Political Risk & Policy speakers

Why organisations work with Rebecca Harding A working command of the machinery of trade finance and trade data, built through founding Coriolis Technologies and serving as Chief Economist at UK Finance, that few geopolitics speakers can match. The author of The World at Economic War, selected by Martin Wolf in his Financial Times best economics books of 2025, with a defined argument about how the market system itself has become a tool of great-power conflict. A current operating role: CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, which puts her inside the institutions building the new trade and security architecture. Equally credible in a C-suite keynote, a regulator-level workshop, or a wargaming session, having designed formats for finance, defence and policy audiences. A specific point of view on sustainable trade and digitalisation, grounded in advisory work with banks, corporates and parliamentary committees rather than in commentary alone. Biography highlights CEO, Centre for Economic Security, leading research on economic threats, supply chain resilience and the weaponisation of trade. Chief Economic Adviser, Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group. Founder and former CEO of Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business serving the trade finance sector, acquired by TradeSun. Author of The World at Economic War (2025) and co-author of The Weaponization of Trade (2017), published by London Publishing Partnership. Former Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Regular contributor to BBC, Bloomberg, Sky News, CNBC, BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio on trade and economic security. Biography Trade is now a security question. Sanctions regimes, export controls, the digitalisation of payments and the contest over critical minerals have collapsed the old boundary between commercial trade policy and national security. Boards and finance ministries are trying to make capital, supplier and counterparty decisions inside a system whose rules are being rewritten in real time. Rebecca Harding’s career has been built on this seam. She is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, two institutions designed for exactly this terrain. Earlier she founded Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business that gave the trade finance sector a clearer view of risk in cross-border flows, and served as Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Her argument is set out in The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy, published in 2025 and selected by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times among his best economics books of the year. The thesis, developed from her earlier book The Weaponization of Trade with Jack Harding, is that the market system itself has become a means of great-power competition, and that defence, finance and trade can no longer be governed as separate domains. For senior audiences this matters because the operational consequences are concrete. They show up in supplier dependencies, in sanctions exposure, in the cost and direction of trade finance, and in where capital can credibly be deployed for the next decade. Harding works through those questions with banks, corporates, regulators and parliamentary committees, and her keynotes, panels and wargaming sessions are designed to leave decision-makers with a clearer read of what economic security requires of them. Key speaking topics Economic security and the weaponisation of trade Geopolitics and geoeconomics Trade finance and supply chain finance Supply chain resilience and reshoring Digital and sustainable trade Defence and security finance Macroeconomic outlook and global markets Ideal for Boards and executive committees of banks, insurers and large corporates with cross-border exposure Heads of trade finance, treasury, supply chain and procurement Policy, regulatory and public affairs leaders working on sanctions, export controls and economic security Defence, security and resilience investors and the institutions financing them Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of economic security and what it asks of capital allocation, supplier strategy and trade finance A read on how sanctions, export controls and reshoring are reshaping cross-border risk for specific sectors A framework for separating geopolitical noise from the structural shifts that change long-range plans A view of where digital and sustainable trade infrastructure is heading, and the implications for banks and corporates Questions and pressure tests that a leadership team can take straight into its strategy and risk discussions

Why organisations work with Reged Ahmad Two decades of live international news at the BBC and Guardian Australia, which means a panel chair who can run a difficult conversation on geopolitics or US politics without losing the room. Active editorial role as Host and Senior Producer of Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast, so the questions she asks come from the same daily news cycle the audience is reading that morning. Experience anchoring BBC World News TV and BBC World Service Radio, including The Newsroom and the Global News Podcast, which translates directly into composure on a live stage with a corporate audience. Bilateral perspective on Australia, the UK and the United States, useful for events with leadership audiences spanning APAC, EMEA and North America. Voice over and event hosting practice that means scripted segments, sponsor reads and award announcements are handled to broadcast standard. Biography highlights Host and Senior Producer, Full Story, Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast, with co-host Nour Haydar. Co-host, Decoding America, Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast, with Jonathan Yerushalmy. Former international news anchor, BBC World News TV. Former presenter, BBC World Service Radio, including The Newsroom and the Global News Podcast. Former presenter and senior producer, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney. Bachelor of Media, Macquarie University, Sydney. Biography International news has rarely been harder to chair. A single panel on the global economy now has to take in US political volatility, sanctions exposure, supply chain decoupling and a media environment where every claim is contested. The skill that the room needs is editorial: the ability to keep a conversation moving while keeping it accurate. That is the working day of a senior broadcast journalist. Reged Ahmad has spent twenty years inside it, first in Australian community radio, then at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, and then in London at the BBC, where she anchored BBC World News TV and presented BBC World Service Radio programmes including The Newsroom and the Global News Podcast. She now sits at Guardian Australia, where she is Host and Senior Producer of Full Story, the masthead’s daily news podcast, with co-host Nour Haydar. She also co-hosts Decoding America with Guardian Australia’s US site editor Jonathan Yerushalmy, a brief that keeps her close to US politics, polling and policy as they move. For a corporate audience, the value is the chair, not the keynote. She is booked to host conferences, moderate executive panels and run Q and A on stage. The benefit is a conversation that holds together under live conditions: a journalist’s instinct for the next question, a presenter’s discipline on time, and a working knowledge of the global news cycle the audience cares about. Key speaking topics International news and current affairs Geopolitics and world affairs US politics and policy Global economic trends and markets Conference hosting and event moderation Panel chairing and on-stage interviews Media, journalism and the public sphere Ideal for Corporate conferences and leadership summits requiring a senior moderator across geopolitics, economics and US politics. Boards, executive committees and investor events running closed-door panels on global risk. Industry awards, gala dinners and brand events that need a broadcast-standard host. Communications, public affairs and ESG functions running stakeholder events with mixed media and policy audiences. Audience outcomes A panel that stays on time, on topic and on the record, with sharper answers from senior speakers. A clean editorial through-line that an audience can recall and repeat after the session. Difficult or sensitive questions handled in a way that protects the speaker, the brand and the agenda. A live event that reads at broadcast standard for film crews, sponsors and internal communications teams.

Why organisations work with Richard Haass His “nonpolarity” framework – first published in Foreign Affairs and developed in A World in Disarray – gives leadership teams a structural vocabulary for geopolitical risk that goes beyond the U.S.-China binary and accounts for the dozens of state and non-state actors now shaping outcomes. He has not only analysed diplomatic crises – he has chaired them. His role as chair of the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which provided the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, gives him practitioner credibility that no purely academic or analytical peer can replicate. Twenty years at the head of the Council on Foreign Relations means organisations gain access to the framework that has shaped U.S. policy thinking across four administrations – not a commentary on that framework, but the source of it. He served inside U.S. foreign policy across four presidencies and both parties – at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House – and can translate the actual mechanics of how foreign policy decisions are made into the strategic implications for non-government actors operating across borders. His New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations demonstrates a capacity rare among foreign policy figures: the ability to make complex geopolitical argument legible and actionable for non-specialist audiences, including boards with no background in international relations. Biography highlights President of the Council on Foreign Relations (2003–2023); now President Emeritus – twenty years leading the United States’ most influential foreign policy institution Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell Senate-confirmed Ambassador; U.S. Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan Chaired the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement Presidential Citizens Medal; State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award; Tipperary International Peace Award; diplomatic decorations from South Korea and Japan Rhodes Scholar; DPhil, Oxford University; formerly on faculty at Harvard Kennedy School of Government Author or editor of sixteen books, including A World in Disarray, the New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations, and the originating Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners; Distinguished University Scholar, NYU School of Professional Studies Biography The post-war international order – the system of alliances, institutions, and rules that governed trade, security, and diplomacy for seven decades – is no longer doing what it was designed to do. For boards operating across borders, that is not an abstract observation. It changes what capital commitments are credible, which supply chains are secure, and which alliances will hold under pressure. Richard Haass led the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty years, shaping U.S. foreign policy debate across the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Before that, he was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. His government service spans four presidencies and both parties – beginning at the Pentagon under Carter, continuing at the State Department under Reagan, and reaching the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush, where he received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His intellectual contribution is specific. In his Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” and the book A World in Disarray, he argues that the current era is neither unipolar nor multipolar – it is nonpolar. Power is distributed across dozens of state and non-state actors, alliances are conditional rather than fixed, and the mechanisms that once imposed order are no longer sufficient. For organisations that have built strategy on the assumption of a rules-based international system, that argument has direct consequences for how risk is modelled and where long-term commitments are made. His experience is not only analytical. In 2013, he chaired the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland that formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement – making him one of the few people in the world who has both theorised about diplomatic complexity and navigated it at the table. His most recent book, The Bill of Obligations, a New York Times bestseller, extends the argument into democratic governance: what the erosion of civic responsibility means for the political stability on which international order ultimately depends. Key speaking topics Nonpolarity and the fracture of the post-war international order U.S. foreign policy and geopolitical risk Diplomacy, conflict resolution, and negotiation Transatlantic relations and the future of alliances Russia-Ukraine and the reshaping of European security Middle East dynamics and regional instability American democracy, civic obligation, and domestic political risk Geopolitical implications for global business and investment Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams with material exposure to geopolitical risk Financial services, asset management, and investment leadership requiring structured country and political risk assessment Global corporations navigating multi-market operations, trade exposure, or supply chain complexity Government affairs, public policy, and strategic foresight leadership Audience outcomes A structural framework – “nonpolarity” – for understanding why the old geopolitical playbook is no longer reliable, and what the distributed power landscape actually looks like Clarity on the strategic implications of specific flashpoints – Russia-Ukraine, U.S.-China competition, Middle East instability – beyond event-by-event commentary Understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is made, where it is likely to go, and what that means for organisations operating across borders A clearer picture of how domestic political instability in democratic societies feeds into international risk and affects the conditions under which institutions and agreements hold Frameworks for scenario planning in a nonpolar environment, where alliances and trade rules are situational rather than fixed

Why organisations work with Rick Kelsey A working broadcaster, not a hired host. Kelsey is currently on air at Times Radio and BBC Business, which means he interviews real cabinet ministers and CEOs in his day job and brings the same posture to a corporate stage. Twelve years inside BBC newsrooms, including World Service and Newsbeat, plus editorial leadership of the Newscast podcast through the pandemic where audience grew by over 30 percent. Genuine subject command in personal finance and energy. He has written hundreds of BBC articles on mortgages, pensions, interest rates and the green-energy transition, so he can host a finance or sustainability brief without notes. Audience-building credibility outside corporate stages. As a presenter on The Running Channel, a YouTube channel of over 700,000 subscribers, he understands how to keep a non-captive audience listening, which translates directly to internal events. A track record across awards formats that punish weak hosts: the LEAF Awards, RFIx Financial Awards and European Hospitality Awards. Biography highlights Presenter at Times Radio, BBC Business and Spotify, covering personal finance, politics and energy. Twelve years at the BBC across television, radio and online, including World Service and Newsbeat. Edited the BBC’s Newscast podcast through the COVID-19 pandemic, with audience growth of over 30 percent. Co-host of The Running Channel on YouTube, with more than 700,000 subscribers. Author of hundreds of BBC personal-finance articles on mortgages, savings, pensions and energy bills. Hosted the LEAF Awards, RFIx Financial Awards and Gala Dinner, and the European Hospitality Awards. Biography Most corporate stages fail in the same way. The host is too cautious to push, the panel runs to the brief, and the audience leaves with a cleaner version of what they already believed. The fix is rarely a more polished MC. It is someone who interviews for a living and treats the stage as a newsroom. Rick Kelsey is that profile. He presents at Times Radio, BBC Business and Spotify, and spent twelve years on BBC staff across World Service and Newsbeat before leaving in 2022. Through the pandemic he edited Newscast, the BBC’s flagship politics podcast, and is credited with audience growth of more than 30 percent during that period. His specialist territory is personal finance and energy. He has written hundreds of BBC articles on mortgages, savings, pensions, interest rates and the green transition, and has interviewed UK prime ministers across multiple cycles. That base means a financial-services or utilities brief does not need scripting; he can take the room into the substance and out again. Outside the BBC he co-hosts The Running Channel, a YouTube property of more than 700,000 subscribers. Combined with awards-night work for the LEAF Awards, the RFIx Financial Awards and the European Hospitality Awards, the result is a host who can carry a 90-minute live show, keep an executive panel honest, and read when the room needs the next question rather than a longer answer. Key speaking topics Event hosting and panel moderation Awards-night presenting Personal finance and cost of living Mortgages, savings and interest rates Energy transition and renewable energy UK politics and policy Broadcast journalism and media Ideal for Internal communications and brand teams running town halls, leadership offsites and customer events. Financial services and consumer-finance audiences where a host needs to speak the subject fluently. Energy, utilities and sustainability conferences requiring a moderator across solar, wind and hydrogen briefs. Industry awards nights where the host carries the room from open to close. Audience outcomes A live event that holds executive attention from open to close, with crisp transitions and on-time running. Panels that produce something the audience did not already know, because the moderator pushes past the prepared answer. A finance or energy session translated into language a mixed corporate audience can act on. A presenter the audience associates with the BBC and Times brands, lifting the perceived production value of the event.

Why organisations work with Ritula Shah Fifteen years anchoring BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight gives her the editorial reflexes to keep a senior panel honest under time pressure, on the record, without losing the audience. A working seat on the RUSI Advisory Board means she walks into defence, security and geopolitics briefings already inside the conversation, not learning it from a brief. Reporting experience from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil and Jordan gives her first-hand reference points when a panel drifts into abstraction on foreign policy or human rights. She is one of a small number of UK broadcasters trusted by ministers, regulators and dissenting voices to chair a discussion that needs to be both serious and broadcast-quality. Her ambassadorial work with the British Asian Trust and trusteeship of INIVA make her a credible host for organisations who want representation handled without performance. Biography highlights Lead presenter, The World Tonight, BBC Radio 4 (15 years, to 2023). Former presenter, The Real Story (BBC World Service), Woman’s Hour, The World Today, One to One. Current weekday-evening presenter, Calm Classics, Classic FM. Advisory Board member, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Ambassador, British Asian Trust; trustee, INIVA. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Warwick (2019). Biography The World Tonight is the BBC Radio 4 programme senior leaders, diplomats and ministers tend to listen to on the drive home. Ritula Shah presented it for fifteen years. That fact alone places her in a small group of UK broadcasters who have spent a working career interrogating finance ministers, foreign secretaries, sanctioned oligarchs, generals and dissidents on the record, in real time, with no second take. The geographical footprint matters here. She has reported from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil, Jordan, Finland and Germany, and covered the Soviet collapse, 9/11 from New York, multiple US and UK elections and the slow grind of Brexit. When a panel on supply chains, sanctions or political risk drifts into theory, she pulls it back to a place she has actually been. The think-tank work is not decorative. Shah sits on the Advisory Board of RUSI, the world’s oldest defence and security institute, which means she chairs geopolitics and security sessions already inside the institutional conversation rather than reading in. She is also an ambassador for the British Asian Trust, a trustee of INIVA, and an honorary Doctor of Letters of the University of Warwick. For organisations, the practical offer is rarer than a keynote. She is a broadcaster who can take a sensitive board conversation, a regulator panel, a closed-room briefing on China exposure or a high-profile awards ceremony, and run it at the standard of a Radio 4 broadcast. The room hears something true, the recording is usable, and the senior speakers do not feel ambushed. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the multipolar world International affairs and foreign policy Defence and national security News literacy and trust in media Inclusion, identity and belonging in public life Conference, panel and awards moderation Board-level event chairing Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning a geopolitical, sanctions or China-exposure session Defence, security, foreign policy and policy-research convenings Awards ceremonies and flagship annual conferences requiring a broadcast-grade host Regulators, professional bodies and universities running on-the-record panels with public figures Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of where the multipolar world is actually moving, beyond headline framing Better-quality contributions from senior panellists, because the questions are sharper and the chairing is firmer A working sense of how to read news critically in an environment of declining trust and rising misinformation Confidence that a difficult conversation, on geopolitics, identity or institutional reform, can be held in public without becoming theatre

Why organisations work with Robert Mazur Twenty-seven years across IRS Criminal Investigation, US Customs and the DEA gives him a breadth of federal financial-crime experience that is rare in the speaker circuit and specifically relevant to banking and regulated audiences. Operation C-Chase, his two-year undercover infiltration of Pablo Escobar’s money-laundering network and BCCI, one of the largest private banks in the world at the time, is one of the most studied financial-crime cases in history, and it is his case to tell. The Infiltrator, his New York Times bestseller, was adapted into a 2016 feature film starring Bryan Cranston, which gives audiences a shared cultural reference point before the session begins. His court certification as a money-laundering expert in the US and Canada means his material holds up in front of compliance, legal and risk audiences who will test it against their own casework. He combines war-story delivery with technical specificity, which is useful for organisations that need to energise a compliance programme without sacrificing the substance. Biography highlights Former US federal agent, 27-year career across IRS Criminal Investigation, US Customs Service and DEA Led Operation C-Chase, the mid-1980s undercover investigation of Pablo Escobar’s money-laundering network and BCCI Undercover alias «Robert Musella» for two years inside a $20 billion global banking fraud Court-certified money-laundering expert in the United States and Canada Author of The Infiltrator, New York Times bestseller, adapted into a 2016 feature film starring Bryan Cranston Author of second memoir The Betrayal Biography The Bank of Credit and Commerce International had $20 billion in assets and operations across more than 70 countries when Robert Mazur, posing as New Jersey businessman «Robert Musella», spent two years inside its money-laundering operations. Operation C-Chase, the US government infiltration he led, ultimately produced one of the most consequential financial-crime prosecutions of the twentieth century and the collapse of BCCI itself. The same investigation reached Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, which was using the bank to move drug proceeds through the global financial system. His route to that case was a 27-year federal career that ran through IRS Criminal Investigation, the US Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Mazur is court-certified as a money-laundering expert in both the United States and Canada, which gives his analysis the standing to be cited in compliance programmes rather than simply admired in a keynote. The public record of the work is extensive. The Infiltrator, his bestselling memoir, was adapted into the 2016 feature film of the same name starring Bryan Cranston. His second memoir, The Betrayal, continues the inside account of how undercover operations against narcotics and money launderers are actually run, and where institutional complicity makes them possible. For global banks, compliance functions, regulators, law-enforcement audiences and corporate risk teams, the value proposition is direct. Mazur does not speak about financial crime; he speaks as someone whose work closed one of the largest laundering operations in financial history. The sessions combine the specific mechanics of how criminal networks move money with a clear-eyed view of what banks consistently fail to catch, and why. Key speaking topics Money laundering and the anatomy of financial crime Undercover investigations and infiltration methodology Banking compliance, AML and the weaknesses professional launderers exploit Drug cartels, organised crime and the global financial system Lessons from the BCCI and Pablo Escobar investigations Risk, governance and executive accountability for financial crime Ideal for Global banks, payment firms and fintech leadership teams strengthening financial-crime programmes Compliance, risk, audit and governance functions running internal training or board briefings Financial services regulators, supervisors and law-enforcement audiences Corporate risk leadership teams and boards exposed to financial-crime reputational risk Audience outcomes A detailed, first-hand view of how professional money launderers assess and exploit banking institutions Specific mechanisms used in the BCCI and Pablo Escobar cases, framed for modern compliance audiences A clearer read of where current AML and KYC approaches still fall short Practical prompts for internal programme design drawn from undercover investigative experience A reference point in The Infiltrator that leadership teams can share with wider compliance staff

Why organisations work with Robert Peston He is one of a very small group of UK journalists who have held the top political and economic editorial roles at both the BBC and ITV, and senior banking and political roles at the Financial Times. Few speakers can map Westminster and the City from the inside in the same conversation. He broke the Northern Rock liquidity story in September 2007; the scoop Press Gazette ranks among the greatest in British journalism. Boards get a speaker who has personally reported the front edge of the UK financial crisis, not a commentator describing it. His co-authored 2024 book, How To Run Britain, sets out a specific reform programme for the UK economy and state. He arrives with a published thesis, not a generic talk. He brings a current, weekly read on the government, the opposition and the markets, drawn from his ITV programme Peston and the podcast The Rest Is Money. Briefings are framed for what leadership teams need to decide next quarter, not for general interest. He founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed thousands of senior speakers into UK state schools. Organisations working with him are working with a journalist who has built an institution. Biography highlights ITV Political Editor and presenter of Peston on ITV. Former BBC Business Editor, 2006 to 2014, and BBC Economics Editor, 2014 to 2015. Former Financial Times Political Editor, Banking Editor and founder of the FT investigations unit. Co-host with Steph McGovern of The Rest Is Money, a leading UK business and economics podcast. Author of seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, WTF?, The Whistleblower and How To Run Britain (with Kishan Koria, 2024). Founder of Speakers for Schools, rebranded Futures For All in 2025. Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and twice winner of Scoop of the Year; Wincott Prize winner for financial journalism. Biography The Northern Rock emergency loan from the Bank of England was reported on the BBC on 13 September 2007. The reporter on the story was Robert Peston, then Business Editor of the BBC, and Press Gazette later listed the scoop as one of the greatest in British journalism. It is the moment that defined a career already deep inside UK banking and government. Peston’s editorial track record is unusually broad for a UK journalist. He has held the top business and economics roles at the BBC, the Political Editor and Banking Editor roles at the Financial Times, and now the Political Editor role at ITV, where he also presents the weekly programme Peston. With Steph McGovern, he co-hosts The Rest Is Money, one of the most-listened-to business podcasts in the UK. The published work matters. Seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, How Do We Fix This Mess?, WTF? and the 2024 reform programme, How To Run Britain, written with Kishan Koria, set out a clear and specific argument about how the British government, banking and public finances need to change. He is one of the few national broadcast journalists who has paired live reporting with a substantive policy thesis. Outside journalism, he founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed senior business, political and cultural figures into thousands of UK state-school talks since 2010. The Royal Television Society named him Journalist of the Year and Specialist Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the credit crunch; he has also won the Wincott Prize for financial journalism. He is among the very few UK speakers who can describe the British political economy from inside the BBC, ITV, the FT and the Treasury press lobby. Key speaking topics UK political and economic outlook Westminster, government and policy direction Banking, financial regulation and financial crisis Public finances, tax and fiscal policy Inequality and the social contract in Britain Geopolitics and UK exposure Leadership in political and institutional reform Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting UK capital allocation, hiring and investment plans Banking, asset management and insurance leadership audiences Public affairs, policy and government relations leads Annual conferences seeking a senior, named UK political and economic read Audience outcomes A current, named read on the UK government, the opposition and the likely policy direction A clear view of where banking, fiscal and regulatory risk sits for UK-exposed organisations An informed sense of the political and social pressures shaping the British economy Direct answers to leadership questions through Q and A with a working political editor

Why organisations work with Robert Reich He has been both architect and analyst: cabinet-level policymaker under President Bill Clinton, and one of America’s most prolific public economists since the 1980s. Few speakers can read a regulatory environment from inside the cabinet room and from outside it, backed by three decades of published work. The “symbolic analysts” framework from The Work of Nations (1991), translated into 22 languages, was one of the earliest serious accounts of how globalisation stratifies labour markets. It anticipated the political and economic divisions now reshaping developed economies. He cuts through the false binary of “free market versus big government” that paralyses most boardroom debate on inequality and regulation. He shows that the real question is who the rules serve, and how that determines long-term commercial stability. Inequality Media’s videos and his daily Substack are read and watched by millions, including the political and policy actors whose decisions reshape corporate operating environments. That places him inside the conversation that shapes the political and regulatory climate executives plan around. For close to two decades he taught Berkeley’s largest undergraduate course in public policy, Wealth and Poverty. He brings that teaching ability into senior rooms, leaving audiences with a model they can apply directly to their own commercial environment. Biography highlights 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton (1993-1997), implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act, raising the federal minimum wage, and leading the federal fight against sweatshops and illegal child labour; one of a small number to have served in three presidential administrations across both parties Named by TIME magazine as one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, and ranked sixth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers (both 2008) Author of 18 books, including The Work of Nations (translated into 22 languages), Saving Capitalism, The Common Good, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America (2025) Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; recipient of the 2003 Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize Co-creator with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth of Inequality for All, winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and the 2017 Netflix original Saving Capitalism; subject of the 2025 feature documentary The Last Class, on his final Wealth and Poverty course at UC Berkeley Columnist for The Guardian and Newsweek; co-founder of Inequality Media and the Economic Policy Institute; founding editor of The American Prospect magazine Biography Every market runs on rules: property, contract, bankruptcy, antitrust. Those rules are political artefacts, written by people with specific interests. The question of who writes them, and on whose behalf, has been the through-line of Robert Reich’s work for forty years. Reich served as the 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. During that period he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, raised the federal minimum wage, and led the federal crackdown on sweatshops and illegal child labour. TIME magazine later named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His thinking did not start there. The Work of Nations, published in 1991 and translated into twenty-two languages, set out a thesis that has aged unusually well: globalisation was stratifying labour into three groups, with a minority of “symbolic analysts” capturing most of the gains while routine production and in-person service workers fell behind. The book named the divide that now drives political volatility across developed economies. Saving Capitalism (2015), the Netflix documentary of the same name, and the books that followed pushed the analysis into the politics of regulation: who writes the rules of property, contract, bankruptcy, and antitrust, and on whose behalf. That argument now places him in active conversation with senior policymakers and commercial leaders trying to read the political environment they operate in. His 2025 memoir Coming Up Short debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Key speaking topics Inequality and the future of capitalism Globalisation and the future of work US political economy and economic policy Regulation, antitrust and corporate power Authoritarian populism and democratic reform Labour markets and workforce policy Trade, tariffs and the global economy Ideal for Boards and executive teams in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, technology, energy) where political-economic conditions directly shape strategic options Senior policy and government affairs leaders trying to understand the political environment they are planning around Investor and asset management audiences assessing political risk in developed market economies Corporate convenings and leadership programmes setting commercial strategy against a longer political-economic horizon Audience outcomes A direct line drawn from current US political-economic conditions to the strategic decisions boards now face on regulation and long-term capital allocation An insider account of how the rules of property, contract, antitrust, and bankruptcy actually get written, and how those rules shape competitive position A historical comparison between the present moment and earlier US reform eras (the Progressive era, the New Deal), and the structural shifts each one produced The political-economic distinction between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, and what each path implies for the corporate operating environment

Why organisations work with Rory Cormac He brings archival-grade authority on how states actually conduct covert action, drawn from declassified British and allied intelligence records, not commentary or speculation. His work on the grey zone gives boards a structured way to read sabotage, subversion and information operations as connected forms of state pressure, not isolated incidents. He translates the playbooks of Russian and Chinese covert activity into specific implications for industries exposed to critical infrastructure, supply chains and intellectual property. How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022) is one of the few mainstream studies of secret statecraft to be taken seriously by both academic intelligence scholars and practitioners. Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) reads the British Cold War forgery operations as a working playbook for present-day state disinformation, giving leaders a historical pattern they can apply to current incidents. He has given oral evidence on foreign interference to parliamentary inquiries in both the UK and Australia, and has fronted three Channel 4 documentaries with Richard Aldrich on intelligence and the British state, making him equally credible in front of policy committees, expert rooms and public audiences. Biography highlights Professor of International Relations and lead for security and resilience research at the University of Nottingham, specialising in secret intelligence and covert action. Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; previous Leverhulme and AHRC Fellowships. Author of Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) on state disinformation, How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022), Disrupt and Deny (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Confronting the Colonies (Hurst, 2014). Co-author with Richard J. Aldrich of The Black Door and The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown from Victoria to Diana (Atlantic, 2021). Co-presenter of three Channel 4 documentaries: Spying on the Royals, D-Day: The King who Fooled Hitler, The Queen and the Coup. Has given oral evidence on foreign interference to parliamentary inquiries in the UK and Australia, with regular appearances across national press, radio and television on intelligence matters. Biography Most boards still treat espionage as a film genre. The pipeline interruption, the leaked tender, the social media campaign that crashes a launch, the supplier suddenly entangled in a sanctions investigation: these are read as separate operational problems, not as connected acts of state pressure. The work of Rory Cormac, Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, is to give senior leaders the language and the historical pattern recognition to see them as one problem. Cormac is Professor of International Relations and lead for security and resilience research at the University of Nottingham, specialising in covert action and secret statecraft. His authority is built on archival research into declassified British and allied records, the basis of Disrupt and Deny (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Confronting the Colonies (Hurst, 2014). With Richard J. Aldrich he co-authored The Black Door and The Secret Royals, broadening that material into a wider reading of how states use the hidden hand. How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022) brought the argument into the present. Eleven lessons drawn from a century of secret statecraft, applied to a world of sabotage, ambiguous warfare and adversaries operating just below the threshold of open conflict. Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) extends the work into disinformation directly, using the declassified history of Britain’s Cold War forgery operations to read the mechanics of present-day state influence campaigns. Both books sit at the centre of current debates on the grey zone among scholars and practitioners alike. Beyond the academy he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a former Leverhulme and AHRC Fellow, and a co-presenter with Aldrich of three Channel 4 documentaries on intelligence and the British state. He has also given oral evidence to parliamentary inquiries on foreign interference in both the UK and Australia. The result is a speaker who can hold a room of historians, a corporate security committee, and a Hay Festival audience using the same material. Key speaking topics Covert action and secret statecraft Grey-zone conflict and hybrid threats Russian and Chinese subversion Disinformation and information warfare Intelligence history and the modern state Political risk for critical infrastructure and IP-heavy sectors Resilience against sabotage and infiltration Ideal for Boards and risk committees in defence, energy, telecoms and critical infrastructure Chief security officers, heads of corporate intelligence and political risk leads Government, military and policy audiences working on national resilience Industry associations and conferences focused on geopolitical exposure Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how state adversaries combine sabotage, subversion and disinformation against commercial targets A working vocabulary for the grey zone that makes specific incidents legible as part of a larger pattern A historically grounded view of Russian and Chinese covert practice, rather than headline impressions Sharper questions for security, communications and supply-chain teams about where the organisation is exposed A sense of where the boundary sits between state interference and ordinary commercial risk

Why organisations work with Rory Stewart He has sat inside the decision-making structures most geopolitical analysts only describe – as a UK Cabinet minister, National Security Council member, and coalition administrator governing two Iraqi provinces at 29. That is not a background organisations can easily find elsewhere on a speaker platform. His co-authored book Can Intervention Work? (2011) makes a specific, tested argument about the conditions under which external state interventions succeed or fail – relevant to any organisation navigating politically unstable markets or working alongside governments in fragile environments. Politics on the Edge (British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year 2024) provides a forensic account of how democratic governance hollows out – useful for any leadership team trying to anticipate political risk in Western markets, not just emerging ones. He teaches grand strategy at Yale’s Jackson School alongside his public engagement – his analysis is grounded in academic rigour about how states make long-term choices under uncertainty, not in the rolling commentary of the news cycle. Co-hosting the UK’s most-listened podcast across all genres (The Rest Is Politics) gives him an unusually clear read of where public and political opinion is moving – and why the gap between elite decision-making and public trust continues to widen. Biography highlights Inaugural Brady-Johnson Professor in the Practice of Grand Strategy and co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs (from January 2024) Former UK Secretary of State for International Development and member of the National Security Council; held six ministerial roles across four government departments under David Cameron and Theresa May Former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights, Harvard Kennedy School Founder of Turquoise Mountain Foundation, Kabul – a cultural heritage and livelihoods charity operating under the patronage of King Charles III Author of six books including The Places in Between (Ondaatje Prize, Royal Society of Literature, 2005) and Politics on the Edge (British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year 2024, #1 Sunday Times bestseller) OBE for services in Iraq (2004); Livingstone Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (2009); Ness Award, Royal Geographical Society (2018); three BBC television documentaries; contributor to the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement Biography Rory Stewart served as a UK Cabinet minister and member of the National Security Council, held six ministerial roles across four departments, governed two Iraqi provinces as a coalition administrator at 29, and founded an operating NGO in Kabul before it was fashionable to work there. He is now the inaugural Brady-Johnson Professor in the Practice of Grand Strategy at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, where he co-directs the programme that trains the next generation of strategists. He is not a commentator who studies power. He is someone who has held it. His intellectual contribution goes beyond memoir. Can Intervention Work? (2011) – co-authored with Gerald Knaus – makes a specific argument about why external state interventions fail and under what conditions they can succeed. Politics on the Edge (2023), winner of the British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year and named a best book of the year by the Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, dissects the structural causes of democratic decline from the inside – cronyism, the hollowing of expertise, the capture of institutions by short-term political incentives. Both books ask questions that boards are now asking about the environments in which they operate. Before Parliament, Stewart served in the UK Diplomatic Service in Indonesia and Montenegro, walked solo across Afghanistan in 2002 – documented in The Places in Between, winner of the Ondaatje Prize – and later led Turquoise Mountain in Kabul. He directed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School before abandoning that chair to stand for Parliament. The breadth is not accidental: his authority on geopolitical risk rests on having moved between every layer of the system that produces it. Co-hosting The Rest Is Politics – the most-listened-to podcast in the UK across all genres – has given him a reading of the gap between institutional decision-making and public trust that no think-tank report captures. For organisations trying to understand not just what geopolitical risk looks like but why it is so consistently misjudged by the institutions they rely on, that perspective is specific and hard to replicate. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the shifting global order Grand strategy and statecraft Political risk and institutional failure The limits of state intervention International development and fragile states Democratic governance and the crisis of political trust Leadership under uncertainty in high-stakes environments Ideal for Boards and executive committees assessing geopolitical exposure in global strategy and investment decisions Chief Risk Officers and political risk functions in financial services, energy, and infrastructure sectors Government affairs and public policy leadership navigating an unstable regulatory and political environment International development organisations, multilaterals, and NGOs operating in fragile or conflict-affected contexts Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing genuine geopolitical risk from noise – grounded in how decisions are actually made inside governments, not how they are reported Specific insight into why state interventions and institutional responses to crises so often fail, and what the structural causes are A more calibrated understanding of the relationship between democratic instability in Western markets and long-term strategic planning Practical exposure to how grand strategy is taught and applied – the long-arc thinking that boards and senior leadership teams rarely build time for Greater confidence in engaging with geopolitical complexity without defaulting to the oversimplified framings of media commentary

Why organisations work with Ruchir Sharma He runs live capital at Rockefeller International and Breakout Capital. The frameworks he presents are tested against the same allocation decisions his audience is making. His Breakout Nations and Rise and Fall of Nations theses give boards a structured set of rules for ranking countries on growth durability, not a country-of-the-month view. What Went Wrong with Capitalism, named a 2024 Book of the Year by both the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, gives him a current, contested argument on debt, state expansion and inequality that lands directly on capital allocation decisions in developed markets. Two decades of on-the-ground reporting across Indian and emerging-market elections give him a political-risk read that desk-bound macro speakers cannot match. A working FT column and prior NYT column mean his arguments are already road-tested against serious editorial scrutiny. Biography highlights Chairman of Rockefeller International; founder and CIO of Breakout Capital. 25 years at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, latterly as Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist. Author of five books, including Breakout Nations, The Rise and Fall of Nations and What Went Wrong with Capitalism, named a 2024 Book of the Year by the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Contributing editor and columnist at the Financial Times; former New York Times opinion columnist. Recognised as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2007), a Foreign Policy top global thinker (2012) and one of Bloomberg’s 50 Most Influential People (2015). Has covered every Indian national election since 1998, and travels widely across emerging economies meeting policymakers, CEOs and local leaders. Biography Most countries that look like the next economic miracle do not become one. The work that made Sharma’s reputation, Breakout Nations and The Rise and Fall of Nations, is built on that observation. Both books set out a structured, rule-based way of judging which economies are likely to sustain growth and which are running on borrowed time. He brings that lens to the room as a working investor, not a commentator. As Chairman of Rockefeller International and CIO of Breakout Capital, he is allocating capital across the same emerging and developed markets he writes about. Before that he spent 25 years at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, ending as Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist. His most recent book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism, was named a 2024 Book of the Year by the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. It argues that a century of expanding government, bailouts, entitlements and financial rescues, has distorted Western markets and entrenched inequality. The thesis travels directly into capital allocation conversations about debt, valuation and the limits of policy support. The reporting work underneath all of this is unusual. Sharma has covered every Indian national election since 1998 and travels regularly through emerging economies meeting politicians, CEOs and local operators. That fieldwork is what gives his macro calls their texture, and what separates a Sharma keynote from a desk-research presentation. Key speaking topics Emerging markets and the rules of national economic success Macro-economic and capital allocation outlook The long-cycle critique of state-led capitalism India’s economic and political trajectory Geopolitics, populism and political risk Globalisation and the post-crisis world economy Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting country and currency exposure CEOs and CFOs of multinationals reassessing emerging-market footprint Asset managers, pension funds and family offices on capital allocation Senior policy and strategy audiences in financial services Audience outcomes A structured set of indicators for ranking countries on growth durability A read on which emerging markets are likely to break out and which are likely to stall A specific, contestable argument on how state expansion is shaping returns in developed markets A political-risk perspective on India and the wider EM landscape grounded in on-the-ground reporting A clearer view of the macro-economic regime shift facing capital allocators

Why organisations work with Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser He reads the technology stack underneath the energy transition with a physicist’s precision: why photovoltaics keeps falling in cost, where power electronics and battery chemistry are going next, and what this implies for capital plans that assume a slower curve. He has run the policy machinery, not just commented on it. As Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention he negotiated across eight national governments on a treaty that links climate, transport and spatial planning. He led the European xGWp effort to rebuild gigawatt-scale photovoltaic manufacturing, which gives him an operating view of why European clean-tech capacity collapsed and what it would take to rebuild any of it. He combines this with thirty years of regional and EU policy work through the EURES Institute he founded in Freiburg, so the analysis lands at the level boards actually act on: investment, location, regulation, time horizon. Biography highlights Founder and director of the EURES Institute for Regional Studies in Europe, Freiburg, for fifteen years from 1989. Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention, 2004 to 2007. Consultant to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in its formative period. Coordinator of the European xGWp / European Gigawatt Fab initiative to rebuild European PV manufacturing, 2013 to 2015. Co-author of “European Transport Policy and Sustainable Mobility” (Routledge, 2000) and “Nachhaltigkeit trotz Globalisierung” (1998, with Christian Hey). Trained physicist (Diplom Physiker, Switzerland); writes and consults from Berlin in German, English, Italian and French. Biography The energy transition is being treated by many leadership teams as a communications and reporting problem. It is in fact an industrial, technological and capital allocation problem, and the gap between the two framings is widening. That gap is the territory Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser has worked in for four decades. His starting point is unusual. He trained as a physicist in Switzerland, then spent fifteen years building and running the EURES Institute for Regional Studies in Europe, a Freiburg think tank that worked through how energy, transport and spatial policy actually combine at regional level. From there he moved into multilateral practice as Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention from 2004 to 2007, the international treaty body covering sustainable development across the Alpine states. The industrial chapter of the work followed. Between 2013 and 2015 he coordinated xGWp, a European initiative that brought together the main European solar research institutes and the world’s largest PV equipment manufacturer to attempt to rebuild gigawatt-scale photovoltaic manufacturing in Europe. He has also advised the International Renewable Energy Agency in its development phase. The published work, including “European Transport Policy and Sustainable Mobility” (Routledge, 2000) and “Nachhaltigkeit trotz Globalisierung” (1998, with Christian Hey), runs along the same line. What this gives a board room is rare. Most speakers on energy and climate either describe the policy or sell the technology. Schleicher-Tappeser explains why the cost curve of photovoltaics is structural rather than accidental, why the next decade of the transition will be decided by power electronics and battery chemistry as much as by any climate summit, and what European industrial exposure looks like once those facts are taken seriously. Key speaking topics Energy transition and decarbonisation strategy The economics and physics of photovoltaics European industrial policy and clean-tech manufacturing Climate policy and capital allocation Sustainable transport and mobility Regional and multilateral sustainability governance Ideal for Boards and executive committees of energy, utility and industrial companies setting capital allocation against transition scenarios Policy and regulatory leaders in European institutions, national ministries and regional authorities Investors and asset owners with material exposure to clean-tech supply chains and energy infrastructure Sustainability and strategy leaders translating climate commitments into operating and procurement decisions Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why photovoltaic costs continue to fall and what that means for adjacent technologies A working view of the four technology pillars (photovoltaics, power electronics, batteries, semiconductors) shaping the next phase of the transition A sharper sense of European industrial exposure in clean-tech and what credible responses look like A grounded policy-and-capital frame for setting net zero ambition against actual delivery constraints A line of sight from regional policy mechanics to multilateral treaty practice, useful to leaders working across both