Desarrollo ejecutivo speakers

Why organisations work with Lee Warren A six-step persuasion system built from twenty years of stage performance and a Head-of-Sales career, not from a communications textbook. The only Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence holder (2022) on most shortlists, the UK industry’s highest peer-awarded recognition. Author of a Business Book Awards finalist on presenting, which gives commercial buyers a published methodology to point sales teams toward after the keynote. A track record of named commercial outcomes from clients, including a reported 350 percent sales lift at New Scientist following his work. Booked repeatedly by Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, audiences that do not retain entertainers and do retain people who shift commercial behaviour. Biography highlights Bestselling author, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting; highly commended finalist, 2019 Business Book Awards. PSA Award of Excellence, 2022, the UK Professional Speaking Association’s top honour. Member of The Magic Circle for twenty years. Former Head of Sales at News International; earlier sales leadership at Eurotunnel and Hertz, including a database-led sales programme. Has delivered keynotes in more than twenty countries for Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Theatre work commissioned at The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House (per speaker’s own biographical material). Biography Persuasion is the bottleneck most sales operations refuse to name. Pipeline tools improve, decks get tidier, training budgets rise, and conversion rates barely move. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the people in the room cannot yet make another person feel the case being made. Lee Warren built a career inside that gap. After commercial roles at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eurotunnel, and Hertz, where he co-created the company’s first database-led sales programme, he became Head of Sales at News International. In parallel, he spent two decades performing as a member of The Magic Circle and creating work for The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The combination is unusual: a quota-carrying sales leader who can hold a thousand-seat room. His book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting, was a finalist at the 2019 Business Book Awards and codifies the structure he teaches to commercial teams: build the talk around the audience, not the slides. In 2022 the Professional Speaking Association named him an Award of Excellence holder, the UK’s highest peer-awarded honour for professional speakers. Clients book him for hard commercial outcomes, not for entertainment. Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have repeat-booked him for sales conferences, partner meetings, and leadership offsites. New Scientist publicly reported a 350 percent sales increase after engaging him. Few presentation specialists have a number like that attached to their name. Key speaking topics Persuasion and influence in commercial settings Sales communication and pitching Presenting and executive communication Business networking Storytelling for B2B audiences Communication under pressure Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership offsites Partner and client conferences where the audience is buying decisions, not information Business development teams, key account directors, and CROs preparing for high-stakes pitches Leadership populations needing sharper executive communication ahead of board, investor, or town hall moments Audience outcomes A repeatable six-step structure for persuading a specific audience, applied the next working day A method for opening, structuring, and closing a pitch that does not depend on slide ware A working technique for networking rooms and conversations without scripts Renewed confidence in front of senior internal and external audiences, grounded in stagecraft, not affirmation A shared vocabulary across a commercial team for what good persuasion looks like

Why organisations work with Les Hewitt A coaching method that has been deployed inside more than 300 companies, including Wells Fargo, RBC, FedEx, RE/MAX and the Million Dollar Round Table, with a focus on sales-led and franchise organisations rather than abstract leadership theory. Co-authorship of The Power of Focus with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, a book that has sold more than 825,000 copies in North America and given Hewitt a recognisable thesis his audiences have often already encountered. Three decades of building and running The Power of Focus coaching program, including more than 900 delivered workshops, so the content is operating practice and not a recycled keynote. A clear diagnostic for why senior teams underperform: unclear future targets, leaders not protecting their top objectives, weak internal communication, and habits that quietly cost productivity. Built specifically for sales leaders, owner-operators and franchise networks, audiences that are usually underserved by leadership-development speakers pitched at corporate HQ. Biography highlights Co-author with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of The Power of Focus, an international bestseller translated into more than 20 languages. Founder of The Power of Focus Coaching Program, used by more than 300 companies across North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, the Gulf, Singapore and Russia. Named clients include Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, Cameron Inc., Nexen Energy, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Investors Group and the Million Dollar Round Table. Author of further titles in the series, including The Power of Focus for Women, The Power of Faithful Focus and The Power of Focus for College Students. Built and ran Achievers Canada, the seminar business that delivered more than 450 leadership and sales programs before evolving into the current coaching practice. Originally from Belfast; rose to top salesperson in an international network marketing company before moving into coaching and authorship. Biography Most senior teams are not failing on strategy. They are failing on follow-through. Targets get diluted by competing demands, the highest-value work slips down the calendar, and the habits that quietly govern productivity go unexamined. Hewitt has spent more than thirty years building a coaching practice around that gap. The Power of Focus, the book he co-authored with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was the first articulation of his method outside the workshop room. It became a long-running international bestseller, has been translated into more than twenty languages, and seeded the coaching program that now carries the same name. The book gave him a public thesis. The coaching business gave him the operating evidence behind it. That coaching business has been deployed inside more than 300 organisations, including Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Cameron Inc. and the Million Dollar Round Table. The work concentrates on a specific cohort: sales-led and franchise organisations where individual leader habits and team focus translate directly into commercial results. More than 900 workshops have been delivered, so the material is tested under load. Hewitt’s distinctive value is the combination of a recognisable book and a long working catalogue of what actually changes inside companies when leaders narrow their targets and protect their top priorities. Audiences leave with concrete habits and language to install on Monday, not a framework to file away. Key speaking topics Focus and follow-through for senior leaders Goal clarity and execution discipline Productivity habits in sales-led organisations Leadership effectiveness and self-management High-performance team behaviour Ideal for CEOs and owner-operators of mid-market and growth-stage businesses Sales leaders, franchise principals and broker networks Senior leadership teams running annual planning and offsite resets Member organisations such as MDRT, RE/MAX, Royal LePage and similar producer networks Audience outcomes A clearer set of personal and team targets, written down and prioritised before they leave the room. Specific habits to protect the highest-value hours of the working week. A common language for accountability that the team can keep using after the event. Practical tactics drawn from sales and entrepreneurial environments rather than abstract leadership theory.

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

Why organisations work with Liz Wiseman She runs two distinct, primary-research-backed frameworks, Multipliers and Impact Players, that name behaviours leaders can change on Monday morning, not abstractions they have to translate. Her Accidental Diminisher diagnostic gives senior leaders a mirror most are not expecting: the well-intentioned habits, rescuing, idea-spraying, pacesetting, that quietly shrink their teams. The Impact Players research, drawn from 170 executives across ten countries, isolates the behaviours of the contributors managers actually depend on, which CHROs use to recalibrate performance criteria and promotion decisions. Seventeen years inside Oracle, including VP of Oracle University, mean she frames leadership in operating terms a senior corporate audience recognises immediately. Named the top-ranked leadership thinker by Thinkers50 in 2019 and recipient of the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023, with continued presence on the ranking. Biography highlights CEO of The Wiseman Group, Silicon Valley leadership research and executive development firm. Author of Multipliers (New York Times bestseller), Rookie Smarts (Wall Street Journal bestseller), and Impact Players (Wall Street Journal bestseller). Thinkers50 Leadership Award winner (2019); Thinkers50 Talent Award winner (2023). Former Vice President of Oracle University and global leader for Human Resource Development across a 17-year Oracle career. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fortune; guest lecturer at Brigham Young University and Stanford University. Advises and speaks for clients including Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, and Tesla. Biography The leader who is the smartest person in the room is often the reason no one else in the room is contributing. Liz Wiseman’s research into what she calls Multipliers and Diminishers, published in Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, isolates the specific habits that determine which one a manager becomes, often without realising. The Accidental Diminisher diagnostic that accompanies the work is now used by leadership teams across global corporations. Before The Wiseman Group, she spent seventeen years inside Oracle, latterly as Vice President of Oracle University and global head of Human Resource Development. That operating background runs through the work. Her frameworks are written for executives who have to act on them, not academics describing them. Impact Players, drawn from interviews with 170 executives across ten countries and surveys of 350 managers, asks a different question: what distinguishes the individual contributors that senior leaders actually rely on in high-stakes moments? The findings reshape how CHROs think about promotion, performance criteria, and the behaviours organisations should be selecting for. She was named the top-ranked leadership thinker on the Thinkers50 list in 2019 and received the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. She contributes to Harvard Business Review and Fortune, and lectures at Brigham Young University and Stanford. Her client roster, Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, reflects an unusual fact: organisations with deep internal leadership capability still bring her in. Key speaking topics Multiplier leadership and the Diminisher effect Accidental Diminisher behaviours in senior leaders Impact Players and high-contribution mindsets Leveraging collective intelligence inside teams Rookie Smarts and learning agility under uncertainty Talent identification, promotion, and performance criteria Executive development and leadership capability building Ideal for CHROs redesigning leadership development, promotion criteria, or performance frameworks CEOs and senior leadership teams reviewing how they get more from existing talent Heads of talent and L&D building enterprise leadership programmes Leadership offsites for executive committees and senior management cohorts Audience outcomes Recognition of the specific Diminisher behaviours senior leaders default to under pressure A working vocabulary for the team behaviours that drive disproportionate impact Diagnostic tools, including the Accidental Diminisher profile, that leaders can apply to their own management style Criteria for identifying and developing high-contribution individual contributors A revised view of where untapped capacity sits inside the existing workforce

Why organisations work with Luis Maria Huete He brings a named, structured methodology, Clienting, that gives a management team a shared language for customer segmentation, business model alignment, and service mix economics. It is the rare customer-strategy framework with both an academic anchor and four decades of board-room application. He has facilitated senior offsites in more than 800 companies across 70 countries, including Banco Santander, BBVA, Telefonica, Coca-Cola, Repsol, and ISS. The work is execution-focused: redesigning structure, coordination mechanisms, and the operating model behind a strategy. His doctoral work on commercial banking service strategy was named best dissertation of 1988 by the Decision Sciences Institute. The same analytical discipline shows up in the way he treats customer profitability as an operating problem, not a marketing one. He has taught inside Harvard Business School’s Achieving Breakthrough Service and Advanced Management programmes, alongside his chair at IESE. The combined platform gives senior audiences confidence that the frameworks have been pressure-tested in serious academic and corporate settings. He works fluently in English and Spanish, with board-level experience across Europe, Latin America, and Asia. For multinational teams that need a single voice on customer strategy across regions, that range is genuinely scarce. Biography highlights Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at IESE Business School, on faculty since 1982. DBA, Boston University. Fulbright Scholar. Doctoral thesis on commercial banking service strategy awarded best dissertation of 1988 by the Decision Sciences Institute. Author of thirteen management books, including Clienting, Service Management, Leading for the Common Good (2015), 50 Leaders Who Made History (2017), and Leadership and Governance (2025). Faculty contributor to Harvard Business School’s Achieving Breakthrough Service and Advanced Management executive programmes. Regular contributor to Harvard Deusto Business Review and Expansion. Chairs the Advisory Board of Makro and the Instituto de Capital Humano. Board member of Altia, the Instituto Gobernanza y Sociedad, and the International Academy of Management. Biography Customer profitability is an operating problem before it is a marketing one. Most companies cannot say, with any precision, which of their customers earn the margin that funds the rest of the business, or how the service model would need to change if they could. That is the question Huete has spent four decades putting in front of senior teams. His framework, Clienting, gives a management committee a structured way to work that question. It moves through segmentation, business model alignment, service mix, implementation, and performance measurement, treating customer strategy as a coordinated set of operating decisions rather than a brand exercise. The methodology is documented across thirteen books and tested inside the executive programmes of IESE Business School and Harvard Business School, where Huete has taught Achieving Breakthrough Service and Advanced Management. The academic anchor is serious. His doctoral thesis on commercial banking service strategy was named best dissertation of 1988 by the Decision Sciences Institute, and he holds a chair at IESE he has occupied since 1982. Alongside that, he has facilitated senior offsites in more than 800 companies across 70 countries, including Banco Santander, BBVA, Telefonica, Coca-Cola, Repsol, and ISS. He chairs the Advisory Board of Makro and the Instituto de Capital Humano, and writes regularly for Harvard Deusto Business Review and Expansion. What a senior team gets is a working vocabulary for customer strategy and a facilitator who has watched several hundred management committees try to install it. The conversation he runs is rarely about ideas. It is about what to stop doing, which customers to organise around, and how to align the operating model to the answer. Key speaking topics Clienting and customer strategy Service management and service economics Strategy execution and operating model design Corporate culture and senior-team alignment Leadership and governance Family business transitions Customer loyalty and profitability Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and CMOs reviewing customer segmentation and the underlying service economics. Boards and ExCos running a strategy refresh or post-merger operating model redesign. Senior leadership offsites that need a structured outside facilitator on customer strategy and execution. Family business owners and boards navigating governance and succession alongside commercial repositioning. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for Clienting, segmentation, service mix, and the link from customer loyalty to operating margin. A sharper read on which customer segments the organisation is actually built to serve profitably, and which it is not. A structured view of the gap between stated strategy and operating execution, and where coordination mechanisms break down. Specific examples drawn from senior offsites with European and Latin American multinationals on how the management committee owns customer strategy. A reference set of books and frameworks the team can use after the session to continue the work internally.

Why organisations work with Magie Cook A nine-figure exit built from $800 in starting capital. Buyers get a speaker whose entrepreneurial credibility is documented in a real Campbell’s Soup transaction, not a curated personal-brand narrative. The 3R Framework (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) gives audiences a portable model for decision-making under pressure, drawn from the same operating discipline that scaled her business across 38 states. A bilingual Latina founder voice that lands with U.S. and Latin American workforces without the cultural flatness of imported keynote material. Credentials buyers recognise: SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year, induction into the NAWBO Hall of Fame, and an honorary LL.D. from the University of Charleston. A philanthropic chapter, including the rescue of 31 children from cartel exploitation in Mexico, that gives her resilience material weight most speakers in the category cannot match. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Maggie’s All-Natural Fresh Salsas & Dips, distributed across 38 U.S. states through Whole Foods, Walmart and Sam’s Club. Sold Maggie’s Salsa with Garden Fresh to Campbell’s Soup in 2015 for $231 million. U.S. Small Business Administration Young Entrepreneur of the Year, 2009. Inducted into the National Association of Women Business Owners Hall of Fame and invited onto the NAWBO Board of Directors in 2022. Author of “Mindful Success: How To Use Your Mind To Transform Your Life,” endorsed by Jack Canfield. Honorary Doctorate of Laws, University of Charleston, 2022; Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, 2015. Biography The first order from Whole Foods came after ninety rejections. The starting capital was $800, handed to a homeless university graduate by a stranger at a salsa contest. Within four years, Maggie’s All-Natural Fresh Salsas & Dips was on shelves in 38 states across Whole Foods, Walmart and Sam’s Club. In 2015 the business sold with Garden Fresh to Campbell’s Soup for $231 million. That trajectory is the substance behind Cook’s keynote work. The 3R Framework she uses with corporate audiences (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) is not a packaged model written for the stage. It is the operating discipline that took the company from $12,000 in annual revenue to $1.9 million in a single year after the Whole Foods listing, and ultimately to a nine-figure exit. She has codified it in “Mindful Success,” her book endorsed by Jack Canfield, and translates it for Fortune 500 leadership teams looking for a credible voice on building under constraint. The credentials sit alongside the operating record. The U.S. Small Business Administration named her Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009. The University of Charleston, where she arrived from a Mexican orphanage on a basketball scholarship, inducted her into its Athletics Hall of Fame and later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws. In 2022 she was inducted into the NAWBO Hall of Fame and joined its Board of Directors. What buyers tend to remember is the second chapter. After the Campbell’s exit, Cook returned to the orphanage where she grew up, served as US Program Director for its parent organisation, and helped coordinate the rescue of 31 children from cartel exploitation. That is what gives her resilience content its weight: a founder who built a national brand, exited it cleanly, and went back to the place that shaped her with the proceeds. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Resilience and high-performance mindset Purpose-driven leadership Diversity, equity and inclusion Mental conditioning and personal transformation Women in business and Latina leadership Corporate culture and employee engagement Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership conferences looking for a founder voice on building through rejection. CHROs and people leaders running engagement, DEI or culture-change programmes that need lived authority rather than theoretical framing. Leadership offsites where the senior team needs an external operator perspective on resilience and decision-making under constraint. Hispanic and Latina employee resource groups, women-in-business networks and bilingual audiences across the U.S. and Latin America. Audience outcomes A working version of the 3R Framework (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) that leaders can apply to their own commercial decisions. A clearer read on how constraint and rejection get converted into operating advantage in a real scale-up. Specific mental-conditioning techniques the speaker used personally to keep building through homelessness, ninety rejections and capital constraints. A practical sense of what changes inside a leader when they stop treating adversity as a setback and start treating it as input. Renewed commitment in the room, especially among under-represented and bilingual employee groups, to act on ambitions they had quietly written off.

Why organisations work with Marcel Pesch He runs a structured AI executive education programme, MMAI, with practitioner faculty drawn from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, Strategyzer, and academic and legal specialists. Few keynote speakers come with their own curriculum. His material covers the full operating stack: generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, automation and agents, and leadership in the AI era. Audiences leave with a managerial map, not a tour of tools. He treats fairness, bias, and equality of opportunity as operating problems for organisations deploying AI, not as a separate ethics conversation. Fifteen years of coaching practice underpins the keynote register. Sessions translate into how managers behave on Monday, not just what they understood on Friday. Active member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), with a stated engagement in AI standards and ethical guidelines. Biography highlights Founder of academy4.ai, an AI education and training organisation Designer of the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, a nine-module cohort-based course covering AI strategy, compliance, and deployment Faculty network on MMAI includes Prof. Dr. Johannes Stübinger (HS Coburg), Dr. Kristina Schreiber (LOSCHELDER), and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer Member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband) Over 15 years of professional coaching experience with individuals and organisations Keynote topics include “AI on Steroids”, “AI & Diversity and Inclusion”, “AI & Inequality of Opportunity”, and “AI & the Workforce of Tomorrow” Biography Most companies have already bought into AI. The harder question is whether their managers can use it well: govern its decisions, interrogate its outputs, and redesign work around it. That is the gap Marcel Pesch built academy4.ai to close. Through the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, Pesch and his faculty take working professionals through nine modules covering generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, marketing and sales applications, automation and agentic systems, sustainability, project management, and leadership in the AI era. Faculty draw on academic specialists, legal experts at LOSCHELDER, and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer. Alongside the curriculum, Pesch speaks publicly on the harder political content of AI deployment: bias in algorithmic systems, equality of opportunity, and the way AI is reshaping who gets which jobs. He is a member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), engaged in standards and ethical guidelines for the field. Fifteen years of coaching shape his keynote register. Sessions are designed to leave senior audiences with a managerial map of where AI changes their work, where it does not, and where the next governance and fairness decisions will sit. Key speaking topics AI literacy for managers and executives Operationalising AI beyond pilots AI Act and regulatory compliance for business leaders Bias and equality of opportunity in algorithmic systems Automation and agentic systems in the workplace The AI-era workforce and future skills Leading teams in AI-augmented organisations Ideal for C-suite teams and senior managers preparing to deploy AI across operations Heads of HR, transformation, and learning planning AI workforce upskilling Boards seeking a structured view of AI governance, compliance, and risk DEI and ethics leads working with technical teams on algorithmic fairness Audience outcomes A practical map of where AI changes managerial work and where it does not Sharper language for governing AI decisions, model outputs, and vendor claims A clearer view of bias and equality-of-opportunity questions in algorithmic systems A workable next step for AI literacy across leadership and team levels

Why organisations work with Marcus Buckingham He is the source, not a secondary interpreter, of the strengths-based management research that now sits inside most large engagement and performance programmes. His HBR cover story with Ashley Goodall, “The Feedback Fallacy,” was named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century, and gives executives a defensible reason to dismantle conventional review cycles. He brings a working evidence base from the ADP Research Institute, which gives boards a global, current dataset on engagement and team performance rather than another set of opinions. First, Break All the Rules is one of the most widely read management books in circulation; senior audiences arrive already familiar with the argument, which lets a session move quickly from premise to application. Few speakers can stand on a body of work that has reshaped how Cisco, Deloitte and other large employers redesigned performance management; Buckingham is one of them. Biography highlights Co-author of First, Break All the Rules (1999) and Now, Discover Your Strengths (2001), foundational texts of strengths-based management and the basis for the StrengthsFinder assessment. Head of People and Performance Research at the ADP Research Institute. Co-author with Ashley Goodall of Nine Lies About Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019), named best management book of 2019 by Strategy+Business. HBR cover authorship includes “Reinventing Performance Management” (April 2015) and “The Feedback Fallacy” (March/April 2019), the latter selected by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first hundred years. Author of Love + Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Thinkers50 ranked thinker, peaking at #8 in 2011 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award the same year. Cambridge University, MA in Social and Political Sciences. Biography The orthodoxy of corporate performance management is built on premises that the evidence does not support. Marcus Buckingham’s research at Gallup, and later at the ADP Research Institute, has spent more than three decades testing those premises against what the highest-performing teams actually do. His finding, in short form, is that performance is local, individual and rooted in what people do best, not in what an annual review tells them to fix. That argument first reached scale through First, Break All the Rules, co-written with Curt Coffman in 1999 and built on Gallup’s global manager interviews. Now, Discover Your Strengths followed in 2001 with Donald O. Clifton and introduced the StrengthsFinder assessment. Together they reframed the conversation in HR from competency gaps to talent deployment. The work has continued to land where senior leaders are paying attention. “Reinventing Performance Management,” his 2015 HBR cover with Ashley Goodall, documented Deloitte’s redesign of its review system. “The Feedback Fallacy,” their 2019 cover, was later named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century. Their book Nine Lies About Work was named best management book of the year by Strategy+Business. Buckingham now heads people and performance research at ADP, with access to one of the larger live datasets on engagement and team behaviour anywhere in business. His most recent book, Love + Work, published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2022, extends the strengths argument into the question of how individuals build careers around the activities that genuinely energise them. The work in front of leaders today is the same work that produced StrengthsFinder: identify what each person does best, then organise around it. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Performance management redesign Employee engagement and team effectiveness Future of work and workforce research Talent strategy and career design Manager development Ideal for CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding performance management or engagement frameworks Executive teams whose growth strategy depends on retaining and deploying skilled talent Boards reviewing the evidence base behind their human capital reporting Leadership development audiences inside large, multi-location workforces Audience outcomes A clear account of which assumptions inside conventional performance management the data actually supports, and which it does not. Specific design principles, drawn from Gallup and ADP research, for how teams should be measured and led. A working definition of strengths that is operational at the level of an individual conversation, not just a slogan. An evidence-based case for replacing annual feedback rituals with a different cadence of attention from managers.

Why organisations work with Maria Papacosta Her personal branding workshop has held the #2 global ranking from Global Gurus for three years running, which means her method has been pressure-tested across thousands of executives, not just polished for the keynote stage. She runs MSC Marketing Bureau, a personal branding agency that also manages speakers, so her work with leaders is grounded in what actually moves rooms and audiences rather than in coaching theory. She coaches TED and TEDx speakers as a curator, which is a sharper test of communication craft than most leadership programmes ever apply. Her work targets the specific gap between a leader’s intent and how they are read by others, which is where most executive presence programmes stop short. Biography highlights Co-founder, MSC Marketing Bureau, a personal branding agency for executives and thought leaders. TEDx speaker coach and content curator. MSc in Strategic Marketing, Aston University; Specialization in Inspired Leadership, Case Western Reserve University. Certified Visionary Leadership Coach (OKVLC) and NLP Associate Practitioner. Personal branding workshop ranked #2 globally by Global Gurus, 2021 to 2023. Named Top 10 Global Thought Leader on Personal Branding by Thinkers360, 2023; Top 100 Global Inspirational Leaders by PeopleHum, 2021. Biography Most senior leaders underestimate how much of their authority is decided before they speak. The way they enter a room, hold a pause, or answer a hard question is read as character, and that reading rarely gets corrected. Maria Papacosta works in the gap between what a leader intends to communicate and what their audience actually receives. She co-founded MSC Marketing Bureau as a personal branding agency for executives and thought leaders, and the agency also operates as a speaker management firm. That dual lens matters. She sees both the boardroom version of leadership identity and the stage version, and she knows which moves transfer between them. Her credentials sit across marketing strategy and leadership development: an MSc in Strategic Marketing from Aston University and a Specialization in Inspired Leadership from Case Western Reserve University, alongside Visionary Leadership Coach certification and NLP practitioner training. She also coaches and curates speakers for TEDx, where the standard for clear, embodied communication is unforgiving. The recognition reinforces the approach. Her personal branding workshop has held the #2 spot in the Global Gurus rankings for three consecutive years, and Thinkers360 placed her in the top 10 worldwide for personal branding in 2023. The substance behind those rankings is a method built for leaders who need to be understood quickly by people who will not give them a second listen. Key speaking topics Executive presence Personal branding for leaders Inspired leadership Public speaking and stage craft Storytelling for executives Self-awareness and leadership identity Communication for senior leaders Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives stepping into wider public visibility Senior leadership teams preparing for a strategic narrative shift High-potential leaders being positioned for board-level or external roles Conferences where leadership communication is the core craft Audience outcomes A clearer read on the gap between how they intend to be perceived and how they actually are. A working method for shaping a personal brand around their real strengths, not a polished surface. Concrete techniques for managing pre-performance fear and using it on stage. Sharper instincts for storytelling and presence in high-stakes settings.

Why organisations work with Maria Santacaterina A published Wiley thesis (Adaptive Resilience) that gives boards a structured way to integrate AI and frontier technology without dismantling the human capability the enterprise still runs on. A formal AI ethics and risk role at ForHumanity, which means her view on governance is grounded in audit standards, not opinion. A humanities-and-international-relations frame that translates directly into how regulators, customers, and employees actually experience AI decisions, useful in rooms where the technology team cannot read the political weather. Recognised in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist, with a profile across HBR-adjacent and AI research podcasts (MLST, Love & Philosophy) that signals credibility to technical audiences as well as commercial ones. Working language fluency in English, French, Italian, and Spanish, which matters for European boards running AI programmes across jurisdictions with diverging regulatory regimes. Biography highlights Author of Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era, Wiley, 2023. ForHumanity Fellow, Ethics and Risk, contributing to AI audit and governance standards. Founder and CEO of Santacaterina, a UK board advisory firm focused on strategic leadership and digital transformation. Named in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist. Featured on Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) and Love & Philosophy on the human-AI relationship. M.A. in International Relations, with prior study in modern languages, philosophy, and political sociology. Biography AI deployment has run ahead of AI governance. Boards have signed off on programmes whose failure modes, regulatory exposure, and human consequences they would struggle to articulate under questioning. Santacaterina’s argument starts there: technology is a means, the operating model is the constraint, and human judgement is the asset most easily eroded in the rush to automate. Her book Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era (Wiley, 2023) sets out how to integrate frontier technology into the enterprise without hollowing out the people, ethics, and oversight that make it defensible. The argument draws on her humanities training, an M.A. in International Relations, and twenty-five years advising senior leaders through digital transformation programmes. That position is reinforced institutionally. As a ForHumanity Fellow in Ethics and Risk, she works on the audit standards that AI systems are now being assessed against. As founder and CEO of Santacaterina, she advises boards on strategy, transformation, and the governance posture that follows. Computer Weekly has named her among the most influential women in UK tech. What she brings into a room is the connection most AI conversations miss: between the technical decision, the governance frame, and the human cost of getting either wrong. She has been a featured voice on Machine Learning Street Talk, where the audience is technical, and on board-facing platforms, where it is not. The same argument holds in both rooms. Key speaking topics AI strategy, ethics, and board oversight Adaptive resilience in the digital enterprise Human-AI complementarity and the future of work Responsible innovation and AI governance frameworks Digital transformation and operating-model redesign Sustainable value creation in a frontier-technology era Ideal for Boards and audit committees commissioning AI governance and assurance CEOs and CTOs moving AI from pilot to operational deployment CHROs and transformation leads redesigning the workforce around AI capability Risk, ethics, and compliance leaders building defensible AI policy Audience outcomes A board-level vocabulary for governing AI decisions that stand up to regulatory and stakeholder scrutiny A clearer view of where human judgement remains the binding constraint on AI deployment, and where it does not Specific reference points from Adaptive Resilience for stress-testing the organisation’s digital strategy A grounded sense of how European AI regulation and ethics standards translate into operating choices

Why organisations work with Marianna Evenstein DW News anchor experience translates directly to live event control: she keeps senior speakers on the question, manages timing without visible effort, and reads a multilingual room in real time. Three working languages (English, German, Russian) let her host the same agenda for a Berlin board, a global trade fair, and a Russian-language guest in one programme without handoffs. Has hosted events for Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz, Samsung, Volkswagen, and Philips, which is the relevant proof for a corporate communications lead deciding whether she can carry a tier-one stage. Advises on programme design and speaker preparation before the event, not just on-the-day delivery, which raises the quality of what panels actually produce. Doubles as a media coach for executives who will be on the same stage, useful when the brief includes both running the event and getting senior leaders camera-ready. Biography highlights News editor and television anchor at DW News, Germany’s international broadcaster, since 2008. Former radio host and reporter for DW’s Newslink. Moderator at Falling Walls 2025, the Berlin science and society summit. Hosts and moderates conferences, panels, galas, and trade fairs for clients including Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Hugo Boss, Mercedes-Benz, Philips, Samsung, and Volkswagen. Media coach for executives preparing for interviews and on-camera appearances. Comparative Literature and Philosophy degree, New York University. Biography A live event with five named speakers, three languages, a hard finish time and a senior audience is not a panel discussion. It is a production. The person at the front of the room is responsible for whether the agenda translates into something the audience can use, or whether it dissolves into competing monologues. Marianna Evenstein has spent her career on that side of the camera. As a news editor and television anchor at DW News, Germany’s international broadcaster, she has worked the same discipline live for international audiences since 2008, after starting in radio at DW’s Newslink. The transferable skill is not charisma. It is timing, accurate listening, and the ability to redirect a conversation without losing the speaker’s dignity. That is the basis on which she is booked by Adidas, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz, Philips, Samsung, Volkswagen and Austrian Airlines, among others, to host conferences, summits, trade fairs, and gala evenings. She works in English, German, and Russian, which removes the seam most international events have to design around. In 2025 she moderated Falling Walls in Berlin, a summit format that demands quick comprehension across science, policy, and business in a single afternoon. Her work also extends backwards into the agenda. She advises clients on programme design and speaker preparation, and runs media coaching for executives who will be on stage themselves. This is the part of the offer that distinguishes her from a presenter who arrives on the day with cue cards. Key speaking topics Conference and summit moderation Panel moderation across business, policy, and science Awards ceremony and gala hosting Trade fair and product launch presenting Multilingual event hosting (English, German, Russian) Media coaching for executive interviews Programme design and speaker preparation Ideal for Heads of communications and event directors planning international flagship events with multilingual audiences. Corporate teams whose agenda includes senior internal speakers who need on-camera coaching alongside event hosting. Foundations, NGOs, and policy institutes running cross-sector summits where panel discipline matters. Trade fair and awards organisers needing a presenter who can carry a televised-quality main stage. Audience outcomes A live agenda that finishes on time with the planned questions actually answered. Panels in which senior speakers are kept on point without visible correction. Smooth handover between English, German, and Russian segments without translation friction. Executive contributors who arrive better prepared because they were briefed and coached in advance.

Why organisations work with Marianne Abib-Pech A verified large-cap finance record at the top: Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, reached before age 35 Active operating practice through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund rebuilding local, modular and resource-efficient supply chains, which keeps her material current rather than retrospective Author of The Financial Times Guide to Leadership, a published thesis on what trust-based leadership actually looks like in execution Frontier-market depth across Africa, the Middle East, and the Caspian region, useful for boards weighing growth in places where their existing playbook does not transfer Biography highlights Global CFO, Shell Aviation, before age 35 Earlier career at Arthur Andersen (Luxembourg) and GE Capital, including integration of a private bank Author, The Financial Times Guide to Leadership (FT Publishing / Pearson) Co-founder, Transitions First, industrial venture fund focused on local and modular supply chains Founder, LTF Partners, M&A and strategy advisory in emerging and frontier markets Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award, 2014 Biography Most leadership material is written from the inside of mature markets. Marianne Abib-Pech wrote hers from the other side. The Financial Times Guide to Leadership argues that trust, not charisma, is the operating system of senior leadership, and the cases that shape it come from places where that argument is hardest to apply. Her credibility on that point is operational. She was Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, before she was 35, after earlier roles at Arthur Andersen in Luxembourg and at GE Capital, where she ran the integration of a private bank into the wider business. The seat at the top of a global division is what gives her material weight with senior audiences. Today the work is split between writing, advising, and investing. Through LTF Partners she works on M&A and strategy in frontier markets across Africa, the Middle East and the Caspian. Through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund she co-founded in 2022, she backs companies rebuilding modular, resource-efficient supply chains, the kind of capital decisions boards are now being asked to underwrite themselves. What that produces in a room is unusually concrete. She talks about leading across 88 nationalities because she has done it. She talks about capital allocation in difficult geographies because she is currently allocating it. She received the Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award in 2014, but the more useful credential is that her examples are still being built. Key speaking topics Leadership in male-dominated and frontier environments Trust as the operating system of senior leadership Strategy and capital allocation in emerging and frontier markets Industrial venture capital and supply-chain rebuilds Women in finance and senior leadership Cross-cultural leadership and global team performance Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and divisional leaders entering or scaling in frontier markets Boards weighing capital allocation into industrial transitions and supply-chain reconfiguration Senior women’s leadership programmes and executive development cohorts Finance leadership audiences moving from analyst to operator roles Audience outcomes A working definition of trust-based leadership grounded in real CFO-level decisions A clearer view of what changes when a leadership playbook crosses into frontier or industrial-transition contexts Specific reference points for capital allocation and deal execution in unfamiliar geographies Reframed expectations of what credibility looks like for women leading in male-dominated sectors