Clive Branson
Most wellbeing programmes can name the statistics. Very few put anyone in front of staff who can describe, without flinching, what an acute mental health crisis actually feels like from the inside, and what managers and colleagues got right or wrong. That gap between policy language and lived reality is where engagement stalls, disclosure rates stay low, and line managers default to silence.
Clive Branson is a mental health and resilience speaker who gives workforces a credible first-person account of surviving terminal diagnosis, suicidal crisis, and return to function, drawing on a prior career in Royal Air Force service and seventeen years in Ministry of Defence industrial relations.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Clive Branson
- He gives wellbeing and safety teams something internal communications cannot produce: an unsentimental first-person account of suicidal crisis and psychiatric admission, delivered by someone who spent seventeen years on the employer side of workplace duty-of-care conversations.
- His professional background in Ministry of Defence industrial relations means he speaks the language of HR, health and safety, and line managers rather than clinical or motivational language.
- He carries three concurrent diagnoses, Motor Neurone Disease, Stage Two prostate cancer, and acute anxiety, and talks about functioning through them rather than recovering from them. Audiences dealing with long-term illness in colleagues recognise the reality he describes.
- He has been trusted inside HM Prison Service settings as well as corporate audiences such as Network Rail, Ecolab and Guy Carpenter, which tells a booker he holds a room across very different registers.
Biography highlights
- Three years Royal Air Force service, followed by seventeen years in UK Ministry of Defence Industrial Relations.
- Founded and ran a health and safety consultancy before health challenges forced him to step back.
- Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in late 2017 and subsequently with Stage Two prostate cancer.
- Seven-week inpatient admission across two psychiatric hospitals for acute anxiety and suicidal ideation.
- Featured speaker at CarFest in 2022 and 2023.
- Delivers talks voluntarily inside HM Prison Service and to corporate audiences including Network Rail, Ecolab, Intermediate Capital Group, Guy Carpenter and Tindall Riley.
Biography
Most corporate mental health content is written by people who have read the research. Branson sat on the other side of the table for nearly two decades. In Ministry of Defence industrial relations he handled the employer-side conversations about employment law, occupational health and the human condition at work, which is to say he knew the policy apparatus before he needed any of it.
In late 2017 he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. A Stage Two prostate cancer diagnosis followed. Surgery was ruled out because of the MND. Acute anxiety took over, and he was admitted to two psychiatric hospitals for a combined seven weeks after considering suicide. He lost his father, father-in-law and mother in the same stretch of years.
What makes the talk useful to organisations is the combination of that experience with his prior role. He can describe, from the inside, what a line manager’s words actually landed as; why disclosure felt impossible; what policy language reads like to someone in crisis. He is not a clinician and does not claim to be. He is the employee that wellbeing policies are written for, who once wrote them.
He works across corporate audiences including Network Rail, Ecolab, Intermediate Capital Group and Guy Carpenter, and volunteers inside HM Prison Service. He was a featured speaker at CarFest in 2022 and 2023 and has discussed resilience on BBC Radio Shropshire. The register adjusts to the room; the underlying account does not soften.
Key speaking topics
- Workplace mental health
- Resilience under sustained adversity
- Suicide awareness and crisis disclosure
- Living and working with long-term illness
- Line manager communication in duty-of-care conversations
- Men’s mental health
- Grief and bereavement at work
Ideal for
- CHROs, wellbeing leads and health and safety directors shaping workforce mental health programmes
- Line manager and people manager development audiences
- Employee resource groups focused on men’s health, long-term illness or cancer
- Organisations marking World Mental Health Day, Men’s Health Week or Mental Health Awareness Week with an internal keynote
Audience outcomes
- A first-person account of what a suicidal crisis and psychiatric admission actually look like, from someone who once wrote workplace policy
- Specific language cues for line managers, on what helps and what closes a conversation down
- A reframing of vulnerability at work as something to surface rather than manage around
- Recognition of how long-term diagnosis reshapes an employee’s relationship with work, useful to colleagues and managers alike