Cybersecurity

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

Jamie Bartlett’s Background In researching his book, The Dark Net, Jamie spent a substantial amount of time embedded with these characters, comparing their real-life personas with their online avatars. The Dark Net offers a startling glimpse of human nature under the conditions of freedom and anonymity and shines a light on an enigmatic and ever-changing world. As Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos, Jamie has researched and written extensively about radical political parties and movements across Europe. He also writes on Technology for the Telegraph and for several other publications on how the internet is changing politics and society. Jamie’s latest book, Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World explores the individuals, groups and movements that reject the way we live today. He is also presenting a documentary series on BBC Two in August 2017 on The Secrets of Silicon Valley, a look at the dark reality behind Silicon Valley’s glittering promise for a better world and the possible dark side of AI and automation. Jamie’s main topics are cybersecurity and privacy online, new political movements, social media research and analysis, and internet cultures.

Why organisations work with James Lyne He runs the world’s most respected cybersecurity training and research institution, so the material he brings into a boardroom reflects what SANS instructors and researchers are seeing in live incidents, not a curated deck of last year’s case studies. Twenty years of frontline work across red teaming, malware reverse engineering, incident response and intelligence support. He speaks to boards, regulators and technical teams in the same briefing and holds credibility with all three. Live demonstration is his signature. He hacks IoT devices, runs social engineering against willing volunteers and walks audiences through real ransomware. Leaders leave with a felt sense of the risk, not a slide on it. Founder of CyberStart, which put 400,000-plus students through hands-on cyber challenges before closing after nine years. That gives him a specific, tested view on the talent gap most organisations are trying to solve. TED main-stage, NBC Nightly News, BBC, CNN, Bill Maher, John Oliver. The booking converts into a communications asset as well as a keynote. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, SANS Institute, appointed from the Office of the CEO after years of strategic and operational leadership inside the organisation. Certified SANS Instructor specialising in offensive operations, with more than two decades in cybersecurity across offensive, defensive and forensic work. Former Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, where he led public threat research and commentary via the Naked Security platform. Founder of CyberStart, a gamified cyber skills programme that ran nine years and engaged over 400,000 students in more than 200 hands-on challenges. TED main-stage speaker on everyday cybercrime, plus TEDx talks including Hacking With Words and Smiles. Recipient of the SANS Difference Makers Award for contribution to the UK cybersecurity community. Media regular across NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC News, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Biography Most cybersecurity briefings for senior audiences fail in the same way. They are either too abstract to act on, or too technical to follow. Lyne built his career working the gap between those two failure modes, first as Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, then as a long-standing Certified Instructor at SANS Institute, and now as its Chief Executive Officer. Twenty years on the frontline shapes the material. He has reverse engineered malware, red teamed high-security organisations, supported intelligence efforts against adversaries and sat inside the response to major breaches. That work is the reason his keynotes do not rely on slides. He demonstrates. Hacking an IoT device on stage, walking a room through a live phishing capture, pulling apart a ransomware sample in real time. The threat stops being theoretical. Lyne’s argument as CEO of SANS is that human expertise, curious and mission-driven, is the decisive advantage in cybersecurity, including against AI-enabled attackers. That belief sits behind CyberStart, the gamified cyber skills programme he founded, which ran for nine years and pulled over 400,000 students through hands-on challenges in cryptography, forensics and ethical hacking. It is also why leadership teams book him when they want their people to leave a session with a sharper instinct, not a longer reading list. The media footprint reinforces rather than replaces the substance. TED main-stage on everyday cybercrime, appearances on NBC Nightly News, CNN, BBC, Bill Maher and John Oliver, and a SANS Difference Makers Award for his contribution to the UK cyber community. Boards get a speaker who can hold a technical room and translate for a non-technical one in the same afternoon. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI-enabled threats and the future of cyber defence Ransomware economics and incident response Social engineering and the human attack surface Internet of Things and connected device risk The cyber skills gap and building security talent Threat intelligence and the live threat landscape Ideal for Boards, CEOs and audit committees setting cyber risk appetite and oversight CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing executive teams on threat and resilience posture Financial services, critical infrastructure and regulated industries with concentrated cyber exposure Leadership summits, customer events and partner conferences where a live demonstration reframes the conversation Audience outcomes A concrete, demonstrated view of how modern attackers actually operate, from ransomware crews to social engineers A clearer sense of where AI is shifting the economics of both attack and defence Named examples of IoT, identity and supply chain vulnerabilities that map onto the audience’s own environment A shared language for boards and technical teams to talk about cyber risk without talking past each other A sharper read on where cyber talent and training investment actually move the needle

Key speaking topics Cybersecurity risk and threat landscape Hacker tactics and attack methodologies Organised hacktivism and cybercrime networks Insider perspectives on Anonymous and LulzSec Law enforcement cooperation in cyber investigations Corporate vulnerability and digital resilience Ethical pathways in cybersecurity careers Ideal for Chief Information Security Officers and security teams Boards and senior leadership teams overseeing cyber risk Risk, compliance, and governance professionals Technology and cybersecurity conferences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how high-profile cyberattacks are planned and executed Insight into vulnerabilities commonly exploited by attackers Greater awareness of organisational cyber risk exposure Perspective on the legal and operational consequences of cybercrime Informed discussion around prevention, detection, and response Why organisations work with Hector Monsegur First-hand experience of organised cybercrime and federal investigation processes Direct insight into attacker mindset and operational methods Practical relevance for organisations managing cyber risk Ability to translate complex security issues into accessible business language Biography Hector Monsegur brings direct, first-hand insight into cyber risk, hacking culture, and digital vulnerability. As a former participant in high-profile cyberattacks linked to Anonymous and LulzSec, he understands how coordinated attacks are planned, executed, and exploited at scale. U.S. federal authorities charged Monsegur with multiple hacking and fraud-related conspiracies and aggravated identity theft. He entered a guilty plea under a cooperation agreement, assisting investigators in identifying co-conspirators and preventing or mitigating further cyberattacks targeting corporate and government systems. Following his sentencing in Manhattan federal court, Monsegur transitioned into legitimate cybersecurity work. He has held roles in penetration testing and cyber risk and research, applying his technical expertise to help organisations understand weaknesses before adversaries do. Monsegur also co-hosts the “Hacker and the Fed” podcast with former FBI special agent Chris Tarbell, exploring cybercrime investigations and the evolving threat landscape. His experience spans both sides of cyber operations, offering senior leaders and security professionals an unfiltered perspective on attacker mindset, law enforcement response, and organisational exposure. Raised in New York City’s Lower East Side public housing and largely self-taught in computing, Monsegur’s journey underscores the accessibility of cyber capability and the realities of digital risk. For organisations navigating complex cybersecurity challenges, his background provides practical insight into how threats emerge, escalate, and can be addressed.

Why organisations work with Garry Kasparov He is the person who sat across the board from Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997. When he talks about AI and human judgement, the source material is his own. He turns chess into a working vocabulary for executive decision-making, separating strategy from tactics in a way senior leaders can use the next morning. As a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and long-time Security Ambassador for Avast, he speaks about AI, cybersecurity and privacy from inside the conversation, not as a commentator on it. His books “How Life Imitates Chess” and “Deep Thinking” give audiences a durable framework and a shared reference point after the session ends. He brings a second register that few speakers in this space can match: a first-hand view of Russia, Putin and the fragility of democratic institutions, grounded in decades of activism and the book “Winter Is Coming.” Biography highlights Youngest undisputed World Chess Champion at 22, in 1985, after defeating Anatoly Karpov. Held the world number one ranking from 1986 until his retirement from professional chess in 2005. Played IBM’s Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997, the first reigning world champion to lose a match to a computer under tournament conditions. Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, working on human-machine collaboration. Founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative; former chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Author of “How Life Imitates Chess,” “Winter Is Coming” and “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.” Biography In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion under tournament conditions for the first time in history. The champion on the other side of the board was Garry Kasparov. Nearly three decades later, the questions that match raised about human judgement and machine intelligence are now the everyday questions of corporate strategy. Kasparov has spent the years since making those questions usable for leaders. At the Oxford Martin School, where he is a Senior Visiting Fellow, he works on the evolving relationship between humans and technology. As Security Ambassador for Avast, he has spent nearly a decade inside the cybersecurity and AI debate, not commenting from outside it. His book “Deep Thinking,” written with Mig Greengard, argues that machines that think are not the end of human creativity but a forcing function for it. The chess career underwrites all of it. Becoming the youngest undisputed world champion at 22, holding the number one ranking for almost twenty years, and defending the title across multiple cycles against Anatoly Karpov gave him a working vocabulary for strategy, tactics, preparation and competitive psychology. “How Life Imitates Chess” is the book executives quote back to him. The distinction he draws between long-term strategy and short-term tactics is one of the most portable ideas a senior team can bring out of a keynote. There is a second strand to the work, and buyers should know it is there. Kasparov founded the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017 and chaired the Human Rights Foundation for over a decade. His book “Winter Is Coming” was one of the earliest serious warnings about Vladimir Putin’s intentions, written well before events made that view consensus. For audiences who want a voice on geopolitical risk alongside the AI and strategy material, he delivers it with the same directness. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and human-machine collaboration Strategic thinking and decision-making under pressure Cybersecurity, privacy and digital freedom The future of work in an age of intelligent machines Russia, Putin and the defence of democratic institutions Leadership, preparation and competitive performance Ideal for CEOs, boards and executive teams rethinking strategy and decision rights as AI moves deeper into the business. CIOs, CISOs and technology leaders navigating cybersecurity, AI adoption and trust. Leadership and talent events where audiences want a working model for strategy versus tactics, not a motivational talk. Policy, risk and government affairs audiences who want an informed voice on Russia and the state of liberal democracy. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between strategy and tactics that senior teams can apply to their own decisions the week after the session. A realistic view of what AI changes in knowledge work, from a speaker who lived the original turning point. Sharper questions about where human judgement still adds value, and where defending it is a waste of effort. A first-hand perspective on Russia and authoritarian risk that frames geopolitical uncertainty in concrete terms. A shared reference point, drawn from chess, that stays useful in strategy conversations long after the event.

Why organisations work with Brett Johnson He built ShadowCrew, the forum widely credited as the template for modern darknet marketplaces, and can walk a security team through the attacker logic he once ran at scale. The U.S. Secret Service publicly named him “The Original Internet Godfather” and embedded him in Operation Anglerphish; that cooperation history gives his sessions a provenance no academic or vendor speaker can match. He translates criminal tradecraft into board-level language: why a particular control matters, which fraud type is about to spike, where identity verification actually breaks down. Named advisory and client work spans the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, and AARP, which means his examples are not theoretical and his audience references are checkable. He is comfortable with the awkward part of his own story, which is what makes him credible to senior security and fraud leaders who have heard every generic “hacker keynote” already. Biography highlights Co-founder and administrator of ShadowCrew (2002-2004), widely cited as the precursor to modern darknet fraud marketplaces. Convicted of 39 felonies, placed on the US Most Wanted list, escaped federal custody, recaptured and served a federal sentence. U.S. Secret Service confidential informant under Operation Anglerphish, embedded on ScandinavianCarding and CardersMarket. Founder of Anglerphish Security, advising Fortune 500 financial services, retail, and technology firms on fraud and darknet intelligence. Host of The AnglerPhish Podcast on cybercrime, scams, and identity theft. Featured in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and covered by The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice. Biography ShadowCrew went live in August 2002 and ran for barely more than two years before the Secret Service shut it down. In that window it wrote the operating manual that darknet marketplaces still use. Brett Johnson, under the handle GOllumfun, was one of three co-founders and an administrator on the forum. After the 2004 takedown he avoided the first wave of arrests, was picked up in 2005 on separate charges, agreed to cooperate with the Secret Service, then continued committing tax fraud while working as an informant. He was placed on the US Most Wanted list, recaptured, sent to federal prison, escaped, recaptured again, and eventually served out a federal sentence. What separates him from the standard former-hacker speaker is the specificity of what he built. Modern identity theft, account takeover, card-not-present fraud, and organised tax-refund fraud all trace back through methods he helped industrialise. Security and fraud leaders at banks, payment networks, and retailers book him because he can describe, step by step, how an attacker selects a target and defeats controls the defenders thought were working. He now runs Anglerphish Security and advises named clients including the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, AARP, and Neustar. His story has been told in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and across The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice, which is a useful external check for buyers who want to verify the biography before the contract. Key speaking topics Cybercrime and the modern fraud economy Identity theft and account takeover Social engineering and phishing Darknet marketplaces and threat intelligence Insider perspectives on financial crime Fraud prevention for banks, payment networks, and retail Ideal for CISOs, heads of fraud, and heads of financial crime at banks, card networks, and fintechs Retail, e-commerce, and payments leadership teams exposed to card-not-present and account takeover fraud Boards and audit committees seeking an unvarnished attacker-side briefing Government and public-sector programme leaders responsible for benefits, tax, or identity systems Audience outcomes A clear picture of how organised cybercriminals select targets, test defences, and cash out. Named examples of where existing fraud and identity controls tend to fail in practice. A sharper sense of which internal signals to take seriously and which to stop paying for. Concrete language to brief a board or executive committee on fraud exposure without resorting to vendor slides.

Why organisations work with Brad Templeton He has sat inside the Google self-driving car program as a strategy and technology consultant since 2010, giving him a read on the robotaxi industry that armchair analysts cannot match. He holds 21 patents across self-driving cars and telephony, so claims about what is technically possible come from someone who has actually built in the space. As founder of ClariNet in 1989, the first company built to do commercial business on the internet, he has a forty-year pattern of calling commercial shifts before the market sees them. Twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including a decade as Chairman, means he speaks credibly on the privacy, surveillance and civil-liberties consequences of AI and autonomy. He is a founding faculty member and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University, where the brief is to frame exponential technology change for senior decision-makers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of ClariNet Communications (1989), the first company established to conduct commercial activity over the internet. Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Chairman from 2000 to 2010, board member since 1997. Founding faculty and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University since 2009. Strategy and technology consultant on the Google self-driving car project, now Waymo, since 2010. Inventor on 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony. Forbes contributor on robocars; publisher of Robocars.com and the long-running Brad Ideas blog. Board member of the Foresight Institute; plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU. Biography ClariNet went live in June 1989 and sold the first commercial subscription on the internet to Stanford University. The founder was Brad Templeton. That single contract is the practical birth of the dot-com economy, and it sets the pattern for the rest of his career: spotting the commercial shape of a technology before the market has language for it. Two decades later the same instinct took him into Google’s self-driving car program. Since 2010 he has consulted on strategy and technology for what is now Waymo, while also writing a reference column on the industry for Forbes and at Robocars.com. His 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony make the commentary load-bearing; he is not narrating the robotaxi race from the outside. Alongside the commercial work, Templeton spent twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a decade of that as Chairman, and was a named plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court case that struck down the Communications Decency Act. That record is why boards bring him in when the question shifts from “does the AI work” to “what fights over privacy, surveillance and liability will shape who gets to deploy it.” At Singularity University, where he has been Chair for Computing and Networks since the founding faculty, the job is translating exponential technology curves for executives who need to plan against them. Few speakers combine an operator record in autonomous vehicles, a founder’s claim on the commercial internet, and two decades of civil-liberties advocacy in the same briefing. Key speaking topics Autonomous vehicles and the robotaxi industry Exponential technology and Moore’s Law thinking Artificial intelligence deployment and strategy Privacy, surveillance and civil liberties in a connected economy Internet history and the pattern of commercial technology shifts Future of mobility and urban transportation Cybersecurity and technology policy Ideal for Boards and executive teams sizing investment or partnership decisions in autonomous vehicles, mobility or AI. CTOs and chief innovation officers testing internal assumptions about exponential technology timelines. General counsel, chief privacy officers and policy leads working through AI and surveillance exposure. Automotive, insurance, logistics and urban-planning leadership teams preparing for autonomous deployment. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which autonomous-vehicle timelines are grounded and which are vendor marketing. A working mental model for exponential technology curves and what they mean for planning horizons. Specific case material from inside the Google and Waymo programs that is hard to source elsewhere. A clearer view of the privacy, liability and civil-liberties questions that will shape AI and autonomy regulation. Named examples drawn from forty years of commercial internet history, used to pressure-test current assumptions.

Why organisations work with Ben Hammersley His practice of Cognitive Risk gives organisations a named framework for understanding how confusion, overload, and misinformation degrade leadership decisions, a problem most risk frameworks don’t address at all. He has advised at the intersection of technology and national security, Brookings Institution’s security and intelligence centre, the UK Foreign Office, the European Commission, giving him credibility with both commercial and governmental boards that few foresight voices can match. He coined the word “podcast” in 2004, not as a boast, but as evidence of a track record: he identified a structural shift in media before it had a name, and that discipline, spotting the real signal in a noisy environment, is the practical substance of what he sells to organisations. His BBC World News series on cybercrime, and his conflict reporting from Afghanistan and Beirut, give him a concrete understanding of how digital systems are weaponised, not a theoretical one. Boards dealing with cyber and geopolitical risk hear something different from a speaker who has actually operated in those environments. His 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then makes an argument that is harder than it sounds: that most of what organisations are told about the future is wrong, and that the skill leaders actually need is better epistemic hygiene, not more prediction. Biography highlights Founder and Principal, Hammersley Futures, international strategic foresight consultancy advising corporations and government agencies Former UK Prime Minister’s Ambassador to East London Tech City (2011-13) Non-Resident Fellow, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Brookings Institution; Fellow, Robert Schuman School, European University Institute, Florence; Member, European Commission High Level Expert Group on Media Freedom Associate Editor and Editor-at-Large, WIRED UK (at launch) Presenter, Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley, six-part BBC World News series, distributed internationally on Netflix and Amazon Prime War correspondent for The Times and The Guardian, reporting from Afghanistan, Beirut, Mindanao, and Tokyo Widely credited with coining the term “podcast” (2004, The Guardian), named New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year 2005 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) Author, 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then (2012) and Now for Then (2013) Biography When the UK government needed someone to represent its technology ambitions to the world, it appointed Ben Hammersley as Prime Minister’s Ambassador to Tech City. When the Brookings Institution wanted a practitioner-fellow in its Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, it brought in the same person. That combination – tech credibility and security credibility, held simultaneously – is the foundation of his work. Hammersley spent years as a conflict journalist for The Times and The Guardian, reporting from Afghanistan, Beirut, and beyond. What he noticed in those environments, how non-state actors adopted innovation faster than the institutions opposing them, became the intellectual core of his foresight practice. The question he returned with wasn’t what technology can do. It was: who adopts it first, and why does that matter? That question runs through his BBC World News series on cybercrime, his advisory work with the European Commission and UK Foreign Office, and his named practice areas: Adaptive Futurism and Cognitive Risk. The latter is his most pointed argument – that the principal threat to organisational decision-making is not lack of information, but the inability to think clearly under conditions of noise, complexity, and deliberate manipulation. His book 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then makes a pointed case: most organisational thinking about the future is based on misread signals and borrowed frameworks, and the antidote is a discipline, not a prediction. That argument is what Hammersley Futures exists to deliver, to boards, executive teams, and government agencies across Europe and North America. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and scenario planning Cognitive Risk and organisational decision-making under uncertainty Cybercrime and national security in the digital era Technology and geopolitical risk The future of work and institutional adaptation Digital misinformation and information warfare Innovation as discipline: separating signal from noise Ideal for Boards and C-suites navigating technology-driven geopolitical or security risk CISOs, risk officers, and national security-adjacent leadership teams Strategy and foresight functions inside large corporations or government bodies Senior leadership conferences where the audience needs to reconcile technology optimism with institutional caution Audience outcomes A named framework – Cognitive Risk – for understanding how confusion and misinformation degrade strategic decisions, and practical methods for defending against it Clearer ability to distinguish technologies and trends that carry real strategic weight from those that are simply loud A more structured approach to scenario planning that goes beyond trend extrapolation Grounded understanding of how digital systems are used as instruments of geopolitical and commercial conflict Stronger shared language across leadership teams for discussing long-term uncertainty without defaulting to hype or paralysis

Why organisations work with Eric O’Neill He has run the highest-stakes counterintelligence operation in modern US history. When he describes how a long-running insider threat actually unfolds, he is describing his own case file, not a model. His framing reorients cyber defence around the human, not the firewall. Hanssen was an FBI veteran with full system access. Most of today’s breaches still begin with someone trusted being manipulated. He translates espionage tradecraft into language CFOs, general counsel and HR leaders can act on. Deepfake CEO fraud, voice cloning, social engineering and ransomware are explained as familiar intelligence techniques running on new infrastructure. He brings two published books from major trade houses, Gray Day (Crown, 2019) and Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025), giving audiences a substantive body of work to follow up with. He is one of the few cybersecurity speakers buyers can hand to a non-technical executive audience without losing them. The Hanssen narrative carries the room; the security argument arrives inside it. Biography highlights Conducted the FBI undercover investigation that led to the arrest of Robert Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran convicted on 15 counts of espionage. Author of Gray Day (Crown, 2019) and Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025). Founder of The Georgetown Group, a Washington DC investigative and security consultancy, and Nexasure AI. Portrayed by Ryan Phillippe in the 2007 Universal Pictures film Breach. Honours graduate of Auburn University and the George Washington University Law School; admitted to the Maryland and DC bars. Featured across NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox, Newsweek and TechCrunch. Biography Robert Hanssen had been spying for Moscow for almost two decades when a 26-year-old FBI operative was placed in the office next to him. Hanssen was a 25-year bureau veteran with full clearance, deep technical fluency and a track record of compromising US assets. The operation that exposed him hinged on a single quiet act, the download of an encrypted Palm Pilot, returned to the desk before it was missed. The arrest came on 18 February 2001. That case sits at the centre of Eric O’Neill’s work, but it is not the product. The product is what the case taught him about how serious adversaries actually operate. They study the organisation. They build trust. They exploit the people closest to the asset, not the perimeter. The same logic now drives AI-generated deepfakes, voice-cloned executive fraud, synthetic identity attacks and supply chain compromise. He has built a second career around that translation. The Georgetown Group, his Washington DC consultancy, handles counterintelligence, economic espionage, internal investigations and security risk for corporate clients. Nexasure AI focuses on AI-era threat advisory. Gray Day (Crown, 2019) is the inside account of the Hanssen case. Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime (HarperCollins, 2025) is the operating manual that followed it. He is also a lawyer, admitted to the Maryland and DC bars after law school at George Washington University. That matters in the room. He briefs general counsel, CISOs and boards on cyber and insider risk in language that lands legally as well as operationally, and he does it with the rare authority of someone who has actually run the case. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity and the human attack surface AI-enabled fraud, deepfakes and synthetic identity Insider threat and counterintelligence for corporates Economic espionage and intellectual property protection Ransomware and extortion economics National security lessons for private sector boards Social engineering in the age of generative AI Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CEOs reframing cyber as enterprise risk rather than IT spend CISOs, CIOs and CSOs briefing non-technical executives on insider threat and AI-era attack methods General counsel and CFOs exposed to deepfake fraud, business email compromise and wire authorisation risk Industry conferences in financial services, defence, technology, healthcare and critical infrastructure Audience outcomes A working mental model of how adversaries plan and execute insider compromise, drawn from a real FBI case A practical view of where AI is changing the cost and speed of social engineering, deepfake and identity attacks Specific behavioural and procedural defences against voice cloning, deepfake video and CEO fraud A board-level vocabulary for cyber and counterintelligence risk that does not depend on technical jargon

Why organisations work with Chris Kelly He built the privacy, safety and public policy functions at Facebook from employee 25 onward, across the period the platform moved from college network to global infrastructure. He has negotiated directly with Attorneys General in all 50 US states on child safety and platform accountability, which is a register of regulator engagement almost no other operator can match. He combines Harvard Law training with live commercial stakes: Netscape in the Microsoft antitrust case, Diamond Multimedia in the first MP3 player litigation, then the defining privacy debates of the social web. He has translated operating experience into public policy, co-authoring California Proposition 35 on human trafficking, which passed with around 81 percent support. He sits on the investor side of technology and sport, as Sacramento Kings co-owner and former board chair at Fandor and MoviePass, so boards get a peer voice rather than an outside adviser. Biography highlights Chief Privacy Officer, first General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy at Facebook, 2005 to 2009. Employee 25 at Facebook, introduced to the company by Sean Parker. Harvard Law School JD; prior degrees from Georgetown and Yale. Represented Netscape in the Microsoft antitrust case and Diamond Multimedia in the landmark MP3 player suit while in private practice at Wilson Sonsini and Baker and McKenzie. Co-author of California Proposition 35 on human trafficking, approved by roughly 81 percent of voters in 2012. Co-owner of the Sacramento Kings since 2013; former board chair of Fandor and MoviePass. Biography Facebook was a college network with a few million users when Chris Kelly became employee 25 in September 2005. By the time he left in 2009, the platform had hundreds of millions of users and was the subject of sustained scrutiny from regulators, attorneys general and the press. Kelly was the person inside the company holding the pen on how it answered them. As Chief Privacy Officer, first General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy, he built the functions that most technology companies only assemble after a crisis. That included real-identity and safety policies, enforcement staffing, and a direct working relationship with Attorneys General in all 50 US states on child protection. The model he shaped is now standard practice across the industry. His path into that seat matters. A Harvard Law JD with earlier degrees from Georgetown and Yale, he came out of Wilson Sonsini and Baker and McKenzie, where he represented Netscape against Microsoft and Diamond Multimedia in the suit that opened the MP3 era. Each fight turned on how new technology collides with existing law, which is the exact question boards now face on AI, data and platform liability. He has since extended that work beyond Facebook. He co-authored California Proposition 35, a human trafficking measure that passed with roughly 81 percent of the vote, ran in the 2010 Democratic primary for California Attorney General, and moved into investing as a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings and former board chair at Fandor and MoviePass. The through line is practical: how technology organisations and the public institutions around them build rules that hold when growth and scrutiny arrive together. Key speaking topics Data privacy and platform governance Technology regulation and policy Online safety and child protection Scaling a hyperscale technology business Legal and regulatory risk for digital platforms Silicon Valley operating lessons Public policy and technology investment Ideal for Boards and general counsel at technology, platform and data-intensive businesses preparing for regulatory scrutiny. CEOs and founders scaling products into markets with live privacy, safety or content-liability exposure. Chief Privacy Officers, CISOs and policy heads designing governance across multiple jurisdictions. Investors and non-executive directors evaluating technology holdings where policy risk affects valuation. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how regulators and attorneys general are thinking about platform accountability, from someone who has sat across the table from them. Operating detail on how Facebook built privacy, safety and policy functions during hypergrowth, and what held up against scrutiny. A framework for deciding which governance decisions belong in product, which in legal, and which in public policy. Insight into how technology companies and public institutions negotiate the rules around new categories, drawing on the Microsoft antitrust and MP3 cases as well as the social-media era. A candid view of the trade-offs between scale, user trust and regulatory exposure.