Purpose-Driven Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Mick Ebeling “Commit, then figure it out” is an operating method with shipped output behind it. The EyeWriter, Project Daniel, Bento, and Music: Not Impossible all began as problems that engineers and clinicians had filed under impossible. Three TIME Best Inventions across thirteen years: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), Music: Not Impossible (2023). No other individual has matched that benchmark. He frames innovation around what his team calls “absurdities”, unmet needs attached to named individuals. That vocabulary travels into executive conversations where abstract innovation language usually fails. A career as a film producer shapes how he tells the case studies. Audiences see the working details of each project, including how it got built and where the friction lived. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Not Impossible, the studio that grew out of Not Impossible Labs and now spans the lab, the Not Impossible Institute, and the Not Impossible Foundation. Spin-out companies include Bento and Music: Not Impossible. Only individual to have three inventions named to TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), and Music: Not Impossible (2023). The EyeWriter is part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Named to Fortune’s Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. Recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award. Two-time SXSW Innovation of the Year winner; Cannes Lions Titanium Lion winner for Project Daniel; nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum; WIRED Agent of Change. Author of “Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done”, Simon & Schuster, 2015. Founder of The Ebeling Group (2001), a commercial film and animation production company whose credits include Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, and Quantum of Solace. Biography In April 2009, a graffiti artist named Tony “Tempt” Quan drew his first new piece of art in seven years, using only the movement of his eyes. He had been silenced by ALS since 2003. The technology that made it possible, the EyeWriter, was assembled in a Los Angeles living room. Mick Ebeling had flown in five programmers and hackers from Graffiti Research Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab, and openFrameworks to attempt it. The device is now part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That episode established the working method behind everything Ebeling has built since. Not Impossible Labs identifies what the team calls “absurdities”: specific human problems that today’s technology should be able to solve and has not. The model is to commit to one named individual, build a working solution, then scale it. The team calls this “Help One. Help Many.” The portfolio that followed kept the same shape. Project Daniel produced 3D-printed prosthetic arms for a teenage boy in South Sudan after a bombing severed his hands. The project was nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum and won the Cannes Lions Titanium Lion. Bento, a text-based system that connects food-insecure Americans with prepaid meals from local restaurants and grocery stores, started life as Hunger: Not Impossible. It has since spun off into its own company and been named a Fast Company World Changing Ideas honoree. Music: Not Impossible built haptic vests that let deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences feel live music as patterns of vibration. Three of these inventions sit on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list, a record no other individual holds. For organisations, the value lies less in the projects themselves than in what they prove. The word impossible is almost always doing more work than it deserves inside a company. Ebeling’s method, “commit, then figure it out”, comes from his earlier career as a film producer at The Ebeling Group, where impossible delivery dates were structural to the business. Audiences leave with a test for the word “impossible” they can run on their own organisation. They also leave with named cases they can cite the next time a hard idea gets that label. Key speaking topics Innovation methodology and the psychology of “impossible” Purpose-driven culture and organisational mission Radical collaboration across disciplines Technology applied to human problems The “Help One. Help Many.” model Storytelling as an innovation discipline Ideal for Innovation and R&D leaders stuck on problems they have classified as too hard to solve CEOs and executive teams trying to translate purpose statements into operating culture Innovation and transformation conferences seeking a credentialed keynote with a named methodology Cross-functional teams being asked to deliver outcomes their existing playbook does not cover Audiences in healthcare, pharma, technology, finance, and professional services, where ambitious problems are routinely filed as too hard to solve Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating ideas that are genuinely infeasible from ideas that are simply unattempted A set of named case studies they can cite when defending innovation budgets and ambition inside their organisation A different criterion for committing resources to a hard problem, modelled on a method that has shipped working technology repeatedly A more honest read on the gap between an organisation’s stated purpose and how that purpose shows up in daily decisions

Why organisations work with Mónica Muriel She has built two B Corp certified businesses, Zurita Madrid and NEST Solutions, and speaks from the position of someone who has signed the supplier contracts, not someone advising from outside. Operating experience inside Chinese textile supply chains, including blockchain-enabled traceability, gives her a credible voice on what regulators and auditors will actually accept. She translates circular and regenerative business models into commercial decisions that protect margin, useful for boards under pressure on both ESG and price. A double legal and business background and a Hult Executive MBA mean she briefs equally well to compliance, commercial, and sustainability leaders in the same room. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Zurita Madrid, B Corp certified sustainable fashion business launched in Shanghai in 2015. Founder and CEO, NEST Solutions, B Corp certified consultancy applying Zurita’s methods to third-party textile and consumer goods companies. Global Executive MBA, Hult International Business School. Double degree in Law and Business Administration, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Associate, WAS (Women Action Sustainability), the Spanish women-led sustainability network. More than 15 years operating between Shanghai and Madrid across fashion and impact businesses. Biography Most sustainability strategies are written in headquarters and executed thousands of miles away, inside factories the brand does not own. The work that closes that gap, on materials, traceability, audits, and supplier behaviour, is what now decides whether an ESG commitment is operating substance or marketing. Mónica Muriel has built two B Corp certified businesses on the operating side of that question. Zurita Madrid, launched in Shanghai in 2015 with two Hult Executive MBA classmates, is a sustainable fashion label built around traceable supply, ethical production, and circular design. NEST Solutions takes the methods, certifications and supplier relationships developed for Zurita and applies them to third parties in textiles and consumer goods. Her training is unusually well matched to the brief. A double degree in Law and Business Administration from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid gives her a working grasp of the regulatory side. A Global Executive MBA from Hult gives her the commercial discipline. Fifteen years between Shanghai and Madrid gives her something rarer in the speaker market: direct experience of how Asian supply chains actually behave when a brand asks them to change. She is an associate of WAS, the Spanish women-led sustainability network, and a regular voice on circular economy, regenerative business models, and blockchain-enabled traceability. The argument she brings to a boardroom is not that sustainability is morally right. It is that the companies treating it as an operating discipline today are the ones that will still be able to sell into European markets when the next compliance cycle lands. Key speaking topics Sustainable and regenerative business models Circular economy in textiles and consumer goods Supply chain traceability and certification Blockchain in supply chain verification B Corp practice and corporate impact Fashion industry transformation Women, culture and sustainability Ideal for Boards and executive teams committing to ESG targets that must now be evidenced in the supply chain Chief sustainability officers, heads of supply chain, and procurement leaders in consumer goods, fashion, and retail Founders and growth-stage CEOs designing circular or impact-led business models Industry associations and women-in-business networks focused on sustainability leadership Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what regulators and auditors will accept as evidence of supply chain sustainability Working examples of how circular and regenerative models hold up commercially A founder’s account of what changes and what does not when a business pursues B Corp certification A grounded view of Asian, and specifically Chinese, supply chain dynamics from someone who has operated inside them

Why organisations work with Muhammad Yunus He has built the model he speaks about. Grameen Bank reached millions of borrowers, 96% of them women, with repayment rates above 95%, and became the template for microfinance in more than a hundred countries. His “social business” concept is operational, not aspirational. Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others have launched joint social business ventures with the Yunus group under defined commercial terms. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games adopted his framework to open procurement to social and solidarity enterprises, with nearly 500 such companies in the supply chain. Milan-Cortina 2026 has signed a follow-on agreement. He sits at the intersection of credibility most speakers cannot reach: Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, and recent head of state experience as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh. His “three zeros” agenda, zero poverty, zero unemployment, zero net carbon, gives boards a single frame to connect ESG, inclusion, and youth employment work that usually live in separate decks. Biography highlights Founder of Grameen Bank, awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank. Recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and Congressional Gold Medal (2010). PhD in Economics, Vanderbilt University; former Professor of Economics, Chittagong University. Author of Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros. Chairman of the Yunus Centre; partner to Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others on joint social businesses. Adviser to Paris 2024 on social business and inclusive procurement; agreement signed for Milan-Cortina 2026. Served as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, August 2024 to February 2026. Biography Grameen Bank started lending in a Bangladeshi village in the 1970s, before microcredit had a name. The borrowers were women, the loans were tiny, and the orthodoxy at the time said neither group nor product should work. The bank grew to serve millions of clients with repayment rates above 95%, and the model was copied into more than a hundred countries. The economist who built it, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank in 2006. The work since has been about converting that proof point into an operating model that companies can actually run. Yunus calls it social business: a non-loss, non-dividend enterprise designed to solve a specific social problem, governed with the same discipline as a commercial business. Danone, Veolia, BASF, and Uniqlo have set up joint ventures with the Yunus Centre on that basis, on nutrition, clean water, and affordable clothing. His books Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros are the reference texts. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games used the framework to open Games procurement to social and solidarity enterprises. Almost 500 such companies were brought into the supply chain. A follow-on agreement has been signed for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games. That is unusual reach for an academic concept. In August 2024, Yunus returned to Dhaka to lead Bangladesh’s interim government as Chief Adviser, following the student-led uprising that ended the Hasina administration. He stepped down in February 2026 after the general election. The detour matters here: he has now run a country as well as built an economic model, and he speaks from both sides of the policy and operating divide. Key speaking topics Social business as an operating model Microfinance and financial inclusion The “three zeros” agenda: poverty, unemployment, net carbon Inclusive procurement and supply chains Women’s economic empowerment Youth employment and entrepreneurship Corporate joint ventures with social outcomes Ideal for Boards and executive committees deciding how to structure ESG, inclusion, and impact work as operating units rather than reporting lines. Heads of strategy, sustainability, and procurement at consumer, industrial, and financial companies running joint ventures or supplier programmes with a social component. Government and multilateral audiences working on financial inclusion, youth employment, and inclusive growth policy. Foundations, family offices, and impact investors choosing between grant-making, ESG investing, and direct social business equity. Audience outcomes A working definition of social business that distinguishes it from CSR, ESG, and traditional philanthropy. Concrete examples of corporate joint ventures structured as social businesses, with the commercial terms made explicit. The Paris 2024 procurement model as a case study in opening a large supply chain to social and solidarity enterprises. A direct view from a Nobel laureate who has also recently led a country on what governments can and cannot do for inclusive growth. A frame, the three zeros, that connects climate, poverty, and unemployment work usually managed as separate programmes.

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 Navi Radjou He has named and codified two frameworks, Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation, that give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for doing more with less rather than relying on bigger R and D budgets. His client work spans Fortune 500 firms including IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, so the case material in his sessions is operational, not academic. The Thinkers50 Innovation Award and three consecutive appearances on the Thinkers50 ranking (2021, 2023, 2025) place him among the small group of innovation thinkers whose work boards take seriously. His 2024 book The Frugal Economy, published by Wiley with Thinkers50, gives senior leaders a current playbook for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative business models. He brings empirical material from emerging markets that most Western innovation speakers cannot, drawing on field research in India, China, Africa, and Latin America. Biography highlights Former Fellow of Cambridge Judge Business School and former Executive Director of its Centre for India and Global Business. Thinkers50 Innovation Award winner, ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2021, 2023, and 2025. Co-author of Jugaad Innovation (Jossey-Bass), an international bestseller, and Frugal Innovation: How to Do More With Less (The Economist Books, foreword by Paul Polman). Co-author of From Smart to Wise (Jossey-Bass), a study of wise leadership judgement in technology-driven business environments. Author of The Frugal Economy: A Guide to Building a Better World With Less (Wiley and Thinkers50, 2024). TED Global speaker with over two million views on his talk on frugal innovation. Former Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research; faculty member of the World Economic Forum. Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and strategy plus business; covered by the Financial Times, The Economist, BBC, NPR, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. Biography R and D budgets in most large companies have stopped producing the returns they once did. Pilots multiply, capital tightens, and the question on the executive agenda becomes how to generate growth without spending more. This is the territory Navi Radjou has worked in for two decades, first as a Forrester analyst studying global innovation networks, then as Executive Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School. His central contribution is a managed practice for innovation under constraint. Jugaad Innovation, co-authored with Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, took a Hindi term for resourceful improvisation and turned it into a corporate framework backed by case work from emerging markets. Frugal Innovation, published by The Economist Books with a foreword by Paul Polman, codified the practice for Western firms. The Frugal Economy, his 2024 book with Wiley and Thinkers50, extends the argument into a model for B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, and regenerative supply chains. The credentials sit underneath the work. Thinkers50 awarded him its Innovation Award in 2013 and has ranked him among the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2021, 2023, and 2025. He has consulted for IBM, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, GM, SAP, and Ernst and Young, and he serves as a faculty member of the World Economic Forum. His TED Global talk on frugal innovation has been watched more than two million times. What makes the perspective unusual is the empirical base. Most innovation thinkers write from Silicon Valley or business school faculties. Born in Pondicherry, educated at Ecole Centrale Paris and the Yale School of Management, and a French-American dual citizen, Radjou builds his arguments from case material in India, China, Africa, and Latin America, where resource constraint has always been the operating condition, then translates the discipline back into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 firms. Key speaking topics Frugal innovation Jugaad and resource-constrained creativity The frugal economy and regenerative business models Intrapreneurship and corporate growth Innovation strategy in emerging markets Wise leadership in the AI era B2B sharing and distributed manufacturing Ideal for Boards and executive teams reviewing innovation portfolios under capital constraint Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers planning growth without expanding R and D spend Sustainability leads and CEOs translating ESG commitments into operating substance Leadership development programmes for senior executives in multinational organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and connects it to growth Case-based examples from Fortune 500 and emerging-market firms that show the discipline in operation A vocabulary for Jugaad and intrapreneurship that senior teams can carry into their own innovation reviews A view of the frugal economy as a commercial opportunity, with named mechanisms (B2B sharing, distributed manufacturing, regenerative principles) A more rigorous standard for what counts as innovation when resources are scarce

Why organisations work with Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian She built the experience function at WeTransfer from inside the executive team across ten years, a rare track record of innovation craft sustained at commercial scale rather than delivered as one-off consulting. She has a method for staging ideas in public, tested at the scale of a 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl performance with NASA scientists and at the scale of small-room design studios at Google, Mattel and Unilever. Her academic foundation is unusual for a creative director: a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway alongside an RCA Design Interactions MA, which gives her work argumentative spine rather than spectacle alone. She runs the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate institution whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter, so she arrives in a room with an active network of researchers and practitioners across science, design and politics. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody, the field’s most explicit signal that her practice has moved from emerging to canonical. Biography highlights Chief of Experiences at WeTransfer from 2012 to 2022, ten years on the executive team during the company’s growth into a global creative platform. Founder and director of the University of the Underground, a tuition-free MA programme hosted at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute since 2013; Vice Chair of the IAF Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space. Founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, performed with Sigur Ros at the Hollywood Bowl to 17,500 people. PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London (Human Geography and Political Philosophy); MA, Royal College of Art (Design Interactions, Dunne and Raby). Design Week Awards Hall of Fame, 2023. WIRED Innovation Fellowship, 2014. Karman Fellowship, 2022. Arts Council England Exceptional Award for Disaster Playground. Biography Most companies treat innovation as an internal practice: research teams, pilots, internal demos, the occasional product launch. The harder discipline is staging an idea so that customers, staff and the broader public feel it. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian has spent fifteen years building a method for that second discipline, first inside a scaling technology company, then as a commissioned director for brands and cultural institutions. She joined WeTransfer in 2012 as its first Head of Experiences and stayed for a decade, eventually serving as Chief of Experiences on the executive team. Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios operated inside WeTransfer as its user experience and innovation department, with a remit that grew from public projects with creative communities to B Corp development, US business expansion, and the founding of the editorial platform WePresent and the University of the Underground. Her parallel practice is anchored by the International Space Orchestra, which she founded in 2012 with scientists and astronauts from NASA Ames, the SETI Institute and the International Space University. The project produced a feature film, a Hollywood Bowl performance with Sigur Ros, and a recording that was played from the International Space Station. It is the clearest example of her core craft, which is the orchestration of scientific and institutional collaborators into something a non-expert audience can feel. In 2017 she founded the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate programme at Sandberg Instituut whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody. Key speaking topics Immersive experiences as innovation practice Building creative communities inside commercial organisations Public-facing storytelling for science and technology Cultural strategy and brand Interdisciplinary collaboration across science, design and the arts Space culture and the public communication of complex science Independent institution building Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and creative directors at consumer or technology brands looking to move from advertising-led growth to experience-led growth. Heads of Innovation and Chief Strategy Officers whose pilots are not translating into customer-visible products or cultural relevance. Cultural institutions, design and architecture studios, and science communication leads commissioning ambitious public projects. Senior leadership teams inside scale-up technology companies considering how to build a brand that creators and partners care about. Audience outcomes A working definition of what an experience function does inside a commercial company, drawn from ten years of operating one at WeTransfer. Concrete patterns for staging an idea publicly, from Hollywood Bowl scale down to a small studio activation. A view of how scientific institutions, creative communities and commercial brands can be brought into the same room without flattening any of them. A reading on where the experience economy is heading, grounded in her current work at SETI, the International Astronautical Federation and the University of the Underground.

Why organisations work with Noëlla Coursaris Musunka She has built and run an institution from scratch in eastern Congo for nearly two decades. The leadership lessons she draws on are operational, not theoretical. Her platform sits across philanthropy, fashion and global health. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, which gives corporate audiences a peer-level voice on global development. She translates a five-pillar community model (education, health, water, food, livelihoods) into a frame senior teams can apply to their own ESG and impact strategies. She brings a personal arc, from being separated from her mother at five to founding a school in her birth country, that audiences hear as testimony rather than corporate narrative. Her recognition by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE, the Muhammad Ali Center and the United Nations gives buyers external validation that does not depend on bureau marketing. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Malaika, a free school and community ecosystem in Kalebuka, DRC, founded 2007. Ambassador of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, appointed 2017. Named one of the BBC’s 100 Women (2017) and one of ELLE’s 50 African women shaping the continent (2016). Speaker at the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, UNICEF, the UK Parliament, the Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia and the Milken Institute Global Conference. Honoured by the Muhammad Ali Center as a “Daughter of Greatness” and recognised at the Nelson Mandela centenary by the House of Mandela. International model with campaigns including Agent Provocateur and editorial coverage in Vogue and Vanity Fair. Biography The DRC is one of the hardest places on earth to build an institution. Malaika has been operating there since 2007, running a free girls’ school, a community centre, vocational training, an agriculture programme and clean water and sanitation services in the village of Kalebuka. It was founded by Noella Coursaris Musunka, who is still its CEO. Her route to that work is unusual. Born in the DRC to a Cypriot father and a Congolese mother, she was sent to relatives in Europe at five after her father died and her mother could no longer support her. She returned at eighteen, met her mother again, and saw what girls in her birth country were facing. The school followed. The substance of her leadership argument is operational. Malaika is not a single-issue charity. It is a five-pillar model built on the recognition that girls cannot stay in school if their families cannot eat, drink clean water or earn a living, and that change has to be made with the community, not delivered to it. That logic, applied in a fragile-state context, is what corporate audiences book her to translate into their own strategy and impact work. The platform that funds and amplifies it is global. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, has been recognised by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE and the Muhammad Ali Center, and has spoken at Davos, the United Nations, UK Parliament, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and MIT. Key speaking topics Values-based and purpose-driven leadership Girls’ education and gender equality Building institutions in fragile environments Global health and the Global Fund agenda Founder leadership and social entrepreneurship Inclusion and the African leadership voice Corporate philanthropy and ESG impact Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting purpose, ESG and corporate philanthropy strategy CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusive leadership and values programmes Foundation, family office and impact investing audiences Annual meetings and leadership conferences seeking a credible founder voice on global development Audience outcomes A working model for translating purpose statements into operating institutions, drawn from a fragile-state context. A clearer view of how girls’ education and global health intersect with corporate ESG agendas. A founder’s account of building, funding and sustaining an organisation across nearly two decades. A reframing of values-based leadership through lived experience rather than corporate vocabulary.

Why organisations work with Padma Lakshmi Her seven-year documentary project across immigrant and Indigenous communities in America (the foundation of both Taste the Nation and the 2025 Knopf cookbook Padma’s All American) gives her argument about diversity and belonging an evidential weight that most cultural voices cannot offer. Her DEI perspective is not theoretical: she co-founded an organisation that passed state legislation and helped establish the first interdisciplinary gynepathology research centre in the US, at MIT, demonstrating what sustained, policy-level advocacy actually produces. As UNDP Goodwill Ambassador and ACLU Artist Ambassador, she operates at a level of formal institutional credibility that separates her from celebrity advocates; she has testified, lobbied, and built coalitions, not just spoken. She offers one of the few genuinely non-confrontational pathways into difficult conversations about immigration, identity, and women’s health – using food as the entry point makes these subjects accessible in rooms where they are otherwise contested. Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and recipient of the UNCA Advocate of the Year Award, she brings independent, multi-sector validation that extends well beyond the entertainment industry. Biography highlights Host and executive producer of Bravo’s Top Chef for 19 seasons; four-time Emmy nominee as Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program Creator, host, and executive producer of Hulu’s Taste the Nation; James Beard Foundation Award winner, Visual Media – Long Form (2022) Author of Padma’s All American (Knopf, 2025), named a Best Cookbook of 2025 by the Washington Post and Boston Globe; New York Times bestselling author of memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate and children’s book Tomatoes for Neela Co-founder, EndoFound; instrumental in establishing the first US interdisciplinary gynepathology research facility (Harvard Medical School and MIT joint project) and passing New York State Senate legislation on teen health education Visiting scholar, MIT Center for Gynepathology research UNDP Goodwill Ambassador; ACLU Artist Ambassador; TIME 100 Most Influential People (2023); UNCA Advocate of the Year (2021) Biography When organisations talk about inclusion, the conversation often stalls at the data. Padma Lakshmi has spent two decades building a different kind of argument; one that begins at the dinner table. As creator and host of Hulu’s Taste the Nation, she spent seven years embedded in immigrant and Indigenous communities across America, documenting how culinary traditions carry identity, history, and a sense of belonging that policy language rarely captures. The 2025 Knopf cookbook Padma’s All American, named a Best Cookbook of the year by the Washington Post and Boston Globe, extends that fieldwork into a mainstream cultural and business conversation: that diversity is not a management challenge to be solved but a generative force that shapes every aspect of how people live and work. Her advocacy has produced verifiable institutional outcomes. In 2009 she co-founded EndoFound, which helped establish the first interdisciplinary gynepathology research facility in the US – a joint Harvard Medical School and MIT project – and successfully drove legislation through the New York State Senate on teenage health education. She holds a visiting scholar appointment at MIT’s Center for Gynepathology Research. As UNDP Goodwill Ambassador and ACLU Artist Ambassador, she operates at the intersection of cultural influence and formal policy rather than occupying the softer territory of celebrity activism. For leadership teams where DEI initiatives have plateaued, or where women’s health and workplace wellbeing require a more credible and personal voice, Lakshmi’s combination of documentary rigour, scientific partnership, policy track record, and media reach offers something genuinely difficult to replicate. Key speaking topics Cultural identity and immigrant experience in America Diversity, equity, and inclusion through lived narrative Women’s health advocacy and public health policy Food, storytelling, and cross-cultural connection Using platform and media for social and civic impact Representation and belonging in public life Ideal for CHROs and people leaders seeking a non-confrontational, narrative-led entry into DEI at company-wide events Boards and executive teams navigating the political and cultural dimensions of workforce diversity Consumer, hospitality, or media brands whose audiences span diverse cultural communities Organisations with active women’s health or workplace wellbeing commitments seeking credible, policy-informed voices Audience outcomes A reframing of diversity from institutional obligation to cultural asset – grounded in specific, documented community experience rather than theory Deeper understanding of how immigrant and Indigenous communities shape the cultural contexts organisations operate in Practical perspective on what sustained advocacy – from grassroots education to legislative success – actually requires Greater awareness of women’s health as a workplace issue with measurable productivity and retention implications A model for using storytelling and platform to make complex social arguments land with mainstream audiences

Why organisations work with Paolo Petrocelli He runs a flagship cultural institution and can speak to the operating discipline behind cultural ambition, not the slogan version. His work in cultural diplomacy is recognised by named bodies that buyers respect: the World Economic Forum, the Italian Republic, the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, UNESCO. He bridges Europe and the Gulf at a moment when both regions are rewriting their cultural and economic positioning, and he has executive experience inside that bridge. He is a credible voice on how youth, talent, and creative capital flow internationally, with a track record of building institutions that move those flows in practice. Biography highlights Head of Dubai Opera since 2023. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum, Class of 2023. Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Founder and President of EMMA for Peace; co-founder of Opera for Peace. PhD, IULM Milan; Executive MBA, SDA Bocconi; Oxford Executive Leadership Programme, Said Business School. Author of The Evolution of Opera Theatre in the Middle East and North Africa, Cambridge Scholars Publishing; research affiliate at metaLAB at Harvard; Forbes contributor and TEDx speaker. Biography Dubai Opera is the kind of asset a city builds when it wants to be taken seriously on the international stage. Running it is closer to running an embassy than running a theatre. The person commissioning a season is making decisions about national positioning, talent attraction, and the symbolic capital of a place. Petrocelli took over the institution in 2023, after building EMMA for Peace into one of the better-known music-diplomacy platforms operating between Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader the same year. His earlier book on the evolution of opera theatres in the MENA region, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, is one of the few serious surveys of cultural infrastructure across a region now investing heavily in it. The credential set is unusual. A PhD in cultural economics from IULM Milan and an Executive MBA from SDA Bocconi sit alongside an Oxford Executive Leadership certificate from Said Business School and a research affiliation at metaLAB at Harvard. He has held cultural diplomacy roles for the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and within UNESCO-aligned youth structures. The Italian state has knighted him in the Order of Merit. What makes him commercially distinctive is the combination of operating responsibility and diplomatic standing. Most cultural strategists write about soft power from outside it. He runs one of its more visible instruments while sitting on the platforms that shape policy around it. Key speaking topics Cultural diplomacy and soft power Leadership of mission-driven cultural institutions Culture, creative industries and global development The Gulf, Europe and the new geography of cultural capital Music and the arts in international relations Youth, talent and the future of cultural leadership Cultural strategy for nations, cities and corporates Ideal for Government and city leaders working on cultural positioning, place branding, or soft-power strategy Boards and CEOs of foundations, sponsors, and corporates with serious cultural portfolios Heads of public affairs, communications, and brand who treat culture as strategy rather than sponsorship Senior leaders in international organisations and diplomatic services working on cultural cooperation Audience outcomes A clearer view of why culture has become a strategic asset for nations, cities and major brands A working sense of how cultural institutions actually run, and where ambition fails in execution Specific examples of soft power and music diplomacy as instruments of international standing A read on where the centre of gravity in global culture is shifting, and what it means for talent, capital, and policy

Why organisations work with Pau Gasol Two NBA championships, three Olympic medals and a FIBA World Cup title give him a working definition of high performance grounded in repeated wins across cultures, coaches and rosters, not a single peak. He speaks credibly about the operating reality of elite teams: ego management next to a generational star (Kobe Bryant), role clarity, and the unglamorous habits that hold a group together across an 82-game season. A Basketball Hall of Fame induction in 2023 and a retired Lakers jersey place him among the small group of athletes whose authority on team and leadership is taken seriously inside a boardroom, not only on a stage. His work outside sport (Gasol Foundation on childhood obesity, IOC Athletes’ Commission, Gasol16 Ventures) shows a leader who has built institutions, not only played in them. The J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award is the NBA’s formal recognition of that. He presents fluently in English and Spanish, with direct experience of US, European and global organisations, which suits international leadership audiences without translation overhead. Biography highlights Two NBA Championships with the Los Angeles Lakers (2009, 2010); six-time NBA All-Star; four-time All-NBA selection. 2002 NBA Rookie of the Year, the first non-American player to win the award. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2023; jersey No. 16 retired by the Los Angeles Lakers. FIBA World Cup champion and MVP 2006; three EuroBasket golds with Spain (2009, 2011, 2015); two-time EuroBasket MVP. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008 and 2012, bronze in 2016. President and co-founder of the Gasol Foundation; UNICEF Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity; member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission; 2012 NBA J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Biography Two NBA Championships, three Olympic medals and a FIBA World Cup title are not won by the same individual playing in different teams. They are won by leaders who help different groups behave the same way under pressure. Pau Gasol spent two decades inside the highest-stakes team environments in professional sport, with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, alongside his brother Marc on the Spanish national team, and across rosters in Memphis, Chicago, San Antonio and Milwaukee. The interest for senior leaders is not the trophy count. It is what it took to sit beside a generational star like Bryant and still deliver, year after year, in the locker room as much as on the court. Role clarity, ego management, honest conversations between named individuals, and a standard that did not move with the score. Gasol’s account of that period is one of the more credible insider readings of elite team performance available from any speaker in the market. His record off the court is unusually substantive for an athlete. He co-founded the Gasol Foundation in 2013 with Marc Gasol, working on childhood obesity and child wellbeing in Spain and the United States. He serves as UNICEF’s Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity, sits on the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission, and runs Gasol16 Ventures, an investment platform in sport, health and wellness. The NBA recognised the community work with the 2012 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023, with his number retired by the Los Angeles Lakers the same year, Gasol now speaks to leadership audiences in English and Spanish on what it actually takes to build a team that wins more than once. Key speaking topics Leadership and team performance under sustained pressure Building trust and role clarity inside elite teams Resilience and self-leadership through injury, transition and setback Sport as a model for organisational culture and standards Purpose-driven leadership and life after a professional career Child health and the leadership case for long-term social investment Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO conferences focused on team performance and culture Sales kick-offs and annual conferences seeking a credible voice on resilience and standards Sports, health and consumer-brand audiences engaging with athlete leadership International audiences requiring delivery in English or Spanish Audience outcomes A working picture of what elite team performance looks like behind the result, told by someone inside it A direct view of how leaders manage ego, role and trust around a dominant individual Specific reference points for resilience and decision-making through injury, transition and public scrutiny A leadership case for long-term investment in people and purpose beyond the immediate quarter

Why organisations work with Paul Polman A ten-year CEO run at Unilever with documented results. Shareholder returns rose 290 percent while the company held the top global sustainability ranking, ended quarterly earnings guidance on day one, and defeated Kraft Heinz’s 143 billion dollar hostile takeover bid in 2017. Ranked first in the world. In 2025 Thinkers50 placed Polman and Andrew Winston first in its biennial list of the most influential management thinkers, the field’s most authoritative ranking. Co-architect of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as one of 27 members of Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel. He helped build the framework boards now report against. A direct read on how long-term capital and global institutions weigh sustainability. Polman advises Temasek and the World Trade Organization and sits on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Net Positive, his book with Andrew Winston, was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Year and won the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Biography highlights CEO of Unilever, 2009 to 2019. Succeeded Patrick Cescau and was succeeded by Alan Jope. 27 years at Procter & Gamble, rising to Group President for Europe. Then Chief Financial Officer at Nestlé from 2006 and Head of the Americas from 2008. Member of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel that developed the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Continues as a UN SDG Advocate. Chair of The Valuable 500 and One Young World, co-chair of the Planetary Guardians, and co-founder and Chair Emeritus of IMAGINE. Board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation, and adviser to the World Trade Organization and Temasek. Former Chair of Oxford Saïd Business School (2019 to 2025) and former Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact (to June 2024). Co-author of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (2021), a Financial Times Business Book of the Year and Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award winner. Ranked first in the 2025 Thinkers50 list with Andrew Winston. Recipient of a UK Knighthood, France’s Légion d’honneur and the UN’s highest environmental honour. Biography Between 2009 and 2019, Unilever delivered a 290 percent shareholder return while holding the top global sustainability ranking and the title of one of the world’s best places to work. The period included the defeat of a $143 billion hostile bid from Kraft Heinz in 2017. The decade is the empirical case sitting underneath everything Paul Polman argues about business today. He wrote the case up with Andrew Winston. Net Positive, published in 2021, argues that companies should improve the wellbeing of everyone they affect, including the planet, and build financial strength in the process. The Financial Times named it a Business Book of the Year, and Thinkers50 gave it the Breakthrough Idea Award the same year. Polman’s operator background predates Unilever. He spent 27 years at Procter & Gamble, rising to Group President for Europe, before joining Nestlé as Chief Financial Officer in 2006. That background matters to the argument. The book comes from someone who ran the P&L while making the sustainability case. Today Polman advises CEOs, boards and investors on long-term value creation and systems change. He co-chairs the Planetary Guardians, chairs The Valuable 500, and sits on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. He advises the World Trade Organization and Temasek. In 2025, Thinkers50 placed him and Andrew Winston first in its biennial ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. Key speaking topics Sustainable business and the Net Positive framework Purpose-driven leadership and long-term value creation Sustainability as commercial strategy Climate change and the role of business The UN Sustainable Development Goals Corporate governance and stakeholder capitalism Systems change and industry coalitions Ideal for Boards and executive teams weighing whether to hardwire long-term and sustainability commitments into strategy as a commercial decision, not a reputational one. CEOs and strategy leads under pressure to deliver near-term growth while defending long-term investment and stakeholder trust. CFOs, investors and IR teams making the commercial case for long-term value creation against short-term capital-markets pressure. Governments, multilateral bodies and business coalitions working on public-private collaboration and systems change. Audience outcomes The empirical case, with the Unilever numbers, for why purpose-driven models outperform shareholder-primacy ones over a decade. A sharper line between sustainability as compliance cost and sustainability as commercial strategy, and how boards tell the difference in practice. The Net Positive model: how a company profits by solving the world’s problems instead of creating them, and builds value for shareholders and society while doing it. A working reframe of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as commercial opportunity, grounded in the industry coalitions Polman has helped build. The operator’s view on defending long-term strategy to activist investors, drawn from the defeat of the Kraft Heinz takeover and the decision to end quarterly earnings guidance.

Why organisations work with Peter Fischer Brown He brings an operator’s view of brand strategy. Years inside Orange Business and KPMG mean he reads brand as a P&L and procurement question, not a marketing artefact. He teaches B2B value creation at Esade Business School, so the frameworks he uses in the room have been pressure-tested with MBA and executive cohorts who push back hard. His membership of the Medinge Group gives him a serious intellectual home for “brands with a conscience” arguments, separate from the agency circuit that usually owns the topic. He works in English, German and Spanish across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, which makes him useful for groups whose brand and culture questions cross those markets. His coaching qualification from Henley and his executive coaching practice mean he can move between keynote framing and small-group leadership work in the same engagement. Biography highlights Founder of FischerBrown, an international brand and corporate strategy consultancy. Former Director of Strategy for Orange Business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the Orange Group; former Manager and Consultant at KPMG. Academic Collaborator at Esade Business School, Barcelona, teaching MBA and Executive programmes on B2B value creation and leadership with conscience. Member of the Medinge Group; contributing author on the Slow Food Movement in “Brands with a Conscience” (Medinge Group, 2016). Contributor to the Radix think tank on European centre-ground politics and democratic participation. MA in Modern Languages and Literature and MPhil in International Relations, both University of Cambridge; Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching, Henley Business School. Biography Most “purpose” programmes break the moment they hit procurement, pricing or a difficult supplier decision. The brand line survives in the campaign and disappears in the operating model. Peter Fischer Brown works at exactly that seam, where a values-led brand position has to be defended in B2B negotiations, capital allocation and the everyday behaviour of senior leaders. He spent the formative part of his career inside the operating side of two demanding environments. At KPMG he advised on corporate and marketing strategy. At Orange he was Director of Strategy for the B2B business and Ambassador of Strategic Branding for the wider France Telecom group, running brand and strategy across European, Middle Eastern and Latin American markets. That history is why his brand frameworks read as commercial first and editorial second. Today he runs FischerBrown and teaches at Esade Business School in Barcelona, where his MBA and Executive sessions focus on B2B value creation and on leadership with conscience. The Medinge Group, of which he is a long-standing member, gives him a serious intellectual home for the latter; his chapter on the Slow Food Movement in the group’s 2016 book “Brands with a Conscience” is a worked example of how a values-led proposition can become a category position. The work that sits outside the brand spine sharpens it. As a Radix contributor he writes on the “radical centre” in European politics; he is a qualified executive coach through Henley; his linguistic and musical training (Cambridge, Trinity College London) feeds the cross-disciplinary keynotes he gives on cosmopolitanism and the art of business. Senior teams book him when they need someone who can argue brand and purpose in the same register as a CFO, and then sit with the leadership team afterwards. Key speaking topics Brand and corporate strategy Brands with a conscience and purpose-led positioning B2B value creation Leadership with conscience Sustainability and the brand promise Cosmopolitanism and cultural identity as competitive advantage The art of business: learning from the creative and performing arts Ideal for CMOs and brand directors in B2B and consumer businesses under pressure to make a purpose claim operational CEOs and strategy leads working through a brand or positioning reset Boards and leadership teams wrestling with ESG and purpose credibility HR and executive development leads commissioning leadership-with-conscience programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A sharper view of where brand sits in the operating model, not only in marketing A vocabulary for discussing purpose in front of a sceptical CFO or procurement audience Specific examples of values-led brands that have held up commercially, and ones that have not A clearer framing of leadership credibility when a business is being asked to behave consistently across markets