Risk Management

Why organisations work with Julie Etchingham She has run the room when the stakes were national. Moderating the head-to-head ITV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer on 4 June 2024, and every ITV leaders’ debate since 2015, is the reference point clients book against when they need a chair who can hold senior figures to a question. She is a working anchor of ITV News at Ten, not a former one. The political, regulatory and geopolitical stories that affect a board agenda are the stories she is reading, writing and presenting that evening. She brings a documented record on hard reporting. Her ITV Tonight and Exposure work on modern slavery, including Britain’s Secret Slaves filmed in the UK, Nigeria and Italy, won her access to the Vatican and to Pope Francis, whom she was the first British broadcast journalist to interview. She carries the rare credential of being the first woman to win the RTS Television Journalism Presenter of the Year, an award she has now won twice, alongside London Press Club Broadcast Journalist of the Year. Biography highlights Anchor of ITV News at Ten since January 2008, alongside the relaunch with Sir Trevor McDonald. Moderator of the ITV Leaders’ Debate at the 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2024 UK general elections, including the Sunak v Starmer head-to-head on 4 June 2024. Presenter of ITV’s Tonight current affairs strand from 2010 to 2022; reporter for ITV’s investigative strand Exposure, including Britain’s Secret Slaves on modern slavery. Royal Television Society Television Journalism Presenter of the Year in 2010 (first woman to win) and 2016; London Press Club Broadcast Journalist of the Year, 2016. President of the Women of the Year Lunch and Awards since 2018; Pro-Chancellor of Birmingham Newman University from October 2023. Cambridge graduate (Newnham College, English); earlier career at BBC (Newsround, Midlands Today, BBC Breakfast News) and Sky News, where she anchored coverage of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the 7/7 London attacks. Biography The ITV debate studio on 4 June 2024 was the only place a UK prime minister and the leader of the opposition were going to share a stage in front of voters that election. Julie Etchingham chaired the hour live. She had done the same job at every ITV leaders’ debate since 2015, when she became the first woman to moderate a UK general election debate, and again in 2017, 2019 and across the 2022 Conservative leadership contest. That body of work sits on top of a journalism career. Etchingham has anchored ITV News at Ten since the programme’s relaunch with Sir Trevor McDonald in January 2008, and earlier presented Sky News through major breaking stories, including live coverage from Thailand after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and on air as the 7/7 attacks unfolded in London. From 2010 to 2022 she presented ITV’s Tonight current affairs programme, with reporting for the Exposure investigative strand including Britain’s Secret Slaves, filmed across the UK, Nigeria and Italy on modern slavery. The recognition is on the record. The Royal Television Society named her Television Journalism Presenter of the Year in 2010, the first woman to win the award, and again in 2016. The London Press Club named her Broadcast Journalist of the Year the same year. She was the first British broadcast journalist to interview Pope Francis, and has since moderated conferences at the Vatican on modern slavery under his patronage. For corporate audiences, the offer is practical. She moderates leadership conferences, chairs panels and runs on-stage interviews with the same craft she uses in a debate studio, with a working knowledge of UK politics, elections and the media environment around them. The president’s chair at the Women of the Year Lunch since 2018 and the Pro-Chancellorship of Birmingham Newman University from October 2023 are the institutional version of that same role. Key speaking topics UK politics and general elections Conference moderation and on-stage interviewing Leadership communication under public scrutiny Media, public trust and the information environment Modern slavery and human rights reporting Awards hosting and high-profile event chairing Ideal for Annual leadership conferences and partner summits needing a chair who can run a serious agenda with senior political or business figures on stage. Investor days, AGMs and policy forums where the on-stage interview format requires a journalist who knows the brief. Awards dinners and major institutional events where the host carries credibility with the audience. Boards and executive committees using a private session to pressure-test communications around a political or regulatory moment. Audience outcomes A working read on the UK political cycle and the elections, regulatory shifts and media stories most likely to land on the agenda. A sharper sense of how leaders are scrutinised in front of a national audience, drawn from years of moderating debates with prime ministers and party leaders. A different quality of on-stage conversation when Etchingham is chairing: speakers pushed past talking points without losing the room. Specific reference points from front-line news anchoring and investigative work used to illustrate rather than decorate the argument.

Why organisations work with Lewis Goodall He covers UK politics daily from inside the story, not from the academic perimeter, which means his read on Westminster, Whitehall, and the parties is current rather than retrospective. His investigative work on the 2020 A-level algorithm helped force a national policy reversal and earned an Orwell Prize nomination, which is a specific, verifiable proof of judgment under pressure. He co-hosts The News Agents, the British Podcast Awards 2023 Best Daily Podcast, giving him a working command of how political narrative is set, contested, and consumed. He has reported across Brexit, four general elections, and successive prime ministers, and can translate that pattern recognition into clear implications for regulated and public-facing sectors. His book Left for Dead? on the modern Labour Party is a serious piece of political analysis, not a media memoir, which gives boards confidence that the on-air voice is backed by genuine intellectual work. Biography highlights Analysis and Investigations Editor at Global, the parent company of LBC and Classic FM. Co-host of The News Agents with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, winner of Best Daily Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2023. Presenter of Sunday with Lewis Goodall, LBC’s flagship Sunday political programme. Former Policy Editor of BBC Newsnight and former political correspondent at Sky News. Author of Left for Dead?: The Strange Death and Rebirth of the Labour Party (William Collins, 2018). Orwell Prize nominee in 2021 for investigative reporting on the A-level grading scandal. Biography The 2020 A-level grading scandal began as a technical story about an algorithm. It became, in part because of sustained reporting by Lewis Goodall at BBC Newsnight, a national policy reversal and a case study in how data systems fail in public administration. That work was nominated for an Orwell Prize in 2021 and remains the clearest illustration of what he does on a working day. His route to that story is unusual for British political journalism. He read History and Politics at St John’s College, Oxford, worked as a policy researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and moved into broadcasting via Sky News and then Newsnight. The policy training is visible in how he frames questions, which is closer to a regulatory analyst than a Westminster reporter. In 2022 he left the BBC to help launch The News Agents, the daily news podcast he co-hosts with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel. It won Best Daily Podcast at the 2023 British Podcast Awards. He also presents Sunday with Lewis Goodall, LBC’s flagship Sunday politics programme, and serves as Analysis and Investigations Editor at Global. His book Left for Dead?: The Strange Death and Rebirth of the Labour Party (William Collins, 2018) traces the collapse of New Labour and the rise and fall of the Corbyn project. For boards exposed to UK political risk, the value of his perspective is concrete: he reads the parties, the policy machine, and the press as a single connected system, and he reports on it every day. Key speaking topics UK political risk and regulatory direction The state of the Labour and Conservative parties Elections, polling, and electoral realignment Brexit’s continuing economic and policy aftermath Public policy formation in Whitehall Investigative journalism and algorithmic accountability The UK media landscape and political narrative Ideal for Boards and executive teams in regulated sectors needing a current read on UK political risk. Public affairs, policy, and corporate affairs leaders briefing C-suites on electoral and regulatory direction. Financial services, energy, and infrastructure firms with material exposure to UK government policy. Annual conferences in politics, economics, and current affairs that need a serious working journalist on stage. Audience outcomes A working read on the current state of UK politics from someone inside the daily news cycle. A clearer view of how regulation and policy are forming inside Whitehall, not just announced. Pattern recognition on elections, party direction, and the signals worth tracking. A more critical read of the media stories shaping public and political opinion. Better questions to take back to internal political risk and public affairs functions.

Why organisations work with Benedikt Böhm A working CEO, not a retired one. He runs an international outdoor brand and continues to ski 8,000-metre peaks, so the leadership material is current and tested, not memoir. A documented record in the most unforgiving operating environment in sport. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without oxygen are public, verifiable proof points for the arguments he makes about preparation, role clarity and team recovery. A peer-reviewed intellectual platform. His Routledge book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl frames the work as leadership scholarship, which gives the content credibility with HR, executive development and L&D buyers who screen out motivational content. A live test case for sustainability as commercial strategy. The DYNAFIT lifetime guarantee and the Helping Band WWF partnership are operating decisions, not communications. Survivor and rescuer in the 2012 Manaslu avalanche. The account of decision-making in and after that event is one of the few first-hand executive narratives of catastrophic shock and sustained recovery. Biography highlights International Managing Director of DYNAFIT, the ski-touring brand he led from insolvency in 2003 to global category leadership. Co-author with Professor Stefan Gröschl of ESSEC Business School of “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom” (Routledge, 2019). Speed records on Muztagata (7,546m, 2005) and Gasherbrum II (8,035m, 2006) with Sebastian Haag; speed ascent and ski descent of Manaslu (8,163m, 2012) without supplemental oxygen. WWF Foundation ambassador for the Himalaya region and snow leopards. Founder of Helping Band, a wristband initiative committing approximately 60,000 euros per year to WWF. Former member of the German national ski mountaineering team. Biography DYNAFIT was effectively insolvent when Benedikt Böhm joined its marketing team in 2003. Two decades later the brand is the international category leader in ski touring, with a lifetime product guarantee and an institutional partnership with WWF that he built personally. The arc is unusual because it has been run in parallel with an active expedition career at 8,000 metres. That second career is the source of his leadership material. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without supplemental oxygen require a precision of role allocation, recovery management and judgement under hypoxia that ordinary corporate planning does not test for. Böhm has spent twenty years moving between the two settings, and the comparison is what makes the work substantive. His 2019 book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl, “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom,” published by Routledge, is the formal statement of that work. The book sits deliberately outside the usual business-and-management canon, drawing on research into fear, pain, suffering and failure to argue that conventional models of executive resilience are too clean to describe how senior leaders actually behave under sustained pressure. The 2012 Manaslu avalanche, which killed eleven climbers and which Böhm and his climbing partner survived and helped rescue from, anchors much of the recovery and decision-making content. It is the rare case where the speaker has lived the catastrophic-shock material he discusses, and continued, after a deliberate pause, to operate at the same altitude and at the head of the same company. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Resilience and recovery after operational shock Team performance in high-stakes environments Risk management and the discipline of preparation Sustainability as commercial strategy Change leadership and organisational reinvention Personal performance and self-leadership at executive level Ideal for Executive committees and boards rebuilding after restructure, crisis or sustained pressure CHROs and heads of executive development designing leadership programmes with substance under the keynote CEOs and senior commercial leaders wrestling with sustainability as an operating decision rather than a communications line Senior teams preparing for major change, market entry or expedition-style strategic bets Audience outcomes A language for separating preparation, role discipline and recovery as three distinct leadership capabilities rather than one blurred idea of “resilience” A clearer view of how senior teams should behave in the first hours and days after a serious operational shock A working example of a CEO who has run sustainability as a product decision, not as a marketing position A grounded counterweight to motivational adventure content, with named expeditions, named outcomes and a named peer-reviewed text behind the argument

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

Why organisations work with Matt Bishop He has run reputation for two of the most-watched teams in global sport, including through the spygate-era recovery at McLaren and the high-profile relaunch of Aston Martin F1 in 2021. Few comms leaders have operated at that level of public exposure. He brokered Sebastian Vettel’s BBC Question Time appearance on climate, the first time a Formula 1 World Champion debated sustainability on the programme. That is a worked example of using a star principal to advance a contested corporate position without losing either. As founder ambassador of Racing Pride, set up with Stonewall in 2019, he has translated DEI from policy language into action inside an industry that historically resisted it. His advocacy is operational, not declarative. He spent over a decade as a senior journalist, including eleven years editing F1 Racing magazine. He understands the room he is briefing because he sat in it. His current firm Diagonal Communications was built specifically for crisis, reputation and DEI counsel in high-stakes commercial environments, which is the lens he brings to a corporate audience. Biography highlights Chief Communications Officer, McLaren Racing, 2008 to 2017 Chief Communications Officer, Aston Martin F1 Team, 2021 and 2022 seasons Editor of F1 Racing magazine, 1996 to 2007, with monthly worldwide circulation around 1.25 million copies Founder ambassador of Racing Pride, established 2019 in collaboration with Stonewall Founder, Diagonal Communications, 2023, advising automotive and motorsport clients Author of the novel The Boy Made the Difference (2020) and co-author of Emerson Fittipaldi’s autobiography Emmo: a Racer’s Soul (2014) Biography A driver, a sponsor and a regulator can each move within hours of the same press conference. In Formula 1 the gap between reputation event and commercial consequence is unusually short, and the leaders inside the team have to make calls in that gap. Matt Bishop ran communications through that environment for almost fifteen years. He joined McLaren Racing as Chief Communications Officer in 2008 and stayed until 2017, a period that included some of the most contested reputational moments in the team’s modern history. He then took on the launch communications for W Series, the all-female single-seater championship, before returning to F1 in 2021 as Chief Communications Officer of the relaunched Aston Martin team. There he worked closely with Sebastian Vettel on climate advocacy, including arranging Vettel’s appearance on BBC Question Time in 2022. Before McLaren, Bishop edited F1 Racing magazine for eleven years, growing it to a monthly worldwide circulation of around 1.25 million copies and serving as Editorial Director of Haymarket Motorsport Publications. The journalism background matters because it shapes how he counsels principals: he has been on the receiving end of corporate communications and knows when it is working and when it is not. His advocacy work runs in parallel. In 2019 he co-founded Racing Pride with Stonewall to advance LGBTQ+ inclusion in motorsport, and his 2020 novel The Boy Made the Difference draws on his volunteering at London Lighthouse during the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 2023 he founded Diagonal Communications, a consultancy focused on crisis, reputation and inclusion counsel for automotive and motorsport clients. Key speaking topics Communications leadership in elite sport Crisis communications and reputation management LGBTQ+ inclusion in traditionally closed industries Diversity, equity and inclusion in motorsport Working with high-profile principals on contested issues Sustainability communication and climate advocacy Media strategy under public scrutiny Ideal for Chief Communications Officers, Heads of Corporate Affairs and CMOs facing high-stakes reputation events CHROs and DEI leads in industries where inclusion has historically been resisted Boards and executive teams briefing public-facing principals on contested topics Sponsorship, partnership and brand teams operating in or alongside elite sport Audience outcomes A clear view of how reputation decisions get made under live public pressure, drawn from inside two F1 teams A working sense of how to brief a high-profile principal on a contested issue without losing the principal or the position Specific examples of inclusion moving from policy to practice in an industry that resisted it A sharper read on the relationship between media operations, sponsor expectation and team performance Language and structure for crisis communications that can be used the same week

Why organisations work with Steve Gaskin Direct senior operational experience at Scotland Yard. DCI rank with homicide and counter-terrorism case exposure is uncommon in the speaker market, where “former detective” often means a junior career repackaged. Pattern recognition that translates between domains. His sales-focused talk shows how the structure of a police suspect interview can be applied directly to a customer conversion conversation, as a working method. Current broadcast credibility. Contributions to Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight and ITV’s Playboy Bunny Club Murders keep his analysis grounded in cases audiences may have followed. Decision-making content shaped by real consequences. The material is built from environments where wrong calls had immediate legal and human stakes, which gives it a weight classroom case studies cannot match. Biography highlights Former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, based at New Scotland Yard, with more than 25 years of service. Case experience spans homicide, counter-terrorism-related operations and serious drug trafficking, including undercover deployment at New Scotland Yard. Contributor to UK true-crime documentary programming, including Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight. Director of Huxley Events Ltd and The Crime Lab Ltd, both delivering corporate crime-themed events and consultancy. BSc in Psychology and Mathematics; executive programme at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management; Associate Tutor at Anglia Ruskin University. Biography Senior detectives at Scotland Yard make calls under pressure, where errors carry immediate legal and human stakes. Structured interviewing and evidence-led decision-making, the disciplines that hold up in those conditions, are learned by practice on real cases. Steve Gaskin spent more than 25 years in that environment and retired as a Detective Chief Inspector. His case experience runs from early 1980s work on the Hyde Park bombing investigation through to homicide and counter-terrorism-related operations. He also served in serious drug trafficking work at New Scotland Yard, including undercover deployment. The connecting thread is decision-making at the point where evidence is incomplete and the cost of waiting is real. That is the foundation of his corporate work. His talks draw structural parallels: police suspect interview frameworks mapped onto sales conversations, and murder squad management compared with leading teams under pressure. The result is applied technique an audience can use the next day. He contributes regularly to UK broadcast crime journalism, including Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight and ITV’s Playboy Bunny Club Murders. The cases he discusses on screen are often the same ones that surface in his corporate keynotes. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Investigative interviewing technique Leadership in high-stakes operational environments Workplace psychopathy and personality reading Sales conversation structure drawn from suspect interviewing Crime-based corporate storytelling Ideal for Sales leadership teams looking to apply structured suspect interviewing techniques to prospecting and conversion Senior leadership groups working on decision-making, team management and risk under pressure Corporate audiences seeking substantive after-dinner content with operational credibility Conferences in financial services, professional services and risk-focused sectors Audience outcomes A method for structuring interviews where information accuracy matters, applicable to either suspect interrogation or sales discovery Names and behavioural markers for the personality patterns most likely to disrupt a workplace, drawn from criminal psychology Concrete examples of how operational teams are led through high-pressure investigations Material drawn from recent high-profile cases he has analysed for UK broadcast

Why organisations work with Johan Rockstrom He is the originator, not the explainer, of the framework that now sits beneath the TNFD, Science Based Targets and a growing share of corporate climate disclosure. Organisations come to him for the source, not the summary. He connects nine specific Earth systems, from climate to freshwater to biogeochemical flows, to commercial decisions on capital, supply chain and product. Boards leave with a map of which limits actually constrain their business. He carries scientific authority that holds in regulator and investor rooms. The 2024 Tyler Prize, the 2009 Nature paper and the directorship of the Potsdam Institute mean his framing survives external scrutiny. He has spent two decades inside the policy process at Davos, the Club of Rome and UN climate negotiations. He speaks to executives in their language about decisions, trade-offs and time horizons, not in the language of an academic seminar. Biography highlights Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), since 2018 Professor of Earth System Science, University of Potsdam Lead author, “A safe operating space for humanity,” Nature, 2009 Co-founder and former Director, Stockholm Resilience Centre (2004 to 2018) 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; German Environmental Prize (2015); International Cosmos Prize (2015); Hillary Laureate (2017); Knight of the Legion of Honour (2016) Co-author, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (2022), the report to the Club of Rome marking 50 years since Limits to Growth Biography In 2009, a paper in Nature titled “A safe operating space for humanity” set out nine biophysical systems that keep the planet in the conditions civilisation grew up in. Johan Rockstrom led the team of 28 international scientists behind it. The framework, planetary boundaries, has since become the scientific foundation for the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, the Science Based Targets Network and a widening set of corporate and regulatory climate frameworks. That work is now the working definition of environmental risk in serious institutions. Boards, central banks and investors increasingly need a defensible answer to the question of where the limits actually lie, and his framework supplies it. The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often called the Nobel for the environment, recognised the framework as the field-defining contribution. He directs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the leading climate science institutions in Europe, and holds the chair in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Before Potsdam, he co-founded and ran the Stockholm Resilience Centre for fourteen years. He is a co-author of Earth for All, the 2022 report to the Club of Rome that revisits Limits to Growth fifty years on with concrete economic and policy turnarounds. The room he tends to be most useful in is the one where strategy meets disclosure: where leadership has to decide which targets to commit to, which trade-offs to accept and how to justify both to investors and regulators. He is unusually direct about the scale of action required and equally direct about what is still possible inside that window. Key speaking topics Planetary boundaries and Earth system risk Climate tipping points and resilience The science behind ESG, TNFD and Science Based Targets Food, land and water systems within planetary limits Net zero and the energy transition Sustainable economic transformation and the Earth for All agenda Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting climate, nature and ESG strategy under tightening disclosure regimes CSOs, Chief Risk Officers and Chief Sustainability Officers building defensible science-based targets Investors, banks and asset managers integrating climate and nature risk into capital allocation Government, multilateral and policy audiences working on energy, food and land system transitions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the nine planetary boundaries and which ones materially affect their sector A clearer view of how regulatory frameworks (TNFD, SBTN, EU disclosure) trace back to the underlying science A direct read on where global climate and nature trajectories sit relative to scientific safe limits Sharper questions for their own strategy and risk teams about which limits the business actually operates inside A grounded sense of what credible action looks like at the scale and pace the science requires

Why organisations work with Monica Verma Operational CISO experience that informs every recommendation. Three CISO appointments, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health, mean her advice on AI risk comes from someone who has actually run the response. A hacker’s view of AI threats paired with a CISO’s view of governance. She started in offensive security finding web application vulnerabilities. She now advises boards on AI trust and accountability. Both perspectives in the same conversation. A proprietary maturity model. Her Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, introduced in 2020, gives executive teams a way to locate themselves on the cyber and AI maturity curve. Credibility with technical and commercial audiences. Booked by FT Live in Luxembourg, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, and WCM 2025 in Brazil for an audience of 2,000 leaders. A clear point of view on the most contested question in the boardroom right now: how to adopt AI without breaking trust and governance. She has built her current keynote portfolio around it. Biography highlights Three-time Chief Information Security Officer with prior CISO appointments at Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet, Helfo, POBO). Director, International Cybersecurity & Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton (2024). Recognised as Top #3 CISO in EMEA (2023), Top 50 Women in Tech (2022), and Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s Outstanding Security Performance Awards (2019). Board-certified Qualified Technology Expert (QTE) and former board member of Cloud Security Alliance Norway and Women in Cybersecurity Norway. Founder and CEO of Monica Talks Cyber and Cyber Foyer. Host of The Monica Talks Cyber Show podcast and author of The Predictability Factor newsletter. Contributor to Dark Reading. Featured speaker at FT Live, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, WCM Brazil, Cyber Root Malta, and the Norwegian Tax Authority’s IT Tech conference. Biography AI is now in the boardroom and in the threat model at the same time. Most leadership teams have someone who can speak credibly about one or the other. Few have someone with three CISO appointments behind them and an active AI advisory practice on top. Monica Verma’s career has run through both. The starting point was offensive security, finding vulnerabilities in web applications and cloud environments before attackers could. Three CISO appointments followed, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. By 2024 she was Director of International Cybersecurity and Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton. Her published work bridges the same divide. The Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, which she introduced in 2020, adapts the technology adoption curve to give executive teams a usable map of their cyber maturity. Her current keynote portfolio takes that lens into the AI era: Innovating with AI Without Breaking Trust and Governing AI Before It Hacks You. The credentials track. Top #3 CISO in EMEA in 2023, Top 50 Women in Tech in 2022, Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s OSPAs in 2019. The booking pattern says more. FT Live brought her in for the European fund management industry in Luxembourg. The ACFE chose her to open its 2025 Fraud Conference Europe to ca. 500 anti-fraud executives. WCM Brazil put her in front of 2,000 leaders at one of the world’s largest strategy and leadership conferences. Key speaking topics AI security and governance Cyber resilience in the AI era AI risk and trust for the enterprise Cybersecurity leadership at board level The evolution of cybercrime AI-enabled fraud and threat response Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI adoption decisions where governance and security are not yet aligned. CISOs, CIOs and CTOs whose teams are being asked to defend against AI-enabled threats while adopting AI internally. Financial services, healthcare and public sector organisations facing high regulatory exposure on both AI and cybersecurity. Audience outcomes Specific examples of how AI is currently breaking enterprise trust in regulated industries. A maturity check against the Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model that locates where the organisation sits. The questions a board needs to ask before approving its next major AI initiative. A view of how attackers are using AI today and which enterprise defences are still holding.

Why organisations work with Luiz Barroso He has held three seats that almost no one else holds together: national energy planner (CEO of Brazil’s EPE), market designer and consultant across 30 countries, and partner in Latin America’s largest investment bank. That gives him a view of energy decisions from the policy desk, the operator’s desk and the capital allocator’s desk simultaneously. His work answers the question most energy speakers avoid: how does decarbonisation actually get financed and priced in markets that do not look like Western Europe? Investors and regulators in Latin America, Asia and Africa book him for that reason. He sits inside the IEA conversation on emerging-economy transition, having been a visiting researcher in Paris on exactly that question. That places him close to where international finance and national policy intersect. IEEE Fellow status, granted for contributions to electricity market design, signals a rare technical depth for an industry speaker. Most transition commentators cannot model what they recommend. Biography highlights CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, the BTG Pactual-owned firm Former CEO of Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica (EPE), Brazil’s national energy planning agency Visiting researcher, International Energy Agency, Paris Associate researcher, Institute for Research in Technology, Comillas University, Madrid IEEE Fellow; IEEE PES Outstanding Young Engineer Award recipient Author of one book, three book chapters and more than 70 peer-reviewed papers on electricity and gas market design Biography The energy transition has stopped being a question of ambition and become a question of capital. Boards have set decarbonisation targets; the harder problem is financing them through power markets that work differently in every country an investor touches. Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia do not have the same grid, the same regulation or the same risk pricing. Luiz Barroso has spent his career inside that problem. As CEO of PSR Energy Consulting and Analytics, a BTG Pactual-owned firm, he advises private investors, public lenders, governments and regulators in around 30 countries on market design, financing and risk in electricity and gas. Before that, he ran Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica, the Brazilian government body responsible for national energy planning, a role equivalent to deputy minister. His research credentials are unusual for someone operating in industry. He is an IEEE Fellow, recognised specifically for contributions to electricity market regulation and design, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas University in Madrid. In 2018 he spent a year at the International Energy Agency in Paris, working on the question of how energy transition unfolds in emerging economies. That combination matters because most senior leaders hearing about energy transition are hearing from policy commentators, academic modellers or industry executives. Barroso has held all three roles. His work helps capital allocators, board directors and regulators see where the transition narrative meets the actual structure of power and gas markets, and where the money has to go for it to function. Key speaking topics Energy transition in emerging economies Electricity and gas market design Investment and financing under decarbonisation Regulation and policy in liberalised power markets Risk management in energy infrastructure Power system economics Ideal for Board directors and investment committees with energy exposure outside Western Europe and North America Infrastructure investors, development banks and sovereign wealth funds allocating to the transition Energy regulators, system operators and policy bodies in emerging markets Senior leaders in utilities, oil and gas, and large industrial energy buyers Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how energy transition is actually financed and priced in emerging-economy power and gas markets A working understanding of why decarbonisation pathways diverge across jurisdictions, and what that means for cross-border capital Practical exposure to the trade-offs regulators face when designing markets that must attract investment and deliver reliability simultaneously A grounded view of which transition assumptions hold up when tested against grid reality and which do not

Why organisations work with Graham Weale Nine years as Chief Economist of RWE AG, Germany’s largest power producer, through the sharpest phase of the Energiewende. Few speakers have read the transition from inside a utility of that scale. Active academic output on the questions boards are asking now, including a 2023 Energy Policy paper on whether energy-only markets can remunerate investment and a 2024 EnWZ piece on hydrogen supply contract design. Cross-border fluency in European energy policy through the CEEM chair at Universite Paris-Dauphine, the German-French Office for Energy Transition, and advisory work for the Energy Transitions Commission. Used as an expert witness in natural gas and power arbitration, which sharpens the precision he brings to contract structure, price review, and regulatory risk. Comfortable translating between the energy-intensive industry lens (through VIK) and the utility and investor lens. Useful when a room contains both sides of the decarbonisation cost argument. Biography highlights Honorary Professor of Energy Economics and Politics, Ruhr University Bochum (Centre for Environmental Management, Resources and Energy). Chief Economist, RWE AG, 2007 to 2016. Senior Advisor, Energy Transitions Commission, 2017 to 2018. Former Director of European Energy Services, Global Insight (now S&P Global), 2000 to 2007. Steering Committee member, Chaire European Electricity Markets, Universite Paris-Dauphine. Published in Energy Policy, Intereconomics, Oxford Energy Forum, EnWZ, and the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law. Biography European power markets were designed in a world of predictable demand and marginal-cost dispatch. That world has gone. The question now is how to remunerate the flexible capacity a decarbonised system needs, and whether the current market design can fund it without another round of state intervention. This is the terrain Graham Weale has worked in for four decades, first as a practitioner and now as an academic. The operator credentials are specific. Weale was Chief Economist at RWE AG, Germany’s largest power producer, from 2007 to 2016, the years in which the Energiewende reshaped the economics of thermal generation. Before that he ran European Energy Services at Global Insight, and earlier worked at ExxonMobil in supply and refining. His training spans physics at Oxford, an MSc in Systems Engineering, and an MBA. The academic record sits alongside the operator one. As Honorary Professor at Ruhr University Bochum, he has published on power market remuneration in Energy Policy, on hydrogen contract design in EnWZ, and on European power market reform in Intereconomics. He advised the Energy Transitions Commission under Adair Turner between 2017 and 2018, and sits on the Steering Committee of the CEEM chair at Universite Paris-Dauphine. That combination is useful in specific rooms. Boards deciding whether to sign a long-term hydrogen offtake, investors pricing capacity market risk, or policymakers weighing the next iteration of electricity market design get someone who has sat on both sides of the problem and still writes about it for a living. Key speaking topics Power market design and capacity remuneration Industrial decarbonisation and the economics of electrification Hydrogen contracts, supply chains, and the European hydrogen ramp-up German Energiewende and EU Green Deal implementation Natural gas markets and price review arbitration Energy geopolitics after the Ukraine invasion Nuclear, renewables, and the zero-carbon generation mix Ideal for Utility, grid, and generation boards setting capital allocation under decarbonisation targets. Infrastructure funds and institutional investors pricing European power and hydrogen assets. Energy-intensive industrial leaders (steel, chemicals, cement) planning decarbonisation roadmaps. Policymakers and regulators working on market design, capacity mechanisms, and hydrogen frameworks. Audience outcomes A clear view of where European power market design is heading and what that means for long-term generation investment. A realistic read on hydrogen: which use cases will scale, which contracts are bankable, and what the European ramp-up actually requires. Sharper framing of the political-economic risk attached to Energiewende-style transitions, drawn from inside a major utility. Specific vocabulary for talking to boards and investors about carbon pricing, capacity mechanisms, and industrial decarbonisation. A defensible basis for stress-testing internal energy transition plans against the economics, not only the targets.

Why organisations work with Guenther Steiner He built a Formula One team from scratch – conceived at his kitchen table during the 2008 financial crisis, brought to the F1 grid seven years later as the first American constructor in thirty years. No other motorsport speaker can talk about team-building from that starting point. His account of accountability is grounded in an environment where failure is timed, televised, and scored. The feedback loop for culture and decision-making in F1 is compressed to minutes, not quarters, which makes his observations directly transferable to any organisation managing high-visibility performance. The Netflix series Drive to Survive documented his leadership style across multiple seasons before a global audience. Organisations booking Steiner get a speaker whose directness and authenticity are already known – the profile is established, not claimed. His perspective spans the full leadership lifecycle – from mechanic to technical manager to managing director (Jaguar Racing), to founding principal (Haas F1), to team owner (Tech3 MotoGP). That breadth is unusual among elite sport speakers who typically occupy a single role. Surviving to Drive, his account of a full F1 season from inside the principal’s office, reached No.1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. The book provides a structured intellectual foundation for his speaking that event organisers can build audience preparation around. Biography highlights Team Principal, Haas F1 Team, 2014-2023 – led the organisation from formation through eight seasons, including a 5th-place Constructors’ Championship finish (2018) and the team’s first pole position (2022) Managing Director, Jaguar Racing (2001-2003), recruited by Niki Lauda; Technical Operations Director, Red Bull Racing (2004-2006) More than a decade in the World Rally Championship, working with multiple manufacturers including Mazda, Prodrive, and M-Sport Ford, alongside drivers Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz Sr Founder and President of Fibreworks Composites, a carbon composites engineering and manufacturing business Author of Surviving to Drive (2023, Sunday Times No.1 bestseller) and Unfiltered: My Incredible Decade in Formula 1 (2024) Led acquisition of Tech3 MotoGP team in September 2025; assumes CEO role from 2026 – his first major ownership position in motorsport Biography Guenther Steiner wrote his first Haas business plan at his kitchen table during the 2008 financial crisis. Seven years later, the team made its Formula One debut at the 2016 Australian Grand Prix, scoring points in its first race – the most successful debut by a new constructor in F1 this century. That founding story is the foundation of his organisational argument. Building a competitive F1 team with limited resources, in a field where performance is measured to thousandths of a second and broadcast to a global audience, produces a specific kind of leadership discipline. Accountability cannot be deferred. Culture either holds under pressure or it does not. Steiner ran that environment for a decade. His career before Haas is equally instructive. He came up through the World Rally Championship as a mechanic and technical manager – working with championship-winning teams at Mazda, Prodrive, and M-Sport Ford – before Niki Lauda recruited him as Managing Director of Jaguar Racing in F1 in 2001. The transition from engineering discipline to senior management, and eventually to team ownership, gives his perspective a structural credibility that purely managerial career paths rarely provide. In September 2025, Steiner led a consortium to acquire the Tech3 MotoGP team, taking on the CEO role from 2026. The move signals a deliberate expansion of his leadership platform from management to ownership – and adds a new chapter to a practitioner argument about building and scaling competitive motorsport organisations that is already two books and one Netflix series deep. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Founding and scaling organisations under resource constraints Accountability and decision-making under competitive pressure Performance culture in high-stakes environments Managing risk and failure Operational resilience in elite sport Leadership transition and team ownership Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite audiences navigating competitive or high-accountability environments CHROs and transformation leads working on performance culture and ownership Boards and executive teams in capital-intensive, operationally complex sectors (manufacturing, technology, professional services) Corporate audiences familiar with Drive to Survive seeking direct engagement with a practitioner whose leadership style is already known Audience outcomes A concrete framework for the relationship between culture, accountability, and performance – drawn from an environment where those variables are tested in real time Specific examples of leadership decisions made under resource constraints and public scrutiny, with the reasoning behind them A clearer understanding of what founding and scaling a high-performance operation actually requires, distinct from received management theory Practical perspective on managing failure productively – how teams that lose well build the foundation for winning Direct insight into what separates declared performance standards from lived performance culture

Why organisations work with Glenn Wilkinson He performs live attack demonstrations on stage, including the bank-compromise walkthrough that has anchored briefings at Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Allen & Company and Google. Audiences see the mechanics of a breach, not a slide about one. He is the offensive practitioner behind Snoopy, the wireless tracking and profiling drone framework presented at DEF CON and covered by BBC and CNN. That gives him standing with technical audiences that most cyber speakers cannot match. He runs Agger Labs, a working ransomware-defence business. Boards get current-operator perspective on the ransomware economy, not retired threat-intel commentary. Rhodes Scholar with two Oxford master’s degrees, including comparative social policy. That second degree shows up in how he frames cyber for non-technical leadership audiences. He has legally compromised more than a hundred banks, governments and corporates over a fifteen-year career. The case material is his own work, not curated public incidents. Biography highlights CEO and founder, Agger Labs, an endpoint ransomware-defence company. Founder of three prior technology companies: Maevro (2016), Polira (2017), Kapenta (2020). Former senior security analyst at SensePost, where he co-created the Snoopy tracking and profiling drone framework. Speaker at Black Hat, DEF CON 22, 44CON and ZeroNights; corporate engagements include Google, Slaughter and May, Linklaters and Allen & Company. Featured on BBC, CNN, ITV, Channel 4 and Vice Motherboard, primarily on wireless surveillance, drone-borne attacks and the ransomware economy. Rhodes Scholar; MSc Computer Science and MSc Comparative Social Policy, University of Oxford; BSc Computer Science, Rhodes University. Biography Ransomware now runs faster than most response playbooks. By the time a CISO is briefing the board, the encryption is finished and the negotiation has begun. That is the operating reality Wilkinson works inside: as CEO of Agger Labs he ships endpoint software designed to halt ransomware before encryption starts, and as a speaker he translates that pace problem for senior audiences who still hear cyber as a compliance topic. The credibility comes from fifteen years on the offensive side. He started at SensePost in South Africa, running penetration tests against banks, governments and corporates, and co-built Snoopy, a distributed tracking and profiling framework that drew BBC and CNN coverage after its DEF CON 22 presentation. That technical lineage is why Black Hat, DEF CON and 44CON book him, and why his corporate keynotes for Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Allen & Company and Google still rely on live demonstrations rather than abstract slides. The Oxford background sits alongside the technical work, not on top of it. A Rhodes Scholar with master’s degrees in computer science and in comparative social policy, he brings the second discipline into how he frames a brief for a leadership team: how human systems and technical systems break together, and where boards actually have agency. That is the angle that makes his bank-compromise walkthrough land in a partner meeting rather than a security conference. The current operator role sharpens the relevance further. Three previous founder roles and the present Agger Labs platform mean briefings are grounded in this quarter’s threat economy, including the ransomware-as-a-service supply chain and the speed gap between attacker tooling and enterprise response. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board capability Ransomware economy and operational defence Ethical hacking and offensive security demonstrations Nation-state cyber conflict Smart cities and critical infrastructure exposure Wireless and mobile surveillance techniques Open source intelligence and human-layer attack vectors Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning cyber as a leadership topic, not an IT update CISOs and CIOs briefing the rest of the C-suite on attacker behaviour Financial services, legal, and professional services firms with high client-data exposure Risk, audit and transformation leads designing post-incident response capability Audience outcomes A working mental model of how attackers chain wireless, social and human-layer techniques into a full compromise Specific board-level questions to put to a CISO on ransomware readiness and response speed A concrete view of where ransomware tooling is in 2026, and what that means for endpoint and backup strategy Recognition that cyber decisions belong on the executive agenda, with named accountability rather than delegated comfort