Future of Work

Why organisations work with Kian Gohar Brings primary research, not commentary. The Ferrazzi-Gohar study of 2,000 leaders during the pandemic and his Stanford-partnered four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming give boards an evidence base for decisions, not anecdote. Co-author of a Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, translated into seven languages), with a working framework for high-return team practices that leaders can apply directly. Operational track record from inside XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he ran innovation programmes for Fortune 500s and helped design corporate moonshot work, so the advice connects to how large organisations actually execute. Published in Harvard Business Review on the failure modes of generative AI in team creativity, with specific guidance on how to redesign ideation workflows so AI raises output rather than flattening it. Speaks five languages and has built innovation programmes across the US, Europe, and China, which translates into sharper sessions for global leadership teams than a US-only perspective offers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Geolab, a research lab on Human-AI collaboration, future of work, and innovation. Co-author with Keith Ferrazzi of “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller in seven languages. Co-author of “Don’t Let Gen AI Limit Your Team’s Creativity,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2024, with Jeremy Utley of Stanford. Former Executive Director, XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Henry Luce Scholar in Shanghai; alumnus of Northwestern, London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. Research and commentary featured in the Financial Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most teams adopted hybrid work and generative AI inside the same eighteen months, and most leaders are still guessing at what good looks like. Kian Gohar’s research sits in that gap. With Keith Ferrazzi he interviewed more than 2,000 leaders during the pandemic; the resulting book, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was translated into seven languages. His more recent work moves the same lens onto AI. With Jeremy Utley of Stanford, he ran a four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming and published the findings in Harvard Business Review in 2024. The headline is uncomfortable for vendors: teams using generative AI produced only modestly more ideas, and several underperformed. The article gives leaders a specific diagnosis of why and what to change in the ideation workflow. Before Geolab, Gohar was Executive Director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he built corporate moonshot and innovation programmes for Fortune 500 leadership teams. That operational background is why his keynotes carry weight in boardrooms; the advice is grounded in running real programmes, not modelling them. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Luce Scholar, and a graduate of Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. For a senior team trying to work out how to make hybrid actually productive and how to introduce AI without quietly degrading creativity, Gohar offers a rare combination of evidence and operating instinct. Key speaking topics Radical adaptability and high-return team practices Human-AI collaboration in knowledge work Generative AI and team creativity Hybrid and remote workplace design Innovation strategy and corporate moonshots Future of work and workforce transformation Leadership through structural change Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning hybrid operating models Chief strategy and chief innovation officers integrating generative AI into team workflows Executive teams running enterprise-wide transformation programmes Boards and senior leadership groups setting an AI and future-of-work agenda Audience outcomes A clear read on what 2,000 leaders learned about hybrid work that actually raises team performance. Specific reasons teams underperform with generative AI and the workflow changes that reverse it. A working vocabulary for radical adaptability that senior teams can use to evaluate their own practices. Concrete examples from XPRIZE moonshot work showing how ambitious goals get organised inside large companies. A sharper sense of which AI and future-of-work investments will compound, and which will not.

Meet Dex Hunter-Torricke With more than a decade working at the heart of the technology industry, Dex Hunter-Torricke has managed communications for some of the most-influential and admired Silicon Valley leaders and corporations of our day. From 2012-2016, he led the executive communications team at Facebook and served as personal speechwriter for Mark Zuckerberg. He then went on to join SpaceX as senior director of communications. He is currently head of communications for the Oversight Board for Meta, the independent body that makes decisions on Facebook and Instagram’s most challenging content issues. A natural storyteller, Dex has an arsenal of jaw-dropping, one-of-a-kind anecdotes that he uses to illustrate spellbinding lessons about moving to the middle of change to access opportunity, understanding connectivity as a universal force, and embracing the emergence of a global generation. A firm believer that corporations must tap into the challenges presented by technologies moving societies across borders rather than running from them. On stage, Dex expertly combines his experience working for some of the world’s most-innovative and technology-driven brands with his passion for social innovation to help companies shift towards a 21st century business methodology. Dex takes audiences into Facebook’s boardroom, Musk’s open-concept cubicle, the famed Googleplex, and finally to the UN itself to share lessons on what it takes in today’s environment to build highly-effective internal teams, how to use storytelling in modern communications, and what to make of the steady transition from local to global that’s unfolded over the past decade. It’s truly fascinating to hear him talk about lessons learned from playing chess with Mark Zuckerberg in the middle of the night, or the intimidating, singular question asked by Elon Musk in a job interview. With prized insight on framing local problems globally, Dex encourages CEOs and entry-level employees alike to move to the center of disruption in order to innovate and offers practical advice for finding success in a constantly changing world. In addition to working with Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, Dex formerly served as Google’s first executive speechwriter, supporting CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and is a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter. He began his career at the United Nations in 2008 as a speechwriter and spokesperson for the office of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and holds a bachelors degree in politics from University College London and a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford. In November 2016, Dex left his role as head of communications for SpaceX to pursue projects focused on global social change, serving as an independent strategic communications adviser for major technology companies and political leaders in the U.S. and UK. He is continuing to focus on ways to advance human rights and freedom of expression online as head of communications for the Oversight Board Administration.

Why organisations work with Jacqueline Carter Four named books from Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave (One Second Ahead, The Mind of the Leader, Compassionate Leadership, More Human) that give a board or executive team a shared language for the human side of leadership. A research base built from interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders worldwide, conducted through Potential Project. Her arguments come with evidence, not anecdote. A framework, “wise compassion”, that gives leaders a usable answer to the empathy-versus-results tension most senior teams are stuck on. Twenty years of consulting at Deloitte and Potential Project with named clients including Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, and Royal Bank of Canada, so she speaks to executives in the language of operational reality, not theory. One of the few credible voices on AI-augmented leadership writing from a leadership-science lens rather than a technology one, anchored in her 2025 book More Human. Biography highlights Senior Partner and North America Director, Potential Project. Co-author, More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025). Co-author, Compassionate Leadership (HBR Press, 2022) and The Mind of the Leader (HBR Press, 2018). Co-author, One Second Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). MSc in Organizational Behaviour; former leader in Deloitte Consulting’s Change Leadership practice. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider. Biography The most senior leaders in large organisations are being asked to do contradictory things at once: cut hard, care visibly, deploy AI fast, and keep the workforce engaged through the disruption it causes. Most leadership advice picks one side of that tension and ignores the other. Jacqueline Carter’s work, built over two decades at Potential Project and Deloitte before that, is about holding both. Her four books with Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave map the same argument across different terrain. The Mind of the Leader (2018) sets out the foundation: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion as practical leadership disciplines. Compassionate Leadership (2022) names the operating problem most senior leaders run into when they try to lead with empathy, namely that empathy alone makes them indecisive, and proposes “wise compassion” as the working alternative. More Human (2025) turns the same lens on AI, arguing that the technology amplifies whichever leadership instinct is already there. The research base is unusual for a leadership speaker. Potential Project’s work draws on interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders and employees across industries. That gives Carter the evidence to make specific claims about what produces trust, candour, and performance in senior teams, rather than the generic motivational frame most leadership keynotes default to. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider, and has worked with executive teams at Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, and Royal Bank of Canada. The thread running through all of it is a single argument senior buyers will recognise immediately: the human qualities most leaders treat as soft are the ones that actually scale under pressure. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and the empathy-versus-results tension AI-augmented leadership Leading through change, restructure, and uncertainty Self-leadership and resilience for senior executives Hybrid and virtual team leadership Difficult conversations and leadership candour Mindfulness and attention as leadership disciplines Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding leadership culture after restructure or rapid growth. CHROs and CLOs designing senior leadership development programmes. Boards and senior teams working out how to deploy AI without losing the workforce. Partner groups and senior leaders in professional services managing client and team pressure simultaneously. Audience outcomes A working definition of “wise compassion” that senior leaders can use the next day in difficult conversations. A clearer view of where their own leadership defaults toward avoidance, false toughness, or performative care. A practical frame for using AI to extend leadership capacity rather than substitute for it. Specific language for the trade-offs between speed, candour, and care that most executive teams struggle to name. A research-backed counter to the assumption that human-centred leadership is incompatible with hard performance.

Why organisations work with Rasmus Hougaard He runs one of the largest applied research programmes on senior leadership behaviour, with data on more than 75,000 leaders in over 100 countries through Potential Project, which gives his content a defensibility most leadership speakers cannot match. Three Harvard Business Review Press books form a single argument, mindfulness, compassion, and AI-augmented leadership, which means a client can build a multi-year leadership curriculum around one coherent thesis rather than a single talk. His “compassionate leadership” framework gives executives a usable language for difficult conversations, restructures, and performance decisions, which is exactly the territory where senior people most often damage their credibility. Potential Project has long-running operating relationships with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, and others, so the content has been pressure-tested inside large complex organisations, not just on the conference circuit. Thinkers50 shortlisting for the Leadership Award places him in the small set of leadership thinkers whose work is taken seriously by senior HR and people-development functions globally. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of Potential Project, a global leadership development and research firm working with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, and Sony among others. Co-author of three Harvard Business Review Press books: “The Mind of the Leader”, “Compassionate Leadership”, and “More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead”. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award and named by Thinkers50 among the most important emerging leadership thinkers. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. Research base of more than 75,000 leaders across 100+ countries underpins his frameworks and talks. Has delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops to senior leadership audiences globally. Biography Most leadership development goes wrong at the same point. It treats the hard part of leadership, the decision that will upset someone, the conversation the leader has been avoiding, the moment of public pressure, as a communications problem. Potential Project, the firm Rasmus Hougaard founded and runs as Managing Director, has spent more than a decade arguing that it is an inner-discipline problem, and producing the research to show it. The argument runs through three Harvard Business Review Press books written with Jacqueline Carter. “The Mind of the Leader” drew on data from around 35,000 senior leaders to identify the mental qualities that distinguish those whose organisations actually follow them. “Compassionate Leadership” reframed the executive’s most uncomfortable moments, performance conversations, redundancies, restructure announcements, as a question of how to be honest without becoming cold. “More Human”, published by HBR Press in 2025, takes the same lens to AI and asks what leaders should do more of, not less, as machines take on more of the work. Potential Project’s client list, Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, Sony, and others, gives the work an operating substance that pure-academic leadership thinkers rarely match. The firm’s research spans more than 75,000 leaders across 100 countries. Thinkers50 has shortlisted him for its Leadership Award and listed him among the most important emerging leadership thinkers globally, and he contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. For a senior people function under pressure to make leadership development do real work in a fatigued organisation, the value is in the through-line. One firm, one body of evidence, one argument about what serious leadership requires in 2026, and a deep enough catalogue to anchor a multi-year programme rather than a single keynote. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and difficult conversations AI-augmented leadership Mindful leadership and executive composure Senior leadership development at scale Leading hybrid and distributed teams Culture and trust inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning senior leadership programmes Executive committees facing restructure, redundancy, or post-acquisition integration Boards and CEOs sponsoring AI rollouts where leadership behaviour, not technology, is the bottleneck Heads of leadership development and learning at global enterprises Audience outcomes A defensible model for handling the conversations leaders most often avoid Concrete practices for sustaining composure and judgement under sustained pressure A clearer view of where AI should and should not replace human leadership work Language to describe what “good leadership” actually looks like in their organisation, grounded in research rather than slogans Reference points from a peer set of global enterprises that have implemented the work

Why organisations work with Andrea Iorio Operator credibility from inside a platform business: five years running Tinder across Latin America, where consumer-tech decisions had to be made under real commercial pressure, not theorised about. A published, peer-reviewed thesis on the AI-human boundary. Between You and AI (Wiley) made the USA Today bestseller list and gives him a defensible point of view that maps to a three-part framework executives can use. Four-language, multi-market authority. He writes the MIT Technology Review Brasil column, hosts NVIDIA Brazil’s official podcast, and lectures on the MBA at Fundação Dom Cabral, while delivering keynotes to Fortune 500 audiences in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. A working CX and digital-transformation playbook drawn from his time as Chief Digital Officer at L’Oréal Brazil, useful for any consumer-facing organisation rebuilding its phygital journey. A delivery cadence at Fortune 500 scale. Repeat clients include Abbott, Bayer, Cargill, Dow, IBM, Roche, Syngenta, and Tetra Pak. Biography highlights USA Today bestselling author of Between You and AI: Unlock the Power of Human Skills to Thrive in an AI-Driven World (Wiley). Author of two #1 Amazon Brazil bestsellers in People Management and Leadership: 6 Competências para Surfar na Transformação Digital and O futuro não é mais como antigamente. Former Head of Tinder, Latin America (5 years) and Chief Digital Officer, L’Oréal Brazil. MBA professor at Fundação Dom Cabral. Columnist at MIT Technology Review Brasil; host of NVIDIA Brazil’s official podcast. Economics, Bocconi University (Milan); MA International Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS (Washington, DC). Biography AI capability is no longer the scarce resource inside large organisations. Human judgement is. Between You and AI, the Wiley book that put Andrea Iorio on the USA Today bestseller list in 2025, makes that case for senior teams trying to convert pilots into operating advantage. The argument runs along three axes: cognitive, behavioural, and emotional. Each carries a practical set of skills that AI tools cannot supply on their own. The operator credentials behind that argument are unusual for someone now working primarily as an author and educator. Iorio spent five years as Head of Tinder for Latin America, then served as Chief Digital Officer at L’Oréal Brazil. Both roles forced commercial decisions about consumer technology under real revenue pressure, not the conference-room version of digital transformation. The academic platform sits alongside. He teaches on the MBA at Fundação Dom Cabral, writes the MIT Technology Review Brasil column, and hosts NVIDIA’s official Brazil podcast. His first book in Portuguese, 6 Competências para Surfar na Transformação Digital, set out a framework of six competencies, from cognitive flexibility to digital altruism, that became the most-read leadership title on Amazon Brazil. Clients book him for Fortune 500 keynotes in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. The roster includes Abbott, Bayer, Cargill, Dow, IBM, Roche, Syngenta, and Tetra Pak. The work that follows the keynote is usually a board-level conversation about which human skills the organisation now needs to build, fast, alongside its AI deployment. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and human skills Digital transformation and leadership Customer-centricity and phygital experience Innovation culture Future of work in the age of AI Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting the human-skills agenda alongside an AI roadmap. CHROs and learning leaders redesigning capability programmes for an AI-augmented workforce. CMOs and CX leaders rebuilding the customer journey across digital and physical touchpoints. Latin America regional executive teams of multinational consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A three-part framework for the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional skills that matter most when AI enters the workflow. A concrete set of decisions about which managerial behaviours to keep, change, or retire in an AI-augmented operating model. Reference examples from Tinder, L’Oréal, and other consumer-facing businesses that have rebuilt the phygital customer journey. A working definition of innovation culture that distinguishes managed practice from creative theatre.

Why organisations work with Sharon Gai She offers a working model for redesigning teams and reporting lines when agentic AI absorbs the work middle management was paid to do. Her book How to Do More with Less (Wiley, 2026) maps the shift from task-based to capability-based org structures, with named roles for what humans do once execution is automated. Most AI adoption speakers describe what is happening to organisations from the outside. As Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba’s Tmall, Sharon worked inside the operating core of one of the world’s most AI-integrated commercial platforms. The vantage gives her authority on AI’s organisational effects that advisers and analysts cannot manufacture. Her practitioner depth on China’s ecommerce ecosystem, built into Ecommerce Reimagined (World Scientific, 2022), gives commercial and transformation leaders a primary source on consumer-to-manufacturer models and AI-integrated logistics via Cainiao. For European boards looking five years ahead, this is the live case study Western markets are still catching up to. Her “Culture Fluid” framework gives leadership teams a way to address the human side of AI adoption without falling into change-management cliché. It explains why two organisations with the same technology stack will get different results. Her client list spans UBS, Deloitte, Nestlé, Walmart, LVMH, and Lenovo, with platform exposure on Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters, TechCrunch, and Wired. Recognised as a LinkedIn Top AI Voice (2026) and a RETHINK Retail Top AI Leader. Biography highlights Author of How to Do More with Less: Future-Proofing Yourself in an AI-Driven Economy (Wiley, 2026) and Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China (World Scientific, 2022) Former Head of Global Key Accounts at Tmall, Alibaba’s core commerce pillar, led omnichannel and ecommerce strategy for major international accounts including Adidas, P&G, H&M, and Xiaomi Selected for the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy, the internal programme designed to globalise Alibaba’s business units MS in Information & Knowledge Strategy, Columbia University; Honours BA in International Development, McGill University Former Global Shaper, World Economic Forum Named in AAE’s Top Keynote Speakers 2023; recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top AI Leader, LinkedIn Top Voice (2024), and LinkedIn Top AI Voice (2026) Media appearances on Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters, TechCrunch, Wired, CBC, and CCTV; keynote clients include UBS, Deloitte, Nestlé, Walmart, LVMH, and Lenovo Biography The work middle management was paid to do is moving into systems. Reporting, status tracking, summarisation, performance feedback, project oversight: agentic AI now performs each of these to the standard a competent manager would have delivered five years ago. The org chart that organisations grew up with is becoming structurally redundant, and most leadership teams do not yet have a working model for what replaces it. That question is the centre of Sharon Gai’s recent work. Her book How to Do More with Less (Wiley, 2026) maps the shift from task-based org structures to capability-based ones, naming what concentrates in humans once execution is automated: judgement, taste, theory of mind, original problem definition. The book sits within an active body of writing on what she calls the Org Chart of the Future, drawing on the live restructures already underway at Meta, Microsoft, and others. Her authority on these questions comes from operational experience few AI speakers can claim. As Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba’s Tmall, she worked inside one of the world’s most AI-integrated commercial platforms, leading omnichannel and ecommerce strategy for Adidas, P&G, H&M, and Xiaomi. Selection for the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy, the internal programme tasked with globalising Alibaba’s business units, deepened that vantage. Her first book, Ecommerce Reimagined (World Scientific, 2022), remains the only practitioner account of China’s ecommerce ecosystem written from within Alibaba, examining how consumer-to-manufacturer models and AI-integrated logistics via Cainiao function inside the company. Her “Culture Fluid” framework addresses the parallel internal question: how to build the agility to compete across simultaneous cultural and technological shifts. The work connects the structural argument of the Org Chart of the Future to the human capability conditions that make any redesign executable. Without the second, the first remains an idea on a slide. Key speaking topics The Org Chart of the Future: AI-era team and role design AI adoption at organisational scale: from pilots to operating model The disappearing middle: agentic AI and management layers Future-proofing in an AI-driven economy China’s AI-integrated commerce ecosystem Culture Fluid: organisational agility across cultural and technological shifts Consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) models and AI-integrated supply chains Ideal for CHROs, COOs, and transformation leads designing the operating model and workforce for an AI-augmented organisation Boards and executive committees confronting the structural implications of AI on management layers, headcount, and capability planning Chief Commercial Officers and heads of digital in retail, FMCG, luxury, and consumer brands looking at AI’s effect on platform commerce Leadership development programmes where AI adoption needs the perspective of someone who has worked inside an organisation operating at AI saturation Audience outcomes A structural model for redesigning teams and reporting lines when agentic AI absorbs the work middle management was paid to do Operating clarity on which AI use cases produce advantage and which produce vendor revenue A view of how China’s AI-integrated commerce platforms actually function, drawn from inside Alibaba, and what is genuinely replicable in Western markets A direct answer to the question of where human capability concentrates in an AI-driven organisation: judgement, taste, theory of mind, original problem definition A shared language, through the Culture Fluid model, for the human side of AI adoption

About James McCabe Irishman Dr. James McCabe inherits his country’s singular tradition of storytelling in all forms and has honed his skill set at Oxford where he gained an award-winning doctorate in literature. James was one of the very first people in Europe to deploy classic story design at enterprise level and has over the last two decades deployed his knowledge across hundreds of corporate events and projects. Equally adept at customizing story design in any industry, function or geography, James brings the trade craft of narrative performance together with contemporary business smarts to help his audience seize the reins themselves. Since the late nineties, James has consulted European, American and Asian entities of all kinds to deploy narrative across leadership, reputation, strategy, brand and culture arenas – from strategic visions and public relations to business development, marketing communications, human relations and personal development. The five biographical phases of organizational life – from starting up and growing to taking over, turning around and evolving – are each brought to life utilizing the timeless story code of empathy, suspense and surprise. James has been involved in large-scale corporate deals, new product and service development, mergers and acquisitions, digital transformations, sustainability drives, start-up scenarios and numerous other corporate engagements. In each case, he combines unique knowledge of story arts with commercial savvy to produce memorable narrative metaphors and kernels. His Fable workshop series is instrumental in bringing original story culture to whole organizations, while his event appearances and keynotes are often the highlight of corporate gigs.

Why organisations work with Huy Nguyen Trieu Two decades inside tier-one banks (Citi, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale) paired with co-founding CFTE, a capability platform that has reached more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries, gives him a view neither pure bankers nor pure technologists can offer. His work names the specific mechanisms by which AI is reshaping institutions, drawing on frameworks developed at CFTE including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model. Boards and policymakers use him to pressure-test AI strategy against what is actually deployable, including a strategy briefing for the senior leadership of a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with over 100 senior leaders. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) and co-author of “The Fintech Job Report” (2022), both of which set out workforce impact in numbers executives can use for planning. Council Member of the ADI Foundation, Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School, and former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board, so his work holds up in front of regulators and sovereign actors as well as operators. Biography highlights Co-founder, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), reaching more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries. Council Member, ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure including national stablecoins and digital public infrastructure. Former Managing Director at Citi, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale; founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators; former CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up. Graduate of MIT and École Polytechnique; first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School; Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School; former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024); co-author of “The Fintech Job Report: Technology is eating Finance” (2022). Commentary on AI in financial services featured in international business media including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and CNBC. Biography Most banks have been running digital transformation programmes for a decade. The harder question now reaches further than banking. Governments, central banks and financial institutions all face the same problem: translating AI from pilots into operating capability that holds up under regulation and talent constraints. That is the terrain Huy Nguyen Trieu has worked on from both sides. He spent years at Citi, finishing as a Managing Director, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale. Before banking he was CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up, and was later a founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators. The mix means he reads an institution’s P&L the way an operator does and reads a technology bet the way an investor does. He co-founded CFTE, the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship. It now reaches more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries and works with governments, central banks and financial institutions on AI capability at scale. CFTE’s frameworks, including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model, are the spine of that work. He was the first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School and is an Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School. He also serves as a Council Member of the ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure for emerging markets. Recent engagements illustrate the scope. He delivered a keynote on the third wave of AI in the presence of H.E. the President of the Republic of Cyprus. Other engagements include a strategy briefing for a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with more than 100 senior leaders. His book “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) explains why AI breaks the historical assumption that new technology creates more jobs than it destroys. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of financial services AI in banking and capital markets Digital business models in regulated industries Platform economics and hyperscalable finance Future of work in financial services Digital assets and tokenisation Venture capital and fintech investment trends Ideal for Governments and central banks building AI capability across regulated sectors Bank and insurer boards setting AI and fintech strategy CEOs, COOs and CIOs of financial institutions running transformation agendas Heads of innovation, strategy and HR grappling with workforce impact of AI Audience outcomes A clearer read on which fintech and AI shifts are structural and which are overstated. Specific examples of business-model change from inside banks, fintechs and big tech, not generic case studies. A workforce view: which roles in finance shrink, which expand, and what skills leaders should build now. A sharper frame for board-level conversations on AI risk, digital assets and platform strategy.

Why organisations work with Aljan de Boer A structured research model, not trend commentary. TrendsActive’s trend model draws on two decades of social science research – psychology, sociology, anthropology – to convert cultural signals into strategic implications. Audiences receive a framework, not a list of observations. Direct access to what 400+ CMOs are actually doing. As Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, de Boer works inside a practitioner network of senior marketing leaders navigating the same pressures he describes. His insight is tested against real decisions, not desk research. The IRG Growth and Impact Studies as evidence base. His talk on humanized growth draws on two large-scale global studies produced by IRG in partnership with the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – giving commercial teams a peer-reviewed foundation for strategies that go beyond shareholder primacy. Translation from complexity to commercial action. Where other trend speakers describe what is happening, de Boer’s focus is on what organisations should do about it – specifically for brand strategy, customer understanding, and growth planning at C-suite level. Named-brand consulting experience behind the research. TrendsActive’s client list includes Disney, Vodafone, and Hugo Boss – organisations where the same analytical approach has been stress-tested against real strategic choices. Biography highlights Head of Inspiration, TrendsActive – Netherlands-based trend consultancy applying social science to brand and business strategy Community Director, Institute for Real Growth – leads CMO leadership programme and connects a global community of 400+ senior marketing leaders IRG Impact Study, produced in partnership with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford – foundational research underpinning his humanized growth framework Board member, Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing, for close to a decade Regular speaker and moderator, Dutch Marketing Awards; three-time winner, Best of MIE Senior Lecturer (Hoofddocent), Iris Academy; advisory and teaching roles in marketing and trends Biography Brands lose relevance not because their products deteriorate, but because the people they serve quietly change around them. Aljan de Boer has spent the past two decades helping commercial leaders see that shift before it becomes a crisis – using social science, not sentiment analysis, as the primary instrument. As Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, de Boer works with a methodology that draws on psychology, sociology, and anthropology to decode fundamental changes in how people think, trust, and make decisions. The consultancy’s client list runs to major international brands across consumer, financial services, and technology sectors. Its trend model is designed not to describe what is fashionable but to identify what is structurally different about the human context organisations are operating in. Alongside his work at TrendsActive, de Boer serves as Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth, where he leads a global CMO leadership programme and connects a practitioner network of more than 400 senior marketing leaders. The IRG’s work – including its Growth and Impact Studies, developed in partnership with the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford – provides the empirical backbone for his argument that durable commercial growth requires creating value for colleagues, customers, communities, and capital markets simultaneously. He calls this humanized growth; the research quantifies why it outperforms narrower models. The result is a speaker who brings an evidence base to questions that typically attract only opinion: what is actually changing in consumer behaviour, why geopolitical and generational pressure shifts brand expectations at a structural level, and what a marketing or commercial leadership team should concretely do next. Key speaking topics Sociocultural trends and brand strategy Humanized growth and multi-stakeholder value creation Consumer behaviour under economic and geopolitical pressure Generation Z and generational change Future-proofing organisations through social science ESG and sustainability as commercial strategy The polycrisis and its implications for business Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leadership teams Chief Commercial Officers and growth strategy leaders Executive committees preparing for medium-term strategic planning Corporate conference programmes focused on brand relevance, customer strategy, or commercial resilience Audience outcomes A structured framework for identifying which sociocultural shifts are commercially significant, and which are noise Clearer understanding of the specific psychological, sociological, and generational forces reshaping customer and employee expectations Language and evidence for making the case internally for human-centred growth strategies, grounded in the IRG research base Sharper perspective on what Generation Z’s formative context – climate anxiety, political polarisation, pandemic – means for brand and product strategy A practical lens for translating societal complexity into near-term decisions on brand positioning, customer engagement, and organisational priorities

Why organisations work with Blaire Palmer She brings a BBC journalist’s instinct for the question leaders are avoiding, then makes the boardroom answer it in plain language. Her book Punks in Suits gives organisations a shared vocabulary for why old management habits, not strategy, are the real brake on growth. She has coached boards and executive teams across Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so the challenge lands with commercial credibility. She runs That People Thing as her own consultancy, which means the keynote is the leading edge of a deeper body of work on leadership transformation, not a standalone act. Biography highlights Chief Executive and founder of That People Thing, a leadership consultancy working with boards and executive teams on culture and change. Author of four books including Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation (Rethink Press, 2024) and What’s Wrong with Work? (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). Former producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where she spent a decade in UK news and current affairs. Trained as one of Europe’s first accredited executive coaches after leaving the BBC. Named clients include Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Govia Thameslink Railway, and Centre for Army Leadership. Regular contributor to Medium and Authority Magazine on leadership and the future of work. Biography Most organisations are not structured to change. They are structured to protect the habits that made them successful, and the people defending those habits are often the most senior in the room. Palmer’s work starts from that observation and builds out. She spent a decade as a producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, interrogating ministers and chief executives at eight minutes past seven in the morning. The habit of asking the uncomfortable question did not leave her when she moved into coaching at 29. It became the method. Since then she has spent more than two decades advising boards and executive teams at Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She founded That People Thing to house that work. Her fourth book, Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation, published by Rethink Press in 2024, sets out the argument that entrenched management orthodoxy, not competitive pressure, is what stalls most organisations trying to evolve. What a senior team gets from her is rare in the category. She has the reporter’s ability to cut through executive language, the coach’s patience to stay with a difficult conversation, and a published thesis specific enough to be argued with. That makes the keynote a starting point for a real internal debate rather than a motivational interval. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and change Workplace reformation and culture Trust and candour in senior teams Future of work Decision-making under pressure Leadership myths and orthodoxies Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a culture or performance inflection point. CHROs and chief people officers leading leadership development at scale. CEOs integrating acquisitions or navigating a strategic reset. Leadership conferences for senior management populations. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership habits are acting as a ceiling on organisational performance. A specific argument, drawn from Punks in Suits, that senior teams can take back into their own decision forums. Language for the conversations leaders have been avoiding with peers and direct reports. Recognition that culture and strategy move together, and a concrete starting point for aligning them.

Why organisations work with Gabriela Hersham Ten years of operating data on what actually draws people back into shared space, drawn from running Huckletree hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin rather than theory. A working view on curating communities by sector, including Web3, fintech, AI and govtech, tested inside the UK’s first Web3-themed co-working hub at Oxford Street. A concrete record of inclusive entrepreneurship practice through Fairer Funding Now and the Huckletree Alpha accelerator, running pro-bono for under-represented founders since 2017. A founder’s view on scaling a physical network to roughly 300,000 sq ft while holding cultural standards, useful for any leader reconciling real-estate spend with employee experience. Speaking experience that spans TEDx stages, industry podcasts and corporate conferences, with a style that senior audiences read as operator rather than consultant. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Huckletree, launched in 2014 and grown to eight hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin. Operates roughly 300,000 sq ft of curated workspace serving around 4,000 members across Web3, fintech, AI, govtech and sustainable innovation. Launched Huckletree Oxford Street, positioned as the UK’s first Web3 and metaverse-themed co-working hub. Founded Fairer Funding Now, a campaign for greater inclusivity in startup investment, and runs Huckletree Alpha, a pro-bono accelerator for under-represented founders since 2017. TEDx speaker on the Future of Work; named one of Tide Bank’s Top 20 female entrepreneurs to watch in 2020. Contributor bylines at The Next Web and Creative Review; interviewed by HuffPost Trailblazing Women, Culture Trip and the Propertyshe podcast. Biography Huckletree opened its first space in Clerkenwell in 2014 after Gabriela Hersham returned to London convinced the city was missing the community model she had seen take hold in New York. Ten years on, the business runs eight hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin, about 300,000 sq ft of space, and a membership base of roughly 4,000 founders and operators. What distinguishes the company from a generic flexible-office provider is the curation. Each hub is built around a sector thesis: Web3 and the metaverse at Oxford Street, fintech and AI elsewhere in the portfolio, with members recruited against that thesis rather than sold desks on a first-come basis. That choice turns the workspace into a distribution channel for deals, hires and partnerships, which is why corporate partners buy into specific hubs rather than generic square footage. Inclusive entrepreneurship sits alongside the commercial model rather than running as a side project. Fairer Funding Now campaigns for change in how capital reaches under-represented founders. Huckletree Alpha, the pro-bono accelerator running since 2017, is the practical counterpart, giving cohort members space, mentoring and access without taking equity. For corporate audiences the value is the operating detail behind those choices. A TEDx talk on the future of work, repeat podcast appearances on property and founder platforms, and contributor bylines at The Next Web and Creative Review have made Hersham a recognisable voice on what brings people back into shared space. The argument she makes to boards and HR leaders is concrete: offices only earn their cost when they are designed as communities with a specific purpose, and diversity in hiring and funding is part of how that purpose holds together. Key speaking topics Future of work and the hybrid workplace Workplace design and community curation Women in entrepreneurship Inclusive funding and diverse founder pipelines Scaling a founder-led business Web3, fintech and emerging-sector ecosystems Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding office strategy and employee experience Real-estate and workplace directors balancing cost with culture Corporate innovation and venture teams engaging with early-stage ecosystems Networks and events on women in business and diverse entrepreneurship Audience outcomes A sharper read on why employees return to some offices and avoid others, grounded in operating data from a curated network. Concrete examples of how sector-themed workplace communities produce commercial value rather than just reduce cost. A practical view on embedding inclusive funding and hiring practices into the way a company runs, not as a separate programme. An operator’s perspective on scaling a physical and cultural network without losing what made it work in the first place.

Why organisations work with Sharmadean Reid She has built three businesses from scratch, WAH Nails, Beautystack and The Stack World, and raised venture capital as one of a small number of Black women globally to close a seven-figure seed round. Her work on the gender wealth gap is operational, not rhetorical: The Stack World is a paid community and financial education platform with over 20,000 members, not a campaign or content brand. Penguin Life published her first book, New Methods for Women, in June 2024, giving her a coherent and citable thesis on independence and economic agency that buyers can hand to their teams. She speaks from inside the founder experience that most corporate diversity programmes are trying to influence, with credibility on capital access, community building and brand creation that few other speakers in this category carry. UAL conferred an Honorary Fellowship at Central Saint Martins in 2024, recognising her contribution to creative entrepreneurship and community. Biography highlights Founder, The Stack World, a community and financial education platform with a global membership focused on women’s wealth building. Founder of Beautystack (2017), an image-based booking platform for beauty professionals that raised over £1m in seed funding in 2018. Founder of WAH Nails (2009), the Dalston-born salon that built a global cultural brand and a product line distributed through Boots. MBE for services to the nail and beauty industry, 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Author of New Methods for Women: A Manifesto for Independence, Penguin Life, 2024. Honorary Fellow, University of the Arts London, 2024; graduate of Central Saint Martins, BA Fashion Communication and Promotion. Biography Few women raise seven-figure seed rounds in the UK. Fewer Black women do. Sharmadean Reid did it in 2018 for Beautystack, the image-based booking platform she founded after a decade running WAH Nails, the Dalston salon that turned a youth-culture zine into a cult retail brand and a product line in Boots. That trajectory matters because it gives her something most speakers on women’s leadership do not have: lived experience of the operating constraints, from access to capital to brand building to customer acquisition, that determine whether women actually end up running and owning businesses at scale. Her work is rooted in commercial reality, not advocacy. The Stack World, which she founded in 2021, is the logical next step. It is a paid community and financial education platform with more than 20,000 members, designed to close the gender wealth gap through literacy, networks and collective investment rather than corporate sponsorship. The thesis is published: Penguin Life released her book, New Methods for Women: A Manifesto for Independence, in June 2024. Her credentials sit behind the argument, not in front of it. MBE in 2015 for services to the nail and beauty industry. Honorary Fellowship from University of the Arts London in 2024, conferred at her alma mater Central Saint Martins. For organisations serious about moving gender equity from policy into commercial outcome, she is the rare voice who can speak to founders, executives and policy audiences from the same body of work. Key speaking topics The gender wealth gap and women’s economic empowerment Entrepreneurship, founder journeys and raising venture capital Community as a commercial strategy Building and scaling consumer brands Closing the gender leadership gap Creative entrepreneurship and the creator economy Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and chief sustainability officers translating gender commitments into measurable outcomes Founders, investors and venture teams focused on backing women-led businesses Marketing, brand and customer leaders building community-led growth models Boards and executive committees setting policy on women’s progression and supplier diversity Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what it takes to fund, build and scale a venture-backed business as a woman founder A working definition of the gender wealth gap, and the levers organisations can pull on it Concrete examples of community as a commercial mechanism, not a marketing layer A more honest internal language for discussing gender equity beyond pipeline metrics