Innovation & Disruption

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

Key speaking topics Frugal innovation Innovation strategy Marketing and competitive advantage Global business and emerging markets Business model innovation The role of government in innovation and enterprise Ideal for Senior leaders shaping innovation and growth strategy Boards and executive teams operating in global or emerging markets Marketing and strategy leaders Policy and public sector leadership audiences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of frugal innovation principles Insight into innovation across developed and emerging markets Frameworks for linking marketing and strategy to growth Broader perspective on the role of government in business and enterprise Why organisations work with Jaideep Prabhu Academic authority from the University of Cambridge combined with applied research in innovation and global business Recognised expertise in frugal innovation and business model innovation Experience engaging with both corporate and public sector audiences Ability to connect marketing, strategy, and enterprise in a global context Biography Jaideep Prabhu brings academic authority and practical insight to organisations navigating innovation, growth and global competition. As Professor of Marketing and Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, he works across marketing, strategy and international business. He also serves as Director of the Centre for India and Global Business, where his work focuses on how companies innovate across developed and emerging markets. His research explores frugal innovation and the strategic implications of doing more with fewer resources in complex, fast-moving environments. Jaideep is co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth and Frugal Innovation, the latter winning the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year Award. These works have shaped how senior leaders think about innovation, business model adaptation and growth beyond traditional resource-intensive approaches. He is also the author of How Should a Government Be?: The New Levers of State Power, extending his expertise to the evolving relationship between enterprise and the state. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy, Jaideep combines rigorous scholarship with commercially relevant insight for organisations seeking sustainable innovation and competitive advantage in global markets.

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Zoe Kleinman She is the BBC’s first Technology Editor, which gives any panel or main-stage conversation an immediate authority signal that a corporate moderator cannot match. She has interviewed Tim Cook, Sir Demis Hassabis, Brad Smith and Jensen Huang on the record, and is comfortable holding senior technologists to a specific answer rather than letting a talking point pass. She translates AI, cybersecurity and digital regulation for boardrooms and general audiences without flattening the technical substance, which is the skill most in-house tech leaders ask for and rarely find. She has chaired flagship sessions for the Open Data Institute, the Royal Institution and Fintech Connect, and hosted The National AI Awards, so she arrives knowing the room. Her reporting has fed UK parliamentary inquiries and her March 2025 House of Lords evidence on AI governance gives her current standing on the regulatory questions buyers are now being asked by their own boards. Biography highlights BBC Technology Editor since September 2021, the first person appointed to the role. Over 20 years at the BBC, including senior technology reporter from 2009 to 2021. Reports across BBC News television, BBC World News, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC World Service. On-the-record interviews with Tim Cook, Sir Demis Hassabis, Brad Smith, Jensen Huang and Dave Baszucki. Interviewed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the 2023 UK Global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. Gave evidence to the House of Lords on AI governance and data privacy in March 2025. Investigative reporting on children’s in-game spending triggered a UK parliamentary committee inquiry. Hosted The National AI Awards and chaired sessions for the Open Data Institute, Royal Institution and Fintech Connect. Biography The hard part of a senior AI conversation is no longer finding an expert. It is finding someone who can sit between the expert and the audience, ask the question the room wants asked, and refuse to let a polished non-answer count as an answer. That is the editorial craft Kleinman has been building at the BBC for two decades. She joined the BBC in 2003 and moved through web production, features editing and senior technology reporting before being appointed the corporation’s first Technology Editor in September 2021. Her reporting now runs across BBC News television, BBC World News, Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC World Service technology and business strands, with a specific brief on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital regulation and diversity in technology. The interview list is the part senior buyers usually recognise. Tim Cook at Apple, Sir Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind, Brad Smith at Microsoft, Jensen Huang at Nvidia, Dave Baszucki at Roblox, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the 2023 UK Global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. Her investigation into children’s in-game spending prompted a UK parliamentary committee inquiry, and in March 2025 she gave evidence to the House of Lords on AI governance and data privacy. What that record gives a corporate stage is something specific. She arrives understanding the technical detail, she knows what the regulators are about to ask, and she has spent enough time across the table from senior technologists to keep the conversation honest. For an organisation putting its leadership in front of clients or its own workforce to talk about AI, that is the moderator profile that does the work. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI AI governance, ethics and regulation Cybersecurity and digital risk Big Tech, platforms and competition Digital transformation and emerging technology Diversity in technology Innovation and disruption Moderation, hosting and panel chairing Ideal for AI, technology and innovation summits requiring a credible main-stage host or interviewer CIO, CISO, CTO and digital transformation leadership events Boards and executive committees commissioning a closed-door briefing on AI and digital regulation Awards ceremonies, flagship dinners and member events seeking a recognisable BBC face with subject authority Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI regulation and governance are moving in the UK, EU and US, and what that means for corporate decisions in the next 12 to 24 months. A sharper sense of which AI vendor and platform claims hold up under scrutiny and which do not. Direct exposure to how the world’s most senior technology leaders are talking, and not talking, about risk. A working vocabulary for non-technical executives to discuss AI, cybersecurity and digital regulation with confidence in front of clients, staff and regulators.

Why organisations work with Whitney Johnson A field-tested model, the S Curve of Learning, that gives executives a shared language for placing every team member on a developmental trajectory rather than an annual performance grid. A track record of applying disruptive innovation theory to capital allocation, including co-founding the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Clayton Christensen and leading the seed investment in Coupang. A No. 8 Thinkers50 ranking in 2021 and consecutive listings since 2015, signalling sustained credibility with the same boards her audiences sit on. Direct relevance to succession planning, post-merger integration, and the talent risk inside transformation programmes, drawn from Fortune 500 advisory work with Kraft Heinz, Intermountain Health, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon. A Wall Street equity-analyst background that lets her speak to commercial leaders in their own language about return on people, not just culture. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder of Disruption Advisors, advising Fortune 500 companies, private equity portfolios, and scale-ups on leadership and team development. Co-founder with Clayton Christensen of the Disruptive Innovation Fund at Rose Park Advisors; led the seed round in Coupang. Ranked No. 8 on Thinkers50 in 2021, with continuous listings since 2015. Author of Smart Growth (Harvard Business Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller and a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book. Author of Disrupt Yourself, Build an A-Team, and Dare, Dream, Do. LinkedIn Top Voice and host of the Disrupt Yourself podcast, with guests including Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Stanley McChrystal. Biography Most companies treat leadership development as a calendar of programmes. The harder question is where each senior leader sits on a learning curve, and what the organisation does when too many of them are stalled at the top of the same one. That is the question Whitney Johnson built a career around. Before founding Disruption Advisors, Johnson spent eight consecutive years as an Institutional Investor-ranked equity analyst on Wall Street. She then partnered with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen to co-found the Disruptive Innovation Fund at Rose Park Advisors, where she served as President from 2007 to 2012 and led the seed round in what is now Coupang. Her shift from capital allocation to people allocation is the through line of her work. The S Curve of Learning, adapted from Everett Rogers and applied through her January-February 2022 Harvard Business Review article and the book Smart Growth, gives executives a way to manage their organisations as a portfolio of learning curves. It reframes engagement, retention, and succession as the same problem looked at from three angles. That argument has earned her a No. 8 Thinkers50 ranking in 2021 and a consistent place on the list since 2015. Her client roster includes Kraft Heinz, Intermountain Health, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon, and her Disrupt Yourself podcast features sustained conversations with figures including Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Stanley McChrystal. Key speaking topics Disruptive innovation applied to people and teams The S Curve of Learning as a development framework Succession planning and talent portfolio management Building and leading high-performing teams Personal disruption and reinvention for senior leaders Smart growth and organisational scaling Coaching cultures inside Fortune 500 companies Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding the bench beneath them CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning succession and development Private equity operating partners pressure-testing portfolio leadership Boards reviewing CEO succession and senior team capability Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for placing every senior leader on a learning curve, with implications for retention and succession A clearer view of when high performers are about to plateau and what to move them toward A practical link between team composition and commercial performance, drawn from her investment-fund experience Specific moves to disrupt their own roles before circumstances disrupt them Examples from named Fortune 500 engagements they can stress-test against their own organisation

Why organisations work with Tania de Jong A working body of evidence that creativity is buildable inside an organisation, drawn from six businesses and four charities she has founded, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia and The Song Room. Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind Australia’s 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, the first national framework of its kind in the world. A keynote format that pairs argument with live performance, used at Thinkers50 European Business Forum in Denmark and the International Forum on Consciousness in the United States, and tested across more than 40 countries. Eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, awarded Corporate Event of the Year at the global Eventex Awards, giving her direct exposure to how international leaders are framing innovation, AI, wellbeing and the future of work. A position on social inclusion through the With One Voice programme that is grounded in operating practice, not theory, having reached thousands of participants across community choirs in Australia. Biography highlights Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 2008, for service to the arts and to music and arts enrichment programmes in schools and communities. Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind the world-first 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA in Australia for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. Founder of Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, Creative Innovation Global, The Song Room, MTA Entertainment & Events, Dimension5 and Pot-Pourri. TEDxMelbourne speaker, “How singing together changes the brain”. Keynote speaker, Thinkers50 European Business Forum, Denmark, 2018, and the International Forum on Consciousness, United States, 2019. Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year; Churchill Fellow; AGSE Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, Swinburne University; Bachelor of Law (Honours), University of Melbourne. Biography Australia became the first country in the world to reschedule psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of depression and PTSD in 2023. Mind Medicine Australia, co-founded by Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt, did the regulatory and clinical groundwork that made it possible. That outcome is the clearest statement of how de Jong tends to work: a long-running campaign to change a system that most assume cannot be moved. The same pattern runs through the rest of her record. Six businesses and four charities, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia, The Song Room and Creative Innovation Global, each built around a specific argument about creativity, inclusion or social repair. The Song Room alone has reached over a million Australian students through music programmes in schools that would not otherwise access them. Her speaking work is unusual in form. She is a classically trained soprano who has performed in over 40 countries, and her keynotes weave argument with live singing. Thinkers50 invited her to keynote its European Business Forum in 2018. Her TEDxMelbourne talk on the neuroscience of group singing has been viewed widely and is often cited in workplace wellbeing literature. The substantive claim underneath all of it is that creativity and collective purpose are operating disciplines. The Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, which she has run eight times and which won Corporate Event of the Year at the Eventex Awards, is the working venue for that argument across AI, leadership, wellbeing and the future of work. Key speaking topics Creativity as a strategic discipline Innovation culture and the future of work Entrepreneurship and social enterprise Mental health, wellbeing and the neuroscience of connection Diversity, inclusion and collective purpose Leadership in disruption and reinvention Storytelling and performance in business communication Ideal for CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing and inclusion programmes that need to land beyond the slide deck. Innovation leads, transformation directors and strategy teams looking to move creativity from training programme to operating practice. CEOs and boards in sectors facing structural reinvention, where the soft conditions of change are as material as the hard ones. Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines argument with live performance and high audience engagement. Audience outcomes A specific case for treating creativity as a leadership capability, not a workshop output. A working view of how social inclusion and collective practice change individual and team performance, drawn from the With One Voice programme and supporting neuroscience. An updated read on the global innovation agenda, informed by eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Forum. Exposure to one of the few global voices arguing for psychedelic-assisted therapy as a serious instrument of mental health policy, with evidence from the Australian rescheduling. A keynote experience that uses live performance to shift the energy of a room, useful for conferences that need a tonal lift alongside content.

Why organisations work with Sahar Hashemi She has built three commercial ventures from a standing start. Coffee Republic (110 stores, £50 million market cap), Skinny Candy (acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built (2,000+ businesses, £2.5 billion combined turnover) give her a working library of how entrepreneurial behaviour actually feels day to day. Her Start Up Forever framework breaks the entrepreneurial mindset down into a small set of repeatable daily behaviours, which is what lets it survive contact with corporate hierarchy. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month. She translates between two worlds that rarely speak the same language: founders running on instinct and customer obsession, and senior executives running on process and structure. Most speakers can describe one of those worlds; she has lived both. Her credibility on women-led growth is operating credibility, not advocacy. Buy Women Built is a commercial channel built with major retailers, and she co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce on growing SMEs. Biography highlights Co-founder, Coffee Republic; scaled to 110 stores and a £50 million market capitalisation Founder, Skinny Candy (50% acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built Author, Anyone Can Do It (Wiley, 2003) and Start Up Forever (Troubador, 2019, Financial Times Business Book of the Month) OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity, 2012 Birthday Honours Co-chair, UK government Scale Up Taskforce; board member, Scale Up Institute Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum Biography Coffee Republic opened on South Molton Street in 1995, the first US-style coffee bar chain in the UK. Within five years it ran 110 stores at a £50 million market capitalisation. Sahar Hashemi co-founded the business with her brother Bobby after leaving a career in law, and the speed of the build became the basis of everything she has worked on since. The question that has occupied her for two decades is why large companies struggle to act on what they already know. Most have the people, the capital and the data to behave entrepreneurially. They rarely behave that way in practice. Her book Start Up Forever, named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month, breaks that gap into a set of daily habits that survive inside corporate structure rather than dying in workshop rooms. The work has weight because it is grounded in three operating businesses she actually built, not consulting case studies. Skinny Candy, the sugar-free confectionery brand, was acquired by Glisten Plc. Buy Women Built, launched in 2020, now represents more than 2,000 women-built businesses with combined turnover above £2.5 billion and has become a working channel inside major UK retailers. She co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce and sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute. Senior teams at Microsoft, L’Oreal, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble and Sky have brought her in for the same reason: she gives a leadership group a usable answer to the question of what entrepreneurial behaviour looks like on a Tuesday afternoon at a 50,000-person company. She was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the UK economy and to charity, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial mindset inside large organisations Innovation and creativity as everyday discipline Building start-up culture in established businesses Intrapreneurship and behaviour change at scale Women-led entrepreneurship and scale-up growth Customer obsession as a leadership behaviour Courage, action and the founder’s bias to start Ideal for Executive teams running innovation, transformation or culture-change programmes CHROs and learning leaders who want behaviour change, not awareness Strategy and growth leaders trying to build new businesses inside an existing one Sales, marketing and customer teams rebuilding around customer obsession Audience outcomes A practical model of entrepreneurial behaviour that translates into Monday-morning habits Specific examples of how founder instincts (customer obsession, bias to act, comfort with ambiguity) operate inside corporate structure A clearer view of why innovation programmes stall, and what to remove rather than add Renewed confidence in personal agency: what an individual contributor or senior leader can change without permission Frameworks from Start Up Forever that teams can apply to their own products, customers and decisions

Why organisations work with Randi Zuckerberg She created Facebook Live – a verifiable, specific product decision made inside one of the most consequential platform companies in history – giving her first-hand insight into how media formats shape audience behaviour at scale that no advisory role can replicate. Pick Three (2018) provides a named, counter-intuitive framework with a specific thesis: sustainable performance – individual and organisational – comes from deliberate daily prioritisation across five competing demands, not from attempting balance across all of them simultaneously. Her knowledge of how Facebook made its foundational decisions on elections, political partnerships, and live video predates the broader public and regulatory reckoning with platform power by nearly a decade – and comes from inside the decisions, not from observing them. Her active angel investment portfolio – 53% female founders, 30% diverse founders – means her perspective on digital entrepreneurship and media ventures is commercially current, not retrospective. Multiple Tony Award wins as a Broadway co-producer alongside a technology career demonstrates a consistent and applied understanding of commercial storytelling across very different formats and audience types – directly relevant to organisations trying to build brand authority rather than brand noise. Biography highlights One of the first ten employees at Facebook (2005–2011); Director of Market Development and Spokesperson Creator of Facebook Live, now used by more than two billion people globally Emmy nomination, 2011, for the pioneering integration of television and social media in U.S. midterm election coverage Founder and CEO, Zuckerberg Media (est. 2011); clients include the United Nations, Condé Nast, Clinton Global Initiative, and Cirque du Soleil New York Times bestselling author: Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperCollins, 2013) and Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day) (2018) Multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway co-producer, including Hadestown (Best Musical, 2019); also Drama Desk Award and Kidscreen Award Host, Randi Zuckerberg Means Business, SiriusXM; board member, Life360 BA in Psychology, Harvard University Biography Facebook Live was built by a team of fewer than ten people making decisions about media format, political partnerships, and audience engagement that nobody had made before. Randi Zuckerberg led that work. The choices her team made – about what live video could do for commercial storytelling, for political communication, for media partnerships – shaped how organisations and audiences interact in real time to this day. After leaving Facebook in 2011, she founded Zuckerberg Media, producing content and advisory work for organisations including the United Nations, Condé Nast, Cirque du Soleil, and the Clinton Global Initiative. The question her firm consistently addresses is strategic rather than technical: how does an organisation translate digital presence into an audience it actually owns, rather than one it rents from a platform? Her 2018 book Pick Three formalised a framework she had developed through practice. The argument is specific and deliberately counter-intuitive: sustainable performance – individual or organisational – does not come from balance across five competing demands (Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, Friends). It comes from deliberate daily prioritisation of three. That specificity is what makes the framework usable in executive development conversations, rather than aspirational. Her Tony Award wins as Broadway co-producer, her weekly SiriusXM programme, and an angel investment portfolio with a deliberate diversity mandate are not incidental to her commercial thinking. They reflect the same underlying argument – that strategic storytelling, deployed with intent and discipline across different formats, builds audiences that advertising cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Digital media strategy and platform intelligence Entrepreneurship and venture building Commercial storytelling and brand media The creator economy and audience ownership Technology and society: the platform era in retrospect Productivity and prioritisation: the Pick Three framework Women in technology and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and communications executives navigating digital media strategy and audience ownership Entrepreneurial leadership communities, founder networks, and innovation-focused executive programmes Executive teams building media presence as a commercial strategy rather than a communications function CHROs and leadership development leads running programmes on performance, prioritisation, and sustainable leadership Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between digital activity and digital strategy, grounded in how platform companies actually make decisions about media and audience Practical application of the Pick Three framework for daily prioritisation – applicable to individual performance, team leadership, and organisational resource allocation First-hand perspective on how media partnerships, content formats, and platform intelligence were developed inside Facebook during its most formative years A more operationally grounded view of the creator economy: what «owning your audience» actually requires versus what platforms provide Greater confidence in making active, deliberate trade-offs between competing strategic priorities rather than attempting to progress all of them simultaneously

Why organisations work with Pippa Malmgren She has sat inside the room where US economic policy is set. As Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council, she advised on the response to 9/11 from a financial markets and Pentagon technology procurement standpoint, which is a different vantage point from any academic economist. She bridges currency markets and geopolitics in a way few speakers can. She ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS, which means her geopolitical reads land with FX, fixed income and treasury audiences. She is a working operator, not just a commentator. Co-founding H Robotics, a CogX and National Technology Award winning industrial drone business, gives her a real seat at the table on industrial AI, autonomous systems and the defence-tech investment cycle. Her book The Leadership Lab won UK Business Book of the Year 2019 and her follow-up The Infinite Leader won the International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership 2021, which means leadership-track briefs are met with credentialed material rather than improvisation. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, the UK defence and security institute, and judges the King’s Awards for Enterprise. Boards using her for geopolitics get an analyst whose reads are taken seriously inside the UK security and industrial establishment. Biography highlights Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Former Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and head of Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia. Author of Signals (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), Geopolitics for Investors, The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader. Co-founder of H Robotics, winner of the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation 2022 to 2024. PhD and MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Biography The job of reading geopolitics for boards used to belong to a small circle of former diplomats and bank chief economists. That circle is no longer wide enough. Currency moves now sit downstream of sanctions decisions, supply chain costs sit downstream of industrial policy, and AI capex sits downstream of export controls. Reading those linkages is a working discipline, not a generalist’s hobby. Malmgren was inside that linkage early. She advised President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and served on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, including the post-9/11 work on terrorism risk to the economy and Pentagon technology procurement. Before the White House, she ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. The combination of policy seat and trading-floor seat is rare, and it shapes how she briefs. The published work makes the argument visible. Signals reads consumer behaviour, magazine covers and shop fronts as evidence about inflation, social pressure and political risk. The Leadership Lab, co-written with Chris Lewis, won UK Business Book of the Year 2019. The Infinite Leader followed it with the 2021 International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership. None of these are commentator books. They argue specific theses about how decisions get made under volatile conditions. She also runs an operating business in the territory she briefs on. H Robotics, the industrial drone company she co-founded, won the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, sits on the judging panel of the King’s Awards for Enterprise and was a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung from 2022 to 2024. When she briefs a board on industrial AI, defence-tech, the new space economy or the strategic-minerals fight, she is briefing as a participant, not a watcher. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the global economy Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Industrial AI, autonomous systems and defence technology Currency markets and inflation signals The new space economy and strategic infrastructure Leadership under conditions of disruption Political risk and sovereign decision-making Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CFOs setting capital allocation policy under sanctions, currency and supply chain pressure. Treasury, FX and asset management leadership teams whose mandates now hinge on geopolitical reads. Strategy and corporate development teams in defence, energy, industrials, semiconductors and infrastructure. Investment committees of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices reassessing global exposure. Audience outcomes A working framework for translating geopolitical events into specific capital, currency and operating consequences. A clearer reading of where US, Chinese and European industrial policy is forcing reallocation of supply chains and capital. Specific signals to track in commodities, currencies and consumer behaviour as leading indicators of macro stress. A grounded view of where AI, autonomous systems and the space economy intersect with national security and corporate strategy. Confidence at board level that geopolitical scenarios have been pressure-tested by someone who has briefed at presidential level.

Why organisations work with Melissa Sterry She brings primary scientific research, not commentary. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group produced an original framework, Panarchistic Architecture, for designing wildland urban-interface resilience to wildfires. She runs Bionic City, the consultancy she founded in 2010 to ask how nature would design a city, and translates biomimicry, bioengineering and biotechnology into specific implications for buildings, infrastructure and utilities. She has briefed senior audiences at the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Schneider Electric, Balfour Beatty, McKinsey and the UK Ministry of Defence, and presented at the University of Oxford Climate Forum and the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Her work crosses architecture, materials, urban planning and corporate strategy without losing scientific rigour, which makes her credible to engineers, planners and procurement teams as well as to boards and marketing functions. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Biography highlights PhD from the AVATAR research group at the University of Greenwich on wildfire resilience for the wildland urban interface Founder of Bionic City (2010) and Bioratorium (2019), her biofuturism and biodesign consultancy practices Chartered Scientist (UK Science Council); Fellow of the Design Research Society and the Institute of Science and Technology Contributor to The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking Presenter of Leonardo’s City for BBC Radio 4’s The Five Faces of Leonardo and interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award; Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network Hall of Fame inductee Biography Most sustainability strategy is written in the language of disclosure. The buildings, materials and supply choices it has to deliver against are physical, and they are increasingly exposed to fire, heat, water stress and biodiversity collapse. Melissa Sterry works in that gap. Her doctorate at the University of Greenwich AVATAR group set out a framework she calls Panarchistic Architecture, which models wildland urban-interface resilience on the way fire-adapted ecosystems behave. From the same body of research she developed Pyrophytic and Xerophytic Architecture, design responses to wildfire and to extreme heat and aridity. The work is grounded in ecological systems theory, not in metaphor. Her practice connects this research to organisations. Bionic City, founded in 2010, applies biomimetics, bioengineering and biotechnology to urban planning and the built environment. Bioratorium, established in 2019, extends that into a wider biofuturism consultancy with an integrated biodesign lab. Through these vehicles she has briefed the World Bank, Unilever, Toyota, Interface, Schneider Electric, McKinsey, Balfour Beatty and the UK Ministry of Defence. She is a Chartered Scientist with the UK Science Council, a Fellow of the Design Research Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology, and sits on the Design Council Expert Network. Her writing appears in publisher series from Routledge, McGraw-Hill and Hachette, including chapters in The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking and The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking. Key speaking topics Biofuturism and biodesign Climate and wildfire resilience in the built environment Bioinspired innovation in materials and manufacturing Future of cities and urban systems Sustainability strategy beyond disclosure Design science and complex systems thinking Ideal for Boards and CSOs setting sustainability and resilience strategy Real estate, infrastructure and built-environment leadership teams Heads of innovation, R&D and materials in industrials and consumer goods Climate, ESG and risk leads inside financial services and insurance Audience outcomes A working understanding of how ecological systems theory applies to fire, heat and resource resilience in physical assets A sharper view of where biomimicry and biodesign produce commercial advantage, and where they are still research Specific examples of nature-modelled responses to wildfire, aridity and urban hazard A more honest reading of the gap between sustainability narrative and operating reality Language to connect sustainability commitments to capital, design and procurement decisions

Why organisations work with Lucy Bullivant She has written the reference work on contemporary masterplanning. Masterplanning Futures (Routledge) won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, and her thinking influences design review panels that approve real projects in London. She bridges urban planning critique and operational place strategy. Most speakers in this space do one or the other; Bullivant publishes peer-reviewed research, curates major exhibitions, and runs a working consultancy commissioned by clients. Her work on deep retrofit, hyperlocal media, and co-design gives organisations a vocabulary for participatory urbanism that goes beyond consultation theatre and connects to measurable place outcomes. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA who has curated exhibitions for Roca London Gallery, the Shenzhen Biennale, and The Building Centre, evidence that her authority is recognised across professional, academic, and cultural institutions. Biography highlights PhD in adaptive planning, London Metropolitan University; MA Cultural History, Royal College of Art Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon FRIBA), elected 2010 Author of Masterplanning Futures (Routledge), winner of the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, 2014; and Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change (Routledge, 2026) Co-author of Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures (Routledge, 2015) with Thomas Ermacora Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Urbanista.org Curator of Urbanistas (Roca London Gallery), Remake-We Make (Shenzhen Biennale), and Phoenix Rising and Retrofit 23 (The Building Centre) Biography Masterplans rarely fail at the design stage. They fail at the point where ambition meets the politics, capital cycles, and community expectations of the neighbourhood or city the plan has to live inside. Bullivant’s career has been built around closing that gap, both as a critic of how cities get planned and as a practitioner working inside design review and consultancy. Masterplanning Futures, her Routledge book that won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year in 2014, set out a comparative reading of large-scale plans across cultures and remains a reference text for planning departments and architecture schools. Her follow-up, Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change, is published by Routledge in autumn 2026. Recoded City, co-authored with Thomas Ermacora, extended the argument toward participatory and bottom-up regeneration, the territory all cities have to operate in. Her credibility comes from working across the professional stack at once. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, founder of Urbanista.org, and a Design Council expert. She chaired the Lambeth Design Review Panel from 2019 to 2025, and has sat on review panels for Enfield and the London Legacy Development Corporation, the panels that shape which projects in London get approved and built. Her recent curatorial work, Phoenix Rising: Visions for Rebuilding Ukraine and Retrofit 23 at The Building Centre, and Urbanistas at Roca London Gallery, sits on the same axis: how to rebuild, retrofit, and reimagine cities under climate, conflict, and demographic pressures. The thread across her writing, consultancy, and curatorship is a single insistence, that liveability is the hard test of any urban strategy, and that planning systems still under-equip leaders and teams to meet it. Key speaking topics Adaptive planning and masterplanning Deep retrofit and adaptive reuse of existing building stock Liveable urbanism and place quality Co-design and participatory placemaking Design review and design governance Urban regeneration and post-conflict rebuilding Climate adaptation in city strategy Ideal for City and regional government leaders, planning directors, and chief design officers Property developers, masterplanning teams, and large-scale regeneration boards Architecture and engineering firm leadership commissioning urban strategy work Sustainability and ESG leads inside real estate, infrastructure, and built environment portfolios Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why masterplans succeed or fail, drawn from comparative international case material Specific principles for deep retrofit at scale rather than project-by-project A working vocabulary for participatory placemaking that goes beyond consultation A sharper view of how design review and governance shape long-term place quality Reference points from leading European, Asian, and post-conflict rebuilding programmes