Growth Strategy

Why organisations work with Cassandra Stavrou She has lived the operational reality of scaling a challenger consumer brand against entrenched incumbents, from cement-mixer experiments in her parents’ garage to listings in every major UK retailer. She made PROPER the first B Corp certified snacks company, then proved the model could withstand a major private equity consolidation deal, completed through Brexit and COVID. She speaks credibly to founders and corporate brand teams about the operational discipline required when purpose stops being a marketing claim and starts being an audited certification. A recognised authority on UK food and drink policy, sitting on the government’s Food & Drink Sector Council, with Veuve Clicquot New Generation and National Business Award recognition behind her. Biography highlights Founder, PROPER Snacks (PROPERCORN and PROPERCHIPS), launched 2011 MBE for services to the food industry, 2020 Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award, 2016 National Business Awards New Business of the Year, 2014 Member, UK Government Food & Drink Sector Council Board member, WARP Snacks, formed in 2021 through the Exponent-backed combination of PROPER and Eat Real Biography PROPER started in a kitchen with a cement mixer and a popcorn recipe. A decade later it was Europe’s largest independent healthier snacking business, with listings in every major UK supermarket and distribution across more than twenty countries. The category it competed in was dominated by global incumbents with budgets that dwarfed anything an independent founder could put behind shelf negotiation, marketing or supply chain. Cassandra Stavrou co-founded PROPER in 2011 and ran it as a challenger brand built on a specific premise: that healthier snacks did not have to compromise on taste, and that the business behind them did not have to compromise on its social and environmental obligations. PROPER became the first B Corp certified snacks company, embedding the standard from the inside rather than retrofitting it later. The Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award in 2016, an MBE in 2020 and a seat on the UK Government’s Food & Drink Sector Council mark a track record that goes beyond brand storytelling. The 2021 consolidation with Eat Real under private equity backer Exponent, forming WARP Snacks, gave the next test: whether the discipline that built the brand could survive the rationalisation that follows institutional capital. She speaks to founders, brand teams and boards on what changes when purpose moves from a positioning line to a binding operating constraint, and on the practical economics of building a category challenger that the incumbents eventually have to take seriously. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building in consumer categories Scaling challenger brands against incumbents B Corp certification as an operating discipline Purpose and profit in the food and drink sector Female founders and capital UK food and drink policy Ideal for Founders and senior commercial leaders in consumer brands and FMCG Brand, marketing and category leaders in retail Investors and boards backing purpose-led businesses through scale events Conferences on entrepreneurship, sustainability and women in business Audience outcomes A working view of what changes operationally when B Corp standards are written into a consumer business from day one Honest detail on the trade-offs between speed of growth and brand integrity in a price-sensitive category The mechanics of negotiating shelf space, retailer relationships and supply chains as an independent challenger A practitioner’s account of running a founder-led business through a private equity consolidation

Why organisations work with Cate Trotter A working method, not a trend report. Trotter pairs structured signal analysis with a disciplined experimentation approach that gets innovation off the slide deck and into the P&L. Direct access to live retail signal infrastructure: Insider Trends runs on-the-ground retail safaris in London, New York, Paris and Seoul, used by senior teams at Chanel, Lego, Nike, Hugo Boss and Carrefour. A retail futures lens recognised by the industry’s own gatekeepers: Rethink Retail Top 100 Global Retail Influencer in 2021 and 2022, LinkedIn Top Voice, TechNation 200 Thought Leader. GINI Certified Chief Innovation Officer credentials applied to commercial problems, not abstract innovation theory. Useful for boards that have tired of innovation programmes that do not pay for themselves. Builds the bridge between AI hype and AI deployment that actually saves money, in language operators and finance teams can act on. Biography highlights Founder and Head of Trends, Insider Trends, a London-based retail futures agency operating retail safaris in London, New York, Paris and Seoul. Rethink Retail Top 100 Global Retail Influencer, 2021 and 2022. LinkedIn Top Voice and TechNation 200 Thought Leader. Future 100 Entrepreneur (Striding Out) and StartUp 100 Entrepreneur (Startups). GINI Certified Chief Innovation Officer. Client roster includes Chanel, Lego, Nike, Mercedes, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, Hugo Boss, Galeries Lafayette, Marks & Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Carrefour, L’Oreal, Unilever, Google and Meta. Biography Retail leaders rarely lack trend material. The Carrefour COO, the Hugo Boss board, and the senior teams at Chanel and Lego all have access to the same headline reports as everyone else. What they buy from Insider Trends is the layer underneath: the structured reading of signals that have not yet become headlines, and a method for acting on them before competitors do. Cate Trotter founded Insider Trends to close that gap. The firm runs in-person retail safaris in London, New York, Paris and Seoul, used by senior operators to ground strategic decisions in what is actually working on the shop floor and on the screen. Clients include Nike, Mercedes, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, Marks & Spencer and Galeries Lafayette. Her method joins two disciplines that usually sit apart. A structured PESTLE-style reading of non-obvious signals on the front end, and a disciplined experimentation practice on the back end, drawn from her work as a GINI Certified Chief Innovation Officer. The result is innovation that earns its budget, rather than innovation as performance. Recent work focuses on AI deployments that operators can defend on commercial grounds, not on novelty. The industry has noticed. Rethink Retail named her a Top 100 Global Retail Influencer in 2021 and 2022. LinkedIn ranks her as a Top Voice. TechNation listed her among its 200 Thought Leaders. She speaks to audiences of up to 800 across Europe, the Americas and Asia, and frequently advises CEOs, COOs and boards directly, including the General Manager of L’Oreal France and the Chief Operations Officer of Carrefour. Key speaking topics Retail futures and customer experience Innovation as a managed commercial discipline AI deployment in retail and consumer-facing operations Trend signals and structured foresight Disciplined experimentation Digital transformation in retail Customer behaviour and consumer signals Ideal for Retail and consumer goods CEOs, COOs and boards setting innovation and customer experience priorities. Chief Innovation Officers and transformation leads under pressure to convert experiments into commercial returns. Chief Marketing and Customer Officers in consumer-facing categories. Leadership offsites at brands rethinking physical and digital retail formats. Audience outcomes A sharper read of the non-obvious signals shaping their category, separated from the noise of trend headlines. A repeatable method for converting trend insight into commercial experiments with measurable returns. Concrete examples of AI use cases in retail that have already paid for themselves. A clearer view of what the world’s best retail operators are actually doing differently. Confidence to retire innovation projects that exist for show and back the ones that move the P&L.

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 Chika Russell CHIKA’S Foods went from home production to listings in Waitrose, Holland & Barrett and Ocado, and then to a $9.8 million Series A – Russell’s perspective covers every stage of that journey, not just the origin story. Her management accounting background gives her a financially specific way of talking about growth decisions that most founder narratives avoid: she built her initial stock and order management systems in Excel before the business could afford software, and that discipline remained the foundation of the company’s commercial architecture. She navigated a reverse diaspora expansion – building a UK consumer brand first, then returning to Nigeria with a manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week – which is a rare, documented case study in cross-border market entry that runs in the opposite direction to most internationalisation models. In 2015 she received offers from all five investors on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and declined them all; six years later she secured institutional PE from a fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations thinking about strategic patience and investor fit, that sequence is evidence, not anecdote. Social impact is structurally embedded in her commercial model – a penny from every pack sold goes to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme, and CHIKA’S Africa employs over 300 people, more than half of them women – making her a credible voice on what purpose-led growth actually costs and yields. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CHIKA’S Foods, launched 2015; UK national retail distribution including Waitrose, Co-op, Holland & Barrett, Ocado and WH Smith Secured $9.8 million Series A from Alitheia IDF, a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and African Development Bank (December 2021) Qualified management accountant; ten years in banking and finance before founding CHIKA’S BBC Dragons’ Den (2015): received offers from all five investors; Deborah Meaden described it as one of the best pitches she had ever seen BBC Question Time panellist; regular contributor to BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money Business Leader Top 30 Inspiring UK Entrepreneurs (2019); Consumer Business Rising Star, Black British Business Awards (2019) Biography CHIKA’S Foods began in a home kitchen in 2014 with hand-toasted peanuts and plantain crisps inspired by Nigerian street food. Within a decade it had secured institutional private equity backing and a Lagos manufacturing operation producing 2.6 million units a week. The path between those two points is what Chika Russell talks about. Her background shapes that conversation in an unusual way. She is a qualified management accountant who spent a decade in banking before founding CHIKA’S. Her instinct for financial architecture, investor narrative and cost control runs through every growth decision she describes – not as theory, but as method. In 2015, she appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and received offers from all five investors. She turned them all down. Six years later, she secured $9.8 million from Alitheia IDF – a gender-lens private equity fund backed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank. For organisations trying to understand what attracts the right institutional capital, that sequence is direct evidence. CHIKA’S Africa, launched in Lagos in 2022, now employs over 300 people – more than half of them women. The business donates a penny from every pack to World Vision’s Empowering Girls programme. Russell is a BBC Question Time panellist and a regular on BBC Radio’s Wake Up to Money: the standing of an operator who has built across markets, not one who has written about doing so. Key speaking topics Consumer brand building and retail distribution Access to growth capital and institutional investment Cross-border market entry and expansion into Africa Financial discipline in early-stage and scaling businesses Purpose-driven commercial growth Entrepreneurship and founder decision-making Gender-lens investing and impact-linked capital Ideal for Founders and entrepreneurs seeking institutional capital or retail distribution scale FMCG, CPG and consumer brand leaders exploring cross-border or emerging market growth Investment and private equity audiences focused on impact-linked or growth-market strategies Senior executives in corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, or commercial development programmes Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how financial discipline – not product vision alone – determines whether a consumer brand crosses from traction to institutional scale Insight into what impact-linked institutional investors actually require, and how to construct a credible narrative for them A practical perspective on cross-border market entry drawn from real first-mover experience in both the UK FMCG market and Nigeria Greater clarity on how to embed social purpose into a commercial model without compromising financial performance A more honest account of the investor journey – including the strategic value of declining the wrong capital

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 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.

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 Darren Hardy He has run the operating seat, not just studied it. He led SUCCESS magazine as publisher and founding editor for eight years and built businesses before that, so the material lands with founders and CEOs rather than feeling like borrowed theory. The Compound Effect gives audiences a single, durable mental model for how small daily choices become outsized business outcomes. It survives long after the keynote ends, which is what organisations actually pay for. His 2016 Master of Influence award from the National Speakers Association places him in a lineage of fewer than a dozen people, alongside Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. Few current keynote speakers carry that specific credential. He has spent two decades interviewing the operators behind large companies, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz and Jack Welch, and brings those case studies into rooms without name-dropping for its own sake. DarrenDaily gives him a live, ongoing feedback loop with hundreds of thousands of high-performers, so the content is stress-tested against what is actually working in the field rather than recycled from a book written years ago. Biography highlights New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Compound Effect, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster and Living Your Best Year Ever. Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, 2007 to 2015. National Speakers Association Master of Influence Award, 2016. Former executive producer of The People’s Network and chairman of The Success Training Network. Founder of DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring platform for entrepreneurs and executives. Has interviewed leaders including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn. Biography Most performance problems in founder-led businesses are not strategy problems. They are execution problems dressed up as strategy problems, and they compound quietly until a growth plan stalls. Darren Hardy has spent twenty-five years working on the side of that equation that boards rarely discuss directly: the daily habits, operating rhythms and personal disciplines that separate the operators who build something lasting from the ones who do not. His argument is built from two sources. The first is his own operating career. He started his first business at eighteen and ran a company generating material annual revenue before he was thirty, before spending eight years as Publisher and Founding Editor of SUCCESS magazine, relaunching the title and running it as a business. The second is editorial. Through SUCCESS and the networks he ran before it, he interviewed a long line of senior operators, including Richard Branson, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch and Steve Wynn, and distilled what he learned into The Compound Effect, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller still in active circulation more than a decade after publication. The 2016 Master of Influence Award from the National Speakers Association is the credential that most senior buyers notice. It has gone to roughly a dozen people in the history of the profession, including Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and it is not given for platform skill alone. It signals durability of ideas, something Hardy has since extended through DarrenDaily, a daily mentoring programme followed by hundreds of thousands of founders, sales leaders and executives. What a room gets from him is not motivation in the old sense. It is a specific mental model for how decisions compound, delivered by someone who has run the P&L, built the audience, and stress-tested the ideas against a live community of operators every working day. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial performance and founder psychology Habit compounding and long-term execution discipline Leadership in fast-changing, multi-generational workplaces Productivity systems of high-performing operators Sales team performance and commercial discipline Personal leadership and daily operating rhythm Ideal for Founder-led and founder-stage businesses facing the transition from hustle to operating discipline CEOs, COOs and sales leaders running performance-driven commercial organisations Annual kick-offs, leadership offsites and sales conferences where the brief is execution, not strategy Audience outcomes A clear, durable model for how small daily choices compound into commercial outcomes A sharper view of the specific habits and rhythms that separate top operators from competent ones Case material drawn from real interviews with leaders such as Branson, Schultz and Welch, applied to the audience’s own context A concrete shift in how leaders structure their own days, weeks and quarters on returning to the business

About Dave Trott Dave’s passion for creativity and advertising started in the ’70s when he worked for John Webster at BMP, who has won more advertising awards than anyone else in history. He worked his way to Deputy Creative Director, then left in 1980 to start his own agency, Gold Greenlees Trott. His time at BMP certainly stood him in good stead when Gold Greenlees Trott won Best Agency in the UK by Campaign magazine in their first year, followed four years later by Best Agency in the World by Ad Age magazine, New York. Current/Past Positions and Roles Consultant Joint Founder, Bainsfair Sharkey Trott Joint Founder, WTCS Chairman, The Gate Founder, D&AD Advertising Concepts Workshops Founder, Gold Greenlees Trott Deputy Creative Director, BMP Awards, Accolades, Achievements, Honours D&AD President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement Lifetime Achievement Award from The Creative Circle Lifetime Achievement Award from The Marketing Society Lifetime Achievement Award from The Scottish Advertising Association Speaking Topics Creativity Advertising Lateral Thinking Publications Dave has written six books exploring creativity, communication, and problem-solving: Creative Mischief Predatory Thinking 1+1=3 Creative Blindness The Power of Ignorance Crossover Creativity

Why organisations work with David S. Kidder He hands leadership teams a named, tested method for growth, the GrowthOS, rather than inspiration. Accenture bought the company built around it, and Fortune 500 partners including Nike, P&G, Citi, and GE ran it inside their own businesses. His work targets the specific failure mode of large firms: they grow existing businesses well but rarely turn new opportunities into meaningful revenue. He gives leaders a way to do the second thing without abandoning the first. The methodology is published and taught, not proprietary folklore. New to Big set out the Growth Operating System in full, and the approach has been used as teaching material on enterprise growth and innovation. He works from the operator’s chair, not the lectern. He built Bionic to $30 million in revenue and sold four companies, so his frameworks come with the scar tissue of having run them under real commercial pressure. His current systems, PreMortem and Apogee, extend the same logic into decision discipline: surfacing the two or three assumptions that decide whether a funded initiative actually succeeds, before more capital is committed. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Bionic, the enterprise-growth firm acquired by Accenture in 2021 and folded into what became Accenture Song Creator of the GrowthOS, deployed with CEOs and leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 organisations Co-author of New to Big (Currency, 2019) with Christina Wallace, endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen Creator and co-author of The Intellectual Devotional, a New York Times bestselling series; his books have sold more than one million copies across 18 languages Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2008) and recipient of ID Magazine’s International Design Award; graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Angel investor in more than 150 startups, with early positions including SpaceX and Airbnb Biography Large companies are good at making big businesses bigger. They are far worse at turning a new idea into a business that matters, which is the skill entrepreneurs and venture investors live by. David S. Kidder built his career on closing that gap. At Bionic, the company he co-founded and led as CEO, Kidder created the GrowthOS: a system that borrows the tools and mindsets of venture capital and installs them inside established organisations. He deployed it directly with leadership teams at Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citi, GE, and more than forty other Fortune 500 firms, and bootstrapped the company to $30 million in revenue before Accenture acquired it in 2021 and made the method a core part of Accenture Song. The thinking is set out in New to Big, written with Christina Wallace and endorsed by Clay Christensen, Adam Grant, and Marc Andreessen. Its argument is practical: stop guessing from the inside out, obsess over the customer problems that create real opportunity, run growth as a portfolio, and treat productive failure as information. His earlier books, including the New York Times bestselling Intellectual Devotional series, have sold more than a million copies across 18 languages. Kidder now applies the same discipline to the moment before capital is committed. PreMortem is a decision system that forces teams to name the assumptions underneath their highest-stakes initiatives and test the two or three that decide the outcome. Apogee, rooted in behavioural science, works on how leadership teams commit to each other and hold the line on those commitments. Both come from the same conviction that runs through his four exits: growth is not luck, it is a system you can build and run. Key speaking topics Enterprise growth systems and the GrowthOS New business-model discovery inside established companies Innovation as a repeatable, portfolio-based discipline Commercial decision-making and assumption testing under uncertainty Corporate reinvention and the founder’s mindset at scale Leadership-team performance and accountability Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and chief growth or innovation officers at large enterprises trying to build new revenue without disrupting the core business Boards and executive teams with a fully funded, high-stakes initiative they cannot confidently say is on course PE and VC portfolio companies under pressure to accelerate new revenue and prove repeatable growth CHROs and people leaders responsible for turning leadership development into visible behaviour change Audience outcomes A shared framework for identifying where genuine new growth lives and a clear first move for pursuing it The specific two or three assumptions that will decide whether a major initiative succeeds, and a plan to test them before more capital goes in A working understanding of how to run innovation as a governed portfolio rather than a series of one-off bets A concrete practice for leadership teams to make visible commitments and hold each other accountable to them Language and mental models that separate a real growth engine from activity that only looks like progress

Why organisations work with Deborah Meaden Twenty years of unscripted investment judgement on Dragons’ Den, where she has personally backed dozens of businesses, given audiences a working language for evaluating risk, founders and growth. Operator credibility built on a £33 million sale of Weststar Holidays to Phoenix Equity Partners in 2005, after a management buyout she led from inside the family business. A consistent, public position on sustainability as a commercial question: through The Big Green Money Show on BBC Radio 5 Live she has interrogated CEOs of major UK and global businesses on what climate strategy actually costs and earns. Author credibility across audiences from senior operators (Common Sense Rules) to financial literacy for children (HarperCollins Little Experts series, including a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice). A direct, plain-language style that translates entrepreneurial decisions into something a leadership team can argue with, not just admire. Biography highlights Investor on BBC’s Dragons’ Den since 2006. Led the 1999 management buyout of Weststar Holidays and sold the majority to Phoenix Equity Partners in 2005 for £33 million. Author of Common Sense Rules (Random House Business, 2009) and the HarperCollins Little Experts financial literacy series. Why Money Matters named a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice; silver at the Made For Mums Toy Awards. Co-host of The Big Green Money Show on BBC Radio 5 Live with Felicity Hannah. Trustee of Tusk Trust, Fellow of WWF, Ambassador for the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and World Horse Welfare, Compassion Visionary at CIWF. Honorary degrees from the University of Exeter Business School, Staffordshire University, Keele University and Bath Spa University. Biography Weststar Holidays was a single-site family business when Deborah Meaden joined its arcade operations in 1988. By 2005 it was a five-park operator hosting around 150,000 holidaymakers a year, sold to Phoenix Equity Partners for £33 million after the management buyout she had led six years earlier. The arc, from operator to owner to seller, is the spine of how she reads other people’s businesses. Two decades on Dragons’ Den have widened that lens. Since 2006 she has sat through several thousand pitches and put her own capital behind a long list of UK ventures, from artisan manufacturer Fox Brothers to consumer brands across food, retail and clean technology. The pattern audiences see, the questions about unit economics, founder discipline and market truth, is the same pattern she applies to her own portfolio. Her published work extends the argument into financial literacy and commercial sustainability. Common Sense Rules (Random House Business, 2009) sets out the operating principles she uses on the Den. The Little Experts series with HarperCollins takes the same plain-language approach to children: Why Money Matters was named a Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 Critics’ Choice. On The Big Green Money Show with Felicity Hannah, she presses senior corporate leaders on whether climate commitments survive contact with a profit-and-loss account. Trustee at Tusk Trust, Fellow of WWF, Ambassador to the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and World Horse Welfare, and Compassion Visionary at CIWF: the environmental work is a working part of how she frames commercial choices. Honorary doctorates from Exeter, Staffordshire, Keele and Bath Spa recognise the same combination of operating record and public argument. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Investment judgement and growth strategy Building and selling a business Sustainability as a commercial discipline Brand, customer and consumer trust Resilience and decision-making in private companies Women in business and leadership Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior operators of growth-stage and family-owned businesses Boards setting strategy on sustainability and long-term capital allocation Sales, partner and customer-facing leadership teams Annual conferences and leadership offsites for operating businesses Audience outcomes A practical view of how an experienced investor reads pitches, plans and people. Concrete reference points from twenty years of UK private investment, including her own deals. A clear-eyed framing of sustainability as a commercial choice, with named examples from major UK and global businesses. Confidence to ask harder questions of their own numbers, founders and customers. A memorable, direct keynote voice that audiences quote back inside their organisations.

Why organisations work with Eloïne Barry She runs the infrastructure, not just the advice. African Media Agency’s wire service was the first of its kind built for the continent, and it gives any organisation she works with direct distribution into hundreds of African newsrooms rather than a slide deck about how to reach them. Her client record is the proof point buyers care about: campaigns delivered for the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, not a pitch deck of hypothetical case studies. She translates between the European and North American boardroom and the African newsroom. That crossover, learned at PR Newswire across France, Germany and the EMEA region before she moved the operation south, is rare at a senior level. She has been recognised by the industry on its own terms: SABRE Africa, ASCOM Grand Prix Excellence, New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential, and Bizcommunity’s PR personalities to watch list for 2026. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, African Media Agency (AMA), Abidjan, with operations across 30+ African countries and hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Built the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck. Winner, SABRE Africa Western Africa award 2026 (Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” campaign); African SABRE Certificate of Excellence in Media Relations 2021; Grand Prix Excellence, ASCOM Abidjan 2019. Named in New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Africans 2022; recognised by MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) in 2018. Tony Elumelu Foundation mentor; board member, Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter. Biography Most multinationals that try to reach African audiences at scale run into the same problem. A campaign built for London or New York lands in Lagos, Nairobi or Abidjan and does not move. The media maps are different, the gatekeepers are different, and the ground truth changes by country. African Media Agency was built to close that gap, and Eloine Barry built African Media Agency. AMA is the Abidjan-headquartered firm behind the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. It now reaches hundreds of newsrooms across more than 30 African countries, with operational hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, alongside governments and African-founded organisations. The agency’s work sits across three arms: AMA Wire for distribution, AMA PR for campaigns and advisory, and AMA Academy for journalist and communications training. Her own route into the work matters. Born in Lyon to a Senegalese mother and a Guinea-Bissauan father, she began her career at PR Newswire, running media relations across France, Germany, and later the wider EMEA and India region. That trajectory is why she is effective with European and American boards and with African newsrooms in the same week; she has sat on both sides of the brief. The industry has recognised the operating record. AMA won a SABRE Africa Western Africa award in 2026 for its Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” mental health campaign, which scaled a Cameroonian-founded initiative into a partnership network spanning health ministries in Togo and Cote d’Ivoire and research groups at Paris Saclay and Santa Clara. Barry herself sits on the boards of Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter, mentors on the Tony Elumelu Foundation programme, and was named by Bizcommunity among the ten PR personalities to watch in 2026. Key speaking topics Growth strategy for African markets Pan-African media and communications Government and public-sector communications in Africa African diaspora and return-to-Africa strategy Cross-cultural leadership between European, North American and African organisations Building and scaling media infrastructure in emerging markets Ideal for CMOs and heads of corporate affairs at multinationals planning or expanding African operations. CEOs and country leads of development institutions, foundations and NGOs running continent-wide campaigns. Government communications directors and ministries engaging African diaspora audiences. Founders and boards of African-built companies preparing for international visibility. Audience outcomes A clear read on why standard global PR playbooks fail in African markets and what replaces them. A grounded view of the African media landscape across anglophone, francophone and lusophone regions. Practical starting points for building credibility with African newsrooms, diaspora audiences and local regulators. A sharper sense of how communications strategy sits inside a broader market-entry or growth plan for the continent.