Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Afua Hagan A working national broadcaster, not a consultant: she speaks on inclusion from inside ITV, BBC, Sky and CNN newsrooms, with a live view of how representation is decided in real time. A practiced live host across high-stakes formats, including news anchoring, awards ceremonies and large corporate stages, where audience handling is the deliverable. Her TEDx talk “Too Dark for Daytime TV” gives her D&I work a specific, named provocation, drawn from a colleague’s comment about her on-screen suitability, rather than a generic equity argument. Recognised by the Black Women in Business Awards for broadcasting, and trusted as Royal Commentator for CTV News and Managing Editor at Black Business Magazine, which gives her credibility across both mainstream and Black British business audiences. Brought in by clients across very different sectors, from Cambridgeshire Police and the NHS to Compare the Market, Lidl and CMR Surgical, indicating a wide register: regulated public bodies, retail, financial services and medtech. Biography highlights TV news anchor and commentator on ITV’s This Morning and Good Morning Britain, Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine, BBC, Sky and CNN. Royal Commentator for CTV News and host of The Royal Tea, covering UK royal affairs for international audiences. Managing Editor at Black Business Magazine; International Correspondent for News Central Africa. Former Editor-in-Chief of Glam Africa Magazine; Features Editor at Pride; Editor of Blackhair; columnist for The Voice Newspaper. Host of CNBC’s Sustainable Energy; producer and anchor at Arise News. TEDxKingstonUponThames speaker, “Too Dark for Daytime TV”, February 2024. Honoured by the Black Women in Business Awards for broadcasting. Speaking and hosting clients include Retail Week, NHS, Cambridgeshire Police, Compare the Market, Inmarsat, Lidl, B&Q, Karcher, CMR Surgical, Syngenta, IQ Student Accommodation, WildBrain and London Metropolitan University. Biography A colleague once told her she was too dark for daytime television. That line became the title of her TEDxKingstonUponThames talk in 2024 and the spine of her speaking work. It is also why her perspective on diversity does not read as theory: it comes from inside the studios that decide who appears on a sofa at nine in the morning. The day job is broadcast journalism. She anchors and contributes across ITV’s This Morning and Good Morning Britain, Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine, BBC, Sky and CNN, and serves as Royal Commentator for CTV News. She is Managing Editor at Black Business Magazine and International Correspondent for News Central Africa, with prior editorships at Glam Africa, Pride and Blackhair, and a columnist seat at The Voice. CNBC’s Sustainable Energy and Arise News sit in the same editorial line. For corporate audiences, that breadth becomes hosting craft. She moderates panels, hosts awards and chairs internal town halls for clients including the NHS, Cambridgeshire Police, Compare the Market, Inmarsat, Lidl, B&Q, Karcher and CMR Surgical, where the brief is to keep a room engaged and a programme on time, not to deliver a thesis. When she does deliver a keynote, the argument is concrete: how representation gets negotiated in commissioning meetings, what tokenism looks like from the side of the person being booked, and how organisations can stop confusing public statements with internal practice. The Black Women in Business Awards have honoured her broadcasting work; she uses that platform to push the conversation about race and inclusion past the comfortable middle. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion in practice Representation in media and broadcasting Race, ethnicity and culture in the workplace Inclusive leadership and workplace culture Social mobility and opportunity Event hosting and panel moderation Royal affairs and current affairs commentary Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and internal communications leaders running inclusion programmes that need to move beyond statements. Boards and executive teams commissioning panel moderation or hosting for high-stakes internal and external events. Awards organisers, conference programme leads and industry associations needing a credible broadcast host. Public sector and regulated organisations briefing leaders on representation and community trust. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where diversity policy stops working in practice, and what a serious response looks like. Specific language for talking about race, ethnicity and culture without retreating into euphemism. A working frame for distinguishing tokenistic from substantive inclusion decisions. A panel or programme that runs sharply, with a host who can hold the room and the agenda.

Key speaking topics Organisational simplification Innovation strategy Reducing workplace complexity Challenging the status quo Leadership and ways of working Creating space for meaningful work Ideal for Senior leadership teams Strategy and transformation leaders Innovation and change teams Corporate conference audiences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how complexity limits innovation Practical approaches to simplifying processes and priorities Tools to challenge outdated practices and assumptions Greater clarity on creating space for higher-value work Why organisations work with Lisa Bodell Combines leadership experience with published research and practical frameworks. Brings a clear focus on simplification as a driver of innovation and performance. Experienced in working with large organisations across sectors. Provides structured thinking that supports strategic change initiatives. Biography Lisa Bodell works with organisations that want to remove unnecessary complexity and create the conditions for meaningful innovation. As founder and CEO of FutureThink, she advises and speaks to senior leaders on how to simplify strategy, streamline ways of working and unlock higher-value performance. Her work centres on challenging entrenched practices and helping organisations rethink how decisions are made, how time is spent and how priorities are set. Through keynote presentations and advisory engagements, she equips leadership teams with practical approaches to reducing friction and focusing on what matters most. Bodell is the author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins, both published by Routledge, where she explores how organisations can escape the complexity trap and build cultures that encourage innovation and accountability. Her ideas on simplification and change have reached global audiences, including through her TEDx talk on how simplification drives meaningful transformation. In addition to her books and speaking engagements, she writes as a Forbes contributor on topics including innovation, leadership and organisational effectiveness. She works with large organisations across sectors, supporting leaders who are navigating growth, transformation and the need to modernise how work gets done.

Why organisations work with Isabel Behncke Her evidence base is unusually direct. More than 3,000 kilometres tracking wild bonobos in Congo gave her the first comprehensive field study of adult play in our closest living relatives, which anchors every claim she makes about creativity and social bonding in observed behaviour rather than metaphor. She translates evolutionary biology into practical arguments about culture. Her framing of play as a core adult competence, not a perk, gives leaders a defensible language for investing in creativity, psychological safety and informal connection inside performance-driven cultures. She moves between serious scientific and serious commercial settings. TED main stage twice, WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20, which means she is used to calibrating the same argument for scientists, policymakers and executives. She holds institutional credibility across three continents. Oxford DPhil, Gruter Institute fellowship, PERC board seat and a research post at Universidad del Desarrollo’s Social Complexity Research Center, plus advisory work on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She sits outside the behavioural economics cohort. Her discipline is field ethology, which gives her arguments about trust, risk and collaboration a biological depth that lands differently with leaders who have already heard the standard behavioural science keynote. Biography highlights DPhil in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Oxford, with the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos at the Wamba research site in Congo. MPhil in Human Evolution from the University of Cambridge; BSc in Zoology and MSc in Wildlife Conservation from University College London. TED Fellow and TED Resident; two main-stage TED talks including «Evolution’s gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans» and «Does nature have a sense of humor?». Researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center (CICS), Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago; Fellow of the Gruter Institute for research on human behavior and institutions; board member at PERC. Advisory roles in Chile’s long-term strategy for science, technology, innovation and knowledge, with affiliations including the Centro de Estudios Publicos. Platform work includes WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the United Nations General Assembly, the House of Lords and the G20, alongside features in BBC and National Geographic documentaries and The Tim Ferriss Show. Biography Most organisations talk about creativity and collaboration as if they were cultural aspirations. Field ethology treats them as biological functions. Isabel Behncke built her career studying how social mammals, and specifically wild bonobos in the Congo, generate trust, creativity and resilience through play, risk-taking and informal bonding. Her DPhil at Oxford produced the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos, based on more than 3,000 kilometres of field observation at the Wamba research site. That field base shapes how she works with organisations. Her argument is that adult play is not a soft concept but an adaptive mechanism that underpins learning, social bonding and innovation in every species that depends on flexible behaviour, humans included. Leaders hear a case for culture that is rooted in evolutionary evidence rather than slogans, delivered by someone who has watched these behaviours in the wild. Her institutional footprint runs across science, policy and public platforms. She is a researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, a Fellow of the Gruter Institute, a board member at PERC and an adviser on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She is a TED Fellow and TED Resident, has spoken twice from the main TED stage, and has appeared at WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20. For senior leaders grappling with how to build adaptive, creative teams under pressure, she offers a rare combination: the rigour of a field scientist, the clarity of a seasoned public communicator, and a set of questions most boards have never asked about why their best work tends to happen in their least controlled rooms. Key speaking topics Play as a driver of adult creativity and adaptation Trust, risk-taking and social bonding inside teams Evolutionary perspectives on organisational culture Human behaviour, complexity and change Creativity and the science of collaboration Rituals and informal structure in working life Ideal for CEOs, Chief People Officers and culture leads rethinking collaboration, creativity or psychological safety Leadership and talent development programmes that want a serious scientific frame rather than another behavioural economics keynote Innovation, R&D and design leaders examining how team environments shape creative output Organisations rebuilding rituals and informal structure after hybrid and remote disruption Audience outcomes A clear evolutionary case for why adult play, humour and informal bonding shape performance, not just morale Language for talking about trust, risk and creativity that rests on observed behaviour in social mammals A sharper read on which cultural habits accelerate adaptation and which quietly suppress it Fresh questions to ask about how teams learn, collaborate and recover under sustained pressure

Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture and values Leadership and people management Employee recognition strategies HR communication Organisational values and behaviour Employee wellbeing and inclusion Ideal for HR leaders and people strategy teams Senior leaders responsible for culture and engagement Organisations seeking to strengthen recognition and workplace values Businesses focused on improving employee communication and engagement Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how engagement, recognition, and values shape organisational culture Practical frameworks for improving HR communication and leadership behaviours Approaches for embedding organisational values into everyday workplace practices Strategies for strengthening employee recognition and engagement initiatives Why organisations work with Debra Corey Combines practical HR leadership experience with consulting and speaking expertise. Brings insight from senior roles in global organisations across HR and reward functions. Author of multiple books focused on employee engagement, recognition, communication, and leadership. Provides organisations with structured, practical approaches to strengthening culture, leadership, and employee experience. Biography Debra Corey brings deep expertise in employee engagement, recognition, workplace culture, and HR communication, developed through senior roles in global organisations and her work advising companies on building stronger people strategies. Her approach focuses on practical ways leaders can create cultures where values are lived, communication is clear, and employees feel recognised and engaged. Before founding Step It Up HR, Debra held senior HR and reward leadership roles at international organisations including Gap Inc., Merlin Entertainments, Reward Gateway, Quintiles, and Honeywell. Across these roles she worked at the centre of people strategy, shaping reward, engagement, and communication programmes within complex global businesses. Today, through Step It Up HR, she works with organisations to strengthen leadership capability, employee engagement, recognition strategies, and organisational values. Her work focuses on helping leaders translate HR strategy into everyday behaviours that support culture, wellbeing, and performance. Debra is the author or co-author of six books covering leadership, employee engagement, recognition, values, and HR communication, including Effective HR Communication, Build It, Bringing Your Values Out to Play, Appreciate It!, See It. Say It. Appreciate It! and Bad Bosses Ruin Lives. Her thinking on employee engagement and workplace culture has also led to her being recognised multiple times as one of the Top 101 Global Employee Engagement Influencers and named among HR Magazine’s Most Influential HR Thinkers.

Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Team culture and accountability High-performance environments Resilience and mental wellbeing Inclusive leadership Sustaining excellence in teams Ideal for Senior leaders and leadership teams Corporate and professional sports organisations Organisations focused on culture and inclusion Teams operating in high-pressure environments Audience outcomes Clear insights into long-term leadership and captaincy. Practical understanding of building and sustaining team culture. Perspective on resilience and wellbeing in performance settings. Lessons from elite sport applied to organisational contexts. Why organisations work with Kate Richardson-Walsh Brings first-hand experience of leading teams at the highest international level. Offers credible, lived insights from an Olympic gold medal-winning programme. Connects leadership, culture and inclusion to real performance outcomes. Provides practical perspectives drawn from elite sport and coaching roles. Biography Kate Richardson-Walsh is one of the most experienced captains in international team sport, with a career defined by long-term leadership, elite performance and sustained accountability at the highest level of competition. As a former England and Great Britain women’s hockey international, she led national teams through multiple Olympic cycles and remains the most-capped female player in the programme’s history. She captained Great Britain and England for 13 years, guiding teams through periods of challenge, transition and renewal. Her leadership culminated in Olympic gold with Team GB women’s hockey, following an earlier Olympic bronze, and appearances across four Olympic Games. Her tenure as captain is widely recognised for its focus on standards, responsibility and collective ownership within high-performance environments. Alongside her international playing career, Kate has built senior coaching experience, including head coach and assistant coach roles within elite club and international programmes. This has strengthened her perspective on leadership from both athlete and coach viewpoints, bridging performance, development and culture. Kate is co-author of Winning Together: An Olympic-Winning Approach to Building Better Teams, which translates lessons from elite sport into practical frameworks for organisational leadership, collaboration and culture. She also speaks openly about mental health challenges in high-performance settings, contributing to informed and grounded conversations about resilience, wellbeing and sustainable success. Together with her wife, Helen Richardson-Walsh, Kate made history as the first same-sex married couple to win Olympic gold as part of the same team. Her work with organisations draws on lived experience of leadership under pressure, inclusive team cultures and delivering results in complex, demanding environments.

Why organisations work with Janey Lee Grace She brings a national-broadcast voice to a workplace wellbeing topic most internal teams avoid raising: how alcohol shows up in meetings, client entertainment, conferences and team rituals. Her coaching method is built around grey area drinkers, the majority of working adults who are not clinically dependent but whose drinking quietly affects sleep, mood, decision-making and presenteeism. The Sober Club gives her a live evidence base of what actually shifts behaviour at scale, drawn from a community of members and an accredited coach training programme, not theory alone. She is credible to a senior audience: 25+ years on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon, a TEDx talk on sobriety, and the Amazon No. 1 bestseller Imperfectly Natural Woman. She speaks about alcohol culture without moralising, which is the practical reason internal sponsors trust her in front of mixed audiences. Biography highlights Co-presenter for more than two decades on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon Founder of The Sober Club, an online community and coaching business focused on alcohol-free living Host of the Alcohol Free Life podcast, 450+ episodes, ranked by the publisher in the top 5% globally TEDx speaker, Sobriety Rocks: Who Knew!, TEDxNorwichED, 2019 Author of Happy Healthy Sober, the Amazon No. 1 bestseller Imperfectly Natural Woman, and the memoir From Wham to Woo Founder of the Janey Loves Platinum Awards, an annual awards programme for the natural and wellbeing sector, in its tenth year Biography Most workplaces are quietly built around alcohol. It anchors networking events, end-of-quarter celebrations, client dinners and the social glue between teams. Wellbeing programmes rarely touch it, because the topic feels personal and the social cost of raising it feels too high. That gap is the territory Janey Lee Grace works in. Her route into the subject is unusually credible. She spent more than two decades as a co-presenter on BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon, one of the most listened-to shows in the UK, and built a parallel career as an author of bestselling books on natural health, including the Amazon No. 1 Imperfectly Natural Woman. In January 2018 she stopped drinking. The Sober Club, the coaching practice, the Alcohol Free Life podcast and the TEDx talk Sobriety Rocks: Who Knew! followed. What she offers organisations is not a personal story dressed up as a talk. It is a practical argument grounded in the concept of grey area drinking, the working population who are not dependent but whose drinking shapes how they sleep, recover, present and decide. She is a qualified Grey Area Drinking Coach, an NLP Practitioner and an EFT practitioner, and she trains other coaches through an accredited programme. The Sober Club gives her a continuous read on what shifts behaviour for working adults outside a clinical setting. The point for a senior audience is not abstinence. It is to make alcohol a legible part of a wellbeing strategy: visible in policy, visible in event design, visible in how leaders model the social contract of work. That is a conversation most organisations have not had, and she is one of the few public figures equipped to start it without the room going defensive. Key speaking topics Workplace alcohol culture and wellbeing strategy Grey area drinking and performance at work Sobriety, sober-curious living and behaviour change Mental health and the social contract of work Natural health and holistic wellbeing Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for HR, wellbeing and culture leads designing post-pandemic wellbeing programmes DEI and employee resource group sponsors looking at inclusion of non-drinkers and recovering drinkers Internal communications and events teams rethinking the role of alcohol at company events Professional services and finance leaders where client entertainment culture is a live issue Audience outcomes A language for discussing alcohol at work that does not moralise or alienate drinkers The grey area drinking framework as a way to think about wellbeing risk in the working population Specific prompts for redesigning company events, client entertainment and team rituals A clearer view of how alcohol intersects with sleep, mood, presenteeism and decision quality Permission, for leaders who want it, to model a different default

Why organisations work with Gillian Tett Her track record on the 2008 crisis is specific and verifiable: she conducted ethnographic research into JPMorgan’s banking culture from 2005 to 2007, published FT warnings about derivative risk before the crash, and documented the analysis in Fool’s Gold – giving organisations a concrete, tested basis for trusting her read of current systemic risk. The Anthro-Vision framework translates anthropological field methods into a practical leadership tool: a way to surface the unstated assumptions, classification systems, and cultural dynamics that standard data analysis cannot reach. The Silo Effect provides boards with a specific diagnostic – that the most dangerous organisational failure modes are cultural, not structural – and a set of case-studied arguments for why addressing them requires a different kind of analysis than process redesign. As co-founder of FT Moral Money, she has tracked the ESG movement from its earliest institutional phase, giving her a longitudinal perspective on how sustainability commitments become financial and reputational risk that few analysts or advisers can match. Her simultaneous role as an active FT journalist and Provost of King’s College Cambridge produces a form of authority that is genuinely rare: live market intelligence, editorial independence, and academic standing, without advisory-firm positioning. Biography highlights 45th Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, since October 2023 FT editorial board member and weekly columnist; former US managing editor (2013-2019) and former Chair of the FT US Editorial Board Co-founder, FT Moral Money newsletter Author of four books: Fool’s Gold (New York Times bestseller), The Silo Effect, Anthro-Vision (Porchlight best business book award; Columbia Business School Eccles prize), and Saving the Sun PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge Awards: Wincott Prize for financial journalism (2007); British Press Awards – Business Journalist of the Year (2008), Journalist of the Year (2009), Columnist of the Year (2014); British Academy President’s Medal (2011); American Anthropological Association President’s Medal (2022); OBE for services to journalism (2024) Chair of the board of trustees, Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism, Columbia University Biography Gillian Tett has spent thirty years at the Financial Times covering global markets. What she found, consistently, is that what moves them is cultural as much as numerical. The forces shaping systemic risk – tribal behaviour, unspoken institutional assumptions, rigid classification systems – are largely invisible in standard economic analysis. Her most verifiable proof point came before the 2008 financial crisis. From 2005 to 2007, she studied JPMorgan’s banking culture ethnographically and published FT warnings about the systemic risks of credit derivatives – risks that most economists and regulators had not yet identified. Fool’s Gold – a New York Times bestseller – documented that analysis and became one of the definitive accounts of how cultural insularity inside banking created the conditions for the crash. Her subsequent books formalised the method. The Silo Effect showed how cultural classification systems – not just structural inefficiencies – create the organisational blindness that precedes major strategic failures. Anthro-Vision – winner of the Porchlight best business book award and the Columbia Business School Eccles prize – translated this into a practical framework for applying anthropological field methods to business, markets, and geopolitical risk. Her current position is what makes her singular. As the 45th Provost of King’s College Cambridge and an active FT columnist, she reports on markets while leading one of the world’s most significant academic institutions. She co-founded FT Moral Money and holds the OBE for services to journalism. Key speaking topics Global economic risk and geopolitical uncertainty Financial markets and systemic risk Anthropological analysis in business and strategy Organisational silos and decision-making failure ESG and sustainable finance Political tribalism and social change Cultural dynamics of markets and institutions Ideal for Board directors and C-suite executives navigating economic and geopolitical uncertainty CFOs, CROs, and investment audiences requiring independent analysis of financial market dynamics CHROs and transformation leads addressing structural silos, organisational culture, and decision-making quality Policy, government, and public sector leaders facing complex political and economic risk Audience outcomes A framework for identifying the cultural assumptions and social dynamics that standard economic analysis tends to miss A clearer perspective on how organisational silos and cultural classification systems create the blindness that precedes strategic and financial failure Practical insight into how anthropological methods can be applied to risk assessment, market analysis, and organisational decision-making A grounded, independent reading of current global economic forces and geopolitical shifts, drawn from active FT journalism A reframing of ESG as a systemic risk discipline rather than a reputational management exercise

Why organisations work with Erica Dhawan She owns two named, published frameworks, Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language, each with its own book, research base, and Fortune 500 application record. Few collaboration speakers operate from a body of work this specific. Her Digital Body Language thesis gives leaders a vocabulary for what was previously a vague complaint about hybrid communication. Buyers describe it as the language their people had been missing. Thinkers50 recognition and a Wall Street Journal bestseller give her credibility with boards and executive committees that are sceptical of soft-skill keynotes. The work has been pressure-tested across unusually wide terrain: World Economic Forum, US Army, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Cisco. The frameworks travel across sector, hierarchy, and culture. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. Co-author of Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence with Saj-nicole Joni. Named to Thinkers50; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 RADAR award for emerging management thinkers. Founder and CEO of Cotential, advising global organisations on 21st-century collaboration. TED speaker; talk on connection across distance has surpassed 2 million views. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal. Education: Wharton (BS), MIT Sloan (MBA), Harvard Kennedy School (MPA). Biography Most hybrid organisations are not short of communication. They are drowning in it. Slack threads, video calls, emoji reactions and read receipts now carry the signals that body language used to. Few leaders have a real method for reading them, and the cost shows up in slower decisions, weaker trust and quiet disengagement. Erica Dhawan built a framework for exactly that problem. Her book Digital Body Language, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, decodes the cues that replace tone, posture and eye contact when teams work across distance, generation and channel. It gives executives a working vocabulary for what until recently was a vague complaint about hybrid culture. Her earlier book with Saj-nicole Joni, Get Big Things Done, introduced the idea of Connectional Intelligence: the practical capability to combine networks, knowledge and ambition into outsized organisational outcomes. Both bodies of work share a single intellectual claim, that the way people connect is now the highest-leverage variable in performance. Thinkers50 has recognised her on this thesis, and her writing appears regularly in Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. The work has been stress-tested in unusually varied rooms. She has briefed the World Economic Forum, the US Army, and global teams at Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart and Cisco. Her TED Talk on connection across distance has been watched more than two million times, an unusual reach for a topic that most speakers struggle to make concrete. Key speaking topics Digital body language and hybrid communication Connectional Intelligence and cross-silo collaboration High-performing teams in the age of AI Trust and engagement across distributed workforces Multigenerational and cross-cultural communication Leadership communication for hybrid organisations Sales and client communication across digital channels Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture redesigning hybrid operating models. Executive teams responsible for cross-functional or cross-geography collaboration. Sales leaders managing client relationships across digital and hybrid channels. Learning and leadership development heads building communication capability at scale. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the digital cues that drive trust and misunderstanding inside hybrid teams. Specific tools for cutting ambiguity from email, chat and video communication. A clearer read on where hybrid working is costing the organisation in speed, decision quality and engagement. Practical methods for building Connectional Intelligence across silos, generations and cultures. A sharper understanding of how AI tools change, but do not replace, the work of human collaboration.

Why organisations work with Emma Willis Two decades of live presenting across every major UK broadcaster, plus Netflix, develops a capacity to read a room under pressure and adapt in real time that most available hosts simply do not have. That composure is the product. Her six-series run on Big Brother (2013-2018) required managing emotionally unpredictable situations live, on camera, with no preparation time. Her skill set (firm pacing, genuine empathy, zero visible panic) is directly transferable to panel discussions, live Q&As, or award presentations that do not go to plan. The W Channel’s “Delivering Babies,” for which she trained and qualified as a Maternity Care Assistant, won the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual for three consecutive years. It is evidence that when she commits to a subject, the result is award-winning rather than merely competent. Her appointment to BBC Radio 2’s Saturday lunchtime slot from January 2026, taking over from Zoe Ball, reflects the institutional trust that comes with consistently delivering at the highest level of British broadcasting, a validation that is straightforward for senior buyers to cite. As a Prince’s Trust ambassador, she brings an existing, public relationship with purpose-driven work to occasions where charitable giving or social commitments are part of the event’s agenda. Biography highlights Broadcast presenter since 2002; major credits across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Netflix Main host of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 5 (2013-2018) Presenter of The Voice UK (2014-present), initially BBC One then ITV; also hosted The Voice Kids UK Co-host of Love Is Blind: UK alongside Matt Willis, Netflix (2024) BBC Radio 2 Saturday lunchtime presenter from January 2026 Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual, three consecutive years (Delivering Babies, W Channel) Prince’s Trust ambassador Former fashion model; campaigns for Gap, Chanel, and Samsung; editorial work for Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue Biography Live occasions are unforgiving. A host who is technically capable but emotionally disconnected leaves the room cold; one who is warm but underprepared leaves it chaotic. Emma Willis has spent more than two decades navigating both risks: across reality television, talent competitions, factual documentary, entertainment, and radio, formats as different from each other as any two occasions a programme director might need to anchor. Her television career began at MTV in 2002 and expanded through Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 5, 2013-2018), The Voice UK (BBC One then ITV, 2014-present), The Circle (Channel 4), and Love Is Blind: UK (Netflix, 2024, with her husband Matt Willis). Each format demanded a different register: firm management of contestants under pressure, warmth with young singers, curiosity about social dynamics, empathy in emotionally complex moments. The consistency across all of them is not a personality trait, it is a professional discipline. In 2019, Willis trained and qualified as a Maternity Care Assistant for the W Channel’s “Delivering Babies” series, working real shifts in a real maternity ward, not observing as a celebrity. The series won the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual for three consecutive years. The project illustrated something her broadcast career had long implied: a genuine capacity to be present on the subject’s terms, not her own. From January 2026, she presents BBC Radio 2’s Saturday lunchtime slot, one of the most scrutinised appointments in British broadcasting. She is a Prince’s Trust ambassador. Her early career as a fashion model, with campaigns for Gap, Chanel, and Samsung and editorial work for Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue gives her a credible platform to speak on fashion, personal style, and media at occasions where those subjects are part of the agenda. Key speaking topics Live broadcast presenting and audience connection Fashion, personal style, and public image Resilience and personal reinvention Authenticity in public and professional life Charitable work and purpose-driven engagement Career development and life transitions Ideal for Awards ceremonies, gala dinners, and internal celebration events Brand launches and consumer-facing occasions Charity fundraisers and purpose-led events Fashion, lifestyle, and consumer industry conferences Audience outcomes An occasion that is paced, emotionally responsive, and memorable rather than merely completed A sense that the room was hosted for the people in it, not managed at them Consistent energy and composure across a full live programme, including unscripted moments Confidence in the platform from the moment the event begins Where relevant, personal insight on resilience, authenticity, and life in the public eye that participants can apply beyond the occasion itself

Why organisations work with Claudia Winkleman Her work on The Traitors demonstrated something unusual: the ability to hold a psychologically complex, unpredictable live format steady without losing warmth or control. Organisations working with her get a host who has been tested in conditions that no rehearsal can replicate. She reads the energy in a room and adjusts in real time – a skill built across more than three decades of live television, not a style choice. Events that hinge on tone, timing, and the ability to recover from the unexpected are where she is most valuable. Her cultural reach is unusually broad. She is recognisable to audiences across age groups and industry sectors without carrying the baggage of a single defining format. That breadth makes her a natural fit for organisations whose people do not all share the same cultural references. Quite, her No.1 Sunday Times bestselling book, demonstrated that her ability to connect is not limited to the room she is physically in – it translates to audiences who encounter her without the benefit of her presence. Where other high-profile hosts bring a format, Winkleman brings a quality of attention. Testimonials from industry awards events – including the UK Jewellery Awards and the British Fashion Awards – consistently describe her as someone who was genuinely responsive to the specific audience in the room, not delivering a generic performance. Biography highlights BAFTA winner, Best Entertainment Performance, 2023, for hosting The Traitors (BBC One) MBE, 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to broadcasting Co-host, Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One), 2010-2025 – one of the BBC’s longest-running primetime partnerships Host, The Traitors (BBC One), 2022-present – the show became one of BBC One’s most-watched reality formats Host, The Piano (Channel 4), 2023-present Author, Quite (HarperCollins, 2020) – No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Royal Television Society Award for Best Presenter, 2015 BBC Radio 2 Saturday morning presenter, 2020-2024 Cambridge University graduate in History of Art Biography Claudia Winkleman has spent more than thirty years working out how to make people feel genuinely present in a room. She co-hosted Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One from 2010 to 2025 and has presented The Traitors – one of the BBC’s most-watched reality formats – since its launch in 2022. In 2023 she won the BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance for that role. The range of those two programmes is worth noting. Strictly is built on warmth, spectacle, and public affection. The Traitors is built on psychological tension, deception, and uncertainty. Winkleman holds both with the same quality of attention, which is rarer than it sounds. Most hosts are calibrated for one register. She moves between them without visible adjustment. Her work off-screen reinforces the same point. Quite (HarperCollins, 2020) reached No.1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list and found readers who had never watched either programme – evidence that her ability to connect is not dependent on format or setting. She was awarded an MBE in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. From 2026, she fronts her own BBC One chat show, The Claudia Winkleman Show, produced by So Television. That commission – from the maker of The Graham Norton Show – marks the next stage of a career that has earned its authority through sustained, publicly visible performance across some of British television’s most demanding live formats. Key speaking topics The art of live communication and audience connection Human behaviour, trust, and deception Authenticity in public and professional life Hosting, moderating, and event craft Creativity and the discipline of warmth Storytelling and tone Ideal for Senior leadership conferences and company-wide events requiring a host with genuine gravitas and cultural reach Industry awards ceremonies where tone, timing, and genuine responsiveness to the room matter Brand and consumer-facing events where the host is a signal about the organisation’s values Events where the audience is broad, multigenerational, or crosses sector boundaries Audience outcomes A room that feels genuinely held rather than managed – audiences typically leave with a stronger sense of shared experience A model for what genuine, unperformed warmth looks and sounds like in high-stakes communication settings Exposure to a practitioner who has navigated both high-warmth and high-tension live formats at the top of British broadcasting For leadership audiences: a concrete illustration of what it means to be present, curious, and responsive rather than polished and scripted

Why organisations work with Charlotte Sweeney She has the rare credential of having written a UK government-commissioned policy review on women on boards, the 2014 Sweeney Review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which directly shaped the Enhanced Code for executive search firms. Leaders FIRST gives her a named diagnostic framework, drawn from work with more than 3,000 senior leaders, that identifies the five reasons inclusion change actually stalls inside a business. That is unusual in a field dominated by training products without a thesis. Her co-authored book Inclusive Leadership, published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2018, gives executive audiences a substantive reference rather than a slide deck. Twelve years of running Charlotte Sweeney Associates means she briefs at C-suite level on what has actually worked, and what has quietly failed, across financial services, FMCG, luxury, healthcare, and professional services. She is credible in the current climate where DEI is contested. She talks about inclusion as a leadership discipline, not a political position, which is what most boards now need. Biography highlights OBE, 2017 New Year Honours, for services to Women and Equalities. Author of the 2014 Independent Review of the Voluntary Code of Conduct for Executive Search Firms, commissioned by the UK Business Secretary. Co-author, Inclusive Leadership (FT Publishing, 2016), shortlisted for CMI Management Book of the Year 2018. Founder and CEO, Charlotte Sweeney Associates, established 2012. Chartered Management Consultant; 2025 MCA Inclusion Award winner; finalist, Times Management Consultant of the Year 2025. Named among HR’s Most Influential Thinkers; former member of the Forbes HR Council. Biography Most inclusion programmes fail at the same point. The strategy is signed off, the metrics get published, and within eighteen months the leadership team has rotated, the budget has been clipped, and the work has lost its centre of gravity. Sweeney has spent more than two decades watching this pattern, first inside global financial services, then through her own firm. She founded Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012 and has since advised C-suites and boards across financial services, FMCG, luxury, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. The firm’s signature framework, Leaders FIRST, was built from input from more than 3,000 senior leaders and isolates the five barriers that actually stop inclusion work landing: fear, ignorance, relinquishing responsibility, systemic inertia, and time. Her credibility on policy is not theoretical. In 2014 she authored the independent review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, commissioned by Business Secretary Vince Cable, into the executive search firms’ Voluntary Code of Conduct on women on boards. The review directly shaped the Enhanced Code that followed. She received an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to Women and Equalities. The book she co-authored with Fleur Bothwick, Inclusive Leadership, was published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year 2018. It is the reference she leaves with executive teams who want a serious working text rather than a training deck. In 2025, the Management Consultancies Association named her firm winner of its Inclusion Award, and the Times shortlisted her for Management Consultant of the Year. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership at board and C-suite level Diversity, equity and inclusion strategy Culture transformation Women on boards and senior pipeline Leaders FIRST: barriers to culture change Wellbeing in the workplace Inclusion in a contested political climate Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Chief Inclusion Officers redesigning DEI strategy after political and budget pressure Boards and executive committees holding the line on inclusion as a governance issue, not a campaign Executive search and talent functions reviewing pipeline practice for senior appointments CEOs leading culture transformation where prior inclusion programmes have lost momentum Audience outcomes A clear read on why most DEI programmes lose executive support, drawn from named patterns across sectors The Leaders FIRST diagnostic, which gives leaders a shared language for the five barriers to culture change A defensible position on inclusion that holds up under board scrutiny in the current political environment Practical reference points from a UK government policy review and a decade of C-suite advisory work A senior peer voice on what separates inclusion theatre from inclusion as an operating discipline

Why organisations work with Carole Gaskell Her use of Motivational Mapping gives organisations something a standard engagement survey does not: a diagnostic map of where individual and team energy is being lost and why, before it becomes a performance or retention problem. As a Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps, she brings three complementary frameworks to the same conversation, addressing how people think, what drives them, and how they communicate under pressure. Her book Full Potential Leadership sets out the case for coaching-led culture change: that leaders who cannot identify what motivates their people are operating with a structural blind spot, not a skills gap. Her executive background – Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, involved in both flotation and the sale of the business – gives her credibility in C-suite conversations about performance as a commercial issue rather than a wellbeing one. Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards and consistent recognition for personal impact on CEO-level audiences reflect a track record of shifting thinking in rooms where change is genuinely hard. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Full Potential Group, one of the UK’s longest-established leadership and executive coaching firms, founded in the late 1990s Author of four books: Full Potential Leadership, Full Potential Coach, Transform Your Life, and Your Pocket Life Coach Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards; voted speaker with the most personal impact on CEO and senior leadership audiences Keynote and facilitation work spanning Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, Nationwide Building Society, Heinz, Lend Lease, JLL, Roche, Urenco and Starbucks, among others Speaker at CIPD conferences in the UK and Asia Pacific, Vistage CEO groups and international investment forums Former Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc; involved in flotation and the eventual sale of the business Biography Leadership development spending has grown steadily for decades. Engagement numbers have not kept pace. Carole Gaskell, founder of Full Potential Group, has spent more than 25 years working on the reason – and what leadership teams can actually do about it. The diagnostic tools she deploys are specific and measurable. Motivational Mapping identifies nine intrinsic motivators at individual and team level, giving leaders a way to see where energy is being generated and where it is being lost. Insights Discovery profiling and Neuro-agility assessment address the other half of the picture: how people process information, communicate under pressure, and learn. Carole is a Master Certified Practitioner across all three frameworks. Her book Full Potential Leadership argues that high-performing cultures cannot be designed around strategy alone. Leaders who do not understand what motivates their people are solving a human problem with structural tools – and wondering why the results do not last. She makes that argument with organisations, not just to them. Her client work spans Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, JLL and Nationwide Building Society. Conference delivery includes CIPD events in the UK and Asia Pacific and Vistage CEO forums internationally. Before founding Full Potential Group, Carole served as Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, working through flotation and eventual sale. That background sets the frame for how she talks about performance: not as a leadership ideal, but as a commercial outcome that depends on getting the people conditions right. Key speaking topics Motivational intelligence and workforce engagement Leadership culture and high-performance team design Coaching as an organisational capability Neuro-agility and cognitive performance at work Team diagnostics and motivational profiling Employee energy, wellbeing and sustainable performance The future of leadership in changing organisations Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and people directors building engagement and performance strategies that go beyond the annual survey CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking measurable approaches to culture and people performance L&D leaders designing programmes that address motivation and mindset, not just skills Boards and executive teams preparing for significant change where people commitment is the critical variable Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding the nine intrinsic motivators and identifying dominant drivers in themselves and their teams A diagnostic language for motivation that can be applied immediately in 1:1s, team reviews and performance conversations Specific leadership behaviours that build high-performance cultures, and the common patterns that undermine them Practical tools for sustaining motivation and energy through change, pressure and uncertainty A clearer distinction between engagement – a feeling that surveys can capture – and motivation, a variable that can be tracked and acted on