Speaker profile

James is the Founder of Provocative Human, a sustainability implementation consultancy built to get things done. He works with global organisations to close the gap between sustainability ambition and operational reality, across supply chain decarbonisation, circular economy, and Scope 3 accountability**.

Formerly a Royal Navy clearance diver and practitioner at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, James has spent over a decade advising some of the world’s largest multinationals across consumer goods, defence, and aerospace. His approach is diagnostic first: find where the system is the problem, then build the pathway out.

At Data Decoded London, James hosted two sessions: a dialogue on whether the data industry is genuinely changing its behaviour on sustainability or just its language, and a provocation asking whether the cloud even exists in any meaningful sense and what it costs us to pretend it does.

James believes the knowing and doing gap is not a data problem. It is a system problem. That is what he fixes. As your host today, he brings the same instinct: less consensus, more clarity, and a genuine interest in what actually happens the day after the strategy