Entrepreneurship

Why organisations work with Britteny Floyd-Mayo She built a recognised consumer wellness brand, Trap Yoga Bae®, that reaches audiences who feel ostracised by standard wellness content. That gives her credibility with employees who tune out the corporate version. Her work sits at the intersection of wellbeing and inclusion, two budgets that increasingly need to be defended together. She speaks to both without separating them. She delivers in formats most wellness speakers cannot: a 45-minute movement and music-led experience as comfortably as a keynote or workshop. That makes her useful for offsites, conferences, and ERG events where a talk alone would not move the room. She has been programmed alongside mainstream consumer brands (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Essence Festival), which signals she can hold a corporate stage without softening the cultural specificity that makes the work distinctive. Biography highlights Founder of Trap Yoga Bae®, a trademarked inclusive wellness brand combining yoga, hip-hop culture, and self-care. Studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University. Certified in Vinyasa yoga in India. Named in Forbes among the top 8 Black Wellness experts to watch. Featured in Issa Rae’s HBO Max series Sweet Life. Speaker and featured artist for Lululemon, Eventbrite, Brit + Co, Black Girls Code, Black Joy Parade, and the 25th Annual Essence Festival. Biography Most corporate wellness and inclusion programming is built for a default employee. The people it most needs to reach, those who already feel like outsiders in the room, are the ones who quietly opt out. Britteny Floyd-Mayo built her brand inside that gap. Trap Yoga Bae® started as a response to feeling unwelcome in standard yoga studios. It grew into a trademarked wellness movement that pairs yoga and meditation with hip-hop, cultural specificity, and direct language. The work is taken seriously enough that Forbes has named her among the top Black wellness experts to watch, and that Issa Rae cast her in the HBO Max series Sweet Life. The educational backbone is real. She studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University, and trained for Vinyasa certification in India. That foundation is why the talks travel beyond the yoga mat into burnout, boundary-setting, and the working conditions that shape mental health for women and employees of colour. For organisations, the practical question she answers is uncomfortable but useful. Why are the people your wellbeing and inclusion programmes were designed for the ones most likely to disengage from them, and what does a version look like that they would actually choose? She has built a partnership list (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Black Girls Code, Essence Festival) that suggests the answer travels. Key speaking topics Inclusive wellbeing and self-care Burnout prevention for women founders and leaders Boundary-setting at work Mental health and resilience Cultural relevance in DEI and wellness programming Entrepreneurship and personal brand-building Employee Resource Group (ERG) keynotes and experiences Ideal for Heads of DEI, ERG leads, and culture teams running inclusion or wellbeing programming for Black employees and other under-served groups. CHROs and benefits leaders looking to refresh wellbeing offerings that have stopped landing. Women’s leadership networks and founder communities focused on burnout and boundary-setting. Conference and offsite programmers needing an experiential keynote rather than a panel discussion. Audience outcomes Practical language for setting boundaries without apology, drawn from her No Is A Full Sentence framework. A different reference point for what inclusive wellbeing looks like in practice, not in policy. Specific tools from the From Pain to Paradise method for processing setback and burnout. An experience employees describe afterwards as theirs, not the company’s, which is the test most wellbeing programmes fail.

Why organisations work with Candice Matthews Brackeen She invests her own fund’s capital into the same founder profile most institutions struggle to reach, which makes her perspective on deal flow operational rather than advocacy-led. She built and now owns Black Tech Week, the largest US convening of Black founders, investors and corporate partners, giving her direct visibility on which company-building patterns are working at scale. She testified before the US House Financial Services Committee in 2025 on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley, a credibility marker few speakers on this topic hold. She translates between corporate procurement, venture capital and underrepresented founder communities, the three groups that rarely sit in the same conversation despite all needing each other. Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020, a recognition that signals investor peers, not bureau marketing, rate her work. Biography highlights General Partner, Lightship Capital, a Cincinnati venture fund backing underrepresented founders in CPG, e-commerce, sustainability, AI and healthcare. Founder and CEO, Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator alumni have raised more than $100M in follow-on funding. Co-founder, Hillman Accelerator, the first Midwest accelerator dedicated to underrepresented tech founders. Witness before the US House Financial Services Committee, March 2025, on access to capital beyond Silicon Valley. Named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Women in Venture Capital, 2020. Member of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium; advisory roles with the Cincinnati Innovation District and Endeavor Northwest Arkansas. Contributing author at TechCrunch. Biography Less than one percent of US venture capital goes to Black-led companies. That number has been broadly stable for years, despite every major institutional commitment to change it. The interesting question for senior leaders is no longer whether the gap exists. It is what mechanism actually closes it. Lightship Capital is one of the small number of funds built specifically to answer that question with capital rather than commentary. As General Partner, Candice Matthews Brackeen invests in early-stage companies across consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, sustainability, artificial intelligence and healthcare, with a focus on founders outside coastal networks. She also founded Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator programmes have helped portfolio companies secure more than $100M in follow-on funding. Before Lightship she co-founded Hillman Accelerator in 2016, the first Midwest programme dedicated to underrepresented tech founders, and Hello Parent, a school-safety app that became a national partner of the Brady Campaign. She has since acquired Black Tech Week and moved it to Cincinnati, anchoring it next to Fortune 500 corporate partners including Kroger and Procter and Gamble. Her authority on this subject is institutional, not rhetorical. The Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020. In March 2025 she testified before the US House Financial Services Committee on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley. She also serves on NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium and writes for TechCrunch on venture and entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Venture capital outside Silicon Valley Building inclusive innovation ecosystems Access to capital for underrepresented founders Corporate partnerships with early-stage companies Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Public policy and capital markets Diversity, equity and inclusion in technology Ideal for Chief investment officers, corporate venture leads and innovation heads designing pipelines into underrepresented founder markets Procurement and supplier diversity leaders building substantive routes to minority-led suppliers Boards and CEOs of large corporates with stated commitments on capital, supplier or workforce inclusion Public sector and economic development leaders working on regional innovation strategy Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where credible deal flow from underrepresented founders actually sits and how to access it. A working view of what corporate partnerships with founder communities look like when they generate revenue, not just press. Specific language for boards on why capital access is an economic question, not only an inclusion one. Direct exposure to a working venture model that has produced documented follow-on funding outcomes.

Why organisations work with Cheryl Campos She has built the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, VCFamilia, and has used it to channel more than $10M of LP funding to emerging Latine fund managers. That is an operating result inside venture capital, not a panel statement. She knows how to take a FinTech platform from early stage to unicorn. As employee #10 at Republic, she led venture growth and partnerships through the company’s run to a $1BN valuation. Her LaFamilia Foundation work is backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer, which gives corporate audiences a credible reference point for what serious inclusion investment looks like in practice. She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Harvard economics degree, and pairs that with an investor’s view of where capital actually flows. Her speaking range covers FinTech, venture, identity and community building, which makes her usable for inclusion programming, leadership offsites and FinTech-sector events without changing speakers. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, LaFamilia Foundation, backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. Co-founder of VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. Former Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic, employee #10, scaling the platform to a $1BN valuation. Scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and investment partner at The Community Fund. Former Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays, Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance. BA in Economics with honours, Harvard University. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31. Biography Latine founders raise less than 2 percent of venture capital, despite Latine consumers being one of the fastest-growing economic groups in the United States. Closing that gap is not a marketing problem. It needs operators who can build new pipelines of investors, founders and limited partners, and move real money through them. LaFamilia Foundation was set up to do that work. As co-founder and CEO, Campos runs two communities under the foundation: VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. VCFamilia has facilitated more than $10M of LP funding into emerging Latine fund managers. FounderFamilia has directed over $1M into early-stage startups through its national pitch competition. Corporate backers include J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. The operating credibility comes from Republic. Campos joined the FinTech investment platform as employee #10 in 2018 and led venture growth and partnerships during its run to a $1BN valuation. She is also a scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and an investment partner at The Community Fund, with prior experience as an investment banking analyst at Barclays in the Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance team. Her academic background sits on top of that operating record. Campos holds a BA in economics with honours from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31 list of emerging venture capital talent, and is a frequent voice in FinTech and venture programming on inclusion, community building and capital access. Key speaking topics Community as a capital-access mechanism in venture and FinTech Latine representation in venture capital and entrepreneurship Inclusion in financial services and technology Building investor and founder pipelines from scratch FinTech growth and scale-up operating lessons Identity, career path and reinvention Ideal for DEI, talent and ERG leaders inside banks, asset managers and FinTech firms looking for substance beyond sentiment programming. Venture capital firms, family offices and corporate venture teams building Latine or wider underrepresented founder pipelines. Heads of community, marketing and partnerships at FinTech and platform businesses scaling user and investor networks. Industry conferences on FinTech, entrepreneurship and capital markets that need a credible voice on inclusion as an operating discipline. Audience outcomes A working view of how community structures inside venture and FinTech move capital and talent, not just sentiment. Specific reference points for what corporate-backed inclusion programmes look like when J.P. Morgan, AWS and Comcast are the partners. Practical lessons from inside a FinTech platform that scaled from employee 10 to unicorn status. A clearer read on how Latine founder and investor networks are forming and where corporates can plug in usefully.

Why organisations work with Brian Brackeen He has run a face recognition company at commercial scale and publicly refused to sell that technology to law enforcement, which gives his arguments on AI governance a credibility most consultants cannot match. He can speak to algorithmic bias from inside the engineering stack, not from the outside as a critic, because he has shipped the models and seen where the failure modes sit. As General Partner of a $50M fund backing underrepresented founders, he brings a capital-allocation lens to questions of inclusion that boards typically hear framed only as workforce or culture issues. His 2018 TechCrunch op-ed against police use of facial recognition shaped industry debate ahead of formal regulation. Boards weighing AI policy get a practitioner who set a market precedent, not a commentator describing one. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Kairos, a face recognition AI company named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013. General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M Cincinnati-based venture fund backing women, founders of colour, LGBTQ+ founders, and founders with disabilities. Author of a June 2018 TechCrunch op-ed arguing that commercial facial recognition should not be sold to government or police use. Returned to Kairos in 2021 as chair of the scientific advisory board, focused on eliminating racial bias in face recognition datasets. Earlier career: Senior Project Manager at Apple and Senior Managing Consultant at IBM. Co-founder of Lightship Foundation, which owns Black Tech Week. Biography Face recognition is one of the few AI categories where a founder has publicly walked away from a commercial market on principle. In June 2018, the CEO of Kairos published an op-ed in TechCrunch refusing to sell the company’s technology to law enforcement, citing the accuracy gap for people of colour and the consequences of misidentification. The argument landed before the broader regulatory conversation caught up. That founder is Brian Brackeen. He had built Kairos from 2012, with prior operating roles at Apple as a Senior Project Manager and at IBM as a Senior Managing Consultant. Under his leadership, Kairos was named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013 and positioned alongside Microsoft and Face++ in the global face recognition market. A board dispute removed him as CEO in 2018; he returned in 2021 to chair the scientific advisory board, with a specific mandate on algorithmic bias. The work since has been about capital, not code. As General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M fund he runs with co-founder Candice Matthews Brackeen, Brackeen invests in underrepresented founders and in regions outside the coastal venture hubs. Lightship Foundation, the family’s parallel non-profit, owns Black Tech Week. The investing thesis treats inclusion as a market inefficiency, not a values exercise. For senior leaders, the value of his perspective is the combination of these two operating experiences. He can describe where bias enters an AI system at the dataset level, why a vendor might be the wrong place to outsource that judgement, and what the capital signal looks like when an entire founder population is being underwritten by the same narrow set of pattern-matching investors. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic bias Facial recognition and surveillance technology Responsible AI governance Venture capital and underrepresented founders Diversity in technology Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI governance policy CTOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers responsible for deployment decisions Investors, LPs, and corporate venture teams reviewing portfolio inclusion Innovation and DEI leaders working at the intersection of product and people Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of where bias actually enters AI systems, and why surface-level audits miss it A defensible framework for deciding which AI use cases an organisation should refuse, not just constrain A clearer view of how capital allocation patterns shape which technologies get built and by whom Direct exposure to the trade-offs faced by founders deploying AI in regulated and sensitive contexts

Why organisations work with Arlan Hamilton She built and capitalised a venture firm from nothing, sleeping on the floor at SFO between meetings, then deployed roughly $30 million into more than 200 companies. That is operator credibility on entrepreneurship and capital, not theory. Her investment thesis at Backstage Capital is a working commercial argument that underestimated founders are a mispriced asset class. Audiences leave with a specific framework for how that misallocation happens and where it produces opportunity. Two books with major trade publishers, It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House) and Your First Million (Hachette), give her a body of written work that travels with the booking and gives audiences a way to extend the conversation. She is one of a small number of Black women operating at fund-principal level in US venture, and the first non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company. That visibility matters for organisations briefing her in front of leadership, founder, or investor audiences. Her register is direct and personal rather than corporate. She is bookable for founder events, investor summits, and leadership conferences where the audience wants honesty about how capital actually gets allocated. Biography highlights Founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, established 2015; the firm has raised approximately $30 million and backed more than 200 startups led by underrepresented founders. Author of It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023). First non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company (2018). Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2016). Named to Business Insider’s 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech (2019). Host of Your First Million, a long-running podcast on building wealth and businesses from the ground up. Biography Backstage Capital was founded in 2015 by a single operator with no finance background, no MBA, and, at the time, no permanent address. The firm has since deployed around $30 million across more than 200 startups led by Black, women, and LGBTQ+ founders. That track record is the central claim of Arlan Hamilton’s work, and it is the basis on which serious organisations book her. Hamilton’s argument is commercial before it is moral. Capital flows to founders who look familiar to the people allocating it, and entire categories of viable business get priced as risk when they are simply unfamiliar. Backstage exists to test that thesis in the market. The portfolio is the proof point, and the books extend the argument into method. The biographical detail is by now well-documented: she built the fund while sleeping on the floor at San Francisco International Airport, doing Silicon Valley meetings by day. It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023) set out the operating system she developed across that period: how to identify unmet need, how to raise capital without a network, how to build multiple income streams, how to keep going when the room does not yet believe you. She is most useful to organisations and audiences working on early-stage investing, founder development, inclusive capital, and the structural question of how decisions about funding actually get made. Her authority in those conversations is operator authority, not advocacy, which is what makes the work travel. Key speaking topics Venture capital and underestimated founders Entrepreneurship from zero Building and scaling new funds Inclusive investing as commercial strategy Personal resilience and self-belief in business Wealth building and ownership for first-generation founders Ideal for Founder, scale-up and accelerator audiences Venture capital and private equity teams looking at deal flow beyond their networks Corporate venture and innovation leads, particularly those working on supplier diversity or new-market entry Leadership audiences on inclusion who want a commercial frame rather than a compliance frame Audience outcomes A specific argument for why underrepresented founders are a structurally mispriced opportunity, with portfolio evidence A concrete account of how a venture fund gets built without an existing network or institutional backing Practical method on identifying unmet need and turning lived experience into a fundable business Honest perspective from a Black, queer fund principal on how capital decisions are actually made inside the room

Why organisations work with Aniyia Williams She has built on both sides of the table. She founded and patented hardware at Tinsel, then moved into ecosystem leadership and capital strategy at Omidyar Network. Few responsible-tech voices have done both. Her work on Zebras Unite gave a vocabulary to a generation of founders who reject the unicorn default. That argument now shows up in boardrooms making real capital allocation decisions. Through Black & Brown Founders and the Black Innovation Alliance, she has spent years inside the operational detail of how 170+ organisations support entrepreneurs the standard system overlooks. The data is concrete. At Omidyar Network’s The Tech We Want, she shapes how a major philanthropic investor thinks about the next layer of technology infrastructure. Senior audiences hear primary-source thinking, not commentary. Biography highlights Director / Principal, Responsible Technology, Omidyar Network. Leads The Tech We Want initiative. Founder and board chair, Black & Brown Founders. Co-founder, Zebras Unite. Co-founder, Firefly Alliance. Convener, Black Innovation Alliance (170+ partner organisations). Founder and inventor, Tinsel. Patent holder for the world’s first audio necklace. 2019 Penn State Alumni Achievement Award (alumni aged 35 and under). Biography The venture model has produced an extraordinary generation of companies. It has also defined what a “real” company looks like in ways that exclude most of the operators who could build the next one. Aniyia Williams has spent the past decade arguing, in operating detail, that the model is one option, not the only one. She began as a fashion-tech founder. At Tinsel she designed, built and patented the world’s first audio necklace. The experience of raising hardware capital as a Black woman founder in Silicon Valley led to the work that followed: Black & Brown Founders, which she founded in 2017 to give Black and Latinx entrepreneurs the financial and community infrastructure that the standard system does not provide, and Zebras Unite, the co-founded movement that gave purpose-aligned founders a clear alternative to unicorn-chasing. That ecosystem work scaled. As convener of the Black Innovation Alliance, she now sits at the centre of a 170-organisation coalition working on the wealth gap for tech entrepreneurs of colour. At Omidyar Network, where she is a director on the Responsible Technology team, she leads The Tech We Want, an incubated initiative shaping how a major philanthropic investor backs the next layer of technology. For boards and executive teams, the value is concrete. She brings the founder’s view of capital, the funder’s view of portfolio strategy, and a working knowledge of governance for technology that has not yet been built. Penn State recognised the trajectory in 2019 with its Alumni Achievement Award. The substance behind the award is what makes her useful in a serious strategy conversation. Key speaking topics Responsible technology and the future of the innovation economy Alternatives to the venture capital model (the “zebra” thesis) Entrepreneurship and scale-up under different rules Inclusive innovation and access to capital Purpose-aligned business strategy Building and governing technology for the long term Ideal for Boards and investment committees rethinking how they back early-stage technology Innovation leaders, CSOs and corporate venture teams designing new operator models Heads of DEI, talent and ecosystem partnerships working on access to capital and supplier diversity Founder communities, accelerators and philanthropic funders Audience outcomes A sharper view of which startup orthodoxies are commercially load-bearing and which are not Working language for purpose-aligned business models that boards and investors can use A clearer map of the responsible-technology agenda and where it intersects with growth strategy Concrete examples of capital, governance and ecosystem design from operators outside the standard pattern A renewed argument for why inclusive innovation is a commercial question, not only a values question

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 Donald Miller He built the most widely adopted messaging framework in the market. Over a million business leaders have used the StoryBrand SB7 model, and companies including Chick-fil-A, Intel, TOMS Shoes, Tempur Sealy, and Trek Bicycles have applied it to live commercial work. He gives marketing and sales teams a shared vocabulary. The hero, guide, plan, and call-to-action structure gets a CMO, a founder, and a field rep aligned on the same customer story inside one session. He is a practitioner, not a consultant-at-a-distance. Miller runs StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, and Coach Builder, and the frameworks he teaches from stage are the ones his own companies run on. He translates narrative theory into revenue mechanics. The work connects story structure directly to website copy, sales emails, and lead generation assets that teams can ship the week after the keynote. He is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have stayed on the list collectively for more than a year, which means a room of senior marketers arrives already familiar with the thesis. Biography highlights CEO of StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, and Coach Builder. Author of Building a StoryBrand (2017) and Building a StoryBrand 2.0 (HarperCollins Leadership, 2025). Author of Marketing Made Simple and How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan. New York Times bestselling author; books have sold millions of copies and spent more than a year on the list collectively. StoryBrand framework adopted by Chick-fil-A, Intel, TOMS Shoes, Trek Bicycles, Tempur Sealy, Pantene, Zaxby’s, and Ford/Lincoln. Earlier bestselling memoirs include Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Scary Close; Blue Like Jazz was adapted for film and premiered at SXSW. Biography Most companies talk about themselves when they should be talking about their customer. The StoryBrand framework, built by Donald Miller and laid out in Building a StoryBrand and its 2025 revision, forces that correction by borrowing the mechanics of narrative: a hero with a problem, a guide with a plan, a call to action, and stakes on both sides of the decision. The framework is now standard equipment in growth teams. More than a million leaders have run their messaging through the SB7 model, and named companies including Chick-fil-A, Intel, TOMS Shoes, Trek Bicycles, and Tempur Sealy have used it on live commercial work. What distinguishes the approach is not the use of story as metaphor, it is that the output is operational: a BrandScript that rewrites a homepage, a sales email, and a lead magnet in the same language. Miller runs the companies that teach it. He is CEO of StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, and Coach Builder, and the playbooks he takes to the stage are the ones his own businesses use to acquire customers. That closes the gap between theory and execution that most marketing speakers leave open. Before StoryBrand, Miller wrote the New York Times bestsellers Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Scary Close. Blue Like Jazz was adapted for film and premiered at SXSW. The craft training those books represent is what makes the business work land: a CEO learning StoryBrand is being taught by someone who spent two decades writing narrative for general readers before applying it to commercial messaging. Key speaking topics StoryBrand messaging framework Marketing and customer acquisition Sales communication and conversion Brand clarity Small business growth Narrative in commercial strategy Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors, and brand leads responsible for messaging across a product or service portfolio Founders and CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses where the leader still owns the brand voice Sales leaders whose teams need a shared structure for prospect conversations and follow-up Agency and consulting networks who want a common framework across client engagements Audience outcomes A working vocabulary, hero, guide, problem, plan, stakes, for diagnosing any piece of marketing that is not converting A clear view of why customer-centric messaging outperforms feature-led messaging in measurable sales terms Practical editing instincts that apply immediately to websites, email sequences, and sales scripts A shared internal language that aligns marketing, sales, and leadership on the same customer story Confidence to cut the clutter from existing brand assets rather than adding more of it

Why organisations work with Felipe Gomez A working framework, the Virtuoso Code, built on three pillars (Method, Attitude, Passion) that gives leaders a concrete vocabulary for what separates technical competence from sustained excellence. Operating credibility behind the metaphor: tripled revenue at Compass Group Colombia, built Farmacity Colombia from launch, and scaled an e-business consultancy across seven Latin American countries. A separate, codified entrepreneurial-mindset model (Attitude-E, six levers) published as a bestselling book in 2019, usable as a standalone keynote for growth and innovation audiences. A live grand piano performance integrated into the keynote, which makes the content memorable in a way a slide deck cannot replicate. Useful when the brief calls for emotional anchoring of a strategy message at a leadership conference or kick-off. Bilingual delivery in English and Spanish, with substantial reach across Latin American corporate audiences. Biography highlights MBA, IMD Lausanne; advanced training in Leading Digital Business Transformation. Author of Attitude-E (2019) and Bitácora De Una Pandemia En Quince Conversaciones (2020). Former Managing Director, Compass Group Colombia; founding president, Farmacity Colombia. Founder of Ink./Azurian, scaled to seven Latin American countries. Speaker at TED, Global Peter Drucker Forum, WOBI, World Business Forum, Oslo Business Forum. 1,000+ keynote engagements across 33 countries on five continents. Biography The habits that produce a virtuoso musician are remarkably specific. Hours of structured practice, an attitude toward error that treats mistakes as information, a relationship with a craft that survives long after the early thrill has gone. Felipe Gomez has spent the last decade arguing that the same habits produce sustained performance in business, and using a grand piano on stage to make the case. The argument has operating weight behind it. Before turning to speaking full time in 2014, Gomez ran Compass Group Colombia as Managing Director, tripling revenue and lifting operating profit 130%. He was founding president of Farmacity Colombia, opening twelve stores in twenty months. Earlier he had built Ink., later Azurian, into the first significant e-business consultancy in Latin America, with offices in seven countries. The Virtuoso Code, his current keynote framework, organises that experience into three pillars: Method, Attitude, Passion. Method is the discipline of consistent, rigorous practice. Attitude is the empathy and humility that make collaboration possible. Passion is the courage to keep going when the work stops being easy. Attitude-E, his 2019 book, applies the same lens to entrepreneurship through six levers: Envision, Energy, Endurance, Ensemble, Elasticity, Engagement. Gomez has presented at TED, the Global Peter Drucker Forum, WOBI, the World Business Forum, and the Oslo Business Forum, in 33 countries on five continents. He delivers in English and Spanish, and his Allegro non-profit brings live therapeutic music to hospital settings in Colombia. Key speaking topics Peak performance and sustained excellence Entrepreneurial mindset and operating discipline Leadership, empathy, and collaboration Innovation culture Active listening and communication Resilience under pressure Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership conferences anchoring a year-long performance or culture programme. Sales and commercial kick-off events where a leadership message needs emotional anchoring. Latin American and Hispanic corporate audiences requiring senior bilingual delivery. Entrepreneurship and scale-up forums where Attitude-E is the relevant frame. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, Method, Attitude, Passion, for what separates sustained performers from talented amateurs. The six Attitude-E levers as a working checklist for entrepreneurial behaviour inside a corporate setting. A specific, memorable anchor for a leadership or kick-off message, reinforced by live piano performance. Practical cues for active listening drawn from Gomez’s 5Ts approach.

Why organisations work with Chris Lyons Direct line into a16z’s deal flow across AI, Web3, and consumer technology, the same intelligence the firm uses to commit capital to companies like OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. A named thesis on culture as a distribution channel for technology, built into the Cultural Leadership Fund, which moved this idea from observation to a fund structure with institutional limited partners. Operator credibility on Web3 specifically, in his role as President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto, at a moment when most boards still treat crypto and AI as separate strategic questions. A perspective on consumer adoption shaped by deep relationships with founders and cultural leaders, useful for brand, media, and consumer-facing organisations trying to understand what the next decade looks like. Biography highlights General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; President, Web3 Media at a16z crypto. Founder of the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, Silicon Valley’s first venture fund with 100% African American Limited Partners. Helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund in 2021. Board director at Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. Kauffman Fellow, Class of 2019. Closing keynote, Harvard Business School Black Investment Club Conference, on “Culture as an Asset Class.” Biography Most boards now have AI and Web3 on the agenda. Far fewer have a credible read on which companies and behaviours inside those categories will actually scale. That read is the working asset of a senior venture partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and it is what Chris Lyons brings into a room. Lyons joined a16z in 2013 as Chief of Staff to co-founder Ben Horowitz, with an internal mandate to build deep relationships with founders regardless of investment status. That work became the architecture for the firm’s later positions in companies including OpenAI, Airbnb, and Lyft. He was promoted to General Partner in 2021 and helped launch a16z’s first $400M Seed Fund the same year. In 2018 he founded the Cultural Leadership Fund, a vehicle built on the thesis that cultural leaders, athletes, entertainers, and executives, drive how new technology gets adopted. CLF was structured with 100% African American Limited Partners, with fees and carry directed to organisations advancing Black participation in technology. The fund made the cultural distribution argument institutional. He now leads Web3 Media at a16z crypto and sits on the boards of Yuga Labs, The James Beard Foundation, The Black Economic Alliance, and New Story Charity. The combination of operator inside the firm and connector across culture, capital, and consumer technology is rare at his level of venture seniority. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI Web3 and digital ownership Venture capital and emerging technology Consumer technology adoption Culture as a driver of technology distribution Entrepreneurship and scale Diversity in technology and capital Ideal for Chief executives, boards, and corporate development leaders setting strategy on AI, Web3, and consumer technology CMOs and brand leaders rethinking how cultural relevance translates into commercial advantage Investment committees and family office principals reading the next venture cycle Innovation, partnerships, and ventures teams scouting categories and founders Audience outcomes A clearer view of which AI and Web3 categories are attracting serious capital and why A working framework for thinking about cultural influence as a real distribution mechanism, not a marketing layer Specific examples from inside a16z’s portfolio that illustrate how consumer technology actually scales A more grounded read on where venture conviction sits today, set against media noise

Why organisations work with Alessandra Dabul A board chair and M&A lawyer who has spent three decades inside cross-border deals, so her ESG perspective lands as governance and diligence content, not as advocacy. President of the Board at Gavea Angels and board member at AmCham Brasil, giving her a working line of sight into how investors and corporates in Latin America are actually pricing ESG into capital decisions. Brings the rare combination of IBGC corporate governance certification with executive education in Sustainable Capitalism at UC Berkeley Law and Sustainable Business Strategy at Harvard Business School, applied to live private and public company boards. Speaks fluently in English and French to international audiences, with deep specificity on the Brazil and broader Latin American context that most global ESG speakers cover only thinly. Founding partner of two Brazilian firms focused on M&A and family business governance, which gives her credibility on succession, owner transitions, and the ESG questions that surface during ownership change. Biography highlights Founding partner of Pereira, Dabul Advogados and of RCA Governanca e Sucessoes, both Brazil-based firms. President of the Board at Gavea Angels, one of Brazil’s longest-standing angel investor networks. Board member at AmCham Brasil and member of Women Corporate Directors Brazil Chapter. Former director at Deloitte and senior manager at KPMG, with prior leadership at EY in southern Brazil. Masters and PhD in Economic Law and Social and Environmental Law; IBGC corporate governance certification. Executive education in Sustainable Capitalism and ESG at UC Berkeley Law, and in Sustainable Business Strategy at Harvard Business School. Biography Most boards in emerging markets are still treating ESG as a reporting exercise. The directors who have lived through cross-border M&A know the cost of that posture. Diligence opens up environmental liabilities, governance gaps, and labour exposures that were invisible in the management deck, and the deal repricing happens in the room. Alessandra Dabul has spent close to thirty years inside that room. She built her career advising European, North American, and Canadian corporates entering Brazil through acquisition, first as a director at Deloitte and senior manager at KPMG, with earlier leadership at EY, and now as founding partner of Pereira, Dabul Advogados and of RCA Governanca e Sucessoes. The second firm reflects the part of her practice focused on family business succession, where ownership transitions surface governance and ESG questions that cannot be deferred. Her board work runs in parallel. She is President of the Board at Gavea Angels, one of Brazil’s longest-standing angel investor networks, and a board member at AmCham Brasil. She holds IBGC corporate governance certification and has completed executive education in Sustainable Capitalism at UC Berkeley Law and Sustainable Business Strategy at Harvard Business School. The combination matters because the substance of ESG governance, as she frames it, is whether the board can defend a capital allocation, a deal, or a succession decision when it is questioned by an acquirer, a regulator, or a limited partner. That is the conversation she brings into the room: ESG as a discipline of decision, tested against the realities of M&A, board accountability, and investor capital in a Latin American market that does not yet have the regulatory scaffolding of Europe, but increasingly has the scrutiny. Key speaking topics ESG governance for boards and investment committees Sustainable business strategy in emerging markets Corporate governance and board effectiveness Cross-border M&A and post-acquisition integration in Latin America Family business succession and ownership transitions Angel investment and early-stage capital in Brazil Ideal for Boards and audit committees of multinationals with Brazilian or Latin American operations Chief sustainability officers and general counsel managing ESG diligence and reporting Private equity, venture capital, and angel investor networks pricing ESG into deal flow Family business owners and family office leadership facing succession or governance reform Audience outcomes A clearer view of the specific ESG questions that surface in cross-border M&A diligence, and how to answer them at board level. A working framework for distinguishing ESG narrative from ESG governance, with examples from Brazilian and Latin American board practice. Practical reference points on how angel investor networks and corporate boards are integrating ESG into capital decisions today. A grounded perspective on family business succession, including where ownership transitions create governance risk.

Why organisations work with SeenThroughGlass He brings a working creator’s audience instinct into the room. Brands get a host who has spent a decade testing what holds attention on a phone screen, not a presenter reading a script. Direct access to the supercar and motorsport world. His interview series Behind The Glass has put him opposite Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button and Max Chilton, which translates into credible panel chemistry with senior automotive guests. Proven commercial partnerships with Shell, Pirelli and Harman Kardon. He has worked inside major brand activations, not just commented on them. Recognised reach. Named in The Sunday Times Top 50 UK Influencers list, with cumulative video views in the tens of millions across an audience that car, lifestyle and luxury marketers spend heavily to reach. A founder’s view of the creator economy. He has built, monetised and scaled the channel himself, which lands well with marketing leadership trying to make sense of where their influencer spend actually goes. Biography highlights Founder of Seen Through Glass, an automotive YouTube channel launched in 2014 that reached 100,000 subscribers in its first year and has accumulated tens of millions of views. Named in The Sunday Times Top 50 UK Influencers. Host of Behind The Glass, a weekly automotive podcast and interview series featuring senior figures from motorsport and the supercar community. Brand collaborations with Shell, Pirelli and Harman Kardon. On-camera work with Formula 1 drivers including Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button and Max Chilton. Creator of Drive The World, a 2019 six-continent road trip series documenting global car culture. Biography Most car brands are still organised around the assumption that the buyer walks into a showroom. The buying decision now happens on a phone, mediated by a small group of creators whose audiences spend hours a week watching them drive, review and argue about cars. Sam Fane is one of them. He founded Seen Through Glass in 2014, after a stint in PR in Mayfair and early experiments shooting point-of-view footage on Google Glass. The channel reached 100,000 subscribers in its first year. A decade on, it has accumulated tens of millions of views across road trips, ownership videos, motorsport coverage and long-form interviews. His interview platform, Behind The Glass, has hosted Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button and Max Chilton, alongside dealers, designers and other figures inside the supercar economy. Brand work with Shell, Pirelli and Harman Kardon has put him on the commercial side of automotive content as well as the editorial side. The Sunday Times named him in its Top 50 UK Influencers list. For events, that combination matters in a practical way. Automotive, luxury and lifestyle brands often need a host who can interview a Formula 1 driver, moderate a panel of marketing leaders and hold an audience that has spent the day on its phones. Fane has done all three for a living for ten years. Key speaking topics Automotive content and the creator economy The supercar and luxury car market Building a media brand on YouTube Brand partnerships and influencer commerce Motorsport and Formula 1 culture Awards hosting and on-stage interviewing Ideal for Automotive OEMs, dealerships and aftermarket brands running customer or trade events Luxury, lifestyle and watch brand marketing leadership Motorsport and motoring industry awards CMOs and brand directors reviewing influencer and content strategy Audience outcomes A clearer view of how automotive buying attention has shifted from showroom to screen. A working sense of what makes a brand partnership land with a creator audience and what makes it fail. Direct, on-stage insight from a creator who has built a business on the platform marketers most often misunderstand. A confident, well-paced event with a host who is comfortable opposite senior automotive and motorsport figures.