Risk Management

Why organisations work with Roger Myerson He is one of three living architects of mechanism design, the field that won the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and now underpins serious thinking on auction design, procurement, regulation and incentive contracts. His revelation principle and revenue-equivalence results are not abstractions for a senior team setting bid rules, supplier contracts or commission structures. They tell you when an incentive system can be made truth-telling at all, and when no rule will work without changing the information environment. He occupies the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professorship in Global Conflict Studies at Chicago, which means his second body of work, on political leadership, federalism and post-conflict state-building, is directly relevant to boards exposed to weak-institution markets. His textbook Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict has trained a generation of economists, regulators and strategists, which makes him unusually effective with audiences who already speak some of the language and want the original source rather than a popularisation. Past president of both the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society, member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations: a level of peer recognition that travels into board rooms and policy settings without further explanation. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2007, shared with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin for the foundations of mechanism design theory. David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies, University of Chicago, with appointments in the Harris School of Public Policy and the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics. PhD in applied mathematics, Harvard University, supervised by Kenneth Arrow; twenty-five years on the faculty at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management before moving to Chicago in 2001. Author of Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (Harvard University Press) and Probability Models for Economic Decisions (now in a second edition with MIT Press). Past President of the Econometric Society (2009) and the Game Theory Society (2012 to 2014); Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize, 2009. Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Biography Most rules inside an organisation are written as if everyone has the same information and roughly aligned interests. Procurement contracts, sales commissions, internal capital allocation, joint-venture terms: the rule is set, and then people behave as the rule incentivises them to behave, which is rarely what the designer intended. Mechanism design is the formal answer to that problem, and Roger Myerson is one of the three economists who built it. The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recognised that body of work, shared with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin. Within it, two of Myerson’s results carry the most operational weight. The revelation principle tells designers when a system can in principle be made truth-telling. The revenue-equivalence theorem, derived in his auction work, tells sellers when superficially different bidding rules produce the same outcome and when they do not. Senior teams designing auctions, bid processes or contracts use these ideas whether they cite him or not. His training is Harvard, applied mathematics, supervised by Kenneth Arrow. The career sat at Northwestern’s Kellogg School for twenty-five years before he moved to the University of Chicago in 2001, where he now holds the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professorship in Global Conflict Studies, with joint appointments in the Harris School of Public Policy and the Griffin Department of Economics. Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict, published by Harvard University Press in 1991, remains a standard graduate text. The Pearson chair signals the second arc of his work. Over the past fifteen years he has applied the same incentive-and-information lens to political institutions: how leaders build reputations, how federal structures change the supply of credible politicians, how post-conflict states succeed or fail at building durable government. For boards with serious exposure to weak-institution markets, that is a different and rarer kind of advisor than a geopolitical commentator. Key speaking topics Mechanism design and incentive systems under asymmetric information Auction design and competitive bidding Game theory for strategy and negotiation Contract and procurement design Political economy of leadership and state-building Federalism and the design of democratic institutions Ideal for Boards and executive teams designing auctions, bid processes, procurement frameworks or major partnership contracts. CSOs, CFOs and corporate development leaders working on incentive structures, internal capital allocation or commission and bonus design. Regulators, central bank teams and policy bodies working on market design, spectrum or asset auctions, and institutional reform. Leadership teams of multinationals with substantive exposure to weak-institution or post-conflict markets. Audience outcomes A working understanding of mechanism design as a tool for setting rules when the other side knows more than you do. The ability to recognise when an auction, bid or contract structure is fighting against the information environment rather than working with it. A clearer view of where incentive design can solve a coordination problem and where the underlying information asymmetry has to be changed first. A grounded perspective on how political incentives shape the operating environment in fragile or institutionally weak markets. Direct exposure to one of the three living architects of the field, with the precision that brings to questions teams are usually forced to answer with intuition.

Why organisations work with Roger Bootle He runs the institutional view, not a commentator’s view. Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, is one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, and senior leaders get the house perspective directly from the source. He has been right on inflation when the consensus was wrong. The Death of Inflation, published in 1996, called the structural fall in inflation a decade before central banks adjusted their thinking, and his subsequent inflation work continues to set the contrarian benchmark. He won the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, the largest cash prize in economics after the Nobel, for the most credible plan to manage a eurozone exit. Boards exposed to euro-denominated risk get a serious answer, not a hot take. He sat for nearly two decades inside UK economic policymaking as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and as a member of the Chancellor’s “Wise Men” panel. He explains the policy process from the inside. The AI Economy, his Axiom Award-winning book, gives leadership teams a proper economic reading of AI: productivity, wages, employment and welfare, not vendor narrative. Biography highlights Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy, which he started in 1999 Former Group Chief Economist of HSBC; earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, 1998 to 2017 Member of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the “Wise Men.” Winner, with the Capital Economics team, of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize for a eurozone exit plan Author of The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets, Making a Success of Brexit, and The AI Economy (Gold, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards) Weekly economics columnist for The Daily Telegraph; named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards 2012 Biography The Death of Inflation appeared in 1996 and argued that the inflationary regime built into Western economies since the 1970s was structurally finished. The book sold widely, was translated into nine languages, and became the reference point for a generation of contrarian inflation analysis. It also established its author as an economist willing to take a position years before the policy consensus caught up. That author is Roger Bootle. He founded Capital Economics in 1999 and built it into one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, serving banks, asset managers, corporates, and policymakers. Before that, he was Group Chief Economist of HSBC, with earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers. His public-policy work runs in parallel. He served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 1998 to 2017, and was appointed to the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers known as the Wise Men. In 2012, he and a team from Capital Economics won the 250,000 pound Wolfson Economics Prize for the most credible plan to manage a country leaving the eurozone, and he was named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards the same year. His more recent books extend the same approach to Brexit and AI. Making a Success of Brexit set out the economic conditions for the UK outside the EU. The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot, which won Gold at the 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards, treats artificial intelligence as a question about productivity, wages and welfare rather than a technology story. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook Inflation and monetary policy Eurozone and European economic policy Brexit and the UK economy The economics of artificial intelligence Capital markets and the policy environment Long-run productivity and growth Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting capital allocation against a volatile macro backdrop CFOs, treasurers and CIOs in financial services and corporates with rate and currency exposure Asset management and private capital firms are briefing LPs on the macro outlook Senior policy and government-relations audiences working on UK, EU and monetary policy Audience outcomes A clear reading of where inflation, rates and growth are heading, and the reasoning behind it A direct view from one of the few economists with a public track record of contrarian calls that proved right A grounded economic framing of AI’s effect on productivity, employment and wages A working understanding of how UK and European economic policy is actually made, from someone who advised inside it A perspective on the eurozone and Brexit risk that buyers can defend in front of their own committees

Why organisations work with Rod Beckstrom He has run cybersecurity at the level boards now have to think about it: founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, briefing executives who must translate cyber exposure into a number their audit committee can act on. He led ICANN through the DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the opening of the new generic top-level domain namespace, decisions that shaped the operating environment every digital business sits inside. His Cybersecurity Value at Risk (CyberVaR) framework gives C-suites a single statistical figure for cyber exposure, replacing technical heat-maps with something a CFO and audit committee can use. The Starfish and the Spider, co-authored with Ori Brafman, gave executives a working vocabulary for why decentralised competitors, movements and threat actors keep outflanking traditional hierarchies. He has commented on cyber and internet policy across CNN, BBC, PBS, MSNBC and NPR, and has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet. Biography highlights Founding Director, U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, Department of Homeland Security. President and CEO of ICANN, 2009 to 2012; oversaw DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the gTLD expansion. Co-author, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (Portfolio/Penguin, 2006), translated into 16 languages. Originator of Beckstrom’s Law for valuing economic networks, presented at BlackHat and DefCon in 2009. Co-founder of CATS Software Inc., a derivatives risk management firm taken public on NASDAQ and acquired by Misys. Trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund; Stanford BA (Honors) and MBA; Fulbright Scholar. Biography Cyber risk is now a board-level question, but most boards still cannot put a number on their exposure. Rod Beckstrom built his career on closing exactly that gap. As founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center inside the Department of Homeland Security, he sat at the point where federal cyber policy met operational reality. His CyberVaR framework translates that experience into something a CFO and audit committee can work with: a single statistical estimate of cyber Value at Risk. The internet itself has been part of his remit. As President and CEO of ICANN from 2009 to 2012, he led the organisation through the DNSSEC signing of the DNS root and the opening of the generic top-level domain namespace, two decisions that quietly reshaped the operating environment of every digital business. The work also took him through the politics of internet governance with governments, registries and civil society, which is the substance behind his commentary on CNN, BBC and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet. His second body of work is about the shape of organisations. The Starfish and the Spider, co-authored with Ori Brafman and translated into 16 languages, gave executives a usable framework for why decentralised networks, from open-source projects to insurgencies to platform competitors, keep outperforming hierarchies on their own terrain. Beckstrom’s Law, his model for valuing economic networks, sits alongside it as an attempt to put the same intuition into numbers. Underneath the public roles is a working entrepreneur. He co-founded CATS Software Inc., a derivatives and risk management firm taken public on NASDAQ and later acquired by Misys, and continues to build and chair technology companies through his advisory firm BECKSTROM. The result is a speaker who treats cyber risk and decentralised networks as the same conversation: how senior leaders make defensible decisions about systems they do not fully control. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Cybersecurity Value at Risk (CyberVaR) for the C-suite Decentralised organisations and the Starfish model Internet governance and the future of the internet Network economics and Beckstrom’s Law Leadership in networked organisations Ideal for Boards and audit committees setting cyber risk appetite and oversight CISOs, CIOs and CFOs translating cyber exposure into financial language C-suite and corporate development teams navigating decentralised competitors and platforms Government, regulator and policy audiences working on internet and cyber governance Audience outcomes A working method for expressing cyber risk as a single financial figure boards can act on A clearer view of how decentralised networks compete with, and erode, traditional hierarchies Sharper questions to put to security leaders about exposure, recovery and accountability A grounded read on where internet governance and policy are heading and what that means for digital strategy

Why organisations work with Robert Shiller He provides Nobel-level empirical authority on asset bubbles, housing cycles, and equity valuation, the questions a board faces when deciding whether to commit capital at the top of a cycle. He named the bubbles others missed. Irrational Exuberance warned of the dot-com peak in 2000 and the housing peak before the subprime crisis, both calls now in the public record. He gives leaders the indicators they can actually use, including the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the CAPE ratio, both of which sit inside the standard toolkit of professional investors. His work on Narrative Economics gives boards a structured way to think about how stories move markets and consumer behaviour, which matters when sentiment shifts faster than fundamentals. He is one of the few macroeconomists who built behavioural finance into the mainstream, co-authoring Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools with George Akerlof. Biography highlights Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and Fellow of the International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management. 2013 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen. Co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio (CAPE / Shiller PE). Author of Irrational Exuberance, Narrative Economics, Animal Spirits, Phishing for Phools, Finance and the Good Society, and The New Financial Order. Regular Project Syndicate columnist and former New York Times “Economic View” columnist. Narrative Economics named a Financial Times Best Book of 2019. Biography Asset prices have a habit of detaching from fundamentals long before anyone calls it a bubble. The challenge for boards and investors is recognising the moment, separating durable conviction from collective story, and acting on it. That problem has defined Robert Shiller’s working life as an empirical economist. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale and a Fellow at the Yale School of Management International Center for Finance. The 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, recognised his empirical analysis of asset prices, including the work showing that stock prices move far more than dividends justify. The implication for capital markets has shaped a generation of valuation thinking. His infrastructure sits inside the toolkit of serious investors. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, developed with Karl Case, became the reference series for US housing and the basis for CME futures. The Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio, built with John Campbell, gave equity investors a long-cycle valuation lens. Irrational Exuberance, first published in 2000, named the dot-com peak in real time and was updated to identify the housing bubble before the subprime crisis. The later work moved into territory most macroeconomists avoid. Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools, both with George Akerlof, brought behavioural and psychological forces into mainstream macro. Narrative Economics, a Financial Times Best Book of 2019, made the case that the stories people tell each other about money and markets shape outcomes as much as the numbers do. For senior leaders, that is the practical question: which narratives are moving capital right now, and which ones are about to break. Key speaking topics Asset prices and market valuation Housing markets and price cycles Behavioural finance Narrative economics Bubbles and financial volatility Macroeconomic risk and forecasting Innovation in finance and risk management Ideal for Boards and investment committees making capital allocation decisions under cycle and valuation uncertainty CFOs, CIOs, and treasury leaders in banks, asset managers, and insurers Senior policymakers, central bank audiences, and regulators working on financial stability Real estate, mortgage, and housing finance leadership Audience outcomes A clearer read on where current asset prices sit relative to long-cycle valuation benchmarks like CAPE A working understanding of how narrative and sentiment translate into measurable market behaviour A sharper framework for spotting bubble dynamics before they reverse Behavioural finance applied to specific decisions on housing, equities, and credit Direct exposure to the empirical evidence behind Nobel-recognised work on asset pricing

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

Why organisations work with Robert C. Merton Co-developer of the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model. The framework on which the modern derivatives market is priced and risk-managed; few speakers in capital markets can credibly claim authorship of the underlying theory. Architect of Managed DC at Dimensional, a retirement-funding system that measures success in lifetime income. The answer to the question every pension board now confronts. 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The credential carries weight with regulators, central banks, and sovereign wealth funds in a way few academic credentials do. Two frameworks finance practitioners use daily, continuous-time finance and Functional and Structural Finance, were built by him. Audiences engage with the original thinking from the source. Biography highlights Awarded the 1997 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Myron Scholes for a new method to value derivatives. School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan; University Professor Emeritus at Harvard. Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors and creator of Managed DC, an integrated retirement-funding system used as the operational basis for income-driven pension design. Past President of the American Finance Association, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author of Continuous-Time Finance and co-author of Principles of Finance (Cambridge University Press) and The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective. Author of “The Crisis in Retirement Planning” (Harvard Business Review, 2014), the article that reframed pension success around lifetime income rather than asset accumulation. Biography Most defined-contribution pension plans measure success by the size of the asset pool. The members measure it by the income that pool will produce. That gap defines a generation of retirement policy debate. The framework for closing it came largely from Robert C. Merton. His 2014 Harvard Business Review article “The Crisis in Retirement Planning” set out the case for a liability-driven investment strategy that targets retirement income directly. The size of the pot at retirement is the wrong success measure. As Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, he built the operating version of that argument: Managed DC, a retirement-funding system designed to deliver guaranteed lifetime income. The same intellectual move, taking financial theory and pushing it into the institutional plumbing of how markets and pensions actually work, runs through his career. With Fischer Black and Myron Scholes he co-developed the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model, the framework that made modern derivatives markets functional. He shared the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Scholes for that work. With Zvi Bodie he developed Functional and Structural Finance, a framework regulators and finance ministries use to analyse financial systems by their economic functions. He is School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan and University Professor Emeritus at Harvard. He is past President of the American Finance Association, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Black-Scholes-Merton model still prices most of the world’s traded options. The frameworks senior finance audiences work inside are, in a literal sense, his. Key speaking topics Derivatives valuation and modern risk management Continuous-time finance Retirement systems and lifetime income design Functional and Structural Finance Capital markets and financial innovation Macro-financial systemic risk Lifecycle investing and portfolio choice Pension reform and DB-to-DC transition Ideal for Pension trustees, defined-contribution plan sponsors, and the asset managers building DC default solutions Boards and CFOs of banks, insurers, and asset managers with material exposure to derivatives and risk-transfer markets Central banks, regulators, and finance ministries working on systemic risk and pension policy Chief investment officers and treasury teams at sovereign wealth funds and large institutional investors Audience outcomes Why retirement income is the right measure of success for any DC pension system, and the design implications for trustees and sponsors The economic logic underneath derivatives and risk-transfer markets, in language that lets a senior non-quant push back on a hedging proposal Functional and Structural Finance as a tool for analysing systemic risk, with examples of how regulators and finance ministries are applying it The case for liability-driven investment in pension and insurance balance sheets, and how it changes asset allocation decisions

Why organisations work with Richard Noble He is one of the very small number of speakers who has actually held a world record under personal physical risk and built the team, the car and the funding model that made it possible. The Thrust2 record stood for fourteen years. His work on ThrustSSC produced the first and only land vehicle to break the sound barrier, and the lessons he draws are about how a small underfunded team executed something the established motor industry had judged impossible. He is the rare speaker whose case studies are his own. The Bloodhound education programme, the ARV Super2 light aircraft, Farnborough Aircraft and JCB Dieselmax are all ventures he founded or led, and the failures are discussed as openly as the records. He pioneered distributed sponsorship in Britain, with the ThrustSSC supporters club running what his team describes as the country’s first end-to-end electronic trading site. Boards considering crowdfunding, community equity or non-traditional capital get a working precedent. His message is uncomfortable on purpose. He argues that the British funding establishment systematically rejects ambitious engineering, and he uses his own story to challenge audiences who claim to back innovation without backing risk. Biography highlights Drove Thrust2 to 633.468 mph at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, on 4 October 1983, returning the World Land Speed Record to Britain after thirteen years in American hands. Project director of ThrustSSC, which on 15 October 1997 became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier, at 763.035 mph, with RAF pilot Andy Green at the wheel. Founded the Bloodhound SSC project in 2008 and built its associated education programme, which has reached approximately 4,600 UK schools and over two million schoolchildren worldwide. Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE); winner of the 1983 Segrave Trophy; honorary Doctor of Technology from the University of the West of England (2010); honorary degree from the University of Bradford (2018). Author of “Thrust: The Remarkable Story of One Man’s Quest for Speed” (Partridge Press, 1998) and “Take Risk!” (Evro Publishing, 2020), which together document eleven of his record-breaking and aviation projects. Founder of ARV Aircraft (the Super2 light aircraft) and Farnborough Aircraft, and a contributor to the JCB Dieselmax diesel record car that exceeded 350 mph at Bonneville in 2006. Biography Most organisations talk about risk. Very few are built to back the kind of venture where failure is the likely outcome, the budget is gone in three months, and the project has to be rebuilt from a scrapyard sale of the previous prototype. Richard Noble has spent his working life inside that gap. His Thrust2 programme began in the mid-1970s with £175 raised from selling the wreckage of his crashed Thrust1 car for scrap. Eight years later, on 4 October 1983, Thrust2 averaged 633.468 mph at Black Rock Desert and returned the World Land Speed Record to Britain. He was awarded the OBE and the Segrave Trophy that year. The record stood for fourteen years. The follow-on project, ThrustSSC, started with a £40,000 sponsorship from Castrol and a two-year computational research programme led by aerodynamicist Ron Ayers. Noble gave up the driving seat to concentrate on funding. On 15 October 1997, with RAF Tornado pilot Andy Green at the controls, ThrustSSC ran at 763 mph and became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier. The financing model behind it, including a supporters’ club website his team has described as Britain’s first end-to-end electronic trading site, prefigured a generation of distributed online fundraising. The Bloodhound SSC project, founded in 2008, aimed at 1,000 mph and built one of the largest STEM education programmes in the UK, working with around 4,600 schools. It went into administration in 2018, was sold to Ian Warhurst, and Noble has written about that ending as candidly as he has written about the records. His 2020 book “Take Risk!” tells the same story from the angle that matters most to a corporate audience: the eleven projects, the people and companies who backed him, and the British institutional culture that he argues consistently fails to back ambitious engineering. Key speaking topics High-risk venture leadership Resilience under repeated failure Team formation under extreme pressure Risk-taking and risk culture in business Entrepreneurship and unconventional capital formation British engineering ambition and innovation Leading without institutional backing Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams setting risk appetite, particularly those wrestling with the gap between stated ambition and actual investment behaviour. Innovation, R&D and engineering leaders responsible for high-uncertainty programmes where conventional ROI cases do not apply. Sales conferences and incentive events where the audience needs a credible, lived account of resilience and persistence rather than a generic motivational story. After-dinner audiences at industry conferences who want a senior speaker with genuine record-breaking authority and a sharp argument about institutional risk aversion. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of how a small underfunded team can deliver something an established industry has judged impossible, drawn from Thrust2 and ThrustSSC rather than abstract case studies. A sharper view of where their own organisation talks about risk-taking but funds and governs as if it does not. Practical reference points for raising capital outside conventional institutional channels, including distributed sponsorship and supporter-funded models. An honest account of failure as part of the same career as the records, including Bloodhound’s collapse, that gives senior teams permission to talk about their own setbacks more openly. A persistent argument they will keep returning to: that ambition without willingness to absorb sustained personal and financial risk produces neither records nor breakthrough commercial outcomes.

Why organisations work with Rhys Jones He has turned back 200 metres from a summit in order to get a team home safely. That experience anchors his safety leadership work: he speaks credibly to the hardest call in any high-risk operation, which is stopping a job when stopping is the right answer. INEOS is the documented engagement. Jim Ratcliffe (then INEOS Chairman) sponsored his record-setting Everest climb in 2006, and the relationship developed into operational work, including a four-presentation programme for INEOS Olefins and Polymers in Texas. That is a reference a buyer can verify directly. The world record is documented and time-stamped. He completed the Seven Summits on his 20th birthday in May 2006 and held the title as the youngest in the world until Jordan Romero broke it in December 2011. The dates and the climb logs are public. He still runs an active expedition company. Monix Adventures, which he co-founded with his wife Laura, operates today as a luxury expedition and adventure travel business, so his material draws on current operational mountaineering rather than a single career-defining climb. His safety presentations are built around the recurring root causes of preventable injuries. Audiences come away with usable observations on team behaviour and the cultural habits that show up consistently in safer operations. Biography highlights Held the world record as the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits, completing the challenge on his 20th birthday in May 2006; record stood until December 2011. Set two earlier records on the way: youngest Briton to summit Mt McKinley (Denali) at age 17, and youngest summiteer of Mount Vinson in Antarctica at age 19. Everest expedition sponsored by INEOS, with public endorsement from Jim Ratcliffe at the time of the climb. 2007 expedition to South East Greenland produced first ascents of four previously unclimbed peaks. 2014 self-supported ski mountaineering ascent of Gunnbjorn Fjeld, the highest mountain in the Arctic, with his wife Laura. Co-founder of Monix Adventures, a luxury expedition and adventure travel company; documented safety leadership engagement with INEOS, including a four-presentation programme for INEOS Olefins and Polymers in Texas. Biography Organisations in oil and gas, construction, and aviation have written every safety procedure that needs writing. The injuries that still happen on site come from judgment under pressure and team behaviour in the moment a decision is taken. That is the territory Rhys Jones works in. Jones brings a specific source of authority to the conversation. In May 2006, on his 20th birthday, he became the youngest person in the world to climb the Seven Summits, holding the record until Jordan Romero broke it in 2011. The route there included two earlier records: youngest Briton up Denali at 17, and youngest summiteer of Mount Vinson in Antarctica at 19. INEOS sponsored the final Everest climb, beginning a corporate relationship that would later extend into his speaking work. What is distinctive is how he uses the experience. The talks are organised around moments of decision under stress. The central case is a climb on which he turned back 200 metres short of the top because conditions did not justify the final push. That kind of call is the central problem in safety culture, and the hardest thing to deliver in the moment. Today Jones runs Monix Adventures with his wife Laura, a luxury expedition company that takes private clients and corporate teams into the mountains. The speaking work sits alongside that. His longest documented client relationship is with INEOS, beginning with the company’s sponsorship of his Everest climb in 2006 and continuing through to a four-presentation programme for the Olefins and Polymers division in Texas. Key speaking topics Safety leadership in high-risk industries Decision-making and risk management under pressure Team behaviour in safety-critical operations Operational resilience and goal-setting Wellbeing and personal achievement Inspirational and after-dinner speaking Ideal for Heads of HSE and operations leaders in oil and gas, construction, infrastructure, and aviation Frontline supervisors and site teams in safety-critical industries who need a credible voice on the human factors behind preventable injuries Senior leadership offsites where the brief is risk decision-making, team accountability, and resilience Annual sales kick-offs, after-dinner engagements, and award ceremonies that need a credible keynote on goals and discipline Audience outcomes A grounded picture of where preventable injuries actually originate, framed around the recurring judgment and team-behaviour patterns that show up in incident analysis. The language and the standing to stop a job when conditions have changed, including who in a chain of command has the authority to make that call. Specific moments from extreme mountaineering that map onto high-risk industrial operations, useful as reference points in safety conversations afterwards. Stories from current expedition work that connect personal goal-setting and recovery habits to sustained performance at work.

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Pierluigi Collina He is the only figure in global sport who achieved celebrity status not as a player or coach but as the person whose sole function was to make consequential public judgments under pressure – his perspective on authority and decision-making has no direct equivalent in the business speaker market. His post-playing career adds institutional weight that most performance speakers cannot match: two decades in senior governance roles across Serie A, UEFA, and FIFA, including leading the global implementation of VAR – the most disruptive change to officiating rules in the sport’s history. My Rules of the Game, translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries, demonstrates that his framework for elite performance and disciplined decision-making has cross-cultural resonance far beyond football. His economics background (cum laude, University of Bologna) and career as a financial consultant mean his analytical lens on preparation, risk, and judgment is grounded in professional rigour, not athletic instinct alone. For organisations working through governance reform, accountability culture, or leadership under scrutiny, he offers a case study of sustained credibility at the highest levels of a globally watched, deeply contested environment. Biography highlights Refereed the 2002 FIFA World Cup Final (Brazil v Germany), the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final (Manchester United v Bayern Munich), the 1996 Olympic Games Final, and the 2004 UEFA Cup Final Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee for six consecutive years, 1998–2003; Serie A Referee of the Year six times Chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee since January 2017; previously UEFA Chief Refereeing Officer and Chairman of the Referees Committee (2010–2018); Chairman of the Serie A referees committee (2007–2010) Led preparation and training of referees for VAR introduction at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Author of My Rules of the Game (Macmillan, 2003), translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries Economics graduate cum laude, University of Bologna; former professional financial consultant Appointed Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2003); Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Hull (2004) Biography Making a decision that 1.2 billion people will immediately scrutinise is not a leadership metaphor. For Pierluigi Collina, it was the 2002 FIFA World Cup Final – the most-watched sporting event on the planet, and the last in a career that also included the 1999 Champions League Final and the 1996 Olympic Games Final. What those moments produced was not simply a record of high-profile matches, but a working methodology for sustained authority under conditions of total public exposure. Collina was named IFFHS World’s Best Referee six consecutive years from 1998 to 2003 – a period that also produced My Rules of the Game, his account of the preparation, discipline, and judgment required to perform at the top of an intensely adversarial profession. Translated into more than ten languages across twenty countries, the book demonstrated that his thinking on decision-making under pressure had relevance well beyond the sport. His economics degree cum laude from the University of Bologna and a parallel career as a financial consultant are consistent with a mind that approached officiating analytically, not intuitively. His retirement from the pitch in 2005 opened a second, structurally significant chapter. He led the Serie A referees committee, moved to UEFA as Chief Refereeing Officer, and since January 2017 has served as Chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee. In that role, he was central to the design and implementation of VAR – the most consequential change to football’s decision-making infrastructure in modern times – preparing referees globally for a system that required them to re-examine, in public and in real time, decisions already made. For organisations grappling with accountability culture, judgment under scrutiny, and the conditions under which authority holds – or fails – Collina brings something rare: not a sporting story applied to business by analogy, but a career-long, institutionally tested practice of making high-consequence decisions when the cost of error is immediate and the audience is watching every call. Key speaking topics Decision-making under public scrutiny Authority, credibility, and trust in leadership Performance preparation and elite standards Governance and institutional integrity Conflict management and de-escalation Accountability and rule-based leadership Technology-led change in high-stakes environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating high-visibility, high-accountability environments Boards and governance professionals addressing decision-making culture and institutional integrity C-suite and executive development programmes focused on judgment, authority, and performance under pressure Transformation leads and HR directors building accountability frameworks within complex organisations Audience outcomes A structured understanding of how preparation, not instinct, is the foundation of sound judgment under pressure Practical perspectives on how authority is built and maintained – and the specific behaviours that erode it A framework for making and communicating consequential decisions in ways that command trust rather than invite challenge Clearer thinking on the relationship between governance structures and individual performance standards Concrete examples of how high-stakes decision-making principles from elite sport translate to organisational and leadership contexts

Why organisations work with Pete Goss He is one of very few speakers whose composure under pressure is documented in two state honours, the MBE and the Legion d’Honneur, awarded for a single named decision in the 1996 Vendee Globe. He has built and led multi-million pound sponsored projects with workforces of 100 plus, including Aqua Quorum, Team Philips and Spirit of Mystery, which gives him a working vocabulary for boards on stewardship, sponsor relationships and visible failure. The Team Philips abandonment in 2000 is part of his material, not edited out of it, so leaders get a credible account of what comes after a public, capital-heavy programme collapses. His teaching credentials sit inside serious institutions: Associate Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford, and regular lecturer at London Business School, which calibrates the content for senior audiences rather than after-dinner crowds. The Dinelli rescue is a teachable case, not a war story: a decision made on incomplete information, against the speaker’s own commercial interest, with a precise sequence of operational choices a board can interrogate. Biography highlights Skippered Aqua Quorum in the 1996/97 Vendee Globe; rescued Raphael Dinelli in a Southern Ocean hurricane on Christmas Day 1996. Awarded the MBE and France’s Legion d’Honneur for the Dinelli rescue. Named Yachtsman of the Year following the Vendee Globe. Author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), an account of the race and rescue. Built and skippered Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft Cornish lugger, on an 11,800 mile voyage from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009. Associate Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford; regular lecturer at London Business School; former Royal Marine. Biography The Vendee Globe is the hardest race in solo sailing: one boat, one person, no stops, around the world. On Christmas Day 1996, in 80 knot winds in the Southern Ocean, Pete Goss received a distress signal from Raphael Dinelli, a French competitor whose boat was sinking. Goss turned back, fought upwind for two days, and pulled Dinelli, near death, out of a life raft. The decision ended his race and won him the MBE from Queen Elizabeth II and the Legion d’Honneur from the President of France. Before that race, Goss was a Royal Marine. After it, he became one of the more credible voices on what leadership looks like when the plan stops working. He is the author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), the bestselling account of the race and the rescue, and was named Yachtsman of the Year. He is an Associate Fellow of Said Business School at Oxford and lectures regularly at London Business School, so the material reads to senior audiences as judgement work, not adventure storytelling. His later projects sharpen the case. Team Philips, a 120 ft catamaran built for a round-the-world record, was abandoned in mid-Atlantic in December 2000 after structural damage in heavy weather. Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft replica Cornish lugger, sailed 11,800 miles from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009 to recreate the 1854 voyage of the original lugger Mystery. One programme failed in public after large sponsor investment. The other succeeded after years of preparation in obscurity. Goss treats both as case material. What makes this useful in a boardroom is the specificity. The Dinelli decision is not a metaphor, it is a sequence of operational choices made against personal interest, with a paper trail. Senior leaders can interrogate it the way they would a real case, and most do. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Self-leadership and composure Recovery after public failure Sponsor and stakeholder leadership in capital-intensive programmes Team conduct in small, high-stakes crews Long-form planning and execution Risk and judgement at sea and in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a high-stakes call where the right answer is commercially costly Leadership programmes for senior operators who have not yet been tested in a public failure Capital project sponsors and programme directors managing visible, multi-year commitments Off-sites where the brief is judgement and resilience rather than motivation Audience outcomes A working reference case for what good looks like when a leader has to abandon a plan mid-execution. A clearer view of how to separate personal stake from organisational duty when the two diverge. A more honest account of what happens after a programme fails in public, drawn from Team Philips. Specific language for talking to sponsors, crews and boards in conditions of real uncertainty.

Why organisations work with Paul Lewis He is the voice UK consumers associate with personal-finance scrutiny. For a pensions provider, bank or platform, putting him in front of customers, advisers or regulators is borrowing the most trusted editorial brand in retail finance. Three decades inside Money Box and Money Box Live means he reads regulatory shifts, scam patterns and adviser conduct from the perspective of the person being affected, not the firm being affected. He is a working broadcaster, not a retired one. Panels, fireside conversations and after-dinner sessions land in the same register listeners hear on Radio 4 every Saturday lunchtime. His record on consumer protection is recognised by the industry itself. The Association of British Insurers gave him a lifetime achievement award; the Association of Investment Companies named him Best Broadcast Journalist; the University of Essex awarded an honorary doctorate citing journalism in defence of consumers. He brings a journalist’s discipline on questions: pension providers, life companies, asset managers and intermediaries are interrogated on the substance their customers actually feel. Biography highlights Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Money Box and Money Box Live, the BBC’s flagship personal-finance programmes, since 2000. Author of Money Box: Your Toolkit for Balancing Your Budget, Growing Your Bank Balance and Living a Better Financial Life, published by Penguin Random House. Monthly Money Works columnist for Saga Magazine and longstanding columnist for Money Marketing. Lifetime achievement award, Association of British Insurers, 2006. Best Broadcast Journalist, Association of Investment Companies, 2011. Multiple Headline Money Awards Broadcast Journalist of the Year, including 2013. Honorary doctorate, University of Essex, 2013, for journalism defending consumers. Biography The pension freedoms reforms of 2015, the long pull of auto-enrolment, scam epidemics targeting older savers and the slow remediation of bad advice have made retail finance one of the most contested editorial territories in Britain. Money Box on BBC Radio 4 is where the issues land first, and Paul Lewis has been the programme’s presenter since September 2000. Three decades of independent journalism sit behind that chair. Lewis began reporting on personal finance in the 1980s and joined Money Box in the 1990s before returning to present it. He writes the monthly Money Works column for Saga Magazine, contributes to Money Marketing, and remains a regular voice on BBC Breakfast, Today, Woman’s Hour and You and Yours when consumer-finance stories break. The industry has recognised the work on its own terms. The Association of British Insurers gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2006. The Association of Investment Companies named him Best Broadcast Journalist in 2011. The University of Essex awarded an honorary doctorate in 2013, citing his journalism in defence of consumers. He is also the author of Money Box, published by Penguin Random House, a practical handbook drawn from years of listener questions on tax, pensions, debt, property and investing. For financial services audiences, the commercial value is editorial credibility most senior leaders cannot manufacture in-house. When Lewis questions a chief executive on a panel, or chairs a regulatory roundtable, or speaks after dinner to a firm’s adviser network, he carries the listening relationship he has built with retail savers into the room. Key speaking topics Personal finance and consumer money Pensions, retirement income and pension scams Personal taxation and tax policy Financial services regulation and conduct Fraud, scams and consumer protection Banking and savings Financial journalism and the consumer voice Ideal for Financial services firms: banks, insurers, life and pensions providers, asset managers, platforms. IFA networks, wealth managers and advice firms commissioning panels, conferences or adviser events. Regulators, trade bodies and consumer organisations working on retail conduct, scams or pension policy. Boards and senior leadership teams in retail-facing financial services who want a journalist’s pressure-test on customer experience. Audience outcomes A clearer read on what retail customers actually hear, miss and mistrust about pensions, tax and savings. Concrete recent cases of scams, mis-selling and conduct failure, drawn from Money Box reporting. A working journalist’s framing of how regulatory change lands with consumers, not with compliance teams. A view of the trust gap between financial services and the public, and where it can realistically be closed.