Risk Management speakers

Why organisations work with Toju Duke Ten years inside Google, including three running Responsible AI programmes across product and research teams on large-scale models. The framework she teaches is the one she ran. A published, structured Responsible AI framework covering fairness, transparency, safety, privacy and robustness across the full ML lifecycle, available to leadership teams as a shared reference point. Operator credibility on the question boards actually ask: how do we deploy AI at pace without inviting regulatory, reputational or human-rights exposure. Independent of any platform or model vendor. With no product to sell, her advice on governance and deployment answers only to the organisation buying it. Biography highlights Author of Building Responsible AI Algorithms (Apress, 2023), a structured framework for fairness, transparency, safety, privacy and robustness across the machine learning lifecycle. Co-author with Prof Paolo Giudici of Responsible AI in Practice (Apress/Springer Nature). Ten years at Google. Final three years as Responsible AI Programme Manager working across product and research teams on large-scale models. Founder and CEO of Diverse AI, a community interest organisation running education and research programmes for groups underrepresented in AI, including a project to build a dataset documenting the cultures of communities without internet access. Media contributor including BBC One Sunday Morning Live, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CGTN America, El Pais, La Vanguardia and Sifted. Biography Most organisations now have an AI policy. Very few have the operating mechanisms to make it real. Toju Duke spent the final three years of a ten-year career at Google building exactly those mechanisms, as a Responsible AI Programme Manager working across product and research teams on large-scale models. That work became Building Responsible AI Algorithms, published by Apress in 2023. The book takes Responsible AI out of principles documents and into the machine learning lifecycle: how to define a problem, audit data, evaluate fairness, document a model, and decide whether to ship. A second volume, Responsible AI in Practice, co-authored with Prof Paolo Giudici, extends the framework into regulation, risk taxonomies and assessment. She advises boards and executive teams on governance, AI readiness, and deployment, and sits on the programme committee for the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics and Society. Through Diverse AI, the community interest organisation she founded, she runs education and research programmes for groups underrepresented in the field, including a project to build a dataset documenting the cultures of communities the internet has left out. Governance and inclusion are the same question seen from two sides of the model. She speaks and writes for serious outlets, including BBC One Sunday Morning Live, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CGTN America, El Pais, La Vanguardia and Sifted. For a board weighing how to govern an AI programme it does not fully understand, she brings the rare combination of operator experience inside a frontier-model team and a published framework to organise the conversation around. Key speaking topics Responsible AI frameworks and governance AI ethics and accountability Generative AI risk and oversight AI regulation and policy Fairness, bias and inclusion in AI systems Diversity in AI talent and design Implementing AI principles across the machine learning lifecycle Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning or governing AI programmes Chief AI officers, CTOs, CIOs and chief data officers building Responsible AI operating models Risk, audit, legal and compliance leaders translating AI regulation into controls DEI and people leaders working on inclusion in technical organisations Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for Responsible AI grounded in a published framework rather than vendor marketing. A view of where AI risk actually sits in the machine learning lifecycle, from problem definition through deployment. A reference model for translating AI principles into review processes, documentation and accountability structures. A sharper read on how regulation, fairness and human-rights considerations intersect for organisations deploying large-scale models.

Why organisations work with Tom Solomon He has run the UK research response to Ebola, Zika and COVID-19 through the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit he founded in 2014, giving boards a direct line into how national systems actually react under pressure. He translates frontier infectious-disease science into the language of operational risk, capital allocation and continuity planning, which is rare among clinicians at his level. His role as Director of The Pandemic Institute means he sees the next wave of biosecurity, antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic threats before they reach the public-policy conversation. He carries the institutional weight of CBE, FMedSci, the Academy of Medical Sciences vice presidency and the Royal College of Physicians academic vice presidency, which earns him a hearing in rooms that would discount commentators. He communicates with the clarity of a science journalist and the authority of a clinician, a combination senior audiences pick up on within the first ten minutes. Biography highlights Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool, and Director of The Pandemic Institute Founding Director, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 2021 Birthday Honours Vice President (International), Academy of Medical Sciences; Academic Vice President, Royal College of Physicians Author, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine (Liverpool University Press, 2016) Royal College of Physicians Moxon Medal for outstanding observation and research in clinical medicine Biography Pandemic and emerging-infection risk has stopped behaving like a tail event. Ebola, Zika, COVID-19 and a steady stream of zoonotic threats have made it a recurring exposure for organisations whose operations depend on movement, contact and supply. Tom Solomon has been inside the national response to each of these. He founded the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections in 2014 and now directs The Pandemic Institute at the University of Liverpool, a coordinated hub bringing infectious-disease science, public health and policy into one operational picture. He chaired government research funding committees during COVID-19 and advised the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on vaccine safety. The brief was practical, not theoretical. The scientific work runs in parallel. His Liverpool Brain Infections Group has secured more than £25 million in research funding from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and NIHR for work on Japanese encephalitis, enterovirus 71 and meningitis, with field programmes across Asia, Africa and Latin America. He has held the Vincenzo Marcolongo Memorial Lectureship and the RCP Moxon Medal, and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021. What makes Solomon useful to leadership audiences is that he speaks the language of risk and decision-making, not the language of the clinic. He writes regularly for The Guardian, The Independent and The Conversation, and his book Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine, based on his time treating Dahl as a junior doctor at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, demonstrated early that he could translate clinical material for a general reader. Boards looking for an authoritative voice on biosecurity find a clinician who is fluent in both registers. Key speaking topics Pandemic preparedness and biosecurity risk Emerging and zoonotic infectious disease Antimicrobial resistance Brain infections and neurological disease Lessons from the COVID-19, Ebola and Zika responses Science communication and public trust in expertise Global health and one-health systems Ideal for Boards and risk committees adding pandemic and biosecurity exposure to the standing risk register Chief Risk Officers, Chief Medical Officers and continuity leads in pharma, insurance, logistics and global manufacturing Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping pandemic preparedness frameworks Senior teams in life sciences, public health and global development Audience outcomes A clearer view of which emerging-infection threats matter most over the next five to ten years and why A working vocabulary for treating pandemic risk as a board-level exposure, not a medical externality Insight into how the UK national response was organised, what worked, and what did not A frame for evaluating biosecurity, AMR and zoonotic risk against other forms of systemic exposure

Why organisations work with Tony Fernandes The AirAsia acquisition – a loss-making airline bought for one Malaysian ringgit and turned profitable within two years – is not an anecdote; it is a live case study in the structural conditions required to make a low-cost model work, and Fernandes can examine its mechanics from the inside His experience running Capital A across aviation, fintech (BigPay), logistics (Teleport), and digital platforms gives him direct exposure to the question of whether and how a low-cost operating logic translates to adjacent categories; a question most diversifying businesses cannot answer from first-hand evidence He operated through several serious crises – the QZ8501 crash, the COVID-19 near-collapse of the aviation industry, and regulatory probes. He can speak to crisis leadership and institutional transparency from personal rather than theoretical experience His trajectory from accountant to entrepreneur, with career foundations at Virgin and Warner Music, gives him the financial fluency to discuss growth strategy at a structural level, not just as an inspirational narrative Named Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010) and included in the TIME 100 (2015), providing credibility with senior international audiences Biography highlights Co-founder of AirAsia; acquired the airline in 2001 for MYR1 and MYR40 million in debt; turned it profitable within two years CEO of Capital A Berhad, the investment holding company whose portfolio spans aviation, logistics (Teleport), fintech (BigPay), and digital travel platforms Educated at the London School of Economics; Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants; member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Career foundations at Virgin Communications (financial controller) and Warner Music Group (VP Southeast Asia) Forbes Asia Businessman of the Year (2010); included in TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list (2015) Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), conferred 2011; Commander of the Legion d’Honneur, awarded by the French government Author of Flying High (2017), an account of the AirAsia model and the entrepreneurial decisions behind it Biography Building a low-cost business is a specific discipline, not a general management philosophy. It requires a structural commitment to cost architecture that most organisations talk about but few maintain under the pressure of growth, competition, and investor expectations. The question of how that discipline is designed, defended, and scaled is one of the most practically useful strategic questions a senior leadership team can work through. And Tony Fernandes has lived it across one of the most scrutinised business turnarounds in Asian commercial history. Fernandes acquired AirAsia in December 2001 alongside three co-founders, taking on a government-linked airline carrying MYR40 million in debt. Within two years it was profitable. Within a decade it was Asia’s largest low-cost carrier by passengers carried, operating across multiple regulatory environments with a model that held its structural logic even as the network grew. The mechanics of that – cost discipline, people culture, regulatory negotiation, market sequencing – are what he brings to a conversation. His broader career adds analytical weight. Trained as an accountant at the London School of Economics and ACCA-qualified, he built his early career at Virgin Communications and as VP Southeast Asia at Warner Music before entering aviation. That foundation in financial control, combined with the scale of what he subsequently built, gives him a capacity to speak about growth strategy at the level of structure rather than story. The post-aviation chapter matters too. Capital A’s evolution from an airline group into a holding company spanning fintech, logistics, and digital travel platforms represents a live experiment in whether a low-cost operating logic can be applied beyond the category that originated it. Forbes Asia named him Businessman of the Year in 2010; he appeared on TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list in 2015. The CBE and Commander of the Legion d’Honneur reflect the international reach of what AirAsia built. Key speaking topics Low-cost business model design and defence Business turnaround and commercial restructuring Scaling across regulated, multi-market environments Entrepreneurial decision-making under constraint Crisis leadership and institutional transparency Diversification strategy and platform business models Southeast Asian market growth and aviation industry transformation Ideal for CEOs and boards of growth-stage or expanding businesses wrestling with cost discipline at scale Strategy and transformation leaders in capital-intensive or regulated industries Entrepreneurs and founders preparing for multi-market expansion Senior teams in aviation, logistics, travel, and adjacent industries benchmarking against proven low-cost operators Audience outcomes A structural understanding of what makes a low-cost business model sustainable, not as a cost-cutting exercise but as an operating architecture A clearer framework for thinking about diversification: when the core model’s logic translates to adjacent categories and when it does not Practical reference points from AirAsia’s expansion for organisations navigating multi-market regulatory complexity A more grounded view of crisis leadership: what transparency and accountability look like in practice when institutional reputation is at stake Sharper thinking about the relationship between people culture and commercial performance in high-growth, low-margin environments

Why organisations work with Trevor Williams He spent over a decade as Chief Economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking advising corporates, financial institutions, and SMEs, so he reads central-bank data the way a treasurer or CFO needs it read. As rotating Chair of the Institute of Economic Affairs Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, he sits inside the small group of UK economists publicly second-guessing the Bank of England, which gives boards a forecast view that is independent of sell-side consensus. He co-authored Trading Economics (Wiley, 2014), the practitioner reference on how to interpret economic statistics, so he can teach a leadership team to read the indicators rather than only react to headlines. As co-founder of FXGuard, he has built and run an FX risk product for SMEs, which means his commentary on currency and rates is grounded in operating exposure, not abstract modelling. Biography highlights Former Chief Economist, Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, leading the bank’s economics team for more than ten years. Rotating Chair, Institute of Economic Affairs Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. Co-author, Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners and Students, Wiley Finance Series. Visiting Professor, University of Derby; lecturer at Bayes Business School and Cardiff University. Co-founder, FXGuard, an FX risk management platform for SMEs. Former member of the UK Government Economic Service; editorial board member, Journal of Corporate Treasury Management; regular columnist, Moneyfacts. Biography The Bank of England’s rate decisions, the Treasury’s fiscal stance, and sterling’s path are no longer background music for boardrooms. They are direct inputs into pricing, hedging, hiring, and the cost of capital. Trevor Williams spent over a decade as Chief Economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking translating exactly that data for corporate clients and financial institutions. That position made him one of the City economists most often quoted on UK growth, inflation, and monetary policy. He now chairs, on rotation, the Institute of Economic Affairs Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, the long-standing independent group that publishes a monthly counter-vote to the Bank of England’s MPC. His co-authored book Trading Economics, in the Wiley Finance Series, is built for practitioners: how to read GDP releases, inflation prints, surveys, and labour market data without being misled by them. The same instinct shapes his work as co-founder of FXGuard, an FX risk tool for SMEs, and his teaching at the University of Derby, Bayes Business School, and Cardiff University. For a board, the value is specific. Williams will not deliver a generic macro tour. He will tell a leadership team where he disagrees with current consensus on rates and inflation, why, and what that means for the next twelve to twenty-four months of capital and currency decisions. Key speaking topics UK and global macroeconomic outlook Monetary policy and central bank decision-making Inflation, interest rates, and capital allocation Foreign exchange and currency risk Economic statistics and how to read them Brexit, trade, and post-shock recovery ESG, climate, and the economics of the energy transition Ideal for Boards, CFOs, and corporate treasurers planning capital and FX strategy under rate and currency uncertainty. Banking, asset management, and insurance leadership teams pressure-testing house views on inflation and growth. Trade associations and industry forums commissioning a credible UK macro voice for annual outlook events. Finance and risk functions inside corporates exposed to FX, commodity, or sovereign-rate cycles. Audience outcomes A clear view of where current Bank of England and consensus forecasts may be wrong, and why. A working grasp of how to read inflation, GDP, and labour market releases for decision-relevant signals. Specific implications for pricing, hedging, and capital allocation under the rate and currency cycle ahead. A sharper sense of how monetary and fiscal policy interact with trade, energy, and political risk.

Why organisations work with Tyler Cohen Wood She brings the threat picture a board actually needs: thirteen years inside the Department of Defense, including roles as Deputy Cyber Division Chief at the DIA and the Directorate’s named Cyber Subject Matter Expert, translated into language a non-technical executive can act on. She has run cyber risk at commercial scale. As Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T she built defences across one of the largest customer bases in the world, so her advice maps onto P&L decisions, not just policy. She is operator, not pundit. As co-founder of Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption) and CEO of MyConnectedHealth (AI in clinical diagnostics), she is currently building in the two domains she speaks on. Her work on social engineering and deepfakes draws on a digital forensics career at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, where she investigated major crimes and intrusions. That gives the deepfake material specific case grounding rather than headline commentary. She holds multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities and is a regular expert voice on Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, so she lands in front of executive audiences who recognise her from crisis coverage. Biography highlights Former Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief, Special Communications Division, US Defense Intelligence Agency. Former Director of Cyber Risk Management, AT&T. Co-founder, Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption); Founder and CEO, MyConnectedHealth Inc. Author of Catching the Catfishers (Career Press); co-author of Alternate Data Storage Forensics (Syngress). Holder of multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities. Regular commentator for Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and GovInfoSecurity. Biography The cyber threat picture has changed shape. Adversaries now use generative AI to scale phishing, clone executive voices and produce convincing video. The defensive vocabulary that worked in 2018, perimeter, patch, password, no longer covers the surface area a modern board is responsible for. Tyler Cohen Wood spent thirteen years inside the US Department of Defense working on exactly that surface area. At the Defense Intelligence Agency she served as Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief in the Special Communications Division, and was designated the Cyber Subject Matter Expert for the DIA Science and Technologies Directorate. Her remit covered the White House, the DoD, federal law enforcement and the wider intelligence community. Before that, as a digital forensic examiner at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, she worked intrusion and major-crimes cases at evidentiary level. She then took that fluency into the commercial world as Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T, where the question shifts from intelligence reporting to defending revenue, customers and brand at scale. She now co-leads Dark Cryptonite, a venture building patent-pending zero-trust encryption for governments and enterprises, and is founder and CEO of MyConnectedHealth, an AI platform for clinical diagnosis. She holds multiple US provisional patents in cyber. What that combination gives an executive audience is a speaker who is currently building the technology she discusses, has carried the threat picture at state level, and has owned commercial cyber accountability inside a Fortune 10 business. Her writing reflects the same range: Catching the Catfishers on social engineering and online identity, and the co-authored Alternate Data Storage Forensics textbook used inside the forensics community. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI and deepfake-driven social engineering Emerging technology strategy for executives Digital transformation and cyber risk management The innovation mindset for technical and non-technical leaders AI in healthcare and connected health Women in technology and senior leadership Ideal for Boards and executive committees treating cyber as a strategic, not IT, agenda item CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing non-technical leadership on AI-era threat posture Risk, audit and compliance leaders preparing for AI-driven fraud and identity attacks Industry conferences in financial services, healthcare, defence and critical infrastructure Audience outcomes A clearer board-level model for where cyber risk now sits in the operating model Specific examples of how AI is changing social engineering, deepfakes and intrusion tactics A grounded view of what zero-trust and encryption actually mean for procurement and architecture decisions A working understanding of how AI is being deployed in regulated environments such as healthcare Confidence to ask sharper questions of internal security leaders and external vendors

Why organisations work with Udo Lielischkies First-hand interpretation of Putin’s regime from a journalist who reported on it continuously from 1999 to 2018, including six years running ARD’s Moscow studio. A reading of Russia grounded in the provinces, not Moscow press briefings, drawn from years travelling beyond the capital and documented in “Im Schatten des Kreml”, reprinted four times since 2019. Editorial credibility recognised by the Deutscher Fernsehpreis, with a win for Best Reportage in 2004 and a Monte Carlo nomination in 2015 for reporting from eastern Ukraine. A senior journalist’s instinct for separating Kremlin signal from Kremlin noise, useful when boards are deciding what a Putin statement, sanction round, or escalation actually means for exposure and planning. Biography highlights Head of ARD studio Moscow, 2014 to 2018, for Germany’s largest public broadcaster. ARD correspondent in Moscow (1999 to 2006), Washington D.C. (2006 to 2012) and Moscow again (2012 to 2018), with an earlier Brussels and NATO posting from 1994. Author of “Im Schatten des Kreml: Unterwegs in Putins Russland”, Droemer Knaur, 2019, English rights title “In the Shadow of the Kremlin”. Winner of the German Television Award (Deutscher Fernsehpreis) 2004 for Best Reportage, “Kremlin, Prison and Corruption” (ARD/WDR). Further recognitions include the Golden Gong (1999), the Ernst Schneider Prize (1989), a Moscow festival special prize (2005) and a Monte Carlo Television Festival nomination (2015) for reporting on the war in Ukraine. Regular guest on German political programming (NDR, phoenix, ARD talk shows) on Russia, Ukraine and the Kremlin’s foreign policy. Biography The Kremlin is now a fixed entry on most board risk registers, alongside China, energy and supply chains. What boards struggle to source is interpretation of the regime that goes beyond headlines and beyond Western analyst convention. That is the gap Udo Lielischkies fills. For nearly 25 years he reported for ARD, Germany’s largest public broadcaster, across the three capitals that have defined the post-Cold War order: Brussels and NATO from 1994, Moscow from 1999, Washington D.C. from 2006, and Moscow again from 2012, where he ran ARD’s studio from 2014 until his retirement in 2018. He watched Putin’s arrival as an unknown FSB veteran and reported continuously through every phase that followed. His book “Im Schatten des Kreml: Unterwegs in Putins Russland” (Droemer Knaur, 2019) is the durable record of that work. It is now in its fourth edition and is widely read as having anticipated the trajectory that led to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The English-language edition, “In the Shadow of the Kremlin”, is offered through Droemer Knaur’s rights catalogue. The reporting that underpins the book also produced his 2004 German Television Award for Best Reportage and a 2015 Monte Carlo Television Festival nomination for “The Murderous War in Ukraine – Escape From Ilovajsk”. What this gives a serious audience is rare. Not a geopolitical taxonomy delivered in the abstract, but the texture of a system explained by someone who lived inside it: how Kremlin power actually moves, how Russian provinces read the war, where the regime is brittle and where it is not. For organisations exposed to Russia, Ukraine, sanctions regimes, or the wider authoritarian bloc, that texture matters more than another forecast. Key speaking topics Putin’s Russia and the architecture of the regime The war in Ukraine and Kremlin strategy Geopolitical risk for Western boards Authoritarian regimes and the rules-based order Russia, Europe and the United States: shifting alliances Inside the Kremlin: power, succession, propaganda Ideal for Boards and executive committees with direct or indirect exposure to Russia, Ukraine, the CIS or sanctions regimes CROs, heads of geopolitical risk, and corporate affairs leads briefing senior leadership on Kremlin scenarios Industry conferences in energy, defence, financial services and logistics where Russia exposure remains material Public-sector and policy audiences working on European security, transatlantic relations and the war in Ukraine Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how Kremlin decision-making actually works, beyond Western media framing A grounded sense of where the regime is fragile, where it is not, and what that means for the next phase of the war Sharper questions to put to internal Russia and CIS exposure analysis A view of the Russian provinces, not only Moscow, and why that distinction shapes outcomes Context for reading future Kremlin statements, sanction rounds and escalation signals with less noise

Why organisations work with Ulrich Walter He brings the credibility of a flown astronaut and a sitting university chair to AI and robotics conversations that usually rely on consultants or vendor analysts. He works on AI from both ends a board cares about: national policy, through the Bavarian Ethics Council, and live corporate implementation, as a supervisory board member responsible for AI and transformation at the Die Bayerische insurance group. Disruptive-innovation content drawn from NASA mission cases and his own IBM project-management work, not from secondhand business literature. A working researcher in geriatronics and service robotics, which gives him a concrete view of what AI-assisted hardware can and cannot do today, beyond the generative-AI conversation. Comfortable in technical depth and broad audience formats. Eleven books, a weekly TV programme on Welt TV, and a Spiegel bestseller indicate a speaker who can carry a non-specialist room without softening the science. Biography highlights Payload Specialist, NASA Space Shuttle Columbia, Spacelab D-2 mission (STS-55), 1993. Chair of the Institute of Astronautics, Technical University of Munich, 2003 to 2023, now emeritus. Member, Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and artificial intelligence. Member of three supervisory boards within the Die Bayerische insurance group, responsible for the group’s AI implementation and transformation programme. Senior Executive Advisor, Deloitte Space, Germany. German Professor of the Year 2008 in engineering sciences and informatics. Author of eleven books including the Spiegel bestseller Im Schwarzen Loch ist der Teufel los, and host of the weekly Welt TV documentary Spacetimes. Biography Most leadership teams are asked to make decisions about AI and robotics without a working understanding of how the underlying systems behave. That gap is where Ulrich Walter does his most useful work. Trained as a physicist at the University of Cologne, with postdoctoral years at Argonne National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, he combines an active scientific career with a policy seat that few keynote speakers can match. In 1993 he flew Spacelab D-2 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as Payload Specialist, running 89 experiments across materials science, life sciences and robotics in just under ten days in orbit. After the mission he managed satellite imaging programmes at the German Aerospace Center, then ran development projects at IBM, before being appointed to the Chair of Astronautics at TU Munich in 2003. At TUM he led research on service robotics, geriatronics, and the systems engineering behind human spaceflight. He also sits on the Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and AI, advising on where the operational and moral limits of these technologies should fall. The work is technical, and it is current. For corporate audiences, the most useful translation is the one between high-risk technical environments and ordinary business decision-making. How does NASA assess disruptive change? How does a project manager at IBM apply mission-grade discipline? What does a working scientist on Germany’s AI ethics body actually think a board should worry about? Walter is unusually direct on all three. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and ethics Disruptive innovation Space technology and the NewSpace economy Robotics and geriatronics Systems engineering and project management The future of human spaceflight Science communication for non-specialist audiences Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting governance on AI and emerging technology Engineering, R&D and innovation leadership at industrial and aerospace firms Senior project and programme managers in complex, high-risk environments Conferences and offsites looking for a substantive technology keynote that can also carry a non-technical room Audience outcomes A working view of where AI and robotics genuinely change the operating picture, and where the hype runs ahead of the science. A practical translation of NASA-style risk management and project discipline into commercial settings. A clearer sense of how European regulators and ethicists are framing the limits of AI deployment. Exposure to the NewSpace economy and what it signals about the next generation of commercial technology. A reset of perspective on long-horizon strategic thinking from someone who has spent ten days looking at the planet from orbit.

Why organisations work with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger His research on data-sharing directly shaped the EU’s Digital Markets Act – when he talks about regulatory risk, he is describing a landscape he helped design. Big Data (co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier) sold over one million copies and set the terms of the enterprise data conversation for a decade; organisations benefit from the intellectual framework behind the book, not just its conclusions. As a member of Germany’s Digital Council, he advised Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet on digital policy (2018–2021) – giving him a rare dual perspective on both corporate strategy and governmental decision-making. His 2024 book Guardrails (with Urs Gasser, hailed in Science journal) offers the most current framework available for deciding which decisions to delegate to AI and which to retain – a live, unresolved question in most boardrooms. He holds the Oxford Chair as one of three statutory professors at the Oxford Internet Institute, combining research authority with over 250 keynote engagements across Fortune 500 companies and government bodies. Biography highlights Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute – one of three statutory chairs Ten years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; continuing affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Member of Germany’s Digital Council; personal adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel on digital policy (2018–2021) Delete (Princeton University Press, 2009) won the 2010 Marshall McLuhan Award and the 2010 Don K. Price Award for Best Book in Science and Technology Politics Big Data (2013, with Kenneth Cukier) – NYT and WSJ bestseller; over one million copies sold; translated into more than 20 languages Research cited in, and proposals adopted by, the EU Digital Markets Act; covered by the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and Nature Biography Data governance is not a compliance function. It is, as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has spent three decades arguing, the central strategic question of the digital economy, and most organisations are still treating it as a footnote. Mayer-Schönberger holds the Chair of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, one of three statutory professorships at the OII. Before Oxford, he spent a decade at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and three years at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. That arc – from entrepreneurship to academic leadership across three continents – gives him a fluency in organisational, governmental, and market dynamics that few researchers in this space share. His books have not merely described the data economy; they have shaped it. Delete (Princeton, 2009) initiated the debate that produced the EU’s right to be forgotten. Access Rules (2022) and the earlier Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data proposed the data-sharing mandates that were subsequently enacted in the EU Digital Markets Act. His bestseller Big Data – co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier – sold over a million copies and remains the foundational text for enterprise data strategy. His most recent book, Guardrails (2024, with Urs Gasser), praised in Science journal, addresses the question now live in every boardroom: how to draw the line between AI delegation and human judgement. From 2018 to 2021 he served as a member of Germany’s Digital Council, advising Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet directly. He is a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center and has addressed senior audiences at IBM, SAP, Microsoft, and Roche, as well as regulatory and governmental forums across the EU, UK, and US. His advisory boards have included Microsoft and the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics AI governance and the limits of delegation Data access, competition, and digital market regulation The strategic economics of data Information privacy and the right to be forgotten Human decision-making in the age of AI Digital policy and corporate regulatory risk The data-driven transformation of capitalism Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams navigating AI governance and regulatory exposure Chief Data, Digital, and AI Officers building organisational data strategy General counsel, compliance, and risk functions in regulated industries Public policy and regulatory affairs teams across the EU and UK Audience outcomes A structured framework for distinguishing decisions that should be delegated to AI from those that must remain with humans Clarity on the regulatory direction of travel in the EU and UK, and what it means for data strategy An understanding of how data access and sharing mandates will reshape competitive dynamics in their sector Practical grounding in the governance failures that produce both legal exposure and strategic underperformance A shared language for board-level conversations about AI risk that moves beyond the abstract

Why organisations work with Vítor Constâncio He offers direct insider perspective on ECB monetary policy design and execution across an eight-year term as Vice-President: a vantage point that cannot be replicated by academic analysis or market commentary alone. His active role in building the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework, including the development of its systemic risk indicators (FSRI and CSRI), gives audiences a conceptual map for understanding financial stability risk that goes beyond standard risk management frameworks. His unusual combination of central bank leadership, national finance ministry experience, and private-sector board roles provides a rare triangulation of how monetary, fiscal, and regulatory decisions interact; directly relevant to boards navigating rate cycles, sovereign risk, and banking regulation. Through his Bruegel contributions and MacroViews Substack, he remains an active, citable analyst on current ECB and Fed policy, eurozone fiscal governance, and international financial risk: making his perspective current, not merely historical. For European and internationally exposed organisations, his forensic understanding of euro area crisis mechanics, including Portugal’s €78bn bailout programme, Banking Union design, and Capital Markets Union architecture, offers a level of granularity that generic economic speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Vice-President of the European Central Bank and member of its Executive Board, 2010-2018, selected by Eurozone finance ministers for an eight-year mandate Governor of the Banco de Portugal in two separate terms (1985-86 and 2000-2010); member of the ECB Governing Council throughout the second term Finance Minister of Portugal (1977-78) and Secretary of State for Planning and Budget (1974-76) Secretary-General of Portugal’s Socialist Party (1986-89) and member of the Portuguese Council of State (1995-99) Co-architect of the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework; named author of ECB Occasional Paper on macroprudential policy at the ECB; developer of the ECB’s Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator Professor at the School of Economics & Business Administration, University of Navarra; President of the School Board, ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon Active contributor to Bruegel policy debates; extensive BIS-published speech record; author of MacroViews (Substack), a widely-read publication on monetary policy and European economic governance Biography Central banks rarely advertise the tensions behind their decisions. The trade-offs between price stability and financial stability, the institutional pressures on monetary union governance, the limits of macroprudential tools when the financial cycle turns: these are not visible in official communiqués. They are visible only to those who have sat inside the institution at the moments when those decisions were made. Vítor Constâncio served as Vice-President of the European Central Bank for eight years, from 2010 to 2018, a period that encompassed the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the design and early operation of the Banking Union, and the gradual construction of a macroprudential policy architecture for the euro area. As a member of the ECB’s Executive Board, he was among the principal architects of the framework that now governs systemic risk oversight across European financial markets; including the ECB’s own Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator, developed under his leadership. His authority on these questions is grounded in institutional breadth as much as seniority. He served as Governor of the Banco de Portugal across two separate terms, representing Portugal on the ECB Governing Council throughout the second; held senior government roles as Finance Minister and Secretary of State; and served as Executive Director at Banco Português de Investimento with non-executive board exposure to major Portuguese corporates. This layered experience – from national treasury to private board to European monetary authority – gives him a perspective on how macroeconomic policy, financial regulation, and institutional design interact that few practitioners can claim. Since leaving the ECB, Constâncio has remained an analytically active voice. He publishes regularly on monetary policy and eurozone governance through his MacroViews commentary platform and continues to contribute to Bruegel, the leading European economic policy research institution. He teaches banking and financial regulation at the University of Navarra and chairs the school board at ISEG. For organisations seeking clarity on the forces shaping credit conditions, regulatory direction, and European financial architecture, he brings the rarest combination available: the institutional memory of someone at the centre of the decisions, and the continued intellectual engagement of someone who has not stopped thinking about them. Key speaking topics Monetary policy design and the limits of central banking Macroprudential policy and systemic risk frameworks European financial governance and Banking Union architecture Sovereign risk and euro area crisis management Banking regulation and the post-Basel III landscape Capital Markets Union and European financial integration Global macro conditions and the outlook for interest rates Ideal for CFOs, CROs, and board risk committees at banks, insurers, and asset managers navigating rate cycles and regulatory change Investment and treasury leaders requiring granular perspective on ECB and eurozone monetary dynamics Government and supranational policy forums focused on European financial architecture and sovereign risk Executive leadership conferences in financial services where strategic macro context is central to the agenda Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how macroprudential policy frameworks function and where their limits lie – grounded in the experience of building them Practical perspective on how central bank decisions are actually made: the trade-offs, institutional constraints, and dissenting pressures that official statements do not capture An informed view of the structural risks in European and global financial systems, and the regulatory tools available to address them Greater ability to distinguish signal from noise in central bank communication and monetary policy signalling Context for assessing how eurozone governance, Banking Union architecture, and Capital Markets Union development affect corporate and institutional financial strategy

Why organisations work with Wesley K. Clark Operational command at the highest level of NATO, including the Kosovo air campaign, gives him a direct read on how modern conflict, escalation, and alliance decision-making actually work. Two decades of advisory work across oil, gas, power, batteries, and finance through Wesley K. Clark and Associates and Energy Security Partners, so the geopolitics connects to capital and supply. A book-length argument, Don’t Wait for the Next War, on linking U.S. energy strength, fiscal capacity, and security strategy, which gives boards a coherent framework rather than a news commentary. Standing as a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center and a director of the Atlantic Council, both of which signal a serious institutional reading of foreign policy rather than punditry. Track record in front of senior audiences as a CNN military analyst and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, so the room treats him as a principal, not a presenter. Biography highlights Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO, 1997 to 2000; commanded Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Valedictorian of the West Point class of 1966; Rhodes Scholar in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Author of four books, including Waging Modern War, Winning Modern War, A Time to Lead, and Don’t Wait for the Next War. Presidential Medal of Freedom; Defense Distinguished Service Medal (five awards); Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart; Commander of the French Legion of Honor. Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations; director, Atlantic Council. Chairman of Wesley K. Clark and Associates and Energy Security Partners; advisor or board member to more than 90 companies across energy, finance, and security. Biography The Kosovo air campaign in 1999 was the first sustained combat operation NATO had ever fought as an alliance. The commander running it was Wesley Clark, then the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and the experience of holding nineteen governments together through 78 days of war became the spine of his subsequent thinking on conflict, alliance management, and political risk. His training was not narrowly military. Clark graduated as valedictorian of the West Point class of 1966, took a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford for Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and went on to a 38-year career that included Vietnam combat, U.S. Southern Command, and authorship of the U.S. National Military Strategy. He retired as a four-star general with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and honorary knighthoods from Britain and the Netherlands. The work since uniform has been almost entirely about how strategy, capital, and security fit together. Through Wesley K. Clark and Associates and Energy Security Partners, he has advised more than 90 companies across oil, gas, power, batteries, and finance. His book Don’t Wait for the Next War argues that American energy capacity, fiscal discipline, and global posture have to be planned as a single system, not three separate debates. That is the perspective he brings into a boardroom. Not running commentary on the day’s headlines, but a coherent reading of how energy supply, alliance behaviour, and great-power competition translate into decisions a senior leadership team has to make about exposure, capital, and timing. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and great-power competition NATO, alliance dynamics, and the rules-based order Energy security and the strategic role of energy supply U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy Leadership and decision-making under operational pressure Conflict, escalation, and modern warfare Ideal for Boards and executive committees pricing geopolitical and sanctions exposure CSOs, heads of strategy, and corporate development teams reassessing global footprint Energy, defence, financial services, and infrastructure leadership audiences Government affairs and risk leaders briefing boards on alliance and policy shifts Audience outcomes A clearer view of how NATO, U.S., and allied decision-making actually moves in a crisis A working read on how energy supply and capital allocation interact with security policy A sharper sense of which geopolitical risks are durable and which are noise Direct exposure to what command-level decision-making under pressure looks like

Why organisations work with Xiao Geng Sustained insider access to Chinese policy and regulatory thinking, built across roles at the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, HSBC Bank China, and senior positions at Brookings, Fung Global Institute, and Columbia Global Centers East Asia. A live, monthly published view on the US-China economic relationship through more than a decade of Project Syndicate commentary co-authored with Andrew Sheng. Founding leadership of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, one of the few institutional bridges between Western policy research and Chinese government economic thinking. Research depth across the technical questions that drive China exposure for foreign capital: exchange rate policy, capital market reform, enterprise productivity, and urbanisation. A working position inside the Greater Bay Area policy network through CUHK Shenzhen and the Shenzhen Finance Institute, giving leaders a sightline into where China’s innovation and finance corridors are heading. Biography highlights President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance. Professor of Practice at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Director of the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute. Director of the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School. Founding Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Former Vice President for China at the Fung Global Institute and Director of Columbia Global Centers East Asia. Project Syndicate columnist since 2012, with more than 140 published commentaries on China and the global economy. Biography Most foreign boards still treat China as a single risk vector. The economy is more fragmented than that, and the policy logic shaping it does not move on the cycles Western investors are used to reading. A serious view of capital allocation in Asia depends on understanding how monetary policy, financial reform, and political economy interact inside Beijing’s system, not just what is announced. Xiao Geng has spent his career sitting inside that system. He is President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance and Professor of Practice at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, where he directs the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute. He also leads the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School. His earlier roles built the institutional reach. He was Founding Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Vice President for China at the Fung Global Institute, and Director of Columbia Global Centers East Asia. Inside the Hong Kong system he served as Head of Research at the Securities and Futures Commission. He has advised HSBC Bank China, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme. Since 2012 he has written a monthly Project Syndicate column with Andrew Sheng, covering Chinese monetary policy, technology competition, energy transition, and the financial architecture of the US-China relationship. The column is one of the few sustained English-language readings of Chinese economic policy written from inside it. Key speaking topics China’s macroeconomic outlook US-China economic and financial relations Chinese financial sector reform and regulation Capital markets and exchange rate policy in Asia Urbanisation, enterprise productivity, and the Greater Bay Area Geopolitical risk for foreign investors in China Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material China or Asia exposure CFOs, treasurers, and heads of corporate strategy reviewing supply chain or capital allocation in Asia Financial services leadership briefings on regulatory and macro direction Government, multilateral, and policy audiences working on US-China economic questions Audience outcomes A clearer read of where Chinese monetary, fiscal, and financial reform is actually heading, not what headlines suggest A working framework for the structural drivers of US-China economic tension and where they sit on the cycle Specific signals to watch on capital flows, exchange rate policy, and Chinese capital market opening A more accurate map of the policy actors and institutions that shape China’s economic decisions An informed basis for stress-testing investment, supply chain, and partnership decisions tied to Greater China

Why organisations work with Ymir Vigfusson He is a tenured computer scientist at Emory and a practising offensive-security entrepreneur, with three founded companies and two acquisitions. Boards rarely get both registers from the same speaker. His TEDxReykjavik talk on teaching people how to hack has passed 1.8 million views, which means executives often arrive already primed by his argument and ready to engage at depth. Keystrike, his third company, was built specifically for the problem of secure remote access when the user’s machine is already compromised. He has commercial scar tissue on the exact threat model most enterprises now face. He holds an NSF CAREER award for fundamental work on caching and distributed systems, so the technical authority extends well beyond cybersecurity into the infrastructure layer that AI workloads depend on. His guest-researcher role at the CDC, applied to disease-outbreak surveillance, gives him a working analogy for how organisations should model contagion and propagation inside their own networks. Biography highlights PhD in Computer Science, Cornell University; BSc in Mathematics, University of Iceland. Associate Professor at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab. NSF CAREER award recipient for the “Rethinking the Cache Abstraction” project. Co-founder of Syndis (acquired by Origo, 2021), Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior, 2020) and Keystrike (current CTO). TEDxReykjavik talk “Why I teach people how to hack” with more than 1.8 million views. Guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, applying network science to outbreak surveillance. Biography The cybersecurity industry has a translation problem. Attackers reason in workflows; defenders reason in compliance frameworks. Most senior leaders only hear the second language, which is why most security investment is shaped by audit logic rather than by how an adversary actually moves through a system. Ymir Vigfusson works in both languages. He is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab, where his NSF CAREER-funded research on caching and distributed systems has produced papers at USENIX ATC, VLDB and EuroSys. The same researcher co-founded Syndis, the de facto cybersecurity firm in Iceland (acquired by Origo in 2021), the hacker-training platform Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior in 2020), and Keystrike, where he is now CTO and which won Emory’s Innovation of the Year for a product that secures remote access even when the endpoint is compromised. That dual track shapes how he speaks to leadership audiences. His TEDxReykjavik talk, “Why I teach people how to hack,” has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and lays out the argument that an organisation cannot defend itself against an attacker mindset it refuses to study. He brings the same logic into board conversations: walk through how an adversary would actually compromise this organisation, then decide what to fund. A guest-researcher post at the CDC, where he applies network-science methods to outbreak surveillance, gives him a working model for how threats propagate inside any complex network. The practical result for leadership audiences is a clearer picture of where their actual attack surface sits and which defensive habits change the outcome. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk The hacker mindset as a defensive capability Secure remote access and the compromised endpoint Distributed systems and the infrastructure layer beneath AI Network science applied to threat propagation Cybersecurity education and the future security workforce Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CISOs commissioning a sharper view of attacker behaviour Chief technology and chief information officers planning resilience investment Banking, healthcare and critical-infrastructure leadership teams with high-value endpoints Innovation and R&D leaders integrating security into AI and cloud roadmaps Audience outcomes A working model for how adversaries actually move through an enterprise network A sharper line between security spend that changes attacker behaviour and spend that satisfies audit A vocabulary for discussing cyber risk with non-technical board members A view of where computational epidemiology and network science inform threat modelling