Employee Wellbeing speakers

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

Why organisations work with Mike Bushell Twenty years of live national television experience on BBC Breakfast, which translates directly into the composure conferences and awards need from the person holding the room. A recognisable face from one of the UK’s largest morning audiences and a 2019 Strictly Come Dancing series, which adds warmth and recognition to internal events and client-facing nights. A genuine interactive format, Sport or Spoof, that he runs with corporate audiences using sports drawn from his on-air library, giving organisations a built-in entertainment slot rather than a generic keynote. An on-record body of work on activity, participation and trying-the-untried that lends a credible voice to wellbeing, engagement and active-lifestyle programmes inside organisations. Reporting experience from Olympics, Paralympics and multiple World Cups, which gives him native fluency on stage with athletes, sports federations and sponsorship audiences. Biography highlights Longest-serving sports presenter in BBC Breakfast history, joined the programme in 2006. Has personally tried and profiled more than 550 sports on BBC One, from Quidditch and shin-kicking to Kabaddi with the Indian national team at the Asian Games in Doha. Held a Guinness World Record for travelling across water in an inflatable ball, set for Sport Relief in 2012. Contestant on Strictly Come Dancing series 17 in 2019, partnered with Katya Jones. Has reported on the Olympics, Paralympics, Commonwealth Games and football, rugby and cricket World Cups. Author of Bushell’s Best Bits (2013), drawn from his sports-discovery slot. Career began at BBC Radio Solent in 1990, with earlier reporting roles at the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Windsor and Slough Observer. Biography Live sports presentation on BBC Breakfast is one of the more exposed jobs in UK broadcasting. The presenter takes the chair every Saturday morning, on national television, with no second take. Mike Bushell has held that chair longer than anyone in the programme’s history, joining BBC Breakfast in 2006 after starting his career at BBC Radio Solent in 1990. The on-air work is built around a simple proposition: every week, try a sport. The list now runs past 550 and includes shin-kicking, worm charming, Quidditch, swamp soccer, Rush hockey and Kabaddi with the Indian team at the Asian Games in Doha. The book that came out of it, Bushell’s Best Bits, was published in 2013. The format is the source of the interactive Sport or Spoof game he runs with corporate audiences. The wider reporting CV covers Olympics, Paralympics, Commonwealth Games and football, rugby and cricket World Cups. In 2019 he was a contestant on series 17 of Strictly Come Dancing with Katya Jones, which is the credit most internal-event audiences recognise on sight. For organisations, the offer is straightforward. Bushell hosts conferences, moderates panels, runs awards nights and gives after-dinner talks. When the brief calls for it, he also speaks on activity, participation and getting people off the sofa, drawn directly from the on-air body of work. Key speaking topics Event hosting and conference moderation Awards night presenting Active lifestyles and sports participation Workplace wellbeing through movement Resilience and trying the unfamiliar Sports broadcasting and the Olympic and World Cup beat Interactive audience formats including Sport or Spoof Ideal for Internal conferences, sales kick-offs and all-hands looking for a recognisable host Awards nights and sponsor evenings in sport, media and consumer sectors Wellbeing, HR and people-team programmes built around activity and participation Charity galas, fundraising dinners and sports federation events Audience outcomes A programme run cleanly from the front of the room, with live moments handled without losing the audience A shared moment of entertainment through the Sport or Spoof format, tuned to the audience in the room A direct, lived case for getting more active and the corporate-wellbeing argument that follows Behind-the-scenes anecdotes from Strictly, the Olympics, World Cups and 550 sports on national television

Why organisations work with Mike Lee Direct credibility transfer from elite sport. Fifteen years coaching NBA MVPs Stephen Curry and Joel Embiid, plus Malcolm Brogdon, gives audiences a vocabulary for high performance that lands harder than any management framework. A useable account of mental health from the inside. Lee built his methodology while working through severe anxiety, depression and antidepressant withdrawal, which lets him talk about wellbeing without the abstraction that usually surrounds it in corporate settings. A specific argument about belonging. The book New Rules For The Future Of Leadership makes engagement, talent and belonging culture a single connected problem, useful for CHROs trying to defend headcount and engagement budgets in the same conversation. An unusually low-friction speaker for the brief. Bureau testimonials repeatedly call out preparation and adaptability, which matters when the room is a board offsite rather than a conference plenary. Biography highlights Founder, MindShift Labs, a performance and leadership consultancy. Author, New Rules For The Future Of Leadership (Heartmind Media, 2023). Fifteen years coaching elite basketball, including NBA MVPs Stephen Curry and Joel Embiid and Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon. Host of The MindShift Lab podcast, with guests including Mo Gawdat (formerly Google X) and Cy Wakeman. Keynote and workshop client list: Google, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Deloitte, IBM, Cisco, American Family Insurance, BMO Harris, ALPLA, and SHRM. Biography Elite athletes have always operated under conditions that resemble what senior corporate leaders now face every day: high stakes, public scrutiny, narrow margins between winning and losing, and almost no recovery time. The transfer of how that world handles performance is more useful to organisations than another framework borrowed from management literature. Lee spent fifteen years inside that world. He built an international basketball training business from a college apartment and ended up working with NBA MVPs Stephen Curry and Joel Embiid, and Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon, among others. While the business grew, he was also working through severe anxiety, depression and the withdrawal from antidepressant medication. The combination of elite-performance coaching and a personal route through mental health is what shaped the methodology he now brings to corporate audiences. That methodology is set out in New Rules For The Future Of Leadership (Heartmind Media, 2023). The book argues that engagement, the contest for talent and the felt experience of belonging are the same operating problem, and that leaders need both the composure of a mindful practitioner and the mindset of an elite athlete to address it. It draws on neuroscience, sports psychology and his own first-person experience. Lee now runs MindShift Labs and works with companies including Google, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Deloitte, IBM, Cisco, American Family Insurance, BMO Harris, and ALPLA, alongside professional bodies such as SHRM. His podcast, The MindShift Lab, ran twenty-nine episodes between 2021 and 2022 with guests including Mo Gawdat, formerly Chief Business Officer at Google X. Key speaking topics High-performance leadership Engagement and belonging culture Mindfulness and presence at work Mental health and burnout Resilience under uncertainty Peak performance psychology Talent and retention Ideal for CHROs and people leaders carrying engagement, retention and culture targets. Senior leadership offsites where performance and wellbeing need to be addressed in the same room. Sales, client-facing and high-pressure commercial teams. Talent and learning leads designing leadership development at the manager and director tier. Audience outcomes A practical view of how elite athletes manage focus, recovery and pressure, applied to corporate conditions. A clearer line between belonging culture and the commercial cost of attrition. Specific mindfulness and presence techniques leaders can use before a high-stakes conversation, not as a wellbeing perk. A more honest internal language for mental health that senior leaders can use without sounding either performative or clinical.

Why organisations work with Mo Gawdat His central AI thesis – that these systems reflect the values humans encode into them, and that organisations still have a window to act – was published in 2021 and validated by the subsequent speed of AI deployment. Boards are not getting speculation; they are getting a forecast with a track record. Scary Smart gives senior leadership a specific accountability framework, not a risk briefing: the argument is that the question is not whether AI will be powerful, but what the organisation is actively doing to shape its values now. The Solve for Happy happiness model is a named, reproducible framework developed through the same engineering logic Gawdat applied throughout his technology career – not a wellbeing programme, but a systematic methodology for building psychological stability under pressure. He addresses the external disruption (AI’s structural impact on work and value) and the internal response (the human psychology of navigating it) as a single argument – which is why his sessions land differently in a strategy forum than a conventional AI speaker or a conventional wellbeing speaker would. Seven years inside Google [X] at the point when self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences were being built and commercialised gives him a credibility baseline that no amount of research or commentary can replicate. Biography highlights Former Chief Business Officer, Google [X] (2013-2018), overseeing commercial strategy for Google’s moonshot innovation division 30-year career in technology spanning IBM, NCR, Microsoft, and Google, including senior roles across emerging markets globally Author of Solve for Happy (Macmillan, 2017), Scary Smart (Macmillan, 2021), That Little Voice in Your Head (Macmillan, 2022), and Unstressable (2024, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law) Scary Smart named a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year (2021) Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett Founder of One Billion Happy, a global initiative to share structured approaches to happiness and wellbeing Host of Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally Biography When Scary Smart was published in 2021, its central argument read as speculative: AI would become superintelligent, its real danger lay not in the technology itself but in the values humans encode into it, and organisations still had a narrow window to shape the outcome. Within a year, the release of ChatGPT had reframed the argument as a warning that had arrived early. Mo Gawdat had been inside Google [X] when these systems were being built. Gawdat joined Google in 2007 and served as Chief Business Officer of Google [X] from 2013, overseeing commercial strategy for the moonshot division behind self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences. His seven years there gave him direct exposure to both the capability and the accountability gaps at the frontier of AI development. He left in 2018 and now serves as Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett. The parallel body of work on happiness was not a departure from his technology career. It emerged from the same engineering mindset applied to personal crisis. Following the death of his son Ali in 2014, Gawdat developed the framework at the centre of Solve for Happy: a systematic, reproducible model for well-being grounded in cognitive science. The book became an international bestseller. His thesis is that the two bodies of work are not separate. An organisation that understands the human psychology of its people is better positioned to navigate the disruption AI will accelerate. Unstressable, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law and published in 2024, extends that logic into a practical stress-management framework built around four human systems. He hosts Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally, and his earlier books – That Little Voice in Your Head (2022) and Scary Smart, a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year – continue to reach executive audiences grappling with AI governance and personal resilience across a 30-year technology career. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Responsible AI adoption The human impact of AI disruption Happiness science and the engineering of well-being Stress management frameworks Technology leadership and strategic foresight Human values in AI development Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making AI governance and adoption decisions Chief People Officers and Chief Technology Officers managing workforce responses to AI disruption Strategy, transformation, and future of work forums where AI risk and human resilience intersect Technology, financial services, and marketing organisations with significant and growing AI exposure Audience outcomes A coherent framework for evaluating AI’s ethical and human risks, grounded in direct experience of building these systems rather than external commentary Clarity on what values organisations need to embed in AI systems now, and why the window to do so meaningfully is narrowing Practical tools from the Solve for Happy model for building psychological stability and resilience under conditions of sustained uncertainty A more calibrated understanding of the timeline and direction of AI development, distinct from both catastrophism and uncritical optimism Practical techniques from Unstressable for identifying and reducing sources of stress at individual and team level

Why organisations work with Mohsin Zaidi He speaks about inclusion from inside the institutions that struggle most with it: the English Bar, the UK Supreme Court, magic-circle law, and a global strategic advisory firm. The argument carries because the credentials are the audience’s own. A Dutiful Boy is the only memoir to win both the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize while also being named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ and New Statesman. That literary standing changes how a corporate audience receives a personal story. His subject is the specific friction between social mobility, faith, race and sexuality, not a single identity strand. Useful for organisations whose inclusion conversations have plateaued on single-axis framing. He has done the unglamorous work alongside the writing: trustee of Stonewall, former board member of London Pride, named on The Lawyer Hot 100 and the FT future LGBT leaders list. The advocacy is institutional, not performative. He translates lived experience into questions a leadership team can act on, particularly on mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities, where most corporate wellbeing programmes are weakest. Biography highlights Author of A Dutiful Boy (Penguin, 2020), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize. Book of the Year selections from The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. BA Law with European Legal Studies, Keble College, Oxford; qualified as a solicitor at Linklaters and a New York attorney. Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson at the UK Supreme Court; criminal barrister at 6 King’s Bench Walk. Management consultant at Hakluyt & Company since 2021. Trustee of Stonewall; Financial Times top future LGBT leader; The Lawyer Hot 100. Biography Walthamstow to Keble College, Oxford was the first improbable journey. Linklaters, then the UK Supreme Court as Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson, then the criminal Bar at 6 King’s Bench Walk, were the next. The institutions Mohsin Zaidi passed through are the same institutions that most struggle to retain people who look and sound like him. A Dutiful Boy, published by Penguin in 2020, is the memoir of how those journeys actually felt from the inside. It won the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize, and was named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. The literary reception matters because it sets the register: this is not a corporate diversity talk dressed up as a story. The argument Zaidi makes to organisations is narrow and useful. Single-axis inclusion frameworks (race, or class, or sexuality, or faith) miss what most people from minority backgrounds actually carry into work, which is the interaction effect. He is direct on mental health stigma inside ethnic minority communities, an area corporate wellbeing programmes routinely under-serve. He is a trustee of Stonewall and a former board member of London Pride, so the institutional knowledge sits alongside the personal one. Since 2021 he has been a management consultant at Hakluyt & Company, alongside his writing and advocacy. The combination is what makes the work travel into senior commercial rooms: he is asking the same questions the partners and executives in front of him are asking, from a position that takes their context seriously. Key speaking topics Intersectionality at work Social mobility in professional services Mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities LGBTQ+ inclusion in conservative cultures Race, faith and workplace identity Belonging and authenticity in elite institutions Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and culture leads at professional services firms Law firm and financial services leadership audiences working on retention of minority talent ERGs, Pride networks and multicultural networks at large corporates Executive committees reviewing the substance, rather than the optics, of their inclusion programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of how race, faith, class and sexuality interact in the daily experience of minority staff. Specific language for talking about mental health in communities where the topic is stigmatised. A sharper sense of why retention of senior minority talent stalls in firms that recruit well. Permission for senior leaders to engage personal identity as a leadership question, not a compliance one.

Why organisations work with Myrto Legaki She translates clinical mindfulness research, trained at the University of Massachusetts and Brown University programmes, into language and practice that corporate leaders accept and apply She speaks to senior audiences as a former MBA-trained consultant who spent 15 years in marketing and consulting roles across New York, London and Athens, not as an external wellness coach Her programmes have been deployed inside Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, Novartis, AbbVie, Bayer and Coca-Cola HBC, giving her a working view of what corporate wellbeing actually requires at scale She treats psychological safety as a leadership behaviour problem, with specific practices, rather than a culture-survey output Biography highlights Founder and director, One Breath Mindfulness Center, Athens Certified MBSR instructor, trained at the University of Massachusetts (OASIS Mindfulness Center) and the Brown University Mindfulness Center Trained directly by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli, the clinical founders of the MBSR field TEDx speaker, TEDxUniversityofMacedonia, on the role of silence and mindfulness in leadership MBA, Boston University; BSc Corporate Finance, University of Piraeus Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Implemented leadership and wellbeing programmes inside Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, Novartis, AbbVie, Bayer, MSD, Philip Morris and Coca-Cola HBC Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes do not change leadership behaviour. They sit alongside it. Yoga sessions, app subscriptions and resilience workshops run in parallel with the same executive operating norms that produce the stress in the first place. The gap between wellbeing spend and wellbeing outcome is, in practice, a gap in what leaders model and reward. Myrto Legaki works in that gap. After 15 years in management consulting and marketing across New York, London and Athens, including senior roles at multinationals, she trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction instructor at the University of Massachusetts and the Brown University Mindfulness Center, under Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. She founded One Breath Mindfulness Center in Athens to bring that clinical training into corporate leadership programmes. Her work integrates neuroscience, applied psychology and contemplative practice into formats senior leaders accept: programmes on self-leadership, psychological safety, stress regulation, communication under pressure and team culture. Inside organisations such as Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, AbbVie and Bayer, she has worked with leaders and teams on the specific behaviours that determine whether a culture supports performance or quietly erodes it. She is a TEDx speaker, a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and holds an MBA from Boston University and a finance degree from the University of Piraeus. The combination matters: corporate audiences engage with her because she has held the operating roles they hold now, and applies clinical wellbeing science with the precision a senior buyer expects. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Psychological safety and trust Self-leadership and executive composure Resilience and stress regulation Mindful leadership Inclusive leadership and unconscious bias Women’s leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing leadership and wellbeing programmes with measurable behavioural outcomes C-suite and senior leadership teams under sustained delivery pressure Heads of culture, DEI and learning embedding psychological safety into management practice Audience outcomes A clear distinction between wellbeing as a perk and wellbeing as a leadership operating capability Specific, evidence-based practices for stress regulation and composure under pressure A working vocabulary for psychological safety that connects daily leadership behaviour to mental health outcomes Confidence to address mental health and burnout in their organisation without defaulting to programme-speak

Why organisations work with Natalie Johnson The CultureJourney™ framework gives senior teams a working model for how culture is actually produced, organised around three named levers: energy, connection, and courage. Combines a science foundation in human performance and resilience with three decades of corporate performance coaching. Few speakers in this space work from both traditions. Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, which means buyers can book her for a keynote and for the full leadership programme from a single practitioner. Track record with organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, and Ascension Healthcare. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Vidl Work, the consulting and keynote firm she leads Co-author of Leading the Culture Journey: Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces (Wiley, August 2026) Co-creator of the CultureJourney™ framework, used to guide culture transformation inside client organisations Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, and a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition; MSc in Wellness Promotion Co-host of the Energy, Connection & Courage at Work podcast Biography Most organisations describe their culture in terms they cannot define. Engagement scores climb and wellbeing budgets grow each year, yet senior teams still cannot explain why some groups sustain high performance while others burn out. This is the gap that the CultureJourney™ framework was built to close. Natalie Johnson developed it with her team at Vidl Work, the firm she co-founded and now leads as Chief Visionary Officer. The framework treats culture as the product of three working systems: how leaders elevate energy, how teams prioritise connection, and how leaders choose courage. The thinking is set out in Leading the Culture Journey, her 2026 book with Rebecca Johnson, published by Wiley. Her authority on the topic comes from a combination of training that few culture speakers share. Johnson holds a BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition and an MSc in Wellness Promotion. She is a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach, a Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, and a certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator. The Dare to Lead credential licenses her to deliver Brené Brown’s full leadership programme inside client organisations. Her client list spans organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition: NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, Ascension Healthcare, and the American College of Surgeons. The HR profession books her too: she has delivered keynotes for SHRM, the largest professional association for human resources. She also sits on the board of the Kidney Cancer Association and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and culture transformation Human performance and energy management Trust and courageous conversation in teams Resilience and sustainable high performance Employee wellbeing as a performance lever Dare to Lead leadership development Ideal for Chief executives and senior leadership teams setting culture as a strategic priority CHROs and Chief People Officers running culture, engagement, and wellbeing portfolios Cross-functional teams operating under sustained change cycles: post-merger integrations, restructures, transformation programmes Leadership teams in high-pressure operating environments such as healthcare, defence, and regulated industry Organisations running Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead programme that want a licensed facilitator with deep performance science background Audience outcomes A working model for culture that names where it gets built and where it breaks down Language for linking employee wellbeing and engagement spend to commercial performance A method for holding the courageous conversations that team trust depends on, drawn from Dare to Lead Approaches for managing human energy and recovery at both individual and team level

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 Neil Laybourn He runs Neil Laybourn Consultancy as a functioning advisory business, with frameworks and partner networks built around measurable workplace outcomes, not as a retainer attached to a keynote. The story is widely known. The corporate value sits in what he built afterwards: This Can Happen as the workplace mental health conference, the This Can Happen Awards as the practice benchmark, and the consultancy that operationalises both. He sits at the centre of the UK workplace mental health network as founder of This Can Happen, Ambassador for Mental Health UK, former Heads Together collaborator, and the UK LinkedIn Changemaker for Mental Health in 2021. The credibility chain is unusual for the category. The University of Bristol awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2018; the Pride of Britain Award (2014) and the Mind Media Award (2015) recognised the campaigning work; Channel 4 commissioned the Stranger on the Bridge documentary. He has addressed leadership teams at Bank of Ireland UK, HSBC, Coutts, Direct Line Group, Ticketmaster, BlackRock, and Yale School of Management. Biography highlights Founder of This Can Happen, the workplace mental health conference, and director of the This Can Happen Awards. Founder of Neil Laybourn Consultancy, a workplace mental health advisory firm. Co-founder, with Jonny Benjamin MBE, of Beyond, the youth mental health charity. Honorary Doctorate, University of Bristol; Pride of Britain Award; Mind Media Award for Making a Difference (with Jonny Benjamin). LinkedIn Changemaker for Mental Health (2021); LinkedIn Top Voice and Creator. Ambassador for Mental Health UK; subject of the Channel 4 documentary Stranger on the Bridge. Biography Workplace mental health is a category that absorbs budget and produces awareness, without reliably producing managers who know what to do when a colleague is in distress. The gap between corporate policy and operational practice is where the value sits, and where most programmes fail. On 14 January 2008, Neil Laybourn was walking across Waterloo Bridge to work when he saw a stranger preparing to jump into the Thames. He stopped, talked to him for half an hour, and persuaded him to step back. Six years later that stranger, Jonny Benjamin MBE, launched the #FindMike campaign on social media to find the man who had saved his life. The campaign reached over 300 million people and became the subject of the Channel 4 documentary Stranger on the Bridge. That intervention is the entry point. The offering, built over the decade since, is unusually operational for the workplace mental health category. He founded This Can Happen, the conference convening employers around what works, and the This Can Happen Awards that recognise the practice. Through Neil Laybourn Consultancy he advises organisations on the design and measurement of mental health programmes. He has delivered over 250 keynotes to more than 200 organisations across 25 sectors. Clients include Bank of Ireland UK, HSBC, Coutts, Direct Line Group, and Ticketmaster, with international audiences at Yale School of Management and BlackRock in New York. The University of Bristol awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2018, and LinkedIn selected him as the UK Changemaker for Mental Health in 2021. With Jonny Benjamin MBE he co-founded Beyond, the youth mental health charity, and remains an Ambassador for Mental Health UK. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health strategy Suicide intervention and prevention Manager capability for mental health conversations Employee wellbeing programme design Stigma in corporate environments Mental health and senior leadership Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People setting workplace wellbeing strategy HR Directors implementing or auditing mental health programmes CEOs and executive teams accountable for culture as a board-level outcome Line managers and people leaders who need usable tools for difficult conversations Audience outcomes A clear sense of why most workplace wellbeing programmes plateau, and where the operational gaps actually sit Practical language and protocols for managers in the moments that matter, from a colleague in distress to a return-to-work conversation A grounded view of what mental health strategy looks like at scale, from a practitioner who runs the conferences and advises the boards The confidence to talk about mental health at senior leadership level without retreating into corporate jargon

Why organisations work with Nick Baylis He brings the academic spine of well-being science into the room. Co-editor of The Science of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2005) and co-convenor of the Royal Society’s first conference on the topic, alongside Daniel Kahneman and Sir Harry Kroto. He was the UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology, teaching the subject at Cambridge for eight years before the wellness industry existed in its current form. That sequencing matters when a workforce has heard every claim before. His writing has reached a public audience without losing its evidence base: 100 Dr FeelGood columns for The Times, The Rough Guide to Happiness for Penguin, and the trade volume Learning from Wonderful Lives. He works comfortably across audiences, from board-level leadership groups to whole-school populations at Wellington College and Rugby School, with the same underlying material translated for the room. He treats well-being as a daily skill set, not a feel-good intervention. The frame is performance and resilience grounded in research, which lands with sceptical commercial audiences. Biography highlights PhD from Jesus College, University of Cambridge, 1999. The UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology and the Science of Well-Being, Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 2001 to 2008. Co-editor of The Science of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2005) with Felicia Huppert and Barry Keverne. Co-convenor of the Royal Society of London’s first three-day conference on the Science of Well-Being. Author of The Rough Guide to Happiness (Rough Guides / Penguin) and Learning from Wonderful Lives (Cambridge Well-being Books, 2005). Wrote 100 weekly Dr FeelGood columns on the science of happiness for The Times, syndicated by The Australian. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Associate of the Royal Society of Medicine; Chartered Psychologist. Biography The science of human well-being is a young field, and most of what shows up in corporate wellness programmes was research before it was product. Nick Baylis is one of a small group of academics who shaped the underlying evidence base and then took the trouble to translate it for a non-academic audience. He earned his PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1999, and in 2001 became the UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology and the Science of Well-Being. Over eight years lecturing at Cambridge, he helped build the academic infrastructure for the field. He co-convened the Royal Society of London’s first conference on the Science of Well-Being, and co-edited the resulting volume for Oxford University Press in 2005, alongside Felicia Huppert and Barry Keverne, with Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Sir Harry Kroto involved in the convening. The book remains a standard reference for the discipline. Outside the academy, his work has reached a public readership without losing the evidence base. He wrote 100 weekly Dr FeelGood columns for The Times, syndicated by The Australian, and authored The Rough Guide to Happiness for Penguin and Learning from Wonderful Lives, the latter built on extended interviews with figures including Kate Adie, Gary Lineker, Jamie Oliver, and Martha Lane Fox. His client work spans corporate leadership groups, healthcare organisations, and senior schools, including extended programmes with Wellington College and Rugby School. The throughline is unchanged across audiences: well-being treated as a daily set of skills with a research foundation, not a poster campaign. Key speaking topics The science of well-being in the workplace Resilience and sustained performance under pressure Positive psychology applied to organisational life Mental health and the working environment Well-being and leadership effectiveness Building well-being capability across schools and educational institutions The everyday skills of psychological flourishing Ideal for CHROs and people directors rebuilding the substance behind a well-being strategy Senior leadership teams working through periods of fatigue, change, or sustained pressure Heads of school and trustees designing whole-institution well-being programmes Healthcare and professional services organisations facing chronic workforce stress Audience outcomes A working understanding of what well-being research actually supports, separated from wellness-industry claims A small set of daily psychological skills that hold up under workplace pressure A sharper view of how leadership behaviour shapes the well-being of a team Confidence to interrogate well-being investments and ask better questions of providers Language for talking about resilience and mental health that does not sound borrowed from a brochure

Why organisations work with Nicky Abdinor Clinical credibility behind the message: trained in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy at the Albert Ellis Institute and in Schema Therapy, with twenty years in practice, so the resilience content is therapy-grade rather than motivational. A live demonstration of inclusion that reframes how teams talk about disability: born without arms and with shortened legs, she founded Nicky’s Drive to fund vehicle adaptations across South Africa, and the lived case sharpens every claim she makes about ability and adjustment. Recognised authority on the speaking circuit: 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame recipient from PSASA and a TEDxTableMountain speaker whose “Driving Dreams” talk drew international engagements across Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Australia. Eight years lecturing psychology at Varsity College, which means the frameworks she teaches travel from keynote stage into workshop and masterclass formats without losing rigour. Biography highlights Registered Clinical Psychologist, HPCSA PS0087157, in independent practice for two decades. TEDxTableMountain speaker, “Driving Dreams,” November 2013. 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame Award, Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa. Founder and chairperson of Nicky’s Drive, a registered South African non-profit funding adapted vehicles for people with disabilities. Trained at the Albert Ellis Institute (REBT, Primary and Advanced Practicums) and the South African Institute of Schema Therapy. Eight years lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate psychology at Varsity College, Cape Town. Biography Resilience has become one of the most over-claimed words in corporate language. Most of what passes for resilience training is mood management dressed up as psychology. The clinical version is something else. It is a set of techniques, drawn from cognitive-behavioural therapy, rational emotive behaviour therapy and schema therapy, that change how a person interprets pressure and adversity. That is the territory Nicky Abdinor works in. Two decades of clinical practice, training accredited by the Albert Ellis Institute in New York, a Diploma in Schema Therapy, and eight years lecturing psychology at Varsity College in Cape Town give her the technical foundation. The keynote work translates that material for non-clinical audiences without softening it. Her own story sharpens the case. Born without arms and with shortened legs, she has built a private practice, founded the non-profit Nicky’s Drive to fund adapted vehicles for people with disabilities across South Africa, and become one of the most decorated speakers in the region, recognised with the 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame Award by PSASA. Her TEDxTableMountain talk “Driving Dreams” carried that perspective onto international stages. For organisations, the value is direct. Wellbeing programmes that lean on generic motivation tend to wear off. Abdinor brings the clinical mechanics, the language of cognitive reframe, schema work, and self-compassion, alongside a lived case that makes inclusion feel less like compliance and more like capability. The room leaves with vocabulary it can use the next day. Key speaking topics Resilience and adversity Cognitive-behavioural therapy in everyday life Optimism and mindset Disability inclusion and the abilities of people with disabilities Self-compassion and emotional wellbeing Mental health in the workplace Tolerating uncertainty Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads building substantive mental health programmes DEI and inclusion teams looking for a credible voice on disability Leadership audiences facing prolonged pressure or change fatigue Conference programmes seeking a closing keynote that combines clinical content with personal narrative Audience outcomes Plain-language tools from CBT and schema therapy that audiences can apply to their own thinking A reframed view of disability and ability that reaches beyond compliance language Specific cognitive techniques for tolerating uncertainty and recovering from setback Vocabulary for self-compassion that managers can carry into team conversations A more demanding standard for what wellbeing content should deliver

Why organisations work with Nicole DuBois A practising CHRO of a 600-person child welfare nonprofit, not a former operator. The HR strategy advice is current, not retrospective. A first-person account of an MS diagnosis, divorce and reinvention published as Unparalyzed, brought into corporate rooms by someone whose day job is running people strategy. Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional by OnConferences across multiple years, alongside membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council. A specific point of view on what authentic leadership costs women in senior roles, anchored in her own decision to publish under her real name after using a pseudonym. Useful to organisations whose own internal HR conversations on illness, caregiving and identity have outgrown the standard wellbeing vendor script. Biography highlights Chief Human Resources Officer, Graham Windham (NYC), responsible for HR strategy across talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement for around 600 employees. Author of Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis, originally published as Danielle M. Bryan and later reclaimed under her own name. Named a Top 100 HR Professional in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025. Connector Award, New Jersey Human Resources Council (2024); Joint Legislative Commendation, State of New Jersey. Bachelor’s in Psychology and Urban Studies from Fordham, Master’s in Mental Health Counselling from NYU, Executive Education for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School. Member of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council. Biography Most organisations now talk openly about wellbeing, inclusion and authentic leadership. Fewer have senior people who can speak about those subjects in the first person without breaking the corporate register. Nicole DuBois sits in that smaller group. Her day job is running people strategy at Graham Windham, a New York child welfare nonprofit with around 600 employees. As Chief Human Resources Officer she leads talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement, and she has done so since 2006. The work is operational and current, not a retired executive’s view of how HR used to function. The second layer is her memoir, Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis. It tracks an MS diagnosis, a divorce after seventeen years of marriage, and a deliberate reinvention. The book was first published under a pseudonym at her publisher’s legal advice, and she has since chosen to reclaim it under her own name. That choice is the spine of her keynote on what authentic leadership actually costs women in senior roles. Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional, the Connector Award from the New Jersey Human Resources Council, and membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council place her inside the professional HR community her audiences are typically drawn from. Her education runs from Fordham and NYU through executive nonprofit work at Columbia Business School. The combination gives organisations a speaker who can hold an HR strategy conversation in the morning and a wellbeing keynote in the afternoon without either feeling rehearsed. Key speaking topics Authentic leadership for women in senior roles Employee wellbeing and the corporate response to chronic illness Engagement and retention in mission-driven organisations Multigenerational workforces Non-linear career paths and personal reinvention Coaching, mentoring and sponsorship inside HR-led talent strategies Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of HR shaping wellbeing, engagement and DEI strategies ERG leaders and women’s networks looking for a senior voice on authentic leadership Nonprofit and mission-driven employers managing retention in lean workforces Internal leadership development programmes for high-potential women Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what authentic leadership looks like in practice when the leader is also living through chronic illness, caregiving or major personal change A current CHRO view on what employee wellbeing programmes get right and where they still miss the people they are aimed at Language and confidence to raise invisible health conditions inside leadership conversations A reframing of non-linear careers as a credibility asset rather than a gap to be explained