The Leading Speakers Bureau

Youngest Person Ever to Sail Around The World

Laura Dekker is the youngest sailor who ever sailed solo around the globe. In August 2010, at the age of 14, Laura set sail from Gibraltar for her maiden voyage and embarked on what would become a record-breaking, 17 month journey. She successfully completed the solo circumnavigation in an 11.5-metre two-masted ketch, arriving in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, on 21 January 2012, having completed a solo circumnavigation at the age of 16 in 123 days.

“Record breaking adventurer”

[expand title=”In detail”] Despite the magnitude of the achievement, it has been anything but an endpoint for Laura, who has continued to sail, both on her own and with larger crews, since completing her trip. In 2011 she was nominated for the Conny van Rietschoten Trophy, a prestigious Dutch sailing award. In 2013, Maidentrip, a documentary about her trip mostly shot by Laura and directed by Jillian Schlesinger, was aired. [/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]In her presentations Laura speaks about her story and the lessons she learned from her months and years spent on – and off – the water. Her presentations are highly inspirational and motivate people around the globe. [/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Her fresh and unconventional presentations make Laura Dekker a great guest at national and international events.[/expand]

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Director of Environment and Innovation at Volvo Trucks

Lars Mårtensson is the Director of Environment and Innovation, Volvo Trucks. He is Chairman of the Board of the Swedish Life Cycle Center (hosted by Chalmers University of Technology) – the Volvo Car Group is one of its current partners.

“An expert on sustainability and innovation”

[expand title=”In detail”] Lars’ educational background is a University degree in Chemical Engineering and an M.Sc. in Environmental Management and Policy. During his 20 years at Volvo, he has been Environmental Director at Volvo Penta and Volvo Group. In his present position at Volvo Trucks, he is responsible for environment and innovation strategies and objectives. Volvo Trucks has during this time period presented the first CO2-neutral automotive production plant in the world, 7 trucks adapted for seven different renewable fuel alternatives and the first hybrid refuse truck in the world as well as innovations like Volvo Dual Clutch and Volvo Dynamic Steering. Lars was for many years the chairman of the Swedish network Climate neutral transports on road. The common objective is to reduce CO2 emissions from road transports by 50% by 2020.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Lars’ sessions are designed to help organisations and individuals better understand change and his vision of a digitally enabled autonomous future. He educates, inspires and empowers new thinking patterns.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]A passionate and engaging speaker, Lars’ presentations are a veritable wealth of new ideas delivered in a unique and highly creative way.[/expand]

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Award-winning Futurist, Europe’s Top 30 Women in Digital

Shivvy Jervis has been voted as one of the ‘most creative thinkers in tech’ and a thought leader ‘making digital Britain tick’. Shivvyis a futurist and video series creator uncovering ground breaking advances that affect us all.

“Shivvy is the winner of Britain’s Asian Women of Achievement Award”

[expand title=”In detail”] Shivvy is particularly known for her work as the creator and host of a long-running online video series Digital Futures that has tracked up over 10 million views to date. In it, she curates fast-paced dialogue on the impact of emerging technologies with industry heavyweights and new founders alike.Shivvy champions the notion of ‘tech-for-good’ and purpose-driven innovation, the sheer power of the digital and tech arena to drive meaningful and sustainable impact. As a former business journalist, she has a sharp sense for not only what is newsworthy, but critically what will make headlines in the future.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Shivvy immerses herself in future technologies, the digital economy and on-line trends, making sense of these for both corporations and consumers. Shivvy demystifies some of the concepts that will radically reshape sectors, industries and ultimately our day-to-day lives[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Professional and truly powerful, this award winning speaker has many high profile credits and is an ideal choice whether speaking, or facilitating events.[/expand]

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Business Transformation Expert

Sean Culey is a world leading futurist and globally recognised business transformation expert.He helps organisations define customer-centric strategies, understand the root cause of issues and develop new ways of working that create new levels of operational and financial performance.

“An internationally renowned expert on business transformation”

[expand title=”In detail”] Sean has 25 years of global experience across numerous verticals and geographies, including a decade working for Cadbury Schweppes as a global design authority for what was the world’s largest SAP implementation, and has also been the CMO for an international business analytics company. He has been involved in a large number of complicated, innovative but exciting projects, and has worked in Australia, America, Africa and Europe in many different industry sectors such as FMCG, Food and Beverage, Healthcare, Pharma, Defence and Heavy Manufacturing, helping to improve some very diverse Supply Chains. He is a member of the Supply Chain Council European Leadership Team and a SCOR-PCertifiedpractitioner. [/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Sean is able to offer a number of ways to help companies become more effective, efficient and profitable. He shares his ground breaking research into disruptive technologies and giving practical advice for business leaders about how they can create more agile organisations that are disruption ready, enabling them to thrive in the new era of digital business.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Sean is passionate about companies obtaining real benefit and strategic value from their investments in people, processes and systems. He leaves his audience thinking differently.[/expand]

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Roboticist

Rodney Brooks builds robots based on biological principles of movement and reasoning. The goal: a robot who can figure things out. He is the Founder and CTO of Rethink Robotics, whose mission is to apply advanced robotic intelligence to manufacturing and physical labour.

“One of the leading pioneers in robotics technology”

[expand title=”In detail”] Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. From 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, and completed his service as a Professor of Robotics. He was also the founding Director of the Institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. Rodney has been honoured by election to the National Academy of Engineering and has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence andthe American Association for the Advancement of Science.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Dr. Rodney Brooks’ keynotes reflect the former Professor’s extensive knowledge in automatons.He shares his insights on the worlds most innovative and promising robotics projects. He is an accomplished speaker who speaks regularly to promote the value of robotics and artificial intelligence invenues throughout the world.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]A distinguished expert, Dr. Rodney Brooks provides excellent and useful inside knowledge on the topics ofAdaptive Behaviour, Applied Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Robots. [/expand]

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CEO of E-Business Strategies and Author

Ravi Kalakota is CEO and cofounder of E-Business Strategies. An early pioneer in the area of e-commerce, he uses his research to help start-ups and large companies alike create and execute corporate digitization initiatives and next generation business models.

“A globally-recognized expert on e-business”

[expand title=”In detail”] Ravi’s company, E-business Strategies, specializes in e-business and mobile best practices, technology architecture, B2B, CRM and Supply Chain processes. Focused on the next generation of enterprise applications, the company offers contract research, customized consulting services, speaking engagements, executive workshops, and in-depth research reports.Prior to E-Business Strategies, Dr.Kalakota was the founder, chairman and CEO of hsupply.com, a B2B e-procurement company. He was also one of the founders of a mobile venture capital firm, Isherpa Capital. He also served as the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Chair Professor of Electronic Commerce and Director of the Center for Digital Commerce at Georgia State University in Atlanta.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]As a leading researcher and author whose powerful formulation of the e-business fundamentals has made him well known, Ravi helps companies navigate their future options, explaining the business implications as well as the infrastructure, customer, and economic issues – clearly, concisely and without ambiguity.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Authoritative and in depth, Ravi is in demand for keynote lectures, workshops and strategy sessions in which he provides practical tools and insights for making the critical transition from strategy to execution.[/expand]

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Creator of The Embodied Present Process

Philip Shepherd is recognized as an international authority on embodiment.He is the creator of The Embodied Present Process (TEPP), a unique method for moving into wholeness that gently discloses and heals divisions we carry within us.

“Bringing clarity to a chaotic world”

[expand title=”In detail”] TEPP integrates the hypervigilance of the cranial brain with the deeper intelligence of the body – especially with the second brain in the belly. Philip’s work is based on the vision articulated in his celebrated book, ‘New Self, New World: Recovering our Senses in the Twenty-first Century’. His personal path to understanding has been shaped by his adventures as a teenager, when he cycled alone through Europe, the Middle East, India and Japan, by his deep commitment to and studies of bodywork, by his experiences as an actor, playing lead roles on stages in London, New York, Chicago and Toronto and also by the burning desire for freedom that has illuminated his entire life.
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[expand title=”What he offers you”]Philip’s conferences help us listen to the world through the body. In his sessions, he provides practical feedback, support and a program of simple exercises designed to the individual needs and growth of the client.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Philip brings to his sessions a compassionate understanding of the challenges of our modern life. The approach he takes heals the frantic, restless pace of the intelligence in the head, which tends to run on overdrive, by uniting it with the deep, present and calm intelligence of the body.
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Author of Branded Growth & Founder of The Circle of Growth

Paul Hughes is an internationally renowned speaker with over 12 years of experience in over 35 countries.His unique quality is his ‘how’: Paul Hughes draws as he speaks along ten meters of paper that he calls Ten Meters of Thinking. Ten Meters of Thinking is not a speech, it is a performance.

“An internationally renowned speaker and expert on growth”

[expand title=”In detail”] Paul has moved from ‘The Business of Design to the Design of Business’. He is leading a movement that is driven by his formula for success.In our interconnected world transformation is needed as we are now facing global challenges never faced before. In the past two decades, Paul Hughes has spoken to tens-of-thousands of people across a wide variety of organizational, educational and governmental bodies, in more than 40 countries. Clients and audiences have included: Coca-Cola, 3M Innovative Technologies, ABN AMRO Bank, Rabo Bank, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Statkraft Energy, MEXX Fashion, Yale University, New York University, University of Amsterdam, and TEDx events.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Paul helps individuals and organizations find their style of growth andunderstand their role in this changing world by making the complex clear.He believes that clarifying your success, growing your business and multiplying your results can be as simple as 1, 2, 3.Growth needs to be tailor-made.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Paul draws live as he speaks.This form of live visual-storytelling engages audiences and is based on his belief that ‘a great speech has the clarity of a picture book’. By this, a unique experience is created and the audience is captivated.[/expand]

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CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Oren Etzioni is Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The goal of Oren’s research is to solve fundamental problems in AI, particularly the automatic learning of knowledge from text

“We have an obligation to figure out how to help people cope with the rapidly changing nature of technology.”

[expand title=”In detail”] Dr.Etzionihas been a Professor at the University of Washington’s Computer Science department since 1991, receiving several awards including GeekWire’s Hire of the Year (2014), Seattle’s Geek of the Year (2013), the Robert Engelmore Memorial Award (2007), the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award (2005), AAAI Fellow (2003), and a National Young Investigator Award (1993). He was also the founder or co-founder of several companies including Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and Decide (sold to eBay in 2013), and the author of over 100 technical papers that have garnered over 25,000 citations.
Oren received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991, and his B.A. from Harvard in 1986.
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[expand title=”What he offers you”]Oren Etzioni offers his perspective on the future of AI, based on cutting-edge research at the Allen Institute for AI on projects such as Aristo and Semantic Scholar. This future reflects the institute’s mission: AI for the common good.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Oren Etzioni’s fascinating hi-tech presentations and demonstrations are universally admired and enjoyed, furthering his reputation as an important contributor to modern-day devices, systems and solutions.[/expand]

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Web psychologist and author

Nathalie Nahai is foremost expert in web psychology. She helps businesses apply scientific rigour to their website design, content marketing and products. Nathalie has worked with Fortune 500 companies, design agencies and SMEs, including Google, eBay, Unilever to name a few.

“Nathalie will change the way you think about marketing, advertising and communications online”

[expand title=”In detail”] Nathalie Nahai is a web psychologist, international speaker and author of the best-selling book, ‘Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion’. Nathalie lectures internationally on the digital application of behavioural sciences, hosts Guardian podcasts, and contributes to national publications, TV and radio on the subject of online behaviour. Nathalie is also the founder of Humanise The Web (a conference that explores both how the internet influences our behaviours, and how businesses can harness persuasive technologies for good), and sits on the Social Media Week advisory board and Ogilvy Change experts’ panel.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]From workshops to keynotes, Nathalie teaches businesses how to apply scientific rigour to their website design, content marketing and products.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Nathalie is charming and witty. Anyone listening to her speak can become a better version of their marketing self, using the psychology of persuasion to delight and empower their customers in an ethical way.
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