Leadership di squadra speakers

Why organisations work with Jose Manuel Calderon Fourteen NBA seasons across seven franchises, each requiring a different role, system, and relationship with coaching staff. Few speakers can describe reinvention at that frequency from inside the experience. Captained the Spain national team through its most decorated era, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. Holds the NBA single-season free throw record at 98.05 percent. The story behind that statistic is a precise account of preparation, repetition, and composure that translates directly to high-stakes performance. Now operates inside the business of sport as Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to technology firm Sngular, and co-founder of sport technology venture OWQLO. The post-playing view is operational, not nostalgic. Biography highlights 14 NBA seasons with Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Atlanta Hawks, and Cleveland Cavaliers. NBA single-season free throw record holder at 98.05 percent (2008-09, Toronto Raptors). 2006 FIBA World Cup champion and 2011 EuroBasket champion with Spain. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008, silver in 2012, bronze in 2016. Special Assistant to the Executive Director at the National Basketball Players Association from 2019. Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to Sngular, co-founder of OWQLO, UNICEF Ambassador. Biography Fourteen seasons in the NBA is not a tenure. It is seven different working environments, seven coaching philosophies, and a constant negotiation of role. Across Toronto, Detroit, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the work was the same every season: arrive, read the room, and become useful to a group of people who did not pick you. That career line is the substance behind Jose Manuel Calderon’s speaking. He captained the Spain national team through the most decorated period in its history, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. The Spanish “golden generation” is studied because it sustained excellence across more than a decade, with changing coaches, ageing key players, and rising rivals. Calderon was a central figure in how that group held together. The detail that travels well into corporate rooms is his free throw record. In 2008-09 he made 151 of 154 attempts, a 98.05 percent season that still stands as the NBA’s highest. The talk that emerges from it is about repeatable performance, not natural talent, and it lands cleanly with audiences who are measured on consistency rather than peaks. After retiring, Calderon moved directly into the business of sport. He served as Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the NBA Players Association from 2019, advises the Cleveland Cavaliers, sits on the advisory board of Spanish technology firm Sngular, and co-founded sport technology venture OWQLO. He is also a UNICEF Ambassador. The result is a speaker who can speak to senior teams in the language they use, drawing on a playing career that is genuinely rare at the level it reached. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Team performance across changing line-ups High-stakes decision-making Captaincy and standards Inclusion and identity in elite sport Reinvention across cultures and systems The business of professional sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams under prolonged performance pressure CHROs and people leaders building cohesion across changing structures Sales and commercial leaders who manage on consistency rather than peaks Board and executive offsites looking for a credible outside voice on team dynamics Audience outcomes A practical account of how elite teams hold standards through line-up change, coaching turnover, and external scrutiny. A clear picture of what daily preparation looks like at the level that produces records, not anecdotes about motivation. A working language for captaincy, the responsibility of senior players inside a team, and how that maps to senior leaders inside an organisation. A perspective on inclusion built from a long career across multiple national, cultural, and locker-room contexts.

Why organisations work with Juan Pablo Montoya One of three drivers in history to win at the top tier of Formula 1, IndyCar, and the NASCAR Cup Series, giving him a rare lens on how elite teams differ across cultures and disciplines. Operated inside the highest-stakes performance environments in sport: Williams and McLaren in Formula 1, Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar, Team Penske in IndyCar and IMSA. Audiences hear about team execution from inside those organisations, not as commentary. A first-hand account of decision-making at 300 km/h, where the cost of a mistake is immediate, which translates directly for leaders managing high-pressure commercial calls. Bilingual (English and Spanish) and Latin American, which makes him relevant for global organisations with significant Hispanic markets or workforces. Biography highlights 1999 CART Series Champion with Chip Ganassi Racing, the youngest CART champion at the time at age 24. Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, in 2000 and 2015. Won the 2000 race on his first attempt. Formula 1 career across Williams and McLaren: 7 wins, 30 podiums, 13 pole positions, and third in the 2002 and 2003 World Drivers’ Championships. Three-time winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona. 2019 IMSA SportsCar Championship with Team Penske. One of only three drivers to win races in Formula 1, IndyCar, and the NASCAR Cup Series. Biography The seat of a Formula 1 car is one of the most unforgiving leadership environments in sport. Decisions arrive at hundreds of kilometres per hour, the team behind the driver runs into the hundreds, and the margin between winning and crashing is measured in tenths. Juan Pablo Montoya spent two decades inside that environment, at the top of every major motorsport discipline. He won the CART championship in 1999 as a rookie with Chip Ganassi Racing, then won the Indianapolis 500 the following year on his first attempt. Formula 1 followed: seven Grand Prix wins and 30 podiums across Williams and McLaren, including a Monaco win in 2003 and back-to-back third-place finishes in the World Drivers’ Championship in 2002 and 2003. He then crossed disciplines that almost nobody else has crossed at the top tier. Wins in the NASCAR Cup Series. A second Indianapolis 500 in 2015 with Team Penske. Three victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 2019 IMSA SportsCar Championship. Only two other drivers in history have won at the top of Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR. That cross-discipline record is what gives his keynote substance. He has worked inside Williams, McLaren, Ganassi, and Penske, four of the most demanding performance organisations in sport, and can speak directly to how they differ in how they prepare drivers, manage teams, and recover from failure. Key speaking topics High-performance team execution Composure and decision-making under pressure Cross-cultural team leadership in elite sport Resilience and reinvention across careers Motorsport, Formula 1, and IndyCar Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes Sales kick-offs and high-performance commercial team events Organisations with a Latin American footprint or Hispanic audience Automotive, technology, and sponsorship-aligned brand events Audience outcomes A first-hand view of how Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR teams prepare for and recover from high-stakes moments. A clearer sense of what composure looks like in practice when decisions cannot be deferred. Specific examples of how trust between a driver and their team is built, tested, and rebuilt. Cross-cultural perspective on what separates elite teams in different national sporting cultures.

Why organisations work with Julien Simon-Chautemps He has run live, multi-million-pound decisions across 265 Grands Prix, where the cost of a wrong call is measured in tenths of a second and broadcast to a global audience. Few speakers operate from that altitude of pressure. He explains the F1 pit wall as a working management system: how information flows from car to engineer to strategist to driver, what gets filtered, and how the team avoids the two failure modes of analysis paralysis and over-reaction. He sat next to one of the most demanding drivers in modern F1 history, Kimi Raikkonen, and can describe in concrete terms how to communicate with high-performers who do not want managing, only useful input. He is still active in the sport as a Canal+ and F1 TV technical analyst, which keeps the case material current rather than nostalgic. The session does not rely on the 2007 Toyota years to make its point. He brings the engineer’s view, not the driver’s. Audiences get the side of the cockpit where the strategy, the data, and the team coordination actually happen. Biography highlights 14 seasons as a Formula 1 race engineer across Toyota, Lotus/Caterham, Renault/Lotus Renault, and Sauber/Alfa Romeo 265 Grands Prix attended trackside between 2007 and 2022 Race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen at Alfa Romeo through his final F1 seasons; previously worked with him at Lotus Engineered drivers including Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado, Vitaly Petrov, Jolyon Palmer, and Marcus Ericsson Founder of JSC7 Engineering Ltd (2022), providing motorsport consultancy, race strategy, and data analysis services Technical analyst for Canal+ and on-air pundit for F1 TV; aerospace engineering graduate of IPSA Paris (2002) Biography The pit wall in Formula 1 is one of the most concentrated decision environments in any industry. Tyre choices, fuel loads, safety-car responses, and pit-stop calls all happen on a clock that does not negotiate. Julien Simon-Chautemps spent fourteen seasons running that environment as a race engineer, including the final F1 chapter of Kimi Raikkonen’s career at Alfa Romeo. His route into the cockpit conversation was technical, not glamorous. He trained as an aerospace and aeronautical engineer at IPSA in Paris, then ran junior single-seater programmes at Prema Powerteam and Trident before stepping onto the F1 grid with Toyota in 2007. By the time he retired from trackside duties in 2022, he had attended 265 Grands Prix across Toyota, Lotus, Caterham, Renault, Sauber, and Alfa Romeo. The drivers he worked with were not interchangeable personalities. Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Vitaly Petrov, Pastor Maldonado, Jolyon Palmer, Marcus Ericsson, and Raikkonen each demanded a different style of communication. That range is what gives his sessions their texture: he is talking about how to lead and inform high-performers who will not tolerate noise, not how to motivate average teams. Today he runs JSC7 Engineering Ltd, a motorsport and automotive consultancy he founded in 2022, and contributes technical analysis to Canal+ and F1 TV. The keynote work draws on the same source material the consultancy does. Senior teams hear how an F1 garage actually coordinates, where the failure points sit, and what leaders in regulated, high-stakes industries can take from a sport built around the discipline of tenths. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team coordination Real-time communication between technical and executive functions Leadership of elite individual performers Operating rhythms in high-stakes, regulated environments Data, instinct, and the limits of each in live decisions Resilience and recovery in competitive cycles Ideal for COOs, transformation leads, and operational executives running time-critical functions Senior leadership teams in regulated or safety-critical industries (aviation, energy, financial markets, healthcare) Engineering and technology leaders building decision systems around live data Sales, trading, and front-line teams whose performance depends on second-by-second judgement Audience outcomes A working picture of how an F1 team turns live data into a single coordinated decision, with named examples from the pit wall Sharper language for the difference between a fast decision and a rushed one A feel for how high-performers actually want to be communicated with under pressure, drawn from years alongside Raikkonen and Grosjean Specific habits leaders can install before high-pressure moments rather than improvise during them A closer view of the sport itself: what the audience hears on the radio is the surface of a much larger system

Why organisations work with Justin Hughes His BETTUR (Better Understanding of Reality) model gives teams a structured, named framework for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity and pressure – one tested in military aviation and refined across corporate and public sector organisations on multiple continents. The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016) advances a specific argument – that consistent high performance is a systems problem, built around people, capability, and delivery – giving his advisory work an intellectual foundation that separates it from standard high-performance keynote content. His advisory work spans genuinely diverse high-stakes environments: BP’s global safety operations programme, Mercedes Formula 1, the United Nations, and Microsoft – meaning the principles he applies have been stress-tested well beyond the military analogy. As current CEO of a biotech startup operating under real commercial pressure, he holds practitioner credibility that most speakers with a military or aviation background left behind long ago. His diagnostic starting point – that cognitive and motivational biases distort individual and team judgement under pressure in predictable, addressable ways – gives organisations a more honest and specific entry point than generic resilience or leadership development typically provides. Biography highlights Former RAF fighter pilot; served as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows, flying more than 250 displays across three international tours Founder of Mission Excellence, an organisational performance consultancy; strategic adviser to Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 Regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme Author of The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016), a performance framework built around people, capability, and delivery; endorsed by Paddy Lowe, Executive Director of Mercedes Grand Prix Profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Director Magazine, and the London Evening Standard; interviewed on BBC World Talking Business, BBC Breakfast, and GB News MBA with Distinction, London Business School; MSt with Distinction in International Relations, University of Cambridge Biography The Business of Excellence, published by Bloomsbury in 2016, makes a specific claim: consistent high performance is not a talent question. It is a question of systems, behaviours, and the decision-making habits that hold up when conditions deteriorate. Justin Hughes wrote that book after twelve years as an RAF fighter pilot and three as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows. Since leaving the RAF, Hughes has operated in the environments his book describes. As founder of Mission Excellence, he has advised Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 on organisational effectiveness. He is also a regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme – a safety-critical context where the gap between intended and actual decision-making carries serious consequences. The practical instrument of that advisory work is the BETTUR model – an acronym for Better Understanding of Reality. It gives organisations a structured approach to planning, executing, and adapting under ambiguity and pressure. The model addresses a specific failure mode: the cognitive and motivational biases that cause individual and team judgement to degrade when information is incomplete and stakes are high. Hughes holds an MBA with Distinction from London Business School and an MSt with Distinction in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. As CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, a biotech company developing alternatives to synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, he retains active operating responsibility alongside his advisory and speaking work. He has been profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and Director Magazine, and interviewed on BBC World Talking Business and BBC Breakfast. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Decision-making in high-stakes environments High-performance team design Organisational effectiveness and execution Risk and cognitive bias in judgement Performance culture Strategic resilience Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams building high-performance cultures in complex, high-reliability, or fast-changing organisations Operations, safety, and transformation leaders in sectors where the cost of poor judgement is high – energy, aerospace, financial services, and healthcare CHROs and L&D directors commissioning leadership development that goes beyond standard competency frameworks C-suite and board audiences addressing the gap between strategic intent and operational execution Audience outcomes A named framework – the BETTUR model – for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity, incomplete information, and time pressure A clearer diagnosis of why high-performance intentions break down under operational stress, and what structural factors – not individual failings – drive that gap Practical principles for building teams that maintain standards and accountability without relying on close supervision or ideal conditions A more rigorous understanding of how cognitive and motivational biases affect individual and team judgement, and what processes reduce their impact Directly applicable approaches to debrief discipline, decision protocols, and leadership behaviour in their own organisations

Why organisations work with Kate Richardson-Walsh She captained an international team for 13 years through a deliberate, multi-cycle rebuild that moved from missing the podium to Olympic gold. That arc is what most senior leaders are actually trying to manage. She co-authored Winning Together with Helen Richardson-Walsh, a published account of the specific behavioural and cultural decisions that produced the Rio 2016 result. Buyers get a methodology, not a highlight reel. She brings a working coach’s perspective from elite environments at HC Bloemendaal, Hampstead and Westminster, and Field Hockey Canada, so the material lands as practice rather than retrospect. Her work on inclusive leadership is grounded in lived experience as one half of the first same-sex married couple to win Olympic gold, and is delivered without ideology. Biography highlights Captain of England and Great Britain women’s hockey for 13 years, with 375 international caps and 49 international goals. Olympic gold medallist at Rio 2016, leading an undefeated Team GB to victory over the Netherlands in the final, and Olympic bronze medallist at London 2012. Co-author of Winning Together: An Olympic-Winning Approach to Building Better Teams, published by Hachette. Awarded MBE in 2015 and promoted to OBE in 2017 New Year Honours for services to hockey. Hockey analyst and commentator for BBC Sport, BBC Radio 5 Live, and BT Sport, including the 2018 Commonwealth Games, the 2018 World Cup, and the Paris 2024 Olympics. Coaching career spanning HC Bloemendaal in the Netherlands, Head Coach at Hampstead and Westminster, Assistant Coach with Field Hockey Canada, and currently Specialist Coach with the China women’s national hockey team. Biography The 2016 Rio gold was the visible moment, but the work that produced it ran for more than a decade. Great Britain’s women’s hockey team had finished outside the medals for years before Kate Richardson-Walsh and a group of coaches and players committed to a different kind of operating model. That work, not the final, is what senior leaders actually find useful. Richardson-Walsh captained England and Great Britain for 13 years and finished her career as the most-capped female player in either programme, with 375 international appearances. Across that span she played four Olympic Games, took bronze at London 2012 (most of it with a broken jaw) and gold at Rio 2016, when Team GB went undefeated and beat the Netherlands in the final. Winning Together, written with her wife and Olympic teammate Helen Richardson-Walsh and published by Hachette, sets out the specific cultural decisions behind that result: how the team handled honest feedback, how it absorbed selection pain, how it stayed coherent through long stretches of pressure. It is a working manual, which is why corporate audiences engage with it. Since retiring she has coached at HC Bloemendaal in the Netherlands, led Hampstead and Westminster women’s first XI, and joined Field Hockey Canada as Assistant Coach in 2023. She is currently a specialist coach with the China women’s national hockey team. She is also a regular hockey analyst for BBC Sport, BBC Radio 5 Live, and BT Sport, and was part of the BBC commentary team at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Key speaking topics Team culture and accountability Trust and psychological safety in teams Leadership under sustained pressure Performance through uncertainty High-performance environments Inclusive leadership, belonging, and LGBT+ inclusion Resilience and mental wellbeing Sustaining excellence across long cycles Ideal for CEOs, executive teams, and board offsites focused on culture change and long-cycle performance CHROs and people leaders building inclusive leadership practice with evidence rather than slogans Transformation and integration leads working through multi-year programmes where early results are absent Senior leadership teams in regulated, high-pressure environments where standards must hold under scrutiny Audience outcomes A clear picture of how an underperforming team rebuilt itself into an Olympic-winning culture, with the specific decisions named. Practical reference points for handling honest feedback, selection conversations, and accountability without breaking trust. A more concrete vocabulary for what inclusive leadership looks like in a high-performance setting. Renewed confidence that long programmes without visible results can still be on the right track if the cultural work is real.

Why organisations work with Katherine Melchior Ray She has made the standardise-versus-adapt decision from inside five global brands, so she can tell a leadership team which elements of a brand must stay fixed worldwide and which should flex by market. Her cultural intelligence framework, set out in Brand Global, Adapt Local (Kogan Page, 2025), gives teams a repeatable method for entering new markets instead of one-off market research that ages quickly. She has led marketing in Japan, France, Germany, and the US in three languages, so her read on a market comes from having sold to those consumers herself. She teaches this material to MBAs at UC Berkeley Haas, which means her frameworks are built to be taught and applied by a team, not performed once from a stage. Biography highlights Lecturer in international marketing and leadership at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Co-author of Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures (Kogan Page, 2025), endorsed by David Aaker, Greg Hoffman, and Jonah Berger. Former CMO of Shiseido’s luxury portfolio in Tokyo and former CMO of Babbel in Berlin. Senior roles at Nike (GM, US Women’s Footwear), Louis Vuitton (VP Marketing, Japan), Gucci (Executive Director, Japan), and Hyatt (VP, Luxury Brands). Featured on CBS 60 Minutes and CNN, and profiled in The Wall Street Journal. Keynote speaker at Cannes Lions and DMEXCO; fluent in English, French, and Japanese. Biography Louis Vuitton broke sales records in Japan with the Neverfull launch in a market where most Western brands struggle to read the customer. Katherine Melchior Ray ran that marketing. The difference was cultural intelligence: knowing which parts of a global brand to hold firm, and which to adapt for a specific market. That judgement came from an unusually broad operating career. She led Nike’s US women’s footwear business, ran global marketing for Nordstrom’s Façonnable from France, and directed Gucci in Japan before taking on Hyatt’s Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt luxury brands. She later became CMO of Shiseido’s luxury portfolio in Tokyo, then CMO of Babbel in Berlin, growing both through rapid market change. In Brand Global, Adapt Local, written with Nataly Kelly and published by Kogan Page in 2025, she turned that experience into a method. The book argues that cultural intelligence, the ability to flex across markets, now matters more than ever, because AI scales reach cheaply but cannot read culture. David Aaker, Greg Hoffman, and Jonah Berger endorsed it. She teaches the same material to MBAs at UC Berkeley Haas. Her career spans four countries and three languages, and every framework she offers has already been tested against a real market and a real profit-and-loss statement. Key speaking topics Cultural intelligence as competitive advantage Global brand building across cultures Brand localisation and market entry Marketing leadership in luxury and consumer goods High-performing global teams Culture as a source of innovation Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders scaling a brand into new international markets Global marketing and international expansion teams balancing brand consistency with local relevance Executive teams and boards at consumer-facing businesses in retail, luxury, beauty, hospitality, and tech Leaders of multicultural or multinational teams Audience outcomes A clear test for which brand elements to keep consistent worldwide and which to adapt locally Named examples of how brands such as Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Kit Kat handled the same tension A working definition of cultural intelligence and how it differs from general and emotional intelligence A view on where AI helps global marketing and where human cultural judgement still decides the outcome

Why organisations work with Kayleigh Fazan Her training population is store teams and frontline managers at PVH, ASICS, Rituals, Hunkemöller, B&Q and Skechers. TIRA’s field trainers work in store, alongside the people who serve the customer. Unscripted resolves into four behaviours a person can practise: Awareness, Connection, Confidence and Contribution. TIRA delivers the same material as Leadership Coaching Days, so a keynote can be the front end of a programme with the same teams. She argues the people case in commercial language. TIRA’s client programmes are built and tracked around conversion, average transaction value, membership acquisition and retention. She has lived the disruption her keynote addresses. Twenty years of career built from a £3.25-an-hour shop floor job, redundancy in 2020, and The International Retail Academy founded the same year. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of The International Retail Academy, a retail training and consulting firm working with Rituals, ASICS, Hunkemöller, Skechers, B&Q, Tommy Hilfiger, Gap and Crocs. Two decades in retail operations before founding TIRA, from Concession Manager at Debenhams at 19 to Area Manager and Head of Franchise across Europe and the Middle East. Hosted the closing session of the 10th Global DIY-Summit in Rome, and shared a Retail Week Live fireside in London with André Pedersen, COO of Intersport Nordics, on focusing store teams on what matters most. Also billed at the Retail Technology Show, House of Retail, and the SingularityU South Africa Summit, which ran online in 2021. Contributor to Retail Jeweller and Bizcommunity, and guest on the Shiny Happy People podcast. Co-author of Women Who Inspire, contributing the chapter “Embracing Discomfort”, and writing her first solo book. Profiled by CIO Business World in its 2025 feature “The 10 Most Iconic Women Leaders Revamping the Future”. Biography The International Retail Academy exists because retailers spend heavily on systems and thinly on the people using them. Kayleigh Fazan founded it in 2020, mid-pandemic, after twenty years running stores, areas and franchise operations across Europe and the Middle East. The method is deliberately bottom-up. TIRA’s field trainers work in store alongside store leaders, moving them from supervising tasks to coaching behaviour. Programmes are tracked in conversion, average transaction value, membership acquisition and retention. Her argument is that being hard to replace is trainable. The signature keynote, Unscripted: How to Thrive When Everything Else Gets Automated, breaks that into four behaviours a person can be coached in. The stages have been mostly retail and franchise: the closing session of the 10th Global DIY-Summit in Rome, and a Retail Week Live fireside in London on focusing store teams on what matters most. Her keynote on The Retail Revolution went out online, to the SingularityU South Africa Summit in 2021. She started at 16 on a New Look shop floor in Barrow-in-Furness, earning £3.25 an hour, and was running a Debenhams concession by 19. Redundancy in 2020 ended the international career she had built. Her speaking fees part-fund her work supporting children living in poverty, a commitment she traces to having lived in a hostel as a child. Key speaking topics Human capability in an automating workplace Frontline behaviour and customer experience Service culture and its commercial results Leadership of store and frontline teams Confidence and presence at work Employee retention in high-turnover roles Retail transformation from the shop floor up Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors accountable for capability in large frontline workforces Chief Customer Officers, retail directors and heads of store operations Conference programmers in retail, franchise and consumer-facing sectors looking for a main stage or closing session Brand and franchise leadership teams at offsites, kick-off meetings and sales conferences Audience outcomes Four behaviours they can practise the next morning: Awareness, Connection, Confidence and Contribution An answer to what their own role becomes once the specifiable parts of it are automated The case for why the person in front of the customer is the brand, and what that changes about how teams are managed Managers able to describe the difference between supervising tasks and coaching behaviour

Why organisations work with Keith Ferrazzi He works at the level above leadership development: the operating system of the senior team itself, where most strategy execution actually breaks down. Twenty years of applied research at Ferrazzi Greenlight, including the dataset behind Never Lead Alone, gives him a defensible model of what the top 15 percent of teams do differently. He named and codified co-elevation, a vocabulary CEOs and CHROs already use to describe peer accountability without formal authority. Five New York Times bestsellers, including Never Eat Alone and Never Lead Alone (USA Today bestseller, Forbes Top 10 Business Books of 2024), give him reach and credibility with senior audiences before he walks on stage. His sessions are diagnostic rather than inspirational: leadership teams typically leave with a read on their own performance against the teamship shifts and a starting point for what to change. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research and consulting firm focused on executive team performance and the future of work. Founder of the Radical Innovators Collaborative, a peer network of Fortune 500 CIOs and CHROs working inside live enterprise transformation. Author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, Competing in the New World of Work, and Never Lead Alone. Never Lead Alone (HarperCollins, 2024): USA Today bestseller and one of Forbes’ Top 10 Business Books of 2024. Former Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most senior teams are designed to report, not to collaborate. Members are accountable to the CEO, not to each other, and that asymmetry shows up the moment the organisation tries to move at speed. This is the problem Ferrazzi Greenlight has been studying for two decades, and it is the territory Keith Ferrazzi has made his own. The work began with relationships. Never Eat Alone, published in 2005, became a business classic by treating networking as a discipline of generosity rather than transaction. Three books later, the focus has shifted from individual influence to what happens between peers at the top of an organisation. Leading Without Authority introduced co-elevation as the mechanism. Never Lead Alone, a USA Today bestseller and a Forbes Top 10 Business Book of 2024, sets out ten specific shifts that distinguish the highest-performing teams in his research dataset. The same logic now sits behind the Radical Innovators Collaborative, a peer community Ferrazzi convenes for Fortune 500 CIOs and CHROs working through AI-driven transformation. The credibility behind that work is operational, not academic. Ferrazzi was Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte and then of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, after Yale and Harvard Business School. He was named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. What he brings to a senior audience is not a talk on collaboration in the abstract. It is a diagnostic frame for the team in the room: where peer accountability is real, where it is theatre, and which of the teamship shifts would change the most about how the organisation actually executes. Key speaking topics Executive team performance Teamship and co-elevation Leading without authority Peer-to-peer accountability Future of work and radical adaptability Organisational collaboration across silos AI and the redesign of team operating models Ideal for CEOs and executive committees are rebuilding how the top team works together CHROs and chief people officers leading culture and leadership transformations Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on execution speed Transformation leads inside organisations, breaking down functional silos Audience outcomes A clear read on where their own senior team sits against the teamship shifts that distinguish the top performers in Ferrazzi’s research. Specific behaviours that move accountability from vertical to peer-to-peer without dismantling the reporting line. A working vocabulary of co-elevation that senior teams can use to call out unhelpful patterns in real time. A view of how AI-native ways of working are changing what a high-performing leadership team looks like.

Why organisations work with Kenton Cool He has summited Mount Everest 20 times, the most of any non-Nepali climber, which gives his observations on decision-making and risk a weight that no theoretical speaker can match. He led Sir Ranulph Fiennes to the Everest summit in 2009 and up the Eiger’s north face in 2007, so he speaks with first-hand authority on guiding individuals through environments they cannot manage alone. In 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in seven days without returning to base camp, a previously unachieved sequence used as a case study in sustained performance and recovery between high-consequence efforts. His corporate content is rooted in repeatable expedition practice: how to read a team in real time, how to decide when to turn back, how to set a risk tolerance before the pressure begins. Biography highlights 20 summits of Mount Everest, the record for any non-Nepali climber, most recently on 22 May 2026. IFMGA/UIAGM Mountain Guide and member of the British Association of Mountain Guides. First person to climb Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single push from base camp, May 2013. Led Sir Ranulph Fiennes on a successful Everest summit in 2009 and on the first British guided ascent of the Eiger’s north face in 2007. Author of One Man’s Everest (Preface, Penguin Random House, 2015). BSc Geological Sciences, University of Leeds; honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Leeds, 2018. Biography Most decisions in a corporate setting can be undone. On the Lhotse Face above Camp 3, with weather closing and oxygen burning down, they cannot. Kenton Cool has stood in that position more often than any non-Nepali climber alive, 20 times on the summit of Everest, and the corporate content he brings into boardrooms is built around what those moments actually demand of a leader. In 1996, an accident on a Welsh rock face fractured both his heel bones. A consultant told him he was unlikely to walk unaided again. He returned to climbing within a year, joined the British Association of Mountain Guides scheme, and went on to earn IFMGA certification, the gold standard for high-altitude guiding. That recovery, and the discipline behind it, shapes how he talks about resilience and the relationship between pain, judgement, and continued performance. His climbing record gives the talks their credibility. In May 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single seven-day push without returning to base camp, a sequence no one had done before. He guided Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the Eiger’s north face in 2007 and to the Everest summit in 2009. In 2012, he carried a 1924 Olympic gold medal awarded to the 1922 British Everest expedition to the top, fulfilling an 88-year-old pledge that Lord Coe credited with helping launch the 2012 London Games. The corporate work translates this into specifics. How to set a risk tolerance before fatigue, ego or sunk cost distort the call. How to read team trust when individual capability is no longer the binding constraint. How to design decision processes that hold up when the time to think runs out. The frameworks are not academic. They are what an IFMGA guide does to bring people home from 8,000 metres. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making Risk tolerance and contingency planning Team trust and shared purpose Resilience after setback Leadership under physical and psychological pressure High-performance culture Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards facing high-consequence strategic decisions Sales kick-offs, partner conferences, and after-dinner events where lived authority is the brief Transformation and operations leadership groups navigating sustained pressure Awards evenings and hosted events requiring a credible, on-stage presence Audience outcomes A concrete account of how an expedition leader sets risk tolerance and decides when to turn back A vocabulary for talking about team trust as an operational capability, not a soft attribute A working model of how to make binary calls when information is incomplete and time is short A reset on what resilience looks like when the recovery is long and the prognosis is bad Energy and a story senior audiences will repeat, anchored in a verifiable climbing record

Why organisations work with Kevin Olusola He performs the argument rather than narrating it. The “Foundation +1” idea (start with one simple element, add one layer at a time) is built live on stage through cello and beatbox, so the audience sees the method before they hear the framing. Three Grammys with Pentatonix and a Sony recording contract give him a credibility profile most innovation speakers cannot match, particularly with audiences sceptical of corporate creativity content. His route into music sits next to a Yale East Asian Studies degree and extended fellowship time in Beijing, which gives the cross-cultural innovation material genuine personal weight rather than a borrowed example. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was hand-picked by Quincy Jones for the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, alongside Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. He has worked at the level of stage where corporate audiences notice. Biography highlights Three-time Grammy winner with Pentatonix: Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella (2015 and 2016) and Best Country Duo/Group Performance (2017 with Dolly Parton). Won NBC’s The Sing-Off season three with Pentatonix, leading to a Sony Music Entertainment contract. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver with a celloboxing performance. Selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. Yale University, East Asian Studies, with pre-med coursework. Spent extended fellowship time in Beijing and became fluent in Mandarin. Pioneered celloboxing, the simultaneous playing of cello and beatboxing; his viral 2011 video of Mark Summer’s “Julie-O” led directly to his Pentatonix recruitment. Biography The first time most audiences see Olusola on stage they are watching a method, not a performance. A single scale on the cello, a single percussive sound, then another, then another, until a Daft Punk medley or a Pharrell track is built in front of them out of parts that were obviously small a minute ago. He calls the underlying idea “Foundation +1”, and it is the spine of his corporate keynote work. The performance credentials sit behind the method. Pentatonix have won three Grammys, signed with Sony Music Entertainment after winning NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011, and built one of the largest a cappella audiences on YouTube. Olusola opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. The cross-cultural material runs in parallel. Olusola read East Asian Studies at Yale with pre-med coursework, and spent extended fellowship time in Beijing where he became fluent in Mandarin. The idea of “celloboxing” itself came from a teacher in China, who asked him whether he had ever considered playing cello and beatboxing at the same time. The biographical detail is doing real work in the keynote: it gives a specific story for how stepping into an unrelated domain produced an original artistic form. For senior teams, Olusola is closer to a performing keynote than to a conventional management speaker. The intellectual content is light, the demonstration is heavy, and the value sits in how an audience leaves thinking about creative method and ambition. He suits openings, closings, and offsite moments where the brief is to shift the room rather than to teach a framework. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working method Cross-disciplinary innovation Ambitious goal-setting and execution Cross-cultural perspective and collaboration Team dynamics in creative work Performance keynote and corporate entertainment Ideal for Annual kick-off and conference opening or closing slots Leadership offsites focused on creativity, innovation, or culture Awards dinners and high-profile client events Internal events where a sceptical senior audience needs a non-standard creative input Audience outcomes A shared, memorable reference point for breaking ambitious goals into a starting move A concrete example of how cross-disciplinary thinking produces original output A genuine performance moment that anchors the rest of the agenda A reframing of creativity as practice rather than personality

Why organisations work with Kyle and Brent Pease They are the first push-assist brother duo in history to finish the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, a fact every audience can verify and few will forget. Their work is operational, not symbolic. The Kyle Pease Foundation has supported hundreds of adaptive athletes, run inclusive employment programmes, and raised over $12 million in cumulative funding. They speak as one unit, not a panel. The dynamic between Kyle and Brent is the content. Audiences see what shared accountability looks like at the level of muscle memory. The “Invisible Wheelchair” frame gives leaders a usable shorthand for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, without the political weight that has stalled mainstream DEI conversations. Biography highlights First push-assist brother duo to complete the IRONMAN World Championship, Kona 2018. Six IRONMAN finishes together, with 100+ endurance races as a push-assist team. Co-authors of “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019), a dual-perspective memoir. Co-founders of The Kyle Pease Foundation, supporting adaptive athletes and inclusive employment in Atlanta and nationally. Subjects of a Hyundai Motor America six-part documentary series chronicling their road to Kona. Kyle holds a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University; Brent is a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach. Biography The Kona finish line in October 2018 was the first time two brothers had crossed it together as a push-assist duo. Brent had towed Kyle through 2.4 miles of open water in an inflatable kayak, pedalled 112 miles with Kyle reclined ahead of him on the bike, and pushed Kyle in a racing wheelchair through a 26.2-mile marathon in volcanic heat. The crossing was sport history. It was also the clearest public demonstration of a working relationship most organisations claim to want and few build. Kyle Pease was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. He went on to earn a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University and now serves as Chief Inspirational Officer at The Kyle Pease Foundation. Brent, a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach, is the Foundation’s Executive Director. Together they have completed more than one hundred races and built a 501(c)(3) that supports adaptive athletes, funds adaptive equipment, and runs inclusive employment programmes. Cumulative fundraising sits above $12 million. Their keynote work draws on the same partnership the race made visible. The Invisible Wheelchair frame asks leaders to recognise constraints that colleagues carry without announcement. Find Your Finish reframes goal-setting around the conditions a team controls rather than the times on the clock. Together We Wheel makes the case that shared accountability is a behavioural practice, not a values statement. Their book “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019) tells both sides of the story in alternating voices. For organisations rebuilding trust after restructure, threading inclusion through a fatigued workforce, or anchoring a leadership event in something the room will actually remember, the brothers offer a working example of two people producing a result neither could produce alone. The proof is on the Kona course tape. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained physical and operational constraint Inclusive leadership in practice, not policy Shared accountability and team interdependence Goal-setting beyond performance metrics Adaptive sport, disability advocacy, and the case for adaptive employment Brotherhood, partnership, and trust under load Ideal for All-hands and town hall events where leadership wants the room to leave changed, not briefed Leadership offsites focused on resilience, team trust, or inclusion behaviours Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking an anchor keynote with high recall Employee resource group summits, particularly disability ERGs, and culture-change moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, usable in everyday team conversations A reframing of resilience as a shared behaviour rather than an individual trait A vivid reference point for what real partnership looks like when failure is not an option A renewed sense of why inclusion matters in operational terms, beyond compliance framing

Why organisations work with Laura Bassett A named, public case study in recovering from a single career-defining moment. The 2015 World Cup semi-final against Japan is one of the most replayed individual incidents in English football. Few speakers can talk about composure after public failure from inside that kind of footage. Sixty-three England caps and five major tournaments over fourteen years, which gives weight to anything she says about sustained performance, selection pressure, and team dynamics under scrutiny. A specific perspective on the women’s game at the point it professionalised. Bassett was among the first 17 players given central FA contracts in 2009, which makes her a credible voice on what changes when an environment moves from amateur to professional standards. Active broadcast presence with BBC, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and DAZN, which means a current public profile and a delivery style trained by live television, not by the speaking circuit. Biography highlights 63 senior England caps between 2003 and 2017. Bronze medallist, 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Captained England at UEFA Women’s Euro 2017. One of the first 17 women awarded FA central contracts (May 2009). 2015 FA WSL Players’ Player of the Year; PFA WSL Team of the Year 2014/15. Pundit and co-commentator for BBC, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and DAZN, including the 2019 and 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cups. BSc Sport and Exercise Sciences; UEFA Level 3 coaching qualification. Biography The own goal happened in stoppage time of a World Cup semi-final, on live television, in front of a global audience. England lost to Japan 2 to 1. The footage is still in circulation a decade later. Three days afterwards, Bassett was back on the pitch playing for the bronze medal, which England won. That episode is the obvious headline, but the more useful credential is what surrounds it. Sixty-three England caps across fourteen years. Five major tournaments. A starting place in a team that progressed from semi-professional to one of the most-watched national sides in English sport. Bassett was among the first 17 players given FA central contracts in 2009, which placed her at the front of the professional era of the women’s game. The clubs read as a working defender’s CV rather than a marketing one: Birmingham City, Arsenal, Leeds, Chelsea, Notts County, Canberra United in the Australian W-League. In 2015 her peers voted her FA WSL Players’ Player of the Year. In 2017 she captained England against Portugal at the Euros. The body of work is unusually consistent for an athlete known to the public for a single moment. Since retiring in 2019 she has worked across BBC, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and DAZN as a co-commentator and analyst, including both the 2019 and 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cups. For an organisation that wants someone to talk credibly about composure, recovery and team performance under public scrutiny, the case material is on the record. Key speaking topics Composure and recovery after public failure High-performance team dynamics Sustained performance over a long elite career Women’s elite sport and its professionalisation Resilience under public scrutiny Leadership through tournament cycles Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for or recovering from a visible setback or crisis moment HR, talent and people functions running resilience, inclusion or high-performance programmes All-staff conferences and leadership offsites looking for a credible sports-keynote anchor Organisations marking moments in the women’s game, including sponsors, governing bodies and partner brands Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for what composure looks like in the hours and days immediately after a high-stakes public failure A working view of what changes when an environment moves from amateur standards to fully professional ones A first-hand account of team behaviour around setbacks at international tournament level Renewed perspective on individual identity versus single-moment definition in a senior career