Executive Development

Why organisations work with Tim Bradshaw His authority sits in operational tradecraft, not theory. As a Covert Human Intelligence Officer he recruited and ran foreign agents in environments where misjudging a person or a moment carried real consequences. That experience translates directly into how senior leaders read rooms, build trust quickly, and influence outcomes without formal authority. He treats resilience as a leadership system, not an individual virtue. His work focuses on how decision-making structures and cultural signals shape whether teams hold together under sustained pressure, which is the version boards actually need. He has tested his content with operationally serious clients across regulated and high-stakes sectors, including Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte, Clyde & Co, Knight Frank, St James’s Place and Netflix. Through Sandstone Communications and the Sandstone Foundation he runs the same material at executive level and in schools, which keeps the language plain and the frameworks usable rather than abstract. Biography highlights Former British Army Intelligence Officer, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst graduate, served as a Covert Human Intelligence Officer. Founder and director of Sandstone Communications, an international leadership and trauma-informed training consultancy. Chief Executive of the Sandstone Foundation, delivering leadership and resilience programmes across corporate, public and education sectors. Author of Because I Can, a practical guide to personal effectiveness under pressure. Keynote client roster includes Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Netflix, Deloitte, Knight Frank, Clyde & Co, St James’s Place, Fujifilm Europe, Hitachi Solutions, Taylor Wessing and Gateley. Personal endurance record includes Ironman, summit of Everest, summit of the Matterhorn, and seven triathlons in one weekend. Biography Most leadership programmes train people for clarity. The harder problem is the meeting where the information is incomplete, the timeline has collapsed, and the person in charge has to commit anyway. That is the territory Tim Bradshaw works in, and it is where his content earns its weight. His authority comes from operational practice rather than research. As a Covert Human Intelligence Officer in the British Army, a Royal Military Academy Sandhurst graduate, he recruited and handled foreign agents in environments where reading a person wrongly had immediate consequences. The discipline he brings into the room is not motivational. It is practical tradecraft: how to make decisions when the picture refuses to clarify, how to build trust at speed, how to influence outcomes when hierarchy gives you nothing to lean on. Through Sandstone Communications, the consultancy he founded, and the Sandstone Foundation, where he is chief executive, he applies that work to senior teams in regulated and operationally complex businesses. Clients include Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte, Clyde & Co, Knight Frank, St James’s Place, Netflix, Fujifilm Europe and Taylor Wessing. His book Because I Can sets out the personal effectiveness framework that underpins the keynotes. What makes his work usable is the refusal to treat resilience as an individual quality. He argues that leadership behaviour, decision structures and cultural signals are what determine whether a team stays effective under sustained pressure. That reframes a topic boards often hear as a wellbeing conversation into a question about how the organisation is actually run. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure and uncertainty Influence and trust without formal authority Leadership in high-stakes operational environments Team resilience as a leadership system Crisis management and composure Leading change without creating fragility Ideal for CEOs and executive teams in regulated, safety-critical or operationally complex sectors Senior leadership offsites where decision-making and judgment under pressure are the headline themes Sales, advisory and client-facing teams that depend on rapid trust-building with senior counterparties Risk, security and crisis leadership functions, including CROs, CISOs and continuity leads Audience outcomes A working method for committing to a decision when the information is incomplete A specific way to build trust and influence at speed without relying on title or authority A view of resilience as something leaders engineer into teams, not something they ask of individuals Composure as a teachable behaviour, with the cues senior leaders can use to model it A clearer read on which organisational habits actively erode performance when pressure is sustained

Why organisations work with Marianne Abib-Pech A verified large-cap finance record at the top: Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, reached before age 35 Active operating practice through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund rebuilding local, modular and resource-efficient supply chains, which keeps her material current rather than retrospective Author of The Financial Times Guide to Leadership, a published thesis on what trust-based leadership actually looks like in execution Frontier-market depth across Africa, the Middle East, and the Caspian region, useful for boards weighing growth in places where their existing playbook does not transfer Biography highlights Global CFO, Shell Aviation, before age 35 Earlier career at Arthur Andersen (Luxembourg) and GE Capital, including integration of a private bank Author, The Financial Times Guide to Leadership (FT Publishing / Pearson) Co-founder, Transitions First, industrial venture fund focused on local and modular supply chains Founder, LTF Partners, M&A and strategy advisory in emerging and frontier markets Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award, 2014 Biography Most leadership material is written from the inside of mature markets. Marianne Abib-Pech wrote hers from the other side. The Financial Times Guide to Leadership argues that trust, not charisma, is the operating system of senior leadership, and the cases that shape it come from places where that argument is hardest to apply. Her credibility on that point is operational. She was Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, before she was 35, after earlier roles at Arthur Andersen in Luxembourg and at GE Capital, where she ran the integration of a private bank into the wider business. The seat at the top of a global division is what gives her material weight with senior audiences. Today the work is split between writing, advising, and investing. Through LTF Partners she works on M&A and strategy in frontier markets across Africa, the Middle East and the Caspian. Through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund she co-founded in 2022, she backs companies rebuilding modular, resource-efficient supply chains, the kind of capital decisions boards are now being asked to underwrite themselves. What that produces in a room is unusually concrete. She talks about leading across 88 nationalities because she has done it. She talks about capital allocation in difficult geographies because she is currently allocating it. She received the Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award in 2014, but the more useful credential is that her examples are still being built. Key speaking topics Leadership in male-dominated and frontier environments Trust as the operating system of senior leadership Strategy and capital allocation in emerging and frontier markets Industrial venture capital and supply-chain rebuilds Women in finance and senior leadership Cross-cultural leadership and global team performance Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and divisional leaders entering or scaling in frontier markets Boards weighing capital allocation into industrial transitions and supply-chain reconfiguration Senior women’s leadership programmes and executive development cohorts Finance leadership audiences moving from analyst to operator roles Audience outcomes A working definition of trust-based leadership grounded in real CFO-level decisions A clearer view of what changes when a leadership playbook crosses into frontier or industrial-transition contexts Specific reference points for capital allocation and deal execution in unfamiliar geographies Reframed expectations of what credibility looks like for women leading in male-dominated sectors

Why organisations work with Richard Gerver He has a verifiable case study that most leadership speakers do not. Grange Primary School moved from near-failure to a nationally referenced model of learning under his leadership, recognised by the National Teaching Awards in 2005. His books are read by operating audiences, not just educators. Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It and Simple Thinking are published by Penguin and Wiley/Capstone, respectively, and held shelf positions in business charts. LinkedIn Learning commissioned him to build Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness for a global business audience. The courses have reached learners at scale across multiple languages. He worked closely with Sir Ken Robinson on human potential and creativity, and is cited in Robinson’s The Element. That intellectual lineage gives his leadership works a depth most motivational speakers cannot claim. He has been named UK Business Speaker of the Year on more than one occasion, including a confirmed 2011 win cited in his University of Derby honorary doctorate commendation. Biography highlights Headteacher of Grange Primary School, Derbyshire, where he developed the “Grangeton” model and led a documented institutional turnaround. National Teaching Awards Head Teacher of the Year, 2005. Honorary Doctor of Education, University of Derby, 2016. Author of Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today (Bloomsbury Education), Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It (Penguin) and Simple Thinking (Wiley/Capstone). LinkedIn Learning instructor: Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness. Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson on his first book; later cited in Robinson’s The Element. Biography Grange Primary School was on the verge of failure when Richard Gerver took it over. Within two years, the school was being studied as a national model, with a curriculum built around a pupil-run virtual town called Grangeton. The work earned him the National Teaching Awards Head Teacher of the Year in 2005 and shaped the rest of his career. He has spent the two decades since translating that experience for business audiences. Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It, published by Penguin, argues that leaders fail at change because they manage it as a project rather than a behaviour. Simple Thinking, published by Wiley/Capstone, attacks the bureaucratic clutter that senior teams build around their own decisions. Both books found shelf space in mainstream business sections, not just education. His thinking sits in the lineage of Sir Ken Robinson, who wrote the foreword to his first book and cited him in The Element. He has worked with UNESCO, the British Council, Skanska and the Welsh Government, and was commissioned by LinkedIn Learning to build two courses, Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness, that have reached a global business audience. The University of Derby awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Education in 2016, citing his ability to humanise complex organisational issues through a leadership philosophy built on communication, empowerment and impact. He has been named UK Business Speaker of the Year on more than one occasion. Key speaking topics Human leadership and behaviour change Organisational transformation Resilience and mental toughness Curiosity, creativity and innovation Future skills and human potential Change management Executive development Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are asking why a recent transformation programme has stalled CHROs and L&D directors rebuilding leadership development for a fatigued workforce Senior leaders preparing a workforce for restructure, integration, or operating-model change Boards looking for an outside voice on the human side of strategic execution Audience outcomes A sharper view of why most change programmes fail at the leader’s own behaviour, not at the strategy Specific tools for stripping complexity out of decisions and communication Confidence that resilience and mental toughness can be built deliberately, with examples from sport and education A reframing of curiosity as an organisational capability, not a personal trait Renewed clarity on what senior leaders should personally commit to during a period of change

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 US Operations at Pitney Bowes, and a retired Walmart Vice President. His view on change comes from someone who has signed off on it. He sits on corporate boards today. As an Independent Director at The Brink’s Company since 2022, and now at Internet Sciences, he speaks to senior leaders from inside their own governance world. His argument on trust has an operating record behind it. Uncommon Leadership sets out how leaders rebuild credibility through integrity and people-centred performance, which carries more weight from someone who led large-scale operations than from a podium. He reached the most senior ranks of corporate America, recognised twice over by Black Enterprise and Savoy. That lived authority changes how a room of executives hears him on culture and accountability. Biography highlights Retired Vice President, Community Engagement and Support, Walmart Inc. (2020 to 2024); earlier played a hands-on role in Walmart’s shift from brick-and-mortar retail to omni-channel e-commerce Former President of Cub Foods and ACME Markets (SuperValu); former President, US Operations, Pitney Bowes Management Services Independent Director, The Brink’s Company (NYSE: BCO), and Internet Sciences, Inc. (appointed 2026) Author of Uncommon Leadership (2026), Diversity Is Not Enough (2021 NAACP Image Award nominee), Good Is Not Enough (2009 NAACP Image Award nominee), and Corner Office Rules Named to the Top 100 African American Executives list by Black Enterprise and Savoy National media on leadership and careers, including NBC’s Today Show, Fox Business, and USA Today Biography Cub Foods was a multi-billion dollar grocery business when Keith Wyche was recruited to run it, one of two SuperValu banners he led as President before joining Walmart. That operating record, built across Pitney Bowes, SuperValu, and a long Walmart career, is what everything else rests on. At Walmart he moved from running operations to helping shift the retailer from brick-and-mortar stores toward an omni-channel, e-commerce business. He then led Community Engagement and Support until he retired in 2024. He now sits as an Independent Director on the board of The Brink’s Company, appointed in 2022, and joined the board of the technology firm Internet Sciences in 2026. The board seats change the room he speaks into. He is in the same governance conversations as the senior leaders he addresses, which is why his read on change and accountability carries weight with a C-suite audience. His fourth book, Uncommon Leadership, published in 2026, grew out of a conversation with his teenage grandson about the run of leaders losing public trust. It follows Good Is Not Enough and Diversity Is Not Enough, both NAACP Image Award nominees. The new book makes a blunt case: strong results do not create followership, and leaders who want to be followed earn it through integrity and how they treat people. Key speaking topics Leadership integrity and rebuilding organisational trust People-centred leadership and accountability Change, resilience, and transformation management Leading through restructure and disruption Career progression, visibility, and personal brand for senior talent Board-level perspective on leadership and organisational performance Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards setting the tone on culture and accountability CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding leadership credibility during change Leadership conferences and senior executive communities across corporate and association audiences High-potential and emerging leaders being prepared for senior executive roles Audience outcomes A frank account of what it takes to keep people committed through restructure and change How trust and accountability get rebuilt after they erode, drawn from real leadership failures and recoveries he has seen and led Specific career and visibility moves, from building sponsors to reading company culture, for leaders aiming at executive roles A board-level read on how culture, performance, and integrity 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