Entrepreneurship speakers

Why organisations work with Peter Diamandis He has built the institutions that defined modern moonshot thinking. XPRIZE, Singularity University and the International Space University are his, not references he cites. Diamandis turned a USD 10 million prize into the catalyst for a private space industry now valued in the hundreds of billions. Boards get a practitioner view of how incentive design unlocks markets. His three New York Times bestsellers with Steven Kotler give executives a shared vocabulary, abundance, exponential, convergence, that travels easily into strategy offsites and board reviews. Through Abundance360 and BOLD Capital Partners he is in continuous contact with the founders building the next wave of AI, longevity and space companies, which keeps the content current rather than retrospective. He frames technology as a commercial and human opportunity, not a threat narrative, which lands with leadership teams that need their organisation to move from caution to considered ambition. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Chairman, XPRIZE Foundation, originator of the Ansari XPRIZE won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Singularity University, with Ray Kurzweil. Co-founder, International Space University, 1987. New York Times bestselling author of Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, with Steven Kotler. Named by Fortune in 2014 as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Founder or co-founder of more than 25 companies across space, longevity, venture capital and education, including Planetary Resources, Human Longevity Inc, Celularity, Space Adventures and Zero Gravity Corporation. Holds degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT and an MD from Harvard Medical School. Biography Most boards plan five years ahead while the technologies reshaping their markets are doubling in capability every eighteen months. The result is strategy that ages faster than it ships. This is the territory Peter Diamandis has spent three decades mapping, first as the entrepreneur who built XPRIZE to prove that private teams could reach space, then as the co-founder of Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil to teach leaders how to think about what compounds. The Ansari XPRIZE, announced in 1996 and won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne, was an early demonstration of his core thesis. A well-designed incentive can move a market faster than a government programme. That logic now sits behind the private space industry and a generation of XPRIZE competitions in fields from carbon removal to longevity. Boards meet a practitioner who has used the same mechanism repeatedly at scale, not a commentator describing it. His three bestsellers with Steven Kotler, Abundance, BOLD and The Future Is Faster Than You Think, give leadership teams a working language for AI, robotics, biotech and the convergence between them. Through Abundance360, his community of founders and investors, and BOLD Capital Partners, he keeps a direct line to the companies operationalising these technologies. The keynote draws on what he is funding and seeing now, not on case studies that have already cycled through the business press. His training is unusual for a futurist. Molecular genetics and aerospace engineering at MIT, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and the co-founding of the International Space University while still in medical school. That depth is what allows him to talk credibly to a healthcare board about longevity and to an industrials executive about space, in the same week, without the content collapsing into generality. Key speaking topics Exponential technologies and business strategy Artificial intelligence and convergence with robotics, biotech and energy Innovation, moonshot thinking and incentive prize design Future of work and leadership in accelerating environments Longevity, healthspan and the science of human performance Space, frontier industries and new commercial markets Entrepreneurship and the building of category-defining ventures Ideal for CEO and board audiences setting strategy under exponential technology pressure Innovation, R and D and corporate venture leaders rethinking how bets are made Healthcare, life sciences and longevity leadership teams Founders, scale-up CEOs and investors at private capital and family office gatherings Audience outcomes A working sense of which technologies are converging, on what timeline, and what that means for their industry A vocabulary for moonshot thinking and 10x targets that survives the trip back to the executive team Concrete examples of how incentive design and prize mechanisms have unlocked markets that traditional R and D could not A clearer view of where AI, longevity and space are creating new revenue categories rather than only disrupting existing ones Renewed appetite among senior leaders for ambition that is grounded in what is now technically achievable

Why organisations work with Peter Thiel Zero to One gives leadership teams a concrete test for whether their strategy is genuinely new or a costly form of imitation – a distinction most strategy processes are designed to obscure rather than force. His operating record spans two structurally different technology businesses – PayPal in consumer finance and Palantir in national security data analytics – which gives his claims about technology-led company building an unusually wide evidential base. The “contrarian question” – what important truth do very few people agree with you on? – functions as a practical diagnostic for strategic differentiation, not a rhetorical warm-up. Leadership teams leave with a tool they can apply immediately. As the first outside investor in Facebook and a Founders Fund partner whose bets include SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe, his argument for backing unconventional ideas over consensus picks is grounded in pattern recognition, not theory. His argument that definite optimism – a concrete plan for the future – outperforms “optionality” as a leadership posture is a direct challenge to how most boards approach long-term planning. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of PayPal; led the company to its acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 Co-founder and Chairman of Palantir Technologies since 2003; the company went public in 2020 and reached a market capitalisation exceeding $300 billion First outside investor in Facebook, acquiring approximately 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004; board member until 2022 Co-founder and partner at Founders Fund, with a portfolio including SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, and Lyft Author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014) – #1 New York Times bestseller and widely adopted reference text in investor and founder communities Holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford University; has taught at Stanford Law School and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers Founder of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides $100,000 grants to young entrepreneurs who forgo university to build companies World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; TechCrunch Crunchie Award, Venture Capitalist of the Year Biography The most expensive strategic mistake a leadership team can make is to compete at full intensity for something not worth fighting over. Most organisations never ask that question. Peter Thiel has spent three decades asking it – and the answer, across PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, has been the same: the most valuable companies do not win competitions; they make them irrelevant. Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998, led it as CEO through its 2002 acquisition by eBay for $1.5 billion, and then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm now serving governments and major institutions worldwide. He was also the first outside investor in Facebook, acquiring roughly 10% of the company for $500,000 in 2004. His Founders Fund portfolio – built on a philosophy of backing what others won’t – includes SpaceX, Airbnb, and Stripe. His 2014 book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future made the underlying argument explicit. The most valuable businesses go from zero to one – they create something genuinely new rather than competing for a larger share of something that already exists. Going from one to n, Thiel argues, is replication. Competitive markets grind down returns until no one profits. The strategic question worth asking is not how to win – it’s whether to compete at all. Thiel chairs Palantir’s board and is a partner at Founders Fund. He holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD from Stanford, where he has taught at the law school and serves on the Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers. He founded the Thiel Fellowship, which grants $100,000 to young founders who leave university to build companies – a direct expression of his conviction that conventional paths often foreclose the unconventional thinking that creates real value. Key speaking topics Creative monopoly and competitive strategy Technology company building and venture capital Contrarian thinking and differentiated investment Artificial intelligence and the future of technology Long-term strategic planning and definite optimism Entrepreneurship and company formation The stagnation of technological progress Ideal for Executive and board leadership teams examining competitive strategy and business model differentiation Chief Strategy Officers, transformation leads, and senior leadership forums in technology-intensive industries Founder and investor communities at the intersection of innovation and capital allocation C-suite audiences focused on AI, data infrastructure, and long-term technology strategy Audience outcomes A concrete framework – the zero-to-one distinction – for evaluating whether a strategy is genuinely new or a structured form of competitive imitation Understanding of why monopoly, correctly defined, is the goal of lasting business strategy, and what the four durable sources of monopoly advantage are A practical diagnostic tool – the contrarian question – for identifying differentiated insight in their own market or category A grounded perspective on how power-law logic in venture capital applies to internal resource allocation and portfolio thinking A clearer view of where technology is genuinely advancing, where it has stalled, and what that means for decisions made today

Why organisations work with Peter Vogel He holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD, one of the only dedicated academic chairs in Europe focused on how wealthy families turn giving into strategy rather than reputation management. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, function as operating manuals for principals and advisors, and the philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. He directs the IMD Global Family Business Center, which gives him a live view across hundreds of enterprising families and their governance, succession, and investment decisions. He is also an operator: founder and non-executive Chairman of Delta Venture Partners, which means founder and family-office audiences hear practitioner judgement, not only academic frameworks. Family Capital ranked him among the Top 100 Family Influencers globally, and Poets&Quants named him to its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list. Biography highlights Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and Director, IMD Global Family Business Center. Co-author of Family Philanthropy Navigator (Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal) and Family Office Navigator. Author of Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan) on the youth employment crisis. Founder and non-executive Chairman, Delta Venture Partners AG; Associate Partner, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame (2024); Poets&Quants Best 40 Under 40 business school professors (2022). Biography Most family businesses do not survive the second generation, and most family offices are built reactively, after a liquidity event, with little design behind them. The work that decides whether enterprising families compound capital or destroy it happens in governance, succession, and philanthropy, areas treated as private until they go wrong in public. Peter Vogel’s research and teaching at IMD sit precisely there. At IMD Business School in Lausanne, he holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and directs the Global Family Business Center, which works with principals, next-generation owners, and their advisors across continents. The chair, funded by the Debiopharm Group, is one of very few dedicated academic posts in Europe focused on how families convert wealth into strategic giving rather than reputational signalling. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, are used by family principals and their advisors as practical operating guides. The philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. Before the family-enterprise work, he wrote Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan), a global analysis of youth unemployment built on interviews with policymakers, employers, and young entrepreneurs. He is also a practitioner. He founded and chairs Delta Venture Partners, an early-stage investment firm, and is an Associate Partner of the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Family Capital has named him to its Top 100 Family Influencers list; Poets&Quants placed him among its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors; and in 2024 he was inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics Family business governance and succession Family office design and operating models Strategic philanthropy for enterprising families Next-generation ownership and leadership Entrepreneurship inside family enterprises Multi-generational wealth and capital allocation Ideal for Principals and next-generation members of family-owned businesses and family offices Advisors to enterprising families: private banks, wealth managers, multi-family offices, legal and tax counsel Boards of family-controlled companies considering succession, governance reform, or philanthropic strategy Foundation trustees and philanthropy leaders inside enterprising families Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates family enterprises that survive transitions from those that fragment A vocabulary for the three connected systems in an enterprising family: the operating business, the family office, and the philanthropy Practical reference points for governance design, ownership succession, and next-generation engagement A sharper sense of where philanthropy belongs in family strategy and where it does not

Why organisations work with Phil Spencer 25 unbroken years on a flagship Channel 4 show means audiences recognise Phil Spencer before he walks on. Few hosts in UK broadcasting can match that level of advanced familiarity. He moves between hosting and substance. Spencer founded Garrington Home Finders in 1996, one of the first UK property businesses built around buyer advocacy, and has since built two further businesses, including Move iQ. His past corporate hosting credits include British Gas, HM Land Registry and Norwich Union. Bureau testimonials repeatedly point to his ability to hold difficult rooms without losing them. Property is the obvious entry point, but the wider relevance is consumer trust in markets structured around the seller. That makes him useful to financial services, mortgage providers, insurers and housebuilders looking for a credible voice on customer-side decisions. The MBE awarded in the 2026 New Year Honours, for nineteen years of patronage at homelessness charity St Mungo’s, adds reputational gravity to the broadcasting credit. Biography highlights Co-presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location since 2000 with Kirstie Allsopp, across 44 series and counting. Founder of Garrington Home Finders (1996), one of the first UK property buying agencies built around buyer-side representation. Co-founder of Raise the Roof Productions (2010), now a major independent supplier to Channel 4, based in Glasgow. Founder of Move iQ (2018), the consumer property advice platform with a podcast, YouTube channel and Property Report tool. Awarded MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours for charitable services, recognised for nineteen years of patronage at homelessness charity St Mungo’s. Author of three Vermilion-published property books: How to Buy a House (with Kirstie Allsopp), Adding Value to Your Home, and How to Buy Your First Home. Biography Most consumer property markets are organised around the seller. Estate agents are paid by vendors and conveyancers work transaction by transaction. The buyer walks into the largest financial decision of their life without anyone professionally obliged to represent them. Phil Spencer founded Garrington Home Finders in 1996 after qualifying as a surveyor at London South Bank University. The business grew to four offices, thirty staff and £3.5m annual turnover before he stepped back in 2008. The buyer-agent model has since been widely copied across the UK property industry. Television came almost by accident. A Scottish production company looking for a property consultant on a new format invited him to screen-test as a presenter. Location, Location, Location launched in 2000 with Kirstie Allsopp and is now in its 44th series, the longest-running property programme in British television. The two later founded Raise the Roof Productions, now a major independent supplier to Channel 4, based in Glasgow. For corporate audiences, the proposition is unusual. Twenty-five years of continuous broadcasting give Spencer the immediate audience recognition that hosting demands. Three businesses sit behind the screen: Garrington in 1996, Raise the Roof in 2010, and Move iQ in 2018. The MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours, for nineteen years of patronage at homelessness charity St Mungo’s, adds a public-service credit beyond the broadcasting career. Key speaking topics The UK property market and the buyer’s journey Consumer-side business models in seller-led markets Entrepreneurship and category creation Awards hosting and conference facilitation Independent television production Career storytelling from Location, Location, Location Ideal for Property and housebuilding businesses running customer or industry events Mortgage providers, insurers and consumer financial services firms hosting client and broker conferences Awards programmes and industry recognition ceremonies that need a confident broadcast host Conference organisers booking after-dinner speakers with an entrepreneurial story behind the broadcasting credit Audience outcomes The Garrington story: how a category-defining property business was built around buyer advocacy in a seller-led market Honest commentary on the UK property market that goes beyond the news cycle into transaction-level dynamics How Move iQ was built as a consumer media platform inside an established broadcasting career A confidently held event programme with the pacing of British broadcast television

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Piers Linney He is running an AI-agent business while he speaks about one. Implement AI has rolled out managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK companies, so the deployment patterns he describes are ones he is shipping. His finance and policy lens is unusual for an AI speaker. Former Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank during the GBP 90 billion Covid loan programmes, with prior careers in M&A at Credit Suisse and venture capital. He has been on both sides of the cap table. Co-CEO of Outsourcery through AIM listing and administration, then Dragon on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, then investor and co-founder again. He is a credible voice on diversity and social mobility without using the word as a slogan. MBE 2026, European Diversity Champion 2024, founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. He works on stage in the register a senior buyer needs: operator, not analyst. Mainstage keynotes at Tech Show London, AI and Big Data World, DTX, ICAEW and Elite Business Live. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Implement AI, winner of AI Startup of the Year (London), UK Startup Awards 2025. Investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12, and subject of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. Former Non-Executive Director, British Business Bank, appointed 2017. MBE, King’s New Year Honours 2026, for services to small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. Chairman and co-founder, Atherton Bikes, additive-manufactured mountain bikes used to win the 2023 UCI Downhill World Championships. Former Co-CEO of Outsourcery (AIM-listed cloud and communications business) and former Trustee of Nesta. Biography Implement AI now runs managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK businesses, from manufacturers to marketing agencies. It is the latest company built by Piers Linney, who co-founded it in 2023 with Dr Aalok Shukla and serves as Executive Chairman. The work sits at the practical edge of the AI conversation: not whether to use it, but how to get agents into the operating model and measure what they return. That operator stance is reinforced by an unusually wide finance and policy track record. Linney trained as a solicitor at SJ Berwin, moved into M&A investment banking at Credit Suisse, then ran the buyout that became Outsourcery, taking the cloud and communications business onto AIM in 2013 in a GBP 13 million flotation. He was later appointed Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank, where he sat through the design of the UK government’s Covid SME loan programmes. Audiences know him from Dragons’ Den, where he invested as a Dragon for series 11 and 12, and from Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. He chairs Atherton Bikes, the additive-manufactured mountain bike maker whose frames carried Atherton siblings to UCI Downhill World Championship titles in 2023. He sits on Sky’s Diversity Advisory Council and was a founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. The MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours captured the through-line: small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. For boards trying to convert AI ambition into deployed capability, the value he brings is the rare combination of someone who has built and sold a tech business, sat on the board of a development bank, picked winners on national television, and is now shipping an AI-agent platform. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the digital workforce AI agent deployment and operating model redesign Entrepreneurship and scaling technology businesses Future of work and workforce transformation Access to capital and SME financing Diversity, social mobility and inclusion in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to deployed agent capability. CEOs, COOs and transformation leads redesigning operations around digital workers. Entrepreneur and scale-up audiences, including investor networks and chamber of commerce events. CHROs and learning leaders preparing workforces for AI-augmented roles. Audience outcomes A working picture of what an AI-agent operating model looks like, with concrete examples from live deployments. Sharper questions for vendors, internal teams and investors about where AI does and does not pay back. A perspective on the capital environment shaping technology investment, drawn from a former development-bank director. Confidence in framing AI as an operating decision, not an IT project.

Why organisations work with Rachel Harris She has built a seven-figure UK accounting firm with multiple regulated divisions, not advised on one. Her commentary on growth comes from an operator with payroll, clients and audit obligations. She runs a financial education platform with an audience over 150,000, which gives her unusual fluency in translating commercial detail for a non-specialist room. She sits as a Director and Trustee of AAT, which signals institutional credibility inside the UK accounting profession, useful for any audience of practice owners or professional services leaders. Her bursary scheme, the first of its kind in UK accounting, gives her a substantive position on widening access to professional services careers, beyond generic DEI talking points. She was named Accountancy Personality of the Year 2023 by PQ Magazine and Breakout Star of the Year by Accounting Excellence, two named industry awards from credible bodies. Biography highlights Founder and director of striveX, a UK accounting firm with regulated divisions in tax, audit, mortgages and HR. Founder of @accountant_she, a financial education platform with a combined audience exceeding 150,000. Accountancy Personality of the Year 2023, PQ Magazine. Breakout Star of the Year 2023, Accounting Excellence Awards. Director and Trustee of the Association of Accounting Technicians. Credentials: MBA, CMgr, MCMI, MAAT. TEDx speaker. Media contributor on ITV This Morning, BBC Radio 5 Live, LBC and Times Radio. Biography The accounting profession has a structural credibility problem with small business owners. Founders need commercial advice, but most accountants are trained in compliance, and most growth advisors have never run a regulated firm. Rachel Harris built striveX to close that gap, and now uses the experience as the basis of her work with founders elsewhere. striveX is one of the UK’s fastest-scaling accounting practices, with divisions across tax, audit, mortgages and HR. It is a regulated, multi-disciplinary firm with clients, staff and operating constraints, not a consultancy or a content business dressed up as one. The operator perspective is what audiences buy. Alongside the firm, she runs @accountant_she, a financial education platform with an audience above 150,000. The dual track matters. She has translated commercial substance into language that lands in a non-technical room, which is rarer than the credential stack of professional services speakers suggests. Her work is recognised inside the profession: Accountancy Personality of the Year 2023 from PQ Magazine, Breakout Star of the Year 2023 from Accounting Excellence, and a Director and Trustee role at the AAT. Her bursary scheme, the first corporate bursary fully funding students through AAT levels 2 to 4, started with one placement and expanded to five in its second year. It is a concrete commitment to widening entry into a profession that has not historically welcomed outsiders, and it gives her a credible position on access that is grounded in something she has built. Key speaking topics Scaling a service business beyond the founder Practice and professional services growth Building a financial brand online Entrepreneurship and operating discipline Personal finance for business owners Widening access in professional services Ideal for Founders and owners of professional services firms scaling past the first hire. Accountancy and finance audiences: practice managers, partners, AAT and ICAEW member networks. Conferences for small business owners, entrepreneurs and creator-led businesses commercialising an audience. Leadership audiences in financial services or professional services HR considering widening-access programmes. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a UK service firm grew from a single founder to a multi-division, seven-figure operation, with the decisions made along the way. A working model for combining a regulated professional services firm with a public-facing personal brand without the two undermining each other. A perspective on widening access to professional services careers grounded in an operating bursary, not an aspirational diversity statement. A view of how to translate financial substance for a non-specialist audience, useful for any leader who has to talk to staff, customers or media about numbers.

Why organisations work with Rachel Rodgers She has bootstrapped a company from zero to eight figures and four consecutive Inc. 5000 listings, so her advice on scale comes from running the playbook, not observing it. We Should All Be Millionaires gives clients a named, bestselling thesis on women’s wealth they can build a programme, sponsorship or summit around, rather than a generic empowerment message. She speaks credibly to the founders most internal entrepreneurship and supplier-diversity programmes struggle to reach: women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ operators trying to move beyond six figures. A former intellectual-property attorney, she pairs business-coaching language with practical commercial structure, pricing, contracts, equity, ownership of IP. The Hello Seven Foundation work on Black maternal health gives sponsors a coherent social-impact angle alongside the commercial content. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Hello Seven, a bootstrapped eight-figure business-education company. Author of We Should All Be Millionaires (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021); Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Amazon bestseller; 200,000+ copies sold. Author of Million Dollar Action and Audible Originals including Plan Your Year Like a Millionaire and Million Dollar Habits. Hello Seven named to the Inc. 5000 four years in a row. Featured in Time, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Washington Post, NBC News, Good Morning America, The Drew Barrymore Show and The Tamron Hall Show. Founder of The Hello Seven Foundation, a 501(c)(3) addressing Black maternal health disparities. Biography The wealth gap for women, and especially for women of colour, does not close at the revenue line. Many run successful businesses for years without converting that revenue into personal capital, ownership or generational wealth. Rachel Rodgers built Hello Seven around exactly this problem. A former intellectual-property attorney trained at Cardozo School of Law, Rodgers spent the early part of her career advising entrepreneurs on contracts and ownership. She moved into business coaching when she realised the side conversations about pricing, equity and money mindset were more valuable to her clients than the legal documents. Hello Seven launched in 2017 and has since scaled to eight figures, with four consecutive years on the Inc. 5000. Her book We Should All Be Millionaires, published by HarperCollins Leadership, has sold over 200,000 copies and reached the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Amazon bestseller lists. The thesis is direct: more women holding seven-figure wealth is a structural intervention in the economy, not a self-help goal. She has built that argument out through subsequent books, an Audible Originals catalogue, a podcast and the ROI Millionaire Summit. Rodgers’ commercial work runs alongside The Hello Seven Foundation, which funds prenatal care, doulas and midwives to address Black maternal mortality. It is one of the few wealth-building platforms in the market that connects personal economic power, business scale and a named social-impact mission inside a single operating company. Key speaking topics Building seven and eight-figure businesses Wealth-building for women and historically excluded founders Pricing, revenue and personal economic power Anti-racist and equitable business practice Entrepreneurship and scale-up discipline Money mindset and financial behaviour Founder leadership and team-building Ideal for Corporate entrepreneurship, supplier-diversity and small-business programmes targeting women and underrepresented founders DEI, ERG and women’s-network summits looking for a commercial rather than identity-only frame Financial-services and wealth-management audiences building products for women clients and business owners Founder and scale-up communities working through the gap between six and seven figures Audience outcomes A clear view of why women’s wealth-building is a structural commercial question, not a self-help one Practical operating habits Rodgers uses inside an eight-figure bootstrapped business A reframed conversation about pricing, equity ownership and what founders actually keep Language for sponsoring or coaching historically excluded entrepreneurs without falling into generic empowerment messaging An evidence-led case for connecting wealth-building to broader social-impact priorities

Why organisations work with Rafe Offer He has run brand portfolios at the scale most marketers only study, including a $1.2 billion Coca-Cola business and a Disney adult merchandise category that grew from $50m to $800m under his marketing leadership. He turned a single concert in a North London flat into Sofar Sounds, a venture-backed live music network operating in over 300 cities, with $40 million raised and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. He works on the seam between brand and community, which is where most companies now have to compete and where most marketing leaders lack practical playbooks. His career spans the corporate brand machine and the founder seat, so the same talk holds up in front of a CMO at a listed business and a scale-up CEO with a board to convince. Biography highlights Founder and Founder-Chair of Sofar Sounds, the global live music community founded in London in 2009. Former Director of Global Marketing, Disney Consumer Products, leading worldwide marketing for a $12bn licensing business. Former Global Marketing Director, The Coca-Cola Company, with responsibility for $1.2bn in stores, attractions, events and licensed merchandise. Former Director of Innovation, Diageo. Founder of “this & that,” a community and tech start-up focused on the practice of dialogue. Sofar Sounds named “one of the top new brands in America” by New York Magazine and described as a “quiet revolution” by The Guardian. Biography A live concert in a North London flat in 2009, eight friends invited to listen to a single performer, became the seed of Sofar Sounds. From that evening, Rafe Offer built a global live music network now operating in more than 300 cities, with about $40 million raised across three funding rounds and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. New York Magazine called it one of the top new brands in America. The unusual part of his career is the route in. Before Sofar, Offer ran the Mickey Unlimited adult merchandise programme at Disney, where the “having fun never goes out of style” campaign helped grow that category from $50m to $800m. He went on to lead worldwide marketing for Disney Consumer Products’ $12bn licensing business, then ran a $1.2bn Coca-Cola portfolio of stores, events and licensed merchandise as Global Marketing Director, before taking a Director of Innovation role at Diageo. That sequence, big-brand operator turned founder, is what gives his perspective its weight. He has built community-led growth from scratch and run brand P&Ls at industrial scale. He talks credibly to a CMO worried about declining ad efficiency and to a founder trying to convert a passionate audience into a fundable business. His more recent venture, this & that, is a community and tech start-up built around the practice of dialogue. It extends the through-line of his work: how organisations earn the right to people’s attention, and how that attention becomes commercial substance. Key speaking topics Brand building in the era of community Customer experience as a growth engine Scaling a start-up from idea to global brand Marketing and innovation inside large organisations Company culture in entrepreneurial businesses Fundraising and commercialising a community brand Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing for a low-trust, low-attention environment Founders and scale-up CEOs converting community traction into investable growth Customer experience and innovation leads inside large consumer businesses Boards reviewing brand and growth strategy in consumer-facing categories Audience outcomes A clearer view of why community has become the central question for consumer brands, with examples from Sofar, Disney and Coca-Cola Specific lessons on running a global brand portfolio at scale, drawn from leading $1.2bn at Coca-Cola and $12bn licensing at Disney A founder’s account of what investors actually fund in a community-led business Practical detail on how culture and customer experience interact in fast-growing companies

Why organisations work with Raffaello D’Andrea He has built two commercially-deployed autonomous systems from the ground up – Kiva Systems, now the architecture powering over a million Amazon Robotics units across 300+ facilities, and Verity, whose autonomous indoor drones operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide. Most technology speakers have observed others build at scale; D’Andrea has done it twice. His account of the gap between academic research and industrial deployment is not speculative. He moved from Cornell professor to co-founder to chief technical advisor to ETH faculty, and back to founder again – carrying hands-on engineering responsibility at every stage. That trajectory gives organisations a rare, inside view of what makes autonomous systems fail or succeed in practice. The Kiva story – a $775M acquisition that became the operational backbone of the world’s largest e-commerce company – is a fully documented, publicly available case study in redesigning an entire industry’s logistics model around autonomous systems. D’Andrea can speak to that case from the inside, as the architect of the core system. His ongoing research at ETH Zurich, through platforms like CyberRunner, Cubli and the Flying Machine Arena, sits at the frontier of autonomous learning and control. Audiences hear what is actually being solved in research today, not what is being forecast by analysts. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the Kiva system, and recognised by the Logistics Hall of Fame – D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry simultaneously, a combination that is rare among technology speakers. Biography highlights Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich; founder of ETH’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control Co-founder of Kiva Systems, acquired by Amazon in 2012 and now operating as Amazon Robotics, the autonomous fulfilment system at the core of Amazon’s global warehouse operations Founder and CEO of Verity, autonomous indoor drone company deployed at nearly 200 sites worldwide, with clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS Elected member, National Academy of Engineering (2020); National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee (2022); Logistics Hall of Fame inductee (2024) IEEE Fellow; IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2016); Engelberger Robotics Award (2015); Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2001); named on more than 40 US patents TED Global 2013 and TED 2016 speaker; TED and research videos with tens of millions of views New media artworks held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and France’s FRAC Centre; exhibited at the Venice Biennale Biography The systems running inside Amazon’s warehouses today – more than a million autonomous robots across over 300 facilities – trace their core architecture directly to Raffaello D’Andrea. As co-founder of Kiva Systems, D’Andrea designed the navigation logic, fleet coordination algorithms and adaptive control systems that made warehouse automation economically viable at commercial scale for the first time. When Amazon acquired Kiva in 2012, it rebranded the company as Amazon Robotics and made it the operational foundation of its global fulfilment network. That work was built on a research track record with real competitive stakes. Before Kiva, D’Andrea was at Cornell University, where he led the Robot Soccer Team to four consecutive RoboCup world championships – using autonomous multi-agent competition as a proving ground for the kinds of coordination and real-time decision-making that large-scale robotics deployments require. The move from academic research to commercial deployment, and back to academic research, is the defining pattern of his career. At ETH Zurich, where he founded the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, D’Andrea leads research through hands-on experimental platforms – CyberRunner, Cubli, the Flying Machine Arena, the Distributed Flight Array – that probe the real limits of autonomous learning, not its theoretical promise. In 2014, he co-founded Verity, whose autonomous indoor drone systems now operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide, automating inventory tracking and operational data collection for clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS. The company raised a $43M Series B in 2023 with Qualcomm Ventures among the investors. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering and inducted into both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Logistics Hall of Fame, D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry – a combination that reflects a career built on closing the distance between what autonomous systems can do in a laboratory and what they can sustain across an industrial operation. Key speaking topics Autonomous systems design and commercial-scale deployment AI, machine learning and physical intelligence Warehouse automation and supply chain operations Deep-tech entrepreneurship and venture building Autonomous flight and drone systems The gap between robotics research and real-world application The future of human-machine collaboration in physical operations Ideal for COOs, heads of supply chain and logistics leaders evaluating or scaling autonomous operations CTOs and technology leadership teams making investment decisions in robotics and AI deployment Boards and executive committees setting autonomous systems strategy Innovation and transformation leadership forums focused on operational technology Audience outcomes A practitioner’s framework for distinguishing autonomous systems that create genuine operational value from those that stall between proof of concept and deployment Concrete understanding of the systems design conditions that make robotics reliable and economically viable at industrial scale An insider account of how Kiva Systems redesigned warehouse operations – and what that process reveals about the real requirements of large-scale autonomous deployment A more accurate picture of where AI and robotics are heading, grounded in what is already working at commercial scale rather than in market speculation Sharper criteria for evaluating autonomous technology partnerships, vendor claims and investment priorities

Why organisations work with Ramon Ray He has built and exited three of his own companies and runs two active media platforms, so the advice is operator-tested, not theorised from the outside His Celebrity CEO framework gives founders a step-by-step way to build local and category authority, not generic personal-brand advice He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and President Obama, and shares platforms with Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, which gives him an unusually wide read on what works across founder archetypes He has been invited to the White House and the US Congress on small-business and personal-branding topics, which gives the work institutional weight beyond the usual marketing-conference circuit He is a high-energy event host as well as a keynote speaker, and is regularly hired by Entrepreneur magazine and similar publishers to anchor their flagship conferences Biography highlights Founder of SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media, two long-running platforms serving small-business owners Author of The Celebrity CEO, Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing (Wiley), Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses, and two further titles Conducted the first live Google Hangout interview with President Barack Obama Member of the US Delegation to India led by Ivanka Trump for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit Invited expert witness to the US Congress and speaker at the White House on personal branding Contributor to Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, Small Business Trends, and Allbusiness.com; co-founder of the Small Business Influencer Awards Biography Most small-business owners do not lose to better products. They lose to better-known competitors. The Celebrity CEO thesis takes that observation seriously and treats personal brand as a growth instrument with measurable outputs: leads, referrals, pricing power, retention. The book is the public face of two decades of work with founders trying to compete against larger rivals. The author of that thesis, Ramon Ray, is a five-time entrepreneur who has built and exited three companies, including SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media. He has written five books across technology, marketing, and personal brand, and his journalism appears in Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, and Small Business Trends. His access to the top of the founder market is unusual. He conducted the first live Google Hangout with President Obama, joined the US Delegation to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and has been invited as an expert witness to Congress and as a speaker at the White House on personal branding. He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and shared stages with Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Deepak Chopra. What makes the work commercially useful is the operator’s eye behind it. Ramon co-founded the Small Business Influencer Awards with Anita Campbell, anchors Entrepreneur magazine’s flagship conferences as host, and runs an active mastermind for founders applying the Celebrity CEO playbook. The advice is not theoretical; it is what he is doing for himself in public, in real time. Key speaking topics Personal brand as a growth engine for founders Small-business marketing and customer acquisition Community building and category authority Social media for entrepreneurs Digital tools and technology for small business Entrepreneurial mindset and resilience Ideal for Founders and CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses Franchise networks, dealer councils, and independent business associations Marketing and growth leaders inside larger organisations who serve SMB customers Diversity-in-business and youth-entrepreneurship programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of what a Celebrity CEO is, and what it takes to become one in their market A simple model for turning customer relationships into a referral and retention engine Specific tactics for showing up consistently on social platforms without burning out Renewed conviction that being visible is part of the job, not a vanity project A short list of next moves they can act on the same week

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