Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Why organisations work with Charlene Douglas A clinically trained therapist, not a wellbeing presenter. Diplomas in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychosexual Studies (2018), BACP-registered, with a private practice in London behind every session she delivers. Public credibility from Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK gives her unusual reach into employee audiences who would tune out a more traditional speaker, without diluting the substance of what she covers. Author of Come Closer (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024), a published synthesis of the communication, intimacy and self-awareness frameworks she uses with clients, available as anchor content for follow-on workshops. Talks about boundaries, communication and stress with the directness of a working therapist, which lands differently inside organisations than corporate wellbeing language usually does. Brings a Black woman entrepreneur’s lens to belonging and imposter syndrome conversations, drawn from her own practice rather than from a DEI framework deck. Biography highlights Sex and relationship therapist on Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK since 2021. Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Highgate Counselling Centre (2018). Diploma in Psychosexual Studies, Centre of Psychosexual Health (2018). Registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Author of Come Closer: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Sex and Relationship Therapist (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024). Founder of private practice The Intimacy Coach; broadcast and podcast credits include Good Morning Britain, Steph’s Packed Lunch, E4’s The Sex Clinic, and The Referral with Dr Karan. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are built around the individual. The relationships people are inside, with managers, peers, and themselves, are where the strain actually shows. That is the territory Charlene Douglas has worked in for almost a decade as a clinically trained therapist, and it translates more directly into team performance than the wellbeing industry usually admits. Douglas qualified through the Highgate Counselling Centre in psychodynamic counselling and the Centre of Psychosexual Health in psychosexual studies, both in 2018. She is registered with the BACP and runs The Intimacy Coach, a private practice working with individuals and couples in London and online. The clinical grounding is what separates her from the broader category of relationship commentators. Channel 4 brought her onto the expert panel of Married at First Sight UK in 2021, which has given her a public platform that few therapists with comparable credentials have. She has used it to publish Come Closer with Penguin Random House in 2024, a book that captures the communication and self-awareness work she does with couples and adapts it for a general reader. For corporate audiences, she draws on the same clinical material to talk about boundaries, communication, stress, and the quiet ways relationships at work erode under pressure. Her own experience as a Black woman building a private practice and a public profile feeds directly into how she handles questions of belonging, voice, and confidence with senior audiences. Key speaking topics Communication and boundaries at work Stress, self-care and burnout prevention Resilience, wellbeing and mental health Team dynamics and psychological safety Belonging and imposter syndrome Leadership with empathy Inclusion and the lived experience of difference Ideal for HR, People and Culture leaders building wellbeing programmes that need clinical credibility Employee resource groups and women’s networks, including events centred on women of colour Internal communications and town hall events seeking a recognisable name with substantive content Leadership development cohorts working on empathy, listening and difficult conversations Audience outcomes A clearer language for what good and bad communication look like in everyday work relationships Practical boundary-setting techniques drawn from clinical practice rather than self-help Direct frameworks for managing stress and protecting personal capacity under sustained pressure A more honest conversation about belonging and confidence that does not retreat into corporate DEI vocabulary

Why organisations work with Chad Foster He pairs a personal resilience story with a Fortune 500 sales record, which means he lands with revenue leaders, not only HR and culture audiences. The Blind Ambition Framework gives sales and operating leaders a structured five-step model rather than an inspirational set piece, and it has been delivered to 175,000+ attendees across six continents. He is credible on technology and commercial execution because he built the first CRM software for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had judged impossible. His Harvard Business School leadership credential, the first awarded to a blind executive, gives buyers cover when programming a resilience speaker for senior commercial audiences. Named client list includes Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina, which signals comfort with the standards of large enterprise commercial events. Biography highlights First blind executive to graduate Harvard Business School’s leadership program. Author of Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, HarperCollins Leadership, 2021. Creator of the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology applied across sales, leadership and culture programmes. Fortune 500 finance and sales executive credited with directing strategies tied to $45 billion in technology contracts. Built the first CRM software for visually impaired users. Keynote clients include Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar, Nestle Purina and Amgen. Biography Resilience as a commercial topic has a credibility problem. Most speakers in the category sit on the personal side of the stage, helpful for a culture day, harder to programme into a sales kickoff or a senior leadership offsite. Chad Foster sits on the other side of that line. Foster lost his eyesight at twenty-one and went on to become the first blind executive to graduate from Harvard Business School’s leadership program. He then spent his career inside Fortune 500 technology companies, directing financial and sales strategies tied to $45 billion in contracts and building the first CRM software designed for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had said was not feasible. His book, Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, was published by HarperCollins Leadership in 2021 and sets out the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology now used inside Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina. He has delivered it more than 200 times to over 175,000 attendees across six continents. The reason buyers programme him into senior commercial settings is that the framework is presented as an operating discipline for performance under pressure, not a story about overcoming adversity. The personal account is the proof. The argument is about how leaders sustain judgement and revenue when the conditions stay hard for longer than the playbook assumes. Key speaking topics Resilience as a commercial leadership capability Performance under sustained pressure Sales leadership and revenue under disruption Mindset and decision-making for senior teams Inclusion and diversity as competitive advantage Change leadership and culture under strain Ideal for Sales kickoffs and CRO-led revenue events Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes Culture, inclusion and people leadership conferences with a commercial audience Technology and financial services firms running multi-year transformation Audience outcomes A structured five-step framework for sustaining performance through disruption. A clearer language for resilience that travels into a sales and commercial setting. Specific tools for reframing setbacks into operating decisions. Renewed conviction at senior level on the link between mindset and revenue performance.

Why organisations work with Reshma Saujani She has founded and scaled two of the most recognised gender-equity institutions in the United States, Girls Who Code and Moms First, and can speak to what actually moved the numbers in each. She brings a working policy and product track record, including federal Marshall Plan for Moms legislation and the PaidLeave.ai tool used by tens of thousands of parents in its New York pilot. Her argument on perfectionism, drawn from “Brave, Not Perfect” and her TED stage, gives senior leaders a concrete diagnosis of why high-performing women self-select out of risk and visibility. “Pay Up” reframes the future of women and work around the motherhood penalty rather than individual ambition, useful for CHROs designing caregiver policy that holds under scrutiny. A New York Times bestselling author with a Yale JD and Harvard MPP, recognised by Fortune, Forbes and Fast Company, which travels with senior boardroom and executive-program audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Moms First, the national advocacy movement for paid leave, affordable childcare, and pay equity for caregivers. Founder and former CEO of Girls Who Code, which has reached hundreds of thousands of girls through in-person programming and a New York Times bestselling book series. New York Times bestselling author of “Pay Up”, “Brave, Not Perfect”, “Women Who Don’t Wait in Line”, and the Girls Who Code series. TED2016 speaker, “Teach girls bravery, not perfection”, one of the most viewed TED talks on women in technology. McGraw Prize in Education; Fortune World’s Greatest Leaders; Forbes Most Powerful Women Changing the World; WSJ Magazine Innovator of the Year. Yale Law School (JD), Harvard Kennedy School (MPP). First Indian American woman to run for US Congress. Biography The female pipeline in technology and senior leadership does not leak in the places organisations assume. It leaks at the points where the workplace stops accommodating risk-taking and caregiving. Reshma Saujani has spent fifteen years building the institutions that address both of those failures directly. Girls Who Code, which she founded in 2012 after running for Congress and seeing the gender gap in computing classrooms first-hand, became one of the most recognised pipeline interventions in American technology, with hundreds of thousands of girls reached through in-person programmes and a New York Times bestselling book series. Her 2016 TED talk “Teach girls bravery, not perfection” reframed the problem as cultural, not technical, and is one of the most cited talks on women in tech. Moms First, which Saujani launched in 2021 as the Marshall Plan for Moms, moved her work upstream into the structural economics of caregiving. The organisation has driven federal legislation, the creation of a New York City task force, and PaidLeave.ai, a working AI tool that helps parents claim benefits they are owed and processed tens of thousands of users in its first New York pilot. Her arguments land in boardrooms because they come with proof of execution. “Brave, Not Perfect” and “Pay Up”, both New York Times bestsellers, give senior leaders a usable diagnosis of why their female talent stalls and what to change. A Yale JD and Harvard MPP, recognised by Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, and WSJ Magazine, she is read by the policy world and the executive audience at the same time. Key speaking topics Women in technology and leadership The motherhood penalty and caregiver economics Paid leave, childcare, and workplace policy design Perfectionism, risk, and the career consequences for women Building gender-equity institutions at scale AI applied to social policy and benefits access Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning caregiver, parental leave, and return-to-work policy Boards and executive committees benchmarking gender representation against credible structural interventions Heads of DEI, women’s leadership networks, and high-potential women’s development programmes Technology leaders responsible for early-career pipeline and retention of women in engineering Audience outcomes A clear structural account of why women stall in senior pipelines, separating cultural drivers from policy drivers Concrete examples of paid leave, childcare, and pay-equity interventions that have moved measurable outcomes A working diagnosis of perfectionism as a career-limiting pattern, with language leaders can use with high-potential women Evidence of how AI can be applied to benefits access and social policy, drawn from PaidLeave.ai A sharper view of the business case for caregiver infrastructure, beyond the standard wellbeing framing

Why organisations work with Makaziwe Mandela She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst alongside two decades of South African corporate experience, which lets her speak to inclusion as an organisational practice, not a slogan. As co-founder and Chairperson of House of Mandela, she has run a company through the actual mechanics of building a brand, hiring, partnership disputes and international expansion, so the leadership content is grounded in operating reality. She offers boards a defensible language for values-led decisions at a moment when DEI commitments are being challenged in public, drawing on a family history that gives her standing to say things others cannot. She has held senior roles at Spoornet, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Nestle South Africa, which means she can address inclusion from inside the constraints of a real P&L rather than from a consultancy frame. Her 2023 Rizzoli book Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life gives her a current platform that pulls executive audiences into a conversation about leadership character, not just legacy. Biography highlights PhD in Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1993, with prior degrees from the University of Fort Hare and the University of Natal. Chairperson and co-founder of House of Mandela, launched in 2010 with her daughter Tukwini Mandela. Author of Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life, Rizzoli, 2023, with a foreword by Reverend Al Sharpton. Former Executive Manager of Corporate Services at the Development Bank of Southern Africa and former General Manager of Human Resources at Spoornet. Board service has included Nestle South Africa, Rand Water Services and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Director of the House of Mandela Family Foundation, established 2017. Recipient of the La Moda Veste la Pace Award, presented in Rome in 2022 for sustained public commitment to her father’s principles of liberty, respect and the fight against discrimination. Biography Inclusion programmes are being cut, defended, rebranded and quietly abandoned across global businesses. The leaders making those calls need someone who can talk about service and inclusion without flinching from the commercial reality, and without flattening the argument into either compliance language or family memoir. Makaziwe Mandela trained as an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she completed her doctorate in 1993, after earlier degrees from the University of Fort Hare and the University of Natal. That training shapes how she works with executive audiences. She treats organisations as cultures with their own incentives, hierarchies and stories, and she pushes leaders to ask what their decisions actually signal to the people inside them. The corporate record sits behind the academic one. She has held senior posts at Spoornet, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Nestle South Africa, and has served on boards including Rand Water Services and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. In 2010 she co-founded House of Mandela with her daughter Tukwini, building a wine label and broader heritage business that now operates internationally. The 2017 House of Mandela Family Foundation extends that work into education and economic empowerment. Her 2023 Rizzoli book, Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life, places her current platform on her own terms. The book draws on family letters, photographs and her father’s later artwork, and it forms the backdrop for the leadership conversation she now takes into boardrooms: what humility looks like as an operating habit, why service is a strategic question, and how senior leaders defend inclusive choices when the political weather turns against them. Key speaking topics Servant and values-based leadership Inclusion as an organisational discipline Female economic empowerment in emerging markets Building a family business with a public legacy Social justice and reconciliation in business Africa’s role in the global economy Allyship and difference at work Ideal for Boards and executive committees reframing DEI commitments under public and investor pressure CHROs and culture leads designing inclusion work that has to survive a budget cycle Leadership development programmes for senior cohorts in multinational organisations Conferences and offsites focused on values-led leadership, purpose and reconciliation Audience outcomes A clearer language for defending inclusive decisions to investors, employees and external critics. A working definition of servant leadership that ties to specific operating choices, not abstract values. A grounded view of how African businesses build durable brands across generations. Concrete reflections on humility, character and consistency as senior leadership habits. A renewed appetite for the human side of strategy, anchored in named examples from her own corporate and entrepreneurial career.

Why organisations work with Nicole Bearne A continuous twenty-five-year vantage point inside one Formula One team, from founding member of British American Racing in 1998 to Head of Internal Communications at Mercedes-AMG Petronas through its run of consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Few practitioners in this field have anywhere near that depth of single-environment experience. Reported directly to Team Principal Ross Brawn between 2007 and 2013, including the 2009 Brawn GP season that delivered both world titles in the team’s first and only year of existence and is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Built and led the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch within a 1,300-person engineering organisation operating across multiple UK sites and racing every fortnight. MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London, and a CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Few practitioners with comparable F1 operational experience hold formal qualifications in organisational psychology. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, adding a board-level governance perspective to the operational track record. Biography highlights Head of Internal Communications, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, for approximately a decade through a sustained period of world championship success. Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn (2007 to 2013), covering Honda Racing F1, the 2009 Brawn GP championship year, and the Mercedes acquisition. Founding member of British American Racing Formula One Team in 1998. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. MSc in Organisational Behaviour, Birkbeck, University of London; CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications; Member of CIPR (MCIPR); Accredited PR Practitioner. Founder and Director of The Comms Exchange Ltd; featured in the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Biography Inside Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, internal communications is treated as a performance variable. The function exists to make sure that 1,300 people across multiple sites act on the same strategy at the same time, every race weekend. That is the environment Nicole Bearne worked inside for 25 years. She was a founding member of British American Racing in 1998 and stayed through the team’s transitions to Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Between 2007 and 2013 she was Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn. That tenure included the 2009 season when Brawn GP took both world titles in its first and only year of existence. She then built the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch and led it for the next decade. She operated at board level through a period in which the team won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Her academic grounding sits alongside that operational experience: an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck and the CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Today she runs The Comms Exchange, advising organisations on internal communications and engagement in complex environments. She also serves as Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and chairs its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. The Brawn GP season she lived through is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Key speaking topics Internal communications in high-performance organisations Employee engagement and employee experience Leadership communication at scale Culture inside elite sport Diversity, equity and inclusion governance Lessons from Formula One for complex organisations Ideal for Internal communications, corporate affairs and employee experience leaders Chief People Officers, HR directors and heads of culture Senior leadership teams in large or multi-site organisations operating under sustained competitive pressure Boards and committees responsible for inclusion, engagement and organisational culture Audience outcomes A view of internal communications as an operating discipline, drawn from a decade running the function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. How a 1,300-person F1 team translates strategy into execution under non-negotiable race deadlines. What four ownership transitions of one F1 team reveal about leading communications through structural change. The link between employee experience and on-track performance, with named examples from Brawn GP and Mercedes’ championship years.

Why organisations work with Yonah Welker Direct line into the European policy machinery shaping AI rules, through working group contributions to the EU AI Code of Practice, DG CNECT’s digital and critical infrastructure work, and EU ICT and standardisation programmes. Published, citable expertise on how AI systems treat disability, neurodiversity, and other designated groups, with frameworks and a MOOC catalogued by OECD.AI, a specialism few governance advisers can match. Cross-institutional fluency across OECD, UN, UNESCO, and WHO governance processes, useful for organisations whose AI strategy now has to answer to several overlapping frameworks at once. Practical command of how governance applies to AI in physical and public deployment, including robotics and assistive systems, where compliance obligations under the EU AI Act and emerging harmonised standards are least settled. A practitioner-policy bridge rather than a pure academic, with hands-on evaluator and rapporteur roles across EU Horizon and EIT/EIC programmes, which is the lane most boards and compliance leads now need filled. Biography highlights AI expert listed in the OECD.AI community directory; visiting lecturer and evaluator affiliated with MIT collaborative work, and contributor to OECD.AI’s Wonk blog. Contributor to the EU AI Code of Practice (working Groups 2 and 3), DG CNECT digital and critical infrastructure programmes, and EU ICT standardisation work. Contributor of input to OECD (G7 Hiroshima AI Process), UN (ITU and IGF), UNESCO, NIST (Risk Management Framework), and White House PCAST processes. Lead author and coordinator on the forthcoming UNESCO/UN AI Science Report, and co-author of the MIT AI Safety Repository. Evaluator, rapporteur, and quality controller across EU Horizon, StandICT, and EIT Health, Deeptech, and Creativity programmes; member of the EDPB expert pool on embodied AI privacy. Former curator of the Global AI Summit and adviser to a national data and AI authority in the EMEA region; speaker at the AI Action Summit (Paris/Sorbonne), Sciences Po, Technical University of Munich, AI Safety Korea, and the Delphi Economic Forum; jury and peer reviewer for the MIT Global Competition, NeurIPS, and IEEE journals. Biography The EU AI Act, the OECD framework, UNESCO’s ethics recommendation, and the G7 Hiroshima Process now govern the same operating decisions, and they do not line up neatly. The people who work inside several of these processes at once, rather than reading them from outside, are few. Welker is one of them. He has contributed to the EU AI Code of Practice working groups and to DG CNECT’s critical infrastructure work. He sits on the EDPB expert pool examining embodied AI privacy, and is lead author and coordinator on the forthcoming UNESCO/UN AI Science Report. His input has also fed NIST and White House PCAST processes, and he has advised a national data and AI authority in the EMEA region alongside his EU Commission work. His distinctive angle is a lens few governance specialists share. His work centres on how AI systems treat designated groups: people with disabilities, neurodivergent users, and others where an algorithm can quietly grant or deny access. That question is now moving into robotics, assistive systems, and AI that acts in public space, where the frameworks are thinnest. The disability-centred AI MOOC catalogued in the OECD.AI tools repository is one concrete marker of it. For senior leaders, the value is operational. He can set out what an EU AI Act audit will actually examine, and what a defensible accessibility claim looks like in a deployed system. He can also show how the OECD, UN, and EU layers connect to a decision a general counsel or risk committee faces next quarter. Key speaking topics AI governance and the EU AI Act Algorithmic accountability and AI audit Disability-centred and accessibility AI policy Neurodiversity and inclusive AI design Sovereign AI and critical digital infrastructure AI safety and responsible deployment Public sector AI and citizen-facing systems Ideal for General counsel, chief compliance officers and CTOs preparing for EU AI Act enforcement Heads of AI, responsible AI leads and digital ethics committees Public sector and intergovernmental bodies designing AI policy Boards reviewing AI risk exposure across accessibility, bias and public-trust dimensions Audience outcomes A clearer map of how the EU AI Act, OECD framework and UN/UNESCO instruments interlock for their organisation Specific questions to put to vendors, internal teams and audit committees on algorithmic accountability A working definition of what disability-centred and accessibility AI obligations look like operationally Sharper instinct for where reputational and regulatory risk concentrates in current AI deployments A view of where European AI policy is heading next, drawn from inside the working groups shaping it

Why organisations work with Claire Williams A rare first-hand credential: one of only two women to have ever led a Formula 1 team, with seven years of operational accountability across a 1,800-person organisation. She negotiated the 2020 sale of Williams Racing to Dorilton Capital, securing the team’s future at a point when commercial terms and the pandemic were squeezing independent teams out of the sport. A commercial track record with specific deals attached, including a reported £65M sponsorship with Unilever and the growth of what became WAE Technologies, later acquired by Fortescue. A demonstrable record on representation: during her tenure, the proportion of women at Williams reached 17.6%, the highest in the F1 paddock, and she gave Susie Wolff her first F1 race weekend drive by a woman since 1992. Currently a recurring expert analyst on Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which keeps her commentary connected to the races and decisions audiences already follow. Biography highlights Deputy Team Principal of Williams Racing, 2013 to 2020, with day-to-day operational control of the Formula 1 team. Led Williams to consecutive third-place finishes in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and 2015, the team’s best results since 2003. Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to Formula 1, awarded in the 2016 Birthday Honours. Brand Ambassador for Fortescue WAE (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering), the green-technologies business she helped grow during her tenure. Vice President of the Spinal Injuries Association; founded the Sir Frank Williams Academy for spinal cord injury care in April 2023. Recurring expert analyst on Netflix’s Drive to Survive, including the 2024 and 2025 editions. Biography The Formula 1 paddock runs on non-negotiable deadlines and live public scrutiny. Every operational decision lands against a fixed calendar of race weekends, with 1,800 staff to align and investors watching results on Sunday. Claire Williams ran Williams Racing in this environment for seven seasons as Deputy Team Principal, from 2013 to 2020. She took over day-to-day operation from her father, Sir Frank Williams, in 2013. The team had just come through some of the weakest years in its history. She replaced the race drivers, restructured the engineering department, switched to Mercedes engines, and secured the sponsorship deals that funded the rebuild. Williams finished third in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and again in 2015, its best results since 2003. Fortescue WAE grew under her watch from an internal sustainability unit into a commercial R&D business later acquired by Fortescue. The proportion of women at Williams reached 17.6%, the highest in the paddock. In 2014, Susie Wolff drove a Williams in a practice session, the first F1 race weekend drive by a woman since 1992. The OBE followed in 2016, for services to the sport. The final chapter was the hardest to execute. Faced with commercial terms that favoured the top teams and the financial impact of the pandemic, she negotiated the sale of Williams Racing to Dorilton Capital in August 2020. She stepped down after the Italian Grand Prix the following month. The sale secured the team’s future under new ownership after more than four decades of Williams family leadership in the sport. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-pressure, high-scrutiny environments High-performance team culture at scale Elite decision-making and operational accountability Commercial turnaround and succession Women in leadership in traditionally closed sectors Safety, risk, and learning cultures Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and boards running organisations under sustained public scrutiny Senior leadership teams in high-stakes or heavily regulated sectors (financial services, sport, energy, aerospace) CHROs and heads of talent building high-performance cultures or advancing gender representation in traditionally closed sectors Transformation leaders and programme sponsors running commercial rebuilds or succession-stage handovers Audience outcomes A first-hand view of leadership inside a Formula 1 team under constant competitive and commercial pressure Reference points from elite-sport operations on accountability and how high-performing teams handle failure at scale A sharper read on what a commercial rebuild followed by a distressed exit requires from the person at the top A credible account of how representation is built in a closed sector, told through named decisions and measurable results

Why organisations work with Elena García Armada She has done what most deep-tech founders only describe: taken a robotics breakthrough from CSIC laboratory bench into certified clinical use, through a company she still runs. Her European Inventor Award Popular Prize from the European Patent Office gives her a credential most innovation speakers cannot match, anchored in a specific patented invention, not a body of opinion. She speaks fluently across two worlds that rarely meet on the same stage: tenured senior scientist at CSIC and CEO of a regulated medical device company, with operational responsibility for staff, capital, and clinical outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of robotics, AI-driven control, and biomedical engineering, which makes her credible on the practical question of how emerging technologies translate into products under real regulatory and commercial constraints. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder of Marsi Bionics, the CSIC-UPM spin-off that brought paediatric exoskeletons to clinical use. Senior tenured scientist at the Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR), CSIC-UPM, leading research on legged robots and exoskeletons. PhD in robotic engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid; postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory. European Inventor Award Popular Prize 2022, European Patent Office; finalist EU Women Innovators Award 2021; Gold Medal of the Spanish Red Cross 2022. Author of “Los robots y sus capacidades” and “Robots” (Catarata / Editorial CSIC). Doctor honoris causa, Miguel de Cervantes European University, 2023; Premio Nacional Reina Letizia for Research and Innovation, 2023. Biography Most exoskeletons in research labs do not fit children. The mechanics, the weight, the control systems, and the regulatory pathway for a paediatric medical device are harder than the adult equivalents, and the commercial incentives to solve them are weaker. ATLAS 2030, the world’s first adaptable paediatric exoskeleton, exists because Elena García Armada chose to work on the harder version of the problem. The technical work began at the Centre for Automation and Robotics, the joint CSIC and Polytechnic University of Madrid centre where she is a senior tenured scientist. The commercial work began in 2013, when she co-founded Marsi Bionics as a CSIC spin-off to take the technology out of the lab and into rehabilitation centres and hospitals. Her credentials sit on both sides of that journey. Postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory on the research side; CEO of a regulated medical device company on the commercial side. The European Patent Office awarded her the Popular Prize of the 2022 European Inventor Award for the underlying invention, and the Spanish state has recognised the social impact with the Premio Nacional Reina Letizia and the Red Cross Gold Medal. What is unusual is not the recognition. It is that the same person holds the patent, runs the company, and answers for the clinical outcomes. That combination is rare in deep-tech innovation, and it is what makes her useful to boards thinking about how science-led ventures actually become businesses. Key speaking topics Deep-tech commercialisation Robotics and exoskeleton technology Biomedical engineering and assistive devices Innovation in regulated industries Science-led entrepreneurship AI-driven control systems in robotics Women in STEM and inclusive innovation Ideal for Boards and executive teams investing in or running deep-tech and medtech ventures Innovation, R&D and CTO functions seeking credible perspective on lab-to-market translation Healthcare and life-sciences leaders working on assistive and rehabilitation technology Audiences focused on STEM talent strategy and women in engineering Audience outcomes A concrete view of what it takes to move a robotics breakthrough from research into a regulated, commercial product A sharper sense of how academic science, patents, and venture-building reinforce one another when handled by the same hand Direct exposure to a working case of paediatric exoskeleton design, with the engineering, clinical, and commercial choices made visible A grounded perspective on the role of women in technical leadership of European deep-tech

Why organisations work with Jade Simmons A mainstage moment that combines a Steinway, live performance and a structured keynote, rather than a podium talk. Few speakers can carry that format credibly at scale. A classical performance pedigree that holds up under scrutiny: Sphinx Medal of Excellence, performances at the White House and the US Supreme Court, repertoire from Rachmaninoff to contemporary crossover work. Author of an Amazon bestseller, Audacious Prayers for World Changers, and host of American Public Media’s Decomposed, a podcast named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. A track record headlining for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada at sales kick-offs, leadership summits and culture events. Biography highlights Recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, with the ceremony hosted at the US Supreme Court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Concert performances at the White House, Ravinia, Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall, New York’s Town Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Host of Decomposed on American Public Media, recognised by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. Author of Audacious Prayers for World Changers (Amazon bestseller, English and Spanish editions) and Purpose the Remix. CEO and founder of Jade Media Global; ran as an independent candidate for US President in 2020. Northwestern University undergraduate; Master’s as a Provost Fellow at Rice University; first runner-up at Miss America 2000. Biography Corporate audiences sit through more keynotes in a year than most of them care to count. The hardest brief a programme committee inherits is the opening or closing slot at a large convening, where the room needs to lift, not settle. A piano on stage and a performer who can also hold a leadership argument is one of the few formats that reliably moves a thousand people from neutral attention to engagement. Simmons built that format from the classical concert hall. She holds the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, awarded in a ceremony at the US Supreme Court hosted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her concert resume includes the White House, Ravinia, the Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall and New York’s Town Hall. She trained at Northwestern and Rice, where she held a Provost Fellowship. The keynote work extends the performance into a structured message about purpose, reinvention and what she calls “Maverick Behavior.” She has headlined for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada. Her book Audacious Prayers for World Changers is an Amazon bestseller in English and Spanish, and her American Public Media podcast Decomposed has been named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. She also runs Jade Media Global, the company that produces her live experiences and content. Buyers commission her when the brief is to make a single moment in a long agenda the one people remember. Key speaking topics Purpose and reinvention Leadership and self-leadership Creativity and personal innovation Performance and mainstage entertainment Diversity and inclusion as a culture lever Personal branding and creative identity Resilience and breakthrough Ideal for CEO town halls, sales kick-offs and annual leadership conferences that need a mainstage opener or closer Chief People Officers and culture leads programming purpose, inclusion or engagement events Awards nights, customer summits and recognition events where the room needs to feel something specific Industries booking marquee music-led keynotes (financial services, pharma, tech, professional services) Audience outcomes A shared mainstage moment the room references for the rest of the agenda A direct, personal message on purpose, reinvention and creative courage A live concert performance that sits inside, not alongside, the keynote argument Practical language for leaders to talk about reinvention with their own teams

Why organisations work with Rob Halford A first-person account of addiction and 40 years of sobriety from a public figure who chose to speak about it rather than manage it privately. Lived experience of coming out in 1998 in an industry built on machismo, which gives weight to inclusion conversations that policy slides cannot. A memoir, Confess, named a Best Music Book of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews, that anchors his talks in a published account audiences can read alongside. A Grammy-winning career across five decades, which earns him the attention of a room before he has said a word about the harder material. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Judas Priest, Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band. Author of Confess: The Autobiography, Headline Publishing Group, 2020, co-written with Ian Gittins. Named one of the Best Music Books of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews. First openly gay heavy metal musician of his stature, coming out publicly in 1998. Marked 40 years of sobriety in January 2026, having spoken openly about addiction and recovery in NME, Rolling Stone, Louder Sound and Fox News. Side projects across his career include Fight, 2wo and the solo project Halford. Biography The metal world in the 1980s did not invite confession. Rob Halford had built one of its biggest voices, fronting Judas Priest through the band’s commercial peak, while privately working through alcoholism and a sexuality he could not name in public. The break came in early 1986. Halford got sober and has now marked four decades without a drink. He has spoken about that decision in interviews with NME, Louder Sound and Fox News, framing it in plain language about humility, honesty and living one day at a time. In 1998 he came out, the first heavy metal singer of his stature to do so. Confess, his 2020 memoir written with Ian Gittins and published by Headline, set the full account on record. Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews named it a Best Music Book of the year. For corporate audiences, the value is the voice behind the story. Mental health, addiction and inclusion conversations land differently when the person at the front has lived all three and is willing to talk about them without softening the edges. Key speaking topics Addiction and recovery Mental health and resilience LGBTQ+ inclusion in hostile environments Life and career lessons from five decades in music Coming out and identity at work Sustained sobriety as a daily practice Ideal for Employee resource group events and Pride programming Wellbeing, mental health and recovery awareness days Leadership offsites where a human story is the anchor of the day After-dinner and conference keynote slots for large mixed audiences Audience outcomes A first-person reference point on addiction and long-term recovery that policy material rarely provides. A more honest baseline for internal conversations about mental health and what disclosure costs. A grounded account of what inclusion looks like from the inside of a hostile industry. A memorable session that signals the organisation takes these topics seriously enough to put a public figure in front of staff.

Why organisations work with Cristiana Pace She has translated FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001, ISO 20121, and carbon footprint methodologies into delivery work for Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, and AS Roma. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index is the first independent benchmark of motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, which gives buyers a defensible reference point when their own disclosures are scrutinised. She built a doctoral research base at Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, so her advice to boards is grounded in evidence, not sector folklore. Enovation Consulting won the 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to receive it, an indicator of operational scale across more than 60 organisations worldwide. She speaks credibly to engineers, commercial leadership, and federation governance in the same room, which matters when sustainability decisions cut across all three. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Enovation Consulting, B Corp certified and FIA environmentally accredited sustainability agency for sport. PhD in Sustainability and Strategic Management, Coventry University; Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Business in Society. First woman to work trackside with the FIA’s technical departments in Formula 1. Former Business Development Manager at Williams Advanced Engineering, where she led work on Formula E battery supply. Member of the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission and Chair of the eSC Sustainability Commission. Board member of BASIS, the British Association for Sustainable Sport, and Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School. Recognised by The Guardian and the Women’s Engineering Society among the UK’s Top 50 Women in Engineering, 2021. 2025 King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, awarded to Enovation Consulting. Biography The motorsport industry has spent two decades building safety as an engineering discipline. Sustainability is the next system to build, and the methods are not yet settled. Cristiana Pace has spent her career inside that transition, first trackside with the FIA, then on battery technology at Williams Advanced Engineering, then in doctoral research on how the sector decarbonises. Enovation Consulting, which she founded in 2018, is the operating expression of that work. The agency advises Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits on FIA environmental accreditation, ISO 14001 and ISO 20121 certification, carbon footprint calculation, and ESG reporting. Clients include Williams Racing, Haas, Scuderia AlphaTauri, Silverstone Circuit, Motorsport UK, and AS Roma, with services now spanning football, tennis, sailing, and athletics. Her Sustainable Motorsport Index sits behind a lot of that work. It benchmarks motorsport stakeholders against UN SDGs and ESG criteria, using only public disclosures, which puts disclosure pressure on the sector itself. In 2025, Enovation Consulting won the King’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, the first sports sustainability agency to do so, recognising scale across more than 60 organisations. She holds a PhD from Coventry University on low-carbon socio-technical transitions in motorsport, sits on the FIA Environment and Sustainability Commission, chairs the eSC Sustainability Commission, and serves on the BASIS board. The technical depth means she can sit in front of an engineering team or a federation board and be useful in both rooms. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy for sport and motorsport ESG reporting and disclosure in sport The decarbonisation of motorsport and the energy transition Technology transfer from motorsport to industry Diversity and STEM in engineering Purpose-driven leadership in high-performance environments Innovation under regulatory and competitive pressure Ideal for Boards and CEOs of sports rightsholders, federations, and clubs facing ESG and net zero scrutiny Heads of sustainability, ESG, and corporate affairs in consumer brands, mobility, and energy companies Senior engineering and operations leaders responsible for translating sustainability commitments into delivery Sponsorship and partnership leadership teams at brands aligning marketing spend with credible sustainability narratives Audience outcomes A clearer view of what credible sustainability looks like once you remove the marketing layer A framework for moving from net zero pledges to disclosed operating data Direct examples of how Formula 1 teams, federations, and circuits are turning ESG into engineering and procurement decisions A sharper sense of where sport sits inside the wider energy transition and what stakeholders will demand next A practical reference point for benchmarking sustainability performance using the Sustainable Motorsport Index

Why organisations work with Andrea McLean Thirteen years anchoring Loose Women gives her a craft of audience handling that few corporate keynote speakers can match, useful for events that need a host who can hold a room as well as deliver content. She speaks publicly about her own surgical menopause, breakdown and career exit, which lets internal audiences raise menopause and midlife anxiety as workplace issues without the conversation feeling clinical or performative. As co-founder and CEO of This Girl Is On Fire, she brings the perspective of someone who has built a women’s personal growth business from scratch, not just a presenter reading a script on the topic. Confessions of a Menopausal Woman and This Girl Is on Fire gave her a defined, recognisable position in the UK menopause and midlife conversation, useful for employer events targeting women in their forties and fifties. She can move between keynote, panel chair, awards host and after-dinner storyteller in the same engagement, which suits women’s networks, internal D&I events and customer-facing brand evenings. Biography highlights Longest-serving anchor of ITV’s Loose Women, on the panel from 2007 to 2020. Began her television career as a GMTV weather presenter in 1997, building a 24-year run across UK daytime broadcasting. Author of four books published with Hodder & Stoughton and others, including Confessions of a Menopausal Woman (2018) and the Sunday Times bestseller This Girl Is on Fire (2020). Co-founder and CEO of This Girl Is On Fire, a women’s personal growth platform launched in 2018 with masterclasses, podcast, app and live events. Has interviewed Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Drew Barrymore and Michael Bublé across her broadcasting career. Runs a CPD-accredited media coaching course used by founders, authors and executives preparing for high-stakes broadcast appearances. Biography Most organisations still treat menopause, anxiety and midlife reinvention as private events that happen to women alongside their work, rather than as workplace issues. The result is a steady, quiet loss of senior women at exactly the point they should be moving into their most influential roles. Andrea McLean has spent the past decade turning that private territory into public conversation. For thirteen years she anchored ITV’s Loose Women, the longest-serving lead on a panel show built around women talking honestly about their lives. The role gave her a particular kind of authority: the craft of holding a room of strangers, and the experience of doing it while navigating a surgical menopause, anxiety, two divorces and, in 2019, a public breakdown that became the trigger for leaving television. In 2018 she co-founded This Girl Is On Fire with her husband Nick Feeney, a personal growth platform for women that now runs masterclasses, a podcast, an app and live events. Confessions of a Menopausal Woman and This Girl Is on Fire established her as a recognisable UK voice on midlife women’s health and reinvention, with the second book reaching the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is most useful to organisations that need someone who can host an event, deliver a keynote and answer questions about midlife transition without flinching. The audience is usually a women’s network, a D&I forum, or a customer event aimed at women in their forties and fifties. The substance is personal, the room is her craft, and the topic is one she has built a company around. Key speaking topics Menopause in the workplace Midlife reinvention for senior women Anxiety and personal recovery Women’s networks and inclusion events Storytelling for high-stakes communication Confidence and career pivots Building a business in midlife Ideal for Women’s networks and ERGs at large employers D&I and wellbeing events focused on women aged 40 to 55 Customer-facing brand evenings and awards nights needing a host with on-air craft Internal leadership events seeking a candid voice on midlife transition and resilience Audience outcomes A frank, named account of menopause, anxiety and recovery delivered without clinical distance. Permission for senior women in the room to raise midlife and health issues as workplace topics. A story of leaving a high-profile career and building a business in midlife, useful for audiences considering their own pivot. A room held with the pace and warmth of a broadcaster, not the rhythm of a corporate presenter.