Geopolitics speakers

Why organisations work with Nicholas Jeffery Four ISP CEO and COO seats across Hostmark, Worldport, PSINet Europe and Uniserve Communications, giving him a working view of what actually happens inside a telecoms or managed service business when the model shifts. A second career on the investor side as Head of Investment Planning and Strategy for the TMT Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where capital allocation decisions in technology and media were made across EMEA. Direct operating experience of digital transformation as a SaaS COO at VIMtrek and Vizerra, in Building Information Management and 3D virtualisation, and as the executive behind Digital Realty’s EMEA sales and marketing strategy. Co-creator of Buzzmetrics, the social media intelligence business acquired by Reed, with a forty-year line of sight across branding from 1980s corporate identity work to the current AI reset. A geopolitical voice on Central Europe through his “Danube Dispatches” column at WBN News, which gives boards with Hungary, EU or CEE exposure a senior commercial reader of the political terrain. Biography highlights CEO of Uniserve Communications Corporation from March 2017; led the listed share price from CND$0.04 to CND$0.67 within nine months of joining. European MD/COO and CEO of internet service providers including Hostmark, Worldport, PSINet Europe and Uniserve. Head of Investment Planning and Strategy, TMT Group, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). COO of VIMtrek and Vizerra, SaaS firms in architectural 3D virtualisation and Building Information Management software. Co-creator of Buzzmetrics, the social media measurement business acquired by Reed. Founding and Managing Partner of Impresario Partners International; Chairman of Ventree Innovations Inc.; author of the Danube Dispatches column at WBN News. Biography PSINet Europe was in administration when its European operations had to be rebuilt as a managed services business. Nicholas Jeffery was one of the executives who ran that kind of work across four internet service providers, including Hostmark, Worldport and, later, Uniserve Communications, where as CEO from March 2017 the listed share price moved from CND$0.04 to CND$0.67 within nine months. The unusual part of his career is that the operating CEO work sits alongside an investor seat. As Head of Investment Planning and Strategy for the TMT Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he was inside the capital allocation conversations on telecoms, media and technology investments across EMEA. Boards rarely meet a single adviser who has been both buyer and operator on the same kinds of assets. The second strand of his work is brand and customer. He co-created Buzzmetrics, the social media intelligence business later acquired by Reed, ran sales and marketing strategy for Digital Realty across EMEA, and has now turned his forty-year branding line into a commentary on how AI is reshaping the discipline. The talk “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: A 40-Year Branding Veteran Embraces AI,” delivered at WINK 2025, sits in this strand. He works between Vancouver, Budapest, London and Kampala as Founding and Managing Partner of Impresario Partners International and Chairman of Ventree Innovations Inc. From Budapest he writes the Danube Dispatches column at WBN News, a serious commercial reader’s account of Hungarian politics and Central European risk in the run-up to the 2026 Hungarian election. He was nominated for the Global Business and Authors’ Award UK 2024. Key speaking topics Digital transformation in telecoms, media and technology businesses Branding strategy under AI Scaling, restructuring and turning around technology companies Investment strategy in TMT Building Information Management and SaaS commercialisation Central European political and commercial risk Ideal for TMT, telecoms and media company boards and executive teams running through transformation or restructuring Private equity, venture and infrastructure investors with TMT or CEE exposure CMOs and brand leaders rethinking marketing operations under generative AI Boards with Hungary, EU accession state or wider Central European commercial exposure Audience outcomes A working operator’s account of what changes inside a telecoms or SaaS business when a transformation plan meets the P&L An investor-side perspective on how TMT capital allocation decisions get made and where they fail A practical view on how the branding discipline is being reorganised by AI, drawn from four decades inside the function A senior commercial reading of Central European political risk for boards exposed to Hungary and the wider region

Why organisations work with Nick Clegg He has sat on both sides of the table that defines tech policy: as the head of global affairs at Meta facing regulators, and as a head-of-government negotiator setting policy for a G7 economy. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet lays out a specific argument about how democracies, Silicon Valley and authoritarian states are pulling the internet apart, and what a workable settlement would look like. Boards get the thesis and the evidence behind it. He can map how Brussels, Washington and Beijing actually behave on AI and platform rules from direct experience of all three, not from secondary commentary. His coalition government experience gives him a working language for decision-making when no single party controls the outcome, which is the practical condition most boards now face on tech policy. Biography highlights Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 2010 to 2015, in Britain’s first post-war coalition government. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, 2007 to 2015; Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam, 2005 to 2017. President for Global Affairs at Meta Platforms, 2018 to January 2025, leading the company’s policy and regulatory engagement worldwide. Author of How to Save the Internet (Bodley Head/Penguin, 2025), Politics: Between the Extremes (2016), How to Stop Brexit (2017), and The Responsibilities of Democracy (2019, with Sir John Major). Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands, 1999 to 2004; earlier career at the European Commission. Knighted in 2018; recipient of the Financial Times David Thomas Prize, 1993. Biography The most consequential rules now shaping AI, data and the global internet are being written by a small number of governments that no longer agree with each other. Nick Clegg has worked at the centre of that argument from both sides. As Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015, he helped run a coalition government through the eurozone crisis. As President of Global Affairs at Meta from 2018 to early 2025, he led the company’s policy engagement with the US, EU, UK, India and beyond. Few people have moved between those two seats. The combination matters because tech policy is no longer a niche regulatory file. It is a board-level question of capital allocation, market access and operational risk. Clegg’s value to a senior audience is that he understands how the political logic of Brussels, the commercial logic of Silicon Valley and the strategic logic of Washington and Beijing actually collide. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet, published by The Bodley Head, sets out the argument in full. He proposes a “digital democracies alliance” to prevent the global internet fragmenting into incompatible national systems, and he is candid about where Big Tech, including his former employer, has misread the public mood. Earlier books, including Politics: Between the Extremes and The Responsibilities of Democracy with Sir John Major, focus on coalition, compromise and democratic resilience under stress. The throughline is governance under conditions where no one is fully in charge. That is the working environment for any senior leader trying to plan around AI rules, content liability, data flows and the geopolitics of semiconductors. Clegg has been in the room when those decisions were taken, on both sides of the regulator and the platform. Key speaking topics AI policy and regulation across the US, EU and UK The geopolitics of the global internet Big Tech, content moderation and platform governance Coalition government and political decision-making under uncertainty Democratic resilience in the age of social media and AI UK and EU relations after Brexit Trust, public discourse and the future of democratic institutions Ideal for Boards and executive teams of companies materially exposed to AI, data, content or platform regulation General Counsel, Chief Policy Officers and Heads of Government Affairs in multinationals CEO and CTO audiences planning AI deployment under divergent regulatory regimes Senior public sector and policy audiences working on tech, digital and AI strategy Audience outcomes A clearer read of where AI and platform regulation is heading in the EU, US and UK over the next planning cycle A working framework for how Silicon Valley, Washington, Brussels and Beijing each think about the internet, and where their positions are converging or diverging An informed view of the argument in How to Save the Internet, including the case for a digital democracies alliance A grounded sense of how senior decisions get made inside coalition governments and inside large global platforms, from someone who has done both

Why organisations work with Nick Watt Three decades of frontline political journalism that spans Belfast through the peace process, Brussels through EU enlargement and Westminster through Brexit and five prime ministers. Few UK political journalists combine all three settings at senior level. Sourcing inside government that produces the story before the press release. Politico‘s London Playbook columnist Jack Blanchard has called his reports “always immaculately sourced and well worth a listen”, and his Brexit coverage repeatedly broke cabinet positions ahead of the formal announcement. A working understanding of both UK and EU institutional politics. Boards with European exposure or cross-border operations get analysis from someone who has reported from both sides. Broadcast discipline as a chair and moderator. He runs a panel the way he runs an interview: tight on time and sharp on the question. He explains what Westminster decisions will mean for regulation, capital allocation and operating risk, in language a boardroom can act on. Biography highlights Political Editor, BBC Newsnight (since 2016) Presenter, The Westminster Hour, BBC Radio 4 (since 2022) Former Chief Political Correspondent and European Editor, The Guardian (Brussels and London) Former Ireland Correspondent and Political Correspondent, The Times (Belfast and London) Listed at number 14 on Press Gazette‘s Top 50 Political Reporters (2012) Coverage spanning seven UK general elections, two Scottish independence referendums and the UK’s EU membership referendum Biography The UK political environment is structurally less stable than for most of the last two decades. Five prime ministers since 2016, two referendums that redrew the country’s constitutional and trading framework, and a regulatory baseline that shifts with each new government. Boards with material UK exposure now have to read political signal as part of strategic planning. As Political Editor of BBC Newsnight, Nick Watt reports from inside that environment. His nightly analysis follows Westminster decisions and cabinet dynamics, and translates what they mean for policy. Politico‘s Jack Blanchard has called his reports immaculately sourced. T-shirts were printed in Germany after Watt relayed on air an unnamed cabinet minister’s verdict on Theresa May’s Brexit strategy: “F*** knows, I’m past caring.” The Times appointed him Ireland Correspondent in Belfast in 1993, just as the peace process began. The Guardian later made him European Editor in Brussels through EU enlargement, and then Chief Political Correspondent in Westminster. Few UK political journalists have held senior roles in all three settings. For organisations with UK exposure, that combination matters. Watt explains what a vote or fiscal event will mean for businesses planning capital allocation, hiring and M&A. He has covered seven UK general elections, two Scottish independence referendums and the Brexit referendum. His Brexit reporting included extended profiles of Michel Barnier, David Davis and Olly Robbins, drawn from sources inside the negotiation. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster The UK policy and regulatory environment UK general elections and electoral cycles UK-EU relations and post-Brexit politics Political risk for boards and businesses operating in the UK European political affairs Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material UK exposure Public affairs, government relations and corporate affairs leads Financial and professional services firms monitoring UK political risk Conferences and member events covering UK politics, policy or political economy Audience outcomes The names, factions and pressures inside the current UK government likely to shape its decisions The way parliamentary arithmetic and the electoral cycle will affect tax, regulation and major policy bills The direction of the UK-EU political relationship and what changes it can realistically absorb Which Westminster developments matter for business and which are noise A practitioner’s read on UK political risk for the next 12 to 24 months

Why organisations work with Nik Gowing A research base built from hundreds of confidential interviews with corporate, political and military leaders, distilled in the book Thinking the Unthinkable, which gives boards a vocabulary for the failures of imagination they recognise but rarely name. Forty years of front-line international reporting, from martial law in Poland to 9/11, that lets him press senior audiences on geopolitical and operational risk without flinching or flattering. A moderator’s authority earned at BBC World News and across hundreds of senior international forums, used to host board offsites, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits where the conversation has to go somewhere uncomfortable. Standing inside the institutions buyers trust: Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, Visiting Professor at Kings College London, former council member at Chatham House and ODI. A track record of making leaders engage with what they have been avoiding, rather than rehearsing the slide they came to deliver. Biography highlights Main news presenter, BBC World News, 1996 to 2014. Diplomatic Editor, Channel 4 News, 1989 to 1996; bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw with ITN. BAFTA, 1981, for coverage of martial law in Poland. Co-author, Thinking the Unthinkable: A new imperative for leadership in the digital age (John Catt, 2018), and founder of the Thinking the Unthinkable project. Author, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Visiting Professor, Kings College London; Distinguished Fellow, Royal United Services Institute; Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter and Bristol. Biography The leaders Nik Gowing has spent four decades interviewing, in studios, at summits and behind closed doors, share a pattern. They saw the signal. They had the data. They did not act. Thinking the Unthinkable, the project he founded in 2014 and the book he co-authored with Chris Langdon in 2018, is built on hundreds of confidential conversations with senior figures in business, government and the military about why that keeps happening, and what could change it. The credibility for that conversation comes from the years before. Gowing was a main news presenter on BBC World News from 1996 to 2014, on air for the announcement of Princess Diana’s death and through the live coverage of 9/11. Before the BBC he spent 18 years at ITN, as bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and as Diplomatic Editor of Channel 4 News. A BAFTA followed his coverage of martial law in Poland in 1981. That broadcast career left him with a particular skill that boards now buy: the ability to chair a difficult conversation in front of senior people, on the record, without losing control of the room or the argument. He moderates regularly for institutions including the World Economic Forum, RUSI and Chatham House. The academic and institutional scaffolding is genuine, not decorative. He is a Visiting Professor at Kings College London’s School of Social Science and Public Policy, a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and a former council member at Chatham House and the Overseas Development Institute. The Reuters Institute at Oxford published his earlier study, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, on institutional vulnerability in the modern information environment. Few moderators bring that depth into the room with them. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Anticipating the unthinkable in board strategy Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Crisis communication and decision-making under pressure Institutional resilience in the digital information environment Senior conference moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees confronting strategic shocks they suspect they are under-rehearsing. Risk, strategy and corporate affairs leaders working on scenario planning, geopolitical exposure and institutional resilience. Convenors of senior international forums, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits who need a moderator who can hold the room. Audience outcomes A direct account of why senior teams systematically miss disruptive signals, drawn from confidential interviews with leaders who lived through it. A sharper read on geopolitical and information-environment risks, from someone who has reported them at first hand. The questions a board should be asking itself before the next unthinkable lands, not after. A working sense of what conformity costs at the top of organisations, and what it takes to break it.

Why organisations work with Nikolas Badminton He brings a published, named foresight methodology to the room. The Positive Dystopia Canvas, set out in Facing Our Futures, is a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. He has worked the discipline at scale, with leadership teams at NASA, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, and the UK Home Office. The methods on stage have been tested in serious rooms first. He bridges AI capability and strategic foresight in a way few speakers can. Most AI speakers stop at adoption. Most foresight speakers treat AI as one signal among many. Badminton treats AI as the variable that breaks existing planning horizons, and shows leaders how to plan accordingly. He served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his work is regularly cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. The audience tends to recognise him before he is introduced. Biography highlights Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the international strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993. Author of Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023), JP Morgan Private Bank’s Next Gen Pick on its Summer Reading List and a Top-50 Business Book of 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of Chatham House. Advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr. Research cited by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, and Sunday Telegraph. Engagements with NASA, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office. Biography Most organisations cannot describe the future they are planning toward. They have a five-year strategy and a quarterly forecast, with very little real method in between. This gap is where Nikolas Badminton works. As Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993, he advises executives and government leaders on how to build anticipatory capability into how they plan. His method is set out in Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023). The book gives executives the Positive Dystopia Canvas, a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. JP Morgan Private Bank named it a Next Gen Pick for its Summer Reading List, and The Next Big Idea Club listed it among the Top-50 Business Books of 2023. The client list reflects the demand for that work. NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office have used Badminton’s foresight work to inform planning that runs longer than the political or quarterly cycle. A Fellow of the RSA and a member of Chatham House, he served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his research is cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futures design Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Anticipatory governance and long-range planning Innovation under disruption Energy transition and the future of resources Geopolitical scenarios and technology futures Ideal for CEOs and CSOs building foresight capability inside annual planning cycles. Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against long-range scenarios. Innovation, transformation, and R&D leaders responsible for moving beyond pilot stage on AI. Public-sector leaders and policymakers designing decisions with consequences beyond the political cycle. Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Positive Dystopia Canvas and how to apply it to current strategic decisions. Specific signals and scenarios in AI, energy, and geopolitics mapped onto the organisation’s actual planning horizon. The language to make the case for foresight capability inside a strategy function built around quarterly forecasting. Confidence to extend the planning conversation past 18 months without it becoming abstract or speculative.

Why organisations work with Nina Khrushcheva A primary read on Russian political culture from a scholar who has travelled and reported across the country’s eleven time zones, not a Moscow-watcher working from secondary sources. Author or co-author of three books on Russian power, including In Putin’s Footsteps (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) with Atlantic contributing editor Jeffrey Tayler, and The Lost Khrushchev, both grounded in original interviews and field research. A standing column at Project Syndicate, where she edits the Russia series, and a publication record across the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Newsweek that boards and investment committees already read. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute, with the institutional standing expected for closed-room conversations on sanctions, geopolitical exposure, and political risk. A family inheritance, as the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, that she uses as a lens on Soviet and post-Soviet authoritarianism rather than a biographical talking point. Biography highlights Professor of International Affairs at The New School, New York. Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Princeton University; former research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Author of Imagining Nabokov (Yale University Press) and The Lost Khrushchev (Tate); co-author of In Putin’s Footsteps (St. Martin’s Press) with Jeffrey Tayler. Contributing Editor at Project Syndicate; bylines in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Newsweek. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; former director of the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute. Recipient of the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award and the Trinity College Dublin Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. Biography The Kremlin is not best understood through Western political vocabulary. It runs on a logic shaped by Russian literature, Soviet bureaucratic instinct, and a long memory of empire. Reading it from the outside, on quarterly briefings alone, has cost organisations real money over the past decade. Nina Khrushcheva works that gap. A professor of international affairs at The New School, with a Princeton doctorate in comparative literature, she teaches courses on comparative propaganda, international media, and Russian contemporary politics. Her academic register is unusual: she reads the Kremlin the way a literary scholar reads a text, while also reporting from inside it. That dual method runs through her books. In Putin’s Footsteps, written with Jeffrey Tayler of The Atlantic, is the product of travel across all eleven of Russia’s time zones. The Lost Khrushchev draws on her family inheritance as the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev to read the Soviet project from inside its own argument. Imagining Nabokov preceded both, with Yale University Press. She edits the Russia series at Project Syndicate and writes regularly for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Newsweek. She sits on the Council on Foreign Relations and previously directed the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute. The Carnegie Corporation named her among its Great Immigrants in 2013, and Trinity College Dublin awarded her its Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage in 2019. Key speaking topics Russia under Putin Authoritarian governance and propaganda Post-Soviet political culture Geopolitical risk and sanctions exposure US-Russia relations Russia, China and the contested global order Soviet history and its modern uses Ideal for Boards and investment committees with direct or indirect Russia exposure, including energy, commodities, and dual-use technology Chief risk officers, general counsel, and government affairs leads weighing sanctions and political risk Policy audiences, foundations, and academic institutions briefing on the post-Soviet space Senior diplomatic, defence and foreign-policy convenings on Russia, Ukraine, and the wider rules-based order Audience outcomes A read of current Kremlin behaviour rooted in Russian political and literary tradition, not Western projection A clearer sense of where Putin’s regime is brittle and where it is durable, with implications for sanctions and exposure Context on how Soviet history is being repurposed in present-day propaganda and policy A sharper map of where Russia, China, and the United States actually intersect, beyond headline framings Specific reference points for how to test the assumptions in any internal Russia or geopolitics brief

Why organisations work with Nina Schick She published the first book on generative AI in 2020, years before the technology entered the boardroom conversation, which means her current strategic claims sit on a public track record rather than a recent pivot. She is one of very few commercial speakers who has briefed both a sitting US President and a former NATO Secretary General on AI and statecraft, giving senior audiences direct access to the language used at the top of Western policymaking. Her “Industrial Intelligence” thesis reframes AI from a software adoption question into an infrastructure and energy question, which is the conversation CFOs, infrastructure heads, and strategy teams now need but rarely get from a generalist AI speaker. Through Tamang Ventures she holds active advisory roles with frontier firms including Synthesia, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, alongside Qlik and Truepic, so she speaks from inside the capital and product decisions she describes, not from the outside. Biography highlights Author, Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse (Hachette/Twelve, 2020), translated into multiple languages and widely cited as the first book on AI-generated content Briefed US President Joe Biden and advised former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Director of Rasmussen Global Worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual study on global attitudes toward democracy Founder of Tamang Ventures; advisor to Synthesia (valued at $4B in its January 2026 Series E), founding AI Council member at Qlik, advisor to Truepic Strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during a decade of European political crises including Brexit and the war in Ukraine Half-Nepalese and half-German, with degrees from the University of Cambridge and University College London; now based in the United States after a decade inside UK and EU policy Biography The race to dominate artificial intelligence is no longer a software race. It is a contest over fabs, energy, compute, and the sovereign infrastructure that will determine which states and which companies hold the next decade of pricing power. That argument, which Nina Schick calls Industrial Intelligence, sits at the centre of her current work with governments, defence institutions, and frontier AI companies. She arrived at it earlier than most. Her 2020 book Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, published by Hachette imprint Twelve, was among the first to describe the geopolitical and informational consequences of generative AI, written before ChatGPT existed as a public product. It introduced the concept of the Infocalypse and is cited as foundational reading in national security and policy circles. That early thesis is grounded in a long career inside European policymaking. As Director of Rasmussen Global, she advised Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General, on political risk and the technological evolution of warfare. She worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual machine-learning study on global attitudes toward democracy. She has briefed US President Joe Biden on AI, technological integrity, and statecraft, and works with the US Army, the United Nations, and Mastercard on AI and sovereignty. For seven years she also served as a strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during the Brexit, Trump, and Ukraine cycles. Through Tamang Ventures, the advisory firm she founded, she now sits inside the companies building the new stack: Synthesia in enterprise AI video, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, Qlik in data analytics where she is a founding AI Council member, and Truepic in digital provenance. Now based in the United States, she works with the institutions and capital allocators that will shape what the AI infrastructure stack looks like at the end of this decade. The combination of policy access, commercial proximity, and a public thesis published five years before the market caught up is what makes her useful in a boardroom. Key speaking topics Industrial Intelligence and the AI infrastructure stack Generative AI and corporate strategy AI, semiconductors, and the US-China technology competition AI and energy demand Deepfakes, synthetic media, and information integrity AI in defence, NATO, and statecraft Sovereign AI and the future of national power Ideal for Boards, CEOs, and strategy heads recalibrating long-range AI investment around infrastructure rather than tooling CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers needing a geopolitical lens on supply, partnerships, and dependency risk Defence, security, and public sector audiences working on AI policy, sovereignty, and statecraft Investor and capital allocator audiences pricing AI exposure across compute, energy, and software layers Audience outcomes A clear thesis about why AI is an infrastructure and energy contest, not only a software adoption question A working frame for assessing corporate exposure to compute, semiconductor, and energy supply constraints Specific examples of how policy, defence, and frontier AI companies are already operating inside the Industrial Intelligence framework Sharper questions to take into the next strategy review on AI, sovereignty, and dependency risk A grounded view of where deepfakes and synthetic media now sit in the corporate and political risk picture

Why organisations work with Norbert Csizmadia He brings the operating perspective of someone who has sat inside national economic planning, as State Secretary at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy and Executive Director at the country’s central bank. His Geofusion framework gives leadership teams a map-based vocabulary for connectivity, complexity and long-term sustainability, drawn from a published body of work that includes Geofusion, GeoFuture and GeoVision. He sits inside the institutions that shape Eurasian strategy, including the Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance in Shanghai and the Board of Bank of China CEE, which gives clients a perspective on the East that few European speakers can match. He treats geography as a strategic asset, not background context, which is useful for boards trying to make sense of supply chain reconfiguration, energy corridors and shifting trade blocs. In 2025 the World Complexity Science Academy awarded him its Medal for Sustainability for the Geofusion research, a signal that the work is taken seriously beyond bureau circuits. He delivers through cartography, not slideware. Two decades of building visual maps means a keynote reads as a guided journey across regions and time horizons, which holds large executive and conference audiences on complex material. Biography highlights Former State Secretary at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy and former Executive Director at the Central Bank of Hungary, responsible for economic strategy and planning. Author of the Geofusion series (LID Publishing / World Scientific), published in English and Chinese, including Geofusion, GeoFusion 2.0, GeoFuture and GeoVision. 2025 recipient of the World Complexity Science Academy Medal for Sustainability for the Geofusion research. Member of the International Advisory Board, Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance, Shanghai, and Independent Director, Bank of China CEE. Goodwill Ambassador of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (AUAP). Founder of the Turquoise Zones concept, presented across higher-education and city forums in Central Asia and Southeast Asia through 2025 and 2026, including keynotes covered by The Astana Times. Biography Geography is making a return to the strategy room. Trade corridors, energy routes, semiconductor chokepoints and sanctions maps are once again decisive variables for capital allocation. Norbert Csizmadia’s work, gathered under the Geofusion banner across four published volumes with LID Publishing and World Scientific, treats this return as the central organising fact of twenty-first century strategy. The argument is built from inside the machinery, not from a desk. As State Secretary for Planning Coordination at Hungary’s Ministry for National Economy, and later as Executive Director at the Central Bank of Hungary, he helped design national economic strategy at the level where geopolitics, infrastructure and capital allocation meet. That experience is rare in the geopolitics speaker pool, where commentary often dominates over operating perspective. His institutional footprint runs East as well as West. He sits on the International Advisory Board of the Fudan Institute of Belt and Road and Global Governance in Shanghai, is an Independent Director at Bank of China CEE, and chairs the Boards of Trustees at John von Neumann University Foundation and the Pallas Athene Domus Meriti Foundation. For European audiences, this gives him an unusually direct line of sight into Chinese strategic thinking on Eurasian connectivity. In 2025 the World Complexity Science Academy recognised the Geofusion body of work with its Medal for Sustainability, citing the research’s ability to map the interconnections between places, disciplines and long-term sustainability questions. That recognition matters because his proposition rests on it: that a map-based, cross-disciplinary reading of the world produces sharper strategic decisions than topic-by-topic analysis. Key speaking topics Geoeconomics and global strategy Eurasian connectivity and the Belt and Road Long-term sustainability and complexity The geography of trade, capital and supply chains Hungarian and Central European economic policy The role of maps in twenty-first century strategy Digitalisation and AI in a geopolitical frame The geography of livable and sustainable places (Turquoise Zones) Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing geopolitical exposure across Europe and Asia Strategy, corporate development and policy leads in industries exposed to Eurasian trade corridors and energy flows Family offices, sovereign investors and asset allocators with capital deployed across East-West blocs Universities, foundations and policy bodies running long-horizon scenario work on connectivity and sustainability Audience outcomes A map-based reading of how Eurasian connectivity, energy and trade corridors are reshaping commercial and capital decisions A clearer view of how Chinese strategic thinking on Belt and Road frames European exposure A working vocabulary from the Geofusion framework for talking about complexity, connectivity and sustainability inside the same conversation A perspective on long-term sustainability that is grounded in geography and capital allocation rather than ESG narrative Strategic questions a leadership team can take into its own scenario planning

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

Why organisations work with Nouriel Roubini His 2006 address to the International Monetary Fund, which outlined the specific structural conditions (overleveraged housing markets, fragile credit instruments, unsustainable household debt) that caused the 2008 financial crisis before they were widely recognised, gives his risk scenarios a credibility that peer analysis rarely carries. The MegaThreats framework, the argument that ten overlapping structural forces, including sovereign debt, geopolitical rivalry, AI-driven labour displacement, and climate stress, reinforce one another, equips leadership teams to analyse compound risk rather than managing individual threats in isolation. As both an academic and an active strategist at Hudson Bay Capital and Atlas Capital Team, he connects macro-risk analysis to live capital allocation decisions, not retrospective commentary. His public-sector career spans the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Treasury Department under Timothy Geithner, giving him a direct, lived understanding of how policymakers reason under pressure, and where their responses typically fall short. His forecasting runs in both directions. The economist who warned the IMF in 2006 has since argued, against consensus, that a technology-led productivity surge will sustain US growth towards 4% by the end of the decade, a case made in the Financial Times and Bloomberg. Boards get a weighed reading of upside and downside scenarios. Biography highlights Professor Emeritus of Economics and International Business, NYU Stern School of Business; previously on faculty at Yale University Author of MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How to Survive Them (Little, Brown, 2022) and Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance (Penguin Press, 2010) 2006 address to the International Monetary Fund accurately identified the structural vulnerabilities that precipitated the 2008 global financial crisis Ranked #4 on Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” (2009); named among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World (2009); multiple further appearances on Foreign Policy’s annual list Senior Economist for International Affairs, White House Council of Economic Advisers (1998–1999); Senior Adviser to the Undersecretary for International Affairs and Director of the Office of Policy Development and Review, U.S. Treasury Department (1999–2000) Chairman and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates; Senior Economic Strategist at Hudson Bay Capital; Chief Economist and Portfolio Manager, Atlas Capital Team Monthly columnist for Project Syndicate; profiled by the Financial Times, New York Times Magazine, and Bloomberg; PhD in Economics, Harvard University; BA, Bocconi University Biography Nouriel Roubini’s most consequential professional moment came at a 2006 address to the International Monetary Fund, where he outlined the structural conditions (overleveraged housing markets, fragile credit instruments, unsustainable household debt) that would produce the 2008 global financial crisis. The IMF’s own economists were, by contemporaneous accounts, sceptical. Within two years, the scenario had materialised almost exactly as described. That track record is the foundation of his authority. Roubini is a Professor Emeritus at NYU’s Stern School of Business and Chairman and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, with a career spanning the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Treasury Department under Timothy Geithner, and advisory roles at the IMF, the World Bank, and the Federal Reserve. His academic foundation rests on a PhD in Economics from Harvard and more than 70 published papers on sovereign debt, financial crises, and international capital flows. His 2022 book, MegaThreats (Little, Brown), advances a named framework for compound systemic risk. The thesis is precise: ten structural forces, sovereign debt at historic highs, geopolitical fragmentation, demographic pressure, AI-driven labour displacement, and climate stress among them, are not independent variables but mutually reinforcing ones. For organisations still using single-factor risk frameworks, the argument is a direct challenge to how they model exposure. Alongside his academic and research work, Roubini serves as Senior Economic Strategist at Hudson Bay Capital and as Chief Economist and Portfolio Manager at Atlas Capital Team, roles that keep his analysis connected to live capital allocation decisions. The crisis-prediction reputation understates the range of his judgment: he has recently argued in the Financial Times that a technology-led productivity boom will sustain US exceptionalism despite tariffs and fiscal strain. He is a monthly contributor to Project Syndicate and has been ranked #4 on Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook and downside risk scenarios Sovereign debt, fiscal dominance, and currency risk Geopolitical fragmentation and its economic consequences US-China strategic rivalry and the restructuring of global trade Financial crises: structural causes, policy responses, and systemic aftermath Inflation, monetary policy, and central bank independence AI, automation, and structural shifts in labour markets Compound systemic risk: the MegaThreats framework Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams stress-testing strategy against macro-economic disruption CFOs, CROs, and treasury functions making capital allocation and risk management decisions in volatile conditions Investment and financial services leadership, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, requiring rigorous macro-risk briefings Government, public policy, and multilateral forums addressing fiscal strategy, monetary policy, and geopolitical-economic interdependence Audience outcomes A structured understanding of how macro forces, debt, geopolitics, monetary policy, interact and compound rather than operating in isolation Specific frameworks, drawn from the MegaThreats thesis, for anticipating systemic stress before it becomes visible in headline economic indicators Clarity on the geopolitical dynamics, particularly US-China rivalry, fiscal dominance risk, and the conditions for de-dollarisation, most likely to affect long-range strategic planning A more calibrated reading of central bank and government policy responses, and the structural conditions under which those responses typically fail or arrive too late Practical language and conceptual tools for articulating compound systemic risk to boards, investors, and regulators, beyond standard scenario planning conventions

Why organisations work with Oliver Kamm He has lived on both sides of the analyst’s desk. Twenty years at the Bank of England, HSBC Securities and Commerzbank Securities, then sixteen years and counting writing The Times leaders on economics and foreign affairs. He reads the data the way a strategist does and frames it the way an editor does. His weekly Times economics column is a primary reference point for British policy debate, which means audiences are hearing the same analysis Westminster, the City and Whitehall are reading the next morning. Authored Accidence Will Happen, endorsed by Steven Pinker as “a unique and indispensable guide to usage”, a credential that signals the rigour he brings to argument and language as well as numbers. He moves cleanly between keynote, panel moderation and after-dinner formats, which lets a single booking cover macro briefing, on-stage interrogation of a CEO and a sharper closing address. Biography highlights Leader writer and columnist at The Times since 2008, covering economics and international affairs. Twenty-year City career: Bank of England, HSBC Securities (European Equity Strategist), Commerzbank Securities (Head of Strategic Research) and founder of WMG Advisors LLP. Author of Anti-Totalitarianism (Social Affairs Unit, 2005), Accidence Will Happen (W&N, 2015) and Mending the Mind (2021). Regular contributor on Newsnight, The Today Programme, Channel 4 News, The Daily Politics, Radio 5 Live and Sky News. Bylines in The Guardian, Prospect, The New York Times and The Jewish Chronicle. Educated at New College, Oxford and Birkbeck College, University of London. Biography The case for booking a serious economics voice for a senior audience usually comes down to translation. Boards are not short of data. They are short of a credible reader of the data who can take a position without flinching, and explain it in language a non-economist will repeat in a meeting the next day. That is the role Kamm has occupied at The Times since 2008. He writes a twice-weekly economics column and is the paper’s principal leader writer on economics and international affairs, which means his analysis sits inside the daily editorial line of one of the few British newspapers still read across Westminster, the City and Whitehall. Before journalism he spent two decades inside the markets he now writes about. Bank of England, HSBC Securities as European Equity Strategist, Commerzbank Securities as Head of Strategic Research, then WMG Advisors LLP, which he founded in 2004. The City background shapes how he reads policy. Capital flows, currency exposure and the actual mechanics of investment decisions are not abstractions when he speaks about them. He is also a working author outside economics. Accidence Will Happen, his 2015 guide to English usage drawn from his Times “Pedant” column, was praised by Steven Pinker for relying on “scholarship rather than dogma”. Mending the Mind followed in 2021. The range matters: it is the reason he holds a room as moderator or after-dinner speaker as confidently as he does in a macro keynote. Key speaking topics Global economy and macro outlook International politics and policy The British economy and public policy Markets, capital flows and the City Media, journalism and editorial judgement Language, communication and clear writing Ideal for Boards and executive committees taking capital allocation or geographic-exposure decisions under macro and geopolitical uncertainty CFOs, treasurers and risk leads briefing internal audiences on the British and global outlook Conference programme owners needing one person to keynote, moderate the CEO panel and close the dinner Audience outcomes A clear, defensible read of the current macro and geopolitical picture, framed for non-economists A working sense of which signals in financial markets and policy actually matter for the year ahead Sharper questions to ask of internal economics and strategy briefings Confidence in the editorial framing of the company’s own external communication on economics and policy

Why organisations work with Pankaj Ghemawat He is the originator of the CAGE Distance Framework, the canonical model for evaluating cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries, taught in MBA strategy courses worldwide and used inside boards making market entry decisions. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, the most widely cited empirical measure of cross-border flows of trade, capital, information, and people, which gives leadership teams a defensible reading of the global environment rather than headline narrative. His Law of Semiglobalization gives boards a precise corrective to the assumption that the world is either flat or fracturing, and reframes how to size international ambition against domestic baseline. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, with 25 years of prior Harvard Business School faculty work, including a McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. World 3.0 won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011, and The Economist named him among the greatest management thinkers in its 2008 guide. Biography highlights Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School and Global Professor of Management and Strategy at NYU Stern. Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management at NYU Stern. Principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011. Author of The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press) and World 3.0 (Harvard Business Review Press), winner of the Thinkers50 Book Award. Recipient of the McKinsey Award for best Harvard Business Review article and the Booz Eminent Scholar Award of the Academy of Management’s International Management Division. Named among the greatest management thinkers in The Economist’s 2008 guide and ranked in the Thinkers50. Biography The hardest strategic question in front of most boards is also the one with the weakest data inside the building: how exposed are we to a world that may be fragmenting, and where should we still be investing across borders. Pankaj Ghemawat has spent his career building the empirical apparatus that answers that question. The CAGE Distance Framework, his contribution to global strategy in the 2000s, gave executives a precise way to measure cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries. It is now standard material in MBA strategy courses and inside corporate development teams making market entry calls. World 3.0, published by Harvard Business Review Press, won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011. His later work, The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2016), formalises two findings drawn from large datasets: international interactions are smaller than domestic ones, and they are dampened by distance along the CAGE dimensions. Boards that internalise both laws stop oscillating between flat-world enthusiasm and deglobalisation panic, and start sizing international ambition against measured reality. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011 and now the most widely cited empirical measure of trade, capital, information, and people flows across borders. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, where he directs the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management. Between 1983 and 2008 he was on the full-time faculty at Harvard Business School, where he was made a full professor in 1991, the youngest in the school’s history. Key speaking topics Globalisation and deglobalisation Cross-border strategy and CAGE distance Market entry and emerging markets Geopolitical risk and corporate exposure Supply chain and global value chain restructuring Global Connectedness Index and trade flows International competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and CEOs reviewing international portfolio exposure, China strategy, or sanctions risk Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development teams evaluating market entry or exit Heads of supply chain and operations restructuring after the end of cheap globalisation Senior leadership teams in multinationals setting the next horizon of cross-border investment Audience outcomes A defensible reading of the actual state of globalisation, drawn from the DHL Global Connectedness Index, not headline narrative. The CAGE Distance Framework as a working tool for evaluating country and market decisions. A clear distinction between semiglobalisation and full integration, and what that implies for strategy. Specific implications for boards on China exposure, regional concentration, and supply chain redesign. A sharper internal vocabulary for separating measurable cross-border risk from political mood.