Keynote lineup

Judit Polgár offers a distinctive and intellectually stimulating perspective through the lens of elite strategic thinking. As the strongest female chess player in history, she translates lessons from competitive chess into leadership, decision-making, and foresight. Senior leaders gain insights into pattern recognition, managing complexity, anticipating consequences, and staying calm under pressure. Her session encourages executives to think several moves ahead, challenge conventional wisdom, and embrace continuous learning. As a keynote or fireside conversation, she leaves audiences with a refreshed mindset on strategy, one that values preparation, adaptability, and disciplined thinking in uncertain environments.

A global ambassador for chess in education, she is the founder of the Judit Polgar’s Global Chess Festival, a TED speaker, and the author of a widely acclaimed three volume autobiography combining elite chess mastery with personal storytelling. She also created the Judit Polgar Method, using chess to develop critical thinking and key life skills in children.

She began playing chess at five and became the world’s top ranked woman at just twelve, a position she held for 26 years. By fourteen, she had won five gold medals at Women’s Chess Olympiads. In 1991, at 15 years and 4 months, she became an international grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer’s age record. Competing exclusively in open events after 1990, she faced and defeated the strongest male players of her era, including eleven world champions. She competed for the men’s World Championship title in 2005 and remains the only woman to surpass a 2700 rating and enter the world’s top ten.

In 2012, she founded the Judit Polgar Chess Foundation to advance chess in education and society. Since retiring from competitive play in 2014, she has led the foundation’s global initiatives, organized major international events, written extensively, and worked as a lecturer, keynote speaker, and expert commentator at top level chess forums worldwide.

Rainer Hersch encourages managers striving to lead high-performance teams to find inspiration in the concert hall. At the heart of this is collaboration: listening, communicating, and working together effectively as a team to produce a wonderful result.

Rainer Hersch has performed in more than thirty countries and worked with orchestras ranging from the St Petersburg Philharmonic to the Tasmanian Symphony. His YouTube performances have generated over 100 million views worldwide. Born in London to an English mother and German father, he trained as a pianist under Norma Fisher and later studied conducting at Blackheath Conservatory. His development included masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Music and specialist study of Johann Strauss at the Vienna Volksoper.

Rainer began his career in concert management, working with leading classical artists, while simultaneously performing stand up comedy on the London cabaret circuit. In 1991, he left arts management to pursue comedy full time. The two worlds merged in 1999 with the creation of the Rainer Hersch Orkestra at the Edinburgh Festival.

His work with the Orkestra led to guest conducting engagements with major symphony orchestras, including the Philharmonia, CBSO, BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Johann Strauss Orchestra, with whom he toured for four years. He is also a respected broadcaster for the BBC and Classic FM.

Professor Arturo Bris is an award-winning teacher and program director, he ranks among the top 100 most-read finance academics worldwide. He is the author of several books, a frequent speaker at international conferences, and appears regularly on international media outlets.

His work has been published in The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Legal Studies, and The Journal of Business. He has also had articles published in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Handelsblatt, among others.

Bris’s areas of expertise include corporate finance, corporate governance, financial regulation, and competitiveness. As Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, he works with governments all over the world assessing, measuring, and managing the competitiveness of countries. The WCC produces trusted annual rankings on economies’ competitiveness, and, under his leadership, it has expanded its coverage by adding new rankings on talent, digital competitiveness, and smart cities.