Matt Swift is the Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Concordia. The Concordia Annual Summit convenes the world’s most prominent business, government and nonprofit leaders to foster dialogue and enable effective partnerships for positive social impact. Concordia is built upon Matthew’s passion for entrepreneurship, co-operation and global affairs and is recognised as a global leader in cultivating global partnerships.

The Concordia Annual Summit is the largest non-partisan gathering alongside the UN General Assembly. Matthew has successfully brought together some of the most respected leaders in government and business to join forces on Concordia’s Leadership Council. In its role at the forefront of the world’s latest developments, Concordia has hosted numerous international and regional summits in Miami, Bogotá, Athens, Madrid and London.

Prior to founding Concordia, Matthew was an intern at NewsCorp and its subsidiaries Fox News Channel, British Sky Broadcasting and the New York Post. During this time, Matthew co-developed an entrepreneurship education program, Entrepreneur 360, aimed at inner-city high school students in New York. Before this, Matthew was a development intern at the Business Roundtable and worked for Sen. John Warner of Virginia.

Matthew holds many board and advisory roles, with a focus on entrepreneurship, mentorship and counter extremism. He is a Senior Advisor at software company Rubicon and SAS, an analytics firm, and serves on the board of the Seleni Institute, a health services organisation. He is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Advisory Council Member of the Millennium Leadership Program at the Atlantic Council. In addition, he is an Air Mobility Command Civic Leader with the United States Air Force, participating in community engagement programs and educational initiatives.

Matthew holds a BA from Georgetown University.

Ed Vaizey (Lord Vaizey of Didcot) is a member of the House of Lords, appointed in 2020, and sits on the Communications and Media Committee. He was the Member of Parliament for Wantage between 2005 and 2019. He served as the UK Government Culture and Digital Minister from 2010 to 2016, and is the longest-serving Minister in that role. He was appointed a privy councillor in 2016.

In his role as Digital Minister, Ed was responsible for the rollout of the successful rural broadband programme to more than 4 million homes, the introduction of 4G, and tax credits for film, television, animation and video games, which have helped make the creative industries the fastest growing part of the UK economy.

In the private sector, Ed is an executive-in-residence at LionTree, the leading global M&A advisory firm specialising in TMT with offices in New York, San Francisco, London and Paris.

At various times Ed has been named by the London Evening Standard as one of London’s 1000 most influential people; GQ as one of the UK’s 100 most influential people; the London Times as one of the 100 most influential people in film; and as one of the 100 most influential people in the video games industry.

Stephen Ball is the Chairman of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust. He has served as Global Lead Partner, CEO and Board Member of global financial institutions, multinational companies and leading professional services firms. He practiced law in the UK and USA with Slaughter and May and Linklaters, before moving into investment banking in Asia-Pacific, the GCC and Europe.

Stephen has received the Freedom of the City of London. Euromoney ranked him in their guide to the world’s leading banking lawyers, and The Lawyer ranked him as one of its Hot 100 Lawyers in the UK, describing his strategy as “making legal history” as Global Managing Partner of an international law firm and Special Advisor to the Chairman – Asia Peace and Reconciliation Council.

Stephen represents his firm, Willkie at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and he advises on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

He has 25 years’ global experience in leadership and advising on strategy, financial services, fintech, cyber, AI and risk for leading global banks, companies, PE firms, hedge funds and sovereign governments.

Stephen’s clients include Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, CQS, Rothschild, Wikipedia, UBS, HSBC, the London Stock Exchange, MCM, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, SoftBank and the People’s Bank of China, as well as sovereign governments around the world.

He is the General Editor of the book Hedge Funds published by the European Lawyer, which received the Queen’s Award to Industry. He writes on M&A, ASEAN, high frequency trading, dark pools, HLTs and derivatives.

Stephen has served on the Board of Trustees of think tank Asia House, and is Chair of the Audit, Risk and Finance Committee. He has served on the Board of Governors of the English National Ballet and Advisory Boards of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Albert Hall.

Traci is a co-founding Partner of Era VC, a global investment fund supporting founders in shaping the next generation of consumer brands. She is also Technology & Brand Director at Merian Ventures, a VC fund dedicated to advancing female-led innovation in cyber, blockchain, artificial intelligence and consumer-facing technologies.

As a respected digital strategist and independent advisor, Traci works alongside some of the world’s most influential people and properties in sport, entertainment and beauty, including David and Victoria Beckham, Neymar Jr, Lewis Hamilton, Real Madrid and Dr Barbara Sturm.

Advising David Beckham for over a decade, Traci defined the strategy and execution that underpinned his worldwide digital and social media presence. Her influence extended to global launches, including the groundbreaking debut of Inter Miami CF, Beckham’s MLS soccer franchise, and strategic partnerships with Google, Adidas, H&M, Diageo, L’Oréal, and UNICEF.

Traci is committed to understanding the profound impact of social media on young women, and received certification in artificial intelligence from Oxford University in 2019. She serves as a board member for the philanthropic organisation TPW, a community uniting 400 global leaders and UHNW individuals committed to addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues.

The Honorable Kirstjen Nielsen

Kirstjen Nielsen has worked across the globe as a speaker, author and thought leader in addressing critical global security issues, including emerging threats, resilience, and cybersecurity for over two decades.

Ms. Nielsen’s breadth of experience stands uniquely at the crossroads of policy, strategy, and operations, enabling her to steward integrated initiatives in complex enterprise environments, preparing organizations to navigate ever-emerging cybersecurity threats, manage risk, and ensure resiliency. She is currently the founder of her second global advisory services firm, Lighthouse Strategies, and advises investors and technology companies on risk management, artificial intelligence, government mission requirements, new technology use cases across the public and private security spectrum, and the mitigation of potential threats or vulnerabilities posed by new technologies.

Ms. Nielsen most recently served as the sixth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, where she oversaw 240,000 law enforcement, civilian and military employees and a $70 billion annual budget. During her tenure, Secretary Nielsen drove major organizational change at DHS to promote a posture of relentless resilience to protect the nation against evolving threats and better equip frontline defenders, including increasing consequences for malicious cyber actors, launching sophisticated efforts to block terrorists from infiltrating the US, successfully working with Congress to create the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and crafting new legislative authorities to protect civilians against weaponized drones and chemical/biological weapons. Previously, Ms. Nielsen held various positions in government, including White House Principal Deputy Chief of Staff, DHS Chief of Staff, Senior Director on the Homeland Security Council and other senior positions in the executive and legislative branches of government.

Internationally recognized as a national security expert, Ms. Nielsen is active on a variety of advisory and policy boards, promoting government, non-profit, and private sector security collaboration. She is a member of the Board Advisors for the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida and co-leads working groups on cyber and critical infrastructure security for the Homeland Security Experts Group. Ms. Nielsen also sits on the Advisory Boards of emerging tech companies focused on cybersecurity, digital identity, drug and biothreat detection, decentralized finance, and emergency communications. She holds a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Mark Wood CBE is one of the UK’s leading financial figures.

He has held several senior positions in global institutions, including Head of Cash Management at Barclays Bank, Chief Executive of Prudential UK and Europe, and CEO of AXA UK.

In 2006, with £500m of private equity backing, Mark founded Paternoster, which quickly became the market leader in bulk annuities.

A regular media commentator on pensions and insurance, Mark is a Non-Executive Director of the Royal Automobile Club and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the NSPCC.

He received an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from Anglia Ruskin University in 2010.

In 2017, Mark was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the British public sector.