At the Intersection of Culture, Capital, and Diplomacy: Global Stratalogues’ Pursuit of Purpose Beyond Ambition
Oscar Wendel is no stranger to bold ideas. From co-founding a lunar-dust cooling initiative to moderating high-level roundtables on the future of digital finance, he has built a career at the intersection of strategy and imagination. As the founder of Global Stratalogues—a forum and think tank launched in 2024—Oscar curates off-the-record dialogues that bridge sectors and disciplines.
Global Stratalogues has hosted roundtables at the UK Parliament’s House of Lords, alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos, with the Qatar Financial Center at the Qatar Economic Forum, at the Venice Biennale with the Saudi Ministry of Culture, and in partnership with the French Ministry of Economy’s Vision Golfe Summit in Paris. It has become a trusted platform for meaningful exchange between industry leaders, policymakers, and academics.
In this exclusive interview with Global Man, Oscar reflects on the power of curiosity, what reporting from conflict zones taught him about infrastructure, and why the most transformative conversations happen when the stage—and the ego—is set aside.
What inspired you to start Global Stratalogues, and what makes those roundtable conversations so powerful?
Global Stratalogues began with a simple insight: the most meaningful conversations often happen offstage, over dinner, between people who’d never otherwise meet. While running large conferences at Dubai World Trade Centre, I organized small, agenda-free dinners for my favorite 20 to 30 speakers. These dinners—unstructured, personal, and agenda-free—sparked something rare: people speaking not as company representatives, but as themselves.
After leaving this position, I wanted to preserve and build on that spirit. That’s how Global Stratalogues came to life—an independent forum and think tank designed to convene remarkable individuals from across sectors for open, non-commercial dialogue. What makes these roundtables powerful is exactly that openness. We don’t choreograph the conversation too tightly. By allowing people to speak candidly, without pushing a brand or a pitch, we create an atmosphere where unexpected insights emerge and new partnerships are born. When the right people share the same room, the conversation takes care of itself.
You’ve worked across journalism, events, and leadership platforms—what connects all these experiences for you?
At the core of everything I do—whether it’s reporting from conflict zones, curating global conferences, or hosting leadership forums—is a drive to bring people together around ideas that matter. Journalism taught me to listen deeply and find meaning in complexity. Event programming taught me how to shape environments that make people feel safe to share bold ideas. And Global Stratalogues brings it all together: it’s about curating not just content, but chemistry.
What was it like reporting from conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan? How did it shape your perspective today?
I wasn’t embedded with military units, but was reporting on industrial operations in some of the most complex and high-risk regions of the Middle East. The trips I made to Baghdad, Basra, and Kabul required meticulous planning, down to the hour. I travelled with logistics operators in Basra who had armored their trucks not just to protect goods, but to ensure supply chains could keep flowing even amid attacks. In Baghdad, entrepreneurs were reestablishing truck dealerships in areas while urban warfare and roadside bombs were a common occurrence. These were stories of determination to build something amid chaos.
That experience fundamentally reshaped my understanding of what “infrastructure” really means. It’s not just about roads and ports—it’s about trust, relationships, and the invisible threads of human coordination that keep fragile environments functioning. It’s also why I approach business and trade through a deeply human lens today. I’ve seen firsthand that resilience isn’t just a system—it’s a living organism, sustained by people coming together to make it work.
You’ve taken on big projects like worker rights and fire safety—what drives you to tackle these complex challenges?
I’m drawn to the blind spots that are inconvenient to talk about but too important to ignore. I think we all believe that we are on the side of truth and justice. Reaching a common understanding of what that is requires there to be open lines of communication between stakeholders to see eye to eye on what the reality on the ground is. When I first moved to Dubai in 2008, I launched the conference division of the magazines Construction Week and Arabian Business. It was in the midst of the building boom, and there was a significant global spotlight on worker safety and welfare. The first conference I produced was under the patronage of the UAE Ministry of Labour, convening international organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the American labour union AFL-CIO. They met with regional construction contractors and diplomatic representatives from the sending countries of labourers. The discussions were very constructive, and many misunderstandings were cleared up, as well as new initiatives that took shape, including the midday work ban for labourers in the summer months. Years later, after a series of high-rise fires, I collaborated with Civil Defense authorities across the Gulf to raise fire safety standards. These projects matter because they change lives.
Tell us about the moment you realized the power of combining creativity with strategy—was there a turning point?
Absolutely. During my time at the Dubai World Trade Centre, I launched the Creative Economy program at GITEX, bringing together authors, artists, and philosophers. The conversations moved beyond the benefits of products and services to explore the deeper, intrinsic value of innovation. By placing creativity at the core, I came to see it as the most potent strategy for unlocking technology’s true potential—to serve people in meaningful, human-centered ways.
At the Qatar Economic Forum, your roundtable with the Qatar Financial Center focused on tokenization of real-world assets. What excites you about this digital asset world?
Fractional ownership unlocks global liquidity and participation. What excites me is the convergence of compliance, capital, and code—it’s reshaping how new value is created and accessed.
With Qatar aiming to tokenize major properties—skyscrapers worth over $500 million—what challenges and opportunities do you see in bringing these conversations to life?
The opportunity is clear: increased transparency, liquidity, and cross-border investment. The challenge lies in regulation, interoperability, and education. These are not just tech conversations—they’re legal, political, and cultural. That’s why roundtables like ours matter. We’re not just showcasing use cases—we’re designing the governance models needed to scale them.
You’ve made bold moves with ASTROCOOL and the Intraplanetary National Anthem. How do you take a creative idea and turn it into global impact?
Creative ideas become impactful when they are shared, supported, and strategically staged. Start with a bold vision, bring the right people together, and find the right stage. Impact comes from cross-sector collaboration, global platforms like COP and the UN, and a strong story with a clear call to action.
Both projects you mention are outlandish in a literal sense. Astrocool is a research project that I co-founded, proposing a lunar-dust solar-shield concept to cool our planet. David Chaum and I focused on the scientific backbone and showcased the idea at the hundred-year-old Deutsches Museum in Munich, the largest science museum in the world.
The idea for the Intraplanetary National Anthem came to me on the spur of the moment after being invited to speak at a COP28 press conference with a day’s notice. I asked my friend Fernando Garibay, the Grammy-winning producer behind Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, to join me on stage to unveil a project we dubbed a “Salute and Celebration to All Mankind.” In the video, you’ll notice how nervous I am. It was a surreal feeling to announce something as unconventional on a UN stage, and I was worried about getting in trouble or bursting out laughing. Afterwards, with the response it received, I realised what a powerful idea it is to create a unifying project celebrating humanity through music. Immediately after the press conference, the team behind placing the first art installation on the moon, Jeff Koons’ Moon Phases, invited me to their launch at Cape Canaveral the next month to discuss potential collaboration. The project is growing in ambition, and work is ongoing with an orchestra in Venice.
How do you bring people from government, business, and culture together to have honest, meaningful talks?
You design for trust and dialogue based on a shared sense of intellectual curiosity. No stages, egos, hierarchies, or experts speaking down to an audience asking questions. It’s not about status, it’s about insight and openness without self-aggrandizing sales and promotion. This means curating the guest list with discrimination. The quality of an event is as much about who is not there as it is about who is.
Finally, it’s asking questions that have no clear answers. Finding new paths towards insights requires the intersection of perspectives. The most boring thing in the world is gathering like-minded individuals. This often leads to entrenched views and groupthink, perpetuating the status quo.
You’ve written under a different name and published a book praised by Forbes. What made you take that route, and what do you hope readers take away?
Oscar Wilde said, ‘Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’ Writing under a pseudonym gave me the freedom to speak openly about uncomfortable truths. The book ‘Bargepole Management’ described strategies to establish and exploit inequalities across organizations to the advantage of a minority. While seen as quite offensive to many, it was written to unveil the Realpolitik of management in large organizations.
Oscar Wendel
Press Conference
Watch on YouTube
With David Chaum and Fernando Garibay at COP28
Watch the Short Clip
Astrocool Article: Moon Dust as a Solar Shield
Read on Digital Journal
Feature Article from Iraq:
https://www.iraqdirectory.com/en/print.aspx?sid=24686