Entrepreneurship

Why organisations work with Adam Cheyer He built the original Siri – not from a single insight but through more than a decade of AI research at SRI International – and then rebuilt the paradigm at Samsung and Airbnb. That depth of iteration, across platforms and at scale, is not replicated elsewhere on the speaking circuit. Four of his five ventures were acquired specifically for their AI technology, by Apple, Samsung, Airbnb, and Cognizant. The acquisitions validate not just the product but the engineering and commercial judgements behind it. After each acquisition, he stayed and led AI integration inside the acquiring organisation. Most founders don’t stay for that part – which is where AI strategies most commonly fail. He was ranked #2 on Voicebot.ai‘s Top Visionaries in Voice 2019 – behind Jeff Bezos and ahead of Sundar Pichai – while actively deploying conversational AI inside Samsung’s global platform. His foundation at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI project, funded by DARPA – means his commercial instincts are grounded in the actual science of how intelligent systems work. Biography highlights Co-founder of Siri, Inc.; Director of Engineering, iPhone/iOS group, Apple – led AI and server-side development for Siri across more than 500 million devices Co-founder and VP R&D, Viv Labs, acquired by Samsung in 2016; Viv became the technical foundation for Samsung’s Bixby Chief Architect, CALO/PAL project, SRI International – the US government’s largest-funded AI research programme, funded by DARPA Co-founder and CEO, GamePlanner.AI, acquired by Airbnb (late 2023, est. ~$200M); VP AI Experience, Airbnb Founding member, Change.org; co-founder, Sentient Technologies (acquired by Cognizant) 60+ peer-reviewed publications; 50+ patents across AI, machine learning, distributed computing, and conversational systems Ranked #2, Voicebot.ai Top Visionaries in Voice 2019; 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award; TechCrunch Crunchies Award for Best Technology Achievement Scientific Advisory Board member, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) Biography Building an AI product that works in a controlled environment and scaling it to hundreds of millions of users are different engineering problems. Most organisations now committing to AI strategies have very few people in the room who have done the second – and fewer still who have done it multiple times, across different platforms, inside multiple large organisations. Adam Cheyer spent more than a decade at SRI International as Chief Architect of CALO/PAL – the US government’s largest AI research programme, funded by DARPA – before co-founding Siri, Inc. in 2007 with Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. When Apple acquired the company in 2010, he stayed as Director of Engineering in the iPhone/iOS group, leading the AI and server-side development that put Siri on more than 500 million devices. He has repeated this cycle three more times. Viv Labs, which he co-founded and led as VP R&D, was acquired by Samsung in 2016 and became the technical foundation for Bixby. Sentient Technologies – an early large-scale distributed machine learning platform – was acquired by Cognizant. GamePlanner.AI was acquired by Airbnb in late 2023, where Cheyer served as VP AI Experience, applying generative AI to transform how users engage with the platform. He holds more than 50 patents and has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in AI, machine learning, and conversational systems. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and received the 2024 Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award for contributions to technology entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Conversational AI and intelligent personal assistants Generative AI and enterprise application AI product development and commercial scaling Technology entrepreneurship and venture building Human-computer interaction and intelligent interfaces Large-scale and distributed machine learning AI integration in consumer and enterprise platforms Ideal for Chief Technology Officers and product leadership teams navigating AI product strategy Innovation and R&D functions evaluating AI investment decisions Executive and board audiences assessing AI-enabled product development or acquisition C-suite leaders who need a practitioner’s account of where AI integration succeeds and where it fails Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of how conversational and generative AI systems are designed, built, and scaled – distinct from analyst or vendor perspectives Understanding of the architectural and organisational decisions that determine whether AI products deliver at scale Direct insight into how Apple, Samsung, and Airbnb have each integrated acquired AI technology into their core platforms Lessons from founding, scaling, and exiting AI ventures across four separate acquisition cycles A grounded, evidence-based framework for assessing which AI capabilities are commercially transformational and which remain overstated

Why organisations work with Jerry Kaplan He has built the technology he now teaches. Two of his four startups went public, his team at GO Corporation produced the first commercial tablet operating system, and he co-founded the first internet auction site five months before eBay. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and writes the Oxford University Press primers that policymakers and boards actually cite. That sits between technical depth and decision-grade clarity. His framing of AI’s labour market consequences in Humans Need Not Apply was selected by The Economist as a top ten science and technology book of 2015, well before generative AI made the question urgent. He approaches AI as a question of competitive advantage, regulation, and capital allocation, not as a feature roadmap. Boards leave with a sharper view of what they are actually deciding. Biography highlights Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University (Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy; Department of Computer Science) Fellow, Centre for Legal Informatics, Stanford Law School Founding CEO, GO Corporation (PenPoint OS, tablet computing) Co-founder, Onsale Inc., the first internet auction site (IPO 1997) Author, Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Humans Need Not Apply (Yale University Press, 2015), an Economist top ten book PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania; inventor on more than a dozen patents; over twenty peer-reviewed papers across ACM and IEEE journals Biography Tablet computing, online auctions, expert systems, and one of the first commercial personal information managers were all built in Silicon Valley before most people had heard of them. Kaplan was inside each of those stories. He was founding CEO of GO Corporation, the company whose PenPoint operating system anticipated the iPad by two decades, and he co-founded Onsale, the first internet auction site, five months before eBay. That operating history is the reason his current work on artificial intelligence is taken seriously by board-level audiences. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and is a Fellow at the Centre for Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. The Oxford University Press primers he writes, including Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, are designed for readers who need to decide, not just to understand. His 2015 book Humans Need Not Apply, published by Yale University Press and named one of The Economist’s top ten science and technology books that year, argued that AI’s labour market effects would arrive faster than most institutions were preparing for. The argument has aged unusually well. It now reads as a brief on the question every executive committee is asking about generative systems. The combination of a working technologist, a serial founder with two IPOs, and a current Stanford lecturer is rare. Kaplan uses it to translate AI from a procurement conversation into a strategic one, and to tell senior audiences where they are exposed. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the executive agenda AI and the future of work AI regulation and public policy Competitive advantage in an AI-led economy Industry-specific AI disruption AI risks, dangers, and safety Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees weighing capital allocation to AI C-suite leaders setting AI strategy, governance, and workforce policy Policy and regulatory audiences confronting AI rules and competition Industry leadership offsites in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services Audience outcomes A working mental model of what generative AI can and cannot do, stripped of vendor framing A sharper read on where AI will reshape the workforce and on which timelines A view of the regulatory and geopolitical pressures shaping AI competition Specific questions a board should be asking management about its AI exposure A historical perspective on technology adoption cycles, from someone who has run several

Why organisations work with Molly Bloom A first-hand account of how pressure and money distort judgement among hedge fund managers, studio heads, and high-net-worth players. The observation comes from inside the room. A real case study in rebuilding after professional and legal collapse. Bloom pleaded guilty to running an illegal gambling operation, then re-emerged as a published author whose memoir was adapted into the Oscar-nominated Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, starring Jessica Chastain. Lived experience of decision-making at the edges of legality and ethics. She knows how the wrong choice looks before it is made, and why intelligent people make it anyway. A practitioner’s view of how exclusivity and discretion build a customer base wealthy clients fight to join. Bloom designed and ran the operation herself, with rooms at venues like the Peninsula Beverly Hills hosting individual hands worth millions. Biography highlights Author of the memoir Molly’s Game (HarperCollins, 2014), adapted into Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, which earned a 2018 Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Former member of the U.S. Ski Team in freestyle moguls, ranked third in the Nor-Am Cup season standings. Built and ran one of the largest high-stakes private poker operations in the United States, with regular players including Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, and Alex Rodriguez. Host of Torched, an investigative sports podcast produced by FilmNation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Corporate speaking clients include BlackRock, Blackstone, Adobe, Cisco, Dell, SiriusXM, Uber, Comcast, and US Bank. Biography The hands at the Peninsula Beverly Hills sometimes ran past $4 million. Bloom designed the operation and ran the room before she turned 26. Her clients were Hollywood actors and Wall Street financiers. The FBI eventually took the business apart. Before any of that, she was a competitive skier. She made the U.S. Ski Team in freestyle moguls and ranked third in the Nor-Am Cup season standings. A back injury ended her Olympic ambitions before she finished her degree at the University of Colorado Boulder. Los Angeles was meant to be a gap year. Within a few years she was hosting weekly poker games for some of the most recognisable people in entertainment. Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, and Alex Rodriguez were among the regulars. In 2013 she was indicted in a federal money-laundering case in New York and pleaded guilty the following year. The second act began on the page. The memoir Molly’s Game (2014) became the basis for Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, starring Jessica Chastain and earning a 2018 Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. She hosts Torched, an investigative podcast on the costs of elite competition, and her corporate audiences include BlackRock, Blackstone, Adobe, Cisco, Dell, SiriusXM, Uber, Comcast, and US Bank. In those rooms she examines how high performers misjudge risk under pressure, and what serious recovery looks like once they have. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Risk and judgement in high-stakes environments Resilience and reinvention after professional setback Ethics and integrity in competitive markets Customer experience and exclusivity Behavioural dynamics of high performers Entrepreneurship from a standing start Ideal for Boards and senior executives facing decisions where the costs of judgement errors are large and public Financial services, investment, and trading audiences working under live time pressure Sales and customer experience leaders building premium or exclusive propositions Conferences on resilience and second-act leadership Audience outcomes A first-hand view of how ego and short-term incentives erode judgement among senior players A specific account of how to read the early signals of risk before public consequences arrive An honest reckoning of what professional and legal failure costs, and what real recovery demands A working sense of how exclusivity and discretion build premium customer bases that competitors cannot easily copy

Why organisations work with Amar Latif He has spent twenty years running an inclusion business that makes commercial sense. Traveleyes pairs blind and sighted travellers worldwide and has twice been voted Best Accessible Holiday Company at the British Travel Awards, in 2019 and 2020. His corporate CV gives him credibility with a board. Before founding Traveleyes he was Head of Commercial Finance at BT, and he makes the commercial case for inclusion in the language a board expects to hear it in. The lived experience is specific and substantial. Amar has retinitis pigmentosa and lost 95% of his sight by 18, and has spent his career building and running an organisation inside that constraint. Mainstream media recognition earns audience attention before he speaks. Regular BBC presenter, first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK, and appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Executive of Traveleyes, the world’s first commercial tour operator pairing blind and sighted travellers on group holidays worldwide; established 2004. Appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship. President of The Ramblers, Britain’s largest walking charity, since April 2023; patron of SeeAbility and of the Rafiki Thabo Foundation. Inaugural recipient of the Stelios Disabled Entrepreneur Award (2007), presented by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in partnership with Leonard Cheshire Disability. Presenter across BBC and Channel 4, including Beyond Boundaries, River Walks (Royal Television Society Yorkshire Best Single Documentary, 2019), Travelling Blind, Pilgrimage: The Road to Istanbul, How to Get Fit Fast; first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK (2020). BSc (Hons) Mathematics, Statistics and Finance, University of Strathclyde; former Head of Commercial Finance at BT. Biography Traveleyes was founded in 2004 on a single commercial insight: that blind and sighted travellers could be paired on the same group holiday, with sighted guests receiving discounted travel in exchange for describing what they see. Twenty years later, the company has twice been voted Best Accessible Holiday Company at the British Travel Awards, and the insight has held up. Amar Latif built the business after leaving a role as Head of Commercial Finance at BT. The route from commercial finance into inclusive travel is unusual, and it gives him the language to make the commercial case for inclusion to a board. The authority on resilience comes from a specific set of circumstances. Amar has retinitis pigmentosa and had lost 95% of his sight by 18. After a BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Finance at the University of Strathclyde, he trained as an accountant and worked his way up to Head of Commercial Finance at BT before founding Traveleyes. A parallel broadcasting career runs across BBC One, BBC Two and Channel 4, including Beyond Boundaries, Travelling Blind, Pilgrimage: The Road to Istanbul, How to Get Fit Fast, and his appearance as the first blind contestant on Celebrity MasterChef UK. He was appointed OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the visually impaired and entrepreneurship, and serves as President of The Ramblers, Britain’s largest walking charity. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Disability inclusion as commercial strategy Entrepreneurial resilience Risk and decision-making under constraint Customer experience in underserved markets Purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief People Officers, CHROs and heads of diversity, equity and inclusion Boards and executive teams building the commercial case for inclusion Entrepreneurship and innovation forums Customer experience and service design leaders Audience outcomes A commercial case for inclusion built to hold up in a board or CFO conversation Specific examples of how inclusion shapes service design and customer experience in underserved markets A reset on how to think about risk when there is no stable precedent A narrative that changes how senior audiences talk about inclusion back in the business

Why organisations work with Chris Gardner His entrepreneurship is not theoretical. Gardner built Gardner Rich & Co. from $10,000 in a Chicago apartment to an institutional brokerage serving major U.S. pension funds – and sold his stake in a multimillion-dollar transaction. No consultant’s framework carries that kind of commercial verification. The cultural footprint of his story is already embedded in most audiences. A #1 New York Times bestselling memoir translated into forty languages and a Columbia Pictures film that grossed over $300 million worldwide mean audiences arrive knowing the narrative – Gardner can move immediately to application rather than spending the session establishing credibility. His intellectual frameworks – Spiritual Genetics, the concept of Permission to Dream, the discipline of deliberate personal commitment – give organisations practical language for conversations about accountability and ambition that conventional performance management rarely reaches. Three books (two New York Times bestsellers and a Wall Street Journal Book of the Month) give programme designers and CHROs sustained content for follow-through beyond the keynote, rather than a single event with no supporting architecture. Where most resilience speakers address adversity in the abstract, Gardner offers a verified, sequential, commercially consequential arc – homeless to Bear Stearns top earner to founder to exit – as the proof case. The story is not inspirational decoration; it is the argument. Biography highlights Founded Gardner Rich & Co. (Chicago, 1987) – institutional brokerage specialising in debt, equity, and derivative products for major U.S. public pension plans; sold minority stake in multimillion-dollar exit (2006) Author of The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): #1 New York Times and Washington Post bestseller, translated into more than forty languages; Start Where You Are (2009): New York Times bestseller; Permission to Dream: Wall Street Journal Book of the Month Associate producer of the Columbia Pictures film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006); Will Smith received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor; gross exceeded $300 million worldwide NAACP Image Awards (book and film); LACAAW Humanitarian Award; Continental Africa Chamber of Commerce Friends of Africa Award; Glaucoma Foundation Kitty Carlisle Hart Lifetime Achievement Award Named AARP Ambassador of Pursuit and Happyness (2010); board service at VerifyMe (NASDAQ: VRME) and The Change Company (a U.S. Treasury-established CDFI) following 37 years in financial services Regular feature across CNN, CNBC, CBS Evening News, 20/20, Oprah, Today Show, People, USA Today, and Fortune Biography Gardner Rich & Co. was founded in 1987 in a small Chicago apartment, with $10,000, a phone, and no outside investment. The firm grew into a fully operational institutional brokerage – serving major U.S. public pension plans and trading in debt, equity, and derivative products. Its founder had been sleeping in subway stations with his infant son the year before he completed the Dean Witter Reynolds broker training programme. Chris Gardner’s path from U.S. Navy medic to homeless single father to Bear Stearns top earner to founder-operator of his own brokerage firm is a documented commercial trajectory, not a metaphor. His memoir, The Pursuit of Happyness, reached #1 on both the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists and has been translated into more than forty languages. His second book, Start Where You Are, also reached the Times list. A third, Permission to Dream, was selected as a Wall Street Journal Book of the Month. The framework Gardner brings to organisational audiences is built around what he calls Spiritual Genetics – the internal inventory of decisions, values, and commitments that determines performance under genuine pressure. His argument is not about coping with adversity after it arrives. It is about the deliberate construction of personal accountability before it does. For leadership and commercial teams, that distinction is the practical one: whether the culture they have built will hold when conditions stop being favourable. His cultural reach is measurable. The Columbia Pictures film adaptation, directed by Gabriele Muccino and starring Will Smith – who received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations – grossed over $300 million worldwide. Gardner served as associate producer. Few speakers in the entrepreneurship and leadership space operate from a cultural reference point this widely shared. Audiences typically arrive already knowing the story, which means Gardner can move directly to the framework and its application. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and business-building from adversity Personal accountability and Spiritual Genetics Resilience in high-pressure commercial environments Values-based leadership and career reinvention Financial services and institutional markets Philanthropy, social responsibility, and giving back Permission to Dream: purpose and ambition at any stage Ideal for Senior leadership and executive audiences in financial services, sales, and entrepreneurially-driven organisations CHROs, People & Culture leads, and transformation teams building genuine accountability frameworks Large-scale employee engagement and motivation programmes where a shared reference point is needed Corporate responsibility, DEI, and community impact forums Audience outcomes A named framework – Spiritual Genetics – for understanding the internal commitments that drive sustained performance under real pressure, rather than programme-led resilience Practical perspective on the difference between accountability declared as a value and accountability installed as an operating standard A shared cultural reference point, drawn from a commercially verifiable trajectory, for team conversations about ambition, responsibility, and perseverance Renewed sense of personal agency among individuals facing professional setbacks, structural change, or high-pressure commercial environments Clarity on the concept of Permission to Dream as an active, deliberate decision rather than an aspiration – applicable at individual, team, and organisational level

Why organisations work with Caspar Craven His Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle give leadership teams a named, structured framework for changing how they think and act under pressure, not a set of borrowed principles, but a system built and tested through his own experience of pursuing extreme goals in commercial and offshore environments. His background as a KPMG Associate Director and CFO, including a technology business exit to a listed company, grounds the material in commercial and financial reality, making it credible with boards, finance teams and senior executive audiences, not only culture or L&D audiences. The argument he makes is unusual: that the behaviours required to hold a team together on a two-year ocean voyage are the same behaviours that determine whether a leadership team delivers or stalls, and he can evidence that claim from both sides of the equation. The Big Bold Circle’s 20 principles connect individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, giving buyers a framework that extends beyond the event into coaching, offsites and leadership programmes. Organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group and Burberry rebook him, evidence that the material holds up under repeated use with commercially sophisticated audiences. Biography highlights Author of three Bloomsbury-published books: Where the Magic Happens, Be More Human: Rethinking the Rules of High-Performance Teamwork, and The Big Bold Mindset: Re-thinking the Rules of Leadership Former Associate Director at KPMG; former CFO in the technology sector, including a business sold to Private Equity Built, scaled and sold a technology business to a stock market listed company Team leader on trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01) Captain of family circumnavigation (2014/16), leading a crew that included three children under ten Speaker for global organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry, Standard Life and BAE Systems Biography Most leadership teams do not lack ambition. They lack the thinking that holds when ambition meets sustained pressure. Caspar Craven has spent three decades studying that gap, in FTSE-boardroom pressure, in the execution risk of building and selling a technology business, and in the conditions of offshore sailing, and building the frameworks that close it. His commercial background is foundational. As an Associate Director at KPMG and then CFO of a technology business sold to Private Equity, Craven worked inside the financial and strategic pressures that boards and senior leadership teams actually face. He then built and exited his own technology company, selling it to a listed firm for a seven-figure sum. That sequence – corporate discipline, then ownership, then entrepreneurial risk – is the basis of his credibility with finance, commercial and executive audiences. The two round-the-world sailing voyages are not adventure narrative. The first, as a team leader on a trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01), tested leadership under competitive pressure and physical exhaustion. The second (2014/16), as captain of a family crew including three young children, tested something harder: sustaining shared values, clear roles and collaborative decision-making over two years in an environment where the cost of poor leadership is immediate and real. Both voyages provided the evidence base for the frameworks he now teaches. That evidence base is formalised in the Big Bold Mindset® and the Big Bold Circle, 20 principles connecting individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, published across three Bloomsbury books. The framework has been applied with leadership teams at Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry and Standard Life, among others. The core argument is practical: that the gap between ambitious goals and actual delivery is a thinking and behaviour problem, and that it can be addressed systematically. Key speaking topics Leadership mindset and behavioural change High-performance team dynamics Goal-setting and execution under pressure Decision-making in uncertainty Resilience and organisational adaptability Entrepreneurship and business growth Culture change and human-centred leadership Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees setting ambitious growth or transformation targets CHROs and L&D leaders designing leadership development programmes, particularly for high-potential talent or senior cohorts Commercial and sales organisations at annual kick-offs or strategic resets Boards and C-suite audiences navigating significant change, M&A, or sustained performance pressure Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (The Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle) applicable immediately to their own goals, team dynamics and leadership behaviours Clearer understanding of why leadership teams stall under pressure, and what specifically needs to change in how they think and make decisions Practical approaches to aligning teams around ambitious goals, reducing execution friction and sustaining momentum through setbacks A shared vocabulary for discussing leadership mindset and team behaviour that moves beyond generic or abstract concepts Renewed confidence in pursuing bold goals, grounded in evidence and principle rather than motivation alone

Key speaking topics Career decision-making Leadership development Redefining success Purpose-driven work Organisational mission and impact Personal and professional growth Executive transition and change Ideal for Senior leaders and executives High-potential and emerging leaders Mission-driven and nonprofit organisations Organisations navigating career development and leadership transitions Audience outcomes Clearer frameworks for defining and measuring success. Insight into aligning professional choices with personal values. Practical perspectives on leadership and career inflection points. Greater awareness of how purpose and performance intersect. Why organisations work with Laura Gassner Otting Combines White House, nonprofit and entrepreneurial experience with authorship and executive coaching. Brings research-informed perspectives from her books and published writing. Connects leadership and career themes to organisational mission and impact. Offers commercially relevant insights for leadership, retention and talent development conversations. Biography Laura Gassner Otting works at the intersection of leadership, career decision-making and organisational mission. As an author, keynote speaker and executive coach, she brings a cross-sector perspective shaped by experience in the White House, nonprofit executive search and entrepreneurial leadership. She served as a presidential appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House with responsibilities connected to AmeriCorps, giving her direct insight into public service, national initiatives and mission-led leadership. She later founded and led the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, an advisory and executive search firm supporting mission-driven organisations, before selling the business to the team that helped build it. Laura is the author of Limitless, Wonderhell, and Mission-Driven, books that explore how individuals and organisations define success, align purpose with performance, and navigate inflection points in leadership and career. Her thinking has been featured in Harvard Business Review and Forbes, and her TEDx talk is available on TED.com. Based in the Boston area, she speaks to senior leaders, boards and growth-focused organisations seeking practical perspectives on success, purpose and leadership in complex professional environments.

Why organisations work with Dominic McVey He has operated, not observed: acquired and restructured Hela Clothing in Sri Lanka in 2013 and grew its workforce to over 17,000 across Sri Lanka, Kenya and Ethiopia, supplying M&S, Tesco, John Lewis and Asda. He converts a teenage-millionaire origin story into serious boardroom utility: the founder instinct for spotting asymmetric opportunity, applied to corporate growth, M&A, and emerging market entry. He brings a government-grade network on Africa: MBE for services to private sector development in Africa, Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales, Coalition for Global Prosperity advisory council, Co-Chair of Global Academy Africa. He speaks credibly on ethical supply chains from the operator seat, as founder of the Fair Fashion Pact and Chairman of Computer Aid International. Biography highlights Professor of Practice, University of Wales Trinity Saint David (appointed June 2022). MBE, 2022 Platinum Jubilee Honours, for services to private sector development in Africa. Chairman and trustee of Computer Aid International, which has reached over 14.5 million people with technology access since 1997. Founder, Fair Fashion Pact; former owner and chairman of Hela Clothing, Sri Lanka. Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales; Co-Chair, Global Academy Africa; advisory council, Coalition for Global Prosperity; ambassador, HALO Trust. Keynote speaker at Davos (2020, 2024), Bloomberg’s Modern Affluence Summit (2019) and the Conservative Party Conference main stage (2018). Biography Most expansion plans into frontier markets get built around cost arbitrage and break on everything else. The operators who actually scale in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ethiopia or Mexico spend less time on the landed-cost model and more on recruitment, training, community standing, political relationships and supplier reliability. McVey has done the second version of that work. He bought Hela Clothing in Sri Lanka in 2013, when the business had around 3,000 staff supplying UK high street retailers. Under his ownership the group expanded into Kenya and Ethiopia, grew to more than 17,000 employees, and supplied Levi’s, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, M&S, John Lewis and Tesco. That track record is the spine of his credibility when he speaks to boards about emerging market growth. The earlier chapter gives him the founder register. At 13 he began importing US-made micro-scooters into the UK. By 15 he was Britain’s youngest self-made millionaire. At 18 the Queen named him a “Pioneer for Britain in Entrepreneurism”. That arc is not a keynote hook; it is why buyers trust him to talk about spotting mispriced opportunity. The third layer is policy and philanthropy. He was awarded an MBE in the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Honours for services to private sector development in Africa, sits on the Coalition for Global Prosperity advisory council, serves as Namibian Honorary Consul to Wales, and chairs Computer Aid International. He founded the Fair Fashion Pact to raise standards in African apparel supply chains. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David appointed him Professor of Practice in 2022. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder thinking Emerging market growth and private sector development in Africa Ethical supply chains and responsible sourcing Scaling manufacturing across multiple geographies Business model innovation and portfolio diversification Philanthropy, trade and sustainable foreign direct investment Ideal for Boards and executive teams planning expansion into African, South Asian or Latin American markets. CEOs and commercial leaders wrestling with supply chain ethics, ESG credibility and supplier consolidation. Founder-led businesses and family offices looking for a peer voice on portfolio strategy and emerging opportunity. Conferences on trade, development finance, manufacturing and the UK-Africa commercial relationship. Audience outcomes A clearer read on what actually determines whether emerging market operations scale, beyond the cost model. A framework for evaluating supply chain partners that treats labour standards as commercial leverage, not compliance overhead. A sharper view of Africa as an investment destination from someone with working diplomatic and trade relationships there. A founder’s perspective on how to spot and act on asymmetric opportunity inside a corporate setting.

Why organisations work with Karl Lillrud He speaks about AI from the seat of someone who has run digital commerce businesses since the late nineties and is currently building one. PodManager AI, his AI-driven podcast production platform, is shipping to paying customers as he speaks about AI to other operators. His work connects AI directly to revenue mechanics: pricing, conversion, retention, and customer acquisition, the parts of the P&L the C-suite is actually accountable for. Nine published books, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct», give leadership teams a shared language for the second-order effects of AI on work, governance, and customer trust, beyond the productivity headlines. Membership of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council and recognition in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings signal that the perspective travels at board level, not just at the developer conference. The client footprint, including Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, and 3, gives him pattern recognition across regulated and consumer-facing businesses that few AI speakers can match. Biography highlights Founder of PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform he is currently building. Founder of Pricelizer, a Swedish e-commerce startup named to CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. Author of nine books on AI and digital business, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct». Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council since August 2024. Two-time TEDx speaker. Recognised across multiple years in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings and Global Gurus’ Top 30 Motivational Speakers list. Public engagement footprint includes Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, 3, Tele2, and TUI. Biography Most AI keynote speakers have never run a checkout flow at scale. Karl Lillrud has. He has been building digital businesses since the late nineties, founded Pricelizer in 2013 to solve the abandoned-cart problem he kept hitting as an operator, and watched it land on CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. He is now building PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform shipping to paying customers. That operator history, still in present tense, is the through-line for everything he says about artificial intelligence. His books reflect the same instinct. «You, Me and AI» treats the technology across 54 chapters covering work, creativity, education, governance, and the human-machine boundary, rather than as a productivity story. «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct» focuses on how leaders and their teams should actually integrate the tools day to day. The two sit inside a wider catalogue of nine published books, written for people who have to make decisions, not people studying the field. The institutional signals followed the work. Thinkers360 has recognised him across its AI thought-leader rankings. Global Gurus has placed him repeatedly in its Top 30 Motivational Speakers ranking. In August 2024 he joined the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, and 3 sit on a public client list that runs across consumer retail, telecoms, and pharma. What a buyer is paying for is the translation layer between board ambition and operating reality. Lillrud has been the person trying to ship the next quarter’s numbers, and he is still in the chair, building an AI product while advising executives who have AI strategies they cannot yet execute. The argument lands because he has been on both sides of the table. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the C-suite agenda AI in retail and consumer experience Digital commerce and customer acquisition Innovation and business model reinvention Leadership in technology-driven organisations AI ethics and governance Future of work in the AI era Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy approval to execution. CEOs, CMOs, and chief digital or commerce officers in retail, telecoms, and consumer brands. Innovation, transformation, and AI leads inside large enterprises building the operating model for AI. Founder and growth-stage leadership teams using AI as a commercial wedge. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which AI use cases move commercial metrics and which are theatre. A vocabulary for discussing AI’s second-order effects on customers, employees, and brand trust at board level. Concrete reference points from operators who have shipped AI inside consumer-facing businesses. A clearer view of where leadership attention should sit next versus where it can wait. Confidence to challenge vendor narratives and refocus internal AI portfolios on revenue impact.

Why organisations work with Darren Hardy He has run the operating seat, not just studied it. He led SUCCESS magazine as publisher and founding editor for eight years and built businesses before that, so the material lands with founders and CEOs rather than feeling like borrowed theory. The Compound Effect gives audiences a single, durable mental model for how small daily choices become outsized business outcomes. It survives long after the keynote ends, which is what organisations actually pay for. His 2016 Master of Influence award from the National Speakers Association places him in a lineage of fewer than a dozen people, alongside Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. Few current keynote speakers carry that specific credential. He has spent two decades interviewing the operators behind large companies, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz and Jack Welch, and brings those case studies into rooms without name-dropping for its own sake. DarrenDaily gives him a live, ongoing feedback loop with hundreds of thousands of high-performers, so the content is stress-tested against what is actually working in the field rather than recycled from a book written years ago. Biography highlights New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Compound Effect, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster and Living Your Best Year Ever. Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, 2007 to 2015. National Speakers Association Master of Influence Award, 2016. Former executive producer of The People’s Network and chairman of The Success Training Network. Founder of DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring platform for entrepreneurs and executives. Has interviewed leaders including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn. Biography Most performance problems in founder-led businesses are not strategy problems. They are execution problems dressed up as strategy problems, and they compound quietly until a growth plan stalls. Darren Hardy has spent twenty-five years working on the side of that equation that boards rarely discuss directly: the daily habits, operating rhythms and personal disciplines that separate the operators who build something lasting from the ones who do not. His argument is built from two sources. The first is his own operating career. He started his first business at eighteen and ran a company generating material annual revenue before he was thirty, before spending eight years as Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, relaunching the title and running it as a business. The second is editorial. Through SUCCESS and the networks he ran before it, he interviewed a long line of senior operators, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn, and distilled what he learned into The Compound Effect, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller still in active circulation more than a decade after publication. The 2016 Master of Influence Award from the National Speakers Association is the credential that most senior buyers notice. It has gone to roughly a dozen people in the history of the profession, including Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and it is not given for platform skill alone. It signals durability of ideas, something Hardy has since extended through DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring programme followed by hundreds of thousands of founders, sales leaders and executives. What a room gets from him is not motivation in the old sense. It is a specific mental model for how decisions compound, delivered by someone who has run the P&L, built the audience, and stress-tested the ideas against a live community of operators every working day. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial performance and founder psychology Habit compounding and long-term execution discipline Leadership in fast-changing, multi-generational workplaces Productivity systems of high-performing operators Sales team performance and commercial discipline Personal leadership and daily operating rhythm Ideal for Founder-led and founder-stage businesses facing the transition from hustle to operating discipline CEOs, COOs and sales leaders running performance-driven commercial organisations Annual kick-offs, leadership offsites and sales conferences where the brief is execution, not strategy Audience outcomes A clear, durable model for how small daily choices compound into commercial outcomes A sharper view of the specific habits and rhythms that separate top operators from competent ones Case material drawn from real interviews with leaders such as Branson, Schultz and Welch, applied to the audience’s own context A concrete shift in how leaders structure their own days, weeks and quarters on returning to the business

Why organisations work with T. Harv Eker His core material is built from his own operating experience, including a retail fitness chain scaled to ten locations, a subsequent financial collapse, and a methodical rebuild; this is not theory cribbed from other authors. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind put his argument into mainstream circulation, a New York Times bestseller and number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list, which gives audiences a common reference point before the session starts. His Money Blueprint framework translates abstract wealth mindset material into a concrete diagnostic that individuals can apply to their own decisions and habits. Peak Potentials Training, the company he founded, has run entrepreneurial and wealth-mindset programmes at scale for more than two decades, so the material has been refined in front of large, mixed audiences rather than a single executive room. He speaks directly to founders, owner-operators and ambitious individuals, which is a different audience to the corporate keynote circuit and a better fit for entrepreneurial and franchise events. Biography highlights Canadian-American entrepreneur, businessman and motivational speaker Author of the New York Times bestseller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (HarperCollins, 2005), number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list Founder of Peak Potentials Training, acquired by Success Resources in 2011 Developer of the Money Blueprint framework for understanding individual wealth behaviour Creator of the Millionaire Mind Intensive and related programmes delivered internationally Biography The practical question behind most wealth advice is why the same information produces very different outcomes for very different people. T. Harv Eker’s working answer is the Money Blueprint: a set of internalised beliefs, set early, that governs how someone earns, saves, invests and loses money. His career has been an extended test of that argument, first on himself and then in front of large rooms of entrepreneurs. He is Canadian-American, born in Toronto in 1954, and started working at thirteen. After more than a dozen unsuccessful businesses, he opened one of North America’s early retail fitness stores and scaled it to ten locations, selling part of the company to a Fortune 500 buyer. He then lost most of the proceeds within two years. The rebuild is the source of the framework: a deliberate study of the psychological patterns that separate people who make money from people who keep it. That work became Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, a New York Times bestseller and number one on the Wall Street Journal business-book list, and Peak Potentials Training, the seminar company he founded and later sold to Success Resources in 2011. The Millionaire Mind Intensive remains the flagship programme. Eker’s natural audience is entrepreneurs, business owners and individuals building financial independence, rather than corporate boards. For growth conferences, founder communities, franchise events and wealth-focused audiences, his draw is the combination of a directly applicable framework, a mainstream bestseller and an operator’s willingness to talk about the failures as well as the results. Key speaking topics Wealth psychology and the Money Blueprint Entrepreneurial mindset and personal finance Building and rebuilding businesses Habits of high-earning individuals Motivation, action and execution Ideal for Entrepreneurs, founders and owner-operators scaling or restarting a business Franchise networks, sales organisations and business-opportunity communities Growth-focused conferences and private wealth events After-dinner and headline slots where a direct, plain-spoken commercial voice is required Audience outcomes A working diagnostic of the beliefs driving their current earning and spending behaviour A concrete view of the habits shared by high-earning entrepreneurs, drawn from Eker’s own research and teaching Specific prompts for changing patterns that have previously capped income or business growth A direct, action-oriented call to implement, consistent with his operating style

Why organisations work with Ryan Serhant He built a brokerage that uses its own studio as the primary lead source, giving sales and marketing leaders a working reference for how content-to-commerce actually operates at scale. He has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales while running the firm, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, so the methodology comes from a practitioner still in the deal flow. His three books, Sell It Like Serhant, Big Money Energy, and Brand It Like Serhant, sequence a coherent commercial argument from individual sales technique to personal brand as a business asset. He is one of the few operators booked at this level whose audience already knows the work through Netflix’s Owning Manhattan and Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York, which compresses the credibility step at large commercial events. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of SERHANT., a brokerage with an in-house film studio used as its lead-generation engine. Star and executive producer of Netflix’s Owning Manhattan; star of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-nominated Million Dollar Listing New York. Author of Sell It Like Serhant (2018), Big Money Energy (2021), and Brand It Like Serhant (2024). The Serhant Team ranked top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years and Top 5 nationwide. Closed close to ten billion dollars in personal sales, including record-setting transactions in New York and Florida. Founder of SERHANT. Studios and the SELL IT digital education platform. Biography Most brokerages still treat marketing as a cost centre and the salesforce as the engine. SERHANT., the firm Ryan Serhant founded in September 2020, inverts that. The studio is the engine. The agents convert the demand it generates. Owning Manhattan, the Netflix series Serhant produces and stars in, is part of the same flywheel. That model is the reason commercial leaders book him. Serhant has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, while running the firm. The point on stage is not the listings. It is what an operating model looks like when content production, personal brand, and sales pipeline are run as a single discipline rather than three departments. His three books trace the same argument at different altitudes. Sell It Like Serhant (2018) is a salesperson’s playbook. Big Money Energy (2021) reframes ambition as a discipline that can be coached. Brand It Like Serhant (2024) treats personal and corporate brand as a measurable commercial asset that produces inbound demand. Together they are the spine of his keynote work and the SELL IT education platform that grew out of the first book. The Serhant Team was ranked the top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years before he launched the brokerage. Million Dollar Listing New York, the two-time Emmy-nominated Bravo series, gave the broader audience the character. Owning Manhattan, now in its second Netflix season, gives them the company. Key speaking topics Content-to-commerce business models Sales methodology and pipeline Personal brand as a commercial asset Entrepreneurship and scale-up Customer acquisition and lead generation Founder mindset and commercial ambition Ideal for Chief revenue officers and heads of sales rebuilding pipeline economics around content Chief marketing officers integrating brand, social, and demand generation into one operating function Founders and CEOs of scale-up businesses building category presence Sales conferences, kickoffs, and partner events for high-ticket and brokerage businesses Audience outcomes A working picture of how an in-house content engine can function as the primary acquisition channel A clearer line between personal brand investment and measurable revenue A sales operating logic drawn from a practitioner who is still closing deals at the top of the market Language and frameworks senior leaders can take back to their commercial teams the next morning