The Leading Speakers Bureau

Inspirational Speaker & Advocate

Jessica Cox has eliminated the words “I can’t” from her vocabulary. Born without arms as the result of a birth defect, she has never allowed that to be a limiting factor. Jessica has a Taekwondo black belt, learnt to drive a car with her feet, type with her toes and fly an airplane.

“Think Outside the Shoe™”

[expand title=”In detail”] Jessica earned her Light Sport Pilot Certificate and entered the Guinness World Record for the “First Armless Person in the World Ever to Have Obtained a Pilot’s Licence”. This led to an audience with the Pope, meetings with heads of state, and a great deal of media attention. In the present, she has turned the tables on her so-called “disability”, allowing it to enable her as a motivational speaker and advocate in the USA and beyond. Putting an emphasis on the way we think versus our physical limitations, Jessica has shared her positive message in her travels to more than 20 countries.In the future there is no telling where her feet will take her.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Jessica is recognised internationally as an inspirational keynote speaker. She has shown people in countries around the world how to overcome insurmountable challenges with fearless innovation[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Jessica demonstrates to the audience the physical challenges she had to overcome to get her pilot certification. By “thinking outside of the shoe”, Jessica taught herself different ways to succeed by focusing on her ultimate goal.[/expand]

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Nomadic Dreamer, World Travel Inspirational Figure, Motivational Speaker & Writer

Sarah Dodd grew up in a small town in the USA. She has had to overcome many obstacles in her life. Living to overcome her fears she got involved in public speaking and her story and Nomadic Dreamer gained its momentum. Sarah started public speaking and now has followers in over 100 countries from around the world.

“I had the ability to choose my path and create the life I have always imagined…”

[expand title=”In detail”] Sarah comes from a family with a long line of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as depression and countless unmet dreams. Eager to leave the only place she had ever known, she focused on a goal to graduate high school one year early and at the age of 17 she left home. Sarah has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas in Speech and Communication, with years of intercultural experience, as well as a nursing background.At the age of 23, Sarah found herself stuck in the normal routine of life, doing what she felt like she “should” be doing, instead of going after her truest dreams. Sarah moved to Spain without knowing a word of Spanish. With hard work and dedication, she learned the language from scratch, with the dream anddesire to be a public speaker.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Sarah is on a current mission to travel sustainably as possibly to all of the countries of the world and spread a inspirational message everywhere she goes. Sarah recently spoke at TEDx León in Spanish, having mastered the language only three years previously.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Sarah is a captivating,passionate and inspirational speaker. Through her own life experiences and challenges Sarah can engage with any audience with her enthusiastic and exuberant style. [/expand]

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Senior Media Sector Leader (ITV, MTV)& Stand Up Comedian

Caroline Beaton has led a hugely successful, not to mention gloriously unorthodox, double-life as both business leader and stand-up comedian. By day heading up a multi-million dollar global business and by night taking her intelligent and subversive material to UK comedy venues and further afield.

“Exciting and hilarious talent – she’s got it” Time Out

[expand title=”In detail”] Cally spent over 25 years working in high profile roles in the international Media. She has operated at senior management level in media companies including ITV, MTV and Comedy Central and most recently as Senior Vice President, Viacom International Media Networks. She has held consultancy roles advising on change and business growth helping release potential and equipping employees with decision-making as well as creative tools. She is a BAFTA voting member and holds a seat on the Development Board of MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation. Her debut solo show, Super Cally Fragile Lipstick, was a sell-out hit at Edinburgh, receiving 4**** reviews.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]A naturally gifted speaker with rare insight combined with a distinctive voice and comedy bones. Cally is an experienced comedian, MC and after-dinner speaker in the corporate, education and charity sectors. [/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Cally is a natural storyteller full of intelligent, distinctive and punch line-rich material.Cally relishes engaging with live audiences and turning gender stereotypes on their head.[/expand]

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Professor of Computer Science

Radhika Nagpal and her research team took a swarm of robots inspired by the design of ant colonies, and redefined expectations for self-organising robotic systems. The robots guide themselves into a variety of shapes that might lead to applications like disaster rescue, space exploration and beyond.

“What intelligent machines can learn from a school of fish”

[expand title=”In detail”] Radhika’sinterest lies in engineering and understanding self-organising multi-agent systems, where large numbers of simple agents cooperate to produce complex and robust global behaviour. This work lies at the intersection of computer science (AI/robotics) and biology. Her group studies bio-inspired algorithms, programming paradigms, and hardware designs for swarm/modular robotic systems and smart materials, drawing inspiration mainly from social insects and multicellular biology. Also investigating models of self-organisation in biology, where the overall goal is to provide a framework for the design and analysis of self-organising systems by combining traditional computer science techniques with biological models. [/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Robotics engineer Radhika studies the collective intelligence displayed by insects and fish schools, seeking to understand their rules of engagement. In visionary talks, she presents her work creating artificial collective power and previews a future where swarms of robots work together to build flood barriers, pollinate crops, monitor coral reefs and form constellations of satellites.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Radhika’sresearch shows us how the future of robotics looks bright. She has moved the field forward in some major ways, so look to this brilliant woman for an idea of what to expect from the robots of tomorrow.[/expand]

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Anthropologist, Explorer& Presenter

Sarah Begum is an Anthropologist-Explorer. In 2010 she became the youngest female documentarian at 21 years of age to produce her first film in the Amazon Rainforest. There, she lived with the Huaorani tribe, immersed in their culture; hunting and gathering with warriors.

“Explore the world adventure, investigate exciting stories & help people along the way”

[expand title=”In detail”] Sarah has been exploring the world, studying tribes and their different ways of life whilst investigating the impacts of oil exploitation on their land and how modernity affected their way of life. In 2014, Sarah partnered with Russ Malkin to set up The Adventuress Club, a platform to connect, share, empower and encourage women through the world of adventure. Sarah’s achievements include winning the “Spirit of Adventure Award” from the Captain Scott Society 2014 for her next big expedition, finalist of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship Award 2014, highly commended by The Adventure Fund in association with Sidetracked magazine.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Sarah delivers ground breaking interesting content from her adventures around the world including documentaries, humanitarian missions, anthropological studies on indigenous tribes and surviving some of the most dangerous parts of the world.

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[expand title=”How she presents”]Sarah’s presentations inform, educate, entertain and inspire people about the world. She is in great demand as a speaker around the globe by audiences eager to hear her inspirational message. [/expand]

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Leading Millennial Expert

Chelsea Krost is one of America’s leading Millennial influencers, LinkedIn Rated Top 20 Millennial marketing and brand strategists, a sought-after keynote speaker, Forbes Contributor, and the #MillennialTalk chat host whose influence shapes marketing strategies of not only small businesses but Fortune 500 corporations.

“Unlocking the mysteries of Millenial mindset”

[expand title=”In detail”] Chelsea sat on the board of Cosmopolitan Magazine as a Millennial Board Member and has been a brand ambassador/spokesperson for many notable and diverse brands such as Intel, MasterCard, IBM, Suave, Skype, TurboTax, Illy Coffee, and The International Rotary.Chelsea was the youngest broadcast radio producer and talk show host to create a program for Millennials by Millennials when she was just 16, back in 2007.Teen Talk Live was innovative and ahead of its time. Chelsea led the show into success then started producing and appearing in TV spots first on Local News and then onto National News outlets.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Chelsea is hot on the speaker’s circuit today as a panellist and keynote speaker representing her generation. She shares business start-up tips and emphasises the importance of establishing a firm foundation with which to build upon. She provides a much needed voice to Millennials and helps others understand their generation.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Chelsea is an inspirational and informative speaker on life in the millennial world. Chelsea is truly a consummate professional and delivers a compelling story about life in the world from a different point of view, a different age and completely different mindset.[/expand]

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Co-founder & Product Manager of Gapminder Foundation

Anna Rosling Rônnlund is a Co-Founder and board member of the Gapminder Foundation, whose mission statement is to fight devastating ignorance with a fact-based worldview everyone can understand. After a few years as User Experience Designer at Google, Anna is now the Head of Design & User Experience at Gapminder.

“Her mission is to understand how culture and income collide to affect how we live our domestic lives”

[expand title=”In detail”] Anna holds a Degree in Sociology and Photography.
She designed the user-interface of the famous animating bubble-chart tool called Trendalyzer, used by millions of students across the world, to understand multidimensional time series.The tool was acquired by Google where Anna worked as Senior Usability Designer, where she designed interactive search results for statistical queries as well as the Motion Chart in Google Spreadsheets. She went back to Gapminder in 2011 to develop new free teaching material. As Product Manager, Art Director & Usability Lead of the Gapminder Foundation she is running the Dollar Street project which makes everyone’s living condition understandable to everyone, by using photos as big data.
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[expand title=”What she offers you”]A user-interface designer, Anna shares with audiences worldwide her personal mission – to make it easy for anyone to understand the world visually. With the Dollar Street project, she uses photos as big data to illustrate the living conditions for families around the globe.
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[expand title=”How she presents”]Anna’s innovative project helps us to understand culture and global income disparity better through visual documentation of domestic life worldwide, in a way that is clear, evidence-based and supported by striking visuals.
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Professor of Influence & Persuasion

Zoe Chance wants to get inside your head. More specifically, the Yale School of Management Professor wants to help good people and businesses do well in the world. The more we understand what influences decision-making, the more we can make better decisions.

“A brilliant thinker with a passion for educating the brightest minds”

[expand title=”In detail”] Prior to joining the Yale faculty, Zoe enjoyed numerous diverse and successful experiences, including marketing a $200 million segment of Barbie, developing an executive education leadership programme at Harvard University, acting on stage and film, and starting a small business.Her 4Ps Framework for Behaviour Change is the foundation for Google’s global food guidelines, helping 60,000 people make healthier choices every day. She also collaborates with various industry partners through her work at Yale’s Center for Customer Insights. Named to the Thinkers50 2016 Radar list of up-and-coming management thinkers, Zoe is passionate about turning knowledge into practice.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Through the lens of behavioural economics, Zoe studies and teaches persuasion and decision-making, focusing on simple ways to understand how to help others lead richer, healthier, happier lives.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Zoe delivers engaging, interactive presentations and workshops to organisations and conferences worldwide.[/expand]

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Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab

Kate Darling is a leading expert in Robot Ethics. She’s a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction.

“A pioneer in the field of robot ethics and the intersection of technology and society”

[expand title=”In detail”] Forever interested in how technology intersects with society, Kate has a background in law & economics and intellectual property. She has researched economic incentives in copyright and patent systems and has taken a role as intellectual property expert at multiple academic and private institutions. She currently serves as intellectual property policy advisor to the director of the MIT Media Lab.Her passion for technology and robotshas led her to interdisciplinary fields. Kate is a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a former fellow at the Yale Information Society Project, and is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. 2017, the American Bar Association honoured her legal work with the Mark T. Banner award in Intellectual Property. [/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Kate explores the emotional connection between people and life-like machines, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction.She shares with her audience the economic issues in intellectual property systems and looks at the near-term effects of robotic technology, with a particular interest in law, social, and ethical issues.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Kate runs experiments, holds workshops, writes, and speaks about some of the more interesting developments in the world of human-robot interaction, and where we might find ourselves in the future.[/expand]

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Chief Operations Officerat 42 USA

Brittany Bir runs a coding college which operates without teachers or lectures. New coding colleges have ditched the lecture in favour of peer-to-peer learning and project-based learning, in which students work together on real-world projects like building a website or a computer game.

“42 – The Tuition Free University”

[expand title=”In detail”] Brittany grew up in Temecula, California. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in Global Studies from California State University, Monterey Bay before completing a Master’s degree in European Studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France. Simultaneously working as an English conversational professor and administrative assistant in The Paris Graduate School of Digital Innovation, she discovered a passion for coding.Immediately intrigued by 42’s innovative pedagogy, she completed the program along with the first, incoming, graduating class in Paris, France.42’s name is a reference to the science fiction book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ written by British author Douglas Adams: in the book 42 is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.[/expand]

[expand title=”What she offers you”]Brittany says 42’s graduates will be better able to work with others and discuss and defend their ideas – an important skill in the “real world'” of work.This is particularly important in computer programming, where individuals are notorious for lacking certain human skills.[/expand]

[expand title=”How she presents”]Brittany has participated in numerous speaking opportunities, through different conferences, events and press relations such as the Reimagine Education Conference and recently the 10 Aniversario de Plan Ceibal in Uruguayon 42’s role in the Maker Culture, with regards to hands on learning curriculums.
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