Sustainability Speakers

Dame Inga Beale

After working in senior global leadership roles in some of the world’s largest insurance companies, Inga took over the helm of the 330-year-old City financial institution. Taking on many of the traditions that had held the organisation back, Inga expanded their global markets, and introduced strategies including the Lloyd’s Innovation Lab, and the Dive In Festival, an industry-wide, international diversity and inclusion event. She considers the balance struck between history and modernisation when implementing change, the vital importance of inclusion in the workplace, and co...

Professor A.C. Grayling

Anthony is one of the most influential thinkers of the age. He believes in applied ethics - philosophical debate on everyday issues from leadership to profit to technology. In his speeches Anthony explores ‘the lessons of war for the business of life.’ He also considers the different forms of wealth, and how to achieve and use them: “Wealth of any kind (material, moral or intellectual) is pointless unless it’s applied.”

Dr Chadden Hunter

Producer and director Chadden has worked on some of the best-known natural history series of recent times, including Wild Arabia, Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and Seven Worlds, One Planet. He reveals the huge challenges of making these spectacular series that combine detailed planning, technical excellence, personal risk and a lot of patience. With stunning images and never-before-seen footage he looks at lessons in creative thinking, problem-solving and working in a team as well as inspiring yet cautionary examples of the fragility of the natural world.

Professor Suzie Imber

Associate Professor of planetary science, Suzie has climbed some of the world’s highest and most challenging mountains, programmed supercomputers, helped develop space tourist training programmes, and won the BBC’s search for a future astronaut. Covering everything from satellites to teamwork, the future of science to dealing with risk, she looks at the lessons from all aspects of her work.

Leo Johnson

Combining consulting, research, and presenting BBC programmes including Future Proofing and Hacking Capitalism, Leo explores change and how we respond to it. He argues that disruptive events from pandemics to new technologies give us the opportunity (even the duty) to consider, with a new perspective, environmental, social and capital imbalances. In doing so, leaders will often understand the imperative to change strategy, but will also experience the intense difficulty of realising transformation. Leo delivers a practical understanding of why change is hard and what to do about it.

Fernando Machado

Cited as one of the most creative and original marketers working in consumer brands today, Fernando considers where businesses sit in a world of trust, values, ethics and media saturation. Acclaimed for his original campaigns that often combine creativity with social and political issues, he looks at strategy, narratives, and how to embody company values in a brand.

Baroness Manningham-Buller

As Head of the Security Service, Eliza dealt with the wake of 9/11 and a growing threat from Al-Qaeda. As Chair of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable funders of medical research, she oversaw an organisation that both predicted and led work tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and its long-term effects. With insights and lessons on leadership from throughout her career, Eliza explains that leaders' priorities must change in order to keep pace with the constant emergence of new, often unimagined challenges, from existential threats such a...

Yaw Nsarkoh

Yaw has broad experience from executive and management positions in Unilever in Africa, Asia, and Europe. His areas of expertise include business development, strategic leadership, marketing and branding, corporate governance, and organisational strategy and leadership.

Lewis Pugh

Lewis is the first to complete long distance swims in each of the world’s oceans. He has also swum in Arctic and Antarctic waters, and the length of the Channel. His aim is to raise global awareness of a fragile maritime environment – one with retreating glaciers and increasing levels of plastic pollution – and he has negotiated official protected status for over two million square kilometres of ocean (equivalent to the size of Western Europe). As well as highlighting the urgent plight of the world’s seas, Lewis also reflects on his mindset and the vision, prepara...