Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Alex Payne A working operator’s read on the brand-influencer market through The Room, the marketplace business he co-founded in 2017, rather than commentary from outside the category. Ten-plus years presenting live for Sky Sports built the practical communication discipline he teaches to senior leaders: clarity under time pressure, listening on camera, holding a room. A safe pair of hands for high-stakes hosting at scale, with named credits including HSBC, Heineken, the World Rugby Awards and the NSPCC. One of British rugby’s most recognisable broadcast voices, useful for organisations whose audiences sit in or adjacent to that world. Biography highlights Led Sky Sports’ rugby union coverage for more than ten years and hosted the channel’s Rugby Club studio show. Presenter across Sky Sports News and Sky News, with additional credits in tennis and poker coverage. Co-founder of The Room, a marketplace tech business connecting brands and influencers, launched in 2017. Co-host of The Good, The Bad and The Rugby with James Haskell and Mike Tindall, a UK number-one Apple podcast with a 2024 book and live tour. Hosting credits for HSBC, Heineken, Help for Heroes, NSPCC, the World Rugby Awards and the RPA Awards. Biography The brand-influencer market still clears through relationships and gut feel more than through any agreed operating model. That is the gap Alex Payne walked into when he co-founded The Room in 2017, a marketplace tech business built to connect brands and influencers on terms both sides could measure. Before that, and still alongside it, he spent more than a decade as the lead presenter of Sky Sports’ rugby union coverage. He fronted the channel’s Rugby Club studio show and presented across Sky Sports News and Sky News, including tennis and poker assignments. The studio years gave him a working communication discipline that he now teaches to senior leaders. He co-hosts The Good, The Bad and The Rugby with James Haskell and Mike Tindall. The show debuted at number one on Apple Podcasts in the UK and has expanded into live arena tours and a 2024 book. His event-hosting roster includes HSBC, Heineken, Help for Heroes, NSPCC, the World Rugby Awards and the RPA Awards. Payne is most useful to organisations as a host who knows how influence works on the inside. He has built a business in the category, sat behind a camera through ten years of live broadcast, and run rooms for some of the largest sponsoring brands in British sport. Key speaking topics Brand and influencer marketplaces Communication under pressure Media training for senior leaders Sport, sponsorship and audience Live event hosting and moderation Ideal for Marketing and brand leaders rethinking influencer spend Sponsorship and partnership teams in sport, lifestyle and consumer brands Senior leaders preparing for media-facing moments Awards ceremonies, conferences and client events needing a credible host Audience outcomes A clearer view of how the brand-influencer market actually clears, from someone running a marketplace inside it. Practical adjustments to how senior leaders show up on camera and on stage. A working sense of what makes communication land in high-pressure live settings. For hosted events, a steady tempo and named credibility with sport-adjacent audiences.

Why organisations work with Alex Polizzi She has walked into more than a hundred real struggling businesses on camera and named exactly what was failing – her credibility is documented and specific, not theoretical. Audiences working on customer experience get something rare: an operator who can describe the gap between management assumption and customer reality from both sides of the front desk. Her commercial advice carries a weight most speakers cannot match – she applies the same standards to The Polizzi Collection’s three boutique hotels as she applies to the businesses she advises, with her own balance sheet as the test. Her BBC Two series The Fixer took her diagnostic approach beyond hospitality into retail, manufacturing, and food service – making her relevant to any audience grappling with family-run or founder-led business performance, not only hotels. She founded and scaled Millers Bespoke Bakery from start-up to a supplier of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason, giving her genuine entrepreneur-to-operator credibility that extends beyond the family hospitality dynasty. Biography highlights Presenter of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector since 2008 – nineteen-plus series visiting and turning around struggling British hospitality businesses Presenter of BBC Two’s The Fixer (four series, 2012-2015) – extending the business turnaround model to family enterprises across retail, manufacturing, and food Co-owner and active operator of The Polizzi Collection: Hotel Tresanton (Cornwall), Hotel Endsleigh (Devon), and The Star, Alfriston (East Sussex, opened 2021) Trained at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong; worked for Marco Pierre White at the Criterion, London; held operational roles across Rocco Forte Hotels in Cardiff, Rome, and St Petersburg Read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford Co-founded Millers Bespoke Bakery; grew to supply Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason Author, Alex Polizzi’s Little Black Book of Hotels (2010) Granddaughter of Lord Forte; mother is Olga Polizzi CBE, Director of Design at Rocco Forte Hotels Biography Most owners of service businesses are certain they know what their customers experience. Nineteen series of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector suggest otherwise. Alex Polizzi has spent more than fifteen years walking into struggling British hotels and family enterprises and naming, clearly, what the management cannot see from the inside. Her authority comes from two directions. She trained at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, worked for Marco Pierre White at the Criterion, and held operational roles across Rocco Forte Hotels in Cardiff, Rome, and St Petersburg. She also co-founded Millers Bespoke Bakery with her then-partner Marcus Miller – building it from a start-up to a supplier of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Fortnum & Mason. She read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. That experience extends to The Polizzi Collection, three boutique hotels she co-owns and actively operates with her mother, the designer Olga Polizzi: Hotel Tresanton in Cornwall, Hotel Endsleigh in Devon, and The Star in Alfriston, East Sussex. Her advice to other businesses carries the weight of someone whose own commercial performance depends on the same standards she applies elsewhere. For BBC Two’s The Fixer (four series, 2012-2015), she extended the same diagnostic lens beyond hotels to family businesses in retail, manufacturing, and food – demonstrating that the tension between conviction and commercial reality is not a hospitality problem alone. The granddaughter of Lord Forte, she brings both the heritage of a three-generation hotel dynasty and the independence of someone who has built and operated alongside it on her own terms. Key speaking topics Hospitality leadership and operational improvement Business turnaround in service and family-run enterprises Customer experience and service standards Commercial positioning for independent and boutique businesses Entrepreneurship and scaling founder-led businesses Recruitment and performance in service industries Family business dynamics and succession Ideal for Hospitality industry conferences and hotel association events Family business forums and owner-managed business summits Customer experience and service excellence programmes (cross-sector) SME and entrepreneurial leadership events where founder perspective is central Audience outcomes A clearer framework for diagnosing the gap between what a business intends to deliver and what customers actually receive Practical understanding of the operational and cultural patterns that drive underperformance in service businesses Insight into how service standards, staff performance, and commercial positioning interact – and which lever to pull first Perspective on the specific challenges of running or advising family-owned enterprises, including how personal loyalty can mask business-critical problems Grounded confidence that improvement in service and commercial performance is achievable through process discipline, not wholesale transformation

Why organisations work with Álex Rovira His central argument – that lasting success is created through deliberate preparation, not reactive management – reframes how senior leaders understand the relationship between their own behaviour and organizational performance. It is a leadership accountability argument backed by one of the most widely distributed Spanish-language business books ever published. La buena suerte, co-authored with Fernando Trías de Bes and translated into 42 languages, gives leadership teams a shared conceptual framework for building proactive cultures – one that has already been tested, challenged, and sustained across millions of readers in dozens of countries before it arrives in a corporate setting. His thinking draws on humanist philosophy and classical mythology as well as management practice, giving boards and executive teams a different register for conversations about organizational values, purpose, and identity – one that moves beyond standard competency frameworks and performance metrics. His Escuela de Transformación Vital y Liderazgo, through which more than 70,000 people have engaged with his frameworks, means his arguments are continuously tested against large, diverse audiences – not fixed at the time of publication. Three decades of organizational consulting on cultural change, talent, innovation, and market development provides the applied foundation that keeps his frameworks grounded in the realities of organizational life, not just leadership theory. Biography highlights Business Sciences degree and MBA from ESADE Business School, Barcelona Co-author with Fernando Trías de Bes of La buena suerte (Good Luck), published in English by Jossey-Bass/Wiley; translated into 42 languages, with more than 3 million copies sold in the first two years of publication Author of more than 15 books including La brújula interior (The Inner Compass) and Los 7 poderes (The Seven Powers); total body of work approaching 10 million copies sold across more than 40 languages Founder of the Escuela de Transformación Vital y Liderazgo, with more than 70,000 enrolled students LinkedIn Top Voice; combined following of more than 800,000 across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube Over 30 years of organizational consulting covering cultural change, talent development, innovation, and market analysis Biography Álex Rovira built his reputation on a deceptively simple argument: that good luck is not random, it is the result of conditions deliberately prepared in advance. That argument, articulated in La buena suerte – co-authored with Fernando Trías de Bes and published in 42 languages – became one of the most widely distributed business books in Spanish publishing history, with more than 3 million copies sold within two years of publication. For organizations, the implication is structural: cultures either develop the habits, values, and practices that generate sustained advantage, or they default to reactive management and wait. Rovira holds a degree in Business Sciences and an MBA from ESADE. He spent more than three decades working as an organizational consultant on cultural change, talent development, innovation, and client-behaviour research with companies across multiple sectors. That applied foundation grounds a body of work – now approaching 10 million copies sold across more than 15 books, including La brújula interior (The Inner Compass) and Los 7 poderes (The Seven Powers) – in the kind of organizational reality that leadership audiences recognize immediately. His thinking draws on an unusual combination of sources: humanist philosophy, classical mythology, and leadership psychology, brought to bear on questions of organizational purpose, cultural alignment, and self-leadership. Where conventional leadership development tends toward competency models and behavioral frameworks, Rovira works at the level of meaning and orientation – helping leaders examine the foundational beliefs that shape culture long before they appear in performance data. Through his Escuela de Transformación Vital y Liderazgo, more than 70,000 people have engaged with his frameworks for self-leadership, organizational culture, and values-based decision-making. That continuing pedagogical practice keeps his thinking in active contact with the challenges organizations are actually facing – and makes him an unusual combination of internationally published author and working educator. Key speaking topics Leadership psychology and self-leadership Creating conditions for sustained organizational advantage Values-based leadership and organizational purpose Cultural transformation and constructive organizational culture Resilience, antifragility, and leading through uncertainty Humanist leadership and ethical organizational management Narrative, myth, and meaning in leadership thinking Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives navigating cultural transformation or strategic reinvention CHROs and people leaders designing or refreshing leadership development programmes Corporate conference and offsite audiences where a values-based perspective on leadership is needed to complement strategy or performance-oriented content Boards and executive committees exploring purpose, organizational identity, and long-term cultural alignment Audience outcomes A clear, named conceptual framework – rooted in La buena suerte – for understanding how leaders and organizations build the conditions for sustained success rather than reacting to circumstance Practical distinctions between reactive management and deliberate leadership that participants can apply to their own organizational context A different register for leadership conversations about values, purpose, and culture – one that complements, rather than duplicates, standard competency frameworks Renewed clarity on the relationship between individual self-leadership, team culture, and organizational performance Concrete orientations for building proactive, resilient cultures that generate rather than merely respond to change

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Dr Alison Edgar MBE The intrapreneurship methodology addresses a specific organisational failure: talent hired to think and then trained to execute. It gives teams ownership inside the existing structure without asking for a reorg. Operator before author. She built her career inside Yell during the Yellow Pages collapse, founded her own training business in 2011, and advises UK government on small business policy. The frameworks on stage were built for a business she was running at the time. The work sits in the mechanics of accountability. The Intrapreneur Mindset and her Big Balls® prioritisation framework give managers a shared language for ownership and follow-through that outlasts the keynote. Designed to land in mixed rooms. Leaders, managers, and front-line teams leave a session with the same vocabulary and the same expectations, which matters when a change programme needs to move through every layer of the business. The back-story does work that a CV can’t. Clydebank council flat, undiagnosed dyslexia, no school qualifications, MBE in 2020, honorary doctorate in education from Bournemouth University in 2024. Senior leaders and front-line staff end up listening to the same talk for different reasons. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of SMASH IT!® Training. Appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business. Awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Bournemouth University, 2024. Author of Secrets of Successful Sales (WHSmith Top Ten business book; named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman) and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. Named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation; TEDx speaker; business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business; regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, CBRE, Specsavers, Currys, St James’s Place, Porsche and Renault. Biography Most change programmes are written to land in the boardroom. The work of making them stick sits three layers below, in the everyday decisions that keep standards consistent when the strategy slides have been filed away. That gap is where Alison Edgar does her work. SMASH IT!® Training was founded after twenty-five years in corporate sales at BT and Yell. The Yell years were the formative ones. She watched Yellow Pages, once a fixture in almost every UK home, lose its market because the leadership chose not to react to Google. Before that came an earlier career managing hotels in Cape Town and Sydney. The training business grew into something broader than sales. At the centre of the work today is the Intrapreneur Mindset: Edgar’s term for what it looks like when employees think and decide like owners inside a large organisation. The Big Balls® framework sits alongside it, giving managers a prioritisation language for work that all feels equally urgent. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. The credibility behind the frameworks is unusually well-documented. She was named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation, appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business, and awarded an honorary doctorate in education by Bournemouth University in 2024. Two books sit on the record: Secrets of Successful Sales, named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman, and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. She is a regular BBC contributor, including as a business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business, and is quoted across The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. The practical test of any speaker for a serious organisation is what survives the following Monday. Alison Edgar is booked repeatedly by Sky, the NHS and the European Commission because the language she gives a room keeps showing up in meetings weeks later. Key speaking topics Leadership accountability Leading change and change fatigue Intrapreneurship and ownership culture Standards and everyday execution Customer experience and service culture High-performance teams Sales leadership and commercial behaviour Ideal for Senior leaders accountable for consistent performance across transformation programmes. CHROs and CPOs building accountability and standards in hybrid or multi-site organisations. Commercial and sales leaders looking to raise conversion through team behaviour without expanding headcount. Organisations running large all-hands or leadership off-sites where the same message needs to reach the C-suite and the front line. Audience outcomes A working definition of accountability that lives in everyday behaviour and survives the next restructure. The Big Balls® prioritisation framework applied to real work, so teams stop treating every task as equally urgent. A shared language across leaders, managers and front-line staff for ownership and consistent standards. Intrapreneurship tools that let employees act like owners inside the existing structure. Language and tools for handling change fatigue, including what to do when a team has already checked out of the next transformation.

Why organisations work with Alison Levine A leadership curriculum tested in two unforgiving classrooms: the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership at West Point, and the death zone above 8,000 metres on Everest. A bestseller, On the Edge, with a substantive thesis on decision-making under uncertainty, endorsed by Mike Krzyzewski and named 800-CEO-READ Best Business Book in the leadership category. A board seat at the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke, which gives her direct line of sight into how the most-studied executive teams in sport and business actually behave under stress. A track record across the Seven Summits, both Poles, and a 600-mile West Antarctic traverse, which lets her speak about cohesion and risk from inside the conditions, not as commentary on them. Biography highlights Team captain, first American Women’s Everest Expedition. Completed the Adventure Grand Slam: Seven Summits plus skiing to both Poles. Fewer than forty people have done it. Adjunct professor for four years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership. Board member and former Senior Fellow, Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, Duke University. MBA, Duke. New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of On the Edge: Leadership Lessons from Mount Everest and Other Extreme Environments, foreword by Mike Krzyzewski. Executive producer of Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest (2022), which screened at 45 festivals and won 20 awards. Biography The orthodox leadership playbook still assumes a degree of environmental stability that most senior leaders no longer recognise from their own week. Conditions change before plans land. Information is partial, teams are tired, and the cost of a wrong call rises while the time to make it shrinks. This is the territory Levine has spent twenty years in, first on expedition and later in a West Point classroom. She served as team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, has summited the highest peak on each continent, skied to both Poles, and in 2008 completed a 600-mile traverse across West Antarctica hauling a 150-pound sled. She did all of this while managing Raynaud’s disease and the aftermath of three heart surgeries. The expeditions are not the message. They are the laboratory. For four years she taught leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership, before transitioning to the Thayer Leader Development Group. She sits on the board of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke, where she earned her MBA, and was a Senior Fellow there. On the Edge, her bestseller, distils what holds and what fails when teams operate at the edge of capacity, and was named Best Business Book of the Year by 800-CEO-READ in the leadership category. What buyers get is a serious operator with a serious classroom record, who can describe the precise mechanics of decision-making, team cohesion, and the strategic use of fear in conditions where being wrong is final. Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest, the documentary she executive-produced about Nepal’s first female Everest summiter, sits alongside the rest of the work as evidence that her interest in leadership extends beyond her own expeditions. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in extreme environments Team cohesion under pressure Risk, fear, and ego in senior leadership Resilience and recovery from setback Inclusive and values-based leadership Personal performance under physiological constraint Ideal for Boards and executive committees navigating sustained volatility Senior leadership offsites for operating teams in regulated, safety-critical, or capital-intensive sectors Military, law enforcement, emergency services and first-responder leadership programmes CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development curricula Audience outcomes A working model for making sound decisions when information is incomplete and conditions are deteriorating. A clearer view of how high-performing teams hold cohesion under fatigue, fear and disagreement. Specific tools for separating useful fear from career-limiting risk aversion. A reframe of setbacks and physical limitations as data, not as identity. Confidence that leadership lessons from the death zone translate into board-level decision practice, not metaphor.

Why organisations work with Álvaro Vizcaíno His central argument is specific and counterintuitive: fear is not an obstacle to performance but navigational data – a claim developed through post-event academic training in transpersonal psychology and Gestalt, which separates it from generic adversity narratives. The survival event underpinning his work is independently documented – recorded on IMDB, covered on Wikipedia, and dramatised in a Netflix feature film directed by Hugo Stuven – giving his framework an evidential base that most speakers on resilience cannot offer. El miedo es tu maestro, published by Ediciones Urano, translates the methodology into ten concrete keys, giving organisations a structured reference that outlasts the event itself. His live sessions include a participative, practical phase in which attendees apply the framework to their own context in the room – not a retrospective reflection exercise, but a live rehearsal of the method. He operates bilingually in Spanish and English, with verified client engagements including Vodafone Spain, Danone, and Mercedes Benz – directly relevant for multinational organisations running leadership events across European and Latin American markets. Biography highlights Real-life subject of Solo (2018), a Spanish drama film directed by Hugo Stuven, distributed by Filmax and available on Netflix, based on his 2014 survival ordeal in Fuerteventura Author of El miedo es tu maestro (Fear Is Your Master: 10 Keys to Convert Your Worries into Strengths), published by Ediciones Urano Formal academic training in transpersonal psychology, Gestalt, and coaching – undertaken following the 2014 accident Background in psychology and business administration; founded an e-commerce agency and operated hotels in the Canary Islands Client engagements include Vodafone Spain, Danone, Mercedes Benz, and BNI Bilingual speaker in Spanish and English Biography Fear is the emotion organisations are least equipped to use well. Leaders who freeze during a restructuring, teams that stall at the first sign of strategic collapse – these are not failures of training. They are failures of framework: nobody has shown them that fear, handled correctly, is information. Álvaro Vizcaíno came to this argument through necessity. In September 2014, a cliff fall on the Fuerteventura coast left him immobilised and alone – fractured hip, no food or water, no certainty of rescue. He survived approximately 48 hours before being found. The experience did not simply give him a story. It prompted a formal investigation: he subsequently trained in transpersonal psychology, Gestalt, and coaching to understand what had actually happened in his mind during those two days. That research produced a methodology and a book. El miedo es tu maestro (Fear Is Your Master), published by Ediciones Urano, sets out ten keys for converting fear from a paralysing force into a practical decision-making tool. The survival story behind it is independently documented in Solo (2018), a Spanish feature film directed by Hugo Stuven and available on Netflix – giving his framework a cultural reference point that most speakers in this space cannot claim. He has applied this methodology with organisations including Vodafone Spain, Danone, and Mercedes Benz. Working bilingually in Spanish and English, he is particularly effective for leadership teams navigating significant change across European and Latin American markets. Key speaking topics Fear as a decision-making tool Resilience under extreme pressure Adaptability and change management Personal and collective responsibility Leadership performance in crisis Mindset and psychological discipline under uncertainty Entrepreneurship and overcoming adversity Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for or navigating significant organisational change CHROs and people directors focused on workforce resilience and performance under pressure Sales, commercial, and operational teams in high-stakes, high-uncertainty environments Spanish-language or bilingual corporate events across European and Latin American markets Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of fear as a source of navigational information, not a signal to retreat or suppress A practical three-step method for maintaining direction and making decisions when certainty disappears Clearer insight into the relationship between personal responsibility and collective performance under pressure Greater awareness of the specific mental habits that distinguish functional from dysfunctional responses to organisational crisis A shared, memorable reference point – drawn from an independently documented survival event – that teams can apply and return to beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Amale Ghalbouni A named diagnosis for stalled initiative. Her Big Freeze model traces it to high threat combined with low autonomy, which puts the problem inside the system leaders control. Two published frameworks: the Experimental Culture Toolkit, with a diagnostic for finding which of the five conditions is weakest, and the Experimental Change Method for sizing change so a team can actually act on it. Seventeen years advising risk-averse organisations from the inside, including Visa, Microsoft, Levi’s, Generali, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu and the London School of Economics. Experimental carries endorsements from Bruce Daisley, Harriet Green OBE, Shazam co-founder Dhiraj Mukherjee and Chris Kay, CEO International at 72andSunny. She consults and facilitates with live clients between speaking dates, so the examples in her keynotes come from current work. Biography highlights Author of Experimental: The Restless Leader’s Field Guide for Building High-Performing, Change-Ready Teams, which reached #1 in Business Consulting on Amazon UK Founder of The Brick Coach, a training and consultancy practice focused on collaborative, change-ready team cultures Former executive strategy director, with seventeen years in consulting, innovation and organisational transformation Clients include Visa, Microsoft, Levi’s, Ralph Lauren, UBS, Generali, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu and the London School of Economics Highly Commended for Best Newcomer at The Speaker Awards 2026; TEDxESCP London speaker, “How to reclaim your fearlessness” Contributor to CEOWORLD magazine and a member of its Executive Council; certified LEGO Serious Play practitioner, working in English, French and Arabic Biography The Brick Coach exists because of a conclusion Amale Ghalbouni reached after years of consulting at FTSE 100 firms. The strategy was rarely the weak point. The conditions teams were asked to work in were. That conclusion has a name. In Experimental, she sets out the Big Freeze: what happens to a team when threat is high and autonomy is low. People stop flagging problems, stop volunteering, and wait for the danger to pass. Because the cause sits in the environment, leaders are the ones who can change it. The book carries two frameworks. The Experimental Culture Toolkit sets out five conditions, connection, clarity, curiosity, courage and celebration, with a diagnostic for finding which one a team is weakest on. The Experimental Change Method covers how to size and shape a change so it survives the politics and habits it has to move through. Bruce Daisley, Harriet Green OBE and Shazam co-founder Dhiraj Mukherjee have all endorsed it, and it went to #1 in Business Consulting on Amazon UK. Seventeen years of consulting sit behind the frameworks. She led strategy and transformation work for Visa, Microsoft, Levi’s, Generali, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu and the London School of Economics, across financial services, retail, media and industrials, and Levi Strauss’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer has gone on record about working with her on transformation there. She is also a certified LEGO Serious Play practitioner, which is why her workshops put physical objects on the table and get senior people building. Key speaking topics Change fatigue and stalled initiative The five conditions of an Experimental Culture Courage and speaking up in teams under pressure Experimentation as a repeatable management practice Leadership through restructure and organisational change Team alignment and decision-making autonomy Innovation practice inside risk-averse organisations Ideal for CHROs and people directors rebuilding initiative after restructures or redundancies Transformation and change directors whose programmes have stalled at the adoption stage Executive teams and senior leadership conferences facing mergers, restructures or new operating models L&D leads designing offsites and leadership programmes around hands-on facilitation Audience outcomes A name and a cause for the behaviour they have been recording as low engagement The five conditions to test their own team against, and a view on which one is weakest A method for turning a large change programme into something a team can act on quickly Language for talking about risk with their teams that does not require anyone to be certain first

Why organisations work with Amelia Rose Earhart Her “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” protocol, drawn directly from aviation’s standard emergency sequence, gives organisations a practical, step-ordered model for distributing responsibility and maintaining forward momentum when conditions destabilise. The 2014 circumnavigation she planned and executed required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval for an aircraft modification, and 17-stop coordination across 14 countries, making her case study in mission execution verifiable and specific, not metaphorical. A genealogy investigation, published by a colleague just before her departure, revealed no traceable connection to her famous namesake and triggered public accusations of fraud; the fact that she proceeded and completed the flight gives her resilience argument a dimension most speakers cannot replicate. Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023) extends her “pilot in command” framework into a structured leadership methodology – passengers react while pilots decide – providing a reference architecture that client teams can apply long after the event. Audiences include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, Lockheed Martin, Capital One, and the United States Air Force Academy, giving her both commercial credibility and access to high-stakes operational contexts. Biography highlights Youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft (Pilatus PC-12 NG, 2014); first to do so in that aircraft type Self-funded and managed the 24,300-nautical-mile, 17-stop global flight, raising close to $2 million across 28 corporate partnerships and securing custom FAA engineering approval Holds private, instrument, and commercial pilot certificates Approximately 15 years as a broadcast news anchor and reporter: KUSA-TV (9NEWS, NBC affiliate, Denver) and Los Angeles television Author of Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023, with Kristin Clark Taylor); keynote clients include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, and the United States Air Force Academy Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award (2013, Atchison, Kansas Chamber of Commerce); Jaycees Top Ten Young Americans (2014) Biography Aviation has a decision protocol for moments when a flight goes wrong: aviate first, navigate second, communicate third. Amelia Rose Earhart spent two years designing a circumnavigation that would test that protocol under real conditions. Closed borders, a custom FAA-engineered fuel system, and a public genealogy scandal nearly derailed the flight before it left California. In June 2014, she departed Oakland in a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 NG. Across 17 stops and 24,300 nautical miles through 14 countries, she landed back in California on July 11. The mission required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval, and open-water survival training. She became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft, and the first to do it in a PC-12 NG. Her 2023 book, Learn to Love the Turbulence, codifies what that flight revealed about organisational decision-making. Preparedness, not optimism, is what keeps teams airborne when conditions deteriorate. The “pilot in command” framework – passengers react, pilots decide – is now the architecture of her work with Fortune 500 clients and the United States Air Force Academy. Before the circumnavigation, she spent approximately 15 years as a news anchor and reporter, at KUSA-TV (NBC’s Denver affiliate) and in Los Angeles. That background sharpens her communication under pressure and her ability to hold a senior audience, which are not the same skill. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making and mission execution Resilience and adaptive leadership Strategic planning under uncertainty Risk assessment and contingency thinking Goal setting and organisational accountability Women in aviation and STEM leadership pathways Team performance under pressure Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes execution challenges or strategic pivots Sales and commercial teams preparing for stretch targets or significant market disruption Women’s leadership programmes and DEI-focused executive conferences Annual leadership conferences and kick-offs requiring both narrative coherence and audience energy Audience outcomes A practical decision sequence – aviate, navigate, communicate – for maintaining clarity and distributing responsibility when a plan breaks down in real time A clearer distinction between reactive and decisive leadership, with a specific framework for building the latter as a team habit Concrete tools for forecasting risk and planning contingencies, drawn directly from aviation mission-planning discipline A reframing of disruption as a navigable condition rather than an exceptional one – and the mindset shift required to operate accordingly A reference framework from Learn to Love the Turbulence that extends the conversation beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Amy Carroll She works on the specific moments leadership training usually skips: board challenges, negotiations that stall, team conversations that tip into defensiveness. Leaders leave with something they can apply on Monday, not a model to file. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a usable vocabulary for power dynamics most leaders feel but cannot name. The client list runs through organisations that do not buy soft skills lightly: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. Thirty years across psychology, executive coaching, and psychiatric and managed-care settings give her range on human behaviour that communications trainers rarely carry. Recognition from Global Gurus, including a Top 20 position in the Communication category, places her among a small group of named practitioners in the field. Biography highlights Author of The Ego Tango: How to Get More of What You Want More Often with Less Hassle, Using These 7 Partner Mindset Techniques Host of Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Ranked among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, placing #18 in 2023 Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, with a BA in Psychology Coaching and training clients include Nestle, Novartis, Microsoft, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the European Stability Mechanism Licenses the Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership Inc. and built the 7 Partner Mindset methodology on top of it Biography Most leadership failures happen in conversation. A board member challenges an assumption and the chief executive concedes ground she should have held. A senior partner pushes harder than the client will accept. A team leader in a performance review slips from clarity into apology. The cost is rarely dramatic, but it compounds, and it sits outside what strategy decks or standard communications training address. Amy Carroll works on that gap. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a working vocabulary for the power dynamics they feel in the room but cannot usually name. The framework draws from three decades in psychology, executive coaching, and earlier work in psychiatric and managed-care settings, which is a wider behavioural base than most communications coaches bring. Her book, The Ego Tango, sets out the methodology through cases from the workshops she runs with multinational clients. The client list is instructive: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. These are organisations where a senior leader’s composure under challenge is a measurable commercial asset. She hosts Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, and has been named among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, including a Top 20 placement in 2023. The recognition is useful context; the substance is the work itself, which is a repeatable method for holding authority when the stakes rise. Key speaking topics Leadership communication under pressure Power and influence in senior conversations Executive presence and authority High-stakes negotiation dynamics Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Storytelling and persuasion in business Coaching culture and leadership development Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams preparing for board, investor, or regulator-facing conversations Partners and client-facing leaders in professional services and financial services HR and Learning leads building executive development programmes Senior women navigating authority in traditionally male-dominated rooms Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the power dynamics that sit beneath difficult conversations, so leaders can diagnose what is happening in the moment Specific techniques from the 7 Partner Mindset model to stay composed when challenged and to influence without escalating A sharper read on their own default patterns under stress, including where they concede and where they overreach Language for feedback, negotiation, and disagreement that holds authority without damaging the relationship A practical sense of how senior presence is built through behaviour, not positioning

Why organisations work with Amy Edmondson She is the original source of the psychological safety research now cited by Google, the NHS, and most leading management programmes, not a downstream interpreter of it. Her frameworks come from two decades of field research inside hospitals, manufacturing plants, and Fortune 500 teams, not from theory or anecdote. She translates an idea that leaders often misread as softness into operational language about error rates, learning speed, and innovation throughput. Her Right Kind of Wrong work gives executives a practical taxonomy of failure types, separating the failures organisations should prevent from the failures they should encourage. Thinkers50 ranked her the world’s number one management thinker in both 2021 and 2023, which signals her standing among the practitioners and academics buyers most respect. Biography highlights Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021 and 2023. Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong. Author of seven books, including The Fearless Organization, Teaming, and Right Kind of Wrong. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award (2019) and Talent Award (2017). PhD in Organizational Behavior, AM in Psychology, AB in Engineering Sciences, Harvard University. Biography The most expensive errors inside large organisations are rarely caused by people who do not know what to do. They are caused by people who know, and choose not to say. Decades of research at Harvard Business School have made that pattern visible, and have given senior leaders a vocabulary for it: psychological safety. Amy Edmondson built that vocabulary. As Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, she has spent more than twenty years studying teams in hospitals, manufacturing operations, technology firms, and government. Her 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly is the academic anchor for an idea now used inside Google’s people analytics, NHS quality improvement work, and most credible executive education curricula. The work has expanded from a single concept into a coherent body. Teaming examined how cross-functional groups learn fast enough to keep up with the work in front of them. The Fearless Organization gave leaders a step-by-step model for making honest contribution the norm, not the exception. Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023, separates the failures organisations should engineer against from the failures they should be willing to commission. Thinkers50 has ranked her since 2011 and named her the world’s number one management thinker in 2021 and again in 2023. That recognition matters because it tracks how often working executives, not academics, cite her frameworks when they describe what they are trying to change inside their own organisations. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and team performance Learning from intelligent failure Teaming in cross-functional and high-stakes work Leadership in high-reliability environments Organisational learning Innovation cultures and candour Leading through error and recovery Ideal for C-suite and board audiences in healthcare, aviation, financial services, and other high-stakes industries CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning culture and capability programmes Heads of innovation and R&D leaders building teams that need to fail intelligently Executive education and leadership development cohorts inside large organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that separates it from comfort, niceness, or lowered standards A taxonomy of failure types that leaders can apply to their own portfolio of decisions Specific leader behaviours that increase the rate at which problems surface early A clearer language for talking about error, candour, and accountability inside the organisation Evidence-based responses to the common executive objection that psychological safety reduces performance pressure

Why organisations work with Amy Purdy She offers a first-hand account of performance under permanent constraint that senior leaders recognise as substantive, not motivational filler. She has changed the rules of her own sport: co-founded Adaptive Action Sports in 2005 and was central to adding Para snowboarding to the 2014 Paralympic programme, a concrete example of building a category where none existed. Her book “On My Own Two Feet” (William Morrow, 2014) sits on New York Times bestseller shelves and gives her argument a durable reference point buyers can hand to executives before or after a session. She holds audiences that include mainstream corporate, healthcare, and sport: Dancing with the Stars finalist, TED speaker, Toyota Super Bowl commercial subject, which means she is legible to wide leadership groups. Her content translates directly to questions boards are actually asking: how to keep teams performing through sustained uncertainty, and how to lead when the original plan is no longer available. Biography highlights Three-time Paralympic medallist in Para snowboarding: bronze, Sochi 2014; silver and bronze, PyeongChang 2018. Co-founder, Adaptive Action Sports (2005), a 501(c)(3) based at Copper Mountain, Colorado. Author, “On My Own Two Feet: From Losing My Legs to Learning the Dance of Life” (William Morrow, 2014), New York Times bestseller. TED speaker, “Living Beyond Limits” (TEDxOrangeCoast, published on TED.com). Finalist, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, Season 18 (2014); contestant, CBS’s The Amazing Race (2012). Featured in a Toyota Super Bowl commercial and on Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour. Biography At nineteen, a case of bacterial meningitis took Amy Purdy’s legs below the knee, her spleen, and the function of both kidneys. A transplanted kidney from her father kept her alive. Within two years she was back on a snowboard. Within a decade she was on the Paralympic podium. The athletic record is specific. Three Paralympic medals across two Games: bronze at Sochi in 2014 and silver and bronze at PyeongChang in 2018, all in snowboard disciplines she helped argue into existence. In 2005, with Daniel Gale, she co-founded Adaptive Action Sports, the organisation that did much of the quiet work to get Para snowboarding onto the 2014 Paralympic programme. Changing the rules of a sport is a rarer credential than winning inside them. The communication record sits alongside the athletic one. “On My Own Two Feet,” published by William Morrow in 2014 and co-written with Michelle Burford, became a New York Times bestseller and remains her primary reference text. The TEDxOrangeCoast talk “Living Beyond Limits” travelled from conference room to the main TED library. A finalist run on Dancing with the Stars, a Toyota Super Bowl commercial and a place on Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour followed, each adding a different audience to her reach. What she offers a corporate room is narrower and more useful than the biography suggests. Her argument is about operating when the original plan has been cancelled: recovering quickly, finding the next move, keeping a team moving while the ground is still shifting. It is a working account of constraint. For leaders building organisations that have to hold together through uncertainty, that is a reference worth hearing directly. Key speaking topics Resilience as a working practice Leading through setback and reinvention Performance under constraint Purpose and reinvention after disruption Category creation and changing the rules of a system High performance in endurance and sport Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO forums focused on resilience, reinvention, and leading through sustained uncertainty. Healthcare, life sciences and patient-facing organisations where the lived-experience dimension carries commercial and cultural weight. Sales kick-offs and all-hands moments that need a serious anchor point rather than generic motivation. Diversity, inclusion and talent events where disability, advocacy, and category creation are part of the conversation. Audience outcomes A sharper working definition of resilience that leaders can apply to their own teams, not just admire in others. A concrete model for operating when the original plan has been removed and a new one has to be built under time pressure. A reference example of building a category (a sport, a product, a business line) where none previously existed. Renewed clarity about the relationship between personal setback and professional performance, useful for high-stakes leadership transitions. Language and framing senior leaders can reuse with their own people after the session ends.