Cybersecurity

Why organisations work with Clodagh Griffin She has built a major media brand’s TikTok presence from zero to 70,000 followers and tens of millions of views, so her advice on what travels on the platform is operational, not theoretical. She has reported undercover on TikTok’s child-safety failures for BBC Panorama, which gives her a working view of platform risk that most marketing speakers cannot offer. She works inside The News Movement, a social-first newsroom built for audiences under 35, so she sees content patterns shift in real time across news, culture and entertainment. She is a working presenter, not a former marketer talking about social media, which matters when a brief calls for on-camera moderation, panel hosting or live content capture alongside the keynote. Biography highlights Multimedia journalist at The News Movement, covering investigations and culture for a social-native audience. Built and fronted Yahoo UK’s TikTok account, reaching 70,000 followers and tens of millions of views. Undercover reporter on BBC Panorama’s “Is TikTok Safe?”, produced by Hardcash Productions. MA in Television Journalism, Goldsmiths, University of London (distinction, 2021); BA in Psychology. Career began at TV3 Ireland, now Virgin Media One, in 2014. Publicly known as “The TikTok Professor” across UK speaker agencies. Biography Most brands still treat TikTok as a publishing channel. Griffin treats it as a newsroom problem. Her work at Yahoo UK started with a blank account and ended with 70,000 followers and tens of millions of views, built through a daily editorial discipline: what is happening today, who cares about it, and what is the shortest credible way to put a brand in the middle of that conversation. That craft sits on top of a journalist’s training. Griffin holds an MA in Television Journalism from Goldsmiths, completed with distinction in 2021, and a BA in Psychology. Her career began at TV3 in Ireland in 2014 and moved through multimedia journalism, radio and digital production before settling into the format that suits her: short-form video built for a social-native audience. The work that distinguishes her from other social media speakers is BBC Panorama’s “Is TikTok Safe?”, produced by Hardcash Productions. Four weeks of undercover research, posing as a 14-year-old, exposed how predators were using the platform to groom children. She presented the findings on camera. For a marketing team thinking about brand safety, this is rare ground. The speaker has actually been on the other side of the platform’s failure mode. She is now a journalist at The News Movement, a social-first newsroom built for younger audiences, where she runs investigations and builds the arts and entertainment strand. That gives her a current view of where attention is moving, which is what brands are actually paying for when they book her. Key speaking topics TikTok strategy for brands Social media content and storytelling Emerging platforms and youth audiences Digital safety and platform risk Investigative journalism on social media Short-form video production Ideal for Heads of social, brand and content marketing CMOs reviewing TikTok or a younger audience strategy Comms and brand-safety leads inside consumer and media businesses Editorial and newsroom leaders moving to social-first formats Audience outcomes A working view of what makes a brand’s TikTok content travel, drawn from a 70,000-follower build at Yahoo UK. A direct account of how predators operate on TikTok, and what that means for brands putting content in front of younger users. A current read on where social audiences are moving across news, culture and entertainment, from inside a social-first newsroom. A clearer brief for an internal social or content team on what to test next.

Why organisations work with Ben Owen He has spent more than two decades on the operational side of intelligence, from sniper duties in Iraq to leading covert teams against counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage targets. Few cyber speakers can speak from that side of the line. He runs live OSINT demonstrations from the stage, exposing what an attacker can assemble about a named executive in minutes. Audiences leave with a visceral understanding of their own exposure, not a slide on the threat landscape. As co-founder of The OSINT Group and Co-Director EMEA for Fortalice Solutions, he advises corporates and high net worth principals on digital risk every week. The keynote content is drawn from current casework, not historical anecdote. His Hunted profile gives him cultural reach that board members already recognise, which lowers the resistance non-technical executives bring to cyber conversations. Biography highlights Co-founder, The OSINT Group, an intelligence-led cyber security consultancy. Co-Director, EMEA Region, Fortalice Solutions, the global cyber and intelligence firm founded by former White House CIO Theresa Payton. Former British intelligence officer, with operational experience in counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage. Former sniper in the British Forces, deployed to Cyprus, Kuwait, and Iraq. Lead hunter and Head of Intelligence across the UK, US, and Australian versions of Hunted (Channel 4, CBS, Channel 10). Quoted by The National and Transport + Energy on online fraud and EV charging cyber risk. Biography The attack surface that matters to senior leaders is no longer the corporate firewall. It is the LinkedIn post that confirms a travel date, the loyalty programme that leaks an address, the family member whose social profile fills in the gap. Adversaries assemble these fragments into a picture. Most boards have never been shown that picture. Ben Owen has spent his career on the other side of it. He served as a sniper in the British Forces in Cyprus, Kuwait, and Iraq, then moved into the British intelligence services, where he led covert teams running counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage operations. Twenty-five years of operational work sits behind the keynote. He now co-runs The OSINT Group, an intelligence-led cyber consultancy, and serves as Co-Director EMEA at Fortalice Solutions, the firm founded by former White House CIO Theresa Payton. Current client work, on high net worth principals, corporate executives, and institutional risk, supplies the material for his speaking. Television audiences know him as a recurring hunter across the UK, US, and Australian versions of Hunted; corporate audiences see the same skill set turned on their own organisation. On stage he runs live demonstrations. A volunteer’s name and employer are usually enough to build a profile in front of the room. The point is not theatre. It is to compress the gap between abstract cyber briefings and the operational reality a board now has to govern. Key speaking topics Cyber security as a board-level risk Open-source intelligence and digital footprint exposure The human element of modern cyber threats Executive and principal protection in a digital environment Counter-fraud and social engineering Operational leadership under pressure Surveillance, evasion, and the Hunted methodology Ideal for Boards, CISOs, and CROs commissioning a non-technical reset on cyber risk Executive offboarding, principal protection, and family office audiences Sales kick-offs and client events where a recognisable name needs to land a serious message Industry conferences on financial services, energy, transport, and professional services Audience outcomes A working picture of what a determined adversary can learn about a named executive from open sources alone Specific changes to personal digital hygiene that materially reduce exposure within a week A vocabulary for boards to interrogate their cyber and intelligence functions without retreating into IT jargon A sharper sense of where social engineering and OSINT meet, and why the human layer is now the primary breach vector

Why organisations work with Alec Ross He has advised both a US Secretary of State and a global venture capital firm on the same question: where power is moving as technology, capital and national interest collide. Boards get a single read across all three. The Industries of the Future sold into 24 languages and remains a reference text for executive teams framing long-range technology strategy. That gives him a shared vocabulary with global leadership audiences before he opens his mouth. The Raging 2020s offers a specific thesis, not a survey: the social contract between government, business and citizens is broken, and companies that misread the rebalancing will lose licence to operate. Leaders leave with a framework for where regulatory and political risk is actually heading. He built and sat inside the first serious technology policy function at the State Department, then moved to the investor side at Amplo. He speaks to both the regulator’s logic and the cap table’s logic, which most commentators cannot. Named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. Credentials buyers can cite when justifying the booking internally. Biography highlights Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009 to 2013, in a role created specifically to modernise the practice of diplomacy. Author of two New York Times bestsellers: The Industries of the Future (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and The Raging 2020s (Henry Holt, 2021). Distinguished Professor at the Business School of the University of Bologna; previously Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at Columbia SIPA. Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm, with director roles across technology, finance, manufacturing, human capital and cybersecurity companies. Co-founder of One Economy, a nonprofit that expanded broadband access for low-income households before broadband policy was a political issue. Named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and holder of the US Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Biography The Senior Advisor for Innovation job at the State Department did not exist before 2009. It was built for Alec Ross, who spent four years travelling to forty-one countries turning emerging technology into an instrument of US foreign policy under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That mandate, sitting at the join between diplomacy, national security and the technology industry, is the lens he has brought to every role since. The Industries of the Future, published in 2016, mapped the sectors he believed would reorganise the global economy over the following decade: robotics, genomics, the commercialisation of data, the weaponisation of code. It sold into 24 languages and became a fixture on executive reading lists. The Raging 2020s, published in 2021, moved the argument on. The question is no longer which technologies win. The question is whether the contract between governments, companies and citizens holds, and what companies do when it does not. Ross now teaches at the University of Bologna Business School and sits as a Board Partner at the venture capital firm Amplo, with director seats across technology, finance, manufacturing and cybersecurity. He reads a regulatory brief the way a former diplomat does and a growth plan the way an investor does, and has held both jobs in earnest. What that produces for a leadership audience is judgement on questions that sit above the CTO and below the board: where the geopolitical weather is turning, which regulatory frames are about to land, which technology bets will still make sense when the politics catches up. Foreign Policy named him to its Top 100 Global Thinkers for a reason specific to this moment. Very few commentators have worked the diplomatic side, the commercial side and the academic side of the same argument. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and the US to China contest The social contract between governments, companies and citizens Artificial intelligence, data and national competitiveness Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Regulation, antitrust and the future licence to operate Long-range industry disruption and capital allocation Innovation policy and the future of work Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting multi-year technology and geopolitical strategy CEOs, CSOs and heads of government affairs briefing for regulatory inflection points Financial services, technology and industrial leadership teams exposed to US, EU and China policy divergence Conferences convening CEOs, policymakers and investors on the intersection of technology and state power Audience outcomes A sharper read on where regulation, capital and public sentiment are pushing the next decade of technology strategy. A working framework for pricing political and geopolitical risk inside commercial decisions. Named examples of how governments, companies and citizens are renegotiating the social contract, and the implications for licence to operate. A clearer view of which technology sectors are concentrating power, and where corporate strategy has to adjust. An investor and policymaker’s dual perspective on the same question, translated for operators.

Why organisations work with Nell Watson She works at the technical standards layer. As Vice Chair of IEEE P7001 on Transparency of Autonomous Systems, she helps leaders understand what credible AI governance actually contains, not what it sounds like. She runs the policy interface in Europe. As President of the European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO), she has direct sightlines into how regulation will land on regulated industries. Her book Taming the Machine (Kogan Page) won Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title in 2025 and the Goody Business Book Award in 2024, giving boards a credible reference document, not a popular-press summary. She has built original research that names AI failure modes. Her Psychopathia Machinalis taxonomy gives executives a vocabulary for the behavioural risks of agentic AI systems before those risks become incidents. She translates between engineers and the C-suite. Her Singularity University faculty role and prior work founding a venture-backed machine-learning company mean she speaks both sides of the room. Biography highlights Author of Taming the Machine: Ethically Harness the Power of AI (Kogan Page, 2024). Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2025. Goody Business Book Award 2024. President and Chair of the Supervisory Board, European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO). Vice Chair, IEEE P7001 Transparency of Autonomous Systems; Chair, IEEE ECPAIS Transparency Experts Focus Group. Associate Faculty (AI and Robotics) and Fellow for Ethics, Singularity University. Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council. Senior Scientific Advisor, Harvard Kennedy School’s Future Society AI Initiative. Founder of Poikos (now QuantaCorp), a machine-learning body-measurement company. Co-founder of EthicsNet and OpenEth. Biography The substance of AI governance lives in technical standards, not in mission statements. The IEEE 7001 standard on transparency for autonomous systems sets out measurable, testable levels of explainability; Nell Watson sits as Vice Chair of that working group. That is the layer where boards either earn defensible AI decisions or do not. She also runs the policy interface. As President of the European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO), she advises organisations on how to operate AI for outcomes that hold up under EU regulation. Few speakers carry both the standards seat and the policy seat at the same time. Most carry one or the other, or neither. Her 2024 book Taming the Machine (Kogan Page) became a reference text quickly, winning Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title in 2025 and the Goody Business Book Award in 2024. Alongside it she developed Psychopathia Machinalis, a diagnostic taxonomy for the behavioural failure modes of agentic AI. The taxonomy gives executive teams something they usually lack: vocabulary for what can go wrong inside an AI system before it goes wrong publicly. She is also an operator. She founded Poikos, a machine-learning body-measurement company now trading as QuantaCorp, and teaches AI and Robotics on the Singularity University faculty. The result for an audience is a speaker who can sit between the engineers writing the code and the directors signing off the risk register, and translate without losing precision. Key speaking topics AI ethics and responsible AI governance Transparency and auditability in autonomous systems EU AI Act and the regulatory operating environment Agentic AI risk and behavioural failure modes AI safety and alignment for executive audiences Machine intelligence and the future of work Standards and policy in emerging technology Ideal for Boards and audit committees taking on AI oversight responsibilities Chief Risk, Compliance, and Legal officers in regulated industries CIO, CTO, and Chief AI Officer functions setting governance frameworks Public sector leaders preparing for EU AI Act enforcement Audience outcomes A clear map of where AI governance is being decided, from IEEE standards work to the EU AI Act, and what each layer requires of the organisation. A working vocabulary for agentic AI failure modes, drawn from her Psychopathia Machinalis taxonomy. A direct view of how regulators and standards bodies are framing transparency, bias, and accountability. A sharper sense of which AI investments will survive external scrutiny and which will not.

Why organisations work with Ymir Vigfusson He is a tenured computer scientist at Emory and a practising offensive-security entrepreneur, with three founded companies and two acquisitions. Boards rarely get both registers from the same speaker. His TEDxReykjavik talk on teaching people how to hack has passed 1.8 million views, which means executives often arrive already primed by his argument and ready to engage at depth. Keystrike, his third company, was built specifically for the problem of secure remote access when the user’s machine is already compromised. He has commercial scar tissue on the exact threat model most enterprises now face. He holds an NSF CAREER award for fundamental work on caching and distributed systems, so the technical authority extends well beyond cybersecurity into the infrastructure layer that AI workloads depend on. His guest-researcher role at the CDC, applied to disease-outbreak surveillance, gives him a working analogy for how organisations should model contagion and propagation inside their own networks. Biography highlights PhD in Computer Science, Cornell University; BSc in Mathematics, University of Iceland. Associate Professor at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab. NSF CAREER award recipient for the “Rethinking the Cache Abstraction” project. Co-founder of Syndis (acquired by Origo, 2021), Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior, 2020) and Keystrike (current CTO). TEDxReykjavik talk “Why I teach people how to hack” with more than 1.8 million views. Guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, applying network science to outbreak surveillance. Biography The cybersecurity industry has a translation problem. Attackers reason in workflows; defenders reason in compliance frameworks. Most senior leaders only hear the second language, which is why most security investment is shaped by audit logic rather than by how an adversary actually moves through a system. Ymir Vigfusson works in both languages. He is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab, where his NSF CAREER-funded research on caching and distributed systems has produced papers at USENIX ATC, VLDB and EuroSys. The same researcher co-founded Syndis, the de facto cybersecurity firm in Iceland (acquired by Origo in 2021), the hacker-training platform Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior in 2020), and Keystrike, where he is now CTO and which won Emory’s Innovation of the Year for a product that secures remote access even when the endpoint is compromised. That dual track shapes how he speaks to leadership audiences. His TEDxReykjavik talk, “Why I teach people how to hack,” has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and lays out the argument that an organisation cannot defend itself against an attacker mindset it refuses to study. He brings the same logic into board conversations: walk through how an adversary would actually compromise this organisation, then decide what to fund. A guest-researcher post at the CDC, where he applies network-science methods to outbreak surveillance, gives him a working model for how threats propagate inside any complex network. The practical result for leadership audiences is a clearer picture of where their actual attack surface sits and which defensive habits change the outcome. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk The hacker mindset as a defensive capability Secure remote access and the compromised endpoint Distributed systems and the infrastructure layer beneath AI Network science applied to threat propagation Cybersecurity education and the future security workforce Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CISOs commissioning a sharper view of attacker behaviour Chief technology and chief information officers planning resilience investment Banking, healthcare and critical-infrastructure leadership teams with high-value endpoints Innovation and R&D leaders integrating security into AI and cloud roadmaps Audience outcomes A working model for how adversaries actually move through an enterprise network A sharper line between security spend that changes attacker behaviour and spend that satisfies audit A vocabulary for discussing cyber risk with non-technical board members A view of where computational epidemiology and network science inform threat modelling

Why organisations work with Tim Cole He has been writing about the commercial internet since 1995, before most of the people now running digital programmes were in the workforce, and that long lens lets him separate genuine inflection points from cyclical hype. AI Means Business and The Power of Digital Transformation are written for non-technical managers, which is the constituency most companies actually need to move. He pitches at the board, not at the engineering org. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, he has continuous visibility into how Industry 4.0, IoT and cognitive computing are being deployed inside European manufacturers, which makes his examples concrete rather than aspirational. His “Wild Wild Web” argument on platform power and digital ethics gives boards a coherent way to think about regulation, sovereignty and the GAFA dependency without slipping into either techno-utopianism or moral panic. Bilingual operating fluency in English and German, with thirty years of context on the German Mittelstand and on European identity and security debates, where most American voices are weak. Biography highlights Editor-in-chief, Smart Industry – the IoT Business Magazine, since 2016. Former editor of Net Investor; long-running columnist for FAZ, VDI-Nachrichten, Der Standard and IX. Author of around a dozen books on the digital economy, including Success Factor Internet (Econ), Digital Enlightenment Now! with Ossi Urchs, The Power of Digital Transformation (Carl Hanser), Wild Wild West (2018) and AI Means Business (2020). One of Germany’s earliest internet journalists; began blogging in 1995, decades before most European business commentators took the medium seriously. Bilingual American journalist based in Germany for over four decades, working in English and German across keynotes, moderation and TV. Subject-matter focus across digital transformation, digital ethics, identity management, IT security, IoT and applied AI. Biography The questions European boards are asking about AI and digital transformation in 2026 are the questions Tim Cole has been writing about, in long form, since 1995. Success Factor Internet came out in 1999. The Power of Digital Transformation and AI Means Business came later, but the through line is the same: how does a real company, with a real cost base and real customers, actually change. That long view is the asset. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, the IoT business magazine, Cole has spent the last decade watching European manufacturers attempt the leap from connected sensors to operating advantage, and reporting on what worked and what stalled. The book Wild Wild West compares today’s platform giants to the 19th-century robber barons of the American frontier and argues that the absence of a digital social contract is now a board-level risk, not a policy abstraction. His audience is the non-technical manager. The books are written for executives who have to make capital allocation calls on AI, IoT and platform strategy without being engineers, and who need a clear-eyed account of what the technology can and cannot do. He is direct on limitations and risk, which is unusual in this field, and he writes from inside the European debate on identity, security and digital sovereignty rather than importing a Silicon Valley frame. Bilingual in English and German, Cole has worked across journalism, broadcasting and analyst-adjacent roles for more than thirty years. He brings to a board conversation the rare combination of an American writer’s directness, a German operator’s pragmatism, and three decades of accumulated context on what actually changes when technology meets a P&L. Key speaking topics Digital transformation for non-technical leaders Artificial intelligence in business Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 Digital ethics and the social contract of the internet Platform power, GAFA and digital sovereignty IT security and digital identity management Cognitive computing and predictive analysis The future of the European Mittelstand in a digital economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of European industrial and Mittelstand companies confronting AI and IoT investment decisions CIOs, CDOs and transformation leads who need a credible non-technical voice to align the rest of the executive team CISOs and identity-management functions briefing boards on cyber and digital sovereignty Industry conferences on manufacturing, IoT, Industry 4.0 and applied AI Audience outcomes A grounded read on which AI and digital transformation moves are real operating advantage and which are still vendor narrative. A working vocabulary for board-level conversations about platform power, digital ethics and digital sovereignty. Concrete examples drawn from European industrial and Mittelstand companies, not recycled Silicon Valley case studies. A clearer sense of where IoT and Industry 4.0 investment is actually paying back, and where it is stuck in pilot. A frame for talking about AI’s limits as well as its potential, in language a non-technical executive team can use.

Why organisations work with Rod Beckstrom He has run cybersecurity at the level boards now have to think about it: founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, briefing executives who must translate cyber exposure into a number their audit committee can act on. He led ICANN through the DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the opening of the new generic top-level domain namespace, decisions that shaped the operating environment every digital business sits inside. His Cybersecurity Value at Risk (CyberVaR) framework gives C-suites a single statistical figure for cyber exposure, replacing technical heat-maps with something a CFO and audit committee can use. The Starfish and the Spider, co-authored with Ori Brafman, gave executives a working vocabulary for why decentralised competitors, movements and threat actors keep outflanking traditional hierarchies. He has commented on cyber and internet policy across CNN, BBC, PBS, MSNBC and NPR, and has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet. Biography highlights Founding Director, U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, Department of Homeland Security. President and CEO of ICANN, 2009 to 2012; oversaw DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the gTLD expansion. Co-author, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (Portfolio/Penguin, 2006), translated into 16 languages. Originator of Beckstrom’s Law for valuing economic networks, presented at BlackHat and DefCon in 2009. Co-founder of CATS Software Inc., a derivatives risk management firm taken public on NASDAQ and acquired by Misys. Trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund; Stanford BA (Honors) and MBA; Fulbright Scholar. Biography Cyber risk is now a board-level question, but most boards still cannot put a number on their exposure. Rod Beckstrom built his career on closing exactly that gap. As founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center inside the Department of Homeland Security, he sat at the point where federal cyber policy met operational reality. His CyberVaR framework translates that experience into something a CFO and audit committee can work with: a single statistical estimate of cyber Value at Risk. The internet itself has been part of his remit. As President and CEO of ICANN from 2009 to 2012, he led the organisation through the DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the opening of the generic top-level domain namespace, two decisions that quietly reshaped the operating environment of every digital business. The work also took him through the politics of internet governance with governments, registries and civil society, which is the substance behind his commentary on CNN, BBC and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet. His second body of work is about the shape of organisations. The Starfish and the Spider, co-authored with Ori Brafman and translated into 16 languages, gave executives a usable framework for why decentralised networks, from open-source projects to insurgencies to platform competitors, keep outperforming hierarchies on their own terrain. Beckstrom’s Law, his model for valuing economic networks, sits alongside it as an attempt to put the same intuition into numbers. Underneath the public roles is a working entrepreneur. He co-founded CATS Software Inc., a derivatives and risk management firm taken public on NASDAQ and later acquired by Misys, and continues to build and chair technology companies through his advisory firm BECKSTROM. The result is a speaker who treats cyber risk and decentralised networks as the same conversation: how senior leaders make defensible decisions about systems they do not fully control. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Cybersecurity Value at Risk (CyberVaR) for the C-suite Decentralised organisations and the Starfish model Internet governance and the future of the internet Network economics and Beckstrom’s Law Leadership in networked organisations Ideal for Boards and audit committees setting cyber risk appetite and oversight CISOs, CIOs and CFOs translating cyber exposure into financial language C-suite and corporate development teams navigating decentralised competitors and platforms Government, regulator and policy audiences working on internet and cyber governance Audience outcomes A working method for expressing cyber risk as a single financial figure boards can act on A clearer view of how decentralised networks compete with, and erode, traditional hierarchies Sharper questions to put to security leaders about exposure, recovery and accountability A grounded read on where internet governance and policy are heading and what that means for digital strategy

Why organisations work with Robert Herjavec Two major business exits anchor the credibility. BRAK Systems sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000, and Herjavec Group’s majority stake sold to Apax Partners in 2021. Senior teams hear from an operator who has built and exited at scale. Seventeen years as an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, evaluating thousands of founder pitches in real time. Audiences get a working investor’s read on what closes a deal and what kills one. A sales-first view of business growth. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, his Wall Street Journal bestseller, frames sales as the universal skill of business and gives non-sales people a usable discipline. Operator-level cybersecurity context from founding and running Herjavec Group, once one of Canada’s largest information security firms, before its 2022 merger into Cyderes. Useful when boards want the threat landscape explained without a vendor agenda. An immigrant-founder narrative with verifiable outcomes. Arrived in Halifax at age eight from communist Yugoslavia, then built and exited multiple technology businesses while helping launch one of the most successful business reality formats on network television. Biography highlights Founder of Herjavec Group (2003); served as CEO until stepping down in September 2024 following the company’s 2022 merger with Fishtech Group and rebrand to Cyderes Sold BRAK Systems to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000 Original cast member on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut; also a panelist on Canada’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank Australia Author of three business books: Driven (2010), The Will to Win (2013), and You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), a Wall Street Journal bestseller Recipient of the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal BA in English literature and political science, University of Toronto Biography Most leaders manage businesses someone else built. Robert Herjavec has founded and exited three. BRAK Systems, the cybersecurity firm he started in his basement, was sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000. Ramp Network, which he ran as VP of Sales, was acquired by Nokia for $225 million. In 2003 he founded Herjavec Group, which grew into one of Canada’s largest information security businesses. Apax Partners bought a majority stake in 2021. After a 2022 merger with Fishtech Group it became Cyderes, where Herjavec served as CEO until September 2024 and remains an investor and board member. He has been an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut. Across seventeen seasons he has heard thousands of founder pitches and decided in real time which to back and which to walk away from. The result is an unusual stockpile of pattern recognition on what closes a deal and what kills one from the investor’s side of the table. His three books work the same vein. Driven (2010) and The Will to Win (2013) were simultaneous Globe and Mail bestsellers about how persistence and self-discipline build careers. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, arguing that sales is a teachable craft any senior leader can use. He won the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor-General of Canada for outstanding service. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Sales as a business discipline Building and scaling technology companies Resilience and persistence in business The cybersecurity threat landscape for enterprise leaders Growth strategy and going from zero to scale Pitch evaluation and the investor’s perspective Ideal for Sales kickoffs and revenue leadership offsites where credibility on selling as a teachable discipline is the priority Annual conferences and flagship events where a marquee, household-name keynote needs to anchor the agenda on entrepreneurship and growth Founder-led businesses and high-growth firms whose audiences want an operator with multiple verified exits behind him Cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise technology audiences, where his industry pedigree adds weight to the broader entrepreneurship and growth conversation Audience outcomes A sharper read on what actually closes a sales conversation and what kills one before it starts The discipline of starting from zero, told by someone who arrived in Halifax with one suitcase and built three businesses worth nine-figure exits An investor’s lens on how to evaluate ideas and the founders behind them, built from seventeen years inside the Shark Tank panel A working argument that persistence and discipline outperform inherited advantage, with a verifiable career arc behind it: BRAK to AT&T, Ramp to Nokia, Herjavec Group to Apax A board-level perspective on cybersecurity risk informed by two decades inside one of Canada’s largest enterprise security operators

Why organisations work with Robert Cringely Four decades of first-person reporting on Silicon Valley, from the InfoWorld “Notes from the Field” column (1987 to 1995) through PBSs “Triumph of the Nerds” and “NerdTV” to the long-running I, Cringely site, give him a pattern memory across every major computing wave that few other speakers can match. He runs a public, self-graded annual technology prediction column, which forces a level of accountability about where the industry is heading that most futurists avoid. His book “Accidental Empires” remains a reference text on how the personal computer industry actually got built, used by leaders who want to understand the cultural mechanics of Silicon Valley rather than the press-release version. He has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth on technology business, so the framing he brings to a corporate audience is editorial and argument-led, not a vendor pitch. Biography highlights Author of the 1992 best-seller “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date”. Wrote the “Notes from the Field” column at InfoWorld for eight years, 1987 to 1995. Host and writer behind the PBS documentary series “Triumph of the Nerds” (1996) and “Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet” (1998). Producer and host of “NerdTV” on PBS (2005 to 2006); wrote the “I, Cringely: The Pulpit” column on PBS.org through 2008. Bylines as Cringely have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. M.A. in Communication Research from Stanford University; B.A. from the College of Wooster. Biography Silicon Valley keeps selling boards a story that the next wave will look nothing like the last one. The track record says otherwise. The same patterns of overfunding, platform consolidation, and quiet operating change show up in the PC era, the internet era, the cloud era, and now in generative AI. Robert Cringely has been writing those patterns down in real time since 1987. His column “Notes from the Field” ran in InfoWorld through the formative years of the PC industry, and the 1992 book “Accidental Empires” turned that reporting into the canonical account of how Silicon Valley actually behaves under pressure. PBS adapted the book into the three-part series “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1996, followed by “Nerds 2.0.1” on the rise of the internet, and later the “NerdTV” interview series. As Cringely, he has written for The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek and Worth. What sets the work apart is the prediction discipline. Each January he publishes specific calls on where computing, networks and now AI are heading, and each year he goes back and grades the prior years record in public. Few commentators in the field do this; almost none have done it for as long. For a corporate audience, the value is editorial judgement on a noisy market. Cringely will tell a leadership team which AI claims are doing real operating work, which look like the dot-com years repeating, and where the durable economics of compute, data and platforms actually sit. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the next phase of enterprise computing The economics and geopolitics of cloud and compute Silicon Valley business models and platform consolidation Annual technology predictions and the discipline of forecasting The history of the PC, internet and cloud as a guide to the AI cycle Cybersecurity and infrastructure risk in a connected economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees forming a view on AI investment and platform exposure Strategy, technology and innovation leaders responsible for the corporate AI agenda Industry conferences and offsites in technology, financial services, telecoms and media Investor and analyst audiences seeking an editorial read on Silicon Valley signals Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and platform claims are durable and which are cycle-driven Pattern recognition across the PC, internet, cloud and AI waves applied to the audience’s own bets Sharper questions for vendors, partners and internal technology teams A practical framework for tracking and grading technology predictions over time

Why organisations work with Philippe Dewost He has run digital transformation from inside the state. As director of a €4.25 billion programme at Caisse des Dépôts, he is one of the few practitioners who can speak to public capital, regulation, and operating execution as a single problem. He authored the 2013 report that produced La French Tech. Leaders briefing him on ecosystem strategy are talking to the person who designed one. He built LaBChain, the 27-partner blockchain consortium at Caisse des Dépôts, before most boards had a working vocabulary for distributed ledgers. His material on blockchain is mechanism-first, not hype. He has operated at every layer of the stack: co-founder of Wanadoo, CEO of a Cambridge startup acquired by Apple, head of Leonard at VINCI, director general of a French engineering school. The same person has shipped consumer products, sold technology to Apple, and built a national policy instrument. Biography highlights Co-founder of Wanadoo, France Telecom’s consumer internet service, which became Europe’s leading ISP at peak. Former CEO of imSense (Cambridge), the image-processing company acquired by Apple in 2010. Director of a €4.25 billion digital programme at Caisse des Dépôts under France’s Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir. Author of the 2013 report to the French Prime Minister that gave rise to La French Tech, announced in January 2014. Founder of LaBChain, a 27-partner blockchain R&D consortium led from Caisse des Dépôts. Director of Leonard, VINCI Group’s corporate innovation and foresight programme; led EPITA, the IT and cybersecurity engineering school; author of “De Mémoire Vive” (2022), preface by Cédric Villani. Biography Wanadoo was an internal France Telecom project in 1995 when Philippe Dewost helped build its product management. Four years later it was Europe’s leading internet service provider with over a million subscribers. That early experience set the pattern: technology only matters when it reaches operating scale and the institutions around it learn to govern it. After running imSense, the Cambridge image-processing company acquired by Apple in 2010, he joined Caisse des Dépôts in 2011 to direct a €4.25 billion digital investment package under France’s Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir. In 2013 he authored the report to the Prime Minister that became the design document for La French Tech, the initiative launched in January 2014 with €215 million of public funding. He then built LaBChain, a 27-partner blockchain consortium that became one of Europe’s earliest serious cross-sector experiments in distributed ledgers. At VINCI Group from 2017 he ran Leonard, the corporate innovation and foresight programme, leading exploration across autonomous vehicles, climate resilience, AI and four other long-horizon topics. The intrapreneurship engine he built there is now a reference model for other large corporates. From October 2021 he ran EPITA, the IONIS Group engineering school, focusing it on cybersecurity and on a presence at the cyber campus in La Défense. He is also Operating Partner at C4 Ventures, Pascal Cagni’s consumer high-tech fund, and sits on the board of agritech firm SunR. His 2022 book “De Mémoire Vive”, with a foreword by mathematician Cédric Villani, is a personal history of the digital revolution by someone who was inside several of its turning points. It was published with 42 unique NFT-numbered first editions, an editorial choice that says something about the author’s instinct for where the technology is going next. Key speaking topics Digital sovereignty Blockchain as institutional infrastructure Corporate innovation and intrapreneurship at scale Building national technology ecosystems Cybersecurity as a strategic capability Artificial intelligence in operating environments Smart cities and autonomous mobility The history and trajectory of the digital revolution Ideal for Board members and CEOs setting digital, AI or sovereignty strategy at a European scale CIOs, CTOs and Chief Innovation Officers moving from pilots into operating deployment Public sector leaders and policy teams designing ecosystem or industrial policy in technology Corporate venture and innovation leads building intrapreneurship and partnership engines Audience outcomes A working mental model of how digital ambition translates into operating capability, with named examples from French and European programmes. A clear-eyed read on blockchain as a coordination mechanism between institutions, not as a product category. A senior practitioner’s view of where corporate innovation programmes succeed and where they stall. A specific framing of digital sovereignty that boards can use to interrogate vendor, infrastructure and talent dependencies.

Why organisations work with Misha Glenny He treats cybersecurity as a geopolitical and criminal-economy problem, not an IT one, which is the framing senior boards now need. McMafia and DarkMarket are built on direct fieldwork with traffickers, money launderers and hackers. The case material is his own, not borrowed from analyst desks. As former Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and incoming host of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, he brings institutional weight that few commercial speakers in this category carry. He can move between a finance board on sanctions exposure, a security committee on ransomware, and a leadership audience on Russia, China and the fracturing global order, without changing voice. Biography highlights Former BBC Central Europe Correspondent. Reported the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars. Rector, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, May 2022 to March 2026. Incoming presenter of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg from January 2026. Author of McMafia, DarkMarket, The Balkans 1804 to 2012 and Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio. Executive producer of the BBC One and AMC drama series McMafia. Sony Radio Academy Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. BT Information Security Journalist of the Year. Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, teaching Crime in Transition. Biography International organised crime is no longer a vice problem on the edge of the economy. It is woven into legitimate supply chains, banking flows and the cyber infrastructure that companies depend on. The argument that organised crime could account for a significant share of global GDP, first set out in McMafia in 2008, has aged into a description that finance, security and policy audiences now treat as a working assumption. Misha Glenny built that argument on direct reporting. As the BBC’s Central Europe Correspondent through the 1989 revolutions and the Yugoslav wars, he reported the collapse of the old order from inside it. McMafia and the follow-up book DarkMarket took the same method into the criminal economy itself, with sustained fieldwork among traffickers, money launderers and the hackers running early carding forums. The BBC One and AMC drama series of McMafia, which he executive produced, gave the analysis a second life with a much wider audience. The institutional record matches the reporting. Glenny served as Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna from 2022 to 2026, one of central Europe’s serious advanced research institutions, and held a visiting professorship at Columbia’s Harriman Institute teaching crime in transition. In December 2025 the BBC announced him as the next host of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg. For a leadership audience, the combination is unusual. Few speakers can talk about Russian power, Balkan history, Chinese strategy, ransomware economics and sanctions exposure as a single connected system. Glenny can, because he has spent thirty years reporting it as one. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global disorder Cybersecurity as a board and national risk Global organised crime and illicit finance Russia, the Balkans and post-Soviet power Cryptocurrency, dark markets and the criminal internet Critical minerals and the new resource competition China, the United States and the contested world order Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting sanctions, cyber and geopolitical exposure together CISOs, CROs and general counsel framing cyber and crime risk to the wider business Financial services, energy and industrial leadership teams exposed to sanctions, illicit flows and supply chain risk Policy, defence and intelligence audiences working at the seam of geopolitics and organised crime Audience outcomes A working model of how organised crime, cybercrime and state power now operate as one system A clearer view of where their own sector sits inside that system, from finance to energy to technology Specific case material from McMafia and DarkMarket that translates to live risk conversations Sharper questions to put to their security, legal and strategy functions on geopolitical exposure

Why organisations work with Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg He has held two of the most consequential portfolios in a G7 cabinet, Economics and Technology then Defence, and can speak to how policy is actually made inside those rooms rather than how it is reported. He led the largest structural reform of the Bundeswehr since 1955, including the suspension of conscription, which gives him a working view of how political decisions translate into institutional change at scale. His advisory firm Spitzberg Partners places him in continuous dialogue with European and US corporates, investors and policymakers, so the read he brings to a board is current rather than historical. His CSIS affiliation in Washington and his German political base give him a genuinely transatlantic vantage point, which matters for companies whose risk now sits across both jurisdictions. He addresses his 2011 resignation and the plagiarism scandal openly when relevant, which removes a question buyers would otherwise have and lets the commercial conversation proceed without ambiguity. Biography highlights Federal Minister of Defence of Germany, 2009 to 2011, under Chancellor Angela Merkel. Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Technology, 2009. Member of the Bundestag for Kulmbach, 2002 to 2011, re-elected in 2009 with 68.1 percent, the highest national share that cycle. Chairman and Founder of Spitzberg Partners LLC, a New York advisory and investment firm. Distinguished Statesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. Author of “Vorerst gescheitert” (2011), “3 Sekunden” (2023), “3 Worte” (2025), and co-host of the “Gysi gegen Guttenberg” podcast with Gregor Gysi since 2023. Biography Two cabinet posts in one year is unusual in any G7 government. Guttenberg took Economic Affairs and Technology in February 2009 and Defence in October 2009, becoming the youngest German Defence Minister of the post-war era at 37. The Defence role placed him at the centre of Germany’s most contested security questions, from the Afghanistan deployment to the long-delayed restructuring of the Bundeswehr. The reform he led suspended conscription and moved Germany toward a smaller professional force of around 165,000 active personnel, the most significant structural change to the armed forces since their founding in 1955. He also broke a long-standing political convention by describing the Afghanistan operation as a war rather than a stabilisation mission, and established the Combat Action Medal of the Bundeswehr in November 2010. He resigned all political offices on 1 March 2011 after the University of Bayreuth revoked his 2007 doctorate over extensive plagiarism in his dissertation on European constitutional law. He addressed the episode in book-length form with Die Zeit editor-in-chief Giovanni di Lorenzo later that year. In 2019 he completed a PhD at the University of Southampton on correspondent banking, supervised by the economist Richard Werner. The second career is built on transatlantic policy and capital. Spitzberg Partners, which he founded in 2013, advises corporates and investors on European and international political, economic, technology and security issues. He has been a Distinguished Statesman at CSIS in Washington since 2011, and holds advisory positions including Barrick Gold and Ripple Labs. In Germany his public voice now travels through Focus columns, n-tv documentaries, and the weekly Gysi gegen Guttenberg podcast with the veteran left-wing politician Gregor Gysi, launched in 2023. Key speaking topics Transatlantic relations and the US-Europe policy agenda Geopolitical risk for boards and investors Defence, security and the future of NATO Technology policy, cybersecurity and digital sovereignty European economic and political outlook Political risk in financial services and fintech Ideal for Boards and investment committees pricing geopolitical and policy risk into capital allocation CEOs and corporate strategy leads with material exposure across the US, Germany and the wider EU Defence, security and aerospace industry leadership groups Financial services and fintech executives navigating regulation, sanctions and digital asset policy Audience outcomes A clearer read on how Washington, Berlin and Brussels are likely to move on the security, trade and technology files that affect their business A working framework for assessing political risk alongside commercial risk, drawn from inside ministerial decision-making A sharper view of the transatlantic relationship and where it is likely to fracture or hold A direct, on-the-record response to the questions boards usually ask privately about his 2011 resignation, when relevant to the brief