Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Joel Zeff He pulls people out of their seats and into the room. Improv games run live with audience volunteers, not slides about engagement, are the mechanism the audience remembers a week later. He has done this more than 2,500 times since 1997, for buyers including Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS. The format is tested at scale. His book Make the Right Choice (Wiley, 2nd edition) gives leaders a written reference for the principles, so the keynote leaves a tangible artefact for managers to apply. He writes and performs his own material. The journalism background, including a recruited move to the Dallas Times Herald and freelance work for Newsday, shows up in tight scripting and audience-aware writing. For internal sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and culture moments where the room needs to be activated rather than briefed, Zeff is one of the few keynote speakers whose primary craft is the performance itself. Biography highlights Author of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, second edition published by Wiley More than 2,500 keynote events for corporate and association audiences since 1997 Former newspaper journalist; recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, with freelance bylines for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Former account executive at Edelman Public Relations Appeared on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch Named clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS Biography Engagement is the corporate problem that has resisted three decades of solutions. Surveys, town halls, pulse tools, and culture decks all describe it well. Almost none of them change the temperature in the room. Joel Zeff’s keynotes start from a different premise. If the room feels alive, the conversation about engagement starts to mean something. If it does not, no framework will fix that. Zeff trained as a newspaper journalist before he was a speaker. He started at the Saginaw News covering crime and accidents, was recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, and freelanced for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Herald closed. He then worked as an account executive at Edelman Public Relations and founded his own consulting practice in 1994. The improv comedy he was doing on weekends turned into his career when Texas Instruments asked him to bring the act to an executive retreat. The format he has built over 2,500 events since 1997 is unusual in a corporate setting. Audience members come on stage, play improvisation games, and produce, in real time, the behaviours the keynote is describing: listening, building on each other’s ideas, taking initiative, recovering from mistakes in front of a crowd. Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS have all booked the act. His book Make the Right Choice, now in its second edition with Wiley, sets out the principles in writing for leaders who want a reference after the room has gone home. What organisations actually buy from Zeff is a live demonstration that the soft skills they keep training for are produced under pressure, not in workshops. The improv stage is a faster way to see them than any management exercise. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture Team collaboration and communication Change and adaptability at work Creativity and innovation in everyday work Leadership and motivation Workplace humour and human connection Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences where the opening or closing keynote needs to lift the room, not brief it Leadership offsites focused on team behaviour, communication, and collaboration Culture, engagement, and HR-led events where managers leave needing something they can act on with their teams Association conferences and customer events that combine substance with a live, interactive set piece Audience outcomes A shared, recent experience of what genuine collaboration looks like, generated live in the room rather than described in slides Specific language and prompts from improv (listening, “yes and”, supporting the person on stage with you) that managers can carry back into team meetings A reset on the role of humour, energy, and play in serious work, with named examples from organisations the audience recognises A written reference, via Make the Right Choice, for leaders who want to extend the keynote ideas into team practice

Why organisations work with Morten Toft Two decades of repeat innovation facilitation work for Grundfos, Danfoss and other large Danish manufacturers, which is unusual longevity for a process consultant. Author of Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), Jyllands-Postens Forlag, a text used as a teaching reference on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes, giving his methodology a documented, teachable form. Operating background as sales and marketing director at Photo Experten across 146 stores, so the co-creation work is grounded in line-management experience, not pure consultancy. Initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne and the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre, which gives him a track record of building functioning organisations from a standing start, not only advising existing ones. Sessions are designed for engagement and recall, with humour and physical staging used deliberately to lock in concepts that pure presentation tends to lose. Biography highlights Author of Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), Jyllands-Postens Forlag, 2007, with Ole Vestergaard Poulsen, used as a teaching text on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes. Author of To Be Perfectly Honest (Aschehoug, 2001) on authentic leadership, and Changemakers (2020, with Rachel Rouncefield). Co-developer with Rachel Rouncefield (De Montfort University) of the Changemakers youth empowerment programme, building on the Butterfly Project in Peterborough. Long-running innovation facilitator for Grundfos and Danfoss. Initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne (Danish Hospital Clowns), founded after working with Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia. Co-initiator of the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre in Middelfart. Former sales and marketing director at Photo Experten across 146 Danish stores; earlier consultant at GREY. Biography Innovation in large industrial businesses tends to fail in a specific way. Ideas accumulate in the central team. Adoption stalls at the operating units. The work that reaches customers is a thin version of what was originally proposed. Morten Toft has spent over twenty years working inside that gap, mainly with Danish manufacturing groups including Grundfos and Danfoss, designing co-creation processes that bring stakeholders into the work early enough to own it. His methodology is documented in Innovationsrecepten (The Innovation Recipe), co-authored with Ole Vestergaard Poulsen and published by Politikens Forlag. The book is used as required reading on Danish innovation and entrepreneurship programmes, which gives his approach a teachable structure rather than the personality dependence common to facilitator-consultants. The work draws on a line operating background. Before consultancy, Toft was sales and marketing director at Photo Experten, with responsibility across 146 retail stores in Denmark. That experience, alongside earlier work at GREY, shapes a facilitation style oriented to commercial outcomes and to the practical question of who actually executes the change. He is also the initiator of Danske Hospitalsklovne, founded after a period with Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia, and a co-initiator of the MAD House Denmark Innovation Centre. Alongside the innovation work, Toft has written on authentic leadership and personal development, including a forthcoming memoir, Journey Out to Find Home (Danish edition August 2026, English edition planned). He also runs Changemakers, a youth empowerment programme co-developed with Rachel Rouncefield of De Montfort University and grounded in the Butterfly Project in Peterborough, which involved several thousand young people over eight years. The connecting argument across his output is straightforward: organisations get more from their people, and societies more from their young people, when those involved feel they built the answer themselves. Key speaking topics Co-creation and stakeholder-led innovation Innovation process design in industrial organisations Authentic leadership Personal development and purpose at work Building healthy organisational cultures Youth empowerment and the changemaker concept Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product directors in industrial and manufacturing businesses HR and learning leaders running leadership development programmes C-suite and senior teams setting direction for cultural change Founders and entrepreneurial leaders running participation-led organisations Audience outcomes A working model for designing innovation processes that build adoption alongside ideas. Specific tools for involving operating-unit stakeholders before, not after, decisions are made. A clearer view of the link between authentic leadership behaviour and commercial culture. Practical examples drawn from long-running work with Grundfos, Danfoss and Danish retail.

Why organisations work with Tom Barton He has the rare combination of operator and supply chain reformer. Honest Burgers is a 39-site casual dining brand that buys whole carcasses directly from regenerative farms, a structural decision most restaurant groups have not been willing to make. His sustainability content carries weight because it is paid for. Honest absorbed the cost of switching to regenerative British beef rather than passing it to customers, a commercial decision a buyer can interrogate, not a marketing claim. He speaks credibly on building a brand from a market stall to a national footprint, with named milestones: the Brixton opening, the Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group) award, and the 2026 National Burger Awards win for “The Honest”. He is a useful voice for boards weighing ESG commitments against margin: the Honest Farming programme is a working example of procurement volume being directed at climate-smart agriculture, not a pledge. Biography highlights Co-founder, Honest Burgers, opened first site in Brixton Market in 2011 Honest Burgers now operates 39+ UK restaurants across London, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Reading Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group), with Phillip Eeles and Dorian Waite Created “The Honest”, named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards 2026 Built the first regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain in UK restaurants, in partnership with the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative Founder of the Honest Farming programme, supporting six regenerative farming families through premium pricing and whole-carcass procurement Biography A small marquee with a griddle and fryer at festivals in 2010 became one of the UK’s most respected casual dining brands. Tom Barton and Phillip Eeles ran outdoor catering for a year before raising investment with restaurant operator Dorian Waite and opening a first site in Brixton Market in 2011. The interesting story is what happened after the brand worked. Honest Burgers grew to 39 sites without selling to a private equity roll-up and without losing its product position. The Cateys 2021 award for Restaurateur of the Year (Group) recognised that scale, particularly through the pandemic. In 2026, “The Honest”, a recipe Barton created, was named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards. The more substantive contribution is a supply-chain one. Honest Burgers became the first UK restaurant group to build a regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain, buying whole carcasses directly from a small group of farming families through the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative. The company absorbed the cost rather than passing it to customers, on the argument that volume procurement is the lever climate-smart agriculture actually responds to. That is the practical content of what Barton brings to a senior audience. Casual dining is a low-margin, high-velocity category. Doing the harder thing on sourcing inside it, at scale, and paying for it out of margin, is a credible operating example for any board that has signed an ESG commitment and is now looking at the bill. Key speaking topics Brand building from start-up to national scale Regenerative agriculture in commercial supply chains Sustainability as an operating decision, not a marketing position Founder leadership through rapid growth Hospitality, food culture and consumer brand Procurement and whole-carcass sourcing Company culture under expansion Ideal for Founders and operating teams scaling consumer brands beyond their first ten sites or stores Boards and CEOs reviewing ESG commitments where supply chain is the largest source of emissions Procurement, sourcing and category leaders in food, retail and hospitality Investor and accelerator audiences interested in entrepreneurship in regulated, low-margin categories Audience outcomes A working example of a regenerative supply chain inside a competitive high-street category, with the commercial trade-offs named A first-hand account of how brand discipline is maintained as a hospitality business moves from one site to forty A clearer sense of where sustainability claims become operating substance, and where they remain marketing Specific decisions about pricing, procurement and farm partnerships that other operators can pressure-test against their own model

Why organisations work with Elizabeth Day A single, named thesis built over hundreds of long-form interviews on How to Fail, applied to the specific cultural problem of how teams talk about setbacks. Journalistic credibility from a decade at The Observer and a Young Journalist of the Year award, which gives her the interviewing range to draw substance out of senior internal speakers and panel guests. Literary authority confirmed by a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, which lifts her above the standard wellbeing-speaker field. A direct corporate track record with Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays, so the material has been tested on senior commercial audiences. Equally strong as keynote, fireside interviewer, or awards host, which makes her useful for events that need one trusted voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected 2024. Host and creator of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, with guests including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kate Winslet, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem. Winner, Rising Star Award, British Podcast Awards 2019. Winner, Young Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2004; Highly Commended Feature Writer, 2012. Author of How to Fail, Failosophy, Friendaholic and Magpie, with Friendaholic entering the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book since 2021; co-host of Sky Arts Book Club Live. Biography Most workplaces still treat failure as an event to be hidden. Elizabeth Day has spent years arguing, in print and on air, that the more useful question is what setbacks teach the people who admit to them. How to Fail, the podcast she launched in 2018, has built that argument into one of the most listened-to interview shows in the UK. Her credibility for the topic is not motivational. It is journalistic. She trained on the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, moved to The Sunday Telegraph as a news reporter, and won Young Journalist of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. From 2007 to 2016 she was a feature writer at The Observer, picking up a commendation in the Feature Writer category at the 2012 Press Awards. The literary record sits alongside the broadcasting one. Her novel Scissors Paper Stone won the Betty Trask Award; The Party became a Richard and Judy Book Club pick; Friendaholic entered the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024 and hosts BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. For corporate audiences, the value is the translation. Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays have booked her to put failure, friendship and candour onto the table as workplace concerns rather than personal anecdotes. The interviews have produced a working vocabulary that senior teams can actually use when something goes wrong. Key speaking topics Failure as a method for learning and recovery Workplace candour and psychological safety Storytelling and interview craft for senior leaders Friendship, connection and the social fabric of teams Vulnerability as a professional capability Resilience after setback Women, work and visibility Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure or underperformance. Communications and internal events teams looking for a host who can interview senior leaders on the record without flattening them. Leadership development programmes for high-potential cohorts working on candour, feedback and self-awareness. Awards evenings and flagship conferences that need one credible voice across keynote, panel and host roles. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming and discussing setbacks at work without defensiveness. Specific, repeatable interview and conversation techniques drawn from years of long-form journalism. A clearer view of how candour and vulnerability function as team capabilities, not personality traits. Permission, modelled from named public figures, to treat early-career mistakes as data rather than damage.

Why organisations work with Naya Antoniou She brings dual training in organisational psychology and integrative psychotherapy to workplace mental health, which sharpens her work on burnout beyond surface-level wellbeing programmes. Her career-transition practice with vulnerable populations through Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas gives her direct evidence of how work loss, identity and recovery interact, which translates into how she advises corporate clients on restructuring with humanity. She works across the full multigenerational stack, from Gen Z entrants to senior leaders, and treats generational tension as a culture-design question, not a stereotype-management exercise. As a Lean In Greece Circle Leader and Women on Top mentor, she has a substantive track record on women in workplace mental health and HR, useful for organisations whose inclusion work has stalled at policy level. Biography highlights Postgraduate Degree in Organisational Psychology Postgraduate Degree in Career, Executive and Business Coaching MSc in International Relations, University of Piraeus Evidence-Based Coaching certification, Athens Coaching Institute Circle Leader, Lean In Greece Network (Mental Health and HR circle) Career coach with Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas career transition programmes Biography Burnout has stopped being an individual diagnosis. Organisations now carry it as an operating cost: turnover, presenteeism, project slippage, the quiet attrition of people who never quite leave. Naya Antoniou’s work sits inside that operating cost, with the tools of organisational psychology and evidence-based coaching applied directly to how teams are structured, led and supported. Her training combines a postgraduate degree in Organisational Psychology with a postgraduate qualification in Career, Executive and Business Coaching, anchored by an MSc in International Relations from the University of Piraeus. Ongoing postgraduate training in Integrative Psychotherapy gives her practice a clinical grounding that is unusual in corporate coaching. The applied work spans corporate culture transformation, leadership development, and career transition programmes. With Doctors of the World, she has coached women asylum seekers rebuilding work identities from zero. With ActionAid Hellas, she has run career transition programmes for vulnerable groups facing displacement from the labour market. That work shapes how she advises corporate clients on restructure, redeployment and the human side of workforce change. Within Greece, she leads the Mental Health and HR circle of Lean In Greece and mentors with Women on Top on workplace equality. The through-line across her practice is concrete: cultures hold people when they are designed to, and fall apart when wellbeing is treated as a benefit rather than a system. Her speaking work brings that argument into rooms where leaders are deciding which to choose. Key speaking topics Multigenerational teams and Gen Z engagement Burnout and workplace mental health Psychological safety as a leadership practice Culture change in high-performance organisations Future skills for emerging leaders Career transition and workforce change Women in mental health and HR Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning engagement strategy across five generations Leadership teams managing burnout risk during restructure or rapid growth HR and DEI leads building culture programmes that move past policy statements Founders and senior leaders of mid-sized organisations in Southern Europe scaling their first formal people function Audience outcomes A clearer view of how generational expectations shape engagement, retention and management overhead Specific moves leaders can make to install psychological safety as a working condition, not an annual survey question A working diagnostic for burnout that distinguishes individual recovery from structural cause Practical reframing of culture change as a design problem with measurable inputs

Why organisations work with Rob Hosking He has made decisions in 999 response situations where the cost of a poor call is measured in lives, and he can translate that experience into language a leadership team or frontline workforce will actually listen to His own breakdown, suicide plan and PTSD diagnosis sit at the centre of his keynote, which is why men’s forums, wellbeing networks and emergency-services audiences book him to start conversations that other speakers can only describe The “What’s in Your Vest?” framework gives audiences a concrete tool, built from a real police equipment vest, for thinking about the communication, composure and curiosity they carry into pressure Chris Evans nicknamed him “The Mighty Motivator” on national radio, and that platform, alongside Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News, has built the public profile that lets him land in front of senior corporate audiences at the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s and Heathrow Biography highlights Former frontline Police Officer with Police Scotland TEDx speaker, “Always Choose Happiness”, TEDxUWE Author of Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness (Fisher King Publishing) Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards Featured on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show (Virgin Radio), Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News Co-founder of Rise of Happiness, Contributor to The Growth Hub, Associate Trainer for Wellity, trained mental health first aider Worked with the NHS, Kellogg’s, London Stock Exchange, Heathrow Airport, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, LetterOne, NI Water and Bedfordshire Police Biography Most workplace conversations about pressure are theoretical. Rob Hosking spent his early career as a frontline officer with Police Scotland, attending 999 calls where every decision had a tight clock and a real consequence. The practical question for any leader, of how people stay clear-headed, communicate well and keep performing when the operating environment is hostile, is the question his career was built to answer. Hosking left policing after a single shift in which he witnessed a young man take his own life and a colleague die of a heart attack. Months earlier, in July 2018, he had planned to take his own life and was interrupted by his dog. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and trained as a mental health first aider. That sequence is the substance of his keynote, not its preamble, and it is what allows him to speak to men’s networks, emergency services and leadership audiences with a credibility that policy and academic content cannot match. The work has earned a public platform. Chris Evans dubbed him “The Mighty Motivator” on Virgin Radio, and he has appeared on Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News. His TEDx talk “Always Choose Happiness” was delivered at TEDxUWE, and his book Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness was published by Fisher King Publishing. He was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards. His “What’s in Your Vest?” framework uses the contents of an officer’s equipment vest as a way of asking audiences what tools they carry into pressure, including communication, composure, clarity and curiosity. He has delivered this material for the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s, Heathrow Airport, the NHS, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, NI Water, LetterOne and Bedfordshire Police, with men’s mental health, wellbeing, resilience and adaptability as the recurring themes. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Adaptability and managing change Mental health in the workplace Resilience and stress management Psychologically safe leadership Decision-making in high-stakes environments Workplace wellbeing culture Ideal for HR, wellbeing and DEI leads programming mental health, resilience or men’s network events Leadership and management teams operating in high-tempo, high-consequence environments such as emergency services, healthcare, transport and infrastructure Internal conferences, all-hands and away-days where the brief is to open up the conversation on pressure and performance Wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness campaigns and employee network launches Audience outcomes A frank vocabulary for talking about pressure, trauma and mental health at work, drawn from a speaker who has lived it The “What’s in Your Vest?” model as a shared reference point teams can return to after the session A clearer view of how sustained stress degrades judgement, communication and team trust Specific habits and behaviours, taken from operational policing, for staying decisive when conditions are unstable Permission, particularly in male-heavy environments, to speak earlier when something is wrong

Why organisations work with Mark Denton Lived authority on leading mixed-ability teams under continuous pressure for ten months at sea, not a borrowed metaphor or a single-event story. Translates that experience into named diagnostic frameworks (Navig-8, CULTIV-8, COLLABOR-8, DOMIN-8) that boards and exec teams can actually use after the keynote. Carries a 20-year consulting practice through MAXVMG, so the room is being addressed by someone who works inside organisations, not only on stage. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, which gives him a defensible position on psychological safety alongside the resilience material. Voted Bookers Choice at the 2024 Speaker Awards by the agents who buy speakers for a living, a sharper signal than self-reported ratings. Biography highlights Skippered BP in the BT Global Challenge round-the-world yacht race with an amateur crew, finishing on the podium. Founder of MAXVMG, an organisational development consultancy focused on leadership, team performance and change. Bookers Choice winner at the 2024 Speaker Awards, voted by booking agents. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. Contributor to Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, the Henley Management College text by Cranwell-Ward, Bacon and Mackie on emotional intelligence and sustained performance. IVCA Gold Award recipient for speaking; accredited executive and team coach. Biography The BT Global Challenge sent twelve identical yachts the wrong way around the world, with crews of mostly first-time sailors, for ten months at sea. BP’s entry, skippered by Mark Denton, finished on the podium. The relevant material for senior leaders is not the race itself, it is what running that team for that long under those conditions teaches a leader about decisions, conflict and recovery. Denton has spent the twenty years since converting that experience into a working consulting practice. Through MAXVMG, his organisation development firm, he advises leadership teams on performance, culture and change. His sessions sit on top of structured frameworks (Navig-8 for resilience, CULTIV-8 for culture, COLLABOR-8 for team dynamics, DOMIN-8 for performance) that give clients something to use after the lights go up. The intellectual ballast comes from two sources. He contributed to the Henley Management College text Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, which examined emotional intelligence and sustained performance. He is also a licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. The combination gives his work on team performance an academic spine that most experiential speakers do not have. In 2024 he was voted Bookers Choice at the Speaker Awards, an industry vote by the agents who place speakers for a living. That is a useful signal in a crowded leadership-from-adversity category, where lived experience without operational substance is the failure mode. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure High-performance team dynamics Resilience and recovery in volatile conditions Leading change with mixed-ability teams Decision-making under uncertainty Psychological safety in performance cultures Performance culture and accountability Ideal for CEOs and executive teams entering an extended period of operational pressure or transformation. HR and people directors building resilience and psychological safety capability across senior populations. Leadership development and talent functions investing in mixed-ability or cross-functional team performance. Sales, operations and project leaders running high-stakes programmes where the team has to perform for sustained periods without burning out. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how leadership behaviour shifts when conditions stay difficult for months, not days. A vocabulary for diagnosing team dysfunction (the Navig-8, COLLABOR-8 and DOMIN-8 frameworks) that leaders can take back into their own meetings. A sharper sense of the link between psychological safety and performance, grounded in Edmondson’s research. Specific examples of how amateur teams outperformed expectations, and what senior leaders can borrow from those mechanics. Practical reset points for leaders going into a period of prolonged uncertainty.

Why organisations work with Rose Eskafi Combines an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the work is grounded in clinical evidence, not generic wellness language Brings trauma-informed practice into corporate settings, which most workplace wellbeing providers are not trained to do Has built and run wellbeing for a working organisation as Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, so understands the operational reality of HR teams, not just the content Track record delivering for consumer brands including LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike, where workforce demographics, creative pressure, and identity questions all sit on the table at once Biography highlights Founder, Still Chill, a workplace wellbeing consultancy focused on mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed culture Former Head of People and Wellbeing, gal-dem MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion; BSc in Psychology Delivered programmes for LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike Teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines Listed expert with Canvas8 Biography Most workplace wellbeing offers are pitched at the wrong layer. They sit between perk and content and rarely touch the conditions that produce burnout, disengagement, or attrition. Rose Eskafi’s work starts at that deeper layer, where stress regulation, identity, and culture meet. She is the founder of Still Chill, a consultancy that designs mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed programmes for corporate teams. Clients have included LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike. The approach pairs an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the practical tools are anchored in clinical evidence rather than wellness language. Before Still Chill, she was Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, where she ran the people function for a working organisation rather than consulting from the outside. That operating background shapes the work. Programmes are designed to fit how HR and people teams actually deliver, not as set-piece talks that leave the room when the speaker does. She teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines and is trained in self-compassion and racial trauma, which gives her a clearer line on the questions corporate wellbeing usually avoids: how identity, pressure, and belonging interact for the people sitting in the room. Key speaking topics Workplace mindfulness and stress regulation Self-compassion and emotional regulation Trauma-informed approaches to corporate wellbeing Authentic and mindful leadership Neuroinclusion and neurodiversity at work Imposter syndrome and the inner critic Culture, identity, and belonging in organisations Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People building or re-platforming a wellbeing programme that has lost credibility DEI and ERG leads where identity, belonging, and mental health intersect Founders and creative leadership teams in consumer, media, and design organisations Learning and development leads commissioning content for high-pressure or high-attrition functions Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of wellbeing that goes beyond perks and resilience training Practical mindfulness and self-compassion tools usable inside the working day A frame for how trauma-informed practice changes the way managers run conversations Language for talking about identity, belonging, and pressure without defaulting to compliance scripts A sharper view of where the organisation’s current wellbeing offer is doing real work and where it is not

Why organisations work with Réka Deák She brings a fifteen-year transformation consulting track record at KPMG, PA Consulting, The Hackett Group, Implement and Novartis, then applies it to wellbeing as a system rather than a programme. She built the model now used inside her own consultancy Wellbeing Designers, and tests it at scale in her current role as Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group. She is one of a small number of practitioners who can speak in the same room to CFOs, CHROs and operating leaders, because the substrate of her argument is measurement, not mindfulness. Her recognition as LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company give her cross-industry credibility that goes beyond a single sector or function. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wellbeing Designers. Head of People Resilience and Inclusion, Zurich Insurance Group. Former Affiliate Senior Advisor, The Josh Bersin Company. Fifteen years of transformation consulting across KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group, and Novartis as Global Leadership Development Engagement Lead. LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development; Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series. Brain-Based Coach (NeuroLeadership Institute), ACC-certified coach (International Coach Federation), MSc Corporate Finance and MSc Education from Corvinus University of Budapest. Creator and host of the Wellbeing Designers podcast. Biography Most wellbeing initiatives sit at the wrong layer of the organisation. They live inside benefits, communications or HR, with a budget that competes against other line items and a vocabulary that does not connect to the operating conversation. The result is a decade of programmes that improve perception scores and barely move retention, productivity or burnout. Réka Deák works the layer underneath that. After fifteen years inside transformation consulting at KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group and a global leadership development role at Novartis, she founded Wellbeing Designers to treat wellbeing the way serious organisations treat change: as a system with a measurement model, a culture intervention, and a leadership behaviour standard. She is now Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group, running the same logic at enterprise scale. Her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company put her in front of HR leaders across industries who recognised that the wellbeing question had outgrown its toolkit. Her recognition as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her selection as a Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series reflect the same shift. Boards are now asking wellbeing leaders to defend their work in business terms, and there are few people who can do it credibly. What she gives senior audiences is the bridge that most wellbeing keynotes refuse to build. She is comfortable with the science, the practice, and the operating reality of running a function. She speaks to people whose KPIs include retention, productivity and engagement, and gives them a way to talk about wellbeing that does not embarrass them in front of their CFO. Key speaking topics Wellbeing culture as a measurable operating capability Human-centric leadership at scale Sustainable performance and human sustainability Wellbeing measurement, indices and strategy Wellbeing inside large-organisation transformation Inclusive wellbeing and DEIB The emerging role of the senior wellbeing leader Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of Wellbeing building or defending a wellbeing function CEOs and boards reframing wellbeing as a retention and productivity question Transformation, culture and DEIB leaders integrating wellbeing into change programmes Senior HR audiences at industry summits on the future of work Audience outcomes A working definition of wellbeing culture that survives a CFO conversation A view of what separates a wellbeing programme from a wellbeing operating system A reference model for measuring wellbeing alongside engagement, retention and productivity A clearer brief for the senior wellbeing role inside large organisations Practical next moves for embedding wellbeing into existing leadership and change agendas

Why organisations work with Kwame Onwuachi He has built an inclusive kitchen at the top of fine dining, an industry structurally hostile to it, and can speak to the practical mechanics of who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who stays. His entrepreneurial track record is concrete: multiple restaurant openings, public failure with Shaw Bijou, and the rebuild that produced Tatiana, named #1 in New York by The New York Times two years running. The Family Reunion, his annual hospitality industry summit with Salamander and Sheila Johnson, gives him standing as a convenor of the diversity conversation in food, not just a participant in it. Two best-selling books with Penguin Random House, a James Beard Rising Star Chef award, and a Food & Wine executive producer role mean his narrative is documented and credible to a corporate audience. Biography highlights James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year, 2019. Chef and owner of Tatiana at Lincoln Center, named #1 Restaurant in New York by The New York Times in 2023 and 2024, and “One to Watch” by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Author of “Notes from a Young Black Chef” (2019) and “My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef” (2022) with Penguin Random House. Founder of The Family Reunion, an annual hospitality diversity event in partnership with Salamander Hotels & Resorts. Contributing executive producer at Food & Wine; named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs. Trained at The Culinary Institute of America, Per Se, and Eleven Madison Park; Top Chef finalist. Biography The fine-dining industry has spent decades discussing diversity without changing very much about who runs its kitchens. Onwuachi is one of the few chefs operating at the top of that industry who can describe, from the inside, why that gap exists and what it takes to close it. Tatiana, his Lincoln Center restaurant, has been named the number one restaurant in New York by The New York Times for two consecutive years. His route there was not linear. He sold candy on subway platforms in the Bronx to fund a catering business, cooked on a boat serving the Deepwater Horizon clean-up crews, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked the line at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. His first solo restaurant, Shaw Bijou in Washington DC, closed within months. The James Beard Foundation named him Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019, the year his memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef” was published. The substance of his corporate work sits in what he built next. The Family Reunion, his annual industry event with Salamander Hotels & Resorts, brings together chefs and hospitality leaders to address representation in food. His cookbook “My America” reframes the question of what American cuisine actually is by tracing the Caribbean, African, and southern Black culinary lineages that produced it. As a Food & Wine contributing executive producer, he sits inside the editorial conversation rather than outside it. For a corporate audience, the value is specific. He has hired, trained, and retained an unusually diverse senior team in an industry where attrition for those workers is severe. He talks about the operational decisions that produced that outcome, not the ideology behind it. Key speaking topics Inclusion and culture in fine dining and hospitality Entrepreneurship through failure and recovery The food of the African Diaspora as American cuisine Storytelling, identity, and brand Building creative teams in exclusionary industries Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads facing pressure to move beyond programmatic inclusion Hospitality, food, and consumer brand leadership teams Founder and entrepreneur audiences working through scale and reinvention Off-sites and conferences seeking a credible voice on culture without corporate framing Audience outcomes A concrete account of what inclusive hiring and retention look like inside a high-pressure operating environment A founder’s view of public failure and the discipline required to rebuild A more honest reading of what American food culture actually is and who built it Renewed appetite for cultural specificity as a commercial asset, not a compliance category

Why organisations work with Tom Fishburne His Marketoonist series has run weekly since 2002 and reaches 500,000 business readers – giving him a live, continuously updated signal on where marketing and organisational thinking is currently stuck, rather than a fixed body of research. His argument is structural, not motivational: that customer engagement fails and innovation stalls for cultural reasons, and that humour is a functional tool for surfacing those reasons – not a tone choice, not entertainment. This gives leadership teams a lever that most change programmes do not include. His Marketoonist studio has built campaigns for over 200 organisations including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC – meaning every argument he makes on stage is backed by commercial execution, not only observation. He provides a shared visual vocabulary that allows cross-functional teams to discuss what is actually blocking performance – poor customer experience, idea killers, AI adoption gaps – without triggering defensiveness. As Stanford GSB’s Cartoonist-in-Residence for the course on humour in business, and a regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, his framework has academic validation alongside its commercial track record. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a cartoon-led content marketing and culture change studio; 200+ campaigns for Google, Adobe, LinkedIn, DBS Bank, PwC, and Unilever Creator of the Marketoonist weekly cartoon series, published since 2002; 500,000 weekly readers; featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times; weekly contributor to MarketingWeek since 2007 Harvard Business School alumnus; Cartoonist-in-Residence and Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business course on humour in business; regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School Author of Your Ad Ignored Here; illustrator of three Deloitte business books – Provoke (WSJ Bestseller), Detonate (National Bestseller), and Work Disrupted Former Interim CMO at HotelTonight (acquired by Airbnb); Marketing VP at Method Products (European brand launch named Brand Launch of the Year, The Grocer); brand management at Nestlé and General Mills Speaker at TED Salon: Unconventional, TED World Theater, New York; 200+ keynotes delivered in more than 30 countries Biography Tom Fishburne started drawing cartoons on the backs of Harvard Business School cases in 2000 and has published the Marketoonist series weekly since 2002. That series now reaches 500,000 readers a week and has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times. The reason it travels is not novelty – it is recognition. The cartoons name what people in organisations already know but rarely say aloud. His argument, developed across a marketing career at Nestlé, General Mills, Method Products, and HotelTonight, is that most marketing underperformance and most innovation failure is cultural in origin. Customer journeys break not because teams lack data, but because organisational dynamics prevent anyone from acting on it. Ideas lose momentum between brainstorm and launch not because of resource constraints, but because of unspoken idea killers that no one has named. Humour, Fishburne argues, is a functional diagnostic tool for exactly these problems – not a way to make difficult conversations comfortable, but a way to make them possible. In 2010, he expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio. The studio has since built cartoon-led content and culture change campaigns for more than 200 organisations, including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC. He is Cartoonist-in-Residence at Stanford GSB for the course on humour in business and returns regularly to guest lecture at Harvard Business School. He illustrated three bestselling Deloitte business books – Provoke, Detonate, and Work Disrupted – and authored Your Ad Ignored Here. A senior buyer leaving his session does not leave with a framework to file. They leave with a vocabulary for conversations their team has been avoiding – and a demonstrated method for making those conversations productive. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness and customer engagement Innovation culture and idea management Humour as a strategic tool for culture change AI adoption and organisational readiness Visual communication and storytelling in business Challenger brand thinking Creative culture and overcoming idea killers Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing leadership teams Chief People Officers and culture change leads Innovation and digital transformation leads Leadership conferences where marketing, creative culture, or organisational change is on the agenda Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic framework for identifying where marketing efforts break down and why Practical understanding of the cultural conditions that allow creative ideas to survive from brainstorm to launch A shared vocabulary for discussing organisational blockers – customer experience failures, AI adoption gaps, innovation stalls – without defensiveness Insight into humour as a repeatable strategic tool for culture change, distinct from motivation or entertainment A more honest assessment of whether technology and AI initiatives are failing for technical reasons or organisational ones

Why organisations work with Adam Markel Author of Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Pivot, giving leadership audiences a researched framework rather than a personal story repurposed as advice. Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, where his work translates resilience research into measurable cultural inputs for senior teams. Operator credibility from 18 years as a trial attorney and a multi-year run as CEO of a professional training business; senior buyers get someone who has run a P&L, not only studied one. Track record with operating businesses under pressure, including Medtronic and Jack in the Box, working with leadership audiences rather than only HR and L&D. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life Author of Change Proof, published by McGraw-Hill in 2022 Co-Founder and Chief Researcher, WORKWELL Host of The Change Proof Podcast TEDx speaker Former CEO of Peak Potentials/New Peaks, a professional training enterprise; previously an 18-year trial attorney Biography Most senior leaders do not have a resilience problem in the wellness sense. They have a decision-quality problem. Repeated restructures, AI rollouts, and cost programmes compound, and the cost shows up in slower judgement long before it shows up in attrition. That is the gap Adam Markel’s work addresses. His framework, set out in Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), treats resilience as a capacity that organisations build into how leaders work, not a personal trait. The earlier Pivot, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, traced the same logic across career and business reinvention. Both books sit on top of his research practice at WORKWELL, where he is Co-Founder and Chief Researcher. The credibility comes from a layered career. Eighteen years as a trial attorney, a multi-year run as CEO of the professional training business Peak Potentials, and several seasons as an ocean lifeguard before any of it. Senior audiences respond to the operator content; they have heard the resilience speech before, and what they recognise here is someone who has run a real enterprise through pressure. The Change Proof Podcast and a steady stream of corporate engagements with operating businesses, Medtronic and Jack in the Box among them, keep his material tested against current leadership briefs rather than older keynote material. Key speaking topics Leadership resilience under sustained change Change Proof: building organisational capacity for uncertainty Workplace culture and engagement Leading through restructure and reinvention Burnout prevention in senior teams Trust and connection in distributed workforces Ideal for CEOs and executive committees facing repeated change cycles CHROs and people leaders responsible for senior-team resilience Leadership offsites and annual conferences for operating businesses Transformation and change leads owning multi-year programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience as an operating capacity, not a personal trait A diagnostic for where change fatigue is degrading senior decision quality Specific practices for recovery and renewal that fit inside a leader’s working week A frame for translating resilience research into culture and engagement decisions Language to use with their own teams about why this matters now