1) David Rowan

• David Rowan is founding Editor-in-chief and now Editor-at-large of WIRED’s UK edition, and technology columnist for The [UK] Sunday Times. He has taken 125 flights in the past year to investigate the companies and entrepreneurs changing our world, recently spending time with the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Xiaomi, Nest, Twitter and countless other disruptive startups from Tel Aviv to Shenzhen.His recent keynote talks have included events for banks, governments and Fortune 100 companies, and recent stage interviews have ranged from will.i.am to James Murdoch and David Cameron. David has been a columnist for The Times, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller and The Guardian.
• David wrote an article for the Times this week. He argued that ”to see the future, visit the startups of Shenzhen and Shanghai. Why? First, the market size leads founders to think big from the start. Take Sheng Wu, of the gaming company Hero Entertainment, who realised that fans didn’t just want to play; they wanted to watch other people play. He set up an esports division and the company soared to a billion-dollar valuation. Then he innovated: why not build stadiums where fans could support local esports stars? “We’re building the first two in Beijing and Shanghai,” he explained, “and when we have ten, we’ll create competitions between cities.”

2)    Cynthia Carroll

• Cynthia Carroll is a powerhouse in the world of commodities. She was the chief executive officer of Anglo American PLC, the world’s fourth largest mining company, where she oversaw growth of the company, with interests in platinum, coal, gold, industrial minerals and diamonds. She is currently a non-executive director of BP, a position which she took up in 2007.Hired by Anglo American in 2006, Cynthia became the first chief executive to come from the outside in the company’s 90-year history, its first female leader, and its first non-South African chief executive. As one of the most influential women in the industry, she was one of only three female Chief Executives of FTSE 100 companies. Operating in 45 countries with 150,000 employees, Cynthia was also chairman of Anglo Platinum Limited and of De Beers s.a, which produces 35% of the world’s diamonds. She stepped down from these roles in April 2013.
• As CEO of Anglo American, Cynthia Carroll led an effort to revamp safety standards and change the culture at the male-dominated mining group. In the second FT series of Leaders Under Pressure, Andrew Hill asks her how she dealt with the backlash. Cynthia said: ”I was told at the end of the day that we had had yet another fatality, and I turned to the CEO and said, we’re going to shut down this mine complex. You were the first woman and the first outsider to run what was a very top-down, male-dominated, hierarchical business. And when you left in 2013, this was seen to be some kind of double disadvantage. But how useful was it to have the outsider status when you joined Anglo?Well Anglo had always been run by insiders, South Africans. When I came in, I didn’t know what to expect. And so my first job was to get out and understand the business and the future potential of the business, which I did. I’ve always been in a male-dominated environment, so I was just there to do what I came to do, and that was to deliver underlying performance.

  I’ve always had the view that safety is a key indicator of rigour and discipline in an organisation. We had been losing about 45 people to fatalities every year for the five years before I arrived. So I started with safety.”

• 3) Tim Enneking

• Timothy Enneking is a successful senior executive with a consistent record of achievement in completing transactions in finance and asset management, M&A and operations (including turnarounds and startups). He is the founder and the primary Principal of Crypto Asset Management.  Prior to founding the CAM, Timothy Enneking was the founder and investment manager for the Crypto Currency Fund (“CCF”), a private fund focused on cryptocurrencies substantially similar to the Fund that was based in the Cayman Islands.
• Bitcoin private has reached a new level of meta – A fork of a fork. Tim demystified what goes on when bitcoin ‘just keeps forking’ , on CNBC this week.

4) John Hulsman

• Dr. John Hulsman is a former Washington DC insider now based in England, where he runs a leading political risk consulting firm (www.john-hulsman.com) concentrating on game-changing foreign and macro-economic policy issues that will determine the fate of the challenging new era of multiple great powers that we live in for business, investors and governments alike.An outstanding geopolitical speaker, John has given more than 1,200 high level briefings at the invitation of the US Department of State, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the CIA, the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and governments around the world. Building on his Washington experience, he is a cutting edge facilitator of war games, a powerful analytical tool. These are simulated exercises played by well briefed individuals to test assumptions and illuminate a range of likely foreign policy outcomes that will constitute the real world conditions that must be mastered in the times ahead. John has designed, played and facilitated dozens of games for blue chip private sector banking and hedge fund clients as well as governments around the world.
• Writing for Project Syndicate this week, John said that if US President Donald Trump and his advisers continue to assume that traditional deterrence does not apply to North Korea, they are likely to lose the latest geopolitical chess match. History shows that those who mistake their political or military adversaries for lunatics are usually disastrously wrong.

5) Zerlina Maxwel

• Zerlina Maxwell is the Director of Progressive Programming at SiriusXM and a Political Analyst for MSNBC.  She was formerly the Director of Progressive Media for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She worked in the campaign’s press shop pitching coverage to progressive media outlets and curating daily messaging for online influencers.  She also acted as a campaign spokesperson for the Presidential Debates. She is currently TV political analyst, speaker, and writer for a variety of national media outlets. Her writing focused on national politics, candidates, and specific policy and culture issues including race, feminism, domestic violence, sexual assault, victim blaming and gender inequality.
• Zerlina Maxwell has a programme to stay sane in the Trump era. She says: ”Something’s snapped. After the 2016 presidential election, women nationwide wanted to make a scene. We flooded streets in protest. We filled out ballots. Whispers gave way to battle cries. We didn’t do it for “attention”; we did it for progress.” In an article for ELLE Magazine Zerlina explores women’s rage—and what comes next.