Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Carl Honoré He makes a specific, testable claim that most management culture resists: that slowing down is not a productivity concession but a competitive advantage, and he has two decades of cross-sector evidence to support it. His Slow Fix framework gives organisations a direct alternative to short-termism in problem-solving, not as a philosophical preference, but as a structured approach to decisions that actually hold. On ageing and the workforce, he converts a topic most organisations treat as a compliance or HR issue into a commercial argument: mixed-age teams outperform across measurable metrics, and ageism is a business risk, not just a social one. His work sits at the junction of two urgent organisational pressures – sustainable performance culture and the longevity economy – giving him a rare dual relevance for leadership teams and people functions simultaneously. As the originator of the Slow Movement – a framework covered by the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist and Time, among others – he brings a level of intellectual ownership that very few speakers in the workplace culture space can claim. Biography highlights Author of In Praise of Slow (2004), Under Pressure, The Slow Fix, and Bolder – published in 36 languages, with bestseller listings across multiple countries Two main-stage TED Talks – «In Praise of Slowness» and «Why We Should Embrace Aging as an Adventure» – with combined views in the millions In Praise of Slow described by the Financial Times as the foundational text of the Slow Movement Journalist whose work has appeared in The Economist, Observer, National Post, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, and Time Named 2024 Advocate for Aging by Next Avenue and the American Society on Aging Creator and presenter of BBC Radio 4 series Status by Carl Honoré; previously presented The Slow Coach for BBC Radio 4 and Frantic Family Rescue for ABC TV Australia Bolder selected as BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Reader’s Digest (UK) Book of the Month Graduated from the University of Edinburgh; reported across Europe and South America for over a decade before turning to books Biography Speed and youth are the two defaults of modern organisational culture. Carl Honoré has built a career and a global movement on the argument that both are miscalibrated, and that the evidence for changing them is stronger than most organisations acknowledge. In Praise of Slow (2004), the book that gave the Slow Movement its name and its intellectual framework, made a counterintuitive claim: that choosing when to be fast, rather than defaulting to fast, is a more reliable route to performance. The Financial Times placed it as the foundational text of the movement. His third book, The Slow Fix, extended that argument into problem-solving, building the case that organisations addicted to quick responses consistently underperform against those willing to invest time in diagnosis and depth. His more recent work, anchored in Bolder, applies the same analytical lens to age. The demographic case for rethinking older workers is well-established in research; the cultural and commercial case is Honoré’s contribution. His argument that ageism functions as a form of the same bias toward speed and novelty that distorts organisational decision-making, connects the two strands of his work into a coherent framework for leaders. In 2024, that work was recognised by both Next Avenue and the American Society on Aging, who named him an Advocate for Aging. Trained as a journalist at The Economist, Observer, and Time, among other outlets, Honoré brings a mode of inquiry to organisational topics that is grounded in evidence gathered across cultures and sectors, not in a single industry or institutional context. His two main-stage TED Talks have been viewed millions of times; his books are published in 36 languages. Key speaking topics Pace as organisational strategy The Slow Movement and workplace performance Multigenerational workforce design Ageism as a commercial risk Sustainable performance and decision quality The Slow Fix: problem-solving under pressure Status, hierarchy, and organisational culture Longevity and the future of work Ideal for CHROs and people leaders designing age-inclusive workforces and addressing talent retention across generations CEOs and senior leadership teams examining whether performance culture is undermining the quality of decisions and the depth of problem-solving Boards and executive committees navigating the commercial implications of ageing demographics and multigenerational customer bases Culture transformation leads and change management functions rethinking pace, productivity, and sustainable output Audience outcomes A clear framework for diagnosing where organisational speed becomes a liability – in decision-making, leadership, and creative work Evidence-based understanding of why multigenerational teams outperform and what structural changes enable that performance A reframed view of ageism as a commercial and strategic problem, not only a social or legal one Practical approaches drawn from the Slow Fix framework for tackling complex problems without defaulting to short-term solutions Greater awareness of the connection between pace culture and youth bias – and why addressing one typically requires addressing both

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

Why organisations work with Charles Hazlewood He founded the world’s first large-scale professional ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians, Paraorchestra, and can speak from direct experience about building a high-performing team by designing the assumptions out, not papering over them. His TED talk “Trusting the Ensemble” has been watched by more than half a million people and is used inside leadership programmes because it demonstrates, live on stage with a string ensemble, how trust is given, withheld and rebuilt in real time. He works regularly with the Royal Concertgebouw, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic and the BBC Concert Orchestra, so when he talks about getting sixty independent experts to act as one organism, he is describing his day job, not a metaphor. He converts conducting into a usable language for executives: how a leader holds the room without micromanaging it, how authority sits alongside vulnerability, how a single bad cue ripples through a group for the rest of the performance. He has been recognised by Making Music with the 2023 Sir Charles Groves Prize for outstanding contribution to UK musical life and holds an honorary doctorate in Social Inclusion from Bath Spa University, which locates him credibly at the intersection of artistic excellence and inclusive leadership. Biography highlights Founder and Artistic Director of Paraorchestra, the first large-scale integrated ensemble of professional musicians with and without disabilities. Won first prize at the European Broadcasting Union Conducting Competition, Lisbon, 1995. Conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic, the Swedish Radio Symphony and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Delivered the TED talk “Trusting the Ensemble” in 2011, viewed more than half a million times; one of three TED and TEDx appearances. Three Sony Radio Academy Awards for BBC Radio 2 music programming; Sky Arts Ambassador for Music since 2021. Awarded the Sir Charles Groves Prize by Making Music in 2023 and an Honorary Doctorate of Social Inclusion by Bath Spa University in 2025. Biography A good orchestra looks nothing like a command hierarchy once the baton comes down. Sixty independently brilliant specialists have to act as one living thing, at speed, with no time for committee. Charles Hazlewood has spent thirty years inside that problem, and has built a second career translating what he has learned back out to people running companies. He came up through the classical mainstream. An organ scholarship to Keble College, Oxford, first prize at the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in Lisbon in 1995, and a conducting life that now runs through the Royal Concertgebouw, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Over 100 world premieres sit on the record. In 2011 he founded Paraorchestra with director Claire Whalley: the world’s first large-scale professional ensemble of disabled and non-disabled virtuosi. Its closing-ceremony debut at the London 2012 Paralympics, performed alongside Coldplay, reached a stated global audience of around a billion. In 2016 the ensemble became the first orchestral headliner at Glastonbury, with Philip Glass’s “Heroes” Symphony. His 2011 TED talk, “Trusting the Ensemble”, is the core of his work with organisations. He conducts a live ensemble on stage, withholds trust, restores it, and shows what each choice does to the sound. Making Music awarded him the Sir Charles Groves Prize in 2023 for outstanding contribution to UK musical life; Bath Spa University conferred an honorary doctorate in Social Inclusion in July 2025. The through-line is consistent: a room of experts does not become an ensemble by accident, and the leader’s job is to make the conditions in which it can. Key speaking topics Leadership and trust Ensemble performance Inclusive leadership and integrated teams Creativity under constraint Authenticity and vulnerability in leadership Culture change through the lens of a conductor Ideal for Executive teams and boards looking to operate as an ensemble rather than a collection of individual stars. CHROs and culture leads working on inclusive leadership, talent design, and what real integration looks like beyond policy. Leadership development programmes that want an embodied, live demonstration of trust and authority rather than a slide deck. Organisations navigating restructure or post-merger integration where the hard task is getting senior specialists to move as one. Audience outcomes A clear, tangible sense of what trust sounds like when it is present in a team, and what collapses when it is not. Language for talking about authority and vulnerability in leadership without defaulting to cliche. A reframe of inclusion grounded in a real example of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians performing at world-class level together. Specific cues for leading experts: how to hold the room without suffocating it, how to signal without scripting, how to recover from a missed entry. An unusually memorable session with a live conductor working with a live ensemble, not a talking-head keynote, that tends to be referenced back inside the business for months afterwards.

Why organisations work with Charlie Rocket A first-person reinvention story with hard credentials behind it: Grammy win as 2 Chainz’s manager at Street Execs, then a public health and athletic transformation rather than a curated brand exercise. The Nike «Dream Crazy» connection gives the keynote a culturally recognisable anchor. The Kaepernick spot won the 2019 Outstanding Commercial Emmy, and audiences place the story instantly. He moves a room emotionally without leaving it there. The Dream Machine Foundation gives the talk a working example of putting ambition into operational practice, not just rhetoric. He pairs naturally with leadership offsites, sales kick-offs, and culture moments where the brief is not analysis but a step-change in energy and self-belief at the top of the organisation. Biography highlights Founder of the Dream Machine Foundation, a non-profit funding individual dreams, small businesses and community recovery projects since 2018. Former CEO of Street Execs, the artist management company behind 2 Chainz, with a Grammy win to his name during that period. Featured in Nike’s «Dream Crazy» campaign with Colin Kaepernick, winner of the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. Endurance athlete: marathon finisher and Ironman finisher following a documented health turnaround that included losing approximately 125 lbs. Profiled by CNN in its Turning Points series on his decision to leave the music business to focus on health. Speaks internationally on reinvention, mindset and culture for corporate audiences across sectors. Biography A music executive walks away from a multimillion-dollar artist management business at 31 because his body has stopped cooperating. That is the hinge moment in Charlie Rocket Jabaley’s story, and the reason it lands in corporate rooms. He had built Street Execs into the company behind 2 Chainz, taken home a Grammy, and was, by his own account, 300 lbs and out of road. What he did next is what makes the talk usable for organisations rather than just moving. He treated his own life as a turnaround project. He lost roughly 125 lbs, became a marathon and Ironman finisher, and ended up in Nike’s «Dream Crazy» advertisement with Colin Kaepernick, the spot that won the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. CNN profiled the decision in its Turning Points series. The corporate keynote sits on top of that arc. The argument is straightforward: ambition is a renewable practice, and most senior teams have quietly let theirs decay under operational load. He extends the personal frame outward through the Dream Machine Foundation, which has been funding individual dreams and small business launches since 2018, as a working proof that the discipline scales beyond one person. The fit is specific. This is a speaker for moments when a leadership group, a sales force, or a culture programme needs a step-change in energy and self-belief, with credible substance behind the inspiration. It is not a research keynote. It is a reinvention keynote with the receipts. Key speaking topics Personal reinvention and mindset Resilience after health and career shock Culture shift and team ambition Purpose-driven leadership Storytelling and brand-led motivation Philanthropy and impact Ideal for Leadership offsites and CEO summits opening or closing on a culture moment Annual sales kick-offs and revenue team gatherings Employee experience and wellbeing programmes that need a credible voice on resilience Foundation, ESG and corporate responsibility events where the brief calls for substance behind the inspiration Audience outcomes A vivid case for treating personal ambition as a leadership discipline, not a private matter Specific behavioural anchors he has used in his own reinvention, transferable into team practice A reset on what individual leaders are willing to ask of themselves and their teams A working model, the Dream Machine Foundation, of how ambition becomes operational rather than aspirational

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

Why organisations work with Chester Elton His frameworks are grounded in the largest empirical base of any comparable culture speaker: studies of more than one million working adults, anchored by a 300,000-person study conducted with Towers Watson for All In – giving boards and HR leaders data they can defend internally. The Carrot Principle and Anxiety at Work sit at opposite ends of the engagement challenge; his ability to address both recognition strategy and workplace anxiety within a single coherent body of work means organisations do not need two different conversations. As a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, his executive coaching practice carries independent third-party validation that extends his value beyond the main stage. His work provides a specific, operational diagnosis – the breakdown between what leaders say they value and what managers actually do day to day – and a toolkit that works at every level of the organisation, not just the C-suite. Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts and consistently ranked among the world’s top organisational culture authorities by Global Gurus (2017–2025), his standing is validated by named external bodies rather than self-reported credentials. Biography highlights Co-author of five New York Times bestselling books, including The Carrot Principle, All In, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work (Harper Business), co-written with Adrian Gostick Books sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide; translated into more than 30 languages Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership (SCL) Certified Executive Coach Global Gurus research organisation: ranked consistently among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts, 2017–2025 Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts (October 2025) Co-founder, The Culture Works, a global leadership and culture consultancy Media: NBC Today, CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC; quoted in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, Financial Times Biography Culture does not fail organisations because leaders lack values. It fails because most managers do not know how to make those values visible in the daily behaviours of their teams. Chester Elton has spent more than two decades building the research base that explains this gap, and identifying what high-performing organisations do differently. His work draws on studies of more than one million working adults, compiled across several large-scale research partnerships. The Carrot Principle established the direct, measurable link between purposeful employee recognition and business outcomes including retention, productivity, and customer satisfaction. All In, produced with research firm Towers Watson, drew on a 300,000-person study to identify the seven practices that generate genuine organisational buy-in. Anxiety at Work – published by Harper Business and the most recent of his five New York Times bestsellers – addressed the other side of the same equation: what happens when uncertainty goes unmanaged and workplace anxiety erodes the culture leaders worked to build. Taken together, these books form one of the most evidence-based frameworks available to executives on how culture is created, sustained, and recovered. Elton is a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner, a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, and a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership certified executive coach. Global Gurus has ranked him among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts every year from 2017 to 2025. Inc. named him to its 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts list. He is co-founder of The Culture Works and has consulted with organisations including American Express, The World Bank, and the New Jersey Devils. What distinguishes him is the range the research covers. Most speakers in this space address either motivation or stress. Elton’s body of work addresses both, and the connection between them. Key speaking topics Employee recognition and culture-building Organisational culture and high-performance teams Workplace anxiety and psychological safety Leading with gratitude Employee engagement strategy Multigenerational workforce leadership Manager capability and team trust Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing, resetting, or embedding organisational culture programmes CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating workforce anxiety, change, or post-transformation culture repair Talent and leadership development functions seeking research-grounded frameworks for manager effectiveness HR and management associations and industry conferences where practitioner credibility and data-backed content are audience expectations Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where culture commitment breaks down between leadership intent and frontline management behaviour Recognition practices tied directly to engagement and retention outcomes, grounded in large-scale empirical research rather than anecdote Practical strategies for identifying workplace anxiety early – before it affects team performance, absenteeism, or attrition A shared organisational vocabulary for discussing culture, gratitude, and psychological safety in operational rather than abstract terms Immediate, actionable steps that managers at any level can apply to strengthen trust and discretionary effort within their teams

Why organisations work with Chip Conley He turned a single boutique hotel into a 50-property group as CEO of Joie de Vivre, then mentored Brian Chesky through Airbnb’s hospitality build-out. Few speakers can speak from inside both an independent operator and a category-defining platform. His Modern Elder thesis gives leadership teams a usable language for intergenerational collaboration at a moment when most companies are still treating age as a liability rather than a capability. He applied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to corporate strategy in his book Peak and his 2010 TED talk, and the framework still reads as one of the more durable arguments for measuring culture, employee engagement, and customer experience as connected variables. The Modern Elder Academy he founded in 2018 is the only midlife wisdom school running at scale, with over 2,000 alumni and a second campus, which gives him real operating data on how mid-career professionals reset, retrain, and re-enter organisations. He is a New York Times bestselling author and three-time TED speaker, with books published across two decades that track the same throughline: human meaning as the underlying engine of commercial performance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he built from a single property in 1987 into a portfolio of around 50 boutique hotels. Former Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb, mentor to CEO Brian Chesky during the company’s expansion to hosts in 191 countries. Founder and Executive Chairman of Modern Elder Academy, with campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and more than 2,000 alumni. Three-time TED speaker, including “Measuring what makes life worthwhile” (2010) and his 2023 talk on the midlife chrysalis. New York Times bestselling author of Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, alongside Peak, Emotional Equations, The Rebel Rules, and Marketing That Matters. Stanford BA and MBA. Named Most Innovative CEO in the Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times and recipient of the hospitality industry’s 2012 Pioneer Award. Biography The conventional career arc treats age as a depreciation curve. Chip Conley has spent two decades arguing the opposite, and building the institutions to prove it. He founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality in San Francisco in 1987, ran it for nearly 24 years, and grew it into one of California’s largest boutique hotel groups, around 50 properties at its peak. The book that came out of that period, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, applied Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to employee, customer, and investor relationships, and remains the most cited articulation of his commercial argument that human meaning is the engine, not the decoration, of business performance. In 2013, Airbnb’s three founders asked him to become Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. He mentored Brian Chesky and helped translate a tech platform into a hospitality company operating with hosts in 191 countries. The label he picked up there, “modern elder”, became the seed of his next institution. The Modern Elder Academy, which he founded in 2018, has campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and has now run more than 2,000 mid-career professionals through structured programmes on transition, longevity, and the social contract between generations at work. His more recent books, Wisdom@Work and Learning to Love Midlife, push that thesis into the corporate agenda directly: age as a category of workforce diversity, midlife as a strategic asset, and the intergenerational team as a more accurate model of how organisations actually learn. The argument is grounded in operating experience, not commentary, which is why boards and executive teams increasingly book him to challenge the assumptions inside their own talent strategy. Key speaking topics The multigenerational workplace and the case for age as workforce diversity Modern Elder leadership and the redesign of mid-career Culture and employee engagement built on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Disruptive innovation in hospitality and platform businesses Customer experience as a function of internal culture Emotional intelligence in leadership Midlife transition, longevity, and workforce retention Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning talent strategy across five generations at work CEOs and boards facing attrition of senior expertise and weak intergenerational knowledge transfer Hospitality, travel, and consumer-facing leadership teams rebuilding culture as a commercial asset Executive development and leadership academy programmes focused on mid-career renewal and senior transition Audience outcomes A clearer operating definition of intergenerational collaboration, with concrete language for treating age as a diversity and capability question A reframed view of mid-career and senior employees as a strategic asset rather than a cost line A working model, drawn from Peak and Maslow, for connecting employee meaning, customer experience, and financial performance Specific, named examples from Joie de Vivre, Airbnb, and Modern Elder Academy that translate into practical policy and culture changes A more honest conversation inside the leadership team about ageism, longevity, and what wisdom is actually worth in commercial terms

Why organisations work with Chris Dyer He ran the experiment before he taught it. PeopleG2 was a fully remote business through five Inc. 5000 listings and fifteen “best place to work” cycles, which means his culture and remote-work models come from operating evidence, not consulting observation. His “7 Pillars” (Transparency, Positivity, Measurement, Acknowledgement, Uniqueness, Listening, Mistakes) give an executive team a shared diagnostic vocabulary for culture, replacing the usual mix of values posters and engagement-survey theatre. He works at the intersection of culture and remote design, where most speakers pick a side. Buyers wrestling with hybrid productivity, distributed leadership, and connection in dispersed teams get one voice on both questions. Inc. Magazine named him the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture, and his client roster includes NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines, which signals he holds a senior room across regulated, industrial, tech, and consumer settings. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a fully remote background-screening company, five-time Inc. 5000 honoree. Author of The Power of Company Culture (Kogan Page) and co-author of Remote Work (Kogan Page). Named #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture by Inc. Magazine; ranked #5 on the LeadersHum Power List. Listed among Global Gurus Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals. Forbes Business Council member, Fast Company Executive Board member, and contributor to Inc.com. Keynote clients include NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines. Biography Most companies treat culture as something HR runs and leaders endorse. PeopleG2 was built the other way around. Chris Dyer ran the firm as a fully remote operation while it landed on the Inc. 5000 list five times and was repeatedly named a best place to work, which made culture a daily operating decision rather than an annual initiative. That experience produced a specific framework. The Power of Company Culture, published by Kogan Page, sets out seven pillars: Transparency, Positivity, Measurement, Acknowledgement, Uniqueness, Listening, and Mistakes. The book’s argument is operational. Each pillar maps to behaviours leaders can audit, and the cases used to test it sit inside companies like General Motors, Southwest Airlines, and VaynerMedia. His second book, Remote Work, also with Kogan Page, addresses the harder follow-on question: how do you keep a culture intact when your workforce is distributed. Inc. Magazine subsequently named Dyer the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture, and his keynote work has placed him in front of leadership teams at NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines. What buyers tend to take from Dyer is permission to stop treating culture as soft. He gives senior teams a vocabulary, a diagnostic, and a set of operator decisions, grounded in a business he built and ran rather than a model he assembled from interviews. Key speaking topics Company culture as an operating system The 7 Pillars framework Remote and hybrid workforce design Employee engagement and retention Leadership in distributed organisations Future of work and AI integration in the workplace Burnout and recession-period leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of People rebuilding engagement and retention strategy CEOs and executive teams setting the direction on hybrid or fully remote operating models Culture and transformation leads inside organisations carrying out post-restructure rebuilds Leadership development functions designing programmes for distributed managers Audience outcomes A shared diagnostic for which cultural levers in their organisation are actually moving performance A practical view of how to run a distributed or hybrid workforce without losing cohesion An operator’s account of how engagement, retention, and productivity reinforce each other when the right pillars are in place Concrete tactics from a CEO who tested them inside a five-time Inc. 5000 company

Why organisations work with Chris Endersby He treats a brand as an internal operating system before he treats it as a marketing asset, so the work changes how the leadership team behaves, not just how the company looks. The DARE methodology he co-developed at Firestarter gives founders a structured way to test whether their positioning is genuinely differentiated, authentic to the team, resonant with the buyer, and expressed consistently across every touchpoint. His background sits at the intersection of corporate change work at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays and front-line risk management in child safeguarding, which gives him a non-marketing read on how people actually respond to disruption and uncertainty. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy, which means he can hold the harder conversations that surface when a founder’s stated brand and the team’s lived experience do not match. Biography highlights Co-founder and COO of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy for purpose-led scale-up B2B businesses. Co-developer of the DARE methodology (Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression). Corporate change and consulting experience with JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays. Dual professional registration in coaching psychology and psychotherapy. Earlier career as a front-line child safeguarding practitioner, manager and researcher. Biography Scale-up B2B brands tend to fail in the same way. The founder’s original conviction gets diluted in committee, the language drifts toward whatever the competitor set is saying, and the team can no longer explain in plain terms why a customer should choose them. Chris Endersby’s work starts from that failure pattern, and from the observation that brand is rarely a marketing problem first. It is a leadership and behaviour problem that surfaces as a marketing problem. Endersby co-founded Firestarter, a London consultancy that works with founders of scale-up B2B businesses to rebuild that conviction. Alongside his business partner he co-developed the DARE methodology, which moves a brand through four practical tests: is it genuinely Differentiated in its market, Authentic to the people who have to live it, Resonant with the audience it is trying to reach, and Expressed consistently in everything the company does. The methodology is designed to make brand work auditable rather than aesthetic. His credibility for this work comes from an unusual stack. He has spent years inside corporate change programmes at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays, where he learned how large organisations actually metabolise new strategy. Before that he worked in child safeguarding as a practitioner, manager and researcher, which gives him a working understanding of risk, human behaviour under pressure, and the gap between what institutions say they do and what they do. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy. The result is a speaker who can sit in front of a founding team and ask the questions that brand agencies usually avoid: whether the leadership group actually believes its own positioning, where the team’s behaviour contradicts the stated values, and what the cost of that contradiction is in hiring, pricing and retention. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation for scale-up B2B Authentic positioning and purpose Founder-led brand strategy Organisational behaviour and brand Change and transformation in growth-stage businesses Coaching psychology applied to leadership teams Ideal for Founders and CEOs of Series A to Series C B2B businesses approaching a rebrand or repositioning Chief marketing officers and brand leads inside scale-ups where the brand has outgrown its origin story Leadership teams preparing for a funding round, acquisition or international expansion where positioning is under scrutiny Audience outcomes A clearer test for whether their current positioning is actually differentiated or just well-written A working understanding of why brand work fails when it stays inside the marketing function Specific questions to take back to their own leadership team about the gap between stated values and lived behaviour A framework (DARE) for auditing brand expression across product, sales, hiring and internal communication

Why organisations work with Chris Heemskerk Operator credibility from inside Google, where he led Scaled Acquisitions for North America and advised the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs documented in the Harvard Business School case study by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards. A defined framework set, including The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine, that gives boards a way to assess innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, rather than relying on anecdote. Practical authority on AI deployment: he speaks as a practitioner who has built scaled sales and product operations, not as an external commentator on the technology. Faculty standing at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, with formal innovation leadership credentials from Harvard Business School and design thinking certification from Stanford, supporting executive-level training and masterclass briefs. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, The Innovation Alliance Former Head of Scaled Acquisitions, Google North America Strategic advisor named in the Harvard Business School case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)” (Case 423-076) Faculty, European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability Author of The Innovation Scorecard and The Innovation Engine frameworks Executive Certification in Innovation Leadership, Harvard Business School; Design Thinking, Stanford University; MSc Marketing, London School of Business and Finance Biography Most large organisations now run innovation teams and AI working groups. Far fewer can name what those teams have shipped, retired, or scaled in the last year. The gap between activity and operating advantage is where senior leaders get exposed, and it is the gap Chris Heemskerk works in. His credibility on that question is operator credibility. As Head of Scaled Acquisitions for Google North America, he ran a large commercial operation inside one of the most studied innovation environments in business. He then helped initiate the partnership between Google Ads and Harvard Business School that produced the case “Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A),” authored by Linda Hill and Emily Tedards, in which he is named as a strategic advisor on the bet-sourcing framework that vetted and accelerated new pipeline opportunities. That experience now sits behind two frameworks he uses with executive teams: The Innovation Scorecard, which assesses innovation capability across culture, organisation, external posture and effectiveness, and The Innovation Engine, which sets out the operating system for sustained innovation output. As Founder and CEO of The Innovation Alliance, and as faculty at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability, he works with senior teams on the same question he faced as an operator: how to turn ambition into a managed capability. For boards looking at their AI agenda, the value is specific. Heemskerk speaks as someone who has built scaled commercial operations and has the structured material to translate AI ambition into how a function actually runs, what it measures, and what it discards. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Innovation culture AI deployment in large organisations Operating models for scaled innovation Digital transformation Executive masterclasses on innovation leadership Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leaders setting AI and innovation strategy Chief Innovation Officers and heads of strategy operationalising new capability Boards reviewing innovation governance and AI exposure Senior commercial and digital transformation leaders moving beyond pilots Audience outcomes A defined view of where the organisation sits on the four pillars of innovation capability Practical reference points from inside Google for how scaled operations adopt new technology A sharper distinction between innovation theatre and innovation that produces operating output Frameworks executives can return to after the keynote, including the Innovation Scorecard and Innovation Engine

Why organisations work with Christian Gansch His work draws directly on the governance and communication structures of professional orchestras to diagnose alignment failures inside organisations – not as analogy, but as operational system analysis. Leaders leave with a replicable model, not just a perspective. His 14 years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon (1990-2003) mean he has exercised genuine executive authority – across production, marketing, sales, and commercial strategy – inside a major global institution. This is the experience of a manager who performed at the highest level, not a performer who later studied management. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) gives his framework a named, tested structure that organisations can return to. The central argument – that orchestras are precision operating systems, not just inspiring metaphors – is the intellectual spine of every engagement. He puts a question to leadership teams that most frameworks avoid: how many high-performing soloists can a team accommodate before individual excellence starts to fracture collective output? The orchestra offers a concrete, daily-tested answer. He speaks and consults in both English and German, making him an operationally practical choice for pan-European organisations and those with significant DACH-region leadership presence. Biography highlights Leader (concertmaster) of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1981 to 1990 Senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon from 1990 to 2003; responsible for approximately 190 classical recordings including productions with Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Lang Lang, and Anna Netrebko Multiple Grammy Award winner as a producer; recipient of the Record Academy Award Tokyo (Gold) in the Best Concerto Disc category Conducted major orchestras internationally, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, and BBC National Orchestra of Wales BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall; conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the orchestra and chorus of Teatro La Fenice, Venice; opera credits include Le nozze di Figaro with Opera North Author of «From Solo to Symphony – What businesses can learn from orchestras» (2006) and a second German-language business book; corporate consulting and keynote work with clients including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche since 2003 Biography Christian Gansch spent a decade as leader of the Munich Philharmonic. He then spent fourteen years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon. In both roles, the daily challenge was identical: turning highly skilled, independently minded specialists into a functioning collective. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) makes a specific argument from that experience. Professional orchestras are not simply compelling analogies for corporate life – they are operational systems, with precise structures for authority, communication, and coordination. Most large organisations have never consciously built those structures. The gap shows up in execution. His 190 recordings at Deutsche Grammophon were produced across commercial, artistic, and logistical functions simultaneously. That cross-functional executive experience – managing complexity at the level of a major global label – is what separates his framework from that of performers who later turned to speaking. Gansch operated inside the institution, not just on stage. Since 2003, his consulting and keynote work has taken him to organisations including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche. The question he brings to every leadership engagement is the one an orchestra solves in every rehearsal: when each individual in the room is an expert in their own domain, what structure of communication and authority allows the group to act as one? Key speaking topics Orchestral leadership and organisational alignment High-performance team dynamics in expert-driven environments Communication and authority structures in complex organisations Leadership decision-making under pressure Managing the tension between individual excellence and collective output Change readiness and adaptability Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams working on alignment, coordination, and collective performance CHROs and organisational development leads designing performance culture in large, expert-heavy organisations Executive conferences and leadership summits with DACH-region or international audiences Organisations in professional services, engineering, or life sciences navigating cross-functional complexity Audience outcomes A named operational framework – the orchestral model – for thinking about authority, communication, and coordination in large organisations Specific diagnostic questions for their own leadership teams about the relationship between individual performance and collective output A clearer vocabulary for the gap between team capability and team alignment – and what structures close it Practical perspectives on decision-making under pressure, drawn from the specific demands of conducting at the highest level A changed understanding of what «communication» requires at an organisational level, beyond cultural aspiration

Why organisations work with Christian Horner He rebuilt Red Bull Racing’s championship standing twice. The two dominant eras – 2010 to 2013 and 2021 to 2023 – are separated by eight years of Mercedes dominance, making his leadership record one of the few in elite sport that spans genuine decline and recovery, not just a single peak. His pivotal talent decisions include recruiting Adrian Newey from McLaren, developing Sebastian Vettel through the junior system, and promoting Max Verstappen mid-season at 18 – each a bold call taken before the outcome was certain, with verifiable long-term consequences. He ran an independent, UK-based team against factory-backed rivals with greater institutional resources and outcompeted them twice, on culture, structure, and strategic clarity rather than budget. His tenure included real organisational pressures – an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022, the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024, and sustained management conflict at parent company level – providing concrete case material on keeping an organisation competitive through reputational and structural challenge. He initiated Red Bull Powertrains and a long-term technical partnership with Ford – a decision to internalise a critical competitive dependency, taken while actively defending championship positions, with consequences measured in performance and cost over a decade. Biography highlights Former Team Principal and CEO, Red Bull Racing, 2005-2025 – longest-serving team principal in the sport during that period 14 Formula 1 World Championship titles: 8 Drivers’ Championships and 6 Constructors’, plus 124 Grand Prix victories Appointed youngest Team Principal in Formula 1 history at age 31 – a record unbroken at the point of his departure in 2025 Founded Arden International; led the team to three consecutive International Formula 3000 teams’ championships (2002-2004) before entering Formula 1 management OBE (2013) and CBE (2024) for services to motorsport Key verified talent decisions include recruiting chief designer Adrian Newey from McLaren and promoting Max Verstappen to the senior team mid-season at 18 Biography Red Bull Racing won its first Formula 1 World Championship in 2010 and its most recent in 2023 – thirteen years apart, with eight years of Mercedes dominance in between. Christian Horner CBE was Team Principal and CEO for all of it. Building the team from an uncompetitive acquisition into a championship operation required bold early decisions. Horner recruited Adrian Newey from McLaren as chief technical architect and developed Sebastian Vettel through the Red Bull junior system. Within five seasons, the team had moved from the back of the grid to world champions. The second era required different thinking. When regulation changes in 2014 ended the first dominant run, Horner navigated nearly eight years without a championship before switching engine supplier from Renault to Honda and promoting Max Verstappen from the junior team mid-season at 18. The four consecutive Drivers’ Championships from 2021 followed from decisions taken when those outcomes were far from certain. Horner led the organisation through an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022 and the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024. His CBE (2024), following an OBE (2013), marks national recognition for a record of 14 World Championships and 124 Grand Prix victories built across two decades. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Decision-making under competitive pressure Talent identification, succession, and bold recruitment Competitive strategy across long performance cycles Organisational culture in elite performance environments Leading through regulatory and structural change Sustaining resilience across extended performance cycles Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards responsible for multi-year performance strategy CHROs and people leaders building talent pipelines in high-competition environments CEOs and managing directors leading organisations through competitive disruption or market shifts Transformation leads managing capability builds across multiple cycles Audience outcomes A concrete framework for distinguishing a performance system from a performance moment, and what it takes to build the former. Insight into talent decisions that compound over multiple competitive cycles, drawn from specific, verifiable recruitment and succession calls. Practical lessons in leading through genuine organisational crises – reputational, structural, and competitive – without losing competitive function. Clarity on the leadership differences between building for a first win and sustaining advantage when rivals close the gap. Case examples drawn from 20 years of high-stakes decisions with traceable long-term consequences.