I speak about the relationship between institutional strategy, organisational design and the changing conditions in which leaders must make decisions.
My topics draw on thirty years of marine and international development experience, as well as the ideas developed in The Regenerate Leap.
The Ocean Economy After the Pledges. What happens to blue economy commitments when they meet fisheries directorates, treasuries and procurement systems, and what has to be true institutionally before the capital can land.
Blue Finance and the Pipeline Problem. Why ocean capital keeps arriving at concepts that are not investable, and what makes a pipeline real. Drawn from work connected to the UK Blue Planet Fund, ADB and the World Bank.
Thirty Years on Danajon Bank. A single reef system as a case study in coastal governance: what worked, what was undone, and what it took to build management that outlasted the funding.
Governing the Ocean with Data. Monitoring, traceability and AI in fisheries, covering where the technology genuinely helps, where it launders a governance failure, and what a national system needs in place first.
Exiting Well. What a funder owes a region after twenty years, and how a phased exit gets designed so the institutions survive the departure.
AI Is Not the Disruption. Your Operating Model Is. How AI raises the baseline for everyone, and how structure decides who benefits.
When Efficiency Becomes Fragility. The point at which optimisation removes the slack a system needs to absorb a shock.
Board and CEO Misalignment. What to do when governance and management have stopped agreeing on the purpose of the organisation.
The Resilience Trap. Why bouncing back can be the wrong objective once the baseline has moved, and what replaces it.
Compound Disruption. Decision-making when pressures arrive together and none of them resolve.
Keynote (30–60 minutes) · Board or executive session (90 minutes to half a day) · Panel and moderation · Broadcast and interview · Workshop (half or full day).
Development banks and multilateral programmes, government ministries and agencies, philanthropic foundations, industry bodies and standards organisations, corporate boards and executive teams, and academic and practitioner convenings across the Indo-Pacific, the Pacific and Europe. Conference and workshop presentation includes PEMSEA’s East Asian Seas Congress, the Society for Conservation Biology’s International Congress for Conservation Biology, ITMEMS and the World Ecotourism Colloquium.
Based in London. Travel and format are agreed for each invitation. Fees vary by format, audience and whether the engagement is commercial, institutional or non-profit.
For organisers: a short biography, speaker introduction and interview topics are on the media kit. Photography is available on request.