Risk Management speakers

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

Why organisations work with Roger Steare His Ethicability framework was adopted by BP into its 2011 Code of Conduct after Deepwater Horizon, and the programme was later recognised by the US Department of Justice in BP’s US$20.8 billion Consent Agreement. Few decision frameworks have been stress-tested at that scale. The MoralDNA psychometric, co-designed with psychologist Pavlos Stamboulides, has profiled more than 200,000 people across 200 countries. It gives boards a measurable language for ethical culture rather than a values poster. He has built ethical leadership programmes for Barclays, BP, Citigroup, HSBC, and Nationwide, and advised the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Reporting Council, and the Serious Fraud Office. His client list is the regulator and the regulated, which is rare. He writes for the Financial Times and Director magazine, and reported for the Chartered Management Institute on the link between moral character and organisational performance. The argument is empirical, not aspirational. He brings the same ethical reasoning to AI governance that he applied to banking and energy. Boards confronting AI deployment get a method, not a moral panic. Biography highlights Designer of BP’s global ethical leadership programme for 4,000 leaders following Deepwater Horizon; framework cited in BP’s US Department of Justice Consent Agreement Co-designer of MoralDNA, the moral-values psychometric used by more than 200,000 people in over 200 countries Author of Ethicability, now in a new edition, and of The MoralDNA of Performance for the Chartered Management Institute Associate Professor of ethical decisions at Headspring, the Financial Times and IE Business School executive development venture in Madrid; formerly Corporate Philosopher in Residence at Bayes (formerly Cass) Business School, City, University of London Commissioner on the Institute of Directors Commission, “Business, a Force for Good?” Columnist for the Financial Times and Director magazine; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Biography Most ethics work in large organisations is theatre. Codes of conduct sit on intranets, e-learning modules are completed quickly, and the actual decisions get made the same way they always were. The MoralDNA work, built with psychologist Pavlos Stamboulides and now profiling over 200,000 people across 200 countries, was designed to interrupt that pattern. It measures how people actually reason about right and wrong, not what they say they value. The Ethicability framework took the same logic into operational decision-making. After Deepwater Horizon, BP incorporated it into the 2011 Code of Conduct and rolled an associated programme out to 4,000 leaders. In 2016 the US Department of Justice cited that programme as part of BP’s US$20.8 billion Consent Agreement. It is one of very few ethical decision tools stress-tested under genuine regulatory and reputational fire. The wider client list spans Barclays, BP, Citigroup, HSBC, and Nationwide, and he has advised the regulators as well: the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Reporting Council, and the Serious Fraud Office. As Associate Professor of ethical decisions at Headspring, the Financial Times and IE Business School venture, he teaches the same material to senior leaders, and he sat as a Commissioner on the Institute of Directors inquiry into whether business is a force for good. His columns for the Financial Times and Director magazine, and his Chartered Management Institute report The MoralDNA of Performance, argue that moral character correlates with measurable organisational outcomes. That argument now extends to AI. The questions a board faces about model deployment, accountability, and bias are not new ethical questions, they are old ones in faster machinery. The work he brings to AI governance is the same reasoning he brought to banking after 2008 and to oil after 2010: a tested method for deciding what is right when commercial, legal, and moral answers diverge. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership and ethical decision-making AI ethics and responsible technology governance Organisational culture and integrity Trust and the social contract of business Moral reasoning at board level Ethics in financial services and regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing ethical or reputational exposure Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officers shaping culture beyond compliance Senior leaders in regulated sectors: financial services, energy, healthcare, defence Heads of AI, Chief Data Officers and technology leaders setting deployment standards Audience outcomes A tested method (the Ethicability framework) for making decisions when commercial, legal, and ethical pressures conflict A common language for ethical culture grounded in the MoralDNA evidence base A clearer account of why values-based leadership is correlated with organisational performance A practical framing for AI governance questions that boards can act on

Why organisations work with Rory Cormac He brings archival-grade authority on how states actually conduct covert action, drawn from declassified British and allied intelligence records, not commentary or speculation. His work on the grey zone gives boards a structured way to read sabotage, subversion and information operations as connected forms of state pressure, not isolated incidents. He translates the playbooks of Russian and Chinese covert activity into specific implications for industries exposed to critical infrastructure, supply chains and intellectual property. How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022) is one of the few mainstream studies of secret statecraft to be taken seriously by both academic intelligence scholars and practitioners. Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) reads the British Cold War forgery operations as a working playbook for present-day state disinformation, giving leaders a historical pattern they can apply to current incidents. He has given oral evidence on foreign interference to parliamentary inquiries in both the UK and Australia, and has fronted three Channel 4 documentaries with Richard Aldrich on intelligence and the British state, making him equally credible in front of policy committees, expert rooms and public audiences. Biography highlights Professor of International Relations and lead for security and resilience research at the University of Nottingham, specialising in secret intelligence and covert action. Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; previous Leverhulme and AHRC Fellowships. Author of Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) on state disinformation, How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022), Disrupt and Deny (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Confronting the Colonies (Hurst, 2014). Co-author with Richard J. Aldrich of The Black Door and The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown from Victoria to Diana (Atlantic, 2021). Co-presenter of three Channel 4 documentaries: Spying on the Royals, D-Day: The King who Fooled Hitler, The Queen and the Coup. Has given oral evidence on foreign interference to parliamentary inquiries in the UK and Australia, with regular appearances across national press, radio and television on intelligence matters. Biography Most boards still treat espionage as a film genre. The pipeline interruption, the leaked tender, the social media campaign that crashes a launch, the supplier suddenly entangled in a sanctions investigation: these are read as separate operational problems, not as connected acts of state pressure. The work of Rory Cormac, Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, is to give senior leaders the language and the historical pattern recognition to see them as one problem. Cormac is Professor of International Relations and lead for security and resilience research at the University of Nottingham, specialising in covert action and secret statecraft. His authority is built on archival research into declassified British and allied records, the basis of Disrupt and Deny (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Confronting the Colonies (Hurst, 2014). With Richard J. Aldrich he co-authored The Black Door and The Secret Royals, broadening that material into a wider reading of how states use the hidden hand. How to Stage a Coup (Atlantic, 2022) brought the argument into the present. Eleven lessons drawn from a century of secret statecraft, applied to a world of sabotage, ambiguous warfare and adversaries operating just below the threshold of open conflict. Fakers (Oxford University Press, 2026) extends the work into disinformation directly, using the declassified history of Britain’s Cold War forgery operations to read the mechanics of present-day state influence campaigns. Both books sit at the centre of current debates on the grey zone among scholars and practitioners alike. Beyond the academy he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a former Leverhulme and AHRC Fellow, and a co-presenter with Aldrich of three Channel 4 documentaries on intelligence and the British state. He has also given oral evidence to parliamentary inquiries on foreign interference in both the UK and Australia. The result is a speaker who can hold a room of historians, a corporate security committee, and a Hay Festival audience using the same material. Key speaking topics Covert action and secret statecraft Grey-zone conflict and hybrid threats Russian and Chinese subversion Disinformation and information warfare Intelligence history and the modern state Political risk for critical infrastructure and IP-heavy sectors Resilience against sabotage and infiltration Ideal for Boards and risk committees in defence, energy, telecoms and critical infrastructure Chief security officers, heads of corporate intelligence and political risk leads Government, military and policy audiences working on national resilience Industry associations and conferences focused on geopolitical exposure Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how state adversaries combine sabotage, subversion and disinformation against commercial targets A working vocabulary for the grey zone that makes specific incidents legible as part of a larger pattern A historically grounded view of Russian and Chinese covert practice, rather than headline impressions Sharper questions for security, communications and supply-chain teams about where the organisation is exposed A sense of where the boundary sits between state interference and ordinary commercial risk

Why organisations work with Rory Stewart He has sat inside the decision-making structures most geopolitical analysts only describe – as a UK Cabinet minister, National Security Council member, and coalition administrator governing two Iraqi provinces at 29. That is not a background organisations can easily find elsewhere on a speaker platform. His co-authored book Can Intervention Work? (2011) makes a specific, tested argument about the conditions under which external state interventions succeed or fail – relevant to any organisation navigating politically unstable markets or working alongside governments in fragile environments. Politics on the Edge (British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year 2024) provides a forensic account of how democratic governance hollows out – useful for any leadership team trying to anticipate political risk in Western markets, not just emerging ones. He teaches grand strategy at Yale’s Jackson School alongside his public engagement – his analysis is grounded in academic rigour about how states make long-term choices under uncertainty, not in the rolling commentary of the news cycle. Co-hosting the UK’s most-listened podcast across all genres (The Rest Is Politics) gives him an unusually clear read of where public and political opinion is moving – and why the gap between elite decision-making and public trust continues to widen. Biography highlights Inaugural Brady-Johnson Professor in the Practice of Grand Strategy and co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs (from January 2024) Former UK Secretary of State for International Development and member of the National Security Council; held six ministerial roles across four government departments under David Cameron and Theresa May Former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights, Harvard Kennedy School Founder of Turquoise Mountain Foundation, Kabul – a cultural heritage and livelihoods charity operating under the patronage of King Charles III Author of six books including The Places in Between (Ondaatje Prize, Royal Society of Literature, 2005) and Politics on the Edge (British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year 2024, #1 Sunday Times bestseller) OBE for services in Iraq (2004); Livingstone Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (2009); Ness Award, Royal Geographical Society (2018); three BBC television documentaries; contributor to the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement Biography Rory Stewart served as a UK Cabinet minister and member of the National Security Council, held six ministerial roles across four departments, governed two Iraqi provinces as a coalition administrator at 29, and founded an operating NGO in Kabul before it was fashionable to work there. He is now the inaugural Brady-Johnson Professor in the Practice of Grand Strategy at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, where he co-directs the programme that trains the next generation of strategists. He is not a commentator who studies power. He is someone who has held it. His intellectual contribution goes beyond memoir. Can Intervention Work? (2011) – co-authored with Gerald Knaus – makes a specific argument about why external state interventions fail and under what conditions they can succeed. Politics on the Edge (2023), winner of the British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year and named a best book of the year by the Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, dissects the structural causes of democratic decline from the inside – cronyism, the hollowing of expertise, the capture of institutions by short-term political incentives. Both books ask questions that boards are now asking about the environments in which they operate. Before Parliament, Stewart served in the UK Diplomatic Service in Indonesia and Montenegro, walked solo across Afghanistan in 2002 – documented in The Places in Between, winner of the Ondaatje Prize – and later led Turquoise Mountain in Kabul. He directed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School before abandoning that chair to stand for Parliament. The breadth is not accidental: his authority on geopolitical risk rests on having moved between every layer of the system that produces it. Co-hosting The Rest Is Politics – the most-listened-to podcast in the UK across all genres – has given him a reading of the gap between institutional decision-making and public trust that no think-tank report captures. For organisations trying to understand not just what geopolitical risk looks like but why it is so consistently misjudged by the institutions they rely on, that perspective is specific and hard to replicate. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the shifting global order Grand strategy and statecraft Political risk and institutional failure The limits of state intervention International development and fragile states Democratic governance and the crisis of political trust Leadership under uncertainty in high-stakes environments Ideal for Boards and executive committees assessing geopolitical exposure in global strategy and investment decisions Chief Risk Officers and political risk functions in financial services, energy, and infrastructure sectors Government affairs and public policy leadership navigating an unstable regulatory and political environment International development organisations, multilaterals, and NGOs operating in fragile or conflict-affected contexts Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing genuine geopolitical risk from noise – grounded in how decisions are actually made inside governments, not how they are reported Specific insight into why state interventions and institutional responses to crises so often fail, and what the structural causes are A more calibrated understanding of the relationship between democratic instability in Western markets and long-term strategic planning Practical exposure to how grand strategy is taught and applied – the long-arc thinking that boards and senior leadership teams rarely build time for Greater confidence in engaging with geopolitical complexity without defaulting to the oversimplified framings of media commentary

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 Ruth Buscombe She has run live race strategy from the pit wall at Ferrari, Haas and Sauber, so the material is operating practice from elite competition, not a borrowed sports metaphor. She led the strategy function during Sauber’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022, the team’s best result in a decade against far better-resourced rivals, a credible reference point for performance under budget constraint. Her Cambridge engineering background (first-class honours, FIA-supervised thesis on the Drag Reduction System) means technical and analytical audiences extend her credit fast. She is one of a very small number of women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, which gives her STEM and inclusion content lived authority rather than allyship framing. As an F1 TV analyst, she explains decisions to a live general audience every race weekend, so she is unusually fluent at translating specialist judgement into language a board can act on. Biography highlights First-class honours in Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering, University of Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA. Race strategist at Scuderia Ferrari (2013 to 2015), based at Maranello, supporting drivers including Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. Strategy engineer at Haas F1 during the team’s debut Formula 1 season. Head of Race Strategy at Sauber/Alfa Romeo, leading the strategy function through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022. On-air strategy analyst and presenter for F1 TV. Ambassador since 2016 for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative. Biography The pit wall is one of the few working environments where leaders make consequential calls in public, on a clock, with information that is partial and changing. Ruth Buscombe has spent her career on that wall. As a race strategist at Ferrari, then Haas, then as Head of Race Strategy at Sauber, she has owned decisions where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in championship points within the same hour. Her credibility starts with the technical foundation. A first-class honours engineering degree from Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA, gave her the analytical grounding to be taken seriously inside Maranello at twenty-two. She joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2012, was promoted to race strategist within a year, and worked through Sebastian Vettel’s first Ferrari victory before moving to Haas for the team’s debut season. The defining body of work came at Sauber. Running the strategy function for a midfield team against rivals with far larger budgets, she led the call sheet through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ Championship finish in 2022, its best result in a decade. That is the substance she brings to corporate audiences: how to design decision protocols that hold up when conditions change mid-race, how to allocate scarce attention under live pressure, how to disagree productively inside a senior team in the seconds before a call has to be made. She is also one of the very few women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, and has been an ambassador for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative, since 2016. As an F1 TV analyst she now explains the same decision logic to a live audience every race weekend, which is why her keynote lands with general management audiences as cleanly as it does with engineers. Key speaking topics Real-time decision-making under pressure High-performance team operating models Race strategy and competitive advantage under constraint Data-led judgement in elite sport Women in motorsport and STEM Engineering leadership Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams running high-stakes operating decisions on short cycles Strategy, operations and risk leaders responsible for live decision protocols Engineering and technical organisations where analytical credibility is the price of entry Diversity, inclusion and STEM programmes seeking a credible operator rather than an advocate Audience outcomes A clearer mental model for how elite teams separate the call from the data behind it A working sense of how decision rights, role clarity and rehearsal change behaviour under live pressure Specific examples of how a smaller, smarter team can outperform a better-resourced rival Confidence to make and defend a call when information is incomplete and time has run out A credible, non-tokenistic reference for women considering senior technical careers

Why organisations work with Saakshar Duggal He argues AI and cyber matters as a practising advocate at the Delhi High Court, so his guidance on governance reflects how liability is actually contested in practice. He helps run the Artificial Intelligence Law Hub and advises Cyberlaw University, which gives him early sight of how AI regulation and agentic-AI liability are taking shape in India. He builds AI literacy for teams with no legal background, turning governance obligations into decisions a product or operations lead can make on Monday. A prolific TEDx speaker who also coaches other specialists on speaking, he can take a subject as dry as AI liability to a full workforce or a board and hold the room. Biography highlights Practising advocate at the Delhi High Court, specialising in AI and cyber law. Chief Marketing Officer of the Artificial Intelligence Law Hub and Adviser, Academic Outreach at Cyberlaw University. Member of the Forbes Communications Council. Author of “Cybercrimes During Covid-19 & Legal Issues in India”. Speaker at the 2025 Global Summit on Artificial Intelligence, Emerging Tech Law and Governance, on the legal questions raised by quantum and AI. Has delivered more than 20 TEDx talks on AI law and cyber issues. Biography Most organisations are adopting AI faster than anyone inside them can explain what it is legally allowed to do. Marketing runs generative tools, operations automates decisions, and the legal function is brought in after the fact, if at all. The gap between what the technology can do and what the organisation understands about it keeps widening. This is the terrain Saakshar Duggal works in. He argues AI and cyber matters as a practising advocate at the Delhi High Court, and helps run the Artificial Intelligence Law Hub, one of India’s dedicated centres for AI legal and governance work. His reading of AI liability comes from live cases and forming regulation. Duggal is also unusually good at being heard. He has delivered more than twenty TEDx talks on AI law, sits on the Forbes Communications Council, and coaches other specialists on how to hold an audience. On a topic that usually reaches people as dense regulation, that is what gets a workforce or a board to engage with it. His current focus is the hardest part of the field. At the 2025 Global Summit on Artificial Intelligence, Emerging Tech Law and Governance, he took on the legal questions thrown up by quantum and AI together. The sharper commercial version is agentic AI: once software takes actions no one authorised in advance, the question of who is liable stops being theoretical and lands on the company that deployed it. Key speaking topics AI governance for corporates Legal liability of agentic AI AI literacy for non-technical teams Regulation of artificial intelligence Cyber law and cybercrime Deepfakes and AI-enabled fraud Data protection and digital responsibility Ideal for General counsel and legal teams setting AI usage and liability policy Chief AI officers, CTOs, and transformation leads deploying AI or agentic systems Boards and risk committees weighing AI governance and exposure Whole-workforce sessions building AI and cyber literacy across non-technical staff Audience outcomes A clear view of where legal liability actually sits when an AI or agentic system causes harm Governance steps a non-legal team can apply to real AI deployment decisions The vocabulary to question vendors and internal teams about AI risk with confidence A working knowledge of common AI-enabled fraud and deepfake tactics, and the exposure they create for the business

Why organisations work with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton Her Decision Control Process derived from helmet-camera research on real operational commands, not simulation, is the only evidence-based framework of its kind adopted nationally, now embedded in UK National Operational Guidance and JESIP doctrine governing all blue-light services at major incidents. Her central research finding – that 80% of decisions made by experienced commanders are instinctive, and that goal-oriented training can increase situational awareness up to five times – gives leadership teams a specific, measurable basis for redesigning how they develop judgement under pressure. She is both a serving Chief Fire Officer and an active researcher at Cardiff University, meaning her framework is continuously stress-tested against real operational consequences – not archived after publication. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), extends the same empirical approach to the structural barriers holding women back at work – giving CHROs and boards a research-grounded contribution to progression strategy rather than advocacy. Her awards span operational command and academic research: the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour represent recognition from named bodies across both domains. Biography highlights Chief Fire Officer, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (first woman to hold this post); formerly CFO, West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service; Deputy Assistant Commissioner, London Fire Brigade PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Honorary Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society; Chartered Companion, Chartered Management Institute Developed the Decision Control Process – adopted by every UK fire and rescue service, embedded in National Operational Guidance for incident command and in JESIP doctrine King’s Fire Service Medal (King’s Birthday Honours); APA Early Career Award (2016); APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award (2018); BBSRC Innovator of the Year (2018) Author: The Heat of the Moment (Penguin Books, 2019) and The Gender Bias (2023) Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs; named among Marie Claire’s Future Shapers; Cosmopolitan Millennial Power List; Big Issue Top 100 Changemakers Biography When researchers at Cardiff University fitted helmet cameras to experienced incident commanders during live operational responses, the footage was unambiguous: eight in ten decisions were made on instinct, with structured analytical frameworks bypassed entirely. That finding became the foundation of the Decision Control Process: a rapid mental checklist developed by Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and subsequently adopted by every UK fire and rescue service. The research reshaped National Operational Guidance for incident command and is embedded in JESIP doctrine, the framework governing decision-making across all blue-light services at major incidents. It is a rare case of behavioural science research moving directly from peer-reviewed publication to national policy. Dr Cohen-Hatton holds a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience from Cardiff University, where she is an Honorary Professor, and is currently Chief Fire Officer of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service: the first woman to lead that service. Her operational career spans South Wales, Surrey, London, and West Sussex, and includes command roles during the Westminster Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks and in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), applies the same empirical lens to structural barriers in organisational progression: a data-led analysis of why women are judged differently at work and what organisations can do to address it. Alongside the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour, her profile extends well beyond emergency services audiences: Desert Island Discs, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan have all featured her work. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Behavioural neuroscience and leadership judgement Incident command and human factors Organisational learning from high-stakes incidents Crisis command and situational awareness Gender bias and structural barriers to progression Social mobility and leadership resilience Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams in regulated, risk-critical, or high-consequence sectors CHROs and senior talent leads focused on women’s progression at executive level Risk, safety, resilience, and business continuity officers Senior leadership development programmes addressing performance and judgement under pressure Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of how instinct and intuition dominate decision-making under pressure, and where that creates measurable organisational risk Familiarity with the Decision Control Process and its evidence base, with direct implications for how leadership development programmes should be designed A research-grounded framework for diagnosing and addressing structural barriers to women’s progression in senior roles Greater awareness of how human factors – not just technical failure – contribute to adverse outcomes in complex, high-stakes environments A perspective on leadership judgement formed from decades of active operational command at the most senior level in UK emergency services

Why organisations work with Salvatore Cantale He directs IMD’s Finance for Boards programme, the sitting reference point for non-executive directors who need to challenge financial strategy with authority rather than deference to the CFO. His work sits at the intersection of strategy and finance, so leadership teams leave with a clearer view of which growth bets, acquisitions and restructurings will actually compound value, and which are expensive to justify. He has built a substantive ESG-finance practice covering green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments and climate tech, addressing the question most boards are quietly avoiding: what does sustainability policy do to the numbers. His consulting track record spans global banks (MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC, Development Bank of Japan, APG) and operating businesses (Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Pernod Ricard, Lacoste), which translates into sessions grounded in how the work is done, not how it is theorised. He teaches finance as a language of leadership, not a specialist function, which is what senior executives from non-finance backgrounds usually need and rarely receive. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at IMD Business School, Lausanne Directs IMD’s Finance for Boards, Business Finance and Driving Sustainability from the Boardroom programmes PhD in Finance and MSc in Management, INSEAD; BA in Economics and Finance, University of Catania Former faculty director of the Master’s in Finance at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business Recipient of the Global Finance Association Best Paper Award and the Southern Finance Association Outstanding Paper Award Contributor to I by IMD, World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal Biography Boards are being asked to sign off on strategies, acquisitions and ESG commitments whose financial consequences are only vaguely understood in the room. Salvatore Cantale’s work is built around the gap that opens when strategic ambition outruns financial literacy at the top of the organisation. As Professor of Finance at IMD, he runs the programmes, Finance for Boards and Business Finance among them, that senior leaders attend when they cannot afford to keep outsourcing that judgment. His intellectual territory is the join between strategy, business models and financial outcomes. The question that animates his teaching is practical: how does a stated strategy actually show up in the P&L, the balance sheet and the cost of capital, and what should a board be able to see that a management deck hides. That framing draws on research in value creation, capital structure and corporate financing choices, work that has been recognised by the Global Finance Association and the Southern Finance Association. A second stream of his work focuses on the relationship between ESG policy and financial performance. Green bonds, sustainability-linked instruments, climate tech investment, investor activism, these are presented to boards as moral or regulatory questions and funded as financial ones. Cantale treats them as both, so executives can defend their choices in either room. His writing on CFO roles, the CEO-CFO-board triumvirate and CSRD compliance sits in I by IMD, the World Economic Forum Agenda, MIT Sloan Management Review and the financial press. The consulting record gives the work texture. Cantale has advised APG, MUFG, UniCredit, ICBC and the Development Bank of Japan on the financial institutions side, and Unilever, Kering, Maersk, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Pernod Ricard and Lacoste on the corporate side. That range is why senior audiences recognise themselves in his examples: the tension between a sustainability roadmap and a quarterly earnings call is not abstract when the person teaching it has sat on both sides of it. Key speaking topics Value creation and capital allocation Finance for boards and non-executive directors The strategic role of the CFO ESG, green finance and sustainability-linked instruments Business models and financial performance Mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring Governance and financial regulation Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors sharpening their ability to challenge management on financial strategy CEOs, CFOs and senior executive teams working through capital allocation, M&A or business model change Leadership teams translating ESG and sustainability commitments into credible financial plans Banks, asset managers and financial institutions navigating governance, regulation and investor expectations Audience outcomes A sharper read of how a given strategic choice will land in the financial statements and the cost of capital Clearer language for boardroom debate on value creation, capital structure and investment trade-offs Specific frameworks for assessing ESG and sustainability initiatives on financial as well as non-financial grounds A more confident view of the CFO’s role as strategic partner rather than scorekeeper Practical reference points drawn from named financial and corporate institutions Cantale has advised