Never Out of Options with Siamak Namazi

Siamak Namazi was held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison for eight years, becoming the longest-held American hostage in Iran. Before his wrongful detention, he spent nearly two decades as a strategy consultant and executive working across the Middle East.

His keynote brings those two worlds together. Drawing on his 2,898 days in captivity, he shares how he “hired” a consultant version of himself to tackle seemingly impossible problems and treated interrogations as dystopian negotiations.

Months before his release, he secretly called CNN from inside the prison to appeal directly to President Biden— an interview Christiane Amanpour called “the bravest, most compelling” of her career.

This isn’t just a story about surviving captivity. This talk distills his experience into five practical lessons—a framework for thinking clearly, finding leverage, and creating options when the stakes are sky-high and the way forward uncertain.