Criatividade

Why organisations work with Lauren LoGrasso She brings the operating logic of a working podcast producer to the question of creative leadership, having executive produced two of the highest-charting podcasts of the past five years, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown and We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle. She speaks to creativity as engagement infrastructure, not as inspiration, drawing on a body of work that has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards through her own show. She gives event audiences a recognisable name from the podcast economy, paired with a keynote performer’s stagecraft as a SAG-AFTRA actor and working musician. Her perspective on self-expression at work is grounded in production craft: what gets people to show up with their fullest contribution, and what systematically silences them. Biography highlights Creator and host of Unleash Your Inner Creative, winner of the Webby, Signal, People’s Choice, W3, Hermes Creative, and Communicator awards. Vice President of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts. Executive producer credits on We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle and Unlocking Us with Brené Brown during her tenure at Cadence13. Named one of Podcast Magazine‘s 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting. Featured in People Magazine, Yahoo, and Business Insider; named by CEO Weekly as a top inspiring woman to follow. Singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova, with songs placed in award-winning films. Biography Unlocking Us with Brené Brown launched at number one and was named Apple’s top new podcast of 2020. We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle did the same a year later. Lauren LoGrasso was an executive producer on both, working at Cadence13 to shape the editorial sensibility that made those shows resonate. The thread running through that work is now the thread running through her keynotes. Unleash Your Inner Creative, the podcast she creates and hosts, has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards. The subject is creativity, but the working question is organisational: why people stop offering their best ideas, and what conditions bring those ideas back into the room. LoGrasso speaks to corporate audiences and university programmes on creative leadership and workplace engagement, with signature talks including “The Key to Creative Leadership” and “The Power of Unleashing Creativity in Your Workplace.” She currently serves as VP of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts and continues to perform as a singer-songwriter, with collaborations including Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova. The substance of her contribution is the connection between self-expression and contribution at work, named by Podcast Magazine as one of 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting and consistently profiled by major outlets for the operating model behind her shows. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in the workplace Employee engagement and morale Self-expression and authentic voice at work Podcasting and audio storytelling for brands and leaders Mental health and creative wellbeing Innovation through creative practice Event hosting, moderation, and interview craft Ideal for Heads of People, Culture, and Employee Engagement designing programmes that move beyond wellness benefits. Innovation, marketing, and brand leaders looking to bring creative practice into commercial work. Internal conferences, leadership offsites, and women’s leadership programmes seeking a keynote with stagecraft. Universities and graduate business programmes hosting events on creative careers and purpose-led work. Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as an organisational condition, not a personality trait. Specific practices for managers who want their teams to surface ideas earlier and more often. A clearer reading of why engagement scores stall in technically high-performing teams. An honest framing of the link between self-expression, mental health, and sustained contribution at work.

Why organisations work with Leee John He carries the weight of a verifiable cultural archive. The Flashback documentary alone represents over a decade of original interviews with figures including Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean and Pauline Black, giving inclusion conversations a body of named, recorded testimony rather than slogans. His authority on Black British contribution is built on lived participation. He fronted one of the defining British soul acts of the 1980s, which lets him talk about representation, visibility and creative gatekeeping from inside the room rather than the academy. He moves an audience emotionally. A career built on falsetto vocal performance and stage presence translates into keynote energy that DEI sessions, gala dinners and cultural-anniversary moments often lack. His humanitarian work is concrete, not decorative. As an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages he has campaigned annually for World Orphan Week and was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France, which gives credibility on purpose-led brand and CSR programmes. He brings a reinvention story senior audiences recognise. Singer to producer to documentary director to charity ambassador is a useful proof point for any room thinking about second-act careers, creative longevity or staying commercially relevant across generational shifts in taste. Biography highlights Founding member and lead singer of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio with three UK top 10 singles, including “Just an Illusion” (UK No. 2, 1982). Imagination earned four platinum discs, nine gold discs and over a dozen silver discs between 1981 and 1983. Director of Flashback: The History of UK Black Music, an independent documentary featuring 80+ interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone. Ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages and recipient of a Humanitarian award in France for charity work; also holds a UK Lifetime Achievement award. Released the jazz album Feel My Soul on Candid Records in 2005; later solo album Retropia reached No. 1 on UK Soul and UK Reggae charts. Trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School; appeared in the 1983 Doctor Who serial Enlightenment, and went on to host and produce television including ITV’s Night Network strand Leee’s Place. Biography The history of British Black music is mostly told in fragments. Leee John has spent more than a decade pulling those fragments into a single record, with over 80 filmed interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone now sitting inside Flashback: The History of UK Black Music. Subjects include Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean, Jaki Graham, Pauline Black and Neville Staple. Before that work, he was the front of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio whose 1982 single “Just an Illusion” reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in Spain. Imagination earned four platinum discs and nine gold discs in a two-year run between 1981 and 1983, which places him inside the small group of Black British artists who broke into mainstream European pop charts in that era. That career is the substance behind his keynote work on inclusion, identity and creative reinvention. He talks about gatekeeping, visibility and longevity from someone who has been on both sides of them, and he extends the same argument into philanthropy as an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages, where his campaigning was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France. The reinvention thread runs through everything: lead singer, jazz recording artist on Candid Records, film and television producer, documentary director, charity ambassador. Flashback is the current centre of gravity, and it is the body of work that gives a contemporary inclusion conversation a name, a face and a primary source. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion Cultural identity and Black British heritage Creative resilience and career reinvention Storytelling and oral history Music, media and representation Purpose, philanthropy and brand Motivation and inspiration Ideal for DEI and ERG leadership programmes seeking a culturally substantive keynote presence rather than a policy-led speaker. CSR, purpose and brand teams marking heritage moments such as Black History Month, World Orphan Week or cultural-anniversary launches. Senior audiences in media, music, entertainment and creative industries debating representation, longevity and the economics of Black British creative output. Conference organisers wanting a closing keynote that combines testimony, performance presence and emotional lift. Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of British Black music history and why it underwrites contemporary conversations about representation. A worked example of creative reinvention across four decades, useful for anyone thinking about second-act careers and staying relevant. A felt understanding of why inclusion is a question of belonging and visibility, not compliance language. Direct exposure to a cultural archive most rooms have never heard, drawn from the Flashback documentary interviews. An emotional close, often involving live vocal performance, that lifts the room rather than ending on a slide.

Why organisations work with Les Binet The 60:40 brand-to-activation framework he co-developed with Peter Field is the most cited effectiveness benchmark in UK marketing strategy. Organisations use it to build a defensible, evidence-based case for long-term brand investment to boards focused on quarterly ROI. His analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank covers more than 1,000 case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and over three decades of commercial data. No comparable longitudinal evidence base for marketing investment decisions exists in published form. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health and anticipating market share movements, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories using publicly available Google Trends data. Research he presented at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference showed that marketing budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite – a gap his work directly addresses. His grounding in Physics, Artificial Intelligence research and LSE econometrics makes him one of the few voices in effectiveness who can construct, interrogate and critique the statistical models organisations use to evaluate their own campaigns. Biography highlights Co-author of The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013) and four further IPA effectiveness reports; has contributed to more IPA Effectiveness Awards papers than any other individual (per the Advertising Association) Former Group Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB; joined BMP account planning in 1987 and remained across all iterations of the agency for more than three decades Recipient of the IPA President’s Medal (2014), the highest honour the UK advertising industry can award Elected IPA Honorary Fellow (2004); Convener of Judges, IPA Effectiveness Awards (2005) Board Advisor, Journal of Advertising Research; named in Campaign Magazine’s “40 over 40” (2023) MA Physics, Oxford; MPhil Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh; postgraduate Economics (Birkbeck) and Econometrics (LSE) Biography The Long and the Short of It, published by the IPA in 2013, is one of the most-cited effectiveness documents in marketing. Its co-author, Les Binet, spent three decades at adam&eveDDB building the evidence that most organisations structure their marketing investment around the wrong metrics. The research drew on 996 advertising effectiveness case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and more than 30 years of IPA Databank data. Its central finding of the “60:40 heuristic” recommended that most consumer brands allocate roughly 60% of marketing budget to brand building and 40% to short-term activation. The report has since been cited in over 70 academic publications and referenced across multiple languages. Binet’s subsequent work has continued to extend the evidence base. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health using Google Trends data, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories. At the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference, he presented research with Medialab showing that budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving marketing effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite. He read Physics at Oxford and completed an MPhil in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh, later adding postgraduate study in Economics at Birkbeck and Econometrics at the LSE. Elected an IPA Honorary Fellow in 2004, he received the IPA President’s Medal in 2014. He serves as a Board Advisor to the Journal of Advertising Research and consults independently through Binet Consulting. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness measurement Brand building versus short-term activation The 60:40 investment framework Share of Search and brand demand indicators Econometrics and advertising evaluation Media effectiveness in digital environments Evidence-based marketing investment strategy Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders making significant media and brand investment decisions CFOs and finance functions reviewing marketing accountability and budget allocation Boards and executive teams evaluating the commercial return on advertising investment Strategy, planning and insight functions in organisations with major advertising spend Audience outcomes A clear, evidence-grounded framework for distinguishing short-term ROI from long-term profit growth, and why the difference matters to boards Practical understanding of the 60:40 brand-to-activation heuristic and how to adapt it by sector, brand maturity and business context A working introduction to Share of Search as a predictive brand health indicator, applicable without specialist tools or budget A stronger internal case for protecting brand investment in organisations under pressure to demonstrate immediate measurable returns Familiarity with the specific effectiveness patterns – reach, share of voice, emotional advertising – that the IPA data consistently identifies as drivers of commercial results

Why organisations work with Liv Marks A live-television-grade interviewer used to extracting a usable, broadcast-ready answer from talent like Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga inside a junket window of a few minutes. Fronts Bauer Media’s “My Life in Movies”, a long-form career interview format with figures including Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, evidence she can carry an unscripted hour as well as a red-carpet hit. Brings a built audience of women aged 25 to 35 on TikTok and Instagram, useful for organisations whose branded content needs to travel beyond the room. Track record of branded campaign work with Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio, so commercial integration is familiar territory, not new ground. A presenter who can move between film, television and stage musicals on Saturday radio, useful for organisations programming arts, culture and entertainment events. Biography highlights Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer, Bauer Media, covering film and television. Host, “My Life in Movies”, Bauer Media’s digital long-form interview series. Presenter, “Magic Musicals” Saturday radio show. Interview credits across red carpets, press junkets and premieres including Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. Branded campaign work with Bvlgari (EE BAFTA Awards), Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. BA in Broadcast Journalism, University of Leeds; earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television. Biography Press junkets are not gentle environments. A reporter has a few minutes with a major film actor, a publicist watching the clock, and a queue of competitors behind them all asking the same question. The interviewers who travel out of that format and into bigger rooms are usually the ones who can find a real conversation inside the constraint. Liv Marks is one of them. As Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer at Bauer Media, Marks works across film and television, interviewing leading talent on red carpets, at premieres and in press junkets. Her interview credits include Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. She fronts Bauer’s “My Life in Movies”, a career-spanning digital series whose guests have included Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, and presents “Magic Musicals” on Saturday radio, where she covers theatre and stage performance. Alongside the day job, Marks has built a sizeable digital audience as @olivialilymarks, with engagement concentrated among women aged 25 to 35. That reach is what turned her into a useful collaborator on branded campaigns for Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. The training behind it is conventional: a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Leeds and earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television, then a steady move into national entertainment journalism. For organisations, the proposition is straightforward. Marks is hired to host an evening, conduct an on-stage interview, moderate a panel or front a piece of branded content, with the craft of a working entertainment journalist behind it and an audience that will share the clip afterwards. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and on-stage interviewing Branded content presenting for film, television and lifestyle brands Red carpet, premiere and awards coverage Long-form career interviews with talent Building a digital audience around film and entertainment Musicals, theatre and stage performance Ideal for Heads of brand and marketing commissioning launch events, premieres or awards moments that need an experienced on-camera host Communications and content leads producing branded interview series or social-first video content Conference and gala organisers in arts, entertainment, lifestyle and media Audience outcomes A live event hosted with the pace and confidence of a working broadcaster On-stage interviews that get past stock answers and produce moments worth clipping Branded content that fits the host’s own audience rather than reading as an advert A bridge between mainstream media credibility and a digital audience of women aged 25 to 35

Why organisations work with Maher Mezher He holds a patent on the Innovators Process, a four-phase method filed across multiple jurisdictions, and uses it as the operating system inside the workshops he runs. His credibility is built on shipped products, not models on paper. The Fertility Loan he created in retail banking is a teaching case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. He works in the languages and industries where innovation is hardest to land: regulated banking, telecom and pharma across the Middle East and Europe. He brings a tool stack, not just a talk. The Innovators Tool app, Innovators Habits and Become an INNOVATOR methodology give teams something to use the day after the keynote. He sits inside the regional innovation infrastructure, including Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education and Qatar Foundation’s Stars of Science programme. Biography highlights Founder of Innovators League, a consulting and training firm focused on installing innovation capability inside large organisations. Inventor of the Innovators Process, a four-phase innovation method protected by patent filings. Creator of the Innovators Tool, an app for guiding teams from idea to commercial concept. Faculty for Leading Change through Innovation at Georgetown University in Qatar Executive Education. Mentor at Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation pan-Arab innovation programme. Originator of the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product cited as a case study in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. Biography Most innovation programmes fail at the same point. Ideas are generated, pilots are funded, and then the work stalls between the lab and the line. Maher Mezher built his career on closing that gap, first as a banker shipping products, then as the operator of a method designed to make innovation behave like a managed process. His starting move was the Fertility Loan, a retail banking product he created that ran into a real customer need rather than a marketing brief. It later appeared as a case in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing, which is the kind of citation that signals practitioner credibility rather than academic positioning. From that base he built Innovators League, the consulting firm through which he now works with banks, telcos, pharma companies and government bodies. The intellectual core is the Innovators Process, a patented four-phase method, supported by the Innovators Tool app and the Become an INNOVATOR methodology used inside client workshops. He sits inside the region’s innovation infrastructure as much as he speaks at it: faculty for Georgetown University in Qatar’s executive education on leading change through innovation, and a mentor on Stars of Science, the Qatar Foundation programme that backs Arab inventors. That mix of patent holder, product builder and teacher is what large organisations book him for. Key speaking topics Structured innovation process Innovation capability inside regulated industries Digital leadership and AI for non-technical leaders Creative leadership under uncertainty Innovator habits and behaviour change Product and business model innovation Innovation in financial services Ideal for CEOs and innovation leads in banks, telcos and pharma planning a multi-year innovation programme Heads of product and transformation responsible for moving concepts to launch Executive education and leadership academies in the Middle East and Europe Government and sovereign innovation bodies building national capability Audience outcomes A working understanding of the four phases of the Innovators Process and where their organisation breaks them A vocabulary for separating ideas, concepts and innovations, so teams stop conflating activity with progress Concrete examples of innovations that shipped in regulated industries, with the trade-offs named A method and tool set leaders can put into rotation the week after the session A sharper read on which innovation behaviours to hire for and which to coach

Why organisations work with Marco Tempest He works inside the technology he talks about. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT Media Lab and ETH Zurich Space are his day-to-day environments, not credentials borrowed for the stage. He treats perception as the strategic variable. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how attention, framing and trust are engineered, which is the part of technology adoption most leadership conversations skip. His material is built with the tools clients want to understand: drones, robots, augmented reality, generative systems. The demonstration is the explanation. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC give him a tested vocabulary for translating complex systems into language a board can act on. He has the rare standing to brief a NASA mission team in the morning and headline a Fortune 100 leadership offsite in the evening, and to make the same argument in both rooms. Biography highlights Director’s Fellow, MIT Media Lab. Creative Technologist and Consultant, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA Honor Award recipient. Director, Pi Innovation Hub, ETH Zurich Space. Founder and Director, MagicLab, New York. Seven-time TED speaker; SIGGRAPH 2020 keynote. Merlin Award for Best Contemporary Magician (2010); World Magic Award for Best Contemporary Magic (2009); Mandrakes d’Or (1994); Special Fellowship, Academy of Magical Arts. Biography A drone swarm performing in formation looks like a technology demo until you watch how an audience reacts to it. The reaction is the product. That is the lens Tempest brings to every emerging technology conversation: not what the system can do, but what it does to the person watching. He holds the working credentials to make that argument seriously. He is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Creative Technologist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a NASA Honor Award for his contribution to COVID-19 ventilator work, and director of the Pi Innovation Hub at ETH Zurich’s Space division. He also runs MagicLab, a New York consortium that prototypes illusion and digital technology together. The performance work is the testing ground for the ideas. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC have used robots, AR, drones and generative systems as live material, not slideware. The Merlin Award, World Magic Award and Mandrakes d’Or sit alongside the academic and engineering affiliations because the discipline is the same one: engineering perception with precision. For executive audiences, the value is specific. Tempest gives leadership teams a working model of how attention, trust and belief actually behave around new technology, drawn from the labs where that technology is being built. A board that has heard him is better equipped to ask the second-order questions about adoption, narrative and human response that strategy decks routinely miss. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and human perception Robotics, drones and autonomous systems Augmented and mixed reality Generative AI and creativity Innovation storytelling Space technology and exploration The psychology of attention and trust Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI, robotics or XR strategy CTO, CIO and chief innovation leaders shaping emerging-technology roadmaps Marketing and brand leadership rethinking customer attention in saturated channels Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the technology argument needs to land with non-technical executives Audience outcomes A working mental model for how attention and trust shift when new technology enters a customer relationship Specific examples, drawn from NASA JPL, MIT Media Lab and live performance, of how robots, drones, AR and generative systems behave in front of real audiences Sharper questions to put to internal technology and innovation teams about adoption and human response A reframing of innovation storytelling as a discipline with rules, not a soft skill

Why organisations work with Margaret Heffernan She gives executive teams a precise vocabulary for organisational failure. “Wilful Blindness” turned the cognitive mechanics of why leaders ignore the obvious into a working diagnostic, and the Financial Times named it one of the most important business books of the decade. She has run companies, not just studied them. Five CEO roles across media and technology mean her arguments about hierarchy, dissent and decision-making are tested against the operational reality buyers actually face. She offers a serious counterweight to forecasting culture. “Uncharted” makes the case that prediction is a poor tool for navigating uncertainty, and gives leaders a more effective set of practices for acting without it. Thinkers50 inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 for lasting contribution to management thinking, which places her among the most established voices on organisational behaviour working today. She is trusted in the room with senior leaders. Through Global Mentors Group she mentors CEOs of major global organisations, and she serves as Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme. Biography highlights Professor of Practice, University of Bath School of Management. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee, 2023. Author of seven books including “Wilful Blindness”, “A Bigger Prize” (Transmission Prize winner), “Beyond Measure”, “Uncharted” and “Embracing Uncertainty”, published by Simon & Schuster and Bristol University Press. TED Global speaker; four TED talks with more than 12 million combined views. Former Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCast Corporation; senior multimedia roles at Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard & Poor’s. Thirteen years as a BBC producer of drama and documentary programmes; regular Financial Times contributor and BBC Radio 4 broadcaster. Biography Most leadership teams do not lack information. They lack the conditions to act on the information they already have. That is the problem Margaret Heffernan has spent two decades naming, first as a CEO and now as one of the most respected voices on organisational behaviour in Europe. “Wilful Blindness”, her third book, set out the cognitive and cultural reasons people in organisations ignore what they can plainly see. The Financial Times listed it among the most important business books of the decade. “A Bigger Prize” challenged the assumption that competition reliably produces the best outcomes and won the Transmission Prize. “Uncharted” pressed further into the territory of how leaders should think, plan and decide when prediction stops working. The credibility behind the writing is operational. Heffernan ran five companies, including InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCast Corporation, after thirteen years producing drama and documentary programmes for the BBC. She holds a Professor of Practice post at the University of Bath, leads faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme, and mentors chief executives through Global Mentors Group. Thinkers50 inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023. Her TED talks, including “Dare to Disagree” and “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world”, have been viewed more than 12 million times. The reason senior teams keep returning to her work is simple: she gives them a serious account of why organisations fail to see, and a usable set of responses. Key speaking topics Organisational blindness and decision-making Leadership under uncertainty The limits of efficiency and forecasting Dissent, candour and constructive conflict Collaboration and the costs of competition Responsible leadership and corporate ethics Building organisational resilience The role of creativity in resilience and innovation Ideal for CEOs, board members and ExCo teams confronting strategic uncertainty CHROs and senior leadership development heads building executive judgement Audit, risk and governance leaders working on early-warning culture Partner-track and senior leadership programmes inside professional services and regulated industries Audience outcomes A clearer language for the cognitive and structural reasons organisations miss the obvious. A working alternative to forecasting-led strategy when conditions will not hold still. Concrete practices for surfacing dissent and constructive conflict at senior levels. A sharper view of where the pursuit of efficiency is quietly degrading resilience. Confidence to act on partial information rather than wait for certainty that will not arrive.

Why organisations work with Mark Schulman He has spent decades performing in front of stadium crowds with P!NK, Cher, and Foreigner, and translates that experience into specific attitude and focus habits a workforce can use the next morning. His keynote includes live drumming and audience participation, which moves a conference room out of passive-listening mode and produces engagement that in-house speakers cannot replicate. He carries the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, a credential held by a minority of working keynote speakers, signalling consistency at the level Fortune 500 buyers expect. His Conquering Life’s Stage Fright framework gives audiences a named three-step model (Clarity, Capability, Confidence) for managing performance anxiety, not a generic motivation message. He pairs the music-industry story with a working business voice, having co-founded and run West Triad Studios in Venice for over a decade. Biography highlights Touring drummer for P!NK from 2006 to 2021, Cher from 1999 to 2017, and Billy Idol from 1993 to 2001 Performed with Foreigner, Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow, Simple Minds, and Velvet Revolver Author of Conquering Life’s Stage Fright: Three Steps to Top Performance, and co-author of The Attitude Equation with Dr. Jim Samuels Cover feature, Modern Drummer Magazine, May 2019; voted Top 3 Pop-Rock Drummer in the Modern Drummer Reader’s Poll Awarded the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation by the National Speakers Association in 2021 Co-founder of West Triad Studios, Venice, California Biography The difference between a strong team and a top-performing one is rarely talent. It is whether people can switch on under pressure, recover quickly when something goes wrong, and stay engaged on the night the room actually matters. That is the territory Mark Schulman works in. His credibility comes from the stage. Schulman spent more than two decades as the touring drummer for P!NK, Cher, Billy Idol, and Foreigner, performing in front of stadium audiences where there is no second take. The performance-mindset content he now delivers to corporate audiences is drawn directly from that environment, not borrowed from a leadership textbook. The work is anchored by his book Conquering Life’s Stage Fright: Three Steps to Top Performance, which sets out a Clarity, Capability, Confidence framework for managing performance anxiety. He co-authored a second book, The Attitude Equation, with Dr. Jim Samuels, focused on the attitudinal habits that separate consistent performers from one-off ones. In 2021 he was awarded the Certified Speaking Professional designation by the National Speakers Association, the standing credential of full-time keynote speakers. What organisations book is a session that changes the energy of a room. Schulman drums live, brings the audience into the performance, and ties the story back to specific attitude shifts a team can apply on Monday. The format is unusual; the underlying argument, that consistent high performance is a learnable discipline, is what keeps Fortune 500 buyers returning. Key speaking topics Performance mindset under pressure Attitude and personal accountability Confidence and stage fright Team engagement and collaboration Peak performance habits Creativity and reinvention Ideal for Sales kickoffs, annual conferences, and leadership offsites looking for an opening or closing keynote that shifts the energy of the room CHROs and culture leads programming for engagement, motivation, and people-performance themes Leadership development audiences working on confidence, presence, and personal performance Audience outcomes A named three-step framework (Clarity, Capability, Confidence) for managing performance anxiety in high-stakes moments Specific attitude practices borrowed from world-class touring musicians and adapted to a business setting A shared, high-energy experience that resets the tone of a conference and gives teams a common reference point A clearer sense of how individual presence and preparation feed collective team performance

Why organisations work with Matthew Luhn He spent more than 20 years inside Pixar’s story room, working on Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille, so the principles he teaches are the ones that actually shipped some of the most commercially successful films ever made. His book The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018) gives buyers a named, documented methodology, not a generic storytelling pitch. Teams leave with a structure they can apply to a keynote, a sales call, or a brand campaign. He is one of very few speakers who has been inside a working creative culture at scale, and can speak credibly to how Pixar’s Braintrust process produces honest creative feedback without breaking trust. His client list on this material includes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target, which signals that senior brand, marketing and innovation leaders are the audience he is built for. He treats storytelling as a commercial competency, not a soft skill. The work is aimed at sharper messaging, stronger brand recall, and better internal communication of strategy. Biography highlights Story artist and story supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios across more than two decades, with credits on Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3 and Monsters University. One of the original 12 animators hired on the first Toy Story film in 1995. Youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at age 19, with credits on six 1992 episodes including Kamp Krusty and Lisa’s Pony. Author of The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond, Morgan James Publishing, 2018. TEDx speaker (TEDxUCSB), and corporate keynote speaker for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony, Target, Vrbo, Adidas and Lego. Trained at the California Institute of the Arts character animation program; BFA from the Academy of Art University. Biography Pixar built one of the most reliable creative engines in modern business by treating story as a discipline, not a talent. Inside that engine sat a small group of story artists whose job was to find, in every film, the emotional truth a global audience would respond to. Matthew Luhn was one of them, across more than 20 years and films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up and Ratatouille. That work began early. He was the youngest animator hired on The Simpsons at 19, then joined Pixar in 1995 as one of the first 12 animators on Toy Story. He moved into the story room for Toy Story 2 and stayed there, eventually as story supervisor, through some of the most commercially successful animated films ever made. The carry-over to business is direct. The same questions a story artist asks about a film, what does the audience need to feel, what is the change, what is the one thing they should remember, are the questions a leader should be asking about a strategy launch, a sales pitch or a brand campaign. His book, The Best Story Wins (Morgan James, 2018), turns those questions into a working methodology. Buyers tend to find him through a specific tension. Their messages are accurate but not memorable. Their brand is recognised but not loved. Their internal communications inform but do not move people. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Capital One, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Target have used his work to address those gaps. Key speaking topics Business storytelling Brand narrative and customer engagement Creative culture and the Pixar Braintrust process Innovation and creative differentiation Leadership communication Sales and pitch storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and content leaders rebuilding how the company shows up to customers. Innovation leads and product organisations that need to make new ideas land internally and externally. Sales leadership and revenue teams sharpening pitch craft and customer-facing narrative. Internal communications and HR leaders running large town halls, change programmes or culture launches. Audience outcomes A working structure for building a story around any business message, drawn from the Pixar story process. Sharper sense of what makes a brand or product narrative memorable rather than merely accurate. Tools for giving and receiving honest creative feedback, modelled on the Pixar Braintrust. A clearer separation between information delivery and persuasion, applied to keynotes, pitches and internal comms. Specific, repeatable techniques the team can apply to the next campaign, all-hands or customer presentation.

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?

Why organisations work with Miha Pogacnik His Macro Violin concept is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across MIT Sloan’s leadership writing. Senior teams engage with an arts-based framework that already has standing in serious management thought. He has worked inside the leadership floors of IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell, Novartis and Porsche. The frame of reference is decades of access to people running companies that compete on judgment. His Resonance Platform method, taught at IEDC-Bled and in client sessions, moves a leadership group from positional debate into composed creative dialogue around the actual decision on the table. He has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam, alongside his appointment at IEDC-Bled. The work is taken seriously inside management academia and in client rooms. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management; has taught at Harvard, INSEAD, IMD, IESE Barcelona, CEIBS Shanghai and THNK Amsterdam Macro Violin concept attributed to him is cited by C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership Founder of IDRIART (Institute for Development of Intercultural Relations through the Arts); originated the Chartres Festival d’Eté in 1981 Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia Has worked with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Nike, Shell, Novartis, Bosch, Coca-Cola and Porsche Speaker at the World Economic Forum (Davos and China), European Forum Alpbach and UN agencies; TEDx talk “A Creative Detour to Unleash Human Potential” Biography Most senior teams have absorbed every available framework for leadership. None of those frameworks change how they listen, or how they bring a room of expert voices into a coherent decision. The capacity that matters at the top is closer to conducting an orchestra than to running an analysis. That is the territory Miha Pogacnik has worked in for four decades. As Adjunct Professor of Arts and Leadership at IEDC-Bled School of Management, he uses musical performance to develop the listening and composed judgment that leadership at the top requires. His Resonance Platform method, taught in sessions with leadership teams at IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, Nike, Shell and Porsche, walks executives through the structural intelligence of a Bach fugue or a Brahms violin concerto and back to the decision on their desk. His distinctive intellectual contribution is the Macro Violin: the principle that a leader, like a violinist inside Chartres Cathedral, cannot perform on instrument alone but has to play the whole space. C. Otto Scharmer cites the concept in Theory U and across the MIT Sloan body of work on systemic leadership. That principle now sits at the centre of how arts-based leadership is taught at IEDC-Bled. The work has roots in something larger than corporate audiences. Pogacnik founded IDRIART in the early 1980s and went on to direct more than 200 intercultural festivals in crisis regions, including the Adriatic during the breakup of Yugoslavia and Central Europe in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He serves as Ambassador of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. The first IDRIART festival ran at Chartres Cathedral in 1981, the same setting in which Pogacnik first identified the Macro Violin principle, and where the entire body of work begins. Key speaking topics Arts-based leadership development Listening as a leadership discipline Creativity and innovation through musical structure Cultural intelligence in international business Organisational learning through artistic practice The Resonance Platform method for senior teams The Macro Violin and ensemble leadership Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers designing executive development programmes CEOs and Chief Strategy Officers convening senior teams for board offsites or strategic dialogue Business school deans and EMBA directors integrating arts and humanities into leadership education Conference programmers leading flagship events on creativity and leadership Audience outcomes A demonstration of how musical structure reveals complex team dynamics, with a Bach fugue or Brahms violin concerto used as the diagnostic Live application of the Resonance Platform method to the strategic question the leadership team brings into the room A working vocabulary for leadership drawn from musical performance: composition, ensemble, listening from the periphery, and the macro violin The shift from treating the conductor as a metaphor to treating conducting as a working model of leadership

Why organisations work with Monty Criswell Five number-one country singles across three decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery and “Hell of a View” for Eric Church, give him a body of work most after-dinner speakers cannot match. His material is built around real songs played live, not slides. The performance element makes the resilience message land with senior audiences in a way a conventional keynote cannot. A stage 3 colon cancer recovery, tied to active support of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, gives the health and recovery thread substance rather than sentiment. Thirty years in a commercial creative industry, with named hits for George Strait, Eric Church, Trace Adkins, Scotty McCreery and Parker McCollum, makes him credible on the realities of sustained creative output under commercial pressure. Biography highlights Co-writer, “I Saw God Today” (George Strait, 2008), CMA Single of the Year; Grammy and Dove nominations. Number-one country singles include “Just Fishin'” (Trace Adkins), “Five More Minutes” (Scotty McCreery, triple platinum), “Hell of a View” (Eric Church, double platinum) and “Handle on You” (Parker McCollum). Two Grammy nominations for Country Song of the Year; multiple BMI and NSAI songwriting awards. Songwriter Session presenter at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville. Publishing history with Hamstein Music Group, Sony/ATV/Tree and currently Spirit Music Group. B.A. American Studies, cum laude, University of Alabama. Biography Country music is one of the few commercial creative industries where the same writer can sustain hits across thirty years. It is also one of the most unforgiving. Hit songs decide careers, and most writers never get one. Monty Criswell has written or co-written five number-one country singles in four different decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, which won CMA Single of the Year in 2008 and was nominated for a Grammy. The catalogue runs from Trace Adkins to Eric Church to Parker McCollum. “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery went triple platinum. “Hell of a View” for Eric Church went double platinum. The longevity matters more than any single credit. It is what gives him a working theory of how a person keeps producing under commercial pressure when the room around them changes. Halfway through that run he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. He recovered, returned to writing, and continued to land number ones. He now supports Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and sits with his wife on Vanderbilt’s Canby Robinson Society. The cancer story is not a frame for the talk; it is the second source of evidence behind it. “An Evening with Monty Criswell” is a live performance, not a conference session. He plays the songs, tells the stories behind them, and draws lessons on persistence, craft and recovery from a working life that produced both. For organisations looking for an inspirational close to a conference, an awards dinner or a leadership offsite, the offering is unusual: a credible commercial creative who can hold a room with songs the audience already knows. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after serious illness Sustaining creative output over a long career Storytelling as a leadership tool Persistence in commercially unforgiving industries Country music songwriting craft Faith and personal values in working life Ideal for Conference closing keynotes and gala dinners where an inspirational live performance is required Sales kick-offs and leadership offsites in need of a resilience and persistence anchor Cancer charities, healthcare audiences and corporate wellness events Audiences in the United States with country music affinity, including Nashville-based events Audience outcomes A live experience of how a hit country song is built, told by its writer A first-hand account of stage 3 cancer recovery and the return to high-output work Stories drawn from a thirty-year Nashville career, with named artists and named songs A close that lands emotionally without leaning on a slide deck