Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Bonnie Greer She has sat on both sides of the table that boards rarely bridge: working artist and critic, and Deputy Chairman of the British Museum. That shapes how she reads institutional risk. Her five years as Chancellor of Kingston University give her a direct view of how younger cohorts now test the legitimacy of large institutions. As a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of a Langston Hughes biography, she brings a historical reading of race, class and representation that resists slogan-level answers. Her BBC Question Time and Newsnight Review record means she is practised at holding a position under pressure in front of a sceptical audience, which is what most boardrooms now need to rehearse. Biography highlights OBE for services to the Arts, 2010 Birthday Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected July 2022. Deputy Chairman, Board of Trustees, the British Museum, from 2009; Trustee from 2005. Chancellor, Kingston University, from 2013. Author of Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction (2011) and the memoir A Parallel Life (2014). Regular BBC Question Time panellist and contributor to BBC Newsnight Review. Biography Culture is no longer a soft topic on the board agenda. It is where reputational risk, workforce expectation and public trust now meet, and it is the area where leadership teams most often find they are underprepared. Bonnie Greer has spent a career at that intersection, as a working playwright and critic and as a senior governor of two of the UK’s most scrutinised public institutions. She was appointed to the British Museum’s Board of Trustees in 2005 and served as its Deputy Chairman from 2009, through a period when museums were being forced to rethink their relationship with history, acquisition and audience. She went on to serve as Chancellor of Kingston University from 2013, which gave her a sustained view of how the next generation of graduates now read institutional legitimacy. Her authorial work sharpens the same themes. Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction, published in 2011, is a study of a writer who refused to resolve the contradictions of American race and class into a usable slogan. Her 2014 memoir A Parallel Life traces her own route from the South Side of Chicago to British public life. The Royal Society of Literature elected her a Fellow in 2022. She is one of the most recognised commentators on BBC Question Time and was a regular contributor to Newsnight Review, including the 2009 Question Time edition opposite Nick Griffin that became a reference point for how public institutions handle hostile argument on live television. Key speaking topics Culture, representation and institutional credibility Public discourse and the management of contested argument Governance of cultural and educational institutions Race, class and history in organisational life Storytelling as a leadership tool Creativity and freedom of expression at work Ideal for Boards and executive committees of cultural, educational and public-facing institutions CHROs and Chief People Officers working on inclusion, representation and workforce voice Communications and corporate affairs leaders preparing for contested public conversations University leadership teams and professional services partners with significant public-sector exposure Audience outcomes A sharper reading of how culture and representation now shape institutional reputation Confidence to hold a position on contested social questions without defaulting to compliance language A more historical frame for current debates on race, class and public trust A clearer sense of where governance, artistic voice and public accountability intersect

Why organisations work with Beth Davies She ran learning and development at Tesla through a workforce expansion from roughly 600 to 33,000 employees, so her playbook on hypergrowth culture is built from the inside, not observed from outside. She led retail talent development at Apple during the iPhone launch and was on the founding team that built Microsoft’s retail stores from zero to fifteen in eighteen months, giving her rare comparative insight into how two very different consumer technology giants trained their customer-facing workforces. She teaches on IE University’s Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, which keeps her arguments tested against the next generation of HR leaders rather than frozen at the point she left corporate roles. McKinsey invited her into its Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning and Development, a signal that her views on workplace learning are taken seriously by the people advising the world’s largest employers. She speaks in concrete operational detail: what the onboarding looked like, how the first week was designed, what broke at which headcount, what the CEO actually said in the room. Biography highlights Former Director of Learning and Development, Tesla (2011 to 2017) Former Director of Retail Talent Development, Apple (2003 to 2008) Former Director of Customer Experience and Training, Microsoft (2009 to 2011) Adjunct Professor, Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, IE University, Madrid Founder and host of the Career Curves podcast JD, Stanford Law School; BA, Indiana University; named Luminary by Indiana University in 2016 Biography Tesla grew from around 600 people to 33,000 in the six years Beth Davies ran its learning and development function. That scale of expansion usually breaks culture. Keeping it intact was her job. Before Tesla, she had already done two of the hardest workforce build-outs in modern retail. At Apple, she was head of retail talent development during the years the stores were becoming the company’s most important customer relationship. She trained teams across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia and prepared thousands of store employees to sell the iPhone on day one. At Microsoft, she joined the small founding team that built the company’s own retail operation from zero to fifteen stores in eighteen months, setting the customer experience standards and the training that went with them. Her argument to senior leaders is that culture is not a slogan or a values poster. It is the behaviour that shows up in onboarding, in manufacturing floor routines, in how a new hire’s first week is designed, and in what managers are actually trained to do. When companies scale quickly, those details get delegated and diluted, and the product suffers. Protecting them is a leadership discipline, not an HR programme. She now teaches on IE University’s Master in Talent Development and Human Resources, advises EdTech founders, and hosts the Career Curves podcast. McKinsey’s Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning and Development invited her in as one of forty thought leaders it wanted in the room. Her Stanford law training shows up in how she structures an argument: specific, evidenced, and unsentimental about what works. Key speaking topics Scaling culture through hypergrowth Onboarding design for new hires Leadership development inside fast-moving companies Learning and development strategy on constrained budgets Customer experience training for retail and consumer businesses The CHRO agenda in technology-led organisations Talent retention in competitive labour markets Ideal for CHROs and heads of L and D in companies scaling past 1,000 employees CEOs and founders protecting culture through a growth phase Retail, consumer, and manufacturing leaders rebuilding customer-facing training HR leadership teams redesigning onboarding and manager capability Audience outcomes A concrete view of what culture preservation looks like at Tesla and Apple scale, in the detail of day-one onboarding and manager routines A sharper test for whether their current learning investment is protecting or eroding the customer experience Specific design principles for onboarding that holds up when headcount doubles A more honest read on which parts of their people strategy are load-bearing and which are ceremonial Comparative lessons from two consumer technology giants that solved retail workforce problems very differently

Why organisations work with Amy Edmondson She is the original source of the psychological safety research now cited by Google, the NHS, and most leading management programmes, not a downstream interpreter of it. Her frameworks come from two decades of field research inside hospitals, manufacturing plants, and Fortune 500 teams, not from theory or anecdote. She translates an idea that leaders often misread as softness into operational language about error rates, learning speed, and innovation throughput. Her Right Kind of Wrong work gives executives a practical taxonomy of failure types, separating the failures organisations should prevent from the failures they should encourage. Thinkers50 ranked her the world’s number one management thinker in both 2021 and 2023, which signals her standing among the practitioners and academics buyers most respect. Biography highlights Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021 and 2023. Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong. Author of seven books, including The Fearless Organization, Teaming, and Right Kind of Wrong. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award (2019) and Talent Award (2017). PhD in Organizational Behavior, AM in Psychology, AB in Engineering Sciences, Harvard University. Biography The most expensive errors inside large organisations are rarely caused by people who do not know what to do. They are caused by people who know, and choose not to say. Decades of research at Harvard Business School have made that pattern visible, and have given senior leaders a vocabulary for it: psychological safety. Amy Edmondson built that vocabulary. As Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, she has spent more than twenty years studying teams in hospitals, manufacturing operations, technology firms, and government. Her 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly is the academic anchor for an idea now used inside Google’s people analytics, NHS quality improvement work, and most credible executive education curricula. The work has expanded from a single concept into a coherent body. Teaming examined how cross-functional groups learn fast enough to keep up with the work in front of them. The Fearless Organization gave leaders a step-by-step model for making honest contribution the norm, not the exception. Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023, separates the failures organisations should engineer against from the failures they should be willing to commission. Thinkers50 has ranked her since 2011 and named her the world’s number one management thinker in 2021 and again in 2023. That recognition matters because it tracks how often working executives, not academics, cite her frameworks when they describe what they are trying to change inside their own organisations. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and team performance Learning from intelligent failure Teaming in cross-functional and high-stakes work Leadership in high-reliability environments Organisational learning Innovation cultures and candour Leading through error and recovery Ideal for C-suite and board audiences in healthcare, aviation, financial services, and other high-stakes industries CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning culture and capability programmes Heads of innovation and R&D leaders building teams that need to fail intelligently Executive education and leadership development cohorts inside large organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that separates it from comfort, niceness, or lowered standards A taxonomy of failure types that leaders can apply to their own portfolio of decisions Specific leader behaviours that increase the rate at which problems surface early A clearer language for talking about error, candour, and accountability inside the organisation Evidence-based responses to the common executive objection that psychological safety reduces performance pressure

Why organisations work with Dr Alison Edgar MBE The intrapreneurship methodology addresses a specific organisational failure: talent hired to think and then trained to execute. It gives teams ownership inside the existing structure without asking for a reorg. Operator before author. She built her career inside Yell during the Yellow Pages collapse, founded her own training business in 2011, and advises UK government on small business policy. The frameworks on stage were built for a business she was running at the time. The work sits in the mechanics of accountability. The Intrapreneur Mindset and her Big Balls® prioritisation framework give managers a shared language for ownership and follow-through that outlasts the keynote. Designed to land in mixed rooms. Leaders, managers, and front-line teams leave a session with the same vocabulary and the same expectations, which matters when a change programme needs to move through every layer of the business. The back-story does work that a CV can’t. Clydebank council flat, undiagnosed dyslexia, no school qualifications, MBE in 2020, honorary doctorate in education from Bournemouth University in 2024. Senior leaders and front-line staff end up listening to the same talk for different reasons. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of SMASH IT!® Training. Appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business. Awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education by Bournemouth University, 2024. Author of Secrets of Successful Sales (WHSmith Top Ten business book; named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman) and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. Named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation; TEDx speaker; business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business; regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, CBRE, Specsavers, Currys, St James’s Place, Porsche and Renault. Biography Most change programmes are written to land in the boardroom. The work of making them stick sits three layers below, in the everyday decisions that keep standards consistent when the strategy slides have been filed away. That gap is where Alison Edgar does her work. SMASH IT!® Training was founded after twenty-five years in corporate sales at BT and Yell. The Yell years were the formative ones. She watched Yellow Pages, once a fixture in almost every UK home, lose its market because the leadership chose not to react to Google. Before that came an earlier career managing hotels in Cape Town and Sydney. The training business grew into something broader than sales. At the centre of the work today is the Intrapreneur Mindset: Edgar’s term for what it looks like when employees think and decide like owners inside a large organisation. The Big Balls® framework sits alongside it, giving managers a prioritisation language for work that all feels equally urgent. Clients include Sky, Discovery Channel, EasyJet, the NHS, the European Commission and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. The credibility behind the frameworks is unusually well-documented. She was named one of the UK’s Top 10 Business Advisers by Enterprise Nation, appointed MBE in 2020 for services to small business, and awarded an honorary doctorate in education by Bournemouth University in 2024. Two books sit on the record: Secrets of Successful Sales, named by The Independent in 2019 among the top business books written by a woman, and SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want. She is a regular BBC contributor, including as a business expert on The Apprentice: Unfinished Business, and is quoted across The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. The practical test of any speaker for a serious organisation is what survives the following Monday. Alison Edgar is booked repeatedly by Sky, the NHS and the European Commission because the language she gives a room keeps showing up in meetings weeks later. Key speaking topics Leadership accountability Leading change and change fatigue Intrapreneurship and ownership culture Standards and everyday execution Customer experience and service culture High-performance teams Sales leadership and commercial behaviour Ideal for Senior leaders accountable for consistent performance across transformation programmes. CHROs and CPOs building accountability and standards in hybrid or multi-site organisations. Commercial and sales leaders looking to raise conversion through team behaviour without expanding headcount. Organisations running large all-hands or leadership off-sites where the same message needs to reach the C-suite and the front line. Audience outcomes A working definition of accountability that lives in everyday behaviour and survives the next restructure. The Big Balls® prioritisation framework applied to real work, so teams stop treating every task as equally urgent. A shared language across leaders, managers and front-line staff for ownership and consistent standards. Intrapreneurship tools that let employees act like owners inside the existing structure. Language and tools for handling change fatigue, including what to do when a team has already checked out of the next transformation.

Why organisations work with Alexandra Shulman She ran British Vogue for a quarter of a century across three recessions and the collapse of the print advertising model, and can speak with evidence about what protects a consumer brand’s authority through structural change. She has first-hand judgement on the fashion and luxury economy that organisations rarely access at this level, including on body image, diversity on the cover, and the commercial consequences of editorial choices. Her work on the Vogue centenary issue with the Duchess of Cambridge, documented by BBC Two, is a case study in how a legacy title uses a single moment to reset its cultural position. As a monthly Business of Fashion columnist and Mail on Sunday writer, she has a continuing, named public record on industry shifts, so audiences get a point of view grounded in current analysis, not reminiscence. Her three books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Clothes and Other Things That Matter, give her a body of published work on women, consumer culture, and the business of appearance that goes beyond the editor role. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief, British Vogue, 1992 to 2017, the longest-serving editor in the title’s history. Editor of British GQ, 1990 to 1992, before moving to Vogue. CBE (2018) for services to fashion journalism; OBE (2005) for services to the magazine industry. Author of Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year (2016) and the Sunday Times bestseller Clothes and Other Things That Matter (Cassell, 2020), alongside two novels. Monthly columnist, The Business of Fashion, from 2017; regular columnist, The Mail on Sunday. Subject of the BBC Two documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue (2016). Strategic advisor to the online fashion marketplace Atterley. Biography British Vogue was a profitable but narrow title when Alexandra Shulman took it over in 1992. Over the next 25 years, she grew monthly circulation to around 200,000, ran the magazine through three recessions, and held its cultural authority as the advertising base of print magazines collapsed around it. When she left in 2017, she had edited more issues of British Vogue than anyone in its history. The commercial case for her voice starts there. The work was not only editorial. It was running a consumer brand at the top of a crowded category, deciding every month which photographers, writers, models and stories earned the cover, and taking the commercial consequences. Her 2009 open letter to fashion houses, pushing back on sample-size-only clothes and the implications for body image on the page, is one example of an editorial call with direct business and cultural weight. Since leaving Vogue, she has kept a continuing public record on the industry as a monthly columnist for The Business of Fashion and as a Mail on Sunday writer. Her books include the diary-memoir Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year, written around the magazine’s centenary, and Clothes and Other Things That Matter, a Sunday Times bestseller that reads the wardrobe as a way into questions about work, ambition, ageing, and the female consumer. She was appointed OBE in 2005 and CBE in 2018. She advises the online fashion marketplace Atterley. The BBC Two documentary Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue filmed her in 2016 assembling the centenary issue with the Duchess of Cambridge on the cover, a piece of work now used as a reference point for how legacy titles use a single edition to reset their place in the culture. Key speaking topics Brand authority in consumer media and luxury Creative leadership and long-tenure editorial judgement The business of fashion and the luxury economy Women, work, and the culture of appearance Body image, diversity, and the responsibility of the page Reinvention after a long institutional career Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders in luxury, beauty, retail, and consumer media Boards and executive teams of cultural or heritage brands working through audience and format change CHROs and leadership development programmes focused on long-tenure creative leadership and succession Conferences on women in business, consumer culture, and the creative industries Audience outcomes A named insider’s read on how fashion and luxury actually make commercial decisions. A working definition of brand authority that holds up across a generational shift in media. A clearer view of the trade-offs between editorial point of view and commercial reach. A usable perspective on long-tenure creative leadership: how to stay current, when to change, when to hold. A frank account of reinvention after a defining role, drawn from her own post-Vogue work.

Why organisations work with Will Greenwood His book World Class is built on interviews with more than 100 elite performers across sport and business, including Sir Clive Woodward, Rio Ferdinand, and Dame Carolyn McCall, giving his framework (celebrating difference, forging togetherness, accelerating growth) a research depth that distinguishes it from speaker anecdote. He was joint-top try scorer in the 2003 World Cup and central to the squad’s performance, not an observer of a winning culture but a direct participant in building one, which gives his account of accountability and standards an authority that is hard to replicate. His role as Chief Customer Officer at Afiniti means his thinking extends into live commercial application; AI-driven customer experience strategy, giving him credibility with boards and executive teams beyond sport. His named concept TCUP (Think Correctly Under Pressure) gives leaders a transferable mental model for individual and collective performance under stress: a specific takeaway rather than an inspirational experience. An Economics degree from Durham, a career as a City trader before turning professional, and more than 15 years as a Sky Sports analyst add analytical credibility that supports board-level conversations on performance, leadership, and organisational change. Biography highlights 55 England caps, 31 international tries: England’s third-highest international try scorer; joint-top scorer at the 2003 Rugby World Cup Three British & Irish Lions tours: South Africa (1997), Australia (2001), New Zealand (2005) Co-author of World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion (Penguin/Ebury Edge, 2021), with Ben Fennell, former CEO of Bartle Bogle Hegarty; built from interviews with 100+ elite performers across sport and business Long-standing rugby analyst and presenter, Sky Sports; weekly rugby columnist, The Daily Telegraph Chief Customer Officer (UK), Afiniti: an AI company focused on customer experience optimisation, since 2020; earlier career as a financial trader at Midland Global Markets (HSBC) MBE; Doctor of Civil Law honoris causa, Durham University; BA in Economics, Durham University Biography England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup squad produced one of the most studied high-performance environments in sport. Will Greenwood was not a bystander: he was joint-top try scorer at the tournament, central to the team’s culture and to the trust structures that drove its performance. That first-hand experience of what a winning team actually looks and feels like from the inside is the foundation of everything he brings to organisations. Greenwood developed that thinking further in World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion, co-authored with Ben Fennell, former CEO of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and published by Penguin in 2021. The book is built on interviews with more than 100 elite performers, from Sir Clive Woodward and Rio Ferdinand to Dame Carolyn McCall, and identifies three organising principles: celebrating difference, forging togetherness, and accelerating growth. It is a framework, not a memoir. His credibility in the room is reinforced by a career that has never stayed still. He read Economics at Durham, traded at Midland Global Markets in the City before turning professional, and has held a C-suite role at AI company Afiniti since 2020. More than 15 years as a Sky Sports analyst, and a long-running column in The Daily Telegraph, have built a discipline of translating elite performance into clear, repeatable language. His concept TCUP (Think Correctly Under Pressure) sits at the centre of his speaking framework: the idea that in the critical moments, individual responsibility and mental clarity are the things that separate teams who deliver from teams who don’t. It is the kind of practical, named concept that organisations can take back into the room and use. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Standards and accountability culture Trust and cohesion under pressure Peak performance and mental discipline Learning, growth and continuous improvement Change management and mindset shift Leadership lessons from elite sport environments Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams building or re-setting high-performance culture Chief People Officers and HR Directors leading culture transformation programmes Sales and commercial leadership audiences where team dynamics directly affect performance Boards and C-suite audiences on sustained organisational performance and resilience under pressure Audience outcomes A named, research-based framework (celebrating difference, forging togetherness, accelerating growth) drawn from 100+ interviews with elite performers across sport and business Practical understanding of the specific behaviours, standards and trust structures that distinguish high-performing teams from merely capable ones The TCUP model (Think Correctly Under Pressure), a transferable tool for individual and collective performance in high-stakes situations A reframed perspective on how organisations respond to setback, injury to performance, and the change of pace that comes with transition – grounded in lived experience, not theory Language and reference points that leadership teams can take back into internal conversations on culture, accountability and performance

Why organisations work with Tom Gimbel Twenty-six years running a staffing firm gives him unusually direct visibility into why employees actually leave: it shows up in his content as specific tactical guidance, not generalised culture theory. He treats middle managers as the operating layer where culture is either built or broken, and gives leadership teams a practical agenda for upgrading that layer. His perspective on hiring, onboarding and retention is the perspective of a CEO who has had to make payroll, not a consultant selling frameworks. Inc. 5000 recognition for twelve consecutive years and a Staffing Industry Analysts Staffing 100 listing back the credibility of his operating record on talent. Biography highlights Founder of LaSalle Network, a national staffing, recruiting and culture firm headquartered in Chicago. LaSalle Network named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for 12 consecutive years. Named to Staffing Industry Analysts’ Staffing 100 list of the most influential people in staffing, multiple years. Inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame; named to Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40. Regular media commentator on hiring, careers and company culture across CNBC Squawk Box, TODAY, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times and Entrepreneur. Board roles include American Staffing Association and Start Early; member of YPO, the Economic Club of Chicago and Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Biography People do not quit companies. They quit managers. That observation, which sits at the centre of Tom Gimbel’s work, sounds simple but is uncomfortable for most executive teams, because it locates the retention problem in the layer of the organisation where the least leadership development happens. Gimbel founded LaSalle Network in Chicago in 1998 and ran it as CEO for 26 years. The firm reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for 12 consecutive years and was repeatedly named to “best places to work” lists by Glassdoor, Fortune, Inc. and Crain’s Chicago Business. He was named to Staffing Industry Analysts’ Staffing 100 list of the most influential people in the industry. That operating record is what makes his content credible to senior buyers. He is a regular commentator on hiring and culture for CNBC, TODAY, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times and Entrepreneur, and his core argument is consistent across those appearances: middle-manager capability is the real engine of retention, and most companies underinvest in it. Gimbel’s keynote material focuses on the practical levers a leadership team can pull, hiring discipline, onboarding, manager development, the often-overlooked “B player” cohort, and how to build a retention-focused culture that survives growth. The audience is the CEO, COO and CHRO who already know they have a culture problem and want a sharp operator’s view on what to do about it. Key speaking topics Company culture and retention Middle-manager development Hiring, onboarding and talent strategy Employee engagement Building and protecting workplace culture through growth The labour market and the future of work Ideal for CEOs, COOs and CHROs leading high-growth or post-acquisition organisations facing retention pressure. Executive teams looking to upgrade their middle-manager population as a strategic priority. HR and talent leadership communities at industry conferences and association events. Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of why retention numbers move and which decisions actually shift them. A specific agenda for upgrading middle managers from individual contributors to people leaders. Tactical guidance on hiring and onboarding processes that protect culture as headcount scales. An operator’s perspective on company culture, distinct from consulting frameworks.

Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork Leadership under pressure Olympic-level preparation and execution Coaching and talent development Performance culture Resilience and sustained excellence Translating elite sport principles into business Ideal for Senior leadership teams High-potential and talent development programmes Organisations focused on performance culture Executive education audiences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of what drives sustained high performance Practical principles for building trust and accountability within teams Insight into preparation, focus and execution under pressure Greater clarity on the role of coaching in leadership Frameworks for embedding performance habits in organisations Why organisations work with Tim Foster Brings first-hand experience of winning and medalling at Olympic level Combines elite sport achievement with formal business education Experienced in coaching international teams and senior leaders Connects performance psychology and teamwork to practical organisational challenges Biography Tim Foster MBE brings the discipline of Olympic performance to the realities of organisational leadership. As an Olympic gold and bronze medallist who competed at three Olympic Games, he understands what it takes to build teams capable of delivering under sustained pressure on the world stage. His international rowing career included multiple World Championship medals, earned within high-accountability environments where preparation, trust and execution determined outcomes. That experience now underpins his work with leaders and teams seeking consistent, measurable performance. Following retirement from elite sport, Tim moved into high-performance coaching, including roles within the Great Britain rowing programme and as head coach of the Swiss national rowing team. He has since developed a leadership and performance coaching practice working across sport and business, supporting senior leaders in translating high-performance principles into practical organisational contexts. An Oxford Saïd Executive MBA alumnus, Tim combines lived experience of elite competition with formal business education. He has also been associated with leadership and performance development initiatives linked to the League Managers Association, supporting professional football managers in enhancing performance and leadership capability. For organisations navigating complexity, competition and change, Tim Foster offers a grounded, credible perspective on building performance cultures, strengthening leadership under pressure, and aligning teams around shared standards of excellence.

Key speaking topics Retail leadership and turnaround Corporate governance and board leadership Organisational culture Business transformation in established brands Corporate social responsibility Public service leadership and reform Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams Retail and consumer sector organisations Corporate governance and risk forums Public sector leadership audiences Audience outcomes Clear insight into leading large, complex organisations through change. Practical perspectives on board-level decision-making and governance. Understanding of leadership accountability in public and private sector contexts. Lessons from retail transformation and brand stewardship. Why organisations work with Stuart Rose Direct experience leading and chairing major UK retail businesses. Board-level perspective across public companies and private enterprises. First-hand insight into government advisory work on organisational culture. Commercially grounded understanding of leadership, governance and corporate responsibility. Biography Stuart Rose is one of the UK’s most experienced retail leaders, having led and chaired major consumer businesses at scale. As Chief Executive and Executive Chairman of Marks & Spencer, he guided the organisation through a significant turnaround period and strategic change, reinforcing its position as one of Britain’s most recognisable brands. His executive career includes Chief Executive roles at the Burton Group, Argos, Booker and Arcadia Group, giving him broad operational experience across fashion, general merchandise, food and wholesale. He brings first-hand insight into managing complex supply chains, brand repositioning and commercial performance in highly competitive markets. At board level, he has served as Chairman of Ocado Group and Zenith Automotive, and as Non-Executive Chairman of EG Group, remaining on its board as a non-executive director. These roles reflect deep expertise in corporate governance, oversight and long-term value creation across public and private enterprises. Beyond the private sector, he was appointed to advise the UK Government on NHS leadership and organisational culture in underperforming hospitals, contributing to discussions on accountability and reform in complex public institutions. He is a Conservative life peer and sits in the House of Lords. Knighted for services to the retail industry and corporate social responsibility, Stuart Rose combines executive leadership, board experience and public service insight. He offers organisations a clear, commercially grounded perspective on governance, culture and strategic leadership in demanding environments.

Why organisations work with Sir Stuart Hampson He chaired the John Lewis Partnership from 1993 to 2007 through one of the most significant modernisation programmes in UK retail, including the Oxford Street and Sloane Square refurbishments, extended trading hours and the launch of John Lewis Direct and Ocado, with pre-tax profit reaching £319 million in 2006. As President of the Employee Ownership Association, he carries both the operator’s and the sector advocate’s view of employee ownership, rather than a textbook one. The public-office record, including chairmanship of The Crown Estate from 2010 to 2016, a CVO and a Deputy Lieutenancy of Buckinghamshire, gives him credibility in front of public-sector and regulated-industry audiences that most business speakers cannot match. His career trajectory, from the UK Civil Service to John Lewis and back into public office, allows him to speak fluently to audiences on both sides of the public-private divide. He has been on the corporate speaking circuit since 2009 and delivers sessions in English and French, useful for pan-European events. Biography highlights Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, 1993 to 2007; joined the Partnership in 1982 Knighted for services to retailing, 1998; Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, 2016 Non-executive Chairman and First Commissioner of The Crown Estate, 2010 to 2016 President of the Employee Ownership Association; founding Deputy Chairman of London First Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford; honorary doctorate in Business Administration, Kingston University Earlier career in the UK Civil Service, rising to Assistant Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry Biography Britain’s most-cited example of employee ownership is the John Lewis Partnership, and the chairman who led it through its transition into the modern retail economy is Sir Stuart Hampson. He joined the Partnership in 1982, became Chairman in 1993, and held the role for fourteen years, through the refurbishment of the flagship Oxford Street and Sloane Square stores, extended trading hours, the expansion of the product range and the creation of John Lewis Direct and Ocado. By 2006 the Partnership was reporting pre-tax profits of £319 million, 27 per cent up on the previous year. His route into the role was unusual. He began his career in the UK Civil Service in 1969 at the Board of Trade and rose to Assistant Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry before moving to John Lewis. That grounding informs how he thinks about governance, employee voice and the relationship between public purpose and commercial return. The knighthood in 1998 recognised the retailing side of that work. A Commander of the Royal Victorian Order followed in 2016, the year his term chairing The Crown Estate came to an end, a role he had held since 2010. The advocacy role has been consistent throughout. He is President of the Employee Ownership Association, a founding Deputy Chairman of London First, a former President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England and a former Prince of Wales Ambassador for Economic Renewal. The academic link is through St John’s College, Oxford, where he studied and is now a Fellow, and Kingston University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1998. For leadership teams, remuneration committees and HR functions looking at employee ownership, engagement and the commercial case for a partnership model, Hampson brings the rarest thing in the field: a first-hand account of what it looks like to run the institution that every UK executive cites when they use the phrase. He has been on the speaking circuit since 2009, delivering sessions in English and French. Key speaking topics Employee ownership and engagement at scale Culture and commercial performance in retail Governance in employee-owned businesses Leadership transitions and executive succession Public-private leadership: lessons from civil service and commercial roles Modernisation of long-established institutions Ideal for Boards and chief executives considering, defending or reforming an employee-ownership or partnership model CHROs, remuneration and engagement leaders looking to ground their strategy in a named, credible reference case Retail, consumer-goods and services leadership teams managing cultural transformation alongside modernisation Public-sector leaders and institutional boards seeking an experienced chair perspective on governance and purpose Audience outcomes A practitioner’s view of how employee ownership and engagement connect to commercial performance, drawn from fourteen years chairing the John Lewis Partnership Reference cases on the Oxford Street and Sloane Square modernisations and the launch of John Lewis Direct and Ocado A clearer framing of the governance trade-offs inside partnership and ownership models Perspective on the civil-service-to-commercial-leadership transition that is useful to organisations at the regulator-private sector boundary

Why organisations work with Stephen M. R. Covey He treats trust as a measurable economic input, not a cultural sentiment. The Speed of Trust sets out a framework, the 4 cores and 13 behaviors, that converts trust into quantifiable effects on speed and cost. His operating record gives the argument weight. As President and CEO of Covey Leadership Center, he grew the firm into the largest leadership development company in the world before its integration with Franklin Quest, with publisher sources citing a sixty-seven-fold increase in shareholder value during his tenure. Trust & Inspire gives senior leaders explicit operating content for the shift away from command and control, a transition that has been described in management literature for decades but rarely defined in practical terms. He writes from inside the discipline, not outside it. He leads FranklinCovey’s Global Speed of Trust Practice and has worked with organisations across business, government, military, education, healthcare, and NGOs in more than fifty countries. His authority on the subject is independently recognised. Trust Across America/Trust Around the World awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award for “Top Thought Leaders in Trust”. Biography highlights Author of The Speed of Trust, New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, translated into 22 languages, over 2 million copies sold (Simon & Schuster). Author of Trust & Inspire, Wall Street Journal bestseller, named #1 Leadership Book of 2022 by the Outstanding Work of Literature Awards. Former President and CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which under his leadership became the largest leadership development firm in the world. Co-founder and current leader of FranklinCovey’s Global Speed of Trust Practice; co-founder of CoveyLink Worldwide. Harvard MBA. Has taught trust and leadership in over fifty countries to business, government, military, education, healthcare, and NGO audiences. Lifetime Achievement Award for “Top Thought Leaders in Trust” from Trust Across America/Trust Around the World. Biography Trust is usually treated as the residue of culture, something an organisation either has or does not have. The Speed of Trust argues the opposite: trust is an economic variable, with direct and measurable effects on the speed at which work moves and the cost at which it gets done. The book has sold more than two million copies and been translated into 22 languages, and it remains the reference work in the field. The author is Stephen M. R. Covey. Before he wrote it, he ran the company that taught his father’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to the world. As President and CEO of Covey Leadership Center, he led the strategy that turned the firm into the largest leadership development company in the world; publisher records cite a sixty-seven-fold increase in shareholder value during his tenure. The credibility of his trust thesis sits on that operating record. His second book, Trust & Inspire, takes the argument into leadership style. The case is direct: command and control was an industrial-age design, and most organisations still use it without naming it. Trust and Inspire describes the alternative in operating terms, not in slogans. The book was a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was named #1 Leadership Book of 2022 by the Outstanding Work of Literature Awards. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, leads FranklinCovey’s Global Speed of Trust Practice, and has taught the work in more than fifty countries across business, government, military, education, healthcare, and NGO settings. Trust Across America/Trust Around the World awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award for “Top Thought Leaders in Trust”, recognition from the body that has tracked the discipline for the longest. Key speaking topics Organisational trust Trust as a driver of speed and cost Trust-based leadership The 4 cores and 13 behaviors of high-trust leaders The shift from command and control to trust and inspire Leadership credibility High-trust culture and organisational performance Ideal for CEOs, executive teams, and boards setting the leadership tone for the organisation CHROs and chief people officers redesigning leadership development and culture programmes Transformation, M&A, and post-restructure leaders rebuilding credibility with employees and stakeholders Senior leadership conferences, partner meetings, and government leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working definition of trust as an economic variable, with named effects on the speed and cost of execution The 4 cores and 13 behaviors framework for diagnosing where trust is being earned, eroded, or paid for A clear distinction between command and control leadership and trust and inspire leadership, with operating content for the shift Specific moves for extending, restoring, and embedding trust at the team, organisation, and stakeholder levels A language senior leaders can use with their teams to make trust an explicit competency in hiring, promotion, and performance

Key speaking topics Psychological safety Growth mindset Leadership behaviour Organisational culture Leadership and change Cross-cultural leadership Organisational transformation Ideal for Senior leaders and executive teams HR, people and culture leaders Organisations navigating cultural or leadership change International and cross-border teams Audience outcomes Clear understanding of psychological safety and growth mindset in leadership. Practical perspectives on leadership behaviour and culture. Insight into leading change across diverse organisational contexts. Shared language for discussing culture, trust and leadership dynamics. Why organisations work with Skip Bowman Brings an integrated leadership framework grounded in psychology and organisational practice. Combines authorship, consulting and keynote experience. Experienced working across multiple European and international contexts. Focuses on leadership and culture challenges relevant to modern organisations. Biography Skip Bowman works with organisations navigating leadership, culture and behavioural change, with a focus on psychological safety and growth mindset as practical enablers of performance and transformation. His work addresses how leadership behaviour shapes culture, trust and adaptability in complex operating environments. He is the author of Safe to Great: The New Psychology of Leadership, which sets out his thinking on the relationship between psychological safety, mindset and organisational effectiveness. The book reflects his applied approach to leadership development, grounded in behavioural science and real-world organisational contexts. Bowman is closely associated with the Safe2Great concept, a structured model that integrates growth mindset and psychological safety to support leadership, team and cultural development. The framework is used across his speaking and consulting work to help organisations assess and strengthen leadership capability during periods of change. Australian-born and Europe-based, he brings approximately 25 years of experience working with international organisations across multiple European markets. His academic background includes studies in finance and postgraduate degrees in psychology, including organisational psychology, informing a practical, evidence-led perspective on leadership and culture.