Customer Experience & Marketing

Why organisations work with Philip Sheppard He has actually built and runs an AI creative business. LifeScore, the generative music platform he co-founded with Siri creator Tom Gruber, has raised £11m and ships to Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures-backed commercial partners. The argument is grounded in a working company, not a slide on disruption. He brings a working composer’s view of human-AI collaboration. Most AI commentary is by analysts. His comes from sitting at the boundary where a human writes the musical raw materials and the machine selects, layers and mixes them in real time, which is the same architectural question now facing design, copy, video and brand teams. The credentials carry weight in a creative-leadership audience. A Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music, an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Music Branch membership, and conducting all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road are not transferable credentials. He has a track record of speaking to technology buyers, not music audiences. Keynotes for Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Google, Facebook, YouTube and Kyu Collective, and on stages including C2MTL, TTI Vanguard and Business Innovation Factory. He turns an abstract debate into a live demonstration. He performs and composes on stage using a six-string electric cello, which makes the argument about generative systems and human craft visible rather than theoretical. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of LifeScore, an AI adaptive music platform co-founded with Tom Gruber, co-creator of Siri at Apple; backed by Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, awarded as a lifetime recognition of services to music and education. Composer of more than 65 scores for film, television, gaming and theatre, including Detroit: Become Human (Sony), the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Comic Con trailer, Mercury 13 (Netflix), In the Shadow of the Moon and Meru. Conducted and arranged all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympic winners’ ceremonies, recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. Music director for the London handover at the 2008 Beijing Olympics closing ceremony; music producer for the Tour de France, Rugby World Cup and the COP21 Paris climate summit. Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Music Branch (2017) and the Television Academy; author of Music Makes Your Child Smarter (Schirmer Trade Books). Biography LifeScore was incubated inside Abbey Road Studios for a reason. The company was set up to answer a question that now matters far beyond music. If a machine can generate plausible creative output on demand, what exactly is the human still meant to do? Philip Sheppard, a composer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, co-founded the platform with Tom Gruber, co-creator of Siri at Apple, and now runs it as CEO. Warner Music Group and Octopus Ventures have backed it through an £11m funding round. The architecture of LifeScore is, in effect, the architecture of any serious human-AI creative system. Composers and musicians build the raw musical materials. The machine selects, layers, sequences and mixes them in real time around the listener’s environment. The output is generated, but the judgement, taste and craft that make it sound human are not. That is the model Sheppard now describes to technology and creative leaders trying to industrialise generative AI without losing what made their work recognisable in the first place. The credentials behind the argument are concrete. Sheppard has composed more than 65 scores for film, television and gaming, including Detroit: Become Human, the Mercury 13 documentary for Netflix and In the Shadow of the Moon. He conducted and arranged all 205 national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road, and was music director for the London handover at the Beijing 2008 closing ceremony. He sits as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy, and wrote Music Makes Your Child Smarter for Schirmer Trade Books. His keynote audiences are mostly outside the music industry. Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Google, Facebook, YouTube and Kyu Collective have all booked him, alongside stages such as C2MTL, TTI Vanguard and Business Innovation Factory. The reason is the same in each case. He is one of the few people who can speak about generative AI and creative work from the position of having shipped a company that does it, and a body of work that depends on it being done well. Key speaking topics Human-AI collaboration in creative work Generative AI and the future of creative industries Building an AI venture from inside a creative practice Music, data and adaptive systems Innovation and creativity as a managed discipline The role of craft in machine-augmented teams Ideal for Chief technology, AI and digital officers shaping how generative AI is deployed across creative, brand and design functions Chief marketing, brand and customer-experience leaders whose teams now produce content with generative tools Innovation, R&D and product leadership at media, entertainment, consumer and platform businesses Leadership offsites at technology, consulting and professional services firms looking for a credible voice on creativity and AI Audience outcomes A clearer account of what generative AI changes about creative production, and what it does not A working mental model for dividing labour between human judgement and machine generation in creative workflows Named examples of how an AI creative venture is actually built, funded and run, drawn from LifeScore’s own history A sharper sense of where craft and taste still differentiate a brand or product in a generative environment A live demonstration of human-machine creative collaboration through performance, not slides

Why organisations work with Philipp Kristian He treats trust as an operating variable in digital and AI transformation, not a soft cultural theme, and equips leaders with language to discuss it at board level. His thesis predates the current AI debate. The Trust Economy was published in 2017 and has since been translated into German by Springer Gabler, giving his framework a longer track record than most current AI-trust voices. He brings an Asia-anchored view of technology adoption, drawing on a decade of work with Fortune 500s in Singapore and across JAPAC, which most Western-based speakers in this space cannot offer. He has lectured inside INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore, so executive audiences encounter material that has been pressure-tested with senior cohorts. Biography highlights Author of The Trust Economy (Marshall Cavendish, 2017) and RESET: Rethinking Our World And Creating A Different Future (World Scientific, 2021). German edition of The Trust Economy published by Springer Gabler in 2018. Faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore. World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Kairos Society Fellow, and Leader of Tomorrow at the St Gallen Symposium. TEDx speaker, with keynote audiences including Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, P&G, and Zillow. Based in Singapore, with a decade of innovation work across Asia for Fortune 500 corporations and high-growth scale-ups. Biography Trust is the part of digital transformation that the engineering plan does not solve. AI rollouts stall, data products fail to land, and customer adoption flattens for reasons that sit outside the technology stack. Philipp Kristian has spent more than a decade arguing that this is the real bottleneck, and that organisations need a strategy for it. His 2017 book The Trust Economy, published by Marshall Cavendish and later translated into German by Springer Gabler, set out an early framework for how digital businesses earn and lose trust at scale. RESET, published by World Scientific in 2021, extends the argument into the post-pandemic shift in how people relate to institutions, technology, and each other. The work has been refined inside executive classrooms. He has held faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and the Civil Service College in Singapore, where the material is taught to senior public and private sector cohorts. The World Economic Forum named him a Global Shaper; the Kairos Society named him a Fellow; the St Gallen Symposium named him a Leader of Tomorrow. Based in Singapore, he brings a non-Western reading of how trust travels through markets, regulators, and customer bases that most boards no longer treat as peripheral. Keynote audiences include Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Zillow. Key speaking topics Trust in AI and data systems Digital transformation and adoption Customer experience in digital businesses Future of work and human-technology collaboration Leadership in the digital economy Brand trust and reputation under technological change Ideal for Boards and executive committees overseeing AI, data, and digital transformation programmes CIO, CTO, CDO, and Chief Trust Officer functions working through adoption and governance questions CMO and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand credibility in digital channels Financial services, professional services, and regulated industries facing trust and reputation pressure from AI deployment Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing trust as an operating asset in digital and AI strategy at board level A reading of why AI and data initiatives lose momentum at the adoption stage, with the levers leaders can use to keep them moving An Asia-anchored perspective on how trust is built and broken across regulators, customers, and employees in fast-digitising markets Specific examples drawn from a decade of innovation work with Fortune 500 corporations and scale-ups in Singapore and across JAPAC

Why organisations work with Philippe Starck He has redefined entire categories through design, not decorated them. The Delano in Miami did not improve hotels, it created the boutique-hotel format that Ian Schrager built a global business on. The Louis Ghost chair sold over a million units by reimagining what mass-produced furniture could look like. His “democratic design” doctrine reframes design as a commercial and ethical question rather than an aesthetic one. The argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price, not the highest, is directly useful to organisations rethinking product strategy and customer access. He works at every scale a business cares about. Hospitality interiors for Royalton, Mondrian, Sanderson, Le Meurice. Industrial products for Alessi, Kartell, Microsoft, Vitra. Bathroom systems for Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Few speakers have applied a single design philosophy across that many sectors and lived to argue for it. He brings a working creator’s view of innovation, including recent collaborations on AI-designed furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, and architectural work on the Axiom space station. He speaks about where design is heading from inside the work, not from outside it. Biography highlights Designed the private apartments of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace and the Café Costes in Paris, the two commissions that established his international reputation. Created the boutique-hotel category with the Delano Miami in collaboration with Ian Schrager, followed by Royalton, Paramount, Mondrian, Hudson, Sanderson, St Martin’s Lane, and Le Meurice. Iconic industrial designs include the Juicy Salif citrus reamer for Alessi, the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell (over one million units sold), the Costes chair, the Microsoft Optical Mouse, and the AXOR bathroom collections for Hansgrohe. First French speaker invited to a TED conference; his 2007 talk “Design and destiny” remains one of the platform’s most viewed design lectures. Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer of Arts and Letters, recipient of the D&AD President’s Award, the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, and the Grand Prix National de la Création Industrielle, among more than 100 international awards. Appointed artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union in 2008, and Ambassador of Creativity and Innovation in 2009. Biography The Delano in Miami opened in 1995 and changed the economics of hospitality. Before it, hotels competed on stars, location, and service. After it, hotels competed on atmosphere and identity. The boutique-hotel category, now a global multi-billion-dollar segment, was built on a single project that Philippe Starck designed for Ian Schrager. The lesson, for any business that thinks design is a finishing layer, is that one designed space can create a market. That pattern, design that creates rather than decorates, runs through fifty years of work. The Café Costes in 1984 reinvented the Parisian café and produced a chair that sold 400,000 units. The Louis Ghost chair for Kartell sold over a million. Hospitality interiors for the Mondrian, Royalton, Sanderson, and Le Meurice. Bathroom systems with Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Industrial products for Alessi, Vitra, Microsoft, Emeco, and Duravit. The discipline behind these is what Starck calls democratic design: the argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price the market can support, not the highest, and that a designer’s obligation is to make good things widely available rather than rare things expensive. This is a usable doctrine for executives, not just designers. It treats design as a commercial decision about category position, brand identity, product economics, and customer access. It rejects the binary of luxury versus mass-market and asks instead what quality at scale should look like. It is also a working philosophy, currently being applied to AI-collaborative furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, to hospitality projects from Paris to Zurich to the French Riviera, and to the Axiom commercial space station. Starck is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an Officer of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, the D&AD President’s Award, and more than 100 international honours. He was the first Frenchman invited to a TED conference and served as artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union. For organisations rethinking how they show up to customers, he offers something rarer than a topic. He offers a method that has built categories. Key speaking topics Democratic design and the economics of quality at scale Design as a driver of brand identity and category creation Hospitality and experience-led environments Product innovation and industrial design Sustainability, dematerialisation, and the future of materials Creativity, AI, and the changing role of the designer The philosophy of useful objects Ideal for Hospitality and consumer brand leadership teams reconsidering how environments and products carry brand identity CMOs, chief brand officers, and customer experience executives who need to argue for design as a commercial lever Product, R&D, and innovation leaders facing decisions about quality, materials, and category position Founders and senior leaders building businesses where design choices and brand identity are inseparable Audience outcomes A working definition of democratic design and how it applies to product strategy, brand position, and pricing decisions A clearer view of when design creates a category versus when it decorates one, with named examples from hospitality and consumer goods Direct exposure to a creator’s view of where design is heading, including AI collaboration, dematerialisation, and the post-plastic era Permission to treat design as a board-level question rather than a downstream finishing exercise

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Purna Virji At Microsoft and LinkedIn she worked the commercialization layer for emerging AI, shaping the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability reaches and convinces a market. She speaks to the gap between what a product can do and what customers adopt from direct operating experience, not observation. She gives executive teams a way to measure AI by business outcomes rather than activity, replacing “time saved” and tokens used with quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the language finance and boards will fund. Her Agent-Led Growth work maps a shift most leaders have not yet priced in: customers delegating discovery and purchase decisions to AI agents, and what that does to how brands get found and trusted. She wrote the award-winning High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page), recognised as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, which grounds her credibility in published, peer-recognised work rather than conference reputation alone. Biography highlights More than a decade across Microsoft and LinkedIn in AI commercialization, go-to-market, and customer engagement, including Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft and Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn. Author of High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page, 2023), a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title (2024) and Goody Business Book Award winner. Creator of the Agent-Led Growth newsletter, publishing original frameworks on agentic commerce, AI adoption, and trust as a ranking factor. Named the #1 Most Influential PPC Expert in the World (PPC Hero, 2016), an Adweek Young Influential (2018), and Search Personality of the Year (US Search Awards). Honoured Listee, Marquis Who’s Who in America (2023). Has keynoted in more than 20 countries; work featured in Adweek, The Drum, TNW, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. Biography Most AI initiatives do not fail in the lab. They fail in the gap between a working model and a customer who changes nothing about how they work. Purna Virji has spent her career inside that gap, at the point where AI commercialization, go-to-market strategy, and customer behaviour meet. That vantage point is unusual. She spent more than a decade at Microsoft and LinkedIn in commercialization and go-to-market work, latterly focused on emerging AI, where she shaped the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability earns trust and gets adopted. She has seen the failure modes up close, from unclear value to a customer journey that asks too much too soon. Her published work carries the same argument. High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page) was named a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title, and her Agent-Led Growth newsletter tracks the next shift: customers handing discovery, comparison, and purchase decisions to AI agents acting on their behalf. The implication for brands is direct. Influence moves from catching a person’s eye to earning an agent’s confidence. What she brings to a leadership audience is a way to argue about AI in board language. She reframes success away from time saved and tasks completed toward quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the outcomes that survive a finance review. Her Agent-Led Growth research names the real blocker directly: the Delegation Gap, the distance between what AI can technically do and what people are ready to hand over. For executives funding AI and seeing experimentation rather than impact, closing that gap is the work. Key speaking topics AI commercialization and adoption Agentic commerce and AI-led customer journeys Measuring AI business impact and ROI Go-to-market strategy for AI products Trust, discovery, and brand visibility in the AI era AI-driven sameness and competitive differentiation Ideal for Executive teams and boards funding AI initiatives and asking what return they are getting AI transformation leads, CTOs, and product leaders moving from pilot to deployment CMOs and revenue leaders facing the shift to agent-led discovery and commerce Enterprise B2B and SaaS organisations whose growth depends on AI adoption by customers Audience outcomes A framework for tying AI initiatives to outcomes a board will fund: quality lift, scope growth, capability unlock, rather than activity metrics. A clear picture of how agent-led customer journeys change discovery, trust, and where buying influence sits. A diagnosis of why specific AI initiatives stall at the pilot stage, and where the product-to-market handoff breaks. A way to spot where AI-driven sameness enters content and customer experience, and how to design for differentiation from the start.

Why organisations work with Rachel DeAlto She brings a working framework for relatability that translates a soft concept into specific leader behaviours, sourced from her own research and applied across Fortune 500, government and nonprofit settings. Her dual training in law and psychology gives her credibility with both legal-minded executives and people-function leaders, two audiences that often talk past each other on culture work. As Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, she works inside a business whose product is human connection at scale, which gives her examples that land with commercial audiences rather than HR-only ones. She holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation and has worked across more than 200 national media platforms, so the delivery is polished without sliding into performance. The work is built for multigenerational teams specifically, which is where most leadership programmes fail in practice. Biography highlights Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, parent company of Match.com, Tinder and Hinge. Author of The Relatable Leader and relatable, both published by Simon & Schuster. TEDx speaker; Being Authentic in a Filtered World featured on TED.com. Television expert on Lifetime’s Married at First Sight and TLC’s Kate+Date. Certified Speaking Professional, National Speakers Association. JD, Seton Hall University; MA in Psychology, Arizona State University; BA in Communications, Syracuse University. Biography Most organisational culture problems present as engagement problems first. People stop volunteering ideas, hand-offs get sloppy, turnover ticks up in the wrong roles. The diagnosis is usually slower than the decline. Rachel DeAlto’s argument is that what looks like disengagement is often a relational deficit at the leader level, and that the deficit is fixable with specific skills rather than slogans. Her two books, relatable and The Relatable Leader, both published by Simon & Schuster, build the case. The first sets out how people connect with each other under conditions of distraction, filtering and fatigue. The second turns the argument toward leadership and the practical question of how a senior manager builds trust quickly across a workforce that spans five generations and several working modes. DeAlto’s background is unusual for the topic. She trained as an attorney at Seton Hall, holds a master’s in psychology from Arizona State, and now serves as Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, where connection is the commercial product. That combination shapes the work. She speaks the language of executives, draws on psychological research rather than anecdote, and tests her frameworks against a business whose users vote on connection every day. The audience is corporate, but the substance is granular. Whitepapers on the multigenerational workforce, signature programmes on customer experience and sales relatability, and a Certified Speaking Professional designation that signals a craft-level investment in delivery. The closing claim is not that culture is everything. It is that culture is built from countable leader behaviours, and those behaviours can be taught. Key speaking topics Relatability and human connection Leadership and team performance Multigenerational workforce dynamics Communication and emotional intelligence Customer experience and relatable sales Organisational culture and engagement Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers building engagement and retention strategy Senior leaders managing newly hybrid or distributed teams Sales and customer experience leaders rebuilding trust in long-cycle buyer relationships Leadership development teams designing programmes for multigenerational workforces Audience outcomes A vocabulary and a framework for relatability that turns a soft concept into observable leader behaviours A clearer view of where engagement breaks down inside multigenerational teams and what to do about it Specific tactics for building trust at speed in hybrid and high-turnover environments A shift in how senior leaders think about communication, from broadcast to connection

Why organisations work with Rafe Offer He has run brand portfolios at the scale most marketers only study, including a $1.2 billion Coca-Cola business and a Disney adult merchandise category that grew from $50m to $800m under his marketing leadership. He turned a single concert in a North London flat into Sofar Sounds, a venture-backed live music network operating in over 300 cities, with $40 million raised and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. He works on the seam between brand and community, which is where most companies now have to compete and where most marketing leaders lack practical playbooks. His career spans the corporate brand machine and the founder seat, so the same talk holds up in front of a CMO at a listed business and a scale-up CEO with a board to convince. Biography highlights Founder and Founder-Chair of Sofar Sounds, the global live music community founded in London in 2009. Former Director of Global Marketing, Disney Consumer Products, leading worldwide marketing for a $12bn licensing business. Former Global Marketing Director, The Coca-Cola Company, with responsibility for $1.2bn in stores, attractions, events and licensed merchandise. Former Director of Innovation, Diageo. Founder of “this & that,” a community and tech start-up focused on the practice of dialogue. Sofar Sounds named “one of the top new brands in America” by New York Magazine and described as a “quiet revolution” by The Guardian. Biography A live concert in a North London flat in 2009, eight friends invited to listen to a single performer, became the seed of Sofar Sounds. From that evening, Rafe Offer built a global live music network now operating in more than 300 cities, with about $40 million raised across three funding rounds and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. New York Magazine called it one of the top new brands in America. The unusual part of his career is the route in. Before Sofar, Offer ran the Mickey Unlimited adult merchandise programme at Disney, where the “having fun never goes out of style” campaign helped grow that category from $50m to $800m. He went on to lead worldwide marketing for Disney Consumer Products’ $12bn licensing business, then ran a $1.2bn Coca-Cola portfolio of stores, events and licensed merchandise as Global Marketing Director, before taking a Director of Innovation role at Diageo. That sequence, big-brand operator turned founder, is what gives his perspective its weight. He has built community-led growth from scratch and run brand P&Ls at industrial scale. He talks credibly to a CMO worried about declining ad efficiency and to a founder trying to convert a passionate audience into a fundable business. His more recent venture, this & that, is a community and tech start-up built around the practice of dialogue. It extends the through-line of his work: how organisations earn the right to people’s attention, and how that attention becomes commercial substance. Key speaking topics Brand building in the era of community Customer experience as a growth engine Scaling a start-up from idea to global brand Marketing and innovation inside large organisations Company culture in entrepreneurial businesses Fundraising and commercialising a community brand Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing for a low-trust, low-attention environment Founders and scale-up CEOs converting community traction into investable growth Customer experience and innovation leads inside large consumer businesses Boards reviewing brand and growth strategy in consumer-facing categories Audience outcomes A clearer view of why community has become the central question for consumer brands, with examples from Sofar, Disney and Coca-Cola Specific lessons on running a global brand portfolio at scale, drawn from leading $1.2bn at Coca-Cola and $12bn licensing at Disney A founder’s account of what investors actually fund in a community-led business Practical detail on how culture and customer experience interact in fast-growing companies

Why organisations work with Ramon Ray He has built and exited three of his own companies and runs two active media platforms, so the advice is operator-tested, not theorised from the outside His Celebrity CEO framework gives founders a step-by-step way to build local and category authority, not generic personal-brand advice He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and President Obama, and shares platforms with Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, which gives him an unusually wide read on what works across founder archetypes He has been invited to the White House and the US Congress on small-business and personal-branding topics, which gives the work institutional weight beyond the usual marketing-conference circuit He is a high-energy event host as well as a keynote speaker, and is regularly hired by Entrepreneur magazine and similar publishers to anchor their flagship conferences Biography highlights Founder of SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media, two long-running platforms serving small-business owners Author of The Celebrity CEO, Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing (Wiley), Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses, and two further titles Conducted the first live Google Hangout interview with President Barack Obama Member of the US Delegation to India led by Ivanka Trump for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit Invited expert witness to the US Congress and speaker at the White House on personal branding Contributor to Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, Small Business Trends, and Allbusiness.com; co-founder of the Small Business Influencer Awards Biography Most small-business owners do not lose to better products. They lose to better-known competitors. The Celebrity CEO thesis takes that observation seriously and treats personal brand as a growth instrument with measurable outputs: leads, referrals, pricing power, retention. The book is the public face of two decades of work with founders trying to compete against larger rivals. The author of that thesis, Ramon Ray, is a five-time entrepreneur who has built and exited three companies, including SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media. He has written five books across technology, marketing, and personal brand, and his journalism appears in Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, and Small Business Trends. His access to the top of the founder market is unusual. He conducted the first live Google Hangout with President Obama, joined the US Delegation to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and has been invited as an expert witness to Congress and as a speaker at the White House on personal branding. He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and shared stages with Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Deepak Chopra. What makes the work commercially useful is the operator’s eye behind it. Ramon co-founded the Small Business Influencer Awards with Anita Campbell, anchors Entrepreneur magazine’s flagship conferences as host, and runs an active mastermind for founders applying the Celebrity CEO playbook. The advice is not theoretical; it is what he is doing for himself in public, in real time. Key speaking topics Personal brand as a growth engine for founders Small-business marketing and customer acquisition Community building and category authority Social media for entrepreneurs Digital tools and technology for small business Entrepreneurial mindset and resilience Ideal for Founders and CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses Franchise networks, dealer councils, and independent business associations Marketing and growth leaders inside larger organisations who serve SMB customers Diversity-in-business and youth-entrepreneurship programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of what a Celebrity CEO is, and what it takes to become one in their market A simple model for turning customer relationships into a referral and retention engine Specific tactics for showing up consistently on social platforms without burning out Renewed conviction that being visible is part of the job, not a vanity project A short list of next moves they can act on the same week

Why organisations work with Rebecca Minkoff Two decades of operating the same brand through three retail eras: department store, direct-to-consumer digital, and the post-pandemic rebuild. Few founder speakers have run their own brand long enough to talk credibly about all three. A working playbook for founder reinvention. After losing 70% of revenue in 2020, Minkoff repositioned the business; she can speak to the operational decisions that recovery actually required. Convening power with other women founders. Through the Female Founder Collective and the Superwomen podcast, she has interviewed and worked alongside operators like Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba, and brings that network into the room. A published thesis on founder behaviour. “Fearless” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021) sets out the specific rules she used to build and rebuild the brand, giving audiences a single argument to react to rather than a career retrospective. Biography highlights Founder and Co-Creative Director of Rebecca Minkoff, established 2005, distributed across 900+ stores worldwide and own retail in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Korea. Founder of the Female Founder Collective (2018), a network of 9,000+ women-led businesses providing education, mentorship and strategic resources. Author of “Fearless: The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021). Host of the “Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff” podcast, with guests including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. Recipient of the Accessories Council Breakthrough Designer Award (2011). Active member of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America). Biography The Morning After Bag was designed in 2005 by a 24-year-old who had moved to New York at 18 to work in fashion. Twenty years later, that handbag is still in production, the brand carries Rebecca Minkoff’s name across 900 stores, and the founder has had to rebuild her own company more than once to keep it there. That second part is where she becomes useful to organisations. Minkoff has run the Rebecca Minkoff brand through the collapse of department store retail, the rise of direct-to-consumer digital, and a pandemic that erased 70% of her business in a single year. The business she now operates is structurally different from the one she founded, and she has had to make every one of those changes herself. In 2018, she founded the Female Founder Collective, now a 9,000-member network for women-led businesses, and launched the Superwomen podcast, where she has interviewed founders and operators including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. In 2021 she published “Fearless” with HarperCollins Leadership, a book that sets out the specific operating rules she used to build the brand and stay in business. The Accessories Council named her Breakthrough Designer in 2011. She is an active CFDA member. The more interesting credential, for a senior buyer, is that she has run the same name-on-the-door consumer brand for two decades, which is not a position many founders reach. Key speaking topics Founder reinvention after market shock Building and scaling a consumer brand Direct-to-consumer and digital retail Women in entrepreneurship and access to capital Brand longevity over multiple retail eras Networks and mentorship for women founders Risk-taking and rule-breaking in brand building Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior commercial leaders at consumer brands navigating channel disruption or category decline. Heads of DTC, brand and customer for retail and consumer-goods companies rebuilding after demand shocks. Corporate networks and ERGs for women in leadership, particularly those focused on entrepreneurship and progression to founder roles. Investor, accelerator and venture-platform audiences working with women-led portfolios. Audience outcomes A specific operator account of how a consumer brand survives twenty years of retail change, told by the person whose name is on the building. A concrete view of what founders actually do after a 70% revenue loss, beyond the post-mortem narrative. A picture of how networks like the Female Founder Collective change the funding and mentorship arithmetic for women-led businesses. The argument from “Fearless” in the founder’s own words, including which of the rules held under pressure and which did not.

Why organisations work with Richard Hammond A face audiences already trust. Two decades on Top Gear and The Grand Tour means a senior room recognises him the moment he walks on, which shortens the warm-up and lifts the agenda. Hosting craft built in live broadcast. Hammond reads a room the way a presenter reads a studio, which is the specific skill awards nights and corporate dinners need. Storytelling drawn from genuine high-stakes experience. The 2006 Vampire crash and the 2017 Rimac crash give him material that lands without rehearsal because it actually happened. Entrepreneurial second act. DriveTribe and The Smallest Cog give Hammond credible commercial experience to draw on when a brief calls for substance beyond hosting, particularly in automotive, media, and brand-building contexts. Comfortable across formats. Awards host, after-dinner speaker, panel moderator, fireside Q and A; he does not need a single staged format to work. Biography highlights Co-presenter, Top Gear, BBC Two, 2002 to 2015, with Jeremy Clarkson and James May. Co-presenter, The Grand Tour, Amazon Prime Video, 2016 to 2024. Author of On the Edge: My Story (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008) and As You Do (Orion, 2007). Founder of The Smallest Cog, a classic car restoration business in Hereford, opened 2021. Co-founder of DriveTribe, the automotive content platform launched in 2016. Presenter of Brainiac: Science Abuse (Sky One), Total Wipeout (BBC One), and Richard Hammond’s Workshop (Discovery+). Biography Top Gear ran for thirteen years on BBC Two with three presenters who became, between them, one of the most exported television properties in British broadcasting history. Hammond was the smallest of the three on screen and the one audiences most often warmed to first. That recognition is the asset corporate buyers are buying when they put him on a stage. Hosting a room of senior executives is closer to live television than to keynote speaking. The host has to set the tempo, hand off cleanly between segments, recover from a missed cue, and keep the audience with the agenda rather than ahead of it. Hammond has spent more than twenty years doing exactly this work, first across local BBC radio, then across motoring television, and most consistently as one third of the Top Gear and Grand Tour line-up. The 2006 Vampire dragster crash at RAF Elvington gave him a recovery story that has become its own asset. He was travelling at 288 mph when the tyre failed; he spent two weeks in a coma; he wrote about the recovery in On the Edge in 2008. When the brief calls for an after-dinner set with substance behind the laughs, that material is genuinely his. Beyond broadcast, Hammond has a working business in The Smallest Cog, the Hereford classic car restoration workshop he opened in 2021, and a media platform in DriveTribe, which he co-founded with Clarkson and May in 2016 and now runs himself. Both give him commercial ground to stand on when a brief moves from hosting into something closer to a fireside conversation about reinvention, brand, or the economics of motoring media. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and ceremony presenting Corporate after-dinner sets Automotive media and broadcast Recovery and return after the 2006 Vampire crash Building DriveTribe and The Smallest Cog The Top Gear and Grand Tour years Engineering, performance cars, and motoring journalism Ideal for Annual award nights and industry awards ceremonies Corporate dinners, gala evenings and partner events Automotive sector conferences and dealer events Brand activations and customer hospitality with a motoring or engineering audience Audience outcomes An evening that runs on tempo, with a host who keeps the agenda moving without flattening it. A first-hand account of the 2006 crash and recovery that anchors the room when the brief calls for it. A working perspective on automotive broadcast, classic car restoration, and the commercial side of motoring media. The recognition value of a presenter the audience already watches at home.

Why organisations work with Richard Shotton Translates academic behavioural science into specific marketing moves, tested against named consumer brands including Google, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays and Sky through his consultancy Astroten. Runs original field experiments rather than recycling textbook biases, giving senior marketers fresh evidence on questions like pricing, costly signalling and admitting weakness. Author of two best-selling behavioural science books, with The Choice Factory translated into 15 languages and named Best Sales and Marketing Book at the 2019 Business Book Awards. Speaks the language of working marketers, not academics, after starting his career as a media planner on Coca-Cola, Lexus and comparethemarket before turning to behavioural science. Biography highlights Founder of Astroten, a behavioural science consultancy advising Google, Facebook, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays, Sky and Santander. Author of The Choice Factory (Harriman House, 2018), available in 15 languages. Winner, Best Sales and Marketing Book, 2019 Business Book Awards; voted #1 in the BBH World Cup of Advertising Books, 2018. Author of The Illusion of Choice (Harriman House, 2023) and co-author of Hacking the Human Mind (2025). Behavioural science columnist for Marketing Week; published in Campaign, The Drum, Admap and The Independent. BA in Geography, University of Oxford; MSc in Development Studies, SOAS University of London. Biography Most marketing budgets are still allocated on what customers say they prefer. The behavioural science evidence is now overwhelming that what people say and what they actually buy are different things, and that the gap is exploitable. This is the territory Richard Shotton has spent two decades mapping. He started in the industry as a media planner on Coca-Cola, Lexus and comparethemarket, before specialising in behavioural science. In 2018, he founded Astroten, a consultancy that has since worked with Google, Facebook, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays, Sky and Santander on questions of pricing, advertising and customer acquisition. His first book, The Choice Factory, set out 25 cognitive biases with concrete examples for marketers. It was named Best Sales and Marketing Book at the 2019 Business Book Awards, voted #1 in the BBH World Cup of Advertising Books, and is now published in 15 languages. The Illusion of Choice followed in 2023, with Hacking the Human Mind co-authored in 2025. What sets his work apart is the mix of sources. Alongside academic studies, he runs original field experiments, then writes them up for Marketing Week, Campaign, The Drum and Admap. The result is a body of work that gives commercial leaders evidence they can act on, not theory they have to translate. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in marketing Cognitive biases and consumer choice Pricing and willingness to pay Advertising effectiveness Brand building and distinctiveness Customer habit formation Behavioural field experimentation Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors are making advertising and pricing decisions under tightening budgets. Brand and customer teams in consumer-facing categories are rebuilding their acquisition strategy. Insight, research and strategy leads who want evidence stronger than stated preference. Agency leadership teams responsible for creative and media effectiveness. Audience outcomes A working catalogue of cognitive biases with named examples of how brands have used them commercially. Sharper questioning of stated-preference research and traditional focus group outputs. Specific tactics for pricing presentation, costly signalling, habit formation and category framing. Evidence-led arguments to defend brand investment and creative quality inside the business.

Why organisations work with Rick Kelsey A working broadcaster, not a hired host. Kelsey is currently on air at Times Radio and BBC Business, which means he interviews real cabinet ministers and CEOs in his day job and brings the same posture to a corporate stage. Twelve years inside BBC newsrooms, including World Service and Newsbeat, plus editorial leadership of the Newscast podcast through the pandemic where audience grew by over 30 percent. Genuine subject command in personal finance and energy. He has written hundreds of BBC articles on mortgages, pensions, interest rates and the green-energy transition, so he can host a finance or sustainability brief without notes. Audience-building credibility outside corporate stages. As a presenter on The Running Channel, a YouTube channel of over 700,000 subscribers, he understands how to keep a non-captive audience listening, which translates directly to internal events. A track record across awards formats that punish weak hosts: the LEAF Awards, RFIx Financial Awards and European Hospitality Awards. Biography highlights Presenter at Times Radio, BBC Business and Spotify, covering personal finance, politics and energy. Twelve years at the BBC across television, radio and online, including World Service and Newsbeat. Edited the BBC’s Newscast podcast through the COVID-19 pandemic, with audience growth of over 30 percent. Co-host of The Running Channel on YouTube, with more than 700,000 subscribers. Author of hundreds of BBC personal-finance articles on mortgages, savings, pensions and energy bills. Hosted the LEAF Awards, RFIx Financial Awards and Gala Dinner, and the European Hospitality Awards. Biography Most corporate stages fail in the same way. The host is too cautious to push, the panel runs to the brief, and the audience leaves with a cleaner version of what they already believed. The fix is rarely a more polished MC. It is someone who interviews for a living and treats the stage as a newsroom. Rick Kelsey is that profile. He presents at Times Radio, BBC Business and Spotify, and spent twelve years on BBC staff across World Service and Newsbeat before leaving in 2022. Through the pandemic he edited Newscast, the BBC’s flagship politics podcast, and is credited with audience growth of more than 30 percent during that period. His specialist territory is personal finance and energy. He has written hundreds of BBC articles on mortgages, savings, pensions, interest rates and the green transition, and has interviewed UK prime ministers across multiple cycles. That base means a financial-services or utilities brief does not need scripting; he can take the room into the substance and out again. Outside the BBC he co-hosts The Running Channel, a YouTube property of more than 700,000 subscribers. Combined with awards-night work for the LEAF Awards, the RFIx Financial Awards and the European Hospitality Awards, the result is a host who can carry a 90-minute live show, keep an executive panel honest, and read when the room needs the next question rather than a longer answer. Key speaking topics Event hosting and panel moderation Awards-night presenting Personal finance and cost of living Mortgages, savings and interest rates Energy transition and renewable energy UK politics and policy Broadcast journalism and media Ideal for Internal communications and brand teams running town halls, leadership offsites and customer events. Financial services and consumer-finance audiences where a host needs to speak the subject fluently. Energy, utilities and sustainability conferences requiring a moderator across solar, wind and hydrogen briefs. Industry awards nights where the host carries the room from open to close. Audience outcomes A live event that holds executive attention from open to close, with crisp transitions and on-time running. Panels that produce something the audience did not already know, because the moderator pushes past the prepared answer. A finance or energy session translated into language a mixed corporate audience can act on. A presenter the audience associates with the BBC and Times brands, lifting the perceived production value of the event.