Bien-être employé speakers

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

Why organisations work with Danny Bent His argument that performance improves when people stop masking who they are is backed by his own experience building communities at scale – including a 3,328-mile relay across the United States that raised approximately $600,000 in weeks, organised by someone with no events infrastructure and a great deal of conviction. That is not a theoretical model; it is evidence. He produces an emotional shift in a room, not just intellectual content. Audiences at HSBC, Nike, and Google have described his sessions as physically changing the atmosphere within an hour – the kind of result most culture and engagement programmes take months to attempt. His willingness to speak openly about dyslexia, therapy, and the parts of himself he spent years performing around gives him rare credibility with audiences resistant to culture messaging. A Guinness World Record holder and BBC Special Forces finalist talking honestly about hiding and shame tends to disarm people who would tune out a conventional wellbeing speaker. His four named talk frameworks give event planners clear, differentiated choices across distinct use cases – personal identity, team belonging, leadership culture, and breaking default behaviour – without requiring bespoke development. His lived experience of building radically inclusive communities – Project Awesome across UK cities, multi-country running relays attracting thousands – gives HR and culture leads a concrete reference point for what genuine belonging actually looks and feels like, not just what it looks like in a framework. Biography highlights Author of “You’ve Gone Too Far This Time Sir” (account of cycling 9,000 miles from London to India; described as an international bestseller) and “Not All Superheroes Wear Capes” (about One Run for Boston and its impact on thousands of Americans) Two Guinness World Records, including for the I Move London Relay – 4,000 miles run by 2,000 participants across London in 2018 Organised One Run for Boston (2013) – a 3,328-mile continuous running relay from Los Angeles to Boston following the Marathon bombings, raising approximately $600,000 for victims Second overall on the BBC’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week; one of only three competitors to complete the programme TEDx speaker on the power of community; 100+ talks delivered at organisations including Google, HSBC, Nike, National Geographic, and the Royal Geographic Society Founder of Project Awesome, a free fitness community that has mobilised tens of thousands of participants across UK cities Former Great Britain triathlete Biography What happened after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 is, at one level, a story about running. A 3,328-mile relay from Los Angeles to Boston, organised in days, ran by thousands of Americans who had no relationship with each other beyond a shared need to do something. It raised approximately $600,000 for victims and demonstrated something specific about what people are capable of when they feel permission to show up honestly. Danny Bent organised that relay. He also cycled 9,000 miles from London to India, founded Project Awesome (a free fitness community across UK cities) and broke two Guinness World Records. He came second in the BBC’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week. These achievements are real, but they are not the point. The point is the human pattern underneath them: what happens to people, and to teams, when they are trusted and given a reason to be honest. Danny is dyslexic, a former Great Britain triathlete, and the author of two books. He spent years performing a version of himself that looked capable and cheerful while keeping quieter parts hidden. His decision to change that shaped his current speaking directly. He has built four named talk frameworks: The Happiness in Being You, The Power of a Tribe Mentality, The All-Powerful You, and Breaking Free from Autopilot, each addressing a different aspect of what shifts when people stop masking who they are at work. He has delivered 100+ talks at organisations including Google, HSBC, Nike, National Geographic, and the Royal Geographic Society, and given a TEDx talk on the power of community. Audiences have consistently described his sessions not as explaining something but as changing something in the atmosphere, in the conversation, in what people say to each other afterward. Key speaking topics Belonging and psychological safety at work Authentic identity and self-permission Community building and collective purpose Team culture and trust Resilience through shared challenge Leadership through enabling others Storytelling as a tool for connection Ideal for CHROs, People Directors, and culture leads building engagement or belonging programmes where intellectual content alone is unlikely to shift behaviour Senior leadership teams and executive offsites where trust, openness, and team cohesion are the underlying agenda Company-wide away days and conferences that need a session capable of shifting energy and atmosphere, not just delivering content Sales, marketing, or client-facing team events where authentic connection and discretionary effort are performance drivers Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of the personal and organisational cost of masking authentic identity at work, expressed through direct, lived experience rather than framework Specific language for talking about belonging, psychological safety, and trust within their own teams Awareness of the default behaviours and autopilot patterns that limit individual and collective performance A reference point – grounded in real community-building at scale – for what genuine belonging actually feels like, not just what it looks like in a policy document A personal prompt to take one specific action toward showing up more honestly, in work or in life

Why organisations work with Dave Steele He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot. He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia. Scientific and medical institutions trust him to carry the patient and lived-experience voice, from the National Eye Institute at NIH to a Roche ophthalmology feature and the American Foundation for the Blind. Few speakers on disability reach clinical and research audiences at that level. Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle. He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room. Biography highlights Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016 to 2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week. Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media. Subject of the BBC documentary “The Film I’ll Never See” (BBC Our Lives, 2025). Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind; opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat at NIH (2024). Gave a Special Presentation at the inaugural Personalized RegenMed Forum, hosted by biotech company Cellino in Cambridge, MA, sharing his experience of sight loss through poetry with an audience of regenerative-medicine developers, clinicians and researchers. Performed a commissioned poem at the Paralympic Heritage Flame Lighting Ceremony at Stoke Mandeville, birthplace of the Paralympic movement, ahead of Paris 2024. Trustee of Henshaws; featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam. Biography Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on. Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and mounting debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed. The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia, and he has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That reach is why leading research and clinical institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH in April 2024 at the invitation of its scientific director, and has been featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology. The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and lived experience Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis Accessibility in product, brand and workplace Poetry and storytelling as communication Mental health and identity through chronic illness Patient voice in medical and research settings Ideal for CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes Healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical and ophthalmology audiences (clinicians, researchers and patient-experience teams) wanting an authentic patient voice Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line

Why organisations work with David Allen He speaks from inside the experience, not about it. A person describing decades of OCD, severe health anxiety and depression in their own words does work that a clinician or a policy lead cannot do. He is a trained Lived Experience Practitioner, formally accredited to use personal recovery to support others, and a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign run by the charity Mind. The mental health talk, “Living with OCD: A Survivor’s Guide”, is autobiographical and practical at the same time: it covers triggers, daily impact and the coping strategies he has built, rather than general awareness messaging. He also offers researched social-history talks on Victorian England and storytelling travel sessions, which makes him a flexible choice for community groups, member associations and after-dinner programmes that want a single speaker for a varied evening. Biography highlights Lived Experience Practitioner working through Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign of the mental health charity Mind. Holds the People’s Champion designation within that movement. Around 15 years as a professional public speaker, with festival appearances at Buxton, Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. Member of the Dickens Fellowship, with a research focus on Victorian social and criminal history. Trained as a solicitor and as a primary school teacher before moving into full-time speaking. Regular speaker on the UK community-association circuit: U3A, Rotary, WI, Townswomen’s Guilds, Probus and 41 Clubs across the south east of England. Biography OCD is one of the most misunderstood common mental health conditions in the workplace. It is treated as a punchline about tidiness, when in clinical reality it is an anxiety disorder that can take hours out of a person’s day. Allen has lived with it since childhood, alongside depression and severe health anxiety, and has built a public talk out of that experience rather than out of theory. The credential that sits behind the talk is specific. After the pandemic, he trained as a Lived Experience Practitioner, the formal route by which people with their own history of mental illness are accredited to support others in recovery. He volunteers as a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the local volunteer network that took over from the national Time to Change campaign run by Mind in 2022. That gives the OCD talk a grounding in something more than personal disclosure. The wider speaking career runs alongside that work. Allen trained as a solicitor and then as a primary school teacher before going full-time on the speaking circuit, where he has now been for around fifteen years. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship and writes and performs researched talks on Victorian England, on Charles Dickens specifically, and on his own bicycle and hitchhiking journeys across Europe and North Africa. He has performed at Buxton Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. For a corporate audience, the value is narrow and specific: a first-person account of severe OCD, delivered by someone who has spent years working out how to talk about it in a room of strangers. For community associations, member groups and festival programmes, the range widens into Victorian history and travel storytelling. Key speaking topics Living with OCD and severe health anxiety Lived-experience mental health advocacy Stigma and mental illness in everyday life Victorian social history Charles Dickens and his world Long-distance bicycle and hitchhiking travel Ideal for Employee wellbeing programmes, mental health awareness weeks and stigma-reduction events inside large employers Healthcare and nursing audiences looking for a lived-experience voice alongside clinical content U3As, Rotary Clubs, WIs, Probus groups, 41 Clubs and similar community associations Literary festivals, history societies and after-dinner programmes booking storytelling sessions Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of what OCD looks like from the inside, beyond the cultural shorthand Specific coping strategies that one person has developed over decades of living with anxiety Permission to talk about mental health more openly inside teams and families For history audiences, a researched and entertaining window into Victorian social life

Why organisations work with David Weir A track record of winning at the highest level across two decades and seven Paralympic Games. Few speakers can draw on that span of sustained elite output when talking to a leadership team about consistency. Four gold medals in nine days at London 2012, on home ground, under the closest possible scrutiny. The story behind that fortnight is a serious case study in preparing for peak moments. Direct, lived authority on inclusion. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded with coach Jenny Archer, is an operating organisation that gets young disabled athletes into sport, not a cause he lends a name to. A career that includes quitting the sport after Atlanta 1996 and returning. That arc gives the resilience content real texture rather than the usual highlight reel. Biography highlights Six Paralympic gold medals (two at Beijing 2008, four at London 2012) and ten Paralympic medals in total across Games from Atlanta 1996 to Paris 2024. Eight-time winner of the London Marathon men’s wheelchair race. Appointed CBE in the 2013 New Year Honours, MBE in 2009. Author of “Weirwolf: My Story”, published by Constable and Robinson in 2013 with David Bond. Co-founder of the Weir Archer Academy at Kingsmeadow, Kingston, launched April 2013. Inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. Biography Four gold medals in nine days at the London 2012 Paralympics, 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon, put Weir at the centre of the most watched disability sport event ever staged. He won on home ground in front of a British crowd that had, by the end of those Games, a different frame of reference for what Paralympic sport was. The arc before that is what gives the story weight. Weir made his Paralympic debut at Atlanta in 1996 at seventeen, came away unimpressed, and quit the sport. He came back, built a partnership with coach Jenny Archer that still runs, and compiled six Paralympic golds and eight London Marathon wins across more than two decades at the top of T54 wheelchair racing. The public work beyond racing is substantive. “Weirwolf: My Story”, written with journalist David Bond and published in 2013, is an unvarnished account of racing, disability, and the training regime behind sustained elite output. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded the same year at Kingsmeadow in Kingston, exists to get the next generation of disabled athletes into sport rather than to decorate a Paralympian’s post-career CV. Weir retired from Paralympic competition after Paris 2024, closing a run of seven Games. He was appointed CBE in 2013 and inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. The corporate audience gets a speaker whose material on performance under pressure, coming back from a year that went wrong, and inclusion inside elite sport is drawn from the record, not constructed around it. Key speaking topics Resilience and comeback after setback Peak performance under pressure Sustained excellence across a long career Disability, inclusion and changing public attitudes Coach and athlete partnerships Goal setting over multi-year cycles Ideal for CHROs and inclusion leads building disability and accessibility into workforce strategy Sales and commercial leadership kick-offs framed around performance under pressure Sports industry, governing body and event organiser conferences Employee network and wellbeing programme events, particularly around mental health and sustained performance Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what consistency at the top actually costs, told through two decades of T54 racing A usable frame for recovering from a setback that does not resolve on its own timetable Specific detail on preparing for a single high-visibility moment, drawn from London 2012 A grounded view of disability inclusion from inside elite sport, rather than from policy language Material on coach and athlete trust that transfers to senior manager and team relationships

Why organisations work with David Woods Bartley Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the three QPR steps directly in his talks, so a manager leaves knowing how to ask the question and make the referral. Lived experience of severe depression, a suicide attempt at the Foresthill Bridge, and recovery through electroconvulsive therapy. The story carries the stigma-breaking weight that clinical presenters rarely match. Named 2021 Mental Health Champion by the Steinberg Institute, a credential anchored to a recognised advocacy body rather than bureau superlatives. Two TEDx talks in active distribution, including “How connection saved my life” on TED.com, which gives programme leads a vetted preview of voice and content before booking. Works across corporate, public sector, healthcare, education, and law enforcement audiences. Material has been delivered to sheriff’s departments, universities, and veterans’ health services, not only corporate wellness events. Biography highlights 2021 Mental Health Champion, Steinberg Institute. Two TEDx speaker: “How connection saved my life” (TEDxLosGatos) and “How to save a life by sitting down” (TEDxFolsom). Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer); certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. Member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, International Association for Youth Mental Health, National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. Founder and former director of a nationally recognised animal sanctuary that housed up to 100 special-needs animals. Designer of “A Lesson in Mental Health,” a whole-school programme that trains students, teachers, and parents in a single day. Biography Most organisations have a mental health policy. Very few have trained the average manager to spot a colleague in distress and say something that helps. That gap is the work David Woods Bartley has been doing for over a decade, in more than 800 sessions across the United States, Canada, Central America, and India. His authority rests on two things that rarely appear together. The first is lived experience: a fight with treatment-resistant depression that took him to the edge of the Foresthill Bridge, and a recovery that included electroconvulsive therapy and the human connection that, in his telling, kept him alive long enough to get there. The second is formal training. He is trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the QPR steps in his sessions, so audiences leave with a protocol they can put to use. The Steinberg Institute named him a 2021 Mental Health Champion. His two TEDx talks, “How connection saved my life” at TEDxLosGatos and “How to save a life by sitting down” at TEDxFolsom, are in active distribution on TED and YouTube. He is a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the International Association for Youth Mental Health, the National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. What he gives a room is a practical shift. Bartley uses a framework he calls Whole Person Care, animal stories drawn from two decades running a sanctuary, and the blunt honesty of someone who has stood on the bridge. Managers walk out knowing how to sit down next to a colleague who is not alright, ask a direct question, and get them to the next step. Key speaking topics Suicide prevention and the QPR approach Workplace mental health literacy Psychological safety and supportive conversations Human connection and isolation Whole Person Care Lived experience of depression and recovery Mental health education for schools and communities Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people function leaders building mental health capability across a workforce Line managers, team leaders, and EAP programme owners responsible for early intervention Public sector, healthcare, and education leaders tasked with staff and community mental health Law enforcement, first responder, and veterans’ services leadership addressing occupational risk Audience outcomes A named protocol for asking direct questions when a colleague shows signs of distress, drawn from the QPR method. Language for starting mental health conversations without fearing the wrong word. A clearer sense of what recovery actually looks like, from someone who has been through severe depression and ECT. Reduced stigma around suicide as a topic that can be raised at work, supported by specific recognition cues and response steps. A self-care and wellness planning frame managers can apply to themselves before applying it to a team.

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

Why organisations work with Demi Stokes A first-hand voice from the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, the most commercially significant moment in English women’s football. Nine seasons at the top of the Women’s Super League with Manchester City, including a WSL title, three FA Cups and three League Cups, plus a return to first-team football after the premature birth of her son. A current player and Newcastle United captain, which gives event audiences access to a live insider perspective rather than a retrospective career story. A credible advocate on premature birth and neonatal care through her Pampers UK ambassadorship with Bliss and UNICEF, suited to wellbeing, parental-leave and ERG-focused events. Biography highlights Member of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022; 69 senior caps between 2014 and 2023. Won the FA Women’s Super League, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups with Manchester City between 2015 and 2024. Named in the PFA WSL Team of the Year in 2018 and 2019. Captained Team GB to gold at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan and represented Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Signed for Newcastle United Women in July 2024 and named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. Pampers UK ambassador for the #PampersforPreemies campaign with Bliss and UNICEF. Biography Most elite athletes peak inside a single environment. Demi Stokes built her career across four of them. Sunderland gave her a first-team debut at sixteen and an FA Cup final in 2009. A scholarship to the University of South Florida added four years of US college football. A summer at Vancouver Whitecaps in the USL W League followed before Manchester City signed her in January 2015. What she built at City is the substance of the speaking story. Nine seasons, more than 100 first-team appearances, the 2016 FA WSL title, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups. Two PFA WSL Team of the Year selections, in 2018 and 2019. A senior England debut in 2014, and a place in the squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 at Wembley, the most commercially important moment in English women’s football. The personal layer runs alongside the career. Stokes was born ten weeks premature herself, and her son Harlen spent time in a neonatal unit after a difficult pregnancy that included pre-eclampsia. She has spoken openly about that period in interviews with Grazia and Mother & Baby, and works with Pampers UK on the #PampersforPreemies campaign in partnership with Bliss and UNICEF. The throughline that audiences hear is how a senior international footballer sustains performance through events that most workplaces still struggle to talk about. She left Manchester City in May 2024, signed for Newcastle United Women in July, and was named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. The story she brings to a room is current, not archived. Key speaking topics Lionesses and UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Women’s football and the professionalisation of the game Return to elite performance after a difficult pregnancy Premature birth, neonatal care and family advocacy Leadership in a dressing room and team identity Long-career resilience across clubs, countries and codes Ideal for Internal events tied to International Women’s Day, parental-leave policy launches or working-parent ERGs. Wellbeing, EDI and culture programmes looking for a credible voice on resilience and identity rather than a clinical specialist. Sport-sponsorship activations, hospitality nights and awards dinners where a current Lioness presence is the brief. Audience outcomes An inside account of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, told by a senior squad member. A direct view of how a top-flight athlete returns to performance after a high-risk pregnancy and a premature birth. A useable reference point for managers thinking about how to support employees through major personal events. A current-player perspective on dressing-room leadership and the demands of being a club captain.

Why organisations work with Diana Ospina and Oscar Lemus They bring an instrument, not a philosophy. BhiPRO produces a quantified Business Happiness Index across 35 indicators with a reported 94% reliability, the kind of evidence a board will fund against. The methodology has earned external academic validation. Harvard Business School teaches a BhiPRO case based on its deployment at Lanco Medical Group, which signals serious analytical credibility for a culture topic that usually trades on anecdote. They speak as a duo with two distinct lenses: Diana on applied neuroscience and culture practice, Oscar on the financial and operational economics of happiness. The split lets them address a CHRO and a CFO in the same room. They are the leading Spanish-language voices on workplace happiness measurement in Latin America, with deployments across 70+ companies and an open study spanning 29 countries. For multinationals with significant LatAm operations, they offer regional substance most international speakers cannot. Their book “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” is prologued by Néstor Braidot, the leading Spanish-language neuroscientist on applied business neuroscience, anchoring their work in a credible scientific tradition. Biography highlights Co-creators of BhiPRO (Business Happiness Index Program), a 35-indicator scientific methodology for measuring organisational happiness, climate and wellbeing. BhiPRO featured as an MBA teaching case at Harvard Business School, based on the Lanco Medical Group implementation. Co-founders of Mide la Felicidad, the Colombian firm that has applied the methodology to 70+ companies in Latin America since 2015. Co-authors of “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” and “Metodología Científica BhiPRO: Cómo Medir la Felicidad Organizacional,” with prologue by neuroscientist Néstor Braidot. Diana Ospina: TEDx speaker (“Monitoreando Felicidad Laboral”, TEDxSanJosédeDavid), NLP practitioner and applied neuroscience specialist. Oscar Rodríguez Lemus: Honorary Doctorate in Human Development and Leadership (2023), trained in Applied Neurosciences and Brain Gym at the Braidot Institute, with two decades in capital markets and finance before his work on workplace happiness. Biography Most organisations cannot answer a basic question about their own culture: how happy are our people, in numbers a finance director would accept. Pulse surveys and engagement indices give partial answers. They do not link wellbeing to performance with enough rigour to defend a culture budget through a downturn. The instrument has been missing. BhiPRO was built to close that gap. Diana Ospina Campuzano and Oscar Rodríguez Lemus spent more than a decade developing a 35-indicator measurement system covering happiness, climate, wellbeing, culture and sustainability, reporting 94% reliability. The methodology now anchors a Harvard Business School MBA case, based on its application at Lanco Medical Group, and has been deployed across more than 70 companies in Latin America since their firm Mide la Felicidad was founded in Colombia in 2014. The duo work in complementary modes. Diana came to the topic through applied neuroscience, NLP and executive coaching, and is a TEDx speaker on workplace happiness. Oscar’s background sits in capital markets and international economic relations, which gives the partnership a financial vocabulary that culture work usually lacks. Together they published “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional,” prologued by the neuroscientist Néstor Braidot, and the companion methodology volume on how to measure organisational happiness. For executive teams the value is concrete. A Spanish-language duo who can stand in front of a Latin American leadership team, present a quantified diagnostic of how their culture is actually performing, and link the gaps to specific operational moves. The Harvard case is the credibility marker. The 35-indicator instrument is the working tool. Key speaking topics Measuring organisational happiness with the BhiPRO methodology Workplace wellbeing and employee engagement Applied neuroscience and workplace happiness Organisational culture transformation Talent retention and human loyalty The economics of happiness at work Entrepreneurship and partnership Ideal for CHROs, Chief Happiness Officers and culture leads in Latin American or Spanish-speaking organisations commissioning a quantified culture diagnostic CEOs and CFOs evaluating the financial case for wellbeing and engagement investment Multinationals with significant Latin American operations seeking regionally credible culture expertise HR conferences and leadership summits in Spanish-language markets Audience outcomes A clear understanding of what an audit-grade happiness measurement actually contains and how it differs from a pulse survey The five dimensions and headline indicators that drive the BhiPRO index, and how each links to operational outcomes An evidence-based read on what Latin American workforce data says about engagement, retention and culture Practical entry points for moving a culture programme from narrative to measurement A neuroscience-informed view of why workplace happiness behaves the way it does, drawn from Braidot Institute training

Why organisations work with Bella Smith Clinical authority that holds up in the room. Twenty years as an NHS GP partner means the advice survives challenge from medical, HR and legal stakeholders alike. Operator credentials, not only commentary. Through The Well HQ she has built women’s health frameworks for clients including the FA and corporate employers, translating physiology into policy. A Sunday Times bestselling co-author of The Female Body Bible, the most cited recent reference book on female-specific health and performance in the UK market. Ambassador status with The Eve Appeal gives her standing on gynaecological health that goes beyond menopause, the topic most women’s health speakers default to. Direct, plain-language register. Audiences leave with vocabulary they can use the next day, in policy drafting, line-management conversations and personal decisions. Biography highlights NHS GP partner with over 20 years of clinical experience, specialising in women’s health Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of The Well HQ, a women’s health consultancy Co-author of The Female Body Bible (Penguin, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller Ambassador for The Eve Appeal, the UK gynaecological cancer charity Media spokesperson as The Digital GP, with appearances on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio Suffolk and Sky News Co-led the design of an integrated female health framework across the Women’s Super League, the National Leagues and grassroots football Biography Women’s health has spent a decade being talked about and rarely being built into how organisations actually operate. Policies on menopause sit in handbooks no manager reads. Wellness budgets fund webinars that leave behavioural change untouched. The work of moving from sentiment to system is technical, and it is what Bella Smith does. She has been an NHS GP partner in Suffolk for over twenty years, with a clinical specialism in women’s health. That practice is the source of the directness audiences notice first. The advice is what she would give in a consultation, stripped of corporate hedging. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with sports scientist Dr Emma Ross and coach Baz Moffat. The consultancy works with employers and sports bodies to translate female physiology into policy, manager training and culture. Their work with the FA produced an integrated female health framework spanning the Women’s Super League, National Leagues and grassroots football, the first of its kind. The Female Body Bible, co-authored with Ross and Moffat and published by Penguin in 2023, became a Sunday Times bestseller. It is now the reference text many HR teams use when they begin to take this seriously. As an ambassador for The Eve Appeal and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and Sky News, she has spent years closing the gap between clinical knowledge and public conversation. Inside organisations, that gap is where most policy fails. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Menopause policy and management Reproductive and gynaecological health Female physiology and performance Stress and lifestyle medicine Health communication and taboo Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and reward leads building or auditing women’s health policy Line manager and leadership audiences who need clinical fluency, not slogans Sports, performance and athlete-welfare organisations Employee resource groups and women’s networks running serious internal programming Audience outcomes A clinical baseline on menopause, reproductive health and female physiology that survives scrutiny Vocabulary and questions managers can use in their next one-to-one A clear view of where current workplace policy falls short, and what good looks like Practical reference points for HR teams designing or revising women’s health provision

Why organisations work with David Patton His research with Professor David Best, published in the Journal of Drug Issues, makes a clean argument that pull factors and turning points, not pain or crisis, drive sustained behavioural change. That reframes how leaders think about wellbeing, resilience and post-crisis recovery. He runs New Central Media, the platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, a book with a foreword by Dame Carol Black that was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review. That is a working track record of turning research into policy traction. His material is built with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, which gives audiences a level of human authenticity that conventional behaviour-change keynotes cannot match. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works internationally with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities, so he speaks with the authority of someone whose research is taken seriously by policymakers, not only by academics. His framework on connection, collaboration, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation and burnout is directly transferable to corporate culture, employee wellbeing and engagement work. Biography highlights Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research PhD, University of Sheffield; Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Founder and Director of New Central Media; lead of Recovery Atlas, a global participatory photovoice archive Co-author with Professor David Best of peer-reviewed work on pull factors and turning points in addiction recovery, published in the Journal of Drug Issues Editor and contributor to Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations Has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, including a 2023 manifesto on stigma in addiction recovery Former Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge; principal investigator on Home Office, ESRC, NIHR and Big Lottery Fund projects Biography The dominant assumption in behaviour-change psychology is that people change when the pain gets bad enough. Research published in the Journal of Drug Issues by David Patton and David Best argues the opposite. Across the life narratives of people in long-term addiction recovery, the consistent driver is not crisis but a pull toward something better: meaning, hope, community, a turning point. That finding moves the conversation about recovery, resilience and wellbeing onto a different footing. Patton is Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, based in the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research. His work is built directly with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, using participatory methods including photovoice and digital storytelling. The international expression of that approach is Recovery Atlas, a global archive linked to recovery communities worldwide. He also runs New Central Media, the publishing platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations. The prison volume, with a foreword by Dame Carol Black, was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review of prison-based recovery. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities on projects across Latin America and Africa. For organisations rethinking employee wellbeing, post-crisis resilience or behavioural change at scale, Patton brings something specific: an evidence base on what actually sustains change in the hardest cases, drawn from people whose lives depended on getting it right. The transfer into corporate culture, talent and engagement strategy is direct. Key speaking topics Pull factors and turning points in behavioural change Addiction recovery and the science of human flourishing Connection, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation Lived experience and participatory research Stigma, marginalisation and inclusion Drug policy reform and the role of recovery communities Wellbeing and resilience after crisis Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing mental health, recovery and resilience strategy Leadership teams in healthcare, criminal justice, social care and the third sector Conferences on the future of work, wellbeing, inclusion and human flourishing Policy and public sector audiences working on drug policy, prisons and rehabilitation Audience outcomes A research-grounded reframing of what sustains behavioural change, drawn from peer-reviewed work Specific language for talking about pull factors, turning points and recovery capital inside an organisation Direct insight into how lived experience can be built into research, policy and programme design A clearer view of how connection, community and meaning operate as antidotes to burnout and disengagement Reference material from Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison and related publications for follow-up

Why organisations work with Elaine Kasket She is one of the few cyberpsychologists in Europe who is also a clinically trained, HCPC-registered counselling psychologist, which means her advice on digital wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not commentary. Her work covers technology across the full lifespan, from “sharenting” to digital afterlife, which gives leaders a coherent framework for thinking about the employee, the customer, and the citizen as the same person. She wrote the definitive trade book on digital death and digital legacy, All the Ghosts in the Machine, and now leads on the psychology of AI companions and grief bots, an area few executive audiences have heard explained well. She has consulted to organisations including Netflix, Santander, Deloitte, the NHS and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, so the work translates from research into board-level conversations about AI, attention and surveillance. Her newest book, Reset, gives leadership teams a practical vocabulary for agency over technology rather than the usual digital detox framing, which most senior buyers find too thin for adult professional audiences. Biography highlights BPS-Chartered Psychologist and HCPC-Registered Counselling Psychologist; Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath; formerly Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton Author of Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) and All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019) TEDx Oxford speaker; featured expert in the Netflix documentary The Future Of: Life After Death Regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, CNN, BBC Ideas, The Guardian, New Scientist, Psychology Today and Stylist Keynote engagements include Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, Royal Society of Medicine, Congreso Futuro, re:publica and the International Baccalaureate global conference Biography Most organisations talk about digital wellbeing in the language of the wellness industry: detoxes, screen-time apps, mindful breathing. The actual psychological problem is structural. Attention is being extracted, identity is being recorded, and the costs are showing up in engagement, retention and clinical mental health caseloads. That gap between the corporate vocabulary and the clinical reality is the space Elaine Kasket works in. She trained as a counselling psychologist before cyberpsychology was a discipline, and is registered with the HCPC alongside her chartered psychologist status with the British Psychological Society. That clinical grounding is what separates her commentary from the commentary economy around technology. She led the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London, was Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton for five years, and is now Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. Her first trade book, All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019), opened a serious public conversation about digital legacy: what happens to your data, your accounts and your image when you die, and what that means for the people who outlive you. Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) extends the argument across the full lifespan, from “digital gestation” and sharenting to surveillance, AI relationships and the digital afterlife. For leadership audiences, she connects four conversations executives often run as separate problems: employee mental health, AI adoption, brand trust and data governance. Her recent keynotes for Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, the Royal Society of Medicine and Congreso Futuro have moved leaders away from “digital detox” framing and toward agency, the design question of how a workforce uses AI without losing the cognitive and relational ground organisations actually run on. Key speaking topics Cyberpsychology and digital wellbeing Psychology of AI adoption at work AI companions, grief bots and the future of human connection Digital legacy, data privacy and digital afterlife Attention, surveillance and the extractive attention economy Technology across the lifespan, from sharenting to digital afterlives Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers designing wellbeing, engagement and AI-readiness programmes Chief AI Officers and transformation leads embedding AI into employee experience and customer-facing tools Brand, marketing and communications leadership teams working on trust, privacy and AI narratives Boards and risk committees considering the human and reputational dimensions of data, surveillance and AI Audience outcomes A clinically grounded read on what technology is actually doing to attention, identity and relationships at work A vocabulary for talking about digital wellbeing that holds up in front of clinicians, regulators and senior employees A clearer view of where AI companions, grief bots and synthetic relationships intersect with workforce mental health and brand risk A practical sense of what individual and organisational agency look like in an extractive attention economy A framework that connects digital legacy, data governance and employee trust as one coherent leadership question