Inkluderende lederskab speakers

Why organisations work with Jeanette Kwakye A working national broadcaster, not a former athlete trading on past results. Buyers get a host who runs live BBC Sport and ITV current affairs every week, with the on-stage instincts that come with it. Rare credibility on women in sport and media. She broke a 24-year drought as a British woman in the Olympic 100m final, then became the first Black female UK presenter to front a terrestrial boxing production. Hosting and moderation experience with Google, Nike, BMW, the IOC and World Athletics, which translates into clean panel craft for senior leadership audiences. Direct, unsentimental on the transition from elite sport to a second career. Useful for talent, learning and DEI conversations that have grown tired of the standard sportsperson keynote. Biography highlights Sixth place in the 100m final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the first British woman in that final since 1984. Silver medallist over 60m at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships, equalling the British record of 7.08. BBC athletics trackside reporter; host of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Football Daily podcast; co-host of BBC Radio 5 Live Weekend Breakfast. Co-host of The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. First Black female UK TV presenter to lead a boxing production on a terrestrial channel, on Channel 5. Appointed MBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to sport and sports broadcasting. Loughborough University graduate in Politics and Economics; author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Biography A British woman had not reached an Olympic 100m final for twenty-four years when Jeanette Kwakye ran 11.14 in Beijing in 2008 and finished sixth. The earlier rounds, not the final, are the part that matters. She trained at Loughborough, came through British championships in both the 100m and 200m, and took silver over 60m at the World Indoors that same year, equalling the British record of 7.08. The second career has the same shape. After retiring in 2014 she went through an NCTJ qualification, started in local BBC radio, and built outwards. She is now a BBC athletics trackside reporter, hosts the Football Daily podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live, co-hosts Weekend Breakfast on the same station, and co-presents The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. In 2020, she became the first Black female presenter on a terrestrial UK boxing production. Her hosting and moderation portfolio outside broadcast covers Google, Nike, BMW, the International Olympic Committee and World Athletics. Senior audiences hire her because she runs a room cleanly, pushes panellists, and brings a working journalist’s instinct to questions of representation and performance rather than a retired-athlete reflection. She was appointed MBE in 2021 for services to sport and sports broadcasting. She is also the author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Key speaking topics Representation in sport and media Women in broadcasting and elite sport High-performance mindset Career transition from elite sport Olympic preparation and selection Sports broadcasting and journalism Resilience after injury Ideal for Conference and summit organisers needing a host or moderator with senior on-stage credibility DEI, talent and people leaders running events on representation and women’s progression Sports industry, federation and rights-holder events Internal kick-offs and leadership offsites looking for an Olympic-finalist perspective on performance under pressure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what representation actually changes inside elite environments, told from inside two of them A working definition of high performance that survives contact with injury, deselection and reinvention Practical ground for talent and DEI leaders considering how the pipeline into senior visible roles really moves A panel or fireside that lands cleanly, with a host who keeps senior speakers honest

Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room. A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind. Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades. A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS. A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion. Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I. Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals. First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland. Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me. Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections. Biography Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around. SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group. Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters. Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me. Key speaking topics AI, belonging and the human future of work Inclusive culture and belonging Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion Inclusive leadership and engagement Workplace allyship Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice Culture change and DEI strategy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules. Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate. Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture. Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down. Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong. A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions. A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture. Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.

Why organisations work with Joe Gerstandt He reframes inclusion as organisational design work, with named practices leaders can actually run, rather than a values campaign that depends on goodwill. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative gives sceptical audiences a credible personal entry point, useful in rooms where DEI language has lost its purchase. Co-author of Social Gravity, a published thesis on how relationship dynamics shape collective performance, which gives the work an intellectual spine beyond bureau talking points. Sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and the ISO US Technical Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion, meaning his frameworks have been tested inside platform governance and global standards. Marine Corps veteran turned culture practitioner, with a delivery register that lands credibly in industrial, defence, and engineering-led organisations where conventional DEI speakers often do not. Biography highlights Co-author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council, Twitter. US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, International Organization for Standardization. Board director, Tri-Faith Initiative, Nebraska. Featured contributor, Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum. Clients include Boeing, Toyota, Nestle, Target, Eli Lilly, Marathon Oil, Cornell University, University of Michigan, the CIA and the FAA. Biography Inclusion work has hit a credibility ceiling inside many large organisations. Twenty years of programmes, statements and training have not translated into the operating changes leaders were promised, and the political pressure on DEI has stripped away the cover that older approaches relied on. The result is a leadership population that knows the work matters but no longer trusts the standard playbook. Joe Gerstandt has spent the past two decades rebuilding the work on different ground. His starting point is that inclusion is a design problem, not a sentiment problem. Behaviour, norms, decision rights, conflict practices and conversational habits are the actual machinery. His sessions teach leaders to operate that machinery, with concrete practices around brave conversations, authenticity, and team design. Two strands give the work its weight. Social Gravity, which he co-authored, sets out the relational dynamics that determine whether collective performance compounds or decays. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative draws on his own move from rural Iowa and the Marine Corps into culture work, giving sceptical audiences a credible bridge into the material without asking them to start from agreement. The institutional record matters. He sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and on the ISO US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, advises Fortune 100 employers and federal agencies including the CIA and FAA, and has published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive and HR Executive. That positions him as a practitioner whose frameworks have been pressure-tested against platform governance, global standards and operating reality. Key speaking topics Inclusion as organisational design Inclusive leadership practice Authenticity and psychological safety at work Team performance and relational dynamics Behaviour change and culture change Allyship and personal transformation Bias, identity and decision-making Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers and culture leads rebuilding inclusion programmes that have lost internal credibility. Executive teams running culture change inside engineering, defence, industrial and regulated environments where conventional DEI delivery falls flat. Boards and leadership cohorts treating inclusion as a leadership capability rather than a compliance line. Employee resource group leaders and allies seeking practical practice, not slogans. Audience outcomes A working definition of inclusion as a designed practice, separable from political language. Named behaviours and conversational practices leaders can use the next working day. A clearer read on where their organisation’s inclusion work has stalled and why. Language for engaging sceptics and ambivalent middle managers without forcing ideological agreement. A frame for treating relational dynamics as a performance variable, drawn from Social Gravity.

Why organisations work with John Amaechi The giants framework – introduced in The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award winner) – gives senior leaders a precise accountability tool: every person with influence shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, whether they intend to or not. He has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust – giving him verified access to the governance conversations his clients face, not just advisory proximity to them. As Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and a Chartered Psychologist, he can name the specific behavioural mechanisms – not just the desired outcomes – that distinguish leaders who consistently build high-performing teams from those who inadvertently undermine them. His reframing of unconscious bias as “entrenched assumption” – from The Promises of Giants – shifts the inclusion conversation from psychological absolution to direct leadership accountability, making it actionable for boards and executive committees that have grown fatigued by compliance-oriented framing. Inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, he is recognised across HR, governance, and psychology communities – not within a single professional silo. Biography highlights Founder, APS Intelligence Ltd (est. 2008), working with executive teams and boards across FTSE 100 companies in financial services, technology, legal, and engineering sectors Professor of Leadership (HC), University of Exeter Business School; Research Fellow, University of East London; Chartered Psychologist (British Psychological Society), Chartered Scientist, Chartered Fellow of the CIPD Author of The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award, Leadership and Strategy category) and It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders Former non-executive director, Greencore Group plc (FTSE 250); former 10-year board director and HR Scrutiny Committee Chair, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust HR Magazine Hall of Fame inductee 2022; Sport Industry Integrity and Impact Award 2023; OBE 2011 First Briton to have a career in the NBA; appointed European Ambassador to the NBA Biography Culture gaps in senior teams are almost always a behaviour problem. APS Intelligence, the consultancy John Amaechi OBE founded in 2008, was built on that premise, and his advisory engagements, governance roles, and published research have only strengthened the case. Amaechi has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. This places him inside the governance conversations most consultants observe from outside. He holds academic roles as Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and Research Fellow at the University of East London, where his research focuses on the mechanisms of inclusive leadership, team performance, and organisational design. His professional credentials sit across three chartered bodies: Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, Chartered Scientist, and Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. The Promises of Giants (2021) introduced the giants framework, the argument that every leader shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, intentionally or not. The book became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and won the Porchlight Business Book Award in Leadership and Strategy. His follow-up, It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders, translates the framework into specific, repeatable actions that distinguish leaders who build high-performing environments from those who inadvertently undermine them. Amaechi was inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice and LinkedIn Influencer with sustained reach across professional audiences. Before his consultancy career, he was the first Briton to have a career in the NBA. That background informs his understanding of how culture either releases or suppresses individual potential, and what it costs organisations when it does the latter. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and culture Inclusive leadership High-performance team dynamics Executive accountability and governance Leadership through permanent disruption AI integration and the human organisation Ideal for Executive teams and C-suite leaders where a gap exists between declared culture and how people actually experience leadership Board members and non-executive directors engaged with governance, leadership accountability, and inclusive decision-making CHROs, CPOs, and people leaders designing culture and inclusion strategies that connect directly to performance outcomes Senior leadership cohorts in organisations navigating culture transformation, post-merger integration, or leadership succession Audience outcomes A specific vocabulary for naming the leadership behaviours – not strategy documents or values statements – that create or undermine the culture an organisation is trying to build Clarity on why inclusion programmes stall at leadership level, and what it takes behaviourally to move them forward A personal accountability framework – the giants principle from The Promises of Giants – that senior leaders can apply immediately to audit and adjust their own daily behaviour Greater understanding of how identity and belonging affect individual contribution, team cohesion, and organisational performance Practical, evidence-based tools from organisational psychology for building psychologically safe environments where high performance is sustainable

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.

Why organisations work with Jonnie Peacock The credibility behind his pressure narrative is specific. He won the London 2012 Paralympic 100m in front of 80,000 people, at 19, as the home favourite, having been largely unknown twelve months earlier. The preparation-to-execution discipline he describes is grounded in that exact moment, and he makes it concrete for business audiences in ways retrospective case studies cannot. His Strictly Come Dancing appearance was a deliberate disability advocacy strategy, not a media opportunity. He has described it publicly as a specific effort to shift mainstream perception of disability, which gives organisations working on inclusion a frame grounded in personal agency rather than policy or HR language. He has won at the highest level and lost at the highest level: two Paralympic golds, a bronze when gold was expected at Tokyo 2020, and a fifth place at Paris 2024 after a career as the public face of British Paralympic sprinting. His account of managing that full arc is something few performance speakers can draw on with equivalent specificity. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching role with five young amputees, demonstrating that his performance insight has been tested and applied beyond his own biography. Competing at four Paralympic Games across twelve years, he provides a long-cycle view of high performance: managing injury, rival pressure, public expectation, and identity shift across a career, not just the story of a single peak moment. Biography highlights Two-time Paralympic 100m champion (London 2012, Rio 2016); bronze medallist T64 100m Tokyo 2020; silver medallist 4x100m Universal Relay at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 World champion at the IPC Athletics World Championships, Lyon 2013, and the World Para Athletics Championships, London 2017; multiple European champion; former world record holder in amputee sprinting (10.85 seconds) MBE for services to athletics, 2013 New Year Honours First amputee Paralympian to compete on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing (Series 15, 2017), partnered with Oti Mabuse Featured in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix (2020) and Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign (2012) Creator and presenter of Channel 4’s Jonnie’s Blade Camp (2021), a structured training programme for young amputees Biography At the 2012 London Paralympic 100m final, a 19-year-old largely unknown twelve months earlier stood behind the start line as the home favourite, in a stadium of 80,000 people. Jonnie Peacock won by a clear margin and set a Paralympic record. The insight that produces is not just biographical. Performing consistently when pressure is highest is one of the hardest things organisations ask of their people. Peacock is a two-time Paralympic 100m champion and former world record holder in amputee sprinting, with medals at three of the four Paralympic Games he has competed in across twelve years. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching environment with five young amputees, demonstrating that his understanding of performance development has been applied in a formal teaching context, not only in his own career. His mainstream media presence reflects a deliberate strategy. He became the first amputee Paralympian on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, a decision he has described publicly as an act of disability advocacy rather than entertainment. He features in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix and was at the centre of Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign in 2012, both of which sit inside the wider argument about how disability is perceived in high-performance sport. The story underneath all of this is not decorative. Peacock contracted meningitis at five and lost his right leg below the knee. He found athletics through a Paralympic talent identification day and became Paralympic champion in his first competitive senior season. His argument to organisations rests on that arc: the gap between preparation and peak execution under genuine pressure is real, and it can be closed. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and adversity recovery Elite competitive mindset Disability and inclusion High-performance team discipline Managing expectation in high-stakes moments Long-cycle career performance Ideal for Executive and leadership teams focused on consistency, decision-making, and execution under scrutiny Organisations running DEI programmes seeking inclusion framed through personal agency and elite performance evidence Commercial, sales, and competitive teams preparing for high-stakes pitches or critical competitive moments HR and people leaders building resilience and wellbeing strategies with credible, first-hand evidence Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what mental preparation for maximum-pressure performance feels like, grounded in verified results across four Paralympic Games Sharper distinction between building capability in training and executing consistently when real scrutiny arrives Disability reframed as competitive capability, evidenced through elite sport rather than policy language Greater clarity on managing external expectation from rivals, public audiences, and an organisation’s own culture A longer view of high performance: how to absorb setback, return to competition, and sustain standards across a career

Why organisations work with Jonny Benjamin He brings a globally tracked story (the Find Mike campaign reached more than 319 million people) into a corporate room without it becoming a tribute act. The point is what changed in the bystander, not the bridge. He has built two of the institutions he speaks about. Beyond, the youth mental health charity, and This Can Happen, the workplace conference, are not anecdotes; they are operating organisations he co-founded. He pairs lived clinical experience of schizoaffective disorder with a public campaigning record recognised by Rethink Mental Illness (first Janey Antoniou Award) and an MBE for suicide prevention. That combination changes how senior audiences listen. His material works as a managerial primer, not a memoir reading. Audiences leave with a clearer sense of what to say in the first ninety seconds when a colleague signals they are not okay. Biography highlights Awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to mental health and suicide prevention. Founder of Beyond, a youth mental health charity established in 2018 funding interventions in UK schools and colleges. Co-founder of This Can Happen, the workplace mental health conference launched in 2017. First recipient of the Janey Antoniou Award from Rethink Mental Illness (2013) for campaigning on severe mental illness. Co-author with Britt Pfluger of “The Stranger on the Bridge” (Pan Macmillan, 2018, foreword by HRH The Duke of Cambridge) and “The Book of Hope: 101 Voices on Overcoming Adversity” (Pan Macmillan, 2021). Subject of the Channel 4 documentary “The Stranger on the Bridge” (2015), which charted his successful search for Neil Laybourn, the stranger who intervened on Waterloo Bridge in 2008. Biography Most workplace mental health programmes are well written and quietly underused. The policy is in the handbook, the EAP is on the intranet, and the manager who notices a struggling colleague still hesitates to say the first sentence. Jonny Benjamin’s work sits in that hesitation. His own story explains the angle. Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in his early twenties, he wrote “The Stranger on the Bridge” with Britt Pfluger to chart how he came to be on Waterloo Bridge in 2008 and what the stranger, later identified as Neil Laybourn, actually did in those minutes. The 2014 Find Mike campaign that reunited them reached more than 319 million people and became a Channel 4 documentary the following year. What followed is what makes him useful to serious organisations. He co-founded This Can Happen in 2017, the workplace mental health conference now used by HR and wellbeing leads to benchmark practice, and founded the youth charity Beyond in 2018 to fund early intervention in UK schools. Rethink Mental Illness gave him the first Janey Antoniou Award in 2013; the MBE followed in 2017. In a corporate room he resists the inspirational frame. The talk is closer to a briefing for managers and colleagues on the specific moves that make a workplace one where people speak up early, and the specific failures that keep them quiet. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health and psychological safety Suicide prevention and early intervention Severe mental illness and stigma in the workplace Wellbeing strategy and line-manager capability Youth mental health and the school-to-work transition Storytelling as a tool for cultural change Ideal for CHROs, wellbeing leads and DEI directors building the next iteration of a mental health strategy. Line manager and senior leadership development programmes where the brief is on confidence in difficult conversations. All-staff conferences where the organisation wants a mental health session that engages the room without slipping into platitude. Education sector audiences (schools, universities, sector bodies) addressing youth mental health and pastoral practice. Audience outcomes A direct account of what helped and what did not, from someone with diagnosed severe mental illness rather than a generalist commentator. A clearer sense of the small interventions that change outcomes, drawn from the bystander side of his own story. Practical language for managers and colleagues to use in the first conversation, not the third meeting. A sharper read on why workplace wellbeing programmes underperform and what closes the gap between policy and behaviour. An informed view of youth mental health drawn from Beyond’s grant-making and school work in the UK.

Why organisations work with Juan Campoo A proprietary, named model. The Mind Canvas gives audiences a concrete mental framework rather than a list of wellbeing tips, which is what makes the content stick after the keynote. Recognised practitioner credibility. Best Wellness Coach 2023 at the CoachAwards is an external mark from a coaching-industry body, not self-applied bureau language. Useful for both populations. The same underlying model has been adapted for general employee audiences (“Accelerate Your Inner Development”) and for people leaders (“Accelerate The Leader Within”), so HR can run a coherent programme across cohorts. A practitioner voice, not an academic one. Campoo built the work after his own burnout in a corporate role, which gives the room a different register from a researcher presenting findings. Trilingual delivery. Working in English, Spanish and Dutch makes him unusually portable for European employee programmes that span sites. Biography highlights Author of The Mind Canvas: A Revolutionary Approach to Personal Mastery (2022), an Amazon best-seller, with a contribution from values-based leadership author Richard Barrett. TEDx speaker on personal development and wellbeing. Best Wellness Coach 2023, CoachAwards. Developer of the Mind Canvas method, applied in keynotes, workshops and one-to-one coaching. Works in English, Spanish and Dutch across European corporate audiences. Based in The Netherlands; born and raised in Argentina. Biography Workplace wellbeing programmes have a credibility problem. They consume budget, generate engagement-survey questions, and rarely change how a stressed manager actually responds at 4pm on a Thursday. The gap is not effort, it is that most interventions never reach the level of how people regulate their own thinking under pressure. This is the territory Juan Campoo works in. His Mind Canvas method, set out in his 2022 Amazon best-seller The Mind Canvas: A Revolutionary Approach to Personal Mastery, gives audiences a single visual model for understanding how thoughts, emotions and behaviours interact, and what to do with that understanding in real working conditions. Richard Barrett, the values-based leadership author, contributed to the book. Campoo’s authority on this comes from practice rather than theory. He hit burnout and depression early in his own corporate career, then spent more than a decade studying mindset and behaviour change and building a coaching and training practice across Europe. The CoachAwards named him Best Wellness Coach in 2023. His two anchor talks, “Accelerate Your Inner Development” and “Accelerate The Leader Within”, apply the same model to two audiences: staff who need better emotional regulation, and leaders whose behaviour shapes whether psychological safety actually exists in their teams. He delivers in English, Spanish and Dutch. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence at work Mindset and behaviour change Wellbeing and burnout prevention Psychological safety Personal mastery and self-regulation Leadership behaviour and influence Stress and resilience Ideal for HR, People and L&D leads designing wellbeing or emotional intelligence programmes for staff People managers and team leaders working on psychological safety and team behaviour Leadership development cohorts inside European multinationals, particularly multilingual sites Employee conferences and culture days where the brief is practical self-development, not corporate strategy Audience outcomes A working mental model (Mind Canvas) for how thoughts, emotions and behaviour connect Specific daily practices for self-regulation under pressure A clearer view of what psychological safety looks like in everyday team behaviour, not policy Language for talking about stress and burnout that managers can actually use with their teams Renewed individual ownership of wellbeing rather than waiting for the organisation to fix it

Why organisations work with Julia Streets Twenty-five years inside financial services, from senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet to founding Streets Consulting, gives her unusual fluency across the language of trading floors, regulators, fintechs and boards. DiverCity Podcast, which she launched in 2017 as the first DE&I podcast in financial services, has run 16 seasons with listeners in more than 50 countries and gives her a documented track record of holding industry leaders to specific commitments, not slogans. An MBE in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, awarded for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, is a credential almost no other speaker in her topic area carries. Her host and moderator craft, sharpened by years on the stand-up circuit, makes her a credible choice for conferences where the chair has to keep senior bankers, regulators and founders in the same conversation without flattening any of them. She advises fintech founders and global institutions on the same set of growth and communication problems, which means she can speak to both sides of the buyer-vendor relationship in the room. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Streets Consulting, advising fintech startups, scaleups and global financial institutions on growth, marketing and communications. MBE, 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology. Host and executive producer of DiverCity Podcast, the first DE&I podcast in financial services, with 16 seasons and listeners across 50 countries. Author of The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, published by Searching Finance. Former senior executive at NYSE Euronext (global head of communications, technology division) and Instinet (European marketing and sales development). Twice named a Global Diversity Champion in the Global Diversity List; three-time Brummell Magazine listee for women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. Trustee of Street Child; regular broadcast contributor on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Kent and City AM. Biography The first DE&I podcast in financial services launched in 2017 with no obvious commercial reason to exist. Sixteen seasons later, DiverCity Podcast has listeners in more than fifty countries and a back catalogue of named industry figures committing on the record to specific changes. The host and executive producer is Julia Streets, and the show is one piece of a wider body of work on how financial services actually changes, rather than how it announces it does. Streets Consulting, which she founded after senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet, advises fintechs and global institutions on growth, positioning and communications. The brief is the same on both sides: how does a firm explain what it does to people who are paid to be sceptical of it. Two decades inside trading-floor culture, and a 2012 satirical book on corporate jargon, The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, give her a low tolerance for the kind of language that lets executives avoid saying anything specific. The 2025 MBE, awarded in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, sits alongside two listings as a Global Diversity Champion and three appearances on Brummell Magazine’s lists of women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. The recognitions track a single argument across her work: that diversity in finance is a commercial question, not a compliance one, and that it should be measured by who gets hired, promoted and listened to. For an audience, the practical effect is a speaker and host who can move between fintech innovation, capital markets technology and DE&I without losing the room, because she has actually built a business in each. She is also a former stand-up comedian, which is why bankers tend to talk back to her on stage rather than at her. Key speaking topics Fintech innovation and capital markets technology Diversity, equity and inclusion in financial services Entrepreneurship in regulated industries Communication and influence for senior leaders AI and the future of financial services Conference chairing and panel moderation Women in fintech and technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams in banking, capital markets and fintech navigating technology adoption and regulatory change. CHROs and DE&I leads in financial services who need a credible external voice on inclusion that holds up to commercial scrutiny. Founders and investors at fintech scaleups working on positioning, growth and institutional credibility. Conference organisers in financial services who need a chair or moderator with subject fluency across innovation, regulation and culture. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where fintech innovation is genuinely changing financial services and where it is being oversold. Specific, named examples of how DE&I commitments translate into hiring, promotion and product decisions, drawn from sixteen seasons of recorded interviews. Direct, jargon-stripped language for talking about technology change inside regulated organisations. A working sense of how fintech founders and incumbents see each other, useful for anyone building or buying across that line.

Why organisations work with Julie Montagu Four published wellness books with a major UK trade publisher, including Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You (Little, Brown, 2018), give her wellbeing material a structured, tested foundation rather than a personal-anecdote frame. She runs a live teaching practice through Whole Self Yoga, including 200-hour teacher training, so the content she delivers to a corporate room is the same content she teaches week to week, not a keynote-only construct. Her cross-cultural vantage point, American by upbringing, English Countess by marriage, makes her an unusual host and after-dinner choice for events that need warmth and storytelling alongside subject expertise. She is an experienced broadcast voice, with royal and heritage commentary credits across BBC and CNN coverage of the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation, which translates directly into stage presence and live-event composure. Her academic work on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age, completed as an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham, gives her a serious second register for heritage, leadership history and women-in-power conversations. Biography highlights Author of Superfoods, Eat Real Food, Superfoods Superfast and Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You, published by Little, Brown / Piatkus. Author of Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024. Founder of Whole Self Yoga, including a 200-hour yoga teacher training programme. MA with Distinction in English Country House Studies, University of Buckingham, 2021. Royal and heritage commentator for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, Platinum Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral and the Coronation of King Charles III. Television credits including Bravo’s Ladies of London and Smithsonian Channel’s An American Aristocrat’s Guide to Great Estates. Co-custodian of Mapperton Estate in Dorset alongside Luke Montagu, 12th Earl of Sandwich. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are built by people who have never had to keep one going through a 70-hour week. Julie Montagu is not one of them. She trained and qualified as a yoga teacher and nutrition educator while raising four children, wrote four books with Little, Brown on plant-forward eating and structured self-care, and built Whole Self Yoga, a teaching practice that includes a 200-hour teacher training programme. Recharge, published in 2018, is the title that travels best into corporate rooms. It is built as a month-by-month framework rather than a lifestyle manifesto, which is why it lands with audiences who have heard the wellbeing pitch many times and want something they can actually use on Monday. The second register is heritage. Montagu lives at Mapperton Estate in Dorset, the seat of the Earls of Sandwich, and completed an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age. That work fed Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024, and a steady run of royal commentary for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation. The result is a speaker who can hold a corporate wellbeing keynote with real depth, then host the dinner that follows it with the kind of cross-cultural ease most subject-matter experts cannot offer. For organisations that want both substance and presence, that combination is what makes the booking commercial. Key speaking topics Self-care and wellbeing for high-pressure careers Yoga, nutrition and sustainable energy management Resilience and burnout prevention Female leadership and personal reinvention British heritage, country houses and royal traditions Corporate event hosting and after-dinner speaking Ideal for Corporate wellbeing days and HR-led leadership offsites Women’s leadership networks and ERG events Executive retreats where wellbeing is the headline rather than a side track Awards dinners, hosted panels and after-dinner engagements requiring a heritage or transatlantic register Audience outcomes A clear, month-by-month structure for self-care that survives a real working calendar Practical anchors on nutrition, movement and recovery that do not require a lifestyle overhaul A more honest read on what burnout looks like before it becomes attrition An hour with a speaker who can carry both the substance of wellbeing content and the warmth of a strong host

Why organisations work with June Sarpong She has run inclusion at scale inside one of the world’s largest media organisations. As the BBC’s first Director of Creative Diversity, she sat on the Executive Committee and oversaw a £100m commissioning commitment, which gives boards a credible peer voice rather than an outside consultant. Her three HarperCollins books (Diversify, The Power of Women, The Power of Privilege) build an economic argument for inclusion, drawing on Nuffield College, Oxford research that put the cost of UK discrimination at £127bn a year. Buyers get a speaker who can frame the case in commercial terms. Through Diversify International, she has worked with Burberry, Barclays, Nike, Google, Unilever, EY and the NHS, so the room can ask practical questions about what works in regulated, consumer-facing and public-sector contexts. She moves naturally between keynote and host or moderator, which makes her usable across formats: a leadership offsite opener, an internal town hall, an awards stage, or a chaired board conversation on diversity. Biography highlights First Director of Creative Diversity at the BBC and first Black woman on the BBC Executive Committee. Oversaw a £100m commitment to diverse and inclusive content commissioning at the BBC. Author of three HarperCollins titles on inclusion: Diversify, The Power of Women, The Power of Privilege. Founder of Diversify International, with corporate clients including Burberry, Barclays, Google, Nike, Unilever, EY, Facebook and the NHS. MBE (2007) and OBE (2020) for services to broadcasting and to broadcasting respectively. Non-Executive Trustee of Tate, appointed by the Prime Minister. Biography Inclusion is now a board-level question because the audiences, workforces and customer bases of most large organisations have changed faster than the people running them. June Sarpong’s work sits exactly in that gap. She argues, in commercial language, that closing it is an operating decision, not a values statement. She made that case from inside one of the world’s most scrutinised institutions. As the BBC’s first Director of Creative Diversity, she sat on the Executive Committee and oversaw a £100m commissioning commitment to diverse and inclusive content. It was the first time a UK public broadcaster of that scale tied inclusion to a budget line and reported against it. The argument is also published. Her three HarperCollins books, Diversify, The Power of Women and The Power of Privilege, draw on Nuffield College, Oxford research that put the annual cost of discrimination in the UK at £127bn. The books are used as a frame in her keynote work, which is how she became useful to companies trying to move beyond statements: Burberry, Barclays, Google, Nike, Unilever, EY and the NHS have all engaged Diversify International, the consultancy she founded after leaving the BBC. Her career began in broadcasting, and that range still matters commercially. She presented Channel 4’s T4 for nine years, interviewed Tony Blair for the strand, and is a regular panel and broadcast voice. The same craft that lets her host a leadership offsite or chair a board conversation also lets her bring difficult inclusion content into a room without it landing as a lecture. She is a Trustee of Tate, appointed by the Prime Minister, and holds an OBE for services to broadcasting. Key speaking topics Inclusion as an operating commitment Diverse audiences and consumer reach Workforce composition and talent The economic case for inclusion Allyship and privilege Women in leadership Culture change inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and DEI leads under pressure to show measurable inclusion outcomes Boards and executive committees revisiting inclusion strategy after the post-2020 reset Marketing and brand leaders rethinking how products and content connect with diverse audiences Leadership offsites, internal town halls and conferences that need a credible host as well as a speaker Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what inclusion looks like as a budget and operating decision, drawn from a real public-sector example The commercial argument for inclusion in language a CFO or board chair will accept A practical reading of what worked and what failed across consumer, financial and public-sector deployments A sharper view of the difference between inclusion programmes and inclusion communications

Why organisations work with Kadeena Cox A first-hand account of rebuilding performance from zero after a stroke and an MS diagnosis at 23, then competing at world-record level across two different Paralympic sports. Substantive content on inclusion in elite environments, drawn from founding and running the KC Academy in partnership with the Rapha Foundation and SportsAid. A track record that is publicly verifiable at the highest level of British sport: golds at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024, plus OBE in 2022. Direct experience of the daily decision-making required when a body and a schedule cannot be relied on, which translates cleanly into leadership audiences operating under sustained uncertainty. Biography highlights Five-time Paralympic gold medallist (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024) in athletics and cycling First British Paralympian since 1984 to win golds in two different sports at the same Games OBE for services to athletics and cycling (2022); MBE (2017) Founder of the KC Academy, in partnership with the Rapha Foundation and SportsAid Winner, BBC Celebrity MasterChef Series 16 (2021) World record holder, C4 500m time trial Biography The Rio 2016 Paralympics produced an outcome no British athlete had achieved in 32 years. Kadeena Cox won gold in two different sports at the same Games, in T38 400m athletics and C4-5 500m cycling, two years after a stroke and a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at the age of 23. The cycling time was faster than any able-bodied Team GB rider had produced at an Olympic or Paralympic Games. Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 added further golds, including a world record in the C4 500m time trial and a team sprint title alongside Jaco van Gass and Jody Cundy. The arc matters less for the medal count than for what it required operationally: training programmes built around a condition that does not behave predictably, and a competitive schedule that had to absorb that reality without losing edge. In 2021 Cox founded the KC Academy, which works with SportsAid and is supported by the Rapha Foundation to identify and fund cyclists from ethnically diverse backgrounds entering the British high-performance pathway. She is the only Black British cyclist to have won Olympic or Paralympic gold, and the Academy is her response to the structural reasons that statistic exists. Her speaking work draws on both strands: the discipline of competing when the body is unreliable, and the institutional work of changing who gets to be in the room at elite level. She was appointed OBE in 2022 for services to athletics and cycling, having received the MBE in 2017. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after diagnosis Composure and decision-making under physical and competitive pressure Inclusion as a high-performance capability Building structures for underrepresented talent Mental health and sustained performance Adapting goals when conditions change Ideal for Leadership offsites and conferences focused on resilience, change, or sustained performance under pressure DEI, talent and culture leads working on inclusion in high-performance settings Employee resource groups, particularly disability, race, and wellbeing networks Internal events marking transitions, restructures, or recovery moments Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what resilience looks like as a daily operational practice, not a value statement A reframed view of inclusion as a performance lever, grounded in the KC Academy’s specific work Honest language for talking about mental health and physical limits inside high-pressure teams Renewed confidence in setting ambitious goals when the operating environment is unstable