Risk Management

Why organisations work with Bruce Dickinson The “customers into fans” argument is drawn from 40 years of evidence. Iron Maiden has sold over 90 million albums across four decades without a conventional radio or streaming strategy. Dickinson frames this as the product of an operating philosophy – not a marketing achievement – giving commercial leaders a different lens on audience loyalty that few speakers can offer with this level of firsthand verification. His aviation credentials are professional-grade, not supplementary. Dickinson holds an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence and flew commercial Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines. He then founded, lost money on, restructured, and turned around a real aviation MRO business to profitability. His commentary on risk as a managed discipline – rather than a constraint to minimise – comes from the cockpit and the boardroom, not a consulting brief. His memoir is a documented argument, not a celebrity anecdote. What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins and No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list, is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously. It gives audiences and event organisers a readable reference point for the claims he makes on stage. He has lived a business turnaround, not studied one. Caerdav went from pre-tax losses of over £2 million to generating £400,000 net monthly profit after a restructure Dickinson led personally. This gives him direct credibility in conversations about founding companies, operational failure, and the discipline required to reverse course. His Honorary Group Captaincy of 601 Squadron RAF, his ranking as no.7 in Britain at fencing, and his eight-year BBC Radio 6 Music presenting career are all independently verifiable. They give the polymath narrative an evidential foundation that separates him from lifestyle speakers using the same positioning without the credentials to support it. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Iron Maiden since 1981; the band has sold over 90 million albums and performed more than 2,000 shows worldwide Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence holder; former Boeing 757 captain for Astraeus Airlines; personally piloted Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747-400 Ed Force One on multiple world tours Founder and Chairman of Caerdav (formerly Cardiff Aviation Ltd., founded 2012), a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company at St Athan, South Wales, operating with EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals Author of What Does This Button Do? (HarperCollins, 2017) – No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography and New York Times Bestseller Honorary Group Captain, 601 (County of London) Squadron, Royal Air Force – appointed January 2020 Ranked no.7 in Great Britain at fencing (foil); named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine (2009) BBC Radio 6 Music presenter, 2002–2010 Biography Building a global fanbase and selling over 90 million records across four decades – without conventional radio airplay – looks like a creative achievement. Bruce Dickinson frames it differently: as the outcome of an operating philosophy applied consistently, in which giving an audience something they cannot get elsewhere becomes a structural principle rather than a marketing ambition. Dickinson is Iron Maiden’s lead vocalist, a role he has held since 1981. He is also a qualified commercial airline captain holding an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence, who flew Boeing 757s for Astraeus Airlines and piloted the band’s Boeing 747-400, Ed Force One, on multiple world tours. When Astraeus collapsed in 2011, he founded Cardiff Aviation – later restructured as Caerdav – a certified aircraft maintenance, repair, overhaul and pilot training company operating from a former RAF base in South Wales. Holding EASA, FAA and UK CAA approvals, the company now generates £400,000 net monthly profit after a turnaround Dickinson led personally following years of losses. His memoir, What Does This Button Do?, published by HarperCollins in 2017, reached No.1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list and became a New York Times bestseller. It is a first-person account of running two demanding professional careers simultaneously – not a retrospective on fame, but a practical argument for how creative ambition and operational discipline coexist. The specific commercial lesson he draws from that experience – turning customers into fans, not merely buyers – is developed through Iron Maiden’s documented business model and translates directly to organisations trying to build durable audience commitment in any sector. Appointed Honorary Group Captain of 601 (County of London) Squadron RAF in 2020, ranked no.7 in Britain at fencing, and named a living polymath by Intelligent Life magazine in 2009, Dickinson brings to speaking engagements a range of firsthand disciplines that give his arguments about performance, precision and resilience direct evidential weight. Key speaking topics Turning customers into fans Entrepreneurship and business building Risk management and business turnaround Creative discipline in commercial performance Team cohesion under sustained pressure Corporate culture and long-duration performance Aviation and the travel industry Ideal for CEOs, commercial directors, and senior leadership teams working on customer loyalty and brand differentiation Entrepreneur and business founder audiences seeking firsthand perspective on building and restructuring real companies under pressure Marketing and brand strategy events where the relationship between internal culture and customer commitment is the central theme Aviation, travel, and logistics sector conferences Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of customer loyalty as an operating and cultural outcome rather than a marketing result Practical principles from commercial aviation and four decades of global touring enterprise applied directly to business discipline and team performance A firsthand account of business failure, restructuring, and turnaround drawn from Caerdav’s trajectory – directly applicable to leaders navigating operational difficulty Specific language and argument for what it means to build an audience that is genuinely committed rather than merely transactional A concrete case study in how creative ambition and operational rigour function as complementary rather than competing forces in high-performance organisations

Why organisations work with Carl Bildt He negotiated the Dayton Peace Accords as EU Special Envoy and went on to serve as the first High Representative in Bosnia. Few speakers have personally built a post-war political settlement from the inside. He has run a European country, then run its foreign policy through the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Arab Spring and the launch of the EU’s Eastern Partnership. The view from a head of government and a foreign minister, in the same career, is rare on the geopolitics circuit. He co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations, the largest pan-European foreign policy network. Briefings are informed by a continent-wide research operation, not one capital’s perspective. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate and The Washington Post and is widely cited on Ukraine, Russia, China and transatlantic strategy. Audiences get the published thinker, not a generic former politician. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation and was its first non-US trustee, giving him a working relationship with the US strategic research establishment that most European speakers do not have. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Sweden, 1991 to 1994. Foreign Minister of Sweden, 2006 to 2014. EU Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia and co-chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference, 1995. First High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995 to 1997. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Balkans, 1999 to 2001. Co-Chair, European Council on Foreign Relations. Board of Trustees, RAND Corporation. Senior Adviser to the Wallenberg Foundations. Author, “Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Columnist for Project Syndicate, contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Biography The European security order that boards have priced into their strategy for thirty years is being rewritten in real time. Ukraine, sanctions regimes, US policy swings and renewed Chinese pressure are no longer foreign-affairs reading. They feed directly into capital allocation, country risk and supply chain decisions in Berlin, Paris, London and Stockholm. Carl Bildt has watched this shift from inside the rooms where it has been argued out. As Prime Minister of Sweden in the early 1990s, he led the negotiation of Sweden’s accession to the European Union. As EU Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia, he co-chaired the Dayton Peace Conference and then served as the first High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, building a peace settlement on the ground. Returning to office as Foreign Minister of Sweden from 2006 to 2014, he was one of the architects of the EU’s Eastern Partnership and a vocal European voice through Russia’s war in Georgia and the early years of the Ukraine crisis. He co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations, sits on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation, and writes regularly for Project Syndicate and The Washington Post. His “Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia” remains one of the few first-person accounts of building a post-war political order in Europe. Audiences book him for what that experience yields now: a direct, unsentimental read on Russia, the transatlantic relationship and the trajectory of the European project under pressure. Key speaking topics European geopolitics and the future of the EU The transatlantic relationship and US foreign policy Russia, Ukraine and the post-1989 security order China and the global rules-based system Sanctions, political risk and country exposure Post-conflict diplomacy and peace negotiation Northern European and Nordic political economy Ideal for Board and executive team off-sites where geopolitical risk has become a strategic variable International banks, asset managers and insurers reviewing country and sanctions exposure Industrial and energy groups with material exposure to Europe, Russia, Ukraine or China Public affairs, policy and government relations leadership in multinationals Audience outcomes A current, named read on Russia, Ukraine and the trajectory of European security from someone who has been in the room. A clearer view of how transatlantic policy shifts under successive US administrations translate into European corporate exposure. A working framework for thinking about sanctions, energy and supply chain risk through a geopolitical, not just regulatory, lens. A sense of where the EU is going as a foreign and security actor, from a head of government who negotiated his country into it.

Why organisations work with Carl Miller He coined the term SOCMINT (social media intelligence) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, which means a room gets the person who defined the field of online influence analysis, not someone summarising it second-hand. His method is first-person and investigative. He has been on cyber-crime raids and spent five years tracing a dark-web murder-for-hire marketplace, so his account of how digital threats actually operate comes from inside them, not from a slide of statistics. He connects technology to power in terms a board can act on, explaining how a tweet moves a stock, how bots reach an electorate, and how disinformation lands on a brand before the communications team sees it coming. He has led more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, and cyber-crime, giving him a span across the threats most organisations encounter only one at a time. Biography highlights Co-founder and Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, the first UK think tank institute dedicated to the digital world. Coined “social media intelligence” (SOCMINT) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett. Author of The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab (Penguin Random House, 2018), joint winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize. Host of Kill List (Wondery/Novel), The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024 and Broadcast Press Guild Podcast of the Year 2025, reaching #1 in seven countries. Visiting Fellow, Department of War Studies, King’s College London; founder of CASM Technology. Contributor to The Economist, Wired, the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian; former presenter on the BBC’s Click. Biography More crime now happens online than offline, and most organisations are still structured to defend a perimeter that no longer exists. Carl Miller has spent over a decade documenting where control has actually moved. In 2012, working with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, he coined the term social media intelligence, SOCMINT, and built the discipline that now sits behind how governments and companies read online influence. That work is grounded in an institution he helped create. He co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, the first UK think tank dedicated to the digital world, and has run more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, radicalisation, and cyber-crime as its Research Director. What separates him from most technology commentators is that he goes to the places he writes about. His book The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab traced power from a suburban cyber-crime raid to the engine rooms of Silicon Valley and won the 2019 Transmission Prize. The reporting is immersive, evidenced, and built from direct encounters with hackers, police units, and disinformation operators. His Kill List podcast came from a five-year investigation into a dark-web marketplace selling murder for hire, where he raced to warn targeted strangers while authorities hesitated. The series topped charts in seven countries and was named The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024. It is the clearest demonstration of his core argument: digital systems now hold real power over real lives, and the people who understand that power are rarely the ones in charge of it. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information warfare The transformation of power in the digital age Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) Digital crime and cyber-security Threats to democracy and elections Artificial intelligence and control The future of digital business risk Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting strategy under digital, reputational, and information risk CISOs and heads of security reframing cyber as a leadership issue, not a compliance one Communications, public affairs, and risk leaders facing disinformation and online influence Government, policy, and institutional audiences working on democracy, security, and tech governance Audience outcomes A clear map of where power has moved in the digital age and who now holds it A working grasp of how disinformation and online influence operations are built and deployed Front-line examples of how digital crime and cyber-threats actually function, drawn from direct investigation A sharper sense of which digital risks reach the balance sheet, and how early they become visible

Why organisations work with Caroline Elliott Crisis decision-making earned in real avalanche rescues. Caroline has been on the team making the call when a four-year-old was buried under two metres of snow and the survival window was eighteen minutes. A rare set of named technical credentials inside a closed European emergency system: the only British woman fully qualified across French ski patrol rescue disciplines, the first British woman in a French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit, and a graduate of ENSA Chamonix. Direct experience of multi-agency coordination when none of the agencies have worked together before. Most leadership audiences understand the problem in theory; few have heard it explained by someone who has run it. Practical content on psychological safety and team performance, drawn from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in survival rates. A track record of operating across language and cultural barriers inside a male-led emergency profession in France, told without standard motivational packaging. Biography highlights Only British woman to hold the full pisteur secouriste 2ème degré qualification, including avalanche bombing, NivoMétéo snow weather forecasting and avalanche dog handling. Graduate of École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA), Chamonix, 2011. First British woman to enter a French Fire and Rescue specialist mountain Search and Rescue dog handler unit (CGSR 64, Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Author of Fjord’s Mountain Mission (2021), the children’s snow safety book endorsed by the International Ski Federation (FIS). French edition published by Catherine Destivelle’s Les Éditions du Mont Blanc; the book is available in four languages. Holds the artificier qualification with ANENA (Association Nationale pour l’Étude de la Neige et des Avalanches) and the NivoMétéo qualification with Météo France. Founder of FjordSAR. Works as an international keynote speaker, snow safety educator, and risk management consultant for wintersports accidents. Represented at the Fédération Internationale des Patrouilles de Ski (FIPS) Conference, Riksgrenzen, 2024. Biography An avalanche call gives a rescue team about eighteen minutes. After that, survival rates collapse. Caroline Elliott has spent her professional life inside that window, working as a fully qualified pisteur secouriste in France and as an avalanche search and rescue dog handler with a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain unit. That career is unusual on multiple counts. Caroline is the only British woman fully qualified across the French ski patrol rescue system, graduating from the École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA) in Chamonix in 2011. Alongside the patrol qualification, she holds artificier accreditation with ANENA, the French authority on controlled avalanche blasting, and NivoMétéo accreditation with Météo France. She was also the first British woman to enter a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit. What this profession teaches, and what makes it useful in a corporate setting, is the operating reality of high-stakes environments. Teams making the decisions are often working with incomplete information and across services that have never worked together. Communication has to be clear in two languages. Trust between strangers has to be operational before the rescue starts. For corporate audiences, Caroline translates those operating conditions into team performance terms, particularly composure under pressure and the communication discipline that holds when conditions deteriorate. Her illustrations come straight from the work. An early-morning controlled blast above a sleeping resort. A family rescue where the four-year-old came up alive after two hours under two metres of snow. A multi-agency operation where command authority had to be established in real time. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-pressure environments Crisis communication under stress Risk management and decision-making under uncertainty Multi-agency coordination in crisis Resilience in hazardous environments Psychological safety in high-stakes teams Women in male-led professional cultures Ideal for Leadership and operational teams in industries where decisions carry real risk, particularly emergency services, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, defence and insurance. Organisations preparing teams for restructuring, multi-agency programmes, or environments where cross-silo coordination has to work the first time it is tested. All-staff and conference audiences at events on resilience, crisis leadership, and team performance under pressure. Women-in-leadership programmes inside male-led professional cultures. Audience outcomes A specific picture of how decisions actually get made when time pressure is genuine, drawn from named operational scenarios rather than case study reconstructions. Concrete tests for whether their own team’s communication and coordination would hold when conditions deteriorate. A view of psychological safety as an operational variable, grounded in environments where it functions or fails in real time. Renewed energy and a different reference point for what “high pressure” actually means in their own work.

Why organisations work with Caspar Berry Berry’s argument has a mathematical foundation, not just a motivational one: every decision is an allocation of scarce resources under uncertainty, and the mathematics of that process produce outcomes that are counterintuitive and consistently misread by leaders operating on instinct and habit. He makes the case, grounded in decision-making science, not poker storytelling, that risk aversion is not conservatism but a measurable source of underperformance; organisations leave value on the table not by taking too many risks but by taking the wrong ones for the wrong reasons. The poker metaphor functions as a precision instrument: it makes uncertainty undeniable in a way that corporate language typically suppresses, which creates genuine permission for leaders to reexamine how they decide rather than simply defending what they have always done. Berry has taken this framework to audiences at RiskMinds International (the senior financial risk conference) and to the UK Home Office leadership, demonstrating that the argument holds at both the technically demanding and the culturally complex ends of the risk conversation. Over 400 Mind Gym training sessions and more than 2,500 keynotes across 30 countries have stress-tested and refined the material against organisations from Google and KPMG to Morgan Stanley and Barclays, audiences where the argument must be robust, not just engaging. Biography highlights MA in Economics and Anthropology, Cambridge University Professional poker player, Las Vegas: three years competing against leading professionals on the circuit Co-founded Twenty First Century Media; built to 40 people; sold to Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps Plc in 2008 Poker adviser on the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale; co-presenter of Sky Poker and host of Poker Night Live Trainer, The Mind Gym: over 400 sessions delivered to 100+ companies Contributor, Financial Risks Today, on behavioural risk and decision-making, for financial risk professionals TEDxAcademy: “Dealing with Uncertainty”; featured speaker, RiskMinds International ‘Best New Speaker’, Academy of Chief Executives, 2008; Fellow of the RSA Over 2,500 speeches and workshops in 30+ countries; clients include Google, IBM, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, PayPal, Shell and the UK Home Office Biography Caspar Berry studied economics at Cambridge, spent three years as a professional poker player in Las Vegas, built and sold a media company, and then built one of the more rigorous arguments in the speaking world for why most organisations are making worse decisions than they think. The career arc is unusual. The intellectual case it produces is the point. The core argument is mathematical before it is motivational. Berry treats every decision as an investment; an allocation of scarce resources under conditions of uncertainty. Decision-making science, he argues, reveals a set of counterintuitive implications that consistently lead intelligent leaders astray: some decisions that feel prudent are quantifiably expensive; some that feel reckless are simply the rational choice. Poker, where uncertainty is undeniable and unambiguous, is the vehicle through which those implications become accessible. After Las Vegas, Berry co-founded Twenty First Century Media, built it to 40 staff and sold it to Ten Alps Plc. He spent several years as a trainer at The Mind Gym (over 400 sessions across more than 100 companies) before establishing his own practice. He has since delivered over 2,500 keynotes and workshops in more than 30 countries, for clients ranging from Google, IBM and PayPal to Morgan Stanley, Barclays and the UK Home Office. He has spoken at RiskMinds International alongside senior financial risk professionals and contributes to Financial Risks Today on behavioural risk and decision-making. Berry holds a Fellowship of the RSA and was named Best New Speaker by the Academy of Chief Executives in 2008. His TEDxAcademy talk on uncertainty has been cited by investment firms as a reference point for decision-making under ambiguity. The argument is neither a poker book nor a leadership manifesto. It is a framework for thinking about risk – and it is specific enough to be genuinely useful. Key speaking topics Risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty The mathematics and psychology of risk Organisational risk culture and innovation Intuition, judgement and cognitive bias in high-stakes decisions Calculated risk as competitive strategy Fear of failure and long-term performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive boards examining risk appetite, innovation culture, or strategic decision-making Strategy and transformation leads responsible for shifting how their organisations act under uncertainty Financial services, professional services, and consulting firms where risk literacy is commercially material Conference programmers building around leadership, performance, or organisational resilience Audience outcomes A reframing of risk: from a hazard to be minimised to a resource to be understood and allocated deliberately Working understanding of how decision-making science applies to everyday business choices; including the counterintuitive implications most leaders have never been taught Greater awareness of how intuition and cognitive bias distort risk assessment, and practical means of compensating Organisational language and permission to discuss risk appetite at leadership level with precision rather than generality A renewed confidence to act under uncertainty rather than waiting for a certainty that will not arrive

Why organisations work with Caspar Veldkamp Direct working experience as the foreign minister of an EU member state during the 2025 NATO summit year, including hosting the first NATO summit ever held in the Netherlands. A documented record of policy principle: he resigned the foreign ministry over the cabinet’s refusal to advance further measures on Israel, and authored the EU review proposal that bears his name. Constituency-level experience of China at the EBRD board, now extended into the EU’s most senior diplomatic post in Beijing from summer 2026. Frontline diplomatic service through two of Europe’s hardest decades of crisis: ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2015 and to Greece during the Eurozone and migration emergencies. Comfort moving between the transatlantic and Brussels frames, grounded in early service on Senator Richard Lugar’s staff and political counsellor work in Washington. Biography highlights Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2024 to 2025. EU Ambassador to China designate, taking up post in Beijing in summer 2026. Board Director, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, 2020 to 2023. Ambassador of the Netherlands to Israel (2011 to 2015) and to Greece (2015 to 2019). Hosted the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague. Author of “the Caspar proposal” for EU review of the EU to Israel Association Agreement. Biography The cabinet meeting on 22 August 2025 ended with the Dutch foreign minister resigning his post. Caspar Veldkamp had proposed further measures on Israel over the conduct of the war in Gaza, including an import ban on goods from settlements in the occupied territories. The cabinet would not move. He left office the same evening, and the New Social Contract ministers followed him out in solidarity. It was the kind of public exit that explains in one moment what a leader’s working principle is. The career that led there is unusually broad for a sitting politician. Veldkamp ran the Dutch embassies in Israel from 2011 to 2015 and in Greece from 2015 to 2019, the second through the Eurozone and migration crises. Between politics and diplomacy he sat on the EBRD board in London for three years, with constituency responsibility for the Netherlands, China, Mongolia, North Macedonia and Armenia, chairing the Board Steering Group during a period of governance reform and active climate and Ukraine work. As foreign minister he hosted the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, the first summit held in the Netherlands. He argued publicly that the two-percent NATO defence benchmark was no longer adequate, backed sustained military support for Ukraine, and authored what came to be called the Caspar proposal: a formal EU review of Israel’s compliance with the EU to Israel Association Agreement. The proposal drew broader member state support than expected and reframed the conversation inside the bloc. In summer 2026 he takes up the post of European Union Ambassador to China, the first Dutch national appointed to the role. For organisations sitting on China exposure, transatlantic supply chain decisions, or the next round of EU sanctions logic, the perspective he carries into Beijing is the one boards are now looking to brief against. Key speaking topics European geopolitics and EU foreign policy NATO, transatlantic security and Ukraine EU to China relations and the Brussels view of Beijing Sanctions, ESG and the Middle East Diplomacy under coalition and parliamentary constraint Crisis-period leadership in foreign ministries and embassies Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material China, Israel or Russia exposure CEO and CFO offsites focused on geopolitical scenario planning Banking, insurance and energy leadership teams sizing sanctions and policy risk Public affairs, government relations and risk leadership functions Audience outcomes A clearer read on how EU foreign policy decisions are actually formed across capitals. A working framework for what the next phase of EU to China relations is likely to demand of European businesses. Specific reference points on Ukraine support, NATO posture and the trajectory of sanctions logic into 2026 and beyond. A first-person account of holding a foreign ministry under coalition strain, useful for any leader managing decisions that carry public principle as well as commercial weight.

Why organisations work with Cathy O’Dowd Her central argument that internal team dynamics, not the external environment, are the primary source of failure in high-performing groups, is drawn from specific, documented expeditions and maps directly onto the decisions senior leadership teams are already wrestling with. The 1996 South African Everest expedition provides one of the most detailed public case studies of a high-performing team collapsing through ego and power-play, then recovering to reach the summit. That arc of breakdown, diagnosis and recommitment is the substance of the work. Her participation in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat (a first ascent of a 10-kilometre ridgeline that had defeated ten previous international expeditions) provides a tested model for executing ambitious objectives when the plan meets an unpredictable environment and must adapt in real time. She makes a specific, counterintuitive claim: that most failures in extreme environments are self-created. This challenges how many organisations locate and manage risk, and gives leaders a different set of questions to ask of their own teams. As a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its highest honour, the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she brings the structural rigour of a career speaker to content that has been tested in front of senior corporate audiences across 46+ countries. Biography highlights First woman to summit Everest from both its south (1996) and north (1999) sides – an unmatched record in mountaineering history First South African to summit Everest; member of the First South African Everest Expedition (1996) Fourth woman to climb Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2000) Participant in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat – a first ascent of one of the last major unclimbed lines on an 8,000-metre peak; the summit pair were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or Author of Just for the Love of It; co-author of Everest: Free to Decide Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland; recipient of the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, the PSA’s highest honour Master’s degree in Journalism, Rhodes University; former university lecturer Professional speaker for 27+ years; presented to organisations in 46+ countries on six continents Biography Most teams of ambitious, capable people contain the seeds of their own failure. Not because the external environment defeats them, but because the competition between high-performers: the very drive that brought them to the room, erodes the collaboration they need to succeed. Cathy O’Dowd watched this happen in real time, at altitude, with lives in the balance. O’Dowd became the first woman to summit Everest from both its south and north sides, completing the south-side ascent in 1996 and returning for the north in 1999. What formed her thinking was not the summits but the crisis that preceded the first: the in-fighting, power-plays, and near-disintegration of a team that had every credential to succeed. Her analysis of that expedition: what broke, what was rebuilt, and how the team reached the top despite itself, is the foundation of her corporate work. Her second major case study is the 2012 Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, a 10-kilometre Himalayan ridgeline that had repelled ten previous international expeditions. The six-person team committed to a first ascent with no existing blueprint and had to adapt in real time as the plan met a complex, unforgiving environment. Two teammates completed the ascent and were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or, mountaineering’s most prestigious prize. O’Dowd uses this expedition as a model for executing ambitious objectives when certainty is unavailable and the original plan cannot hold. A Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she has presented in 46+ countries over 27 years. She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University, where she also lectured. Her presentations are built not on inspiration but on diagnosis: specific, transferable analysis of why high-performing groups succeed and fail under pressure. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership in high-stakes environments Executing ambitious plans under uncertainty Resilience, failure, and recovery Risk, responsibility, and the limits of control Adapting strategy when execution meets reality Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes decisions under uncertainty Organisations running ambitious transformation, innovation, or change programmes Leadership conferences centred on team performance and organisational resilience Boards and executive committees examining risk, accountability, and decision-making frameworks Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic framework for understanding why high-performing teams fail from within, not from outside Practical analysis of how ego, competition, and communication breakdown manifest under pressure, and how to interrupt those patterns A case-study model for adapting ambitious plans when execution meets an unpredictable environment A reframed understanding of organisational risk: internal dynamics as a primary variable, not just external conditions Greater clarity on what leadership under genuine uncertainty looks and feels like, drawn from real decisions with irreversible consequences

Why organisations work with Chloe Colliver She has run live detection work across the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US elections, which means she can speak to election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour from operational experience rather than commentary. She has sat on both sides of the table, as a lead investigator at ISD naming tactics used against platforms, and in senior online safety policy at Ofcom shaping how UK regulation will actually be enforced. Her testimony to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and the Swedish, Canadian, French, German and New Zealand governments gives boards a direct line into how legislators are thinking about tech regulation. She co-authored the ISD reports that set the methodological vocabulary for this field, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage, cited by journalists, regulators and platform policy teams. She is fluent on camera, with sustained appearances on CNN, BBC Newsnight, Sky News and Channel 4, which translates into a keynote register that works for mixed executive and technical audiences. Biography highlights Head of Digital Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, leading a global team of analysts on disinformation and online extremism. Now in senior online safety policy at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, building the evidence base behind the Online Safety Act. Co-author of ISD reports including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle, The 101 of Disinformation Detection and Click Here For Outrage. Expert witness to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and to the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments. Contributor to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism alongside Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. BA History, Clare College, Cambridge; MA History, Yale, as a Mellon Fellow. Biography Coordinated manipulation online is no longer a fringe concern for communications teams. It is an operating risk that touches elections, public health, brand safety and regulatory exposure all at once. The field that studies it seriously is small, and Chloe Colliver has been at the centre of it for most of the last decade. At the Institute for Strategic Dialogue she led a global team mapping disinformation, hate speech and extremist content across major platforms. Her team ran live analysis during the German, European Parliamentary, UK, Swedish and US election cycles, and co-authored the research reports that shaped how journalists, regulators and platform policy staff now talk about coordinated inauthentic behaviour, including Hoodwinked, Spin Cycle and Click Here For Outrage. She has given expert evidence to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and advised the Swedish, New Zealand, Canadian, French and German governments on tech regulation. She also contributed to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the cross-platform body that includes Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google. She now holds a senior online safety role at Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, where she leads work on the evidence base for the Online Safety Act. That shift from platform-level investigator to regulator-side policy lead is what makes her rare on a stage: she has named the tactics, tested the interventions, and now sits inside the body writing the rules. Key speaking topics Disinformation and information integrity Online safety regulation and the Online Safety Act Election interference and coordinated inauthentic behaviour Platform governance and content moderation Digital policy and tech regulation Extremism and online radicalisation Crisis communications in a manipulated information environment Ideal for Boards, CEOs and comms leaders preparing for regulatory, reputational or election-year information risk. Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Heads of Trust and Safety navigating the Online Safety Act and wider platform regulation. Policy, public affairs and government relations teams tracking how UK, EU and G7 legislators are moving on disinformation and online harms. Security, intelligence and threat teams integrating platform-level signals into enterprise risk reporting. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how coordinated disinformation is actually built, distributed and monetised, with named examples from recent election cycles. A grounded read on where UK and EU online safety regulation is heading and what it will require from platforms, advertisers and large employers. A working vocabulary for discussing information integrity at board level, separating genuine risk from noise. A sense of which interventions have been tested and which have not, drawn from ISD research and regulator-side evidence work.

Why organisations work with Chris Kelly He built the privacy, safety and public policy functions at Facebook from employee 25 onward, across the period the platform moved from college network to global infrastructure. He has negotiated directly with Attorneys General in all 50 US states on child safety and platform accountability, which is a register of regulator engagement almost no other operator can match. He combines Harvard Law training with live commercial stakes: Netscape in the Microsoft antitrust case, Diamond Multimedia in the first MP3 player litigation, then the defining privacy debates of the social web. He has translated operating experience into public policy, co-authoring California Proposition 35 on human trafficking, which passed with around 81 percent support. He sits on the investor side of technology and sport, as Sacramento Kings co-owner and former board chair at Fandor and MoviePass, so boards get a peer voice rather than an outside adviser. Biography highlights Chief Privacy Officer, first General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy at Facebook, 2005 to 2009. Employee 25 at Facebook, introduced to the company by Sean Parker. Harvard Law School JD; prior degrees from Georgetown and Yale. Represented Netscape in the Microsoft antitrust case and Diamond Multimedia in the landmark MP3 player suit while in private practice at Wilson Sonsini and Baker and McKenzie. Co-author of California Proposition 35 on human trafficking, approved by roughly 81 percent of voters in 2012. Co-owner of the Sacramento Kings since 2013; former board chair of Fandor and MoviePass. Biography Facebook was a college network with a few million users when Chris Kelly became employee 25 in September 2005. By the time he left in 2009, the platform had hundreds of millions of users and was the subject of sustained scrutiny from regulators, attorneys general and the press. Kelly was the person inside the company holding the pen on how it answered them. As Chief Privacy Officer, first General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy, he built the functions that most technology companies only assemble after a crisis. That included real-identity and safety policies, enforcement staffing, and a direct working relationship with Attorneys General in all 50 US states on child protection. The model he shaped is now standard practice across the industry. His path into that seat matters. A Harvard Law JD with earlier degrees from Georgetown and Yale, he came out of Wilson Sonsini and Baker and McKenzie, where he represented Netscape against Microsoft and Diamond Multimedia in the suit that opened the MP3 era. Each fight turned on how new technology collides with existing law, which is the exact question boards now face on AI, data and platform liability. He has since extended that work beyond Facebook. He co-authored California Proposition 35, a human trafficking measure that passed with roughly 81 percent of the vote, ran in the 2010 Democratic primary for California Attorney General, and moved into investing as a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings and former board chair at Fandor and MoviePass. The through line is practical: how technology organisations and the public institutions around them build rules that hold when growth and scrutiny arrive together. Key speaking topics Data privacy and platform governance Technology regulation and policy Online safety and child protection Scaling a hyperscale technology business Legal and regulatory risk for digital platforms Silicon Valley operating lessons Public policy and technology investment Ideal for Boards and general counsel at technology, platform and data-intensive businesses preparing for regulatory scrutiny. CEOs and founders scaling products into markets with live privacy, safety or content-liability exposure. Chief Privacy Officers, CISOs and policy heads designing governance across multiple jurisdictions. Investors and non-executive directors evaluating technology holdings where policy risk affects valuation. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how regulators and attorneys general are thinking about platform accountability, from someone who has sat across the table from them. Operating detail on how Facebook built privacy, safety and policy functions during hypergrowth, and what held up against scrutiny. A framework for deciding which governance decisions belong in product, which in legal, and which in public policy. Insight into how technology companies and public institutions negotiate the rules around new categories, drawing on the Microsoft antitrust and MP3 cases as well as the social-media era. A candid view of the trade-offs between scale, user trust and regulatory exposure.

Why organisations work with Chris Moon Reference points for crisis decision-making come directly from surviving Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia and self-treating critical injuries inside a Mozambique minefield after a landmine explosion in 1995. Brings formal academic grounding to the subject: a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester, focused on human behaviour and management theory. Credentials a senior audience registers immediately: an MBE awarded in 1996 for services to the HALO Trust, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter. Has been booked by Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, Skanska, Direct Line Group and London Business School executive programmes, typically on leadership in high-pressure environments. Biography highlights Former British Army officer, commissioned into the Royal Military Police after graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Led landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust in Cambodia and Mozambique from 1993; awarded MBE in 1996 for services to demining. Survived abduction by Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia and negotiated the release of himself and two colleagues from captivity. Lost his right arm and lower right leg after a landmine explosion in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995. First amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables (1997); subsequently completed the Badwater 135 ultra in Death Valley and, in 2024, a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago at age 62. Author of One Step Beyond (Pan Macmillan); Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester; honorary doctorates from Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter. Biography A landmine detonated in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995. Chris Moon, then running mine clearance for the HALO Trust, lost his right arm and lower right leg. He treated himself where he lay, and reached a South African hospital where doctors said they had never seen anyone survive with so little blood remaining. Moon came to the work through the British Army. After Sandhurst and three years of operational duty with the Royal Military Police, he left in 1993 to lead landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust. Two years before the Mozambique explosion, he had already negotiated his way out of Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia along with two colleagues. The MBE followed in 1996, for services to demining. Within a year of leaving hospital he completed the London Marathon. In 1997 he became the first amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables, the 250km race across the Sahara. The Badwater 135 in Death Valley followed. At age 62, in 2024, he completed a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago. Alongside the endurance work he holds a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester and serves as an adviser to the NHS on prosthetics. The organisations that retain him now tend to be those in which decisions carry operational weight: Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Skanska, Direct Line Group, and London Business School executive programmes. In those rooms, his argument keeps coming back to one observation. The responses leaders fall back on under severe pressure are the ones they have already rehearsed in ordinary conditions. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under pressure Crisis response and operational risk Resilience and human performance Safety culture in high-risk industries Personal accountability in operational settings Ideal for Senior leadership teams in operationally intensive industries: construction, utilities, energy, defence, transport Heads of risk, safety and security responsible for how the organisation performs in a crisis Boards and executive programmes working on leadership in high-pressure conditions Health and safety conferences where the audience is operational leadership Audience outcomes Recalibration of what operating “under pressure” actually involves when conditions are genuine A stock of specific, verifiable examples of decision-making in extreme conditions that audiences can apply to their own work Vocabulary for discussing risk, accountability and resilience that is grounded in operational terms A baseline for what sustained performance under difficult conditions looks like across three decades

Why organisations work with Christian Berg A Club of Rome author whose report mapped the structural barriers blocking sustainability across economy, politics, law, and technology, giving boards a diagnostic rather than a slogan. Direct experience translating sustainability strategy into corporate practice as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, not commentary from outside the firm. Advisory standing at federal government level through the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Merkel’s Future Dialogue. Live exposure to capital-allocation decisions as an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank. Academic authority across two German universities and a transdisciplinary base in physics, philosophy, theology, and engineering, which lets him connect technical and ethical questions in the same conversation. Biography highlights Author of Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers (Routledge), published as a report to the Club of Rome. Former Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, responsible for the sustainability consulting function. Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Clausthal University of Technology. Visiting Professor for Corporate Sustainability at Saarland University. Co-founder and board member of Think Tank 30 within the German Chapter of the Club of Rome. Investment committee member at GLS Bank. Biography The 2030 Agenda set the targets. It offered little guidance on which structural barriers stop organisations from meeting them. Christian Berg’s Club of Rome report, Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers, was written to answer that question across economy, politics, law, and technology in a single integrated frame. That frame is not theoretical. He spent more than a decade as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, leading the sustainability consulting function inside one of the largest enterprise software firms in the world. He has also led the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Future Dialogue, putting him in the room where federal sustainability policy was negotiated. His academic base sits at Clausthal University of Technology and Saarland University, where he holds professorships in sustainability and corporate sustainability. The transdisciplinary training behind the work, in physics, philosophy, theology, and mechanical engineering, is what allows him to move between the technical, ethical, and economic registers a board conversation actually requires. The capital allocation question is live for him too. As an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank, Berg sits inside the decisions that test whether sustainability claims survive contact with credit and risk. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability strategy Sustainable finance and capital allocation Barriers to sustainability transformation ESG operating substance Climate action and resilience Innovation under sustainability constraints Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting or reviewing ESG and net zero strategy Chief sustainability officers, CFOs, and treasury leads navigating capital allocation under transition Investor and banking audiences working at the intersection of finance and sustainability Innovation and strategy leaders translating sustainability commitments into product and operating decisions Audience outcomes A clearer map of the structural barriers blocking their sustainability commitments, from incentives to regulation Sharper criteria for which sustainability investments are likely to compound and which will stall A working vocabulary for connecting net zero ambition to capital allocation decisions Reference points from corporate practice at SAP, federal policy, and the GLS Bank investment committee

Why organisations work with Christian Havrehed He has operated inside the Sino-Western seam at every level: management consulting at L.E.K., MD roles in Hong Kong and Shanghai with KPMG, Allianz and VIKING, and a two-person expedition partnership that lasted 70 days at sea. Mandarin fluency lets him work directly with Chinese stakeholders in the room, not through a translator, which materially changes the quality of preparation and post-meeting reading. The Atlantic row with Sun Haibin is a documented case study in trust-building under pressure, published in three languages and over 20,000 copies, that he uses to make cross-cultural failure modes concrete. He is qualified to challenge the comforting Western assumption that cultural difference can be managed with a framework imported from headquarters. For boards weighing China exposure, he brings a credible inside-and-outside view that few Western speakers can match without a state affiliation that constrains them. Biography highlights 20 years working in China, including managing director roles with KPMG, Allianz, and VIKING Life-Saving Equipment in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Former consultant at L.E.K. Consulting, London. BA Joint Hons. in Chinese Language and Western Management Studies, Durham University, with study at Renmin University, Beijing. Author of “Beijing to Barbados in a Rowboat”, published in English, Chinese, and Danish; over 20,000 copies sold. First Dane to row an ocean: 3,000-mile Atlantic crossing in 2001 with Chinese ex-soldier Sun Haibin. Founder of the Yantu Project; Adventure Ambassador for Engage with China and Eyesea; member of The Explorers Club. Biography China is no longer a question of market entry. It is a question of whether senior teams can lead partnerships, joint ventures, and supply relationships where the other side does not share their assumptions about risk, hierarchy, or time. That is the ground Christian Havrehed has worked for two decades. After reading Chinese at Durham University and studying at Renmin University in Beijing, he moved into management consulting at L.E.K. in London, then ran businesses inside China and Hong Kong as managing director with KPMG, Allianz, and VIKING Life-Saving Equipment. He speaks Mandarin in commercial settings, which changes the texture of every conversation he is part of. In 2001 he rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic with Sun Haibin, a former Chinese PLA soldier and Communist Party member, becoming the first Dane and the first Chinese citizen respectively to row an ocean. The story, told in “Beijing to Barbados in a Rowboat”, is published in three languages and used by Havrehed as a working case study in what trust actually requires when the contract runs out and the weather turns. For senior leaders, the value is practical. He challenges the soft-skills framing of cross-cultural work and treats it as a leadership problem with real commercial consequences: deal terms misread, partners disengaged, talent lost. His Yantu Project, founded in 2000, has been the spine of this work since long before China became a board-level agenda item in the West. Key speaking topics Sino-Western leadership and partnership Cross-cultural collaboration in joint ventures Trust-building under operational pressure China market strategy and stakeholder engagement Risk-taking and decision-making in unfamiliar conditions Sustainability and citizen science through expedition Ideal for Boards and executive committees with material China exposure Country leaders, regional MDs, and joint-venture sponsors operating in or with Greater China Heads of strategy, M&A, and partnerships evaluating Asia-Pacific deals Senior teams running multinational cross-border programmes where cultural fluency is operationally load-bearing Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Sino-Western partnerships actually fail, drawn from inside both sides of the seam. Specific, named examples of trust-building behaviours that hold up when conditions deteriorate. A direct challenge to standard cultural-intelligence frameworks imported from Western HQ. Practical reframing of risk-taking as an organisational capability, not a personality trait. A more grounded basis for boardroom conversations about China exposure, partnership terms, and joint-venture governance.