ESG Strategy speakers

Why organisations work with Mark Roe His published research identifies the specific political forces – interest groups, legislative bargaining, regulatory path-dependence – that determine how corporations are governed in different national systems, giving boards and investors a structural map that economic analysis alone does not provide. Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022) dismantled the dominant short-termism narrative with economy-wide data, offering executives and policymakers a corrected diagnosis of why corporate investment patterns have changed – and where the real policy levers sit. His analysis of too-big-to-fail dynamics explains how implicit government guarantees distort corporate structure and shield management from market discipline, a framework directly relevant to financial institutions, their regulators, and the firms exposed to systemic counterparty risk. Two decades of commentary in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Project Syndicate means his arguments have been tested in public, not just in academic journals – the positions he takes in a boardroom are the same ones he defends in the financial press. His current research on the transformation of US public firms (fewer companies, greater concentration of profit and market power) reframes a debate that directly affects M&A strategy, capital allocation, and regulatory risk. Biography highlights David Berg Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, since 2001 Author of four books published by Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, and Foundation Press, including Missing the Target (2022) and Strong Managers, Weak Owners (1994) Ranked among SSRN’s top 50 most-cited law professors, with a career high of #10 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy; Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute Recipient of the ECGI Allen & Overy Working Paper Prize (2015) for research on structural corporate degradation in too-big-to-fail finance Regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2004, with commentary published in the Financial Times, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal Biography Corporate governance is usually treated as a design problem: get the incentives right, align the board with shareholder interests, and the structure should optimise itself. Mark J. Roe’s research at Harvard Law School has spent three decades demonstrating that this view is incomplete. His books Strong Managers, Weak Owners (Princeton, 1994) and Political Determinants of Corporate Governance (Oxford, 2003) established a now widely cited argument: governance structures in the United States and across major economies are shaped as much by political forces as by market logic. The practical implications are specific. In the US, fragmented share ownership is not merely an outcome of deep capital markets. It reflects a century of political decisions that prevented financial institutions from accumulating concentrated ownership stakes. In continental Europe, the postwar political settlement empowered labour and entrenched blockholding structures that persist long after the conditions that created them. Roe’s work traces these connections with data and institutional detail, giving corporate leaders and policymakers a framework for understanding why governance reform so often stalls or produces unintended consequences. His most recent book, Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022), challenged the prevailing consensus that stock market short-termism is crippling corporate investment and R&D. Using economy-wide data, Roe showed that corporate R&D spending has been rising, not falling, and that the real culprits behind declining investment are political uncertainty, accelerating technological change, and a collapse in government research funding. The Wall Street Journal called it essential reading for anyone concerned with markets and policy. Before entering academia, Roe worked at the Federal Reserve System and at Cahill Gordon & Reindel on Wall Street. He held faculty positions at Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia before joining Harvard in 2001. His paper on too-big-to-fail finance won the ECGI Allen & Overy Prize in 2015. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published over 160 scholarly papers, with more than 10,000 citations tracked by ResearchGate. Key speaking topics Political economy of corporate governance Financial regulation and systemic risk Corporate short-termism and long-term investment Too-big-to-fail finance and structural corporate degradation Shareholder activism and corporate purpose Bankruptcy, restructuring, and creditor bargaining The transformation of US public markets Ideal for Boards, chairs, and non-executive directors assessing governance structures in a politicised regulatory environment CFOs, general counsel, and heads of corporate strategy at firms navigating financial regulation, M&A, or capital structure decisions Institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers evaluating governance risk across jurisdictions Policy audiences, regulators, and central bankers examining the intersection of political economy and financial stability Audience outcomes A structural explanation of why corporate governance rules differ across major economies and why convergence has been slower than predicted A data-grounded reframing of the short-termism debate that separates genuine investment constraints from politically convenient narratives An understanding of how too-big-to-fail dynamics distort corporate structure and create hidden risks for counterparties and investors A framework for assessing how political uncertainty, interest-group pressure, and regulatory path-dependence affect capital allocation and strategic planning Specific examples from US and European corporate history that make abstract governance debates concrete and applicable to current board-level decisions

Why organisations work with Matthew Gitsham Two decades of research focused on what CEOs of named multinationals actually do on sustainability, not what they say in annual reports. Direct experience advising the UN Global Compact, Business in the Community and corporates including Unilever, IBM, HSBC, GSK, De Beers, Cemex and Pearson on sustainable development strategy. Thinkers50 Radar recognition and the Aspen Institute Rising Star award give boards external validation when commissioning content on a contested topic. His Rio+20 report “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World” shaped how the UN framed corporate leadership on sustainable development, evidence that his frameworks travel beyond the classroom. Research on corporate modern slavery leadership, conducted with the Ethical Trading Initiative, gives him operating substance on supply chain ESG that most academic voices lack. Biography highlights Professor of Business and Sustainability, Hult Ashridge Executive Education. Director of the Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability. Thinkers50 Radar, Class of 2021. Cited as “global expert on CEOs and sustainability.” Aspen Institute and Academy of Business in Society European Faculty Pioneer Award, Rising Star category. Hult International Business School Researcher of the Year, 2016 to 2017. Lead author of “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World,” referenced at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Biography Most ESG conversations stop at the disclosure framework. The harder question, which Gitsham has spent twenty years researching, is what CEOs of Unilever, IBM, HSBC, GSK and similar companies actually do with sustainability once it leaves the sustainability report. His work tracks the decisions boards take on capital allocation, supplier governance and public policy advocacy when sustainability stops being narrative and starts being operating substance. That research base is what earned him Thinkers50 Radar recognition in 2021, with Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove naming him a “global expert on CEOs and sustainability.” His Rising Star award from the Aspen Institute and the Academy of Business in Society European Faculty Pioneer Awards reflects the same point. He is not a commentator on sustainability. He is one of the few academics with sustained, named access to CEOs of large multinationals on the subject. At Hult Ashridge, he directs the Centre for Business and Sustainability and teaches across the MBA and executive education programmes. His report “Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World” was used to inform debate at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Current research partnerships include Business Fights Poverty on corporate SDG embedding and the Ethical Trading Initiative on corporate leadership on modern slavery, giving him an operating view of supply chain ESG that bridges academia and practice. His work appears in The Economist, Financial Times and Harvard Business Review. His corporate clients span Tesco, Bayer, Rolls Royce, Swarovski, Marks & Spencer and Pearson, alongside the UK Senior Civil Service. The throughline across all of it is the same question: how do leaders of large organisations make defensible sustainability decisions when the stakes are now financial, political and reputational at once. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability and ESG strategy CEO leadership on sustainable development The UN Sustainable Development Goals and corporate practice Modern slavery and supply chain governance Business and public policy advocacy Climate action in commercial strategy Executive development for sustainability Ideal for Boards and executive committees translating sustainability commitments into capital allocation and operating decisions Chief Sustainability Officers, CFOs and General Counsels handling ESG scrutiny and regulatory exposure Senior teams in companies with exposed supply chains are addressing modern slavery and human rights Corporate affairs and public policy leaders shaping CEO advocacy on climate, SDGs and sustainable development Audience outcomes A clearer view of what CEOs of large multinationals do differently when sustainability moves from narrative to operating substance. Named research evidence on corporate SDG embedding, modern slavery leadership and CEO public policy advocacy. A defensible framing for board conversations on ESG that withstands investor, regulatory and political scrutiny. Practical reference points from Unilever, IBM, HSBC and other named corporates, not generic sustainability case studies.

Why organisations work with Melissa Sterry She brings primary scientific research, not commentary. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group produced an original framework, Panarchistic Architecture, for designing wildland urban-interface resilience to wildfires. She runs Bionic City, the consultancy she founded in 2010 to ask how nature would design a city, and translates biomimicry, bioengineering and biotechnology into specific implications for buildings, infrastructure and utilities. She has briefed senior audiences at the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Schneider Electric, Balfour Beatty, McKinsey and the UK Ministry of Defence, and presented at the University of Oxford Climate Forum and the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Her work crosses architecture, materials, urban planning and corporate strategy without losing scientific rigour, which makes her credible to engineers, planners and procurement teams as well as to boards and marketing functions. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Biography highlights PhD from the AVATAR research group at the University of Greenwich on wildfire resilience for the wildland urban interface Founder of Bionic City (2010) and Bioratorium (2019), her biofuturism and biodesign consultancy practices Chartered Scientist (UK Science Council); Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology Contributor to The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking Presenter of Leonardo’s City for BBC Radio 4’s The Five Faces of Leonardo and interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award; Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network Hall of Fame inductee Biography Most sustainability strategy is written in the language of disclosure. The buildings, materials and supply choices it has to deliver against are physical, and they are increasingly exposed to fire, heat, water stress and biodiversity collapse. Melissa Sterry works in that gap. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group set out a framework she calls Panarchistic Architecture, which models wildland urban-interface resilience on the way fire-adapted ecosystems behave. From the same body of research she developed Pyrophytic and Xerophytic Architecture, design responses to wildfire and to extreme heat and aridity. The work is grounded in ecological systems theory, not in metaphor. Her practice connects this research to organisations. Bionic City, founded in 2010, applies biomimetics, bioengineering and biotechnology to urban planning and the built environment. Bioratorium, established in 2019, extends that into a wider biofuturism consultancy with an integrated biodesign lab. Through these vehicles she has briefed the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Interface, Schneider Electric, McKinsey, Balfour Beatty and the UK Ministry of Defence. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Her writing appears in publisher series from Routledge, McGraw-Hill and Hachette, including chapters in The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking. Key speaking topics Biofuturism and biodesign Climate and wildfire resilience in the built environment Bioinspired innovation in materials and manufacturing Future of cities and urban systems Sustainability strategy beyond disclosure Design science and complex systems thinking Ideal for Boards and CSOs setting sustainability and resilience strategy Real estate, infrastructure and built-environment leadership teams Heads of innovation, R&D and materials in industrials and consumer goods Climate, ESG and risk leads inside financial services and insurance Audience outcomes A working understanding of how ecological systems theory applies to fire, heat and resource resilience in physical assets A sharper view of where biomimicry and biodesign produce commercial advantage, and where they are still research Specific examples of nature-modelled responses to wildfire, aridity and urban hazard A more honest reading of the gap between sustainability narrative and operating reality Language to connect sustainability commitments to capital, design and procurement decisions

Why organisations work with Michael Yaziji He wrote the standard reference on NGO–corporate relations. NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press) carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. He holds doctorates in both analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD), a combination that brings serious ethical reasoning into his work on AI governance and corporate ownership design. His leadership work draws on the world’s largest survey tying psychological drivers and psychological safety to organisational performance, giving him empirical depth most speakers in the field do not have. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme and has trained boards and executive teams at Microsoft, Shell, PepsiCo, Ericsson, and Maersk. He thinks ahead of the consensus: his 2008 Harvard Business Review piece on the structural flaws of shareholder capitalism predated the mainstream stakeholder capitalism debate by close to a decade. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Leadership at IMD, Lausanne Co-Director of IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme Author of NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press), endorsed at publication by the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo Two doctorates: analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD) Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review Gold Award, 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards (Excellence in Executive Education) for IMD’s Sprint programme with Bayer Biography Regulation and activist coalitions now shape more corporate outcomes than many of the competitive moves around which strategy frameworks are built. This nonmarket terrain is what Michael Yaziji has spent two decades mapping. He argues that political dynamics and stakeholder pressure are core variables of corporate strategy and should be treated as such by senior leaders. His training is unusual: a doctorate in analytic philosophy from the University of California, and a second in management and strategy from INSEAD. Both disciplines show up in the work. Yaziji treats ethical reasoning and institutional theory as practical tools, applied to live executive questions like AI governance and corporate ownership design. At the centre of his published work is NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-authored with Villanova’s Jonathan Doh. The book carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. It remains a standard reference for executives dealing with activist NGOs and contested social licence. His current research extends this work to artificial intelligence: who sets the rules, and who carries the cost of weak governance. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme. An executive education programme he co-led for the pharmaceutical group Bayer trained more than 12,000 leaders across ten months and won Gold at the 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. Key speaking topics Nonmarket strategy and political risk NGO and stakeholder engagement Stakeholder management for boards AI governance and corporate strategy Corporate ethics and ownership design Psychological safety and organisational performance Sustainability and competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and chairs facing scrutiny on ESG and political risk C-suites in regulated or politically exposed industries (energy, pharma, financial services, extractives, technology platforms) Chief sustainability officers and corporate affairs heads building integrated nonmarket strategy Executive teams designing AI governance and stakeholder policy in large organisations Audience outcomes A working method that turns regulation and NGO pressure into variables leaders can shape Sharper thinking on how AI governance creates strategic risk and opportunity for their organisation Confidence in reading share ownership and stakeholder governance shifts as strategic variables A more direct vocabulary for talking to investors and regulators about the company’s social licence

Why organisations work with Miguel Luengo-Oroz He held the inaugural Chief Data Scientist role at the United Nations for six years, applying AI to conflict prevention, refugee response, epidemics and human rights. That is a vantage point no consultant or academic alone can replicate. He runs Spotlab, an operating AI company in clinical diagnostics. His commentary on AI risk is grounded in shipping production systems, not theoretical governance. He has published more than 100 articles in venues including Nature and MIT Technology Review, and has briefed governments in Europe and the United States, including the Global Partnership on AI. He invented MalariaSpot, a crowdsourced game that turned thousands of citizens into diagnostic contributors. He is fluent in both AI ethics doctrine and what it looks like when humans and AI actually share work. Biography highlights First Chief Data Scientist of the United Nations, UN Global Pulse, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, 2016 to 2022. Founder and CEO of Spotlab, an AI platform for clinical research and universal diagnosis. Professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; PhD (special prize) from the same institution; additional MSc from EHESS and École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Obama Foundation Leader (Europe 2023), Ashoka Fellow, MIT Technology Review TR35, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, EU Responsible Research and Innovation Award. More than 100 scientific articles, policy briefs and op-eds; featured in Nature, MIT Technology Review, The Guardian and The New York Times. Inventor of MalariaSpot.org, a crowdsourcing video game for malaria diagnosis. Biography The United Nations created its first Chief Data Scientist post in 2016, and Miguel Luengo-Oroz held it for six years. The brief was to put AI and data science to work on problems that do not forgive errors: epidemic response, refugee movements, hate speech detection, conflict prevention, climate. That experience shaped a working philosophy that responsible AI is not a values statement, it is an operating discipline. Today he runs Spotlab, an AI platform for clinical research and diagnostics, built around smartphones, AI models and 3D printing to bring quality diagnostics to diseases largely absent from the digital health economy. He is also a professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, where his research spans generative AI, collective intelligence and systems biology. His commentary draws on more than 100 publications across Nature, MIT Technology Review, The Guardian and The New York Times, and on advisory work with governments in Europe and the United States and the Global Partnership on AI. Recognitions include the Obama Foundation Leaders programme, an Ashoka fellowship, MIT TR35, the EU Responsible Research and Innovation Award, and a fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. For senior leaders, the value is the combination: someone who has set AI policy inside the most scrutinised public institution in the world, and who currently ships AI products into regulated medical environments. He speaks about AI risk and opportunity with the specifics of someone doing the work. Key speaking topics Responsible and ethical AI AI governance and public-interest technology AI in healthcare and diagnostics AI for sustainable development and humanitarian response Generative AI: applications, risks and limits The future of AI policy and regulation Data science inside multilateral institutions Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI governance and risk posture CTOs, Chief Data Officers and Chief AI Officers operationalising responsible AI Healthcare, life sciences and pharma leaders deploying clinical AI Public sector, multilateral and NGO leadership teams using AI in policy and operations Audience outcomes A clear view of where AI risk actually sits in deployment, beyond policy statements Specific examples of AI applied to high-stakes problems inside the UN and in clinical settings A working framework for distinguishing responsible AI as discipline from responsible AI as branding Sharper questions to put to internal AI programmes, vendors and regulators Realistic perspective on what generative AI changes for organisations over the next two to three years

Why organisations work with Miloš Maričić He gives investment boards a working diagnostic for distinguishing real machine learning from AI marketing, anchored in his SPEC framework and his CFA Institute Enterprising Investor work on weak quant models. He chairs Executive AI, the network of CEOs of major European institutional investment organisations, and represented that industry in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act standardisation process. Few speakers can describe AI regulation from inside the room where the rules were written. He has co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy with the University of Geneva, the standard reference for AI in the social sector. That gives foundations and philanthropic boards a credible voice on the same subject. He has built and exited two AI companies and ranks in the top five per cent of the Numerai global leaderboard for market prediction models, so the technical claim is matched by personal track record. He is an OECD AI Expert and a World Economic Forum contributor, which means his framing is already calibrated for senior policy and regulatory audiences. Biography highlights Founder of the Altruist League, Geneva, a philanthropy consultancy whose network reports AUM above USD 10 billion. Chair of Executive AI, a network of CEOs of major European institutional investment organisations. AI Expert at the OECD and contributor at the World Economic Forum. Co-editor, The Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy, Routledge, 2024. Co-author, Fixing Philanthropy: Six Principles for Actually Improving the World When Giving Away Money, 2021. Educated at the London School of Economics, New York University and Harvard Business School. Biography Most institutional investors now have AI somewhere in their portfolio, their managers, or their operations. Very few have a working method for telling genuine machine learning from a factor model dressed up for a board meeting. That is the gap Maričić has spent his career filling, first inside his own AI ventures, now as Chair of Executive AI, the network of CEOs of major European institutional investment organisations. His SPEC framework, developed for capital allocators and published through CFA Institute’s Enterprising Investor, gives investment committees a short diagnostic for evaluating quantitative managers who claim AI capability. It is the kind of practical tool a CIO can take into a manager meeting on Monday morning. He represented the institutional investor industry in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act standardisation process, and serves as an AI Expert at the OECD and a contributor at the World Economic Forum. Maričić founded the Altruist League, a Geneva-based philanthropy consultancy that pioneered the use of AI in sourcing investments, distributing funds and managing portfolios, and whose network now reports AUM above USD 10 billion. With Giuseppe Ugazio at the University of Geneva, he co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy, the 2024 reference work for foundations and social sector boards thinking about AI governance. He is educated at the London School of Economics, NYU and Harvard Business School, ranks in the top five per cent of the Numerai global leaderboard for market prediction models, and writes The Specification, a newsletter that translates frontier AI research into practical tools for institutional allocators. Key speaking topics AI governance for investment boards and fiduciary committees Due diligence on machine learning in quantitative investment strategies AI regulation, the EU AI Act and institutional capital allocation AI in philanthropy and the social sector Causal inference and the limits of factor investing Geopolitics of AI for sovereign wealth funds and central banks Trust-based giving and systemic-change philanthropy Ideal for Chief Investment Officers, investment committees and manager-selection teams at pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, central banks and endowments Boards of foundations and philanthropic organisations setting AI strategy and governance Risk, audit and fiduciary committees taking responsibility for AI-driven strategies they did not build Senior policy and regulatory audiences working on AI in financial services Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic for distinguishing real machine learning from AI marketing inside quantitative managers Specific questions a board or investment committee can put to managers and internal teams about AI claims A current read on the EU AI Act and what it means for institutional allocators in practice A grounded view of where AI is genuinely changing philanthropy and where it is hype A working vocabulary for fiduciary AI oversight that does not require a technical background

Why organisations work with Miranda Brawn She brings the perspective of a sitting non-executive director across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds and AI start-ups, so her recommendations land as practitioner advice rather than commentary from outside the boardroom. The Brawn Review, launched at the House of Lords in October 2025, gives clients access to a named, evidenced governance framework with 50 specific recommendations, not a general lecture on why diversity matters. She is a barrister called to the Bar of England and Wales with an MBA and academic appointments at Roehampton and previously Oxford, which gives her credibility with general counsel, audit committees and regulators in equal measure. Her foundation has run the UK’s first diversity leadership lecture and scholarship programme since 2016, giving her a decade of evidence on what actually shifts representation, useful for clients tired of pledges that do not move numbers. She covers ESG, AI ethics and inclusive leadership from the same vantage point, which suits boards that no longer want three different speakers for three governance topics that have collapsed into one. Biography highlights Author of The Brawn Review: Boardroom Sustainability, Inclusion and Corporate Governance, launched at the UK House of Lords in October 2025. Honorary Professor in Business and Law, University of Roehampton; former Senior Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford. Barrister, Bar of England and Wales; MBA; Honorary Doctor of Letters (Brighton); Honorary Doctor of Laws (University of Law). Non-executive director, chair, trustee and advisor across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with over GBP 2 billion AUM, VC funds and AI start-ups including X0PA AI. Former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan; founder and CEO of The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation (2016). Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders; Prime Minister’s Point of Light; Woman of the Year, Women in Finance Awards. Biography The Brawn Review landed at the House of Lords in October 2025 with 50 recommendations on boardroom sustainability, inclusion and governance, drawn from contributions by 1,000 global board members and endorsed by Lord Davies of the 2011 Davies Review. It is the work of an author who sits on the boards she is writing about, not a researcher describing them from outside. Miranda Brawn is a barrister, MBA, honorary professor at the University of Roehampton and former Senior Visiting Fellow at Oxford, where the review began. Her board portfolio runs across the UK’s largest NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with more than GBP 2 billion in assets under management, venture capital funds and AI start-ups. Before the boardroom she traded for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Most inclusion speakers offer advocacy. Her contribution is governance design: what a sustainability committee should actually do, how directors should oversee AI deployment, how inclusion outcomes should be measured against legal and fiduciary tests. The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation, which she founded in 2016, has run a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes that give her a longitudinal view of what shifts representation in finance, law and technology. Her recognition reflects the breadth of that practice rather than a single domain: Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders, Prime Minister’s Point of Light, Woman of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards, and Top 50 Afro-Caribbean Leadership Award presented at the House of Lords. Key speaking topics Boardroom governance of sustainability, inclusion and AI Inclusive and values-based leadership ESG strategy and board oversight AI ethics and responsible technology Non-executive director practice Diversity, equity and inclusion in regulated industries The Brawn Review recommendations Ideal for Boards, chairs and non-executive directors reviewing committee structure on ESG, AI and inclusion General counsel, company secretaries and heads of governance preparing for investor and regulator scrutiny CHROs and chief sustainability officers translating board commitments into operating practice Financial services, healthcare and professional services firms with concentrated DEI and governance exposure Audience outcomes A named governance framework, The Brawn Review, with specific recommendations on board composition, committee remits and oversight of AI and sustainability. A clearer view of where DEI commitments sit in fiduciary and regulatory terms, not only reputational ones. A practitioner reading of what NEDs are actually being asked to evidence on inclusion and ESG by investors and regulators. Evidence from a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes on which interventions move representation in finance, law and technology.

Why organisations work with Mónica Muriel She has built two B Corp certified businesses, Zurita Madrid and NEST Solutions, and speaks from the position of someone who has signed the supplier contracts, not someone advising from outside. Operating experience inside Chinese textile supply chains, including blockchain-enabled traceability, gives her a credible voice on what regulators and auditors will actually accept. She translates circular and regenerative business models into commercial decisions that protect margin, useful for boards under pressure on both ESG and price. A double legal and business background and a Hult Executive MBA mean she briefs equally well to compliance, commercial, and sustainability leaders in the same room. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Zurita Madrid, B Corp certified sustainable fashion business launched in Shanghai in 2015. Founder and CEO, NEST Solutions, B Corp certified consultancy applying Zurita’s methods to third-party textile and consumer goods companies. Global Executive MBA, Hult International Business School. Double degree in Law and Business Administration, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Associate, WAS (Women Action Sustainability), the Spanish women-led sustainability network. More than 15 years operating between Shanghai and Madrid across fashion and impact businesses. Biography Most sustainability strategies are written in headquarters and executed thousands of miles away, inside factories the brand does not own. The work that closes that gap, on materials, traceability, audits, and supplier behaviour, is what now decides whether an ESG commitment is operating substance or marketing. Mónica Muriel has built two B Corp certified businesses on the operating side of that question. Zurita Madrid, launched in Shanghai in 2015 with two Hult Executive MBA classmates, is a sustainable fashion label built around traceable supply, ethical production, and circular design. NEST Solutions takes the methods, certifications and supplier relationships developed for Zurita and applies them to third parties in textiles and consumer goods. Her training is unusually well matched to the brief. A double degree in Law and Business Administration from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid gives her a working grasp of the regulatory side. A Global Executive MBA from Hult gives her the commercial discipline. Fifteen years between Shanghai and Madrid gives her something rarer in the speaker market: direct experience of how Asian supply chains actually behave when a brand asks them to change. She is an associate of WAS, the Spanish women-led sustainability network, and a regular voice on circular economy, regenerative business models, and blockchain-enabled traceability. The argument she brings to a boardroom is not that sustainability is morally right. It is that the companies treating it as an operating discipline today are the ones that will still be able to sell into European markets when the next compliance cycle lands. Key speaking topics Sustainable and regenerative business models Circular economy in textiles and consumer goods Supply chain traceability and certification Blockchain in supply chain verification B Corp practice and corporate impact Fashion industry transformation Women, culture and sustainability Ideal for Boards and executive teams committing to ESG targets that must now be evidenced in the supply chain Chief sustainability officers, heads of supply chain, and procurement leaders in consumer goods, fashion, and retail Founders and growth-stage CEOs designing circular or impact-led business models Industry associations and women-in-business networks focused on sustainability leadership Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what regulators and auditors will accept as evidence of supply chain sustainability Working examples of how circular and regenerative models hold up commercially A founder’s account of what changes and what does not when a business pursues B Corp certification A grounded view of Asian, and specifically Chinese, supply chain dynamics from someone who has operated inside them

Why organisations work with Nadja Swarovski Three decades of brand-building inside one of the world’s most recognisable luxury names. She initiated the Swarovski Collective (1999), Swarovski Crystal Palace (2002) and Atelier Swarovski (2007), and oversaw collaborations with more than 200 designers including Alexander McQueen, Zaha Hadid, Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf. Sustainability built into commercial strategy at executive board level, not bolted on as communications. She established Swarovski’s sustainability function in 2012, ran it through 2020, and aligned the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Family-business governance from the inside. She sat on the executive board of a fifth-generation family company through a major repositioning, and can speak credibly to how creative direction, sustainability and commercial discipline coexist at scale. An ecosystem of working relationships across fashion, design, philanthropy and conservation. Built through chairmanship of the Swarovski Foundation, presidency of Fashion Council Germany, and roles at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, FIT Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy’s European Council. Currently CEO of Really Wild Clothing and Managing Partner at Pegasus Private Capital. She is using the same brand-building principles in her own businesses now, with her own capital and her own operational time at stake. Biography highlights First female member of the Executive Board of Swarovski, with responsibility for global brand strategy, communications and sustainability across a business with annual turnover of approximately €3.5 billion. Created and led Swarovski Crystal Palace and Atelier Swarovski, the platforms behind collaborations with Zaha Hadid, Alexander McQueen, Karl Lagerfeld, Viktor & Rolf, Yves Béhar, Tom Dixon and more than 200 other designers. Founded the Swarovski Foundation in 2013, a UK-registered charity supporting culture and creativity, human empowerment and environmental conservation, including the Swarovski Foundation Centre for Learning at the Design Museum in London. Established Swarovski’s Sustainability Department in 2012 and ran sustainability strategy through 2020, aligning the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Currently CEO and majority owner of Really Wild Clothing and Managing Partner of Pegasus Private Capital, a UK investment firm focused on heritage and craft-led brands. Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016), honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts London (2019), Business of Fashion BoF 500 (2020), Positive Luxury Business Leader of the Year (2020). Biography Most heritage luxury brands lose cultural ground when they cannot reconcile preservation with relevance. Swarovski, the Austrian crystal company founded by Daniel Swarovski in 1895, became one of the few heritage houses that did both, through twenty-six years of work led by Nadja Swarovski as the first woman on its executive board. The contribution was structural. She built Swarovski Collective, Swarovski Crystal Palace and Atelier Swarovski as platforms for designers who otherwise had no commercial reason to engage with a crystal supplier. The collaborator list runs to more than two hundred and includes Alexander McQueen, Zaha Hadid, Viktor & Rolf, Karl Lagerfeld and Christopher Kane. Swarovski moved from component supplier to cultural participant, and the brand equity that followed underwrote the broader business. In 2012 she established Swarovski’s sustainability function and ran it through 2020, aligning the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, and embedding ethical sourcing and traceability into a global manufacturing operation. The Swarovski Foundation, which she founded in 2013, made the philanthropic side of that work formal as a UK-registered charity organised around three pillars: culture and creativity, human empowerment, and conserving natural resources. Since leaving the family company at the end of 2021, she has moved from operator inside one company to operator-investor across several. As Managing Partner at Pegasus Private Capital she invests in heritage businesses where craft and traceability function as commercial advantages rather than aesthetic gestures. As CEO of Really Wild Clothing, the British countryside brand she and her husband acquired in 2024, she is rebuilding the supply chain around UK mills including Lovat, Kynoch, Harris Tweed, Lochcarron, Linton and Liberty. The investment thesis is the same one that worked at Swarovski: cultural relevance compounds when the supply chain is real. Key speaking topics Brand strategy in heritage and luxury businesses Sustainability as commercial strategy Creative collaboration as a brand asset Family-business governance and next-generation leadership Philanthropy and corporate foundation design Women’s leadership in legacy companies Ideal for CEOs and executive boards of heritage, luxury and consumer brands Chief Brand Officers, CMOs and creative directors managing cultural relevance Chief Sustainability Officers integrating ESG commitments into commercial strategy Family business owners and next-generation leaders preparing for repositioning or succession Audience outcomes A specific account of how creative collaboration generated brand equity at Swarovski, traced through the named platforms that built it. Examples of sustainability translated into operating decisions across product, supply chain, governance and reporting, with the UN frameworks the company aligned to. Insider knowledge of family-business governance at executive board level during a major brand repositioning. Honest assessment of which sustainability and brand trade-offs are commercially real, drawn from current investment decisions at Pegasus Private Capital.

Why organisations work with Noëlla Coursaris Musunka She has built and run an institution from scratch in eastern Congo for nearly two decades. The leadership lessons she draws on are operational, not theoretical. Her platform sits across philanthropy, fashion and global health. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, which gives corporate audiences a peer-level voice on global development. She translates a five-pillar community model (education, health, water, food, livelihoods) into a frame senior teams can apply to their own ESG and impact strategies. She brings a personal arc, from being separated from her mother at five to founding a school in her birth country, that audiences hear as testimony rather than corporate narrative. Her recognition by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE, the Muhammad Ali Center and the United Nations gives buyers external validation that does not depend on bureau marketing. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Malaika, a free school and community ecosystem in Kalebuka, DRC, founded 2007. Ambassador of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, appointed 2017. Named one of the BBC’s 100 Women (2017) and one of ELLE’s 50 African women shaping the continent (2016). Speaker at the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, UNICEF, the UK Parliament, the Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia and the Milken Institute Global Conference. Honoured by the Muhammad Ali Center as a “Daughter of Greatness” and recognised at the Nelson Mandela centenary by the House of Mandela. International model with campaigns including Agent Provocateur and editorial coverage in Vogue and Vanity Fair. Biography The DRC is one of the hardest places on earth to build an institution. Malaika has been operating there since 2007, running a free girls’ school, a community centre, vocational training, an agriculture programme and clean water and sanitation services in the village of Kalebuka. It was founded by Noella Coursaris Musunka, who is still its CEO. Her route to that work is unusual. Born in the DRC to a Cypriot father and a Congolese mother, she was sent to relatives in Europe at five after her father died and her mother could no longer support her. She returned at eighteen, met her mother again, and saw what girls in her birth country were facing. The school followed. The substance of her leadership argument is operational. Malaika is not a single-issue charity. It is a five-pillar model built on the recognition that girls cannot stay in school if their families cannot eat, drink clean water or earn a living, and that change has to be made with the community, not delivered to it. That logic, applied in a fragile-state context, is what corporate audiences book her to translate into their own strategy and impact work. The platform that funds and amplifies it is global. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, has been recognised by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE and the Muhammad Ali Center, and has spoken at Davos, the United Nations, UK Parliament, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and MIT. Key speaking topics Values-based and purpose-driven leadership Girls’ education and gender equality Building institutions in fragile environments Global health and the Global Fund agenda Founder leadership and social entrepreneurship Inclusion and the African leadership voice Corporate philanthropy and ESG impact Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting purpose, ESG and corporate philanthropy strategy CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusive leadership and values programmes Foundation, family office and impact investing audiences Annual meetings and leadership conferences seeking a credible founder voice on global development Audience outcomes A working model for translating purpose statements into operating institutions, drawn from a fragile-state context. A clearer view of how girls’ education and global health intersect with corporate ESG agendas. A founder’s account of building, funding and sustaining an organisation across nearly two decades. A reframing of values-based leadership through lived experience rather than corporate vocabulary.

Why organisations work with Noreena Hertz Sits on two Nasdaq-listed boards, Mattel and Warner Music Group, which means her counsel is shaped by live boardroom debates on governance, ESG and consumer strategy rather than from the outside. Has spent two decades arguing, in print and to governments, that political and economic risk are inseparable from corporate strategy; The Silent Takeover and IOU named structural risks that later became central to board agendas. Authored original research on a 13 to 20 year-old cohort she labels Generation K, giving consumer brands and employers a specific read on the workforce and customer base now entering organisations. Frames AI for senior audiences as a question of governance, labour and societal trust, not feature adoption, which is what most boards now need from the conversation. Writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The Guardian, which means she works in the same register and discipline as the publications a senior buyer reads on a Sunday. Biography highlights PhD in Economics and Business, King’s College, Cambridge; MBA, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Honorary Professor, UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London. Director, Mattel (Nasdaq) and Warner Music Group (Nasdaq); also serves on the board of Workhuman. Author of five books including The Silent Takeover, IOU: The Debt Threat, Eyes Wide Open, Generation K and The Lonely Century, which was named Book of the Year by The Daily Telegraph, Wired and El Mundo. Opinion contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Financial Times and The Guardian. Hosted MegaHertz: London Calling on SiriusXM Insight as the network’s first foreign-based news and talk host. Biography The Silent Takeover, published in 2001, argued that global corporations were displacing the state as the primary political actor in citizens’ lives. Two decades later, that thesis reads less like provocation and more like the standing brief for any board navigating ESG, regulation and political pressure. Noreena Hertz wrote it as a Cambridge economist; the questions it raised have followed her into the boardrooms she now sits inside. Her work has consistently anticipated structural risks before they hit corporate agendas. IOU: The Debt Threat made the case for sovereign debt as a destabilising force years before the financial crisis. Generation K, based on her own survey research with thousands of 13 to 20 year-olds in the UK and US, identified anxiety, loneliness and institutional distrust as defining cohort traits, well before those words became standard in workforce and consumer strategy decks. The Lonely Century, published in 2020, treated loneliness as an economic and political variable, not a wellbeing issue. The credentials sit behind the argument rather than in front of it. A PhD from Cambridge and an MBA from Wharton. An Honorary Professorship at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity. Directorships at Mattel and Warner Music Group, both Nasdaq-listed, and at Workhuman. Opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. The work has been recognised by The Daily Telegraph, Wired and El Mundo, which each named The Lonely Century a Book of the Year. What makes the perspective unusual is the combination of seats. Few economists who write at this register also vote on remuneration, audit and governance matters at major listed companies. That is why the boards and leadership teams who book her tend to be working on the same questions she is: how to govern through geopolitical fracture, how to integrate AI without losing institutional trust, and how to lead a workforce and customer base that has stopped giving incumbents the benefit of the doubt. Key speaking topics Geopolitical and political risk for business AI, governance and societal trust Generation K and the post-millennial workforce and consumer Loneliness as an economic and political variable Global capitalism, debt and the state ESG and corporate governance in contested terrain Decision-making under uncertainty Ideal for Board directors and chairs working on governance, ESG and political risk CEOs and executive committees setting strategy under geopolitical and AI uncertainty CHROs and CMOs whose workforce and customer base is now defined by Gen Z and post-millennial behaviour Investor and asset-management leadership audiences focused on macro and policy risk Audience outcomes A sharper read on where geopolitical and policy risk meets corporate strategy A specific picture of how a younger workforce and consumer base behaves, and why incumbent assumptions are failing A framework for treating AI as a governance and trust question, not only a technology one Argument-ready material for board-level debate on ESG, capitalism and the state A clearer view of loneliness and disconnection as commercial and political forces, not soft issues

Why organisations work with Oliver Hart Hart’s theory of incomplete contracts and the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights theory underpin most modern thinking on corporate governance and the boundaries of the firm. Boards working through M&A, integration, outsourcing, or governance redesign get a framework grounded in four decades of foundational research. The Hart-Zingales shareholder welfare framework gives boards a substantive third position between Friedman-style shareholder primacy and stakeholder capitalism rhetoric. It is published in peer-reviewed journals and directly applicable to live ESG and shareholder voting decisions. Hart has served as a government expert witness in major US legal cases, including Black & Decker v. USA and Wells Fargo v. USA. The framework has been tested under adversarial legal scrutiny, with high-stakes commercial outcomes turning on the economic argument. Hart’s body of work has shaped four decades of research on ownership and incentive design. The 2016 Nobel Prize and 2023 Knight Bachelor are the formal recognition of a framework that now underpins how regulators and corporate boards approach governance questions. Biography highlights Co-recipient of the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded with Bengt Holmström for contributions to contract theory. Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard, the institution’s highest faculty rank. Author of Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure (Oxford University Press), the standard reference text on the economic theory of the firm. Knight Bachelor in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to economic theory. Past president of the American Law and Economics Association and past vice president of the American Economic Association. Fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Biography What is a firm, and where should its boundaries lie? The question sits underneath most of the contested decisions facing modern boards, from M&A integration to ESG governance. The framework that lets boards answer it rigorously was largely built by Sir Oliver Hart. Hart’s contributions to contract theory, recognised with the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, centre on a foundational insight. Real contracts are incomplete: they cannot specify every contingency, and whoever holds the right to decide on the unspecified elements holds the real power. The Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights theory built on this to formalise when activities should sit inside firms and when they should sit in markets. More recently, his work with Luigi Zingales of Chicago Booth has redrawn the corporate purpose debate. The Hart-Zingales shareholder welfare framework reframes corporate objectives around the actual preferences of investors, including their non-financial concerns, and proposes shareholder voting as the mechanism for expressing them. The framework speaks directly to live disputes about ESG votes and shareholder activism on social issues. At Harvard since 1993, Hart holds the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professorship and chaired the Economics department from 2000 to 2003. Past president of the American Law and Economics Association and fellow of the British Academy, he was made a Knight Bachelor in 2023 for services to economic theory. The 1986 paper with Sandy Grossman, “The Costs and Benefits of Ownership,” remains the standard reference for how firm boundaries are analysed in modern economics. Key speaking topics Contract theory and incomplete contracts The theory of the firm Corporate governance and ownership Shareholder welfare and corporate purpose ESG governance and shareholder activism Incentive design Ideal for Boards of directors and chairs General counsel, CFOs, and corporate governance leaders Investors and asset managers grappling with ESG mandates Policymakers, regulators, and antitrust authorities Audience outcomes A working theory of where firm boundaries should lie and why, applicable to live decisions on M&A and outsourcing. A defensible position on corporate purpose that goes beyond Friedman versus stakeholder capitalism slogans. The economic logic underneath shareholder activism and ESG governance, including when shareholder voting matters and when it doesn’t. The intellectual vocabulary for thinking about ownership and incentive design with the seriousness these topics require.