Change Management

Why organisations work with Thomas Kolditz A research base built where it counts. His framework on in extremis leadership draws on more than 175 field interviews conducted during combat operations in Iraq, giving senior teams something more rigorous than borrowed military metaphors. A command record at scale. Twelve years leading the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point, plus a flag officer career, give him a standing few academic speakers can match when addressing CEOs and boards on decision-making under pressure. A measurable model for leader development. As founding director of Rice University’s Doerr Institute, he built a programme recognised in 2019 as the top university leader development effort by the Association of Leadership Educators, with methods documented in Leadership Reckoning. Direct relevance to crisis governance. His work on dodging crisis, leading through tragedy, and building leadership capability in legacy organisations speaks to boards under live operational and reputational stress, not abstract resilience theory. A bridge between military, academic, and corporate audiences. Yale School of Management appointed him to run its Leadership Development Program; Rice trusted him to design theirs from a blank page. Both translate cleanly into how he works with executive teams. Biography highlights Founding Director, Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders, Rice University. Retired Brigadier General, U.S. Army; former head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point for twelve years. Former Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Director of the Leadership Development Program, Yale School of Management. Author, In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended On It, Jossey-Bass, in the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum series. Co-author, Leadership Reckoning: Can Higher Education Develop the Leaders We Need?, with Libby Gill and Ryan P. Brown. Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership; Fellow of the American Psychological Association; U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal. Biography The leaders most worth studying are not those who perform well in stable conditions. They are the ones whose followers believe their lives, careers, or institutions are genuinely at risk. That observation became the basis for one of the more rigorous bodies of research on extreme leadership, drawn from more than 175 field interviews during combat operations in Iraq and published as In Extremis Leadership. The author of that work spent twelve years running the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point and retired as a Brigadier General. Yale School of Management then appointed him to lead its Leadership Development Program. Rice University asked him to build the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders from scratch, with the brief of creating the most evidence-based university leader development programme in the world. The Doerr Institute did not stay theoretical. By 2019, the Association of Leadership Educators named it the top university leader development programme in the country, and Global Gurus ranked it fourth in the world. The methodology behind that result is documented in Leadership Reckoning, co-authored with Libby Gill and Ryan P. Brown, which makes the case that most leader development efforts cannot prove they work and shows what a defensible alternative looks like. That combination of fieldwork in lethal environments, command authority, and measurable institution building is why he is invited into boardrooms where the question is not what leadership means in the abstract but what it produces under pressure. Recognition includes the Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership, fellowship of the American Psychological Association, and the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal. Key speaking topics In extremis, leadership and decision-making under threat Crisis leadership and avoiding institutional crisis Leader development as a measurable discipline Composure and judgement at a senior level Innovation leadership inside legacy organisations Building leadership capability across an enterprise Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees facing operational, reputational, or regulatory crisis exposure Chief Human Resources Officers and Chief Learning Officers are responsible for senior leader development Military, public sector, and high-hazard industry leadership audiences University presidents, provosts, and trustees are rebuilding leadership formation on campus Audience outcomes A working model for what changes in leader behaviour when the stakes shift from comfortable to consequential A clearer view of why most leader development programmes cannot demonstrate impact, and what to require instead Specific reference points from combat, aviation, and skydiving environments were translated for commercial decision-making A framework for treating composure, presence, and judgement as trainable senior-leader capabilities Practical guidance on leading through tragedy, restructuring, or reputational shock without losing organisational coherence

Why organisations work with Stephanie Davies A working method that gets cynical adult audiences to engage with behaviour change without the eye-rolling that usually accompanies culture training. A track record on hard conversations, with a programme at HSBC training more than 500 leaders to handle performance and feedback without flinching. A point of view on engagement grounded in published psychology, set out in her book Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter (Crown House). Two decades inside corporate culture work across HSBC, Nespresso, Nando’s, and government, so the content lands as practitioner advice rather than commentary. A delivery style that holds the room. The comedy training is a tool for retention and recall, not a gimmick layered on top of the content. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Laughology, founded 2006. Author of Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, Crown House Publishing. Master’s-level training in psychology, focused on humour and organisational performance. Designed and delivered performance-conversation training at HSBC for 500+ leaders. Culture and behaviour programmes with Nespresso, Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and UK government departments. Regular columnist for Training Journal; previously an award-winning stand-up comedian. Biography Most culture programmes lose the room in the first ten minutes. Adults arrive sceptical, the language is corporate, and the behaviours being asked of them feel performative. Laughology was built to solve that delivery problem. Stephanie Davies founded it in 2006 to pair applied psychology with the craft of stand-up, and uses humour as a mechanism for behaviour change rather than as decoration. The substance sits behind the style. Her book, Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, sets out humour as a thinking skill, drawing on positive psychology and the cognitive research on how laughter shifts perspective and learning retention. Her master’s-level work in psychology runs through the firm’s programmes on engagement, leadership behaviour, and feedback. The client list reflects the practical bias. HSBC commissioned performance-conversation training for more than 500 leaders. Nespresso brought her in to strengthen retail leadership. Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and government departments have used Laughology for culture and behaviour work. Across these, the brief is consistent: get people to commit to a change in how they behave, not just understand why it matters. That practitioner record is what distinguishes her in a crowded happiness-at-work category. Most speakers in the space arrive from coaching, HR, or pop-psychology. Davies arrives from a working comedy career and a psychology specialism in humour, with twenty years of corporate delivery behind her. Key speaking topics Workplace engagement and culture change Psychology of humour at work Performance and feedback conversations Behaviour change in large organisations Leadership development and team culture Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Resilience and positive psychology Ideal for CHROs and people directors running engagement or culture change agendas. L&D and OD leads commissioning leadership, feedback, or behaviour-change programmes. Boards and executive teams looking for a substantive culture session that an internal audience will actually engage with. Conference organisers programming a keynote that has to do real work on a wellbeing or culture theme. Audience outcomes A working model of humour as a behaviour-change tool, not as entertainment. Language and techniques for running performance and feedback conversations without avoidance. A clearer view of what drives engagement at the level of daily behaviour. Practical positive-psychology techniques for resilience and team morale. A session people actually remember, which is the precondition for any of the above changing behaviour.

Why organisations work with Terry Lundgren He executed one of the largest retail mergers in US history and rebranded more than 400 regional stores under a single national brand inside twelve months, a case study in integration that boards rarely get to hear from the person who ran it. He led a Fortune 100 retailer through the early omnichannel transition, making capital and organisational decisions that other CEOs were still debating. He sits on the board of Procter and Gamble and chairs its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, which gives him a current view of how blue-chip boards are thinking about CEO succession and operating performance. His Deming Cup citation from Columbia Business School recognises sustained continuous improvement at scale, not a single transformation moment, which is the harder leadership question for most enterprises. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. from 2003 to 2017; executive chairman until January 2018. Led the 2005 Federated/May acquisition, the largest US retail transaction at the time, creating a single national Macy’s brand from more than 400 regional stores. Director of The Procter & Gamble Company since 2013; chair of the Compensation and Leadership Development Committee. Executive in Residence, Columbia Business School; namesake of the Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona. Recipient of the National Retail Federation Gold Medal Award (2008) and the Columbia Business School Deming Cup (2012). Named one of Barron’s Top 30 CEOs in the World (2015) and WWD Newsmaker of the Year (2014). Biography Federated’s USD 11 billion acquisition of The May Department Stores Company in 2005 was, at the time, the largest retail transaction in US history. Inside a year, more than 400 regional department stores across the country had been rebranded under the Macy’s name. Terry Lundgren was the CEO who ran that integration. He had joined Federated in 1975, run Bullocks Wilshire at 35, served as Chairman and CEO of Neiman Marcus, and returned to Federated in 1994. By the time he became CEO of Macy’s, Inc. in 2003, he had spent almost three decades inside the operating layer of American retail. The fourteen years that followed are the substance of his speaking work. He launched the “My Macy’s” localisation programme in 2008, an early answer to the question of how a national chain competes with category specialists. He made the capital and organisational decisions that pulled Macy’s into omnichannel before most peers had committed. By his final year as CEO in fiscal 2016, the company was running sales of roughly USD 26 billion with about 140,000 employees. Since stepping down he has sat on the board of Procter and Gamble, chairing its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, and served as an Executive in Residence at Columbia Business School. The Deming Cup citation from Columbia, awarded for continuous improvement at scale, is the credential that distinguishes him from CEOs known for a single defining moment. Key speaking topics Large-scale merger integration CEO leadership through structural change Omnichannel and the reinvention of retail Continuous improvement at enterprise scale Brand strategy and national brand building CEO succession and board-level talent decisions Ideal for CEO and board audiences working through merger integration or major restructuring. CHROs and Chief Talent Officers focused on CEO succession, executive development, and operating discipline. Retail, consumer, and consumer-adjacent leadership teams navigating channel transitions and brand consolidation. Senior leadership programmes inside large enterprises where the case studies need to come from someone who ran the company. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what merger integration costs an organisation operationally, culturally, and in customer experience. A clearer view of the decisions a CEO actually faces when committing capital to a channel transition. Reference points from a fourteen-year tenure for how continuous improvement is institutionalised, not just announced. A board-level perspective on what compensation, succession, and leadership development look like inside a current Fortune 50 company.

Why organisations work with Lior Arussy He has the documented Mercedes-Benz USA case: a dealer network that moved from ninth to first in customer satisfaction, with 25,000 employees engaged through 80 full-day programmes. His method treats customer experience as an execution problem, not a brand or service problem. The deliverable is behavioural change at the frontline, tied to revenue and retention. He brings a published intellectual track. Seven books, including Next Is Now (Simon & Schuster) on building organisations for continuous change, and 300+ articles, with regular contributions to Harvard Business Review and Chief Executive. He has run more than 200 corporate transformations through Strativity, with clients including Mercedes-Benz, Royal Caribbean, Thomson Reuters, HSBC, SAP, FedEx, and Johnson & Johnson. The reference base is unusually deep for a CX speaker. His Generative AI keynote work addresses what the technology does to customer expectations and to the operating model of customer-facing teams. It is positioned as a strategic conversation, not a tooling demo. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Strativity Group, a global customer experience and strategy execution consultancy operating across multiple countries. Author of seven books, including Next Is Now (Simon & Schuster, 2018), Passionate and Profitable (Wiley, 2005), and Customer Experience Strategy. 300+ published articles, with regular contributions to Harvard Business Review and Chief Executive media. Led the Mercedes-Benz USA customer experience transformation, taking the dealer network from ninth to first in customer satisfaction. Named to the Global Gurus customer service and customer experience rankings; recipient of the CRM Magazine “Influential Leaders” award. MBA, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Previously held executive positions at Hewlett-Packard. Biography Most customer experience programmes do not fail at the strategy stage. They fail when an engaged steering committee meets a frontline that has been trained to comply with policy rather than own a customer outcome. Arussy has spent two decades closing that gap inside large organisations. He founded Strativity Group in 2003 and has since led more than 200 corporate transformations across customer experience, employee engagement, and strategy execution. The Mercedes-Benz USA work is the cleanest illustration: a dealer network that moved from ninth to first in customer satisfaction after 25,000 employees were engaged through 80 full-day programmes. A European logistics client he advised moved from 3% to 44% annual organic growth in two years. The work is consistently anchored in measurable commercial change, not in survey scores or brand language. The published track behind the consulting is substantial. He has written seven books, including Next Is Now (Simon & Schuster, 2018) on building organisations that thrive under continuous change, and Passionate and Profitable (Wiley, 2005) on why customer strategies typically fail. He has published more than 300 articles, including in Harvard Business Review, and contributes regularly to Chief Executive media. His current keynote work extends into the implications of generative AI for customer expectations and the operating model of customer-facing teams. For a senior buyer, the value is access to a CX practitioner who has done the work at scale and writes about it with the directness of someone who has watched it succeed and fail in real organisations. The references run from Mercedes-Benz and Royal Caribbean to HSBC, SAP, and Johnson & Johnson. Key speaking topics Customer experience as commercial growth strategy Strategy execution and behavioural change at the frontline Customer-centric culture and employee engagement The generative AI-empowered customer Leading continuous change and organisational reinvention Personal agency and ownership in transformation Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, CXOs, and Chief Marketing Officers leading enterprise-wide CX programmes. CEOs and COOs evaluating the gap between customer strategy and operating reality. Transformation and change leaders responsible for embedding new behaviours across large, distributed workforces. Boards and leadership teams in retail, financial services, automotive, hospitality, logistics, and B2B technology. Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of what separates CX programmes that move revenue from those that move only dashboards. A clearer picture of how generative AI is reshaping customer expectations and the work of customer-facing teams. The five steps from Next Is Now applied to the audience’s own change environment. Named case material from Mercedes-Benz, Royal Caribbean, and other Fortune 500 transformations. A direct challenge to the policy-and-consistency model of customer service, with the alternative framed in operational terms.

Why organisations work with Alex Staniforth Both of Staniforth’s Everest attempts (2014, 2015) ended in catastrophe, which means his argument about resilience, failure, and redefining success is not constructed from triumph. That credibility is difficult to replicate. His personal mental health disclosure; depression, anxiety, eating disorders, epilepsy, and a lifelong stammer, is specific and public. It allows him to reach parts of a leadership audience that pure performance speakers cannot, including people who are privately struggling. The ‘Resilience Rucksack’ gives audiences a named, practical framework to take away: not just an inspiring story, but a set of tools mapped to real workplace pressures. As co-founder of Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity combining outdoor experience with professional mental health support, he brings an institutional track record to conversations about psychological safety that extends well beyond the stage. His Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Chester, awarded in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, positions him credibly across both the performance and the clinical ends of the wellbeing conversation. Biography highlights Survived the 2014 Khumbu Icefall avalanche and the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the two most significant disasters in Everest history, on consecutive attempts, as a teenager First and fastest person to complete all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales under human power in 45 days; fastest ever ascent of all 100 UK county tops (72 days) Author of Icefall (Coventry House Publishing, 2016) and Another Peak (2019) Co-founder, Mind Over Mountains: national UK charity restoring mental health through therapeutic outdoor programmes (est. 2020) Honorary Doctorate (DLitt), University of Chester, 2025: for outstanding contribution to young people’s mental health services Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, 2023; Pride of Britain Granada Reports Fundraiser of the Year, 2017; over £150,000 raised for charity across endurance challenges Biography Everest has a way of clarifying what resilience actually means. Alex Staniforth attempted the summit twice – the 2014 season ended by the Khumbu Icefall avalanche, the 2015 attempt halted by the Nepal earthquake – and returned from neither having reached the top. Both experiences form the foundation of his argument to organisations: that the most useful preparation is not for success, but for what happens when things go wrong. Since those expeditions, Staniforth has completed a series of documented endurance records. He is the first and fastest person to run and cycle all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales in 45 days and holds the record for the fastest ascent of all 100 UK county tops. He is the author of Icefall and Another Peak, and in 2020 co-founded Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity that combines outdoor experience with professional mental health support. What separates his contribution from most adventure-based speaking is where it goes beyond the summit metaphor. Staniforth has spoken publicly about depression, anxiety, and eating disorders experienced as an endurance athlete: alongside epilepsy and a lifelong stammer. This specificity allows him to speak credibly in mental health conversations where most performance speakers cannot go. His practical framework, the ‘Resilience Rucksack’, translates that experience into tools that leadership audiences can name and apply. His keynotes have been delivered to Rolls-Royce Submarines, Samsung, Bank of America, Accenture, FedEx, and the NHS, among others. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) by the University of Chester in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, and received the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award in 2023. He is an ICF-trained coach and certified Gazing Red2Blue practitioner. Key speaking topics Resilience under pressure Mental fitness and sustainable performance Leadership through adversity and change Burnout prevention and psychological safety Goal setting and redefining success Team performance in uncertainty Wellbeing as a performance foundation Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating organisational change or post-disruption recovery CHROs and people leads building mental health or wellbeing programmes with senior buy-in Leadership development and high-potential programmes requiring a resilience anchor Corporate conferences where performance and wellbeing are a combined agenda item Audience outcomes A practical, named framework (the ‘Resilience Rucksack’) for maintaining performance during setbacks, change, and high pressure A more specific understanding of the relationship between mental fitness and sustained performance – not as a trade-off, but as the same investment Increased confidence among leaders in modelling openness around mental health, and in recognising early warning signs in their teams A shift in how failure and setback are framed – from evidence of inadequacy to material for growth Reference points from extreme conditions that translate directly to the pressures of demanding professional environments

Why organisations work with Danilo McGarry He has run AI inside two of the largest regulated enterprises on the planet. Buyers get an operator who has defended budgets, cleared risk committees and shipped at scale, not a consultant describing other people’s work. His track record is tied to outcomes in the numbers. His work at Alter Domus is associated with a period of significant valuation growth, and his engagements are framed around measurable cost, revenue and risk impact rather than adoption metrics. He sits at the board-level interface of AI. He teaches on the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and advises the CIPD on AI, which means the language he uses lands with directors, not just technologists. He explains complex AI choices in terms non-technical leaders can act on. That is what earns him repeat invitations from banks, insurers, health systems and consultancies where the decision rests with a chief executive or a chair. Biography highlights Former Head of AI at Citigroup, leading enterprise AI and automation inside one of the world’s largest banks. Former Head of AI at UnitedHealth Group, operator of one of the largest software-robot estates in any healthcare business. Former Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus, the fund services group, from December 2019. Strategic adviser on artificial intelligence to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme. Host of the “It’s All About AI” podcast; TEDx speaker; ranked on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading AI voices. Biography The hard part of enterprise AI is not the model. It is the decision to commit, the governance to contain the risk, and the operational grip to turn a working pilot into a line on the P&L. Danilo McGarry has spent his career on the inside of that problem. At Citigroup he led artificial intelligence and machine learning, launching automation and AI initiatives across capital markets operations. He then became a senior AI leader at UnitedHealth Group, where his remit included a programme of roughly 3,500 software “digital workers” embedded in one of the largest healthcare businesses in the United States. As Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus from 2019, he built an AI and automation function inside a fund services firm through a period of significant growth. Earlier roles at JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada gave him the grounding in regulated operations that now sits under everything he says on stage. That operator track record is why boards listen. He is a faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and strategic adviser on AI to the CIPD, which puts him in front of chairs, chief executives and people leaders making the governance calls. He is cited and quoted in outlets including the Financial Times, The Times, Bloomberg, Forbes and WIRED, and ranks on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading voices in AI and intelligent automation. His argument on stage is practical. Treat AI as an operating-model question, not a tooling question. Pick the handful of processes where the economics are real, industrialise them, and build the governance that lets the next wave scale without fresh permission every time. It is a message that lands with leadership teams who are tired of pilot decks and want to know what to do on Monday. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy AI operating models and governance Intelligent automation at scale AI in financial services and healthcare Board-level AI literacy Digital workers and the future of operations Responsible AI adoption Ideal for Boards and chief executives setting enterprise AI policy and investment envelopes. CIOs, CDOs and heads of transformation running AI and automation portfolios. CHROs and people leaders rethinking workforce design around AI and digital workers. Regulated-sector leadership teams in banking, insurance, asset servicing and healthcare. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI actually moves the numbers inside their own operating model. A working vocabulary for the governance, risk and workforce questions AI creates at board level. Concrete reference points from AI deployments inside Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group and Alter Domus. A sharper read on which AI investments industrialise and which stay trapped as pilots. Confidence to set the next twelve months of AI priorities with fewer, better bets.

Why organisations work with Gordon Hewitt Direct intellectual lineage from C.K. Prahalad at Michigan Ross, applied for two decades to live board agendas at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, HSBC, Sony, and Deutsche Post/DHL. A working method that treats strategy as a thinking system for senior teams, not a planning cycle, so boards leave with sharper questions about value creation, not a deck. Demonstrated range across pharma, financial services, consumer goods, telecoms, and logistics, which lets him connect cross-industry disruption patterns most sector specialists miss. CBE for services to management and international business, plus Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, signal a level of institutional credibility boards trust at chair and CEO level. A genuine practitioner-academic: still teaching at Michigan Ross and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School while advising sitting CEOs. Biography highlights CBE for services to management and international business, 2007 New Year Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Visiting Distinguished Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor of Strategy Practice, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy, Duke Corporate Education. Long collaboration with the late C.K. Prahalad on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation. Advised CEOs and boards at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, Philips, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Verizon, Ericsson, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Syngenta, Biocon, and Deutsche Post/DHL. Biography Most strategy frameworks assume the rules of the industry hold still long enough for a plan to play out. They no longer do. The companies that struggle are often the ones that ran the previous playbook best. Gordon Hewitt has spent two decades helping senior leaders work in that more unstable terrain. At the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, he formed a long partnership with the late C.K. Prahalad, working at the front edge of thinking on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation in what they described as a game-changing world. That body of work continues to anchor how he talks to boards. The list of organisations he has advised reads like a cross-industry map of where disruption hits hardest: Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pharma, IBM and Verizon in technology, HSBC and Credit Suisse in financial services, Sony, PepsiCo, and Time Warner in consumer-facing businesses, Deutsche Post/DHL in logistics. He chairs CEO and chairman peer groups in Europe and the United States on the future of corporate strategy and governance. He was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to management and international business, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continues to hold appointments at Michigan Ross, Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, and Duke Corporate Education, which is unusual for a working board advisor and is one of the reasons CEOs treat him as a serious thinking partner rather than a speaker. Key speaking topics Strategy under industry disruption Corporate value creation in complex markets Innovation as a discipline Strategic transformation in incumbent businesses Strategic collaboration and ecosystem strategy Overcoming industry and organisational orthodoxies The CEO and board agenda in a game-changing world Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees of incumbent businesses facing rule-changing competition. CSOs, heads of strategy, and transformation leads. Pharma, financial services, telecoms, consumer goods, and logistics leadership teams contending with cross-industry disruption. Senior leadership development programmes that want a serious strategy voice rather than a motivational one. Audience outcomes A sharper account of how value is created and lost when industry rules are being rewritten. A working language for separating planning from strategic thinking inside their own executive team. Cross-sector patterns of disruption they can test against their own market. A clearer view of where current orthodoxies inside their organisation are quietly working against them. Specific provocations for the next board strategy conversation, not generic frameworks.

Why organisations work with Tom Flatau He brings formal NeuroLeadership Institute accreditation into client rooms, so the brain science behind his coaching is grounded in a recognised body of research rather than self-styled commentary. His firm’s programmes are quality-assured by the Institute of Leadership and Management, which gives L and D buyers a credentialed delivery standard alongside the keynote. Two decades of repeat work with HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates and the BBC means the material has been pressure-tested across regulated finance, consumer goods, engineering, luxury retail and broadcast. He translates neuroplasticity, threat response and bias research into specific leadership practice on negotiation, change communication and team collaboration, so audiences leave with mechanism, not metaphor. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Teamworking International, with custom leadership programmes quality-assured by the Institute of Leadership and Management. Accredited brain and behaviour specialist trained by the NeuroLeadership Institute. Master’s in Business Analysis and Systems Design; Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management. Long-standing client roster including HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates, American Express, Qatar Airways, British American Tobacco and the BBC. Conference speaker for bodies including the Chartered Institute of Building and the Institute of Directors. Signature keynote portfolio covering the inner game of leadership, the neuroscience of unconscious bias, leading through change, team collaboration, sales mastery and black belt negotiation. Biography Most behaviour change in organisations fails because it stops at the conscious mind. Leaders are taught new frameworks and new vocabulary, then return to the same threat responses, biases and habits the moment a quarter goes sideways. Tom Flatau built Teamworking International around a different premise: that leadership behaviour shifts when the brain underneath it shifts. The credentials matter here. Flatau is an accredited brain and behaviour specialist trained by the NeuroLeadership Institute, holds a Master’s in Business Analysis and Systems Design, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management. His firm’s programmes are quality-assured by the ILM, which is unusual in a market crowded with self-styled neuroscience commentators. For more than two decades, the work has been delivered into HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates, American Express, Qatar Airways, British American Tobacco and the BBC. Across regulated banking, consumer goods, engineering, luxury and broadcast, the same patterns surface: leaders making decisions under threat, teams misreading each other’s intent, salespeople reverting to scripts. His material translates the relevant brain research into practice for each. His keynote portfolio sits along that line. “The inner game of leadership” examines the subconscious behaviours that erode senior credibility. “The neuroscience of unconscious bias” treats bias as a wiring problem with intervention points, not a values lecture. “Black belt negotiation” and “Sales mastery: hello science, goodbye myths” apply the same lens to deal-making. The throughline is mechanism: what is happening in the brain, and what to do about it. Key speaking topics Applied neuroscience for leadership Neuroscience of unconscious bias Leading through change Executive coaching and the inner game of leadership Mindset and team collaboration Negotiation and influence Sales behaviour and buyer psychology Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and senior leadership teams are responsible for behaviour change at the top of the organisation CHROs, L and D directors and heads of leadership development, designing accredited leadership pipelines Sales and commercial leadership teams looking to upgrade negotiation and buyer engagement Diversity and inclusion leads who want a brain-science framing of bias rather than a values framing Audience outcomes A working understanding of how stress, threat and reward responses shape leadership decisions in real time Specific mechanisms for interrupting unconscious bias in hiring, promotion and day-to-day team interactions Practical communication moves for leading people through change without losing trust Sharper read on the neuroscience of negotiation and how buyer brains actually respond to influence attempts

Why organisations work with Chris Grant He has run the room with senior leadership teams across government, professional sport, the NHS, financial services, and FTSE corporates, and is unusually fluent in moving a group from comfortable discussion to actual decision. His framework on decision-making, set out in Better Decisions (Quarto, 2020), gives executives a working language for how judgement degrades under speed, fatigue, and political pressure. He has chaired one of the largest public-facing behaviour change programmes in UK history (Chip & PIN), which gives him real authority on the gap between strategy and adoption at a population scale. He brings a substantive, non-performative line on inclusion, drawn from sport governance reform and his work as Chair of the British Basketball Federation, useful when boards are tired of theatre and want operating change. Audiences describe his style as “high energy calm”. He runs interactive keynotes, not lectures, which suits leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver content. Biography highlights OBE for services to sport, 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Chair of the British Basketball Federation (2022 to present). Former CEO of Sported, the UK-wide London 2012 legacy charity supporting community sport. Author of Better Decisions: Direct your life. Influence your world. (Quarto, 2020). Independent Board Member, Sport England (two terms); board member, Financial Services Culture Board. Chaired the Programme Steering Committee for the UK rollout of Chip & PIN. Mentored Olympic and Paralympic medal-winning coaches; Deputy Chair, International Inspiration (London 2012). Biography Strategy is easier than execution, and execution is easier than getting a senior team to actually change how it behaves. Most leadership teams know what good looks like. The work that closes the gap between intention and operating reality is what Chris Grant has spent his career on, across government, professional sport, the NHS, financial services, and large corporates. The credentials sit behind that argument rather than in front of it. He led Sported, the UK-wide London 2012 legacy charity, as CEO. He chaired the Programme Steering Committee for the UK introduction of Chip & PIN, one of the largest public-facing behaviour change programmes the country has run. He served two terms as an Independent Board Member of Sport England and joined the Financial Services Culture Board. He was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to sport, and now chairs the British Basketball Federation. His 2020 book Better Decisions (Quarto) sets out a 20-lesson framework on how senior leaders can hold their judgement when pace, politics, and uncertainty are pulling against them. It draws on thousands of facilitated days with executive teams and on his work mentoring Olympic and Paralympic coaches, where decision quality is measured in seconds and consequences. Grant runs interactive keynotes rather than lectures. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how their team makes decisions, where group dynamics are quietly costing them, and what to change on Monday. The work is most useful to organisations that already understand the diagnosis and need help moving on to the cure. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Organisational change and execution Group dynamics and team performance Inclusive leadership and culture reform Behaviour change at scale Strategy facilitation for senior teams Governance reform in sport and the public sector Ideal for Executive committees and boards working through restructure, succession, or strategic reset CHROs and chief people officers tackling culture, inclusion, and engagement as operating problems Leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver content Programme leads in large public-facing behaviour change or transformation rollouts Audience outcomes A clearer view of where their team’s decision-making degrades under pressure, and what to do about it Practical language for separating change (incremental) from transformation (structural), and choosing between them Tools from Better Decisions for stress-testing judgement before acting on it A direct read on inclusion as a leadership capability, not a compliance exercise Greater willingness in the room to name what is actually slowing the organisation down

Why organisations work with Jonah Berger He has built two operating frameworks, STEPPS for word of mouth and REDUCE for overcoming resistance, that translate directly into product, marketing and change decisions rather than sitting at the level of theory. The research base is unusually deep for a commercial speaker: 80+ peer-reviewed articles, much of it using natural language processing on real consumer and organisational text, not anecdote. His client work spans Apple, Google, Nike, Amazon, GE, Moderna, Facebook and the Gates Foundation, which means the frameworks have been pressure-tested across consumer brands, platforms and mission-driven organisations. Contagious won the Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best book in marketing, the field’s most credible peer recognition. He addresses two distinct buyer problems with one body of work: how things spread (marketing, product, communications) and how to move people who do not want to move (change, transformation, sales). Biography highlights Marketing Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. PhD in Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA Stanford. Author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, The Catalyst and Magic Words; books published in over 35 countries. Berry-AMA Book Prize for Best Book in Marketing (Contagious). Wharton Iron Professor Award for faculty research; recognised by the American Marketing Association as a top-five most productive marketing researcher. Research and commentary featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and NPR. Biography Most attempts to change behaviour rely on more pressure: more advertising spend, more incentives, more internal communication. The research suggests the opposite often works better. Removing the friction that holds people in place changes more behaviour than pushing harder against it. That argument sits at the centre of Jonah Berger’s work as a marketing professor at the Wharton School. His book The Catalyst sets out a five-part model, REDUCE, for identifying and dismantling the specific barriers that stop customers, employees and citizens from changing their minds. It is paired with the earlier STEPPS framework from Contagious, which names the six factors that make products and ideas spread. The academic foundation is substantial. Berger holds a PhD in Marketing from Stanford and has published more than eighty peer-reviewed articles, much of it applying natural language processing to large bodies of consumer and organisational text. Contagious won the Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best book in marketing. Invisible Influence and Magic Words extend the same methodology into social influence and the language of persuasion. The frameworks have been used inside Apple, Google, Nike, Amazon, GE, Moderna, Facebook and the Gates Foundation. The value to a senior team is the same in each case: a defensible, named model for two questions that boards and chief marketing officers ask repeatedly, why some things spread and others do not, and why people resist change even when the case for it is sound. Key speaking topics Word of mouth and viral marketing Behavioural science in commercial strategy Change and persuasion Consumer behaviour and decision-making Language and influence Social influence and choice architecture Branding and customer engagement Ideal for Chief marketing officers and brand leadership teams setting strategy on growth, virality and customer engagement. Transformation and change leaders running programmes where employee or customer resistance is the binding constraint. Sales and revenue leaders looking to apply behavioural science to pricing, messaging and conversion. Product and innovation teams working on adoption of new offerings. Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the STEPPS framework and how to apply each principle to a current product, message or campaign. The REDUCE model as a diagnostic for stalled change, with the five categories of resistance named and addressable. Specific language techniques from Berger’s natural language processing research that shift persuasion outcomes. A sharper read on which behavioural levers genuinely move customers and employees, and which ones do not. Concrete examples drawn from consumer brands, platforms and mission-driven organisations Berger has worked with.

Why organisations work with Eric M. Bailey He turns cognitive neuroscience into 22 named tools managers can use the next morning, not a worldview to adopt over time. The methodology is called the Principles of Human Understanding. His client list spans Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, and the Phoenix Police Department. Few communication speakers translate across that range of cultures. The Cure for Stupidity gives an organisation a shared vocabulary for irrational workplace behaviour. Once a team has read it, conflict conversations get shorter. He works the room across analytical and emotional registers. Engineering audiences and frontline service teams both come away with the same takeaways, which is rare. Biography highlights President of Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, a communication and organisational development consultancy. Bestselling author of The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work. Creator of the Principles of Human Understanding methodology, used in keynote, facilitation, and coaching engagements. Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Development, Saint Louis University. Client work with Google, US Air Force, Los Angeles County, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, City of Phoenix, Phoenix Police Department. Media features on CNN, Forbes, and HuffPost. Speaker on the Workhuman Live conference programme. Biography Most conflict at work is not about the issue on the table. It is about two people running different software on the same conversation. Bailey has built a career mapping that mismatch and giving leaders a way to talk about it without making anyone feel stupid. His book The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work sets out the argument. Irrational behaviour is usually rational once you understand what the brain is protecting against. The book seeded a methodology, the Principles of Human Understanding, which now anchors his keynote and consulting work through Bailey Strategic Innovation Group. The client list is the proof. Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the City of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Police Department have all brought him in. These are organisations with very different tolerance for soft language, which forces the material to do real work. The Master’s from Saint Louis University in Leadership and Organizational Development is the academic underpinning. The 22 tools are what audiences actually leave with. What sets Bailey apart from other neuroscience-of-work voices is that he writes for the manager who has eleven things to do today, not for the reader who wants a theory of mind. The framework is built to be used inside a difficult conversation, not admired from a distance. Key speaking topics Brain science of workplace communication Generational dynamics and intergenerational friction Diversity, equity and inclusion under contested conditions Change management and the neuroscience of resistance Team trust and functional team design Leadership development for first-line and mid-level managers Ideal for CHROs and people leaders dealing with persistent team conflict and engagement decay Heads of L&D commissioning manager development at scale DEI leads who need a frame for inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences Public sector and uniformed leadership teams (law enforcement, military, municipal government) needing communication training that travels across rank Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming the cognitive patterns that drive workplace friction Specific tools, drawn from the Principles of Human Understanding, that can be used in a difficult conversation the same week A reframe of irrational behaviour as predictable, not personal, which lowers the temperature of recurring conflicts A working model for how the brain interprets change, status, and difference, applied to current team dynamics

Why organisations work with Joel Zeff He pulls people out of their seats and into the room. Improv games run live with audience volunteers, not slides about engagement, are the mechanism the audience remembers a week later. He has done this more than 2,500 times since 1997, for buyers including Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS. The format is tested at scale. His book Make the Right Choice (Wiley, 2nd edition) gives leaders a written reference for the principles, so the keynote leaves a tangible artefact for managers to apply. He writes and performs his own material. The journalism background, including a recruited move to the Dallas Times Herald and freelance work for Newsday, shows up in tight scripting and audience-aware writing. For internal sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and culture moments where the room needs to be activated rather than briefed, Zeff is one of the few keynote speakers whose primary craft is the performance itself. Biography highlights Author of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, second edition published by Wiley More than 2,500 keynote events for corporate and association audiences since 1997 Former newspaper journalist; recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, with freelance bylines for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Former account executive at Edelman Public Relations Appeared on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch Named clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS Biography Engagement is the corporate problem that has resisted three decades of solutions. Surveys, town halls, pulse tools, and culture decks all describe it well. Almost none of them change the temperature in the room. Joel Zeff’s keynotes start from a different premise. If the room feels alive, the conversation about engagement starts to mean something. If it does not, no framework will fix that. Zeff trained as a newspaper journalist before he was a speaker. He started at the Saginaw News covering crime and accidents, was recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, and freelanced for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Herald closed. He then worked as an account executive at Edelman Public Relations and founded his own consulting practice in 1994. The improv comedy he was doing on weekends turned into his career when Texas Instruments asked him to bring the act to an executive retreat. The format he has built over 2,500 events since 1997 is unusual in a corporate setting. Audience members come on stage, play improvisation games, and produce, in real time, the behaviours the keynote is describing: listening, building on each other’s ideas, taking initiative, recovering from mistakes in front of a crowd. Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS have all booked the act. His book Make the Right Choice, now in its second edition with Wiley, sets out the principles in writing for leaders who want a reference after the room has gone home. What organisations actually buy from Zeff is a live demonstration that the soft skills they keep training for are produced under pressure, not in workshops. The improv stage is a faster way to see them than any management exercise. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture Team collaboration and communication Change and adaptability at work Creativity and innovation in everyday work Leadership and motivation Workplace humour and human connection Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences where the opening or closing keynote needs to lift the room, not brief it Leadership offsites focused on team behaviour, communication, and collaboration Culture, engagement, and HR-led events where managers leave needing something they can act on with their teams Association conferences and customer events that combine substance with a live, interactive set piece Audience outcomes A shared, recent experience of what genuine collaboration looks like, generated live in the room rather than described in slides Specific language and prompts from improv (listening, “yes and”, supporting the person on stage with you) that managers can carry back into team meetings A reset on the role of humour, energy, and play in serious work, with named examples from organisations the audience recognises A written reference, via Make the Right Choice, for leaders who want to extend the keynote ideas into team practice