The Leading Speakers Bureau

President of the World Bank Group

Jim Yong Kim, M.D., Ph.D. is the 12th President of the World Bank Group. A physician and anthropologist, Dr. Kim has dedicated himself to international development for more than two decades, helping to improve the lives of under-served populations worldwide.

“Helping people realise their potential can spur economic growth”

[expand title=”In detail”] Soon after Dr Kim assumed his position in July 2012, the organisation established two goals to guide its work: to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries. During his first term, the World Bank Group supported the development priorities of countries at levels never seen outside a financial crisis and, with its partners, achieved two successive, record replenishments of the World Bank Group’s fund for the poorest. The institution also launched several innovative financial instruments, including facilities to address infrastructure needs, prevent pandemics and help the millions of people forcibly displaced from their homes by climate shocks, conflict, and violence.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Aspirations are rising as never before across the world, thanks in large part to smartphones and the internet – will they be met with opportunity or frustration? Dr Kim says that we all face big challenges to help the world’s poorest people and ensure that everyone sees benefits from economic growth. Data and research help us understand these challenges and set priorities, share knowledge of what works, and measure progress.[/expand]

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World Bank Group President, Dr Kim shares his thoughts on why investing in human capital is critical to ending extreme poverty. Drawing on his own life experiences, Dr Kim is an eloquent, passionate speaker, a true inspiration for any audience.[/expand]

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Founding Chairman of the Advanced Human Technologies Group

Ross Dawson is globally recognised as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of the Advanced Human Technologies group of companies, which includes international consulting and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, futures think-tank Future Exploration Network, leading events company The Insight Exchange, and three more companies being developed in stealth mode.

“Proven Prescience & Ability to Stimulate New Insights”

[expand title=”In detail”] Ross has run executive education programs and lectured at numerous academic institutions around the world, including the University of Virginia, Australian Graduate School of Management, Singapore Institute of Management, Institute of Banking and Finance, and Singularity University in Silicon Valley. Ross holds a B.Sc (Hons) from Bristol University and a Grad.Dip in Applied Finance from Macquarie University, and is certified as a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Ross frequently appears in the media, including on CNN, Bloomberg TV, SkyNews, ABC TV, New York Timesand the Today and Sunrise shows.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Ross is an engaging speaker with the ability to get people thinking beyond tomorrow. He spells out what it will take for businesses to succeed in the knowledge-based economy of the future, providing a practical framework that audiences from any services industry can understand.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Ross is a dynamic speaker who presents his ideas in an exciting and interactive manner.[/expand]

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Executive & Leadership Consultant, Advisor & Bestselling Author

Liz Wiseman teaches leadership to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She is the President of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Liz has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review and Fortune, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc. and Time magazines.

“Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world”

[expand title=”In detail”] A former executive at Oracle Corporation, Liz worked for over 17 years as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development. During her tenure at Oracle, she led several major global initiatives and has worked and travelled in over 40 countries. Liz holds a Bachelors degree in Business Management and a Masters of Organisational Behaviour from Brigham Young University. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU, the Naval Postgraduate Academy, and Stanford University.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]In her presentations Liz offers decision makers from a wide range of businesses an exceptional guide to staying vital in the changing marketplace. She gives practical advice of how to remain curious, creative and to develop talent within organisations.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Her expertise and thought provoking remarks make Liz Wiseman a highly sought after commentator at conferences around the globe.[/expand]

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Director of Henley Centre for HR Excellence & HR/Performance Strategist

Nick Holley is currently Professor and Director of Henley Business School’s Centre for HR excellence. He also runs his own HR performance consultancy and provides one to one coaching for a number of senior leaders. Nick has a unique background that combines experience as an army officer, ten years as a successful futures and foreign exchange broker with Merrill Lynch and sixteen years in senior organisational, leadership and people development roles in large global organisations. In his last two roles, Nick was partner in charge of learning for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa for Arthur Andersen and director of global people development for Vodafone. His work on leadership development at Vodafone was externally benchmarked amongst the top five in Europe. This extensive commercial experience and customer focus provides a strong link between organisational change and bottom line performance improvement.

Voted the 5th most influential thinker in HR by Human Resource Magazine

[expand title=”In detail”] Nick has recently carried out research on employee engagement, HR and Big Data, HR careers, HR in the recession and recovery, HR leadership, HR organisational models, leadership development, performance management, talent management and what CEOs want from HR. Nick has worked with a number of major global businesses and governments in North and South America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe on a number of projects looking at change management, HR strategy and capability, leadership development, strategy implementation and people, performance and talent management.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Nick has been involved in creating and managing large scale organisational change, leadership and people development programmes and performance and talent management processes and systems but his real expertise lies in embedding them in day to day operations. Most organisations have great strategies but fail to deliver them. Nick understands the theory but combines this with a proven ability to deliver and sustain them in highly complex organisations.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Nick has the ability to turn solid ‘academic’ insights into practical and workable solutions and in his engaging, humorous and pragmatic presentations, he always energises and enriches his audience.
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One of the Top Facilitators in the Human Resources Field in Australia

Peter Ferrera is an experienced, facilitator / trainer and consultant with a proven success track record which he gained over 20 years in business. Prior to establishing his consulting firm, E-Cue Pty Ltd, Peter was Employee Relations Manager for Coca-Cola Amatil. He is an Australian Institute of Professional Facilitators Fellow, a DDI Master Trainer, a Targeted Selection Accredited Trainer and a Myers Briggs Type Indicator Accredited Trainer.

“Peter is an excellent facilitator who always applies theory to reality.”

[expand title=”In detail”] Peter Ferrera is regarded as one of the top facilitators in his field in Australia. He has been a leading contract facilitator with high profile RTO’s including The Australian Institute of Management, and Chifley Business School. He has successfully designed and delivered middle and senior management leadership development programs including frontline management, personal growth and professional development programs, team development, targeted selection, continuous improvement, communications, client management, conflict management, career development, sales and marketing
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[expand title=”What he offers you”]Peter Ferrera’s experience encompasses both private and public sector organisations in the fields of manufacturing, engineering, financial services, information technology, transport & logistics, sales and marketing, aviation, and health.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Peter Ferrera maintains everyone’s attention throughout his interesting events which are easy for the delegates to participate. His humour and ability to relate the theory to everyday practicalities makes the courses extremely valuable.[/expand]

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Human Resource / Training Expert

Graham Nugent is a line banker for more than 18 years with HSBC and Citibank who has thirty years experience as a human resource / training specialist – with TACK International Training, The World Bank / ORT – Organization Reconstruction Travail and in his last appointment as Director of Training at the SAMA Institute of Banking in Saudi Arabia, (where he was responsible for the development and management of more than 300 training programs each year). He has been based in the Gulf for the past 30 years. He established MANDEVCO / ABAMI over 20 years ago; the Company develops and presents training programmes in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“One of the Gulf’s most experienced mentors”

[expand title=”In detail”] Graham Nugent was working for Midland Bank – now HSBC when he was headhunted by Citibank and obtained Licence # 1 in Guernsey. He led a World Bank Project team bringing 5 regional banks together in Northern Nigeria, established and was the first Director of Training at the Central Bank of Saudi Arabia (SAMA) He was responsible for bank education and training in the Kingdom for the Institute of Banking and established Activity Learning Centres in Dubai which now have the most successful Programs ever in the Gulf – 289 Programs/ 13,439 participants.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Graham Nugent has provided training in many parts of the world for major banks, companies and Government institutions. He is renowned in his field for having establishing four major Training Centres (in Nigeria, Kuwait, KSA & UK), developed and implemented the policies and procedures, covering all aspects of manpower planning, manpower development, education and training for major international organisations.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Graham Nugent’s presentations are a flow of stories combined with his enormous speaking presence. His energetic, enthusiastic style and wealth of experience in banking, management and business is much appreciated by his audiences.[/expand]

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Former HR Director at the BBC

Lucy Adams is the best known HR Director in the UK having been on the Board of the BBC during its most turbulent period and acted as its media spokesperson on all people issues. She now advises business leaders and their teams on developing resilience to cope with a disrupted world and is the author of the book to be published next year, ‘Better or Bitter – How to thrive after a setback’.

“Renowned HR Expert”

[expand title=”In detail”] Lucy has led and delivered difficult change in complex organisations for over 15 years. In just two years the BBC had four CEOs, they moved BBC Sport, Children’s TV, Radio 5Live and 2,500 jobs to the North of England, opened the largest multi-media newsroom in Europe, delivered £200m+ of savings and managed numerous crises, most notably the Jimmy Savile scandal. Lucy was at the heart of handling all of these. Prior to the BBC, Lucy was Group HR Director at Serco plc, a multi-national plc delivering large scale government contracts across the world. In 2013 the BBC made the headlines on many occasions including the resignation of its leader after just 54 days. Lucy also found herself on the TV news and in every major newspaper in the UK as she experienced her own personal crisis around the pay-offs to senior BBC Executives.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Lucy’s experiences of delivering difficult change in complex and challenging environments have given her a unique insight into how individuals and teams cope with the pressures of doing business in a disrupted world. Using her personal experiences and the latest research she helps business leaders explore how resilient they are, how they can better anticipate and manage the risks of driving change, build their own agility and resilience and that of their team, cope with the pressures of modern leadership and recover quickly from setbacks. [/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]Lucy always aims to provide her audiences with very practical take-aways and whilst she does include insights from the latest research, her speeches are essentially very earthy and pragmatic, based on years of actually delivering at the top of very large organisations. Her speeches are incredibly honest and filled with real life examples and anecdotes from the BBC and elsewhere.[/expand]

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Internationally Recognised Expert on Creativity and Human Resources

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognised leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. He has worked with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and currently works with many groups and organisations around the world that are designing more creative and holistic approaches in education, culture and business.

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”

[expand title=”In detail”] Sir Ken led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education’ (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. He was one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]His vision and expertise is sought by businesses that recognise the urgent need to promote stronger powers of creativity, communication and innovation within their company. Sir Ken also challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
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[expand title=”How he presents”]His presentations are designed individually and his style of delivery is unique and inspirational.[/expand]

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Chilean-American Acclaimed Novelist

Isabel Allende is an internationally acclaimed author considered to be part of the Latin American feminist literary awakening. Born in Lima, Peru, she grew up in Chile and travelled around the world as the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. She is best known for her epic and highly autobiographical novel ‘The House of Spirits’, which was later released as a motion picture in 1993.

“A genius” The Los Angeles Times

[expand title=”In detail”] Isabel Allende worked with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Santiago, then later in Brussels, Belgium, and in Europe. For a brief period in Chile, she also had a job translating Romance novels from English to Spanish. Reportedly, the CIA-backed military coup in 1973 “changed everything” for her because “her name meant she was caught up in finding safe passage for those on the wanted lists”. In 2006, she was one of the eight flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her novels have been translated into 30 languages and sold more than 51 million copies.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Isabel has lectured, done extensive book tours and has taught literature at several US colleges. In her writing, Allende deals with politics, history, and social institutions in a way that is all but passive. [/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Isabel’s presentations give fascinating insights into how she is guided by a vision of a world in which women have achieved social and economic justice. This vision includes empowerment of women and girls and protection of women and children. [/expand]

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Deputy Chair Equalities and Human Rights Commission

Caroline Waters is a highly accomplished senior executive with 13 years’ experience of operating at board level in a variety of European executive and non-executive roles. Caroline held a number of positions for the BT Group including Director, People & Policy before her retirement in March 2013. She is currently Deputy Chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Vice President of Carers UK, a member of the Whole Education Board and runs her own Strategic HR Consultancy business. She has established herself as a leading voice, across industry and Government for Inclusion, equal opportunities and progressive employment.

“She is one of the pioneers in approaches to workforce management”

[expand title=”In detail”] Caroline established BT’s Diversity Centre of Expertise, building BT’s leadership in diversity practice and embedding it within BT and its supply chain. She regularly contributes advice and guidance to Government and Industry. Her work is widely recognised across the industry with appointment as HR Director of the Year at HR Magazine’s HR Excellence Awards in 2009, where she is also consistently placed within a top 3 position in their annual HR’s Most Influential listings. This leadership was further recognised by the award of an OBE in the New Year Honours List 2010 for services to diversity and equal opportunities.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Caroline’s enthusiasm for the benefits of work-life balance is unrivalled. All her efforts are focused on demonstrating that flexible working is good for business. A high-profile leader in this area, she has proven track record of delivering sustained transformational change programmes across a complex international organisation.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Her professional and personal integrity, passion and inspirational leadership style have allowed her to create an environment where success is a natural outcome and measurable results are delivered while creating a culture based on honesty, mutual trust and determined shared purpose.[/expand]
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