Sandro Boeri

Specialist Speaker Sando Boeri is a Culture and Leadership Advisor, Governance Expert and Speaker on Organisational Culture, Behavioural Risk and Business Performance

• Culture and leadership advisor to boards, executives and senior leadership teams
• Former President of the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors
• Founder of Risk Audit, advising organisations on governance, culture, internal audit and financial services regulation
• More than 40 years of experience in complex, regulated and high-pressure organisations
• Co-creator of the IIA’s Topical Requirement on Organisational Behaviour
• Speaker on culture, behavioural risk, leadership, governance, decision-making and AI

Speaking

Sandro Boeri has spent more than 40 years watching what happens when the culture an organisation believes it has meets the culture it actually has.

The difference usually becomes visible when something gets difficult.

A decision has to be made quickly. Someone needs to challenge a senior colleague. A target creates the wrong incentive. A control looks perfectly adequate on paper but fails when confronted with real human behaviour.

This is where Sandro believes organisational culture really lives.

A former President of the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors and founder of Risk Audit, Sandro works with boards, executives and leadership teams to make what he calls “the fuzzy less fuzzy.” His argument is that culture should not be confined to values statements, employee surveys or abstract conversations. It can be observed, understood and influenced, and it has direct consequences for business performance.

His talks explore leadership behaviour, organisational culture, risk, trust and decision-making. He examines why intelligent people make poor decisions, why employees sometimes remain silent when they know something is wrong, how incentives alter behaviour and why apparently robust governance can fail in practice.

For leadership audiences, Sandro connects culture directly to strategy and execution. Does information travel upwards? Can people challenge decisions? Do incentives encourage the behaviour leaders actually want? And will the organisation’s controls still work when people are under pressure?

Increasingly, Sandro also explores artificial intelligence and what it means for governance, risk and organisational culture. As AI changes how information is produced and decisions are supported, he asks what happens to judgement, accountability and oversight when technology moves faster than the structures designed to govern it.

Speaker Topics

• Organisational Culture and Business Performance
• Leadership Behaviour and Decision-Making
• Behavioural Risk
• Culture as a Strategic Asset
• Trust, Accountability and Employee Voice
• Corporate Governance
• Risk Management and Internal Audit
• AI, Governance and the Future of Risk
• Leading Cultural Transformation
• Aligning Culture with Strategy

Why Book Sandro Boeri

Sandro makes the fuzzy less fuzzy. Instead of asking whether an organisation has a ‘good culture’, he helps leaders examine what actually happens when someone challenges the boss, a target encourages the wrong behaviour or a difficult decision exposes the gap between the stated values and everyday reality.

Backed by more than 40 years in business, senior leadership and governance, Sandro gives audiences a practical way to connect culture with performance, risk and decision-making. His approach is especially relevant to boards and leadership teams operating in complex or regulated environments.

Biography

Ask Sandro Boeri where an organisation’s culture is written down and he is unlikely to point you towards its values statement.

He would rather watch what happens when someone disagrees with the boss.

That distinction has occupied much of Sandro’s career. Across more than four decades in business, he has worked as an executive, entrepreneur, board chair, non-executive director and governance specialist. His experience has consistently taught him the same thing: organisations are shaped by how people actually behave, particularly when incentives compete, information is incomplete or speaking up carries a personal cost.

Sandro founded Risk Audit in 1999 to provide training and advice across corporate governance, internal audit, risk management and financial services regulation. His work has included organisations including American Express, Lloyds, Standard Chartered and UBS. Over time, his focus turned increasingly towards the behavioural side of governance — understanding the gap between what organisations intend to happen and what people actually do.

As President of the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors, he worked with boards, regulators and governance professionals across complex regulated environments. He later co-created the IIA’s Topical Requirement on Organisational Behaviour, which gives internal auditors a structured approach to examining how human behaviour and culture affect governance, risk and control.

Having built and run his own business, Sandro also brings an entrepreneurial perspective. Founding Risk Audit meant living with the same realities he now discusses with leadership teams, reinforcing his belief that good governance should help organisations perform better, not simply protect them from doing something wrong.

Today, he advises boards and senior leaders on culture, leadership behaviour and behavioural risk. Artificial intelligence is adding new dimensions to those questions, particularly around accountability, judgement and what effective oversight looks like as organisations delegate more decisions to intelligent systems.

Culture may be difficult to see, but that does not make it intangible.

Instead, it means leaders need to know where to look.