After a distinguished career as a journalist at the BBC, The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review and Forbes, Nigel Holloway began a second career in thought leadership in 2003. He was first at the Economist Intelligence Unit, then at American Lawyer Media and subsequently ran his own editorial consulting firm in the US.

As a journalist who has covered the news on six continents, Nigel offers a unique perspective on global trends in industry, business and investment. This experience enables him to write about a broad range of thought leadership topics, including the future of manufacturing, cybersecurity, business issues in the wake of COVID-19, and corporate integrity.

In recent years, much of his research has been focused on risk, from the impact of digital transformation on risk management, to corporate fraud and money laundering. He has written two special reports  on corporate ethics and global corruption for Knowledge@Wharton, and edited The New Era of Regulatory Enforcement: A comprehensive guide for raising the bar to manage risk (Girgenti & Hedley, 2016). He won a Native Advertising Award in 2019 for Best Use of Video (Silver) and a Best Branded Content Partnerships of 2018 by Pressboard for an international index, sponsored by OFX, that compares countries’ investment climate.

Nigel is a skilled presenter and moderator, both in live and recorded events, for a wide range of activities, topics and occasions from the role of corporate culture to the importance of cyber resilience. He has led conference meetings in the US, South Africa, Singapore, Britain and Brazil. At other times, he has facilitated discussions at business meetings throughout America.

Born in London, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, Harvard University and the National University of Singapore. He is co-author of two books on finance and investment in East Asia.

Lucy Hurst has 20 years of experience designing and conducting projects to inform strategy and priorities for action based on a deeper understanding of key trends and sector or issue-specific dynamics.  Areas of focus include AI transformation and the future of work, ESG factors and their role in sustainable growth and development, food security and sustainable food systems, and driving areas of progress for youth, women and girls.

Lucy has developed research project methodologies that incorporate both new and time-honored datasets, information and primary insights to frame issues and trends so that companies, government and development initiatives can understand the potential impacts, risks and opportunities for their operations and objectives.

She was previously at the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York and London where she conducted qualitative and quantitative research to support global political, economic and industry analysis projects for the Custom Research and Public Policy teams.  

Lucy has participated in thought leadership and research initiatives for the World Wildlife Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and the MiSK Foundation as well as UN agencies, regional development banks, and government ministries in the US, UK and Middle East. 

She has designed and developed research programs for a range of corporate clients including DuPont/Corteva Agriscience, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, HSBC, Gilead Sciences, ABB and Rio Tinto. She holds degrees from Vanderbilt University and the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky.

Maria-Luiza Apostolescu is a research and strategy consultant with 10 years’ experience in conducting literature reviews, comparative studies, quantitative analytics, and devising strategies for private clients. Her international expertise covers a wide range of topics in the public policy and business intelligence realms, all with a sustainability component. Examples of projects she designed and conducted include the EIU’s and the Barilla Foundation’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI), a quantitative assessment of the sustainability of food systems at the country level; contributions to the intellectual framework behind Bioversity International’s Agro-Biodiversity Index (ABD Index); and a number of bespoke ESG comparative assessments for private clients focusing on the sustainability maturity of corporate strategies since 2020.

Maria-Luiza holds a Masters Degree in International Development with a focus on Energy studies from Sciences-Po Paris, and has simultaneously attended two universities during her Bachelor's degrees, one in Political Sciences with Economics from Sciences-Po Paris and one in Environmental Sciences from University “Pierre et Marie Curie” (Paris 6). A native French and Romanian speaker, she is fluent in English and Spanish as well.

After over 30 years spent creating data-driven content in finance, marketing and technology, Dan excels in collecting, visualizing and presenting data in order to tell customer stories.

Dan created CEO surveys for IBM, worked as a data visualizer for Deloitte, and built a library of capital markets courses licensed to Citibank and RBC. He has authored over 60 white papers for software companies, consulting firms and financial institutions. His webcast scripts range from the business case for diversity (using data from Major League Baseball) to the explosion in movie theater construction prior to World War I (with an animated map of theater construction over time).

A Python programmer and Tableau developer, Dan has written scrapers and built datasets showing the gender breakdown of board members in the Russell 3,000, employee satisfaction ratings at 2,500 US companies, and shot maps showing the rise of 3-point shooting among NBA players. He specializes in compiling unique datasets – from surveys, Bloomberg, or scraped from the web – that compare organizations to their peers and show off their strengths.

Dan’s publications include Derivatives Engineering and its companion volume, The Derivatives Engineering Workbook; How to Free Blocked Funds; and Active Bank Risk Management. He is a certified Financial Risk Manager. He holds an MBA from Columbia University and an MA in Geographic Information Systems from the City University of New York.

For a year in the 1980s, Dan worked as Barack Obama's editor (described in Dreams of My Father) during Barack's first job out of college. Dan also spent a few years in Tokyo at the Mainichi Daily News, a Japanese tabloid. He speaks Spanish well, Japanese badly, and spends too much time on Twitter.

Stéphane Côté has 10 years of experience as an analyst, writer and presenter of data-driven content. He is a partner in the Media Analytics Group, a Canadian research firm.

He primarily produces white papers and analytical reports as well as conducting research and analysis, including the design and interpretation of executive and consumer surveys. In this capacity he has worked with many major B2B publishers, including the Economist Intelligence Unit, Forbes Insights, Wall Street Journal Intelligence, Americas Market Intelligence and many more. His clients include Visa, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, Humana and Google Education.

He was previously at Stiff Strategic Communications where he helped to design brand identities, packaging, social media tiles, keynote presentations and annual reports that captivate audiences and convey messages effectively. He also led a team that created a comprehensive national education plan for the Education Ministry of Ethiopia in conjunction with the United Nations.

Born in Ottawa, he studied journalism at Carleton University. Steph’s skills include market research, competitive analysis, strategic communications and public speaking. He’s driven by a desire to think critically, to communicate clearly and to solve interesting problems.

For the past 15 years, Ken Waldie has created compelling content for data-driven media, from thought leadership publications to content marketing and native advertising. He is a partner in Media Analytics Group, a Canadian research firm. Ongoing work for major business publishers involves authoring sponsored stories, white papers and reports as well as conducting research and analysis, including the design and interpretation of executive and consumer surveys. 

Ken’s skills include white-space analysis, hypothesis development and questionnaire design, as well as data analysis and statistical presentation using a range of formats such as Tableau. His clients have included the State of Michigan, Sapient, Northern Trust, SAP and Dun & Bradstreet.

Prior to his work in thought leadership, Ken was a partner in an economics consulting firm, serving as the principal economic adviser on large multi-disciplinary project teams. This involved several major international capital projects, as well as a long series of consultative commissions and task forces.