The Leading Speakers Bureau

Vice-President of Inditex, Former CEO of Iberia Airlines & Mercedes Benz Spain

Carlos Espinosa is a renowned commercial expert & state economist. He is currently Vice President of Inditex, one of the world’s largest fashion retailers and advisor to Acciona S.A., a Spanish conglomerate dedicated to engineering, construction and infrastructure. Carlos Espinosa was President and CEO of Daimler Chrysler Spain and Chief Executive Officer for Mercedes Benz Spain for more than 20 years.

“A key figure in Spanish business & politics”

[expand title=”In detail”] He has held several high profile positions including Sales Director and Vice-President of the National Institute of Industry in Spain and President of Iberia and Aviaco airlines. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Air Transport Association and President of the Businessmen Circle of the Spanish Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and of the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. Carols was Professor of Economy at ICADE, a member of NATO’s “Wisemen Group” for the analysis of European industry and consultant at the CEE for the study of the future of the aeronautic industry. He worked for the Spanish Government as Spanish Commercial Aggregate in Chicago and became the first president of Bodegas Gónzalez- Byass who wasn’t a member of the González family. [/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]One of the key figures who have shaped the Spanish business and political landscape in recent years, Carlos Espinosa addresses in his highly sought-after presentations the analysis of the Spanish economy, the internationalisation of businesses and the current sociopolitical environment. With almost 40 years experience, he has seen the positives and negatives in business and management and provides useful advice how to be less vulnerable to the crisis, how to position yourself effectively in different markets and the development of strategic sense for SMEs.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Carlos Espinosa is a powerful and informative orator with excellent communication skills.[/expand]
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Author and Expert on Innovation and New Management Thinking

Tom Davenport is a Fellow with the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business and holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is a widely published author and has written more than 100 articles for publications such as Harvard Business Review, California Management Review and the Financial Times amongst others. In 2003 he was named one of the top 25 consultants in the world by Consulting magazine.

One of the most innovative and forward thinking management thinkers

[expand title=”In detail”] Tom has a Ph.D. from Harvard University in organizational behaviour, has taught at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and the University of Texas at Austin. He has also directed research centres at Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Company and CSC Index.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Tom shows decision makers from a wide range of businesses exactly how to modify and implement new management ideas resulting in improved performance, bigger profits and greater turn over.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Tom’s presentations are thought-provoking, well-researched, powerful and filled with actionable information and innovative break through thinking.[/expand]
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President of DT Global Business Consulting

Dr. Daniel Thorniley is a leading authority on global emerging markets. He is the President of DT Global Business Consulting and former Senior Vice President of The Economist Group, a position he held for 19 years. He is Senior Consultant to over 200 companies in East-Central Europe, Russia, The Middle East and Africa. He delivers in-house briefings to the boards of major US and European companies.

“Danny Thorniley is a remarkable public speaker. Knowledgeable, insightful, provocative and very funny.” Rt Hon John Major

[expand title=”In detail”] Educated at Oxford University, Dr Thorniley also holds a Doctorate from the Centre for Russian and European Studies and contributes to several journals including The Economist and Time magazine. He makes frequent appearances on BBC and Channel 4 Television, CNN, CNBC as well as occasional radio interviews around the world. Previously Dr Thorniley worked at the United Nations as the United Kingdom representative at the Vienna Centre, a United Nations office for political and economic research, based in Vienna, Austria.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Daniel offers decision makers a wealth of useful actionable information, focusing on the business environment, market entry and development, banking, financing, politics and economic situation. Daniel speaks about all major markets of the world (USA, Europe, the UK) specialising in emerging markets such as China, Russia, India, the Middle East and Central Europe.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]A challenging, informative and well balanced speaker, Daniel’s scintillating presentations are both high content and factual and delivered with his trademark sense of humour. He is able to entertain the audience through a two-fold approach combining insight and provocative commentary.[/expand]
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Commercial Director of Virgin Galactic

Stephen Attenborough is at the forefront of space tourism. After almost 20 years in senior business and client management roles for a top London finance company, Stephen Attenborough decided that success and excitement did not necessarily go hand in hand. A chance meeting with a top Virgin executive resulted in a grand plan being hatched to create the world’s first Head of Astronaut Relations for the world’s first space tourism operator – Virgin Galactic.

“Stephen Attenborough considers himself to have the best job in the world if not the universe!”

[expand title=”In detail”] Based in London, Stephen Attenborough leads Virgin Galactic’s commercial operations with a team that covers sales, marketing, customer care, PR and communications. He also is responsible for workstreams that are developing and managing the astronaut experience as well as the liability, insurance and regulatory framework.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Stephen Attenborough explains to audiences the impact new technologies have on businesses and focuses on how to drive business innovation and growth through the right combination of innovative people and technology. Stephen Attenborough also entertains his audiences with the enthralling Virgin Galactic Story.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Immensely entertaining and highly enjoyable, Stephen’s presentations are a perfect mix of new ideas and sound business know-how.[/expand]
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Founder, President, CEO & Chairman of the Board of Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos is the brains behind Amazon, that now sells more than $10 billion a year of goods, profitably, and its technology will influence the changes to business and media that will come next. Intrigued by the amazing growth in use of the Internet, he created a business model that leveraged the Internet’s unique ability to deliver huge amounts of information rapidly and efficiently. Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1999.

“If the Internet was the new rock and roll, Jeff Bezos…was its Elvis … [Today he’s] the ultimate dotcom survivor” BBCNews.com

[expand title=”In detail”] Jeffrey Preston “Jeff” Bezos, a Tau Beta Pi graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. before founding Amazon in 1994. His bookstore quickly expanded into dozens of product categories, forcing the world’s biggest retailers to rethink their business models, and ultimately changing the way people shop. From 1990 to 1994, Bezos worked for D.E. Shaw & Co where he helped build one of the most technically sophisticated quantitative hedge funds on Wall Street. Outside of his work with Amazon, he recently founded Blue Origin, a space-flight startup.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders in 2008, Jeff Bezos is one of the few early Web CEOs who still runs the company he founded. He didn’t invent online shopping, but he almost single-handedly turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. He provides a deep prospective into the importance to accessing all kinds of information. He offers his unique perspective on how he defined online shopping and rewrote the rules of commerce, ushering in a new era in business.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Online commerce pioneer, Jeff Bezos is a warm, informative and entertaining speaker with boundless optimism, whose laugh is like a streak of exclamation points. Irrepressibly casting every challenge as an opportunity, his presentations are memorable both for their content and powerful delivery.[/expand]
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Founder & CEO of FutureWorld

Wolfgang Grulke is Founder and Chairman of FutureWorld, a global business and technology think tank, instrumental in helping major corporations and venture capital firms position themselves for the new world economy. Wolfgang is a Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at the London Business School and teaches regularly on the School’s flagship Senior Executive Programme. He also works with Duke CE and Oxford University’s Said Business School. He was formerly founder and CEO, Business Futures Group, a South African management consultancy firm renowned for applying holistic and systemic thinking in a chaotic business environment and creating sustainable business change.

“One of the world’s most important commentators on the future” The Forbes Group

[expand title=”In detail”] As a former IBM executive he worked internationally with IBM for more than 20 years and was awarded the prestigious IBM Outstanding Innovation Award from then CEO John Akers in London in 1983. His article, In Search of Simplicity, won the NACCA award for the best business article of the year and From Value Chain to Marketspace was awarded the AFSM International Writing Award for Professional Writers and Consultants in Boston. He also works with Duke CE and Oxford University’s Said Business School. He is a successful writer and photographer and has been widely published, on the subjects of business, technology, management and marine life.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]With a background in business, technology, nuclear physics, entertainment and marine biology, Wolfgang is an exhilarating and thought-provoking speaker on topics from business transformation to the technological revolutions, paradigm shifts to chaos, fractals and the dilemmas of modern management, With a superb combination of practicality and vision, real out-of- the-box thinking, exploring essential strategies for difficult times, Wolfgang shows decision makers from all fields how to create powerful communication vehicles to encourage and promote radical business and personal change. Wolfgang has addressed audiences in more than 20 countries, in person, on radio and on television.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Wolfgang is a true visionary and in the style of a Victorian raconteur Wolfgang brings fresh ideas and a breadth of thinking that is rare in today’s focused and specialised world.[/expand]
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Lawyer & One of America’s Top Real Estate Investors & Educators

Robert Shemin is a Wealth Creation Expert who has been involved in more than five hundred real estate transactions totalling over fifty million dollars. He has been featured on CNN, Montel Williams, Leeza, HG-TV and National Public Radio and has written ten bestselling books. As a widely respected speaker he is a breath of fresh air. He is a leading expert in the critical areas of buying and selling great deals, landlording, wealth building and asset protection.

Once considered the “least likely to succeed,” Shemin was a millionaire by the age of 32

[expand title=”In detail”] Robert Shemin holds dual graduate degrees from Emory University. He has been highlighted in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and hundreds of other newspapers and magazines. He began building his fortune in 1992 when, as a financial planner, he met an older modest-living couple that had a monthly net income of over US$ 65,000 solely from real estate properties. Inspired by what he learned from this humble couple, Robert shifted his focus to real estate and moved back to his native Nashville, Tennessee, where he developed and documented his incredible wealth building strategies and techniques.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Robert Shemin is a sought after expert on all aspects of real estate, investing and wealth building. He enjoys teaching the strategies that helped him become a multi-millionaire by the age of thirty-two and loves to help his students become millionaires and achieve their goals. Although he is a successful writer, teacher and public speaker he continues to be a full time investor who, in four months alone, was involved in the purchase of over one hundred properties while actively managing his own real estate.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]An expert on wealth for CNN as well as a frequent guest on national, regional, and local television and radio programmes, Robert Shemin is a highly charismatic, captivating and entertaining motivational speaker whose presentations are loaded with perspective-altering tips and how to leverage the power of relationships in ways no one ever talks about. He wows audiences with his humour, knowledge and charm.[/expand]
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Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer of Starbucks Coffee Company

Howard Schultz is a highly successful businessman and entrepreneur. He is currently chairman, president and chief executive officer of Starbucks Coffee Company, having bought out the two founders in 1987 and taken the company public in 1992. Howard has taken Starbucks from a mere 11 retail stores to in excess of 1,300 stores.

“A world-class business leader”

[expand title=”In detail”] In 1981 Howard was the vice president in charge of U.S. operations for Hammarplast, a Swedish company that makes housewares and kitchen equipment. It was whilst at Hammarplast’s that Howard noted “a strange phenomenon: a little retailer in Seattle was placing unusually large orders for a certain type of drip coffeemaker”. The name of the business was Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice. Howard’s curiosity led him to Seattle where he met Starbucks’ two owners, who acquainted him with the history of their five stores. By 1982, he’d joined Starbucks and was helping it expand its reach to other cities. The rest, as they say, is history. He is also the former owner of the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics. In 2007 he received the FIRST Responsible Capitalism Award.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Howard is recognised as one of the most influential, successful, and visionary business leaders in the world today. Known for having created two landmark programs for Starbucks partners (employees); comprehensive health coverage for part-time partners and equity in the company in the form of stock options, he draws upon his knowledge and expertise to offer audiences advice on achieving their ambitions and sustainable success.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Howard Schultz is a highly professional and passionate keynote speaker whose presentations are guaranteed to leave delegates inspired and motivated.[/expand]
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CEO of Rinspeed and Unconventional Business Visionary

So what kind of car you would like? One that shrinks for easy parking? A four-seater that turns into a pick-up at the touch of a button? Or would you like seats that lean into the curves? Well, they all exist. Swiss inventor Frank Rinderknecht comes up with a different curiosity every year. With his company Rinspeed, Rinderknecht has a habit of unveiling a world’s first and most innovative that is guaranteed not to go unnoticed. The Swiss are among the world’s pioneers in the area of hydropower – his car creations sQuba is a zero emission car.

“We want to set trends–we don’t want to follow” Frank M. Rinderknecht

[expand title=”In detail”] In 1979 Frank founded Rinspeed Inc. and appeared for the first time at the Geneva International Motor Show. Today Rinspeed is a successful automotive consulting business which creates special products and conversions and is internationally renowned for extraordinary concept cars. Rinspeed also focuses on the use of new materials and eco-friendly energies and engines. [/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]The pioneering Swiss car designer shows how dreams become reality. Frank analyses the structures of communication and leadership in organisations and employs the model of extraordinary concepts in the corporate life. His presentations also offer insights into his belief that emotions are an important factor of success – they inspire creativity and innovation and generate new ideas. [/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Through wit and intelligence he will be a thought provoking, out-of-the-box thinking speaker at your event.[/expand]
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Associate Professor, Harvard Business School and Information Technology

Andrew McAfee joined the faculty of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School in 1998. His research investigates how managers can most effectively select, implement, and use Information Technology (IT) to achieve business goals. He was the recipient of a US Department of Energy Integrated Manufacturing Fellowship for his doctoral research, which focused on the performance impact of enterprise information systems such as SAP’s R/3.

Andrew is an expert at helping companies formulate and execute IT strategies

[expand title=”In detail”] He was awarded a Doctorate in Business Administration at HBS in 1999. He also holds dual MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Management from MIT as a Leader for manufacturing fellow, and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and in Humanities from MIT. He continues to consult, primarily on helping companies formulate and execute IT strategies. He speaks frequently to industry and trade groups.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Andrew offers decision makers the necessary tools and strategies to facilitate organizational change, improve performance and create wealth. His current research falls into two categories. The first is an exploration of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used within the enterprise, and what their impact is likely to be. The second is a study of IT’s impact over time on the structure of US industries and the nature of competition within them.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Andrew’s tailor made presentations are well researched and filled with essential information designed specifically for maximum impact using new technologies to achieve business goals.[/expand]
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