Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Christian Byrge He treats creativity as a skill that can be coached into a team, not a culture project. Leaders leave with specific habits they can run on Monday morning, not a manifesto. He has a working position on AI in the creative process, grounded in current research, that goes beyond the prompt-engineering surface most innovation talks stop at. His research base is unusually deep for a speaker in this category: 70+ academic publications and a full professorship, paired with operational training inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Grundfos, and the Danish Armed Forces. He is comfortable in front of an executive audience and inside a workshop room. Same content holds at both altitudes, which makes him useful when the brief is a keynote that has to seed follow-on internal work. Biography highlights Full Professor of Business Creativity, Vilnius University Business School. PhD in Creativity and Business, Aalborg University. Author of Everyday Innovator (BIS Publishers), How to Teach Creativity, and Enhancing Creativity for Individuals, Groups and Organizations. 70+ academic publications across creativity, team creativity culture, creative self-efficacy, and AI creativity. Worked with LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Danfoss, Siemens, Kompan, TotalEnergies, and the Danish Armed Forces. Trained creative practice with practitioners across engineering, law, healthcare, software, education, and film production. Biography Innovation programmes inside large organisations tend to fail in the same way. They start with energy, produce a portfolio of pilots, and stall when the original sponsor moves on. The diagnosis is usually written as a cultural problem. Christian Byrge’s research argues something more precise: the failure point is that idea generation was never built as a team skill in the first place. That argument is the core of his three books and seventy-plus academic publications. Everyday Innovator, published by BIS Publishers, names four habits that turn creative output into a repeatable behaviour rather than a mood. How to Teach Creativity and Enhance Creativity for Individuals, Groups, and Organizations extends the same logic into education and organisational design. The thread across all three is treating creativity as a trainable capability with named components, not an ambient quality of the workplace. He holds a full professorship in Business Creativity at Vilnius University Business School and a PhD from Aalborg University. The academic base matters because his recent work on AI in the creative process is one of the few executive-level treatments grounded in current research rather than vendor framing. He has trained creative practice inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Siemens, and the Danish Armed Forces, which gives the research weight in front of an operating audience. The room he is most useful in is the one where leadership has decided innovation matters, but cannot describe what their teams should actually do differently on Tuesday. He gives them the answer in specific behaviours, not in a vision deck. Key speaking topics Team creativity as a trainable discipline Innovation capability inside operating teams AI-supported creative process Creative confidence and self-efficacy Idea generation and development practice Creative culture in regulated and engineering environments Ideal for CHROs and L&D leaders building innovation capability across the workforce Heads of innovation, R&D directors, and transformation leads Executive teams in engineering, life sciences, and industrial sectors, where creativity is treated as soft Educators and learning system leaders are responsible for creative competence development Audience outcomes A working definition of team creativity is a set of named behaviours, not a personality trait The four habits from Everyday Innovator are mapped to the audience’s own operating context A grounded view of where AI helps and where it flattens the creative process Specific practices senior leaders can install in standing meetings to lift idea quality A clear separation between creative culture rhetoric and creative output discipline

Why organisations work with Neil West First-hand operator perspective from inside Apple Music, the App Store, Apple TV+ and iTunes during the period the company shifted a billion-dollar services business across Europe. A specific thesis on simplicity as competitive advantage, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026) and structured as nine rules leaders can apply to their own products and teams. Useful for the meeting after the strategy offsite: he speaks to the practical work of cutting features, killing projects, and protecting customer experience from internal politics. Co-founded the iTunes Festival and curated Apple’s relationship with artists from Beyonce to Bono, which gives the talks the texture of a content business, not a generic technology keynote. Translates Steve Jobs era principles into language that lands with commercial and product leaders who have to ship, not theorise. Biography highlights Head of Services, Apple Southern Europe, with responsibility for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+ across the region. Head of Music, Apple UK and Europe, for ten years, including the period iTunes became the world’s largest music retailer. Co-founder and curator of the iTunes Festival. Author of It Just Works: The Nine Simple Rules of Apple’s Success, Macmillan Business, September 2026. TEDx speaker on The Beatles, Steve Jobs, and Team Management. Earlier career: European Editor-in-Chief at Rhapsody, the first music streaming subscription service, Creative Director at Garageband.com (founded with Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and Sir George Martin), and Editor-in-Chief of NEXT Generation magazine. Biography iTunes was a record store before it was a streaming service, and the App Store was a developer experiment before it was a platform. The hard part of running those businesses across Europe was not adding features. It was deciding what not to build, what to pull, and which artist or partner relationship was worth defending against internal pressure to standardise. West did that work for sixteen years. As Head of Music for Apple in the UK and Europe, he led the team through the period iTunes became the world’s biggest music retailer, and co-founded the iTunes Festival as a way of binding the catalogue to a live cultural moment. He then ran Services for Apple Southern Europe, a billion-dollar portfolio covering App Store, Apple Music, TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+, through the shift from downloads to subscription. His argument now, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026), is that Apple’s edge has always been a discipline for removing complexity rather than a talent for adding features. The book offers nine rules drawn from inside the business, on simplifying products, reducing friction in customer journeys, and protecting focus when an organisation grows. His TEDx talk on The Beatles and Steve Jobs makes the team-design version of the same case. For audiences in product, marketing, services and digital businesses, the value is the operator detail. He talks about specific decisions, named launches, and the politics of holding a line on customer experience when commercial pressure points the other way. Key speaking topics Simplicity as commercial operating discipline Customer experience in subscription and platform businesses The shift from downloads to streaming and what it taught the wider content economy Product and service launches at scale Building and managing creative teams Lessons from inside Apple’s services business Ideal for Product, services and platform leaders running multi-product portfolios CMOs and customer experience leaders in subscription, media and consumer businesses Innovation and transformation directors looking for an operator voice rather than a consultant frame Leadership teams resetting after a period of feature accumulation or proposition drift Audience outcomes A working definition of simplicity that can be applied to a roadmap, not just a brand line. Specific tests for deciding what to cut from a product, service or process. A view of Apple’s services business from inside the European operation, including how artist and partner relationships were handled. Language for protecting customer experience against internal pressure to add complexity. A team-design lens drawn from how Apple, and before it The Beatles, structured small creative groups for output.

Why organisations work with Ashlea Atigolo She has co-built a generative AI product, Finley AI, that has been recognised on the WealthTech100 2024 list, so the advice she offers boards is grounded in shipped technology rather than commentary. She brings a regulated-industry lens. Her work spans wealth management, private equity and fintech, where the question is not whether to deploy AI but how to do it without breaking trust, compliance, or customer relationships. She is a credible voice on women in AI without leaning on the topic alone. The named recognition (TechRound Top 64 Women in Tech, Great British Businesswoman finalist, Fintech Powerlist) sits alongside the technical and commercial credentials. She is equally fluent as a keynote speaker, panel host and workshop facilitator, which makes her a flexible fit for AI summits, leadership offsites and investor-facing events. Biography highlights Co-founder of INATIGO, a generative AI venture builder. Co-founder of Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024. Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners, advising executives on generative and agentic AI adoption. Former Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of City Wharf Private Wealth, awarded Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Listed on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology (2022) and named on the Fintech Powerlist. Speaker and host at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. A much smaller number have AI in production, talking to customers, sitting inside regulated workflows and answering to a compliance function. Ashlea Atigolo works at that second layer. As co-founder of INATIGO and its flagship product Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024, she has built generative AI systems for personal finance rather than written about them. Her route into AI was operational, not academic. Before INATIGO she co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, where her co-leadership won Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. That background gives her advisory work a distinctive cast. She understands wealth, private equity and fintech as live operating environments, not case studies, and her current role as Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners is built on that. Her independent recognition is dense and recent. She has been named on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology, included on the Fintech Powerlist, and shortlisted as a finalist for the Great British Businesswoman Awards in technology. She has advised Adobe directly and has been engaged through GLG, AlphaSense and GuidePoint by executives in fintech, private equity and financial services. On stage she is most useful to organisations that need a builder’s view of generative and agentic AI: what to deploy, what to delay, how to govern it, and where the human still has to sit inside the workflow. She hosts and keynotes at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit, and is equally credible in a board workshop as on a main-stage panel. Key speaking topics Generative and agentic AI in financial services AI product strategy and deployment in regulated industries Conversational and empathetic AI design Responsible AI, trust and governance Fintech and wealth management innovation Women in AI and inclusive technology teams Leadership through technological disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, wealth management, private equity and fintech sizing up generative or agentic AI investments. CIO, CTO, CDO and Head of Innovation audiences moving from AI pilots into operating deployment. Fintech, AI and wealth-management conferences looking for an operator-speaker rather than a commentator. Internal AI summits, leadership offsites and women-in-tech programmes inside large enterprises. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where generative and agentic AI is genuinely production-ready in regulated industries, and where it is not. A working vocabulary for governance conversations: agents, guardrails, oversight, human-in-the-loop. A view of how a builder, not a vendor, sequences AI adoption inside a regulated business. Named examples of fintech and wealth-management deployments that buyers can take into their own strategy conversations.

Why organisations work with Dhiraj Mukherjee He has done the thing most innovation speakers describe. Shazam was a category invention before mobile internet was mainstream, and it ended with a reported $400 million sale to Apple. A 250-company investment portfolio across AI, climate tech and frontier software gives him a working map of which emerging technologies are moving from pilot to operating substance and which are stalling. Direct line of sight into capital flows alongside Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, which is rare for a keynote speaker working on climate and AI together. Operator credibility inside large incumbents as well as start-ups, including Head of Banking Innovation at Virgin Money and senior roles at Bauer Media, Infosys and Reuters. Named to the Financial Times’ Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs, The Digital Banking Club’s Power 50 and Smith & Williamson’s Power 100, which positions him as a credible voice on UK and European innovation policy as well as commercial strategy. Biography highlights Co-founder of Shazam Entertainment, acquired by Apple in 2017 for a reported $400 million Named to the Financial Times’ Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs (2015) Elected to The Digital Banking Club’s Power 50 (2016) and Smith & Williamson’s Power 100 (2017) Angel investor in over 250 technology companies across AI, climate tech and “Tech for Good” Former Head of Banking Innovation, Virgin Money; previous roles at Bauer Media, Infosys, Reuters and Save the Children Mathematical Economics degree, Dartmouth College; MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business Biography Shazam was launched in 2000, before smartphones, before app stores, before mobile data was reliable enough to stream a song. The team built a service that recognised music by sound from a feature phone over a voice call. Eighteen years later, Apple bought the company for a reported $400 million. Dhiraj Mukherjee co-founded it. That history matters because it is the practical version of what most boards are now trying to do with AI. Identify a capability that the technology curve will eventually make obvious, build it before the market is ready, survive long enough to be right. Shazam went through the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis on the way to Apple, which is why his perspective on category-building is closer to operating experience than to theory. Since exiting Shazam, Mukherjee has invested in more than 250 technology companies, with a declared focus on AI, climate tech and “Tech for Good.” He has co-invested into Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate vehicle backed by Bill Gates, and into Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, which gives him an unusual vantage point on where institutional capital is actually moving across the AI and energy transition curves. His earlier career sits inside large incumbents, including Head of Banking Innovation at Virgin Money and senior roles at Bauer Media, Infosys and Reuters. The Financial Times named him to its Top 50 European technology entrepreneurs in 2015, and he holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Mathematical Economics degree from Dartmouth. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and AI strategy Innovation and category creation Climate tech and the energy transition investment case Digital transformation inside large incumbents Resilience and the long arc of building a technology company Tech for Good and impact investing The future of work in the age of AI Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and innovation leads setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Boards and investment committees pressure-testing capital allocation across AI and climate Senior leadership teams inside banks, media and consumer businesses navigating digital transformation Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venturing and accelerator programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on which emerging technologies are moving from pilot to operating advantage and which are stalling A working framework, drawn from Shazam, for how categories actually get built through downturns An investor’s view of where AI and climate-tech capital is concentrating, and what that signals for corporate strategy A more honest sense of the time, capital and persistence required to compound a technology bet into commercial outcome

Why organisations work with Elemi Atigolo He has put a generative AI product through UK financial regulation. Finley AI worked with the FCA Advice Unit on guidance models before evolving into an agentic financial AI agent that institutions integrate by API, which gives him a reference point on supervision and compliance that few AI speakers hold. He has handled the work he now advises on. A wealth manager at HSBC and a partner at St. James’s Place before he co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, he has dealt with client suitability and adviser workflow first-hand. His thinking is on the record. His 2026 paper on the Agentic Profit Paradox sets out how agentic AI can improve client outcomes while weakening the human-bounded revenue that funds a firm’s margins, which reframes AI from an efficiency question into a question about the business model itself. He works at executive level, not only with technology teams. At Consult Venture Partners he advises boards on where generative and agentic AI changes the operating model and the economics, a conversation that needs someone who has carried both commercial and regulatory responsibility. Biography highlights Managing Partner and co-founder of Consult Venture Partners, advising boards on generative and agentic AI adoption. Founder of the Autonomy Economics framework and author of the 2026 paper “The Agentic Profit Paradox and the Reorganisation of Value Capture”. Co-founder of INATIGO (WealthTech100 2024, selected by FinTech Global from 1,300 companies) and lead developer of Finley AI, now an agentic financial AI agent delivered by API, which engaged the FCA Advice Unit on guidance models. Former HSBC Wealth Manager and former partner at St. James’s Place; co-founder of City Wharf Private Wealth, Highly Commended for Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Member of the Forbes Advisor Advisory Board (since October 2024) and the MIT Technology Review Global Insights Panel; named in the Powerlist Top 30 Tech Titans 2021 for Fintech and Data (Refinitiv/LSEG) and a UK FinTech Awards “Innovator of the Year” finalist. Contributor to FT Adviser and The Banker; featured by The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC Africa, IBM, and Wealth Adviser; speaker at an Economist Impact summit (2023). Holds a BSc in Computer Science and Distributed Information Systems and an MA in Accounting and Finance. Biography Finley AI went through the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Advice Unit before most banks had written an AI policy. Built by INATIGO, the company Atigolo co-founded, it began in 2019 as a conversational assistant. It now runs as an agentic financial AI agent that institutions integrate by API. That history anchors his work, at the point where AI in finance meets supervision and the realities of client suitability. His route into AI is unusual. He managed client portfolios at HSBC, became a partner at St. James’s Place, and co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, a digital wealth firm recognised at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. He has sat on both sides of the client relationship and the technology that now reshapes it. His current research turns that experience into an argument. In a 2026 paper he set out the Agentic Profit Paradox: firms adopt agentic AI to stay competitive, and in doing so erode the human-bounded revenue that produced their margins. He calls the wider field Autonomy Economics, the study of how value capture and commercial defensibility shift once work no longer needs continuous human direction. For a board, the question is rarely what AI can do, and almost always what to build, what to buy, what to govern, and what it does to the business model. Through Consult Venture Partners, where he is Managing Partner, Atigolo answers it as someone who has both written the models and signed the client suitability forms. Key speaking topics Generative AI in financial services AI agents and conversational interfaces in wealth management AI, regulation, and the FCA AI product strategy for regulated firms Client experience and adviser workflow in an AI-enabled firm Fintech innovation and WealthTech AI adoption for finance leaders Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and boards in banking, wealth, asset management, insurance, and private capital setting AI strategy Chief Technology, Data, and AI Officers scoping generative and agentic AI deployment in regulated environments Heads of Advice, Distribution, and Client Experience reworking the adviser-client model Compliance, risk, and regulatory leads assessing AI governance, and executives weighing what autonomous systems do to margins and operating models Audience outcomes A clear view of where generative and agentic AI is already viable in regulated financial services, and where it is not A working vocabulary for AI agents, conversational interfaces, and the governance questions behind them A sharper read on what the FCA and comparable regulators expect when AI touches client guidance A realistic picture of what changes for advisers, clients, and operating models when AI moves from pilot to live A view of how agentic AI can strengthen client outcomes while undermining the revenue that historically funded them, and what that means for strategy

Why organisations work with Christian Wehner He runs innovation strategy inside SAP Brand & Creative, so the perspective is from a serving operator at a Fortune 100 software company, not a former practitioner. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt gives audiences a citable thesis on where adult organisational thinking has narrowed, and what to do about it. His “Kidult” framework reframes creativity as a recoverable adult capability, not a personality trait, which lands with executives who have written off creativity training. He is a LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation, with a public body of work that audiences can extend after the keynote. He works fluently in English and German, which matters for DACH-region leadership programmes and EU-headquartered corporate audiences. Biography highlights Senior Director, Innovation Strategy, SAP Brand & Creative. SPIEGEL bestselling author, Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt (Conte Verlag). TEDx speaker on the “Kidult” mindset. LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation. Guest lecturer, Brand Academy, EBS University Oestrich-Winkel. Ambassador, School of Future Skills. Biography Most large companies are not short of intelligence. They are short of the willingness to ask naive questions inside rooms full of expertise. That gap is the one Christian Wehner has spent his career closing, first in radio and start-up environments, now as Senior Director of Innovation Strategy at SAP Brand & Creative. His thesis is direct. The skills that make organisations creative, curiosity, comfort with not-knowing, and the ability to be wrong out loud, are the skills most adults stop practising once they enter corporate life. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt sets out the argument in book form. His TEDx talk gives it a name, the “Kidult” mindset. In keynote settings, he turns this into an executive question rather than a self-help one. What does an organisation lose when its senior people optimise for being right? Where in the operating model does AI-era automation make childlike thinking more valuable, not less? Audiences leave with a defensible reason to protect curiosity inside performance cultures, and language to do it with their own teams. The credentials read as a portfolio of platforms rather than titles: a serving SAP innovation role, a guest lectureship at EBS University’s Brand Academy, an ambassadorship with the School of Future Skills, and a steady editorial presence on LinkedIn that has earned him TopVoice status in both Creativity and Innovation. The combination is unusual: an operator inside one of Europe’s largest software companies who writes and speaks publicly about how big companies stop being creative. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and creative recovery in established organisations The “Kidult” mindset: curiosity as an executive capability Future skills in the age of AI Leadership and intuition under algorithmic decision-making Brand and creative strategy inside large enterprises Collaboration and the transparency revolution Ideal for Chief innovation, strategy and brand officers responsible for the next product cycle Executive leadership teams confronting AI-driven workforce redesign Corporate transformation, learning and culture lead inside DACH and EU-headquartered organisations Sales, marketing and customer experience leadership programmes looking for a creative-strategy keynote rather than a tools session Audience outcomes A working argument for why creative capability is a board-level concern in the AI era A language and framework (“Kidult”) for protecting curiosity inside performance-driven cultures A clearer view of which adult corporate habits suppress innovation and which can be retrained Concrete prompts for leaders to use with their own teams the next working day A bilingual perspective from inside a Fortune 100 European software company, useful for cross-border programmes

Why organisations work with Tom Gruber He shipped the first mainstream intelligent assistant. When he speaks about what AI deployment actually requires inside a product organisation, it is from the inside of a system Apple now runs across its entire device base. He authored the foundational definition of an ontology in computer science. Boards wrestling with AI governance, knowledge representation and explainability are talking to the person whose 1993 paper their technical teams still cite. His Humanistic AI framework gives leadership a usable language for AI design choices. It moves the conversation from “should we use AI” to “what does this system do for the human using it”, which is the question regulators and employees are now asking. He chooses his advisory portfolio around AI applied to assistive neurotech, mental health and clinical accuracy. The examples he brings to a keynote are concrete deployments, not hypotheticals. He is one of very few speakers who can credibly walk a room from ontology engineering to product design to ethics in a single talk, without losing either the technical audience or the executive one. Biography highlights Co-founder, CTO and head of design of Siri Inc., acquired by Apple in 2010. Led Siri’s Advanced Development Group at Apple for eight years following the acquisition. Author of the foundational 1993 paper defining ontology in AI, the highest-cited article in the history of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Main-stage TED 2017 speaker on Humanistic AI. Co-founder and CTO of LifeScore, an adaptive AI music company backed by Octopus Ventures. Advisor to the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network on organisational intelligence and technology. Biography Siri began as a research project, became a startup, and was acquired by Apple in 2010, the same year it launched. Tom Gruber was its co-founder, CTO and head of design. The product now runs across Apple’s device base and processes more than a billion interactions a day. Most of what users now expect from a voice assistant was decided inside the small team he helped lead. Before Siri, the foundation. In 1993, working at Stanford’s Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Gruber published the paper that gave AI its working definition of an ontology: “an explicit specification of a conceptualization”. It became the highest-cited article in the history of the journal it appeared in, and it remains the reference point for anyone building systems where machines have to share knowledge cleanly. The shipping product and the citation history are connected. Siri worked because the underlying representation was right. After eight years leading Apple’s Advanced Development Group for Siri, Gruber stepped out to focus on what he calls Humanistic AI. The argument, set out in his 2017 TED talk, is that AI design is a choice between automation that competes with people and augmentation that collaborates with them. He puts the framework to work as co-founder and CTO of LifeScore, an adaptive music company, and as advisor to AI ventures in assistive neurotechnology, mental health, and clinical decision support. The Humanistic AI lens is what leadership teams find most useful from him. It reframes AI deployment as a design decision with named consequences for customers, employees and society, rather than a procurement decision about which model to license. For boards approving AI strategy and CEOs explaining it, that reframing is doing work no other AI keynote does. Key speaking topics Humanistic AI and human-centred design AI governance, ethics and trust Intelligent assistants and conversational AI Ontology engineering and knowledge representation AI in assistive technology and healthcare AI for collective intelligence and ocean conservation Building AI products from research to scale Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting AI policy and accountability Chief Technology Officers and Chief AI Officers shaping enterprise AI deployment Heads of product and design building AI into customer-facing systems Healthcare, financial services and public-sector leaders deploying AI in high-stakes contexts Audience outcomes A working definition of Humanistic AI that distinguishes augmentation from automation in their own operating context A clearer framework for evaluating AI design choices against customer, employee and societal impact Concrete reference points from Siri and from current AI deployments in healthcare, assistive tech and creative industries A language for leadership conversations about AI ethics that goes beyond compliance and into product design Recognition of where their own AI roadmap is making automation choices it should be making augmentation choices

Why organisations work with Jenny Fleiss She has built a consumer business from a Harvard Business School idea to a publicly listed company, and a separate venture inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator. That gives a board credible answers on both routes into a new market. She speaks from inside the operating cockpit of conversational commerce and AI-driven personalisation, not from a strategist’s deck. Jetblack used text and machine learning to handle real customer requests at scale. Her seat at Initialized Capital and prior investing work put her across hundreds of early-stage decks in e-commerce, consumer and AI. She can tell a corporate audience which startup behaviours are worth importing and which are noise. She brings board-level perspective from listed and private companies including The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly and Rent the Runway, which lets her translate founder language into governance language an audit and risk committee will understand. Biography highlights Co-founder and board member, Rent the Runway, the New York-listed designer rental company she started with Jennifer Hyman in 2008. Founder and former CEO of Jetblack, the conversational commerce startup launched inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator in 2018. Former Partner at Initialized Capital, the seed-stage venture firm, where she led e-commerce, consumer and AI investing. Independent director, The Lanvin Group (since 2022); board member, Shutterfly (since 2019); board member, Arteza. MBA, Harvard Business School; BA in Political Science, Yale University, cum laude. Recognised on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 (2012), Inc. 30 Under 30 (2010), Forbes Disruptors 2013, and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology. Biography Renting a designer dress through a website was not an obvious business in 2008. Jenny Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman started Rent the Runway from a Harvard Business School idea and turned it into a publicly listed consumer company. The work needed to be done in unglamorous places: dry cleaning logistics, returns flows, fit data, inventory forecasting. The brand sat on top of an operations problem. A decade later, Walmart asked her to build a startup inside its corporate body. Jetblack was a text-based, AI-assisted personal shopping service for high-spending New York households, incubated inside Store No. 8. The product taught Walmart what conversational commerce actually costs to run, what humans still have to do behind the model, and where machine learning genuinely earns its keep in retail. That double track, founder of a venture-backed unicorn and intrapreneur inside a Fortune 1 retailer, is what makes her useful in a corporate room. She has lived the trade-offs between speed and brand risk, between founder autonomy and parent-company governance, between AI promise and operating reality. Her investing work at Initialized Capital and as an angel adds a third lens: which early-stage signals are worth a corporate’s attention and which are theatre. Her board work at The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly, Rent the Runway and Arteza puts her in front of the same governance questions her audiences face. Boards want innovation, but they also want explanations. Key speaking topics Building and scaling consumer internet businesses Conversational commerce and AI in retail Corporate venture building and intrapreneurship Customer data and personalisation at scale Female founders and the funding gap Early-stage investing in consumer and AI Board governance for innovation programmes Ideal for CEOs and divisional presidents in retail, consumer goods and direct-to-consumer brands Heads of innovation, corporate venture and new ventures inside large incumbents Chief digital, chief data and chief AI officers responsible for customer-facing AI deployment Founder communities, accelerator cohorts and women-in-business leadership programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of which startup behaviours translate into a corporate parent and which collapse on contact with it. A working vocabulary for what conversational commerce and AI personalisation actually require to run at scale. A board-level frame for sponsoring internal ventures: what to measure, what to protect, when to wind down. A grounded read on the current early-stage consumer and AI investment market from someone who has sat on both sides of the table.

Why organisations work with Sina Kahen He has shipped a regulated, complex technology product into a sceptical market. Commercialising Celito, named publicly as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot, gives him operator credibility that very few AI speakers carry. He runs a generative AI company today. VAICE, where he is co-founder and CEO, builds workplace productivity software, which means his views on enterprise AI come from active build decisions, not commentary. His book “The Promised Land of AI” gives leaders a usable strategic playbook for AI adoption, structured around use-case discovery, data readiness, and the build, buy or partner question that most boards stall on. He teaches AI strategy at Imperial College Business School, so the material is tested against MBA cohorts and senior executives every term, not assembled for the stage. He brings a working language for ethics, philosophy and human judgement in AI, drawing on his published philosophical work, without drifting into abstraction that leaves an operating team with nothing to do on Monday. Biography highlights MBA, Imperial College Business School; degree in Biomedical Sciences Guest Lecturer in AI, healthcare and corporate innovation, Imperial College Business School Co-founder and CEO, VAICE, building generative AI software for workplace productivity Former Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical; led commercialisation of Celito, publicly described as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot Author of “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business” and “Brief Insights on Medical Robotics” Engagements and clients include Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, Imperial College, InterSystems, Juniper Networks, Ipsen Pharma and Novateur Ventures Biography Celito was the UK’s first orthopaedic robot. Sina Kahen, then Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical, was the person responsible for bringing it through commercialisation into operating theatres. That work, taking a regulated, high-stakes technology from concept into the hands of surgeons, is the experience he now applies to a different problem: enterprise adoption of generative AI. The current vehicle for that work is VAICE, a company he co-founded and runs as CEO, building generative AI software for workplace productivity. Around it sits his book “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business”, a Guest Lectureship at Imperial College Business School, and engagements with organisations including Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, InterSystems and Ipsen Pharma. The argument running through all of it is operational. Most companies have proved AI can do something useful. The harder questions, which buyers are now ready to confront, are about strategy: which use cases actually compound, whether to build, buy or partner, how to make data and people ready, and how to govern decisions that cannot be fully explained. Kahen has trained as a Biomedical Scientist and holds an MBA from Imperial, which is one reason his framing of these questions feels closer to medicine than marketing: rigorous about evidence, blunt about what is not yet known. He is also the author of several books on Jewish philosophy, and that interest shows up in the AI work as a refusal to let the human and ethical questions float free of operating practice. Boards do not need another AI ethics policy. They need a way to make defensible AI decisions inside their existing governance, and to take their workforce with them. That is the territory Kahen occupies. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy for enterprise AI adoption and operating performance AI in healthcare and life sciences Responsible AI and AI governance Build, buy or partner decisions in AI sourcing Innovation and intrapreneurship inside large organisations Philosophy, ethics and the human side of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning enterprise-wide AI strategy CIOs, CTOs, Chief Data Officers and Chief AI Officers translating pilots into operating systems Healthcare and life sciences leadership confronting AI, robotics and regulated innovation Heads of Innovation and transformation leads structuring AI portfolios across business units Audience outcomes A working framework for moving AI from pilot into measurable operating performance A clearer view on when to build, buy or partner for AI capability Sharper questions to ask of internal teams and external vendors on data readiness, governance and use-case selection A practical position on AI ethics that holds up inside real operating decisions, not slide decks Language and reference points senior leaders can use to bring the rest of the organisation with them

Why organisations work with Nick Fry He ran the management buyout of Honda’s F1 team for a nominal sum in 2009, then won both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships that same season. There are very few executives anywhere who can speak from inside a turnaround that extreme. He has led at two distinct scales of performance organisation: a 700-person independent team operating on survival economics, and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 as a global OEM works operation. Most senior teams need both lenses. His career predates F1 by 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including running Aston Martin Lagonda through the DB7 launch. He speaks credibly to industrial leaders, not only to motorsport audiences. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador under Prime Ministers Brown and Cameron, giving him a working view of how British engineering competes globally. His book “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone, sets out the Brawn GP year in operational detail rather than as motorsport nostalgia. Biography highlights CEO of Brawn GP, the team that won the 2009 Formula One Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championships in its only season. CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 from 2010 to 2013, following Mercedes’ acquisition of Brawn GP. Co-author of “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. UK Business Ambassador appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, appointed October 2021. 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 programme. Biography In late 2008, Honda withdrew from Formula One with almost no notice. The team based in Brackley had weeks to find a buyer or close. The CEO, with technical director Ross Brawn, negotiated a management buyout for a nominal sum, secured an interim engine supply from Mercedes, and ran the operation through the winter on a fraction of its previous budget. The team won both World Championships the following season, with Jenson Button taking the Drivers’ title. Brawn GP existed for one year, and won everything available to it. That season is the central case Nick Fry now teaches. He set it out in “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), co-written with Ed Gorman and with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. The book is a working account of how leadership decisions are made when the organisation has no margin, not a victory memoir. Mercedes acquired the team in 2010 and Fry stayed on as CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 until 2013, taking a 700-person independent operation into integration with a global OEM works programme. Before Formula One, he spent 24 years at Ford Motor Company. Roles included product planning on the Ford Escort RS Cosworth and the RS200, and Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 launch and the move from handbuilt-only production at Newport Pagnell to higher-volume manufacturing at Bloxham. He then ran Prodrive as Managing Director from 2001, before joining BAR and Honda in Formula One. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador, appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He is currently Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, the company awarded the FIA contract for the 2026 Formula One engine control system, and Chairman of the esports organisation Fnatic. Key speaking topics Leadership under existential pressure Turnaround and restructure in high-performance organisations Decision-making with incomplete information Integration of a small operation into a global parent British engineering and high-performance manufacturing Formula One as an operating model Ideal for CEOs and senior executives facing a forced restructure, funding shock, or major integration Boards weighing the leadership profile required for a turnaround Industrial, engineering, and manufacturing leadership teams Operating committees in performance-driven cultures, including motorsport, aerospace, and elite engineering Audience outcomes A working account of how a senior team made decisions during a survival period in which conventional planning was not possible. A clear view of how leadership behaviours need to change between a small independent organisation and an integrated works operation inside a global OEM. Specific examples of which Brawn GP decisions worked, which did not, and what the CEO would do differently with hindsight. A more honest reading of what Formula One actually demonstrates about high-performance management, separated from the marketing version.

Why organisations work with Rebecca Minkoff Two decades of operating the same brand through three retail eras: department store, direct-to-consumer digital, and the post-pandemic rebuild. Few founder speakers have run their own brand long enough to talk credibly about all three. A working playbook for founder reinvention. After losing 70% of revenue in 2020, Minkoff repositioned the business; she can speak to the operational decisions that recovery actually required. Convening power with other women founders. Through the Female Founder Collective and the Superwomen podcast, she has interviewed and worked alongside operators like Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba, and brings that network into the room. A published thesis on founder behaviour. “Fearless” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021) sets out the specific rules she used to build and rebuild the brand, giving audiences a single argument to react to rather than a career retrospective. Biography highlights Founder and Co-Creative Director of Rebecca Minkoff, established 2005, distributed across 900+ stores worldwide and own retail in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Korea. Founder of the Female Founder Collective (2018), a network of 9,000+ women-led businesses providing education, mentorship and strategic resources. Author of “Fearless: The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021). Host of the “Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff” podcast, with guests including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. Recipient of the Accessories Council Breakthrough Designer Award (2011). Active member of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America). Biography The Morning After Bag was designed in 2005 by a 24-year-old who had moved to New York at 18 to work in fashion. Twenty years later, that handbag is still in production, the brand carries Rebecca Minkoff’s name across 900 stores, and the founder has had to rebuild her own company more than once to keep it there. That second part is where she becomes useful to organisations. Minkoff has run the Rebecca Minkoff brand through the collapse of department store retail, the rise of direct-to-consumer digital, and a pandemic that erased 70% of her business in a single year. The business she now operates is structurally different from the one she founded, and she has had to make every one of those changes herself. In 2018, she founded the Female Founder Collective, now a 9,000-member network for women-led businesses, and launched the Superwomen podcast, where she has interviewed founders and operators including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. In 2021 she published “Fearless” with HarperCollins Leadership, a book that sets out the specific operating rules she used to build the brand and stay in business. The Accessories Council named her Breakthrough Designer in 2011. She is an active CFDA member. The more interesting credential, for a senior buyer, is that she has run the same name-on-the-door consumer brand for two decades, which is not a position many founders reach. Key speaking topics Founder reinvention after market shock Building and scaling a consumer brand Direct-to-consumer and digital retail Women in entrepreneurship and access to capital Brand longevity over multiple retail eras Networks and mentorship for women founders Risk-taking and rule-breaking in brand building Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior commercial leaders at consumer brands navigating channel disruption or category decline. Heads of DTC, brand and customer for retail and consumer-goods companies rebuilding after demand shocks. Corporate networks and ERGs for women in leadership, particularly those focused on entrepreneurship and progression to founder roles. Investor, accelerator and venture-platform audiences working with women-led portfolios. Audience outcomes A specific operator account of how a consumer brand survives twenty years of retail change, told by the person whose name is on the building. A concrete view of what founders actually do after a 70% revenue loss, beyond the post-mortem narrative. A picture of how networks like the Female Founder Collective change the funding and mentorship arithmetic for women-led businesses. The argument from “Fearless” in the founder’s own words, including which of the rules held under pressure and which did not.

Why organisations work with Shiza Shahid She has built a global non-profit alongside a Nobel laureate and a viral consumer brand from the ground up, which gives boards a credible voice on what purpose looks like inside a P&L rather than on a slide. Our Place put a specific commercial bet on multicultural cooking and on cookware made without PFAS, PTFE and PFOA. She can speak about how a values position becomes a product specification and a category position. Through NOW Ventures and her AngelList partnership, she has seen hundreds of early-stage decks from mission-led founders. She can tell a corporate audience which purpose-led strategies are creating real growth and which are positioning. Her arc from McKinsey analyst to non-profit CEO to consumer founder to seed investor gives her language that translates across the room, from a CFO to a brand lead to an innovation team. Biography highlights Co-founder and founding CEO of the Malala Fund, established in 2013 with Malala Yousafzai to advance girls’ education in Pakistan and across Africa. Co-founder and Co-CEO of Our Place, the direct-to-consumer kitchenware brand behind the Always Pan, launched in 2019. Founder of NOW Ventures, an early-stage fund launched in 2017 in partnership with AngelList, backing mission-driven technology startups. Author of Dinner at Our Place: Recipes for Gathering, published by HarperCollins in 2025 with eleven chefs and tastemakers. BA, Stanford University, graduated with University Distinction; former business analyst, McKinsey & Company, Dubai. Named to TIME’s 30 Under 30 People Changing the World and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs; honoured as a Tribeca Disruptive Innovator. Biography A teenage activist in Islamabad set up a summer camp for Malala Yousafzai and other Pakistani girls in 2009. Three years later, after Malala was shot, that camp became the foundation for the Malala Fund. Shiza Shahid was the founding CEO, working alongside Malala and her father Ziauddin to build a global organisation focused on girls’ education in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone. The Malala Fund was a lesson in scaling a mission. The Our Place chapter, which started in 2019 with husband Amir Tehrani and co-founder Zach Rosner, was a lesson in scaling a product. The brand bet that multicultural cooking and toxin-free cookware were a commercial proposition, not a niche, and the Always Pan answered that bet with a 30,000-person waitlist on release. NOW Ventures, launched in 2017 with AngelList, is the third lens. Shahid writes early cheques into mission-led founders in technology, with an explicit emphasis on women and diverse entrepreneurs. The fund gives her a constant view of which purpose-led businesses are converting into commercial substance, and which are still positioning. Her cookbook, Dinner at Our Place, published by HarperCollins in 2025, sits on top of that body of work. The recipes are written with eleven chefs and tastemakers, and the book is structured around hosting as a cultural act. It is the most concrete expression yet of the conviction that drives her companies: that culture, commerce and care are not separate categories. Key speaking topics Mission-driven entrepreneurship and scale Purpose as a commercial proposition Building a consumer brand from launch Women and diverse founders in early-stage tech Girls’ education and social impact Inclusive brand and product design Investing in technology for global challenges Ideal for CEOs and founders building purpose-led consumer brands and DTC businesses Chief marketing, chief brand and chief sustainability officers in consumer goods Corporate venture, innovation and ESG teams designing new mission-led ventures Women in leadership programmes, founder networks and philanthropy boards Audience outcomes A grounded view of how a mission becomes a product specification, a brand position and a category bet, not a marketing line. A clearer read on which purpose-led commercial strategies are creating growth and which are signalling. A working vocabulary for backing women and diverse founders in early-stage technology, from someone who writes cheques. A direct account of how a non-profit at global scale and a consumer brand at viral scale are built from the same founder discipline.