BoF VOICES 2023 will be livestreamed for BoF Professional All-Access members. Register now to join us for the whole event or attend the sessions of your choice.
One thing we aimed to do when we first created BoF VOICES was to disrupt the industry echo chamber and bring in valuable external perspectives to help form a more rounded perspective on how cultural, technological and economic forces are shaping fashion and the wider world.
This year is no exception. We are delighted to announce the speakers from across the worlds of film, music, philanthropy, activism, contemporary art, architecture and design who will be joining us at BoF VOICES 2023, from November 28 to November 30.
- Thomas Heatherwick CBE is the founder and design director of the award-winning Heatherwick Studio
- Hélène Huby is a French space scientist and is chief executive of The Exploration Company
- Ali Sethi is a Pakistani-American musician whose song Pasoori has been streamed more than 1 billion times
- Waad Al-Kateab is a Syrian journalist and filmmaker who was awarded a BAFTA for her documentary “For Sama”
- Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism
- Joe Gebbia is a designer and the co-founder of the disruptive online marketplace Airbnb
- Sumayya Vally is principal of Counterspace, the architecture and research firm based between Johannesburg and London
- Rachel Higham is chief information officer of WPP, the global creative transformation company headquartered in London
- Andrés Reisinger is an Argentinian digital artist based in Barcelona, Spain
- Keith Yamashita is a creative force who has guided countless teams and organisations through positive transformations
They join an already outstanding lineup of industry speakers including Diane von Furstenberg, creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson, Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy, global CEO of Chanel, Leena Nair, CEO of Gap Inc, Richard Dickson and president of global creative at Fast Retailing, John C. Jay. For a full list of this year’s speakers, please click here.
All five insight-packed content sessions of BoF VOICES 2023 will be livestreamed for BoF Professional All-Access members. Register now to join us for the sessions of your choice.
If you’re not already a BoF Professional All-Access member, join now with our £1/$1 trial offer for your first 30-days or upgrade for full access.
BoF VOICES 2023 is made possible in part by our partners Snapchat, McKinsey & Company, Porsche, Getty Images and Soho House.
Thomas Heatherwick is a UK-based designer. He founded his studio, Heatherwick Studio, in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design and interiors into a single creative workspace. Working across multiple scales, locations and typologies, Heatherwick Studio has developed into a team of 200 makers and inventors with no signature style. With bases in London and Shanghai, the studio team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, including Azabudai Hills, a six-hectare mixed-use development in the centre of Tokyo, the new headquarters for Google in Silicon Valley and London (in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group) and Airo, an electric car. The studio has also recently completed Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King’s Cross, London. Heatherwick’s forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin in October 2023.
Hélène Huby is the co-founder and chief executive of The Exploration Company which builds reusable space capsules that carry goods and humans to space stations around the Earth and to the Moon. She has served as an executive at Airbus Defence & Space and ArianeGroup both in operational and strategic roles: from starting as head of innovation to leading major European space programs. She is the founder and chair of Urania Ventures, a deep tech investment company. She is the founder and chairman of The Karman Project, a non-profit foundation which fosters trust, independent dialogue and cooperation between the ones who shape the future of space. She graduated from ENS-Ulm, Sciences-Po Paris and ENA.
Ali Sethi is a Pakistani-American writer and musician whose work explores South Asian identity. As a queer artist, Sethi is known for marshalling tradition in ways that upend binaries. Since 2015, Sethi has made music that blurs the lines between traditional and modern, and East and West. He has been a fixture on Pakistan’s Coke Studio television programme, collaborating with the likes of Pakistani singer and composer Abida Parveen, and has contributed to movie soundtracks and genre-busting albums, including Riz Ahmed’s “Swet Shop Boys,” Nicolas Jaar’s “Intiha” and Carnegie Hall’s multimedia orchestral work “Where We Lost Our Shadows.” In 2022, his song “Pasoori” earned over a billion streams and was Google’s most “hummed-to-search” song in the world. That same year, Sethi was named to the Time100 Next list. He is a graduate of Harvard University.
Waad Al-Kateab is a Syrian activist and filmmaker, whose debut feature film, For Sama, won a BAFTA for Best Documentary and received a nomination at the Academy Awards in 2020. Waad’s new film, “We Dare To Dream,” follows the steadfast journey of athletes in the Olympic Refugee Team. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023 and is set to premiere this November. “We Dare To Dream,” commissioned by IOC for XTR, received the Grand Prize Documentary Award at the Heartland International Film Festival. Waad lives in London with her family, and is also the co-founder of the Action For Sama advocacy campaign aimed at ending the targeting of hospitals in the war in Syria.
Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. Chopra is also the Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. Chopra is a pioneer of integrative medicine and author of over 90 books published in more than 43 languages. Chopra has been New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories and is one of TIME magazine’s top 100 most influential people.
Joe Gebbia is an entrepreneur and designer. He co-founded Airbnb in 2007, the hospitality company that helped four million hosts welcome more than one billion across the globe. Gebbia’s contributions helped shape Airbnb’s brand to become a part of everyday life and common vernacular. Gebbia has also founded Airbnb.org, a community-powered non-profit, whose mission is to offer housing in times of crisis. Their emergency response efforts have housed over 300,000 people during natural disasters, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global refugee crisis. Gebbia has recently departed his full-time operating role and has since transitioned to a strategic advisory position while serving on the board of directors of both Airbnb and Airbnb.org. His latest venture, Samara, specialises in factory-made homes designed to create rental income, house a family, or support work-from-home life. Gebbia is also a member of the San Antonio Spurs investor group and a Giving Pledge signatory where he backs the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity, The Ocean Clean Up, Malala Fund, and Kevin Durant Charity Foundation. Gebbia graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he earned dual degrees in Graphic Design and Industrial Design. He serves on the RISD Board of Trustees, Olympic Refuge Foundation, and leadership council for the Malala Fund.
Sumayya Vally is founder and principal of Counterspace, an architecture and research and practice focused. Vally been recognised as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and is Time100 Next list honoree. She sits on several boards, including the World Monuments Fund and is interested in supporting new networks of knowledge in the arts. Vally designed the 20th Serpentine Pavilion in London, making her the youngest architect to receive the commission. She was the artistic director of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Vally has been praised for putting forth a decolonial definition of Islamic art, one that is resonant with the lived and embodied practices and experiences of the Islamic world. Practising adjacent to the academy, Vally has received numerous awards and institutional honours for her contributions to the field, including an Honorary Professorship from University College London and a gold medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
Rachel Higham, is the chief information officer at advertising company WPP. Higham joined WPP in December 2020 to lead the creation of a new global IT organisation and a multi-year digital transformation programme. Over the past 25 years, Higham has served in technology leadership and transformation roles at major corporations and financial institutions including M&S Money, HSBC, ACE Group, and has worked across a number of geographies. Higham is passionate about building diverse teams and inclusive cultures and giving back through volunteering. She has been named as one of the top 30 global executives driving gender equality by Heroes, an organisation spotlighting women in the workplace. She has also been named one of the top ten inspirational leaders at the 2020 British LGBT awards. Higham serves as board chair of Fact, a digital and immersive arts charity in the United Kingdom, and is currently a trustee of cancer support charity Macmillan.
Andrés Reisinger is an Argentinian digital artist currently based in Spain. His works include “The Shipping” and “Arcadia.” Reisinger’s works have drawn interest from a number of collectors, brands, art galleries and museums alike. He has exhibited at leading institutions including the Moco Museum in Barcelona, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Design Museum Gent in Ghent, Belgium, Nilufar Gallery in Milan, Collectible Fair in Brussels, Faena Art in Miami and Christie’s in New York.
Keith Yamashita is an artistic director and designer and is one of the founders of SYPartners, a design, communications and consulting firm. He is also the founder of the Kyu collective, a group of companies dedicated to using creativity to solve the world’s challenges. He has worked with Oprah Winfrey to launch The Life You Want tour—an eight-city stadium tour to help her followers build better lives. Yamashita collaborated with Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw to launch their philanthropic foundation — the Hearthland Foundation. He has worked with Laurene Powell Jobs on reimagining public education in America and has hosted gatherings to bring mindfulness to the realm of business with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is a frequent writer, commentator, and is the creator and host of This Human Moment, a series focused on art and renewal. Yamashita holds a Master’s degree in Organisational Behaviour and a Bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University.
