Sikisa

The Barbadian stand-up won the public vote at the BBC New Comedy Awards. She’s now delighting audiences from the Comedy Store to The Guilty Feminist Live, and hosting the onstage chat show Girl Code. Her TV and podcast credits include Jonathan Ross’ Comedy Club, Off Menu and Perfect Sounds. According to The Guardian, ‘Sikisa’s ebullient personality makes the room sing.’

Abandoman

Rob Broderick invites audience suggestions on almost any subject and instantly turn them into a funky hip-hop track. Dick & Dom’s house band has been hailed as ‘Flight of the Conchords meets 8 Mile.‘ For bigger audiences, he can work as a duo.

Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Maggie has led projects making anything from land mine detectors to satellite sub-systems that measure variables like wind speed to improve our knowledge of climate change. In presentations the Sky At Night expert talks about exploring space with missions like Rosetta, and how we live in a galaxy with 200 billion stars. Maggie believes that with 100 billion galaxies in the universe, there must be life out there – simply as a matter of probability.

Kate Adie

People used to joke that if you find yourself in the same place as Adie you should get out immediately. As Chief News Reporter she broadcast from the front line in the Gulf War and riots in Tiananmen Square. Kate talks about Britain’s home front, and when women started going to football matches.

Rt Hon Lord (Andrew) Adonis

As Transport Secretary, Schools Minister and Head of the No.10 Policy Unit, Andrew has been an architect of public service reforms from academies to policing. He also prepared the plan for HS2, before leading a review of regional growth strategies. As Chair of the new commission, he is now assessing the UK’s future infrastructure needs. In presentations Andrew looks at change management and policy implementation in complex organisations – and difficult conditions.

Henry Ajder

Henry works at the frontier of the generative AI and synthetic media revolution. He presented the BBC documentary series The Future will be Synthesised, and advises organisations on the challenges and opportunities new technologies present.

Ayo Akinwolere

Ayo became one of four people of colour with a swimming world record, when he swam in one of the deepest stretches of water on earth. The former Blue Peter presenter has written for the Daily Telegraph, BBC Sport and the Independent, and appeared on Celebrity MasterChef, the Great British Bake Off and Celebrity Pointless. After moving into sports and current affairs, Ayo co-created the production company Milk First Productions, which aims to tell diverse stories and amplify diverse voices.

Tom Allen

Tom is a household name. An award-winning comic with a well-spoken but often scathing line in put-downs, stories and observations.  His TV credits include The Apprentice: You’re Fired, The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice, Complaints Welcome, The Island and The Royal Variety Performance. As a presenter, Tom teases home bakers and budding entrepreneurs and rummages around our towns. To The Guardian, he is simply ‘The master of the nonstop rant.’

Eniola Aluko

The former Juventus, England and Chelsea striker was a natural goalscorer and a leading talent in the women’s game. She won Super League and Serie A titles as well as FA Cups, and played over 100 internationals. She served as Aston Villa Women's sporting director. Off the pitch she’s a lawyer, having qualified in the US and worked in the City. She's a regular pundit and commentator on both the men's and women's game, becoming the first woman pundit on Match of the Day. She hit the headlines with her stand against the discrimination, outdated behaviou...

Anne Applebaum

Anne is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. A Washington Post columnist for fifteen years and a former member of the editorial board, she has also worked as the foreign and deputy editor of the Spectator, and as the political editor of the Evening Standard. Her book, The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, considers why some of Anne’s contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favour of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states.

Dr Nighat Arif

Dr Nighat is a GP specialising in women’s health and family planning. She is a medical educator and provides teaching to local trainee GPs as well as at national and international conferences. Nighat was nominated for the National Bevan Prize for Health and Wellbeing to acknowledge her commitment to advancing wellbeing in her community. She has worked to raise awareness on menopause and women’s healthcare in Black and Asian women, and presented her clinical work at the Menopause in the Workplace Parliamentary committee hearing. Nighat...

Christine Armstrong

Communications and management expert, and acclaimed author, Christine considers what modern, values-driven, inclusive organisations should look like and how they should operate. Touching on work-life balance, workplace culture, 'hybrid work',  management and mental health, she examines the new challenges to old ways of doing business. From remote working to diversity strategies, she points out the misleading assumptions and dares organisations to think differently about what they do, how and where they do it. She was named sixth out of the top fifty Future of Work influ...

Ros Atkins

Ros joined the BBC as a producer on Five Live and is now the BBC News Analysis Editor and presenter of The Media Show on Radio 4. He produces viral explainer videos on topical news stories that led to him being labelled been labelled 'Explainer-in-Chief', and founded the BBC's 50:50 Project which aimed to increase the representation of women in journalism. He is also the author of The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence.

Vanessa Baffoe

Vanessa is a Journalist and Presenter at Sky News. She has previously worked at BBC News and ITV News. She also hosts and moderates International Women’s Day for all of Sky’s platforms.

Dr Victoria Baines

Having worked in law enforcement and cybersecurity, Victoria joined the social media giant in a leading role to connect the business to government and security agencies. A leading thinker on trust and safety in the digital world, she looks at everything from the how, why and who of fake news to what AI could do for privacy, the myths and realities of cybercrime to what invading someone’s space in virtual reality might mean.

Clare Balding

Clare is the First Lady of TV sport. The ex-champion jockey fronts Royal Ascot, the Olympics, and the BBC's Wimbledon coverage. After dinner Clare shares highs and lows, and takes guests behind the latest back page headlines. She is also adept at live Q&A with sporting heroes.

Ed Balls

Noted as one of the leading economic voices in the Labour governments of the 1990s and 2000s, Ed was a key architect of policies from the independence of the Bank of England to the minimum wage. Having left frontline politics his new life has encompassed academia in the US and UK, presenting documentaries, analysing the big stories alongside George Osborne on Political Currency, and, of course, a celebrated turn on Strictly Come Dancing.

Katy Balls

Now covering events in the US, Katy’s media career began at The Daily Telegraph before becoming Diary Editor and a Political Correspondent for The Spectator, where she then became Political Editor. She also hosted the podcast Women With Balls speaking to women at the top of their respective fields about their passions, battles and what makes them tick.

Georgie Barrat

On TV Georgie is part of the Gadget Show team and a regular tech correspondent. Away from reviewing the latest apps and devices she considers the implications for business and society of developments in the digital world, the changing expectations of the next generation of employees, and how to encourage more women to work in tech.

Jose Manuel Barroso

As President of the EU’s executive and legislative branch, José Manuel dealt with the expansion of the Union, the fallout from the financial crisis, and closer integration of member states. He is also a critic of all sides in the Brexit debate and believes the EU could have done more to avoid it.

Jamie Bartlett

Jamie is the creator and host of the popular BBC podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen and is the author of The People Vs Tech, The Dark Net and Radicals. He has explored everything from online subcultures and hackers to blockchain and cryptocurrencies to the threat social media has on democracy.