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 Ayse Birsel She brings a method, not a mood. Deconstruction: Reconstruction is a four-step process (deconstruct, point of view, reconstruct, express) developed across two decades of paid client work, and groups can run it on a real problem in the room. Her design credentials are commercial, not theoretical: products and systems for Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, IKEA, Knoll, GE and Colgate-Palmolive, with Resolve for Herman Miller named by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years. She bridges product innovation and people innovation. The same method behind the Zoë Washlet for TOTO underpins Design the Work You Love, which is why teams leave with a tool they can apply to org design, not just to creativity. She is one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and the cohort itself was formed inside her Design the Life You Love process. That credential signals trust from the most senior coaching network in business. Recognised by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business and by Thinkers50 on its Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. Biography highlights Co-founder and Creative Director, Birsel + Seck, New York. Master’s in Industrial Design, Pratt Institute, on a Fulbright Scholarship; undergraduate in Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University. Author of “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (Running Press, 2022). Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. One of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2017); member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches. Work in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; clients include Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, GE, IKEA, Knoll, Staples, Colgate-Palmolive and TOTO. Biography Most organisations treat innovation as a personality trait. Ayse Birsel treats it as a process. Deconstruction: Reconstruction, the method she has used at Birsel + Seck for two decades, is built around four steps: take the problem apart, change the point of view, put it back together within real constraints, and give the result a clean form. It is the same logic she has applied to a Herman Miller workstation, a Toyota concept car and a TOTO washlet. Her credentials are commercial. Birsel + Seck, the New York studio she runs with Bibi Seck, has produced work for Amazon, GE, IKEA, Staples, Knoll and Colgate-Palmolive. The Resolve System for Herman Miller has been cited by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years, and her work sits in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She trained at Middle East Technical University and took a master’s at Pratt Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship. The translation from product to people came through her books. “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (2022) take the same four-step method and apply it to careers, relationships and ageing well. Marshall Goldsmith ran the program himself, and the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches network was formed inside it. She is a member of that cohort and on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. For corporate audiences, this matters because the method is the product. Teams do not leave with a story about creativity. They leave having deconstructed a real brief, tested a different point of view and reconstructed an option they can take back to the operating model on Monday. Key speaking topics Innovation method and design thinking in practice Deconstruction: Reconstruction as a creative process for teams Designing the work, not just the workplace Life design and career reinvention for senior leaders Creativity under constraint Human-centred product and service design Long-life and longevity design Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product leaders looking for a repeatable creative method. CHROs and learning leaders running senior leadership offsites or executive development programs. Boards and executive teams working through reinvention, succession and second-act questions. Design, marketing and customer experience functions translate creativity into operating decisions. Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the four-step Deconstruction: Reconstruction process applied to a real organisational brief. A different point of view on a problem the team came in with, tested in the room. Language and structure for talking about creativity that does not depend on individual talent. A personal life-design or career-design artefact that senior leaders can take away from the session. Confidence that innovation can be run as a discipline, not staged as a culture programme.

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.

Why organisations work with Tim Smith Two decades on Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 is rehearsal time most corporate hosts do not have. He arrives on stage already knowing how to read a room of strangers in real time. He has built a working production relationship with FTSE-scale internal communications teams through podcast series for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s. He understands what a regulated employer can and cannot put into a sponsored programme. He interviews senior leaders, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair on the Steve Wright Show, without losing the audience or the executive. That craft transfers directly to fireside chats and keynote interviews at corporate events. His current weekday morning slot on Magic Classical and continuing radio practice keep his interview rhythm sharp. Buyers are not booking a former broadcaster; they are booking someone still on air every week. Biography highlights Co-presenter on Steve Wright in the Afternoon, BBC Radio 2, from 1999 to 2022. Presenter of the UK Top 20 Chart Show on BBC World Service for 13 years, succeeding Paul Burnett. Weekday morning presenter on Magic Classical from June 2025. Corporate podcast presenter for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s. Sony Award-nominated for Picture Show on BBC GLR. Covered the 2000 Open Golf Championship at St Andrews and Wimbledon for official broadcast platforms. Biography The hardest part of a corporate set piece is rarely the strategy on the slide. It is the twelve seconds after the host introduces the CEO, when the audience decides whether to listen. A broadcaster trained on live national radio knows how to fill those twelve seconds. Most corporate MCs do not. Tim joined BBC Radio 2 in 1999 as co-presenter on Steve Wright in the Afternoon and stayed for 23 years, alongside Janey Lee Grace and Joyce Frost. Before that he had presented on BBC Radio 1, on BBC GLR where Picture Show earned a Sony Award nomination, and the UK Top 20 Chart Show on BBC World Service for 13 years. The corporate work runs in parallel. He presents podcast series for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s, working inside the editorial and compliance constraints that internal communications teams in regulated industries actually operate under. From June 2025 he also presents the weekday morning show on Magic Classical. For a buyer, the proposition is narrow and clear. He is not a subject-matter speaker on a business theme. He is a host with two decades of live national broadcast behind him, hired to make a conference, awards night, town hall or branded podcast sound like something the audience wants to keep listening to. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Keynote interviews and fireside chats with senior leaders Corporate podcast presenting and production Internal town hall and all-hands hosting Panel moderation Live broadcast craft for corporate events Ideal for Internal communications and employee experience leads commissioning town halls, all-hands events and leadership broadcasts Marketing and brand teams running awards programmes, conferences and customer events Corporate affairs teams producing branded podcast series for employee or external audiences Event producers and agency partners briefing on plenary and panel hosting Audience outcomes A plenary that runs to time, with senior speakers introduced and handled without dead air. A keynote interview that draws the answer the audience came to hear, not the answer the executive rehearsed. A panel that moves, with questions sharp enough that the panellists have to respond rather than recite. An awards night with pace, where category presentations land and the room is still engaged at the final award. A podcast episode that sounds like national broadcast quality rather than a recorded internal meeting.

Why organisations work with Stuart Rose He has run a defensive takeover at the highest level in British retail. M&S beat Sir Philip Green’s bid in 2004 with Rose as chief executive, three weeks into the job. He turned Arcadia around and sold it for over £800m, then took on the M&S turnaround the same decade. Two CEO-led recoveries in adjacent businesses, a year apart. He authored the 2015 Better Leadership for Tomorrow review for the Department of Health, the standing reference document on why NHS hospital leadership underperforms and what to do about it. Plan A at M&S was the first time a FTSE retailer treated sustainability as a board strategy with capital attached, not a CSR report. Rose committed £200m and signed his top suppliers in private before launch. Sits in the House of Lords as Baron Rose of Monewden and chaired Ocado Group from 2013 to 2021. Buyers get a perspective shaped by both governance and operating accountability. Biography highlights Former Chief Executive (2004 to 2008) and Executive Chairman (2008 to 2011) of Marks & Spencer. Former Chairman of Ocado Group (2013 to 2021) and Chairman of Asda (2021 to 2024), with day-to-day executive leadership at Asda from September 2024. Former Chief Executive of Arcadia Group, Argos, Booker plc and Burton Group. Author of the 2015 NHS leadership review commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health, Better Leadership for Tomorrow. Knighted in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to retail and corporate social responsibility. Conservative life peer: Baron Rose of Monewden, created 2014. Biography Marks & Spencer was three weeks into a hostile bid from Sir Philip Green when Stuart Rose was appointed chief executive in May 2004. The defence held. What followed was a six-year programme that restored profit, rebuilt the supply base, and put sustainability at the centre of the operating plan rather than the CSR report. Plan A launched in 2007 with 100 commitments across climate, waste, raw materials, fair partnership and health. The framing was deliberately blunt: there is no Plan B. £200m of capital was committed up front, and the largest M&S suppliers were briefed privately before launch so the public commitment was already operationally backed. The retail track record runs deeper than M&S. As chief executive of Arcadia from 2000, he led the turnaround that culminated in the £800m sale of the group in 2002. Earlier, he ran Argos, Booker plc, where he engineered the merger with Iceland to form the Big Food Group and the Burton Group. The 2015 NHS leadership review for the Department of Health applied the same operating discipline to a non-commercial setting, with 19 recommendations on talent, accountability and visible frontline leadership. He chaired Ocado Group from 2013 to 2021 and took the chair at Asda in November 2021, stepping into executive responsibilities in September 2024 to stabilise the business. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Rose of Monewden. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in large consumer businesses Defended takeover bids and board response Sustainability as an operating strategy Public sector reform and NHS leadership Corporate governance and the chair role UK retail and the future of the high street Ideal for Boards and chairs of large consumer or retail businesses are going through performance recovery Public sector leadership audiences responsible for hospital, trust or system reform CEO and CFO offsites where the agenda is restoring investor and workforce confidence Sustainability and ESG forums where the audience is past narrative and into capital allocation Audience outcomes A working account of how a defended takeover changes board behaviour and the CEO calendar in the first 90 days. The decisions behind Plan A, including how Rose secured supplier alignment before public launch. A clear view of why NHS leadership underperforms and which of the 2015 review recommendations still apply. The chair’s perspective on when to intervene executively and when to hold back, drawn from the Ocado and Asda chairmanships.

Why organisations work with Stuart Lancaster A coaching record that proves the method twice: a national team rebuild with England and a sustained European-winning culture with Leinster, where the same principles produced different results in different conditions. Direct authorship of the 2018 Heineken Champions Cup-winning Leinster culture, alongside Leo Cullen, plus four consecutive PRO14 titles between 2018 and 2021. Few corporate speakers can point to a documented seven-year run of trophy-level output in their primary domain. A structured leadership masterclass product, not a one-off war-stories keynote. Lancaster runs his own corporate programme through Stuart Lancaster Leadership, which means the material has been used and refined with executive audiences over years. Hands-on practitioner credibility on the specific question senior leaders find hardest: how to set behavioural standards inside a high-status, high-ego group of professionals without losing performance. Biography highlights Head Coach, England Rugby, 2011 to 2015. Forty-six tests, twenty-eight wins, a Triple Crown and four Calcutta Cups. Senior coach, Leinster Rugby, 2016 to 2023. One European Rugby Champions Cup (2018) and four consecutive PRO14/URC titles (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). Head Coach, Racing 92, from 2023. Head Coach, Connacht Rugby, from June 2025. Three Churchill Cup titles as Head Coach of England Saxons (2008, 2010, 2011) and National Division One title with Leeds Tykes (2006 to 2007). Founder of Stuart Lancaster Leadership, running corporate masterclasses and keynotes for business audiences. Biography Rebuilding a national rugby programme after a public failure is a leadership problem before it is a technical one. When Lancaster took the England head coach role in 2012, the squad was carrying the reputational damage of a disastrous 2011 World Cup. He spent the next four years rebuilding the behavioural standards, won twenty-eight of forty-six tests, took a Triple Crown and four Calcutta Cups, and then watched it end in the group stages of the 2015 World Cup on home soil. The next chapter is what makes the leadership argument credible. Joining Leinster as a senior coach in 2016, Lancaster worked alongside Leo Cullen on a culture that produced the 2018 European Rugby Champions Cup final, won 15-12 against Racing 92, and four consecutive PRO14/URC titles between 2018 and 2021. The same person, the same principles, a different system, and a sustained run of European and domestic trophies. That sequence is now the source material for his work with senior executives. Through Stuart Lancaster Leadership, he runs masterclasses and keynote sessions for corporate audiences on building high-performing teams, leadership under pressure, and the practical detail of culture inside elite groups. The work is structured, not anecdotal: behavioural standards, feedback mechanics, role clarity, how leaders show up in front of their group when results are poor. Since 2023 he has continued to coach at the highest level, first at Racing 92 in the Top 14 and now as Head Coach of Connacht Rugby, appointed in June 2025. The leadership method is not retrospective; it is being tested again, on the field, while the corporate audience is watching. Key speaking topics Building high-performing teams Culture and behavioural standards in elite groups Leadership under public scrutiny and after setback Trust, feedback and communication inside senior teams Resilience and sustained performance through change Authentic leadership for introverts and extroverts Ideal for Chief executives, executive committees and senior leadership groups responsible for performance over multi-year cycles Chief people officers and HR directors building leadership development programmes anchored in real team-leadership practice Sales, professional services and trading leadership teams operating under high pressure and public results Conference audiences of senior managers where leadership and team-performance content is the primary brief Audience outcomes A concrete reference model for what cultural standards look like inside an elite-performance group, drawn from named examples at England and Leinster Sharper thinking on the difference between leading through good results and leading through bad ones Practical language for the behavioural side of leadership: standards, feedback, role clarity, the leader’s own conduct in front of the group A counterpoint to abstract leadership content, grounded in a domain where results are public, weekly and unforgiving

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