Emotional Intelligence

Why organisations work with Lisa Feldman Barrett She has reshaped the scientific consensus on emotion. Her theory of constructed emotion is now taught in psychology, neuroscience and affective computing curricula, and it directly contradicts the assumptions baked into most corporate EQ training and emotion-detection AI. She translates first-tier neuroscience for boardrooms without diluting it. Her two trade books, How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, are written for general readers but cite the same primary research she publishes in Science and Nature Neuroscience. Her work has been adopted by audiences that need it to be right, including FBI behavioural analysts, the legal community through her role as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and senior medical faculties at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. A leader who books her gets a researcher with NIH Pioneer Award and Guggenheim credentials, not a popular-science communicator working from secondary sources. Biography highlights University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Chief Science Officer, Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. TED speaker, with the talk “You Aren’t at the Mercy of Your Emotions” passing 6.5 million views. NIH Director’s Pioneer Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award; APS William James Fellow Award. Past President of the Association for Psychological Science; co-founder of the Society for Affective Science; over 275 peer-reviewed publications. Biography The textbook view of emotion, that anger, fear and joy are hard-wired circuits with universal facial signatures, dominated psychology, psychiatry and product design for most of the last century. It is also wrong. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s laboratory at Northeastern has spent twenty-five years showing that the brain constructs emotion in the moment, drawing on past experience, bodily state and cultural learning. Her theory of constructed emotion has reshaped affective science and is now reaching the institutions that depend on getting emotion right. She advises the FBI on behavioural analysis, serves as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and her work is cited in debates over emotion-detection AI and courtroom evidence. Barrett holds a University Distinguished Professorship at Northeastern, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed papers, sits among the top 0.1 percent most-cited scientists in the world, and has received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. For senior leaders, the practical payoff is a sharper model of how their own brains, and their people’s, actually work under uncertainty. That model contradicts a great deal of what corporate wellbeing, EQ training and emotion-aware technology currently sell. Key speaking topics The science of emotion in the workplace Brain, prediction and decision-making under uncertainty Stress, allostasis and the body budget The neuroscience of self-regulation for senior leaders Emotion-detection AI and the limits of affective computing Mental health and the construction of experience Communication and influence grounded in brain science Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior leadership teams reassessing wellbeing, EQ training and performance management Boards and risk committees evaluating emotion-recognition AI, behavioural surveillance, or affective computing investments Healthcare, legal and security organisations whose decisions hinge on interpreting human behaviour Senior leaders wanting a substantive, science-led perspective on stress, resilience and decision quality Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain predicts and constructs emotion, replacing the “universal emotions” model that underpins most corporate EQ content. A clearer view of what emotion-detection technology can and cannot reliably do, useful for evaluating vendors and policy. Practical implications for stress, recovery and senior decision-making, grounded in the brain’s energy regulation rather than pop-psychology. Sharper questions about how performance reviews, hiring assessments and customer research read emotional signals.

Why organisations work with Naomi Sesay She has run inclusion from inside the commissioning machine of a major UK broadcaster, not as an external consultant, so her advice carries the weight of decisions she has actually had to make and defend. Her training portfolio inside FTSE 100 clients and at Google, YouTube, NBC Universal, Deloitte and Lloyds Bank means she has tested her approach against the realities of regulated, scaled corporate environments. She frames inclusion as a leadership capability tied to commercial output, drawing on a 30-year broadcasting career where audience, talent and brand decisions were never separable. She brings a builder’s perspective on equity through her Sierra Leone smart-city project, which gives keynotes a concrete reference point beyond the standard DEI canon. Biography highlights Head of Creative Diversity, Channel 4, 2022 to 2025; previously On Screen Diversity Executive and Interim Head of Diversity & Inclusion at the broadcaster. Earlier television career as Producer, Director and Presenter at MTV News, and among the early producers on Channel 4’s Big Brother. Former Head of Innovation and Diversity, Media Trust. Senior Lead Trainer in Race Fluency and Inclusive Leadership with APS Intelligence, delivering programmes inside FTSE 100 organisations. Training and keynote work for Google, YouTube, NBC Universal, Amazon, Deloitte, Lloyds Bank, Warner Bros, Viacom, UN Women, Harvard Medical School and the Met Police. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Human Upgrade: The Power to Create Your Future; leads a female-centric sustainable smart-city project in Sierra Leone. Biography Most diversity work in large organisations is built by people who have never had to make a commissioning decision, hire a senior leader, or sign off a brand campaign. The view from inside those rooms is different. It is harder to be theoretical when the choice is in front of you and the budget is real. Naomi Sesay spent three years as Head of Creative Diversity at Channel 4, with two earlier spells at the broadcaster as On Screen Diversity Executive and Interim Head of Diversity & Inclusion. Her remit covered commissioning, training, talent and the broadcaster’s relationships with culturally and ethnically diverse creative communities across the UK. Before Channel 4 she ran innovation and diversity at Media Trust, and worked at APS Intelligence as a senior trainer in race fluency and inclusive leadership for FTSE 100 clients. Her television career started at MTV News during the channel’s European peak as a producer, director and presenter, and continued through one of the original production teams on Channel 4’s Big Brother. That broadcasting grounding shapes the way she talks to corporate audiences. Inclusion is not framed as a values statement; it is framed as an editorial, hiring and commercial discipline that decides which work gets made and which people get heard. Outside the broadcaster she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, author of The Human Upgrade: The Power to Create Your Future, and leads a network of architects and investors developing a female-centric sustainable smart city in Sierra Leone. The combination gives her keynotes for Google, Deloitte, UN Women, Harvard Medical School and others a practical edge: she has built things, not only advised on them. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Diversity, equity and inclusion in practice Cultural intelligence Creative industries and representation Emotional intelligence for senior teams Storytelling and human connection Social enterprise and equitable city design Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers and heads of DEI under pressure to show operating impact, not statements. Boards and ExCos reassessing inclusion strategy after political shifts and ESG scrutiny. Commissioning, editorial and creative leaders in media, entertainment, publishing and advertising. Senior leadership programmes inside FTSE 100 and equivalent corporates rebuilding inclusive leadership capability. Audience outcomes A clearer test for distinguishing inclusion that changes decisions from inclusion that performs them. Specific language for talking to senior leaders about race, identity and culture without retreating into either jargon or platitude. Working examples from broadcasting, FTSE 100 corporates and global brand environments that translate into the audience’s own commissioning, hiring and team practices. A way to connect inclusive leadership to commercial output, audience reach and talent retention rather than to compliance reporting.

Why organisations work with Aaron Balick He sits at an uncommon intersection: clinical psychotherapy experience, a former directorship of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a foundational book on the psychology of social media that is still cited in practitioner and academic literature. His media record gives audiences a speaker whose voice they already know: longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery, alongside regular appearances on BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His published writing runs from serious academic work to accessible self-help, which lets him move between main-stage keynote and in-depth workshop without dropping register. As founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he built across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich, he developed his reading of digital life from inside an operating organisation, not only from a consulting desk. His framing of AI and social media is psychological rather than technical, which is exactly the angle most executive teams are missing when making decisions about generative AI and platform strategy. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, an international applied-psychology hub formerly with locations in London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich Former director of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex; continues as associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies Psychotherapist in private practice in London, with over 20 years of clinical experience Author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking (Karnac), The Little Book of Calm and Keep Your Cool Longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery Regular BBC Radio 4 contributor; published in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek Biography The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, published by Karnac Books, remains one of the most widely cited practitioner texts on how the platforms senior leaders are now running their strategies through actually affect the people using them. Aaron Balick wrote it at a point when most commentary on social media was still either evangelical or dismissive, and the book set the register for a more serious psychological reading of digital life. His work sits at the seam between clinical practice and public commentary. He has maintained a private psychotherapy practice in London for more than two decades, trained in depth psychology and psychoanalysis, and formerly directed the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, where he continues as an associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies. The applied side of that work ran through Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he founded and led across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich. The media presence anchors him inside a mainstream audience. He was the longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek. Alongside his academic book, he has published two accessible titles, The Little Book of Calm and the children’s book Keep Your Cool. For organisations making senior decisions about generative AI, platform strategy, employee wellbeing or customer engagement, Balick brings something their technology advisers do not: a trained clinical reading of what digital experience actually does to the people on the other side of it. That perspective is increasingly what the better boards want on the table. Key speaking topics Psychology of social media, AI and digital connectivity Digital wellbeing and hyperconnectivity at work The psychologically intelligent workplace Personal leadership and authenticity Mental health in technology-mediated environments Ethics and psychology of generative AI Ideal for Executive teams and boards making decisions on AI deployment, platform strategy or digital customer experience CHROs, wellbeing leads and chief people officers designing mental health and engagement strategy Technology, media and platform leadership teams looking for a psychological voice on product and user impact Conferences and leadership events needing a media-recognised speaker who can connect AI, wellbeing and culture Audience outcomes A working psychological framework for understanding social-media and AI effects on people and behaviour Specific implications for wellbeing, engagement and customer experience strategy A clearer language for the ethical questions senior teams are quietly asking about generative AI Reference material from The Psychodynamics of Social Networking and his BBC contributions for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Rose Cartolari Operator-grade credibility with senior leaders: she co-founded and ran the operations of Scharper Pharmaceuticals through to a 2011 sale, then turned that experience into a coaching practice. She has sat in the chair the room is talking about. A board-level lens on inclusion as leadership capability, built through her Executive Committee role at European Women on Boards and the Board Readiness Programme she launched there. Cross-cultural fluency that holds up in genuinely complex settings, drawn from senior roles at American Express and UNICEF and on-the-ground postings in India, Indonesia and Somalia. A coaching toolkit grounded in neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles, applied to specific senior problems: influence across the C-suite, executive presence, succession readiness. Teaches the material as well as practises it, through executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, RC Consulting, advising C-suite leaders and their teams on leadership, influence and inclusion. Executive Committee member, European Women on Boards; launched the EWOB Board Readiness Programme. Co-founder and former COO, Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, exited in 2011. Senior corporate roles at American Express and UNICEF, with field postings across India, Indonesia and Somalia. Executive education faculty at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. MBA, Columbia Business School. BA, Brown University. Forbes Coaches Council member. TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). Co-author, Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance (Erik Seversen, ed., 2021). Biography Senior leadership rarely fails on technical knowledge. It fails on composure, influence and the ability to hold a team together when conditions stop being stable. That is the territory Rose Cartolari works in, and she works in it from the position of someone who has held an operating role at scale and then chosen to coach the people who hold those roles now. Cartolari is Founder and Managing Director of RC Consulting, a leadership advisory and executive coaching practice for the C-suite and their teams. Before founding RC, she co-founded and served as COO of Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, a European pharmaceuticals business sold in 2011, after senior roles at American Express and UNICEF, including field assignments in India, Indonesia and Somalia. That operator history is the reason her conversations with senior leaders sound like conversations between peers, not between a leader and an outside expert. Her work sits at the point where leadership behaviour meets inclusion practice. On the European Women on Boards Executive Committee she launched the Board Readiness Programme, which prepares senior women for credible non-executive roles. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Brown, sits on the Forbes Coaches Council, and teaches executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. She is co-author of Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance and a TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). The throughline of the work is practical: senior leaders, under pressure, learning to influence other senior people, hold their own counsel under ambiguity and turn inclusion from a value statement into a leadership behaviour. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence across the C-suite Inclusive leadership as a senior capability Leading senior teams through change and ambiguity Board readiness and the path to non-executive roles Personal leadership and self-awareness for senior roles Cross-cultural leadership in multinational organisations Emotional intelligence applied to executive performance Ideal for C-suite executives and their direct reports working through ambiguity, restructure or succession Senior women preparing for non-executive director or board positions Heads of executive development, talent and inclusion building senior leadership pipelines Multinational leadership teams operating across multiple cultures and geographies Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior influence works and where their own influence is leaking Language and practices for inclusive leadership that hold up in front of other senior leaders A specific view of board readiness, what selectors actually look for and how to close the gap Tools from neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles applied to live senior dilemmas A working definition of executive presence that is behavioural, not stylistic

Why organisations work with Michael Maisey Lived experience that lands in rooms where wellbeing decks usually do not, drawn from five years in Feltham Young Offenders Institute and a documented twenty-year rebuild. Operates an active service organisation. The CIP Project runs residential workshops from a 25-acre Devon retreat centre, giving him a working view of what actually helps people recover, not a theoretical one. Two published works that hold up to corporate scrutiny: Young Offender (Pan Macmillan, 2019) and Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma (2025). The second gives him a named framework, not just a story. Civic recognition by the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police in 2014, a useful third-party validation when buyers vet speakers with criminal-record backgrounds. Talks designed to give managers practical language for the empathy-and-communication conversation, rather than a motivational arc that leaves the audience moved but unequipped. Biography highlights Founder of The CIP Project, a UK non-profit operating from a 25-acre retreat centre in Devon. Author of Young Offender: My Life from Armed Robber to Local Hero, published by Pan Macmillan in 2019. Author of Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma, published in 2025. TEDx speaker. Talk title: “The Healing Power of Connection”. Honoured by the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police in 2014 for services to the community. Over 17 years sober. Public advocacy work across UK prisons, including author visits to HMYOI Aylesbury. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes do not fail on intent. They fail on permission. Employees are offered resources, apps and policies, but rarely the model of what an honest conversation about mental health, addiction or trauma actually sounds like in a working environment. Michael Maisey’s contribution is to provide that model in a room of senior managers, with credibility earned outside the wellness industry. His route into the work is unusually direct. At sixteen he was sentenced for armed robbery and spent much of his teenage years in Feltham Young Offenders Institute. The rebuild that followed produced two things organisations care about: a published autobiography with Pan Macmillan, Young Offender, in 2019; and a working non-profit, The CIP Project, founded in 2018 on a 25-acre site in Devon, supporting people with addiction, mental health, PTSD and childhood trauma. A second book, Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma, followed in 2025 and gives him a structured framework rather than a single biographical story. His TEDx talk, “The Healing Power of Connection”, is the most-quoted piece of his keynote content in workplace settings. In 2014, the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police recognised him formally for services to the community. For a head of people or culture, the practical value is twofold. Maisey can hold a room on the subjects that most speakers either soften or skirt: suicidal ideation, addiction, the texture of trauma. And he can hand managers a vocabulary for the empathy-and-communication conversation that has otherwise sat in the wellbeing policy and never made it onto the floor. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health Empathy and compassion at work Trauma recovery Addiction and the workplace Personal transformation and lived experience Communication around wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of people, heads of culture and wellbeing leads commissioning workplace mental health content Internal manager populations responsible for direct conversations about wellbeing Employee resource groups and DEI forums focused on mental health and recovery Conference programmes seeking a lived-experience anchor on wellbeing alongside clinical or academic speakers Audience outcomes Sharper language for raising mental health, addiction or trauma in a workplace conversation without making it clinical A more concrete view of what recovery actually requires, drawn from operating a residential support model Permission, observed in the room, for senior people to speak honestly about their own experience A framework, drawn from the seven stages in Change is Possible, for thinking about trauma in stages rather than as a single event

Why organisations work with Anna Mathur Clinical credibility most workplace wellbeing speakers cannot match. BACP accreditation, a Master’s from Regent’s University and NHS and private practice experience sit behind every session. A body of work that has reached a mainstream audience on its own merits, including four Sunday Times bestsellers under Penguin Life and a podcast past three million downloads, so she arrives with recognition employees already have. Practical tools rather than awareness raising. Sessions land on techniques people can use the same week for anxiety, people pleasing, guilt and worth at work. A register that works for stigma-sensitive topics. She has presented to teams at Google, Spotify, Bain & Company, Soho House and UCL on subjects most speakers reduce to platitudes. Biography highlights BACP-accredited psychotherapist; MA Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent’s University London; BSc Social Psychology, Loughborough University. Author of four Sunday Times bestsellers published by Penguin Life: Mind Over Mother, Know Your Worth, The Little Book of New Mum Feelings and The Uncomfortable Truth (March 2025). Host of The Therapy Edit podcast, more than 3 million downloads, charting on Apple and Spotify. Corporate keynote and seminar work for Google, Spotify, Bain & Company, Soho House and UCL. Broadcast contributor on Sky News, Good Morning Britain, BBC Three and Steph’s Packed Lunch; columns and features in Grazia, Stylist, Red, Marie Claire, Psychologies, The Telegraph and Daily Mail. Instagram community of around 225,000 followers built on practical psychotherapeutic content rather than influencer wellness. Biography Most workplace mental health content stops at awareness. Employees know the language of burnout, anxiety and boundaries; what they do not have is a clinician’s read on what to actually do with those feelings on a Tuesday morning. Anna Mathur’s work sits in that gap. She is a BACP-accredited psychotherapist trained at Regent’s University London, with NHS and private practice experience behind a body of writing and broadcasting that has reached an audience well beyond the consulting room. Penguin Life has published four of her books to Sunday Times bestseller status, most recently The Uncomfortable Truth in March 2025, which addresses ten of the fears that drive overwhelm, perfectionism and people pleasing. The Therapy Edit, her podcast of ten-minute episodes, has passed three million downloads and is a regular Apple and Spotify chart fixture. These are not sidelines to a therapy practice. They are the practice operating at scale. For corporate audiences, the practical content stays close to the clinical work. Anxiety, stress, guilt around work and parenting, self-worth and the people-pleasing patterns that show up in managerial behaviour are the recurring subjects. Sessions for Google, Spotify, Bain & Company, Soho House and UCL have run from intimate sofa-style workshops with leadership teams to webinars for retail managers in the hundreds. What organisations are paying for is the combination of clinical seriousness and accessible delivery. The accreditation is genuine, the book record is verifiable, and the techniques people leave with are the same ones she uses with private clients. That is what makes the content land in workplaces where wellbeing fatigue is already setting in. Key speaking topics Anxiety and overwhelm at work Workplace mental health and wellbeing People pleasing and burnout Self-worth and imposter feelings Stress and resilience The working parent: guilt, worry and capacity Boundaries and emotional regulation Ideal for People, culture, DEI and wellbeing leads commissioning credible mental health content Senior leadership offsites where the brief is composure, sustainability and self-leadership Employee resource groups, particularly working parents and women’s networks Professional services and tech firms with high-performance cultures and rising anxiety reporting Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for anxiety, overwhelm and self-worth that employees can use without clinical training. Specific techniques for managing intrusive worry, perfectionist patterns and the people-pleasing reflex at work. Permission, from a clinician, to interrupt the productivity-at-all-costs logic that is driving burnout. A reset on what self-care actually means in a working week, distinct from the wellness industry version. Confidence among managers to hold mental health conversations with team members without overstepping.

Why organisations work with Amy Carroll She works on the specific moments leadership training usually skips: board challenges, negotiations that stall, team conversations that tip into defensiveness. Leaders leave with something they can apply on Monday, not a model to file. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a usable vocabulary for power dynamics most leaders feel but cannot name. The client list runs through organisations that do not buy soft skills lightly: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. Thirty years across psychology, executive coaching, and psychiatric and managed-care settings give her range on human behaviour that communications trainers rarely carry. Recognition from Global Gurus, including a Top 20 position in the Communication category, places her among a small group of named practitioners in the field. Biography highlights Author of The Ego Tango: How to Get More of What You Want More Often with Less Hassle, Using These 7 Partner Mindset Techniques Host of Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Ranked among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, placing #18 in 2023 Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, with a BA in Psychology Coaching and training clients include Nestle, Novartis, Microsoft, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the European Stability Mechanism Licenses the Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership Inc. and built the 7 Partner Mindset methodology on top of it Biography Most leadership failures happen in conversation. A board member challenges an assumption and the chief executive concedes ground she should have held. A senior partner pushes harder than the client will accept. A team leader in a performance review slips from clarity into apology. The cost is rarely dramatic, but it compounds, and it sits outside what strategy decks or standard communications training address. Amy Carroll works on that gap. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a working vocabulary for the power dynamics they feel in the room but cannot usually name. The framework draws from three decades in psychology, executive coaching, and earlier work in psychiatric and managed-care settings, which is a wider behavioural base than most communications coaches bring. Her book, The Ego Tango, sets out the methodology through cases from the workshops she runs with multinational clients. The client list is instructive: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. These are organisations where a senior leader’s composure under challenge is a measurable commercial asset. She hosts Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, and has been named among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, including a Top 20 placement in 2023. The recognition is useful context; the substance is the work itself, which is a repeatable method for holding authority when the stakes rise. Key speaking topics Leadership communication under pressure Power and influence in senior conversations Executive presence and authority High-stakes negotiation dynamics Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Storytelling and persuasion in business Coaching culture and leadership development Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams preparing for board, investor, or regulator-facing conversations Partners and client-facing leaders in professional services and financial services HR and Learning leads building executive development programmes Senior women navigating authority in traditionally male-dominated rooms Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the power dynamics that sit beneath difficult conversations, so leaders can diagnose what is happening in the moment Specific techniques from the 7 Partner Mindset model to stay composed when challenged and to influence without escalating A sharper read on their own default patterns under stress, including where they concede and where they overreach Language for feedback, negotiation, and disagreement that holds authority without damaging the relationship A practical sense of how senior presence is built through behaviour, not positioning

Why organisations work with Adele Bates Her classroom experience covers every major UK school setting: mainstream primary and secondary, pupil referral units, alternative provision, and special schools. School leaders can bring her to a mixed-audience CPD day knowing the examples hold up across every context in the room. Her approach is informed by funded comparative international research. In 2019, she received a full grant to research Finland’s inclusive education system. Research in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica followed. What she recommends draws on documented practice from functioning systems across three countries. Her book, published by Corwin/SAGE, has been used by headteachers to rewrite whole-school behaviour policies from scratch. It provides a structured, chapter-by-chapter framework that school leaders can put to immediate institutional use. She writes for TES, SecEd, and Headteacher Update, reaching school leaders at scale. Audiences in her sessions often arrive knowing her work, which changes the quality of the conversation. Her TEDx 2020 talk and BBC Radio 4 appearances as the network’s expert on teenagers and behaviour give her name recognition well beyond the education conference circuit. Biography highlights Author, “Miss, I Don’t Give A Sh*t”: Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools (Corwin/SAGE) TEDx 2020 speaker BBC Radio 4 expert on teenagers and behaviour Trainer for the National Education Union and Amnesty International Education WeAreTheCity Rising Star Award, Education category Funded international researcher in behaviour and inclusion: Finland (2019), Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica Biography Behaviour policies give teachers a sequence of steps. They rarely explain what to do when those steps stop working. For more than 20 years, Adele Bates taught in the settings where that gap matters most: mainstream primary and secondary schools, pupil referral units, alternative provision, and special schools. Her book, “Miss, I Don’t Give A Sh*t”: Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools, is published by Corwin/SAGE. It gives school leaders a structured framework for rebuilding behaviour culture from the ground up. Headteachers have used it to rewrite their school’s behaviour policy from scratch. In 2019, she received a full grant to research Finland’s inclusive education system, observing classes and interviewing teachers across several schools. She has since carried out school-based research in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. Those visits inform how she frames what is achievable, with reference to systems that have solved problems UK schools are still working through. She is BBC Radio 4’s expert on teenagers and behaviour and gave a TEDx talk in 2020. She writes regularly for TES, SecEd, and Headteacher Update. She trains for the National Education Union and Amnesty International Education. School leaders who book her often know her work before she arrives. Key speaking topics Inclusive behaviour in schools Social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) in education Trauma-informed practice Whole-school behaviour culture and consistency Pupil engagement and relationship-led teaching Equality, bias, and inclusion in education Staff confidence and wellbeing in schools Ideal for Headteachers and senior leadership teams in mainstream and specialist schools Classroom teachers and subject leaders seeking practical behaviour frameworks Multi-academy trust (MAT) CPD and professional development leads National education organisations and education conference organisers Audience outcomes A clearer account of why SEMH-driven behaviour does not respond to sanctions, and what the evidence suggests actually works Practical strategies for rebuilding positive relationships with disengaged pupils, applicable from the next lesson A framework for evaluating whether a school’s behaviour policy is built to support or to separate A sharper understanding of how equality, bias, and inclusion connect to behaviour patterns across a whole school Tools for strengthening staff confidence and consistency in challenging classroom situations

Why organisations work with Phillippa Mole She brings the practical content of executive presence into the room: how leaders hold themselves in a pitch, a board meeting, or a difficult conversation, taught as craft rather than as personality. Her coaching combines elite-sport performance psychology with certified executive coaching credentials, including Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach and ICF PCC accreditation, giving the work a defensible technical base. She is the first UK qualified practitioner of Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which gives her unusual range when working with leaders carrying real career or personal load. Her broadcast background, including BBC and GMTV presenting, sharpens the work on how senior people communicate when the stakes and the camera are both live. Clients have included Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with applications spanning bid pitches, capital raises and senior team development. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Fresh Air Coaching, established 2007. Master Executive Coach (Association for Coaching) and ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC). NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer; first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories for PTSS. MSc Sport Science and Performance Psychology, Loughborough University. Former lecturer in Performance Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Former BBC and GMTV network broadcaster and Sunday Telegraph columnist. Biography Composure is rarely the line item in a leadership development plan, but it is what senior people are actually judged on when the room turns difficult. Phillippa Mole’s coaching practice is built around that observation. Fresh Air Coaching, the firm she founded in 2007, works with senior leaders and teams on the behavioural mechanics of presence, influence and decision-making under pressure. The technical base is unusual. She holds an MSc in Sport Science and Performance Psychology from Loughborough and lectured in performance psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University before moving into executive coaching full time. Her certifications run from Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach to ICF PCC, with NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer status alongside. She is named as the first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which extends her range into work that touches genuine personal load. Before coaching, she competed in sprint hurdles for the South of England and represented Great Britain in bobsleigh, then spent years in front of a camera as a network broadcaster for the BBC and GMTV, including coverage of the Commonwealth Games, and as a Sunday Telegraph columnist. That background informs the way she teaches presence: the work is granular and physical, closer to a directing note than a leadership homily. Named clients include Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with engagements on bid pitches, capital raising and senior team performance. Buyers describe her as a “secret weapon” in those high-stakes settings, language that reflects what the work actually does, which is to make a small set of senior people materially better at the moments their reputation rests on. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence Self-leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence in senior teams Performance psychology applied to business Communication and persuasion craft Resilience and recovery for senior leaders Ideal for CEOs, managing partners and board members preparing for high-stakes pitches, capital raises or contested set-pieces Senior leadership teams investing in presence, influence and team performance ahead of restructure or growth Newly promoted executives stepping into roles where credibility is judged in moments rather than over months HR directors and L&D leads commissioning behavioural development for the top layer rather than generic wellbeing content Audience outcomes A clearer, behaviourally specific picture of what executive presence is and how to build it Practical methods for holding composure in pitches, boardrooms and difficult conversations A working model for using emotional intelligence to read a room and shift a dynamic in real time Language for naming and addressing the pressure points that quietly reduce senior performance Renewed personal confidence in the moments where reputation is actually decided

Why organisations work with Rasmus Hougaard He runs one of the largest applied research programmes on senior leadership behaviour, with data on more than 75,000 leaders in over 100 countries through Potential Project, which gives his content a defensibility most leadership speakers cannot match. Three Harvard Business Review Press books form a single argument, mindfulness, compassion, and AI-augmented leadership, which means a client can build a multi-year leadership curriculum around one coherent thesis rather than a single talk. His “compassionate leadership” framework gives executives a usable language for difficult conversations, restructures, and performance decisions, which is exactly the territory where senior people most often damage their credibility. Potential Project has long-running operating relationships with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, and others, so the content has been pressure-tested inside large complex organisations, not just on the conference circuit. Thinkers50 shortlisting for the Leadership Award places him in the small set of leadership thinkers whose work is taken seriously by senior HR and people-development functions globally. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of Potential Project, a global leadership development and research firm working with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, and Sony among others. Co-author of three Harvard Business Review Press books: “The Mind of the Leader”, “Compassionate Leadership”, and “More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead”. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award and named by Thinkers50 among the most important emerging leadership thinkers. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. Research base of more than 75,000 leaders across 100+ countries underpins his frameworks and talks. Has delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops to senior leadership audiences globally. Biography Most leadership development goes wrong at the same point. It treats the hard part of leadership, the decision that will upset someone, the conversation the leader has been avoiding, the moment of public pressure, as a communications problem. Potential Project, the firm Rasmus Hougaard founded and runs as Managing Director, has spent more than a decade arguing that it is an inner-discipline problem, and producing the research to show it. The argument runs through three Harvard Business Review Press books written with Jacqueline Carter. “The Mind of the Leader” drew on data from around 35,000 senior leaders to identify the mental qualities that distinguish those whose organisations actually follow them. “Compassionate Leadership” reframed the executive’s most uncomfortable moments, performance conversations, redundancies, restructure announcements, as a question of how to be honest without becoming cold. “More Human”, published by HBR Press in 2025, takes the same lens to AI and asks what leaders should do more of, not less, as machines take on more of the work. Potential Project’s client list, Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, Sony, and others, gives the work an operating substance that pure-academic leadership thinkers rarely match. The firm’s research spans more than 75,000 leaders across 100 countries. Thinkers50 has shortlisted him for its Leadership Award and listed him among the most important emerging leadership thinkers globally, and he contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. For a senior people function under pressure to make leadership development do real work in a fatigued organisation, the value is in the through-line. One firm, one body of evidence, one argument about what serious leadership requires in 2026, and a deep enough catalogue to anchor a multi-year programme rather than a single keynote. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and difficult conversations AI-augmented leadership Mindful leadership and executive composure Senior leadership development at scale Leading hybrid and distributed teams Culture and trust inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning senior leadership programmes Executive committees facing restructure, redundancy, or post-acquisition integration Boards and CEOs sponsoring AI rollouts where leadership behaviour, not technology, is the bottleneck Heads of leadership development and learning at global enterprises Audience outcomes A defensible model for handling the conversations leaders most often avoid Concrete practices for sustaining composure and judgement under sustained pressure A clearer view of where AI should and should not replace human leadership work Language to describe what “good leadership” actually looks like in their organisation, grounded in research rather than slogans Reference points from a peer set of global enterprises that have implemented the work

Why organisations work with Angie McQuillin Gives technically strong managers the specific behavioural tools to hold difficult conversations they currently avoid, not a theory of why those conversations matter. Works the seam between imposter syndrome and assertiveness where most confidence training stops short: what to say, how to say it, and how to hold the line when pushed back on. Psychology degree and MBTI-certified, with 15+ years inside corporate HR at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot, so the behavioural science lands in language an operating leader recognises. Track record as a keynote for mixed senior and emerging-leader audiences, including the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference and in-house programmes at Disney, EasyJet, Amazon, Barclays and KPMG. Sessions are designed as interactive workshops, not lectures, so participants leave with scripts and techniques they can test the next working day. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) in Psychology and certified MBTI Practitioner. 15+ years in corporate HR and international staffing, including roles across Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot. Keynote speaker and workshop lead for Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and Norcan Petroleum. Announced keynote speaker at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference, Birmingham. Coaching practice focused on confidence, assertiveness, imposter syndrome, conflict resolution and leadership communication. Biography Most confidence programmes stop at the mindset. They tell people to back themselves and leave them there. The harder problem, what to actually say in the moment a senior colleague pushes back, a peer oversteps, or a direct report underperforms, is where careers get made or quietly stall. Angie McQuillin builds her work at exactly that point. Trained in psychology with a BSc (Hons) and certified as an MBTI Practitioner, she spent 15 years inside corporate HR and international staffing at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot before moving full time into coaching and speaking. That HR background matters. She has sat in the rooms where promotion decisions get made and watched capable people lose ground because they could not have one specific conversation. Her sessions translate that pattern into behaviour. Managers and emerging leaders learn how to raise a concern without apologising for it, handle pushback without escalating, and hold a position under pressure. Imposter syndrome, assertiveness and conflict are treated as linked problems rather than separate workshops. Client rosters reflect the range: Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and the keynote slot at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference in Birmingham. The register is interactive rather than inspirational. Audiences leave with scripts and techniques they can test in their next meeting, which is the test that matters to the HR directors and L&D leads who hire her. Key speaking topics Self-confidence and imposter syndrome Assertive communication Leadership communication Conflict resolution and difficult conversations Growth mindset Resilience under pressure Personal impact and influence Ideal for CHROs, L&D directors and talent leads building emerging-leader and first-time manager programmes. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs addressing confidence, voice and visibility. Technical and functional leadership populations where communication is the bottleneck to promotion. Organisations running culture work on feedback, psychological safety and conflict norms. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the conversations they currently avoid, including pushback, performance and boundary-setting. Specific techniques for handling imposter syndrome as it arrives, not as an abstract concept. A clearer read of their own communication defaults under stress and what to adjust first. Confidence grounded in behaviour they can repeat, not a temporary lift from the room.

Why organisations work with Susan David She is the named originator of Emotional Agility, a peer-reviewed psychological framework that Harvard Business Review designated a Management Idea of the Year and Thinkers50 awarded its Breakthrough Idea Award. Her authority sits at Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, which means leadership teams get clinical psychology, not motivational content dressed as science. She gives senior leaders a usable method for operating under pressure: working with hard emotions as signal rather than noise, and translating values into decisions when stakes are high. Her research base spans more than two decades of work on emotion, resilience and change, and her writing in HBR, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal puts her in front of the same readership a board does. She is South African, trained at Yale, and brings a register that travels across global executive audiences without the wellness-industry tone that often blunts this material. Biography highlights Faculty psychologist, Harvard Medical School. Cofounder and co-director, Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. CEO, Evidence Based Psychology. Author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Emotional Agility, translated into more than 30 languages. Winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award; named to the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. TED Talk “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage” delivered at TEDWomen 2017, with more than 11 million views on TED.com. Biography Most leadership advice asks senior people to stay positive under pressure. The clinical evidence says the opposite. Suppressing difficult emotion narrows judgement, erodes decision quality and corrodes trust over time. That gap, between the slogan and the science, is where Susan David built her work. She is a faculty psychologist at Harvard Medical School and cofounder of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. Her framework, Emotional Agility, was named a Management Idea of the Year by Harvard Business Review and won the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. The book of the same title was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into more than 30 languages. The framework treats emotions as data on values, not as performance problems. It gives leaders a way to notice what they are feeling, label it accurately, separate the feeling from the impulse to act on it, and then make a values-based choice. It is a discipline, not a mood, and it scales from individual executive judgement to how cultures handle hard conversations, conflict and change. Her work has reached management readers through HBR, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and a wider audience through her TEDWomen 2017 talk. The audiences that book her are usually executive teams under sustained pressure: leadership groups mid-restructure, partner cohorts in professional services, and senior teams trying to rebuild trust after shock. They leave with a method, not a mood-lift. Key speaking topics Emotional agility Self-leadership under pressure Resilience and change Decision-making under stress Values-based leadership Workplace mental health and wellbeing Culture and emotional honesty at work Ideal for CEOs, C-suite teams and boards leading through restructure, integration or sustained pressure. CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after change. Partner groups and senior cohorts in professional services, finance and law. Executive development and high-potential leadership programmes. Audience outcomes A working definition of emotional agility, with the four steps that turn it from idea into practice. A way to read difficult emotions as data on values rather than as problems to suppress. Language to lead hard conversations without retreating into positivity or performance. A method for staying decisive under pressure, including in moments of public scrutiny or internal conflict. A clearer link between personal values and the day-to-day choices a leadership role demands.