Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Rahaf Harfoush Her work is anthropological, not predictive. It is grounded in fieldwork, behavioural research, and fifteen years of watching what technology does to the people who use it. That matters when leadership teams have already absorbed every version of the AI hype cycle and want something more durable. Her positions on AI move with the research, because the research is hers. What she takes into a boardroom in 2026 is not what she said in 2024, and the next book she is writing on humane productivity in the age of AI is shaping her current thinking in real time. She works across the full institutional range. The same questions she takes into board conversations on AI strategy show up in her policy work at the UN, her research at Oxford and Cambridge, and her teaching at Sciences Po. That range means she can speak credibly to executives, regulators, and creative teams in the same week. The Decoded Company thesis; that organisations should apply the same analytical rigour to understanding their talent as they apply to understanding their customers, gives CHROs and people strategy teams a precise, data-grounded argument for workforce intelligence. She brings an active body of work. The Decoded Company was a New York Times bestseller, Hustle & Float set the structural argument on productivity and creative work, a fourth book on humane productivity in the age of AI is in progress, and her weekly newsletter and original research mean she arrives at every engagement with new material rather than a fixed deck. Biography highlights Executive Director, Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture; former Associate Director, Technology Pioneer Programme, World Economic Forum, Geneva Member, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence; member, France’s National Digital Council; served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission on AI and democracy Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute; Research Affiliate, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge Author of Hustle & Float (2019); co-author of The Decoded Company (New York Times and USA Today bestseller; 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book) Named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2021); writing featured in Harvard Business Review, Wired, Financial Times, and Fast Company Faculty at Sciences Po’s School of Management and Innovation, Paris, teaching “Innovation and Emerging Business Models” Biography For the past fifteen years, the same question has run through her work. What happens to human beings when the systems they work and live inside change faster than their ability to absorb the change? That question has taken her into the early Obama campaign, the World Economic Forum, the UN, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the boardrooms of some of the largest companies in the world. The pattern she keeps finding is the same. The technology gets the attention. The behavioural and cultural consequences get ignored until they show up as a problem no one can solve with another tool. Her first book, Yes We Did, documented the digital infrastructure behind the 2008 Obama campaign from inside the war room. Her second, The Decoded Company (co-authored, and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), argued that organisations apply rigorous analytics to their customers and intuition to their people, and pay for that mismatch in every retention number. Her third, Hustle and Float, made the case that the conflict between productivity culture and creative work is older than any of the tools we blame for it, and cannot be solved by another wellness programme. Her current research focuses on AI’s impact on human cognition and learning. This is the territory where the most urgent questions are being asked, and where the gap between what the technology can do and what organisations actually need is widest. She is writing about it, teaching about it at Sciences Po, advising on it at the UN, and bringing what she finds onto the stage as it develops. She holds research affiliations with the Oxford Internet Institute and Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission and on France’s National Digital Council. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wired, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She was named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2021. Key speaking topics Digital culture and organisational behaviour Artificial intelligence governance and ethics The future of creative and knowledge work Human-centred AI strategy Innovation and emerging business models Leadership in technological disruption Data intelligence and talent strategy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams who want to think clearly about AI before committing to a strategy they will have to defend in eighteen months CHROs and people leaders facing the talent, learning, and creative-performance consequences of AI adoption Government, regulatory, and policy audiences working on AI governance and digital policy Innovation, foresight, and strategy functions in technology-intensive and creative industries Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding what AI is actually doing to the people in your organization, beyond productivity metrics Language for the cultural and cognitive shifts your leaders are already sensing but have not been able to name A clearer position on AI governance, grounded in research and lived policy experience at the UN and national level A sharper read on the gap between what your technology strategy assumes and what your people are experiencing

Why organisations work with Jenn Lim She carries the operating lineage of the Zappos culture work directly into the room. She built the original Zappos Culture Book and co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh, so the source material is hers, not borrowed. Her Beyond Happiness book gives buyers a single, named framework (the Greenhouse Method) they can point to, rather than a generic engagement talk. Wall Street Journal bestseller and Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. She works at the seam where personal purpose meets commercial outcome. The Me, We, Community model is built to be used by HR and leadership teams, not just admired on stage. Credibility with both ends of the buyer market: Fortune 500 cultures (Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pixar) and government audiences (World Government Summit, SHRM global events). Selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing places her inside the small group setting the policy conversation on workplace wellbeing, not just commenting on it. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness, the culture consultancy that evolved from Tony Hsieh’s 2010 book of the same name. Author of Beyond Happiness (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. Led the launch of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, a #1 New York Times bestseller that stayed on the list for 27 weeks. Creator of the original Zappos Culture Book. Selected in 2017 to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing. Delivering Happiness named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Speaker at the World Government Summit, SHRM and inside Fortune 500 cultures including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Pixar. Biography Most workplace culture conversations start with the symptoms: low engagement, attrition, burnout, the lukewarm Glassdoor scores. Jenn Lim’s work starts a level deeper, with the question of whether the people inside an organisation actually have a reason to commit. That question has been her professional terrain for two decades, first inside Zappos, then through Delivering Happiness. The story is straight. Lim built the original Zappos Culture Book, which became the internal artefact that defined how Zappos talked about itself. She then co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh in 2010 and led the launch of his book, which sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks. Delivering Happiness became a consultancy used by Fortune 500 cultures, Best Places to Work honourees and government bodies, and reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Her own book, Beyond Happiness, was published by Grand Central in 2021 and named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of the year. The argument is operational: organisations get sustained engagement when individual purpose is connected to a clear organisational mission, and leaders are the variable that makes the connection real or hollow. The Greenhouse Method and the Me, We, Community framework give HR and leadership teams a structure they can run inside the business, not just a talk to applaud. What separates Lim from the broader wellbeing field is the lineage. She is not adapting someone else’s culture story for the stage. She built the source material, she co-founded the consultancy that productised it, and her selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing in 2017 placed her inside the group shaping the policy conversation on this question. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and engagement Purpose-driven leadership Employee wellbeing Organisational change and resilience Authentic leadership Belonging and connection at work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning engagement strategy after a period of restructure or fatigue Boards and executive teams reviewing the link between culture, purpose and commercial performance Heads of culture, DEI and employee experience inside Fortune 500 and large public-sector organisations Leadership development programmes focused on values-based and authentic leadership Audience outcomes A clear way to talk about purpose that connects individual employees to organisational mission, using the Me, We, Community model. The Greenhouse Method as a named structure for reducing burnout and rebuilding trust through change. The lessons from inside the Zappos culture build, told by the person who wrote the original Culture Book. A defensible language for wellbeing that goes beyond the surface wellness vocabulary leaders are tired of.

Why organisations work with Natalie Johnson The CultureJourney™ framework gives senior teams a working model for how culture is actually produced, organised around three named levers: energy, connection, and courage. Combines a science foundation in human performance and resilience with three decades of corporate performance coaching. Few speakers in this space work from both traditions. Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, which means buyers can book her for a keynote and for the full leadership programme from a single practitioner. Track record with organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, and Ascension Healthcare. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Vidl Work, the consulting and keynote firm she leads Co-author of Leading the Culture Journey: Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces (Wiley, August 2026) Co-creator of the CultureJourney™ framework, used to guide culture transformation inside client organisations Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, and a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition; MSc in Wellness Promotion Co-host of the Energy, Connection & Courage at Work podcast Biography Most organisations describe their culture in terms they cannot define. Engagement scores climb and wellbeing budgets grow each year, yet senior teams still cannot explain why some groups sustain high performance while others burn out. This is the gap that the CultureJourney™ framework was built to close. Natalie Johnson developed it with her team at Vidl Work, the firm she co-founded and now leads as Chief Visionary Officer. The framework treats culture as the product of three working systems: how leaders elevate energy, how teams prioritise connection, and how leaders choose courage. The thinking is set out in Leading the Culture Journey, her 2026 book with Rebecca Johnson, published by Wiley. Her authority on the topic comes from a combination of training that few culture speakers share. Johnson holds a BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition and an MSc in Wellness Promotion. She is a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach, a Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, and a certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator. The Dare to Lead credential licenses her to deliver Brené Brown’s full leadership programme inside client organisations. Her client list spans organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition: NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, Ascension Healthcare, and the American College of Surgeons. The HR profession books her too: she has delivered keynotes for SHRM, the largest professional association for human resources. She also sits on the board of the Kidney Cancer Association and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and culture transformation Human performance and energy management Trust and courageous conversation in teams Resilience and sustainable high performance Employee wellbeing as a performance lever Dare to Lead leadership development Ideal for Chief executives and senior leadership teams setting culture as a strategic priority CHROs and Chief People Officers running culture, engagement, and wellbeing portfolios Cross-functional teams operating under sustained change cycles: post-merger integrations, restructures, transformation programmes Leadership teams in high-pressure operating environments such as healthcare, defence, and regulated industry Organisations running Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead programme that want a licensed facilitator with deep performance science background Audience outcomes A working model for culture that names where it gets built and where it breaks down Language for linking employee wellbeing and engagement spend to commercial performance A method for holding the courageous conversations that team trust depends on, drawn from Dare to Lead Approaches for managing human energy and recovery at both individual and team level

Why organisations work with Russell Beck His 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) gives people teams a structured, actionable framework for talent strategy: not a list of principles, but a diagnostic and planning tool organisations can apply directly. His career spans engineering project leadership across 25 countries, European Head of Talent at Yahoo!, MD of a £120m talent outsourcing business, and Global Head of Consulting at Impellam Group: a level of operational depth that most future-of-work commentators do not have. The World of Work to 2030 was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read and won the Institute of Leadership’s Book of the Year giving his frameworks independent, named validation rather than self-asserted authority. He translates megatrend analysis into specific commercial decisions. His sessions leave teams with a clear view of what the talent market will require of them by 2030, not just why it matters. Biography highlights Author of The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business (2024) Winner, Institute of Leadership Leadership Book of the Year 2024 Recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read; regular interviewee in the FT Former European Head of Talent, Yahoo! – built one of the first pan-European talent functions Former Managing Director, Carlisle Managed Solutions – grew business to £120m turnover in 30 months; former Global Head of Consulting, Impellam Group Engineering project leader across 25+ countries, including a USD500m programme; co-owner and Director of Inspiration, ImagineThinkDo Biography Work is changing faster than most organisations’ talent strategies can keep up with. The labour market that defined hiring and retention practices for the last thirty years has shifted structurally, and the organisations still winning on compensation alone are discovering the limits of that approach. Russell Beck has spent three decades working through this tension as an operator running large-scale engineering programmes across 25 countries to building Yahoo!’s first pan-European talent function, to leading a £120m talent outsourcing business as Managing Director. His book, The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business, maps the megatrends reshaping organisations and careers and translates them into a practical action framework. It won the Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year in 2024 and was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read. The book’s argument is not that change is coming, it is that most organisations are already behind, and that closing that gap requires deliberate, structured action on people strategy now. The 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) is Beck’s proprietary framework for diagnosing and rebuilding talent strategy in a market where employees hold structural leverage. It has been deployed with organisations across sectors including Vodafone, the NHS, Cambridge University Press and the Top Employers Institute. Through ImagineThinkDo, the consultancy and development firm he co-owns with Alison Beck, he works directly with senior leadership teams on workforce transformation, leadership development and cultural change. His perspective combines the research discipline of an engineer, the strategic experience of an operator who has led at scale, and the practical tools of a practitioner who has done the work inside organisations, not just advised on it from outside. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce strategy Talent attraction, retention and the 6C© model Organisational culture and belonging The multigenerational workforce Purpose-led leadership Leadership in uncertainty Future skills and employability Megatrends and their organisational implications Ideal for CHROs and people directors designing future-fit talent strategy Senior leadership teams navigating workforce transformation Talent, learning and organisational development functions CEOs and MDs seeking a commercially grounded view of the future labour market Audience outcomes A structured view of the megatrends reshaping work, and their specific implications for organisational and talent strategy Familiarity with the 6C© model as a practical tool for rebuilding attraction and retention approaches Clearer understanding of why belonging – not diversity alone – determines whether inclusion strategies deliver measurable outcomes Practical steps leaders can take to close the gap between current people strategy and what the labour market will require by 2030 A leadership lens for embedding purpose and meaning at work in ways that affect retention and performance

Why organisations work with Andy Bass His Suits & Geeks Trap framework gives leaders a named, structured diagnosis for one of the most persistent and underacknowledged barriers to growth in technology-driven businesses – the breakdown between commercial and technical functions – and a clear method for resolving it. His Start With What Works thesis (Pearson) challenges the default assumption that growth requires new investment; the argument is that most organisations are sitting on underused capabilities, relationships and knowledge that can be mobilised before new capital is sought. His C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action – Curiosity, Exploration, Ownership – gives leaders a specific, repeatable method for moving people from passive compliance to genuine ownership of strategic priorities. His PhD in Software Engineering and early career at BT Research Labs give him standing inside technical organisations that a leadership generalist cannot credibly claim – he can hold the room with engineers and commercial directors simultaneously. Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) and named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange Big Thinkers panel – external recognitions of consulting practice, earned outside the speaking circuit. Biography highlights Founder and principal of BassClusker Consulting; advisory work spanning more than 30 industries across 12 countries PhD in Software Engineering and BSc in Computer Science and Ergonomics, both from Aston University; career began at BT Research Labs, Human Factors Division Executive educator at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde Business Schools; Visiting Professor in Consulting Practice, Birmingham City University Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) by Alan Weiss Author of five books including The Suits & Geeks Trap, Start With What Works (Pearson) and Committed Action Named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange ‘Big Thinkers’ panel of experts Corporate clients include L’Oréal, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and International Automotive Components Group Biography In technology-driven organisations, one of the most consistent barriers to growth is not the strategy, it is the relationship between the people who build things and the people who sell them. Andy Bass, founder of BassClusker Consulting and author of The Suits & Geeks Trap, has spent over two decades working on that specific problem: helping senior leaders diagnose and close the gap between strategic intent and organisational execution. His Suits & Geeks Trap framework identifies a pattern that recurs across industries: commercial and technical teams defaulting to stereotyping and blame, with leaders drawn into refereeing internal politics rather than facing the market. The framework, developed through advisory work with organisations ranging from Deutsche Bank and L’Oréal to mid-sized growth businesses across 12 countries, gives leaders a structured way to reverse that dynamic and redirect energy toward the customer. His parallel argument, developed in Start With What Works (Pearson), challenges what he calls one of the most persistent thinking traps in business: that growth requires new investment. Bass makes the case (supported by client work across 30 industries) that most organisations have more usable capability than they recognise. The book presents practical tools for identifying and deploying those hidden assets before leaders turn to capital-intensive alternatives. His third major framework, the C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action, addresses the question leaders ask most consistently: why their people do not engage with strategic priorities as fully as intended. Bass’s answer, structured around Curiosity, Exploration and Ownership, gives leaders a repeatable method for building genuine commitment rather than managed compliance. His credentials span both sides of the technical-commercial divide he studies: a PhD in Software Engineering from Aston University, an early career at BT Research Labs, executive education delivered at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde business schools, and induction into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame in 2017. Key speaking topics Commercial and technical team alignment Organisational learning and execution Growth strategy using existing resources Leadership and committed action Change management and strategic engagement Organisational culture in technology-driven businesses Executive decision-making and capability development Ideal for CEOs and MDs of technology-driven, engineering-led or innovation-focused organisations managing persistent commercial-technical friction Senior leadership teams where execution consistently falls short of strategic ambition CHROs and organisational development leads working on engagement, ownership and culture in mixed commercial-technical workforces Professional services, financial services, manufacturing and growth-stage businesses navigating rapid change Audience outcomes A named framework for diagnosing commercial-technical team friction – and a clear method for resolving it before it becomes a leadership crisis Practical tools for identifying underused organisational assets and applying them to growth priorities, before seeking new capital or resource The C.E.O. Roadmap – a three-stage method for building genuine team commitment rather than surface-level compliance Sharper understanding of how leadership behaviour, not strategy alone, determines whether execution succeeds Specific questions and diagnostic approaches leaders can apply immediately to unlock stalled priorities or disengaged teams

Why organisations work with Sarah Furness The H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) formula gives leaders a structured, repeatable system for sustaining performance under pressure – not a set of principles, but a behavioural methodology built from combat aviation and formal human factors instruction. Her “Practise Scared” methodology reframes discomfort as a development mechanism directly addressing the conditions under which most leadership training fails to stick. Her argument in The Uni-tasking Revolution, that focus is a competitive performance variable that organisations are systematically destroying through multitasking culture, gives senior teams a specific, actionable lens for redesigning how work gets done. She brings an instructor’s precision, not only a practitioner’s story: she taught human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, which means the frameworks she delivers have been built and tested in a formal training environment, not assembled retrospectively for a speaking career. Her status as the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq is not a biographical detail, it is evidence of what her approach to fear, credibility, and inclusion in high-performance cultures actually looks like in practice. Biography highlights RAF Squadron Leader; approximately 20 years of service including operational combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan First female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq Graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University (Natural Sciences and Theology) Instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham Creator of the H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) performance framework and the “Practise Scared” methodology Author of two Amazon no.1 bestselling books: Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution Founder of Well Be It, an executive coaching and leadership development practice (est. 2020) Qualified mindfulness coach and human factors facilitator; trained in cognitive behavioural techniques Biography Most performance under pressure research stays theoretical. Sarah Furness spent two decades testing it as a Cambridge-educated RAF helicopter pilot, then as a Squadron Leader leading combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then as the first female pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq. That operational record informs everything she brings to organisations. But it is not the point of the work. The point is that she identified, in conditions of genuine risk, that resilience and performance under pressure are not instinctive. They are skills. And skills can be built. This observation – simple in articulation, significant in implication – is the foundation of her H.A.B.I.T.S. framework and her “Practise Scared” methodology, both of which sit at the centre of her leadership development work. Before founding Well Be It in 2020, Furness formalised that thinking as an instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK. That background gives her frameworks a rigour that distinguishes them from testimony alone: these are methods that were built in a professional military training environment before they were taken to the boardroom. Her two no.1 bestselling books, Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution, extend the argument into self-leadership and organisational focus respectively. Together, they represent a coherent intellectual position: that the gap between how capable leaders look and how they actually perform under pressure is a structural problem, and that closing it requires deliberate behavioural practice, not motivation. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Resilience and mental performance Human factors in high-stakes decision-making Focus, attention, and uni-tasking as a performance strategy Psychological safety and growth culture Inclusive leadership and leading in the new era Decision-making and gut instinct under pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-stakes change or transformation CHROs and L&D leaders building performance and resilience programmes Executive development audiences where the gap between visible capability and felt confidence is a recognised issue Organisations in sectors where pressure, speed, and accountability are structural features – professional services, financial services, defence, manufacturing, engineering Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why performance under pressure is a trainable skill, not a personality trait, with a framework for developing it Practical application of the H.A.B.I.T.S. formula and “Practise Scared” methodology to real workplace conditions A concrete argument for redesigning how attention and focus are managed at team and organisational level Greater leader confidence in decision-making under time pressure and ambiguity A reframe of fear, failure, and discomfort as development data rather than performance problems

Why organisations work with Anna Hemmings A high-performance specialist with a six-time world champion’s record behind her. Fifteen years coaching senior teams, with a method built as much on the psychology of performance as on sport. She has reached the top, lost it, and got back. Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at her competitive peak and told she would not race again, she returned to win three more world titles. That comeback is how she teaches recovery as a performance strategy rather than a wellbeing exercise. Her focus is the repeat, not the one-off peak. She works on the behaviours and culture that let teams perform at the highest level and hold it year after year, which is the question most leadership teams actually face. Accredited delivery that runs past the keynote. As a qualified high-performance and leadership coach and an accredited Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer, she takes leadership teams at IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, and NatWest through masterclasses and team development. Biography highlights Six-time Marathon Kayak World Champion, including three consecutive titles from 2005 to 2007; Britain’s most successful female marathon kayaker. Two-time Olympian for Great Britain: Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008. MBE, 2010 New Year Honours, for services to sport. Founder and Managing Director of Beyond the Barriers, a high-performance consultancy she has run since 2009. Accredited High Performance and Leadership Coach and accredited Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer. Has now spent as long developing senior leaders and teams as she spent competing, with clients including IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, British Airways, and NatWest. Biography Reaching the top of a field is hard. Staying there, year after year, while the pressure becomes permanent, is harder, and it is the problem most leadership teams underestimate. It is also the one Anna Hemmings spent her sporting career solving in public. She won six marathon kayak world titles, three of them in consecutive years, and competed at two Olympic Games. The detail that matters most came in between. Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at her peak and told she might not race again, she came back to win three more world titles and qualify for Beijing 2008. She treats that comeback as evidence that recovery can be engineered as a performance strategy. The second half of her career has now run longer than the first. Since 2009 she has built Beyond the Barriers into a high-performance consultancy, coaching senior leaders and teams at IBM, Unilever, Novartis, Deloitte, and NatWest. Her method pairs what works at elite level with an applied reading of human behaviour and the psychology of performance. That is why it holds up with executives who have no interest in sport. She is an accredited high-performance and leadership coach and a Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team trainer, so her work runs from keynote into masterclass and team development. She has now spent more years coaching leaders and teams than she spent winning titles, and that is the half of the story that earns her the room. Key speaking topics Achieving and sustaining high performance High-performance culture and world-class teams Resilience and performance under pressure Recovery and refocus as a performance strategy Mindset for thriving under constant demand Leadership and high-performing teams Ideal for Executive and leadership teams under pressure to perform at a high level and repeat it CEOs and senior leaders who have reached a peak and need to sustain it without burning out the team Sales and commercial leadership operating in demanding, target-driven cycles HR and L&D leads designing high-performance and leadership development programmes Audience outcomes What it actually takes to reach a high level and hold it, beyond a single peak The specific behaviours that separate the best teams from the merely good Recovery and refocus methods they can use under pressure, treated as a performance tool, not a wellbeing add-on A first-hand account of being written off at her peak and coming back, used as working material on how resilience is built Language for talking about high performance and its disciplines with their own teams

Why organisations work with Shela Gobertina von Trapp She brings twenty years of sustainability operating experience to a story most people only know from the screen: founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership and a decade leading corporate sustainability at Office Depot across the US and Europe. She gives boards a usable frame for decisions whose payoff sits well beyond the current leadership’s tenure, which is the practical problem behind most long-term commitments. She is the one speaker who can connect a globally recognised family legacy directly to corporate questions of brand stewardship and long-term value, which makes the argument land rather than feel borrowed. Through the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she has worked inside the procurement standards and circular-economy roadmaps that large buyers actually use. Biography highlights Founder and President of Celebrity Legacy and co-founder of the Georg & Agathe Foundation, with the heritage project vonTrapp.org Founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP), the cross-industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030 Director of Global Relations at the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT environmental ecolabel Roughly a decade in corporate sustainability at Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, across the United States and Europe Master’s in Energy and Environmental Analysis from Boston University, with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Analysis and Policy awarded Magna Cum Laude Great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music Biography Most companies plan in quarters and report in years. The choices that shape a brand compound over decades, long after the leaders who made them have gone. Sustainability lives in that gap, judged on short cycles and paid for over much longer ones. Shela Gobertina von Trapp spent two decades working that gap from inside large organisations. At Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, she led corporate sustainability across the United States and Europe. At the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she became a founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership, an industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030. What makes her perspective unusual is its source. She is a great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and a granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music. She has spent years researching how that family held its identity through war, exile, and reinvention, and what allowed the name to outlast the people who carried it. She now puts the same question to companies in commercial terms: how does a brand earn the right to last? Drawing on the family archive and her sustainability work, she helps boards treat reputation and environmental commitment as assets that are stewarded across generations, the way the von Trapp name was. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability and the circular economy Long-term value and legacy thinking Brand longevity and stewardship Heritage and historical preservation Leadership lessons from the von Trapp family Values-based and purpose-driven leadership Sustainable procurement and electronics circularity Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG teams moving from reporting cycles to long-term substance Boards and family businesses weighing brand stewardship and succession across generations Heritage brands and organisations whose long-term reputation is itself a core asset Leadership and culture programmes wanting a substantive story about values that outlast their founders Audience outcomes A way to test today’s decisions against their consequences decades out, not just the current cycle A concrete account of how one family held its name through war and exile, and why that matters for institutions that want to last Sustainability reframed as a long-horizon asset that boards steward, illustrated with circular-economy examples from the electronics industry Reputation and brand understood as inheritances, built deliberately or eroded by default

Why organisations work with Adam Markel Author of three books on resilience and culture, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller Pivot and Change Proof (McGraw-Hill), with Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) setting out the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework for rebuilding trust and connection in teams. Leadership audiences get a researched body of work, not 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. His formats are built for application. Drawing on the Re-Culture argument that culture forms through repeated shared practice, sessions are structured to move a leadership team to specific commitments while still in the room. 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 Author of three books on resilience and culture: Pivot (Wall Street Journal bestseller), Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), and Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) 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 Corporate engagements with operating businesses including Medtronic and Jack in the Box 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 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 sit on top of his research practice at WORKWELL, where he is Co-Founder and Chief Researcher. Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) extends that work from the individual leader to the team. Its argument is that culture forms through what people repeatedly practise together, and it sets out a framework, WORK WELL TOGETHER, for rebuilding trust in organisations strained by constant change. That argument shapes how he runs a room: sessions are structured so a leadership team leaves with specific commitments it has agreed together. 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 seven seasons as an ocean lifeguard before any of it. That operator history is what senior audiences respond to, and it stays tested against current briefs through the Change Proof Podcast and engagements with operating businesses such as Medtronic and Jack in the Box. Key speaking topics Leadership resilience under sustained change Change Proof: building organisational capacity for uncertainty Re-Culture: designing culture through shared practice Workplace culture, trust, and engagement Leading through restructure and reinvention Burnout prevention in senior teams 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 Tina Stowell She has run a national regulator from the inside. As Chair of the Charity Commission for three years, she rebuilt how a public body holds an entire sector to account, and can speak to regulatory pressure with the authority of someone who has applied it. She is one of the few practitioners who has led a legislative chamber through politically contested change, including the passage of equal marriage law through the House of Lords. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee places her at the centre of UK scrutiny on generative AI, large language models and the future of news, with published committee reports cited by government and industry. She offers a working insight into how organisations earn or lose public trust, drawn from BBC corporate affairs, No. 10, the Cabinet table and a non-executive seat at Impellam Group plc. She speaks without political performance. Buyers commission her when the room contains regulators, ministers, journalists and executives who would all detect spin instantly. Biography highlights Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, 2014 to 2016, full Cabinet member from 2015. Chair, Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2018 to 2021. Chair, House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, with reports on generative AI, media literacy and the future of news. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs and Head of Communications for the BBC Trust. MBE in the 1996 Birthday Honours for service in the No. 10 Press Office under Prime Minister John Major. Spectator Peer of the Year, 2013 and 2024; Stonewall Politician of the Year, 2013. Non-executive director, Impellam Group plc; board member, ABTA; Social Mobility Commissioner since 2023. Biography The Charity Commission was a regulator that few outside the sector took seriously when Tina Stowell took the chair in 2018. Three years later it was setting the public conversation about how charities behave. That arc, from background body to active regulator, captures the kind of work she has built a career around: institutions under pressure, and the leadership choices that decide whether they recover authority or lose it. She came to that chairmanship through a route few in the Lords have taken. Five years in the No. 10 Press Office under John Major, recognised with an MBE in 1996. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs during a period of intense scrutiny of the Corporation. Deputy chief of staff to William Hague at Conservative Party headquarters. The pattern is consistent: senior communications and governance roles inside organisations whose legitimacy was being publicly tested. In 2014 she was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, becoming a full member of the Cabinet after the 2015 election. The previous year she had taken the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill through the Lords, work that drew Politician of the Year recognition from Stonewall and PinkNews and a first Spectator Peer of the Year award. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee has produced some of the more substantive UK parliamentary work on large language models, generative AI and the future of news, with the 2024 report on LLMs widely cited in the policy debate on AI safety and opportunity. She also brings the texture that comes from having grown up in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the daughter of a painter-decorator and a factory worker, with five O-levels and no university degree. That biography matters in the room. She has held cabinet rank, regulated a sector, and chaired the parliamentary committee scrutinising AI, without the credentialism that often accompanies those roles. Her Spectator Peer of the Year award was repeated in 2024 for parliamentary work on the ownership of UK newspapers. Key speaking topics Leadership and trust under public scrutiny AI governance and the UK regulatory environment Regulation as a leadership tool, not a compliance burden Decision-making in politically contested terrain Media, communications and reputational risk Public sector and charity sector governance Bridging divides across political, generational and institutional lines Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing regulatory or political exposure Senior leaders in regulated industries, charities, media and the public sector Communications, public affairs and corporate affairs leadership Policy and government relations teams in technology, financial services and consumer-facing businesses Audience outcomes A clearer view of what earns institutional trust in front of regulators, media and elected officials A practical reading of how UK and parliamentary scrutiny of AI is actually evolving Sharper instincts for spotting where leadership communication is hardening or losing the room A more honest sense of what the public sector expects of senior corporate leaders, from someone who has sat on both sides

Why organisations work with Shil Shanghavi His methodology has been stress-tested against the hardest possible conditions. Shanghavi manages a severe stutter and has built his entire framework from the requirement to communicate fluently under pressure. When he teaches communication, there is no abstraction – the techniques work because they had to. He turns a soft skill into a data problem. The SpeakerLab AI platform he developed measures pace, structure, eye contact, jargon, repetition, and narrative flow, giving organisations a means to track communication development in the same way they would any other performance metric. The music-based delivery technique is genuinely novel. His method of using musical time signatures and rhythm to manage presence, pacing, and fluency is not borrowed from conventional coaching. It is proprietary, demonstrably effective, and unmatched by other communication speakers in the market. His coaching background shapes the quality of practical output. As former Head of Speaker Coaching for TEDxPerth, he has worked with speakers whose performance is publicly scrutinised against one of the most demanding spoken-word formats in the world. That standard transfers to boardroom and conference work. Cross-cultural reach is operationally demonstrated. He has delivered keynotes and workshops to audiences across more than 70 countries, which means his frameworks have been tested for cultural transference, not just constructed for a single market. Biography highlights Former Head of Speaker Coaching, TEDxPerth Creator of SpeakerLab, an AI-powered platform that measures and analyses communication performance LinkedIn Top Voice for Public Speaking Subject of SHIL, an award-winning short film documentary (2021) chronicling his communication journey Presentation mentor, IMPACT 100 WA Has delivered keynotes and workshops to audiences across more than 70 countries Developed a proprietary communication technique using musical time signatures to manage fluency and stage presence Biography The most persistent failure in leadership development is not a shortage of smart people. It is a shortage of leaders who can make their thinking land. Communication breakdowns are rarely about content; they are about trust, presence, and the ability to make an audience believe that the person speaking has actually lived what they are saying. That problem sits at the centre of Shil Shanghavi’s work. Shanghavi built his communication framework from necessity. Managing a severe stutter since childhood, he developed a proprietary technique rooted in musical time signatures: using rhythm, pace, and structure drawn from progressive house music to achieve fluency and presence on stage. What began as a personal survival mechanism became a coaching methodology, tested over decades of practice and refined through his role as Head of Speaker Coaching for TEDxPerth, one of the most demanding public speaking environments in the world. His contribution to the field extends beyond technique. Shanghavi developed SpeakerLab, an AI platform that analyses communication performance across dimensions including eye contact, pacing, structure, jargon, and narrative coherence – translating what most coaches treat as intuition into measurable, actionable data. For organisations that have tried conventional presentation training and found it evaporates within weeks, the ability to quantify progress changes what improvement looks like in practice. His work spans more than 70 countries and a range of industries, with clients that include senior executives, leadership teams, and TEDx speakers preparing for high-scrutiny environments. He is a LinkedIn Top Voice for Public Speaking and the subject of a 2021 award-winning documentary, SHIL, which traces his journey from communication fear to global platform. Key speaking topics Storytelling as a leadership and trust-building discipline Communication under pressure and high-stakes environments AI and measurement in communication development Executive presence and authentic leadership communication Building organisational culture through narrative Cross-cultural communication and global audiences Overcoming communication fear and building confidence Ideal for CHROs and L&D leads commissioning leadership communication programmes Senior executive and C-suite teams preparing for high-visibility engagements Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines personal narrative with practical communication frameworks Organisations embedding authenticity and trust as cultural values at senior level Audience outcomes A practical framework for structuring stories in professional contexts – pitches, presentations, and leadership communications Familiarity with the SpeakerLab AI approach to measuring and improving communication performance Techniques for managing pressure, presence, and fluency in front of audiences of varying sizes and seniority A reframed understanding of authenticity as a practical communication tool, not a personality trait Confidence in applying storytelling principles to business communication across digital and in-person formats

Why organisations work with Lee Rubin He gives leadership teams a named, repeatable framework, the Five Cs (competitors, common goal, communication, chemistry, consistency), so culture work stops being a slogan and becomes a checklist a manager can run on Monday. He has lived both sides of the room: captain of a Big Ten football programme and 16+ years as an HR executive inside Fortune 500 environments including Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan. Audiences hear locker-room stories backed by enterprise people-strategy experience. He addresses the specific failure mode senior leaders see most often, talented individuals who do not function as a team, rather than the generic topic of “culture”. His delivery converts. Bureau and client materials consistently book him for sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and all-hands events where the goal is alignment before execution, not abstract inspiration. Biography highlights Captain and three-year starting free safety, Penn State Nittany Lions football. 1994 Florida Citrus Bowl Defensive MVP; All-Big Ten Conference selection; Honorable Mention All-American. 16+ years as a Human Resources executive serving Fortune 500 corporations. Author of WIN: Simple Insights to Help You Win the Game of Life and a companion edition for student-athletes. Signature keynote “5 Components of Extraordinary Teams” delivered to clients including Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan. TEDx presenter on team performance. Bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications with a Business minor, Penn State University. Biography A football captain learns something a corporate org chart rarely teaches. Talent is not the constraint. The constraint is whether eleven people, eleven directors, eleven engineers, share a goal clearly enough that they can adjust to each other in real time. Lee Rubin spent three years as a starting free safety at Penn State, captained the team, and earned 1994 Florida Citrus Bowl Defensive MVP honours. He then spent 16 years inside Fortune 500 HR functions watching the same dynamic play out in conference rooms. Out of that two-track career came the Five Cs: competitors, common goal, communication, chemistry, consistency. It is the spine of his signature keynote, “5 Components of Extraordinary Teams,” and it gives leaders a working vocabulary for diagnosing why a capable group is not performing as a team. Each component is concrete enough to be acted on the next week, not abstract enough to be ignored. His client list runs from Johnson & Johnson, Sony, and JP Morgan to college athletic departments and professional sports organisations. The range matters. The same framework that helps an enterprise sales team align around a quarterly goal helps a coaching staff align around a season. Buyers booking Rubin are typically wrestling with a specific symptom, post-merger silos, a stalled transformation, a high-turnover quarter, and want a session that produces shared language, not a closing high. He is also the author of WIN: Simple Insights to Help You Win the Game of Life, with a parallel edition written for student-athletes. The books extend the keynote argument: that the habits of high-performing teams, accountability, clarity of role, mutual respect, are the same habits that produce high-performing individuals. Key speaking topics Team performance and the Five Cs framework Building championship culture inside corporate teams Communication and chemistry under pressure Leadership lessons from elite athletics Employee engagement and buy-in Peak performance for individuals and teams Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders running culture, engagement, or post-merger integration work Sales leaders preparing kickoffs where alignment matters more than tactics Heads of transformation rebuilding teams after restructuring College and professional sports organisations investing in leadership development Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, the Five Cs, that managers can use the next day to diagnose team friction Specific tactics for converting individual talent into collective output Renewed clarity on the difference between a group of strong performers and a functioning team Practical communication habits that hold up when a team is under pressure