Sara Riis-Carstensen

Sara Riis-Carstensen is a globally recognised brand strategist who specialises in transforming iconic brands through the powerful intersection of brand strategy and cultural relevance. As Global Director of Brand Development at LEGO, she built the company's first global brand strategy from the ground up, propelling it to become one of the most powerful brands in the world. She has since led transformational work at De Beers, modernising a 130-year-old heritage brand for the digital age, and now serves as Head of Brand Strategy and Brand Management at Lufthansa Group, where she is uniting a diverse portfolio of airlines into one cohesive brand narrative. Her keynotes equip leaders with practical frameworks to navigate brand transformation, challenge them to rethink brand as a strategic discipline rather than a marketing function, and reveal how brands earn lasting resonance by participating authentically in culture.

When LEGO faced the edge of bankruptcy with no brand strategy and no dedicated department to build one, Sara Riis-Carstensen stepped in to create both from scratch. As Global Director of Brand Development, she embedded brand thinking into every core marketing process at the Danish toy company, ensuring that strategy and creativity became inseparable. Her work transformed LEGO into a global icon, propelling it to become recognised as one of the most powerful brands in the world, celebrated not only for its beloved product but for holding one of the strongest brand strategies ever built. That transformational approach has since defined her career across some of the world's most prestigious companies, where she has consistently proven that even the most traditional organisations can reinvent themselves when brand and culture move together.

Sara's expertise has been forged through leadership roles at De Beers, Carlsberg, Giorgio Armani, Zurich Insurance, and now at Lufthansa Group, where she serves as Head of Brand Strategy and Brand Management. At De Beers, she modernised a 130-year-old heritage brand for the digital age, demonstrating her ability to honour legacy whilst driving bold transformation. Following a period as a management consultant in New York, she took on the challenge of uniting Lufthansa Group's diverse portfolio of B2B and B2C brands, including Lufthansa, SWISS, and ITA Airways, into one cohesive brand narrative. By redefining the Group brand as a bold connector and rolling out a striking, cohesive visual identity, she has elevated brand from a corporate layer to the core of business strategy, driving alignment, cultural change, and accelerating growth at scale. Her strategic thinking has been sought by organisations as varied as Burberry, Coca-Cola, Google, and Facebook, and her philosophy centres on finding the sweet spot between brand and culture, understanding that brands must play a role in shaping communities rather than simply serving consumers.

In her keynotes, Sara challenges leaders to rethink what a brand truly represents: not a marketing function, but a strategic discipline; not a campaign, but a way to stay culturally relevant; not just a promise on the outside, but behaviour on the inside. She equips audiences with practical frameworks to navigate brand transformation, encouraging them to move beyond product benefits and vertical thinking to consider their brand's role in the broader cultural discourse. Her sessions reveal how brands earn lasting resonance by tapping into cultural movements, tensions, and conversations that people genuinely care about, moving from simply communicating to truly participating in culture. Leaders leave with actionable insights on building brand strategies that create genuine resonance, adapt to shifting cultural dynamics, and drive sustained commercial success. Sara's ability to distil decades of boardroom experience into immediately applicable wisdom makes her an invaluable resource for organisations seeking to stand out in sameness and forge their own paths to brand supremacy.