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Why organisations work with Chester Elton His frameworks are grounded in the largest empirical base of any comparable culture speaker: studies of more than one million working adults, anchored by a 300,000-person study conducted with Towers Watson for All In – giving boards and HR leaders data they can defend internally. The Carrot Principle and Anxiety at Work sit at opposite ends of the engagement challenge; his ability to address both recognition strategy and workplace anxiety within a single coherent body of work means organisations do not need two different conversations. As a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, his executive coaching practice carries independent third-party validation that extends his value beyond the main stage. His work provides a specific, operational diagnosis – the breakdown between what leaders say they value and what managers actually do day to day – and a toolkit that works at every level of the organisation, not just the C-suite. Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts and consistently ranked among the world’s top organisational culture authorities by Global Gurus (2017–2025), his standing is validated by named external bodies rather than self-reported credentials. Biography highlights Co-author of five New York Times bestselling books, including The Carrot Principle, All In, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work (Harper Business), co-written with Adrian Gostick Books sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide; translated into more than 30 languages Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership (SCL) Certified Executive Coach Global Gurus research organisation: ranked consistently among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts, 2017–2025 Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts (October 2025) Co-founder, The Culture Works, a global leadership and culture consultancy Media: NBC Today, CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC; quoted in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, Financial Times Biography Culture does not fail organisations because leaders lack values. It fails because most managers do not know how to make those values visible in the daily behaviours of their teams. Chester Elton has spent more than two decades building the research base that explains this gap, and identifying what high-performing organisations do differently. His work draws on studies of more than one million working adults, compiled across several large-scale research partnerships. The Carrot Principle established the direct, measurable link between purposeful employee recognition and business outcomes including retention, productivity, and customer satisfaction. All In, produced with research firm Towers Watson, drew on a 300,000-person study to identify the seven practices that generate genuine organisational buy-in. Anxiety at Work – published by Harper Business and the most recent of his five New York Times bestsellers – addressed the other side of the same equation: what happens when uncertainty goes unmanaged and workplace anxiety erodes the culture leaders worked to build. Taken together, these books form one of the most evidence-based frameworks available to executives on how culture is created, sustained, and recovered. Elton is a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner, a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, and a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership certified executive coach. Global Gurus has ranked him among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts every year from 2017 to 2025. Inc. named him to its 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts list. He is co-founder of The Culture Works and has consulted with organisations including American Express, The World Bank, and the New Jersey Devils. What distinguishes him is the range the research covers. Most speakers in this space address either motivation or stress. Elton’s body of work addresses both, and the connection between them. Key speaking topics Employee recognition and culture-building Organisational culture and high-performance teams Workplace anxiety and psychological safety Leading with gratitude Employee engagement strategy Multigenerational workforce leadership Manager capability and team trust Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing, resetting, or embedding organisational culture programmes CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating workforce anxiety, change, or post-transformation culture repair Talent and leadership development functions seeking research-grounded frameworks for manager effectiveness HR and management associations and industry conferences where practitioner credibility and data-backed content are audience expectations Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where culture commitment breaks down between leadership intent and frontline management behaviour Recognition practices tied directly to engagement and retention outcomes, grounded in large-scale empirical research rather than anecdote Practical strategies for identifying workplace anxiety early – before it affects team performance, absenteeism, or attrition A shared organisational vocabulary for discussing culture, gratitude, and psychological safety in operational rather than abstract terms Immediate, actionable steps that managers at any level can apply to strengthen trust and discretionary effort within their teams

Why organisations work with Chris Baréz-Brown Twenty-five years working the commercial creativity brief as an operator, first agency-side and then running his own firm. The view is from inside the work, not from a research perch. Five Penguin titles set out a coherent published thesis on creativity as a learnable behaviour, so buyers can read the argument before booking the room. His Unilever programme was written up in Harvard Business Review, a rare credential in this territory. He ships a behaviour-change tool with the keynote. TiO and the Elvis Energy Lab let the room run the method the next morning, not just remember the speech. A repeat-booking record on the brand side that other creativity speakers don’t match. Biography highlights Founder of Upping Your Elvis, a creativity and energy consultancy working with global brands. Former director at innovation consultancy ?What If!, leading offices in London, New York and Sydney. Author of five Penguin books: Shine, Wake Up!, Free!, How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas, and Upping Your Elvis. Penguin’s bestselling author in 2014. Creator of TiO, a workplace mental wellbeing app with research from the University of Bristol. Featured in Harvard Business Review for the impact of his work with Unilever. Media appearances include the BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Fast Company and Calm. Biography Most creativity programmes inside large organisations fail at the same point. The room leaves energised, the workstreams revert, and within a quarter the operating model has absorbed the change. The problem is rarely a shortage of ideas. It is the absence of a daily practice that lets ordinary employees produce original work under commercial pressure. This is the territory Chris Baréz-Brown has worked in for twenty-five years. He spent over a decade as a director at ?What If!, the innovation consultancy, running the business across London, New York and Sydney before founding Upping Your Elvis in 2010. The premise of the firm is that human energy, not strategy decks, is the variable that determines whether a creative culture survives contact with the operating model. His five Penguin titles, including the bestseller Upping Your Elvis, set out a body of practice that treats creativity as a learnable behaviour rather than a personality trait. The work has run inside Nike, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Unilever, Roche, Microsoft and the WPP agency network on the brand side, with Harvard Business Review featuring the impact of the Unilever programme. What sets the offer apart from a standard creativity keynote is the post-event mechanism. Through TiO, an app developed with research from the University of Bristol, and the Elvis Energy Lab, audiences leave with a method they can run themselves. The thesis underneath all of it is commercial: brave thinking is a function of human state, and human state can be designed for. Key speaking topics Commercial creativity and innovation practice Energy management and human performance at work Mental and emotional wellbeing in high-pressure roles Leadership of creative teams Behaviour change and habit design inside organisations Brand-side innovation case studies Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders looking to lift creative output across marketing organisations Heads of innovation and R&D in consumer-facing businesses Senior HR and people leaders responsible for engagement and wellbeing strategy Leadership offsites where the brief is renewal of energy and creative confidence, not a strategy refresh Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as daily practice, not occasional inspiration Specific behavioural tools, including TiO, that audiences can use the next morning A sharper read on how their own energy state is shaping the quality of their commercial decisions Case material on what holds up when a creative culture meets the operating model

Why organisations work with Chrissy May She speaks to the personal interior of high performers, the part that wellness perks and engagement surveys do not reach, drawing on two decades of one-to-one work with founders, executives and athletes. Her practice integrates hypnotherapy, somatic work and subconscious reprogramming through Sacred Shift Therapy, so the material is grounded in a specific therapeutic method rather than general motivational content. Audiences hear from someone who has built and run businesses across health, wellness and real estate, not a speaker whose only product is the talk itself. Her book Aligned + Alive and the podcast of the same name give organisers a clear, public body of work that audiences can engage with before and after the session. Biography highlights Author, ALIGNED + ALIVE: Your Guide to Clarity, Self-Love, and Living with Purpose. Host, Aligned + Alive podcast, distributed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Founder, Sacred Shift Therapy and Sacred Experiences retreats. Founder of CMAY Performance, with work spanning elite athletes and survivors of domestic violence. Over 20 years in health and wellness; concurrent real-estate advisory practice based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Former competitive figure skater and fitness champion. Biography Performance at senior levels increasingly comes with a private cost that organisations do not see. Founders, executives and high-output professionals function publicly while quietly running low on clarity, energy and meaning. Chrissy May has spent more than twenty years working with that interior layer. Her practice, Sacred Shift Therapy, draws on transformational hypnotherapy, somatic work and subconscious reprogramming. The method is specific, not generalised motivation. Her retreat business, Sacred Experiences, applies the same approach to immersive group settings for leaders who need a reset rather than another training programme. She came to this work through performance environments. She competed as a figure skater and fitness champion before building CMAY Performance, which trained elite athletes and supported survivors of domestic violence. She has since combined the therapeutic practice with a long-running real-estate advisory career in Arizona, working in proximity to the entrepreneurial clients she also coaches. Her book Aligned + Alive: Your Guide to Clarity, Self-Love, and Living with Purpose and the podcast of the same name extend that practice to a wider audience. Both are built around the same thesis: that the people who appear most capable are often the ones most in need of permission to slow down, recover and choose what they actually want next. Key speaking topics Personal recovery from burnout Clarity and purpose for high achievers Mindset and subconscious reprogramming Inner work behind sustained performance Resilience after personal setback Authenticity and self-leadership Ideal for Founder and entrepreneur communities convening for offsites or retreats Sales, advisory and client-facing teams in high-output industries Women’s leadership and high-performer networks Personal-development and wellbeing programmes inside professional services and real estate Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where they are running on reserves and what is depleting them A specific therapeutic vocabulary for the difference between motivation, mindset and subconscious patterns Permission and language to slow down without losing professional ambition Practical exercises drawn from hypnotherapy and somatic work that they can use after the session

Why organisations work with Christian Jessen Clinical authority paired with a household-name broadcast platform. GMC-registered, UCL-trained, and the public face of Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies for eight years, which gives him a rare ability to hold a corporate audience on subjects most staff avoid. Substantive expertise in sexual health, HIV and LGBT+ health equity, including work in Kenya and Uganda and an appointment as National HIV Testing Week Ambassador in 2015. Useful when inclusion and health intersect with real clinical content. First-person testimony on depression, bulimia and muscle dysmorphia, delivered without performance. Audiences hear from a clinician who has been the patient, which moves the conversation past awareness scripts. A communication style built over two decades of primetime television: plain language, comfort with discomfort, no euphemism. The right register for a room where leaders have been told mental health matters but do not know what to say next. Biography highlights MBBS, University College London (2001). MSc in sexual health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Co-presenter, Embarrassing Bodies, Channel 4 (2007 to 2015), alongside Pixie McKenna and Dawn Harper. Co-presenter, Supersize vs Superskinny, Channel 4 (2008 to 2014). National HIV Testing Week Ambassador, 2015. Author of Can I Just Ask? (2010) and a three-book Scholastic series for adolescents covering growing up, sensitive subjects and the self. Patron of Humanists UK. Biography Stigma is the reason health conversations stall inside organisations. People know what they should disclose, and they know what their employer says it supports, and they still do not speak. Christian Jessen has spent two decades working at the point where that silence breaks, first as a clinician in sexual health and infectious disease, then as the face of Channel 4’s most successful health franchise. The medical training is substantive. UCL for the MBBS in 2001, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for an MSc in sexual health, with field experience on HIV and malaria in Kenya and Uganda. That clinical grounding ran through eight years co-presenting Embarrassing Bodies and six years on Supersize vs Superskinny, where the production worked because the doctor on screen was a doctor, not a presenter playing one. His written work for younger readers, the Scholastic trilogy on growing up and the everyday questions adolescents will not ask aloud, shows the same instinct. Take subjects coded as awkward, name them in plain language, treat the audience as intelligent. The 2015 appointment as National HIV Testing Week Ambassador reflected the same trust in his communication: clinical accuracy without moralising. In corporate rooms the relevance is specific. He has spoken openly about his own experience of depression, bulimia and muscle dysmorphia, which lets him hold a discussion on workplace mental health that does not collapse into either policy summary or personal anecdote. For organisations moving beyond awareness campaigns into harder questions about disclosure, manager capability and clinical literacy, that combination of credentials and lived experience is the value. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Body image and eating disorders Sexual health and LGBT+ health equity Stigma and disclosure in organisational settings Men’s health Health communication and behaviour change Ideal for CHROs, wellbeing leads and chief people officers building substantive mental health programmes DEI and ERG leaders running health-equity sessions, particularly around LGBT+ inclusion Employee Assistance Programme partners and benefits leaders looking for clinical credibility on stage All-staff wellbeing weeks and Mental Health Awareness events that need a clinician, not a motivational act Audience outcomes A clearer line between what wellbeing programmes can do and what clinical support is for Confidence to talk about eating disorders, body dysmorphia and men’s mental health in plain terms at work A working understanding of why stigma persists even where policy support exists A sharper sense of what good disclosure conversations sound like between staff and managers

Why organisations work with Christie Watson Two decades on hospital wards, including paediatric intensive care and resuscitation roles at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’, give her a direct authority on care under pressure that consultants and academics cannot replicate. The Language of Kindness reached number one in the Sunday Times list and stayed in the top ten for five months, evidence that her articulation of care work resonates well beyond a clinical audience. A Costa First Novel Award winner and a UEA professor, she translates the texture of frontline experience into language that lands with senior, sceptical audiences. She offers a serious counterweight to wellness-industry framing: a vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and staff burnout that is grounded in lived practice, not vendor messaging. Biography highlights Author of eight books across fiction and memoir, including Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, The Language of Kindness, The Courage to Care, and Moral Injuries. Costa First Novel Award winner for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away (2011). Sunday Times number one bestseller for The Language of Kindness, with translations in 23 languages. Professor at the University of East Anglia, holding appointments associated with creative writing and medical and health humanities. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of East Anglia. Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation; contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Biography The hardest work in any organisation is usually the work that involves caring for other people, and it is also the work most likely to be reduced to a slogan. Christie Watson spent twenty years inside that reality as a nurse, in paediatric intensive care and as a resuscitation officer at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’. Her writing started inside that experience and has stayed there. The Language of Kindness drew on those two decades and reached number one on the Sunday Times list, where it stayed in the top ten for five months. It has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. Her debut novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2011. Later books, including The Courage to Care and the novel Moral Injuries, continue to sit at the meeting point of medicine, ethics, and ordinary human life. She is a professor at the University of East Anglia, where she completed her own MA in creative writing and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2018. She is a patron of the RCN Foundation and a contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Her standing inside nursing and outside it is unusual and gives her a hearing in rooms that rarely listen to the same voice. For senior audiences, she offers something specific. A way of talking about compassion, moral injury, and staff wellbeing that does not rely on borrowed corporate framing, and a sense of what care actually costs the people who provide it. Key speaking topics Compassion and care in high-pressure organisations Moral injury and burnout in frontline workforces Storytelling as a tool for organisational understanding Mental health and wellbeing beyond the wellness industry The lived reality of healthcare and caring professions Kindness as an institutional discipline Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and wellbeing leads in organisations with frontline or caring workforces Healthcare boards, NHS leadership, and clinical executive teams Conferences on workplace mental health, employee experience, and the future of work in human-intensive sectors Universities, professional bodies, and membership organisations addressing the future of caring professions Audience outcomes A more honest vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and burnout, grounded in twenty years of frontline practice A sharper sense of why standard wellbeing programmes underperform with fatigued workforces An authentic, first-person account that senior audiences remember and quote afterwards A reframing of care as a serious institutional practice, not a soft attribute

Why organisations work with Clive Branson He gives wellbeing and safety teams something internal communications cannot produce: an unsentimental first-person account of suicidal crisis and psychiatric admission, delivered by someone who spent seventeen years on the employer side of workplace duty-of-care conversations. His professional background in Ministry of Defence industrial relations means he speaks the language of HR, health and safety, and line managers rather than clinical or motivational language. He carries three concurrent diagnoses, Motor Neurone Disease, Stage Two prostate cancer, and acute anxiety, and talks about functioning through them rather than recovering from them. Audiences dealing with long-term illness in colleagues recognise the reality he describes. He has been trusted inside HM Prison Service settings as well as corporate audiences such as Network Rail, Ecolab and Guy Carpenter, which tells a booker he holds a room across very different registers. Biography highlights Three years Royal Air Force service, followed by seventeen years in UK Ministry of Defence Industrial Relations. Founded and ran a health and safety consultancy before health challenges forced him to step back. Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in late 2017 and subsequently with Stage Two prostate cancer. Seven-week inpatient admission across two psychiatric hospitals for acute anxiety and suicidal ideation. Featured speaker at CarFest in 2022 and 2023. Delivers talks voluntarily inside HM Prison Service and to corporate audiences including Network Rail, Ecolab, Intermediate Capital Group, Guy Carpenter and Tindall Riley. Biography Most corporate mental health content is written by people who have read the research. Branson sat on the other side of the table for nearly two decades. In Ministry of Defence industrial relations he handled the employer-side conversations about employment law, occupational health and the human condition at work, which is to say he knew the policy apparatus before he needed any of it. In late 2017 he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. A Stage Two prostate cancer diagnosis followed. Surgery was ruled out because of the MND. Acute anxiety took over, and he was admitted to two psychiatric hospitals for a combined seven weeks after considering suicide. He lost his father, father-in-law and mother in the same stretch of years. What makes the talk useful to organisations is the combination of that experience with his prior role. He can describe, from the inside, what a line manager’s words actually landed as; why disclosure felt impossible; what policy language reads like to someone in crisis. He is not a clinician and does not claim to be. He is the employee that wellbeing policies are written for, who once wrote them. He works across corporate audiences including Network Rail, Ecolab, Intermediate Capital Group and Guy Carpenter, and volunteers inside HM Prison Service. He was a featured speaker at CarFest in 2022 and 2023 and has discussed resilience on BBC Radio Shropshire. The register adjusts to the room; the underlying account does not soften. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health Resilience under sustained adversity Suicide awareness and crisis disclosure Living and working with long-term illness Line manager communication in duty-of-care conversations Men’s mental health Grief and bereavement at work Ideal for CHROs, wellbeing leads and health and safety directors shaping workforce mental health programmes Line manager and people manager development audiences Employee resource groups focused on men’s health, long-term illness or cancer Organisations marking World Mental Health Day, Men’s Health Week or Mental Health Awareness Week with an internal keynote Audience outcomes A first-person account of what a suicidal crisis and psychiatric admission actually look like, from someone who once wrote workplace policy Specific language cues for line managers, on what helps and what closes a conversation down A reframing of vulnerability at work as something to surface rather than manage around Recognition of how long-term diagnosis reshapes an employee’s relationship with work, useful to colleagues and managers alike

Why organisations work with Conn Bertish He built his resilience method from the inside of a rare adult brain cancer diagnosis, then road-tested it with oncologists at Groote Schuur, Red Cross Children’s Hospital, and Mediclinic before using it on corporate audiences. His Cancer Dojo platform is one of the only resilience tools that has been medically reviewed for use with patients under active treatment, which gives his frameworks a clinical credibility most motivational survivor stories lack. Twenty years inside top-tier creative agencies, including as executive creative director at JWT Cape Town and a member of the JWT Global Creative Council, means he can talk to leadership teams about creativity as an operating method, not a mood. His Cannes Lions record as speaker, judge, and award winner gives marketing and brand organisations a speaker who understands their craft from inside the jury room. He brings two distinct lenses, creative strategy and survival, to the same question: how do teams keep making good decisions when the ground is moving. Biography highlights Founder of Cancer Dojo, a mobile resilience platform for cancer patients, built with a clinical advisory team drawn from Groote Schuur, Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and Mediclinic. Former executive creative director at JWT Cape Town and former member of the JWT Global Creative Council. Cannes Lions speaker, juror, and award winner; has worked with Google, Airbnb, Nestlé, Merck, Standard Chartered, Coca-Cola, and Pfizer. Creator of the Happy People Are Harder To Kill and Never Fight The Ocean talk series, delivered to corporate, clinical, and creative-industry audiences. Creative Director for the Cape Town World Design Capital programme and steering committee partner at the Cape Town Design Network. Survivor of a rare form of adult brain cancer, Red Bull big wave surfer, downhill skateboarder, and winner of South Africa’s first Fear Factor. Biography Cancer Dojo began as a workbook that Bertish made for himself during treatment for a rare adult brain cancer. It became a mobile platform, reviewed by a panel of South African oncologists and psychologists, now used by patients across several countries. That is the unusual provenance of the resilience method he brings to corporate rooms. Before cancer, he spent two decades in advertising. He was executive creative director at JWT Cape Town, sat on the JWT Global Creative Council, and represented South Africa at Cannes Lions as a speaker, juror, and award winner. He walked away from a Chief Creative Officer role to build Cancer Dojo in 2015. Clients now include Google, Airbnb, Nestlé, Merck, Standard Chartered, Coca-Cola, and Pfizer. The talks sit under two series, Happy People Are Harder To Kill and Never Fight The Ocean, and they cover creative leadership under pressure, purpose inside teams, and mental health at work. What he offers a leadership audience is the collision of three things most speakers cannot combine credibly: senior creative-industry craft, clinical-grade resilience content, and a personal history of extreme pressure that stopped being metaphor in 2006. The Red Bull big wave record and the Fear Factor win are true, but the more useful fact is that his resilience curriculum has been signed off by the people treating cancer patients at Groote Schuur. Key speaking topics Creative leadership under pressure Resilience as a teachable organisational skill Mental health and performance at work Purpose-driven teams and collaboration Creativity as a strategic method, not a mood Leading through personal and organisational crisis Ideal for CEOs and executive teams navigating restructuring, layoffs, or sustained uncertainty CHROs and wellbeing leads designing resilience and mental health programmes with clinical credibility Chief Marketing Officers and creative leadership groups, particularly in agencies and brand organisations Leadership offsites where the brief is human performance under real pressure, not inspirational content Audience outcomes A practical vocabulary for talking about resilience as a skill their teams can build, not a personality trait Specific tools drawn from the Cancer Dojo workbook, adapted for workplace use A sharper view of how creative thinking functions as a decision-making method when conditions deteriorate An unusually honest account of what fear, crisis, and recovery look like from inside, useful for leaders holding the room through hard moments Language for connecting purpose, mental health, and performance without slipping into wellness cliché

Why organisations work with Conor Randall A first-person account of stage 4 stomach cancer, metastasis to multiple organs, sixteen rounds of chemotherapy, and a clear October 2023 remission. The story does the persuasion that wellbeing slide decks cannot. He gives leaders permission to open conversations about mental health without flinching, because the audience has just heard someone describe the floor of human experience. He focuses on the daily practice underneath recovery, acceptance, routine, and belief, rather than slogans. Useful for audiences who have heard every wellbeing keynote and stopped listening. He works well as a closing or anchor speaker on conference programmes that need an emotional gear change after dense content. Biography highlights Diagnosed at 29 with stage 4 stomach cancer, with metastasis to the pancreas, gallbladder, and abdominal nodules. Completed sixteen cycles of palliative chemotherapy and a partial stomach bypass before stepping away from conventional treatment in September 2022. Scans in October 2023 confirmed no active cancer remaining. Speaks internationally on resilience, mental and physical wellbeing, mindset, and dealing with setbacks. Publishes long-form writing on his recovery, including the essay “An Unexpected Journey” on Medium, and shares the story across LinkedIn and TikTok. Represented by multiple international speaker bureaux, including Speakers Associates and Kruger Cowne. Biography In November 2021, at 29, a routine investigation returned a stage 4 stomach cancer diagnosis with metastasis to the pancreas, gallbladder, and abdominal nodules. Conor Randall was given an initial prognosis measured in weeks. A partial stomach bypass and sixteen cycles of palliative chemotherapy followed. In September 2022, he stepped away from conventional treatment and turned to holistic methods, working on stress, trauma, belief, and daily routine. He has written that the work was as much psychological as physiological. By October 2023, scans showed no active cancer remaining. He now speaks to corporate audiences, conferences, and leadership gatherings about what the recovery actually required, day by day. The talks centre on acceptance, mindset, routine, and the practical content of resilience when a person is being asked to live differently. He writes long-form on Medium, including the essay “An Unexpected Journey”, and is represented by international speaker bureaux, including Speakers Associates and Kruger Cowne. The value to a serious organisation is narrow but real. He is not a clinician, researcher, or HR practitioner. He is a person who has been to a place most audiences only fear, returned from it, and learned to talk about it in a way leaders can use to open conversations about mental health that would otherwise stay closed. Key speaking topics Resilience and mental wellbeing Mindset and belief under adversity Dealing with setbacks Stress management Acceptance and recovery Daily routine as a wellbeing practice Mental and physical health Ideal for Internal wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness moments, and people-team events Sales kick-offs, all-hands meetings, and conferences seeking an anchor or closing speaker with emotional weight Leadership offsites where senior teams are under sustained pressure Healthcare, life sciences, and patient-facing organisations engaging with the patient perspective Audience outcomes A vivid, first-person reference point for what resilience looks like under extreme conditions Permission to talk openly about mental health and adversity inside a professional setting Practical handholds, acceptance, belief, routine, that audiences can take into their own week An emotional reset on a conference programme that has become dense or transactional

Why organisations work with Daisy Buchanan A working novelist and journalist who teaches creative practice as a wellbeing discipline, not a soft skill. Her DK title Read Yourself Happy makes the case that reading is anxiety management with evidence, not a metaphor. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic and a tutor for Arvon, the UK creative writing charity. Her sessions on imposter syndrome and creative risk are built on a teaching practice, not a single keynote. Host of the literature podcast You’re Booked, with hundreds of long-form author interviews. She brings a tested craft of asking good questions, which transfers directly into panel hosting, internal town halls and leadership Q and A formats. Catalogue of four Sphere novels and three non-fiction books across DK, Headline and Hachette. The credibility is in the working output, not the speaker reel. Broadcast fluency across Woman’s Hour, the Today programme, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Audiences get a speaker who can hold a room, an interviewee and a live moment with the same control. Biography highlights Author of four novels published by Sphere (Little, Brown): Insatiable, Careering, Limelight and Pity Party. Insatiable was longlisted for the CWIP prize. Author of three non-fiction books: How To Be A Grown Up, The Sisterhood, and Read Yourself Happy (DK, 2025), on reading as a tool for anxiety. Host of the You’re Booked podcast, interviewing authors on their reading lives. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic, a writing community on Substack, and creator of the Write Like A Reader course. Tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Journalism in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Grazia (former “Dear Daisy” agony aunt), Marie Claire and The Pool. Broadcast credits include Woman’s Hour, Today, A Good Read, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Guest-presented Booker Prize coverage for BBC News. Biography Wellbeing programmes have multiplied inside organisations over the past decade, and so has the language of psychological safety. Yet many leaders still find their teams cautious, distracted and reluctant to bring a half-formed idea into the room. The missing piece is often the daily practice of imagination, attention and honest conversation, which used to happen on the page and in long forms of reading. Buchanan’s books take this on directly. Read Yourself Happy, published by DK in 2025, argues that the right book habit is a clinically meaningful intervention in anxiety. Her novels with Sphere, including Insatiable, Careering (adapted by BBC Radio 4) and Limelight, examine ambition, money and self-worth in working women’s lives. Her non-fiction includes The Sisterhood and How To Be A Grown Up, both written for readers navigating early career and adult identity. The teaching grew out of the writing. She founded the Creative Confidence Clinic on Substack, tutors for the Arvon Foundation and hosts You’re Booked, a long-running literature podcast in which she conducts the kind of careful, generous author interview that is now uncommon in mainstream culture. The discipline of asking good questions and listening to the answer sits underneath her workplace sessions on imposter syndrome, creative risk and reading for wellbeing. For organisations, the value is in the combination of a working journalist’s discipline, a novelist’s specificity about emotional life, and a broadcaster’s room presence. Audiences leave able to name what they were anxious about, with a small number of usable habits for attention and creative risk. Her broadcast work, from the Today programme to guest-presenting Booker Prize coverage for BBC News, also makes her a credible host for internal events where the speaker needs to land a difficult conversation, not deliver a slide deck. Key speaking topics Reading and book habits as a tool for anxiety and mental health Creative confidence and imposter syndrome at work Asking better questions in leadership and team conversations Storytelling and narrative craft for business communication Women, ambition and the working life Event hosting, panel moderation and author-in-conversation formats Ideal for People, culture and wellbeing leaders looking for a wellbeing voice that is literary and specific rather than clinical or generic Internal communications and L&D teams running sessions on creative confidence, imposter syndrome or storytelling Conference organisers needing a credible host or moderator for an author-in-conversation or fireside format Women’s networks, ERGs and book clubs inside organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of creative confidence that they can practise without leaving their job A small set of reading and attention habits with a defensible link to anxiety reduction Sharper questions to take into one-to-ones, town halls and difficult team conversations Permission to take creative risk in writing, presenting and contributing in meetings A more honest sense of the gap between performed confidence and the real thing

Why organisations work with Dalia Feldheim She led the brand team behind Always #LikeAGirl, a campaign that won 14 Cannes Lions and was named by Forbes as one of the most influential of the decade. She now translates that instinct for cultural change into how leaders run teams. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, with a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg, sets out a specific playbook built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, rooted in both corporate practice and organisational psychology. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, bringing applied positive psychology into the room, not just a founder story. Her credentials are practitioner-plus-clinician: an INSEAD Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, ICF coach accreditation, and training as a psychodynamic group therapist. That range lets her work with executive teams on culture change without oversimplifying. She speaks from inside the marketing craft, which makes her credible with commercial leaders who are suspicious of wellbeing content that does not understand how businesses actually grow. Biography highlights 17 years at Procter and Gamble as a C-suite global marketing executive, leading Always, Tampax and Whisper brand teams. Led the Always #LikeAGirl campaign, 14 Cannes Lions, named by Forbes as one of the most influential campaigns of the decade. Author of “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), foreword by Sheryl Sandberg. Revised paperback “Lead Like a Girl” followed in 2024. Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, teaching the Science of Happiness and Resilience. Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, INSEAD. Certified teacher in the Science of Happiness via the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Founder of Flow Leadership Consultancy and of Uppiness, a positive-psychology game for employees. Featured in McKinsey Author Talks and on TED.com via TEDxJaffaWomen. Biography Always #LikeAGirl rewired how a generation talks about what girls can do. Dalia Feldheim led the brand team behind it at Procter and Gamble. The campaign won 14 Cannes Lions and was later listed by Forbes among the most influential campaigns of the decade. That work sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership today. After 17 years running global marketing for P and G brands including Always, Tampax and Whisper, she retrained as an organisational psychologist at INSEAD and as a certified teacher in the Science of Happiness at the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Flow Leadership Consultancy grew out of that combination. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022, foreword by Sheryl Sandberg) argues that the most durable response to burnout is a leadership style built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, for men and women alike. McKinsey featured her in its Author Talks series on the same thesis. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, and works with executive teams on building cultures that combine psychological safety with commercial ambition. Her TEDxJaffaWomen talk, also titled “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, is published on TED.com. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the four Ps: purpose, perseverance, people-first, positivity Psychological safety and culture change Resilience and the science of happiness at work Women in leadership and gender equality in the workplace Burnout, wellbeing and sustainable performance Purpose-led brand building Ideal for CHROs and heads of leadership development rethinking how they build leaders through sustained pressure. CMOs and brand leaders looking at purpose-led marketing from someone who has led it at scale. Executive teams running culture, DEI or wellbeing programmes that need credibility with commercial leaders. Leadership offsites where the audience wants substance from a practitioner, not motivational content. Audience outcomes A language for leading with empathy and purpose that commercial leaders can actually use with their teams. A clearer view of how psychological safety links to commercial performance, not just engagement scores. Specific positive-psychology practices leaders can apply to manage burnout in themselves and their teams. A sharper read on how purpose shows up in brand and culture, drawn from the Always #LikeAGirl playbook. A framework for rethinking gender and leadership style without reducing the conversation to representation numbers.

Why organisations work with Dan Edwards He has actually led a large public-sector workforce through a sustained cultural rebuild, including pandemic-era disruption, rather than describing the work from a consultancy seat. His talks come with named, road-tested models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts among them, that translate cleanly out of education into any large operational workforce. He is one of the few credible male voices speaking publicly about psychological safety and male mental health in front-line teams, through his MENtal Health talk. The delivery is performer-grade. He has a stand-up and stage background that keeps a senior audience with him through difficult material on wellbeing and morale. His creative business, the Fibre studio space, is built around working creative communities, which gives him direct operating experience of inclusion and creativity as workforce outcomes rather than values statements. Biography highlights Founder of Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, live events, and creative production. Former Principal of a large inner-city primary school in Leicester; prior Executive school leadership roles. Drama teacher background in inner-city secondary schools; entered teaching as a mature trainee via night school after leaving school with two GCSEs. Speaker at the SSAT Primary Conference 2021 on leading a school community through the coronavirus pandemic; international training work includes The Sultan’s School in Oman. Writes ‘Brief Reflections On…’, a newsletter of essays on leadership, culture, and community. Stage performer and writer; “The Sound of Muzak” was nominated for the Audience Choice Award at the 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival. Biography Large workforces have absorbed five years of change, and the cultural cost is now visible in engagement scores, sickness data, and middle-management churn. Edwards spent the worst of that period running a large inner-city primary school in Leicester, holding a staff body and parent community together when the national playbook for leadership had stopped working. That job, and the executive school leadership work that followed, is the substance behind his keynote material. The 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts are not theoretical frameworks; they are the models he built to keep a school improving while wellbeing was collapsing. The translation into corporate settings is direct, because the underlying tension, leading people through sustained pressure without burning them out, is the same. Edwards now runs Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, and live events, built around a working creative community. The work has also travelled, including school culture and leadership training at The Sultan’s School in Oman. Running a live creative space gives him a current operating vantage point on culture and creative discipline, which keeps the talks from drifting into nostalgia for the education world. The delivery is the differentiator at the senior end. A stand-up and theatre background, including a 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival nomination for “The Sound of Muzak”, means his keynotes on staff mental health and male psychological safety land in front of audiences that have heard the standard wellbeing pitch too many times. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and staff wellbeing Authentic and humane leadership Male mental health and psychological safety at work Creativity beyond the creative industries People development and change leadership Inclusion and belonging at work Belonging and engagement in large workforces Ideal for HR and people directors in large, change-fatigued workforces CEOs and executive leadership teams rebuilding culture after restructure or sustained disruption Leadership development programmes and middle-management conferences Public sector, education and healthcare leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between performative wellbeing and substantive cultural change. Two named models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts, applied to their own organisational context. A more honest internal conversation about male mental health and psychological safety on the front line. Specific reference points for leading a workforce through prolonged pressure without losing it.

Why organisations work with Dan Pontefract The Work-Life Bloom model is not a concept – it is a research-backed framework with 12 named factors, four defined employee personas, and a structured approach that leaders can apply to their teams immediately. It gives organisations something specific to replace the work-life balance language they already know is not working. His decade as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS – where he launched the TELUS MBA, the Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90% – means he is not theorising about culture change from the outside. He has built it at scale. His five award-winning books each address a discrete organisational tension with a named model: the three-level purpose sweet spot (The Purpose Effect), the cyclical Open Thinking framework (Open to Think), the nine-lesson caring leadership model (Lead. Care. Win.), and the 12-factor Work-Life Bloom. Audiences leave with named frameworks they can act on, not just ideas they can reflect on. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey (May 2026), positions him on a strategic workforce issue that most boards are not yet treating as a risk: age debt – the growing talent and productivity shortfall created by demographic ageing – and the experience dividend available to organisations that treat older workers as assets. He is one of the few leadership voices in this space with a complete framework already developed. Thinkers50 Radar recognition (Class of 2018) and the Thinkers50 Best New Management Book designation for Work-Life Bloom (2024) provide intellectual validation beyond the speaking circuit. His ideas are credentialed within the management thinking community, not only the keynote market. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Pontefract Group; former Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer, TELUS Author of five award-winning books: Flat Army, The Purpose Effect, Open to Think, Lead. Care. Win., and Work-Life Bloom; sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026 Work-Life Bloom: 2024 Thinkers50 Best New Management Book and Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal, Leadership category Open to Think: 2019 getAbstract International Book of the Year; Lead. Care. Win.: 2022 Nautilus Awards Silver Medal for Leadership Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2018; shortlisted, Thinkers50 Talent Award, 2019 Adjunct Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria Contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review Presented at four TED events; delivered more than 1,000 keynotes across North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East Biography Work-life balance has been the default language of organisational culture for three decades. The data says it is not working. Engagement has flatlined, burnout has become a structural feature of corporate life, and the gap between what leaders promise their people and what they actually deliver keeps widening. The framework itself is the problem. Dan Pontefract has spent two decades inside and alongside organisations asking why the standard tools keep failing. His Work-Life Bloom model, built on primary research with more than 8,000 leaders and team members across 15 countries, maps 12 factors that determine whether people can genuinely flourish in both work and life. The insight spans five award-winning books and gives leaders a practical operating system to act on, not just a new way of describing the problem. That credibility is not theoretical. As Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, Pontefract launched the TELUS MBA, the company’s Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90%. Since founding Pontefract Group in 2018, he has worked with organisations including Salesforce, Nestlé, Manulife, and Virgin Media O2. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026, tackles a challenge most boards have not yet named. As populations age and birth rates fall, organisations are accumulating what he calls age debt – a growing talent and productivity shortfall they are unprepared for. His Rivers, Rocks, and Rubies framework gives leaders a practical approach to treating experience as a competitive asset. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business and a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Thinkers50 named him to the Radar Class of 2018. Key speaking topics Work-life bloom and the conditions for employee flourishing Culture transformation and employee engagement Purpose-driven leadership Caring and human-centred leadership practice The multigenerational workforce and age as a strategic asset Open thinking, decision-making, and organisational performance The future of work Ideal for CHROs and People and Culture leaders redesigning engagement, wellbeing, and culture strategy CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating cultural transformation or significant workforce change Transformation leads and Learning and Development heads building leadership capability at scale Executive teams and boards confronting multigenerational workforce planning and the talent implications of demographic ageing Audience outcomes A named, practical alternative to work-life balance – the Work-Life Bloom model and its 12 factors – that leaders can apply to their teams immediately after the session Clarity on the four work-life personas (blooming, budding, stunted, in renewal) and how to identify and respond to each within their own organisations A framework for three-level purpose alignment – between individual, role, and organisation – drawn from The Purpose Effect model Nine concrete leadership practices from the Lead. Care. Win. model for building caring, high-trust teams in everyday conditions An initial strategic lens on the multigenerational workforce challenge and the actions leaders should be prioritising now