RADICAL REALIST

Last year, our Covent Garden home welcomed over 120,000 people, convened five flagship conferences, hosted some 200 talks and panels, and facilitated millions in capital and partnerships through Conduit Connect. We closed out the year with a new strategic partnership with leading guest experience specialists, Levy, which will redefine what social impact looks like across the events industry, and further strengthen our commitments to sustainable hospitality. This collaboration will also bring the Conduit’s expertise and thought leadership to Levy client venues, events and partner sites, which include Allianz Stadium, KIA Oval, National Theatre, The All England Lawn Tennis Club, and The O2. 

This is now a very intentional moment for us. One clear conviction that has guided our work at The Conduit from the very beginning is that our impact is inseparable from our business model. We are here not only to convene conversations, but to create the conditions in which ideas meet, disciplines collide, and collective action becomes possible. That’s why last year, we launched The Conduit’s Solutions Agenda – a shared framework grounded in what our community cares about most and what we believe is foundational to human progress. 

Sitting at the intersection of business, policy, philanthropy, civil society and culture gives The Conduit a rare vantage point. Through hundreds of convenings and thousands of interactions, we spot patterns as they emerge – and also where progress is being held back; not due to a lack of ambition, but a lack of coordination. 

As our community expanded, we increasingly felt there’s an opportunity – as well as a responsibility – to connect the dots, align actors and carry the momentum forward. This is the thinking that underpins the Solutions Agenda: a bold framework that clarifies our priorities and strengthens our purpose, empowering us to be more intentional about how we catalyse collective intelligence into collective action. It also enables us to pilot new models for collective action, including coalition-building and solution-scouting, and to establish The Conduit Foundation — enabling us to channel philanthropic capital more effectively toward work emerging from our ecosystem. 

One of the clearest expressions of this evolution has been FloodAction. Flooding is one of the UK’s fastest-growing climate risks with direct flood damage estimated at around £2.4 billion a year, with an even greater long-term drag on the wider economy. As we convened conversations across climate, insurance, land use and nature-based solutions, a pattern was impossible to ignore. The ingredients for transformative change were present, yet they were operating in parallel rather than in concert. So we took the lead and founded a landmark initiative with the mandate, credibility and capacity to catalyse that ecosystem into alignment.  

Chaired by Aviva, the FloodAction Coalition brings together the landowners, infrastructure operators, insurers, financiers, environmental NGOs, water utilities, legal and advisory partners, and government agencies — uniting the full value chain needed to deliver water resilience at scale. The coalition is developing the UK’s first investment market for natural flood and drought resilience — unlocking private and public capital to build large-scale, investable portfolios of nature-based projects, building a £1billion+ resilience market by 2028. It will scale green infrastructure that protects homes and communities from floods and drought, safeguards critical assets, and delivers lasting co-benefits for nature, climate and local communities. 

FloodAction was born not from a single idea, but from a collective insight: that natural flood management could become a viable, investable market if the ecosystem could align. Our role has been to convene, coordinate and steward that collaboration — translating shared ambition into structured action. It is a model we believe can be replicated across other complex challenges where progress is stalled not by a lack of ideas, but by a lack of alignment. 

Another core theme coming out of our discussions in 2025 is the scale and speed of the transformation we are living through. Advances in AI and other technologies are not confined to one domain; they are reshaping how problems are understood and solved across nearly every issue we engage with. The question is no longer whether technology will shape outcomes, but how — and who benefits. Our work increasingly reflects this reality, focusing on how technology intersects with human systems, and how to harness it for the public good. 

Across all this work, one thing is increasingly clear: impact does not happen by accident. In 2026, we continue to ask not only what ideas are emerging, but what it takes for them to land in the world. To scale this work, we are launching the Solutions Lab as the action engine that allows The Conduit to do more, and do it at scale. Drawing on our solution-scouting pilots, the Lab will provide a replicable model for identifying emerging ideas, pressure-testing them with cross-sector partners, and supporting their incubation, testing and growth. It is designed to surface the ecosystem levers that can unlock real change, mobilise investment, and scale what works so others can build on it. 

In 2026, we will scale our theory of change across areas where our community sees both urgency and opportunity. This includes convening global leaders across climate, health, business, and policy to tackle the growing impact of climate change on our health; exploring the intersection and pressures around democracy and AI; as well as launching an exclusive platform for senior impact leaders to help them bring about systems-level change. We will share more on each initiative in the months ahead. 

As we begin this next chapter, I feel proud of what this community has already achieved and am optimistic about what lies ahead. The Conduit was founded on the belief that connection is the catalyst for change. In the year ahead, we will continue evolving from a home for bold ideas into a platform that helps those ideas take root in the world. 

Thank you for being part of this journey — for your imagination, your courage and your commitment to building something better, together. 

With gratitude and resolve,
Paul van Zyl
Co-Founder, The Conduit