Future of Work

Why organisations work with Seth Mattison His book The War at Work, co-authored with Joshua Medcalf, frames the cultural and structural tension between the traditional hierarchy and the emerging network, which is the underlying shape of most workforce disputes leaders are now managing. As a Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks, the firm that helped define generational diversity consulting, he works inside the practitioner tradition rather than commenting on it from the outside. His client list is unusual in its breadth: MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney and the Dallas Cowboys, which means his material has been calibrated across consumer, technology, financial services, industrial and entertainment audiences. He is a main-stage speaker first, with an Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch selection and published quotes in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail, which is useful for all-hands, sales kick-offs and customer conferences. He combines data-heavy content on workforce trends with a storyteller’s register, which keeps Gen Z and boomer audiences in the same session without patronising either. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Luminate Labs; Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks Co-author of The War at Work with Joshua Medcalf Expert on generational workforce dynamics, future of work and talent management Published and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail Named clients include MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and the Dallas Cowboys Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch Biography Four generations are now working alongside each other in most major organisations, and the assumptions each has brought to the table about loyalty, hierarchy and flexibility are pulling in different directions. Seth Mattison has spent almost two decades working on that gap. As Co-Founder and CEO of Luminate Labs and a Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks, the consulting firm that helped define the generational-diversity category, he works with senior leaders on the specific changes that multi-generational and post-hierarchical workplaces require. The War at Work, co-authored with Joshua Medcalf, is the most accessible expression of his argument. Written as a fable, it lays out the tension between the traditional hierarchy and the emerging network inside modern organisations, and the unwritten rules leaders need to understand to manage both. The book is widely used in leadership programmes, and it is the same argument his keynotes are built on. The client list runs across industries that rarely share a training vendor: MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, GE Energy, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and the Dallas Cowboys. His work has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail, and he has been selected as an Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch. For CHROs, chief talent officers and executive committees trying to build a leadership pipeline that spans Gen Z through boomers, Mattison offers something most generational speakers do not: a main-stage performer backed by a consulting practice and a published book, with a client footprint that shows the argument holds up across sectors. Key speaking topics Generational dynamics and the multigenerational workplace Future of work and the shift from hierarchy to network Talent management and high-performance culture Sales and leadership in the new workforce Next-generation leadership development Change and transformation in the people system Ideal for CHROs, chief talent officers and HR leadership teams designing multigenerational workforce strategy Sales, revenue and commercial leadership teams adapting to new buyer and workforce dynamics All-hands, kick-offs and customer or partner conferences where a main-stage future-of-work voice is needed Leadership programmes and corporate universities running high-potential and next-generation cohorts Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the tension between hierarchy and network inside their own organisation A clearer view of what drives and derails each generational cohort at work, drawn from BridgeWorks practice and Mattison’s own research Specific prompts for updating leadership, sales and talent practices for a post-hierarchical workforce Case material from named Fortune 500 engagements usable as reference cases in the audience’s own context

Why organisations work with Sebastian Thrun He has shipped autonomous AI at production scale. The Stanford team he led won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, and the Google self-driving project he co-founded became Waymo. He built the playbook that boards now ask about. Google X, founded under his leadership, codified moonshot methodology for capital-intensive technology bets. He has direct experience reskilling enterprise workforces in AI, data and cloud through Udacity, including programmes for IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google before the 2024 acquisition by Accenture. He explains AI without dumbing it down. Senior audiences leave with a working sense of what current systems can and cannot do, and where the real operational risk sits. Biography highlights Co-founder of Google X and the Google self-driving car project that became Waymo Led the Stanford Racing Team whose vehicle Stanley won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge; Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Co-founder and chairman of Udacity, acquired by Accenture in 2024 to power the LearnVantage reskilling platform Co-founder and former CEO of Kitty Hawk, the eVTOL “flying car” company backed by Larry Page Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award (Education, 2012) Co-author of Probabilistic Robotics (MIT Press), the standard graduate text on the mathematics behind autonomous systems Biography Stanley crossed the finish line of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge after 132 miles of desert, the first autonomous vehicle to do so. The Stanford Racing Team that built it was led by Sebastian Thrun, then director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Stanley now sits in the Smithsonian. The technology grew into Waymo and the modern autonomous vehicle industry. That arc, from research lab to production AI, is what makes his perspective valuable to senior teams. He gave up tenure at Stanford to become a Google Fellow, co-founded Google X, and built the moonshot model that boards now reference when they talk about long-horizon technology bets. Probabilistic Robotics, the textbook he co-authored with Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox, remains the standard graduate reference in the field. The second half of his career addresses the constraint that most boards now feel acutely. Talent. Udacity, which he co-founded in 2012, built the Nanodegree model with employers including IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Google, then sold to Accenture in 2024 to anchor the LearnVantage reskilling platform. He also co-founded Kitty Hawk with Larry Page to commercialise eVTOL aircraft. Audiences get something specific from him. A clear read on what current AI systems do well, where they fail, what production deployment actually requires, and how to build a workforce that can operate the technology rather than admire it. Key speaking topics Production AI and autonomous systems Moonshot methodology and long-horizon technology bets AI workforce reskilling and the talent constraint The future of mobility and self-driving vehicles AI for the board and the executive committee Online learning and the economics of education Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy to operating deployment CHROs and CLOs commissioning enterprise reskilling at scale Automotive, mobility and industrial leadership teams facing autonomy CTOs and chief AI officers benchmarking moonshot and R&D portfolios Audience outcomes A working mental model of where current AI systems succeed and where they fail in production A concrete view of the workforce capability required to run AI inside a large organisation A read on how moonshot bets are structured, governed and shut down inside a serious technology company A clearer sense of where autonomy is heading in mobility, logistics and adjacent sectors

Why organisations work with Scott Steinberg A method for foresight that produces decisions, not predictions. The POP FUTURE workshop format converts trend analysis into specific moves on product, talent, and customer strategy. A working library of 30 published books across futurism, innovation, change, and digital transformation, which means buyers can match a programme to a specific board agenda rather than a generic keynote. Direct advisory exposure to Fortune 500 operators and US defence leadership, including IBM, PwC, Intel, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense, with the language and pace that environment demands. A trends franchise visible through CNBC, BBC, NPR, and Forbes, which gives senior audiences confidence that the speaker on stage is the same voice they have heard analysing the market elsewhere. Biography highlights CEO of FutureProof Strategies and of BIZDEV, the International Association for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships. Author of Make Change Work for You (Perigee/Penguin) and Think Like a Futurist, part of a published catalogue of more than 30 books. Named Master of Innovation by Fortune magazine. Contributor and on-air expert for CNBC, BBC, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, and Fox Business; columnist for Forbes and Reader’s Digest. Advisory and consulting work with IBM, PwC, Intel, Sony, Microsoft, MTV, ESPN, American Express, and the US Department of Defense. Creator of the POP FUTURE methodology and the What’s the Future of…? and The Future is Yours applied foresight tools. Biography Most foresight work stops at the trend chart. Boards see the slide on AI, demographics, or customer behaviour, agree it matters, then return to the operating decisions in front of them. Scott Steinberg’s work is built around closing that gap. His POP FUTURE methodology and the What’s the Future of…? workshop tools are designed to take a leadership team from “this trend is real” to “this is what we do on Monday”. That bias toward decision shows up across his published catalogue. Make Change Work for You, published by Perigee, frames future-proofing as a set of practical disciplines for individuals and teams. Think Like a Futurist extends the same logic to enterprise planning. Across more than 30 books, the through-line is the same: foresight as an operating capability, not a corporate trend report. The credentials behind that argument are unusually broad. He runs FutureProof Strategies and BIZDEV, advises IBM, PwC, Intel, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense, and was named Master of Innovation by Fortune. CNBC, BBC, NPR, and Forbes use him as a recurring voice on technology, work, and consumer behaviour, which means his audiences arrive already familiar with how he reasons. For senior buyers, the practical value is range. Boards working on AI adoption, generational change, customer experience, or change fatigue can put him in front of any of those audiences and get the same disciplined translation from trend to decision. That is what makes him useful when the brief is wide, the audience is mixed, and the agenda is more than a single topic. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and future-proofing Artificial intelligence and the future of business Change leadership and innovation Digital transformation Customer experience and consumer trends Generational shift and future of work Organisational culture and resilience Ideal for Board and executive committee strategy offsites setting a multi-year agenda Transformation, innovation, and digital leaders running enterprise-wide change programmes CMOs and customer experience leaders planning around generational and behavioural shift Industry events where a mixed senior audience needs a single integrating view of technology, work, and customer trends Audience outcomes A working definition of what futurism is and is not, and how to use it inside an existing planning cycle A short list of the trends most likely to reshape the audience’s industry over the next planning horizon A method for translating trend analysis into specific decisions on product, customer, and workforce Language and frames that make foresight defensible to a sceptical board or investment committee

Many speakers sell something — especially if they speak for free. They annoy audiences with their sales pitches for their company’s products, their books, or their consulting services. But Samuel’s company’s product has nothing to do with marketing. He does not have a book. He does not do consulting. Rather, Samuel Scott uses his decades of experience to give business clients and conference attendees actual insights into marketing best practices rather than buzzword-filled fluff. And yes — he charges a fee instead of selling something to audiences. Samuel’s first career as a journalist and newspaper editor lets him see through the BS that fills much of the marketing industry. His second career in marketing has provided him the insights that he now shares with the world on stages and through his columns in publications ranging from The Drum to TechCrunch. Scott has Mini-MBAs in marketing and brand management from Marketing Week in London, a Master of Advertising Effectiveness from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) in the UK, and a B.S. in journalism from Boston University. He is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) in the UK and a member of Toastmasters International. In 2019, Scott was a judge for the UK Ad Association’s Young Lions competition in advance of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Scott is American and lives in Tel Aviv.

Rowan Gibson’s background He is the internationally bestselling author of 3 major books, which have been published in 25 languages, and a trusted strategic adviser to both the private and public sector all over the world. In 2015 Rowan received the prestigious “Global Leader of Innovation” award for his significant contribution to the field of innovation strategy. He was also nominated and shortlisted for the 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award. Rowan has worked with a long list of major organizations, including Apple, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, British Telecom, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, Dell Technologies, Dow Chemicals, Foxconn, Generali Group, Haier, HarleyDavidson, Heineken, Heinz, Hershey’s, Hugo Boss, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, KIA Motors, Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin, Mars, McCain Foods, Microsoft, Philips, P&G, Roche, Siemens, Steelcase, Swarovski, Toyota, Telefonica, Volkswagen, Volvo, and many others. His strategic advice has helped these companies seize valuable new growth opportunities and even reinvent whole businesses by making innovation and transformation happen. Rowan is one of the world’s most in-demand public speakers. He has delivered his keynote speeches, public seminars, and multi-day masterclasses in 64 countries. He is also a prolific writer. He is the internationally bestselling author of three major books on business strategy, innovation, and transformation: – Rethinking The Future (1996), Innovation to the Core (2008) and The Four Lenses of Innovation (2015) – which have been published to date in 25 languages. His seminal book Innovation to the Core (Harvard Business School Press 2008), explained – for the first time – how to build and sustain a deep, company-wide capability for strategy innovation that drives continual growth and transformation. Rowan’s latest book The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking (Wiley 2015) provides today’s companies with a revolutionary methodology for infusing radical business creativity into their organizations. In addition to his bestselling books, Rowan has authored dozens of business articles, columns and blogs which have been read all around the globe. He has been interviewed frequently on television and radio, as well as online and in the international press. His media appearances include Forbes, CNN, Sky News, BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, and BBC World Service. The media have labeled him “Mr. Innovation”, “the Innovation Grandmaster”, “the W. Edwards Deming of innovation”, “an innovation management ninja” and “a guru among the gurus”. Rowan Gibson is President of Imagination Bridge, a global consulting firm in the field of strategy innovation and digital transformation. Over the last two decades, his global clients have included some of the world’s largest and most successful companies. Rowan has lived and worked in various countries over the last twenty years and speaks three languages fluently. Today, he divides his time between the USA, Latin America, Europe and Asia, focusing on writing, public speaking and consulting activities.

Why organisations work with Ronan Harrington He has built and tested the Resilient Performance Method directly with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG, so the model arrives in the room already pressure-tested by the firms that advise on the same problems. His foresight background at the UK Foreign Office gives leaders a credible reading of why the operating environment has changed, before he gets to what to do about it personally and as a team. He is a guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme, which makes him a familiar choice for executive development teams looking for a speaker who works alongside their existing leadership curriculum. His chronic illness and political burnout story is verifiable and used as evidence, not as theatre, which lets the resilience argument land with senior audiences who are usually allergic to motivational content. Buyers report a practical takeaway: leaders leave with a small set of decisions about how they spend energy, attention and team time, rather than a generic call to look after themselves. Biography highlights Former Futurist to the UK Foreign Office, authoring a long-range outlook on the world of 2030 and advising senior officials on geopolitical risk. Creator of the Resilient Performance Method, developed with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG. Guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme and at Oxford University. Founder of Alter Ego, a global network of progressive leaders. Former strategic lead at RethinkX, leading narrative work on the “Rethinking Humanity” report. LinkedIn Top Voice on Public Speaking and Top 5 Best Storyteller at the 2023 Speaker Awards. Biography Most resilience content sounds the same once a senior audience has heard it twice. Harrington is interesting because his track record is in foresight, not in sport psychology, and the model he teaches was built with the firms that advise the same boards he now speaks to. He worked as a Futurist at the UK Foreign Office, advising on geopolitical risk and authoring a long-range outlook on the world of 2030. The brief gave him a structural view of why the operating environment has shifted from cyclical pressure to permanent volatility, which is the frame he now brings to executive audiences. The Resilient Performance Method was developed with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG, and Harrington is a guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme. The method covers how senior leaders allocate energy, attention and team capacity through restructure, AI rollouts and prolonged uncertainty. It is taught as practice, not as inspiration. The personal story is load-bearing rather than decorative. After a period operating at national political level he was diagnosed with a lifetime chronic pain condition, and seven years of managing that condition is what gives his content on energy, recovery and pace its specificity. Clients including L’Oreal, Siemens Energy, Sky, Aviva, IHG, TUI, Sage, Kimberly-Clark, A&O Shearman, DLA Piper, the UK Treasury and Oxford University use him as the speaker who makes the resilience conversation operational at executive level. Key speaking topics Resilient high performance under sustained pressure Leadership through restructuring and prolonged uncertainty Burnout prevention in senior teams Human-first leadership in the AI transition Psychological safety and candour at executive level Energy and attention management for leaders Mental health and recovery for senior professionals Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership offsites where the agenda is performance, not wellbeing as a side topic. Partner and director audiences in professional services facing prolonged client and restructuring pressure. Heads of executive development and leadership programmes building resilience modules into senior curricula. Transformation and change leads running multi-year AI or restructuring programmes that are fatiguing leadership populations. Audience outcomes A working definition of resilient performance that goes beyond personal wellbeing into team-level decisions. A specific read on which signals of burnout to act on early in a senior population. Practical decisions about how leaders allocate energy, attention and team time during sustained pressure. A reframe of human capability under AI-driven change, focused on judgement, candour and recovery rather than tooling. A vocabulary leadership teams can carry into their own meetings about pace, candour and what they will stop doing.

Why organisations work with Roger Bootle He runs the institutional view, not a commentator’s view. Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, is one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, and senior leaders get the house perspective directly from the source. He has been right on inflation when the consensus was wrong. The Death of Inflation, published in 1996, called the structural fall in inflation a decade before central banks adjusted their thinking, and his subsequent inflation work continues to set the contrarian benchmark. He won the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, the largest cash prize in economics after the Nobel, for the most credible plan to manage a eurozone exit. Boards exposed to euro-denominated risk get a serious answer, not a hot take. He sat for nearly two decades inside UK economic policymaking as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and as a member of the Chancellor’s “Wise Men” panel. He explains the policy process from the inside. The AI Economy, his Axiom Award-winning book, gives leadership teams a proper economic reading of AI: productivity, wages, employment and welfare, not vendor narrative. Biography highlights Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy, which he started in 1999 Former Group Chief Economist of HSBC; earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, 1998 to 2017 Member of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the “Wise Men.” Winner, with the Capital Economics team, of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize for a eurozone exit plan Author of The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets, Making a Success of Brexit, and The AI Economy (Gold, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards) Weekly economics columnist for The Daily Telegraph; named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards 2012 Biography The Death of Inflation appeared in 1996 and argued that the inflationary regime built into Western economies since the 1970s was structurally finished. The book sold widely, was translated into nine languages, and became the reference point for a generation of contrarian inflation analysis. It also established its author as an economist willing to take a position years before the policy consensus caught up. That author is Roger Bootle. He founded Capital Economics in 1999 and built it into one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, serving banks, asset managers, corporates, and policymakers. Before that, he was Group Chief Economist of HSBC, with earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers. His public-policy work runs in parallel. He served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 1998 to 2017, and was appointed to the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers known as the Wise Men. In 2012, he and a team from Capital Economics won the 250,000 pound Wolfson Economics Prize for the most credible plan to manage a country leaving the eurozone, and he was named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards the same year. His more recent books extend the same approach to Brexit and AI. Making a Success of Brexit set out the economic conditions for the UK outside the EU. The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot, which won Gold at the 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards, treats artificial intelligence as a question about productivity, wages and welfare rather than a technology story. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook Inflation and monetary policy Eurozone and European economic policy Brexit and the UK economy The economics of artificial intelligence Capital markets and the policy environment Long-run productivity and growth Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting capital allocation against a volatile macro backdrop CFOs, treasurers and CIOs in financial services and corporates with rate and currency exposure Asset management and private capital firms are briefing LPs on the macro outlook Senior policy and government-relations audiences working on UK, EU and monetary policy Audience outcomes A clear reading of where inflation, rates and growth are heading, and the reasoning behind it A direct view from one of the few economists with a public track record of contrarian calls that proved right A grounded economic framing of AI’s effect on productivity, employment and wages A working understanding of how UK and European economic policy is actually made, from someone who advised inside it A perspective on the eurozone and Brexit risk that buyers can defend in front of their own committees

Having founded a number of successful businesses and worked as Director of the United States’ National Cybersecurity Centre and former CEO and President of ICANN, Beckstrom’s bestselling book The Starfish and the Spider, which examines leaderless organisations, has been translated into over 15 languages. Former Director of the National Cybersecurity Centre Former CEO and President of ICANN Co-author of the bestselling ‘The Starfish and the Spider’ Environmentalist Entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom’s Speaking Style A true leadership expert, Rod Beckstrom can educate and motivate organisations of all sizes to future-proof their business as they plan their structure and evaluate their levels of cyber-security.

Why organisations work with Robert Reich He has been both architect and analyst: cabinet-level policymaker under President Bill Clinton, and one of America’s most prolific public economists since the 1980s. Few speakers can read a regulatory environment from inside the cabinet room and from outside it, backed by three decades of published work. The “symbolic analysts” framework from The Work of Nations (1991), translated into 22 languages, was one of the earliest serious accounts of how globalisation stratifies labour markets. It anticipated the political and economic divisions now reshaping developed economies. He cuts through the false binary of “free market versus big government” that paralyses most boardroom debate on inequality and regulation. He shows that the real question is who the rules serve, and how that determines long-term commercial stability. Inequality Media’s videos and his daily Substack are read and watched by millions, including the political and policy actors whose decisions reshape corporate operating environments. That places him inside the conversation that shapes the political and regulatory climate executives plan around. For close to two decades he taught Berkeley’s largest undergraduate course in public policy, Wealth and Poverty. He brings that teaching ability into senior rooms, leaving audiences with a model they can apply directly to their own commercial environment. Biography highlights 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton (1993-1997), implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act, raising the federal minimum wage, and leading the federal fight against sweatshops and illegal child labour Named by TIME magazine as one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, and ranked sixth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers (both 2008) Author of 18 books, including The Work of Nations (translated into 22 languages), Saving Capitalism, The Common Good, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; recipient of the 2003 Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize Co-creator with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth of Inequality for All, winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and the 2017 Netflix original Saving Capitalism Columnist for The Guardian and Newsweek; co-founder of Inequality Media and the Economic Policy Institute; founding editor of The American Prospect magazine Biography Every market runs on rules: property, contract, bankruptcy, antitrust. Those rules are political artefacts, written by people with specific interests. The question of who writes them, and on whose behalf, has been the through-line of Robert Reich’s work for forty years. Reich served as the 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. During that period he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, raised the federal minimum wage, and led the federal crackdown on sweatshops and illegal child labour. TIME magazine later named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His thinking did not start there. The Work of Nations, published in 1991 and translated into twenty-two languages, set out a thesis that has aged unusually well: globalisation was stratifying labour into three groups, with a minority of “symbolic analysts” capturing most of the gains while routine production and in-person service workers fell behind. The book named the divide that now drives political volatility across developed economies. Saving Capitalism (2015), the Netflix documentary of the same name, and the books that followed pushed the analysis into the politics of regulation: who writes the rules of property, contract, bankruptcy, and antitrust, and on whose behalf. The argument now places him in active conversation with senior policymakers and commercial leaders trying to read the political environment they operate in. His 2024 memoir Coming Up Short debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Key speaking topics Inequality and the future of capitalism Globalisation and the future of work US political economy and economic policy Regulation, antitrust and corporate power Authoritarian populism and democratic reform Labour markets and workforce policy Trade, tariffs and the global economy Ideal for Boards and executive teams in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, technology, energy) where political-economic conditions directly shape strategic options Senior policy and government affairs leaders trying to understand the political environment they are planning around Investor and asset management audiences assessing political risk in developed market economies Corporate convenings and leadership programmes setting commercial strategy against a longer political-economic horizon Audience outcomes A direct line drawn from current US political-economic conditions to the strategic decisions boards now face on regulation and long-term capital allocation An insider account of how the rules of property, contract, antitrust, and bankruptcy actually get written, and how those rules shape competitive position A historical comparison between the present moment and earlier US reform eras (the Progressive era, the New Deal), and the structural shifts each one produced The political-economic distinction between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, and what each path implies for the corporate operating environment

Robert Holden’s background Robert Holden, Ph.D., is Director of success Intelligence and The Happiness Project. His innovative work on Success and happiness has been featured on Oprah, Good Morning America, a PBS special Shift Happens! and in two major BBC-TV documentaries, The Happiness Formula and How to Be Happy. His services as a keynote speaker, consultant and coach are employed worldwide by organizations and brands such as Dove & the Real Beauty Campaign, Unilever, the Body Shop, IBM, Google and Virgin. Robert has presented two TEDx talks on Destination Addiction and The Tea Meditation. He has given over 100 keynotes to industry and 50 keynote talks for I CAN DO IT! conferences worldwide. Robert is a New York Times bestselling author of 10 books, including Happiness NOW!, Authentic Success (formerly titled Success Intelligence), Shift Happens!, Loveability, Holy Shift! and Life Loves You (co-written with Louise Hay). He is an official contributor to Oprah.com and for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, hosts a weekly show on Hay House Radio called Shift Happens! He posts daily on  his facebook and official website.

Robert Cringely’s background Robert Cringely is a futurist, speaker, columnist and is the author of two best-selling technical publications including “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition” and “Still Can’t Get a Date”. He is also one of the world’s most renowned tech bloggers with more than two million monthly followers who work has been featured some high-profile publications including Newsweek, Forbes, Upside, Success and Worth magazines. Robert is the Op-Ed writer for The New York Times and runs his own high-tech consulting business. He is also a popular and widely known speaker. Robert is also a public broadcasting service (PBS) personality and was the 12th employee at Apple Computers back in 1977. After moving on from Apple, he taught for several years at Stanford University before becoming the high-tech columnist for InfoWorld which is an industry trade publication read by more than six hundred thousand IT professionals. Robert is known in the tech world for his wit, insight, irreverence and for being the man with his finger on the pulse of the very latest from the high tech world.

Why organisations work with Richard Sennett A longitudinal sociological lens almost no other living speaker offers. Five decades on the same questions about what work does to people, running from The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972) through The Corrosion of Character (1998) to Building and Dwelling (2018). Reframes employee engagement as a question of craft. The Craftsman (2008) advanced the thesis that “making is thinking” and treats the desire to do a job well for its own sake as a workplace asset organisations either nurture or destroy. A serious framework for cooperation as a workplace skill. Together (2012) argues that cooperation is a craft learned through structured practice, and shows why short-term teams and constant reorganisation erode the conditions that make it possible. Direct involvement in shaping how cities and labour are governed. Sennett wrote the mission statement for UN Habitat III, helped organise COP26 work on cities and climate, and chaired the LSE Cities programme. Credentials at a level few corporate speakers reach: the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize, the Centennial Medal from Harvard, an OBE for services to design and Fellowship of the British Academy. Biography highlights Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics; former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Author of The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Craftsman, Together, Building and Dwelling and The Performer. Founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities (with Susan Sontag and Joseph Brodsky); former President of the American Council on Work; founder and chair of Theatrum Mundi. Senior Advisor to the United Nations Council on Urban Initiatives; wrote the mission statement for UN Habitat III; helped organise COP26 work on cities and climate. OBE for services to design (2018); Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; recipient of the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize and the Centennial Medal from Harvard. Senior Fellow at the Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University; Honorary Professor at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture and Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Biography The promise of flexible capitalism was that workers would gain real control of their own time and direction. The Corrosion of Character, published in 1998, showed in granular ethnographic detail what actually happened to dismissed IBM executives, Boston bakers and a barmaid turned advertising executive. The book established a thesis that has only sharpened with time: an economy built around “no long-term” produces people who struggle to sustain identity and craft over a working life. That argument matured over two decades into a trilogy on what Sennett calls Homo Faber, or “man the maker.” The Craftsman (2008) advanced a single thesis: making is thinking. It treated the desire to do a job well for its own sake as a workplace capacity organisations either nurture or destroy. Together (2012) extended the argument into the social. Cooperation is a craft, Sennett argued, learned through structured practice and degraded by short-term teams and constant reorganisation. Building and Dwelling (2018) carried the same lens into urbanism, distinguishing the ville (the built city) from the cité (how people actually live in it). Sennett’s intellectual lineage runs directly through David Riesman, John Rawls and Hannah Arendt at Harvard, where he took his PhD in 1969. Few living sociologists carry that depth of connection to the most serious thought of the twentieth century into corporate and policy conversations of the present. In 2024 he published The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, the opening volume of a new trilogy on performance, narration and image-making. Key speaking topics The future of work in flexible capitalism Craftsmanship and the conditions for good work Cooperation as a workplace skill Character and the personal consequences of “no long-term” employment Urbanism and the ethical city Public culture and authority in modern organisations Ideal for CHROs and senior people leaders moving past trend diagnostics into the deeper drivers of engagement and workforce design. Executive teams contending with the cultural costs of reorganisation, short-term teams and high turnover. Boards, CEOs and strategy leaders commissioning long-horizon work on the human foundations of organisational change. City leaders, urbanists and real-estate strategists working on the ethics and design of public space. Audience outcomes A vocabulary for what short-termism and perpetual reorganisation actually do to character and craft inside organisations. The “making is thinking” framework, which puts employee skill and the conditions for good work at the centre of strategic conversation. Cooperation reframed as a workplace craft, built through specific practices and degraded by structures many organisations now treat as normal. The ville/cité distinction as a tool for thinking about the human and built dimensions of any large environment, from offices to city districts. A historical lens on flexible capitalism that sets present-day workforce challenges in their actual fifty-year arc.