Supply Chain Resilience speakers

Why organisations work with Pankaj Ghemawat He is the originator of the CAGE Distance Framework, the canonical model for evaluating cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries, taught in MBA strategy courses worldwide and used inside boards making market entry decisions. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, the most widely cited empirical measure of cross-border flows of trade, capital, information, and people, which gives leadership teams a defensible reading of the global environment rather than headline narrative. His Law of Semiglobalization gives boards a precise corrective to the assumption that the world is either flat or fracturing, and reframes how to size international ambition against domestic baseline. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, with 25 years of prior Harvard Business School faculty work, including a McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. World 3.0 won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011, and The Economist named him among the greatest management thinkers in its 2008 guide. Biography highlights Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School and Global Professor of Management and Strategy at NYU Stern. Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management at NYU Stern. Principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011. Author of The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press) and World 3.0 (Harvard Business Review Press), winner of the Thinkers50 Book Award. Recipient of the McKinsey Award for best Harvard Business Review article and the Booz Eminent Scholar Award of the Academy of Management’s International Management Division. Named among the greatest management thinkers in The Economist’s 2008 guide and ranked in the Thinkers50. Biography The hardest strategic question in front of most boards is also the one with the weakest data inside the building: how exposed are we to a world that may be fragmenting, and where should we still be investing across borders. Pankaj Ghemawat has spent his career building the empirical apparatus that answers that question. The CAGE Distance Framework, his contribution to global strategy in the 2000s, gave executives a precise way to measure cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between countries. It is now standard material in MBA strategy courses and inside corporate development teams making market entry calls. World 3.0, published by Harvard Business Review Press, won the Thinkers50 Book Award for best business book of 2010 to 2011. His later work, The Laws of Globalization and Business Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2016), formalises two findings drawn from large datasets: international interactions are smaller than domestic ones, and they are dampened by distance along the CAGE dimensions. Boards that internalise both laws stop oscillating between flat-world enthusiasm and deglobalisation panic, and start sizing international ambition against measured reality. He is principal author of the DHL Global Connectedness Index, introduced in 2011 and now the most widely cited empirical measure of trade, capital, information, and people flows across borders. He holds chairs at IESE Business School and NYU Stern, where he directs the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management. Between 1983 and 2008 he was on the full-time faculty at Harvard Business School, where he was made a full professor in 1991, the youngest in the school’s history. Key speaking topics Globalisation and deglobalisation Cross-border strategy and CAGE distance Market entry and emerging markets Geopolitical risk and corporate exposure Supply chain and global value chain restructuring Global Connectedness Index and trade flows International competitive advantage Ideal for Boards and CEOs reviewing international portfolio exposure, China strategy, or sanctions risk Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development teams evaluating market entry or exit Heads of supply chain and operations restructuring after the end of cheap globalisation Senior leadership teams in multinationals setting the next horizon of cross-border investment Audience outcomes A defensible reading of the actual state of globalisation, drawn from the DHL Global Connectedness Index, not headline narrative. The CAGE Distance Framework as a working tool for evaluating country and market decisions. A clear distinction between semiglobalisation and full integration, and what that implies for strategy. Specific implications for boards on China exposure, regional concentration, and supply chain redesign. A sharper internal vocabulary for separating measurable cross-border risk from political mood.

Why organisations work with Parag Khanna A trilogy of books on global order, connectivity and the Asian century gives clients a coherent thesis on where capital, people and supply chains are moving, not a topical scan of headlines. Founder of AlphaGeo, which operationalises his frameworks as geospatial risk analytics for institutional investors, so the work in the room connects to a product used inside investment processes. Advised US Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends programme, which sharpens the briefing for boards weighing political risk and sanctions exposure. Sits inside the Gulf and Asian capital-allocation conversation through the UAE Ministry of Economy’s International Advisory Council and a senior advisory role at Gulf Capital, giving Western audiences access to perspectives they rarely hear directly. Multi-pillar fluency on geopolitics, climate adaptation and demographic mobility means a single keynote can reframe the same investment committee on country risk, supply chain and talent strategy. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, AlphaGeo, an AI-powered geospatial analytics platform for institutional investors. Author of seven books including Connectography, The Future is Asian and MOVE, published by Random House, Simon and Schuster and W&N. PhD in International Relations, London School of Economics; BSc and MA, Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Senior Geopolitical Adviser to US Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (2007); adviser to the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends programme. Named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century”. Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE Data Science Institute (2025-27); member, UAE Ministry of Economy International Advisory Council. Biography The argument that capital follows borders has stopped working. Supply chains, energy flows, migration and digital infrastructure now describe the world more accurately than the political map, and Parag Khanna has spent two decades building the data and the language to read it. His trilogy Connectography, The Future is Asian and MOVE traces that shift from theory through to the operating reality facing investment committees and corporate boards. The work sits on serious institutional ground. A PhD from the London School of Economics, two degrees from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and senior research posts at Brookings, the New America Foundation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. He has advised US Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends programme, work that informs how he handles questions on sanctions, China exposure and political risk in front of senior audiences. What separates the speaking work from the wider geopolitics circuit is that he runs the product. AlphaGeo, the company he founded and leads as CEO, turns the same geospatial and scenario frameworks into analytics used by sovereign wealth funds, pension plans and asset managers. The result is a keynote that connects a global thesis to the country, sector and asset-level decisions a board is already wrestling with. He also sits inside the conversations Western audiences rarely access directly. A seat on the UAE Ministry of Economy’s International Advisory Council, a senior advisory role at Gulf Capital, and a long working relationship with Asian governments and family offices give him a view of where Gulf and Asian capital is actually being committed, and why. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and the new global macro Asia, the Gulf and shifting capital flows Supply chain restructuring and connectivity Climate-driven migration and demographic mobility Country risk for institutional investors AI-powered geospatial analytics for decision-making Scenario planning and strategic foresight Ideal for Boards and investment committees of asset managers, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds reweighting country and sector exposure CEOs and CSOs of multinationals revising supply chain, China and Gulf strategy Heads of strategy, risk and policy in financial services, energy and infrastructure Family office principals and private equity partners pricing geopolitical and climate risk into capital decisions Audience outcomes A working thesis on where capital, people and supply chains are moving over the next decade, anchored to named regions and corridors A clearer read on China exposure, sanctions risk and the Gulf and Asian counter-cycle for committee-level conversations Practical framing for how climate-driven migration and demographic shifts intersect with country risk Exposure to how leading sovereign and institutional investors are using geospatial analytics inside live investment processes

Why organisations work with Pascal Coppens Twenty years living and working in China, eleven of them building his own companies in Shanghai. Coppens co-founded Polycore Software in Silicon Valley, founded Letsface in Shanghai, and created Sinnolabs, a growth accelerator preparing Belgian companies for China entry. Three books, one continuous argument: China’s New Normal (2019), Can We Trust China? (2022) and China’s Next Miracle (2026) follow China from copycat to standard-setter to intellectual property creator. In 2019 he named ten sectors where China would set the global innovation standard by 2025. Huawei, TikTok, TEMU, Ant, BYD, DJI, and BGI have since made the case for him. The eight circles of trust framework in Can We Trust China? gives Western leaders analytical ground on a polarised question, neither cheerleading China nor reducing it to threat. Biography highlights Author of three books on modern China: China’s New Normal (2019), Can We Trust China? (2022), and China’s Next Miracle (2026). Master’s in Eastern Languages and Cultures from Ghent University and Business Engineering degree from Solvay Business School (Free University of Brussels). Twenty years living and working in Shanghai and Beijing, with several years in San Francisco; founder of Letsface, co-founder of Polycore Software, creator of Sinnolabs. Partner at nexxworks; delivers close to 100 keynotes a year for clients including Mastercard, Microsoft, Salesforce, Huawei, Walmart, P&G, S.W.I.F.T., Rabobank, EY, and PWC, and teaches at CEDEP (INSEAD) and London Business School. YouTube channel Pascal’s China Lens with 65,000+ subscribers and 4 million views; regular guest on Belgian public broadcaster VRT; co-host of the Radar podcast with Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem. Biography Chinese companies now lead in electric vehicles, mobile payments, social commerce, drone manufacturing, and consumer AI. The country has moved past the cheap-factory phase that shaped Western mental models. Western executives are now competing against or partnering with companies whose innovation logic they were not trained to read. Coppens has spent two decades operating on both sides of that gap. He began at the Alcatel joint venture Shanghai Bell in 2000, moved to San Francisco with Wind River Systems, and co-founded Polycore Software in Silicon Valley in 2004. He returned to Shanghai in 2005 and later founded Letsface, an offline community platform for premium global brands. His primary sources were the hundreds of Chinese innovators he employed and competed against. Three books trace a developing argument. China’s New Normal (2019) mapped ten sectors where Chinese companies would set the innovation standard by 2025, with predictions on Huawei, BYD, DJI, TikTok, and Ant largely borne out. Can We Trust China? (2022) tackled the trust deficit fuelling Western fear, building an eight circles of trust framework as an analytical handle on a polarising question. China’s Next Miracle (2026) tracks the shift from market innovation to intellectual property creation, and China’s geostrategic alignment with the Global South. Coppens delivers close to 100 keynotes a year for Fortune 500 audiences and advises boards and management teams on China. He runs the Pascal’s China Lens YouTube channel for 65,000 subscribers and co-hosts the Radar podcast with Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem. Beijing has set 2030 as its target for global innovation leadership, which on his reading leaves Western companies about five years to prepare. Key speaking topics China’s innovation model Geopolitical risk and US-China-EU dynamics China’s economic transition Chinese business ecosystems Supply chain de-risking Generative AI in China Cross-cultural business with Chinese partners The multipolar world order Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing strategic decisions on China exposure CSOs, transformation leads, and innovation heads benchmarking against Chinese competitors COOs and procurement leaders rethinking supply chain after the end of cheap globalisation Senior leadership teams in industries where Chinese companies are moving from supplier to direct competitor (automotive, consumer electronics, retail, pharmaceuticals) Audience outcomes A clearer reading of China’s current strategic intent, separated from both the threat narrative and the market opportunity narrative The specific mechanics behind Chinese ecosystem speed and scale, drawn from the WeChat superapp, Alibaba’s platforms, Haier’s micro-enterprises, and the state-built EV supply chain A view of which Chinese competitors and partners are most relevant to their sector, and which are noise Sharper questions for their China strategy: whether to de-risk, where to compete, where to partner, where to learn from A current map of China’s AI position relative to the US and Europe, including the policy and infrastructure context

Why organisations work with Pascal Lamy He spent eight years running the WTO and five years as the EU’s Trade Commissioner. Few people alive have personally negotiated as much of the architecture that boards now watch breaking down. He works at the level of operating substance, not commentary. Doha, EU enlargement trade chapters, the China accession follow-through, the transatlantic disputes: he was in the room. He frames geoeconomics and geopolitics as a single system, an argument set out with Nicole Gnesotto in Strange New World, which gives leaders a working language for decisions they used to treat as separate. He is a credible bridge into European institutional thinking. Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors for nine years, now President of the Paris Peace Forum and President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute. Biography highlights Director-General of the World Trade Organization, 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term. European Commissioner for Trade, 1999 to 2004, under Commission President Romano Prodi. Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, 1985 to 1994. CEO of Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, 1994 to 1999. Author of The Geneva Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-author of Strange New World: Geoeconomics vs Geopolitics (Odile Jacob, 2020). President of the Paris Peace Forum; CEPR Distinguished Fellow; affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai. Biography The system of rules that governed cross-border trade for three decades is no longer the system companies are operating in. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions regimes and industrial subsidies have become first-order strategic variables, and the institutions designed to arbitrate them have lost most of their authority. Pascal Lamy spent two decades inside that machinery and is one of the few public figures who can describe, from the inside, what is breaking and what is taking its place. As Director-General of the World Trade Organization from 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term, he led the institution through the Doha Round and through China’s full integration into the global trading system. Before that, as European Commissioner for Trade from 1999 to 2004, he handled the EU’s most consequential trade files of the period, including its position on WTO accession negotiations and transatlantic disputes. His earlier career sits at the heart of the European project. For nine years he was chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, working on the single market, the run-up to monetary union and successive enlargement. He then ran Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, a reminder that his read on policy is paired with operating experience inside a balance sheet under pressure. He now writes and convenes from a small set of platforms: President of the Paris Peace Forum, President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute, CEPR Distinguished Fellow, affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai. With Nicole Gnesotto he co-authored Strange New World, the argument that geoeconomics and geopolitics now have to be read as one system. For boards trying to set capital allocation under that framing, he is among the most credible voices available. Key speaking topics Global trade and the future of the WTO Geoeconomics and geopolitics EU-US-China relations European integration and the EU policy agenda Sanctions, export controls and industrial policy Globalisation and supply chain restructuring Multilateral governance under strain Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material exposure to US, EU and China trade policy CSOs, heads of public affairs and chief economists setting macro and political risk frameworks Investor and asset manager forums focused on capital allocation under geopolitical stress Senior policy and government affairs leaders working on EU institutional questions Audience outcomes A working map of how the trade and geoeconomics system is actually being rewired, from someone who helped write the previous version A grounded read on the EU-US-China triangle that goes beyond headline risk Sharper questions for the board on sanctions exposure, supply chain restructuring and industrial policy alignment A vocabulary for treating geoeconomics and geopolitics as one decision frame, not two

Why organisations work with Penny Mordaunt A former Cabinet minister with direct authority on three of the topics now sitting on most board agendas: defence, trade policy, and international development. Front-line experience of UK trade reorientation, including the country’s accession to CPTPP and bilateral economic agreements with US states, useful to companies modelling supply chain and market access decisions. Built and led the cross-government defensive cyber function in its early form, and rebuilt UK civil contingencies and resilience as Paymaster General. Practical credibility on national resilience, not commentary. Read by US and Commonwealth audiences as a serious British voice on the transatlantic relationship; now Chair of the Coalition for Global Prosperity, where her case is that aid and defence are part of national resilience, not philanthropy. A genuine speaker, not a politician reading remarks. Parliamentary Wit of the Year and Spectator Speech of the Year, with a global audience earned at the 2023 Coronation. Biography highlights Former Secretary of State for Defence; first woman to hold the role. Former Secretary of State for International Development and UK Governor at the World Bank. Former Minister of State for Trade Policy; oversaw UK accession to CPTPP and bilateral economic agreements with US states. Former Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons; carried the Sword of State at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023. Co-author of Greater: Britain After the Storm, winner of the 2021 Parliamentary Book Award. Appointed Chair of the Coalition for Global Prosperity in January 2025; made a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours 2025. Honorary Captain, MCM2 Squadron, Royal Naval Reserve. Biography Trade, defence and development used to be three separate conversations inside government. They are now a single conversation, and most boards are catching up to it. The leaders who understand this best tend to be the ones who have held responsibility for all three. Penny Mordaunt is one of a small group who has. She served fourteen years as MP for Portsmouth North, holding nine ministerial roles across four Cabinet posts. She was the first woman to serve as Secretary of State for Defence, ran the Department for International Development, and as Minister of State for Trade Policy oversaw the UK’s accession to the CPTPP and a series of economic agreements at US state level. As Paymaster General she rebuilt the UK’s civil contingencies and resilience capability, and built the first cross-government defensive cyber lead. Her public profile is wider than Westminster. She carried the 17th-century Sword of State at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023, the first woman to do so, and the role gave her a global audience that few former Cabinet ministers ever acquire. Her book Greater: Britain After the Storm, co-authored with Chris Lewis, won the 2021 Parliamentary Book Award and reached bestseller lists in the UK and US. Since leaving Parliament in 2024 she has chaired the Coalition for Global Prosperity, where she argues the case for the transatlantic partnership and for treating development and defence as components of national resilience rather than discretionary spend. For corporate audiences, the value is the access to a former insider’s view of how trade policy, sanctions architecture and security commitments are actually made, and what changes when an election cycle turns over. Key speaking topics UK trade policy, CPTPP and US state-level economic agreements Defence, security and the transatlantic relationship International development as national resilience Geopolitical risk and the future of the rules-based order Civil contingencies, cyber and national resilience Women in public leadership Ideal for Board and C-suite audiences modelling geopolitical and trade exposure CFOs and strategy teams reassessing market access and supply chain decisions post-Brexit and post-CPTPP CISOs and risk officers working at the intersection of cyber, national security and corporate resilience Public affairs, government affairs and ESG leaders briefing on UK policy direction Audience outcomes A clearer view of how UK and transatlantic policy choices translate into commercial and operational risk. A more accurate read of the post-Brexit trade architecture, including CPTPP and bilateral US engagement. A practical framing of national resilience that connects defence, cyber, supply chain and civil contingencies. An informed sense of where the UK government sees its own room for manoeuvre in a contested global order.

Why organisations work with Phil Osborn He ran UK Defence Intelligence at four-star level from 2015 to 2018, including the period covering Russia, China, Iran and the operationalisation of state cyber. Few civilian advisers have sat in that seat. He led UK Defence’s offensive and defensive cyber capability, so the boardroom conversation about hostile-state cyber risk is not theoretical for him. It is something he commanded. He sits inside the same problem from three angles at once: as Director of Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK, and Senior Advisor to DXC Technology. That triangulation is rare. He established and ran the £2.5 billion annual Joint Forces Command Capability Portfolio, so capital-allocation conversations about resilience and sovereign capability are grounded in operating reality. CBE, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Chair of the RAF Charitable Trust. The credentials sit on substance, not the other way round. Biography highlights Air Marshal (Retired), Royal Air Force, 1982 to 2019; Tornado navigator, station commander, deployed operational commander. Chief of Defence Intelligence, 2015 to 2018: strategic intelligence to UK Defence and Government, ISR coordination, counter-intelligence, and Defence cyber leadership. Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group RAF, 2010 to 2012; Director Capability at Joint Forces Command, 2013. Director, Universal Defence and Security Solutions; Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and DXC Technology; Non-Executive Director, Inzpire. Chair, Royal Air Force Charitable Trust. CBE (2009 New Year Honours); Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Biography The boardroom conversation about geopolitics has changed. Sanctions, hostile-state cyber, supply-chain coercion, sovereign technology dependencies: these have moved from external context to first-order strategic risk. Most leadership teams do not have an intelligence-grade read on any of them. That is the seat Phil Osborn occupied at national level. As UK Chief of Defence Intelligence from 2015 to 2018, he was responsible for the strategic intelligence picture supplied to UK Defence and Government, for the coordination of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and for Defence’s leadership of offensive and defensive cyber. He did this through a period in which Russia, China, Iran and non-state actors all changed posture in observable ways. The career under that role matters. Thirty-seven years in the Royal Air Force, originally as a Tornado navigator, then through squadron and station command, then as Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group, then at Joint Forces Command where he set up and ran the £2.5 billion annual Capability Portfolio that became part of Strategic Command. The capital-allocation muscle is real, not anecdotal. Since retiring as Air Marshal in 2019 he has worked the same problem from the commercial side: Director at Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and to DXC Technology, Non-Executive Director at Inzpire, and Chair of the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust. Boards looking for somebody who can connect the geopolitical signal, the cyber threat picture and the sovereign-capability question, in language a Chair can use, find one of the few people in the UK who has run all three. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and national security Defence intelligence and the strategic threat picture State and non-state cyber risk Sovereign capability and supply chain resilience Force design, capability portfolios and capital allocation Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Ideal for Boards and audit and risk committees confronting geopolitical and cyber exposure CEOs, CFOs and CSOs in defence, aerospace, critical infrastructure and government-facing industries Investors and capital allocators with sovereign-capability or sanctions-sensitive portfolios Senior leadership offsites in regulated industries where state-level risk is now a board agenda item Audience outcomes A clearer read on the geopolitical and security drivers that will most affect the next planning cycle A sharper distinction between hostile-state cyber risk and the generic cyber narrative A practical sense of how national-level intelligence assesses adversaries, applied to corporate risk A working view on sovereign capability, supply-chain dependency and what resilience actually costs The vocabulary to brief a Chair or audit committee on geopolitical and cyber exposure with confidence

Why organisations work with Pippa Malmgren She has sat inside the room where US economic policy is set. As Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council, she advised on the response to 9/11 from a financial markets and Pentagon technology procurement standpoint, which is a different vantage point from any academic economist. She bridges currency markets and geopolitics in a way few speakers can. She ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS, which means her geopolitical reads land with FX, fixed income and treasury audiences. She is a working operator, not just a commentator. Co-founding H Robotics, a CogX and National Technology Award winning industrial drone business, gives her a real seat at the table on industrial AI, autonomous systems and the defence-tech investment cycle. Her book The Leadership Lab won UK Business Book of the Year 2019 and her follow-up The Infinite Leader won the International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership 2021, which means leadership-track briefs are met with credentialed material rather than improvisation. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, the UK defence and security institute, and judges the King’s Awards for Enterprise. Boards using her for geopolitics get an analyst whose reads are taken seriously inside the UK security and industrial establishment. Biography highlights Special Assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Former Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and head of Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia. Author of Signals (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), Geopolitics for Investors, The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader. Co-founder of H Robotics, winner of the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation 2022 to 2024. PhD and MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Biography The job of reading geopolitics for boards used to belong to a small circle of former diplomats and bank chief economists. That circle is no longer wide enough. Currency moves now sit downstream of sanctions decisions, supply chain costs sit downstream of industrial policy, and AI capex sits downstream of export controls. Reading those linkages is a working discipline, not a generalist’s hobby. Malmgren was inside that linkage early. She advised President George W. Bush on the National Economic Council and served on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, including the post-9/11 work on terrorism risk to the economy and Pentagon technology procurement. Before the White House, she ran Bankers Trust Asset Management in Asia and was Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. The combination of policy seat and trading-floor seat is rare, and it shapes how she briefs. The published work makes the argument visible. Signals reads consumer behaviour, magazine covers and shop fronts as evidence about inflation, social pressure and political risk. The Leadership Lab, co-written with Chris Lewis, won UK Business Book of the Year 2019. The Infinite Leader followed it with the 2021 International Press Award for Best Book on Leadership. None of these are commentator books. They argue specific theses about how decisions get made under volatile conditions. She also runs an operating business in the territory she briefs on. H Robotics, the industrial drone company she co-founded, won the CogX Award for Autonomy and the 2020 National Technology Award. She holds a Senior Associate Fellowship at RUSI, sits on the judging panel of the King’s Awards for Enterprise and was a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung from 2022 to 2024. When she briefs a board on industrial AI, defence-tech, the new space economy or the strategic-minerals fight, she is briefing as a participant, not a watcher. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the global economy Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Industrial AI, autonomous systems and defence technology Currency markets and inflation signals The new space economy and strategic infrastructure Leadership under conditions of disruption Political risk and sovereign decision-making Ideal for Boards, CEOs and CFOs setting capital allocation policy under sanctions, currency and supply chain pressure. Treasury, FX and asset management leadership teams whose mandates now hinge on geopolitical reads. Strategy and corporate development teams in defence, energy, industrials, semiconductors and infrastructure. Investment committees of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and family offices reassessing global exposure. Audience outcomes A working framework for translating geopolitical events into specific capital, currency and operating consequences. A clearer reading of where US, Chinese and European industrial policy is forcing reallocation of supply chains and capital. Specific signals to track in commodities, currencies and consumer behaviour as leading indicators of macro stress. A grounded view of where AI, autonomous systems and the space economy intersect with national security and corporate strategy. Confidence at board level that geopolitical scenarios have been pressure-tested by someone who has briefed at presidential level.

Why organisations work with Raffaello D’Andrea He has built two commercially-deployed autonomous systems from the ground up – Kiva Systems, now the architecture powering over a million Amazon Robotics units across 300+ facilities, and Verity, whose autonomous indoor drones operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide. Most technology speakers have observed others build at scale; D’Andrea has done it twice. His account of the gap between academic research and industrial deployment is not speculative. He moved from Cornell professor to co-founder to chief technical advisor to ETH faculty, and back to founder again – carrying hands-on engineering responsibility at every stage. That trajectory gives organisations a rare, inside view of what makes autonomous systems fail or succeed in practice. The Kiva story – a $775M acquisition that became the operational backbone of the world’s largest e-commerce company – is a fully documented, publicly available case study in redesigning an entire industry’s logistics model around autonomous systems. D’Andrea can speak to that case from the inside, as the architect of the core system. His ongoing research at ETH Zurich, through platforms like CyberRunner, Cubli and the Flying Machine Arena, sits at the frontier of autonomous learning and control. Audiences hear what is actually being solved in research today, not what is being forecast by analysts. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the Kiva system, and recognised by the Logistics Hall of Fame – D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry simultaneously, a combination that is rare among technology speakers. Biography highlights Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich; founder of ETH’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control Co-founder of Kiva Systems, acquired by Amazon in 2012 and now operating as Amazon Robotics, the autonomous fulfilment system at the core of Amazon’s global warehouse operations Founder and CEO of Verity, autonomous indoor drone company deployed at nearly 200 sites worldwide, with clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS Elected member, National Academy of Engineering (2020); National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee (2022); Logistics Hall of Fame inductee (2024) IEEE Fellow; IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2016); Engelberger Robotics Award (2015); Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2001); named on more than 40 US patents TED Global 2013 and TED 2016 speaker; TED and research videos with tens of millions of views New media artworks held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and France’s FRAC Centre; exhibited at the Venice Biennale Biography The systems running inside Amazon’s warehouses today – more than a million autonomous robots across over 300 facilities – trace their core architecture directly to Raffaello D’Andrea. As co-founder of Kiva Systems, D’Andrea designed the navigation logic, fleet coordination algorithms and adaptive control systems that made warehouse automation economically viable at commercial scale for the first time. When Amazon acquired Kiva in 2012, it rebranded the company as Amazon Robotics and made it the operational foundation of its global fulfilment network. That work was built on a research track record with real competitive stakes. Before Kiva, D’Andrea was at Cornell University, where he led the Robot Soccer Team to four consecutive RoboCup world championships – using autonomous multi-agent competition as a proving ground for the kinds of coordination and real-time decision-making that large-scale robotics deployments require. The move from academic research to commercial deployment, and back to academic research, is the defining pattern of his career. At ETH Zurich, where he founded the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, D’Andrea leads research through hands-on experimental platforms – CyberRunner, Cubli, the Flying Machine Arena, the Distributed Flight Array – that probe the real limits of autonomous learning, not its theoretical promise. In 2014, he co-founded Verity, whose autonomous indoor drone systems now operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide, automating inventory tracking and operational data collection for clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS. The company raised a $43M Series B in 2023 with Qualcomm Ventures among the investors. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering and inducted into both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Logistics Hall of Fame, D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry – a combination that reflects a career built on closing the distance between what autonomous systems can do in a laboratory and what they can sustain across an industrial operation. Key speaking topics Autonomous systems design and commercial-scale deployment AI, machine learning and physical intelligence Warehouse automation and supply chain operations Deep-tech entrepreneurship and venture building Autonomous flight and drone systems The gap between robotics research and real-world application The future of human-machine collaboration in physical operations Ideal for COOs, heads of supply chain and logistics leaders evaluating or scaling autonomous operations CTOs and technology leadership teams making investment decisions in robotics and AI deployment Boards and executive committees setting autonomous systems strategy Innovation and transformation leadership forums focused on operational technology Audience outcomes A practitioner’s framework for distinguishing autonomous systems that create genuine operational value from those that stall between proof of concept and deployment Concrete understanding of the systems design conditions that make robotics reliable and economically viable at industrial scale An insider account of how Kiva Systems redesigned warehouse operations – and what that process reveals about the real requirements of large-scale autonomous deployment A more accurate picture of where AI and robotics are heading, grounded in what is already working at commercial scale rather than in market speculation Sharper criteria for evaluating autonomous technology partnerships, vendor claims and investment priorities

Why organisations work with Rebecca Harding A working command of the machinery of trade finance and trade data, built through founding Coriolis Technologies and serving as Chief Economist at UK Finance, that few geopolitics speakers can match. The author of The World at Economic War, selected by Martin Wolf in his Financial Times best economics books of 2025, with a defined argument about how the market system itself has become a tool of great-power conflict. A current operating role: CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, which puts her inside the institutions building the new trade and security architecture. Equally credible in a C-suite keynote, a regulator-level workshop, or a wargaming session, having designed formats for finance, defence and policy audiences. A specific point of view on sustainable trade and digitalisation, grounded in advisory work with banks, corporates and parliamentary committees rather than in commentary alone. Biography highlights CEO, Centre for Economic Security, leading research on economic threats, supply chain resilience and the weaponisation of trade. Chief Economic Adviser, Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group. Founder and former CEO of Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business serving the trade finance sector, acquired by TradeSun. Author of The World at Economic War (2025) and co-author of The Weaponization of Trade (2017), published by London Publishing Partnership. Former Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Regular contributor to BBC, Bloomberg, Sky News, CNBC, BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio on trade and economic security. Biography Trade is now a security question. Sanctions regimes, export controls, the digitalisation of payments and the contest over critical minerals have collapsed the old boundary between commercial trade policy and national security. Boards and finance ministries are trying to make capital, supplier and counterparty decisions inside a system whose rules are being rewritten in real time. Rebecca Harding’s career has been built on this seam. She is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, two institutions designed for exactly this terrain. Earlier she founded Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business that gave the trade finance sector a clearer view of risk in cross-border flows, and served as Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Her argument is set out in The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy, published in 2025 and selected by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times among his best economics books of the year. The thesis, developed from her earlier book The Weaponization of Trade with Jack Harding, is that the market system itself has become a means of great-power competition, and that defence, finance and trade can no longer be governed as separate domains. For senior audiences this matters because the operational consequences are concrete. They show up in supplier dependencies, in sanctions exposure, in the cost and direction of trade finance, and in where capital can credibly be deployed for the next decade. Harding works through those questions with banks, corporates, regulators and parliamentary committees, and her keynotes, panels and wargaming sessions are designed to leave decision-makers with a clearer read of what economic security requires of them. Key speaking topics Economic security and the weaponisation of trade Geopolitics and geoeconomics Trade finance and supply chain finance Supply chain resilience and reshoring Digital and sustainable trade Defence and security finance Macroeconomic outlook and global markets Ideal for Boards and executive committees of banks, insurers and large corporates with cross-border exposure Heads of trade finance, treasury, supply chain and procurement Policy, regulatory and public affairs leaders working on sanctions, export controls and economic security Defence, security and resilience investors and the institutions financing them Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of economic security and what it asks of capital allocation, supplier strategy and trade finance A read on how sanctions, export controls and reshoring are reshaping cross-border risk for specific sectors A framework for separating geopolitical noise from the structural shifts that change long-range plans A view of where digital and sustainable trade infrastructure is heading, and the implications for banks and corporates Questions and pressure tests that a leadership team can take straight into its strategy and risk discussions

Why organisations work with Ricardo Hausmann He built the frameworks. Economic Complexity and Growth Diagnostics, now used by the IMF, the World Bank, and governments from South Africa to Sri Lanka, are his work. Audiences hear them from the person who originated them. Fifty country engagements deep. The Harvard Growth Lab has run more than 50 research initiatives across nearly 30 countries since 2006, under his direction. He brings what those projects revealed about why standard reform packages fail and where productive capability actually compounds. He has held the brief. Former Minister of Planning of Venezuela and the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, where he founded the Research Department. He speaks to ministers, central bank governors, and global CFOs as someone who has been on their side of the table. Powershoring is his framing. The argument that energy-intensive production will migrate to countries with abundant green electricity, and that this rewires comparative advantage, originated in his Growth Lab work. Boards working out where to put the next decarbonised plant get the underlying logic from him. The vocabulary traces back to him. Original Sin, Dark Matter, Self-Discovery, and Powershoring are his coinages, now standard in IMF and central bank discourse on sovereign risk and the energy transition. Biography highlights Founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab; Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Originator with César Hidalgo of the Economic Complexity methodology, published as The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity (MIT Press, 2014). Originator with Dani Rodrik and Andrés Velasco of the Growth Diagnostics framework, adopted by the World Bank as a long-running executive education course. First Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he founded the Research Department. Former Minister of Planning of Venezuela; former Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. Monthly columnist for Project Syndicate; research cited more than 60,000 times and covered by The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Biography Most standard development indicators fail to predict which economies will actually grow. They measure outputs and surface conditions, not the underlying productive capabilities that generate them. That gap is what Economic Complexity, the framework Ricardo Hausmann built with César Hidalgo at Harvard’s Growth Lab, set out to close. Hausmann founded the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School in 2006. It has since run more than 50 country engagements across nearly 30 countries, identifying the binding constraints on growth and the industries that existing capabilities make possible. The Growth Diagnostics methodology, developed with Dani Rodrik and Andrés Velasco, is now taught at the World Bank and used by governments worldwide. Before Harvard he was on the other side of the brief. He served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela in the early 1990s, then became the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, where he founded the Research Department. He has seen which policy frameworks survive contact with fiscal and political reality, and which collapse on first contact. His more recent work has moved into the geography of decarbonisation. Powershoring, a concept developed in the Growth Lab, argues that energy-intensive production will migrate to countries with abundant green electricity, rewiring global supply chains in the process. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate; the Growth Lab’s recent client roster runs from Bolivia and the UAE to Wyoming and Western Australia. Key speaking topics Economic complexity and country diversification Growth diagnostics Powershoring and the energy transition Sovereign risk, original sin, and dark matter Industrial policy in a decarbonising economy Latin American political economy Global supply chain reconfiguration Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting country exposure and supply chain strategy. CFOs and treasurers managing sovereign and currency risk in emerging markets. Heads of corporate strategy planning industrial investment under the energy transition. Multilateral institutions, finance ministries, and central bank leadership. Audience outcomes A working diagnostic for why some economies grow and others stall, built on the Economic Complexity framework. A sharper read on where productive capability is compounding and where it is decaying, with implications for supply chain placement and country exposure. The case for powershoring and the structural logic that will move energy-intensive production toward countries with abundant green electricity. What 50+ Growth Lab country engagements have revealed about why standard reform packages fail. The vocabulary that finance ministries and central banks now use to discuss sovereign risk: original sin, dark matter, self-discovery.

Why organisations work with Richard Nugee He wrote the climate strategy that a national defence ministry now operates against. That is a different order of evidence from advocacy work; he has done the institutional translation himself. He links climate to the things boards actually argue about: supply chain exposure, energy security, geopolitical instability, capital allocation under long horizons. He carries the credibility of a Lieutenant General with operational service in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, which lands with audiences that tune out conventional sustainability messaging. He still sits inside the policy machinery. As Co-Chair of the advisory board of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Climate, Nature and Security, and an advisor to the International Military Council on Climate and Security and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, his framing reflects current government and alliance thinking. Biography highlights Lieutenant General (Retd), British Army, 36-year career in the Royal Artillery; CB, CVO, CBE; US Legion of Merit (2014) Chief of Defence People, Ministry of Defence, 2016 to 2020 Author, Ministry of Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach (March 2021); delivered a 2025 National Emergency Briefing to UK parliamentarians on climate and nature as a national security threat Co-Chair, Advisory Board, All-Party Parliamentary Group for Climate, Nature and Security; former Non-Executive Director for Climate Change and Sustainability, Ministry of Defence Senior advisor, International Military Council on Climate and Security; advisor to the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and the University of Oxford Climate Change & (In)Security Project Chief Executive, The Scar Free Foundation; Chair, Royal NAAFI Board Recent podcast guest on climate, food, and security, including Bloomberg’s Zero, Cleaning Up, Real Zero, and Farm Gate Leaders Biography The Ministry of Defence published its first formal climate strategy in March 2021. The author was a serving Lieutenant General who had spent the previous year inside the department turning climate from an environmental concern into a defence planning question. That strategy now shapes how UK Defence approaches emissions, estate, capability and resilience over a thirty-year horizon. Richard Nugee’s military career ran for thirty-six years in the Royal Artillery, with operational tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Cyprus and Afghanistan. As Chief of Defence People from 2016 to 2020 he was responsible for personnel policy across the armed forces, the civil service side of Defence, and the veteran community. His honours include the CB, CVO and CBE, and the US Legion of Merit for service in Afghanistan. The climate review changed his second career. He held the Non-Executive Director seat for Climate Change and Sustainability at the Ministry of Defence from 2021. He now co-chairs the advisory board of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Climate, Nature and Security. He advises the International Military Council on Climate and Security, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and the University of Oxford Climate Change & (In)Security Project, and is Chief Executive of The Scar Free Foundation and Chair of the Royal NAAFI Board. What he offers commercial audiences is the discipline of a defence planner applied to climate. He talks about resource competition, supply chain fragility, infrastructure exposure and the cost of inaction in language that boards used to hearing risk papers, not green narratives. The argument lands because it comes from someone who has had to make it stick inside a department that does not tolerate vague claims. Key speaking topics Climate change as a national security risk Defence and sustainability strategy Geopolitical implications of climate Supply chain and resource resilience Net zero and capital allocation Leadership in large, change-resistant institutions Veterans, personnel and people strategy Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting climate, ESG and net zero strategy with real capital at stake CSOs, sustainability leads and risk officers wanting to reframe climate as security and operating risk Defence, aerospace, energy and critical infrastructure organisations with exposure to geopolitical and resource volatility Leadership audiences in large, regulated or change-resistant institutions Audience outcomes A working definition of climate as a security and supply chain risk, not a compliance or PR issue Specific examples of how a national defence ministry has translated climate into planning, capability and capital decisions A sharper view of the geopolitical second-order effects of climate, from resource competition to migration to alliance pressure Language for talking about climate to audiences that are sceptical of standard sustainability framing

Why organisations work with Tom Barton He has the rare combination of operator and supply chain reformer. Honest Burgers is a 39-site casual dining brand that buys whole carcasses directly from regenerative farms, a structural decision most restaurant groups have not been willing to make. His sustainability content carries weight because it is paid for. Honest absorbed the cost of switching to regenerative British beef rather than passing it to customers, a commercial decision a buyer can interrogate, not a marketing claim. He speaks credibly on building a brand from a market stall to a national footprint, with named milestones: the Brixton opening, the Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group) award, and the 2026 National Burger Awards win for “The Honest”. He is a useful voice for boards weighing ESG commitments against margin: the Honest Farming programme is a working example of procurement volume being directed at climate-smart agriculture, not a pledge. Biography highlights Co-founder, Honest Burgers, opened first site in Brixton Market in 2011 Honest Burgers now operates 39+ UK restaurants across London, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Reading Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group), with Phillip Eeles and Dorian Waite Created “The Honest”, named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards 2026 Built the first regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain in UK restaurants, in partnership with the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative Founder of the Honest Farming programme, supporting six regenerative farming families through premium pricing and whole-carcass procurement Biography A small marquee with a griddle and fryer at festivals in 2010 became one of the UK’s most respected casual dining brands. Tom Barton and Phillip Eeles ran outdoor catering for a year before raising investment with restaurant operator Dorian Waite and opening a first site in Brixton Market in 2011. The interesting story is what happened after the brand worked. Honest Burgers grew to 39 sites without selling to a private equity roll-up and without losing its product position. The Cateys 2021 award for Restaurateur of the Year (Group) recognised that scale, particularly through the pandemic. In 2026, “The Honest”, a recipe Barton created, was named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards. The more substantive contribution is a supply-chain one. Honest Burgers became the first UK restaurant group to build a regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain, buying whole carcasses directly from a small group of farming families through the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative. The company absorbed the cost rather than passing it to customers, on the argument that volume procurement is the lever climate-smart agriculture actually responds to. That is the practical content of what Barton brings to a senior audience. Casual dining is a low-margin, high-velocity category. Doing the harder thing on sourcing inside it, at scale, and paying for it out of margin, is a credible operating example for any board that has signed an ESG commitment and is now looking at the bill. Key speaking topics Brand building from start-up to national scale Regenerative agriculture in commercial supply chains Sustainability as an operating decision, not a marketing position Founder leadership through rapid growth Hospitality, food culture and consumer brand Procurement and whole-carcass sourcing Company culture under expansion Ideal for Founders and operating teams scaling consumer brands beyond their first ten sites or stores Boards and CEOs reviewing ESG commitments where supply chain is the largest source of emissions Procurement, sourcing and category leaders in food, retail and hospitality Investor and accelerator audiences interested in entrepreneurship in regulated, low-margin categories Audience outcomes A working example of a regenerative supply chain inside a competitive high-street category, with the commercial trade-offs named A first-hand account of how brand discipline is maintained as a hospitality business moves from one site to forty A clearer sense of where sustainability claims become operating substance, and where they remain marketing Specific decisions about pricing, procurement and farm partnerships that other operators can pressure-test against their own model