Innovation & Disruption

Why organisations work with Freddy Wexler A working hit-maker, not a commentator. Ten Billboard number ones with Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Post Malone, BLACKPINK and others give him a verifiable claim on how popular taste actually moves. The Billy Joel case study. Coaxing a thirty-year creative silence into a Grammy-stage single, including the full marketing rollout and an AI-directed music video, is a rare example of cultural reactivation that buyers can study end to end. Talent identification with a track record. Wexler scouted and pitched Stefani Germanotta as a future Madonna while she was still unsigned, and signed Rachel Platten before “Fight Song”. Useful for audiences thinking about how to spot signal early. A view on AI and creative work shaped by shipping product. The “Turn the Lights Back On” video was a Webby-winning AI-led production, which gives him a practitioner’s read on where machine generation helps and where it does not. Commercial track record across formats. Founder of The Brain Music with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs, plus a first-look television deal with Disney. Biography highlights Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer with ten Billboard number one contributions Co-writer and producer of Billy Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On” (Columbia Records, 2024), the artist’s first new pop single in roughly thirty years Album of the Year Grammy nomination for Justin Bieber’s Justice (2022); credited contributor on Laufey’s Bewitched, a 2024 Grammy-winning album Co-wrote “Stuck with U” by Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Billboard Hot 100 number one that raised over five million dollars for first responders’ families Founder of The Brain Music, with joint ventures involving Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs; first-look television deal with Disney Webby Award (2024) for direction of the AI-led “Turn the Lights Back On” music video; Golden Globe nomination for “Forbidden Road” from the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man Biography Billy Joel had not released a new pop single for thirty years when “Turn the Lights Back On” arrived in February 2024 on Columbia Records. The song was co-written and produced by Freddy Wexler, who spent more than a year developing the material with Joel from a CD of unfinished sketches. The track debuted at number one on classic hits and classic rock radio, picked up a Grammy-stage performance, and was packaged with an AI-directed music video that later won a Webby. As a worked example of how a dormant creative voice gets reactivated and brought back to market, it is unusually complete. That collaboration sits inside a longer hit-making record. Wexler has ten Billboard number one contributions and Grammy nominations across three consecutive years, including Album of the Year for Justin Bieber’s Justice and contributor credit on Laufey’s Bewitched. He co-wrote “Stuck with U” for Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, a Hot 100 number one that raised more than five million dollars for first responders’ families during the early pandemic. His writing and production credits span Post Malone, BLACKPINK, Selena Gomez, Halsey, Diana Ross and Celine Dion. He is also a builder of companies. The Brain Music, founded in 2012, runs joint ventures with Disney, Scooter Braun Projects, Warner Chappell and Prescription Songs. The Freddy Wexler Company holds a first-look television deal with Disney and a slate spanning Nickelodeon’s Kid Cowboy, a Broadway production of The Last Five Years, and a Hulu special with Sebastian Maniscalco. The Variety Family Entertainment Impact Report has recognised the operation. For organisations, the relevant point is access to a practitioner who can describe how a cultural moment actually gets made, including the writing room, the artist relationship, the rollout, and the use of AI in production. Few speakers on creativity can point to a specific commercial artefact and walk a senior audience through the craft behind it. Wexler can. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working practice Storytelling across music, film and brand AI in creative production and music video direction Talent identification and early-signal spotting Cultural moments and the commercial rollout behind them Resilience and creative reinvention Philanthropy embedded in creative product Ideal for Marketing, brand and CMO leadership teams thinking about cultural relevance Creative and content function heads inside media, entertainment and consumer companies Innovation and product groups exploring AI-assisted creative production Senior offsites and leadership conferences looking for a practitioner perspective on craft Audience outcomes A working framework for how cultural moments are constructed, drawn from a specific recent case A practitioner’s read on AI in creative production, anchored in a Webby-winning video A more concrete sense of what early signal looks like in talent and ideas, before they are obvious Reference points from a hit-making catalogue that audiences can apply to their own creative briefs

Why organisations work with Tom Fishburne His Marketoonist series has run weekly since 2002 and reaches 500,000 business readers – giving him a live, continuously updated signal on where marketing and organisational thinking is currently stuck, rather than a fixed body of research. His argument is structural, not motivational: that customer engagement fails and innovation stalls for cultural reasons, and that humour is a functional tool for surfacing those reasons – not a tone choice, not entertainment. This gives leadership teams a lever that most change programmes do not include. His Marketoonist studio has built campaigns for over 200 organisations including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC – meaning every argument he makes on stage is backed by commercial execution, not only observation. He provides a shared visual vocabulary that allows cross-functional teams to discuss what is actually blocking performance – poor customer experience, idea killers, AI adoption gaps – without triggering defensiveness. As Stanford GSB’s Cartoonist-in-Residence for the course on humour in business, and a regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, his framework has academic validation alongside its commercial track record. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a cartoon-led content marketing and culture change studio; 200+ campaigns for Google, Adobe, LinkedIn, DBS Bank, PwC, and Unilever Creator of the Marketoonist weekly cartoon series, published since 2002; 500,000 weekly readers; featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times; weekly contributor to MarketingWeek since 2007 Harvard Business School alumnus; Cartoonist-in-Residence and Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business course on humour in business; regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School Author of Your Ad Ignored Here; illustrator of three Deloitte business books – Provoke (WSJ Bestseller), Detonate (National Bestseller), and Work Disrupted Former Interim CMO at HotelTonight (acquired by Airbnb); Marketing VP at Method Products (European brand launch named Brand Launch of the Year, The Grocer); brand management at Nestlé and General Mills Speaker at TED Salon: Unconventional, TED World Theater, New York; 200+ keynotes delivered in more than 30 countries Biography Tom Fishburne started drawing cartoons on the backs of Harvard Business School cases in 2000 and has published the Marketoonist series weekly since 2002. That series now reaches 500,000 readers a week and has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times. The reason it travels is not novelty – it is recognition. The cartoons name what people in organisations already know but rarely say aloud. His argument, developed across a marketing career at Nestlé, General Mills, Method Products, and HotelTonight, is that most marketing underperformance and most innovation failure is cultural in origin. Customer journeys break not because teams lack data, but because organisational dynamics prevent anyone from acting on it. Ideas lose momentum between brainstorm and launch not because of resource constraints, but because of unspoken idea killers that no one has named. Humour, Fishburne argues, is a functional diagnostic tool for exactly these problems – not a way to make difficult conversations comfortable, but a way to make them possible. In 2010, he expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio. The studio has since built cartoon-led content and culture change campaigns for more than 200 organisations, including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC. He is Cartoonist-in-Residence at Stanford GSB for the course on humour in business and returns regularly to guest lecture at Harvard Business School. He illustrated three bestselling Deloitte business books – Provoke, Detonate, and Work Disrupted – and authored Your Ad Ignored Here. A senior buyer leaving his session does not leave with a framework to file. They leave with a vocabulary for conversations their team has been avoiding – and a demonstrated method for making those conversations productive. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness and customer engagement Innovation culture and idea management Humour as a strategic tool for culture change AI adoption and organisational readiness Visual communication and storytelling in business Challenger brand thinking Creative culture and overcoming idea killers Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing leadership teams Chief People Officers and culture change leads Innovation and digital transformation leads Leadership conferences where marketing, creative culture, or organisational change is on the agenda Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic framework for identifying where marketing efforts break down and why Practical understanding of the cultural conditions that allow creative ideas to survive from brainstorm to launch A shared vocabulary for discussing organisational blockers – customer experience failures, AI adoption gaps, innovation stalls – without defensiveness Insight into humour as a repeatable strategic tool for culture change, distinct from motivation or entertainment A more honest assessment of whether technology and AI initiatives are failing for technical reasons or organisational ones

Why organisations work with Terence Mauri He gives leadership teams a defined decision framework, DARE (Data, Agility, Risk, Evolution), drawn from his Wiley and Thinkers50 book, that turns “respond to disruption” from a slogan into a working method. His vantage point sits across operating roles, not commentary alone: founder of Hack Future Lab, Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT, visiting professor at IE Business School. Senior audiences can tell the difference. The content is built for the AI era without becoming a technology lecture. The argument is about how executives think, choose, and govern when technology cycles are shorter than planning cycles. He writes for a senior business readership through a monthly Inc.com column, “Future Proof,” which means the room hears arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print. Biography highlights Founder of Hack Future Lab, a global management think tank focused on leadership, AI, and disruption. Author of The Upside of Disruption (Wiley, in partnership with Thinkers50, 2024), centred on his DARE framework. Earlier books include The Leader’s Mindset and The 3D Leader. Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT and visiting professor at IE Business School. Inc.com columnist, author of the “Future Proof” column. Described by Thinkers50 as “an influential and outspoken thinker on the future of leadership.” Biography The hardest part of leading through disruption is not recognising that the environment has changed. It is changing the way a senior team decides while the business still has to deliver this quarter. That gap, between awareness and operating practice, is the question Terence Mauri has spent his work addressing. His most recent book, The Upside of Disruption, was published by Wiley in 2024 in partnership with Thinkers50. It introduces the DARE framework, Data, Agility, Risk, Evolution, as a way of organising executive decisions when conditions will not stabilise. Earlier books, The Leader’s Mindset and The 3D Leader, traced the same thread through the language of mindset and leadership behaviour. The institutional ground underneath the work matters. Mauri founded Hack Future Lab as a global management think tank, and holds active posts as Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT and visiting professor at IE Business School. He writes the “Future Proof” column for Inc.com, which is where many of the arguments arrive in public before they appear in a keynote. Thinkers50, the management ranking authority, has called him “an influential and outspoken thinker on the future of leadership.” For a senior team weighing whether to put a speaker in front of their own leadership, the practical question is sharper: he gives them a structured way to talk about decisions in conditions of uncertainty, drawn from a published framework rather than a slide deck. Key speaking topics Leadership in the age of AI Decision-making under uncertainty Future readiness and organisational agility Disruption as a strategic input, not a threat Executive mindset and unlearning Innovation and growth in fast-changing markets Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting strategy in conditions where AI and market shifts have shortened planning horizons. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning leadership development for senior cohorts. Boards and transformation leads asking how the organisation should make decisions, not just which technology to adopt. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how senior leaders make decisions when the operating context is actively changing. The DARE framework as a structure for diagnosing where the leadership team is strong and where it is exposed. A sharper read on the difference between adopting AI and leading through the AI era. A set of named behaviours, around unlearning, calculated risk, and trust, that senior teams can return to after the keynote.

Why organisations work with Tyler Cohen Wood She brings the threat picture a board actually needs: thirteen years inside the Department of Defense, including roles as Deputy Cyber Division Chief at the DIA and the Directorate’s named Cyber Subject Matter Expert, translated into language a non-technical executive can act on. She has run cyber risk at commercial scale. As Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T she built defences across one of the largest customer bases in the world, so her advice maps onto P&L decisions, not just policy. She is operator, not pundit. As co-founder of Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption) and CEO of MyConnectedHealth (AI in clinical diagnostics), she is currently building in the two domains she speaks on. Her work on social engineering and deepfakes draws on a digital forensics career at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, where she investigated major crimes and intrusions. That gives the deepfake material specific case grounding rather than headline commentary. She holds multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities and is a regular expert voice on Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, so she lands in front of executive audiences who recognise her from crisis coverage. Biography highlights Former Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief, Special Communications Division, US Defense Intelligence Agency. Former Director of Cyber Risk Management, AT&T. Co-founder, Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption); Founder and CEO, MyConnectedHealth Inc. Author of Catching the Catfishers (Career Press); co-author of Alternate Data Storage Forensics (Syngress). Holder of multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities. Regular commentator for Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and GovInfoSecurity. Biography The cyber threat picture has changed shape. Adversaries now use generative AI to scale phishing, clone executive voices and produce convincing video. The defensive vocabulary that worked in 2018, perimeter, patch, password, no longer covers the surface area a modern board is responsible for. Tyler Cohen Wood spent thirteen years inside the US Department of Defense working on exactly that surface area. At the Defense Intelligence Agency she served as Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief in the Special Communications Division, and was designated the Cyber Subject Matter Expert for the DIA Science and Technologies Directorate. Her remit covered the White House, the DoD, federal law enforcement and the wider intelligence community. Before that, as a digital forensic examiner at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, she worked intrusion and major-crimes cases at evidentiary level. She then took that fluency into the commercial world as Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T, where the question shifts from intelligence reporting to defending revenue, customers and brand at scale. She now co-leads Dark Cryptonite, a venture building patent-pending zero-trust encryption for governments and enterprises, and is founder and CEO of MyConnectedHealth, an AI platform for clinical diagnosis. She holds multiple US provisional patents in cyber. What that combination gives an executive audience is a speaker who is currently building the technology she discusses, has carried the threat picture at state level, and has owned commercial cyber accountability inside a Fortune 10 business. Her writing reflects the same range: Catching the Catfishers on social engineering and online identity, and the co-authored Alternate Data Storage Forensics textbook used inside the forensics community. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI and deepfake-driven social engineering Emerging technology strategy for executives Digital transformation and cyber risk management The innovation mindset for technical and non-technical leaders AI in healthcare and connected health Women in technology and senior leadership Ideal for Boards and executive committees treating cyber as a strategic, not IT, agenda item CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing non-technical leadership on AI-era threat posture Risk, audit and compliance leaders preparing for AI-driven fraud and identity attacks Industry conferences in financial services, healthcare, defence and critical infrastructure Audience outcomes A clearer board-level model for where cyber risk now sits in the operating model Specific examples of how AI is changing social engineering, deepfakes and intrusion tactics A grounded view of what zero-trust and encryption actually mean for procurement and architecture decisions A working understanding of how AI is being deployed in regulated environments such as healthcare Confidence to ask sharper questions of internal security leaders and external vendors

Why organisations work with Dr Ted James His concurrent roles – co-directing a Harvard Medical School executive programme and leading enterprise transformation across an 8-hospital health system – mean the frameworks he delivers are being tested in live operational conditions, not drawn from retrospective case studies. He holds a Master of Science in Healthcare Management from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alongside a surgical oncology career, which means he translates between clinical and executive registers without simplifying either. His advisory work with biotech and medical device companies, including a fractional CMO role at Perimeter Medical Imaging AI guiding FDA strategy for AI-enabled surgical technology, gives him a vendor-facing perspective that most health system speakers cannot offer. He built an NIH-funded research portfolio while simultaneously holding senior clinical governance roles at a Harvard-affiliated academic medical centre. His Harvard Global Health Care Leaders Program draws participants from more than 200 countries, which means his analysis of healthcare leadership is genuinely comparative rather than US-centric. Biography highlights System Physician Executive, Endeavor Health Cancer Institute, leading clinical strategy and care transformation across an 8-hospital integrated health system Co-Director, Global Health Care Leaders Program, Harvard Medical School Executive Education which draws participants from more than 200 countries Faculty, Harvard Medical School; former Associate Professor of Surgery Former Chief of Breast Surgical Oncology, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs in Surgery, and Medical Director of the Breast Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Fractional Chief Medical Officer, Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, guiding medical and regulatory strategy for AI-enabled breast cancer surgery technology Master of Science in Healthcare Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Co-author, The OAS CAHPS Compendium: A Guidebook for Improving Patient Experience and Outcomes Across the Ambulatory Surgery Continuum Biography Ted James spent the first part of his executive career doing something most physician leaders are never asked to do at the same time: running a nationally accredited multidisciplinary breast programme, leading academic affairs for a surgery department, and building an NIH-funded research portfolio – all within a Harvard-affiliated academic health system. That compression of roles at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is the biographical fact most relevant to why health organisations bring him in. He has worked the intersection of clinical governance, academic leadership, and service-line management from the inside. He is now System Physician Executive for the Endeavor Health Cancer Institute, responsible for clinical strategy and enterprise-wide care transformation across eight hospitals. Alongside that operational role, he co-directs the Global Health Care Leaders Program at Harvard Medical School: a flagship executive education programme with a global participant base spanning more than 200 countries. His Harvard-based work focuses on the mechanics of how healthcare leaders design care models, adopt digital health technology, and lead transformation in systems that resist it. His commercial advisory work adds a third register. As fractional Chief Medical Officer at Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, he is helping advance AI-enabled surgical imaging technology toward FDA approval; work that gives him first-hand knowledge of how healthcare technology moves from clinical concept to operational deployment. It is a vantage point most hospital executives simply do not have. His co-authored book, The OAS CAHPS Compendium, anchors the academic dimension of his work in something measurable: patient experience and outcomes in ambulatory surgery. The through-line across all three roles is the same question: how do you build organisations in which clinical excellence and operational performance reinforce each other rather than compete? Key speaking topics Healthcare transformation and system leadership Physician and clinical leadership development Organisational culture in complex health systems Digital health strategy and technology adoption Cancer care innovation and oncology strategy Patient experience and quality improvement Clinician resilience and workforce performance Ideal for Hospital and health system CEOs, CMOs, and boards navigating transformation programmes Physician and clinical leaders developing executive capability Biotech, medical device, and digital health organisations seeking clinical strategic credibility Academic medical centre leadership teams managing the tension between research, education, and care delivery Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where clinical culture is enabling or blocking organisational change Practical tools for developing physician leaders within complex, resource-constrained systems Clarity on evaluating and deploying digital health and AI-enabled technology against real clinical workflows An understanding of how academic, operational, and innovation goals can be aligned within a single leadership approach Approaches for addressing clinician burnout while maintaining performance standards

Why organisations work with Jon Carmichael He brings a single, verifiable feat that anchors every claim he makes about creative ambition: the 2017 “108” photograph, captured aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368 after the captain secured FAA approval to perform five 180-degree turns mid-flight. The story has been covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Inc., which gives the keynote external validation few inspirational speakers can match. He has presented at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester, two audiences with low tolerance for thin material, which signals he can hold a room of senior or technical attendees. His “Eclipse Mindset” gives sales conferences, innovation summits, and culture events a non-corporate frame for talking about ambition, alignment, and risk without sounding like internal-comms language. Biography highlights Astrophotographer; sixteen years documenting corporate and political events. Photographed the 2017 total solar eclipse from 39,000 feet aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368, image titled “108”. Has spoken at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester to an audience of around 2,500. Eclipse work featured by Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc., and Weather.com. Visual storytelling engagements with Twitter, Dell and ESPN; collectors of his fine art work include Sir Elton John. Unveiled the “108” image at a Twitter company event at the invitation of Jack Dorsey. Biography In August 2017, a commercial Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to St. Louis made five 180-degree turns at 39,000 feet so a single passenger in seat 1A could photograph a total solar eclipse over the Snake River. That passenger had spent two years mapping flight paths against the moon’s shadow, persuading an airline and a captain to accept the risk, and securing FAA approval the morning of the flight. The resulting image, titled “108”, is the spine of Jon Carmichael’s keynote work. Buyers do not commission him for technical photography. They commission him for what the project demonstrates about how teams attempt things that are not yet possible. The “Eclipse Mindset” he draws from the story is a practical frame, not a metaphor: identify the constraint, recruit unlikely partners, accept that the plan will change in execution, and prepare so that when conditions narrow to a two-minute window, the team can act. His credibility for serious audiences comes from where the work has been received. The image was covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. and Weather.com. He was invited to present at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium, with the talk broadcast to other NASA centres, and at TEDxManchester to roughly 2,500 attendees. Jack Dorsey invited him to unveil the photograph at a Twitter company event. For sales conferences, innovation kick-offs and culture moments where the brief is to lift the room without resorting to standard motivational fare, Carmichael offers a verifiable feat, a named project, and a usable frame, anchored by a story that audiences can recall and repeat months later. Key speaking topics The Eclipse Mindset Creativity and perspective shift Bold execution under constraint Visual storytelling Innovation through ambition Team alignment around a high-stakes vision Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs seeking a non-corporate opening or closing keynote Innovation, R&D, and product leadership offsites Culture, brand and marketing events CMOs and creative leadership audiences Audience outcomes A specific story they can quote, with named brands and dates, to anchor internal conversations about ambition A practical frame (“Eclipse Mindset”) for identifying which constraints are real and which are inherited Renewed appetite for projects that require unlikely partners and mid-execution adjustment A reminder that bold work is rarely solo: the eclipse image required an airline, a captain, a regulator, and years of preparation

Why organisations work with Adam Braun He is a working CEO, not a retired one. Clarasight’s carbon planning software is in active commercial deployment with clients representing over $1 trillion in market capitalisation, so his content reflects current operating reality. He has built three organisations across three categories: a nonprofit started with $25 that grew to hundreds of schools globally, a venture-backed education startup acquired by WeWork, and a B2B sustainability platform. The pattern recognition across founder modes is rare. His “Build For Where The World Is Headed” framework gives leaders a teachable structure for anticipating change and committing capital before consensus forms, rather than another model for reacting after the fact. His Pencils of Promise origin story translates cleanly into a corporate room. Audiences leave with a specific argument about how individual conviction scales into institutional outcomes, evidenced by a real organisation, not an analogy. He pairs commercial credibility with a published, bestselling book on purpose-driven leadership, which means leadership development and culture briefs can be served by the same speaker without a register switch. Biography highlights CEO and Co-Founder of Clarasight, carbon planning and intelligence software, formerly Climate Club Founder and Chairman of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit started with $25 that has built schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua Co-Founder and CEO of MissionU, acquired by WeWork in 2018; subsequently served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Promise of a Pencil, Simon & Schuster Selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the original ten Global Shapers; named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World” Brown University graduate; began his career at Bain & Company Biography The hard part of strategy is not seeing change. It is committing capital and people before the change is obvious to competitors. Most operating cultures are built to do the opposite. Adam Braun has spent his career sitting in that gap as a founder. Pencils of Promise began with $25 and grew into a nonprofit operating schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. MissionU, the income-share-agreement college alternative he co-founded, was acquired by WeWork in 2018, where he then served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business. Clarasight, his current company, sells carbon planning software into enterprise clients representing more than $1 trillion in market value. That arc gives him an unusual operating vocabulary. He has launched a category from zero capital, raised venture funding and exited through acquisition, and is now running a B2B SaaS business in a buyer-relevant category. The framework he teaches, “Build For Where The World Is Headed,” is the synthesis of those three founder modes into a structure leaders can use to evaluate where to deploy effort before the market rewards it. His book The Promise of a Pencil, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster, gives the same argument a leadership-development register. He was an original World Economic Forum Global Shaper, has been named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and built his early career at Bain & Company after graduating from Brown. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder leadership Building organisations for future operating conditions Innovation under uncertainty Corporate sustainability as commercial advantage Purpose-driven business strategy Social entrepreneurship and scaled impact Ideal for Founders, CEOs and executive committees setting growth or transformation agendas Heads of strategy, innovation and sustainability shaping medium-term capital decisions Leadership development programmes for high-potential operators and emerging executives Conferences focused on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, or corporate climate strategy Audience outcomes A working framework for committing to direction before market consensus forms A founder’s view of how scaled impact actually compounds, drawn from three different ventures A practical read on where corporate sustainability becomes commercial advantage rather than reporting overhead A renewed argument for individual agency inside large organisations, evidenced rather than asserted

Why organisations work with Jann Mardenborough He carries a verified outlier credential: third in the LMP2 class at the 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours, reached in two years from a Gran Turismo console with no prior motorsport background. His subject is composure after consequence. The 2015 Nürburgring crash, which killed a spectator and which he chose to allow into the Sony Pictures film, is part of what he discusses, not a fact left at the door. The Gran Turismo film, in which Archie Madekwe plays him and on which he served as co-producer and stunt driver, gives audiences immediate recognition without requiring a motorsport brief. He has operated inside two of the most demanding racing cultures in the world, Japan’s Super GT and Super Formula, where the working language and feedback loops are not built around his first language. Biography highlights Won the 2011 Nissan GT Academy, beating more than 90,000 entrants on Gran Turismo before progressing through a real-car final at Silverstone. Third in LMP2 class at the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans with Greaves Motorsport; further Le Mans entries in 2014 and 2015, the latter with Nissan’s LMP1 programme. Second in the 2016 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship, with four wins, six poles and twelve podiums. Long Japanese career across Super GT GT300 and GT500 and Super Formula, including a GT300 win at Fuji. Co-producer, stunt driver and consultant on Gran Turismo (Sony Pictures, 2023), portrayed by Archie Madekwe. Simulator and test driver in Formula E for Nissan e.dams and McLaren (2021 to 2022); signed by HRT Ford Performance for the 2025 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. Biography The 2011 Nissan GT Academy final was a twenty-minute race at Silverstone in real GT cars, contested between gamers who had never sat in one. Jann Mardenborough won it by eight seconds and signed a professional racing contract the same week. He had been playing Gran Turismo since he was eight. Two years later he stood on the LMP2 podium at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. That trajectory is unusual enough on its own. What makes the story usable for senior audiences is what came after. In 2015 his Nissan GT-R Nismo left the circuit at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, cleared the catch fencing at Flugplatz and killed a spectator. He survived. He returned to racing. He later agreed to let the incident appear in the Sony Pictures Gran Turismo film, on which he was co-producer, stunt driver and consultant. The professional record sits alongside that. Second in the 2016 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship with four wins and a dozen podiums. A GT300 win at Fuji. Multiple seasons in Super GT’s top GT500 class and in Super Formula, racing inside an engineering culture that does not run on his first language. Simulator and test work in Formula E with Nissan e.dams and McLaren. A 2025 signing with HRT Ford Performance for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. The talk he gives is about what performance actually costs once the conditions stop being forgiving, and what a person and a team have to keep doing on the morning after a setback that is not theoretical. Few speakers in this category can address that subject from inside the event rather than at a remove. Key speaking topics High-performance under pressure Composure and recovery after setback Mindset and the transition from amateur to professional Decision-making at speed Cross-cultural performance in elite sport Digital disruption and unconventional career paths Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for high-stakes execution windows: product launches, results days, regulatory events Sales, trading and operations groups whose work is judged on consistency under pressure Talent and L&D programmes addressing resilience and career reinvention Corporate partner activations for motorsport, gaming and automotive sponsors Audience outcomes A concrete account of what changes inside a performer between an amateur ceiling and a professional one A sharper sense of what composure looks like in the hours and days after a serious setback A working frame for thinking about decision-making when feedback is immediate and consequence is high Recognition that high-performance careers are made of recoveries, not only of wins

Why organisations work with Paddy Lowe He has industrialised winning at three Formula 1 constructors and can show, from inside the engineering room, how a championship operation actually allocates capital, talent and risk. He runs Zero Petroleum, the company behind the Guinness-verified first flight on 100 percent synthetic fuel, which gives him a working answer to the question of how aviation and motorsport decarbonise without waiting for batteries. His authority on energy transition is operational, not advocacy: a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering speaking from a fuel plant, not a policy podium. He bridges the two conversations that boards now run in parallel, hard-edged engineering performance under pressure and the capital reality of net zero, which most speakers handle separately. Biography highlights 32 years in Formula 1 across Williams, McLaren and Mercedes; technical leadership behind cars that won 12 World Championships and 158 Grands Prix. Technical Director at McLaren, then Executive Director (Technical) at Mercedes during the team’s 2014 to 2016 dominance with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Co-founder and CEO of Zero Petroleum, a UK synthetic fuel company producing fossil-free drop-in fuels from atmospheric CO2 and renewable hydrogen. Holder of the Guinness World Record with the Royal Air Force for the first aircraft flight powered entirely by synthetic fuel, achieved at Cotswold Airport in November 2021. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, elected 2015. Engineering graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Honorary Fellow of the College. Biography Mercedes won 51 of 59 Grands Prix between 2014 and 2016. Paddy Lowe was the Executive Director responsible for the technical organisation that made that possible, after a decade as Technical Director at McLaren and an earlier career at Williams developing the active suspension that delivered the 1992 titles. Three constructors, twelve World Championships, one common pattern: an engineering culture built to convert money and time into measurable performance under public scrutiny. That track record is the credential. The substantive work he now talks to boards about is different. In 2020 he co-founded Zero Petroleum, a synthetic fuel company that combines atmospheric carbon dioxide with renewable hydrogen to produce fossil-free, drop-in liquid fuels. The point is not laboratory novelty. The point is that aviation, motorsport, shipping and the global classic vehicle base will run on hydrocarbons for decades, and decarbonising them needs molecules, not only electrons. The proof exists. In November 2021, Zero Petroleum and the Royal Air Force flew an aircraft on 100 percent synthetic fuel and were awarded a Guinness World Record for the first such flight. Formula 1 has since committed to fully sustainable fuels, and Lowe has been a public technical voice in the policy conversation around how that transition is engineered and financed. For a senior buyer, the value is operational specificity. He explains how engineering organisations win against deadlines, how data and simulation reshape decision-making at the top of an organisation, and what it actually takes, in capital, regulation and supply, to move a heavy industry off fossil fuel. Key speaking topics Synthetic fuels and the energy transition in aviation, motorsport and heavy transport Net zero strategy beyond electrification Engineering performance under competitive pressure Data-led decision making in high-stakes operations Innovation and R&D leadership in regulated industries Lessons from Formula 1 championship organisations Ideal for Boards and executive teams in aviation, automotive, energy and industrial groups facing a credible decarbonisation deadline CTOs, Chief Sustainability Officers and Heads of R&D scoping practical low-carbon liquid fuel pathways Strategy and transformation leads benchmarking high-performance engineering cultures Investor days, supplier summits and policy forums where the audience needs a working voice on the energy transition Audience outcomes A clearer view of how aviation, motorsport and other liquid-fuel sectors can decarbonise without waiting for full electrification A working sense of how a Formula 1 technical organisation converts data, simulation and capital into repeatable performance A sharper read on which net zero claims are engineered and financed, and which are still rhetorical Specific examples of what it takes, in regulation, supply chain and certification, to move a synthetic fuel from prototype to commercial flight

Why organisations work with Angela Oguntala Her Futurecasting process is a replicable leadership methodology for distinguishing structural change from cyclical noise – giving strategy teams something to use after the keynote, not just a perspective to carry home. She brings a practitioner’s decade-long track record: foresight and innovation advisory work with Google, IKEA, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, BCG, and Deloitte, across sectors from healthcare to luxury to financial services. Her cross-disciplinary background – spanning interaction design, business strategy, and foresight research – allows her to connect technology shifts, sustainability pressures, and shifting social norms in a single strategic frame that sector specialists rarely produce. She was named a Future Innovator by the United Nations OICT and Ars Electronica – a designation that extends her credibility beyond the speaking circuit into formal expert recognition. Her central argument – that the future is not predictable but can be actively shaped – moves executive audiences from defensive risk-management to purposeful strategic action. Biography highlights Founding partner at Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy, for over a decade Named Future Innovator by the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and Ars Electronica Salzburg Global Fellow for leaders challenged to shape a better world Advisory and keynote engagements with Google, IKEA, Microsoft, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, BCG, and Deloitte, across healthcare, education, luxury, and financial services TED talk: Re-imagine the future – on how cultural narratives both inspire and constrain strategic imagination Featured as a futures thinking expert on NPR and Sky Biography The hardest thing about strategy is not analysing the present. It is imagining a future that does not yet exist – and committing resources to it before certainty arrives. Angela Oguntala built her career around exactly this problem. As founding partner of Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy, Oguntala spent a decade working across industries – from healthcare and education to luxury goods and financial services – helping leadership teams develop the disciplines to read structural change before it becomes a crisis. Her clients have included Google, IKEA, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, BCG, and Deloitte. Her named methodology, Futurecasting, is a structured process for mapping the forces shaping an organisation’s near and far future, and for building strategy around what is genuinely plausible rather than what feels intuitively familiar. It is not trend forecasting in the conventional sense; it is an exercise in building collective imagination at leadership level – a capability most organisations have never formally developed. Named a Future Innovator by the United Nations OICT and Ars Electronica, and a Salzburg Global Fellow, Oguntala speaks on the TED platform and has been featured as a futures expert on NPR and Sky. Her TED talk, Re-imagine the future, addresses the cultural blindspots that prevent organisations and individuals from imagining the full range of what is genuinely possible. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and Futurecasting Innovation under uncertainty Emerging technology impacts Purpose-driven innovation Leadership and organisational foresight Sustainability and systemic transition Future of work Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams planning beyond the conventional 3–5 year horizon CEOs and executive boards confronting compounding disruption across technology, climate, or market structure Chief Innovation Officers and heads of transformation navigating uncertainty without a clear methodological framework Government and institutional leaders working on long-horizon policy and societal change Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between structural change and cyclical noise – and an understanding of how to act on that distinction at leadership level Practical familiarity with the Futurecasting methodology as a replicable process for strategic decision-making under uncertainty A more integrated view of how emerging technologies, sustainability pressures, and shifting social expectations interact – rather than treating each as a separate workstream A reframed relationship with uncertainty: from something to manage defensively to something that can be navigated with intention Approaches to building organisations willing to experiment with genuinely new ideas rather than optimise existing ones

Why organisations work with Elena García Armada She has done what most deep-tech founders only describe: taken a robotics breakthrough from CSIC laboratory bench into certified clinical use, through a company she still runs. Her European Inventor Award Popular Prize from the European Patent Office gives her a credential most innovation speakers cannot match, anchored in a specific patented invention, not a body of opinion. She speaks fluently across two worlds that rarely meet on the same stage: tenured senior scientist at CSIC and CEO of a regulated medical device company, with operational responsibility for staff, capital, and clinical outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of robotics, AI-driven control, and biomedical engineering, which makes her credible on the practical question of how emerging technologies translate into products under real regulatory and commercial constraints. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder of Marsi Bionics, the CSIC-UPM spin-off that brought paediatric exoskeletons to clinical use. Senior tenured scientist at the Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR), CSIC-UPM, leading research on legged robots and exoskeletons. PhD in robotic engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid; postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory. European Inventor Award Popular Prize 2022, European Patent Office; finalist EU Women Innovators Award 2021; Gold Medal of the Spanish Red Cross 2022. Author of “Los robots y sus capacidades” and “Robots” (Catarata / Editorial CSIC). Doctor honoris causa, Miguel de Cervantes European University, 2023; Premio Nacional Reina Letizia for Research and Innovation, 2023. Biography Most exoskeletons in research labs do not fit children. The mechanics, the weight, the control systems, and the regulatory pathway for a paediatric medical device are harder than the adult equivalents, and the commercial incentives to solve them are weaker. ATLAS 2030, the world’s first adaptable paediatric exoskeleton, exists because Elena García Armada chose to work on the harder version of the problem. The technical work began at the Centre for Automation and Robotics, the joint CSIC and Polytechnic University of Madrid centre where she is a senior tenured scientist. The commercial work began in 2013, when she co-founded Marsi Bionics as a CSIC spin-off to take the technology out of the lab and into rehabilitation centres and hospitals. Her credentials sit on both sides of that journey. Postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory on the research side; CEO of a regulated medical device company on the commercial side. The European Patent Office awarded her the Popular Prize of the 2022 European Inventor Award for the underlying invention, and the Spanish state has recognised the social impact with the Premio Nacional Reina Letizia and the Red Cross Gold Medal. What is unusual is not the recognition. It is that the same person holds the patent, runs the company, and answers for the clinical outcomes. That combination is rare in deep-tech innovation, and it is what makes her useful to boards thinking about how science-led ventures actually become businesses. Key speaking topics Deep-tech commercialisation Robotics and exoskeleton technology Biomedical engineering and assistive devices Innovation in regulated industries Science-led entrepreneurship AI-driven control systems in robotics Women in STEM and inclusive innovation Ideal for Boards and executive teams investing in or running deep-tech and medtech ventures Innovation, R&D and CTO functions seeking credible perspective on lab-to-market translation Healthcare and life-sciences leaders working on assistive and rehabilitation technology Audiences focused on STEM talent strategy and women in engineering Audience outcomes A concrete view of what it takes to move a robotics breakthrough from research into a regulated, commercial product A sharper sense of how academic science, patents, and venture-building reinforce one another when handled by the same hand Direct exposure to a working case of paediatric exoskeleton design, with the engineering, clinical, and commercial choices made visible A grounded perspective on the role of women in technical leadership of European deep-tech

Why organisations work with Aaron Frank As one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship five-day Executive Program, he translates emerging technology trajectories into specific decisions a senior team can make this quarter, not abstract futures. He has taught the same material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, GE, and The Economist Group, which means his frame is tested across regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators. He guest lectures inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School Digital Transformation course, evidence that his content survives peer scrutiny in a serious executive-education environment. He writes a steady stream of analysis for Singularity Hub, Wired, Forbes, Vice, and VentureBeat, and authored Singularity’s 2026 executive briefing on Physical AI, so audiences get a speaker whose arguments are already pressure-tested in print. His current research focus is the convergence of generative AI, spatial computing, 3D simulation, and physical AI, a frame that gives him a concrete read on where the next wave of enterprise infrastructure is heading. Biography highlights Principal Faculty, Singularity University, and one of only two lead facilitators of its flagship five-day Executive Program. MBA, University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where he also guest lectures on the Digital Transformation course. Bylines in Vice, Wired, Forbes, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Author of A Business Leader’s Introduction to Physical AI (Singularity, 2026). Has spoken to or advised the United States Marine Corps, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, GE, The Economist Group, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, FC Barcelona, the NBA, Sony, and Honeywell. Board member, Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Biography Generative AI is now familiar territory for most senior leaders. What comes after is the harder question: which emerging shifts genuinely reshape an industry, and where capital should actually move. That interpretive read is what Aaron Frank does for a living. He is one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship Executive Program. The five-day intensive puts him in a room with around a hundred senior leaders, working through emerging technology trajectories as a structured curriculum. Few speakers test their arguments against a senior audience that often. His range covers rapid technological change, spatial computing and 3D simulation, digital twins as enterprise infrastructure, and the move toward physical AI. He has taught that material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, and GE. His bylines appear in Wired, Forbes, Vice, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Outside Singularity, he holds an MBA from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and guest lectures on its Digital Transformation course. He also sits on the board of Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. His current research focus is the rise of physical AI, set out for Singularity in a 2026 executive briefing on the convergence of robotics, simulation, and spatial intelligence. Key speaking topics Exponential technology trajectories and leadership decisions Innovation strategy under technology acceleration Spatial computing, 3D simulation, and digital twins Physical AI and robotics Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI and emerging technology investment direction CTO, CIO and head of digital transformation audiences Industrial, manufacturing, defence and supply chain leadership planning around physical AI and digital twins Strategy and innovation leads in financial services, sport, media and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which emerging technology shifts actually reshape their industry, and which are noise. A working vocabulary for generative AI, spatial computing, digital twins, and physical AI that a senior team can use in the same conversation. Specific examples of how regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators are deploying these technologies today. A view on the next two to five years of enterprise AI infrastructure beyond the chatbot, drawn from operating deployments.