Ed Gillespie is a keynote speaker, writer, communications specialist, serial entrepreneur and futurist.

He is the author of ‘Only Planet – a flight-free adventure around the world’ a book about his circumnavigation of the globe without getting on a plane. Ed’s core talent is to take the complex, interconnected, interdependent nature of the many urgent challenges the world faces, from climate change to disruptive innovation, and make common sense of them for non-specialist audiences in a pandemic world.

He started his career as a marine biologist and has worked and lived all over the globe, including in Jamaica, the Orkney Islands, Australia and New Caledonia.

Professionally Ed is known for his own unique brand of authentic ‘insultancy’ – being strategically and playfully cheeky to clients, with judicious wit and wisdom to inspire them to greater heights and aspirations.

As well as the Resident Futurist at the GDS-Movement, Ed is a facilitator with the Forward Institute for responsible leadership, a Director of Greenpeace UK, a Trustee of Ecolibrium, co-founder of the pioneering Change Agency Futerra, and a founder investor and former Chair of pioneering online rail ticketing business ‘Loco2’ now rebranded as Rail Europe. He is also an investor in pioneering slow travel agency Byway and deep work start-up Flown. Ed co-hosts Itunes chart-topping podcast ‘Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts’ and ‘The Great Humbling’. He is a regular media contributor from the BBC to the Guardian (for whom he wrote a regular column during his flight-free navigation of the world – ‘The Slow Traveller’) to Conde Naste (‘How to embrace a travel mind set while staying at home’)