Creativity

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?

Why organisations work with Chris and Mickey Brand decisions get tested against how buyers actually think, because a creative director and a business psychologist run the same brief together. They show leadership exactly where sameness is costing pricing power, and where a defensible difference already sits unused inside the business. Their DARE method gives a repeatable test for whether a brand will command a premium, not just whether it looks current. They work the specific problem of the AI era: building a brand faster with generative tools without producing the generic output that makes a company replaceable. Biography highlights Co-founders of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy with a design studio in Cape Town, working with B2B scale-ups across the UK, Europe, and beyond. Mickey Wilson founded her first creative agency at 21 and has spent over 30 years in brand, with clients including Tesco, Samsung, Ocado, and CIMA. Dr Chris Endersby is a business psychologist with an MBA from Imperial College London, who led change programmes for JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS, and Barclays. Creators of the DARE framework: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression. Co-authors of the forthcoming book BRANDFIRE. Biography A brand can now be generated in days. That speed carries a cost. Across B2B markets, companies are converging on the same claims and the same visual language, and buyers lose any real reason to choose one over another. Firestarter, the London consultancy Chris and Mickey run, was built to reverse that drift. Their method pairs two instincts that rarely meet. Mickey Wilson brings over 30 years of brand work for names such as Tesco, Samsung, and Ocado. Her instinct is for what makes a business unlike its rivals. Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist who ran change programmes inside JP Morgan, KPMG, and Barclays, brings the evidence for why those differences move buyers. Their case is plainly commercial. A business that looks and sounds like its competitors ends up competing on price, and margin leaks away. The DARE framework, Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression, gives leaders a way to judge whether a brand will command a premium or blend in. On stage, they work as a double act. Mickey reads a room by instinct; Chris explains the psychology underneath the reaction. The thinking behind both is now set down in their forthcoming book, BRANDFIRE. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation in B2B markets The psychology of buyer decisions Brand-led growth and pricing power Branding in the age of generative AI Authenticity and brand consistency Creative strategy for scale-ups Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups deciding how to stand apart in a crowded category CMOs and brand leads are under pressure to defend pricing and win consideration Boards and leadership teams are weighing how generative AI changes their brand and market position Audience outcomes A clear read on where their brand currently sounds like everyone else, and what that is costing in price and consideration The DARE framework is a working test for whether a brand will command value A view on where generative AI helps build a brand and where it strips out what makes the brand worth choosing The psychological drivers behind B2B buying decisions, and how to align a brand to them

Why organisations work with Abigail Posner Holds a rare combination of credentials in cultural anthropology (Harvard, magna cum laude), creative strategy (Publicis New York, DDB New York), and senior technology leadership (13 years at Google). Few speakers can address AI and human creativity from inside all three worlds. Pioneered Humanizing Digital at Google, an anthropology-led research programme exploring the emotional relationship between people and technology. Her frameworks come from original fieldwork conducted inside Google. Led AI integration and a cultural transformation programme for 4,000+ Google sales professionals. Speaks from direct experience about what works and what fails inside one of the most AI-fluent companies in the world. Provides concrete methodologies, the Expansiveness Edge framework and the Human Code approach, that teams can apply immediately to specific business problems. Biography highlights Former Director, U.S. Creative Works at Google; thirteen years at the company Pioneered Humanizing Digital, Google’s anthropology-led thought leadership series on the emotional relationship between people and technology Founder of Human Code Company; host of the Human Code podcast Magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University in social anthropology Contributor to The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; ongoing columnist for The Drum Recipient of the United Nations Media Impact Award Biography Google spent more than a decade trying to understand the emotional logic behind why people engage with digital content. The Humanizing Digital research programme came out of that effort, an anthropology-led series Abigail Posner pioneered while at the company. The route there was unusual. Posner is a magna cum laude graduate in social anthropology from Harvard who spent years in brand strategy at Publicis New York and DDB New York. As Director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, she led creative strategy for YouTube’s largest global advertisers and ran a cultural transformation programme for over 4,000 sales professionals. Posner now leads Human Code Company, the consultancy she founded after leaving Google. Her Expansiveness Edge and Human Code frameworks address the question every leader is asking: what do my people uniquely contribute when every competitor has the same AI tools. Both frameworks come from years of anthropological fieldwork done inside Google. Her writing appears in The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; she is an ongoing columnist for The Drum. The United Nations awarded her its Media Impact Award for the work. Key speaking topics Human creativity in the AI age The Expansiveness Edge framework AI as a creative amplifier Cultural anthropology applied to business The future of work in an AI economy Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders working out how AI changes their craft Chief Innovation Officers and senior creative leaders inside marketing, product, or innovation teams CHROs and learning leaders building creative capacity across the workforce Senior leadership teams setting an organisation-wide position on what humans do and what AI does Audience outcomes A named framework, the Expansiveness Edge, for combining different disciplines and perspectives within an individual to produce ideas competitors cannot replicate A working answer to where human judgement still beats AI in their function, and which work to defend against automation Specific exercises they can run inside their own teams to activate creative thinking on demand A reframe of AI as an amplifier of human ingenuity, with concrete ways to deploy it that way

Why organisations work with Liv Marks A live-television-grade interviewer used to extracting a usable, broadcast-ready answer from talent like Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga inside a junket window of a few minutes. Fronts Bauer Media’s “My Life in Movies”, a long-form career interview format with figures including Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, evidence she can carry an unscripted hour as well as a red-carpet hit. Brings a built audience of women aged 25 to 35 on TikTok and Instagram, useful for organisations whose branded content needs to travel beyond the room. Track record of branded campaign work with Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio, so commercial integration is familiar territory, not new ground. A presenter who can move between film, television and stage musicals on Saturday radio, useful for organisations programming arts, culture and entertainment events. Biography highlights Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer, Bauer Media, covering film and television. Host, “My Life in Movies”, Bauer Media’s digital long-form interview series. Presenter, “Magic Musicals” Saturday radio show. Interview credits across red carpets, press junkets and premieres including Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. Branded campaign work with Bvlgari (EE BAFTA Awards), Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. BA in Broadcast Journalism, University of Leeds; earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television. Biography Press junkets are not gentle environments. A reporter has a few minutes with a major film actor, a publicist watching the clock, and a queue of competitors behind them all asking the same question. The interviewers who travel out of that format and into bigger rooms are usually the ones who can find a real conversation inside the constraint. Liv Marks is one of them. As Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer at Bauer Media, Marks works across film and television, interviewing leading talent on red carpets, at premieres and in press junkets. Her interview credits include Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. She fronts Bauer’s “My Life in Movies”, a career-spanning digital series whose guests have included Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, and presents “Magic Musicals” on Saturday radio, where she covers theatre and stage performance. Alongside the day job, Marks has built a sizeable digital audience as @olivialilymarks, with engagement concentrated among women aged 25 to 35. That reach is what turned her into a useful collaborator on branded campaigns for Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. The training behind it is conventional: a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Leeds and earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television, then a steady move into national entertainment journalism. For organisations, the proposition is straightforward. Marks is hired to host an evening, conduct an on-stage interview, moderate a panel or front a piece of branded content, with the craft of a working entertainment journalist behind it and an audience that will share the clip afterwards. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and on-stage interviewing Branded content presenting for film, television and lifestyle brands Red carpet, premiere and awards coverage Long-form career interviews with talent Building a digital audience around film and entertainment Musicals, theatre and stage performance Ideal for Heads of brand and marketing commissioning launch events, premieres or awards moments that need an experienced on-camera host Communications and content leads producing branded interview series or social-first video content Conference and gala organisers in arts, entertainment, lifestyle and media Audience outcomes A live event hosted with the pace and confidence of a working broadcaster On-stage interviews that get past stock answers and produce moments worth clipping Branded content that fits the host’s own audience rather than reading as an advert A bridge between mainstream media credibility and a digital audience of women aged 25 to 35

Why organisations work with Rich Mulholland He runs a working AI agency, Too Many Robots, alongside a presentation business, so the advice on staying relevant in an AI-saturated market comes from someone deploying the tools, not commenting on them. Legacide gives him a precise argument that flips the standard innovation conversation: the constraint is not new ideas, it is the old behaviour that keeps surviving every restructure. Here Be Dragons codifies “storyselling” as a discipline for commercial teams, useful for sales leaders trying to move buyers without resorting to feature lists or discounting. Missing Link has shaped the presentation craft of corporate leaders across South Africa and beyond for over two decades, which means he speaks to senior executives about communication as someone who has trained the room rather than just spoken in it. Biography highlights Founder of Missing Link, described by multiple sources as South Africa’s largest presentation and communication training firm. Founder of Too Many Robots, an AI agency advising clients on practical AI deployment. Co-founder of 21Tanks, a problem-identification consultancy positioned as South Africa’s first perspective lab. Author of four books: Legacide, Boredom Slayer, Here Be Dragons, and Relentless Relevance. Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. TEDx speaker at TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown; has delivered keynotes in 50 countries across six continents. Biography Innovation programmes rarely fail at the idea stage. They fail at the legacy stage, where the existing way of doing things absorbs the new initiative and digests it back into business as usual. This is the territory Rich Mulholland has spent two decades working in, first through Missing Link, the South African presentation and communication firm he founded, and then through the writing that made Legacide a reference point for executives trying to understand why their change programmes keep stalling. His thesis is direct. Innovation does not happen when an organisation starts doing something new. It happens when it stops doing something old. That distinction reframes the senior team’s job from generating ideas to clearing space, and it is the spine that connects his work across innovation, sales, and communication. In Here Be Dragons he applies the same logic to commercial teams, treating storytelling not as a soft skill but as the operating discipline that decides whether a deal moves. The AI dimension is the more recent layer. Through Too Many Robots, the agency he founded to help clients deploy AI tactically rather than rhetorically, Mulholland has been working inside the question that most boards are still asking from the outside: what remains a human advantage when expectation, attention, and execution can all be automated. His answer, set out in the Humanity’s Unfair Advantage keynote, is that relevance is the perpetual play, not a position you achieve once. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and at GIBS, has spoken in 50 countries across six continents, and has appeared on TEDx stages including TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown. Before any of this he was a touring roadie running lights for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, which is where the obsession with what makes a room respond actually started. Key speaking topics Relentless relevance and the discipline of staying useful to customers Legacy thinking as the silent constraint on innovation Storyselling and persuasion for commercial teams Humanity’s unfair advantage in an AI-driven market Leadership communication and executive presence Strategy for autonomous and purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief commercial officers, chief revenue officers, and sales leadership audiences working on storytelling and buyer persuasion Innovation leads, transformation heads, and strategy teams trying to dismantle legacy behaviour rather than add new initiatives Executive communicators and senior leaders preparing for high-stakes platforms, investor days, and town halls Boards and leadership teams scoping where AI substitutes human work and where human relevance still holds Audience outcomes A working definition of what legacy thinking looks like inside their own organisation, and where it is absorbing innovation effort A sharper framing for sales and commercial narratives that moves beyond feature lists into customer-centred story A clearer view of which parts of their work AI will eat and which parts depend on human relevance A practical standard for what a senior executive presentation should do, drawn from someone who has trained presenters for two decades

Why organisations work with Dan Edwards He has actually led a large public-sector workforce through a sustained cultural rebuild, including pandemic-era disruption, rather than describing the work from a consultancy seat. His talks come with named, road-tested models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts among them, that translate cleanly out of education into any large operational workforce. He is one of the few credible male voices speaking publicly about psychological safety and male mental health in front-line teams, through his MENtal Health talk. The delivery is performer-grade. He has a stand-up and stage background that keeps a senior audience with him through difficult material on wellbeing and morale. His creative business, the Fibre studio space, is built around working creative communities, which gives him direct operating experience of inclusion and creativity as workforce outcomes rather than values statements. Biography highlights Founder of Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, live events, and creative production. Former Principal of a large inner-city primary school in Leicester; prior Executive school leadership roles. Drama teacher background in inner-city secondary schools; entered teaching as a mature trainee via night school after leaving school with two GCSEs. Speaker at the SSAT Primary Conference 2021 on leading a school community through the coronavirus pandemic; international training work includes The Sultan’s School in Oman. Writes ‘Brief Reflections On…’, a newsletter of essays on leadership, culture, and community. Stage performer and writer; “The Sound of Muzak” was nominated for the Audience Choice Award at the 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival. Biography Large workforces have absorbed five years of change, and the cultural cost is now visible in engagement scores, sickness data, and middle-management churn. Edwards spent the worst of that period running a large inner-city primary school in Leicester, holding a staff body and parent community together when the national playbook for leadership had stopped working. That job, and the executive school leadership work that followed, is the substance behind his keynote material. The 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts are not theoretical frameworks; they are the models he built to keep a school improving while wellbeing was collapsing. The translation into corporate settings is direct, because the underlying tension, leading people through sustained pressure without burning them out, is the same. Edwards now runs Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, and live events, built around a working creative community. The work has also travelled, including school culture and leadership training at The Sultan’s School in Oman. Running a live creative space gives him a current operating vantage point on culture and creative discipline, which keeps the talks from drifting into nostalgia for the education world. The delivery is the differentiator at the senior end. A stand-up and theatre background, including a 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival nomination for “The Sound of Muzak”, means his keynotes on staff mental health and male psychological safety land in front of audiences that have heard the standard wellbeing pitch too many times. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and staff wellbeing Authentic and humane leadership Male mental health and psychological safety at work Creativity beyond the creative industries People development and change leadership Inclusion and belonging at work Belonging and engagement in large workforces Ideal for HR and people directors in large, change-fatigued workforces CEOs and executive leadership teams rebuilding culture after restructure or sustained disruption Leadership development programmes and middle-management conferences Public sector, education and healthcare leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between performative wellbeing and substantive cultural change. Two named models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts, applied to their own organisational context. A more honest internal conversation about male mental health and psychological safety on the front line. Specific reference points for leading a workforce through prolonged pressure without losing it.

Why organisations work with Lauren LoGrasso She brings the operating logic of a working podcast producer to the question of creative leadership, having executive produced two of the highest-charting podcasts of the past five years, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown and We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle. She speaks to creativity as engagement infrastructure, not as inspiration, drawing on a body of work that has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards through her own show. She gives event audiences a recognisable name from the podcast economy, paired with a keynote performer’s stagecraft as a SAG-AFTRA actor and working musician. Her perspective on self-expression at work is grounded in production craft: what gets people to show up with their fullest contribution, and what systematically silences them. Biography highlights Creator and host of Unleash Your Inner Creative, winner of the Webby, Signal, People’s Choice, W3, Hermes Creative, and Communicator awards. Vice President of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts. Executive producer credits on We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle and Unlocking Us with Brené Brown during her tenure at Cadence13. Named one of Podcast Magazine‘s 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting. Featured in People Magazine, Yahoo, and Business Insider; named by CEO Weekly as a top inspiring woman to follow. Singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova, with songs placed in award-winning films. Biography Unlocking Us with Brené Brown launched at number one and was named Apple’s top new podcast of 2020. We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle did the same a year later. Lauren LoGrasso was an executive producer on both, working at Cadence13 to shape the editorial sensibility that made those shows resonate. The thread running through that work is now the thread running through her keynotes. Unleash Your Inner Creative, the podcast she creates and hosts, has won the Webby, Signal, W3, Hermes Creative, People’s Choice, and Communicator awards. The subject is creativity, but the working question is organisational: why people stop offering their best ideas, and what conditions bring those ideas back into the room. LoGrasso speaks to corporate audiences and university programmes on creative leadership and workplace engagement, with signature talks including “The Key to Creative Leadership” and “The Power of Unleashing Creativity in Your Workplace.” She currently serves as VP of Programming and Development at Audacy Podcasts and continues to perform as a singer-songwriter, with collaborations including Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bova. The substance of her contribution is the connection between self-expression and contribution at work, named by Podcast Magazine as one of 22 Unsung Heroes of Podcasting and consistently profiled by major outlets for the operating model behind her shows. Key speaking topics Creative leadership in the workplace Employee engagement and morale Self-expression and authentic voice at work Podcasting and audio storytelling for brands and leaders Mental health and creative wellbeing Innovation through creative practice Event hosting, moderation, and interview craft Ideal for Heads of People, Culture, and Employee Engagement designing programmes that move beyond wellness benefits. Innovation, marketing, and brand leaders looking to bring creative practice into commercial work. Internal conferences, leadership offsites, and women’s leadership programmes seeking a keynote with stagecraft. Universities and graduate business programmes hosting events on creative careers and purpose-led work. Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as an organisational condition, not a personality trait. Specific practices for managers who want their teams to surface ideas earlier and more often. A clearer reading of why engagement scores stall in technically high-performing teams. An honest framing of the link between self-expression, mental health, and sustained contribution at work.

Why organisations work with Robin Ince Sixteen years co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox gave him a working method for translating serious ideas into language a general audience can act on. Few speakers have practised that craft at that scale. His account of late-diagnosed ADHD in Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal is one of the most widely read first-person treatments of adult neurodiversity from a recognisably high-functioning public figure. That makes him useful to leadership audiences who do not see themselves in standard neurodiversity training. He brings genuine comedy timing to material that is usually delivered flat. Boards and senior leadership offsites can absorb difficult content from him that they would resist from a clinical speaker. He carries credentials that survive scrutiny in any room: Honorary Fellow at UCL, honorary doctorate from Royal Holloway, Fellow of the British Science Association, Booksellers Association Author of the Year. Biography highlights Co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox, 2009 to 2025; the show won the 2011 Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme. Honorary Fellow of University College London and honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. Author of I’m a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested, Bibliomaniac, and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity; co-author with Brian Cox of How to Build a Universe. Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 2022; Time Out Outstanding Contribution to Comedy, 2006; multiple Chortle Awards including Best Compere. Co-founder of the Cosmic Shambles Network and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, the annual science variety show that has run since 2008. Public advocate on adult ADHD and neurodiversity following his own late diagnosis, anchoring his current touring show The Universe and the Neurodiverse. Biography The Infinite Monkey Cage ran on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years and won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme along the way. Robin Ince co-presented it with the physicist Brian Cox throughout, and the working method he developed there sits at the centre of what he now offers organisations: serious science, philosophy and literature delivered in language a general audience will actually use. That method has produced four solo books and one co-authored with Cox. The Importance of Being Interested and Bibliomaniac established him as a writer on curiosity and reading culture. Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, published by Macmillan in 2025, did something different. Following his own late ADHD diagnosis, he wrote a first-person account of adult neurodiversity that has been unusually well received by readers who do not see themselves in standard workplace material on the subject. The credentials behind the work are real. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College London and an Honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway. He is a Fellow of the British Science Association and was Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2022. He co-founded the Cosmic Shambles Network and has curated the Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People science variety show every December since 2008. For corporate audiences the proposition is specific. He is useful when a leadership team wants to talk seriously about neurodiversity and curiosity without flattening either into HR language, and he is one of very few speakers who can take a room from a research finding to a usable insight to a genuine laugh in the same minute. Key speaking topics Adult neurodiversity and late ADHD diagnosis Scientific curiosity as a habit of mind Communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences Humour and humanity Reading culture and the value of attention Science, music and comedy as a single conversation Ideal for Leadership teams and HR directors building neurodiversity work that goes beyond policy Boards and senior offsites looking for substantive content delivered with comedy timing Innovation, R&D and learning functions who want to reset what curiosity looks like in practice Conference organisers programming a science, culture or curiosity strand Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about adult ADHD and neurodiversity in senior settings A clearer sense of why attention, not information, is the scarce resource in their organisation Specific examples from sixteen years of putting scientists in front of general audiences, with the lessons that translate Permission to be more interested in their own work, which most leaders need more than they admit

Why organisations work with Tom Roach He originated the “performance plateau” framework, a specific, named diagnosis of the growth ceiling that confronts brands over-indexed on performance channels, developed in collaboration with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and published in Marketing Week. His IPA Effectiveness Gold Awards span McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, among the most analytically rigorous advertising effectiveness cases in UK industry history. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, he worked directly alongside Les Binet, the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research, placing him at the centre of the field’s most serious practitioner thinking. He is one of the few voices making the commercial case for brand investment from inside a performance-first agency group, giving his arguments about the brand/performance divide an operational credibility that consulting positions rarely carry. His “Share of Model” framework addresses an unmapped emergent risk: how large language models represent brands, and what that means for commercial visibility as AI increasingly mediates discovery and purchase intent. Biography highlights VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group; prior roles at adam&eveDDB, BBH London, Leo Burnett, and AMV BBDO – a career spanning over two decades at the leading edge of UK advertising Multiple Gold IPA Effectiveness Awards across campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB working directly alongside Les Binet Key contributor to BBH London’s designation as IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year 2018–19 Marketing Week columnist; regular speaker at Cannes Lions, SXSW, Google Firestarters, and IPA Effweek Originator of the “performance plateau” concept (with Dr Grace Kite) and associated “Bothism” brand/performance integration framework, widely adopted in marketing practice Biography Many marketing organisations are measuring the right things in the wrong sequence. Brands that concentrated investment in performance channels – search, social, display – often found their growth curve flattening at precisely the moment leadership expected it to accelerate. Tom Roach named this pattern the “performance plateau,” developing the concept with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and publishing it in Marketing Week, where it has since entered mainstream marketing vocabulary. The credibility behind that argument is operational. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Roach worked directly alongside Les Binet – the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research – before that, spending seven years driving BBH London’s effectiveness practice to IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year status in 2018–19. The IPA Gold Awards he contributed to, across McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, represent some of the most analytically demanding advertising cases in UK industry history. At Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group, Roach holds a position that few brand effectiveness thinkers occupy: making the case for long-term brand investment from within a digital-first, performance-oriented agency. That vantage point has produced frameworks with real institutional friction behind them, “Bothism” (the philosophy of ending the false choice between brand and performance), a revised model of how people enter and move through markets, and “Share of Model,” which addresses what large language models say about brands and why this matters commercially. He writes regularly for Marketing Week and speaks at Cannes Lions, SXSW, and IPA Effweek, using those platforms to pressure-test frameworks with practitioners rather than simply advocate positions. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness Brand and performance marketing integration The performance plateau Brand building in fragmented media Creative effectiveness Generative AI and brand strategy AI brand visibility and Share of Model Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams whose growth from performance channels is flattening CFOs and senior leaders challenged to build the internal case for long-term brand investment Brand and performance marketing teams operating in organisational silos Agency leadership and strategy teams working across integrated client portfolios Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for identifying whether their organisation has hit the performance plateau, and a framework for addressing it Clearer understanding of how brand building and performance marketing are commercially interdependent rather than competing priorities A framework for evaluating creative effectiveness across fragmented, platform-native media environments Practical thinking on what AI-mediated search and discovery means for brand visibility (Share of Model) Language and commercial evidence to make the case for brand investment to boards and finance leadership

Why organisations work with Costas Andriopoulos He has built one of the most cited academic foundations for organisational ambidexterity, the discipline of running exploitation and exploration in parallel, and translates it into language a leadership team can act on rather than admire. His 2009 Organization Science paper with Marianne Lewis is on most senior reading lists in the field, which gives the boardroom conversation a defensible reference point when innovation budgets come under pressure. “Purposeful Curiosity” gives leaders a working method for the awkward middle of an innovation cycle, where the question is not whether to explore but how to keep the inquiry productive when results are slow. As founder of Bayes X, he runs a live research programme on disruption with corporate partners, so the case material he brings to a session is current rather than historical. He has acted as thematic advisor on the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF, giving him a working view of how capital markets currently price the very disruption that operating leaders are trying to manage. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bayes Business School, City, University of London Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, Bayes Business School Founder and Director, Bayes X, the school’s Research Centre for Innovation and Disruption Director, Avyssos Advisors Ltd., innovation management consultancy Author, “Purposeful Curiosity” (Yellow Kite/Hachette, 2022), endorsed by Adam Grant Co-author, “Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation” (5th edition, Sage, 2024) Research published in Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, and California Management Review Thematic advisor to the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF Biography The hardest problem inside an established firm is not whether to innovate. It is how to keep the innovation agenda alive against the gravitational pull of the existing business. Costas Andriopoulos has spent two decades building the academic and practical answer to that question. His 2009 paper with Marianne Lewis in Organization Science set out how ambidextrous firms hold exploitation and exploration in productive tension rather than collapsing one into the other. The work has become a reference point for how senior teams discuss the paradox of running today’s business while building tomorrow’s. He has continued that line of research through articles in Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning and California Management Review. At Bayes Business School he holds the chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, serves as Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, and founded the Bayes X Centre for Innovation and Disruption. Through Avyssos Advisors he works with founders and corporate leadership teams; through the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF advisory work he sees the same disruption priced by capital markets. “Purposeful Curiosity,” published by Yellow Kite in 2022 and endorsed by Adam Grant, took that research base to a wider audience. Its argument is operational rather than inspirational: curiosity becomes useful only when it is structured, directed, and protected against the day-to-day demands that crowd it out. That is the brief he brings into a leadership room. Key speaking topics Organisational ambidexterity Disruptive innovation in established firms Purposeful curiosity as a leadership discipline Innovation portfolio management Entrepreneurial mindset inside corporates Leading creative teams The paradox of exploitation and exploration Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding both a profitability and a growth mandate Chief Innovation Officers and heads of R&D under board pressure to show returns from exploration CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development programmes that include innovation capability Founders and senior leadership teams of scale-ups moving from a single product to a portfolio Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the paradox of running today’s business while building the next one A defensible reference framework, drawn from peer-reviewed research, for protecting the exploration agenda inside an established firm A working method for converting individual curiosity into a managed organisational practice Examples of how ambidextrous firms structure decisions, incentives and team design to hold both modes at once

Why organisations work with Greg Orme A book-length, award-winning thesis behind every keynote. The Human Edge won Business Book of the Year 2020 and gives senior audiences a single, memorable framework, the four “superpowers”, they can apply to their own teams the next morning. London Business School pedigree as a builder, not just a teacher. He founded LBS’s Centre for Creative Business and ran executive programmes there for seven years, so the content has been pressure-tested on senior cohorts before it reaches a client stage. Recognised by peers in the people function. HR Magazine named him among its Most Influential Thinkers in 2022, which matters to CHROs sponsoring leadership and capability work. Translates the AI conversation into something a workforce can act on. Where most AI speakers describe the technology, Orme tells leadership teams what human behaviours their organisation now has to develop deliberately. Biography highlights Author of The Human Edge: How Curiosity and Creativity are Your Superpowers in the Digital Economy (Pearson, 2019), named Business Book of the Year 2020 and translated into Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. Author of The Spark: How to Ignite and Lead Business Creativity (FT Publishing, 2014). Founding CEO of London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business; programme director and lecturer at LBS for seven years. Named to HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers 2022. Forbes contributor writing on leadership, creativity and the digital economy. Clients include Microsoft, Accenture, BMW, EY, Sky, Virgin Media O2, ING, Novo Nordisk, the International Olympic Committee and the World Economic Forum. Biography The arrival of generative AI has forced a question that most leadership development programmes were not built to answer. If machines can now write, summarise, analyse and code, what exactly should an organisation expect from its human workforce? Greg Orme’s work is a direct response to that question. His book The Human Edge, published by Pearson and named Business Book of the Year 2020, argues that four human capabilities, consciousness, curiosity, creativity and collaboration, become more commercially valuable as routine cognitive work is absorbed by technology. The thesis has travelled. The book has been translated into Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, and the framework now sits behind his keynote and executive education work. That work has institutional roots. Orme founded London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business and spent seven years there as a programme director and lecturer, building and running executive education for senior cohorts. He holds an LBS MBA. HR Magazine named him among its Most Influential Thinkers in 2022, a recognition that matters in the people function where his content is most often commissioned. What separates him from other voices in the AI conversation is the audience he is talking to. He is not selling tooling, and he is not forecasting. He is telling leadership teams what their organisations have to develop in their people, deliberately and at scale, so that an AI strategy produces advantage rather than displacement. Key speaking topics Human capability in the age of AI Leadership in the digital economy Creativity and innovation as organisational disciplines Curiosity and learning culture Purpose-driven leadership Influence and storytelling for senior leaders Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning leadership and learning around AI. Executive committees setting the human capability agenda alongside a digital or AI strategy. Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to reset behaviours, not roll out tools. Boards and partner groups in professional services confronting AI’s impact on talent value. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, the four superpowers, for what the organisation now needs from its people. A clearer view of where AI raises the value of human judgment and where it erodes it. Specific behavioural prompts senior leaders can model in their own teams the following week. A sharper sense of which leadership development investments still pay back in an AI-enabled organisation.

Why organisations work with Dee Snider He has a verifiable, on-the-record case study of standing alone in front of a hostile Senate committee and winning the argument, used as a live example of composure under public pressure. His material is built on four decades of reinvention across music, film, voice acting and production, giving audiences a concrete arc rather than a generic resilience pitch. He delivers a celebrity main-stage presence that conference organisers can use to lift the energy of a sales kick-off, anniversary dinner or awards night without losing substance. His free-speech story sits inside a serious cultural moment, the PMRC hearings, and lands with senior audiences who lived through it. Biography highlights Lead singer of Twisted Sister, writer of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, both certified rock anthems of the 1980s. Testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in September 1985 against the Parents Music Resource Center, alongside Frank Zappa and John Denver. Author of the autobiography “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic”, published by Gallery Books. Screenwriter of the cult horror feature “Strangeland” and President of production company Defiant Artists. Keynote speaker at “The World’s Most Dangerous Meeting” in Gothenburg, drawing on career lessons for a corporate audience. Voice actor and on-camera presence across film, television and video games, with collaborators including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gordon Ramsay. Biography In September 1985 a U.S. Senate committee called three musicians to testify on the moral content of rock lyrics. Frank Zappa, John Denver and the leather-clad lead singer of Twisted Sister sat in front of the cameras and refused to apologise. The hearing became the founding moment of the modern free-speech argument over music. That afternoon is the spine of Snider’s speaking career. He was 30 years old, painted, and treated by the room as a public enemy. He stayed calm, dismantled the accusations against “We’re Not Gonna Take It” line by line, and walked out with the cultural argument largely intact. Forty years later the moment is still used in journalism and law classes as a case study in composure under public attack. The career around it gives the story weight. Twisted Sister sold millions of records. Snider went on to write the horror film “Strangeland”, run a production company in Defiant Artists, voice video game and animated characters, and publish “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic” with Gallery Books. The through-line is reinvention without softening the original position. For corporate audiences he uses that material to talk about holding a line under public pressure, surviving repeated career reinvention, and the practical content of not backing down when the room wants you to. The delivery is funny, profane and self-deprecating. The argument underneath is serious. Key speaking topics Free speech and standing by a position under public attack Self-leadership and composure under pressure Career reinvention across four decades Creative resilience Storytelling for senior audiences The 1985 PMRC hearings as a leadership case study Ideal for Sales kick-offs, anniversary dinners and awards nights looking for a celebrity main-stage presence with a serious underlying argument Leadership offsites using personal-resilience case studies to anchor a session on composure Communications, brand and public affairs teams studying how to defend a position in hostile public settings Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the 1985 PMRC Senate hearings from one of the three musicians who testified A concrete personal example of holding a position under sustained public attack A four-decade case study of career reinvention without abandoning the original work An entertaining, profane and self-deprecating main-stage set that lifts the energy of a corporate room