods Climate, ESG and risk leads inside financial services and insurance Audience outcomes A working understanding of how ecological systems theory applies to fire, heat and resource resilience in physical assets A sharper view of where biomimicry and biodesign produce commercial advantage, and where they are still research Specific examples of nature-modelled responses to wildfire, aridity and urban hazard A more honest reading of the gap between sustainability narrative and operating reality Language to connect sustainability commitments to capital, design and procurement decisions

Why organisations work with Michael Spence Few people in the world can translate frontier economic theory into language a board can act on. His 1973 paper on signalling is foundational to information economics; he brings the same rigour to current questions about growth and capital allocation. He chaired the Commission on Growth and Development from 2006 to 2010. Its Growth Report directly shaped how the World Bank and major development institutions approach long-term growth strategy. That policy depth is in the room when he speaks. As Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute at General Atlantic, he is one of very few academic economists actively engaged in live capital allocation decisions. Boards get a perspective that has been pressure-tested against real investment choices. His analysis of China, India, and the developing world draws on direct engagement, including a co-chair role at the Asia Global Institute in Hong Kong. His 2023 book Permacrisis, written with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian, gives organisations a current, public-facing argument about cascading global risks and the policy choices that could break the cycle. Biography highlights 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, for work on markets with asymmetric information. John Bates Clark Medal (1981) from the American Economic Association. William R. Berkley Professor in Economics and Business at NYU Stern; Dean Emeritus of Stanford Graduate School of Business; former Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Chaired the Commission on Growth and Development (2006 to 2010), the independent international body whose Growth Report shaped how the World Bank and IMF approach development strategy. Senior Advisor to General Atlantic and Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Co-author of Permacrisis (Simon & Schuster, 2023, with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian) and author of The Next Convergence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); long-standing Project Syndicate columnist. Biography In 2001 the Nobel committee recognised a 1973 paper. Michael Spence’s work on signalling reshaped how economists think about markets where buyers and sellers do not have the same information. That is most of the markets corporate strategists care about. From 2006 to 2010, Spence chaired the Commission on Growth and Development. The Growth Report it produced is still cited inside the World Bank, the IMF, and finance ministries across the developing world. It remains a touchstone for how senior policymakers approach long-term growth strategy in developing economies. His current focus sits at the meeting point of macroeconomics and capital allocation. As Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute at General Atlantic, he sits inside one of the world’s largest growth equity firms. He helps the firm think through how technology and geopolitics now shape where capital can productively flow. His 2023 book Permacrisis, written with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian, took the same argument to a wider audience. His Project Syndicate column, running since 2008, lands on the desks of senior policymakers and institutional investors. Recent essays have covered single points of failure in global supply chains, AI adoption in emerging markets, and why open markets often fail to produce homegrown tech champions outside the US and China. Key speaking topics Global economic growth and structural change Information economics and decision-making under uncertainty Emerging markets and the rise of Asia Capital allocation in a fragmented global economy Trade, supply chains, and geopolitical risk Technology, AI, and the future of productivity Climate, energy transition, and sustainable growth Ideal for CEOs, Group Strategy Officers, and CFOs setting capital allocation across global markets Boards and non-executive directors with multi-region exposure Ministers of finance and economy, central bankers, and senior policymakers in international institutions Institutional investors, asset managers, and growth equity teams setting long-horizon allocations Audience outcomes A sharper internal articulation of what has actually changed about growth, inflation, and trade since 2008. A working sense of how emerging markets and Asia are actually growing, drawing on direct engagement with policymakers and capital markets in those regions. A grounded view of where AI and the green transition will and will not reshape productivity at country and sector level. A current reading of the cascading risks set out in Permacrisis, including the policy choices that could break the cycle.

Why organisations work with Michael Yaziji He wrote the standard reference on NGO–corporate relations. NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press) carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. He holds doctorates in both analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD), a combination that brings serious ethical reasoning into his work on AI governance and corporate ownership design. His leadership work draws on the world’s largest survey tying psychological drivers and psychological safety to organisational performance, giving him empirical depth most speakers in the field do not have. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme and has trained boards and executive teams at Microsoft, Shell, PepsiCo, Ericsson, and Maersk. He thinks ahead of the consensus: his 2008 Harvard Business Review piece on the structural flaws of shareholder capitalism predated the mainstream stakeholder capitalism debate by close to a decade. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Leadership at IMD, Lausanne Co-Director of IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme Author of NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press), endorsed at publication by the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo Two doctorates: analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD) Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review Gold Award, 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards (Excellence in Executive Education) for IMD’s Sprint programme with Bayer Biography Regulation and activist coalitions now shape more corporate outcomes than many of the competitive moves around which strategy frameworks are built. This nonmarket terrain is what Michael Yaziji has spent two decades mapping. He argues that political dynamics and stakeholder pressure are core variables of corporate strategy and should be treated as such by senior leaders. His training is unusual: a doctorate in analytic philosophy from the University of California, and a second in management and strategy from INSEAD. Both disciplines show up in the work. Yaziji treats ethical reasoning and institutional theory as practical tools, applied to live executive questions like AI governance and corporate ownership design. At the centre of his published work is NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-authored with Villanova’s Jonathan Doh. The book carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. It remains a standard reference for executives dealing with activist NGOs and contested social licence. His current research extends this work to artificial intelligence: who sets the rules, and who carries the cost of weak governance. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme. An executive education programme he co-led for the pharmaceutical group Bayer trained more than 12,000 leaders across ten months and won Gold at the 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. Key speaking topics Nonmarket strategy and political risk NGO and stakeholder engagement Stakeholder management for boards AI governance and corporate strategy Corporate ethics and ownership design Psychological safety and organisational performance Sustainability and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and chairs facing scrutiny on ESG and political risk C-suites in regulated or politically exposed industries (energy, pharma, financial services, extractives, technology platforms) Chief sustainability officers and corporate affairs heads building integrated nonmarket strategy Executive teams designing AI governance and stakeholder policy in large organisations Audience outcomes A working method that turns regulation and NGO pressure into variables leaders can shape Sharper thinking on how AI governance creates strategic risk and opportunity for their organisation Confidence in reading share ownership and stakeholder governance shifts as strategic variables A more direct vocabulary for talking to investors and regulators about the company’s social licence

Why organisations work with Michaela Strachan Recognised across forty years of British television, from 1980s Saturday morning audiences to current Springwatch viewers and the 2025 Dancing on Ice final. That cross-generational recognition is unusual for a single broadcaster. Decades of on-location wildlife filming with named conservation organisations including SANCCOB in South Africa, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. The specialism is built from fieldwork. BAFTA Best Children’s Presenter (2005) for Michaela’s Wild Challenge, with co-presenter status on BBC’s flagship Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch since 2011 alongside Chris Packham. Live performance pedigree across formats most television presenters never touch. BBC live broadcasts, the 2018 Walking with Dinosaurs arena tour, and the 2025 Dancing on Ice final as the oldest contestant in show history. A genuine personal story for resilience and wellbeing briefs as a Breast Cancer Now ambassador, following her own 2014 diagnosis. Biography highlights BAFTA Best Children’s Presenter (2005) for Michaela’s Wild Challenge (Channel 5) Co-presenter, BBC Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch (2011 to present), alongside Chris Packham Presenter, BBC Countryfile (1999 to 2009) Presenter, BBC’s The Really Wild Show (1993 to 2006) Presenter for Channel 5, National Geographic and Animal Planet, including Safari Live from Kruger National Park, Big 5 Little 5, Digging for Treasure and Extreme Conservation for BBC World News Author, Michaela Strachan’s Really Wild Adventures (2013) Finalist, ITV Dancing on Ice (2025), oldest contestant in the show’s history Biography Springwatch is one of British television’s most enduring nature programmes. Strachan has co-presented it since 2011 alongside Chris Packham, on location at reserves including Slimbridge and Wild Ken Hill. The role demands what few broadcasters can sustain over fifteen years: holding an audience through serious conservation content without losing either the science or the warmth. Before Springwatch came ten years on BBC’s Countryfile and thirteen years on The Really Wild Show, the BBC1 children’s wildlife series that ran until 2006. Earlier still, the breakthrough roles in 1980s Saturday morning television. Wide Awake Club and Wacaday with Timmy Mallett, then late-night music as the ‘Her’ in The Hitman and Her with Pete Waterman. The presenting craft is BAFTA-validated. She won Best Children’s Presenter at the 2005 British Academy Children’s Awards for Michaela’s Wild Challenge on Channel 5. International filming with SANCCOB, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust gives her the fieldwork credentials behind the broadcasting craft. Audiences from forty years of British television recognise her on stage. That reach is unusual. Sustainability and conservation briefs benefit from a host with subject knowledge to back the warmth. Resilience and wellbeing programmes can draw on her work as a Breast Cancer Now ambassador after her own 2014 diagnosis. Few television presenters span Wide Awake Club, Springwatch and the Dancing on Ice final. Key speaking topics Wildlife and conservation Climate and sustainability communication Hosting and moderating live events Personal resilience and reinvention Breast cancer awareness and recovery Television and broadcasting craft Ideal for Sustainability conferences, climate events and ESG forums needing a credible host who is comfortable with the subject matter Wildlife festivals, conservation fundraisers and environmental charities Awards ceremonies, gala dinners and corporate emcee briefs that benefit from a familiar British television voice Health, wellbeing and women’s events drawing on personal cancer recovery and resilience themes Audience outcomes A grounded picture of what conservation actually looks like behind the camera, from Borneo orangutan rescues to penguin colonies in South Africa Stories of professional reinvention across forty years on television, useful for audiences thinking about long careers and second acts A clear, generous account of life through a breast cancer diagnosis and recovery Behind-the-scenes detail on how Springwatch and other live nature broadcasts are actually made