Farah Nanji
Senior leaders are asked to hold composure when the conditions keep changing under them. The cognitive demands of a race weekend, a live performance and a board meeting are closer than most leadership programmes acknowledge. The question is how to build the routines, recovery patterns and decision habits that hold up when the margin for error is thin.
Farah Nanji is a British entrepreneur, TEDx speaker and founder of Regents Racing who draws on Formula 1 psychology and her own experience with dyspraxia to teach senior leaders how to hold composure and make decisions under pressure.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Farah Nanji
- A working framework for high-pressure performance built from a decade inside Formula 1 culture and a decade as the touring artist NINJA, two domains where small lapses are publicly visible.
- A founder’s view of building a private leadership community, Regents Racing, that uses motorsport psychology as a development tool for executives and members.
- A rare first-person account of rewiring cognitive function around dyspraxia, delivered as a TEDx keynote at the Luxembourg Philharmonie and translated into practical lessons on neurodivergence at work.
- A reference network drawn from Mission Makers, the podcast she founded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which has hosted leaders across music, motorsport and business.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of Regents Racing, a private leadership community using motorsport psychology, with roots at Regent’s University London.
- CEO of The Formula Mind, Regents Racing’s executive-facing subsidiary exploring Formula 1 as a lens for leadership and peak performance.
- TEDx speaker at TEDxLuxembourgCity, 2019, delivered at the Luxembourg Philharmonie.
- Producer and host of Mission Makers, a podcast launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
- Lecturer at Regent’s University London and Point Blank Music School.
- Performing artist as NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, Goodwood Festival of Speed, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum.
Biography
Formula 1 teams treat composure as an engineered system. Sleep, nutrition, debrief routines and pre-race protocols are sequenced so that the driver can make sound decisions when the cost of a wrong one is highest. Regents Racing was built to translate that discipline into a leadership setting, taking senior executives and members through experiences that pressure-test how they prepare, recover and decide.
The organisation began in 2011 at Regent’s University London as a community of competitive drivers and has grown into a private network with programming around Formula 1 weekends in Monaco, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, the Goodwood Festival of Speed and factory tours. Its executive-facing subsidiary, The Formula Mind, sits closer to senior leadership development.
A second strand of the work comes from a personal record. Diagnosed with dyspraxia at 15, Nanji built a parallel career as the touring artist NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum. Her TEDx talk at the Luxembourg Philharmonie in 2019 set out how she rewired cognitive function around the condition, and that account is now a core part of her keynote work on neurodivergence and resilience.
The third strand is Mission Makers, the podcast she launched during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020. The show has interviewed leaders across music, motorsport and business, and it doubles as her research engine: the conversations feed the frameworks she brings into the room when she speaks.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership and decision-making under pressure
- Formula 1 psychology and peak performance
- Resilience and self-leadership
- Neurodivergence and dyspraxia at work
- High-performance teams
- Entrepreneurship and founding a community-based business
- Music, creativity and performance discipline
Ideal for
- Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes focused on composure and decision-making under pressure
- Boards and ExCo audiences exploring high-performance culture
- DEI, talent and HR audiences working on neurodivergence and inclusive performance
- Conferences seeking a hybrid keynote and live performance from a single artist
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for what high-performance preparation, recovery and debrief actually look like in Formula 1, and where the parallels to executive work hold
- A first-person account of building cognitive routines around dyspraxia, with direct application for neurodivergent talent in the workforce
- A clearer sense of how leaders sustain composure when the margin for error is thin
- A founder’s perspective on building a private community business that crosses motorsport, music and leadership