Storytelling & Business Communication speakers

Why organisations work with Manisha Tank Five years hosting the Singapore Fintech Festival, the largest fintech gathering in Asia, gives her live editorial command of a 7,000-seat stage and a working knowledge of the sector’s senior players. A 25-year anchoring career across Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International means she interviews from a position of subject fluency, not a script. She has put questions to CEOs, founders, policymakers and heads of state on live broadcast television. She moderates the Milken Institute Asia Summit and hosted Earthshot+ during The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in 2023. Both events demand a host who can move between climate finance, technology and policy in the same panel without losing the room. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, so corporate communications teams are buying a known editorial product, not an unknown. Based in Singapore. A buyer running a regional summit in Asia gets a host who understands the regulatory, political and capital context their senior speakers actually operate in. Biography highlights 25-plus years as an international broadcast journalist for Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International. Former anchor of CNN’s News Stream from Hong Kong (Asian TV Awards, Best TV News Programme) and Talk Asia. Host of the Singapore Fintech Festival for five consecutive years. Moderator at the Milken Institute Asia Summit and host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize Singapore 2023. Host of the podcast Tank Talks Asia, and producer of corporate podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture. Winner, Summerson Goodacre and Daily Telegraph Wealth Management Award for Best Industry Commentator, 2007. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. Biography Running a senior conference stage is a different craft from delivering a keynote on it. The host sets the editorial pace, frames the question the panel is actually there to answer, and decides when to press a CEO and when to move on. Get it wrong and a marquee event reads as flat. Get it right and the room produces the material that gets quoted for the rest of the year. That is the work Manisha Tank has done for two and a half decades. She spent the formative part of her career as a financial news reporter for Reuters Television, posted to New York to cover the Nasdaq and the NYSE in the late 1990s, then anchored business and main news bulletins for BBC News in London. She joined CNN International in the mid 2000s and fronted News Stream from Hong Kong, which won Best TV News Programme at the Asian TV Awards, and the long-form interview series Talk Asia. Now based in Singapore, she has built a second career as the editorial host of the region’s most senior business stages. Five consecutive years at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Recurring moderation work at the Milken Institute Asia Summit. Host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in November 2023, the investor-facing day of Prince William’s climate prize. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, and her own podcast, Tank Talks Asia, interviews senior figures from across the region. Her subject anchors are fintech, financial inclusion, sustainability and digital transformation. Her award for Best Industry Commentator from the Daily Telegraph and Summerson Goodacre dates back to 2007. The continuity is the craft itself: she remains one of the few hosts in Asia who can hold a CEO panel, a head-of-state interview and a climate finance session in the same programme without losing the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and main-stage moderation Panel moderation for senior leadership audiences Fintech and financial inclusion in Asia Net zero transition finance and sustainability Digital transformation and emerging technologies Corporate podcast hosting and branded audio Ideal for Senior business and finance summits in Asia that need an experienced editorial host on the main stage. CEO-level panel sessions on fintech, sustainability or digital transformation where the moderator needs to push without breaking the room. Corporate communications and marketing leads commissioning long-form branded podcast series with a recognisable broadcaster. Investor days, awards nights and after-dinner programmes that require an emcee with broadcast pedigree. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time, with sessions that end on the question the audience came to hear answered. Panels that get past prepared talking points, because the moderator knows the subject and the speakers. A senior audience that stays in the room for the second half of the day. A set of session clips and quotes the marketing team can use long after the event.

Why organisations work with Marc Priestley He spent a decade inside McLaren Racing during a Drivers’ Championship-winning era, and can describe how a thirty-second pit-stop is engineered, rehearsed and recovered when something goes wrong. Few speakers have lived that operational tempo. His material is structured around the actual mechanics of high-performance teams: role clarity, debrief culture, marginal gains, and how senior figures handle blame after a public failure. Not motivational; operational. His broadcast work for BBC, Sky Sports F1 and ESPN, plus Discovery’s Wheeler Dealers, makes him a natural choice when the brief calls for a speaker who can also host, moderate or anchor a programme. His two books, The Mechanic and Pitlane Lessons, give a senior audience a written through-line they can recommend internally after the session. Biography highlights McLaren Racing F1 mechanic, 2000-2009, including Number One Mechanic and pit-stop crew duties. Part of the McLaren team during Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 Drivers’ Championship season. Author of The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane (Yellow Jersey, 2017). Author of Pitlane Lessons: What F1 Can Teach You About Life and Work, foreword by Jake Humphrey. Co-host of Wheeler Dealers on Discovery alongside Mike Brewer. Broadcaster and pundit for BBC, Sky Sports F1 and ESPN; founder of the Pitlane Life Lessons Podcast. Biography A McLaren pit-stop in 2008 took just under three seconds. The crew had rehearsed it thousands of times, knew exactly what each pair of hands would do, and had a debrief structure for every error. Marc Priestley spent a decade inside that environment, working his way up to Number One Mechanic before leaving the team in 2009. What he carried out of the paddock was a precise model of how a high-performance operation actually runs. Role design, communication protocols, blameless debriefs, recovery discipline after a public mistake. His keynote work translates those mechanics for senior leaders who recognise the pattern in their own teams: the failure under pressure that nobody had stress-tested for. Two books anchor the material. The Mechanic, published by Yellow Jersey, is a behind-the-scenes account of life inside an F1 team. Pitlane Lessons, with a foreword by Jake Humphrey, applies the operating principles to leadership and work. Both give buyers a written reference point alongside the keynote. The broadcasting career runs parallel. Priestley is an analyst and pit-lane reporter for Sky Sports F1, has worked for the BBC and ESPN, hosts the Pitlane Life Lessons Podcast and co-presents Discovery’s Wheeler Dealers with Mike Brewer. That range is why corporate clients book him for keynotes, panel chairing and full-event hosting from the same brief. Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork under time pressure Communication in operationally complex environments Marginal gains and continuous improvement Debrief culture and recovery after failure Decision-making in time-critical settings Leadership lessons from elite motorsport Event hosting, moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Senior leadership teams looking to stress-test how their organisation behaves under operational pressure. COOs, transformation leads and operations directors responsible for complex, time-critical execution. Sales and engineering leadership groups using offsites to reset team standards and feedback culture. Conference organisers who need a speaker who can also host, moderate or anchor the programme. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how elite teams design roles so individuals can act fast without waiting for permission. A practical reference for blameless debriefs and how senior people respond after a public error. Named examples from inside an F1 team that translate to corporate operational settings. A framework for thinking about marginal gains as a discipline, not a slogan.

Why organisations work with Marco Tempest He works inside the technology he talks about. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT Media Lab and ETH Zurich Space are his day-to-day environments, not credentials borrowed for the stage. He treats perception as the strategic variable. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how attention, framing and trust are engineered, which is the part of technology adoption most leadership conversations skip. His material is built with the tools clients want to understand: drones, robots, augmented reality, generative systems. The demonstration is the explanation. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC give him a tested vocabulary for translating complex systems into language a board can act on. He has the rare standing to brief a NASA mission team in the morning and headline a Fortune 100 leadership offsite in the evening, and to make the same argument in both rooms. Biography highlights Director’s Fellow, MIT Media Lab. Creative Technologist and Consultant, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA Honor Award recipient. Director, Pi Innovation Hub, ETH Zurich Space. Founder and Director, MagicLab, New York. Seven-time TED speaker; SIGGRAPH 2020 keynote. Merlin Award for Best Contemporary Magician (2010); World Magic Award for Best Contemporary Magic (2009); Mandrakes d’Or (1994); Special Fellowship, Academy of Magical Arts. Biography A drone swarm performing in formation looks like a technology demo until you watch how an audience reacts to it. The reaction is the product. That is the lens Tempest brings to every emerging technology conversation: not what the system can do, but what it does to the person watching. He holds the working credentials to make that argument seriously. He is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Creative Technologist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a NASA Honor Award for his contribution to COVID-19 ventilator work, and director of the Pi Innovation Hub at ETH Zurich’s Space division. He also runs MagicLab, a New York consortium that prototypes illusion and digital technology together. The performance work is the testing ground for the ideas. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC have used robots, AR, drones and generative systems as live material, not slideware. The Merlin Award, World Magic Award and Mandrakes d’Or sit alongside the academic and engineering affiliations because the discipline is the same one: engineering perception with precision. For executive audiences, the value is specific. Tempest gives leadership teams a working model of how attention, trust and belief actually behave around new technology, drawn from the labs where that technology is being built. A board that has heard him is better equipped to ask the second-order questions about adoption, narrative and human response that strategy decks routinely miss. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and human perception Robotics, drones and autonomous systems Augmented and mixed reality Generative AI and creativity Innovation storytelling Space technology and exploration The psychology of attention and trust Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI, robotics or XR strategy CTO, CIO and chief innovation leaders shaping emerging-technology roadmaps Marketing and brand leadership rethinking customer attention in saturated channels Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the technology argument needs to land with non-technical executives Audience outcomes A working mental model for how attention and trust shift when new technology enters a customer relationship Specific examples, drawn from NASA JPL, MIT Media Lab and live performance, of how robots, drones, AR and generative systems behave in front of real audiences Sharper questions to put to internal technology and innovation teams about adoption and human response A reframing of innovation storytelling as a discipline with rules, not a soft skill

Why organisations work with Marcus Collins He translates cultural anthropology into commercial decisions, turning ideas that usually live in academic departments into practical inputs for brand, product, and growth strategy. His book For the Culture provides a single thesis with named mechanisms for how meaning, identity, and belonging move markets. Buyers get an argument they can hand to a team, not a set of trend observations. He has run the work he teaches. Apple’s iTunes and Nike sport music, Beyonce’s digital strategy, Wieden+Kennedy New York, and named campaigns for Google, Brooklyn Nets, and State Farm sit behind every claim. Thinkers50 named him to the 2023 Radar with the Distinguished Achievement Award for the idea most likely to shape the future of business management. That puts him among a small group of new voices the global management community has formally endorsed. He sits inside the platform side of culture as Professor in Residence at TikTok, which means his read on how brand meaning forms and spreads is current, not retrospective. Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Marketing, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Professor in Residence, TikTok Former Chief Strategy Officer, Wieden+Kennedy New York Author, For the Culture (PublicAffairs, 2023); Thinkers50 2023 Best New Management Booklist Thinkers50 Radar Distinguished Achievement Award, 2023 American Advertising Federation Advertising Hall of Achievement; Ad Age and Crain’s 40 Under 40 Columnist, Adweek and Forbes Biography Culture, not demographics, decides what consumers buy and what they refuse. Marcus Collins built a career inside that observation. He ran digital strategy for Beyonce, worked on iTunes and Nike sport music at Apple, and went on to serve as Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy New York, the agency behind Nike’s most enduring brand work. His doctorate at Temple University was in cultural contagion and meaning-making, the academic foundation that now sits behind his book For the Culture. Published in 2023, it landed on the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist and won him the Radar Distinguished Achievement Award the same year, naming his thinking as the idea most likely to shape the future of business management. He teaches marketing at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, holds a Professor in Residence role at TikTok, and writes columns for Adweek and Forbes. His commercial fingerprints are on Google’s Real Tone, the relaunch of the Brooklyn Nets, the Made In America festival, and State Farm’s Cliff Paul campaign. For senior commercial audiences, his value is specific. He gives marketing, growth, and brand teams a working theory of why some ideas move through a culture and most do not, and he ties that theory to operating choices about positioning, audience, and product. Key speaking topics Cultural contagion and consumer behaviour Brand strategy and meaning-making Marketing in a fragmented media environment The role of identity in consumption Building brands that earn cultural relevance Storytelling and business communication Customer experience and brand Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing strategy for a post-demographic environment Growth and commercial leadership teams trying to understand why their category narrative has stopped working Creative agencies and in-house brand teams looking for an applied framework on cultural relevance Consumer-facing businesses, retail, media, sport, technology, where brand meaning is a competitive variable Audience outcomes A working definition of culture that explains why messages succeed or fail, beyond demographic targeting A clear view of how meaning, identity, and belonging move audiences toward or away from a brand Named mechanisms from For the Culture that brand and marketing teams can apply to live campaigns Examples drawn from Apple, Nike, Beyonce, Brooklyn Nets, Google, and State Farm, showing how cultural strategy operates inside real commercial work A sharper sense of why most brand and growth strategies underperform in fragmented markets, and what changes when culture becomes the unit of analysis

Why organisations work with Margaret Doyle She is a working Deloitte partner inside UK Financial Services, not a retired commentator. The questions she asks on stage are the questions she asks Deloitte’s banking and insurance clients during the week. Two careers reinforce each other on the platform: a decade at The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, and Reuters Breakingviews, plus presenting Today, The World Tonight and Analysis on BBC Radio 4. The result is a chair who can read a room and rewrite a question on the fly. She authors and oversees Deloitte’s UK Financial Services research, including the bi-annual London Office Crane Survey and reports on banking culture, insurance disruption and talent. Conference content benefits from her own data, not a generic deck. She has chaired and moderated for Economist Conferences, the European Commission, Allen and Overy, ING and Procter and Gamble. The reference list reads like the buyer’s own peer set. Harvard Business School Baker Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, and a member of the HBS European Advisory Board since its 2003 founding. The credential signals the seniority of the rooms she has been in. Biography highlights Partner at Deloitte UK and Chief Insights Officer for Financial Services; member of the UK Financial Services Executive. Former financial journalist with bylines at The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and Reuters Breakingviews. Editor of Global Agenda, the magazine of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos. Presenter on BBC Radio 4 (Today, The World Tonight, Analysis), the BBC World Service (The World Today) and Five Live (Wake Up to Money). Economics graduate of Trinity College Dublin (Entrance Exhibitioner and Foundation Scholar); MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and Baker Scholar. Member of the Harvard Business School European Advisory Board since its inception in 2003; British-American Project Fellow. Biography Banking, insurance and investment management leaders are running their businesses through a period when interest rate paths, regulation and customer behaviour are all moving at once. The conversations that matter on stage are no longer one-topic panels. They demand a chair who can hold a CEO, a regulator and an institutional investor in the same exchange and pull a usable line out of it. Margaret Doyle has spent her career in that exchange from both sides. As Chief Insights Officer for Financial Services at Deloitte UK, she sits on the UK Financial Services Executive and oversees research on innovation, culture and talent across banking, insurance and investment management. Her team produces the bi-annual London Office Crane Survey, a benchmark dataset on the London commercial property market. Before Deloitte she covered business and finance for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, edited Global Agenda for the World Economic Forum’s Davos meeting, and wrote on investment banking for Reuters Breakingviews. She also presented Today, The World Tonight and Analysis on BBC Radio 4, alongside The World Today on the BBC World Service and Wake Up to Money on Five Live. She read economics at Trinity College Dublin as an Entrance Exhibitioner and Foundation Scholar, took an MBA at Harvard Business School as a Fulbright Scholar and graduated as a Baker Scholar. She has been a member of the HBS European Advisory Board since its 2003 inception. Her chairing credits include Economist Conferences, the European Commission, Allen and Overy, ING, Procter and Gamble and Trinity College Dublin. Key speaking topics Financial services strategy and disruption Banking, insurance and investment management outlook Macroeconomic trends and global markets Culture and talent in financial services Real estate and the London office market Conference chairing and panel moderation Media and current affairs in financial services Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and board chairs in banking, insurance and investment management Investor and analyst conferences in financial services Industry conferences requiring an informed chair across regulation, capital markets and macro Senior client and partner events at professional services firms and law firms Audience outcomes A clearer view of where macro pressure is biting in banking, insurance and investment management An honest read of disagreement among the senior voices on stage, not a managed consensus Sharper questions to take back into board and executive conversations A working sense of how Deloitte’s UK Financial Services research is reading the cycle

Why organisations work with Maria Bartiromo Three decades of access to the people who run global capital markets, central banks, and listed companies, used in the room to produce conversation a panel chair without that history cannot. A live-markets reflex. She has anchored daily business television since 1993 and asks the question the audience wants asked, in the language of the trading floor and the boardroom at once. Editorial credibility that travels. Two News and Documentary Emmys, induction into the Cable Hall of Fame as the first female journalist, and a place in the Library of American Broadcasting Giants of Broadcasting class of 2016. A through-line on the intersection of policy and capital. Her FOX Business and FOX News programmes have built a sustained record of interviews with US administration figures, foreign leaders, and Fortune 100 chief executives on trade, energy, and monetary policy. Institutional standing beyond broadcast. Trustee of New York University, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and 2026 Horatio Alger Award recipient. Biography highlights Anchor, Mornings with Maria, FOX Business Network, and Sunday Morning Futures, FOX News Channel. First journalist to broadcast live daily from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, beginning 1995. 20 years on-air at CNBC; host of Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo and On the Money with Maria Bartiromo. Two News and Documentary Emmy Awards: 2008 financial-crisis coverage and 2009 documentary on Google. Cable Hall of Fame, Class of 2011, the first female journalist inducted; Giants of Broadcasting, 2016. Author of The Weekend That Changed Wall Street, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, and Use The News; trustee of New York University; member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Biography The morning the financial system seized in September 2008, the calls that mattered were going to a small list of journalists with the standing to take them. Maria Bartiromo was on that list. She had spent thirteen years anchoring live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the first reporter to do so daily, and her Emmy-winning coverage of the crisis became one of the defining records of the period. That access was not accidental. Bartiromo studied journalism and economics at New York University, learned business news at CNN, and joined CNBC in 1993, where she anchored Closing Bell and On the Money for two decades. The throughline is unusual for a broadcaster: an editorial sensibility built on the trading floor, then refined across a thousand interviews with chief executives, finance ministers, and central bankers. In 2014 she moved to FOX as Global Markets Editor. Mornings with Maria became the highest-rated pre-market business news programme on cable, and Sunday Morning Futures has consistently topped Sunday cable news. The work earned her induction into the Cable Hall of Fame as the first female journalist in its class, a place among the Library of American Broadcasting Giants of Broadcasting, and in 2026 the Horatio Alger Award. Three books extend the same beat off-camera. The Weekend That Changed Wall Street is an eyewitness account of the 2008 collapse. The 10 Laws of Enduring Success draws on her interviews with chief executives. Use The News is a working manual for separating signal from noise in financial markets. She serves as a trustee of New York University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Key speaking topics Global markets and economic outlook Geopolitics and capital flows Leadership lessons from chief executive interviews Monetary policy and the macro environment Energy, trade, and US-China relations The future of media and financial journalism Moderation and on-stage interviews with senior leaders Ideal for Annual leadership and investor conferences seeking a credible interviewer for CEO, finance-minister, or policymaker keynotes. CFO, treasurer, and investment-committee audiences working through macro and geopolitical scenarios. Boards and executive offsites that want a working journalist to interrogate strategy in front of the room. Financial services, asset management, and corporate banking client events. Audience outcomes A clear read on the macro forces, policy moves, and geopolitical signals shaping the next planning cycle. First-hand perspective drawn from recent on-record interviews with sitting CEOs, central bankers, and government officials. A working sense of how markets are pricing the current political and economic moment, and what that means for capital allocation. For interview and moderation formats, a sharper public conversation with the speaker on stage than a non-journalist chair will produce.

Why organisations work with Maria Papacosta Her personal branding workshop has held the #2 global ranking from Global Gurus for three years running, which means her method has been pressure-tested across thousands of executives, not just polished for the keynote stage. She runs MSC Marketing Bureau, a personal branding agency that also manages speakers, so her work with leaders is grounded in what actually moves rooms and audiences rather than in coaching theory. She coaches TED and TEDx speakers as a curator, which is a sharper test of communication craft than most leadership programmes ever apply. Her work targets the specific gap between a leader’s intent and how they are read by others, which is where most executive presence programmes stop short. Biography highlights Co-founder, MSC Marketing Bureau, a personal branding agency for executives and thought leaders. TEDx speaker coach and content curator. MSc in Strategic Marketing, Aston University; Specialization in Inspired Leadership, Case Western Reserve University. Certified Visionary Leadership Coach (OKVLC) and NLP Associate Practitioner. Personal branding workshop ranked #2 globally by Global Gurus, 2021 to 2023. Named Top 10 Global Thought Leader on Personal Branding by Thinkers360, 2023; Top 100 Global Inspirational Leaders by PeopleHum, 2021. Biography Most senior leaders underestimate how much of their authority is decided before they speak. The way they enter a room, hold a pause, or answer a hard question is read as character, and that reading rarely gets corrected. Maria Papacosta works in the gap between what a leader intends to communicate and what their audience actually receives. She co-founded MSC Marketing Bureau as a personal branding agency for executives and thought leaders, and the agency also operates as a speaker management firm. That dual lens matters. She sees both the boardroom version of leadership identity and the stage version, and she knows which moves transfer between them. Her credentials sit across marketing strategy and leadership development: an MSc in Strategic Marketing from Aston University and a Specialization in Inspired Leadership from Case Western Reserve University, alongside Visionary Leadership Coach certification and NLP practitioner training. She also coaches and curates speakers for TEDx, where the standard for clear, embodied communication is unforgiving. The recognition reinforces the approach. Her personal branding workshop has held the #2 spot in the Global Gurus rankings for three consecutive years, and Thinkers360 placed her in the top 10 worldwide for personal branding in 2023. The substance behind those rankings is a method built for leaders who need to be understood quickly by people who will not give them a second listen. Key speaking topics Executive presence Personal branding for leaders Inspired leadership Public speaking and stage craft Storytelling for executives Self-awareness and leadership identity Communication for senior leaders Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives stepping into wider public visibility Senior leadership teams preparing for a strategic narrative shift High-potential leaders being positioned for board-level or external roles Conferences where leadership communication is the core craft Audience outcomes A clearer read on the gap between how they intend to be perceived and how they actually are. A working method for shaping a personal brand around their real strengths, not a polished surface. Concrete techniques for managing pre-performance fear and using it on stage. Sharper instincts for storytelling and presence in high-stakes settings.

Why organisations work with Maria Ressa She has tested platform governance arguments against actual prosecution, exile threats and a coordinated state-backed disinformation campaign, which gives her a clarity on digital risk that academic experts rarely match. As co-founder of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and co-leader of Columbia’s Technology and Democracy Initiative, she sits at the centre of the policy conversation shaping how governments will regulate platforms and AI. Her Nobel citation specifically named the defence of free expression as a precondition for democracy, giving leadership and ESG audiences a credible voice on information integrity as a governance issue, not a communications one. She runs a working newsroom that has documented platform manipulation in real time, so her arguments come with primary evidence rather than secondary commentary. How to Stand Up to a Dictator gives her a published thesis on the architecture of digital authoritarianism that boards and policy teams can engage with in advance of a session. Biography highlights 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, jointly with Dmitry Muratov, for work safeguarding freedom of expression. Co-founder and CEO of Rappler, the Manila-based investigative news organisation she launched in 2012. Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; Distinguished Fellow and co-leader of the Technology and Democracy Initiative at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics. Author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator (Harper, 2022), a New York Times bestseller, and Seeds of Terror (2003). 2021 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize; 2018 Golden Pen of Freedom from the World Association of News Publishers. Time Person of the Year 2018; Time 100 Most Influential People; BBC 100 Women. Nearly two decades as CNN bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta; former SVP for News and Current Affairs at ABS-CBN. Biography The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize citation named freedom of expression as a precondition for democracy. It was the first time since 1935 that the prize had been given to working journalists, and the choice was not symbolic. Ressa shared it with Dmitry Muratov for a body of work that treats disinformation, platform power and the erosion of shared reality as the defining governance problem of the decade. Her vantage point is unusual. She co-founded Rappler in Manila in 2012, then ran it through years of state-backed harassment, criminal charges and an online campaign that the company itself documented in forensic detail. That experience produced a working theory of how engagement-driven platforms, weaponised by political actors, dismantle public trust and institutional legitimacy from below. The argument is laid out in How to Stand Up to a Dictator, the Harper book that became a New York Times bestseller and Princeton’s Class of 2027 Pre-read. She now sits at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs as a Professor of Professional Practice and co-leads the Technology and Democracy Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics. The role pairs naturally with her work on the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body of journalists, academics and activists holding Meta to account on content governance. Earlier in her career she opened CNN’s Manila bureau, ran its Jakarta bureau through the post-9/11 years, and led news at ABS-CBN; her 2003 book Seeds of Terror remains a reference on Jemaah Islamiyah. For corporate audiences, the value sits in the bridge she builds between platform mechanics and executive decision-making. AI accelerates everything she has been documenting for a decade, and the regulatory response, in Brussels, Washington and Manila, is now arriving in the operating environment of any business with a public-facing reputation. Key speaking topics Disinformation and the integrity of the information ecosystem Platform governance and Big Tech accountability AI ethics and the future of public trust Press freedom as institutional infrastructure Democratic resilience under digital authoritarianism Leadership and moral courage in contested environments Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams reassessing reputational and regulatory risk in an AI-mediated information environment Chief Communications Officers, Chief Risk Officers and General Counsel responsible for platform exposure and disinformation response Public-sector and policy audiences working on technology regulation, democratic resilience and ESG frameworks Leadership programmes seeking a serious voice on values, courage and institutional integrity Audience outcomes A working model of how engagement-driven platforms shape public perception of organisations, leaders and policy. Direct evidence, drawn from Rappler’s own reporting, of how coordinated disinformation campaigns are designed and executed. A clear read on where AI regulation and platform accountability are heading across major jurisdictions. A sharper sense of what leadership looks like when institutional norms are under pressure, told through a Nobel-recognised case. Language and frameworks for treating information integrity as a governance issue at board level, not a communications problem.

Why organisations work with Mariana Atencio Field-tested authority on trust. Her reporting from family separations at the US border, cartel territory, and the Syrian border gives her arguments about authentic leadership a weight that pure motivational content cannot match. A bilingual broadcaster who has crossed from Univision to NBC News and back to independent media, which makes her credible to audiences and leadership teams operating across the Americas in both English and Spanish. Perfectly You, published by HarperCollins in English and Spanish, gives buyers a published, citable thesis on authenticity at work rather than a talk built from generic insights. A working journalist’s instinct on stage. She has moderated heads of state, Fortune 100 CEOs and panels at Microsoft, Nasdaq and the UN General Assembly, which is the same skill set buyers want when the brief is high-stakes interviewing rather than a standard keynote. Biography highlights Peabody Award winner for the Univision investigative documentary Rapido y Furioso on US-Mexico weapons trafficking. Three Emmy nominations, a Hillman Prize, and the NAHJ Presidential Award for reporting on cartel violence, migrant family separation and women’s rights. Former NBC News and MSNBC correspondent; prior bilingual correspondent at Univision. Author of Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real (HarperCollins, 2019), published in English and Spanish. 2021 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Founder of GoLike Media and creator of the 2022 true crime podcast Lost in Panama, which reached Apple Podcasts’ top 10. Biography The hardest assignments in network news are the ones where the people on camera have every reason not to trust the person holding the microphone. Atencio spent a decade in those rooms, reporting on family separations at the US border, cartel violence in Mexico, and women’s rights along the Syrian border for Univision and then NBC News. The Peabody Award came from that work, alongside a Hillman Prize, three Emmy nominations and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Presidential Award. That experience is the foundation for the second half of her career. Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real, published by HarperCollins in 2019 in English and Spanish, sets out a thesis on authenticity drawn directly from the field: that the leaders, families and communities who hold together under pressure are the ones who tell the truth about themselves and their circumstances. The book reads as reporting on trust, not self-help. She founded GoLike Media in 2020 and created Lost in Panama in 2022, a true crime podcast on the disappearance of two young Dutch hikers that became a top-10 Apple Podcasts release and was used as a platform to surface the wider issue of missing women in the region. She is a 2021 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. For corporate audiences, the combined record matters more than either half alone. A Peabody-winning correspondent who has interviewed heads of state and translated live on-air for NBC speaks about credibility, belonging and culture from a different place than a speaker who has only worked the keynote circuit. That is what buyers are paying for when they put her in front of a leadership team. Key speaking topics Authentic leadership and trust Belonging and culture in cross-border organisations Communication and storytelling for senior leaders Resilience and reinvention under pressure Latino market and the Americas Bilingual moderation, hosting and high-stakes interviewing Ideal for Leadership teams rebuilding internal trust after restructure, contested change or public scandal. CHROs and culture leads designing belonging and inclusion programmes with substance rather than signalling. CMOs, communications leaders and Latin America country heads briefing on bilingual audiences across the Americas. Conference hosts who need a moderator credible with heads of state, Fortune 100 CEOs and a sceptical room. Audience outcomes A sharper view of what authenticity actually costs senior leaders, and where the line sits between candour and overshare. A working framework for how trust is rebuilt with employees and external audiences who have stopped listening to corporate communications. Concrete examples of credibility under pressure, drawn from her on-the-ground reporting in conflict zones, migrant camps and political crises. A clearer read on the US Hispanic and broader Latin American audience for organisations operating across the region.

Why organisations work with Marianna Evenstein DW News anchor experience translates directly to live event control: she keeps senior speakers on the question, manages timing without visible effort, and reads a multilingual room in real time. Three working languages (English, German, Russian) let her host the same agenda for a Berlin board, a global trade fair, and a Russian-language guest in one programme without handoffs. Has hosted events for Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz, Samsung, Volkswagen, and Philips, which is the relevant proof for a corporate communications lead deciding whether she can carry a tier-one stage. Advises on programme design and speaker preparation before the event, not just on-the-day delivery, which raises the quality of what panels actually produce. Doubles as a media coach for executives who will be on the same stage, useful when the brief includes both running the event and getting senior leaders camera-ready. Biography highlights News editor and television anchor at DW News, Germany’s international broadcaster, since 2008. Former radio host and reporter for DW’s Newslink. Moderator at Falling Walls 2025, the Berlin science and society summit. Hosts and moderates conferences, panels, galas, and trade fairs for clients including Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Hugo Boss, Mercedes-Benz, Philips, Samsung, and Volkswagen. Media coach for executives preparing for interviews and on-camera appearances. Comparative Literature and Philosophy degree, New York University. Biography A live event with five named speakers, three languages, a hard finish time and a senior audience is not a panel discussion. It is a production. The person at the front of the room is responsible for whether the agenda translates into something the audience can use, or whether it dissolves into competing monologues. Marianna Evenstein has spent her career on that side of the camera. As a news editor and television anchor at DW News, Germany’s international broadcaster, she has worked the same discipline live for international audiences since 2008, after starting in radio at DW’s Newslink. The transferable skill is not charisma. It is timing, accurate listening, and the ability to redirect a conversation without losing the speaker’s dignity. That is the basis on which she is booked by Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz, Philips, Samsung, Volkswagen and Austrian Airlines, among others, to host conferences, summits, trade fairs, and gala evenings. She works in English, German, and Russian, which removes the seam most international events have to design around. In 2025 she moderated Falling Walls in Berlin, a summit format that demands quick comprehension across science, policy, and business in a single afternoon. Her work also extends backwards into the agenda. She advises clients on programme design and speaker preparation, and runs media coaching for executives who will be on stage themselves. This is the part of the offer that distinguishes her from a presenter who arrives on the day with cue cards. Key speaking topics Conference and summit moderation Panel moderation across business, policy, and science Awards ceremony and gala hosting Trade fair and product launch presenting Multilingual event hosting (English, German, Russian) Media coaching for executive interviews Programme design and speaker preparation Ideal for Heads of communications and event directors planning international flagship events with multilingual audiences. Corporate teams whose agenda includes senior internal speakers who need on-camera coaching alongside event hosting. Foundations, NGOs, and policy institutes running cross-sector summits where panel discipline matters. Trade fair and awards organisers needing a presenter who can carry a televised-quality main stage. Audience outcomes A live agenda that finishes on time with the planned questions actually answered. Panels in which senior speakers are kept on point without visible correction. Smooth handover between English, German, and Russian segments without translation friction. Executive contributors who arrive better prepared because they were briefed and coached in advance.

Why organisations work with Mariano Sigman A 2018 Nature Human Behaviour study he co-authored, run with 5,180 live participants, showed that aggregating small structured debates produces sharper answers than the wisdom of thousands; that finding rewrites how senior groups should be designed to decide. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, Europe’s flagship neuroscience consortium, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. His training in physics in Buenos Aires, neuroscience at Rockefeller, and postdoctoral work with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France gives his claims a methodological grounding that separates them from motivational uses of the same science. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Science Magazine; his ideas hold up outside the speaker circuit. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, gives leadership audiences a calm, scientifically grounded read on what AI changes and does not change in human cognition. Biography highlights PhD in neuroscience from Rockefeller University; postdoctoral research with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France. Director of the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project; the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. Associate Professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; founder of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires; Principal Researcher at CONICET. Pius XI Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2016); James S. McDonnell Scholar Award; Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award. Author of “The Secret Life of the Mind” (HarperCollins, 2017) and “El poder de las palabras” (2022); co-author of “Artificial” with Santiago Bilinkis (2023). TED main-stage speaker on collective intelligence with Dan Ariely. Biography Smart people in a room together do not reliably make smart decisions. Mariano Sigman has spent two decades building the experimental science that explains why, and what to change about it. His laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella draws on physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science to study how individuals and groups actually form judgments under uncertainty. The clearest example is a 2018 paper in Nature Human Behaviour with Joaquin Navajas and colleagues. Working with 5,180 live participants, the team showed that aggregating the consensus of small structured debate groups was substantially more accurate than averaging the opinions of thousands of independent individuals. The architecture of a conversation, in other words, matters more than the number of voices inside it. Sigman trained as a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires, took a PhD in neuroscience at Rockefeller, and did postdoctoral research at the College de France with Stanislas Dehaene, one of the leading figures in cognitive science. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, the European flagship initiative, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship there. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, became an international bestseller and brought his work on judgment, learning, and consciousness to readers in more than a dozen languages. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, applies the same lens to the relationship between human cognition and AI. For boards and executive teams, that body of work answers a specific question. Senior decisions live or die on how a small group aggregates uncertain information. Sigman gives leaders a working account of where that process breaks, why it breaks, and which structural moves close the gap. Key speaking topics Collective intelligence and group decision-making Cognitive bias and judgment under uncertainty The neuroscience of learning and adult neuroplasticity Conversation, language, and belief formation Artificial intelligence and human cognition Consciousness and the science of the mind Creativity and the cognitive roots of innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees rethinking how high-stakes decisions are deliberated and made CHROs and learning leaders designing capability and judgment programmes for senior talent Strategy, innovation, and transformation leaders working under deep uncertainty Technology and AI leadership teams reasoning about human-machine collaboration Audience outcomes A working account of why structured small-group debate outperforms both lone experts and large consensus meetings. A specific vocabulary for the cognitive distortions that quietly shape leadership judgment, including confidence bias and equality bias. A clearer read on how the adult brain learns and changes, and where common assumptions about learning capacity are wrong. A practical sense of how language and conversation shape belief, memory, and choice inside teams. A grounded view of what AI changes, and does not change, in the cognitive demands placed on senior leaders.

Why organisations work with Mark Barton The instinct to know when a speaker is avoiding the question comes from 10,000+ live interviews with central bankers, finance ministers, and CEOs. That is not something a professional facilitator acquires through facilitation training. A moderator who anchored Bloomberg Television’s coverage of six US elections, six UK general elections, the global financial crisis, and Brexit can challenge an economist or minister with authority rather than deference. For executives facing media scrutiny, Barton is among a very small group of coaches who can genuinely recreate the pressure of a live news anchor interrogation: because he spent 23 years on that side of the camera. He has chaired forums for Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute; organisations that expect substantive interrogation of the room’s most senior participants, not event management. As one of the five journalists who built Bloomberg Television’s European operations from the ground up in 1995, he brings an institutional relationship with the world of global finance and markets that most conference professionals simply do not have. Biography highlights One of five founding journalists, Bloomberg Television’s European operations, London, 1995 23-year Bloomberg TV anchor; hosted Countdown, First Word On Money, European Market Report, Bloomberg Markets, and The European Close Covered six UK general elections, six US elections, the global financial crisis, and Brexit across Bloomberg’s flagship prime-time programming Radio broadcaster: Daybreak Europe (Bloomberg Radio); financial bulletins on NPR, LBC Radio, Jazz FM, and Riviera Radio Conference host at the World Media Awards and The AIBs; moderator at the Horasis Global Meeting and Zurich Global Risk Management Summit Post-Bloomberg clients include Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute University of London, history Biography Bloomberg Television launched its European operations in London in 1995 with five journalists. Mark Barton was one of them. Over the next 23 years, he anchored the channel’s flagship programming: Countdown, European Market Report, Bloomberg Markets, The European Close. Those two decades built the editorial instincts and financial market depth that define his work today. His coverage record is specific. Six UK general elections. Six US elections. The global financial crisis. Brexit. More than 10,000 live interviews with world leaders, finance ministers, central bankers, and chief executives, including Bill Gates, Jean-Claude Trichet, and Shimon Peres. The experience of managing live, unscripted conversations with the world’s most guarded public figures is not one that transfers through conventional facilitation training. Beyond television, Barton presented Daybreak Europe on Bloomberg Radio and delivered financial market bulletins on NPR, LBC Radio, Jazz FM, and Riviera Radio. He also trained dozens of Bloomberg journalists in on-air communication: work that forms the basis of the media coaching he now delivers to business leaders preparing for public scrutiny. Since leaving Bloomberg in 2018, he has moderated for organisations including Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute. At the 2019 Horasis Global Meeting, he chaired a plenary on global governance featuring the former Prime Ministers of Romania and Belgium and the former President of Slovenia. The consistent thread: rooms that require a moderator with the credibility to hold their most senior participants to account. Key speaking topics Global financial markets and economic trends Geopolitical risk and international affairs Conference hosting and high-stakes panel moderation Executive media and communications coaching Live broadcast journalism and interviewing Business and financial crisis coverage Presentation skills under pressure Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams commissioning high-profile forums on global economic risk, geopolitics, or financial markets Conference producers and event directors requiring a moderator with genuine domain authority, not just facilitation skills Chief Communications Officers and communications teams preparing executives for live media exposure C-suite leaders undergoing media training ahead of investor events, public testimony, or broadcast interviews Audience outcomes A moderated panel or forum with the editorial discipline and intellectual challenge of a live news broadcast Executives with a clearer understanding of how to communicate complex positions under real media pressure – not simulated conditions A more productive leadership dialogue: one that surfaces genuine disagreement rather than managing it toward pre-approved consensus Practical techniques for live interview performance, grounded in the experience of 10,000+ actual broadcast interviews Increased confidence in high-stakes public settings, drawn from observing how the world’s most scrutinised figures handle live questioning