Forum Radio

Send us Fan Mail Lila Charif (Milan) is a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist, cookbook author, former fashion entrepreneur and wellness advocate. Born in Iran and raised in France, Lila spent two decades in New York, a decade in London and several years in Paris before settling in Milan in 2025.  Passionate about her work, Lila talks to Forum Radio host Jessica Fellowes about her rigorous training...

Send us Fan Mail Steven Hirth (New York) is a longstanding friend and member of Forum 500. Both the consummate East Coast gentleman and a true international, Steven travels widely throughout the year for both work and pleasure. He is the Founder and Principal of S.H.Hirth and Associates, an international merchant banking boutique modelled after pre-World War II European merchant banks. His family...

Send us Fan Mail Nathalie Latham (Tamil Nadu) was a documentary film maker and photographer until cancer halted her life. Now, she has re-emerged as an artist, with a beautiful book about her treatment, recovery and emergence into her new phase of life. 'I AM ALIVE" is a testament to resilience and creativity, and how the two intertwine. With eloquence and humour, Nathalie talks to Jessi...

Send us Fan Mail Elizabeth Linder (Florida/London) has spoken at several Forum events, and we are honoured to have her as our guest this week. She has an extraordinarily insightful mind that manages to encompass the ever-expanding worlds of geopolitics, social media and leadership. She is so clever, in fact, that she although she has worked for Google, YouTube, Facebook and Chatham House, she has...

Send us Fan Mail Roozbeh Aliabadi (Lisbon) is an AI education entrepreneur, geopolitical commentator and former military service member with expertise in the Middle East, Central Asia and geo-economics. His insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, USA Today and now Forum Radio! Roozbeh talks to Jessica Fellowes about his mission to make AI education accessible worldwide, as...

Send us Fan Mail Doris loves gemstones. After listening to this episode, you'll understand why – and perhaps have a different appreciation for them yourself. Sitting in her beautiful atelier in Zurich, Forum member Doris Hangartner talks to Jessica Fellowes about her passion for gemology, how she matches personalities to stones, and the changing landscape of gem portfolios with recent discove...

Send us Fan Mail The luckiest amongst us will enjoy living to a grand old age, but are any of us looking forward to those years? Zurich member Jan Garde is on a mission to ensure that we are... As founder of The Embassies of Good Living, Jan is building mixed-use developments combining retail, leisure and serviced living in the hearts of the world's most amazing cities. The focus on 'con...

Send us Fan Mail Would you invest in space? Raphael Roettgen (Zurich) talks to Jessica Fellowes about the ever-expanding universe for investment and why you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get into it.  Raphael is the founding partner of E2MC, a space-focused early-stage venture capital firm with over 25 space investments to date. As a pioneering and complex VC, he lectures on space en...

Send us Fan Mail Tracy Hall is a former speaker for Forum in Singapore, talking here to Jessica Fellowes about her devastating experience as ‘the last victim’ of serial conman Hamish McLaren, currently in jail for fraud estimated at the value of $60-80m worldwide. Tracy talks to Jessica Fellowes here about the financial and emotional fall out of realising that the love of her life, the man she kne...

Send us Fan Mail Bala Chandra (Dubai) talks to Jessica Fellowes this week about ‘inorganic growth,’ how having a performance psychologist in his staff transformed his company and what Harvard Business school did teach him.  Bala grew up in India and when he first arrived in London as a programmer, he came down to breakfast and couldn’t understand why he was the only person in the room. He had no i...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s episode of Forum Radio is with Parag Khanna. Technically a Singapore member, Parag is perhaps more accurately a citizen of the world, having travelled to more than 150 countries and lived in several of them. A leading global strategy advisor, founder and CEO of Climate Alpha, author of several books – most recently, 'Move' – and a frequent speaker at Forum ev...

Send us Fan Mail Series Two of Forum Radio begins with Erkin Bek. As most of us would like to find a way to prolong the tranquility of our summer rest into our autumn work schedule, Erkin is the one to teach us how to do it. Founder of the All Here Organisation and the World Meditation League, Erkin is a scientifically accomplished meditation practitioner but comes to it from a background as an en...

Send us Fan Mail Juliet Stannard is our guest this week on Forum Radio. A longstanding member, Juliet moved to Singapore from Britain in 1993, and has built a successful career in property in the region.  Juliet also talks movingly about the tragedy her family suffered in the Asian tsunami of 2004, and how they came through it with the support of friends. Since then, there have been further challe...

Send us Fan Mail This week is a special edition of Forum Radio – an interview with Forum’s founder, Simon Jacot de Boinod. Interviewed by his wife and co-founder, Jessica, Simon talks about how he came to create Forum and the exciting plans that are now in place for Forum 500, our future iteration of the club, launching in Singapore later this year.   ‘I do see an opportunity for Forum 500 to be a...

Send us Fan Mail Ziad Salloum (Abu Dhabi) talks to Jessica Fellowes about his legal practice, advising governments and corporations in the UAE and elsewhere, his knighthoods from Italy and the Vatican, and how his father inspired him. Ziad grew up in the UAE – 'I used to be asked if I went to school on a camel' – and discusses the common misconceptions of the region that still exist toda...

Send us Fan Mail Betsy Pearce (New York) talks to Jessica Fellowes about her work as a lawyer and strategic advisor for creative businesses. In the past, Betsy has overseen deals with fashion giants such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci. She talks about how investors need guidance into how creatives work, and creatives need to understand the demands made by investment – sometimes the twain do not me...

Send us Fan Mail This week's interview is with long-standing New York member John McCormick. Jessica talks to John about his work at InnovaHealth partners, where investment in the healthcare space has brought him to some of the most cutting edge developments in recent years. John also talks about the importance of investing in women's healthcare – notoriously neglected and underfunded –...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode, Jessica talks to Anita Beacroft (Singapore). Born and raised in Sydney, before moving to Tokyo and Hong Kong, Anita began her professional career in finance and property. Following health challenges, she trained in energy healing modalities from Reiki to meditation, and now runs The Ascended Heart, a transformational coaching company. She talks about t...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Beneville (New York) is a familiar face to many of our members, as the co-founder of Beneville Studios, which hosts Forum breakfasts so brilliantly. An artist, storyteller and futurist, Michael talks to Jessica about his childhood inspirations, LA vs NY, how to ‘step into the shoes of your worth’ and growing a business that has no template. Beneville Studios today has crea...

Send us Fan Mail This week's conversation is with New York member James Greenberg, founder of Greenberg Art Advisory, member of the Whitney Museum Library Fellows and Vice Chairman for The Center for Arts Education. He is also an artist himself, working out of a studio in Greenpoint Brooklyn.  Jim talks to Jessica about his training in art history, finance and law, and how this gave him a dif...

Send us Fan Mail Daniel Widdicombe (London), CFO of Devolver Digital, and former head of investment banking for CBB (the world's second-largest bank), talks to Jessica about a career that has bridged east and west, the creative and the financial, and his plans to travel as widely as possible.  Daniel told us what he has enjoyed about his Forum membership, too:  'It has broadened my persp...

Send us Fan Mail Jennifer Schipf (London) is Global Chief Underwriting Officer Fine Art & Specie at AXA XL, which means she sets worldwide strategy for client solutions in the specialised market of fine art underwriting. In her conversation with Jessica, Jennifer talks about inspirational artists, the challenges of intersecting business and art, as well as her own work in the studio. ‘I sit at...

Send us Fan Mail Pano Anthos is based in New York, where he is founder and managing partner of XRC Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. Pano talks to Jessica about how technology has disrupted and changed human behaviour in the retail space, now we live in an 'online first, offline second' world. The future, says Pano, is in increasingly beautiful wearable technology. And, of c...

Send us Fan Mail Our latest podcast is an interview with Shwan Ibrahim Taha, our member based in Istanbul. Shwan grew up in Iraq, worked in America (for Franklin Templeton, later co-managing a hedge fund sponsored by George Soros) and has returned to the  region with Rabee Securities, a brokerage and investment firm. You can hear his fascinating insights into the risk and reward that is investing...

Send us Fan Mail Jessica talks to Dan Sandhu (London), CEO of Education Development Trust (EDT), a vast not-for-profit organisation working to improve education outcomes around the world. Dan talks about how COVID changed education globally, how remote learning is enabling education to scale faster in countries without structural policy framework, his plans to expand EDT's footprint in sub-Sa...