Transformación cultural speakers

Why organisations work with Duena Blomstrom She names a specific, measurable liability most boards do not currently track. Human Debt sits underneath stalled transformations and lets a leadership team see why their roadmap keeps slipping for non-technical reasons. Her argument lands with engineering and product audiences who tune out conventional wellbeing language. Framing safety as a debt that compounds against velocity gives operators a vocabulary they will actually use. She built the diagnostic, not just the theory. PeopleNotTech turns the framework into measurement, which means a keynote can connect to real follow-on team data rather than ending at inspiration. Three books across Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury Business, and Kogan Page give her argument continuity from FinTech culture (Emotional Banking) through team safety (People Before Tech) to enterprise transformation (Tech-Led Culture). She speaks publicly as a neurodivergent founder, which gives substance to inclusion conversations that are otherwise abstract for senior audiences. Biography highlights Author of Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan), People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business), and Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page). CEO and co-founder of PeopleNotTech, a psychological safety measurement platform. Originator of the Human Debt concept and the Emotional Banking framework. LinkedIn Top Voice on leadership and psychological safety with a large newsletter readership. Former Forbes contributor; host of the “people AND tech” and “Tales from the FinTech Crypt” podcasts. Background spanning C-level roles in startups and major technology companies before founding PeopleNotTech. Biography Most digital transformation programmes do not fail on the technology. They fail on whether the team running them can disagree, recover from a bad decision, and tell the truth about a slipping deadline. That is the territory Duena Blomstrom has spent the last decade making operational. Her central concept, Human Debt, reframes psychological safety as a balance sheet item. Teams accrue interest every time a candid conversation is avoided, every time a senior leader rewards optics over honesty, every time fatigue is left unaddressed. Tech debt gets the spreadsheet. Human Debt rarely does, and the cost shows up in stalled roadmaps, attrition, and AI rollouts that never reach production. She built three books out of this argument. Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan) treated culture as the missing variable in retail banking transformation. People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business) made the case for safety as a precondition of high performance. Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page) extended the work into enterprise change. Alongside the writing, she co-founded PeopleNotTech to turn the diagnosis into measurement, so the conversation about team health does not stop at the keynote. Audiences also get a founder who writes openly about being neurodivergent and what that means for leadership in practice. That makes inclusion a substantive thread in her work rather than a section header. Key speaking topics Psychological safety as a measurable team capability Human Debt and the hidden cost of low-trust teams Culture inside digital and AI transformation FinTech, retail banking, and Emotional Banking Neurodiversity and inclusive leadership Future of work and agile team practice Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and heads of organisational development running culture or engagement programmes alongside major technology change. CIOs, CTOs, and transformation leads whose roadmaps depend on team behaviour, not just delivery capacity. Banking, FinTech, and financial services leadership teams working through digital and AI rollouts. Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious conversation about why transformation programmes are underperforming. Audience outcomes A working definition of Human Debt that a leadership team can apply to its own organisation the next morning. A clearer line between team-level psychological safety and the commercial outcomes a board cares about. A vocabulary that lands with technical audiences who normally resist culture conversations. Specific signals to look for in teams where transformation, AI adoption, or restructuring is in flight. A frank account of what gets lost when neurodivergent leaders are managed for compliance rather than contribution.

Why organisations work with Dumi Senda He runs inclusion inside a 3,000-person operation at BBC England, so his method has been tested against the same scale and politics the audience is wrestling with, not built in a classroom. His LinkedIn Learning course “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace” gives organisations a shared curriculum to anchor manager conversations after the keynote, which most DEI speakers cannot offer. As President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network and ICF-accredited coach, he brings institutional credibility with senior audiences alongside coaching craft that works one-to-one with leaders. His lived arc from a decade of UK factory work to an Oxford MSc is the proof point that disarms the most sceptical rooms, including leadership teams that have sat through several DEI sessions already. He has delivered programmes inside the BBC, the UN, the House of Commons, the Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs, so references translate across public sector, finance and technology briefs. Biography highlights Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio Lead, BBC England (six regions, 3,000+ staff). Oxford University MSc graduate; sitting President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network (OxBAN). LinkedIn Learning instructor, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”; 2024 LinkedIn Top Voice, Teambuilding. International Coaching Federation (ICF) accredited coach. Founder of Titese, an EDI consultancy working with clients including the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs. Featured in “Everyday Ubuntu” (Mungi Ngomane, Penguin), foreworded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Biography The gap in most inclusion programmes is not ambition, it is operational credibility. Statements of intent are easy to write. Changing how three thousand managers actually speak to each other on a Tuesday morning is harder, and that is the work Senda does every day inside BBC England, where he leads the Diversity and Inclusion portfolio across six regions. That operational grounding is the reason his keynotes do not sound like generic DEI content. He is running the same programme internally that he is recommending to the audience, with the same budget pressures and the same sceptical middle managers. His LinkedIn Learning course, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”, distils that method into a curriculum organisations can deploy after he has left the stage. The personal story is well known and deliberately useful. Ten years as a labourer in the UK, a Master’s from Oxford, and now President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network. Senda uses it not as inspiration, but as evidence: inclusion is decided by the everyday behaviour of people already inside the room, and that behaviour can change. Clients include BBC, the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs. What they book him for is rarely a talk on diversity as a topic. They book him to shift the conversation from what the organisation says about inclusion to what its managers actually do on Monday. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and manager behaviour Belonging at work Bias and everyday conduct Culture change inside large organisations Authenticity and bringing your whole self to work Career development and professional identity Transformational change and taking the organisation with you Ideal for CHROs and heads of DEI designing the next phase of an inclusion programme that has stalled at policy level. Executive and senior leadership teams ahead of a culture change, restructure or “digital first” transformation. People managers across regionally dispersed organisations who carry the practical load of inclusion. Employee resource group leads and internal DEI networks looking for an external voice with operational authority. Audience outcomes A sharper read of where their own inclusion programme is losing traction between executive intent and manager behaviour. Specific language for describing belonging, bias and conduct that holds up in difficult day-to-day conversations. A framework for connecting personal values to professional contribution that coaches and managers can reuse. Practical prompts from Senda’s LinkedIn Learning curriculum that can be taken back into team sessions. Renewed confidence among sceptical managers that this work is a leadership skill, not a compliance task.

Why organisations work with Ella Sy She reads consumer, retail, and technology change as a working strategist rather than a trend curator. She ran global strategy inside Publicis, then built an independent futures practice briefed by retailers and brands to call where behaviour is heading and to defend that call commercially. She pairs a futures lens with delivery discipline. Alongside the strategy work she runs programme at Elevate, so her view of change includes what it takes to operationalise it, not only name it. Her brief is genuinely cross-sector. Named client work spans Google, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts, which gives her material from both B2B technology and consumer-facing brands. She brings a non-Anglosphere cultural read. French-born, Asian heritage, London based, working in English, French, and Mandarin. Useful for boards with EMEA and APAC exposure who want more than a US-centric view. She is comfortable with soft territory that leadership teams often duck: meaning, purpose, human growth inside commercial strategy. Named bookings in this register rather than retrofitted from a trends talk. Biography highlights Former Business Futures Strategy Director at GDR, a retail and brand futures consultancy. Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, and Chair of its Youth Board Committee. Former Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide, part of Publicis Groupe. 13+ years of strategy across retail, technology, wellness, banking, luxury, and FMCG. Client engagements include Google across LatAm markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts. MA in International Marketing and Communication. Works in English, French, and Mandarin. Biography Most organisations treat foresight as a slide at the start of strategy offsites. Ella Sy has spent her career selling it as a product: reading consumer and cultural signals for retailers and brands that need to place commercial bets on where behaviour is heading next. That is the discipline she brings into the room. Earlier she was Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide inside Publicis Groupe, running strategy for large advertising clients. The thread running through her work is translation: taking messy, contradictory signals from culture, technology, and consumer behaviour and turning them into positions a leadership team can defend and a business can execute against. She also holds an operational role: Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, a UK youth mentoring organisation where she chairs the Youth Board Committee. That side of the work keeps her close to delivery rather than only advice, which is unusual for a speaker working in the futures space. Her client record crosses categories that rarely share speakers: Google across Latin American markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, KSL Resorts. French-born, of Asian heritage, based in the UK, she works in English, French, and Mandarin, and the cultural range shows up in how she frames audiences outside the Anglosphere default. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and business futures Consumer and cultural signal reading Customer experience and brand strategy in an AI-shaped market Organisational culture under technological disruption Purpose-driven leadership and human growth Cross-cultural strategy across EMEA and APAC Ideal for CSOs, chief strategy officers, and transformation leads deciding where to place medium-term bets. CMOs and customer experience leaders in retail, hospitality, and consumer technology. Boards and executive teams setting a three-to-five year direction under technology and consumer volatility. International leadership groups that need a non-US-default reading of culture and consumer change. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which emerging signals in consumer behaviour and technology actually matter for the business in the room. Working language for talking about culture and customer experience together rather than as separate agendas. Examples from retail, luxury, hospitality, and technology clients that test the ideas against real commercial pressure. A more honest view of the gap between seeing change and executing on it inside a large organisation. Cross-cultural context for leaders whose markets extend beyond the US and UK.

Why organisations work with Ellis Watson He has run a ten-year transformation of a family-owned media group, DC Thomson, including the digital reinvention of brands like The Beano, with full P&L accountability. Few keynote speakers can show that length of tenure inside a turnaround. He has held the top operating role in three different content businesses, newspapers, global TV formats and family-owned media, so the change playbook he offers is sector-tested, not theoretical. His current seat as Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland gives him a live view of how policy, regulation and capital are shaping the conditions executive teams are actually working in. He is direct in a room. Boards and executive audiences book him when they want candour about cost, culture and pace, not a motivational set piece. Biography highlights Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland, appointed January 2023. CEO and later Executive Chairman of DC Thomson, 2011 to 2020, leading the modernisation of titles including The Beano and The Press and Journal. Global CEO of Syco Entertainment under Simon Cowell in 2010, with responsibility for the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. CEO of Celador International from 2000, oversaw the international rollout of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to around 100 territories. Managing Director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 2003 to 2005, accountable for five national and around 240 regional titles. Non-executive director of FirstGroup plc from 2009, with North American Greyhound responsibility, and a former Marketing Director of News International reporting to Rupert Murdoch. Biography DC Thomson is the kind of business that does not usually survive a digital decade. A family-owned publisher in Dundee, built on print titles like The Beano, The Sunday Post and The Press and Journal, it carried a cost base shaped by an industry that no longer existed. Between 2011 and 2020 it was rebuilt from the inside, with a third of the staff gone and the consumer brands repositioned for digital. Ellis Watson ran that decade as CEO and then Executive Chairman. That was not an unfamiliar problem to him. He had already taken Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? out to roughly 100 territories as CEO of Celador, run five national newspapers and around 240 regional titles at the Mirror Group, and spent 2010 as global CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment, holding the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. The earlier ground had been News International, as Marketing Director reporting to Rupert Murdoch. What that career produces, in a board context, is an unusually long lens on the same problem. Legacy businesses tend to be governed by people who have never personally rebuilt one. Ellis has, in three sectors, and he is now sitting inside Scottish Government as the First Minister’s Chief Business Advisor, a role created in January 2023 to bring private sector judgement into policy decisions. The result is a speaker who is most useful to executive teams in the middle of structural change, where the questions are about cost, talent and tempo, and where a generic transformation framework is not enough. Key speaking topics Leadership through structural change in legacy businesses Turnaround and brand revitalisation Building and holding high-performance cultures Engaging younger workforces inside traditional organisations Disruption as an operating discipline, not a slogan Governance and stakeholder trust during transformation Ideal for Boards and executive teams of legacy or family-owned businesses facing structural decline CEOs, COOs and transformation directors running cost and culture programmes in parallel CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement during restructure Senior leadership audiences in media, publishing, transport and consumer brands Audience outcomes A clear-eyed read on how long real turnaround actually takes inside a legacy business Specific operator decisions, on cost, talent and brand, drawn from DC Thomson, Mirror, Celador and Syco A working argument for why culture is the binding constraint in any transformation, not strategy A view from inside government on the conditions UK businesses are operating against A different vocabulary for talking about disruption with a board, less abstract, more accountable

Why organisations work with Emma Ross She brings the operating knowledge of the person who ran physiology for Team GB across Olympic and Paralympic cycles, applied directly to corporate workforces rather than borrowed as metaphor. She co-founded The Well HQ, the consultancy that has delivered women’s health programmes inside Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association, Vitality, News UK and Barclays; her frameworks are already in production in serious organisations. The Female Body Bible gave her a mainstream platform and a Sunday Times bestseller, which means her language is already familiar to employees and journalists before she walks into the room. She closes the knowing-doing gap leaders struggle with most: turning evidence on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic health and breast health into specific policy, benefits and manager scripts. Her authority is independent and scientific. The Cardiff Metropolitan honorary doctorate and her Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science signal that the content is peer-respected, not opinion. Biography highlights Head of Physiology, English Institute of Sport, 2013 to 2021, across Rio and Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic cycles. Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, The Well HQ. Co-author, The Female Body Bible, Sunday Times bestseller, 2023. Changemaker, The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards, 2021. Honorary Doctorate, Cardiff Metropolitan University, 2025. Honorary Research Fellow, University of Brighton; Honorary Lecturer, University of Kent; Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science. Biography Women make up roughly half of most workforces and a larger share of many consumer markets. Until recently, almost no corporate policy, product design or leadership development programme was built on evidence about how female bodies actually work. Emma Ross is one of the people rewriting that. As Head of Physiology at the English Institute of Sport from 2013, she supported Team GB athletes and coaches across the Rio and Tokyo cycles. Inside that system she saw how much of the playbook for elite performance had been written for men, and what happened when women were given training, recovery, nutrition and medical support designed around their physiology instead. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with Baz Moffat and Dr Bella Smith. The consultancy has built education and policy programmes for Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association and the Open University, and has moved into corporate workforces with Vitality, News UK and Barclays. The Female Body Bible, co-authored in 2023, landed as an instant Sunday Times bestseller and took the argument into the mainstream. Her credibility is underwritten by a PhD from Brunel, more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, a Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science, and an Honorary Doctorate from Cardiff Metropolitan University awarded in 2025. The practical value for a boardroom is simpler: she can tell a CHRO, in specific terms, what to change on Monday about benefits, line-manager training, menopause policy, return-to-work protocols and the data the organisation is not yet collecting. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Female physiology and high performance Menstrual health, menopause and pelvic health at work Policy and manager capability for women’s health Culture change in male-default organisations Lessons from elite sport for corporate performance systems Evidence-based wellbeing for women Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Heads of Reward designing benefits, menopause and family-health policy. DEI and ERG leads moving from awareness events to operational change. Executive teams in organisations with large female workforces or female consumer bases. Leadership programmes for senior women and their managers. Audience outcomes A clear read on where your current policies and manager behaviours fail women, and what to change first. Specific, evidence-based actions on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic and breast health that can be taken into HR and benefits. Language that line managers and male leaders can use without fear of saying the wrong thing. A framework for translating women’s health from a wellbeing initiative into an organisational performance lever. Confidence that the content is backed by elite sport science and peer-reviewed evidence, not opinion.

Why organisations work with Farrah Storr She has repositioned three major consumer media brands through structural decline in print and can speak with evidence about what actually protects audience, authority, and commercial performance when the category is shrinking. She launched Women’s Health UK from a three-person team with minimal budget into what industry records call the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, a concrete case of building inside a constraint. She crossed from legacy publishing to Substack and now runs its international writer business, so she has operator experience on both sides of the media disruption that most leaders only read about. Her book The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method give her a published leadership argument on how individuals and teams perform in conditions most organisations try to engineer away. Her MBE for services to Media and Diversity, her Social Mobility Commissioner role and her National Theatre board seat give her a public record on social mobility and diversity in creative industries that goes beyond corporate talking points. Biography highlights Head of Substack International, previously Head of Writer Partnerships at Substack UK. Editor-in-Chief, ELLE UK, 2019 to 2021. Editor-in-Chief, Cosmopolitan UK, 2015 to 2019, where the title became the UK’s number-one women’s glossy. Launch Editor-in-Chief, Women’s Health UK, from 2012. MBE, 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to Media and Diversity. Commissioner, Social Mobility Commission, from 2018; Board Member, National Theatre, from 2021. Author, The Discomfort Zone: How to Get What You Want by Living Fearlessly, Piatkus, 2018. BSME Editor of the Year 2012, 2018, 2020; PPA Editor of the Year 2018, 2019. TEDxExeter speaker, 2018, “The Discomfort Zone”. Biography Women’s Health UK was a three-person team with almost no budget when Farrah Storr launched it in 2012. By industry count it became the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, and the pattern repeated at the titles that followed. Cosmopolitan UK, where she was Editor-in-Chief from 2015, became the country’s number-one women’s glossy inside her tenure. In 2019 she moved to ELLE UK to do a similar job on the luxury end of the same portfolio. Her argument as an operator is that consumer brands hold their authority through hard editorial judgement under constraint, not through more budget. That case is easier to make now because she has left the category she was running. In 2021 she joined Substack as the first Head of Writer Partnerships in the UK, building the writer base that anchors the platform in this market, and has since stepped up to lead Substack International. That arc, from print consumer titles into the paid newsletter platform that is reshaping them, is unusually clean. It gives her a credible view on what moves with a writer, what stays with a brand, and what the economics of direct subscription actually demand from a team. Her book The Discomfort Zone, published by Piatkus in 2018, sets out the BMD method, her shorthand for Brief Moments of Discomfort as a training discipline for individuals and teams. It is read alongside the public work: her 2018 appointment as a Commissioner on the Social Mobility Commission, her 2021 appointment to the board of the National Theatre, and the 2024 MBE for services to Media and Diversity. Key speaking topics Brand reinvention in consumer media Leading through structural change and category decline Platform economics and the paid newsletter shift The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method Social mobility and diversity in creative industries Women in leadership Editorial judgement as commercial discipline Ideal for CMOs, editorial leaders and heads of content in consumer brands, publishing, and media CEOs and executive teams running heritage brands through audience and format change CHROs and leadership programmes focused on leading in constrained, shrinking or contested categories Networks and conferences on women’s leadership, social mobility and diversity in creative industries Audience outcomes A named operator’s read on what actually protects brand authority when a category is contracting. A working view of the paid newsletter shift from the inside of the platform now reshaping consumer media. A concrete account of launching and repositioning brands on small teams and tight budgets. A usable leadership argument from the Discomfort Zone on how people and teams perform in uncomfortable conditions. A credible perspective on social mobility and diversity in the creative industries, grounded in public roles and personal record.

Why organisations work with Fiona Passantino Her AI Integration Roadmap gives organisations a structured, sequential process for embedding AI across teams, not a list of tools, but a governance-aware framework that accounts for readiness, culture and communication at each stage She addresses the segment most AI programming leaves behind: the competent, non-technical professional who is capable of meaningful AI adoption but has no entry point designed for them Her 15 years inside major European multinationals – including Philips, NN-Group and Danone – means she understands the internal resistance, governance gaps and anxiety that follow AI announcements from the inside AI-Powered Leader (2026) and AI-Powered Professional (2025), part of her award-winning Comic Books for Executives series, are practical, illustrated resources audiences leave with, extending a session’s impact beyond the room She connects AI adoption directly to the disciplines organisations already invest in: internal communications, employee engagement and culture; making the case for AI readiness in language leadership teams already use Biography highlights Creator of the AI Integration Roadmap, a structured framework for practical, organisation-wide AI adoption Author of AI-Powered Leader (2026) and AI-Powered Professional (2025), the latest titles in the Comic Books for Executives series; the series’ Handbook for Post-Covid Engagement won the 2023 UK Business Book Awards and a Goody Award for Thought Leadership MBA in Management with an AI concentration from the University of Amsterdam 15 years in corporate HR and internal communications at Danone, Philips, NN-Group, PostNL and Achmea TEDx speaker; has addressed audiences at events for the European Commission, Business Insider and Vodafone Host of the Working Humans podcast; founder of Executive Storylines Delivers sessions in English, Dutch and Italian Biography Most AI adoption programmes are built for the technically literate. Fiona Passantino built her practice around everyone else – the HR director, the communications lead, the team managers – the non-technical majority on whom successful AI integration actually depends. After fifteen years in corporate HR and internal communications at companies including Philips, NN-Group and Danone, Passantino understands what AI announcements look like from inside an organisation: the anxiety, the governance gaps, the employees who wait to be told what to do. Her MBA from the University of Amsterdam, with a concentration in AI, gave her the technical vocabulary. Her career gave her the people knowledge. The AI Integration Roadmap, her signature framework, brings both together in a structured, staged process that organisations can apply without a technical team leading it. Her books make the argument in concrete form. The Comic Books for Executives series won at the 2023 UK Business Book Awards; AI-Powered Professional (2025) is a practical, illustrated guide for the professional who has no technical background and limited tolerance for abstraction. AI-Powered Leader (2026) takes the same approach to the leadership team driving adoption across an organisation, built around her AI Integration Roadmap. As host of the Working Humans podcast and a speaker at events including the European Commission and TEDxLuxembourgCity, she consistently speaks to the audience most AI commentary bypasses. Her sessions cover AI adoption, communication, employee engagement and organisational culture, connecting AI readiness to the disciplines serious organisations already understand. She delivers in English, Dutch and Italian. Key speaking topics AI integration for non-technical professionals Human-AI collaboration and co-creation AI literacy and organisational readiness Employee engagement and culture in the age of AI AI and internal communications Workforce upskilling and future skills Professional communication and storytelling Ideal for HR directors and people teams leading AI adoption or workforce readiness initiatives Internal communications and employee engagement leads managing AI change programmes L&D professionals designing AI upskilling curricula for non-technical workforces Senior leadership teams navigating the cultural and communications challenges of organisation-wide AI integration Audience outcomes A clear mental model of how AI applies to non-technical roles and everyday workflows, reducing anxiety and increasing practical confidence Working familiarity with the AI Integration Roadmap and how to begin applying it within their own team or organisation Practical strategies for managing employee resistance and uneven adoption across a workforce Sharper understanding of how to communicate AI initiatives in ways that land with non-technical colleagues and teams Two concrete resources, AI-Powered Leader and AI-Powered Professional, that extend the value of the session beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Furkan Karayel She speaks to engineering leaders as a former engineer. Ten years across multinational tech firms in Ireland gave her a working vocabulary for the room. Inclusive Intelligence, her book, gives line managers a behavioural framework rather than a values statement. It is the artefact she leaves with leadership teams. She lectures on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The academic grounding sits alongside the practitioner experience. She has been recognised by named bodies including the WomenTech Global Awards and the International Diversity Leadership Awards, and sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Diversein.com Author, Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Associate lecturer, EDI Master’s programme, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology Board member, Women For Election Ireland Speaker of the Year, WomenTech Global Awards Member, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Biography Most inclusion programmes inside technology companies are designed by people who have never written production code. That gap shows up in the language, the metrics and the interventions. Furkan Karayel started her career as a software systems test engineer in Athlone, then spent a decade across multinational tech firms in Ireland in DevOps, automation, integration and support roles. She founded Diversein.com when she realised that, in her words, the action piece behind the diversity vocabulary was missing. The work that followed is documented in Inclusive Intelligence, a book written for line managers rather than chief people officers. It treats inclusion as a leadership behaviour, observable and learnable, not a values position. The framework has carried into her teaching on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she lectures alongside her commercial work. Her credentials sit across academic, commercial and civic categories. She holds a seat on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, serves on the board of Women For Election Ireland, and was named in the EUClid Network’s Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise. Named awards include Speaker of the Year at the WomenTech Global Awards and the Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business honour from the International Diversity Leadership Awards. For technology businesses that have already invested in DEI and want a more useful conversation than the one they have been having, Karayel offers a practitioner’s argument rooted in the realities of engineering culture. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in technology organisations Women in tech retention and progression Cultural intelligence across multilingual teams Bias-free decision-making for line managers Authentic leadership development Female founder and entrepreneur enablement Ideal for Engineering and product leadership teams inside multinational tech businesses CHROs and heads of DEI under pressure to convert programme spend into behavioural outcomes Women-in-tech networks and ERGs seeking content with technical credibility Conferences serving founders, female entrepreneurs and STEM professionals Audience outcomes A behavioural definition of inclusion managers can apply on Monday Specific practices for reducing bias inside engineering and product decisions A clearer view of why technical women leave, and what changes the equation Language for inclusive leadership grounded in lived practitioner experience

Why organisations work with Sir Gareth Southgate His England management tenure is the subject of a published case study at Harvard Business School – one of the few occasions in sport where a coaching approach has been formally codified as an executive leadership model. He rebuilt a national team culture from a position of public failure and sustained performance across four consecutive major tournaments. That track record gives his thinking on culture change and sustained delivery a foundation most leadership authors lack. Dear England: Lessons in Leadership (Sunday Times instant bestseller, 2025) sets out the specific reasoning behind his decisions under pressure – on accountability, psychological safety, selection, and standing behind unpopular choices – in a form directly applicable to organisational leadership. He led through personal, very public failure – the Euro ’96 penalty miss that defined a decade of his public identity – and through two consecutive tournament final defeats. His account of resilience starts from having lived the worst-case scenario, not from having studied it. During intense national debates on race, identity, and protest, he articulated a values position publicly and held a diverse squad together through that pressure. Organisations navigating social or political tension inside teams get a practitioner account of what that demands in practice. Biography highlights England men’s senior manager 2016-2024; 102 matches, 61 wins – more major tournament games won than any other England manager in history Only the second England manager to reach a major tournament final, after Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966; reached consecutive European Championship finals in 2021 and 2024 Knighted in the King’s New Year Honours 2025; previously appointed OBE in 2019 Visiting lecturer at Harvard Business School; his England tenure is the subject of a published HBS leadership case study Author of Dear England: Lessons in Leadership (Cornerstone, 2025) – an instant Sunday Times bestseller; delivered the 2025 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One, joining Bill Gates, Christine Lagarde, and the Prince of Wales as past speakers in the series Two-time BBC Sports Personality of the Year Coach Award (2018 and 2021); playing career spanning over 500 appearances for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, and Middlesbrough, with 57 England caps Biography When Gareth Southgate took charge of England in 2016, the national team had just been knocked out of the Euros by Iceland. Public confidence was at a low. Over eight years and four major tournaments, he rebuilt the team’s culture entirely. The result was consecutive European Championship finals and a record for the most major tournament games won by any England manager. His approach is now the subject of a case study taught at Harvard Business School. The method was deliberate cultural architecture rather than tactical adjustment. Southgate prioritised psychological safety, shared values, and a team identity that held under pressure. His open letter to England fans during COVID-19 inspired the award-winning West End play Dear England. It demonstrated how he treated transparency and personal vulnerability as leadership tools, not liabilities. Southgate delivered the 2025 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One, joining Bill Gates, Christine Lagarde, and the Prince of Wales as previous speakers in the series. Dear England: Lessons in Leadership became an instant Sunday Times bestseller; the Guardian described it as articulating a moral vision that went beyond the reach of contemporary British politics. He was knighted in the King’s New Year Honours 2025 for services to association football. The fractured starting point, intense public accountability, and need to build individual and collective performance simultaneously – these are not challenges unique to sport. His insights are drawn from eight consecutive years at the sharp end of that problem, not from theory. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained public scrutiny Culture transformation and team identity Values-based accountability Resilience and performance through failure Psychological safety and trust in high-stakes teams Inclusive leadership and diversity of thought Decision-making in high-pressure environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives navigating cultural or strategic transformation CHROs and people leaders working on team culture, inclusion, and performance under pressure Board-level and executive leadership development programmes Organisations in high-scrutiny sectors – financial services, public institutions, large consumer-facing businesses – where leadership decisions carry public accountability Audience outcomes A concrete model for building values-led culture that outlasts individual results cycles First-hand perspective on decision-making under public pressure: how values, not tactics, determine outcomes over time Practical insight into what psychological safety looks like in a high-accountability, high-visibility environment A framework for holding team identity together through failure, scrutiny, and competing stakeholder demands An honest account of how personal and public setback can become the foundation of leadership credibility rather than a liability

Why organisations work with Howard Schultz He is one of the only major executives to have led a full crisis turnaround at the same global company twice. That longitudinal experience produces a very different quality of insight than a single transformation story. His 2011 number-one New York Times bestseller “Onward” presents a specific and testable argument: recovering a business means restoring what people came for, not restructuring around it. Within three years of his 2008 return to Starbucks, the stock had risen more than five times from its crisis low. His case for employee investment is built on commercial evidence, not values rhetoric. Starbucks under Schultz was among the first U.S. companies to extend healthcare to part-time workers and to offer equity participation to hourly employees. He presents attrition, service quality, and customer loyalty as the direct outputs. Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011 and included in Time’s “Time 200” most influential people, he holds ethics recognition from Columbia Business School, Notre Dame’s Mendoza College, and UCLA Anderson – providing academic validation of a practical executive record. As co-founder of Maveron, a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management, he brings pattern recognition on consumer brand durability well beyond the Starbucks story. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Starbucks across three leadership periods (1986-2000, 2008-2017, 2022-2023), growing the company from 11 stores to 28,000 locations across 77 countries Took Starbucks public in 1992; oversaw nearly $100 billion added to the company’s market capitalisation between 2008 and 2017 Author of four books including “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul” (2011), a number-one New York Times bestseller Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011; included in Time magazine’s “Time 200” most influential people Ethics and leadership awards from Columbia Business School (Botwinick Prize), Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business (Hesburgh Award), and UCLA Anderson (John Wooden Global Leadership Award) Co-founder of Maveron (1998), a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management and early investments including eBay and Zulily Biography The most destructive leadership decisions at scale are rarely made during crises. They accumulate during the growth years, when speed and efficiency gradually crowd out the cultural foundations that made a business worth building. Howard Schultz experienced this from the inside, as the architect of Starbucks’ global expansion and the executive who had to reverse the damage when it became visible. His 2008 return as CEO is documented in “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul,” a number-one New York Times bestseller. The argument at the centre of the book is precise: the path back to financial health ran directly through culture, not around it. Employee retraining, the restoration of the in-store experience, and a deliberate recalibration of what Starbucks stood for came before the financial metrics recovered. Within three years of his return, the stock had risen more than five times from its crisis low. His approach to employees follows the same logic. Starbucks under his leadership was among the first U.S. companies to extend healthcare benefits to part-time workers, and it offered equity participation to hourly employees through a programme called Bean Stock. Schultz presented these not as social obligations but as commercial decisions: loyalty, retention, and service quality are measurable outputs of how people are treated, not side effects of good intentions. Named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2011 and included in Time magazine’s “Time 200,” Schultz holds ethics recognition from Columbia Business School, Notre Dame’s Mendoza College, and UCLA Anderson. As co-founder of Maveron, a consumer-focused venture capital firm with $1.3 billion in assets under management, he has extended this analysis of brand durability well beyond the Starbucks story. His perspective reaches audiences navigating growth, crisis recovery, and the sustained tension between operational efficiency and cultural health. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership at scale Crisis leadership and organisational recovery Brand culture and long-term commercial performance Global consumer brand strategy Employee investment as competitive strategy Entrepreneurship and growth Corporate responsibility and business ethics Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating rapid scaling decisions or organisational turnaround Chief People Officers and HR leadership examining employee value proposition at scale Brand, marketing, and commercial leadership in consumer-facing organisations Boards and senior leaders weighing cultural priorities against short-term commercial pressure Audience outcomes A tested framework for treating culture and commercial performance as mutually reinforcing, not competing priorities Concrete, sequenced lessons from a live turnaround at global scale – what decisions were made, in what order, and why A reframe of employee investment from a cost line to a commercial variable with traceable outcomes Perspective on how a brand’s identity is preserved or eroded through the decisions made at pace and scale Practical insight into leading across multiple organisational phases, including growth, institutional crisis, and recovery

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

Why organisations work with James McCabe He brings primary training in dramatic literature, not communications consulting, which gives the work a different starting point: structure, character, suspense and resolution as operating tools, not metaphors. His applied focus is the moments where corporate language usually fails most visibly, namely M&A integration, transformation programmes and AI roll-out, where employees disengage from the official storyline within weeks. He works directly with senior communication leaders at named global organisations including Allianz and Siemens, with engagement framed around outcomes for the business, not the comms function. His Fable workshop format compresses the craft into a working session that produces a usable narrative artefact for the leadership team, not a theory lecture. The intellectual lineage is unusually deep for the topic: an Oxford doctorate in literature, the British Council Millennium Prize, and twenty-five years of pattern recognition across European, American and Asian engagements. Biography highlights Doctorate in literature from St John’s College, Oxford, and a Double First from University College Dublin. British Council Millennium Prize for doctoral research. Twenty-five years applying classical narrative design at enterprise level across Europe, the US, and Asia. Engagements with Allianz and Siemens at Group Communications level. Founder of Fable, an artist collective of poets, designers, and filmmakers for corporate narrative work. Guest on industry storytelling podcasts including Business of Story and Storytelling for Business. Biography The standard corporate communication toolkit is rhetoric: slogans, value statements, change decks. It is designed to persuade in the moment and forgotten by the next quarter. Classical narrative is built differently. It is the form humans have used for three thousand years to make complex change feel inevitable, and most organisations are not using it. That gap is what McCabe has spent twenty-five years closing. He came to the work as a poet and literary scholar, with a doctorate from St John’s College, Oxford and the British Council Millennium Prize, before any of it touched the inside of a boardroom. The discipline he brought across is structural: how stories actually move audiences, why suspense and reversal matter more than messaging, and how character functions in a corporate cast. The applied work is concentrated in the moments where corporate language tends to break: mergers and acquisitions, restructures, AI roll-outs and sustainability programmes. Group Communications functions at organisations including Allianz and Siemens have used him to design the through-line of those programmes rather than the deck. His Fable workshop format takes a leadership team through a compressed version of that craft and produces a narrative artefact the team can use. What makes the offer unusual is the lineage. Most commercial storytelling consultants come from advertising or PR. McCabe’s frame of reference is dramatic literature, which is why the diagnosis tends to be sharper than the topic suggests: it is not about better stories, it is about whether the organisation has a structurally coherent one at all. Key speaking topics Corporate narrative strategy Storytelling for mergers and acquisitions Brand and reputation through narrative design Narrative for AI and digital transformation Sustainability storytelling Leadership communication and executive presence Culture and engagement through story Ideal for CCOs, Heads of Group Communications and brand leadership teams M&A integration leads and post-deal communication owners CEOs and CHROs running enterprise transformation or AI programmes Marketing and brand teams under pressure to differentiate in saturated categories Audience outcomes A working understanding of how dramatic narrative differs from corporate rhetoric, and why one travels and the other does not. The structural elements of a usable enterprise story: protagonist, stakes, reversal, resolution. A diagnostic for where the organisation’s existing story is failing, in M&A, AI roll-out, transformation or brand. A method for designing leadership communication around narrative architecture rather than message points.