Sam Conniff
Best Selling & Award Winning Author, Be More Pirate 2009: Named as one of the UK’s 50 new Radicals in The Observer 2014: Named on the Happy List, the people making the UK happier, and the Maserati 100 2018: Awarded CSR Leader of the Year at Global CSR Awards 2019: Becomes an international best selling author with Be More Pirate
About this speaker
Sam has always been an advocate of business as unusual, operating at the intersection of brands, policy and social innovation to create positive change in the world.
He left education when the manager of his Saturday Job had a heart attack and Sam got a rapid promotion. Leaving retail for a two-year stint as a chef showed Sam his love of making things. The raves he ran as a teenager, held under held a banner of Saving The World, showed him his need for a purpose greater than himself.
The post-rave-running startup that began in his bedroom became the Bafta and Cannes winning activist content studio, Don’t Panic.
The first business plan he wrote, that became Livity won Business of The Year, Agency of The Year, and UK Social Enterprise of The Year, all in the same year. It was awarded by successive Prime Ministers and even The Queen for social innovation and supporting young people.
His NGO in Youth Development grew from Live Magazine in London to becoming Digify Africa, operating from Jo’bug to Lagos to Nairobi providing hundreds of thousands of young people across the UK and Africa with Digital Skills.
The TV show he produced was the world's first multi platform interactive Tv Series, Dubplate Drama, engaged millions of young people into important social debates.
The aspect of the 2012 London Games he ran was the largest youth program of its kind in a generation giving young people access to underused space all across the country.
The book he wrote after stepping back from being CEO became an international best seller and launched a global movement of Pirates, rewriting the rules of life, society and work.
Sam turned down an MBE in 2020 in an open letter to the Queen suggesting an update to the honours system to move it away from it's 'colonial past'.
Since 2021 Sam has been creating Uncertainty Experts a unique hybrid of online learning, interactive documentary and neuroscience creating measurable increases to audiences Uncertainty Tolerance.
And, as a consultant, Sam currently advises Mercedes, Red Bull, Tate & Lyle and Rolex on sustainability, accountability and what he calls Professional Rule Breaking.
