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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 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 Dave Steele He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot. He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia. Scientific and medical institutions trust him to carry the patient and lived-experience voice, from the National Eye Institute at NIH to a Roche ophthalmology feature and the American Foundation for the Blind. Few speakers on disability reach clinical and research audiences at that level. Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle. He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room. Biography highlights Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016 to 2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week. Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media. Subject of the BBC documentary “The Film I’ll Never See” (BBC Our Lives, 2025). Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind; opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat at NIH (2024). Gave a Special Presentation at the inaugural Personalized RegenMed Forum, hosted by biotech company Cellino in Cambridge, MA, sharing his experience of sight loss through poetry with an audience of regenerative-medicine developers, clinicians and researchers. Performed a commissioned poem at the Paralympic Heritage Flame Lighting Ceremony at Stoke Mandeville, birthplace of the Paralympic movement, ahead of Paris 2024. Trustee of Henshaws; featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam. Biography Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on. Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and mounting debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed. The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia, and he has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That reach is why leading research and clinical institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH in April 2024 at the invitation of its scientific director, and has been featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology. The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and lived experience Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis Accessibility in product, brand and workplace Poetry and storytelling as communication Mental health and identity through chronic illness Patient voice in medical and research settings Ideal for CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes Healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical and ophthalmology audiences (clinicians, researchers and patient-experience teams) wanting an authentic patient voice Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line

Why organisations work with David Allen He speaks from inside the experience, not about it. A person describing decades of OCD, severe health anxiety and depression in their own words does work that a clinician or a policy lead cannot do. He is a trained Lived Experience Practitioner, formally accredited to use personal recovery to support others, and a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign run by the charity Mind. The mental health talk, “Living with OCD: A Survivor’s Guide”, is autobiographical and practical at the same time: it covers triggers, daily impact and the coping strategies he has built, rather than general awareness messaging. He also offers researched social-history talks on Victorian England and storytelling travel sessions, which makes him a flexible choice for community groups, member associations and after-dinner programmes that want a single speaker for a varied evening. Biography highlights Lived Experience Practitioner working through Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign of the mental health charity Mind. Holds the People’s Champion designation within that movement. Around 15 years as a professional public speaker, with festival appearances at Buxton, Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. Member of the Dickens Fellowship, with a research focus on Victorian social and criminal history. Trained as a solicitor and as a primary school teacher before moving into full-time speaking. Regular speaker on the UK community-association circuit: U3A, Rotary, WI, Townswomen’s Guilds, Probus and 41 Clubs across the south east of England. Biography OCD is one of the most misunderstood common mental health conditions in the workplace. It is treated as a punchline about tidiness, when in clinical reality it is an anxiety disorder that can take hours out of a person’s day. Allen has lived with it since childhood, alongside depression and severe health anxiety, and has built a public talk out of that experience rather than out of theory. The credential that sits behind the talk is specific. After the pandemic, he trained as a Lived Experience Practitioner, the formal route by which people with their own history of mental illness are accredited to support others in recovery. He volunteers as a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the local volunteer network that took over from the national Time to Change campaign run by Mind in 2022. That gives the OCD talk a grounding in something more than personal disclosure. The wider speaking career runs alongside that work. Allen trained as a solicitor and then as a primary school teacher before going full-time on the speaking circuit, where he has now been for around fifteen years. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship and writes and performs researched talks on Victorian England, on Charles Dickens specifically, and on his own bicycle and hitchhiking journeys across Europe and North Africa. He has performed at Buxton Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. For a corporate audience, the value is narrow and specific: a first-person account of severe OCD, delivered by someone who has spent years working out how to talk about it in a room of strangers. For community associations, member groups and festival programmes, the range widens into Victorian history and travel storytelling. Key speaking topics Living with OCD and severe health anxiety Lived-experience mental health advocacy Stigma and mental illness in everyday life Victorian social history Charles Dickens and his world Long-distance bicycle and hitchhiking travel Ideal for Employee wellbeing programmes, mental health awareness weeks and stigma-reduction events inside large employers Healthcare and nursing audiences looking for a lived-experience voice alongside clinical content U3As, Rotary Clubs, WIs, Probus groups, 41 Clubs and similar community associations Literary festivals, history societies and after-dinner programmes booking storytelling sessions Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of what OCD looks like from the inside, beyond the cultural shorthand Specific coping strategies that one person has developed over decades of living with anxiety Permission to talk about mental health more openly inside teams and families For history audiences, a researched and entertaining window into Victorian social life

Why organisations work with David Woods Bartley Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the three QPR steps directly in his talks, so a manager leaves knowing how to ask the question and make the referral. Lived experience of severe depression, a suicide attempt at the Foresthill Bridge, and recovery through electroconvulsive therapy. The story carries the stigma-breaking weight that clinical presenters rarely match. Named 2021 Mental Health Champion by the Steinberg Institute, a credential anchored to a recognised advocacy body rather than bureau superlatives. Two TEDx talks in active distribution, including “How connection saved my life” on TED.com, which gives programme leads a vetted preview of voice and content before booking. Works across corporate, public sector, healthcare, education, and law enforcement audiences. Material has been delivered to sheriff’s departments, universities, and veterans’ health services, not only corporate wellness events. Biography highlights 2021 Mental Health Champion, Steinberg Institute. Two TEDx speaker: “How connection saved my life” (TEDxLosGatos) and “How to save a life by sitting down” (TEDxFolsom). Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer); certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. Member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, International Association for Youth Mental Health, National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. Founder and former director of a nationally recognised animal sanctuary that housed up to 100 special-needs animals. Designer of “A Lesson in Mental Health,” a whole-school programme that trains students, teachers, and parents in a single day. Biography Most organisations have a mental health policy. Very few have trained the average manager to spot a colleague in distress and say something that helps. That gap is the work David Woods Bartley has been doing for over a decade, in more than 800 sessions across the United States, Canada, Central America, and India. His authority rests on two things that rarely appear together. The first is lived experience: a fight with treatment-resistant depression that took him to the edge of the Foresthill Bridge, and a recovery that included electroconvulsive therapy and the human connection that, in his telling, kept him alive long enough to get there. The second is formal training. He is trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the QPR steps in his sessions, so audiences leave with a protocol they can put to use. The Steinberg Institute named him a 2021 Mental Health Champion. His two TEDx talks, “How connection saved my life” at TEDxLosGatos and “How to save a life by sitting down” at TEDxFolsom, are in active distribution on TED and YouTube. He is a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the International Association for Youth Mental Health, the National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. What he gives a room is a practical shift. Bartley uses a framework he calls Whole Person Care, animal stories drawn from two decades running a sanctuary, and the blunt honesty of someone who has stood on the bridge. Managers walk out knowing how to sit down next to a colleague who is not alright, ask a direct question, and get them to the next step. Key speaking topics Suicide prevention and the QPR approach Workplace mental health literacy Psychological safety and supportive conversations Human connection and isolation Whole Person Care Lived experience of depression and recovery Mental health education for schools and communities Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people function leaders building mental health capability across a workforce Line managers, team leaders, and EAP programme owners responsible for early intervention Public sector, healthcare, and education leaders tasked with staff and community mental health Law enforcement, first responder, and veterans’ services leadership addressing occupational risk Audience outcomes A named protocol for asking direct questions when a colleague shows signs of distress, drawn from the QPR method. Language for starting mental health conversations without fearing the wrong word. A clearer sense of what recovery actually looks like, from someone who has been through severe depression and ECT. Reduced stigma around suicide as a topic that can be raised at work, supported by specific recognition cues and response steps. A self-care and wellness planning frame managers can apply to themselves before applying it to a team.

Why organisations work with Dean Ashton A first-person account of how an elite career ends without warning, and what it takes to construct a credible second one from scratch in a watched, public arena. Direct experience of performing under scrutiny, from Premier League football and an FA Cup final to live broadcast on talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV and Quest, is useful to leaders whose own work has become more publicly observed. A grounded, unvarnished voice on mental health, injury and identity loss, drawn from being told at 26 that the work he had trained his life for was over. An after-dinner presence that lifts the energy of a room, with material a sports-literate UK audience recognises immediately: Crewe academy, Norwich, the £7.25m move to West Ham, the 2006 cup final, the England debut against Trinidad & Tobago. Biography highlights Capped by England at the senior level; made his debut against Trinidad & Tobago on 1 June 2008. Signed by West Ham United from Norwich City in January 2006 for a then club-record £7.25m fee. Scored in the 3-3 FA Cup final against Liverpool in May 2006. Career ended in December 2009 at age 26 following a long-term ankle injury sustained in England training in August 2006. Product of the Crewe Alexandra academy under Dario Gradi; scored 74 goals in 177 appearances for the club. Now a pundit and co-commentator across talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV, Premier League TV and The EFL Show on Quest. Biography Ashton was a £7.25m centre-forward, an FA Cup final scorer, and an England international by the time he was 24. By 26, he was retired. The ankle injury sustained in an England training session in August 2006 never fully healed, and in December 2009, West Ham confirmed publicly what he had been trying to outrun for three years. The interesting part of the story for organisations is what came next. The default path for a player in that position is a quiet drift out of public life. Ashton instead built a second career inside the same scrutiny he had been performing in as a player, this time as a broadcaster, working as a pundit and co-commentator across talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV, Premier League TV and The EFL Show on Quest. That arc is the substance of his speaking work. The material is not abstract resilience theory. It is a specific account of identity loss at 26, the practical mechanics of rebuilding professional credibility in a new field, and the discipline of performing under live scrutiny when the result is judged in public. He talks honestly about mental health, public pressure and the version of yourself you have to construct when the original plan is gone. For a UK corporate audience, Ashton sits at the intersection of after-dinner sports speaker and credible voice on dealing with career shock. The football material gives the room an immediate point of entry. The reinvention material is what a leadership audience actually takes away. Key speaking topics Resilience after career-ending shock Reinvention and second careers Performing under public scrutiny Mental health and identity in elite performance environments Team culture and high performance in professional sport After-dinner sports speaking and Premier League punditry Ideal for HR, leadership and wellbeing conferences where the brief calls for an honest first-person voice on resilience and mental health. Sales kick-offs, awards dinners and partner events are looking for a UK sports-literate after-dinner speaker with substance behind the anecdotes. Internal leadership offsites addressing change fatigue, role loss after restructure, or the reset that follows a strategic shock. Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what resilience looks like in practice when the original plan is no longer available. A more honest internal vocabulary for talking about mental health, identity and pressure at senior levels. A reference point for thinking about career reinvention as a deliberate, constructed process rather than a recovery story. An engaged, sports-literate room, set up well for the rest of the agenda.

Why organisations work with Dona Sarkar She runs the program that lets enterprise developers extend Microsoft Copilot onto their own data, so the practical content of her sessions is what she ships day-to-day at Microsoft, not commentary about it. She brings a track record of building global technical communities at scale, including the Windows Insider Program of around 20 million members, which informs how she advises leaders on adoption inside large workforces. Her work on accessibility and inclusive AI gives organisations a substantive position on responsible AI that goes beyond policy statements into product design and developer practice. She codifies her experience into named frameworks her audiences can use, including the SHENANIGANS approach to solving business problems and a structured method for tackling non-promotable work. She speaks credibly to the human side of AI transformation, from imposter syndrome in technical careers to mental health conversations at work, drawing on her own published books rather than borrowed material. Biography highlights Chief Troublemaker, Microsoft AI and Copilot Extensibility Program. Former Director of Technology for Microsoft Accessibility, leading inclusive design across the company. Led the Windows Insider Program from 2016 to 2019, a global community of around 20 million members. Author of The Imposter Syndrome Banishing Spell, Model 47: A Startup Storybook and You Had Me at Hello World, alongside three young-adult novels published by Harper Collins. Featured in Fast Company’s 100 Most Productive People; profiled in Fast Company and Microsoft’s own publications. Founder of Prima Dona, an ethical fashion line based in Seattle, alongside her engineering career. Biography Microsoft built Copilot, then had to answer the harder question: how do enterprises actually deploy generative AI on their own data, inside their own workflows, without losing the accessibility, governance and developer discipline that make software trustworthy. That is the program Dona Sarkar runs as Chief Troublemaker for Microsoft’s AI and Copilot Extensibility Program, working directly with the developers and IT leaders responsible for moving AI from pilot to production. Before this remit she was Director of Technology for Microsoft Accessibility, a role that shaped her view that inclusive design is engineering, not policy. She led the Windows Insider Program from 2016 to 2019, growing it into a global community of around 20 million members who tested early Windows builds, and she has run developer advocacy across HoloLens and Power Platform. Each of those roles required her to translate engineering decisions for non-technical leaders and to turn vague ambitions into concrete adoption. Outside Microsoft she has published books on imposter syndrome, startup methodology and mentorship, alongside three young-adult novels with Harper Collins. She founded Prima Dona, an ethical fashion line in Seattle, and has coached founders in emerging markets in East and West Africa. Fast Company has named her one of its 100 Most Productive People and profiled her approach to managing complex parallel careers. For senior buyers, her value is operational credibility on the enterprise AI question boards keep asking. She is not describing a market she observes. She runs the platform inside it. Key speaking topics Enterprise generative AI and Copilot deployment Inclusive AI and accessibility in product design Developer community and adoption at scale The future of work alongside AI agents Innovation frameworks for large organisations Career advancement and non-promotable work Mental health and imposter syndrome in technical careers Ideal for CIOs, CTOs and chief data officers planning enterprise AI deployment CHROs and heads of talent designing workforces around AI capability Heads of accessibility, DEI and responsible AI Engineering and developer relations leaders building internal AI fluency Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Copilot and generative AI add operating value on proprietary data, and where they do not A working vocabulary for inclusive AI that connects accessibility decisions to product and engineering practice Named frameworks for innovation and career progression that audiences can apply inside their teams A more honest conversation about imposter syndrome, mental health and burnout in technical organisations A read on Microsoft’s direction of travel on Copilot extensibility from someone responsible for delivering it

Why organisations work with Bella Smith Clinical authority that holds up in the room. Twenty years as an NHS GP partner means the advice survives challenge from medical, HR and legal stakeholders alike. Operator credentials, not only commentary. Through The Well HQ she has built women’s health frameworks for clients including the FA and corporate employers, translating physiology into policy. A Sunday Times bestselling co-author of The Female Body Bible, the most cited recent reference book on female-specific health and performance in the UK market. Ambassador status with The Eve Appeal gives her standing on gynaecological health that goes beyond menopause, the topic most women’s health speakers default to. Direct, plain-language register. Audiences leave with vocabulary they can use the next day, in policy drafting, line-management conversations and personal decisions. Biography highlights NHS GP partner with over 20 years of clinical experience, specialising in women’s health Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of The Well HQ, a women’s health consultancy Co-author of The Female Body Bible (Penguin, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller Ambassador for The Eve Appeal, the UK gynaecological cancer charity Media spokesperson as The Digital GP, with appearances on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio Suffolk and Sky News Co-led the design of an integrated female health framework across the Women’s Super League, the National Leagues and grassroots football Biography Women’s health has spent a decade being talked about and rarely being built into how organisations actually operate. Policies on menopause sit in handbooks no manager reads. Wellness budgets fund webinars that leave behavioural change untouched. The work of moving from sentiment to system is technical, and it is what Bella Smith does. She has been an NHS GP partner in Suffolk for over twenty years, with a clinical specialism in women’s health. That practice is the source of the directness audiences notice first. The advice is what she would give in a consultation, stripped of corporate hedging. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with sports scientist Dr Emma Ross and coach Baz Moffat. The consultancy works with employers and sports bodies to translate female physiology into policy, manager training and culture. Their work with the FA produced an integrated female health framework spanning the Women’s Super League, National Leagues and grassroots football, the first of its kind. The Female Body Bible, co-authored with Ross and Moffat and published by Penguin in 2023, became a Sunday Times bestseller. It is now the reference text many HR teams use when they begin to take this seriously. As an ambassador for The Eve Appeal and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and Sky News, she has spent years closing the gap between clinical knowledge and public conversation. Inside organisations, that gap is where most policy fails. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Menopause policy and management Reproductive and gynaecological health Female physiology and performance Stress and lifestyle medicine Health communication and taboo Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and reward leads building or auditing women’s health policy Line manager and leadership audiences who need clinical fluency, not slogans Sports, performance and athlete-welfare organisations Employee resource groups and women’s networks running serious internal programming Audience outcomes A clinical baseline on menopause, reproductive health and female physiology that survives scrutiny Vocabulary and questions managers can use in their next one-to-one A clear view of where current workplace policy falls short, and what good looks like Practical reference points for HR teams designing or revising women’s health provision

Why organisations work with David Patton His research with Professor David Best, published in the Journal of Drug Issues, makes a clean argument that pull factors and turning points, not pain or crisis, drive sustained behavioural change. That reframes how leaders think about wellbeing, resilience and post-crisis recovery. He runs New Central Media, the platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, a book with a foreword by Dame Carol Black that was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review. That is a working track record of turning research into policy traction. His material is built with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, which gives audiences a level of human authenticity that conventional behaviour-change keynotes cannot match. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works internationally with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities, so he speaks with the authority of someone whose research is taken seriously by policymakers, not only by academics. His framework on connection, collaboration, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation and burnout is directly transferable to corporate culture, employee wellbeing and engagement work. Biography highlights Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research PhD, University of Sheffield; Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Founder and Director of New Central Media; lead of Recovery Atlas, a global participatory photovoice archive Co-author with Professor David Best of peer-reviewed work on pull factors and turning points in addiction recovery, published in the Journal of Drug Issues Editor and contributor to Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations Has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, including a 2023 manifesto on stigma in addiction recovery Former Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge; principal investigator on Home Office, ESRC, NIHR and Big Lottery Fund projects Biography The dominant assumption in behaviour-change psychology is that people change when the pain gets bad enough. Research published in the Journal of Drug Issues by David Patton and David Best argues the opposite. Across the life narratives of people in long-term addiction recovery, the consistent driver is not crisis but a pull toward something better: meaning, hope, community, a turning point. That finding moves the conversation about recovery, resilience and wellbeing onto a different footing. Patton is Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, based in the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research. His work is built directly with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, using participatory methods including photovoice and digital storytelling. The international expression of that approach is Recovery Atlas, a global archive linked to recovery communities worldwide. He also runs New Central Media, the publishing platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations. The prison volume, with a foreword by Dame Carol Black, was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review of prison-based recovery. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities on projects across Latin America and Africa. For organisations rethinking employee wellbeing, post-crisis resilience or behavioural change at scale, Patton brings something specific: an evidence base on what actually sustains change in the hardest cases, drawn from people whose lives depended on getting it right. The transfer into corporate culture, talent and engagement strategy is direct. Key speaking topics Pull factors and turning points in behavioural change Addiction recovery and the science of human flourishing Connection, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation Lived experience and participatory research Stigma, marginalisation and inclusion Drug policy reform and the role of recovery communities Wellbeing and resilience after crisis Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing mental health, recovery and resilience strategy Leadership teams in healthcare, criminal justice, social care and the third sector Conferences on the future of work, wellbeing, inclusion and human flourishing Policy and public sector audiences working on drug policy, prisons and rehabilitation Audience outcomes A research-grounded reframing of what sustains behavioural change, drawn from peer-reviewed work Specific language for talking about pull factors, turning points and recovery capital inside an organisation Direct insight into how lived experience can be built into research, policy and programme design A clearer view of how connection, community and meaning operate as antidotes to burnout and disengagement Reference material from Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison and related publications for follow-up

Why organisations work with Elaine Kasket She is one of the few cyberpsychologists in Europe who is also a clinically trained, HCPC-registered counselling psychologist, which means her advice on digital wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not commentary. Her work covers technology across the full lifespan, from “sharenting” to digital afterlife, which gives leaders a coherent framework for thinking about the employee, the customer, and the citizen as the same person. She wrote the definitive trade book on digital death and digital legacy, All the Ghosts in the Machine, and now leads on the psychology of AI companions and grief bots, an area few executive audiences have heard explained well. She has consulted to organisations including Netflix, Santander, Deloitte, the NHS and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, so the work translates from research into board-level conversations about AI, attention and surveillance. Her newest book, Reset, gives leadership teams a practical vocabulary for agency over technology rather than the usual digital detox framing, which most senior buyers find too thin for adult professional audiences. Biography highlights BPS-Chartered Psychologist and HCPC-Registered Counselling Psychologist; Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath; formerly Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton Author of Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) and All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019) TEDx Oxford speaker; featured expert in the Netflix documentary The Future Of: Life After Death Regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, CNN, BBC Ideas, The Guardian, New Scientist, Psychology Today and Stylist Keynote engagements include Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, Royal Society of Medicine, Congreso Futuro, re:publica and the International Baccalaureate global conference Biography Most organisations talk about digital wellbeing in the language of the wellness industry: detoxes, screen-time apps, mindful breathing. The actual psychological problem is structural. Attention is being extracted, identity is being recorded, and the costs are showing up in engagement, retention and clinical mental health caseloads. That gap between the corporate vocabulary and the clinical reality is the space Elaine Kasket works in. She trained as a counselling psychologist before cyberpsychology was a discipline, and is registered with the HCPC alongside her chartered psychologist status with the British Psychological Society. That clinical grounding is what separates her commentary from the commentary economy around technology. She led the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London, was Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton for five years, and is now Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. Her first trade book, All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019), opened a serious public conversation about digital legacy: what happens to your data, your accounts and your image when you die, and what that means for the people who outlive you. Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) extends the argument across the full lifespan, from “digital gestation” and sharenting to surveillance, AI relationships and the digital afterlife. For leadership audiences, she connects four conversations executives often run as separate problems: employee mental health, AI adoption, brand trust and data governance. Her recent keynotes for Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, the Royal Society of Medicine and Congreso Futuro have moved leaders away from “digital detox” framing and toward agency, the design question of how a workforce uses AI without losing the cognitive and relational ground organisations actually run on. Key speaking topics Cyberpsychology and digital wellbeing Psychology of AI adoption at work AI companions, grief bots and the future of human connection Digital legacy, data privacy and digital afterlife Attention, surveillance and the extractive attention economy Technology across the lifespan, from sharenting to digital afterlives Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers designing wellbeing, engagement and AI-readiness programmes Chief AI Officers and transformation leads embedding AI into employee experience and customer-facing tools Brand, marketing and communications leadership teams working on trust, privacy and AI narratives Boards and risk committees considering the human and reputational dimensions of data, surveillance and AI Audience outcomes A clinically grounded read on what technology is actually doing to attention, identity and relationships at work A vocabulary for talking about digital wellbeing that holds up in front of clinicians, regulators and senior employees A clearer view of where AI companions, grief bots and synthetic relationships intersect with workforce mental health and brand risk A practical sense of what individual and organisational agency look like in an extractive attention economy A framework that connects digital legacy, data governance and employee trust as one coherent leadership question