Business Continuity and Crisis Management

Why organisations work with Maria Belon A first-person account of catastrophic crisis delivered with the clinical precision of a physician, not the drama of a motivational speaker. The audience leaves with vocabulary, not adrenaline. Clinical and psychotherapy training that gives her a working language for fear, dissociation, and recovery that translates directly into leadership conversations about teams under pressure. A reference point that senior audiences already know. The story behind The Impossible carries instant recognition; Belon uses that recognition as a way in, then takes the conversation somewhere serious. Credibility on both sides of the room. An ESADE MBA and a teaching record in Human Resources at ESADE Business School mean she speaks the language of executive audiences before she ever turns to her own experience. A clear point of view on values and human connection as the operating system that holds organisations together when systems fail, drawn from what she observed in herself, her family, and the strangers around them. Biography highlights Survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Khao Lak, Thailand, with her husband and three sons; sustained life-threatening injuries and underwent a two-year recovery. Spanish physician with additional training as a Humanistic Gestalt psychotherapist. MBA from ESADE; former Human Resources instructor at ESADE Business School. Story formed the basis of The Impossible (2012), directed by J.A. Bayona, with Naomi Watts nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal. Author of the illustrated children’s book Kokoro y el Mar, published by Editorial Libre Albedrio as the first title in her “Yo soy” collection. Speaker at international platforms including the World Business Forum and the Share Iuvare Business Convention. Biography The wave that struck Khao Lak on 26 December 2004 separated a family of five and gave one of them, a Spanish physician on holiday with her husband and three sons, two years of surgery and recovery before something like a normal life returned. Maria Belon now works with senior leaders on what that experience taught her about people under maximum pressure. Her professional background matters here. Belon trained as a physician and as a Humanistic Gestalt psychotherapist, and she holds an MBA from ESADE, where she later taught Human Resources. The combination is unusual. She can speak about the body’s response to trauma with clinical accuracy, and she can speak about organisations with the vocabulary executive audiences already use. What she offers a leadership team is not a survival story performed for effect. It is a precise account of what stayed intact when planning, control, and competence were all stripped away, and what that suggests for the way leaders prepare their people for the unplannable. She has tested the material across international audiences, including the World Business Forum and the Share Iuvare Business Convention. The work has continued in print. Her illustrated children’s book Kokoro y el Mar, published by Editorial Libre Albedrio, distils for a younger reader the same question that director J.A. Bayona once asked her, and that her keynotes return to: what do you bring back from the experiences that life forces on you. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme adversity Crisis response and recovery Values and human connection in organisations Leadership in moments of breakdown Post-traumatic growth Wellbeing and the human side of performance Ideal for Executive teams and boards preparing for, or reckoning with, organisational crisis CHROs and people leaders building resilience and wellbeing into how their organisation operates Closing keynotes at senior leadership conferences where the brief is to leave the room changed, not informed Healthcare, emergency services and public sector leadership audiences whose work runs close to crisis Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for fear, loss, and recovery that leaders can use with their own teams. A sharper sense of which values actually carry weight when the systems of an organisation fail. An honest reference point for the difference between performance and presence in a crisis. Permission, often missing in senior rooms, to talk about the human cost of pressure without flinching.

Why organisations work with Dan Restrepo He sat in the White House Situation Room as the Obama administration’s point person on the Americas, and he explains U.S. policy toward the region with the authority of someone who helped write it. He holds a current corporate board seat at MasTec, a New York Stock Exchange-listed infrastructure group, which gives his risk analysis a boardroom register rather than a think-tank one. His published argument on hemispheric migration, carried in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly, reframes migration as a management problem for governments and investors, not a humanitarian talking point. He works in English and Spanish across U.S., Latin American, and Iberian audiences, with on-air experience on CNN and CNN en Espanol that makes him effective in front of mixed-language rooms. Through Dinamica Americas and Restrepo Strategies he advises firms actively making investment, market-entry, and government-relations decisions across the region, so the analysis lands on live questions rather than historical ones. Biography highlights Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, National Security Council, March 2009 to July 2012, under President Barack Obama. Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, focused on U.S. policy in the Americas. Founder and managing director, Restrepo Strategies; Founding Partner, Dinamica Americas. Class II Director, MasTec, Inc. (NYSE: MTZ). On-air contributor, CNN and CNN en Espanol; published in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly. Named one of America’s most influential Latinos three times by Poder magazine; J.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School; former judicial clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Biography The U.S. relationship with Latin America has never mapped neatly onto a single policy frame. Trade, migration, narcotics, Cuba, Venezuela, and the competition for influence with China all run through the same capitals and the same meetings. For nearly six years, Dan Restrepo sat at the centre of that portfolio as President Obama’s principal advisor on the Americas, first as a campaign surrogate and then as Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council. That experience shapes the way he advises boards and executives now. Through Restrepo Strategies and as Founding Partner of Dinamica Americas, he works with U.S. firms operating in Latin America and with Latin and Iberian firms operating in the United States. The brief is usually the same: read the political signal correctly, price it, and decide what to do about it before the market does. Published work in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly has put him on record arguing that migration in the Americas is a management challenge, not a crisis narrative, and that the tools already exist to handle it if governments choose to use them. On CNN and CNN en Espanol he translates U.S. domestic politics and hemispheric policy in both English and Spanish, which is part of why Spanish-speaking boards and U.S. leadership teams hire him for the same conversation. His seat as a Class II Director on the board of MasTec, a listed U.S. infrastructure group, is the detail that distinguishes him from most policy voices. He has used it. The analysis buyers get is not an academic read on the region but a directorial one, tested against the kind of operational decisions boards actually make. Key speaking topics U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere U.S.-Mexico relations and the border Migration strategy across the Americas Political risk in Latin America U.S. domestic politics and its foreign policy consequences Investment climate and market entry in the Americas Cuba, Venezuela, and U.S. engagement with authoritarian regimes Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with operations, supply chains, or expansion plans in Latin America and the Caribbean Chief strategy officers, heads of government affairs, and risk committees pricing Western Hemisphere exposure Latin American and Iberian corporates preparing for U.S. market entry, regulatory engagement, or capital raises Investor conferences, family offices, and financial institutions with dedicated Americas portfolios Audience outcomes A clear read on where U.S. policy toward Latin America is heading and what the administration is likely to do next A practical framework for distinguishing political noise from decisions that will actually move capital, trade, and talent Specific judgment on U.S.-Mexico, migration, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil, delivered with the authority of someone who has negotiated in the region The confidence to ask sharper questions of internal country teams, local partners, and government affairs advisers

Why organisations work with Matt Eversmann He brings a first-person, documented account of small-unit leadership inside the Battle of Mogadishu, one of the most analysed combat actions of the modern era, and translates it directly into commercial decision-making. His Bronze Star with Valor and 20 years in elite Ranger and Infantry units give credibility on team performance under stress that consulting frameworks cannot replicate. As co-author with James Patterson of three New York Times bestselling oral histories of soldiers and police officers, he has spent a decade interviewing operators about how teams hold together, which sharpens his content well beyond a single war story. His teaching record at the U.S. Army War College and the Johns Hopkins ROTC program means he speaks to leaders in the language of training and followership, not just battlefield anecdotes. He is the rare keynote a senior team will quote back to each other a week later, because the material concerns specific, named decisions, not abstractions about resilience. Biography highlights Retired U.S. Army First Sergeant, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; 20 years of active service. Bronze Star Medal with Valor device for actions in the Battle of Mogadishu, October 3, 1993. Portrayed by Josh Hartnett in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001); the first source interviewed for Mark Bowden’s original book. Co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, all New York Times bestsellers in the Heroes Among Us series. Former Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College and former instructor in Johns Hopkins University’s ROTC program. Deployed to Iraq from 2007 to 2008 as an Infantry Company First Sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division during the Surge. Biography The Battle of Mogadishu on 3 October 1993 lasted roughly 18 hours. Inside it, a young staff sergeant from the 3rd Ranger Battalion was responsible for a chalk of soldiers fast-roping into a city that had already gone wrong. That sergeant was Matt Eversmann, and the decisions he made in those hours became one of the most studied case studies in modern small-unit command. The reason that experience matters in a boardroom is not symbolism. It is that the conditions Rangers train for, incomplete information, broken communications, no time to consult upward, are the same conditions senior teams now face during cyber incidents, supply shocks and reputational crises. Eversmann teaches what holds and what fails when a plan does not survive contact. His authority on the subject extends well beyond his own service. As co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, he has spent years interviewing soldiers, police officers and first responders about the texture of decisions made under load. That body of work, three New York Times bestsellers, sits behind every keynote. Before founding Eversmann Advisory in 2018, he served as Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College, taught leadership in the Johns Hopkins University ROTC program, and led an Infantry Company through the Iraq Surge. The result is a speaker who can move from a specific named moment in Mogadishu to a specific question a CEO is asking about command culture, without losing either audience. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure and in crisis Team performance in high-stakes environments Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and followership inside elite units Trust and culture in small teams Lessons from the Battle of Mogadishu and combat command Service, sacrifice and operator stories from Walk in My Combat Boots Ideal for CEO and C-suite offsites focused on resilience, command culture and crisis decision-making. Leadership development programmes for senior operators, plant managers, regional heads and first-line commanders of large field organisations. Conferences for sectors with a high-consequence operating tempo: financial services, energy, healthcare, defence, law enforcement, and aviation. Annual sales kick-offs and partner meetings looking for a serious anchor keynote rather than entertainment. Audience outcomes A vocabulary for naming what their teams actually do well and badly when conditions go non-linear. Specific lessons from a documented combat action that translate to crisis governance and post-incident review. A clearer view of what accountability looks like at the team-leader level, distinct from individual performance. Renewed seriousness about preparation, rehearsal and standards as cultural artefacts, not HR processes. Stories with named operators and named events that senior leaders can reference back inside their own organisations.

Why organisations work with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton Her Decision Control Process derived from helmet-camera research on real operational commands, not simulation, is the only evidence-based framework of its kind adopted nationally, now embedded in UK National Operational Guidance and JESIP doctrine governing all blue-light services at major incidents. Her central research finding – that 80% of decisions made by experienced commanders are instinctive, and that goal-oriented training can increase situational awareness up to five times – gives leadership teams a specific, measurable basis for redesigning how they develop judgement under pressure. She is both a serving Chief Fire Officer and an active researcher at Cardiff University, meaning her framework is continuously stress-tested against real operational consequences – not archived after publication. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), extends the same empirical approach to the structural barriers holding women back at work – giving CHROs and boards a research-grounded contribution to progression strategy rather than advocacy. Her awards span operational command and academic research: the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour represent recognition from named bodies across both domains. Biography highlights Chief Fire Officer, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (first woman to hold this post); formerly CFO, West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service; Deputy Assistant Commissioner, London Fire Brigade PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Honorary Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society; Chartered Companion, Chartered Management Institute Developed the Decision Control Process – adopted by every UK fire and rescue service, embedded in National Operational Guidance for incident command and in JESIP doctrine King’s Fire Service Medal (King’s Birthday Honours); APA Early Career Award (2016); APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award (2018); BBSRC Innovator of the Year (2018) Author: The Heat of the Moment (Penguin Books, 2019) and The Gender Bias (2023) Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs; named among Marie Claire’s Future Shapers; Cosmopolitan Millennial Power List; Big Issue Top 100 Changemakers Biography When researchers at Cardiff University fitted helmet cameras to experienced incident commanders during live operational responses, the footage was unambiguous: eight in ten decisions were made on instinct, with structured analytical frameworks bypassed entirely. That finding became the foundation of the Decision Control Process: a rapid mental checklist developed by Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and subsequently adopted by every UK fire and rescue service. The research reshaped National Operational Guidance for incident command and is embedded in JESIP doctrine, the framework governing decision-making across all blue-light services at major incidents. It is a rare case of behavioural science research moving directly from peer-reviewed publication to national policy. Dr Cohen-Hatton holds a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience from Cardiff University, where she is an Honorary Professor, and is currently Chief Fire Officer of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service: the first woman to lead that service. Her operational career spans South Wales, Surrey, London, and West Sussex, and includes command roles during the Westminster Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks and in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), applies the same empirical lens to structural barriers in organisational progression: a data-led analysis of why women are judged differently at work and what organisations can do to address it. Alongside the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour, her profile extends well beyond emergency services audiences: Desert Island Discs, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan have all featured her work. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Behavioural neuroscience and leadership judgement Incident command and human factors Organisational learning from high-stakes incidents Crisis command and situational awareness Gender bias and structural barriers to progression Social mobility and leadership resilience Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams in regulated, risk-critical, or high-consequence sectors CHROs and senior talent leads focused on women’s progression at executive level Risk, safety, resilience, and business continuity officers Senior leadership development programmes addressing performance and judgement under pressure Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of how instinct and intuition dominate decision-making under pressure, and where that creates measurable organisational risk Familiarity with the Decision Control Process and its evidence base, with direct implications for how leadership development programmes should be designed A research-grounded framework for diagnosing and addressing structural barriers to women’s progression in senior roles Greater awareness of how human factors – not just technical failure – contribute to adverse outcomes in complex, high-stakes environments A perspective on leadership judgement formed from decades of active operational command at the most senior level in UK emergency services

Why organisations work with Jenny Radcliffe She has spent decades being paid to break into client buildings, networks and confidence; the briefings she gives boards are based on what worked, not what theory predicts. She runs Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded to handle authorised physical-access and social-engineering testing for organisations that want their human layer stress-tested rather than surveyed. Her induction into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame placed her among a small group recognised for shifting the industry’s view of human risk from a training problem to a security discipline. People Hacker, published by Simon and Schuster, gives senior audiences a single readable account of how cons, pretexts and physical infiltration actually work inside corporate environments. She translates attacker behaviour into specific decisions about hiring, access, vendor management and culture, which is what a CISO’s report to the board usually leaves out. Biography highlights Founder and director of Human Factor Security, the consultancy she set up in 2013 to focus on human-factor risk. Inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame in 2022 and delivered that year’s Hall of Fame Annual Lecture. Author of People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, Simon and Schuster. Host of the Human Factor podcast, awarded European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards. Multiple TEDx speaker on social engineering, deception and influence. Featured “HQ Hunter” on Channel 4’s Hunted, applying her OSINT and undercover tradecraft on screen. Regular keynote contributor at Infosecurity Europe, RANT, Cisco events, Trend Micro events and the PCI Security Standards Council Community Meetings. Biography The fastest way past most corporate security is to ring the doorbell. Jenny Radcliffe has spent her career proving it, working as an authorised social engineer hired to walk into offices, data centres and executive floors using nothing more than confidence, a cover story and a careful read of the people in front of her. Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded in 2013, runs that work as a discipline rather than a stunt. Clients commission live infiltration tests, pretext calls and on-site assessments; the findings then feed into board-level guidance on how culture, process and physical design create the openings attackers actually use. Her book People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, published by Simon and Schuster, sets out the playbook in detail, and the Human Factor podcast has built a long-running audience among security and risk professionals, winning European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards. Television work on Channel 4’s Hunted and multiple TEDx talks have widened the audience well beyond the cyber industry. In 2022 she was inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame and delivered the Hall of Fame Annual Lecture, “Facta Non Verba: Six Life Lessons from a Social Engineer”. For senior buyers, that recognition matters less than the underlying point: she is one of a small number of voices the security industry now treats as authoritative on the human side of the threat, and she briefs boards in the same plain language she uses to brief her own clients after a successful break-in. Key speaking topics Social engineering and human-factor security Physical-access testing and corporate infiltration Fraud, scams and modern-day con tactics Security culture and workforce behaviour Deception, influence and non-verbal communication Insider threat and pretext attacks Board-level cybersecurity briefing Ideal for CISOs, CSOs and heads of information security commissioning human-risk programmes Boards and executive committees reviewing cyber and operational resilience Heads of risk, compliance and governance overseeing fraud and insider threat Corporate security, facilities and HR leaders responsible for access, vetting and culture Audience outcomes A clear picture of how attackers actually combine pretext, OSINT and physical access against organisations like theirs. Specific control points where human behaviour, not technology, decides whether an attack succeeds. Sharper questions to put to security, HR and facilities teams about access, vetting and incident response. A working vocabulary for discussing social engineering and human risk at board level. Confidence that security awareness can be redesigned around real attacker behaviour rather than generic training.

Why organisations work with John Volanthen He has operated at the point where a wrong call costs lives, and can describe the actual mechanics of how a small team made decisions inside Tham Luang when the engineered solutions had run out. George Medal recipient and one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year: the credentials behind his keynote are not anecdotal, they are state-recognised and internationally documented. His thinking is engineered, not motivational. A working IT consultant who designs his own rebreathers and mapping kit, he treats risk, redundancy and failure modes the way a serious technologist does. Author of “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives,” a structured account of the rescue built around principles that map directly onto leadership, risk and team performance. Useful in rooms where the leadership question is concrete: how a team builds trust fast across strangers, agencies and disciplines, and keeps making rational decisions when the cost of error is no longer abstract. Biography highlights George Medal, 2019 New Year Honours, for the Tham Luang cave rescue. Named, with the rescue dive team, as one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year. Royal Humane Society Bronze, Silver and Stanhope Gold medals; Scout Association Bronze Cross; Pride of Britain award. Honorary degree from the University of Bristol, awarded jointly with Rick Stanton in July 2022. World record holder for longest cave penetration dive at 8,800m in the Pozo Azul system, Spain. Author of “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives: The Thai Cave Rescue” (Aurum Press, 2021). Biography On 2 July 2018, two British cave divers reached an air pocket nine days into a search inside the flooded Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand. The voice on the now well-known footage, asking “How many of you?”, is John Volanthen’s. Twelve boys and their coach were alive. What happened next is taught in business schools as a case study in cross-agency coordination under extreme constraint. The rescue involved Thai Navy SEALs, foreign militaries, technical cave divers and medical specialists, working through a problem nobody had previously solved. Volanthen and his long-time partner Rick Stanton were the divers who carried children out, one at a time, through kilometres of submerged passage. The technical depth behind that decision-making is not accidental. Volanthen runs an IT consultancy in Bristol, has built and sold two technology businesses, and designs his own rebreathers, underwater mapping devices and communications systems. He approaches survival the way an engineer approaches a system: identify the failure modes, reduce them, accept the residual risk consciously. His book “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives,” published by Aurum Press in 2021, frames the rescue as a sequence of decisions rather than a feat of nerve. He holds the George Medal, the highest civilian bravery award outside human conflict, alongside Royal Humane Society Bronze, Silver and Stanhope Gold medals. He was named one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year, and received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol in 2022. He still cave-dives. He still does rescues, as a volunteer. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme constraint Risk, redundancy and failure modes Team trust across strangers and disciplines Crisis leadership in real conditions Performance under pressure Cross-agency coordination Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for genuinely high-stakes scenarios where preparation, not improvisation, is the deciding factor. CROs, heads of safety, and operational leaders who own consequences when systems fail. Senior leadership offsites focused on trust, judgement and decision quality under pressure. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a small team made rational decisions inside Tham Luang when standard protocols had run out. A working model for thinking about risk, redundancy and acceptable failure modes that leaders can apply to their own operations. A clearer view of what builds trust quickly between people who have not worked together before. A reset on the difference between motivational courage and engineered preparation.

Why organisations work with Lord Sebastian Coe He has led, end to end, one of the largest peacetime delivery programmes a UK organisation has ever attempted: the London 2012 bid, build, and Games. Few speakers can talk about institutional execution at that scale from inside the room. As President of World Athletics since 2015, he has run a global federation through doping scandals, Russian sanctions, prize-money reform, and gender-eligibility policy. The case material is contemporary, contested, and useful to any board navigating reputational risk. He moves credibly between elite performance, political office, and institutional governance. That breadth lets him address both the human side of leadership and the structural side without flattening either. He brings a working operator’s view of stakeholder management: IOC, host governments, sponsors, broadcasters, athletes, media. Buyers wrestling with multi-principal accountability get a practitioner, not a commentator. Biography highlights President of World Athletics since 2015; member of the International Olympic Committee since 2020. Chair of the London 2012 bid and of LOCOG, the organising committee that delivered the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Chairman of the British Olympic Association, 2012 to 2016. Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, 1992 to 1997; Chief of Staff to William Hague as Leader of the Opposition; created Baron Coe of Ranmore in 2000. Two-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist (Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984); set twelve world records across middle-distance events. KBE (2006), Companion of Honour (2013); author of Running My Life: The Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). Biography The London 2012 bid was three points behind Paris in the final IOC stretch. The committee changed chairs, brought in a new presentation, and won the host vote in Singapore on 6 July 2005. The work that followed, seven years of build, contracts, security, transport, and ceremony, finished on time and inside its public envelope. That is the institutional record buyers come to hear about. What sits behind it is unusual. Coe was an Olympic 1500m champion in 1980 and 1984 and held twelve world records before he left the track. He then served as a Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, became Chief of Staff to William Hague, and was created a life peer in 2000. By the time he chaired LOCOG he had already worked at close range on how political institutions actually function under stress. Since 2015 he has been President of World Athletics. The federation he inherited was in the middle of the Russian doping crisis and faced an open question about whether its own governance was credible. The decade since has involved sanctions, reform of integrity systems, the introduction of prize money at the Olympic Games, and contested decisions on transgender and DSD eligibility in elite competition. None of those calls were uncontested; all of them were made. He brings to a corporate audience a working knowledge of leadership where the stakeholders are not aligned, the deadline does not move, and the public verdict arrives the same week as the decision. That is the part of the experience that translates. Key speaking topics Leadership of complex institutions under public scrutiny Delivering large-scale programmes against fixed deadlines Governance reform and integrity in international organisations Stakeholder management across political, commercial, and civic principals Building and sustaining high-performance cultures Legacy, reputation, and long-horizon decision-making Transitioning from individual performance to institutional leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams running multi-stakeholder organisations where regulators, governments, and the public are all in the room CEOs and transformation leads delivering large programmes against fixed external deadlines Public-sector and federated bodies facing reform under reputational pressure Senior leadership audiences in sport, broadcasting, infrastructure, and major-event delivery Audience outcomes A working frame for setting and holding direction when stakeholders do not share interests Specific case material from London 2012 and a decade at World Athletics on integrity, reform, and crisis response Sharper sense of how to manage the gap between elite performance and institutional leadership Perspective on legacy, reputation, and the trade-offs that surface late in long programmes A direct read on what high-stakes accountability looks like from the inside of the room

Why organisations work with Andrew Verity He is the reporter who broke the evidence of central bank involvement in LIBOR rate-rigging on Panorama and in the Radio 4 podcast The Lowball Tapes, and then laid out the full case in his book Rigged. Few speakers in this field can claim that level of original work on a scandal they covered end to end. As BBC Economics Correspondent he explains interest rates, inflation and growth on air to a national audience every week. That training shows up on stage: dense economic material rendered in language a board can use. His investigative track record, from The Truth About Property ahead of the 2008 housing crash to on-the-ground reporting on money laundering in Ukraine, gives him a sharper instinct than most commentators for where institutional risk is actually building. He is a practised live broadcaster, which makes him a natural moderator and interviewer at internal leadership events, client summits and regulated-industry conferences where the stakes of the conversation are high. For financial services, risk and compliance audiences in particular, he offers a perspective that is informed by named regulators, named trials and named evidence, not generic commentary. Biography highlights Economics Correspondent, BBC News, reporting across television, radio and online since 2014. Author of Rigged (The History Press, 2023), a detailed account of the LIBOR scandal serialised in The Times. Presenter of The Lowball Tapes, the 2022 BBC Radio 4 investigative podcast series shortlisted for the British Journalism Awards and the Foreign Press Association Awards. Reporter and presenter for Panorama, including the investigation into the Bank of England’s role in LIBOR rate-rigging, with further contributions to Newsnight and File on Four. Former host of Wake Up to Money on BBC Radio 5 Live for eight years, a daily programme on markets, the economy and personal finance. Previously Personal Finance Correspondent at The Independent, recognised with industry awards for personal finance journalism and broadcasting. Biography The LIBOR scandal was presented to the public as a story about rogue traders. The evidence Andrew Verity assembled, on Panorama, in The Lowball Tapes and then in his book Rigged, tells a different story about the role of central banks and the safety of the convictions that followed. That body of work is why senior financial audiences take him seriously when he speaks about misconduct, regulation and market structure. His day job is to translate macroeconomics for a national audience. As BBC Economics Correspondent since 2014 he has covered Brexit, the pandemic shock and post-pandemic inflation across television, radio and online. The discipline of explaining a rate decision or an inflation print in clear language, live, week after week, is what makes him effective in front of a leadership team. The investigative thread runs through the rest of his career. He presented BBC Two’s The Truth About Property before the 2008 housing crash, hosted Wake Up to Money on BBC Radio 5 Live for eight years, and has reported from Ukraine on suspected money laundering. His book Rigged, published by The History Press in 2023 and serialised in The Times, has since been optioned for television. For boards, risk committees and regulated-industry audiences, the practical value is specific. He can moderate a results conference, interview a chief executive on the record, or deliver a keynote that takes the latest central bank move and shows what it changes for the people in the room. Key speaking topics The LIBOR scandal and financial misconduct Inflation, interest rates and monetary policy UK and global economic outlook Regulation and enforcement in financial services Investigative journalism and corporate accountability Housing, property markets and household finance Economics event moderation and on-stage interviewing Ideal for Financial services, banking and asset management leadership events Risk, compliance and internal audit conferences in regulated industries Board and executive offsites seeking a clear read on the macro environment Corporate and client summits needing a senior broadcast-grade moderator or interviewer Audience outcomes A clearer read on where inflation, interest rates and growth are heading and what actually drives the next move. A grounded view of the LIBOR scandal from the journalist who reported the cover-up, with direct relevance to conduct and culture questions today. A sharper sense of where regulatory and reputational risk tends to build inside large financial institutions. Confidence that the on-stage conversation with their own leaders or guests will be handled with the discipline of a live BBC broadcast.

Why organisations work with Martin Smith He built SASIG from a private forum into a community of more than 11,000 cybersecurity practitioners across roughly 4,500 organisations, which gives him a unique read on what CISOs actually worry about, not what vendors say they should. His argument that breaches are behavioural before they are technical reframes the cyber conversation for boards that have over-invested in tooling and under-invested in people. Three decades of operational security experience across the RAF, Kroll, Standard Chartered and his own firm, The Security Company, lets him talk to executive audiences without retreating into jargon or vendor pitch. He speaks with the authority of an industry founder, not a commentator. SASIG, TSC, and his OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 give him standing other cyber speakers cannot match in a UK boardroom. He is unusually effective with mixed audiences of technical and non-technical leaders, a direct consequence of his behavioural psychology background and a career spent translating between the two. Biography highlights Founder and Chairman of The Security Awareness Special Interest Group (SASIG), established 2004; now part of Nineteen Group following the January 2024 acquisition. Awarded the MBE for 15 years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch. Former Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates (UK) and Head of Information Security at Standard Chartered Bank. Founded The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997, exiting via management buyout in December 2019. Lifetime Achievement Award, inaugural OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards), March 2017. BSc in Behavioural Psychology; FSyI (Fellow of The Security Institute); Freeman Emeritus of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. Biography The vast majority of cybersecurity failures start with a human decision, not a system flaw. That observation has driven Martin Smith’s work for three decades, and it is the argument SASIG, the network he founded in 2004, was built around. Today it represents over 11,000 practitioners drawn from roughly 4,500 organisations across UK industry, government, law enforcement, and academia. His credibility is operational, not theoretical. Fifteen years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch earned him an MBE. He then went into the commercial sector via Touche Ross, took on Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates, and ran information security for Standard Chartered Bank before founding The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997. What ties that career together is a behavioural psychology background that shapes how he reads risk. Boards tend to think of cyber as a technical procurement problem. Smith’s work consistently pushes them toward the harder question of how staff behave under pressure, how culture is engineered, and how awareness is sustained beyond an annual training module. He retired from TSC in December 2019 in a management buyout to focus on SASIG, which Nineteen Group acquired in January 2024. In March 2017 he received the inaugural OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the human factor in security breaches, which remains the most precise summary of what he has spent his career arguing for. Key speaking topics Cyber and information security The human factor in security breaches Security awareness and behavioural risk Counter-terrorism and crisis management Risk and resilience for boards The business of security Ideal for CISOs, CIOs and CTOs assessing the cultural side of their cyber exposure Boards and audit committees recalibrating cyber risk beyond tooling spend HR and learning leaders responsible for security awareness programmes Public-sector and regulated-industry leaders working with sensitive information Audience outcomes A clearer view of where cyber budgets are misallocated between technology and people. Specific, practitioner-grounded examples of how organisations engineer security awareness into culture rather than treat it as a compliance event. A working understanding of the human-factor argument that has reshaped UK cybersecurity practice over the last twenty years. The perspective of a founder who has watched 11,000+ cyber practitioners articulate what really keeps them awake.

Why organisations work with Catherine Hunt She has sat in the editor’s chair at the BBC’s flagship evening news, deciding what leads, what gets cut, and how a story is framed for millions of viewers. Few communications advisors have made those calls in real time. Her training is editorial, not presentational. She works on what a leader is actually saying and in what order, before any work on delivery, which is where most media coaching starts. She has worked across local press, national newspapers, the Press Association, and BBC television, which means she knows how the same story moves and mutates across formats. She runs CHC Media as a working consultancy, so her advice draws on current client engagements rather than archived BBC experience. Biography highlights Editor of the BBC Six O’Clock News, the corporation’s main early-evening television bulletin. Edited live BBC coverage of major domestic and international news events. Reporter for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before joining the BBC. Began in regional journalism at the Evening Argus in Brighton. Founder of CHC Media, a communications consultancy advising private and public sector clients. Author of the psychological thriller “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton. Biography The work of editing a national news bulletin is the work of deciding what matters in the next thirty minutes. Catherine Hunt did that for the BBC Six O’Clock News, one of the UK’s most-watched television programmes, choosing which stories led, which were cut for time, and how complex events were translated for a general audience. That seat carries an editorial discipline that very few communications professionals have ever held. Hunt came to the BBC after a career in print. She started at the Evening Argus in Brighton, then reported for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before moving into broadcast as a producer. Across those roles, she learned how the same fact reads differently in a wire copy line, a tabloid lead, and a televised top story. That cross-format fluency now sits underneath her advisory work. Through her consultancy CHC Media, Hunt advises private and public sector clients on the same questions she handled in the gallery: what is the story, who is it for, and what is the cleanest way to land it. The practical content is editorial first, presentational second. Leaders work on the structure and ordering of what they want to say before anything is done about how they say it. Her work suits the senior client who has to communicate something difficult and knows that the words will be recorded, clipped, and replayed. She wrote a psychological thriller in 2015, “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton, which she covered as a young reporter, which sits alongside her advisory practice as evidence of a lifetime spent on how stories are built. Key speaking topics Media interviews and high-stakes communication Newsroom decision-making and editorial judgement Message structure and prioritisation for senior leaders Crisis communications and breaking-news coverage Storytelling for public and private sector audiences The journalist’s view of corporate communications Ideal for Executive teams preparing for media interviews, regulator hearings, or analyst calls Communications and public affairs leads building internal media-skills programmes Boards and senior leaders rehearsing crisis statements and town halls Conference organisers needing an experienced moderator or panel chair with a journalist’s instinct Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a national newsroom would treat their story, and what that means for what to say first A sharper sense of which message belongs at the top of a statement, and which sits below the line Practical instincts for handling difficult interviews, hostile questions, and breaking news pressure Confidence in editing their own communications down to what actually matters

Why organisations work with Macer Gifford He has built two functioning units from nothing, a Combat Medical Unit with Kurdish forces in Syria and Operation Golden Hour in Ukraine, both still saving lives. That is a rare proof point on creating capability under pressure. He has fought alongside Kurdish and Syriac forces against Islamic State and now serves as a reconnaissance infantryman and medic in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion’s 131st Battalion. The material is firsthand, not interpreted. His talks translate combat decision-making into language a board, a transformation team or a frontline manager can actually use, without the bravado that typically comes with the genre. He brings credible standing on two of the defining conflicts of the era, with published work in The Spectator and The Telegraph and regular appearances on BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Channel 4. He is the author of “Fighting Evil” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, foreword by Andy McNab), a sustained piece of writing about why an ordinary person chooses to act when most do not. Biography highlights Volunteer fighter with the Kurdish YPG and a Syriac Christian unit in Syria, mid-2015 to 2017, including the Manbij offensive and the siege of Raqqa. Founder of a Combat Medical Unit with Kurdish forces in Syria, still operational, and of Operation Golden Hour, a battlefield first-aid training programme for Ukrainian and international volunteers. Reconnaissance infantryman and medic with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion’s 131st Battalion and the International Cossacks Expeditionary Force; awarded a medal by the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Author of “Fighting Evil: The Ordinary Man who went to War Against ISIS”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, with a foreword by Andy McNab. Contributor to The Spectator and The Telegraph; regular interviewee on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Channel 4, ITV, Sky News and LBC. Reading for a Master’s in Security, Peace-building and Diplomacy at Loughborough University London. Biography A foreign exchange trader from Cambridge with no military background flew to northern Syria in 2015 and joined the Kurdish YPG. Over the next three years, that decision became one of the longest tours by any British international volunteer in the war against Islamic State, ending at the siege of Raqqa. The interesting question is not why he went, it is what he learned about command, fear and group cohesion when the people around him were untrained, frightened and being killed. Out of that experience came a Combat Medical Unit, built from nothing with Kurdish forces, that still operates in north-east Syria. He repeated the pattern in 2022. Ten days before Russia’s full-scale invasion he was on the ground in Ukraine, and within weeks he had launched Operation Golden Hour, a battlefield first-aid programme that has trained domestic and international volunteers across the conflict. He now serves as a reconnaissance infantryman and medic with the 131st Battalion, was decorated in connection with the liberation of Kherson, and writes about the war for outlets including The Spectator and The Telegraph. His memoir, “Fighting Evil”, carries a foreword by Andy McNab and sits alongside regular appearances on BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Channel 4. For an organisation thinking seriously about leadership when the systems break, the practical question is simple: who actually has done it, and can explain it. Gifford can. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Building teams and capability from scratch in hostile conditions Courage, fear and individual moral choice Frontline lessons from Syria and Ukraine Humanitarian action and combat medicine in conflict zones The fight against Islamic State and the war in Ukraine Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO forums focused on resilience and crisis decision-making Transformation, change and operations leaders dealing with high ambiguity and human risk Defence, security, NGO and public-sector audiences working in unstable environments Conferences and dinners that need a serious, firsthand voice on the conflicts shaping the decade Audience outcomes A direct account of how trust, command and morale actually function when conditions deteriorate A practical view of how small groups build capability quickly when no system supports them A frame for thinking about courage and individual responsibility that does not collapse into cliche A clear-eyed sense of what is happening on the ground in Syria and Ukraine, from someone still serving there

Why organisations work with Matt Bishop He has run reputation for two of the most-watched teams in global sport, including through the spygate-era recovery at McLaren and the high-profile relaunch of Aston Martin F1 in 2021. Few comms leaders have operated at that level of public exposure. He brokered Sebastian Vettel’s BBC Question Time appearance on climate, the first time a Formula 1 World Champion debated sustainability on the programme. That is a worked example of using a star principal to advance a contested corporate position without losing either. As founder ambassador of Racing Pride, set up with Stonewall in 2019, he has translated DEI from policy language into action inside an industry that historically resisted it. His advocacy is operational, not declarative. He spent over a decade as a senior journalist, including eleven years editing F1 Racing magazine. He understands the room he is briefing because he sat in it. His current firm Diagonal Communications was built specifically for crisis, reputation and DEI counsel in high-stakes commercial environments, which is the lens he brings to a corporate audience. Biography highlights Chief Communications Officer, McLaren Racing, 2008 to 2017 Chief Communications Officer, Aston Martin F1 Team, 2021 and 2022 seasons Editor of F1 Racing magazine, 1996 to 2007, with monthly worldwide circulation around 1.25 million copies Founder ambassador of Racing Pride, established 2019 in collaboration with Stonewall Founder, Diagonal Communications, 2023, advising automotive and motorsport clients Author of the novel The Boy Made the Difference (2020) and co-author of Emerson Fittipaldi’s autobiography Emmo: a Racer’s Soul (2014) Biography A driver, a sponsor and a regulator can each move within hours of the same press conference. In Formula 1 the gap between reputation event and commercial consequence is unusually short, and the leaders inside the team have to make calls in that gap. Matt Bishop ran communications through that environment for almost fifteen years. He joined McLaren Racing as Chief Communications Officer in 2008 and stayed until 2017, a period that included some of the most contested reputational moments in the team’s modern history. He then took on the launch communications for W Series, the all-female single-seater championship, before returning to F1 in 2021 as Chief Communications Officer of the relaunched Aston Martin team. There he worked closely with Sebastian Vettel on climate advocacy, including arranging Vettel’s appearance on BBC Question Time in 2022. Before McLaren, Bishop edited F1 Racing magazine for eleven years, growing it to a monthly worldwide circulation of around 1.25 million copies and serving as Editorial Director of Haymarket Motorsport Publications. The journalism background matters because it shapes how he counsels principals: he has been on the receiving end of corporate communications and knows when it is working and when it is not. His advocacy work runs in parallel. In 2019 he co-founded Racing Pride with Stonewall to advance LGBTQ+ inclusion in motorsport, and his 2020 novel The Boy Made the Difference draws on his volunteering at London Lighthouse during the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 2023 he founded Diagonal Communications, a consultancy focused on crisis, reputation and inclusion counsel for automotive and motorsport clients. Key speaking topics Communications leadership in elite sport Crisis communications and reputation management LGBTQ+ inclusion in traditionally closed industries Diversity, equity and inclusion in motorsport Working with high-profile principals on contested issues Sustainability communication and climate advocacy Media strategy under public scrutiny Ideal for Chief Communications Officers, Heads of Corporate Affairs and CMOs facing high-stakes reputation events CHROs and DEI leads in industries where inclusion has historically been resisted Boards and executive teams briefing public-facing principals on contested topics Sponsorship, partnership and brand teams operating in or alongside elite sport Audience outcomes A clear view of how reputation decisions get made under live public pressure, drawn from inside two F1 teams A working sense of how to brief a high-profile principal on a contested issue without losing the principal or the position Specific examples of inclusion moving from policy to practice in an industry that resisted it A sharper read on the relationship between media operations, sponsor expectation and team performance Language and structure for crisis communications that can be used the same week