Creativity

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

Why organisations work with Abigail Posner Holds a rare combination of credentials in cultural anthropology (Harvard, magna cum laude), creative strategy (Publicis New York, DDB New York), and senior technology leadership (13 years at Google). Few speakers can address AI and human creativity from inside all three worlds. Pioneered Humanizing Digital at Google, an anthropology-led research programme exploring the emotional relationship between people and technology. Her frameworks come from original fieldwork conducted inside Google. Led AI integration and a cultural transformation programme for 4,000+ Google sales professionals. Speaks from direct experience about what works and what fails inside one of the most AI-fluent companies in the world. Provides concrete methodologies, the Expansiveness Edge framework and the Human Code approach, that teams can apply immediately to specific business problems. Biography highlights Former Director, U.S. Creative Works at Google; thirteen years at the company Pioneered Humanizing Digital, Google’s anthropology-led thought leadership series on the emotional relationship between people and technology Founder of Human Code Company; host of the Human Code podcast Magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University in social anthropology Contributor to The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; ongoing columnist for The Drum Recipient of the United Nations Media Impact Award Biography Google spent more than a decade trying to understand the emotional logic behind why people engage with digital content. The Humanizing Digital research programme came out of that effort, an anthropology-led series Abigail Posner pioneered while at the company. The route there was unusual. Posner is a magna cum laude graduate in social anthropology from Harvard who spent years in brand strategy at Publicis New York and DDB New York. As Director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, she led creative strategy for YouTube’s largest global advertisers and ran a cultural transformation programme for over 4,000 sales professionals. Posner now leads Human Code Company, the consultancy she founded after leaving Google. Her Expansiveness Edge and Human Code frameworks address the question every leader is asking: what do my people uniquely contribute when every competitor has the same AI tools. Both frameworks come from years of anthropological fieldwork done inside Google. Her writing appears in The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; she is an ongoing columnist for The Drum. The United Nations awarded her its Media Impact Award for the work. Key speaking topics Human creativity in the AI age The Expansiveness Edge framework AI as a creative amplifier Cultural anthropology applied to business The future of work in an AI economy Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders working out how AI changes their craft Chief Innovation Officers and senior creative leaders inside marketing, product, or innovation teams CHROs and learning leaders building creative capacity across the workforce Senior leadership teams setting an organisation-wide position on what humans do and what AI does Audience outcomes A named framework, the Expansiveness Edge, for combining different disciplines and perspectives within an individual to produce ideas competitors cannot replicate A working answer to where human judgement still beats AI in their function, and which work to defend against automation Specific exercises they can run inside their own teams to activate creative thinking on demand A reframe of AI as an amplifier of human ingenuity, with concrete ways to deploy it that way

Why organisations work with Dan Edwards He has actually led a large public-sector workforce through a sustained cultural rebuild, including pandemic-era disruption, rather than describing the work from a consultancy seat. His talks come with named, road-tested models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts among them, that translate cleanly out of education into any large operational workforce. He is one of the few credible male voices speaking publicly about psychological safety and male mental health in front-line teams, through his MENtal Health talk. The delivery is performer-grade. He has a stand-up and stage background that keeps a senior audience with him through difficult material on wellbeing and morale. His creative business, 52 Stone Film, is built around employment pathways for underrepresented groups, which gives him direct operating experience of inclusion as a workforce outcome rather than a values statement. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of 52 Stone Film, a Leicester-based TV and film production company built on filmmaking and education. Former Principal of a large inner-city primary school in Leicester; prior Executive school leadership roles. Drama teacher background in inner-city secondary schools; entered teaching as a mature trainee via night school after leaving school with two GCSEs. Speaker at the SSAT Primary Conference 2021 on leading a school community through the coronavirus pandemic. Host of two podcasts, Dan Edwards Has Questions and A Quiet Night’s Sleep. Stage performer and writer; “The Sound of Muzak” was nominated for the Audience Choice Award at the 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival. Biography Large workforces have absorbed five years of change, and the cultural cost is now visible in engagement scores, sickness data, and middle-management churn. Edwards spent the worst of that period running a large inner-city primary school in Leicester, holding a staff body and parent community together when the national playbook for leadership had stopped working. That job, and the executive school leadership work that followed, is the substance behind his keynote material. The 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts are not theoretical frameworks; they are the models he built to keep a school improving while wellbeing was collapsing. The translation into corporate settings is direct, because the underlying tension, leading people through sustained pressure without burning them out, is the same. Edwards now runs 52 Stone Film, a Leicester production company with a deliberate mandate to build employment pathways for underrepresented groups. That gives him a second, current operating vantage point on culture, inclusion, and creative discipline inside a working business, which keeps the talks from drifting into nostalgia for the education world. The delivery is the differentiator at the senior end. A stand-up and theatre background, including a 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival nomination for “The Sound of Muzak”, means his keynotes on staff mental health and male psychological safety land in front of audiences that have heard the standard wellbeing pitch too many times. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and staff wellbeing Authentic and humane leadership Male mental health and psychological safety at work Creativity and innovation in large workforces People development and change leadership Inclusion through employment and creative pathways Ideal for HR and people directors in large, change-fatigued workforces CEOs and executive leadership teams rebuilding culture after restructure or sustained disruption Leadership development programmes and middle-management conferences Public sector, education and healthcare leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between performative wellbeing and substantive cultural change. Two named models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts, applied to their own organisational context. A more honest internal conversation about male mental health and psychological safety on the front line. Specific reference points for leading a workforce through prolonged pressure without losing it.

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

Why organisations work with Robin Ince Sixteen years co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox gave him a working method for translating serious ideas into language a general audience can act on. Few speakers have practised that craft at that scale. His account of late-diagnosed ADHD in Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal is one of the most widely read first-person treatments of adult neurodiversity from a recognisably high-functioning public figure. That makes him useful to leadership audiences who do not see themselves in standard neurodiversity training. He brings genuine comedy timing to material that is usually delivered flat. Boards and senior leadership offsites can absorb difficult content from him that they would resist from a clinical speaker. He carries credentials that survive scrutiny in any room: Honorary Fellow at UCL, honorary doctorate from Royal Holloway, Fellow of the British Science Association, Booksellers Association Author of the Year. Biography highlights Co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox, 2009 to 2025; the show won the 2011 Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme. Honorary Fellow of University College London and honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. Author of I’m a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested, Bibliomaniac, and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity; co-author with Brian Cox of How to Build a Universe. Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 2022; Time Out Outstanding Contribution to Comedy, 2006; multiple Chortle Awards including Best Compere. Co-founder of the Cosmic Shambles Network and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, the annual science variety show that has run since 2008. Public advocate on adult ADHD and neurodiversity following his own late diagnosis, anchoring his current touring show The Universe and the Neurodiverse. Biography The Infinite Monkey Cage ran on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years and won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme along the way. Robin Ince co-presented it with the physicist Brian Cox throughout, and the working method he developed there sits at the centre of what he now offers organisations: serious science, philosophy and literature delivered in language a general audience will actually use. That method has produced four solo books and one co-authored with Cox. The Importance of Being Interested and Bibliomaniac established him as a writer on curiosity and reading culture. Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, published by Macmillan in 2025, did something different. Following his own late ADHD diagnosis, he wrote a first-person account of adult neurodiversity that has been unusually well received by readers who do not see themselves in standard workplace material on the subject. The credentials behind the work are real. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College London and an Honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway. He is a Fellow of the British Science Association and was Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2022. He co-founded the Cosmic Shambles Network and has curated the Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People science variety show every December since 2008. For corporate audiences the proposition is specific. He is useful when a leadership team wants to talk seriously about neurodiversity and curiosity without flattening either into HR language, and he is one of very few speakers who can take a room from a research finding to a usable insight to a genuine laugh in the same minute. Key speaking topics Adult neurodiversity and late ADHD diagnosis Scientific curiosity as a habit of mind Communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences Humour and humanity Reading culture and the value of attention Science, music and comedy as a single conversation Ideal for Leadership teams and HR directors building neurodiversity work that goes beyond policy Boards and senior offsites looking for substantive content delivered with comedy timing Innovation, R&D and learning functions who want to reset what curiosity looks like in practice Conference organisers programming a science, culture or curiosity strand Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about adult ADHD and neurodiversity in senior settings A clearer sense of why attention, not information, is the scarce resource in their organisation Specific examples from sixteen years of putting scientists in front of general audiences, with the lessons that translate Permission to be more interested in their own work, which most leaders need more than they admit

Why organisations work with Tom Roach He originated the “performance plateau” framework, a specific, named diagnosis of the growth ceiling that confronts brands over-indexed on performance channels, developed in collaboration with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and published in Marketing Week. His IPA Effectiveness Gold Awards span McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, among the most analytically rigorous advertising effectiveness cases in UK industry history. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, he worked directly alongside Les Binet, the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research, placing him at the centre of the field’s most serious practitioner thinking. He is one of the few voices making the commercial case for brand investment from inside a performance-first agency group, giving his arguments about the brand/performance divide an operational credibility that consulting positions rarely carry. His “Share of Model” framework addresses an unmapped emergent risk: how large language models represent brands, and what that means for commercial visibility as AI increasingly mediates discovery and purchase intent. Biography highlights VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group; prior roles at adam&eveDDB, BBH London, Leo Burnett, and AMV BBDO – a career spanning over two decades at the leading edge of UK advertising Multiple Gold IPA Effectiveness Awards across campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB working directly alongside Les Binet Key contributor to BBH London’s designation as IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year 2018–19 Marketing Week columnist; regular speaker at Cannes Lions, SXSW, Google Firestarters, and IPA Effweek Originator of the “performance plateau” concept (with Dr Grace Kite) and associated “Bothism” brand/performance integration framework, widely adopted in marketing practice Biography Many marketing organisations are measuring the right things in the wrong sequence. Brands that concentrated investment in performance channels – search, social, display – often found their growth curve flattening at precisely the moment leadership expected it to accelerate. Tom Roach named this pattern the “performance plateau,” developing the concept with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and publishing it in Marketing Week, where it has since entered mainstream marketing vocabulary. The credibility behind that argument is operational. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Roach worked directly alongside Les Binet – the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research – before that, spending seven years driving BBH London’s effectiveness practice to IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year status in 2018–19. The IPA Gold Awards he contributed to, across McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, represent some of the most analytically demanding advertising cases in UK industry history. At Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group, Roach holds a position that few brand effectiveness thinkers occupy: making the case for long-term brand investment from within a digital-first, performance-oriented agency. That vantage point has produced frameworks with real institutional friction behind them, “Bothism” (the philosophy of ending the false choice between brand and performance), a revised model of how people enter and move through markets, and “Share of Model,” which addresses what large language models say about brands and why this matters commercially. He writes regularly for Marketing Week and speaks at Cannes Lions, SXSW, and IPA Effweek, using those platforms to pressure-test frameworks with practitioners rather than simply advocate positions. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness Brand and performance marketing integration The performance plateau Brand building in fragmented media Creative effectiveness Generative AI and brand strategy AI brand visibility and Share of Model Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams whose growth from performance channels is flattening CFOs and senior leaders challenged to build the internal case for long-term brand investment Brand and performance marketing teams operating in organisational silos Agency leadership and strategy teams working across integrated client portfolios Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for identifying whether their organisation has hit the performance plateau, and a framework for addressing it Clearer understanding of how brand building and performance marketing are commercially interdependent rather than competing priorities A framework for evaluating creative effectiveness across fragmented, platform-native media environments Practical thinking on what AI-mediated search and discovery means for brand visibility (Share of Model) Language and commercial evidence to make the case for brand investment to boards and finance leadership

Why organisations work with Costas Andriopoulos He has built one of the most cited academic foundations for organisational ambidexterity, the discipline of running exploitation and exploration in parallel, and translates it into language a leadership team can act on rather than admire. His 2009 Organization Science paper with Marianne Lewis is on most senior reading lists in the field, which gives the boardroom conversation a defensible reference point when innovation budgets come under pressure. “Purposeful Curiosity” gives leaders a working method for the awkward middle of an innovation cycle, where the question is not whether to explore but how to keep the inquiry productive when results are slow. As founder of Bayes X, he runs a live research programme on disruption with corporate partners, so the case material he brings to a session is current rather than historical. He has acted as thematic advisor on the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF, giving him a working view of how capital markets currently price the very disruption that operating leaders are trying to manage. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bayes Business School, City, University of London Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, Bayes Business School Founder and Director, Bayes X, the school’s Research Centre for Innovation and Disruption Director, Avyssos Advisors Ltd., innovation management consultancy Author, “Purposeful Curiosity” (Yellow Kite/Hachette, 2022), endorsed by Adam Grant Co-author, “Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation” (5th edition, Sage, 2024) Research published in Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, and California Management Review Thematic advisor to the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF Biography The hardest problem inside an established firm is not whether to innovate. It is how to keep the innovation agenda alive against the gravitational pull of the existing business. Costas Andriopoulos has spent two decades building the academic and practical answer to that question. His 2009 paper with Marianne Lewis in Organization Science set out how ambidextrous firms hold exploitation and exploration in productive tension rather than collapsing one into the other. The work has become a reference point for how senior teams discuss the paradox of running today’s business while building tomorrow’s. He has continued that line of research through articles in Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning and California Management Review. At Bayes Business School he holds the chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, serves as Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, and founded the Bayes X Centre for Innovation and Disruption. Through Avyssos Advisors he works with founders and corporate leadership teams; through the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF advisory work he sees the same disruption priced by capital markets. “Purposeful Curiosity,” published by Yellow Kite in 2022 and endorsed by Adam Grant, took that research base to a wider audience. Its argument is operational rather than inspirational: curiosity becomes useful only when it is structured, directed, and protected against the day-to-day demands that crowd it out. That is the brief he brings into a leadership room. Key speaking topics Organisational ambidexterity Disruptive innovation in established firms Purposeful curiosity as a leadership discipline Innovation portfolio management Entrepreneurial mindset inside corporates Leading creative teams The paradox of exploitation and exploration Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding both a profitability and a growth mandate Chief Innovation Officers and heads of R&D under board pressure to show returns from exploration CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development programmes that include innovation capability Founders and senior leadership teams of scale-ups moving from a single product to a portfolio Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the paradox of running today’s business while building the next one A defensible reference framework, drawn from peer-reviewed research, for protecting the exploration agenda inside an established firm A working method for converting individual curiosity into a managed organisational practice Examples of how ambidextrous firms structure decisions, incentives and team design to hold both modes at once

Why organisations work with Dee Snider He has a verifiable, on-the-record case study of standing alone in front of a hostile Senate committee and winning the argument, used as a live example of composure under public pressure. His material is built on four decades of reinvention across music, film, voice acting and production, giving audiences a concrete arc rather than a generic resilience pitch. He delivers a celebrity main-stage presence that conference organisers can use to lift the energy of a sales kick-off, anniversary dinner or awards night without losing substance. His free-speech story sits inside a serious cultural moment, the PMRC hearings, and lands with senior audiences who lived through it. Biography highlights Lead singer of Twisted Sister, writer of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, both certified rock anthems of the 1980s. Testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in September 1985 against the Parents Music Resource Center, alongside Frank Zappa and John Denver. Author of the autobiography “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic”, published by Gallery Books. Screenwriter of the cult horror feature “Strangeland” and President of production company Defiant Artists. Keynote speaker at “The World’s Most Dangerous Meeting” in Gothenburg, drawing on career lessons for a corporate audience. Voice actor and on-camera presence across film, television and video games, with collaborators including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gordon Ramsay. Biography In September 1985 a U.S. Senate committee called three musicians to testify on the moral content of rock lyrics. Frank Zappa, John Denver and the leather-clad lead singer of Twisted Sister sat in front of the cameras and refused to apologise. The hearing became the founding moment of the modern free-speech argument over music. That afternoon is the spine of Snider’s speaking career. He was 30 years old, painted, and treated by the room as a public enemy. He stayed calm, dismantled the accusations against “We’re Not Gonna Take It” line by line, and walked out with the cultural argument largely intact. Forty years later the moment is still used in journalism and law classes as a case study in composure under public attack. The career around it gives the story weight. Twisted Sister sold millions of records. Snider went on to write the horror film “Strangeland”, run a production company in Defiant Artists, voice video game and animated characters, and publish “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic” with Gallery Books. The through-line is reinvention without softening the original position. For corporate audiences he uses that material to talk about holding a line under public pressure, surviving repeated career reinvention, and the practical content of not backing down when the room wants you to. The delivery is funny, profane and self-deprecating. The argument underneath is serious. Key speaking topics Free speech and standing by a position under public attack Self-leadership and composure under pressure Career reinvention across four decades Creative resilience Storytelling for senior audiences The 1985 PMRC hearings as a leadership case study Ideal for Sales kick-offs, anniversary dinners and awards nights looking for a celebrity main-stage presence with a serious underlying argument Leadership offsites using personal-resilience case studies to anchor a session on composure Communications, brand and public affairs teams studying how to defend a position in hostile public settings Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the 1985 PMRC Senate hearings from one of the three musicians who testified A concrete personal example of holding a position under sustained public attack A four-decade case study of career reinvention without abandoning the original work An entertaining, profane and self-deprecating main-stage set that lifts the energy of a corporate room

Why organisations work with Fabian Hemmert He brings a working academic’s depth to a question most strategy teams treat too lightly: what does good human-computer interaction actually look like when AI is in the loop. His “Research Through Design” approach produces tested prototypes, not slideware. The “Data Touch” project, a finger ring that advances presentations by recognising objects, is the kind of artefact that shifts how a leadership team thinks about interface design. He speaks fluently across audiences. A PhD from Berlin University of the Arts, prior commercial work at Nintendo and Marvel, and stage time at SXSW, Lift and the Chaos Communication Congress give him range from board to design floor. He reframes AI as a design problem rather than a deployment problem. For organisations wrestling with adoption, that reframing tends to unlock conversations the technical roadmap cannot. Biography highlights Professor of Interface and User Experience Design, University of Wuppertal, heading the department since 2016. Dr.-Ing. from Berlin University of the Arts, with doctoral research at the Design Research Lab in collaboration with Telekom Innovation Labs. TEDxBerlin speaker; talk “The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone” hosted on TED.com. Conference platforms include SXSW, Lift, Chaos Communication Congress, EuroVision TV Summit, CeBIT, TEDxSalzburg and TEDxInnsbruck. Earlier industry experience at Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics during interface design studies. Published academic work on tangible interfaces and design research methodology, including a PhD thesis and book chapter on the Repertory Grid Technique. Biography Most digital products are built for the system, not the human using it. That mismatch is becoming harder to hide as AI moves from the back office into daily work. Fabian Hemmert’s research at the University of Wuppertal is a sustained attempt to close that gap through design rather than user training. He runs the Interface and User Experience Design department at Wuppertal’s industrial design school and earned his Dr.-Ing. at Berlin University of the Arts, working alongside Telekom Innovation Labs. The methodology is “Research Through Design”: build a prototype, put it in front of people, learn what changes. Projects such as “Data Touch”, a finger ring that controls a presentation by recognising the objects in a speaker’s hand, are how the research becomes argument. Earlier in his career he worked for Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics, which gives the academic frame a commercial spine. His public platform includes TEDxBerlin, SXSW, Lift, the Chaos Communication Congress, the EuroVision TV Summit and CeBIT. The through-line is consistent across all of them: intuitive technology is a design outcome, not an accident. For senior leaders, the value is a corrective. Strategy decks treat AI and digital tools as capability questions. Hemmert’s work makes the case that adoption, engagement and trust are decided much earlier, at the interface, and that organisations underestimate how much of their digital strategy is being shaped by design defaults they never examined. Key speaking topics Human-computer interaction Designing for AI in everyday use Tangible and embodied interfaces The future of mobile and personal devices Research Through Design methodology Design education and creative capability Play as a method for innovation Ideal for Chief design officers, heads of product and CX leaders rethinking digital interfaces in light of AI. Innovation and R&D teams looking for an academic perspective grounded in built prototypes. Leadership audiences at technology, telecoms, consumer electronics and media organisations. Universities, design schools and conferences focused on the future of human-machine interaction. Audience outcomes A sharper sense of why interface design, not model capability, often decides whether an AI deployment lands. Exposure to working prototypes that reframe assumptions about how digital systems should feel to use. A vocabulary for discussing tangibility, embodiment and intuition as commercial design variables. Confidence to challenge default assumptions about screens, devices and digital workflows in their own organisation.

Why organisations work with Turi King She led one of the most-publicised forensic genetics cases in modern British history. The Richard III identification is a named, verifiable case study she can speak to with primary authority, not a borrowed reference. She translates complex science for non-specialist audiences without losing rigour. Audiences across Congressional Breakfasts on Capitol Hill, the Moscow Science Festival opening, and a Royal Institution Christmas Lecture have rated her as one of the clearest communicators in her field. She runs a research centre as well as a broadcasting career. The combination is rare and lets her sit credibly on innovation panels, science award juries, and CEO-level conversations on R&D. She presents to camera at scale. BBC Two’s DNA Family Secrets with Stacey Dooley and Sky History’s Ancient Murders Unearthed make her one of the few academic speakers who is equally comfortable on a corporate stage and a broadcast set. She brings emotional weight to a technical topic. Her work on DNA Family Secrets, where DNA testing reunites separated families or uncovers medical risk, gives her material that lands with audiences in a way that pure-lab science never does. Biography highlights Director of the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath. Led the DNA identification of King Richard III, University of Leicester, 2012. Presenter, DNA Family Secrets, BBC Two, with Stacey Dooley. Presenter, Ancient Murders Unearthed, Sky History. Host, Head Number 7 podcast, Wondery. Honorary Fellow, British Science Association, 2016. Awards from the Genetics Society and the British Council for science communication. Author, Surnames, DNA, and Family History. Biography Richard III’s skeleton was found under a Leicester car park in 2012. The remains needed to be identified beyond doubt before the find could be made public. Turi King led the genetics. She and her team built the genealogy of two living maternal-line descendants of Richard III’s sister, sequenced their mitochondrial DNA, and compared it with DNA extracted from a tooth in the skeleton. The match held. The identification became the foundation of one of the most-cited forensic genetics cases of the century. The work made her a public scientist. She had already trained at Cambridge in archaeology and anthropology and completed her MSc and PhD in molecular genetics at Leicester, but the Richard III project moved her into broadcasting and onto stages including a Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, a Congressional Breakfast on Capitol Hill, and the opening of the Moscow Science Festival. She now directs the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, one of the UK’s main evolutionary biology research centres. Alongside the research role she presents BBC Two’s DNA Family Secrets with Stacey Dooley, where genetic testing is used to answer questions about heritage, missing relatives, and inherited disease, and hosts the Wondery podcast Head Number 7. What makes her unusual as a corporate speaker is the combination of working scientist, broadcaster, and on-stage host. She has been recognised by the Genetics Society and the British Council for science communication, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association in 2016. She is comfortable carrying a keynote, moderating a panel of senior executives, or hosting an awards evening. Key speaking topics Forensic DNA and the Richard III investigation Genetic genealogy and ancestry Science communication for non-specialist audiences Evolution and human origins Identity, family, and inherited disease Women in science Ideal for Innovation leaders, R&D directors, and CTOs hosting cross-functional offsites where the brief calls for a credible scientist who can engage non-scientific colleagues. Awards ceremonies and gala dinners in the science, technology, healthcare, and education sectors looking for a host with on-screen presence. Chief Communications Officers and learning leads commissioning storytelling content on identity, family, and human history. Universities, science festivals, and policy gatherings where the speaker needs both academic credibility and broadcast skill. Audience outcomes A vivid, first-hand account of how the Richard III identification was actually done, including the genealogy, the lab work, and the decisions that held the case together. A working sense of how DNA testing now answers everyday questions about ancestry, missing relatives, and inherited medical risk. A clearer view of what good science communication looks like in practice, from someone who does it on television and on stage. A reminder of why investment in basic science matters, told through cases the audience already recognises.

Why organisations work with David McCandless He built the language of modern editorial data visualisation through Information is Beautiful, the blog and three books that defined the form for a generation of journalists and designers. He co-founded the Information is Beautiful Awards in 2012 with Kantar’s Aziz Cami, the global benchmark prize for data visualisation, giving him a panoramic view of what works across thousands of submissions. His work has been published by The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit and exhibited at MoMA, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, evidence that the craft holds up to both editorial and curatorial scrutiny. His TEDGlobal 2010 talk, “The beauty of data visualization”, remains one of the most-watched introductions to the field and shapes how senior audiences think about visual storytelling. Biography highlights Author of Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023), published by HarperCollins. Founder of the Information is Beautiful blog and co-founder of the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards (2012). TEDGlobal 2010 speaker: “The beauty of data visualization”. Information design featured in The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit. Work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery (London). Began his career as a journalist writing for The Guardian and Wired before building Information is Beautiful into a publishing platform. Biography The hardest problem in modern communication is not gathering data. It is making the data mean something to a reader who has eight seconds and a phone. That is the territory David McCandless has worked for nearly two decades, first as a journalist at The Guardian and Wired, then as the founder of Information is Beautiful. The blog became a publishing programme. Information is Beautiful (2009), Knowledge is Beautiful (2014), and Beautiful News (2023) collect more than 1,500 graphics that take subjects ranging from drug deaths to global wealth and turn them into images a non-specialist can read. The craft sits in the choices: what to compare, what to leave out, what visual metaphor lets a number argue with itself. In 2012 he co-founded what became the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards with Aziz Cami, then Creative Director at Kantar. Through that platform McCandless has spent more than a decade looking at the best data visualisation work in the world, which gives him an unusually wide reference set when advising teams on what separates a chart that lands from one that does not. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and the Wellcome Trust gallery, and his TEDGlobal 2010 talk on the beauty of data visualisation introduced the field to a mainstream audience. For organisations sitting on data they cannot translate into action, he offers the rarer skill: editorial judgement on what is worth showing, and how. Key speaking topics Data visualisation Information design Data storytelling Data journalism Visual communication Creativity and pattern recognition Infographics in business communication Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders rethinking how data shapes customer narratives Communications, internal comms, and corporate affairs leads briefing senior audiences Heads of data, analytics, and insight whose dashboards are not changing decisions Innovation and design leaders building visual literacy across the organisation Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what makes a data visualisation land with a non-specialist audience Sharper editorial judgement on which numbers in a dataset are worth showing and which are noise Concrete examples from across journalism, design, and the IIB Awards archive of what good looks like A clearer view of how to brief designers, agencies, and internal teams on data-led communication

Why organisations work with Katherine Templar-Lewis She brings the science of uncertainty into the room with an evidence base, not a metaphor. The Uncertainty Experts, the programme she leads as chief scientist, was built with University College London and is one of the few interventions on the topic with published validation. Her material is designed to land on commercial teams, not academic audiences. She has translated the same research into work for Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit with Sam Conniff (Pan Macmillan), giving leaders a named, citable framework rather than a generic talk on resilience. A serious media operator: BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4 and The Today Show, with coverage in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and New Scientist. Boards get a communicator who can hold a stage and a camera. Co-founder of Kinda Studios, a neuroscience studio that runs applied research with UCL and Goldsmiths. The work she presents from the stage is the work she is doing with clients during the week. Biography highlights Cognitive scientist; co-founder and director of Kinda Studios, a creative neuroscience studio. Lead scientist and co-creator of The Uncertainty Experts, an interactive documentary developed with University College London and Sam Conniff. Co-author of The Uncertainty Toolkit, published by Pan Macmillan. Co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses, an Audible Originals neuroscience series. Research collaborations with UCL and Goldsmiths; programme research validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. Recurring science contributor on BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN, Radio 4, The Today Show, The One Show and Start the Week. Speaker and consulting work with Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle, Netflix and TikTok. Biography Most leadership advice on uncertainty stops at metaphor. Katherine Templar-Lewis works on the underlying mechanism, the cognitive and neurological systems that decide whether a senior team holds its nerve, narrows its focus or freezes. As co-founder of Kinda Studios and lead scientist on The Uncertainty Experts, she has built one of the few evidence-based programmes on the subject, developed with University College London and validated in association with The Royal Society and CIPD. The work has commercial reach because the science is translated, not diluted. The Uncertainty Toolkit, her book with Sam Conniff for Pan Macmillan, sets out the operating moves leaders can make when conditions are unstable: how to read their own physiology, how to choose between options without false confidence, how to keep teams committed when the picture keeps changing. Apple, LEGO, Nike, Volvo, Nestle and TikTok have used the same material inside their own organisations. She is also a confident communicator outside the academic register. As co-host and executive producer of Beyond 5 Senses on Audible, and as a recurring contributor across BBC, Sky News, NBC, CNN and Radio 4, she has spent years turning research into language that an audience can use the next morning. New Scientist has called her approach radically optimistic, which is unusual in a field that tends toward warnings. What she gives an executive audience is a more accurate map of what their own brains are doing during a hard quarter, and a small set of tools that hold up when the data does not. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Applied neuroscience for leaders Team performance and connection Cognitive resilience and recovery Neuroaesthetics, creativity and wellbeing Behaviour change and organisational learning Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through prolonged strategic uncertainty CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team resilience after sustained change Innovation, brand and customer experience leaders interested in neuroaesthetics Leadership development programmes for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain handles uncertainty, and what that means for senior decisions Named techniques from The Uncertainty Toolkit that leaders can apply to their own routines Sharper recognition of the team behaviours that signal cognitive overload before performance drops A more confident posture toward ambiguity, grounded in research rather than mindset language