Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Tim Harford Translates economic and statistical research into commercial decisions, drawing on a Financial Times column that has run for nearly two decades and a body of ten published books. Brings credibility on numbers that very few speakers can match: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and OBE for services to economic understanding. Reframes innovation as an evidence-based discipline grounded in adaptation and failure, the central thesis of “Adapt” and “Messy”, rather than the usual creativity rhetoric. Equips senior audiences to interrogate their own data culture using the rules from “How To Make The World Add Up”, a practical antidote to misleading statistics inside organisations. Trusted as a host, moderator and after-dinner speaker by serious audiences because his radio craft on “More or Less” and “Cautionary Tales” carries directly into the room. Biography highlights Senior columnist, Financial Times, writing “The Undercover Economist”. Presenter, BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, the long-running statistics-in-the-news programme. Host of “Cautionary Tales”, a Pushkin Industries podcast, and creator of “Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy”. Author of ten books, including “The Undercover Economist”, “Adapt”, “Messy”, “How To Make The World Add Up” and “The Truth Detective”. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of Brasenose College, Oxford; Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford. OBE for services to Improving Economic Understanding; winner of the Bastiat Prize (twice), the Wincott Journalist of the Year award, and the Royal Statistical Society award for journalistic excellence. Biography Most organisations claim to be evidence-led. Few are. Decisions are framed in numbers but driven by narrative, and innovation programmes routinely refuse to learn from the failures that contain the most useful information. Harford’s work, across the Financial Times column, ten books and two long-running BBC and Pushkin productions, has been built around exactly that gap. His books map the intellectual territory leaders care about. “The Undercover Economist” reframed everyday markets through the lens of price, scarcity and incentive, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies in thirty languages. “Adapt” and “Messy” argue that progress depends on disciplined trial, error and tolerance for disorder, a more honest account of innovation than most corporate playbooks allow. “How To Make The World Add Up” gives senior audiences a practical method for testing the numbers they are asked to act on. The credentials behind that work are unusual. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Associate Member of Nuffield College Oxford, an OBE for services to economic understanding, and a body of awards from the Bastiat Prize to the Wincott. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, Harford has spent years publicly stress-testing the statistics that shape policy and business commentary, which makes him one of the few speakers who can hold a senior room on data culture without resorting to platitudes. For boards and leadership teams, the value is concrete. Sharper questions about innovation portfolios, a working method for separating signal from noise, and a more honest model of how organisations actually learn. The recent “Cautionary Tales” series, which dissects high-profile organisational failures, has become a reference point for leaders thinking seriously about how decisions go wrong. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making Innovation, adaptation and learning from failure Statistical literacy and data culture in organisations Economic forces shaping business and policy Creativity, disorder and team productivity Cognitive bias and judgement under uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting decisions where the numbers are contested Strategy, innovation and R&D leaders building portfolios under uncertainty CFOs and finance functions reviewing how evidence is presented and challenged internally Senior leadership offsites where the brief calls for serious intellectual content with broad relevance Audience outcomes A working method for interrogating statistics and management dashboards before acting on them A clearer model of innovation as managed trial and error, with practical implications for portfolio choice Sharper recognition of the cognitive errors that recur in senior decision-making Concrete references from “Cautionary Tales” and “More or Less” that audiences can use to reframe their own debates

Why organisations work with Tim Collins He has commanded under live fire. The lessons on composure, communication, and accountability are drawn from running the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group in Iraq, not a leadership model. His eve-of-battle speech is one of the most studied pieces of leadership communication of the last twenty years, hung in the Oval Office and quoted in business schools. Few speakers can talk about leadership communication from that position. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, gives him a vocabulary on small-team performance, selection, and trust that very few corporate speakers can match credibly. He builds the talk around the audience’s actual leadership tension. The military stories are evidence, not the point. Biography highlights Commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including service as Operations Officer. Appointed OBE in 2003 for service in Iraq. Author of Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict (Headline, 2006). Co-founder and Chairman of New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security services firm working with government clients since 2006. Regular media commentator and columnist on defence and security, with bylines in the Telegraph and other UK national press. Biography The eve-of-battle address to the Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group, delivered in Kuwait on 19 March 2003, was extemporised and recorded in shorthand by a single journalist. President George W. Bush later had a copy hung in the Oval Office. It is now a fixture on leadership reading lists, taught for what it does in five minutes: set the moral frame, give the team something to hold onto, and accept the weight of command without flinching. The speech is not why senior leaders book Collins, but it explains what they get. He commanded a battalion in combat, with all that implies for accountability, communication, and the long shadow that command throws over a career. He came back to allegations of war crimes, cleared his name, and was promoted to colonel. That sequence, command, scrutiny, recovery, is the substance of what he teaches. Before Iraq, Collins served eight years in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, and led troops through Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Cyprus. The earlier work shapes how he talks about selection, small-team trust, and what actually holds a unit together when the plan fails. His memoir Rules of Engagement (Headline, 2006) is the long-form version. Since retiring from the army in 2004 he has built New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security firm working largely with government, and become a regular commentator on defence and security in the UK national press. The corporate keynote work draws on all of it: the command experience, the public scrutiny, the second career building a business with a payroll and contracts. Key speaking topics Command leadership under pressure Leadership communication in high-stakes moments Small-team performance and trust Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and the weight of command Resilience after public scrutiny Lessons from operational command for civilian leaders Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and divisional MDs preparing teams for high-stakes operational moments Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders taking on command-level accountability Sales and operations conferences where the central leadership question is composure under pressure Board offsites focused on crisis readiness, succession, or the human side of restructure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what leadership communication actually does in the moment that counts. Practical handles on composure, accountability, and team trust, drawn from command experience rather than theory. A more honest reading of what holds a team together when the plan changes. A reference point, the eve-of-battle speech, that audiences carry back into their own leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Tim Bouverie A prize-winning historian whose two books, Appeasing Hitler and the Duff Cooper Prize-winning Allies at War, sit on exactly the questions boards now face: when to confront, when to compromise, and how to hold a fragile coalition together. Trained as a political journalist at Channel 4 News under Michael Crick, so the material is delivered as argument and narrative, not lecture. Brings a specific, named angle on negotiation: the Big Three at Tehran and Yalta as a working case study for M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration. Comfortable in serious rooms. Has interviewed George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson on stage at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and lectures regularly across the UK and US, including at the Hoover Institution. An Oxford-trained historian (Christ Church, Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s) whose readership includes Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Margaret MacMillan, all of whom have publicly endorsed the work. Biography highlights Author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Bodley Head, 2019), Sunday Times bestseller, Orwell Prize shortlist. Author of Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler (Bodley Head), winner of the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize. Christ Church, Oxford. 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford. Political journalist at Channel 4 News, 2013-2017, working with Michael Crick on Dispatches and covering two general elections, the Scottish referendum and the EU referendum. Regular contributor of book reviews on history and politics to the Spectator, the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. Speaker and interviewer at the Chalke Valley History Festival and at the Hoover Institution, with public sessions alongside George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson. Biography The diplomatic record of the 1930s is one of the best-documented examples of senior decision-makers misreading a hostile counterparty. It is also one of the most relevant to today’s boardroom. Tim Bouverie’s first book, Appeasing Hitler, took that record apart in detail, working from cabinet papers, private diaries and Foreign Office files to show how a generation of competent, well-informed leaders talked themselves into a strategic disaster. The book became a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His second, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler, drew on more than a hundred archives to reconstruct the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin coalition as the brittle, mistrustful negotiation it actually was. It won the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, one of the most credited awards in narrative non-fiction. The training behind the work matters to a corporate audience. Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford, and held the 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College. Before the books, he spent four and a half years as a political journalist at Channel 4 News, working with Michael Crick across two general elections and the Scottish and EU referendums. The combination shows up in the keynotes: archival depth, delivered with a working journalist’s instinct for argument. On stage he is a fluent interviewer as well as a lecturer, having questioned George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and presented at the Hoover Institution and at festivals across the United States. The signature talks pull directly from the books: appeasement as a study in strategic miscalculation, and the Big Three as a working manual on how to negotiate inside an alliance you cannot afford to walk away from. Key speaking topics Lessons from appeasement and strategic miscalculation Alliance management and coalition negotiation Leadership decisions under geopolitical pressure Diplomatic history of the Second World War The fragility of the rules-based order Negotiation in M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration Narrative history and archival research Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites focused on geopolitical risk and long-horizon strategy CEO and senior leadership audiences negotiating major partnerships, alliances or M&A Heads of strategy, government affairs and corporate affairs working on sanctions, China exposure and political risk After-dinner audiences at industry conferences where intellectual seriousness is part of the brief Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior leaders misjudge hostile counterparties, with named historical examples that stick. Specific lessons from the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance applicable to coalition negotiations today. A historical frame for current debates on the rules-based order, sanctions and Western unity that goes beyond the news cycle. A model for how to use evidence and narrative together when communicating high-stakes decisions internally.

Why organisations work with Steven Pinker His argument that human cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – are not random errors but predictable and correctable patterns gives organisations a diagnostic framework that most behavioural science speakers only gesture towards. The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now provide leaders with a rigorously evidenced counterweight to crisis-driven decision-making: a data-grounded case for long-run institutional progress that challenges the assumption that things are categorically worse than before. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters grew out of a Harvard course on reasoning, and offers organisations a structured, named toolkit – logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, game theory – applied directly to the kinds of collective judgments institutions face. His work on language and common knowledge (the study of what people know that others know they know) gives communicators and senior leaders rare analytical precision about why messaging fails, why consensus breaks down, and how shared understanding is actually constructed. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker brings a level of peer-validated scholarly authority that very few public-facing intellectuals in this space can match. Biography highlights Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; faculty career spanning Harvard, MIT (1982–2003), and Stanford Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2016) Author of thirteen books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences (shared with Peter Singer) William James Book Prize (three times); Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize; Cundill Recognition of Excellence in History Award Ranked by Academic Influence as the second most influential psychologist in the world, 2010–2020 Regular contributor to The New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic; named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and Foreign Policy‘s 100 Global Thinkers Biography Organisations that operate in complex, information-saturated environments face a specific and underappreciated failure mode: not a shortage of data, but a systematic distortion in how that data is processed. Leaders overweight vivid recent events, underweight statistical baselines, and build strategy around narratives that feel coherent rather than evidence that is reliable. The cognitive science underlying these failures is well-documented – but rarely applied with rigour inside institutions. Steven Pinker has spent four decades studying the mechanisms of language, reasoning, and human cognition at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. His research is not popularised work drawn from others’ findings: it is original experimental scholarship in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and the psychology of social relations, conducted at the Johnstone Family Chair in Harvard’s Department of Psychology. What distinguishes his public work is the consistent application of that scientific foundation to questions that organisations – and civilisations – actually face. His most argued books form a coherent intellectual project. The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) used historical data across centuries to make the case that violence and conflict have declined measurably – not as opinion, but as documented empirical fact – and identified the institutional and psychological forces responsible. Enlightenment Now (2018) extended that analysis across all major indicators of human welfare, arguing that reason, science, and Enlightenment institutions remain the engines of progress. Rationality (2021) turned the lens directly onto decision-making: what cognitive tools are required to think clearly, why they are rarely applied, and how organisations and democracies can build structures that reason more reliably. The book emerged from a course Pinker teaches at Harvard and addresses logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, and game theory as practical instruments for institutional judgment. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences – for contributions to the understanding of human rationality and progress that have entered the mainstream of public debate – and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker occupies a rare position: a research scientist whose work is directly legible to senior leaders grappling with the quality of organisational reasoning and the reliability of their own institutions. Key speaking topics Cognitive biases and institutional decision-making Rationality and evidence-based reasoning Language, communication, and common knowledge The psychology and history of violence Enlightenment values and organisational progress Human nature and social behaviour Clarity and effectiveness in professional communication Ideal for C-suite and board audiences wrestling with strategic decision-making under uncertainty Policy, government, and public affairs leadership Strategy, risk, and scenario planning functions Executive development and leadership faculty programmes Audience outcomes A working understanding of how specific cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – shape organisational decisions, and what structures can correct them A data-grounded framework for assessing long-run institutional and societal progress, reducing reliance on media-driven perception of perpetual crisis Practical reasoning tools from logic, probability, and causal inference, applied to the kinds of collective judgments senior leaders actually face Greater precision about how language shapes shared understanding – and why institutional communication so often fails to build the common knowledge it intends A clearer sense of where human nature helps and where it hinders, grounded in evolutionary psychology rather than management metaphor

Why organisations work with Steve Richards Decades of first-hand interviews with serving and former prime ministers, ministers and senior advisers, which is the basis of an Atlantic Books trilogy on leadership in Number 10 rather than political history written from a distance. A leadership lens on government that translates directly into corporate questions about succession, executive isolation, decision-making under public scrutiny, and the gap between strategy and execution. Editorial credibility built across the New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian and BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, which gives boards and policy audiences a commentator they already trust. A genuine performer’s command of a room, developed across a decade of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which makes him as effective chairing a senior dinner as delivering a keynote. Biography highlights Political Editor of the New Statesman, then Chief Political Commentator at The Independent and Independent on Sunday from 2000. Regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, with BBC television series on Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Author of The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson, Atlantic Books. Author of The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn, Atlantic Books. Author of Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss, Macmillan, named in The Times Best Politics and Current Affairs Books of the Year. Creator and performer of Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics, a touring stage show and podcast that ran for ten consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Biography The most useful evidence on leadership under pressure sits in government, where the same individuals can be observed across cabinet, opposition and crisis, often with the receipts public. Steve Richards has spent his career inside that material. As Political Editor of the New Statesman and then Chief Political Commentator at The Independent, he conducted long-form interviews with most living UK prime ministers and the people who advised them. That body of work became a leadership trilogy with Atlantic Books. The Prime Ministers reads ten occupants of Number 10 from Wilson to Johnson against the same questions: what they understood about power before they had it, what they did with the institution once they were inside, and why most of them ended badly. The Prime Ministers We Never Had applies the same lens to the figures who came close, including Butler, Healey and Corbyn. Turning Points, published by Macmillan in 2023, was named in The Times Best Politics and Current Affairs Books of the Year and steps further back, to ten moments that reshaped post-war Britain. On stage, Richards is unusual among British political commentators. He has built Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics into a touring one-man show and podcast that ran for ten consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The performance discipline travels: he chairs senior dinners and conferences with a journalist’s command of evidence and a stand-up’s command of a room. For corporate audiences, the value is translation. Cabinet government is an unusually rich case study in executive constraint, succession, advisory teams that work and do not, and the limits of personal authority under public scrutiny. Richards moves between Westminster and the boardroom without losing the specificity that makes the analysis useful. Key speaking topics UK political leadership and prime ministerial power The executive under public scrutiny Outsider movements and political disruption Post-war turning points and political change in Britain Number 10 advisory teams and decision-making Media, message and political communication Ideal for Boards and executive committees seeking analytical commentary on UK political risk and leadership transitions CEOs, chairs and advisers studying succession, executive isolation and decision-making under scrutiny Public affairs, policy and government relations leaders Senior dinners, partner conferences and chaired panels where credibility and command of a room matter equally Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how UK political power actually flows around Number 10, and what that means for forecasting policy direction A leadership case framework drawn from real prime ministerial successes and failures, applicable to corporate succession and executive transitions A sharper sense of why outsider politics keeps disrupting the centre, and how organisations should price that risk A view of post-war turning points that puts current volatility into longer-cycle perspective

Why organisations work with Stephen Sackur Access to a perspective built across nearly four decades of frontline reporting, from the Gulf War and the fall of the Berlin Wall to two decades of adversarial interviews with presidents, prime ministers, and heads of international institutions, that cannot be replicated by analysts working from secondary sources. A forensic, barristerial framework for examining how leaders think and deflect under pressure, drawn from nearly 20 years presenting HARDtalk to audiences in over 200 countries, that translates directly into sharper boardroom questioning and more rigorous scenario analysis. Timely relevance: his forthcoming book Hard Truth (Headline Press, 2026) addresses disinformation, authoritarian political power, and the fight to preserve truth-telling institutions, the precise threats organisations are being asked to assess and respond to now. The ability to moderate high-stakes discussions at board or senior leadership level with the structural discipline of a trained interviewer, not merely facilitating, but drawing out what participants actually believe rather than what they intend to say. Credibility built through direct engagement with the figures who shape geopolitical risk, including Hugo Chávez, Alexei Navalny, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, and Bill Clinton, giving his analysis a texture that is absent from most expert commentary. Biography highlights Presented BBC HARDtalk for 19 years (2005–2025), conducting in-depth accountability interviews with heads of state and global leaders broadcast across more than 200 countries 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent, based in Cairo, Jerusalem, Brussels, and Washington DC; covered the Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and 9/11 First correspondent to report the mass killing on the Basra road at the end of the Gulf War; author of On the Basra Road (1991), named a Spectator Book of the Year Named International TV Personality of the Year (Television) by the Association for International Broadcasting, 2010; nominated Speech Broadcaster of the Year, Sony Radio Awards, 2013 Honorary Doctorate, University of Warwick (2018); Henry Fellow, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; BA History (Hons), Emmanuel College, Cambridge Contributor to The Observer, London Review of Books, New Statesman, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph; currently presenter of The Times at One, Times Radio Under contract with Headline Press for Hard Truth: 10 Investigations That Shook the World – and Why They Matter Now (due September 2026) Biography When organisations need to understand how geopolitical risk is constructed as the product of decisions made by identifiable people operating under specific pressures, they are looking for something that most commentary cannot supply: direct, structured, adversarial engagement with the people who make those decisions. That is the experience Stephen Sackur brings. As the presenter of BBC HARDtalk from 2005 to 2025, Sackur conducted in-depth accountability interviews with figures including Hugo Chávez, Emmanuel Macron, Alexei Navalny, Christine Lagarde, and Bill Clinton that reached audiences across more than 200 countries. The programme’s defining characteristic was not access but interrogation: a forensic, evidence-based questioning method that was designed to surface what leaders believe rather than what they wish to project. Over nearly two decades, this produced an unusually detailed map of how power operates, deflects, and occasionally fractures under scrutiny. Before HARDtalk, Sackur spent 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent in Cairo, Jerusalem, Brussels, and Washington DC. He reported on the Gulf War, the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the peace process in the Middle East, and the political crises of the Clinton era. His 1991 book On the Basra Road, which emerged from being the first correspondent to report the mass killing of retreating Iraqi forces at the end of the Gulf War, was named a Spectator Book of the Year and established the analytical seriousness that has characterised his work since. His forthcoming book Hard Truth: 10 Investigations That Shook the World – and Why They Matter Now (Headline Press, September 2026) makes the case for investigative journalism as a democratic safeguard against disinformation, authoritarian capture, and institutional erosion. Educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Sackur now presents The Times at One on Times Radio and works regularly with international forums and senior leadership audiences as a moderator and speaker on geopolitics, accountability, and the anatomy of power. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global power dynamics Political risk and democratic accountability Leadership under pressure and public scrutiny The media’s role in holding institutions to account Disinformation and the future of truth-telling High-stakes questioning and structured decision-making International affairs: Middle East, US politics, European security Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams seeking structured geopolitical context rather than generic risk briefings Risk, strategy, and government affairs functions in international financial services, energy, and professional services firms Senior leadership conferences where geopolitical volatility, democratic risk, or institutional trust is on the agenda Organisations seeking a high-calibre moderator for multi-stakeholder panels on international affairs or governance Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing genuine geopolitical signal from media and political noise Insight into how senior political leaders actually think and behave when their positions are challenged, and what that reveals about institutional resilience A more rigorous vocabulary for assessing democratic risk, disinformation threats, and the erosion of accountability structures that underpin stable operating environments Practical understanding of how adversarial questioning works as a leadership and governance tool, applicable to board effectiveness, media engagement, and stakeholder management A grounded, non-sensationalised view of geopolitical risk derived from direct engagement with many of the figures who have shaped it

Why organisations work with Sohail Rahman More than 30 years across ITV, Granada, BBC, Channel 4, CNN and Al Jazeera English, which is a breadth of senior broadcast experience most corporate hosts cannot match. He was part of the original on-screen launch line-up for Al Jazeera English in 2005 and has anchored from Doha for two decades, giving him recognised standing across the Middle East, South Asia and Asia-Pacific. His correspondent postings in New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur were not studio work. They included access to places most correspondents do not reach, including North-West Pakistan’s tribal areas, which gives his geopolitical material front-line credibility. The awards record is specific: Royal Television Society Best Television Presenter in 2003 and a USA TV Emmy nomination for the Nepal Earthquake coverage. These are external markers of presentation quality rather than vanity listings. Fluency in five South Asian languages in addition to English makes him unusually useful for events in South Asia, GCC and South-East Asia where a host who understands cultural nuance materially affects how the room receives the content. Biography highlights Main presenter, Al Jazeera English, Doha; part of the 2005 on-screen launch line-up Former Al Jazeera Senior Correspondent for South Asia (New Delhi) and Asia Pacific (Kuala Lumpur) Previous networks include ITV, ITV Granada, BBC, Channel 4 and CNN Royal Television Society Best Television Presenter Award (2003); USA TV Emmy nomination for Nepal Earthquake coverage First British Muslim man to present ITV National News and ITV Granada regional news Fluent in five South Asian languages and English Biography Al Jazeera English went on air in 2005 as one of the most ambitious international news launches in a generation, and Sohail Rahman was part of the original on-screen team. Two decades later he remains a main anchor at the network’s Doha headquarters, having also spent postings as Senior Correspondent for South Asia from New Delhi and for Asia Pacific from Kuala Lumpur. The roles put him directly into the stories that now frame international business risk, from Asian elections and natural disasters to conflict on the Afghan-Pakistan border. His earlier career sits with the UK networks. More than 30 years across ITV, Granada, BBC, Channel 4 and CNN include a period as an ITV national news presenter, where he was the first British Muslim man to hold the role, and earlier Granada regional news anchoring. In 2003 he won the Royal Television Society’s Best Television Presenter Award for his ITV work. He later received a USA TV Emmy nomination for his coverage of the Nepal Earthquake. The correspondent experience is specific rather than general. He was one of the few international reporters granted access to North-West Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Swat, and filed on militancy and governance from those regions at a time when few Western broadcasters could. Fluency in five South Asian languages means his reporting and hosting in the region is not mediated through translators, which in turn gives him a register that regional audiences recognise as genuine. For international conferences, GCC summits, South Asian business events and investor-facing programmes with Asia or Middle East exposure, Rahman brings the combination most organisers actually want: a recognised Al Jazeera anchor, a Royal Television Society award holder, and a correspondent who has filed from the places the audience is otherwise only reading about. He is used for main-stage moderation, awards hosting, MC work and keynote interviews. Key speaking topics Middle East and Gulf geopolitics South Asian and Asia-Pacific current affairs International business, economics and global markets Media, journalism and cross-cultural communication Muslim representation and identity in Western media Hosting, moderating and awards MC craft Ideal for GCC, Middle East and Asia-based conferences, investor days and trade summits International awards and industry events needing a globally recognised anchor as host Corporate off-sites, client events and fireside interviews focused on Middle East and Asia risk Cultural, faith and representation events where a senior British Muslim broadcaster’s voice is relevant Audience outcomes A sharper read on Middle East and Asian geopolitics delivered by a serving Al Jazeera anchor Sessions that move from prepared remarks into genuine interview under a broadcast-grade host Specific front-line reference cases from South Asia, Asia Pacific and the tribal areas of Pakistan A host who can move credibly between English and South Asian languages in mixed international rooms

Why organisations work with Simon Jack His position as sitting BBC Business Editor gives direct, current insight into how major financial and corporate stories are selected, framed and brought to national audiences – not historical analysis, but active editorial intelligence A decade in investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda means he interrogates market events and corporate decisions from inside knowledge, not observation; financial audiences notice the difference Uniquely placed to explain the mechanics of media-corporate accountability, how organisations end up on the wrong side of a headline, and what that process actually looks like from within a national broadcaster The Good Bad Billionaire podcast (Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024) demonstrates an ability to make wealth, power and business ethics accessible and genuinely engaging for broad audiences – a value signal for any organisation wanting sharp facilitation, not just informed commentary His BBC Panorama film on male suicide brings personal authority to mental health discussions in business contexts that few speakers in this space can match Biography highlights BBC Business Editor since 2016, holding the role previously occupied by Robert Peston, Jeff Randall and Kamal Ahmed Decade in corporate and investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda before joining the BBC PPE, St John’s College, Oxford Lead BBC correspondent for the 2008 financial crisis: Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG bailout, Lloyds TSB/HBOS Co-presenter of Good Bad Billionaire (BBC World Service) – Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024 Presented BBC Panorama «A Suicide in the Family» (2015), a personal investigation into male suicide and the death of his father Biography When a major financial institution collapses, a rate decision lands, or a FTSE company comes under scrutiny, the story that reaches boardrooms and living rooms alike passes through a small number of editorial gatekeepers. Understanding how that process works – what gets reported, what gets simplified, what gets missed – is increasingly relevant to any senior leader operating in a complex economic environment. Simon Jack has spent two decades sitting at that interface. Appointed BBC Business Editor in 2016, he leads the corporation’s coverage of business, markets and economic policy across television, radio and digital platforms (a role previously held by Robert Peston). Before entering journalism, he spent a decade in corporate and investment banking in London, New York and Bermuda, building a working understanding of how financial institutions operate, how risk is managed, and how decisions are made under pressure that journalists who came up through newsrooms simply do not have. The dual experience of practitioner then investigator, gives Jack a particular kind of credibility. He has reported from inside major market events, including the 2008 financial crisis across Lehman Brothers, the AIG bailout and the HBOS collapse. He co-presents Good Bad Billionaire for BBC World Service, which won Best Business Podcast at the 2024 British Podcast Awards, demonstrating an ability to make the economics and ethics of extreme wealth engaging for audiences well beyond the specialist. He also presented the BBC Panorama film «A Suicide in the Family» – a personal and investigative piece on male suicide – which established him as a credible voice on mental health in a way that is unusual for a business journalist of his seniority. His value to organisations is not analysis from a distance. It is the perspective of someone who has been inside the financial system, run editorial coverage of it, and understands how the story between those two worlds gets told. Key speaking topics Global financial markets and economic developments Banking, investment banking and institutional risk Media accountability and corporate reputation Business journalism and editorial decision-making Wealth, power and business ethics Male mental health in professional contexts Ideal for Financial services, banking and insurance sector conferences seeking credible external perspective on market dynamics and media coverage Senior leadership and board-level events where understanding the media-corporate interface is strategically relevant Corporate communications, investor relations and policy teams navigating how economic narratives are formed Organisations seeking a facilitator or moderator with genuine financial literacy and broadcast authority Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how major financial and economic events are selected, shaped and communicated by national media, and what that means for organisational decision-making Insight into the practical gap between financial reality and public narrative, drawn from experience on both sides Greater literacy in reading market events and economic signals, without requiring specialist background A more grounded perspective on how corporate institutions appear under editorial scrutiny, and what factors shape that For events that include the mental health strand: a serious, personally grounded framing of male wellbeing in high-pressure professional environments

Why organisations work with Shashi Tharoor He has held substantive roles at all three levels of global decision-making – UN senior leadership, national government minister, and parliamentary committee chair. His analysis of geopolitical risk is grounded in direct institutional experience, not inference. Inglorious Empire makes a specific, evidenced argument that British colonialism reduced India’s share of world GDP from 23 per cent to 4 per cent. That argument now shapes how India approaches trade negotiations, multilateral engagement, and its relationships with former colonial powers – and any organisation operating in or alongside India needs to understand it. As current chair of India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, he articulates how India’s foreign policy decisions are actually being made and debated. That is not a perspective available from analysts outside the room. His 2015 Oxford Union speech became one of the most-viewed political addresses in recent memory, without institutional amplification, on the strength of its argument alone. Organisations placing him before senior audiences are drawing on a demonstrably high-impact communicator. His Project Syndicate column appears in approximately 80 newspapers, alongside regular contributions to The New York Times and Washington Post – a track record of making geopolitical complexity legible to exactly the audiences his clients are trying to reach. Biography highlights Four-term Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; current chair of the Lok Sabha Standing Committee on External Affairs 29-year UN career (1978–2007), culminating as Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information under Secretary-General Kofi Annan; India’s official candidate for UN Secretary-General in 2006, finishing second to Ban Ki-moon PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, at age 22 – the youngest in the school’s history at that time; founding editor-in-chief of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Author of 23+ books; Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India won the Sahitya Akademi Award (2019) and Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award (2017); The Great Indian Novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (1991) Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (France, 2022); Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (India’s highest honour for overseas nationals, 2004); World Economic Forum «Global Leader of Tomorrow» (1998) Contributing author to The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, and Newsweek International; monthly Project Syndicate column syndicated to approximately 80 newspapers worldwide Biography India’s share of the global economy stood at 23 per cent when the British East India Company arrived. By independence in 1947, it had fallen to 4 per cent. That single data point – made with forensic precision in Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India – is how Shashi Tharoor moved a historical argument into mainstream geopolitical discourse. The book grew from a 2015 Oxford Union speech that accumulated millions of YouTube views and earned cross-party praise in India, including from Prime Minister Modi. It won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019. Tharoor’s authority on international affairs is not rhetorical. He spent 29 years at the United Nations – joining as a refugee worker in Geneva in 1978 and rising to Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information under Kofi Annan. In 2006, the Government of India nominated him as its official candidate for Secretary-General; he finished second to Ban Ki-moon in the Security Council straw polls. The candidacy was a direct acknowledgement of the stature he had built inside the institution. Since entering elected politics in 2009, he has served four terms as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram and currently chairs the Lok Sabha Standing Committee on External Affairs. His vantage point spans the full arc of India’s global engagement – from the multilateral institutions he helped lead to the parliamentary committees now setting the direction of India’s foreign and trade policy. For organisations navigating a world where India is simultaneously a growth market, a strategic partner, and an independent geopolitical actor, Tharoor offers something no consultant’s report can replicate: a first-hand account of how power actually works from the inside of both global institutions and national government. He holds a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and contributes regularly to The New York Times, Washington Post, and Project Syndicate. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the fracturing of the multilateral order India’s strategic autonomy and its global rise Post-colonial history and its economic legacy International trade, diplomacy, and political risk India as an emerging market and 21st-century power Multilateral institutions: limitations, reform, and alternatives Leadership in public life and political decision-making Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams with material India exposure or strategic interest in South Asia Senior leaders navigating geopolitical risk in global markets – particularly in the context of US–China–India triangulation Policy-focused leadership conferences engaging with the future of multilateralism and international institutions Organisations in sectors directly affected by India’s trade and regulatory policy: manufacturing, financial services, technology, and energy Audience outcomes A structured framework for understanding India’s geopolitical positioning and what its pursuit of strategic autonomy means for international business Informed context on how post-colonial history is actively shaping India’s trade relationships, diplomatic priorities, and domestic politics A clearer picture of how multilateral institutions are evolving – and what fills the gaps when they fail to hold Practical language for discussing geopolitical risk in board conversations, without resorting to oversimplification A more grounded model for engagement with the Global South, particularly India, that goes beyond market data

Why organisations work with Seth Godin The permission marketing framework, first articulated in 1999, anticipated the mechanics now encoded in GDPR, email consent law, and the inbound marketing movement. Organisations working with Godin are drawing on the original source, not a derivative Purple Cow provides a genuinely testable argument: remarkability must be designed into the product or service from the outset, not applied as a marketing layer afterwards: a direct challenge to most organisations’ R&D and go-to-market sequencing His body of work spans 21 bestsellers over three decades with a consistent intellectual thread; buyers are not engaging with a single-thesis speaker, but with someone whose thinking has proved durable across multiple market cycles Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame – the only person known to hold all three – giving him third-party validation across the full spectrum of marketing practice His daily blog, running for over 25 years without interruption, is itself a proof point for the compounding value of consistent, permission-based communication: a lived demonstration of the principle he teaches Biography highlights Author of 21 international bestsellers translated into 38+ languages, including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, This Is Marketing, and This Is Strategy (2024 National Bestseller) Originator of the «permission marketing» and «interruption marketing» frameworks (1999), now foundational to digital marketing, CRM practice, and consent regulation worldwide Founder of Yoyodyne, a pioneering permission-marketing company sold to Yahoo! in 1998; served as Yahoo!’s VP of Direct Marketing post-acquisition Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (AMA New York, 2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA in computer science and philosophy, Tufts University Founder of the altMBA, an intensive online leadership and decision-making workshop Five TED Talks; author of one of the most-read daily business blogs in the world Biography Seth Godin sold his first company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo! in 1998 for $29.6 million. It was a permission marketing business: built around the then-contrarian argument that reaching people who had consented to hear from you was worth more than reaching vastly more people who had not. That argument is now the structural basis of email marketing, CRM, and data consent regulation across most markets. His 1999 book Permission Marketing named the framework and introduced its counterpart: interruption marketing, the logic of buying attention from people who did not want to give it. The book’s central claim – that anticipated, personal, relevant communication outperforms volume-based reach at every commercial stage – has proved more durable than most marketing theory of its era. HubSpot built a software category around a version of it. GDPR made it legally mandatory. The same structural argument runs through his subsequent work. Purple Cow made the case that a product worth noticing is the precondition for marketing worth running. Tribes reframed leadership as community-building rather than hierarchy. This Is Strategy, published in 2024 and a US National Bestseller, gives organisations a practical framework for distinguishing between long-term systems thinking and reactive planning. Each book refines the same underlying question: what does it actually take to earn the attention and trust of people who have a choice? He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a degree in computer science and philosophy from Tufts University. Inducted into three marketing halls of fame and the author of 21 international bestsellers, Godin writes a daily blog that has run without interruption for over 25 years; a compounding body of public intellectual work that few business writers at any level have matched. Key speaking topics Permission-based marketing and opt-in engagement Market differentiation and the logic of remarkability Strategy, systems thinking, and long-term planning Tribe leadership and community-driven growth Creative practice and the discipline of shipping work The economics of attention in overcrowded markets Climate communication and collaborative action Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rethinking acquisition and retention strategy CEOs and senior strategy leads pressure-testing their differentiation logic Founders and growth-stage leaders building category identity Boards and executive teams resetting planning frameworks in volatile conditions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the permission marketing framework and how it applies to current customer acquisition and retention strategy A testable argument for why remarkability must precede marketing investment, not follow it Practical framing for the difference between short-term attention tactics and long-term trust-building Exposure to the systems-thinking approach in This Is Strategy, useful for teams that confuse tactics with strategy A challenge to default assumptions about reach, volume, and interruption as commercial levers

Why organisations work with Richard Hammond A face audiences already trust. Two decades on Top Gear and The Grand Tour means a senior room recognises him the moment he walks on, which shortens the warm-up and lifts the agenda. Hosting craft built in live broadcast. Hammond reads a room the way a presenter reads a studio, which is the specific skill awards nights and corporate dinners need. Storytelling drawn from genuine high-stakes experience. The 2006 Vampire crash and the 2017 Rimac crash give him material that lands without rehearsal because it actually happened. Entrepreneurial second act. DriveTribe and The Smallest Cog give Hammond credible commercial experience to draw on when a brief calls for substance beyond hosting, particularly in automotive, media, and brand-building contexts. Comfortable across formats. Awards host, after-dinner speaker, panel moderator, fireside Q and A; he does not need a single staged format to work. Biography highlights Co-presenter, Top Gear, BBC Two, 2002 to 2015, with Jeremy Clarkson and James May. Co-presenter, The Grand Tour, Amazon Prime Video, 2016 to 2024. Author of On the Edge: My Story (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008) and As You Do (Orion, 2007). Founder of The Smallest Cog, a classic car restoration business in Hereford, opened 2021. Co-founder of DriveTribe, the automotive content platform launched in 2016. Presenter of Brainiac: Science Abuse (Sky One), Total Wipeout (BBC One), and Richard Hammond’s Workshop (Discovery+). Biography Top Gear ran for thirteen years on BBC Two with three presenters who became, between them, one of the most exported television properties in British broadcasting history. Hammond was the smallest of the three on screen and the one audiences most often warmed to first. That recognition is the asset corporate buyers are buying when they put him on a stage. Hosting a room of senior executives is closer to live television than to keynote speaking. The host has to set the tempo, hand off cleanly between segments, recover from a missed cue, and keep the audience with the agenda rather than ahead of it. Hammond has spent more than twenty years doing exactly this work, first across local BBC radio, then across motoring television, and most consistently as one third of the Top Gear and Grand Tour line-up. The 2006 Vampire dragster crash at RAF Elvington gave him a recovery story that has become its own asset. He was travelling at 288 mph when the tyre failed; he spent two weeks in a coma; he wrote about the recovery in On the Edge in 2008. When the brief calls for an after-dinner set with substance behind the laughs, that material is genuinely his. Beyond broadcast, Hammond has a working business in The Smallest Cog, the Hereford classic car restoration workshop he opened in 2021, and a media platform in DriveTribe, which he co-founded with Clarkson and May in 2016 and now runs himself. Both give him commercial ground to stand on when a brief moves from hosting into something closer to a fireside conversation about reinvention, brand, or the economics of motoring media. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and ceremony presenting Corporate after-dinner sets Automotive media and broadcast Recovery and return after the 2006 Vampire crash Building DriveTribe and The Smallest Cog The Top Gear and Grand Tour years Engineering, performance cars, and motoring journalism Ideal for Annual award nights and industry awards ceremonies Corporate dinners, gala evenings and partner events Automotive sector conferences and dealer events Brand activations and customer hospitality with a motoring or engineering audience Audience outcomes An evening that runs on tempo, with a host who keeps the agenda moving without flattening it. A first-hand account of the 2006 crash and recovery that anchors the room when the brief calls for it. A working perspective on automotive broadcast, classic car restoration, and the commercial side of motoring media. The recognition value of a presenter the audience already watches at home.

Why organisations work with Raphael Rowe His story is not a metaphor. He served close to twelve years in prison for a 1988 murder he did not commit, as part of the M25 Three case, before the Court of Appeal ruled the convictions unsafe in 2000. His broadcast credentials are substantial in their own right: host of Netflix’s Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons since season two, BBC Panorama reporter, and a track record on BBC Radio 4’s Today, BBC One’s Six O’Clock News and Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago. The Panorama investigative work, including on the Barry George case, places him inside the British public-interest journalism tradition rather than on the margin of it. The Raphael Rowe Foundation, his own organisation focused on prison health, education and rehabilitation, gives him a platform on institutional accountability that is active, not historical. He is comfortable on any stage that wants the full range of his experience, from a resilience keynote to a main-stage moderator role to an in-depth session on justice, media and institutional failure. Biography highlights Presenter of Netflix’s Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons since 2018 BBC Panorama reporter, BBC Radio 4 Today programme, BBC One Six O’Clock News, Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago (BBC Two) Investigative work including the wrongful conviction of Barry George in the Jill Dando murder case Author of autobiography Notorious Founder of the Raphael Rowe Foundation, working on prison health, education and rehabilitation Served close to 12 years wrongly imprisoned as part of the M25 Three case; convictions ruled unsafe, 2000 Biography The M25 Three case is one of the most-cited miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history. Raphael Rowe is one of the three men at the centre of it. Convicted in 1990 for a 1988 murder and a series of aggravated robberies, he spent close to twelve years in prison before the Court of Appeal ruled the convictions unsafe in July 2000. That experience is the reason he speaks with authority on institutional accountability, resilience and the cost of being wrong, and the reason he chose to spend the second half of his working life investigating the same systems from the outside. Since his release, Rowe has built a career in BBC and international broadcast journalism. He has reported for and presented BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC One’s Six O’Clock News and BBC Panorama, where his investigations included the wrongful conviction of Barry George for the murder of Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando. Outside the newsroom, he presented Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago for BBC Two, a format that allowed him to explore questions of meaning and resilience at long form rather than in soundbites. The Netflix commission is the title that most audiences now know him by. Since 2018 he has hosted Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons, the series that has taken him into maximum-security facilities in more than 20 countries, with a perspective no other presenter in the category has: he is the only host who has served time on the other side of the bars. The advocacy work sits alongside the broadcasting. He founded the Raphael Rowe Foundation to work on health, education and rehabilitation inside prison systems, and his autobiography Notorious is his first-person account of the conviction, imprisonment and rebuild. For corporate audiences, Rowe offers a resilience keynote that cannot be recreated, a host with Netflix-level recognition, and a credible voice on institutional failure when the brief calls for it. Key speaking topics Resilience and rebuilding after catastrophic adversity Criminal justice, wrongful convictions and institutional accountability Investigative journalism and the public interest Prison reform, health, education and rehabilitation Ethics and accountability inside institutions Media craft: hosting, long-form journalism and broadcast storytelling Ideal for Corporate audiences and leadership events looking for a first-person resilience keynote with substance Legal, justice and compliance audiences engaging with institutional accountability and miscarriage of justice Media, communications and PR organisations wanting an investigative-journalism perspective Events requiring a Netflix/BBC-grade host or moderator with a high-recognition public profile Audience outcomes A grounded account of what resilience looks like after a decade inside a system most audiences only study A clearer view of how and why institutions make catastrophic errors, and what breaks that cycle A specific set of examples from Netflix’s Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons and BBC Panorama investigative work Reference points on institutional accountability that are usable in legal, corporate and public-sector contexts The benefit of a recognised Netflix and BBC name in the room for audience engagement and post-event conversation