Employee Engagement

Why organisations work with Jamie Theakston Heart Breakfast reaches a daily UK audience in the millions, which means an internal audience recognises him on sight and an external audience trusts the room he is in. He has hosted live network television in formats that test pacing and composure: Live & Kicking on BBC1, Top of the Pops, The Games on Channel 4. Long-form live experience translates directly to long awards evenings. His on-air partnership with Amanda Holden on the UK’s biggest commercial breakfast show is built on interview craft, which carries into panel moderation and senior interview slots on conference stages. He works comfortably across formats: awards host, conference MC, after-dinner host, panel moderator, all from the same booking. Biography highlights Co-host of Heart Breakfast, Heart Radio’s national UK breakfast show, with Amanda Holden. Co-presenter, with Zoe Ball, of Live & Kicking on BBC1, 1996 to 1998. The show won a BAFTA. Host of Top of the Pops, BBC1, 1998 to 2003. Narrator of Traffic Cops, on BBC and Channel 5 since 2003. Co-host, with Alexander Armstrong, of a wine podcast. Trained at the National Youth Theatre from age 13. Biography National breakfast radio is the hardest live shift in British media. Three hours, every weekday, with no script that survives contact with breaking news, traffic, listener calls or a co-host on a tangent. Jamie Theakston has held one of those chairs since 2005, currently alongside Amanda Holden on Heart Breakfast, the UK’s largest commercial breakfast show. Before Heart, he co-presented Live & Kicking on BBC1 with Zoe Ball from 1996 to 1998, the BAFTA-winning Saturday morning show that pulled twice the audience of any rival in its slot. He hosted Top of the Pops through its final mainstream era between 1998 and 2003, interviewing every major artist that passed through it. He has narrated Traffic Cops on BBC and Channel 5 since 2003. That mileage is the product organisations book. Awards evenings, internal conferences, customer events, after-dinner formats: the work that goes wrong when the host cannot read a room, cannot recover when an autocue fails, cannot move from a comedy bit to a moment of genuine recognition without breaking tone. Theakston has done that work on live national television and live national radio for nearly three decades. He hosts as a known quantity. The audience knows the voice and the face. The executive team gets a host who has covered everything from royal memorial broadcasts to chart shows and treats both with the same level of preparation. Key speaking topics Awards hosting Conference and event MC Panel moderation Senior leader interviews on stage After-dinner hosting Ideal for Internal awards and recognition evenings Annual customer and partner conferences Sales kick-offs and all-hands events Charity galas and fundraising dinners Audience outcomes A live event that runs to time, holds energy through the long middle section, and lands its key recognition moments cleanly. Senior leader interviews and panels that produce usable answers rather than rehearsed talking points. A familiar broadcast voice on stage that warms the room before the substantive content begins.

Why organisations work with Colette Carlson A Master’s in Human Behavior anchors the content in behavioural science rather than speaker anecdote, which holds up in front of senior, sceptical audiences. The Human Edge framework organises five distinct programmes against specific buyer briefs: leadership, sales, team performance, burnout and resilience, and women’s leadership. CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame membership signals platform reliability for high-stakes conferences and executive offsites where delivery risk is itself a procurement criterion. A career arc that begins on straight commission and ends in front of Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Boeing audiences makes the trust and connection content land with sales and revenue teams, not only with HR. Biography highlights Master’s Degree in Human Behavior. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), a credential held by fewer than 10% of International Federation for Professional Speakers members. Inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame in 2017. Founder of Speak Your Truth, Inc. and author of Stop Playing Fictionary: Speak Your Truth to Stress Less and Connect More. Keynote work for Microsoft, PepsiCo, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble, Fidelity, Costco, Domino’s, Boeing, PwC, and Accenture. Contributor to Success, Business Management Daily, and Working Mother; co-authored Conversations on Success Vol. 4 alongside Deepak Chopra and Mark Victor Hansen. Biography The relational fabric of most organisations has thinned. Hybrid schedules, lean middle layers, and rapid restructures have left teams collaborating by habit rather than by design, and the result shows up in disengagement scores, deal cycles that stall, and change programmes that miss the people piece. Colette Carlson works on that exact problem. Her content draws on a Master’s in Human Behavior and two decades on commission-based sales floors, then translates the behavioural science into communication moves senior leaders, salespeople, and team managers can use the next morning. The Human Edge framework organises this into five keynote programmes spanning leadership, sales, team performance, resilience, and women’s leadership. The credential trail is unusually concentrated. She holds the CSP designation held by under 10% of IFPS members and was inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame in 2017, an NSA lifetime award. Her client list, including Microsoft, PepsiCo, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, and Accenture, indicates a track record across both regulated and consumer-facing environments. What separates her in the workplace-culture pillar is the bridge between scientific framing and revenue-floor experience. Buyers booking a culture or engagement keynote often get one or the other. Carlson is fluent with HR audiences and with sales kick-offs, which is why her work travels across the org chart rather than sitting only in the people function. Key speaking topics Trust and connection in hybrid organisations Psychological safety and team performance Communication under pressure Resilience and burnout prevention Sales relationships and influence Women’s leadership and executive presence Human skills in an AI-augmented workplace Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement after restructure or hybrid transition Sales leaders running national kick-offs that need a behavioural, relationship-led keynote Executive teams introducing psychological safety and trust as operating principles Women’s leadership networks and ERG flagship events Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for trust and psychological safety that leaders can use in their next team meeting Specific communication moves for difficult conversations, candour, and feedback Behavioural tools to protect focus and energy through sustained organisational pressure A relationship-first sales mindset that closes the gap between rapport and revenue Practical confidence cues for women navigating senior rooms and negotiation moments

Why organisations work with Anton Gunn He has operated at the level his audiences operate at. Advising a President on national health policy and running diversity and external affairs inside a federal department is not a case study he read; it is the room he was in. His World-Class Culture framework gives executives a named, structured approach to retention and culture rather than another values poster. It has been applied inside Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, HCA Healthcare and Mercedes-Benz Vans. He talks about inclusion as an operating capability, not a political position. For boards navigating contested ground on DEI, that distinction is the reason he gets booked. His credibility carries on both sides of the executive table: a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow with a Certified Speaking Professional designation, an MSW, and seven years inside senior healthcare leadership at MUSC. Biography highlights Former senior advisor to President Barack Obama; Director of External Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading stakeholder engagement for Affordable Care Act implementation Former Executive Director and Chief Diversity Officer, Medical University of South Carolina Resident Fellow, Harvard Institute of Politics Bestselling author of Just Lead, The Presidential Principles, and The Audacity of Leadership Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by fewer than 10 percent of professional speakers worldwide Featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, BBC and Good Morning America Biography The Affordable Care Act needed people to believe in it before it could function. As Director of External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Anton Gunn led the stakeholder engagement that turned a contested federal statute into something hospitals, employers and citizens could act on. That work, advising President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, is the reference point his clients hire him for. He has since spent close to a decade translating that experience into a body of executive practice. As Chief Diversity Officer and Executive Director at the Medical University of South Carolina, he ran inclusion as an operating function inside a complex healthcare institution, not as a communications exercise. His framework, World-Class Culture, codifies the seven behaviours he saw separate retention-positive cultures from the rest. His three books trace the same argument from different angles. The Audacity of Leadership set out the principles. The Presidential Principles distilled what he learned watching Obama lead in real time. Just Lead, his 2022 bestseller, gave operators 44 specific actions for retention and culture. Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, T-Mobile, SHRM and Mercedes-Benz Vans have all brought him in to apply that work. He is a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow and a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by under 10 percent of speakers globally. The combination buyers respond to is rarer than either credential alone: a former White House operator who has also run culture and inclusion inside a 17,000-person institution, and who can talk to a board in the language of accountability rather than aspiration. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership Workplace culture and retention Inclusive leadership Trust as an executive capability Crisis leadership and recovery Talent strategy in healthcare and regulated industries Ideal for Boards and CEOs navigating culture and retention under restructure CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers building inclusion as an operating discipline Senior leadership teams in healthcare, financial services and regulated industries Public sector and policy audiences working at the boundary of government and enterprise Audience outcomes A named, repeatable framework for diagnosing and rebuilding workplace culture A clearer view of where executive trust is earned and where it is forfeited Concrete actions for retention drawn from the Just Lead framework A working definition of inclusive leadership that holds up in front of a sceptical board An inside view of decision-making at the senior levels of the Obama administration

Why organisations work with Josie Gibson A nationally familiar face from ITV’s daytime flagship who lands instantly with UK consumer and employee audiences without long set-up. A live-room temperament built across thousands of hours of unscripted daytime television, including I’m A Celebrity 2023, where unpredictability is the format. Brand-event credibility from sustained partnerships with Samsung, Very, Next, Regatta, Babybel and Cawston Press. Genuine warmth on stage that suits internal culture moments, recognition nights and panels where audiences need to feel met, not lectured to. Biography highlights Host on ITV’s This Morning, regularly presenting alongside Alison Hammond, Dermot O’Leary and Rylan. Winner of Big Brother UK Series 11 (Channel 4, 2010). Finalist on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, 2023, finishing fourth. Television credits across The Wheel, Blankety Blank and Bake Off: Extra Slice. Commercial partnerships with Samsung, Very, Next Clothing, Regatta, Babybel and Cawston Press. Biography Live audiences are unforgiving. They feel a host who is performing at them rather than with them, and they switch off fast. The work of carrying a room with warmth, pace and on-the-fly recovery is craft, and it is built only by doing it for years on live television. Josie Gibson has built that craft on ITV’s This Morning, the UK’s longest-running daytime magazine show, where she presents alongside Alison Hammond, Dermot O’Leary and Rylan. Daytime television is unscripted by design: she has the reflexes to handle a guest going off-piste, a feature that runs short, or a tonal shift between segments without losing the audience. Her wider profile sits on top of that broadcast spine. She first reached a national audience as the winner of Big Brother UK Series 11 in 2010, and reinforced her live-television credentials reaching the final four on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2023. Brand work with Samsung, Very, Next Clothing, Regatta, Babybel and Cawston Press has given her sustained experience of representing partners on camera and in live settings. For organisations, this translates into a specific kind of value. Gibson is recognisable to UK staff and customer audiences from a programme they actually watch, and she brings the unscripted live-television temperament that internal events, awards ceremonies and brand activations need to feel like genuine moments rather than corporate set pieces. Key speaking topics Live event hosting Awards night hosting Brand event moderation Panel facilitation On-stage interviews Audience engagement for consumer-facing brands Ideal for Internal company conferences, kick-offs and recognition events with UK consumer-facing staff audiences. Awards ceremonies and brand activations seeking a recognisable ITV daytime presenter. Marketing, communications and HR teams briefing for warm, audience-led moderation rather than subject-matter keynote. Audience outcomes A live event paced and held by a broadcaster the room already knows from television. Panels and on-stage interviews that feel conversational rather than rehearsed. A recognition or awards moment that registers with employees as a genuine reward, not a formality. Brand stories told on stage by a presenter audiences read as warm and credible.

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.

Why organisations work with Duena Blomstrom She names a specific, measurable liability most boards do not currently track. Human Debt sits underneath stalled transformations and lets a leadership team see why their roadmap keeps slipping for non-technical reasons. Her argument lands with engineering and product audiences who tune out conventional wellbeing language. Framing safety as a debt that compounds against velocity gives operators a vocabulary they will actually use. She built the diagnostic, not just the theory. PeopleNotTech turns the framework into measurement, which means a keynote can connect to real follow-on team data rather than ending at inspiration. Three books across Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury Business, and Kogan Page give her argument continuity from FinTech culture (Emotional Banking) through team safety (People Before Tech) to enterprise transformation (Tech-Led Culture). She speaks publicly as a neurodivergent founder, which gives substance to inclusion conversations that are otherwise abstract for senior audiences. Biography highlights Author of Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan), People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business), and Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page). CEO and co-founder of PeopleNotTech, a psychological safety measurement platform. Originator of the Human Debt concept and the Emotional Banking framework. LinkedIn Top Voice on leadership and psychological safety with a large newsletter readership. Former Forbes contributor; host of the “people AND tech” and “Tales from the FinTech Crypt” podcasts. Background spanning C-level roles in startups and major technology companies before founding PeopleNotTech. Biography Most digital transformation programmes do not fail on the technology. They fail on whether the team running them can disagree, recover from a bad decision, and tell the truth about a slipping deadline. That is the territory Duena Blomstrom has spent the last decade making operational. Her central concept, Human Debt, reframes psychological safety as a balance sheet item. Teams accrue interest every time a candid conversation is avoided, every time a senior leader rewards optics over honesty, every time fatigue is left unaddressed. Tech debt gets the spreadsheet. Human Debt rarely does, and the cost shows up in stalled roadmaps, attrition, and AI rollouts that never reach production. She built three books out of this argument. Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan) treated culture as the missing variable in retail banking transformation. People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business) made the case for safety as a precondition of high performance. Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page) extended the work into enterprise change. Alongside the writing, she co-founded PeopleNotTech to turn the diagnosis into measurement, so the conversation about team health does not stop at the keynote. Audiences also get a founder who writes openly about being neurodivergent and what that means for leadership in practice. That makes inclusion a substantive thread in her work rather than a section header. Key speaking topics Psychological safety as a measurable team capability Human Debt and the hidden cost of low-trust teams Culture inside digital and AI transformation FinTech, retail banking, and Emotional Banking Neurodiversity and inclusive leadership Future of work and agile team practice Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and heads of organisational development running culture or engagement programmes alongside major technology change. CIOs, CTOs, and transformation leads whose roadmaps depend on team behaviour, not just delivery capacity. Banking, FinTech, and financial services leadership teams working through digital and AI rollouts. Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious conversation about why transformation programmes are underperforming. Audience outcomes A working definition of Human Debt that a leadership team can apply to its own organisation the next morning. A clearer line between team-level psychological safety and the commercial outcomes a board cares about. A vocabulary that lands with technical audiences who normally resist culture conversations. Specific signals to look for in teams where transformation, AI adoption, or restructuring is in flight. A frank account of what gets lost when neurodivergent leaders are managed for compliance rather than contribution.

Why organisations work with Andy Ayim He works with leadership teams where the brief is not a keynote but a measurable shift in how the team makes decisions, handles conflict and holds each other to account. His track record sits on both sides of the table: senior product roles at WorldFirst and Zilch, then Managing Director at Backstage Capital running accelerators on three continents. He has been the executive being coached and the investor pushing portfolio leaders to grow. His MBE, awarded in 2020 for services to diversity in the technology industry, signals a substantive record on inclusion rather than a stated commitment. Clients booking inclusive-leadership work get an external voice the room cannot dismiss as marketing. Through the Angel Investing School he has trained over a thousand new investors and built the curriculum used by 100 senior Google executives who went on to raise a $70m fund. He brings that operator’s view of capital, ownership and opportunity into corporate rooms that rarely hear it. Biography highlights MBE for services to diversity in the technology industry, awarded 2020 (London Gazette, Issue 63135). Founder of the Angel Investing School, which has trained 1,000+ new angel investors and produced the Open Angel platform. Former Managing Director at Backstage Capital, helping run accelerator programmes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and London. Senior product roles at WorldFirst (acquired by Ant Financial for $700m) and Series C fintech Zilch. Trained 100 senior Black executives at Google who formed the Black Angel Group and raised a $70m fund. Named in the Financial Times Top 10 Most Influential BAME Leaders in Tech; HSBC and UK Black Business Show Top 25 Black Entrepreneurs to Watch. Opened the Venture programme at SXSW London 2026 (Christ Church Spitalfields). Biography Most senior teams are not short of intelligence or ambition. They are short of safety. People hold back the disagreement, the bad news, the half-formed idea that might change the decision. Andy Ayim’s work begins there. He is hired by leaders at Google, Stripe, Uber, Diageo, Novartis and Tesco to do the harder thing: change how a team behaves with each other in the room. His authority is built on doing the job, not describing it. He held senior product roles at WorldFirst before its $700m acquisition by Ant Financial, then at Series C fintech Zilch. In 2018 he joined Arlan Hamilton as Managing Director at Backstage Capital, designing accelerator programmes for underrepresented founders in Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and London. The pattern is consistent: operator credibility first, advisor work second. The inclusion record is documented. He was appointed MBE in 2020 for services to diversity in the technology industry, gazetted by the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood. In the same year he founded the Angel Investing School, which has since trained over a thousand new angel investors and built the curriculum that produced the Black Angel Group, 100 senior Google executives who went on to raise a $70m fund. What that means for a client is straightforward. When Ayim walks into a leadership offsite, he is not a consultant translating a theory. He is a former executive and active investor who has seen the same trust and capital problems from inside companies, inside portfolios and inside an honours system that has recognised the work. Key speaking topics Human-centred leadership Inclusive leadership and team performance Psychological safety in senior teams Diversity and inclusion in technology Angel investing and ownership Future of work and hybrid team design Talent and the next generation of leaders Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers commissioning inclusive-leadership and culture work for senior populations. ExCo and board offsites where the brief is honest conversation, trust and decision quality, not a standard keynote. Heads of Diversity and Inclusion looking for an external voice with a credentialled record rather than a generic DEI speaker. Investor and founder audiences inside corporate venture, accelerators and innovation functions. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of the specific behaviours that produce psychological safety in senior teams, and the ones that quietly destroy it. Language for naming the inclusion problems leaders are nervous to name, with examples drawn from operator and investor experience. A view of inclusion as a leadership capability tied to performance, not a compliance function bolted onto HR. An informed perspective on angel investing, ownership and wealth creation for audiences that rarely get it from a credible practitioner.

Why organisations work with Karim Ellis A John Maxwell Team founding partner, which puts him inside the most widely sold leadership development network in the US corporate market and gives buyers a recognised pedigree to point to internally. Corporate training experience across Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS and the US Department of Defense, so he is calibrated for large, regulated, blue-collar and white-collar audiences in the same brief. A signature framework, GPS My Success, published as a book and built around five named principles for translating individual vision into action, which gives organisers a structured deliverable rather than a generic motivational set. A platform style trained directly under Les Brown, certified at Platinum level, which is what a programme committee is buying when they want an energising US-style closing keynote that lifts a room. Biography highlights Founding partner of the John Maxwell Team. Author of GPS My Success: The Address You Input In Life Determines Your Destination (2020). Two-time TEDx speaker, including TEDx Cincinnati. Les Brown Certified Platinum Speaker. 2022 Speakercon Motivational Speaker of the Year. Corporate clients include Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS, SHRM and the US Department of Defense. Biography Large organisations spend significant budgets on leadership and engagement programmes that fail to move the dial on day-to-day behaviour. People are inspired in the room, then the routine resumes. The problem is rarely talent or content. It is the absence of a shared, repeatable language for what good looks like and how individuals contribute to it. Karim Ellis works in that gap. As a founding partner of the John Maxwell Team, he trained inside the leadership network John C. Maxwell built, then developed his own framework, GPS My Success, around five principles for turning individual vision into a destination the rest of the organisation can recognise. The book of the same name, published in 2020, is the spine of his corporate keynote. His audiences are mainstream US corporate: Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS and the US Department of Defense, alongside SHRM and the National Urban League. The brief is consistent. Lift the room, give people a structured way to talk about ambition and accountability, and send them back to work with something they can use on Monday. The platform craft sits on top of formal training with Les Brown, where Ellis holds Platinum certification, and two TEDx appearances. Speakercon named him its 2022 Motivational Speaker of the Year. The work is built for events that need an energising US-style keynote backed by a defined leadership and personal-development model, not a strategy lecture. Key speaking topics Leadership development Vision and goal-setting Personal effectiveness and peak performance Motivation and audience engagement Communication and presence Sales and customer service mindset Ideal for Internal leadership development conferences and L and D programmes. Annual sales kick-offs and field-force events seeking an energising main-stage keynote. Diversity, employee engagement and culture events looking for a US motivational headliner with corporate fluency. Audience outcomes A named five-part framework, GPS My Success, that individuals can apply to their own goals after the session. A shared language for vision, ambition and accountability that managers can carry back into team conversations. A renewed sense of personal agency on performance, grounded in concrete principles rather than slogans. A high-energy closing or opening moment that lifts engagement scores for the event.

Why organisations work with Eric M. Bailey He turns cognitive neuroscience into 22 named tools managers can use the next morning, not a worldview to adopt over time. The methodology is called the Principles of Human Understanding. His client list spans Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, and the Phoenix Police Department. Few communication speakers translate across that range of cultures. The Cure for Stupidity gives an organisation a shared vocabulary for irrational workplace behaviour. Once a team has read it, conflict conversations get shorter. He works the room across analytical and emotional registers. Engineering audiences and frontline service teams both come away with the same takeaways, which is rare. Biography highlights President of Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, a communication and organisational development consultancy. Bestselling author of The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work. Creator of the Principles of Human Understanding methodology, used in keynote, facilitation, and coaching engagements. Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Development, Saint Louis University. Client work with Google, US Air Force, Los Angeles County, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, City of Phoenix, Phoenix Police Department. Media features on CNN, Forbes, and HuffPost. Speaker on the Workhuman Live conference programme. Biography Most conflict at work is not about the issue on the table. It is about two people running different software on the same conversation. Bailey has built a career mapping that mismatch and giving leaders a way to talk about it without making anyone feel stupid. His book The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work sets out the argument. Irrational behaviour is usually rational once you understand what the brain is protecting against. The book seeded a methodology, the Principles of Human Understanding, which now anchors his keynote and consulting work through Bailey Strategic Innovation Group. The client list is the proof. Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the City of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Police Department have all brought him in. These are organisations with very different tolerance for soft language, which forces the material to do real work. The Master’s from Saint Louis University in Leadership and Organizational Development is the academic underpinning. The 22 tools are what audiences actually leave with. What sets Bailey apart from other neuroscience-of-work voices is that he writes for the manager who has eleven things to do today, not for the reader who wants a theory of mind. The framework is built to be used inside a difficult conversation, not admired from a distance. Key speaking topics Brain science of workplace communication Generational dynamics and intergenerational friction Diversity, equity and inclusion under contested conditions Change management and the neuroscience of resistance Team trust and functional team design Leadership development for first-line and mid-level managers Ideal for CHROs and people leaders dealing with persistent team conflict and engagement decay Heads of L&D commissioning manager development at scale DEI leads who need a frame for inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences Public sector and uniformed leadership teams (law enforcement, military, municipal government) needing communication training that travels across rank Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming the cognitive patterns that drive workplace friction Specific tools, drawn from the Principles of Human Understanding, that can be used in a difficult conversation the same week A reframe of irrational behaviour as predictable, not personal, which lowers the temperature of recurring conflicts A working model for how the brain interprets change, status, and difference, applied to current team dynamics

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 Jahkini Bisselink She sits inside Whetston Strategic Foresight, a practice built for long-range corporate planning, which means her insights arrive as briefable strategy inputs rather than generational commentary. She is one of the few speakers who is both a member of Generation Z and a trained foresight researcher of it, which closes the gap between authentic voice and analytical distance. Her UN Youth Representative work involved structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people, giving her data depth most generational speakers cannot match. Senior clients including Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, and Lloyds Banking Group have used her to shape leadership conversations about Gen Z, not as a panel novelty. She works in English and Dutch, and she presents to boards, HR functions, and customer experience teams without translating the message between them. Biography highlights Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, 2017 to 2019, elected through open national election. First UN General Assembly speech delivered at age 18. Youth expert at Whetston Strategic Foresight, Amsterdam, since 2020. TEDxYouth@Maastricht speaker, March 2019, “Why Youth Participation is Key”. Named in MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) Class of 2023. Corporate clients include Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, R/GA, and AVEVA. Biography A quarter of the workforce is now Generation Z, and most leadership teams are still describing them in language borrowed from coverage of millennials a decade earlier. The result is a steady mismatch between what organisations design for younger employees and customers, and what those groups actually want. Closing that gap is now a board-level problem, not an HR one. Bisselink works inside Whetston Strategic Foresight in Amsterdam, where her job is to translate generational research into corporate strategy. Whetston is a foresight practice, not a marketing agency, which shapes how her work lands: she briefs leadership teams the way a strategy consultant would, with a defined argument and named implications, rather than offering generational colour. Her credibility on Gen Z is built on two layers. She is a member of the generation, born in Amsterdam in 1999. She also spent two years as the Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, running structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people across the country and presenting their views at the UN General Assembly in New York. That fieldwork, conducted before she joined Whetston, is the data foundation under her current commercial work. Boards and HR functions at Deutsche Telekom, Lloyds Banking Group, the European Parliament, and Rabobank have used her to pressure-test assumptions about how their next generation of employees and customers actually decide. She was recognised in the MIPAD Class of 2023 for the same body of work. Key speaking topics Generation Z in the workforce The multigenerational workplace Future of customer experience Strategic foresight and generational trends Corporate purpose and youth activism Talent attraction and retention for the next generation Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent rebuilding attraction and retention strategies around a Gen Z-majority workforce CMOs and customer experience leaders whose growth segment is now Gen Z Executive teams and boards reviewing workforce, culture, and brand strategy through a generational lens Public sector and policy bodies that need a credible Gen Z voice in stakeholder conversations Audience outcomes A clearer read on what Gen Z employees and customers actually decide on, separated from common media generalisations. Specific implications for how attraction, retention, and customer strategy need to change inside the audience’s own organisation. A working understanding of the friction points between four working generations and where leaders are still managing on outdated assumptions. Direct exposure to a Gen Z researcher whose evidence base is consultation work, not commentary.

Why organisations work with Andrew Brodsky He gives leadership teams a named, research-backed framework, PING (Perspective-taking, Initiative, Non-verbal cues, Goals), that turns ad hoc virtual habits into a deliberate operating practice. His evidence is original, not aggregated: peer-reviewed studies in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on how channel choice changes what gets said, heard and believed. He answers a question most consultants avoid: when is audio better than video, when does email outperform a meeting, and what does that mean for managers who default to whatever is easiest. His client roster includes Dell Technologies, PwC, Amazon and Novo Nordisk, which means the work has been pressure-tested inside organisations running global hybrid operations. The book Ping, published by Simon & Schuster and Penguin, has been endorsed by Adam Grant and Katy Milkman, placing his work alongside the leading voices in applied behavioural science. Biography highlights Management professor, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin PhD in Organizational Behavior, Harvard Business School; BS, The Wharton School Author, Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, 2025) CEO and founder, Ping Group Named one of the world’s Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors by Poets&Quants Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNBC, The New York Times and TIME Biography Hybrid work settled the location question and left a harder one open. Inside most companies, the decision about which channel to use for which conversation is still made by habit. The cost is measurable: slower decisions, weaker trust, meetings that exist to compensate for messages that should never have been sent. Brodsky has built a research programme around that gap. His peer-reviewed work in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin examines the operating consequences of specific channel choices, from how email shapes emotional authenticity to why audio-only calls often outperform video. The findings are precise enough to act on, which is unusual in a field crowded with generalities about remote work. The book Ping, published by Simon & Schuster and Penguin in 2025, consolidates that research into a four-part framework used inside teams at Dell Technologies, PwC, Amazon and Novo Nordisk. Adam Grant and Katy Milkman have endorsed the work, and HBR IdeaCast featured the argument as a guide for leaders auditing their own virtual practices. His credibility rests on a clear point: virtual communication is now an executive skill, not a logistics question. Boards and senior teams that treat it as the latter pay the cost in performance. Key speaking topics Virtual and hybrid communication strategy Channel choice and operating performance Leadership in distributed teams Trust and authenticity in digital workplaces Conflict reduction across asynchronous communication AI in workplace communication Inclusion in remote and hybrid settings Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning hybrid operating models Executive teams auditing the performance cost of their meeting and communication habits Transformation and digital workplace leads setting team-level communication norms Senior leadership offsites focused on trust, decision speed and team effectiveness Audience outcomes A working framework for matching communication channel to task, with named criteria Specific research findings on when email, audio, video and instant message each outperform the alternatives A clear view of how leadership behaviour in virtual channels shapes trust and response patterns across teams Practical guidance on reducing conflict and misinterpretation in asynchronous communication A defensible position on AI-assisted interpersonal communication and the trust consequences of getting it wrong