Customer Experience & Marketing

Why organisations work with Rita Clifton A board-level voice on brand, not an agency one. As Deputy Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership and former NED at Nationwide, ASOS, Bupa, and Dixons, she speaks about brand from inside the governance conversation, not across the table from it. Two decades shaping the modern discipline of brand valuation as London CEO then Chairman of Interbrand, the firm that established the methodology most large companies still use to put a number on brand equity. Author of the standard reference text Brands and Branding for The Economist, used as a teaching text on MBA programmes, alongside The Future of Brands and Love Your Imposter. Credible on sustainability and brand purpose as Chair of Forum for the Future, which separates her from brand voices who treat purpose as messaging rather than as a commercial commitment to test. Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Said Business School on corporate reputation, with media reach across BBC, Sky, and the FT that signals authority to an external audience as well as an internal one. Biography highlights Deputy Chairman, John Lewis Partnership (from February 2021); Chair of the Nominations Committee. Chair, Forum for the Future, the international sustainability non-profit founded by Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin. Former London CEO and Chairman of Interbrand (1997 to 2012); previously Vice Chairman and Strategy Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Visiting Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford, specialising in corporate reputation. Author of Brands and Branding (The Economist), The Future of Brands, and Love Your Imposter (Kogan Page, 2020), shortlisted at the Business Book Awards. CBE, 2014 New Year Honours, for services to the creative industries. Biography Brand is still treated, in most boardrooms, as something the marketing function owns. It sits beneath strategy in the agenda, gets the smallest share of capital, and is measured by activity rather than by enterprise value. Rita Clifton’s argument, built across thirty years at Saatchi & Saatchi, Interbrand, and BrandCap, is that this is the wrong organisational logic. Brand is what holds a company’s pricing power, customer trust, and talent magnetism in place, and in most large businesses it is the largest intangible asset on the balance sheet. She has tested the argument from both sides. As London CEO and then Chairman of Interbrand from 1997 to 2012, she helped shape the brand valuation methodology that boards now use to compare brand equity to other forms of intangible capital. As Deputy Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, alongside earlier non-executive roles at Nationwide Building Society, ASOS, Bupa, Dixons, and Ascential, she has been the person on the other side of the table, asking executive teams what their brand investment is actually buying. Her writing makes the argument durable. Brands and Branding, published by The Economist, is a standard MBA reference. Love Your Imposter, published by Kogan Page in 2020, was shortlisted at the Business Book Awards and reframes the inner experience of senior leadership through the same lens of identity and authenticity she applies to brands. The sustainability work runs in parallel and reinforces the commercial case. As Chair of Forum for the Future and a Trustee at Green Alliance, she sits inside the policy conversation on net zero and corporate purpose. That gives her something most brand voices lack: a defensible position on whether a company’s stated purpose is actually being capitalised, or is just rhetoric on a website. Key speaking topics Brand as enterprise value and board agenda item Corporate reputation under digital and AI disruption Brand purpose, sustainability, and credibility Non-executive leadership and governance Personal brand and authenticity for senior leaders Marketing and brand strategy in consumer-facing businesses Diversity in the boardroom Ideal for Boards, chairs, and NEDs reviewing brand as a strategic asset rather than a marketing budget line CMOs, CCOs, and CSOs aligning brand, sustainability, and corporate reputation CEO and ExCo offsites in consumer, retail, financial services, and partnership-model businesses Senior leadership programmes addressing personal brand, identity, and presence at the top Audience outcomes A sharper definition of what brand is doing inside their own organisation’s P&L and balance sheet A board-level vocabulary for brand investment that connects to capital allocation, not campaign spend A more honest read on whether stated purpose is commercially credible to customers, employees, and investors A practical view of personal authority for senior leaders facing scrutiny they did not have earlier in their careers

Why organisations work with Robbie Lyle He built the category. AFTV is the largest football fan channel globally, with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion views, created without external investment. Most speakers on community-led media describe the trend; he set the benchmark. He owns the commercial reality of audience-first media. GFN turns over more than £1.4 million a year on a self-financed model, which gives him a working answer to the questions boards actually ask: how do you monetise community without breaking trust, and where does the margin sit. He has taken on incumbent broadcasters and won audience share on their core territory. That is a useful perspective for any organisation watching a digital-native competitor erode a category it used to dominate. His ITV documentary Football Fans Under Their Skin and his work on representation in sport give him a serious second register on race, inclusion and who gets heard in mainstream media, beyond the entrepreneurship story. Biography highlights Founder and Group CEO of Global Fan Network, parent company of AFTV and DR Sports. Founded AFTV in October 2012, now the largest football fan channel worldwide with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion total views. Host of Channel 4’s The Real Football Fan Show, which premiered in April 2018. Subject of the 2020 ITV documentary Robbie Lyle: Football Fans Under Their Skin, on race and Black supporters in UK football. Speaker at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union. Listed in TechRound’s BAME 50 entrepreneurs. Biography Most of the people who broadcast football matches have never paid for a ticket. Robbie Lyle noticed that gap in 2012, borrowed a camera, and started filming Arsenal supporters outside the Emirates after every game. The channel he launched as Arsenal Fan TV is now AFTV: 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, more than a billion views, and the dominant fan media platform in world football. The business case is more interesting than the YouTube numbers. Lyle has never taken external investment. Global Fan Network, the parent company he founded and runs as Group CEO, now houses AFTV alongside DR Sports and a growing roster of fan-led channels, with turnover above £1.4 million reinvested back into the business. He has done what most legacy media companies are still trying to work out: build a direct relationship with an audience, hold it, and make it pay. That gives him a particular kind of authority on community-led commercial strategy. He can describe, from inside, how a fan channel competes with Sky and BT Sport for the same attention, why authenticity is a working business model rather than a marketing line, and what happens to the economics of a category when the most engaged audience decides it would rather watch other supporters than paid presenters. Channel 4 commissioned The Real Football Fan Show off the back of that argument in 2018. ITV’s Football Fans Under Their Skin, in 2020, used the same platform to examine race in English football and the experiences of Black supporters. He speaks at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union, and his TechRound BAME 50 listing reflects the entrepreneurial side of the story. The line his work draws is a useful one for any organisation thinking about audience ownership: communities that already exist are worth more than communities you try to build, and the operators who understand that tend to win the next decade of commercial media. Key speaking topics Fan-led media and audience ownership Community as a commercial model Entrepreneurship without external investment Digital disruption of incumbent broadcasters Representation and race in sports media Authentic content and brand trust Building a category-defining platform Ideal for Media, entertainment and sports businesses rethinking direct-to-audience strategy CMOs and brand leaders working on community, loyalty and creator partnerships Founders and commercial leaders scaling content businesses without venture capital DEI and culture leads programming sessions on representation in media and sport Audience outcomes A working view of how a fan-first platform takes audience share from established broadcasters A concrete commercial framework for community-led businesses that do not rely on external investment An honest read on what authenticity costs and earns inside a content business at scale Sharper questions for any organisation trying to convert audience attention into a defensible commercial position A first-hand account of representation in sport and what changes when underrepresented voices control the platform

Why organisations work with Robyn Dwyer Two decades anchoring business news for BBC, ITN, Sky and TalkTV translates directly to the stage: she can interview a CEO with the editorial discipline of a newsroom rather than the deference of a corporate compere. She works fluently in French and English, which makes her a practical choice for Paris-based forums, pan-European leadership meetings and bilingual customer events without a second host. Her live anchoring at CGTN keeps her sharp on the running stories executives are being asked about, including energy, retail, China exposure and sustainability, so she chairs from current information rather than a briefing pack. She has interviewed business figures from Sir Richard Branson to the head of Citroen, alongside political leaders and bankers, which is the relevant proof point for boards putting their own leadership on stage opposite her. Biography highlights Presenter for CGTN, anchoring live news programmes, documentaries and special events. Former anchor of TalkTV’s flagship evening news programme. Business news experience at BBC, ITN, Sky and CGTN spanning more than two decades. Conceived and presented a US elections programme for TRT World. Radio news credits at Classic FM, Magic Radio, Smooth Radio, Absolute Radio, LBC and Share Radio. Fluent in French, with on-air work across Istanbul, Paris, Sydney and London. Biography Conferences are where leadership teams expose themselves in front of customers, regulators and their own people. The person chairing the day decides whether that exposure becomes useful tension or polite filler. Robyn Dwyer has spent more than twenty years on the working side of that question, first as a business journalist for the BBC and ITN, then as an anchor for Sky and TalkTV’s flagship evening news programme. Her current seat at CGTN keeps her in daily contact with the live agenda boards are wrestling with: energy markets, retail conditions, China exposure, the sustainability transition. Hosts who only emerge for events tend to drift into generic moderation. Dwyer chairs from a newsroom, which is a different discipline. The interviewee list is the relevant proof. Sir Richard Branson, the head of Citroen, political leaders, bankers and environmental stakeholders have all sat opposite her on air. That experience reads on stage. Senior executives are interviewed properly rather than handed a microphone, and the panel does not collapse into talking points. A working command of French, plus on-air experience in Istanbul, Paris, Sydney and London, makes her a practical pick for European and bilingual programmes that would otherwise need two hosts. The differentiator is straightforward: a journalist who chairs, not a presenter who reads. Key speaking topics Conference moderation and panel chairing Live business interviews with senior executives Bilingual French and English event hosting Sustainability and the energy transition Retail, consumer and finance briefings China business and politics UK news and political context for international audiences Ideal for CEO, CFO and CMO led customer forums and partner conferences that need a credible business interviewer on stage. Boards and investor relations teams running flagship results events, capital markets days and AGM-adjacent forums. Communications, marketing and event leads at European and bilingual French-English organisations. Sustainability, energy and retail sector convenings where the chair needs to handle technical executives without losing the room. Audience outcomes A flagship event held to time, with senior executives interviewed in a way the audience trusts. Panels that produce a usable point of view rather than a round of position statements. Bilingual French and English programming covered by a single host without quality drop-off. Q and A handled with newsroom judgement on which questions to take, redirect or close. A chair record the comms team can point to when the next sponsor or board member asks who is hosting.

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Roger Dooley A 20-year published track record applying neuromarketing to commercial problems, not a recent rebrand into the topic. Friction gives commercial leaders a single operational lens for finding the small frictions that quietly suppress revenue, conversion, and loyalty. Brainfluence translates academic behavioural research into 100 specific tactics marketing and CX teams can deploy, which is why the book has been translated into eleven languages. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) gives buyers a published account of how AI is moving neuromarketing tools out of Fortune 500 research budgets and into reach of ordinary commercial teams, a shift most CX functions have not yet built a working view of. Forbes column and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in active dialogue with the field’s leading researchers, from Robert Cialdini to Dan Ariely. Biography highlights Author of Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011), translated into eleven languages. Author of Friction (McGraw Hill, 2019), named a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019 by PwC’s strategy+business. Author of The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), on AI applied to behavioural science and neuromarketing. Forbes contributor on neuromarketing, customer experience and behavioural science. Host of the Brainfluence podcast, with guests including Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Tom Peters, Rory Sutherland, Nir Eyal and BJ Fogg. Named a Top 50 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty by Thinkers360. Biography Most marketing plans assume customers behave rationally. They do not. The gap between what a brand believes its customers are doing and what their brains are actually doing is where Roger Dooley has built his work for two decades. His 2019 book Friction (McGraw Hill) argues that the small unnecessary frictions inside a buying journey, an employee process, or a product experience are usually more powerful than the bigger strategic levers leaders prefer to discuss. PwC’s strategy+business named it a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019. The earlier Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011) compresses academic behavioural research into 100 marketing-grade tactics, and has been translated into eleven languages. That commercial frame is what separates Dooley from purely academic behavioural-economics voices. The Neuromarketing blog he started in 2005, his Forbes column, and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in continuous dialogue with Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Rory Sutherland, BJ Fogg and Nir Eyal, then translated for marketing, CX, and growth teams who need to ship decisions on Monday. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) turns to AI: how language models and behavioural analytics are pushing tools once held inside Fortune 500 research budgets into the hands of much smaller commercial teams, and the governance and customer-trust questions that follow. Key speaking topics Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience Friction in customer experience and operations Behavioural economics applied to marketing and sales AI-enabled behavioural science and persuasion Customer loyalty and brand trust Persuasion and decision architecture Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams redesigning customer journeys Heads of customer experience and digital product leaders working on conversion and retention Sales leaders rebuilding playbooks around buyer psychology Growth and innovation teams testing AI-enabled behavioural tools Audience outcomes A working definition of where friction is suppressing revenue inside their own customer and employee journeys A vocabulary of behavioural mechanisms drawn from named research, not generic persuasion tropes A current read on how AI is changing the cost and access economics of behavioural research Specific, testable changes to marketing, sales or CX practice they can run inside their teams

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report

Why organisations work with Rory Sutherland His Alchemy argument, that businesses leave their most valuable opportunities untapped by optimising for logic rather than psychology, is built on 30 years of commercial practice at Ogilvy, not academic research. He founded and runs a dedicated behavioural science practice inside one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, where small contextual changes have produced large, documented commercial results, including tripling a call centre’s conversion rate through script changes alone. His concept of “psycho-logic” gives commercial teams a named, usable framework for the decisions that resist rational modelling: pricing, positioning, and customer experience chief among them. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views, meaning his arguments are already part of the strategic vocabulary of many senior audiences, any conversation with him starts further ahead. He founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences – making him an institutional builder in the field, not simply a commentator on it. Biography highlights Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK; co-founder and leader of Ogilvy’s Behavioural Science Practice, established 2012 Author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense (Penguin, 2019); co-author of Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? (2021) Two TED Talks – “Life Lessons from an Ad Man” and “Sweat the Small Stuff” – with over 7 million combined views Former President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising; former Chair of Judges, Direct Jury, Cannes Lions Fortnightly “The Wiki Man” columnist, The Spectator; founder of Nudgestock, the annual behavioural sciences festival Studied Classics at Christ’s College, Cambridge; joined Ogilvy as a graduate trainee in 1988 Biography In 2012, Rory Sutherland did something unusual for an advertising agency: he built a team of psychology graduates inside Ogilvy and pointed them at commercial problems. The premise was direct. Most organisations optimise for the logical version of what customers want, not the psychological reality of how they decide. Three decades of commercial practice have made that premise difficult to argue with. His 2019 book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense sets out the argument in full. Human decision-making, Sutherland contends, follows a “psycho-logic”, a coherent but non-rational set of rules governing what people buy, how much they’ll pay, and how satisfied they feel. Richard Thaler and Robert Cialdini both appear in its pages; Nassim Nicholas Taleb described it as “a breakthrough book.” The Behavioural Science Practice he founded at Ogilvy tests these ideas commercially. Small contextual adjustments – changes to a call centre script, a reframing of a product’s positioning, a tweak to the sequence of a customer journey – have produced measurable results. It is the kind of evidence that makes his argument practical rather than purely theoretical. He served as President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and as Chair of the Judges for Cannes Lions’ Direct Jury. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views. He writes a fortnightly column in The Spectator and founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics and commercial strategy Consumer psychology and decision-making Perception, value, and pricing psychology The limits of data-driven marketing Creativity and non-rational problem-solving Behavioural design and customer experience Nudge theory in organisational contexts Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and marketing leadership teams rethinking growth strategy Commercial strategy and innovation leaders exploring alternatives to pure data-led optimisation Senior executives and boards examining how psychological insight can improve pricing, product design, and customer experience Conference audiences in financial services, retail, consumer goods, and technology where customer behaviour directly drives commercial performance Audience outcomes A named framework, “psycho-logic”, for identifying where logical optimisation is producing diminishing returns in marketing and commercial strategy Specific, documented examples of small behavioural interventions that produced large commercial results A clearer understanding of why the most effective growth moves often look counterintuitive, and how to make the internal case for them Practical grounding in behavioural economics principles applicable to pricing, customer experience, and product design A more honest audit of where data-driven approaches reach their limits and what to reach for instead

Why organisations work with Ruth Hinks She is the first woman to win UK Chocolate Masters and produced the highest UK finish on record at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, a credential that lands in any room. She has built and run Cocoa Black since 2008 across retail, production, cafe, and a chocolate and pastry school, giving her a working operator’s view of a specialist food business rather than a theory of one. She brings hands-on culinary content to client hospitality and product launches, which most keynote speakers cannot offer. Her career has run from Head Pastry Chef at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne and the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh to international competition and television, giving her credibility across hospitality, retail, and broadcast settings. Biography highlights First woman to win UK Chocolate Masters, 2012. Top-five finish at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, 2013, the highest UK result recorded at the time. Founder of Cocoa Black, Peebles, established 2008; chocolate and pastry school opened by HRH Prince Edward in 2016. Former Head Pastry Chef at the Windsor Hotel, Melbourne and the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh. Named Australian Pastry Chef of the Year early in her Melbourne career. Expert judge, BBC Two’s The Hairy Bikers’ Chocolate Challenge; featured in Netflix’s Extreme Chocolate Makers. Biography Cocoa Black opened in Peebles in 2008. From a single Scottish border town it has grown into a chocolate and patisserie business that runs retail, production, a cafe, and a school, with international competition credibility behind it. The founder has held every line in the operation. Ruth Hinks made her name in competition before the business expanded. In 2012 she became the first woman to win UK Chocolate Masters. A year later she finished in the top five at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, the strongest UK result on record at that time. The result put a small Peebles operation on the international map for the craft. Her hospitality grounding came earlier. She was named Australian Pastry Chef of the Year in Melbourne, where she ran the pastry kitchen at the 5-star Windsor Hotel, then moved to head the pastry section at the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh. She trained with Cacao Barry and studied under Albert Roux, technical roots that show up in Cocoa Black’s product range and in the school’s curriculum. The Pastry School in Peebles was opened by HRH Prince Edward in 2016. Hinks has appeared as expert judge on BBC Two’s The Hairy Bikers’ Chocolate Challenge and produced a chocolate showpiece for Chatsworth House in Netflix’s Extreme Chocolate Makers, work that has put a specialist craft business in front of a far larger audience than the trade alone. Key speaking topics Building a specialist food and drink brand Entrepreneurship in craft-led businesses Competition standards in chocolate and patisserie Hospitality leadership in 5-star kitchens Product innovation and chocolate development Skills development and culinary education Women in elite culinary competition Ideal for Food and beverage industry conferences and supplier events Hospitality leadership teams and luxury hotel groups Corporate client hospitality, gala dinners, and product launches that benefit from craft content alongside a keynote Founder and entrepreneur audiences in specialist consumer businesses Audience outcomes A close-range view of what international competition standards demand of a craft operator. A founder’s account of building a specialist food business across retail, production, and education from a small town base. Specific examples of how product, brand, and training can sit inside a single small business. Hospitality and kitchen leadership lessons drawn from 5-star pastry roles.

Why organisations work with Ryan Serhant He built a brokerage that uses its own studio as the primary lead source, giving sales and marketing leaders a working reference for how content-to-commerce actually operates at scale. He has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales while running the firm, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, so the methodology comes from a practitioner still in the deal flow. His three books, Sell It Like Serhant, Big Money Energy, and Brand It Like Serhant, sequence a coherent commercial argument from individual sales technique to personal brand as a business asset. He is one of the few operators booked at this level whose audience already knows the work through Netflix’s Owning Manhattan and Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York, which compresses the credibility step at large commercial events. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of SERHANT., a brokerage with an in-house film studio used as its lead-generation engine. Star and executive producer of Netflix’s Owning Manhattan; star of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-nominated Million Dollar Listing New York. Author of Sell It Like Serhant (2018), Big Money Energy (2021), and Brand It Like Serhant (2024). The Serhant Team ranked top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years and Top 5 nationwide. Closed close to ten billion dollars in personal sales, including record-setting transactions in New York and Florida. Founder of SERHANT. Studios and the SELL IT digital education platform. Biography Most brokerages still treat marketing as a cost centre and the salesforce as the engine. SERHANT., the firm Ryan Serhant founded in September 2020, inverts that. The studio is the engine. The agents convert the demand it generates. Owning Manhattan, the Netflix series Serhant produces and stars in, is part of the same flywheel. That model is the reason commercial leaders book him. Serhant has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, while running the firm. The point on stage is not the listings. It is what an operating model looks like when content production, personal brand, and sales pipeline are run as a single discipline rather than three departments. His three books trace the same argument at different altitudes. Sell It Like Serhant (2018) is a salesperson’s playbook. Big Money Energy (2021) reframes ambition as a discipline that can be coached. Brand It Like Serhant (2024) treats personal and corporate brand as a measurable commercial asset that produces inbound demand. Together they are the spine of his keynote work and the SELL IT education platform that grew out of the first book. The Serhant Team was ranked the top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years before he launched the brokerage. Million Dollar Listing New York, the two-time Emmy-nominated Bravo series, gave the broader audience the character. Owning Manhattan, now in its second Netflix season, gives them the company. Key speaking topics Content-to-commerce business models Sales methodology and pipeline Personal brand as a commercial asset Entrepreneurship and scale-up Customer acquisition and lead generation Founder mindset and commercial ambition Ideal for Chief revenue officers and heads of sales rebuilding pipeline economics around content Chief marketing officers integrating brand, social, and demand generation into one operating function Founders and CEOs of scale-up businesses building category presence Sales conferences, kickoffs, and partner events for high-ticket and brokerage businesses Audience outcomes A working picture of how an in-house content engine can function as the primary acquisition channel A clearer line between personal brand investment and measurable revenue A sales operating logic drawn from a practitioner who is still closing deals at the top of the market Language and frameworks senior leaders can take back to their commercial teams the next morning

Why organisations work with Sabrina Faramarzi She has written trend reports for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8, three of the most-used forecasting houses in consumer strategy, so brand teams get a forecaster who knows how the foresight industry actually works inside. Her sector range covers travel, beauty, fashion, food and drink, wellbeing, money, tech, retail and media, which means a single speaker can address an audience drawn from several consumer-facing categories without losing specificity. She runs Are We Europe, a cross-border editorial operation, so she brings a pan-European read on culture and audience behaviour rather than a default Anglo-American lens. Her data storytelling practice through Dust in Translation is built for organisations that have research and data assets but cannot make them land with a non-technical audience. Biography highlights Managing Director, Are We Europe, a non-profit pan-European media collective. Founder and Editorial Director, Dust in Translation, a creative data storytelling agency. Co-founder, Feminist Internet, a non-profit advancing internet equality through creative practice. Trend reports written for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8. Journalism contributions to The Guardian, Wired, Vice and Vogue Business. BA (Hons) First Class in Trend Prediction and Forecasting, University of East London; MA with Distinction in Journalism, University of the Arts London. Biography Most consumer trend conversations in the boardroom collapse into one of two failure modes. They either treat every TikTok spike as a strategic shift, or they ignore weak signals until a competitor has already built around them. Sabrina Faramarzi works in the gap between those two errors. Her practice is reading consumer and cultural signals well enough to tell a brand team which ones to bet on. She has the technical training for it. A First Class degree in Trend Prediction and Forecasting from the University of East London, an MA with Distinction in Journalism from the University of the Arts London, and a working track record writing trend reports for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8. That is the inside of the foresight industry, not a commentator’s view of it. The journalism work runs alongside the forecasting. Bylines in The Guardian, Wired, Vice and Vogue Business cover gender, AI, digital rights and internet culture, and that editorial muscle is what lets her translate research into stories that boards and marketing teams actually use. Through Dust in Translation, her data storytelling agency, she does the same job for organisations sitting on data they cannot make legible. She also runs Are We Europe, a non-profit pan-European media collective, and co-founded Feminist Internet. Both give her something most trend speakers do not have: a structural view of how cultural narratives form and travel across borders, which is the part of trend work that matters most when a category is being reshaped rather than refreshed. Key speaking topics Consumer trend forecasting Data storytelling Internet culture and online communities Futures of consumer-facing industries Gender, AI and digital ethics Cross-border European media and audiences Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and category leads in consumer-facing businesses planning the next 18 to 36 months. Innovation and insights teams looking for an outside read on which signals to commit to. Communications and content leaders who need research and data turned into audience-ready stories. Conferences in travel, hospitality, beauty, fashion, food and drink, retail and media that want a sector-specific futures keynote. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of which consumer signals in their category are durable and which are noise. Working language for telling stories with data so research lands with non-technical audiences. A sharper read on how online communities form, mobilise and shape brand reputation. Sector-specific cues for where to look for the next category shift in travel, beauty, fashion, food, retail or media.

Why organisations work with Sahar Hashemi She has built three commercial ventures from a standing start. Coffee Republic (110 stores, £50 million market cap), Skinny Candy (acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built (2,000+ businesses, £2.5 billion combined turnover) give her a working library of how entrepreneurial behaviour actually feels day to day. Her Start Up Forever framework breaks the entrepreneurial mindset down into a small set of repeatable daily behaviours, which is what lets it survive contact with corporate hierarchy. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month. She translates between two worlds that rarely speak the same language: founders running on instinct and customer obsession, and senior executives running on process and structure. Most speakers can describe one of those worlds; she has lived both. Her credibility on women-led growth is operating credibility, not advocacy. Buy Women Built is a commercial channel built with major retailers, and she co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce on growing SMEs. Biography highlights Co-founder, Coffee Republic; scaled to 110 stores and a £50 million market capitalisation Founder, Skinny Candy (50% acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built Author, Anyone Can Do It (Wiley, 2003) and Start Up Forever (Troubador, 2019, Financial Times Business Book of the Month) OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity, 2012 Birthday Honours Co-chair, UK government Scale Up Taskforce; board member, Scale Up Institute Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum Biography Coffee Republic opened on South Molton Street in 1995, the first US-style coffee bar chain in the UK. Within five years it ran 110 stores at a £50 million market capitalisation. Sahar Hashemi co-founded the business with her brother Bobby after leaving a career in law, and the speed of the build became the basis of everything she has worked on since. The question that has occupied her for two decades is why large companies struggle to act on what they already know. Most have the people, the capital and the data to behave entrepreneurially. They rarely behave that way in practice. Her book Start Up Forever, named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month, breaks that gap into a set of daily habits that survive inside corporate structure rather than dying in workshop rooms. The work has weight because it is grounded in three operating businesses she actually built, not consulting case studies. Skinny Candy, the sugar-free confectionery brand, was acquired by Glisten Plc. Buy Women Built, launched in 2020, now represents more than 2,000 women-built businesses with combined turnover above £2.5 billion and has become a working channel inside major UK retailers. She co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce and sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute. Senior teams at Microsoft, L’Oreal, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble and Sky have brought her in for the same reason: she gives a leadership group a usable answer to the question of what entrepreneurial behaviour looks like on a Tuesday afternoon at a 50,000-person company. She was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the UK economy and to charity, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial mindset inside large organisations Innovation and creativity as everyday discipline Building start-up culture in established businesses Intrapreneurship and behaviour change at scale Women-led entrepreneurship and scale-up growth Customer obsession as a leadership behaviour Courage, action and the founder’s bias to start Ideal for Executive teams running innovation, transformation or culture-change programmes CHROs and learning leaders who want behaviour change, not awareness Strategy and growth leaders trying to build new businesses inside an existing one Sales, marketing and customer teams rebuilding around customer obsession Audience outcomes A practical model of entrepreneurial behaviour that translates into Monday-morning habits Specific examples of how founder instincts (customer obsession, bias to act, comfort with ambiguity) operate inside corporate structure A clearer view of why innovation programmes stall, and what to remove rather than add Renewed confidence in personal agency: what an individual contributor or senior leader can change without permission Frameworks from Start Up Forever that teams can apply to their own products, customers and decisions

Why organisations work with Sallie Krawcheck She has run wealth management at the largest scale in the industry, leading Smith Barney, Citi Private Bank, US Trust and Merrill Lynch, then built a venture-backed fintech from scratch around a gap she watched the incumbents miss. Her thesis on the gender wealth gap is quantified, not rhetorical. Ellevest’s portfolio construction takes gender-specific salary curves, career breaks and longevity into account, which gives her a concrete answer to the “what would you actually change” question that most diversity speakers cannot give. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for refusing to soften research calls and for reimbursing retail clients during a downturn. That reputation is what makes her credible to senior boards on questions of conflict of interest and product integrity. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) is a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, and her LinkedIn writing has built one of the largest executive followings on the platform. She arrives with a real audience and a real argument, not a stock keynote. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women. Former president of Global Wealth and Investment Management, Bank of America, overseeing Merrill Lynch and US Trust. Former CEO of Citi Global Wealth Management and former chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Author of “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017), Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Called “The Last Honest Analyst” by Fortune; multiple appearances on the Forbes “100 Most Powerful Women” list; named to Time “Global Influentials”. BA summa cum laude, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MBA with honors, Columbia Business School. Biography The gender wealth gap is wider than the gender pay gap, and for many cohorts, it is still moving in the wrong direction. Closing it is not a marketing problem for financial services. It is a product, advice and capital allocation problem, and the people best placed to solve it are the people who have run the businesses on the other side of the gap. Krawcheck spent two decades doing exactly that. She rose from equity analyst to chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co, then ran Smith Barney and Citi Global Wealth Management, then led Bank of America’s combined Merrill Lynch and US Trust wealth business. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for protecting research independence and reimbursing retail clients during a downturn, which remains the cleanest single line on her professional integrity. In 2016 she co-founded Ellevest, a digital investment platform built around the financial reality of women’s careers and lifespans. The investing algorithm factors in salary curves that peak earlier, more frequent career breaks and longer retirement horizons. Ellevest is the only modern fintech that uses gender as an input to portfolio construction rather than a marketing layer on top of a generic product. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) became a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Her LinkedIn following puts her among the most-read business writers on the platform, and Inc. has named her a Top Female Founder. She speaks to financial services boards, leadership teams and consumer brands on what it actually takes to design products and careers around a customer base the industry has historically underserved. Key speaking topics Closing the gender wealth gap Designing financial products for underserved customer segments Women, leadership and career capital Building a fintech inside a regulated industry Trust, conflict of interest and integrity in financial advice Entrepreneurship after a corporate career Capital, investing behaviour and the future of advice Ideal for Financial services CEOs, CMOs and heads of wealth and private banking are rethinking their women-client strategy. Boards and ExCos of consumer-facing businesses where female customer segments are under-monetised. Founders, investors and leadership teams in fintech and consumer finance. Senior women’s leadership programmes, CHRO sponsors and ERG executive sponsors at large enterprises. Audience outcomes A specific read on where the gender wealth gap actually sits in product design, pricing and advice, not in HR policy. A Wall Street insider’s honest account of how integrity, advice quality and conflicts of interest play out at the top of the industry. A practical view of what it takes to build a regulated fintech around an underserved segment, told by an operator who has done it. A direct, unhedged set of arguments on women, money and career capital that senior audiences can act on.