Business Continuity and Crisis Management speakers

Why organisations work with Nick Leeson He is the named primary actor in the most studied operational-risk failure in modern banking history, which means his account of how account 88888 was opened, fed and hidden carries weight no consultant can replicate. He breaks the polite fiction that rogue trading is rare. Subsequent losses at Allied Irish, Societe Generale, UBS and others have proved his core point that the conditions which produced Barings are still live in trading-floor and middle-office design. His 2023 appointment to Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit puts him on the investigator side of financial misconduct, giving compliance and audit audiences a rare voice that has worked both sides of the control line. He addresses the human variables that risk frameworks assume away: pressure, ego, fear of admitting a small loss, and the speed at which a contained problem becomes terminal. For boards and senior leaders, he is the named cautionary case, sitting in the room and answering questions, rather than a slide in an audit deck. Biography highlights Caused the £827m collapse of Barings Bank in February 1995 through unauthorised futures and options trades booked to error account 88888 on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. Convicted in Singapore and held at Changi Prison from December 1995 until July 1999. Author of Rogue Trader (1996) and co-author of Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress (2005, with psychologist Ivan Tyrrell). Subject of the 1999 film Rogue Trader, starring Ewan McGregor, with rights optioned by Sir David Frost. CEO of Galway United Football Club, 2007 to 2011. Investigator at Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm, since 2023, working financial misconduct cases for investors. Biography A 25-year-old derivatives trader on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange held the positions of chief trader and head of settlements at the same time, and used that conflict to bury an initial £20,000 error inside an account numbered 88888. Three years later, that account held £827m of concealed losses, and Barings, the bank that had financed the Louisiana Purchase, was insolvent. The mechanics of that failure remain the most cited operational-risk case study in financial services. The point of hearing it directly from Leeson is not the drama. It is the precision. He can describe the specific control breaches, the cultural signals that allowed them, and the day-by-day choices that kept the losses hidden, including the short straddle on the Nikkei placed the day before the Kobe earthquake of 17 January 1995. Risk and compliance teams use that detail to test their own supervisory architecture. The post-Barings career adds the second half of the argument. Six and a half years in Changi, a colon cancer diagnosis served out in prison, a psychology degree, the CEO seat at Galway United, and the books Rogue Trader and Back from the Brink with Ivan Tyrrell. The last of those titles is the one risk professionals tend to underestimate. Pressure, isolation and the fear of admitting a contained loss are the human inputs that no governance framework prices correctly. In 2023 Leeson joined Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm that investigates financial misconduct on behalf of wronged investors. For audiences in banking, insurance and regulated industries, that role is the salient point: the man who once defeated the controls is now being hired to detect the people doing it next. Key speaking topics Operational risk and rogue trading Compliance, supervision and the limits of policy Corporate governance and board oversight of trading risk Internal controls, segregation of duties and concealment behaviour Organisational culture in high-pressure environments Resilience, stress and decision-making under pressure Financial crime detection and investigation Ideal for Boards, audit committees and risk committees in banking, asset management and insurance Chief risk officers, compliance heads, internal audit leads and operational risk teams Regulators, supervisors and financial crime units Senior leaders in any business with material market, trading or treasury exposure Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how concealment actually works inside a trading operation, beyond the textbook description Specific signals that supervisors, risk teams and auditors should treat as warnings rather than reassurance A clearer view of the human conditions, pressure, ego, fear, that turn a recoverable error into a terminal loss A sharpened sense of where a control framework on paper diverges from the behaviour on the desk Renewed attention to segregation of duties, error-account governance and exception handling

Why organisations work with Nik Gowing A research base built from hundreds of confidential interviews with corporate, political and military leaders, distilled in the book Thinking the Unthinkable, which gives boards a vocabulary for the failures of imagination they recognise but rarely name. Forty years of front-line international reporting, from martial law in Poland to 9/11, that lets him press senior audiences on geopolitical and operational risk without flinching or flattering. A moderator’s authority earned at BBC World News and across hundreds of senior international forums, used to host board offsites, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits where the conversation has to go somewhere uncomfortable. Standing inside the institutions buyers trust: Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, Visiting Professor at Kings College London, former council member at Chatham House and ODI. A track record of making leaders engage with what they have been avoiding, rather than rehearsing the slide they came to deliver. Biography highlights Main news presenter, BBC World News, 1996 to 2014. Diplomatic Editor, Channel 4 News, 1989 to 1996; bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw with ITN. BAFTA, 1981, for coverage of martial law in Poland. Co-author, Thinking the Unthinkable: A new imperative for leadership in the digital age (John Catt, 2018), and founder of the Thinking the Unthinkable project. Author, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Visiting Professor, Kings College London; Distinguished Fellow, Royal United Services Institute; Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter and Bristol. Biography The leaders Nik Gowing has spent four decades interviewing, in studios, at summits and behind closed doors, share a pattern. They saw the signal. They had the data. They did not act. Thinking the Unthinkable, the project he founded in 2014 and the book he co-authored with Chris Langdon in 2018, is built on hundreds of confidential conversations with senior figures in business, government and the military about why that keeps happening, and what could change it. The credibility for that conversation comes from the years before. Gowing was a main news presenter on BBC World News from 1996 to 2014, on air for the announcement of Princess Diana’s death and through the live coverage of 9/11. Before the BBC he spent 18 years at ITN, as bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and as Diplomatic Editor of Channel 4 News. A BAFTA followed his coverage of martial law in Poland in 1981. That broadcast career left him with a particular skill that boards now buy: the ability to chair a difficult conversation in front of senior people, on the record, without losing control of the room or the argument. He moderates regularly for institutions including the World Economic Forum, RUSI and Chatham House. The academic and institutional scaffolding is genuine, not decorative. He is a Visiting Professor at Kings College London’s School of Social Science and Public Policy, a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and a former council member at Chatham House and the Overseas Development Institute. The Reuters Institute at Oxford published his earlier study, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, on institutional vulnerability in the modern information environment. Few moderators bring that depth into the room with them. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Anticipating the unthinkable in board strategy Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Crisis communication and decision-making under pressure Institutional resilience in the digital information environment Senior conference moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees confronting strategic shocks they suspect they are under-rehearsing. Risk, strategy and corporate affairs leaders working on scenario planning, geopolitical exposure and institutional resilience. Convenors of senior international forums, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits who need a moderator who can hold the room. Audience outcomes A direct account of why senior teams systematically miss disruptive signals, drawn from confidential interviews with leaders who lived through it. A sharper read on geopolitical and information-environment risks, from someone who has reported them at first hand. The questions a board should be asking itself before the next unthinkable lands, not after. A working sense of what conformity costs at the top of organisations, and what it takes to break it.

Why organisations work with Oliver Peyton He pioneered the model of high-quality restaurant and café concessions inside cultural institutions, with sites at the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Wallace Collection and Kew Gardens, and can describe the operating logic from the inside. He has presided over both the building and the public administration of Peyton & Byrne, and discusses commercial failure and reinvention as someone who has lived it. He has applied a single operating philosophy, hospitality as a service discipline, across nightclubs, restaurants, bakeries, drinks brands and the funeral sector with Exit Here. Fifteen years as a judge on the BBC’s Great British Menu has given him sustained scrutiny of how performance operations function under pressure, and a vocabulary that translates for audiences outside hospitality. He has consulted for Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard, organisations large enough to expose any thin theory of consumer-facing operations. Biography highlights Founder of Peyton & Byrne, with restaurants and cafés inside the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Wallace Collection, Kew Gardens, the British Library and the Wellcome Collection. Judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu from 2006 to 2021. Honorary OBE for services to catering, presented in 2012. Founder of Exit Here, a contemporary funeral business in Chiswick and Crouch End, opened in 2019. Founder of Unknown Pleasures, a premium canned cocktail brand launched in 2021. Author of two cookbooks; columnist for GQ Magazine; consulting client list includes Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard. Biography Hospitality is a public discipline. Every cover is a transaction watched in real time, and a single bad year can take a brand that took fifteen years to build. Few operators have spent longer testing what that requires than Oliver Peyton. He opened nightclubs in Brighton and London in the early 1980s. He moved into restaurants with the Atlantic Bar & Grill in 1994, then launched a string of London venues including Coast, Mash and Isola. In 2005, he founded Peyton & Byrne, which placed restaurant and café concessions inside major London cultural institutions, including the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Wallace Collection and Kew Gardens. The trajectory has not been linear. In October 2016, Peyton & Byrne entered administration after losing contracts, including Kew Gardens and the British Library. It was acquired by Sodexo, where Peyton stayed on as creative director. In 2019, he founded Exit Here, a contemporary funeral business in Chiswick, now also operating in Crouch End. It applies the hospitality model to a sector he describes as largely unchanged since the Victorian era. In 2021, he launched the premium canned cocktail brand Unknown Pleasures. Alongside the operating career, Peyton spent fifteen years as a judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu, from 2006 to 2021. He has also presented and contributed to programmes on restaurant turnaround. He was awarded an honorary OBE for services to catering in 2012 and has consulted for Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard. His career makes a practical point. Consumer-facing operations are a portable discipline. Operators who have lived through public failure and started again carry an authority that strategists rarely match. Key speaking topics Hospitality and consumer-facing operations Restaurant and catering entrepreneurship Brand building inside cultural and visitor attraction venues Commercial reinvention after public failure Operating discipline in service businesses Cross-sector application of hospitality models Ideal for Hospitality, retail and consumer-facing operators looking at growth or repositioning CEOs and founders of brands operating inside host environments such as museums, galleries, transport hubs and public venues Boards weighing turnaround, recovery or reinvention strategy after operational failure Senior leaders in catering, foodservice and customer-facing service industries Audience outcomes An operator’s account of how restaurants and consumer venues actually generate margin, and where it leaks Specific case material on building brands inside the National Gallery, Royal Academy, Kew Gardens and similar host venues A direct read on how Peyton & Byrne entered administration, what was lost, and what came next A view of how hospitality discipline transfers into adjacent sectors, drawn from the funeral business, Exit Here and drinks brand Unknown Pleasures

Why organisations work with Oswald Rodrigo Pereira He has summited five eight-thousand-metre peaks without supplementary oxygen or Sherpa support, a credential held by a small population of climbers worldwide and one that gives his risk material a basis no simulation can replicate. He has been on the active end of two high-altitude rescues, including the 2023 evacuation of 84-year-old Carlos Soria from Dhaulagiri, and uses both as worked examples of crisis decision-making rather than as anecdote. His twelve years as a television journalist before mountaineering give him a working method for information triage under deadline, which he applies directly to how leadership teams handle incomplete data. He directs and shoots his own documentary work in the death zone, including The Silent Escape, which gives his sessions visual evidence at a level most speakers in the resilience category cannot match. Biography highlights Five eight-thousand-metre summits without supplementary oxygen: Broad Peak, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Makalu, Kangchenjunga Ten Himalayan and Karakoram expeditions in seven years, including two winter K2 attempts Director of The Silent Escape, awarded Best Mountain Film at the Krakow Mountain Festival 2023 and screened in more than twenty countries Co-led the 2023 high-altitude rescue of climber Carlos Soria on Dhaulagiri Twelve-year prior career as a television journalist in Poland covering politics, economics and sport Law studies at the University of Warsaw and the University of Lisbon Biography The death zone above eight thousand metres is the highest-stakes operating environment a person can voluntarily enter. Judgement degrades, oxygen falls below half of sea-level value, and the consequences of a slow decision are irreversible. Oswald Rodrigo Pereira has worked in that environment for seven years, on ten expeditions, and has summited five of its peaks without supplementary oxygen. His route to the mountain ran through journalism. Twelve years in Polish television covering politics, economics and sport gave him a working discipline around information under deadline. The pivot came on a winter K2 expedition, where he went as a correspondent and stayed as a climber. He now films what he climbs. The documentary The Silent Escape premiered in Seoul in October 2023, won Best Mountain Film at the Krakow Mountain Festival, and has since screened in over twenty countries. Two rescues anchor his crisis material. The 2023 evacuation of 84-year-old Carlos Soria from Dhaulagiri, reported in detail by Explorersweb, required him and climbing partner Bartek Ziemski to return to altitude with stretcher and oxygen after their own summit and ski descent. The decisions in that sequence, who moves, in what order, with what margin, are the substance of his risk and decision-making sessions, not the dressing. What he offers leadership audiences is not motivation. It is a working description of how a small team triages information, allocates physical and cognitive reserve, and decides what to abandon when conditions change faster than the plan. The translation to boardroom risk is left to the audience, deliberately, and that is the strongest test of whether the material lands. Key speaking topics Risk management in extreme conditions Decision-making under sustained pressure Crisis response and rescue operations Resilience and recovery Information triage from journalism to crisis leadership High-altitude filmmaking and storytelling Personal transformation and physical reinvention Ideal for Executive teams and boards running risk, safety, or crisis-response remits Operations and field leaders in industries with consequential physical risk (energy, construction, logistics, defence) Leadership offsites focused on decision-making under pressure Conferences in insurance, security, or resilience adjacent sectors Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a small team makes consequential decisions when information is partial and time is short Two worked examples of high-altitude crisis response, used to surface the structure of good and bad calls under load A framing of risk that separates the avoidable from the inherent, and treats the inherent as something to be managed rather than removed Footage and first-person material from inside the death zone that gives the abstract content concrete weight

Why organisations work with Parm Sandhu A first-hand command perspective on incidents the public watched unfold, including the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich and senior organising responsibility during the London 2012 Olympics. A serving leader’s account of how institutional culture excludes capable people, evidenced by her settled discrimination case against the Metropolitan Police and her memoir Black and Blue. Operational fluency in counter-terrorism, public order, anti-corruption and crisis response, drawn from 30 years across the Met rather than from secondary research. A current education brief as Managing Director of the London Policing College and Associate Lecturer at the University of West London, which keeps her thinking close to how leadership and ethics are actually taught to the next generation. Comfort in front of cameras and senior audiences, built from regular analysis on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography highlights Former Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police Service; first and only Asian female officer promoted through the ranks to that grade. Borough Commander for Richmond and senior officer with operational responsibilities during the London 2012 Olympics and on duty during the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich. Author of Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice, Atlantic Books, co-written with Stuart Prebble. Managing Director, London Policing College; Associate Lecturer, University of West London. Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of West London, for contribution to public service and police education. Public Sector Award, Asian Women of Achievement Awards. Regular on-air contributor for BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography The Lee Rigby murder happened on a residential street in Greenwich in 2013. Parm Sandhu was the superintendent on duty. That kind of moment, where command judgement is made quickly and reviewed slowly, sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership. Thirty years inside the Metropolitan Police gave her the operational range to back it up: counter-terrorism, anti-corruption, public order, and a senior organising role during the London 2012 Olympics. She finished as a Chief Superintendent and Borough Commander for Richmond, the first and only Asian woman in the force’s history to be promoted through the ranks to that grade. She also wrote about what it cost. Black and Blue, published by Atlantic Books with journalist Stuart Prebble, is a serving officer’s account of how institutional culture decides who gets believed and who gets through. Her later discrimination case against the Met, settled confidentially, made the same argument in a different register. Audiences hear both sides of the same career, the command decisions and the cultural ones. Today she runs the London Policing College and lectures at the University of West London, where she holds an honorary Doctorate of Letters for her contribution to public service. The combination of senior operational command, public commentary on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News and LBC, and a settled record on discrimination is rare. It is also why she lands with leadership audiences who are tired of being told that culture and performance are separate problems. Key speaking topics Crisis command and decision-making under public scrutiny Counter-terrorism and major incident leadership Institutional culture and organisational integrity Inclusive leadership in hierarchical institutions Women’s safety and violence against women and girls Resilience and personal recovery from adversity Ethics, accountability and public trust Ideal for Boards and executive committees of institutions where culture, scrutiny and public trust are commercial risks, including financial services, healthcare and regulated public bodies. Senior leadership programmes for police, military, civil service and other hierarchical organisations. CHRO and Chief People Officer audiences working on inclusion outcomes rather than inclusion communications. Conferences on women in leadership and on safeguarding, where a commander-rank perspective is genuinely uncommon. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what command judgement actually looks like when an incident is live and the public is watching. A practical view of how culture quietly suppresses talent, and what senior leaders can do about it before it reaches a tribunal. A frame for thinking about resilience that is grounded in 30 years of operational policing rather than in self-help language. A direct, named account of how institutional discrimination operates in practice, with implications for any organisation under similar scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Patrick Leddin A co-authored New York Times bestseller with James Patterson, Disrupt Everything and Win, that has been licensed by FranklinCovey as a global corporate training programme. Few keynote speakers have their material adopted as a productised curriculum at that scale. A working research base at Vanderbilt Owen, where he runs the Disruption Project. The frameworks in the keynote (the 5 roles of disruption, the 16 behaviours of successful disruptors) are grounded in field research, not consulting anecdotes. A career that has actually run leadership at every scale he speaks about: a ranger-qualified Army infantry officer, KPMG consultant, FranklinCovey practitioner, and co-founder of an Inc. 5000 firm. Senior audiences recognise the difference. A direct line into the Stephen M.R. Covey and FranklinCovey leadership canon, which is the operating language for L&D functions inside many large enterprises. Biography highlights Associate Professor of the Practice of Business Studies, Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management. Teaches Corporate Strategy, Negotiation, Advanced Marketing, and Crisis Leadership. Co-author with James Patterson of Disrupt Everything and Win: Take Control of Your Future (Little, Brown, 2025), an instant New York Times bestseller. Author of The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, a Wall Street Journal bestseller introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey. Subject-matter source for FranklinCovey’s Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact corporate training programme, launched October 2025. Host of the Leadership Lab podcast, with on-record interviews including Stephen M.R. Covey, Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. Former U.S. Army airborne infantry ranger-qualified officer, former KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey practitioner, co-founder of Wedgewood Consulting Group and Leddin Group. Biography Disruption used to be the event a leadership team planned for. It is now the operating condition. The question that follows is harder than the one most leadership development is built to answer: what does a leader actually do, day to day, when the disruption never stops arriving? That question is the subject of Disrupt Everything and Win, the New York Times bestseller Patrick Leddin co-authored with James Patterson. The book grew out of the Disruption Project at Vanderbilt Owen, where Leddin teaches Corporate Strategy and Crisis Leadership. The research produced specific output: five roles people play inside a disruption, sixteen behaviours that distinguish successful disruptors, eight tools leaders can use to convert disruption into progress. FranklinCovey has since licensed the material as a global training programme, Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact. The credibility behind that work is operational. Leddin served as a ranger-qualified U.S. Army infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne, ran large client engagements at KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey, and co-founded Wedgewood Consulting Group, an Inc. 5000 firm that was acquired in 2012. His earlier book, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, was introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey and reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. He hosts the Leadership Lab podcast, where his guests have included Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. The argument senior teams come for is concrete. Disruption is not a communication problem to be managed by the executive office. It is a leadership capability that can be specified, taught, and practised at every level of the organisation, and a board that treats it that way will outperform one that does not. Key speaking topics Leadership in disruption Crisis leadership Organisational change and culture Leadership pipeline development Negotiation and influence Corporate strategy under uncertainty Innovation as a leadership behaviour Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and senior leadership teams running through extended restructuring or market repositioning CHROs and chief learning officers building leadership pipelines that have to operate under continuous change Strategy and transformation leaders responsible for cultural readiness alongside operating model change Industry conferences in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, energy, government) where leaders manage repeated external shocks Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the roles people play during a disruption, and a way to name which role is missing in their own team The sixteen behaviours that distinguish leaders who use disruption as fuel from those who absorb it as damage A concrete set of tools, drawn from the Vanderbilt research, that leaders can apply to a specific change they are already running A sharper view of the difference between managing crisis and building a leadership culture that expects disruption as a baseline

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 Pete Goss He is one of very few speakers whose composure under pressure is documented in two state honours, the MBE and the Legion d’Honneur, awarded for a single named decision in the 1996 Vendee Globe. He has built and led multi-million pound sponsored projects with workforces of 100 plus, including Aqua Quorum, Team Philips and Spirit of Mystery, which gives him a working vocabulary for boards on stewardship, sponsor relationships and visible failure. The Team Philips abandonment in 2000 is part of his material, not edited out of it, so leaders get a credible account of what comes after a public, capital-heavy programme collapses. His teaching credentials sit inside serious institutions: Associate Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford, and regular lecturer at London Business School, which calibrates the content for senior audiences rather than after-dinner crowds. The Dinelli rescue is a teachable case, not a war story: a decision made on incomplete information, against the speaker’s own commercial interest, with a precise sequence of operational choices a board can interrogate. Biography highlights Skippered Aqua Quorum in the 1996/97 Vendee Globe; rescued Raphael Dinelli in a Southern Ocean hurricane on Christmas Day 1996. Awarded the MBE and France’s Legion d’Honneur for the Dinelli rescue. Named Yachtsman of the Year following the Vendee Globe. Author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), an account of the race and rescue. Built and skippered Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft Cornish lugger, on an 11,800 mile voyage from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009. Associate Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford; regular lecturer at London Business School; former Royal Marine. Biography The Vendee Globe is the hardest race in solo sailing: one boat, one person, no stops, around the world. On Christmas Day 1996, in 80 knot winds in the Southern Ocean, Pete Goss received a distress signal from Raphael Dinelli, a French competitor whose boat was sinking. Goss turned back, fought upwind for two days, and pulled Dinelli, near death, out of a life raft. The decision ended his race and won him the MBE from Queen Elizabeth II and the Legion d’Honneur from the President of France. Before that race, Goss was a Royal Marine. After it, he became one of the more credible voices on what leadership looks like when the plan stops working. He is the author of Close to the Wind (Headline, 1998), the bestselling account of the race and the rescue, and was named Yachtsman of the Year. He is an Associate Fellow of Said Business School at Oxford and lectures regularly at London Business School, so the material reads to senior audiences as judgement work, not adventure storytelling. His later projects sharpen the case. Team Philips, a 120 ft catamaran built for a round-the-world record, was abandoned in mid-Atlantic in December 2000 after structural damage in heavy weather. Spirit of Mystery, a 37 ft replica Cornish lugger, sailed 11,800 miles from Newlyn to Melbourne in 2008 to 2009 to recreate the 1854 voyage of the original lugger Mystery. One programme failed in public after large sponsor investment. The other succeeded after years of preparation in obscurity. Goss treats both as case material. What makes this useful in a boardroom is the specificity. The Dinelli decision is not a metaphor, it is a sequence of operational choices made against personal interest, with a paper trail. Senior leaders can interrogate it the way they would a real case, and most do. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Self-leadership and composure Recovery after public failure Sponsor and stakeholder leadership in capital-intensive programmes Team conduct in small, high-stakes crews Long-form planning and execution Risk and judgement at sea and in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a high-stakes call where the right answer is commercially costly Leadership programmes for senior operators who have not yet been tested in a public failure Capital project sponsors and programme directors managing visible, multi-year commitments Off-sites where the brief is judgement and resilience rather than motivation Audience outcomes A working reference case for what good looks like when a leader has to abandon a plan mid-execution. A clearer view of how to separate personal stake from organisational duty when the two diverge. A more honest account of what happens after a programme fails in public, drawn from Team Philips. Specific language for talking to sponsors, crews and boards in conditions of real uncertainty.

Why organisations work with Peter Baines His authority on crisis leadership is operational, not theoretical. He led international forensic teams in Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami and held senior roles in the response to the Bali bombings, the 2010 Jeddah floods and the 2011 Japan tsunami. Few speakers can talk credibly about international counter-terrorism work from the inside. He spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, advising Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime across South East Asia. He brings a 20 year, AUD 40 million case study in purpose at scale through Hands Across the Water, which lets him talk about values, culture and CSR with real numbers behind him rather than slogans. He has published with Wiley twice on the substance of his work, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), giving organisations a coherent body of thinking to engage with beyond the keynote. He carries an Order of Australia Medal and a royal Thai honour, which gives the talk a level of public standing that lands credibly with boards, philanthropic committees and senior leadership audiences. Biography highlights 22 year career as a forensic investigator with NSW Police, holding qualifications in Law, Forensic Science, and postgraduate Management, with leadership roles in the response to the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand Spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, advising Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in South East Asia Founder of Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand since 2005 Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2014 for international humanitarian work, and the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn by the King of Thailand in 2016 First Australian to receive the Rotary International Professional Excellence Award (2008), a NSW finalist for Australian of the Year (2010), and recognised in 2025 as one of the top five most influential Australians working in Thailand Author of four books: Hands Across the Water (Pan Macmillan, 2011), Doing Good By Doing Good (Wiley, 2014), Leadership Matters (Wiley, 2023), and Together We Can: 33 Marathons in 26 Days (2025) In December 2024, ran 1,400 km across Thailand in 26 days, the equivalent of 33 marathons, in support of Hands Across the Water Biography The bodies were still being recovered in Thai temples when the question of leadership stopped being abstract. In the weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Australian and international forensic teams operating out of Phuket and Khao Lak had to identify thousands of victims with limited infrastructure, exhausted personnel and grieving families waiting for answers. The leader running multiple rotations of that operation was a NSW Police forensic investigator on secondment. That investigator was Peter Baines. Before leaving the force, he had also worked through the Bali bombings, spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, and advised Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime across South East Asia. The Saudi government later engaged him to review the response to the Jeddah floods. He was deployed again after the 2011 Japan tsunami. The leadership argument he draws from that work is simple but unfashionable: authority comes from how you behave when nobody is keeping score, and culture is what survives a bad day. He set out to test it in practice. In 2005 he founded Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has now raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand and supported 46 of them through university degrees. He has written it up in two Wiley books, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), and most recently in Together We Can (2025), the account of his 1,400 km, 26 day run across Thailand at age 57. The Order of Australia Medal and the King of Thailand’s Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn followed, but the real proof point is that the operation he started in a tent of orphaned children in 2005 is still functioning, and growing, twenty years later. Key speaking topics Leadership in crisis and disaster response Decision-making under uncertainty and operational pressure Purpose-driven leadership and culture Corporate social responsibility and shared value Resilience and recovery after shock Building and sustaining high performing teams Storytelling and humanitarian impact Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding leadership credibility after a crisis, restructure or reputational shock CHROs, CSOs and culture leads designing values-based leadership programmes with substance behind them CSR, sustainability and foundation leads who need a credible voice on shared value and authentic purpose Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences in professional services, financial services and complex operating environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what authority actually looks like when titles, scripts and procedures stop helping Specific reference points for decision-making under fatigue, ambiguity and public scrutiny A practical model for connecting organisational purpose to measurable community outcomes, not slogans Renewed appetite to hold leadership teams to a higher standard of behaviour in ordinary, not just exceptional, conditions A repertoire of concrete stories, tested in disaster response and humanitarian work, that senior leaders can carry into their own teams

Why organisations work with Philip Keil He brings the operating discipline of Crew Resource Management, the framework airlines use to prevent crew failure under pressure, into language a leadership team can actually apply on Monday morning. He has been the captain in command during a genuine in-flight emergency with nearly 200 passengers on board, so his content on composure and decision-making is grounded in a specific event, not a hypothetical. His books You are the pilot! and The inner compass give him a published position on intuition and self-leadership, which extends a keynote into a longer programme for executive development. He delivers in English and German at a senior corporate level across more than 20 countries, which suits multinational audiences without an interpreter compromise. He is an active TV aviation expert in Germany, which means he is fluent at explaining technical environments to non-technical audiences without losing the senior register. Biography highlights Qualified as a Lufthansa-trained airline pilot at 22, one of the youngest in Germany. Over 9,000 hours of commercial flying across four continents. Author of You are the pilot! (2019) and The inner compass (2022). Listed in Europe’s TOP 100 Excellent Keynote Speakers since 2017. Two-time nominee for the Red Fox Award, Germany’s Keynote Speaker of the Year (2019, 2020). Recurring aviation expert across ZDF, RTL, Pro 7, Sat.1, WELT, and ntv. Biography The aviation industry has spent four decades engineering away a single problem: capable people, working together, still making fatal decisions. The framework that emerged is called Crew Resource Management, and it is the operating discipline behind the modern cockpit. It assumes that a senior captain can be wrong, that a junior co-pilot must be heard, and that error must surface before it compounds. Philip Keil works inside that framework professionally. He qualified as an airline pilot at 22 after training at Lufthansa in Bremen, and has since logged more than 9,000 flying hours over four continents. On 24 February 2009 he was the captain in command when a routine flight with around 200 passengers became an emergency landing, an event he has used as the empirical anchor for his work on composure and decision-making ever since. His books extend the cockpit material into something more useful for a senior leader. You are the pilot! (2019) is a study in self-leadership and confidence under load. The inner compass (2022) addresses the role of intuition in high-stakes decisions, the part of judgement that does not appear on a spreadsheet. Both have given him a published intellectual position rather than a single-incident speaker hook. That position has been recognised commercially. Keil has been listed in Europe’s TOP 100 Excellent Keynote Speakers since 2017, was nominated as Germany’s Keynote Speaker of the Year in 2019 and 2020, and is the recurring aviation voice across the major German broadcasters. He works in English and German, which is what a multinational leadership audience actually needs. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Crew Resource Management for executive teams Error culture and accountability Self-leadership and composure Crisis communication and command Team coordination across hierarchy Ideal for Executive committees and boards facing high-consequence decisions under time pressure COOs, CHROs, and operational leaders rebuilding accountability and error reporting culture Leadership development programmes for newly appointed senior managers Safety-critical, regulated, or operationally complex industries (aviation, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, financial services) Audience outcomes A working vocabulary from Crew Resource Management that they can apply to their own leadership meetings A specific model for how to surface bad news up a hierarchy before it becomes a crisis A clearer view of what composure looks like as an operational skill, not a personality trait A repeatable approach to making the next decision when the information is incomplete

Why organisations work with Pierre-Yves Gerbeau A first-hand operating account of one of the most public corporate rescues in modern British memory, told by the executive who took the role on day one of the crisis. A career built inside live consumer assets at scale, from Disneyland Paris park operations through the X-Leisure portfolio he grew from roughly 70 million pounds to more than 1.3 billion pounds before the sale to Land Securities. Practical content for boards facing a hostile press cycle, a sceptical workforce and demanding political stakeholders at the same time, drawn from the Dome and the London Resort theme park CEO seat. A teaching practitioner, lecturing on the London Business School MBA programme and as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, so the operating stories carry an analytical frame. Biography highlights Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company from February 2000, with the Millennium Dome reaching more than six million visitors during its year of operation. Vice-President of Park Operations and Attractions at Euro Disney, with operational ownership of ticketing, safety, maintenance and queue management. Co-founder and Chief Executive of X-Leisure, operator of the Xscape centres, sold to Land Securities after a decade of growth. Chief Executive of London Resort Company Holdings, June 2019 to December 2022, leading the Paramount IP licensing arrangement for the proposed Kent resort. President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, appointed October 2021 and re-elected in 2022. Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, lecturer on the London Business School MBA programme, MBA from Sciences Po. Biography The Millennium Dome in January 2000 was the most publicly mocked asset in Britain. Tony Blair’s flagship project had opened to negative press, queues that did not move and visitor numbers well below plan. On 5 February that year Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, recommended by Disney CEO Michael Eisner, took over as Chief Executive of the New Millennium Experience Company. The Dome went on to attract more than six million visitors before its scheduled close. The Dome story is the headline, but the operating CV underneath it is what makes the perspective unusual on a stage. Gerbeau ran park operations at Disneyland Paris through its difficult early years, with direct responsibility for the unglamorous mechanics of a theme park: ticketing, safety, maintenance, queue flow. He then built X-Leisure, the platform behind the Xscape indoor ski and entertainment centres, growing it from roughly 70 million pounds of assets under management in 2003 to more than 1.3 billion pounds by 2007, and eventually selling to Land Securities. Subsequent roles have kept him close to the same set of problems. As CEO of London Resort Company Holdings from 2019 to 2022, he led negotiations for the Paramount IP deal that anchored the proposed Kent theme park before resigning in December 2022. In 2021 he was elected President of the French Ice Hockey Federation, a return to the sport in which he competed professionally before an ankle injury ended his playing career. The teaching work sits alongside the operating one. Gerbeau lectures on the London Business School MBA programme and is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Rescue at Imperial College, holding an MBA from Sciences Po. The argument he carries into a senior boardroom is built from the seat: turnaround is an operating discipline executed under public pressure, not a slide deck about resilience. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and rescue Transformational leadership under public scrutiny Change management in consumer-facing assets Entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer experience in live-operations businesses Risk management and crisis response Stakeholder management with political and media exposure Ideal for Boards and executive committees inheriting a publicly criticised asset, brand or programme Operating leaders running large customer-facing platforms in leisure, retail, hospitality and travel CEOs and transformation directors managing a turnaround under regulatory or political stakeholder pressure Senior teams in scale-up businesses moving from founder energy to institutional operating discipline Audience outcomes A working model of how an incoming CEO sequences the first weeks of a public-asset turnaround A clear view of where operating discipline and brand recovery interact, drawn from the Dome and X-Leisure A sharper read on managing political, media and workforce stakeholders simultaneously Reusable lessons on building and selling a leisure property platform at scale Confidence to make unpopular operating calls when values and commercial reality both demand them

Why organisations work with Richard Haass His “nonpolarity” framework – first published in Foreign Affairs and developed in A World in Disarray – gives leadership teams a structural vocabulary for geopolitical risk that goes beyond the U.S.-China binary and accounts for the dozens of state and non-state actors now shaping outcomes. He has not only analysed diplomatic crises – he has chaired them. His role as chair of the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which provided the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, gives him practitioner credibility that no purely academic or analytical peer can replicate. Twenty years at the head of the Council on Foreign Relations means organisations gain access to the framework that has shaped U.S. policy thinking across four administrations – not a commentary on that framework, but the source of it. He served inside U.S. foreign policy across four presidencies and both parties – at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House – and can translate the actual mechanics of how foreign policy decisions are made into the strategic implications for non-government actors operating across borders. His New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations demonstrates a capacity rare among foreign policy figures: the ability to make complex geopolitical argument legible and actionable for non-specialist audiences, including boards with no background in international relations. Biography highlights President of the Council on Foreign Relations (2003–2023); now President Emeritus – twenty years leading the United States’ most influential foreign policy institution Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell Senate-confirmed Ambassador; U.S. Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process; U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan Chaired the 2013 Northern Ireland multiparty negotiations, which formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement Presidential Citizens Medal; State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award; Tipperary International Peace Award; diplomatic decorations from South Korea and Japan Rhodes Scholar; DPhil, Oxford University; formerly on faculty at Harvard Kennedy School of Government Author or editor of sixteen books, including A World in Disarray, the New York Times bestseller The Bill of Obligations, and the originating Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners; Distinguished University Scholar, NYU School of Professional Studies Biography The post-war international order – the system of alliances, institutions, and rules that governed trade, security, and diplomacy for seven decades – is no longer doing what it was designed to do. For boards operating across borders, that is not an abstract observation. It changes what capital commitments are credible, which supply chains are secure, and which alliances will hold under pressure. Richard Haass led the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty years, shaping U.S. foreign policy debate across the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Before that, he was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. His government service spans four presidencies and both parties – beginning at the Pentagon under Carter, continuing at the State Department under Reagan, and reaching the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush, where he received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His intellectual contribution is specific. In his Foreign Affairs article “The Age of Nonpolarity” and the book A World in Disarray, he argues that the current era is neither unipolar nor multipolar – it is nonpolar. Power is distributed across dozens of state and non-state actors, alliances are conditional rather than fixed, and the mechanisms that once imposed order are no longer sufficient. For organisations that have built strategy on the assumption of a rules-based international system, that argument has direct consequences for how risk is modelled and where long-term commitments are made. His experience is not only analytical. In 2013, he chaired the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland that formed the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement – making him one of the few people in the world who has both theorised about diplomatic complexity and navigated it at the table. His most recent book, The Bill of Obligations, a New York Times bestseller, extends the argument into democratic governance: what the erosion of civic responsibility means for the political stability on which international order ultimately depends. Key speaking topics Nonpolarity and the fracture of the post-war international order U.S. foreign policy and geopolitical risk Diplomacy, conflict resolution, and negotiation Transatlantic relations and the future of alliances Russia-Ukraine and the reshaping of European security Middle East dynamics and regional instability American democracy, civic obligation, and domestic political risk Geopolitical implications for global business and investment Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams with material exposure to geopolitical risk Financial services, asset management, and investment leadership requiring structured country and political risk assessment Global corporations navigating multi-market operations, trade exposure, or supply chain complexity Government affairs, public policy, and strategic foresight leadership Audience outcomes A structural framework – “nonpolarity” – for understanding why the old geopolitical playbook is no longer reliable, and what the distributed power landscape actually looks like Clarity on the strategic implications of specific flashpoints – Russia-Ukraine, U.S.-China competition, Middle East instability – beyond event-by-event commentary Understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is made, where it is likely to go, and what that means for organisations operating across borders A clearer picture of how domestic political instability in democratic societies feeds into international risk and affects the conditions under which institutions and agreements hold Frameworks for scenario planning in a nonpolar environment, where alliances and trade rules are situational rather than fixed