Glenn Marsden
Mental health pressure inside organisations is now a senior leadership problem, not a wellness programme. High performers carry it quietly, executives mask it, and the cost shows up in turnover, presenteeism and avoidable burnout. The harder question is how to talk about it credibly without lapsing into wellness theatre or HR boilerplate.
Glenn Marsden is a mental wellbeing advocate and founder of the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, helping organisations address the cultural cost of perfectionism and the silence that surrounds mental health at senior levels.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Glenn Marsden
- He brings lived experience of body dysmorphia and loss into the boardroom in a way that makes mental health a credible business conversation rather than an HR campaign.
- He has built and scaled a global advocacy platform from zero, the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, which gives him direct evidence of what changes when people in power speak openly about their own pressure.
- Through Ascendia Wellness Group, the venture he co-founded in 2025 with Dan Mansour and Daryl Kelly, he translates the advocacy work into executive wellbeing programmes for C-suite teams.
- His content travels: a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast and a long roster of public-figure interviews give audiences a body of work to engage with after the keynote, not a one-off talk.
Biography highlights
- Founder, Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, launched 2018, a global mental wellbeing advocacy movement.
- Co-founder, Ascendia Wellness Group, executive wellbeing venture launched 2025 with Dan Mansour and Daryl Kelly.
- Author of the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign book series, with Volume 3 released January 2026.
- Host of the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, interviewing public figures on mental health and wellbeing.
- Has delivered speaking engagements across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Dubai, Thailand and Japan.
Biography
The cost of mental health pressure inside organisations is now showing up where it used to stay hidden. It sits with the people running them. Glenn Marsden built the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign in 2018 to make that conversation possible, starting with a question senior leaders rarely answer in public: what does it actually cost you to keep up appearances?
The campaign was founded after the suicide of a close friend and Marsden’s own struggle with body dysmorphia. What began as a single advocacy project has grown into a content platform with a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast and a long roster of public-figure interviews. The argument that runs through all of it is simple: when people in positions of visibility speak openly about their own pressure, the social permission for everyone else to do the same expands.
In 2025 Marsden co-founded Ascendia Wellness Group with Dan Mansour and Daryl Kelly, translating the advocacy work into executive wellbeing programmes for C-suite teams and senior leadership groups. Where most workplace wellbeing offers stop at policy and benefits, Ascendia treats wellbeing as part of performance architecture, with mental clarity and emotional resilience treated as operational variables for the people running the business.
What audiences get is not a wellness talk. It is a working argument, made by someone who has spent years getting senior people to say in public what they say to each other in private, that perfectionism is expensive, silence at the top sets the tone for the rest of the organisation, and the leaders who name the pressure first are the ones who change the culture.
Key speaking topics
- Mental health and the cost of perfectionism
- Wellbeing at executive and C-suite level
- Resilience under sustained pressure
- Authentic leadership and lived experience
- Building advocacy platforms from zero
- Storytelling and public influence
Ideal for
- CHRO and chief people officer audiences setting the mental health agenda
- Executive leadership offsites where wellbeing is on the strategy table, not the perks list
- Senior leadership development programmes addressing perfectionism and burnout in high performers
- Conferences on workplace wellbeing, culture and mental health where lived experience adds credibility to the data
Audience outcomes
- A direct, founder-led account of how mental health pressure operates at senior levels and why it stays hidden.
- A language for talking about perfectionism and silence inside organisations without lapsing into wellness clichés.
- A working model for what executive wellbeing looks like when it is treated as operational, drawn from the Ascendia Wellness Group approach.
- Evidence, from the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign and its 500-plus public-figure interviews, of what changes when people in positions of influence speak openly.
Talks
A keynote on purpose-driven leadership under pressure, drawing on Marsden’s work with senior leaders through Ascendia Wellness Group and the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign.
Key takeaways:
- How perfectionism and silence at the top set the cultural tone for an entire organisation.
- Practical ground for talking about pressure and wellbeing inside senior teams.
- How visible leadership on mental health changes engagement and retention below.
A talk on corporate wellbeing and high-performance leadership, built on the Ascendia Wellness Group thesis that mental clarity and emotional resilience are operational variables for executives.
Key takeaways:
- Where wellbeing programmes break down at senior level and what to do instead.
- The difference between wellbeing as policy and wellbeing as performance architecture.
- A model for building resilience that holds across teams, not just individuals.
A talk on how the pursuit of perfection drives mental health pressure in high performers, anchored in Marsden’s lived experience of body dysmorphia and the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign.
Key takeaways:
- The mechanics of perfectionism as a workplace and cultural problem.
- Why high performers are most exposed and least likely to speak up.
- How leaders can name the pressure in a way that gives permission, not platitude.