Empreendedorismo speakers

Why organisations work with Keely Cat-Wells She has built and sold the category. C Talent, the agency she founded in 2018, was acquired by Whalar in 2022 and remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the sector. Her current company, Making Space, gives leaders an operating model rather than a manifesto: an employer-backed training and acquisition platform with reported lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per learner. She speaks from inside the boardroom conversation, not next to it. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Obama Leader USA, and Forbes contributor, she carries credibility with executive audiences who are tired of generic DEI framing. She connects representation in media to talent strategy in the workforce, drawing on a roster that has placed Disabled creators in projects including The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Making Space, a venture-backed talent acquisition and learning platform for Disabled professionals. Founder of C Talent, acquired by Whalar in 2022. Co-founder, Making Space Media, with a first-look deal at Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2025 Obama Leader USA, inaugural Gloria Steinem Fellow. L’Oreal Paris 2025 Women of Worth, Forbes 30 Under 30, Diana Award, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2022. Forbes contributor on disability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive workforce strategy. Biography The Disabled talent pool is one of the largest underused labour markets in the global economy. Most companies do not have a working strategy for reaching it. Keely Cat-Wells builds the infrastructure that closes that gap. She founded C Talent in 2018 after disability discrimination ended an early career in performing arts. The agency grew into the most prominent home for Deaf and Disabled creators in entertainment, placing talent in The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games before being acquired by Whalar in 2022. It remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the industry. Making Space, founded in 2023, is the operator-led answer to a different question: how do enterprise employers actually hire and retain Disabled professionals at scale. The platform pairs employer-backed training with talent acquisition, and closed a $2M pre-seed round led by Beta Boom in 2024. Its Ascend program reports projected lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per participant. Cat-Wells writes for Forbes, sits on disability-focused boards, and was named the youngest Presidential Leadership Scholar in the program’s history. Her recognitions include the Diana Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth, and Gloria Steinem Fellow. The credentials matter, but the harder evidence is the line item her work creates on a hiring scorecard. Key speaking topics Disability and workforce strategy Hiring and retaining Disabled professionals Inclusive talent acquisition platforms Representation in media and entertainment Building and scaling mission-led ventures Hidden disabilities in the workplace Founder experience in inclusive entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition rebuilding disability hiring strategy Chief diversity and inclusion officers moving from awareness work to operational outcomes Boards and ELTs reviewing workforce, ESG, and human capital reporting Media, entertainment, and creative leaders accountable for on-screen and off-screen representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where disability inclusion programmes break in practice and what to fix first. Specific tactics for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining Disabled professionals at enterprise scale. A founder’s view of how to translate inclusion strategy into measurable economic outcomes. Language and evidence senior leaders can use with their own boards on disability as a workforce issue.

Why organisations work with Kelly Hoppen She has run a creatively-led business across forty years of cycles, from private residential commissions to hotels, yachts, cruise ships and a direct-to-consumer product line, and can speak to the commercial trade-offs at each stage. Her Dragons’ Den seat on BBC Two gave her direct, public investor experience evaluating early-stage consumer brands, including portfolio names such as Skinny Tan and Reviveaphone. The “East meets West” design philosophy is a defined intellectual signature that has carried through books, product ranges and international commissions, demonstrating how a creative point of view translates into a brand asset. As chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group, she has represented British creative industries to overseas markets at a level few founders are asked to operate at. A CBE for services to the GREAT campaign and an MBE for services to interior design provide independent validation of contribution beyond the studio. Biography highlights CBE awarded in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the GREAT campaign; MBE awarded in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to interior design. Founder of Kelly Hoppen Interiors, with international projects including One Park Taipei, the Celebrity Edge cruise ship for Celebrity Cruises and LUX* Grand Gaube in Mauritius. Investor “Dragon” on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12 (2013 to 2015). Author of multiple interior design books, beginning with “East Meets West: Global Design for Contemporary Interiors”. Winner of the Andrew Martin International Interior Designer of the Year Award (1996) and the European Woman of Achievement Award (2007). Chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group and ambassador for The Prince’s Trust. Biography A single kitchen, designed for a family friend, was the first commission. Kelly Hoppen had left school at sixteen. The business that grew from that job now spans private residences, yachts, jets, hotels, cruise ships and a direct-to-consumer product range, and trades on a name that has become its own design vocabulary. The creative argument is “East meets West”, set out in her first book and carried through more than a dozen titles since. It gave the studio a recognisable signature long before personal brands were a formal commercial category. The same instinct shaped the move into product, retail and licensing, where the discipline is no longer a single client but a coherent offer at scale. Public-market judgement followed. Hoppen sat as an investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den across series 11 and 12, backing early-stage consumer companies including Skinny Tan and Reviveaphone, and speaking openly afterwards about which bets were working and which were not. That experience sits alongside four decades of running her own balance sheet. Recognition has come from outside the design world as well as inside it. An MBE for services to interior design in 2009, a CBE for services to the GREAT campaign in 2020, and the chair of the GREAT Ambassadors’ group, where she represents British creative industries to overseas markets and government counterparts. Key speaking topics Creative entrepreneurship and building a personal brand Design-led business and the commercial value of a distinctive aesthetic Women in business and founder resilience Investor judgement on early-stage consumer brands British creative industries and global market positioning Career reinvention across forty years of cycles Ideal for Founders and CEOs of design-led, consumer or lifestyle businesses considering brand expansion or licensing Senior marketing and brand leaders working on a defined creative signature Women’s leadership and founder networks across consumer industries Trade and government audiences focused on UK creative-industry exports Audience outcomes A working view of how a creative signature becomes a defensible brand asset, and the commercial decisions that protect or dilute it. Investor-side perspective on what makes an early-stage consumer brand fundable, drawn from public Dragons’ Den deals. Honest reflection on what forty years of running a name-led business teaches about cycles, partners and product extensions. A confident position on how British design and creative industries compete in international markets.

Why organisations work with Kelly Vero She has shipped AAA games (including credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises) and now runs an AI-powered digital fashion business, so she speaks about immersive technology from the inside of two different commercial stacks, not from a consultancy slide. As CEO and CTO of NAK3D, she gives leadership teams a concrete view of how 3D content, AI and consumer brands are starting to fit together at production scale. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals (Routledge) gives executives a structured way to read the metaverse as the natural extension of forty years of game technology, not a marketing fad. She has worked at policy and institutional level with the European Commission and Pro Helvetia, which means she can frame technology questions in terms a regulated board will recognise. Biography highlights CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion start-up. Chief Metaverse Officer at Aequaland, an educational platform for children. Author of How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge. Earlier edition nominated for the British Business Book Awards 2024. 30-year career in interactive entertainment, with credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises. Consultant to the European Commission, Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) and Confetti Media Group. Won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos, January 2024. Biography The metaverse arrived in the boardroom as a slogan and left as a question: where is the operational substance behind any of this. The honest answer is that it sits inside the games industry, where 3D worlds, real-time content pipelines and live-service economies have been working at scale for two decades. That is the world Kelly Vero has spent thirty years inside. Her credits stretch across the Lara Croft franchise and Hasbro’s Transformers games, taking her from script and character work into production at the heart of mass-market AAA development. The result is a deep, practitioner-level grasp of how immersive technology actually gets built, shipped and monetised. She now applies that experience as CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion company sitting between gaming, virtual platforms and consumer brands. NAK3D won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos in January 2024. Vero is also Chief Metaverse Officer of the children’s education platform Aequaland, and has consulted for the European Commission and Pro Helvetia on technology and creative policy. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge, treats the metaverse as the next chapter of a long technical lineage, not a sudden hype cycle. For boards trying to decide what to fund, what to ignore and what to build, that frame is more useful than any forecast. Key speaking topics AI and 3D commerce The metaverse as commercial infrastructure Digital fashion and virtual goods Generative AI in creative production Game design as a model for customer experience Web3 and immersive platforms Innovation strategy in deep tech Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders deciding how to commit to virtual goods, digital fashion and immersive customer experience CEOs and boards of consumer and entertainment businesses weighing AI and 3D investment CTOs and digital transformation leads scoping AI commerce, content pipelines and creative AI Investors and innovation teams in retail, fashion, media, gaming and adjacent sectors Audience outcomes A clear read on which immersive and metaverse claims are commercially serious and which are not Concrete examples of how AI and 3D content are already reshaping fashion, retail and entertainment commerce A working frame for treating game technology as the parent discipline of the metaverse, with practical implications for product and platform decisions Confidence to scope a first credible AI or 3D content initiative, rather than commission another exploratory study

Why organisations work with Kevin Kelly His Xceptional Execution methodology is not motivational scaffolding – it is a documented framework built from original case study research with high-growth entrepreneurs across the globe, making the argument that execution, not vision, is the real driver of commercial success. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write – a specific, named validation from one of the most cited figures in management literature. The Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling frameworks give teams named, repeatable tools for immediately improving how they earn attention, structure conversations, and close in markets where buyers are already sceptical before a call begins. His cross-industry track record is verifiable: rated the highest-performing speaker at Microsoft’s World Partner Conference (92.5% satisfaction score, ahead of five other speakers on the programme) and a repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table – two of the most commercially exacting professional audiences in technology and financial services. His starting point is always the specific failure mode that sales leaders recognise – the knowing-doing gap – rather than generic motivation; audiences leave with a named diagnosis and specific tools, not energy that fades by the following Monday. Biography highlights Founder of Advanced Marketing, established in Ireland in 1990 following a career breaking sales records across construction and manufacturing sectors in Ireland and internationally Author of five business books, including Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution, endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence How? When You Don’t Know How sold 15,000 copies in Ireland – a bestseller for an independent Irish author on a first title Developed the Xceptional Execution Video Series for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Community; rated top speaker at the 2015 Microsoft World Partner Conference with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score Repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), one of the most selective annual platforms for financial services professionals globally Has addressed audiences across more than 35 countries, with named corporate clients including GE Healthcare, KPMG, Hologic, Hang Seng Bank, Lane Crawford, and ICON Clinical Research Biography The central problem in most commercial teams is not a shortage of knowledge. It is a shortage of consistent execution. Kevin Kelly, founder of Advanced Marketing, has built a 30-year methodology on that distinction: the argument that competitive advantage in sales and leadership is won not by the team with the most insight, but by the team that acts on ordinary ideas with extraordinary discipline. His framework, Xceptional Execution, emerged from structured research with entrepreneurs and executives across the globe: people who achieved outsized commercial results not through original thinking, but through repeatable, disciplined action. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution captured this research and was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write. The frameworks Kelly uses in his sessions: Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling, are designed to be immediately applicable by sales and leadership teams returning to their desks the next morning. At Microsoft’s World Partner Conference he was rated the highest-performing speaker on a six-speaker programme, with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score. He has since delivered keynotes for the Million Dollar Round Table and for commercial audiences across more than 35 countries spanning financial services, healthcare, technology, and professional services. Based in the west of Ireland, Kelly holds a marketing degree and began his career breaking sales records in construction and manufacturing before founding Advanced Marketing in 1990. His first book, How? When You Don’t Know How, sold 15,000 copies in Ireland. His subsequent body of work (five books in total) returns repeatedly to the same conviction: that performance, at the individual and organisational level, is almost always a question of execution rather than ambition. Key speaking topics Sales performance and commercial execution Attention and persuasion in distracted markets Xceptional Execution methodology and frameworks Storytelling and business communication Leadership, engagement, and team performance Entrepreneurship and growth through disciplined action Communication and influence in multicultural environments Ideal for Sales directors and commercial leaders seeking to close the gap between sales training and sustained field performance CEOs and senior executives accountable for execution culture across distributed or international teams Partner and channel organisations – particularly in technology and financial services – where performance depends on enabling third-party sales behaviours Associations and conference organisers serving entrepreneurial, financial services, or sales professional audiences (including MDRT-type communities) Audience outcomes A named framework (Triple A and Storytelling) for structuring sales conversations and earning attention from overloaded, sceptical buyers A shift in perspective from sales as persuasion to sales as disciplined execution – with specific practices that distinguish knowing from consistently doing Practical storytelling tools for making commercial messages stick in distracted, multicultural, and low-trust environments Clarity on the specific behaviours and mindsets that separate average teams from those that execute consistently under pressure Approaches to converting disengaged employees and resistant prospects into active advocates – grounded in the Xceptionalists research from Do!

Why organisations work with Kevin O’Leary He has run the full founder cycle once, from boot-strapped start-up through hostile acquisitions to a multi-billion-dollar exit, and he speaks about growth from inside that experience rather than around it. His Shark Tank track record gives him one of the largest public corpora of investor-versus-founder negotiations on record, which translates directly into how he teaches deal discipline. O’Leary Ventures has invested across more than 30 private companies, so the commentary on emerging sectors is grounded in current capital allocation, not retrospective storytelling. The Cold Hard Truth book series with Penguin Random House Canada has built a financial literacy framework that travels well from boardroom audiences to all-employee events. His CNBC, Fox Business, and CNN presence means audiences arrive already familiar with the voice, which compresses the time it takes to land a serious argument. Biography highlights Founder of SoftKey Software Products, which acquired The Learning Company in 1995 and was sold to Mattel in 1999 for $4.2 billion. Investor on ABC’s Shark Tank since the 2009 launch, where he is known on screen as “Mr. Wonderful”. Chairman of O’Leary Ventures, the venture platform he founded in 2000, and of Beanstox, the automated investing service. Host of CNBC’s Money Court, the primetime business series adjudicating financial disputes. Author of the Cold Hard Truth series published by Penguin Random House Canada. MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario; honours bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo. Biography The Learning Company was bankrupt-adjacent in the early 1990s when SoftKey, Kevin O’Leary’s small Toronto software business, bought it through a hostile bid and adopted its name. Four years later, Mattel paid $4.2 billion for the combined company. That transaction sits at the centre of his commercial credibility, both the win and the post-deal collapse that followed at Mattel, and it shapes how he talks about capital. Since 2009 he has sat on ABC’s Shark Tank as a working investor evaluating live pitches. The show has accumulated multiple Primetime Emmy wins for Outstanding Structured Reality Program. For audiences, the relevance is not the entertainment, it is the public archive: hundreds of negotiations on the record, with the founder’s pitch, the investor’s questions, and the post-deal outcome all visible. Few business voices carry that volume of documented decision-making. Off camera he runs O’Leary Ventures, the platform he founded in 2000, and chairs Beanstox. He hosts CNBC’s Money Court and contributes regularly to CNBC, Fox Business, and CNN on markets and policy. The Cold Hard Truth book series with Penguin Random House Canada extends the same operating philosophy into personal finance, family business, and money behaviour. What organisations buy with him is the cold-eyed view of their own pitch. He treats a business the way a professional allocator does, judging it by cash, defensibility, and the quality of the operator, and he applies that lens with the bluntness that built the on-screen persona and the off-screen track record. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founder discipline Investment decision-making and capital allocation Venture investing and start-up evaluation Personal finance and financial literacy Economic and market commentary Business media and brand building Ideal for CEOs and founders preparing for fundraising, M&A, or a strategic capital event Boards and senior investment teams looking at portfolio discipline and venture exposure Sales conferences and channel events where the audience is operating against revenue and unit-economics targets Banking, wealth management, and financial services audiences working with entrepreneur clients Audience outcomes A working sense of how a professional investor reads a pitch in the first three minutes. Sharper questions about cash conversion, defensibility, and operator quality inside their own portfolio or business unit. A direct, sometimes contrarian view of where capital is moving across sectors. Practical financial literacy points that hold up across a mixed audience of executives and front-line staff.

Why organisations work with Kimberly Bryant She built Black Girls CODE from a single San Francisco workshop into an organisation that reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, which gives her concrete authority on what scales in early-career technical pipeline work and what does not. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures, puts her in active deal flow with founders working in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, so her view of inclusive innovation is grounded in capital decisions, not advocacy. The Black Girlboss Paradox is her own framework for the specific leadership progression problem Black women hit at senior levels, and it gives audiences a usable concept rather than a general DEI message. A 20-plus year engineering career at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer means she can hold a serious conversation with technical leaders about pipeline, R&D culture, and progression in regulated, complex organisations. Recognition by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion and a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award places her in a small group of named, vetted voices on this subject for senior audiences. Biography highlights Founder, Black Girls CODE (2011), reaching more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa. Founder and CEO, Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, based in Memphis on the historic Griggs College campus, investing in Black founders in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech. White House Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion, 2013. Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, 2014. BE Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 1989. Twenty-plus year career in engineering leadership roles at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. Forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House, autumn 2027. Biography In 2011 a Memphis-born electrical engineer ran a coding workshop for fourteen girls in San Francisco because her own daughter could not find a class that looked like her. The workshop became Black Girls CODE. Inside a decade it had reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, with Smithsonian and White House recognition attached. Kimberly Bryant came to that work after twenty years as an engineering manager inside Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. That matters for buyers, because her view of inclusion is shaped by R&D budgets, validation cycles, and Fortune 100 promotion ladders, not by the language of advocacy alone. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, is based on the historic Griggs College campus in her hometown of Memphis. The fund writes cheques into Black-led companies in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, which keeps her thesis on inclusive innovation tied to live capital decisions. The framework she now brings to senior audiences is the Black Girlboss Paradox: the structural reason Black women who reach the threshold of executive power encounter heightened scrutiny, narrower capital access, and confinement to lower-leverage roles. It is also the subject of her forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, from Tiny Reparations Books at Penguin Random House, due in autumn 2027. Key speaking topics Institutional accountability in leadership Inclusive innovation and venture capital Founder journeys and entrepreneurship at scale Black women’s leadership progression and the Black Girlboss Paradox Organisational design and who holds power Inclusive AI development and AI for social impact Ideal for CHROs and chief diversity officers responsible for moving senior representation, not just hiring numbers Boards and executive teams reviewing the credibility of their inclusion strategy Heads of innovation, R&D, and venture units allocating capital to underrepresented founders Women in leadership programmes, particularly those focused on senior progression for women of colour Audience outcomes A clear, named framework, the Black Girlboss Paradox, for the leadership-progression problem that generic DEI language misses A practitioner view of what scales in tech-equity work, drawn from running an organisation that reached 100,000 students Specific signals to apply when assessing inclusive innovation strategies, sourced from active venture practice A re-set on the difference between access initiatives and structural change in promotion, capital, and culture

Why organisations work with Kirstie Allsopp Twenty-five years of unbroken primetime presence on Channel 4 means audiences arrive already familiar with her, which shortens the warm-up phase of any event and lifts the room from the first minute. She runs her own production company, Raise the Roof, and her own product range, so she briefs as a working businesswoman rather than as talent reading lines, and questions on retail, brand and property land with substance. Property, home and consumer behaviour are the core subjects she has covered on screen since 2000, which makes her a natural fit for property, housebuilding, retail, lifestyle, charity and DIY brand audiences without needing a forced bridge. A direct, unscripted on-stage style. She is comfortable with live Q and A, off-the-cuff interviewing of executives, and the kind of room where a guarded host would stall. Sustained ambassadorship of Home-Start UK gives her credibility with charity galas and corporate-foundation audiences where a frivolous host would jar. Biography highlights Co-presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location with Phil Spencer since the show’s launch in 2000. Co-founder of Raise the Roof Productions, the Glasgow-based independent television company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series. Founder in 1996 of Kirmir, a high-end home search agency operating in central and west London. Author of Kirstie’s Homemade Home, Kirstie’s Vintage Home, Kirstie Allsopp Craft and Kirstie’s Christmas Crafts, all published by Hachette. Creator and presenter of the Kirstie’s craft franchise on Channel 4, including Handmade Britain, Vintage Home, Celebrity Craft Masters and House of Craft. Long-standing ambassador for Home-Start UK. Biography Location, Location, Location launched on Channel 4 in 2000. More than two decades and forty series later, it is still on air, still presented by the same two people, and still one of the most reliable property formats in British television. Kirstie Allsopp has been one half of that pairing since the first episode. The career around it is broader than the show. She founded Kirmir, a central and west London home search agency, in 1996, four years before the cameras arrived. She co-founded Raise the Roof Productions, the independent company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series, and sits inside the business as co-owner rather than as on-screen talent. Her published work with Hachette covers homes, vintage interiors and craft, and her Channel 4 craft franchise has run alongside the property work for more than a decade. For corporate audiences, the relevance is practical. She has spent twenty-five years interviewing buyers, sellers, retailers and small producers in front of a national audience, and she has run her own businesses across property, production and product. That gives her a working vocabulary for retail, property, brand and consumer behaviour that most television hosts do not carry. On stage she is direct, fluent without a script, and at ease with live audiences, which is the qualification that matters most when an organisation hands a host the room for an evening. She is also a sustained ambassador for Home-Start UK, the family-support charity, and her fundraising work there gives her credibility in charity-led and corporate-foundation settings where a purely entertainment host would feel mismatched. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and corporate compering After-dinner presence Property and the UK housing market Consumer behaviour in home and lifestyle British craft and small-producer retail Building a brand alongside a broadcasting career Charity event hosting Ideal for Property, housebuilding, mortgage and estate agency conferences booking a recognisable host with subject fluency Retail, lifestyle, DIY and home-furnishing brand events and awards Charity galas and corporate-foundation evenings, particularly those with a family, home or community focus After-dinner slots and awards ceremonies for senior corporate audiences who want a familiar Channel 4 face Audience outcomes A confidently paced evening where transitions, awards reads and guest interviews land cleanly Authentic engagement with property, retail and consumer-brand themes when the brief calls for them Live, unscripted interviewing of executives, winners and panellists that adds energy rather than filler Warmth and access for charity audiences where a sincere host materially affects giving and mood

Why organisations work with Kwame Onwuachi He has built an inclusive kitchen at the top of fine dining, an industry structurally hostile to it, and can speak to the practical mechanics of who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who stays. His entrepreneurial track record is concrete: multiple restaurant openings, public failure with Shaw Bijou, and the rebuild that produced Tatiana, named #1 in New York by The New York Times two years running. The Family Reunion, his annual hospitality industry summit with Salamander and Sheila Johnson, gives him standing as a convenor of the diversity conversation in food, not just a participant in it. Two best-selling books with Penguin Random House, a James Beard Rising Star Chef award, and a Food & Wine executive producer role mean his narrative is documented and credible to a corporate audience. Biography highlights James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year, 2019. Chef and owner of Tatiana at Lincoln Center, named #1 Restaurant in New York by The New York Times in 2023 and 2024, and “One to Watch” by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Author of “Notes from a Young Black Chef” (2019) and “My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef” (2022) with Penguin Random House. Founder of The Family Reunion, an annual hospitality diversity event in partnership with Salamander Hotels & Resorts. Contributing executive producer at Food & Wine; named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs. Trained at The Culinary Institute of America, Per Se, and Eleven Madison Park; Top Chef finalist. Biography The fine-dining industry has spent decades discussing diversity without changing very much about who runs its kitchens. Onwuachi is one of the few chefs operating at the top of that industry who can describe, from the inside, why that gap exists and what it takes to close it. Tatiana, his Lincoln Center restaurant, has been named the number one restaurant in New York by The New York Times for two consecutive years. His route there was not linear. He sold candy on subway platforms in the Bronx to fund a catering business, cooked on a boat serving the Deepwater Horizon clean-up crews, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked the line at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. His first solo restaurant, Shaw Bijou in Washington DC, closed within months. The James Beard Foundation named him Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019, the year his memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef” was published. The substance of his corporate work sits in what he built next. The Family Reunion, his annual industry event with Salamander Hotels & Resorts, brings together chefs and hospitality leaders to address representation in food. His cookbook “My America” reframes the question of what American cuisine actually is by tracing the Caribbean, African, and southern Black culinary lineages that produced it. As a Food & Wine contributing executive producer, he sits inside the editorial conversation rather than outside it. For a corporate audience, the value is specific. He has hired, trained, and retained an unusually diverse senior team in an industry where attrition for those workers is severe. He talks about the operational decisions that produced that outcome, not the ideology behind it. Key speaking topics Inclusion and culture in fine dining and hospitality Entrepreneurship through failure and recovery The food of the African Diaspora as American cuisine Storytelling, identity, and brand Building creative teams in exclusionary industries Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads facing pressure to move beyond programmatic inclusion Hospitality, food, and consumer brand leadership teams Founder and entrepreneur audiences working through scale and reinvention Off-sites and conferences seeking a credible voice on culture without corporate framing Audience outcomes A concrete account of what inclusive hiring and retention look like inside a high-pressure operating environment A founder’s view of public failure and the discipline required to rebuild A more honest reading of what American food culture actually is and who built it Renewed appetite for cultural specificity as a commercial asset, not a compliance category

Why organisations work with Lance Armstrong A first-person account of an integrity collapse at the top of elite sport, told without the usual euphemism. Few public figures will sit in that conversation on a corporate stage. Almost none will take unscripted questions on it. A working argument that “winning at all costs” is a leadership failure mode, drawn from the inside of the system that produced the most-litigated example of it in modern sport. Direct relevance to leaders thinking about culture risk, whistleblower dynamics, and the gap between stated values and operating norms in high-performance environments. A separate, substantive track on cancer survivorship and the building of LIVESTRONG, a foundation that has raised more than $500 million and continues operating independently of his sporting reputation. An investor’s lens on sport, fitness, health and human performance categories through Next Ventures, useful for briefs that touch consumer health, wellness, or the commercial side of endurance sport. Biography highlights Won the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, titles subsequently stripped by USADA in 2012 and not reallocated by the UCI. Diagnosed with stage-three testicular cancer in 1996, with metastases to lung and brain; returned to professional cycling after treatment. Founder of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, now LIVESTRONG, which has raised more than $500 million in support of people affected by cancer. Confessed publicly to long-term doping in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013, having previously denied the allegations under oath and in litigation. Founder and managing partner of Next Ventures, a venture firm focused on sport, fitness, nutrition and human performance, with earlier personal investments in Uber and DocuSign. Host of THEMOVE and THE FORWARD podcasts on the WEDU platform; the network reports roughly 10 million annual listeners. Biography The 2012 USADA reasoned decision did not just end a cycling career. It documented, in unusual detail, how a high-performance culture had been built around systemic dishonesty, and how that culture had survived a decade of scrutiny by enrolling teammates, doctors, sponsors and the press in its maintenance. Lance Armstrong was the centre of that system. The fall, when it arrived, was institutional as well as personal. That story sits awkwardly on a corporate stage, which is part of why it is useful on one. Most failure-and-recovery talks describe a setback the speaker did not cause. This one does not. Armstrong’s argument, when he is on the right brief, is that a “win at all costs” operating norm is a leadership failure mode rather than a leadership style, and that the costs are paid by people other than the person at the top long before they are paid by the leader. The other side of the public record is also real. The Lance Armstrong Foundation, founded after his 1996 cancer diagnosis and now LIVESTRONG, has raised more than $500 million for survivorship work and continues to operate independently of his sporting reputation. As an investor, he was an early backer of Uber and DocuSign and now runs Next Ventures, a fund focused on sport, fitness and human performance. WEDU, his media platform, hosts THEMOVE and THE FORWARD, two of the more durable podcasts in endurance sport. For audiences willing to engage with the uncomfortable parts, Armstrong is one of the few speakers who can hold a serious adult conversation about reputational collapse, accountability, and what is and is not possible to rebuild after it. The right brief is honest, the right format is fireside or moderated Q&A, and the right room is one that wants substance rather than redemption theatre. Key speaking topics Win-at-all-costs cultures and the leadership cost of them Accountability after public failure Self-leadership under sustained pressure Cancer survivorship and the LIVESTRONG story High-performance teams and the dynamics of dissent Reputation, recovery and the long arc after a public shock Investing in sport, fitness and human performance categories Ideal for CEOs, boards and senior leadership teams interested in culture risk and the gap between stated values and operating norms Executive offsites and leadership development programmes addressing decision-making under pressure Health, wellness, sport and consumer-brand audiences with a survivorship or human performance angle Conferences willing to host an unscripted, on-the-record conversation about institutional failure rather than a polished keynote Audience outcomes A first-person view of how high-performance cultures normalise compromise long before any single decision goes wrong A frank account of what changed, and what did not, after public confession and the loss of a sporting career A clearer sense of what genuine accountability sounds like in practice, distinct from public-relations recovery language An honest portrait of survivorship work through the LIVESTRONG story, separated from the sporting record

Why organisations work with Linda Mabhena-Olagunju She has actually built and operates a 244MW utility-scale wind farm in the Northern Cape, not advised on one. Her authority on the energy transition comes from owning the asset, raising the capital, and running it. A legal foundation in oil and gas law from Aberdeen, applied to renewable energy operations in Africa. That sequence gives her a sharper view than most operators on how regulation, project finance, and offtake contracts actually shape what gets built. Direct line of sight on what local ownership looks like in practice. DLO acquired the engineering services and operations capability behind its plants, making it the rare African IPP with both equity and technical control. Sits at the table where African energy policy is shaped: advisor to South Africa’s Minister of Energy, University of Oxford International Advisory Board, founder of the DLO Africa Power Roundtable. Recognised by named bodies, not bureau hype: Choiseul 100 (multi-year), Forbes Woman Africa, CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award, Veuve Clicquot. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, DLO Energy Resources Group, owner and operator of a 244MW wind farm in South Africa’s Northern Cape. LLB, University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List); LLM in International Commercial Law with oil and gas specialisation, University of Aberdeen (First Class). Admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Member of the University of Oxford International Advisory Board since 2018. External contributor to Institut Montaigne on African energy and infrastructure. Recognition: Choiseul 100 Africa Economic Leaders for Tomorrow (multi-year); Forbes Woman Africa Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award; Veuve Clicquot Businesswomen Award; Oprah Power List of 20 most powerful women in Africa. Biography Africa’s renewable energy build-out is shaped less by technology than by who can hold a project together long enough to reach financial close. DLO Energy Resources Group, founded by Linda Mabhena-Olagunju and now the operator of a 244MW wind farm in the Northern Cape, is one of the few independent power producers on the continent that owns both the equity and the engineering capability behind its assets. Her route into the sector is unusual. She read law at the University of Cape Town, then took an LLM in International Commercial Law at Aberdeen with a specialism in oil and gas. She is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. That legal grounding, in the contracts and regulation that govern energy projects, is what allowed DLO to acquire an EPC and O&M operation and bring operational control in-house, a step most African IPPs never take. The recognition has followed the work, not the other way round. The Choiseul 100 has listed her among Africa’s economic leaders of tomorrow across multiple years. Forbes Woman Africa named her Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC named her Young Business Leader for Southern Africa. She sits on the University of Oxford International Advisory Board, contributes to Institut Montaigne on African energy policy, and advises the South African Minister of Energy. For audiences working on energy transition strategy, climate-related disclosures, or capital allocation to emerging markets, she is one of the very small group who can describe the path from policy ambition to a generating asset, with the receipts to back it up. Key speaking topics Africa’s energy transition Renewable energy project finance and ownership Independent power producers in emerging markets Local content and black ownership in energy Women in energy and infrastructure Climate policy and capital allocation in Africa Ideal for Boards and investment committees with African or emerging-market energy exposure CFOs, treasury, and capital allocators reviewing climate transition strategy Energy, utilities, and infrastructure executives planning African projects DEI sponsors and women-in-leadership programmes in capital-intensive sectors Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes for an African renewable project to reach financial close, told by someone who has done it. A working understanding of where policy ambition on energy transition diverges from project finance reality on the continent. Concrete answers on how local ownership, EPC control, and offtake structures change the economics of a generation asset. A sharper view of where African renewable capacity is actually being built, by whom, and at what cost of capital.

Why organisations work with Liz Earle A 30-year track record as a trusted public voice on women’s health, built through ITV’s This Morning, more than 30 books, and the Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine and podcast Authorship of The Good Menopause Guide and the Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller A Better Second Half, giving her a defined body of work that women’s networks and ERGs already recognise Co-founder credibility from Liz Earle Beauty Co., a brand she built with Kim Buckland from 1995 and sold to Avon in 2010, is useful for entrepreneurship and women-led business audiences An MBE for services to business and ambassador roles with The Menopause Charity and The Soil Association, evidence that she is taken seriously beyond the consumer brand Hosting fluency that lets her chair panels, lead Q&A, and run on-stage conversations on health and sustainability, not only delivers a fixed keynote Biography highlights Co-founder, Liz Earle Beauty Co. (1995, sold to Avon in 2010) Founder, Liz Earle Wellbeing (magazine, podcast, digital platform) Author of more than 30 books, including The Good Menopause Guide and A Better Second Half (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller) MBE for services to business; Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Portsmouth University and Staffordshire University Long-running broadcaster on ITV’s This Morning since the late 1980s; podcast host of the Liz Earle Wellbeing Show Ambassador, The Menopause Charity; founder of the LiveTwice charity Biography Most large employers now agree that menopause is a workplace issue. Far fewer have a credible voice that women in their forties and fifties will actually listen to. That is the gap Liz Earle has spent three decades filling on national television and in print, and increasingly inside corporate audiences. Earle co-founded Liz Earle Beauty Co. with Kim Buckland in 1995 and sold the business to Avon in 2010, by which point the brand had become a benchmark for botanical, ethically sourced skincare. She left the company in 2017 and built Liz Earle Wellbeing into a magazine, podcast and publishing platform focused on midlife women’s health. Her writing extends the same authority. The Good Menopause Guide became a defining popular reference on the subject, and A Better Second Half reached No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list, with more than 30 books behind it on nutrition, beauty and women’s health. She holds an MBE for services to business and Honorary Doctorates of Law from Portsmouth and Staffordshire. For an audience of senior HR leaders, women’s network sponsors or wellbeing buyers, what Earle offers is rare in the speaker market: a public figure with the longevity, broadcast skill and named body of work to make a women’s health agenda land inside an organisation, rather than another clinical talk that the people most affected will not show up to. Key speaking topics Menopause and midlife women’s health Wellbeing and healthy ageing Women in business and entrepreneurship Nutrition and gut health Sustainable and ethical sourcing Building a consumer brand and a trusted public profile Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI, and women’s network sponsors are building menopause and midlife policies Employee wellbeing leads and benefits buyers commissioning credible women’s health programming Female-leadership conferences, ERG summits, International Women’s Day platforms Consumer brands and retailers seeking a trusted host or panel chair on health, beauty or sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer view of menopause as a workplace and leadership issue, not only a personal health one Practical, evidence-grounded reference points on midlife health that audiences can act on without clinical jargon Confidence that women’s health content has been delivered by a voice their workforce already trusts A more honest conversation about ageing, energy, and performance for women in senior roles

Why organisations work with Liz Jackson She has been on both sides of the table: founder of a B2B marketing firm she ran for 17 years, and now Sales & Marketing Director at M&A advisor BCMS, where she works with owner-managers through valuation, growth-to-sale, and the transition into life after exit. She runs The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have already sold their companies through BCMS. Few speakers can draw on a live, operational community of post-exit founders for their material. Her credibility on resilience is earned, not borrowed. She lost her sight at 25, the same year she founded Great Guns Marketing, and built the business into a multi-site national operation while blind. The MBE in 2007 was for services to business, not for personal story. She turns the conversation about disability and inclusion into a problem-solving conversation. Her framing, that disabled people develop unusually strong problem-solving instincts because they have had to, gives leadership teams a sharper lens on adversity and capability than the standard inclusion talk. Biography highlights MBE, 2007, for services to business Honorary doctorate, Staffordshire University, 2012 Founder, Great Guns Marketing, a national B2B telemarketing business she led for 17 years Sales & Marketing Director, BCMS (Initium Corporate Finance), advising owner-managers on sale and transition Host of The Fellows Group, a network of 200+ entrepreneurs who have exited their businesses through BCMS Featured on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire Author of StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall Biography Great Guns Marketing was launched in 1998 by a 25-year-old with no degree, a £1,000 grant and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. The same year, its founder lost her sight. Over the next 17 years the business grew into one of the UK’s leading B2B telemarketing firms, with offices across England, Scotland and Ireland. That arc is the foundation of Liz Jackson’s commercial credibility, but it is no longer her main subject. As Sales & Marketing Director at BCMS, the M&A advisor for owner-managed businesses, she now sits inside the transactions she once would have been on the other side of, coaching founders through valuation, growth-to-sale and the life that begins the day the cheque clears. She also hosts The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have exited their companies through BCMS. It gives her a working evidence base on what actually changes for founders after a sale, the parts that are well rehearsed and the parts that are not. That material sits behind her work on entrepreneurship, growth strategy and exit planning, and it is what distinguishes her from speakers whose entrepreneurial story stopped at the founding moment. Jackson’s MBE, awarded in 2007 for services to business, and her honorary doctorate from Staffordshire University in 2012 are the public markers of that record. The Channel 4 Secret Millionaire appearance and her book StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall, are the points where her story has reached a broader audience. Inside a leadership room, her sharpest material is on how owner-managers can run a business now with the discipline of a business that will one day be sold. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Growth strategy for owner-managed businesses Sale readiness and post-exit transition Sales and B2B customer acquisition Resilience and adversity in business building Disability, problem-solving and inclusion Networking and founder community Ideal for Owner-managers, founders and shareholder-directors of mid-market businesses M&A advisors, private equity portfolio companies and corporate finance audiences Sales and commercial leadership teams in B2B businesses DEI and leadership audiences seeking a substantive voice on disability and capability Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what running a business “to be sold” actually looks like operationally, not just financially Specific insight from a network of 200+ post-exit founders on what makes the transition succeed or fail A sharper framing of disability and adversity as a source of commercial problem-solving capability A direct account of how a national B2B business was built, and sustained, by a founder operating without sight