Lernen & Entwicklung speakers

Why organisations work with Alex Cicelsky His 2024 peer-reviewed paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – a self-supporting, carbon-sequestering insulation material fabricated from post-harvest crop residue – is one of the few published, field-tested proofs of concept for low-embodied-carbon construction, giving sustainability teams a citable alternative to conventional materials. He brings thirty years of active construction experience in extreme desert conditions from Kibbutz Lotan’s carbon-neutral EcoCampus: a monitored, measurable, functioning built environment – not a model, but a standing result. His work connects supply chain sustainability to concrete materials decisions: agricultural waste, natural binders, and thermal building performance are his research domain, not a framing device. For organisations whose sustainability commitments have not yet reached their built-environment procurement, he provides both the science of what is possible and a living demonstration of what has already been built. For sustainability education programmes, his curriculum experience spans the Green Apprenticeship at Kibbutz Lotan – a globally recognised programme that has trained hundreds of practitioners in ecological design, natural building, and permaculture across decades of continuous operation. Biography highlights Co-founder and core faculty member, Center for Creative Ecology, Kibbutz Lotan – a carbon-neutral EcoCampus in Israel’s Arava Valley desert and internationally recognised sustainability education centre Founding member, Kibbutz Lotan; member community of the Global Ecovillage Network PhD researcher, Department of Energy Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; BSc in Soil and Water Sciences and Environmental Quality in Agriculture, Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture Published in MRS Energy and Sustainability (2024): peer-reviewed research on Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks – carbon-sequestering construction insulation derived from post-harvest wheat straw Center for Creative Ecology: Israel Ministry of Environment Shield Award for Environmental Education (2000); Global Ecovillage Network Ecovillage Excellence Prize (2006) Lectures at universities and professional seminars internationally on ecological design, sustainable construction, and regenerative systems Biography Buildings carry two kinds of carbon footprint: what they consume after occupation, and what was spent building them. The second, larger figure is fixed at construction and is invisible to most operational sustainability programmes. Alex Cicelsky has spent three decades designing, constructing, and researching structures that address both – in one of the world’s most demanding climates. He is co-founder and core faculty of the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan, a carbon-neutral desert community in Israel’s Arava Valley and a member of the Global Ecovillage Network. The Centre’s EcoCampus, designed and monitored by Cicelsky and his colleagues, operates as a live demonstration and research site. It has been recognised by the Israel Ministry of Environment and the Global Ecovillage Network for its contribution to environmental education, and its buildings have been the subject of formal post-occupancy research. That research has produced peer-reviewed results. A 2024 paper in MRS Energy and Sustainability – co-authored with colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where Cicelsky holds a PhD research affiliation in the Department of Energy Engineering – documents the thermal and mechanical performance of Lightweight Straw and Clay Blocks (LSCBs). Fabricated from post-harvest wheat straw bound with clay, LSCBs are self-supporting and carbon-sequestering. In field tests against autoclaved aerated concrete and expanded polystyrene, they demonstrated superior thermal performance in extreme summer heat, with a two-hour thermal lag that reduced peak indoor temperatures measurably below ambient. The practical implication for any organisation with ESG commitments that extend to its built environment is direct: the materials exist, the performance has been independently measured, and the construction has been done. What Cicelsky brings to a serious sustainability conversation is not a proposition but a record. Key speaking topics Embodied carbon in the built environment Natural and low-carbon construction materials Ecological design and permaculture systems Carbon sequestration through agricultural-waste materials Regenerative community and ecovillage development Sustainable building in extreme climates ESG strategy and the built environment Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads responsible for Scope 3 and built-environment carbon reporting Real estate, infrastructure, and facilities teams developing low-carbon construction or procurement strategies Sustainability education programmes at universities and professional bodies Organisations and communities developing regenerative development or ecovillage frameworks Audience outcomes A clear understanding of embodied carbon in construction and why it falls outside most current ESG reporting frameworks Awareness of peer-reviewed materials alternatives – including agricultural-waste insulation blocks – that reduce and sequester carbon in new construction A working reference point in the Kibbutz Lotan EcoCampus: a carbon-neutral built environment designed, constructed, and monitored over thirty years in an extreme desert climate Practical orientation to permaculture design as an organising framework for regenerative buildings and communities A sharper understanding of the gap between operational efficiency targets and whole-life carbon commitments – and what closing it requires at the procurement stage

Why organisations work with Andy Lopata He reframes networking as a leadership discipline. The argument lands with executives who have dismissed the topic as junior or transactional, and gives them a structured way to think about who supports them, how, and why. The Relationship Matrix gives leaders a tangible way to audit their professional support system, identify where it is thin, and decide where to invest. Few speakers in this space work at that level of operational specificity. His mentoring work, anchored in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell, gives organisations a serious reference point for designing mentoring programmes that retain senior talent. Twenty-five years inside the topic, recognition from the Financial Times and Forbes, and a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist place him in a small group of speakers who have built genuine institutional credibility on professional relationships. He works with the cultural problem behind the leadership one: why senior people will not ask for help, and what it costs the organisation when they do not. Biography highlights Author of six books, including Connected Leadership (2020) and The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring (Pearson, 2024, with Dr Ruth Gotian). Shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award. Two-time board member and former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland; holder of the PSAE, the PSA’s Hall of Fame distinction. Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute; member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Meetings Industry Association. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today; host of The Connected Leadership Podcast. Clients include PayPal, Google, Harrods, BBC, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Allen and Overy, Saïd Business School and Brother International Europe. Biography Most senior leaders rise on technical and commercial credibility, then hit a level where the job is mostly relational. They under-invest in mentors, hesitate to ask for help, and end up isolated at exactly the point where their decisions carry the most weight. That gap is what Lopata’s work addresses. For more than twenty-five years he has worked on professional relationships as an executive capability rather than a soft skill. The Financial Times has called him one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists; Forbes has described him as a true master of networking. The label undersells the work. His Relationship Matrix gives leaders a structured way to audit who supports them, where the gaps are, and where to invest. Frameworks like the Seven Stages of Professional Relationships and The Influence Wheel extend that work into stakeholder mapping, influence and senior mentoring practice. His books map the territory in detail. Connected Leadership argues that executive success is built on a deliberate web of relationships, and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2021. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell Medicine in 2024, gives organisations a reference text for treating mentoring as a strategic retention and development tool. The book was a runner-up for Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Leadership Awards. The institutional weight follows the work. He is a former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland and holds its PSAE Hall of Fame distinction. He was shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award, contributes to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and has worked with PayPal, Google, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, the BBC and Saïd Business School on the same underlying problem: how senior people stop performing in isolation and start leading through the relationships around them. Key speaking topics Professional relationships as a leadership capability Mentoring strategy and programme design Asking for help and the cost of not asking Vulnerable leadership Referral and influence networks Connected leadership and executive support systems Psychological safety and speaking up at senior level Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and partners moving into senior leadership roles where the work becomes relational CHROs and learning leaders designing mentoring, succession and retention programmes Professional services and partner-track populations where business development depends on relationship quality Sales leaders rebuilding referral networks and account relationships Audience outcomes A clear framework, the Relationship Matrix, for auditing the professional support system around a senior role A different language for mentoring as a strategic asset rather than a benefit programme Specific shifts in how leaders approach asking for help, and why most do not A more honest read on where executive isolation is costing the organisation in retention, succession and decision quality Practical adjustments to how teams use referrals, networks and senior relationships in commercial contexts

Why organisations work with Andy Storch He has facilitated talent and leadership programmes for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co., which means he has tested his career-ownership material against the most demanding corporate L&D functions in the market. He runs the room where his buyers meet each other. The Talent Development Think Tank conference, community, and podcast give him a working view of what CHROs and L&D leaders are actually trying to fix, before they brief a speaker. His thesis is concrete and actionable: career ownership is a learnable practice, not a slogan. Own Your Career Own Your Life breaks it into specific steps employees and managers can apply on Monday. His 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, gives organisations a practical handle on personal brand as a retention and internal mobility lever, not a LinkedIn exercise. He works equally credibly as a keynote, workshop facilitator, and community host. For talent functions running multi-day events, that flexibility is rare. Biography highlights Author of Own Your Career Own Your Life (2020) and co-author with Mike Kim of Own Your Brand, Own Your Career (2025). Founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, conference, and community, sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Has consulted, taught, or facilitated for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, State Farm, Red Bull, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, HP, Sony, Cisco, and Tiffany & Co. MBA, USC Marshall School of Business (President of the MBA programme); BS, University of Florida. Host of three podcasts: The Talent Development Hot Seat, Own Your Career, and My NFT Journey. Workshop facilitator for global enterprises since 2011. Biography Career development inside large organisations has become a quiet contract failure. Employees assume their employer will plot the path; employers assume employees will take initiative; the middle is where engagement and retention disappear. Storch built a practice around closing that gap from both sides. His book Own Your Career Own Your Life sets out a step-by-step approach to career ownership for individual contributors and managers. The 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, extends the argument into personal brand as an internal-mobility and retention lever rather than an external marketing exercise. Both books are direct and operational, not motivational. The proof point most relevant to corporate buyers is who he works with. Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co. have used him to facilitate leadership and talent programmes. He has been running these workshops since 2011, which is what allows the keynote material to land in language a senior L&D function recognises. The Talent Development Think Tank, his podcast, conference, and community, gives him an unusual position in the market. He is not commenting on the talent development field from outside it; he is the convener inside it. For a CHRO or head of L&D, that means the speaker on stage has heard, in private, the same problems they are trying to solve. Key speaking topics Career ownership and employee development Talent development strategy Personal brand and internal mobility Leadership for managers of professionals Employee engagement and retention Future of work and talent trends Ideal for CHROs, heads of L&D, and talent development leaders running enterprise development programmes Annual talent and leadership offsites for managers of professionals Employee resource groups and internal high-potential cohorts Sales and account leadership conferences focused on retention and growth of top performers Audience outcomes A working definition of career ownership that managers and employees can apply to weekly conversations Specific tools to make personal brand work as an internal mobility and retention asset A clearer line between what the employer owes the employee and what the employee owes their own career Language to frame development conversations that does not collapse into performance review template A view of where talent development practice is heading, drawn from a sitting community of CHROs and L&D leaders

Why organisations work with Barbara Oakley Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework gives L&D teams a named, neuroscience-backed model for redesigning how training is structured, not just what it covers. It establishes that structured recovery and retrieval practice matter as much as instruction time, a claim with direct implications for how organisations budget and sequence learning investment. “Learning How to Learn,” co-created with Salk Institute neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, has been taken by over 4 million people on Coursera. That scale of real-world adoption gives her frameworks empirical grounding that no controlled study can fully replicate. Her personal trajectory from U.S. Army linguist to engineering professor, achieved through deliberate adult retraining, is the primary evidence for her central argument that capability can be built at any career stage. For organisations running reskilling programmes, that is more persuasive than theory from a researcher who has never made the journey themselves. “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestseller translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold, means her frameworks already have traction well beyond corporate learning circles. Audiences often arrive familiar with her work, reducing the credibility gap that typically slows training adoption. The 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and widely considered the field’s most prestigious award, recognised Oakley as the inaugural winner in a new Lifelong Learning category – independent confirmation that her contribution to continuous capability development is field-defining. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Oakland University; Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Inaugural winner of the 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education (Lifelong Learning category), administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Co-creator (with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute) of “Learning How to Learn” on Coursera – over 4 million enrolled, one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education Author of “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestselling science book translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold; subsequent titles include “Mindshift” (2017), “Uncommon Sense Teaching” (2021), and “Learn Like a Pro” (2021) Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal; Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year (2018) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor” Former U.S. Army Captain; recognised as Distinguished Military Scholar Biography In 2014, a Coursera course called “Learning How to Learn” attracted over 300,000 students in its first three runs. It now has over 4 million enrolled, making it one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education. That appetite reflects a gap most organisational training does not close: a practical understanding of how capability is actually built. Barbara Oakley created that course with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. She came to the research through direct experience: a former U.S. Army Captain trained as a linguist, she retaught herself mathematics and engineering entirely as an adult. Her own career transition is the most direct demonstration of her central argument – that capability is genuinely malleable, and that the brain can acquire new domains of expertise at any career stage. Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework, named in “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), gives organisations a practical model for how concentration, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process. The book reached New York Times bestseller status and has been translated into 13 languages. Subsequent titles including “Mindshift,” “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” and “Learn Like a Pro” extend the framework into career reinvention, teaching design, and AI-era learning. In 2023, she received the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, the most prestigious award in the field, as inaugural winner in a newly created Lifelong Learning category. She is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and holds a concurrent appointment as Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of effective learning and skill retention Workforce reskilling and adult capability development Learning frameworks for the age of AI Building organisational learning culture Career reinvention and professional mindset The science of effective training design Cognitive performance and focus at work Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors designing or auditing workforce capability programmes CEOs and executive teams navigating AI-driven workforce transition and reskilling investment Corporate universities and internal learning academies benchmarking training effectiveness Boards and transformation leads sponsoring large-scale reskilling or career transition initiatives Audience outcomes A named neuroscience framework (focused vs. diffuse mode) for understanding how attention, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process Evidence-based techniques (retrieval practice, spaced repetition, the Pomodoro method) that individuals and teams can apply immediately to improve learning retention A reframe of learning ability from fixed trait to trainable skill, with direct implications for how organisations identify, develop, and retain talent Clarity on why conventional training approaches consistently underdeliver, and what research-supported alternatives look like in practice A grounded argument for why adult capability development is achievable at any career stage, drawn from both neuroscience and the speaker’s own documented transition

Why organisations work with Beth Davies She ran learning and development at Tesla through a workforce expansion from roughly 600 to 33,000 employees, so her playbook on hypergrowth culture is built from the inside, not observed from outside. She led retail talent development at Apple during the iPhone launch and was on the founding team that built Microsoft’s retail stores from zero to fifteen in eighteen months, giving her rare comparative insight into how two very different consumer technology giants trained their customer-facing workforces. She teaches on IE University’s Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, which keeps her arguments tested against the next generation of HR leaders rather than frozen at the point she left corporate roles. McKinsey invited her into its Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning and Development, a signal that her views on workplace learning are taken seriously by the people advising the world’s largest employers. She speaks in concrete operational detail: what the onboarding looked like, how the first week was designed, what broke at which headcount, what the CEO actually said in the room. Biography highlights Former Director of Learning and Development, Tesla (2011 to 2017) Former Director of Retail Talent Development, Apple (2003 to 2008) Former Director of Customer Experience and Training, Microsoft (2009 to 2011) Adjunct Professor, Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, IE University, Madrid Founder and host of the Career Curves podcast JD, Stanford Law School; BA, Indiana University; named Luminary by Indiana University in 2016 Biography Tesla grew from around 600 people to 33,000 in the six years Beth Davies ran its learning and development function. That scale of expansion usually breaks culture. Keeping it intact was her job. Before Tesla, she had already done two of the hardest workforce build-outs in modern retail. At Apple, she was head of retail talent development during the years the stores were becoming the company’s most important customer relationship. She trained teams across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia and prepared thousands of store employees to sell the iPhone on day one. At Microsoft, she joined the small founding team that built the company’s own retail operation from zero to fifteen stores in eighteen months, setting the customer experience standards and the training that went with them. Her argument to senior leaders is that culture is not a slogan or a values poster. It is the behaviour that shows up in onboarding, in manufacturing floor routines, in how a new hire’s first week is designed, and in what managers are actually trained to do. When companies scale quickly, those details get delegated and diluted, and the product suffers. Protecting them is a leadership discipline, not an HR programme. She now teaches on IE University’s Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, advises EdTech founders, and hosts the Career Curves podcast. McKinsey’s Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning and Development invited her in as one of forty thought leaders it wanted in the room. Her Stanford law training shows up in how she structures an argument: specific, evidenced, and unsentimental about what works. Key speaking topics Scaling culture through hypergrowth Onboarding design for new hires Leadership development inside fast-moving companies Learning and development strategy on constrained budgets Customer experience training for retail and consumer businesses The CHRO agenda in technology-led organisations Talent retention in competitive labour markets Ideal for CHROs and heads of L and D in companies scaling past 1,000 employees CEOs and founders protecting culture through a growth phase Retail, consumer, and manufacturing leaders rebuilding customer-facing training HR leadership teams redesigning onboarding and manager capability Audience outcomes A concrete view of what culture preservation looks like at Tesla and Apple scale, in the detail of day-one onboarding and manager routines A sharper test for whether their current learning investment is protecting or eroding the customer experience Specific design principles for onboarding that holds up when headcount doubles A more honest read on which parts of their people strategy are load-bearing and which are ceremonial Comparative lessons from two consumer technology giants that solved retail workforce problems very differently

Why organisations work with Christian Byrge He treats creativity as a skill that can be coached into a team, not a culture project. Leaders leave with specific habits they can run on Monday morning, not a manifesto. He has a working position on AI in the creative process, grounded in current research, that goes beyond the prompt-engineering surface most innovation talks stop at. His research base is unusually deep for a speaker in this category: 70+ academic publications and a full professorship, paired with operational training inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Grundfos, and the Danish Armed Forces. He is comfortable in front of an executive audience and inside a workshop room. Same content holds at both altitudes, which makes him useful when the brief is a keynote that has to seed follow-on internal work. Biography highlights Full Professor of Business Creativity, Vilnius University Business School. PhD in Creativity and Business, Aalborg University. Author of Everyday Innovator (BIS Publishers), How to Teach Creativity, and Enhancing Creativity for Individuals, Groups and Organizations. 70+ academic publications across creativity, team creativity culture, creative self-efficacy, and AI creativity. Worked with LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Danfoss, Siemens, Kompan, TotalEnergies, and the Danish Armed Forces. Trained creative practice with practitioners across engineering, law, healthcare, software, education, and film production. Biography Innovation programmes inside large organisations tend to fail in the same way. They start with energy, produce a portfolio of pilots, and stall when the original sponsor moves on. The diagnosis is usually written as a cultural problem. Christian Byrge’s research argues something more precise: the failure point is that idea generation was never built as a team skill in the first place. That argument is the core of his three books and seventy-plus academic publications. Everyday Innovator, published by BIS Publishers, names four habits that turn creative output into a repeatable behaviour rather than a mood. How to Teach Creativity and Enhance Creativity for Individuals, Groups, and Organizations extends the same logic into education and organisational design. The thread across all three is treating creativity as a trainable capability with named components, not an ambient quality of the workplace. He holds a full professorship in Business Creativity at Vilnius University Business School and a PhD from Aalborg University. The academic base matters because his recent work on AI in the creative process is one of the few executive-level treatments grounded in current research rather than vendor framing. He has trained creative practice inside LEGO, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Velux, Grundfos, Siemens, and the Danish Armed Forces, which gives the research weight in front of an operating audience. The room he is most useful in is the one where leadership has decided innovation matters, but cannot describe what their teams should actually do differently on Tuesday. He gives them the answer in specific behaviours, not in a vision deck. Key speaking topics Team creativity as a trainable discipline Innovation capability inside operating teams AI-supported creative process Creative confidence and self-efficacy Idea generation and development practice Creative culture in regulated and engineering environments Ideal for CHROs and L&D leaders building innovation capability across the workforce Heads of innovation, R&D directors, and transformation leads Executive teams in engineering, life sciences, and industrial sectors, where creativity is treated as soft Educators and learning system leaders are responsible for creative competence development Audience outcomes A working definition of team creativity is a set of named behaviours, not a personality trait The four habits from Everyday Innovator are mapped to the audience’s own operating context A grounded view of where AI helps and where it flattens the creative process Specific practices senior leaders can install in standing meetings to lift idea quality A clear separation between creative culture rhetoric and creative output discipline

Why organisations work with Sir Clive Woodward Built the same culture system in two radically different contexts. In rugby, England moved from sixth in the world to World Cup winners. Across Team GB’s 26 Olympic sports he contributed to the country’s most successful modern Games at London 2012. The framework travels. His “Teamship” model is a written operational system. England’s Black Book ran to roughly 240 rules across 35 sections, drafted and owned by the players themselves. Audiences work with a documented method they can apply. One of the very few elite sports coaches to have codified his own methodology into an enterprise learning platform. As founder and former chairman of Hive Learning, built with digital venture builder Blenheim Chalcot in 2012, he grew a client base that included Sky, Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, PepsiCo, Halma and the International Olympic Committee. Named tools audiences can use: Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials. Each is a specific leadership discipline with a defined practice. Biography highlights Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team from 1997 to 2004, winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup. England reached world number one during his tenure and remain the only Northern Hemisphere side to have won a World Cup. Director of Sport at the British Olympic Association, supporting Team GB across the Beijing, Vancouver and London Olympic Games. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. Head Coach of the British & Irish Lions for their 2005 tour to New Zealand. Founder and former chairman of Hive Learning, the digital learning platform he built with Blenheim Chalcot in 2012, whose clients have included Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover. Author of Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019), both setting out the Teamship methodology. Awarded an OBE for services to rugby in 2002 and knighted in the 2004 New Year Honours, and a World Rugby Hall of Fame inductee; currently a member of the IOC Entourage Commission and Director of Sport at the APEX2100 International Ski Academy in Tignes. A former England international and British & Irish Lion: 21 England caps between 1980 and 1984, a member of the 1980 Grand Slam side, and a Lions tourist in 1980 and 1983. Biography England rugby were sixth in the world when Woodward took the head coach’s role in 1997. Six years later the team lifted the Rugby World Cup in Sydney, holding the world number one ranking and an unbeaten home record at Twickenham. England remain the only Northern Hemisphere team to have won the tournament. The underlying framework was what Woodward called Teamship: a written, player-owned set of behavioural standards covering everything from punctuality to media conduct. The Black Book that held these rules ran to roughly 240 entries across 35 sections. Its premise was that values only matter when they translate into specific daily behaviours, and that the team should write those rules itself. He took the same approach into the British Olympic Association from 2006, serving as Team GB’s Director of Sport through the Beijing, Vancouver and London cycles. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. The task across 26 Olympic sports was closer to running a diversified business than to coaching a single squad. In 2012 he founded Hive Learning with Blenheim Chalcot, codifying the Teamship approach into an enterprise learning platform whose clients came to include Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover. His books Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019) document the same method in full. The underlying conviction: culture is a design problem, and the rules that sustain it should be written down. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Leadership under pressure Team performance and behavioural standards Building winning teams Learning cultures Performance in elite environments Culture change across large, federated organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards treating culture as a measurable performance lever CEOs, CPOs and heads of learning leading organisation-wide behaviour and capability programmes Leadership teams integrating businesses after mergers or major reorganisations Organisations operating in high-stakes environments where team cohesion directly affects outcomes Audience outcomes A working method for writing behavioural standards that teams author and enforce themselves, drawn directly from England’s Black Book Specific language for diagnosing culture problems in behavioural terms A framework for running performance culture change across large, federated organisations where no single leader commands the whole system Perspective on building through setbacks, grounded in the six-year arc between the 1999 and 2003 Rugby World Cup campaigns Named leadership tools including Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials

Why organisations work with David Thomas Measurable cognitive credentials that a buyer can name in one sentence: Guinness record for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits, International Grandmaster of Memory, US Memory Champion. Most motivational speakers cannot point to anything comparable. A lived story of reinvention from a troubled start and 11 years in the Fire Service to a global speaking career, which lands with audiences who are themselves being asked to reinvent roles, teams, and businesses. A practical toolkit, not a biography. Audiences leave with specific techniques for recall, preparation, and presenting under pressure that they can apply the next morning. 30 years of professional speaking across more than 30 countries, including after-dinner, keynote, and executive coaching formats, which gives the booker flexibility on room, tone, and length. A rare bridge between motivational storytelling and hard cognitive science, useful for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and learning events where a generic inspirational keynote would fall flat. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits from memory (1998), breaking an 18-year-old record. International Grandmaster of Memory and 2007 US Memory Champion; world record holder for memorising 100 individually shuffled packs of playing cards. Former operational firefighter with the UK Fire Service for 11 years before his speaking career. Author of “Improving Your Memory” in the DK Essential Managers series, published by Dorling Kindersley / Penguin Random House. Featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2003, with further coverage cited across BBC World Service, Wall Street Journal and The Times. Has delivered keynotes, workshops and after-dinner talks in more than 30 countries, with venues including Caesar’s Palace, Wembley and the Tower of London. Biography Most organisations treat memory and attention as personality traits. They are not. They are trainable, measurable disciplines, and the people who treat them that way outperform the ones who do not. David Thomas built a career on that distinction. The shift from the UK Fire Service to the World Memory Championships happened in under a year. Eight months after buying his first memory book to help him pass exams, Thomas placed fourth at the Championships. On 1 May 1998 he recited Pi to 22,500 digits, breaking an 18-year Guinness World Record. He later became an International Grandmaster of Memory, a US Memory Champion, and a world record holder for memorising 100 shuffled packs of playing cards. Those credentials matter because they separate him from the generic motivational field. When he talks about change, resilience, or performance under pressure, he is not borrowing language from the leadership canon. He is describing a discipline he has competed in at world level, published on through the DK Essential Managers series, and taught to more than 250,000 people across 30 countries. The work in the room is practical. Audiences leave with techniques they can use that week: how to remember names in a sales context, how to hold a room without notes, how to prepare when the stakes are real. It is why he still gets booked for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and after-dinner events nearly 30 years into the career, including a 2003 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that took the message to a global audience. Key speaking topics Memory and cognitive performance Resilience and personal reinvention Change and adaptability Presentation and communication skills Peak performance under pressure Motivation and mindset Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial conferences where recall of product, client, and context is a direct revenue lever. Leadership offsites and learning events where a keynote needs to bridge inspiration with practical cognitive skills. After-dinner and awards audiences looking for a serious credential paired with a human story rather than generic motivational fare. Learning and development leaders building programmes on performance habits, attention, and executive presence. Audience outcomes Specific, named memory techniques audiences can apply the next day to recall names, data, and presentation content. A sharper sense of what trainable performance actually looks like, anchored in world-record discipline rather than slogans. Renewed appetite for personal reinvention, drawn from a first-person story of moving from the Fire Service to world-level competition. Practical approaches to preparing for and performing in high-stakes rooms, from boardroom pitches to stage presentations.

Why organisations work with Debra Corey She built the Engagement Bridge, a ten-element model set out in Build It (Wiley, 2018) and road-tested across Reward Gateway’s client base. It gives HR and executive teams a shared diagnostic for where engagement is actually breaking. Her Bad Bosses Ruin Lives work names ten specific manager archetypes and the behaviours that produce them. It gives senior leaders a way to talk about poor management without it becoming personal. She has sat in the seat, twenty-plus years of senior HR roles at Gap Inc., Honeywell, Quintiles, Merlin Entertainments, and Reward Gateway. The case studies she uses are operational, not theoretical. HR Magazine ranked her on its Most Influential Thinkers list in 2021, and Inspiring Workplaces has named her on its Top 101 Global Employee Engagement Influencers list for multiple years running. She writes and speaks as a practitioner. Her six books give leadership teams a common vocabulary for engagement, recognition, values, and HR communication that outlasts the keynote. Biography highlights Author or co-author of six books on engagement, recognition, values, leadership, and HR communication, published with Wiley and Kogan Page among others. Creator of the Engagement Bridge model and the Great Boss Building Block framework. Former senior HR leader at Gap Inc., Honeywell, Quintiles, Merlin Entertainments, and Reward Gateway. Founder of DebCo HR Ltd (operating as Step It Up HR), established 2019. Ranked on HR Magazine’s HR Most Influential Thinkers list in 2021. Named Employee Benefits Professional of the Year by Employee Benefits Magazine. Biography Most organisations know their engagement scores are soft. Fewer can say where the break is, whether it sits in recognition, in values, in manager behaviour, or in how HR itself communicates. Debra Corey’s working career has been spent inside that diagnostic question. Twenty-plus years in senior HR at Gap Inc., Honeywell, Quintiles, Merlin Entertainments, and Reward Gateway gave her a view across retail, pharma, manufacturing, hospitality, and HR tech. In 2019 she left corporate life and founded DebCo HR, operating as Step It Up HR, to work on the same problem from the outside. The Engagement Bridge model, set out in Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement (Wiley, 2018, with Glenn Elliott), is the framework most associated with her. It breaks engagement into ten concrete elements, from purpose and reward through to manager behaviour, and gives HR and executive teams a shared way to identify which element is actually failing. Her later books push into specific pieces of that terrain: Appreciate It! on recognition, Bringing Your Values Out to Play on operationalising values, and Bad Bosses Ruin Lives (2023, with Ken Corey) on the ten archetypes of poor management. HR Magazine placed her on its Most Influential Thinkers list in 2021, and she has featured repeatedly on Inspiring Workplaces’ Top 101 Global Employee Engagement Influencers list. The through-line across the books, the consultancy, and the speaking is narrow and deliberate: make the gap between HR design and daily behaviour smaller. Key speaking topics Employee engagement and the Engagement Bridge model Employee recognition and appreciation Organisational values in practice Manager effectiveness and the Great Boss Building Block Workplace culture and employee experience HR communication and the IMPACT model Ideal for CHROs, Reward Directors, and People and Culture leads designing or resetting engagement and recognition programmes Executive teams where engagement or culture scores have stalled and the board wants a diagnostic, not a pep talk Organisations rolling out revised values or manager-capability frameworks and needing external credibility behind the launch HR conferences, leadership off-sites, and people-manager summits where the audience is operational, not theoretical Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for engagement rooted in the ten elements of the Engagement Bridge A working view of where recognition programmes typically fail and what a working one looks like A practical read on the ten bad-boss archetypes and the behaviours that produce each A method for moving organisational values from poster to operating practice Named examples from Gap, Honeywell, Merlin Entertainments, Reward Gateway, and the wider client base in her books

Why organisations work with Diana Renner Her book Not Knowing (CMI Management Book of the Year, translated into 15+ languages) makes a specific, counterintuitive argument: that the pressure to project expertise and have answers actively impairs leadership in genuinely complex situations. This is a diagnosis most leadership development programmes avoid, and a conversation senior leadership teams rarely have with rigour. She works at the intersection of three distinct bodies of knowledge – adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology – a combination that addresses not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders must develop as people. This is not available from single-discipline practitioners. Her guest faculty roles at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government confirm that her frameworks hold up in rigorous, peer-reviewed executive education settings alongside practitioner application. Through the Uncharted Leadership Institute and programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management, she has built and tested leadership development approaches across commercial, government, and community contexts at scale. Her personal biography – leaving Romania in 1987, professional reinvention across law, refugee advocacy, and leadership development – gives the Not Knowing framework lived authority that purely academic treatments of the same topic cannot match. Biography highlights Co-author of Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity (LID Publishing) – CMI Management Book of the Year 2015; translated into 15+ languages Co-author of Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (LID Publishing, 2018) Director and co-founder, Uncharted Leadership Institute (est. 2016); creator, Not Knowing Lab Senior Lecturer, Monash University; adjunct lecturer, University of Adelaide; associate, Melbourne Business School Guest faculty, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and University of Texas LBJ School of Government 2017 Monash University Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (Global Challenges Honours Program teaching team) Biography Diana Renner’s book Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity, co-written with Steven D’Souza, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2015. Its thesis is direct: the pressure to project expertise and certainty is often what makes complex adaptive challenges harder to navigate, not easier. Translated into more than fifteen languages, it has become a reference for leadership development practitioners and senior teams working with genuine strategic uncertainty. The book draws on a distinction most leadership frameworks collapse: technical problems can be solved with existing expertise, while adaptive challenges require new thinking and development. Renner’s work through the Uncharted Leadership Institute, which she co-founded in 2016, is built around helping senior leaders recognise which they are facing – and develop the capacity to engage productively with the latter. Her practice draws on three distinct disciplines: adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology. Together, these address not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders need to develop as people to lead well in conditions of genuine uncertainty. Programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management have tested these frameworks across commercial, government, and community contexts. Renner holds a Senior Lectureship at Monash University and has served as guest faculty at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government. Her second book, Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (2018), extends the Not Knowing argument into the territory of executive effectiveness – examining how excessive busyness and compulsive doing undermine the quality of leadership in complex environments. Key speaking topics Adaptive leadership in uncertainty and complexity Not Knowing – leading beyond expertise Not Doing – effortless action and the limits of busyness Distinguishing adaptive from technical challenges Adult development theory and leadership growth Deliberately developmental organisational cultures Complexity theory and strategic resilience Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives leading organisations through complex change or strategic inflection points CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior leadership programmes Senior executives and leadership teams in government and public sector organisations Board-level strategy and scenario planning forums Audience outcomes A clear distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, with practical language for applying it in real organisational conversations Greater self-awareness about how the pressure to have answers shapes individual leadership behaviour and team dynamics Practical frameworks from Not Knowing and Not Doing for leading through uncertainty without forcing premature resolution A more explicit understanding of how adult development theory applies to the daily practice of leadership Approaches to building team and organisational cultures that can hold complexity and sustain productive engagement over time

Why organisations work with Dr. Diane Hamilton She turns curiosity from a soft cultural aspiration into a measurable diagnostic. The Curiosity Code Index gives leaders a named set of inhibitors, fear, assumptions, technology, environment, that can be addressed with specific interventions rather than slogans. Her work connects directly to the business outcomes leaders are already accountable for: engagement, innovation rate, learning velocity, retention. The framing makes curiosity legible to a CFO, not only to an L&D team. Thinkers50 Radar selection (2020) places her among a small group of behavioural thinkers being actively translated into corporate practice. The recognition signals her credibility to boards reviewing speaker rosters. A Forbes column and five years interviewing thousands of senior leaders on her nationally syndicated radio show mean she walks into a boardroom already fluent in the language of the C-suite. Four decades of business experience, an MBA program chair role, and certifications in Myers-Briggs and EQ-i give her the assessment vocabulary HR leaders trust, without the academic distance that limits some behavioural speakers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Tonerra, a management consulting and training business focused on curiosity, perception, and behavioural assessment. Creator of the Curiosity Code Index and the Perception Power Index, both validated organisational assessments with associated certification programmes. Thinkers50 Radar 2020 selection, the annual list of management thinkers most likely to influence organisational practice. Fulbright Specialist and faculty member at Duke Corporate Education, the executive education arm of Duke University, and former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Author of Cracking the Curiosity Code, Curiosity Unleashed, and The Power of Perception (with Dr. Maja Zelihic), with a fourth title, Adaptive Curiosity, forthcoming from Wiley. Host of Take the Lead, a nationally syndicated radio show, where she interviewed thousands of senior leaders including Steve Forbes, Naveen Jain, and Craig Newmark. Forbes contributor on workplace behaviour, leadership, and innovation. Biography Curiosity is one of the most cited drivers of organisational performance and one of the least precisely measured. Diane Hamilton built her career on closing that gap. The Curiosity Code Index, which she created and validated, identifies the four factors that suppress curiosity inside organisations: fear, assumptions, technology, and environment. The framework, known as FATE, gives leaders a diagnostic rather than a slogan. Hamilton brings the assessment vocabulary HR functions trust. She holds a PhD in business management and is a certified Myers-Briggs and EQ-i practitioner. She teaches leadership as faculty at Duke Corporate Education and previously chaired the MBA programme at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Her consulting firm, Tonerra, applies the Curiosity Code Index alongside the Perception Power Index, a second validated instrument she developed with Dr. Maja Zelihic and set out in their book The Power of Perception. Thinkers50 named her to its 2020 Radar, the annual cohort of management thinkers shaping organisational practice. She writes for Forbes on workplace behaviour. Over five years hosting Take the Lead, her nationally syndicated radio show, she interviewed thousands of senior figures, including Steve Forbes and Craig Newmark. As a Fulbright Specialist she speaks and teaches internationally, with recent engagements in the United States, Luxembourg, and Dubai. For a corporate audience, the practical value is the move from cultural rhetoric to behavioural intervention. Hamilton names the specific structures and assumptions that suppress curiosity inside a given organisation, then prescribes the changes that follow. Her forthcoming book, Adaptive Curiosity, extends that work to the question now facing every leadership team: what stays distinctly valuable in people as intelligent machines absorb more of the work. Key speaking topics Curiosity as an organisational capability Perception and global leadership Emotional intelligence in senior roles Future-proofing the workforce in the age of AI Innovation culture and employee engagement Behavioural assessment in leadership development Multigenerational workforce dynamics Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding engagement and learning culture Heads of L&D commissioning behavioural assessment programmes Innovation and transformation leads diagnosing why initiatives stall Executive teams investing in EQ and behavioural development for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A named diagnostic, FATE, for identifying what specifically suppresses curiosity in their organisation A framework for connecting curiosity to engagement, innovation, and retention metrics leaders already track Tools to assess and develop emotional intelligence and perception in senior teams A clearer view of how personality and generational differences shape team performance A practical sense of which behavioural interventions move the needle and which produce activity without change

Why organisations work with Andrew Ng His AI Transformation Playbook – a named, five-step framework derived directly from building AI teams at Google and Baidu – gives organisations a structured implementation path, not principles. It is the difference between a direction and a plan. He has operated on both sides of the AI adoption challenge: as the person responsible for making two of the world’s largest technology companies into AI-first organisations, and as the founder of platforms that have trained more than 8 million people in AI skills. The failure modes at both ends are not theoretical to him. His “AI is the new electricity” thesis reframes AI as general-purpose infrastructure rather than a feature or a product – a distinction that changes how boards allocate capital and how leadership teams structure accountability. Named to Time’s inaugural Time100 AI list (2023) – recognising active, current influence in the field – and to Amazon’s board of directors. The former signals peer standing; the latter signals boardroom credibility. Through AI Aspire, developed in partnership with Bain & Company, he advises enterprises moving from AI experimentation to scalable transformation – giving organisations access to a perspective tested across venture building, hyperscale operations, and mass education. Biography highlights Co-founded Google Brain – the research team credited with reshaping Google’s approach to artificial intelligence VP and Chief Scientist at Baidu, leading a 1,300-person AI team responsible for the company’s global AI strategy Co-founder and Chairman of Coursera (NYSE: COUR), now serving 150 million+ registered learners globally Founder of DeepLearning.AI – over 8 million people have completed AI courses through his programmes Named to Time100 Most Influential People (2012), Fast Company’s Most Creative People (2014), and Time100 AI (2023) Member of Amazon’s board of directors (appointed April 2024) Author of the AI Transformation Playbook and Machine Learning Yearning, both in wide circulation Holds a BSc from Carnegie Mellon, MSc from MIT, and PhD from UC Berkeley; co-authored over 200 research papers Biography Most AI pilot projects never become AI companies. Andrew Ng has spent years examining why – first as the founding lead of Google Brain and then as VP and Chief Scientist at Baidu, where he built a 1,300-person AI team. The gap between isolated AI experimentation and enterprise-wide capability is the problem he has studied from the inside. His AI Transformation Playbook – drawn directly from that experience – sets out a five-step framework for taking AI adoption from initial momentum to company-wide infrastructure. It circulates widely because it treats AI transformation as an operational challenge, not a technology question. His thesis that AI is infrastructure the way electricity was infrastructure gives boards a strategic frame that holds across industries and business models. Ng co-founded Coursera, which now serves over 150 million registered learners, and founded DeepLearning.AI, through which more than 8 million people have trained in AI skills. Building AI literacy at that scale – and measuring what works – gives him a concrete, tested perspective on what workforce transformation in practice actually requires. Few speakers can point to comparable operational evidence. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and UC Berkeley, has co-authored over 200 research papers, and sits on Amazon’s board of directors. Named to Time’s inaugural Time100 AI list in 2023 – recognising current influence rather than historical contribution – he continues to co-found AI companies through AI Fund and advise enterprises on AI strategy through AI Aspire, a firm he built in partnership with Bain & Company. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI adoption and transformation AI strategy for boards and C-suite leaders Agentic AI and the next phase of AI systems AI workforce development and capability building Responsible AI development and regulation Machine learning fundamentals and applied AI The economics of AI as general-purpose infrastructure Ideal for C-suite executives and boards setting AI strategy and capital allocation Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading enterprise AI programmes CHROs and people leaders responsible for AI upskilling and workforce transformation Transformation leads and innovation teams moving from AI pilots to scaled deployment Audience outcomes A structured framework for diagnosing where enterprise AI adoption is stalling and what to do next Clarity on how to build internal AI capability – teams, workflows, and governance – rather than relying on isolated project-by-project approaches A board-level frame for AI as infrastructure, with implications for investment, talent, and competitive positioning Practical understanding of what large-scale AI workforce development requires, drawn from programmes that have trained millions A more grounded view of responsible AI development – distinguishing credible risk from speculative concern – from a practitioner who has argued these positions in public and in policy