Executive Development

Why organisations work with Lee Warren A six-step persuasion system built from twenty years of stage performance and a Head-of-Sales career, not from a communications textbook. The only Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence holder (2022) on most shortlists, the UK industry’s highest peer-awarded recognition. Author of a Business Book Awards finalist on presenting, which gives commercial buyers a published methodology to point sales teams toward after the keynote. A track record of named commercial outcomes from clients, including a reported 350 percent sales lift at New Scientist following his work. Booked repeatedly by Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, audiences that do not retain entertainers and do retain people who shift commercial behaviour. Biography highlights Bestselling author, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting; highly commended finalist, 2019 Business Book Awards. PSA Award of Excellence, 2022, the UK Professional Speaking Association’s top honour. Member of The Magic Circle for twenty years. Former Head of Sales at News International; earlier sales leadership at Eurotunnel and Hertz, including a database-led sales programme. Has delivered keynotes in more than twenty countries for Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Theatre work commissioned at The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House (per speaker’s own biographical material). Biography Persuasion is the bottleneck most sales operations refuse to name. Pipeline tools improve, decks get tidier, training budgets rise, and conversion rates barely move. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the people in the room cannot yet make another person feel the case being made. Lee Warren built a career inside that gap. After commercial roles at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eurotunnel, and Hertz, where he co-created the company’s first database-led sales programme, he became Head of Sales at News International. In parallel, he spent two decades performing as a member of The Magic Circle and creating work for The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The combination is unusual: a quota-carrying sales leader who can hold a thousand-seat room. His book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting, was a finalist at the 2019 Business Book Awards and codifies the structure he teaches to commercial teams: build the talk around the audience, not the slides. In 2022 the Professional Speaking Association named him an Award of Excellence holder, the UK’s highest peer-awarded honour for professional speakers. Clients book him for hard commercial outcomes, not for entertainment. Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have repeat-booked him for sales conferences, partner meetings, and leadership offsites. New Scientist publicly reported a 350 percent sales increase after engaging him. Few presentation specialists have a number like that attached to their name. Key speaking topics Persuasion and influence in commercial settings Sales communication and pitching Presenting and executive communication Business networking Storytelling for B2B audiences Communication under pressure Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership offsites Partner and client conferences where the audience is buying decisions, not information Business development teams, key account directors, and CROs preparing for high-stakes pitches Leadership populations needing sharper executive communication ahead of board, investor, or town hall moments Audience outcomes A repeatable six-step structure for persuading a specific audience, applied the next working day A method for opening, structuring, and closing a pitch that does not depend on slide ware A working technique for networking rooms and conversations without scripts Renewed confidence in front of senior internal and external audiences, grounded in stagecraft, not affirmation A shared vocabulary across a commercial team for what good persuasion looks like

Why organisations work with Keith Wyche He has actually run the P&L. Former President of Cub Foods and ACME Markets, former President of U.S. Operations at Pitney Bowes, and a retired Walmart Vice President. His advice on change comes from someone who has signed off on it. He sits on a NYSE board today. As an Independent Director at The Brink’s Company since 2022, he speaks to senior leaders with the perspective of someone in their own governance seat, not above it. His inclusion work is anchored to commercial outcomes. Diversity Is Not Enough sets out a recruitment, development, and promotion roadmap built around what large employers can actually operate, which is why boards and CHROs commission him in a contested DEI climate. He is one of a small group of senior Black executives who has reached the most senior operating ranks of corporate America, recognised twice over by Black Enterprise and Savoy. That lived authority changes how an inclusion conversation lands in a room of senior leaders. Biography highlights Retired Vice President, Community Engagement and Support, Walmart Inc. Former President, Cub Foods (SuperValu); former President, ACME Markets Former President, U.S. Operations, Pitney Bowes Management Services Independent Director, The Brink’s Company (NYSE: BCO) Author of Diversity Is Not Enough, Good Is Not Enough (2009 NAACP Image Award nominee), Corner Office Rules, and Swag Is Not Enough Named to the Top 100 African American Executives list by Black Enterprise and Savoy magazine Biography Cub Foods was a $3 billion grocery business with more than 8,000 employees when Keith Wyche took it through a turnaround that produced double-digit sales growth in his first year as President. That kind of operating record, repeated across ACME Markets, Pitney Bowes, and a long Walmart career that ended as Vice President of Community Engagement and Support, is the foundation everything else rests on. He now sits as an Independent Director on the board of The Brink’s Company (NYSE: BCO), appointed in 2022. The board seat matters because it changes the room he is speaking into. He is not advising senior leaders from a step removed. He is in the same governance conversations they are. His four books, including the NAACP Image Award nominated Good Is Not Enough and the more recent Diversity Is Not Enough, treat inclusion as an operating problem rather than a values statement. The argument is that recruitment, development, and promotion of Black leaders in America requires the same systems thinking large companies apply to any other business priority. It is a position that holds up in front of a CHRO with revenue targets attached to it. Black Enterprise and Savoy have both named him among the Top 100 African American executives in the United States. That recognition signals what makes him useful in front of a senior audience right now. He carries the personal authority of someone who has done the work at the highest operating levels, and he brings it into rooms where the inclusion conversation has otherwise gone stale. Key speaking topics Leadership through transformation and restructure Inclusive leadership and DEI as an operating discipline Talent development and executive pipelines Personal branding and career progression for senior leaders Corporate culture and change management Board-level perspectives on organisational performance Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding inclusion strategy with commercial credibility Boards and C-suite teams setting direction on culture, talent, and transformation Employee resource groups and senior leadership networks for under-represented talent Annual leadership conferences for retail, consumer, and services organisations Audience outcomes A direct view of what change leadership actually looks like inside a multi-billion dollar P&L A grounded position on inclusion that holds up commercially with senior peers and external scrutiny Specific career and visibility moves for high-potential leaders ready for executive roles Board-level perspective on how culture, talent, and performance connect at the top of an organisation

Why organisations work with Patrick Leddin A co-authored New York Times bestseller with James Patterson, Disrupt Everything and Win, that has been licensed by FranklinCovey as a global corporate training programme. Few keynote speakers have their material adopted as a productised curriculum at that scale. A working research base at Vanderbilt Owen, where he runs the Disruption Project. The frameworks in the keynote (the 5 roles of disruption, the 16 behaviours of successful disruptors) are grounded in field research, not consulting anecdotes. A career that has actually run leadership at every scale he speaks about: a ranger-qualified Army infantry officer, KPMG consultant, FranklinCovey practitioner, and co-founder of an Inc. 5000 firm. Senior audiences recognise the difference. A direct line into the Stephen M.R. Covey and FranklinCovey leadership canon, which is the operating language for L&D functions inside many large enterprises. Biography highlights Associate Professor of the Practice of Business Studies, Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management. Teaches Corporate Strategy, Negotiation, Advanced Marketing, and Crisis Leadership. Co-author with James Patterson of Disrupt Everything and Win: Take Control of Your Future (Little, Brown, 2025), an instant New York Times bestseller. Author of The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, a Wall Street Journal bestseller introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey. Subject-matter source for FranklinCovey’s Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact corporate training programme, launched October 2025. Host of the Leadership Lab podcast, with on-record interviews including Stephen M.R. Covey, Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. Former U.S. Army airborne infantry ranger-qualified officer, former KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey practitioner, co-founder of Wedgewood Consulting Group and Leddin Group. Biography Disruption used to be the event a leadership team planned for. It is now the operating condition. The question that follows is harder than the one most leadership development is built to answer: what does a leader actually do, day to day, when the disruption never stops arriving? That question is the subject of Disrupt Everything and Win, the New York Times bestseller Patrick Leddin co-authored with James Patterson. The book grew out of the Disruption Project at Vanderbilt Owen, where Leddin teaches Corporate Strategy and Crisis Leadership. The research produced specific output: five roles people play inside a disruption, sixteen behaviours that distinguish successful disruptors, eight tools leaders can use to convert disruption into progress. FranklinCovey has since licensed the material as a global training programme, Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact. The credibility behind that work is operational. Leddin served as a ranger-qualified U.S. Army infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne, ran large client engagements at KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey, and co-founded Wedgewood Consulting Group, an Inc. 5000 firm that was acquired in 2012. His earlier book, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, was introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey and reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. He hosts the Leadership Lab podcast, where his guests have included Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. The argument senior teams come for is concrete. Disruption is not a communication problem to be managed by the executive office. It is a leadership capability that can be specified, taught, and practised at every level of the organisation, and a board that treats it that way will outperform one that does not. Key speaking topics Leadership in disruption Crisis leadership Organisational change and culture Leadership pipeline development Negotiation and influence Corporate strategy under uncertainty Innovation as a leadership behaviour Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and senior leadership teams running through extended restructuring or market repositioning CHROs and chief learning officers building leadership pipelines that have to operate under continuous change Strategy and transformation leaders responsible for cultural readiness alongside operating model change Industry conferences in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, energy, government) where leaders manage repeated external shocks Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the roles people play during a disruption, and a way to name which role is missing in their own team The sixteen behaviours that distinguish leaders who use disruption as fuel from those who absorb it as damage A concrete set of tools, drawn from the Vanderbilt research, that leaders can apply to a specific change they are already running A sharper view of the difference between managing crisis and building a leadership culture that expects disruption as a baseline

Why organisations work with Melissa Majors She gives managers a behavioural model, not a values statement. The seven habits in her book are written for the team-lead who has fifteen minutes between meetings, not for the chief diversity officer. She speaks from operator credibility, having rebuilt the education function at Ellucian for more than half a million clients and partners and run global education at Meeting Professionals International. She makes inclusion commercially legible. The argument she lands with senior buyers is innovation, retention and team output, which keeps the conversation alive when political appetite for DEI has cooled. She brings packaged IP, in’klooded for strategic planning and Community Keynotes for surfacing ideas, that clients can put to work after the keynote rather than translating principles into practice on their own. Biography highlights Author, The 7 Simple Habits of Inclusive Leaders; also author of Help Them Thrive: Leadership Coaching for Humans Leading Humans. Former Director, Global Education Services, Ellucian; former Director of Global Education, Meeting Professionals International. Career across Nationwide Insurance, Wells Fargo and HD Vest Financial Services before moving into education and consulting. Founder of Melissa Majors Consulting; creator of the in’klooded inclusive strategic planning methodology and Community Keynotes. Advanced study in strategy and innovation at Harvard University; guest lecturer in leadership and inclusion at San Diego State University. Featured contributor and subject in Forbes, Smart Meetings, PCMA Convene and The Meeting Professional. Biography Most inclusion programmes were built for a different political climate. They assumed senior sponsorship would hold, that the language would be uncontested, and that managers would translate principles into practice. None of that is reliable now. The work that survives is the work that turns inclusion into something a busy manager can do, repeatedly, without thinking of it as a programme at all. That is the territory Melissa Majors has spent more than two decades inside. She ran global education at Meeting Professionals International and rebuilt the education services function at Ellucian, where she was responsible for more than 500,000 clients and partners. Before that, her career sat inside Nationwide Insurance, Wells Fargo and HD Vest Financial Services. The pattern is consistent: large, regulated, performance-measured organisations where culture work has to justify itself in operating terms. Her book The 7 Simple Habits of Inclusive Leaders is the spine of her speaking work. It reframes inclusion as a set of repeatable behaviours, including how decisions get made, how empathy is applied tactically, and how dissent is invited rather than tolerated. The companion methodologies, in’klooded for strategic planning and Community Keynotes for idea generation, give clients something to use after the room clears. She has been featured in Forbes, Smart Meetings, PCMA Convene and The Meeting Professional, and lectures on leadership and inclusion at San Diego State University. The work she is booked for is straightforward: take inclusion off the values poster and put it back into the operating practice of managing a team. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership as everyday management practice Behavioural habits of high-performing inclusive teams Women’s leadership and progression Manager effectiveness and team performance Psychological safety and team trust Talent retention through inclusion Tactical empathy in leadership Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and heads of L&D rebuilding inclusion programmes for a more contested environment People-leader populations: front-line managers, mid-level leaders and newly promoted team leads Women’s leadership networks and ERGs inside large organisations Member associations and professional bodies addressing the meetings, events and education sectors Audience outcomes A behavioural model managers can apply in the next team meeting, not after the next training cycle Language for inclusion that holds up commercially when sponsorship has cooled A clearer read on where current inclusion efforts are stalling and which habits would shift them Practical mechanisms for surfacing dissent and quieter voices inside decision-making

Why organisations work with Rose Cartolari Operator-grade credibility with senior leaders: she co-founded and ran the operations of Scharper Pharmaceuticals through to a 2011 sale, then turned that experience into a coaching practice. She has sat in the chair the room is talking about. A board-level lens on inclusion as leadership capability, built through her Executive Committee role at European Women on Boards and the Board Readiness Programme she launched there. Cross-cultural fluency that holds up in genuinely complex settings, drawn from senior roles at American Express and UNICEF and on-the-ground postings in India, Indonesia and Somalia. A coaching toolkit grounded in neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles, applied to specific senior problems: influence across the C-suite, executive presence, succession readiness. Teaches the material as well as practises it, through executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, RC Consulting, advising C-suite leaders and their teams on leadership, influence and inclusion. Executive Committee member, European Women on Boards; launched the EWOB Board Readiness Programme. Co-founder and former COO, Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, exited in 2011. Senior corporate roles at American Express and UNICEF, with field postings across India, Indonesia and Somalia. Executive education faculty at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. MBA, Columbia Business School. BA, Brown University. Forbes Coaches Council member. TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). Co-author, Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance (Erik Seversen, ed., 2021). Biography Senior leadership rarely fails on technical knowledge. It fails on composure, influence and the ability to hold a team together when conditions stop being stable. That is the territory Rose Cartolari works in, and she works in it from the position of someone who has held an operating role at scale and then chosen to coach the people who hold those roles now. Cartolari is Founder and Managing Director of RC Consulting, a leadership advisory and executive coaching practice for the C-suite and their teams. Before founding RC, she co-founded and served as COO of Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, a European pharmaceuticals business sold in 2011, after senior roles at American Express and UNICEF, including field assignments in India, Indonesia and Somalia. That operator history is the reason her conversations with senior leaders sound like conversations between peers, not between a leader and an outside expert. Her work sits at the point where leadership behaviour meets inclusion practice. On the European Women on Boards Executive Committee she launched the Board Readiness Programme, which prepares senior women for credible non-executive roles. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Brown, sits on the Forbes Coaches Council, and teaches executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. She is co-author of Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance and a TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). The throughline of the work is practical: senior leaders, under pressure, learning to influence other senior people, hold their own counsel under ambiguity and turn inclusion from a value statement into a leadership behaviour. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence across the C-suite Inclusive leadership as a senior capability Leading senior teams through change and ambiguity Board readiness and the path to non-executive roles Personal leadership and self-awareness for senior roles Cross-cultural leadership in multinational organisations Emotional intelligence applied to executive performance Ideal for C-suite executives and their direct reports working through ambiguity, restructure or succession Senior women preparing for non-executive director or board positions Heads of executive development, talent and inclusion building senior leadership pipelines Multinational leadership teams operating across multiple cultures and geographies Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior influence works and where their own influence is leaking Language and practices for inclusive leadership that hold up in front of other senior leaders A specific view of board readiness, what selectors actually look for and how to close the gap Tools from neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles applied to live senior dilemmas A working definition of executive presence that is behavioural, not stylistic

Why organisations work with Matt Eversmann He brings a first-person, documented account of small-unit leadership inside the Battle of Mogadishu, one of the most analysed combat actions of the modern era, and translates it directly into commercial decision-making. His Bronze Star with Valor and 20 years in elite Ranger and Infantry units give credibility on team performance under stress that consulting frameworks cannot replicate. As co-author with James Patterson of three New York Times bestselling oral histories of soldiers and police officers, he has spent a decade interviewing operators about how teams hold together, which sharpens his content well beyond a single war story. His teaching record at the U.S. Army War College and the Johns Hopkins ROTC program means he speaks to leaders in the language of training and followership, not just battlefield anecdotes. He is the rare keynote a senior team will quote back to each other a week later, because the material concerns specific, named decisions, not abstractions about resilience. Biography highlights Retired U.S. Army First Sergeant, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; 20 years of active service. Bronze Star Medal with Valor device for actions in the Battle of Mogadishu, October 3, 1993. Portrayed by Josh Hartnett in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001); the first source interviewed for Mark Bowden’s original book. Co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, all New York Times bestsellers in the Heroes Among Us series. Former Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College and former instructor in Johns Hopkins University’s ROTC program. Deployed to Iraq from 2007 to 2008 as an Infantry Company First Sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division during the Surge. Biography The Battle of Mogadishu on 3 October 1993 lasted roughly 18 hours. Inside it, a young staff sergeant from the 3rd Ranger Battalion was responsible for a chalk of soldiers fast-roping into a city that had already gone wrong. That sergeant was Matt Eversmann, and the decisions he made in those hours became one of the most studied case studies in modern small-unit command. The reason that experience matters in a boardroom is not symbolism. It is that the conditions Rangers train for, incomplete information, broken communications, no time to consult upward, are the same conditions senior teams now face during cyber incidents, supply shocks and reputational crises. Eversmann teaches what holds and what fails when a plan does not survive contact. His authority on the subject extends well beyond his own service. As co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, he has spent years interviewing soldiers, police officers and first responders about the texture of decisions made under load. That body of work, three New York Times bestsellers, sits behind every keynote. Before founding Eversmann Advisory in 2018, he served as Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College, taught leadership in the Johns Hopkins University ROTC program, and led an Infantry Company through the Iraq Surge. The result is a speaker who can move from a specific named moment in Mogadishu to a specific question a CEO is asking about command culture, without losing either audience. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure and in crisis Team performance in high-stakes environments Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and followership inside elite units Trust and culture in small teams Lessons from the Battle of Mogadishu and combat command Service, sacrifice and operator stories from Walk in My Combat Boots Ideal for CEO and C-suite offsites focused on resilience, command culture and crisis decision-making. Leadership development programmes for senior operators, plant managers, regional heads and first-line commanders of large field organisations. Conferences for sectors with a high-consequence operating tempo: financial services, energy, healthcare, defence, law enforcement, and aviation. Annual sales kick-offs and partner meetings looking for a serious anchor keynote rather than entertainment. Audience outcomes A vocabulary for naming what their teams actually do well and badly when conditions go non-linear. Specific lessons from a documented combat action that translate to crisis governance and post-incident review. A clearer view of what accountability looks like at the team-leader level, distinct from individual performance. Renewed seriousness about preparation, rehearsal and standards as cultural artefacts, not HR processes. Stories with named operators and named events that senior leaders can reference back inside their own organisations.

Why organisations work with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton Her Decision Control Process derived from helmet-camera research on real operational commands, not simulation, is the only evidence-based framework of its kind adopted nationally, now embedded in UK National Operational Guidance and JESIP doctrine governing all blue-light services at major incidents. Her central research finding – that 80% of decisions made by experienced commanders are instinctive, and that goal-oriented training can increase situational awareness up to five times – gives leadership teams a specific, measurable basis for redesigning how they develop judgement under pressure. She is both a serving Chief Fire Officer and an active researcher at Cardiff University, meaning her framework is continuously stress-tested against real operational consequences – not archived after publication. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), extends the same empirical approach to the structural barriers holding women back at work – giving CHROs and boards a research-grounded contribution to progression strategy rather than advocacy. Her awards span operational command and academic research: the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour represent recognition from named bodies across both domains. Biography highlights Chief Fire Officer, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (first woman to hold this post); formerly CFO, West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service; Deputy Assistant Commissioner, London Fire Brigade PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Honorary Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society; Chartered Companion, Chartered Management Institute Developed the Decision Control Process – adopted by every UK fire and rescue service, embedded in National Operational Guidance for incident command and in JESIP doctrine King’s Fire Service Medal (King’s Birthday Honours); APA Early Career Award (2016); APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award (2018); BBSRC Innovator of the Year (2018) Author: The Heat of the Moment (Penguin Books, 2019) and The Gender Bias (2023) Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs; named among Marie Claire’s Future Shapers; Cosmopolitan Millennial Power List; Big Issue Top 100 Changemakers Biography When researchers at Cardiff University fitted helmet cameras to experienced incident commanders during live operational responses, the footage was unambiguous: eight in ten decisions were made on instinct, with structured analytical frameworks bypassed entirely. That finding became the foundation of the Decision Control Process: a rapid mental checklist developed by Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and subsequently adopted by every UK fire and rescue service. The research reshaped National Operational Guidance for incident command and is embedded in JESIP doctrine, the framework governing decision-making across all blue-light services at major incidents. It is a rare case of behavioural science research moving directly from peer-reviewed publication to national policy. Dr Cohen-Hatton holds a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience from Cardiff University, where she is an Honorary Professor, and is currently Chief Fire Officer of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service: the first woman to lead that service. Her operational career spans South Wales, Surrey, London, and West Sussex, and includes command roles during the Westminster Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks and in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), applies the same empirical lens to structural barriers in organisational progression: a data-led analysis of why women are judged differently at work and what organisations can do to address it. Alongside the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour, her profile extends well beyond emergency services audiences: Desert Island Discs, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan have all featured her work. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Behavioural neuroscience and leadership judgement Incident command and human factors Organisational learning from high-stakes incidents Crisis command and situational awareness Gender bias and structural barriers to progression Social mobility and leadership resilience Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams in regulated, risk-critical, or high-consequence sectors CHROs and senior talent leads focused on women’s progression at executive level Risk, safety, resilience, and business continuity officers Senior leadership development programmes addressing performance and judgement under pressure Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of how instinct and intuition dominate decision-making under pressure, and where that creates measurable organisational risk Familiarity with the Decision Control Process and its evidence base, with direct implications for how leadership development programmes should be designed A research-grounded framework for diagnosing and addressing structural barriers to women’s progression in senior roles Greater awareness of how human factors – not just technical failure – contribute to adverse outcomes in complex, high-stakes environments A perspective on leadership judgement formed from decades of active operational command at the most senior level in UK emergency services

Why organisations work with Amy Carroll She works on the specific moments leadership training usually skips: board challenges, negotiations that stall, team conversations that tip into defensiveness. Leaders leave with something they can apply on Monday, not a model to file. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a usable vocabulary for power dynamics most leaders feel but cannot name. The client list runs through organisations that do not buy soft skills lightly: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. Thirty years across psychology, executive coaching, and psychiatric and managed-care settings give her range on human behaviour that communications trainers rarely carry. Recognition from Global Gurus, including a Top 20 position in the Communication category, places her among a small group of named practitioners in the field. Biography highlights Author of The Ego Tango: How to Get More of What You Want More Often with Less Hassle, Using These 7 Partner Mindset Techniques Host of Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Ranked among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, placing #18 in 2023 Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, with a BA in Psychology Coaching and training clients include Nestle, Novartis, Microsoft, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the European Stability Mechanism Licenses the Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership Inc. and built the 7 Partner Mindset methodology on top of it Biography Most leadership failures happen in conversation. A board member challenges an assumption and the chief executive concedes ground she should have held. A senior partner pushes harder than the client will accept. A team leader in a performance review slips from clarity into apology. The cost is rarely dramatic, but it compounds, and it sits outside what strategy decks or standard communications training address. Amy Carroll works on that gap. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a working vocabulary for the power dynamics they feel in the room but cannot usually name. The framework draws from three decades in psychology, executive coaching, and earlier work in psychiatric and managed-care settings, which is a wider behavioural base than most communications coaches bring. Her book, The Ego Tango, sets out the methodology through cases from the workshops she runs with multinational clients. The client list is instructive: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. These are organisations where a senior leader’s composure under challenge is a measurable commercial asset. She hosts Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, and has been named among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, including a Top 20 placement in 2023. The recognition is useful context; the substance is the work itself, which is a repeatable method for holding authority when the stakes rise. Key speaking topics Leadership communication under pressure Power and influence in senior conversations Executive presence and authority High-stakes negotiation dynamics Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Storytelling and persuasion in business Coaching culture and leadership development Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams preparing for board, investor, or regulator-facing conversations Partners and client-facing leaders in professional services and financial services HR and Learning leads building executive development programmes Senior women navigating authority in traditionally male-dominated rooms Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the power dynamics that sit beneath difficult conversations, so leaders can diagnose what is happening in the moment Specific techniques from the 7 Partner Mindset model to stay composed when challenged and to influence without escalating A sharper read on their own default patterns under stress, including where they concede and where they overreach Language for feedback, negotiation, and disagreement that holds authority without damaging the relationship A practical sense of how senior presence is built through behaviour, not positioning

Why organisations work with Andy Lopata He reframes networking as a leadership discipline. The argument lands with executives who have dismissed the topic as junior or transactional, and gives them a structured way to think about who supports them, how, and why. The Relationship Matrix gives leaders a tangible way to audit their professional support system, identify where it is thin, and decide where to invest. Few speakers in this space work at that level of operational specificity. His mentoring work, anchored in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell, gives organisations a serious reference point for designing mentoring programmes that retain senior talent. Twenty-five years inside the topic, recognition from the Financial Times and Forbes, and a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist place him in a small group of speakers who have built genuine institutional credibility on professional relationships. He works with the cultural problem behind the leadership one: why senior people will not ask for help, and what it costs the organisation when they do not. Biography highlights Author of six books, including Connected Leadership (2020) and The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring (Pearson, 2024, with Dr Ruth Gotian). Shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award. Two-time board member and former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland; holder of the PSAE, the PSA’s Hall of Fame distinction. Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute; member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Meetings Industry Association. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today; host of The Connected Leadership Podcast. Clients include PayPal, Google, Harrods, BBC, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Allen and Overy, Saïd Business School and Brother International Europe. Biography Most senior leaders rise on technical and commercial credibility, then hit a level where the job is mostly relational. They under-invest in mentors, hesitate to ask for help, and end up isolated at exactly the point where their decisions carry the most weight. That gap is what Lopata’s work addresses. For more than twenty-five years he has worked on professional relationships as an executive capability rather than a soft skill. The Financial Times has called him one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists; Forbes has described him as a true master of networking. The label undersells the work. His Relationship Matrix gives leaders a structured way to audit who supports them, where the gaps are, and where to invest. Frameworks like the Seven Stages of Professional Relationships and The Influence Wheel extend that work into stakeholder mapping, influence and senior mentoring practice. His books map the territory in detail. Connected Leadership argues that executive success is built on a deliberate web of relationships, and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2021. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell Medicine in 2024, gives organisations a reference text for treating mentoring as a strategic retention and development tool. The book was a runner-up for Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Leadership Awards. The institutional weight follows the work. He is a former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland and holds its PSAE Hall of Fame distinction. He was shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award, contributes to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and has worked with PayPal, Google, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, the BBC and Saïd Business School on the same underlying problem: how senior people stop performing in isolation and start leading through the relationships around them. Key speaking topics Professional relationships as a leadership capability Mentoring strategy and programme design Asking for help and the cost of not asking Vulnerable leadership Referral and influence networks Connected leadership and executive support systems Psychological safety and speaking up at senior level Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and partners moving into senior leadership roles where the work becomes relational CHROs and learning leaders designing mentoring, succession and retention programmes Professional services and partner-track populations where business development depends on relationship quality Sales leaders rebuilding referral networks and account relationships Audience outcomes A clear framework, the Relationship Matrix, for auditing the professional support system around a senior role A different language for mentoring as a strategic asset rather than a benefit programme Specific shifts in how leaders approach asking for help, and why most do not A more honest read on where executive isolation is costing the organisation in retention, succession and decision quality Practical adjustments to how teams use referrals, networks and senior relationships in commercial contexts

Why organisations work with Rachel Treece A coach-led leadership thesis grounded in published work, not platform rhetoric: her book “The Henka Effect” sets out how coaching changes the operating behaviour of senior leaders, with named case studies from financial services. Operating credibility inside financial services. The Henka Institute reports work with a majority of the largest fund managers and investment banks, and her podcast “Flex and the City” speaks directly to FS leadership audiences. ICF-accredited coaching credentials (PCC, CPCC) and a psychology background, which means the content is built on practice-tested method, not opinion. A multinational and multilingual delivery range across 35 countries, useful for boards and leadership populations that span Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. A direct, no-platitudes register on inclusion and culture that buyers can put in front of mixed senior audiences without it landing as DEI theatre. Biography highlights CEO of The Henka Institute and fts global, a leadership development firm operating in 35 countries. Author of “The Henka Effect: How Coaching is Transforming Leadership and Organisations” (2022). Host of the podcast “Flex and the City – Great leadership in financial services”. ICF-credentialled executive coach (PCC, CPCC) and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Speaker at the ALFI Leadership Seminar, the leading industry forum for the Luxembourg fund and asset management sector. Co-founder of Dress for Success Luxembourg. Biography Most senior leaders know that pushing harder no longer produces the result it used to. Workforces are exhausted by repeated change, sceptical of slogans, and quick to disengage from leaders who default to control. The harder question is what leaders should do instead, and how to develop that behaviour at scale. Rachel Treece’s answer is coaching. Not coaching as a development perk, but coaching as the operating mode of senior leadership itself. Her book “The Henka Effect” sets out the argument with case material drawn from her work inside financial services, where she has spent much of her career advising FTSE and Fortune 100 leadership teams. That work runs through The Henka Institute, the Luxembourg-based firm she leads. The institute operates across 35 countries and reports clients including a majority of the largest fund asset managers and investment banks. Her credentials sit alongside the practice: PCC and CPCC coaching certifications, a psychology background, and Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. For organisations going through restructure, integration, or cultural reset, the value of her work is specific. She gives senior leaders a usable behavioural toolkit that replaces directive instinct with curiosity, ownership, and accountability, rather than asking them to soften their style and hope. Key speaking topics Coaching as a leadership operating model Leadership in financial services Inclusive and values-based leadership Change and transformation in regulated industries Communication and executive presence Organisational culture and trust Sustainable performance and leader energy Ideal for CEOs, CHROs, and heads of leadership development inside banks, asset managers, and other regulated financial institutions. Boards and executive committees navigating restructuring, M&A integration, or cultural reset. Senior leadership populations being asked to lead through change without burning out their teams or themselves. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between coaching as a development activity and coaching as a senior leadership behaviour, with the second framed as the lever for sustainable performance. Specific behavioural moves senior leaders can use to replace directive defaults in real conversations with their teams. A working model for building trust and ownership inside teams that have been through repeated change. An honest read on what inclusive leadership looks like in practice in commercial organisations, beyond statement-making.

Why organisations work with Mariano Sigman A 2018 Nature Human Behaviour study he co-authored, run with 5,180 live participants, showed that aggregating small structured debates produces sharper answers than the wisdom of thousands; that finding rewrites how senior groups should be designed to decide. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, Europe’s flagship neuroscience consortium, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. His training in physics in Buenos Aires, neuroscience at Rockefeller, and postdoctoral work with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France gives his claims a methodological grounding that separates them from motivational uses of the same science. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Science Magazine; his ideas hold up outside the speaker circuit. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, gives leadership audiences a calm, scientifically grounded read on what AI changes and does not change in human cognition. Biography highlights PhD in neuroscience from Rockefeller University; postdoctoral research with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France. Director of the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project; the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. Associate Professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; founder of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires; Principal Researcher at CONICET. Pius XI Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2016); James S. McDonnell Scholar Award; Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award. Author of “The Secret Life of the Mind” (HarperCollins, 2017) and “El poder de las palabras” (2022); co-author of “Artificial” with Santiago Bilinkis (2023). TED main-stage speaker on collective intelligence with Dan Ariely. Biography Smart people in a room together do not reliably make smart decisions. Mariano Sigman has spent two decades building the experimental science that explains why, and what to change about it. His laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella draws on physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science to study how individuals and groups actually form judgments under uncertainty. The clearest example is a 2018 paper in Nature Human Behaviour with Joaquin Navajas and colleagues. Working with 5,180 live participants, the team showed that aggregating the consensus of small structured debate groups was substantially more accurate than averaging the opinions of thousands of independent individuals. The architecture of a conversation, in other words, matters more than the number of voices inside it. Sigman trained as a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires, took a PhD in neuroscience at Rockefeller, and did postdoctoral research at the College de France with Stanislas Dehaene, one of the leading figures in cognitive science. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, the European flagship initiative, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship there. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, became an international bestseller and brought his work on judgment, learning, and consciousness to readers in more than a dozen languages. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, applies the same lens to the relationship between human cognition and AI. For boards and executive teams, that body of work answers a specific question. Senior decisions live or die on how a small group aggregates uncertain information. Sigman gives leaders a working account of where that process breaks, why it breaks, and which structural moves close the gap. Key speaking topics Collective intelligence and group decision-making Cognitive bias and judgment under uncertainty The neuroscience of learning and adult neuroplasticity Conversation, language, and belief formation Artificial intelligence and human cognition Consciousness and the science of the mind Creativity and the cognitive roots of innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees rethinking how high-stakes decisions are deliberated and made CHROs and learning leaders designing capability and judgment programmes for senior talent Strategy, innovation, and transformation leaders working under deep uncertainty Technology and AI leadership teams reasoning about human-machine collaboration Audience outcomes A working account of why structured small-group debate outperforms both lone experts and large consensus meetings. A specific vocabulary for the cognitive distortions that quietly shape leadership judgment, including confidence bias and equality bias. A clearer read on how the adult brain learns and changes, and where common assumptions about learning capacity are wrong. A practical sense of how language and conversation shape belief, memory, and choice inside teams. A grounded view of what AI changes, and does not change, in the cognitive demands placed on senior leaders.

Why organisations work with Suzi Perry She has hosted live, high-stakes broadcast for more than two decades, including BBC Formula 1, MotoGP for BBC and BT Sport, Wimbledon and the London Olympics. Few hosts on the corporate circuit carry that volume of unscripted live experience. She is the first woman to have held the permanent main-anchor role on BBC Formula 1, which makes her credible in front of motorsport, automotive and engineering audiences in a way most generalist hosts are not. She has eight years on Channel 5’s The Gadget Show and a long run with Mobile World Congress and Global Mobile Awards, giving her fluency with technology, telecoms and consumer electronics audiences without needing a brief. Repeat corporate clients include BT, Mercedes, Honda, HSBC, Suzuki, DELL, EE, Nikon and Royal Mail, with hosting work spanning awards nights, conference moderation and product launches. Biography highlights First permanent female anchor of BBC One’s Formula 1 coverage, 2013 to 2015. Lead MotoGP presenter for BT Sport, now TNT Sports, since 2016. Thirteen seasons covering MotoGP for BBC Sport before joining Formula 1. Co-presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show for eight years across 17 series. Conference and awards host for BT, Mercedes, Honda, HSBC, Mobile World Congress and Global Mobile Awards. Honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton. Biography Live broadcast is the part of the modern executive job that gets the least practice and the most scrutiny. Suzi Perry has spent more than twenty years working in exactly that environment, first as the BBC’s MotoGP presenter for thirteen seasons, then as the first woman to hold the permanent main-anchor role on BBC One’s Formula 1 coverage from 2013, and since 2016 as the lead MotoGP presenter for BT Sport and TNT Sports. That work is the basis of how she shows up for corporate audiences. She has hosted at Mobile World Congress, Global Mobile Awards, the Boat Show and conferences for BT, Mercedes, Honda, HSBC, Suzuki, DELL, EE, Nikon and Royal Mail, alongside awards-night work for technology, automotive and consumer brands. Eight years co-presenting Channel 5’s The Gadget Show, and a long association with Gadget Show Live, gave her a separate base of fluency with technology and consumer-tech audiences. Her speaking content draws on the same source material. Two decades of live broadcast at the front of a Formula 1 paddock or a MotoGP grid produce a specific working knowledge: how to prepare, how to recover when a feed drops or a guest goes off-script, how to read a room when the schedule slips. For senior leaders increasingly asked to be the face of their organisation on stage and on camera, that experience is the relevant credential. She holds an honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton, where she originally studied business and finance, and serves as a patron or ambassador for Promise Dreams, UK Youth, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Special Olympics. Key speaking topics Live broadcast and presenting craft Awards hosting and conference moderation Motorsport and Formula 1 MotoGP and motorcycle racing Technology and consumer electronics Women in motorsport and broadcasting Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for high-visibility live moments: investor days, town halls, AGMs. Automotive, motorsport and engineering audiences looking for a host with technical fluency, not a generalist. Technology and telecoms organisations running keynote stages, awards nights or product launches. CMOs and brand teams briefing for sponsorship-driven hospitality at major sporting events. Audience outcomes A working sense of how experienced broadcasters prepare for live moments where the script can fail. A clearer view of what composure on camera actually looks like in practice. Specific examples from inside Formula 1 and MotoGP that translate to high-pressure corporate stages. A sharper read on how to recover when a live moment goes off plan.