Team Leadership

Why organisations work with Marina Ibrahim She has run cross-cultural integration work inside named multinationals including BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom, across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Her own biography (British-German, born to a German mother and Egyptian father, bilingual in English and German) is the lived case study behind the work, which lands with international audiences in a way a single-culture expert cannot match. She brings instrument-led rigour, not opinion. GLOBE+, her signature framework, integrates Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner, Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team), GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 into diagnostic data on team performance. She has worked the British-German interface specifically, including post-merger cultural integration, where most cross-cultural speakers stay at a generic level. Externally judged: FSB West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024 for the consultancy she founded, and Professional Speaker of the Year Staffordshire 2025. Biography highlights Founder of Globility Insights, the West Midlands-based cultural agility and inclusive leadership consultancy she established in 2011. Creator of GLOBE+, her signature cultural agility framework, used with multinational clients across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Senior Culture Coach at Country Navigator, the cultural intelligence training platform. Federation of Small Businesses West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024; Professional Speaker of the Year, Staffordshire 2025; Cartus Service Excellence Award 2020. Client organisations include BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, EMI, Commerzbank, BP, UBS, Deutsche Telekom and Wood PLC. Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner; Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team); Country Navigator, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 Coach; MirrorMIRROR Certified Team Coach; NLP Practitioner; MCIM Chartered Marketer. British and German national with Egyptian heritage; bilingual English and German. Biography Most multinational organisations treat culture as a soft variable. Strategy is hard, culture is decoration. The teams running the actual work know better. They are the ones absorbing the friction when a German engineering function tries to land a project inside a Brazilian commercial team, or when a British acquirer tells a Japanese subsidiary that “nothing will change”. Marina Ibrahim has spent more than 25 years inside that gap. Through Globility Insights, the consultancy she founded in 2011, she has worked with BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom on the parts of cross-cultural collaboration that do not show up on a strategy slide: trust between merged teams, decision-making across British and German operating styles, the difference between an inclusion statement and a multicultural team that actually functions. Her own profile is part of the credibility. Born to a German mother and Egyptian father, British-German, bilingual in English and German, she is the lived case study behind the work. The method is not. GLOBE+, her signature framework, runs senior teams through Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC, Wiley Five Behaviours, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0, so leaders leave with diagnostic data on how their teams actually operate, not a set of stories. In 2024, the Federation of Small Businesses named Globility the West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award winner, an externally judged signal that the practice she built holds up under scrutiny. For senior teams trying to make global structures actually perform, that is the relevant test. Key speaking topics Cultural agility as a competitive advantage Inclusive leadership in multinational organisations High-performing multicultural teams Post-merger cultural integration British and German business cultures and operating styles Unconscious bias and inclusive decision-making in practice Leading internationally distributed and hybrid teams Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads embedding inclusion beyond policy into team behaviour Executive teams running cross-border integrations or post-merger collaboration Global function heads managing multicultural and internationally distributed teams Leadership development programmes for senior leaders preparing for international roles Audience outcomes A working definition of cultural agility that names what behaviours actually shift performance across borders A diagnostic view of where their own multicultural teams break down, drawn from established cultural instruments rather than opinion Specific moves leaders can use the next day to manage British, German and broader European operating differences A sharper sense of where current inclusion efforts are stalling and what to do about it

Why organisations work with Anna Hemmings A first-hand performance record with operating substance behind it. Six world titles, two Olympic Games, and twelve years running her own consultancy with named global clients. A direct, evidence-based take on resilience as a trainable capability. Her recovery from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and return to win three further world titles is the case study, not the headline. Accredited delivery on team performance through the Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team model, used in workshop and team-development formats, not just keynote. Material that translates to senior leadership audiences. Beyond the Barriers has worked with leadership teams at IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Roche, Deloitte, British Airways, and NatWest. Biography highlights Six-time Marathon Kayak World Champion, K-1 and K-2 disciplines, 1999 to 2007. Two-time Olympian for Great Britain: Sydney 2000 (K-1 500m), Beijing 2008 (K-2 500m). MBE, 2010 New Year Honours, for services to sport. Sunday Times Sports Woman of the Year, Champions Award (2005). Founder and Managing Director, Beyond the Barriers, a high-performance training consultancy. Accredited trainer in the Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team model. Biography Britain’s most successful female marathon kayaker spent more than a decade winning at the top of an endurance sport, and then spent the following decade translating what she learned into work with senior leadership teams. The athletic record is six world titles between 1999 and 2007 and two Olympic Games. The second decade is the operating substance behind her speaking work. The pivot point in her story is medical. At the peak of her career Anna Hemmings was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and told racing was unlikely to return. She came back to win three further world titles and qualify for Beijing 2008. That recovery is the working material she uses with leaders, not as inspiration but as a worked example of resilience as a set of repeatable practices. Through her consultancy, Beyond the Barriers, she works with senior leaders and teams at organisations including IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Roche, Deloitte, British Airways and NatWest. She is an accredited High Performance and Leadership Coach and an accredited trainer in the Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team model. Her sessions move beyond keynote into masterclass and longer-form team development. What separates her from the standard athlete-speaker is the consultancy work. She is not narrating a sporting career to an audience of executives, she is bringing twelve years of applied practice with leadership teams to bear on a specific organisational question: how senior people hold their performance and judgement when the load does not let up. Key speaking topics Resilience as a leadership capability Performance under sustained pressure High-performing team development Mindset and recovery in high-stakes environments Confidence and composure in senior roles Sustained excellence and the disciplines behind it Ideal for C-suite and executive leadership teams managing prolonged operational pressure Senior leaders moving into bigger remits where composure becomes a visible variable Sales and commercial leadership audiences operating in high-stakes deal cycles HR and L&D programmes building resilience and team performance into leadership development Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience that goes beyond willpower, with practices that can be used immediately A clearer view of how senior leaders maintain judgement and composure under sustained load Specific behaviours for building trust and accountability inside leadership teams A first-hand account of recovery and return to elite performance, used as worked content rather than story Language for talking about performance under pressure with their own teams

James is a multi-bestselling author whose books span sport, comedy, mindset, performance and fitness, all delivered with his trademark honesty, humour and unfiltered storytelling. Since retiring from professional rugby in 2019, James has built a hugely successful career as a podcaster, presenter, author, DJ and high-demand public speaker. He is co-host of the smash hit weekly podcast The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, one of the UK’s most popular sports shows with over 120,000 listeners per episode. He has also launched a host of other successful podcasts including What A Flanker, Couple’s Quarantine, Backrow Radio, and the comedy led Amuse Douche, collectively amassing more than 500 episodes and 500+ hours of content.

Why organisations work with Lee Rubin He gives leadership teams a named, repeatable framework, the Five Cs (competitors, common goal, communication, chemistry, consistency), so culture work stops being a slogan and becomes a checklist a manager can run on Monday. He has lived both sides of the room: captain of a Big Ten football programme and 16+ years as an HR executive inside Fortune 500 environments including Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan. Audiences hear locker-room stories backed by enterprise people-strategy experience. He addresses the specific failure mode senior leaders see most often, talented individuals who do not function as a team, rather than the generic topic of “culture”. His delivery converts. Bureau and client materials consistently book him for sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and all-hands events where the goal is alignment before execution, not abstract inspiration. Biography highlights Captain and three-year starting free safety, Penn State Nittany Lions football. 1994 Florida Citrus Bowl Defensive MVP; All-Big Ten Conference selection; Honorable Mention All-American. 16+ years as a Human Resources executive serving Fortune 500 corporations. Author of WIN: Simple Insights to Help You Win the Game of Life and a companion edition for student-athletes. Signature keynote “5 Components of Extraordinary Teams” delivered to clients including Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan. TEDx presenter on team performance. Bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications with a Business minor, Penn State University. Biography A football captain learns something a corporate org chart rarely teaches. Talent is not the constraint. The constraint is whether eleven people, eleven directors, eleven engineers, share a goal clearly enough that they can adjust to each other in real time. Lee Rubin spent three years as a starting free safety at Penn State, captained the team, and earned 1994 Florida Citrus Bowl Defensive MVP honours. He then spent 16 years inside Fortune 500 HR functions watching the same dynamic play out in conference rooms. Out of that two-track career came the Five Cs: competitors, common goal, communication, chemistry, consistency. It is the spine of his signature keynote, “5 Components of Extraordinary Teams,” and it gives leaders a working vocabulary for diagnosing why a capable group is not performing as a team. Each component is concrete enough to be acted on the next week, not abstract enough to be ignored. His client list runs from Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan to college athletic departments and professional sports organisations. The range matters. The same framework that helps an enterprise sales team align around a quarterly goal helps a coaching staff align around a season. Buyers booking Rubin are typically wrestling with a specific symptom, post-merger silos, a stalled transformation, a high-turnover quarter, and want a session that produces shared language, not a closing high. He is also the author of WIN: Simple Insights to Help You Win the Game of Life, with a parallel edition written for student-athletes. The books extend the keynote argument: that the habits of high-performing teams, accountability, clarity of role, mutual respect, are the same habits that produce high-performing individuals. Key speaking topics Team performance and the Five Cs framework Building championship culture inside corporate teams Communication and chemistry under pressure Leadership lessons from elite athletics Employee engagement and buy-in Peak performance for individuals and teams Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders running culture, engagement, or post-merger integration work Sales leaders preparing kickoffs where alignment matters more than tactics Heads of transformation rebuilding teams after restructuring College and professional sports organisations investing in leadership development Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, the Five Cs, that managers can use the next day to diagnose team friction Specific tactics for converting individual talent into collective output Renewed clarity on the difference between a group of strong performers and a functioning team Practical communication habits that hold up when a team is under pressure

Why organisations work with Vicki Anstey She has tested her own thesis in conditions most leaders will never face: 60 days unsupported across the Pacific, 11 days in the Chilean Andes on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, the Race Across America cycled in under seven days. The frameworks she brings into a boardroom are not theoretical. She translates extreme-environment behaviour into specific decisions a leadership team can act on: how to lead when the team is fatigued, how to make defensible calls under acute stress, how to protect judgment when the operating window narrows. Her commercial track record, two decades in advertising including senior marketing at Eurostar, and a London studio business she has run since 2009, gives her credibility with audiences who default to scepticism about adventurer-speakers. She works with audiences where the stakes are concrete. Booked client list includes JP Morgan, Google, Meta, Avanade, Virgin Media O2 and the LTA, organisations not in the market for inspirational stories detached from operating reality. The Pin Drop Podcast and her TEDxKingstonUponThames talk give buyers and AI tools a verifiable body of public work to reference, beyond the testimonial layer. Biography highlights Two Guinness World Records: unsupported Pacific Ocean row (San Francisco to Hawaii, 2021, with the Girls Who Dare team) and Race Across America (3,000 miles, 6 days 19 hours, 2024). Final stages of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, 2019, among the first female finalists in the show’s history. TEDxKingstonUponThames speaker, “Why fear is a choice”, January 2020. Founder of Barreworks, a London barre studio opened in 2009 after a 20-year career in advertising and senior marketing at Eurostar. Host of The Pin Drop Podcast, interviewing operators and leaders on how they perform at the edge. UK Ambassador for Inspiring Girls International. Biography Most leadership development programmes treat composure as a personality trait. It is closer to a craft. The discipline of staying useful when conditions are bad, when recovery time is short and when the cost of a poor call is real, is teachable, but only by people who have been tested by something harder than a workshop. Vicki Anstey arrived at that argument through a long detour. Two decades in advertising, including a senior marketing role at Eurostar, taught her how high-functioning teams hold together under commercial pressure. Founding Barreworks in London during the 2009 recession taught her how an operator behaves when the business is the only safety net. The endurance work came later and is the evidence base she now draws on with leadership audiences. Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2019, the Pacific Ocean rowed unsupported with the Girls Who Dare team in 2021, the Race Across America cycled in under seven days in 2024. Two Guinness World Records, each set in conditions where the failure mode is not embarrassment but injury or worse. What she does with that material in a corporate room is the work. She breaks down how high-performing teams handle fear, fatigue and disagreement under load, how individuals protect their judgment when the operating window narrows, and what separates the people who keep functioning at the edge from those who freeze. Her TEDxKingstonUponThames talk and The Pin Drop Podcast extend the same argument for buyers who want to see the thinking before they book. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under sustained pressure High-performance team behaviours in extreme environments Psychological safety and trust under load Fear, decision-making and the cost of hesitation Resilience as a trainable capability Female leadership and performance Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams entering periods of acute pressure: restructuring, integration, crisis response, major commercial bets. Sales, trading and front-line client teams whose performance is gated on composure under repeated rejection or volatility. Leadership development programmes for high-potential managers stepping into roles where the stress profile changes faster than the skill set. Audiences where the brief calls for credibility with sceptical senior operators, not generic motivation. Audience outcomes A working model of how composure is built and lost, with named behaviours leaders can practise rather than aspire to. Specific tactics for protecting decision quality when teams are fatigued or fearful. A concrete view of what high-performing teams do differently when conditions deteriorate. An honest account of failure, recovery and the actual cost of operating at the edge, drawn from named expeditions rather than generic anecdote.

Why organisations work with The Tempest Two A two-handed delivery rooted in shared, verifiable experience. Most resilience content is told solo. The duo dynamic, including dialogue and disagreement on stage, lands as conversation rather than lecture. The Atlantic row, Patagonia ultra-triathlon and El Capitan ascent are all self-funded, self-organised expeditions started without the relevant skills. The lesson on agency is structurally different from a story told by a former soldier or elite athlete. Operating discipline behind the talks. Through Dose, the same lessons are productised into workplace programmes for clients such as Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb, so a keynote can sit inside a wider engagement rather than ending at the closing slide. Tonal range commercial buyers actually want. The act works on a sales kick-off stage, an EMEA marketing conference or an internal wellbeing day without code-switching, which is rare in the adventure-speaker field. Biography highlights 3,000-mile unaided ocean row from the Canary Islands to Barbados, completed in 54 days, with no prior rowing or sailing experience. World-first ultra-triathlon across Patagonia in 2017: 1,600km cycle, 65km Huemul Circuit run, 100km stand-up paddleboard descent of the La Leona river. Winter ascent of Mont Blanc and El Capitan summit in Yosemite, the latter on roughly 18 months of climbing experience. Co-founders of Dose, a workplace wellbeing company working with Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb among others. Keynote clients include Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Heineken, Vodafone, Red Bull, Dropbox, Tesco, Waitrose & Partners, NatWest and Gymshark. Hosts of The Tempest Two Pod on adventure, mindset and performance. Biography Two friends in marketing jobs decided to row the Atlantic. Neither had sat in a rowing boat. Fifty-four days after leaving the Canary Islands, James Whittle and Tom Caulfield reached Barbados, having met the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic in fifty years on the way. The story matters because the starting point was ordinary, which is the point of every keynote that has followed. What came next was a deliberate run of self-organised expeditions: a winter ascent of Mont Blanc, a climb of El Capitan, a London-to-Sahara motorbike ride, and a self-styled world-first ultra-triathlon across Patagonia stitching together a 1,600km cycle, the 65km Huemul Circuit and a 100km paddleboard descent of the La Leona river. None were undertaken with the relevant elite credentials beforehand. That gap, between what they could obviously do and what they did anyway, became the working material. In 2018 they built Dose, a workplace wellbeing and performance company, around the same idea. Resilience and growth mindset are taught not as motivational concepts but as practices for teams under load. Clients include Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb. The keynote and the operating business reinforce each other; an event can lead to a programme rather than a one-off morale lift. The act sits in a specific commercial niche. It is not pure adventure inspiration, and it is not corporate consulting in disguise. It is a two-person performance for the part of an organisation that has heard the resilience message before and stopped listening, told by two people who keep proving the premise on themselves. Key speaking topics Growth mindset Resilience under pressure Team performance and trust Operating outside the comfort zone Embracing risk and failure Courage-based leadership Workplace wellbeing and engagement Ideal for CHROs and heads of employee engagement designing resilience and wellbeing programmes that need a credible opening moment. Sales, marketing and commercial leadership running annual kick-offs that need energy without slipping into hype. Culture and L&D leads looking for keynote content that can be extended into team workshops rather than ending at applause. Founder-led and high-growth companies whose teams are carrying sustained pressure and need a shared language for it. Audience outcomes A working definition of growth mindset that survives contact with a hard week back in the office. Specific habits the duo use to prepare for, push through and recover from extended pressure, transferable to a team context. A reframing of failure and risk that gives more junior staff permission to act with higher agency. A shared reference point across a team that lasts beyond the event, often picked up by Dose programming where it follows.

Why organisations work with Tommy Caulfield Stories with receipts. The Atlantic crossing, the Patagonia ultra triathlon, and the El Capitan climb are documented adventures, not platform anecdotes, which gives the resilience material an evidence base most motivational keynotes do not have. The “ordinary person” frame. Caulfield was a content marketer with no endurance background before any of this. That makes the material legible to a non-elite audience in a way that ex-military and Olympic speakers often are not. A specific intellectual hook in High Agency. The signature talk reframes resilience as ownership and decisive action under ambiguity, which gives people teams a more useful organising idea than “be resilient.” A corporate client list that signals fit. Repeat work with Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Airbnb, Nike, Dropbox, BNY Mellon, and Gymshark indicates the content travels across sectors and seniority levels. Biography highlights Co-founder of The Tempest Two with James Whittle, the speaking and adventure partnership formed after their 2015 Atlantic crossing. Rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic unaided in 54 days, from the Canary Islands to Barbados, with no prior rowing experience. Completed a world-first ultra triathlon in Patagonia: 1,600km cycle, 65km mountain run, and a 100km stand-up paddleboard descent of the La Leona river between Lakes Viedma and Argentino. Climbed El Capitan in Yosemite with 36 months’ climbing experience. Co-founder of Dose, a workplace wellbeing company whose clients have included Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM, and Airbnb. Host of The Tempest Two Pod, a podcast on adventure mindset. Corporate keynote clients include Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Dropbox, Heineken, Gymshark, and Rapid7. Biography Most resilience content fails the room within five minutes. The audience has heard the abstract version. They have done the workshop. What they have not heard is someone who can describe what changes in the head when a 7-metre rowing boat capsizes 1,500 miles from land in a hurricane, and then say something useful about Monday morning. That is the slot Tommy Caulfield fills. He and James Whittle, who together form The Tempest Two, rowed 3,000 miles unaided across the Atlantic in 2015 with no prior rowing experience. They followed it with a world-first ultra triathlon across Patagonia in 2017: a 1,600km cycle, a 65km mountain run, and a 100km stand-up paddleboard descent of the La Leona river. They climbed El Capitan in 2019 with three years of climbing experience between them. The keynote work draws on those expeditions, but the proposition is structural rather than anecdotal. The signature talk, High Agency, treats ownership and decisive action under ambiguity as a learnable workplace skill, not a personality trait. It is built for audiences who are tired of being told to be resilient and want a more specific mental model. The corporate adoption supports the case. Caulfield has delivered repeat keynotes for Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Airbnb, Nike, Dropbox, BNY Mellon, Gymshark, and Heineken, and co-founded the workplace wellbeing company Dose, which has worked with Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM, and Airbnb. The “ordinary person” framing is the differentiator: no elite athletic background, no military service, no academic credential. The credibility lives in the expeditions themselves and the room responses they produce. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure High agency and ownership at work Growth mindset Team performance in adversity Adventure mindset and behaviour change Decision-making under uncertainty Ideal for People and culture leaders looking for resilience and mindset content that lands with a mid-career audience. Sales, customer, and high-pressure operating teams running annual kick-offs or away-days. HR and L&D teams designing wellbeing or performance programmes that need a credible external opener. Conference programmes wanting an adventure-led keynote with a corporate client track record rather than a pure inspirational slot. Audience outcomes A working definition of high agency that an audience can apply to their own decisions, not a generic call to be more resilient. A felt sense of what mindset under prolonged pressure actually looks like, drawn from documented expeditions rather than abstract examples. Specific habits and decision routines used to keep moving through setbacks, capsizes, and prolonged adversity. A reset of what “ordinary” people are capable of when the frame shifts from experience to ownership.

Why organisations work with James Whittle A first-person account of decision-making after 54 days of unsupported ocean rowing, three days on the wall of El Capitan, and a world-first Patagonia triathlon, drawn on directly rather than borrowed from research. A deliberate “started from zero” frame that lands with workforces who are tired of being shown ex-special-forces or Olympic-medallist case studies and find them remote. A track record of repeat work with Nike, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Heineken and Airbnb, which gives buyers reassurance that the material survives a senior corporate audience. A second business, Dose, built around translating expedition lessons into ongoing workplace wellbeing programmes for clients including BNY Mellon and IBM, so the keynote sits inside a wider intervention rather than a one-off appearance. A speaking partnership with Tom Caulfield that allows two-handed delivery, useful for offsites and team experiences where a single-voice keynote would not hold the room. Biography highlights Co-founder, The Tempest Two, the speaking and adventure partnership with Tom Caulfield. Co-founder, Dose, a workplace wellbeing company working with Nike, BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb. Rowed the Atlantic unsupported, Canary Islands to Barbados, 3,000 miles in 54 days, with no prior rowing experience. World-first ultra-triathlon across Patagonia: 1,600km cycle, 65km mountain run, 100km stand-up paddleboard descent of the La Leona River. Climbed El Capitan in Yosemite, encountering Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell on the wall. Speaking client list includes Google, Nike, Airbnb, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Heineken, Red Bull and Vodafone. Biography The honest version of resilience is not a poster on an office wall. It is what someone does on day forty of an Atlantic crossing when the water-maker has failed and the next port is still two weeks away. That is the territory The Tempest Two have spent the better part of a decade walking into on purpose. The duo, James Whittle and Tom Caulfield, started with no rowing experience and crossed 3,000 miles of ocean in 54 days. They followed it with a world-first ultra-triathlon in Patagonia and three days on the granite face of El Capitan. The pattern is deliberate: pick a discipline neither of them has practised, give themselves enough runway to learn it, and put the result in front of a corporate audience as material on how ordinary people make hard decisions under load. That positioning is what gives the work its commercial weight. Most adventure speakers come from a military or elite-sport background that audiences quietly discount as unreachable. The Tempest Two reject that framing on principle, which is why their keynote travels into rooms at Nike, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan and Heineken without losing the audience halfway through. Whittle’s second business, Dose, takes the same lessons and converts them into structured workplace wellbeing programmes for clients including BNY Mellon, IBM and Airbnb. The keynote is the front door; the operating model behind it is closer to a sustained intervention on team energy and recovery than a one-time motivational booking. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Decision-making in degraded conditions Team performance on long-duration projects Risk and the comfort zone Wellbeing as a performance variable Adventure-led leadership development Ideal for HR and people leaders running offsites focused on team energy and recovery Sales and commercial leadership conferences where the brief is grit and momentum, not strategy content Programme leads on long-duration transformations who need to address fatigue head-on Senior all-hands events that need a non-corporate voice to shift the register Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a small team makes decisions when the original plan has stopped working A vocabulary for resilience that does not collapse into platitude A reset on the difference between high-effort discomfort and actual risk A reason to look at recovery and energy management as a leadership concern, not a personal one

Mickey Wilson is the CEO, founder, and creative force behind Firestarter, a brand consultancy renowned for fusing ingenuity with psychology to build standout B2B brands. With over thirty years of experience, she has guided brand strategy and creative leadership for industry giants like Samsung, Tesco, CIMA, and Ocado. Mickey developed Firestarter’s DARE Formula—Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression—helping brands unlock growth through clarity and resonance.​ Her passion lies in helping rebellious scale-ups and purpose-led SMEs forge impactful brands in a landscape dominated by automation and sameness. She uniquely combines strategic frameworks, behavioural insight, and AI to drive authentic creativity and commercial success. Mickey Wilson also collaborates with Chris Endersby, Firestarter’s co-founder and expert business psychologist, to give inspiring keynotes that unite brand psychology, creative strategy, and transformational insight for entrepreneurial audiences.

Why organisations work with Perri Shakes-Drayton She offers a first-person account of returning to elite performance four years after a career-altering injury, useful to leaders managing teams through prolonged recovery rather than single-event setbacks. Her story is grounded in a verifiable competitive record at the highest level: 4x400m relay silver at the 2017 World Championships in London, on the same track where the 2013 injury happened. She speaks credibly about the difference between motivation and discipline, drawing on a coaching relationship and a return-to-sport pathway, not generic mindset language. The narrative arc is unusually clean for buyers programming a values or culture moment: ranked second in the world, injury, surgery, four-year absence, return at the top level. Specific, dated, evidenced. Biography highlights 2013 European Indoor Champion in the 400m, and gold medallist in the 4x400m relay at the same championships in Gothenburg. 2012 World Indoor 4x400m relay gold medallist; 2017 World Championships 4x400m relay silver medallist in London. Personal best of 53.67 seconds in the 400m hurdles, the second-fastest by a British woman, behind only Sally Gunnell. Four-time British Athletics Champion in the 400m hurdles (2008, 2011, 2012, 2013). BSc Sports Science, Brunel University. Nike-sponsored athlete since 2005. Member of Victoria Park Harriers and Tower Hamlets Athletics Club. Founder of Train with PSD, a London-based fitness initiative running outdoor sessions at venues including The Shard and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Biography The 2013 World Championship 400m hurdles final in Moscow ended at the first hurdle. Perri Shakes-Drayton, ranked second in the world that season with a personal best of 53.67 seconds, landed awkwardly and ruptured the ligaments and cartilage in her left knee. She finished seventh. The surgeon’s instruction afterwards was direct: no more hurdles. What followed was not a comeback story in the conventional sense. It was four years of surgery, rehabilitation, relearning movement, and rebuilding a competitive base in a different event. She returned to the 400m flat, made the Great Britain relay squad for the 2017 World Championships in London, and ran on the team that took silver in front of a home crowd on the track where her injury had happened. The athletic record is verifiable and serious. European Indoor Champion in the 400m in 2013. Gold in the 4x400m relay at the same championships and at the 2012 World Indoors. Four-time British Athletics Champion over 400m hurdles. Second-fastest British woman in history over the distance behind Sally Gunnell, the Olympic and world champion. A Nike-sponsored athlete since 2005, trained out of Victoria Park Harriers in east London, BSc in Sports Science from Brunel. For senior audiences, the value of her account lies in the part most resilience speakers skip: the middle. The years between the injury and the return, where progress is invisible and the question of whether to continue gets asked repeatedly. That is the conversation she is credible on, and the one most leadership programmes are not equipped to host. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setback Self-leadership and discipline under sustained pressure Goal-setting and the practical content of long-term focus Mental health and athlete wellbeing Team dynamics in high-performance environments Diversity and representation in elite sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams and offsites focused on resilience, recovery and decision-making after a setback HR, talent and wellbeing leads programming culture and mental health moments Employee networks, ERGs and diversity events seeking a credible elite-sport voice Conference openers and after-dinner audiences where the brief is story-led rather than thesis-led Audience outcomes A first-hand reference point for what sustained recovery looks like over years, not weeks A working distinction between motivation and discipline that audiences can use the next day A concrete example of returning to a top level after a four-year absence, useful as a benchmark for teams under pressure A reset on what is realistic to ask of people coming back from professional or personal disruption

Why organisations work with Jodie Burrage She speaks from inside the experience of considering whether to walk away, then choosing not to. That is a different conversation from generic motivational content, and audiences feel the difference. Her examples are dated, specific and verifiable: a top-five win over Paula Badosa, a Wimbledon main-draw debut victory, an all-British WTA final, and a near full ankle ligament rupture in training that cost her a Grand Slam season. She covers mental health from the position of someone who broke down in a training session in 2024 and went back the next day. The credibility on pressure and stress comes from the record, not from a wellness framework. She is a current player, not a retired figurehead. The recovery story is live, which makes the material useful to teams facing their own in-flight setbacks rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Career-high WTA singles ranking of world No. 85, reached in September 2023 Reached the 2023 Nottingham Open final, the first all-British WTA final since 1977 WTA Tour doubles champion at the 2023 Transylvania Open with Jil Teichmann First Grand Slam main-draw singles win at Wimbledon 2023 against Caty McNally Top-five career win over Paula Badosa at the 2022 Eastbourne International Represented Great Britain in the Billie Jean King Cup including the 2026 qualifier against Australia in Melbourne Biography Three ankle surgeries before the age of twenty would have ended most playing careers. Burrage came back from them, broke into the world top 100 in 2023, and reached an all-British WTA final at Nottingham against Katie Boulter, the first of its kind since 1977. The same year she recorded her first Grand Slam main-draw singles win at Wimbledon against Caty McNally and lifted a WTA Tour doubles title in Cluj-Napoca with Jil Teichmann. The 2024 season is the part of the story audiences tend to remember. Wrist surgery in February was followed, just as she was returning, by a near full rupture of her ATFL ankle ligament in a training session with Boulter. She missed the French Open, the grass-court season and Wimbledon. She has since said publicly that she considered retirement during that recovery and broke down mid-session asking how much fight she had left. The material she brings to corporate audiences is built on that ground. The career-high ranking of No. 85, the top-five win over Paula Badosa at Eastbourne in 2022, and her Billie Jean King Cup appearances for Great Britain through to the 2026 qualifier against Australia all sit inside a record of repeated injury and return. She talks about pressure, public accountability and the daily decision to keep going as someone still actively making that decision on the WTA Tour. For leaders who have to ask teams to perform through restructure, setback or sustained uncertainty, the value is the realism. Burrage does not present resilience as a state. She describes it as a series of small choices made on bad days, with the scoreboard public the following week. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Mental health in high-performance environments Goal setting and personal accountability Performing in the public eye Team environments and individual responsibility Ideal for Sales, trading and other performance-measured teams operating under public or visible scorecards HR, talent and L&D leaders building wellbeing and mental health content with credibility beyond the wellness sector Leaders running organisations through restructure, layoffs or sustained operational pressure Early-career and high-potential audiences facing first encounters with public failure Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a current professional athlete makes the decision to continue after setback, rather than an abstract framework Language for talking about mental health in performance settings without softening it into wellness A working definition of accountability when results are visible and the next attempt is days away A reference point for resilience grounded in dated, verifiable career events rather than metaphor