Economic Trends & Global Markets speakers

Why organisations work with Bill Emmott His 13 years editing The Economist – during which global circulation roughly doubled – produced a practitioner’s discipline in making geopolitical complexity legible to business audiences without simplifying it away. His 2024 IISS Adelphi book on Taiwan develops a specific deterrence framework for US-China conflict risk, giving boards a tested analytical vocabulary for the most consequential near-term geopolitical scenario they face. His argument in The Fate of the West (2017) – that the democratic world’s greatest threat is institutional self-erosion, not external aggression – anticipated a political dynamic that organisations are now managing in real time. Three decades of specialist focus on Japan, Asia, Italy, and European political economy means he does not speak generically about geopolitics; he speaks about specific countries, specific pressures, and specific trajectories. As Senior Adviser, Geopolitics at Montrose Associates, he works at the intersection of intelligence and executive decision-making – his analysis is applied, not academic. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief, The Economist, 1993–2006; under his editorship global circulation approximately doubled to over one million Chairman of the Trustees, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 2010–2025 Author of 15 books on Japan, Asia, Italy, and the 20th century; latest published by IISS/Routledge (2024) Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in business journalism, 2009 (UCLA Anderson School) Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, awarded by the Japanese government, 2016 Regular columnist: La Stampa, Nikkei Business, Mainichi Shimbun, Project Syndicate; contributor to the Financial Times First-class honours, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Magdalen College, Oxford; Honorary Fellow, Magdalen College Ushioda Fellow, Tokyo College, University of Tokyo; visiting fellow at All Souls College and Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford Biography Geopolitics became a boardroom word long before most boards knew how to use it. Bill Emmott spent 13 years at the helm of The Economist – the period in which it doubled its global circulation – developing the discipline of making the world’s structural shifts legible to decision-makers under deadline. That combination of editorial rigour and strategic directness is what he now brings to executive and board audiences. His most recent book, Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict over Taiwan (IISS/Routledge, 2024), builds a specific analytical framework for the US-China scenario that organisations cite most often as an unquantified risk. His earlier work, The Fate of the West (2017), argued that liberal democracies are more threatened by institutional decay from within than by external pressure – a thesis that has moved from provocative to plainly descriptive in the years since. Emmott’s specialist geography sets him apart from generalist geopolitics commentators. Three decades of work on Japan, Asia, and European political economy – including a Japanese government honour for contributions to UK-Japan relations – gives him granular fluency in precisely the regions where organisations most need specific, rather than broad-brush, risk analysis. Outside writing and speaking, he served as Chairman of IISS Trustees for 15 years, advised Swiss Re’s senior panel for 13 years, and currently acts as Senior Adviser, Geopolitics at Montrose Associates. The accumulated perspective is that of someone who has analysed geopolitical risk not only for public audiences, but for the institutions charged with managing it. Key speaking topics Great-power competition and the US-China relationship Indo-Pacific security and the Taiwan risk scenario The fragility of the liberal international order Geopolitical risk and corporate strategy Japan, Asia, and the shifting balance of economic power European political economy and the future of the EU Business decision-making under geopolitical uncertainty Ideal for Boards and C-suites assessing geopolitical exposure in investment, supply chain, or market strategy decisions Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Risk Officers navigating great-power competition Financial services and insurance sector leadership (experience advising Swiss Re; expertise in macro and political risk) Government affairs, policy, and public affairs leadership teams requiring analysis of Western institutional trends Audience outcomes A clearer analytical framework for distinguishing genuine geopolitical risk from background noise, applicable to specific business decisions A grounded understanding of the US-China-Taiwan scenario and the deterrence logic that shapes it – beyond media headlines A historically informed perspective on why Western institutional resilience matters to business, and where it is most under pressure Specific insight into Japan and Asia’s economic and political trajectories, relevant to market-entry, partnership, and investment decisions The vocabulary to communicate geopolitical risk credibly inside an organisation – to boards, investors, and regulators

Why organisations work with Blanca Moreno-Dodson Direct line of sight into how the World Bank, UNOPS and European institutions actually think about fiscal stability, tax cooperation and development finance, from someone who held senior operating roles in all three. Published authority on the rewriting of international tax rules, co-author of Winning the Tax Wars (Wolters Kluwer, 2017), which sits at the centre of how governments and multinationals are reorganising around BEPS and global minimum tax. A working interpreter of Mediterranean and MENA integration, with operational experience of regional dialogue on trade, climate and migration as Manager of the Center for Mediterranean Integration. Field-tested across more than four regions, with policy assignments in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and East Asia, which lets her speak credibly to boards with exposure across emerging markets. Bilingual fluency across English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, which makes her unusually effective in mixed-language executive rooms in Europe, Latin America and Francophone Africa. Biography highlights Lead Economist, World Bank Group, with senior roles on the Global Tax Team, West Africa Region, the Investment Climate Department and the Office of the Vice-President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. Manager, Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI), the World Bank and UNOPS-hosted partnership based in Marseille. Director, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), 2021 to 2023. Co-author, Winning the Tax Wars: Tax Competition and Cooperation (Wolters Kluwer, 2017); author/co-author of four other books on fiscal policy and public finance published by the World Bank and CMI. Ph.D. in International Economics and Finance, Aix-Marseille University; executive education at Harvard Kennedy School. Affiliated economist with the Economic Research Forum, the Policy Center for the New South and the Navarra Center for International Development. Biography The architecture of international taxation is being rewritten while most boards are still operating on the version that preceded BEPS. Trade rules, fiscal transfers and regional integration agreements are moving with it. Leadership teams that treat these shifts as background noise are routinely the ones surprised by them. Winning the Tax Wars, co-authored with Brigitte Alepin and Louise Otis and published by Wolters Kluwer in 2017, sits inside that argument. It maps how globalisation of trade, digitisation of the economy and tax competition between states have exposed the limits of legacy tax systems, and what governments are now constructing in their place. Earlier work, including Is Fiscal Policy the Answer? (World Bank, 2013) and Public Finance for Poverty Reduction (World Bank, 2006), gives the policy spine that runs through her thinking. The credibility comes from inside the system. Twenty-six years at the World Bank Group, including Lead Economist positions on the Global Tax Team, the West Africa Region and the Office of the Vice-President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. Then Manager of the Center for Mediterranean Integration in Marseille, the partnership hosted by UNOPS that convenes governments, financial institutions and civil society across the Mediterranean basin. From 2021 to 2023, Director at UNOPS itself. For senior audiences this matters in a specific way. She does not theorise about how multilateral institutions and tax authorities behave; she has run programmes inside them. That makes her unusually effective with boards in extractives, infrastructure, financial services and any business whose tax exposure or regional footprint is being reshaped by the new fiscal order. Key speaking topics International taxation and the post-BEPS order Fiscal policy and inclusive growth Mediterranean and MENA regional integration Public-private sector dynamics in development finance Poverty reduction and macroeconomic policy Climate, migration and regional dialogue Globalisation, inequality and the development trajectory Ideal for Boards and executive teams with material tax, trade or regulatory exposure across MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America CFOs and Heads of Tax navigating the global minimum tax and shifting international tax cooperation Government, development finance and multilateral audiences working on fiscal reform, regional integration and public finance Investor and policy forums where macroeconomic, fiscal and geo-economic context shapes capital decisions Audience outcomes A clear read of where international tax cooperation is heading and what that means for cross-border business A more accurate map of fiscal policy as a driver of growth, stability and political risk in emerging economies A working understanding of how Mediterranean and MENA integration shapes trade, migration and climate exposure An informed view of how multilateral institutions actually operate, and where their decisions land on corporate strategy Sharper questions to ask of internal tax, treasury and public affairs teams about exposure to the new fiscal order

Why organisations work with Brahma Chellaney He named the concept boards and ministries now use to discuss Chinese lending. Debt-trap diplomacy entered the policy lexicon through his January 2017 Project Syndicate column and is now cited by three successive US administrations. He wrote the canonical book on Asian water security. Water: Asia’s New Battleground won the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Award in 2012, ahead of nearly 90 other titles. For organisations with manufacturing, agricultural or infrastructure exposure across South and Southeast Asia, he treats water as a hard strategic variable, not a sustainability slide. He helped draft India’s nuclear doctrine in 1999 as convener of the National Security Advisory Board’s External Security Group. When directors ask what New Delhi is actually thinking on Pakistan, China or the Quad, they are getting analysis from someone who has sat in the room. His distribution is institutional. Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, The Japan Times, The Hill, with op-eds in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the South China Morning Post. The same readers who set strategy on Asia are reading him in primary sources. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Studies, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Richard von Weizsacker Fellow, Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin; affiliate, International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, King’s College London. Former adviser to India’s National Security Council and convener of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board. Author of nine books on strategic affairs, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press), Asian Juggernaut (HarperCollins) and Water, Peace, and War (Rowman and Littlefield). Winner of the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award. Columnist for Project Syndicate, The Hill, Nikkei Asia and The Japan Times; visiting appointments at Harvard, Brookings, the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Johns Hopkins SAIS and the Australian National University. Biography Debt-trap diplomacy entered the language of Western policy in a single Project Syndicate column in January 2017. The author was Brahma Chellaney, writing on China’s Belt and Road lending. Within five years the phrase was being used by three successive US administrations, congressional committees and finance ministries across Asia and Africa. That trajectory is the clue to what he offers. Chellaney works on the structural fault lines of Asia, Chinese statecraft, India’s strategic posture, and the contest over rivers that sustain nearly half the world’s population, and gives them names that policymakers can act on. The work is grounded in primary sources and in years inside India’s own strategic apparatus, where he served as adviser to the National Security Council and convened the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board that drafted India’s nuclear doctrine in 1999. His books have set the terms of two distinct debates. Asian Juggernaut, published in the United States by HarperCollins in 2010, became a reference point for how China, India and Japan compete economically and militarily. Water: Asia’s New Battleground, published by Georgetown University Press, won the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award in 2012, beating nearly 90 other titles, and remains the canonical treatment of transboundary water risk in Asia. A follow-up, Water, Peace, and War, broadened the analysis to the global water crisis. His current platform is institutional and global. He holds the Richard von Weizsacker Fellowship at Berlin’s Robert Bosch Academy, is affiliated with King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Brookings, the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Johns Hopkins SAIS and the Australian National University. His columns run in Project Syndicate, Nikkei Asia, The Japan Times and The Hill, with op-eds in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the South China Morning Post. For boards wrestling with China exposure, water-stressed supply chains, or the strategic logic of the Indo-Pacific, he is one of the very few analysts whose framing tends to be cited back to them by their own regulators. Key speaking topics China’s strategic statecraft and debt diplomacy The Indo-Pacific power balance and the rise of Asia India’s foreign and security policy Transboundary water risk and resource geopolitics Asian supply chain and infrastructure exposure Nuclear and security dynamics in South Asia Great-power competition and the fracturing global order Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to China, India or the wider Indo-Pacific CEOs, CSOs and government affairs leads reassessing political risk and country exposure Infrastructure, utilities, agriculture and manufacturing leaders facing water-related operational risk in Asia Investor and policy forums focused on geopolitical risk and capital allocation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for Chinese economic statecraft, including the original mechanics of debt-trap diplomacy A sharper read on how Beijing, New Delhi and Tokyo each calculate strategic risk, and where their interests collide A defensible view of where transboundary water disputes are likely to disrupt supply chains, agriculture and infrastructure A clearer sense of what India’s foreign and security policy is, beyond Western reporting of it Frames for board-level conversations on Asia exposure that hold up under scrutiny from policy and regulatory readers

Why organisations work with Carl Bildt He negotiated the Dayton Peace Accords as EU Special Envoy and went on to serve as the first High Representative in Bosnia. Few speakers have personally built a post-war political settlement from the inside. He has run a European country, then run its foreign policy through the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Arab Spring and the launch of the EU’s Eastern Partnership. The view from a head of government and a foreign minister, in the same career, is rare on the geopolitics circuit. He co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations, the largest pan-European foreign policy network. Briefings are informed by a continent-wide research operation, not one capital’s perspective. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate and The Washington Post and is widely cited on Ukraine, Russia, China and transatlantic strategy. Audiences get the published thinker, not a generic former politician. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation and was its first non-US trustee, giving him a working relationship with the US strategic research establishment that most European speakers do not have. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Sweden, 1991 to 1994. Foreign Minister of Sweden, 2006 to 2014. EU Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia and co-chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference, 1995. First High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995 to 1997. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Balkans, 1999 to 2001. Co-Chair, European Council on Foreign Relations. Board of Trustees, RAND Corporation. Senior Adviser to the Wallenberg Foundations. Author, “Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Columnist for Project Syndicate, contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Biography The European security order that boards have priced into their strategy for thirty years is being rewritten in real time. Ukraine, sanctions regimes, US policy swings and renewed Chinese pressure are no longer foreign-affairs reading. They feed directly into capital allocation, country risk and supply chain decisions in Berlin, Paris, London and Stockholm. Carl Bildt has watched this shift from inside the rooms where it has been argued out. As Prime Minister of Sweden in the early 1990s, he led the negotiation of Sweden’s accession to the European Union. As EU Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia, he co-chaired the Dayton Peace Conference and then served as the first High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, building a peace settlement on the ground. Returning to office as Foreign Minister of Sweden from 2006 to 2014, he was one of the architects of the EU’s Eastern Partnership and a vocal European voice through Russia’s war in Georgia and the early years of the Ukraine crisis. He co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations, sits on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation, and writes regularly for Project Syndicate and The Washington Post. His “Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia” remains one of the few first-person accounts of building a post-war political order in Europe. Audiences book him for what that experience yields now: a direct, unsentimental read on Russia, the transatlantic relationship and the trajectory of the European project under pressure. Key speaking topics European geopolitics and the future of the EU The transatlantic relationship and US foreign policy Russia, Ukraine and the post-1989 security order China and the global rules-based system Sanctions, political risk and country exposure Post-conflict diplomacy and peace negotiation Northern European and Nordic political economy Ideal for Board and executive team off-sites where geopolitical risk has become a strategic variable International banks, asset managers and insurers reviewing country and sanctions exposure Industrial and energy groups with material exposure to Europe, Russia, Ukraine or China Public affairs, policy and government relations leadership in multinationals Audience outcomes A current, named read on Russia, Ukraine and the trajectory of European security from someone who has been in the room. A clearer view of how transatlantic policy shifts under successive US administrations translate into European corporate exposure. A working framework for thinking about sanctions, energy and supply chain risk through a geopolitical, not just regulatory, lens. A sense of where the EU is going as a foreign and security actor, from a head of government who negotiated his country into it.

Why organisations work with Carl Frey The 2013 paper Frey co-authored with Michael Osborne – estimating 47% of US jobs at risk from automation – is one of the most cited works in social science of the past two decades, with its methodology adopted by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, and the Bank of England. No comparable speaker in this space brings this level of intellectual provenance to the conversation. His concept of the “technology trap” gives boards a precisely named mechanism for diagnosing their own institutional response to AI: the pattern by which efforts to resist short-term disruption deny organisations the long-term gains that technology makes possible. How Progress Ends (Princeton, 2025) addresses the question now at the top of most board agendas – why do some organisations and nations sustain the capacity to benefit from new technology while others stagnate – and gives senior leaders a durable, historically grounded answer rather than a forecast. His analysis is built on 1,000 years of economic history, not current trend extrapolation. That means the framework he offers survives the next wave of AI announcements rather than becoming obsolete with each new model release. Advisory roles with the G20, OECD, European Commission, and OECD Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence mean he brings regulatory and policy intelligence that most academic speakers lack – organisations understand not just the technology but the governance environment forming around it. Biography highlights Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work, Oxford Internet Institute; Fellow of Mansfield College; Director, Future of Work Programme, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Co-author of “The Future of Employment” (2013, with Michael Osborne) – one of the most cited social science papers of the past two decades; 20,000+ citations on Google Scholar; methodology adopted by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, and the Bank of England Author of The Technology Trap (Princeton University Press, 2019) – Financial Times Best Books of the Year; winner of the Richard A. Lester Prize for Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labour Economics (Princeton University) Author of How Progress Ends (Princeton University Press, 2025) – shortlisted for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award; finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize Advisor to the G20, OECD, European Commission, and United Nations; former member of the OECD Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Economic Agenda Ranked in the top 0.5% of economists worldwide by IDEAS/RePEC; contributor to the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and The Economist (By Invitation) Biography The paper that put 47% of US jobs at risk of automation – co-authored at Oxford by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne in 2013 – reshaped the global policy debate and became one of the most cited works in social science that decade. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors used its methodology. So did the World Bank and the Bank of England. The Economist later described Frey as an “accidental doom-monger”: his own reading of the evidence was considerably more nuanced than the headlines. That nuance became the subject of his first book. The Technology Trap (Princeton, 2019) – Financial Times Best Book of the Year and winner of Princeton’s Richard A. Lester Prize – argued that the real risk of automation is not that work disappears, but that organisations and governments mismanage the transition. Drawing on the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, Frey named the failure mode precisely: resistance to short-term disruption, he showed, tends to deny access to the long-term gains. His 2025 book How Progress Ends – shortlisted for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award – extends the framework to the question now central to board strategy: why do some organisations and nations sustain the capacity to benefit from new technology while others stagnate? Frey’s answer, built from 1,000 years of economic history spanning Song China to the present, identifies the balance between decentralised innovation and the institutional capacity to scale as the deciding factor. As Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at Oxford’s Internet Institute and Director of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School, Frey advises the G20, OECD, European Commission, and United Nations. His analysis appears in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Scientific American. IDEAS/RePEC ranks him in the top 0.5% of economists worldwide. Key speaking topics Automation, AI, and labour market transformation The technology trap: historical lessons for the age of AI Why progress stalls – and what organisations and nations can do about it Workforce strategy in an era of technological disruption AI, inequality, and the distribution of economic gains Industrial policy and the geopolitics of technological leadership The economics of innovation: decentralisation, scaling, and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams navigating AI investment decisions and long-term workforce strategy CHROs and transformation leads developing evidence-based frameworks for workforce planning under conditions of technological disruption Policy and public affairs functions in sectors facing direct automation exposure – financial services, professional services, manufacturing Strategy and scenario planning teams in organisations with significant AI or digital transformation programmes Audience outcomes A historically grounded framework for distinguishing automation that displaces workers from technology that expands what workers can do – and why the difference matters for investment decisions A working understanding of the “technology trap” mechanism: how to identify institutional resistance before it becomes strategically costly Concrete criteria for evaluating workforce and AI investment decisions against historical patterns of disruption, transition, and recovery Insight into the macro-economic and geopolitical conditions shaping AI adoption – including what the US-China competition for technological leadership means for business strategy Sharper language and stronger evidence for board-level conversations about AI, workforce, and long-term competitive positioning

Why organisations work with Carlo Cottarelli Led the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department for five years, the team that provides roughly half of the Fund’s technical assistance to governments worldwide on public finance. Created and developed the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor, one of three flagship IMF publications that now shape global conversation on sovereign debt and fiscal sustainability. Represented Italy, Albania, Greece, Malta, Portugal and San Marino on the IMF Executive Board, so he has sat in the room when major sovereign decisions were debated and signed off. Served as Italy’s Commissioner for Public Spending Reform under Prime Ministers Letta and Renzi, with operational experience of what government actually has to do to cut public expenditure. Received a presidential mandate to form an Italian government during the 2018 political crisis, giving his analysis of fiscal populism a standpoint few economists share. Biography highlights Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund, 2008 to 2013. Commissioner for Public Spending Reform in Italy under the Letta and Renzi governments. Executive Director on the IMF Executive Board for Italy, Albania, Greece, Malta, Portugal and San Marino. Prime Minister-designate of Italy in May 2018, appointed by President Sergio Mattarella. Director of the Observatory on Italian Public Accounts at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. Senator of the Italian Republic for the Democratic Party (Lombardy), elected 2022. Author of What We Owe: Truths, Myths, and Lies about Public Debt (Brookings Institution Press) and of six Feltrinelli titles in Italian on debt and economic policy. Biography On 28 May 2018, President Sergio Mattarella asked Carlo Cottarelli to form a caretaker government in Italy. The attempt did not hold. But the moment mattered, because it placed a career economist at the centre of a political crisis driven by fiscal credibility. That kind of placement is not accidental. For almost thirty years Cottarelli worked at the International Monetary Fund, and from 2008 to 2013 he directed its Fiscal Affairs Department. Under his leadership the team created the Fiscal Monitor, one of the IMF’s three flagship publications, which now shapes global thinking on sovereign debt and budget discipline. He later returned to the Fund as Executive Director for Italy, Albania, Greece, Malta, Portugal and San Marino. Between those two IMF chapters, Italy made him Commissioner for Public Spending Reform under the Letta and Renzi governments. The Italian press called him Mr Scissors. He spent a year inside government trying to turn fiscal analysis into actual cuts, and came away with direct experience of where reform stalls and why. He directs the Observatory on Italian Public Accounts at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he also leads the Programme for Education in Economic and Social Sciences. He was elected Senator for the Democratic Party in 2022 and has taught Fiscal Macroeconomics at Bocconi. With Brookings Institution Press he has published What We Owe: Truths, Myths, and Lies about Public Debt. With Feltrinelli he has written six widely read Italian volumes on debt and public spending. Key speaking topics Sovereign debt and fiscal sustainability Public spending reform European economic governance International monetary institutions Macroeconomic policy Italian public finance Fiscal credibility and political risk Ideal for Boards and senior leadership of financial institutions with exposure to European sovereign debt CFOs and treasury teams of multinationals making capital allocation decisions across eurozone markets Government and central bank audiences working on fiscal policy and public financial management Audience outcomes A sharper picture of which European economies face real fiscal pressure and which are politically overstating it A read on how the IMF, ECB and major finance ministries actually think about debt sustainability, beyond the headlines An honest account of what public spending reform looks like from inside government, including what stops it A working knowledge of the fiscal variables that matter most for corporate and financial decisions in Europe

Why organisations work with Carmen Reinhart Her book This Time Is Different, built on 800 years of financial crisis data across 66 countries gives boards and investment committees a rigorous, empirically grounded framework for stress-testing assumptions about debt, inflation, and contagion that no shorter-horizon analysis can replicate. She has held decision-making authority inside each of the three institutions that matter most when crises hit: the IMF Research Department during the 1990s emerging-market crises, Bear Stearns during its formative years as a fixed-income house, and the World Bank during the COVID-19 sovereign debt emergency. Her peer-reviewed research on capital flow cycles, exchange rate regimes, and China’s overseas lending, published in the American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics provides organisations with evidence-based analysis rather than commentary. She translates systemic economic risk into the decisions boards and CFOs actually face: when elevated debt becomes a structural constraint on growth, how to read early-warning signals in capital markets, and why apparently unprecedented shocks tend to follow familiar historical scripts. Biography highlights Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System, Harvard Kennedy School Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank Group, 2020–2022 Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director, IMF Research Department Chief Economist and Vice President, Bear Stearns Co-author, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (with Kenneth Rogoff) – Paul A. Samuelson Award winner; CFR Arthur Ross Book Award, Gold Medal; translated into 20+ languages Elected member, Group of Thirty; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics, Bank of Spain, 2018; NABE Adam Smith Award, 2018 Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of St Andrews, 2023 Ranked among the world’s top economists by Research Papers in Economics (RePec); listed among Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance Biography Financial crises follow patterns. That argument, demonstrated across 800 years of data and 66 countries in This Time Is Different, is the empirical foundation on which Carmen Reinhart built one of the most cited bodies of research in modern economics. The book, co-authored with Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, won the Paul A. Samuelson Award and the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal, and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Reinhart holds the Minos A. Zombanakis Professorship of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. She served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group from 2020 to 2022, leading the Development Economics Department at a moment of historically acute sovereign debt strain across developing economies. Earlier she was Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director in the IMF Research Department during the Asian and Latin American crisis cycles of the 1990s, and before that Chief Economist at Bear Stearns; a career that spans academic scholarship, active market practice, and multilateral policy responsibility in equal measure. Her research record covers capital flow cycles, exchange rate regimes, banking and sovereign debt crises, inflation, and contagion. A seminal paper with Graciela Kaminsky, published in the American Economic Review in 1999, identified the “twin crises” dynamic: the tendency for banking and currency crises to amplify one another, which became a standard reference in crisis analysis. More recent work on China’s overseas lending, co-authored with Sebastian Horn and Christoph Trebesch for the National Bureau of Economic Research, has directly shaped policy debates on developing-economy debt sustainability. Reinhart is an elected member of the Group of Thirty and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She received the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics from the Bank of Spain and the NABE Adam Smith Award in 2018, and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of St Andrews in 2023. Her analysis is published in Foreign Affairs, and her work is covered in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Key speaking topics Sovereign debt and financial crisis dynamics Global capital flows and exchange rate risk Post-crisis recovery and debt overhang Emerging-market and advanced-economy financial stability China’s overseas lending and developing-economy debt Historical patterns of boom, bust, and contagion International financial governance and multilateral institutions Ideal for CFOs, treasurers, and investment committees managing exposure to global economic risk Central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and multilateral institutions Board-level audiences in financial services and global corporates monitoring debt and capital market conditions Government and senior policy audiences focused on fiscal sustainability and financial system resilience Audience outcomes A historically grounded framework for recognising when current debt, inflation, or capital flow conditions mirror pre-crisis patterns Understanding of the structural mechanics that distinguish short-term economic disruption from prolonged sovereign debt impairment Sharper reading of emerging-market and advanced-economy risk through the lens of capital flow cycles and contagion effects Insight into how multilateral institutions – the IMF and World Bank – actually operate under pressure, and where their constraints lie A working model for applying long-run economic evidence to near-term organisational and investment decisions

Why organisations work with Carrie Gracie Two decades reporting from inside China, including the role of BBC News’ first China Editor based in Beijing, give her a read on Party politics and economic policy that few Western commentators can match. She translates Chinese political signals into the questions a board actually needs to answer: market access, supply chain exposure, regulatory direction, and the real shape of the US-China contest. Her Peabody-winning “White Horse Village” reporting, a decade-long series tracking one community through China’s modernisation, is evidence of the long-horizon judgement she brings to shorter-cycle corporate questions. On a separate brief, her public resignation from the BBC over unequal pay, and the £361,000 settlement she donated to the Fawcett Society and Equal Pay Advice Service, make her one of the few speakers who has forced structural change at a named employer and can talk about it first-hand. She is a working broadcaster, not an academic: she handles live Q&A with senior audiences, difficult journalists, and hostile questions with the composure of someone who has presented BBC News on air for over a decade. Biography highlights Former BBC News China Editor (2013 to 2018), based in Beijing, and the first person to hold that role 33-year career at the BBC as correspondent, presenter, and editor, including Beijing bureau chief and presenter of BBC News Channel and the BBC World Service programme “The Interview” Peabody Award for the “White Horse Village” documentary series following a Chinese village through a decade of modernisation Author of “Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money” (Virago, Little Brown) Resigned as BBC China Editor in January 2018 over unequal pay; the BBC issued a public apology and back pay settlement, which she donated in full (£361,000) to the Fawcett Society and the Equal Pay Advice Service Educated at Hertford College, Oxford (PPE) and the University of Westminster (BA Chinese); honorary graduate of the University of Exeter (2022) Biography The BBC’s first China Editor was appointed in 2013 and based in Beijing. The job was created because Western news organisations had concluded that China could no longer be covered as a regional story. Carrie Gracie held that role until January 2018, and she had already been reporting from China, on and off, for more than twenty years before it was given to her. Her reporting record in the country is unusually long for a Western journalist. She taught English and economics in Yantai and Chongqing in the mid-1980s, before joining the BBC. She covered the death of Deng Xiaoping, the 1997 Hong Kong handover, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Her “White Horse Village” series, which tracked a single village in Chongqing through a decade of displacement and rebuilding, won a Peabody Award for the way it read national policy through one community. That long-horizon approach is what senior audiences draw on now. She reads Chinese political and economic signals with the eye of a reporter who has watched Party congresses, five-year plans, and leadership transitions over multiple cycles. For boards exposed to Chinese markets or supply chains, this is closer to intelligence than commentary. She has a second, distinct body of work. In January 2018 she resigned as China Editor after learning that male international editors were paid substantially more for equivalent jobs. The BBC apologised publicly, backdated her pay, and Gracie donated the full £361,000 to the Fawcett Society and the Equal Pay Advice Service. Her book “Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money” (Virago) is the account of that case and what it took to force an institution to move. Key speaking topics China’s political direction under Xi Jinping US-China strategic competition Geopolitical risk for boards and supply chains Chinese economy and market access Media, free speech, and authoritarian states Gender pay equality and institutional accountability Equal pay as a governance issue Ideal for Boards and executive committees with significant exposure to China or Asia-Pacific markets CROs, general counsel, and strategy leads pressure-testing geopolitical scenarios CHROs and reward committees reviewing pay equity, transparency, and disclosure practice Leadership audiences at financial services, industrial, technology, and consumer firms navigating the US-China contest Audience outcomes A clearer read on how Beijing makes decisions and what that means for the next three to five years of market access and regulatory risk A sharper set of questions to take into the next board or strategy review on China exposure An unvarnished account of how pay inequality survives inside a high-profile, regulated employer, and what actually shifted the institution A working journalist’s framework for distinguishing signal from noise in Chinese state communications Confidence to brief non-specialist colleagues on the commercial stakes of the US-China relationship

Why organisations work with Chris Goodall His book Possible: Ways to Net Zero provides a sector-by-sector analysis of 16 specific technical challenges – from green hydrogen storage to decarbonising steel and cement – giving executive teams a structured, evidence-based account of what net zero delivery actually requires, not just what it aspires to. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Pictet Clean Energy Fund in Geneva, advising institutional capital on the technologies he researches and writes about – his perspective is shaped by what serious investors are actually backing, not by policy advocacy. Carbon Commentary – his long-running newsletter, part of the Guardian Environment Network – has tracked real-world clean energy deployment data independently for over a decade. Executives and investors treat it as a check on sector claims rather than a source of promotional commentary. Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate was named an FT Books of the Year, establishing a track record of translating complex energy systems into analysis that serious non-specialist audiences can act on. He covers hard-to-abate sectors – aviation, agriculture, heavy industry – where most advisers produce high-level ambition; Goodall engages with specific technologies and deployment realities. Biography highlights Author of seven books on energy and climate published over 17 years, with Possible: Ways to Net Zero (Profile Books, 2024) as the most recent Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate named an FT Books of the Year What We Need to Do Now shortlisted for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation Member of the Advisory Board, Pictet Clean Energy Fund, Geneva Publisher of Carbon Commentary – long-running energy transition newsletter and website, part of the Guardian Environment Network Contributor to The Guardian, The Independent and The Ecologist Alumnus of the University of Cambridge and Harvard Business School (MBA) Biography Chris Goodall has spent nearly two decades tracking the energy transition – not as a trend to describe, but as a set of specific, solvable technical and economic problems. His most recent book, Possible: Ways to Net Zero (Profile Books, 2024), takes that argument to its logical conclusion: mapping 16 distinct challenges on the path to carbon neutrality, from the decarbonisation of steel and cement to green hydrogen storage and climate-resilient agriculture. That analytical discipline is tested against real capital. Goodall sits on the Advisory Board of the Pictet Clean Energy Fund in Geneva, where institutional investors are deploying money into the technologies he researches. It is a position that keeps his work anchored in what is commercially viable now, rather than what might be viable in a decade. Most energy transition commentary collapses that distinction. His Carbon Commentary platform – part of the Guardian Environment Network – has tracked clean energy deployment data independently for over a decade. It has earned a readership among executives and investors precisely because it does not represent a corporate or consultancy position. Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate was an FT Books of the Year; What We Need to Do Now was shortlisted for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation. Goodall read at the University of Cambridge and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He brings to board-level audiences something the energy transition conversation rarely produces: an independent, data-grounded account of what is technically and financially achievable – and what is not. Key speaking topics Net zero pathways and energy system transformation Decarbonisation technologies: hydrogen, storage, renewables deployment Hard-to-abate sectors: steel, cement, aviation, agriculture Clean energy investment and technology readiness Climate policy, regulation and corporate strategy Electric vehicles and charging infrastructure Grid infrastructure and the limits of the energy transition Ideal for Boards and executive teams building credible net zero strategies Energy, infrastructure and sustainability investors Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leaders in energy-intensive industries Chief Strategy Officers and transformation leads navigating the capital implications of decarbonisation Audience outcomes A clearer picture of which decarbonisation technologies are deployment-ready and which remain speculative A realistic, sector-specific understanding of what net zero delivery actually requires operationally Greater confidence in evaluating clean energy investment claims against independent evidence Insight into the policy and regulatory risks shaping energy transition timelines A framework for moving from corporate climate ambition to credible, technology-grounded action

Why organisations work with Christoph M. Schmidt Seven years chairing the German Council of Economic Experts, the body that formally advises the federal government, gives him a working command of how policy is actually made in Berlin and Brussels. As co-chair of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts, he reads the Paris-Berlin axis from inside the room, useful for any business whose European strategy depends on it. His research sits where most boardroom questions now live: energy transition economics, CO2 pricing design, labour market structure, and inequality. He has published on all of them. Project Syndicate columnist and contributor to the World Economic Forum Agenda and Brookings, which means audiences are getting a voice already trusted by the serious business press. Recipient of the Gustav Stolper Award (2016), given by the Verein fuer Socialpolitik for economists who shape public debate with empirical work, not rhetoric. Biography highlights President of RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen since 2002. Chair for Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum. Chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, 2013 to 2020. Co-chairman of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts since 2020. Gustav Stolper Award (2016); honorary doctorate, Leibniz Universitaet Hannover (2019). Ph.D. in Economics, Princeton University; CEPR Fellow; IZA Research Fellow. Biography The German Council of Economic Experts exists to tell the federal government what the data actually says, in writing, every year. Christoph M. Schmidt chaired that body from 2013 to 2020, which means he authored or co-authored seven annual reports that shaped how Berlin framed growth, fiscal policy, labour reform, and the energy transition. He has been President of RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen since 2002, while holding the Chair for Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum. The combination is unusual. RWI is one of Germany’s largest economic research institutes; Bochum keeps him teaching and publishing the empirical work that gives the policy voice its weight. Since 2020 he has served as co-chairman of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts, a body set up to surface where the two largest eurozone economies can cooperate and where they cannot. For any executive team with European exposure, that bilateral view is rarely available from a single speaker. His training is Princeton applied econometrics, with a Ph.D. supervised in the Alfred P. Sloan tradition. The research output covers energy and CO2 pricing, labour markets, health, and inequality. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate, the World Economic Forum Agenda, and Brookings. The Gustav Stolper Award, given in 2016 by the Verein fuer Socialpolitik, recognises economists who translate serious empirical work into public debate. Schmidt is one of the few German economists to have done both at the scale the award implies. Key speaking topics European economic policy and the Franco-German axis Energy transition economics and CO2 pricing German and European labour market reform Income and wealth inequality Fiscal policy and debt sustainability in the eurozone The role of evidence-based economic advice in democracies Productivity and structural change in advanced economies Ideal for Boards and executive teams with European operations weighing the fiscal, energy, and labour policy outlook CFOs, strategy leads, and government affairs teams briefing on eurozone direction Investor audiences and policy forums examining the Franco-German economic relationship Industrial and energy sector leadership assessing the real cost trajectory of the transition Audience outcomes A sharper read on where German and European economic policy is heading and why A working framework for thinking about CO2 pricing, energy cost pass-through, and competitiveness A clearer view of the Franco-German policy interface and what it means for European business decisions A sense of which reform debates carry durable weight and which are political theatre Direct engagement with an economist who has sat inside the machinery of federal advice

Why organisations work with Sir Christopher Pissarides The Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model – the standard tool used by central banks and governments to analyse unemployment and wage formation – means his analysis carries a precision and institutional grounding that macroeconomic commentary cannot match. His Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a Nuffield Foundation-funded programme conducted with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School, converts macroeconomic research into concrete, evidence-based frameworks for managing workforce disruption from automation. Forty years of advisory work for the World Bank, European Commission, OECD, and Bank of England means audiences receive analysis that has already shaped the policy environment they operate in – not analysis that describes it from the outside. His position as co-developer of the most cited model in labour economics, and former chair of a national economy council during a financial crisis, enables board-level conversations that translate structural theory directly into strategic workforce decisions. His analysis of AI and automation extends the search-frictions framework behind his Nobel Prize – it is not speculative commentary, but a rigorous continuation of four decades of original research applied to a new generation of technological disruption. Biography highlights Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2010, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen, for “analysis of markets with search frictions” Regius Professor of Economics, London School of Economics – faculty member since 1976; former Head of the Economics Department Co-developer of the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) model – the standard global tool for analysing unemployment, wage formation, and labour market policy Author of Equilibrium Unemployment Theory (MIT Press) – the standard reference in labour economics Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Institute for the Future of Work (2018); led the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a £1.8m Nuffield Foundation-funded programme with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School Knighted 2013 for services to economics; IZA Prize in Labor Economics 2005; Fellow of the British Academy, Econometric Society, and American Economic Association; adviser to the World Bank, European Commission, OECD, and Bank of England Biography The Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model is the standard analytical framework for understanding unemployment. Sir Christopher Pissarides co-built it at the London School of Economics, where he has been on the faculty since 1976. He received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the work, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen. The model’s core claim is that labour markets are governed by frictions. Workers and vacancies do not find each other efficiently. Search costs, information gaps, and institutional design create persistent mismatches that no increase in job openings can resolve on its own. This structural view of unemployment is the one that central banks, the World Bank, and the European Commission reach for when they need precision rather than commentary. Pissarides co-founded the Institute for the Future of Work in 2018 and led the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a Nuffield Foundation-funded programme conducted with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School. The Review applies his frictions framework to automation and AI, producing evidence on how technological disruption creates new mismatches and what organisations and governments must do to manage them. His advisory record spans the World Bank, the European Commission, the OECD, and the Bank of England. He chaired the National Economy Council of the Republic of Cyprus during its financial crisis. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, and the American Economic Association. For boards and leadership teams working through structural workforce questions, his analysis carries a weight that secondary interpretation of the same data cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Labour market economics and unemployment theory Search frictions and job matching Automation, AI, and the future of work Workforce disruption and structural economic change Employment policy and institutional design Economic growth and structural transformation Worker wellbeing and productivity Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership navigating long-term workforce and employment strategy Policymakers, finance ministries, and government economic advisers Chief Human Resources Officers and HR leadership teams grappling with automation and structural workforce change Economic and business conferences addressing labour markets, growth, or the workforce consequences of technology Audience outcomes A structural model for why labour markets underperform that goes beyond cyclical explanations Analytical tools for assessing how automation and AI will affect workforce composition in specific sectors or regions A framework for distinguishing cyclical workforce disruption from structural change that requires institutional response Policy context for decisions on hiring, reskilling, and workforce investment Clarity on how technological change distributes economic gains and losses – and what factors determine which outcome prevails

Why organisations work with Daisy McAndrew She has chaired panels, awards and leadership forums for clients including Samsung, HPE and ABTA, and returns to the same rooms because she reads a stage the way a lobby journalist reads a division lobby. Thirty years inside Westminster, first as a Commons researcher and Liberal Democrat press secretary, then as a BBC and ITV News political and economics correspondent, gives her a working map of how UK policy actually gets made. She can interview a chief executive, a cabinet minister or a customer keynote without a script change, which matters when a board-level event pivots on the day. She combines a broadcaster’s discipline about time and tone with the subject authority of a former national Economics Editor, so she can run a technical panel on rates, trade or regulation without deferring to the panellists. NBC News retains her as Royal Commentator, which signals that US networks trust her on camera at short notice under live political conditions. Biography highlights Former Chief Political Correspondent, Economics Editor and Special Correspondent, ITV News (2005 to 2012). Former co-presenter, BBC Daily Politics, alongside Andrew Neil, and presenter of Yesterday in Parliament, BBC Radio 4. Former Press Secretary to Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. Former Editor of The House Magazine, Westminster’s weekly parliamentary publication. Royal Commentator for NBC News, United States. Former Vice-Chair, Internews Europe, the international media-development charity. Biography Westminster is not a neutral place to report from. Understanding how a tax change, a whip’s decision or a regulatory signal translates into a market move takes years of standing in the same corridors as the people making those calls. That is the ground Daisy McAndrew has covered for three decades. She began in the House of Commons as an MP’s researcher at nineteen, edited The House Magazine in the mid-1990s, and was Press Secretary to Charles Kennedy when he led the Liberal Democrats. Moving to broadcasting, she co-presented BBC’s Daily Politics with Andrew Neil before ITV News hired her as Chief Political Correspondent in 2005, then promoted her to Economics Editor in 2008. She reported the credit crunch and the subsequent recession from across the UK, and filed extended pieces on the French and German economies. She left ITV as its most senior female reporter. Her corporate work sits on the same foundation. She chairs conferences, moderates board-level panels, and hosts awards for clients including Samsung, HPE and ABTA, and is rebooked for the reason senior buyers rebook anyone: she runs the room. An executive chair can hand her a late script change, a difficult CEO, or a technical panel on trade or monetary policy and trust the output. She is NBC News’s Royal Commentator in the United States, was Vice-Chair of the Internews Europe trustee board until June 2023, and edited The Politics Companion for Chrysalis Books. Key speaking topics UK politics and government UK economic policy and the business environment Political risk for corporate and investor audiences Media, political communication and the British press The British Royal Family and soft-power coverage Conference hosting, panel moderation and awards chairing Ideal for Boards, investor conferences and CEO forums wanting a UK political and economic read they can act on CCOs, heads of public affairs and government relations teams briefing leadership on policy exposure Industry trade bodies and regulated-sector conferences needing a chair who can handle ministers, executives and journalists on the same stage Internal leadership summits and awards where the host must carry scripted and unscripted segments with equal authority Audience outcomes A clearer read on which Westminster and Whitehall developments actually change commercial conditions, and which do not. A sharper sense of how political communication works from the inside, from lobby briefings to Downing Street signalling. On-stage interviews, panels and awards segments that land on time, on message and with the right tension held between speakers. Context on UK economic policy drawn from first-hand reporting on the credit crunch, recession recovery and successive fiscal cycles. A senior journalistic presence that steadies a room when the agenda, speaker line-up or news cycle shifts on the day.