Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with David Marquet The framework comes from an operational turnaround inside a high-consequence command environment. The crew of a nuclear submarine cannot afford the kind of leadership failure a corporate team can absorb, and the system Marquet built was tested against that standard. Intent-Based Leadership replaces the request for permission with a statement of intent, which is a specific behavioural change a leadership team can implement on Monday morning. It is a working method, not a philosophy. “Turn the Ship Around!” became a reference text inside US Navy submarine command, technology firms, manufacturers and healthcare systems. Adoption across that range of industries is rare for a leadership book. “Leadership is Language” gives senior leaders specific verbal moves to dismantle the industrial-age meeting culture that still produces compliant teams and over-burdened decision-makers. Stephen R. Covey studied Santa Fe directly and called it the most empowering organisation he had encountered. The endorsement carries weight because Covey rarely attached his name to operational case studies of this kind. Biography highlights Commanded USS Santa Fe (SSN-763) from 1999 to 2001, taking it from the lowest-rated submarine in the fleet to the highest in retention and operational evaluations. 1981 graduate of the US Naval Academy, top of class; 28 years of service in the US submarine force. Author of “Turn the Ship Around!” (Penguin Portfolio, 2013), foreword by Stephen R. Covey, called by Fortune “the best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” Author of “Leadership is Language” (Penguin Portfolio, 2020), setting out six leadership plays for dismantling industrial-age meeting culture. Founder of Intent-Based Leadership International, the consulting firm operationalising the framework inside corporate, healthcare and government organisations. Named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. Biography The USS Santa Fe was the lowest-rated nuclear submarine in the US fleet when David Marquet took command in 1999. Within two years it had the highest retention and operational evaluations in the force. Over the following decade, a disproportionate number of its officers were selected for submarine command of their own. The shift began with a single moment. Marquet gave an order that could not be executed on his class of submarine, and the watch officer relayed it anyway. When asked why, the answer was: because you told me to. Marquet stopped giving orders. He built a system in which crew members stated intent (“I intend to surface the boat at 0300”) and the officer’s job was to certify competence and clarity, not to authorise the decision. He calls this Intent-Based Leadership. It is now used inside manufacturers, healthcare systems, technology companies, professional sports teams and government agencies that face the same structural problem: decision-makers too far from the information, and a workforce trained to wait for instruction. Stephen R. Covey spent time aboard Santa Fe and wrote about it in “The 8th Habit”, calling it the most empowering organisation he had observed. His second book, “Leadership is Language”, extends the framework into the meeting room. Marquet argues that industrial-age verbal habits (“Does anyone have any concerns?”, “Sounds good to me”) manufacture compliance and silence dissent at the moment leaders need it most. The six plays in the book give senior teams specific replacement language, tested in environments where the cost of an unchallenged bad decision is operational rather than theoretical. Key speaking topics Intent-Based Leadership Distributed decision-making in high-consequence environments Leadership language and meeting design Psychological safety and high-reliability teams Cultural transformation in command-and-control organisations Leader development and succession at scale Ideal for CEOs and senior operating leaders rebuilding decision rights after a period of centralisation COOs and operations leaders in regulated or high-consequence industries (energy, healthcare, defence, manufacturing) CHROs and chief learning officers designing leadership development programmes that change behaviour, not vocabulary Boards and executive teams reviewing why their organisation is slow to act on information the workforce already has Audience outcomes A working language for replacing requests for permission with statements of intent, usable inside the next leadership meeting. A diagnostic for where in the organisation control, competence and clarity are out of balance. The six plays from “Leadership is Language” as a structured alternative to industrial-age meeting habits. A clearer view of which decisions a senior leader should still own, and which have been hoarded by default. Evidence, drawn from a documented operational turnaround, that distributed authority improves performance under pressure rather than weakening it.

Why organisations work with Madison Butler She works inside the people function as a practitioner, not as an outside commentator. Her perspective comes from running employee experience as Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and as a fractional people ops consultant. She has built a structural intervention into her own industry. The Black Speakers Collection was created to close the speaker pay gap for Black speakers, and is now a working directory used by meeting planners. Her book “Let Them See You” (Wiley, 2025) gives buyers a published thesis on authenticity at work that they can hand to a leadership team before the keynote. She speaks credibly on mental health, trauma and psychological safety in workplace settings without softening the operational implications for managers. Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice and a DivInc Austin Rising Star, with sustained media presence in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and Rolling Stone. Biography highlights Author, “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity” (Wiley, 2025) Founder, Black Speakers Collection, a directory created to address pay equity for Black speakers Founder, Blue Haired Unicorn, an HR and DEI consultancy advising on psychological safety and culture design Chief Experience Officer at GRAV, based in Austin, Texas Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice; named DivInc Austin Rising Star, 2021 Featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone Biography The employee experience is the part of the company most leaders do not own. HR runs onboarding, operations runs the systems, leadership sets the tone, and the actual lived experience falls between them. Butler works in that gap. As Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and through her consultancy Blue Haired Unicorn, she designs how a workforce actually moves through the organisation, from joining to leaving. Her published thesis sits in “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity”, released by Wiley in 2025. The argument is that performative culture work fails because it asks people to keep their full selves out of the building. Butler treats authenticity as an operating condition for trust, engagement and retention, not as a value statement. The Black Speakers Collection is her clearest demonstration of how she thinks. Faced with persistent pay inequity for Black speakers in the bureau industry, she built a directory rather than writing a position piece. It is now used by meeting planners as a working resource, profiled by PCMA and Prevue Meetings. Her media presence reflects the breadth of her audience. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone have carried her commentary on workplace culture, mental health and inclusion. LinkedIn named her a Top Black Voice; DivInc named her Austin Rising Star in 2021. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and workplace culture Authenticity and human-centred leadership Employee experience design Inclusion as operating practice Mental health and trauma at work Future of work and the people function Personal branding and self-presentation at work Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers designing employee experience end to end Heads of DEI and inclusion leads looking for operating substance over signalling Founders and CEOs of scaling companies under cultural strain Internal leadership programmes for managers responsible for psychological safety Audience outcomes A clearer view of where the employee experience is breaking inside their own organisation A sharper distinction between performative culture work and operating culture work Language for managers to discuss mental health, trauma and authenticity at work without flinching Practical reference points from a practitioner running these problems day to day A published thesis (“Let Them See You”) to extend the conversation after the room

Why organisations work with Mark Levy He built Employee Experience as a discipline inside Airbnb during the years it was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work, so the playbook he teaches is one he has actually shipped. He treats culture as something designed, instrumented, and operated, not as a values poster or a wellness programme, which gives CHROs and CEOs a concrete way to talk about it with the board. He has done the same work twice at very different scales, at Airbnb in hypergrowth and at Allbirds through global expansion, so the frameworks travel beyond one company’s circumstances. He is co-authoring the Wiley method that is becoming the reference text for EX practitioners, alongside Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, which gives his sessions a body of work rather than a personal anecdote set. He speaks fluently to the alignment between CMO and CHRO, where most internal-brand efforts break down, because he has run the function that sits between them. Biography highlights Pioneered the Employee Experience function at Airbnb, replacing the traditional HR model with an end-to-end employee journey approach. Led the people and culture work during the year Airbnb was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work. Most recently led Employee Experience at Allbirds during its global expansion. Co-author of Employee Experience Design (Wiley, 2026) with Dean Carter and Samantha Gadd. Earlier corporate roles at Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. Board director at First Graduate; former Gap Foundation board member; advisor to Backstage Capital and MixR. JD/MBA from the University of Colorado. Biography Airbnb hit Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work ranking in 2016 with a people function that did not look like a people function. It had been rebuilt as Employee Experience, with culture, workplace, and social impact reporting alongside traditional HR. The person who designed that structure was Mark Levy. He came to it from a long retail and consumer career: Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and two years at Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. The pattern across those roles was practical, not academic. How does a company actually live its brand internally, in the systems and rituals employees experience every day, rather than in the language printed on the wall? At Airbnb he turned that question into an operating model. The result, codified now in the Wiley book he co-authored with Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, treats employee experience as something you design with employees rather than for them, and instrument the way a product team would. Most recently he led the same work at Allbirds as the company scaled internationally. What organisations get from him is the rare combination of a builder who has actually run the function and a teacher with a published method. The audience he is sharpest with is the CHRO who needs to translate culture into board-readable substance, and the CEO and CMO who want the company their customers experience to match the company their employees work in. Key speaking topics Employee Experience design Belonging and the internal brand Culture during hypergrowth and global expansion The shift from HR to end-to-end employee journey CMO and CHRO alignment on brand Hybrid and distributed work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning the HR operating model. CEOs and founder-led companies in scale-up where culture is starting to fragment. CMOs and brand leaders working with people teams on internal brand and employer brand. Boards and executive committees treating culture as a governance topic, not an HR topic. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between Employee Experience as a discipline and HR as a function, with the structural implications of each. A practical model for designing employee journeys the way product teams design customer journeys. A working language for the CMO and CHRO to align internal and external brand. Specific examples from Airbnb and Allbirds of what design-led culture looks like when it is built and instrumented. A reference point in the Wiley method, including how Patagonia, Airbnb, and other companies have made it operational.

Why organisations work with Kanika Chadda Gupta A live interviewer who can carry a senior-leader fireside, a customer panel and an all-hands Q&A inside the same event, with the journalistic preparation of a network anchor rather than a generalist host. A working-parent and caregiver lens grounded in years of conversations with the audience itself, through the That’s Total Mom Sense podcast and its named guests including Chelsea Clinton, Kelly Rowland and America Ferrera. AAPI and South Asian heritage programming led by someone with cultural authority, not a borrowed brief, useful for Heritage Month moments where credibility is what makes the session land. Recognised by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women as a 2023 100 Women to KNOW Across America honouree, which travels well with internal sponsors who want a credentialled external voice on women’s progression. A second business as founder of Kronologie Agency, so brand, storytelling and marketing-to-mothers content is delivered with operator credibility, not theory. Biography highlights Former television journalist and anchor, with CNN India reporting credits including coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Host of That’s Total Mom Sense, featured in Forbes and on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and Cheddar. 2023 honouree, 100 Women to KNOW Across America, presented by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women. Director for Women in Media at HeyMama; Official Podcast Partner of Mom 2.0 with Everyday Health and BabyCenter. Founder and CEO of Kronologie Agency, a New York digital marketing and branding firm. Trained Kuchipudi classical dancer and Hindustani vocalist; former Miss India Maryland and Miss India East Coast. Biography Working parents are the silent majority inside most large employers, yet leave, benefits and culture programmes still treat them as a special case. That mismatch is where Kanika Chadda Gupta does her most useful work. Her years interviewing CEOs, founders and public figures on That’s Total Mom Sense gave her a clear view of what working parents actually need from their employer, and what they quietly resent. The journalism credential is not decoration. She trained as a broadcast journalist and anchored at CNN, including coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, before moving into long-form interviewing. On stage that shows up as preparation: she reads in, asks the question the audience wanted asked, and does not let a panel drift. Forbes, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and Cheddar have all featured the podcast and her guest list runs from Chelsea Clinton to Kelly Rowland to America Ferrera. Her topical authority sits on three tracks. Working-parent and caregiver policy, anchored in interview evidence and her role as Director for Women in Media at HeyMama. Women’s progression, recognised by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women in their 2023 100 Women to KNOW Across America cohort. And AAPI and South Asian heritage, delivered with the cultural authority of someone trained in Kuchipudi classical dance and Hindustani vocal music since childhood. She also runs Kronologie Agency, a New York branding and digital marketing firm, which gives her a second register: marketing-to-mothers content delivered by an operator who has built campaigns, not just talked about them. Employers booking her for a Heritage Month moment, a working-parent ERG event or a customer fireside get a host who has done the reading and a topical voice who has done the work. Key speaking topics Working parents and caregivers in corporate culture Women’s progression and leadership development AAPI and South Asian heritage programming Marketing and brand storytelling for mother-led households Interview craft and on-stage moderation Storytelling for television, podcast and new media Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and ERG sponsors designing working-parent, women’s and AAPI heritage programming CMOs and brand teams targeting mother-led household decision-making Internal communications and event leads booking a fireside, customer panel or all-hands moderator Heads of talent and culture running employee summits where journalistic interview craft matters more than a keynote Audience outcomes A clearer read on where current working-parent policy is failing in practice and which fixes employees actually value Specific language for sponsoring women’s progression and AAPI heritage moments without slipping into compliance theatre A marketing perspective on mother-led households that goes beyond demographic data A session moderated or hosted with network-journalist preparation, not generalist host energy Direct exposure to interview-based insight from named senior figures the audience would recognise

Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room. A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind. Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades. A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS. A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion. Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I. Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals. First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland. Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me. Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections. Biography Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around. SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group. Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters. Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me. Key speaking topics AI, belonging and the human future of work Inclusive culture and belonging Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion Inclusive leadership and engagement Workplace allyship Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice Culture change and DEI strategy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules. Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate. Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture. Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down. Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong. A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions. A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture. Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.

Why organisations work with Otmar Szafnauer He has run a Formula 1 constructor through administration and out the other side with the workforce intact, a credential almost no other operational leader on the speaking circuit can claim. He led the same team across three brand identities, Force India, Racing Point and Aston Martin, which gives him direct experience of the gap between a rebrand on paper and a rebrand in the engineering hall. His technical grounding, an engineering degree paired with operational roles at Ford, BAR, Honda and Force India, means board audiences get specifics on how decisions actually move through a complex organisation, not motivational abstractions. He has worked under three very different ownership cultures, from Vijay Mallya at Force India to Lawrence Stroll at Racing Point and Renault Group at Alpine, and can speak credibly about leading inside contested governance structures. Biography highlights Team Principal and CEO, Racing Point F1 and Aston Martin F1, 2018 to January 2022. Team Principal, BWT Alpine F1 Team, February 2022 to July 2023. Senior leadership at Force India from October 2009, including the team’s 2016 and 2017 fourth-place Constructors’ Championship finishes. Former Vice President, Honda Racing Developments, after entering F1 as Operations Director at British American Racing in 1998. Founder and Chairman, Soft Pauer, publisher of the official Formula 1 Timing iPhone app launched in 2009. BSc Electrical Engineering, Wayne State University; master’s in Business and Finance, University of Detroit Mercy. Biography Force India was placed in administration in mid-2018 after Vijay Mallya’s financial collapse. The garage was full of staff who had been approached by other teams, and a technical director the rivals very much wanted. The team came out of that summer with most of its people still in their seats. Otmar Szafnauer was the operational leader who kept them there. That period is the centre of his value to a serious audience. Across more than a decade running the same Silverstone constructor under three brands, Force India, Racing Point and finally Aston Martin, he saw what holds a high-performance organisation together when ownership, identity and strategy all change at once. The answer turned out to be unglamorous: honesty in front of the workforce, continuity of technical leadership, and a refusal to let the rebrand outrun the operating reality. His route into that role was deliberate. An electrical engineering degree from Wayne State, an MBA in finance from Detroit Mercy, then Ford, then Formula 1 from 1998 onwards, including a Vice President role at Honda Racing Developments. The result is a leader who can speak to engineers and to a board, and who treats culture as something built on calendar-blocked decisions about hiring, accountability and recognition rather than slogans. His later move to Alpine, where he served as Team Principal from 2022 until July 2023, gives the picture its second half. Running an OEM-owned team under Renault Group meant operating inside a corporate governance structure, with all of the political weight that implies. Few operators have led both an independent privateer and a manufacturer-owned team at the same level, and the contrast is the substance of what he can say to leaders managing similar shifts of their own. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Leadership through restructure and ownership change Culture, accountability and psychological safety in elite environments Operational decision-making under time and resource pressure Lessons from three decades inside Formula 1 leadership Building and retaining technical talent in competitive markets Ideal for Boards and executive teams navigating ownership change, M&A integration or a corporate rebrand CHROs and people leaders responsible for retaining critical talent through periods of uncertainty Senior operators in technical and engineering-led organisations Leadership development audiences focused on composure and decision quality under pressure Audience outcomes A working sense of what leadership actually does for a workforce when ownership and strategy are in flux Specific examples of how culture, retention and accountability hold up in genuinely high-stakes environments A practical view of the difference between a rebrand on paper and a rebrand inside the operating organisation Confidence that the lessons translate, drawn from a domain where the consequences of poor decisions are visible every fortnight

Why organisations work with Tom Coleman He brings clinical sleep science into operational contexts where it actually changes behaviour, including shift-working teams, elite sport and high-pressure corporate environments. His client base spans nine of the top ten pharmaceutical companies along with Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Roche, Deloitte and Samsung, demonstrating that the content lands across regulated, industrial and consumer-facing workforces. He works with institutional partners that most wellbeing speakers do not, including An Garda Siochana on officer resilience and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on shift-working nurses. His framing treats burnout and recovery as biology, not motivation, which gives senior leaders a defensible language for investment decisions on workforce health. Biography highlights Honours Degree in Public Health and qualified health scientist. Resident sleep expert for Bauer Media, with regular contributions to Newstalk and Today FM. Consultant to An Garda Siochana on health and resilience strategy for serving officers. Collaborator with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on educational material for shift-working healthcare staff. Corporate clients include Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Roche, Deloitte, Samsung, eBay, PayPal, AIB, Dropbox, DHL and Irish Rail. Has worked with Olympic and elite athletes on sleep analytics and recovery. Biography Most wellbeing programmes treat sleep as a personal problem. Coleman treats it as an operating risk. His work translates clinical sleep science into inputs that organisations can actually manage, including shift schedules, recovery protocols and executive workload. The grounding is academic and applied. An Honours Degree in Public Health, qualification as a health scientist, and over a decade of consulting with corporate and elite-sport clients give him a base most wellness speakers cannot match. He has worked with Olympic athletes on recovery analytics, with An Garda Siochana on officer resilience, and with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on educational content for shift-working nurses. The corporate footprint is substantial. Nine of the top ten pharmaceutical companies have used his programmes, alongside Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Roche, Deloitte, Samsung, eBay, PayPal, AIB, Dropbox and Irish Rail. The work is consistent across very different operating models, which is what gives senior buyers confidence that this is a scalable intervention rather than a single-keynote topic. As Bauer Media’s resident sleep expert in Ireland, he is the voice most regularly consulted by Newstalk and Today FM on sleep and recovery. That media role keeps the content sharp, current and accessible to non-specialist audiences, which matters when the brief is a board offsite or an all-hands rather than a clinical seminar. Key speaking topics Sleep science in the workplace Burnout prevention and recovery Shift work and circadian performance Recovery for high-pressure roles Stress, fatigue and decision quality Health and longevity for executives Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing redesigning health and resilience strategy Operations leaders accountable for shift-working populations in healthcare, manufacturing, logistics or emergency services Executive teams under sustained workload pressure where recovery is the bottleneck Talent and engagement leaders looking to move beyond mindfulness app procurement Audience outcomes A clear separation between fatigue, stress and burnout, with different organisational responses for each Specific behavioural inputs that improve sleep quality, applicable to executives and shift workers alike A defensible business case for recovery as a performance variable rather than a benefits line item Practical structures for managers responsible for high-pressure or round-the-clock teams

Why organisations work with Wema Hoover She ran global DEI inside four of the most scrutinised employers in the world: Google, Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The advice is shaped by what survives in regulated, multinational environments. She separates the politics of DEI from the operating substance, which lets boards keep the practice going without the labels that now invite litigation and activist pressure. Her work covers the full stack: hiring, promotion, belonging, manager capability, and how leadership teams behave under public scrutiny. Not awareness training. She writes for Fast Company on the structural questions, gender investment, leadership double standards, beyond the DEI backlash, which means buyers get a thinker, not a workshop facilitator. Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force membership signals she works alongside the most serious researchers in this field, not adjacent to them. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Google Former Chief Diversity Officer / Global Head of DEI at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb Published contributor at Fast Company, Inc. and Diversity Magazine Member, Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force Board member, Ten By Three MSc Human Resource Management and Master’s Certificate in Organizational Change Management, The New School; BA Psychology, Rutgers; GPHR certified Biography The DEI conversation has fractured. Court rulings, shareholder activism and political pressure have made the language toxic in some markets, while the underlying organisational questions, who gets hired, who gets promoted, who feels they belong, are now more commercially material than they have been in a decade. Wema Hoover spent the last fifteen years running that practice inside large, regulated, global employers. As Global Head of DEI at Google, and in equivalent senior roles at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, she designed and operated inclusion programmes in the kinds of environments where the work has to clear legal, board, regulator and workforce scrutiny. That operator background is what makes her useful now. She is not arguing for DEI as a value; she is showing leadership teams how to keep the operating substance, hiring discipline, manager capability, advancement pipelines, belonging metrics, without the rhetorical scaffolding that has become a liability. Her Fast Company writing and her “Beyond the DEI Backlash” work track the same argument in public. She holds an MSc in Human Resource Management and a Master’s-level Certificate in Organizational Change Management from The New School, a BA in Psychology from Rutgers, and a Global Professional in Human Resources certification. She sits on Coqual’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, the working group most senior corporate DEI heads consult on talent equity research. Key speaking topics Inclusion strategy after the DEI backlash Belonging and culture inside global, regulated employers Women’s advancement, sponsorship and the leadership double standard Manager capability for inclusive teams Cross-cultural leadership in multinational workforces Executive coaching for senior leaders navigating cultural change Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers managing inclusion programmes through political and legal headwinds Boards and ExCos that need to reset their position on DEI without abandoning the substance Global employers with regulated workforces (pharma, tech, financial services) where inclusion is tied to talent risk Senior leadership development programmes for newly promoted women and underrepresented executives Audience outcomes A clear read on what has changed in the DEI landscape, in the US and globally, and what that means for their own programme design A working distinction between inclusion as compliance theatre and inclusion as operating capability Practical decisions on which existing initiatives to keep, which to retire and which to rename Confidence in how to brief their board on DEI in the current environment without overpromising or retreating A sharper view of where sponsorship and advocacy, not training, actually move the dial on women’s advancement

Why organisations work with Stephanie Davies A working method that gets cynical adult audiences to engage with behaviour change without the eye-rolling that usually accompanies culture training. A track record on hard conversations, with a programme at HSBC training more than 500 leaders to handle performance and feedback without flinching. A point of view on engagement grounded in published psychology, set out in her book Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter (Crown House). Two decades inside corporate culture work across HSBC, Nespresso, Nando’s, and government, so the content lands as practitioner advice rather than commentary. A delivery style that holds the room. The comedy training is a tool for retention and recall, not a gimmick layered on top of the content. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Laughology, founded 2006. Author of Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, Crown House Publishing. Master’s-level training in psychology, focused on humour and organisational performance. Designed and delivered performance-conversation training at HSBC for 500+ leaders. Culture and behaviour programmes with Nespresso, Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and UK government departments. Regular columnist for Training Journal; previously an award-winning stand-up comedian. Biography Most culture programmes lose the room in the first ten minutes. Adults arrive sceptical, the language is corporate, and the behaviours being asked of them feel performative. Laughology was built to solve that delivery problem. Stephanie Davies founded it in 2006 to pair applied psychology with the craft of stand-up, and uses humour as a mechanism for behaviour change rather than as decoration. The substance sits behind the style. Her book, Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, sets out humour as a thinking skill, drawing on positive psychology and the cognitive research on how laughter shifts perspective and learning retention. Her master’s-level work in psychology runs through the firm’s programmes on engagement, leadership behaviour, and feedback. The client list reflects the practical bias. HSBC commissioned performance-conversation training for more than 500 leaders. Nespresso brought her in to strengthen retail leadership. Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and government departments have used Laughology for culture and behaviour work. Across these, the brief is consistent: get people to commit to a change in how they behave, not just understand why it matters. That practitioner record is what distinguishes her in a crowded happiness-at-work category. Most speakers in the space arrive from coaching, HR, or pop-psychology. Davies arrives from a working comedy career and a psychology specialism in humour, with twenty years of corporate delivery behind her. Key speaking topics Workplace engagement and culture change Psychology of humour at work Performance and feedback conversations Behaviour change in large organisations Leadership development and team culture Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Resilience and positive psychology Ideal for CHROs and people directors running engagement or culture change agendas. L&D and OD leads commissioning leadership, feedback, or behaviour-change programmes. Boards and executive teams looking for a substantive culture session that an internal audience will actually engage with. Conference organisers programming a keynote that has to do real work on a wellbeing or culture theme. Audience outcomes A working model of humour as a behaviour-change tool, not as entertainment. Language and techniques for running performance and feedback conversations without avoidance. A clearer view of what drives engagement at the level of daily behaviour. Practical positive-psychology techniques for resilience and team morale. A session people actually remember, which is the precondition for any of the above changing behaviour.

Why organisations work with Simon T. Bailey Original research on workforce resilience. His State of Working America: Thriving in Resilience and Brilliance study surveyed over 1,000 US workers and underpins his keynotes with current data rather than received wisdom. A customer experience playbook rooted in operational reality. His SPARK methodology distils what he learned as Sales Director of the Disney Institute into practices that frontline teams can apply. Award-winning published work. Resilience@Work won both the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award, signalling editorial credibility beyond bureau-circuit hype. Reach that translates into recognition inside client organisations. His 14 LinkedIn Learning courses have reached more than 400,000 professionals, so audiences often arrive already familiar with the material. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Brilliance Institute, Inc. Former Sales Director, Disney Institute (seven years as a Disney cast member). Author of 11 books, including Release Your Brilliance (HarperCollins), ranked No. 17 by 800-CEO-Read among the top 100 books being read by corporate America. Resilience@Work recipient of the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award. Named to Success magazine’s Top 25 thought leaders alongside Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey. 14 LinkedIn Learning courses with a combined audience of 400,000+ professionals. Executive MBA, University of East London; three honorary doctorates, most recently a Doctorate of Science in Business Administration from Cleary University. Biography Disney spent decades teaching the world that service is a system, not a personality trait. Bailey was inside that system as Sales Director of the Disney Institute, and his work since has carried that operating discipline into the wider corporate world. The premise of his current research is straightforward. Engagement scores plateaued during the pandemic and have not recovered. His State of Working America: Thriving in Resilience and Brilliance report, drawn from over 1,000 US workers, gives leaders an evidence base for why and what to do about it. Resilience@Work, the book built on that research, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award. The intellectual through-line across his 11 books is the connection between how people feel about their work and what customers experience at the other end. Release Your Brilliance, published by HarperCollins, was ranked among the top 100 books being read by corporate America. His SPARK methodology turns that thesis into operating practice for frontline teams. His reach inside organisations is unusual for a keynote author. 14 LinkedIn Learning courses have placed his material in front of 400,000+ professionals, which is why Success magazine listed him among its Top 25 thought leaders, in the company of Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey. Key speaking topics Workforce resilience Employee engagement and retention Customer experience and service culture Leadership development Personal and professional brilliance Inclusive and values-based leadership Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement after sustained workforce fatigue Customer experience and service leaders translating brand promise into frontline behaviour Sales and commercial leadership teams looking to renew energy and conviction HR and L&D summits, organisational town halls, and customer-facing field events Audience outcomes A current evidence base, drawn from Bailey’s State of Working America research, on what is driving disengagement and what restores it. The SPARK service framework, translated into specific behaviours frontline teams can adopt the following week. Renewed conviction in the link between how employees feel and what customers experience. A vocabulary leaders can use to talk about resilience and brilliance without slipping into wellness platitudes.

Why organisations work with Rachel Stone A coach’s diagnostic eye rather than a speaker’s set piece. She reads what is actually happening between a leader and their team and names it, then offers next steps the leader can act on the same week. Direct experience of the operator’s chair. Commercial buying, retail management at Safeways PLC, classroom teaching and senior college leadership, before twelve years coaching 130-plus companies. The advice lands because it is grounded in those rooms. A clear behavioural model. The “breathe life into people” frame and the Kindness Economy (People, Planet, Profit) give leaders a vocabulary for what trust-based leadership looks like day to day. Tools that travel back to the workplace. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone diagnostics give audiences something concrete to use with their own teams, not just a takeaway feeling. Biography highlights Founder of Rachel Stone Coaching Ltd, established 2012. Author of “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders” (2024), foreword by Professor Damian Hughes. Accredited ICQ Global DISC Profile and Growth Zone Practitioner. Qualified business coach via The Coaching Academy. Coached 130-plus companies and 250-plus leaders across construction, retail, education, manufacturing and professional services. Earlier career: commercial buyer in electronics, retail manager at Safeways PLC, Business Studies teacher and senior college manager. Biography Most managers are promoted for being good at the job they used to do. The job they now have is different, and the gap between the two is where engagement breaks, conflict festers and culture quietly drifts. Stone built her practice around closing that gap. She works with business owners and senior teams on the small behavioural shifts that change how a team performs, not on abstract leadership theory. Her route into coaching was unusual. After commercial buying in electronics and retail management at Safeways PLC, she retrained as a Business Studies teacher, took on senior college management, and in 2012 left to start her own coaching business. Twelve years later the client list runs to more than 130 companies across construction, retail, education and manufacturing, with over 250 individual leaders coached. The work spans board-level transformation, embedding coaching cultures, and middle-management development. The intellectual frame is set out in her 2024 book “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders”, with a foreword by Professor Damian Hughes of the High Performance podcast. The book pairs her own story with the principles she teaches: trust as a leadership currency, the “Kindness Economy” of People, Planet and Profit, and the idea that leaders “breathe life into people” rather than extract performance from them. Audiences leave with usable language and a diagnostic. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone tools give leaders a way to read their own behaviour and their team’s. The delivery is pacey and pragmatic; the focus is on what a leader can do differently on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Transformational leadership Coaching cultures and coaching as a leadership skill Trust and team performance Communication and conflict in teams Employee engagement and burnout Resilience and self-management for leaders The Kindness Economy: People, Planet, Profit Workplace culture in hybrid and growing businesses Ideal for Business owners and founder-CEOs scaling beyond a hands-on operating model. Senior leadership teams in mid-market and SME organisations who need a behavioural reset, not a strategy day. HR and L&D leads commissioning manager development or embedding a coaching culture. Leadership groups in sectors that promote technically (construction, manufacturing, professional services, education). Audience outcomes A clearer read on how their own behaviour shapes their team’s engagement and output. Practical coaching techniques managers can use in one-to-ones and team conversations from the next working day. A shared vocabulary for trust, conflict and culture that survives beyond the session. Tools to spot early signs of burnout and disengagement before they cost the business people. A working definition of transformational leadership grounded in behaviour, not theory.

Why organisations work with Onyeka Nubia Brings primary-source historical research to a conversation that has become dominated by opinion and ideology, giving inclusion content intellectual credibility rather than activist framing. Has spent a decade rewriting how British history teaches diversity, with seminars in roughly half of UK universities that teach history, so the methodology travels into corporate contexts with academic weight. Author of Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen, the two reference works most cited in debates on Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Reframes a contested topic on factual ground. Equally comfortable at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and on BBC and Channel 4 history programming, which means the register adjusts to the room without losing substance. Useful precisely because he does not sound like a DEI consultant. The frame is historical, cultural and intellectual, which is the register many boards now prefer. Biography highlights Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Nottingham Fellow of the Royal Historical Society Advance HE National Teaching Fellow, recognised for embedding diversity in university history curricula Author of Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England (2013) and England’s Other Countrymen: Black Tudor Society (2019) PhD by publication, University of East Anglia Keynote presenter at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland Television contributor for BBC’s Digging for Britain and History Cold Case, Channel 5’s Walking Victorian Britain, and Channel 4’s London’s Lost Graveyard and The Queens Who Changed the World Over fifty articles in History Today, BBC History Magazine, European History Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement Biography For most of the last decade, the inclusion conversation inside large organisations has been carried by HR language and political framing. That register is now strained. Boards want substance, not slogans, and the people leading inclusion work need a deeper well to draw from. Onyeka Nubia offers that well. As Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his research has rewritten what is known about Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen are now standard references on Tudor diversity, drawn from parish registers, court records and primary archives rather than secondary commentary. The Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship recognises a parallel achievement: a body of curriculum work, delivered in roughly half of the UK universities that teach history, that has changed how the subject is taught. The methodology, evidence first, identity later, is exactly what corporate audiences are reaching for as the DEI conversation moves out of advocacy and into substance. His broadcasting work, from Digging for Britain to The Queens Who Changed the World, sharpens the public-facing register. The audience he is most useful to is a senior leadership team that wants to keep talking about inclusion seriously, without the language that has stopped working. Key speaking topics Black British history and the Tudor period Cultural intelligence and national identity Diversity, equity and inclusion grounded in historical evidence Decolonising knowledge and curriculum Race, otherness and the British imagination Renaissance and pre-modern multiculturalism Storytelling and historical method Ideal for CHROs and heads of inclusion looking to reset the intellectual frame for their DEI work Boards and executive teams under pressure on the politics of inclusion who want substance over signalling Cultural and educational institutions reviewing how they curate history, identity and audience Leadership development programmes that want a serious treatment of cultural intelligence Audience outcomes A historically grounded language for diversity and identity that holds up to scrutiny A clearer view of how British national identity has been constructed, and what that means for inclusion now Confidence to lead inclusion conversations on evidence rather than ideology Exposure to the primary sources that reshape commonly held assumptions about race in British history A sharper sense of how curriculum and culture change actually happens inside institutions