Topic: Digital Disruption

Victoria Scholar

Winner of CITY AM's Analyst of the Year 2023 Award, Victoria Scholar is one of UK TV’s foremost financial commentators, enjoying a rare combination of banking, television and journalistic experience. Known for her plain English approach to financial news, Victoria excels at translating complex City moves to a wider audience and has a regular opinion column in The Telegraph, sharing her advice with readers.

A hugely popular broadcaster and expert on business, finance and economics, Victoria is the Head of Investment at Interactive Investor - the UK’s second largest direct-to-consumer investment platform. She has a wide-ranging broadcast remit discussing the daily business news agenda, investment strategy and asset allocation, collective investments and direct shares, as well as macro-economics and markets.

Victoria is a popular event host and keynote speaker on business, economics and the markets. Victoria hosted the Euromoney Awards and is regular panellist at business and financial conferences and other events.

Previously Victoria was a financial journalist with IG Group and presented the business news at the IGTV broadcast channel. She has a background as a producer for Bloomberg and broadcast journalist for CNBC and BBC and is in demand as a financial and markets commentator for major TV networks in the UK and across the world.

Victoria started her career on the trading floor in the square mile at the investment bank Nomura. She holds a degree in Economics from University of Bristol and a broadcast journalism masters' degree from City University, London. She is also an award-winning technical analyst, having received the Bronwen Wood prize in her Society of Technical Analysis Diploma.

Ed Newton-Rex

Ed Newton-Rex is one of the world’s leading experts and speakers on Generative AI. He is one of only a handful of people to have founded and sold a Generative AI company, and has a breadth of experience working at a senior level for social media giants TikTok and Snapchat. Ed is now VP of Audio at Stability AI, a billion-dollar Generative AI company that is one of the leading competitors to OpenAI.

Having graduated top of his year in Music at Cambridge University, in 2010 Ed founded Jukedeck, the world’s first AI music company. Jukedeck’s technology was used to create more than a million original pieces of music, and won a number of awards, including a Cannes Innovation Lion. In 2019, the company was acquired by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.

At ByteDance, Ed first led the AI music lab, then ran Product in Europe for TikTok, working on the world-renowned AI recommendation algorithm. At Snapchat, Ed was Chief Product Officer for Voisey, a music creation app that made it easy to make and collaborate on music, which led to record deals for a number of its users.

Ed is now VP of Audio at Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, the hugely successful, open-source image generation technology that helped kickstart the mass adoption of Generative AI. He is also a professional composer, published by Boosey & Hawkes, which gives him a unique perspective on the impact AI will have - and is already having - on the creative industries. He was a co-organiser and judge of the first international AI Song Contest, and is a mentor on the startup programme at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Ed was named one of Business Insider’s 30 most creative people in UK tech, and one of Sifted’s 20 generative AI ‘power players’ in Europe. He has made a number of media appearances discussing AI and creativity, including on the BBC, and has spoken on the topic at a range of conferences including TEDx, Mobile World Congress and Slush.

Noreena Hertz

Named by The Observer as “one of the world’s leading thinkers” and by Vogue as “one of the world’s most inspiring women,” economist Noreena Hertz is a bestselling author, broadcaster and keynote speaker.

Her previous books The Silent Takeover, The Debt Threat and Eyes Wide Open are published in more than twenty countries. Her latest book, The Lonely Century – Coming Together in a World That’s Pulling Apart is out now in the UK, and is being published across the world in the coming months.

A regular commentator in print globally, Noreena’s opinion pieces have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Die Zelt, El Pais, and The South China Morning Post. She makes frequent television appearances around the world including on flagship television shows such as CBS’ This Morning, BBC’s Question Time, NHK’s Global Debate; has created and hosted four television documentaries; hosted her own show on the US’ largest radio network, Sirius XM and served as the economics editor for the UK’s leading commercial television network, ITV.

Noreena has a PhD from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Having spent 10 years at the University of Cambridge, in 2014 she moved to University College London where she is an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity. Noreena advises corporations globally and sits on the board of Warner Music Group.

Frequently sought around the world as a speaker, Noreena has given keynote speeches at TED, the World Economic Forum in Davos and Google Zeitgeist as well as for leading global corporations, sharing platforms with such luminaries as President Bill Clinton, Professor Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall amongst others.

Her thoughtfully tailored keynote speeches combine a deep analytical understanding of global trends, threats and opportunities with practical solutions for how to make smarter decisions in a complex world.

Noreena’s inspirational talks leave the audience with a clearer vision for the future, arming them with better strategies that can prepare an organization for the future.

Arnaud Bonzom

Arnaud Bonzom is a former Venture Partner at 500 Startups where he was focusing on helping Southeast Asian entrepreneurs to succeed. He is a frequent speaker at several international conferences including Slush, Tech in Asia, Rise and Web Summit.

Arnaud is active as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD and has co-authored a report with INSEAD on how the largest organizations are engaging with startups which achieved press coverage across 28 countries and generated more than 120 speaking engagement invitations.

He has been invited by Accenture, Airbus, Allianz, Amazon Web Services, BMW, Deloitte, INSEAD, MERCER, NUS, Standard Chartered, as well as the Estonian, German and the Singaporean Governments, among others to share his input on Corporate Innovation and Startup Ecosystem.

His extensive work in the startup ecosystem received more than 160 citations in prominent media such as Forbes, Bloomberg TV, and Les Echos. His research is also quoted by leading organizations including Bain, SAP, BNP Paribas, and Orange.

His main research interest is in Startups and Innovation.

He is also the co-founder of Map the Money, an organization that helps entrepreneurs to raise funds in Southeast Asia. As well as the author of The Asia Funding / M&A Newsletter and the Singapore startup ecosystem and entrepreneur toolbox.

Earlier in his career, Arnaud was involved in setting up and growing new businesses including for INSEAD as Assistant Director of Corporate Partnership Development. Prior to that, he worked at Business France as Trade Advisor in New Technologies, Innovation and Services.

Arnaud holds a Masters Degree in International Marketing and Business Development at SKEMA Business School as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Versailles.

Tom Koulopoulos

Tom Koulopoulos is Chairman and founder of Delphi Group, a 30-year-old Boston-based think tank named one of the fastest growing private companies by Inc. Magazine, and the founding partner of Acrovantage Ventures, which invests in early-stage technology startups. He is also the author of 13 books, an inventor with several patents, an Inc.com columnist, the past Executive Director of the Babson College Center for Business Innovation, the past director of the Dell Innovation Lab, and a professor at Boston University.

His insights have received wide praise from luminaries such as the late Peter Drucker, the father of modern management; Dee Hock, founder of Visa International; and Tom Peters, who called his writing, “a brilliant vision of where we must take our enterprises to survive and thrive.” His Inc. column is read by over one million people yearly.

Mr. Koulopoulos’ thirteen books include his most recent, Reimagining Healthcare, The Bottomless Cloud, Revealing the Invisible, The Gen Z Effect, and Cloud Surfing. His upcoming book, Gigatrends, looks at the seven tech trends that are shaping the future of how we live, work, and play.

Tom’s keynotes blend humor, insight, and a cutting-edge view of the future in a way that’s customized to each audience. According to Tom’s mentor, Peter Drucker, Tom’s writing “makes you question not only the way you run your business but the way you run yourself.”