Employee Engagement

Why organisations work with Jen Sincero Her four Badass books have sold more than five million copies in over forty languages, which gives audiences immediate familiarity and a shared vocabulary before she takes the stage. She speaks directly to the part of an engagement and retention problem that policy cannot fix: what people privately believe about their own potential, their right to earn, and their capacity to change a habit. Her audiobook narration of You Are a Badass won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association, evidence that the delivery itself, not only the writing, holds an audience. She is a regular speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, which gives her a track record at the scale and format most women’s leadership programmes commission. She is one of the few keynote names that consistently lifts attendance and registration for internal empowerment, mental fitness, and money mindset events without requiring topical reframing for each booking. Biography highlights Number-one New York Times bestselling author of You Are a Badass, with over five million copies sold and translation into more than forty languages Author of four titles in the Badass series, including You Are a Badass at Making Money, also a New York Times bestseller 2014 Audie Award winner from the American Audio Publishers Association for narration of You Are a Badass Featured speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women Media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah Magazine, Success Magazine, and The Howard Stern Show BA in English, Colorado College, 1987 Biography You Are a Badass became a slow-burn phenomenon after its 2013 release, climbing the New York Times bestseller list and staying there for years. The book reframed personal success as a problem of belief and habit rather than information. Jen Sincero wrote it, narrated it, and won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association for the audiobook. The Badass series now runs to four titles, including You Are a Badass at Making Money and Badass Habits, with combined sales of more than five million copies across forty languages. Sincero’s central argument is that the gap between what people say they want and what they do is held in place by inherited beliefs about money, worth, and what they are allowed to want. Closing that gap is the work of her books, coaching, and stage material. Her speaking practice is built for audiences inside organisations that have already tried policy answers to engagement and retention. She speaks at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, at corporate empowerment events, and at executive retreats where the brief is to shift what people privately believe is available to them. Her style is direct, comedic, and unapologetically practical, designed for action rather than reflection. Before the Badass books, Sincero was a freelance writer in Los Angeles and a workshop facilitator with the women’s entrepreneurial network Ladies Who Launch. She holds a BA in English from Colorado College. Her media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Oprah Magazine, The Dr. Oz Show, and The Howard Stern Show. Key speaking topics Money mindset and wealth psychology Self-limiting belief and confidence Habit formation and behaviour change Personal motivation and empowerment Women’s leadership and entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and people leaders running engagement, retention, and internal mobility programmes Heads of DEI and women’s leadership networks commissioning conference and ERG keynotes Sales, broker, and advisor conferences where money belief and personal confidence determine output Internal empowerment, mental fitness, and culture moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A direct, named language for the beliefs that quietly limit individual performance Specific habit-change tools drawn from Badass Habits, applicable from the day after the event A money-mindset frame that connects personal earning beliefs to commercial behaviour Higher attendance and registration energy around internal empowerment programming A shared reference that people leaders can carry into one-to-ones and team conversations

Why organisations work with Jake Mazulewicz He has run the work, not just studied it. As HPI Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he applied the same frameworks he now teaches to lineworkers, system operators, and executives. His Near Miss Library generated more than 150 voluntary reports inside one utility, the kind of disclosure rate most safety programmes never achieve, and it carries endorsements from both executives and union leadership. His Scan & Focus model and Four Levels of Decision Making are tools field foremen and substation crews actually use, not concepts that work only in a classroom. He speaks the language of pilots, paratroopers, firefighters, and lineworkers because he has worked alongside them. Audiences in technical industries treat him as one of their own, which is rare for a keynote speaker on safety. His book, Seven Practical Steps, gives senior leaders a defensible operating playbook for human reliability that can be cited inside the business after the keynote ends. Biography highlights Ph.D. in Education, University of Virginia Former Human Performance Improvement Lead, Dominion Virginia Power, 3,500+ person unit Founder and Director, JMA Human Reliability Strategies Author, Seven Practical Steps: How to Build Reliability, Safety, and Trust in Technical Teams Has worked with 250+ teams across energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and government sectors Named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Energy Safety Canada Biography The instinct in most safety cultures is to chase zero. Zero incidents, zero errors, zero near misses. The most reliable industries figured out long ago that this target produces the opposite of safety. It produces silence. People stop reporting what they see, the organisation stops learning, and the next failure looks exactly like the last one. Jake Mazulewicz has spent more than two decades inside that contradiction. As Human Performance Improvement Lead for a 3,500-person business unit at Dominion Virginia Power, he led the work of analysing more than 300 incidents, ran root cause analyses on transmission-level switching errors, and built a Near Miss Library that drew more than 150 voluntary reports from a workforce that had every reason not to volunteer them. His Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia underpins the teaching method, but the credibility is operational. Lineworkers, system operators, and executives all recognised the same person in the room. In 2015 he founded JMA Human Reliability Strategies and has since worked with more than 250 teams across utilities, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and government. Named clients include the US Department of Energy, Fermilab, NERC, Chevron, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and Energy Safety Canada. His book, Seven Practical Steps, codifies the approach he has used inside those organisations: a learning-based posture, psychological safety as a working condition rather than a slogan, and After Action Reviews treated as a craft. What separates him from other safety speakers is biography. He has served as a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, a wilderness search and rescue field team leader, and a military paratrooper. When he tells a technical audience that errors are signals, not character flaws, the room hears it from someone who has had to act on that belief in conditions where being wrong has consequences. Key speaking topics Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) High-reliability team practice in high-hazard industries Psychological safety in technical teams After Action Reviews and event learning Situational awareness and decision-making under pressure Safety culture and human error reduction Just culture and incident investigation Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and operations leaders in utilities, energy, manufacturing, and other high-hazard sectors Heads of HSE, safety directors, and chief safety officers responsible for organisational reliability HR and people leaders responsible for psychological safety and frontline team culture Field operations leadership: plant managers, station managers, fleet leaders, frontline supervisors Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that survives contact with a unionised, technical workforce The Scan & Focus model as a usable situational awareness tool, applied to their own operating context A practical method for running After Action Reviews that produce learning rather than blame The Four Levels of Decision Making framework, mapped from novice to expert in their environment A reframing of error as a system signal, with the operating implications for how leaders respond to incidents

Why organisations work with Peter Avis A career from dishwasher to General Manager of Galvin at Windows at the London Hilton on Park Lane, giving him operational credibility with both frontline teams and executive leadership in the same room. Fifteen years inside the Virgin Group, working alongside Sir Richard Branson on the London Roof Gardens, Mont Rochelle and Kasbah Tamadot, where service culture is a measurable commercial asset. UK Restaurant Manager of the Year in 2009 and Chairman of the UK Guild of Restaurant Services, recognised credentials that translate hospitality language into commercially serious customer experience. A working operator’s view of employee engagement, not a consultant’s deck: how rosters, recognition and recruitment actually change guest outcomes. Biography highlights General Manager of Galvin at Windows and 10 Degrees Bar at the London Hilton on Park Lane from February 2020, succeeding Fred Sirieix. UK Restaurant Manager of the Year, 2009, while running Babylon Restaurant at The Roof Gardens, which won Best London Restaurant at the Visit London Awards in 2008. More than 15 years with the Virgin Group, including involvement in the launches of Virgin Limited Edition properties Mont Rochelle in South Africa and Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco. Chairman of the UK Guild of Restaurant Services and Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality. Recipient of the 2014 Richard Branson Special Award for Services to the Community and the 2014 Carey Award Manager of the Year. Awarded the Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022 and inducted into the Seal of Excellence at the House of Lords for services to hospitality. Biography Service businesses can describe their brand promise clearly. The difficulty is keeping it intact across a 14-hour service, three sittings, a kitchen running short and a new starter on the floor. That gap, between corporate standard and the table the guest is actually sitting at, is the problem Peter Avis has spent a career solving. He began as a dishwasher in Liverpool and ran kitchens, floors and rooms up through the ranks at named London venues. By 2009 he was UK Restaurant Manager of the Year at Babylon Restaurant in The Roof Gardens, Kensington. Babylon had taken Best London Restaurant at the Visit London Awards a year earlier under his management. Fifteen years inside the Virgin Group followed, working closely with Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Limited Edition team. He was part of the launch teams for Mont Rochelle in South Africa and Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco, brands where service is the product. In 2020 he was appointed General Manager of Galvin at Windows and 10 Degrees Bar at the London Hilton on Park Lane, succeeding Fred Sirieix. That breadth gives him an unusually grounded view of engagement, recognition and service culture. He chairs the UK Guild of Restaurant Services and holds Fellow status at the Institute of Hospitality. Boards and operational leaders book him because he can talk about engagement, retention and customer experience in the language of a working operator, not a consultant. Key speaking topics Customer service and guest experience Employee engagement in service businesses Building high-performing hospitality teams Leadership in service operations Delivering on a brand promise Recognition, retention and culture in frontline industries Ideal for Hospitality, leisure and retail leadership teams and operations directors Customer experience and service excellence functions across consumer-facing industries HR and people leaders working on engagement and retention in frontline workforces Conferences focused on service culture, brand delivery and operational excellence Audience outcomes A practical view of how recognition, recruitment and floor leadership change guest outcomes A clearer understanding of where brand promise breaks down between executive intent and frontline delivery Specific examples from named flagship operations rather than generic service theory Confidence that service excellence is a managed system, not a personality trait

Why organisations work with Joel Zeff He pulls people out of their seats and into the room. Improv games run live with audience volunteers, not slides about engagement, are the mechanism the audience remembers a week later. He has done this more than 2,500 times since 1997, for buyers including Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS. The format is tested at scale. His book Make the Right Choice (Wiley, 2nd edition) gives leaders a written reference for the principles, so the keynote leaves a tangible artefact for managers to apply. He writes and performs his own material. The journalism background, including a recruited move to the Dallas Times Herald and freelance work for Newsday, shows up in tight scripting and audience-aware writing. For internal sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and culture moments where the room needs to be activated rather than briefed, Zeff is one of the few keynote speakers whose primary craft is the performance itself. Biography highlights Author of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, second edition published by Wiley More than 2,500 keynote events for corporate and association audiences since 1997 Former newspaper journalist; recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, with freelance bylines for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Former account executive at Edelman Public Relations Appeared on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch Named clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS Biography Engagement is the corporate problem that has resisted three decades of solutions. Surveys, town halls, pulse tools, and culture decks all describe it well. Almost none of them change the temperature in the room. Joel Zeff’s keynotes start from a different premise. If the room feels alive, the conversation about engagement starts to mean something. If it does not, no framework will fix that. Zeff trained as a newspaper journalist before he was a speaker. He started at the Saginaw News covering crime and accidents, was recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, and freelanced for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Herald closed. He then worked as an account executive at Edelman Public Relations and founded his own consulting practice in 1994. The improv comedy he was doing on weekends turned into his career when Texas Instruments asked him to bring the act to an executive retreat. The format he has built over 2,500 events since 1997 is unusual in a corporate setting. Audience members come on stage, play improvisation games, and produce, in real time, the behaviours the keynote is describing: listening, building on each other’s ideas, taking initiative, recovering from mistakes in front of a crowd. Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS have all booked the act. His book Make the Right Choice, now in its second edition with Wiley, sets out the principles in writing for leaders who want a reference after the room has gone home. What organisations actually buy from Zeff is a live demonstration that the soft skills they keep training for are produced under pressure, not in workshops. The improv stage is a faster way to see them than any management exercise. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture Team collaboration and communication Change and adaptability at work Creativity and innovation in everyday work Leadership and motivation Workplace humour and human connection Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences where the opening or closing keynote needs to lift the room, not brief it Leadership offsites focused on team behaviour, communication, and collaboration Culture, engagement, and HR-led events where managers leave needing something they can act on with their teams Association conferences and customer events that combine substance with a live, interactive set piece Audience outcomes A shared, recent experience of what genuine collaboration looks like, generated live in the room rather than described in slides Specific language and prompts from improv (listening, “yes and”, supporting the person on stage with you) that managers can carry back into team meetings A reset on the role of humour, energy, and play in serious work, with named examples from organisations the audience recognises A written reference, via Make the Right Choice, for leaders who want to extend the keynote ideas into team practice

Why organisations work with Elizabeth Day A single, named thesis built over hundreds of long-form interviews on How to Fail, applied to the specific cultural problem of how teams talk about setbacks. Journalistic credibility from a decade at The Observer and a Young Journalist of the Year award, which gives her the interviewing range to draw substance out of senior internal speakers and panel guests. Literary authority confirmed by a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, which lifts her above the standard wellbeing-speaker field. A direct corporate track record with Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays, so the material has been tested on senior commercial audiences. Equally strong as keynote, fireside interviewer, or awards host, which makes her useful for events that need one trusted voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected 2024. Host and creator of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, with guests including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kate Winslet, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem. Winner, Rising Star Award, British Podcast Awards 2019. Winner, Young Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2004; Highly Commended Feature Writer, 2012. Author of How to Fail, Failosophy, Friendaholic and Magpie, with Friendaholic entering the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book since 2021; co-host of Sky Arts Book Club Live. Biography Most workplaces still treat failure as an event to be hidden. Elizabeth Day has spent years arguing, in print and on air, that the more useful question is what setbacks teach the people who admit to them. How to Fail, the podcast she launched in 2018, has built that argument into one of the most listened-to interview shows in the UK. Her credibility for the topic is not motivational. It is journalistic. She trained on the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, moved to The Sunday Telegraph as a news reporter, and won Young Journalist of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. From 2007 to 2016 she was a feature writer at The Observer, picking up a commendation in the Feature Writer category at the 2012 Press Awards. The literary record sits alongside the broadcasting one. Her novel Scissors Paper Stone won the Betty Trask Award; The Party became a Richard and Judy Book Club pick; Friendaholic entered the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024 and hosts BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. For corporate audiences, the value is the translation. Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays have booked her to put failure, friendship and candour onto the table as workplace concerns rather than personal anecdotes. The interviews have produced a working vocabulary that senior teams can actually use when something goes wrong. Key speaking topics Failure as a method for learning and recovery Workplace candour and psychological safety Storytelling and interview craft for senior leaders Friendship, connection and the social fabric of teams Vulnerability as a professional capability Resilience after setback Women, work and visibility Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure or underperformance. Communications and internal events teams looking for a host who can interview senior leaders on the record without flattening them. Leadership development programmes for high-potential cohorts working on candour, feedback and self-awareness. Awards evenings and flagship conferences that need one credible voice across keynote, panel and host roles. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming and discussing setbacks at work without defensiveness. Specific, repeatable interview and conversation techniques drawn from years of long-form journalism. A clearer view of how candour and vulnerability function as team capabilities, not personality traits. Permission, modelled from named public figures, to treat early-career mistakes as data rather than damage.

Why organisations work with Naya Antoniou She brings dual training in organisational psychology and integrative psychotherapy to workplace mental health, which sharpens her work on burnout beyond surface-level wellbeing programmes. Her career-transition practice with vulnerable populations through Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas gives her direct evidence of how work loss, identity and recovery interact, which translates into how she advises corporate clients on restructuring with humanity. She works across the full multigenerational stack, from Gen Z entrants to senior leaders, and treats generational tension as a culture-design question, not a stereotype-management exercise. As a Lean In Greece Circle Leader and Women on Top mentor, she has a substantive track record on women in workplace mental health and HR, useful for organisations whose inclusion work has stalled at policy level. Biography highlights Postgraduate Degree in Organisational Psychology Postgraduate Degree in Career, Executive and Business Coaching MSc in International Relations, University of Piraeus Evidence-Based Coaching certification, Athens Coaching Institute Circle Leader, Lean In Greece Network (Mental Health and HR circle) Career coach with Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas career transition programmes Biography Burnout has stopped being an individual diagnosis. Organisations now carry it as an operating cost: turnover, presenteeism, project slippage, the quiet attrition of people who never quite leave. Naya Antoniou’s work sits inside that operating cost, with the tools of organisational psychology and evidence-based coaching applied directly to how teams are structured, led and supported. Her training combines a postgraduate degree in Organisational Psychology with a postgraduate qualification in Career, Executive and Business Coaching, anchored by an MSc in International Relations from the University of Piraeus. Ongoing postgraduate training in Integrative Psychotherapy gives her practice a clinical grounding that is unusual in corporate coaching. The applied work spans corporate culture transformation, leadership development, and career transition programmes. With Doctors of the World, she has coached women asylum seekers rebuilding work identities from zero. With ActionAid Hellas, she has run career transition programmes for vulnerable groups facing displacement from the labour market. That work shapes how she advises corporate clients on restructure, redeployment and the human side of workforce change. Within Greece, she leads the Mental Health and HR circle of Lean In Greece and mentors with Women on Top on workplace equality. The through-line across her practice is concrete: cultures hold people when they are designed to, and fall apart when wellbeing is treated as a benefit rather than a system. Her speaking work brings that argument into rooms where leaders are deciding which to choose. Key speaking topics Multigenerational teams and Gen Z engagement Burnout and workplace mental health Psychological safety as a leadership practice Culture change in high-performance organisations Future skills for emerging leaders Career transition and workforce change Women in mental health and HR Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning engagement strategy across five generations Leadership teams managing burnout risk during restructure or rapid growth HR and DEI leads building culture programmes that move past policy statements Founders and senior leaders of mid-sized organisations in Southern Europe scaling their first formal people function Audience outcomes A clearer view of how generational expectations shape engagement, retention and management overhead Specific moves leaders can make to install psychological safety as a working condition, not an annual survey question A working diagnostic for burnout that distinguishes individual recovery from structural cause Practical reframing of culture change as a design problem with measurable inputs

Why organisations work with Mohamed Isa He has actually run the P&L. Former CFO of INOVEST B.S.C., a Bahrain Bourse-listed investment company, and former Regional Finance Manager at Unilever for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, he speaks about service and engagement from inside the numbers. Original published work behind the commercial argument. Chai Karak: A Customer Service Story is now in its third illustrated edition and used by management teams as a discussion tool for service culture. His content rests on a published book with a specific thesis. Native bilingual delivery. Equally fluent in Arabic and English, he can hold a Gulf executive audience in either language without flattening the argument, which matters for regional events and for global firms operating across the GCC. Track record across very different rooms. Booked sessions include Google, American Express, BASF, KPMG, and SDAIA (the Saudi Authority for Data and AI), giving him unusual range across multinationals, professional services and Saudi public-sector audiences. Personal experience that earns the airtime. The 2022 Everest Base Camp trek to 5,364 metres gives him a concrete reference point for talks on persistence and pressure. The story is his own. Biography highlights Former Chief Financial Officer of INOVEST B.S.C., a Bahrain Bourse-listed investment company, with prior senior finance roles at Unilever covering the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey Author of Chai Karak: A Customer Service Story, now in its third illustrated edition, with international keynote bookings drawn from the book including Google, American Express and BASF Contributing author to The Success Blueprint alongside Brian Tracy, recognised with a Quilly Award from the National Academy of Best-Selling Authors in the United States Holds CPA, MBA and Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) credentials Trekked to Everest Base Camp at 5,364 metres, the experiential frame for his leadership keynotes Delivers in Arabic and English, with audiences including KPMG, SDAIA (Saudi Authority for Data and AI) and GGI Middle East & Africa Regional Conferences Biography In commoditised markets, the firm that competes on price loses. The firm that competes on service quality often wins on margin and retention, but most organisations cannot prove the link in their own numbers. Mohamed Isa spent more than a decade as Chief Financial Officer of INOVEST B.S.C., a Bahrain Bourse-listed investment company. Before that, he was Regional Finance Manager at Unilever, covering the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. That background gives him an unusual angle on customer experience. He argues for it in the language of revenue, retention and margin. Chai Karak: A Customer Service Story is the centre of his commercial content. Now in its third illustrated edition, the book is used by managers as a discussion tool with their teams. Customers in price-driven categories have enormous switching power, so service quality is where margin actually gets defended. The book has driven keynote bookings at Google, American Express, BASF and KPMG, alongside regional engagements with SDAIA and GGI Middle East & Africa. The Everest Base Camp trek to 5,364 metres is the experiential frame he uses for leadership material on persistence and pressure. He delivers in Arabic and English, which makes him one of the few speakers in the Gulf who can hold an executive audience in either language without simplifying the content. Key speaking topics Customer experience and commercial performance Service culture in commoditised markets Employee engagement and profitability Sales growth and profit maximisation Leadership under pressure Resilience in demanding conditions Ideal for Chief Customer Officers and customer experience leaders responsible for tying service investment to commercial outcomes Chief Sales Officers and commercial leaders facing margin pressure in commoditised markets CHROs and engagement leaders looking for an evidence-based link between people experience and revenue Regional conferences and leadership events in the GCC where audiences mix Arabic and English speakers Audience outcomes A thesis on why service quality outperforms price in defending margin in commoditised markets A worked example of how engagement levels show up in the P&L, drawn from inside CFO experience A specific tool from Chai Karak that managers can put to work with their service teams A reframing of leadership and resilience anchored in a specific endurance experience the audience has not heard before A regionally-aware perspective from a speaker who has held Gulf, multinational and US-technology audiences in both Arabic and English

Why organisations work with Ed Jordan He treats executive presence as a teachable craft, not a personality trait, drawing on 25 years in front of cameras and microphones to coach how leaders actually land in a room. He pairs that stagecraft with a Gordon Institute of Business Science coaching qualification and a decade inside Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking, so the language is recognisable to senior commercial audiences. He has been named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA UK and Ireland, an industry-judged award by working speakers, not a marketing claim. He works fluently across formats: keynote, executive coaching, on-camera training, moderation and event hosting, which makes him useful when a leadership event needs a single anchor, not a roster. His moderating roster includes Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, evidence he can hold a room with figures more senior than the audience. Biography highlights Certified Business Coach, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). PSA Professional Speaker of the Year, UK and Ireland. 25 years as a South African TV presenter (Deal or No Deal, Popstars, Fast Forward, The Wedding Show) and Kaya FM Breakfast Show host. Multi-platinum recording artist; performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Decade inside Financial Services since 2014, in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. Hosting and moderating credits with Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank and Investec, including platform conversations with Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy. Biography Presence is now part of the job description for senior leaders. Quarterly all-hands events, board updates, investor calls and internal video are not occasional performances. They are the medium through which leadership decisions are received, judged and remembered. Ed Jordan worked that medium for 25 years before he taught it. As a South African television presenter on Deal or No Deal, Popstars and Fast Forward, and as Kaya FM’s Breakfast Show host, he learned how to hold a room in real time, on camera, without a second take. He is also a multi-platinum recording artist who performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. In 2014 he moved into Financial Services, spending a decade in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. That gave him fluency with the audience he now coaches. He qualified as a Business Coach through the Gordon Institute of Business Science and built a leadership practice that translates stagecraft into a discipline senior executives can practise. The work is most useful when leaders inherit a wider remit than the skills that earned them the role. Jordan was named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA in the UK and Ireland, and is regularly trusted to moderate platforms with figures including Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, holding the room when the room is senior. Key speaking topics Executive presence and on-camera communication Self-leadership and personal effectiveness Leadership development for newly senior leaders Purpose and values alignment at work Virtual and hybrid communication craft Moderation and platform conversation Ideal for CEOs and executive teams preparing for high-stakes platform moments Senior leaders moving into broader, more visible roles Learning and leadership development heads designing executive programmes Internal communications and corporate affairs leaders rebuilding leader visibility Audience outcomes A working method for executive presence on stage, on camera and in the room Specific techniques for self-leadership under pressure that hold up in live settings A vocabulary for purpose and values that senior commercial audiences will engage with Concrete improvements in how leaders prepare for and recover from high-stakes communication moments

Why organisations work with Nikhil Desai A signature programme on stress management, “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, that has been delivered to executives across more than 2,000 organisations and refined over three decades. A trainer’s instinct for behaviour change at scale, built through 250,000-plus participants across 42 countries, not a single keynote act. Direct operating credibility from building eight businesses in eight years across Indian textile and automobile manufacturing after his US MBA. A practical blend of corporate yoga practice and MBA discipline that lands well with mixed audiences in Asia, the Gulf, and beyond. Biography highlights Director of The Centre For Excellence, the corporate training firm he founded in 1991 in the year of India’s economic liberalisation. MBA from a US university where he graduated first in his class, followed by a period working in New York. Built and ran manufacturing operations across the Indian textile and automobile sectors before moving full time into training. Programmes delivered to more than 250,000 participants across 300-plus cities in 42 countries. Recipient of the Global Iconic Motivational Speaker Award (Leadership & Excellence Awards 2021) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress. Author of the forthcoming book “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”. Biography The Centre For Excellence opened its doors in 1991, the year India dismantled its old industrial controls and a generation of managers had to learn a new commercial language. Nikhil Desai had already lived both sides of that shift. He had taken an MBA in the United States, graduating first in his class, then worked in New York before returning to India to build manufacturing businesses across textiles and automobile components. That operating background matters because it shapes what he teaches. He grew one business into eight in eight years, which gave him a working view of how middle managers actually behave under cost pressure, missed deadlines, and family obligation pulling in opposite directions. His signature programmes, “In Pursuit Of Excellence” and “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, are designed around that lived friction rather than a textbook model of motivation. The reach is large by any standard for the corporate training market. More than 250,000 participants across 300 cities in 42 countries have been through his programmes over three decades. He works in English and Gujarati, runs sessions from Mumbai to Muscat, and is one of a small number of Indian trainers regularly booked into multinational programmes in the Gulf, South Africa, and South East Asia. What he is not is a strategy speaker. The work sits in personal effectiveness, stress resilience, communication, and team behaviour, which is its own discipline and one most senior leaders quietly know their organisations are weakest at. The Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress reflects that. His forthcoming book, “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”, continues the same line. Key speaking topics Stress management and personal resilience Personal effectiveness and time management Motivation and excellence in the workplace Leadership and team performance Communication and presentation skills Customer care and sales behaviour Train the trainer programmes Ideal for HR and L&D leaders commissioning company-wide capability programmes Sales and customer-facing teams under sustained delivery pressure Middle managers stepping up into leadership roles for the first time Indian and Gulf-based organisations with mixed-language workforces Audience outcomes Practical techniques for managing stress without disengaging from the work Sharper personal time management habits that survive the week after the session A clearer view of what excellence looks like in their specific role Communication and presentation skills that hold up in front of internal and external audiences Greater confidence in handling difficult customers, colleagues, and team dynamics

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 George Randle He has run talent acquisition at the scale most organisations are trying to reach. His teams hired 85,000+ professionals and 2,000+ executives across 75+ countries inside Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 firms. His framework is published and specific. The Talent War sets out an attribute-based selection model drawn from US Special Operations, applied to corporate hiring, with named predictors rather than personality archetypes. He brings Hogan certification (HPI, HDS, MVPI) and uses assessment data operationally, for executive selection and derailer identification, not as decoration in a keynote. He built one of the largest veteran hiring programmes inside a Global Fortune 50, which gives him a concrete answer to a problem most CHROs are still solving in PowerPoint. He speaks to talent and HR audiences as a peer, not a consultant. He has sat on both sides of the executive search transaction and structured the team that ran it. Biography highlights Co-author, The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent (Lioncrest, 2020), foreword by Jocko Willink. Co-host, The Talent War Podcast. Managing Partner, Randall Partners LLC; former Managing Partner at Talent War Group and EF Overwatch. 20+ years of Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 HR and talent acquisition leadership, including head of talent acquisition roles at a Global Fortune 50 firm. Hogan Leadership Assessment certified coach across HPI, HDS, and MVPI instruments. Former US Army officer with operational assignments in Berlin, US CENTCOM, and III Corps, and deployments to Somalia, Kenya, Central America, and Guantanamo Bay. Biography Most large organisations hire the wrong people in the same way every year. They optimise for credentials and interview performance, then absorb the cost when those hires fail under real conditions. The Special Operations community solved that problem decades ago, by selecting on attributes that predict behaviour under stress rather than on resumes. That is the argument George Randle makes, with the standing to make it. He co-wrote The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent with former SEAL officer Mike Sarraille and Dr. Josh Cotton, with a foreword by Jocko Willink. The book sets out a selection model anchored in named attributes such as drive, resilience, adaptability, and integrity, and shows how to test for them in a corporate interview. The credibility behind the argument is operational, not theoretical. Randle ran talent acquisition functions inside Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 firms, and his teams hired more than 85,000 professionals and 2,000+ executives across 75+ countries. He built one of the largest veteran hiring programmes at a Global Fortune 50. He is Hogan certified across HPI, HDS, and MVPI, and uses the assessment data to surface candidates that interview processes routinely miss. He came to the work through the US Army, where he served as an officer with assignments at Berlin, US CENTCOM, and III Corps, and deployments across Somalia, Kenya, Central America, and Guantanamo Bay. The through-line of his career is the same question asked twice: in a high-stakes selection decision, what actually predicts performance. Key speaking topics Attribute-based talent selection Executive search and assessment Building high-performing teams Veteran hiring and transition programmes Talent strategy as competitive advantage Leadership under pressure Talent acquisition at scale Ideal for CHROs, Chief Talent Officers, and Heads of Talent Acquisition rebuilding selection processes CEOs and boards reviewing executive search and succession discipline Private equity operating partners assessing portfolio company leadership Senior HR and people leaders running veteran hiring or transition programmes Audience outcomes A named set of attributes to test for in executive and high-stakes hires, beyond competency interviews A working view of how Special Operations selection translates into corporate hiring decisions A clearer read on where assessment data, including Hogan, belongs in the selection process A sharper case to take back to the executive team for treating talent acquisition as a strategic function, not an administrative one

Why organisations work with Lisa Walden She translates over a decade of qualitative research on generational sociology into culture decisions a CHRO can actually defend at board level, not survey commentary. Two published books, including The Future of Work is Human and the Wiley “For Dummies” field guide on managing millennials, give her arguments a public, citable spine. She tackles the contested ground of hybrid work, return-to-office friction and Gen Z expectations without retreating into either nostalgia or hype. Her work on trust and psychological safety reads as operational, not therapeutic: barriers named, ingredients specified, applied across in-person, virtual and hybrid teams. She customises through pre-event interviews with client teams, so the keynote lands on the organisation’s specific cultural tension rather than a generic future-of-work narrative. Biography highlights Co-founder of Good Company Consulting, a workplace culture and future-of-work advisory firm. Co-author of The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World (with Hannah L. Ubl). Co-author of Managing Millennials for Dummies, part of Wiley’s “For Dummies” series. Advisor to organisations including BMW, Siemens, HP, Syntellis, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Texas A&M University System. Over a decade of qualitative research on generational dynamics and employee experience. Speaker on culture, trust, hybrid work, AI and human judgement, and cross-generational collaboration. Biography Five generations now share the same payroll, and the cultural assumptions each one brought to work have stopped quietly cohabiting. Trust expectations differ. Communication norms differ. The unwritten contract between employer and employee, the one that held through most of the late twentieth century, no longer carries the room. This is the territory Lisa Walden has spent more than a decade studying as a generational sociologist and workplace strategist. As co-founder of Good Company Consulting, Walden advises organisations on how to redesign culture for a workforce that no longer agrees on what work is for. Her clients include BMW, Siemens, HP, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Syntellis and Texas A&M University System. The work focuses on the connective tissue of an organisation: trust, psychological safety, communication norms, and the specific operating shifts that make a hybrid or multigenerational workforce coherent rather than fractious. Her two books anchor the public argument. The Future of Work is Human, co-authored with Hannah Ubl, sets out a post-pandemic culture playbook built around compassionate leadership and person-first management. Managing Millennials for Dummies, published in Wiley’s “For Dummies” series, gave her the early platform on generational management and remains a working reference for HR and people leaders. What distinguishes her on a stage is the refusal to default to either the wellness register or the technology register when discussing culture. She treats generational difference as a design input for operating decisions, not a personality theme, and she addresses the friction points that senior teams usually avoid in public: return-to-office disagreement, Gen Z expectations of managers, and what AI adoption does to the human texture of a team. Key speaking topics Future of work and post-pandemic culture Multigenerational workplace dynamics Trust and psychological safety Hybrid and remote work design Employee engagement and motivation Human-centred AI adoption Leadership communication across generations Ideal for CHROs, people leaders and heads of culture redesigning post-pandemic operating norms. Executive teams confronting return-to-office friction and hybrid policy disagreement. Boards and CEOs of organisations with significant Gen Z and millennial workforces. Leadership development and talent programmes inside large, multi-generational employers. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where generational friction is actually costing the organisation, and where it is noise. A working vocabulary for trust and psychological safety that managers can apply on Monday. Specific operating moves for hybrid and in-person team design, not policy slogans. A way to talk about AI adoption that treats human judgement as a capability, not a leftover. Confidence to make culture decisions defensible to both a board and a Gen Z hire.