Growth Strategy

Why organisations work with Andy Bass His Suits & Geeks Trap framework gives leaders a named, structured diagnosis for one of the most persistent and underacknowledged barriers to growth in technology-driven businesses – the breakdown between commercial and technical functions – and a clear method for resolving it. His Start With What Works thesis (Pearson) challenges the default assumption that growth requires new investment; the argument is that most organisations are sitting on underused capabilities, relationships and knowledge that can be mobilised before new capital is sought. His C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action – Curiosity, Exploration, Ownership – gives leaders a specific, repeatable method for moving people from passive compliance to genuine ownership of strategic priorities. His PhD in Software Engineering and early career at BT Research Labs give him standing inside technical organisations that a leadership generalist cannot credibly claim – he can hold the room with engineers and commercial directors simultaneously. Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) and named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange Big Thinkers panel – external recognitions of consulting practice, earned outside the speaking circuit. Biography highlights Founder and principal of BassClusker Consulting; advisory work spanning more than 30 industries across 12 countries PhD in Software Engineering and BSc in Computer Science and Ergonomics, both from Aston University; career began at BT Research Labs, Human Factors Division Executive educator at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde Business Schools; Visiting Professor in Consulting Practice, Birmingham City University Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) by Alan Weiss Author of five books including The Suits & Geeks Trap, Start With What Works (Pearson) and Committed Action Named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange ‘Big Thinkers’ panel of experts Corporate clients include L’Oréal, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and International Automotive Components Group Biography In technology-driven organisations, one of the most consistent barriers to growth is not the strategy, it is the relationship between the people who build things and the people who sell them. Andy Bass, founder of BassClusker Consulting and author of The Suits & Geeks Trap, has spent over two decades working on that specific problem: helping senior leaders diagnose and close the gap between strategic intent and organisational execution. His Suits & Geeks Trap framework identifies a pattern that recurs across industries: commercial and technical teams defaulting to stereotyping and blame, with leaders drawn into refereeing internal politics rather than facing the market. The framework, developed through advisory work with organisations ranging from Deutsche Bank and L’Oréal to mid-sized growth businesses across 12 countries, gives leaders a structured way to reverse that dynamic and redirect energy toward the customer. His parallel argument, developed in Start With What Works (Pearson), challenges what he calls one of the most persistent thinking traps in business: that growth requires new investment. Bass makes the case (supported by client work across 30 industries) that most organisations have more usable capability than they recognise. The book presents practical tools for identifying and deploying those hidden assets before leaders turn to capital-intensive alternatives. His third major framework, the C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action, addresses the question leaders ask most consistently: why their people do not engage with strategic priorities as fully as intended. Bass’s answer, structured around Curiosity, Exploration and Ownership, gives leaders a repeatable method for building genuine commitment rather than managed compliance. His credentials span both sides of the technical-commercial divide he studies: a PhD in Software Engineering from Aston University, an early career at BT Research Labs, executive education delivered at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde business schools, and induction into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame in 2017. Key speaking topics Commercial and technical team alignment Organisational learning and execution Growth strategy using existing resources Leadership and committed action Change management and strategic engagement Organisational culture in technology-driven businesses Executive decision-making and capability development Ideal for CEOs and MDs of technology-driven, engineering-led or innovation-focused organisations managing persistent commercial-technical friction Senior leadership teams where execution consistently falls short of strategic ambition CHROs and organisational development leads working on engagement, ownership and culture in mixed commercial-technical workforces Professional services, financial services, manufacturing and growth-stage businesses navigating rapid change Audience outcomes A named framework for diagnosing commercial-technical team friction – and a clear method for resolving it before it becomes a leadership crisis Practical tools for identifying underused organisational assets and applying them to growth priorities, before seeking new capital or resource The C.E.O. Roadmap – a three-stage method for building genuine team commitment rather than surface-level compliance Sharper understanding of how leadership behaviour, not strategy alone, determines whether execution succeeds Specific questions and diagnostic approaches leaders can apply immediately to unlock stalled priorities or disengaged teams

Why organisations work with Chris and Mickey Brand decisions get tested against how buyers actually think, because a creative director and a business psychologist run the same brief together. They show leadership exactly where sameness is costing pricing power, and where a defensible difference already sits unused inside the business. Their DARE method gives a repeatable test for whether a brand will command a premium, not just whether it looks current. They work the specific problem of the AI era: building a brand faster with generative tools without producing the generic output that makes a company replaceable. Biography highlights Co-founders of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy with a design studio in Cape Town, working with B2B scale-ups across the UK, Europe, and beyond. Mickey Wilson founded her first creative agency at 21 and has spent over 30 years in brand, with clients including Tesco, Samsung, Ocado, and CIMA. Dr Chris Endersby is a business psychologist with an MBA from Imperial College London, who led change programmes for JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS, and Barclays. Creators of the DARE framework: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression. Co-authors of the forthcoming book BRANDFIRE. Biography A brand can now be generated in days. That speed carries a cost. Across B2B markets, companies are converging on the same claims and the same visual language, and buyers lose any real reason to choose one over another. Firestarter, the London consultancy Chris and Mickey run, was built to reverse that drift. Their method pairs two instincts that rarely meet. Mickey Wilson brings over 30 years of brand work for names such as Tesco, Samsung, and Ocado. Her instinct is for what makes a business unlike its rivals. Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist who ran change programmes inside JP Morgan, KPMG, and Barclays, brings the evidence for why those differences move buyers. Their case is plainly commercial. A business that looks and sounds like its competitors ends up competing on price, and margin leaks away. The DARE framework, Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression, gives leaders a way to judge whether a brand will command a premium or blend in. On stage, they work as a double act. Mickey reads a room by instinct; Chris explains the psychology underneath the reaction. The thinking behind both is now set down in their forthcoming book, BRANDFIRE. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation in B2B markets The psychology of buyer decisions Brand-led growth and pricing power Branding in the age of generative AI Authenticity and brand consistency Creative strategy for scale-ups Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups deciding how to stand apart in a crowded category CMOs and brand leads are under pressure to defend pricing and win consideration Boards and leadership teams are weighing how generative AI changes their brand and market position Audience outcomes A clear read on where their brand currently sounds like everyone else, and what that is costing in price and consideration The DARE framework is a working test for whether a brand will command value A view on where generative AI helps build a brand and where it strips out what makes the brand worth choosing The psychological drivers behind B2B buying decisions, and how to align a brand to them

Why organisations work with Trabucchi and Buganza The Platform Thinking Matrix gives strategy and transformation teams a structured instrument for identifying precisely where platform mechanisms can be applied to existing business models, built from a decade of research on established companies, not borrowed from startup literature. The Digital Phoenix Effect draws on analysis of 140 platform initiatives across S&P 500 companies, with detailed cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s – the organisations their research is built around look like most audiences, not like Silicon Valley startups. With 100+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation, their frameworks can be tested against sustained evidence – not just a practitioner’s conviction codified into a model. As Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, they give organisations access to live, connected research, not a fixed set of frameworks. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking: the body that the Financial Times has described as producing the Oscars of management thinking. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Platform Thinking (Trabucchi) and Full Professor of Leadership & Innovation (Buganza), School of Management, Politecnico di Milano Co-founders and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, and of LEADIN’Lab; Buganza chairs the EIASM International Product Development Management Conference Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award, Digital Thinking category Co-authors of Platform Thinking: Read the Past. Write the Future (Business Expert Press, 2023) – shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 and translated into Italian and Chinese – and The Digital Phoenix Effect (Platform Thinking Publishing, 2025) 100+ peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technovation, and Information Systems Journal Co-founders of Symplatform (2018), the annual international conference on digital platforms connecting researchers and practitioners Biography Most digital transformation advice is written for companies that do not yet exist. Trabucchi and Buganza study the ones that do: established firms with legacy assets, existing customer relationships, and infrastructure they cannot simply abandon. Over more than a decade at Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, they developed Platform Thinking as a named strategic framework. It is not a description of what Uber or Airbnb do. It is a method for how any established organisation can activate its existing assets to generate the multi-sided value that platform businesses create. The Platform Thinking Matrix formalises this as a practical instrument for strategy and transformation teams. Their 2025 book, The Digital Phoenix Effect, draws on 140 platform initiatives analysed across S&P 500 companies, with cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s. The argument that incumbent firms cannot compete in the platform economy on their own terms is a common one. Trabucchi and Buganza make the opposite case, and back it with sustained empirical research. Both were included in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking. As co-founders of Symplatform and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB, they connect rigorous academic research to active practitioner communities. Their frameworks emerge from sustained, peer-reviewed inquiry – over 100 published articles across journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation – not from advisory work alone. Key speaking topics Platform thinking and business model transformation Legacy organisations in the platform economy The Platform Thinking Matrix Data as a platform asset GenAI and internal platform development Platform leadership and innovation management Multi-sided platforms and ecosystem strategy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading platform transformation in established businesses CEOs and boards of legacy organisations facing disruption from platform competitors Innovation and transformation leads in non-digital-native companies Executive MBA and corporate learning audiences focused on digital business model innovation Audience outcomes A working definition of Platform Thinking and how it differs from conventional digital transformation advice The Platform Thinking Matrix as a practical framework for identifying where platform mechanisms apply to existing business models Real cases from established firms – Siemens, AXA, Eni, Domino’s – showing how legacy assets become platform advantages Clarity on the specific leadership conditions that enable platform-based change within established organisations A starting point for assessing their organisation’s platform potential against a research-backed framework

Why organisations work with Arunjay Katakam He has spent over a decade inside the GSMA and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation portfolios building the financial infrastructure that brought a billion people into the formal economy, so he speaks about inclusion as an operating problem, not a values statement. His book Generation Hope sets out a five-principle model (growth, participation, opportunity, stability, sustainability) that boards can map directly onto strategy, pricing, and product decisions. He has co-founded three startups, mentored 20-plus emerging-market fintechs through DFS Lab, and built ventures at Catalyst Fund, which gives him real authority on scale-up economics rather than commentary. He brings operator credibility on cross-border payments, digital public infrastructure, and zero-fee payment design, all areas where boards now face direct regulatory and competitive pressure. Biography highlights Author, Generation Hope: How Inclusive Economics Can Help Us All Thrive (Otterpine, 2024). Author, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, a practitioner guide to profitable money-transfer operators. Strategic Advisor, Interledger Foundation. Founder and CEO, Yooz, a cross-border remittance company. Founder, Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating ventures aimed at poverty alleviation by 2030. Co-author of two GSMA State of the Industry reports on mobile financial services for the unbanked; former EY consultant; mentor to 20-plus inclusive fintech startups via DFS Lab. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a values problem. After a decade inside the GSMA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, building the rails that brought a billion people into the formal economy, the case is sharper than that. Inclusion is an operating problem, with measurable consequences for pricing, distribution, and risk. That is the argument behind Generation Hope (Otterpine, 2024), which sets out five principles: growth, participation, opportunity, stability, and sustainability. The book gives senior leaders a usable frame for redesigning commercial strategy when the extractive model is running out of road, not a moral lecture. The operator background is what makes the case credible. Arunjay Katakam co-founded three startups, including one acquired by Twitter, ran cross-border remittance company Yooz, mentored more than 20 emerging-market fintechs at DFS Lab, and built ventures with Catalyst Fund. His earlier book, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, is a working manual for building profitable payment operators on zero-fee economics. He now advises the Interledger Foundation on open payments infrastructure and runs Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating moonshot ventures aimed at ending extreme poverty by 2030. The throughline is consistent: commercial discipline applied to inclusive design, with the numbers to support it. Key speaking topics Inclusive economics as a commercial operating model Cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure Open and decentralised finance Scale-up leadership in emerging-market fintech Zero-fee payment design and unit economics Generation Hope: rebuilding growth around participation and sustainability Ideal for Boards and ExCos rethinking growth strategy under regulatory, customer, and capital pressure Financial services leaders (CEO, COO, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer) navigating cross-border payments, fintech disruption, and inclusion mandates Innovation and venture-building teams inside large institutions backing inclusive products Foundation, development finance, and policy audiences working on financial inclusion Audience outcomes A five-principle model audiences can apply to their own pricing, product, and strategy decisions A clearer view of where inclusive economics changes unit economics rather than just narrative Specific examples from cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure that show what works at scale A practical agenda for boards on how to position growth strategy for the next decade

Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room. Twenty-five years of advisory work at Prophet plus a senior INSEAD faculty role gives him both the operator’s view of transformation and the academic’s discipline. Few digital strategy speakers credibly hold both. His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes. The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work. He co-directs INSEAD’s flagship Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme, so his content reflects what CMOs and CEOs are actually being taught at the frontier, not what was written eighteen months ago. Biography highlights Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD. Former Partner, Prophet. Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer. Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner. Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy. Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. Biography Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on. At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders. Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised. The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week. Key speaking topics Customer-centric digital transformation B2B digital transformation and growth AI and digital marketing strategy Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world Data and analytics as a commercial capability Business model innovation from product to solution Culture and leadership of transformation programmes Ideal for CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes. CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment. B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth. Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth. A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme. Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language. A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand. Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Cheryl Campos She has built the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, VCFamilia, and has used it to channel more than $10M of LP funding to emerging Latine fund managers. That is an operating result inside venture capital, not a panel statement. She knows how to take a FinTech platform from early stage to unicorn. As employee #10 at Republic, she led venture growth and partnerships through the company’s run to a $1BN valuation. Her LaFamilia Foundation work is backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer, which gives corporate audiences a credible reference point for what serious inclusion investment looks like in practice. She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Harvard economics degree, and pairs that with an investor’s view of where capital actually flows. Her speaking range covers FinTech, venture, identity and community building, which makes her usable for inclusion programming, leadership offsites and FinTech-sector events without changing speakers. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, LaFamilia Foundation, backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. Co-founder of VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. Former Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic, employee #10, scaling the platform to a $1BN valuation. Scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and investment partner at The Community Fund. Former Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays, Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance. BA in Economics with honours, Harvard University. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31. Biography Latine founders raise less than 2 percent of venture capital, despite Latine consumers being one of the fastest-growing economic groups in the United States. Closing that gap is not a marketing problem. It needs operators who can build new pipelines of investors, founders and limited partners, and move real money through them. LaFamilia Foundation was set up to do that work. As co-founder and CEO, Campos runs two communities under the foundation: VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. VCFamilia has facilitated more than $10M of LP funding into emerging Latine fund managers. FounderFamilia has directed over $1M into early-stage startups through its national pitch competition. Corporate backers include J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. The operating credibility comes from Republic. Campos joined the FinTech investment platform as employee #10 in 2018 and led venture growth and partnerships during its run to a $1BN valuation. She is also a scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and an investment partner at The Community Fund, with prior experience as an investment banking analyst at Barclays in the Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance team. Her academic background sits on top of that operating record. Campos holds a BA in economics with honours from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31 list of emerging venture capital talent, and is a frequent voice in FinTech and venture programming on inclusion, community building and capital access. Key speaking topics Community as a capital-access mechanism in venture and FinTech Latine representation in venture capital and entrepreneurship Inclusion in financial services and technology Building investor and founder pipelines from scratch FinTech growth and scale-up operating lessons Identity, career path and reinvention Ideal for DEI, talent and ERG leaders inside banks, asset managers and FinTech firms looking for substance beyond sentiment programming. Venture capital firms, family offices and corporate venture teams building Latine or wider underrepresented founder pipelines. Heads of community, marketing and partnerships at FinTech and platform businesses scaling user and investor networks. Industry conferences on FinTech, entrepreneurship and capital markets that need a credible voice on inclusion as an operating discipline. Audience outcomes A working view of how community structures inside venture and FinTech move capital and talent, not just sentiment. Specific reference points for what corporate-backed inclusion programmes look like when J.P. Morgan, AWS and Comcast are the partners. Practical lessons from inside a FinTech platform that scaled from employee 10 to unicorn status. A clearer read on how Latine founder and investor networks are forming and where corporates can plug in usefully.

Why organisations work with Damon Dunn He has built and run the businesses he talks about. A 38-unit franchise system, a 31-property retail portfolio with tenants such as Walmart and CVS, and three CEO seats give him P&L credibility most leadership speakers do not have. His Hoover Institution work on welfare-to-work, K-14 education and workforce skilling connects boardroom growth questions to the labour and human-capital realities that actually determine whether a scale-up works. His path from severe poverty in Fort Worth to Stanford, the NFL and a multi-company operating career gives audiences a resilience story that is specific and verifiable, not generic. He is fluent in two registers buyers rarely get in one room: operator and policy fellow. That makes him useful for leadership offsites that need both growth substance and a wider economic frame. Biography highlights Hoover Institution Fellow, Stanford University, working on economic mobility, welfare reform and skills-based education. Author of Punting Poverty: Breaking the Chains of Welfare (Pacific Research Institute). Three-time CEO. Current CEO of Sagan Sign Talent. Founder of Lagunita Franchise Operations, scaled to 38 Dunkin locations across six states. Co-founder of Tricor SW Corporation, which developed 31 retail properties. BA, Public Policy, Stanford University. Harvard Business School Executive Education (2005). Former NFL wide receiver: Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys. Republican nominee for California Secretary of State, 2010. Founder of Long Beach College Prep Academy, which has sent 158 students from low-income families to college. Biography Build a 38-unit franchise system from a single location and you learn quickly which growth ideas survive contact with payroll, leases and operators on a Tuesday morning. Damon Dunn has done the work three times as a CEO, in franchising at Lagunita, in retail development at Tricor, and most recently in industrial talent at Sagan Sign Talent. Tricor developed 31 retail properties across the United States, securing tenants including Walmart and CVS. Lagunita scaled to 38 Dunkin locations across six states, with around 500 employees and roughly thirty million dollars in revenue. The throughline is the same: capital deployed against real assets, real customers and real labour markets, with a P&L that has to clear at the end of every period. Alongside the operating work, Dunn is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he writes on welfare reform, K-14 education and the skills-based pathways that actually move people out of poverty. His book Punting Poverty: Breaking the Chains of Welfare, published with the Pacific Research Institute, sets out a workable agenda for that mobility question. He was the Republican nominee for California Secretary of State in 2010. His own route from severe poverty in Fort Worth to a Stanford scholarship, four NFL teams and a working operator’s career gives the policy argument something most policy arguments lack: an author who has been the subject. Boards and leadership teams get a speaker who can work the labour question from inside the labour market, not from a podium above it. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scaling Growth strategy under capital and labour constraints Economic mobility and workforce skilling Leadership across business, sport and policy Resilience and high-performance under pressure Public policy on welfare-to-work and K-14 education Ideal for CEOs, founders and country managers running scale-up plays in capital-constrained conditions. Boards and executive teams looking for a credible operator’s view alongside macro and policy framing. Industry conferences in franchising, retail, real estate and consumer where unit economics drive growth. Leadership offsites that want substance on resilience without the standard sports-keynote arc. Audience outcomes A working operator’s view of how franchise and retail systems actually scale, with the trade-offs named. A clear link between workforce policy, skills and the practical labour economics inside a growing business. A resilience narrative grounded in named institutions and verifiable career stages, not motivational abstraction. Useable language for leaders trying to communicate ambition without overpromising on capital or timelines.

Dr. Jonah Berger: Unlocking the Science of Influence Through Language, Behavior and Ideas How can we use language to communicate more effectively and increase our influence? Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors catch on? And how can we be more effective at changing minds and organizations? Professor Jonah Berger examines the behavioral science behind these and other questions. Millions of copies of his books are in print in over 35 countries around the world. Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way. Almost everything we do involves words. From emails and power points to phone calls and pitch meetings, words are how we persuade, communicate, and connect. But certain words are more impactful than others. They’re better at changing minds, engaging listeners, and driving action. What are these magic words, and how can we take advantage of their power? Learn the words that convince clients, captivate audiences, and deepen social connection. How to ask the right questions, hold attention, speak with confidence, and design presentations, pitches, and other types of content for maximum impact. And how the words others use reveal hidden information about their interests, actions, and intent. Whether you’re trying to persuade a customer, motivate a team, or get a whole organization to see things differently, this course will show you how to leverage the power of magic words. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind. Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Startups want to change industries and non-profits want to change the world. But change is hard. We push and push, but often nothing happens. Could there be a better way? This book introduces a revolutionary approach to change. Successful change isn’t about pushing harder or exerting more energy. It’s about removing barriers. Overcoming resistance by reducing friction and lowering the hurdles to action. Discover the five hidden factors that impede change, and how by mitigating them, you can become a catalyst. Contagious: Why Things Catch On reveals the secret science behind why products, services, and ideas become popular. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to catch on. If you’ve ever wondered why certain stories get shared, brands get more word of mouth, or videos go viral, this book will explain why, and show you how to leverage these ideas to craft contagious content. Contagious was New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller and has been translated into over 35 languages. Amazon named it one of the best books of the year and it received the Berry Book Prize from the American Marketing Association as the year’s best marketing book. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior. Ever wish you could be more influential? Be better at motivating yourself and others? Make smarter decisions and shape group opinion? This book will show you how. Invisible Influence spent more than three months on the New York Times bestseller list. It was also a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller and has been translated into over 25 languages. Berger has been recognized with a number of awards for both scholarship and teaching, including various early career awards. He was named one of the top 30 leaders in business by the American Management Association and one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. His research has been featured multiple times in the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” and Wharton gave him the Iron Professor award for awesome faculty research. Dr. Berger has helped hundreds of companies like Apple, Google, Nike, and GE get their products, services, and ideas to catch on. He’s helped Facebook launch new hardware, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sharpen messaging, and small start-ups, political campaigns, and nonprofit organizations change minds and drive action. He’s also keynoted hundreds of major conferences and events like SXSW and Cannes Lions, and spoken to audiences from 10 to 10,000 people around the world. He received a BA from Stanford University in Human Judgment and Decision Making, and a PhD from Stanford in Marketing.

Fleur East – Presenter, Singer, Dancer, Writer & Fitness Expert Fleur has established herself as one of the UK’s most respected and likeable broadcasters, particularly as host of Hits Radio’s nationwide Breakfast show and Strictly Come Dancing spin off show, Strictly: It Takes Two on BBC Two. Fleur has appeared in some of the UK’s most beloved family TV programs starting with her successful turn in ITV’s X Factor 2014, where she became the first act to top the UK chart during the competition with her cover of ‘Uptown Funk.’ In 2018, Fleur made it to the final four of ITV’s ‘I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here’ and since 2019, has appeared as a series presenter on ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’ for ITV One. Fleur also hosted new ITV Saturday night show, The Void alongside Ashley Banjo. Away from her TV work, Fleur continues to sing, dance and perform at shows and festivals around the country. Fleur is also a talented actress who has appeared in Apple TV drama, Ted Lasso and is performing the role of Miss Meesha in CBBC drama, Phoenix Rise which airs May 2024. Fleur launched a haircare business with her sister ‘Kurl Kitchen’ in 2024 – based on the challenges that they faced with their hair growing up and how they have come to fully embrace their natural curls.

Adam Thomas – Actor & TV Presenter Adam is a Manchester-born British actor and presenter best known for playing the role of Adam Barton in the ITV soap opera, Emmerdale and his role as Donte Charles in Waterloo Road. Aged 17, Adam had his breakthrough role in the BBC drama, Waterloo Road, starring as Donte Charles from 2006-2009. Adam has recently reprised his role as Donte in the show’s revival in 2023 and will continue to play Donte. In 2009 Adam joined Emmerdale where he played the role of Adam Barton until 2018. He has also appeared in the popular BBC Hospital drama, Casualty, and has performed in Nativity the Musical, playing the Hollywood Producer at the Empire Theatre in 2018. In 2016, Adam was a contestant on the 16th series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, where he finished in 3rd place. In October 2019, Adam co-hosted the spin-off – I’m a Celebrity: Extra Camp, alongside Joel Dommett and Emily Atack. In 2020, Adam starred in a six-part ITV prime-time series Absolutely India: Mancs in Mumbai with his two brothers, Ryan and Scott and their late Father Dougie, where they visited India to trace their heritage. Adam was among the 2023 Strictly cohort of contestants, finishing the series in 8th Place. Adam also co-hosts Mancs on the Mic, a popular podcast series, alongside both of his brothers. They talk about childhood memories as well as their most embarrassing and moving moments. He also co-hosts the Waterloo Road podcast alongside one of his co-stars, Priyasasha Kumari. Adam is a restaurateur and entrepreneur with the flagship of his brand, Oh My Glaze, being found in the Trafford Centre. The brand includes a range of hot sauces. Adam also works with some of the Nation’s favourite brands including successful partnerships with Gillette, McDonald’s, TalkTalk, Fairy, Sainsbury’s and Oreo. He is also an ambassador for Sky.

Glenn Marsden: Australia’s Most Compelling Speaker Australia’s transformative speaker and visionary leader behind the highly acclaimed Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, Glenn Marsden, is on a mission to redefine mental health conversations and foster a culture of inclusivity. What began as a deeply personal journey —rooted in the tragic loss of a close friend to suicide and his own battle with body dysmorphia—has evolved into a global movement. Facing his own struggles brought Glenn face-to-face with the darkest corners of his mind, leading him to a pivotal realisation: if his mind could take him to such depths of despair, it also held the potential to propel him toward greatness. This profound understanding ignited his passion to help others recognise their own strength and resilience, encouraging them to break free from the stigma surrounding mental health challenges. As a serial entrepreneur, Glenn has built his own success through a diverse array of endeavours—including speaking engagements, literary works, events, consulting, and more. His entrepreneurial achievements have enabled him to pour resources into his philanthropic efforts, all while adhering to his morals and integrity. Committed to being of service to others, he provides free resources and support to those in need, exemplifying his dedication to making a positive impact. Glenn Marsden is not only the visionary Founder of the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign but also an international luminary, accomplished author, and compelling motivational speaker. As a distinguished thought leader in mental health advocacy, his unwavering commitment to inspiring positive change, embracing imperfection, and fostering inclusivity has resonated globally. Through his multifaceted contributions—spanning global campaigns, impactful literary works, dynamic speaking engagements, and strategic consulting—Glenn continues to empower others to turn their pain into purpose, solidify themselves as leaders, and make a lasting difference in the world.