Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Joy Poole Joy addresses a gap most leadership development programmes leave entirely open: not what leaders should do under pressure, but how they actually operate internally when clarity is scarce, the stakes are high, and the team is watching. Her background at Meta, in large-scale consulting environments, and across high-growth technology companies gives her a working knowledge of the specific pressures that senior audiences are navigating. As a credentialed executive coach with a practice built around leaders under sustained load, she brings a level of depth and practical tool-transfer that most leadership keynote speakers cannot replicate from the stage. The sailing narrative, crewing an ocean circumnavigation as part of a team, is not an adventure story bolted onto a leadership talk. It provides an environment in which the same principles about self-leadership under pressure have been tested and proven. Joy customises her engagements as a matter of principle. A leadership team at a fintech navigating rapid growth is not the same audience as a professional services firm managing restructuring, and she treats them accordingly. Biography highlights 20 years in senior sales, consulting and leadership roles across Google, Facebook/Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen Certified Professional Coach, Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC); Master Practitioner of the Energy Leadership Index; Transitions Dynamics Specialist Executive Programme certificates from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics Speaker at internal leadership forums for Meta and at industry conferences across technology, media, and financial services Completed a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation – her second parallel environment for testing how leaders perform when conditions are extreme Biography Senior leadership in fast-moving technology and consulting organisations teaches you a great deal about performance under pressure. It teaches you rather less about what is actually happening inside a leader while all of that performance is required. Joy Poole spent two decades at the centre of that tension in senior roles at Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen, before building a practice around the gap she identified. Her core argument is precise: when organisations face uncertainty, change, or sustained pressure, the variable that most determines leadership quality is not expertise or experience alone. It is how clearly and calmly a leader can operate within themselves; how they think when the picture is incomplete, how they make decisions when there is no clean answer, and how they show up for their teams while also carrying their own uncertainty. This is self-leadership, and she treats it as a practical capability, not a motivational concept. Joy holds executive credentials from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics alongside certification from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. She brings to the stage what most leadership speakers cannot: a decade of operational experience at genuine scale, combined with years of coaching senior executives through exactly the internal dynamics she speaks about. An unusual secondary proof point sits alongside her professional record. Joy is currently completing a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation; an environment that applies the same conditions her leadership audiences face, stripped to their essentials. The lessons from both settings reinforce the same argument: what determines performance under pressure is not position or preparation. It is the quality of self-leadership. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure and uncertainty Decision-making in ambiguous conditions Composure and credibility under sustained organisational load Leadership during restructuring and change Confidence and presence for senior leaders Trust as a leadership capability Ideal for HR and L&D directors commissioning leadership development sessions for offsites, internal forums, or away-days during periods of significant organisational change: restructuring, reorganisation, or high-growth phases Executive and senior leadership programme managers looking for a session that is grounded and practical rather than motivational Senior leadership teams in technology, financial services, professional services, and consulting where pace and pressure are structural features of the environment Audience outcomes A clearer, more honest account of how they actually operate under pressure, not how they think they should operate Practical tools for improving self-leadership composure in high-stakes situations that can be applied immediately A reframe of uncertainty and incomplete information as conditions to be navigated rather than problems to be solved Greater understanding of how their own internal state affects team performance and organisational credibility A shared vocabulary for a leadership conversation that most organisations do not currently have language for

Why organisations work with Caroline Elliott Crisis decision-making earned in real avalanche rescues. Caroline has been on the team making the call when a four-year-old was buried under two metres of snow and the survival window was eighteen minutes. A rare set of named technical credentials inside a closed European emergency system: the only British woman fully qualified across French ski patrol rescue disciplines, the first British woman in a French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit, and a graduate of ENSA Chamonix. Direct experience of multi-agency coordination when none of the agencies have worked together before. Most leadership audiences understand the problem in theory; few have heard it explained by someone who has run it. Practical content on psychological safety and team performance, drawn from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in survival rates. A track record of operating across language and cultural barriers inside a male-led emergency profession in France, told without standard motivational packaging. Biography highlights Only British woman to hold the full pisteur secouriste 2ème degré qualification, including avalanche bombing, NivoMétéo snow weather forecasting and avalanche dog handling. Graduate of École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA), Chamonix, 2011. First British woman to enter a French Fire and Rescue specialist mountain Search and Rescue dog handler unit (CGSR 64, Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Author of Fjord’s Mountain Mission (2021), the children’s snow safety book endorsed by the International Ski Federation (FIS). French edition published by Catherine Destivelle’s Les Éditions du Mont Blanc; the book is available in four languages. Holds the artificier qualification with ANENA (Association Nationale pour l’Étude de la Neige et des Avalanches) and the NivoMétéo qualification with Météo France. Founder of FjordSAR. Works as an international keynote speaker, snow safety educator, and risk management consultant for wintersports accidents. Represented at the Fédération Internationale des Patrouilles de Ski (FIPS) Conference, Riksgrenzen, 2024. Biography An avalanche call gives a rescue team about eighteen minutes. After that, survival rates collapse. Caroline Elliott has spent her professional life inside that window, working as a fully qualified pisteur secouriste in France and as an avalanche search and rescue dog handler with a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain unit. That career is unusual on multiple counts. Caroline is the only British woman fully qualified across the French ski patrol rescue system, graduating from the École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme (ENSA) in Chamonix in 2011. Alongside the patrol qualification, she holds artificier accreditation with ANENA, the French authority on controlled avalanche blasting, and NivoMétéo accreditation with Météo France. She was also the first British woman to enter a specialist French Fire and Rescue mountain SAR dog handler unit. What this profession teaches, and what makes it useful in a corporate setting, is the operating reality of high-stakes environments. Teams making the decisions are often working with incomplete information and across services that have never worked together. Communication has to be clear in two languages. Trust between strangers has to be operational before the rescue starts. For corporate audiences, Caroline translates those operating conditions into team performance terms, particularly composure under pressure and the communication discipline that holds when conditions deteriorate. Her illustrations come straight from the work. An early-morning controlled blast above a sleeping resort. A family rescue where the four-year-old came up alive after two hours under two metres of snow. A multi-agency operation where command authority had to be established in real time. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-pressure environments Crisis communication under stress Risk management and decision-making under uncertainty Multi-agency coordination in crisis Resilience in hazardous environments Psychological safety in high-stakes teams Women in male-led professional cultures Ideal for Leadership and operational teams in industries where decisions carry real risk, particularly emergency services, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, defence and insurance. Organisations preparing teams for restructuring, multi-agency programmes, or environments where cross-silo coordination has to work the first time it is tested. All-staff and conference audiences at events on resilience, crisis leadership, and team performance under pressure. Women-in-leadership programmes inside male-led professional cultures. Audience outcomes A specific picture of how decisions actually get made when time pressure is genuine, drawn from named operational scenarios rather than case study reconstructions. Concrete tests for whether their own team’s communication and coordination would hold when conditions deteriorate. A view of psychological safety as an operational variable, grounded in environments where it functions or fails in real time. Renewed energy and a different reference point for what “high pressure” actually means in their own work.

Why organisations work with Dr Sue Mitchell Her PEP framework gives leaders a portable and memorable model for navigating uncertainty – field-tested across sectors from global pharma to policing, and consistently recalled by participants months after delivery. Her background in evolutionary ecology – studying adaptive strategies across complex, dynamic systems – informs an analytical approach to leadership that goes beyond behavioural coaching, connecting individual mindset to systemic structures. She completed training with Peter Senge in Compassionate Systems Leadership, giving her work a rigorous intellectual foundation that distinguishes her from practitioners working from applied psychology or HR frameworks alone. Her concept of “inner sustainability” reframes resilience as a proactive leadership capacity rather than a reactive stress-management tool – a distinction that senior leaders in high-change environments find practically useful. Biography highlights PhD in evolutionary ecology; post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh and a Max Planck Institute, Germany Trained in Compassionate Systems Leadership with Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline Author, The Authority Guide to Engaging Your People (SRA Books) Founder and Director, Aeona Ltd; clients include EY, Lloyds Banking Group, Bayer, Gilead Sciences, Scottish Enterprise, and Police Scotland Fellow and former Regional President (Scotland, 2019–2020), Professional Speaking Association UK & Ireland Co-founder, IDG Edinburgh Resilience Hub – applying the Inner Development Goals framework to leadership and organisational change Biography When engagement falls and burnout rises, the root cause is rarely individual. It is usually a leadership culture that was built for stability and has not been redesigned for permanent disruption. Dr Sue Mitchell has spent two decades helping organisations close that gap. Her starting point is unusual. Before moving into coaching and leadership development, she was an evolutionary ecologist, with post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh and a Max Planck Institute in Germany. The discipline – studying how organisms sustain effective strategies across dynamic, interconnected systems – gave her a framework for understanding organisations that is structurally different from standard behavioural models. She later trained with Peter Senge in Compassionate Systems Leadership, deepening that foundation. That systems perspective runs through her proprietary PEP framework: a practical model for helping leaders maintain clarity, commitment and adaptability under pressure. It has been delivered across a client base that includes EY, Lloyds Banking Group, Gilead Sciences, Bayer, Scottish Enterprise, and Police Scotland. More recently, she co-founded the IDG Edinburgh Resilience Hub, bringing the Inner Development Goals framework – developed as a companion to the UN Sustainable Development Goals – into leadership and organisational practice. She is the author of The Authority Guide to Engaging Your People (SRA Books) and a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK & Ireland, where she served as Regional President for Scotland. Through Aeona, her Edinburgh-based consultancy, she works across keynote speaking, executive coaching, and multiday leadership development programmes. Key speaking topics Adaptable leadership Navigating change and uncertainty Employee engagement and sustainable performance Systems thinking in organisations Organisational resilience Inner sustainability and mindset Diversity, decision-making and team dynamics Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating restructure, sustained organisational change, or rapid growth HR directors and heads of OD commissioning leadership development programmes or all-staff development events Organisations in professional services, financial services, life sciences, or public sector seeking structured leadership development programmes Mid-to-senior management cohorts where engagement, performance, and wellbeing are competing tensions Audience outcomes A portable framework (PEP) for managing their own mindset and their team’s behaviour through uncertainty and change Clearer understanding of how unconscious mental models shape decision-making under pressure – and how to intervene A common language for discussing change, resilience and engagement across a leadership group Practical tools for sustaining performance without trading off wellbeing Greater awareness of how organisational systems and structures – not just individual behaviour – drive or undermine engagement

Why organisations work with Sarah Furness The H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) formula gives leaders a structured, repeatable system for sustaining performance under pressure – not a set of principles, but a behavioural methodology built from combat aviation and formal human factors instruction. Her “Practise Scared” methodology reframes discomfort as a development mechanism directly addressing the conditions under which most leadership training fails to stick. Her argument in The Uni-tasking Revolution, that focus is a competitive performance variable that organisations are systematically destroying through multitasking culture, gives senior teams a specific, actionable lens for redesigning how work gets done. She brings an instructor’s precision, not only a practitioner’s story: she taught human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, which means the frameworks she delivers have been built and tested in a formal training environment, not assembled retrospectively for a speaking career. Her status as the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq is not a biographical detail, it is evidence of what her approach to fear, credibility, and inclusion in high-performance cultures actually looks like in practice. Biography highlights RAF Squadron Leader; approximately 20 years of service including operational combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan First female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq Graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University (Natural Sciences and Theology) Instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham Creator of the H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) performance framework and the “Practise Scared” methodology Author of two Amazon no.1 bestselling books: Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution Founder of Well Be It, an executive coaching and leadership development practice (est. 2020) Qualified mindfulness coach and human factors facilitator; trained in cognitive behavioural techniques Biography Most performance under pressure research stays theoretical. Sarah Furness spent two decades testing it as a Cambridge-educated RAF helicopter pilot, then as a Squadron Leader leading combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then as the first female pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq. That operational record informs everything she brings to organisations. But it is not the point of the work. The point is that she identified, in conditions of genuine risk, that resilience and performance under pressure are not instinctive. They are skills. And skills can be built. This observation – simple in articulation, significant in implication – is the foundation of her H.A.B.I.T.S. framework and her “Practise Scared” methodology, both of which sit at the centre of her leadership development work. Before founding Well Be It in 2020, Furness formalised that thinking as an instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK. That background gives her frameworks a rigour that distinguishes them from testimony alone: these are methods that were built in a professional military training environment before they were taken to the boardroom. Her two no.1 bestselling books, Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution, extend the argument into self-leadership and organisational focus respectively. Together, they represent a coherent intellectual position: that the gap between how capable leaders look and how they actually perform under pressure is a structural problem, and that closing it requires deliberate behavioural practice, not motivation. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Resilience and mental performance Human factors in high-stakes decision-making Focus, attention, and uni-tasking as a performance strategy Psychological safety and growth culture Inclusive leadership and leading in the new era Decision-making and gut instinct under pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-stakes change or transformation CHROs and L&D leaders building performance and resilience programmes Executive development audiences where the gap between visible capability and felt confidence is a recognised issue Organisations in sectors where pressure, speed, and accountability are structural features – professional services, financial services, defence, manufacturing, engineering Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why performance under pressure is a trainable skill, not a personality trait, with a framework for developing it Practical application of the H.A.B.I.T.S. formula and “Practise Scared” methodology to real workplace conditions A concrete argument for redesigning how attention and focus are managed at team and organisational level Greater leader confidence in decision-making under time pressure and ambiguity A reframe of fear, failure, and discomfort as development data rather than performance problems

Why organisations work with Anna Hemmings A high-performance specialist with a six-time world champion’s record behind her. Fifteen years coaching senior teams, with a method built as much on the psychology of performance as on sport. She has reached the top, lost it, and got back. Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at her competitive peak and told she would not race again, she returned to win three more world titles. That comeback is how she teaches recovery as a performance strategy rather than a wellbeing exercise. Her focus is the repeat, not the one-off peak. She works on the behaviours and culture that let teams perform at the highest level and hold it year after year, which is the question most leadership teams actually face. Accredited delivery that runs past the keynote. As a qualified high-performance and leadership coach and an accredited Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer, she takes leadership teams at IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, and NatWest through masterclasses and team development. Biography highlights Six-time Marathon Kayak World Champion, including three consecutive titles from 2005 to 2007; Britain’s most successful female marathon kayaker. Two-time Olympian for Great Britain: Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008. MBE, 2010 New Year Honours, for services to sport. Founder and Managing Director of Beyond the Barriers, a high-performance consultancy she has run since 2009. Accredited High Performance and Leadership Coach and accredited Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer. Has now spent as long developing senior leaders and teams as she spent competing, with clients including IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, British Airways, and NatWest. Biography Reaching the top of a field is hard. Staying there, year after year, while the pressure becomes permanent, is harder, and it is the problem most leadership teams underestimate. It is also the one Anna Hemmings spent her sporting career solving in public. She won six marathon kayak world titles, three of them in consecutive years, and competed at two Olympic Games. The detail that matters most came in between. Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at her peak and told she might not race again, she came back to win three more world titles and qualify for Beijing 2008. She treats that comeback as evidence that recovery can be engineered as a performance strategy. The second half of her career has now run longer than the first. Since 2009 she has built Beyond the Barriers into a high-performance consultancy, coaching senior leaders and teams at IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, and NatWest. Her method pairs what works at elite level with an applied reading of human behaviour and the psychology of performance. That is why it holds up with executives who have no interest in sport. She is an accredited high-performance and leadership coach and a Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer, so her work runs from keynote into masterclass and team development. She has now spent more years coaching leaders and teams than she spent winning titles, and that is the half of the story that earns her the room. Key speaking topics Achieving and sustaining high performance High-performance culture and world-class teams Resilience and performance under pressure Recovery and refocus as a performance strategy Mindset for thriving under constant demand Leadership and high-performing teams Ideal for Executive and leadership teams under pressure to perform at a high level and repeat it CEOs and senior leaders who have reached a peak and need to sustain it without burning out the team Sales and commercial leadership operating in demanding, target-driven cycles HR and L&D leads designing high-performance and leadership development programmes Audience outcomes What it actually takes to reach a high level and hold it, beyond a single peak The specific behaviours that separate the best teams from the merely good Recovery and refocus methods they can use under pressure, treated as a performance tool, not a wellbeing add-on A first-hand account of being written off at her peak and coming back, used as working material on how resilience is built Language for talking about high performance and its disciplines with their own teams

Why organisations work with Albert Riba A five-book catalogue spanning twelve years, from Mamut o Sapiens (2013) to Mamut o Humanoide (2025), gives clients a sustained body of writing to reference rather than a one-off keynote thesis. The Expansión column, monthly since September 2012, anchors his material inside the conversation Spanish-speaking executives are already reading. The combination of InPreneur (entrepreneurial culture inside corporations) and Sapiens Mindset (founded March 2019) gives him two distinct delivery vehicles for different client problems. Twenty-plus years of technology-sector operating experience, including a decade leading Kinetical Business and a partnership at Innova B2B, gives the mindset material commercial grounding rather than purely motivational framing. Bilingual English and Spanish delivery makes him particularly useful for Spanish, Latin American and pan-European leadership events where a regional voice is required alongside Anglo-American content. Biography highlights Founder of InPreneur and Sapiens Mindset (established March 2019) Author of five books including Mamut o Sapiens (2013) and Mamut o Humanoide (2025) Monthly opinion columnist in Expansión since September 2012 Twenty-plus years in the technology sector; former leader of Kinetical Business; partner at Innova B2B Regular radio contributor on Rac1, RNE R4, Catalunya Ràdio and Cadena Ser Catalunya Three master’s degrees in technology-related fields Biography The book Albert Riba is most associated with, Mamut o Sapiens, carries his argument in the title: organisations either adapt or they extinct themselves. Over the past twelve years he has extended that thesis across a five-book catalogue, from the 2013 original to Mamut o Humanoide: De la extinción a la IA in 2025. The books are in Spanish and circulate mostly through Spanish-language corporate audiences, but the underlying frame, entrepreneurial mindset applied to incumbent organisations, translates cleanly into English delivery. He runs two linked vehicles. InPreneur is his intrapreneurship advisory, focused on building entrepreneurial behaviour inside corporations, and Sapiens Mindset, founded in March 2019, delivers his keynote and coaching work on mindset and adaptation. Earlier in his career he led Kinetical Business for a decade and continues as a partner in the Innova B2B technology company, which gives the material its operating base. His public presence in Spain is longer-standing than his international bureau listing suggests. He has written a monthly opinion column in Expansión, Spain’s leading business daily, since September 2012, and contributes regularly to Rac1, RNE R4, Catalunya Ràdio and Cadena Ser Catalunya. His personal story of late academic start, three subsequent master’s degrees and a twenty-plus year technology career often shows up in his speaking work as a live illustration of the adaptation thesis. For Spanish, Latin American and European leadership audiences looking for a mindset and intrapreneurship voice with a published track record, a working corporate practice and a current column in Expansión, Riba sits inside a small group of regional thinkers who operate fluently in both English and Spanish. Key speaking topics Mindset and adaptation in the age of AI Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurial culture in established companies Change management and organisational transformation Digitalisation and corporate culture Resilience and burnout prevention Ancient and monastic practices applied to modern organisations Ideal for Spanish and Latin American corporate leadership audiences Pan-European events where a senior Catalan voice complements an English-language programme Technology firms and incumbents working on entrepreneurial culture and AI-driven change Leadership offsites and change programmes requiring a mindset-focused keynote Audience outcomes A working frame for adaptation and mindset change drawn from the Mamut o Sapiens and Mamut o Humanoide thesis Practical techniques for building entrepreneurial behaviour inside established organisations A Spanish-market view of digital and AI transformation A set of reference books and Expansión columns for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Ben McBean He turns disability inclusion from a compliance topic into a human conversation audiences keep having after the session ends. His recovery from catastrophic injury gives mental health and resilience messaging a weight that consultants and clinicians cannot replicate. As presenter of ITVX’s “For Crown and Country,” he has a documented public-facing body of work on race and the British Armed Forces, which makes him credible for DEI briefs that demand more than personal story. He has spoken to Chelsea FC, Lloyds Bank, JP Morgan, Ernst & Young, Vodafone, and Citigroup, so he reads corporate rooms with the same ease he reads public ones. He is comfortable with young audiences, employee resource groups, and senior leadership sessions, which lets a single booking do work across an organisation. Biography highlights Former Royal Marine, 40 Commando, medically discharged in 2010 after an IED injury in Helmand Province. Overcoming Adversity winner at The Sun Military Awards 2009 for becoming the first double amputee to finish the London Marathon. Outstanding Global Achievement Award at Britain’s Best Award 2008, presented by the Prime Minister. Rotary Young Citizen Award, 2012. Presenter, “For Crown and Country,” ITVX Fresh Cuts, 2023. Corporate client list includes Chelsea FC, Lloyds Bank, JP Morgan, Ernst & Young, Vodafone, and Citigroup. Biography An IED exploded near Kajaki Dam, Helmand Province, on 28 February 2008. Ben McBean lost his left arm and right leg and was flown home on the same aircraft as Prince Harry, who later called him the “real hero” of that flight. He was twenty years old. A year later he finished the London Marathon in six hours and twenty minutes, the first double amputee to complete the course. He did it again the following year, faster. The Sun Military Awards recognised him for Overcoming Adversity in December 2009. What McBean does for organisations now grew out of what happened after the marathons. He spent years speaking in schools, at veterans’ events, and inside companies that were trying to make inclusion and mental health feel real rather than performative. In 2023 ITVX asked him to present “For Crown and Country,” a Fresh Cuts documentary on the contribution of Black British servicemen and women, which extended his platform from personal testimony into commissioned social history. Corporate audiences at Chelsea FC, Lloyds Bank, JP Morgan, Ernst & Young, Vodafone, and Citigroup have booked him for the same reason. A policy document can tell a workforce that difference is welcome. A room full of people who have just listened to McBean walks out knowing what that looks like when it is tested. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion in the workplace Mental health and recovery from trauma Resilience after catastrophic setback Diversity, equity and inclusion Veterans’ experience and reintegration Race and representation in institutional settings Ideal for DEI leads, CHROs, and employee resource group sponsors designing inclusion programming with real behavioural reach. Wellbeing and mental health leads running Mental Health Awareness Week, wellbeing conferences, or post-crisis staff events. Learning and development teams building resilience content for managers and frontline staff. Armed Forces charities, veterans’ networks, and public sector employers convening on race, service, and belonging. Audience outcomes A sharper read on how disability and difference are actually experienced inside a team, not how policy says they should be. Permission to talk about mental health and recovery in direct language, without workplace euphemism. A human reference point audiences return to when their own setback, illness, or loss arrives. Renewed conviction that inclusion is a behaviour practised in meetings, not a statement published on an intranet.

Why organisations work with Lilah Jones She has run the room she is now coaching. Two decades inside Microsoft, Oracle, and Google Cloud, including a stint as head of corporate sales for North Central U.S., means her advice carries the weight of someone who carried a number. Her Activation Methodology gives leaders a structured way to break decision deadlock, not a pep talk. Audiences leave with a sequenced plan for the next ninety days, owned by named people. She speaks to the operator’s problem during transitions: how to keep a team executing while the strategy, structure, or leadership above them is still being rewritten. She built and led inside a sales organisation that grew Google Cloud from a standing start into one of the largest enterprise franchises in tech, and she draws her examples from that environment rather than from secondary research. Biography highlights Roughly nine years at Google, including a role on Google Cloud’s founding sales team and head of corporate sales for North Central U.S. Earlier enterprise sales and sales-management roles at Microsoft and Oracle. Adjunct faculty at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, teaching working professionals. Creator of the Activation Methodology, the framework behind The Activated Leader keynote and her eight-week Activated Leader group coaching programme. Has spoken for and worked with organisations including Microsoft, Google, HP, WISE, DePaul University, NIST, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women of Influence. Biography Most leadership programmes assume the bottleneck is skill. Inside large enterprises during a restructure or strategy reset, the bottleneck is usually decisions. Capable managers stop committing because the next layer up is still moving, and entire quarters disappear into preparation that never ships. Lilah Jones spent roughly two decades inside that environment. She joined Google Cloud’s founding sales team and later ran corporate sales for the North Central U.S., after earlier sales and management roles at Microsoft and Oracle. The through-line of that career is selling and managing while the surrounding business is being rebuilt, which is the same condition most of her clients now face. The work she does today turns that operator experience into a method. Her Activation Methodology, taught through The Activated Leader keynote and an eight-week group coaching programme, is built around a single move: getting leaders from analysis to commitment with a clear, sequenced plan and named owners. The named keynotes around it, including Courage as a Carry-On and Manage Your Blindspots, address the adjacent problems of feedback, self-advocacy, and the personal cost of stalled decisions. She also teaches, as adjunct faculty at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, and has worked with organisations including Microsoft, Google, HP, WISE, DePaul University and NIST. The audience she is most useful to is the layer of senior managers and directors who are expected to drive a transition without the authority to redesign it. Key speaking topics Leading through transitions and restructures Executive decision-making under uncertainty Sales leadership and high-performing commercial teams Psychological safety and feedback culture Career transitions for senior operators Transformation execution inside large enterprises Ideal for CROs, CCOs and sales leadership running through reorganisation, integration or new go-to-market models Heads of leadership and executive development designing programmes for director and VP populations CHROs and transformation leads running enterprise-wide change where middle-layer execution is the constraint Women in leadership networks and senior-women development programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A named method for moving a stalled leadership team from review to commitment within a defined window. Specific language for separating the decisions that need more analysis from the ones that have been ready to make for weeks. A clearer view of how feedback culture and psychological safety either accelerate or quietly block execution. Concrete examples from inside Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle of how senior leaders behave when their own ground is shifting.

Why organisations work with Karenjeet Kaur Bains She holds a Guinness World Record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, set against a male equivalent of 34) and a Commonwealth gold, which gives her claims about pressure and preparation a weight that motivational speakers without competitive credentials cannot match. She is the first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World powerlifting championships, which makes her a credible voice on what representation actually costs and produces inside an institution. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant and spent six years in audit at KPMG, so she speaks to professional services and corporate audiences in their own language rather than from outside it. She combines a primetime BBC platform as Athena on Gladiators with a serious athletic and professional record, which lands with employee networks, ERGs, and graduate populations in a way a single-track speaker rarely does. Biography highlights Commonwealth Powerlifting Champion; first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at European and World championships. Guinness World Record holder, most bodyweight squats by a woman in one minute (42 reps, 2022). ACA Chartered Accountant; six years at KPMG in audit before moving into charity finance. Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year, 2023 and 2024. Listed keynote speaker at the ICAEW Annual Conference. Biography Powerlifting is one of the smallest, most demographically narrow sports in Britain. The first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World championships is also a Commonwealth gold medallist and a Guinness World Record holder. That combination is what Karenjeet Kaur Bains brings into a room. Her route to elite strength sport ran through, not around, a professional services career. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant, spent six years at KPMG in audit, and trained for international competition in the hours either side of a working day. The Guinness record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, against a male equivalent of 34) was set in two weeks of preparation while she held a full-time charity finance role. Her account of how high performers actually structure their lives is grounded, not theoretical. Since 2024 she has appeared as Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, which has put her in front of a household audience without softening the technical seriousness of her sport. ICAEW lists her as a keynote speaker at its Annual Conference, and she has been recognised as British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year in 2023 and 2024. For HR, DEI and employee engagement leaders, the value is specific. She speaks to what it takes for someone visibly different to stay, perform, and be seen inside institutions that did not previously include her, and what employers, networks and managers can usefully do about it. Key speaking topics Representation and identity in elite environments Performance under pressure and recovery from injury South Asian women in sport and professional life Breaking cultural and gender stereotypes Resilience and the psychology of high performance Inclusive culture in professional services Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads, and employee network sponsors planning Heritage Month, IWD, or culture moments. Professional services firms briefing graduate, qualified-accountant, and women’s network audiences. Leadership and high-performance offsites looking for a credentialled athlete voice over a generic motivational one. Audience outcomes A grounded picture of what visible representation costs and produces inside an institution. A practical sense of how high performers structure preparation, recovery, and the routine work around a peak. Language for ERGs and managers on how to support employees who are first or only in their roles. A reframing of “strength”, physical and professional, that audiences can use in their own teams.

Why organisations work with Brian Burke He has run four NHL franchises and acted as the league’s chief disciplinarian, so the material on accountability, conduct, and hard personnel calls is drawn from decisions he actually made, not cases he studied. He built the Anaheim Ducks team that won the 2007 Stanley Cup and the U.S. squad that took Olympic silver in 2010, giving him a credible answer to how standards and culture translate into results. He co-founded the You Can Play Project after the death of his son Brendan, an inclusion initiative that became the operating standard for LGBTQ+ acceptance across professional sport. As first Executive Director of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association, he has worked on institution-building inside a league designed from scratch, not just running established franchises. Harvard Law School training and five years as NHL Executive Vice President mean he speaks to the legal, governance, and reputational dimensions of leadership with specific authority. Biography highlights Juris Doctor, Harvard Law School, 1981 Captain of Providence Friars men’s ice hockey, NCAA (1976-77) NHL Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations, 1993-1998 General manager of Hartford Whalers, Vancouver Canucks, Anaheim Ducks (Stanley Cup, 2007), and Toronto Maple Leafs General manager, United States men’s Olympic hockey team, Vancouver 2010 (silver medal) Co-founder, You Can Play Project (2012) Inductee, U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Class of 2023 Author, “Burke’s Law: A Life in Hockey” (Viking, 2020), with Stephen Brunt Executive Director, Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association (2024) Biography The Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007 under a front office that had been rebuilt almost from scratch. Brian Burke was the general manager who rebuilt it. That pattern, inherit a struggling operation, set hard standards, make uncomfortable personnel decisions, has defined four decades of his career across Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, Toronto, Calgary, and Pittsburgh. Before any of that, he trained as a lawyer. Burke took a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1981, then spent five years inside the NHL league office as Executive Vice President and the chief disciplinarian for on-ice conduct. The legal training shows up in how he talks about leadership: precise about process, unsentimental about accountability, aware that every decision by a senior executive is a decision the organisation will have to defend. The work changed after his son Brendan, who was openly gay, died in a 2010 car accident. With his son Patrick, Burke launched the You Can Play Project in 2012 to end homophobia in sport. The initiative has since become the reference standard for LGBTQ+ inclusion across professional leagues, and the experience gave Burke an unusually direct perspective on how cultural change happens inside organisations built around a narrow definition of toughness. His 2020 memoir “Burke’s Law: A Life in Hockey,” co-authored with Stephen Brunt, was a number one Canadian bestseller. In 2023 he was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. In 2024 he took on the first executive directorship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players’ Association, a mandate to build institutional foundations for a league being designed in real time. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-performance sport Culture, conduct, and accountability inside elite organisations Inclusion and the You Can Play Project Decision-making under public scrutiny Building and running championship teams Governance and discipline in professional leagues Resilience and personal loss Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting conduct and accountability standards CHROs and chief culture officers working on inclusion in tradition-bound organisations Leaders running high-profile operations where decisions are reviewed in public Sports and entertainment businesses, and organisations that work closely with them Audience outcomes A concrete read on how senior leaders hold conduct standards when the easy move is to look the other way Specific examples of what it took to build a Stanley Cup-winning organisation and an Olympic medal-winning team A direct account of how the You Can Play Project changed LGBTQ+ inclusion across professional sport A sharper sense of how legal, reputational, and competitive considerations collide in senior personnel decisions Perspective from a leader who has made high-consequence calls under sustained public pressure and can explain the reasoning

Why organisations work with Mallory Weggemann A first-person account of high-stakes performance after catastrophic setback, drawn from four Paralympic Games across sixteen years, not a single comeback story. A specific framework, Small Steps, Big Impact, that translates incremental progress into a leadership method teams can use the next week, including how to treat setbacks as team-building inputs rather than morale costs. Credibility on adaptation through repeated injury. The 2014 arm injury required two reconstructive surgeries and reshaped her training and competition method ahead of Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. A media and production track record beyond athletics, including an Emmy-winning NBC Sports hosting role and co-leadership of TFA Group, which lends executive register to the resilience material. Author of Limitless (Nelson Books, 2021), which gives senior audiences a published, citable source for the ideas they will hear in the room. Biography highlights Four-time Paralympian for Team USA; seven-time Paralympic medallist across London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024. Has held 15 world records and 34 American records in Para Swimming. Author of Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance (Nelson Books, 2021), with a film adaptation in development at Morning Moon Productions. Co-Founder and Co-CEO of TFA Group, a social impact agency and production studio. Emmy Award-winning broadcast host for NBC Sports, with correspondent and host roles across the 2018, 2022, and 2024 Games. ESPY Award winner; three-time USA Swimming Disabled Swimmer of the Year. Biography In January 2008, an epidural injection administered for back pain left an eighteen-year-old competitive swimmer paralysed from the waist down. Three months later, she was back in the pool. Inside two years, she had broken eight world records. The story matters not because it is dramatic, but because it set the operating pattern for everything that followed: progress measured in small, repeatable steps under conditions that would justify stopping. By the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Mallory Weggemann held fifteen world records and thirty-four American records. A 2014 arm injury required two reconstructive surgeries and forced a rebuild of her stroke and her training method. She returned to competition, medalled at the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships, and went on to win two golds and a silver at Tokyo 2020 and a further gold and silver at Paris 2024. Across four Games, the through-line is sustained recovery, not a single comeback. Outside the pool, Weggemann is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of TFA Group, a social impact agency and production studio. She is an Emmy Award-winning NBC Sports broadcaster, with correspondent roles at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Paralympics and a hosting debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Her 2021 memoir, Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance, is in development as a film with Morning Moon Productions. Her speaking work translates that pattern into a leadership method. The argument is that resilience is not character. It is a sequence of small, deliberate decisions made consistently under pressure, and a discipline that teams can adopt rather than admire. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after shock Self-leadership under sustained pressure Incremental progress as a leadership discipline Team behaviour after setback Inclusive leadership and disability in the workplace Peak performance under constraint Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through restructure, market shock, or sustained operational stress. CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement and team resilience after repeated change cycles. Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders learning to operate under pressure. Annual conferences and sales kick-offs that need a substantive resilience anchor rather than a generic inspirational keynote. Audience outcomes A working method for breaking down stalled or overwhelming goals into a sequence of executable steps. A more useful definition of resilience that senior leaders can apply to their own decision-making, not just attribute to others. A reframe of setbacks as team-formation inputs, with examples of how that has worked under elite-performance conditions. A citable example, drawn from Paralympic competition and broadcast media, that audiences can take back into board and team conversations.

Why organisations work with Sylvia Marusyk A practising occupational therapist, not a wellness coach, which gives wellbeing content credibility with EHS, operations and unionised audiences who routinely dismiss soft programming. Thirty years of clinical work translated into language that holds a room of utility engineers, nurses, municipal workers and aerospace technicians, not only an HR audience. A repeatable session catalogue covering stress, engagement, respectful conduct and self-health, with named talks that buyers can match to a specific workforce problem. Author of Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, written through her own cancer diagnosis, which gives the wellbeing material lived authority rather than borrowed theory. Track record across Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, City of Winnipeg, Transport Canada, Health Canada, StandardAero and the Manitoba Nurses Union, so buyers can see the work has held up across regulated, industrial and public sector environments. Biography highlights Founder and owner of MindBody Works Inc., a Canadian workplace health and wellness consultancy. Registered occupational therapist with more than 30 years of practice in health, safety and workplace wellbeing. Author of Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, a daily guide written after her cancer diagnosis during the pandemic. Host of the Trigger with Sylvia Marusyk podcast and former host of the Happy Hour with Sylvia radio programme. Speaking and training clients include Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, Transport Canada, Health Canada, City of Winnipeg, StandardAero, Manitoba Nurses Union and CAPPA. Signature programmes include Surviving to Thriving, Stressed to Kill, Happy Hour Begins at 9am, Respectfully, Up Yours! and Rules of Engagement. Biography Wellbeing budgets have grown for a decade, yet absence, burnout and turnover keep rising. The problem is not awareness. It is that most workplace health content sits a long way from the physical and cognitive reality of the people actually doing the work, which is precisely the gap Sylvia Marusyk has spent her career closing. She trained as an occupational therapist and has practised in the field for more than thirty years. That clinical grounding shapes everything she does on stage: the body and the brain treated as a single working system, stress described in biochemical and behavioural terms, prevention framed as an operational discipline rather than a lifestyle choice. As founder of MindBody Works Inc., she has built a Canadian workplace health consultancy around that approach. Her session catalogue is unusually concrete for the wellbeing category. Stressed to Kill unpacks the physical, cognitive, emotional and environmental components of stress. Surviving to Thriving offers self-health tools that hold up under pressure. Respectfully, Up Yours! turns psychological safety into a behavioural conversation, and Rules of Engagement tackles retention and engagement. The book Testing Positive: 365 Days of Calm Through Chaos, written through her own cancer diagnosis, supplies the personal spine to the clinical content. The credibility shows up in who books her. Manitoba Hydro, Great-West Life, Transport Canada, Health Canada, the City of Winnipeg, StandardAero and the Manitoba Nurses Union have all put her in front of audiences that are unforgiving of generic wellness talk: engineers, nurses, municipal staff, aerospace technicians. That is the market she has built her work for. Key speaking topics Workplace stress and burnout prevention Employee wellbeing and mental health at work Occupational health and injury prevention Respectful workplace culture and psychological safety Employee engagement and retention Resilience and self-health practices Workplace happiness and work-life conflict Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing and EHS leaders rebuilding stress, absence and injury programmes Operations and safety leaders in utilities, healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing and municipal services Union and member organisations commissioning content for frontline and clinical workforces HR and culture leads addressing respectful conduct, engagement and retention in fatigued teams Audience outcomes A clinical understanding of how stress affects the body, brain and behaviour at work Specific self-health practices audiences can apply during and after the working day Language for naming and addressing disrespectful conduct without escalating it A sharper sense of where wellbeing programmes are working and where they are theatre Renewed energy and humour in rooms that often arrive defensive about wellbeing content