Culture Transformation

Why organisations work with Clare Kenny Her role as Global Wellbeing Lead at Burberry, responsible for a strategy covering 9,000 employees globally, gives her credibility with CHROs and operational leaders alike. She built the business case for wellbeing investment at scale, not just the human one. Prior career at YSC Consulting (part of Accenture) and MindGym grounds her frameworks in leadership psychology and behavioural science, not wellness trends or personal experience alone. Her TEDx talk reframes addiction as a spectrum behaviour present in most high-performance cultures, shifting the conversation from individual stigma to a risk organisations are actively creating through their own culture. Her work on ADHD and neuroinclusion moves beyond awareness. She helps organisations identify the specific leadership and structural conditions that enable neurodivergent talent to perform, and the ones that quietly prevent it. She moves wellbeing from a programme organisations fund to a behaviour leaders practise. That shift is what determines whether culture actually changes. Biography highlights BSc in Psychology, University of Manchester Former Global Wellbeing Lead, Burberry: led the global wellbeing strategy for a 9,000-person workforce Former Head of Client Operations (Europe), YSC Consulting (part of Accenture), leadership advisory Former Client Executive, MindGym, behavioural science learning and development consultancy TEDx speaker on rethinking addiction as a spectrum issue present in high-performance environments Clients include Warner Bros Discovery, KPMG, Ministry of Justice, Channel 4, Specsavers, Fidelity International, Avanade, and HSBC Biography At Burberry, the global wellbeing strategy covered 9,000 employees across multiple continents. Building that infrastructure required a specific kind of credibility; part organisational psychology, part leadership consultancy experience, and a willingness to name what most organisations actively avoid. Clare Kenny holds a BSc in Psychology from the University of Manchester and built her professional foundations at MindGym, a behavioural science learning and development consultancy. She moved into leadership advisory at YSC Consulting (part of Accenture), running client operations across Europe. That sequence; psychology, behavioural science, leadership consulting, shapes how she approaches wellbeing as an organisational systems problem, not a personal one. Her most defining role was Global Wellbeing Lead at Burberry, where she designed and ran the company’s wellbeing strategy across its global workforce. That experience directly informs her current work with organisations including KPMG, Warner Bros Discovery, Channel 4, and the Ministry of Justice, where her focus is on psychological safety, neuroinclusion, and the leadership behaviours that create or undermine mentally healthy cultures. Clare also speaks from personal experience of ADHD, addiction, anxiety, and grief. Her TEDx talk reframes addiction as a spectrum behaviour recognisable in most high-performance environments: not a personal failing confined to a few. That willingness to name what organisations routinely avoid is what makes her work function as more than awareness-raising. It becomes a credible basis for sustained culture change. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and workplace mental health Neuroinclusion and ADHD at work Sustainable leadership under pressure Addiction and numbing behaviours in high-performance cultures Wellbeing strategy and culture transformation Leadership resilience Ideal for CHROs and people directors designing or resetting a wellbeing strategy Senior leaders and executive teams navigating burnout or culture health HR and organisational development teams in professional services, media, financial services, and retail Organisations building neuroinclusive cultures or addressing gaps in psychological safety Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why wellbeing strategies fail to shift culture – and what actually changes leader behaviour Practical tools for recognising and responding to psychological safety issues at team level A reframed understanding of neurodivergence and addiction as organisational conditions, not individual ones Confidence to have honest leadership conversations about mental health in high-performance settings Specific practices for sustaining performance without burning people out

Why organisations work with Nilofer Merchant Her Onlyness framework offers a structural diagnosis for why innovation stalls inside organisations: not a confidence problem or a diversity problem, but a systemic filtering-out of unconventional ideas that the existing norms were built to do. Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) names 24 specific norms – including performance reviews, servant leadership, and “move fast and break things” – that actively undermine the conditions for great work, and provides a measurable, team-applicable alternative for each one. She holds a position few speakers occupy: genuine technology executive experience (Apple, Autodesk, Symantec; 100+ products; $18B in revenues) combined with management research that Thinkers50 cited as among the five ideas most likely to shape business for the next twenty years. She reframes the productivity and innovation conversation away from individual behaviour change – where most leadership speakers operate – and onto the systems and norms that leaders themselves control, which is a more actionable entry point for a board or senior team. Ranked by Thinkers50 as the “#1 person most likely to influence the future of management in both theory and practice,” her work carries both intellectual authority and practical application at the senior level. Biography highlights Author of four books on organisational performance and work design: The New How (O’Reilly, 2010), 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra (Harvard Business Review, 2012), The Power of Onlyness (Viking, 2017), and Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) Thinkers50 “Future Thinker” Award, 2013; ranked #22 globally in 2017 ranking; Thinkers50 Top 50, 2021; The Power of Onlyness shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award TED mainstage speaker; “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” ranks in the top 10% of TED’s most-viewed talks Harvard Business Review contributor; media coverage includes Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Fast Company, and CNN Former executive at Apple, Autodesk, and GoLive; personally launched more than 100 products generating $18 billion in revenue across 25 years in technology Teaches business strategy and collaborative management at Stanford University and Santa Clara University; MBA, Santa Clara University Founder, The Intangible Labs; top 10 HR thinker, HR Magazine Biography Nilofer Merchant starts from an observation that most organisations resist: the management tools that delivered performance in the twentieth century are actively limiting performance now. From her position as founder of The Intangible Labs and author of four books on work design, she has spent twenty-five years building an evidence base for that claim, and an alternative. Her Onlyness framework, developed in The Power of Onlyness (Viking, 2017) and cited by Thinkers50 as one of five ideas most likely to shape business for the next twenty years, holds that modern value creation flows not from hierarchy or title, but from the distinct perspective that only each individual can bring. When organisations filter out that perspective through deference, conformity, and outdated norms, they lose the one input that capital and process cannot replicate. Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) takes that argument into the operational detail boards and leadership teams can actually act on. It names 24 specific norms – from performance reviews to servant leadership to “move fast and break things” – that suppress contribution, trust, and innovation, and pairs each with a measurable alternative. The argument is structural: the problem is not the willingness of people to perform, but the systems they are asked to perform inside. Merchant’s authority on this is grounded in operating experience. A former executive at Apple, Autodesk, and Symantec, she personally launched more than 100 products generating $18 billion in revenue. She has contributed to Harvard Business Review, been ranked #22 among the world’s top management thinkers by Thinkers50, and teaches business strategy at Stanford University and Santa Clara University. Her TED talk “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” ranks in the top 10% of TED’s most-viewed talks. Key speaking topics Organisational norms and performance systems The Onlyness framework and value creation Intangible value in modern organisations Collaborative strategy and execution Innovation and idea suppression in hierarchical structures Future of work and work design Culture change as systems change Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing or overhauling performance and culture systems CEOs and senior leadership teams asking why execution consistently falls short of strategy Chief Innovation Officers and transformation leads examining why new ideas fail to scale internally Boards and executive committees evaluating whether their management models are still fit for purpose Audience outcomes A named diagnostic framework (Onlyness) for identifying where organisational value is being systematically suppressed – and why Specific understanding of which widely adopted management practices are actively limiting innovation and contribution in their own organisations A practical model for replacing competition-based and hierarchy-based norms with trust and collaboration-based alternatives, drawn from Our Best Work‘s 24-indicator framework Language for the gap between what organisations currently measure and what actually creates value – useful for board-level and senior team conversations Concrete team-level practices applicable immediately post-session, drawn from the chapter-by-chapter practice model in Our Best Work

Why organisations work with Natalie Johnson The CultureJourney™ framework gives senior teams a working model for how culture is actually produced, organised around three named levers: energy, connection, and courage. Combines a science foundation in human performance and resilience with three decades of corporate performance coaching. Few speakers in this space work from both traditions. Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, which means buyers can book her for a keynote and for the full leadership programme from a single practitioner. Track record with organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, and Ascension Healthcare. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Vidl Work, the consulting and keynote firm she leads Co-author of Leading the Culture Journey: Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces (Wiley, August 2026) Co-creator of the CultureJourney™ framework, used to guide culture transformation inside client organisations Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, and a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition; MSc in Wellness Promotion Co-host of the Energy, Connection & Courage at Work podcast Biography Most organisations describe their culture in terms they cannot define. Engagement scores climb and wellbeing budgets grow each year, yet senior teams still cannot explain why some groups sustain high performance while others burn out. This is the gap that the CultureJourney™ framework was built to close. Natalie Johnson developed it with her team at Vidl Work, the firm she co-founded and now leads as Chief Visionary Officer. The framework treats culture as the product of three working systems: how leaders elevate energy, how teams prioritise connection, and how leaders choose courage. The thinking is set out in Leading the Culture Journey, her 2026 book with Rebecca Johnson, published by Wiley. Her authority on the topic comes from a combination of training that few culture speakers share. Johnson holds a BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition and an MSc in Wellness Promotion. She is a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach, a Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, and a certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator. The Dare to Lead credential licenses her to deliver Brené Brown’s full leadership programme inside client organisations. Her client list spans organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition: NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, Ascension Healthcare, and the American College of Surgeons. She also sits on the board of the Kidney Cancer Association and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and culture transformation Human performance and energy management Trust and courageous conversation in teams Resilience and sustainable high performance Employee wellbeing as a performance lever Dare to Lead leadership development Ideal for Chief executives and senior leadership teams setting culture as a strategic priority CHROs and Chief People Officers running culture, engagement, and wellbeing portfolios Cross-functional teams operating under sustained change cycles: post-merger integrations, restructures, transformation programmes Leadership teams in high-pressure operating environments such as healthcare, defence, and regulated industry Organisations running Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead programme that want a licensed facilitator with deep performance science background Audience outcomes A working model for culture that names where it gets built and where it breaks down Language for linking employee wellbeing and engagement spend to commercial performance A method for holding the courageous conversations that team trust depends on, drawn from Dare to Lead Approaches for managing human energy and recovery at both individual and team level

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 Andrew and Gaia Grant The co-presenting format is its own offer. The audience hears two voices working a leadership problem in real time, with the academic and the facilitator perspectives playing off each other. The frameworks come out of Gaia Grant’s PhD research in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. The Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) is an academically validated diagnostic, which matters when the work has to defend itself in front of a board or audit committee. They treat the explore-preserve tension as the actual problem. Most innovation speakers present innovation as a simple acceleration story, which leaves leaders without a useful answer for the part of the business that has to stay reliable. The thirty-year working partnership is itself the case study for the leadership content. Andrew and Gaia have built a co-authored body of research while running a global consultancy together, and that lived material reads in the room as something that cannot be performed. Biography highlights Co-authors of The Innovation Race: How to Change a Culture to Change the Game (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) and the international bestseller Who Killed Creativity?…And How Do We Get it Back? (Wiley, 2012) Dr Gaia Grant: PhD researcher and lecturer in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School Andrew Grant: founder and director of Tirian International Consultancy and a TEDx speaker, with three decades of executive facilitation across more than thirty countries Developers of the academically validated Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) and the Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) framework, used with executive teams from Fortune 500 firms and government innovation programmes Keynote work at YPO Global Leadership Conference, APEC CEO Summit, the PwC US National Conference, Gartner ITxpo, TEDx and the Salesforce ANZ Roadshow Clients include Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Disney, Salesforce, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Citibank, Visa, Goldman Sachs, UBS and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office Biography The hardest part of innovation is not coming up with new ideas. It is running the rest of the business while you do it. That tension is the central argument of two books co-authored by Andrew and Gaia Grant: The Innovation Race and Who Killed Creativity?. It is also the problem most organisations get wrong when they accelerate AI adoption. The research backbone is Dr Gaia Grant’s doctoral work in Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. Her PhD examined what lets some organisations innovate sustainably while others stall. Two tools came out of it: the academically validated Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP), both now used by executive teams worldwide. Andrew Grant founded Tirian International Consultancy and is the working other half of the research in the room. Gaia anchors the academic case; Andrew runs the live facilitation, with simulations, audience experiments and the kind of pacing that keeps a three-thousand-person Salesforce roadshow following the argument. The partnership is thirty years old, which is why the co-presented sessions read as a working dialogue, not a stitched-together keynote. The work has been used by Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Salesforce, Four Seasons and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, often delivered with partner institutions including Duke Corporate Education. What gets repeated is the clearest signal of fit: roadshows that return, leadership programmes that scale, teams running iCLi diagnostics by the next planning cycle. Key speaking topics Innovation leadership and culture The explore-preserve paradox in AI adoption Sustainable innovation in complex organisations Creative intelligence and critical thinking Ambidextrous leadership Innovation diagnostics and culture transformation Ideal for C-suite teams running concurrent AI adoption and core-business protection mandates Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy in large, complex organisations Boards and CEOs designing a programme of cultural change with a long delivery arc Executive education and leadership programmes that need academically defensible content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the explore-preserve tension that surfaces in every AI and innovation programme An honest read on where the organisation sits on innovation readiness, supported by the Innovation Climate Indicator (iCLi) A workable distinction between creative thinking and innovation execution, and where each is breaking down inside the audience’s own teams Visibility into which leadership archetypes in the room pull toward exploration and which pull toward preservation Decisions that hold up in a board paper because the framework behind them is academically validated

Why organisations work with Ellis Watson He has run a ten-year transformation of a family-owned media group, DC Thomson, including the digital reinvention of brands like The Beano, with full P&L accountability. Few keynote speakers can show that length of tenure inside a turnaround. He has held the top operating role in three different content businesses, newspapers, global TV formats and family-owned media, so the change playbook he offers is sector-tested, not theoretical. His current seat as Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland gives him a live view of how policy, regulation and capital are shaping the conditions executive teams are actually working in. He is direct in a room. Boards and executive audiences book him when they want candour about cost, culture and pace, not a motivational set piece. Biography highlights Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland, appointed January 2023. CEO and later Executive Chairman of DC Thomson, 2011 to 2020, leading the modernisation of titles including The Beano and The Press and Journal. Global CEO of Syco Entertainment under Simon Cowell in 2010, with responsibility for the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. CEO of Celador International from 2000, oversaw the international rollout of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to around 100 territories. Managing Director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 2003 to 2005, accountable for five national and around 240 regional titles. Non-executive director of FirstGroup plc from 2009, with North American Greyhound responsibility, and a former Marketing Director of News International reporting to Rupert Murdoch. Biography DC Thomson is the kind of business that does not usually survive a digital decade. A family-owned publisher in Dundee, built on print titles like The Beano, The Sunday Post and The Press and Journal, it carried a cost base shaped by an industry that no longer existed. Between 2011 and 2020 it was rebuilt from the inside, with a third of the staff gone and the consumer brands repositioned for digital. Ellis Watson ran that decade as CEO and then Executive Chairman. That was not an unfamiliar problem to him. He had already taken Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? out to roughly 100 territories as CEO of Celador, run five national newspapers and around 240 regional titles at the Mirror Group, and spent 2010 as global CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment, holding the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. The earlier ground had been News International, as Marketing Director reporting to Rupert Murdoch. What that career produces, in a board context, is an unusually long lens on the same problem. Legacy businesses tend to be governed by people who have never personally rebuilt one. Ellis has, in three sectors, and he is now sitting inside Scottish Government as the First Minister’s Chief Business Advisor, a role created in January 2023 to bring private sector judgement into policy decisions. The result is a speaker who is most useful to executive teams in the middle of structural change, where the questions are about cost, talent and tempo, and where a generic transformation framework is not enough. Key speaking topics Leadership through structural change in legacy businesses Turnaround and brand revitalisation Building and holding high-performance cultures Engaging younger workforces inside traditional organisations Disruption as an operating discipline, not a slogan Governance and stakeholder trust during transformation Ideal for Boards and executive teams of legacy or family-owned businesses facing structural decline CEOs, COOs and transformation directors running cost and culture programmes in parallel CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement during restructure Senior leadership audiences in media, publishing, transport and consumer brands Audience outcomes A clear-eyed read on how long real turnaround actually takes inside a legacy business Specific operator decisions, on cost, talent and brand, drawn from DC Thomson, Mirror, Celador and Syco A working argument for why culture is the binding constraint in any transformation, not strategy A view from inside government on the conditions UK businesses are operating against A different vocabulary for talking about disruption with a board, less abstract, more accountable

Why organisations work with Nicky Moffat Direct experience of leading 4,500 officers and soldiers at the Army Personnel Centre, giving her a practical authority on leadership at scale that few civilian speakers can match. A working definition of inclusive leadership built inside an institution where she was, for years, the only woman in the room at her level. Not a theoretical position. A track record of supporting ministerial decision-making during live operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, which translates into credibility with senior leaders facing high-stakes calls under public scrutiny. Story-led delivery grounded in named events and decisions, so the leadership argument lands as a worked example rather than a model on a slide. Biography highlights Brigadier, British Army, 2009 to 2012; highest-ranking woman in the service during that period. Appointed CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours. Former military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon. Named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014. Primary instructor on BBC’s Secret Agent Selection: WW2 (2018), released on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Founder of What Good Leadership Looks Like, working with organisations in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. Biography Leading 4,500 people through continuous restructure tests every assumption a leader has about authority, communication and the limits of their own composure. Nicky Moffat did exactly that as the most senior woman the British Army had, running the Army Personnel Centre and serving as Brigadier from 2009 to 2012. Her career before that was unusual in its proximity to live decisions. As military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, she was in the room as ministers made calls on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, and during the UK’s Foot and Mouth response. That work shaped a view of leadership as something that has to function under public scrutiny, not in a workshop. She was appointed CBE in 2012. Since leaving the Army she has built What Good Leadership Looks Like, a practice that works with senior teams in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. The work centres on a question most large organisations now have to answer: how do you keep a workforce engaged and performing through restructure after restructure? She approaches inclusion as part of the answer rather than a parallel conversation, having spent much of her own career as the only woman of her rank in the room. She was named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014 and was the primary instructor on the BBC series Secret Agent Selection: WW2, broadcast in 2018 and released internationally on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Leading through transformational change Building leadership culture at scale High-performing teams Career transition and self-leadership Women in senior leadership Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding the line through restructure CHROs and people directors rebuilding leadership benches Senior women’s networks and emerging leader programmes Boards and partnerships in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media Audience outcomes A sharper read on what inclusive leadership actually requires of senior leaders, beyond statements of intent Specific behaviours to keep teams engaged through repeated structural change A reference point for leading at scale drawn from inside one of the UK’s largest hierarchical institutions Practical language for the harder parts of senior leadership, including being the only one of your kind in the room

Why organisations work with Janie Frampton She has lived the problem leaders are trying to solve. As the second woman to referee in men’s professional football in England, she knows exactly how institutions react to someone who does not fit their template, and what it takes to stay. FIFA chose her as one of eight Women Referee Instructors worldwide, a credential that signals international standing in a governance body that rarely hands that status to outsiders. She moves credibly between elite sport, government counter-extremism work, and community programmes for under-represented young people. Few speakers in the inclusion space carry that range of institutional experience. She founded two organisations that deliver, not advocate: Ref Support UK for officials under pressure, and Team You for young people in socially deprived communities. The OBE and Deputy Lieutenancy of Dorset are not decorative. Both were awarded for the same body of work she speaks about, which gives audiences an uncommon alignment between platform and proof. Biography highlights OBE for services to equality in football, awarded in the 2024 New Year’s Honours. Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset. Second woman to referee in men’s professional football in England; qualified as a referee in December 1991. FIFA Referee Instructor from 2005 to 2015, working as Technical Instructor, Observer and Match Delegate across multiple World Cup cycles. Former FA Regional Referee Manager and National Manager for Education and Training of Referees. Vice President of the International Federation for Sports Officials; Patron of Muslim Women’s Network UK; Ambassador for Women in Football; co-founder of Ref Support UK and Team You. Biography Football was not built for women when Janie Frampton qualified as a referee in December 1991. The Football Association did not formally recognise the women’s game until 1994. She became the second woman to officiate in men’s professional football in England by working inside a system that had not designed a place for her, and then refused to leave it. From that starting point she moved into the infrastructure of the game. Between 2001 and 2012 she worked as an FA Regional Referee Manager and later as National Manager for Education and Training of Referees. FIFA appointed her as a Referee Instructor in 2005, and for the next decade she travelled as Technical Instructor, Observer and Match Delegate across World Cup cycles. She is one of only eight women globally to hold FIFA instructor status. The work outside the whistle is the part organisations buy. She co-founded Ref Support UK, the first charity in England focused on the welfare and development of football officials, and Team You, a social enterprise running leadership and life-skills programmes for young people in under-represented communities. She is Vice President of the International Federation for Sports Officials, Patron of Muslim Women’s Network UK, and an Ambassador for Women in Football. The 2024 OBE was awarded specifically for long-standing service to equality in football, locally and nationally. She was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset the same year. Audiences get someone whose inclusion work has been recognised by the institutions she was once excluded from, told in the voice of a referee: direct, unhedged, and used to making decisions people will argue with. Key speaking topics Gender equality in male-dominated institutions Inclusive leadership and culture change Resilience and decision-making under pressure Supporting under-represented talent in sport and business Governance and integrity in elite performance environments Mental health and the welfare of officials Values-based leadership Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads confronting the gap between inclusion policy and day-to-day culture. Boards and executive teams in sport, governing bodies and federations. Leadership programmes for women moving into senior roles in male-dominated sectors. Organisations working with young people, education bodies, and community outreach functions. Audience outcomes A clearer view of what structural inclusion looks like inside institutions that were not designed for it. Specific tactics for staying, deciding and leading when you are the first or only one in the room. A frank account of how elite sport handles pressure, welfare and accountability, translatable to corporate performance cultures. Direct examples of building organisations, Ref Support UK and Team You, that deliver measurable outcomes for the people they serve.

Why organisations work with Mike Evans He has spent his career inside the three firms that defined modern change and execution practice, Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, and brings a synthesised operator view rather than a single methodology. His book Achieve with Accountability (Wiley) sets out a specific thesis on distributed ownership that buyers can interrogate before booking, not a generic accountability message. He has worked inside 34 of the Fortune 50, with named results including faster decision cycles at Intel and a constrained-budget pilot training rebuild at the US Army Aviation Center. His forthcoming work on AI and the future of work, Distinct or Extinct, gives leadership teams a current frame for workforce redesign without the usual technology evangelism. He works as consultant, coach, and keynote in sequence, which suits clients who need the conference moment to land as the start of a programme, not the end of one. Biography highlights Author of Achieve with Accountability (Wiley, 9781119314080). Forthcoming book Distinct or Extinct: Future-Proofing People and Organizations in the Age of AI (April 2026). Former senior consultant at Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company. Currently Executive Vice President and Managing Partner of QuestMark. Clients include Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, Caterpillar, Capital One, Pfizer, General Mills, Google, Oracle, Johnson and Johnson, NASA, and the US Army Aviation Center. Developer of the 7-Sided Pincer Movement framework and the Kryptonite Scorecard diagnostic. Biography Distributed accountability is the unsolved problem inside most large organisations. Leaders ask for ownership at every level, then keep authority concentrated at the top. When a fresh disruption arrives, AI, restructure, a regulatory shift, the gap between asked-for ownership and actual decision rights becomes the binding constraint on execution. Mike Evans has spent more than two decades working that gap. His operator chapters, Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, are three of the most cited firms in modern change practice. He worked directly alongside John Kotter on change acceleration, Stephen Covey and Hyrum Smith on personal effectiveness, Tom Peters on operational excellence, and Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner on the leadership challenge. The synthesis matters: clients get an integrated view rather than a single methodology stretched beyond its useful range. His Wiley book, Achieve with Accountability, is the spine of his keynote work. It frames accountability not as a performance management tool but as a distributed capability that lets organisations move at the speed their markets now require. Inside the Fortune 50, that thesis has produced specific results: shorter decision cycles at Intel, a rebuilt pilot training pipeline at the US Army Aviation Center, equity growth at NetApp. His forthcoming book, Distinct or Extinct, extends the same lens to AI and the future of work. Today Evans serves as Executive Vice President and Managing Partner of QuestMark, where he advises senior teams across technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. His engagements typically extend beyond the keynote into custom workshops and executive coaching, which is the configuration most large-scale execution work actually requires. Key speaking topics Distributed accountability and execution discipline Change acceleration and leadership capacity AI impact and the future of work Peak-performing organisational culture Resilience under repeated disruption Personal and organisational distinctiveness Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams driving a multi-year change or transformation programme Operating leaders responsible for execution across distributed business units Chief People Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning accountability and ownership structures Boards examining workforce readiness for AI-driven reshaping of roles Audience outcomes A working model for distributing accountability without losing strategic coherence Practical mechanisms for accelerating decision cycles inside complex organisations A current frame for what AI does to roles, capability requirements, and workforce design Specific behaviours that distinguish high-execution cultures from compliance cultures A vocabulary senior teams can use after the session to keep momentum

Why organisations work with Dr Alan O’Neill The 7-Steps to Profit is a named, proprietary framework built from a multi-year consulting engagement at Selfridges, where annual profit grew from £45m to £200m. Audiences leave with a structured path they can map to their own organisation, not a set of principles they have to interpret. His central argument, that culture and customer experience are a single commercial mechanism, not parallel HR and marketing initiatives, gives boards a specific reframing of a decision they are typically making in silos. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he draws content from active client engagements across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector. The material is current, not archival. Four published books provide a body of work that extends well beyond the session: “Premium Is the New Black” on customer experience as competitive differentiation; “Culture Matters” on the four values that underpin high performance; “Show Me the Lid on the Box” on reducing change resistance; and “The Leader’s Six-Pack” on balancing leadership competencies with emotional intelligence A business columnist for the Sunday Independent and Gulf based publications, his frameworks are tested continuously against live commercial situations across multiple sectors and geographies. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Kara Change Management Creator of the 7-Steps to Profit framework; deployed across client organisations including Selfridges, Toyota, Intel, Primark, Moët Hennessy, Dubai Duty Free, Getty Images, and the United Nations Author of three books: Premium Is the New Black, Culture Matters, and Show Me the Lid on the Box Business columnist, Sunday Independent (Ireland) and Gulf Business Non-executive director across multiple sectors in Europe and the Middle East 30+ years of consulting practice spanning retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, manufacturing, and public sector organisations across EMEA Biography Selfridges’ annual profit grew from £45m to £200m across several years of structured transformation, and the business went on to win multiple ‘Best Department Store in the World’ awards. The consulting framework behind that journey, Dr Alan O’Neill’s 7-Steps to Profit, is what organisations now bring him in to share. The 7-Steps to Profit is built on a specific argument: that culture, customer experience, and commercial performance are not parallel workstreams but a single, interdependent system. Culture is not the backdrop to strategy, it is the delivery mechanism. O’Neill formalised this thinking across three books: Premium Is the New Black addresses customer experience as competitive differentiation; Culture Matters defines the four values (Customer Centricity, Respect, Accountability, and Agility) that underpin a high-performance culture; Show Me the Lid on the Box provides a framework for leading change with reduced resistance. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he has applied the framework with organisations across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector, from Toyota and Intel to Dubai Duty Free and the United Nations. The Selfridges story transfers well: the structural argument it illustrates is as relevant to a B2B services firm or a public institution as it is to a department store. O’Neill continues to practise as an active consultant and non-executive director. He writes regular business commentary for the Sunday Independent and Gulf Business, keeping his frameworks in direct conversation with the commercial challenges organisations are currently navigating. Key speaking topics Change management and organisational transformation Culture as commercial strategy Customer experience and service excellence The 7-Steps to Profit Premium brand positioning and margin protection Values-led leadership Retail reinvention and the future of physical retail Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams managing a cultural transformation alongside a commercial or strategic pivot Chief Customer Officers and Chief Marketing Officers seeking to embed customer-centric behaviour across the full organisation CHROs and HR Directors designing culture programmes that connect directly to business performance Executive conferences in retail, hospitality, consumer goods, and financial services Audience outcomes A working understanding of the 7-Steps to Profit framework and how to map its logic to their own organisational context A reframing of culture and customer experience as a single commercial lever, not separate functional priorities Concrete examples drawn from the Selfridges engagement and other named client organisations that show how the framework operates under real conditions Greater clarity on where resistance to change typically originates and how structured approaches reduce it at scale A sharper diagnostic lens for identifying the gap between leadership intent and frontline behaviour

Why organisations work with Paul Gibbons His Adaptive Adoption model – a seven-pillar behavioral science framework for AI adoption – and its companion diagnostic, the Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index (AAMI), give leaders a structured tool for assessing and addressing the human conditions that determine whether an AI investment delivers returns or stalls. This kind of named, built IP is rare in this topic area. «The Science of Organizational Change» is cited by Google’s change team and Microsoft’s internal culture group as having reoriented how they approach transformation: an unusual form of verification that the intellectual framework holds up under real operational pressure, not just in consulting engagements. He will tell an organisation what is wrong with its change thinking. The Chairman of KPMG described the experience as hearing «what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to hear», a quality that becomes valuable when senior leaders have quietly invested in approaches that are not working. His practitioner career spans founding one of Europe’s leading leadership consulting firms (Future Considerations), serving as Partner at IBM Consulting, and developing change management methodology in PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice, meaning the frameworks have been stress-tested in exactly the large, complex organisations that attend senior leadership events. His academic breadth spanning neurochemistry, economics, neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral science – allows him to draw on disciplines rarely applied to organizational transformation, and to name and debunk the pseudoscience that fills a field where, as Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer has noted publicly, charlatanism is common. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Future Considerations (2001), one of Europe’s leading leadership and culture change consulting firms, with named clients including Shell, BP, HSBC, Barclays, and KPMG Former Partner at IBM Consulting (Talent and Transformation); former senior strategist at PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice, where he developed its change management and corporate transformation methodologies Author of eight books including «The Science of Organizational Change» – named among the top change management texts of all time – and «Adopting AI: The People-First Approach» (2025) Ranked #5 globally in organizational culture change by Global Gurus; named among the top 52 globally in AI in 2026 (London Speaker Bureau) Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA); Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Denver (2015-2018); member of the American Philosophical Association and the U.S. Academy of Management Council Writing featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Guardian; endorsed by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford Business School) and Simon Collins (Chairman, KPMG) Biography Most organisations know their AI and transformation investments are underperforming. The harder question is why and the honest answer, in most cases, is that the behavioural and cultural architecture of the organisation was never redesigned alongside the technology. Paul Gibbons has spent three decades building the evidence base that explains this failure, and the frameworks that help leaders act on it. His intellectual contribution begins with a provocation. In «The Science of Organizational Change,» Gibbons argues that most change management frameworks are built on myth and untested pop psychology, and replaces them with approaches grounded in behavioural economics, neuroscience, and complexity theory. Google’s change team and Microsoft’s internal culture group both credited the book with reorienting how they approach transformation. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Business School praised his work for bringing scientific rigour to what he described as a field riddled with pseudoscience. That critique evolved into a constructive framework for the AI era. His Adaptive Adoption model, a seven-pillar approach grounded in behavioral science, offers leaders a structured alternative to applying conventional change management to AI transformation. Its companion diagnostic, the Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index, helps organisations assess where they actually stand. The model draws on three decades of board and C-suite advisory work, including founding Future Considerations, one of Europe’s leading leadership consulting firms, serving as Partner at IBM Consulting, and developing change methodology in PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice. Gibbons is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is ranked among the top five globally in organizational culture change by Global Gurus, and among the top 52 globally in AI in 2026. He has taught business ethics and leadership at the University of Denver, serves on the board of Denver’s Institute for Enterprise Ethics, and hosts the Think Bigger Think Better podcast, which explores the intersection of AI, behavioral science, and organizational leadership. Key speaking topics Behavioral science and organizational change AI adoption and workforce transformation Culture change and behavior design Change management myths and evidence-based practice AI ethics and organizational governance Leadership in complex and uncertain environments The future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for CHROs and people transformation leaders navigating technology-driven organizational change Boards and C-suite leaders making AI adoption and governance decisions Organizational development and change management practitioners Digital and technology transformation leaders in large, complex organizations Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding why culture change and AI adoption efforts typically fail, grounded in behavioral science rather than convention Practical tools for diagnosing where behavioral and cultural gaps are undermining technology investments A more rigorous basis for evaluating AI adoption strategies and distinguishing credible signals from market noise Language and framing for board and C-suite conversations about the organizational conditions required for successful transformation Familiarity with the Adaptive Adoption framework and Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index as structured, evidence-based alternatives to conventional change management applied to AI

Why organisations work with Jenn Lim She carries the operating lineage of the Zappos culture work directly into the room. She built the original Zappos Culture Book and co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh, so the source material is hers, not borrowed. Her Beyond Happiness book gives buyers a single, named framework (the Greenhouse Method) they can point to, rather than a generic engagement talk. Wall Street Journal bestseller and Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. She works at the seam where personal purpose meets commercial outcome. The Me, We, Community model is built to be used by HR and leadership teams, not just admired on stage. Credibility with both ends of the buyer market: Fortune 500 cultures (Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pixar) and government audiences (World Government Summit, SHRM global events). Selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing places her inside the small group setting the policy conversation on workplace wellbeing, not just commenting on it. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness, the culture consultancy that evolved from Tony Hsieh’s 2010 book of the same name. Author of Beyond Happiness (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. Led the launch of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, a #1 New York Times bestseller that stayed on the list for 27 weeks. Creator of the original Zappos Culture Book. Selected in 2017 to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing. Delivering Happiness named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Speaker at the World Government Summit, SHRM and inside Fortune 500 cultures including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Pixar. Biography Most workplace culture conversations start with the symptoms: low engagement, attrition, burnout, the lukewarm Glassdoor scores. Jenn Lim’s work starts a level deeper, with the question of whether the people inside an organisation actually have a reason to commit. That question has been her professional terrain for two decades, first inside Zappos, then through Delivering Happiness. The story is straight. Lim built the original Zappos Culture Book, which became the internal artefact that defined how Zappos talked about itself. She then co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh in 2010 and led the launch of his book, which sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks. Delivering Happiness became a consultancy used by Fortune 500 cultures, Best Places to Work honourees and government bodies, and reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Her own book, Beyond Happiness, was published by Grand Central in 2021 and named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of the year. The argument is operational: organisations get sustained engagement when individual purpose is connected to a clear organisational mission, and leaders are the variable that makes the connection real or hollow. The Greenhouse Method and the Me, We, Community framework give HR and leadership teams a structure they can run inside the business, not just a talk to applaud. What separates Lim from the broader wellbeing field is the lineage. She is not adapting someone else’s culture story for the stage. She built the source material, she co-founded the consultancy that productised it, and her selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing in 2017 placed her inside the group shaping the policy conversation on this question. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and engagement Purpose-driven leadership Employee wellbeing Organisational change and resilience Authentic leadership Belonging and connection at work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning engagement strategy after a period of restructure or fatigue Boards and executive teams reviewing the link between culture, purpose and commercial performance Heads of culture, DEI and employee experience inside Fortune 500 and large public-sector organisations Leadership development programmes focused on values-based and authentic leadership Audience outcomes A clear way to talk about purpose that connects individual employees to organisational mission, using the Me, We, Community model. The Greenhouse Method as a named structure for reducing burnout and rebuilding trust through change. The lessons from inside the Zappos culture build, told by the person who wrote the original Culture Book. A defensible language for wellbeing that goes beyond the surface wellness vocabulary leaders are tired of.