Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Why organisations work with René Carayol His SPIKE framework (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) gives leadership teams a diagnostic for identifying the two or three individual strengths that drive high performance, rather than a generic conversation about development areas. It changes how teams are built, not just how leaders think. His case for inclusive leadership is grounded in firsthand board experience, including appointment as a Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue in 2001, at a time when no diversity representation existed at that level in UK public institutions. The argument carries a credibility that cannot be borrowed from research alone. Coaching and advisory engagements with senior leaders across business and government: clients and counterparts include Ralph Hamers (former CEO, ING and UBS), Sir Richard Branson, and Sir Tony Blair His “Everybody In, Nobody Out” framing positions inclusion as a performance architecture rather than an HR compliance function, directly relevant to organisations where DEI has stalled because it has not been connected to business outcomes. His executive and governance track from Marks & Spencer, PepsiCo, and IPC Media to Inland Revenue board and Computacenter plc, means his observations on leadership culture are drawn from the inside of institutions, not from coaching their periphery. His academic teaching (Cass Business School, MSc in Management) and media fluency (BBC, Channel 4, Sky News) mean he can move between rigorous argument and compelling narrative in a single session. His events consistently produce behavioural commitments rather than inspiration that dissipates. Biography highlights Decade-long career at Marks & Spencer (Senior IT Manager); IT Systems Director, PepsiCo; CIO then Managing Director of IPC Electric, IPC Magazines, driving Europe’s largest MBO at £860m, culminating in the sale to AOL Time Warner Non-Executive Director, Inland Revenue (appointed 2001); current Independent Non-Executive Director, Computacenter plc (FTSE-listed), sitting on Audit, Nomination and Remuneration Committees Executive Vice President for ESG, Medallia; member of the Global Executive Leadership Team Visiting Professor, Cass Business School; lectured on MSc in Management programme MBE (2004), services to the business community; undergraduate degree, London School of Economics; Honorary Doctorate, University of Roehampton Author, SPIKE: What Are You Great At?; co-author, Corporate Voodoo (third edition) and My Voodoo Broadcaster and commentator: BBC Two, Channel 4, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, Sky News; former Sunday Telegraph Business Reporter columnist Biography Most leadership cultures are built around a small number of star performers at the top. SPIKE, René Carayol’s published strengths framework, challenges that model directly. The argument comes from someone who has led, governed, and coached at the highest levels of British and international business. Carayol spent a decade at Marks & Spencer in senior IT roles, then moved to PepsiCo as IT Systems Director before joining IPC Magazines as CIO. He rose to Managing Director of IPC Electric, the internet business at the centre of Europe’s largest MBO, a £860 million transaction that ended with the sale to AOL Time Warner. He went on to serve as Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue through its merger into HMRC, and currently sits on the board of FTSE-listed Computacenter plc. SPIKE (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) is the framework that emerged from this experience. Its core argument: every person carries at least one genuine strength, and organisations that build around those strengths consistently outperform those that manage around weaknesses. For Carayol, this is inseparable from the business case for inclusive leadership. His mantra, “Everybody In, Nobody Out,” frames inclusion as a performance imperative, a position he holds with authority as one of the first Black men to serve at board level in a major UK institution. As Visiting Professor at Cass Business School and a regular voice on BBC Radio 4, Sky News, and Channel 4, his thinking reaches well beyond the conference circuit. His books, SPIKE: What Are You Great At? and the co-authored Corporate Voodoo, now in its third edition, extend his frameworks to leadership teams at scale. He was awarded an MBE in 2004 for services to the business community. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Inclusive leadership and culture Leadership and business transformation Collaborative leadership Corporate culture and performance Executive coaching and personal effectiveness Diversity, equity and inclusion Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organisations navigating culture change or post-merger integration CHROs and Chief People Officers building inclusive, high-performance leadership cultures Board directors and non-executive directors focused on governance, leadership accountability, and succession Transformation leads and executive development programmes where the shift from management to leadership is the central challenge Audience outcomes A working understanding of the SPIKE framework and how to apply it to individual development, team design, and succession planning A reframed case for inclusive leadership as a performance architecture, not a compliance exercise – with the language to make that argument inside their own organisations Practical distinctions between management and leadership behaviours, grounded in frontline C-suite and board experience Insight drawn from Carayol’s direct coaching relationships with named CEOs and institution heads; World Bank, Barclays, ING, Generali, rather than theoretical constructs Clarity on how culture and leadership interact in practice, and what leaders can do immediately to change the pattern

Why organisations work with Piers Linney He is running an AI-agent business while he speaks about one. Implement AI has rolled out managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK companies, so the deployment patterns he describes are ones he is shipping. His finance and policy lens is unusual for an AI speaker. Former Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank during the GBP 90 billion Covid loan programmes, with prior careers in M&A at Credit Suisse and venture capital. He has been on both sides of the cap table. Co-CEO of Outsourcery through AIM listing and administration, then Dragon on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, then investor and co-founder again. He is a credible voice on diversity and social mobility without using the word as a slogan. MBE 2026, European Diversity Champion 2024, founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. He works on stage in the register a senior buyer needs: operator, not analyst. Mainstage keynotes at Tech Show London, AI and Big Data World, DTX, ICAEW and Elite Business Live. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Implement AI, winner of AI Startup of the Year (London), UK Startup Awards 2025. Investor on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den, series 11 and 12, and subject of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. Former Non-Executive Director, British Business Bank, appointed 2017. MBE, King’s New Year Honours 2026, for services to small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. Chairman and co-founder, Atherton Bikes, additive-manufactured mountain bikes used to win the 2023 UCI Downhill World Championships. Former Co-CEO of Outsourcery (AIM-listed cloud and communications business) and former Trustee of Nesta. Biography Implement AI now runs managed digital workforces inside more than 120 UK businesses, from manufacturers to marketing agencies. It is the latest company built by Piers Linney, who co-founded it in 2023 with Dr Aalok Shukla and serves as Executive Chairman. The work sits at the practical edge of the AI conversation: not whether to use it, but how to get agents into the operating model and measure what they return. That operator stance is reinforced by an unusually wide finance and policy track record. Linney trained as a solicitor at SJ Berwin, moved into M&A investment banking at Credit Suisse, then ran the buyout that became Outsourcery, taking the cloud and communications business onto AIM in 2013 in a GBP 13 million flotation. He was later appointed Non-Executive Director of the British Business Bank, where he sat through the design of the UK government’s Covid SME loan programmes. Audiences know him from Dragons’ Den, where he invested as a Dragon for series 11 and 12, and from Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire. He chairs Atherton Bikes, the additive-manufactured mountain bike maker whose frames carried Atherton siblings to UCI Downhill World Championship titles in 2023. He sits on Sky’s Diversity Advisory Council and was a founding trustee of the Powerlist Foundation. The MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours captured the through-line: small business, entrepreneurship, banking, diversity and social mobility. For boards trying to convert AI ambition into deployed capability, the value he brings is the rare combination of someone who has built and sold a tech business, sat on the board of a development bank, picked winners on national television, and is now shipping an AI-agent platform. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the digital workforce AI agent deployment and operating model redesign Entrepreneurship and scaling technology businesses Future of work and workforce transformation Access to capital and SME financing Diversity, social mobility and inclusion in business Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to deployed agent capability. CEOs, COOs and transformation leads redesigning operations around digital workers. Entrepreneur and scale-up audiences, including investor networks and chamber of commerce events. CHROs and learning leaders preparing workforces for AI-augmented roles. Audience outcomes A working picture of what an AI-agent operating model looks like, with concrete examples from live deployments. Sharper questions for vendors, internal teams and investors about where AI does and does not pay back. A perspective on the capital environment shaping technology investment, drawn from a former development-bank director. Confidence in framing AI as an operating decision, not an IT project.

Why organisations work with Oscar van Weerdenburg He brings a published, evidence-based diagnostic. The Intercultural Readiness Check, co-developed with Ursula Brinkmann and built on a dataset of roughly 30,000 international respondents, lets leaders move from impression to assessment. He is part of the Trompenaars lineage. His work began with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam in 1992, and his frameworks sit inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than alongside it. His M&A and integration track record is operational. He has been brought into post-deal integration work at major European and global firms to handle the cultural friction that derails synergy targets. He teaches inside INSEAD Executive Education and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, so the same content runs in front of senior leaders before it reaches their teams. His delivery is Anglo-Dutch in register: direct, often dryly funny, low on jargon. Buyers report sessions that are usable on Monday morning, not just well-received in the room. Biography highlights Co-author, Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), with Ursula Brinkmann. Co-founder and Managing Director, Intercultural Business Improvement (IBI), founded 1996. Co-creator of the Intercultural Readiness Check, drawn from a 15-year research programme of roughly 30,000 respondents. Visiting professor, INSEAD Executive Education; former lecturer at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management. Long-standing partner in the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network, with collaboration with Fons Trompenaars dating to 1992. Lecturer of the Year 2008, Chalmers Professional Education. Biography Most cross-border failures inside multinationals are not strategic. They are cultural. Synergy targets in M&A slip, global rollouts stall, and senior hires struggle because the assumptions people carry about hierarchy, conflict, and time were never made visible. That is the territory Oscar van Weerdenburg has worked in for more than three decades. He began this work in 1992 with Fons Trompenaars at the University of Amsterdam, the partnership that became the foundation of modern intercultural management consulting. In 1996 he co-founded Intercultural Business Improvement with the psychologist Ursula Brinkmann. Together they built the Intercultural Readiness Check, a diagnostic drawn from a fifteen-year research programme of roughly thirty thousand respondents across four continents and published as Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The IRC is what separates his practice from consulting impressionism. It gives leaders a measurable read on four competences that predict whether their teams can actually work across cultures, and it sits inside the Trompenaars Hampden-Turner network rather than competing with it. He teaches the underlying material on INSEAD Executive Education programmes and has lectured at Michigan Business School and Rotterdam School of Management, with a client list that includes Shell, HSBC, Qantas, BASF, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs. What buyers tend to value is the operational edge. He has been brought into post-merger integrations and global team builds where cultural friction was already costing money, and he leaves leaders with vocabulary and a diagnostic, not abstractions. Chalmers Professional Education named him Lecturer of the Year in 2008 for the same reason: the room walks out with something usable. Key speaking topics Cultural intelligence as a measurable capability Leading multicultural and global teams Cultural integration in mergers and acquisitions International negotiation Strategic dilemmas in global business Cross-cultural leadership development The Intercultural Readiness Check as a leadership diagnostic Ideal for CHROs and global L&D leads building intercultural capability across regions M&A integration leads and post-deal sponsors handling cultural fit and synergy execution Global team leaders, country heads, and matrixed senior managers with cross-border accountability Executive education and leadership programme directors at multinationals Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the cultural assumptions that drive most cross-border friction Familiarity with the four intercultural competences measured by the IRC and how to apply them A clearer read on where their own team or deal is most exposed to cultural breakdown Practical moves for international negotiation, integration, and global team design they can use the following week

Why organisations work with Neal Petersen A first-person account of self-leadership at the edge of human tolerance: 195 days alone at sea, completing the 1998 to 1999 Around Alone circumnavigation as the first Black sailor to race solo around the world A story arc that translates directly to senior leadership: a hip defect, apartheid-era barriers, and no capital, met with a multi-year build of his own ocean-racing yacht and a top-five finish in his class Material credibility for diversity, inclusion, and access conversations that goes beyond commentary, grounded in lived experience inside an elite, almost entirely white sport A National Outdoor Book Award winning memoir, Journey of a Hope Merchant, and a PBS documentary, which give audiences a coherent reference text to engage with after the keynote A track record of repeat keynotes for IBM, Microsoft, Intel, MasterCard, Salesforce, and senior government audiences, with content adapted to the specific operating challenge in the room Biography highlights First Black sailor to race solo around the world, completing the 1998 to 1999 Around Alone race in Class II Designed and built his own 38-foot yacht, Stella R, while funding the project through North Sea oil-rig and commercial diamond diving work Author of Journey of a Hope Merchant: From Apartheid to the Elite World of Solo Yacht Racing (2004), winner of the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award, History/Biography Subject of the PBS documentary No Barriers: The Story of Neal Petersen Repeat keynote speaker for IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Salesforce, MasterCard, AXIS Capital, and US federal and state government audiences Born 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa, into apartheid-era classification with a hip defect that required three childhood surgeries Biography The 1998 to 1999 Around Alone circumnavigation was a 27,000-mile solo yacht race, completed by nine sailors, with Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean as the central trial. Neal Petersen, racing in Class II aboard a yacht he had built himself, was one of those nine. He finished the course after 195 days at sea, becoming the first Black sailor to race solo around the world. The route to that starting line is the substance of the keynote. Born in Cape Town in 1967, classified under apartheid, and recovering from three childhood hip surgeries, he taught himself the sport from magazines in a hospital bed. He funded the yacht, Stella R, by working as a North Sea oil-rig diver and a commercial diamond diver off the South African coast. The boat was built from donated and reclaimed parts. Journey of a Hope Merchant, his 2004 memoir, won the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award in the History and Biography category, and PBS produced a documentary on the same story. The published record gives senior audiences a coherent reference text rather than a stage anecdote, which matters for the kind of programme that wants the talk to keep working after the lights go up. The booking pattern reflects what corporate audiences actually want from this material. Repeat engagements with IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Salesforce, MasterCard, and senior government audiences point to a speaker whose value lies in the practical content of composure: how to make decisions when the cost of being wrong is total, how to hold a course through months of degraded conditions, and how to lead yourself when no one is watching. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under sustained pressure Resilience and decision-making in extreme conditions Diversity, inclusion, and access in elite environments Goal-setting and execution over multi-year horizons Adaptability when plans break down Building from limited resources Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership offsites focused on resilience and composure Sales kickoffs and annual conferences that need a credible, non-generic peak-performance keynote DEI leadership programmes seeking lived experience over commentary Government, defence, and association audiences working under prolonged operational strain Audience outcomes A reference framework for self-leadership during sustained adversity, drawn from a documented multi-year build and a 195-day solo race Specific decision-making lessons from the Southern Ocean, applicable to leaders operating without immediate support A renewed view of barriers as design constraints rather than stop signs A coherent narrative audiences can carry back into team conversations, supported by an award-winning memoir and a PBS documentary

Why organisations work with Muhammad Yunus He has built the model he speaks about. Grameen Bank reached millions of borrowers, 96% of them women, with repayment rates above 95%, and became the template for microfinance in more than a hundred countries. His “social business” concept is operational, not aspirational. Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others have launched joint social business ventures with the Yunus group under defined commercial terms. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games adopted his framework to open procurement to social and solidarity enterprises, with nearly 500 such companies in the supply chain. Milan-Cortina 2026 has signed a follow-on agreement. He sits at the intersection of credibility most speakers cannot reach: Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, and recent head of state experience as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh. His “three zeros” agenda, zero poverty, zero unemployment, zero net carbon, gives boards a single frame to connect ESG, inclusion, and youth employment work that usually live in separate decks. Biography highlights Founder of Grameen Bank, awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank. Recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and Congressional Gold Medal (2010). PhD in Economics, Vanderbilt University; former Professor of Economics, Chittagong University. Author of Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros. Chairman of the Yunus Centre; partner to Danone, Veolia, BASF, Uniqlo, and others on joint social businesses. Adviser to Paris 2024 on social business and inclusive procurement; agreement signed for Milan-Cortina 2026. Served as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, August 2024 to February 2026. Biography Grameen Bank started lending in a Bangladeshi village in the 1970s, before microcredit had a name. The borrowers were women, the loans were tiny, and the orthodoxy at the time said neither group nor product should work. The bank grew to serve millions of clients with repayment rates above 95%, and the model was copied into more than a hundred countries. The economist who built it, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the bank in 2006. The work since has been about converting that proof point into an operating model that companies can actually run. Yunus calls it social business: a non-loss, non-dividend enterprise designed to solve a specific social problem, governed with the same discipline as a commercial business. Danone, Veolia, BASF, and Uniqlo have set up joint ventures with the Yunus Centre on that basis, on nutrition, clean water, and affordable clothing. His books Banker to the Poor, Building Social Business, and A World of Three Zeros are the reference texts. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games used the framework to open Games procurement to social and solidarity enterprises. Almost 500 such companies were brought into the supply chain. A follow-on agreement has been signed for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games. That is unusual reach for an academic concept. In August 2024, Yunus returned to Dhaka to lead Bangladesh’s interim government as Chief Adviser, following the student-led uprising that ended the Hasina administration. He stepped down in February 2026 after the general election. The detour matters here: he has now run a country as well as built an economic model, and he speaks from both sides of the policy and operating divide. Key speaking topics Social business as an operating model Microfinance and financial inclusion The “three zeros” agenda: poverty, unemployment, net carbon Inclusive procurement and supply chains Women’s economic empowerment Youth employment and entrepreneurship Corporate joint ventures with social outcomes Ideal for Boards and executive committees deciding how to structure ESG, inclusion, and impact work as operating units rather than reporting lines. Heads of strategy, sustainability, and procurement at consumer, industrial, and financial companies running joint ventures or supplier programmes with a social component. Government and multilateral audiences working on financial inclusion, youth employment, and inclusive growth policy. Foundations, family offices, and impact investors choosing between grant-making, ESG investing, and direct social business equity. Audience outcomes A working definition of social business that distinguishes it from CSR, ESG, and traditional philanthropy. Concrete examples of corporate joint ventures structured as social businesses, with the commercial terms made explicit. The Paris 2024 procurement model as a case study in opening a large supply chain to social and solidarity enterprises. A direct view from a Nobel laureate who has also recently led a country on what governments can and cannot do for inclusive growth. A frame, the three zeros, that connects climate, poverty, and unemployment work usually managed as separate programmes.

Why organisations work with Matthew Syed He has named two of the most widely adopted ideas in modern leadership vocabulary, Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas, and uses them to give leadership teams a shared language for failure and dissent. He brings the rare triangulation of two-time Olympian, Times columnist since 1999 and Sunday Times number one bestselling author, which lets him hold the room with executives, boards and entire workforces. His arguments are built from primary case material across aviation, healthcare, intelligence, sport and government, not from generic management literature, so leaders leave with examples they can use in their own decision forums. Through Matthew Syed Consulting he has converted the books into psychometrics and culture programmes deployed in named organisations, which makes the keynote a credible entry point to longer-term work rather than a one-off appearance. Biography highlights Two-time Olympic table tennis player for Great Britain (Barcelona 1992, Sydney 2000) and three-time Commonwealth singles champion. First-class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford. Columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times since 1999, with two British Press Awards Sports Journalist of the Year wins. Author of Bounce, Black Box Thinking, Rebel Ideas, The Greatest, plus the You Are Awesome series for younger readers, with over two million copies sold and translations into more than thirty languages. Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Sideways since 2021, examining the ideas that shape behaviour and decision-making. Co-founder of Matthew Syed Consulting and trustee of Greenhouse Sports. Biography Most organisations are not structured to learn from failure. They are structured to defend against it. The aviation industry, by contrast, treats every incident as data and rewrites procedure accordingly. That contrast is the spine of Black Box Thinking, the Sunday Times number one bestseller that turned a clinical engineering practice into a leadership argument. Syed builds his case from primary material, not from the management canon. Aviation, healthcare, intelligence agencies, elite sport and government feature as case studies in his work because each shows how culture either invites or suppresses honest information. Rebel Ideas extends the argument to cognitive diversity, making the case that homogenous teams fail at complex problems even when each member is individually brilliant. The credibility behind the argument is unusual. Two Olympic Games for Great Britain, nearly a decade as England’s number one in table tennis, three Commonwealth singles titles, and a first-class PPE degree from Balliol College, Oxford. Since 1999 he has written for The Times and The Sunday Times, winning Sports Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards twice and multiple awards from the Sports Journalists’ Association. The work continues across formats. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Sideways, now in multiple series, and through Matthew Syed Consulting has turned Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas into diagnostic tools and culture programmes used inside organisations. The keynote is the most condensed expression of that body of work, and the route many leadership teams use to start a longer conversation about how their own institution treats failure and dissent. Key speaking topics Learning from failure and the Black Box Thinking model Cognitive diversity and the Rebel Ideas thesis High-performance culture and growth mindset Decision-making under uncertainty Innovation and creative problem-solving Leadership and team learning Ideal for CEOs and executive committees redesigning how the organisation handles error, post-mortems and accountability. Boards and senior leadership teams concerned that groupthink is shaping major decisions. Heads of innovation, R&D and transformation looking to build cognitive range into team composition. CHROs and learning leaders embedding growth-mindset and high-performance culture at scale. Audience outcomes A working definition of Black Box Thinking that leaders can apply to their own incident reviews. A clear test for cognitive diversity inside their teams, separate from demographic diversity. Specific case examples from aviation, medicine and elite sport that translate into their own decision forums. A sharper view of where their organisation currently rewards consensus over dissent. Language and frameworks that travel from the keynote into ongoing leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Mark Foster A first-person performance argument for inclusion. Foster competed at five Olympics while hiding that he was gay; his account of what that cost him is harder to dismiss than any case study. Twenty-three years of elite-level pattern recognition on what separates athletes who reach a final from those who win it, drawn from a career that produced six World Championship golds and eight world records. Credibility with broadcast audiences. As a BBC Sport analyst across four Olympics and four Commonwealth Games, he is comfortable in front of senior rooms, on stage with a host, and in moderated panel formats. A flag-bearer story that is not the usual one. Foster led Team GB into the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony, the first British swimmer to do so since 1964, and uses it to talk about visibility and what representation actually does for the people watching. Biography highlights Five-time Olympian: Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 Six World Championship golds, eleven European titles, two Commonwealth titles, eight world records across a 23-year career Flag bearer for Great Britain at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony BBC Sport swimming analyst across the London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics, alongside Clare Balding and Rebecca Adlington Honorary Doctor of Health Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University (2016) Patron of The Anaphylaxis Campaign and ambassador for SportsAid UK Autobiography, My Double Life, scheduled for 2026 publication Biography Most performance cultures are built around what people produce, not around what people are carrying while they produce it. The gap between the two is where output quietly gets lost. Foster’s contribution is to make that gap legible to a corporate audience using the only evidence harder to argue with than data: a 23-year career he competed through while hiding who he was. The competitive record stands on its own. Six World Championship golds, eleven European titles, two Commonwealth titles, eight world records, and selection for five Olympic Games between Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008. He carried the Union Flag at the Beijing opening ceremony, the first British swimmer to lead the team in since Anita Lonsbrough in 1964. What he has said publicly since 2017, and what his autobiography My Double Life addresses in full, is the part of that career that did not appear in the results. Foster competed at the highest level while closeted, and has been specific about the energy that consumed and the performance margin it cost. For a senior leader thinking about inclusion as a productivity question rather than a values one, that is a useful first-hand source. His broadcast work keeps him sharp on stage. Foster has been a BBC Sport swimming analyst across four Olympics and four Commonwealth Games, regularly on air with Clare Balding and Rebecca Adlington, and Anglia Ruskin University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2016 in recognition of the contribution. Key speaking topics Inclusive performance cultures Visibility and representation in high-performance environments Resilience across a long career Goal-setting and reinvention Olympic-level preparation and mindset Working under pressure Coming out at work Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads building the business case for inclusion in performance terms Senior leadership offsites where the brief is performance under sustained pressure Employee Resource Groups and Pride networks looking for an external voice with sporting credibility Awards dinners, conferences and broadcast-style panels needing a confident on-stage presenter Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how concealment at work shows up in output, and what it actually costs A practical view of what twenty-three years of competing taught him about setbacks, plateaus and second acts A sharper sense of why representation at senior levels matters, told from the person being represented A reframing of resilience as something built across a career, not summoned in a moment

Why organisations work with Jonnie Peacock The credibility behind his pressure narrative is specific. He won the London 2012 Paralympic 100m in front of 80,000 people, at 19, as the home favourite, having been largely unknown twelve months earlier. The preparation-to-execution discipline he describes is grounded in that exact moment, and he makes it concrete for business audiences in ways retrospective case studies cannot. His Strictly Come Dancing appearance was a deliberate disability advocacy strategy, not a media opportunity. He has described it publicly as a specific effort to shift mainstream perception of disability, which gives organisations working on inclusion a frame grounded in personal agency rather than policy or HR language. He has won at the highest level and lost at the highest level: two Paralympic golds, a bronze when gold was expected at Tokyo 2020, and a fifth place at Paris 2024 after a career as the public face of British Paralympic sprinting. His account of managing that full arc is something few performance speakers can draw on with equivalent specificity. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching role with five young amputees, demonstrating that his performance insight has been tested and applied beyond his own biography. Competing at four Paralympic Games across twelve years, he provides a long-cycle view of high performance: managing injury, rival pressure, public expectation, and identity shift across a career, not just the story of a single peak moment. Biography highlights Two-time Paralympic 100m champion (London 2012, Rio 2016); bronze medallist T64 100m Tokyo 2020; silver medallist 4x100m Universal Relay at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 World champion at the IPC Athletics World Championships, Lyon 2013, and the World Para Athletics Championships, London 2017; multiple European champion; former world record holder in amputee sprinting (10.85 seconds) MBE for services to athletics, 2013 New Year Honours First amputee Paralympian to compete on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing (Series 15, 2017), partnered with Oti Mabuse Featured in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix (2020) and Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign (2012) Creator and presenter of Channel 4’s Jonnie’s Blade Camp (2021), a structured training programme for young amputees Biography At the 2012 London Paralympic 100m final, a 19-year-old largely unknown twelve months earlier stood behind the start line as the home favourite, in a stadium of 80,000 people. Jonnie Peacock won by a clear margin and set a Paralympic record. The insight that produces is not just biographical. Performing consistently when pressure is highest is one of the hardest things organisations ask of their people. Peacock is a two-time Paralympic 100m champion and former world record holder in amputee sprinting, with medals at three of the four Paralympic Games he has competed in across twelve years. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching environment with five young amputees, demonstrating that his understanding of performance development has been applied in a formal teaching context, not only in his own career. His mainstream media presence reflects a deliberate strategy. He became the first amputee Paralympian on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, a decision he has described publicly as an act of disability advocacy rather than entertainment. He features in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix and was at the centre of Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign in 2012, both of which sit inside the wider argument about how disability is perceived in high-performance sport. The story underneath all of this is not decorative. Peacock contracted meningitis at five and lost his right leg below the knee. He found athletics through a Paralympic talent identification day and became Paralympic champion in his first competitive senior season. His argument to organisations rests on that arc: the gap between preparation and peak execution under genuine pressure is real, and it can be closed. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and adversity recovery Elite competitive mindset Disability and inclusion High-performance team discipline Managing expectation in high-stakes moments Long-cycle career performance Ideal for Executive and leadership teams focused on consistency, decision-making, and execution under scrutiny Organisations running DEI programmes seeking inclusion framed through personal agency and elite performance evidence Commercial, sales, and competitive teams preparing for high-stakes pitches or critical competitive moments HR and people leaders building resilience and wellbeing strategies with credible, first-hand evidence Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what mental preparation for maximum-pressure performance feels like, grounded in verified results across four Paralympic Games Sharper distinction between building capability in training and executing consistently when real scrutiny arrives Disability reframed as competitive capability, evidenced through elite sport rather than policy language Greater clarity on managing external expectation from rivals, public audiences, and an organisation’s own culture A longer view of high performance: how to absorb setback, return to competition, and sustain standards across a career

Why organisations work with John Amaechi The giants framework – introduced in The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award winner) – gives senior leaders a precise accountability tool: every person with influence shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, whether they intend to or not. He has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust – giving him verified access to the governance conversations his clients face, not just advisory proximity to them. As Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and a Chartered Psychologist, he can name the specific behavioural mechanisms – not just the desired outcomes – that distinguish leaders who consistently build high-performing teams from those who inadvertently undermine them. His reframing of unconscious bias as “entrenched assumption” – from The Promises of Giants – shifts the inclusion conversation from psychological absolution to direct leadership accountability, making it actionable for boards and executive committees that have grown fatigued by compliance-oriented framing. Inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, he is recognised across HR, governance, and psychology communities – not within a single professional silo. Biography highlights Founder, APS Intelligence Ltd (est. 2008), working with executive teams and boards across FTSE 100 companies in financial services, technology, legal, and engineering sectors Professor of Leadership (HC), University of Exeter Business School; Research Fellow, University of East London; Chartered Psychologist (British Psychological Society), Chartered Scientist, Chartered Fellow of the CIPD Author of The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award, Leadership and Strategy category) and It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders Former non-executive director, Greencore Group plc (FTSE 250); former 10-year board director and HR Scrutiny Committee Chair, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust HR Magazine Hall of Fame inductee 2022; Sport Industry Integrity and Impact Award 2023; OBE 2011 First Briton to have a career in the NBA; appointed European Ambassador to the NBA Biography Culture gaps in senior teams are almost always a behaviour problem. APS Intelligence, the consultancy John Amaechi OBE founded in 2008, was built on that premise, and his advisory engagements, governance roles, and published research have only strengthened the case. Amaechi has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. This places him inside the governance conversations most consultants observe from outside. He holds academic roles as Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and Research Fellow at the University of East London, where his research focuses on the mechanisms of inclusive leadership, team performance, and organisational design. His professional credentials sit across three chartered bodies: Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, Chartered Scientist, and Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. The Promises of Giants (2021) introduced the giants framework, the argument that every leader shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, intentionally or not. The book became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and won the Porchlight Business Book Award in Leadership and Strategy. His follow-up, It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders, translates the framework into specific, repeatable actions that distinguish leaders who build high-performing environments from those who inadvertently undermine them. Amaechi was inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice and LinkedIn Influencer with sustained reach across professional audiences. Before his consultancy career, he was the first Briton to have a career in the NBA. That background informs his understanding of how culture either releases or suppresses individual potential, and what it costs organisations when it does the latter. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and culture Inclusive leadership High-performance team dynamics Executive accountability and governance Leadership through permanent disruption AI integration and the human organisation Ideal for Executive teams and C-suite leaders where a gap exists between declared culture and how people actually experience leadership Board members and non-executive directors engaged with governance, leadership accountability, and inclusive decision-making CHROs, CPOs, and people leaders designing culture and inclusion strategies that connect directly to performance outcomes Senior leadership cohorts in organisations navigating culture transformation, post-merger integration, or leadership succession Audience outcomes A specific vocabulary for naming the leadership behaviours – not strategy documents or values statements – that create or undermine the culture an organisation is trying to build Clarity on why inclusion programmes stall at leadership level, and what it takes behaviourally to move them forward A personal accountability framework – the giants principle from The Promises of Giants – that senior leaders can apply immediately to audit and adjust their own daily behaviour Greater understanding of how identity and belonging affect individual contribution, team cohesion, and organisational performance Practical, evidence-based tools from organisational psychology for building psychologically safe environments where high performance is sustainable

Why organisations work with Fons Trompenaars His Seven Dimensions of Culture model gives boards and integration teams a shared vocabulary for diagnosing where global strategies break down, drawn from research across more than a hundred thousand managers. Dilemma reconciliation moves leaders past the false choice between universal standards and local adaptation, which is the recurring failure mode in M&A integration, joint ventures, and global rollouts. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame status places him in the same tier as Drucker, Porter, and Peters, useful credibility when the audience is a sceptical executive committee. Three decades of advisory work with Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, General Motors, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer mean the case material is operational, not academic. He is one of the few cultural theorists whose framework is built around action: every dimension comes with a method for resolving the tension, not just naming it. That method now runs inside AI-enabled tools, including a Dilemma Solver trained on a proprietary database of more than 60,000 leadership dilemmas. Biography highlights PhD in social systems sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1983. Co-founder of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner with Charles Hampden-Turner in 1989; acquired by KPMG in 1998. Author of Riding the Waves of Culture, named to the Thinkers50 top ten Management Classics list in 2024 and translated into more than twenty languages. Co-author of Nine Visions of Capitalism, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Building Cross-Cultural Competence, and Servant Leadership Across Cultures. Co-authoring Tension to Traction with Bas Kemme, a forthcoming book built on CEO interviews that extends the reconciliation argument of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.” Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017; ranked among the most influential management thinkers in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Recipient of the ASTD International Professional Practice Area Research Award (1991) and the WFPMA George Petitpas Award (2023). Biography Most cross-cultural frameworks describe difference. They tell leaders that the Dutch are direct and the Japanese are deferential, then leave the leader to work out what to do about it. Trompenaars’ contribution is the next step: a method for reconciling competing cultural values rather than choosing between them. The Seven Dimensions of Culture, developed with Charles Hampden-Turner over a decade of empirical research, identifies the underlying tensions that surface when global organisations try to operate as one. Universal rules against particular relationships. Individual achievement against collective ascription. Sequential time against synchronous time. The model is built on data from over a hundred thousand managers and has anchored consulting engagements at Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer. The intellectual foundation runs deep. A doctorate from Wharton, nine years inside Shell across nine countries, and the 1989 founding of the consultancy that became Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, later acquired by KPMG. “Riding the Waves of Culture” is a Thinkers50 Management Classic. The Hall of Fame induction in 2017 placed him alongside Drucker, Porter, and Peters. What makes the work commercially useful is dilemma reconciliation. Competing values, results and relationships, standards and local fit, individual and collective, are not trade-offs to be balanced but tensions to be integrated. For boards working through merger integration, global expansion, or post-acquisition culture programmes, that shift in framing is what turns cultural awareness into operational performance. The method now runs inside AI-enabled tools and underpins Tension to Traction, a forthcoming book with Bas Kemme on how CEOs turn competing pressures into a path forward. Key speaking topics Cross-cultural leadership and global team effectiveness Dilemma reconciliation as a leadership method Cultural due diligence in mergers and acquisitions The Seven Dimensions of Culture Leading change across multinational organisations Servant leadership across cultures Cultural reconciliation in the age of AI and polarisation Ideal for Executive committees and boards leading multinational integration, joint ventures, or post-acquisition culture work CHROs and global HR leaders responsible for leadership development across multiple regions Transformation leads running global change programmes where local resistance is the recurring blocker Leadership development programmes for newly international senior leaders Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the seven cultural tensions that surface inside global teams A method for reconciling competing values rather than defaulting to head office standards Diagnostic clarity on why specific global initiatives have stalled or fragmented Case material from Shell, Heineken, Philips, and other multinationals that can be applied to the audience’s own integration challenges

Why organisations work with Erik Weihenmayer A first-hand operating model for making decisions without full visibility, drawn from summiting Everest and kayaking 277 miles of Grand Canyon whitewater rather than from theory A tested argument about rope-team leadership: how trust, role clarity, and communication protocols hold a team together when one member’s judgement has to carry the rest A named framework, the No Barriers Life, backed by a published book and a working nonprofit, not a single keynote built around a single mountain Credibility with audiences who have heard every generic resilience talk, because the proof points are specific, verifiable, and unusual: Everest, the Eight Summits, Leadville 100 on a tandem, Colorado River source to sea Biography highlights First blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, May 25, 2001; featured on the cover of Time magazine that June Completed the Seven Summits in 2002 and the Eight Summits in 2008 with Carstensz Pyramid Kayaked the full 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 2014 Co-founder of No Barriers USA, serving people with disabilities, veterans, youth, and caregivers Author of “Touch the Top of the World,” published in 9 languages, and co-author of “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” with Buddy Levy Recipient of an ESPY Award, Nike’s Casey Martin Award, and the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement Award Biography The path down Everest is more dangerous than the path up. On the descent in May 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to summit the mountain, was moving on a rope team whose margin for error had effectively closed. The instruction he had been given by expedition leader Pasquale Scaturro on the way home set the next two decades of his work: do not let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do. What followed was not a sequence of stunts. It was the construction of an argument about how teams operate when the environment does not cooperate. The Seven Summits by 2002, Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on a tandem in 2010, and in 2014 the full 277-mile kayak descent of the Grand Canyon with blinded Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell. Each expedition is a case study in role assignment, communication discipline, and trust allocation under degraded information. The intellectual output sits alongside the physical one. “Touch the Top of the World” was published in twelve countries and nine languages and became the basis of a documentary that won first prize at 21 international film festivals. “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon,” co-written with Buddy Levy, took an Honorable Mention at the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards and a 2018 Colorado Book Awards finalist spot. “The Adversity Advantage,” co-written with Paul Stoltz, moves the same material into an explicit business register. In 2005, Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA, a nonprofit that now works with veterans, youth, people with disabilities, and full-time caregivers. It is where the speaking work connects back to a working practice: the No Barriers Life is not a slogan, it is the operating code the organisation teaches and the argument the book defends. Key speaking topics Decision-making under incomplete information Rope-team leadership and trust allocation The No Barriers Life as an organisational operating code Resilience as a team discipline, not an individual trait Innovation and problem-solving under constraint Inclusive leadership and diverse-ability teams Navigating reinvention after a defining achievement Ideal for Executive teams preparing for high-stakes decisions where the data will not be complete in time CHROs and culture leads building resilience and belonging into the organisational operating model, not bolting it on Leadership offsites for transformation, integration, or turnaround programmes Veteran-heavy, disability-community, or inclusion-focused audiences where lived authority matters Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how to lead a mixed-ability, mixed-experience team through a decision with partial information Named protocols from expedition practice that transfer directly into executive decision rooms A sharper sense of the difference between individual grit and team discipline, and why resilience only compounds when it is built into the team Permission to treat constraint as a design input rather than a deficit A concrete reference point, the No Barriers Life, that leaders can carry back into their own language

Why organisations work with David Weir A track record of winning at the highest level across two decades and seven Paralympic Games. Few speakers can draw on that span of sustained elite output when talking to a leadership team about consistency. Four gold medals in nine days at London 2012, on home ground, under the closest possible scrutiny. The story behind that fortnight is a serious case study in preparing for peak moments. Direct, lived authority on inclusion. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded with coach Jenny Archer, is an operating organisation that gets young disabled athletes into sport, not a cause he lends a name to. A career that includes quitting the sport after Atlanta 1996 and returning. That arc gives the resilience content real texture rather than the usual highlight reel. Biography highlights Six Paralympic gold medals (two at Beijing 2008, four at London 2012) and ten Paralympic medals in total across Games from Atlanta 1996 to Paris 2024. Eight-time winner of the London Marathon men’s wheelchair race. Appointed CBE in the 2013 New Year Honours, MBE in 2009. Author of “Weirwolf: My Story”, published by Constable and Robinson in 2013 with David Bond. Co-founder of the Weir Archer Academy at Kingsmeadow, Kingston, launched April 2013. Inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. Biography Four gold medals in nine days at the London 2012 Paralympics, 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon, put Weir at the centre of the most watched disability sport event ever staged. He won on home ground in front of a British crowd that had, by the end of those Games, a different frame of reference for what Paralympic sport was. The arc before that is what gives the story weight. Weir made his Paralympic debut at Atlanta in 1996 at seventeen, came away unimpressed, and quit the sport. He came back, built a partnership with coach Jenny Archer that still runs, and compiled six Paralympic golds and eight London Marathon wins across more than two decades at the top of T54 wheelchair racing. The public work beyond racing is substantive. “Weirwolf: My Story”, written with journalist David Bond and published in 2013, is an unvarnished account of racing, disability, and the training regime behind sustained elite output. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded the same year at Kingsmeadow in Kingston, exists to get the next generation of disabled athletes into sport rather than to decorate a Paralympian’s post-career CV. Weir retired from Paralympic competition after Paris 2024, closing a run of seven Games. He was appointed CBE in 2013 and inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. The corporate audience gets a speaker whose material on performance under pressure, coming back from a year that went wrong, and inclusion inside elite sport is drawn from the record, not constructed around it. Key speaking topics Resilience and comeback after setback Peak performance under pressure Sustained excellence across a long career Disability, inclusion and changing public attitudes Coach and athlete partnerships Goal setting over multi-year cycles Ideal for CHROs and inclusion leads building disability and accessibility into workforce strategy Sales and commercial leadership kick-offs framed around performance under pressure Sports industry, governing body and event organiser conferences Employee network and wellbeing programme events, particularly around mental health and sustained performance Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what consistency at the top actually costs, told through two decades of T54 racing A usable frame for recovering from a setback that does not resolve on its own timetable Specific detail on preparing for a single high-visibility moment, drawn from London 2012 A grounded view of disability inclusion from inside elite sport, rather than from policy language Material on coach and athlete trust that transfers to senior manager and team relationships