Change Management

Why organisations work with Charlotte Sweeney She has the rare credential of having written a UK government-commissioned policy review on women on boards, the 2014 Sweeney Review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which directly shaped the Enhanced Code for executive search firms. Leaders FIRST gives her a named diagnostic framework, drawn from work with more than 3,000 senior leaders, that identifies the five reasons inclusion change actually stalls inside a business. That is unusual in a field dominated by training products without a thesis. Her co-authored book Inclusive Leadership, published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2018, gives executive audiences a substantive reference rather than a slide deck. Twelve years of running Charlotte Sweeney Associates means she briefs at C-suite level on what has actually worked, and what has quietly failed, across financial services, FMCG, luxury, healthcare, and professional services. She is credible in the current climate where DEI is contested. She talks about inclusion as a leadership discipline, not a political position, which is what most boards now need. Biography highlights OBE, 2017 New Year Honours, for services to Women and Equalities. Author of the 2014 Independent Review of the Voluntary Code of Conduct for Executive Search Firms, commissioned by the UK Business Secretary. Co-author, Inclusive Leadership (FT Publishing, 2016), shortlisted for CMI Management Book of the Year 2018. Founder and CEO, Charlotte Sweeney Associates, established 2012. Chartered Management Consultant; 2025 MCA Inclusion Award winner; finalist, Times Management Consultant of the Year 2025. Named among HR’s Most Influential Thinkers; former member of the Forbes HR Council. Biography Most inclusion programmes fail at the same point. The strategy is signed off, the metrics get published, and within eighteen months the leadership team has rotated, the budget has been clipped, and the work has lost its centre of gravity. Sweeney has spent more than two decades watching this pattern, first inside global financial services, then through her own firm. She founded Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012 and has since advised C-suites and boards across financial services, FMCG, luxury, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. The firm’s signature framework, Leaders FIRST, was built from input from more than 3,000 senior leaders and isolates the five barriers that actually stop inclusion work landing: fear, ignorance, relinquishing responsibility, systemic inertia, and time. Her credibility on policy is not theoretical. In 2014 she authored the independent review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, commissioned by Business Secretary Vince Cable, into the executive search firms’ Voluntary Code of Conduct on women on boards. The review directly shaped the Enhanced Code that followed. She received an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to Women and Equalities. The book she co-authored with Fleur Bothwick, Inclusive Leadership, was published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year 2018. It is the reference she leaves with executive teams who want a serious working text rather than a training deck. In 2025, the Management Consultancies Association named her firm winner of its Inclusion Award, and the Times shortlisted her for Management Consultant of the Year. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership at board and C-suite level Diversity, equity and inclusion strategy Culture transformation Women on boards and senior pipeline Leaders FIRST: barriers to culture change Wellbeing in the workplace Inclusion in a contested political climate Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Chief Inclusion Officers redesigning DEI strategy after political and budget pressure Boards and executive committees holding the line on inclusion as a governance issue, not a campaign Executive search and talent functions reviewing pipeline practice for senior appointments CEOs leading culture transformation where prior inclusion programmes have lost momentum Audience outcomes A clear read on why most DEI programmes lose executive support, drawn from named patterns across sectors The Leaders FIRST diagnostic, which gives leaders a shared language for the five barriers to culture change A defensible position on inclusion that holds up under board scrutiny in the current political environment Practical reference points from a UK government policy review and a decade of C-suite advisory work A senior peer voice on what separates inclusion theatre from inclusion as an operating discipline

Why organisations work with Chris Bertish The only person to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean alone on a stand-up paddleboard, a 93-day unsupported crossing completed in 2017. That body of lived experience gives his lessons on preparation and sustained performance an authority almost no other speaker can claim. Speaks from five years of deliberate engineering and rehearsal before each expedition. Leaders hear how contingency planning and fear management get built long before they are ever needed. Holds Guinness World Records in big wave surfing, open-ocean stand-up paddleboarding and solo wing-foil ocean crossing. Few speakers can demonstrate sustained performance across this range of unrelated operational systems. Structures every major expedition around raising funds for named charities including Operation Smile and The Lunchbox Fund. Audiences see purpose functioning as an actual operating constraint on decisions taken at sea. Biography highlights First person to complete a solo, unsupported crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on a stand-up paddleboard (Morocco to Antigua, 93 days, March 2017). First person to complete a solo, unsupported wing-foil crossing of the Pacific Ocean (California to Hawaii, 48 days, 2022). Winner of the Mavericks Big Wave Invitational at Half Moon Bay, California, in 2010. Best-selling author of Stoked! (Penguin Random House) and All In!; co-director of the award-winning documentaries Ocean Driven and Last Known Coordinates. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and on BBC, CNN, NPR and National Geographic. Selected as a Genius 100 Visionary by the Albert Einstein Foundation, alongside figures including Deepak Chopra and Sir Ken Robinson. Biography The Atlantic Ocean was crossed for the first time on a stand-up paddleboard in March 2017. The crossing took 93 days at sea and required roughly two million paddle strokes. Chris Bertish was alone for every one of them, in a custom-built 20-foot craft designed by naval architect Phil Morrison. Before the crossing, Bertish had already won the 2010 Mavericks Big Wave Invitational at Half Moon Bay in the largest waves in the competition’s history. He arrived in California without his board or a sponsor, borrowing both. The value organisations draw from his story lies in the five years of engineering and rehearsal that preceded the expedition, the part that never appears in the documentary. His body of work covers ocean disciplines that do not naturally overlap. In 2022 he became the first person to wing-foil solo across the Pacific, from California to Hawaii in 48 days. In 2025 he sailed an open beach catamaran from San Diego toward Oahu with no cabin, again solo and unsupported. Each expedition is a new operating system built under different constraints, which maps closely onto what senior teams face through extended transformation programmes. Every expedition sits inside a structure of named beneficiaries. The Atlantic crossing raised more than $400,000 for Operation Smile, The Lunchbox Fund and Signature of Hope Trust. His company, Chris Bertish Impossible, is a certified B Corp, and his Chris Bertish Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Audiences come away with a working example of how purpose operates as an actual constraint on decisions at sea, a form of evidence most leadership keynotes cannot offer. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained, real-world pressure Risk and fear management in high-consequence decisions Preparation discipline and systems redundancy Purpose-driven leadership Change and adaptability under uncertainty Peak performance and mindset Ocean conservation and sustainable business Ideal for Leadership teams asking their people to sustain effort through extended transformation or recovery programmes. Sales, commercial and delivery organisations facing high-stakes, high-pressure execution cycles. Senior offsites, executive retreats and all-hands conferences focused on resilience, purpose or culture change. ESG, sustainability and B Corp-aligned organisations looking for a credible voice on purpose as operating principle. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what preparation looks like when failure carries real consequences. Practical tools for managing fear and risk when systems fail and no external help is available. A working example of purpose operating as a genuine constraint on decisions under pressure. A shift in how teams think about the scale of goals that are achievable through sustained preparation.

Why organisations work with Chris Boardman Demonstrable experience building high-performing teams in three distinct environments: elite sport (the British Cycling R&D team known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»), commercial business (Boardman Bikes), and UK national infrastructure (Active Travel England). The pattern transfers. Most speakers only have one of these on the CV. Genuine authority on driving innovation inside institutions that are structurally set up to resist it. His work on the Bee Network in Greater Manchester, alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, is a case study in pushing something new through a political and administrative system built for continuity. Credibility with senior leaders who are tired of generic «marginal gains» content. Boardman was inside the team that produced the phrase and can explain what the method actually looked like on the ground at British Cycling, without the subsequent mythology. A personal story of reinvention that holds a senior room’s attention: carpenter, Olympic champion, product entrepreneur, commissioner of a £2 billion government agency, with the same discipline around preparation running through each phase. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Barcelona 1992 (4km individual pursuit); first British cycling gold in 72 years. World Hour Record holder on two separate occasions; three times wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France; three-time World Champion. CBE (2022) for services to transport; MBE (1992) for services to cycling. Led the R&D group within British Cycling known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»; co-founded Boardman Bikes with Alan Ingarfield and Sarah Mooney. National Active Travel Commissioner for England and Chair of Sport England, with oversight responsibility for billions of pounds of public investment in active travel and sport. Author of «Triumphs and Turbulence» (Cross Sports Cycling Book of the Year, 2017); BBC and ITV cycling commentator, including London 2012 Olympic coverage. Biography Britain had not won an Olympic cycling gold in seventy-two years. In 1992, at Barcelona, a former carpenter from the Wirral crossed the line first on a Lotus frame. Chris Boardman’s name has been tied to technology-led performance ever since. Two decades later, that fascination with preparation had been institutionalised. As head of research and development at British Cycling, Boardman led the small team that became known inside the sport as the Secret Squirrel Club. Its remit was to find every unglamorous, repeatable improvement a well-prepared squad could stack on top of raw talent. The approach underwrote Team GB’s dominance at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The phrase «marginal gains» was, in practice, its house style. The same method has since travelled further than most sporting careers ever do. Alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, Boardman designed the Bee Network as Greater Manchester’s first Cycling and Walking Commissioner: an 1,800-mile, £1.5 billion plan to rewire how a city region moves. From 2022 he has led Active Travel England, the national executive agency responsible for the standard of walking and cycling infrastructure across the country. He chairs Sport England in parallel. What makes him useful in a senior boardroom is the translation. Most speakers have built one high-performing team, in one context. Boardman has done it three times: inside an elite sporting federation, inside a consumer bike business he co-founded, and inside a government agency running a £2 billion programme. The common thread is stamina: how you keep a team intact and productive long enough to deliver something the surrounding system quietly prefers not to change. Key speaking topics High-performance team building Innovation culture in complex institutions Change leadership and organisational resistance Marginal gains and operational excellence Leading large-scale public delivery Personal reinvention and career translation Ideal for CEOs and senior leaders responsible for major transformation programmes Public sector, transport, and infrastructure leaders delivering long-duration projects Innovation, strategy, and transformation directors inside risk-averse institutions Audience outcomes A sharper view of what it takes to build a team capable of sustained high performance, drawn from inside British Cycling’s Olympic programme. A working understanding of why innovation usually fails inside institutions, with examples from both elite sport and UK public policy. Specific examples of moving large organisations from strategy to delivery, drawn from the Bee Network and Active Travel England. A direct, practical account of managing one’s own career through repeated reinvention.

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 Chris Grant He has run the room with senior leadership teams across government, professional sport, the NHS, financial services, and FTSE corporates, and is unusually fluent in moving a group from comfortable discussion to actual decision. His framework on decision-making, set out in Better Decisions (Quarto, 2020), gives executives a working language for how judgement degrades under speed, fatigue, and political pressure. He has chaired one of the largest public-facing behaviour change programmes in UK history (Chip & PIN), which gives him real authority on the gap between strategy and adoption at a population scale. He brings a substantive, non-performative line on inclusion, drawn from sport governance reform and his work as Chair of the British Basketball Federation, useful when boards are tired of theatre and want operating change. Audiences describe his style as “high energy calm”. He runs interactive keynotes, not lectures, which suits leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver content. Biography highlights OBE for services to sport, 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Chair of the British Basketball Federation (2022 to present). Former CEO of Sported, the UK-wide London 2012 legacy charity supporting community sport. Author of Better Decisions: Direct your life. Influence your world. (Quarto, 2020). Independent Board Member, Sport England (two terms); board member, Financial Services Culture Board. Chaired the Programme Steering Committee for the UK rollout of Chip & PIN. Mentored Olympic and Paralympic medal-winning coaches; Deputy Chair, International Inspiration (London 2012). Biography Strategy is easier than execution, and execution is easier than getting a senior team to actually change how it behaves. Most leadership teams know what good looks like. The work that closes the gap between intention and operating reality is what Chris Grant has spent his career on, across government, professional sport, the NHS, financial services, and large corporates. The credentials sit behind that argument rather than in front of it. He led Sported, the UK-wide London 2012 legacy charity, as CEO. He chaired the Programme Steering Committee for the UK introduction of Chip & PIN, one of the largest public-facing behaviour change programmes the country has run. He served two terms as an Independent Board Member of Sport England and joined the Financial Services Culture Board. He was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to sport, and now chairs the British Basketball Federation. His 2020 book Better Decisions (Quarto) sets out a 20-lesson framework on how senior leaders can hold their judgement when pace, politics, and uncertainty are pulling against them. It draws on thousands of facilitated days with executive teams and on his work mentoring Olympic and Paralympic coaches, where decision quality is measured in seconds and consequences. Grant runs interactive keynotes rather than lectures. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how their team makes decisions, where group dynamics are quietly costing them, and what to change on Monday. The work is most useful to organisations that already understand the diagnosis and need help moving on to the cure. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Organisational change and execution Group dynamics and team performance Inclusive leadership and culture reform Behaviour change at scale Strategy facilitation for senior teams Governance reform in sport and the public sector Ideal for Executive committees and boards working through restructure, succession, or strategic reset CHROs and chief people officers tackling culture, inclusion, and engagement as operating problems Leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver content Programme leads in large public-facing behaviour change or transformation rollouts Audience outcomes A clearer view of where their team’s decision-making degrades under pressure, and what to do about it Practical language for separating change (incremental) from transformation (structural), and choosing between them Tools from Better Decisions for stress-testing judgement before acting on it A direct read on inclusion as a leadership capability, not a compliance exercise Greater willingness in the room to name what is actually slowing the organisation down

Why organisations work with Chris Hirst He has actually run a 10,000-person global P&L. The leadership argument comes from a CEO seat, not a research role. He took Grey London from underperformer to a business that tripled in size and quadrupled profit in five years, then took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three. That is the exact operating story most boards are asking for. No Bullsh*t Leadership won UK Business Book of the Year, an independently awarded credential rather than self-published positioning. The argument now runs across three books, on leadership, change, and career, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. His content travels into operating environments because it was built for one. Recent clients include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Deloitte, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He gives leadership teams a shared language for the small, repeatable behaviours that determine whether change actually happens, not another model to put on a slide. Biography highlights Former Global CEO, Havas Creative Group, leading more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries. Took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global network rankings in three years; shortlisted by Campaign as Global CEO of the Year, 2022. Former UK CEO of Grey London (WPP); the agency tripled in size and quadrupled profit during his tenure. Author of three books, No Bullsht Leadership (UK Business Book of the Year 2020), No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable (Pan Macmillan), together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. Host of the No Bullsht Leadership podcast (with Intelligence Squared), more than 500,000 downloads, and founder of the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Now a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies; graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford (Engineering Science) and Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. Biography Grey London was a struggling agency inside WPP when Chris Hirst took over as UK CEO. Five years later it had tripled in size and quadrupled profit. He then ran Havas Creative Group globally, more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries, taking the network from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three years. Campaign shortlisted him as Global CEO of the Year in 2022. That operating record is the foundation of his leadership work. No Bullsht Leadership, published by Profile Books in 2019, was named UK Business Book of the Year 2020. It argues that leadership is a small set of repeatable behaviours, not a personality type, and is written for people running things rather than studying them. The argument now runs across three books, No Bullsht Leadership, No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. It also reaches a podcast made with Intelligence Squared, a monthly Management Today column, and the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Organisations that have worked with him include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He still runs businesses too, now as a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies. What he gives a serious audience is rare on the leadership circuit: a former Global CEO who reduces leadership to behaviours a team can use the same week. His own equation, Impact equals Clarity times Action, is the spine of it, tested across more than a decade of running businesses and a billion-dollar global P&L. Key speaking topics Practical leadership and decision-making Leading transformational change Building high-performing cultures Turnaround and growth leadership Leading teams through AI-driven change Executive presence and credibility The behaviours of effective CEOs Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and executive teams running through restructure or growth Senior leadership populations inside large organisations rebuilding culture High-potential leadership programmes and talent cohorts Boards and partner groups in professional services and agencies Audience outcomes A working definition of leadership stripped of jargon and slogans His core equation for impact, Clarity times Action, and what it means when either side falls to zero A way to read culture as the behaviour of leadership, not a values poster, and to spot a culture problem before it becomes a performance one The 40/70 rule for making decisions without waiting for complete information A direct, occasionally uncomfortable challenge to current leadership habits

Why organisations work with Chris Hoy He won six Olympic golds across four Games, a career that required rebuilding for a new event (the kilo was removed after Athens) and winning three golds in a single Olympics. Audiences get a first-person account of sustained performance at the very top, not a theory of it. His perspective on adversity carries unusual weight. Since his stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis in October 2024, he has spoken publicly about living and working through it, and his openness triggered a near eight-fold spike in NHS searches for prostate cancer symptoms. He is a Laureus World Sports Academy member and BBC Sports Personality of the Year, credentials that put him among the small group of athletes peer-recognised for how they competed, not only what they won. He has reinvented himself commercially, as a Le Mans motorsport driver, children’s author of the Flying Fergus series with Joanna Nadin, and memoirist with All That Matters. That gives the talk a second life beyond the medal count. Biography highlights Six-time Olympic gold medallist and one-time Olympic silver medallist across Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and London. Three gold medals at Beijing 2008, the first British male to do so at a single Games since 1908. 11-time UCI Track Cycling World Champion. Team GB flag bearer at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony; BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2008. Knight Bachelor (2009) for services to sport; Laureus World Sports Academy member (2017). Author of All That Matters (Hodder and Stoughton, 2024) and the Flying Fergus children’s series with Joanna Nadin; the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow is named in his honour. Biography The velodrome in Beijing in August 2008 produced one of the defining British sporting runs of the modern era: three gold medals in the Keirin, Sprint, and Team Sprint, the first time a British man had taken three at a single Olympics since Henry Taylor in 1908. Four years later at London 2012, a sixth gold in the Keirin made him, at that moment, Britain’s most decorated Olympian. Behind the medal count is a career that required genuine reinvention. The kilometre time trial, the event in which Hoy won his first individual Olympic gold in Athens, was dropped from the programme after 2004. He retrained for the Keirin and Sprint, the events he would dominate in Beijing. Eleven world titles, a knighthood in 2009, and membership of the Laureus World Sports Academy in 2017 followed the same pattern: technical preparation, deliberate pressure-testing, and the discipline to keep the standards consistent across cycles. Retirement in 2013 became a series of second acts. He raced at the Le Mans 24 Hours and won the European Le Mans Series LMP3 title in 2015. He wrote ten books in the Flying Fergus children’s series with Joanna Nadin. In October 2024 he disclosed a stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis and published All That Matters with Hodder and Stoughton, a memoir about the diagnosis and the family around it. The disclosure was followed by a near eight-fold jump in NHS searches for prostate cancer symptoms. For senior audiences, what Hoy offers is the lived version of something most performance literature only describes: how you build, hold, and eventually renegotiate an identity around sustained excellence when the conditions change beneath you. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance at elite level Preparation and composure under pressure Resilience and adversity Team performance and role clarity Reinvention across careers Leadership through personal and organisational uncertainty Ideal for Executive teams and boards setting long-horizon performance standards. Sales kick-offs and leadership conferences framed around sustained execution under pressure. High-performance teams benchmarking preparation, recovery, and coordination. Organisations working on resilience, wellbeing, and leading through uncertainty. Audience outcomes A first-person view of how three gold medals at a single Games were actually prepared for, not the sanitised version. A sharper sense of what it takes to reinvent a career when the rules change mid-cycle, from an Olympic-event restructure to a terminal diagnosis. Specific reference points, Athens, Beijing, London, Le Mans, the cancer disclosure, that audiences can use as shared shorthand for composure and preparation. A more honest framing of resilience than most corporate decks allow, from someone speaking with direct personal authority.

Why organisations work with Chris Moon Reference points for crisis decision-making come directly from surviving Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia and self-treating critical injuries inside a Mozambique minefield after a landmine explosion in 1995. Brings formal academic grounding to the subject: a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester, focused on human behaviour and management theory. Credentials a senior audience registers immediately: an MBE awarded in 1996 for services to the HALO Trust, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter. Has been booked by Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, Skanska, Direct Line Group and London Business School executive programmes, typically on leadership in high-pressure environments. Biography highlights Former British Army officer, commissioned into the Royal Military Police after graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Led landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust in Cambodia and Mozambique from 1993; awarded MBE in 1996 for services to demining. Survived abduction by Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia and negotiated the release of himself and two colleagues from captivity. Lost his right arm and lower right leg after a landmine explosion in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995. First amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables (1997); subsequently completed the Badwater 135 ultra in Death Valley and, in 2024, a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago at age 62. Author of One Step Beyond (Pan Macmillan); Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester; honorary doctorates from Plymouth, Leicester and Exeter. Biography A landmine detonated in a supposedly cleared safety lane in Mozambique in 1995. Chris Moon, then running mine clearance for the HALO Trust, lost his right arm and lower right leg. He treated himself where he lay, and reached a South African hospital where doctors said they had never seen anyone survive with so little blood remaining. Moon came to the work through the British Army. After Sandhurst and three years of operational duty with the Royal Military Police, he left in 1993 to lead landmine clearance operations for the HALO Trust. Two years before the Mozambique explosion, he had already negotiated his way out of Khmer Rouge captivity in Cambodia along with two colleagues. The MBE followed in 1996, for services to demining. Within a year of leaving hospital he completed the London Marathon. In 1997 he became the first amputee to complete the Marathon des Sables, the 250km race across the Sahara. The Badwater 135 in Death Valley followed. At age 62, in 2024, he completed a solo unsupported 500-mile Camino de Santiago. Alongside the endurance work he holds a Master’s in Security Management from the University of Leicester and serves as an adviser to the NHS on prosthetics. The organisations that retain him now tend to be those in which decisions carry operational weight: Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Skanska, Direct Line Group, and London Business School executive programmes. In those rooms, his argument keeps coming back to one observation. The responses leaders fall back on under severe pressure are the ones they have already rehearsed in ordinary conditions. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under pressure Crisis response and operational risk Resilience and human performance Safety culture in high-risk industries Personal accountability in operational settings Ideal for Senior leadership teams in operationally intensive industries: construction, utilities, energy, defence, transport Heads of risk, safety and security responsible for how the organisation performs in a crisis Boards and executive programmes working on leadership in high-pressure conditions Health and safety conferences where the audience is operational leadership Audience outcomes Recalibration of what operating “under pressure” actually involves when conditions are genuine A stock of specific, verifiable examples of decision-making in extreme conditions that audiences can apply to their own work Vocabulary for discussing risk, accountability and resilience that is grounded in operational terms A baseline for what sustained performance under difficult conditions looks like across three decades

Why organisations work with Chris Riddell First Chief Digital Officer at Mars in Australia and New Zealand, with direct operator experience of building digital capability inside a Fortune-scale consumer business. Not a commentator who has never had to make the call. Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers. The same pattern-recognition applied in boardrooms is also informing national law enforcement strategy. Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project. Practised at translating complex technology into language a general audience will actually retain, which is what boards also need. Advisory work spans consumer goods, financial services, telecommunications and government, including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Vodafone. The reference list signals pattern recognition across sectors, not a single-industry view. Biography highlights First Chief Digital Officer at Mars Incorporated in Australia and New Zealand, with responsibility for digital strategy across Whiskas, Pedigree, Wrigley, Snickers, Starburst and Maltesers Inaugural Innovation Partner and current Strategic Advisor to the Australian Federal Police on emerging technology and global drivers Resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and regular commentator on The Project (Network 10) Former director of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE) Presenter of the Tomorrow’s World technology and futures video series Advised organisations including Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover, Facebook, eBay and Macquarie Bank Biography Mars Incorporated is one of the largest consumer businesses in the world, with brands ranging from Snickers and Maltesers to Whiskas and Pedigree. Until the appointment of its first Chief Digital Officer in Australia and New Zealand, it had no single figure accountable for digital strategy across that portfolio. Chris Riddell held that role. The perspective he built in it is the foundation of everything he now tells leadership audiences about digital change. Riddell’s argument from the Mars experience has a specific shape. Technology trends are only legible to people who have had to act on them with budgets and timelines on the line. Outside that pressure, trend-spotting becomes entertainment. The signals remain interesting but never connect to a decision a CEO actually has to make. That operator background separates the work from conventional trend commentary. Beyond Mars, Riddell was the Australian Federal Police’s first Innovation Partner, and continues as its Strategic Advisor on emerging technology and global drivers. He is also the resident Global Affairs and Technology Expert for Channel Seven, and a regular commentator on The Project on Network 10. Television work forces a discipline most futurists avoid: complex technology has to be made intelligible in three minutes or it does not make air. The work spans geographies most commentators never touch. Riddell has operated across the UK, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, China, New Zealand and Australia. His advisory list includes Google, PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, EY, Jaguar Land Rover and Macquarie Bank. The through line in every engagement is a single question: which technology shifts will actually change the economics of this business, and which are a rounding error? Key speaking topics Digital transformation and emerging technology strategy Artificial intelligence and its business implications The future of leadership in a disrupted economy Innovation and business model reinvention Consumer behaviour and customer experience in a digital economy Global technology trends and geopolitical drivers Organisational change in the face of rapid disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees of large organisations working through technology-led transformation Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Transformation Officers with accountability for the digital agenda Leadership conferences in consumer, financial services, telecommunications and government sectors Innovation leads and strategy teams responsible for identifying and acting on emerging technology trends Audience outcomes A sharper filter for separating technology signal from noise in their own industry Named examples of how emerging technologies are already reshaping consumer behaviour and commercial models A frame for deciding which trends warrant investment, and which can safely be deferred Language for explaining complex technology shifts to boards and customers without losing the substance A clearer view of which internal questions about digital capability have not yet been asked

Why organisations work with Chris Roebuck He designed and ran the leadership programme for UBS’s top 500 that is now taught at Harvard Business School as UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm. Few speakers can point to a live HBS case as evidence that their approach works at scale. He coined the corporate application of entrepreneurial leadership and has spent twenty years refining it in banks, government, healthcare, and the military. The Wikipedia entry on entrepreneurial leadership cites his definition. He operates as a practitioner first and a speaker second: former British Army officer, Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank, Global Head of Leadership at UBS, Head of Culture Change at London Underground. The credibility in a boardroom is built in. HR Magazine named him one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, and inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame in 2025. That is the longest sustained recognition of any thinker on the list. Biography highlights Global Head of Leadership and Talent, UBS (2004 onward), leading the development programme for the bank’s top 500 leaders that became Harvard Business School case UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership, Cass Business School (2009–2021, the institution later rebranded Bayes) Inducted into the HR Hall of Fame by HR Magazine, July 2025; named one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, a record on the list Author of five leadership books, including Lead to Succeed (2014) and Strategic Leadership Development, co-authored with Professor Colin Carnall Expert panel member for the UK Government’s Engaging for Success review (2009), and author of The King’s Fund report on NHS leadership (2011) Contributor to Newsweek; quoted on leadership and organisational performance in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review China; 350+ television interviews across BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Sky, and Al Jazeera Biography UBS between 2002 and 2006 is a useful place to start. A newly integrated global bank, 70,000 staff, a top team of 500 whose behaviour had to shift if the merger was going to hold. Chris Roebuck was the person, as Global Head of Leadership and Talent, who designed and ran the programme that got that behavioural shift. The work is now a Harvard Business School case study, UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm, and it is where the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, taking the behaviours of successful entrepreneurs and transplanting them into a large corporate, was first systematically applied in the corporate world. That practitioner record sits behind everything he now says from a stage. Before UBS, he was Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank and ran culture change at London Underground during the partial privatisation. After UBS, he was commissioned by The King’s Fund to report to the UK Government on leadership in the NHS, and sat on the expert panel behind Engaging for Success, the UK Government’s review of employee engagement. He was Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership at Cass Business School, now Bayes, from 2009 to 2021. The argument Roebuck brings to senior audiences is a hard one, because it refuses the usual levers. He tells leaders that the performance they are looking for is not hiding in a new strategy, a new tech stack, or a restructure. It is hiding in the way their top 200 people behave on a Tuesday morning. His Accelerate Your Success approach is built to make that behavioural gap visible, then close it, with the bottom line as the test. HR Magazine has named him one of its Most Influential Thinkers ten times; in July 2025 it inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame. The rare thing he does is connect that leadership argument to hard numbers. He is a trained economist, not a behavioural coach; he served as an officer in the British Army before moving into business; he has run programmes inside a global bank, the UK Civil Service, and a 1.4-million-person healthcare system. When he says ten percent of organisational performance is sitting unused, the claim is backed by work done at UBS, in the NHS, and at KPMG rather than by a slide deck. Key speaking topics Leadership during integration, transformation, and culture change Entrepreneurial leadership in large organisations Senior team behaviour and executive performance Talent identification and leadership pipelines Employee engagement as an organisational lever Leadership in conditions of uncertainty Human leadership in the AI era Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and C-suite teams running integrations, post-merger transformations, or major operating model change CHROs and Chief People Officers building a leadership and talent strategy that senior business leaders will take seriously Board and executive committee offsites where the subject is how top leadership needs to behave differently for the organisation to perform Public sector and military audiences looking at leadership reform in large, complex institutions Audience outcomes A clear view of where performance is being lost inside their own organisation, and which leadership behaviours are causing it The specific mechanics of how entrepreneurial leadership was built at UBS, and which elements transfer to their own sector A short set of actions senior leaders can take in the weeks after the session, tied to business outcomes rather than general development A more useful language for talking about leadership with their board, their HR function, and their top 100

Why organisations work with Christian Gansch His work draws directly on the governance and communication structures of professional orchestras to diagnose alignment failures inside organisations – not as analogy, but as operational system analysis. Leaders leave with a replicable model, not just a perspective. His 14 years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon (1990-2003) mean he has exercised genuine executive authority – across production, marketing, sales, and commercial strategy – inside a major global institution. This is the experience of a manager who performed at the highest level, not a performer who later studied management. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) gives his framework a named, tested structure that organisations can return to. The central argument – that orchestras are precision operating systems, not just inspiring metaphors – is the intellectual spine of every engagement. He puts a question to leadership teams that most frameworks avoid: how many high-performing soloists can a team accommodate before individual excellence starts to fracture collective output? The orchestra offers a concrete, daily-tested answer. He speaks and consults in both English and German, making him an operationally practical choice for pan-European organisations and those with significant DACH-region leadership presence. Biography highlights Leader (concertmaster) of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1981 to 1990 Senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon from 1990 to 2003; responsible for approximately 190 classical recordings including productions with Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Lang Lang, and Anna Netrebko Multiple Grammy Award winner as a producer; recipient of the Record Academy Award Tokyo (Gold) in the Best Concerto Disc category Conducted major orchestras internationally, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, and BBC National Orchestra of Wales BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall; conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the orchestra and chorus of Teatro La Fenice, Venice; opera credits include Le nozze di Figaro with Opera North Author of «From Solo to Symphony – What businesses can learn from orchestras» (2006) and a second German-language business book; corporate consulting and keynote work with clients including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche since 2003 Biography Christian Gansch spent a decade as leader of the Munich Philharmonic. He then spent fourteen years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon. In both roles, the daily challenge was identical: turning highly skilled, independently minded specialists into a functioning collective. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) makes a specific argument from that experience. Professional orchestras are not simply compelling analogies for corporate life – they are operational systems, with precise structures for authority, communication, and coordination. Most large organisations have never consciously built those structures. The gap shows up in execution. His 190 recordings at Deutsche Grammophon were produced across commercial, artistic, and logistical functions simultaneously. That cross-functional executive experience – managing complexity at the level of a major global label – is what separates his framework from that of performers who later turned to speaking. Gansch operated inside the institution, not just on stage. Since 2003, his consulting and keynote work has taken him to organisations including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche. The question he brings to every leadership engagement is the one an orchestra solves in every rehearsal: when each individual in the room is an expert in their own domain, what structure of communication and authority allows the group to act as one? Key speaking topics Orchestral leadership and organisational alignment High-performance team dynamics in expert-driven environments Communication and authority structures in complex organisations Leadership decision-making under pressure Managing the tension between individual excellence and collective output Change readiness and adaptability Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams working on alignment, coordination, and collective performance CHROs and organisational development leads designing performance culture in large, expert-heavy organisations Executive conferences and leadership summits with DACH-region or international audiences Organisations in professional services, engineering, or life sciences navigating cross-functional complexity Audience outcomes A named operational framework – the orchestral model – for thinking about authority, communication, and coordination in large organisations Specific diagnostic questions for their own leadership teams about the relationship between individual performance and collective output A clearer vocabulary for the gap between team capability and team alignment – and what structures close it Practical perspectives on decision-making under pressure, drawn from the specific demands of conducting at the highest level A changed understanding of what «communication» requires at an organisational level, beyond cultural aspiration

Why organisations work with Christian Horner He rebuilt Red Bull Racing’s championship standing twice. The two dominant eras – 2010 to 2013 and 2021 to 2023 – are separated by eight years of Mercedes dominance, making his leadership record one of the few in elite sport that spans genuine decline and recovery, not just a single peak. His pivotal talent decisions include recruiting Adrian Newey from McLaren, developing Sebastian Vettel through the junior system, and promoting Max Verstappen mid-season at 18 – each a bold call taken before the outcome was certain, with verifiable long-term consequences. He ran an independent, UK-based team against factory-backed rivals with greater institutional resources and outcompeted them twice, on culture, structure, and strategic clarity rather than budget. His tenure included real organisational pressures – an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022, the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024, and sustained management conflict at parent company level – providing concrete case material on keeping an organisation competitive through reputational and structural challenge. He initiated Red Bull Powertrains and a long-term technical partnership with Ford – a decision to internalise a critical competitive dependency, taken while actively defending championship positions, with consequences measured in performance and cost over a decade. Biography highlights Former Team Principal and CEO, Red Bull Racing, 2005-2025 – longest-serving team principal in the sport during that period 14 Formula 1 World Championship titles: 8 Drivers’ Championships and 6 Constructors’, plus 124 Grand Prix victories Appointed youngest Team Principal in Formula 1 history at age 31 – a record unbroken at the point of his departure in 2025 Founded Arden International; led the team to three consecutive International Formula 3000 teams’ championships (2002-2004) before entering Formula 1 management OBE (2013) and CBE (2024) for services to motorsport Key verified talent decisions include recruiting chief designer Adrian Newey from McLaren and promoting Max Verstappen to the senior team mid-season at 18 Biography Red Bull Racing won its first Formula 1 World Championship in 2010 and its most recent in 2023 – thirteen years apart, with eight years of Mercedes dominance in between. Christian Horner CBE was Team Principal and CEO for all of it. Building the team from an uncompetitive acquisition into a championship operation required bold early decisions. Horner recruited Adrian Newey from McLaren as chief technical architect and developed Sebastian Vettel through the Red Bull junior system. Within five seasons, the team had moved from the back of the grid to world champions. The second era required different thinking. When regulation changes in 2014 ended the first dominant run, Horner navigated nearly eight years without a championship before switching engine supplier from Renault to Honda and promoting Max Verstappen from the junior team mid-season at 18. The four consecutive Drivers’ Championships from 2021 followed from decisions taken when those outcomes were far from certain. Horner led the organisation through an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022 and the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024. His CBE (2024), following an OBE (2013), marks national recognition for a record of 14 World Championships and 124 Grand Prix victories built across two decades. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Decision-making under competitive pressure Talent identification, succession, and bold recruitment Competitive strategy across long performance cycles Organisational culture in elite performance environments Leading through regulatory and structural change Sustaining resilience across extended performance cycles Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards responsible for multi-year performance strategy CHROs and people leaders building talent pipelines in high-competition environments CEOs and managing directors leading organisations through competitive disruption or market shifts Transformation leads managing capability builds across multiple cycles Audience outcomes A concrete framework for distinguishing a performance system from a performance moment, and what it takes to build the former. Insight into talent decisions that compound over multiple competitive cycles, drawn from specific, verifiable recruitment and succession calls. Practical lessons in leading through genuine organisational crises – reputational, structural, and competitive – without losing competitive function. Clarity on the leadership differences between building for a first win and sustaining advantage when rivals close the gap. Case examples drawn from 20 years of high-stakes decisions with traceable long-term consequences.