Employee Engagement speakers

Why organisations work with Robert Holden His Be Happy programme is one of the few wellbeing interventions to have been independently tested by academic scientists on national television, giving HR and culture leaders a credible, evidence-grounded answer to the “is any of this real” question from finance and the board. Twenty years of corporate work with Dove on the Real Beauty Campaign and Unilever on brand purpose across 400 brands means he speaks to wellbeing and purpose as commercial, not pastoral, conversations. Success Intelligence reframes high performance for senior teams who have hit their targets and are quietly running on empty, an audience that generic resilience speakers do not credibly reach. A back catalogue of 14 books with Hay House and Penguin Random House, two BBC documentaries, two TEDx talks and a long Oprah association gives him cultural recognition that lifts an internal event out of a routine wellness slot. Biography highlights Ph.D. in psychology and spirituality; founder of The Happiness Project (1994), originally NHS-sponsored. Subject of two BBC documentaries, The Happiness Formula and How to Be Happy, shown in 20 countries to more than 30 million viewers. Be Happy programme was independently tested by Professor Michael Argyle (Oxford) and Professor Richard Davidson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for the BBC QED science strand. Appointed team coach to the leaders of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign in 2005; later led brand-purpose work with Unilever across its 400 brands. New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, including Happiness NOW!, Authentic Success, Loveability, Life Loves You (with Louise Hay) and Higher Purpose. Two TEDx talks (Destination Addiction, The Tea Meditation); featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, and PBS. Biography The Happiness Project began in 1994 as an NHS-sponsored clinic in west London, treating happiness as a clinical question rather than a self-help category. Two years later, the BBC built a QED science documentary around its eight-week programme, with Oxford’s Michael Argyle and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Richard Davidson measuring outcomes. The documentary reached more than 30 million viewers in 20 countries and gave Robert Holden a platform other wellbeing voices have struggled to match. From that base, Holden built Success Intelligence, a consulting practice working with senior teams on the version of high performance that does not quietly burn people out. In 2005 he was appointed team coach to the leaders of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, and the brand-purpose work that followed extended into Unilever’s broader portfolio. His books, fourteen of them across Hay House and Penguin Random House, sit on the same line of inquiry: Happiness NOW!, Authentic Success, Loveability, Life Loves You with Louise Hay, and Higher Purpose. Two TEDx talks and a long association with Oprah have kept the audience wide. What organisations get from Holden is a serious, non-corporate voice on questions HR and senior teams now have to answer in commercial language: why people commit, what purpose actually means inside a P&L, and why happiness, properly defined, is closer to a leadership variable than a benefit. Key speaking topics Happiness and wellbeing at work Success Intelligence and authentic success Purpose-led leadership and brand purpose Resilience and burnout in senior teams Creative thinking through change Coaching and personal development Mental health and positive psychology Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture rebuilding wellbeing strategies that have to land with finance and the board. Senior leadership offsites where high-performing teams are quietly fatigued and need a different framing of success. Brand and marketing leadership working through purpose, authenticity and customer trust. Conferences on the future of work, employee engagement, and mental health in the workplace. Audience outcomes A clearer, evidence-backed view of what happiness at work actually is, and what it is not. Language to talk about wellbeing and purpose with commercial credibility, not pastoral softness. Practical inquiries from Success Intelligence that senior leaders can apply to their own working patterns. A sharper account of why purpose work succeeds inside some organisations and fails inside others. Permission, particularly for senior audiences, to take the question of meaning at work seriously.

Why organisations work with Roberto Forzoni Authored the textbook the Football Association embedded into its national coaching curriculum (The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football, Hodder, 2004). The intellectual model has been tested at scale across FA coach education, not only in private practice. Built the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary support model during his tenure as National Performance Psychologist at the Lawn Tennis Association, 2007 to 2009. The structure has since been adopted by other federations and players as a template. Has done the hands-on work alongside the consultancy. First-team coaching roles under Steve Coppell at Crystal Palace, Brentford and Brighton; performance psychology at West Ham United, Southampton, Charlton and Norwich City. He has been in the dressing room when pressure broke a team and when it did not. Holds an MSc in Sport Sciences (Distinction) from Brunel University and BASES accreditation, with applied training in CBT, motivational interviewing and solution-focused practice. The clinical depth is unusual for a performance speaker. Standing BBC consultant on performance and mindset for more than two decades, with further contributions on Sky and Al Jazeera. The perspective has been publicly tested over time, not assembled for the stage. Biography highlights Lead author of The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004), embedded by the Football Association into its national coaching curriculum. National Performance Psychologist at the Lawn Tennis Association from 2007 to 2009. Created the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary support model during Andy Murray’s early Grand Slam years. First-team coaching and performance psychology roles across eight Premier League clubs, including West Ham United, Southampton, Brentford, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Charlton Athletic and Norwich City. MSc Sport Sciences (Distinction), Brunel University. BASES-accredited Sport Psychologist, with further training in CBT, motivational interviewing and solution-focused practice. BBC consultant on performance and mindset across BBC TV and BBC Radio for more than two decades, with further contributions on Sky and Al Jazeera. Psychological coach to Olympic and World Championship athletes, including heavyweight Derek Chisora’s preparation for his title fight against Tyson Fury and Olympic sprinter Ashleigh Nelson. Biography The West Ham squad that brought in Roberto Forzoni as performance psychologist was running a 23% win rate. Nine games later, after the team had completed a Premier League double over both Manchester United and Arsenal, the win rate sat at 78%. The intervention was psychological. That kind of recovery has shown up repeatedly across Forzoni’s thirty years inside elite sport. He has held first-team coaching and performance psychology roles at eight Premier League clubs, including West Ham United, Southampton, Brentford and Crystal Palace. He prepared heavyweight Derek Chisora for the title fight against Tyson Fury, and built the “Team Murray” multidisciplinary model during Andy Murray’s early years on the tour. The published work sits in football. Forzoni is the lead author of The Official FA Guide to Psychology for Football, the textbook the Football Association embedded into its coach education programme in 2004. The intellectual base draws on an MSc in Sport Sciences (Distinction) from Brunel University, BASES accreditation, and applied training in CBT and solution-focused practice. More than two decades of BBC consultancy on performance and mindset have put the perspective into wide public circulation. What Forzoni brings into a corporate room is a particular reading of senior team behaviour under pressure. The patterns he watches for were diagnosed in dressing rooms and on Centre Court. Composure narrows under scrutiny. Strong personalities stop bringing their best to the group when results turn. For Forzoni, these are coachable problems, drawn from the same evidence base a relegation-threatened Premier League squad would use. Key speaking topics Performance psychology Team dynamics under pressure Composure and emotional regulation in senior leadership Recovery from public setback Mindset and behavioural change in elite environments Wellbeing and sustained performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams under sustained external scrutiny or after a publicly visible setback CEOs and executive committees in restructure, post-merger integration or change cycles, where the constraint has become team behaviour CHROs and L&D directors building team-effectiveness and resilience programmes for senior talent High-stakes client-facing teams in sales, professional services and trading environments Audience outcomes A specific language for the behaviours that hold a team together under pressure and the behaviours that split it apart The techniques used inside Premier League dressing rooms and Grand Slam tennis to regulate nerves and recover after a public setback An honest read of the gap between a leadership team’s stated values and how it actually behaves when results stall Composure approached as a deliberate behaviour leaders can train, with specific drills Forzoni uses inside elite sport The discipline of asking “Did I work as hard as I could today?” as a daily performance check, a question Forzoni draws from elite athletes

Why organisations work with Roger Delves Two decades inside one of Europe’s most established executive education faculties, teaching senior leaders in London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and across Europe. Co-author of The Top 50 Management Dilemmas (Pearson) and co-editor of Inspiring Leadership (Bloomsbury), so his content is tested against the everyday tensions managers actually face, not theoretical models. A practitioner background that runs through advertising board directorship and founding Ireland’s first international advertising agency. Leadership content built from operator experience, not academic distance. Multiple-time Hult Professor of the Year, voted by MBA and EMBA cohorts. He earns the trust of the audiences senior buyers want him in front of. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership Practice and Dean of Qualifications, Hult Ashridge Executive Education Director of the Ashridge MBA and Ashridge Masters in Management Co-author, The Top 50 Management Dilemmas (Pearson, 2013) with Sona Sherratt Co-editor, Inspiring Leadership: Becoming a Dynamic and Engaging Leader (Bloomsbury, 2017) with Dr Kerrie Fleming Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; MA, English, St Catherine’s College, Oxford Multiple-time Hult Professor of the Year, voted by MBA and EMBA students Biography Most leadership content tells senior leaders what good looks like. Very little of it survives contact with a fatigued team, a contested decision, or a quarter when the strategy is not landing. Delves’s teaching is built for that gap. His subject matter is the practical content of authenticity, emotional intelligence and integrity when leaders are under real pressure, not the language of values when conditions are calm. That perspective comes from a hybrid career. He spent his early years in advertising, reaching UK board director at DMB&B, then founded Ireland’s first international advertising agency, serving Mars Masterfoods and Procter & Gamble. He moved into executive education through Cranfield’s Centre for Customised Executive Education before joining Ashridge, where he is now Professor of Leadership Practice and Dean of Qualifications across the MBA and Masters in Management. The published work reflects the same orientation. The Top 50 Management Dilemmas, co-authored with Sona Sherratt for Pearson, takes the recurring tensions managers describe in the room and works through them as decisions rather than concepts. Inspiring Leadership, co-edited with Dr Kerrie Fleming for Bloomsbury, brings together faculty perspectives on what actually develops leaders rather than what merely describes them. He has been voted Hult Professor of the Year by MBA and EMBA students on multiple occasions, and teaches across London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Europe. What organisations get from him is a serious examination of how leaders make defensible decisions when the data is incomplete and the audience is watching. He treats authenticity as a discipline, not a slogan, and he is comfortable saying so in front of senior cohorts who have heard most of it before. Key speaking topics Authentic leadership Emotional intelligence in senior leadership Leadership decision-making under pressure Transformational leadership and change Values, ethics and integrity in management Team engagement and follower psychology Leadership in uncertain conditions Ideal for Senior leadership programmes for executive committees, divisional MDs, and high-potential cohorts Heads of leadership development and CLOs designing flagship leader interventions CHROs and CPOs commissioning content for engagement and culture programmes MBA, EMBA and partner cohorts within corporate universities Audience outcomes A sharper read on where their own leadership credibility comes from, and where it leaks Working language for emotional intelligence that is usable in a leadership team, not a workshop Specific tests for whether a decision is authentic or merely consistent A diagnostic for the everyday management dilemmas that erode trust if handled badly Confidence to lead through ambiguity without retreating into process

Why organisations work with Ross Reekie He brings primary research material that most engagement speakers do not have: the Fun Jobs Project is a multi-year field experiment in which he personally took on roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to test where meaning actually originates at work. He treats meaning as a performance variable, not a wellbeing variable. The argument lands with operating leaders who have stopped believing engagement programmes pay back. His academic base is serious. An Engineering degree from Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and PhD-track research at Macquarie give him a credible research spine to sit alongside the field work. He is built for interactive formats. His keynote uses live experiments, props and audience participation rather than slide narration, which suits internal leadership offsites and culture-launch events. He has tested the same content across two continents and across sectors, with named conference platforms including TEDxMonashUniversity, TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity, and the Urban Future Global Conference. Biography highlights Founder of Rise Consulting, Sydney, working with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture. TEDx speaker at TEDxMonashUniversity (2019) and TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity (2019). Creator of the Fun Jobs Project, a live research experiment into the sources of meaning at work. Host of The Meaning of Work podcast, with hundreds of interviews from interns to chief executives. MBA and Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney; Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh; Master’s in Research underway at Macquarie University. Twenty years of consulting work with leadership teams across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. Biography Most organisations have stopped believing their own engagement data. Scores hold steady, but discretionary effort drains away, and the standard interventions of values workshops, recognition platforms and mission refreshes no longer change behaviour. The interesting question is no longer whether people are engaged. It is what they are committing to, and why. Ross Reekie has spent two decades inside that question. He founded Rise Consulting in Sydney to work with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture, building on twenty years of consulting across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. His academic base sits alongside the practice: an Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and Master’s research at Macquarie University on what makes work matter. The Fun Jobs Project is what sets the work apart. After burning out as the meaningful-work expert who had lost meaning in his own work, Reekie ran a live experiment on himself, taking roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to opera extra to test where engagement actually comes from. The output is a model of meaning that starts with a playful, exploratory mindset rather than with mission statements, and that treats curiosity and connection as performance inputs. He brings the same material to TEDx stages at Monash and Glasgow Caledonian, to the Urban Future Global Conference, and to private leadership rooms. His keynote runs as a live, interactive session rather than a talk, with props and audience experiments built in. For a senior people or transformation leader trying to revive a tired culture, he gives them a research-grounded argument they can hand to an operating board. Key speaking topics Meaningful work and workplace culture Employee engagement and the social contract of work Purpose and authenticity in leadership Burnout and recovery in senior teams Belonging and team connection Fear as a performance blocker Playful curiosity as a leadership capability Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement after a period of flat scores or fatigued change programmes Heads of culture and internal communications launching or refreshing a purpose narrative Leadership teams and executive offsites looking for a working session rather than a talk Conference organisers in the future-of-work, employee experience, and urban or civic-leadership space Audience outcomes A research-grounded view of why meaning at work is a performance question, not a wellbeing question A clear distinction between engagement programmes that move behaviour and those that do not Specific language for the mindset shifts that produce more discretionary commitment at work Practical prompts for leaders to test on their own teams before changing anything organisation-wide A felt experience of a working session, not a lecture, that participants can replicate in their own offsites

Why organisations work with Ryan Campbell He turns a story most audiences expect to be inspirational into a working framework. The Joy Audit gives leaders and teams a specific weekly practice for protecting attention, recovery, and engagement. He speaks to burnout from inside it. Campbell has publicly described a period when, despite physical recovery and external success, his mental health was at its worst, which gives the keynote an honesty that resilience theatre lacks. The 1960 pink Cadillac is not a stage prop, it is the structural anchor of his argument. Audiences leave with a single concrete image that survives the flight home and the inbox. His credentials are independently verifiable: Guinness World Record for the youngest solo circumnavigation, Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year, recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers. He is comfortable speaking to safety-critical and high-performance industries. Aviation, healthcare, and emergency services audiences recognise a speaker who has sat in the rehab ward and the cockpit. Biography highlights Youngest pilot in history to fly solo around the world, age 19, completing 24,000 nautical miles in 70 days from Wollongong, NSW. Australian Geographic Society’s Young Adventurer of the Year, 2013. Recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers (Trailblazers exhibition). Author of Born to Fly (HarperCollins Australia). Returned to commercial flying as an incomplete paraplegic after a Tiger Moth crash in 2015. Featured on 60 Minutes and NBC’s Today. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are designed for the average week, not the weeks that break people. They assume the problem is information, when in practice it is attention. Campbell’s keynote starts from that gap. The credentials behind the talk are uncommonly concrete. At 19 he became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world, a 70-day, 24,000-nautical-mile flight from Wollongong, NSW that earned a Guinness World Record and Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year. The Australian Museum included him among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers in its Trailblazers exhibition. He wrote the journey up in Born to Fly, published by HarperCollins Australia. Two years later, an engine-out in a Tiger Moth ended in a crash that left him an incomplete paraplegic. He spent six months in spinal rehab, then returned to flying, eventually qualifying as a commercial helicopter pilot with modified controls. The arc is well-documented in Australian Geographic and on long-form podcasts, including Beyond the Crucible. The keynote is not the crash. The keynote is what he learned about burnout in the years after, when his mental health was worse than at any point in the rehab ward. The Joy Audit and the “What’s Your Pink Cadillac?” framework came out of that period. They are deliberately small, weekly, and operational, which is why corporate audiences in safety-critical industries take them seriously. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Burnout and recovery Resilience and performance under pressure Workplace wellbeing and culture Motivation and lived-experience leadership Aviation and high-stakes decision-making Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reviewing wellbeing strategy and burnout response. Leadership offsites and senior team meetings in safety-critical industries (aviation, healthcare, emergency services, energy). All-hands and annual conferences where the brief is to reset the conversation on mental health without a generic awareness talk. Sales kickoffs and high-pressure commercial teams operate through sustained intensity. Audience outcomes A clear, named framework (the Joy Audit) that audiences can apply in the week after the keynote. A specific argument for treating recovery and joy as performance inputs, not benefits-package items. A vocabulary for raising mental health inside high-performance teams without softening the standard. A memorable single image, the 1960 pink Cadillac, that anchors the message past the event itself.

Why organisations work with Sam Silverstein A 30-year body of work that treats accountability as an operating system, not a virtue. Buyers get a structured method, not a motivational reset. Founder of The Accountability Institute and creator of the Certified Accountability Advisor designation. The frameworks are productised, taught, and used inside client organisations long after the keynote. Author of 13 books on the subject, anchored by No More Excuses and The Accountability Advantage. Senior teams can verify the substance before they commission the talk. CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee and past President of the National Speakers Association. The peer recognition is from people who book and brief speakers for a living. Practitioner credibility: built and sold a manufacturing business to a Fortune 500 acquirer before turning to the topic full-time. The room reads him as an operator who later became an author. Biography highlights Founder of The Accountability Institute and the Certified Accountability Advisor programme. Author of 13 books, including No More Excuses, The Accountability Advantage, No Matter What, Non-Negotiable, and Pivot!. CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, inducted by the National Speakers Association in 2021. Past President of the National Speakers Association (2008). Named one of the World’s Top 30 Organisational Culture Professionals by Global Gurus. Former owner of manufacturing and distribution companies with combined sales over $100 million, including a successful exit to a Fortune 500 company. Biography Most organisations treat accountability as a tone of voice. Silverstein treats it as a structure. His work, developed over three decades and codified through The Accountability Institute, defines accountability as the willingness to keep commitments to others. That definition is operational, not motivational, and it changes how leaders are expected to behave when no one is watching the dashboard. The frameworks sit inside thirteen books, beginning with No More Excuses and built out through The Accountability Advantage, No Matter What, Non-Negotiable, and the Certified Accountability Advisor designation that licenses the method to practitioners. Clients use them to address the problems culture decks usually skirt: turnover that erodes margin, change programmes that lose energy after launch, and senior leaders who carry decisions that should live closer to the customer. The credentials are equally serious. The National Speakers Association inducted him into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame in 2021, and he previously served as the association’s President. Global Gurus has named him among the world’s top thirty organisational culture professionals. The peer recognition matters because it comes from the part of the industry that watches speakers under pressure. Before any of this, he built and ran manufacturing and distribution companies with combined sales above $100 million and sold one of them to a Fortune 500 acquirer. That history is why the room reads him as an operator first. The accountability argument lands harder because the person making it has been the one writing the cheque for the consequences of weak execution. Key speaking topics Accountability as a culture operating discipline Organisational culture and retention Values-driven leadership Change adoption and resistance Trust and team commitment Disengagement and turnover reduction Ideal for CHROs and people directors facing retention and engagement pressure COOs and operating leaders translating strategy into consistent execution CEOs leading culture or values resets after restructure, merger, or rapid growth Leadership development and L&D teams building behavioural standards across the management layer Audience outcomes A working definition of accountability that separates it from blame, compliance, or performance management A clear view of where commitments break down inside their own organisation Specific behaviours that leaders can adopt to model accountability without micromanaging A vocabulary for culture that the senior team can use in operating meetings, not just engagement surveys A defensible answer to “what would change if we actually did this?”

Why organisations work with Samantha Clarke Treats workplace wellbeing as a design problem. Her Masters-level training in Neuroaesthetics and Global Innovation Design gives her a scientific framework for how physical space and sensory conditions shape performance. It is territory most workplace wellbeing consultants never enter. Teaches regularly at three distinct platforms: The School of Life, Simon Sinek’s Inspire U, and The Guardian Masterclasses. The material has been refined across years of teaching, not just delivered on a speaker circuit. Author of Love It Or Leave It: How to Be Happy at Work (Octopus Publishing Group, 2020). The book sets out a framework for career fit decisions that HR leaders have used to structure retention and talent development conversations with senior talent. Qualified as a Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Facilitator, one of few workplace speakers with formal training in a non-Western model of measuring wellbeing. The credential brings practical weight to what otherwise risks becoming a philosophical conversation about happiness at work. Client roster includes JP Morgan, LVMH, Accenture, Samsung and Pinterest. The work holds up in performance-first cultures where wellbeing programmes are often treated with suspicion. Biography highlights Author of Love It Or Leave It: How to Be Happy at Work (Octopus Publishing Group, 2020) TEDx speaker, “Are You Ready to Break Up With Work?” (TEDxRoyalTunbridgeWells) Faculty lecturer at The School of Life; lecturer and facilitator at Simon Sinek’s Inspire U platform; facilitator for The Guardian Masterclasses Masters-level training in Neuroaesthetics and Global Innovation Design for Social Change; qualified Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Facilitator; MIT training in Neuroscience for Business; ICF-accredited Co-Active and ORSC coach Appeared in conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Angela Duckworth at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Summit Featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Monocle, Stylist, Harper’s Bazaar, Psychologies, Evening Standard, BBC Woman’s Hour and BBC Radio 4 Client work across JP Morgan, LVMH, Accenture, Samsung, Pinterest, Unilever, Nespresso, ITV and the NHS Biography Organisations spend more on wellbeing than at any point in their history, and employee engagement keeps falling. The gap between intention and outcome is where Samantha Clarke works. She treats wellbeing as a design problem: something shaped by how work is structured, led and experienced, before any programme begins. Her methodology draws on neuroaesthetics, coaching practice and positive psychology. The Masters-level training in Neuroaesthetics and Global Innovation Design equipped her to think about how physical space and sensory design shape cognitive and emotional capacity. A Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Facilitator qualification adds a non-Western model for measuring wellbeing; MIT Neuroscience for Business adds the biological layer. She teaches at The School of Life as a faculty lecturer, and runs programmes for Simon Sinek’s Inspire U platform and The Guardian Masterclasses. Her TEDx talk “Are You Ready to Break Up With Work?” takes the central question to a wider audience. Her book Love It Or Leave It: How to Be Happy at Work (Octopus, 2020) takes the same argument to individuals: a framework for deciding whether a role still fits. The material on resilience and sustainable performance also draws on her lived experience of sickle cell anaemia and chronic pain. That experience is the reason her work on stress and burnout sits on a different foundation from motivational treatment of the same topics. Clients including JP Morgan, LVMH, Accenture, Samsung, Pinterest, Unilever, Nespresso and the NHS have brought her into senior teams where those topics matter. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing and culture design Happiness and fulfilment at work Burnout prevention and sustainable performance Employee engagement and retention Leadership in change and transition Resilience and stress management Neuroaesthetics and workplace environment design Ideal for CHROs and People leaders reviewing wellbeing and engagement strategy Senior leadership teams addressing burnout and retention in high-performance environments Culture and transformation leads designing new operating rhythms HR directors shifting from programme-led to design-led wellbeing Audience outcomes Specific reasons their wellbeing initiatives have failed to improve engagement, and what is missing Language to distinguish wellbeing-as-benefit from wellbeing-as-design inside their own organisation Methods to identify signature drop-off points in the employee experience before those become attrition problems Rhythms leaders can install in their own teams without adding another programme layer A sharper view of when individual performance issues are in fact organisational design issues

Why organisations work with Sara Ross A named, proprietary framework. LeadFULL gives leadership teams a shared operating language for shifting out of effort management and into capacity management, grounded in her own multi-year workplace vitality research. A book with a thesis, not a brand. Dear Work, Something Has to Change sets out a specific argument about why current wellbeing interventions fail and what replaces them, which gives leaders something to act on after the keynote. Independent recognition from named bodies. Global Gurus ranked her among its Top 10 Keynote Speakers for 2026, Real Leaders named her a Top Impact Speaker, and SUCCESS Magazine made her a 2023 Woman of Influence, the kind of third-party validation buyers use to defend a shortlist. A working track record in high-pressure organisations. Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, and the U.S. Navy have used her work in environments where fatigue carries a direct operational cost. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Vitality Officer, BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm. Author of the bestselling Dear Work, Something Has to Change, built on a three-year Workplace Vitality Study of over 10,000 people. Global Gurus Top 10 Keynote Speakers (2026), Real Leaders Top Impact Speaker, and LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. 2023 Woman of Influence, SUCCESS Magazine. Featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, and Psychology Today, with more than 500 engagements delivered. Former executive with nearly two decades in leadership research and development; client work spans Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Deloitte, the U.S. Navy, and Stanford Health Care. Biography Wellbeing has been a corporate priority for a decade, and most senior teams are no closer to fixing the underlying problem. Capable people are still leaving, performance is still uneven, and the cost of fatigue is now showing up in decisions, not just disengagement scores. Sara Ross’s work begins with that observation. She is the founder of BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm, and author of Dear Work, Something Has to Change, which draws on her own multi-year study of workplace vitality. The book makes a specific argument: leaders have been taught to manage effort, when what now matters is managing state. Capacity, not endurance, becomes the operating variable. Out of that research she built LeadFULL, a framework she uses with senior teams to translate the argument into practical leadership behaviour. It sits at the intersection of emotional intelligence, behavioural science, and organisational culture, areas she has worked in for close to two decades, most recently as a global head of leadership innovation before founding BrainAMPED. The work has earned external recognition: a Top 10 Global Gurus keynote ranking for 2026, a Top Impact Speaker listing from Real Leaders, and a 2023 Woman of Influence award from SUCCESS Magazine. Her writing appears in Fast Company, Forbes, and Psychology Today. Across more than 500 engagements, her clients include Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, and the U.S. Navy, where fatigue carries a direct operational cost. Key speaking topics Workplace vitality and sustainable high performance Leadership in the age of burnout and fatigue Change leadership and future-ready resilience Human-centred leadership in the age of AI Emotional intelligence at senior levels The future of work and hybrid-era engagement Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning engagement and wellbeing strategy beyond the wellness-vendor cycle. CEOs and senior leadership teams carrying the cost of leadership fatigue and sustained operational pressure. Transformation and change leaders whose workforces are fatigued by repeated restructuring and AI-driven change. Heads of leadership development running flagship programmes for senior and high-potential leaders. Audience outcomes A clear, named distinction between managing effort and managing state, and why the second is the strategic variable. Specific leadership behaviours that reduce fatigue without lowering performance expectations. A practical reading of why current wellbeing initiatives stall, and what shifts the curve. Language senior teams can use with each other to talk about capacity, recovery, and sustained output without it sounding soft.

Why organisations work with Sarah Moshman Her documentary Nevertheless is in active use as a sexual harassment prevention tool by employers and educators through distributor Indieflix, giving HR and DEI leads a piece of external content that has survived independent review. The Empowerment Project has been screened more than 700 times for corporate and education audiences and has been picked up as programming by Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab, which is a working track record for women’s leadership events rather than a speculative pitch. She brings a regional Emmy in the Human Interest category and a NASA CineSpace first-place win for UNBOUND, which gives her credibility as a maker, not only as a speaker telling stories about her own life. She has been booked into difficult rooms, including a US Air Force women’s symposium at Hill Air Force Base and the opening keynote at the PEI Women Conference, where the audience is not the converted. Her commercial film work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel means she understands the brief from a marketing buyer’s side and can speak credibly to internal communications and brand teams about storytelling that performs. Biography highlights Emmy Award winner, NATAS Chicago/Midwest Chapter, 2013, for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. Director of three feature documentaries: The Empowerment Project (2014), Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) and Nevertheless (2020). UNBOUND won First Place at NASA’s CineSpace Global Short Film Competition. Author of Empowered Filmmaking: How To Make a Documentary On Your Own Terms (2020). Branded content work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel. Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Marie Claire, Upworthy and PBS; TEDx speaker; adjunct professor in documentary film. Biography Compliance-led harassment training is the work environment most employees have come to mistrust. The films Sarah Moshman has made for the same audience take the opposite route. Nevertheless, her 2020 feature documentary, follows seven survivors across industries from a tech CEO to a 911 dispatcher, and is now distributed by Indieflix as part of structured prevention education in workplaces and schools. That outsider craft is what organisations are actually booking. The Empowerment Project, her 2014 feature on women in leadership across the US, has been screened more than 700 times for audiences from corporates to schools, and has carried sponsorship from Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab. Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) follows four women rowing more than 8,000 miles across the Pacific and gives her a second register: endurance and team performance under conditions where every easy out has been removed. The credentials behind the work are specific. A regional Emmy in 2013 for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. First place at NASA’s CineSpace competition for the short UNBOUND. A book, Empowered Filmmaking, that documents how the films were funded, made and licensed to Netflix. Branded content commissions from SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel that confirm she can produce inside a marketing brief, not only on her own terms. In a room, she works from her own footage. The PEI Women Conference opened with her in 2019, the US Air Force hosted her at the Hill women’s symposium, and her TEDx delivery is on public record. The result is the rare speaker on these topics whose primary asset is film that an organisation can keep using long after the keynote ends. Key speaking topics Workplace sexual harassment prevention Women’s leadership and the next generation pipeline Storytelling for brand and internal communications Inclusion and allyship after #MeToo Courage and risk-taking in early careers Documentary craft and the business of independent film Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and ER teams running harassment prevention or culture programmes Internal communications and employer brand leaders looking for narrative content Women’s leadership networks and ERG anchor events CMOs and brand teams interested in long-form storytelling as a commercial asset Audience outcomes A documentary screening or curated clips package that gives employees a shared piece of content to discuss, rather than a slide-led training A clear account of how the Nevertheless survivors describe what allyship looked like in practice, including from peers and managers Specific examples of how women profiled in The Empowerment Project moved into senior roles, useful as case material for internal mentoring conversations A working method for using story to make uncomfortable workplace conversations possible without defensiveness

Why organisations work with Scott Deming He ran the agency before he ran the keynote. Deming built Ryan Communications to 70 staff and around USD 30m in revenue, serving clients including Benjamin Moore and The Scotts Company, so his views on brand and customer experience come from operating accountability rather than observation. His thesis in The Brand Who Cried Wolf (Wiley, 2007) is unusually concrete for the category: brand is the cumulative outcome of every customer interaction, and most brands fail because they over-promise in marketing and under-deliver in operations. Powered by Purpose gives leadership teams a working language for connecting individual values to customer-facing behaviour, which is where most culture programmes break down. Client list spans regulated and operationally complex environments: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, General Motors, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Delta Airlines, PwC, U.S. Treasury, McDonald’s of Eastern Europe. Useful when buyers want a speaker who has worked inside their kind of complexity, not adjacent to it. He writes regularly for Entrepreneur on customer experience, leadership and innovation, which keeps the material in active circulation rather than locked to a single book cycle. Biography highlights Author, The Brand Who Cried Wolf: Deliver on Your Company’s Promise and Create Customers for Life (John Wiley & Sons, 2007). Author, Powered by Purpose: Identify Your Values, Discover Your Purpose, and Build Success for Life! Founder of Deming Advertising in 1986, later Ryan Communications Inc.; grew the agency to 70 employees and approximately USD 30m in annual revenue before exit in 2003. Regular contributor to Entrepreneur on customer experience, brand, leadership and innovation. Keynote and training work for AT&T, Verizon Wireless, General Motors, Delta Airlines, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. Treasury, Hershey Foods, McDonald’s of Eastern Europe, 3M, Chipotle and Frito-Lay, among others. Founder and former board member, Service Nation / Service Roundtable. Biography Brand promises are written in marketing and broken in operations. The book that captures this most directly is The Brand Who Cried Wolf, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2007. Its argument is that customer loyalty is built or destroyed in the routine interactions that no advertising campaign can paper over. That argument has a particular weight because the author spent seventeen years running the kind of agency that produces those campaigns. Scott Deming founded Deming Advertising in 1986 and rebuilt it as Ryan Communications Inc., growing the agency to around 70 staff and USD 30m in revenue before exiting in 2003. Clients included Benjamin Moore and The Scotts Company. The view of brand as an operating outcome, not a creative output, was formed inside that business. His second book, Powered by Purpose, extends the thesis inward. Customer experience is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of whether individual employees understand their own values and how those values show up in the work. The book is the basis for his leadership keynote, which leaders use as the language for connecting purpose to customer-facing behaviour. The platform work spans large, operationally complex organisations: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, General Motors, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Delta Airlines, PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. Treasury, McDonald’s of Eastern Europe and others. He writes regularly for Entrepreneur on customer experience, brand, leadership and innovation, and he was a founding board member of Service Nation / Service Roundtable, the network for service-business owners in the trades. Key speaking topics Customer experience and brand loyalty Brand strategy and brand promise Purpose-driven leadership and culture Employee engagement and customer-facing behaviour Sales and customer service performance Innovation in customer-led organisations Ideal for CMOs, CXOs and brand leaders looking to close the gap between marketing promise and customer reality. CEOs and operating leaders accountable for culture as a commercial lever, not an HR slogan. Heads of customer service, sales and retail operations in regulated or franchised environments. Franchise networks, dealer groups and service-business associations where the brand is delivered by independently operated front lines. Audience outcomes A clearer test for whether your brand promise survives contact with your actual customer journey. A working model for connecting employee purpose and values to customer-facing decisions. Practical changes to customer service routines, from frontline scripts to escalation policy, that compound into loyalty. Confidence that culture work has a measurable commercial return, not just a wellbeing one. A shared internal language for talking about brand as an operational discipline rather than a creative one.

Why organisations work with Scott Lesnick He has spent 24 years inside Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 business, before moving into speaking, so the change, retention and communication material is delivered from operating experience, not a consultancy framework. His multigenerational workplace content draws on a five-year practitioner survey and converts it into seven concrete strategies for recruiting, retaining and integrating Millennials, Gen Z and the incoming Generation Alpha. The Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from the National Speakers Association, plus a term as Dean of the NSA Academy for Professional Speakers, is a credential of speaking craft, not of subject expertise, and it shows up in the quality of room-handling for plenary keynotes. The Kidjacked story (recovering his two children after international abduction) gives him a non-negotiable platform for keynotes on resilience and persistence under sustained pressure, used by clients including UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven and SHRM. Biography highlights 24 years in sales and management leadership at Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 company. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association. Former Dean of the Academy for Professional Speakers, National Speakers Association. TEDx speaker, TEDx Oshkosh: “Limited Resources or Unlimited Resourcefulness”. Author of Kidjacked: A Father’s Story and Lifejacked: Life Lessons on Leadership. Named client list includes UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven, SHRM, the Financial Planning Association and the American Association of Orthodontists. Biography For the first time in working memory, five generations are sharing the same office, the same Slack channel and the same performance review system. Traditionalists are exiting, Generation Alpha is starting to arrive, and managers in between are running engagement playbooks built for a workforce that no longer exists. Scott Lesnick built his speaking practice on that problem. After 24 years leading sales and management teams at Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 business, he moved into keynote work full time and built a multigenerational workplace programme around a five-year practitioner survey. The output is a set of seven concrete strategies for recruiting, retaining and integrating workers across Millennials, Gen Z and the incoming cohorts. The resilience material runs alongside it. Lesnick’s memoir Kidjacked tells the story of locating and recovering his two young children after they were abducted to the Middle East, and his second book, Lifejacked, collects interviews with people who came through serious adversity and went on to lead. Both feed into the change, burnout and persistence content he is most often booked for. He holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from the National Speakers Association, served as Dean of the NSA Academy for Professional Speakers, and delivered a TEDx talk on doing more with less at TEDx Oshkosh. Named clients include UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven, SHRM, the Financial Planning Association and the American Association of Orthodontists. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace strategy Leading through organisational change Employee engagement and retention Resilience and burnout Communication across generational cohorts Hybrid workplace dynamics Ideal for CHROs, talent and people leaders rebuilding engagement across a five-generation workforce. Sales and commercial leaders managing teams through restructure or market change. Healthcare, financial services and trade associations running practitioner conferences with mixed-cohort audiences. Internal leadership development programmes for newly promoted managers leading older and younger reports. Audience outcomes Seven practitioner strategies for blending and retaining multiple generations on the same team. A clearer read on what Millennials, Gen Z and Generation Alpha actually respond to in recruitment and engagement design. Specific tools for reducing burnout and protecting decision quality during periods of sustained change. A working vocabulary for inclusion and communication that is portable across the organisation.

Why organisations work with Scott Sonenshein A peer-reviewed thesis with commercial bite: Stretch synthesises a decade of his published research at Rice and Michigan into a working model for resourcefulness, not a recycled productivity argument. Credibility with finance and operations buyers: a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Washington Post pick of the 10 leadership books of 2017, anchored in studies of how constrained firms outperform better-funded rivals. A second franchise on workplace clutter and focus: co-author with Marie Kondo of the New York Times bestseller Joy at Work, giving him reach into culture, productivity and wellbeing briefs as well as strategy. Academic standing that holds up under scrutiny: former Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal, with publications in Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science, and seven Rice Faculty Research Excellence Awards. A speaker who translates research without diluting it: keynotes at Google and Fortune 500 audiences across technology, energy, healthcare, retail, banking and manufacturing. Biography highlights Henry Gardiner Symonds, Professor of Management at Rice Business, Rice University. Author of Stretch (HarperCollins, 2017), a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Washington Post 2017 leadership book of the year selection. Co-author with Marie Kondo of Joy at Work (Little, Brown Spark, 2020), a New York Times bestseller. Ph.D. from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; M.Phil from the University of Cambridge. Former Associate Editor, Academy of Management Journal; published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review and Organization Science. Bylines in the New York Times, Time, Fast Company and Harvard Business Review; speaker at Talks at Google. Biography The instinct in most boardrooms under pressure is to ask for more. More budget, more headcount, more technology, more data. Sonenshein’s research at Rice University, drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, argues that the firms that outperform their rivals tend to do the opposite. They redeploy what they already own. That argument is the spine of Stretch, his Wall Street Journal bestseller, named by the Washington Post as one of the ten leadership books to read in 2017. The book separates two organisational mindsets. Chasers measure themselves by what they lack. Stretchers find unconventional uses for resources, people and capabilities already inside the business. The distinction shows up in margins, in innovation rates, and in how teams behave when the next round of funding does not arrive. The academic credentials behind the argument are unusually strong for a trade book author. Sonenshein holds the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professorship at Rice Business, a Ph.D. from the Ross School of Business at Michigan, and an M.Phil from Cambridge. He has served as Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal and published in Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science. Rice has awarded him its Faculty Research Excellence Award seven times. His second book, Joy at Work, co-written with Marie Kondo and published by Little, Brown Spark in 2020, became a New York Times bestseller and extended his reach into the operating reality of how people focus, prioritise and clear cognitive load at work. That combined ground, the strategy of resourcefulness above and the discipline of focus below, is what makes him useful to executive audiences who cannot solve a growth problem by writing a bigger cheque. Key speaking topics Resourcefulness as a strategic capability Innovation under constraint Organisational change and sensemaking Productivity and focus at work Decluttering professional life and decision load Creativity and growth without additional budget Ideal for Senior leadership teams under cost pressure who still own a growth mandate CHROs and culture leads rebuilding focus, prioritisation and engagement Innovation, transformation and operations leaders running pilots without expansion capital Conferences in technology, energy, healthcare, retail, banking and manufacturing where the audience is operators, not strategists in the abstract Audience outcomes A working language to separate “chasing” from “stretching” inside their own decisions Concrete examples of how constrained firms outperform better-resourced rivals A method for auditing the underused resources, people and capabilities already on the books Practical tools from Joy at Work for cutting cognitive clutter at the team level Research-backed counterarguments to the default that growth requires more inputs