Zielorientierte Führung speakers

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

Why organisations work with Christie Watson Two decades on hospital wards, including paediatric intensive care and resuscitation roles at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’, give her a direct authority on care under pressure that consultants and academics cannot replicate. The Language of Kindness reached number one in the Sunday Times list and stayed in the top ten for five months, evidence that her articulation of care work resonates well beyond a clinical audience. A Costa First Novel Award winner and a UEA professor, she translates the texture of frontline experience into language that lands with senior, sceptical audiences. She offers a serious counterweight to wellness-industry framing: a vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and staff burnout that is grounded in lived practice, not vendor messaging. Biography highlights Author of eight books across fiction and memoir, including Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, The Language of Kindness, The Courage to Care, and Moral Injuries. Costa First Novel Award winner for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away (2011). Sunday Times number one bestseller for The Language of Kindness, with translations in 23 languages. Professor at the University of East Anglia, holding appointments associated with creative writing and medical and health humanities. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of East Anglia. Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation; contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Biography The hardest work in any organisation is usually the work that involves caring for other people, and it is also the work most likely to be reduced to a slogan. Christie Watson spent twenty years inside that reality as a nurse, in paediatric intensive care and as a resuscitation officer at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’. Her writing started inside that experience and has stayed there. The Language of Kindness drew on those two decades and reached number one on the Sunday Times list, where it stayed in the top ten for five months. It has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. Her debut novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2011. Later books, including The Courage to Care and the novel Moral Injuries, continue to sit at the meeting point of medicine, ethics, and ordinary human life. She is a professor at the University of East Anglia, where she completed her own MA in creative writing and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2018. She is a patron of the RCN Foundation and a contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Her standing inside nursing and outside it is unusual and gives her a hearing in rooms that rarely listen to the same voice. For senior audiences, she offers something specific. A way of talking about compassion, moral injury, and staff wellbeing that does not rely on borrowed corporate framing, and a sense of what care actually costs the people who provide it. Key speaking topics Compassion and care in high-pressure organisations Moral injury and burnout in frontline workforces Storytelling as a tool for organisational understanding Mental health and wellbeing beyond the wellness industry The lived reality of healthcare and caring professions Kindness as an institutional discipline Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and wellbeing leads in organisations with frontline or caring workforces Healthcare boards, NHS leadership, and clinical executive teams Conferences on workplace mental health, employee experience, and the future of work in human-intensive sectors Universities, professional bodies, and membership organisations addressing the future of caring professions Audience outcomes A more honest vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and burnout, grounded in twenty years of frontline practice A sharper sense of why standard wellbeing programmes underperform with fatigued workforces An authentic, first-person account that senior audiences remember and quote afterwards A reframing of care as a serious institutional practice, not a soft attribute

Why organisations work with Clover Hogan She turns climate anxiety from a cultural backdrop into a measurable pressure point on recruitment, retention, and stakeholder trust, with specific evidence from Force of Nature’s work with young people in more than fifty countries. She has moved between youth movements and Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, which means she can translate Gen Z expectations into language a sustainability committee can act on. Her TED talk “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable” has been viewed close to two million times, giving her a rare ability to hold a mixed audience, including sceptics, on a subject most speakers polarise. She founded Force of Nature at nineteen and built it into an internationally recognised organisation before handing over leadership, which gives her direct operating experience of building a climate programme rather than only commenting on one. Forbes 30 Under 30 listing and features in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue place her in the small group of climate voices that board-level audiences already know by name. Biography highlights Founder of Force of Nature, a youth non-profit mobilising mindsets for climate action, founded at age nineteen. Former Executive Director of Force of Nature; now advisor and chair of the board after a formal leadership handover in 2024. TED speaker, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” with close to two million views. Recognised on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list at age twenty-two. Host of the Force of Nature podcast, in conversation with figures including lawyers behind landmark climate agreements and Nobel Peace Prize nominees. Has advised Fortune 50 companies including PepsiCo and Unilever on Gen Z climate expectations; interviewed the 14th Dalai Lama and shared platforms with Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva. Featured in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue. Biography The climate conversation inside most large organisations has quietly shifted. It used to be a reporting question. It is now a hiring question, a customer question, and a boardroom legitimacy question. Force of Nature, the non-profit Clover Hogan founded at nineteen, has spent the last several years mapping that shift from the other side of the table, working with young people in more than fifty countries on what they actually expect from the companies they join, buy from, and vote with. Hogan treats eco-anxiety as a serious operating variable, not a feeling. Her TED talk, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” has reached close to two million viewers by refusing both doom and false optimism, and by naming what people are actually experiencing. Inside Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, she translates that same research into a direct question for leadership teams: what are you asking your people to defend, and can you defend it yourself. Her authority comes from operating experience. She built Force of Nature into an internationally recognised youth organisation, managed a formal handover to new leadership in 2024, and now sits as chair of the board while advising organisations and speaking internationally. The Force of Nature podcast has put her in extended conversation with figures ranging from Nobel Peace Prize nominees to the lawyers behind landmark climate agreements, and with Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, and the 14th Dalai Lama. The effect in a room of senior leaders is specific. She will not make the climate crisis smaller than it is, and she will not let it become an abstraction. She returns the conversation to the concrete group of people, inside and outside the organisation, whose trust the next decade of climate strategy has to earn. Key speaking topics Climate leadership and corporate accountability Eco-anxiety and climate psychology Gen Z expectations of employers and brands Youth engagement and movement building ESG credibility and the gap between commitments and delivery Storytelling and public communication on the climate crisis Purpose and values in modern organisations Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads defending or rebuilding climate strategy against tougher stakeholder scrutiny. CHROs and talent leaders whose recruitment and retention now runs through how credible the organisation looks on climate. Boards and executive committees setting the next phase of sustainability commitments and the communications around them. Brand, marketing, and corporate affairs leaders whose audiences are increasingly Gen Z and increasingly unforgiving of gaps between claim and practice. Audience outcomes A sharper read on what younger employees and consumers are actually asking of organisations on climate, beyond the survey headlines. Language for discussing eco-anxiety as a workforce and stakeholder factor rather than a private sentiment. A more honest internal test for where the organisation’s climate commitments are holding up and where they are exposed. Confidence to lead climate conversations with staff, customers, and boards without retreating into either doom or marketing gloss. A clearer sense of how youth movements, media scrutiny, and investor pressure are converging into a single reputational frontier.

Why organisations work with Cristiana Pace She has translated FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001, ISO 20121, and carbon footprint methodologies into delivery work for Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, and AS Roma. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index is the first independent benchmark of motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, which gives buyers a defensible reference point when their own disclosures are scrutinised. She built a doctoral research base at Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, so her advice to boards is grounded in evidence, not sector folklore. Enovation Consulting won the 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to receive it, an indicator of operational scale across more than 60 organisations worldwide. She speaks credibly to engineers, commercial leadership, and federation governance in the same room, which matters when sustainability decisions cut across all three. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Enovation Consulting, B Corp certified and FIA environmentally accredited sustainability agency for sport. PhD in Sustainability and Strategic Management, Coventry University; Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Business in Society. First woman to work trackside with the FIA’s technical departments in Formula 1. Former Business Development Manager at Williams Advanced Engineering, where she led work on Formula E battery supply. Member of the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission and Chair of the eSC Sustainability Commission. Board member of BASIS, the British Association for Sustainable Sport, and Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School. Recognised by The Guardian and the Women’s Engineering Society among the UK’s Top 50 Women in Engineering, 2021. 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, awarded to Enovation Consulting. Biography The motorsport industry has spent two decades building safety as an engineering discipline. Sustainability is the next system to build, and the methods are not yet settled. Cristiana Pace has spent her career inside that transition, first trackside with the FIA, then on battery technology at Williams Advanced Engineering, then in doctoral research on how the sector decarbonises. Enovation Consulting, which she founded in 2018, is the operating expression of that work. The agency advises Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits on FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001 and ISO 20121 certification, carbon footprint calculation, and ESG reporting. Clients include Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, Motorsport UK, and AS Roma, with services now spanning football, tennis, sailing, and athletics. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index sits behind a lot of that work. It benchmarks motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, using only public disclosures, which puts disclosure pressure on the sector itself. In 2025, Enovation Consulting won the King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to do so, recognising scale across more than 60 organisations. She holds a PhD from Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, sits on the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission, chairs the eSC Sustainability Commission, and serves on the BASIS board. The technical depth means she can sit in front of an engineering team or a federation board and be useful in both rooms. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy for sport and motorsport ESG reporting and disclosure in sport The decarbonisation of motorsport and the energy transition Technology transfer from motorsport to industry Diversity and STEM in engineering Purpose-driven leadership in high-performance environments Innovation under regulatory and competitive pressure Ideal for Boards and CEOs of sports rightsholders, federations, and clubs facing ESG and net zero scrutiny Heads of sustainability, ESG, and corporate affairs in consumer brands, mobility, and energy companies Senior engineering and operations leaders responsible for translating sustainability commitments into delivery Sponsorship and partnership leadership teams at brands aligning marketing spend with credible sustainability narratives Audience outcomes A clearer view of what credible sustainability looks like once you remove the marketing layer A framework for moving from net zero pledges to disclosed operating data Direct examples of how Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits are turning ESG into engineering and procurement decisions A sharper sense of where sport sits inside the wider energy transition and what stakeholders will demand next A practical reference point for benchmarking sustainability performance using the Sustainable Motorsport Index

Why organisations work with Dalia Feldheim She led the brand team behind Always #LikeAGirl, a campaign that won 14 Cannes Lions and was named by Forbes as one of the most influential of the decade. She now translates that instinct for cultural change into how leaders run teams. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, with a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg, sets out a specific playbook built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, rooted in both corporate practice and organisational psychology. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, bringing applied positive psychology into the room, not just a founder story. Her credentials are practitioner-plus-clinician: an INSEAD Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, ICF coach accreditation, and training as a psychodynamic group therapist. That range lets her work with executive teams on culture change without oversimplifying. She speaks from inside the marketing craft, which makes her credible with commercial leaders who are suspicious of wellbeing content that does not understand how businesses actually grow. Biography highlights 17 years at Procter and Gamble as a C-suite global marketing executive, leading Always, Tampax and Whisper brand teams. Led the Always #LikeAGirl campaign, 14 Cannes Lions, named by Forbes as one of the most influential campaigns of the decade. Author of “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), foreword by Sheryl Sandberg. Revised paperback “Lead Like a Girl” followed in 2024. Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, teaching the Science of Happiness and Resilience. Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, INSEAD. Certified teacher in the Science of Happiness via the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Founder of Flow Leadership Consultancy and of Uppiness, a positive-psychology game for employees. Featured in McKinsey Author Talks and on TED.com via TEDxJaffaWomen. Biography Always #LikeAGirl rewired how a generation talks about what girls can do. Dalia Feldheim led the brand team behind it at Procter and Gamble. The campaign won 14 Cannes Lions and was later listed by Forbes among the most influential campaigns of the decade. That work sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership today. After 17 years running global marketing for P and G brands including Always, Tampax and Whisper, she retrained as an organisational psychologist at INSEAD and as a certified teacher in the Science of Happiness at the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Flow Leadership Consultancy grew out of that combination. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022, foreword by Sheryl Sandberg) argues that the most durable response to burnout is a leadership style built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, for men and women alike. McKinsey featured her in its Author Talks series on the same thesis. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, and works with executive teams on building cultures that combine psychological safety with commercial ambition. Her TEDxJaffaWomen talk, also titled “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, is published on TED.com. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the four Ps: purpose, perseverance, people-first, positivity Psychological safety and culture change Resilience and the science of happiness at work Women in leadership and gender equality in the workplace Burnout, wellbeing and sustainable performance Purpose-led brand building Ideal for CHROs and heads of leadership development rethinking how they build leaders through sustained pressure. CMOs and brand leaders looking at purpose-led marketing from someone who has led it at scale. Executive teams running culture, DEI or wellbeing programmes that need credibility with commercial leaders. Leadership offsites where the audience wants substance from a practitioner, not motivational content. Audience outcomes A language for leading with empathy and purpose that commercial leaders can actually use with their teams. A clearer view of how psychological safety links to commercial performance, not just engagement scores. Specific positive-psychology practices leaders can apply to manage burnout in themselves and their teams. A sharper read on how purpose shows up in brand and culture, drawn from the Always #LikeAGirl playbook. A framework for rethinking gender and leadership style without reducing the conversation to representation numbers.

Why organisations work with Dan Pontefract The Work-Life Bloom model is not a concept – it is a research-backed framework with 12 named factors, four defined employee personas, and a structured approach that leaders can apply to their teams immediately. It gives organisations something specific to replace the work-life balance language they already know is not working. His decade as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS – where he launched the TELUS MBA, the Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90% – means he is not theorising about culture change from the outside. He has built it at scale. His five award-winning books each address a discrete organisational tension with a named model: the three-level purpose sweet spot (The Purpose Effect), the cyclical Open Thinking framework (Open to Think), the nine-lesson caring leadership model (Lead. Care. Win.), and the 12-factor Work-Life Bloom. Audiences leave with named frameworks they can act on, not just ideas they can reflect on. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey (May 2026), positions him on a strategic workforce issue that most boards are not yet treating as a risk: age debt – the growing talent and productivity shortfall created by demographic ageing – and the experience dividend available to organisations that treat older workers as assets. He is one of the few leadership voices in this space with a complete framework already developed. Thinkers50 Radar recognition (Class of 2018) and the Thinkers50 Best New Management Book designation for Work-Life Bloom (2024) provide intellectual validation beyond the speaking circuit. His ideas are credentialed within the management thinking community, not only the keynote market. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Pontefract Group; former Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer, TELUS Author of five award-winning books: Flat Army, The Purpose Effect, Open to Think, Lead. Care. Win., and Work-Life Bloom; sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026 Work-Life Bloom: 2024 Thinkers50 Best New Management Book and Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal, Leadership category Open to Think: 2019 getAbstract International Book of the Year; Lead. Care. Win.: 2022 Nautilus Awards Silver Medal for Leadership Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2018; shortlisted, Thinkers50 Talent Award, 2019 Adjunct Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria Contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review Presented at four TED events; delivered more than 1,000 keynotes across North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East Biography Work-life balance has been the default language of organisational culture for three decades. The data says it is not working. Engagement has flatlined, burnout has become a structural feature of corporate life, and the gap between what leaders promise their people and what they actually deliver keeps widening. The framework itself is the problem. Dan Pontefract has spent two decades inside and alongside organisations asking why the standard tools keep failing. His Work-Life Bloom model, built on primary research with more than 8,000 leaders and team members across 15 countries, maps 12 factors that determine whether people can genuinely flourish in both work and life. The insight spans five award-winning books and gives leaders a practical operating system to act on, not just a new way of describing the problem. That credibility is not theoretical. As Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, Pontefract launched the TELUS MBA, the company’s Transformation Office, and a leadership philosophy that drove employee engagement to nearly 90%. Since founding Pontefract Group in 2018, he has worked with organisations including Salesforce, Nestlé, Manulife, and Virgin Media O2. His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey, publishing May 2026, tackles a challenge most boards have not yet named. As populations age and birth rates fall, organisations are accumulating what he calls age debt – a growing talent and productivity shortfall they are unprepared for. His Rivers, Rocks, and Rubies framework gives leaders a practical approach to treating experience as a competitive asset. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business and a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Thinkers50 named him to the Radar Class of 2018. Key speaking topics Work-life bloom and the conditions for employee flourishing Culture transformation and employee engagement Purpose-driven leadership Caring and human-centred leadership practice The multigenerational workforce and age as a strategic asset Open thinking, decision-making, and organisational performance The future of work Ideal for CHROs and People and Culture leaders redesigning engagement, wellbeing, and culture strategy CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating cultural transformation or significant workforce change Transformation leads and Learning and Development heads building leadership capability at scale Executive teams and boards confronting multigenerational workforce planning and the talent implications of demographic ageing Audience outcomes A named, practical alternative to work-life balance – the Work-Life Bloom model and its 12 factors – that leaders can apply to their teams immediately after the session Clarity on the four work-life personas (blooming, budding, stunted, in renewal) and how to identify and respond to each within their own organisations A framework for three-level purpose alignment – between individual, role, and organisation – drawn from The Purpose Effect model Nine concrete leadership practices from the Lead. Care. Win. model for building caring, high-trust teams in everyday conditions An initial strategic lens on the multigenerational workforce challenge and the actions leaders should be prioritising now

Why organisations work with Danah Zohar She gave the field two of its named ideas. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management are her frameworks, not borrowed labels, and they sit on a substantial body of published work. Her management thinking is built on physics and complexity science, not from organisational behaviour. That gives her a different starting point from most leadership voices, and a model that holds up when the operating environment becomes genuinely non-linear. The Haier group in China rebuilt its management system around her concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, giving her work a named operating reference at one of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers. She brings credentials that are hard to assemble in one speaker: MIT, Harvard, Oxford’s Strategic Leadership Programme, Cranfield, Tsinghua, and induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Biography highlights Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2022. Named in the 2002 Financial Times Prentice Hall Business Minds anthology of the world’s 50 greatest management thinkers. Teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School; Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and the China Academy of Art; entrepreneurial mentor at Haier. Author of The Quantum Self, ReWiring the Corporate Brain, SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, Spiritual Capital, The Quantum Leader, and Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age. Educated in Physics and Philosophy at MIT, with postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion and Psychology at Harvard. Biography Newtonian management assumes that organisations behave like machines: predictable parts, fixed structures, control flowing from the top. The physics it is built on was superseded a hundred years ago. Danah Zohar has spent her career arguing that the management model needs to catch up, and showing senior leaders what a quantum and complexity-based alternative looks like in practice. Her two named contributions, Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management, treat organisations as complex adaptive systems and treat people as carriers of meaning and purpose, not units of labour. The 12 Principles of SQ, set out in SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, the Ultimate Intelligence and developed further in Spiritual Capital, are drawn directly from the properties of living quantum systems. The work has been picked up where it matters. Haier, one of China’s largest industrial groups, restructured its management system around Zohar’s concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, the basis of Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, holds a visiting fellowship at Cranfield, and visiting professorships at Tsinghua and the China Academy of Art. For boards and executive teams, the practical question is how to lead a workforce and a strategy when the old assumptions of stability, hierarchy and pure financial logic no longer carry the weight they once did. Zohar offers a coherent answer, built from physics rather than rhetoric, and tested at scale inside one of the most ambitious corporate reorganisations of the last decade. Key speaking topics Quantum Management and the post-Newtonian organisation Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and the 12 Principles Spiritual capital and purpose-driven leadership Complex adaptive systems applied to corporate strategy Meaning, motivation and the future of work Sustainable capitalism and the role of business in society Leading transformation at scale, with reference to the Haier model Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are redesigning operating models for higher autonomy and faster customer response Boards and senior leaders working through purpose, values and the social licence of the business Transformation leads and CHROs running culture and structure change in parallel Strategy and innovation leaders looking for a complexity-based alternative to classical planning Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for treating the organisation as a complex adaptive system, with concrete implications for structure, decision rights and information flow. A clearer link between purpose, meaning and commercial performance, beyond statement-of-values exercises. The Haier “zero distance” case as a worked reference for radical decentralisation at scale. Sharper questions for the executive team about where Newtonian assumptions still shape their planning, structure and incentives. An informed view of where Spiritual Intelligence sits alongside IQ and EQ in leadership development.

Why organisations work with Ewald Nowotny A first-hand account of ECB Governing Council decision-making across the sovereign debt crisis, the negative-rate era, and the start of unconventional policy unwind, by someone who voted in the room. Cross-institutional perspective most central bankers cannot match: ECB Governing Council, Vice President of the European Investment Bank, CEO of BAWAG P.S.K., and a chair of the Austrian Parliament’s Finance Committee. An economist’s framework, not a commentator’s view. Three decades as a full professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business, with nine books and a standard public finance textbook in its fifth edition. A direct read on European political economy and the durability of the euro, from a participant who was inside the German-Austrian bloc on the Council during its most contested years. Biography highlights Governor, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and member of the ECB Governing Council, 2008 to 2019. Vice President, European Investment Bank, 1999 to 2003. CEO, BAWAG P.S.K. Group, 2006 to 2008. Full Professor of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1981 to 2008; Vice Rector for Finance, 2003 to 2005. Member of the Austrian National Council, 1978 to 1999; Chair of the Finance Committee, 1985 to 1999. Chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur (2017); Honorary Member, SUERF. Biography The eurozone has spent fifteen years inside policy regimes most boards were not built to read. Sovereign debt crisis, negative rates, asset purchase programmes, and the start of policy normalisation each redrew the cost of capital and the political settlement around it. Ewald Nowotny was inside the room where those decisions were taken. As Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank from 2008 to 2019, he sat on the ECB Governing Council through every one of those phases. He voted on the response to the Greek crisis, on the launch of large-scale asset purchases, and on the policy stance that defined European credit conditions for a decade. His public commentary, captured across BIS speech archives and central banking media, tracked the substantive arguments inside the Council rather than the headlines outside it. Before the central bank, his career covered the institutions that shape European capital flows from different angles. He served as Vice President of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg from 1999 to 2003, then as CEO of BAWAG P.S.K. Group during a period of acute restructuring at the Austrian bank. Earlier, he chaired the Finance Committee of the Austrian Parliament for fourteen years. The academic standing is the second axis. He held a full professorship at Vienna University of Economics and Business for almost three decades and co-authored the standard German-language textbook on public sector finance, now in its fifth edition. He was made Chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur in 2017 and is an honorary member of SUERF, the European Money and Finance Forum. Key speaking topics Eurozone monetary policy and the future of the euro ECB decision-making and central bank independence European banking regulation after the financial crisis Sovereign debt and fiscal policy in the EU Macroeconomic outlook and global capital markets Public sector finance Ideal for Boards and audit committees stress-testing capital and treasury assumptions against European monetary policy CFOs, group treasurers, and CIOs in banking, insurance, and asset management Public-sector and supranational audiences working on EU economic governance Senior policy and corporate-affairs leaders engaging with European institutions Audience outcomes A working account of how the ECB Governing Council weighs price stability against financial stability, from someone who voted on those trade-offs. A clearer view of what is structural versus cyclical in eurozone politics, including the German-Austrian fiscal stance and its likely persistence. Specific reference points for reading future ECB decisions: which arguments tend to win on the Council, and which signals matter. Context on the European Investment Bank and the EU’s supranational lending architecture as a tool of policy and capital allocation.

Why organisations work with Fehinti Balogun He brings a working screen actor’s craft to climate communication, with credits across HBO, Netflix, BBC and Paramount+ that buy attention from audiences who tune out conventional sustainability talks. His one-man show Can I Live?, produced by Complicite with the Barbican, is the rare piece of climate work that has been taken seriously by both theatre critics and climate organisers, giving him a methodology he can adapt for corporate audiences. He has spoken to policy and scientific audiences at UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament and Cambridge University, which means his climate content stands up in rooms beyond entertainment. His TED talk on finding your voice for climate action gives organisations a direct entry point for staff who want to act but do not know how to begin. Biography highlights Graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), 2016. Screen credits include I May Destroy You, Dune, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, and Down Cemetery Road. BAFTA nomination for Supporting Actor for Down Cemetery Road. Writer and lead performer of Can I Live?, produced by Complicite with the Barbican, directed by Daniel Bailey and Simon McBurney. TED speaker: “How to find your voice for climate action” (2022). Climate platforms include UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament, Cambridge University and the YouTube Creator Summit. Biography Climate communication inside organisations runs into the same wall again and again. The science is settled, the targets are public, and the workforce still does not have a shared language for any of it. Fehinti Balogun has spent his second career building that language through performance rather than policy. Trained at RADA, Balogun is a working actor with screen credits across HBO, Netflix, BBC and Paramount+, including I May Destroy You, Dune, A Gentleman in Moscow and Down Cemetery Road, the last of which earned him a BAFTA nomination for Supporting Actor. The technical command he brings to a stage or a camera is what gives his climate work its unusual reach. Can I Live?, written and performed by Balogun and produced by the theatre company Complicite with the Barbican, is the centre of that work. It combines spoken word, hip-hop, theatre, animation and scientific fact, and it became one of the few climate pieces taken seriously inside both the UK theatre scene and the climate movement. The same instinct shapes his TED talk, “How to find your voice for climate action.” His climate platforms include UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament, Cambridge University and the YouTube Creator Summit. He is most useful to organisations that have a credible climate position on paper and a workforce that has not yet found a way to talk about it. Key speaking topics Climate communication and storytelling Sustainability and employee engagement Diversity and inclusion in the climate movement Purpose and voice for early-career talent Creative practice as a tool for organisational change Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leads who need internal communications that move staff, not just stakeholders. CHROs and employee engagement leads building purpose-led programmes for early-career and creative talent. Internal D&I and ERG sponsors working at the intersection of climate and inclusion. Communications and brand leads in consumer-facing organisations who need a credible cultural voice on climate. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of why staff disengage from climate messaging that reads as compliance. Language and examples leaders can use to talk about sustainability without sliding into jargon. A working model for how creative practice can carry organisational messages that policy memos cannot. A more honest picture of how race, class and access shape who feels invited into climate conversations at work.

Why organisations work with Gary Cohen He has demonstrably moved an entire sector. Under his leadership, U.S. medical waste incinerators fell from around 5,600 to fewer than 70, and mercury was effectively removed from U.S. medical devices, contributing to the global Minamata phase-out. He brings a network, not just a perspective. Health Care Without Harm operates with hospitals and health partners in more than 50 countries and convenes ministries of health, group purchasing organisations and major hospital systems. His credibility is recognised by the bodies that matter to senior buyers: MacArthur Fellow (2015), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2006), and White House Champion of Change for Climate Change and Public Health (2013). He talks to executives in their own operating language. Procurement, capital projects, energy contracts, waste contracts, supply chain risk, not abstract sustainability narrative. He has spent nearly four decades inside the toxics and environmental health field, including running the National Toxics Campaign Fund and co-founding the Military Toxics Project, so he understands regulation, litigation and corporate response from multiple sides. Biography highlights Co-founder and president, Health Care Without Harm, since 1996. President, Practice Greenhealth, the U.S. membership organisation for sustainable healthcare. MacArthur Fellow, 2015. Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, 2006; Frank Hatch Award for Enlightened Public Service, 2007. White House Champion of Change for Climate Change and Public Health, 2013. Co-author, “Fighting Toxics” (Island Press, 1990); former executive director, National Toxics Campaign Fund. Biography Hospitals exist to heal, yet the global health sector is responsible for around 4.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and remains a significant source of toxic chemical exposure. Reconciling that contradiction has been Gary Cohen’s working life for almost four decades. He co-founded Health Care Without Harm in 1996 after a period running the National Toxics Campaign Fund and co-founding the Military Toxics Project. The organisation began as a response to the use of dioxin-emitting incineration, mercury thermometers and toxic plasticisers in routine medical care. It now works with hospital systems, ministries of health and purchasing organisations in more than 50 countries. The track record is concrete. Mercury has been substantially eliminated from U.S. medical devices, with the work feeding into the Minamata Convention. Medical waste incinerators in the United States fell from roughly 5,600 in the late 1990s to fewer than 70 by 2006. Practice Greenhealth, the U.S. membership arm Cohen leads, gives hospital executives a structured way to act on procurement, energy and waste rather than restate intentions. Recognition has followed the substance: a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006, the Frank Hatch Award in 2007, and a White House Champion of Change designation for climate change and public health in 2013. What that record gives a senior audience is unusual: someone who can speak to climate, toxics and supply chain risk as an operator who has already redesigned a regulated sector at scale. Key speaking topics Climate change as a public health issue Decarbonising the healthcare sector Toxic chemicals and supply chain redesign Sustainable procurement in regulated industries Hospital infrastructure, energy and waste Environmental health and community resilience Coalition building across regulators, providers and purchasers Ideal for Boards and executive teams of health systems, hospital networks and pharmaceutical companies setting climate and chemical safety strategy Chief sustainability officers, chief procurement officers and capital planning leads in regulated, asset-heavy sectors Public sector health leaders, ministries of health and group purchasing organisations ESG, impact and philanthropic investors looking at health and climate intersections Audience outcomes A clear view of where healthcare’s environmental footprint actually sits, by procurement category, energy use and waste stream A working model of how a sector moves from commitment to operating change, drawn from a redesign that has already happened Specific reference points on mercury elimination, incineration reduction and supply chain detoxification that translate to other regulated industries A more honest conversation about ESG substance versus ESG narrative, grounded in measurable sector outcomes

Why organisations work with Glenn Marsden In his hands, mental health becomes a business conversation that senior leaders take responsibility for, grounded in lived experience of body dysmorphia and the loss of a close friend. He has built and scaled a global advocacy platform from zero, the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, which gives him direct evidence of what changes when people in positions of influence speak openly about their own pressure. His keynote treats wellbeing as a leadership issue, connecting how senior people hold identity and performance under change to the cultural cost of silence at the top. His content travels: a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast, and hundreds of public-figure interviews give audiences a body of work to carry on with long after the keynote. Biography highlights Founder, Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, launched 2018, a global mental wellbeing advocacy movement. Author of the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign book series, with Volume 3 released January 2026. Host of the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, interviewing public figures on mental health and wellbeing. Has delivered speaking engagements across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Dubai, Thailand, and Japan. Biography The cost of mental health pressure inside organisations is now showing up where it used to stay hidden. It sits with the people running them. Glenn Marsden built the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign in 2018 to make that conversation possible, starting with a question senior leaders rarely answer in public: what does it actually cost you to keep up appearances? The campaign was founded after the suicide of a close friend and Marsden’s own struggle with body dysmorphia. What began as a single advocacy project has grown into a content platform with a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast, and a long roster of public-figure interviews. The argument that runs through all of it is simple: when people in positions of visibility speak openly about their own pressure, the social permission for everyone else to do the same expands. What audiences get is a working argument, made by someone who has spent years getting senior people to say in public what they say to each other in private: that perfectionism is expensive, silence at the top sets the tone for the rest of the organisation, and the leaders who name the pressure first are the ones who change the culture. Key speaking topics Mental health and the cost of perfectionism Identity and self-worth through change Resilience under sustained pressure Authentic leadership and lived experience Building advocacy platforms from zero Storytelling and public influence Ideal for CHRO and chief people officer audiences setting the mental health agenda Executive leadership offsites where wellbeing is treated as a strategy issue Senior leadership development programmes addressing perfectionism and burnout in high performers Conferences on workplace wellbeing, culture, and mental health where lived experience adds credibility to the data Audience outcomes A direct, founder-led account of how mental health pressure operates at senior levels and why it stays hidden. Words for naming perfectionism and silence inside organisations, without the wellness clichés. A map of how identity loss works after disruption, and how people find direction again, drawn from what the campaign has surfaced across cultures and industries. Evidence, from the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign and the hundreds of public-figure conversations it has gathered, of what changes when people in positions of influence speak openly.

Why organisations work with Holly Tucker She built a marketplace that gave more than 5,000 independent businesses a commercial route they could not otherwise access, and can speak directly to what scaled that community and what broke it. Her second act, Holly and Co, is a certified B Corp built around purpose-led small business advice, giving her a live view of what founders are wrestling with now, not a decade ago. As host of Conversations of Inspiration, she has interviewed several hundred founders in long form, which makes her one of the few speakers in the UK with a continuously refreshed sense of what early-stage builders are learning. Her MBE and appointment as a UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador give her credibility on the policy side of small business, not only the operator side. She translates founder thinking into language corporate audiences can use: retail teams, marketing teams and transformation teams leave with a sharper sense of what independent brands do that scale players do not. Biography highlights Co-founder of notonthehighstreet.com (2006), the UK marketplace for independent makers. Founder of Holly and Co (2017), a certified B Corporation supporting small businesses. MBE, 2013, for services to small businesses. UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for creative small businesses, 2015. Author of Do What You Love, Love What You Do (Virgin Books, 2021), a Sunday Times bestseller; earlier titles with Simon and Schuster. Presenter of ITV’s Be Your Own Boss and host of the Conversations of Inspiration podcast. Biography Notonthehighstreet.com began as a frustration with nowhere to sell handmade Christmas wreaths. Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish turned that frustration into the UK’s defining marketplace for independent brands, and over thirteen years it gave more than five thousand small businesses a route to customers they would not otherwise have reached. That is the operator credential Tucker brings into a room. Holly and Co, founded in 2017 and a certified B Corporation since 2022, is where the second chapter sits. It is a platform, a shop and an advice engine for independent founders, and it is the evidence base for most of what Tucker says publicly about small business. The weekly Conversations of Inspiration podcast now runs into the hundreds of episodes, which gives her a continuously updated read on what founders are actually doing, not what commentators think they are doing. Her public role has extended beyond business. An MBE in 2013 for services to small businesses, and appointment as a UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador in 2015, placed her inside the conversation about how policy shapes independent enterprise. Three books, including Sunday Times bestseller Do What You Love, Love What You Do, turned that experience into written form for founders at earlier stages. Where Tucker is most useful to a corporate audience is on the question larger companies rarely answer well: what exactly do independent brands do that scale players find hard to replicate, and how should a big business think about that when it partners with them, buys from them, or tries to build its own version. She speaks to that from both sides of the relationship. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Building and scaling marketplaces Independent retail and the creative economy Purpose-led business and B Corp practice Small business advocacy and policy Female founders and enterprise Brand, storytelling and community for consumer businesses Ideal for Retail, consumer and marketplace leadership teams thinking about independent brand partnerships. Marketing and brand leaders who want a grounded view of what small and founder-led brands do that larger ones cannot. Conferences and internal events focused on entrepreneurship, purpose-led growth or the creative economy. Female founder communities and enterprise networks within larger organisations. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what independent founders actually do differently, drawn from a marketplace of more than five thousand small businesses. A practical read on what purpose-led and B Corp businesses look like in operation, not in theory. Fresh founder stories from a podcast library that now spans several hundred interviews. Language for corporate teams to use when they talk about supporting, partnering with or learning from small businesses. A sharper sense of how policy, platform and community interact in the creative economy.