Toppræstation speakers

Why organisations work with Jack Burnell He speaks from the inside of a public failure most leaders only read about: disqualified at Rio 2016 on the finish line, then open about the nightmares and depression that followed. He currently coaches Premier League footballers at Brentford FC on performing in the hardest sustained-pressure environment in European sport, so the material is live, not retrospective. He can translate the texture of elite competition, the silent weeks of preparation, the seconds in which a career-defining decision goes wrong, into language that senior teams recognise from their own work. His credibility is earned rather than claimed: GB’s first named Olympic quota place for the Rio open-water 10km, 2016 European silver, 2017 Abu Dhabi FINA World Cup gold. He is precise about what he is and is not: a performance mindset coach, not a clinical psychologist, which is the right framing for a corporate audience that wants applied insight rather than therapeutic content. Biography highlights Represented Great Britain at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in the 10km open-water marathon swim. Secured GB’s first named quota place for the Rio 2016 Olympic open-water event at the 2015 Kazan World Championships. Silver medal, 10km, 2016 European Open Water Swimming Championships. Gold medal, 2017 FINA Marathon Swimming World Cup, Abu Dhabi. Retired from competitive swimming in April 2021. Performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, working with first-team players on sustaining performance in the Premier League. Biography The Rio 2016 men’s 10km marathon swim ended for Jack Burnell with a second yellow card on the finish straight, a disqualification after what briefly looked like a fifth-place finish, and an unsuccessful appeal. He had arrived in Rio a month after winning European silver in the same event, as the first British swimmer named to Team GB for the open-water Olympic programme. What organisations rarely hear is what happens in the months afterwards. Burnell has spoken publicly about the nightmares and depression that followed, and about the specific, unpredictable triggers that brought the memory back. He did not stop. He returned to the World Championships the following year, won a FINA World Cup gold in Abu Dhabi in 2017, and continued in elite competition until retiring in 2021 after the Doha World Cup. That arc, the public failure, the private struggle, the continued competing, is the substance of what he now takes into rooms. Since retiring he has worked as a performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, introduced to the club by performance psychologist Tom Bates. He is careful about the label. He is not a clinical psychologist. He is a coach whose job is to help players perform in the Premier League, a sustained-pressure environment with few parallels outside elite sport. That live practice is what keeps his speaking content grounded in current work rather than past results. For senior teams the value is specific. Burnell gives organisations a close-range account of how high performers actually cope with repeated high-stakes pressure, how failure lands when it happens in front of the world, and what recovery looks like when the next event is already on the calendar. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained pressure Resilience and recovery after public setback Mental health in high-performance environments Decision-making in high-stakes moments Lessons from elite sport applied to leadership teams The role of performance mindset coaching in professional sport Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads building resilience and mental-health programmes for high-pressure functions Senior leadership teams operating under acute, sustained scrutiny Founders and executive teams at inflection points who need honest language for failure and recovery Sales, trading, and client-facing leaders whose teams work in repeated high-stakes decision cycles Audience outcomes A sharper read on how elite performers actually hold up and where they come apart Honest language for failure and recovery that people can use inside their own teams A working distinction between performance mindset coaching and clinical support, and where each belongs Practical reference points from Premier League football and Olympic open-water swimming that translate into everyday leadership pressure

Why organisations work with Jack McMullen A working actor on a major Apple TV+ and BBC One drama slate, speaking from a career that has run continuously since age ten on the practical mechanics of performing under pressure. Two British Soap Awards as a teenager, including Best Newcomer for Brookside, give him a specific story about early-career exposure, public scrutiny, and recovering from the dip that follows. Mental health and wellbeing content rooted in lived experience of the acting industry, where rejection, instability, and visibility are constant. Reaches audiences that resist clinical or corporate framings. Comfortable as host as well as keynote speaker, useful for awards evenings, leadership retreats, and internal events that need a credible presenter rather than an MC for hire. Biography highlights Two British Soap Awards for Brookside (Channel 4): Best Newcomer and Best On-Screen Partnership with Sarah White. Long-running BBC roles as Tigger Johnson in Grange Hill and Finn Sharkey in Waterloo Road. Feature film Ford v Ferrari / Le Mans ’66 with Matt Damon and Christian Bale. BBC One’s prison drama Time alongside Sean Bean and Stephen Graham. Apple TV+ thriller Hijack opposite Idris Elba. Lead role as Jamie Phelan in BBC One’s This City Is Ours. Biography A career that begins on screen at ten and continues through a person’s mid-thirties is unusual in any industry. Jack McMullen made his television debut on Channel 4’s Brookside in 2002 and won two British Soap Awards before he had left school, including Best Newcomer and Best On-Screen Partnership. The years that followed are the material most working actors talk about least: long stretches of auditions, regional theatre, day-player roles on Casualty, Doctors, and The Bill, alongside a long-running BBC contract as Tigger Johnson in Grange Hill and Finn Sharkey in Waterloo Road. The work was constant. The visibility was not. The latter part of his career has been a steady move into prestige drama. Ford v Ferrari with Matt Damon and Christian Bale; BBC One’s Time opposite Sean Bean and Stephen Graham; Apple TV+’s Hijack with Idris Elba; the lead role of Jamie Phelan in BBC One’s This City Is Ours. His speaking work draws on the operating discipline that sits behind that arc, the mechanics of preparation, the management of nerves and rejection, and the practical experience of staying useful in a profession where most people do not. Where his content is most useful to organisations is in audiences that have stopped responding to standard wellbeing language. He is a working performer, not a coach with a model, and the credibility of what he says comes from the fact that he is still doing the work. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Confidence in high-visibility roles Mental health and wellbeing in performance careers Resilience after early success Motivation and personal discipline Storytelling and business communication Ideal for Internal conferences and away days where audiences have grown tired of corporate wellbeing framings Awards evenings and leadership retreats needing a credible host as well as a speaker Sales, trading, and client-facing teams operating in high-pressure, high-visibility environments Early-career and graduate audiences navigating exposure and rejection Audience outcomes A specific account of how working performers manage nerves, rejection, and exposure across a long career Language for talking about pressure and mental health that audiences who resist clinical framings will engage with A clearer view of confidence as a practised behaviour, not a personality trait An honest perspective on what sustained career performance actually requires when the visibility is uneven

Why organisations work with Jaco van Gass A first-hand account of what happens between catastrophic loss and elite-level performance, from a speaker who has lived both ends of that arc rather than studied them. Demonstrated ability to translate military and Paralympic experience into language senior teams use, with named clients including Investec and the British Forces Foundation. Credibility built on verifiable results, including Paralympic gold at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 and a world record of 3:15.488 in the C3 3000m pursuit, not motivational anecdote. A serving counterweight to the corporate resilience industry: the message is grounded in 11 operations, two Paralympic cycles and a polar expedition, not in a wellness model. Biography highlights Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), 2025 New Year Honours, for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022. Multiple-time Paralympic gold medallist across Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, with podium finishes across pursuit, team sprint and time trial events. World record holder in the C3 3000m individual pursuit, 3:15.488, set during Paris 2024 qualifying. Author of Unequivocal: My Story (2022), published in hardback and ebook; ghostwritten with Eleanor Updegraff. Member of the 2011 Walking with the Wounded North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Walking with the Wounded Everest summit team. Former British Army Parachute Regiment soldier, wounded in action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2009. Biography The 2009 RPG strike in Helmand should have been the end of the story. It removed Jaco van Gass’s left arm at the elbow, collapsed a lung, broke his tibia and put him through 11 operations. The interest, for a senior audience, is what came next, and how. Recovery did not look like a return to baseline. It looked like a rebuilt operating system. Jaco joined Walking with the Wounded for the 2011 North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Everest summit team, before moving into elite para-cycling. By Tokyo 2020, he was a Paralympic gold medallist in the C3 3000m pursuit and the mixed team sprint. By Paris 2024, he had retained the pursuit title with a world record of 3:15.488, having raced a week after being hit by a car in training. The book Unequivocal, published in 2022, gives the spine of the argument: that recovery is a deliberate practice, not a personality trait, and that the gap between “I cannot do this” and “I can do this differently” is closed by specific decisions made under fatigue. He was appointed OBE in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022. For corporate audiences, the value is precise. Jaco is not delivering motivation. He is describing what composure under sustained pressure costs, what it produces, and how it is rebuilt when the original conditions of success no longer apply. Key speaking topics Resilience after catastrophic setback Self-leadership under sustained pressure High-performance recovery and rehabilitation Goal-setting when the original plan is gone Team performance under extreme conditions Disability, inclusion and adaptive performance Ideal for Leadership and senior teams facing prolonged operational pressure or post-crisis recovery HR, talent and wellbeing leads commissioning serious content on resilience rather than wellness theatre Sales conferences and annual kick-offs, where the agenda needs a credible counterpoint to commercial content Veteran, public-sector and emergency-service audiences with a direct cultural bridge to his story Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience grounded in lived recovery, not framework language A clearer view of the difference between motivation and decision-making under fatigue A concrete account of how high-performance teams, military and athletic, function when conditions deteriorate Renewed reference points for goal-setting when circumstances force a full reset

Why organisations work with Jacques Villeneuve He is one of only two drivers in history, alongside Mario Andretti, to have won the Formula One World Championship, the CART IndyCar title, and the Indianapolis 500, which gives him a claim to performance at the highest level that almost no other speaker can match. His rookie Formula One records from 1996 (pole on debut in Australia, four wins, 11 podiums, 78 points) still stand, offering leadership audiences a concrete example of arriving inside an elite team and performing from day one. He brings an insider’s reading of how Formula One organisations align hundreds of engineers, mechanics, and commercial staff around a weekend deadline, useful for leaders managing complex global operations. A decade of analyst work for Sky Sport Italia and broader F1 broadcasting means he is fluent on camera and comfortable translating elite sport into plain language for corporate audiences. He speaks from direct experience of reinvention across disciplines, from CART to F1 to sportscars at Le Mans to NASCAR at Daytona, which grounds conversations about adapting when the rules of your industry change. Biography highlights 1997 Formula One World Drivers’ Champion with Williams, Canada’s first F1 world champion. 1995 Indianapolis 500 winner and 1995 CART IndyCar Series champion with Team Green. 1996 Formula One debut season with Williams: pole in his first race, four victories, 11 podiums, runner-up in the championship. Second overall at the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP alongside Marc Gene and Nicolas Minassian. Competed in the 2022 Daytona 500 with Team Hezeberg, finishing 22nd. F1 analyst for Sky Sport Italia since 2013 and confirmed on the Sky Sports F1 broadcast team for 2026. Biography Very few drivers have ever held the three races that define the sport. Fewer still have held them the way Jacques Villeneuve did, inside three seasons, on two continents, before turning 27. The 1995 Indianapolis 500, the 1995 CART championship, and the 1997 Formula One World Championship sit together on a record that only Mario Andretti also owns. His arrival in Formula One in 1996 is the part that tends to interest leadership audiences. Williams put him in the car, he put it on pole in Melbourne, and he ended the year with four wins, 11 podiums, and a set of rookie records that have not been beaten since. The following season he won the title in a championship-deciding race at Jerez against Michael Schumacher. After Williams, Villeneuve spent five seasons helping build the British American Racing team from a start-up into a Formula One constructor, then went on to contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Peugeot, finishing second in 2008, and later qualified for the 2022 Daytona 500 at the age of 50. The common thread is a driver who kept stepping into unfamiliar machinery and making it work. He now speaks, writes, and broadcasts about the sport, including a long-running analyst role with Sky Sport Italia since 2013 and a confirmed seat on the Sky Sports F1 team for 2026. For corporate audiences, he is useful on the same question that sits behind every race weekend: how leaders and teams hold their standard when the conditions keep changing and the margin for error is measured in tenths. Key speaking topics High-performance culture in elite teams Decision-making under pressure Composure and focus in competitive environments Leadership inside Formula One organisations Safety, risk, and calculated aggression Reinvention across disciplines and formats Teamwork in deadline-driven operations Ideal for Executive leadership teams preparing for high-stakes decision cycles Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership conferences focused on competitive edge Client events hosted by brands with motorsport, engineering, or performance heritage Operations and engineering leadership audiences interested in elite-team execution Audience outcomes A first-person account of how world-class drivers and teams prepare for moments where hesitation is the failure mode. A view from inside Formula One on how large technical organisations align around a weekend deadline they cannot move. Language leaders can take back to their own teams about composure, standards, and the difference between aggression and recklessness. A sharper sense of what sustained high performance actually costs, across a career rather than a single season.

Why organisations work with Jade Jones She is the only athlete to have won Olympic taekwondo gold for Britain, and she did it twice, at 19 and at 23, against the world’s best Korean and Chinese fighters in their own sport. She speaks from a 13-year competitive career at the top of a sport with no margin for off-days, which gives weight when she talks about pressure, preparation, and the psychology of repeat performance. Her trajectory through Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 first-round exits, then a complete sport change to professional boxing at 31, gives her a credible vocabulary on setback and reinvention that most decorated athletes do not have. Awarded both an MBE and an OBE by the Crown for services to taekwondo and sport, recognition that signals public-record stature rather than bureau framing. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, women’s 57 kg taekwondo: London 2012 and Rio 2016. World Champion, 57 kg, Manchester 2019. Three-time European Champion (2016, 2018, 2021). Two-time European Games champion (2015, 2023). Ten career gold medals across World Taekwondo Grand Prix events between 2014 and 2023. MBE (2013) and OBE (2020) for services to taekwondo and sport. Twice named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year (2012, 2016); Flint Pavilion Leisure Centre renamed in her honour. Professional boxing debut, 7 March 2026, Misfits Duel 2 in Derby; second-round knockout victory over Egypt Criss. Biography Team GB had never won an Olympic taekwondo medal of any colour when Jones walked into the ExCeL arena for the women’s 57 kg final at London 2012. She walked out at 19 as Team GB’s first taekwondo Olympic champion and the youngest member of that Games’ British gold cohort. Four years later in Rio, she defended the title against Spain’s Eva Calvo, beating her 16-7 to become the only British fighter ever to win two Olympic taekwondo golds. The two-Games haul is the headline. The career underneath it is the substance. She won her first World Championship in Manchester in 2019 against the defending champion. She holds three European titles and two European Games titles. She collected ten World Grand Prix golds across nearly a decade of competition, the kind of record that requires a person to be peaking on demand at three or four major events a year for most of their twenties. That record also includes the two losses that matter. First-round exits at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, after a year of training in her own garage during the pandemic and a second cycle as the marked favourite. The recovery vocabulary she uses on stage is not borrowed; it is what she did to keep competing after each of them. In March 2025 she retired from taekwondo and signed with former professional boxer Stephen Smith to train for a boxing career. Her stated target is to become a world champion in two sports. She made her professional debut at Misfits Duel 2 in Derby on 7 March 2026 and won by second-round knockout. The point for a corporate audience is the willingness to start again from the bottom of a different sport at 31 after one of the most decorated careers in British combat sport. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure at elite level Repeat peak performance across a long career Recovery and reinvention after public setback Mental health in high-stakes environments Long-term goal setting and focus Women in sport and underrepresented disciplines Career transition and starting again Ideal for Sales, trading and leadership teams whose performance is measured event by event Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, succession, and renewal after a hard year Company-wide kickoffs and recognition events looking for credible Olympic-calibre proof of what discipline produces Diversity, women’s networks and ERG events where a high-profile woman in a male-dominated combat sport adds substance Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what daily discipline looks like over a decade of competitive peaks A working definition of pressure that comes from inside an Olympic final, not a metaphor Permission to treat setback as an operational fact rather than a personal failing A first-hand account of changing direction late, told by someone doing it now in public

Why organisations work with James Benson-King He has tested resilience claims under conditions that almost no corporate audience has access to: a 32,000km solo ride from Alaska to Argentina, ultra-endurance racing, and a Guinness-ratified ascent from sea level to the world’s highest road in 14 days. His corporate finance background, ten years inside JP Morgan’s Investment Banking Operations, means he translates the physical lessons into the language and pressures senior commercial audiences actually recognise. The childhood cardiac story is genuine, not staged inspiration. It connects directly to his work with Cardiac Risk in the Young and gives the resilience material a clinical and personal foundation that other endurance speakers do not have. He talks about decision-making under exhaustion, not motivation. Audiences leave with material on what to do when the conditions for good thinking have already gone. Biography highlights Former Vice President, Investment Banking Operations, JP Morgan Guinness World Record holder: fastest ascent, Khambhat to Umling La Pass by standard bicycle (June 2025, ratified by WUCA) Completed a 32,000km solo cycle from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina, raising funds for Cardiac Risk in the Young Lead figure in “Pedal The Impossible”, a planned solo unsupported cycle to the South Pole Brand partner of GOREWEAR and Restrap; published rider features with both Public profile under “The Biking Viking”, with documentary-style video coverage of his ultra-endurance attempts Biography The hardest part of an ultra-endurance ride is rarely the terrain. It is what happens to judgement after weeks of broken sleep, cold, and physical decline. That is the territory James Benson-King has spent the last several years inside, and the territory that gives his speaking material its weight. A childhood heart condition, with two operations before he turned seventeen, set the original frame. It is also the reason his cycling work is tied to Cardiac Risk in the Young, the charity behind his 32,000km Alaska to Argentina ride beginning in 2022. He cycled from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia through fifteen countries, including a 900km stretch ridden on one leg. The corporate context is real and recent. He spent close to a decade at JP Morgan, reaching Vice President in Investment Banking Operations. That background shapes how he speaks to senior commercial audiences: he understands quarterly pressure, operational decision-making, and what resilience language sounds like when it is empty. In June 2025 he set a Guinness World Record for the fastest ascent from Khambhat at sea level to Umling La Pass at 5,800m, completing 2,100km and 17,595m of climbing in 14 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes, ratified by the World Ultra Cycling Association. His current project, Pedal The Impossible, is an attempt to become the first person to cycle solo and unsupported to the South Pole. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Decision-making in fatigue and uncertainty Mental health for high performers Goal-setting and execution over multi-year horizons Recovery from physical and personal setbacks Performance under extreme conditions Ideal for Sales and trading leadership teams managing prolonged commercial pressure Operations and transformation leaders running multi-year change programmes HR and wellbeing leads building substantive resilience content for senior populations Off-site keynotes for leadership groups requiring lived rather than theoretical resilience material Audience outcomes A direct account of how decisions degrade under exhaustion, and what to protect first Specific, repeatable practices used by ultra-endurance athletes that translate into commercial settings A frank perspective on mental health from someone who built a career on physical risk A reference point that audiences carry into their own difficult periods, anchored in named events rather than abstractions

Why organisations work with James Clear He brings the operating manual behind one of the most-sold business books of the last decade, with 25 million copies in circulation and a shared vocabulary already present inside most client organisations. His Four Laws of Behavior Change (make it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying) give teams a concrete framework they can apply to execution, sales behaviour, safety, and performance the week after the keynote. He draws on behavioural science, not motivation theatre, which lands with technical and commercial audiences who have seen too many inspirational speakers. His corporate track record includes named engagements with Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Procter & Gamble, so the work has been stress-tested inside complex organisations, not only on conference stages. His weekly 3-2-1 newsletter reaches over 3 million readers, which means audiences tend to arrive already familiar with his ideas and leave with a direct channel to keep applying them. Biography highlights Author of Atomic Habits, #1 New York Times bestseller, 25 million+ copies sold, translated into more than 60 languages. Atomic Habits has spent over 260 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Writer of the 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter, delivered weekly to over 3 million subscribers. Keynote client list includes Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, AT&T, JP Morgan Chase, Procter & Gamble, and Disney. His frameworks have been adopted inside teams across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. BA in biomechanics, Denison University (2008); inducted into the College Sports Communicators Academic All-America Hall of Fame, 2024. Biography Most strategy fails in the gap between decision and behaviour. Leaders leave the offsite aligned, the deck is immaculate, and six months later the teams are doing what they always did. Atomic Habits sold 25 million copies in part because it addressed that gap with a specific, usable mechanism, not another call to motivation. The mechanism is the Four Laws of Behavior Change: make the desired behaviour obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying, and invert each law to break the behaviours you want to lose. It is a simple vocabulary that scales, which is why it now shows up in internal decks at Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Procter & Gamble, and in locker rooms across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. The same language runs through teams that sit three organisational layers apart. Before the book, Clear spent six years writing at JamesClear.com, testing ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience against his own practice as an entrepreneur, writer, and competitive athlete. The 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter that grew out of that work now reaches more than 3 million readers each week. It is one of the largest paid-media-free newsletters in the world, and it keeps the ideas current, not frozen in 2018 when the book launched. For a senior buyer, the value is specific. Clear does not sell a mindset shift. He sells a framework for closing the execution gap that is portable across functions, clearly authored, and already circulating inside the company before he walks on stage. The audience leaves with something they can use on Monday morning and a shared language the leadership team can hold them to on Friday. Key speaking topics Habit formation and behaviour change Continuous improvement and the compounding of small gains Decision-making under uncertainty Behavioural design in teams and organisations Execution and performance systems Identity-based behaviour and culture Ideal for CHROs and heads of L&D building behaviour change into leadership and performance programmes. CEOs and executive teams running a transformation that requires sustained behaviour change below the leadership layer. Sales and commercial leaders looking to embed consistent customer-facing behaviours across distributed teams. Conference audiences of senior managers responsible for turning strategy into daily operational practice. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for diagnosing why a desired behaviour is not happening, using the Four Laws as a diagnostic grid. A specific method for designing environments and cues so that high-value behaviours become the default, not the exception. A concrete view of how small, consistent improvements compound into outsized organisational results over a one-to-three-year horizon. A framework linking identity and behaviour that senior leaders can use when the challenge is cultural, not procedural. A shared reference point, drawn from a widely read book, that leaders can hold teams to after the event.

Why organisations work with James Cracknell He has won at the highest level twice in a four-person team, in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, with crews that included Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. The lessons on team selection, internal standards and competing with teammates are first-hand. He is one of very few senior speakers who has lived through a severe traumatic brain injury and rebuilt a public-facing career afterwards. Audiences get an honest account of recovery, identity and what high performance looks like when the baseline changes. At 46 he returned to elite rowing and won the 2019 Boat Race for Cambridge, the oldest competitor in the race’s 190-year history. The story maps directly onto conversations about late-career reinvention and standards under age, fatigue and doubt. He pairs athletic authority with an academic lens: an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies from Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a working programme for business teams (Muto, co-founded with James Tansey) built on elite-performance science. Biography highlights Olympic gold medals in the coxless four at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, racing with Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles across coxless four, coxless pair and coxed pair. Appointed OBE in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to sport. MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. Oldest rower in Boat Race history at age 46, winning for Cambridge in 2019. Co-author of “The Crossing” (Atlantic Books, 2006) with Ben Fogle and “Touching Distance” (Random House, 2012) with Beverley Turner; BBC and Discovery commentator for major rowing events. Biography Two Olympic golds in the coxless four, four years apart, against different crews in different conditions. That is the core achievement. Cracknell won in Sydney 2000 alongside Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and Tim Foster, and again in Athens 2004 with Pinsent, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles sit alongside those golds. What he offers corporate audiences is the working knowledge of those crews: how selection decisions were made, how standards were held when the crew was under-performing, how a team with strong personalities agreed on what mattered and what did not. He speaks about internal competition as a tool, not a threat. The OBE, awarded in 2005 for services to sport, sits inside that record. In July 2010, while cycling across Arizona in a Los Angeles to New York endurance attempt, Cracknell was struck by the wing mirror of a fuel tanker at 65mph. He spent around ten days in an induced coma in Phoenix. The brain injury that followed, and the long rebuild through epilepsy, changed sense of smell and taste, and an altered personality, is the subject of “Touching Distance”, written with Beverley Turner. He is honest about the years that followed and what they taught him about identity under damage. The late chapter is the one that surprises audiences most. At 46, already a father of three, he enrolled at Peterhouse, Cambridge for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies and rowed in the 2019 Boat Race, becoming the oldest competitor in the event’s 190-year history and winning. He now runs Muto, an elite-performance programme for business teams co-founded with entrepreneur James Tansey, built on the argument that the mindset and habits of top athletes are learnable by senior professionals. Key speaking topics Peak performance and elite team habits Resilience and recovery after setback Team leadership under pressure High-performance culture and internal standards Mindset, motivation and reinvention Endurance, adventure and risk Ideal for Leadership teams holding delivery through a long, difficult programme or transformation CHROs and L and D leaders shaping high-performance and resilience programmes Sales, trading and operations teams where individual output and team trust both have to hold Board, executive and all-hands sessions that need a sharp, human anchor for a performance or culture message Audience outcomes A working picture of how a winning team actually selects, challenges and holds standards for each other An honest account of recovery from serious setback, usable by anyone leading through personal or organisational adversity Specific habits from elite sport that translate to corporate performance, drawn from the Muto programme Renewed appetite for late-career reinvention, grounded in the 2019 Boat Race and Cambridge MPhil

Why organisations work with James Davies He brings elite sport recovery practice directly into the office: the same posture, mobility and recovery principles used with Team GB track and field athletes at Rio 2016, translated for people sitting at desks. He treats physical wellbeing as measurable behaviour change, not inspiration. Audiences leave with specific stretches, ergonomic fixes and microbreak routines they can run the next morning. His client work with Hugo Lloris, Marcus Smith and performers in music and television gives him a credible way to talk about performance under pressure without drifting into motivational abstraction. As author of the Sunday Times bestseller “Body” (HarperCollins), he has already distilled his method for a general reader, which makes the keynote version land quickly with mixed corporate audiences. His patronage of STAMMA and his own experience of stammering give the session a personal register when the brief calls for resilience or human story, without the profile depending on it. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Rising Health, a London-based osteopathy and performance practice established in 2009. Team therapist for Team GB track and field athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Sunday Times bestselling author of “Body: Simple Techniques and Strategies to Heal, Reset and Restore” (HarperCollins, 2022). Trained as an osteopath at the British School of Osteopathy; earlier study in massage and sports injuries at the London School of Massage. Patron of STAMMA, the British Stammering Association. Clinical base at the South Kensington Club, London; client work spans Premiership football, international rugby, Olympic athletics, music and television. Biography Most corporate wellbeing talks leave people nodding and then returning to the same chair, the same screen, the same tight shoulders by Thursday. Davies works the other way round. His starting point is the body in front of him, and a short list of things that actually change how it feels. That practical bias comes from two decades of hands-on clinical work. He trained as an osteopath at the British School of Osteopathy, founded Rising Health in 2009, and built a client list that runs from Premiership footballers and Olympic track and field athletes to performers who cannot afford to be injured before a tour. In 2016 he was selected as a team therapist for Team GB at the Rio Olympics. The same method is now available to general readers. His book “Body: Simple Techniques and Strategies to Heal, Reset and Restore” was published by HarperCollins in 2022 and reached the Sunday Times bestseller list. It is a recovery manual written for people who do not have a physio on call, which is exactly the audience most organisations are trying to reach when they commission a wellbeing keynote. He is also Patron of STAMMA, the British Stammering Association, and speaks openly about his own stammer when a brief calls for a resilience thread. The clinical substance stays the primary reason buyers bring him in: a clinician who can stand in front of five hundred employees, give them three things to do on Monday, and have them feel the difference by the end of the week. Key speaking topics Workplace physical wellbeing and pain prevention Posture, ergonomics and desk-based health Recovery habits from elite sport Sustainable performance under pressure Sleep, stress and physical resilience Movement and mobility for sedentary workforces Ideal for HR, People and Wellbeing leaders commissioning a credible physical health keynote for a wider wellbeing programme Internal communications and employee experience teams running conferences, offsites or return-to-office events Leadership and high-performance teams in sales, trading, consulting or law where sustained intensity is the job Event organisers looking for a practical clinical voice alongside mental health and nutrition speakers Audience outcomes Specific daily habits for posture, mobility and microbreaks that work in an office or at home A clearer sense of how elite athletes structure recovery, and which parts of it translate to desk work Confidence to spot early warning signs of back, neck and shoulder strain before they become absence A short, memorable set of techniques for sleep, breathing and stress discharge A personal story about stammering that gives resilience content a human anchor when the brief calls for it

Why organisations work with James Ketchell His credibility is forensically specific: two verified world firsts – completing what media dubbed the “Ultimate Triathlon” and the first FAI-ratified gyroplane circumnavigation of the globe – give his message about incremental progress a factual foundation that generic resilience content cannot match. The “ten steps at a time” approach he developed on Everest and has applied across five major expeditions gives teams a transferable, named model for breaking complex goals into sustained, manageable action – not a metaphor, but a method he has stress-tested at altitude, at sea, and in the air. His backstory runs in the opposite direction to most adventure speakers: teenage depression, no school qualifications, fired from five jobs, and a motorcycle accident that threatened permanent disability. That starting point makes his message about potential accessible to audiences who do not identify with elite athletic backgrounds. He has spoken at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, PwC, GSK, eBay, and RBS – organisations that set a high bar for relevance and credibility. His ability to adapt the same core content to military leadership, financial services, and pharma audiences is verified across named client feedback. Biography highlights First and only person to complete the “Ultimate Triathlon”: solo Atlantic row (2010), Everest summit (2011), unsupported 18,000-mile global cycle (2013–14) Guinness World Record holder: first person to circumnavigate the globe in an open-cockpit gyroplane, certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (2019) Winner of the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy (2020), awarded for outstanding skill, courage and initiative Author of two books: The Ultimate Triathlon (2016, endorsed by Bear Grylls) and It’s All Mental (2021) UK Scouting Ambassador; ambassador for children’s charity Over The Wall Speaking clients include eBay, PwC, GSK, RBS, and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy Biography James Ketchell is the only person to have rowed solo across the Atlantic, summited Everest, and cycled 18,000 miles around the world – a sequence the media named the “Ultimate Triathlon” – and in 2019 became the first person to fly an open-cockpit gyroplane around the globe, a journey of 24,000 nautical miles in 175 days, ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and recognised by Guinness World Records. The Royal Automobile Club awarded him the Segrave Trophy for the achievement in 2020. None of this was a trajectory anyone predicted. Ketchell left school without qualifications, was fired from five jobs, struggled with depression as a teenager, and in 2008 sustained a motorcycle accident that left him with broken legs, a shattered ankle, and a prognosis of permanent disability. His response to that diagnosis became the architecture of everything that followed: break the goal into the smallest possible steps, prioritise ruthlessly, and keep moving. The principle he articulates most precisely came at 8,000 metres on Everest – the last few hundred metres completed ten steps at a time. That isn’t a metaphor he applies to business; it is a documented method he has used to cross oceans, cycle continents, and fly around the world. His second book, It’s All Mental, makes the case that the obstacles to extraordinary performance are almost never physical. His talks draw on five major expeditions, two mid-ocean rescues, and a recovery from near-permanent disability to give organisations something they rarely get from a speaker: a framework for sustained performance that has been tested at the point of actual failure. The organisations that bring him in – PwC, GSK, eBay, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, RBS – are not looking for inspiration as an emotion. They are looking for something their teams can use. Ketchell delivers that. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme pressure Incremental goal-setting and performance Leadership mindset and self-discipline Overcoming adversity and setback Mental toughness and sustained focus Expedition planning and risk management Ideal for Leadership teams and senior executives preparing for significant organisational change or uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience and performance programmes Sales, commercial, and operational teams where sustained motivation and goal delivery under pressure is a strategic priority Military, emergency services, and high-stakes professional audiences (Ketchell has a verified track record with Sandhurst) Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework for breaking large or daunting goals into sustained, achievable steps A recalibrated view of setback as structural information rather than failure – drawn from Ketchell’s own documented experience of failed expeditions alongside record-breaking ones Practical language for discussing mental resilience and performance that avoids wellness cliché A reference point for goal prioritisation under resource and time constraints, developed across expeditions where those constraints were life-critical Greater confidence that high performance is method-driven, not talent-dependent

Why organisations work with James King He has applied the same performance method inside Tier One military units, hedge funds including Citadel and AKO Capital, and elite sport at the Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners and Premier League level. Few practitioners have credibility across all three worlds. His book Accelerating Excellence gives a leadership team a shared operating language for confidence, motivation, resilience and skill acquisition, drawn from primary work with outlier performers rather than from secondary research. Case studies from his work have been presented inside the MBA programmes at Oxford, Harvard, MIT and Princeton, which means his material has been pressure-tested by the most analytically demanding audiences in management education. Endorsed in named testimonials by General Stanley McChrystal, the President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, and the founder of Mandara Capital, which is a rare credential set across military, sport and capital markets. He treats psychological skill as something a senior team can train, not something they either have or do not, which gives executives a route into performance work without the soft language that usually accompanies it. Biography highlights Author of Accelerating Excellence: The Principles that Drive Elite Performance, published 2021. MSc in Performance Psychology, University of Edinburgh. Performance work with hedge funds including Citadel, AKO Capital and Mandara Capital, and with Norges Bank Investment Management. Performance work with elite sports organisations including the Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Premier League clubs and Team GB. Performance programmes inside specialist military units, including UK Special Forces and US Navy SEAL formations. Host of the Accelerating Excellence podcast and developer of the “Train the Operating System” application. Biography Most leadership teams have built their careers on capability. The next bar is composure: the ability to think, decide and recover when conditions stop cooperating. That bar is where King operates, and it is the bar he has watched outlier performers cross inside special operations, hedge fund trading floors and elite sport. His book Accelerating Excellence sets out the principles he has seen produce sustained elite performance across those settings. The argument is unfashionably specific. Confidence, motivation, resilience and rapid skill acquisition are trainable behaviours with underlying mechanisms, not personality traits. The work is grounded in his MSc in Performance Psychology from the University of Edinburgh and fifteen years of advising at the top of those domains. The list of organisations he has worked with reads as cross-disciplinary on purpose. Citadel, AKO Capital and Norges Bank Investment Management on the capital side. The Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Premier League clubs and Team GB on the sports side. UK Special Forces and US Navy SEAL formations on the military side. The same operating principles travel across all three. Case studies from his work have been presented at the MBA programmes at Oxford, Harvard, MIT and Princeton. He has been publicly endorsed by General Stanley McChrystal, by the President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, and by the founder of Mandara Capital. For a senior team trying to raise its standard of decision-making under pressure, that combination of operational depth and analytical credibility is unusual. Key speaking topics Performance psychology for senior leaders Decision-making under pressure Resilience and recovery in high-stakes environments Talent identification and accelerated skill acquisition Building elite teams Strategy and continuous improvement in competitive systems Ideal for Executive committees and boards under sustained operational pressure Investment partners and trading leadership in capital markets Heads of high-performance and senior coaches in elite sport Specialist units and leadership in defence, security and emergency services Audience outcomes A clear language for the psychological skills that separate sustained elite performers from one-off high performers A diagnostic for where their own team is leaking performance under pressure Specific principles for building confidence, motivation and resilience as trainable behaviours A faster, more deliberate model for skill acquisition than the standard 10,000-hour assumption Cross-domain reference points from military, capital markets and elite sport that travel back into their own context

Why organisations work with James Lang He brings live, professional rugby experience of operating at fly-half, the position responsible for in-game decisions under crowd noise, time pressure, and immediate consequences. That is a useful analogue for senior teams that have to make calls quickly in front of an audience. His career spans Harlequins (79 senior appearances) and Edinburgh Rugby in the United Rugby Championship, with six Scotland caps. The credentials are specific, verifiable, and current. He works in concrete language: setbacks, dropped balls, missed kicks, recovery between phases. Audiences leave with examples, not generic motivation. Useful for sessions where the buyer wants athlete-translated content on pressure and team trust rather than a corporate leadership lecture. Biography highlights Senior debut for Scotland against Canada in Edmonton, 9 June 2018, starting at inside centre in a 48-10 win. Six caps for Scotland between 2018 and 2021. 79 senior appearances for Harlequins between 2016 and 2021. Signed for Edinburgh Rugby in 2021, playing in the United Rugby Championship. Early career with Welsh side Rygbi Gogledd Cymru (RGC1404) before returning to the Harlequins academy. Educated at St Mary’s University and Bangor University. Biography Fly-half is the most exposed position on a rugby pitch. Every decision is public, every kick is counted, and recovery has to happen between phases of play. Lang has spent his senior career in that role, including a Scotland debut against Canada in Edmonton in June 2018 and 79 senior appearances for Harlequins before signing for Edinburgh Rugby in 2021. His route to professional rugby is itself part of the content. He left the Harlequins schoolboy programme for Welsh side Rygbi Gogledd Cymru as a teenager, then returned to the Harlequins academy in 2016. The detour gave him competitive minutes that more conventional pathways do not provide, and it shapes how he talks about non-linear progression. On stage he focuses on the practical mechanics of pressure performance: preparation routines, handling mistakes mid-game, and the team trust that holds when results do not. The reference points are specific moments in named matches, which makes the content useful for internal team sessions, sales kick-offs, and events where the brief is high performance and recovery rather than strategic leadership. The honest framing for a buyer: this is athlete-experience content. It is most powerful when the room wants a credible voice on composure and team dynamics, paired with substantive business speakers for the strategic agenda. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team trust and collaboration Resilience and recovery from setbacks Self-motivation and elite habits Leadership in high-stakes moments Adversity and non-linear careers Ideal for Sales kick-offs and internal team conferences seeking an athlete’s voice on pressure and recovery. People and culture events focused on team trust and collaboration. Talent and graduate development programmes covering early-career resilience and non-linear progression. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how elite athletes train composure rather than rely on it. Specific examples of recovery routines used between high-pressure moments. Language for talking about team trust that holds when results turn negative. A useful contrast between athlete preparation habits and typical corporate working patterns.