Scenario Planning & Strategic Foresight

Why organisations work with Levison Wood He has tested leadership and team principles under conditions where failure has a real cost, including a 4,250-mile walk along the Nile and a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula through Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. His military background as a Parachute Regiment captain in Afghanistan gives him a working framework for decision-making under pressure that translates cleanly into commercial settings. “The Art of Exploration” sets out a usable structure on curiosity, resilience and team behaviour that boards and senior teams can apply, rather than a set of war stories. He brings a credible outside perspective on geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar environments, drawn from on-the-ground work in regions most leaders only read about. Bureau-listed clients including Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin indicate a track record with senior commercial audiences rather than only event circuits. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Chancellor of Staffordshire University, installed May 2024. Honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham. Author of bestselling titles including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Arabia”, “The Last Giants” and “The Art of Exploration”. “Walking the Himalayas” named Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the 2016 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Producer and presenter of major documentary series for Channel 4, including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Walking the Americas” and “Arabia with Levison Wood”. Biography The first ever expedition to walk the length of the Nile began in December 2013, in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, and finished nine months and 4,250 miles later in the Mediterranean. The walker was Levison Wood, a former Parachute Regiment captain who had served in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, and who had decided that exploration was a more honest test of the same disciplines. What separates his work from adventure storytelling is the operating logic underneath it. Walking through Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the Empty Quarter and the Darien Gap forces specific decisions about risk, team composition, local intelligence and when to abandon a plan. Those decisions are recognisable to anyone running a complex programme in a volatile environment. He has put the framework on paper. “The Art of Exploration”, published in 2021, sets out how curiosity, resilience and small-team discipline operate when the route is unknown, and is the basis of his keynote of the same name. His other books, including “Walking the Himalayas”, which won the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Book of the Year in 2016, and “Arabia”, treat the expeditions as case material rather than autobiography. The institutions have followed. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, holds honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham, and was installed as Chancellor of Staffordshire University in May 2024. Senior corporate audiences at Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin have booked the same body of work. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in complex environments Team performance and small-team discipline Resilience and recovery from setback Risk assessment and mitigation Curiosity as a leadership practice Geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar regions Ideal for CEOs and executive teams setting strategy in volatile or unfamiliar markets. Operations, transformation and programme leaders responsible for delivery under shifting conditions. Leadership development audiences in financial services, industrials and consumer businesses. Boards and senior offsites looking for an outside perspective on risk and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working sense of how experienced operators make decisions when information is incomplete and the environment keeps moving. Specific examples of how small teams hold together under sustained pressure, drawn from named expeditions across the Nile, the Himalayas and the Arabian Peninsula. A sharper view of how to identify, weigh and live with material risk rather than try to remove it. A reframed sense of curiosity and adaptability as operational disciplines, not personality traits. A vocabulary for talking about resilience that does not collapse into motivational language.

Why organisations work with Mark van Rijmenam He gives boards a named decision framework, WAVE (Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower), drawn from his book Now What?, now built into an operating diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness against its own industry and regulatory context. The framework translates futurist material into something a planning cycle can actually use. His research base spans AI, blockchain and the metaverse across six books, so the technology view is not a single-trend pitch but a structured map of how these layers interact for an operating business. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, which gives buyers an external credibility marker beyond bureau ranking. He has built and run technology platforms himself, Datafloq and Futurwise, and has turned the WAVE framework into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, so the perspective is informed by building the tools, not only commenting on them. Format range is unusually wide for a futurist: he delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens via digital twin, and runs sessions in person, virtually and as holographic delivery when the brief calls for it. Biography highlights PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change Founder of Datafloq and of Futurwise, an AI-powered insights platform Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Global Speaking Fellow Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI Delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality (2020) and a TEDx talk in Athens via digital twin (2023) Biography The hardest question for a board right now is not whether AI matters. It is what to commit to, when most of the technology in front of them will be obsolete in eighteen months. Van Rijmenam works on that question. His latest book, Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, sets out the WAVE framework: Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower. The framework is built to be used by an executive team in a planning cycle, not admired from a stage. The credibility behind that work is structural. A PhD in management from the University of Technology Sydney sits alongside six published books that span big data, blockchain, the metaverse and now generative AI. Step into the Metaverse was published by Wiley in 2022. Future Visions, written in five days as an experiment in human-AI co-authorship with ChatGPT, came the following year. The body of work treats each technology layer as part of a connected operating reality, not as standalone trends. He builds the tools he talks about. Datafloq curates emerging-technology intelligence for executives. Futurwise is an AI-powered learning environment he founded to give organisations a structured way to track signal across technology, regulation and culture. He has since turned WAVE into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, a diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness, surfaces the gap between what the C-suite believes and what management experiences, and returns a 90-day action plan. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation has admitted him as a Global Speaking Fellow, a designation held by fewer than fifty people worldwide. The format choices reinforce the argument. He delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality in 2020, and a TEDx in Athens in 2023 through a digital twin. For a buyer, the relevant signal is not the novelty. It is that the speaker is using the technologies he is asking leadership teams to make decisions about. Key speaking topics Generative AI and enterprise deployment Strategic foresight and scenario planning Decision architecture under exponential change The metaverse and immersive business models Blockchain and distributed-ledger applications AI ethics and governance Future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences Leadership offsites and planning cycles where a structured foresight method is needed Audience outcomes A working decision architecture (WAVE) that an executive team can apply to its own AI and technology bets, with the option of a structured readiness diagnostic that benchmarks the team against its industry A structured map of how AI, blockchain and immersive technologies interact across the operating model A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge on AI, including early preparedness for AGI-level systems Specific examples of organisations that have moved from technology pilots into operational advantage

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 Miriam Meckel She runs the leadership academy that European boards turn to when they need their executive layer fluent in AI, quantum and adjacent technologies, which gives her a live read on where senior teams actually get stuck. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, is one of the most cited German-language treatments of generative AI for business audiences, anchored in regulation, labour markets and governance rather than hype. She combines a serious academic chair at the University of St. Gallen with two decades inside business media, including the editorship of WirtschaftsWoche, so her framing is built for executive audiences rather than translated for them. Her work on brain-computer interfaces and cognitive enhancement gives her unusual range when the conversation moves from current AI deployment to the next horizon of human-machine integration. She holds the 2025 Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille for Best Media Communication, a recognition explicitly tied to making complex future technologies practical for executive audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of ada Learning GmbH, the AI and transformation academy spun out of Handelsblatt Media Group with Lea Steinacker and Verena Pausder. Professor of Communication Management and Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management, University of St. Gallen. Co-author of “Alles uberall auf einmal” (Rowohlt, 2024) on artificial intelligence; author of “Mein Kopf gehort mir” (Piper, 2018) on brain-computer interfaces. Former editor-in-chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche, the first woman to lead the title. Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; board member of Swiss media group Tamedia. Recipient of the Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille (2025), Ernst Schneider Prize, Cicero Speaker’s Prize for Science, Eisenhower Fellowship and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship. Biography Generative AI sits on most executive agendas and inside very few operating models. The space between those two facts is where European leadership teams currently lose months. Miriam Meckel works in that gap, professionally and intellectually. As co-founder and CEO of ada Learning, she runs the academy that puts senior managers from major European companies through structured programmes on AI, quantum and the technologies reshaping their industries. The work is concrete: how a CFO should think about model risk, how an HR leader should redesign roles around AI capability, how a CEO should commission and challenge an AI strategy. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, argues that AI is best understood as a data-driven human amplifier, a framing that cuts through both utopian and apocalyptic readings of the technology. Her authority comes from holding two distinct positions at the same time. She is Professor of Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and Director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, with research credentials reaching back to Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. She is also a working operator who edited WirtschaftsWoche, sits on the Tamedia board, and has built ada into a recognised institution in the German-speaking executive market. Her 2018 book “Mein Kopf gehort mir” took the same operator-academic approach to brain-computer interfaces, with first-person experiments inside the laboratories developing them. For boards confronting AI, she offers something the consultancy reports cannot: a researcher who teaches the technology to executives every week and reports back what they understand, what they resist, and what actually moves once they leave the room. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business strategy AI governance, regulation and ethics The future of work in an AI-enabled economy Brain-computer interfaces and human enhancement Quantum computing for executive audiences Digital transformation and leadership Media, communication and information overload Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning AI strategy and asking whether their AI position has any operational substance. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning workforce capability around AI. CEOs and strategy leaders in regulated European industries balancing AI ambition with the EU AI Act and national supervision. Senior leadership programmes and executive offsites at the point of confronting AI seriously rather than in passing. Audience outcomes A working mental model of where generative AI is already operational, where it remains pilot, and where it is still speculative. A clear read on the EU, US and Chinese regulatory environments and what they mean for European firms. Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal AI teams and consultants, grounded in how the technology actually behaves. An honest sense of what AI will do to roles, teams and decision rights inside their own organisation over the next three to five years. A bridge between today’s deployment questions and the next horizon of human-machine integration, including neural interfaces and quantum.

Why organisations work with Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser He reads the technology stack underneath the energy transition with a physicist’s precision: why photovoltaics keeps falling in cost, where power electronics and battery chemistry are going next, and what this implies for capital plans that assume a slower curve. He has run the policy machinery, not just commented on it. As Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention he negotiated across eight national governments on a treaty that links climate, transport and spatial planning. He led the European xGWp effort to rebuild gigawatt-scale photovoltaic manufacturing, which gives him an operating view of why European clean-tech capacity collapsed and what it would take to rebuild any of it. He combines this with thirty years of regional and EU policy work through the EURES Institute he founded in Freiburg, so the analysis lands at the level boards actually act on: investment, location, regulation, time horizon. Biography highlights Founder and director of the EURES Institute for Regional Studies in Europe, Freiburg, for fifteen years from 1989. Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention, 2004 to 2007. Consultant to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in its formative period. Coordinator of the European xGWp / European Gigawatt Fab initiative to rebuild European PV manufacturing, 2013 to 2015. Co-author of “European Transport Policy and Sustainable Mobility” (Routledge, 2000) and “Nachhaltigkeit trotz Globalisierung” (1998, with Christian Hey). Trained physicist (Diplom Physiker, Switzerland); writes and consults from Berlin in German, English, Italian and French. Biography The energy transition is being treated by many leadership teams as a communications and reporting problem. It is in fact an industrial, technological and capital allocation problem, and the gap between the two framings is widening. That gap is the territory Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser has worked in for four decades. His starting point is unusual. He trained as a physicist in Switzerland, then spent fifteen years building and running the EURES Institute for Regional Studies in Europe, a Freiburg think tank that worked through how energy, transport and spatial policy actually combine at regional level. From there he moved into multilateral practice as Acting Secretary General of the Alpine Convention from 2004 to 2007, the international treaty body covering sustainable development across the Alpine states. The industrial chapter of the work followed. Between 2013 and 2015 he coordinated xGWp, a European initiative that brought together the main European solar research institutes and the world’s largest PV equipment manufacturer to attempt to rebuild gigawatt-scale photovoltaic manufacturing in Europe. He has also advised the International Renewable Energy Agency in its development phase. The published work, including “European Transport Policy and Sustainable Mobility” (Routledge, 2000) and “Nachhaltigkeit trotz Globalisierung” (1998, with Christian Hey), runs along the same line. What this gives a board room is rare. Most speakers on energy and climate either describe the policy or sell the technology. Schleicher-Tappeser explains why the cost curve of photovoltaics is structural rather than accidental, why the next decade of the transition will be decided by power electronics and battery chemistry as much as by any climate summit, and what European industrial exposure looks like once those facts are taken seriously. Key speaking topics Energy transition and decarbonisation strategy The economics and physics of photovoltaics European industrial policy and clean-tech manufacturing Climate policy and capital allocation Sustainable transport and mobility Regional and multilateral sustainability governance Ideal for Boards and executive committees of energy, utility and industrial companies setting capital allocation against transition scenarios Policy and regulatory leaders in European institutions, national ministries and regional authorities Investors and asset owners with material exposure to clean-tech supply chains and energy infrastructure Sustainability and strategy leaders translating climate commitments into operating and procurement decisions Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why photovoltaic costs continue to fall and what that means for adjacent technologies A working view of the four technology pillars (photovoltaics, power electronics, batteries, semiconductors) shaping the next phase of the transition A sharper sense of European industrial exposure in clean-tech and what credible responses look like A grounded policy-and-capital frame for setting net zero ambition against actual delivery constraints A line of sight from regional policy mechanics to multilateral treaty practice, useful to leaders working across both

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 Sabrina Faramarzi She has written trend reports for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8, three of the most-used forecasting houses in consumer strategy, so brand teams get a forecaster who knows how the foresight industry actually works inside. Her sector range covers travel, beauty, fashion, food and drink, wellbeing, money, tech, retail and media, which means a single speaker can address an audience drawn from several consumer-facing categories without losing specificity. She runs Are We Europe, a cross-border editorial operation, so she brings a pan-European read on culture and audience behaviour rather than a default Anglo-American lens. Her data storytelling practice through Dust in Translation is built for organisations that have research and data assets but cannot make them land with a non-technical audience. Biography highlights Managing Director, Are We Europe, a non-profit pan-European media collective. Founder and Editorial Director, Dust in Translation, a creative data storytelling agency. Co-founder, Feminist Internet, a non-profit advancing internet equality through creative practice. Trend reports written for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8. Journalism contributions to The Guardian, Wired, Vice and Vogue Business. BA (Hons) First Class in Trend Prediction and Forecasting, University of East London; MA with Distinction in Journalism, University of the Arts London. Biography Most consumer trend conversations in the boardroom collapse into one of two failure modes. They either treat every TikTok spike as a strategic shift, or they ignore weak signals until a competitor has already built around them. Sabrina Faramarzi works in the gap between those two errors. Her practice is reading consumer and cultural signals well enough to tell a brand team which ones to bet on. She has the technical training for it. A First Class degree in Trend Prediction and Forecasting from the University of East London, an MA with Distinction in Journalism from the University of the Arts London, and a working track record writing trend reports for The Future Laboratory, Stylus and Canvas8. That is the inside of the foresight industry, not a commentator’s view of it. The journalism work runs alongside the forecasting. Bylines in The Guardian, Wired, Vice and Vogue Business cover gender, AI, digital rights and internet culture, and that editorial muscle is what lets her translate research into stories that boards and marketing teams actually use. Through Dust in Translation, her data storytelling agency, she does the same job for organisations sitting on data they cannot make legible. She also runs Are We Europe, a non-profit pan-European media collective, and co-founded Feminist Internet. Both give her something most trend speakers do not have: a structural view of how cultural narratives form and travel across borders, which is the part of trend work that matters most when a category is being reshaped rather than refreshed. Key speaking topics Consumer trend forecasting Data storytelling Internet culture and online communities Futures of consumer-facing industries Gender, AI and digital ethics Cross-border European media and audiences Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and category leads in consumer-facing businesses planning the next 18 to 36 months. Innovation and insights teams looking for an outside read on which signals to commit to. Communications and content leaders who need research and data turned into audience-ready stories. Conferences in travel, hospitality, beauty, fashion, food and drink, retail and media that want a sector-specific futures keynote. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of which consumer signals in their category are durable and which are noise. Working language for telling stories with data so research lands with non-technical audiences. A sharper read on how online communities form, mobilise and shape brand reputation. Sector-specific cues for where to look for the next category shift in travel, beauty, fashion, food, retail or media.

Why organisations work with Ella Sy She works inside the signals, not on top of them. Her day job as Business Futures Strategy Director at GDR is reading retail, tech, and consumer change for commercial clients, not curating trend decks from the outside. She pairs a futures lens with delivery discipline. Alongside the strategy work she runs programme at Elevate, so her view of change includes what it takes to operationalise it, not only name it. Her brief is genuinely cross-sector. Named client work spans Google, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts, which gives her material from both B2B technology and consumer-facing brands. She brings a non-Anglosphere cultural read. French-born, Asian heritage, London based, working in English, French, and Mandarin. Useful for boards with EMEA and APAC exposure who want more than a US-centric view. She is comfortable with soft territory that leadership teams often duck: meaning, purpose, human growth inside commercial strategy. Named bookings in this register rather than retrofitted from a trends talk. Biography highlights Business Futures Strategy Director at GDR, a retail and brand strategy consultancy. Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, and Chair of its Youth Board Committee. Former Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide, part of Publicis Groupe. 13+ years of strategy across retail, technology, wellness, banking, luxury, and FMCG. Client engagements include Google across LatAm markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts. MA in International Marketing and Communication. Works in English, French, and Mandarin. Biography Most organisations treat foresight as a slide at the start of strategy offsites. GDR, where Ella Sy is Business Futures Strategy Director, sells it as a product to retailers and brands that need to place commercial bets on where consumer behaviour is going next. That is the discipline she brings into the room. Before GDR, she was Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide inside Publicis Groupe, running strategy for large advertising clients. The common thread across the two roles is translation. Taking messy, contradictory signals from culture, technology, and consumer behaviour and turning them into positions a leadership team can defend and a business can execute against. She also holds an operational role: Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, a UK youth mentoring organisation where she chairs the Youth Board Committee. That side of the work keeps her close to delivery rather than only advice, which is unusual for a speaker working in the futures space. Her client record crosses categories that rarely share speakers: Google across Latin American markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, KSL Resorts. French-born, of Asian heritage, based in the UK, she works in English, French, and Mandarin, and the cultural range shows up in how she frames audiences outside the Anglosphere default. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and business futures Consumer and cultural signal reading Customer experience and brand strategy in an AI-shaped market Organisational culture under technological disruption Purpose-driven leadership and human growth Cross-cultural strategy across EMEA and APAC Ideal for CSOs, chief strategy officers, and transformation leads deciding where to place medium-term bets. CMOs and customer experience leaders in retail, hospitality, and consumer technology. Boards and executive teams setting a three-to-five year direction under technology and consumer volatility. International leadership groups that need a non-US-default reading of culture and consumer change. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which emerging signals in consumer behaviour and technology actually matter for the business in the room. Working language for talking about culture and customer experience together rather than as separate agendas. Examples from retail, luxury, hospitality, and technology clients that test the ideas against real commercial pressure. A more honest view of the gap between seeing change and executing on it inside a large organisation. Cross-cultural context for leaders whose markets extend beyond the US and UK.

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 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 Abishur Prakash He defined the geopolitics-of-technology field early and keeps naming what comes next. His 2016 book Next Geopolitics set out a scenario framework for state competition over AI and robotics that boards are now living through. His latest, The Great Fracturing, maps the broken order they operate in today. He gives executives a working vocabulary for the new operating environment. Concepts he coined, including Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI and Business Iron Curtain, name dynamics that buyers can otherwise only describe in fragments. His work at the Center for Innovating the Future has been cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signalling that policymakers and corporates draw on the same analysis. He briefs in two registers. He has testified to the Senate of Canada and writes regularly in CNBC, Nikkei Asia, BBC, Politico, Fortune and the WSJ, so he is fluent with both heads of state and operating executives. He runs an advisory firm, The Geopolitical Business, that is built specifically for corporate decision-makers, not academic audiences. The reading frame is always: what does this mean for your next investment, supplier, market or product launch. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Geopolitical Business, a Toronto-based advisory firm. Author of six books, including his latest, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World (2026), The World Is Vertical, and Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two. Former geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future; represented CIF in testimony to the Senate of Canada in 2017. Work cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bylines and commentary in CNN, BBC, CNBC, WSJ, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Politico, Fortune, The Telegraph, Scientific American and SCMP. Coined frameworks now used in corporate strategy discussions: Next Geopolitics, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain. Biography The intersection of state power and corporate strategy is where most boardroom assumptions are now breaking. Export controls on chips, sanctions regimes that shift quarterly, severed supply corridors and AI rivalry between Washington and Beijing are no longer macro context. They sit on the operating P&L. Abishur Prakash has been mapping this terrain since 2013, when he first set out the case that geopolitics and technology had become a single field. Six books built that argument in stages. Next Geopolitics Volumes One and Two used scenario-based chapters to show how AI, robotics and biotech would force governments and companies into new postures. Go.AI examined the state-level race for artificial intelligence advantage. The Age of Killer Robots looked at autonomy in defence. The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization argued that the flat, integrated world of the 1990s and 2000s is being replaced by a layered, segmented one in which corporates choose blocs rather than markets. His latest book, The Great Fracturing: How Geopolitics Is Breaking the World, widens the lens from technology to the whole order. It traces how trade, ideology, connectivity and alliances are breaking into rival systems, reshaping everything from capital flows to how AI is deployed. His vantage point is built on both policy and corporate exposure. As a futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, his work was cited by the World Economic Forum, Brookings and the UAE foreign ministry, and he testified to the Senate of Canada in 2017. He now runs The Geopolitical Business, a firm built to convert that analysis into decisions for executives, central banks and investors. His commentary appears regularly in CNBC, BBC, Nikkei Asia, the WSJ, Politico and Fortune. What boards take from him is not a worldview, but a working method. Concepts he coined, Vertical Globalization, Geopolitics of AI, Business Iron Curtain, give leadership teams a vocabulary for things they were already feeling on supply, capital and market access. The output is concrete: which corridors are closing, which blocs are forming, where the next sanction or subsidy is likely to land, and what that means for the next investment cycle. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and AI US-China strategic and technology competition Vertical Globalization and the end of flat-world supply chains Sanctions, export controls and the Business Iron Curtain Scenario planning for boards and investors Long-range geopolitical foresight Bloc formation and the future of trade corridors The fracturing of the global order Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CSOs setting strategy across multiple geopolitical blocs CFOs and treasury leaders running capital allocation under sanctions and currency volatility Heads of supply chain, procurement and manufacturing footprint Investors, central banks and policy leaders responsible for long-horizon risk Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how state-level technology rivalry is reshaping their specific industry Named frameworks for describing geopolitical change inside their own strategy process Sharper questions for the next board, investment committee or supply review A view of which corridors, blocs and choke points to watch over the coming cycle Confidence to act on geopolitical risk before it becomes a balance-sheet event

Why organisations work with Ian Dunt He explains the mechanics of UK government, not the gossip: how a bill actually becomes law, where civil service capacity sits, why a policy lands or stalls. Useful to any team pricing regulatory or political exposure. His book How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t became a Sunday Times bestseller and is used as a reference text by people who work in and around Parliament. That is a stronger credibility signal than a television appearance count. He brings a second, distinct intellectual track on liberalism, populism and the condition of democratic institutions, drawn from How To Be A Liberal and the Origin Story podcast. Boards thinking about long-horizon political risk get more than a UK briefing. He writes and speaks for decision-makers, not commentators. The register is direct, argued, commercially relevant, and stays away from partisan theatre. Biography highlights Columnist for The i Paper, one of the UK’s main daily political columns. Former editor of politics.co.uk, the long-running UK politics analysis site. Author of How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller. Author of How To Be A Liberal (Canbury, 2020) and Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? (Canbury, 2016). Co-host of Origin Story with Dorian Lynskey, and a founding voice on Oh God, What Now? and The Bunker, all Podmasters productions. Appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist magazine in 2025. Biography Most UK political coverage describes the weather over Westminster. Dunt describes the building. How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2023 and an immediate Sunday Times bestseller, walked readers through the actual wiring: Number 10, the Cabinet Office, the civil service, the Commons, the Lords, the party machines, and the specific failure points in each. That is the unusual thing about him as a political voice. The subject is institutions, not personalities. Before the book, a long editorship of politics.co.uk gave him the beat, and a column at The i Paper gave him the public platform he still uses. He writes in plain, argued English, not lobby shorthand, which is part of why the book crossed over from political readers to the general ones. The second strand of his work sits further back from the news cycle. How To Be A Liberal, published by Canbury in 2020, is a history of liberal thought and a defence of it against nationalism and authoritarian revival. Origin Story, co-hosted with the journalist Dorian Lynskey on Podmasters, takes that same method, trace an idea to its root, then show what it has become, across subjects from neoliberalism to conspiracy theory. It is the part of his work that serious boards find most useful when the question is not what happens next week but what kind of political environment the organisation will be operating in for the next decade. In 2025 he was appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist, the 140-year-old rationalist magazine, which sits comfortably inside that longer-arc intellectual project. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster governance Political and regulatory risk for business UK-EU relations after Brexit Populism and the condition of democratic institutions Liberalism, public reason, and the information environment Media disruption and misinformation Ideal for Boards, executive teams and public affairs leads exposed to UK regulatory and political risk. Risk, compliance and government relations functions inside multinationals operating in the UK and Europe. Investor and membership audiences who want a serious read on Westminster rather than a news recap. Audience outcomes A working mental model of how UK government actually produces decisions, and where it breaks. Sharper judgement on which political stories matter commercially and which are noise. A clearer view of where populist politics is driving institutional change across Europe and the UK. An informed frame for conversations with policymakers, regulators and own-government-relations teams.

Why organisations work with Hans Diels Direct operator experience inside EU trade policy. He represented Belgium on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee on services and investment, which gives his read on sanctions, tariffs, and industrial policy a practitioner’s weight that pure commentators cannot match. A continental European lens on geopolitical risk, at a moment when Anglo-American analysis dominates the boardroom. For European leadership teams exposed to Russia, China, and US policy swings, his vantage point is scarcer and more relevant. Two published books that form a coherent argument: “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) sets out the scenario-thinking method; “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024) applies it to the economic consequences of political conflict. He works in the register executives need: translating sanctions regimes, trade wars, and energy shocks into decisions about where to produce, whom to sell to, and which contracts to stress-test. Dutch and English delivery across keynotes and workshops, with a track record in boardrooms, strategy offsites, and risk committees across the Benelux and wider Europe. Biography highlights Futurist and geopolitical expert at ETION, the Belgian entrepreneurial network and think tank. Former Belgian representative on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee (services and investment). Former researcher at the University of Antwerp, Department of Political Science. Prior roles at the US Embassy in Belgium, the Belgian Parliament, and EU institutions. Author of “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) and “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024). Master’s in Political Science (KU Leuven), International Relations postgraduate (UCLouvain), economics via LSE External Programme. Biography Sanctions, export controls, and industrial policy now set the boundary conditions for European business. Assumptions that underpinned strategy for two decades, open markets, cheap Russian gas, reliable Asian supply chains, a stable US security guarantee, are no longer reliable. That is the terrain Hans Diels works on. His perspective is built from inside the machinery. He represented Belgium on the EU Council’s Trade Policy Committee on services and investment, worked at the US Embassy in Belgium, served in the Belgian Parliament, and researched international governance at the University of Antwerp. He now sits at ETION, the Belgian entrepreneurial network, advising boards and executive teams on how political conflict translates into commercial exposure. Two books carry the argument. “Het onzekerheidsvoordeel” (LannooCampus, 2022) sets out a method for strategy under deep uncertainty, built on horizon scanning and scenario testing rather than forecast precision. “Markt onder vuur” (LannooCampus, 2024) turns the lens on geopolitical disruption itself: how sanctions, cyber operations, and economic warfare reshape markets, and what companies can practically do in response. Diels is Dutch-speaking, trained in international relations at KU Leuven and UCLouvain, and read economics through the LSE External Programme. He writes regularly on futures and political disruption on Substack and in Belgian media. What he offers a board is a specific thing: the discipline of keeping strategy open to multiple plausible futures, without paralysing the decision to act in the present. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and corporate strategy Economic warfare, sanctions and export controls Scenario thinking and strategic foresight Global megatrends and systemic disruption Europe’s position between the US, China and Russia Supply chain exposure and industrial policy Strategy under deep uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive committees reassessing exposure to geopolitical shocks Strategy, risk and supply chain leaders at industrial and financial services firms European multinationals with significant US, China or Russia-linked revenue or sourcing Leadership offsites and strategy days where the macro picture needs to become a decision input Audience outcomes A sharper read on which geopolitical shifts genuinely move their P&L and which are noise A working vocabulary for scenario thinking that survives contact with the executive agenda Concrete pressure points to test in supply chains, contracts, and market strategies A realistic view of Europe’s structural position between the US, China and Russia, and what that means for their sector Confidence to make strategic commitments without waiting for the fog to clear