Change Management

Why organisations work with Adam Markel Author of three books on resilience and culture, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller Pivot and Change Proof (McGraw-Hill), with Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) setting out the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework for rebuilding trust and connection in teams. Leadership audiences get a researched body of work, not a personal story repurposed as advice. Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, where his work translates resilience research into measurable cultural inputs for senior teams. Operator credibility from 18 years as a trial attorney and a multi-year run as CEO of a professional training business; senior buyers get someone who has run a P&L, not only studied one. His formats are built for application. Drawing on the Re-Culture argument that culture forms through repeated shared practice, sessions are structured to move a leadership team to specific commitments while still in the room. Track record with operating businesses under pressure, including Medtronic and Jack in the Box, working with leadership audiences rather than only HR and L&D. Biography highlights Author of three books on resilience and culture: Pivot (Wall Street Journal bestseller), Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), and Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) Co-Founder and Chief Researcher, WORKWELL Host of The Change Proof Podcast TEDx speaker Former CEO of Peak Potentials/New Peaks, a professional training enterprise; previously an 18-year trial attorney Corporate engagements with operating businesses including Medtronic and Jack in the Box Biography Most senior leaders do not have a resilience problem in the wellness sense. They have a decision-quality problem. Repeated restructures, AI rollouts, and cost programmes compound, and the cost shows up in slower judgement long before it shows up in attrition. That is the gap Adam Markel’s work addresses. His framework, set out in Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), treats resilience as a capacity organisations build into how leaders work, not a personal trait. The earlier Pivot, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, traced the same logic across career and business reinvention. Both sit on top of his research practice at WORKWELL, where he is Co-Founder and Chief Researcher. Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) extends that work from the individual leader to the team. Its argument is that culture forms through what people repeatedly practise together, and it sets out a framework, WORK WELL TOGETHER, for rebuilding trust in organisations strained by constant change. That argument shapes how he runs a room: sessions are structured so a leadership team leaves with specific commitments it has agreed together. The credibility comes from a layered career. Eighteen years as a trial attorney, a multi-year run as CEO of the professional training business Peak Potentials, and seven seasons as an ocean lifeguard before any of it. That operator history is what senior audiences respond to, and it stays tested against current briefs through the Change Proof Podcast and engagements with operating businesses such as Medtronic and Jack in the Box. Key speaking topics Leadership resilience under sustained change Change Proof: building organisational capacity for uncertainty Re-Culture: designing culture through shared practice Workplace culture, trust, and engagement Leading through restructure and reinvention Burnout prevention in senior teams Ideal for CEOs and executive committees facing repeated change cycles CHROs and people leaders responsible for senior-team resilience Leadership offsites and annual conferences for operating businesses Transformation and change leads owning multi-year programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience as an operating capacity, not a personal trait A diagnostic for where change fatigue is degrading senior decision quality Specific practices for recovery and renewal that fit inside a leader’s working week A frame for translating resilience research into culture and engagement decisions Language to use with their own teams about why this matters now

Why organisations work with Bonnie Crombie A decade running Mississauga (population approaching 800,000) with operating and capital budgets in the billions, while Mississauga held a Triple-A credit rating from S&P for 17 consecutive years. Secured the initial $1.6 billion provincial commitment for the Hurontario LRT, the largest infrastructure project in Mississauga’s history, by building alignment across federal, provincial and municipal governments. Won three consecutive mayoral elections by wide margins (63.5%, 77%, and a decisive third win), and returned the Ontario Liberal Party to official party status in the 2025 provincial election, lifting its seat count from nine to fourteen. Brings two decades of corporate experience (McDonald’s Canada, The Walt Disney Company, and co-founding Cargo Cosmetics with a classmate from her MBA) into discussions of governance, growth and stakeholder management; supplemented by an ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors at Rotman. Biography highlights Sixth Mayor of Mississauga, 2014 to 2024; three terms, each won by a wide margin. Leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, December 2023 to January 2026; led the party from nine seats back to official party status with fourteen. Liberal Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Streetsville, 2008 to 2011; co-chair of the Liberal Caucus Outreach Committee alongside Justin Trudeau; Liberal critic for Crown corporations. Mississauga held a Triple-A credit rating from S&P for 17 consecutive years during her tenure; secured full provincial funding for the Hurontario LRT, the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history. Co-founder of Cargo Cosmetics; previously held marketing roles at McDonald’s Canada and The Walt Disney Company, and managed government relations at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. MBA from Schulich School of Business, York University; ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors at Rotman School of Management; awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. Biography Mississauga was Canada’s seventh-largest city when Bonnie Crombie became its sixth mayor in 2014. Her predecessor, Hazel McCallion, had been mayor for 36 years and built an institution shaped by her own personal authority. Crombie inherited that organisation and had to make it work for a more diverse and more demanding electorate. Over a decade in office, she ran budgets that scaled into the billions while the city preserved its Triple-A credit rating from S&P for 17 consecutive years. She secured the initial provincial commitment for the Hurontario LRT, the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history, and won three consecutive mayoral elections by margins above 60 per cent. Before public life she spent two decades in business, including marketing roles at McDonald’s Canada and The Walt Disney Company and co-founding the cosmetics company Cargo with a classmate from her MBA program. She holds an MBA from Schulich at York University and an ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors at Rotman. In 2023 she was elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party; she resigned the role in January 2026, having returned the party to official status with fourteen seats. That decade of operating experience gives her a working vocabulary for how senior leaders hold credibility inside large, politically scrutinised organisations. Decisions are made in public and stakeholders are fragmented. Outcomes are measured in budgets held and infrastructure delivered. Few keynote speakers have run an organisation at this scale and complexity; fewer still have done so through three consecutive electoral mandates. Key speaking topics Leadership in large, complex organisations Public sector governance and fiscal discipline Major infrastructure and city-building Decision-making under public scrutiny Stakeholder negotiation across tiers of government Women in political and executive leadership Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams in regulated or publicly scrutinised industries (utilities, financial services, healthcare, real estate, infrastructure). Public sector and government audiences navigating multi-stakeholder reform, urban growth, or major capital projects. Women’s leadership conferences and senior women’s networks across business, government and the professions. Industry associations, chambers of commerce, and economic-development summits focused on competitiveness, investment attraction and urban prosperity. Audience outcomes How senior leaders hold fiscal discipline while delivering major capital projects under public pressure. The specific moves that build stakeholder alignment when constituencies do not share incentives. How to manage sustained public scrutiny and political attack, from someone who has been on the receiving end of both. A working vocabulary for leadership transitions and reform inside long-established organisations. For women in senior roles, a candid account of leading at the top of politics and business, and of the double standards that come with it.

Why organisations work with Albert Riba A five-book catalogue spanning twelve years, from Mamut o Sapiens (2013) to Mamut o Humanoide (2025), gives clients a sustained body of writing to reference rather than a one-off keynote thesis. The Expansión column, monthly since September 2012, anchors his material inside the conversation Spanish-speaking executives are already reading. The combination of InPreneur (entrepreneurial culture inside corporations) and Sapiens Mindset (founded March 2019) gives him two distinct delivery vehicles for different client problems. Twenty-plus years of technology-sector operating experience, including a decade leading Kinetical Business and a partnership at Innova B2B, gives the mindset material commercial grounding rather than purely motivational framing. Bilingual English and Spanish delivery makes him particularly useful for Spanish, Latin American and pan-European leadership events where a regional voice is required alongside Anglo-American content. Biography highlights Founder of InPreneur and Sapiens Mindset (established March 2019) Author of five books including Mamut o Sapiens (2013) and Mamut o Humanoide (2025) Monthly opinion columnist in Expansión since September 2012 Twenty-plus years in the technology sector; former leader of Kinetical Business; partner at Innova B2B Regular radio contributor on Rac1, RNE R4, Catalunya Ràdio and Cadena Ser Catalunya Three master’s degrees in technology-related fields Biography The book Albert Riba is most associated with, Mamut o Sapiens, carries his argument in the title: organisations either adapt or they extinct themselves. Over the past twelve years he has extended that thesis across a five-book catalogue, from the 2013 original to Mamut o Humanoide: De la extinción a la IA in 2025. The books are in Spanish and circulate mostly through Spanish-language corporate audiences, but the underlying frame, entrepreneurial mindset applied to incumbent organisations, translates cleanly into English delivery. He runs two linked vehicles. InPreneur is his intrapreneurship advisory, focused on building entrepreneurial behaviour inside corporations, and Sapiens Mindset, founded in March 2019, delivers his keynote and coaching work on mindset and adaptation. Earlier in his career he led Kinetical Business for a decade and continues as a partner in the Innova B2B technology company, which gives the material its operating base. His public presence in Spain is longer-standing than his international bureau listing suggests. He has written a monthly opinion column in Expansión, Spain’s leading business daily, since September 2012, and contributes regularly to Rac1, RNE R4, Catalunya Ràdio and Cadena Ser Catalunya. His personal story of late academic start, three subsequent master’s degrees and a twenty-plus year technology career often shows up in his speaking work as a live illustration of the adaptation thesis. For Spanish, Latin American and European leadership audiences looking for a mindset and intrapreneurship voice with a published track record, a working corporate practice and a current column in Expansión, Riba sits inside a small group of regional thinkers who operate fluently in both English and Spanish. Key speaking topics Mindset and adaptation in the age of AI Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurial culture in established companies Change management and organisational transformation Digitalisation and corporate culture Resilience and burnout prevention Ancient and monastic practices applied to modern organisations Ideal for Spanish and Latin American corporate leadership audiences Pan-European events where a senior Catalan voice complements an English-language programme Technology firms and incumbents working on entrepreneurial culture and AI-driven change Leadership offsites and change programmes requiring a mindset-focused keynote Audience outcomes A working frame for adaptation and mindset change drawn from the Mamut o Sapiens and Mamut o Humanoide thesis Practical techniques for building entrepreneurial behaviour inside established organisations A Spanish-market view of digital and AI transformation A set of reference books and Expansión columns for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Lilah Jones She has run the room she is now coaching. Two decades inside Microsoft, Oracle, and Google Cloud, including a stint as head of corporate sales for North Central U.S., means her advice carries the weight of someone who carried a number. Her Activation Methodology gives leaders a structured way to break decision deadlock, not a pep talk. Audiences leave with a sequenced plan for the next ninety days, owned by named people. She speaks to the operator’s problem during transitions: how to keep a team executing while the strategy, structure, or leadership above them is still being rewritten. She built and led inside a sales organisation that grew Google Cloud from a standing start into one of the largest enterprise franchises in tech, and she draws her examples from that environment rather than from secondary research. Biography highlights Roughly nine years at Google, including a role on Google Cloud’s founding sales team and head of corporate sales for North Central U.S. Earlier enterprise sales and sales-management roles at Microsoft and Oracle. Adjunct faculty at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, teaching working professionals. Creator of the Activation Methodology, the framework behind The Activated Leader keynote and her eight-week Activated Leader group coaching programme. Has spoken for and worked with organisations including Microsoft, Google, HP, WISE, DePaul University, NIST, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women of Influence. Biography Most leadership programmes assume the bottleneck is skill. Inside large enterprises during a restructure or strategy reset, the bottleneck is usually decisions. Capable managers stop committing because the next layer up is still moving, and entire quarters disappear into preparation that never ships. Lilah Jones spent roughly two decades inside that environment. She joined Google Cloud’s founding sales team and later ran corporate sales for the North Central U.S., after earlier sales and management roles at Microsoft and Oracle. The through-line of that career is selling and managing while the surrounding business is being rebuilt, which is the same condition most of her clients now face. The work she does today turns that operator experience into a method. Her Activation Methodology, taught through The Activated Leader keynote and an eight-week group coaching programme, is built around a single move: getting leaders from analysis to commitment with a clear, sequenced plan and named owners. The named keynotes around it, including Courage as a Carry-On and Manage Your Blindspots, address the adjacent problems of feedback, self-advocacy, and the personal cost of stalled decisions. She also teaches, as adjunct faculty at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, and has worked with organisations including Microsoft, Google, HP, WISE, DePaul University and NIST. The audience she is most useful to is the layer of senior managers and directors who are expected to drive a transition without the authority to redesign it. Key speaking topics Leading through transitions and restructures Executive decision-making under uncertainty Sales leadership and high-performing commercial teams Psychological safety and feedback culture Career transitions for senior operators Transformation execution inside large enterprises Ideal for CROs, CCOs and sales leadership running through reorganisation, integration or new go-to-market models Heads of leadership and executive development designing programmes for director and VP populations CHROs and transformation leads running enterprise-wide change where middle-layer execution is the constraint Women in leadership networks and senior-women development programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A named method for moving a stalled leadership team from review to commitment within a defined window. Specific language for separating the decisions that need more analysis from the ones that have been ready to make for weeks. A clearer view of how feedback culture and psychological safety either accelerate or quietly block execution. Concrete examples from inside Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle of how senior leaders behave when their own ground is shifting.

Why organisations work with Chris Endersby He treats a brand as an internal operating system before he treats it as a marketing asset, so the work changes how the leadership team behaves, not just how the company looks. The DARE methodology he co-developed at Firestarter gives founders a structured way to test whether their positioning is genuinely differentiated, authentic to the team, resonant with the buyer, and expressed consistently across every touchpoint. His background sits at the intersection of corporate change work at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays and front-line risk management in child safeguarding, which gives him a non-marketing read on how people actually respond to disruption and uncertainty. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy, which means he can hold the harder conversations that surface when a founder’s stated brand and the team’s lived experience do not match. Biography highlights Co-founder and COO of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy for purpose-led scale-up B2B businesses. Co-developer of the DARE methodology (Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression). Corporate change and consulting experience with JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays. Dual professional registration in coaching psychology and psychotherapy. Earlier career as a front-line child safeguarding practitioner, manager and researcher. Biography Scale-up B2B brands tend to fail in the same way. The founder’s original conviction gets diluted in committee, the language drifts toward whatever the competitor set is saying, and the team can no longer explain in plain terms why a customer should choose them. Chris Endersby’s work starts from that failure pattern, and from the observation that brand is rarely a marketing problem first. It is a leadership and behaviour problem that surfaces as a marketing problem. Endersby co-founded Firestarter, a London consultancy that works with founders of scale-up B2B businesses to rebuild that conviction. Alongside his business partner he co-developed the DARE methodology, which moves a brand through four practical tests: is it genuinely Differentiated in its market, Authentic to the people who have to live it, Resonant with the audience it is trying to reach, and Expressed consistently in everything the company does. The methodology is designed to make brand work auditable rather than aesthetic. His credibility for this work comes from an unusual stack. He has spent years inside corporate change programmes at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays, where he learned how large organisations actually metabolise new strategy. Before that he worked in child safeguarding as a practitioner, manager and researcher, which gives him a working understanding of risk, human behaviour under pressure, and the gap between what institutions say they do and what they do. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy. The result is a speaker who can sit in front of a founding team and ask the questions that brand agencies usually avoid: whether the leadership group actually believes its own positioning, where the team’s behaviour contradicts the stated values, and what the cost of that contradiction is in hiring, pricing and retention. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation for scale-up B2B Authentic positioning and purpose Founder-led brand strategy Organisational behaviour and brand Change and transformation in growth-stage businesses Coaching psychology applied to leadership teams Ideal for Founders and CEOs of Series A to Series C B2B businesses approaching a rebrand or repositioning Chief marketing officers and brand leads inside scale-ups where the brand has outgrown its origin story Leadership teams preparing for a funding round, acquisition or international expansion where positioning is under scrutiny Audience outcomes A clearer test for whether their current positioning is actually differentiated or just well-written A working understanding of why brand work fails when it stays inside the marketing function Specific questions to take back to their own leadership team about the gap between stated values and lived behaviour A framework (DARE) for auditing brand expression across product, sales, hiring and internal communication

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

Why organisations work with James Whittle A first-person account of decision-making after 54 days of unsupported ocean rowing, three days on the wall of El Capitan, and a world-first Patagonia triathlon, drawn on directly rather than borrowed from research. A deliberate “started from zero” frame that lands with workforces who are tired of being shown ex-special-forces or Olympic-medallist case studies and find them remote. A track record of repeat work with Nike, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Heineken and Airbnb, which gives buyers reassurance that the material survives a senior corporate audience. A second business, Dose, built around translating expedition lessons into ongoing workplace wellbeing programmes for clients including BNY Mellon and IBM, so the keynote sits inside a wider intervention rather than a one-off appearance. A speaking partnership with Tom Caulfield that allows two-handed delivery, useful for offsites and team experiences where a single-voice keynote would not hold the room. Biography highlights Co-founder, The Tempest Two, the speaking and adventure partnership with Tom Caulfield. Co-founder, Dose, a workplace wellbeing company working with Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb. Rowed the Atlantic unsupported, Canary Islands to Barbados, 3,000 miles in 54 days, with no prior rowing experience. World-first ultra-triathlon across Patagonia: 1,600km cycle, 65km mountain run, 100km stand-up paddleboard descent of the La Leona River. Climbed El Capitan in Yosemite, encountering Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell on the wall. Speaking client list includes Google, Nike, Airbnb, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Heineken, Red Bull and Vodafone. Biography The honest version of resilience is not a poster on an office wall. It is what someone does on day forty of an Atlantic crossing when the water-maker has failed and the next port is still two weeks away. That is the territory The Tempest Two have spent the better part of a decade walking into on purpose. The duo, James Whittle and Tom Caulfield, started with no rowing experience and crossed 3,000 miles of ocean in 54 days. They followed it with a world-first ultra-triathlon in Patagonia and three days on the granite face of El Capitan. The pattern is deliberate: pick a discipline neither of them has practised, give themselves enough runway to learn it, and put the result in front of a corporate audience as material on how ordinary people make hard decisions under load. That positioning is what gives the work its commercial weight. Most adventure speakers come from a military or elite-sport background that audiences quietly discount as unreachable. The Tempest Two reject that framing on principle, which is why their keynote travels into rooms at Nike, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan and Heineken without losing the audience halfway through. Whittle’s second business, Dose, takes the same lessons and converts them into structured workplace wellbeing programmes for clients including BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb. The keynote is the front door; the operating model behind it is closer to a sustained intervention on team energy and recovery than a one-time motivational booking. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Decision-making in degraded conditions Team performance on long-duration projects Risk and the comfort zone Wellbeing as a performance variable Adventure-led leadership development Ideal for HR and people leaders running offsites focused on team energy and recovery Sales and commercial leadership conferences where the brief is grit and momentum, not strategy content Programme leads on long-duration transformations who need to address fatigue head-on Senior all-hands events that need a non-corporate voice to shift the register Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a small team makes decisions when the original plan has stopped working A vocabulary for resilience that does not collapse into platitude A reset on the difference between high-effort discomfort and actual risk A reason to look at recovery and energy management as a leadership concern, not a personal one

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 Stefan Löfven Direct head-of-government experience of running a minority coalition through migration shock, terror response, the pandemic, and a vote of no confidence, useful for boards weighing political risk in their own operating geographies. Chair of SIPRI, the institute whose annual data on military expenditure, arms transfers and conflict is the reference set used by foreign ministries and defence analysts globally. Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, which produced the 2023 report A Breakthrough for People and Planet on reforming global governance. Co-led, with Cyril Ramaphosa, the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, the body whose 2019 report shaped the ILO Centenary Declaration on labour standards and social protection. Career rooted on the factory floor as a welder and union leader, which gives a credibility on labour, industrial policy and the social contract that very few former heads of state can claim. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Sweden, 2014 to 2021, across two coalition governments. Chair of the Governing Board, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), since 2022. Co-Chair, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, 2022 to 2023. Co-Chair, ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, with President Cyril Ramaphosa. President, Party of European Socialists, elected 2022. Resident Fellow, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, Fall 2022. Biography The seven years of Löfven’s premiership covered the European migration crisis, a fatal terror attack on central Stockholm, a vote of no confidence that briefly removed him from office, and the COVID-19 response in a country that diverged from most of its neighbours on lockdown policy. Few European leaders held office continuously across that span. Fewer still did so while running minority governments dependent on votes from across the political spectrum. That experience is the foundation of the international roles he now holds. As Chair of SIPRI’s Governing Board since 2022, he sits over the institute that produces the data foreign ministries rely on for arms transfers, military spending, and conflict trends. As Co-Chair, with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, he led the 2023 report A Breakthrough for People and Planet, which set out concrete reforms to the global financial architecture and the UN system itself. The labour and industrial dimension of his work is harder to fake. Trained as a welder at Hagglunds and active in the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union from his twenties, he became the first president of IF Metall in 2006 before entering elected politics. That background is why the ILO chose him, with Cyril Ramaphosa, to co-chair its Global Commission on the Future of Work, and why the Global Deal he launched in 2016 with the OECD and ILO is built around social dialogue rather than purely fiscal levers. For audiences, what travels is the practical weight of having held the line on multilateral cooperation when the politics moved against it, and the clarity that comes from briefing other heads of state, not from observing them. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Multilateral cooperation and UN reform Crisis leadership in coalition government Future of work and the social contract European political alignment and the rise of the populist right Industrial policy and the labour market Peace, security and disarmament Ideal for Boards and executive teams scoping geopolitical exposure, sanctions risk, and operating decisions in a fracturing global order. CHRO and policy leaders working on the social contract, labour standards, and the future of work agenda. Government affairs, sustainability, and ESG functions tracking multilateral reform and UN-level policy direction. Senior leadership audiences at financial institutions, defence and dual-use industries with direct exposure to peace, security and arms-control data. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how a head of government weighs political risk, security, and economic exposure inside the same decision. A clearer reading of where multilateral institutions are likely to bend, break, or reform over the next cycle. A grounded view of the European political map, including the rise of the populist right and its operating consequences. An informed perspective on labour, social dialogue and the future of work from a leader who has lived both sides of the table. Confidence that the briefing reflects current institutional reality, not commentary from the outside.

Why organisations work with Sacha Romanovitch She has actually done what most purpose-led leadership talks describe. As CEO of Grant Thornton UK she capped her own pay at 20 times the firm’s average salary, introduced firm-wide profit sharing, and gave 4,500 staff a stake in how the partnership was run. She left Grant Thornton having grown it past £500m in revenue and finished her tenure in the Glassdoor Top 50 CEOs with a 94% approval rating, two places behind Tim Cook. Boards listening to her hear an operator, not an advocate. She built Fair4All Finance from a standing start into the UK’s recognised body on financial inclusion, working across HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, regulators, lenders, and the voluntary sector. Few speakers can demonstrate cross-sector convening at that scale. She is willing to discuss the political and partner-level backlash she faced for refusing to back down on shared enterprise. That candour is rare from former CEOs and unusually useful to boards anticipating their own pushback. Biography highlights First woman to lead a major UK accounting firm, as CEO of Grant Thornton UK LLP from 2015 to 2019. OBE awarded in 2020 for Services to Business, recognising her work on financial wellbeing through Fair4All Finance. Founding CEO of Fair4All Finance, the UK financial inclusion body backed by dormant assets funding, from September 2019. Member of the UK Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council from February 2022, leading the Social Infrastructure working group. Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; Honorary Doctorate, University of York; Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Independent Non-Executive Director of the Association of British Insurers; Non-Executive Director, LeapFrog Investments; inaugural Chair of Access Accountancy. Biography In 2015 the partnership at Grant Thornton UK voted in a CEO who told them their pay should be capped, profits should be shared with every employee, and the firm should drop clients whose work it could not defend. By the end of her tenure the firm had grown past £500m in revenue, was sitting in the Glassdoor Top 50 CEOs ranking with a 94% staff approval rating, and the same partnership that elected her had fractured over the cost of what it had agreed to. That tension is the substance of Sacha Romanovitch’s leadership work. She is one of the few senior UK operators who has put a recognisable shared enterprise model inside a major professional services firm and then absorbed the partner-level resistance it produced. Boards that say they want a purpose-led culture often have not faced the moment when their senior earners discover what purpose costs them. She has, and she will discuss it directly. Since 2019 she has been building Fair4All Finance, the body set up under the Dormant Assets Scheme to extend access to affordable credit, insurance, and savings for people in vulnerable financial circumstances. Under her the organisation has become the convening point for the financial services sector, HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and the voluntary sector on financial inclusion. She co-chairs the Inclusive Economy Partnership and served on the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council from 2022, leading its Social Infrastructure working group. The thread across both roles is the same. Values claims are tested by the decisions a leader takes when those values cost something. Romanovitch is unusually credible on that test because she has been on both sides of it: as the CEO who held the line at Grant Thornton, and as the founding chief executive who has had to make the case for financial inclusion to commercial lenders, regulators, and ministers in turn. Key speaking topics Purpose-led leadership in commercial organisations Shared enterprise and employee ownership models Financial inclusion and the social contract of financial services Inclusive leadership in regulated and professional services sectors Cross-sector partnership between government, business, and civil society Social mobility and access to professional careers Leading change against partner-level or shareholder resistance Ideal for Boards and ExCos in professional services, financial services, and partnership-structured firms reviewing their culture and ownership model CEOs and CHROs designing reward, voice, and stake structures for purpose-led strategies Financial services leaders, regulators, and policy audiences working on financial inclusion and consumer vulnerability Industry social mobility programmes and DEI sponsor groups setting concrete targets rather than statements Audience outcomes A direct account of what shared enterprise looks like when it is operating, costing, and contested inside a major firm A working model for testing whether a stated value will hold under commercial pressure before it is publicly committed to A clear picture of how financial inclusion gets built in practice across regulators, banks, fintechs, and the voluntary sector An honest reading of the partner-level and shareholder dynamics that derail purpose-led change, and the moves that protect it A sense of what the next decade of financial services accountability looks like from inside the policy conversation

Why organisations work with Ellis Watson He has run a ten-year transformation of a family-owned media group, DC Thomson, including the digital reinvention of brands like The Beano, with full P&L accountability. Few keynote speakers can show that length of tenure inside a turnaround. He has held the top operating role in three different content businesses, newspapers, global TV formats and family-owned media, so the change playbook he offers is sector-tested, not theoretical. His current seat as Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland gives him a live view of how policy, regulation and capital are shaping the conditions executive teams are actually working in. He is direct in a room. Boards and executive audiences book him when they want candour about cost, culture and pace, not a motivational set piece. Biography highlights Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland, appointed January 2023. CEO and later Executive Chairman of DC Thomson, 2011 to 2020, leading the modernisation of titles including The Beano and The Press and Journal. Global CEO of Syco Entertainment under Simon Cowell in 2010, with responsibility for the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. CEO of Celador International from 2000, oversaw the international rollout of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to around 100 territories. Managing Director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 2003 to 2005, accountable for five national and around 240 regional titles. Non-executive director of FirstGroup plc from 2009, with North American Greyhound responsibility, and a former Marketing Director of News International reporting to Rupert Murdoch. Biography DC Thomson is the kind of business that does not usually survive a digital decade. A family-owned publisher in Dundee, built on print titles like The Beano, The Sunday Post and The Press and Journal, it carried a cost base shaped by an industry that no longer existed. Between 2011 and 2020 it was rebuilt from the inside, with a third of the staff gone and the consumer brands repositioned for digital. Ellis Watson ran that decade as CEO and then Executive Chairman. That was not an unfamiliar problem to him. He had already taken Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? out to roughly 100 territories as CEO of Celador, run five national newspapers and around 240 regional titles at the Mirror Group, and spent 2010 as global CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment, holding the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. The earlier ground had been News International, as Marketing Director reporting to Rupert Murdoch. What that career produces, in a board context, is an unusually long lens on the same problem. Legacy businesses tend to be governed by people who have never personally rebuilt one. Ellis has, in three sectors, and he is now sitting inside Scottish Government as the First Minister’s Chief Business Advisor, a role created in January 2023 to bring private sector judgement into policy decisions. The result is a speaker who is most useful to executive teams in the middle of structural change, where the questions are about cost, talent and tempo, and where a generic transformation framework is not enough. Key speaking topics Leadership through structural change in legacy businesses Turnaround and brand revitalisation Building and holding high-performance cultures Engaging younger workforces inside traditional organisations Disruption as an operating discipline, not a slogan Governance and stakeholder trust during transformation Ideal for Boards and executive teams of legacy or family-owned businesses facing structural decline CEOs, COOs and transformation directors running cost and culture programmes in parallel CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement during restructure Senior leadership audiences in media, publishing, transport and consumer brands Audience outcomes A clear-eyed read on how long real turnaround actually takes inside a legacy business Specific operator decisions, on cost, talent and brand, drawn from DC Thomson, Mirror, Celador and Syco A working argument for why culture is the binding constraint in any transformation, not strategy A view from inside government on the conditions UK businesses are operating against A different vocabulary for talking about disruption with a board, less abstract, more accountable

Why organisations work with Nicky Moffat Direct experience of leading 4,500 officers and soldiers at the Army Personnel Centre, giving her a practical authority on leadership at scale that few civilian speakers can match. A working definition of inclusive leadership built inside an institution where she was, for years, the only woman in the room at her level. Not a theoretical position. A track record of supporting ministerial decision-making during live operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, which translates into credibility with senior leaders facing high-stakes calls under public scrutiny. Story-led delivery grounded in named events and decisions, so the leadership argument lands as a worked example rather than a model on a slide. Biography highlights Brigadier, British Army, 2009 to 2012; highest-ranking woman in the service during that period. Appointed CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours. Former military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon. Named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014. Primary instructor on BBC’s Secret Agent Selection: WW2 (2018), released on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Founder of What Good Leadership Looks Like, working with organisations in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. Biography Leading 4,500 people through continuous restructure tests every assumption a leader has about authority, communication and the limits of their own composure. Nicky Moffat did exactly that as the most senior woman the British Army had, running the Army Personnel Centre and serving as Brigadier from 2009 to 2012. Her career before that was unusual in its proximity to live decisions. As military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, she was in the room as ministers made calls on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, and during the UK’s Foot and Mouth response. That work shaped a view of leadership as something that has to function under public scrutiny, not in a workshop. She was appointed CBE in 2012. Since leaving the Army she has built What Good Leadership Looks Like, a practice that works with senior teams in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. The work centres on a question most large organisations now have to answer: how do you keep a workforce engaged and performing through restructure after restructure? She approaches inclusion as part of the answer rather than a parallel conversation, having spent much of her own career as the only woman of her rank in the room. She was named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014 and was the primary instructor on the BBC series Secret Agent Selection: WW2, broadcast in 2018 and released internationally on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Leading through transformational change Building leadership culture at scale High-performing teams Career transition and self-leadership Women in senior leadership Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding the line through restructure CHROs and people directors rebuilding leadership benches Senior women’s networks and emerging leader programmes Boards and partnerships in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media Audience outcomes A sharper read on what inclusive leadership actually requires of senior leaders, beyond statements of intent Specific behaviours to keep teams engaged through repeated structural change A reference point for leading at scale drawn from inside one of the UK’s largest hierarchical institutions Practical language for the harder parts of senior leadership, including being the only one of your kind in the room