Risk Management

Why organisations work with Bernie Collins She ran race strategy at Aston Martin F1, a role that required committing several hundred engineers to a single decision in under thirty seconds, with the result televised live. Very few speakers have carried that kind of accountability. Her book with Maurice Hamilton, How to Win a Grand Prix, translates the mechanics of F1 decision making into a framework leaders can apply to their own operating rhythm. She brings a working broadcaster’s clarity. As Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, she explains complex trade-offs to a lay audience every race weekend, which transfers directly to boardroom and all-hands contexts. Her perspective on diversity in engineering is grounded in her own path through a male-dominated paddock, not in consultancy talking points. She is Irish, plain-spoken, and unafraid to be specific about what went wrong on a given decision. That honesty is rare in sports-adjacent keynotes. Biography highlights Former Head of Race Strategy, Aston Martin F1, 2020 to 2022. Performance and strategy engineer at Force India, Racing Point, and Aston Martin from 2015, working with Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg. Began her F1 career at McLaren in 2009 as a graduate trainee, becoming performance engineer to Jenson Button. Formula 1 strategy analyst for Sky Sports F1 and F1TV. Author of How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium with Maurice Hamilton, Quercus, 2024. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, Manufacturing and Industry, 2016. Honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast, 2023. Biography An F1 race strategist has around thirty seconds to recommend a tyre change that commits the team for the rest of the Grand Prix. Bernie Collins spent more than a decade in that seat, ending as Head of Race Strategy at Aston Martin F1, where she called the race at Sergio Perez’s maiden victory at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. Her route there ran through McLaren, where she arrived as a graduate from Queen’s University Belfast in 2009 and eventually worked trackside with Jenson Button, and then Force India, where she moved into strategy alongside Nico Hulkenberg and Perez. The team rebranded twice while she stayed in the same chair, which gave her an unusual view of how a technical organisation holds its culture together through ownership changes. What makes Collins useful to senior audiences is the structure of the F1 strategy job itself. A pit-wall call blends incomplete telemetry, weather models, competitor behaviour, and driver feedback into a single recommendation, made under time pressure, with the outcome visible on live television within minutes. In How to Win a Grand Prix, her 2024 book with journalist Maurice Hamilton, she sets out how that decision is actually made, and what organisations elsewhere tend to get wrong about it. She now works as Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, explaining those decisions in real time to a mass audience. The broadcaster’s discipline, saying what matters in plain language without hedging, carries into her speaking. Queen’s University Belfast awarded her an honorary degree in 2023. Key speaking topics Decision making under time pressure High-performance team culture Strategy in complex, data-rich environments Leadership in distributed technical organisations Women in engineering and motorsport Risk and safety in regulated, high-stakes settings Ideal for Executive leadership teams in fast-moving competitive markets Engineering, technology, and operations organisations Strategy, risk, and transformation functions Conferences on performance, decision making, and team culture Audience outcomes A clearer model of how high-performing teams decide when evidence is incomplete A frank look at what accountability actually feels like when your call is public Specific examples of how F1 teams align hundreds of people on a single decision in seconds A useful perspective on women in technical roles from someone who sat at the top of one

Why organisations work with Peter Crolla He has helped build two Formula 1 teams from scratch. He joined Haas in 2015 as the team’s 14th employee and joined Cadillac in 2025 to prepare its 2026 debut. Few F1 practitioners have stood up a competitive operation from zero more than once. His content is grounded in operational mechanics. Audiences leave with how the pit wall actually works, how a 1.8-second pit stop with 22 staff and 36 tasks is choreographed, and how compliance with FIA scrutineering is built into every weekend. Formula 1 sits where exacting regulation meets competitive margins of milliseconds. Leaders in pharmaceuticals, financial services, aviation, and energy find the comparison directly applicable to their own environments. He can explain how F1 reduced driver fatalities from over 40 between 1950 and 1994 to one in the three decades since. The shift came from a system in which safety stopped being a source of competitive advantage and was shared across rival teams. Two decades across British Touring Cars, F3, McLaren, Haas, and Cadillac give him grounded comparative views on which high-performance practices transfer between organisations and which collapse outside their original context. Biography highlights Race Team Manager at the Cadillac F1 Team, preparing the operation for its 2026 Formula 1 debut. Team Manager at Haas F1 Team for eight seasons, joining as the 14th employee in 2015 ahead of the team’s 2016 debut. Previously Team Leader at McLaren Racing, working alongside World Champions Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso. Oversaw Haas’s maiden Formula 1 pole position at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Helped Haas secure FIA Three-Star Environmental Accreditation ahead of the 2023 season. Awarded the Teamwork Award at the 2013 MIA Business Excellence Awards during his time at Team Dynamics in the British Touring Car Championship. Biography In Formula 1, a pit stop now takes 1.8 seconds. Twenty-two people complete thirty-six tasks while the car is stationary. One missed cue and a podium becomes a points-paying afternoon. That kind of choreography is what Peter Crolla has spent his career producing. He joined the Haas F1 Team in 2015 as its fourteenth employee, before the team had been on a grid, and stayed for eight seasons as Team Manager. In 2025 he left to take the same role at the Cadillac F1 Team, where he is preparing the operation for its 2026 debut. Doing this work twice in a decade puts him in a small group of practitioners who have stood up a competitive Formula 1 team from a standing start. F1 teams of 1800 staff coordinate around twenty-four non-negotiable race weekend deadlines a year, under one of the most exacting regulatory regimes in commercial sport. Crolla speaks about how that machine actually runs. He explains the daily tension between psychological safety and personal accountability, and how F1 turned over forty driver fatalities between 1950 and 1994 into one in the three decades since. The change came from stopping competitive teams from hoarding what they learned about safety. Key speaking topics High-performance team operations Leadership in regulated, high-pressure environments Operational excellence under non-negotiable deadlines Safety culture and risk transformation Building organisations from a standing start Continuous improvement and marginal gains Sustainability in elite motorsport Ideal for COOs and operations directors in regulated sectors such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, aviation, and energy, where compliance and competitive performance have to be solved together. Founders, transformation leads, and executive teams building or rebuilding an organisation from a standing start. Senior risk and safety leaders looking at how F1’s cultural transformation was actually achieved over three decades. HR and people leaders focused on psychological safety and accountability in technical or engineering-led organisations. Audience outcomes The choreography of a 1.8-second pit stop across 22 staff, including where it most often breaks down. The specific practices that keep psychological safety and personal accountability in balance inside an F1 operation. How F1’s safety record went from over forty driver fatalities in its first four decades to one in its last three, including the specific decision to stop competing on safety. A clear separation between high-performance practices that transfer between industries and those that depend on the specifics of F1.

Why organisations work with Susan Hetrick A working operating model for toxic culture, not a moral framing of it. Her four-stage progression gives a board language to discuss what stage they are in, before deciding what to do. The RESPECT framework as a remediation sequence, used inside her book and consultancy at zuhra. It anchors the conversation in specific leadership behaviours rather than values posters. Practitioner credibility from senior HR roles at the World Bank Group, RBS, HSBC, Aegon and Deloitte, paired with a doctorate from City University Business School. She has run the function she is now critiquing. A published, peer-reviewed thesis (Routledge, 2023; 2024 Business Book Awards finalist) that gives the room a single, citable reference point rather than a deck of opinions. Biography highlights Author, Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership: How to Build and Sustain a Healthy Workplace (Routledge, 2023). 2024 Business Book Awards finalist. Co-author with Professor Graeme Martin, Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management: A Strategic Approach to HR. Doctorate in Organisational Psychology, City University Business School. Senior HR leadership roles inside the World Bank Group, RBS Group, HSBC, Aegon, Arab Banking Corporation and Deloitte. Academic appointments at the Universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and London, Birkbeck College and Helsinki School of Economics. Founder of zuhra consulting; Chair of the Board, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre. Keynote, CIPD Annual Conference 2023, to an audience of 600+ HR professionals. Biography Most organisations describe culture as something they have, not something they do. That language is what allows toxic patterns to harden inside otherwise functional companies, often for years before the board treats them as a strategic risk. Susan Hetrick’s work is built around closing that gap. Her book Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership (Routledge, 2023) sets out a four-stage account of how cultures degrade and a remediation sequence she calls the RESPECT framework. The book reached the 2024 Business Book Awards shortlist and is now used by HR leaders looking for a structured way to brief their executive committees. She brings 35 years of senior HR practice to the argument, including roles inside the World Bank Group, RBS, HSBC, Aegon, Arab Banking Corporation and Deloitte. Her doctorate in Organisational Psychology is from City University Business School, with academic appointments at Aberdeen, Glasgow, London, Birkbeck and Helsinki School of Economics. Today she runs zuhra consulting, a specialist culture practice, and chairs the boards of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre. The combination matters because it gives senior teams a counterpart who has sat in their seat, written the academic case, and is now operating the remedy with paying clients. Key speaking topics Toxic organisational cultures Healthy workplace culture design Leadership behaviour and culture risk Corporate reputation and HR strategy Culture transformation in regulated industries Board oversight of people risk Organisational psychology in practice Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders facing engagement, attrition or conduct concerns Boards and audit/risk committees treating culture as a governance risk Executive teams entering or recovering from restructure, acquisition or scandal Regulated sector leadership groups (financial services, professional services, public bodies) Audience outcomes A four-stage diagnostic that lets a leadership team locate where their culture currently sits The RESPECT sequence as a practical guide to leadership behaviours that repair, rather than mask, cultural damage A clearer board-level language for naming culture risk before it becomes legal or reputational exposure A reading of how HR, legal and executive functions need to operate together to prevent toxicity recurring

Why organisations work with Alex Wood First-hand operator knowledge of social engineering, impersonation and mule-account networks, drawn from years inside the work rather than modelled from the outside. Active advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces, so the material reflects current regulatory and policing priorities. Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian on the fraud mindset and social engineering, giving risk, compliance and customer-protection teams a structured view of how scams are designed. Co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, a weekly national broadcast that keeps his case base current rather than historical. Biography highlights Co-presenter, BBC Radio 4 Scam Secrets, alongside journalist Shari Vahl and criminologist Dr Elisabeth Carter Advises the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces on fraud mindset and social engineering Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian Author of the forthcoming memoir Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency Trained classical violinist, Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music; early performances at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall Named speaker at Counter Fraud 2023 and UK Cyber Week 2024 Biography Most fraud controls assume the attacker is a technical problem. The last decade of evidence says the attacker is a psychologist with a laptop. What banks, insurers and regulators rarely get in the room is the working logic of the person on the other side of the transaction, and that is what Alex Wood brings. Wood trained as a concert violinist at the Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music, and performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall. A repetitive strain injury ended the career in his early twenties. What followed was a decade of fraud, including a 2015 conviction for impersonating the Duke of Marlborough across London hotels and a later sentence tied to banking fraud. He was released from prison in 2022. Since then he has become a working advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority, UK police forces and Tier 1 banks including NatWest. His focus is the mule-account economy and the social engineering playbooks that defeat otherwise strong controls. He co-presents the BBC Radio 4 series Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, dissecting live cases with forensic detail. His memoir, Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, is represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, and a documentary on his story is in production with Mindhouse Productions, the company founded by Louis Theroux. For a risk committee briefing, what Wood delivers is specific: how a criminal chooses a target, how a customer is moved into a mule role, and where in a bank’s own process the decisive second of hesitation was lost. Key speaking topics The fraud mindset and how sophisticated scams are designed Social engineering and impersonation at scale Mule accounts and the retail-banking fraud perimeter AI-enabled fraud and the near-term threat surface Informal value-transfer systems and underworld banking (Hawala, Daigou) Counter-fraud culture inside large financial institutions Ideal for Heads of financial crime, fraud and compliance at banks, insurers and law firms Risk and customer-protection teams rebuilding fraud prevention programmes Internal audit, AML and onboarding functions facing mule-account and impersonation pressure Counter-fraud conferences, regulator-facing events and financial services leadership summits Audience outcomes A working view of how fraud is designed from the offender side, not the detection side Specific frames for spotting social-engineering and impersonation pressure earlier in the transaction path A read on where AI-enabled fraud and underworld banking are pushing the near-term threat surface A speaker whose BBC Radio 4 co-presenter role keeps the material current with national-level fraud reporting

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

Why organisations work with Gary Foote He is a current F1 Chief Information Officer, now at GM Performance Power Units, building the technology function for the Cadillac F1 power unit programme from the ground up. He ran the IT and digital operation at Haas F1 for a decade, taking the team from a start-up entry in 2016 to a competitive, data-driven constructor with global infrastructure. His remit at Haas covered IT, digital, facilities, operations, ESG and business continuity, which gives boards a realistic view of how sustainability and technology intersect inside a performance business. He has been named in the UK CIO 100 for five consecutive years and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, so the credibility holds up in a room of sitting CIOs. His track record spans Cosworth, Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes Grand Prix, covering six motorsport world championships, which lets him speak to high-performance culture without leaning on abstract frameworks. Biography highlights Chief Information Officer, GM Performance Power Units, the General Motors and TWG Global company delivering the Cadillac F1 power unit. Former CIO and Director of Sustainability at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, a role held for approximately ten years. Earlier senior technology roles at Mercedes Grand Prix, Brawn GP, Honda Racing F1 and Cosworth Technology. Fellow of the British Computer Society. Named in the UK CIO 100 five years running, 2021 to 2025. Trustee at Tove Learning Trust and active advocate for STEM education. Biography Haas F1 arrived on the grid in 2016 with two cars, a lean headcount and a blank technology estate. Gary Foote built the IT and digital backbone that made that entry possible, then spent a decade scaling it into the stack of a competitive constructor. His brief at Haas eventually covered IT, digital, facilities, ESG and business continuity, which is a wider surface than most corporate CIO roles carry. That is the frame he brings to boards: technology strategy shaped by the realities of logistics, carbon reporting, risk and culture inside one business. Today he is CIO at GM Performance Power Units, the General Motors and TWG Global company set up to build the Cadillac F1 power unit. He is doing again what most CIOs never get the chance to do once, which is stand up an elite-sport technology function from a clean sheet while the competitive clock is already running. The credentials back the story. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and has been listed in the UK CIO 100 five years in a row. He writes and speaks in named industry outlets including Computer Weekly, Infosecurity Magazine and Celonis, and he sits on the board of Tove Learning Trust. Key speaking topics Technology leadership in high-performance sport Artificial intelligence and data strategy in Formula 1 Cybersecurity in time-critical operations Digital transformation inside elite teams Sustainability and ESG in motorsport Scaling an IT function from start-up to championship contender High-performance culture and cross-functional operations Ideal for CIO, CTO and CDO audiences looking at AI, data and infrastructure investment decisions Boards and executive teams benchmarking their operating model against high-tempo performance businesses Sustainability and ESG leaders in industrial and logistics-heavy sectors Audience outcomes A working picture of how a Formula 1 team uses data, AI and cloud infrastructure to compete race by race. A sharper view of how technology, facilities and ESG sit inside one leadership remit rather than separate silos. Practical reference points for scaling an IT function quickly without accruing legacy risk. A candid read on cybersecurity and business continuity in an environment where downtime is visible to the world.

Why organisations work with Hollie McKay She has reported from inside Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran’s borderlands, and Myanmar, and stayed in Kabul through and after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Her geopolitical analysis is built on direct access to actors most analysts only read about. Her work documenting ISIS atrocities against the Yazidi has been used as evidentiary material in war-crimes proceedings. That standard of source verification carries directly into how she briefs corporate audiences on risk. As Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting for a Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief and the Wall Street Journal. Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield, with a foreword by Jocko Willink, and the photo-led volume on the fall of Afghanistan with Jake Simkin. Both books work as primary-source material for executives trying to understand asymmetric threats. She is a 40 Under 40 Honoree of the Middle East Policy Council and a 2022 Media Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, two credentials that signal recognition from serious foreign-policy institutions, not media bureaus. Biography highlights Investigative and international affairs correspondent for Fox News Digital for more than fourteen years, covering Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Latin America. Research Director, GlobalStrat Ltd., Washington D.C., leading geopolitical risk, conflict analysis, and threat forecasting. Contributing writer at The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, regional conflict, and state security. Author of Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield (Di Angelo Publications, 2021) and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule (Di Angelo Publications, 2022). 40 Under 40 Honoree, Middle East Policy Council; 2022 Media Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Honorary board member, EMERGENCY USA; human rights and cultural consultant to Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). Biography Geopolitical risk has moved from an annual board paper to a live operating variable. Most of what reaches the boardroom is filtered through several analytical layers before it gets there. Hollie McKay’s work sits at the other end of that chain. For more than fourteen years at Fox News Digital, she reported as an investigative and international affairs correspondent across Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. She embedded with US and allied forces, interviewed captured ISIS fighters, and documented sexual-violence cases against the Yazidi at the evidentiary standard used in war-crimes proceedings. When the Taliban returned to Kabul in 2021, she stayed. That body of work is now the foundation for her current role as Research Director at GlobalStrat Ltd., the Washington D.C. geopolitical risk firm where she leads conflict analysis and threat forecasting. Her commentary appears in The Cipher Brief on nuclear deterrence, Iran, and state security, and in the Wall Street Journal. Her two books, Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield and Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule, are primary-source documents on how violent non-state actors behave once they hold ground. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She translates situations most executives only read about, sanctions regimes, supply-chain choke points, the operational reality of doing business in fractured states, into briefings grounded in named actors and verifiable events. The 40 Under 40 honour from the Middle East Policy Council and the 2022 Media Fellowship at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies are markers of credibility inside the foreign-policy institutions that serious organisations rely on. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and conflict forecasting Terrorism, insurgency, and the behaviour of violent non-state actors Afghanistan after the US withdrawal and Taliban rule The war in Ukraine and Russia’s strategic posture Iran, the Middle East, and nuclear deterrence War crimes, accountability, and post-conflict justice Reporting and truth-telling under hostile-regime pressure Ideal for Boards and risk committees with exposure to Middle East, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia operations Chief Security Officers, Heads of Geopolitical Risk, and General Counsel scoping country-level threat Defence, energy, and extractives leadership teams with personnel or assets in fragile states Strategy and corporate affairs functions briefing executive committees on sanctions and political risk Audience outcomes A grounded read on how the fracturing rules-based order is reshaping country-level risk, drawn from direct reporting rather than secondary analysis Specific case material on Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, and ISIS that audiences can apply to their own exposure mapping A clearer picture of how violent non-state actors, sanctioned regimes, and intelligence services actually operate, and what that means for corporate decision-making Sharper questions to put to internal risk and security functions after the session

Why organisations work with Robert Smith He is a working AI researcher with more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, not a consultant translating other people’s science. When a board asks how a model actually behaves, he can answer at the level of the maths. His book Rage Inside the Machine sets out a specific thesis on why algorithmic bias is structural rather than incidental. It gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the risk before they have to defend a hiring, credit, or pricing decision. He has built and deployed AI inside organisations where failure is expensive: NASA, Boeing, Airbus, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority. The reference points are operational, not theoretical. He led AI and data science at Digital Catapult, the UK government’s deep tech innovation centre. He has seen what separates the firms that move beyond pilots from the ones that stall. As a Founding Trustee of We and AI and a Senior Fellow at UCL, his independence on responsible AI is institutional, not positional. That matters when the audience needs a voice that does not sell the technology. Biography highlights Author, Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All (Bloomsbury Business). Shortlisted, UK Business Book Awards, Specialist category. Former Director of AI and Data Science, Digital Catapult. Senior Honorary Fellow, Computer Science Faculty, University College London. Co-founder, UCL Centre for Decision-Making Uncertainty. Founding Trustee, We and AI. Author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers in artificial intelligence, with a focus on evolutionary computation, knowledge representation, and machine learning. Applied AI work for NASA, Boeing, Airbus, BT, the European Union, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority, and US national laboratories. Biography The history of artificial intelligence is older than most boardrooms assume, and so are the design choices that made today’s models prone to bias. That is the argument running through Robert Smith’s work as a complexity scientist, and it is the reason serious organisations book him when they need an AI conversation that holds up under scrutiny. Smith spent more than three decades inside applied AI before the current wave of public attention. He built systems for NASA, Boeing, Airbus, BT, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority, the European Union, and US national laboratories at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. He went on to lead AI and data science at Digital Catapult, the UK’s deep tech innovation centre, where the question shifted from research to deployment at scale. His book Rage Inside the Machine, published by Bloomsbury Business and shortlisted for the UK Business Book Awards, traces algorithmic bias back through the intellectual history of computing. The case is technical, not rhetorical: apparently neutral data and models can encode prior injustice across hiring, credit, insurance, policing, and content moderation. He gives leadership audiences a way to interrogate their own systems without needing to read the code. Smith holds a PhD, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Senior Honorary Fellow at UCL Computer Science where he co-founded the Centre for Decision-Making Uncertainty, and a Founding Trustee of We and AI. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed papers to his name and has presented at Google, the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and corporate, academic, and policy venues internationally. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI AI ethics and responsible technology Algorithmic bias and governance Digital transformation Data analytics Future of technology Risk management Ideal for Boards and executive committees signing off on enterprise AI strategy CTOs, CIOs, Chief Data Officers, and heads of AI looking for a credible external voice on governance and bias Risk, compliance, and regulatory leaders in financial services, insurance, healthcare, and public sector Senior HR and people leaders deploying AI in hiring, performance, or workforce decisions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where bias actually originates inside their AI systems, with examples drawn from peer-reviewed research and operational deployments. A working language for board-level conversations about AI risk, beyond the vendor pitch and the headline. Specific questions executives can put to their data science teams and external suppliers to test whether claims about model behaviour are defensible. A grounded sense of where AI is genuinely creating value in regulated environments, and where it is creating exposure. A perspective on responsible AI that comes from a working scientist and trustee of an independent charity, not from a platform vendor.

Why organisations work with James Barrat Twelve years of sustained, on-record argument about AI risk, beginning with Our Final Invention in 2013 and updated in The Intelligence Explosion in 2025. Few speakers can show that length of intellectual track record on the same question. Direct interview access to the people building frontier AI, used as primary source material rather than secondary commentary. Boards get a view from inside the labs, filtered through someone outside them. A documentarian’s craft for making technical material legible without diluting it. His PBS NOVA and National Geographic films were built for non-specialist audiences who still needed to understand the substance. Independent voice. Barrat is not selling a model, a consultancy methodology or a vendor stack. The argument is unencumbered by commercial alignment with any AI provider. Named by Time in 2014 as one of five serious thinkers on AI catastrophic risk, alongside figures including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. The framing has aged into mainstream policy debate. Biography highlights Author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), named a Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013. Author of The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything (St. Martin’s Press, 2025), endorsed by Max Tegmark and Gary Marcus. Named by Time magazine as one of “5 Very Smart People Who Think Artificial Intelligence Could Bring the Apocalypse.” Award-winning documentary filmmaker for National Geographic, PBS NOVA, BBC, Discovery Channel and History Channel; credits include The Gospel of Judas, Herod’s Lost Tomb, Extreme Cave Diving, Spillover: Zika, Ebola and Beyond and Facing Suicide. Featured commentator on AI for CNN, BBC World Service and the 2018 feature documentary Do You Trust This Computer? B.A. in philosophy, Davidson College. Biography The people closest to frontier AI systems are the most candid about not understanding them. That admission, repeated by senior researchers at the leading labs, sits uncomfortably alongside the pace at which boards are being asked to commit to AI strategies, hiring plans and disclosures. James Barrat has spent over a decade interviewing those researchers and translating what they say into language that non-specialists can act on. His 2013 book Our Final Invention was among the first serious mainstream works to argue that artificial general intelligence carried catastrophic as well as commercial implications. The argument was once treated as fringe. It is now the working assumption inside policy debates in Washington, London and Brussels. Time named him in 2014 as one of five public thinkers warning seriously about AI risk. Elon Musk recommended the book publicly. The 2025 sequel, The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything, draws on fresh interviews with the engineers and ethicists working on recursively self-improving systems. Max Tegmark and Gary Marcus have endorsed it. The book lays out the technical pathways to AGI and the governance gaps that accompany them, written for citizens and policymakers rather than for the labs themselves. Underneath the AI work sits a long career as a documentary filmmaker for National Geographic, PBS NOVA, BBC, Discovery Channel and History Channel, with credits including The Gospel of Judas, Herod’s Lost Tomb and the PBS feature Facing Suicide. That craft is what allows him to take a board through capability overhang, alignment risk and regulatory exposure in a sitting, without losing the room. Key speaking topics Autonomous AI cyberattacks and the security and regulatory response Artificial intelligence risk and governance The path to artificial general intelligence AI policy and regulation AI ethics and corporate responsibility The capability and alignment problem in frontier models AI and the future of human work Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning or approving enterprise AI strategy Chief risk officers, general counsel and policy leads with AI oversight responsibility Government, regulatory and public-sector audiences shaping AI policy Investor and asset-allocator audiences with concentrated AI exposure Audience outcomes A working mental model of how today’s frontier AI systems behave and where the next capability jumps are likely to come from. A sharper view of the specific governance, legal and reputational exposures AI creates for the organisation. Direct exposure to what the people building these systems actually say in private about risk. A clearer reading of the regulatory direction of travel in the US, UK and EU. Confidence to ask harder questions of internal AI teams and external vendors.

Why organisations work with Harry Broadman He has negotiated services trade for the United States inside NAFTA and the WTO, then operated those same markets from inside the World Bank and the private sector. Few speakers can carry one argument across all three vantage points. He served on CFIUS inside the White House and now advises companies on foreign investment review as a principal at WestExec Advisors, the geopolitical advisory firm. Leaders get a working read on how Washington actually screens cross-border deals. His emerging markets work spans more than 80 countries and includes book-length research on China and India in Africa, on Russia and the former Soviet Union, and on Chinese state ownership. The frameworks he uses on stage are his own. He writes a monthly business leadership column for Forbes and the national security column for the International Financial Law Review, so audiences meet a voice they may already read in named outlets. He chairs corporate boards and audit committees as an SEC-qualified financial expert and is a Board Leadership Fellow at the National Association of Corporate Directors, so he addresses directors as a peer who carries the same fiduciary exposure. Biography highlights Principal at WestExec Advisors and Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation Former U.S. Assistant Trade Representative; led services negotiations for NAFTA and the WTO Former Chief of Staff, President’s Council of Economic Advisers; CFIUS member; OPIC board member Senior World Bank roles covering China, Russia, the Balkans, and Africa Author of Africa’s Silk Road, From Disintegration to Reintegration, and The State as Shareholder SEC-qualified financial expert who chairs corporate boards and audit committees; NACD Board Leadership Fellow; monthly Forbes columnist Biography Few people have negotiated U.S. trade policy, run capital and reform programmes inside the World Bank, and then advised boards on what those same rules mean for live investment decisions. That is the career Harry Broadman has built. As U.S. Assistant Trade Representative, he led the American negotiating position on services in both NAFTA and the WTO, the framework most multinationals still operate under. He served as Chief of Staff to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the first Gulf War and the Savings and Loan crisis, sat on CFIUS, and was a board member at OPIC. From there, he moved into senior operational roles at the World Bank, working on the ground in China, Russia, the Balkans, and Africa. The research he produced in that period, including Africa’s Silk Road and The State as Shareholder, is still cited by people trying to understand how Chinese capital and state-owned firms behave abroad. Today he is a principal at WestExec Advisors, the geopolitical advisory firm, and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. He chairs corporate boards and audit committees as an SEC-qualified financial expert, writes a monthly Forbes column, and serves as national security columnist for the International Financial Law Review. His work concentrates on the boardroom problem behind every geopolitical headline: where to commit capital, how to read foreign investment review, and how to restructure supply chains when cheap globalisation is no longer the operating assumption. For a leadership team trying to make a defensible call on China exposure, on a supply chain shift, or on a CFIUS-sensitive deal, his value is the rare combination of having negotiated the rules, supervised reform programmes that operationalised them, and now advising the corporate directors who live with the consequences. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and the rules-based trading order Foreign investment review and CFIUS Emerging markets investment strategy China and India in the global economy Supply chain reconfiguration and trade policy Corporate governance under geopolitical pressure Sanctions, antitrust, and FCPA compliance for global firms Ideal for Boards and investment committees facing China, Russia, or sanctions exposure Chief Strategy Officers and Heads of Corporate Development weighing cross-border deals General Counsel and Compliance leaders working through CFIUS, antitrust, or FCPA matters Institutional investors and private equity partners deploying into emerging markets Audience outcomes A working view of how foreign investment review actually operates inside Washington A clearer read on where China and India are reshaping commercial geography, beyond headline narratives A practical lens for sequencing supply chain shifts under tariff and sanctions risk Direct exposure to a voice that has sat inside trade negotiation, multilateral finance, and corporate boards

Why organisations work with Jutta Kleinschmidt She is the only woman ever to win the Dakar Rally outright, a fact buyers can repeat without qualification, in a field where most “first woman” credentials require footnotes. She brings a physics-engineering mind to a topic, high-pressure performance, that is usually dominated by intuition and anecdote. Audiences get the mechanics, not just the story. Her current FIA role gives her a serving leadership platform in international motorsport, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. She speaks credibly to mixed audiences on team performance, risk tolerance and the practical limits of preparation, drawing on a 17-attempt Dakar career across motorcycles and cars. She works fluently in English and German, which matters for German-speaking corporates booking a global-grade keynote without losing the original voice. Biography highlights First and only woman to win the Dakar Rally outright, in 2001, driving a Mitsubishi Pajero with co-driver Andreas Schulz. President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission since 2019. Inaugural Championship Driver for the Extreme E electric off-road series; raced for ABT Cupra XE in 2021. Trained physicist (Isny University of Applied Sciences) and former BMW vehicle development engineer. Author of the autobiography “My Victory at the Dakar.” Recipient of the Monaco World Sports Legends Award (2018), FIM Legend status (2013) and the Lord Wakefield Trophy from the British Women Racing Drivers Club. Biography The Dakar Rally runs for two weeks across some of the most punishing terrain on the planet, with no second chances and no controlled environment. In January 2001, a German driver in a Mitsubishi Pajero crossed the line in Dakar 2 minutes 39 seconds ahead of her teammate. That driver was Jutta Kleinschmidt, and she remains the only woman ever to have won the event outright. Her route to that result is what makes her useful to senior teams. She studied physics at Isny University of Applied Sciences, completed her diploma thesis at BMW, and spent five years as a vehicle development engineer there before going professional in motorsport in 1993. She first contested Dakar in 1988 on a BMW motorcycle, switched to cars in 1994, took her first stage win in 1997, and stood on the podium in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005 across 17 starts. Since 2018 she has been Senior Advisor for Cross Country Rally at the FIA, and since 2019 President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission, where she has pushed the discipline toward more sustainable technologies. She joined the Extreme E electric series as its inaugural Championship Driver and Advisor in 2021, racing for ABT Cupra XE. For business audiences, her material is the engineer’s read on what actually drives outcomes when conditions turn hostile: how to build a team that can absorb a hit and keep deciding, what preparation is worth and what is theatre, and how to keep a clear head when the equipment, the weather and the field are all working against you. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in endurance environments Risk management and preparation Resilience and recovery from setback Women in male-dominated industries Sustainable mobility and the future of motorsport Leadership in mixed-discipline, high-stakes teams Ideal for Boards and executive teams running performance, safety or operational risk agendas Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on competitive edge Senior leadership programmes building resilience and decision quality Engineering, automotive and mobility audiences working on the energy transition Audience outcomes A working language for what high performers actually do when the plan fails A sharper view of where preparation pays off and where it stops Specific examples of team coordination under physical and time pressure A credible counterweight to the assumption that elite performance is mostly talent Confidence that high-stakes decisions can be trained, not just hired for

Why organisations work with Paul Johnson He led the Institute for Fiscal Studies through fourteen years of fiscal events, Budgets and Spending Reviews, and is the economist most often cited when journalists need the numbers explained. He has been inside the machinery: Director of Public Spending at HM Treasury and Chief Economist at the Department for Education, so he speaks to how decisions are actually made, not how they are reported. His book Follow the Money is the clearest public account of how Britain raises and spends roughly £1 trillion a year, and it gives a board a shared vocabulary for fiscal risk. Eleven years on the UK Climate Change Committee mean he can connect net zero policy to the capital allocation choices it forces on boards, not just the headline target. As Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford, he now sits at the intersection of economic policy, higher education funding and long-term institutional strategy. Biography highlights Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2011 to 2025. Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford, from August 2025. Author of Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? (2023), Sunday Times bestseller. Weekly columnist for The Times; presenter of Austerity Audit on BBC Radio 4. CBE, 2018, for services to social sciences and economics. Honorary doctorates from UCL, York, Sussex and Exeter; member of the UK Climate Change Committee for eleven years. Biography The state raises and spends roughly £1 trillion a year in the UK. Most boards treat that figure as background. It is not. Tax policy, departmental budgets and the demographics behind them shape the cost of capital, the cost of labour and the regulatory weather every business operates in. For fourteen years as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson was the public translator of those numbers. The IFS Budget briefings he led became the reference point for journalists, civil servants and parliamentary committees on fiscal events. Follow the Money, his 2023 book, is the most readable account of UK public finances in print, and it became a Sunday Times bestseller. His credibility is built on direct experience inside the system. He was Director of Public Spending at HM Treasury, Chief Economist at the Department for Education, and Deputy Head of the Government Economic Service. He served eleven years on the UK Climate Change Committee, where the policy gap between net zero ambition and capital allocation is most visible. He sat on the councils of the ESRC and the Royal Economic Society. In August 2025 he became Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford. He continues to write a weekly column for The Times and to advise organisations whose strategic decisions are shaped by UK and global fiscal policy. He was appointed CBE in 2018 for services to social sciences and economics. Key speaking topics UK public finances and fiscal policy Tax, welfare and pensions reform Macroeconomic outlook and capital allocation Income inequality and the distributional effects of policy Climate change economics and net zero financing Government spending priorities and trade-offs Ideal for Boards and executive committees of UK and internationally exposed companies CFOs, treasurers and heads of strategy planning under fiscal and tax uncertainty Investor and asset-management audiences focused on macro and policy risk Public-sector leadership and regulated-industry executives Audience outcomes A clear read of how the next Budget, Spending Review or fiscal event is likely to land A shared vocabulary for fiscal risk that connects Treasury decisions to operating choices A grounded view of how net zero policy will translate into capital and tax pressure A sharper sense of where UK macroeconomic constraints will most affect their sector Direct answers to the questions a CFO or chair actually wants to ask an economist