Cybersecurity

Why organisations work with Lisa Ventura An MBE-recognised and Chartered Fellow (FCIIS) authority on the cultural and behavioural side of cyber security, the area boards now name as their largest residual exposure once tooling is in place. Chief Executive and Founder of the AI and Cyber Security Association, the first global trade association for the convergence of AI and cyber security, which gives her a current read on how AI is changing both attacker behaviour and defensive practice. Founder of Cyber Security Unity, a global community of practitioners, which gives her live cross-industry visibility into what is actually working against social engineering, phishing, and insider risk. A practical voice on neurodiversity and inclusion in cyber security hiring, useful for organisations trying to widen a tight talent pool without diluting capability. Author of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity (Kogan Page) and Human Factors in Cybersecurity (BPB), two trade-published books that map onto the two problems she is booked to address. Biography highlights MBE, King Charles III Birthday Honours 2023, for services to cyber security and to diversity and inclusion. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security (FCIIS), 2025. Chief Executive and Founder of the AI and Cyber Security Association (AICSA), the first global trade association for the convergence of AI and cyber security. Chief Executive and Founder of Unity Group Solutions Limited, and Founder of Cyber Security Unity (formerly the UK Cyber Security Association). Author of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity (Kogan Page) and Human Factors in Cybersecurity (BPB), alongside The Rise of the Cyber Women series. Recent recognition includes a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Security and Safety Entrepreneur Awards (2026) and a place in the Independent Impact 50, the UK listing of leading independent PR and communications practitioners (2026). Listed on IT Security Guru’s Most Inspiring Women in Cyber Security, We Are Tech Women Top 100, and IFSEC Global Influencers. Biography The cyber security industry sells controls. What it has been slower to sell is culture. Most organisations now have endpoint protection, SIEM platforms, and incident response retainers. The breaches that still happen are almost always human: a click, a credential, a process gap, an exhausted analyst missing a signal at 3am. That is the territory Lisa Ventura works in. She founded Cyber Security Unity, a global community for cyber security practitioners, out of the view that the industry stays fragmented and works in silos. More recently she founded the AI and Cyber Security Association, the first global trade association built around the convergence of AI and cyber security, giving practitioners and organisations a place to work through what AI changes for both attack and defence. As Chief Executive and Founder of Unity Group Solutions Limited, a cyber security awareness and strategic communications consultancy, she works across concurrent client engagements, which keeps her practice grounded in live delivery. Two trade-published books track the two problems she works on: Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity (Kogan Page) on where the field is heading, and Human Factors in Cybersecurity (BPB) on why people, not tools, decide most outcomes. An MBE in 2023 and a Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Information Security in 2025 recognise that body of work. Cyber security has a hiring problem, and one of the cheapest ways to widen the pipeline is to treat neurodiversity and non-linear career paths as an advantage. Ventura is openly autistic and ADHD, diagnosed later in life, and uses that experience to make the business case to CISOs and HR teams who are losing talent they could keep. Key speaking topics Cyber security awareness and culture change The human layer of cyber risk Neurodiversity in cyber security hiring and retention Social engineering and phishing defence Burnout, stress, and mental health in security teams Cloud security collaboration Women and underrepresented groups in cyber security careers Ideal for CISOs and security leadership teams running awareness programmes that have stalled CHROs and talent leads trying to widen the cyber security hiring pipeline Boards and audit committees treating cyber as a culture and conduct issue, not only a control issue Industry conferences and corporate events on cyber security, technology workforce, and inclusion Audience outcomes A clearer view of where human factors sit inside the organisation’s actual cyber risk picture Specific, applicable approaches to awareness training that move behaviour, not just completion rates A practical case for treating neurodiversity as a hiring advantage in security teams Recognition of the burnout patterns that quietly damage incident response capability Cross-sector reference points from a practitioner community rather than a vendor stack

Why organisations work with H. R. McMaster A National Security Advisor’s view of how the United States, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea actually behave, drawn from the seat where the options are written, not from outside the room. A historian’s discipline applied to current events. His PhD-grade work on Vietnam decision-making in Dereliction of Duty is the same lens he turns on present-day strategic mistakes. Direct argument over diplomatic hedge. McMaster takes positions, names countries and policies, and explains the reasoning, which is what boards under sanctions and supply-chain pressure actually need. Thirty-four years of command experience translated into language executives use. He speaks about decision-making under contact with the enemy, not as metaphor, but as a method that maps onto leadership in volatile markets. A working policy interlocutor. Through Battlegrounds with H.R. McMaster at the Hoover Institution he is in regular conversation with serving and former heads of state, defence ministers and intelligence chiefs, which keeps his read of the system current. Biography highlights 25th National Security Advisor of the United States, 2017 to 2018. Retired US Army lieutenant general after a 34-year career; awarded the Silver Star for action at the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War. Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Author of three bestsellers: Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, and At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders. Host of Battlegrounds with H.R. McMaster, the Hoover Institution’s policy interview series with serving and former heads of state and senior officials. Biography The seats where US strategy is actually written are small. McMaster has occupied two of them: command of an armoured cavalry troop in combat, and the office of National Security Advisor in the White House. That combination is what makes his read of geopolitical risk practical for boards rather than ornamental. His Gulf War record is part of the public file. As a captain in February 1991, his Eagle Troop destroyed 28 Iraqi tanks, 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks at the Battle of 73 Easting in 23 minutes, without losing a soldier. He was awarded the Silver Star. He went on to command the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in 2005 and 2006, work that informed the US shift in counterinsurgency doctrine under General Petraeus. The intellectual record runs in parallel. Dereliction of Duty, drawn from his University of North Carolina PhD, dissected how the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to challenge the political logic that produced the Vietnam War, and is still on US military reading lists. Battlegrounds, published in 2020, sets out how the United States misread China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, South Asia and the cyber domain over two decades. At War with Ourselves, the 2024 New York Times bestseller, is his account of running the National Security Council under the Trump administration. Today he is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and lectures at the Graduate School of Business. Through the Battlegrounds interview series he keeps a working line into serving heads of state, defence ministers and intelligence chiefs, which is the substantive update boards want when they ask what is actually happening between Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. Key speaking topics Geopolitical competition with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea US foreign policy and national security strategy Decision-making under uncertainty and contact Leadership in high-stakes, ambiguous environments Risk to global commerce from state-level conflict Cyber, technology and the future of national power History as a discipline for present strategic choice Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing China exposure, sanctions risk, and country strategy CEOs, CFOs and chief strategy officers setting capital allocation against geopolitical scenarios General counsel, chief risk officers and heads of government affairs Defence, aerospace, energy, financial services and technology leadership audiences with direct geopolitical exposure Audience outcomes A clearer read of how the United States and its rivals actually make strategic decisions, and where that points next. A working framework for thinking about competition with China and Russia that goes beyond headlines. Sharper questions for the company’s own scenario planning, sanctions exposure and supply-chain assumptions. A historian’s perspective on why strategic mistakes repeat, applied to decisions the audience is currently making. Confidence to take a position on geopolitical risk inside the company, rather than outsourcing it to consultants.

Why organisations work with Mara Balestrini Her governance frameworks are not conceptual – the Bristol Approach and the City Commons Framework (published at ACM CHI 2017) were developed with real institutions, in real urban systems, and have influenced urban data policy beyond their original contexts. Organisations get tested models, not white papers. She has operated at the level of national AI policy, serving as cabinet advisor to Spain’s Secretary of State for Digitalization and AI. That gives her a direct, non-theoretical understanding of how regulatory and governance frameworks are made – and where they typically fall short. Her tenure leading digital transformation and responsible AI at IDB Lab, including the fAIr LAC+ initiative, means she has applied these frameworks inside a multilateral institution managing large-scale technology programmes across 23 countries. The challenges she addresses are not hypothetical. Her research sits at the intersection of HCI, IoT, and responsible AI governance – cited over 1,500 times and recognised by ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and Ars Electronica. That academic grounding gives organisations the analytical vocabulary to move from AI deployment to AI accountability. As co-founder of SalusCoop, the first Spanish cooperative for citizens’ health data, she has demonstrated that the data governance models she advocates are viable as operating organisations, not just policy positions. Biography highlights PhD in Computer Science, Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities (ICRI-Cities), University College London Former CTO and Digital Transformation Lead, IDB Lab (Inter-American Development Bank Innovation Laboratory); contributor to fAIr LAC+, a dedicated initiative on responsible AI adoption across Latin America and the Caribbean Currently CEO of LNET, the global blockchain infrastructure nonprofit and executing agency for IDB Lab, operating across 23 countries Former cabinet advisor to Spain’s Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence Former CEO and Partner, Ideas for Change; originator of the City Commons Framework (ACM CHI 2017) and co-developer of the Bristol Approach with Bristol City Council Co-founder, SalusCoop, the first Spanish cooperative for citizens’ health data Over 30 academic publications; 1,584+ citations on Google Scholar; awards from ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and Ars Electronica Covered by BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, and El País; TEDx speaker (TEDxCordoba, 2018); Research Fellow, ESADE EsadeGov Center for Public Governance Biography Mara Balestrini’s core argument is that AI and digital transformation strategies fail not because the technology is wrong, but because the governance is built after the fact, not before. From European Commission-funded research to Spain’s national AI policy office to the Inter-American Development Bank, she has spent two decades building the frameworks to reverse that sequence. Her doctoral work at UCL’s Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities produced the City Commons Framework, published at ACM CHI 2017 – a model for embedding citizen governance into data-driven systems from the design stage. She co-developed the Bristol Approach with Bristol City Council and KWMC, a commons-based methodology for participatory sensing that reframes smart city investment around citizen priorities rather than technical capability. She also coordinated Making Sense, a European Commission H2020-funded project that turned community-owned environmental sensors into a platform for civic action at scale. From that research base she moved into national policy, serving as cabinet advisor to Spain’s Secretary of State for Digitalization and AI – one of the few HCI researchers to have held a position at that level of government. She then took the role of CTO and Digital Transformation Lead at IDB Lab, where she contributed to fAIr LAC+, the Inter-American Development Bank’s initiative on responsible AI adoption across Latin America and the Caribbean. She is currently CEO of LNET, the global blockchain infrastructure nonprofit that evolved from LACChain and now connects governments, multilateral organisations, and the private sector across 23 countries. Her research, cited over 1,500 times, spans HCI, IoT, and responsible AI governance. It has been recognised by ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and Ars Electronica, and covered by the BBC, the Financial Times, The Guardian, and El País. Key speaking topics Responsible AI governance and institutional accountability Digital transformation strategy for public and civic institutions Civic technology and citizen participation in technology design Smart cities and urban data governance Data rights and cooperative data models Emerging technology governance (blockchain, Web3) for institutions AI policy and regulation from a practitioner perspective Ideal for Chief Digital Officers and Chief Data Officers navigating AI governance, data strategy, and responsible technology deployment Public sector executives and government leads managing AI policy, digital transformation, or regulatory frameworks Boards and senior leadership teams weighing institutional accountability in large-scale AI or data programmes Transformation leads and innovation directors in multilateral organisations, development banks, or international institutions Audience outcomes A working distinction between AI deployment and AI governance, and why confusing the two produces predictable failures at scale Familiarity with tested, named governance frameworks (Bristol Approach, City Commons Framework, fAIr LAC+) that can be adapted beyond urban or government contexts A clearer understanding of where current AI and digital transformation strategies most commonly break down, and what designing governance in from the start actually looks like in practice An informed view of how national AI policy is being shaped, drawn from direct government advisory experience rather than secondary analysis Practical reference points for designing responsible AI strategies that are accountable to stakeholders before they are deployed, not after

Why organisations work with Marc Saltzman Three decades of daily working-journalist output across USA Today, AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection and Yahoo, which means his read on what is real versus hype is grounded in actual product testing, not slide-deck futurism. Author of 17 books, including Wiley’s Siri, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies titles, giving him a track record of translating frontier consumer tech into language a general audience can act on. Host of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. radio stations via Radio America, plus Canada’s longest-running technology radio show, Tech Talk; broadcast craft that translates directly into keynote pacing for mixed audiences. Covers a working business stack in plain English: generative AI, cybersecurity, smart home and aging-in-place tech, retail and commerce, social media, automotive innovation, so a single booking can address multiple functions in the room. Regular on-camera commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV and Global, which means he is comfortable in front of a sceptical room and on stage with executives and media partners. Biography highlights Reporting on the technology sector since 1994 as journalist, author and broadcaster. Contributor to USA Today/Gannett (109 publications), AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo, Toronto Star, Zoomer and Postmedia. Author of 17 books, including Siri For Dummies (Wiley, 2012), Apple Watch For Dummies (Wiley, 2015) and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies (Wiley, 2024). Host and producer of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. stations via Radio America. Creator and host of Tech Talk, Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. On-air technology commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television. Biography Most consumer technology coverage is written by people who do not actually use the products. Saltzman’s career is built on the opposite habit. Since 1994 he has reported on the technology sector as a working journalist, columnist and broadcaster, with a syndicated USA Today/Gannett column reaching 109 publications and regular bylines in AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo and Postmedia titles. The output across formats is what makes the perspective useful to senior teams. He has written 17 books for general audiences, including Siri For Dummies, Apple Watch For Dummies and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies for Wiley, where the editorial constraint is to make a frontier consumer product usable by a non-technical reader on day one. That same constraint shapes his radio work: Tech It Out airs on 100+ U.S. stations through Radio America, and Tech Talk is Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. Television sharpens the discipline further. As a regular commentator on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television, he has spent years translating new categories, AI assistants, wearables, smart home, mixed reality, connected vehicles, into language a general audience can use within a four-minute segment. For organisations, the practical value is a single voice that can speak across consumer technology, generative AI, cybersecurity, retail and commerce, and the future of work, grounded in what products actually do today rather than what vendor decks claim they will do tomorrow. Key speaking topics Generative AI in everyday business and consumer life Cybersecurity and digital safety for organisations and customers The future of retail and commerce Smart home, wearables and connected devices Social media strategy for business Aging-in-place and consumer health technology Automotive and mobility innovation Emerging consumer technology trends Ideal for CMOs and customer experience leaders responding to AI, social and commerce shifts IT, security and risk leaders briefing non-technical executives and boards Retail, consumer goods and franchise leadership teams Conference programmers seeking a credible technology emcee, panel host or keynote across mixed audiences Audience outcomes A working filter for separating durable consumer technology shifts from short-lived hype A clearer view of how generative AI, cybersecurity threats and connected devices show up in customer behaviour Concrete examples of how retail, commerce and workplace tools are changing, drawn from current product testing Plain-English language that executives can repeat to staff, customers and boards without distortion Sharper questions to take back to vendors, agencies and internal technology teams

Why organisations work with Martin Smith He built SASIG from a private forum into a community of more than 11,000 cybersecurity practitioners across roughly 4,500 organisations, which gives him a unique read on what CISOs actually worry about, not what vendors say they should. His argument that breaches are behavioural before they are technical reframes the cyber conversation for boards that have over-invested in tooling and under-invested in people. Three decades of operational security experience across the RAF, Kroll, Standard Chartered and his own firm, The Security Company, lets him talk to executive audiences without retreating into jargon or vendor pitch. He speaks with the authority of an industry founder, not a commentator. SASIG, TSC, and his OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 give him standing other cyber speakers cannot match in a UK boardroom. He is unusually effective with mixed audiences of technical and non-technical leaders, a direct consequence of his behavioural psychology background and a career spent translating between the two. Biography highlights Founder and Chairman of The Security Awareness Special Interest Group (SASIG), established 2004; now part of Nineteen Group following the January 2024 acquisition. Awarded the MBE for 15 years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch. Former Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates (UK) and Head of Information Security at Standard Chartered Bank. Founded The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997, exiting via management buyout in December 2019. Lifetime Achievement Award, inaugural OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards), March 2017. BSc in Behavioural Psychology; FSyI (Fellow of The Security Institute); Freeman Emeritus of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. Biography The vast majority of cybersecurity failures start with a human decision, not a system flaw. That observation has driven Martin Smith’s work for three decades, and it is the argument SASIG, the network he founded in 2004, was built around. Today it represents over 11,000 practitioners drawn from roughly 4,500 organisations across UK industry, government, law enforcement, and academia. His credibility is operational, not theoretical. Fifteen years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch earned him an MBE. He then went into the commercial sector via Touche Ross, took on Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates, and ran information security for Standard Chartered Bank before founding The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997. What ties that career together is a behavioural psychology background that shapes how he reads risk. Boards tend to think of cyber as a technical procurement problem. Smith’s work consistently pushes them toward the harder question of how staff behave under pressure, how culture is engineered, and how awareness is sustained beyond an annual training module. He retired from TSC in December 2019 in a management buyout to focus on SASIG, which Nineteen Group acquired in January 2024. In March 2017 he received the inaugural OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the human factor in security breaches, which remains the most precise summary of what he has spent his career arguing for. Key speaking topics Cyber and information security The human factor in security breaches Security awareness and behavioural risk Counter-terrorism and crisis management Risk and resilience for boards The business of security Ideal for CISOs, CIOs and CTOs assessing the cultural side of their cyber exposure Boards and audit committees recalibrating cyber risk beyond tooling spend HR and learning leaders responsible for security awareness programmes Public-sector and regulated-industry leaders working with sensitive information Audience outcomes A clearer view of where cyber budgets are misallocated between technology and people. Specific, practitioner-grounded examples of how organisations engineer security awareness into culture rather than treat it as a compliance event. A working understanding of the human-factor argument that has reshaped UK cybersecurity practice over the last twenty years. The perspective of a founder who has watched 11,000+ cyber practitioners articulate what really keeps them awake.

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 Monica Verma Operational CISO experience that informs every recommendation. Three CISO appointments, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health, mean her advice on AI risk comes from someone who has actually run the response. A hacker’s view of AI threats paired with a CISO’s view of governance. She started in offensive security finding web application vulnerabilities. She now advises boards on AI trust and accountability. Both perspectives in the same conversation. A proprietary maturity model. Her Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, introduced in 2020, gives executive teams a way to locate themselves on the cyber and AI maturity curve. Credibility with technical and commercial audiences. Booked by FT Live in Luxembourg, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, and WCM 2025 in Brazil for an audience of 2,000 leaders. A clear point of view on the most contested question in the boardroom right now: how to adopt AI without breaking trust and governance. She has built her current keynote portfolio around it. Biography highlights Three-time Chief Information Security Officer with prior CISO appointments at Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet, Helfo, POBO). Director, International Cybersecurity & Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton (2024). Recognised as Top #3 CISO in EMEA (2023), Top 50 Women in Tech (2022), and Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s Outstanding Security Performance Awards (2019). Board-certified Qualified Technology Expert (QTE) and former board member of Cloud Security Alliance Norway and Women in Cybersecurity Norway. Founder and CEO of Monica Talks Cyber and Cyber Foyer. Host of The Monica Talks Cyber Show podcast and author of The Predictability Factor newsletter. Contributor to Dark Reading. Featured speaker at FT Live, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, WCM Brazil, Cyber Root Malta, and the Norwegian Tax Authority’s IT Tech conference. Biography AI is now in the boardroom and in the threat model at the same time. Most leadership teams have someone who can speak credibly about one or the other. Few have someone with three CISO appointments behind them and an active AI advisory practice on top. Monica Verma’s career has run through both. The starting point was offensive security, finding vulnerabilities in web applications and cloud environments before attackers could. Three CISO appointments followed, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. By 2024 she was Director of International Cybersecurity and Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton. Her published work bridges the same divide. The Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, which she introduced in 2020, adapts the technology adoption curve to give executive teams a usable map of their cyber maturity. Her current keynote portfolio takes that lens into the AI era: Innovating with AI Without Breaking Trust and Governing AI Before It Hacks You. The credentials track. Top #3 CISO in EMEA in 2023, Top 50 Women in Tech in 2022, Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s OSPAs in 2019. The booking pattern says more. FT Live brought her in for the European fund management industry in Luxembourg. The ACFE chose her to open its 2025 Fraud Conference Europe to ca. 500 anti-fraud executives. WCM Brazil put her in front of 2,000 leaders at one of the world’s largest strategy and leadership conferences. Key speaking topics AI security and governance Cyber resilience in the AI era AI risk and trust for the enterprise Cybersecurity leadership at board level The evolution of cybercrime AI-enabled fraud and threat response Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI adoption decisions where governance and security are not yet aligned. CISOs, CIOs and CTOs whose teams are being asked to defend against AI-enabled threats while adopting AI internally. Financial services, healthcare and public sector organisations facing high regulatory exposure on both AI and cybersecurity. Audience outcomes Specific examples of how AI is currently breaking enterprise trust in regulated industries. A maturity check against the Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model that locates where the organisation sits. The questions a board needs to ask before approving its next major AI initiative. A view of how attackers are using AI today and which enterprise defences are still holding.

Why organisations work with Monique Morrow She speaks about cybersecurity and digital infrastructure as someone who built it. As the first CTO of Cisco Services and later CTO-Evangelist for New Frontiers Development and Engineering, she sat in the architecture seat through Cisco’s expansion into cloud, IoT and emerging networks. The standards organisations will operate under in extended reality and metaverse systems are partly being written by her. She chairs IEEE P7030 and IEEE P7016, two of the few global working groups defining how these technologies are assessed and built. Engineering credibility that few cybersecurity speakers match. More than seventeen USPTO patents covering networking, IoT, cybersecurity and data handling, plus three published technical books, mean she does not need to translate from analyst-speak. Board-level visibility into how distributed ledger governance actually works. As an Independent Director on the Hedera Council Board, she sees decisions on a major public DLT network being made, not just commented on. Her digital identity work has been pressure-tested against the hardest cases. Through The Humanized Internet, she has built frameworks for portable, self-sovereign identity for stateless and displaced populations, which sharpens her perspective on identity systems for corporate users. Biography highlights President and Co-Founder of The Humanized Internet, the Switzerland-based non-profit advancing self-sovereign digital identity for stateless and displaced populations Former first CTO of Cisco Services and CTO-Evangelist for New Frontiers Development and Engineering at Cisco; previously Senior Distinguished Architect for Emerging Technologies at Syniverse Technologies Independent Director on the Hedera Council Board, governing one of the larger public distributed ledger networks Chair of IEEE P7030 (global extended reality assessment standard) and IEEE P7016 (Standard for Ethically Aligned Design and Operation of Metaverse Systems) Co-author of The Humanized Internet (River Publishers, 2023), The Internet of Women (River Publishers, 2016) and Developing IP-Based Services (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003) Holder of more than seventeen USPTO patents in networking, IoT, cybersecurity and data handling; named one of Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech globally (2018) Biography Distributed ledger systems, extended reality platforms and digital identity protocols are being built faster than the governance around them. Once they scale, the rules embedded in them are very hard to remove. The decisions that matter most are being made at the architecture layer, often in working groups most senior leaders cannot name. Monique Morrow has spent more than twenty-five years inside that layer. She was the first CTO of Cisco Services and later CTO-Evangelist for New Frontiers Development and Engineering. The brief was to read economics, technology and research together and identify what was coming next for the business. She holds more than seventeen USPTO patents in networking, IoT, cybersecurity and data handling, and in 2005 was named Cisco’s first Distinguished Consulting Engineer. She is President and Co-Founder of The Humanized Internet, the Swiss non-profit working on portable, self-sovereign digital identity for the more than one billion people without legal identity. Her 2023 book of the same name from River Publishers makes the argument that identity systems built for stateless and displaced populations produce more robust architecture than systems built for corporate convenience. She chairs IEEE P7030, the global working group writing the assessment standard for extended reality, and IEEE P7016, the standard for ethically aligned metaverse design. She also sits as an Independent Director on the Hedera Council Board, where governance of one of the larger public distributed ledger networks is decided. The rules organisations will operate under in the next decade are being drafted in rooms she chairs. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity strategy and risk Digital identity and self-sovereign identity systems Extended reality and metaverse governance Distributed ledger and blockchain infrastructure Privacy and data governance Ethics in emerging technology Standards and governance for AI and connected systems Ideal for CISOs, CTOs and chief digital officers setting cybersecurity and emerging technology direction Boards and audit committees scrutinising digital identity, AI and distributed ledger exposure Telecommunications, financial services and infrastructure organisations weighing investments in DLT, XR and biometric systems Policy and standards bodies shaping technology governance frameworks Audience outcomes Sharper view of where the actual risks sit in their cybersecurity and emerging technology architecture, separated from vendor noise Working knowledge of the IEEE, GSMA and WEF standards that will shape extended reality, distributed ledger and digital identity over the next five years Grounded perspective on what self-sovereign identity actually requires, from someone building systems for the hardest cases Specific questions to put to vendors and regulators on AI ethics, DLT governance and XR deployment A view of where the next set of regulatory and reputational pressures on emerging technology are likely to land

Why organisations work with Neira Jones Understanding Payments, endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa (author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech) and Monzo founder Tom Blomfield, is the closest thing the payments industry has to a standard reference text. She has since extended that body of work with Beyond Payments on decentralised finance and The A-Z of Payments, a 1,600-entry industry glossary. Organisations working with Jones get access to that body of work in a live advisory context, not just a speaker’s perspective. She spent her executive career operating at the scale where payments risk becomes consequential: as Director of Payment Security and Fraud at Barclaycard, she was directly responsible for the security compliance and risk management of approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties. Four years on the PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors and current membership on the UK Payment Systems Regulator Panel give her visibility of how standards are made, not just how they should be interpreted – a position that is genuinely rare in a speaker. She makes a specific and verifiable argument – that fraud prevention and cybersecurity are the same problem managed as two – that most organisations have not yet addressed and which has direct commercial and regulatory consequences. She covers three disciplines – payments mechanics, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance – from a single practitioner perspective. Most organisations rely on separate specialists for each, which produces the fragmented picture Jones helps boards resolve. Biography highlights Author of three Routledge-published books on payments: Understanding Payments (2024), Beyond Payments (2024), and The A-Z of Payments (2025). Understanding Payments is endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa, author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech, and Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo and GoCardless Former Director of Payment Security and Fraud, Barclaycard – responsible for security compliance and risk management across approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties Panel Member, UK Payment Systems Regulator Former member, PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors (four years); Fellow of the British Computer Society Inducted into the InfoSecurity Europe Hall of Fame (2011); SC Magazine Information Security Person of the Year (2012); Merchant Payments Ecosystem Acquiring Personality of the Year (2013); Cybersecurity Woman Influencer of the Year (2021) Listed on the Refinitiv Top 100 Influencers in Financial Services, Fintech Weekly 100 Most Influential People in FinTech (2021), and Retail Technology Innovation Hub Top 100 Influencers (2023) Biography At Barclaycard, Neira Jones was Director of Payment Security and Fraud – responsible for security compliance and risk management across approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties. That scale of direct institutional exposure shaped her central argument: payments security and cybersecurity are the same problem. Organisations almost universally manage them as if they were two. Her three Routledge-published books form the most comprehensive public treatment of how payment ecosystems work. Understanding Payments (2024), endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa, author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech, and Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, has become the reference text for practitioners and regulators navigating the industry. Beyond Payments (2024) extends that work into decentralised finance and the next generation of payment infrastructure, and The A-Z of Payments (2025) is a 1,600-entry industry glossary. That practitioner depth is backed by formal standards standing. Jones served on the PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors for four years and is a Panel Member for the UK Payment Systems Regulator – roles that give her direct visibility of how payment standards develop and how regulatory expectations form. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. The industry recognition reflects both communities she works across. She is an InfoSecurity Europe Hall of Fame inductee and SC Magazine’s Information Security Person of the Year. She appears on the Refinitiv Top 100 Influencers in Financial Services and the Fintech Weekly 100 Most Influential People in FinTech. Key speaking topics Payments ecosystems and fintech infrastructure Payment security and fraud prevention Cybercrime in financial services Financial regulation and compliance (PSD2, GDPR, AML) Digital trust and open banking Cybersecurity governance for boards Decentralised finance and digital currencies Ideal for Chief Risk Officers and Chief Information Security Officers in financial services and payments organisations Boards and executive committees approving payments infrastructure or fintech partnerships Compliance, legal, and regulatory professionals operating in payments and fintech Fintech investors and M&A teams requiring cybersecurity and payments due diligence expertise Audience outcomes A structural understanding of how payments ecosystems work – across cards, open banking, real-time payments, and digital currencies – and where security and compliance risk sits in each Recognition of why fraud prevention and cybersecurity are typically managed as separate functions when the threat landscape treats them as one – and what that costs Practical clarity on the regulatory environment governing payments, including PSD2, GDPR, and AML frameworks, and how those requirements shape commercial decisions A framework for evaluating fintech partnerships and payments infrastructure decisions against security, fraud, and compliance criteria Greater confidence engaging with regulators, auditors, and technology vendors on payments security questions

Why organisations work with Nina Schick She published the first book on generative AI in 2020, years before the technology entered the boardroom conversation, which means her current strategic claims sit on a public track record rather than a recent pivot. She is one of very few commercial speakers who has briefed both a sitting US President and a former NATO Secretary General on AI and statecraft, giving senior audiences direct access to the language used at the top of Western policymaking. Her “Industrial Intelligence” thesis reframes AI from a software adoption question into an infrastructure and energy question, which is the conversation CFOs, infrastructure heads, and strategy teams now need but rarely get from a generalist AI speaker. Through Tamang Ventures she holds active advisory roles with frontier firms including Synthesia, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, alongside Qlik and Truepic, so she speaks from inside the capital and product decisions she describes, not from the outside. Biography highlights Author, Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse (Hachette/Twelve, 2020), translated into multiple languages and widely cited as the first book on AI-generated content Briefed US President Joe Biden and advised former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Director of Rasmussen Global Worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual study on global attitudes toward democracy Founder of Tamang Ventures; advisor to Synthesia (valued at $4B in its January 2026 Series E), founding AI Council member at Qlik, advisor to Truepic Strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during a decade of European political crises including Brexit and the war in Ukraine Half-Nepalese and half-German, with degrees from the University of Cambridge and University College London; now based in the United States after a decade inside UK and EU policy Biography The race to dominate artificial intelligence is no longer a software race. It is a contest over fabs, energy, compute, and the sovereign infrastructure that will determine which states and which companies hold the next decade of pricing power. That argument, which Nina Schick calls Industrial Intelligence, sits at the centre of her current work with governments, defence institutions, and frontier AI companies. She arrived at it earlier than most. Her 2020 book Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, published by Hachette imprint Twelve, was among the first to describe the geopolitical and informational consequences of generative AI, written before ChatGPT existed as a public product. It introduced the concept of the Infocalypse and is cited as foundational reading in national security and policy circles. That early thesis is grounded in a long career inside European policymaking. As Director of Rasmussen Global, she advised Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General, on political risk and the technological evolution of warfare. She worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual machine-learning study on global attitudes toward democracy. She has briefed US President Joe Biden on AI, technological integrity, and statecraft, and works with the US Army, the United Nations, and Mastercard on AI and sovereignty. For seven years she also served as a strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during the Brexit, Trump, and Ukraine cycles. Through Tamang Ventures, the advisory firm she founded, she now sits inside the companies building the new stack: Synthesia in enterprise AI video, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, Qlik in data analytics where she is a founding AI Council member, and Truepic in digital provenance. Now based in the United States, she works with the institutions and capital allocators that will shape what the AI infrastructure stack looks like at the end of this decade. The combination of policy access, commercial proximity, and a public thesis published five years before the market caught up is what makes her useful in a boardroom. Key speaking topics Industrial Intelligence and the AI infrastructure stack Generative AI and corporate strategy AI, semiconductors, and the US-China technology competition AI and energy demand Deepfakes, synthetic media, and information integrity AI in defence, NATO, and statecraft Sovereign AI and the future of national power Ideal for Boards, CEOs, and strategy heads recalibrating long-range AI investment around infrastructure rather than tooling CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers needing a geopolitical lens on supply, partnerships, and dependency risk Defence, security, and public sector audiences working on AI policy, sovereignty, and statecraft Investor and capital allocator audiences pricing AI exposure across compute, energy, and software layers Audience outcomes A clear thesis about why AI is an infrastructure and energy contest, not only a software adoption question A working frame for assessing corporate exposure to compute, semiconductor, and energy supply constraints Specific examples of how policy, defence, and frontier AI companies are already operating inside the Industrial Intelligence framework Sharper questions to take into the next strategy review on AI, sovereignty, and dependency risk A grounded view of where deepfakes and synthetic media now sit in the corporate and political risk picture

Why organisations work with Phil Osborn He ran UK Defence Intelligence at four-star level from 2015 to 2018, including the period covering Russia, China, Iran and the operationalisation of state cyber. Few civilian advisers have sat in that seat. He led UK Defence’s offensive and defensive cyber capability, so the boardroom conversation about hostile-state cyber risk is not theoretical for him. It is something he commanded. He sits inside the same problem from three angles at once: as Director of Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK, and Senior Advisor to DXC Technology. That triangulation is rare. He established and ran the £2.5 billion annual Joint Forces Command Capability Portfolio, so capital-allocation conversations about resilience and sovereign capability are grounded in operating reality. CBE, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Chair of the RAF Charitable Trust. The credentials sit on substance, not the other way round. Biography highlights Air Marshal (Retired), Royal Air Force, 1982 to 2019; Tornado navigator, station commander, deployed operational commander. Chief of Defence Intelligence, 2015 to 2018: strategic intelligence to UK Defence and Government, ISR coordination, counter-intelligence, and Defence cyber leadership. Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group RAF, 2010 to 2012; Director Capability at Joint Forces Command, 2013. Director, Universal Defence and Security Solutions; Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and DXC Technology; Non-Executive Director, Inzpire. Chair, Royal Air Force Charitable Trust. CBE (2009 New Year Honours); Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Biography The boardroom conversation about geopolitics has changed. Sanctions, hostile-state cyber, supply-chain coercion, sovereign technology dependencies: these have moved from external context to first-order strategic risk. Most leadership teams do not have an intelligence-grade read on any of them. That is the seat Phil Osborn occupied at national level. As UK Chief of Defence Intelligence from 2015 to 2018, he was responsible for the strategic intelligence picture supplied to UK Defence and Government, for the coordination of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and for Defence’s leadership of offensive and defensive cyber. He did this through a period in which Russia, China, Iran and non-state actors all changed posture in observable ways. The career under that role matters. Thirty-seven years in the Royal Air Force, originally as a Tornado navigator, then through squadron and station command, then as Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group, then at Joint Forces Command where he set up and ran the £2.5 billion annual Capability Portfolio that became part of Strategic Command. The capital-allocation muscle is real, not anecdotal. Since retiring as Air Marshal in 2019 he has worked the same problem from the commercial side: Director at Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and to DXC Technology, Non-Executive Director at Inzpire, and Chair of the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust. Boards looking for somebody who can connect the geopolitical signal, the cyber threat picture and the sovereign-capability question, in language a Chair can use, find one of the few people in the UK who has run all three. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and national security Defence intelligence and the strategic threat picture State and non-state cyber risk Sovereign capability and supply chain resilience Force design, capability portfolios and capital allocation Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Ideal for Boards and audit and risk committees confronting geopolitical and cyber exposure CEOs, CFOs and CSOs in defence, aerospace, critical infrastructure and government-facing industries Investors and capital allocators with sovereign-capability or sanctions-sensitive portfolios Senior leadership offsites in regulated industries where state-level risk is now a board agenda item Audience outcomes A clearer read on the geopolitical and security drivers that will most affect the next planning cycle A sharper distinction between hostile-state cyber risk and the generic cyber narrative A practical sense of how national-level intelligence assesses adversaries, applied to corporate risk A working view on sovereign capability, supply-chain dependency and what resilience actually costs The vocabulary to brief a Chair or audit committee on geopolitical and cyber exposure with confidence

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.