Speakers
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Charlie Robertson Head of Macro-Strategy, FIM Partners
Charlie worked for 12 years at ING Barings and 12 years at Renaissance Capital before joining the buyside firm FIM Partners. His second book The Time Travelling Economist was published in 2022 and was runner-up in BCA’s Business Book of the Year award. He was the top-rated Frontier Analyst for 2016-20 and top-rated Emerging Europe Analyst from 2007-10. He previously worked in parliament, a defence think-tank and an economic research house.
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Priya Lakhani AI Entrepreneur
After giving up a career in law to pursue a dream of running her own business, Priya built and sold a successful food brand. She then established a social enterprise before starting a tech company that brings together AI and education in order to understand how students learn and provide educators with an insight into how to create personalised education. She tackles themes including what innovation means and how to embed it into a culture, how leaders need to be adaptable especially in times of crisis, and why keeping values at the core of what you do is the best strategy for success. Priya serves as a non-Exec DCMS board member and regularly contributes to BBC News.
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Leo Johnson Head of Disruption & Innovation, PwC
Leo Co-presents Radio 4’s flagship series FutureProofing, exploring the big ideas and innovations reshaping business and society. He explores the cutting edge in exponential technology, probing game changers both short term and long, from autonomous transport and payment by data to radical life extension, quantum computing, and the RFID chipped workforce. What - in the tsunami of exponential technology - is real and what is hype? More importantly, what is the impact going to be on business?
After Oxford and INSEAD, Leo joined the World Bank as a Resource Economist before co-founding the boutique advisory firm Sustainable Finance, since acquired by PwC Group. He is now a Visiting Business Fellow at Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise & the Environment, a judge on the Financial Times’ Boldness in Business awards, and a regular presenter for BBC World. TV credits include Changing the Rules, Down to Business, One Square Mile and World Challenge.
Leo is an occasional commentator for the Financial Times, New Statesman, Evening Standard and Wall Street Journal. He also co-authored Turnaround Challenge: Business & the City of the Future.
