Change Management

Why organisations work with Corinna Pommerening Specific authority in the German Mittelstand and regional banking layer, where most international leadership speakers have no credible footprint. Two Springer Gabler and GABAL books arguing a structured thesis on leadership change inside the financial sector, not a generic leadership platform applied to banking. Treats employer brand and leadership culture as one programme rather than two HR projects, which is how regional banks actually experience the talent problem. Customer advisory seat at HASPA, Germany’s largest savings bank, anchors the work in a real institutional setting rather than a consultancy abstraction. Delivers in German and English, with formats from keynote to working session, suited to bank executive committees and supervisory-board offsites. Biography highlights Author of “New Leadership im Finanzsektor,” Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022. Author of “Digitale Regionalokonomie,” GABAL Verlag, 2023. Host of “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast, 140+ episodes. Co-founder of Ecosystems 4 Business AG. Member of the customer advisory board, Hamburger Sparkasse (HASPA). Certified employer brand manager; guest lecturer at the University of Wismar; Industry Insider with trend-research firm TRENDONE. Biography Most regional banks in Germany are running two redesigns at once. The business model is being rebuilt around digital and platform competition, and the workforce that has to deliver that rebuild is harder to keep and harder to recruit than at any point in the sector’s history. Treating those as separate projects is why so many programmes stall. Corinna Pommerening’s argument, set out in “New Leadership im Finanzsektor” (Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022), is that leadership culture and employer brand are the same problem in a regional bank. Courage and responsibility have to move down from the executive layer, silo working has to give way to networked teams, and the institution has to become legible to the talent it wants. Her second book, “Digitale Regionalokonomie” (GABAL Verlag, 2023), extends the case to the regional economy these banks sit inside. The work has institutional grounding. She sits on the customer advisory board of Hamburger Sparkasse, Germany’s largest savings bank, co-founded Ecosystems 4 Business AG, and runs the “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast across more than 140 episodes with senior practitioners in the financial sector. A certified employer brand manager and guest lecturer at the University of Wismar, she works in German and English, with formats running from board-level keynote to executive working session. What she gives a Sparkassen, Volksbank, or Mittelstand executive team is rare in the wider speaker market: an authoritative outside voice that already understands the regulatory, cultural and talent context they operate in, and that has written the book on the leadership shift the institution has to make. Key speaking topics New leadership in the financial sector Leadership culture in mid-market and regional banks Employer branding for the Mittelstand Future skills and workforce capability Digital and cultural transformation in regional economies Distributed responsibility and networked working Ideal for Executive boards and supervisory boards of Sparkassen, cooperative banks and regional commercial banks CHROs and HR directors in mid-market financial institutions Mittelstand CEOs running combined leadership and talent agendas Regional economic development bodies and bank-association events Audience outcomes A clearer read on why leadership culture and employer brand fail when run as separate programmes A working model for moving responsibility and decision-making down through a bank’s hierarchy Specific positions to take on future skills, lifelong learning and knowledge-sharing inside the institution A view of the regional bank as part of a regional economic ecosystem, not an isolated operator Language that supervisory boards and executive committees can use to align on the leadership shift

Why organisations work with Matt Mayberry He gives leaders a working blueprint for culture, not a values exercise. Culture Is the Way sets out a Five-Step Culture-Building Process that McKinsey named a 2024 top business book. He has been ranked in the world’s Top 30 leadership thought leaders by Global Gurus on the basis of a 25,000-respondent CEO and MBA survey, which means buyers can defend the booking internally on credentials alone. His client list, JP Morgan Chase, Allstate, the FBI, DuPont, Lowe’s and Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, signals that the material survives contact with regulated, high-pressure operating environments. The NFL backstory is not the act. He uses a career ended by injury in a Chicago Bears preseason opener as the opening case in a serious argument about reinvention and team behaviour, then moves to the management content quickly. He writes for the same audience that books him. Bylines in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune and Entrepreneur mean a CHRO can hand the keynote thesis to the executive team in printed form before he walks on stage. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Culture Is the Way (Wiley, 2023), named a 2024 top business book by McKinsey & Company and featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Book Club. USA Today bestselling author of The Transformational Leader (Wiley, 2024). Ranked in the Top 30 global leadership thought leaders by Global Gurus. Former Chicago Bears linebacker, signed 2010; college career at Indiana University, recipient of the 2009 Howard Brown Award. Featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur and Chief Executive; broadcast credits with NBC, ABC, Fox Business and ESPN. Client roster includes JP Morgan Chase, Allstate, the FBI, DuPont, Lowe’s, Optum, Fifth Third Bank, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, Phillips 66 and Mack Trucks. Biography Most culture work fails for the same reason. It treats culture as the warm story an organisation tells itself, not the set of repeated behaviours that determine whether the strategy lands. Mayberry’s Culture Is the Way (Wiley, 2023) is built around that distinction, and it is why McKinsey selected it as a 2024 top business book and Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Club picked it up. The argument has a structure. The Five-Step Culture-Building Process forces senior teams to define the behaviours they want to see, hold leaders accountable for them in public, and connect those behaviours to commercial outcomes. The Transformational Leader (Wiley, 2024), a USA Today bestseller, extends the work into how senior leaders model what they ask of others. Both books sit in front of an audience that includes JP Morgan Chase, the FBI, DuPont and Lowe’s. The credibility on stage comes partly from how the path began. Mayberry signed with the Chicago Bears in 2010 and lost the career to an ankle fracture in the preseason opener against the San Diego Chargers. He uses that moment briefly, as a way into the operating point about how teams rebuild after a setback, then moves to the management material. Global Gurus has placed him in the world’s Top 30 leadership thought leaders on the strength of that combined work. What organisations get is a senior practitioner who has translated the language of high-performing teams into something a CHRO, COO or transformation lead can put to work on Monday. The bylines in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune and Entrepreneur are the public evidence; the Five-Step Process is the working tool. Key speaking topics Workplace culture as an operating system Transformational leadership Employee engagement and team performance Change and disruption Peak performance and resilience Sales performance Leadership in the age of AI Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers leading culture and engagement programmes COOs and transformation leads accountable for cultural execution of a strategy Sales leadership conferences and revenue kickoffs Senior leadership teams running off-sites on team performance and behavioural alignment Audience outcomes A working definition of culture that connects daily behaviour to commercial outcome, drawn from the Five-Step Culture-Building Process A clearer view of what transformational leadership requires from senior leaders, beyond inspirational language Specific moves for rebuilding engagement when the workforce is fatigued by repeated change A vocabulary for how high-performing teams handle setback and recovery A short list of behaviours to take back to the executive team and operationalise

Why organisations work with Ben Saunders He holds the record for the longest human-powered polar journey in history, a 108-day, 1,795-mile round trip to the South Pole that gives every lesson he draws a specific factual anchor. His three TED main-stage talks have been viewed more than five million times, and TED describes him as a master storyteller; senior audiences leave with arguments they can repeat, not motivational impressions. His material on composure, energy management and team honesty comes from completing expeditions that defeated Scott and Shackleton, not from secondary reading or coaching frameworks. He pairs the expedition record with a working life in climate-tech investment, including Sequoia Scout status and the founding of Kintanna Ventures, so the parallels he draws to business are not theoretical. Biography highlights Led The Scott Expedition (2013 to 2014), the longest human-powered polar journey on record at 1,795 miles, completing the route that defeated both Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. Youngest person to ski solo to the geographic North Pole, spending 72 days alone on the Arctic Ocean (2004). Three TED main-stage talks (2005, 2012, 2014) with over five million combined views. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; Honorary Fellow, University of Northampton; Patron of British Exploring; Ambassador for the Scouts and The Prince’s Trust. Author of Shackleton in the Ladybird Expert series (Penguin Random House, 2017); contributor to TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson. Founder of Kintanna Ventures, a climate-technology investment vehicle, and a Sequoia Scout angel investor. Biography The Scott Expedition set out from Ross Island on 26 October 2013 and finished 108 days later, on 7 February 2014, after 1,795 miles on foot to the South Pole and back. It is the longest human-powered polar journey on record, and the first completion of the route attempted by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton more than a century earlier. Ben Saunders led it. Saunders skied solo to the geographic North Pole in 2004 at the age of 26, the youngest person ever to do so, spending 72 days alone on the Arctic Ocean. Across two decades he has led 14 expeditions in the polar regions and covered more than 4,500 miles on foot in conditions that strip away every soft variable in performance. The material he brings to senior audiences is built from that record, not from theory. His three TED main-stage talks have been viewed over five million times and earned the unusual designation of master storyteller from TED itself. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Honorary Fellow of the University of Northampton, Patron of British Exploring and an Ambassador for the Scouts and The Prince’s Trust. His Ladybird Expert volume on Shackleton was published by Penguin Random House in 2017. The commercial life sits alongside the expedition record. Saunders raised more than $10m in sponsorship across his career, brokering multi-year partnerships with Intel, Land Rover, Canada Goose and Bremont, and now founds and runs Kintanna Ventures, a climate-technology investment vehicle, alongside angel investing as a Sequoia Scout. That working knowledge of capital allocation and venture-stage operations is what stops the polar material reading as parable when he places it in front of a board. Key speaking topics Decision-making under sustained physical and psychological pressure Composure and energy management at the limits of human capacity Team honesty and trust in small, high-stakes groups Adaptation to volatile and unforgiving operating environments Recovery and persistence after setback Climate-technology investment and the commercial reality of decarbonisation Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing prolonged operational stress or restructure CEOs, COOs and transformation leads commissioning leadership offsites on resilience and decision quality Senior teams in regulated, safety-critical or capital-intensive industries Sales kick-offs and partner conferences where the brief calls for substance over spectacle Audience outcomes A specific account of what composure looks like as a working discipline, not a personality trait A frame for separating controllable inputs from external noise when conditions deteriorate Practical examples of how small teams maintain honesty and trust through extended pressure A more credible vocabulary for talking about failure, recovery and the gap between plan and execution A fresh reference point for board-level conversations on risk, endurance and the limits of preparation

Why organisations work with Jack Shaw Operator experience across successive AI waves, from expert systems and eCommerce through Knowledge-Based Expert Systems to today’s generative AI. That span of hands-on work is rare, and it is what lets him tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Author of The AI Imperative Series, a planned multi-volume set examining AI transformation industry by industry. The first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, was published in April 2026; subsequent volumes covering healthcare, finance, distribution, and government are in preparation. Track record advising senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch. The client mix skews industrial and regulated, which is directly relevant when the audience is not a technology company. A working framework that separates tactical AI initiatives, which can pay back inside twelve months, from strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years. The framework is built for executive teams running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other. Presents in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, with material that adapts to manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences rather than a single vertical. Biography highlights Author of The AI Imperative Series; first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, published April 2026 Graduate of Yale University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Enterprise AI experience spanning commercial expert systems and machine learning through to today’s generative AI Former Vice President of Commercial Systems, Applied Systems Intelligence; previously led an AI software company in Knowledge-Based Expert Systems Advisor to senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch Keynote presentations in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences Biography Knowledge-Based Expert Systems were running in defence and industrial settings long before ChatGPT gave AI a consumer face. Shaw was writing commercial software in that space in the 2000s as Vice President of Commercial Systems at Applied Systems Intelligence, after leading an AI software company through the previous wave. He has been inside enterprise AI since before most organisations were asking the question, which is why he can tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Drawing on more than four decades in AI and enterprise technology, Shaw has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations across 26 countries. As an AI transformation advisor, he works with senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Bosch, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Oracle. His focus is where AI changes the economics of the business, not just its tooling. His work turns on a dual-path distinction between Tactical AI and Strategic AI. Tactical AI covers the applications that pay back inside twelve months; Strategic AI is the operating-model change that reshapes competitive position over three to five years. He frames the destination as the Autonomic Enterprise, where routine sensing and response run at machine speed and human judgement is reserved for the decisions that cannot be delegated. That thinking is now published. Manufacturing’s AI Imperative: An Executive Mandate is the first volume in The AI Imperative Series, an industry-by-industry set applying the framework to the AI decisions facing the C-suite, with volumes on distribution, government, healthcare, and finance in preparation. A Yale graduate with a Kellogg MBA, Shaw advises internationally on executive AI strategy, AI governance, and workforce transformation. He speaks directly to what boards are asking now: how to get out of pilot purgatory, how to cut the decision latency that stalls AI programmes, and how the gap between AI leaders and laggards compounds faster than in any previous technology shift. Key speaking topics Tactical AI and Strategic AI: the dual-path framework Enterprise AI from pilot to operating-model change The Autonomic Enterprise and the emerging Autonomic Economy AI governance, risk, and executive accountability Workforce transformation in the age of AI Industry-specific AI strategy for manufacturing, distribution, and regulated sectors Decision latency and compounding advantage in enterprise AI Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting enterprise AI and digital strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs sequencing AI investment across competing priorities: infrastructure, workforce capability, data readiness, and vendor selection Manufacturing, automotive, distribution, and financial services leadership teams Industry associations and regulated-sector conferences asking where the technology actually lands in operations Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI capabilities matter for their specific industry and time horizon Concrete examples from Fortune 500 deployments rather than generic case studies Vocabulary to challenge vendor pitches and internal proposals with sharper questions A dual-path framework for separating the AI initiatives that pay back inside twelve months from the strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years, with a method for running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other

Why organisations work with Lord Sebastian Coe He has led, end to end, one of the largest peacetime delivery programmes a UK organisation has ever attempted: the London 2012 bid, build, and Games. Few speakers can talk about institutional execution at that scale from inside the room. As President of World Athletics since 2015, he has run a global federation through doping scandals, Russian sanctions, prize-money reform, and gender-eligibility policy. The case material is contemporary, contested, and useful to any board navigating reputational risk. He moves credibly between elite performance, political office, and institutional governance. That breadth lets him address both the human side of leadership and the structural side without flattening either. He brings a working operator’s view of stakeholder management: IOC, host governments, sponsors, broadcasters, athletes, media. Buyers wrestling with multi-principal accountability get a practitioner, not a commentator. Biography highlights President of World Athletics since 2015; member of the International Olympic Committee since 2020. Chair of the London 2012 bid and of LOCOG, the organising committee that delivered the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Chairman of the British Olympic Association, 2012 to 2016. Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, 1992 to 1997; Chief of Staff to William Hague as Leader of the Opposition; created Baron Coe of Ranmore in 2000. Two-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist (Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984); set twelve world records across middle-distance events. KBE (2006), Companion of Honour (2013); author of Running My Life: The Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). Biography The London 2012 bid was three points behind Paris in the final IOC stretch. The committee changed chairs, brought in a new presentation, and won the host vote in Singapore on 6 July 2005. The work that followed, seven years of build, contracts, security, transport, and ceremony, finished on time and inside its public envelope. That is the institutional record buyers come to hear about. What sits behind it is unusual. Coe was an Olympic 1500m champion in 1980 and 1984 and held twelve world records before he left the track. He then served as a Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, became Chief of Staff to William Hague, and was created a life peer in 2000. By the time he chaired LOCOG he had already worked at close range on how political institutions actually function under stress. Since 2015 he has been President of World Athletics. The federation he inherited was in the middle of the Russian doping crisis and faced an open question about whether its own governance was credible. The decade since has involved sanctions, reform of integrity systems, the introduction of prize money at the Olympic Games, and contested decisions on transgender and DSD eligibility in elite competition. None of those calls were uncontested; all of them were made. He brings to a corporate audience a working knowledge of leadership where the stakeholders are not aligned, the deadline does not move, and the public verdict arrives the same week as the decision. That is the part of the experience that translates. Key speaking topics Leadership of complex institutions under public scrutiny Delivering large-scale programmes against fixed deadlines Governance reform and integrity in international organisations Stakeholder management across political, commercial, and civic principals Building and sustaining high-performance cultures Legacy, reputation, and long-horizon decision-making Transitioning from individual performance to institutional leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams running multi-stakeholder organisations where regulators, governments, and the public are all in the room CEOs and transformation leads delivering large programmes against fixed external deadlines Public-sector and federated bodies facing reform under reputational pressure Senior leadership audiences in sport, broadcasting, infrastructure, and major-event delivery Audience outcomes A working frame for setting and holding direction when stakeholders do not share interests Specific case material from London 2012 and a decade at World Athletics on integrity, reform, and crisis response Sharper sense of how to manage the gap between elite performance and institutional leadership Perspective on legacy, reputation, and the trade-offs that surface late in long programmes A direct read on what high-stakes accountability looks like from the inside of the room

Why organisations work with Rachel Treece A coach-led leadership thesis grounded in published work, not platform rhetoric: her book “The Henka Effect” sets out how coaching changes the operating behaviour of senior leaders, with named case studies from financial services. Operating credibility inside financial services. The Henka Institute reports work with a majority of the largest fund managers and investment banks, and her podcast “Flex and the City” speaks directly to FS leadership audiences. ICF-accredited coaching credentials (PCC, CPCC) and a psychology background, which means the content is built on practice-tested method, not opinion. A multinational and multilingual delivery range across 35 countries, useful for boards and leadership populations that span Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. A direct, no-platitudes register on inclusion and culture that buyers can put in front of mixed senior audiences without it landing as DEI theatre. Biography highlights CEO of The Henka Institute and fts global, a leadership development firm operating in 35 countries. Author of “The Henka Effect: How Coaching is Transforming Leadership and Organisations” (2022). Host of the podcast “Flex and the City – Great leadership in financial services”. ICF-credentialled executive coach (PCC, CPCC) and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Speaker at the ALFI Leadership Seminar, the leading industry forum for the Luxembourg fund and asset management sector. Co-founder of Dress for Success Luxembourg. Biography Most senior leaders know that pushing harder no longer produces the result it used to. Workforces are exhausted by repeated change, sceptical of slogans, and quick to disengage from leaders who default to control. The harder question is what leaders should do instead, and how to develop that behaviour at scale. Rachel Treece’s answer is coaching. Not coaching as a development perk, but coaching as the operating mode of senior leadership itself. Her book “The Henka Effect” sets out the argument with case material drawn from her work inside financial services, where she has spent much of her career advising FTSE and Fortune 100 leadership teams. That work runs through The Henka Institute, the Luxembourg-based firm she leads. The institute operates across 35 countries and reports clients including a majority of the largest fund asset managers and investment banks. Her credentials sit alongside the practice: PCC and CPCC coaching certifications, a psychology background, and Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. For organisations going through restructure, integration, or cultural reset, the value of her work is specific. She gives senior leaders a usable behavioural toolkit that replaces directive instinct with curiosity, ownership, and accountability, rather than asking them to soften their style and hope. Key speaking topics Coaching as a leadership operating model Leadership in financial services Inclusive and values-based leadership Change and transformation in regulated industries Communication and executive presence Organisational culture and trust Sustainable performance and leader energy Ideal for CEOs, CHROs, and heads of leadership development inside banks, asset managers, and other regulated financial institutions. Boards and executive committees navigating restructuring, M&A integration, or cultural reset. Senior leadership populations being asked to lead through change without burning out their teams or themselves. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between coaching as a development activity and coaching as a senior leadership behaviour, with the second framed as the lever for sustainable performance. Specific behavioural moves senior leaders can use to replace directive defaults in real conversations with their teams. A working model for building trust and ownership inside teams that have been through repeated change. An honest read on what inclusive leadership looks like in practice in commercial organisations, beyond statement-making.

Why organisations work with Ömer Atiker Three decades of running digital agencies, not advising on them. He has founded, scaled, and sold internet ventures since 1996, which gives his keynote content the texture of an operator rather than a commentator. Author of four German-language reference books on digital transformation, including titles with Wiley and Campus, used inside companies as practical handbooks rather than thought-leadership accessories. Works in German, English, and Dutch at conference register, which makes him a credible booking for DACH-headquartered firms with international leadership audiences. Client list spans regulated industrials (BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius), platform technology (Amazon, Google, Adobe), and consumer-facing operators (Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi), so the examples on stage match the room. Sits at the intersection of digital marketing, AI deployment, and change leadership, which is the precise zone where most enterprise transformation programmes get stuck. Biography highlights Industrial engineer from the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT), with a master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. Founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, in 1996. Founder and CEO of Click Effect, a Freiburg-based digital marketing and transformation consultancy, since 2006. Author of four books on digital transformation, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020. Worked alongside Frithjof Bergmann, the originator of the New Work concept, during a sabbatical period. Keynote clients include BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Amazon, Google, Adobe, Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi, and John Deere. Biography Digital transformation has never been short of strategy. The bottleneck sits further down the operating stack, in the daily handover between leadership intent, technology choices, and the people who have to do the work differently on Monday. Atiker has spent thirty years inside that handover. He studied industrial engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and wrote his master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. In 1996 he founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, and sold it after the dotcom cycle. In 2006 he founded Click Effect in Freiburg, the digital marketing and transformation consultancy he still runs. Between agencies he took a sabbatical and worked with Frithjof Bergmann, the philosopher who originated the New Work concept. That period sits behind the leadership and culture material in his keynotes, which treats digital change as a problem of human adoption first and technology second. His four books, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020, function as practical playbooks for German-speaking enterprises rather than airport thought-leadership. The client list reads as a cross-section of the European industrial and platform economy: BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Singapore Airlines, Amazon, Google, Adobe, John Deere, Mitsubishi. He works in German, English, and Dutch, which makes him a natural fit for DACH-headquartered companies running international leadership programmes around AI and digital execution. Key speaking topics Digital transformation execution AI in the enterprise Digital and remote leadership Customer centricity and digital marketing Corporate culture and digital adoption Innovation under operating constraints Personal development in the digital age Ideal for DACH-headquartered enterprises running multi-year digital and AI transformation programmes CDOs, CMOs, and transformation leads responsible for moving from pilot to operational deployment Industrial and life-sciences boards translating digital strategy into customer-facing change Senior leadership offsites where the audience needs an operator’s view, not a consultant’s frame Audience outcomes A practitioner’s reading of where their own transformation programme is most likely to stall Concrete examples of digital and AI deployment from regulated industrials and platform companies A clearer separation between technology decisions and the leadership behaviour those decisions require Language and reference points senior leaders can use with their own organisations after the session

Why organisations work with Eddie Obeng He has spent thirty years on a single, consequential argument: that the management playbook built for a slower world now actively harms organisations trying to move at current speed. Boards get a framework, not a pep talk. His project typology (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) gives leadership teams a language for matching management style to the kind of uncertainty a project actually contains, instead of defaulting to one method for every initiative. He built and runs QUBE, one of the earliest avatar-based virtual campuses, used to teach and coach distributed executive teams. He is speaking about distributed leadership from inside a working example, not from theory. The 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award from the Association for Project Management recognises a lifetime contribution to how organisations deliver complex work, which is the substance underneath his keynotes. He is genuinely provocative in a room. The Financial Times called him “an agent provocateur” for a reason; he is comfortable telling a senior audience that what they are doing will not work. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Director of Pentacle (The Virtual Business School), established 1994. Professor at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation; previously Executive Director at Ashridge Business School. 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement, Association for Project Management. Author of All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook (Financial Times Pearson), Perfect Projects, Making Re-Engineering Happen and New Rules for the New World. TED Global 2012 speaker, “Smart failure for a fast-changing world”. Creator of QUBE, a virtual learning and collaboration environment covered by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Biography The gap between how quickly the world changes and how quickly organisations learn has been widening for three decades. Eddie Obeng has built a career arguing that this gap, more than any single technology or disruption, is the defining problem of modern management. He calls the condition the “New World After Midnight”. Pentacle, the business school he founded in 1994, was an early attempt to answer the problem practically. Its teaching is built around immediate application rather than case-study reflection, and it runs on QUBE, an avatar-based virtual campus Pentacle developed in 2010 that The Wall Street Journal described in its coverage of virtual workplaces and The Economist flagged as a future digital place to work. Running it means he has been leading distributed teams for longer than most of the organisations he advises. The intellectual spine of his work sits in project management, where he is credited with the four-type model (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) that reframes delivery around how much is known at the start rather than how big the budget is. The Association for Project Management gave him its Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. His books, beginning with All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook in 1995, translate that model for practising leaders. He also holds a chair at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and has sat on the UK Design Council board. In front of an audience he is sharp and direct; the Financial Times has used the words “leading revolutionary” and “agent provocateur”, which is closer to the experience of being in the room than the usual speaker billing. Key speaking topics Leading organisations in a fast-changing environment Project leadership and delivery under uncertainty Distributed and virtual team leadership Innovation and smart failure Organisational change and transformation The future of work and digital collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting a change agenda that their current operating model cannot support Transformation, strategy and innovation leaders responsible for delivery across distributed teams Project and programme leadership communities inside large, complex organisations Partner meetings and leadership offsites where the brief is to unsettle assumptions, not confirm them Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the types of change a leadership team is actually managing, rather than treating every initiative as the same problem A sharper view of why current planning and governance rituals slow organisations down in fast-moving conditions Permission and structure for “smart failure” as a deliberate mechanism for learning, not a slogan A working sense of what leading a distributed team looks like when it is built from scratch, not retrofitted onto office norms A harder question to take back into the next executive meeting

Why organisations work with Andreas Kuffner He has lived the precise problem most leadership teams describe in abstract terms: eight people, one boat, no room for individual heroics, sixteen years of preparation collapsing or holding in a six-minute window. That is the case he draws on, not a metaphor for it. He pairs that experience with a formal systemic coaching practice (ECA-certified) and a master’s in business engineering, so the language he uses with executives is operational, not inspirational. He works inside corporate change programmes at Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC, advising on team coherence and resilience rather than delivering one-off motivational sets. His framing of resilience is specific: coherence between meaning, self-efficacy and belonging, sustained when results stop confirming the strategy. That is a working model leaders can act on, not a slogan. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, men’s eight, London 2012, ending a 24-year German drought in the event Olympic silver medallist, men’s eight, Rio 2016 World champion, men’s eight, Bled 2011; European champion 2014 Recipient of the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, Germany’s highest sporting honour, awarded twice Certified systemic personal and business coach (European Coaching Association) Master’s degree in business engineering, completed while competing at elite level Advises corporate clients including Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC Biography The German eight had not won Olympic gold for 24 years before the crew Kuffner rowed in took the title in London in 2012. Four years later, the same boat took silver in Rio. The interesting fact is not the medal count. It is what an eight-person crew has to do, technically and psychologically, to put six minutes of synchronised output on the water when one micro-deviation ends the race. That problem is closer to what senior leadership teams face than the usual sports-keynote framing suggests. Coherence under pressure is a measurable thing, not a mood. It can be designed, rehearsed and rebuilt when it breaks. Kuffner spent 16 years inside that discipline at the highest level, and he now works with corporate teams on the same mechanics. His credentials outside the boat matter for that reason. A master’s degree in business engineering, completed alongside Olympic training. Certification as a systemic personal and business coach through the European Coaching Association. Active consulting work with Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC on team development, change and resilience. The vocabulary is operational, and the engagements run beyond the stage. What he offers a leadership team is a working language for performance that does not collapse the first time results turn against the strategy. Resilience as a structural property of how a team is held together, not a personal virtue. That is the conversation a boardroom needs when the next quarter looks harder than the last. Key speaking topics Resilience and team coherence under sustained pressure High-performance team development Leadership through change and setback Composure and decision-making in elite environments Building trust and collective discipline in senior teams Corporate culture and value creation Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams navigating restructure or sustained performance pressure CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team trust after acquisition, reorganisation or repeated change cycles Boards and operating committees seeking a working model of team coherence rather than a motivational input Audience outcomes A specific working model of team coherence drawn from elite rowing and applied to corporate operating teams A clearer view of resilience as a structural condition of the team, not a personality trait of its members Concrete language for how meaning, self-efficacy and belonging hold performance together when results turn A frame for distinguishing motivation from discipline in how leaders respond to setbacks

Why organisations work with Sebastian Wachter He arrives in a wheelchair with a Master’s in business mathematics, a career as a stock analyst, and a Bundesliga rugby record. The audience cannot file his argument under inspirational story and move on. His thesis, set out in Change Mindset (BoD, 2020) and excerpted in WirtschaftsWoche, treats change resistance as a managerial problem with named mechanisms, not a motivational gap. He won the European Speaker Award 2019 in front of a jury drawn from Daimler, Lufthansa and Siemens, which is the buyer profile that commissions him. He works fluently in German and English, which matters for DACH-region corporates running cross-border transformation programmes. Biography highlights Master of Science in Business Mathematics, with an exchange semester at the University of Texas at Austin. Former stock analyst in a private bank before founding Barrierefrei im Kopf UG. Bundesliga wheelchair rugby player with German national team experience. Author of Change Mindset: Veranderungsprozesse ins Rollen bringen! (BoD, 2020), with a chapter excerpt carried by WirtschaftsWoche’s Management-Blog. Winner of the European Speaker Award 2019. Television and radio appearances on ARD, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Radio Gong and SWR’s Nachtcafe. Biography Most change programmes do not fail at the design stage. They fail at the moment when the people inside the organisation decide, often quietly, that the new direction is something happening to them rather than something they own. This is the gap Sebastian Wachter writes about and the gap his keynotes are designed to close. His own credibility on the subject is mathematical before it is motivational. He holds a Master of Science in Business Mathematics, spent an exchange semester at the University of Texas at Austin, and worked as a stock analyst in a private bank. The accident that left him with roughly 95% muscle paralysis came at 24, after the analytical training, not before it. He treats change as a managerial problem with mechanisms, not a feel-good lesson drawn from biography. That argument is set out in Change Mindset: Veranderungsprozesse ins Rollen bringen!, published in 2020 and excerpted in WirtschaftsWoche’s Management-Blog. The book reframes change resistance as a question of accountability, role clarity and the willingness of senior managers to keep asking for help once the plan is signed off. The European Speaker Award 2019, judged by representatives from Daimler, Lufthansa and Siemens, recognised the same content in keynote form. He works in German and English, founded the Wurzburg-based firm Barrierefrei im Kopf UG, and continues to play Bundesliga wheelchair rugby. The work he is booked for sits at the point where a transformation programme has stalled and the executive team needs the workforce to re-engage on its own terms. Key speaking topics Change mindset and stalled transformation programmes Growth mindset and managerial resilience Diversity and inclusion in the workforce Team accountability and role clarity Resilience after personal and organisational setback Communication and collaboration across functions Ideal for Executive teams and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes that have lost momentum DACH-region corporates with mixed German- and English-speaking audiences HR directors and culture leads addressing inclusion and engagement together Leadership offsites where the brief is to reset accountability across senior managers Audience outcomes A working definition of why change programmes stall at the point of behavioural commitment, not strategic design. A vocabulary for separating constraint from excuse inside a leadership team. A concrete account of how role clarity, accountability and asking for help operate together in change execution. A different reference point for what resilience looks like in practice, drawn from a verifiable biographical record rather than abstraction.

Why organisations work with Benedikt Böhm A working CEO, not a retired one. He runs an international outdoor brand and continues to ski 8,000-metre peaks, so the leadership material is current and tested, not memoir. A documented record in the most unforgiving operating environment in sport. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without oxygen are public, verifiable proof points for the arguments he makes about preparation, role clarity and team recovery. A peer-reviewed intellectual platform. His Routledge book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl frames the work as leadership scholarship, which gives the content credibility with HR, executive development and L&D buyers who screen out motivational content. A live test case for sustainability as commercial strategy. The DYNAFIT lifetime guarantee and the Helping Band WWF partnership are operating decisions, not communications. Survivor and rescuer in the 2012 Manaslu avalanche. The account of decision-making in and after that event is one of the few first-hand executive narratives of catastrophic shock and sustained recovery. Biography highlights International Managing Director of DYNAFIT, the ski-touring brand he led from insolvency in 2003 to global category leadership. Co-author with Professor Stefan Gröschl of ESSEC Business School of “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom” (Routledge, 2019). Speed records on Muztagata (7,546m, 2005) and Gasherbrum II (8,035m, 2006) with Sebastian Haag; speed ascent and ski descent of Manaslu (8,163m, 2012) without supplemental oxygen. WWF Foundation ambassador for the Himalaya region and snow leopards. Founder of Helping Band, a wristband initiative committing approximately 60,000 euros per year to WWF. Former member of the German national ski mountaineering team. Biography DYNAFIT was effectively insolvent when Benedikt Böhm joined its marketing team in 2003. Two decades later the brand is the international category leader in ski touring, with a lifetime product guarantee and an institutional partnership with WWF that he built personally. The arc is unusual because it has been run in parallel with an active expedition career at 8,000 metres. That second career is the source of his leadership material. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without supplemental oxygen require a precision of role allocation, recovery management and judgement under hypoxia that ordinary corporate planning does not test for. Böhm has spent twenty years moving between the two settings, and the comparison is what makes the work substantive. His 2019 book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl, “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom,” published by Routledge, is the formal statement of that work. The book sits deliberately outside the usual business-and-management canon, drawing on research into fear, pain, suffering and failure to argue that conventional models of executive resilience are too clean to describe how senior leaders actually behave under sustained pressure. The 2012 Manaslu avalanche, which killed eleven climbers and which Böhm and his climbing partner survived and helped rescue from, anchors much of the recovery and decision-making content. It is the rare case where the speaker has lived the catastrophic-shock material he discusses, and continued, after a deliberate pause, to operate at the same altitude and at the head of the same company. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Resilience and recovery after operational shock Team performance in high-stakes environments Risk management and the discipline of preparation Sustainability as commercial strategy Change leadership and organisational reinvention Personal performance and self-leadership at executive level Ideal for Executive committees and boards rebuilding after restructure, crisis or sustained pressure CHROs and heads of executive development designing leadership programmes with substance under the keynote CEOs and senior commercial leaders wrestling with sustainability as an operating decision rather than a communications line Senior teams preparing for major change, market entry or expedition-style strategic bets Audience outcomes A language for separating preparation, role discipline and recovery as three distinct leadership capabilities rather than one blurred idea of “resilience” A clearer view of how senior teams should behave in the first hours and days after a serious operational shock A working example of a CEO who has run sustainability as a product decision, not as a marketing position A grounded counterweight to motivational adventure content, with named expeditions, named outcomes and a named peer-reviewed text behind the argument

Why organisations work with Andrew Bryant He authored the McGraw-Hill book that defined self-leadership for a generation of corporate practitioners, and his research has been cited in more than 200 academic papers and dissertations. His 2026 Wiley book Potential-ize introduces the IGNITE Framework, a six-element model for leaders who need to combine human judgement with AI capability rather than be displaced by it. He has coached senior leaders inside Singapore Airlines, Microsoft, SAP, Deutsche Bank, and Nokia, so the work is tested against real operating pressure, not a coaching practice that lives only in workshops. He carries the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Professional Speakers Association of Australia and has chaired the speaker associations of both Singapore and Spain, which means executional reliability on stage is a known quantity. The President of Singapore has formally recognised his work twice, in 2018 and 2020, for self-leadership programmes that produced measurable outcomes with disadvantaged teenagers and women leaders. Biography highlights Founder of Self Leadership International, established 1999, with clients in over 40 countries. Co-author of Self-Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 2012) with Dr. Ana Lucia Kazan, a defining text in the field. Author of five books, including The New Leadership Playbook (2022) and Potential-ize: How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI (Wiley, 2026). Certified Speaking Professional, Professional Speakers Association of Australia, 2009. Past President of Asia Professional Speakers Singapore (2015 to 2016) and Professional Speakers Association Spain (2021 to 2023). Acknowledged twice by the President of Singapore, in 2018 and 2020, for community leadership programmes. Biography Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your own thinking, feeling and actions toward a defined objective. That definition, written by Andrew Bryant and Dr. Ana Lucia Kazan in their 2012 McGraw-Hill book, is now cited in more than 200 academic papers. It is also the operating idea behind a coaching and keynote practice that has run for more than twenty-five years. The argument is simple. Leaders who cannot regulate their own attention, energy and reactions cannot reliably lead anyone else through change. Bryant founded Self Leadership International in 1999 and built the methodology out of work with named global organisations, including Singapore Airlines, Microsoft, SAP, Deutsche Bank and Nokia. He came to the work as a physiotherapist to elite athletes, which is where the interest in performance under pressure began. The 2022 follow-up book, The New Leadership Playbook, translated the underlying research into twelve concrete leadership conversations that teams actually need to have. His 2026 Wiley book, Potential-ize: How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI, extends the work into the live boardroom question. The IGNITE Framework, six elements covering Inspire, Guide, Nurture, Integrate, Transform and Evaluate, is built for leaders who need to combine human judgement with AI capability without losing either. It is the same intellectual line, applied to the workforce conversation that buyers are having now. That upstream logic also anchors his work on workplace mental health: building the self-regulation that prevents burnout, rather than paying for wellness programmes after the damage is done. Bryant carries the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Professional Speakers Association of Australia and has chaired the speaker associations of both Singapore and Spain. The President of Singapore acknowledged his community work formally in 2018 and again in 2020. The credentials are useful as proof of seriousness, but the more practical point for a buyer is that he is one of the very few speakers who can credibly claim to have shaped the leadership category he speaks on. Key speaking topics Self-leadership Leadership in the age of AI Executive presence and personal effectiveness Workplace mental health and resilience Psychological safety and high-performing teams Leading change and restructure Human potential and talent development Ideal for CEO, COO and senior leadership teams under pressure to deliver during restructure or AI adoption. CHROs and Heads of Leadership Development building self-leadership capability across mid and senior cohorts. Boards and executive committees commissioning offsites on resilience, composure and decision quality. Audience outcomes A working definition of self-leadership that leaders can apply to their own behaviour the next day, not just discuss in the abstract. The IGNITE Framework as a structured way to think about unlocking team potential alongside AI capability rather than against it. A direct view of how composure under pressure compounds into team performance and retention. Specific leadership conversations, drawn from the twelve plays in The New Leadership Playbook, that managers can run with their own teams. Named tools from Bryant’s Self-Leadership Resilience Stack, including the Evening Review and the View from Above, for regulating pressure before it compounds into burnout.