Digital Transformation

Why organisations work with Debarati Guha Sits at the editorial centre of one of the largest non-Asian international broadcasters covering Asia, with operational responsibility across nine language services and bureaus in Taipei, Delhi, and Jakarta. Two decades of front-line reporting on South Asian politics, including direct interviews with Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen, gives her a working network few moderators in the region can match. Recognised as one of Germany’s top ten women leaders by Global Woman Leader in 2023, with a track record of leading multi-country, multi-language editorial teams through digital transition. Comfortable chairing complex media and policy panels for organisations like WAN-IFRA, where the room mixes editors, regulators, and platform leaders. Bilingual cultural register: equally readable to a Berlin or Brussels audience and a Delhi, Dhaka, or Jakarta one, which matters when the conversation crosses both. Biography highlights Director Programs for Asia, Deutsche Welle, leading nine Asian language departments plus Asia Desk (English and German). MA and MPhil in Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Career interviews include Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen. Top 10 “Women Leader in Germany” 2023, Global Woman Leader. “Most Influential Business Leader” 2024, Business Frontier. Executive Management Programme, EBU Academy (2022); BAKS course on Southeast Asian politics and Germany (2023). Panel chair at WAN-IFRA Indian Media Leaders eSummit and similar industry forums. Biography Asia is no longer a single story for international organisations. India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Mekong economies each move on different political clocks, and the editorial signal reaching Western capitals is increasingly mediated by national platforms with their own agendas. Reading Asia from a London or Frankfurt boardroom is harder than it was ten years ago. That is the operational world Debarati Guha works inside every day. As Director Programs for Asia at Deutsche Welle, she runs nine Asian language services plus the Asia Desk in English and German, with editorial bureaus in Taipei, Delhi, and Jakarta. The job involves judgement calls on what crosses the line between regional reporting and global business interest, made several times a day across very different political environments. Her background is unusual for that seat. She trained in political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, started in journalism as the New Delhi assistant to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Asia correspondent in 2003, and joined DW in 2007. By 2013 she was running DW’s Bengali service; by 2018, the whole Asia operation. Along the way she has interviewed Sheikh Hasina, Shashi Tharoor, and Amartya Sen, and built relationships across South and Southeast Asian political and intellectual life. For Speakers Associates, this means a moderator and panellist who can hold a room of senior leaders on Asia, media, and the politics of digital information without resorting to high-level summary. She was named one of Germany’s top ten women leaders by Global Woman Leader in 2023, and chairs panels at WAN-IFRA’s Indian Media Leaders eSummit, where the audience is exactly the working editors and platform leaders she manages every day. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of South and Southeast Asia The future of international broadcasting and public-service media Digital transformation in newsrooms Women in media leadership Disinformation and political reporting in Asia Cross-cultural editorial leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams shaping Asia strategy or expansion plans Conferences on international media, journalism, and digital news Leadership programmes on cross-cultural management and women in senior media roles Panels and summits requiring an informed chair on Asia, geopolitics, or the information ecosystem Audience outcomes A clearer read on the political and media dynamics shaping South and Southeast Asia Direct insight into how a major international broadcaster makes editorial calls across nine languages and three Asian bureaus Practical perspective on running multilingual, multicultural teams through digital change A sharper sense of where disinformation, platform power, and politics intersect in Asia A panel or session moderated with senior-room composure, where the questions land and the speakers are pushed

Why organisations work with Bill Tolany He has run brand and marketing inside a category-defining grocer and operations inside Amazon’s ultra-fast delivery business, so he can talk about customer experience as both a marketing problem and a logistics problem. As Senior Director of Marketing at Whole Foods Market, he launched the integrated marketing team and grew alternative commerce sales by hundreds of millions of dollars; a specific commercial result, not a theme. His Amazon Prime Now experience as Regional General Manager gives him direct exposure to the operating model that consumer brands are now being benchmarked against. As Turnaround CEO of Greenling, he has carried the cost discipline and unit economics of a venture-stage e-commerce business, not just commentary on it. He moves easily between corporate transformation conversations and start-up advisory work, useful for buyers whose internal teams need to understand both worlds. Biography highlights Senior Director of Marketing, Whole Foods Market; founding leader of its integrated media team. Regional General Manager, Amazon Prime Now, during its launch and expansion phase. Turnaround CEO, Greenling, Inc., a mission-driven local food e-commerce business. Board Director, The Very Good Food Company Inc., appointed December 2020. Advisor to multiple consumer and technology start-ups. US patent holder. Biography Whole Foods Market and Amazon were two of the most studied consumer businesses of the last decade. Bill Tolany held senior roles at both before they merged, which is unusual for any operator working in modern retail. At Whole Foods Market he served as Senior Director of Marketing and founding leader of the integrated media team. The brief covered brand, social and mobile; the result, according to the company’s own later disclosures, was the launch of an integrated marketing function and growth of alternative commerce sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. His public commentary on Whole Foods’ social strategy, where roughly 85% of corporate tweets were customer responses, became a reference point for retailers thinking about brand as service. Amazon then recruited him as Regional General Manager for Prime Now, the ultra-fast local delivery business that pushed Amazon into the consumer experience grocers had previously owned. That role gave him direct exposure to how marketing, logistics and store operations have to be re-wired when a customer expects a one-hour window. He later ran Greenling, Inc. as Turnaround CEO, taking on the unit economics of a mission-driven local food platform rather than commenting on them. He sits on the Board of The Very Good Food Company Inc., a plant-based food business, and advises start-ups in media, education and e-commerce. The throughline is practical: how a consumer brand sustains a relationship with its customer when the delivery model, the marketing channel and the competitor set all change at once. Key speaking topics Customer experience in modern retail Marketing and commerce integration Digital transformation in grocery and food E-commerce operating models Brand building through service and social Start-up and corporate innovation Plant-based and mission-driven consumer businesses Ideal for CMOs and customer experience leaders in retail, grocery and consumer brands Heads of digital, e-commerce and omnichannel inside consumer businesses Leadership teams at food, beverage and mission-driven consumer companies Corporate innovation and venture teams working with consumer start-ups Audience outcomes A clearer view of how marketing, operations and logistics combine to produce customer experience in modern retail. Specific reference points from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Prime Now on how brand and commerce can be run as one system. Sharper questions to ask about the unit economics of e-commerce and ultra-fast delivery models. Perspective on how legacy consumer brands can work with and learn from start-up operators.

Why organisations work with Jennifer Jordan Her seven tensions framework, built from surveys of more than 1,000 senior executives and published in Harvard Business Review with Michael Wade, gives leadership teams a shared language for the contradictions that actually slow them down. She directs IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes, so the work she brings to a boardroom is the same work she runs with executive cohorts every month. Her doctoral training at Yale in social psychology means the advice on power, influence, and ethical lapse rests on peer-reviewed research, not anecdote. She translates academic findings into operational decisions: when to slow a leader down, when to add a shadow board, when a decision should be made by data and when by judgment. Recognised by Poets&Quants on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list and the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year, she sits in the small group of leadership researchers whose work senior executives are actively asking for. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. PhD in Psychology, Yale University; postdoctoral fellow at Kellogg School of Management and Tuck School of Business. Co-author with Michael Wade of “Every Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions,” Harvard Business Review, 2020. Named by Poets&Quants to its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list and nominated to the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year. Research published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, Journal of Management, and Business Ethics Quarterly. Biography Most leadership advice still asks executives to pick a side. Be visionary or be operational. Trust the data or trust your gut. Hold authority or share it. The senior leaders Jennifer Jordan studies do not have that luxury, and her research is built around the cost of pretending they do. Jordan is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD in Lausanne, where she directs the Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. Her 2020 Harvard Business Review piece with Michael Wade, drawn from surveys of more than 1,000 senior leaders, set out seven tensions that define the modern executive role, from expert to learner, from controller to architect, from constant to adaptor. The framework is now used inside leadership development at major firms. Trained as a social psychologist at Yale, she works on the harder edge of the leadership question: power, influence, and the conditions under which capable people make ethical mistakes. That research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Management, and it underpins her work on leadership transitions, family business succession, and women on boards. Her recognition is concrete. Poets&Quants placed her on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list of business school professors, citing close to 1,500 academic citations of her work. Thinkers50 named her to its Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the same year. With Mahwesh Khan, she has argued in HBR for shadow boards as a structural answer to generational distance at the top of organisations, a recommendation that several large European firms have since adopted. Key speaking topics Leadership in the digital age Power, influence, and ethics Leadership transitions and succession Decision-making under contradiction Women on boards and inclusive leadership Family business leadership Shadow boards and intergenerational governance Ideal for CEOs and executive committees are navigating contradictory strategic demands. CHROs and heads of leadership development are designing senior leader programmes. Board chairs and nominating committees are working on succession and governance. Family business principals and next-generation leaders are preparing to take over. Audience outcomes A direct read on the seven tensions that define senior leadership today, with practical tests for which behaviour each situation calls for. A clearer view of how power changes a leader’s judgement, and the routines that keep that change in check. Sharper questions for succession and leadership transitions, including how shadow boards and reverse mentoring change board-level perspective. A research-grounded account of why digital execution stalls at the top of organisations, and what senior leaders can do about it.

Why organisations work with Jaideep Prabhu He wrote the books that put frugal innovation on the boardroom agenda. “Jugaad Innovation” and “Frugal Innovation” are the reference texts, and the latter won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016. He connects innovation theory to what is actually happening in India, China, Brazil and Africa, not as case studies but as strategic signal for Western firms facing the same constraints a decade later. His work travels into public policy. “How Should a Government Be?” takes the same logic on digital, lean operations and citizen value, and applies it to how state power is now exercised. He holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School and is a Fellow of the British Academy, which means the frameworks have been pressure-tested by academic peers, not only by consultants. Biography highlights Professor of Marketing and Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, Cambridge Judge Business School Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge Co-author of “Jugaad Innovation” (Jossey-Bass, 2012) and “Frugal Innovation” (Economist Books / Profile Books, 2015), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2016 Author of “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” (Profile Books, 2021) Commentary and profiles in The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Times, Le Monde, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek Biography “Jugaad” is the Hindi word for an ingenious, improvised fix. In 2012, Jaideep Prabhu and his co-authors turned it into a serious argument about how Western firms should learn to innovate when money, time and certainty are all in shorter supply. That book, and its successor “Frugal Innovation”, reframed a generation of conversations about growth under constraint. Prabhu holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School: Professor of Marketing and the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise. He directs the Centre for India and Global Business, and sits as a Fellow of the British Academy and of Clare College, Cambridge. The research sits where marketing, innovation, strategy and international business meet, with a steady focus on what firms in emerging economies are teaching firms everywhere else. “Frugal Innovation”, co-written with Navi Radjou and published with The Economist, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016. His 2021 book “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” extended the same question beyond companies, arguing that digital infrastructure, lean operations and new organisational forms are reshaping what governments can credibly deliver. The through-line is practical. Leaders who work with him come away with a clearer view of how to compete on creativity and economics at the same time, and a sharper sense of which constraints to design around and which to design with. Key speaking topics Frugal and jugaad innovation Business model innovation in emerging markets Growth strategy under constraint India and the global innovation economy Digital transformation in the public sector The future of government and state capacity Global marketing and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting innovation and growth strategy for cost-sensitive or emerging markets CSOs, CMOs and heads of innovation looking to pressure-test portfolios against leaner competitors Public sector leaders, policy teams and ministers redesigning delivery around digital and citizen value Corporate India programmes, global leadership forums and any organisation with a serious India or emerging markets thesis Audience outcomes A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and makes it usable at board level Named examples from India, China, Brazil and Africa of firms that built scale under constraint, and what they reveal about Western incumbents A framework for spotting which parts of the business model are most exposed to leaner competition and which offer the fastest route to reinvention For public sector audiences, a clearer view of the levers that modern states are using to deliver more with less Specific, citable references from the three books that senior teams can build internal conversations around

Why organisations work with Carlos Cordon Direct advisory experience with Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors, which means the examples on stage come from rooms he has sat in. Reframes the supply chain conversation at board level as a revenue and growth discussion, shifting it away from the familiar cost-defence framing and into competitive territory. Teaching material that other business schools pay to use. His cases have twice placed him on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally. Sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which gives him a working view of how a global consumer business is actually pricing digital and AI bets at the top. Writes regularly for TIME on supply chain and geopolitics, so a board gets someone whose argument has already been tested against an international editorial audience. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management at IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program. Author of Strategy is Digital (Springer), The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan), and Strategic Supply Chain Management (Routledge). Twice listed on The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors (#18 in 2020/21, #36 in 2023/24). Winner of the EFMD Case Writing Competition in 2017 and of The Case Centre’s Production and Operations Management Award in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. Regular contributor to TIME and to I by IMD; board advisor to Coca-Cola European Partners on digital. Biography Most supply chain conversations in the boardroom are still framed as cost questions. Cordon’s work reframes them as revenue questions. His argument, developed across three books and a case portfolio used in MBA programmes globally, is that how a company sources, makes, moves, and digitises its value chain now decides whether it can grow at all in a fragmenting world. At IMD, where he holds the chair in Strategy and Supply Chain Management, he directs the Strategies for Supply Chain Digitalization program and teaches senior executives from the companies shaping the consumer, pharma, and industrial economy. Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Merck, Mondelez, Unilever, Heineken, Danone, and General Motors are on his client list. He sits on Coca-Cola European Partners’ Digital Advisory Board, which keeps his perspective grounded in live commercial decisions. His published work tracks the trajectory of the field. The Power of Two (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) set out how smart customer-supplier partnerships create value that neither party could capture alone. Strategy is Digital (Springer, 2016) argued that big data and digital platforms had become the value chain, not an overlay on it. The current research programme tackles the hardest question leaders now face: how to reconfigure sourcing, manufacturing footprints, and operating models when tariffs, geopolitical risk, and Gen-AI are all moving at once. The case writing is a second form of evidence. He has twice placed in The Case Centre’s Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors globally and won the Production and Operations Management category in 2011 and again in 2026 for Apple’s Supply Chain Transformation. The EFMD Case Writing Competition recognised his Adidas case in 2017. Few supply chain academics are read this widely by other teachers of the subject, which is what gives his perspective on a live boardroom problem the weight it carries. Key speaking topics Supply chain reconfiguration under geopolitical and tariff pressure Reshoring, nearshoring, and manufacturing footprint strategy Digital value chains and the commercial use of Gen-AI in operations Customer-supplier partnership models Supply chain as a driver of revenue and competitive advantage Digital lean and process redesign Operating model resilience in consumer goods, pharma, and industrial sectors Ideal for Board and ExCo sessions where supply chain redesign is on the strategic agenda Chief Supply Chain Officers, COOs, and Chief Procurement Officers managing global footprint decisions Strategy and transformation leads working on reshoring, digitisation, or tariff response Consumer goods, pharma, and industrial leadership teams rethinking how operations create commercial value Audience outcomes A sharper read on how tariff fragmentation and geopolitical risk are reshaping operating model choices in the next three to five years. A working vocabulary for arguing the supply chain case at board level as a growth lever. Worked examples from named multinationals showing how reshoring, digitisation, and Gen-AI are being priced into real operating model decisions. A sharper test for where digital and AI investment in the value chain earns its cost, and where it does not.

Why organisations work with Amit Joshi His work gives leaders a precise diagnosis of the “islands of excellence” problem – why AI generates results in one function but fails to cross organisational boundaries – and a practical application logic for what has to change structurally and strategically for it to scale. His 2025 book The AI-Centered Enterprise introduces the 3Cs framework: Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize, a practical decision architecture for leaders redesigning organizations around context-aware AI, grounded in documented case studies across multiple industries. He publishes in both Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review and has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing: a combination that places analytical rigour and commercial applicability in the same conversation. As Co-Director of IMD’s AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program and Director of its Generative AI for Business Sprint, he works continuously with senior executives from banking, pharma, telecoms, and retail navigating live AI transformations, not retrospective case analysis. Named one of Switzerland’s Digital Shapers in 2020 by a consortium of Swiss media including Bilanz, Handelszeitung, and Le Temps: one of a small group identified as shaping the European digital economy. Biography highlights Professor of AI and Strategy, IMD Business School, Lausanne; joined IMD in 2017 Co-Director, AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program; Director, Generative AI for Business Sprint and Business Analytics for Leaders program, IMD Author of The AI-Centered Enterprise (2025) and GAIN: Demystifying GenAI for Office and Home (2025) Two-time winner of the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing (2010 and 2015); Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (2006) Named a Digital Shaper by Bilanz, Handelszeitung, Le Temps, and Digitalswitzerland (2020); voted favourite professor by IMD MBA Class of 2024 Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Marketing, and Marketing Science; cited in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPR, CNN, and Forbes Led panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, Davos (2020) PhD, UCLA Anderson School of Management; PGDM, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta Biography Most senior leaders now have AI running somewhere in their organisation. The harder question – one that Joshi has built a body of work around – is why it rarely runs everywhere. As Professor of AI and Strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Amit Joshi directs the Generative AI for Business Sprint and co-directs the AI Strategy and Agentic Implementation program, working with executives from banking, pharma, retail, and telecoms on both the strategic and application decisions that determine whether AI scales. His work with organizations across banking, pharma, retail, telecoms, and financial services has produced a sharply specific diagnosis of where enterprise AI goes wrong: not in the technology, but in the organization built around it. The concept he returns to is what he calls “islands of excellence”, AI that works in one function, under one champion, without the structural conditions to spread. His 2025 book The AI-Centered Enterprise, co-authored with Ram Bala and Natarajan Balasubramanian, addresses this directly. The book’s 3Cs framework – Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize – gives leaders a practical architecture for moving from point-solution AI to systems that understand organizational context, intent, and workflow. His earlier book GAIN, co-authored with Michael Wade, makes the strategic case that generative AI is a paradigm shift, not an upgrade, and that the organizational response should reflect that distinction. His research on marketing strategy, analytics, and AI applications has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has twice won the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing and was named one of Switzerland’s Digital Shapers by a consortium of Swiss media in 2020. His analysis is regularly covered in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, and NPR, and he led a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Joshi holds a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a postgraduate management diploma from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He started his career as a sales manager at Cadbury India: a background that continues to shape an approach to AI strategy grounded in commercial reality rather than technical possibility. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and scaling Generative AI implementation Context-aware AI and organizational design Data and analytics capability building AI and commercial strategy Digital transformation leadership Building AI-ready organisations Ideal for C-suite leadership teams shaping or accelerating enterprise AI strategy CDOs, CTOs, and Chief Analytics Officers leading AI and data transformations Boards evaluating AI investment priorities and organizational readiness Senior executive education cohorts in banking, pharma, telecoms, retail, and financial services Audience outcomes A named diagnostic framework for identifying where and why AI is stalling in their organization Clarity on the distinction between context-aware AI and point-solution AI, and its strategic implications for investment and organizational design A practical model – the 3Cs: Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize – for moving from AI pilots to scaled enterprise capability A sharper understanding of how data infrastructure, organizational structure, and AI strategy need to be aligned, not sequenced The ability to evaluate AI proposals against a strategic rationale rather than a technology roadmap alone

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 Tonje Elisabeth Aarøe She brings a perspective built from both sides of the transformation equation: having seen digital change from inside Google and Microsoft, and then spent years advising organisations on why the people side of it breaks down. Empulse, the staff engagement diagnostic she co-developed with Professor Sut I Wong at BI Norwegian Business School, gives organisations a structured way to measure how employees are actually experiencing transformation, not how leaders think they are. FranklinCovey’s methodology underpins her advisory work, bringing a globally tested behaviour-change framework rather than a proprietary system built on personal experience alone. Her work addresses a specific failure mode – the 70% change project failure rate – with diagnostic and practical tools rather than motivational reframing. She has delivered in academic and executive contexts across institutions including BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School, giving her work independent intellectual grounding beyond the speaking circuit. Biography highlights Country Manager Norway, FranklinCovey North; the globally recognised leadership and behaviour-change organisation Former Industry Manager, Google Norway; prior enterprise sales and marketing roles at Microsoft Co-developer of Empulse, an employee engagement survey built with Professor Sut I Wong of BI Norwegian Business School to measure employee experience during digital transformation Author of Ignite Your Inner Game Changer (2017) Founder of Growthitude, a transformation and engagement consultancy Guest lecturer at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School Certified Prosci Change Management Practitioner; certified NLP Trainer Contributor to PECB Insights on digital transformation topics Biography Most digital transformation programmes treat culture as the final phase; the communications plan, the change management appendix. Tonje Elisabeth Aarøe’s argument, built over a career inside Google and Microsoft and then sharpened through advisory work at FranklinCovey, is that this sequencing is the primary reason so many programmes fail. At FranklinCovey Norway, where she serves as Country Manager, Aarøe advises organisations on leadership capability and employee engagement using one of the most widely deployed behaviour-change methodologies in the world. Her practical toolkit includes Empulse, a staff engagement diagnostic she co-developed with Professor Sut I Wong at BI Norwegian Business School, which allows organisations to track how employees are actually experiencing transformation at pace, rather than retrospectively. Before moving into advisory work, she spent the better part of 15 years in corporate technology and digital sales at Microsoft and Google, working with enterprise clients across sectors on digital strategy and commercial execution. That background means she can describe transformation from inside the organisations that defined it, not only from the consulting room. She has guest lectured at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School, and contributes to PECB Insights. Her work sits at the intersection of operational credibility and structured methodology; a combination that tends to land in rooms where cultural scepticism about change consultants runs high. Key speaking topics Employee engagement in digital transformation Culture change management Change leadership in hybrid and international environments Building high-performing teams Behavioural change at organisational scale Leadership development and execution Digital work culture Ideal for CHROs and People Directors leading culture or engagement programmes during transformation CEOs and leadership teams managing organisation-wide change initiatives Transformation and change leads in mid-to-large organisations implementing new ways of working L&D and executive education programmes looking for practitioner-led content on digital culture Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why employee engagement, not technology, determines transformation outcomes Practical framing of how culture and behaviour change can be managed alongside – not after – digital implementation Familiarity with diagnostic approaches (including pulse-survey methodology) for tracking engagement during change Specific leadership behaviours that sustain team performance under sustained organisational pressure A more honest account of how digital change actually lands inside organisations, drawn from inside Google and Microsoft

Why organisations work with Randi Zuckerberg She created Facebook Live – a verifiable, specific product decision made inside one of the most consequential platform companies in history – giving her first-hand insight into how media formats shape audience behaviour at scale that no advisory role can replicate. Pick Three (2018) provides a named, counter-intuitive framework with a specific thesis: sustainable performance – individual and organisational – comes from deliberate daily prioritisation across five competing demands, not from attempting balance across all of them simultaneously. Her knowledge of how Facebook made its foundational decisions on elections, political partnerships, and live video predates the broader public and regulatory reckoning with platform power by nearly a decade – and comes from inside the decisions, not from observing them. Her active angel investment portfolio – 53% female founders, 30% diverse founders – means her perspective on digital entrepreneurship and media ventures is commercially current, not retrospective. Multiple Tony Award wins as a Broadway co-producer alongside a technology career demonstrates a consistent and applied understanding of commercial storytelling across very different formats and audience types – directly relevant to organisations trying to build brand authority rather than brand noise. Biography highlights One of the first ten employees at Facebook (2005–2011); Director of Market Development and Spokesperson Creator of Facebook Live, now used by more than two billion people globally Emmy nomination, 2011, for the pioneering integration of television and social media in U.S. midterm election coverage Founder and CEO, Zuckerberg Media (est. 2011); clients include the United Nations, Condé Nast, Clinton Global Initiative, and Cirque du Soleil New York Times bestselling author: Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperCollins, 2013) and Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day) (2018) Multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway co-producer, including Hadestown (Best Musical, 2019); also Drama Desk Award and Kidscreen Award Host, Randi Zuckerberg Means Business, SiriusXM; board member, Life360 BA in Psychology, Harvard University Biography Facebook Live was built by a team of fewer than ten people making decisions about media format, political partnerships, and audience engagement that nobody had made before. Randi Zuckerberg led that work. The choices her team made – about what live video could do for commercial storytelling, for political communication, for media partnerships – shaped how organisations and audiences interact in real time to this day. After leaving Facebook in 2011, she founded Zuckerberg Media, producing content and advisory work for organisations including the United Nations, Condé Nast, Cirque du Soleil, and the Clinton Global Initiative. The question her firm consistently addresses is strategic rather than technical: how does an organisation translate digital presence into an audience it actually owns, rather than one it rents from a platform? Her 2018 book Pick Three formalised a framework she had developed through practice. The argument is specific and deliberately counter-intuitive: sustainable performance – individual or organisational – does not come from balance across five competing demands (Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, Friends). It comes from deliberate daily prioritisation of three. That specificity is what makes the framework usable in executive development conversations, rather than aspirational. Her Tony Award wins as Broadway co-producer, her weekly SiriusXM programme, and an angel investment portfolio with a deliberate diversity mandate are not incidental to her commercial thinking. They reflect the same underlying argument – that strategic storytelling, deployed with intent and discipline across different formats, builds audiences that advertising cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Digital media strategy and platform intelligence Entrepreneurship and venture building Commercial storytelling and brand media The creator economy and audience ownership Technology and society: the platform era in retrospect Productivity and prioritisation: the Pick Three framework Women in technology and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and communications executives navigating digital media strategy and audience ownership Entrepreneurial leadership communities, founder networks, and innovation-focused executive programmes Executive teams building media presence as a commercial strategy rather than a communications function CHROs and leadership development leads running programmes on performance, prioritisation, and sustainable leadership Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between digital activity and digital strategy, grounded in how platform companies actually make decisions about media and audience Practical application of the Pick Three framework for daily prioritisation – applicable to individual performance, team leadership, and organisational resource allocation First-hand perspective on how media partnerships, content formats, and platform intelligence were developed inside Facebook during its most formative years A more operationally grounded view of the creator economy: what «owning your audience» actually requires versus what platforms provide Greater confidence in making active, deliberate trade-offs between competing strategic priorities rather than attempting to progress all of them simultaneously

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