Business Continuity and Crisis Management

Why organisations work with Kevin Fong He has run the actual command-and-control work organisations rehearse in tabletop exercises: seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor for Emergency Preparedness during COVID-19, embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, and active on a UK air ambulance crew. He brings a tested method for high-pressure decision-making drawn from anaesthesia, prehospital medicine and human spaceflight, sectors where the standards for crew performance are explicit and audited. His Apollo and Apollo 13 work for the BBC, including the World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, is built from primary interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made the calls. The case material is specific, not anecdotal. He holds a serious clinical and academic post (UCLH consultant; UCL professor; co-director of CASE Medicine), so his framing of human limits and team performance survives scrutiny by technical audiences. He was appointed OBE in 2019 for services to medicine and healthcare, and delivered the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on space medicine, a platform with a high bar for clarity and authority. Biography highlights Consultant anaesthetist, University College London Hospitals; Professor of Public Engagement and Innovation, UCL. Co-director, Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine), UCL. National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, NHS England (COVID-19 secondment, from March 2020). HEMS doctor, Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex; previously embedded with British Military Emergency Response Team, Afghanistan; alumnus of NASA’s human spaceflight programme, Johnson Space Center. Presenter, 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (BBC Four); host of BBC World Service podcasts 13 Minutes to the Moon and 13 Minutes Presents: Apollo 13. Author, Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body (Hodder). OBE, 2019, for services to medicine and healthcare. Biography The Apollo 11 lunar module ran out of usable computer memory in the final minutes of its descent. The crew had thirteen minutes to reach the surface or abort. The decision to land was made by a flight director who had spent his career rehearsing exactly that kind of call. Fong’s BBC World Service series 13 Minutes to the Moon was built from first-hand interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made it work, and it is the clearest expression of what his speaking practice is actually about. The thread runs through his clinical career. As a consultant anaesthetist at UCLH, a HEMS doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex, and a clinician embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, he has spent his working life inside the systems that train teams to function when the cost of error is immediate. In March 2020, he was seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, working at the centre of the COVID-19 response and the vaccine rollout. The academic infrastructure underneath the speaking is substantive. He is a professor at UCL and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, with degrees spanning astrophysics, medicine and engineering and a long association with NASA’s human spaceflight programme at Johnson Space Center. The book Extremes and the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures sit on top of that record, not in place of it. What he gives a corporate audience is a translation. The protocols that make space crews, trauma teams and air ambulance services reliable under extreme strain are not analogies for business leadership; they are concrete practices that can be examined and adopted. The 2019 OBE recognises a body of work that already crosses medicine, science and public communication, which is why his sessions land with technical leaders, not only general audiences. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performing teams in safety-critical environments Crisis leadership and command Pandemic response and healthcare resilience Human spaceflight and extreme environment medicine Risk and human factors Leadership lessons from Apollo Ideal for CEOs, COOs and crisis leadership teams preparing for low-probability, high-consequence events Boards and risk committees stress-testing operational resilience and command structures Leadership development programmes for clinical, aviation, energy, defence and infrastructure organisations Conferences for senior medical, scientific and engineering audiences who reject generic motivational content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for human factors, crew resource management and command structure that can be applied inside their own organisations Specific, named case material from Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and the COVID-19 response, used to interrogate how their own teams would behave A clearer view of where their organisation is rehearsed and where it is improvising under pressure Renewed conviction in the operational standards that distinguish reliable teams from the rest

Why organisations work with Jake Mazulewicz He has run the work, not just studied it. As HPI Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he applied the same frameworks he now teaches to lineworkers, system operators, and executives. His Near Miss Library generated more than 150 voluntary reports inside one utility, the kind of disclosure rate most safety programmes never achieve, and it carries endorsements from both executives and union leadership. His Scan & Focus model and Four Levels of Decision Making are tools field foremen and substation crews actually use, not concepts that work only in a classroom. He speaks the language of pilots, paratroopers, firefighters, and lineworkers because he has worked alongside them. Audiences in technical industries treat him as one of their own, which is rare for a keynote speaker on safety. His book, Seven Practical Steps, gives senior leaders a defensible operating playbook for human reliability that can be cited inside the business after the keynote ends. Biography highlights Ph.D. in Education, University of Virginia Former Human Performance Improvement Lead, Dominion Virginia Power, 3,500+ person unit Founder and Director, JMA Human Reliability Strategies Author, Seven Practical Steps: How to Build Reliability, Safety, and Trust in Technical Teams Has worked with 250+ teams across energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and government sectors Named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Energy Safety Canada Biography The instinct in most safety cultures is to chase zero. Zero incidents, zero errors, zero near misses. The most reliable industries figured out long ago that this target produces the opposite of safety. It produces silence. People stop reporting what they see, the organisation stops learning, and the next failure looks exactly like the last one. Jake Mazulewicz has spent more than two decades inside that contradiction. As Human Performance Improvement Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he led the work of analysing more than 300 incidents, ran root cause analyses on transmission-level switching errors, and built a Near Miss Library that drew more than 150 voluntary reports from a workforce that had every reason not to volunteer them. His Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia underpins the teaching method, but the credibility is operational. Lineworkers, system operators, and executives all recognised the same person in the room. In 2015 he founded JMA Human Reliability Strategies and has since worked with more than 250 teams across utilities, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and government. Named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and Energy Safety Canada. His book, Seven Practical Steps, codifies the approach he has used inside those organisations: a learning-based posture, psychological safety as a working condition rather than a slogan, and After Action Reviews treated as a craft. What separates him from other safety speakers is biography. He has served as a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, a wilderness search and rescue field team leader, and a military paratrooper. When he tells a technical audience that errors are signals, not character flaws, the room hears it from someone who has had to act on that belief in conditions where being wrong has consequences. Key speaking topics Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) High-reliability team practice in high-hazard industries Psychological safety in technical teams After Action Reviews and event learning Situational awareness and decision-making under pressure Safety culture and human error reduction Just culture and incident investigation Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and operations leaders in utilities, energy, manufacturing, and other high-hazard sectors Heads of HSE, safety directors, and chief safety officers responsible for organisational reliability HR and people leaders responsible for psychological safety and frontline team culture Field operations leadership: plant managers, station managers, fleet leaders, frontline supervisors Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that survives contact with a unionised, technical workforce The Scan & Focus model as a usable situational awareness tool, applied to their own operating context A practical method for running After Action Reviews that produce learning rather than blame The Four Levels of Decision Making framework, mapped from novice to expert in their environment A reframing of error as a system signal, with the operating implications for how leaders respond to incidents

Why organisations work with Julia Ebner Direct field intelligence on extremist movements. She has gone undercover inside a dozen networks across the ideological spectrum, which gives her a granular read on how these groups recruit, organise and migrate between platforms. Institutional authority on both sides of the policy conversation. She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion and is Co-Executive Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the reference NGO in this field. A working brief with the organisations setting the rules. She has advised NATO, Europol, the World Bank, Google, Meta and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, which means she can speak to how platform governance and counter-extremism policy are actually being written. A track record of calling movements early. Going Mainstream (2023) traced how fringe conspiracy and extremist narratives were entering mainstream politics, an argument the subsequent two years of elections has substantively borne out. Two book awards from credible bodies. The Rage won the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Book of the Year 2018; Going Dark won Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2020 and was long-listed for the Gold Dagger Award. Biography highlights Co-Executive Director, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. Postdoctoral Researcher at the Calleva Centre for Evolution and Human Sciences, Magdalen College, Oxford. Former Special Advisor on Terrorism Prevention to the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism. Author of Going Mainstream (2023), Going Dark (2019) and The Rage (2017); winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize and Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres. Regular contributor to The Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Washington Post and Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Biography Most extremist movements look marginal until the moment they are not. By the time a conspiracy theory reaches a regulator, an election or a consumer boycott, the network behind it has been organising for years. Julia Ebner studies that interval. Her work explains how fringe ideas move from encrypted channels into mainstream politics, and what that movement means for governments, platforms and large employers. For Going Dark, her 2019 book, she spent two years undercover inside a dozen extremist groups, adopting five different identities to access neo-Nazi networks, jihadist recruiters, trad-wife communities and the alt-right channels that planned the Charlottesville rally. The book won Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2020 and the Dr Caspar Einem prize, and was long-listed for the Gold Dagger Award. Her follow-up, Going Mainstream (Ithaka Press, 2023), traced how those same networks were already shaping electoral and policy outcomes. That field work is anchored in serious institutional positions. She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, sits as a postdoctoral researcher at Magdalen College’s Calleva Centre, and is Co-Executive Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London. She has advised NATO, Europol, the World Bank, Google and Meta, and served as Special Advisor on Terrorism Prevention to the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism. For corporate audiences, the value of that combination is concrete. She can tell a board which narratives are about to hit them, why the networks behind those narratives behave the way they do, and what platform governance, employee safety and political-risk teams should actually be doing about it. Key speaking topics Online radicalisation and extremist networks Disinformation, conspiracy movements and democratic risk AI-enabled influence operations Platform governance and trust and safety Polarisation as a political and corporate risk Counter-extremism policy and terrorism prevention Ideal for Boards and risk committees assessing political-violence and reputational exposure Chief Trust and Safety, Policy and Public Affairs leads at technology platforms Government, defence and intelligence audiences working on counter-extremism and election integrity CHRO and Communications leadership teams facing polarisation inside the workforce or the customer base Audience outcomes A working picture of how extremist and conspiracy networks recruit, organise and migrate across platforms The early-warning signals that distinguish a fringe movement from one about to enter the mainstream A clearer view of how AI-generated content is changing the economics of disinformation A frame for translating online radicalisation into board-level political, regulatory and reputational risk Reference points from her undercover work and from ISD and Oxford research that audiences can take into their own planning

Why organisations work with Matt Barbet A current Sky News anchor who can chair a CEO panel, run a town hall or moderate a board offsite at the standard of a national broadcast interview. Inside view from Freuds, where he advised executives and global figures on storytelling and on managing crises in real time, not in theory. Two decades of frontline reporting across BBC, ITV and Channel 5, including coverage of elections, conflict and natural disasters, which gives him a credible voice on how reputations break and recover. A second keynote on artificial intelligence that focuses on human judgement and authentic communication as the variables that matter when AI takes over routine output. Biography highlights Sky News anchor, hosting the Sunday 10am to 2pm programme since February 2024. Partner at Freuds, the London public relations firm, since 2018. Former anchor of Channel 5’s 5 News flagship 17:00 programme and co-presenter of ITV Breakfast’s Daybreak. Reporting career across BBC News, BBC Radio 1, ITV News and Channel 5 spanning more than twenty years. Covered major international stories including the 2010 Haiti earthquake and embedded reporting in Afghanistan. Cardiff University and Cardiff School of Journalism graduate. Biography A reputational crisis used to be a press office problem. It is now a board problem, with a clock measured in hours and an audience that includes regulators, investors, customers and staff watching the same feed at the same time. The leaders who navigate this well tend to share one quality, the ability to think clearly and communicate plainly while the noise is at its loudest. This is the territory Matt Barbet has worked in from both sides. As a Sky News anchor, and previously across BBC News, ITV and Channel 5, he has spent more than twenty years interviewing senior figures during the moments that define their organisations. As a partner at Freuds since 2018, he has sat on the other side of the table, advising executives and high-profile clients on how to prepare for those moments and how to recover from them. The dual vantage point is what makes him useful to a serious audience. He can describe what a newsroom sees during a developing story, what makes a spokesperson credible on camera, and where leaders most commonly lose control of a narrative. The reporting gives him the field examples. The Freuds work gives him the language of strategy and reputational risk. For most clients the commercial product is hosting. Barbet chairs conferences, moderates panels of senior executives and runs awards ceremonies and town halls at broadcast standard. The keynote material on crisis communications and on artificial intelligence sits alongside that work, anchored in the same craft of listening carefully and speaking clearly under pressure. Key speaking topics Crisis communications and reputational risk Leadership communication under media scrutiny Storytelling for senior executives Artificial intelligence and the human side of communication Conference hosting and panel moderation Frontline journalism and how news is made Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and communications directors preparing for reputational incidents Senior leadership teams running town halls, conferences or investor events that need broadcast-quality hosting Boards and executive committees commissioning a moderator for high-stakes panel sessions Awards ceremonies and flagship industry conferences Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a newsroom processes a developing story, and what that means for the speed of a corporate response. Specific examples of how senior figures hold or lose credibility on camera. A practical sense of how communications, legal and operational decisions interact during a live crisis. A point of view on where AI raises the value of direct human communication rather than reducing it.

Why organisations work with Jacinda Ardern Ardern made consequential governance decisions – not advisory ones – during a live-streamed act of mass terrorism, a major volcanic eruption, and a global pandemic, all within a single term in office. What she brings to organisations is a practitioner’s account of crisis governance under conditions of maximum accountability. She co-founded the Christchurch Call with French President Macron in 2019 and remains Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation today. That initiative – a multi-government, multi-platform framework for eliminating terrorist content online – gives her grounded authority on AI governance, platform accountability, and digital regulation that most governance specialists cannot match. Her memoir A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House/Pan Macmillan, 2025), a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, develops the concept of “pragmatic idealism” – the argument, backed by her own record in office, that empathy and decisive institutional action reinforce each other rather than pull against each other. Her Harvard appointments span three distinct domains: public leadership (Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership), AI and platform governance (Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow, Berkman Klein Center), and women’s policy (Senior Fellow, Women and Public Policy Program). This breadth reflects genuine multi-domain institutional credibility. As board member of The Earthshot Prize and Arnhold Distinguished Fellow at Conservation International, she engages with climate accountability at the level of institutional design – not as a cause, but as a governance and measurement problem that boards increasingly own. Biography highlights 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2017-2023; the world’s youngest female head of government at the time of her election, aged 37 Led the governmental response to the Christchurch mosque attacks (2019), the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic – each requiring real-time governance decisions at national scale Co-founded the Christchurch Call with President Macron (2019); Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation, the NGO established by New Zealand and France in 2024 to coordinate global action on violent extremist content online Multiple Harvard fellowships across Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, including the Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership, and Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow Author of A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House / Pan Macmillan, 2025) – New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Harvard Kennedy School Gleitsman International Activist Award (2020); Harvard 2022 Commencement speaker; Honorary Doctorate from Harvard University; twice named to Time Magazine’s Most Influential People list Board member, The Earthshot Prize; Arnhold Distinguished Fellow, Conservation International; founder of the Field Fellowship on empathetic leadership (2024) Biography New Zealand was four weeks past the Christchurch mosque attacks when Jacinda Ardern stood with French President Macron in Paris and co-launched the Christchurch Call – a commitment from governments and technology companies to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. It was a governance response to a governance failure, assembled at pace, and it is still operating. That sequence captures what is most useful about Ardern’s perspective: she did not observe the intersection of crisis leadership, platform accountability, and public trust from the outside. She was accountable for it. Her concept of “pragmatic idealism” – developed across her term in office and set out in her memoir A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House/Pan Macmillan, 2025, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller) – makes the case that empathy is not a soft alternative to decisive leadership but a structural condition of it. Leaders who build genuine trust before a crisis hits have more to draw on when decisions must be made under pressure and incomplete information. Leaders who do not find that the crisis itself destroys the conditions needed to manage it. Since leaving office in early 2023, Ardern has held multiple fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where her focus has been AI governance, algorithmic accountability, and platform regulation. She is board member of The Earthshot Prize, Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation, Arnhold Distinguished Fellow at Conservation International, and founder of the Field Fellowship, a programme supporting political leaders in empathetic leadership practice. For boards navigating crisis preparedness, digital governance, or ESG accountability, Ardern brings a record of decisions taken, at national scale, under conditions that most leadership frameworks were not designed for. Key speaking topics Crisis decision-making and governance under pressure Trust, institutional credibility, and stakeholder communication Digital platform accountability and online safety AI governance and technology regulation Climate accountability and ESG leadership Empathetic leadership and values-based decision-making Women in leadership and inclusive governance Ideal for Board and C-suite audiences responsible for crisis response, reputation management, and stakeholder trust under public scrutiny Technology and digital governance leaders focused on platform accountability, AI regulation, and online safety policy ESG and sustainability officers translating climate commitments into credible, auditable, scrutiny-resistant action Public sector and government-adjacent leaders managing delivery under high institutional pressure Audience outcomes A practical decision-making framework developed through direct, accountable experience of national-scale crisis – not theoretical modelling A sharper understanding of how trust is built, maintained, and lost under crisis conditions – and what communication disciplines make the difference Grounded perspective on digital platform accountability and AI governance from someone who helped design one of the world’s first functioning multi-government frameworks in this space A working account of how “pragmatic idealism” operates as a leadership model: acting from values without sacrificing speed, coherence, or institutional effectiveness Concrete principles for maintaining organisational credibility when multiple stakeholder groups are applying conflicting pressure simultaneously

Why organisations work with Emil Dobrovolschi He is a working airline captain and EASA-certified examiner, so the discipline he teaches around briefings, checklists and crew coordination is the discipline he is held to in the cockpit. Co-author of Dark Cockpit with Octavian Pantis, a published thesis that gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a calm, fully functioning operating state and the behaviours that produce it. Three decades inside a national flag carrier, including time as Director of Flight Operations, give him a frank view of what command, accountability and quiet discipline look like in a regulated organisation. The pilots he has trained as a Type Rating Instructor have gone on to fly as captains for at least twelve international airlines, evidence that his teaching method travels and holds up under examination. The aviation material is concrete. Audiences leave with named behaviours, not metaphors: how a brief is structured, how a challenge is raised, how a captain hands over control. Biography highlights Captain, instructor and examiner at TAROM since 1994, across Antonov 24, ATR 42/72, Airbus A320 and A310. Former Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, TAROM. EASA-certified Type Rating Examiner; Type Rating Instructor since 2001. Commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. Co-author of Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain (with Octavian Pantis). TEDx speaker (TEDxBaiaMare, “Gata de decolare”). Biography A commercial flight deck is one of the few corporate settings where bad communication is logged, debriefed and corrected by regulation. Aviation does not assume good leaders happen. It produces them through briefings, checklists, standard calls and a regulated training cycle. Emil Dobrovolschi has spent his career inside that system. He joined TAROM, the Romanian flag carrier, in 1994 and worked through every rank from Antonov 24 co-pilot to Airbus A320 and A310 captain, instructor and examiner. As a Type Rating Instructor since 2001 and an EASA-certified examiner, he has trained pilots who now hold left-seat command at twelve or more international carriers. Inside TAROM he served as Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, and as commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. The corporate work grew out of that. With consultant and author Octavian Pantis he co-wrote Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain. The dark cockpit is the aviation term for the state in which no caution lights are on, the aircraft is functioning, and the crew can do its job. The book translates that into a leadership thesis: the conditions for clarity, command and trust are designed in, not improvised when something goes wrong. In keynotes, that translation is concrete. He shows how a captain runs a pre-flight brief, how a junior officer is trained to challenge a senior one, and what changes when control is formally handed over. Senior teams use the material to look at their own briefings, escalation paths and quiet failures of communication. The authority behind it is straightforward: he is still the captain in the room. Key speaking topics Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Communication and crew resource management Decision-making under pressure Teamwork, hierarchy and the freedom to speak up Crisis management and recovery Building professional standards inside an operating culture Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing how decisions are taken when the situation tightens CHROs and leadership development leads designing programmes for newly senior managers Operations, safety and risk leaders in regulated industries (energy, healthcare, financial services, transport) Corporate offsites and leadership weeks looking for an external voice with operational credibility, not consulting language Audience outcomes A vocabulary borrowed from the cockpit (brief, checklist, challenge, handover) that makes everyday leadership behaviours explicit. A clearer view of where their own organisation tolerates ambiguous communication that aviation would not. Specific practices for raising a concern up a hierarchy and for receiving one. A working definition of composure under pressure as a trained behaviour, not a personality trait. A frame for distinguishing routine operations from genuine crisis, and for behaving differently in each.

Why organisations work with FC He is one of a small number of speakers who can describe live, named-method physical and digital intrusion against the kinds of organisations sitting in the audience, because that is his day job at Cygenta. His Wiley-published book “How I Rob Banks” gives a senior audience a credible, written reference point for the work, with more than seventy documented intrusion accounts behind the keynote. He held the Head of Offensive Cyber Research role at Raytheon Missile Systems, which gives him a defence-grade perspective on nation-state threat actors that most commercial security speakers cannot match. He treats cyber security as a culture and behaviour problem, not a technology problem, which is the framing senior leaders need when they are asked to own cyber risk at board level. His material translates from technical demonstration to executive insight without losing either audience, which is rare in the cybersecurity speaker market. Biography highlights Co-founder and co-CEO of Cygenta, a cyber security firm specialising in offensive testing, defensive consulting and security culture. Former Head of Offensive Cyber Research at Raytheon Missile Systems. Author of “How I Rob Banks: And Other Such Places,” published by Wiley in 2023. Featured on Darknet Diaries, Episode 66, one of the most listened-to cyber security podcasts globally. Mainstream media contributor including the BBC (Fake Britain) and ITV. Keynote speaker at named industry events including CPX360, CERN and Intersec. Biography The bank’s physical security policy is usually well written. The CCTV is monitored. The access cards are issued through HR. None of that has prevented FC from walking into the vault, more than once, in jurisdictions across the world, with the bank’s permission and a signed scope of work in his pocket. That is the work behind “How I Rob Banks: And Other Such Places,” published by Wiley in 2023, which collects more than seventy authorised intrusion stories from a career spent breaking into banks, government buildings and multinational corporations to prove how their defences actually fail. The book is a practitioner record, not a thesis, and it is the most credible written artefact in the speaker market on the question of how breaches really happen. The credibility behind the book is operational. FC is co-founder and co-CEO of Cygenta, the cyber security firm he runs alongside Dr Jessica Barker. Before Cygenta, he was Head of Offensive Cyber Research at Raytheon Missile Systems, working on the kind of nation-state threat picture that almost no commercial security speaker has direct line of sight to. He has briefed audiences at CPX360, CERN and Intersec, and his work has been profiled on the BBC, ITV and Darknet Diaries. What a senior audience leaves with is a re-framed view of where their organisation is actually exposed. Cyber security as a board-level capability sits inside the human and procedural layer of the business. FC shows that layer being defeated, with the methods named and the lesson made specific to the people in the room. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Physical penetration testing and social engineering Ransomware and phishing as operational threats Nation-state cyber activity Security culture and human behaviour Artificial intelligence in offensive and defensive security Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CISOs reviewing cyber risk ownership at executive level Banking, insurance and critical infrastructure leadership teams hardening physical and digital defences Heads of internal audit, risk and operations responsible for security culture across the workforce Defence, government and regulated-sector audiences engaging with nation-state threat scenarios Audience outcomes A specific picture of how attackers, both criminal and state-sponsored, actually get inside organisations like theirs A reframing of cyber security as a leadership and culture problem, with concrete examples, not as a technology checklist Named methods used in real-world physical and digital breaches, with the defensive lessons drawn from each A clearer view of where board oversight of cyber risk is currently failing, and what it should look like instead

Why organisations work with Tim Hames He has run the trade body for British private equity and venture capital, so he speaks to investors, allocators and operators in their own language, not as an outside commentator. His China analysis is built on close study of the Chinese Communist Party’s internal operations, which is the level boards need when sanctions, supply chain and market access decisions are on the table. He spent a decade as chief leader writer and assistant editor at The Times, which means he can frame a complex political argument tightly enough for a board paper or an investor letter. He served as the first Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Commons, giving him direct experience of how Westminster machinery actually moves. He co-wrote The Long Shot with Dame Kate Bingham, the definitive insider account of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, and a Financial Times science book of the year. Biography highlights Director General of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), 2013 to 2019. Co-founder of Acuti Associates, a UK, US and China political and geopolitical risk advisory. Co-author with Dame Kate Bingham of The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain (Oneworld, 2022); Sunday Times business bestseller, FT science book of the year, Money Week politics book of the year. Former Assistant Editor, chief leader writer and weekly political columnist at The Times. First Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Commons, with a brief on parliamentary reform. Former Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University, 1989 to 1996, specialising in American and British government. Biography Most political risk advice on offer to boards is written by people who have only ever observed politics from outside. Hames has worked inside three of the systems that matter, Westminster, the British press, and the City, and the value comes from how he connects them. His BVCA years gave him an investor’s reflex for capital flows; his Times years taught him to write a sharp, defensible argument; his Speaker’s Office year showed him how Parliament actually decides. That combination shapes the way he reads the UK, US and China triangle through Acuti Associates, the advisory firm he co-founded. The focus is practical: what does a Trump second term mean for trans-Atlantic deal flow, how should a board think about China exposure when the signals from Beijing are deliberately opaque, what does the UK regulatory direction look like after a change of government. The answers are not generic. His co-authored book with Dame Kate Bingham, The Long Shot, is the inside record of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, the rare British state-led project of the last decade that actually worked. It was a Financial Times science book of the year and a Sunday Times business bestseller, and it doubles as a study in how political and commercial decision-making interact under pressure. He continues to advise financial institutions, professional services firms and technology companies, and serves as a Senior Adviser to FTI Consulting’s strategic communications practice. The work he is asked to do is consistent: translate political signal into commercial decision, before the headlines force the issue. Key speaking topics UK, US and China political risk Geopolitical risk for boards and investors US politics and the Trump factor Chinese Communist Party decision-making UK government, regulation and the post-election landscape Private equity and venture capital policy environment Lessons from the UK Vaccine Taskforce Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material China, US or UK regulatory exposure Private equity and venture capital firms briefing LPs on political risk Financial services and professional services leadership teams CEO and CFO offsites where geopolitics is a standing agenda item Audience outcomes A clearer read on what to take seriously and what to discount in current US, UK and China political coverage. Sharper questions to put to in-house government affairs, public policy and risk teams. A practical sense of how Westminster, Washington and Beijing actually decide, not how they are reported. A more disciplined frame for board discussions on China exposure, sanctions risk and regulatory direction.

Why organisations work with Penny Mordaunt A former Cabinet minister with direct authority on three of the topics now sitting on most board agendas: defence, trade policy, and international development. Front-line experience of UK trade reorientation, including the country’s accession to CPTPP and bilateral economic agreements with US states, useful to companies modelling supply chain and market access decisions. Built and led the cross-government defensive cyber function in its early form, and rebuilt UK civil contingencies and resilience as Paymaster General. Practical credibility on national resilience, not commentary. Read by US and Commonwealth audiences as a serious British voice on the transatlantic relationship; now Chair of the Coalition for Global Prosperity, where her case is that aid and defence are part of national resilience, not philanthropy. A genuine speaker, not a politician reading remarks. Parliamentary Wit of the Year and Spectator Speech of the Year, with a global audience earned at the 2023 Coronation. Biography highlights Former Secretary of State for Defence; first woman to hold the role. Former Secretary of State for International Development and UK Governor at the World Bank. Former Minister of State for Trade Policy; oversaw UK accession to CPTPP and bilateral economic agreements with US states. Former Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons; carried the Sword of State at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023. Co-author of Greater: Britain After the Storm, winner of the 2021 Parliamentary Book Award. Appointed Chair of the Coalition for Global Prosperity in January 2025; made a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours 2025. Honorary Captain, MCM2 Squadron, Royal Naval Reserve. Biography Trade, defence and development used to be three separate conversations inside government. They are now a single conversation, and most boards are catching up to it. The leaders who understand this best tend to be the ones who have held responsibility for all three. Penny Mordaunt is one of a small group who has. She served fourteen years as MP for Portsmouth North, holding nine ministerial roles across four Cabinet posts. She was the first woman to serve as Secretary of State for Defence, ran the Department for International Development, and as Minister of State for Trade Policy oversaw the UK’s accession to the CPTPP and a series of economic agreements at US state level. As Paymaster General she rebuilt the UK’s civil contingencies and resilience capability, and built the first cross-government defensive cyber lead. Her public profile is wider than Westminster. She carried the 17th-century Sword of State at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023, the first woman to do so, and the role gave her a global audience that few former Cabinet ministers ever acquire. Her book Greater: Britain After the Storm, co-authored with Chris Lewis, won the 2021 Parliamentary Book Award and reached bestseller lists in the UK and US. Since leaving Parliament in 2024 she has chaired the Coalition for Global Prosperity, where she argues the case for the transatlantic partnership and for treating development and defence as components of national resilience rather than discretionary spend. For corporate audiences, the value is the access to a former insider’s view of how trade policy, sanctions architecture and security commitments are actually made, and what changes when an election cycle turns over. Key speaking topics UK trade policy, CPTPP and US state-level economic agreements Defence, security and the transatlantic relationship International development as national resilience Geopolitical risk and the future of the rules-based order Civil contingencies, cyber and national resilience Women in public leadership Ideal for Board and C-suite audiences modelling geopolitical and trade exposure CFOs and strategy teams reassessing market access and supply chain decisions post-Brexit and post-CPTPP CISOs and risk officers working at the intersection of cyber, national security and corporate resilience Public affairs, government affairs and ESG leaders briefing on UK policy direction Audience outcomes A clearer view of how UK and transatlantic policy choices translate into commercial and operational risk. A more accurate read of the post-Brexit trade architecture, including CPTPP and bilateral US engagement. A practical framing of national resilience that connects defence, cyber, supply chain and civil contingencies. An informed sense of where the UK government sees its own room for manoeuvre in a contested global order.

Why organisations work with David Atkins Twenty-two years commanding New York State Police operations across Westchester County, including a Ground Zero deployment and incident command at the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot, give him direct authority on decision-making when the stakes are real New York State Trooper of the Year (2003) and New York State Investigator of the Year (2007) are named credentials from a credible body, not bureau adjectives The “One Decision Away” framework gives audiences a structured Assess, Address, Act sequence they can apply the next morning, not a story without a takeaway He pairs command experience with a documented commercial track record, having built a 1,400-person direct sales organisation into the top 0.5% of his company, which lets him speak credibly to sales floors as well as leadership rooms Biography highlights Retired Captain, New York State Police, 22 years of service Commanded all NYSP operations for Westchester County, overseeing reported 400,000 to 500,000 annual 911 calls New York State Trooper of the Year, 2003 New York State Investigator of the Year, 2007 Ground Zero first responder, 11 September 2001 Incident Commander, 2020 USGA US Open at Winged Foot Golf Club Author, “The Leveled Up Life: The No Excuse Blueprint to Live Up to Your Fullest Potential” Biography Most leadership content about pressure is written by people who have read about it. Atkins commanded New York State Police operations for Westchester County for more than two decades, with reported call volumes of close to half a million 911 incidents a year. The decisions were live, the consequences immediate, and the audience for those decisions was the public. That operational record sits behind his keynote work. He was a Ground Zero first responder on 11 September 2001, ran undercover units against organised crime and trafficking, and served as Incident Commander for the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot Golf Club. He was named New York State Trooper of the Year in 2003 and New York State Investigator of the Year in 2007. After retiring from law enforcement, Atkins built a 1,400-person international direct sales organisation through Beachbody, reaching the top 0.5% of the company by earnings. The commercial track record matters because it shows the same decision-making pattern applied outside a command environment, which is why sales and revenue audiences book him alongside leadership programmes. His book, “The Leveled Up Life: The No Excuse Blueprint to Live Up to Your Fullest Potential”, sets out the “One Decision Away” framework he uses on stage: Assess the single decision creating maximum momentum, Address the obstacle, Act with public commitment. The framework is the through-line buyers can point to when they need a keynote that leaves a structured takeaway rather than an emotional one. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Resilience and stress management Leadership in high-stakes environments Sales performance and direct selling discipline Personal accountability and the “One Decision Away” framework First responder leadership lessons Ideal for Sales kick-offs and revenue conferences looking for credibility on personal performance Leadership programmes for line managers and frontline supervisors who carry decision risk First responder, healthcare and public safety audiences HR, talent and SHRM-style audiences focused on resilience and engagement Audience outcomes A named decision-making sequence (Assess, Address, Act) audiences can take into the next working week Concrete examples of command-level decision-making from policing, 9/11 response and major event security A reframed view of what counts as an “excuse” inside their own teams Practical language for talking about composure and accountability without slipping into wellness clichés

Why organisations work with Thom Mayer He has commanded medical operations during three of the defining crises of the modern era: the Pentagon on 9/11, the 2001 US Capitol anthrax attacks, and the early months of the war in Ukraine. The lessons are not theoretical. As NFLPA Medical Director, he authored the concussion protocols now used across professional football, demonstrating how to rebuild a safety system inside an institution that did not want it rebuilt. His book “Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless” is built on eleven principles drawn directly from those crises, including the distinction between holding the title and doing the work. He won the 2018 James D. Mills Award, ACEP’s highest honour, and has been recognised three times with the College’s “Over-the-Top” award. The clinical community considers him a peer, not a celebrity. He runs a working executive role at LogixHealth alongside his speaking calendar, which keeps the case studies current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Medical Director, NFL Players Association, appointed by Gene Upshaw in 2002 Command Physician, Pentagon Rescue Operation, 11 September 2001 Founder, BestPractices, Inc.; Executive Vice President of Leadership, LogixHealth Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine, George Washington University; Senior Lecturing Fellow, Duke University School of Medicine Author, “Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless” (Berrett-Koehler, 2023); co-author of “Battling Healthcare Burnout” and “Hardwiring Flow” 2018 James D. Mills Outstanding Contribution to Emergency Medicine Award (ACEP’s highest honour); USA Today “100 Most Important People in the NFL”; Pro Football Hall of Fame nominee for sports medicine safety reform Biography The Pentagon was struck at 09:37 on 11 September 2001. By the time the rescue operation was running, Mayer was the command physician on site, coordinating medical assets across federal, military, and civilian teams that had never trained together. Three weeks later, with anthrax-laced letters circulating through the US Capitol, his BestPractices physicians at Inova Fairfax became the first in the country to successfully diagnose and treat inhalational anthrax. The pattern holds across his career. Gene Upshaw appointed him Medical Director of the NFL Players Association on the day Korey Stringer died of heat stroke in 2002, asking him to build a safety function the league did not yet have. Mayer wrote the original NFL Concussion Guidelines, which reshaped diagnosis and management of head injuries in professional football and, through that, across global contact sport. USA Today later named him among the 100 most important people in the NFL. His clinical and academic standing sits behind all of it. He holds the 2018 James D. Mills Award, ACEP’s highest honour for contribution to emergency medicine, alongside Clinical Professor and Senior Lecturing Fellow appointments at George Washington University and Duke University School of Medicine. He has served on Department of Defense Science Board Task Forces covering bioterrorism, homeland security, and weapons of mass destruction. His 2023 book “Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless” frames the argument that runs through the speaking work: eleven principles drawn from the Pentagon, the NFL, the anthrax crisis, and a mobile emergency mission into Ukraine in 2022. The thesis is that titles and frameworks do not survive contact with a real crisis, but a small set of disciplines does. Boards and executive teams hire him because the source material is not borrowed. Key speaking topics Crisis leadership and command decision-making Servant leadership in high-stakes environments Burnout and resilience for clinical and corporate teams Building safety culture inside resistant institutions Operational flow and frontline performance Innovation and trust under pressure Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive committees preparing for crisis response, business continuity, or major change Healthcare leadership: CMOs, CNOs, hospital executives, clinical directors Boards reviewing safety, risk, or duty-of-care frameworks Senior leadership development programmes that need a credible voice on decision-making under pressure Audience outcomes A set of leadership principles tested in conditions most executives will never face, made transferable to commercial settings A clearer model of the difference between holding a leadership role and performing the work of leading Specific decision-making heuristics for moments when information is incomplete and the cost of waiting is high A practical view of how safety culture is rebuilt inside organisations that resist the work

Why organisations work with Jim Davidson Two decades inside a regulated, risk-driven scientific career sit behind the climbing stories, so the language of preparation, hazard analysis and recovery lands with operational, safety and engineering audiences who usually distrust adventure speakers. Two named, public disasters on his record, the 1992 Mount Rainier crevasse fall and the 2015 Everest earthquake at base camp, give him specific case material to teach from rather than generic survivor framing. Co-authored The Ledge won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, and The Next Everest is a published St. Martin’s Press title, so the underlying material is editorially vetted, not bureau copy. Twice recognised by the U.S. National Park Service for volunteer high-altitude rescues, which gives him a credible voice on team trust, mutual reliance and judgement at altitude that is hard to manufacture. Books to senior corporate audiences with a track record of named clients, including Marriott, National Geographic, UPS, Nationwide Insurance and the U.S. Army, so the room calibration is already proven across sectors. Biography highlights Co-author, The Ledge: An Inspirational Story of Friendship and Survival (Ballantine / Penguin Random House), with journalist Kevin Vaughan. Author, The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again (St. Martin’s Press). Winner, 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, for The Ledge. B.S. and M.S. in environmental geology; roughly 20 years as a practising environmental geologist before full-time speaking. Summited Mount Everest in 2017, two years after surviving the April 2015 Nepal earthquake at base camp. Recognised twice by the U.S. National Park Service for volunteer high-altitude rescue work in Colorado and Alaska. Biography A snowbridge collapsed under Jim Davidson on Mount Rainier in June 1992. He fell roughly 80 feet into a glacial crevasse with his climbing partner, Mike Price. Price did not come out. Davidson did, and spent the next 20 years working as an environmental geologist while quietly building the body of climbing experience that would later put him on Everest. That two-track career is the point. Davidson is not a climber who picked up a corporate vocabulary, he is a working scientist who spent two decades on industrial sites assessing oil and gasoline contamination, writing remediation plans and answering to regulators. The risk language he uses with executive audiences, hazard recognition, contingency design, post-incident learning comes from that work as much as from the mountains. The mountains supplied the case studies. Co-authored with journalist Kevin Vaughan, The Ledge took the Rainier accident through judgment, friendship and recovery and won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature. The Next Everest, published by St. Martin’s Press, covers the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which struck while Davidson was on Everest, and his return to the summit in 2017. Both books are written, not ghosted around a brand. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. He has briefed Marriott, National Geographic, UPS, Nationwide Insurance and the U.S. Army on what disciplined teams actually do when the plan stops matching the terrain, drawn from rescues he has been part of and the U.S. National Park Service has formally recognised, twice. The talks work because the material is real, the science is honest about luck, and the decisions get named. Key speaking topics Resilience under pressure Decision-making in high-consequence environments Risk recognition and hazard preparation Team trust and mutual reliance Recovery after setback Leadership in crisis conditions Change and uncertainty Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is preparation, recovery and judgment, not motivational storytelling. Safety, risk, engineering and operations functions in industries where consequence is physical, including energy, construction, utilities, life sciences and defence. Annual sales kickoffs and field-leader gatherings that need a credible non-business voice on resilience. HR and learning leaders are building a leadership programme around decision-making under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about hazard, judgement and recovery that doesn’t collapse into platitude. Two specific case studies, Mount Rainier 1992 and Everest 2015, are used as decision artefacts that the audience can argue with. A clearer separation between things a team can prepare for and things it can only respond to. Practical questions to take back into post-incident reviews, planning sessions and team debriefs. A sharper view of what trust between teammates is actually built from when the consequences are real.