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Ben Hines

Leadership teams talk about high performance more than they practise it. The behaviours that separate a coordinated team from a competent one are often invisible inside the organisation itself, drowned out by hierarchy and process. Senior groups need a way to see those behaviours from outside their own dynamics and translate what they see into how they work on Monday morning.

Why organisations work with Ben Hines A signature programme, Know the Score, delivered with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and other professional ensembles, that puts senior leaders in the room with a world-class team operating in real time. Faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, anchoring the experiential work in a credible leadership development frame. Eighteen years in financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC, which keeps the corporate translation grounded rather than theatrical. A coaching credential (ACC, International Coach Federation) and a music degree from the University of York, sitting behind a method that other speakers cannot replicate. Biography highlights Founder of Moving Performance (2009), a leadership development firm using music and live musicians as the medium for senior team work. Creator of Know the Score, the first leadership programme to be developed in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Senior Associate faculty at Henley Business School, Korn Ferry International, and Altitude Leadership Partners. Associate Certified Coach, International Coach Federation. BA (Hons) Music, University of York. Earlier career as a strategic marketer at Barclays PLC and advisor to CPA Global. Biography A high-performing orchestra and a high-performing executive team face the same problem. Many specialists, one shared outcome, no rehearsal time. Most leadership development programmes describe that problem in abstract terms. Ben Hines puts it on a stage and lets leaders watch it solved in front of them. Moving Performance, the firm he founded in 2009, places professional musicians inside leadership sessions for serious organisations. The signature programme, Know the Score, runs in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and was the first leadership format developed with that orchestra. Senior teams observe how a group of experts coordinates without verbal instruction, then translate what they have seen into their own decision rhythms, listening habits, and roles under pressure. The credibility of the work rests on the corporate spine behind it. Eighteen years inside financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC across multiple international markets and an advisory role at CPA Global, sit underneath the musical method. Senior Associate faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, and an ACC coaching credential from the International Coach Federation, place the practice inside recognised leadership development infrastructure. Clients to date include Accenture, BP, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Borse, Jaguar Land Rover, PwC, Telekom Austria, Thames Water, and Wise. Key speaking topics High-performing teams Leadership and team development Change leadership Emotional intelligence in senior teams Communication and listening Executive presence Ideal for Chief Executives and executive committees running team off-sites and leadership conferences Heads of Leadership Development and CHROs commissioning senior team programmes Transformation leads using a leadership intervention to reset team behaviour during change Conference organisers needing a substantive keynote that doubles as a shared experience for the room Audience outcomes A common reference point for how an expert team coordinates without hierarchy interrupting the work Specific behavioural cues from professional musicians that translate into meeting and decision rhythms Sharper attention to listening, non-verbal signals, and timing in senior team interaction A shared experience the group keeps referring back to long after the session

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Charles Clark

Workforces are tired. Engagement scores are sliding, burnout is normalised, and the standard wellbeing programme rarely changes how anyone shows up on Monday. Leaders need something that helps people rebuild their own capacity to perform under pressure, not another wellness initiative bolted on top of the day job.

Why organisations work with Charles Clark A first-person account of a career ending in a single training session, used to give audiences a concrete frame for setbacks they are currently sitting with. Habit and goal-setting tools (Thrive Planner, Recap Journal) that give attendees something to take back to their desk on Monday rather than a feeling that fades by Wednesday. A book catalogue covering self-therapy, team dynamics, and personal goal design, which lets buyers match the talk to a sales kickoff, a wellbeing day, or a leadership offsite. Comfort across audience types: Fortune 500 sales teams, professional sports organisations, and college and military audiences, all referenced in his published client list. Biography highlights 3-time NCAA National Champion and 10-time All-American at Florida State University. Ranked 6th in the world over 100m at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. Author of “Become Your Ideal Self: How to Heal Through Self Therapy” and “Guide to Thrive.” Creator of the Thrive Planner goal-setting system and the Recap Journal. Host of the Thrive Tribe Podcast on mindset, business, and athletic development. Speaking and training engagements referenced with Nike, Amazon, Google, NFL, MLB, NCAA, Raymond James, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi Co, and the US Army. Biography A 99% tear in the right quadriceps ends a sprinter’s career. For Charles Clark, it ended a track career that had already produced three NCAA titles, ten All-American honours, and a sixth-place finish at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. The injury removed the only professional path he had built for. What replaced it was a deliberate second discipline. Clark studied habits, goal design, and recovery from setback, then built tools around them: the Thrive Planner, the Recap Journal, and a set of books beginning with “Guide to Thrive” and “Become Your Ideal Self.” Each is a practical product, not a memoir. That practicality is what corporate buyers are responding to. Clark works with sales organisations at Raymond James, Frontier Communications, and Pepsi, with sports bodies including the NFL, MLB, and NCAA, and with military and education audiences. The story opens the room. The planner-and-habits content gives people something to do with what they heard. Clark’s work fits an organisation that has tried wellbeing weeks and motivational posters and wants something with a real exercise attached. He is not a leadership theorist. He is a performer who learned a second craft after the first one was taken away, and who teaches the second one with the same discipline. Key speaking topics Personal resilience after setback Habit design and goal-setting Mindset and mental health for high-pressure roles Sales-team motivation and kickoff energy Team culture and relationship-building Performance under pressure Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences in commercial organisations. Wellbeing days and mental health weeks where leaders want substance over slogans. Professional sports organisations and high-performance environments. College, university, and military audiences working on resilience and personal development. Audience outcomes A specific reframe for the setback the audience is currently sitting with, drawn from Clark’s own career-ending injury. A working set of habit and goal-setting tools attendees can apply the next day. Language for talking about mental health and personal performance inside a commercial culture. Practical decisions about where attention, energy, and recovery time should go in the next quarter.

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Chris Boardman

Every organisation says it wants to change. Most are built to resist it. Transformations tend to break where strategy meets the team that has to carry them through years of institutional resistance.

Why organisations work with Chris Boardman Demonstrable experience building high-performing teams in three distinct environments: elite sport (the British Cycling R&D team known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»), commercial business (Boardman Bikes), and UK national infrastructure (Active Travel England). The pattern transfers. Most speakers only have one of these on the CV. Genuine authority on driving innovation inside institutions that are structurally set up to resist it. His work on the Bee Network in Greater Manchester, alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, is a case study in pushing something new through a political and administrative system built for continuity. Credibility with senior leaders who are tired of generic «marginal gains» content. Boardman was inside the team that produced the phrase and can explain what the method actually looked like on the ground at British Cycling, without the subsequent mythology. A personal story of reinvention that holds a senior room’s attention: carpenter, Olympic champion, product entrepreneur, commissioner of a £2 billion government agency, with the same discipline around preparation running through each phase. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Barcelona 1992 (4km individual pursuit); first British cycling gold in 72 years. World Hour Record holder on two separate occasions; three times wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France; three-time World Champion. CBE (2022) for services to transport; MBE (1992) for services to cycling. Led the R&D group within British Cycling known as the «Secret Squirrel Club»; co-founded Boardman Bikes with Alan Ingarfield and Sarah Mooney. National Active Travel Commissioner for England and Chair of Sport England, with oversight responsibility for billions of pounds of public investment in active travel and sport. Author of «Triumphs and Turbulence» (Cross Sports Cycling Book of the Year, 2017); BBC and ITV cycling commentator, including London 2012 Olympic coverage. Biography Britain had not won an Olympic cycling gold in seventy-two years. In 1992, at Barcelona, a former carpenter from the Wirral crossed the line first on a Lotus frame. Chris Boardman’s name has been tied to technology-led performance ever since. Two decades later, that fascination with preparation had been institutionalised. As head of research and development at British Cycling, Boardman led the small team that became known inside the sport as the Secret Squirrel Club. Its remit was to find every unglamorous, repeatable improvement a well-prepared squad could stack on top of raw talent. The approach underwrote Team GB’s dominance at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The phrase «marginal gains» was, in practice, its house style. The same method has since travelled further than most sporting careers ever do. Alongside Mayor Andy Burnham, Boardman designed the Bee Network as Greater Manchester’s first Cycling and Walking Commissioner: an 1,800-mile, £1.5 billion plan to rewire how a city region moves. From 2022 he has led Active Travel England, the national executive agency responsible for the standard of walking and cycling infrastructure across the country. He chairs Sport England in parallel. What makes him useful in a senior boardroom is the translation. Most speakers have built one high-performing team, in one context. Boardman has done it three times: inside an elite sporting federation, inside a consumer bike business he co-founded, and inside a government agency running a £2 billion programme. The common thread is stamina: how you keep a team intact and productive long enough to deliver something the surrounding system quietly prefers not to change. Key speaking topics High-performance team building Innovation culture in complex institutions Change leadership and organisational resistance Marginal gains and operational excellence Leading large-scale public delivery Personal reinvention and career translation Ideal for CEOs and senior leaders responsible for major transformation programmes Public sector, transport, and infrastructure leaders delivering long-duration projects Innovation, strategy, and transformation directors inside risk-averse institutions Audience outcomes A sharper view of what it takes to build a team capable of sustained high performance, drawn from inside British Cycling’s Olympic programme. A working understanding of why innovation usually fails inside institutions, with examples from both elite sport and UK public policy. Specific examples of moving large organisations from strategy to delivery, drawn from the Bee Network and Active Travel England. A direct, practical account of managing one’s own career through repeated reinvention.

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Chris Hoy

The hardest part of running a high-pressure organisation is not the result itself. It is keeping a team composed and disciplined when the stakes keep rising and the conditions keep changing. Leaders need to see, in concrete terms, how sustained performance is actually built, and how people hold their nerve when circumstances turn against them.

Why organisations work with Chris Hoy He won six Olympic golds across four Games, a career that required rebuilding for a new event (the kilo was removed after Athens) and winning three golds in a single Olympics. Audiences get a first-person account of sustained performance at the very top, not a theory of it. His perspective on adversity carries unusual weight. Since his stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis in October 2024, he has spoken publicly about living and working through it, and his openness triggered a near eight-fold spike in NHS searches for prostate cancer symptoms. He is a Laureus World Sports Academy member and BBC Sports Personality of the Year, credentials that put him among the small group of athletes peer-recognised for how they competed, not only what they won. He has reinvented himself commercially, as a Le Mans motorsport driver, children’s author of the Flying Fergus series with Joanna Nadin, and memoirist with All That Matters. That gives the talk a second life beyond the medal count. Biography highlights Six-time Olympic gold medallist and one-time Olympic silver medallist across Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and London. Three gold medals at Beijing 2008, the first British male to do so at a single Games since 1908. 11-time UCI Track Cycling World Champion. Team GB flag bearer at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony; BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2008. Knight Bachelor (2009) for services to sport; Laureus World Sports Academy member (2017). Author of All That Matters (Hodder and Stoughton, 2024) and the Flying Fergus children’s series with Joanna Nadin; the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow is named in his honour. Biography The velodrome in Beijing in August 2008 produced one of the defining British sporting runs of the modern era: three gold medals in the Keirin, Sprint, and Team Sprint, the first time a British man had taken three at a single Olympics since Henry Taylor in 1908. Four years later at London 2012, a sixth gold in the Keirin made him, at that moment, Britain’s most decorated Olympian. Behind the medal count is a career that required genuine reinvention. The kilometre time trial, the event in which Hoy won his first individual Olympic gold in Athens, was dropped from the programme after 2004. He retrained for the Keirin and Sprint, the events he would dominate in Beijing. Eleven world titles, a knighthood in 2009, and membership of the Laureus World Sports Academy in 2017 followed the same pattern: technical preparation, deliberate pressure-testing, and the discipline to keep the standards consistent across cycles. Retirement in 2013 became a series of second acts. He raced at the Le Mans 24 Hours and won the European Le Mans Series LMP3 title in 2015. He wrote ten books in the Flying Fergus children’s series with Joanna Nadin. In October 2024 he disclosed a stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis and published All That Matters with Hodder and Stoughton, a memoir about the diagnosis and the family around it. The disclosure was followed by a near eight-fold jump in NHS searches for prostate cancer symptoms. For senior audiences, what Hoy offers is the lived version of something most performance literature only describes: how you build, hold, and eventually renegotiate an identity around sustained excellence when the conditions change beneath you. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance at elite level Preparation and composure under pressure Resilience and adversity Team performance and role clarity Reinvention across careers Leadership through personal and organisational uncertainty Ideal for Executive teams and boards setting long-horizon performance standards. Sales kick-offs and leadership conferences framed around sustained execution under pressure. High-performance teams benchmarking preparation, recovery, and coordination. Organisations working on resilience, wellbeing, and leading through uncertainty. Audience outcomes A first-person view of how three gold medals at a single Games were actually prepared for, not the sanitised version. A sharper sense of what it takes to reinvent a career when the rules change mid-cycle, from an Olympic-event restructure to a terminal diagnosis. Specific reference points, Athens, Beijing, London, Le Mans, the cancer disclosure, that audiences can use as shared shorthand for composure and preparation. A more honest framing of resilience than most corporate decks allow, from someone speaking with direct personal authority.

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Christophe Fox

Big internal gatherings (sales kickoffs, all-hands, client events, anniversaries) carry real cost and a real ask: the audience must leave more engaged with the company, the strategy and each other than when they arrived. Too many of these events default to a series of talking-head sessions that audiences forget within a week. The harder problem is designing a moment in the room that is genuinely memorable and still reinforces the message leadership wants to land.

Why organisations work with Christophe Fox Headline entertainment that doubles as a content vehicle. The mentalism set is built for a corporate room, with company branding, brief framing and a takeaway message that ties back to the event theme. Emcee craft for high-stakes internal events. Fox holds the room across a multi-session agenda, manages energy between speakers and reduces the load on internal hosts at sales kickoffs, anniversaries and client gatherings. A motivational keynote anchored in a personal arc. “Performing Under Pressure” uses Fox’s stage-fright-to-stage transformation as the spine, paired with live demonstrations rather than slides. A reception product, not just a stage product. Mix-and-mingle mentalism gives organisations a way to make networking sessions and hospitality moments deliberately memorable rather than incidental. A client list that signals corporate-grade reliability. Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon have all booked Fox, alongside named work for PBS and the Jordan Royal Family. Biography highlights Corporate clients include Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon. Television appearances on CBS, ABC, Fox and MSNBC, plus a TEDx appearance. Featured in Modern Luxury Magazine and Yahoo News. Social audience of more than one million followers and over 100 million views of his work. Performs in English and French. Named client testimonial from Princess Ghida Talal of the Jordanian Royal Family. Biography Most corporate events are built around content the audience will forget. The harder design problem is the moment in the room that people retell on Monday morning, and that still carries the message leadership wanted to land. Christophe Fox builds that moment as a product. Fox is a corporate mentalist and emcee who works almost exclusively in the Fortune-100 event circuit. His headline set uses mind reading, suggestion and audience participation to put the audience inside the demonstration rather than in front of it. The same craft scales down to mix-and-mingle receptions and up to multi-session emcee work across sales kickoffs, anniversaries, product launches and client appreciation events. His keynote, “Performing Under Pressure,” runs a different lane. The content draws on his own transition from paralysing stage fright to full-time performer for clients including Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon. Mentalism demonstrations carry the message rather than slide decks, which is why the talk lands with audiences that have sat through a long agenda of conventional speakers. The body of public work sits on television (CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC), a TEDx appearance, features in Modern Luxury Magazine and Yahoo News, and a social audience above one million followers with 100 million plus views. For a senior buyer, the relevant signal is reliability at scale: a performer who can hold the room at a Fortune-100 sales kickoff, brand the set to the event, and leave the audience with a shared moment that reinforces, rather than competes with, the leadership message. Key speaking topics Corporate mentalism and interactive entertainment Event emcee and hosting Mix-and-mingle reception performance Performing under pressure Mindset and overcoming stage fright Customer experience as a designed moment Audience engagement at large internal events Ideal for Heads of internal communications and event leads planning sales kickoffs, all-hands, anniversaries and client appreciation events. Chief marketing officers and brand teams designing customer events, product launches and hospitality experiences. Conference organisers booking an emcee who can hold a multi-session agenda and absorb load from internal hosts. Audience outcomes A shared, retold moment from the event that ties back to the message leadership wanted to land. Higher energy and attention through the second half of the agenda when audiences typically fade. A reception or networking session that feels deliberate and branded, not incidental. For keynote bookings: a personal narrative about composure and stage fright that audiences relate to without it feeling like a lecture.

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Clarence Seedorf

High performance usually has a context. Move the team into a new market or operating culture, and most of what made them good quietly stops working. Leaders who hold excellence steady through that kind of change know what travels and what has to be rebuilt from scratch.

Why organisations work with Clarence Seedorf The only footballer to have won the UEFA Champions League with three different clubs (Ajax, Real Madrid, and AC Milan twice), meaning he has had to make elite performance work inside three very different institutional cultures. Senior leadership experience on both sides of the performance equation: former head coach of AC Milan, with subsequent head-coaching roles at Shenzhen FC, Deportivo La Coruña and the Cameroon national team. Commercial and institutional credibility beyond the pitch: Bocconi-educated in economics and management, builder of a business portfolio including On International and SK Sports Holding in Dubai (co-founded with Khabib Nurmagomedov), and Advisor to the UEFA President for Social Affairs. Cross-cultural bandwidth that is hard to match: played, led or coached on four continents, and works fluently in six languages (Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Sranan Tongo). A substantive public record on inclusion and institutional impact as UEFA Global Ambassador for Diversity and Change, trustee of the UEFA Foundation for Children, founder of the Champions for Children Foundation and the Black Impact Foundation, and a Nelson Mandela Foundation Legacy Champion. Biography highlights Only player in football history to win the UEFA Champions League with three different clubs: Ajax (1995), Real Madrid (1998), AC Milan (2003 and 2007). Domestic league winner in the Netherlands, Spain and Italy; UEFA Club Midfielder of the Year 2006-07; included in the FIFA 100 list of greatest living players selected by Pelé. Former head coach of AC Milan, with additional head-coaching roles at Shenzhen FC, Deportivo La Coruña and the Cameroon national team. Studied economics and management at Bocconi University in Milan; speaks six languages (Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Sranan Tongo). UEFA Global Ambassador for Diversity and Change, Advisor to the UEFA President for Social Affairs, trustee of the UEFA Foundation for Children, and a Nelson Mandela Foundation Legacy Champion. Founder of the Champions for Children Foundation (2004) and the Black Impact Foundation; FOX Sports studio analyst for the FIFA World Cup 2026 and lead soccer analyst for Amazon Prime in the UK and Italy. Biography Ajax beat AC Milan in the 1995 Champions League final. Clarence Seedorf, then 19, was in the Ajax midfield. Over the next twelve years, he lifted the trophy three more times, with Real Madrid in 1998 and AC Milan itself in 2003 and 2007. A four-time winner with three different clubs, a record no other footballer has matched. The record matters to organisations because of what it implies about sustained performance at the top. Ajax under Louis van Gaal, Real Madrid through its Galáctico years, and Milan under Carlo Ancelotti were three very different operating environments. Different tactical systems, different languages, different dressing-room cultures, different definitions of how an elite team should behave. Staying at the top of each, across more than a decade, required a specific discipline around what transfers between contexts and what has to be rebuilt from scratch. After retiring, Seedorf moved to the other side of the performance equation as head coach of AC Milan. He subsequently coached at Shenzhen FC, Deportivo La Coruña and the Cameroon national team, extending his professional experience across three more countries. He had already studied economics and management at Bocconi University in Milan during his playing years, which earned him the dressing-room nickname “Il Professore”. He now runs a commercial portfolio that includes the sport management firm On International, the Fingers restaurant group, and SK Sports Holding in Dubai, co-founded with UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov. His public role extends into inclusion and institutional impact. He serves as UEFA Global Ambassador for Diversity and Change, Advisor to the UEFA President for Social Affairs, and trustee of the UEFA Foundation for Children. He founded the Champions for Children Foundation in 2004 and the Black Impact Foundation, and is a Nelson Mandela Foundation Legacy Champion chosen to carry Mandela’s message worldwide. Alongside the boardrooms, he has spoken at Oxford, Harvard and the Council of Europe, and in 2026 returns to FOX Sports as a studio analyst for the FIFA World Cup. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture in elite environments Sustained performance across changing organisations and cultures Leadership at the top of global, high-pressure institutions The transition from elite performer to senior leader Cross-cultural leadership across languages and geographies Diversity, inclusion and institutional legacy Ideal for Senior leadership teams working through major strategic or cultural transitions CHROs, talent directors and heads of L&D designing leadership development or high-performance culture programmes Sales organisations and performance-driven functions looking to push established teams to a new level Global and multinational organisations operating across languages and geographies Audience outcomes A sharper view of what actually transfers when a team or organisation moves into a new culture or a new operating structure A vocabulary for talking about elite performance as a repeatable discipline that organisations can teach Specific examples from dressing rooms at Ajax, Real Madrid and AC Milan of how elite teams respond to pressure and setback Renewed confidence that sustained excellence can be built and rebuilt, team after team

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Clive Tyldesley

Broadcaster at ITV, TalkSport, CBS, Amazon Prime and Rangers TV

About Clive Tyldesley Clive Tyldesley is a television sports broadcaster. He was ITV’s senior football commentator from 1998 until 2020. In that role, he has led the ITV commentary team at four World Cups and four European Championships, and been lead commentator on 17 UEFA Champions League finals and a commentator on nine FA Cup finals for ITV. He won the prestigious Royal Television Society Sports Commentator of the Year in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2005, and was voted the Sony Radio Awards’ Sports Broadcaster of the Year in 1983. He currently serves as a commentator for ITV Sport, Amazon Prime, TalkSPORT, CBS/Paramount Plus in USA and Rangers Football Club on their in-house Rangers TV service. In 2021 his first book was published by Headline: the semi-autobiographical ‘Not for me, Clive’. Following requests from his social media followers Clive has also made prints of his famous commentary charts available to purchase online. Tyldesley was born in Radcliffe, Lancashire, and was educated at Bury Grammar School, Kirkham Grammar School and the University of Nottingham. He obtained an honours degree in Industrial Economics, but always wanted to pursue a career in sports commentating. In June 1975, he began his broadcast career straight from university with Radio Trent in Nottingham, where he became their regular Nottingham Forest reporter. In April 1977, he joined Radio City (Liverpool) and remained there for the next 12 years. After succeeding Elton Welsby as City’s sports editor, he covered the successes of Everton and Liverpool through the late 1970s and 1980s. Tyldesley was on-air at the scene of the Heysel disaster in 1985, but did not attend Liverpool’s tragic FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough in 1989. He was heavily involved in City’s coverage of the aftermath of the disaster.

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Cole Brauer

Senior leaders are being asked to hold their nerve through decisions that cannot be reversed, with information that is always incomplete and a team that is watching how they behave under strain. The gap between teams that perform under sustained pressure and teams that fracture is rarely about talent or strategy. It is about the quality of judgement at the point where fatigue, fear, and consequence meet.

Why organisations work with Cole Brauer She has a first-person account of what it takes to run a high-stakes operation alone for 130 days, with no option to stop, and can translate that into language a board or executive team can actually use. She pairs the solo story with hard professional credibility: 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, first all-female team to win the Bermuda One-Two, and a current seat on Team Malizia’s IMOCA 60 programme alongside Boris Herrmann. She speaks credibly about risk management and preparation, not as abstractions, but as the specific trade-offs that kept a 40-foot racing boat sailing through the Southern Ocean for four months. She reaches audiences outside the usual sailing world; her real-time documentation of the voyage built a following of nearly 400,000 people and changed who pays attention to offshore racing. She is a rare example of a young operator, not a retired one, describing lessons that are still being tested at elite level. Biography highlights First American woman to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation, finishing second in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge in March 2024. 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (US Sailing). Co-skipper, Team Malizia, competing on the IMOCA 60 in The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Skipper of Class40 First Light; winner of the 2023 Bermuda One-Two with Cat Chimney, the first all-female team to take the race. Set a new reference time for a solo circumnavigation on a 40-foot boat, around seven days inside the previous mark. Featured across NBC News, The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and Robb Report for the Global Solo Challenge voyage. Biography Most people who survive 130 days alone at sea stop doing it afterwards. Cole Brauer came off the water in March 2024 as the first American woman to race solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world, and immediately began preparing for the next campaign. That sequence tells you most of what matters about how she works. The Global Solo Challenge took her 30,000 miles through the three Great Capes aboard First Light, a 40-foot Class40. She finished second overall out of 16 starters from 10 countries, set a new reference time for the class, and did it while injuring her ribs mid-race and managing a bout of dehydration that required her to insert her own IV under instruction from a remote medical team. US Sailing named her 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year the following February. The racing record is not a single-event story. In 2023 she and co-skipper Cat Chimney won the Bermuda One-Two outright, the first all-female team to do so, winning both legs by more than 12 hours. In 2025 she joined Team Malizia as co-skipper on the IMOCA 60 alongside Boris Herrmann and Will Harris, racing The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Her longer target is the 2028 Vendee Globe. What a business audience gets from her is the operational texture of decision-making when there is no one to escalate to. She is specific about the preparation, the trade-offs she rejected, the moments she got it wrong, and how she rebuilt composure in the next watch. The voyage was also a communications exercise: near-daily video from the boat built an audience of nearly 400,000 and changed who follows offshore racing. That combination of elite performance and direct, unvarnished narration is what makes her useful to leadership teams trying to understand what real endurance looks like from the inside. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible consequences Resilience and endurance in extreme environments Risk management and preparation High-performance offshore teams Leading yourself when no one is watching Narrative, visibility, and building a following around hard work Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement under pressure Sales kickoffs and company-wide events where the goal is genuine inspiration backed by a specific story Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want practitioner-level detail rather than metaphor Audience outcomes A vivid, concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry back into their own decisions A different model of resilience, rooted in routine, self-honesty, and recovery rather than willpower A reset on what courage looks like at working level, not a motivational abstraction

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Daniel Chappell

Most service industries are full of skilled practitioners trapped inside fragile small businesses. They can deliver the work, but the economics of premises, admin, and client acquisition quietly erode the margin. The question for any founder entering a category like this is whether a better operating model can release the talent that is already there.

Why organisations work with Daniel Chappell A first-hand account of raising significant early-stage capital with no trading history, which is the situation most internal innovation teams quietly find themselves in when pitching new ventures to their own boards. A working operator’s view of UNTIL, a business that pairs physical premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone with a digital membership model. Useful for any leadership team thinking about hybrid product-and-place propositions. An unusually honest voice on neurodiversity from a founder who runs a company while managing dyslexia and dyspraxia, rather than a clinical or HR-led perspective. A high-performance sports background that translates the language of marginal gains, recovery, and team standards into the running of a commercial business, without leaning on tired sporting metaphor. Biography highlights Co-founder of UNTIL, a members business for freelance health, wellness and medical practitioners operating from three central London sites. UNTIL counts Steven Bartlett among its investors and co-founders, following a high-profile early funding round. MSc in Strength and Conditioning, Cardiff Metropolitan University. BSc in Sports and Exercise Science, St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Over a decade working inside high-performance sporting environments before launching his own ventures. Speaks publicly about dyslexia and dyspraxia, and treats neurodiversity as part of his founder identity, not a sidebar. Biography Service industries built on individual practitioners tend to share the same problem. The talent is excellent and the business model is fragile. UNTIL, the London business Daniel Chappell co-founded, was built around that gap: a members club and workspace that lets freelance health, wellness and medical professionals operate from premium premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone without carrying the cost of their own. The route in matters. More than a decade inside high-performance sport gave Daniel an instinct for how elite practitioners work, what they need around them, and where their time is wasted. An MSc in Strength and Conditioning from Cardiff Metropolitan University and a BSc in Sports and Exercise Science from St Mary’s University, Twickenham sit behind that view. The transition from working with athletes to building a company for the people who work with athletes is the spine of the story. UNTIL has since attracted Steven Bartlett as an investor and co-founder, and has built a community of more than 300 practitioners across more than 40 disciplines. For a buyer, the value of the talk is not the milestone list. It is what the talk reveals about persuading investors with no trading history, building a founding team that can scale, and running a young company in public. Daniel is also open about managing dyslexia and dyspraxia as a founder, and speaks to neurodiversity from the inside of a working business. That perspective is useful in any leadership conversation about how organisations actually get the best out of people whose minds are wired differently from the average hire. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding-team dynamics Early-stage fundraising and investor relationships Building a business in the health and wellness sector High performance applied to commercial environments Neurodiversity in leadership and at work Team culture in young companies Resilience and personal performance for founders Ideal for Leadership offsites for scale-ups and founder-led businesses Corporate innovation, ventures and intrapreneurship teams HR and people leaders building practical neurodiversity programmes Wellbeing, benefits and employee-experience conferences Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what early-stage investors actually respond to when there is no trading history to point at. A practical framing of how a young founding team divides work, makes decisions, and survives the first eighteen months. A working model for treating neurodiversity as a commercial asset inside a team, with examples from a live business. Language for translating high-performance habits into a corporate or scale-up context without resorting to sports cliché.

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Danny Webber

Performance under pressure is rarely the real problem. The harder question is what people do when the role they trained for ends, the team around them changes, and they have to rebuild credibility in a new arena. Most organisations underestimate how brutal that transition is, and how much of leadership is the willingness to start again.

Why organisations work with Danny Webber He played professionally across four divisions, from Manchester United’s youth setup through Premier League football with Sheffield United to non-league title-winning sides at Salford City. He has lived the full spectrum of elite team environments, not one rarefied tier of it. He has reinvented himself twice since retiring as a player: as a pundit and co-commentator working regularly across BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV and talkSPORT, and as founder and CEO of his own sports agency, Autograph Sports Management. Through Autograph he mentors young athletes on building professional and personal brands, which gives him a current operator’s view of talent development, not retired-player nostalgia. His broadcast career means he can hold a room, run a Q and A, and host a panel without external moderation, which materially expands how he can be used at an event. Biography highlights Former professional footballer for Manchester United, Watford, Sheffield United, Portsmouth, Leeds United (loan), Accrington Stanley and Salford City. Helped Sheffield United win promotion to the Premier League in the 2005-06 season. England Under-20 international. Northern Premier League Division One North champion (2014-15) and Premier Division play-off winner (2016) with Salford City. Pundit and co-commentator for BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV Sport, talkSPORT and BBC 5 Live. Founder and CEO of Autograph Sports Management, a sports and commercial agency representing players and building athlete brands. Biography A teenager scoring 16 goals in 11 youth appearances for Manchester United is normally on a single track. Webber turned down a three-year contract at Old Trafford at the end of the 2002-03 season to chase senior football elsewhere. The decision shaped everything that followed: a deliberate move toward first-team minutes over reputation. What came next was a Premier League career built around adaptability. Watford, where he scored 21 goals across 72 games. Sheffield United, where his goals contributed to promotion to the Premier League in 2005-06. Portsmouth, Leeds United and Accrington Stanley followed, then a title-winning run with Salford City in the Northern Premier League. Few players cover that range of clubs and divisions inside one career. The second act has been the harder one. After retiring he built a media presence as a pundit and co-commentator across BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV and talkSPORT, and founded Autograph Sports Management, a player representation and brand-building agency. He now mentors young athletes through the same career decisions he made himself. That is the substance he brings to a corporate audience. Not the highlight reel, but the working knowledge of how elite teams hold together, what reinvention costs when the first career ends, and how to keep performing when the conditions keep changing. Key speaking topics Performance and resilience in elite team environments Career transition and reinvention after a defined first chapter Building and mentoring young talent Mindset and motivation under pressure Personal brand and reputation in public-facing careers Leadership lessons from professional sport Ideal for Sales, commercial and high-performance teams running annual conferences or kick-off events. Talent, learning and graduate development leads designing mentoring and early-career programmes. Sport, broadcast and entertainment organisations briefing on athlete welfare and career-after-career questions. Hosts of leadership or after-dinner formats wanting a sports speaker who can also moderate or interview. Audience outcomes A grounded view of what performance in elite team environments actually requires day to day. A first-hand account of career reinvention, including the periods that do not work. Practical reflections on mentoring younger talent through high-pressure decisions. A useable read on how reputation and personal brand are built in public-facing careers.

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Darren Edwards

Senior leaders are good at running plans. They are less practised at leading a team when the plan has gone, the body is broken, and the next decision has to be made in the next hour. Recovery is treated as a personal subject, but it is an organisational capability, and most leadership teams have never built it deliberately.

Why organisations work with Darren Edwards He has led injured-veteran teams across four genuine world-first or world-record expeditions, including the 1,400 km Land’s End to John O’Groats kayak and the seven-continent World Marathon Challenge in a wheelchair. The leadership content is drawn from operations, not theory. He talks about the South Pole expedition that did not finish as openly as the ones that did, which gives senior teams a rare working example of how to make a collective stop call without losing the team. His book Strength Through Adversity, an Amazon UK bestseller, sets out the adaptive mindset framework he uses with leadership teams, giving audiences a single referenceable text after a session. He founded Adaptive Expeditions, so the work is institutional rather than personal narrative, and translates into language about team capability, not individual triumph. Biography highlights Author of Strength Through Adversity, Amazon UK bestseller, published February 2023. First wheelchair user to complete the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. Led the first team to kayak 1,400 km from Land’s End to John O’Groats with injured-veteran crew. Member of the first adaptive team to cross Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest ice cap. Founder of Adaptive Expeditions. Former Army Reservist and qualified teacher. Biography A ledge gave way in North Wales in 2016. Darren Edwards fell more than 100 feet, broke his back in two places, and severed his spinal cord. He woke up paralysed from the chest down. He had been a mountaineer, an Army Reservist, and a trained teacher. None of those identities survived intact. What followed is the working material of his keynote. Inside three years he was leading a team of injured veterans on the first kayak crossing of Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats, 1,400 kilometres through some of the country’s most exposed sea. He went on to row the English Channel, cross the Vatnajokull ice cap with the first adaptive team to do it, and in 2023 became the first wheelchair user to finish the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. The expeditions are not the proof point. The proof point is what he did with them. He built Adaptive Expeditions as an organisation, wrote Strength Through Adversity in 2023, and has spent the years since refining what he calls the adaptive mindset: a working set of disciplines for leading teams through sustained uncertainty. How composure is built before it is needed. How recovery is led rather than waited out. How a team makes the call to stop. In December 2025 his Redefining Impossible team cut a 222 km sit-ski attempt on the South Pole short after a week on the ice. He talks about that decision with the same clarity as the records. For organisations under sustained pressure, that is the value. Edwards has lived the gap between the plan and what actually happens, and he can describe it in operational terms. Key speaking topics The adaptive mindset for leadership teams Leading through sustained uncertainty Team leadership across injured and mixed-ability crews Composure and decision-making under pressure Recovery as a leadership discipline Resilience after catastrophic disruption Ideal for Executive leadership teams preparing for or recovering from major disruption Senior operational leaders responsible for sustained-pressure environments Programmes for high-potential leaders building decision-making range Veteran transition, healthcare leadership, and emergency-services audiences Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about composure and recovery as leadership capabilities, not personality traits A clear example of how a senior team makes a collective stop decision without losing trust The adaptive mindset framework, drawn from his book, that audiences can take into team conversations after the session An honest account of the gap between the plan and the operation, useful for risk and contingency thinking

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David Brabham

In elite environments, the difference between first and last is usually not talent. It is the quality of decisions a team makes under load, when information is incomplete and the clock is running. Most organisations understand this in theory and rehearse it poorly in practice.

Why organisations work with David Brabham He has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright, a 24-hour team sport where one weak link across 60 people ends the race. That is a different reference point to draw on than a pure individual-sport narrative. He is the only driver in the history of the American Le Mans Series to win races and take pole positions in all four competitive classes, a credential that signals adaptability across very different cars, teams, and race formats. He carries the Brabham name through three operating contexts: driver for the family F1 team, overall Le Mans winner for Peugeot, and founder of Brabham Automotive. Audiences get sport, corporate, and entrepreneurial perspectives from one speaker. He stayed in the car at Simtek in 1994 after the death of his team mate Roland Ratzenberger at Imola. When he speaks about composure under pressure, the source material is direct. He is comfortable in after-dinner and hosted formats as well as keynotes, which gives event teams flexibility on how to place him in a programme. Biography highlights Overall winner, 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Peugeot (908 HDi FAP), co-driving with Alexander Wurz and Marc Gene. Le Mans GT1 class winner in 2007 and 2008 with Aston Martin Racing (DBR9). American Le Mans Series LMP champion, 2009 and 2010, with Patron Highcroft Racing and Acura. Formula One driver with Brabham (1990) and Simtek (1994); team mate to Roland Ratzenberger. Japanese GT Championship winner, 1996. Bathurst 1000 winner, 1997. Founder of Brabham Automotive and the BT62 track car, launched in London in 2018. Member of the British Racing Drivers’ Club. Patron of the UK cancer charity Hope for Tomorrow. Biography Le Mans is a 24-hour race with roughly 60 people behind every car and a failure rate that runs close to half the grid. Winning it outright once is a career. David Brabham did it in 2009, with Peugeot, having already taken the GT1 class twice in the two previous years with Aston Martin. The pattern underneath those results is the story he brings to corporate audiences. He is the only driver in the history of the American Le Mans Series to have won races and taken poles in all four classes, from prototype to production GT. Back-to-back ALMS titles in 2009 and 2010 with Patron Highcroft and Acura came in a series where small execution advantages decide seasons. Consistency at that level is a team capability, not a personal one, and he talks about it that way. The wider career sharpens the material. He drove in Formula One for his family team in 1990 and for Simtek in 1994, where he lost team mate Roland Ratzenberger at Imola and continued to race the rest of the season. Later he built Brabham Automotive around the BT62 and launched it publicly in London in 2018, carrying the family brand into its own manufacturing business. For senior audiences the value is practical. He can describe, from the cockpit and the pit wall, how elite teams handle risk, prepare for conditions they cannot control, and recover when something goes wrong mid-race. The references are specific, named, and drawn from the highest level of professional motorsport. Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork Decision-making under pressure Leadership in competitive environments Resilience and focus after setbacks Brand building and heritage Preparation and execution at elite level Ideal for Senior leadership teams looking at how elite performance environments coordinate under pressure Sales and commercial leadership meetings focused on consistency of execution Automotive, engineering, and manufacturing organisations with technical workforces Annual conferences and after-dinner programmes where event teams want a credible non-business voice in the room Audience outcomes A clear picture of how a 60-person team wins a 24-hour race, and which of those mechanics transfer to a corporate setting Specific examples of how elite drivers prepare for conditions they cannot control on the day A direct account of composure and continuity after a team loss, from someone who lived it in 1994 A different vocabulary for talking about risk, handover, and recovery inside a business