Risk Management

Why organisations work with Kevin Fong He has run the actual command-and-control work organisations rehearse in tabletop exercises: seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor for Emergency Preparedness during COVID-19, embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, and active on a UK air ambulance crew. He brings a tested method for high-pressure decision-making drawn from anaesthesia, prehospital medicine and human spaceflight, sectors where the standards for crew performance are explicit and audited. His Apollo and Apollo 13 work for the BBC, including the World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, is built from primary interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made the calls. The case material is specific, not anecdotal. He holds a serious clinical and academic post (UCLH consultant; UCL professor; co-director of CASE Medicine), so his framing of human limits and team performance survives scrutiny by technical audiences. He was appointed OBE in 2019 for services to medicine and healthcare, and delivered the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on space medicine, a platform with a high bar for clarity and authority. Biography highlights Consultant anaesthetist, University College London Hospitals; Professor of Public Engagement and Innovation, UCL. Co-director, Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine), UCL. National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, NHS England (COVID-19 secondment, from March 2020). HEMS doctor, Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex; previously embedded with British Military Emergency Response Team, Afghanistan; alumnus of NASA’s human spaceflight programme, Johnson Space Center. Presenter, 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (BBC Four); host of BBC World Service podcasts 13 Minutes to the Moon and 13 Minutes Presents: Apollo 13. Author, Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body (Hodder). OBE, 2019, for services to medicine and healthcare. Biography The Apollo 11 lunar module ran out of usable computer memory in the final minutes of its descent. The crew had thirteen minutes to reach the surface or abort. The decision to land was made by a flight director who had spent his career rehearsing exactly that kind of call. Fong’s BBC World Service series 13 Minutes to the Moon was built from first-hand interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made it work, and it is the clearest expression of what his speaking practice is actually about. The thread runs through his clinical career. As a consultant anaesthetist at UCLH, a HEMS doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex, and a clinician embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, he has spent his working life inside the systems that train teams to function when the cost of error is immediate. In March 2020, he was seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, working at the centre of the COVID-19 response and the vaccine rollout. The academic infrastructure underneath the speaking is substantive. He is a professor at UCL and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, with degrees spanning astrophysics, medicine and engineering and a long association with NASA’s human spaceflight programme at Johnson Space Center. The book Extremes and the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures sit on top of that record, not in place of it. What he gives a corporate audience is a translation. The protocols that make space crews, trauma teams and air ambulance services reliable under extreme strain are not analogies for business leadership; they are concrete practices that can be examined and adopted. The 2019 OBE recognises a body of work that already crosses medicine, science and public communication, which is why his sessions land with technical leaders, not only general audiences. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performing teams in safety-critical environments Crisis leadership and command Pandemic response and healthcare resilience Human spaceflight and extreme environment medicine Risk and human factors Leadership lessons from Apollo Ideal for CEOs, COOs and crisis leadership teams preparing for low-probability, high-consequence events Boards and risk committees stress-testing operational resilience and command structures Leadership development programmes for clinical, aviation, energy, defence and infrastructure organisations Conferences for senior medical, scientific and engineering audiences who reject generic motivational content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for human factors, crew resource management and command structure that can be applied inside their own organisations Specific, named case material from Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and the COVID-19 response, used to interrogate how their own teams would behave A clearer view of where their organisation is rehearsed and where it is improvising under pressure Renewed conviction in the operational standards that distinguish reliable teams from the rest

Why organisations work with Jake Mazulewicz He has run the work, not just studied it. As HPI Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he applied the same frameworks he now teaches to lineworkers, system operators, and executives. His Near Miss Library generated more than 150 voluntary reports inside one utility, the kind of disclosure rate most safety programmes never achieve, and it carries endorsements from both executives and union leadership. His Scan & Focus model and Four Levels of Decision Making are tools field foremen and substation crews actually use, not concepts that work only in a classroom. He speaks the language of pilots, paratroopers, firefighters, and lineworkers because he has worked alongside them. Audiences in technical industries treat him as one of their own, which is rare for a keynote speaker on safety. His book, Seven Practical Steps, gives senior leaders a defensible operating playbook for human reliability that can be cited inside the business after the keynote ends. Biography highlights Ph.D. in Education, University of Virginia Former Human Performance Improvement Lead, Dominion Virginia Power, 3,500+ person business unit Founder and Director, JMA Human Reliability Strategies Author of Seven Practical Steps and the HOP Handbook for Leaders, the latter with 7,000+ hardcopies sold Published in The Sentinel, the magazine of the International Institute of Risk & Safety Management (IIRSM) 250+ client teams across energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and government; named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, BNSF Railway, and Princeton Plasma Physics Lab Biography The instinct in most safety cultures is to chase zero. Zero incidents, zero errors, zero near misses. The most reliable industries figured out long ago that this target produces the opposite of safety. It produces silence. People stop reporting what they see, the organisation stops learning, and the next failure looks exactly like the last one. Jake Mazulewicz has worked inside that contradiction for his whole career, including a decade in the safety function of a Fortune 500 electric utility. As Human Performance Improvement Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he led the work of analysing more than 300 incidents, ran root cause analyses on transmission-level switching errors, and built a Near Miss Library that drew more than 150 voluntary reports from a workforce that had every reason not to volunteer them. His Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia underpins the teaching method, but the credibility is operational. Lineworkers, system operators, and executives all recognised the same person in the room. In 2015 he founded JMA Human Reliability Strategies and has since worked with more than 250 teams across utilities, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and government. Named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, BNSF Railway, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and Energy Safety Canada. Audiences have logged more than 4,700 reviews across 125 engagements since 2023. Two books codify the method. The HOP Handbook for Leaders has sold over 7,000 hardcopies, and Seven Practical Steps sets out a learning-based posture, psychological safety as a working condition rather than a slogan, and After Action Reviews treated as a craft. His six-step event review approach was published in The Sentinel, the magazine of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management, in April 2025. What separates him from other safety speakers is biography. He has served as a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, a wilderness search and rescue field team leader, and a military paratrooper. When he tells a technical audience that errors are signals, not character flaws, the room hears it from someone who has had to act on that belief in conditions where being wrong has consequences. Key speaking topics Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) High-reliability team practice in high-hazard industries Psychological safety in technical teams After Action Reviews and event learning Situational awareness and decision-making under pressure Safety culture and human error reduction Just culture and incident investigation Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and operations leaders in utilities, energy, manufacturing, and other high-hazard sectors Heads of HSE, safety directors, and chief safety officers responsible for organisational reliability HR and people leaders responsible for psychological safety and frontline team culture Field operations leadership: plant managers, station managers, fleet leaders, frontline supervisors Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that survives contact with a unionised, technical workforce The Scan & Focus model as a usable situational awareness tool, applied to their own operating context A practical method for running After Action Reviews that produce learning rather than blame The Four Levels of Decision Making framework, mapped from novice to expert in their environment A reframing of error as a system signal, with the operating implications for how leaders respond to incidents

Why organisations work with Julia Ebner Direct field intelligence on extremist movements. She has gone undercover inside a dozen networks across the ideological spectrum, which gives her a granular read on how these groups recruit, organise and migrate between platforms. Institutional authority on both sides of the policy conversation. She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion and is Co-Executive Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the reference NGO in this field. A working brief with the organisations setting the rules. She has advised NATO, Europol, the World Bank, Google, Meta and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, which means she can speak to how platform governance and counter-extremism policy are actually being written. A track record of calling movements early. Going Mainstream (2023) traced how fringe conspiracy and extremist narratives were entering mainstream politics, an argument the subsequent two years of elections has substantively borne out. Two book awards from credible bodies. The Rage won the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Book of the Year 2018; Going Dark won Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2020 and was long-listed for the Gold Dagger Award. Biography highlights Co-Executive Director, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. Postdoctoral Researcher at the Calleva Centre for Evolution and Human Sciences, Magdalen College, Oxford. Former Special Advisor on Terrorism Prevention to the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism. Author of Going Mainstream (2023), Going Dark (2019) and The Rage (2017); winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize and Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres. Regular contributor to The Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Washington Post and Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Biography Most extremist movements look marginal until the moment they are not. By the time a conspiracy theory reaches a regulator, an election or a consumer boycott, the network behind it has been organising for years. Julia Ebner studies that interval. Her work explains how fringe ideas move from encrypted channels into mainstream politics, and what that movement means for governments, platforms and large employers. For Going Dark, her 2019 book, she spent two years undercover inside a dozen extremist groups, adopting five different identities to access neo-Nazi networks, jihadist recruiters, trad-wife communities and the alt-right channels that planned the Charlottesville rally. The book won Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2020 and the Dr Caspar Einem prize, and was long-listed for the Gold Dagger Award. Her follow-up, Going Mainstream (Ithaka Press, 2023), traced how those same networks were already shaping electoral and policy outcomes. That field work is anchored in serious institutional positions. She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, sits as a postdoctoral researcher at Magdalen College’s Calleva Centre, and is Co-Executive Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London. She has advised NATO, Europol, the World Bank, Google and Meta, and served as Special Advisor on Terrorism Prevention to the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism. For corporate audiences, the value of that combination is concrete. She can tell a board which narratives are about to hit them, why the networks behind those narratives behave the way they do, and what platform governance, employee safety and political-risk teams should actually be doing about it. Key speaking topics Online radicalisation and extremist networks Disinformation, conspiracy movements and democratic risk AI-enabled influence operations Platform governance and trust and safety Polarisation as a political and corporate risk Counter-extremism policy and terrorism prevention Ideal for Boards and risk committees assessing political-violence and reputational exposure Chief Trust and Safety, Policy and Public Affairs leads at technology platforms Government, defence and intelligence audiences working on counter-extremism and election integrity CHRO and Communications leadership teams facing polarisation inside the workforce or the customer base Audience outcomes A working picture of how extremist and conspiracy networks recruit, organise and migrate across platforms The early-warning signals that distinguish a fringe movement from one about to enter the mainstream A clearer view of how AI-generated content is changing the economics of disinformation A frame for translating online radicalisation into board-level political, regulatory and reputational risk Reference points from her undercover work and from ISD and Oxford research that audiences can take into their own planning

Why organisations work with Matt Barbet A current Sky News anchor who can chair a CEO panel, run a town hall or moderate a board offsite at the standard of a national broadcast interview. Inside view from Freuds, where he advised executives and global figures on storytelling and on managing crises in real time, not in theory. Two decades of frontline reporting across BBC, ITV and Channel 5, including coverage of elections, conflict and natural disasters, which gives him a credible voice on how reputations break and recover. A second keynote on artificial intelligence that focuses on human judgement and authentic communication as the variables that matter when AI takes over routine output. Biography highlights Sky News anchor, hosting the Sunday 10am to 2pm programme since February 2024. Partner at Freuds, the London public relations firm, since 2018. Former anchor of Channel 5’s 5 News flagship 17:00 programme and co-presenter of ITV Breakfast’s Daybreak. Reporting career across BBC News, BBC Radio 1, ITV News and Channel 5 spanning more than twenty years. Covered major international stories including the 2010 Haiti earthquake and embedded reporting in Afghanistan. Cardiff University and Cardiff School of Journalism graduate. Biography A reputational crisis used to be a press office problem. It is now a board problem, with a clock measured in hours and an audience that includes regulators, investors, customers and staff watching the same feed at the same time. The leaders who navigate this well tend to share one quality, the ability to think clearly and communicate plainly while the noise is at its loudest. This is the territory Matt Barbet has worked in from both sides. As a Sky News anchor, and previously across BBC News, ITV and Channel 5, he has spent more than twenty years interviewing senior figures during the moments that define their organisations. As a partner at Freuds since 2018, he has sat on the other side of the table, advising executives and high-profile clients on how to prepare for those moments and how to recover from them. The dual vantage point is what makes him useful to a serious audience. He can describe what a newsroom sees during a developing story, what makes a spokesperson credible on camera, and where leaders most commonly lose control of a narrative. The reporting gives him the field examples. The Freuds work gives him the language of strategy and reputational risk. For most clients the commercial product is hosting. Barbet chairs conferences, moderates panels of senior executives and runs awards ceremonies and town halls at broadcast standard. The keynote material on crisis communications and on artificial intelligence sits alongside that work, anchored in the same craft of listening carefully and speaking clearly under pressure. Key speaking topics Crisis communications and reputational risk Leadership communication under media scrutiny Storytelling for senior executives Artificial intelligence and the human side of communication Conference hosting and panel moderation Frontline journalism and how news is made Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and communications directors preparing for reputational incidents Senior leadership teams running town halls, conferences or investor events that need broadcast-quality hosting Boards and executive committees commissioning a moderator for high-stakes panel sessions Awards ceremonies and flagship industry conferences Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a newsroom processes a developing story, and what that means for the speed of a corporate response. Specific examples of how senior figures hold or lose credibility on camera. A practical sense of how communications, legal and operational decisions interact during a live crisis. A point of view on where AI raises the value of direct human communication rather than reducing it.

Why organisations work with Emil Dobrovolschi He is a working airline captain and EASA-certified examiner, so the discipline he teaches around briefings, checklists and crew coordination is the discipline he is held to in the cockpit. Co-author of Dark Cockpit with Octavian Pantis, a published thesis that gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a calm, fully functioning operating state and the behaviours that produce it. Three decades inside a national flag carrier, including time as Director of Flight Operations, give him a frank view of what command, accountability and quiet discipline look like in a regulated organisation. The pilots he has trained as a Type Rating Instructor have gone on to fly as captains for at least twelve international airlines, evidence that his teaching method travels and holds up under examination. The aviation material is concrete. Audiences leave with named behaviours, not metaphors: how a brief is structured, how a challenge is raised, how a captain hands over control. Biography highlights Captain, instructor and examiner at TAROM since 1994, across Antonov 24, ATR 42/72, Airbus A320 and A310. Former Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, TAROM. EASA-certified Type Rating Examiner; Type Rating Instructor since 2001. Commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. Co-author of Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain (with Octavian Pantis). TEDx speaker (TEDxBaiaMare, “Gata de decolare”). Biography A commercial flight deck is one of the few corporate settings where bad communication is logged, debriefed and corrected by regulation. Aviation does not assume good leaders happen. It produces them through briefings, checklists, standard calls and a regulated training cycle. Emil Dobrovolschi has spent his career inside that system. He joined TAROM, the Romanian flag carrier, in 1994 and worked through every rank from Antonov 24 co-pilot to Airbus A320 and A310 captain, instructor and examiner. As a Type Rating Instructor since 2001 and an EASA-certified examiner, he has trained pilots who now hold left-seat command at twelve or more international carriers. Inside TAROM he served as Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, and as commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. The corporate work grew out of that. With consultant and author Octavian Pantis he co-wrote Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain. The dark cockpit is the aviation term for the state in which no caution lights are on, the aircraft is functioning, and the crew can do its job. The book translates that into a leadership thesis: the conditions for clarity, command and trust are designed in, not improvised when something goes wrong. In keynotes, that translation is concrete. He shows how a captain runs a pre-flight brief, how a junior officer is trained to challenge a senior one, and what changes when control is formally handed over. Senior teams use the material to look at their own briefings, escalation paths and quiet failures of communication. The authority behind it is straightforward: he is still the captain in the room. Key speaking topics Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Communication and crew resource management Decision-making under pressure Teamwork, hierarchy and the freedom to speak up Crisis management and recovery Building professional standards inside an operating culture Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing how decisions are taken when the situation tightens CHROs and leadership development leads designing programmes for newly senior managers Operations, safety and risk leaders in regulated industries (energy, healthcare, financial services, transport) Corporate offsites and leadership weeks looking for an external voice with operational credibility, not consulting language Audience outcomes A vocabulary borrowed from the cockpit (brief, checklist, challenge, handover) that makes everyday leadership behaviours explicit. A clearer view of where their own organisation tolerates ambiguous communication that aviation would not. Specific practices for raising a concern up a hierarchy and for receiving one. A working definition of composure under pressure as a trained behaviour, not a personality trait. A frame for distinguishing routine operations from genuine crisis, and for behaving differently in each.

Why organisations work with FC He is one of a small number of speakers who can describe live, named-method physical and digital intrusion against the kinds of organisations sitting in the audience, because that is his day job at Cygenta. His Wiley-published book “How I Rob Banks” gives a senior audience a credible, written reference point for the work, with more than seventy documented intrusion accounts behind the keynote. He held the Head of Offensive Cyber Research role at Raytheon Missile Systems, which gives him a defence-grade perspective on nation-state threat actors that most commercial security speakers cannot match. He treats cyber security as a culture and behaviour problem, not a technology problem, which is the framing senior leaders need when they are asked to own cyber risk at board level. His material translates from technical demonstration to executive insight without losing either audience, which is rare in the cybersecurity speaker market. Biography highlights Co-founder and co-CEO of Cygenta, a cyber security firm specialising in offensive testing, defensive consulting and security culture. Former Head of Offensive Cyber Research at Raytheon Missile Systems. Author of “How I Rob Banks: And Other Such Places,” published by Wiley in 2023. Featured on Darknet Diaries, Episode 66, one of the most listened-to cyber security podcasts globally. Mainstream media contributor including the BBC (Fake Britain) and ITV. Keynote speaker at named industry events including CPX360, CERN and Intersec. Biography The bank’s physical security policy is usually well written. The CCTV is monitored. The access cards are issued through HR. None of that has prevented FC from walking into the vault, more than once, in jurisdictions across the world, with the bank’s permission and a signed scope of work in his pocket. That is the work behind “How I Rob Banks: And Other Such Places,” published by Wiley in 2023, which collects more than seventy authorised intrusion stories from a career spent breaking into banks, government buildings and multinational corporations to prove how their defences actually fail. The book is a practitioner record, not a thesis, and it is the most credible written artefact in the speaker market on the question of how breaches really happen. The credibility behind the book is operational. FC is co-founder and co-CEO of Cygenta, the cyber security firm he runs alongside Dr Jessica Barker. Before Cygenta, he was Head of Offensive Cyber Research at Raytheon Missile Systems, working on the kind of nation-state threat picture that almost no commercial security speaker has direct line of sight to. He has briefed audiences at CPX360, CERN and Intersec, and his work has been profiled on the BBC, ITV and Darknet Diaries. What a senior audience leaves with is a re-framed view of where their organisation is actually exposed. Cyber security as a board-level capability sits inside the human and procedural layer of the business. FC shows that layer being defeated, with the methods named and the lesson made specific to the people in the room. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Physical penetration testing and social engineering Ransomware and phishing as operational threats Nation-state cyber activity Security culture and human behaviour Artificial intelligence in offensive and defensive security Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CISOs reviewing cyber risk ownership at executive level Banking, insurance and critical infrastructure leadership teams hardening physical and digital defences Heads of internal audit, risk and operations responsible for security culture across the workforce Defence, government and regulated-sector audiences engaging with nation-state threat scenarios Audience outcomes A specific picture of how attackers, both criminal and state-sponsored, actually get inside organisations like theirs A reframing of cyber security as a leadership and culture problem, with concrete examples, not as a technology checklist Named methods used in real-world physical and digital breaches, with the defensive lessons drawn from each A clearer view of where board oversight of cyber risk is currently failing, and what it should look like instead

Why organisations work with Kenton Cool He has summited Mount Everest 20 times, the most of any non-Nepali climber, which gives his observations on decision-making and risk a weight that no theoretical speaker can match. He led Sir Ranulph Fiennes to the Everest summit in 2009 and up the Eiger’s north face in 2007, so he speaks with first-hand authority on guiding individuals through environments they cannot manage alone. In 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in seven days without returning to base camp, a previously unachieved sequence used as a case study in sustained performance and recovery between high-consequence efforts. His corporate content is rooted in repeatable expedition practice: how to read a team in real time, how to decide when to turn back, how to set a risk tolerance before the pressure begins. Biography highlights 20 summits of Mount Everest, the record for any non-Nepali climber, most recently on 22 May 2026. IFMGA/UIAGM Mountain Guide and member of the British Association of Mountain Guides. First person to climb Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single push from base camp, May 2013. Led Sir Ranulph Fiennes on a successful Everest summit in 2009 and on the first British guided ascent of the Eiger’s north face in 2007. Author of One Man’s Everest (Preface, Penguin Random House, 2015). BSc Geological Sciences, University of Leeds; honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Leeds, 2018. Biography Most decisions in a corporate setting can be undone. On the Lhotse Face above Camp 3, with weather closing and oxygen burning down, they cannot. Kenton Cool has stood in that position more often than any non-Nepali climber alive, 20 times on the summit of Everest, and the corporate content he brings into boardrooms is built around what those moments actually demand of a leader. In 1996, an accident on a Welsh rock face fractured both his heel bones. A consultant told him he was unlikely to walk unaided again. He returned to climbing within a year, joined the British Association of Mountain Guides scheme, and went on to earn IFMGA certification, the gold standard for high-altitude guiding. That recovery, and the discipline behind it, shapes how he talks about resilience and the relationship between pain, judgement, and continued performance. His climbing record gives the talks their credibility. In May 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single seven-day push without returning to base camp, a sequence no one had done before. He guided Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the Eiger’s north face in 2007 and to the Everest summit in 2009. In 2012, he carried a 1924 Olympic gold medal awarded to the 1922 British Everest expedition to the top, fulfilling an 88-year-old pledge that Lord Coe credited with helping launch the 2012 London Games. The corporate work translates this into specifics. How to set a risk tolerance before fatigue, ego or sunk cost distort the call. How to read team trust when individual capability is no longer the binding constraint. How to design decision processes that hold up when the time to think runs out. The frameworks are not academic. They are what an IFMGA guide does to bring people home from 8,000 metres. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making Risk tolerance and contingency planning Team trust and shared purpose Resilience after setback Leadership under physical and psychological pressure High-performance culture Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards facing high-consequence strategic decisions Sales kick-offs, partner conferences, and after-dinner events where lived authority is the brief Transformation and operations leadership groups navigating sustained pressure Awards evenings and hosted events requiring a credible, on-stage presence Audience outcomes A concrete account of how an expedition leader sets risk tolerance and decides when to turn back A vocabulary for talking about team trust as an operational capability, not a soft attribute A working model of how to make binary calls when information is incomplete and time is short A reset on what resilience looks like when the recovery is long and the prognosis is bad Energy and a story senior audiences will repeat, anchored in a verifiable climbing record

Why organisations work with Tim Hames He has run the trade body for British private equity and venture capital, so he speaks to investors, allocators and operators in their own language, not as an outside commentator. His China analysis is built on close study of the Chinese Communist Party’s internal operations, which is the level boards need when sanctions, supply chain and market access decisions are on the table. He spent a decade as chief leader writer and assistant editor at The Times, which means he can frame a complex political argument tightly enough for a board paper or an investor letter. He served as the first Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Commons, giving him direct experience of how Westminster machinery actually moves. He co-wrote The Long Shot with Dame Kate Bingham, the definitive insider account of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, and a Financial Times science book of the year. Biography highlights Director General of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), 2013 to 2019. Co-founder of Acuti Associates, a UK, US and China political and geopolitical risk advisory. Co-author with Dame Kate Bingham of The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain (Oneworld, 2022); Sunday Times business bestseller, FT science book of the year, Money Week politics book of the year. Former Assistant Editor, chief leader writer and weekly political columnist at The Times. First Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Commons, with a brief on parliamentary reform. Former Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University, 1989 to 1996, specialising in American and British government. Biography Most political risk advice on offer to boards is written by people who have only ever observed politics from outside. Hames has worked inside three of the systems that matter, Westminster, the British press, and the City, and the value comes from how he connects them. His BVCA years gave him an investor’s reflex for capital flows; his Times years taught him to write a sharp, defensible argument; his Speaker’s Office year showed him how Parliament actually decides. That combination shapes the way he reads the UK, US and China triangle through Acuti Associates, the advisory firm he co-founded. The focus is practical: what does a Trump second term mean for trans-Atlantic deal flow, how should a board think about China exposure when the signals from Beijing are deliberately opaque, what does the UK regulatory direction look like after a change of government. The answers are not generic. His co-authored book with Dame Kate Bingham, The Long Shot, is the inside record of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, the rare British state-led project of the last decade that actually worked. It was a Financial Times science book of the year and a Sunday Times business bestseller, and it doubles as a study in how political and commercial decision-making interact under pressure. He continues to advise financial institutions, professional services firms and technology companies, and serves as a Senior Adviser to FTI Consulting’s strategic communications practice. The work he is asked to do is consistent: translate political signal into commercial decision, before the headlines force the issue. Key speaking topics UK, US and China political risk Geopolitical risk for boards and investors US politics and the Trump factor Chinese Communist Party decision-making UK government, regulation and the post-election landscape Private equity and venture capital policy environment Lessons from the UK Vaccine Taskforce Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material China, US or UK regulatory exposure Private equity and venture capital firms briefing LPs on political risk Financial services and professional services leadership teams CEO and CFO offsites where geopolitics is a standing agenda item Audience outcomes A clearer read on what to take seriously and what to discount in current US, UK and China political coverage. Sharper questions to put to in-house government affairs, public policy and risk teams. A practical sense of how Westminster, Washington and Beijing actually decide, not how they are reported. A more disciplined frame for board discussions on China exposure, sanctions risk and regulatory direction.

Why organisations work with Adrian Joseph He has run an AI and data function of roughly 1,600 people inside a FTSE 100 company, so his advice to boards reflects what it takes to deliver at that scale, not what a strategy deck suggests. He sits on the boards of Direct Line, Allwyn and Great Ormond Street Hospital, giving him a current view of how AI lands in insurance, gaming and healthcare rather than a single-sector perspective. As an Expert Member of the UK AI Council he contributed to the National AI Strategy, so he reads regulation and policy as someone who has been inside the room, not as an outside observer. He holds an OBE for services to equality and diversity in business and was named the UK’s most influential minority ethnic technology leader by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards, which sharpens his credibility on the workforce side of AI transformation. His career path through Google, EY and BT gives audiences a rare triangulation: the hyperscaler view of what the technology can do, the consulting view of how to sell change internally, and the operator view of what actually breaks. Biography highlights Former Chief Data and AI Officer, BT Group, leading approximately 1,600 data and AI professionals. Former Senior Partner and Head of UK Data and Analytics for Financial Services at EY. Over ten years in senior leadership roles at Google across cloud, digital and data science. Non-Executive Director at Direct Line Insurance Group, Allwyn UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Expert Member of the UK Government’s AI Council and former Non-Executive Director at the Home Office. OBE for services to equality and diversity in business; named the UK’s most influential BAME technology leader by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards. Biography Running an AI and data function of 1,600 people inside BT Group taught Adrian Joseph OBE what most board conversations about AI miss. The commercial case is not won in the model. It is won in the operating model, the talent pipeline and the patience of the leadership team to let value compound. That operator’s view is what he brings into the room. Before BT, he spent over a decade at Google in senior cloud, digital and data science roles, then led the UK Data and Analytics practice for Financial Services at EY as a Senior Partner. The path gives him three lenses on the same problem. Hyperscalers built the infrastructure. Consultancies sold the transformation story. Incumbents have to actually run the thing in production under regulatory scrutiny. He currently holds non-executive director roles at Direct Line Insurance Group, Allwyn UK, the National Lottery operator, and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, and sits on the Technology Advisory Board at NatWest Group. As an Expert Member of the UK Government’s AI Council he contributed to the National AI Strategy, and served as a Non-Executive Director at the Home Office from 2015 to 2020. He was awarded an OBE in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for services to equality and diversity in business, and the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards named him the UK’s most influential Black, Asian and ethnic minority technology leader. That recognition is not decoration on the CV. It sharpens his argument that the AI advantage large organisations seek is inseparable from who they let build and govern the systems. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and commercial return Responsible AI and governance Data and AI operating models at scale Digital and cloud transformation in regulated industries AI policy and the National AI Strategy Diversity and inclusion in technology leadership Board-level oversight of AI risk Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and boards under pressure to show commercial return from AI and data spend Chief Data Officers, CIOs and CTOs building or restructuring AI and data functions Financial services, insurance, healthcare and public sector leaders navigating AI in regulated environments CHROs and transformation leads addressing the talent and inclusion dimension of AI adoption Audience outcomes A sharper line between AI activity that produces commercial return and AI activity that produces slides A realistic view of what an AI and data operating model looks like at enterprise scale, from someone who ran one Current reading of UK AI policy and regulation from inside the AI Council and National AI Strategy work Practical signals for boards on where to probe AI risk, governance and delivery maturity Language for connecting AI capability to workforce, talent and inclusion strategy

Why organisations work with Cole Brauer She has a first-person account of what it takes to run a high-stakes operation alone for 130 days, with no option to stop, and can translate that into language a board or executive team can actually use. She pairs the solo story with hard professional credibility: 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, first all-female team to win the Bermuda One-Two, and a current seat on Team Malizia’s IMOCA 60 programme alongside Boris Herrmann. She speaks credibly about risk management and preparation, not as abstractions, but as the specific trade-offs that kept a 40-foot racing boat sailing through the Southern Ocean for four months. She reaches audiences outside the usual sailing world; her real-time documentation of the voyage built a following of nearly 400,000 people and changed who pays attention to offshore racing. She is a rare example of a young operator, not a retired one, describing lessons that are still being tested at elite level. Biography highlights First American woman to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation, finishing second in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge in March 2024. 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (US Sailing). Co-skipper, Team Malizia, competing on the IMOCA 60 in The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Skipper of Class40 First Light; winner of the 2023 Bermuda One-Two with Cat Chimney, the first all-female team to take the race. Set a new reference time for a solo circumnavigation on a 40-foot boat, around seven days inside the previous mark. Featured across NBC News, The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and Robb Report for the Global Solo Challenge voyage. Biography Most people who survive 130 days alone at sea stop doing it afterwards. Cole Brauer came off the water in March 2024 as the first American woman to race solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world, and immediately began preparing for the next campaign. That sequence tells you most of what matters about how she works. The Global Solo Challenge took her 30,000 miles through the three Great Capes aboard First Light, a 40-foot Class40. She finished second overall out of 16 starters from 10 countries, set a new reference time for the class, and did it while injuring her ribs mid-race and managing a bout of dehydration that required her to insert her own IV under instruction from a remote medical team. US Sailing named her 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year the following February. The racing record is not a single-event story. In 2023 she and co-skipper Cat Chimney won the Bermuda One-Two outright, the first all-female team to do so, winning both legs by more than 12 hours. In 2025 she joined Team Malizia as co-skipper on the IMOCA 60 alongside Boris Herrmann and Will Harris, racing The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Her longer target is the 2028 Vendee Globe. What a business audience gets from her is the operational texture of decision-making when there is no one to escalate to. She is specific about the preparation, the trade-offs she rejected, the moments she got it wrong, and how she rebuilt composure in the next watch. The voyage was also a communications exercise: near-daily video from the boat built an audience of nearly 400,000 and changed who follows offshore racing. That combination of elite performance and direct, unvarnished narration is what makes her useful to leadership teams trying to understand what real endurance looks like from the inside. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible consequences Resilience and endurance in extreme environments Risk management and preparation High-performance offshore teams Leading yourself when no one is watching Narrative, visibility, and building a following around hard work Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement under pressure Sales kickoffs and company-wide events where the goal is genuine inspiration backed by a specific story Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want practitioner-level detail rather than metaphor Audience outcomes A vivid, concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry back into their own decisions A different model of resilience, rooted in routine, self-honesty, and recovery rather than willpower A reset on what courage looks like at working level, not a motivational abstraction

Why organisations work with Nigel Taberner His “Level 2 listening” framework – drawn from 10 years of operational hostage negotiation, not from theory – gives leaders a named, structured method for building trust and influencing outcomes when positional power and concessions are unavailable. The “negotiating when you have nothing to give” argument maps directly to the situations most commercial and leadership teams actually face: a resistant enterprise client, a difficult board conversation, a supplier who holds all the terms. An operational record of more than 130 high-risk incidents – armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations – resolved without loss of life at any incident he attended gives his principles a level of practical validation that is genuinely rare. He contributed to the national training programmes that produced negotiators for forces in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI, meaning the frameworks he teaches have been tested and refined across different cultures and high-stakes operational contexts. His interactive masterclasses give leadership and sales teams direct practice in the specific listening and influence techniques – not a theory of why they work, but structured repetition of actually applying them. Biography highlights 30-year career with Greater Manchester Police, rising from Police Constable in Moss Side to Detective Inspector 10 years as an operational hostage negotiator, attending more than 130 armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations States that no incident he attended ended in loss of life Detective Inspector for counter-terrorism policing operations at Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport Member of the national negotiator training team responsible for programmes delivered in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI Founder and Managing Director of Level2Communications Featured speaker at AICPA and CIMA events on commercial negotiation and leadership communication Biography Nigel Taberner joined Greater Manchester Police as a constable in Moss Side in the early 1990s. Three decades later, he retired as a Detective Inspector, having led counter-terrorism operations at Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. In between, he spent 10 years as an operational hostage negotiator. During those 10 years, he attended more than 130 high-risk incidents – armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations. He states that no one died in any incident he attended. From that experience, he drew a precise argument: what separates a resolved negotiation from a failed one is almost always the quality of listening, not the strength of the opening position. He calls this Level 2 listening – attending fully to what the other person is actually communicating, rather than preparing a response. The commercial application is direct. Most business negotiations happen without meaningful leverage. A sales team pursuing a reluctant client, a leader managing a team through unwanted change, a CFO trying to hold a supplier to terms – each faces the same dynamic a hostage negotiator faces when they hold no cards and can offer nothing in return. That is where the framework Taberner developed applies most sharply. He was a member of the national training team that developed new generations of negotiators for forces in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI. Since founding Level2Communications, he has brought those same principles to corporate audiences, including events run by AICPA and CIMA. Key speaking topics Negotiation without leverage High-stakes communication Active listening and influence Trust-building under pressure Crisis communication Leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence in negotiation Ideal for Senior leaders and executive teams facing difficult internal or external stakeholder conversations Sales and commercial teams whose negotiations depend on relationship and trust rather than pricing power Risk, security, and crisis management professionals HR and people leaders managing conflict, sensitive conversations, or organisational change Audience outcomes A named, structured framework – Level 2 listening – for influencing outcomes when leverage is absent Practical techniques for building trust quickly in unfamiliar or high-pressure conversations A clearer understanding of how professional negotiators approach conversations most people find difficult, and why their methods work Greater confidence in handling conflict, resistant stakeholders, and high-stakes decisions A reframed view of listening as a strategic tool rather than a passive courtesy

Why organisations work with Maria Santacaterina A published Wiley thesis (Adaptive Resilience) that gives boards a structured way to integrate AI and frontier technology without dismantling the human capability the enterprise still runs on. A formal AI ethics and risk role at ForHumanity, which means her view on governance is grounded in audit standards, not opinion. A humanities-and-international-relations frame that translates directly into how regulators, customers, and employees actually experience AI decisions, useful in rooms where the technology team cannot read the political weather. Recognised in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist, with a profile across HBR-adjacent and AI research podcasts (MLST, Love & Philosophy) that signals credibility to technical audiences as well as commercial ones. Working language fluency in English, French, Italian, and Spanish, which matters for European boards running AI programmes across jurisdictions with diverging regulatory regimes. Biography highlights Author of Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era, Wiley, 2023. ForHumanity Fellow, Ethics and Risk, contributing to AI audit and governance standards. Founder and CEO of Santacaterina, a UK board advisory firm focused on strategic leadership and digital transformation. Named in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist. Featured on Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) and Love & Philosophy on the human-AI relationship. M.A. in International Relations, with prior study in modern languages, philosophy, and political sociology. Biography AI deployment has run ahead of AI governance. Boards have signed off on programmes whose failure modes, regulatory exposure, and human consequences they would struggle to articulate under questioning. Santacaterina’s argument starts there: technology is a means, the operating model is the constraint, and human judgement is the asset most easily eroded in the rush to automate. Her book Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era (Wiley, 2023) sets out how to integrate frontier technology into the enterprise without hollowing out the people, ethics, and oversight that make it defensible. The argument draws on her humanities training, an M.A. in International Relations, and twenty-five years advising senior leaders through digital transformation programmes. That position is reinforced institutionally. As a ForHumanity Fellow in Ethics and Risk, she works on the audit standards that AI systems are now being assessed against. As founder and CEO of Santacaterina, she advises boards on strategy, transformation, and the governance posture that follows. Computer Weekly has named her among the most influential women in UK tech. What she brings into a room is the connection most AI conversations miss: between the technical decision, the governance frame, and the human cost of getting either wrong. She has been a featured voice on Machine Learning Street Talk, where the audience is technical, and on board-facing platforms, where it is not. The same argument holds in both rooms. Key speaking topics AI strategy, ethics, and board oversight Adaptive resilience in the digital enterprise Human-AI complementarity and the future of work Responsible innovation and AI governance frameworks Digital transformation and operating-model redesign Sustainable value creation in a frontier-technology era Ideal for Boards and audit committees commissioning AI governance and assurance CEOs and CTOs moving AI from pilot to operational deployment CHROs and transformation leads redesigning the workforce around AI capability Risk, ethics, and compliance leaders building defensible AI policy Audience outcomes A board-level vocabulary for governing AI decisions that stand up to regulatory and stakeholder scrutiny A clearer view of where human judgement remains the binding constraint on AI deployment, and where it does not Specific reference points from Adaptive Resilience for stress-testing the organisation’s digital strategy A grounded sense of how European AI regulation and ethics standards translate into operating choices