Marketing & Branding speakers

Why organisations work with Matt Davies He has built positioning work for both regulated giants and founder-led companies, including Nestle, Boots, Specsavers, Virgin, Nikon and Capital One, so the methods have been tested across categories rather than refined inside one. His Brand Strategy Triangle gives executive teams a single shared structure for four arguments they usually have separately: why we exist, who we serve, how we show up, and what we offer. He pushes back hard against generic purpose statements. His “Purpose Fatigue” argument is built for boards tired of green and social washing being mistaken for strategy. He sits inside the practitioner conversation, not above it. Co-hosting the JUST Branding podcast with over 500,000 downloads means the frameworks he brings into a room have been pressure-tested against the working strategists who use them. Operator credibility: he founded, scaled and sold a branding agency, then ran an in-house creative function at Capital One UK. He has been on the buyer’s side of brand work, not only the consultant’s. Biography highlights Author of Storyategy, a six-step process for building a brand strategy on story foundations. Co-host of the JUST Branding Podcast with Jacob Cass; 500,000-plus downloads, guests including Marty Neumeier, David Aaker, Denise Lee Yohn and Chris Do. Named Top 50 UK Advisor by Enterprise Nation in 2019, 2020 and 2021, in the branding and design category. Certified Level C Brand Specialist, Strategist and Architect; Silver Star recipient in the 2020 LEVEL C Metaskills Challenge. Founder of Matt Davies Consultancy Ltd; advisory and fractional roles at Newfound, Motto and ikon. Earlier career: founder of Attitude Design (2008 to 2017, acquired); Creative Department Manager at Capital One UK, where he established the in-house Creative Studio. Biography Most companies do not have a positioning problem. They have a clarity problem. The leadership team cannot agree, in plain language, on the answer to why we exist, who we serve, how we show up and what we sell. Marketing fills the gap with purpose statements that could belong to any competitor in the category. That is the gap Matt Davies works in. His Brand Strategy Triangle reduces a year of internal debate to four questions a board can actually answer in a room together. His book Storyategy sets out the six-step process behind it, built on the argument that a brand is a story an organisation has to live, not a statement it has to write. The credibility comes from having sat in every seat. He founded the branding agency Attitude Design in 2008, ran it for nine years and sold it. He then built and led the in-house Creative Studio inside Capital One UK, learning what brand work looks like inside a regulated business with operational constraints. Today he advises CEOs, CMOs and founders through his consultancy and fractional strategy roles at Newfound, Motto and ikon, with named clients including Nestle, Boots, Specsavers, Virgin, Nikon, Fred Perry and Experian. He also keeps one foot inside the practitioner debate. The JUST Branding podcast he co-hosts with Jacob Cass has passed 500,000 downloads and put him in conversation with Marty Neumeier, David Aaker, Denise Lee Yohn and most of the working canon of brand strategy. Enterprise Nation has named him a UK Top 50 Advisor for three consecutive years in branding and design. Key speaking topics Brand positioning and category differentiation Story-led brand strategy Purpose, meaning and the limits of purpose marketing Customer experience and brand alignment Leadership vision and internal brand Culture and brand as one strategic asset Brand-led growth for founder and scale-up businesses Ideal for CEOs, founders and MDs leading a repositioning, a rebrand, or a category shift CMOs and brand directors are trying to land a single positioning argument across a leadership team Boards and ExCos are tired of generic purpose statements and are looking for a more commercial alternative Marketing and design leaders inside large or regulated organisations who need their work to be understood as strategy, not decoration Audience outcomes A working answer to the four questions of the Brand Strategy Triangle, applied to the audience’s own business A sharper view of where the company’s positioning is generic and where it is genuinely defensible A clearer language for talking about brand inside the leadership team, beyond logos and taglines A practical critique of purpose-driven messaging and a workable alternative built on customer-centric ideas Confidence that brand strategy is a commercial growth tool, not a marketing afterthought

Why organisations work with Matthew Luhn He spent more than 20 years inside Pixar’s story room, working on Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille, so the principles he teaches are the ones that actually shipped some of the most commercially successful films ever made. His book The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018) gives buyers a named, documented methodology, not a generic storytelling pitch. Teams leave with a structure they can apply to a keynote, a sales call, or a brand campaign. He is one of very few speakers who has been inside a working creative culture at scale, and can speak credibly to how Pixar’s Braintrust process produces honest creative feedback without breaking trust. His client list on this material includes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target, which signals that senior brand, marketing and innovation leaders are the audience he is built for. He treats storytelling as a commercial competency, not a soft skill. The work is aimed at sharper messaging, stronger brand recall, and better internal communication of strategy. Biography highlights Story artist and story supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios across more than two decades, with credits on Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3 and Monsters University. One of the original 12 animators hired on the first Toy Story film in 1995. Youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at age 19, with credits on six 1992 episodes including Kamp Krusty and Lisa’s Pony. Author of The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond, Morgan James Publishing, 2018. TEDx speaker (TEDxUCSB), and corporate keynote speaker for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony, Target, Vrbo, Adidas and Lego. Trained at the California Institute of the Arts character animation program; BFA from the Academy of Art University. Biography Pixar built one of the most reliable creative engines in modern business by treating story as a discipline, not a talent. Inside that engine sat a small group of story artists whose job was to find, in every film, the emotional truth a global audience would respond to. Matthew Luhn was one of them, across more than 20 years and films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille. That work began early. He was the youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at 19, then joined Pixar in 1995 as one of the first 12 animators on Toy Story. He moved into the story room for Toy Story 2 and stayed there, eventually as story supervisor, through some of the most commercially successful animated films ever made. The carry-over to business is direct. The same questions a story artist asks about a film, what does the audience need to feel, what is the change, what is the one thing they should remember, are the questions a leader should be asking about a strategy launch, a sales pitch or a brand campaign. His book, The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018), turns those questions into a working methodology. Buyers tend to find him through a specific tension. Their messages are accurate but not memorable. Their brand is recognised but not loved. Their internal communications inform but do not move people. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target have used his work to address those gaps. Key speaking topics Business storytelling Brand narrative and customer engagement Creative culture and the Pixar Braintrust process Innovation and creative differentiation Leadership communication Sales and pitch storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and content leaders rebuilding how the company shows up to customers. Innovation leads and product organisations that need to make new ideas land internally and externally. Sales leadership and revenue teams sharpening pitch craft and customer-facing narrative. Internal communications and HR leaders running large town halls, change programmes or culture launches. Audience outcomes A working structure for building a story around any business message, drawn from the Pixar story process. Sharper sense of what makes a brand or product narrative memorable rather than merely accurate. Tools for giving and receiving honest creative feedback, modelled on the Pixar Braintrust. A clearer separation between information delivery and persuasion, applied to keynotes, pitches and internal comms. Specific, repeatable techniques the team can apply to the next campaign, all-hands or customer presentation.

Why organisations work with Max Lenderman He wrote the founding text of experiential marketing. Experience the Message (2005) put the category on the map. Twenty years on, his thinking is the underlying logic most brand-experience practice still draws from. He has run the experiential function at the agencies that shape global brand work: founder of the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, former CEO of School, current Chief Experience Officer at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing. He moves brands from broadcasting purpose to operating on it. His “invertising” approach starts inside the organisation, with employees, and makes brand purpose a commercial driver rather than a campaign line. He has been working on web3, NFTs, and the digital-physical convergence since 2021, before most CMOs had a position on any of it. His Adweek “Into the Metaverse” column is one of the longer-running serious treatments of the territory. He has built campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Absolut, and DaimlerChrysler. The case material in the room is from inside the work, not observed from outside it. Biography highlights Author of Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing Is Changing the Brand World and Brand New World: How to Reach Billions, Not Millions Chief Experience Officer at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing, the world’s largest experiential marketing agency Founder of the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky; former CEO of School (Project Worldwide) Founding member of the International Experiential Marketing Association (IXMA) Columnist for Adweek and Campaign magazines, including the “Into the Metaverse” column Speaker at SXSW, Consensus, Forbes CMO Summit, Advertising Week, and X-Prize Biography Experience the Message was published in 2005. It is the book that put the phrase “experiential marketing” into the advertising vocabulary, and the thesis behind it, that the brand is what the customer experiences, not what the brand says about itself, is now treated as common sense by most serious CMOs. The author wrote it from inside the work, not as a theorist looking on. Max Lenderman has spent the last two decades building the function he named. He launched the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, served as CEO of School, the purpose-led consultancy inside Project Worldwide, and now holds the first Chief Experience Officer post at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing. The client list, Tommy Hilfiger, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Absolut, DaimlerChrysler, NASCAR Canada, gives him operating ground in categories where brand experience moves revenue. Two ideas anchor his current work with senior marketers. The first is “invertising,” the argument that brand purpose has to be operationalised through employees before it can be sold to customers, and that the financial return on purpose is measurable when treated this way. The second is the “phygital” frontier, where digital and physical experiences are designed as a single product rather than as a campaign with a digital extension. His Adweek column “Into the Metaverse” has tracked this territory since 2021. What he gives a senior marketing audience is the founding logic of the category and twenty years of inside work applying it. He cites a PwC finding that 86% of US buyers will pay more for a better brand experience, then shows what that figure actually requires of a brand operating model. Key speaking topics Customer experience and brand operating reality Experiential and “phygital” marketing Brand purpose as commercial driver Web3, NFTs, and the metaverse for marketers AI as creative amplifier in marketing Sports marketing and live brand experience Marketing innovation and emerging consumer behaviour Ideal for CMOs, CBOs, and brand directors rethinking the role of marketing in commercial strategy Customer experience and brand experience leads inside large consumer businesses Agency leaders and creative directors briefing on web3, AI, and digital-physical integration Sports, entertainment, and live-event sponsors building brand experience programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of brand experience that separates it from communications and advertising A view of brand purpose as an internal operating commitment, not a campaign theme A sharper read on where web3, NFTs, and the metaverse have commercial traction for marketers, and where they do not A direct argument for treating AI as a creative amplifier inside marketing teams Case material from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, School, and GMR Marketing applied to the audience’s own brand questions

Why organisations work with Michael Solomon His textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being is the most widely adopted course text on the subject worldwide, which means the conceptual vocabulary used by a generation of marketers traces back to his work. He has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, and United Airlines on consumer psychology applied to brand, retail, and product decisions. He brings academic discipline to fast-moving commercial questions: AI consumer trust, avatar identity, metaverse engagement, and post-pandemic spending behaviour, all grounded in published research. Holder of the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University and recognised among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications. Regular Forbes.com contributor, with commentary picked up by The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, and Time, giving clients a speaker whose framing is already in market. Biography highlights Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University. Author of more than thirty books, including the global bestselling textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being and The New Chameleons. Former faculty at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn University, and the University of Manchester. Forbes.com contributor; commentary in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Adweek, Time, and on Today, Good Morning America, and CNN. Cutty Sark Men’s Fashion Award recipient for research on the psychology of clothing. Client roster spanning Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, P&G, eBay, Subaru, United Airlines, Microsoft Advertising, and the U.S. Army. Biography The textbook that trained a generation of marketers in consumer behaviour, Buying, Having, and Being, sits on Michael Solomon’s CV. So does a Forbes column read by the executives who now run those marketers’ employers. That dual position, academic standard-setter and commercial commentator, is what brings serious brands to him for strategic reads on customer psychology. Solomon holds the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business, with prior faculty posts at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn, and the University of Manchester. His PhD in social psychology from UNC Chapel Hill anchors a research career that has placed him among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications, and the fifteen most cited in behavioural sciences and fashion. The applied work is where the academic record converts into commercial value. Solomon has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Subaru, and United Airlines on questions of brand identity, customer experience, and category disruption. His current speaking work centres on consumer trust in AI and avatars, the post-pandemic spending psychology he frames as G.A.S., and the dissolution of traditional consumer categories he treats in The New Chameleons. For senior marketing, brand, and customer-experience leaders, the value is access to a thinker who can defend a claim about consumer behaviour from the underlying psychology, then translate it into a brand or product decision a board can act on. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and decision-making Brand identity and customer experience Marketing implications of AI, avatars, and the metaverse Fashion psychology and the symbolic meaning of products Post-pandemic consumer behaviour Retail disruption and category evolution Cross-cultural consumer meaning-making Ideal for CMOs and brand directors rebuilding strategy after segmentation models stop working Retail and consumer goods leadership teams confronting category disruption Customer experience and insight leads in financial services, automotive, apparel, and FMCG Boards of consumer-facing businesses assessing exposure to AI-mediated commerce Audience outcomes A sharper read on the psychology driving current consumer switching, loyalty, and category exit. Specific frameworks for thinking about AI and avatars in brand and retail experience, not generic technology commentary. Named research and case examples that senior marketers can cite internally to defend a strategic shift. A more rigorous internal vocabulary for consumer behaviour, drawn from the academic standard text in the field.

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?

Why organisations work with Mickey Wilson She runs a working brand consultancy, not a speaking practice with an agency name attached. The frameworks she presents are the same ones Firestarter applies inside Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado engagements. The DARE Formula gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for brand decisions: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression. It replaces the design-led conversation most boards default to with a commercial one. She works the B2B scale-up problem specifically. The advice is calibrated to founders who have product-market fit and need brand to do the next stage of commercial lifting, not to consumer giants polishing an existing position. Paired with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist, she brings behavioural insight into brand decisions where most agencies bring only aesthetic judgement. Biography highlights CEO and founder, Firestarter (est. 2015), a London-headquartered brand consultancy with a studio in Cape Town 30+ years in brand strategy and creative leadership; launched her first agency at twenty-one Client engagements include Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado Creator of the DARE Formula and Firestarter’s Brand Maturity Model Co-author of forthcoming book BRANDFIRE with Dr Chris Endersby Featured in Authority Magazine, Startups Magazine, BMmagazine, WeAreTheCity and Talented Ladies Club Biography Most B2B scale-ups treat brand as a downstream problem. They build the product, win early customers, then commission a logo refresh when sales plateau. Mickey Wilson’s argument is that the plateau is the brand problem, and that treating it cosmetically is what causes it to harden. Firestarter, the consultancy she founded in 2015, sells against that pattern. Working with clients including Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado, the firm built a proprietary framework, the DARE Formula, around four ingredients its analysts argue brand-led growth depends on: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance and Expression. It is the spine of how the firm diagnoses why a B2B business is not converting at the rate its product would predict. What separates her work from generic brand consultancy is the partnership with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist whose background sits in behavioural change rather than design. Together they pair brand strategy with cognitive insight into why buyers respond, hesitate, or commit. That joint authorship runs through Firestarter’s BrandSight:360 assessment and through BRANDFIRE, the book the two are preparing for publication. Wilson started her first agency at twenty-one and has spent more than three decades in brand strategy and creative leadership. The corporate client list is the credential most senior buyers will check first. The more telling proof is that scale-up founders, who tend to be sceptical of agency theatre, hire her to turn brand from a marketing line item into a commercial growth lever. Key speaking topics B2B brand strategy Differentiation in saturated markets Brand-led growth for scale-ups The DARE Formula Behavioural psychology in branding Brand resonance and emotional connection Founder-led brand building Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups in series A through C CMOs and brand directors at mid-market businesses Sales and marketing leadership teams aligning on positioning Industry conferences in B2B technology, professional services and SaaS Audience outcomes A diagnostic for where their brand is losing commercial ground to competitors The DARE Formula as a working vocabulary for cross-functional brand decisions A clearer view of how psychology shapes B2B buyer commitment Practical pointers on translating founder conviction into a brand position buyers remember A challenge to the assumption that brand is a marketing function rather than a commercial one

Why organisations work with Monica McCoy She built her practice from inside a Fortune 100 procurement and strategy function, not from advocacy. Her recommendations work because they account for how large companies actually source. Her trademarked Pitch University and Global Supplier Diversity Conference are operating programmes with named corporate partners, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, not concepts. She works upstream of typical DEI conversations, on the pipeline of founders that procurement teams can credibly contract with, which is where most inclusion strategies break down. Her non-profit Pivot Purposefully extends the same discipline to formerly incarcerated women founders, giving her a defensible position on inclusion that goes beyond corporate audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Monica Motivates, LLC (2017 to present); supports 38 Fortune 500 clients on supplier diversity and inclusion delivery Fifteen years at The Coca-Cola Company, most recently Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation, McDonald’s Division Creator of Pitch University, the Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference, and a Microsoft-backed accelerator for commercial real estate founders Founder, Pivot Purposefully, non-profit supporting formerly incarcerated women entrepreneurs Recognitions include American Express Founder of Change (2020), Porsche Driven Women (2021), Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All (Women’s Economic Forum), YWCA Corporate Woman of Achievement (2015) BA Psychology, Emory University; Oxford College Alumni Board Biography Most corporate inclusion programmes fail at the seam between policy and procurement. The policy gets signed. The procurement function keeps sourcing from the same qualified vendor pool. The pipeline of underrepresented founders never reaches contract size. This is the gap Monica McCoy spent fifteen years observing from inside The Coca-Cola Company, and the one her firm now exists to close. Monica Motivates, founded in 2017, works with 38 Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, on the practical mechanics of bringing underrepresented founders into corporate supply chains. The firm’s programmes are operating, not conceptual. Pitch University trains founders for the specific pitch standards large companies use. The Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference puts buyers and suppliers in the same room at scale. A Microsoft-backed accelerator focuses on commercial real estate, where founder access has historically been narrowest. The corporate credentials sit underneath this work. McCoy was Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation for the McDonald’s Division at Coca-Cola, a role that gave her direct exposure to how a Fortune 100 firm sources, qualifies, and contracts at scale. That experience is what makes her programmes legible to procurement leaders, not just to inclusion officers. Her non-profit, Pivot Purposefully, applies the same discipline to a harder constituency, formerly incarcerated women founding businesses. Recognition from the Women’s Economic Forum, American Express, Porsche, and the YWCA tracks the same throughline: inclusion treated as a delivery problem. Key speaking topics Supplier diversity programme design Founder pipeline and access for underrepresented entrepreneurs Inclusion as procurement capability Entrepreneurial pitch and storytelling discipline Corporate strategy and innovation at Fortune 100 scale Personal brand and executive presence for senior women Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of supplier diversity at large corporates Procurement and category leaders responsible for diverse sourcing targets Founder networks and accelerator audiences focused on underrepresented entrepreneurs Senior women’s leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy stalls inside procurement and category management Specific programme structures that have moved underrepresented founders into Fortune 500 supply chains A defensible position on inclusion grounded in operating mechanics, not advocacy framing Practical pitch and access standards founders need to clear to win corporate contracts

Why organisations work with Nadja Swarovski Three decades of brand-building inside one of the world’s most recognisable luxury names. She initiated the Swarovski Collective (1999), Swarovski Crystal Palace (2002) and Atelier Swarovski (2007), and oversaw collaborations with more than 200 designers including Alexander McQueen, Zaha Hadid, Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf. Sustainability built into commercial strategy at executive board level, not bolted on as communications. She established Swarovski’s sustainability function in 2012, ran it through 2020, and aligned the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Family-business governance from the inside. She sat on the executive board of a fifth-generation family company through a major repositioning, and can speak credibly to how creative direction, sustainability and commercial discipline coexist at scale. An ecosystem of working relationships across fashion, design, philanthropy and conservation. Built through chairmanship of the Swarovski Foundation, presidency of Fashion Council Germany, and roles at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, FIT Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy’s European Council. Currently CEO of Really Wild Clothing and Managing Partner at Pegasus Private Capital. She is using the same brand-building principles in her own businesses now, with her own capital and her own operational time at stake. Biography highlights First female member of the Executive Board of Swarovski, with responsibility for global brand strategy, communications and sustainability across a business with annual turnover of approximately €3.5 billion. Created and led Swarovski Crystal Palace and Atelier Swarovski, the platforms behind collaborations with Zaha Hadid, Alexander McQueen, Karl Lagerfeld, Viktor & Rolf, Yves Béhar, Tom Dixon and more than 200 other designers. Founded the Swarovski Foundation in 2013, a UK-registered charity supporting culture and creativity, human empowerment and environmental conservation, including the Swarovski Foundation Centre for Learning at the Design Museum in London. Established Swarovski’s Sustainability Department in 2012 and ran sustainability strategy through 2020, aligning the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Currently CEO and majority owner of Really Wild Clothing and Managing Partner of Pegasus Private Capital, a UK investment firm focused on heritage and craft-led brands. Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016), honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts London (2019), Business of Fashion BoF 500 (2020), Positive Luxury Business Leader of the Year (2020). Biography Most heritage luxury brands lose cultural ground when they cannot reconcile preservation with relevance. Swarovski, the Austrian crystal company founded by Daniel Swarovski in 1895, became one of the few heritage houses that did both, through twenty-six years of work led by Nadja Swarovski as the first woman on its executive board. The contribution was structural. She built Swarovski Collective, Swarovski Crystal Palace and Atelier Swarovski as platforms for designers who otherwise had no commercial reason to engage with a crystal supplier. The collaborator list runs to more than two hundred and includes Alexander McQueen, Zaha Hadid, Viktor & Rolf, Karl Lagerfeld and Christopher Kane. Swarovski moved from component supplier to cultural participant, and the brand equity that followed underwrote the broader business. In 2012 she established Swarovski’s sustainability function and ran it through 2020, aligning the company with the UN Global Compact and the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, and embedding ethical sourcing and traceability into a global manufacturing operation. The Swarovski Foundation, which she founded in 2013, made the philanthropic side of that work formal as a UK-registered charity organised around three pillars: culture and creativity, human empowerment, and conserving natural resources. Since leaving the family company at the end of 2021, she has moved from operator inside one company to operator-investor across several. As Managing Partner at Pegasus Private Capital she invests in heritage businesses where craft and traceability function as commercial advantages rather than aesthetic gestures. As CEO of Really Wild Clothing, the British countryside brand she and her husband acquired in 2024, she is rebuilding the supply chain around UK mills including Lovat, Kynoch, Harris Tweed, Lochcarron, Linton and Liberty. The investment thesis is the same one that worked at Swarovski: cultural relevance compounds when the supply chain is real. Key speaking topics Brand strategy in heritage and luxury businesses Sustainability as commercial strategy Creative collaboration as a brand asset Family-business governance and next-generation leadership Philanthropy and corporate foundation design Women’s leadership in legacy companies Ideal for CEOs and executive boards of heritage, luxury and consumer brands Chief Brand Officers, CMOs and creative directors managing cultural relevance Chief Sustainability Officers integrating ESG commitments into commercial strategy Family business owners and next-generation leaders preparing for repositioning or succession Audience outcomes A specific account of how creative collaboration generated brand equity at Swarovski, traced through the named platforms that built it. Examples of sustainability translated into operating decisions across product, supply chain, governance and reporting, with the UN frameworks the company aligned to. Insider knowledge of family-business governance at executive board level during a major brand repositioning. Honest assessment of which sustainability and brand trade-offs are commercially real, drawn from current investment decisions at Pegasus Private Capital.

Why organisations work with Nathalie Nahai Her psychological model for how digital persuasion builds or erodes consumer trust is grounded in a decade of published research, not reactions to recent AI headlines, which gives marketing and strategy teams a diagnostic framework rather than a new concern to manage. Business Unusual directly addresses the commercial consequences of values misalignment, applying the frameworks of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the question of why consumers switch, stay and trust: with practical implications for brand, marketing and leadership strategy. She co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate the values they actually hold, converting a strategic abstraction into a usable tool that survives the board conversation. She translates the ethics of AI and persuasive technology into a commercially legible argument that boards can act on, rather than a compliance burden that legal teams manage. Webs of Influence, published by Pearson and translated into seven languages, is used by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a foundational text on digital consumer behaviour, meaning her frameworks are often already the shared language of the audiences she addresses. Biography highlights Author of Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (Pearson), translated into seven languages and adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard text on digital consumer behaviour Author of Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, with named contributors including Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson Co-created TheValuesMap.com (2021) with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientific values-assessment instrument available to organisations Guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI, teaching “Transversal Vision of Artificial Intelligence” Member of the BIMA Human Insights Council, the representative body for digital and tech in the UK Covered in and contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph; hosted the Guardian Changing Media Summit Biography Nathalie Nahai coined the term web psychology in 2011, defining it as the empirical study of how online environments influence human attitudes and behaviours. At the time, most organisations had powerful digital tools and no psychological framework for understanding what those tools were doing to the people using them. Her book Webs of Influence (Pearson), translated into seven languages, built that framework into a practical text adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard reference on digital consumer behaviour. Her follow-up, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, extended the argument into harder commercial territory – specifically, how organisations sustain consumer trust when digital markets, values and expectations all shift at once. The book drew contributions from Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson, and applies self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the practical question of what makes brands resilient rather than brittle. In 2021 she co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate their actual values. The ability to deploy psychology as a practical tool – not just a conceptual frame – distinguishes her approach from most advisory work in this space. Her analysis has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph. She has lectured at Cambridge, UCL, Lund and Hult business schools and addressed major platforms including SXSW, the Web Summit and the Guardian Changing Media Summit. She serves as guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI and is a member of the BIMA Human Insights Council. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and digital influence Ethics of AI and persuasive technology Values-led brand resilience Human behaviour and digital trust Eudaimonic consumerism and shifting consumer expectations Web psychology and online decision-making Behavioural science applied to marketing and product design Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams navigating the ethics and commercial implications of AI-driven personalisation Boards and senior leadership teams seeking a psychological framework for brand resilience and consumer trust strategy Digital product and technology teams applying persuasive design with ethical accountability Transformation and strategy leads working to align organisational values with commercial outcomes Audience outcomes A working model for understanding how AI and persuasive technology affect consumer trust and decision-making, grounded in published research rather than trend observation Practical application of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism frameworks to brand, marketing and customer experience strategy A diagnostic approach to identifying where persuasive technology is eroding rather than building customer relationships Clarity on the commercial case for values-led strategy, with evidence from consumer behaviour research A set of questions to carry back into product, marketing and leadership conversations about how technology is actually affecting the people it is designed to serve

Why organisations work with Neri Karra Sillaman Her eight-principle longevity framework in Pioneers (Wiley, 2025) is built on original academic research rather than case-study observation – it provides strategic leaders with a testable, applicable structure for long-term competitive positioning, not an anecdote collection. Pioneers was named Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025 and a Financial Times Readers’ Choice – the two most credible independent signals in management thinking, giving buyers a defensible basis for the engagement beyond the speaker bureau description. She runs a manufacturing business with 25 years of partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as both a B Corp and a Positive Luxury venture. The argument she makes about sustainable, values-driven longevity is one she has applied and revised under commercial pressure. Her Cambridge doctoral research used her own family business as a primary case study – an insider position on immigrant entrepreneurship that no other management scholar in this space holds, and which is the source of her most counterintuitive findings: that constraint, outsider perspective, and community cohesion function as durable competitive advantages. Her academic research has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, while her practitioner work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and the Financial Times – giving her credibility across board, executive, and academic settings. Biography highlights Professor of Practice and Entrepreneurship Expert at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford PhD from the University of Cambridge; doctoral research on born-global firms and immigrant entrepreneurship Author of Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs (Wiley, 2025) – Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025, Financial Times Readers’ Choice, and Next Big Idea Club Must Read Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and recipient of the Thinkers50 Radar Award 2025 Co-founder of Neri Karra, a luxury leather goods brand with 25+ years of manufacturing partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as a B Corp and Positive Luxury venture Founder of Moda Métiers, a fashion and luxury business consultancy Academic research published in Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Contributed articles to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company; covered by the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC, Newsweek, Monocle, Bloomberg, and Vogue Business Biography The question of why some companies survive for decades while others peak and fade is one of the most commercially consequential questions in strategy – and one of the least rigorously studied. Neri Karra Sillaman spent two decades approaching it through an unusual lens: the immigrant entrepreneurs behind brands including Chobani, WhatsApp, Duolingo, and PayPal, who built iconic and enduring businesses while starting with limited capital, no institutional networks, and no margin for failure. That research, rooted in her Cambridge doctoral work and developed across her faculty career at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, produced Pioneers (Wiley, 2025) – an eight-principle framework for business longevity drawn from the structural choices that explain immigrant entrepreneurial success. The book was named Thinkers50 Best New Management Book of 2025 and a Financial Times Readers’ Choice. She holds roles as both Professor of Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship Expert at Oxford, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024. The practitioner dimension matters here. She is co-founder of Neri Karra, a luxury leather goods business with 25+ years of manufacturing partnerships with leading Italian fashion labels, recognised as a B Corp and a Positive Luxury venture. The principles she applies in the boardroom and lecture hall – around purpose, constraint, community, and sustainable growth – are ones she has had to test, revise, and defend commercially over the same period she was researching them. Her writing appears in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Newsweek. Her academic research has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Organization, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. She has contributed commentary to the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC, Monocle, Bloomberg, and Vogue Business, and has delivered TEDx talks on creativity, resilience, and entrepreneurship. Born in Bulgaria, she fled as a child refugee to Turkey before making her way through the University of Miami and Cambridge to the research that has defined her career – and which gives her a lived understanding of the very principles she argues make businesses last. Key speaking topics Business longevity and long-term competitive strategy Immigrant entrepreneurship and outsider advantage Sustainable growth and purpose-driven enterprise Fashion and luxury entrepreneurship Iconic brand building and brand durability Creativity and innovation in organisations Resilience as a strategic asset Ideal for CEOs, founders, and boards engaged in long-term strategy and business durability reviews Chief Strategy Officers and senior commercial teams seeking research-grounded frameworks for sustainable growth Fashion, luxury, and consumer goods executives navigating brand longevity, sustainability pressures, and global expansion Executive education and MBA audiences at business schools Audience outcomes A concrete eight-principle framework for what drives business longevity, applicable across sectors not limited to fashion or luxury A reframed understanding of constraint, outsider perspective, and community as structural competitive advantages rather than liabilities Specific strategic principles drawn from the companies behind Chobani, WhatsApp, Duolingo, and PayPal – examined analytically, not biographically Clearer language for board and leadership conversations about the gap between short-term performance and lasting competitive advantage A research-grounded basis for evaluating whether current strategic decisions are building for durability or optimising for the next cycle

Why organisations work with Nicholas Jeffery Four ISP CEO and COO seats across Hostmark, Worldport, PSINet Europe and Uniserve Communications, giving him a working view of what actually happens inside a telecoms or managed service business when the model shifts. A second career on the investor side as Head of Investment Planning and Strategy for the TMT Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where capital allocation decisions in technology and media were made across EMEA. Direct operating experience of digital transformation as a SaaS COO at VIMtrek and Vizerra, in Building Information Management and 3D virtualisation, and as the executive behind Digital Realty’s EMEA sales and marketing strategy. Co-creator of Buzzmetrics, the social media intelligence business acquired by Reed, with a forty-year line of sight across branding from 1980s corporate identity work to the current AI reset. A geopolitical voice on Central Europe through his “Danube Dispatches” column at WBN News, which gives boards with Hungary, EU or CEE exposure a senior commercial reader of the political terrain. Biography highlights CEO of Uniserve Communications Corporation from March 2017; led the listed share price from CND$0.04 to CND$0.67 within nine months of joining. European MD/COO and CEO of internet service providers including Hostmark, Worldport, PSINet Europe and Uniserve. Head of Investment Planning and Strategy, TMT Group, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). COO of VIMtrek and Vizerra, SaaS firms in architectural 3D virtualisation and Building Information Management software. Co-creator of Buzzmetrics, the social media measurement business acquired by Reed. Founding and Managing Partner of Impresario Partners International; Chairman of Ventree Innovations Inc.; author of the Danube Dispatches column at WBN News. Biography PSINet Europe was in administration when its European operations had to be rebuilt as a managed services business. Nicholas Jeffery was one of the executives who ran that kind of work across four internet service providers, including Hostmark, Worldport and, later, Uniserve Communications, where as CEO from March 2017 the listed share price moved from CND$0.04 to CND$0.67 within nine months. The unusual part of his career is that the operating CEO work sits alongside an investor seat. As Head of Investment Planning and Strategy for the TMT Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he was inside the capital allocation conversations on telecoms, media and technology investments across EMEA. Boards rarely meet a single adviser who has been both buyer and operator on the same kinds of assets. The second strand of his work is brand and customer. He co-created Buzzmetrics, the social media intelligence business later acquired by Reed, ran sales and marketing strategy for Digital Realty across EMEA, and has now turned his forty-year branding line into a commentary on how AI is reshaping the discipline. The talk “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: A 40-Year Branding Veteran Embraces AI,” delivered at WINK 2025, sits in this strand. He works between Vancouver, Budapest, London and Kampala as Founding and Managing Partner of Impresario Partners International and Chairman of Ventree Innovations Inc. From Budapest he writes the Danube Dispatches column at WBN News, a serious commercial reader’s account of Hungarian politics and Central European risk in the run-up to the 2026 Hungarian election. He was nominated for the Global Business and Authors’ Award UK 2024. Key speaking topics Digital transformation in telecoms, media and technology businesses Branding strategy under AI Scaling, restructuring and turning around technology companies Investment strategy in TMT Building Information Management and SaaS commercialisation Central European political and commercial risk Ideal for TMT, telecoms and media company boards and executive teams running through transformation or restructuring Private equity, venture and infrastructure investors with TMT or CEE exposure CMOs and brand leaders rethinking marketing operations under generative AI Boards with Hungary, EU accession state or wider Central European commercial exposure Audience outcomes A working operator’s account of what changes inside a telecoms or SaaS business when a transformation plan meets the P&L An investor-side perspective on how TMT capital allocation decisions get made and where they fail A practical view on how the branding discipline is being reorganised by AI, drawn from four decades inside the function A senior commercial reading of Central European political risk for boards exposed to Hungary and the wider region

Why organisations work with Nirmalya Kumar He has run group strategy inside one of the world’s largest conglomerates. As a member of the Tata Sons Group Executive Council from 2013 to 2016, he was responsible for group-level strategy and customer centricity across Tata’s operating companies. His Marketing as Strategy thesis, published by Harvard Business Press, is the reference text for CEOs and CMOs trying to elevate marketing from a campaign function to a profit-and-loss instrument. Brand Breakout, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, codifies eight specific routes by which emerging-market brands take share from Western incumbents, including the Asian tortoise route and B2B-to-B2C migration. It is one of the few books on the subject grounded in named cases rather than generic globalisation theory. Private Label Strategy gives executive teams a worked playbook for competing with retailer brands, an issue that returns to the boardroom every time a downturn compresses margins in consumer goods. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame induction in 2017, the AMA Mahajan Award in 2021, and roughly twenty thousand Google Scholar citations place his work in the upper tier of academic marketing thinkers actively booked by industry. Biography highlights Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing, Singapore Management University; Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute. Member, Group Executive Council of Tata Sons (2013 to 2016), reporting to Chairman Cyrus Mistry, with responsibility for group strategy. Former Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Aditya Birla India Centre at London Business School (2003 to 2013). Author of eight books, including Marketing as Strategy and Private Label Strategy, both Harvard Business Press; and Brand Breakout (Palgrave Macmillan). Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2017); awarded the Thinkers50 Global Village Award (2011); awarded the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy (2021). Board service across ACC, Bata India, Tata Chemicals, UltraTech Cement, and Zensar. Biography Marketing inside large organisations has been losing strategic ground for two decades, and the cost is now visible at the top line. CEOs see commoditisation, retailer power, and emerging-market competitors moving faster than their own brand portfolios. Kumar’s central argument, set out in Marketing as Strategy (Harvard Business Press, 2004), is that the answer is not better campaigns but a redefined role for marketing as the architect of customer-driven growth across the organisation. His subsequent work develops that argument against specific commercial pressures. Private Label Strategy, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp at Harvard Business Press, addressed the structural rise of retailer brands. Brand Breakout, published as Western incumbents woke up to Tata, Lenovo, Haier, and Mahindra, mapped eight named routes by which emerging-market brands cross into global markets. Clash, on Amazon versus Walmart, examined the platform-versus-retail confrontation now defining consumer business. The work is reinforced by an operating record. From 2013 to 2016 Kumar sat on the Tata Sons Group Executive Council under Cyrus Mistry, leading group strategy across one of the most diversified industrial portfolios in the world. He has held faculty positions at London Business School, IMD, and Kellogg, and currently holds the Lee Kong Chian Chair at Singapore Management University. The recognition follows from the substance: Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, the Global Village Award in 2011, the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy in 2021, and a citation record above twenty thousand on Google Scholar. For boards weighing how to make marketing pay back its budget, his work is the operating manual. Key speaking topics Marketing as strategy Private label and retailer power Brand-building from emerging markets Competing with low-cost rivals Customer centricity in conglomerates Strategy and innovation in India Platform versus retail competition Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders seeking to position marketing as a P&L discipline CEOs and boards of consumer goods, retail, and industrial groups facing margin compression from private label or emerging-market entrants Executive teams in Indian and Asian conglomerates planning international brand strategy Strategy and corporate development leaders working on portfolio decisions and customer-centric reorganisation Audience outcomes A working definition of what marketing must control inside the organisation to drive profitable growth, beyond the campaign function A framework of named routes by which emerging-market brands take share from incumbents, with worked cases A practical view of when to fight, partner with, or build a private label, drawn from the Harvard Business Press study A Tata-scale account of how group strategy and customer focus get implemented across diversified portfolios A sharper read on the Amazon-versus-Walmart structural shift and what it means for consumer companies