Innovation & Disruption

Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and business building Investment strategy and capital allocation Financial decision-making Personal finance and wealth management Venture investing and startup evaluation Leadership and business discipline Value creation and long-term investment thinking Ideal for Corporate leadership teams Entrepreneurs and startup founders Investors and financial services professionals Business conferences and leadership forums Audience outcomes Clear perspectives on evaluating business opportunities and investment risk Practical insights into building and scaling businesses Structured thinking about capital allocation and financial discipline Lessons from venture investing and startup decision-making Approaches to managing money and financial priorities Why organisations work with Kevin O’Leary Recognised public figure in business through Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den. Combines entrepreneurial experience with investment and media perspectives. Provides commercially focused insights on business growth, capital and financial strategy. Brings real-world examples from investing, entrepreneurship and television business evaluation. Biography Kevin O’Leary is recognised globally for his experience at the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing and business media. Known to audiences through Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den, he brings a direct, commercially focused perspective on building companies, evaluating opportunities and making disciplined financial decisions. O’Leary’s entrepreneurial career began with the founding of SoftKey Software Products, which later became The Learning Company. The business grew into a major player in educational software before being acquired by Mattel in a multi-billion-dollar transaction. This experience established his reputation as a founder who understands both the operational realities of scaling companies and the financial discipline required to create enterprise value. Alongside his work as an investor, O’Leary has built a portfolio of businesses including O’Leary Ventures and O’Shares Investments. His work focuses on capital allocation, long-term value creation and identifying businesses capable of sustainable growth. Earlier in his career he also co-founded O’Leary Funds, further extending his involvement in investment and asset management. O’Leary’s public profile expanded through television, where he became widely known as an investor on Shark Tank and previously as a panelist on Dragons’ Den. His television work has also included appearances on programmes such as Project Earth and CNBC’s Money Court, where he evaluates business proposals and financial disputes with a strong emphasis on commercial fundamentals. Beyond investing and television, O’Leary is the author of the Cold Hard Truth series of books on business and personal finance. His writing focuses on practical approaches to entrepreneurship, financial responsibility and wealth creation. He has also been involved in consumer ventures, including wine-branded products developed under the Kevin O’Leary name. For organisations and leadership audiences, Kevin O’Leary offers a perspective shaped by building companies, investing in entrepreneurs and evaluating businesses in highly competitive environments. His insights focus on financial discipline, opportunity assessment and the realities of scaling and sustaining successful enterprises.

Why organisations work with Jeff DeGraff He brings a tested intellectual frame, the Competing Values Framework, that gives executives a shared language for the trade-offs they already feel but cannot resolve. His Innovatrium has built innovation programmes inside more than half the Fortune 500, including Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, NASA and Microsoft, so the methods are stress-tested in real operating conditions. The work crosses sectors that rarely share a stage: commercial, military (US Air Force, NATO, Singapore Armed Forces), academic and mission-driven, which sharpens his diagnosis of what is structural and what is industry-specific. He treats innovation as a system of competing roles (Artist, Engineer, Athlete, Sage), so leaders leave with a way to staff and sequence change, not a motivational pep talk. The Ross School base and the Certified Professional Innovator programme give buyers a credible academic anchor when they need to sell the engagement internally. Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, since 1990. Co-creator of the Competing Values Framework, with Robert Quinn, Kim Cameron and John Rohrbaugh. Founder of the Innovatrium Institute for Innovation, working with Fortune 500 firms, NASA and allied military commands. Author of The Art of Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2025), The Creative Mindset, The Innovation Code, Leading Innovation and Competing Values Leadership. Host of the PBS programme Innovation You and contributor to Michigan Public’s The Next Idea. Former Vice President of Communications and New Ventures at Domino’s Pizza during the period the company scaled from a regional chain to a global brand. Biography Innovation inside large organisations rarely fails for lack of ideas. It fails because the same organisation rewards efficiency, control and reliability while asking a small group to break those very rules. That tension is the subject Jeff DeGraff has spent his career mapping, first as a co-creator of the Competing Values Framework alongside Robert Quinn, Kim Cameron and John Rohrbaugh, and then as the architect of a more applied body of work on innovation as a system. The academic anchor is the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he has been Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations since 1990. The applied side is the Innovatrium, the institute he founded to put the theory into contact with operating reality. Through Innovatrium and direct consulting, his methods have been used inside more than half the Fortune 500, including Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Microsoft and NASA, and inside the US Air Force, NATO and the Singapore Armed Forces. His three most recent books, The Innovation Code (2017), The Creative Mindset (2020) and The Art of Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2025), form a single argument. Innovation is not a personality trait, it is a discipline of holding competing values long enough to produce something new. The Innovation Code translates that into roles and team design. The Creative Mindset breaks creative work into six trainable skills. The Art of Change reframes paradox itself as the engine of transformation. The career arc explains the bias toward application. He earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and went directly into industry as Vice President of Communications and New Ventures at Domino’s Pizza, where the nickname “Dean of Innovation” stuck. The work since has kept the same shape: a serious framework, tested against organisations that cannot afford abstractions. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and operating models Competing Values Framework in practice Creative leadership and team design Organisational change and transformation Culture and capability for sustained innovation Cross-sector innovation: commercial, public, military Paradox and decision-making under competing priorities Ideal for CEOs and executive teams under pressure to deliver core performance and a credible innovation agenda at the same time Chief Innovation Officers, CSOs and heads of strategy designing or rebuilding innovation operating models CHROs and learning leaders building creative capability across senior cohorts Public-sector, defence and mission-driven leadership groups that need a private-sector grade innovation method Audience outcomes A shared language for the competing demands inside the business and a way to talk about them without picking sides A working model for staffing innovation teams across distinct creative roles rather than relying on a few “creative” individuals A practical sequence for turning paradoxes (efficiency versus experimentation, control versus autonomy) into design decisions Confidence that innovation can be built as a repeatable system, not a personality-driven exception Examples drawn from companies, NASA and military commands that translate cleanly back to the audience’s own context

Why organisations work with Jose Morey He has implemented AI inside an actual clinical and research environment, not theorised about it. As former Associate Chief Health Officer at IBM Watson Health, he sat at the intersection where the Watson promise met hospital reality. He brings genuine NASA insight on how the agency screens emerging health and AI technologies, drawn from his roles as Medical Technology and AI Adviser to NASA iTech and Senior Advisor to the NASA Space Breathing Initiative. He connects medical, space, biosecurity, and transportation domains in a way that lets boards stress-test their AI assumptions against problems harder than their own. Few speakers can move from radiology workflows to Hyperloop systems engineering with credibility in both rooms. He is co-author of Latinx Business Success (Wiley, 2021), which gives him a distinct second register on representation, talent pipelines, and how diverse leadership shows up in technology-driven industries. He is a working radiologist and medical society leader, currently President of the Medical Society of Virginia Foundation, which keeps the keynote material grounded in operational practice rather than commentary. Biography highlights Co-author, Latinx Business Success: How Latinx Ingenuity, Innovation, and Tenacity are Driving Some of the World’s Biggest Companies (Wiley, 2021). Former Associate Chief Health Officer, IBM Watson Health; former Chief Medical Innovation Officer, Liberty BioSecurity. Medical Technology and AI Adviser to NASA iTech and Senior Advisor to the NASA Space Breathing Initiative. Eisenhower Fellow, 2020/2021 Zhi-Xing Fellows Program. Adjunct Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of Virginia and Eastern Virginia Medical School; Guest Lecturer, Singularity University. Member, Forbes Technology Council; Informatics Leadership Council, American College of Radiology; public volunteer, NIST Generative AI Public Working Group. CEO and Founder, Ad Astra Media LLC, a STEAM media production company building role models and educational content for under-represented students. Biography Most of the AI conversation inside large organisations is still happening at one remove from where the technology actually meets a patient, a pilot, or a regulator. Jose Morey works at that meeting point. He is a practising radiologist who has built clinical AI tools, advised NASA on which health technologies are worth backing, and helped Liberty BioSecurity think through genetic intelligence and augmented human performance. His operational range is unusually wide. At IBM Watson Health he served as Associate Chief Health Officer during the period when the platform’s clinical claims were being tested against hospital reality. He has advised NASA iTech on the feasibility and commercialisation of emerging health and AI companies, and serves as a Senior Advisor to the NASA Space Breathing Initiative. He sits on the Chief Engineering Council for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and on the Informatics Leadership Council of the American College of Radiology. The intellectual through-line is translation between domains. Morey co-authored Latinx Business Success with Frank Carbajal (Wiley, 2021), a book built around interviews with Latinx leaders across technology, finance, healthcare and media, and structured around what they call the DIGITAL framework. He is also an Eisenhower Fellow from the 2020/2021 Zhi-Xing programme, an adjunct professor of radiology at the University of Virginia and Eastern Virginia Medical School, and a guest lecturer at Singularity University. He runs Ad Astra Media, a production studio he founded to put serious STEAM role models in front of under-represented students, and contributes as a public volunteer to the NIST Generative AI Public Working Group. The result is a speaker who can take a board from a question about AI hallucination risk to a question about clinical liability to a question about who is actually being trained to build the next generation of these systems, without losing the room. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence in clinical medicine Health technology and the future of patient care AI for space exploration and human performance in extreme environments Emerging technology and innovation strategy Latinx leadership and representation in technology industries Generative AI policy and responsible deployment Frontier infrastructure: Hyperloop, biosecurity, and the new technology renaissance Ideal for Healthcare boards, hospital executives, and CMIOs evaluating clinical AI deployment and governance CTOs, CIOs, and innovation leads in regulated industries who need a practitioner view of frontier technology Public-sector and defence audiences focused on biosecurity, space health, and emerging-technology policy DEI sponsors and talent leaders looking to connect representation with technical workforce strategy Audience outcomes A grounded reading of where clinical and operational AI actually works today and where it is still marketing Specific examples of how NASA, biosecurity, and healthcare institutions evaluate emerging technologies before they buy A framework, drawn from Latinx Business Success, for thinking about leadership, talent and innovation in technology-driven industries A clearer view of which frontier technologies (AI, biotech, space health, hyperloop-class infrastructure) are converging on the same set of organisational problems Direct, practical answers to executive questions on AI governance, regulation, and risk

Why organisations work with Mark Adams He has run the operating side of digital change at scale, leading innovation inside VICE Media as it grew from print magazine into a multi-billion-dollar global youth media group. That is a sharply different vantage point from consultants who advise on transformation without running it. His earliest clients were Hollywood A-listers and global public figures, then global consumer brands. The result is a working understanding of how audiences, talent, and brand authority interact in algorithmic markets, which most digital strategists do not have. As Chairman of the AI Leadership Council, he spends his time fielding live questions from the public and senior leaders on how to use AI responsibly and commercially. The result is content built around the questions executives are actually asking, not the ones a slide deck assumes. He converts AI hype into specific operating choices: which capabilities to build internally, which to buy, which to ignore, and how to set the cultural conditions for adoption. Useful for boards and executive teams that feel busy on AI but not yet decisive. Biography highlights Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation, VICE Media, following the 2015 acquisition of his consumer-brand digital transformation business. Founder of the first digital transformation consultancy for celebrities and public figures, acquired by William Morris Endeavor. First Chief Digital Officer in the entertainment industry, appointed at WME. Chairman of the AI Leadership Council, convening senior AI practitioners to answer public and executive questions on AI. Named to the Sunday Times Top People in Britain, The Drum Digerati List, Debrett’s Top 10 Digital List, and the Silicon 60 Global Tech Entrepreneurs list. Profiled by The Guardian as a “Star of Tech City”. TEDx speaker with a TED talk reaching millions of views; forthcoming book Enter the Cult of Extreme Innovation, Penguin, 2026. Biography The first wave of AI in the enterprise was about pilots. The second is about whether large organisations can absorb the technology into the way they actually work. That gap, between AI capability and AI as operating reality, is the territory Mark Adams now spends most of his time inside. His route to that work is unusual. In 2003 he built the first digital transformation consultancy aimed at celebrities and public figures, advising A-list talent on how to operate in an internet-shaped media economy. The business was acquired by William Morris Endeavor, where he was installed as the entertainment industry’s first Chief Digital Officer. He then built a second business focused on consumer brand digital transformation, which VICE Media acquired in 2015. As Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation, he helped run the company through its expansion from a print title into a global youth media group. Today he chairs the AI Leadership Council, a panel of senior digital and AI practitioners who field questions from the public and from executives trying to make sense of the technology. The model is deliberate. Most AI commentary is one-directional. The Council works the other way, starting with the question the leader is asking and building the answer from operating practice. His forthcoming book with Penguin, Enter the Cult of Extreme Innovation, sits in the same territory: AI treated as a creative and commercial discipline rather than a topic. He has been named to the Sunday Times Top People in Britain, the Silicon 60 Global Tech Entrepreneurs list, The Drum Digerati and Debrett’s Top 10 Digital lists, and profiled by The Guardian as a “Star of Tech City”. The recognition matters less than the through-line: he has spent his career inside the institutions that have had to absorb digital change first, from celebrity talent to youth media, and is now working the same problem in AI. Key speaking topics AI adoption inside large organisations Digital transformation as operating change Brand building in algorithmic and AI-shaped markets Innovation as a managed practice Engaging younger audiences and youth-culture brands The cultural conditions for digital and AI change Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to operating deployment Chief Marketing Officers and brand leaders rethinking brand in an AI and algorithm-led environment Chief Innovation, Digital and Transformation Officers responsible for execution, not just strategy Consumer-facing businesses trying to reach and retain younger audiences Audience outcomes A sharper read on which AI capabilities to build internally and which to buy or ignore Working language for translating AI between technical teams and senior decision-makers A practical sense of the cultural and operating conditions that determine whether AI investment pays back Specific reference points from inside VICE Media and from advising A-list talent on digital and AI shifts A frame for thinking about brand and audience in an algorithmically mediated market

Key speaking topics Competitive strategy and value creation Value-based strategy frameworks Business strategy in the digital economy Customer willingness-to-pay and value capture Strategic decision-making in competitive markets Digital transformation and corporate performance Media markets and digital disruption Ideal for Senior executives responsible for strategy and growth Corporate strategy teams and business unit leaders Boards and senior leadership teams evaluating competitive positioning Organisations navigating digital disruption and market competition Audience outcomes Clear understanding of value-based strategy principles. Insight into how willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-sell shape competitive advantage. Practical frameworks for analysing value creation in competitive markets. Strategic clarity on the impact of digital change on business performance. Why organisations work with Felix Oberholzer-Gee Combines academic research with practical frameworks for competitive strategy. Provides structured approaches for analysing value creation and competitive positioning. Helps leadership teams focus strategy discussions on measurable sources of value. Brings insight from research on digital markets, strategy, and corporate performance. Biography Felix Oberholzer-Gee is the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where his work focuses on competitive strategy and the drivers of corporate performance in an increasingly digital economy. His research and teaching explore how organisations create and capture value, helping leaders understand the strategic decisions that shape long-term competitiveness. His approach to strategy centres on value creation. In his book Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance, he introduces a framework often referred to as the “Value Stick”. The model emphasises the importance of customer willingness-to-pay and employee or supplier willingness-to-sell as the core variables that determine value creation and competitive advantage. Alongside his academic work, Oberholzer-Gee has held faculty roles at leading institutions including the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier in his career he served as managing director of Symo Electronics, a Swiss process-control company, providing first-hand experience of business leadership and operational decision-making. His research spans competitive strategy, international competition, non-market strategy, and the impact of digital change on corporate performance. Published work also examines file-sharing, copyright, and the economics of media markets, contributing to broader understanding of how technology reshapes industries. Oberholzer-Gee also brings board-level perspective through his role as a member of the board of Ringier. Across teaching, research, and advisory work, he helps organisations focus strategy discussions on measurable sources of value and the competitive choices that determine performance.

Why organisations work with Pascal Coppens Twenty years building tech businesses in Shanghai. Coppens founded Letsface, co-founded Polycore Software, and built Sinnolabs as a growth accelerator for European scale-ups entering China. Three books with a developing argument on modern China. China’s New Normal (2019), Can We Trust China? (2022), and China’s Next Miracle (2025) give buyers a thinker with sustained intellectual commitment to one country. A track record of predictions that landed. The 2019 forecast that China would set the innovation standard across multiple sectors by 2025 was borne out by Huawei, BYD, DJI, TikTok, TEMU, BGI, and Ant Financial. A nuanced reading in a debate dominated by extremes. The eight circles of trust framework in Can We Trust China? gives Western leaders analytical ground that neither cheerleads China nor reduces it to threat. Biography highlights Author of three books on modern China: China’s New Normal (2019), Can We Trust China? (2022), and China’s Next Miracle (2025). Master’s in Eastern Languages and Cultures from Ghent University and Business Engineering degree from Solvay Business School (Free University of Brussels). Twenty years living and working in Shanghai and Silicon Valley; founder of Letsface, co-founder of Polycore Software, co-creator of Sinnolabs. Partner at nexxworks; delivers close to 100 keynotes a year, with clients including Mastercard, Microsoft, Salesforce, Huawei, Walmart, P&G, S.W.I.F.T., Rabobank, EY, PWC, London Business School, and CEDEP. YouTube channel Pascal’s China Lens with 65,000+ subscribers and 4 million views; regular guest on Belgian public broadcaster VRT; co-host of the Radar podcast with Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem. Biography Chinese companies now lead in electric vehicles, mobile payments, social commerce, drone manufacturing, and consumer AI. The country has moved past the cheap-factory phase that defined Western mental models for thirty years. Western executives are now competing against or partnering with companies whose innovation logic they were not trained to read. Coppens has spent two decades operating on both sides of that gap. He began at Alcatel in Shanghai and moved to Silicon Valley for Wind River Systems before co-founding Polycore Software. He then returned to China and founded Letsface, an offline community platform for premium global brands. His primary sources became the Chinese innovators he hired and competed against. Three books trace a developing argument. China’s New Normal (2019) mapped the sectors where Chinese companies would set the innovation standard, with predictions on Huawei, BYD, DJI, TikTok, and Ant largely borne out. Can We Trust China? (2022) tackled the trust deficit fuelling Western fear, building an eight circles of trust framework as an analytical handle on a polarising question. China’s Next Miracle (2025) describes the next phase. It tracks the shift from market innovation to intellectual property creation, with implications for capital, supply chain, and competitive strategy. His operating position now is unusually broad for a country specialist. Coppens delivers close to 100 keynotes a year for Fortune 500 audiences and advises boards on de-risking and supply chain. He runs the Pascal’s China Lens YouTube channel for 65,000 subscribers and co-hosts the Radar podcast with Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem. The argument he is making now: the rules of global business are being rewritten in Chinese, and Western companies have less time to adjust than they think. Key speaking topics China’s innovation model Geopolitical risk and US-China-EU dynamics China’s economic transition Chinese business ecosystems Supply chain de-risking and “China plus one” Generative AI in China Cross-cultural business with Chinese partners The multipolar world order Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing strategic decisions on China exposure CSOs, transformation leads, and innovation heads benchmarking against Chinese competitors COOs and procurement leaders rethinking supply chain after the end of cheap globalisation Senior leadership teams in industries where Chinese companies are moving from supplier to direct competitor (automotive, consumer electronics, retail, pharmaceuticals) Audience outcomes A clearer reading of China’s current strategic intent, separated from both the threat narrative and the market opportunity narrative Working knowledge of how Chinese innovation ecosystems generate speed and scale, drawn from named cases (WeChat, Alibaba, Haier’s micro-enterprise model, the EV supply chain) A view of which Chinese competitors and partners are most relevant to their sector, and which are noise Sharper questions for their China strategy: whether to de-risk, where to compete, where to partner, where to learn from A current map of China’s AI position relative to the US and Europe, including the policy and infrastructure context

Why organisations work with Jamie Siminoff He has the full founder arc on the record: invented a product category in a garage, pitched it on national television and walked out without a deal, rebuilt from near-bankruptcy, and sold to Amazon for about 1 billion dollars. He has run the acquired business inside Big Tech, giving buyers a rare view of what integration, reporting lines, and product autonomy look like after a landmark exit. He has repeated the cycle: founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc., took the CEO seat at the acquirer, then returned to Amazon as a VP running Ring and adjacent smart home units. Most speakers have one exit story; he has a sequence. The Shark Tank rejection is specific and documented, which makes the resilience material credible rather than motivational. It is cited by the Sharks themselves as one of the biggest misses in the show’s history. He co-authored “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door” with Andrew Postman, published in November 2025, which gives buyers a named, durable reference point for the material. Biography highlights Founder and original CEO of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018 for approximately 1 billion dollars. Pitched DoorBot on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2013 and left without a deal; returned to the show as a guest Shark in 2018. Earlier founder of PhoneTag, the first voicemail to text service, and Unsubscribe.com, both acquired. Founder of Honest Day’s Work, acquired by Latch Inc. in 2023; subsequently appointed CEO of Latch. Rejoined Amazon in 2025 as Vice President running Ring and related smart home businesses, leading a pivot to AI. Babson College, Class of 1999, and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson in 2021, where he delivered the undergraduate commencement address. Co-author with Andrew Postman of “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door,” published November 2025. Biography Ring began as DoorBot, a Wi-Fi video doorbell built in a garage in 2011. By 2013 it was on Shark Tank, where every investor passed. The company was close to running out of money. Seven years later, Amazon bought it for roughly 1 billion dollars. That arc is the material Siminoff brings to the stage, and he brings it with the receipts. The more useful part of the story for serious operators is what happened between the rejection and the exit. Siminoff rebuilt the product and the brand, raised from Kleiner Perkins, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DFJ Growth and Sir Richard Branson, and built Ring into a category defining consumer technology business. After the Amazon acquisition he stayed inside the company for five years, running Ring alongside Blink, Amazon Key and adjacent smart home lines. Most founder talks stop at the exit. His continues through integration. He has since extended the pattern. He founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc. in 2023, stepped in as Latch’s CEO, and in 2025 rejoined Amazon as a Vice President running Ring and nearby smart home units, now pivoting the category toward AI. In November 2025 he published “Ding Dong” with Andrew Postman, the first full account of how Ring actually got built. A Babson graduate and Honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution, he is one of a small group of founders who can speak to rejection, category creation, acquisition, and re-entry as connected stages of one working life. Key speaking topics Consumer technology product invention and category creation Scaling from prototype to acquisition Founder resilience through investor rejection Operating an acquired business inside Big Tech Smart home, connected devices, and AI in consumer hardware Brand building in hardware startups Hiring and team building in early stage companies Ideal for Founders, CEOs and product leaders in consumer technology and connected hardware Corporate innovation, strategy and M and A teams working on acquisition integration Investor audiences and startup ecosystems running portfolio or founder programmes Entrepreneurship centres and executive education audiences in business schools Audience outcomes A concrete, non-generic view of what it takes to get a hardware startup from prototype to billion-dollar exit. A working model for how to treat a high-profile rejection as distribution rather than a verdict. Specific insight into how an acquired category runs inside a company like Amazon, and what that means for teams going through similar integrations. A clear read on where consumer smart home and home security technology are heading as AI becomes the core layer of the product. Hiring and early team construction principles drawn from building Ring from a Craigslist hire list to a company sold for 1 billion dollars.

Why organisations work with Nikki Greenberg Her Five Step Future Ready Framework gives leadership teams a structured, replicable methodology for taking AI and technology adoption from boardroom conversation to approved initiative: developed directly from leading digital transformation across a major institutional real estate portfolio, not from consulting at a remove. She reads the built environment, business strategy, and technology fluently and simultaneously: enabling her to assess AI’s implications for physical assets, long capital cycles, and operational infrastructure in ways that technology-only futurists cannot. As founder of Women in PropTech and three-term co-chair of the ULI New York Technology & Innovation Council, she has shaped industry consensus on built-world innovation rather than simply reported on it, which means audiences get a perspective that is ahead of the published analysis, not derived from it. Her client roster spans real estate, financial services, retail, hospitality, and the public sector, giving organisations outside property access to cross-industry pattern recognition on how physical-digital convergence is being handled at scale elsewhere. She translates demographic shifts, emerging technology, and long-range scenarios into specific decisions leaders can take today; not horizon-scanning for its own sake, but a structured pathway from trend to action. Biography highlights Former Head of Technology Strategy (Real Estate) at QIC, where she led the digital transformation of a $22 billion real estate portfolio within a global investment manager with $70 billion AUM Founder and Global Ambassador of Women in PropTech Former three-term co-chair, Urban Land Institute New York Technology & Innovation Council Speaker of the Year, Trends & Technologies category (2025); ULI Global Luminary (2022); MIPIM Global PropTech Awards Finalist (2019); CIO View’s 5 Most Influential Women in Real Estate to Watch Career spanning architecture, development, and technology strategy across Lendlease, Koichi Takada Architects, Greenland Australia, and Brown Harris Stevens Bachelor of Architecture (Hons), Master of Architecture, Master of International Business – all from UNSW, Sydney Conference and event engagements include Harvard Business School, Bank of America, Brookfield, UN-Habitat, Smart City Expo World Congress, MIPIM, and the National Association of Realtors Biography Nikki Greenberg began her career as an architect working on master-planned communities and mixed-use developments across Sydney, New York, and China. That background – designing places intended to serve the next generation of occupants – became the foundation for a career built around a single organising question: what do today’s decisions look like from twenty years out? At QIC, one of Australia’s largest investment managers, she led the digital transformation of a $22 billion real estate portfolio, translating technology strategy into decisions about operations, assets, and customer experience at institutional scale. It is this combination that makes her unusual: she has delivered the physical and the digital, not merely theorised about their convergence. Her Five Step Future Ready Framework, developed from that experience, gives leadership teams a structured methodology for moving from technology awareness to committed action; addressing the specific friction points of incentive misalignment, budget pressure, and multi-generational workforces that stall most transformation programmes. It is the practical core of her keynote work across industries as varied as financial services, retail, and urban planning. She is the founder of Women in PropTech and served three terms as co-chair of the Urban Land Institute’s New York Technology & Innovation Council; roles that positioned her at the centre of where policy, capital, and technology strategy converge in the built environment. Recognised as Speaker of the Year (Trends & Technologies, 2025) and a ULI Global Luminary, she holds a Master of Architecture, Master of International Business, and Bachelor of Architecture with honours from UNSW, Sydney, and is based in New York City. Key speaking topics AI and digital transformation in the built environment Future-readiness strategy and technology adoption frameworks The future of cities, real estate, and physical infrastructure AI and the future of work Technology strategy for asset-intensive industries Demographic change and long-range scenario planning PropTech, ConTech, and innovation in the property sector Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders in real estate, construction, and asset management navigating technology strategy and digital transformation CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Transformation Officers in industries with significant physical infrastructure; financial services, retail, hospitality, public works Industry associations and sector conferences where audiences need technology insight grounded in commercial and operational reality, not pure speculation Leadership development programmes seeking a cross-industry perspective on AI adoption, future-of-work strategy, and long-range planning Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (Five Step Future Ready Framework) for moving technology and AI initiatives from aspiration to organisational buy-in and implementation Clearer understanding of how demographic shifts, AI, robotics, and automation will affect demand for physical space, workforce design, and capital allocation: framed in sector-specific terms Practical starting points for a digital transformation roadmap: including how to sequence early initiatives while building toward a long-term AI integration plan Greater confidence in communicating technology strategy across functions and seniority levels, including to boards and investors unfamiliar with the underlying technology A recalibrated sense of timeline: which technology trends require decisions now, and which can be monitored without near-term commitment

Why organisations work with Adam Smith The Real Junk Food Project is not a case study from a consultancy report. Smith built it from a single Leeds cafe in 2013 to a network of 120+ projects across seven countries, which makes his argument about the scalability of surplus redistribution operationally evidenced, not theoretical. The Pay As You Feel model challenges the assumption that pricing must track cost-price. For organisations navigating social value procurement, circular economy strategy, or food retail margins, that challenge is commercially relevant. Smith has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, which means his framing has direct policy credibility – useful for organisations managing regulatory and reputational exposure on ESG commitments. His current work at Surplus to Purpose, which diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023, keeps his insight current. He is not drawing on a legacy project. The Telegraph named him one of the 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink (Food & Drink Power List, 2017). His argument has been stress-tested in public, not just on stage. Biography highlights Founded The Real Junk Food Project in Leeds in December 2013; the network grew to 120+ projects across seven countries within four years TEDx speaker at TEDxWarwick (2015): “Let’s REALLY Feed the World” Named one of 50 most influential people in UK Food & Drink, The Telegraph Food & Drink Power List (2017) FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) Gave parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste Yorkshire Awards 2025 Community Hero Award; Canal & River Trust Unsung Hero of Leeds (2022) CEO of Surplus to Purpose since 2022; appeared on Channel 4’s Inside the Superbrands Observer Food Monthly Awards runner-up across TRJFP projects in Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds (2017, 2018) Biography The UK food industry wastes an estimated 9.5 million tonnes of food annually. Most of it is edible. In December 2013, Adam Smith opened a single cafe in Armley, Leeds, that served meals made entirely from intercepted surplus. He called the pricing model Pay As You Feel. Within four years, that cafe had become a network of 120+ projects operating across seven countries. The model did not succeed because it was charitable. It succeeded because it demonstrated a functional alternative to the assumption that surplus has no commercial value – and that communities, schools, and organisations could participate in redistribution at scale without requiring philanthropy as a precondition. Smith stepped back from The Real Junk Food Project in 2019 and, in 2022, took on the leadership of Surplus to Purpose – a social enterprise built on the same structural argument but with a more explicit focus on the environmental costs of food waste in the supply chain. Surplus to Purpose diverted 506 tonnes of food in 2023. He has given parliamentary evidence to an All-Party Parliamentary Group on food waste, and The Telegraph placed him on its Food & Drink Power List in 2017 as one of the 50 most influential people in the sector. The TEDxWarwick talk from 2015 covers the core argument clearly. Food waste is a corporate supply chain decision, not a consumer behaviour problem. The organisations with the most leverage to change it are the ones that benefit most from not changing it. Key speaking topics Surplus food redistribution and supply chain waste Pay As You Feel and alternative pricing models Purpose-led business model design Social enterprise at scale ESG and food system accountability Corporate responsibility in the food supply chain Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads in food retail, hospitality, and manufacturing Procurement and supply chain leadership in organisations with food or FMCG exposure Strategy and transformation teams working on circular economy frameworks Social value and impact leads in public sector and corporate foundations Audience outcomes A working model for how surplus redistribution operates at scale – not a concept, but a documented case with known failure points and operational evidence A concrete example of how pricing can be decoupled from cost-price to deliver both social value and commercial viability Clarity on where corporate supply chains generate waste and why existing incentive structures keep that waste in place A framework for distinguishing between ESG commitments that reduce reputational risk and changes that alter the underlying supply chain economics

Why organisations work with Adjiedj Bakas His analytical framework tracks six categories of structural change simultaneously – economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security – giving leadership teams a coherent map rather than a trend list. No single category is read in isolation; the interactions between them are where the real strategic insight lives. His “#Forwardism” thesis reframes megatrend analysis as a source of opportunity rather than a catalogue of threat. This is a deliberate intellectual stance, not a motivational gloss – it changes how an organisation positions itself in response to disruption. His biography is genuinely differentiating in a field dominated by Western vantage points. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas brings a Global South perspective to questions about the shifting balance of economic and cultural power that most European or American futurists cannot replicate. His material has been tested against the most demanding institutional audiences on the circuit: the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, Shell’s major futures conferences, and central banking and financial institutions across Africa and Asia. A Shell audience of senior executives elected him one of the top two speakers from a field of fifty. His books – including World Megatrends and Beyond the Crisis – have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai, and the intellectual rigour of his framework has earned consistent media recognition from CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. Biography highlights Founder of Trend Office Bakas, Amsterdam – a trendwatching practice serving multinationals, financial institutions and governments internationally Author of more than ten books on global megatrends, distributed across 40+ countries; titles include World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis, Megatrends Europe and #Forwardism Elected Trendwatcher of the Year 2009 and Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 in the Netherlands Covered as a leading voice on global futures by CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Times of India and China Daily Keynote engagements include Shell, Deloitte, Google, Microsoft, ABN AMRO, KPMG, Rabobank, Credit Suisse and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Course material at CEIBS (China Europe International Business School, Shanghai) and Emory University, Atlanta Biography Most organisations run their long-term strategy on a three-to-five year horizon. The megatrends that actually reshape industries – demographic reordering, geopolitical power shifts, energy transitions, technological discontinuities – operate on timescales of twenty years or more. Adjiedj Bakas, founder of Trend Office Bakas in Amsterdam, has spent his career helping senior leaders read those slower, more consequential signals before they arrive as operational emergencies. His body of work – more than ten books published across 40 countries, including World Megatrends, Beyond the Crisis and Megatrends Europe – develops a consistent analytical lens across six categories of structural change: economic, technological, demographic, environmental, spiritual and security. His most recent work, #Forwardism, introduces the concept of “Happynomy” – the argument that the most powerful megatrends are better interpreted as sources of strategic opportunity than as threats to be mitigated. The perspective he brings is shaped by biography as much as by research. Of Indian descent, raised in Suriname and based in the Netherlands for three decades, Bakas has a genuinely non-Western vantage point on shifts in global economic and cultural power that most European futurists cannot replicate. His engagements span Shell, Deloitte, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the parliaments of Hungary, and financial institutions across Africa, Asia and Europe – audiences for whom a view of the future that goes beyond the Western horizon is not optional. Elected Trendwatcher of the Year in the Netherlands in 2009, his work has been covered by CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and China Daily. His books have been used as course material at CEIBS in Shanghai and Emory University in Atlanta. Key speaking topics Global megatrends and structural futures Geopolitical power shifts and the rise of the Global South Demographic change and its economic consequences Long-cycle economic forecasting and scenario planning Energy and environmental transitions Technology and innovation futures Opportunity-centred strategic foresight (#Forwardism / Happynomy) Ideal for C-suite and board leaders developing long-range organisational strategy Strategy and foresight teams in multinationals requiring a structured macro-trend framework Financial institutions and investment firms assessing long-term geopolitical and economic risk Government and public-sector organisations navigating demographic and geopolitical change Audience outcomes A structured, six-category framework for mapping structural megatrends across economic, technological, demographic, environmental and geopolitical dimensions Greater confidence in distinguishing long-cycle structural shifts from short-term cyclical noise Exposure to the Global South’s increasing influence on economic and cultural direction – a perspective absent from most standard futures briefings A reframed strategic posture: tools for reading disruption as a source of opportunity rather than purely a risk management challenge A renewed and evidence-based basis for organisational optimism in conditions of uncertainty

Why organisations work with Brenda Romero Forty-plus years inside a creative industry as designer, studio CEO and educator, with credits on roughly 49 shipped titles including the Wizardry series, Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon and Empire of Sin. A working perspective on running an independent creative business: she co-founded Romero Games in Galway in 2015 and has built it through publisher deals, original IP and the realities of indie studio economics. An unusual record on the question of how design carries meaning. Her Train (2009) and the broader The Mechanic is the Message series are studied in academic literature as examples of game mechanics used to communicate difficult historical material. Formal industry recognition that buyers can reference without explanation: BAFTA Special Award (2017), GDC Ambassador Award (2015), Fulbright Scholar (2014). An educator’s clarity. As Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick (2016 to 2019) she taught the craft to a graduate cohort, and co-authored Challenges for Game Designers with Ian Schreiber, a standard text in the field. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Romero Games Ltd, Galway, Ireland (2015 to present). BAFTA Special Award, 2017, for creative contribution to the games industry. Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award, 2015. Fulbright Scholar, 2014. Director, MSc in Game Design and Development, University of Limerick, 2016 to 2019. Designer of Train (2009) and the The Mechanic is the Message series; works held by the Strong National Museum of Play; TED speaker on games for understanding. Biography Most discussions of innovation get stuck at the level of culture. Romero’s career is a sustained argument that it is really a question of craft. She began at Sir-tech Software in 1981 on the Wizardry role-playing series, and has since shipped credits on roughly 49 titles across PC, console and mobile, including Jagged Alliance, Ghost Recon, Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes and Empire of Sin. In 2015 she co-founded Romero Games in Galway with John Romero, where she is CEO. The studio sits outside the conventional tech hubs, an operating choice rather than an aesthetic one, and a useful case study for any leader thinking about how to build a creative organisation away from the talent magnet cities. The work spans publisher partnerships, original IP and the day-to-day of running a creative business through cycles. Alongside the commercial work, Romero has used game design to address serious historical material. Train (2009) and the wider The Mechanic is the Message series treat the mechanics of a game, the rules players agree to follow, as the message itself. Train won the IndieCade Vanguard Award and is studied in academic literature on serious games and design ethics. The credentials line up around a consistent argument. BAFTA Special Award in 2017. GDC Ambassador Award in 2015. Fulbright Scholar in 2014. Director of the MSc in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick from 2016 to 2019. Co-author with Ian Schreiber of Challenges for Game Designers, a standard text used in graduate programmes worldwide. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in technology and entertainment The discipline of design and managed innovation Building and running an independent creative studio Games as a medium for communicating complex ideas Women in technology and the games industry The economics of creative work and intellectual property Ideal for Leaders of creative, R and D, brand and product organisations. Boards and executive teams in entertainment, media and consumer technology. Innovation and transformation leads looking for a working studio perspective on creative output. Talent and learning leaders building creative capability inside a corporate environment. Audience outcomes A working operator’s view of how creative output is produced under commercial pressure. A clearer picture of what good design discipline looks like when the subject is hard or contested. Reference points from inside the games industry that translate into corporate creative function. A frank account of building a creative business outside the obvious geographies, with the trade-offs named.

Why organisations work with Tim Smit He does not make the case for sustainability in principle. Instead, he has built one of Britain’s most visited destinations on the premise that ecological purpose and economic return are the same project. The Eden Project’s contribution to the Cornish economy exceeds £1.9 billion. His KBE was awarded specifically for services to public engagement with science, recognition that his primary skill is making complex environmental challenges legible and motivating to non-specialist audiences, including sceptical ones. Where most ESG speakers work from frameworks or research, Smit works from operations: active international development projects in Colombia, Australia, China, and Northern Ireland, each built on the Eden model of derelict land, public-private partnership, and ecological purpose that also generates revenue. He reframes the internal sustainability conversation from risk mitigation and reporting into a question of commercial imagination, which is a materially different starting point for a leadership team than most ESG speakers offer. The Lost Gardens of Heligan, his account of the first restoration project, was voted Sunday Times Book of the Year in 1997, evidence of an unusual ability to make environmental ambition into a story that reaches well beyond specialist audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Vice-Chair, Eden Project, Cornwall: former china clay pit transformed into one of Britain’s most visited destinations, contributing over £1.9 billion to the regional economy Director, Lost Gardens of Heligan: co-led restoration of the neglected Tremayne estate; his account of the project was voted Sunday Times Book of the Year, 1997 KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire), awarded 2011, substantive 2012, for services to public engagement with science RSA Albert Medal, 2003; Morgan Stanley Great Britons Award (Environment category), 2007; Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year special award, 2011 Speaker at TEDxKingsCross, 2021 – «How We’re Going to Solve Climate Change» (COP26 countdown event) Author of two books: The Lost Gardens of Heligan and Eden (Penguin, updated 15th anniversary edition, 2016) Biography The Eden Project began as a derelict china clay pit in Cornwall. It now attracts over a million visitors a year and has contributed more than £1.9 billion to the regional economy. Sir Tim Smit KBE conceived it in 1995, opened it in 2001, and has spent the intervening years using it as a working proof: that environmental ambition and commercial success are the same project, not a trade-off between them. Smit’s central argument is about courage as much as strategy. Most organisations approach sustainability as a compliance function; obligations to manage, metrics to report. Eden was built to demonstrate something more radical: that a project rooted in ecology, science communication, and community investment could produce a destination business with private financing, a £1.9 billion economic footprint, and a KBE from the Crown for services to public engagement with science. The model is now being replicated globally. Through Eden Project International, formally launched in 2017, Smit has secured partnerships with national governments in Colombia – working with the Humboldt Institute on a biome in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, alongside active development projects in Australia, China, and Northern Ireland. The ambition is an Eden presence on every inhabited continent. For executives navigating the gap between ESG commitment and meaningful action, Smit’s contribution is specific and uncomfortable in equal measure. He has spent three decades demonstrating that the starting point for a new business model can be a landscape others have written off. The barrier, in his view, is not knowledge or resource; it is a failure of commercial imagination, and he has built institutions to fill it. Key speaking topics Environmental regeneration as a commercial business model ESG strategy and the economics of sustainability Entrepreneurship and large-scale transformational project delivery Science communication and public engagement with environmental issues Multi-stakeholder project leadership across public, private, and community sectors Climate action and biodiversity: the business opportunity framing Place-based and regional economic regeneration Ideal for CEOs and executive teams building or pressure-testing sustainability and ESG strategy Boards facing investor, regulatory, or employee pressure on environmental commitments Transformation and programme directors overseeing large-scale environmental, infrastructure, or regeneration initiatives Public sector and civic leaders working on regional development and post-industrial recovery Audience outcomes A reframe of sustainability from reporting obligation to genuine business model, with specific, quantified evidence from Eden’s own track record Practical understanding of how to structure and sustain multi-stakeholder projects at transformational scale A more ambitious and commercially grounded vocabulary for internal ESG conversations Exposure to a model of science communication that moves non-specialist audiences to change behaviour, not just awareness Confidence that large-scale environmental projects can attract private capital and deliver measurable economic returns alongside ecological impact