Employee Engagement

Why organisations work with Stef Sword-Williams She gives quiet, high-performing employees a working method for being seen, which directly affects retention and promotion equity rather than abstract confidence. Her material is built from eight years inside advertising, so self-promotion is taught as a brand and storytelling discipline, not a motivational frame. F*ck Being Humble has trained workforces at Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon, giving her a wide read on where internal visibility fails. The book F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word has sold over 10,000 copies and gives her a defined point of view that audiences can follow into workshops and team practice. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, useful as signal for senior buyers screening a younger speaker against a leadership-level audience. Biography highlights Founder of F*ck Being Humble, a global training consultancy working with Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. Author of F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word, published by Quadrille and reported to have sold over 10,000 copies. TEDx speaker, with a talk titled “F*ck being humble!” delivered at TEDxAreni. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), recognising the social impact of her work. Featured in Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times, and a regular speaker at industry events including Advertising Week. Biography The people who get promoted are not always the people doing the best work. Inside large organisations, visibility shapes who progresses and who plateaus, and most employees have never been taught how to make their contribution legible to the people deciding their next role. Stef Sword-Williams spent close to eight years in advertising telling stories for global brands before noticing how rarely the same craft was applied to individual careers. She founded F*ck Being Humble in 2018 to close that gap, and in 2020 published the book of the same name with Quadrille, setting out a method for self-promotion that treats it as professional skill rather than personality trait. The work has scaled into a training practice used by Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. She has been recognised as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, with media coverage across Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times. Her TEDxAreni talk, “F*ck being humble!”, is the short form of the same argument. Organisations that want to keep their best people, close promotion gaps, and grow a stronger internal pipeline cannot rely on quiet competence to surface itself. Sword-Williams gives them a vocabulary and a practice for fixing that. Key speaking topics Self-promotion as a workplace skill Personal branding inside organisations Imposter syndrome and confidence at work Pitching, presenting, and making ideas heard Negotiation and asking for more Networking and internal visibility Feedback culture Storytelling for individuals in a brand-driven world Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and L&D leaders working on retention, promotion equity, and internal mobility. DEI and ERG leads designing programming for women, early-career talent, and underrepresented groups in promotion pipelines. Heads of Talent and managers running high-potential and emerging-leader cohorts. Conference programmers building tracks on workplace confidence, personal brand, or future skills. Audience outcomes A practical method for talking about their own work without sounding self-serving or scripted. A clear view of where internal visibility breaks down and which behaviours close that gap. Language for handling feedback, negotiation, and self-advocacy conversations with managers. Permission and pattern for ambitious self-presentation in cultures that default to humility. Tools managers can use to surface quieter talent and rebalance who gets seen.

Why organisations work with Rikki Arundel A category-defining UK voice on trans and non-binary inclusion at work, with the rare combination of an MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull and twenty years of lived experience as an openly trans speaker. Inaugural recipient of The Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2024) and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, signals that this is a senior practitioner, not a first-person-story booking. Founder and first president of the UK and Ireland Professional Speaking Association, which means a level of platform craft that allows hard subject matter to land with executive audiences without defensiveness. Practical content for managers and ERG sponsors: what to say when someone comes out, how policy holds up under challenge, and where unconscious bias actually shows up in promotion and customer-facing decisions. A track record across police forces, NHS trusts, financial services and government, including Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Biography highlights Founder and first president, Professional Speaking Association (UK and Ireland). MSc in Gender Research, University of Hull. PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame, Professional Speaking Association. Inaugural Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024. Named one of 50 LGBT Icons in the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary list. TEDx speaker, including “Why is Gender Identity so Important?” at TEDxFidelityInternational. Biography Most organisations have a trans inclusion policy. Far fewer have managers who know what to do when an employee comes out at work, when a customer files a complaint about pronouns, or when a journalist asks how the company will hold its position. Rikki Arundel’s work sits in that gap between policy language and operational practice. The credibility for that work is unusually layered. Rikki founded the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland and served as its first president, then publicly transitioned in 2002 and rebuilt a speaking career around gender and inclusion. An MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull underpins the content, and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame induction reflects the platform craft. The substance is practical. Rikki separates sex from gender for non-specialist audiences, walks managers through the moments where inclusion is actually tested, and addresses how policy holds up when challenged externally. The aim is behavioural change inside teams, not awareness for its own sake. Recognition has tracked the work. The Speaker Awards named Rikki the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2024, and Rikki was listed among 50 LGBT Icons during the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary. Clients include Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and Atalian Servest UK and Ireland. Key speaking topics Trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplace Sex, gender and social identity LGBTQ discrimination and harassment Unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion Inclusive leadership for managers ERG enablement for Pride and LGBT History Month Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes that need to survive external scrutiny. ERG and Pride network sponsors planning LGBT History Month, Pride and Trans Day of Visibility events that have to do more than mark a date. Line managers and people partners in regulated sectors, including policing, healthcare, financial services and government. Boards and executive teams seeking a credible briefing on trans inclusion before a public position is required. Audience outcomes A working separation of sex, gender identity and gender expression that managers can use in real conversations. Specific scripts and behaviours for the moment a colleague comes out as trans or non-binary at work. A clearer view of where unconscious bias actually shows up in hiring, promotion and customer-facing decisions. A framework for ERG leaders to plan inclusion content that is substantive rather than performative.

Why organisations work with Mark Wilkinson Pairs an operational safety credential, Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health, with personality diversity practice through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework. That combination is unusual on the speaker circuit, where wellbeing voices rarely carry frontline safety standing. Translates personality difference into safety behaviour. The argument that an extroverted risk-taker and a cautious analyst will hear the same toolbox talk in opposite ways gives leaders a concrete way to redesign briefings, supervision and incident review. Lived recovery from collapse, addiction, bankruptcy and depression gives the resilience material first-hand authority. The story is supported by a published book, Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Works comfortably across heavy industry, energy and corporate audiences, including engagements such as Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, and adapts the same material for a leadership offsite or a frontline safety stand-down. Brings the production craft of a former Ministry of Sound resident DJ into the room. Music, video and live elements are part of the delivery, which lands with audiences who switch off during conventional keynotes. Biography highlights Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health (CMIOSH) and Fellow of the Institute of Leadership (FIoL). Certified E-Colours personality diversity practitioner through Equilibria, working with leadership teams across energy, sport and corporate sectors. Author of Life Remixed: Looking Beyond The Dance To Face The Music, published 2021, with foreword endorsements from Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Host of the Life Remixed podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Former international house music DJ with a Ministry of Sound residency, performances in 65 countries and a UK Top 10 chart entry as part of Dab Hands with the remix of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love”. Speaker at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival and across health, safety and leadership programmes for industrial and corporate clients. Biography Behavioural safety has a translation problem. Two people on the same site, given the same briefing, will walk away with different versions of what was said and different views of the risk in front of them. Wilkinson’s working argument is that personality difference is a structural variable in safety and engagement, not a soft factor to be managed around. He works that argument through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework, where he is a certified practitioner, and through his Chartered standing with the Institute of Safety and Health. The combination matters: the diagnostic of human difference is paired with operational health and safety credibility, which is what gives the work purchase in heavy industry and energy clients rather than only in leadership development settings. The personal story sits behind the professional one. A former Ministry of Sound resident DJ with a UK Top 10 chart credit, Wilkinson collapsed at 33 and lost income, home and relationship across an 18-month recovery. He rebuilt through health and safety work and personal development study, and wrote Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff, as the account of that rebuild. For organisations, that biography is useful because it lets him hold a room of frontline operators and a room of senior leaders with the same material. The safety and personality work gives the talk its operational edge. The recovery narrative gives it the emotional weight that makes the safety message actually stick. Key speaking topics Behavioural safety and human factors Personality diversity in the workplace Resilience and personal recovery Mental wellbeing and mindset Leadership communication across personality types Engagement in high-risk operational environments Ideal for Heads of HSE, safety leadership teams and operational directors in energy, construction, aviation and manufacturing HR and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing or behavioural change programmes Leadership and learning teams running offsites that need a credible voice on personal resilience Frontline conferences and toolbox events where a conventional academic keynote will lose the room Audience outcomes A working model for why the same safety message lands differently across a workforce and what to change about briefings as a result A vocabulary for personality difference that supervisors and team leads can use without specialist training A first-hand account of recovery from collapse and addiction that opens room for honest conversation about wellbeing A reframe of behavioural safety as a leadership and communication problem, not only a compliance one

Why organisations work with Anna Baréz-Brown A track record at scale: the Shine programme has reached thousands of women across four continents and more than 75 nationalities, with named corporate clients including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google. Her work is built around retention and progression metrics, not engagement scores. Clients commission her when the gender balance of their senior roster needs to change, not when they need an inspirational keynote. She frames inclusion as a commercial discipline. Her core argument, that diversity fails in most companies because it sits with people who lack decision rights and budget, lands credibly with COOs and CEOs as well as CHROs. A corporate operator before a coach: a former European Sales Director responsible for 12 countries and 85 employees, with credentials as a CTI Leadership Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. She talks to men as well as women. The programme deliberately addresses allyship, micro-aggressions, and the part male leaders play in changing the system, which makes her workable for organisations nervous about polarised DEI framing. Biography highlights Co-founder of Shine (now We Are Shine), launched 2013 with Caroline Whaley. Former European Sales Director with responsibility for 12 countries and 85 employees. Earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. Programme has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. Named clients include WPP, Rothschild & Co, TikTok, Channel 4, Google, Channel 4, ITV, and EasyJet. Credentialled as a CTI Leadership Coach, Neuro-Linguistic Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Biography Most diversity work fails on the same fault line. Programmes sit inside HR, measured by sign-up rates and sentiment, while the senior roster keeps reproducing itself. Promotion patterns do not move. Mid-career women leave. The gap between stated values and lived experience widens. Shine, the organisation Anna Baréz-Brown co-founded with Caroline Whaley in 2013, was built to attack that fault line directly. The programme is delivered into companies including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google, and is measured against retention, promotion, and the gender balance of senior teams. It has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. The credibility behind that work is corporate, not activist. Before launching Shine, Baréz-Brown ran a sales business as European Director with twelve countries and eighty-five staff reporting in, after earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. She is a CTI Leadership Coach, an NLP Master Practitioner, and a qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Her argument to senior teams is commercial. Diversity stalls because the responsibility is delegated downward, the investment is underestimated, and the conversation polarises before any system actually changes. Her work treats inclusion as a leadership discipline that involves men and women, allies and sceptics, and the operating decisions of the business itself. Key speaking topics Gender balance in senior leadership Inclusive leadership and allyship Building corporate leadership pipelines Coaching cultures and feedback Personal energy and performance at work Influence, impact, and executive presence Courageous conversations and managing micro-aggressions Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of D&I designing senior pipeline programmes. CEOs and ExCo sponsors who want gender balance treated as a commercial outcome, not a comms initiative. Leadership development teams running cohort programmes for high-potential women and their managers. Male executives and line managers being asked to act as allies and sponsors in practice. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most diversity programmes do not move the senior roster, and what does. Language and tools for courageous conversations across difference, including on micro-aggressions. Specific practices for women navigating senior career transitions: stakeholder management, brand, energy, narrative. A framing of inclusion that male leaders can act on, not just endorse. A diagnostic for where their own organisation’s pipeline is leaking and who needs to own the fix.

Why organisations work with Andy Storch He has facilitated talent and leadership programmes for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co., which means he has tested his career-ownership material against the most demanding corporate L&D functions in the market. He runs the room where his buyers meet each other. The Talent Development Think Tank conference, community, and podcast give him a working view of what CHROs and L&D leaders are actually trying to fix, before they brief a speaker. His thesis is concrete and actionable: career ownership is a learnable practice, not a slogan. Own Your Career Own Your Life breaks it into specific steps employees and managers can apply on Monday. His 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, gives organisations a practical handle on personal brand as a retention and internal mobility lever, not a LinkedIn exercise. He works equally credibly as a keynote, workshop facilitator, and community host. For talent functions running multi-day events, that flexibility is rare. Biography highlights Author of Own Your Career Own Your Life (2020) and co-author with Mike Kim of Own Your Brand, Own Your Career (2025). Founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, conference, and community, sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Has consulted, taught, or facilitated for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, State Farm, Red Bull, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, HP, Sony, Cisco, and Tiffany & Co. MBA, USC Marshall School of Business (President of the MBA programme); BS, University of Florida. Host of three podcasts: The Talent Development Hot Seat, Own Your Career, and My NFT Journey. Workshop facilitator for global enterprises since 2011. Biography Career development inside large organisations has become a quiet contract failure. Employees assume their employer will plot the path; employers assume employees will take initiative; the middle is where engagement and retention disappear. Storch built a practice around closing that gap from both sides. His book Own Your Career Own Your Life sets out a step-by-step approach to career ownership for individual contributors and managers. The 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, extends the argument into personal brand as an internal-mobility and retention lever rather than an external marketing exercise. Both books are direct and operational, not motivational. The proof point most relevant to corporate buyers is who he works with. Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co. have used him to facilitate leadership and talent programmes. He has been running these workshops since 2011, which is what allows the keynote material to land in language a senior L&D function recognises. The Talent Development Think Tank, his podcast, conference, and community, gives him an unusual position in the market. He is not commenting on the talent development field from outside it; he is the convener inside it. For a CHRO or head of L&D, that means the speaker on stage has heard, in private, the same problems they are trying to solve. Key speaking topics Career ownership and employee development Talent development strategy Personal brand and internal mobility Leadership for managers of professionals Employee engagement and retention Future of work and talent trends Ideal for CHROs, heads of L&D, and talent development leaders running enterprise development programmes Annual talent and leadership offsites for managers of professionals Employee resource groups and internal high-potential cohorts Sales and account leadership conferences focused on retention and growth of top performers Audience outcomes A working definition of career ownership that managers and employees can apply to weekly conversations Specific tools to make personal brand work as an internal mobility and retention asset A clearer line between what the employer owes the employee and what the employee owes their own career Language to frame development conversations that does not collapse into performance review template A view of where talent development practice is heading, drawn from a sitting community of CHROs and L&D leaders

Why organisations work with Andy Milligan Seven books across Kogan Page and Financial Times imprints, including Bold (CMI Management Book of the Year, e-book category, 2012) and On Purpose with Shaun Smith, give him a documented track record on brand-led growth that consultants without published evidence cannot match. He works the full chain from purpose to promise to operational delivery, which is rare. Most advisors stop at strategy or stop at touchpoint design. He has spent thirty years on the connection between them. Client work spans Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche and WWF across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The breadth of categories and geographies means his examples land with audiences in heavily regulated, consumer, and B2B sectors equally. His starting position is that brand lives in employee behaviour before it lives in customer perception. For leaders trying to align a fatigued workforce behind a customer promise, that is the more useful framing. Biography highlights Founding partner of The Caffeine Partnership, the UK brand and growth consultancy he co-founded in 2006. Began his career at Interbrand in London; ran the firm’s Singapore office and later led its Internal Brand Management practice. Co-author of On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) and Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win with Shaun Smith. Bold won the CMI Management Book of the Year award in the e-book category in 2012. Co-author of Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey (Kogan Page, 2017; second edition 2022). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; media commentator for BBC, Sky and CNN on brand issues. Biography Brand is an operating discipline, not a marketing one. That has been the thesis of Andy Milligan’s work since his time at Interbrand in the 1990s, where he ran the Singapore office and later led the firm’s Internal Brand Management practice. The argument is now unfashionable enough to be useful again: customers do not experience strategy decks, they experience employees, products and service moments. In 2006 he co-founded The Caffeine Partnership, a brand and growth consultancy that has advised Nissan, McLaren, Barclays, Unilever, FIFA, IHG, Roche, WWF and Thai Airways across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the USA and Europe. The work moves between purpose definition, customer experience design and employee engagement, treated as one connected problem rather than three departmental ones. The same argument runs through seven books. Uncommon Practice and See, Feel, Think, Do with Shaun Smith examined the link between corporate culture and brand experience. Bold: How to be Brave in Business and Win won the CMI Management Book of the Year in the e-book category in 2012. On Purpose (Kogan Page, 2015) set out a practical framework for translating purpose into a branded customer experience. Myths of Branding with Simon Bailey, now in its second edition with Kogan Page, dismantles the assumption that brand work is a logo problem. Milligan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and comments regularly for BBC, Sky and CNN. The reason senior teams bring him into commercial growth conversations is straightforward: he has spent thirty years arguing that organisations get the customers their employees deserve, and he can show them where the gap is. Key speaking topics Brand-led business growth Customer experience strategy Employee engagement and brand Purpose and commercial strategy Brand culture and organisational alignment Marketing and brand myths Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and brand directors aligning marketing with operational delivery CHROs and CPOs connecting employee engagement to customer outcomes CEOs and boards repositioning a business around a sharper purpose Customer experience and transformation leads moving from strategy to execution Audience outcomes A clearer view of where brand promise and customer experience are diverging in their own organisation A working definition of purpose that can be tested against employee and customer behaviour, not slogan Named case examples across consumer, financial services, automotive and sport that translate to the audience’s category A short list of brand myths their leadership team is probably still operating under

Why organisations work with Fehinti Balogun He brings a working screen actor’s craft to climate communication, with credits across HBO, Netflix, BBC and Paramount+ that buy attention from audiences who tune out conventional sustainability talks. His one-man show Can I Live?, produced by Complicite with the Barbican, is the rare piece of climate work that has been taken seriously by both theatre critics and climate organisers, giving him a methodology he can adapt for corporate audiences. He has spoken to policy and scientific audiences at UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament and Cambridge University, which means his climate content stands up in rooms beyond entertainment. His TED talk on finding your voice for climate action gives organisations a direct entry point for staff who want to act but do not know how to begin. Biography highlights Graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), 2016. Screen credits include I May Destroy You, Dune, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, and Down Cemetery Road. BAFTA nomination for Supporting Actor for Down Cemetery Road. Writer and lead performer of Can I Live?, produced by Complicite with the Barbican, directed by Daniel Bailey and Simon McBurney. TED speaker: “How to find your voice for climate action” (2022). Climate platforms include UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament, Cambridge University and the YouTube Creator Summit. Biography Climate communication inside organisations runs into the same wall again and again. The science is settled, the targets are public, and the workforce still does not have a shared language for any of it. Fehinti Balogun has spent his second career building that language through performance rather than policy. Trained at RADA, Balogun is a working actor with screen credits across HBO, Netflix, BBC and Paramount+, including I May Destroy You, Dune, A Gentleman in Moscow and Down Cemetery Road, the last of which earned him a BAFTA nomination for Supporting Actor. The technical command he brings to a stage or a camera is what gives his climate work its unusual reach. Can I Live?, written and performed by Balogun and produced by the theatre company Complicite with the Barbican, is the centre of that work. It combines spoken word, hip-hop, theatre, animation and scientific fact, and it became one of the few climate pieces taken seriously inside both the UK theatre scene and the climate movement. The same instinct shapes his TED talk, “How to find your voice for climate action.” His climate platforms include UN COP26, the Scottish Parliament, Cambridge University and the YouTube Creator Summit. He is most useful to organisations that have a credible climate position on paper and a workforce that has not yet found a way to talk about it. Key speaking topics Climate communication and storytelling Sustainability and employee engagement Diversity and inclusion in the climate movement Purpose and voice for early-career talent Creative practice as a tool for organisational change Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leads who need internal communications that move staff, not just stakeholders. CHROs and employee engagement leads building purpose-led programmes for early-career and creative talent. Internal D&I and ERG sponsors working at the intersection of climate and inclusion. Communications and brand leads in consumer-facing organisations who need a credible cultural voice on climate. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of why staff disengage from climate messaging that reads as compliance. Language and examples leaders can use to talk about sustainability without sliding into jargon. A working model for how creative practice can carry organisational messages that policy memos cannot. A more honest picture of how race, class and access shape who feels invited into climate conversations at work.

Why organisations work with Hayley Mulenda She has been booked into the rooms where retention strategy is set, including Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Unilever’s C-suite under Leena Nair, and Meta MENA’s leadership. Her TEDxLSE talk «The Danger of Being a Role Model» frames a specific argument about authenticity that translates directly into how organisations think about leadership visibility and reverse mentoring. She holds an active operating seat as Brand Board Member at Wagamama, so the inclusion and culture content is informed by board-level decision-making, not consultancy at arm’s length. Her work on the gap between C-suite intent and Gen Z lived experience addresses a problem most leadership teams can name but few can resolve. Her book «The ABCs to Student Success» and her TEDx platform give her a public body of work that buyers can read before booking. Biography highlights TEDxLSE speaker, «The Danger of Being a Role Model» Author, «The ABCs to Student Success» Brand Board Member, Wagamama Keynote and consulting work with Microsoft, Unilever, JP Morgan, Google, Meta MENA, Chanel, Bloomberg Media, Harrods, Clifford Chance, Cabinet Office UK Spoken at Wembley Arena, Oslo Spektrum, and the UK Houses of Parliament Named one of 25 Black entrepreneurs to watch in 2024, The Black Business Show x HSBC Biography The cost of failing to engage a younger workforce is now measured at executive committee level. Retention has become a leadership question rather than an HR one. Hayley Mulenda’s work sits at the point where mental health, inclusion, and generational change converge inside that question. She came to the work through her own experience. After a suicide attempt at 18, she rebuilt her life around the practical mechanics of mental health and self-worth, and turned that into a public body of work. Her TEDxLSE talk, «The Danger of Being a Role Model», argues that organisations and leaders default to curated personas when employees actually need authenticity, and that the difference is what determines trust. Her client list reflects how that argument lands inside large organisations. Microsoft brought her to Redmond. Unilever’s then Chief HR Officer Leena Nair, now CEO of Chanel, has worked with her. Meta MENA, JP Morgan, Bloomberg Media, Clifford Chance, Google, the Cabinet Office, and Teach First have all booked her on briefs covering wellbeing, inclusion, and reverse mentoring. Wagamama appointed her to its brand board. The «ABCs to Student Success» gives her a published framework. The board seat keeps the work close to operating decisions. Together, they explain why she is booked less as a wellbeing speaker and more as a translator between senior leaders and the workforce now reporting to them. Key speaking topics Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Reverse mentoring and generational engagement Diversity, equity and inclusion Employee retention and the social contract of work Authentic leadership and personal branding Workplace culture across the MENA region Ideal for CHROs and people directors managing retention of Gen Z and millennial talent Inclusion and culture leads building reverse mentoring or ERG programmes Executive teams reviewing employee engagement and wellbeing strategy Conferences and offsites where leadership wants a credible voice on mental health rather than a generic one Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between leader visibility and leader authenticity, and why one drives engagement and the other does not A direct view of what younger employees actually want from senior leaders A reframing of mental health from a wellbeing programme into a retention lever Practical reference points for designing reverse mentoring that produces decisions, not optics

Why organisations work with June Sarpong She has run inclusion at scale inside one of the world’s largest media organisations. As the BBC’s first Director of Creative Diversity, she sat on the Executive Committee and oversaw a £100m commissioning commitment, which gives boards a credible peer voice rather than an outside consultant. Her three HarperCollins books (Diversify, The Power of Women, The Power of Privilege) build an economic argument for inclusion, drawing on Nuffield College, Oxford research that put the cost of UK discrimination at £127bn a year. Buyers get a speaker who can frame the case in commercial terms. Through Diversify International, she has worked with Burberry, Barclays, Nike, Google, Unilever, EY and the NHS, so the room can ask practical questions about what works in regulated, consumer-facing and public-sector contexts. She moves naturally between keynote and host or moderator, which makes her usable across formats: a leadership offsite opener, an internal town hall, an awards stage, or a chaired board conversation on diversity. Biography highlights First Director of Creative Diversity at the BBC and first Black woman on the BBC Executive Committee. Oversaw a £100m commitment to diverse and inclusive content commissioning at the BBC. Author of three HarperCollins titles on inclusion: Diversify, The Power of Women, The Power of Privilege. Founder of Diversify International, with corporate clients including Burberry, Barclays, Google, Nike, Unilever, EY, Facebook and the NHS. MBE (2007) and OBE (2020) for services to broadcasting and to broadcasting respectively. Non-Executive Trustee of Tate, appointed by the Prime Minister. Biography Inclusion is now a board-level question because the audiences, workforces and customer bases of most large organisations have changed faster than the people running them. June Sarpong’s work sits exactly in that gap. She argues, in commercial language, that closing it is an operating decision, not a values statement. She made that case from inside one of the world’s most scrutinised institutions. As the BBC’s first Director of Creative Diversity, she sat on the Executive Committee and oversaw a £100m commissioning commitment to diverse and inclusive content. It was the first time a UK public broadcaster of that scale tied inclusion to a budget line and reported against it. The argument is also published. Her three HarperCollins books, Diversify, The Power of Women and The Power of Privilege, draw on Nuffield College, Oxford research that put the annual cost of discrimination in the UK at £127bn. The books are used as a frame in her keynote work, which is how she became useful to companies trying to move beyond statements: Burberry, Barclays, Google, Nike, Unilever, EY and the NHS have all engaged Diversify International, the consultancy she founded after leaving the BBC. Her career began in broadcasting, and that range still matters commercially. She presented Channel 4’s T4 for nine years, interviewed Tony Blair for the strand, and is a regular panel and broadcast voice. The same craft that lets her host a leadership offsite or chair a board conversation also lets her bring difficult inclusion content into a room without it landing as a lecture. She is a Trustee of Tate, appointed by the Prime Minister, and holds an OBE for services to broadcasting. Key speaking topics Inclusion as an operating commitment Diverse audiences and consumer reach Workforce composition and talent The economic case for inclusion Allyship and privilege Women in leadership Culture change inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and DEI leads under pressure to show measurable inclusion outcomes Boards and executive committees revisiting inclusion strategy after the post-2020 reset Marketing and brand leaders rethinking how products and content connect with diverse audiences Leadership offsites, internal town halls and conferences that need a credible host as well as a speaker Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what inclusion looks like as a budget and operating decision, drawn from a real public-sector example The commercial argument for inclusion in language a CFO or board chair will accept A practical reading of what worked and what failed across consumer, financial and public-sector deployments A sharper view of the difference between inclusion programmes and inclusion communications

Why organisations work with David Siegel He led the carve-out of Meetup from WeWork to AlleyCorp in March 2020, a transaction completed inside the first weeks of the pandemic, and can speak from inside the deal rather than around it. He took Investopedia through a near-fivefold valuation increase and the sale to Dotdash, which gives him operator authority on building a category-leading consumer brand and exiting it. His book, “Decide and Conquer,” published by HarperCollins Leadership, gives audiences a structured 44-decision framework written from the chair, not the seminar room. He teaches strategic planning and entrepreneurship at Columbia University, which means the operational material is sharpened by working with the next generation of founders and senior leaders. His “Keep Connected” podcast has turned community-building into a measurable commercial discipline, useful for organisations rebuilding internal engagement or customer affinity. Biography highlights Former CEO of Meetup; led the company through the WeWork-to-AlleyCorp acquisition in March 2020. Former CEO of Investopedia; led the sale to Dotdash after tripling revenue and driving a near-fivefold valuation increase. Former President of Seeking Alpha and former SVP at 1-800-Flowers; early-career executive at DoubleClick. Author of “Decide and Conquer: 44 Decisions that will Make or Break All Leaders” (HarperCollins Leadership). Adjunct professor at Columbia University, teaching strategic planning and entrepreneurship. Bylines in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, CNBC, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur. Biography Meetup was a difficult business when David Siegel inherited it. It had been bought by WeWork, was burning cash, and was about to face a pandemic that emptied the rooms where its product lived. Inside eighteen months, he had made it profitable for the first time in its history, and in March 2020, he led its carve-out to a consortium led by AlleyCorp. That arc, distressed asset to functioning standalone business under pandemic conditions, is what gives his speaking work its weight. Before Meetup, he was CEO of Investopedia, where he tripled revenue and led the sale to Dotdash at a near-fivefold valuation. Before that, President of Seeking Alpha and an SVP at 1-800-Flowers, with an early-career chapter at DoubleClick. His book, “Decide and Conquer,” published by HarperCollins Leadership, is organised around the 44 decisions he argues a new chief executive will face. It is a working playbook, not a memoir, and it draws on the specific judgement calls, hiring, pricing, communications, and board management that he made in the seat. He teaches strategic planning and entrepreneurship at Columbia University, hosts the “Keep Connected” podcast on community as a business lever, and has published bylines in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, CNBC, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur. The teaching and writing keep the operator material structured; the operator material keeps the teaching honest. Key speaking topics Decision-making for chief executives and founders Community as a commercial growth engine Carve-outs, turnarounds, and post-acquisition leadership Scaling consumer internet businesses Building and selling category-leading brands Entrepreneurial leadership through crisis Ideal for Founders and CEOs of scaling businesses, particularly those facing a financing event, carve-out, or sale Boards and executive teams working through restructure, integration, or post-acquisition leadership questions Senior commercial and product leaders rebuilding customer community or engagement at scale Audience outcomes A working set of decision frames drawn from a real CEO seat, not a consulting model A clear view of how community translates into commercial outcomes, with examples from a platform business Specific lessons from a pandemic-era carve-out, applicable to current restructure and divestment conversations A sharper read on what to do in the first ninety days of a new chief executive role

Why organisations work with Jill Payne A working method, not a mood-lift. Her Energy Management framework gives leaders and teams a shared language for how they move, what they focus on, and how they talk to themselves under load. Credibility with high-performance environments. She has coached the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme on mental conditioning and culture, and applies the same playbook inside companies. A book the field has rated. Be a Dime won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Self-Help category, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Range across sectors that demand precision. Named corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. Tools audiences keep using. Her sessions hand over named practices, the Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence among them, that leaders can take back into their week. Biography highlights Author of Be a Dime: Unleash Your Inherent Energy and Live Life More Joyfully (Figure 1 Publishing). Gold Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, Self-Help, 2024. Master’s in Workplace Wellness / Employee Engagement & Workplace Performance; undergraduate degrees in Human Kinetics and Education. Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach to the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme. Former Team Canada athlete in Sprint Canoe and Rugby. Corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, Western Union, NBC. Biography Most wellbeing programmes treat burnout as something to soften after the fact. Payne treats it earlier, as a question of capacity. How a leader moves through the day, what they choose to attend to, and the running dialogue they hold with themselves all sit upstream of how much pressure they can absorb before judgement slips. That logic became the Energy Management framework, now used inside organisations across North America. The method is built on three working levers, body, focus, and dialogue, which Payne treats as a single system rather than three wellness habits. Her book Be a Dime sets out the approach in long form and won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Self-Help, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Her credibility comes from working inside environments where the cost of poor energy is immediate. As Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach with the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme, she applied the same method she now brings to senior teams at Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. The academic spine is a Master’s in Workplace Wellness and Employee Engagement, layered on undergraduate work in Human Kinetics and Education. For an organisation absorbing change fatigue or watching engagement scores drift, Payne gives leaders a concrete operating practice, not another wellness initiative. The work is closer to mental performance coaching than to mindfulness, and it equips senior teams to keep showing up clearly when conditions tighten. Key speaking topics Energy management and personal capacity Burnout prevention and recovery Resilience under sustained pressure High-performance team culture Mental conditioning for leaders Joy and engagement at work Workplace wellbeing strategy Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and heads of talent rebuilding engagement after sustained change Senior leadership teams managing performance under prolonged pressure Wellbeing and learning leads moving past surface-level wellness programming High-performance functions, sales, trading floors, clinical leadership, where capacity is the constraint Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for energy as an organisational capacity, not a private wellness concern The Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence as a practice that leaders can apply that week A clearer read on the early indicators of burnout inside their own teams Specific practices for joy and recovery that are grounded in evidence, not slogans A reframe of resilience as a daily operating habit, taught and reinforced

Why organisations work with Dumi Senda He runs inclusion inside a 3,000-person operation at BBC England, so his method has been tested against the same scale and politics the audience is wrestling with, not built in a classroom. His LinkedIn Learning course “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace” gives organisations a shared curriculum to anchor manager conversations after the keynote, which most DEI speakers cannot offer. As President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network and ICF-accredited coach, he brings institutional credibility with senior audiences alongside coaching craft that works one-to-one with leaders. His lived arc from a decade of UK factory work to an Oxford MSc is the proof point that disarms the most sceptical rooms, including leadership teams that have sat through several DEI sessions already. He has delivered programmes inside the BBC, the UN, the House of Commons, the Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs, so references translate across public sector, finance and technology briefs. Biography highlights Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio Lead, BBC England (six regions, 3,000+ staff). Oxford University MSc graduate; sitting President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network (OxBAN). LinkedIn Learning instructor, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”; 2024 LinkedIn Top Voice, Teambuilding. International Coaching Federation (ICF) accredited coach. Founder of Titese, an EDI consultancy working with clients including the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs. Featured in “Everyday Ubuntu” (Mungi Ngomane, Penguin), foreworded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Biography The gap in most inclusion programmes is not ambition, it is operational credibility. Statements of intent are easy to write. Changing how three thousand managers actually speak to each other on a Tuesday morning is harder, and that is the work Senda does every day inside BBC England, where he leads the Diversity and Inclusion portfolio across six regions. That operational grounding is the reason his keynotes do not sound like generic DEI content. He is running the same programme internally that he is recommending to the audience, with the same budget pressures and the same sceptical middle managers. His LinkedIn Learning course, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”, distils that method into a curriculum organisations can deploy after he has left the stage. The personal story is well known and deliberately useful. Ten years as a labourer in the UK, a Master’s from Oxford, and now President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network. Senda uses it not as inspiration, but as evidence: inclusion is decided by the everyday behaviour of people already inside the room, and that behaviour can change. Clients include BBC, the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs. What they book him for is rarely a talk on diversity as a topic. They book him to shift the conversation from what the organisation says about inclusion to what its managers actually do on Monday. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and manager behaviour Belonging at work Bias and everyday conduct Culture change inside large organisations Authenticity and bringing your whole self to work Career development and professional identity Transformational change and taking the organisation with you Ideal for CHROs and heads of DEI designing the next phase of an inclusion programme that has stalled at policy level. Executive and senior leadership teams ahead of a culture change, restructure or “digital first” transformation. People managers across regionally dispersed organisations who carry the practical load of inclusion. Employee resource group leads and internal DEI networks looking for an external voice with operational authority. Audience outcomes A sharper read of where their own inclusion programme is losing traction between executive intent and manager behaviour. Specific language for describing belonging, bias and conduct that holds up in difficult day-to-day conversations. A framework for connecting personal values to professional contribution that coaches and managers can reuse. Practical prompts from Senda’s LinkedIn Learning curriculum that can be taken back into team sessions. Renewed confidence among sceptical managers that this work is a leadership skill, not a compliance task.