Change Management

Why organisations work with Tom Cheesewright The Intersections methodology maps incoming macro trends against the specific stress points inside an organisation or sector; producing prioritised decision-points with the analysis behind them, not a generic forecast that leadership teams have to interpret themselves. The framework is teachable and licensable. Organisations leave with a repeatable process they can run internally, not a dependency on a single advisor. His published credentials – Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin; FT business book of the month) and High Frequency Change (Business Book Awards shortlist, 2020) – mean audiences arrive already oriented to his thinking. He does not need to spend the first third of a session building the intellectual case. A decade-plus of broadcast experience across BBC, Channel 4, and national press makes him unusually effective at translating complex AI and technology change for non-technical board audiences without losing analytical precision. Named clients across sectors – Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Virgin Media, Visa – give procurement teams confidence in sector-agnostic credibility. This is not a speaker whose framework only works in one industry. Biography highlights Creator of the Intersections foresight methodology, now licensed and delivered to third-party organisations Author of High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019) shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2020, ‘Leadership for the Future’ category Author of Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020), Financial Times business book of the month Clients include Google, Barclays, NASA, HMRC, BMW, Visa, HSBC, Accenture, and Virgin Media and more than 30 Global 500 companies Regular contributor and broadcaster: BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4 Sunday Brunch, The Guardian, The Times, Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph BEng in Mechatronics, Lancaster University; established as a full-time applied futurist in 2012 Biography Most organisations know they need to anticipate change. Very few have a structured way to do it. The annual strategic planning cycle and the technology roadmap were not designed to connect incoming macro trends to the specific decisions a leadership team faces this quarter. Tom Cheesewright built the Intersections methodology to close that gap. It maps macro trends, from AI capability shifts to demographic and regulatory change, against the existing pressures inside an organisation or sector, identifying the points where disruption will hit hardest and where meaningful opportunity sits. More than 30 Global 500 companies and government bodies, including NASA, HMRC, Google, and Barclays, have put the framework to work. His two business books establish the intellectual foundation. High Frequency Change (LID Publishing, 2019; shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2020) sets out why organisations feel overwhelmed by the pace of change and what structural responses actually work. Future-Proof Your Business (Penguin Business Experts, 2020; Financial Times business book of the month) translates the methodology into practical tools for strategy teams. His sustained media presence – BBC Breakfast, Radio 4, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Times – means he is not an unknown quantity when he walks on stage. A mechatronics engineer by training, Cheesewright spent years in technology marketing and digital business before establishing himself as a futurist in 2012. That background – engineering logic, commercial experience, years of public communication about technology – is what keeps the Intersections work grounded. The output is not prediction. It is a structured process for stress-testing an organisation’s assumptions against what is actually coming. Key speaking topics AI and automation in strategic decision-making Scenario planning and applied foresight methodology Organisational agility and adaptive strategy Technology-driven disruption and competitive positioning The future of consumer behaviour and business models Change management in high-frequency environments Long-range strategic planning under uncertainty Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards preparing long-range or scenario-based strategy Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Technology Officers navigating AI investment decisions Industry associations and sector bodies facing structural disruption from technology or regulation Conference audiences drawn from finance, technology, retail, government, or professional services sectors Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Intersections methodology and how to apply it to their own organisation’s planning process Clarity on which AI and technology developments are commercially significant in their sector, and which can be deprioritised A revised set of strategic questions, not just better answers to the existing ones Stronger language and frameworks for briefing boards and senior stakeholders on emerging technology risk and opportunity A clearer view of where their organisation is most exposed to macro-level disruption over the next three to five years

Why organisations work with Stephen Shapiro He treats innovation as a portfolio of small, structured bets rather than a culture programme, which is why his work lands with CFOs and operating leaders, not just innovation teams. His 25 Lenses framework, set out in Invisible Solutions, gives leadership teams a working tool for reframing the questions behind a stalled initiative, rather than another model to admire and shelve. He built and ran Accenture’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice, so the advice is grounded in operating a function at scale, not in observing one. Senior corporate audiences trust him with active programmes: 3M, P&G, Nike, Marriott, NASA, Microsoft, Capital One, and Johnson and Johnson are among the organisations that have brought him in to work on real innovation problems. The 2015 Speaker Hall of Fame induction and Senior Fellow appointment at The Conference Board signal that the speaking craft and the underlying research both meet a serious institutional bar. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, The Conference Board. 15-year career at Accenture, where he built the firm’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice. Inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE) by the National Speakers Association in 2015. Author of seven books, including Best Practices Are Stupid, named 800-CEO-READ’s best innovation and creativity book of the year, and Invisible Solutions, an INDIE Award winner. Industrial Engineering, Cornell University; Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation; six-year term on the NSA Board of Directors. Has worked with leadership teams in over 50 countries, including 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, NASA, Microsoft, Capital One, Honda, and Johnson and Johnson. Biography Most corporate innovation programmes fail in the same place. They generate ideas faster than the operating model can absorb them, and the executive committee eventually quietens down because the cost is visible and the return is not. The problem is rarely a shortage of creativity. It is a missing discipline for choosing which questions to spend money on. That is the problem Stephen Shapiro has spent twenty-five years working on. At Accenture he co-led the business process reengineering practice, then built the firm’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice. The shift from efficiency work to growth work shaped the argument that runs through his books: innovation is an operating capability, not a culture, and it can be managed with the same rigour as any other portfolio. His seven books trace that argument. Best Practices Are Stupid, named 800-CEO-READ’s best innovation and creativity book of the year, makes the case for small structured bets over large transformational programmes. Invisible Solutions sets out 25 Lenses for reframing the questions behind a stalled initiative. Pivotal, published in 2024, takes the same discipline into how organisations create stability while continuing to change. The recurring thesis is that better questions are cheaper and more useful than more answers. The institutional credentials reinforce the work. He is a Senior Fellow at The Conference Board, was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE) in 2015, and holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation. Clients including 3M, P&G, Nike, Marriott, NASA, and Microsoft have brought him in for active innovation programmes rather than thought-leadership set pieces, which is the more useful test of where his work actually lands. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed corporate discipline Question reframing and problem definition Portfolio approaches to innovation investment Culture and team composition for innovation Stability and adaptability in uncertain markets Growth strategy beyond best-practice benchmarking Ideal for CINOs, heads of innovation, and R&D leaders running enterprise programmes CEOs and strategy leaders trying to convert innovation activity into commercial results Transformation sponsors and operating committees rebuilding the innovation function after a stalled programme Large industrials, financial services, consumer goods, and healthcare organisations with complex internal innovation portfolios Audience outcomes A working method for reframing the strategic question behind a stalled initiative, drawn from the 25 Lenses framework A clear case for replacing large transformational bets with structured small ones, and the financial logic to defend it internally A diagnostic for which innovation activities are producing learning and which are producing motion Specific examples of how named Fortune 500 clients have restructured innovation portfolios, with the trade-offs made visible Language a senior leader can use the next morning to challenge their own innovation roadmap

Why organisations work with Rob Hosking He has made decisions in 999 response situations where the cost of a poor call is measured in lives, and he can translate that experience into language a leadership team or frontline workforce will actually listen to His own breakdown, suicide plan and PTSD diagnosis sit at the centre of his keynote, which is why men’s forums, wellbeing networks and emergency-services audiences book him to start conversations that other speakers can only describe The “What’s in Your Vest?” framework gives audiences a concrete tool, built from a real police equipment vest, for thinking about the communication, composure and curiosity they carry into pressure Chris Evans nicknamed him “The Mighty Motivator” on national radio, and that platform, alongside Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News, has built the public profile that lets him land in front of senior corporate audiences at the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s and Heathrow Biography highlights Former frontline Police Officer with Police Scotland TEDx speaker, “Always Choose Happiness”, TEDxUWE Author of Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness (Fisher King Publishing) Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards Featured on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show (Virgin Radio), Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News Co-founder of Rise of Happiness, Contributor to The Growth Hub, Associate Trainer for Wellity, trained mental health first aider Worked with the NHS, Kellogg’s, London Stock Exchange, Heathrow Airport, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, LetterOne, NI Water and Bedfordshire Police Biography Most workplace conversations about pressure are theoretical. Rob Hosking spent his early career as a frontline officer with Police Scotland, attending 999 calls where every decision had a tight clock and a real consequence. The practical question for any leader, of how people stay clear-headed, communicate well and keep performing when the operating environment is hostile, is the question his career was built to answer. Hosking left policing after a single shift in which he witnessed a young man take his own life and a colleague die of a heart attack. Months earlier, in July 2018, he had planned to take his own life and was interrupted by his dog. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and trained as a mental health first aider. That sequence is the substance of his keynote, not its preamble, and it is what allows him to speak to men’s networks, emergency services and leadership audiences with a credibility that policy and academic content cannot match. The work has earned a public platform. Chris Evans dubbed him “The Mighty Motivator” on Virgin Radio, and he has appeared on Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News. His TEDx talk “Always Choose Happiness” was delivered at TEDxUWE, and his book Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness was published by Fisher King Publishing. He was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards. His “What’s in Your Vest?” framework uses the contents of an officer’s equipment vest as a way of asking audiences what tools they carry into pressure, including communication, composure, clarity and curiosity. He has delivered this material for the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s, Heathrow Airport, the NHS, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, NI Water, LetterOne and Bedfordshire Police, with men’s mental health, wellbeing, resilience and adaptability as the recurring themes. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Adaptability and managing change Mental health in the workplace Resilience and stress management Psychologically safe leadership Decision-making in high-stakes environments Workplace wellbeing culture Ideal for HR, wellbeing and DEI leads programming mental health, resilience or men’s network events Leadership and management teams operating in high-tempo, high-consequence environments such as emergency services, healthcare, transport and infrastructure Internal conferences, all-hands and away-days where the brief is to open up the conversation on pressure and performance Wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness campaigns and employee network launches Audience outcomes A frank vocabulary for talking about pressure, trauma and mental health at work, drawn from a speaker who has lived it The “What’s in Your Vest?” model as a shared reference point teams can return to after the session A clearer view of how sustained stress degrades judgement, communication and team trust Specific habits and behaviours, taken from operational policing, for staying decisive when conditions are unstable Permission, particularly in male-heavy environments, to speak earlier when something is wrong

Why organisations work with Nick Jankel He works with senior executives as a peer rather than an outsider. His position lets him challenge leadership teams in the room and stay engaged across the programmes that follow, which is the difference between a keynote that lands and a keynote that fades by the next quarter. Bio-Transformation® (BTX®) is one of the few leadership frameworks built from medical science and philosophy of science rather than consulting practice. The argument that change fails when leaders apply machine logic to living systems is a defensible intellectual position, not a packaging exercise. His Cambridge Triple First in Medicine and Philosophy of Science, combined with twenty-five years applying the framework inside organisations, gives senior leaders a rare combination: a scientist’s argument about human behaviour and a practitioner’s instinct for what works in the room. Across roughly 250 executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel, the methodology has shaped the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives. His keynotes are designed as interventions: customised, experiential, and built to move leaders toward leading change, AI transition, or transformation, rather than simply describing why it matters. Biography highlights Cambridge Triple First (summa cum laude) in Medicine and Philosophy of Science; clinical medicine at UCL Co-founder and CEO of Switch On Leadership, designer of executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel Creator of the Bio-Transformation® (BTX) methodology, a neuroscience-based framework for individual, team, and organisational change Roughly 250 executive leadership development and transformation programmes designed and delivered, shaping the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives Author of multiple books on leadership and transformation, including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014); work translated into Chinese Lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley; media coverage in the Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian Transformation coach on BBC and MTV television series; spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit Biography Most senior leaders are now asked to lead change, AI transition, and transformation in parallel, often without the time to recover between cycles. The standard answer is to equip them with better strategy. The harder answer, and the one Nick Jankel has spent twenty-five years working on, is that under pressure most leaders default to protecting rather than adapting, and no amount of strategic clarity rewrites that biology. Jankel arrived at this argument by an unusual route. He studied medicine and philosophy of science at Cambridge, graduating with a Triple First, before training in clinical medicine at UCL. He then moved into brand strategy at TBWA/Chiat Day on accounts including PlayStation and Nike. Bio-Transformation® (BTX®), the methodology he later built, draws on all three: a clinician’s view of human systems, a philosopher’s account of how knowledge changes under pressure, and a practitioner’s understanding of how people actually choose. As co-founder of Switch On Leadership, Jankel applies BTX through senior executive interventions, leadership team development, and enterprise-wide programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel. Roughly 250 programmes and 100,000 leaders have been built around the methodology to date. He has explored the underlying ideas in books including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014), and lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley. What separates his keynote work is the deliberate refusal to treat the keynote as a speech. The session is designed as an intervention, customised to a leadership group’s actual change agenda and built to move people, not only inform them. The Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian have covered his work; he has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit, and hosted transformation-focused series for the BBC and MTV. Key speaking topics Executive leadership development under pressure Leading change, AI transition, and transformation Neuroscience of organisational change and human adaptation Adaptive leadership and senior team capability Leadership for the age of generative AI Bio-Transformation® methodology and applied complexity science Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams leading transformation, AI transition, or large-scale organisational change CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning executive leadership development programmes at top-50, top-100, or top-500 leader scale Boards and executive committees seeking a science-backed perspective on why standard leadership development underdelivers in conditions of sustained pressure Innovation, transformation, and AI leads in regulated or complex sectors including pharma, financial services, and government Audience outcomes Senior leaders leave with a working understanding of why their organisation’s last change programme stalled at the human level, framed through the Control-and-Protect vs Create-and-Connect distinction at the heart of BTX® Practical tools for regulating stress responses and shifting leadership defaults under live pressure, applicable inside the room and after the event A shared language for naming the human dynamics of change at senior team level, so the work continues without him A clearer view of what generative AI specifically asks of leaders, distinct from what it asks of technology functions Visible movement, not only information: the session is designed to leave leaders ready to lead the next phase of change, not only to think about it

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 Europe, the Middle East, 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; new book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026) 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; INSEAD board governance certification 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, Europe, the Middle East, 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 book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026), endorsed by Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer, extends the 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 The P.E.A.C.E. Framework 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 Boards and executive committees seeking a working practitioner’s perspective on AI-era leadership CHROs and people leaders managing generational integration, workforce redesign, and future-of-work strategy Transformation leads and change management functions inside large multinational organisations Audience outcomes A structured, repeatable framework (P.E.A.C.E.) that gives teams shared language for leading through uncertainty, usable Monday morning A clear diagnosis of why AI adoption and transformation programmes stall at the leadership level, with specific approaches to address it Practical tools for integrating generational diversity, particularly Gen Z talent alongside experienced human capital and AI capability A first-hand view of how organisations including Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are integrating people with advanced technology, applied to the audience’s own market A mindset shift from defending what is crumbling to building what is emerging, positioning disruption 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