Führungskräfteentwicklung speakers

Why organisations work with Herminia Ibarra She supplies the missing operating manual for executive transitions. Her research names the specific trap, clinging to a proven identity, that causes capable leaders to stall in bigger roles. She owns a published, citable framework. “Outsight”, the principle that leaders think their way into new behaviours by acting first, gives a leadership team a shared vocabulary it can actually use on a Monday morning. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” reframed a live boardroom debate. It is one of the few pieces of leadership writing that gives senior teams permission to experiment with styles that do not yet feel like “them”. She sits at the top of the field by external measure, not self-description. Fellow of the British Academy, multi-cycle Thinkers50 listee, 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, Charles Handy Chair at LBS. She speaks to succession, sponsorship, and women’s advancement with the same empirical grounding, which matters for organisations running serious talent and inclusion agendas rather than performative ones. Biography highlights Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School; prior faculty posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2019). Multi-cycle Thinkers50 ranked thinker; winner of the Thinkers50 Leadership Award, 2013. Author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press) and Working Identity (Harvard Business Press), translated into 16 languages. Judge, Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award; member, World Economic Forum Expert Network; Governor of London Business School. Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour, Yale University (National Science Fellow). Biography Capable executives often stall in their first genuinely senior role. The research by Herminia Ibarra explains why: they try to think their way into the new job from the inside, when the only reliable route is the opposite. Act first, reflect later, and let the new behaviours gradually reshape how you see yourself. That argument, captured in her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in the “outsight” principle, is what most distinguishes her work. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” extended the case into one of the thorniest topics in executive development, how leaders can experiment with unfamiliar styles without feeling like frauds. Working Identity, her earlier book, has been translated into 16 languages and sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics list. Ibarra holds the Charles Handy Chair at London Business School, with prior tenured posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a multi-cycle Thinkers50 honoree, winner of the 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, and a Governor of LBS. She also judges the Financial Times Business Book of the Year and sits in the World Economic Forum Expert Network. For a leadership team wrestling with succession, executive transitions, or the gap between the leader a company has and the leader it now needs, few academics anywhere offer a more precise diagnosis or a more usable set of moves. Key speaking topics Executive transitions and stepping up to bigger roles Leadership identity and the authenticity paradox Career reinvention and the “outsight” principle Leadership in the age of AI Sponsorship, succession, and women’s advancement Authentic leadership development Organisational reinvention under change Ideal for CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning executive development and succession pipelines CEOs and boards planning leadership transitions at the top team Senior leaders stepping into enterprise-wide or first-time general management roles Inclusion, sponsorship, and high-potential programmes for underrepresented senior talent Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of why smart executives stall in bigger roles and what to do about it Language and examples for leading through a change in identity, not just a change in strategy A usable principle, “outsight”, that senior leaders can apply to their own weekly calendar A sharper view of authenticity that replaces “be yourself” with a more workable standard for growth Practical cues for building sponsorship and succession conversations that actually move careers

Why organisations work with Hollie Castro Operating record across the moments that test a people function: IPO transition at YETI, take-private of BMC Software under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and VC-backed scale-up at Miro under Accel and ICONIQ. Sits credibly in the boardroom on AI and the workforce, co-chairing the NACD Austin chapter and leading director-level sessions on GenAI governance and the multigenerational workforce. Has actually run HR at global scale: workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, 25-plus acquisitions integrated. Bridges Fortune 500 and late-stage start-up worlds, including current advisory work with HR-focused AI founders at Series A through her firm HC Advice. Recognised externally where it counts: Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates and the HR Transformation award at Silicon Valley’s High Tech Symposium. Biography highlights Five-time CHRO and Chief Administration Officer: YETI, BMC Software, Talisman Energy, Miro, Kony. Co-Chair, Austin Advisory Board, National Association of Corporate Directors. Advisory Board Member, Texas A&M Mays School of Business Center for Human Resources. Stanford University and NACD certified Corporate Director; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates; HR Transformation award, Silicon Valley High Tech Symposium. Published in Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards; featured at HR Retail and on the Revenue Builders podcast. Biography Few HR leaders have sat in the seat across as many high-pressure transitions. As CHRO, Castro took YETI through its IPO from private equity ownership at Cortec, led BMC Software through its take-private under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and ran people strategy at Miro and Kony alongside Accel and ICONIQ Capital. The thread across those mandates is the same: HR as an operating discipline tied to capital events, not a support function. Her scope has been unusually broad. Workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, operations in 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, and more than 25 acquisitions integrated. That range includes the cultural architecture work that ESG and compensation committees now ask for, as well as the harder M&A integration calls that decide whether a deal earns its thesis. The board work has become a second discipline. Castro co-chairs the Austin advisory board of the National Association of Corporate Directors and led the 2024 NACD Director Summit conversation on how boards govern GenAI alongside a five-generation workforce. She is a Stanford and NACD certified Corporate Director, a Thunderbird MBA, and was named to the Financial Times Group’s Top 100 Board Candidates. Today she advises HR-focused AI founders at Series A through HC Advice and writes for Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards on the governance questions that follow when HR is asked to deploy AI at scale. Key speaking topics The CHRO as a strategic business partner Generative AI in HR and talent acquisition Global HR strategy and M&A integration Board governance of AI and the workforce Scaling people functions through IPO and take-private events ESG, compensation, and human capital in the boardroom The multigenerational workforce Agile HR and design thinking Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CPO-track HR leaders preparing for board-facing roles. Boards, compensation committees, and audit committees engaging with AI, human capital, and ESG oversight. CEOs and executive teams in private equity portfolio companies or scale-ups preparing for IPO, M&A, or take-private events. Leadership programmes for senior women in operating and director roles. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what boards now expect from HR on AI, talent risk, and human capital reporting. Specific reference points on integrating HR through IPO, take-private, and cross-border M&A. A working view of how generative AI is changing talent acquisition and the CHRO operating model. Director-level language for governing AI ethics, workforce design, and compensation in tandem.

Why organisations work with Howard Webb His concept of «anonymously competent», the trained reflex to seek invisibility rather than make the decisive, visible call, names a leadership trap that senior audiences recognise on first hearing as a live problem in their own organisations – not a sports metaphor, but a precise description of how their institutions reward the wrong behaviour. His career after the pitch, spanning Technical Director at PGMOL, General Manager at the Professional Referee Organization in North America, and now Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL, is itself a case study in reforming institutional standards under sustained public pressure. Most sports speakers offer a performing career; Webb offers both. He led the rollout of VAR in North American soccer and returned to England to reform how the Premier League applies the same technology, giving him direct cross-jurisdictional experience in managing the gap between contested innovation and stakeholder trust. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013, his credentials hold in any boardroom that includes serious sports people, which makes the leadership translation sharper and harder to dismiss. His direct experience of a governance model where every decision is publicly logged, graded, and contested translates to regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply to senior leaders. Biography highlights The only referee in history to officiate both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year (2010) Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013; MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to football First-ever Chief Refereeing Officer, PGMOL (2022), responsible for more than 600 match officials across English professional football Former General Manager, Professional Referee Organization (PRO), leading the match official programme across Major League Soccer and North American football, including the introduction of VAR Approximately 296 Premier League matches as a professional referee (2003-2014); FIFA international referee across nine major tournaments including two FIFA World Cups Former sergeant, South Yorkshire Police; broadcast analyst with BT Sport and ITV Biography Howard Webb became a Premier League referee in 2003 and a FIFA international referee two years later. By 2010, he had officiated both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year. No referee in the sport’s history had achieved that combination before, or has since. His career after the pitch is equally instructive. As Technical Director at PGMOL and then General Manager of the Professional Referee Organization in North America, Webb led the introduction of VAR across Major League Soccer, managing the institutional resistance, stakeholder scepticism, and communication challenges that accompany contested technological change in any professional environment. His appointment in 2022 as the first-ever Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL placed him at the head of a reform programme for more than 600 match officials across the English professional game. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013 and awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours, his on-field record gives credibility to the broader argument. His concept of «anonymously competent», the trap of seeking invisibility over decisive action, names a tension that senior leadership audiences recognise immediately in their own organisations. Webb has spoken at forums including the HR Directors Business Summit. The direct parallel is between officiating, where every decision is logged, graded, and publicly contested, and leadership in regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Leadership under public scrutiny Accountability and governance in professional organisations High-performance team standards Institutional reform and standards development Technology adoption and stakeholder trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite forums in regulated industries including financial services, healthcare, and professional services Boards and governance committees addressing public accountability and decision-making under scrutiny HR and L&D leaders building executive development programmes Sports organisations and governing bodies addressing officiating standards, governance, and reform Audience outcomes A concrete framework for understanding the gap between private competence and public accountability Practical perspective on what it means to make decisive calls when decisions are irreversible and publicly visible Insight into building institutional cultures that sustain performance under contested, public scrutiny A transferable case study in introducing contested technology into a resistant professional community The «anonymously competent» concept as a diagnostic for identifying leadership cultures that reward invisibility over action

Why organisations work with Isabel Aguilera Navarro She has run the Iberian or Southern European business of three of the most scrutinised multinationals in the world (Dell, Google, GE) and can speak from the CEO chair, not the consultant’s deck. She sits on the boards of five listed and regulated companies spanning cement, real estate, biotech, digital advertising and water, giving her a cross-sector read on how governance and transformation actually play out at board level. She chairs the Audit and Control Committee of Lar Espana, a role that forces her to translate strategic ambition into numbers, risk and control, which is exactly the language CFOs and chairs want to hear from a speaker. She has held an Executive in Residence position at Esade Business School in Strategy and General Management for over two decades, so the frameworks she uses are taught as well as lived. She wrote a full book on intelligent digital transformation, Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui, giving audiences a defined thesis rather than a collection of anecdotes. Biography highlights President, General Electric Spain and Portugal (2008 to 2009). General Manager, Google Spain and Portugal (2006 to 2008), leading the set-up of Google Iberia. CEO, Dell Computer for Spain, Italy and Portugal (1997 to 2002). Operations Director, NH Hotel Group (2002 to 2005). Independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science; chair of the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. Executive in Residence, Department of Strategy and General Management, Esade Business School; former President of the Social Council of the University of Seville. Author of Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui: Secretos de la transformacion digital inteligente (LID Editorial, 2016). Biography Most transformation programmes fail in the gap between the boardroom and the country P&L. Isabel Aguilera Navarro has spent her career working in that gap. She stood up Google’s operation in Spain and Portugal, then moved across to run General Electric in the same region, having earlier led Dell’s Iberian and Italian business through the years in which Dell took the top of the PC market in Europe. That sequence, Dell then NH Hoteles then Google then GE, is unusual. It put her inside a Silicon Valley growth company, a Spanish hospitality group, a consumer technology brand at its commercial peak and an American industrial conglomerate, each at the moment the business model was being rewritten. The operating lessons translate directly into how she now advises boards. Today she sits as an independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science, chairing the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. The mix is deliberate: heavy industry, commercial real estate, biotech, a regulated water utility and a digital advertising firm. Few speakers can move between those governance contexts with credibility, and fewer still have done so while also holding an Executive in Residence role at Esade Business School. Her book Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui argues that the digital transformation leaders were preparing for has already arrived, and the remaining work is organisational rather than technological. Financial Times and Fortune have both included her in their European and global rankings of senior women in business, and the Wall Street Journal named her among the 30 Most Influential Business Women in Europe in 2001 for her work at Dell. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board strategy Digital transformation in established businesses Leadership across industries and operating models Strategy and competitive positioning Innovation inside large organisations Technology company operating culture Ideal for Boards and nominating committees preparing for a strategy refresh or a digital transformation programme. CEOs and executive committees of large, multi-country businesses navigating technology and operating-model change. Audit and risk committees looking to translate strategic ambition into governance, numbers and control. Leadership programmes for senior women in business and cross-sector executive development audiences. Audience outcomes A board-level view of where digital transformation programmes tend to break inside real P&Ls, drawn from three country-CEO seats. A clearer sense of how governance structures can either accelerate or stall strategic change, from someone who chairs an audit and control committee. Specific contrasts between how Silicon Valley, American industrials and European operators approach the same strategic problem. Frameworks from Esade’s Strategy and General Management faculty, tested against sitting boards in cement, real estate, biotech and water. Reference points from her book on intelligent digital transformation that audiences can take back into their own planning cycles.

Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude. The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market. His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms. The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority. Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace). Biography highlights Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021 Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast Biography Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists. His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data. The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions. Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series. Key speaking topics Future-ready leadership Vulnerability and trust in organisations Employee experience strategy Leadership in the age of AI Future of work Organisational culture and performance Executive development and people strategy Ideal for CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks Audience outcomes A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it

Why organisations work with Jacqueline Carter Four named books from Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave (One Second Ahead, The Mind of the Leader, Compassionate Leadership, More Human) that give a board or executive team a shared language for the human side of leadership. One of the few people answering “how do I lead people in the age of AI?” from a leadership-science lens rather than a technology one. Her 2025 book More Human treats people and AI as complementary forces, and shows leaders where to deploy the technology and where the decision has to stay human. A research base built from interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders worldwide, conducted through Potential Project. Her arguments come with evidence, not anecdote. A framework, “wise compassion”, that gives leaders a usable answer to the empathy-versus-results tension most senior teams are stuck on. Twenty years of consulting at Deloitte and Potential Project with named clients including Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, and Royal Bank of Canada, so she speaks to executives in the language of operational reality, not theory. Biography highlights Senior Partner and North America Director, Potential Project. Co-author, More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025). Co-author, Compassionate Leadership (HBR Press, 2022) and The Mind of the Leader (HBR Press, 2018). Co-author, One Second Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). MSc in Organizational Behaviour; former leader in Deloitte Consulting’s Change Leadership practice. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider. Biography The most senior leaders in large organisations are being asked to do contradictory things at once: cut hard, care visibly, deploy AI fast, and keep the workforce engaged through the disruption it causes. Most leadership advice picks one side of that tension and ignores the other. Jacqueline Carter’s work, built over two decades at Potential Project and Deloitte before that, is about holding both. Her four books with Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave map the same argument across different terrain. The Mind of the Leader (2018) sets out the foundation: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion as practical leadership disciplines. Compassionate Leadership (2022) names the operating problem most senior leaders run into when they try to lead with empathy, namely that empathy alone makes them indecisive, and proposes “wise compassion” as the working alternative. More Human (2025) turns the same lens on AI, arguing that the technology amplifies whichever leadership instinct is already there. The research base is unusual for a leadership speaker. Potential Project’s work draws on interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders and employees across industries. That gives Carter the evidence to make specific claims about what produces trust, candour, and performance in senior teams, rather than the generic motivational frame most leadership keynotes default to. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider, and has worked with executive teams at Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, and Royal Bank of Canada. The thread running through all of it is a single argument senior buyers will recognise immediately: the human qualities most leaders treat as soft are the ones that actually scale under pressure. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and the empathy-versus-results tension Human leadership in the age of AI Leading through change, restructure, and uncertainty Self-leadership and resilience for senior executives Hybrid and virtual team leadership Difficult conversations and leadership candour Mindfulness and attention as leadership disciplines Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding leadership culture after restructure or rapid growth. CHROs and CLOs designing senior leadership development programmes. Boards and senior teams working out how to deploy AI without losing the workforce. Partner groups and senior leaders in professional services managing client and team pressure simultaneously. Audience outcomes A working definition of “wise compassion” that senior leaders can use the next day in difficult conversations. A clearer view of where their own leadership defaults toward avoidance, false toughness, or performative care. A practical frame for using AI to extend leadership capacity rather than substitute for it. Specific language for the trade-offs between speed, candour, and care that most executive teams struggle to name. A research-backed counter to the assumption that human-centred leadership is incompatible with hard performance.

Why organisations work with Jake Havron He treats influence as a learnable skill with named components (motivators, decision methods, body language, congruence), not a personality trait, which gives sales and leadership teams something they can actually practise. He has trained inside revenue-heavy environments rather than seminar rooms, including real estate organisations reporting $300M to $1.6B in annual sales and the HVAC contractor audience at ACCA 2024. His material is built for entrepreneurial and mastermind audiences, GoBundance, MentorBox, 180 Elevate, where the bar for application is high and theory does not survive the room. The framework targets the gap between effort and persuasion that most sales managers describe but cannot name: why two reps with identical scripts close at different rates. Biography highlights Founder of Dream Life Mastery Company and co-founder of FORDIFY, a personal branding agency whose clients include Life Time Fitness. Keynote speaker at the ACCA 2024 conference, addressing roughly 1,000 HVAC contractors on leading with influence. Trainer for GoBundance, MentorBox, 787 Coffee Co. and 180 Elevate Nonprofit. Has worked with real estate sales organisations reporting between $300M and $1.6B in annual revenue. Co-leads the ITfactor Mentorship Program with speaker Emily Ford. Background as a registered nurse before moving into business strategy and speaking. Biography Most sales and leadership development still treats influence as a soft skill, something either you have or you do not. Havron’s argument is the opposite. Influence has structure. People shift their decisions for identifiable reasons, and a salesperson or leader who cannot name those reasons is guessing in the room. His “4 Pillars of Influence” framework, motivators, decision methods, body language and congruence, is built around that claim. Each pillar names a variable a practitioner can read in a live conversation and adjust. It is a working model for people whose income depends on whether the person across the table moves. The audiences he trains tend to be commercially exposed: real estate teams in the $300M to $1.6B revenue range, mastermind communities like GoBundance, and trade audiences such as the ACCA 2024 contractor conference. He also co-founded FORDIFY, a personal branding agency that has worked with brands including Life Time Fitness, and runs the ITfactor Mentorship Program with Emily Ford. Havron’s path into the work is unusual. He was a registered nurse before building Dream Life Mastery Company and moving full-time into strategy and keynote work. The clinical background shows up in how he teaches: behaviour first, theory second, and a bias toward what a person can actually do differently on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Influence in sales Influence in leadership Self-leadership and personal effectiveness Sales team performance Communication and persuasion Entrepreneurial leadership Ideal for Sales leaders and high-performing sales teams in revenue-driven sectors Entrepreneur and founder communities, mastermind groups, and scale-up leadership audiences Franchise and channel-partner audiences where influence sits at the centre of the commercial model Front-line managers stepping into senior leadership roles for the first time Audience outcomes A named, four-part vocabulary for influence that teams can apply in live sales and leadership conversations. The ability to read motivators and decision methods in a counterpart, not just deliver a script. A separation between influence and pressure tactics, and a working sense of why the second tends to backfire. Specific adjustments leaders can make in body language and congruence when the room is not moving with them.

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

Why organisations work with James Henderson He treats strategy as a sequence of staged commitments, not a single plan, which is what boards facing capital decisions in volatile sectors actually need. His teaching draws on more than 50 published case studies built with named companies, so the room is working with operating examples, not abstractions. He has run IMD’s Strategic Partnerships and Leading Sustainable Business Transformation programs, giving him a working view of how ecosystems and sustainability commitments are reshaping competitive strategy. As a former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD, he has built and led large executive programs himself, which translates into sessions designed for senior decision-makers rather than classroom delivery. Biography highlights Professor of Strategic Management, IMD Lausanne, since 2006. Program Director of IMD’s Strategic Partnerships course; Co-Director of Leading Sustainable Business Transformation. Former Dean of Programs and Innovation at IMD (2012 to 2016); launched the Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. Co-edited Restructuring Strategy (Strategic Management Society, 2005); editorial board, Strategic Management Journal. EFMD Excellence in Practice Gold Award (2018); Academy of Management Carolyn Dexter Award (2009); ECCH Best Selling Case in Europe. PhD, INSEAD; MBA, Ivey School of Business; BA Economics, University of Western Ontario. Biography Strategy textbooks describe choices that have already been made. The harder work is the period before, when leaders must commit capital, build partnerships and reshape portfolios while the underlying competitive logic is still moving. That is the territory Henderson has spent twenty years teaching at IMD. He treats strategy as a discipline of staged commitment. Where many frameworks assume a stable view of advantage, his work focuses on options-based investment, corporate venturing, and the timing of moves into new positions. The argument is that senior teams overestimate the cost of acting early and underestimate the cost of waiting for clarity that does not arrive. That work is grounded in operating cases. Henderson has developed more than 50 published case studies, including the Heineken Buckler Beer case that became ECCH’s best-selling case in Europe. He co-edited the Strategic Management Society’s Restructuring Strategy and sits on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal, the field’s flagship journal. Inside IMD he has carried operating responsibility as well as faculty responsibility. As Dean of Programs and Innovation he launched the school’s Global Leadership in the Cloud online portfolio. He directs the Strategic Partnerships course and co-directs Leading Sustainable Business Transformation, two of IMD’s anchor programs on how ecosystems and sustainability are reshaping commercial strategy. Key speaking topics Strategy under uncertainty Strategic agility and options-based investment Corporate strategy and portfolio decisions Strategic partnerships and ecosystems Strategy execution Sustainable business transformation Corporate entrepreneurship and new growth platforms Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing capital allocation decisions in volatile or transitioning markets. CSOs, heads of corporate development and strategy teams running portfolio and partnership reviews. CEOs and senior leadership teams working through sustainable business transformation. Senior leadership programs and offsite agendas focused on commitment and execution under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for staging strategic commitments rather than treating strategy as a single decision. A sharper read of when to invest early, when to hold optionality, and when waiting becomes the costlier choice. Operating examples from named companies that map onto the audience’s own portfolio and partnership questions. A view of how ecosystem and sustainability pressures are restructuring competitive advantage in capital-intensive industries.

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

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

Why organisations work with James Poulter Operator credibility. He built and sold a voice AI company (Vixen Labs to House 337, 2023) before becoming a speaker. The frameworks come from running the work, not commenting on it. A named implementation model. The AI Nervous System framework, published in AI @ Work (Bloomsbury, 2026), gives leadership teams a structure for embedding AI across functions rather than treating it as a tools procurement question. Inside view of how a global brand actually adopts emerging tech. As Head of Emerging Platforms at LEGO, he led LEGO Life and the GIPHY partnership at consumer scale, so the case material is concrete. Comfortable with the ethics conversation without losing the commercial argument. He has advised the Church of England Digital Board alongside corporate clients, which signals range when the AI question shifts from productivity to governance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Vixen Labs, acquired by House 337 in December 2023. Founder of ThreePoint Labs; Head of AI at Dunham & Company, Dallas. Former Head of Emerging Platforms, The LEGO Group, leading LEGO Life and the LEGO GIPHY channel. Author of AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026). Advisor to the Church of England Digital Board; board roles with Christian Aid and Raiser. Client and advisory work cited with Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music. Biography The hard part of corporate AI is rarely the model. It is what happens once a leadership team agrees to use one. Procurement, legal, brand, product, and people functions each have a stake, and most organisations have no shared structure for resolving the trade-offs between them. This is the territory James Poulter has worked in for the past decade. At The LEGO Group, as Head of Emerging Platforms, he led LEGO Life and managed the brand’s GIPHY partnership, learning at consumer scale how a heritage business absorbs new technology without breaking its existing one. He then founded Vixen Labs, a UK voice and conversational AI consultancy, scaled it through the pandemic, and sold it to House 337 in December 2023. His current work sits inside that operator lineage. Through ThreePoint Labs and as Head of AI at Dallas-based Dunham & Company, he advises leadership teams on how to move from isolated AI pilots to a coherent operating capability. His forthcoming book, AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026), sets out the AI Nervous System framework, a model for connecting model choice, team design, ethics, and decision rights across the business. The client list spans Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music, alongside advisory work with the Church of England Digital Board. The range matters: Poulter is comfortable when the conversation is about productivity gains, and equally comfortable when it shifts to governance, values, and what an organisation should refuse to automate. Key speaking topics AI implementation across the enterprise The AI Nervous System framework Conversational and voice AI in commercial strategy AI ethics and responsible deployment Innovation culture inside established organisations The future of work in an AI-native business Emerging platforms and consumer technology adoption Ideal for CEOs and executive teams sponsoring an enterprise AI agenda CTOs, CIOs and Chief AI Officers moving from pilots to operating capability CHROs and people leaders redesigning teams around AI capability Boards and advisory groups grappling with AI ethics and governance Audience outcomes A structured way to assess where their organisation actually is on AI adoption, rather than where the vendor deck claims it is A working vocabulary for the AI Nervous System framework and how its components map to real decisions Worked examples from LEGO, Vixen Labs and named enterprise clients, not generic case studies A clearer position on the ethics calls leadership has to own rather than delegate to a working group