Customer Experience & Marketing

Why organisations work with Ken Schmidt He sat inside the room when Harley-Davidson went from near-collapse to one of the most emotionally bonded brands in American business, and he can describe what changed in the company’s positioning rather than what got written about it afterwards. He frames customer loyalty as an operating decision, not a marketing output. His Noise Cubed Trilogy gives leadership teams a structured way to interrogate how they are heard, remembered and chosen. Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance (Simon and Schuster, 2018) gives leaders a written, reusable method for moving a company from product-first to people-first positioning. He works in the language operators use. Sales teams, dealer networks, franchisees and frontline staff respond to him because he treats reputation as something the whole organisation builds, not a head-office function. He is consistently booked for annual sales kickoffs, dealer conferences and leadership offsites where the brief is to change how a workforce thinks about its own market position, not to deliver a generic motivational talk. Biography highlights Director of Corporate and Financial Communications at Harley-Davidson Motor Company, 1990 to 1997; joined the company in 1985. Primary spokesperson to media and financial communities during Harley-Davidson’s turnaround years. Author of Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance, Simon and Schuster, November 2018. Co-creator of 100 Years of Harley-Davidson, an official centenary motorsports title. Founder of Ken Schmidt Company (1999); co-founder of Torque Sessions Leadership Training. Host of the Tailgating with Geniuses business podcast; previously held an ownership stake in Chicago marketing firm VSA Partners. Biography Harley-Davidson was effectively a dying American manufacturer in the mid-1980s. The bikes had reputation problems, the financials were thin, and the brand was the punchline of its own segment. The work that pulled the company out was not a product fix. It was a deliberate reconstruction of how customers, dealers and the financial community thought and talked about the company, and Ken Schmidt was inside that work from 1985. By 1990 he was Director of Corporate and Financial Communications, working directly with the CEO and CFO and serving as the primary voice to the media and investment community during the years sales and brand equity recovered. That seat gave him a particular vantage on how reputation actually gets engineered inside a company under pressure, and on how leadership decisions about positioning translate into customer behaviour on the ground. After leaving Harley in 1997 he took an ownership position at Chicago marketing firm VSA Partners, then founded Ken Schmidt Company in 1999. Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance (Simon and Schuster, 2018) sets out his method for moving a company from product-first to people-first positioning; his Torque Sessions training format and Tailgating with Geniuses podcast extend the same operating logic. The argument he brings to a leadership room is that competitive advantage built on product specifications is now mostly perishable, and the durable form of advantage is being chosen on purpose by customers who feel something specific about the company. That is a hard claim to make credibly. It is harder to make from the inside of a brand that did it. Key speaking topics Customer loyalty and advocacy Brand positioning and reputation Competitive differentiation People-first organisational culture Storytelling and corporate voice Sales force and dealer-network alignment Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and customer-experience leadership teams. Sales leadership at companies running annual kickoffs, dealer conferences or franchise summits. CEO and executive teams in mature categories where product parity is eroding margins. Membership organisations, associations and trade bodies needing to reset how they are perceived. Audience outcomes A sharper internal language for what their company is actually known for, versus what it claims to be known for. Schmidt’s three-question Noise Cubed framework, useable as a working tool on positioning decisions. A concrete view of how the Harley-Davidson turnaround changed customer behaviour, with the operator-side mechanics named. A reframing of customer loyalty as something every part of the business builds, not a marketing or CX function output.

Why organisations work with Kevin Brown He brings the operator’s view. Twenty years inside SERVPRO’s leadership team, helping build a franchise system into a billion-dollar category leader, gives him direct credibility with sales, service, and franchise audiences that academic culture speakers cannot match. The HERO Effect is a usable framework, not a slogan. It gives frontline teams and managers a shared language for personal accountability that survives the flight home from the conference. He sits comfortably in front of mixed audiences: sales kick-offs, franchisee conventions, dealer meetings, and customer-experience summits. The same material lands with technicians, agents, and senior leaders. Repeat-booking proof. His client list, which includes American Express, Delta Air Lines, PayPal, ExxonMobil, Chick-fil-A, and Ernst and Young, reflects organisations that buy speakers on outcomes, not on novelty. Recognition from buyer-facing bodies. Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers (2024), SpeakInc Top 10 Keynote Speakers (2021), and NorthStar Meetings Group Best Keynote Speakers (2019). Biography highlights Author of The Hero Effect: Being Your Best When It Matters the Most (2017) and Unleashing Your Hero (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021). Spent more than 20 years on the senior leadership team at SERVPRO, helping grow the franchise system into a billion-dollar category leader. Creator of the HERO Effect framework, used as the basis of his keynote programmes and books. Named to Global Gurus’ Top 30 Motivational Speakers list (2024). Selected to SpeakInc’s Top 10 Keynote Speakers (2021) and NorthStar Meetings Group’s Best Keynote Speakers (2019). Keynote client list includes American Express, Delta Air Lines, PayPal, ExxonMobil, Chick-fil-A, Verizon Connect, O’Reilly Automotive, Ernst and Young, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Merck. Biography Service-led businesses spend heavily on customer-experience programmes and still lose customers at the moment of contact. The reason is rarely strategy. It is the daily, individual choices of the people closest to the customer, and most cultures do not equip those people to choose well under pressure. That is the territory Kevin Brown has worked in for thirty years, first as an operator and now as a keynote speaker. Two decades of his corporate career were spent on the senior leadership team at SERVPRO, where the team built the franchise system into a billion-dollar category leader. He learned culture from the inside, in a network of independent operators where consistency had to be earned every day rather than mandated from headquarters. Out of that experience came the HERO Effect, the framework that anchors his keynotes and his two books, The Hero Effect (2017) and Unleashing Your Hero (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021). The argument is straightforward. Excellence is a personal practice before it is an organisational outcome, and leaders who treat culture as a behavioural discipline, not a values poster, get measurably different results from their frontline teams. His client list reflects who that argument lands with: American Express, Delta Air Lines, PayPal, ExxonMobil, Chick-fil-A, Verizon Connect, Ernst and Young, Booz Allen Hamilton. Global Gurus named him to its Top 30 Motivational Speakers list in 2024. The work is not theory borrowed for a stage. It is a set of operating principles taken back into the room they came from. Key speaking topics Service excellence and customer experience Culture and frontline accountability Leadership at every level Personal performance and ownership Sales-team motivation and consistency Franchise and dealer-network performance Ideal for CHROs, customer-experience leads, and operations leaders running cultural change inside service-led organisations. Sales kick-offs, dealer conferences, and franchisee conventions where the audience is mixed-seniority and outcome-focused. Front-line and customer-facing teams in retail, hospitality, financial services, and field service. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for personal accountability that managers can keep using after the keynote. A clearer line between individual behaviour and customer-experience results, made concrete with examples from inside a billion-dollar franchise system. Renewed energy in mixed-audience settings such as sales kick-offs and dealer meetings, where engagement is the usual brief. Practical prompts for managers on how to coach service consistency rather than mandate it.

Why organisations work with Kevin Lane Keller He authored the framework most senior marketers were trained on. The Customer-Based Brand Equity model, his 1993 Journal of Marketing paper, is the reference point that brand equity conversations still anchor to. He co-authors the standard MBA marketing textbook. Marketing Management with Philip Kotler is in its 16th edition and sits on the syllabus of most top business schools, which means his vocabulary is already shared by the room. He has advised brand strategy at Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Nike, P&G, Samsung, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Google, so the case material is current rather than historical. He treats the tension between short-term performance marketing and long-term brand building as a capital allocation question, not a creative one, which lands with CFOs and CEOs as well as CMOs. He brings the academic credibility of 135+ peer-reviewed papers and a Tuck professorship without retreating into theory; the work has been pressure-tested in expert witness testimony for Amazon, Meta, Mercedes-Benz, and the NFL. Biography highlights E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Author of Strategic Brand Management, 5th edition, co-authored with Vanitha Swaminathan, widely referred to as the “bible of branding.” Co-author with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev of Marketing Management, 16th edition. Originator of the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model, 1993 Journal of Marketing. Former Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, 2013 to 2015. Previously held tenured marketing posts at Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley, and UNC Chapel Hill. Biography The argument over what brand investment is actually for has moved from the marketing function to the boardroom. Finance leaders want a defensible link between brand spend and enterprise value. Marketing leaders are negotiating between short-term performance metrics and the longer arc of customer preference. Keller’s work is the framework most of those conversations are still built on. His 1993 Journal of Marketing paper introduced the Customer-Based Brand Equity model, which redefined brand value as what customers know, feel, and recognise about a brand rather than as a balance-sheet residual. The CBBE pyramid remains a standard reference for measuring brand strength inside organisations like Accenture, American Express, Disney, Nike, P&G, and Samsung, all of which have drawn on his counsel. He co-authors Marketing Management with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev, now in its 16th edition, and Strategic Brand Management with Vanitha Swaminathan, now in its 5th. Both textbooks are core curriculum at most top business schools, which means most CMOs in the room were trained inside his vocabulary. He has held tenured positions at Stanford, Berkeley, and UNC before Tuck, and served as Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. Keller’s current work focuses on how brands hold their position when AI reshapes media buying, customer experience, and pricing simultaneously. He addresses the tension senior teams face directly: how to keep building the brand asset when every dashboard rewards the campaign. Key speaking topics Customer-based brand equity Building global power brands Brand strategy and brand architecture Integrated marketing communications The economics of brand investment AI and the future of brand management Marketing strategy at the CEO and CFO level Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders defending brand investment to boards and finance functions CEOs and CFOs evaluating how brand contributes to enterprise value Marketing leadership offsites and senior marketing development programmes Global brand and category teams in consumer, technology, and financial services Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, grounded in the CBBE framework, for discussing brand value across marketing, finance, and the executive team A clearer view of how short-term performance activity and long-term brand building reinforce or undermine each other Diagnostic tools for assessing where a brand is strong, vulnerable, or under-leveraged in current category dynamics A current perspective on what AI changes, and does not change, for brand strategy Case context from senior brand decisions inside Nike, Disney, P&G, Samsung, Google, and others

Why organisations work with Kevin Roberts He led Saatchi and Saatchi globally for seventeen years, so brand and creative conversations land with the authority of someone who ran the network, not observed it. Lovemarks is one of the few brand frameworks from the 2000s still cited in marketing rooms; Advertising Age named it an Idea of the Decade in 2009. His operator track record covers Mary Quant, Gillette, Procter and Gamble, Pepsi-Cola and Lion Nathan, which gives commercial teams a counterpart who has run P&Ls, not only advised on them. 64 Shots gives leadership audiences a structured, opinionated playbook for operating in volatile markets, written from inside a creative business rather than a business school. Biography highlights CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi from 1997 to 2014; Chairman until 2016. CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East at 32, then President and CEO of Pepsi-Cola Canada. Chief Operating Officer and Director at Lion Nathan, the Australasian brewer, from 1989 to 1996. Author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, published in 18 languages, and 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World. Honorary Professor of Creative Leadership at Lancaster University, with parallel honorary chairs at the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada. Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business and the community. Biography Lovemarks reframed a question marketers had been answering badly for years. Instead of measuring respect and recognition, Kevin Roberts argued that the brands that survive are the ones customers actively love, and that emotion, not rational benefit, is the real driver of long-term commercial value. The book travelled into 18 languages and became one of the few brand frameworks from the period still in active use. The argument carries weight because of where it came from. Roberts spent seventeen years as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi, after running Pepsi-Cola in the Middle East and Canada, and serving as Chief Operating Officer at Lion Nathan. He has sat on the operator side of brand decisions at scale, including categories where price is brutal and differentiation is mostly emotional. 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World extended the work into leadership. The book is a set of sixty-four short, opinionated entries on running creative businesses in volatile conditions, drawn from his own career and the leaders he has worked with. It gives commercial audiences a way to talk about culture, decision-making and creative risk without the abstraction that usually surrounds those topics. Roberts now runs Red Rose Consulting and chairs My Food Bag and The Herdy Company. He holds honorary chairs in creative leadership and innovation at Lancaster University, the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada, and is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and emotional brand equity Creative leadership in commercial organisations Marketing transformation and customer loyalty High-performance culture Leadership in volatile markets Innovation inside legacy businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding loyalty in commoditised categories CEOs and boards of consumer-facing businesses where brand is the main commercial moat Marketing, creative and customer experience leadership teams Sales and growth conferences in retail, FMCG, media and advertising Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a brand customers respect from one they actively love, and why the second is worth more Language for talking about emotion as a commercial asset rather than a soft variable A clearer view of how creative organisations make decisions under pressure, drawn from inside one of the world’s largest networks Practical positions on culture, risk and leadership taken from 64 Shots that audiences can argue with rather than nod at

Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from. A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle. Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor). Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo. A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press. Biography highlights Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets. Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024). Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing. Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC). Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation. Biography Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work. His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline. His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC. What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers. Key speaking topics Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour Purpose-led marketing and brand activism Cultural intelligence and foresight Marketing for social change The future workforce and generational diversity Brand communities and the creator economy Innovation, imagination and creativity Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention Audience outcomes A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research. A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks. A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up. Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.

Why organisations work with Kim Davis Live broadcast experience that translates directly into stage presence: she presents The Travel Show on BBC News and writes regularly for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, so a panel or conference plenary in her hands feels editorially produced rather than improvised. A working marketer’s view of communication, not a theorist’s. Sarsaparilla, the consultancy she founded after moving from New York to London in 2004, operates inside campaigns, brand work and go-to-market decisions for commercial clients. Range across the unlovable formats. After-dinner, awards-night emcee, panel moderation, fireside interview and keynote, performed without the tonal mismatch that normally appears when speakers cross between them. A keynote thesis on arts-led achievement, given on the TEDxLukelyBrook stage in 2022, that gives leadership and culture audiences a route into creativity without the usual self-help register. Biography highlights Presenter, The Travel Show on BBC News. Contributing writer, CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph. Founder and CEO, Sarsaparilla Marketing, London. TEDxLukelyBrook speaker, “How The Arts Can Help You Achieve Anything”, 2022. New York native, London-based for over two decades; works across UK, US and EU markets. Stage and broadcast credits include Carnegie Hall, the O2 Arena and the TED platform (per speaker representation). Biography A live audience makes decisions about a speaker inside the first sentence. Davis was trained for that. Her day job is presenting The Travel Show on BBC News and writing for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, work that depends on getting a viewer or reader to lean in before a single fact has been delivered. That broadcast craft is what organisations are buying when they put her on stage. As a host and moderator she structures conversations the way an editor structures a segment: a clear thread, time discipline, and the ability to draw a usable answer out of an executive who would otherwise read from notes. The substantive content sits behind that. In 2004 she moved from New York to London and founded Sarsaparilla, a marketing and communications consultancy that runs campaign, brand and go-to-market work for commercial clients. Her keynote material draws from this practice and from her own performing background, including the TEDxLukelyBrook talk on arts and achievement she delivered in 2022. The combination is unusual. Most marketing speakers cannot present. Most broadcasters cannot speak credibly about commercial growth. Davis is booked when an event needs both in the same person. Key speaking topics Hosting, moderation and emcee craft Media and broadcast communication for executives Marketing and brand building Customer and audience engagement Arts-led approaches to creativity and achievement Female leadership in media, business and culture After-dinner speaking and awards-night presenting Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams looking for a working practitioner rather than a marketing academic Conference organisers and internal event leads who need a host or moderator with broadcast credibility Awards nights, gala dinners and customer events that need a confident emcee with editorial range Leadership and culture programmes wanting a session on creativity, communication and presence Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a journalist structures a story, and how to apply that discipline to a board narrative or all-hands talk Specific techniques drawn from broadcast and stage performance for holding attention in high-stakes settings A working framework for using arts and creative practice as a tool for executive communication For events: a tightly run room, a coherent through-line across sessions, and interviews that produce usable quotes rather than safe ones

Why organisations work with Kirstie Allsopp Twenty-five years of unbroken primetime presence on Channel 4 means audiences arrive already familiar with her, which shortens the warm-up phase of any event and lifts the room from the first minute. She runs her own production company, Raise the Roof, and her own product range, so she briefs as a working businesswoman rather than as talent reading lines, and questions on retail, brand and property land with substance. Property, home and consumer behaviour are the core subjects she has covered on screen since 2000, which makes her a natural fit for property, housebuilding, retail, lifestyle, charity and DIY brand audiences without needing a forced bridge. A direct, unscripted on-stage style. She is comfortable with live Q and A, off-the-cuff interviewing of executives, and the kind of room where a guarded host would stall. Sustained ambassadorship of Home-Start UK gives her credibility with charity galas and corporate-foundation audiences where a frivolous host would jar. Biography highlights Co-presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location with Phil Spencer since the show’s launch in 2000. Co-founder of Raise the Roof Productions, the Glasgow-based independent television company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series. Founder in 1996 of Kirmir, a high-end home search agency operating in central and west London. Author of Kirstie’s Homemade Home, Kirstie’s Vintage Home, Kirstie Allsopp Craft and Kirstie’s Christmas Crafts, all published by Hachette. Creator and presenter of the Kirstie’s craft franchise on Channel 4, including Handmade Britain, Vintage Home, Celebrity Craft Masters and House of Craft. Long-standing ambassador for Home-Start UK. Biography Location, Location, Location launched on Channel 4 in 2000. More than two decades and forty series later, it is still on air, still presented by the same two people, and still one of the most reliable property formats in British television. Kirstie Allsopp has been one half of that pairing since the first episode. The career around it is broader than the show. She founded Kirmir, a central and west London home search agency, in 1996, four years before the cameras arrived. She co-founded Raise the Roof Productions, the independent company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series, and sits inside the business as co-owner rather than as on-screen talent. Her published work with Hachette covers homes, vintage interiors and craft, and her Channel 4 craft franchise has run alongside the property work for more than a decade. For corporate audiences, the relevance is practical. She has spent twenty-five years interviewing buyers, sellers, retailers and small producers in front of a national audience, and she has run her own businesses across property, production and product. That gives her a working vocabulary for retail, property, brand and consumer behaviour that most television hosts do not carry. On stage she is direct, fluent without a script, and at ease with live audiences, which is the qualification that matters most when an organisation hands a host the room for an evening. She is also a sustained ambassador for Home-Start UK, the family-support charity, and her fundraising work there gives her credibility in charity-led and corporate-foundation settings where a purely entertainment host would feel mismatched. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and corporate compering After-dinner presence Property and the UK housing market Consumer behaviour in home and lifestyle British craft and small-producer retail Building a brand alongside a broadcasting career Charity event hosting Ideal for Property, housebuilding, mortgage and estate agency conferences booking a recognisable host with subject fluency Retail, lifestyle, DIY and home-furnishing brand events and awards Charity galas and corporate-foundation evenings, particularly those with a family, home or community focus After-dinner slots and awards ceremonies for senior corporate audiences who want a familiar Channel 4 face Audience outcomes A confidently paced evening where transitions, awards reads and guest interviews land cleanly Authentic engagement with property, retail and consumer-brand themes when the brief calls for them Live, unscripted interviewing of executives, winners and panellists that adds energy rather than filler Warmth and access for charity audiences where a sincere host materially affects giving and mood

Why organisations work with Konstantinos Karypidis He holds a room the way a stage performer does, then converts that attention into mindset work, drawing on years performing in theatres and on national television before moving into corporate training. His method is built on clinical ground, not platform clichés: as a licensed psychotherapist he targets the beliefs that keep behaviour stuck, which is where most change initiatives quietly fail. Every workshop is built from scratch against the client’s specific problem rather than delivered from a fixed deck, so the content matches the actual tension in the organisation. He has run sessions for the people-facing functions of demanding multinationals, including Sanofi, Roche, KPMG, L’Oréal and AstraZeneca, across sales, HR and customer-service briefs. Biography highlights Licensed psychotherapist, business consultant and executive coach to senior leaders internationally. Began his career as a performance artist, writing and directing his own shows for theatres and national television. Has delivered keynotes and bespoke workshops for Sanofi, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Philips, AstraZeneca, L’Oréal, DHL, AXA and JTI. TEDx speaker. Listed in the Thinkers360 Top 50 Global Thinkers & Influencers in Change Management, 2022. Hosts a podcast and a YouTube channel devoted to books worth reading. Biography Most behaviour-change efforts inside organisations stall in the same place. The strategy is sound and the training is delivered, but the people expected to change carry the same assumptions out of the room that they brought into it. Konstantinos Karypidis works on that gap. He came to corporate work by an unusual route. Before the boardroom he was a performer, writing and directing his own shows for theatres and national television. That background gives him a working performer’s command of attention, which he treats as the precondition for any real change rather than the point of it. The substance underneath the stagecraft is clinical. As a licensed psychotherapist, he focuses on the beliefs and mental patterns that govern how people act, the layer most training programmes skip. His sessions are built individually for each client, shaped around the specific friction a team is facing in sales, HR or customer service. That approach has been tested across demanding environments, from Sanofi and Roche to KPMG, L’Oréal and AstraZeneca. He was listed among the Thinkers360 Top 50 Global Thinkers and Influencers in Change Management in 2022, and speaks regularly on the same TEDx and conference platforms where he first built his reputation for getting an audience to question how they think. Key speaking topics Mindset change and behavioural adoption Peak performance and productivity Employee motivation and engagement Non-verbal communication and influence Sales and customer service Embracing organisational change Ideal for Heads of HR and L&D commissioning a keynote that needs to land emotionally and stick afterwards Sales and customer-service leaders running kick-offs or summits where energy and engagement matter Conference organisers who need an opening or closing speaker who can hold a large room After-dinner audiences at corporate events Audience outcomes A clearer view of the mental patterns that hold back individual performance, and practical techniques to interrupt them Specific tools for reading and using non-verbal communication Renewed motivation tied to concrete take-away methods rather than a temporary lift A shared, energised reference point that teams can carry back into day-to-day work

Why organisations work with Krista Jäntti She runs the validation work most internal innovation teams skip, separating generative AI and XR concepts that have a defensible business case from those that do not. Her perspective is operator-led, not analyst-led: as founder of EventuallyXR and Exthereal, she has built and shipped immersive products, not only written about them. She combines an Aalto Executive MBA with a working knowledge of AI, XR and blockchain, which lets her translate engineering reality into language a leadership team can act on. Selection for the 100 Women of the Future list and her advisory role at Aalto University place her inside the European deep-tech and creative-industries network, with current visibility into where the technology is actually heading. She speaks about AI and immersive technology with measured scepticism, naming the limits and risks alongside the opportunity, which lands well with senior audiences tired of hype. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of EventuallyXR, advising organisations on commercial use cases in extended reality, generative AI and blockchain. Founder of Exthereal, a digital fashion and immersive virtual production studio. Business Advisor at Aalto University, working inside the Aalto Digital Creatives programme. Named to the 100 Women of the Future list in 2023 for her work at the boundary of physical and generated reality. Aalto Executive MBA holder, with prior Master of Science training spanning life sciences and computer science. Task leader on the EU Horizon Seeds of Bravery programme supporting the Ukrainian deep-tech ecosystem. Published author on AI-powered digital humans and immersive UX in AR/VR Journey and on Medium. Biography Generative AI and extended reality keep arriving on board agendas faster than organisations can absorb them. The result, in most companies, is a pile of pilots, vendor demos and internal experiments that never connect to a commercial decision. Krista Jäntti’s work sits in that gap, between a technology that is genuinely interesting and a use case that is genuinely defensible. As founder and CEO of EventuallyXR, she advises organisations on where XR, generative AI and blockchain belong inside their business model, and where they do not. She is an operator first. Her second company, Exthereal, builds digital fashion and immersive virtual productions, which means she has shipped the kind of content and experience layer her clients are trying to evaluate. Her academic path runs from microbiology and biochemistry through computer science to an Aalto Executive MBA. That mix matters in the work, because emerging-technology decisions cut across engineering, design, regulation and commercial strategy at the same time. As Business Advisor inside Aalto University’s Digital Creatives programme, and as task leader on the EU Horizon Seeds of Bravery programme for the Ukrainian deep-tech ecosystem, she stays close to where the technology is being built, not only sold. She was selected for the 100 Women of the Future list in 2023, recognised for working at the boundary of physical and generated reality. Audiences who book her tend to want what that recognition implies: a speaker who can hold both the technical detail and the commercial question in the same sentence, and who will tell a leadership team which of their AI and XR bets are worth keeping. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business Extended reality and the metaverse Emerging technology validation AI-powered digital humans and immersive UX Digital fashion and virtual production Responsible adoption of AI and XR Innovation strategy for creative industries Ideal for CEOs, CDOs and innovation leaders shaping a generative AI or XR strategy. Boards weighing the commercial case for immersive and generative technology investment. Marketing, brand and creative leadership teams in consumer, fashion and media businesses. Corporate venture, R&D and emerging-technology teams choosing where to place pilot budget. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which generative AI and XR use cases have a defensible commercial case in their sector. A sharper sense of the difference between vendor narrative and real technical capability. Specific examples of how digital humans, immersive production and generative content are already being deployed. Language to brief internal teams and boards on responsible adoption of AI and immersive technology. Confidence to retire pilots that will not scale and double down on the ones that will.

Why organisations work with Kudzi Chikumbu He built TikTok’s creator marketing, education, and community functions from a small U.S. team into a global operation, so he speaks from inside the engine room rather than from the outside as a commentator. He teaches the operating logic of authenticity as a brand strategy, not as a values statement, with a specific framework brands can apply to product launches, executive presence, and creator partnerships. He carries dual credibility: a senior platform operator who has also built a personal creator brand (Sir Candle Man) at meaningful scale, with coverage in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD and The Economist. His perspective on diversity and representation is grounded in what actually moves engagement and trust on platform, which makes it usable for CMOs who need substance rather than signalling. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, which gives a structured curriculum behind what could otherwise be presented as anecdote. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Creator Marketing at TikTok; longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; current faculty at Stanford GSB. Began career as an accountant and management consultant at Deloitte. Author, Let It Burn: Illuminate Your Life with Candles & Fragrance (Chronicle Books). Creator of Sir Candle Man, featured in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, NY Mag, The Economist, and on The Rachael Ray Show. Fortune 40 Under 40, The Hollywood Reporter Next Gen 35 Under 35, Variety’s Hollywood’s New Leaders, AdWeek Experiential Executive of the Year, ADCOLOR Innovator Award. Biography The shift in marketing power from media buyers to creators happened faster than most brand teams adjusted. The companies that responded well treated creators as an operating channel with its own logic. The ones that didn’t treated TikTok like a new ad placement and underperformed on both reach and reputation. Kudzi Chikumbu spent the years that defined that transition inside TikTok, where he built the creator marketing, education, partnerships and community functions as the platform scaled from new entrant to global infrastructure. He was the longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team and rose to Global Head of Creator Marketing, working at the point where brand strategy, platform mechanics, and creator economics meet. His operating thesis is that authenticity functions as a commercial system, not a value statement. Audiences pay attention when a brand or executive shows up with a specific point of view, a clear identity, and a willingness to be legible as a person or a culture. He has tested that thesis on himself: as Sir Candle Man, he built a luxury fragrance creator brand recognised by The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, The Economist, and Chronicle Books, which published his book Let It Burn. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, the same institution where he earned his MBA after starting his career at Deloitte. The combination of platform operator, working creator, and faculty member is unusual, and gives him a vocabulary that translates between marketing teams, executive sponsors, and the creator partners they are trying to work with. Key speaking topics Creator marketing and partnerships Brand authenticity as a commercial discipline Niche communities and audience strategy The future of social platforms and digital content Diversity and representation in consumer brands Personal brand and executive presence online Career pivots and reputation strategy Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding their creator and platform strategy Communications and corporate affairs leaders preparing executives for visible digital presence Consumer brand, retail and lifestyle businesses where culture and creator influence drive purchase DEI, talent and culture leaders working on representation as a commercial, not symbolic, lever Audience outcomes A clearer model of how creator partnerships actually create commercial value, beyond reach metrics Specific tests for whether a brand’s content is platform-native or simply repurposed advertising A practical view of what authenticity means in marketing decisions, from product to executive voice Sharper understanding of how niche communities convert into durable audience relationships Renewed perspective on personal brand and online presence for senior leaders and emerging executives

Why organisations work with Kyle Walker He is on air every week. The hosting reflexes are current, not remembered. He has fronted live football output for Sky Sports, the Premier League, and the BBC. Few corporate hosts bring that calibre of live-television experience. His range covers brand activations (EA Sports, Puma, JD Sports), federation work (The FA, FIFA), and financial-services events (Barclays). He hosts industry awards at scale, including the Grounds Management Association Industry Awards 2025. He started at Manchester City TV and built outward through BBC and Sky. The career is earned, not handed over from a playing background. Biography highlights Sky Sports presenter and reporter: The Transfer Show, The ePremier League Show, Saturday Social, The Early Kick Off Show, Sky Sports News. Premier League Productions reporter, delivering matchday and behind-the-scenes content for a global audience. Former BBC contributor: BBC Football Focus, Match of the Day, BBC 5 Live’s Talking Balls, BBC Radio Manchester’s The Dead Good Show. Covered the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and Good Morning Euros during UEFA Women’s Euro 2022. Trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts. Nominated for the SJA British Sports Journalism Award, Ones to Watch (On-Air), 2021. Biography A bad host turns a strong agenda into a long afternoon. A good one keeps a senior audience in the room, moves a panel forward without dominating it, and recovers when a speaker overruns or a microphone fails. The craft is built on live air, not in a green room. Walker works in live television every week. He presents Sky Sports flagship football output, including The Transfer Show, The ePremier League Show, Saturday Social, and The Early Kick Off Show, and reports for Premier League Productions on matchday content for a global audience. He began at Manchester City TV and built outward through the BBC, contributing to Football Focus, Match of the Day, and BBC 5 Live’s Talking Balls. Tournament coverage includes the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and Good Morning Euros during UEFA Women’s Euro 2022. His corporate hosting roster sits across federation, brand, and financial-services work: The FA, FIFA, EA Sports, Puma, JD Sports, and Barclays. In 2025 he fronted the Grounds Management Association Industry Awards. The training is formal. Walker is an Academy of Live and Recorded Arts graduate, and was nominated in 2021 for the SJA British Sports Journalism Award, Ones to Watch (On-Air). Organisations book him for the same reason production teams keep him on air: he holds the room, keeps the pace, and lets the content do its work. Key speaking topics Live event hosting Awards-night hosting Panel moderation Conference moderation Brand activation hosting Sports and broadcast Q&A Corporate interviewing and on-stage discussion Ideal for Awards ceremonies and industry recognition events Brand activations and consumer launches Conference and summit moderation for sports, media, and consumer organisations Senior leadership offsites needing a professional host across multiple sessions Audience outcomes An event that runs to time without feeling timed Panels that produce a usable exchange rather than four parallel monologues On-stage interviews that draw a real answer from a senior guest A close that sends the room out engaged rather than relieved

Why organisations work with Lee Warren A six-step persuasion system built from twenty years of stage performance and a Head-of-Sales career, not from a communications textbook. The only Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence holder (2022) on most shortlists, the UK industry’s highest peer-awarded recognition. Author of a Business Book Awards finalist on presenting, which gives commercial buyers a published methodology to point sales teams toward after the keynote. A track record of named commercial outcomes from clients, including a reported 350 percent sales lift at New Scientist following his work. Booked repeatedly by Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, audiences that do not retain entertainers and do retain people who shift commercial behaviour. Biography highlights Bestselling author, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting; highly commended finalist, 2019 Business Book Awards. PSA Award of Excellence, 2022, the UK Professional Speaking Association’s top honour. Member of The Magic Circle for twenty years. Former Head of Sales at News International; earlier sales leadership at Eurotunnel and Hertz, including a database-led sales programme. Has delivered keynotes in more than twenty countries for Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Theatre work commissioned at The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House (per speaker’s own biographical material). Biography Persuasion is the bottleneck most sales operations refuse to name. Pipeline tools improve, decks get tidier, training budgets rise, and conversion rates barely move. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the people in the room cannot yet make another person feel the case being made. Lee Warren built a career inside that gap. After commercial roles at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eurotunnel, and Hertz, where he co-created the company’s first database-led sales programme, he became Head of Sales at News International. In parallel, he spent two decades performing as a member of The Magic Circle and creating work for The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The combination is unusual: a quota-carrying sales leader who can hold a thousand-seat room. His book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting, was a finalist at the 2019 Business Book Awards and codifies the structure he teaches to commercial teams: build the talk around the audience, not the slides. In 2022 the Professional Speaking Association named him an Award of Excellence holder, the UK’s highest peer-awarded honour for professional speakers. Clients book him for hard commercial outcomes, not for entertainment. Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have repeat-booked him for sales conferences, partner meetings, and leadership offsites. New Scientist publicly reported a 350 percent sales increase after engaging him. Few presentation specialists have a number like that attached to their name. Key speaking topics Persuasion and influence in commercial settings Sales communication and pitching Presenting and executive communication Business networking Storytelling for B2B audiences Communication under pressure Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership offsites Partner and client conferences where the audience is buying decisions, not information Business development teams, key account directors, and CROs preparing for high-stakes pitches Leadership populations needing sharper executive communication ahead of board, investor, or town hall moments Audience outcomes A repeatable six-step structure for persuading a specific audience, applied the next working day A method for opening, structuring, and closing a pitch that does not depend on slide ware A working technique for networking rooms and conversations without scripts Renewed confidence in front of senior internal and external audiences, grounded in stagecraft, not affirmation A shared vocabulary across a commercial team for what good persuasion looks like