ESG Strategy speakers

Why organisations work with Lewis Pugh He has helped secure formal protection for more than two million square kilometres of ocean, including the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, the largest in the world. That is a track record on environmental policy outcomes very few private-sector advisors or speakers can match. He brings a working maritime lawyer’s grasp of treaty, sovereign negotiation, and multilateral process. His framing of climate and ocean commitments is grounded in how rules actually move, which lands with boards wrestling with regulatory and ESG risk. As the UN’s first Patron of the Oceans, he carries institutional weight inside the system most companies are now being judged against, including UNEP, COP processes, and national governments. He converts physical expeditions into specific decisions about preparation, team selection, and changing course under hostile conditions. Audiences leave with a usable account of how leaders behave when the plan stops working, sourced from the North Pole, Mount Everest, the Red Sea, and Antarctica. Biography highlights UN Patron of the Oceans, appointed by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2013. Founder of The Lewis Pugh Foundation, established in 2015 to drive the creation of Marine Protected Areas worldwide. First person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world; first across the North Pole, the length of the English Channel, the Red Sea, and around Martha’s Vineyard. Maritime lawyer trained at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town; former practitioner at Ince and Co in the City of London; former Reservist in the British SAS. Author of Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster, 2010) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo (2014); twice a TEDGlobal speaker. Awarded South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga (Gold Class); named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame; named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Biography The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, off Antarctica, is the largest protected ocean reserve on the planet, larger than the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy combined. Lewis Pugh swam in its near-freezing waters in a Speedo to push 25 nations, including Russia, into signing the agreement that created it. Few advocates working on the ocean and climate file have that kind of policy outcome attached to their name. Pugh trained as a maritime lawyer at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town, and practised at Ince and Co in the City of London. During those years he served as a Reservist in the British SAS. The combination matters for the work he now does. The legal training shapes how he reads treaties, jurisdiction, and sovereign behaviour. The military background shapes how he plans expeditions and assembles teams. The endurance swimming is the public-facing instrument that pulls governments to the table. In 2013 the UN appointed him as its first Patron of the Oceans. In 2015 he founded The Lewis Pugh Foundation, dedicated to Marine Protected Areas, the ocean equivalent of national parks. Through that work he has helped secure protection for more than two million square kilometres of marine ecosystem, an area the size of Western Europe, and is campaigning for 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be formally protected by 2030. His books, Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo, sit alongside two TEDGlobal talks that TED’s editors describe as the work of a “master story-teller”. For corporate audiences, the substance is not the swimming. It is the working method behind it: how a small team prepares for hostile conditions, how an advocate moves sovereign signatories, and how leaders decide when to keep going and when to change course. Key speaking topics Ocean and climate policy Sustainability and ESG commitments at board level Marine Protected Areas and treaty negotiation Resilience and leadership in hostile conditions Team preparation and decision-making under pressure Purpose-driven leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting climate, ocean, and ESG strategy Sustainability leaders, chief sustainability officers, and ESG committees Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, preparation, and decision-making under pressure Public-sector and multilateral audiences working on environment and oceans policy Audience outcomes A clearer view of how high-level environmental commitments are converted into binding agreements and protected areas. A working account of how small teams plan for, and recover from, conditions where the original plan fails. A direct line of sight into the UN, COP, and Marine Protected Area processes that increasingly shape corporate disclosure and risk. A sharper sense of what credible, evidenced advocacy looks like, drawn from named expeditions and named outcomes.

Why organisations work with Linda Mabhena-Olagunju She has actually built and operates a 244MW utility-scale wind farm in the Northern Cape, not advised on one. Her authority on the energy transition comes from owning the asset, raising the capital, and running it. A legal foundation in oil and gas law from Aberdeen, applied to renewable energy operations in Africa. That sequence gives her a sharper view than most operators on how regulation, project finance, and offtake contracts actually shape what gets built. Direct line of sight on what local ownership looks like in practice. DLO acquired the engineering services and operations capability behind its plants, making it the rare African IPP with both equity and technical control. Sits at the table where African energy policy is shaped: advisor to South Africa’s Minister of Energy, University of Oxford International Advisory Board, founder of the DLO Africa Power Roundtable. Recognised by named bodies, not bureau hype: Choiseul 100 (multi-year), Forbes Woman Africa, CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award, Veuve Clicquot. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, DLO Energy Resources Group, owner and operator of a 244MW wind farm in South Africa’s Northern Cape. LLB, University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List); LLM in International Commercial Law with oil and gas specialisation, University of Aberdeen (First Class). Admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Member of the University of Oxford International Advisory Board since 2018. External contributor to Institut Montaigne on African energy and infrastructure. Recognition: Choiseul 100 Africa Economic Leaders for Tomorrow (multi-year); Forbes Woman Africa Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award; Veuve Clicquot Businesswomen Award; Oprah Power List of 20 most powerful women in Africa. Biography Africa’s renewable energy build-out is shaped less by technology than by who can hold a project together long enough to reach financial close. DLO Energy Resources Group, founded by Linda Mabhena-Olagunju and now the operator of a 244MW wind farm in the Northern Cape, is one of the few independent power producers on the continent that owns both the equity and the engineering capability behind its assets. Her route into the sector is unusual. She read law at the University of Cape Town, then took an LLM in International Commercial Law at Aberdeen with a specialism in oil and gas. She is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. That legal grounding, in the contracts and regulation that govern energy projects, is what allowed DLO to acquire an EPC and O&M operation and bring operational control in-house, a step most African IPPs never take. The recognition has followed the work, not the other way round. The Choiseul 100 has listed her among Africa’s economic leaders of tomorrow across multiple years. Forbes Woman Africa named her Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC named her Young Business Leader for Southern Africa. She sits on the University of Oxford International Advisory Board, contributes to Institut Montaigne on African energy policy, and advises the South African Minister of Energy. For audiences working on energy transition strategy, climate-related disclosures, or capital allocation to emerging markets, she is one of the very small group who can describe the path from policy ambition to a generating asset, with the receipts to back it up. Key speaking topics Africa’s energy transition Renewable energy project finance and ownership Independent power producers in emerging markets Local content and black ownership in energy Women in energy and infrastructure Climate policy and capital allocation in Africa Ideal for Boards and investment committees with African or emerging-market energy exposure CFOs, treasury, and capital allocators reviewing climate transition strategy Energy, utilities, and infrastructure executives planning African projects DEI sponsors and women-in-leadership programmes in capital-intensive sectors Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes for an African renewable project to reach financial close, told by someone who has done it. A working understanding of where policy ambition on energy transition diverges from project finance reality on the continent. Concrete answers on how local ownership, EPC control, and offtake structures change the economics of a generation asset. A sharper view of where African renewable capacity is actually being built, by whom, and at what cost of capital.

Why organisations work with Lizzie Carr She has built and runs an operating environmental non-profit, not a campaign. Planet Patrol’s app turns volunteer activity into structured pollution and water-quality data, which is a usable model for any organisation thinking about citizen-led evidence gathering. Her record-setting expeditions (England’s waterways solo, the English Channel, the Hudson) gave the work its primary dataset. The endurance story is inseparable from the environmental method, which makes for a sustainability talk that actually contains a method. A cancer diagnosis at 26 sits behind the whole trajectory. That gives audiences a credible voice on personal resilience and reinvention without it being a separate, bolted-on talk. Recognition from the Crown (MBE, 2021) and from the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award gives the profile institutional weight that bureau-built activist profiles often lack. Authored Paddling Britain (2018) and hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, with regular media presence on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 and national newspapers. The platform is real. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Planet Patrol; nearly 500,000 pieces of litter recorded by volunteers across 113 countries. MBE, 2021, for services to environmental work and activism. First person to paddleboard England’s connected waterways solo and unsupported (400 miles, 22 days). First woman to solo paddleboard the English Channel; also crossed the Hudson River (170 miles, 8 days). Author, Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018); host, Earth Shakers podcast. Named in Top 10 Female Climate Activists lists by Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour; Stylist Inspiration of the Year, 2020. Biography Most environmental campaigners describe a problem. Carr built a tool that measures it. Planet Patrol began as one woman with a paddleboard and a phone, plotting every piece of plastic she could see along England’s 400 miles of inland waterway, and has become a citizen-science platform with volunteers in more than 100 countries logging pollution and water-quality data into a single app. The origin matters because the method does. Carr was diagnosed with cancer at 26 and took up paddleboarding during recovery. Three world firsts followed, each a research expedition as much as an endurance feat. The English waterway crossing produced over 20,000 plastic data points. The English Channel and Hudson River crossings extended the platform internationally. The expeditions gave the non-profit its data, its public profile and its operating logic. That logic is what makes the talk land in a corporate room. The argument is that environmental action becomes credible when it produces evidence, that citizen science is a legitimate route to that evidence at scale, and that personal conviction holds up when it has a measurement framework underneath it. Carr’s MBE in 2021, the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, and her place in the Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour lists of leading climate activists are recognitions of an operating contribution, not just a story. She is the author of Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018), hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, and writes and broadcasts regularly across UK national press and television. Audiences leave with a story they remember and, more usefully for a sustainability or purpose programme, a working example of how community action becomes data and how data becomes accountability. Key speaking topics Citizen science and environmental data Plastic pollution and freshwater health Sustainability leadership and purpose Building and scaling a non-profit Personal resilience and reinvention after illness Adventure, endurance and mental performance Activism without perfectionism Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leads designing employee or community engagement programmes with measurable outcomes. CSR, foundation and purpose teams looking for a credible activist voice with operating substance. Leadership and culture programmes wanting a resilience and reinvention narrative with verifiable proof points. Conferences and offsites where a sustainability or wellbeing keynote needs a memorable lead voice. Audience outcomes A clear example of how citizen-led data collection translates environmental concern into evidence organisations can use. A working model for turning a single expedition or campaign into a long-term operating platform. A vivid case for personal reinvention after a serious health setback, told without sentiment. Language and arguments senior leaders can take back into their own sustainability and purpose conversations.

Why organisations work with Lizzie Daly She brings working scientist credentials, not commentator credentials. Her PhD research at Swansea University tracks animal movement with tag technology, including fieldwork on African elephants in Kenya and a male jaguar in the Pantanal. She has the broadcast craft to land a sustainability message with a non-specialist audience, with on-screen credits across BBC One, BBC Two, CBeebies, CBBC, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Love Nature. Conservation organisations trust her platform: ambassador for the Marine Conservation Society and the Jane Goodall Institute UK, and the first female patron of ORCA. She has a track record of hosting and moderating high-stakes industry moments, including the Wildscreen Panda Awards in 2018 and 2022 and over 50 hours of live content during Wildscreen 2020. Her expedition record, including a 140km solo run in the Finnish Arctic Circle at minus 35C, gives a credible second register on resilience and decision-making in extreme environments. Biography highlights Honorary Fellow of Swansea University and part-time PhD researcher there, with a research focus on animal movement through tag technology. Academic Teaching and Outreach Fellow at Swansea University. Undergraduate degree from the University of Exeter; research Masters from the University of Bristol. Author of Life in the Wild (DK, 2024), a children’s wildlife book illustrated by Chiara Fedele. Presenter credits include Weatherman Walking (BBC One), Curious Creatures (BBC Two), Winterwatch (BBC Two), The One Show (BBC One), Solved: Nature’s Greatest Mysteries (Animal Planet), Jaguar Journals (Love Nature) and Deep Dive Australia (Love Nature). Hosted the Wildscreen Panda Awards in 2018 and 2022, and live-hosted the Wildscreen festival in 2020. Ambassador for the Marine Conservation Society and the Jane Goodall Institute UK, first female patron of ORCA, and ambassador for the Norwich Science Festival. Biography A barrel jellyfish the size of a human, filmed off the Cornish coast during Wild Ocean Week 2019, became one of the most-shared marine wildlife clips on the BBC that summer. The biologist in the water was Lizzie Daly, then mid-way through a seven-day expedition raising funds for the Marine Conservation Society. The clip travelled because the science was real and the storytelling was clean. Both qualities define how she now works with organisations on sustainability and conservation. Her academic base is Swansea University, where she is a part-time PhD researcher studying wildlife movement with tag technology and an Academic Teaching and Outreach Fellow. The fieldwork is specific and physical: deploying tracking tags on African elephants in Kenya, on a male jaguar in the Pantanal, and joining a 2022 scientific expedition to the Peruvian Amazon. Swansea has since named her an Honorary Fellow. The broadcasting CV runs in parallel. Recent series include Jaguar Journals and Deep Dive Australia for Love Nature, alongside earlier credits on BBC One, BBC Two, CBeebies, CBBC, National Geographic and Animal Planet. She has hosted the Wildscreen Panda Awards twice, in 2018 with Lewis Pugh and in 2022 with Dan O’Neill, and live-hosted more than 50 hours of Wildscreen festival content in 2020. For a corporate audience, this combination matters. A sustainability or ESG narrative that has to survive scrutiny needs a voice with field credibility, scientific training, and the storytelling judgement to keep a non-specialist audience with the argument. In September 2024 she published Life in the Wild with DK, a children’s title built on the same instinct: real animals, real movement data, told without hype. Key speaking topics Sustainability and environmental responsibility Marine conservation and ocean health Wildlife biology and animal movement science Climate communication for non-specialist audiences Conservation storytelling and public engagement Resilience and performance in extreme environments Hosting and moderation of awards, conferences and live formats Ideal for Chief sustainability officers, ESG leads and corporate affairs teams shaping external sustainability narratives. Boards and leadership offsites adding scientific credibility to climate, ocean and biodiversity discussions. Conference and awards organisers who need a host who can carry a science-led programme on stage. Internal events focused on purpose, employee engagement and connecting people to environmental commitments. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what current wildlife and ocean science actually shows, beyond headline narratives. Practical reference points for talking about sustainability with employees, customers and stakeholders without resorting to slogans. A vivid set of field stories, from Arctic expeditions to jaguar tracking, that audiences can recall and retell. Renewed conviction about the role organisations can play in marine and wildlife conservation, grounded in named partner organisations.

Why organisations work with Louis De Jaeger He runs a working design practice, Commensalist, that has delivered regenerative projects from food forests and future-proof farms to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands, so the recommendations on stage are tied to built assets, not slideware. He frames regeneration as a financial proposition. Boards leave able to discuss soil, biodiversity and food systems as long-term yield and risk variables, not as CSR. He is one of the few sustainability voices who has also built infrastructure at scale, co-founding the Belgian night-train start-up Moonlight Express that merged into European Sleeper, which gives him direct credibility with leaders who care about how new green businesses actually get financed and operated. He brings a body of evidence from his own work: the FoodForest documentary, the book SOS: Save Our Soils, and over fifty opinion pieces in titles such as De Standaard, De Morgen and Knack. Audiences hear arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print and on screen. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Commensalist, a regenerative landscape architecture practice working on productive landscapes, regenerative farms and hospitality estates worldwide. Co-founder of the Food Forest Institute and of the ByeByeGrass biodiversity campaign in Belgium. Co-founder of Moonlight Express, the Belgian night-train start-up that merged into European Sleeper, now operating sleeper services from Brussels. Director of the award-winning documentary FoodForest (2022) and of the feature documentary Eat More Trees on the role of food forests in climate and food security. Author of SOS: Save Our Soils (2025) and of Design your own food forest, a technical reference on food forest design. Long-running opinion contributor to De Standaard, De Morgen, Knack, Knack Weekend and MO*, with more than fifty published columns since 2018. Biography Most boards now accept that climate, biodiversity and food security are material risks. Far fewer can describe what to actually do about the soil their supply chains depend on. Louis De Jaeger has spent the last decade closing that gap, designing the land and writing the case for it at the same time. He runs Commensalist, a Belgian landscape architecture practice that designs regenerative projects from productive farms and food forests to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands. The work is built, not theoretical. Clients come to him because they need an asset that will still hold value in thirty years under heat, drought and tighter nature regulation. Alongside the practice, he co-founded the Food Forest Institute and the ByeByeGrass campaign in Belgium, and made the documentaries FoodForest and Eat More Trees about the role of food forests in cooling the climate and rebuilding food systems. His 2025 book SOS: Save Our Soils sets out a direct argument that regenerative agriculture is the cheapest, most effective form of climate infrastructure available, and that current food and land policy is mispriced against it. What makes him useful in a leadership room is the second track. With Moonlight Express, the night-train start-up he co-founded that merged into European Sleeper, he has been on the inside of building a green infrastructure business from a deck to operating trains. So when he talks to investors and operators about regeneration as a long-term asset class, the argument carries the weight of someone who has had to finance, license and run one. Key speaking topics Regenerative agriculture and soil health Food forests and productive landscapes Climate, biodiversity and nature-based solutions Sustainable land use and food systems Regeneration as long-term asset strategy Sustainable hospitality and estate design Green infrastructure entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and investment committees pricing climate, nature and land-use risk into long-term portfolios CSOs, heads of sustainability and ESG leads moving beyond carbon accounting into soil, water and biodiversity Real estate, hospitality and agribusiness operators evaluating regenerative design for their own assets Founders and corporate venture teams backing food, agritech and green infrastructure businesses Audience outcomes A working definition of regeneration that boards can use, distinct from offsetting and from generic ESG language. A clearer view of which sustainability assumptions and assets are likely to age badly over the next decade. Practical reference points from built projects: food forests, regenerative farms, hospitality estates, biodiversity campaigns. A founder’s account of how a green infrastructure business actually gets financed and run, drawn from Moonlight Express and European Sleeper. A sharper internal narrative for connecting climate, food and land strategy to commercial decisions.

Why organisations work with Luiz Barroso He has held three seats that almost no one else holds together: national energy planner (CEO of Brazil’s EPE), market designer and consultant across 30 countries, and partner in Latin America’s largest investment bank. That gives him a view of energy decisions from the policy desk, the operator’s desk and the capital allocator’s desk simultaneously. His work answers the question most energy speakers avoid: how does decarbonisation actually get financed and priced in markets that do not look like Western Europe? Investors and regulators in Latin America, Asia and Africa book him for that reason. He sits inside the IEA conversation on emerging-economy transition, having been a visiting researcher in Paris on exactly that question. That places him close to where international finance and national policy intersect. IEEE Fellow status, granted for contributions to electricity market design, signals a rare technical depth for an industry speaker. Most transition commentators cannot model what they recommend. Biography highlights CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, the BTG Pactual-owned firm Former CEO of Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica (EPE), Brazil’s national energy planning agency Visiting researcher, International Energy Agency, Paris Associate researcher, Institute for Research in Technology, Comillas University, Madrid IEEE Fellow; IEEE PES Outstanding Young Engineer Award recipient Author of one book, three book chapters and more than 70 peer-reviewed papers on electricity and gas market design Biography The energy transition has stopped being a question of ambition and become a question of capital. Boards have set decarbonisation targets; the harder problem is financing them through power markets that work differently in every country an investor touches. Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia do not have the same grid, the same regulation or the same risk pricing. Luiz Barroso has spent his career inside that problem. As CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, a BTG Pactual-owned firm, he advises private investors, public lenders, governments and regulators in around 30 countries on market design, financing and risk in electricity and gas. Before that, he ran Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica, the Brazilian government body responsible for national energy planning, a role equivalent to deputy minister. His research credentials are unusual for someone operating in industry. He is an IEEE Fellow, recognised specifically for contributions to electricity market regulation and design, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas University in Madrid. In 2018 he spent a year at the International Energy Agency in Paris, working on the question of how energy transition unfolds in emerging economies. That combination matters because most senior leaders hearing about energy transition are hearing from policy commentators, academic modellers or industry executives. Barroso has held all three roles. His work helps capital allocators, board directors and regulators see where the transition narrative meets the actual structure of power and gas markets, and where the money has to go for it to function. Key speaking topics Energy transition in emerging economies Electricity and gas market design Investment and financing under decarbonisation Regulation and policy in liberalised power markets Risk management in energy infrastructure Power system economics Ideal for Board directors and investment committees with energy exposure outside Western Europe and North America Infrastructure investors, development banks and sovereign wealth funds allocating to the transition Energy regulators, system operators and policy bodies in emerging markets Senior leaders in utilities, oil and gas, and large industrial energy buyers Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how energy transition is actually financed and priced in emerging-economy power and gas markets A working understanding of why decarbonisation pathways diverge across jurisdictions, and what that means for cross-border capital Practical exposure to the trade-offs regulators face when designing markets that must attract investment and deliver reliability simultaneously A grounded view of which transition assumptions hold up when tested against grid reality and which do not

Why organisations work with Malaika Vaz She has gone undercover inside wildlife trafficking networks across India, Myanmar and China, and can speak to environmental crime as a live operational and reputational risk, not a policy abstraction. Her documentary Sacrifice Zone, made in association with the National Geographic Society, reported pollution exposure across New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira, giving boards a concrete picture of what fenceline impact looks like in four very different jurisdictions. She has built Untamed Planet into a production house whose work reaches National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France audiences in more than 150 countries, which means her storytelling is calibrated for global, non-specialist viewers, not insiders. The credentials are independently verified: Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent (2024), Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Earthshot Prize Advocate, and UNEP recognition as one of six environmentalists changing the world. For a sustainability or risk audience used to consultants, she offers something different: a reporter who has been in the room with traffickers, regulators and affected communities, and can connect those scenes to the decisions executives are making. Biography highlights National Geographic Explorer and presenter; films broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France in more than 150 countries. Co-founder and creative director of Untamed Planet, an independent documentary production company. Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent, 2024 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, for Sacrifice Zone. Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Media category. Earthshot Prize Advocate; named by UNEP as one of six environmentalists changing the world. Presenter of On the Brink (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet) and Living with Predators (National Geographic), and lead reporter on Peng Yu Sai, a Green Oscar-nominated investigation into the illegal manta ray trade. Biography Manta rays were disappearing from the waters off the coast of Goa. Tracing why led Malaika Vaz, on camera and undercover as a seafood trader, from Indian fishing vessels to the Indo-Myanmar border and into the wildlife trafficking hubs of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The resulting documentary, Peng Yu Sai, was nominated for a Green Oscar and aired on National Geographic India. That is the kind of reporting Vaz does. As a National Geographic Explorer and co-founder of the documentary production company Untamed Planet, she has built a body of work focused on environmental crime, industrial pollution and the human-wildlife interface. Her films have been broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France, reaching audiences in more than 150 countries. Her 2024 documentary Sacrifice Zone, produced with the National Geographic Society, examined the human cost of industrial pollution in New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira. It won the Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent at the 2024 Wildscreen Festival in Bristol. She has also presented Living with Predators, a three-part National Geographic series on coexistence with India’s big cats, and On the Brink for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Forbes named her to its 30 Under 30 North America list in 2025, in the Media category. She is an Earthshot Prize Advocate and was named by the United Nations Environment Programme as one of six environmentalists changing the world. For an executive audience, the value she brings is specific: an investigator who has stood inside the trafficking routes, fenceline communities and ecosystems that sit underneath their environmental and supply chain risk reports. Key speaking topics Environmental crime and illicit wildlife trade Industrial pollution and frontline community impact Supply chain exposure to environmental risk Investigative environmental journalism Biodiversity and human-wildlife coexistence Documentary storytelling for non-specialist audiences Field reporting in fragile and high-risk environments Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG leads and risk committees responsible for environmental and supply chain exposure Boards and executive teams setting climate, biodiversity and human rights priorities Communications, brand and public affairs leaders translating environmental commitments into credible external narrative Investor and asset management forums focused on natural capital, biodiversity and climate-related disclosure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how wildlife trafficking and environmental crime intersect with global supply chains Specific case material from frontline reporting in India, Myanmar, China, the United States and Latin America A sharper sense of where ESG narratives diverge from on-the-ground reality, and what that means for credibility A working model for using storytelling and visual evidence to move non-specialist stakeholders Renewed urgency, grounded in named places and named systems, not abstract climate framing

Why organisations work with Manfred Weber He sits at the centre of the institution that writes European law. As Chair of the EPP Group since 2014 and President of the EPP since 2022, he has been part of every major legislative bargain in Brussels for over a decade. He explains EU politics the way an operator does, not the way a commentator does. He has negotiated directives, including the EU Returns Directive on migration, and can talk about how a file actually moves through the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission. He gives boards a realistic read on European political risk: migration, the centre-right and far-right relationship, transatlantic tensions, Ukraine, and the EU’s competitiveness agenda. He is rare on the speaking circuit. Few sitting heads of a major European political family take corporate engagements; access to that vantage point is the offer. He speaks fluent German and English and is comfortable with senior international audiences in either language. Biography highlights President of the European People’s Party since 2022, re-elected for a second term in 2025. Chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament since 2014, re-elected after the 2024 European elections for a fourth term. Member of the European Parliament for Bavaria since 2004, currently in his fifth parliamentary term. EPP Spitzenkandidat for President of the European Commission in 2019, nominated with 79 percent of the EPP congress vote. Vice-President of the CSU since 2015 and member of the CSU Party Presidency since 2009. Trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences before entering politics, with prior experience running two companies. Biography The largest political family in Europe is the European People’s Party. Its group in the European Parliament holds more seats than any other, its national affiliates lead governments across the continent, and its members include the President of the European Commission. Manfred Weber leads both the party and the group, a combination of roles few politicians in Brussels have held simultaneously. He has been Chair of the EPP Group in the Parliament since 2014, when he became the youngest group leader in the institution’s history. He was re-elected after the 2024 European elections for his fourth term. In 2022 he was elected President of the EPP, succeeding Donald Tusk, and was re-elected for a second term in 2025. That arc gives him a continuous view of the legislative engine of the EU across more than a decade of crises: the eurozone, migration in 2015 and again now, Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the energy shock, and the competitiveness debate. Before Brussels he trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences and ran two companies, then entered politics through the Junge Union and the CSU. He became the youngest member of the Bavarian State Parliament in 2002 at the age of 29, and was elected to the European Parliament two years later. He has represented Bavaria continuously since, sitting on the committees that shape constitutional affairs, civil liberties, and home affairs. He negotiated the EU Returns Directive, the first Home Affairs directive adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure. For a corporate audience, the relevant point is not the biography but the vantage point. He is in the room when European policy is decided, and he can explain to a board, in plain terms, what is changing in Brussels, where the political centre is moving, and what that means for the rules companies will be operating under for the next five years. Key speaking topics European political direction and the EU policy agenda EU competitiveness and the regulatory environment Migration policy and border security Transatlantic relations and the war in Ukraine The future of the EU after enlargement Centre-right politics in Europe and the rise of the far right Germany, the CSU, and Berlin’s role in the EU Ideal for CEOs, boards, and government affairs leaders setting Europe strategy Strategy and policy leaders at financial institutions, energy, defence, and industrial firms with material EU exposure Senior leadership teams at multinationals navigating EU regulation on AI, competition, sustainability, and trade Conference programmes and closed-door briefings on European political risk Audience outcomes A clearer read on where the EU is heading on competitiveness, migration, defence, and the green transition A sense of the political map across European capitals and how it constrains or enables the Commission’s agenda A realistic view of the centre-right and far-right dynamic and what it means for stability of EU policy An inside account of how legislation actually moves through Brussels, from someone who has done the deals Sharper questions to put to in-house government affairs and European strategy teams

Why organisations work with Manisha Tank Five years hosting the Singapore Fintech Festival, the largest fintech gathering in Asia, gives her live editorial command of a 7,000-seat stage and a working knowledge of the sector’s senior players. A 25-year anchoring career across Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International means she interviews from a position of subject fluency, not a script. She has put questions to CEOs, founders, policymakers and heads of state on live broadcast television. She moderates the Milken Institute Asia Summit and hosted Earthshot+ during The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in 2023. Both events demand a host who can move between climate finance, technology and policy in the same panel without losing the room. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, so corporate communications teams are buying a known editorial product, not an unknown. Based in Singapore. A buyer running a regional summit in Asia gets a host who understands the regulatory, political and capital context their senior speakers actually operate in. Biography highlights 25-plus years as an international broadcast journalist for Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International. Former anchor of CNN’s News Stream from Hong Kong (Asian TV Awards, Best TV News Programme) and Talk Asia. Host of the Singapore Fintech Festival for five consecutive years. Moderator at the Milken Institute Asia Summit and host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize Singapore 2023. Host of the podcast Tank Talks Asia, and producer of corporate podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture. Winner, Summerson Goodacre and Daily Telegraph Wealth Management Award for Best Industry Commentator, 2007. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. Biography Running a senior conference stage is a different craft from delivering a keynote on it. The host sets the editorial pace, frames the question the panel is actually there to answer, and decides when to press a CEO and when to move on. Get it wrong and a marquee event reads as flat. Get it right and the room produces the material that gets quoted for the rest of the year. That is the work Manisha Tank has done for two and a half decades. She spent the formative part of her career as a financial news reporter for Reuters Television, posted to New York to cover the Nasdaq and the NYSE in the late 1990s, then anchored business and main news bulletins for BBC News in London. She joined CNN International in the mid 2000s and fronted News Stream from Hong Kong, which won Best TV News Programme at the Asian TV Awards, and the long-form interview series Talk Asia. Now based in Singapore, she has built a second career as the editorial host of the region’s most senior business stages. Five consecutive years at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Recurring moderation work at the Milken Institute Asia Summit. Host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in November 2023, the investor-facing day of Prince William’s climate prize. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, and her own podcast, Tank Talks Asia, interviews senior figures from across the region. Her subject anchors are fintech, financial inclusion, sustainability and digital transformation. Her award for Best Industry Commentator from the Daily Telegraph and Summerson Goodacre dates back to 2007. The continuity is the craft itself: she remains one of the few hosts in Asia who can hold a CEO panel, a head-of-state interview and a climate finance session in the same programme without losing the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and main-stage moderation Panel moderation for senior leadership audiences Fintech and financial inclusion in Asia Net zero transition finance and sustainability Digital transformation and emerging technologies Corporate podcast hosting and branded audio Ideal for Senior business and finance summits in Asia that need an experienced editorial host on the main stage. CEO-level panel sessions on fintech, sustainability or digital transformation where the moderator needs to push without breaking the room. Corporate communications and marketing leads commissioning long-form branded podcast series with a recognisable broadcaster. Investor days, awards nights and after-dinner programmes that require an emcee with broadcast pedigree. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time, with sessions that end on the question the audience came to hear answered. Panels that get past prepared talking points, because the moderator knows the subject and the speakers. A senior audience that stays in the room for the second half of the day. A set of session clips and quotes the marketing team can use long after the event.

Why organisations work with Manuel Maqueda He teaches the working mechanics of circular and regenerative economics at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, and built the equivalent programmes at UC Berkeley Extension and UCLA Extension. The intellectual content has been tested on senior professional audiences for years. He co-founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition and runs SUPER, a certification programme that operationalises single-use plastics elimination inside real businesses. The advice is operator-grade, not lecture-grade. He bridges sustainability and AI through Viento.ai, applying machine learning to climate disaster response. Boards facing both decarbonisation and AI agendas get one voice across both. His client list includes Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell, Uber, Santander and the New Plastics Economy Conference. He is fluent across deep-tech, financial services and policy audiences. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for Iberian, Latin American and Pan-American programmes where most sustainability authorities are anglophone only. Biography highlights Special Program Instructor, Applied Circular Economics and Regenerative Economics, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education. Architect of the Circular Economy Program at UCLA Extension and the Circular Economy online course at UC Berkeley Extension. Co-founder, Plastic Pollution Coalition; CEO and co-founder, SUPER (Single-Use Plastics Elimination or Reduction). Co-founder, Viento.ai, applying machine learning to climate disaster response. Adviser to the Long Now Foundation; producer associated with the award-winning documentary Albatross on plastic pollution. Author of the forthcoming book The Meaning Economy on regenerative economics; speaking clients include Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell, Uber and Santander. Biography Most sustainability programmes inside large companies are still organised around doing less harm. They count carbon, swap materials, and add disclosures, while the core business model continues to extract, consume and discard. The leaders running them know the gap, and they are looking for a credible account of what an actual circular or regenerative business looks like. That account is the working content of Manuel Maqueda’s teaching at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, where he is Special Program Instructor in Applied Circular Economics and Regenerative Economics. He built the equivalent programmes at UCLA Extension and UC Berkeley Extension. The frame he uses is practical: maintain the value of materials, components and products in use; eliminate waste and pollution by design; and where possible restore natural capital rather than only protecting it. His authority is not only academic. He co-founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance on plastics, and runs SUPER, a tiered certification programme for businesses eliminating single-use plastics from their operations. Through Viento.ai he co-founded a venture applying machine learning to climate disaster response, which gives him a working view of where AI helps and where it does not in the climate agenda. Maqueda has advised the Long Now Foundation, contributed to the documentary Albatross, and speaks for clients including Google, NASA, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Dell and the New Plastics Economy Conference. His forthcoming book The Meaning Economy sets out his case that only regenerative thinking provides a serious framework for the next phase of climate action and commercial reinvention. Key speaking topics Circular economy strategy and implementation Regenerative economics and business models Plastic pollution and materials innovation Sustainability failure modes inside large organisations Supply chain redesign for circularity AI for climate resilience and disaster response Ideal for Boards and executive committees of consumer goods, retail, materials and industrial companies revisiting their sustainability strategy. Chief Sustainability Officers, Chief Supply Chain Officers and Chief Strategy Officers preparing the next ESG operating cycle. Innovation, R&D and product leaders responsible for materials choices and packaging redesign. Policy, public sector and city government audiences working on plastics, circularity and climate adaptation. Audience outcomes A working distinction between eco-efficiency, circular and regenerative business models, and where each one actually applies. The specific failure patterns that make corporate sustainability programmes stall, and what to do instead. A view of where AI changes the climate and resilience agenda for executives, and where it does not. Language and examples senior leaders can use with their board when proposing a more ambitious sustainability operating model.

Why organisations work with Marga Hoek She has run the institutions she now advises on. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the policy-side organisation that pushed Dutch business onto a sustainability footing, then took the same argument to the supervisory boards of Aegon, SUSI Partners and Earth Capital. Her three books have set a sequence: New Economy Business (2014) framed shared value, The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the SDGs as a business opportunity, Tech For Good (2023) translated Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate use cases. Both later books carry Axiom Business Book Awards. She speaks with operating credibility on sustainable capital, which is rare. Most ESG voices come from academia or activism. Hoek sits on the supervisory boards of institutions allocating billions into the energy transition, infrastructure and real estate. Her argument that “Business for Good is Good Business”, coined in 2014, has aged into the dominant board framing for ESG. She is one of the people who put it there. Biography highlights Three-time CEO across private and public sectors, including Thunissen (Dutch construction) and the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer. Founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, from 2009 to 2017. Author of three Routledge titles: New Economy Business (2014), The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) and Tech For Good (2023). Gold Axiom Business Book Awards for The Trillion Dollar Shift (2019) and Tech For Good (2024). Thinkers50-recognised; featured on the Thinkers50 podcast. Supervisory and advisory board roles at Aegon Nederland, SUSI Partners, Redevco, ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital. Media coverage in Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune. Biography The argument that sustainability is good business is now uncontested in principle and unevenly applied in practice. Marga Hoek has spent fifteen years closing that gap from inside the institutions that allocate the capital. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the body that pushed corporate Netherlands onto a sustainability footing between 2009 and 2017. That operating background is what differentiates her work. She sits on the Supervisory Board of Aegon Nederland, the Supervisory Board of SUSI Partners, the International Advisory Council of Redevco, and advisory boards at ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital. Each of these is a vehicle for capital flowing into the energy transition, sustainable infrastructure or climate technology. She is not describing the shift, she is helping govern it. Her three Routledge books form a sequence. New Economy Business (2014) won Management Book of the Year and established shared value as a commercial argument. The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals as named market opportunities and won the Gold Axiom Business Book Award in 2019. Tech For Good (2023) translated artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate applications against climate, biodiversity and inequality, and won Gold Axiom in 2024. Thinkers50 recognises her, and the Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune have covered the work. The reason senior buyers commission her is more specific. She has the rare profile of an operator who has been responsible for sustainability decisions at executive level, an author whose frameworks have been adopted by boards, and a non-executive sitting on the capital side of the transition. Key speaking topics Sustainable business and capital ESG and the Sustainable Development Goals Energy transition and climate finance Purpose-driven leadership Technology for good and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Sustainable investing and capital allocation Board governance of ESG Ideal for Boards and supervisory boards setting or reviewing ESG and net zero commitments CEOs, CFOs and Chief Sustainability Officers translating commitments into operating decisions Asset managers, institutional investors and family offices allocating into the transition Financial services, real estate and infrastructure leadership teams Audience outcomes A clearer view of where ESG narrative is failing to convert into capital allocation, and where it is. Named examples of companies and investors who have made the commercial case for sustainability work. A framework for using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies against specific sustainability outcomes rather than as generic transformation. A board-level vocabulary for distinguishing substantive ESG progress from disclosure activity.

Why organisations work with Margarida Matos Rosa She has run a national competition regulator from the inside. Decisions on banking, telecoms, energy, health, digital services and advertising cartels passed across her desk between 2016 and 2023, giving her a working view of how cases are built, prioritised and defended. She has sat at the policy table that shapes EU and global competition rules, as ICN Vice-Chair for Growth and Recovery and as a Bureau member of the OECD Competition Committee. Few speakers can read the regulatory direction of travel from inside both bodies. Her background bridges competition policy and capital markets. Earlier roles at the Portuguese Securities Market Commission and at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank mean she speaks credibly on the Savings and Investments Union, financial regulation and the cost of capital, not only antitrust. She translates regulation into board language. Boards leave with a sharper view of how competition enforcement, digital rules and capital markets integration affect their pricing, M&A pipeline and growth assumptions. Biography highlights President of the Portuguese Competition Authority, 2016 to 2023. Vice-Chair, International Competition Network (Growth and Recovery), 2022 to 2023. Bureau member, OECD Competition Committee, elected by peer authorities. Senior Consultant, Compass Lexecon International practice. Former Managing Director, Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), investment management supervision. Earlier career at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank in economic research, investment banking and asset management. MPA, Princeton University. Economics degree, Université Catholique de Louvain. Fulbright scholar at MIT. Biography Competition policy used to sit in a corner of corporate strategy: a compliance file, occasionally a deal-breaker, rarely a board-level lens. That has changed. Digital markets rules, merger thresholds and cartel enforcement now move pricing, investment and M&A decisions across whole sectors, and the EU is moving on capital markets integration in parallel. Margarida Matos Rosa led Portugal’s competition regulator through that shift. As President of the Autoridade da Concorrência from 2016 to 2023, she oversaw enforcement decisions across banking, telecoms, energy, health, digital services and advertising, and built up the authority’s technical capability in AI and IT forensics for cartel detection. Her tenure is widely credited with raising the authority’s international standing. That national role sat alongside two international ones. She was elected by peers to the Bureau of the OECD Competition Committee, and was appointed Vice-Chair of the International Competition Network for Growth and Recovery in 2022, a portfolio focused on the interface between antitrust and macro-economic policy after the pandemic. She now advises clients of Compass Lexecon’s International practice as a Senior Consultant. Her earlier career gives her an unusually wide read of the regulatory landscape. Before competition policy, she ran investment management supervision at Portugal’s Securities Market Commission, and held roles at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank covering economic research, investment banking and asset management. That financial markets grounding is what makes her credible on the Savings and Investments Union and on how capital allocation responds to a tighter EU regulatory perimeter. Key speaking topics Competition policy and antitrust enforcement EU single market and strategic autonomy Digital markets regulation Productivity and AI in regulated markets Savings and Investments Union and capital markets integration Financial regulation and capital markets oversight Institution building in economic regulators Ideal for Boards and executive committees of regulated firms in banking, telecoms, energy, digital and consumer markets General counsels, heads of strategy, heads of M&A and chief economists managing competition and digital regulation exposure CFOs and treasurers reading EU capital markets and Savings and Investments Union signals Policy and government affairs leaders shaping engagement with national and EU competition authorities Audience outcomes A clearer read on how EU and national competition enforcement is moving, and where it is likely to bite next A working understanding of how digital markets rules interact with innovation, pricing and platform strategy A view from inside a regulator on how cases are prioritised, built and resolved A sharper sense of how the Savings and Investments Union and capital markets integration affect cost of capital and cross-border deals A practical framework for engaging credibly with competition authorities, the European Commission and the OECD