Ledarskapsutveckling speakers

Why organisations work with Jamie Roberts He carries 94 Wales caps, two Lions tours and a 2009 Lions Player of the Series award, with the operational vocabulary that goes with it: selection, cycle planning, recovery, accountability inside a small group. He completed a Cardiff University medical degree, a Cambridge MPhil in Medical Science and a Loughborough MBA while playing professional rugby, giving him a credible voice on dual-career discipline that most athlete speakers cannot match. As an Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, he speaks from current governance experience, not retired anecdote. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries and published by Hodder and Stoughton, gives buyers a sourced, on-record account of the moments he draws on from stage. Biography highlights 94 Wales caps and two British and Irish Lions tours (2009, 2013); named Lions Player of the Series in South Africa, 2009. Two Six Nations Grand Slams (2008, 2012) and the 2013 Six Nations Championship title. BSc Sport and Exercise Science from Cardiff Met, MBBCh in Medicine from Cardiff University, MPhil in Medical Science from Queens’ College, Cambridge, and MBA from Loughborough University. Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, appointed October 2023. Author of Centre Stage (Hodder and Stoughton, 2021), co-written with Ross Harries. Honorary Fellow of Cardiff Metropolitan University (2023); started NHS Foundation training in Cardiff and Vale Health Board in 2025. Biography Inside elite rugby, the gap between training and Test match is small, public and unforgiving. Selection lasts a week. Recovery windows are measured in hours. The same group has to perform again, in front of cameras, after the last result has been dissected on television. That is the operational world Jamie Roberts lived in for seventeen years. He won 94 caps for Wales between 2008 and 2017, lifted Grand Slams in 2008 and 2012, took the Six Nations title in 2013 and toured twice with the British and Irish Lions. On the 2009 tour to South Africa he was named Player of the Series alongside Brian O’Driscoll in midfield. Most athletes at that level commit fully and exclusively to the game. Roberts was qualifying as a doctor at the same time. He completed his medical degree at Cardiff University in 2013, an MPhil in Medical Science at Queens’ College, Cambridge in 2017 and an MBA at Loughborough in 2020. The combination is unusual and useful. It gives him a vocabulary for performance that translates easily to clinical settings, board agendas and commercial teams, without leaning on rugby metaphor. Since 2023 he has sat on the Welsh Rugby Union Board as an Independent Non-Executive Director, a role he took during a difficult period for the governing body. He began NHS Foundation training in Cardiff in 2025. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries, is the on-record source for the stories audiences hear from him: selection, injury, the loss of a Wales place after a decade, and what holds a senior group together when the result is public. Key speaking topics Team performance under public pressure Leadership inside elite small groups Dual-career discipline and identity Resilience after setback and reinvention Sport, medicine and governance crossovers Mental approach to high-stakes selection Ideal for Senior leadership teams under sustained external scrutiny Sales, partnership and trading floors operating on short performance cycles Healthcare, professional services and regulated organisations interested in dual-career and clinical-leader perspectives Conferences and dinners seeking a credible, articulate sports voice with substantive content beyond playing anecdote Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain performance across a long competitive cycle, not a single peak Practical reference points for composure when results are visible and immediate A frank account of what selection, demotion and recovery feel like inside a high-performing group Insight into how a serious second discipline can sit alongside, rather than dilute, a primary role A grounded perspective on leadership and governance from someone currently inside both clinical and rugby boardroom settings

Why organisations work with Jamil Qureshi Six individuals to world number one, five Ryder Cup captains advised, 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. The track record in elite sport is operationally specific, not rhetorical. He has designed and embedded long-running change programmes at scale: Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. He has run transformation inside organisations, not only spoken about it. He translates the psychology of sustained pressure from environments where the cost of failure is public and immediate (Premier League, Ryder Cup) into boardrooms where it usually is not. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. The framework has been pressure-tested in domains most speakers can only describe. Biography highlights First-ever official psychologist appointed to the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam in 2006; has since worked with five Ryder Cup captains. Has worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50, with Premier League players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, with Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, and with members of the 2009 England Ashes-winning cricket team. Designed and delivered board-level leadership and change programmes for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK, and Lloyds Banking Group. Author of The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, on the psychological foundations of personal and professional performance. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. Listed by GQ Magazine among the most influential figures in British sport (2009); named in The Daily Mirror’s top 100 coaches in the world (2023). Biography At the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, Europe beat the United States by a record-equalling margin. Captain Ian Woosnam had done something no Ryder Cup captain had done before: he appointed an official psychologist to the team. That psychologist was Jamil Qureshi. Sport had been treating mindset as decisive for years. Most boards still treat it as a soft skill, even as senior leaders increasingly face the conditions of elite athletes: sustained scrutiny and very narrow margins for error. Qureshi has spent two decades closing that gap. He has helped six individuals reach world number one in their sport, advised five Ryder Cup captains, and worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. Premier League players at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea sit on the same client list as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK and Lloyds Banking Group. In business, the work goes well beyond keynotes. Qureshi designed and embedded leadership and change programmes for Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s cultural separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. Through Covid he ran extensive work with global leadership teams at SAS, GSK, Janssen, NHS England and Protiviti as they reset around remote and hybrid leadership. His book, The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, sets out the psychological foundations he applies in both worlds. Skill gets people to the top. What keeps them there, and what determines whether the team around them performs when it matters, is something organisations rarely build deliberately. That is what Qureshi is asked in to do. Key speaking topics Performance psychology in business High-performing teams Leadership under sustained pressure Mindset and behavioural change Cultural change and transformation Translating elite sport into business performance Hybrid and remote leadership Ideal for Boards and CEO leadership teams setting expectations for performance under sustained pressure Sales and commercial leadership teams where individual mindset shapes pipeline outcomes HR and L&D directors building leadership programmes that need psychological substance, not theory Senior leadership conferences where elite-sport credibility opens the room Audience outcomes Specific behaviours for performing under sustained pressure, drawn from how elite athletes actually train A sharper view of where individual mindset constrains team output, and what to do about it Language for leaders to talk about psychology without it sounding soft A more honest read on the gap between intent and execution in their own teams

Why organisations work with Jason Harris He brings a working framework, No Fail Trust, that he has applied with Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, not a set of war stories repackaged as leadership lessons. His operational credibility is current. He still flies commercial widebody aircraft for American Airlines, so the standards he teaches are standards he is still held to. He commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has run a real organisation with real accountability for safety, performance and people, not only led from the cockpit. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy, which gives the framework an academic spine that most ex-military speakers do not have. His material translates cleanly to civilian teams under restructure, hybrid working strain or post-incident recovery, where the question is whether trust will hold when conditions degrade. Biography highlights Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, nearly 30 years of service across active duty and the Air Force Reserve Command, concluding as a flying Squadron Commander. US Air Force Academy graduate, later instructor in the Academy’s Military and Strategic Studies department. 11 combat deployments, 470 combat sorties, more than 2,000 combat hours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Co-author of “Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership” (RTI Press, 2022), reviewed in the USAFA Journal of Character and Leadership Development. Commercial pilot with American Airlines, type-rated on the Airbus A320 family and Boeing 757, 767 and 777. Featured in Forbes and on the History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters”. Biography A cargo aircraft taking fire on approach is not the place to discover that a crew does not trust each other. The cost of unspoken doubt in that environment is measurable in seconds and lives. Jason Harris flew 470 combat sorties in environments where that calculation was not theoretical. That operating context shaped a leadership method, not a memoir. The No Fail Trust framework codifies what high-functioning aircrews actually do: the habits of disclosure, calibration and accountability that hold a team together when conditions degrade. He has carried it into Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, where the trust problem looks different on the surface but obeys the same logic underneath. Harris also brings the structural side. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy and commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has been responsible for organisational design, safety culture and people decisions, not only flight operations. His co-authored book “Aiming Higher” (RTI Press, 2022) was reviewed in the Academy’s Journal of Character and Leadership Development, which is rare for a bureau speaker working in this lane. He still flies. As an American Airlines pilot type-rated across the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 757, 767 and 777, the standards he asks corporate teams to consider are standards he is still operating under in the next week’s flight schedule. Key speaking topics Trust as an operational capability Leadership under high-consequence pressure Team performance in distributed and hybrid environments Psychological safety and crew resource management Decision-making under uncertainty Culture in safety-critical organisations Leading after restructure or incident Ideal for Boards and executive teams confronting a trust gap after restructure, leadership change or a public incident CHROs and culture leads designing for safety-critical or distributed teams Operational leadership cohorts in regulated sectors: aviation, energy, defence, logistics, financial services Sales kick-offs and leadership summits where the brief calls for credibility under pressure rather than motivational lift Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that can be observed, measured and rebuilt, rather than asserted A method for surfacing unspoken doubt inside senior teams before it becomes an operational cost A clearer view of how psychological safety, accountability and decision speed reinforce each other under pressure Specific behavioural habits drawn from aircrew practice that translate to civilian operating environments A sharper read on what leadership presence looks like when conditions are not stable

Why organisations work with Jason Roberts He is the named architect of the 2012 player boycott of the Kick It Out campaign, which produced the PFA’s six-point plan and a UK Rooney Rule for coaching appointments. He can speak to inclusion as institutional reform, not as awareness work. He runs football development across CONCACAF’s forty-one member associations, including the Coaching Convention and the Pro Licence, which gives him a working operator’s view of talent pathways and governance at scale. He built and still leads the Jason Roberts Foundation, active since 2007 across the UK and Grenada, with a documented record of programme delivery rather than badge philanthropy. His MBE was awarded for services to sport in both Grenada and London, recognition of cross-jurisdiction social impact, not single-country celebrity endorsement. He has a long broadcast track record (BBC 5 Live 606, Match of the Day 2, Sky Sports), so he handles audience and conversation with the fluency of a working presenter. Biography highlights Chief Football Development Officer, CONCACAF, leading coaching education and grassroots infrastructure across forty-one member associations. MBE, 2010 New Year Honours, for services to sport in Grenada and London. Founder and chair, Jason Roberts Foundation, established 2007, operating in the UK and Grenada. Premier League career across West Bromwich Albion, Wigan Athletic, Blackburn Rovers and Reading; full Grenada international. Director, West Bromwich Albion Football Club Limited (board appointment, April 2026). Broadcaster for BBC Radio 5 Live (606), Match of the Day 2 and Sky Sports. Biography In October 2012, a group of Premier League players refused to wear the Kick It Out t-shirt at the weekend’s fixtures. The protest had a named leader. Roberts, then at Reading, had written publicly that the campaign was under-resourced and that the league’s anti-racism work was failing the players it was meant to protect. The fallout produced concrete reform. The PFA published a six-point plan that included tougher sanctions for racial abuse and an English version of the NFL’s Rooney Rule for coaching interview opportunities. Inclusion in English football moved, however briefly, from communications campaign to procedural change. That is the through-line of his career: refusing the symbolic version of an institutional problem and pushing for the operating version. That instinct now runs at confederation scale. As Chief Football Development Officer at CONCACAF, he leads coaching education, the Pro Licence, and grassroots infrastructure across forty-one member associations from Canada to Caribbean micro-states. The work is structural. It is about who gets coached, by whom, to what standard, in which country. The credentials on paper, MBE for services to sport in Grenada and London, a Premier League career of nearly five hundred appearances, broadcast roles at BBC 5 Live and Sky, and the foundation running since 2007, are real. They matter most as evidence that the inclusion argument and the development work are not separate tracks. They are the same job done from different positions. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and institutional reform Race equality in elite sport and corporate parallels Talent pathways and development systems Governance and culture change in high-performance organisations Social impact through sport Leadership and resilience in competitive environments Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and culture transformation executives examining the gap between inclusion narrative and operating change. Board and executive committees responsible for governance reform in legacy institutions. Talent and learning leaders rebuilding development pathways and progression systems. Sport, broadcast and entertainment organisations facing reputational and structural inclusion pressure. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes to convert an inclusion problem into a procedural reform with measurable obligations. A working view of how confederation-scale development systems are structured, useful by analogy for any federated organisation. Honest assessment of the personal and reputational cost of leading reform from inside a powerful institution. A grounded perspective on social impact programmes that survive past the initial press cycle.

Why organisations work with Jean Alesi A decade at the front of Formula One with Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan, racing wheel to wheel with Senna, Prost and Schumacher. The reference points are first-hand, not researched. A record that names the exact problem leaders are buying for: 32 podiums and one Grand Prix win from 201 starts, including the joint F1 record for most podiums before a first victory. Composure across years of near misses, not a single highlight reel. Operated inside Ferrari from 1991 to 1995, one of the most scrutinised high-performance environments in sport. Useful for leaders dealing with intense external pressure, internal politics and constant public judgement. Continued at elite level after F1 across the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500. A practical case study in reinventing a career when the original platform ends. Knight of the Legion of Honour (France, 2006) and Pirelli ambassador since 2013. Credible to senior European audiences without needing translation. Biography highlights 201 Formula One Grand Prix starts between 1989 and 2001 for Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan. Winner of the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix for Ferrari; 32 career podiums; joint F1 record holder for most podium finishes before a first win. 1989 International Formula 3000 Champion with Eddie Jordan Racing; 1987 French Formula Three Champion. Five race wins in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with Mercedes between 2002 and 2006. Knight of the Legion of Honour, awarded by the French Republic in 2006. Pirelli ambassador since 2013 and co-founder of the Jean Alesi Esports Academy with Matteo Bobbi. Biography Most public-facing roles are evaluated on outcomes that are obvious to outsiders. Formula One is one of the few where the audience watches the process in real time, every fortnight, for years on end. That is the discipline Jean Alesi grew up inside. Alesi raced 201 Grands Prix between 1989 and 2001 for Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan. He took one victory, at the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix for Ferrari, alongside 32 podiums. He also holds the joint Formula One record for most podiums before a first win. Read together, those numbers describe a long career of being a few decisions or a few seconds short of the result, and continuing to perform at the front anyway. The Ferrari years gave him something most speakers on resilience do not have: five seasons inside one of the most scrutinised teams in professional sport, in an era that included Senna, Prost and Schumacher. The work was not only driving. It was holding personal performance steady inside a public organisation under constant internal change and external judgement. After Formula One he won races in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with Mercedes, returned to Le Mans with AF Corse, and entered the 2012 Indianapolis 500. France made him a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2006. Today, as a Pirelli ambassador and co-founder of the Jean Alesi Esports Academy, his focus is on developing the next generation of competitors, which is the same problem senior leaders face when their job moves from doing the work to building the people who will. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained competitive pressure Composure and decision-making at the limit High-performance team dynamics inside elite organisations Recovery from public setback and near miss Career reinvention after a defining role ends Mentoring and developing next-generation talent Ideal for C-suite and board audiences responsible for the tone of an organisation under scrutiny Sales leadership and commercial teams operating against measurable competitors High-performance environments inside automotive, sport, luxury and engineering Talent and leadership development programmes focused on succession and reinvention Audience outcomes A first-person account of operating at the front of Formula One across the Senna, Prost and Schumacher era A clear view of how elite teams hold composure when results do not come on the expected timeline Specific reference points for handling external pressure, internal change and public judgement at once A working model for moving from individual performance to building the next generation of performers

Why organisations work with Jean-Francois Manzoni Named a pattern managers now use to describe their own mistakes. The “set-up-to-fail syndrome”, introduced in his 1998 Harvard Business Review article and the 2002 Harvard Business School Press book with Jean-Louis Barsoux, is one of the few leadership concepts that has entered standard corporate vocabulary and is still taught on MBA and executive programmes worldwide. Works on the problem leadership development rarely solves. His current research focuses on the “knowing-doing gap”, the reason senior leaders leave off-sites full of energy and revert to old habits within weeks. Seven years running IMD gives him operational credibility that most academic speakers lack. As President from 2017 to 2024, he led the school through COVID and a revenue collapse from 130 million to 90 million Swiss francs in a single year. Governance expertise is practice, not theory. He served as Independent Director of Keppel Ltd from 2018 to 2024 and chaired its Nominations Committee during the period in which the company transformed from an industrial conglomerate to a global asset manager and won Best Managed Board at the 2023 Singapore Corporate Awards. Stays in live conversation with sitting CEOs. Through IMD’s CEO Dialogue series, he interviews the leaders of ABB, ASML, Vodafone, Hindustan Unilever, Mars, HEINEKEN, Tata Steel, Temasek and Keppel, keeping his material current against the challenges they are actually facing. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance at IMD (Lausanne), where he served as President and Nestlé Chaired Professor from 2017 to 2024 Co-author with Jean-Louis Barsoux of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (Harvard Business School Press), winner of two Book of the Year awards Author of the Harvard Business Review article that introduced the “set-up-to-fail syndrome” concept (March/April 1998); contributor to HBR and the Financial Times Author of 30+ business case studies; four received Case of the Year awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Centre Recipient of the Research Award on Leadership and Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants; invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos (2014, 2016) Independent Director and Chair of the Nominations Committee at Keppel Ltd (2018-2024); Fellow and Senior Accredited Board Director of the Singapore Institute of Directors; Doctorate from Harvard Business School Biography When a capable employee starts under-performing, the instinctive explanation is that something has changed in them. A 1998 Harvard Business Review article argued the opposite: most of the time, the boss’s tightened monitoring and visible loss of confidence caused the decline. The authors called it the set-up-to-fail syndrome, and the term entered management vocabulary. Jean-Francois Manzoni co-wrote that article with Jean-Louis Barsoux, and the 2002 Harvard Business School Press book that followed won two Book of the Year awards. The book belongs to a larger body of work on why organisations struggle to change and why leaders struggle to behave differently once pressure returns. Manzoni is Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance at IMD. He has written more than thirty business cases, four of which received Case of the Year awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Centre. Separate research on interpersonal dynamics in diverse boardrooms won the Research Award on Leadership and Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. The research focus in recent years has narrowed to what he calls the “knowing-doing gap”. Senior leaders increasingly know what good leadership looks like. Most internalise it poorly. Development programmes generate intention; the habits they target return within weeks. Manzoni’s work examines why this happens and what designs, including technology-mediated interventions, actually change behaviour for longer. Academic insight of this kind rarely comes with operating experience. Manzoni’s does. He served as IMD President and Nestlé Chaired Professor from 2017 to 2024. During COVID, he restructured the school’s executive education model and held the institution together through a revenue collapse from 130 million to 90 million Swiss francs. Board-level practice ran in parallel. He was the Independent Director of Keppel Ltd from 2018 to 2024 and chaired its Nominations Committee. Over that period, Keppel transformed from an industrial conglomerate to a global asset manager and took Best Managed Board at the 2023 Singapore Corporate Awards. Key speaking topics Leadership development and sustained behaviour change The knowing-doing gap in executive practice Organisational change and high-performance work environments Corporate governance and boardroom interpersonal dynamics The set-up-to-fail syndrome and boss-subordinate relationships Executive development and leadership programme design Change management at individual and organisational levels Ideal for CEOs, presidents and C-suite leaders are responsible for shaping senior leadership behaviour and organisational culture Board chairs, nominations committees and directors examining the interpersonal dynamics that determine oversight quality CHROs and heads of leadership development are reassessing whether their programmes actually produce sustained behaviour change Executive committees preparing for or inside significant organisational change Audience outcomes A sharper vocabulary for the performance dynamics they are already creating without noticing, including the specific behaviours that cause capable people to disengage A realistic view of why leadership development programmes fail to produce sustained behaviour change and what design choices make new habits stick Evidence from boardrooms where diversity has increased but interpersonal maturity has not, and a clearer sense of how to close that gap A usable sense of the distance between what senior leaders say they value and what their behaviour signals once pressure returns

Why organisations work with Jeff Grout Operator-grade leadership content. He ran Robert Half UK as Managing Director through a period in which the business grew from 12 staff to over 360, which gives his account of leadership and recruitment a grounding that most speakers on the same topic cannot offer. Inside access to an elite sporting campaign. As business manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, he saw England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup preparation and performance culture from the inside, which translates into specific examples rather than generic sporting analogies. One of the senior interviewers on the UK circuit. His public interview work includes Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Dave Brailsford, Charles Handy, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke, and he is regularly booked as conference chair where a board-level audience needs a senior host. Eight books on leadership, performance and recruitment, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007) and The Adventure Capitalists. The work is published, not just performed on the stage. A repeat client list that includes Amazon, BT, British Airways, HSBC, Barclays, LinkedIn, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Harrods and UK Sport. Biography highlights Former UK Managing Director of Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy. Built the UK business from two offices and 12 staff to £65 million turnover, 19 offices and over 360 staff during a 21-year tenure. Business Manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, spanning England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. Graduate of the London School of Economics. Co-author of eight business books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007), The Adventure Capitalists (Kogan Page), Mind Games, Recruiting Excellence and What You Need to Know About Leadership. Public interviewer of senior figures including Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington, Sir Stuart Rose and Greg Dyke. Collaborated with the BBC to produce an interview training video, and has delivered leadership and executive skills workshops for clients including BT, HSBC, British Airways, Virgin, Harrods, Amazon, LinkedIn, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Biography Plenty has been written about what makes a good leader. Much less has been written about what leaders do on the day a quarter misses, or on the morning after a senior resignation. The working reality of leadership is where most senior teams need help, and where generic advice tends to fail. That working reality is the ground Jeff Grout has operated on for most of his career. He spent 21 years inside Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy, eventually running its UK business as Managing Director until 2000. Under his leadership, the operation grew from two offices and 12 staff to a £65 million business with 19 offices and more than 360 staff. That is the grounding behind his current work with senior teams on leadership, recruitment and high-performance culture. From 2002 to 2006, he was business manager to Sir Clive Woodward, through the years surrounding England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. That sustained access to an elite sporting campaign at its peak gives his work on high-performance culture a different weight. He saw the detail of how a winning environment is built and defended, up close and over time, not as a single anecdote deployed for colour. For senior buyers, he is typically booked either as a keynote speaker on leadership and high performance, or as the conference chair and interviewer who can hold a board-level room. His written work spans eight books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? and The Adventure Capitalists. His interview subjects have included Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke. Key speaking topics Leadership in practice Building high-performance teams Peak performance lessons from elite sport Leading change Recruitment, retention and talent strategy Executive interviewing and conference chairing The characteristics of success Ideal for Senior leadership teams who want a practical, operator-grounded account of leadership rather than an academic framework CHROs, talent directors and senior HR leaders focused on recruitment, retention and high-performance team design Conference organisers who need a senior chair or public interviewer for a board-level audience Sales leadership and high-performance culture off-sites Audience outcomes A sharper vocabulary for describing what effective leaders actually do day to day Specific examples, drawn from elite business and sporting environments, of how high-performance teams get built and held together under pressure New questions to ask about recruitment and retention, from an operator who ran a 360-person business A more confident view of the behaviours that separate consistent performers from occasional ones

Why organisations work with Jeffrey Pfeffer His research quantifies what most HR functions treat as intangible: the measurable physical health cost of management decisions on job insecurity, autonomy, and workload – giving boards and CHROs a data-backed case for structural change rather than wellness programmes. “Leadership BS” provides executives with a named, argued critique of why leadership development investment typically fails – and a framework for what evidence-based practice looks like instead, which is directly usable in programme redesign conversations. His Stanford elective “Paths to Power” distils decades of research on how organisational power actually operates – not how it should – giving senior leaders an accurate map of the dynamics shaping their own institutions. He is one of the few management academics whose work has been covered seriously in both peer-reviewed journals and mainstream business media, making his arguments accessible to boards and executive committees without losing analytical credibility. His willingness to argue positions that contradict the consulting and coaching industry – on leadership myths, on power, on workplace harm – makes him a genuinely disruptive voice in executive conversations where polished consensus is the norm. Biography highlights Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business – one of the institution’s longest-serving faculty members in that department Author of approximately 15 books including “Dying for a Paycheck” (HarperBusiness, 2018), “Leadership BS” (HarperBusiness, 2015), and “Power: Why Some People Have It – and Others Don’t” (HarperBusiness, 2010) Co-author with Robert Sutton of “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense” (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) – a foundational text in evidence-based management Creator and long-running instructor of the Stanford MBA elective “Paths to Power” Published in and extensively covered by Harvard Business Review across multiple decades Recognised on the Thinkers50 ranking of global management thinkers Biography Jeffrey Pfeffer has spent five decades at Stanford asking an uncomfortable question: if organisations invest heavily in leadership development, why do workplaces keep producing the same failures? His answer, built across roughly 15 books and more than 150 academic articles, is that most management practice is not grounded in evidence – it is grounded in optimism, ideology, and the preferences of an industry that profits from selling aspiration. His 2015 book “Leadership BS” made this argument directly and with data. The leadership development industry, Pfeffer argued, systematically teaches qualities – humility, authenticity, servant leadership – that do not predict outcomes in real organisations, while ignoring what the evidence actually shows about how power and authority work. “Power: Why Some People Have It – and Others Don’t” offered the corrective: a clear-eyed, research-based account of how influence is built and exercised, drawn from his long-running Stanford MBA elective “Paths to Power.” “Dying for a Paycheck,” published in 2018, extended the argument into territory most organisations find harder to discuss. Pfeffer documented, with epidemiological and workplace data, that management decisions on job insecurity, autonomy, long hours, and benefits have direct, measurable effects on employee health – making the workplace, he argued, the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. The implication for senior leaders is significant: workforce wellbeing is not a culture initiative, it is a consequence of operational and strategic choices made at the top. As Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford GSB, Pfeffer brings this body of work directly into executive conversations. His value is not a programme or a model – it is a sustained, evidence-based argument that organisations routinely make avoidable, costly mistakes about people, and a clear account of what taking the evidence seriously would require. Key speaking topics Evidence-based management and leadership practice Organisational power and influence The economics of workplace health and employee wellbeing Leadership development – what works and what does not Workplace conditions and workforce performance Decision-making under organisational pressure Strategy execution and the role of power dynamics Ideal for CHROs and CPOs reviewing the design and ROI of leadership development programmes CEOs and boards seeking an evidence-based challenge to prevailing management assumptions Transformation leads and organisational development functions designing large-scale change Executive education programme directors at business schools and corporate universities Audience outcomes A grounded, data-backed critique of standard leadership development assumptions – with specific alternative approaches A clearer understanding of how power and influence actually operate in organisations, distinct from how formal authority is structured Practical framing for the business case linking management decisions to workforce health and productivity outcomes Sharper questions to apply to existing people strategy, programme design, and organisational structure A working vocabulary for distinguishing evidence-based management practice from received wisdom

Why organisations work with Jennifer Jordan Her seven tensions framework, built from surveys of more than 1,000 senior executives and published in Harvard Business Review with Michael Wade, gives leadership teams a shared language for the contradictions that actually slow them down. She directs IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes, so the work she brings to a boardroom is the same work she runs with executive cohorts every month. Her doctoral training at Yale in social psychology means the advice on power, influence, and ethical lapse rests on peer-reviewed research, not anecdote. She translates academic findings into operational decisions: when to slow a leader down, when to add a shadow board, when a decision should be made by data and when by judgment. Recognised by Poets&Quants on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list and the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year, she sits in the small group of leadership researchers whose work senior executives are actively asking for. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. PhD in Psychology, Yale University; postdoctoral fellow at Kellogg School of Management and Tuck School of Business. Co-author with Michael Wade of “Every Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions,” Harvard Business Review, 2020. Named by Poets&Quants to its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list and nominated to the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year. Research published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, Journal of Management, and Business Ethics Quarterly. Biography Most leadership advice still asks executives to pick a side. Be visionary or be operational. Trust the data or trust your gut. Hold authority or share it. The senior leaders Jennifer Jordan studies do not have that luxury, and her research is built around the cost of pretending they do. Jordan is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD in Lausanne, where she directs the Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. Her 2020 Harvard Business Review piece with Michael Wade, drawn from surveys of more than 1,000 senior leaders, set out seven tensions that define the modern executive role, from expert to learner, from controller to architect, from constant to adaptor. The framework is now used inside leadership development at major firms. Trained as a social psychologist at Yale, she works on the harder edge of the leadership question: power, influence, and the conditions under which capable people make ethical mistakes. That research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Management, and it underpins her work on leadership transitions, family business succession, and women on boards. Her recognition is concrete. Poets&Quants placed her on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list of business school professors, citing close to 1,500 academic citations of her work. Thinkers50 named her to its Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the same year. With Mahwesh Khan, she has argued in HBR for shadow boards as a structural answer to generational distance at the top of organisations, a recommendation that several large European firms have since adopted. Key speaking topics Leadership in the digital age Power, influence, and ethics Leadership transitions and succession Decision-making under contradiction Women on boards and inclusive leadership Family business leadership Shadow boards and intergenerational governance Ideal for CEOs and executive committees are navigating contradictory strategic demands. CHROs and heads of leadership development are designing senior leader programmes. Board chairs and nominating committees are working on succession and governance. Family business principals and next-generation leaders are preparing to take over. Audience outcomes A direct read on the seven tensions that define senior leadership today, with practical tests for which behaviour each situation calls for. A clearer view of how power changes a leader’s judgement, and the routines that keep that change in check. Sharper questions for succession and leadership transitions, including how shadow boards and reverse mentoring change board-level perspective. A research-grounded account of why digital execution stalls at the top of organisations, and what senior leaders can do about it.

Why organisations work with Jennifer Willey Fewer than 12% of National Speakers Association members hold the Certified Speaking Professional designation, and Jennifer is one of them. It is the NSA’s earned credential for platform delivery. The Fearless Fundamentals framework (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) comes from Wet Cement’s Fearless@Work Survey and a decade of programme delivery, and clients can keep running it internally after the keynote ends. 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 and holds SBA Woman-Owned Small Business certification, which satisfies supplier diversity criteria where procurement applies them. Fearless in 5 was published by Pearson Business in August 2026. Wet Cement builds the book into its programme delivery, so a cohort keeps working from a shared vocabulary after the keynote. 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 (Pearson Business, August 2026), built on the Fearless Fundamentals: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage 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 More than 20 years across Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD, Sharecare and The Trade Desk; earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates Opening keynote at Ad Tech Tokyo, then emcee for the full two-day conference of 10,000 attendees Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung, Genentech, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NPR, Walmart and Wesco Biography Wet Cement works with teams on their third or fourth restructure of the year, where composure becomes the binding constraint on performance. Jenn Willey founded the firm in 2017, after more than 20 years leading sales and marketing teams at Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD and The Trade Desk, and an earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates. The methodology is the Fearless Fundamentals framework, 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. Fearless in 5 was published by Pearson Business in August 2026. Its twenty chapters sit under the five capabilities, from evicting the inner impostor to building a personal board of directors and self-advocating under bias. Pearson positions the book for professional women and for the leaders who manage them, and Wet Cement sells it into organisations as a common leadership language for a whole cohort. Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business, and Jenn is a Certified Speaking Professional, the National Speakers Association designation held by fewer than 12% of its members. She opened Ad Tech Tokyo and then emceed the full two-day conference for 10,000 attendees. Her work in this region includes the Empower and Elevate Training Academy for ethnic-minority-owned businesses in Europe and the UK, delivered with ESDP and MSDUK. 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 beyond DEI framing Women’s leadership and the Advance Women at Work approach Career navigation, sponsorship and the personal board of directors Generative AI for confidence, communication, and networking 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 and self-advocacy 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 and self-advocacy A case for inclusion as a leadership capability that holds up in organisations that have stopped using DEI as a label A method for building and using a personal board of directors, drawn from the chapter on it in Fearless in 5 Specific AI prompts for drafting a self-assessment, finding a mentor, and auditing their own calendar

Why organisations work with Jeremy Blain He has published the operating detail behind distributed leadership, including a five-point organisational blueprint and a 90-day implementation roadmap, so the conversation moves past intent into execution. His OpenHR framework, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, gives HR and people leaders a working model for designing a workforce that blends employees, contractors, and open talent without losing coherence. Twenty-five years operating as a CEO and board officer across the UK and Asia, including seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore, mean the boardroom register is native, not learned. Recognition from credible third parties, Gold at the 2024 Global Book Awards for Unleash the Inner CEO and ACQ5 International Gamechanger of the Year 2023, confirms the work has been independently judged on substance. He brings frameworks that travel beyond the keynote, with diagnostic tools and culture-building activities organisations can take into their own leadership development programmes. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Performance Works International, advising boards and executive teams on leadership and digital transformation. Author of The Inner CEO and the second edition Unleash the Inner CEO, both award-winning titles on distributed leadership. Co-author with Dr. Rochelle Haynes of OpenHR: The Human Capital Framework for the Blended Workforce. Fellow of the Institute of Directors, London since 2003; senior board advisor to WDHB and co-founder of the Transformational Leadership Acceleration Institute. Named International Gamechanger of the Year by ACQ5 in 2023. Featured in Forbes, The Times of London, CEO Today, Dialogue by Duke CE, and Business Matters; host of the Rethink Leadership podcast. Biography Distributed leadership has been talked about for two decades. What has been missing is a working model that boards and operating committees can actually run. Jeremy Blain has spent his career building that model, first as a CEO and board officer in the UK and Asia, and now as the founder of Performance Works International. The argument is set out in The Inner CEO and its updated second edition, Unleash the Inner CEO, which won Gold in the Business Leadership category at the 2024 Global Book Awards. The book offers a five-point blueprint for the conditions, structures, and processes that make distributed leadership operational, plus a 90-day roadmap for managers and individual contributors. It is closer to an implementation manual than a thesis. A second strand of the work, OpenHR, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, addresses what happens when the workforce itself is no longer a single category. As organisations blend employees, contractors, freelancers, and open talent, traditional human capital systems strain. OpenHR offers a framework, glossary, and templates for designing people strategy across that mix. The credibility behind the frameworks is operational. Seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore. Twenty-five years in corporate learning and human capital. Senior board roles at WDHB and the Intercontinental School of Economics and Applied Sciences. ACQ5 named him International Gamechanger of the Year in 2023, and his commentary appears in Forbes, The Times of London, and Dialogue by Duke CE. Boards work with him because the prescriptions come with the receipts. Key speaking topics Distributed leadership as an operating model Digital and AI transformation for boards and executive teams Human capital strategy for the blended workforce Empowerment and accountability at scale Leadership development across multinational and multi-generational teams Culture and capability for hybrid, AI-enabled organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive committees rewiring decision rights and accountability across the organisation CHROs and chief people officers designing for a workforce that combines full-time, contract, and open talent Boards reviewing the leadership and culture preconditions for digital and AI transformation Transformation, change, and leadership development leads building scalable programmes across regions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where authority and accountability are misaligned in their own organisation A practical reference model for distributing leadership without losing strategic coherence A framework for designing human capital strategy across employees, contractors, and open talent Specific diagnostic questions to take into the next executive committee or board agenda Language for confronting the gap between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour

Why organisations work with Jeremy Snape He has run the experiment in public. As performance coach to Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, he built the dressing-room culture that won the inaugural IPL title against far better-resourced franchises. His work sits at the join between two credentials most consultants only have one of: an England international playing career and a master’s in sport psychology, applied across Premier League football, England Rugby and South African cricket. The “Inside the Mind of Champions” podcast gives him a continuously refreshed evidence base. Guests include Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Eddie Jones and Rahul Dravid, and the material feeds directly into his executive sessions. Through Sporting Edge, he has spent two decades translating sport psychology into corporate practice rather than telling sporting war stories with a thin business gloss on top. Biography highlights Former England international cricketer, 10 ODIs and one T20I, with a Man of the Match award on ODI debut against Zimbabwe. County career at Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire and Leicestershire; captained Leicestershire and lifted the Twenty20 Cup in 2004. Master’s degree in sport psychology, taken during the latter stage of his playing career. Performance coach to the Rajasthan Royals during their IPL title-winning campaign under Shane Warne, with subsequent roles at Delhi Daredevils, England Rugby, Premier League football clubs and the South African national cricket team. Founder and Managing Director of Sporting Edge, the performance consultancy he established in 2005. Non-Executive Director of the League Managers Association since 2013, supporting leadership development for football managers at St George’s Park. Host of the “Inside the Mind of Champions” podcast, with guests including Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Eddie Jones, Rahul Dravid and Shane Warne. Biography The Rajasthan Royals were the cheapest-bought, lowest-rated franchise in the inaugural Indian Premier League. They won it. The performance coach embedded with that team, working alongside Shane Warne to build a culture out of nothing in a few weeks, was Jeremy Snape. That project is the cleanest illustration of what he does. Snape played 10 One Day Internationals for England and captained Leicestershire to the Twenty20 Cup, and during the back end of his playing career he took a master’s in sport psychology. The combination is unusual: a working international athlete who became a credentialed performance specialist, rather than an academic with a fan’s interest in sport. Since founding Sporting Edge in 2005, he has taken those methods into corporate work, alongside continued roles in elite sport, including Delhi Daredevils, England Rugby, Premier League football and South African cricket. In 2013 he joined the League Managers Association as a Non-Executive Director, helping design the leadership programmes that football managers take at St George’s Park. His “Inside the Mind of Champions” podcast keeps the research live. Conversations with Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Eddie Jones, Rahul Dravid and Shane Warne are not entertainment for him; they are the working material that feeds the frameworks he takes into boardrooms on team trust, composure under scrutiny and the unglamorous standards that separate first place from fourth. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Leadership under pressure Team trust and standards Mindset and mental resilience Performance psychology for business Talent development and succession Ideal for CEOs and executive teams entering a sustained period of pressure, scrutiny or transition Senior leadership offsites focused on team standards, trust and decision-making in stretch conditions Sales, trading and client-facing leadership groups whose performance hinges on composure under public-facing risk HR and L&D leads designing leadership development programmes for high-stakes commercial roles Audience outcomes A specific read on how elite sport builds composure and how that translates into executive decision-making under scrutiny. Concrete language for what high-performing team standards actually look like day to day, beyond the values poster on the wall. A clearer view of where individual mindset ends and where team culture has to take over. Methods for sustaining performance after a setback, drawn from named figures in elite sport who have done it publicly.