Corporate Culture

Why organisations work with Bonita Norris Her “Focus Not Fret” framework gives teams a specific, repeatable mechanism for redirecting attention under pressure, from what cannot be controlled to what can. Clients at Google and Alpine cite it by name as something still in use after the event. Her trajectory from complete novice to holder of two world records in three years is structurally identical to the challenge organisations face when asking teams to achieve stretch goals from a standing start, which is why the analogy lands rather than simply inspiring. The “Data Over Dogma” keynote reframes the 1953 Everest ascent as a triumph of scientific evidence over institutional resistance, creating a bridge to data and AI audiences that most expedition speakers cannot credibly make. She is the first British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain: a credential that goes beyond Everest and signals sustained, multi-year commitment to extreme performance, not a single peak. Winner of Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards 2024, with verified feedback from organisations across financial services, technology, FMCG, and professional services, not a single sector cohort. Biography highlights Youngest British woman to summit Everest (2010); youngest person to reach both the summit of Everest and the North Pole First British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2012) Attempted to become the first British woman to climb K2, widely regarded as the world’s most dangerous mountain Author of The Girl Who Climbed Everest (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017); Amazon No. 1 in mountaineering and adventure (2022) Winner, Best Speaker Storyteller, The Speaker Awards 2024 Appearances on BBC News, ITV’s Lorraine, and BBC World Service; featured on HSBC’s Power Up Your Goals podcast (2024) Biography The question most organisations ask after a high-pressure failure is: what went wrong with the plan? The harder question and the more useful one is: what went wrong with the mindset? Bonita Norris has spent fifteen years developing a practical answer. She began climbing at twenty, having never touched a mountain. Two years later she stood on the summit of Everest, the youngest British woman to do so. A year after that she reached the North Pole, becoming the youngest person to hold both records simultaneously. None of it was the product of innate talent. It was the product of a specific way of managing fear, uncertainty, and the pressure of stretch goals: principles she has since codified and delivered in more than 650 corporate engagements worldwide. Her framework centres on three named concepts: “Success by Smallness”: the principle that ambitious goals are won through consistent, process-driven small actions; “Mountains of the Mind”: the argument that the limiting factor is almost always cognitive, not physical; and “Focus Not Fret”: a tool for redirecting attention from what is uncontrollable to what is actionable. These are not metaphors. They are structures that clients at Google, Clifford Chance, BlackRock, and Microsoft have applied directly. Her memoir, The Girl Who Climbed Everest, published in 2017, reached No. 1 on Amazon’s mountaineering and adventure chart in 2022. In 2024 she was awarded Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards, recognition grounded in a consistent record of audience engagement across industries, not a single standout performance. Key speaking topics Resilience and mindset under pressure High performance in high-stakes environments Goal-setting and stretch ambition Overcoming fear and cognitive limitation Team cohesion and shared-goal culture Marginal gains and process-driven performance Data, evidence, and overcoming institutional resistance to change Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating high-pressure transformation or uncertainty Sales and commercial organisations working toward stretch targets CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience or performance programmes All-hands and conference audiences where cross-functional alignment and shared motivation are the goal Audience outcomes A named, portable framework – “Focus Not Fret” – for managing attention and decision-making under pressure Clearer understanding of why ambitious goals fail at the mindset level, and what specifically to do about it A reframed relationship with failure: practical insight into how mistakes accelerate rather than derail progress Greater awareness of how small, consistent actions – not heroic moments – produce exceptional results over time A shared reference point for team culture conversations around resilience, ambition, and collective performance

Why organisations work with Andy Milligan Seven books across Kogan Page and Financial Times imprints, including Bold (CMI Management Book of the Year, e-book category, 2012) and On Purpose with Shaun Smith, give him a documented track record on brand-led growth that consultants without published evidence cannot match. He works the full chain from purpose to promise to operational delivery, which is rare. Most advisors stop at strategy or stop at touchpoint design. He has spent thirty years on the connection between them. Client work spans Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche and WWF across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The breadth of categories and geographies means his examples land with audiences in heavily regulated, consumer, and B2B sectors equally. His starting position is that brand lives in employee behaviour before it lives in customer perception. For leaders trying to align a fatigued workforce behind a customer promise, that is the more useful framing. Biography highlights Founding partner of The Caffeine Partnership, the UK brand and growth consultancy he co-founded in 2006. Began his career at Interbrand in London; ran the firm’s Singapore office and later led its Internal Brand Management practice. Co-author of On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) and Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win with Shaun Smith. Bold won the CMI Management Book of the Year award in the e-book category in 2012. Co-author of Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey (Kogan Page, 2017; second edition 2022). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; media commentator for BBC, Sky and CNN on brand issues. Biography Brand is an operating discipline, not a marketing one. That has been the thesis of Andy Milligan’s work since his time at Interbrand in the 1990s, where he ran the Singapore office and later led the firm’s Internal Brand Management practice. The argument is now unfashionable enough to be useful again: customers do not experience strategy decks, they experience employees, products and service moments. In 2006 he co-founded The Caffeine Partnership, a brand and growth consultancy that has advised Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche, WWF and Thai Airways across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The work moves between purpose definition, customer experience design and employee engagement, treated as one connected problem rather than three departmental ones. The same argument runs through seven books. Uncommon Practice and See, Feel, Think, Do with Shaun Smith examined the link between corporate culture and brand experience. Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win won the CMI Management Book of the Year in the e-book category in 2012. On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) set out a practical framework for translating purpose into a branded customer experience. Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey, now in its second edition with Kogan Page, dismantles the assumption that brand work is a logo problem. Milligan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and comments regularly for BBC, Sky and CNN. The reason senior teams bring him into commercial growth conversations is straightforward: he has spent thirty years arguing that organisations get the customers their employees deserve, and he can show them where the gap is. Key speaking topics Brand-led business growth Customer experience strategy Employee engagement and brand Purpose and commercial strategy Brand culture and organisational alignment Marketing and brand myths Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and brand directors aligning marketing with operational delivery CHROs and CPOs connecting employee engagement to customer outcomes CEOs and boards repositioning a business around a sharper purpose Customer experience and transformation leads moving from strategy to execution Audience outcomes A clearer view of where brand promise and customer experience are diverging in their own organisation A working definition of purpose that can be tested against employee and customer behaviour, not slogan Named case examples across consumer, financial services, automotive and sport that translate to the audience’s category A short list of brand myths their leadership team is probably still operating under

Why organisations work with Dean Leak A working language for productive disagreement at the top of the house, captured in his “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask), that teams can use the day after the session Direct operating experience inside Olympic gold-medal environments at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting, not theory borrowed from sport A mentorship lineage to Professor Steve Peters and the Chimp Management model, applied with discipline to executive behaviour rather than repackaged as motivation Comfort moving between board rooms, military commanders, and elite athletes, which translates into a sharper read of how senior leaders actually behave under load Biography highlights Worked directly with Olympic gold medallists including Jade Jones and Joe Clarke Held senior leadership roles at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting Mentored by Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox, over a five-year period Graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme Corporate clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Specsavers, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government Author of the “3 A’s” disagreement framework and the “Human iOS” model of behaviour change Member, Association for Coaching Biography Gold medals are not won by teams that agree with each other. They are won by teams that can disagree, in the room, on the day, without the relationship breaking. That observation is the foundation of Dean Leak’s work with senior leadership teams. Leak spent more than a decade inside Olympic programmes, in roles that combined psychological skills coaching with operational leadership. He worked under Professor Steve Peters using the Chimp Management model, then took senior positions at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting. The athletes he supported include Olympic gold medallists Jade Jones and Joe Clarke. The corporate work followed the same logic. Boards and executive teams behave like elite squads under pressure: they need composure, role clarity, and a way to surface friction without retreating into politeness. Leak’s “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask) gives teams a reusable structure for disagreeing well. His “Human iOS” framework treats change as a problem of biology and attention, not slogans, which is why his sessions tend to stick with operators who have already heard the standard transformation script. Clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government. He is a member of the Association for Coaching and a graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Productive disagreement and healthy conflict Leadership under pressure Change leadership Team performance Psychological safety Imposter syndrome at senior levels Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through restructure, integration, or strategic disagreement CHROs and chief people officers redesigning culture around performance, not engagement scores Leadership development directors briefing partner-track or senior management cohorts High-pressure operational environments (legal, professional services, elite teams) where stakes are personal and decisions are time-bound Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming and routing disagreement instead of avoiding it A clearer read on the behaviours that distinguish gold-medal teams from competent ones The 3 A’s method as a portable practice for senior conversations the next week A sharper view of where the team’s culture rewards comfort over accuracy Practical handles for managing personal composure under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Ben Keene Twenty years of founding and running purpose-led ventures, from a crowdfunded Fijian island community to a climate startup platform, gives him a practitioner’s view of what actually holds communities together under pressure. A repeatable community-building method, the “5 R’s”, field-tested inside Rebel Book Club across 10 cities and 5,000 members, and translated for corporate audiences. Author of “Tribe Wanted” (Ebury Press, 2008), the book behind the BBC2 series, which gives his community thesis a public, documented origin story that most speakers in this space do not have. Equally comfortable hosting, facilitating, and running workshops, which means the same brief can be delivered as a keynote, a leadership offsite session, or a multi-day internal accelerator. Active founder work in climate and AI through Raaise and Good with AI, so his material on sustainability communication and responsible AI comes from current operating experience, not commentary. Biography highlights Founder, Tribewanted (2006-2016); built a crowdfunded sustainable-tourism community on Vorovoro, Fiji, later extended to Sierra Leone and Umbria. Author, “Tribe Wanted: My Adventure on Paradise or Bust”, Ebury Press, 2008. Subject of a five-part BBC2 series on the Fiji project, broadcast winter 2008. Co-founder, Rebel Book Club, a paid non-fiction reading community operating across 10 cities. Former lead of The Escape School at Escape the City; business advisor and mentor at Virgin StartUp. Founder of Raaise (climate startup fundraising platform) and Good with AI (AI education cohorts). Biography Building a physical community on a remote Fijian island with strangers recruited online is not a business-school case study. It is what Ben Keene did in 2006 when he co-founded Tribewanted, and the project ran for a decade across Fiji, Sierra Leone, and Umbria. It produced a BBC2 series, a book with Ebury Press, and several million dollars of investment into the regions it touched. The interesting part, for organisations, is what he took from it. Communities with paying members do not behave like audiences or customers. They need rhythm, roles, and a reason to return. Keene has spent the years since codifying how that works, most visibly in Rebel Book Club, the non-fiction reading community he co-founded in 2015 and grew to around 5,000 members in 10 cities. He applies the same lens to the commercial problems leaders actually bring him: why sustainability messaging lands with colleagues but not customers, why purpose programmes fade after the launch moment, why AI adoption stalls when it is framed as a tool rather than a practice. His current work through Raaise and Good with AI keeps him inside those problems as a founder, not a commentator. The through-line is specific. He is a founder who has repeatedly built communities that people pay to belong to, and he has turned the method into something organisations can use. Key speaking topics Community building inside organisations Purpose-driven business and impact entrepreneurship Sustainability communication and consumer behaviour Responsible AI and practical adoption Employee engagement through shared rituals and rhythm Founder lessons from climate and impact ventures Ideal for CHROs and internal communications leads designing engagement, belonging, or community programmes. Sustainability and ESG leads who need to translate strategy into language that customers and employees act on. Founders, innovation teams, and corporate venture units looking for a practitioner view of how purpose-led businesses scale. Learning and development leads building cohort-based programmes on AI, climate, or entrepreneurial mindset. Audience outcomes A clear method for building an internal or customer community, drawn from the “5 R’s” framework he has tested at scale. Honest distinctions between communities, audiences, and networks, and what each actually requires from the organisation. Concrete examples of where sustainability messaging fails with consumers and what reframing it around customer value looks like. A founder’s view of responsible AI adoption inside teams, grounded in his current cohort work rather than abstract policy. Renewed conviction that purpose and commercial outcomes reinforce each other when the community layer is built deliberately.

Why organisations work with Ben Whiting He converts a 20-year corporate mentalism career into a working communication toolkit, the same techniques magicians use to read a room, build rapport quickly, and hold attention under pressure. The Limitless Culture keynote pairs entertainment with practical tools, so the ideas land in a way that reduces the usual gap between conference-room inspiration and Monday-morning behaviour. A track record across Apple, Google, Amazon, American Express, Schlumberger, and UNiDAYS, organisations that already have access to most leadership content and still book him for culture and connection work. A delivery style designed for audiences fatigued by another panel and another slide deck, which gives internal sponsors a memorable centrepiece for offsites, sales kickoffs, and culture days. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years as a corporate magician and mentalist with performances in over 30 countries. TEDx speaker, TEDxTraverseCity: “Connect Like a Mind Reader”. Featured in The New York Times and Entrepreneur Magazine. Named clients include Apple, Google, Amazon, American Express, Schlumberger, UNiDAYS, Crystal Cruises, HARPO Studios, and Facebook. Signature keynote: Creating a Limitless Culture. Hired by an international leadership development firm to design and deliver corporate content globally after his TEDx talk. Biography Most workplace communication problems are not information problems. People have the data, the slides, and the strategy document. What they lack is the attention, trust, and connection that make the message stick. Ben Whiting’s career sits exactly at that gap. For two decades he worked as a corporate magician and mentalist in more than 30 countries, performing for audiences from Crystal Cruises and HARPO Studios to Facebook. The craft was reading rooms quickly, holding attention without props beyond the human voice, and creating moments people remembered long after they had left. That is the same skill set most leaders are trying to learn in a different vocabulary. After his TEDx talk “Connect Like a Mind Reader” in 2017, an international leadership development firm hired him to translate the mechanics of mentalism into corporate content. The result became Creating a Limitless Culture, a keynote built around three competency areas: clearer communication, more connected teams, and a shared mindset for navigating change. Apple, Google, Amazon, American Express, Schlumberger, and UNiDAYS have all booked the work. What makes the offer commercially interesting is the format. Whiting delivers serious content about culture and communication through a performance that audiences remember, which solves a recurring problem for internal sponsors: how to put substantive ideas in a room without losing the room. Coverage in The New York Times and Entrepreneur Magazine reflects an audience response that is closer to entertainment economics than to standard conference programming. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and connection Communication under pressure Change management and team adaptability Employee engagement Hybrid and remote team connection Innovation mindset Leadership communication Ideal for CHROs and people leaders running culture, engagement, or change programmes Sales and revenue leaders planning kickoffs where energy and message retention both matter Internal communications and L&D teams designing leadership offsites Conference organisers who need a keynote that resets a fatigued audience without sacrificing substance Audience outcomes Communication techniques drawn from mentalism that read attention, build rapport, and shift a room A working language for connection inside teams, particularly across hybrid and remote setups A reframing of change that treats new conditions as an opening rather than a threat A memorable shared reference point the audience can carry back into the workplace Practical prompts for leaders on how to model the culture they want their teams to adopt

Why organisations work with Candice Brathwaite Two Sunday Times bestsellers built on different theses. I Am Not Your Baby Mother (2020) reshaped national conversations on Black British motherhood. Manifest(o) (2024) became an instant bestseller on intention and self-belief, and took her on a sold-out international tour across the UK, US and Canada. Lived authority on inclusion and representation in a moment when most DEI speakers have either lost the room or become politically performative. Her debut was the first book by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library. A speaker who can hold uncomfortable conversations and keep audiences listening. Liberty London described her keynote as “the best we have ever put on in 150 years of the store.” Cross-sector keynote track record across financial services, professional services, retail and tech: NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London and the Cambridge Union. The timing and craft of a working broadcaster, drawn from regular appearances on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch, her role as Contributing Editor at Grazia, and writing across the Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar and Stylist. Biography highlights Two-time Sunday Times bestselling author: I Am Not Your Baby Mother (Quercus, 2020) and Manifest(o) (Quercus, 2024) First book by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library Founder of Make Motherhood Diverse, the campaign challenging stereotyped representations of parenthood in British media Contributing Editor at Grazia and regular UK television presenter on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch Host of Conversations with Candice (Acast, 2026), following the multi-million-download Closet Confessions Keynote clients include NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London, the Royal College of Midwives and the Cambridge Union Biography Most corporate conversations about inclusion have stopped landing. The language is familiar, the speakers cautious, and the audiences switched off. The substance still matters; the form has stopped working. In 2016 a blog post asked where the Black mothers were in British parenting media, and started building an answer. The blog became Make Motherhood Diverse. The platform became a book. I Am Not Your Baby Mother (2020) was a Sunday Times bestseller and the first book written by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library. A second Sunday Times bestseller followed in Manifest(o) (2024), with a sold-out international tour across the UK, US and Canada. Alongside the books came regular presenting work on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch, a Contributing Editor role at Grazia, and two podcasts. The corporate keynote diary expanded with it: NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London and the Cambridge Union. Buyers tend to book her for the same reason. Inclusion, ambition and the lived reality of working parents are subjects where most speakers either over-perform or under-deliver. Liberty London described her keynote as “the best we have ever put on in 150 years of the store.” That is the response organisations come back for. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion Personal brand building and visibility Modern motherhood and the working parent Motivation and self-belief Manifestation and intentional living Storytelling and cultural commentary Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and DEI leads designing inclusion programming that audiences will actually engage with rather than tolerate Internal communications, ERG sponsors and culture teams running events on representation, belonging and the experience of working parents Leadership development and event teams looking for a closing keynote that drives genuine post-event conversation Brand, marketing and creative leadership teams thinking about voice, visibility and cultural authenticity Audience outcomes A direct, honest perspective on inclusion that audiences will repeat back to their colleagues A sharper sense of what genuine representation looks like in the everyday operation of a business, beyond statements and campaigns Language and permission to talk about visibility, ambition and working parenthood as serious organisational concerns The energy and confidence to act on something they have been postponing in their own careers

Why organisations work with Diana Ospina and Oscar Lemus They bring an instrument, not a philosophy. BhiPRO produces a quantified Business Happiness Index across 35 indicators with a reported 94% reliability, the kind of evidence a board will fund against. The methodology has earned external academic validation. Harvard Business School teaches a BhiPRO case based on its deployment at Lanco Medical Group, which signals serious analytical credibility for a culture topic that usually trades on anecdote. They speak as a duo with two distinct lenses: Diana on applied neuroscience and culture practice, Oscar on the financial and operational economics of happiness. The split lets them address a CHRO and a CFO in the same room. They are the leading Spanish-language voices on workplace happiness measurement in Latin America, with deployments across 70+ companies and an open study spanning 29 countries. For multinationals with significant LatAm operations, they offer regional substance most international speakers cannot. Their book “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” is prologued by Néstor Braidot, the leading Spanish-language neuroscientist on applied business neuroscience, anchoring their work in a credible scientific tradition. Biography highlights Co-creators of BhiPRO (Business Happiness Index Program), a 35-indicator scientific methodology for measuring organisational happiness, climate and wellbeing. BhiPRO featured as an MBA teaching case at Harvard Business School, based on the Lanco Medical Group implementation. Co-founders of Mide la Felicidad, the Colombian firm that has applied the methodology to 70+ companies in Latin America since 2015. Co-authors of “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” and “Metodología Científica BhiPRO: Cómo Medir la Felicidad Organizacional,” with prologue by neuroscientist Néstor Braidot. Diana Ospina: TEDx speaker (“Monitoreando Felicidad Laboral”, TEDxSanJosédeDavid), NLP practitioner and applied neuroscience specialist. Oscar Rodríguez Lemus: Honorary Doctorate in Human Development and Leadership (2023), trained in Applied Neurosciences and Brain Gym at the Braidot Institute, with two decades in capital markets and finance before his work on workplace happiness. Biography Most organisations cannot answer a basic question about their own culture: how happy are our people, in numbers a finance director would accept. Pulse surveys and engagement indices give partial answers. They do not link wellbeing to performance with enough rigour to defend a culture budget through a downturn. The instrument has been missing. BhiPRO was built to close that gap. Diana Ospina Campuzano and Oscar Rodríguez Lemus spent more than a decade developing a 35-indicator measurement system covering happiness, climate, wellbeing, culture and sustainability, reporting 94% reliability. The methodology now anchors a Harvard Business School MBA case, based on its application at Lanco Medical Group, and has been deployed across more than 70 companies in Latin America since their firm Mide la Felicidad was founded in Colombia in 2014. The duo work in complementary modes. Diana came to the topic through applied neuroscience, NLP and executive coaching, and is a TEDx speaker on workplace happiness. Oscar’s background sits in capital markets and international economic relations, which gives the partnership a financial vocabulary that culture work usually lacks. Together they published “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional,” prologued by the neuroscientist Néstor Braidot, and the companion methodology volume on how to measure organisational happiness. For executive teams the value is concrete. A Spanish-language duo who can stand in front of a Latin American leadership team, present a quantified diagnostic of how their culture is actually performing, and link the gaps to specific operational moves. The Harvard case is the credibility marker. The 35-indicator instrument is the working tool. Key speaking topics Measuring organisational happiness with the BhiPRO methodology Workplace wellbeing and employee engagement Applied neuroscience and workplace happiness Organisational culture transformation Talent retention and human loyalty The economics of happiness at work Entrepreneurship and partnership Ideal for CHROs, Chief Happiness Officers and culture leads in Latin American or Spanish-speaking organisations commissioning a quantified culture diagnostic CEOs and CFOs evaluating the financial case for wellbeing and engagement investment Multinationals with significant Latin American operations seeking regionally credible culture expertise HR conferences and leadership summits in Spanish-language markets Audience outcomes A clear understanding of what an audit-grade happiness measurement actually contains and how it differs from a pulse survey The five dimensions and headline indicators that drive the BhiPRO index, and how each links to operational outcomes An evidence-based read on what Latin American workforce data says about engagement, retention and culture Practical entry points for moving a culture programme from narrative to measurement A neuroscience-informed view of why workplace happiness behaves the way it does, drawn from Braidot Institute training

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Joe Gerstandt He reframes inclusion as organisational design work, with named practices leaders can actually run, rather than a values campaign that depends on goodwill. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative gives sceptical audiences a credible personal entry point, useful in rooms where DEI language has lost its purchase. Co-author of Social Gravity, a published thesis on how relationship dynamics shape collective performance, which gives the work an intellectual spine beyond bureau talking points. Sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and the ISO US Technical Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion, meaning his frameworks have been tested inside platform governance and global standards. Marine Corps veteran turned culture practitioner, with a delivery register that lands credibly in industrial, defence, and engineering-led organisations where conventional DEI speakers often do not. Biography highlights Co-author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council, Twitter. US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, International Organization for Standardization. Board director, Tri-Faith Initiative, Nebraska. Featured contributor, Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum. Clients include Boeing, Toyota, Nestle, Target, Eli Lilly, Marathon Oil, Cornell University, University of Michigan, the CIA and the FAA. Biography Inclusion work has hit a credibility ceiling inside many large organisations. Twenty years of programmes, statements and training have not translated into the operating changes leaders were promised, and the political pressure on DEI has stripped away the cover that older approaches relied on. The result is a leadership population that knows the work matters but no longer trusts the standard playbook. Joe Gerstandt has spent the past two decades rebuilding the work on different ground. His starting point is that inclusion is a design problem, not a sentiment problem. Behaviour, norms, decision rights, conflict practices and conversational habits are the actual machinery. His sessions teach leaders to operate that machinery, with concrete practices around brave conversations, authenticity, and team design. Two strands give the work its weight. Social Gravity, which he co-authored, sets out the relational dynamics that determine whether collective performance compounds or decays. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative draws on his own move from rural Iowa and the Marine Corps into culture work, giving sceptical audiences a credible bridge into the material without asking them to start from agreement. The institutional record matters. He sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and on the ISO US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, advises Fortune 100 employers and federal agencies including the CIA and FAA, and has published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive and HR Executive. That positions him as a practitioner whose frameworks have been pressure-tested against platform governance, global standards and operating reality. Key speaking topics Inclusion as organisational design Inclusive leadership practice Authenticity and psychological safety at work Team performance and relational dynamics Behaviour change and culture change Allyship and personal transformation Bias, identity and decision-making Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers and culture leads rebuilding inclusion programmes that have lost internal credibility. Executive teams running culture change inside engineering, defence, industrial and regulated environments where conventional DEI delivery falls flat. Boards and leadership cohorts treating inclusion as a leadership capability rather than a compliance line. Employee resource group leaders and allies seeking practical practice, not slogans. Audience outcomes A working definition of inclusion as a designed practice, separable from political language. Named behaviours and conversational practices leaders can use the next working day. A clearer read on where their organisation’s inclusion work has stalled and why. Language for engaging sceptics and ambivalent middle managers without forcing ideological agreement. A frame for treating relational dynamics as a performance variable, drawn from Social Gravity.

Why organisations work with Peter Crolla He has helped build two Formula 1 teams from scratch. He joined Haas in 2015 as the team’s 14th employee and joined Cadillac in 2025 to prepare its 2026 debut. Few F1 practitioners have stood up a competitive operation from zero more than once. His content is grounded in operational mechanics. Audiences leave with how the pit wall actually works, how a 1.8-second pit stop with 22 staff and 36 tasks is choreographed, and how compliance with FIA scrutineering is built into every weekend. Formula 1 sits where exacting regulation meets competitive margins of milliseconds. Leaders in pharmaceuticals, financial services, aviation, and energy find the comparison directly applicable to their own environments. He can explain how F1 reduced driver fatalities from over 40 between 1950 and 1994 to one in the three decades since. The shift came from a system in which safety stopped being a source of competitive advantage and was shared across rival teams. Two decades across British Touring Cars, F3, McLaren, Haas, and Cadillac give him grounded comparative views on which high-performance practices transfer between organisations and which collapse outside their original context. Biography highlights Race Team Manager at the Cadillac F1 Team, preparing the operation for its 2026 Formula 1 debut. Team Manager at Haas F1 Team for eight seasons, joining as the 14th employee in 2015 ahead of the team’s 2016 debut. Previously Team Leader at McLaren Racing, working alongside World Champions Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso. Oversaw Haas’s maiden Formula 1 pole position at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Helped Haas secure FIA Three-Star Environmental Accreditation ahead of the 2023 season. Awarded the Teamwork Award at the 2013 MIA Business Excellence Awards during his time at Team Dynamics in the British Touring Car Championship. Biography In Formula 1, a pit stop now takes 1.8 seconds. Twenty-two people complete thirty-six tasks while the car is stationary. One missed cue and a podium becomes a points-paying afternoon. That kind of choreography is what Peter Crolla has spent his career producing. He joined the Haas F1 Team in 2015 as its fourteenth employee, before the team had been on a grid, and stayed for eight seasons as Team Manager. In 2025 he left to take the same role at the Cadillac F1 Team, where he is preparing the operation for its 2026 debut. Doing this work twice in a decade puts him in a small group of practitioners who have stood up a competitive Formula 1 team from a standing start. F1 teams of 1800 staff coordinate around twenty-four non-negotiable race weekend deadlines a year, under one of the most exacting regulatory regimes in commercial sport. Crolla speaks about how that machine actually runs. He explains the daily tension between psychological safety and personal accountability, and how F1 turned over forty driver fatalities between 1950 and 1994 into one in the three decades since. The change came from stopping competitive teams from hoarding what they learned about safety. Key speaking topics High-performance team operations Leadership in regulated, high-pressure environments Operational excellence under non-negotiable deadlines Safety culture and risk transformation Building organisations from a standing start Continuous improvement and marginal gains Sustainability in elite motorsport Ideal for COOs and operations directors in regulated sectors such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, aviation, and energy, where compliance and competitive performance have to be solved together. Founders, transformation leads, and executive teams building or rebuilding an organisation from a standing start. Senior risk and safety leaders looking at how F1’s cultural transformation was actually achieved over three decades. HR and people leaders focused on psychological safety and accountability in technical or engineering-led organisations. Audience outcomes The choreography of a 1.8-second pit stop across 22 staff, including where it most often breaks down. The specific practices that keep psychological safety and personal accountability in balance inside an F1 operation. How F1’s safety record went from over forty driver fatalities in its first four decades to one in its last three, including the specific decision to stop competing on safety. A clear separation between high-performance practices that transfer between industries and those that depend on the specifics of F1.

Why organisations work with Jason Lauritsen He turns the manager-employee relationship into a working model, not a slogan, through The Check-In Method, a named and published approach leaders can install the week after the keynote. His research seat at Quantum Workplace gave him visibility across thousands of employers and millions of engagement responses, which grounds every claim in pattern data rather than anecdote. His book Unlocking High Performance reframes performance management as a relationship discipline, endorsed by Daniel H. Pink, and is used by HR leaders as a practical redesign guide. He speaks fluently to both the CHRO and the frontline manager, which is rare. The same session lands with executives rethinking policy and with line leaders rethinking their next one-to-one. He brings the credibility of an operator who has run the system from both sides: corporate HR leadership where he helped double revenue per employee and halve turnover, and now CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising executive teams on the same problem at the source. Biography highlights CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising CEOs and executive teams on the performance systems that turn strategy into execution. Creator of the Connected Performance System, a framework for leadership clarity, alignment, and performance enablement, with original research presented at Workhuman Live Orlando 2026. Author of Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018), a performance-management redesign endorsed by Daniel H. Pink. Co-author with Joe Gerstandt of Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. As a corporate executive, helped double revenue per employee while cutting employee turnover in half. Former Director of Best Places to Work at Quantum Workplace, leading research across thousands of participating organisations. Biography Engagement has been one of the most measured aspects of corporate life for two decades, and it has barely moved. The data is rich, the pulse surveys run quarterly, and most managers still cannot describe what actually changes a disengaged employee’s trajectory. That gap between measurement and behaviour is the terrain Jason Lauritsen works in. Earlier in his career, as a corporate executive, he helped double revenue per employee while cutting turnover in half. He then led the research team for the Best Places to Work programme at Quantum Workplace, which gave him a cross-sectional view of engagement data across thousands of employers. The conclusion he draws from both sides is direct: employees do not experience work as a contract or a process, they experience it as a relationship, and they leave when the relationship fails. That thesis runs through two books. Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018) argues that performance management collapses when it is built as a compliance process and works when it is built around conversation. Social Gravity, co-authored with Joe Gerstandt, maps the laws that govern how workplace relationships actually form. The Check-In Method, the framework he is best known for, translates the relationship argument into the specific moments managers can do differently on a Monday morning. As CEO of Connected Performance Group, his current work goes one layer up. The Connected Performance System treats connection as the operating mechanism through which strategy turns into execution, and locates the leadership, cultural, and operational conditions that strengthen or erode it. Cited across Forbes, Fast Company, HR Executive, Talent Management, and SHRM, his sessions give CHROs and executive teams a named system to install, not just an argument to agree with. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Connection as a performance driver Performance management redesign The manager-employee relationship Employee experience Talent retention Workplace culture Ideal for CHROs and VPs of People rethinking engagement or performance strategy HR and people-team leaders preparing a manager-effectiveness programme Executive teams whose engagement scores have plateaued and whose attrition is climbing Line manager audiences at leadership summits, where the goal is behaviour change, not theory Audience outcomes A clear model for treating the manager-employee bond as a relationship, with the specific manager behaviours that sustain it. The Check-In Method as an installable practice, including the questions managers can use in their next one-to-one. A diagnosis for why performance management processes fail, and what to redesign rather than patch. A sharper read of engagement data, so leaders stop optimising scores and start changing the experience behind them. Language HR and line leaders can share, which closes the gap between policy intent and what employees actually feel.

Why organisations work with Giancarlo Fisichella Rare double credential: three Formula One Grand Prix wins across 14 seasons and two LMGTE Pro class victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Very few speakers have won at the front of both disciplines. First-hand experience of seven F1 constructors, from Minardi at the back of the grid to Ferrari, which gives a practical read on how resources, culture and leadership translate into on-track performance. Lived the shift from single-lap qualifying to 24-hour endurance racing, which makes him useful for audiences thinking about short-cycle intensity and long-cycle stamina in the same business. Delivers talks in English and Italian, which widens his reach for automotive, engineering and industrial audiences across Europe. Still an active Ferrari Competizioni GT ambassador, so his material is current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights 229 Formula One starts, three Grand Prix victories, four pole positions, 19 podium finishes between 1996 and 2009. F1 race wins at Brazil 2003 (Jordan), Australia 2005 (Renault) and Malaysia 2006 (Renault). Contributed to Renault’s back-to-back Constructors’ Championships in 2005 and 2006; career-best fourth in the 2006 Drivers’ Championship. Drove Force India to its first pole position and first podium at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix. Two LMGTE Pro class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans (2012 and 2014) with AF Corse, partnered with Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander. Ambassador Driver for Ferrari Competizioni GT and founder of Fisichella Motor Sport, which competed in GP2 from 2006 to 2009. Biography Formula One teams are built on thousands of decisions that never reach a television screen. The lap time is the visible output. Giancarlo Fisichella spent fourteen seasons inside that machine across seven different constructors, which is an unusually wide sample of how high-performance organisations actually operate. He won his first Grand Prix at Interlagos in 2003, in a Jordan, after a five-day timekeeping review handed him a result that had initially gone to someone else. Two further wins followed at Renault in 2005 and 2006, alongside Fernando Alonso, during the period when the team took consecutive Constructors’ Championships. At Force India in 2009 he delivered the team’s first pole and podium, at Spa, in a car that had been at the back of the field a year earlier. The second act has been Ferrari GT machinery at endurance level. He has twice won the LMGTE Pro class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with AF Corse, in 2012 and 2014, with Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander. He remains an Ambassador Driver for Ferrari Competizioni GT, which keeps his point of view current rather than nostalgic. The useful material for a business audience is what sits underneath those results: how a driver and a team stay honest about performance when a rival is faster, how trust inside a small group gets built over a season, and what happens to confidence when the car or the circumstances turn against you. Fisichella has lived all three, at the Minardi end of the grid and at the front with Renault and Ferrari. Key speaking topics Formula One and elite motorsport performance Competing under pressure at decisive moments Team dynamics in high-performance environments Endurance racing and long-cycle competition Recovery after setbacks and results loss Italian motorsport and the Ferrari Competizioni GT programme Ideal for Automotive, engineering and industrial audiences planning leadership offsites Sales and commercial teams operating in competitive, measurable environments Corporate events with an Italian or European audience where bilingual delivery is valuable Boards and leadership teams examining how elite teams sustain performance across multi-year cycles Audience outcomes A concrete view of how F1 teams prepare for decisive moments and what that looks like away from the racetrack A sharper sense of the difference between short-cycle intensity, such as a qualifying lap, and long-cycle stamina, such as a 24-hour race Specific examples of how trust is built inside a small, high-pressure team across a season A first-hand account of winning and losing at the highest level of a sport where margins are tenths of a second