February 12th, 2008: On February 4th, 2008, CSA Celebrity Speakers held its inaugural Forum at London’s BAFTA entitled ‘What’s Next? … Challenging The Future’, a unique panel debate in front of an invited audience of business professionals drawn from all areas of industry and commerce.
The evening delivered an entertaining and thought-provoking debate from five popular conference speakers, including: Lord Stern of Brentford whose career includes high profile economist and advisor roles to both the World Bank and the Blair Government and Rachel Lomax, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. To bring entirely different perspectives there were lawyer-turned-entrepreneur founder of Coffee Republic, Sahar Hashemi; ex-Ambassador in Washington and now head of the Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher Meyer and the inimitable Ruby Wax who has taken her MSc in psychotherapy into the boardroom, delivering workshops on corporate leadership. James Bellini moderated the panel and brought insightful thought and great perspicacity to the event.
Lord Nicholas Stern warned of the sheer magnitude of the risks we face if we continue the way we are: “Business as usual will take us some time at the end of this century to a position where hundreds of millions, probably billions of people will be on the move: – and that will cause massive global conflict.” However, Lord Stern later added that “We have the opportunity to lay the foundations for the future – low carbon growth is the way forward.”
As the debate progressed Rachel Lomax strongly defended the work of the Monetary Policy Committee on which she contributed an influential steer for five years. Acknowledging the failures of recent months, she remarked: “Something has gone wrong with the way our financial system works. We’ve got to learn how to run a good financial banking system safely and soundly and that’s the big question at the moment.” Rachel went on “This is having a very big effect on people’s lives and people’s jobs and we haven’t seen the end of it yet.”
And Ruby Wax made an almost philosophical contribution saying “The growth of our brain is about a teaspoon every 100,000 years, and we can use it to regulate our mind and understand, and deal with, the global disease by communicating and collaborating better”.
Meanwhile Sahar Hashemi commented: “We have to think of new ways of doing things; you’re almost pushed over the edge in a recession, you become more creative and many successful brands we know now from Apple to Microsoft to Amazon to Google started in a recession.”
The various backgrounds of the speakers shone through, highlighting climate change, monetary policy, entrepreneurialism, international affairs and personal development. The chemistry between the panel led to a fascinating evening that both entertained and informed and the questions from the audience reflected the tone of the evening; they were captivated by the positive feelings that came from the panel; that working together we can all make a difference and that it is people who created the current situation and it will certainly be people who will effect the changes necessary to move us on and out of it.
For more information on this event and the six speakers, please contact: Barry Jones, Marketing Manager on +44 (0) 1628 601425 or email him on [email protected]
About
CSA Celebrity Speakers Ltd is part of the global network of speaker bureaux CSA, with an established reputation of 25 years operating from 15 offices around the world. CSA Speakers is entrusted with the management of speakers’ services, who are among the world’s most outstanding personalities from the field of professional business, academia, politics, sport, entertainment and the art.
Press Contacts
Barry Jones
+44 (0) 1628 601425
Email: [email protected]
www.speakers.co.uk
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