Purpose-Driven Leadership

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 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 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 Lewis Pugh He has helped secure formal protection for more than two million square kilometres of ocean, including the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, the largest in the world. That is a track record on environmental policy outcomes very few private-sector advisors or speakers can match. He brings a working maritime lawyer’s grasp of treaty, sovereign negotiation, and multilateral process. His framing of climate and ocean commitments is grounded in how rules actually move, which lands with boards wrestling with regulatory and ESG risk. As the UN’s first Patron of the Oceans, he carries institutional weight inside the system most companies are now being judged against, including UNEP, COP processes, and national governments. He converts physical expeditions into specific decisions about preparation, team selection, and changing course under hostile conditions. Audiences leave with a usable account of how leaders behave when the plan stops working, sourced from the North Pole, Mount Everest, the Red Sea, and Antarctica. Biography highlights UN Patron of the Oceans, appointed by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2013. Founder of The Lewis Pugh Foundation, established in 2015 to drive the creation of Marine Protected Areas worldwide. First person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world; first across the North Pole, the length of the English Channel, the Red Sea, and around Martha’s Vineyard. Maritime lawyer trained at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town; former practitioner at Ince and Co in the City of London; former Reservist in the British SAS. Author of Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster, 2010) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo (2014); twice a TEDGlobal speaker. Awarded South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga (Gold Class); named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame; named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Biography The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, off Antarctica, is the largest protected ocean reserve on the planet, larger than the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy combined. Lewis Pugh swam in its near-freezing waters in a Speedo to push 25 nations, including Russia, into signing the agreement that created it. Few advocates working on the ocean and climate file have that kind of policy outcome attached to their name. Pugh trained as a maritime lawyer at Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Cape Town, and practised at Ince and Co in the City of London. During those years he served as a Reservist in the British SAS. The combination matters for the work he now does. The legal training shapes how he reads treaties, jurisdiction, and sovereign behaviour. The military background shapes how he plans expeditions and assembles teams. The endurance swimming is the public-facing instrument that pulls governments to the table. In 2013 the UN appointed him as its first Patron of the Oceans. In 2015 he founded The Lewis Pugh Foundation, dedicated to Marine Protected Areas, the ocean equivalent of national parks. Through that work he has helped secure protection for more than two million square kilometres of marine ecosystem, an area the size of Western Europe, and is campaigning for 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be formally protected by 2030. His books, Achieving the Impossible (Simon and Schuster) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo, sit alongside two TEDGlobal talks that TED’s editors describe as the work of a “master story-teller”. For corporate audiences, the substance is not the swimming. It is the working method behind it: how a small team prepares for hostile conditions, how an advocate moves sovereign signatories, and how leaders decide when to keep going and when to change course. Key speaking topics Ocean and climate policy Sustainability and ESG commitments at board level Marine Protected Areas and treaty negotiation Resilience and leadership in hostile conditions Team preparation and decision-making under pressure Purpose-driven leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting climate, ocean, and ESG strategy Sustainability leaders, chief sustainability officers, and ESG committees Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, preparation, and decision-making under pressure Public-sector and multilateral audiences working on environment and oceans policy Audience outcomes A clearer view of how high-level environmental commitments are converted into binding agreements and protected areas. A working account of how small teams plan for, and recover from, conditions where the original plan fails. A direct line of sight into the UN, COP, and Marine Protected Area processes that increasingly shape corporate disclosure and risk. A sharper sense of what credible, evidenced advocacy looks like, drawn from named expeditions and named outcomes.

Why organisations work with Jonathon Porritt Three decades inside the rooms where government, business, and civil society negotiate climate policy, including nine years chairing the UK Sustainable Development Commission for three prime ministers. Co-founder of Forum for the Future, the consultancy that has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE boards on serious sustainability strategy rather than reporting compliance. Author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, a book that argues capitalism is the only viable vehicle for sustainability and sets out what reshaping it actually demands; cited as a foundational text in corporate sustainability curricula. Independence from any single corporate paymaster; willingness to tell senior teams what their own sustainability advisors will not. A long view that connects climate, biodiversity, inequality, and population; useful for boards trying to understand how environmental risks compound across a strategic horizon. Biography highlights Co-founder and Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1996-2023), one of the world’s leading sustainability charities, with offices in the UK, US, India, and Southeast Asia. Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, 2000-2009, advising the Blair and Brown governments on environmental policy. Director of Friends of the Earth (UK), 1984-1990; former Co-Chair of the UK Green Party. Co-founder of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, delivered through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Author of Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), The World We Made (Phaidon, 2013), and Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan, 2005). CBE for services to environmental protection (2000); Chancellor of Keele University, 2012-2022. Biography The corporate climate agenda has run into its first credibility test. A decade of net-zero pledges, ESG reporting, and sustainability committees has not closed the gap between what boards say and what their capital plans deliver. Porritt has spent his working life inside that gap. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996 with Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins, and ran it as Founder Director for nearly thirty years. Forum has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE-100 boards on the harder questions of business model change, not the softer ones of disclosure. Before that, he ran Friends of the Earth (UK) through the late 1980s and co-chaired the Green Party. For nine years he chaired the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising Tony Blair and Gordon Brown directly. He also co-founded the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, now part of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where senior executives go to interrogate their own sustainability strategies. Few people have spent as much time on both sides of that table. His books map the argument. Capitalism as if the World Matters made the case that capitalism is the only viable engine for a sustainable future, and set out the reforms that case requires. The World We Made imagined 2050 as if those reforms had landed. Hope in Hell, written into the climate emergency, is sharper and more impatient. Read together, they explain why he is taken seriously by chief executives and climate activists alike, even when he is telling each of them something they would rather not hear. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy and ESG governance Climate risk and the energy transition Reforming capitalism for environmental limits Net-zero credibility and corporate accountability Long-term scenario planning and systems change Biodiversity, nature, and business Intergenerational responsibility and the next decade Ideal for Board directors and CEOs reviewing the credibility of their net-zero and ESG commitments Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building serious, board-ready strategy Investor relations and capital allocation teams under increasing scrutiny on transition planning Strategy and risk leaders trying to integrate climate and biodiversity into long-range planning Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their own organisation’s climate strategy is exposed to investor, regulator, and employee scrutiny A working understanding of what credible, board-level sustainability looks like beyond reporting compliance A sharper sense of how climate, biodiversity, inequality, and capital allocation compound as connected risks Direct, unflattering challenge from someone with no commercial interest in their answer

Why organisations work with Jermaine Harris A Sports Psychology MSc with Distinction sits behind the talk, so the resilience content rests on academic grounding rather than slogans. The Empowered Results Programme gives audiences a defined process to take away, not a one-off emotional lift that fades by Monday. His own near-amputation and recovery story is used as evidence for behaviour-change technique, which is why Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, and PGA EuroPro Group have brought him in. Audiences leave with usable mental tools drawn from his reading of more than 380 self-help titles, distilled by someone trained to assess what actually works. He is comfortable in front of mixed audiences from frontline staff to leadership, which makes him useful for company-wide kick-offs and sales conferences where a single speaker has to land across the room. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) and MSc (Distinction) in Sports Psychology ICF accredited Professional Coach and certified Firewalk Instructor Author of The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life! Founder of The Empowered Results Programme Corporate engagements with Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes Fundraiser and advocate for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, following his son’s diagnosis in 2015 Biography Resilience is one of the most over-claimed words in corporate wellbeing. The challenge for an HR or culture lead is to find a voice on the topic who can move beyond the language and actually shift how people behave on Monday morning. Jermaine Harris built his speaking practice around exactly that gap. His starting point was personal. A serious car accident and the threat of losing a leg ended a phase of heavy drinking and gambling. The interesting decision came next: he completed a BSc and an MSc with Distinction in Sports Psychology and used that training to study what actually changes behaviour. The Empowered Results Programme is the consolidated output of that work. Two published books, The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life!, give audiences something to take home, and an ICF coaching credential underpins the one-to-one work he runs alongside the keynotes. Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes have used him for company events where the brief is morale, motivation, and personal performance. What sets the work apart from standard motivational fare is the combination of an academic frame, a worked methodology, and a credible personal account of recovery. He also fundraises for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a cause connected to his son’s diagnosis at four weeks old in 2015. Key speaking topics Mindset and personal performance Resilience after setback Overcoming self-imposed limits Confidence and self-belief Behaviour change and habit formation Team motivation and morale Purpose and direction at work Ideal for HR and culture leads planning company-wide kick-offs, sales conferences, and morale events Frontline and customer-service organisations where motivation directly affects performance Wellbeing and L and D leads looking for resilience content with an academic underpin Sales and revenue teams running incentive or annual meetings Audience outcomes A defined process for resetting after a personal or professional setback Specific techniques for managing self-talk, fear, and limiting belief A short list of habit changes that translate into measurable daily behaviour A renewed sense of agency over career, health, and finance decisions Energy and lift, paired with content audiences can apply the next morning

Why organisations work with Jeremy Heimans His intellectual authority is built on a named thesis. New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the “Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, and accompanied by a TED talk viewed over 1.5 million times. The operating credentials are rare. As co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out, and CEO of Purpose, he has built some of the most successful campaigning organisations and social movements of the last two decades, so he reasons about participation from live product experience. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, gives brand and marketing leaders a concrete equation rather than a worldview, which makes it easier to translate into campaign design and consumer engagement strategy. His recent work on AI participation, autonomous agents and governance scaffolding brings the New Power thesis into the question most executive teams are now actually wrestling with, how to build legitimacy around AI systems that are already in the building. The institutional recognition, Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Chair of its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award, means he opens doors for the organisations he speaks to as well as the audiences he addresses. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a public-benefit corporation building social movements for brands, NGOs and philanthropies Co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out Co-author of New Power with Henry Timms (Penguin Random House); FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist; HBR Big Idea feature TED talk on new power with over 1.5 million views World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation; Ford Foundation 75th Anniversary Visionary Award Educated at the University of Sydney and Harvard; earlier career at McKinsey Biography Power has changed shape. The argument that Jeremy Heimans built over two decades of campaigning and writing is that the organisations, brands and leaders who will matter in this century are the ones who understand participation as a structural force, not a communications channel. New Power, his book with Henry Timms, turned that argument into one of the most cited frames in contemporary leadership thinking, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, and anchored by a TED talk now viewed over 1.5 million times. The credibility behind the frame is operational. Heimans co-founded GetUp! in Australia in 2005, a political organisation that grew to more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and was a co-founder of the global campaigning platforms Avaaz and All Out. His company, Purpose, is the public-benefit corporation he built to carry that expertise into brands, NGOs and philanthropies, helping them design the participation models that command-and-control marketing no longer produces. Academically, he is a McKinsey alumnus with degrees from the University of Sydney and Harvard. Institutionally, he has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, chaired its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, is the simplest expression of what his advisory work delivers for consumer brands. The current edge of the work is artificial intelligence. Heimans’ thesis on how participation builds legitimacy is increasingly being applied to AI deployment, autonomous agents and the governance scaffolding companies are building for large-scale AI use. For leadership teams trying to work out how to retain brand trust, employee commitment and regulatory standing as AI reshapes their operating model, he is one of the few commentators whose framework was already built for this shift. Key speaking topics New power and the shift from broadcast to participation AI, autonomous agents and the governance of participation Brand building and consumer engagement under (Product + Purpose) × Participation Movement design for organisations, NGOs and advocacy Leadership and influence in hyperconnected systems The future of work and distributed authority Ideal for CEOs, CMOs and communications leaders redesigning brand and stakeholder strategy for a participatory environment Chief AI officers, governance leads and executive committees building legitimacy around AI systems NGO and philanthropy leadership teams scaling movements and civic participation programmes World Economic Forum, public affairs and policy forums where civic and corporate power converge Audience outcomes A working grasp of the New Power frame and how it changes marketing, leadership and governance decisions Concrete examples of brands, movements and platforms that have applied (or failed to apply) new power mechanics A clearer view of how participation can be designed into AI deployment and governance rather than retrofitted Practical models for civic, employee and customer engagement that work with the grain of hyperconnected systems

Why organisations work with Javier Goyeneche He built a profitable circular fashion brand from waste streams that most of the industry still treats as someone else’s problem: discarded fishing nets, post-consumer PET, used tyres, and post-industrial cotton. He runs Upcycling the Oceans, a working supply chain of almost 5,000 fishermen across 83 Mediterranean ports that has recovered around 2,000 tonnes of marine waste since 2015. It is a named operational system, not a campaign. ECOALF became the first Spanish fashion company to certify as a B Corp in 2018 and sits in the top 5% globally in the environment category. Boards questioning the credibility of their own ESG claims recognise the standard. He gives leaders a direct account of the commercial trade-offs of circularity: why ECOALF refuses Black Friday, why 74% of its latest collection is single-material, and how the business still reached profitability. Thinkers50 Radar listing (2019) and the Schwab Foundation Social Innovator of the Year award (2020) place him in the small group of sustainability founders whose work has been independently examined, including in a published IMD case study. Biography highlights Founder and President of ECOALF, launched in Madrid in 2009. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2019. Schwab Foundation Social Innovator of the Year, 2020. Leads the ECOALF Foundation and its Upcycling the Oceans programme, operating across 83 Mediterranean ports. Previously founded Fun and Basics in 1995, growing it to 350 points of sale and 70 branded stores before exiting. Subject of the IMD case study “ECOALF: Because there is no Planet B” by Benoit Leleux and Thomas Brochier. Biography Most fashion brands describe sustainability as a value. ECOALF treats it as an input constraint. The brand that Javier Goyeneche founded in Madrid in 2009 was built around a single operating question: can a fashion business be assembled entirely from recovered waste and still make money. It is now stocked in more than 1,500 stores worldwide and has been profitable since 2021. The raw materials tell most of the story. ECOALF manufactures from post-consumer PET bottles, discarded fishing nets, used tyres, coffee grounds, and post-industrial cotton and wool. The Upcycling the Oceans programme, run through the ECOALF Foundation, works with close to 5,000 fishermen across 83 Mediterranean ports and has recovered around 2,000 tonnes of marine waste since 2015. The supply chain is physical, named, and audited. The commercial discipline is the part boards tend to notice. ECOALF does not run seasonal sales, does not participate in Black Friday, and has pushed 74% of its latest collection into single-material garments so that items can be recycled at end of life. In 2018 it became the first Spanish fashion brand to certify as a B Corp, and in 2022 was named “Best for the World” in the environment category, placing it in the top 5% of the 5,000 B Corps globally. The recognition follows the work rather than leading it. Thinkers50 put Goyeneche on its Radar in 2019, the Schwab Foundation named him Social Innovator of the Year in 2020, and IMD has published a business-school case study on the model. For leadership teams trying to close the distance between their ESG commitments and their operating decisions, his value is specific. He has already made those trade-offs and can show where the numbers broke and where they held. Key speaking topics Circular business models in practice Sustainable and regenerative supply chains B Corp certification and corporate accountability Ocean plastic and waste recovery at scale Sustainable fashion and textile innovation Purpose-led entrepreneurship ESG credibility and greenwashing Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting sustainability strategy who need an operator’s view of what circularity costs and delivers. Consumer, retail, and industrial leadership teams under pressure to translate ESG commitments into supply-chain decisions. Founders and commercial leaders building purpose-led businesses who want the honest commercial arithmetic behind a Thinkers50-recognised model. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a circular business model functions end to end, from waste sourcing to single-material garment design to retail policy. A sharper test for their own sustainability claims against B Corp-grade standards. Language for the trade-offs involved in refusing discount-driven growth channels while remaining commercially viable. An operator’s account of how a multi-stakeholder supply chain, in this case with fishing communities across 83 Mediterranean ports, actually gets built.

Why organisations work with Javier Bajer He treats culture as a system of habits, not a communications exercise, and builds timelines measured in months rather than multi-year programmes. His training sits in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, which lets him speak to behaviour change with evidence, not slogans. He has run this work inside large, complex institutions on both sides of the corporate and public divide: HSBC, Shell, Google, Buckingham Palace, and the City of Buenos Aires. As Editor-in-Chief of Strategic HR Review, he works at the interface between HR practice and academic research, which gives senior people leaders a counterpart who is credible in both rooms. He founded The Talent Foundation and has spent two decades translating values statements into observable behaviour, so the client conversation starts at execution rather than diagnosis. Biography highlights Founding CEO of The Talent Foundation Editor-in-Chief of Strategic HR Review, Emerald Publishing PhD in Behavioural Change and MSc in Neurosciences; cognitive psychologist by training Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Professor of culture change at Universidad de San Andres and Visiting Fellow of the Business School at the University of Surrey Advisory work with HSBC, Shell, Google, Accenture, Hewlett-Packard, Buckingham Palace and the City of Buenos Aires Biography Most culture work fails in the same place. A values statement gets written, a town hall gets held, and the behaviour people see around them in meetings, decisions and email threads does not move. Javier Bajer has spent two decades working on that specific gap, and his argument is that culture is not a message problem. It is a habit problem. The foundation is technical. He trained as a cognitive psychologist, holds an MSc in Neurosciences and a doctorate in behavioural change, and uses that grounding to treat culture as a system of learned behaviours that can be redesigned on a defined timeline. He founded The Talent Foundation to apply that thinking at organisational scale, and he edits Strategic HR Review at Emerald, which keeps him close to both research and practice. The client record is unusually wide for the field. He has advised HSBC, Shell, Accenture, Hewlett-Packard and Google on the corporate side, Buckingham Palace in a royal institutional context, and the City of Buenos Aires at municipal scale. The through-line is not the sector; it is that each of these organisations had a gap between what leadership said and what staff did, and needed that gap closed in months rather than years. His academic affiliations reinforce the practitioner work. He is a Fellow of the RSA, professor of culture change at Universidad de San Andres, and Visiting Fellow of the Business School at the University of Surrey. On stage, the argument he brings to senior audiences is that good intentions are cheap, sustainable habits are rare, and the route from one to the other is a design problem leaders can actually solve. Key speaking topics Culture change and transformation Behavioural science in organisations Translating values into daily behaviour Leadership and cultural alignment Employee engagement beyond incentives Purpose and meaning at work Culture change in public institutions and cities Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders holding the mandate for culture and engagement CEOs and executive teams running a values refresh, post-merger integration or strategy reset Transformation and change leaders whose plans depend on observable behaviour shifts Public sector leaders working on institutional or city-level behaviour change Audience outcomes A working definition of culture as a system of habits rather than a communications output A sharper view of why values statements usually fail to change behaviour, and what replaces them Language for separating leadership intent from the daily signals that shape staff behaviour Reference points from corporate, royal and city government culture programmes that have moved in months A set of questions leaders can take into their next culture or engagement conversation

Why organisations work with Gary Cohen He has demonstrably moved an entire sector. Under his leadership, U.S. medical waste incinerators fell from around 5,600 to fewer than 70, and mercury was effectively removed from U.S. medical devices, contributing to the global Minamata phase-out. He brings a network, not just a perspective. Health Care Without Harm operates with hospitals and health partners in more than 50 countries and convenes ministries of health, group purchasing organisations and major hospital systems. His credibility is recognised by the bodies that matter to senior buyers: MacArthur Fellow (2015), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2006), and White House Champion of Change for Climate Change and Public Health (2013). He talks to executives in their own operating language. Procurement, capital projects, energy contracts, waste contracts, supply chain risk, not abstract sustainability narrative. He has spent nearly four decades inside the toxics and environmental health field, including running the National Toxics Campaign Fund and co-founding the Military Toxics Project, so he understands regulation, litigation and corporate response from multiple sides. Biography highlights Co-founder and president, Health Care Without Harm, since 1996. President, Practice Greenhealth, the U.S. membership organisation for sustainable healthcare. MacArthur Fellow, 2015. Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, 2006; Frank Hatch Award for Enlightened Public Service, 2007. White House Champion of Change for Climate Change and Public Health, 2013. Co-author, “Fighting Toxics” (Island Press, 1990); former executive director, National Toxics Campaign Fund. Biography Hospitals exist to heal, yet the global health sector is responsible for around 4.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and remains a significant source of toxic chemical exposure. Reconciling that contradiction has been Gary Cohen’s working life for almost four decades. He co-founded Health Care Without Harm in 1996 after a period running the National Toxics Campaign Fund and co-founding the Military Toxics Project. The organisation began as a response to the use of dioxin-emitting incineration, mercury thermometers and toxic plasticisers in routine medical care. It now works with hospital systems, ministries of health and purchasing organisations in more than 50 countries. The track record is concrete. Mercury has been substantially eliminated from U.S. medical devices, with the work feeding into the Minamata Convention. Medical waste incinerators in the United States fell from roughly 5,600 in the late 1990s to fewer than 70 by 2006. Practice Greenhealth, the U.S. membership arm Cohen leads, gives hospital executives a structured way to act on procurement, energy and waste rather than restate intentions. Recognition has followed the substance: a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006, the Frank Hatch Award in 2007, and a White House Champion of Change designation for climate change and public health in 2013. What that record gives a senior audience is unusual: someone who can speak to climate, toxics and supply chain risk as an operator who has already redesigned a regulated sector at scale. Key speaking topics Climate change as a public health issue Decarbonising the healthcare sector Toxic chemicals and supply chain redesign Sustainable procurement in regulated industries Hospital infrastructure, energy and waste Environmental health and community resilience Coalition building across regulators, providers and purchasers Ideal for Boards and executive teams of health systems, hospital networks and pharmaceutical companies setting climate and chemical safety strategy Chief sustainability officers, chief procurement officers and capital planning leads in regulated, asset-heavy sectors Public sector health leaders, ministries of health and group purchasing organisations ESG, impact and philanthropic investors looking at health and climate intersections Audience outcomes A clear view of where healthcare’s environmental footprint actually sits, by procurement category, energy use and waste stream A working model of how a sector moves from commitment to operating change, drawn from a redesign that has already happened Specific reference points on mercury elimination, incineration reduction and supply chain detoxification that translate to other regulated industries A more honest conversation about ESG substance versus ESG narrative, grounded in measurable sector outcomes

Why organisations work with Dan Pontefract The Work-Life Bloom model is not a concept – it is a research-backed framework with 12 named factors, four defined employee personas, and a structured approach that leaders can apply to their teams immediately. It gives organisations something specific to replace the work-life balance language they already know is not working. His decade as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS – where he launched the TELUS MBA, the Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90% – means he is not theorising about culture change from the outside. He has built it at scale. His five award-winning books each address a discrete organisational tension with a named model: the three-level purpose sweet spot (The Purpose Effect), the cyclical Open Thinking framework (Open to Think), the nine-lesson caring leadership model (Lead. Care. Win.), and the 12-factor Work-Life Bloom. Audiences leave with named frameworks they can act on, not just ideas they can reflect on. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey (May 2026), positions him on a strategic workforce issue that most boards are not yet treating as a risk: age debt – the growing talent and productivity shortfall created by demographic ageing – and the experience dividend available to organisations that treat older workers as assets. He is one of the few leadership voices in this space with a complete framework already developed. Thinkers50 Radar recognition (Class of 2018) and the Thinkers50 Best New Management Book designation for Work-Life Bloom (2024) provide intellectual validation beyond the speaking circuit. His ideas are credentialed within the management thinking community, not only the keynote market. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Pontefract Group; former Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer, TELUS Author of five award-winning books: Flat Army, The Purpose Effect, Open to Think, Lead. Care. Win., and Work-Life Bloom; sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026 Work-Life Bloom: 2024 Thinkers50 Best New Management Book and Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal, Leadership category Open to Think: 2019 getAbstract International Book of the Year; Lead. Care. Win.: 2022 Nautilus Awards Silver Medal for Leadership Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2018; shortlisted, Thinkers50 Talent Award, 2019 Adjunct Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria Contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review Presented at four TED events; delivered more than 1,000 keynotes across North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East Biography Work-life balance has been the default language of organisational culture for three decades. The data says it is not working. Engagement has flatlined, burnout has become a structural feature of corporate life, and the gap between what leaders promise their people and what they actually deliver keeps widening. The framework itself is the problem. Dan Pontefract has spent two decades inside and alongside organisations asking why the standard tools keep failing. His Work-Life Bloom model, built on primary research with more than 8,000 leaders and team members across 15 countries, maps 12 factors that determine whether people can genuinely flourish in both work and life. The insight spans five award-winning books and gives leaders a practical operating system to act on, not just a new way of describing the problem. That credibility is not theoretical. As Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, Pontefract launched the TELUS MBA, the company’s Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90%. Since founding Pontefract Group in 2018, he has worked with organisations including Salesforce, Nestlé, Manulife, and Virgin Media O2. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026, tackles a challenge most boards have not yet named. As populations age and birth rates fall, organisations are accumulating what he calls age debt – a growing talent and productivity shortfall they are unprepared for. His Rivers, Rocks, and Rubies framework gives leaders a practical approach to treating experience as a competitive asset. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business and a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Thinkers50 named him to the Radar Class of 2018. Key speaking topics Work-life bloom and the conditions for employee flourishing Culture transformation and employee engagement Purpose-driven leadership Caring and human-centred leadership practice The multigenerational workforce and age as a strategic asset Open thinking, decision-making, and organisational performance The future of work Ideal for CHROs and People and Culture leaders redesigning engagement, wellbeing, and culture strategy CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating cultural transformation or significant workforce change Transformation leads and Learning and Development heads building leadership capability at scale Executive teams and boards confronting multigenerational workforce planning and the talent implications of demographic ageing Audience outcomes A named, practical alternative to work-life balance – the Work-Life Bloom model and its 12 factors – that leaders can apply to their teams immediately after the session Clarity on the four work-life personas (blooming, budding, stunted, in renewal) and how to identify and respond to each within their own organisations A framework for three-level purpose alignment – between individual, role, and organisation – drawn from The Purpose Effect model Nine concrete leadership practices from the Lead. Care. Win. model for building caring, high-trust teams in everyday conditions An initial strategic lens on the multigenerational workforce challenge and the actions leaders should be prioritising now

Why organisations work with Chris Bertish The only person to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean alone on a stand-up paddleboard, a 93-day unsupported crossing completed in 2017. That body of lived experience gives his lessons on preparation and sustained performance an authority almost no other speaker can claim. Speaks from five years of deliberate engineering and rehearsal before each expedition. Leaders hear how contingency planning and fear management get built long before they are ever needed. Holds Guinness World Records in big wave surfing, open-ocean stand-up paddleboarding and solo wing-foil ocean crossing. Few speakers can demonstrate sustained performance across this range of unrelated operational systems. Structures every major expedition around raising funds for named charities including Operation Smile and The Lunchbox Fund. Audiences see purpose functioning as an actual operating constraint on decisions taken at sea. Biography highlights First person to complete a solo, unsupported crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on a stand-up paddleboard (Morocco to Antigua, 93 days, March 2017). First person to complete a solo, unsupported wing-foil crossing of the Pacific Ocean (California to Hawaii, 48 days, 2022). Winner of the Mavericks Big Wave Invitational at Half Moon Bay, California, in 2010. Best-selling author of Stoked! (Penguin Random House) and All In!; co-director of the award-winning documentaries Ocean Driven and Last Known Coordinates. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and on BBC, CNN, NPR and National Geographic. Selected as a Genius 100 Visionary by the Albert Einstein Foundation, alongside figures including Deepak Chopra and Sir Ken Robinson. Biography The Atlantic Ocean was crossed for the first time on a stand-up paddleboard in March 2017. The crossing took 93 days at sea and required roughly two million paddle strokes. Chris Bertish was alone for every one of them, in a custom-built 20-foot craft designed by naval architect Phil Morrison. Before the crossing, Bertish had already won the 2010 Mavericks Big Wave Invitational at Half Moon Bay in the largest waves in the competition’s history. He arrived in California without his board or a sponsor, borrowing both. The value organisations draw from his story lies in the five years of engineering and rehearsal that preceded the expedition, the part that never appears in the documentary. His body of work covers ocean disciplines that do not naturally overlap. In 2022 he became the first person to wing-foil solo across the Pacific, from California to Hawaii in 48 days. In 2025 he sailed an open beach catamaran from San Diego toward Oahu with no cabin, again solo and unsupported. Each expedition is a new operating system built under different constraints, which maps closely onto what senior teams face through extended transformation programmes. Every expedition sits inside a structure of named beneficiaries. The Atlantic crossing raised more than $400,000 for Operation Smile, The Lunchbox Fund and Signature of Hope Trust. His company, Chris Bertish Impossible, is a certified B Corp, and his Chris Bertish Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Audiences come away with a working example of how purpose operates as an actual constraint on decisions at sea, a form of evidence most leadership keynotes cannot offer. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained, real-world pressure Risk and fear management in high-consequence decisions Preparation discipline and systems redundancy Purpose-driven leadership Change and adaptability under uncertainty Peak performance and mindset Ocean conservation and sustainable business Ideal for Leadership teams asking their people to sustain effort through extended transformation or recovery programmes. Sales, commercial and delivery organisations facing high-stakes, high-pressure execution cycles. Senior offsites, executive retreats and all-hands conferences focused on resilience, purpose or culture change. ESG, sustainability and B Corp-aligned organisations looking for a credible voice on purpose as operating principle. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what preparation looks like when failure carries real consequences. Practical tools for managing fear and risk when systems fail and no external help is available. A working example of purpose operating as a genuine constraint on decisions under pressure. A shift in how teams think about the scale of goals that are achievable through sustained preparation.