Cybersecurity

Why organisations work with Jamie Bartlett He has spent more than a decade inside the parts of the internet that boards now worry about: dark net markets, crypto fraud, online radicalisation, generative AI manipulation. The reporting is first-hand, not desk-based. He built and ran the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, giving him a rare combination of investigative journalism and large-scale data work on online behaviour. The People Vs Tech won the 2019 Transmission Prize and set out a specific argument about how digital systems destabilise democratic institutions, an argument that now reads as a forecast of the AI-and-elections debate. The Missing Cryptoqueen is one of the most successful financial-crime podcasts ever made; he can talk about crypto fraud and influence operations from inside the case file, not from a slide deck. He is comfortable in front of regulators, insurers and corporate boards, having spoken at the ABI Annual Conference and worked with governments on online harms and disinformation policy. Biography highlights Founder and former Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos. Author of The Dark Net, Radicals Chasing Utopia, The People Vs Tech and The Missing Cryptoqueen, published by Penguin Random House and Hachette. Winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing for The People Vs Tech. Presenter of the BBC Two documentary The Secrets of Silicon Valley and the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and Believe in Magic. TED speaker; “How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream” has been viewed several million times. Technology contributor to The Telegraph, The Spectator, the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect; writes the Substack newsletter How to Survive the Internet. Biography The OneCoin fraud took roughly four billion dollars from ordinary investors before its founder, Ruja Ignatova, vanished. Jamie Bartlett spent two years inside that story for the BBC, and the podcast he co-wrote and presented, The Missing Cryptoqueen, became one of the most-downloaded financial-crime investigations the BBC has ever produced. It is the clearest example of his method: long, embedded reporting inside the parts of the digital economy that institutions struggle to see clearly. That method runs through four books. The Dark Net mapped the subcultures, markets and ideologies operating below the public internet. Radicals Chasing Utopia tracked fringe political movements that have since shaped mainstream politics. The People Vs Tech, which won the 2019 Transmission Prize, argued that digital platforms were quietly hollowing out the conditions democracy needs to function. Boards reading it in 2018 found it provocative. Boards reading it now read it as a forecast. The analytical foundation came earlier, at Demos. Bartlett founded and led the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media for around a decade, combining investigative reporting with large-scale data work on online extremism, political movements and information operations. That work fed into BBC Two’s The Secrets of Silicon Valley and into regular contributions to the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect. His current focus is the generative AI cycle and what it does to fraud, trust and democratic infrastructure. He writes the Substack How to Survive the Internet, speaks to insurers, regulators and corporates on digital risk, and has appeared at venues including the Association of British Insurers Annual Conference. The brief he answers most cleanly: help senior leaders see what is actually happening online, not what their dashboards say is happening. Key speaking topics Generative AI, democracy and corporate trust Online fraud, crypto scams and financial crime Disinformation, influence operations and information integrity Dark net markets and digital underworld economies Technology, regulation and the future of online harms Political radicalisation and digital subcultures Ideal for Boards, audit committees and risk committees grappling with AI, fraud and digital trust as governance issues Insurers, banks and financial services firms exposed to crypto fraud, identity risk and information operations CISOs, Chief Risk Officers and Heads of Compliance briefing executive teams on the changing online threat landscape Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping rules on AI, online harms and platform accountability Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how generative AI is changing fraud, influence and information integrity in practice, beyond the headline narrative. Specific case material on OneCoin, dark net markets and online radicalisation that leaders can use to brief their own teams. A sharper sense of where digital risk now sits inside corporate governance, not only inside IT. Confidence in talking about technology, democracy and trust without leaning on consultancy abstractions. A reading of where the next two years of regulatory and reputational pressure on technology are likely to land.

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

Why organisations work with Hector Monsegur He co-founded and led LulzSec during its 2011 campaign against targets including Sony, the CIA public website, News Corporation, Stratfor, and US and UK law enforcement bodies, which gives his technical explanations a provenance no defender-only speaker can claim. Court filings credit his FBI cooperation with helping prevent roughly 300 cyber attacks on US government, military, and corporate targets; that record is a matter of public record, not self-description. He is a working penetration tester and cybersecurity research lead, currently Chief Research Officer at SafeHill, so his examples reflect live engagements rather than stories from a decade ago. His joint work with former FBI Special Agent Chris Tarbell, including the “Hacker and the Fed” podcast, means a single booking can span both the attacker and investigator perspective on the same incidents. He is direct about his own record and the decisions that led to cooperation, which is what makes him credible in front of boards and security leaders who have seen the sanitised version of this story before. Biography highlights Co-founder and de facto leader of LulzSec, the 2011 hacktivist group that breached Sony, PBS, News Corporation, Stratfor, and the public website of the CIA. FBI cooperator from June 2011, credited in federal court filings with helping prevent around 300 cyber attacks before being sentenced to time served in May 2014. Co-founder and Chief Research Officer of SafeHill, a US cybersecurity startup that exited stealth in 2025 with a 2.6 million dollar pre-seed round. Former Director at Rhino Security Labs, leading network penetration testing for financial services, retail, and technology clients. Co-host with former FBI Special Agent Chris Tarbell of the “Hacker and the Fed” podcast. Covered by CBS News, Wired, Vice, Ars Technica, and Fox News; first television interview conducted by Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning. Biography LulzSec existed for roughly fifty days in the summer of 2011 and did enough damage in that window to force boards at Sony, News Corporation, and several federal agencies to rethink their security posture. Hector Monsegur, operating under the handle Sabu, was one of six core members and the group’s public face on IRC and Twitter. The FBI identified him that June and, within twenty four hours of arrest, he agreed to cooperate. Over the next ten months he continued to appear online as Sabu while working with federal investigators, an arrangement court filings later credited with helping prevent around 300 planned attacks on targets including NASA, the US military, and major media organisations. He was sentenced in May 2014 to time served. What makes his perspective commercially useful is not the biography, it is the technical specificity behind it. He can walk a security team through how a hacktivist crew forms, how trust between members is established and exploited, how initial access is gained, and how the same operational mistakes keep appearing inside Fortune 500 networks a decade later. That work now sits inside a live engineering role. He is Chief Research Officer at SafeHill, a cybersecurity startup that raised 2.6 million dollars in pre-seed funding in 2025 to build a continuous threat exposure management platform. Alongside that he co-hosts “Hacker and the Fed” with Chris Tarbell, the former FBI special agent who ran the LulzSec and Silk Road investigations. For a security buyer, the unusual thing is that both sides of that original case are now on the same stage. Key speaking topics Attacker-side perspective on corporate cyber risk Hacktivism and the formation of online crime groups Penetration testing and offensive security Insider threat and human failure points Federal cybercrime investigation and cooperation State of the threat landscape Ideal for CISOs, heads of offensive security, and red team leaders inside banks, insurers, and large technology firms Boards and audit committees seeking an unfiltered briefing on how a modern intrusion actually unfolds Risk, compliance, and fraud leadership inside retail, payments, and critical infrastructure Cybersecurity conferences and industry events looking for a keynote that pairs operator credibility with current research Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how a hacktivist group formed, operated, and was eventually dismantled. Specific examples of where corporate defences tend to fail against a motivated attacker with time. A clearer view of the human factors that drive most successful intrusions, from insider error to social engineering. Language that senior leaders can use to brief their own boards on cyber exposure without leaning on vendor slides.

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.

Why organisations work with Chloe Colliver She has run live detection work across the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US elections, which means she can speak to election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour from operational experience rather than commentary. She has sat on both sides of the table, as a lead investigator at ISD naming tactics used against platforms, and in senior online safety policy at Ofcom shaping how UK regulation will actually be enforced. Her testimony to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and the Swedish, Canadian, French, German and New Zealand governments gives boards a direct line into how legislators are thinking about tech regulation. She co-authored the ISD reports that set the methodological vocabulary for this field, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage, cited by journalists, regulators and platform policy teams. She is fluent on camera, with sustained appearances on CNN, BBC Newsnight, Sky News and Channel 4, which translates into a keynote register that works for mixed executive and technical audiences. Biography highlights Head of Digital Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, leading a global team of analysts on disinformation and online extremism. Now in senior online safety policy at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, building the evidence base behind the Online Safety Act. Co-author of ISD reports including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle, The 101 of Disinformation Detection and Click Here For Outrage. Expert witness to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and to the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments. Contributor to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism alongside Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. BA History, Clare College, Cambridge; MA History, Yale, as a Mellon Fellow. Biography Coordinated manipulation online is no longer a fringe concern for communications teams. It is an operating risk that touches elections, public health, brand safety and regulatory exposure all at once. The field that studies it seriously is small, and Chloe Colliver has been at the centre of it for most of the last decade. At the Institute for Strategic Dialogue she led a global team mapping disinformation, hate speech and extremist content across major platforms. Her team ran live analysis during the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US election cycles, and co-authored the research reports that shaped how journalists, regulators and platform policy staff now talk about coordinated inauthentic behaviour, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage. She has given expert evidence to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and advised the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments on tech regulation. She also contributed to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the cross-platform body that includes Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. She now holds a senior online safety role at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, where she leads work on the evidence base for the Online Safety Act. That shift from platform-level investigator to regulator-side policy lead is what makes her rare on a stage: she has named the tactics, tested the interventions, and now sits inside the body writing the rules. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information integrity Online safety regulation and the Online Safety Act Election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour Platform governance and content moderation Digital policy and tech regulation Extremism and online radicalisation Crisis communications in a manipulated information environment Ideal for Boards, CEOs and comms leaders preparing for regulatory, reputational or election-year information risk. Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Heads of Trust and Safety navigating the Online Safety Act and wider platform regulation. Policy, public affairs and government relations teams tracking how UK, EU and G7 legislators are moving on disinformation and online harms. Security, intelligence and threat teams integrating platform-level signals into enterprise risk reporting. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how coordinated disinformation is actually built, distributed and monetised, with named examples from recent election cycles. A grounded read on where UK and EU online safety regulation is heading and what it will require from platforms, advertisers and large employers. A working vocabulary for discussing information integrity at board level, separating genuine risk from noise. A sense of which interventions have been tested and which have not, drawn from ISD research and regulator-side evidence work.

Why organisations work with Zoe Kleinman She is the BBC’s first Technology Editor, which gives any panel or main-stage conversation an immediate authority signal that a corporate moderator cannot match. She has interviewed Tim Cook, Sir Demis Hassabis, Brad Smith and Jensen Huang on the record, and is comfortable holding senior technologists to a specific answer rather than letting a talking point pass. She translates AI, cybersecurity and digital regulation for boardrooms and general audiences without flattening the technical substance, which is the skill most in-house tech leaders ask for and rarely find. She has chaired flagship sessions for the Open Data Institute, the Royal Institution and Fintech Connect, and hosted The National AI Awards, so she arrives knowing the room. Her reporting has fed UK parliamentary inquiries and her March 2025 House of Lords evidence on AI governance gives her current standing on the regulatory questions buyers are now being asked by their own boards. Biography highlights BBC Technology Editor since September 2021, the first person appointed to the role. Over 20 years at the BBC, including senior technology reporter from 2009 to 2021. Reports across BBC News television, BBC World News, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC World Service. On-the-record interviews with Tim Cook, Sir Demis Hassabis, Brad Smith, Jensen Huang and Dave Baszucki. Has interviewed two serving UK Prime Ministers, Rishi Sunak at the 2023 UK Global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park and Keir Starmer. Gave evidence to the House of Lords on AI governance and data privacy in March 2025. Investigative reporting on children’s in-game spending triggered a UK parliamentary committee inquiry. Hosted The National AI Awards and chaired sessions for the Open Data Institute, Royal Institution and Fintech Connect. Biography The hard part of a senior AI conversation is no longer finding an expert. It is finding someone who can sit between the expert and the audience, ask the question the room wants asked, and refuse to let a polished non-answer count as an answer. That is the editorial craft Kleinman has been building at the BBC for two decades. She joined the BBC in 2003 and moved through web production, features editing and senior technology reporting before being appointed the corporation’s first Technology Editor in September 2021. Her reporting now runs across BBC News television, BBC World News, Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC World Service technology and business strands, with a specific brief on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital regulation and diversity in technology. The interview list is the part senior buyers usually recognise. Tim Cook at Apple, Sir Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind, Brad Smith at Microsoft, Jensen Huang at Nvidia, Dave Baszucki at Roblox, and two serving Prime Ministers, Rishi Sunak at the 2023 UK Global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park and Keir Starmer. Her investigation into children’s in-game spending prompted a UK parliamentary committee inquiry, and in March 2025 she gave evidence to the House of Lords on AI governance and data privacy. What that record gives a corporate stage is something specific. She arrives understanding the technical detail, she knows what the regulators are about to ask, and she has spent enough time across the table from senior technologists to keep the conversation honest. For an organisation putting its leadership in front of clients or its own workforce to talk about AI, that is the moderator profile that does the work. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI AI governance, ethics and regulation Cybersecurity and digital risk Big Tech, platforms and competition Digital transformation and emerging technology Diversity in technology Innovation and disruption Moderation, hosting and panel chairing Ideal for AI, technology and innovation summits requiring a credible main-stage host or interviewer CIO, CISO, CTO and digital transformation leadership events Boards and executive committees commissioning a closed-door briefing on AI and digital regulation Awards ceremonies, flagship dinners and member events seeking a recognisable BBC face with subject authority Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI regulation and governance are moving in the UK, EU and US, and what that means for corporate decisions in the next 12 to 24 months. A sharper sense of which AI vendor and platform claims hold up under scrutiny and which do not. Direct exposure to how the world’s most senior technology leaders are talking, and not talking, about risk. A working vocabulary for non-technical executives to discuss AI, cybersecurity and digital regulation with confidence in front of clients, staff and regulators.

Why organisations work with Sasha Qadri Her years as Senior Programming Director at Bloomberg Live mean she approaches moderation as an editorial problem: she understands what a discussion is supposed to achieve before she takes the stage to lead it – not just how to keep it moving. She started her career in investment banking and has worked extensively with financial institutions including Lloyds Bank and the Treasury – giving her genuine financial literacy that shows when chairing sessions on fintech, capital markets, and economic policy. Her live broadcast background – including breaking news on Sky News and production roles at CNN and CNBC – means she is rarely unsettled by format changes, difficult panellists, or unscripted moments in high-profile live environments. She has chaired the Innovate Finance Global Summit, co-hosted London Tech Week and its Global Leaders Summit, and emceed Money 20/20 in Europe: events where the participant list demands more than capable chairmanship. Her interviewee roster spans the Former UK Chancellor, the Head of GCHQ, leading technology CEOs, and AI researchers – giving her substantive range across the full landscape of technology, finance, and public policy that executive audiences expect a moderator to navigate. Biography highlights Anchored television news for Sky News; produced and reported for CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, and Channel 4 News Former Senior Programming Director, Bloomberg Live – curated and moderated flagship business and technology events Career began in investment banking (UBS cited by multiple bureau sources); subsequent commercial experience at lastminute.com during the dotcom era Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge; further study at The Sorbonne Recent events include: co-host, London Tech Week; chair, Innovate Finance Global Summit; emcee, Money 20/20 Middle East; main stage chair, Tech Show London; main stage chair and moderator, Global Health Exhibition; moderator, FII Institute and Cityscape Global Named interviewees include Rt. Hon. Philip Hammond (Former UK Chancellor), Anne Keast-Butler (Head of GCHQ), Mo Gawdat, Martha Lane Fox, Francesca Carlesi (Revolut UK CEO), and Mike Martin (Strava CEO) Recent corporate clients include Palo Alto Networks, Amazon, Akamai, Royal London, and Mastercard Biography Leadership events at the intersection of technology, finance, and business policy are only as good as the conversation they produce. Sasha Qadri is a broadcaster and event moderator whose career has run across two disciplines that rarely coexist: live television journalism – anchoring for Sky News, producing for CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg – and editorial leadership of major live events as Senior Programming Director at Bloomberg Live. That editorial role is what distinguishes her from the professional host market. At Bloomberg Live, she did not simply chair discussions – she curated them, shaping the content architecture of flagship business and technology events before taking the stage to lead them. The combination of knowing what a conversation is supposed to achieve, then making it happen with senior executives in front of a live audience, is the specific capability organisations are hiring when they book her. Her professional foundation adds further range. She began her career in investment banking and has since worked regularly with financial institutions including Lloyds Bank and the Treasury. A degree in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge gives her the grounding to operate across the full space where technology, finance, economics, and public policy intersect – and to interview figures including a former UK Chancellor and the Head of GCHQ with genuine comprehension, not just broadcast fluency. In 2025, she co-hosted London Tech Week and chaired its Global Leaders Summit, emceed Money 20/20 in Europe, and chaired the Innovate Finance Global Summit (the UK fintech sector’s flagship annual conference). The same year extended her chairing and moderation work across the Middle East, including FII Institute, Cityscape Global, and the Global Health Exhibition. Events that trust her with their main stage consistently feature participant lists where competent chairmanship is insufficient. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and digital transformation Financial services and fintech leadership Cybersecurity and technology risk AI adoption and generative AI Sustainability and energy transition Geopolitics, policy, and economic leadership Business strategy and technology innovation Ideal for CTOs, CISOs, and technology leadership conferences requiring a moderator with genuine sector depth, not just broadcast presence Financial services and fintech events – CFO, CEO, and C-suite panel formats where moderator literacy on capital markets, regulation, and digital disruption is material Public-private sector summits on technology, national security, and economic strategy, where interviewees include government officials and policymakers Major international conferences requiring anchor-standard broadcast experience combined with editorial event direction Audience outcomes Executive panel discussions that move past rehearsed positions into substantive exchange Clearer understanding of emerging intersections between technology, finance, and policy – framed for decision-makers, not technical specialists Confident navigation of complex or sensitive topics – AI ethics, geopolitical risk, fintech regulation – without losing audience accessibility A moderated session that maintains engagement and structure across multiple hours, formats, or speakers Conversations shaped by editorial intelligence that understands what the session is supposed to achieve before it begins