Risk Management speakers

Why organisations work with Sam McAlister She is the negotiator who landed the 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew on the Epstein scandal, after almost a year of patient access work with Buckingham Palace. Few speakers can teach reputational negotiation from inside a case at that altitude. She teaches negotiation as a Visiting Senior Fellow in Practice at the LSE Law School, which gives the methodology academic structure, not just war stories. Her book Scoops, published by Oneworld in 2022, was adapted as the Netflix film Scoop in 2024 with Billie Piper. The material has been stress-tested by film, television and law school audiences. Two careers, criminal defence at 25 Bedford Row and a decade as a Newsnight booker, mean her toolkit covers cross-examination, hostile interview preparation, and the negotiation tactics that actually work when the counterparty has every reason to walk away. Biography highlights Visiting Senior Fellow in Practice, London School of Economics Law School, teaching negotiation. Former BBC Newsnight interviews producer for approximately ten years; left in 2021 after voluntary redundancy. Trained criminal defence barrister, 25 Bedford Row chambers, London. Author of Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews (Oneworld Publications, 2022). Subject of the 2024 Netflix film Scoop, portrayed by Billie Piper. Secured the 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew on the Epstein scandal; the programme received a 2020 BAFTA Television Award nomination for News Coverage. Biography The BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew aired in November 2019 and ended his public life. The booker who spent close to a year negotiating that access was Sam McAlister, then a producer on the programme and previously a criminal defence barrister at 25 Bedford Row. That career sequence matters. Cross-examination teaches a particular discipline: prepare the question for the answer you actually want, do not flinch when the room shifts, do not concede the frame. Booker work at a national news programme adds a second discipline, the patient, repeated conversation with a reluctant counterparty who can leave the table at any moment. McAlister now teaches that craft formally. She is a Visiting Senior Fellow in Practice at the LSE Law School, where her remit is negotiation. Her 2022 memoir Scoops, published by Oneworld, became the source material for the 2024 Netflix film Scoop, with Billie Piper in the lead. The Newsnight programme that anchors both was nominated at the 2020 BAFTA Television Awards in the News Coverage category. What this gives a corporate audience is rare: a working method for the conversations leaders most often delegate or duck. How to keep a reluctant counterparty in dialogue. How to prepare for an interview where every answer is reputationally live. How a calm, prepared, well-briefed presence wins access that money and seniority cannot. Key speaking topics High-stakes negotiation Crisis communication and reputational risk Persuasion and influence Media interviews and executive preparation Composure under public scrutiny Access and relationship-building with reluctant counterparties Ideal for CEOs, board chairs and general counsel facing reputational scrutiny or media exposure Heads of corporate affairs, communications and investor relations Senior leaders preparing for hostile interviews, regulatory hearings or contested negotiations Women’s leadership programmes and executive development cohorts focused on persuasion under pressure Audience outcomes A working frame for negotiating access and agreement when the counterparty has every reason to refuse. A practical method for preparing executives for high-pressure interviews, including the questions they hope no one asks. A read on what reputational risk looks like from the journalist’s side of the table, before it lands on yours. Tools for staying composed and on-message when the room turns adversarial.

Why organisations work with Sandra Navidi She wrote the book on how the financial elite actually operates. SuperHubs maps the people, institutions and personal networks that move capital and policy, and gives a board a working model of where systemic risk concentrates rather than a list of headlines. She is a member of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, founded by Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, which gives her line of sight to academic research on capitalism, innovation and inequality alongside her practitioner work. Her second book, Future IQ, treats AI as a workforce and strategy question, not a technology demo. That makes her unusually well placed to take a board through the macro and the AI conversation in a single session. Bilingual delivery in English and German, paired with two decades of n-tv commentary, gives DACH and transatlantic audiences a speaker who works natively in both regulatory and cultural contexts. A licensed attorney in New York and Germany with prior roles in investment banking, fund counsel work and macro advisory at Roubini Global Economics. The credential stack maps directly to the rooms she is asked to speak in. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of BeyondGlobal, a New York-based strategic advisory firm. Author of SuperHubs, a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year and 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal winner. Author of Future IQ: Your Success Strategies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Die DNA der USA: Wie tickt Amerika. Member of the Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University. LinkedIn Top Voice (Executive Blue Badge) and long-standing n-tv (RTL) expert commentator on business and politics. Co-host of the Biz and Beyond podcast with Ulrich Reitz, interviewing senior decision-makers and international experts. Biography The 2008 financial crisis exposed something most risk frameworks had missed. The shocks did not travel through markets in the abstract; they travelled through a small, interlocking network of bankers, regulators, central bankers and policy figures who knew each other personally. SuperHubs, written with a foreword by Nouriel Roubini, is the book that mapped that network and named it. It was selected as a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year and won a Silver Medal in the 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards. Sandra Navidi spent the years before that book inside the rooms she went on to describe. She worked as an investment banker, as general counsel at Muzinich and Co., as a Deloitte consultant, and then as a director of research strategies at Roubini Global Economics, where she briefed clients on macroeconomic and geopolitical risk. She is admitted to the bar in New York and Germany, holds an LL.M. in banking, corporate and finance law from Fordham, and is a member of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, founded by Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps. Her second book, Future IQ, takes the same network thinking into the AI conversation. It treats AI as a workforce and capital-allocation problem, not a technology demonstration, and asks how individuals, organisations and economies stay relevant when machine intelligence absorbs more of the cognitive work. It is the bridge between her macro authority and the questions boards are now being asked by their own people. Through BeyondGlobal she advises corporates, financial institutions and ultra-high-net-worth clients; through n-tv (RTL) and the Biz and Beyond podcast she keeps a working line into German and European business audiences. The result is a speaker who can move between Washington-style macro analysis, frankfurt-style risk culture and a Silicon Valley AI brief inside the same keynote, in either English or German. Key speaking topics Systemic risk and the architecture of global finance Geopolitics, sanctions and transatlantic exposure AI as a strategy and workforce question Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Future-proofing leadership and human capital US political and economic intelligence for European boards Ideal for Boards and executive committees of banks, asset managers and insurers CEOs, CFOs and CROs in globally exposed corporates Family offices and private wealth platforms with cross-border allocation decisions DACH and transatlantic leadership audiences requiring bilingual delivery Audience outcomes A working mental model of where systemic risk concentrates in the global financial system, named by institution and actor. A clearer read on how geopolitical fracture, sanctions and US policy shifts reach their own balance sheet. A practitioner view of AI as a capital and workforce question, not a tooling debate. A briefing on what US business and political dynamics mean for European strategy in the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Sandra Wachter Her Counterfactual Explanations framework – co-developed at Oxford and adopted in production by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone – gives organisations a legally defensible method for explaining algorithmic decisions to the individuals they affect, not just to internal audit teams. Her Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test demonstrated that 13 of 20 widely used bias detection tools fail EU non-discrimination standards. Amazon and IBM implemented CDD in their cloud services; it was deployed in 2024 to expose systemic bias in the Dutch national education system, resulting in a ministerial apology and formal reform. She works at the precise intersection of legal standards and technical metrics – meaning she can tell risk and compliance teams not only what accountability requires but how to measure whether systems actually deliver it. As a member of the European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability and the World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology, she tracks how regulatory frameworks are being written in real time, giving organisations visibility into requirements before they become mandatory. Her research has shifted institutional practice at the NHS and MHRA, which are revising medical device licensing standards using her findings on the unintended consequences of common group fairness measures – a concrete precedent for how her work moves from publication to policy. Biography highlights Professor of Technology and Regulation, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford; Humboldt Professor of Technology and Regulation, Hasso Plattner Institute Leads the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) Research Programme at Oxford Co-developer of Counterfactual Explanations (now deployed by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone) and the Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test (implemented by Amazon and IBM; applied in the Netherlands education reform, 2024) Published in Science Robotics, Nature Electronics, and Nature Reviews Physics; cited over 20,000 times (Google Scholar) Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2025, €3.5M); O2RB Excellence in Impact Award (2018, 2021); Computer Weekly Women in UK Tech Award (2021); Privacy Law Scholar Award (2019); CognitionX AI Ethics Award (2017, 2023) Policy roles: European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability; World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology; WEF Global Futures Council on Values, Ethics and Innovation; UNESCO; UK Police Ethics Guidance Group Previously Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School; Research Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute Media profiles in the Financial Times, Wired, New York Times, BBC,Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Reuters, Time Magazine, and MIT Technology Review Biography Sandra Wachter is Professor of Technology and Regulation at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet Institute and Humboldt Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute. She leads Oxford’s Governance of Emerging Technologies Research Programme – work that sits not in the space of ethical aspiration but in the harder territory of legal standards and technical verification. The tools her research has produced are in use at scale. The Counterfactual Explanations framework she co-developed is deployed in production by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone. Her Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test – built after demonstrating that 13 of 20 commonly used bias tools fail EU non-discrimination law – was adopted by Amazon and IBM in their cloud services. In 2024, CDD was used to expose systemic bias in the Dutch national education system; the Dutch Minister of Education apologised and initiated formal reform. The NHS and MHRA have revised their medical device licensing practices using her findings on the consequences of widely applied group fairness measures. Her publications appear in Science Robotics, Nature Electronics, and Nature Reviews Physics, and she has been cited over 20,000 times. Awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2025, €3.5M), the O2RB Excellence in Impact Award (2018, 2021), the Privacy Law Scholar Award (2019), and the CognitionX AI Ethics Award (2017, 2023). She sits on the European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability, the World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology, the WEF Global Futures Council on Values, Ethics and Innovation, and the UK Police Ethics Guidance Group, and was previously Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. For boards and risk leaders, her most immediate value is diagnostic: the gap between what organisations say their AI governance achieves and what the regulatory and technical evidence supports is larger than most assume. She has spent a decade building the instruments to measure that gap precisely. Key speaking topics AI governance and regulation Algorithmic accountability and explainability Algorithmic bias and non-discrimination law Generative AI and legal liability The EU AI Act and regulatory compliance Profiling, inferential analytics, and data protection Platform regulation and internet governance Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams making AI adoption and governance commitments Chief Data Officers and technology leadership teams designing accountability frameworks Legal, compliance, and risk leaders responsible for AI deployment decisions Public sector and regulatory audiences shaping AI policy and standards Audience outcomes A clear-eyed assessment of where current AI governance practices fall short of EU and UK legal standards – and why common assumptions about bias testing are insufficient Practical grounding in legally defensible tools for explainability and bias measurement, including frameworks already adopted by major technology companies Informed foresight into how the EU AI Act and emerging AI liability frameworks will affect deployment requirements Understanding of how generative AI creates specific new liabilities around hallucination, misinformation, and the emerging legal question of AI truthfulness The ability to distinguish between stated accountability commitments and governance that can withstand external scrutiny

Why organisations work with Scott Parazynski He is the only person on record to have both flown in space and summited Everest, giving every preparation and recovery argument the weight of a verifiable case study rather than an analogy. His STS-120 solar array repair, 90 feet from the airlock on a live, energised structure, is a documented worked example of decision-making at the edge of available data. Few speakers can hand a board that kind of primary material. A Stanford-trained physician and Harvard-trained emergency clinician, he brings a clinician’s discipline to how teams triage information when something is genuinely going wrong. As founder of Fluidity Technologies and CEO of OnwardAir, he speaks about innovation and risk from inside two operating aerospace companies, not from a podium career. His material on calculated risk versus reckless risk is built from cases where the distinction was tested in real time, which lands with audiences who have heard the metaphor too many times. Biography highlights Five Space Shuttle missions and seven spacewalks across 17 years at NASA, including service as EVA Branch Chief. Performed the STS-120 repair of a live P6 solar array tethered on the OBSS boom approximately 90 feet from the airlock. First person to fly in space and summit Mount Everest, reaching the summit on 20 May 2009. Stanford University BS Biology; Stanford Medical School MD; Harvard emergency medicine training. Author of The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed, co-written with Susy Flory (Little A, 2017). Inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame, 2016; recipient of five NASA Spaceflight Medals and two NASA Distinguished Service Medals. Founder and CEO of Fluidity Technologies; currently leading OnwardAir, a hybrid-electric VTOL venture. Biography The fourth spacewalk of STS-120 in 2007 was not in any flight plan. A torn solar array on the International Space Station had to be repaired while still energised, and the astronaut sent to do it was tethered to a boom 90 feet from the airlock, further from safety than anyone had been before. The repair held. It is one of the most cited operational saves of the Shuttle era and the working example behind most of what Scott Parazynski now teaches leadership teams about decisions made on incomplete information. He spent 17 years at NASA, flying five Shuttle missions and conducting seven spacewalks for a total of around 47 hours outside the vehicle. He served as EVA Branch Chief, leading the office responsible for how astronauts work in vacuum. The clinical training behind that career, Stanford Medical School and Harvard emergency medicine, shapes how he describes preparation: as a structured rehearsal of failure, not as confidence-building. On 20 May 2009 he became the first person to have both flown in space and stood on the summit of Everest, after a ruptured lumbar disc forced him to abandon an earlier attempt and rebuild. The Sky Below, published with Susy Flory in 2017, is the long-form account. The book is useful here because it documents recovery and re-attempt, not just achievement. His current work is operational. He founded Fluidity Technologies, the single-handed 3D input controller spun out of his spacewalk experience, and now leads OnwardAir, a hybrid-electric VTOL venture. That gives boards a speaker who is currently running engineering teams under capital and regulatory pressure, not narrating a former career. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme adversity Calculated risk versus reckless risk Team performance in high-consequence environments Preparation, rehearsal and failure recovery Innovation inside engineering-led organisations Human performance at the edge of physiology Building a culture where innovation is permitted and expected Ideal for Boards and executive teams designing crisis-response and operational resilience capability CEOs and COOs in safety-critical sectors: aerospace, energy, healthcare, infrastructure Engineering and R&D leadership teams setting risk thresholds for novel programmes Leadership-development cohorts for newly senior operators Audience outcomes A clearer language for distinguishing calculated risk from reckless risk inside their own decisions A working model of pre-mission rehearsal that they can adapt to their organisation’s failure modes A primary-source view of how a small team executes a non-rehearsed repair on a live system A more honest account of recovery from setback at the individual and team level A higher bar for what counts as preparation rather than reassurance

Why organisations work with Shang-Jin Wei He has sat in the seat where these questions are actually answered, as Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and a senior research economist at the IMF, not just analysed them from a faculty office. His chair at Columbia Business School is specifically the N.T. Wang Professorship of Chinese Business and Economy, giving boards a single, named source on US-China economic integration with academic standing behind it. He publishes in the journals that regulators and central banks read, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Quarterly Journal of Economics, so his views on capital flows and currency carry weight in policy rooms as well as boardrooms. His Project Syndicate columns track the live arguments around the renminbi, Chinese trade surpluses, Ant Group, Trump-era tariffs and India, which means clients get a current macro read, not a recycled lecture. Biography highlights N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy and Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School and Columbia SIPA. Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and Director General, Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, 2014 to 2016. Former Assistant Director and Chief of the Trade and Investment Division at the IMF Research Department; IMF Chief of Mission to Myanmar in 2004. Former New Century Chair in Trade and International Economics at the Brookings Institution; former Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Research Associate at NBER and Research Fellow at CEPR; published in American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Journal of Finance. Regular Project Syndicate columnist on China, the renminbi, trade and emerging markets; co-author of China’s Growing Role in World Trade (NBER, with Robert Feenstra). Biography The hard question on China is no longer whether it matters. It is which numbers to trust, which signals to read, and where the operating reality is diverging from the official line. That gap is where capital is mispriced. Shang-Jin Wei has worked on both sides of that gap. As Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank from 2014 to 2016, he led the analytical work behind regional fora such as ASEAN+3 and APEC, and advised the ADB President on growth diagnostics across developing Asia. Before that, he was Assistant Director and Chief of the Trade and Investment Division at the IMF Research Department, and the Fund’s Chief of Mission to Myanmar. At Columbia, he holds the N.T. Wang Chair in Chinese Business and Economy, with a joint appointment between the Business School and the School of International and Public Affairs. His research, published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Journal of Finance, sits at the meeting point of trade, international finance and the institutional architecture of the Chinese economy. He is a Research Associate at NBER, a Research Fellow at CEPR, and a frequent Project Syndicate contributor on the renminbi, Chinese trade surpluses, Ant Group and the structural reforms China still has to make. For boards and investors, the value is concrete. He reads China the way someone who has had to sign off on a regional growth forecast reads it. He treats trade and currency as live operating variables, not slogans. Buyers leave a session with a clearer view of where the real risk in their China exposure sits, and what to watch over the next two cycles. Key speaking topics US-China economic integration Chinese growth, structural reform and policy outlook The renminbi, capital flows and currency risk Trade, tariffs and the future of globalisation Emerging-market macro and developing Asia International finance and cross-border investment Geopolitical risk for global investors Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material China or wider Asia exposure CFOs, treasurers and CIOs setting capital allocation under tariff and currency uncertainty Strategy and corporate development leaders reviewing supply chain and market exposure to China Financial services and asset management firms briefing institutional clients on emerging-market risk Audience outcomes A clearer read on which Chinese economic indicators are meaningful and which are not. A working view on where US-China trade and tariff dynamics are heading and what that does to operating models. A grounded position on the renminbi, capital controls and the limits of RMB internationalisation. A sharper sense of where emerging-market risk concentrates beyond the headline narrative.

Why organisations work with Shlomo Ben-Ami He led the Israeli negotiating team at the 2000 Camp David Summit and the Taba talks that followed, which remain the high-water mark of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiation. Briefing audiences on the region from outside that room is a different proposition to briefing from inside it. His academic base is serious: a PhD from Oxford, headship of the Tel Aviv University School of History, and the Elias Sourasky Chair for Spanish and Latin American Studies. His analysis reads as historian’s work rather than political memoir. Two Oxford University Press books, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (2006) and Prophets Without Honor (2022), give audiences reference texts rather than talking points. Co-founding and Vice Presidency of the Toledo International Centre for Peace in Spain places him inside the European-Mediterranean diplomatic network, useful for international audiences. Project Syndicate syndication means his analysis is already in the diet of many executive and board readers, which shortens the framing time inside a session. Biography highlights Former Foreign Minister of Israel (2000); former Minister of Public Security (1999) Israel’s first Ambassador to Spain, 1987 to 1991 Head of the Israeli delegation at the 2000 Camp David Summit and the Taba talks Co-founder and Vice President of the Toledo International Centre for Peace PhD in History, University of Oxford; Head of the School of History, Tel Aviv University, 1982 to 1986 Author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Prophets Without Honor (Oxford University Press, 2022); Project Syndicate columnist Biography The Camp David Summit of 2000 is the most-analysed moment in contemporary Middle East diplomacy, and the person who led the Israeli negotiating team at it is Shlomo Ben-Ami. A serving Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, he had by that point spent almost a decade at the centre of Israel’s foreign relations: first as Israel’s first Ambassador to Spain from 1987 to 1991, then as a Knesset member on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, then as Minister of Public Security, before taking the foreign portfolio in 2000. His diplomatic record predates that. He served on Israel’s delegation to the 1993 Madrid Peace Conference and led the Israeli delegation at the Multilateral Talks on Refugees in Ottawa. The credibility behind the work is academic: a PhD in History from Oxford, a period as Head of the School of History at Tel Aviv University, and the Elias Sourasky Chair for Spanish and Latin American Studies. Since leaving government he has written what are now the standard practitioner accounts of the process he was part of. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, published by Oxford University Press in 2006, challenges a number of founding myths about Israel’s early history. Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution, published by Oxford University Press in 2022, is the definitive inside account of the summit he chaired. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate, which places his commentary in front of international executive and policy audiences. He co-founded the Toledo International Centre for Peace in Spain and serves as its Vice President, keeping him inside the European-Mediterranean diplomatic networks still working on conflict resolution in the region. For investor, corporate and policy audiences trying to read the Middle East with the seriousness the region now demands, Ben-Ami is one of the few voices whose analysis is built on both direct negotiation experience and Oxford-trained historical scholarship. Key speaking topics Middle East geopolitics and the Israeli-Arab conflict Inside the 2000 Camp David Summit and the Taba talks International negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution Israeli domestic politics and foreign policy The two-state solution and post-Oslo process Europe, Spain and the Mediterranean security picture Ideal for Boards, CEOs and investment committees assessing Middle East geopolitical risk Financial institutions, energy companies and multinationals with Middle East exposure Policy forums, think tanks and international affairs audiences Conferences on diplomacy, international negotiation and historical scholarship Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what actually happened inside Camp David and Taba, not the public version A clearer view of how and why two-state diplomacy stalled and what would be required to move it Historical context drawn from his Oxford University Press books and long academic record Insight into Spain, the EU and the Mediterranean framework around Middle East conflict, from a former Israeli Ambassador to Madrid Reference material in Scars of War, Wounds of Peace and Prophets Without Honor for follow-up reading

Why organisations work with Sílvia Vidal She offers a first-person account of high-stakes performance with no team, no rescue, and no communication, on expeditions that run up to two months at a time and include weeks living alone on the wall, which translates directly into senior conversations about judgement under pressure. She holds international recognition at the top of her sport: a Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021 in Briancon for two decades of solo big wall climbing, and Spain’s Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022. She speaks credibly about fear and uncertainty as managed working conditions rather than abstractions, drawing on first ascents in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalaya, the Andes, and Alaska, among others. She is unusual in choosing complete communication blackout on every expedition: no radio, no phone, no GPS, no weather forecasts. She carries the same principle into daily life, where she has never owned a mobile phone, so the discipline is lived rather than performed. She presents internationally in both English and Spanish, with more than 25 years on stage for corporate and festival audiences across Europe, the Americas, and beyond. Biography highlights Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021, Briancon, for outstanding contribution to solo big wall climbing over two decades Spanish Piolet de Oro (1996), Spanish Mountain Federation, for the solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit (2022), Spanish High Council of Sports Honorary Member of the Spanish Geographic Society (2023) Solo first ascents on remote walls across five continents, including Sincronia Magica (Cerro Chileno Grande, Patagonia, 33 days on the wall) and Un pas mes (Arrigetch, Alaska, 53-day expedition) Master’s degree in Physical Education, INEFC-Barcelona Biography The west face of Cerro Chileno Grande in Patagonian Chile is a 1,200-metre granite wall in one of the least visited corners of the Aysen region. In 2020 Sílvia Vidal spent 33 days alone on it, opening a new route called Sincronia Magica, with no radio, no phone, no GPS, and no weather forecasts. The Piolets d’Or jury cited that climb, and the two decades behind it, when they awarded her a Special Mention in Briancon in 2021. Vidal was born in Barcelona in 1970, came into climbing through adventure racing during a Master’s in Physical Education at INEFC-Barcelona, and within a couple of years was climbing at the hardest aid grades, A5. The 1996 solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias in northern Spain earned her the Spanish Piolet de Oro from the Spanish Mountain Federation. Since then she has put up first ascents on remote walls in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalaya, the Andes, and Alaska, including Un pas mes in the Arrigetch range, a 53-day expedition in 2017. What separates her from most extreme-environment speakers is the choice of complete communication blackout. She hauls her own gear, lives on the wall for weeks, and has no contact with the outside world until she walks out. Spain’s High Council of Sports awarded her the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022, and the Spanish Geographic Society made her an Honorary Member in 2023. Across more than 25 years she has presented to corporate and festival audiences in Europe, Canada, and Peru in English and Spanish. The argument she brings to a leadership audience is concrete. Composure under pressure is not a personality trait. It is built before the wall, tested every day on it, and rebuilt every time fear arrives without warning. The lessons that come back down with her are about preparation, self-honesty, and the difference between solitude and loneliness when there is genuinely no help available. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible commitment Composure and self-leadership under sustained pressure Working with fear and uncertainty Preparation as the foundation of high-stakes performance Solitude, focus, and self-reliance Resilience in extreme environments Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement and composure under pressure Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want a practitioner-level account, not a metaphor Company-wide events looking for credible inspiration anchored in a verifiable record Leadership development programmes on resilience, self-management, and decision-making Audience outcomes A concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires A practical relationship with fear and uncertainty as working conditions, not obstacles Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry into their own decisions A model of resilience built on preparation, daily routine, and self-honesty under sustained pressure A reset on what self-leadership looks like when no one is watching and no help is available A different reference point for attention and focus, from someone whose work depends on sustained concentration with no notifications, no inbox, and no way to call for help

Why organisations work with Ben Ainslie The 2013 America’s Cup comeback – Oracle Team USA recovering from 8-1 down to win 9-8, with Ainslie as a late-joining tactician – is one of the most documented examples in sport of collective decision-making under existential, real-time pressure; he was inside it, not watching it. He has led the British America’s Cup team across four consecutive editions from founding to Louis Vuitton Cup victory, navigating a sponsor exit, a team restructure, and a PE-backed rebuild – the leadership challenges here sit closer to a turnaround CEO than a sporting champion. Where most elite sport speakers speak from an individual athlete’s perspective, Ainslie has built and led a 200-person high-performance organisation with institutional investors, commercial partners, and multi-year competitive strategy – his understanding of what performance culture requires at scale is operational. He founded BAR Technologies in 2016 to commercialise elite sailing engineering in commercial marine industries, demonstrating that his thinking about high-performance systems translates into product development and industrial innovation beyond competition. As founder of the 1851 Trust – which has engaged over 1.5 million young people globally in STEM and climate education – he has built long-term talent and education infrastructure alongside his competitive programme: a model directly relevant to organisations thinking about capability pipelines rather than just current performance. Biography highlights Four Olympic gold medals (Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012) and one silver (Atlanta 1996) across five consecutive Olympic Games Tactician for Oracle Team USA in the 2013 America’s Cup, contributing to one of sport’s most documented competitive comebacks: from 8-1 down to a 9-8 series win Founded the British America’s Cup team in 2012; led it – through successive iterations as Ben Ainslie Racing, INEOS Team UK, and INEOS Britannia – to win the 2024 Louis Vuitton Cup in Barcelona, Britain’s first America’s Cup match appearance in 60 years Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team (Athena Sports Group) won the 2025 SailGP Championship Founder, BAR Technologies (2016): maritime innovation company applying high-performance sailing engineering to commercial marine industry Founder, 1851 Trust (2014): sport-inspired STEM and climate education charity; Royal Patronage from HRH The Princess of Wales; over 1.5 million young people engaged globally Knighted for services to sailing; previously appointed MBE, OBE, and CBE; ISAF World Sailor of the Year four times (1998, 2002, 2008, 2012) Biography The 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco produced one of the most compressed examples of collective decision-making under competitive pressure in the history of sport. Oracle Team USA, trailing 8-1 in a first-to-nine series, won eight consecutive races to take the Cup 9-8. Ben Ainslie joined as tactician mid-series and is recognised as a central figure in that turnaround. That moment belongs to a much longer record. Ainslie won medals across five consecutive Olympic Games between 1996 and 2012 – silver in Atlanta, then four consecutive golds across the Laser and Finn classes – establishing himself as the most successful Olympic sailor in history. What the record demonstrates is not simply exceptional individual talent, but the capacity to sustain competitive performance across two decades of changing conditions, equipment classes, and rivals. Since 2012, the same discipline has been applied to building organisations. The British America’s Cup team Ainslie founded – through successive iterations as Ben Ainslie Racing, INEOS Team UK, and INEOS Britannia – won the 2024 Louis Vuitton Cup in Barcelona, making it the first British team in 60 years to qualify for the America’s Cup match, and the first in 90 years to score points in the match itself. Alongside the racing programme, he founded BAR Technologies in 2016 to commercialise high-performance marine engineering, and the 1851 Trust in 2014, which has engaged over 1.5 million young people globally in STEM and climate education – both carrying Royal Patronage. For senior leaders, the combination is specific and current. Ainslie’s experience covers individual elite performance, real-time decision-making in competitive crises, multi-cycle team leadership, and the structural work of building and rebuilding high-performance organisations under financial and competitive pressure. The Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team, part of his Athena Sports Group, won the 2025 SailGP Championship – evidence that the performance culture he has built is still being tested, and still delivering. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership across competitive cycles Decision-making under competitive pressure Organisational resilience and rebuilding after setback Elite team culture and identity Strategic risk in high-stakes environments Performance under sustained adversity Talent development and long-term performance pipeline Ideal for Senior leadership and C-suite teams navigating high-stakes competitive environments or post-setback rebuilds Chief People Officers and HR leadership focused on building durable, high-performance cultures rather than episodic peak performance Boards and executive committees managing structural transitions, sponsor or investor changes, or long-horizon competitive strategy Conferences focused on leadership excellence, organisational performance, and team culture Audience outcomes A concrete reference framework – drawn from five Olympic campaigns and four America’s Cup cycles – for what distinguishes teams built to perform once from teams built to perform repeatedly First-hand perspective on real-time collective decision-making under existential competitive pressure, with reference to the 2013 America’s Cup comeback A clearer understanding of what high-performance culture requires at the systemic level – identity, accountability, recruitment, and succession – rather than in peak-moment inspiration Practical reference points from building, losing, and rebuilding a 200-person elite organisation across multiple competitive and commercial cycles A perspective on running performance culture and innovation infrastructure in parallel, drawn from Athena Sports Group, BAR Technologies, and the 1851 Trust

Why organisations work with Sławomir Sierakowski His argument that Eastern European populism is rooted in post-communist institutional weakness – not economic grievance – gives organisations a structural framework for market risk that standard political analysis does not provide. As founder of Krytyka Polityczna since 2002, he built and led the largest intellectual and civic network in Central and Eastern Europe; his intelligence on how political and social forces actually operate in the region is embedded, not desk-based. His current Senior Fellow role at the DGAP Europe Center, combined with his monthly Project Syndicate column and contributions to the FT, Foreign Policy, and Le Monde, puts him at the intersection of live policy debate and long-form analytical rigour: an unusual combination for a single voice. As Head of the Program Board of Impact CEE – Central and Eastern Europe’s largest leadership conference, drawing 8,000 participants and 700 speakers – he sits at the organisational intersection of business, policy, and intellectual life in the region. He is one of the few analysts who can position a single election result, a court ruling, or a Kremlin provocation within the deeper sociological argument, making his briefings more durable than a news cycle. Biography highlights Founder and editor-in-chief of Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), established 2002: the largest intellectual and civic movement in Central and Eastern Europe, with branches in Ukraine and Germany Senior Fellow, DGAP Europe Center (German Council on Foreign Relations), Berlin: Europe’s equivalent of Chatham House or the Council on Foreign Relations Monthly columnist for Project Syndicate; contributing author to The New York Times (since 2013); regular contributor to the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Le Monde, El País, and Haaretz Head of the Program Board, Impact CEE, Central and Eastern Europe’s largest innovation and leadership conference Former Director, Institute for Advanced Studies in Warsaw Fellowships from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, the German Marshall Fund, IWM Vienna, Mercator Stiftung, and the Bosch Academy Contributor to the Journal of Democracy and the New York Review of Books Biography Most Western organisations treat European political risk as a single problem. Sławomir Sierakowski has spent two decades arguing that it is not. Central and Eastern Europe operates under different political logic: weak institutional checks, middle-class populist majorities, and a post-communist legacy that renders standard Western analytical models unreliable. Sierakowski is the founder of Krytyka Polityczna, the intellectual and civic movement he launched in Warsaw in 2002, which grew into the largest network of liberal intellectuals, artists, and activists in the region. The movement was built on the argument that cultural and political analysis had to be integrated, not separated. And it produced a body of public debate that placed Sierakowski at the centre of European civic life for more than two decades. His current work as a Senior Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations’ Europe Center, combined with his long-running monthly column for Project Syndicate and regular contributions to the Financial Times, Le Monde, and Foreign Policy, keeps that analysis close to the decision-making environments where it matters. As Head of the Program Board of Impact CEE – a conference that brings together 8,000 business leaders, policymakers, and academics annually – he also operates at the precise intersection where political intelligence reaches commercial leadership. The result is a perspective that is neither purely academic nor purely journalistic. Sierakowski reads what is happening in Warsaw, Budapest, or Bucharest not as news, but as evidence for structural arguments about where European democracy is going, and what that means for the organisations that have to operate within it. Key speaking topics Populism and democratic erosion in Europe Central and Eastern European politics and institutions European geopolitical risk EU cohesion, enlargement, and strategic autonomy Russia, Ukraine, and European security Political risk and its implications for business strategy The divergence between Western and Eastern European political cultures Ideal for Strategy, risk, and government affairs teams at multinational organisations with operations or investment exposure in Central and Eastern Europe Boards and C-suite seeking geopolitical context on EU political stability and regulatory environments Policy and investment conferences focused on European markets, democracy, or security Senior leadership forums where geopolitical volatility is the central strategic theme Audience outcomes A structural framework for understanding why Central and Eastern European politics behaves differently from Western Europe, with direct implications for risk assessment Clearer analytical tools for distinguishing durable political trends from short-term electoral noise in European markets An informed basis for evaluating how democratic erosion affects regulatory predictability and institutional reliability in specific markets Context for recent and likely near-term developments – elections, judicial conflicts, security flashpoints – drawn from active policy engagement rather than retrospective commentary

Why organisations work with Stephane Garelli He created the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook in 1989, the reference benchmark used by governments and multinationals for more than three decades. When he interprets a country’s position, he is the source, not a commentator on the source. His 2025 book World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity (Wiley) is the first sustained reframing of his own thesis for the post-globalisation era, which gives boards a coherent argument for capital allocation under fragmentation rather than a list of risks. Thirteen years running the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings, plus twelve years advising the European management of Hewlett-Packard, mean his counsel is informed by how senior executives and heads of state actually decide, not how they describe themselves on stage. His positions at IMD and the University of Lausanne, alongside long board service at Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and Le Temps, place him at the intersection of academic originality and Swiss-grade institutional discipline, an unusual combination among economic speakers. Biography highlights Founder of the IMD World Competitiveness Center and creator of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the leading annual ranking of national competitiveness since 1989. Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at IMD Business School and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lausanne. Former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings for 13 years. Author of Top Class Competitors (Wiley) and World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity (Wiley, 2025). Former Chairman of FF Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and long-tenured Chairman of Le Temps, the leading French-language Swiss newspaper. Member of the International Olympic Committee Commission on Sustainability and Legacy, chaired by Prince Albert of Monaco. Biography Most economic commentary on the new global order describes the symptoms. Garelli wrote the underlying framework. In 1989, he founded the IMD World Competitiveness Center and created the World Competitiveness Yearbook, the first systematic annual ranking of how nations build and sustain prosperity. The Yearbook now benchmarks more than sixty economies across hundreds of indicators and remains the reference governments and multinationals reach for when they want to know where a country actually stands. His 2025 book, World Competitiveness: Rewriting the Rules of Global Prosperity, published by Wiley, extends that work into the period after the “golden era of globalization”, the four decades from China’s 1978 opening to the COVID shock. The argument is that the world will remain global but no longer united, and that competitiveness now has to be rebuilt around bloc-level alignment, industrial policy, and resilience rather than open markets. For boards setting capital allocation under sanctions, tariffs, and supply chain rewiring, this is operating guidance, not theory. The institutional spine behind the work is unusual. Thirteen years as Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and the Davos Annual Meetings, twelve years as permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard, and chairmanship of FF Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding and of Le Temps, the leading French-language Swiss newspaper. He has sat on the IOC Commission on Sustainability and Legacy chaired by Prince Albert of Monaco. He has held faculty positions at IMD and the University of Lausanne, where he is Professor Emeritus at both. The credentials matter because the analysis is informed by how senior leaders actually decide, not how they describe their decisions in retrospect. The earlier Wiley book, Top Class Competitors, defined competitiveness as the ability to manage a set of disparate competencies, including education, security, brand, and individual reinvention, to achieve prosperity. The 2025 work argues that the components have changed but the discipline has not. Key speaking topics World competitiveness in a fragmented global economy The end of the golden era of globalisation National strategy under bloc-level alignment Enterprise competitiveness and value chain reconfiguration Capital allocation and country selection under fragmentation The competitiveness implications of industrial policy Ideal for Boards and executive committees rewriting global strategy under sanctions, tariffs, and bloc-level alignment. CFOs, CSOs, and corporate development leaders making country-level capital allocation decisions. Government, sovereign, and policy audiences benchmarking national competitiveness against credible peers. Senior leadership offsites where the agenda turns on what comes after the open-markets era. Audience outcomes A working frame for what competitiveness now means when blocs, not markets, set the rules. Sharper questions for the board on country exposure, supply chain dependence, and capital allocation under fragmentation. A clearer read on how industrial policy, sanctions, and multi-alignment strategies are reshaping where prosperity now accrues. The vocabulary and evidence base of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook applied directly to the audience’s strategic situation.

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

Why organisations work with Stephen Roach His false narratives framework, argued across two Yale University Press books and cited by senior Financial Times columnists Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, and Rana Foroohar, as well as multiple Nobel laureates in economics, gives leaders a forensically grounded alternative to the prevailing decoupling consensus. Three decades as Morgan Stanley’s Chief Economist and then Chairman of its Asia operations means he has spent equal time analysing the US macro economy and operating inside Asian financial markets: a bilateral vantage point that most China analysts or US economists hold separately, not together. His analysis attributes much of the US-China conflict to domestic failures on both sides – America’s savings shortfall, China’s failed economic rebalancing – rather than to strategic malice. This reframes the risk calculus for leaders making long-term decisions about market exposure and technology strategy. As a monthly columnist for Project Syndicate and an active commentator on current US-China developments, he tracks the relationship in real time, not from a static academic framework. He was among the earliest economists identified as having predicted the structural conditions leading to the 2008 financial crisis – a forecasting record that lends credibility to his current warnings about the misread trajectory of US-China conflict escalation. Biography highlights Senior Research Scholar, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School; formerly Senior Fellow, Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs (2010–2022) and Senior Lecturer, Yale School of Management Chief Economist, Morgan Stanley (from 1982), heading a global team across New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Paris; Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia (2007–2010), based in Hong Kong Research staff, Federal Reserve Board; Research Fellow, Brookings Institution Author of Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives (Yale University Press, 2022) – Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Economics; endorsed by Nobel laureates Robert Shiller and Robert Engle Author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China (Yale University Press, 2014) and The Next Asia (Wiley, 2009) Monthly columnist, Project Syndicate; Member, Council on Foreign Relations PhD in Economics, New York University Biography The US-China relationship is the most consequential and most misread economic partnership of the 21st century. Most boardroom analysis of the conflict treats it as a zero-sum structural rivalry between two incompatible powers. Stephen Roach’s argument is more uncomfortable: much of the conflict is self-inflicted, driven not by genuine strategic incompatibility but by false narratives that each nation has constructed to deflect accountability for its own economic shortcomings. That argument is made with unusual authority. Roach spent thirty years at Morgan Stanley, first as Chief Economist leading a global team across six major financial centres, then as Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, where he worked directly with governments, financial institutions, and multinationals operating at the intersection of the two economies. When he joined Yale in 2010, first at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and subsequently at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, he brought that bilateral operating experience into academic research and graduate teaching, developing courses including «The Next China» and «The Lessons of Japan.» His two Yale University Press books make a cumulative argument. Unbalanced (2014) identified the structural codependency binding the two economies. Accidental Conflict (2022), named a Financial Times Best Book of the Year in Economics, diagnosed the false narratives on both sides now pushing that codependency toward confrontation. The analysis drew endorsements from Nobel laureates Robert Shiller and Robert Engle, and was reviewed by Financial Times senior columnists Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, and Rana Foroohar. For boards making consequential decisions about market exposure, supply chain configuration, and technology strategy, the practical question is not which side of the conflict to believe. It is whether the conflict they are planning for is the conflict that actually exists. Key speaking topics US-China economic and geopolitical relations Global macroeconomic risk and policy Trade conflict and the structural limits of decoupling Asian economies and market dynamics False narratives and strategic misperception International trade and globalisation US savings, fiscal imbalance, and structural economic vulnerability Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material exposure to US or China market risk CFOs, Chief Risk Officers, and heads of strategy in global financial services, technology, and industrial manufacturing Government, diplomatic, and policy audiences engaged in trade, investment, or security posture toward China Investment management firms and sovereign wealth funds requiring a rigorous bilateral economic framework for allocation decisions Audience outcomes A structured framework for separating the rhetoric driving US-China conflict from the underlying structural economic forces that actually shape it Sharper clarity on what decoupling, reshoring, and geopolitical hedging strategies address – and what they leave unexamined A more rigorous basis for assessing China-related risk in capital allocation, supply chain design, and technology partnership decisions Exposure to a track record of independent, contrarian macroeconomic forecasting, including early identification of conditions leading to the 2008 financial crisis Greater confidence in framing the US-China trajectory for boards, investors, and senior stakeholders