Change Management speakers

Why organisations work with Peter Guber He has built and led organizations across film, music, professional sports, and esports. The storytelling framework that runs through his work has been pressure-tested in each, and senior audiences hear it from someone who has actually used it to move boards, talent, partners, and capital. He authored the only mainstream business book on storytelling to hit #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists simultaneously. Tell to Win and his HBR cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller give audiences a portable framework they can take into their own communications work, not a collection of war stories. He speaks from current operating experience as Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, co-executive chairman of the Golden State Warriors, and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The material reflects problems he still has to solve every week. The same discipline has been honed across more than forty consecutive years of teaching at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, recognized in 2017 with the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group; former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; former Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment; former President of Columbia Pictures; co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks. Films he produced or executive produced have grossed over $3 billion worldwide and received 50 Academy Award nominations, including five Best Picture nominations and the Best Picture win for Rain Man. Other titles include Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Flashdance, Gorillas in the Mist, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Kids Are All Right. Co-Executive Chairman and co-owner of the Golden State Warriors (NBA Champions 2015, 2017, 2018); owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers (World Series winners 2020 and 2024); Owner and Executive Chairman of Los Angeles Football Club (MLS); Co-Executive Chairman of aXiomatic Gaming, owner of esports franchise Team Liquid. Author of Tell to Win (Crown Business, 2011), instant #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller; named by Fortune one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” Earlier books include Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a seven-year AMC television series he hosted. Author of the Harvard Business Review cover article “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” (December 2007). Professor for more than forty years at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. UCLA Medal recipient (2017). Appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by Governor Jerry Brown (2017). Biography Sony Pictures Entertainment led the industry in domestic box office market share for four straight years after Peter Guber became Chairman and CEO in 1989. Over the same period, the studio earned 120 Academy Award nominations, the most ever recorded by any company in any four-year stretch. What ran through that work, and through the decades before it at Columbia Pictures, Polygram, and Casablanca Records, was a discipline Guber later codified. He could take a strategic intent and translate it into a story the audience he needed to move had reason to act on. He named it purposeful storytelling. The Harvard Business Review cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller laid out the four conditions a story has to meet to do real work in a room: true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. Tell to Win, his expansion of the same thesis, hit number one simultaneously on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists in 2011. Fortune named it one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” In Guber’s argument, data is the cost of entry; persuasion is the work that closes the deal. Guber still runs Mandalay Entertainment Group, co-owns the three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors and the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers, and chairs the esports investment vehicle aXiomatic. He has taught the same craft at UCLA Anderson and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than forty consecutive years, by the Chancellor’s account never missing a year. In 2017, UCLA awarded him the UCLA Medal, its highest honor, the same year Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the University of California Board of Regents. Key speaking topics Purposeful storytelling in business Leadership communication and persuasion Leading through uncertainty and disruption Innovation and organizational culture High-performance team building across industries Storytelling for marketing and brand strategy Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams preparing to communicate strategic change to internal and external audiences. Chief commercial, marketing, and sales leaders rebuilding the persuasion infrastructure of their organizations. Founders and senior operators raising capital, recruiting talent, or pitching boards. Executive education clients, leadership development programs, and partner or customer summits where the centerpiece is communication craft. Audience outcomes A working test for their own communications: whether the story is true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. A sharper distinction between informing an audience and persuading them, with a clearer view of where most leadership communication breaks down. Specific examples from film, sports, and the boardroom that they can map onto their own decisions and pitches. A method for finding and shaping the right story for a specific audience and a specific moment. Shared vocabulary they can take back to their teams and demand of communications, marketing, and IR functions.

Why organisations work with Peter Senge Built the framework that defined organisational learning. The Fifth Discipline has sold over two million copies; Harvard Business Review named it one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years, and the Financial Times listed it among the five most important management books ever published. Treats systems thinking as a leadership discipline. The Five Disciplines (personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking) give executives a working method for changing the structures that produce their hardest recurring problems. Three decades of applied work with Ford, Shell, BP, Unilever, Intel, and Saudi Aramco, alongside cross-sector initiatives on global food systems, climate, and education. Named “Strategist of the Century” by the Journal of Business Strategy, one of 24 figures judged to have had the greatest influence on 20th-century business strategy. The Fifth Discipline is now in its fourth decade of continuous use on MBA syllabuses and inside operating companies. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Founding Chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and co-founder of the Academy for Systemic Change. Author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, with over two million copies sold worldwide. Co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, Schools That Learn, Presence, and The Necessary Revolution. Named “Strategist of the Century” by the Journal of Business Strategy; ranked among the world’s top management thinkers by the Financial Times and BusinessWeek. Convened the Sustainable Food Lab, bringing major food companies and NGOs into shared work on sustainable agriculture. Biography The Fifth Discipline, published in 1990, gave senior executives a working vocabulary for something they kept hitting in practice but could not name: the structure of an organisation tends to produce the very problems its leaders are trying to solve. Thirty-six years later the book is still in print and still the reference text for the field. Peter Senge wrote it at MIT, where he is Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the Sloan School of Management. He is founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning and co-founder of the Academy for Systemic Change. The Fifth Discipline has sold more than two million copies. Harvard Business Review named it one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years; the Financial Times listed it among the five most important management books ever published. The book is organised around five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. The core argument is that the only sustainable competitive advantage is an organisation’s ability to learn faster than its environment changes. Senge’s later work extended the method into education through Schools That Learn, into large-scale change through The Dance of Change, and into sustainability through The Necessary Revolution. His applied work has run through Ford, Shell, BP, Unilever, Intel, and Saudi Aramco, and across cross-sector initiatives including the Sustainable Food Lab, which brought major food companies and NGOs into shared work on sustainable agriculture, and the Compassionate Systems community in primary and secondary education. The Journal of Business Strategy named him a “Strategist of the Century,” one of 24 figures judged to have had the greatest influence on 20th-century business strategy. Key speaking topics Systems thinking Organisational learning Leadership in complex systems Sustaining change in large organisations Cross-sector collaboration Sustainability and systemic change Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams running multi-year transformation programmes Heads of strategy and transformation leads diagnosing why change initiatives stall Chief sustainability officers and ESG leads working across sector and stakeholder boundaries Senior leaders in education, healthcare, and government addressing complex public-system challenges Audience outcomes A new vocabulary for talking about why their hardest organisational problems keep returning The Five Disciplines as a working method, applied through cases drawn from Ford, Shell, Unilever, and the Sustainable Food Lab Language to make the structural causes of organisational performance visible to senior teams A sharper read on what leadership in complex, multi-stakeholder environments demands

Why organisations work with Peter Sheahan A defined commercial framework. Matter and the Edge of Disruption give boards a concrete way to locate where their existing profits, reach, and reputation can be redeployed to create new markets, not just defend old ones. Operating credibility, not just theory. He has built three companies and runs Karrikins Group, advising leadership teams at Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo, Hyundai, Pfizer, and Cardinal Health on transformation execution. Authority recognised by his peers. The National Speakers Association ranked him among its 25 Most Influential Speakers and inducted him as the youngest member ever into its Hall of Fame. A clear thesis on commoditisation. He gives commercial and sales leadership a usable argument for moving organisations off price competition and onto value, trust, and indispensability. A senior-room voice on the human side of growth. His work on culture, attraction, and retention is grounded in the same commercial logic, treating people strategy as a driver of competitive position rather than an HR programme. Biography highlights Founder and Group CEO of Karrikins Group, a global growth and transformation consultancy. Author of seven books, including Matter, Flip, Generation Y, and Making it Happen; published by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Amplify. Inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame as its youngest-ever member. Named one of the 25 Most Influential Speakers in the World by the National Speakers Association. 2,500+ keynote presentations delivered across more than 40 countries. Advisory and keynote client roster including Apple, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Wells Fargo, Hyundai, Pfizer, Cardinal Health, Chick-fil-A, and BP. Biography The companies that sustain growth do not protect what made them successful. They identify the place where their existing reach, reputation, and profits give them permission to build the next market, and they move before they have to. That place is what Peter Sheahan calls the Edge of Disruption. The thesis is laid out in Matter: Move Beyond the Competition, Create More Value, and Become the Obvious Choice, co-authored with Julie Williamson, PhD. The book studies more than thirty companies that achieved indispensability by leaning into disruption rather than defending against it. It is the intellectual spine of his consulting practice at Karrikins Group, where he advises Fortune 500 leadership teams on transformation, growth, and commercial repositioning. His earlier books cover the same terrain from different angles. Flip set out the case for counterintuitive thinking when markets refuse to behave predictably. Generation Y and Making it Happen addressed how the workforce side of a business has to evolve in step with its commercial ambitions. Across the work, the argument is consistent: growth comes from identifying where the most important problems are converging, then committing operational resources before the rest of the market sees them. The credibility behind the argument is operating, not academic. He has built three companies, delivered more than 2,500 presentations across 40+ countries, and counts Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo, Pfizer, and Cardinal Health among the leadership teams he has worked with. The National Speakers Association named him among its 25 Most Influential Speakers in the World and inducted him as the youngest-ever member of its Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics Growth strategy under disruption Business model innovation and the Edge of Disruption Competitive advantage when products and services commoditise Culture as a commercial driver Workforce attraction and retention Trusted-adviser positioning and winning on value Ideal for CEOs, chief strategy officers, and chief growth officers planning the next horizon of competitive position Boards and executive teams confronting margin compression or post-acquisition integration Chief commercial officers, sales leadership, and revenue teams shifting from price to value CHROs and chief people officers tying talent strategy to commercial outcomes Audience outcomes A defined view of where the organisation’s Edge of Disruption sits, and what would need to be true to commit to it A working argument for moving customers, talent, and internal narrative away from price as the basis of choice Sharper language for the leadership team on what genuine differentiation looks like in their category Renewed conviction in the commercial logic of culture, talent, and organisational design decisions

Why organisations work with Phil Olley He gives leadership groups a working method for personal composure under pressure, not a generic resilience talk. The NEXUS Code is his own framework, refined over more than two decades of client work. His credibility rests on operating experience: six years as a Royal Navy officer, a sales and financial planning career, and a coaching practice founded in 1999. He speaks to commercial audiences as a peer, not an academic. He has a documented recovery story, a near-death incident in March 1999, which anchors his material on adversity and decision-making in something specific rather than rhetorical. He has been retained by Shell, PepsiCo, Mars, Kellogg’s, The Wood Group and IOSH, which signals that operating businesses, not just conferences, find the material useful. He has authored three books, including RESULT! published by Pearson, giving him a body of written work that buyers can read before commissioning. Biography highlights Former Royal Navy officer, six years’ service. Founded his performance coaching practice in 1999. Author of three books: Counting Chickens, RESULT! Think Decisively, Take Action and Get Results (Pearson, 2013), and Reflections from the White Tunnel (FCM Publishing, 2017). Creator of The NEXUS Code framework. Named corporate clients include Shell, PepsiCo, Mars (Masterfoods), Kellogg’s, The Wood Group, IOSH and Blevins Franks International. Media appearances include The Richard and Judy Show, BBC Radio 4 and The Times. Biography Most leadership advice on resilience starts from a model. Olley starts from an event. On 18 March 1999 he collapsed on a pavement and was revived by paramedics. The same year, he closed his sales and financial planning career and built a coaching practice around a single question: what actually holds people steady when the ground moves. That question became The NEXUS Code, a working framework on self-leadership, focus and execution that he has refined over more than two decades of client engagements. It is not a research model. It is a practitioner’s method, built and tested in front of sales teams, leadership groups and business owners under real commercial pressure. The body of written work backs the speaking. RESULT! Think Decisively, Take Action and Get Results was published by Pearson in 2013. Counting Chickens preceded it. Reflections from the White Tunnel, his most personal book, was published by FCM Publishing in 2017 and ties the recovery story directly to the framework. Three books give a buyer something concrete to read before commissioning a session. The career arc behind all of this matters for credibility with commercial audiences. Six years as a Royal Navy officer, then a sales and financial planning career, then his own business. Clients have included Shell, PepsiCo, Mars, Kellogg’s, The Wood Group and IOSH. He talks to leaders as someone who has carried a number and led a team, not as someone observing from a faculty position. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Mental toughness and resilience Goal setting and execution Performance coaching for leaders and teams Leading through change and adversity Employee engagement in difficult conditions Ideal for Sales leadership conferences and annual kick-offs. Leadership offsites for senior teams under restructuring or pressure. Owner-managed businesses and senior commercial functions in larger organisations. Professional services and financial services audiences working to lift execution and accountability. Audience outcomes A working method for holding composure and focus when conditions are difficult. A clearer view of where personal performance is being lost to noise rather than effort. Specific language and habits for converting goals into delivered results. A reset on how to lead a team through repeated change without losing momentum.

Why organisations work with Philip Gimmack Twenty-five years spanning enterprise change management at Oracle, KPMG, Cap Gemini and Accenture, followed by a dedicated EQ practice since 2012, means he speaks to senior audiences from inside their vocabulary rather than imposing a coaching register on them. His proprietary assessments, the A.R.T. and the 6 Pillars of Resilience Model, turn EQ from an abstract virtue into something a leadership team can score, compare and improve across engagements. He holds two of the most widely used professional credentials in the field: certified NLP Psychotherapist (1998) and licensed EQ-i 2.0 practitioner, which gives HR buyers confidence that the underlying method is not bespoke invention. He is as comfortable in a 30-minute keynote as in a multi-day programme, which suits organisations that want the keynote to seed a larger capability build rather than stand alone. His writing on HR Zone gives HR and L&D audiences prior exposure to his argument before they put him in front of their own leaders. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of EQworks, established 2012 Designer of The A.R.T. (Advanced Relationship Skills) assessment and the 6 Pillars of Resilience Model Certified NLP Psychotherapist (1998); licensed EQ-i 2.0 and A.R.T. practitioner Twenty-five years in change management and leadership coaching Earlier career in management consulting at Oracle, KPMG, Cap Gemini and Accenture Contributor to HR Zone Biography The reason most leadership development programmes fail to move the needle is not that the models are weak. It is that the participants cannot regulate their own emotions well enough to apply the models when it matters. Philip Gimmack built EQworks in 2012 to close that specific gap, and his twenty-five-year career has been a progression toward the argument that emotional intelligence is the operating layer underneath every other leadership skill. His route into the work was through enterprise change. Years as a management consultant at Oracle, KPMG, Cap Gemini and Accenture showed him that the repeatable failure point in transformation programmes was human rather than technical. The response was a deliberate shift into the behavioural disciplines: a certification as an NLP Psychotherapist in 1998, a professional coaching qualification, and licences to use the EQ-i 2.0 psychometric instrument. EQworks gave him a platform to turn that toolkit into something organisations could deploy. The A.R.T., his Advanced Relationship Skills assessment, diagnoses communication and relationship dynamics in a way that is specific enough to coach against. The 6 Pillars of Resilience Model does the same for how leaders and teams absorb pressure. Both sit underneath the programmes he now runs with UK corporate clients. Gimmack’s speaking style is built for the audiences he coaches: pragmatic, plain-spoken and framed in business rather than therapeutic terms. For HR directors, L&D leaders and executive teams looking for EQ content that will survive contact with a cynical senior audience, his proposition is a measurable method rather than a motivational message. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence in leadership Resilience and the 6 Pillars model Behaviour change and communication skills Change management from the people side EQ and diversity and inclusion Employee engagement and retention Ideal for CHROs, HR directors and L&D leaders designing leadership development programmes with measurable behavioural outcomes Executive teams and senior leadership groups working on internal conflict, communication or change fatigue Corporate universities and in-house academies looking for EQ content that can scale across cohorts Industry conferences and HR forums requiring a practitioner voice on emotional intelligence Audience outcomes A working understanding of what emotional intelligence actually is, measured through established psychometrics rather than intuition An introduction to the A.R.T. framework for understanding relationship and communication dynamics in teams Practical techniques from the 6 Pillars of Resilience Model that leaders can apply to themselves and their direct reports A clearer view of how EQ underpins change management, diversity and retention outcomes

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 Polly LaBarre She co-built, with Gary Hamel, the most concrete body of practice on post-bureaucratic management, drawing on case studies from named companies rather than abstract principles. She wrote the bestselling field guide to original organisations, Mavericks at Work, and has spent two decades adding to that evidence base through Fast Company and HBR. She brings a working operator’s view on what actually frees creative capacity inside large firms, sharpened through running the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize and the MIX Mashup. She lands as a journalist first, which means specific stories about specific companies, not slide-deck frameworks recycled from other speakers in the same topic area. Biography highlights Co-author, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, named a Book of the Year by The Economist Co-founder, Management Lab, with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini Co-founder and editorial director, MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), partnered with HBR and Fortune Founding member and senior editor, Fast Company magazine, for eight years Business and innovation correspondent, CNN, with recurring on-air segments on American Morning and Your Money Contributor to Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and McKinsey Quarterly Biography Most companies were engineered for a world that no longer exists. They reward consistency, suppress dissent and treat management as a control function. That mismatch, between how organisations are built and what they now need to do, is the problem Polly LaBarre has been studying, writing about and trying to fix for more than two decades. She was a senior editor and founding team member at Fast Company, the magazine that reframed how a generation of leaders thought about work. With William C. Taylor she wrote Mavericks at Work, a New York Times bestseller that The Economist called a Book of the Year and put alongside In Search of Excellence. The book set out, through detailed company case studies, what it actually takes to compete with originality at scale. That work led directly into the Management Lab, which she co-founded with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, and into the MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), the open platform partnered with Harvard Business Review and Fortune and backed by McKinsey, Red Hat and Gartner. Through the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize and the MIX Mashup, she has spent the past decade pulling together a working catalogue of progressive management practice from companies inside the Fortune 500 and well beyond it. Her background as a journalist shows in how she works on stage. She speaks in named cases, names sources and concrete mechanisms, and her writing in HBR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and McKinsey Quarterly is the basis for most of what she puts in front of an audience. CNN used her as a business and innovation correspondent for exactly that reason. Key speaking topics Post-bureaucratic management and organisational redesign Resilience and adaptability in large organisations Innovation as a managed discipline Corporate culture and the human edge Talent, autonomy and the future of work Leadership for purpose-driven change Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams confronting the limits of their current operating model CHROs and chief people officers redesigning work and culture for a more capable workforce Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy looking for evidence rather than slogans Boards and leadership offsites wanting a sharp, journalist’s read on what original organisations actually do differently Audience outcomes A clear-eyed picture of why traditional management practices are now a constraint on competitiveness Concrete examples, drawn from named companies, of how organisations have rebuilt for adaptability A working vocabulary for diagnosing where their own management model is leaking energy and initiative A sharper sense of what to change first when the goal is more resilience and originality, not more control

Why organisations work with Poppy Murray She built the BE LADS Campaign on a single operational question, what can men and boys do to help women feel safer, and turned it into training that police forces, regulators, and large employers buy. Her consultancy, Transformative Culture Consultancy, is one of the few in the market designed specifically around the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act) duty that came into force in October 2024. She has delivered to Tesco Mobile, WSP, Butterfield Bank, the Chelsea FC Foundation, the Royal British Legion, and the City of London Crime Prevention Association. The client list crosses corporate, sport, charity, and policing. The National Police Chiefs’ Council named her runner-up in Making Safer Spaces in 2024, one of only two civilians recognised from 170 nominations. The credential is operational, not honorary. She works without blame or division. Audiences of men leave with something to do, which is why HR and culture leaders book her where other formats have stalled. Biography highlights Founder, BE LADS Campaign, 2021 Co-founder and Director, Transformative Culture Consultancy Global Ltd, 2024 UN Women UK Delegate, 68th Commission on the Status of Women, 2024 Runner-up, Making Safer Spaces, National Police Chiefs’ Council VAWG Recognition Event, 2024 Founder, SafetyNet Guernsey Trustee, Lloyds Bank Foundation for the Channel Islands, since December 2021 Biography The Worker Protection Act put a positive duty on UK employers to prevent sexual harassment before it happens. It moved the question from “how do we handle a complaint” to “how do we change the culture that produced it,” and most organisations are now working out what that means in practice. Poppy Murray works in that gap. She co-founded Transformative Culture Consultancy Global with Brooke Jarvis in 2024, building prevention training that maps directly onto the new legal duty and the operational reality of the workplaces buying it. The firm’s clients sit across corporate, sport, charity, and policing, including Tesco Mobile, WSP, Butterfield Bank, the Chelsea FC Foundation, the Royal British Legion, and the City of London Crime Prevention Association. Her authority on the subject is built on the BE LADS Campaign, which she founded in March 2021 after the murder of Sarah Everard. The campaign asked a precise question, what can men and boys actually do to help women feel safer, and turned the answer into training that engages men without blame. The National Police Chiefs’ Council named her runner-up in Making Safer Spaces in 2024, one of only two civilians recognised from 170 nominations. Her professional background spans journalism, law, finance, and retail, which shapes how she handles sensitive material in front of mixed audiences. She is a UN Women UK Delegate, a trustee of the Lloyds Bank Foundation for the Channel Islands, and the founder of SafetyNet Guernsey, where her “It’s only a touch” campaign placed the criminal penalties for sexual assault in front of the night-time economy in plain language. Key speaking topics Sexual harassment prevention and the Worker Protection Act Workplace culture and safety as a leadership responsibility Engaging men as allies in gender safety Violence against women and girls in corporate and public settings Behavioural change and bystander intervention Inclusion without blame or division Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People preparing for the Worker Protection Act duty DEI, culture, and ER leads designing harassment prevention beyond e-learning Boards and ExCos in regulated and customer-facing industries reviewing safeguarding exposure Police, justice, and public safety leaders working on VAWG prevention Audience outcomes A clear read of what the Worker Protection Act actually requires of employers and where most are still under-prepared A practical framing of male allyship that male audiences engage with rather than resist Specific bystander and intervention behaviours that translate from keynote to workplace A way to talk about VAWG in a corporate setting without losing half the room A model for connecting culture, safety, and inclusion as one operating question, not three

Why organisations work with Rachael Robertson She gives leadership teams a working vocabulary, «No Triangles», «Bacon Wars», «Respect Trumps Harmony», that clients adopt as internal shorthand long after the keynote ends. She has run a workforce in conditions where avoidance was not an option: 18 people, one year, no exit, at Davis Station. The lessons are tested, not theoretical. Her two Wiley-published books, Leading on the Edge and Respect Trumps Harmony, give buyers a defensible, peer-reviewable body of work to point at internally. She speaks specifically to the leadership cost of false harmony: how senior teams that prize getting on quietly underperform teams that prize respect and direct disagreement. She reads as Australian-direct rather than American-motivational, which makes her credible with engineering, mining, finance and government audiences who are allergic to inspirational framing. Biography highlights Led the 58th ANARE expedition to Davis Station, Antarctica, including the year-long winter with a team of 18. Victoria’s youngest ever Chief Ranger, appointed at 32, with responsibility for the state’s South West Region. MBA, Melbourne Business School; BA in Public Relations, Deakin University. Author of Leading on the Edge (Wiley, 2013) and Respect Trumps Harmony (Wiley). Has delivered keynotes across mining, healthcare, finance, construction, retail and government, including ANZ, BHP-Billiton, Chevron, Australia Post and CPA Australia. Biography A workforce of 18 people, locked into Davis Station for the Antarctic winter, cannot be managed with charisma or compromise. Everyone is interdependent, no one can leave, and the dynamics that big organisations spend years tolerating become operational risks within weeks. That is the problem Rachael Robertson was handed in 2005 as the leader of the 58th ANARE expedition. She had arrived there through Victoria’s parks service, where she became the youngest Chief Ranger in the state’s history at 32. After Antarctica she completed an MBA at Melbourne Business School and turned the experience into a deliberate body of leadership work, not a memoir. The frameworks she has built, «No Triangles», «Respect Trumps Harmony», «Bacon Wars», «Lead Without a Title», are codified in her two Wiley books and used by client organisations as internal vocabulary. They focus on a specific failure pattern: senior teams that mistake politeness for cohesion and pay for it later in slow decisions, hidden grievances, and softening accountability. She has spoken to leadership audiences across mining, finance, healthcare, construction and government, including ANZ, BHP-Billiton, Chevron, Australia Post and CPA Australia. The reason she keeps being booked into those rooms is straightforward: she gives senior leaders a small set of behaviours they can name, defend, and install with their own teams the following Monday. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Constructive conflict and team accountability Resilience in isolated and high-stakes workplaces Safety leadership and remote operations Building team culture in interdependent environments Women in senior leadership Change-ready organisational cultures Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams running geographically dispersed or high-risk operations Mining, energy, construction, transport and emergency services leadership HR and people directors rebuilding accountability after restructure or hybrid drift Conferences for senior women in operational and technical industries Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the silent dysfunctions, gossip chains, parked grievances, false harmony, that erode senior team performance. Specific behavioural rules a leader can install the next week, including the No Triangles practice for direct communication. A clearer view of when team harmony becomes a leadership liability rather than an asset. Tested examples of how decisions, conflict and morale hold up when a team cannot escape itself.

Why organisations work with Rachel Botsman She has built a discrete intellectual territory around trust, with three named frameworks (Trust Leap, Trust Shift, Risk–Trust Lens) that give leadership teams a working vocabulary rather than a motivational concept. She holds the first Trust Fellowship at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, a position created around the subject she defined. Few speakers in this category have a comparable academic anchor. Her thinking on AI is grounded in fifteen years of work on how humans transfer trust to new systems, which is why boards use her to pressure-test AI adoption plans before they reach the workforce. Thinkers50 ranked her among the world’s 30 most influential management thinkers and gave her the 2015 Breakthrough Idea Award, signalling that her ideas have been judged consequential by peers, not only by bureau marketing. She works directly with boards and senior executives as an advisor, so the keynote is the visible part of a deeper practice on culture and governance. Biography highlights Trust Fellow, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, the first such fellowship at the school. Author of What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust? and How to Trust & Be Trusted; books translated into 14 languages. Three TED talks with more than 5 million combined views. Named one of the world’s 30 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50; winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum. Contributor to and subject of coverage in The New York Times, Financial Times, TIME, Wired, The Guardian and Fast Company; writer of the Rethink newsletter. Biography Most leadership crises are described as strategy problems and turn out to be trust problems. A workforce that has been through three restructures will not run faster because the new operating model is sharper. A board that has lost confidence in a CEO will not be rebuilt by a clearer plan. The active variable is whether people believe enough in the institution, the leadership, and each other to take risks on its behalf. Rachel Botsman has spent two decades turning that observation into a working discipline. As the first Trust Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, she designed and teaches courses on trust and technology, and advises boards, senior leaders and governments on the same questions in live operating contexts. Her books, including Who Can You Trust? and How to Trust & Be Trusted, redefine trust as a confident relationship with the unknown rather than a synonym for assurance or predictability. Her named frameworks give that idea operational form. The Trust Leap explains how people move from familiar to unfamiliar behaviour, which is why it has been useful for organisations deploying AI and automating workflows. The Trust Shift maps how authority has migrated from institutions to individuals and platforms. The Risk–Trust Lens gives senior leaders a way to read where their cultures sit on the spectrum between paralysis and recklessness. Thinkers50 has ranked her among the 30 most influential management thinkers in the world and gave her its Breakthrough Idea Award. The World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. Her three TED talks have been watched more than five million times. The reason her work has carried that distance is that it gives leaders something specific to do on a subject that most speakers can only describe. Key speaking topics Trust as a leadership capability Trust and AI adoption Culture and decision-making under change The Trust Shift from institutions to individuals Designing for trust in new products and systems The future of work and the social contract Authority and accountability in modern organisations Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and chief people officers leading organisations through restructure, integration, or cultural reset. Boards and risk committees evaluating AI deployment, governance, and workforce trust. Transformation, technology and product leaders responsible for adoption of new systems by employees or customers. Executive education and senior leadership programmes building common language around trust, accountability and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that holds up to scrutiny inside a leadership team, not a motivational phrase. A read on where the organisation sits on the risk–trust spectrum and what that implies for current decisions. A clearer view of why specific change programmes, AI rollouts, or cultural initiatives are stalling, and where the trust gap actually lives. Specific language and frameworks (Trust Leap, Trust Shift, Risk–Trust Lens) that travel from the keynote into board and executive conversations. A sharper position on how authority, accountability, and AI intersect inside the organisation over the next two to three years.

Why organisations work with Rachel Treece A coach-led leadership thesis grounded in published work, not platform rhetoric: her book “The Henka Effect” sets out how coaching changes the operating behaviour of senior leaders, with named case studies from financial services. Operating credibility inside financial services. The Henka Institute reports work with a majority of the largest fund managers and investment banks, and her podcast “Flex and the City” speaks directly to FS leadership audiences. ICF-accredited coaching credentials (PCC, CPCC) and a psychology background, which means the content is built on practice-tested method, not opinion. A multinational and multilingual delivery range across 35 countries, useful for boards and leadership populations that span Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. A direct, no-platitudes register on inclusion and culture that buyers can put in front of mixed senior audiences without it landing as DEI theatre. Biography highlights CEO of The Henka Institute and fts global, a leadership development firm operating in 35 countries. Author of “The Henka Effect: How Coaching is Transforming Leadership and Organisations” (2022). Host of the podcast “Flex and the City – Great leadership in financial services”. ICF-credentialled executive coach (PCC, CPCC) and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Speaker at the ALFI Leadership Seminar, the leading industry forum for the Luxembourg fund and asset management sector. Co-founder of Dress for Success Luxembourg. Biography Most senior leaders know that pushing harder no longer produces the result it used to. Workforces are exhausted by repeated change, sceptical of slogans, and quick to disengage from leaders who default to control. The harder question is what leaders should do instead, and how to develop that behaviour at scale. Rachel Treece’s answer is coaching. Not coaching as a development perk, but coaching as the operating mode of senior leadership itself. Her book “The Henka Effect” sets out the argument with case material drawn from her work inside financial services, where she has spent much of her career advising FTSE and Fortune 100 leadership teams. That work runs through The Henka Institute, the Luxembourg-based firm she leads. The institute operates across 35 countries and reports clients including a majority of the largest fund asset managers and investment banks. Her credentials sit alongside the practice: PCC and CPCC coaching certifications, a psychology background, and Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. For organisations going through restructure, integration, or cultural reset, the value of her work is specific. She gives senior leaders a usable behavioural toolkit that replaces directive instinct with curiosity, ownership, and accountability, rather than asking them to soften their style and hope. Key speaking topics Coaching as a leadership operating model Leadership in financial services Inclusive and values-based leadership Change and transformation in regulated industries Communication and executive presence Organisational culture and trust Sustainable performance and leader energy Ideal for CEOs, CHROs, and heads of leadership development inside banks, asset managers, and other regulated financial institutions. Boards and executive committees navigating restructuring, M&A integration, or cultural reset. Senior leadership populations being asked to lead through change without burning out their teams or themselves. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between coaching as a development activity and coaching as a senior leadership behaviour, with the second framed as the lever for sustainable performance. Specific behavioural moves senior leaders can use to replace directive defaults in real conversations with their teams. A working model for building trust and ownership inside teams that have been through repeated change. An honest read on what inclusive leadership looks like in practice in commercial organisations, beyond statement-making.