Next Up: The W. David Duckett Speaker Series

Dr. Pippa Malmgren is an economist who makes sense of the world economy and geopolitics by writing books, by founding tech businesses, by advising policymakers around the world and through public speaking and teaching. Her speciality is understanding the nexus between geopolitics, tech innovation, strategic security and markets. She is a Strategic Advisor to C10 Labs, the MIT Media Lab based AI Venture Builder Studio. She is also on the Board of Premios Verdes which holds the annual “Green Oscars” to support the best cleantech start-ups in emerging markets. She is a member of the Advisory Board at Streamline Media, the firm that built many of the most successful video, digital and VR games in modern history. She is also a Founder member of LUNARC, a project to ensure the first human institution on the moon represents the arts and humanities. She has also served on the Judging Panel of The King’s Awards for Enterprise since 2017 and a Senior Associate Fellow of RUSI, the world’s leading defence think tank. She is also an advisor to several start-ups in various areas: space, nuclear fusion, batteries and lunar logistics. She writes a column about the world economy and geopolitics on Substack.

She served President George W. Bush in the White House as Special Assistant to the President and on The National Economic Council. She served on the President’s Working Group on Corporate Governance and The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. After 9/11 she was also assessed Terrorism Risks to the Economy and Pentagon procurement from tech startups. Before joining the White House, she ran the Bankers Trust Asset Management business in Asia and then served as the Global Chief Currency Strategist. She was then named the Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS. More recently she advised the British Cabinet on trade issues as a Board Member for The Department for International Trade from 2017-2019.  In 2014, she co-founded a robotics firm that made industrial drones which won the 2020 Cog X Award for Autonomy, the 2020 National Technology Award and Power Product of the Year 2020.  She was a Senior Advisor to The Monaco Foundry, a European start-up incubator for impact-led founders from 2020-2024.  She previously served on the Advisory Boards of the Legatum Center at MIT, The Ditchley Foundation, and Indiana University. She was a Fellow of the The Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation for 2022-2024.

Her most recent bestseller, The Infinite Leader, won the International Press Award for the Best Book on Leadership for 2021. Her book, The Leadership Lab, was named Business Book of the Year and Best Book on Leadership in 2019 and won the International Press Award 2020. She is also the author of: Geopolitics for Investors (2015) and Signals: How Everyday Signs Help Us Navigate the World’s Turbulent Economy (2016/7). She has been named one of the Fifty Top Inspiring Women in the UK and one of the Top 100 in Tech by @WATC_WeAreTech. In 2024 she was awarded the Mission College Women in Leadership Prize.

She has a BA from Mount Vernon College and an M.Sc. and PhD from LSE. She completed the Harvard Program on National Security. She gave the graduation address at the London School of Economics in 2013 and 2016. She is an occasional lecturer in the Duke Fuqua Global Executive MBA Program, Sandhurst and The Royal College of Defence Studies. Commercial firms like Google, Rolls Royce, American Express, PWC, major banks like Citigroup and Barclays and asset managers like State Street, various governments and military leaders regularly retain her to speak on leadership, the future of the world economy, tech innovation and geopolitics.

Brian Ballard is the SVP of Product Management and Solution Delivery for TeamViewer, bringing the power of augmented reality to frontline workers in retail, logistics, manufacturing, and services industries. For over a decade, Ballard has been working on the next industrial revolution, pioneering the use of augmented reality in enterprise settings. Ballard co-founded and served as CEO of Upskill from 2011 until 2021 when Upskill was acquired by TeamViewer – having been recognized as a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer, Inc. Best Places to Work, and multiple recognitions for Upskill’s enterprise AR platform. In 2024, he was inducted into The Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame.

Prior to founding Upskill, Ballard served as Vice President of Product Development at BTS, CTO of ARES-SG, and spent over a decade with the Department of Defense, where his work ranged from FPGA-based supercomputing to software intelligence fusion for counter-terrorism.

Ballard has contributed to books, multiple publications, and patents related to wearable computing. He has served a three-year appointment on the National Academy of Sciences’ Technology, Insight—Gauge, Evaluate, Review (TIGER) Committee. Ballard holds a master’s and bachelor’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the University of Maryland.

Maurice has worked with Autodesk, Amazon, NIKE, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, lululemon, Airbus, Telefonica, the Navy SEALS, the Government of Japan, and many others, to help them use emerging technology to solve some of the world’s toughest problems. 

As a futurist, deep tech authority, innovation executive, and international keynote speaker he has helped companies achieve truly disruptive innovation. He is a rare blend of hands–on practitioner and big thinker.

Maurice's work focuses on Artificial Intelligence, Immersive Reality (AR/VR), Advanced Manufacturing, and other emerging technologies, and how organizations can best leverage them today and in the future. He has more than a dozen patents in this space, and his vision for how AI can help us build a better world can be seen in his TED talk, viewed more than 13 million times.

Lisa Seacat DeLuca leads the engineering, design, and product management organization at Unstoppable Domains innovating the future of the decentralized web. She is the 2nd Most Prolific Female Inventor in the world and as a technology executive for the past decade, Lisa brings emerging technology to life. Previously, Lisa spent 16 years at IBM as a Distinguished Engineer and Director of Product Management. Lisa holds a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University with minors in Business Administration and Multimedia Productions.

Lisa is an Inductee into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame, Entrepreneur Magazine listed Lisa as one of their "49 Female Entrepreneurs Who Are Reshaping the Business World", she's one of the 115 Most Inspirational Women in Web3 and the Metaverse, and she's been featured in #LinkedInTopVoices in Technology list three years (2019 #2, 2018 #1, 2017 #2), and was an MIT 35 under 35. She is a TED speaker, a self-published author of two children’s books titled "A Robot Story" and “The Internet of Mysterious Things”, and the most prolific female inventor in IBM history. Her innovation portfolio includes over 1,000 patents filed in the United States and abroad, of which, over 650 have been granted, to date. The topic of her innovations include cloud, mobile, IoT, social, security, AI, commerce, blockchain, web3. Lisa is an AAAS-Lemelson Inventor Ambassador where she increases visibility to the importance of innovation. Lisa has spoken at numerous tech conferences and written articles to share her technology and innovation passion with others.