Change Management

Why organisations work with Jennifer Vessels The P.E.A.C.E. Framework gives transformation a structured language and methodology: not abstract change theory, but a tested roadmap built from live engagements inside organisations including Adobe, Cisco, and Novartis She brings Silicon Valley operational experience applied globally, having led transformation programmes across EMEA and Asia, she translates insider knowledge of how the world’s most innovation-intensive organisations actually work into practical approaches for complex, multinational businesses She is an active CEO running transformation programmes concurrently with her speaking engagements, meaning her insights reflect current deployments, not retrospective case studies Her work on generational integration: aligning Gen Z talent, AI capability, and experienced human capital, addresses a workforce tension that most change and transformation speakers do not tackle with equivalent specificity Through the Executive Growth Alliance (EGA), she connects audiences to a live community of F100 leaders navigating the same challenges, giving organisations access to a peer learning network beyond the event itself Biography highlights CEO of Next Step, Silicon Valley consulting firm leading business transformation for global enterprises since 2006 Founder, Executive Growth Alliance: a global peer community of Fortune 100 leaders focused on future-of-work and AI adoption Creator of the P.E.A.C.E. Framework (Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, Empowerment), deployed across organisations including Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric Awarded «Best Technology Speaker ’24» (IOFM, Diversified Communications) Author of «No Clue, No Fear: Navigating Storms of Change» and «How Leaders are REALLY Winning with Technology» Featured by EFMD, the World Economic Forum, the Institute of Directors, the San Jose Mercury News, and The New York Times MBA, San Jose State University; MS Occupational Psychology, University of London Early career: international business development at Tandberg (acquired by Cisco); Director of Global Sales Operations at Tandem Computers Biography Leadership thinking built for the Industrial Age is not built for what organisations are experiencing now. Most change programmes assume that if the strategy is sound and the technology is right, transformation will follow. It does not. The missing variable is almost always how leaders are thinking, and what they are willing to let go of. Jennifer Vessels has spent two decades inside that gap, working as CEO of Next Step across Silicon Valley, EMEA, and Asia. Her client list includes Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric: organisations navigating business model change, AI adoption, and leadership redesign at scale. From that operational experience, she developed the P.E.A.C.E. Framework: a structured methodology giving leaders a repeatable roadmap through disruptive change rather than a case for why change is necessary. What distinguishes her position is its currency. She is not drawing on past engagements. As an active CEO running transformation programmes alongside her speaking work, the examples she brings to audiences reflect live challenges rather than archived successes. She also founded the Executive Growth Alliance, a community of F100 leaders using collaborative challenge-resolution as a vehicle for building future-readiness collectively. Her forthcoming book, «Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking,» extends her framework into a broader argument about the leadership models that are no longer fit for purpose, and what replaces them. Key speaking topics AI Adoption and Human-Centred Integration Change Leadership and Organisational Transformation Future of Work and Generational Integration P.E.A.C.E. Approach for Leading Through Change Silicon Valley Innovation Applied to Global Business Business Model Redesign in an AI Era Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating business model transformation or AI adoption programmes CHROs and people leaders managing generational integration, workforce redesign, and future-of-work strategy Transformation leads and change management functions inside large multinational organisations Leadership conference audiences where the appetite is for operational credibility over academic theory Audience outcomes A structured framework (P.E.A.C.E.) that gives teams shared language and a repeatable approach to leading through uncertainty Clearer understanding of why AI adoption and transformation programmes stall at the leadership level – and specific approaches to address it Practical tools for integrating generational diversity: particularly Gen Z talent alongside experienced human capital and AI capability A more precise view of how Silicon Valley’s most transformation-intensive organisations actually drive change, applied to the audience’s own context Mindset shift from managing disruption defensively to positioning it as a source of competitive advantage

Why organisations work with Mark Denton Lived authority on leading mixed-ability teams under continuous pressure for ten months at sea, not a borrowed metaphor or a single-event story. Translates that experience into named diagnostic frameworks (Navig-8, CULTIV-8, COLLABOR-8, DOMIN-8) that boards and exec teams can actually use after the keynote. Carries a 20-year consulting practice through MAXVMG, so the room is being addressed by someone who works inside organisations, not only on stage. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, which gives him a defensible position on psychological safety alongside the resilience material. Voted Bookers Choice at the 2024 Speaker Awards by the agents who buy speakers for a living, a sharper signal than self-reported ratings. Biography highlights Skippered BP in the BT Global Challenge round-the-world yacht race with an amateur crew, finishing on the podium. Founder of MAXVMG, an organisational development consultancy focused on leadership, team performance and change. Bookers Choice winner at the 2024 Speaker Awards, voted by booking agents. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. Contributor to Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, the Henley Management College text by Cranwell-Ward, Bacon and Mackie on emotional intelligence and sustained performance. IVCA Gold Award recipient for speaking; accredited executive and team coach. Biography The BT Global Challenge sent twelve identical yachts the wrong way around the world, with crews of mostly first-time sailors, for ten months at sea. BP’s entry, skippered by Mark Denton, finished on the podium. The relevant material for senior leaders is not the race itself, it is what running that team for that long under those conditions teaches a leader about decisions, conflict and recovery. Denton has spent the twenty years since converting that experience into a working consulting practice. Through MAXVMG, his organisation development firm, he advises leadership teams on performance, culture and change. His sessions sit on top of structured frameworks (Navig-8 for resilience, CULTIV-8 for culture, COLLABOR-8 for team dynamics, DOMIN-8 for performance) that give clients something to use after the lights go up. The intellectual ballast comes from two sources. He contributed to the Henley Management College text Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, which examined emotional intelligence and sustained performance. He is also a licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. The combination gives his work on team performance an academic spine that most experiential speakers do not have. In 2024 he was voted Bookers Choice at the Speaker Awards, an industry vote by the agents who place speakers for a living. That is a useful signal in a crowded leadership-from-adversity category, where lived experience without operational substance is the failure mode. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure High-performance team dynamics Resilience and recovery in volatile conditions Leading change with mixed-ability teams Decision-making under uncertainty Psychological safety in performance cultures Performance culture and accountability Ideal for CEOs and executive teams entering an extended period of operational pressure or transformation. HR and people directors building resilience and psychological safety capability across senior populations. Leadership development and talent functions investing in mixed-ability or cross-functional team performance. Sales, operations and project leaders running high-stakes programmes where the team has to perform for sustained periods without burning out. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how leadership behaviour shifts when conditions stay difficult for months, not days. A vocabulary for diagnosing team dysfunction (the Navig-8, COLLABOR-8 and DOMIN-8 frameworks) that leaders can take back into their own meetings. A sharper sense of the link between psychological safety and performance, grounded in Edmondson’s research. Specific examples of how amateur teams outperformed expectations, and what senior leaders can borrow from those mechanics. Practical reset points for leaders going into a period of prolonged uncertainty.

Why organisations work with Robby Kojetin A first-person account of recovery that holds up to scrutiny: 928 days from operating table to the summit of Everest, with the rebuild documented in two published books, not a single anecdote stretched across an hour. A working framework, Define, Decide, Deliver, that translates expedition discipline into how senior people make calls under pressure rather than freeze or default to old plans. Credibility as the 17th South African to summit Everest, ten Kilimanjaro summits, and a K2 attempt halted by helicopter evacuation at 5,000 metres. The expeditions are real, not décor. A delivery register that suits serious corporate audiences. Past clients include Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Liberty, GSK and Wits Business School, across keynote and executive-education formats. Biography highlights 17th South African to summit Mount Everest, 2009. Author of Mind Over Mountain: A Mental and Physical Climb to the Top (Jonathan Ball Publishers, international edition ISBN 9781789561050). Co-author of Parallel Summits: Mastering the Art of Money with financial planner Thys van Zyl. Ten Kilimanjaro summits, five of the Seven Summits, first South African team member to summit Ama Dablam. Keynote and executive-education work for Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB, GSK, Medtronic, LEGO, Volkswagen SA, Wits Business School and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. Ironman triathlon finisher; team leader on more than one hundred mountaineering expeditions. Biography A simple mistake at an indoor climbing gym in 2006 broke both of Robby Kojetin’s ankles and put a 28-year-old aspiring mountaineer in a wheelchair for the best part of a year. Nine hundred and twenty-eight days after leaving the operating table, he stood on the summit of Mount Everest as the 17th South African to have done so. The interesting part is what happened in between. Kojetin’s keynote work is built on the discipline of that rebuild rather than the drama of the summit. Recovery, in his framing, is not a private mental health story. It is a question of how a leader reassembles the capacity to define what now matters, decide under conditions that have shifted, and deliver without burning out the people around them. The framework he uses with corporate audiences, Define, Decide, Deliver, comes directly from the expedition logic of operating in environments where the original plan no longer applies. The published record matters. Mind Over Mountain: A Mental and Physical Climb to the Top, his account of the accident, the recovery and the climb, was first issued by Jonathan Ball Publishers and later in an international paperback edition. He has since co-authored Parallel Summits: Mastering the Art of Money with financial planner Thys van Zyl, applying the same logic to long-horizon decisions about capital. Two books, one consistent argument: the work that determines outcomes happens before the visible climb begins. Beyond Everest, the expedition CV does heavy lifting in front of senior audiences. Ten Kilimanjaro summits, five of the Seven Summits, an aborted K2 attempt that ended with a helicopter evacuation at five thousand metres, and the first South African team summit of Ama Dablam. Corporate clients including Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank and Wits Business School book him for the keynote, not the climb. Key speaking topics Resilience after shock Self-leadership and composure under pressure Decision-making in disrupted conditions Long-horizon goal setting for senior teams Team accountability on extended efforts Personal recovery and return to performance Ideal for C-suite leadership conferences where the team is in the middle of, or emerging from, a significant disruption. HR, talent and L&D leaders designing senior leadership development around resilience and decision-making. Sales and commercial kick-offs where the room needs a credible reset on persistence and execution discipline. Partner and senior associate audiences in professional services firms (consulting, audit, law) running multi-year client mandates. Audience outcomes A clear sense of what changes in a leader’s decision-making after a setback, and what to do about it. The Define, Decide, Deliver structure applied to a current organisational pressure point, not as a generic motivational message. Language for talking about recovery and composure that senior leaders can actually use with their own teams. A reset on goal-setting horizons that distinguishes between summit thinking and the daily decisions that determine whether the summit is reached.

Why organisations work with Peter Rios He brings a published research base on Latinx leadership in higher education that few DEI advisers can match. Untold Stories (Wipf & Stock, with Juan F. Martinez) is one of the first academic studies of Latinx administrators in Christian higher education and gives his diagnosis weight no consultant deck can. He works in two doctoral disciplines, intercultural studies (Fuller) and strategic leadership (Regent), so his prescriptions sit inside organisational structure and incentives, not alongside them. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for organisations with bilingual workforces or Latin American operations where translated DEI content typically loses its edge. His operator credibility is genuine. He held vice presidential roles at two universities and ran teams as a pastor for a decade before moving into consulting, so his sessions speak to leaders carrying P&L and people responsibility, not just HR. Biography highlights Author of Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education (Wipf & Stock, 2022), co-written with Juan F. Martinez. Author of Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential. Lecturer in leadership at Penn State University; former adjunct at Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University. PhD in Intercultural Studies, Fuller Graduate Schools; Doctorate in Strategic Leadership, Regent University School of Business and Leadership; doctoral coursework at USC Rossier School of Education; MA, Northeastern Seminary. Founder of Peter Rios Consulting, advising clients across business, government, higher education and faith-based institutions on leadership and inclusion. US Marine Corps veteran; bilingual in English and Spanish. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a value and treat it as a programme. The leaders who carry it inside the building, particularly Latinx leaders in white-dominated institutions, often experience something else: invisibility, code-switching, and a slow drain on the energy needed to do the job. Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education, written by Peter Rios with Juan F. Martinez and published by Wipf & Stock, was one of the first academic studies to document that gap inside Christian higher education. Rios writes from inside the systems he studies. He served as vice president at two universities, taught at Penn State, Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University, and built Peter Rios Consulting to advise organisations on leadership development, organisational change and DEI integration. Clients sit across business, government, higher education, non-profits and faith-based institutions. His credentials sit in two disciplines on purpose. The PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Graduate Schools gives him the language of identity, power and belonging. The Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Regent University gives him the language of structure, decision-making and organisational design. That dual lens is what allows him to translate inclusion from values statement into management practice. His second book, Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential, sits alongside the consulting work as a leadership development resource. He delivers in English and Spanish, draws on his US Marine Corps service and a decade in pastoral ministry, and is a frequent podcast guest on shows including Les Brown and Cafe con Pam. Key speaking topics Inclusive and values-based leadership Latinx leadership and representation Leadership development and executive coaching Organisational change and culture Identity, power dynamics and belonging at work Generational diversity in the workplace Personal leadership and peak performance Ideal for Heads of HR, CHROs and DEI leads in organisations where inclusion programmes are stalling at the leadership pipeline University presidents, provosts and trustees navigating Latinx student growth and faculty representation Bilingual or pan-American organisations seeking leadership development that works in English and Spanish Faith-based institutions and non-profits revisiting how leadership is identified and developed across cultural lines Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion language and leadership practice diverge inside their own organisation Specific moves leaders can make to retain and promote underrepresented talent rather than just hire it A framework drawn from Rios’s research and consulting for surfacing the lived experience of Latinx and other underrepresented leaders Personal leadership reflection grounded in the twelve principles of Maximize!

Why organisations work with Réka Deák She brings a fifteen-year transformation consulting track record at KPMG, PA Consulting, The Hackett Group, Implement and Novartis, then applies it to wellbeing as a system rather than a programme. She built the model now used inside her own consultancy Wellbeing Designers, and tests it at scale in her current role as Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group. She is one of a small number of practitioners who can speak in the same room to CFOs, CHROs and operating leaders, because the substrate of her argument is measurement, not mindfulness. Her recognition as LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company give her cross-industry credibility that goes beyond a single sector or function. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wellbeing Designers. Head of People Resilience and Inclusion, Zurich Insurance Group. Former Affiliate Senior Advisor, The Josh Bersin Company. Fifteen years of transformation consulting across KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group, and Novartis as Global Leadership Development Engagement Lead. LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development; Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series. Brain-Based Coach (NeuroLeadership Institute), ACC-certified coach (International Coach Federation), MSc Corporate Finance and MSc Education from Corvinus University of Budapest. Creator and host of the Wellbeing Designers podcast. Biography Most wellbeing initiatives sit at the wrong layer of the organisation. They live inside benefits, communications or HR, with a budget that competes against other line items and a vocabulary that does not connect to the operating conversation. The result is a decade of programmes that improve perception scores and barely move retention, productivity or burnout. Réka Deák works the layer underneath that. After fifteen years inside transformation consulting at KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group and a global leadership development role at Novartis, she founded Wellbeing Designers to treat wellbeing the way serious organisations treat change: as a system with a measurement model, a culture intervention, and a leadership behaviour standard. She is now Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group, running the same logic at enterprise scale. Her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company put her in front of HR leaders across industries who recognised that the wellbeing question had outgrown its toolkit. Her recognition as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her selection as a Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series reflect the same shift. Boards are now asking wellbeing leaders to defend their work in business terms, and there are few people who can do it credibly. What she gives senior audiences is the bridge that most wellbeing keynotes refuse to build. She is comfortable with the science, the practice, and the operating reality of running a function. She speaks to people whose KPIs include retention, productivity and engagement, and gives them a way to talk about wellbeing that does not embarrass them in front of their CFO. Key speaking topics Wellbeing culture as a measurable operating capability Human-centric leadership at scale Sustainable performance and human sustainability Wellbeing measurement, indices and strategy Wellbeing inside large-organisation transformation Inclusive wellbeing and DEIB The emerging role of the senior wellbeing leader Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of Wellbeing building or defending a wellbeing function CEOs and boards reframing wellbeing as a retention and productivity question Transformation, culture and DEIB leaders integrating wellbeing into change programmes Senior HR audiences at industry summits on the future of work Audience outcomes A working definition of wellbeing culture that survives a CFO conversation A view of what separates a wellbeing programme from a wellbeing operating system A reference model for measuring wellbeing alongside engagement, retention and productivity A clearer brief for the senior wellbeing role inside large organisations Practical next moves for embedding wellbeing into existing leadership and change agendas

Why organisations work with Hubertus Porschen He speaks to mid-market boards from inside the same world. As the elected federal chairman of Die Jungen Unternehmer from 2015 to 2018, he represented Germany’s young Mittelstand owners directly to policymakers and to ASU/Die Familienunternehmer. He has built and run digital businesses, not just advised on them. App-Arena and iConsultants give him a working vocabulary for what actually breaks when a traditional company tries to digitise a business model. His book Digitaler Suizid frames digital inertia as an existential risk to German firms, an argument that lands with audiences who have heard the optimistic version too often. He works in German and English with equal credibility, which matters for groups whose senior leadership sits across DACH and the wider European market. Biography highlights Federal Chairman, Die Jungen Unternehmer (BJU), 2015 to 2018, the young-entrepreneurs body within the ASU/Die Familienunternehmer association. Doctorate in economics, University of Marburg, with a dissertation on the academic entrepreneur. Author of Digitaler Suizid, on the digitalisation gap in the German economy. Founder and operator of multiple digital ventures including App-Arena GmbH; partner at iConsultants GmbH. Lecturer at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and the University of Cologne. Listed in Top 100 Speakers Excellence 2026 by Speakers Excellence. Biography The German Mittelstand is one of the most successful industrial structures in Europe. It is also one of the slowest to absorb new technology. That tension defines the working subject matter of Hubertus Porschen. He spent three years, from 2015 to 2018, as federal chairman of Die Jungen Unternehmer, the young-entrepreneurs wing of the ASU/Die Familienunternehmer association. The role put him in regular contact with policymakers in Berlin and with several thousand owner-managers running mid-sized German firms. The work that followed, as a speaker and as a founder, builds directly on that constituency. His operating experience is the second pillar. App-Arena, an online marketplace for social media applications, and iConsultants, a digital advisory practice, gave him direct exposure to the gap between digital strategy decks and the messy reality of changing how a 150-person company actually works. His book Digitaler Suizid develops the argument: German firms that treat digitisation as a marketing project rather than an operating one are quietly removing themselves from their own future. Today his keynote work concentrates on artificial intelligence: specifically the question of how a board moves from “AI-interested” to “AI-ready” without paralysing the operating business in the process. He lectures at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and the University of Cologne, holds a doctorate from the University of Marburg, and is listed in Speakers Excellence’s Top 100 for 2026. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence in mid-market operations Digital transformation in family-owned and Mittelstand businesses Entrepreneurship and founder leadership Innovation and disruption in traditional industries Change management across generational workforces Digital business model design Ideal for Boards and executive teams of family-owned and Mittelstand firms in DACH CEOs, COOs and digital leaders confronting an AI adoption gap Industry associations and chambers of commerce convening member firms Founder networks and entrepreneurship programmes in German-speaking markets Audience outcomes A clearer sense of where their organisation sits on the line between AI-interested and AI-ready A working argument for why digital inertia is a strategic, not operational, risk Specific examples of how German mid-market companies have moved digital initiatives out of pilot Vocabulary to talk to a sceptical board about AI without leaning on vendor language

Why organisations work with Stacey Ashley Direct experience coaching sitting CEOs on the personal practice of leadership, not the org-chart mechanics around it. A seven-book body of work on leadership published into the executive market, with each title addressing a specific capability gap rather than restating a single thesis. A coach-training programme, The Coaching Leader, that gives client organisations a way to scale her approach beyond the keynote. Recognition from credible third parties: 14 International Stevie Awards, Gold for Thought Leader of the Year at the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, twice on LinkedIn Top Voices, and Thinkers360 Global Top Voice in 2025. Holds the senior credentials of both the coaching and speaking professions: PCC with the International Coaching Federation and CSP with Professional Speakers Australia. Biography highlights Author of seven Amazon #1 best-selling leadership books, including Confluence, Big Leadership, First Lead Yourself, and The New Leader. 14 International Stevie Awards, including Gold for Thought Leader of the Year, Stevie Awards for Women in Business, 2023. LinkedIn Top Voices, 2018 and 2021; Thinkers360 Global Top Voice and APAC Top Voice, 2025. Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation; Certified Speaking Professional with Professional Speakers Australia; Fellow of CPA Australia and the Institute of Managers and Leaders. Founder of The Coaching Leader, a coach-training programme used to embed coaching capability inside client organisations. Has worked with leadership teams across organisations including ABC, ASX, Accor, Atlassian, Boeing Defence Australia, CSIRO, Engie, Hilton Hotels and SAAB. Biography Most CEOs are not short of advice. They are short of a structured place to think about how they lead, especially when the demands of the role keep expanding. Ashley’s coaching practice is built around that gap. Her core proposition, future proofing CEOs, treats senior leadership as a capability that has to be deliberately developed, not a status that follows from the job. The work has produced a body of writing rather than a single book. Confluence argues that the supply of real leaders is no longer keeping pace with what organisations need from them. Big Leadership extends the case into the CEO role itself. First Lead Yourself focuses on self-leadership as the foundation. The New Leader addresses the move from team member to people leader. You’re On Mute and Power Up cover visible leadership in distributed settings and the energy and wellbeing required to sustain senior roles. Each title is positioned at a specific point in the leadership journey, from individual self-leadership through to the macro question of where the next generation of leaders comes from. Recognition has come from coaching and speaking bodies that screen on substance: 14 International Stevie Awards, Gold for Thought Leader of the Year at the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Professional Certified Coach designation from the International Coaching Federation. The Coaching Leader, her coach-training programme, gives organisations a way to extend the approach into their own management cohorts. What makes Ashley useful in a board or executive setting is that she works the practical edge of leadership: the meetings, the conversations, the decisions, the moments when composure becomes a strategic variable. The frameworks are built for application, and the writing is structured to be picked up by someone with twenty minutes between meetings. Key speaking topics Future proofing CEOs Self-leadership and executive presence Coaching as a leadership capability Leading through change and transformation Leadership energy, wellbeing and sustainability Visible and credible leadership in hybrid settings Building high-performing executive teams Ideal for CEOs and managing directors moving into larger or more complex portfolios C-suite teams and direct reports working through restructure or transition CHROs and chief people officers building a coaching capability inside the organisation Senior leadership cohorts on executive development programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of what senior leadership actually requires of them, beyond the job description A practical method for self-leadership under sustained pressure The vocabulary and habits of a coaching leader, not just a directing one A sharper read on personal credibility and presence in senior settings A starting point for embedding coaching capability across their own teams

Why organisations work with Sir Graham Brady He held the formal mechanism by which four UK Prime Ministers came to office and, in several cases, by which they left it. Few speakers can describe leadership transition from inside the room rather than from press coverage of it. He spent fourteen years as the trusted channel between a parliamentary party and its leader, the longest tenure in the role’s history. That is a working case study in managing upward confidence and discretion at the top of a fractious organisation. His memoir “Kingmaker” was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Times Book of the Year, giving audiences a published, on-the-record reference point for the arguments he makes from the platform. He is one of a small group of public figures who can speak credibly about how political risk, party fragility and government instability translate into the operating environment that boards and executive teams now have to plan against. Biography highlights Member of Parliament for Altrincham and Sale West, 1997 to 2024 Chairman of the 1922 Committee, 2010 to 2024, the longest-serving in that role Created Baron Brady of Altrincham; sits in the House of Lords from August 2024 Knight Bachelor (2018); Privy Counsellor (2023); Freedom of the City of London (2023) Author of “Kingmaker: Secrets, Lies, and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers” (Bonnier Books, 2024), Sunday Times bestseller Deputy Chairman, Centre for Policy Studies Biography The 1922 Committee is the body inside the Conservative Party through which backbench MPs hold their leader to account, and through which leadership contests are run. For fourteen years its chair was Graham Brady. Four prime ministers, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, came into office through processes he oversaw. Several left the same way. That is an unusual vantage point. Most political memoirs are written by the principals; Brady’s account is written by the person who counted the letters, took the calls, and decided when a leader’s position had become untenable. “Kingmaker”, published by Bonnier Books in September 2024, was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Times Book of the Year, and it sets out in detail what those moments looked like from inside. For corporate audiences the value is not the political gossip. It is the structure of how confidence at the top of an organisation actually operates. When does a leader lose authority before they lose the title. How does a senior cohort below the leader signal that the line has been crossed. What does discretion cost, and what does it buy. Brady spent fourteen years in the practical mechanics of those questions, longer than anyone else has held the role. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Brady of Altrincham, having been knighted in 2018 and appointed to the Privy Council in 2023. He is Deputy Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies. He read law at Durham and entered the Commons in 1997 at the age of 29. The political career is the credential. The substantive offer to a serious audience is the mechanism behind it. Key speaking topics Leadership transitions and the loss of authority The mechanics of political risk in the UK Trust, discretion and confidence at the top of an organisation Westminster, Whitehall and the operating environment for business Conservative Party history and the post-2010 leadership cycle The role of intermediaries between leaders and the led Ideal for Boards and chairs navigating CEO succession or contested leadership change Executive committees and senior partner groups that need a frank account of how authority is won and lost Corporate affairs and public policy audiences working on UK political risk Membership organisations, associations and professional firms with a senior audience drawn from regulated industries Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of how leadership confidence is actually measured and signalled inside an organisation A first-hand account of four UK Prime Ministerial transitions and what each one reveals about leadership under pressure A working sense of how UK political instability is likely to affect the operating environment over the next parliament The texture of how discretion, loyalty and dissent are managed at the top of a fractious institution

Why organisations work with Darren Edwards He has led injured-veteran teams across four genuine world-first or world-record expeditions, including the 1,400 km Land’s End to John O’Groats kayak and the seven-continent World Marathon Challenge in a wheelchair. The leadership content is drawn from operations, not theory. He talks about the South Pole expedition that did not finish as openly as the ones that did, which gives senior teams a rare working example of how to make a collective stop call without losing the team. His book Strength Through Adversity, an Amazon UK bestseller, sets out the adaptive mindset framework he uses with leadership teams, giving audiences a single referenceable text after a session. He founded Adaptive Expeditions, so the work is institutional rather than personal narrative, and translates into language about team capability, not individual triumph. Biography highlights Author of Strength Through Adversity, Amazon UK bestseller, published February 2023. First wheelchair user to complete the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. Led the first team to kayak 1,400 km from Land’s End to John O’Groats with injured-veteran crew. Member of the first adaptive team to cross Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest ice cap. Founder of Adaptive Expeditions. Former Army Reservist and qualified teacher. Biography A ledge gave way in North Wales in 2016. Darren Edwards fell more than 100 feet, broke his back in two places, and severed his spinal cord. He woke up paralysed from the chest down. He had been a mountaineer, an Army Reservist, and a trained teacher. None of those identities survived intact. What followed is the working material of his keynote. Inside three years he was leading a team of injured veterans on the first kayak crossing of Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats, 1,400 kilometres through some of the country’s most exposed sea. He went on to row the English Channel, cross the Vatnajokull ice cap with the first adaptive team to do it, and in 2023 became the first wheelchair user to finish the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. The expeditions are not the proof point. The proof point is what he did with them. He built Adaptive Expeditions as an organisation, wrote Strength Through Adversity in 2023, and has spent the years since refining what he calls the adaptive mindset: a working set of disciplines for leading teams through sustained uncertainty. How composure is built before it is needed. How recovery is led rather than waited out. How a team makes the call to stop. In December 2025 his Redefining Impossible team cut a 222 km sit-ski attempt on the South Pole short after a week on the ice. He talks about that decision with the same clarity as the records. For organisations under sustained pressure, that is the value. Edwards has lived the gap between the plan and what actually happens, and he can describe it in operational terms. Key speaking topics The adaptive mindset for leadership teams Leading through sustained uncertainty Team leadership across injured and mixed-ability crews Composure and decision-making under pressure Recovery as a leadership discipline Resilience after catastrophic disruption Ideal for Executive leadership teams preparing for or recovering from major disruption Senior operational leaders responsible for sustained-pressure environments Programmes for high-potential leaders building decision-making range Veteran transition, healthcare leadership, and emergency-services audiences Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about composure and recovery as leadership capabilities, not personality traits A clear example of how a senior team makes a collective stop decision without losing trust The adaptive mindset framework, drawn from his book, that audiences can take into team conversations after the session An honest account of the gap between the plan and the operation, useful for risk and contingency thinking

Why organisations work with Adam Markel Author of Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Pivot, giving leadership audiences a researched framework rather than a personal story repurposed as advice. Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, where his work translates resilience research into measurable cultural inputs for senior teams. Operator credibility from 18 years as a trial attorney and a multi-year run as CEO of a professional training business; senior buyers get someone who has run a P&L, not only studied one. Track record with operating businesses under pressure, including Medtronic and Jack in the Box, working with leadership audiences rather than only HR and L&D. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life Author of Change Proof, published by McGraw-Hill in 2022 Co-Founder and Chief Researcher, WORKWELL Host of The Change Proof Podcast TEDx speaker Former CEO of Peak Potentials/New Peaks, a professional training enterprise; previously an 18-year trial attorney Biography Most senior leaders do not have a resilience problem in the wellness sense. They have a decision-quality problem. Repeated restructures, AI rollouts, and cost programmes compound, and the cost shows up in slower judgement long before it shows up in attrition. That is the gap Adam Markel’s work addresses. His framework, set out in Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), treats resilience as a capacity that organisations build into how leaders work, not a personal trait. The earlier Pivot, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, traced the same logic across career and business reinvention. Both books sit on top of his research practice at WORKWELL, where he is Co-Founder and Chief Researcher. The credibility comes from a layered career. Eighteen years as a trial attorney, a multi-year run as CEO of the professional training business Peak Potentials, and several seasons as an ocean lifeguard before any of it. Senior audiences respond to the operator content; they have heard the resilience speech before, and what they recognise here is someone who has run a real enterprise through pressure. The Change Proof Podcast and a steady stream of corporate engagements with operating businesses, Medtronic and Jack in the Box among them, keep his material tested against current leadership briefs rather than older keynote material. Key speaking topics Leadership resilience under sustained change Change Proof: building organisational capacity for uncertainty Workplace culture and engagement Leading through restructure and reinvention Burnout prevention in senior teams Trust and connection in distributed workforces Ideal for CEOs and executive committees facing repeated change cycles CHROs and people leaders responsible for senior-team resilience Leadership offsites and annual conferences for operating businesses Transformation and change leads owning multi-year programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience as an operating capacity, not a personal trait A diagnostic for where change fatigue is degrading senior decision quality Specific practices for recovery and renewal that fit inside a leader’s working week A frame for translating resilience research into culture and engagement decisions Language to use with their own teams about why this matters now

Why organisations work with Terence Mauri He gives leadership teams a defined decision framework, DARE (Data, Agility, Risk, Evolution), drawn from his Wiley and Thinkers50 book, that turns “respond to disruption” from a slogan into a working method. His vantage point sits across operating roles, not commentary alone: founder of Hack Future Lab, Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT, visiting professor at IE Business School. Senior audiences can tell the difference. The content is built for the AI era without becoming a technology lecture. The argument is about how executives think, choose, and govern when technology cycles are shorter than planning cycles. He writes for a senior business readership through a monthly Inc.com column, “Future Proof,” which means the room hears arguments that have already been pressure-tested in print. Biography highlights Founder of Hack Future Lab, a global management think tank focused on leadership, AI, and disruption. Author of The Upside of Disruption (Wiley, in partnership with Thinkers50, 2024), centred on his DARE framework. Earlier books include The Leader’s Mindset and The 3D Leader. Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT and visiting professor at IE Business School. Inc.com columnist, author of the “Future Proof” column. Described by Thinkers50 as “an influential and outspoken thinker on the future of leadership.” Biography The hardest part of leading through disruption is not recognising that the environment has changed. It is changing the way a senior team decides while the business still has to deliver this quarter. That gap, between awareness and operating practice, is the question Terence Mauri has spent his work addressing. His most recent book, The Upside of Disruption, was published by Wiley in 2024 in partnership with Thinkers50. It introduces the DARE framework, Data, Agility, Risk, Evolution, as a way of organising executive decisions when conditions will not stabilise. Earlier books, The Leader’s Mindset and The 3D Leader, traced the same thread through the language of mindset and leadership behaviour. The institutional ground underneath the work matters. Mauri founded Hack Future Lab as a global management think tank, and holds active posts as Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at MIT and visiting professor at IE Business School. He writes the “Future Proof” column for Inc.com, which is where many of the arguments arrive in public before they appear in a keynote. Thinkers50, the management ranking authority, has called him “an influential and outspoken thinker on the future of leadership.” For a senior team weighing whether to put a speaker in front of their own leadership, the practical question is sharper: he gives them a structured way to talk about decisions in conditions of uncertainty, drawn from a published framework rather than a slide deck. Key speaking topics Leadership in the age of AI Decision-making under uncertainty Future readiness and organisational agility Disruption as a strategic input, not a threat Executive mindset and unlearning Innovation and growth in fast-changing markets Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting strategy in conditions where AI and market shifts have shortened planning horizons. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning leadership development for senior cohorts. Boards and transformation leads asking how the organisation should make decisions, not just which technology to adopt. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how senior leaders make decisions when the operating context is actively changing. The DARE framework as a structure for diagnosing where the leadership team is strong and where it is exposed. A sharper read on the difference between adopting AI and leading through the AI era. A set of named behaviours, around unlearning, calculated risk, and trust, that senior teams can return to after the keynote.

Why organisations work with Sam Silverstein A 30-year body of work that treats accountability as an operating system, not a virtue. Buyers get a structured method, not a motivational reset. Founder of The Accountability Institute and creator of the Certified Accountability Advisor designation. The frameworks are productised, taught, and used inside client organisations long after the keynote. Author of 13 books on the subject, anchored by No More Excuses and The Accountability Advantage. Senior teams can verify the substance before they commission the talk. CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee and past President of the National Speakers Association. The peer recognition is from people who book and brief speakers for a living. Practitioner credibility: built and sold a manufacturing business to a Fortune 500 acquirer before turning to the topic full-time. The room reads him as an operator who later became an author. Biography highlights Founder of The Accountability Institute and the Certified Accountability Advisor programme. Author of 13 books, including No More Excuses, The Accountability Advantage, No Matter What, Non-Negotiable, and Pivot!. CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, inducted by the National Speakers Association in 2021. Past President of the National Speakers Association (2008). Named one of the World’s Top 30 Organisational Culture Professionals by Global Gurus. Former owner of manufacturing and distribution companies with combined sales over $100 million, including a successful exit to a Fortune 500 company. Biography Most organisations treat accountability as a tone of voice. Silverstein treats it as a structure. His work, developed over three decades and codified through The Accountability Institute, defines accountability as the willingness to keep commitments to others. That definition is operational, not motivational, and it changes how leaders are expected to behave when no one is watching the dashboard. The frameworks sit inside thirteen books, beginning with No More Excuses and built out through The Accountability Advantage, No Matter What, Non-Negotiable, and the Certified Accountability Advisor designation that licenses the method to practitioners. Clients use them to address the problems culture decks usually skirt: turnover that erodes margin, change programmes that lose energy after launch, and senior leaders who carry decisions that should live closer to the customer. The credentials are equally serious. The National Speakers Association inducted him into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame in 2021, and he previously served as the association’s President. Global Gurus has named him among the world’s top thirty organisational culture professionals. The peer recognition matters because it comes from the part of the industry that watches speakers under pressure. Before any of this, he built and ran manufacturing and distribution companies with combined sales above $100 million and sold one of them to a Fortune 500 acquirer. That history is why the room reads him as an operator first. The accountability argument lands harder because the person making it has been the one writing the cheque for the consequences of weak execution. Key speaking topics Accountability as a culture operating discipline Organisational culture and retention Values-driven leadership Change adoption and resistance Trust and team commitment Disengagement and turnover reduction Ideal for CHROs and people directors facing retention and engagement pressure COOs and operating leaders translating strategy into consistent execution CEOs leading culture or values resets after restructure, merger, or rapid growth Leadership development and L&D teams building behavioural standards across the management layer Audience outcomes A working definition of accountability that separates it from blame, compliance, or performance management A clear view of where commitments break down inside their own organisation Specific behaviours that leaders can adopt to model accountability without micromanaging A vocabulary for culture that the senior team can use in operating meetings, not just engagement surveys A defensible answer to “what would change if we actually did this?”