Risk Management

Why organisations work with Caroline Elliott Crisis decision-making earned in real avalanche rescues. Caroline has been on the team making the call when a four-year-old was buried under two metres of snow and the survival window was eighteen minutes. A rare set of named technical credentials inside a closed European emergency system: the only British woman fully qualified across French ski patrol rescue disciplines, the first British woman in a French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit, and a graduate of ENSA Chamonix. Direct experience of multi-agency coordination when none of the agencies have worked together before. Most leadership audiences understand the problem in theory; few have heard it explained by someone who has run it. Practical content on psychological safety and team performance, drawn from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in survival rates. A track record of operating across language and cultural barriers inside a male-led emergency profession in France, told without standard motivational packaging. Biography highlights Only British woman to hold the full pisteur secouriste 2ème degré qualification, including avalanche bombing, NivoMétéo snow weather forecasting and avalanche dog handling. Graduate of École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA), Chamonix, 2011. First British woman to enter a French Fire and Rescue specialist mountain Search and Rescue dog handler unit (CGSR 64, Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Author of Fjord’s Mountain Mission (2021), the children’s snow safety book endorsed by the International Ski Federation (FIS). French edition published by Catherine Destivelle’s Les Éditions du Mont Blanc; the book is available in four languages. Holds the artificier qualification with ANENA (Association Nationale pour l’Étude de la Neige et des Avalanches) and the NivoMétéo qualification with Météo France. Founder of FjordSAR. Works as an international keynote speaker, snow safety educator, and risk management consultant for wintersports accidents. Represented at the Fédération Internationale des Patrouilles de Ski (FIPS) Conference, Riksgrenzen, 2024. Biography An avalanche call gives a rescue team about eighteen minutes. After that, survival rates collapse. Caroline Elliott has spent her professional life inside that window, working as a fully qualified pisteur secouriste in France and as an avalanche search and rescue dog handler with a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain unit. That career is unusual on multiple counts. Caroline is the only British woman fully qualified across the French ski patrol rescue system, graduating from the École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA) in Chamonix in 2011. Alongside the patrol qualification, she holds artificier accreditation with ANENA, the French authority on controlled avalanche blasting, and NivoMétéo accreditation with Météo France. She was also the first British woman to enter a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit. What this profession teaches, and what makes it useful in a corporate setting, is the operating reality of high-stakes environments. Teams making the decisions are often working with incomplete information and across services that have never worked together. Communication has to be clear in two languages. Trust between strangers has to be operational before the rescue starts. For corporate audiences, Caroline translates those operating conditions into team performance terms, particularly composure under pressure and the communication discipline that holds when conditions deteriorate. Her illustrations come straight from the work. An early-morning controlled blast above a sleeping resort. A family rescue where the four-year-old came up alive after two hours under two metres of snow. A multi-agency operation where command authority had to be established in real time. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-pressure environments Crisis communication under stress Risk management and decision-making under uncertainty Multi-agency coordination in crisis Resilience in hazardous environments Psychological safety in high-stakes teams Women in male-led professional cultures Ideal for Leadership and operational teams in industries where decisions carry real risk, particularly emergency services, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, defence and insurance. Organisations preparing teams for restructuring, multi-agency programmes, or environments where cross-silo coordination has to work the first time it is tested. All-staff and conference audiences at events on resilience, crisis leadership, and team performance under pressure. Women-in-leadership programmes inside male-led professional cultures. Audience outcomes A specific picture of how decisions actually get made when time pressure is genuine, drawn from named operational scenarios rather than case study reconstructions. Concrete tests for whether their own team’s communication and coordination would hold when conditions deteriorate. A view of psychological safety as an operational variable, grounded in environments where it functions or fails in real time. Renewed energy and a different reference point for what “high pressure” actually means in their own work.

Why organisations work with Tina Stowell She has run a national regulator from the inside. As Chair of the Charity Commission for three years, she rebuilt how a public body holds an entire sector to account, and can speak to regulatory pressure with the authority of someone who has applied it. She is one of the few practitioners who has led a legislative chamber through politically contested change, including the passage of equal marriage law through the House of Lords. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee places her at the centre of UK scrutiny on generative AI, large language models and the future of news, with published committee reports cited by government and industry. She offers a working insight into how organisations earn or lose public trust, drawn from BBC corporate affairs, No. 10, the Cabinet table and a non-executive seat at Impellam Group plc. She speaks without political performance. Buyers commission her when the room contains regulators, ministers, journalists and executives who would all detect spin instantly. Biography highlights Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, 2014 to 2016, full Cabinet member from 2015. Chair, Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2018 to 2021. Chair, House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, with reports on generative AI, media literacy and the future of news. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs and Head of Communications for the BBC Trust. MBE in the 1996 Birthday Honours for service in the No. 10 Press Office under Prime Minister John Major. Spectator Peer of the Year, 2013 and 2024; Stonewall Politician of the Year, 2013. Non-executive director, Impellam Group plc; board member, ABTA; Social Mobility Commissioner since 2023. Biography The Charity Commission was a regulator that few outside the sector took seriously when Tina Stowell took the chair in 2018. Three years later it was setting the public conversation about how charities behave. That arc, from background body to active regulator, captures the kind of work she has built a career around: institutions under pressure, and the leadership choices that decide whether they recover authority or lose it. She came to that chairmanship through a route few in the Lords have taken. Five years in the No. 10 Press Office under John Major, recognised with an MBE in 1996. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs during a period of intense scrutiny of the Corporation. Deputy chief of staff to William Hague at Conservative Party headquarters. The pattern is consistent: senior communications and governance roles inside organisations whose legitimacy was being publicly tested. In 2014 she was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, becoming a full member of the Cabinet after the 2015 election. The previous year she had taken the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill through the Lords, work that drew Politician of the Year recognition from Stonewall and PinkNews and a first Spectator Peer of the Year award. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee has produced some of the more substantive UK parliamentary work on large language models, generative AI and the future of news, with the 2024 report on LLMs widely cited in the policy debate on AI safety and opportunity. She also brings the texture that comes from having grown up in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the daughter of a painter-decorator and a factory worker, with five O-levels and no university degree. That biography matters in the room. She has held cabinet rank, regulated a sector, and chaired the parliamentary committee scrutinising AI, without the credentialism that often accompanies those roles. Her Spectator Peer of the Year award was repeated in 2024 for parliamentary work on the ownership of UK newspapers. Key speaking topics Leadership and trust under public scrutiny AI governance and the UK regulatory environment Regulation as a leadership tool, not a compliance burden Decision-making in politically contested terrain Media, communications and reputational risk Public sector and charity sector governance Bridging divides across political, generational and institutional lines Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing regulatory or political exposure Senior leaders in regulated industries, charities, media and the public sector Communications, public affairs and corporate affairs leadership Policy and government relations teams in technology, financial services and consumer-facing businesses Audience outcomes A clearer view of what earns institutional trust in front of regulators, media and elected officials A practical reading of how UK and parliamentary scrutiny of AI is actually evolving Sharper instincts for spotting where leadership communication is hardening or losing the room A more honest sense of what the public sector expects of senior corporate leaders, from someone who has sat on both sides

Why organisations work with Roger Spitz His background gives him unusual commercial authority. Before Techistential and the Disruptive Futures Institute, he led Technology M&A at BNP Paribas globally, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with a combined value over $25 billion. That record matters to boards and institutional investors whose advisers often lack operating experience. His book Disrupt With Impact won the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. The AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) gives leadership teams a concrete lens to apply to their own operating environment rather than another abstract call to “embrace change”. Techistentialism, the concept he coined, is specifically about human agency and decision-making under AI, which is the question most executive teams are quietly asking themselves about the technology their organisations are deploying. Institutional anchors at the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership and the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence place him inside the forums his audiences either belong to or want to. Biography highlights President of Techistential and Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, San Francisco Former Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas; 50-plus transactions with a combined value exceeding $25 billion Author of Disrupt With Impact and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership WEF Global Foresight Network member; AI Council, Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence Biography Traditional strategy runs on prediction. The trouble is that the systems senior leaders now operate in, AI, geopolitics, climate, capital markets, are non-linear in ways prediction cannot catch. Roger Spitz’s work is built around the alternative: a discipline of antifragility, anticipation and agility that allows organisations to benefit from volatility rather than simply endure it. His authority starts in finance. He was Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with combined value over $25 billion, which is a different foundation to most futurists and is visible in how he handles boards. He now runs Techistential, the climate and foresight strategy advisory he founded, and chairs the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, where he coined the term “Techistentialism” to describe human agency and decision-making in an AI-mediated world. The body of published work is substantial. Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World won first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. He sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, ranks in the Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership, and serves on the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence. For CEOs, boards, institutional investors and policy leaders, what Spitz offers is both specific and operational. The AAA Framework gives them a lens. The AI and techistentialism work gives them a language for what autonomous systems are doing to their operating model. And the M&A record gives them a speaker who has been on the other side of the capital-markets conversation they are probably also having. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and the AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) AI, techistentialism and human agency in an automated world Non-linear disruption and scenario thinking Geopolitical and technological risk Boardroom strategy under unpredictability Building antifragile organisations Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees revisiting strategic planning assumptions under accelerating disruption Chief strategy officers, chief AI officers and heads of corporate development Institutional investors, asset managers and private equity leadership teams Policy leaders and central banks running foresight and resilience briefs World Economic Forum and high-level industry forums Audience outcomes A clearer view of why linear forecasting is failing and what replaces it in current conditions A working grasp of the AAA Framework and how to apply it to the audience’s own strategy cycle Specific framing for human-AI decision-making drawn from Disrupt With Impact and the techistentialism work Case material from M&A, frontier technology and foresight consulting usable in the audience’s own sector Reference material from the published books that leadership teams can circulate after the session

Why organisations work with Stephen Foerster Co-author with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press), a working intellectual map of modern finance built from direct interviews with ten of its pioneers, including six Nobel laureates. He can take a board through how its current investment frameworks were actually constructed, with the people who built them on the page. Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance, with more than fifty papers in outlets including the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics. The analysis is the kind that has to hold up to cross-examination. Has built and delivered executive finance programmes for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and Alcan, specifically for senior leaders without a finance background. A sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board and former chair of Foundation Western’s Investment Committee. The fiduciary discipline he teaches is one he has exercised. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987 PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; CFA designation since 1997 Co-author with Andrew Lo (MIT Sloan) of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press); featured in The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column; Axiom Business Awards silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing Author of Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor (Wiley, 2024); Axiom Book Awards bronze medal in Investing More than fifty published articles, including in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance; sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board Biography Most boards and investment committees making consequential capital decisions are not staffed by finance specialists. They sign off on portfolio risk and long-horizon investment choices with frameworks they have not built and a century of market history they have not had time to absorb. In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio, co-authored with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo and published by Princeton University Press, takes ten of modern finance’s most consequential figures, including six Nobel laureates. The book traces how investors actually came to be taught to think about risk and return. The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column featured the book; Axiom Business Awards gave it the silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing. The 2024 follow-up, Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks (Wiley), uses episodes drawn from a thousand years of market history to make the same lessons stick for senior decision-makers. That historical method runs through Foerster’s work with institutions. He has taught at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987. He holds a PhD from Wharton and the CFA designation, and has won Ivey’s Teaching Innovation Award and the Dean Carol Stephenson Excellence in EMBA Teaching Award. He has designed and delivered executive education for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and other major Canadian institutions. The focus is consistent: translating finance for senior leaders who do not come from a finance background. He has also sat on the other side of the table. He sits on Western University’s joint pension board and previously chaired the Investment Committee of Foundation Western. He is Federal Court qualified as an expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance. His more than fifty published papers appear in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal. He is currently writing the authorised biography of William F. Sharpe, the 1990 Nobel laureate whose Capital Asset Pricing Model still underpins how most institutions measure investment risk. Key speaking topics Portfolio management and asset allocation Capital markets and long-term investing Investment decision-making and risk management Modern portfolio theory in practice Behavioural traps in investing Lessons from market history Corporate finance for non-financial executives Ideal for Boards and investment committees with fiduciary responsibility for pensions, endowments, or corporate treasury CFOs, treasurers, and finance leaders responsible for portfolio and capital allocation decisions Senior executives without a finance background who oversee investment risk Asset managers and investment professionals interested in the intellectual lineage of their field Audience outcomes Where modern portfolio theory came from, and where its assumptions break down in real markets Sharper questions to put to investment managers and finance teams Which investment lessons from market history are durable, and which are products of their era Enough working knowledge to engage substantively with capital allocation and investment risk without a finance background

Why organisations work with Louis De Jaeger He runs a working design practice, Commensalist, that has delivered regenerative projects from food forests and future-proof farms to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands, so the recommendations on stage are tied to built assets, not slideware. He frames regeneration as a financial proposition. Boards leave able to discuss soil, biodiversity and food systems as long-term yield and risk variables, not as CSR. He is one of the few sustainability voices who has also built infrastructure at scale, co-founding the Belgian night-train start-up Moonlight Express that merged into European Sleeper, which gives him direct credibility with leaders who care about how new green businesses actually get financed and operated. He brings a body of evidence from his own work: the FoodForest documentary, the book SOS: Save Our Soils, and over fifty opinion pieces in titles such as De Standaard, De Morgen and Knack. Audiences hear arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print and on screen. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Commensalist, a regenerative landscape architecture practice working on productive landscapes, regenerative farms and hospitality estates worldwide. Co-founder of the Food Forest Institute and of the ByeByeGrass biodiversity campaign in Belgium. Co-founder of Moonlight Express, the Belgian night-train start-up that merged into European Sleeper, now operating sleeper services from Brussels. Director of the award-winning documentary FoodForest (2022) and of the feature documentary Eat More Trees on the role of food forests in climate and food security. Author of SOS: Save Our Soils (2025) and of Design your own food forest, a technical reference on food forest design. Long-running opinion contributor to De Standaard, De Morgen, Knack, Knack Weekend and MO*, with more than fifty published columns since 2018. Biography Most boards now accept that climate, biodiversity and food security are material risks. Far fewer can describe what to actually do about the soil their supply chains depend on. Louis De Jaeger has spent the last decade closing that gap, designing the land and writing the case for it at the same time. He runs Commensalist, a Belgian landscape architecture practice that designs regenerative projects from productive farms and food forests to vineyard hotels and private eco-islands. The work is built, not theoretical. Clients come to him because they need an asset that will still hold value in thirty years under heat, drought and tighter nature regulation. Alongside the practice, he co-founded the Food Forest Institute and the ByeByeGrass campaign in Belgium, and made the documentaries FoodForest and Eat More Trees about the role of food forests in cooling the climate and rebuilding food systems. His 2025 book SOS: Save Our Soils sets out a direct argument that regenerative agriculture is the cheapest, most effective form of climate infrastructure available, and that current food and land policy is mispriced against it. What makes him useful in a leadership room is the second track. With Moonlight Express, the night-train start-up he co-founded that merged into European Sleeper, he has been on the inside of building a green infrastructure business from a deck to operating trains. So when he talks to investors and operators about regeneration as a long-term asset class, the argument carries the weight of someone who has had to finance, license and run one. Key speaking topics Regenerative agriculture and soil health Food forests and productive landscapes Climate, biodiversity and nature-based solutions Sustainable land use and food systems Regeneration as long-term asset strategy Sustainable hospitality and estate design Green infrastructure entrepreneurship Ideal for Boards and investment committees pricing climate, nature and land-use risk into long-term portfolios CSOs, heads of sustainability and ESG leads moving beyond carbon accounting into soil, water and biodiversity Real estate, hospitality and agribusiness operators evaluating regenerative design for their own assets Founders and corporate venture teams backing food, agritech and green infrastructure businesses Audience outcomes A working definition of regeneration that boards can use, distinct from offsetting and from generic ESG language. A clearer view of which sustainability assumptions and assets are likely to age badly over the next decade. Practical reference points from built projects: food forests, regenerative farms, hospitality estates, biodiversity campaigns. A founder’s account of how a green infrastructure business actually gets financed and run, drawn from Moonlight Express and European Sleeper. A sharper internal narrative for connecting climate, food and land strategy to commercial decisions.

Why organisations work with Michael Lyon He has mentored more than 100 ventures through the Creative Destruction Lab since 2018, currently anchored in the Oceans stream at the Atlantic site. That is a working accelerator practice, not a retired one. He was Vice President and General Counsel of Space Adventures during the first private spaceflights to the International Space Station (Tito, Shuttleworth). When he talks about commercialising frontier technology, he is describing a market he helped invent. He served as Special Assistant to FDIC Chairman L. William Seidman during the Savings and Loan crisis and as an Assistant Director for Resolutions at the RTC. Few startup mentors have run a federal crisis at that level. His book Accelerating Startups: Lessons From Mentors, foreword by Professor Ajay Agrawal of the Rotman School and contributions including Professor Philip Kotler, gives boards and accelerator programmes a published reference point for what he teaches. He works comfortably in the Gulf Cooperation Council region and Asia, and has done business in more than 100 countries, which makes him useful for venture programmes thinking about international expansion from day one. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Lyon Capital Services; mentor at the Creative Destruction Lab. Former Vice President and General Counsel, Space Adventures; leadership roles at Zero Gravity Corporation. Special Assistant to the Chairman of the FDIC and Resolution Trust Corporation during the Savings and Loan crisis; Assistant Director for Resolutions at the RTC. Former General Counsel and Director of Business Development at J.E. Robert Company; former attorney at Covington and Burling. Co-founder of Xtronaut Enterprises with the leader of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission. Author of Accelerating Startups: Lessons From Mentors (foreword by Professor Ajay Agrawal, Rotman School of Management). J.D. cum laude, Harvard Law School; B.A. summa cum laude, Brandeis University; attended London School of Economics. Biography The hardest part of building a serious venture is not the idea. It is the cluster of decisions a founder makes about regulation, capital, geography, and timing in the first three years, almost always with too little information. That is the gap that Michael Lyon has spent two decades closing for founders, first inside the companies and now from the mentor’s seat at the Creative Destruction Lab. His commercial track record is in the part of the economy where regulation, capital intensity, and frontier technology meet. As Vice President and General Counsel of Space Adventures he helped organise the first private spaceflights to the International Space Station, the Tito and Shuttleworth missions. He held leadership roles at Zero Gravity Corporation and co-founded Xtronaut Enterprises with the lead scientist of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. Before the space sector he was Special Assistant to the Chairman of the FDIC during the Savings and Loan crisis and an Assistant Director for Resolutions at the Resolution Trust Corporation, working on failed thrifts of more than 500 million dollars in assets. He has also been General Counsel and Director of Business Development at the J.E. Robert Company and an attorney at Covington and Burling. The legal training is from Harvard, cum laude. Since 2018 he has mentored more than 100 ventures at the Creative Destruction Lab across the space, ocean, and emerging technology streams. His book Accelerating Startups: Lessons From Mentors carries a foreword by Professor Ajay Agrawal of the Rotman School of Management, who founded CDL, and a contribution from Professor Philip Kotler. It is the most direct expression of what a buyer is hiring when they put him in front of founders or a corporate innovation team. Key speaking topics Commercialising frontier technology in regulated markets Mentorship and founder decision-making inside accelerator programmes The commercial space sector and lessons from the first private orbital flights International market entry, with a focus on the Gulf and Asia Crisis resolution lessons from the Savings and Loan era Corporate innovation, intrapreneurship, and venture building Ideal for Founders and CEOs of early-stage ventures in space, ocean, and other regulated frontier sectors. Corporate innovation, R&D, and venture-building teams setting up accelerator or incubator programmes. Investors, family offices, and government innovation funds backing technology commercialisation. Universities, accelerators, and policy bodies running founder education at scale. Audience outcomes A working playbook for how founders extract real value from accelerators, incubators, and government innovation programmes. A grounded view of how commercial space and ocean ventures actually get built when regulation, capital, and timing are all moving at once. Lessons from the inside of a federal financial crisis applied to how founders and boards should think about risk and resolution today. Specific guidance on entering Gulf and Asian markets without burning the first eighteen months on the wrong structure.

Why organisations work with Brian Burke He has run four NHL franchises and acted as the league’s chief disciplinarian, so the material on accountability, conduct, and hard personnel calls is drawn from decisions he actually made, not cases he studied. He built the Anaheim Ducks team that won the 2007 Stanley Cup and the U.S. squad that took Olympic silver in 2010, giving him a credible answer to how standards and culture translate into results. He co-founded the You Can Play Project after the death of his son Brendan, an inclusion initiative that became the operating standard for LGBTQ+ acceptance across professional sport. As first Executive Director of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association, he has worked on institution-building inside a league designed from scratch, not just running established franchises. Harvard Law School training and five years as NHL Executive Vice President mean he speaks to the legal, governance, and reputational dimensions of leadership with specific authority. Biography highlights Juris Doctor, Harvard Law School, 1981 Captain of Providence Friars men’s ice hockey, NCAA (1976-77) NHL Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations, 1993-1998 General manager of Hartford Whalers, Vancouver Canucks, Anaheim Ducks (Stanley Cup, 2007), and Toronto Maple Leafs General manager, United States men’s Olympic hockey team, Vancouver 2010 (silver medal) Co-founder, You Can Play Project (2012) Inductee, U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Class of 2023 Author, “Burke’s Law: A Life in Hockey” (Viking, 2020), with Stephen Brunt Executive Director, Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association (2024) Biography The Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007 under a front office that had been rebuilt almost from scratch. Brian Burke was the general manager who rebuilt it. That pattern, inherit a struggling operation, set hard standards, make uncomfortable personnel decisions, has defined four decades of his career across Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, Toronto, Calgary, and Pittsburgh. Before any of that, he trained as a lawyer. Burke took a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1981, then spent five years inside the NHL league office as Executive Vice President and the chief disciplinarian for on-ice conduct. The legal training shows up in how he talks about leadership: precise about process, unsentimental about accountability, aware that every decision by a senior executive is a decision the organisation will have to defend. The work changed after his son Brendan, who was openly gay, died in a 2010 car accident. With his son Patrick, Burke launched the You Can Play Project in 2012 to end homophobia in sport. The initiative has since become the reference standard for LGBTQ+ inclusion across professional leagues, and the experience gave Burke an unusually direct perspective on how cultural change happens inside organisations built around a narrow definition of toughness. His 2020 memoir “Burke’s Law: A Life in Hockey,” co-authored with Stephen Brunt, was a number one Canadian bestseller. In 2023 he was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. In 2024 he took on the first executive directorship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association, a mandate to build institutional foundations for a league being designed in real time. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-performance sport Culture, conduct, and accountability inside elite organisations Inclusion and the You Can Play Project Decision-making under public scrutiny Building and running championship teams Governance and discipline in professional leagues Resilience and personal loss Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting conduct and accountability standards CHROs and chief culture officers working on inclusion in tradition-bound organisations Leaders running high-profile operations where decisions are reviewed in public Sports and entertainment businesses, and organisations that work closely with them Audience outcomes A concrete read on how senior leaders hold conduct standards when the easy move is to look the other way Specific examples of what it took to build a Stanley Cup-winning organisation and an Olympic medal-winning team A direct account of how the You Can Play Project changed LGBTQ+ inclusion across professional sport A sharper sense of how legal, reputational, and competitive considerations collide in senior personnel decisions Perspective from a leader who has made high-consequence calls under sustained public pressure and can explain the reasoning

Why organisations work with Lucy Shepherd She has actually led teams through conditions where decisions carry physical consequence: a 50-day, 400km first-recorded crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, captured in Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild. Her credentials sit inside the institutions that historically define exploration: Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23, co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society, with a Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, that documents the thinking behind the expedition. She speaks credibly to mixed-team leadership in cultures and conditions she does not control, a closer analogy for senior leaders running global teams than the usual sports or military comparisons. She brings a current, on-camera profile, rather than a single-event story repeated for years. Each new expedition and broadcast updates the material she draws on. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, appointed at age 23. Co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society. Led the first recorded east-to-west traverse of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains, a 50-day, 400km expedition with an all-Indigenous team. Author of Into the Wild, published by Penguin Michael Joseph. Star and self-shooting subject of Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, a two-part series that aired in 2024. Described by The Times as «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers». Biography The first recorded east-to-west crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains took 50 days and roughly 400 kilometres on foot. Lucy Shepherd led it in 2021 with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, navigating jungle, river and uncharted terrain on outdated maps. Channel 4 turned the expedition into Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, broadcast in 2024. Shepherd’s credentials read like an older era of exploration. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23 and co-opted onto the council of the Scientific Exploration Society, the bodies that have historically vetted serious British expedition work. The Times has called her «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers,» a line that travels because it is uncharacteristically literal about what she does. The keynote material draws on a decade of leading and joining expeditions across Arctic plateaus, high mountains, deep jungle and desert. The themes that recur are practical: composure when conditions degrade, trust built across cultural and language boundaries, decisions made on incomplete information, and the discipline of carrying on when the plan no longer applies. Her Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, sets out the thinking behind those decisions in long form. Senior audiences tend to find the analogy useful because the field she works in is unforgiving in ways business rarely is. The leadership questions translate without softening, and the speaker bringing them has carried the consequences personally. Key speaking topics Expedition leadership in extreme environments Decision-making under physical and psychological pressure Leading mixed and cross-cultural teams Risk, preparation and the limits of planning Wilderness, biodiversity and environmental stewardship Resilience drawn from expedition fieldwork Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences seeking a substantive keynote on judgment under pressure Teams coming through restructure, sustained change, or operational shock who need a renewed sense of composure and trust Sustainability, ESG and conservation-themed audiences who want a credible field voice rather than a policy speaker All-hands and inspirational anchor slots where the standard sports or military keynote has worn thin Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what real decision-making under pressure looks like, told through a specific 50-day expedition rather than abstract framework. A more honest reading of risk, preparation and the point at which planning stops being useful. A practical model for building trust across a team when language, culture and authority are not stable. A renewed argument for protecting wilderness and biodiversity, made by someone who has spent time inside it.

Why organisations work with Theresa Payton She has held the most accountable technology seat in the world – not as an adviser, but as the operator responsible for securing the Executive Office of the President. That is a different class of credential from the vendor or think-tank backgrounds most cybersecurity speakers bring. Her book Manipulated – on The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list, maps the specific mechanics of AI-driven disinformation, deepfakes, and election interference; organisations working on trust, governance, or brand integrity get a strategic framework they can act on. As a patented inventor of security designs and co-founder of a cybersecurity product company (Dark3, acquired by Celerium), she brings the practitioner’s perspective, not the theorist’s: she has built the solutions, not just described the problem. She translates threat intelligence into board-level language. Her seventeen years across banking technology, government, and private advisory work means she can speak credibly to risk committees, technology leaders, and general business audiences in the same event. Biography highlights First female White House Chief Information Officer, serving under President George W. Bush, 2006–2008 Founder and CEO of Fortalice Solutions, ranked in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500 by Cybercrime Magazine Prior senior technology executive roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Author of Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth, The Guardian Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list; revised edition published 2024 Co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design Recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Community Service; 2020 CISO MAG Cybersecurity Crusader of the Year; 2019 Woman Cybersecurity Leader of the Year Starred as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS reality series Hunted Regular security commentator on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and MSNBC Biography Theresa Payton ran cybersecurity for the White House. From 2006 to 2008, as Chief Information Officer for the Executive Office of the President under George W. Bush, she was accountable for the security of IT systems used by the President and 3,000 staff: not as an adviser, but as the person responsible. Before that, she spent sixteen years in senior technology roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The combination is unusual: operational authority at the highest level of government, built on a banking technology foundation. That background shapes how she approaches cyber risk with corporate audiences. The question she puts to boards is not whether their organisation will face a breach, but whether their governance structures are designed to know about it, act on it, and contain it. As CEO of Fortalice Solutions, listed in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500, she has spent fifteen years working through exactly that question with Fortune 100 clients. Her book Manipulated, named one of The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime, examines how AI-generated deepfakes, self-replicating chatbots, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are used to compromise institutions from the outside in. A revised edition was published in 2024. She is also a co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design, and previously co-founded Dark3, a cybersecurity product company later acquired by Celerium. Her profile extends beyond the conference circuit. She has testified before government bodies, served as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS series Hunted, and is a regular security analyst on networks including CNN, CBS News, and MSNBC. For organisations where the board genuinely needs to understand what it owns and what it is exposed to, she is one of the few speakers who has actually sat in that seat. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity governance and board-level risk AI-driven threats and deepfake manipulation Secured digital transformation Election security and information integrity Data privacy and digital identity Fraud and social engineering Cybersecurity leadership and workforce Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors navigating cyber and AI governance CISOs, CIOs, and CTOs developing organisation-wide security strategy Risk, compliance, and audit committees in regulated sectors Technology and transformation leaders in financial services, healthcare, and government-adjacent industries Audience outcomes A board-ready framework for assessing the gap between digital investment and security governance Practical understanding of how AI-driven threats – deepfakes, disinformation, autonomous attack tools – operate in practice, not just in theory Clearer accountability structures for cyber risk at executive level Awareness of the specific ways social engineering and fraud are evolving, with concrete defensive steps Language and framing to take cybersecurity from a technical department concern to a strategic leadership conversation

Why organisations work with Caspar Veldkamp Direct working experience as the foreign minister of an EU member state during the 2025 NATO summit year, including hosting the first NATO summit ever held in the Netherlands. A documented record of policy principle: he resigned the foreign ministry over the cabinet’s refusal to advance further measures on Israel, and authored the EU review proposal that bears his name. Constituency-level experience of China at the EBRD board, now extended into the EU’s most senior diplomatic post in Beijing from summer 2026. Frontline diplomatic service through two of Europe’s hardest decades of crisis: ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2015 and to Greece during the Eurozone and migration emergencies. Comfort moving between the transatlantic and Brussels frames, grounded in early service on Senator Richard Lugar’s staff and political counsellor work in Washington. Biography highlights Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2024 to 2025. EU Ambassador to China designate, taking up post in Beijing in summer 2026. Board Director, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, 2020 to 2023. Ambassador of the Netherlands to Israel (2011 to 2015) and to Greece (2015 to 2019). Hosted the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague. Author of “the Caspar proposal” for EU review of the EU to Israel Association Agreement. Biography The cabinet meeting on 22 August 2025 ended with the Dutch foreign minister resigning his post. Caspar Veldkamp had proposed further measures on Israel over the conduct of the war in Gaza, including an import ban on goods from settlements in the occupied territories. The cabinet would not move. He left office the same evening, and the New Social Contract ministers followed him out in solidarity. It was the kind of public exit that explains in one moment what a leader’s working principle is. The career that led there is unusually broad for a sitting politician. Veldkamp ran the Dutch embassies in Israel from 2011 to 2015 and in Greece from 2015 to 2019, the second through the Eurozone and migration crises. Between politics and diplomacy he sat on the EBRD board in London for three years, with constituency responsibility for the Netherlands, China, Mongolia, North Macedonia and Armenia, chairing the Board Steering Group during a period of governance reform and active climate and Ukraine work. As foreign minister he hosted the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, the first summit held in the Netherlands. He argued publicly that the two-percent NATO defence benchmark was no longer adequate, backed sustained military support for Ukraine, and authored what came to be called the Caspar proposal: a formal EU review of Israel’s compliance with the EU to Israel Association Agreement. The proposal drew broader member state support than expected and reframed the conversation inside the bloc. In summer 2026 he takes up the post of European Union Ambassador to China, the first Dutch national appointed to the role. For organisations sitting on China exposure, transatlantic supply chain decisions, or the next round of EU sanctions logic, the perspective he carries into Beijing is the one boards are now looking to brief against. Key speaking topics European geopolitics and EU foreign policy NATO, transatlantic security and Ukraine EU to China relations and the Brussels view of Beijing Sanctions, ESG and the Middle East Diplomacy under coalition and parliamentary constraint Crisis-period leadership in foreign ministries and embassies Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material China, Israel or Russia exposure CEO and CFO offsites focused on geopolitical scenario planning Banking, insurance and energy leadership teams sizing sanctions and policy risk Public affairs, government relations and risk leadership functions Audience outcomes A clearer read on how EU foreign policy decisions are actually formed across capitals. A working framework for what the next phase of EU to China relations is likely to demand of European businesses. Specific reference points on Ukraine support, NATO posture and the trajectory of sanctions logic into 2026 and beyond. A first-person account of holding a foreign ministry under coalition strain, useful for any leader managing decisions that carry public principle as well as commercial weight.

Why organisations work with Kristen Clarke She ran the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus at scale, with direct accountability for prosecutions in the George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tree of Life, and Club Q cases. Few speakers have led a mandate of that visibility under that level of political and public pressure. She is the first Black woman ever confirmed by the Senate to lead the DOJ Civil Rights Division, a credential that signals both institutional access and personal conviction in a way corporate DEI speakers rarely match. Her career has moved between government, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, giving her a working view of how civil rights principles get translated into operational policy across very different institutions. She brings the perspective of someone who has had to defend a contested mandate, not theorise about it. That voice is useful to boards and executive teams where DEI commitments are being publicly questioned. Biography highlights 19th Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice, 2021 to 2025; first Black woman confirmed to the role. General Counsel of the NAACP, appointed March 2026. Former President and Executive Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, from 2015. Former Civil Rights Bureau Chief, New York State Attorney General’s Office. Harvard University (BA, 1997) and Columbia Law School (J.D., 2000); 2025 W. Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law and Distinguished Lecturer at Penn Carey Law. Recipient of Columbia Law School’s Paul Robeson Distinguished Alumni Award and the National Bar Association’s Top 40 Under 40. Biography The federal Civil Rights Division has rarely been more visible, or more contested, than during the period Kristen Clarke led it. Between 2021 and 2025, as the 19th Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, she directed the prosecutions in the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and federal hate crime cases tied to the Tree of Life synagogue, the El Paso Walmart, and Club Q shootings. The Division operated at the intersection of law, politics, and public attention, and she was the person accountable for it. Her path to that role was not accidental. She began her legal career as a trial attorney in the same Division through the DOJ Honors Program. From there she moved to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, then ran the Civil Rights Bureau in the New York Attorney General’s Office, then led the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law as President and Executive Director from 2015. By the time of her Senate confirmation in 2021, she had spent roughly two decades inside civil rights enforcement at every level of the system. The credential that matters for senior audiences is not the list of cases. It is what those cases say about the discipline of running a values-led mandate when the political environment is hostile, the press cycle is constant, and the cost of getting it wrong is institutional. Clarke’s voice is most useful to organisations that are wrestling with how to hold a position on inclusion, fairness, or governance when external pressure is asking them to back away. She holds degrees from Harvard University and Columbia Law School, currently serves as General Counsel of the NAACP, and teaches federal civil rights law at Penn Carey Law and as the W. Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law. Key speaking topics Federal civil rights enforcement Values-based leadership under public scrutiny Voting rights and democratic institutions Hate crimes prosecution and prevention Police reform and accountability Inclusion in contested political environments Public-interest leadership at scale Ideal for Boards and executive committees defending DEI or governance positions in a politicised environment. General counsel, chief legal officers, and chief compliance officers responsible for institutional policy on civil rights, equity, and discrimination risk. Leadership development programmes focused on values-based decision-making for senior public-facing leaders. Foundations, professional services firms, and public-sector bodies whose audiences need a credible civil rights voice. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how federal civil rights enforcement actually works, from a leader who ran it. A working sense of what values-based leadership costs in practice when the mandate is contested. Specific case examples (Floyd, Arbery, hate crime prosecutions) used to illustrate institutional decision-making, not for shock value. Direct exposure to a senior public-interest leader who has had to translate principle into operational policy.

Why organisations work with Kim Darroch A first-hand reading of US, EU, and UK political dynamics from someone who has sat opposite the people now setting policy, not a commentator interpreting from the outside. A decade at the operational core of UK national security and European policy, covering Brexit, the Trump administration, Russian aggression in Ukraine, the rise of Daesh, and the Libya collapse. Author of Collateral Damage, the most senior insider account of the UK-US relationship under the first Trump presidency, published by HarperCollins and reviewed in Foreign Affairs. A career-long perspective on the transatlantic alliance at the moment it is under the most pressure since the Cold War, useful for boards exposed to US, European, and China risk in the same quarter. Biography highlights British Ambassador to the United States, 2016 to 2019. National Security Adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, 2012 to 2015. UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, 2007 to 2011. Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat and EU adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2004 to 2007. Crossbench life peer, House of Lords; Chairperson, Best for Britain. Author, Collateral Damage: Britain, America and Europe in the Age of Trump (HarperCollins, 2020). KCMG (2008). Biography The British Ambassador to Washington is meant to be the cable channel between Downing Street and the White House. In July 2019, Kim Darroch’s frank diplomatic cables about the Trump administration were leaked to the British press, and the post became untenable. He resigned, closing a forty-year career in HM Diplomatic Service from inside the most public diplomatic incident in modern British memory. That career was built at the centre of UK foreign policy. As National Security Adviser to David Cameron from 2012 to 2015, he chaired the brief covering Daesh in Iraq and Syria, Russian operations in Ukraine, and the collapse of state authority in Libya. Before that he was UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, and before that Tony Blair’s senior EU adviser inside the Cabinet Office. Few living British diplomats have held that range of senior posts in sequence. His memoir, Collateral Damage, is the closest thing to a Washington-side account of how the UK read the Trump administration through Brexit and the early trade negotiations. Foreign Affairs reviewed it; HarperCollins published it in the UK and PublicAffairs in the US. He served as a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics in spring 2020 and now sits as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, chairing Best for Britain. What boards get from him is unusual at the senior diplomatic level. He speaks operationally about how Washington, Brussels, and Whitehall actually decide, who holds the file, what moves the principal, where the brittle points are. That is the reading senior executives need when they are asked to price political risk into a five-year plan. Key speaking topics US politics and the Washington decision-making system The transatlantic alliance under strain The war in Ukraine and European security China, the US, and strategic competition UK foreign policy after Brexit Geopolitical risk for boards and investors Ideal for Boards and audit committees pricing political and sanctions exposure into strategy CEOs and CFOs of multinationals with significant US, European, or China revenue General counsel, government affairs, and strategy heads reading regulatory and trade risk Investor and asset management audiences exposed to sovereign and policy risk Audience outcomes A grounded reading of the current US administration’s foreign policy trajectory from someone who has worked with the principals. A clearer view of where the transatlantic alliance is brittle and where it still holds. The questions a senior leadership team should be asking its risk function about geopolitics, not the headlines. A sharper sense of how Washington, Brussels, and London actually negotiate, useful when planning lobbying, market entry, or sanctions response.