Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Arnt Eriksen PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, and Salesforce all sit on his client list. His point of contact is usually the senior marketing leader carrying the number. His forthcoming book Marketing at Velocity (Kogan Page, April 2027) sets out a thesis on B2B brand compounding, with proprietary frameworks (Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, the Velocity Brand Scorecard) that audiences can apply once they leave the room. Thirty years agency-side at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar means his frameworks come out of work that shipped and clients who renewed. He is a practitioner with a published thesis, which is rarer in this category than buyers expect. Senior marketing audiences have heard the AI-and-content pitch from a dozen other speakers. He gives them a diagnosis of why brand activity is not converting into category position, and a working set of tools for fixing it. Biography highlights Forthcoming book: Marketing at Velocity: B2B Brand Building, Momentum and Category Leadership (Kogan Page, April 2027) Author of Brand You Economics (2021) Thirty years of senior brand experience across more than 75 global brands, including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, Meta, and doTERRA Senior agency career at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; co-founded his first agency at twenty-five Host of the Marketing at Heart podcast Keynotes delivered across the Nordics, Europe, North America, and Australia, including for Salesforce stages Biography Most B2B brands run their marketing as a continuous feed of campaigns and content. Activity rises, dashboards look healthy, and category position barely moves. Arnt Eriksen’s argument is that this is a compounding problem, not an effort problem. For thirty years he has worked inside the marketing functions of global brands including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, and doTERRA. His agency career covered Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; he co-founded his first agency at twenty-five. The pattern in his work is consistent. The brands that pulled away from their categories were the ones whose positioning held long enough to compound. That argument runs book-length in his forthcoming Marketing at Velocity, published by Kogan Page in April 2027. The premise is that speed wins moments and velocity wins markets. Around it sits a working set of frameworks. The One Rule (1rE²Zag), Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard are tools senior marketers can take back into a planning cycle, not concepts that live only on a stage. Beyond the book, he hosts the Marketing at Heart podcast and runs Conquer OS, his London-based consultancy. His client work has produced concrete commercial outcomes, including a Domino’s Internet-of-Things pizza-ordering button that the company’s Digital Director, Nick Dutch, publicly credited with what he called “mind-blowing” return on investment across PR coverage and sales. Key speaking topics B2B brand building Brand velocity and category leadership Marketing strategy for senior leaders Customer relationship economics AI and the modern marketing function B2B narrative and positioning Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders accountable for brand position and revenue contribution B2B leadership teams in crowded categories where differentiation is starting to blur Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses where marketing is being asked to translate spend into category position Audience outcomes A working diagnosis of why their B2B brand activity is not converting into category position A set of named frameworks, including Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard, that translate directly into next-quarter marketing planning A clear read on whether their current marketing is producing speed or velocity, and what to change if the answer is speed A reframe of trust, story, and consistency as commercial assets that compound, with implications for budget allocation and channel mix

Why organisations work with Mark Stevenson Two bestselling books, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and We Do Things Differently, that don’t theorise innovation but document it on the ground across four continents. Senior leaders get evidence of what already works, not opinions about what should. Operating experience to back up the advice. Stevenson is Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath, writing from inside a venture of the kind he asks boards to study. Cross-domain advisory range from the UK Ministry of Defence on peace and national security, to Médecins Sans Frontières on climate strategy, to GSMA on purpose. Few advisors hold credibility across that spread of rooms. A working stance on uncertainty for leaders who can no longer rely on prediction. The “reluctant futurist” framing names the discomfort buyers feel about boardroom forecasting and offers something more useful in its place. Stagecraft from a comedy and music background that makes serious material land. He gets a sceptical or hostile room engaged without softening the argument. Biography highlights Author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future (Profile Books, translated into 12 languages) and We Do Things Differently: The Outsiders Rebooting Our World Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath Co-founder of carbon removals firm CUR8 Global Ambassador for environmental law firm ClientEarth Former strategic advisor on peace, national security and climate change to the UK Ministry of Defence Has advised Médecins Sans Frontières (UK/Ireland) and the GSMA on long-term strategy Co-host of Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts podcast with comedian Jon Richardson and writer Ed Gillespie Biography Most boards still operate on a model of prediction. But the variables that shape strategy now move together and feed each other. Climate, geopolitics, technology and the failures of markets to price risk properly are not separate items on a register. They are aspects of the same problem. Mark Stevenson works the seam where senior leaders have to make confident decisions without the luxury of confident forecasts. His two books, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and the bestselling We Do Things Differently, are field reports rather than theory. Both document the people and ventures actually rebuilding broken systems in education, energy, healthcare, food and finance. His advisory practice spans governments, NGOs, investors and multinational organisations, and covers ground few in this category can match. He has been strategic advisor on peace, national security and climate change to the UK Ministry of Defence. He is ‘Futurist without Borders’ for Médecins Sans Frontières (UK/Ireland), strategic advisor to the GSMA, and Global Ambassador for environmental law firm ClientEarth. Alongside that, he is Director of Strategy and Special Projects at soil health business Oath, working on systems change from inside a venture rather than commenting on it from the gallery. Some of this is lived. Stevenson’s understanding of leadership under uncertainty is also shaped by his own recovery from Complex-PTSD, an experience of leading through profound personal disorientation. It is part of why his keynotes treat the emotional and relational dimensions of change as seriously as the strategic ones, and why he is unusually direct about what it costs leaders to hold composure when the ground moves. Key speaking topics Systems change and systems literacy Strategic foresight under deep uncertainty Innovation in failing systems Future of technology and society Climate, democracy and market risk as connected challenges Storytelling and stagecraft for serious material Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards Strategy, innovation and foresight functions Investors and capital allocators making long-horizon decisions Policy makers and public sector audiences Audience outcomes A way to look at climate, geopolitics, technology and trust in institutions as one problem rather than four Specific examples of innovators already rebuilding broken systems at scale, drawn from Stevenson’s own field research A working stance on uncertainty for leaders who can no longer rely on prediction-based planning A sharper view of where their organisation may be committing capital to outdated assumptions about how the world works

Why organisations work with Purna Virji At Microsoft and LinkedIn she worked the commercialization layer for emerging AI, shaping the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability reaches and convinces a market. She speaks to the gap between what a product can do and what customers adopt from direct operating experience, not observation. She gives executive teams a way to measure AI by business outcomes rather than activity, replacing “time saved” and tokens used with quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the language finance and boards will fund. Her Agent-Led Growth work maps a shift most leaders have not yet priced in: customers delegating discovery and purchase decisions to AI agents, and what that does to how brands get found and trusted. She wrote the award-winning High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page), recognised as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, which grounds her credibility in published, peer-recognised work rather than conference reputation alone. Biography highlights More than a decade across Microsoft and LinkedIn in AI commercialization, go-to-market, and customer engagement, including Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft and Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn. Author of High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page, 2023), a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title (2024) and Goody Business Book Award winner. Creator of the Agent-Led Growth newsletter, publishing original frameworks on agentic commerce, AI adoption, and trust as a ranking factor. Named the #1 Most Influential PPC Expert in the World (PPC Hero, 2016), an Adweek Young Influential (2018), and Search Personality of the Year (US Search Awards). Honoured Listee, Marquis Who’s Who in America (2023). Has keynoted in more than 20 countries; work featured in Adweek, The Drum, TNW, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. Biography Most AI initiatives do not fail in the lab. They fail in the gap between a working model and a customer who changes nothing about how they work. Purna Virji has spent her career inside that gap, at the point where AI commercialization, go-to-market strategy, and customer behaviour meet. That vantage point is unusual. She spent more than a decade at Microsoft and LinkedIn in commercialization and go-to-market work, latterly focused on emerging AI, where she shaped the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability earns trust and gets adopted. She has seen the failure modes up close, from unclear value to a customer journey that asks too much too soon. Her published work carries the same argument. High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page) was named a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title, and her Agent-Led Growth newsletter tracks the next shift: customers handing discovery, comparison, and purchase decisions to AI agents acting on their behalf. The implication for brands is direct. Influence moves from catching a person’s eye to earning an agent’s confidence. What she brings to a leadership audience is a way to argue about AI in board language. She reframes success away from time saved and tasks completed toward quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the outcomes that survive a finance review. Her Agent-Led Growth research names the real blocker directly: the Delegation Gap, the distance between what AI can technically do and what people are ready to hand over. For executives funding AI and seeing experimentation rather than impact, closing that gap is the work. Key speaking topics AI commercialization and adoption Agentic commerce and AI-led customer journeys Measuring AI business impact and ROI Go-to-market strategy for AI products Trust, discovery, and brand visibility in the AI era AI-driven sameness and competitive differentiation Ideal for Executive teams and boards funding AI initiatives and asking what return they are getting AI transformation leads, CTOs, and product leaders moving from pilot to deployment CMOs and revenue leaders facing the shift to agent-led discovery and commerce Enterprise B2B and SaaS organisations whose growth depends on AI adoption by customers Audience outcomes A framework for tying AI initiatives to outcomes a board will fund: quality lift, scope growth, capability unlock, rather than activity metrics. A clear picture of how agent-led customer journeys change discovery, trust, and where buying influence sits. A diagnosis of why specific AI initiatives stall at the pilot stage, and where the product-to-market handoff breaks. A way to spot where AI-driven sameness enters content and customer experience, and how to design for differentiation from the start.

Why organisations work with Lucy Bullivant She has written the reference work on contemporary masterplanning. Masterplanning Futures (Routledge) won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, and her thinking influences design review panels that approve real projects in London. She bridges urban planning critique and operational place strategy. Most speakers in this space do one or the other; Bullivant publishes peer-reviewed research, curates major exhibitions, and runs a working consultancy commissioned by clients. Her work on deep retrofit, hyperlocal media, and co-design gives organisations a vocabulary for participatory urbanism that goes beyond consultation theatre and connects to measurable place outcomes. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA who has curated exhibitions for Roca London Gallery, the Shenzhen Biennale, and The Building Centre, evidence that her authority is recognised across professional, academic, and cultural institutions. Biography highlights PhD in adaptive planning, London Metropolitan University; MA Cultural History, Royal College of Art Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon FRIBA), elected 2010 Author of Masterplanning Futures (Routledge), winner of the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, 2014; and Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change (Routledge, 2026) Co-author of Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures (Routledge, 2015) with Thomas Ermacora Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Urbanista.org Curator of Urbanistas (Roca London Gallery), Remake-We Make (Shenzhen Biennale), and Phoenix Rising and Retrofit 23 (The Building Centre) Biography Masterplans rarely fail at the design stage. They fail at the point where ambition meets the politics, capital cycles, and community expectations of the neighbourhood or city the plan has to live inside. Bullivant’s career has been built around closing that gap, both as a critic of how cities get planned and as a practitioner working inside design review and consultancy. Masterplanning Futures, her Routledge book that won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year in 2014, set out a comparative reading of large-scale plans across cultures and remains a reference text for planning departments and architecture schools. Her follow-up, Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change, is published by Routledge in autumn 2026. Recoded City, co-authored with Thomas Ermacora, extended the argument toward participatory and bottom-up regeneration, the territory all cities have to operate in. Her credibility comes from working across the professional stack at once. She is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, founder of Urbanista.org, and a Design Council expert. She chaired the Lambeth Design Review Panel from 2019 to 2025, and has sat on review panels for Enfield and the London Legacy Development Corporation, the panels that shape which projects in London get approved and built. Her recent curatorial work, Phoenix Rising: Visions for Rebuilding Ukraine and Retrofit 23 at The Building Centre, and Urbanistas at Roca London Gallery, sits on the same axis: how to rebuild, retrofit, and reimagine cities under climate, conflict, and demographic pressures. The thread across her writing, consultancy, and curatorship is a single insistence, that liveability is the hard test of any urban strategy, and that planning systems still under-equip leaders and teams to meet it. Key speaking topics Adaptive planning and masterplanning Deep retrofit and adaptive reuse of existing building stock Liveable urbanism and place quality Co-design and participatory placemaking Design review and design governance Urban regeneration and post-conflict rebuilding Climate adaptation in city strategy Ideal for City and regional government leaders, planning directors, and chief design officers Property developers, masterplanning teams, and large-scale regeneration boards Architecture and engineering firm leadership commissioning urban strategy work Sustainability and ESG leads inside real estate, infrastructure, and built environment portfolios Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why masterplans succeed or fail, drawn from comparative international case material Specific principles for deep retrofit at scale rather than project-by-project A working vocabulary for participatory placemaking that goes beyond consultation A sharper view of how design review and governance shape long-term place quality Reference points from leading European, Asian, and post-conflict rebuilding programmes

Why organisations work with Jennifer Willey The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association is held by fewer than 12% of NSA members. For a main-stage keynote where delivery quality is part of the decision, that level of platform competence reduces the risk on the booking. Behind every keynote sits a deployable methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage), built from Wet Cement’s Fearless@Work Survey and a decade of leadership programme delivery. The work can continue inside the organisation after the event. The career arc, from TV news anchor to senior commercial leader at Yahoo, AOL and The Trade Desk to founder of a leadership development firm, gives her credibility with two audiences at once: the people running culture and the people running the business. Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business, which matters for organisations applying supplier diversity criteria in procurement, and reinforces the lived basis of her work on confidence, voice and inclusion. Her book Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage is being published by Pearson in September with a UK and European launch, giving clients in the region a credible local moment to anchor a leadership programme around. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wet Cement (founded 2017); dual-certified Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association Author, Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage (Pearson, September 2026; UK and European launch) Creator of the Fearless in 5 microlearning series and the Advance Women at Work practice; co-founder of WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association Twenty-year commercial career across Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD, Sharecare and The Trade Desk; earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung, Genentech, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NPR, Walmart and Wesco Biography The leadership capabilities that mattered most a decade ago are not the ones under most pressure now. The pressure has shifted to composure, to communicating clearly when the brief keeps changing, and to keeping teams engaged through the third or fourth restructure of the year. That is the work Wet Cement was built around. Jenn Willey founded the firm in 2017 after twenty years leading sales and marketing teams at Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD and The Trade Desk, with an earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates. The firm’s methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework, is anchored on five capabilities: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage. It draws on the Wet Cement Fearless@Work Survey and a research collaboration with Wharton behavioural scientists, and has been deployed at Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung and Genentech. The September publication of Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage with Pearson is the first time the methodology has been put between hard covers. The retitling, from a women’s leadership guide in earlier framing to a broader leadership framework now, mirrors a real shift in how Wet Cement is bought. Women’s leadership remains a substantial specialty, anchored by the Advance Women at Work practice and her co-founding role at WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association. The primary work is now leadership development for change-fatigued teams across the seniority range. The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, earned by fewer than 12% of NSA members, is the platform credential most large rooms screen for. It marks Jenn out from most leadership development founders, who do not keynote at her standard. The combination of CSP-grade delivery and a deployable methodology is what makes her work usable past the event itself. Key speaking topics Fearless leadership and team capability under repeated change Self-leadership and resilience under sustained pressure Executive presence and confident communication for senior leaders Inclusive leadership and the next phase after DEI Women’s leadership and the Advance Women at Work approach Career navigation, sponsorship and the personal board of directors Ideal for Heads of leadership development and CHROs designing executive and senior-leader programmes for change-fatigued teams Executive teams and senior off-sites looking for a speaker who can also run the programme behind the keynote Women’s leadership networks, ERGs and high-potential cohorts that need a credible voice on confidence, advancement and inclusion without performative DEI framing Media, technology, advertising and life sciences organisations where her commercial vocabulary maps directly onto the audience Audience outcomes A working version of the Fearless Fundamentals (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) applied to their own context Specific behaviours for staying composed and decisive when the brief keeps changing, drawn from the Wet Cement Fearless@Work research The vocabulary to coach team members through impostor patterns, confidence gaps and self-advocacy challenges A defensible argument for why inclusion still matters as a leadership capability, useful in rooms where DEI as a label has been retired A method for designing and using a personal board of directors as a working career navigation tool

Why organisations work with Shela Gobertina von Trapp She brings twenty years of sustainability operating experience to a story most people only know from the screen: founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership and a decade leading corporate sustainability at Office Depot across the US and Europe. She gives boards a usable frame for decisions whose payoff sits well beyond the current leadership’s tenure, which is the practical problem behind most long-term commitments. She is the one speaker who can connect a globally recognised family legacy directly to corporate questions of brand stewardship and long-term value, which makes the argument land rather than feel borrowed. Through the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she has worked inside the procurement standards and circular-economy roadmaps that large buyers actually use. Biography highlights Founder and President of Celebrity Legacy and co-founder of the Georg & Agathe Foundation, with the heritage project vonTrapp.org Founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP), the cross-industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030 Director of Global Relations at the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT environmental ecolabel Roughly a decade in corporate sustainability at Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, across the United States and Europe Master’s in Energy and Environmental Analysis from Boston University, with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Analysis and Policy awarded Magna Cum Laude Great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music Biography Most companies plan in quarters and report in years. The choices that shape a brand compound over decades, long after the leaders who made them have gone. Sustainability lives in that gap, judged on short cycles and paid for over much longer ones. Shela Gobertina von Trapp spent two decades working that gap from inside large organisations. At Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, she led corporate sustainability across the United States and Europe. At the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she became a founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership, an industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030. What makes her perspective unusual is its source. She is a great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and a granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music. She has spent years researching how that family held its identity through war, exile, and reinvention, and what allowed the name to outlast the people who carried it. She now puts the same question to companies in commercial terms: how does a brand earn the right to last? Drawing on the family archive and her sustainability work, she helps boards treat reputation and environmental commitment as assets that are stewarded across generations, the way the von Trapp name was. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability and the circular economy Long-term value and legacy thinking Brand longevity and stewardship Heritage and historical preservation Leadership lessons from the von Trapp family Values-based and purpose-driven leadership Sustainable procurement and electronics circularity Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG teams moving from reporting cycles to long-term substance Boards and family businesses weighing brand stewardship and succession across generations Heritage brands and organisations whose long-term reputation is itself a core asset Leadership and culture programmes wanting a substantive story about values that outlast their founders Audience outcomes A way to test today’s decisions against their consequences decades out, not just the current cycle A concrete account of how one family held its name through war and exile, and why that matters for institutions that want to last Sustainability reframed as a long-horizon asset that boards steward, illustrated with circular-economy examples from the electronics industry Reputation and brand understood as inheritances, built deliberately or eroded by default

Why organisations work with Neelu Kaur She treats workplace silence as a structural problem. Most speakers in this space coach individuals to be more confident; her intervention sits in meeting design and the conversational rules that decide who gets to challenge a senior idea. The Self-Trust Recession is her named diagnosis of the moment: capable leaders, surrounded by AI and competing opinion, are second-guessing themselves and outsourcing decision authority. Her Self-Trust Reset framework is the way back. Her cross-cultural lens, the collective “we” she was raised in meeting the individualistic “I” of American corporate life, makes her credible to global and AAPI audiences who have lived that gap themselves. Her tools combine cognitive and body-based techniques. The pairing of organisational psychology training (Columbia, NYU Stern) and sixteen years of yoga and Ayurveda teaching produces practical methods her audiences can apply in the next meeting they walk into. Be Your Own Cheerleader, published by Post Hill Press in January 2023, gives her work a published thesis a senior buyer can read before commissioning. Biography highlights Author of Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, 2023), a guide to self-advocacy that addresses the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms. MA in Social and Organizational Psychology, Columbia University, and BS from NYU Stern School of Business. Certified NLP Master Practitioner and Coach, NLP Center of New York. Client list includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies. Featured on Morning Brew’s Good Work and TV Asia / SEEMA Network’s Sundays with Seema. Chief Guide at Chief (NYC), with over sixteen years as a yoga teacher and Ayurveda practitioner. Biography Most organisations have more talent than they have contribution. Capable people stay quiet at exactly the moments their judgement is most needed, and what looks like alignment is often silence. This is the tension Neelu Kaur takes on. Trained as an organisational psychologist at Columbia and with an undergraduate degree from NYU Stern, she has spent over fifteen years inside Fortune 500 organisations. The question her work returns to is why capable people stay quiet in the moments that matter. Her client list, which includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies, gives her a view across financial services, consulting, and tech. Her current diagnosis is what she calls the Self-Trust Recession. Leaders are surrounded by AI tools and competing opinion, and the quiet effect is that capable people are outsourcing their own judgement. The Self-Trust Reset framework she has built around this idea is a way to recognise when fear is shaping a decision and rebuild internal authority before acting on it. The earlier strand of her work runs through Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, January 2023). She wrote the book out of her own experience growing up between two cultures: Indian at home, American at work. It examines why people raised in collective ‘we’ cultures struggle to advocate for themselves in workplaces built around the individualistic ‘I’. That cultural lens still shapes her work and is part of what makes her credible to global teams and AAPI audiences who have lived the same code-switch. Key speaking topics Self-trust and decision-making in high-pressure environments Self-advocacy in the workplace Cross-cultural communication in global teams The cost of consensus and over-collaboration AAPI and underrepresented voices in corporate life Burnout and sustainable leadership Ideal for Leadership teams in Fortune 500 environments where decision speed and contribution quality are the bottleneck CHROs, Chief Learning Officers, and L&D leaders building cultures of voice and accountability DEI, AAPI, and Employee Resource Group programmes looking for content that goes beyond representation language High-potential talent and mid-career professionals working across cultures in global organisations Audience outcomes A clear way to recognise when fear, perfectionism, or comparison is shaping a decision instead of judgement Behavioural tools to speak up in high-stakes moments without overshooting or shutting down A vocabulary for the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms, useful for global team conversations A diagnostic for where consensus and over-discussion are slowing the team’s decisions

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 Shil Shanghavi His methodology has been stress-tested against the hardest possible conditions. Shanghavi manages a severe stutter and has built his entire framework from the requirement to communicate fluently under pressure. When he teaches communication, there is no abstraction – the techniques work because they had to. He turns a soft skill into a data problem. The SpeakerLab AI platform he developed measures pace, structure, eye contact, jargon, repetition, and narrative flow, giving organisations a means to track communication development in the same way they would any other performance metric. The music-based delivery technique is genuinely novel. His method of using musical time signatures and rhythm to manage presence, pacing, and fluency is not borrowed from conventional coaching. It is proprietary, demonstrably effective, and unmatched by other communication speakers in the market. His coaching background shapes the quality of practical output. As former Head of Speaker Coaching for TEDxPerth, he has worked with speakers whose performance is publicly scrutinised against one of the most demanding spoken-word formats in the world. That standard transfers to boardroom and conference work. Cross-cultural reach is operationally demonstrated. He has delivered keynotes and workshops to audiences across more than 70 countries, which means his frameworks have been tested for cultural transference, not just constructed for a single market. Biography highlights Former Head of Speaker Coaching, TEDxPerth Creator of SpeakerLab, an AI-powered platform that measures and analyses communication performance LinkedIn Top Voice for Public Speaking Subject of SHIL, an award-winning short film documentary (2021) chronicling his communication journey Presentation mentor, IMPACT 100 WA Has delivered keynotes and workshops to audiences across more than 70 countries Developed a proprietary communication technique using musical time signatures to manage fluency and stage presence Biography The most persistent failure in leadership development is not a shortage of smart people. It is a shortage of leaders who can make their thinking land. Communication breakdowns are rarely about content; they are about trust, presence, and the ability to make an audience believe that the person speaking has actually lived what they are saying. That problem sits at the centre of Shil Shanghavi’s work. Shanghavi built his communication framework from necessity. Managing a severe stutter since childhood, he developed a proprietary technique rooted in musical time signatures: using rhythm, pace, and structure drawn from progressive house music to achieve fluency and presence on stage. What began as a personal survival mechanism became a coaching methodology, tested over decades of practice and refined through his role as Head of Speaker Coaching for TEDxPerth, one of the most demanding public speaking environments in the world. His contribution to the field extends beyond technique. Shanghavi developed SpeakerLab, an AI platform that analyses communication performance across dimensions including eye contact, pacing, structure, jargon, and narrative coherence – translating what most coaches treat as intuition into measurable, actionable data. For organisations that have tried conventional presentation training and found it evaporates within weeks, the ability to quantify progress changes what improvement looks like in practice. His work spans more than 70 countries and a range of industries, with clients that include senior executives, leadership teams, and TEDx speakers preparing for high-scrutiny environments. He is a LinkedIn Top Voice for Public Speaking and the subject of a 2021 award-winning documentary, SHIL, which traces his journey from communication fear to global platform. Key speaking topics Storytelling as a leadership and trust-building discipline Communication under pressure and high-stakes environments AI and measurement in communication development Executive presence and authentic leadership communication Building organisational culture through narrative Cross-cultural communication and global audiences Overcoming communication fear and building confidence Ideal for CHROs and L&D leads commissioning leadership communication programmes Senior executive and C-suite teams preparing for high-visibility engagements Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines personal narrative with practical communication frameworks Organisations embedding authenticity and trust as cultural values at senior level Audience outcomes A practical framework for structuring stories in professional contexts – pitches, presentations, and leadership communications Familiarity with the SpeakerLab AI approach to measuring and improving communication performance Techniques for managing pressure, presence, and fluency in front of audiences of varying sizes and seniority A reframed understanding of authenticity as a practical communication tool, not a personality trait Confidence in applying storytelling principles to business communication across digital and in-person formats

Why organisations work with Maja Jovanovic She has built an entire body of work around one specific, observable behaviour, the unnecessary workplace apology, which gives her sessions a level of practical specificity that most “women’s confidence” programming lacks. Her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk and the follow-on TED Ideas article gave her a clearly identifiable thesis that travels beyond the room, useful for internal communications and post-event reinforcement. She works from a sociological lens rather than a self-help one, framing communication patterns as products of culture and structure, which lands well with audiences sceptical of motivational content. She has been engaged across regulated and conservative environments, including programming associated with TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School, and consulted on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign. She delivers in keynote, half-day workshop and online-course formats, viable for both flagship women’s leadership events and ongoing manager-level capability work. Biography highlights PhD in Sociology, with research focus on the sociology of women’s health. Contract and sessional faculty, Department of Sociology, McMaster University. Author of Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make (Rock’s Mills Press), with a published workbook and audiobook edition. TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen speaker, “How apologies kill our confidence”. Contributor to TED Ideas on workplace apology language and confidence. Consultant on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign; broadcast appearances on Global News, CHCH and CTV’s The Social. Biography The unnecessary apology is one of the most reliable predictors of how a woman will be perceived in a meeting. Maja Jovanovic has spent over a decade studying it. As a sociologist trained at the doctoral level in the sociology of women’s health, she treats workplace communication as a social phenomenon, not a personality trait, which is what gives her work its bite. Her book, Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make, names a category of behaviour that most leadership programmes gesture at but rarely isolate. The argument is straightforward. Women in professional settings apologise reflexively in moments that do not call for it, and each instance erodes credibility with the stakeholders who decide who gets sponsored. The book has appeared in multiple editions through Rock’s Mills Press, alongside a workbook and audiobook. The thesis travelled further through her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk, “How apologies kill our confidence”, and a TED Ideas feature that her own site identifies as the platform’s most-read piece of 2019. That visibility has translated into corporate workshops with audiences at TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School programming, plus consulting work on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign. What sets her apart in the women’s leadership speaker pool is her refusal to generalise. She does not talk about confidence as an attitude. She talks about confidence as a set of identifiable speech acts, written and spoken, that can be observed, measured and changed inside a quarter, the form of intervention that operations-minded HR and DEI functions can actually use. Key speaking topics Workplace communication and gendered language patterns Confidence as a learnable behaviour Apology language and professional credibility Imposter syndrome and structural bias Allyship and male sponsorship in mixed teams Perfectionism and people-pleasing at work Women’s leadership and career progression Ideal for CHRO, Chief Diversity Officer and DEI leads designing women’s progression programmes Heads of Talent and Learning building manager and high-potential curricula Employee resource group and women’s network leads booking flagship events Financial services, professional services and regulated-industry firms running women’s leadership tracks Audience outcomes A sharper, sociologically grounded vocabulary for naming the communication patterns that limit progression. Specific edits to spoken and written language that audiences can apply the next working day. A reframe of confidence as observable behaviour rather than personal trait, coachable at scale. A clearer view of where individual habit ends and organisational culture begins, useful for managers and sponsors.

Why organisations work with Lucy Shepherd She has actually led teams through conditions where decisions carry physical consequence: a 50-day, 400km first-recorded crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, captured in Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild. Her credentials sit inside the institutions that historically define exploration: Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23, co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society, with a Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, that documents the thinking behind the expedition. She speaks credibly to mixed-team leadership in cultures and conditions she does not control, a closer analogy for senior leaders running global teams than the usual sports or military comparisons. She brings a current, on-camera profile, rather than a single-event story repeated for years. Each new expedition and broadcast updates the material she draws on. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, appointed at age 23. Co-opted council member of the Scientific Exploration Society. Led the first recorded east-to-west traverse of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains, a 50-day, 400km expedition with an all-Indigenous team. Author of Into the Wild, published by Penguin Michael Joseph. Star and self-shooting subject of Channel 4’s Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, a two-part series that aired in 2024. Described by The Times as «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers». Biography The first recorded east-to-west crossing of Guyana’s Kanuku Mountains took 50 days and roughly 400 kilometres on foot. Lucy Shepherd led it in 2021 with an Indigenous Macushi and Wapishana team, navigating jungle, river and uncharted terrain on outdated maps. Channel 4 turned the expedition into Secret Amazon: Into the Wild, broadcast in 2024. Shepherd’s credentials read like an older era of exploration. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society at 23 and co-opted onto the council of the Scientific Exploration Society, the bodies that have historically vetted serious British expedition work. The Times has called her «the most hardcore member of the new generation of British adventurers,» a line that travels because it is uncharacteristically literal about what she does. The keynote material draws on a decade of leading and joining expeditions across Arctic plateaus, high mountains, deep jungle and desert. The themes that recur are practical: composure when conditions degrade, trust built across cultural and language boundaries, decisions made on incomplete information, and the discipline of carrying on when the plan no longer applies. Her Penguin Michael Joseph book, Into the Wild, sets out the thinking behind those decisions in long form. Senior audiences tend to find the analogy useful because the field she works in is unforgiving in ways business rarely is. The leadership questions translate without softening, and the speaker bringing them has carried the consequences personally. Key speaking topics Expedition leadership in extreme environments Decision-making under physical and psychological pressure Leading mixed and cross-cultural teams Risk, preparation and the limits of planning Wilderness, biodiversity and environmental stewardship Resilience drawn from expedition fieldwork Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences seeking a substantive keynote on judgment under pressure Teams coming through restructure, sustained change, or operational shock who need a renewed sense of composure and trust Sustainability, ESG and conservation-themed audiences who want a credible field voice rather than a policy speaker All-hands and inspirational anchor slots where the standard sports or military keynote has worn thin Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what real decision-making under pressure looks like, told through a specific 50-day expedition rather than abstract framework. A more honest reading of risk, preparation and the point at which planning stops being useful. A practical model for building trust across a team when language, culture and authority are not stable. A renewed argument for protecting wilderness and biodiversity, made by someone who has spent time inside it.

Why organisations work with Liv Marks A live-television-grade interviewer used to extracting a usable, broadcast-ready answer from talent like Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga inside a junket window of a few minutes. Fronts Bauer Media’s “My Life in Movies”, a long-form career interview format with figures including Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, evidence she can carry an unscripted hour as well as a red-carpet hit. Brings a built audience of women aged 25 to 35 on TikTok and Instagram, useful for organisations whose branded content needs to travel beyond the room. Track record of branded campaign work with Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio, so commercial integration is familiar territory, not new ground. A presenter who can move between film, television and stage musicals on Saturday radio, useful for organisations programming arts, culture and entertainment events. Biography highlights Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer, Bauer Media, covering film and television. Host, “My Life in Movies”, Bauer Media’s digital long-form interview series. Presenter, “Magic Musicals” Saturday radio show. Interview credits across red carpets, press junkets and premieres including Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. Branded campaign work with Bvlgari (EE BAFTA Awards), Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. BA in Broadcast Journalism, University of Leeds; earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television. Biography Press junkets are not gentle environments. A reporter has a few minutes with a major film actor, a publicist watching the clock, and a queue of competitors behind them all asking the same question. The interviewers who travel out of that format and into bigger rooms are usually the ones who can find a real conversation inside the constraint. Liv Marks is one of them. As Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer at Bauer Media, Marks works across film and television, interviewing leading talent on red carpets, at premieres and in press junkets. Her interview credits include Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. She fronts Bauer’s “My Life in Movies”, a career-spanning digital series whose guests have included Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, and presents “Magic Musicals” on Saturday radio, where she covers theatre and stage performance. Alongside the day job, Marks has built a sizeable digital audience as @olivialilymarks, with engagement concentrated among women aged 25 to 35. That reach is what turned her into a useful collaborator on branded campaigns for Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. The training behind it is conventional: a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Leeds and earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television, then a steady move into national entertainment journalism. For organisations, the proposition is straightforward. Marks is hired to host an evening, conduct an on-stage interview, moderate a panel or front a piece of branded content, with the craft of a working entertainment journalist behind it and an audience that will share the clip afterwards. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and on-stage interviewing Branded content presenting for film, television and lifestyle brands Red carpet, premiere and awards coverage Long-form career interviews with talent Building a digital audience around film and entertainment Musicals, theatre and stage performance Ideal for Heads of brand and marketing commissioning launch events, premieres or awards moments that need an experienced on-camera host Communications and content leads producing branded interview series or social-first video content Conference and gala organisers in arts, entertainment, lifestyle and media Audience outcomes A live event hosted with the pace and confidence of a working broadcaster On-stage interviews that get past stock answers and produce moments worth clipping Branded content that fits the host’s own audience rather than reading as an advert A bridge between mainstream media credibility and a digital audience of women aged 25 to 35