Executive Development

Why organisations work with Nadira Tudor She moderates at the level of the World Economic Forum at Davos, IBC Amsterdam, GITEX Global Dubai and the Future Investment Initiative, which means clients commissioning her are buying the same on-stage standard those programmes demand. She runs Euronews’ Baku Bureau, anchoring and producing the network’s news output from the region, so her interviewing instincts are tested daily on live international news, not refreshed once a year on the speaker circuit. Her on-camera presenting for branded content is recognised at industry award level, including a Silver Telly Award for the Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series with ReutersPlus and a Bronze Award for IDA Ireland’s film on the country’s semiconductors cluster, with regular further work for the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter. She trains military and government communicators, including NATO, UK MOD and the Royal Navy, which sharpens her judgement on stage when conversations turn to security, geopolitics or regulated industries. Her academic seat at Cardiff JOMEC and her master’s in intercultural communication from Birkbeck give her a working theory of cross-cultural audience response, which matters for global summits where the audience is not a single market. Biography highlights Bureau Chief, Baku, for Euronews, running the bureau and its sponsored programmes hub with editorial responsibility for the full news output. Broadcast career across BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, BBC 5 Live, BBC News, BBC Wales and BBC Asian Network, with a further spell at BBC News and Programmes (2023 to 2025), launch-team roles at News UK across Times Radio and TalkTV (2020 to 2023), and international experience at ITN, Channel 5 and Al Arabiya English. Award-winning ReutersPlus branded-content presenter: Silver Telly Award (Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series) and Bronze Award (IDA Ireland semiconductors film). Regular further branded-content work for the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter. Visiting Lecturer at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC); master’s in Intercultural Communication for Business and Professions, Birkbeck, University of London. Moderation credits include the World Economic Forum (Davos 2023 and 2024), GITEX Global Dubai, GITEX Africa, IBC Amsterdam, Future Investment Initiative, GMIS and T20. Communications training for NATO, UK MOD, the Royal Navy and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps; 2015 Asian Professional Award for Media and BBC Innovation Award. Biography Most leadership content fails on stage long before the strategy fails in the market. The interview misfires, the panel drifts, the senior voice in the room sounds defensive, and the audience remembers the discomfort, not the message. The person holding the microphone decides whether that happens. Her current post is Bureau Chief in Baku for Euronews, where she runs the bureau and its sponsored programmes hub, anchors and produces key programmes for the region, and is responsible for the full news output. She came up through the BBC across Radio 4, Radio 1 and 1Xtra, 5 Live, News, Wales and the Asian Network, with a further spell at BBC News and Programmes from 2023 to 2025, and was part of the launch teams for both Times Radio and TalkTV at News UK between 2020 and 2023. International newsroom experience runs through ITN, Channel 5 and Al Arabiya English. She moderates at the most senior end of the global conference circuit, including the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2023 and 2024, IBC Amsterdam, GITEX Global, the Future Investment Initiative, the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit and the T20. The same craft underpins her communications training for NATO, the UK MOD, the Royal Navy and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, where leadership communication is a security issue, not a presentation skill. The intellectual underpinning is her master’s in Intercultural Communication for Business and Professions from Birkbeck, University of London, and a Visiting Lecturer seat at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture. She also fronts award-winning branded content for ReutersPlus, the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter, with a Silver Telly Award for the Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series and a Bronze Award for IDA Ireland’s film on the country’s semiconductors cluster. The 2015 Asian Professional Award for Media and an earlier BBC Innovation Award round out a record that rests on disciplined interviewing more than on stage presence. Key speaking topics Conference moderation and on-stage interviewing Executive communication for senior leaders Crisis and reputation communication Media and on-camera training Intercultural communication in global organisations Awards and gala hosting Panel and debate facilitation Ideal for Chief Communications Officers and Heads of Corporate Affairs commissioning a senior moderator for global summits, leadership offsites or investor days. Heads of Internal Communications running CEO town halls, all-hands and quarterly leadership broadcasts. Event directors at industry conferences who need an interviewer who can carry a multi-track programme across sectors in a single day. Public sector and defence communications leads briefing senior teams on media engagement under scrutiny. Audience outcomes A live demonstration of how a sharp interviewer turns a panel from a sequence of statements into a substantive conversation. Practical handles for senior leaders on how to answer hard questions on stage without retreating into corporate language. A clearer view of how cultural and audience context changes what counts as a strong answer, drawn from her global moderation work. For internal communications teams, a working sense of what good looks like when the CEO is in front of the room.

Why organisations work with Phillippa Mole She brings the practical content of executive presence into the room: how leaders hold themselves in a pitch, a board meeting, or a difficult conversation, taught as craft rather than as personality. Her coaching combines elite-sport performance psychology with certified executive coaching credentials, including Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach and ICF PCC accreditation, giving the work a defensible technical base. She is the first UK qualified practitioner of Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which gives her unusual range when working with leaders carrying real career or personal load. Her broadcast background, including BBC and GMTV presenting, sharpens the work on how senior people communicate when the stakes and the camera are both live. Clients have included Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with applications spanning bid pitches, capital raises and senior team development. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Fresh Air Coaching, established 2007. Master Executive Coach (Association for Coaching) and ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC). NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer; first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories for PTSS. MSc Sport Science and Performance Psychology, Loughborough University. Former lecturer in Performance Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Former BBC and GMTV network broadcaster and Sunday Telegraph columnist. Biography Composure is rarely the line item in a leadership development plan, but it is what senior people are actually judged on when the room turns difficult. Phillippa Mole’s coaching practice is built around that observation. Fresh Air Coaching, the firm she founded in 2007, works with senior leaders and teams on the behavioural mechanics of presence, influence and decision-making under pressure. The technical base is unusual. She holds an MSc in Sport Science and Performance Psychology from Loughborough and lectured in performance psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University before moving into executive coaching full time. Her certifications run from Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach to ICF PCC, with NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer status alongside. She is named as the first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which extends her range into work that touches genuine personal load. Before coaching, she competed in sprint hurdles for the South of England and represented Great Britain in bobsleigh, then spent years in front of a camera as a network broadcaster for the BBC and GMTV, including coverage of the Commonwealth Games, and as a Sunday Telegraph columnist. That background informs the way she teaches presence: the work is granular and physical, closer to a directing note than a leadership homily. Named clients include Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with engagements on bid pitches, capital raising and senior team performance. Buyers describe her as a “secret weapon” in those high-stakes settings, language that reflects what the work actually does, which is to make a small set of senior people materially better at the moments their reputation rests on. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence Self-leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence in senior teams Performance psychology applied to business Communication and persuasion craft Resilience and recovery for senior leaders Ideal for CEOs, managing partners and board members preparing for high-stakes pitches, capital raises or contested set-pieces Senior leadership teams investing in presence, influence and team performance ahead of restructure or growth Newly promoted executives stepping into roles where credibility is judged in moments rather than over months HR directors and L&D leads commissioning behavioural development for the top layer rather than generic wellbeing content Audience outcomes A clearer, behaviourally specific picture of what executive presence is and how to build it Practical methods for holding composure in pitches, boardrooms and difficult conversations A working model for using emotional intelligence to read a room and shift a dynamic in real time Language for naming and addressing the pressure points that quietly reduce senior performance Renewed personal confidence in the moments where reputation is actually decided

Why organisations work with George Nagle He built his innovation method inside oil and gas water chemistry, one of the most conservative industrial sectors there is, and used it to launch 19 products in 14 months across a portfolio worth more than $352 million. His Breakthrough Thinking series gives leadership teams a named, codified methodology to use after the keynote, not a set of slogans to remember. He is a certified FORTH method instructor with black and green belt credentials in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. The toolset is academically accredited, not invented for the stage. He has applied the same approach across more than 24 industries, which makes him a credible voice for boards and executive teams that want innovation discipline transferred into their context, not borrowed from a single sector. Biography highlights Former global executive and strategy lead at a multi-billion-dollar industrial services company, with portfolio responsibility above $352 million. Launched 19 products in 14 months in the oil and gas water chemistry sector. Founder of The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, LLC, and author of the Breakthrough Thinking series. MS in Biology and MBA in Marketing and Management from Duquesne University; BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh. Certified online instructor in the FORTH method; black belt and multiple green belt certifications in academically accredited innovation systems. Published interviews with Authority Magazine on communication, attention, and creative habits. Biography Innovation in heavy industry is hard for a reason. The cultures are engineered for safety, repeatability, and risk avoidance, which are exactly the traits that make new ideas die quietly in a meeting. George Nagle spent his executive career inside that environment, in oil and gas water chemistry, and built a method to move past it. As a global executive, he carried a portfolio of more than $352 million and led the launch of 19 products in 14 months in a sector where most launches take years. That operating record sits behind everything else he does. He went on to found The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, codifying the approach into the Breakthrough Thinking series, including “The Five Letter F Word”, “Miserable At Work? Why? You Don’t Have To Be”, and “How Are Kids Innovating Faster Than You?”. His credentials are unusual for an innovation speaker. He holds an MS in Biology and an MBA from Duquesne University, a BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh, and academically accredited certifications in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. He is also a certified FORTH method instructor. The toolkit is borrowed, tested, and labelled, not improvised. What distinguishes him is the breadth of application: more than 24 industries have used the same set of ideation tools, from industrial chemistry to consumer-facing services. For leadership teams that want innovation treated as a managed discipline rather than a creative-culture initiative, that record makes him a practical voice. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Creative ideation and the FORTH method Commercial product launch under operating constraint Strategy communication across organisational levels Breakthrough Thinking methodology Workplace engagement and creative culture Ideal for Chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, and product portfolio executives looking to convert pilots into shipped revenue CEOs and executive teams in mature, process-heavy industries trying to install repeatable ideation Strategy and transformation leads responsible for cross-functional innovation programmes Senior HR and culture leaders pairing innovation capability with employee engagement work Audience outcomes A named, repeatable ideation method audiences can put into a project the next week A clearer view of why innovation efforts stall in conservative organisations and which mechanisms unblock them Specific tools for separating real strategic priorities from organisational noise Practical examples of how a structured innovation cadence produced 19 product launches in 14 months Language for connecting creativity, engagement, and commercial outcomes in a single business case

Why organisations work with Jacqueline Carter Four named books from Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave (One Second Ahead, The Mind of the Leader, Compassionate Leadership, More Human) that give a board or executive team a shared language for the human side of leadership. A research base built from interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders worldwide, conducted through Potential Project. Her arguments come with evidence, not anecdote. A framework, “wise compassion”, that gives leaders a usable answer to the empathy-versus-results tension most senior teams are stuck on. Twenty years of consulting at Deloitte and Potential Project with named clients including Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, and Royal Bank of Canada, so she speaks to executives in the language of operational reality, not theory. One of the few credible voices on AI-augmented leadership writing from a leadership-science lens rather than a technology one, anchored in her 2025 book More Human. Biography highlights Senior Partner and North America Director, Potential Project. Co-author, More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025). Co-author, Compassionate Leadership (HBR Press, 2022) and The Mind of the Leader (HBR Press, 2018). Co-author, One Second Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). MSc in Organizational Behaviour; former leader in Deloitte Consulting’s Change Leadership practice. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider. Biography The most senior leaders in large organisations are being asked to do contradictory things at once: cut hard, care visibly, deploy AI fast, and keep the workforce engaged through the disruption it causes. Most leadership advice picks one side of that tension and ignores the other. Jacqueline Carter’s work, built over two decades at Potential Project and Deloitte before that, is about holding both. Her four books with Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave map the same argument across different terrain. The Mind of the Leader (2018) sets out the foundation: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion as practical leadership disciplines. Compassionate Leadership (2022) names the operating problem most senior leaders run into when they try to lead with empathy, namely that empathy alone makes them indecisive, and proposes “wise compassion” as the working alternative. More Human (2025) turns the same lens on AI, arguing that the technology amplifies whichever leadership instinct is already there. The research base is unusual for a leadership speaker. Potential Project’s work draws on interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders and employees across industries. That gives Carter the evidence to make specific claims about what produces trust, candour, and performance in senior teams, rather than the generic motivational frame most leadership keynotes default to. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider, and has worked with executive teams at Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, and Royal Bank of Canada. The thread running through all of it is a single argument senior buyers will recognise immediately: the human qualities most leaders treat as soft are the ones that actually scale under pressure. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and the empathy-versus-results tension AI-augmented leadership Leading through change, restructure, and uncertainty Self-leadership and resilience for senior executives Hybrid and virtual team leadership Difficult conversations and leadership candour Mindfulness and attention as leadership disciplines Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding leadership culture after restructure or rapid growth. CHROs and CLOs designing senior leadership development programmes. Boards and senior teams working out how to deploy AI without losing the workforce. Partner groups and senior leaders in professional services managing client and team pressure simultaneously. Audience outcomes A working definition of “wise compassion” that senior leaders can use the next day in difficult conversations. A clearer view of where their own leadership defaults toward avoidance, false toughness, or performative care. A practical frame for using AI to extend leadership capacity rather than substitute for it. Specific language for the trade-offs between speed, candour, and care that most executive teams struggle to name. A research-backed counter to the assumption that human-centred leadership is incompatible with hard performance.

Why organisations work with Rasmus Hougaard He runs one of the largest applied research programmes on senior leadership behaviour, with data on more than 75,000 leaders in over 100 countries through Potential Project, which gives his content a defensibility most leadership speakers cannot match. Three Harvard Business Review Press books form a single argument, mindfulness, compassion, and AI-augmented leadership, which means a client can build a multi-year leadership curriculum around one coherent thesis rather than a single talk. His “compassionate leadership” framework gives executives a usable language for difficult conversations, restructures, and performance decisions, which is exactly the territory where senior people most often damage their credibility. Potential Project has long-running operating relationships with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, and others, so the content has been pressure-tested inside large complex organisations, not just on the conference circuit. Thinkers50 shortlisting for the Leadership Award places him in the small set of leadership thinkers whose work is taken seriously by senior HR and people-development functions globally. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of Potential Project, a global leadership development and research firm working with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, and Sony among others. Co-author of three Harvard Business Review Press books: “The Mind of the Leader”, “Compassionate Leadership”, and “More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead”. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award and named by Thinkers50 among the most important emerging leadership thinkers. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. Research base of more than 75,000 leaders across 100+ countries underpins his frameworks and talks. Has delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops to senior leadership audiences globally. Biography Most leadership development goes wrong at the same point. It treats the hard part of leadership, the decision that will upset someone, the conversation the leader has been avoiding, the moment of public pressure, as a communications problem. Potential Project, the firm Rasmus Hougaard founded and runs as Managing Director, has spent more than a decade arguing that it is an inner-discipline problem, and producing the research to show it. The argument runs through three Harvard Business Review Press books written with Jacqueline Carter. “The Mind of the Leader” drew on data from around 35,000 senior leaders to identify the mental qualities that distinguish those whose organisations actually follow them. “Compassionate Leadership” reframed the executive’s most uncomfortable moments, performance conversations, redundancies, restructure announcements, as a question of how to be honest without becoming cold. “More Human”, published by HBR Press in 2025, takes the same lens to AI and asks what leaders should do more of, not less, as machines take on more of the work. Potential Project’s client list, Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, Sony, and others, gives the work an operating substance that pure-academic leadership thinkers rarely match. The firm’s research spans more than 75,000 leaders across 100 countries. Thinkers50 has shortlisted him for its Leadership Award and listed him among the most important emerging leadership thinkers globally, and he contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. For a senior people function under pressure to make leadership development do real work in a fatigued organisation, the value is in the through-line. One firm, one body of evidence, one argument about what serious leadership requires in 2026, and a deep enough catalogue to anchor a multi-year programme rather than a single keynote. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and difficult conversations AI-augmented leadership Mindful leadership and executive composure Senior leadership development at scale Leading hybrid and distributed teams Culture and trust inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning senior leadership programmes Executive committees facing restructure, redundancy, or post-acquisition integration Boards and CEOs sponsoring AI rollouts where leadership behaviour, not technology, is the bottleneck Heads of leadership development and learning at global enterprises Audience outcomes A defensible model for handling the conversations leaders most often avoid Concrete practices for sustaining composure and judgement under sustained pressure A clearer view of where AI should and should not replace human leadership work Language to describe what “good leadership” actually looks like in their organisation, grounded in research rather than slogans Reference points from a peer set of global enterprises that have implemented the work

Why organisations work with Marissa Afton She brings a published, board-ready framework for compassion paired with difficult action, set out in Compassionate Leadership (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), not a generic wellbeing message. She works at the inside edge of what leaders actually face right now: how to communicate restructure, layoff and AI-driven role change in a way that retains the people who stay. Her client base spans Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Google, Eli Lilly and Amgen, so her examples are drawn from leadership teams operating at the same scale and pressure as the buyer’s. She is one of the few voices on this topic with 25 years of mindfulness practice behind the management argument, which gives the material a depth of practice that pure consulting frameworks lack. Her recent HBR work on AI and compassionate leadership puts her ahead of most leadership speakers on the question of what changes when machines do more of the cognitive work. Biography highlights Partner and Head of Global Accounts, Potential Project. Co-author, Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022). Contributing author, The Mind of the Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018). Recurring contributor to Harvard Business Review, including “Connect with Empathy, But Lead with Compassion” and “Using AI to Make You a More Compassionate Leader.” Client engagements at Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Eli Lilly, Google and Amgen. Twenty-five years of formal mindfulness practice, applied to executive development at scale. Biography Hard decisions are arriving faster, and the audience for them has changed. Boards are being asked to restructure, redeploy and let people go in the same year they ask for innovation, retention and engagement. The leaders inside that contradiction need a way to act decisively without becoming the problem they were hired to solve. That is the territory Marissa Afton works in. As Partner and Head of Global Accounts at Potential Project, she runs leadership engagements with companies including Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Google, Eli Lilly and Amgen, and the brief is consistently the same: how do senior people deliver difficult news, drive hard change and still hold the room. Her co-authored book Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022) is the published frame for that work. The argument, also developed in her HBR pieces with Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, is that empathy on its own makes leaders worse at hard decisions, and that the discipline organisations need is wise compassion, the willingness to act on hard truth while keeping the human in view. She brings a quarter century of mindfulness practice to the management argument, which gives her work a depth of attention that consulting frameworks typically lack. Her more recent HBR writing on AI and compassionate leadership pushes the same discipline into the next phase of corporate change, where the question is what kind of human presence still matters when more of the cognitive work runs through machines. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and hard decisions Leading through restructure, layoffs and change The mind of the leader and mental agility Mindful leadership and self-leadership at senior levels Resilience and burnout prevention for executives Women in senior leadership Leading in the age of AI Building human connection in hybrid work Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior HR leaders running restructure, redeployment or layoff programmes Executive leadership teams working on culture and trust through periods of significant change Boards and ELT offsites where the brief is to combine commercial honesty with humane delivery Women’s leadership programmes and senior leadership development cohorts Audience outcomes A working language for combining hard decisions with humane delivery, drawn from a published HBR Press framework A clearer view of where empathy helps leaders and where it begins to undermine them Specific practices for self-leadership under pressure, grounded in mental training rather than motivation A perspective on AI-era leadership that treats human attention as a scarce, trainable resource

Why organisations work with Angie McQuillin Gives technically strong managers the specific behavioural tools to hold difficult conversations they currently avoid, not a theory of why those conversations matter. Works the seam between imposter syndrome and assertiveness where most confidence training stops short: what to say, how to say it, and how to hold the line when pushed back on. Psychology degree and MBTI-certified, with 15+ years inside corporate HR at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot, so the behavioural science lands in language an operating leader recognises. Track record as a keynote for mixed senior and emerging-leader audiences, including the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference and in-house programmes at Disney, EasyJet, Amazon, Barclays and KPMG. Sessions are designed as interactive workshops, not lectures, so participants leave with scripts and techniques they can test the next working day. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) in Psychology and certified MBTI Practitioner. 15+ years in corporate HR and international staffing, including roles across Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot. Keynote speaker and workshop lead for Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and Norcan Petroleum. Announced keynote speaker at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference, Birmingham. Coaching practice focused on confidence, assertiveness, imposter syndrome, conflict resolution and leadership communication. Biography Most confidence programmes stop at the mindset. They tell people to back themselves and leave them there. The harder problem, what to actually say in the moment a senior colleague pushes back, a peer oversteps, or a direct report underperforms, is where careers get made or quietly stall. Angie McQuillin builds her work at exactly that point. Trained in psychology with a BSc (Hons) and certified as an MBTI Practitioner, she spent 15 years inside corporate HR and international staffing at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot before moving full time into coaching and speaking. That HR background matters. She has sat in the rooms where promotion decisions get made and watched capable people lose ground because they could not have one specific conversation. Her sessions translate that pattern into behaviour. Managers and emerging leaders learn how to raise a concern without apologising for it, handle pushback without escalating, and hold a position under pressure. Imposter syndrome, assertiveness and conflict are treated as linked problems rather than separate workshops. Client rosters reflect the range: Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and the keynote slot at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference in Birmingham. The register is interactive rather than inspirational. Audiences leave with scripts and techniques they can test in their next meeting, which is the test that matters to the HR directors and L&D leads who hire her. Key speaking topics Self-confidence and imposter syndrome Assertive communication Leadership communication Conflict resolution and difficult conversations Growth mindset Resilience under pressure Personal impact and influence Ideal for CHROs, L&D directors and talent leads building emerging-leader and first-time manager programmes. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs addressing confidence, voice and visibility. Technical and functional leadership populations where communication is the bottleneck to promotion. Organisations running culture work on feedback, psychological safety and conflict norms. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the conversations they currently avoid, including pushback, performance and boundary-setting. Specific techniques for handling imposter syndrome as it arrives, not as an abstract concept. A clearer read of their own communication defaults under stress and what to adjust first. Confidence grounded in behaviour they can repeat, not a temporary lift from the room.

Why organisations work with Blaire Palmer She brings a BBC journalist’s instinct for the question leaders are avoiding, then makes the boardroom answer it in plain language. Her book Punks in Suits gives organisations a shared vocabulary for why old management habits, not strategy, are the real brake on growth. She has coached boards and executive teams across Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so the challenge lands with commercial credibility. She runs That People Thing as her own consultancy, which means the keynote is the leading edge of a deeper body of work on leadership transformation, not a standalone act. Biography highlights Chief Executive and founder of That People Thing, a leadership consultancy working with boards and executive teams on culture and change. Author of four books including Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation (Rethink Press, 2024) and What’s Wrong with Work? (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). Former producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where she spent a decade in UK news and current affairs. Trained as one of Europe’s first accredited executive coaches after leaving the BBC. Named clients include Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Govia Thameslink Railway, and Centre for Army Leadership. Regular contributor to Medium and Authority Magazine on leadership and the future of work. Biography Most organisations are not structured to change. They are structured to protect the habits that made them successful, and the people defending those habits are often the most senior in the room. Palmer’s work starts from that observation and builds out. She spent a decade as a producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, interrogating ministers and chief executives at eight minutes past seven in the morning. The habit of asking the uncomfortable question did not leave her when she moved into coaching at 29. It became the method. Since then she has spent more than two decades advising boards and executive teams at Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She founded That People Thing to house that work. Her fourth book, Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation, published by Rethink Press in 2024, sets out the argument that entrenched management orthodoxy, not competitive pressure, is what stalls most organisations trying to evolve. What a senior team gets from her is rare in the category. She has the reporter’s ability to cut through executive language, the coach’s patience to stay with a difficult conversation, and a published thesis specific enough to be argued with. That makes the keynote a starting point for a real internal debate rather than a motivational interval. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and change Workplace reformation and culture Trust and candour in senior teams Future of work Decision-making under pressure Leadership myths and orthodoxies Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a culture or performance inflection point. CHROs and chief people officers leading leadership development at scale. CEOs integrating acquisitions or navigating a strategic reset. Leadership conferences for senior management populations. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership habits are acting as a ceiling on organisational performance. A specific argument, drawn from Punks in Suits, that senior teams can take back into their own decision forums. Language for the conversations leaders have been avoiding with peers and direct reports. Recognition that culture and strategy move together, and a concrete starting point for aligning them.

Why organisations work with David Smith His 7 Principles framework is grounded in a specific, documented corporate turnaround – Asda’s recovery from near-bankruptcy to the UK’s No.1 Sunday Times Best Place to Work – giving boards a case study with traceable outcomes rather than a theoretical model. His book “Culture Trumps Strategy” gives leadership teams a direct, contestable argument: that most organisations are investing disproportionately in strategy and structure while the cultural conditions that determine execution go unmanaged. His book “Bad Bosses,” drawn from interviews with more than 200 CEOs and senior executives, documents the specific leadership behaviours that most consistently destroy engagement – giving HR directors and transformation leads a diagnostic, not a philosophy. He spent a decade on the Executive Board of a 170,000-person, £15bn-turnover business, which means his credibility holds in a boardroom conversation, not just an HR function. As a Companion of the CIPD – the body’s highest membership grade – and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Employment Studies, he can position people practice as a serious performance variable rather than a support function. Biography highlights People and IT Director at Asda (2000-2009); Executive Board member for 10 years, responsible for a workforce of 170,000 across a £15bn-turnover business Asda named No.1 Best Place to Work in The Sunday Times Best Companies survey during his tenure; Asda’s People Team also won the Personnel Today Rebus HR Award for Best HR Strategy in Line with Business Author of four books: “Asda Magic: The 7 Principles of Building a High-Performance Culture” (2012), “Culture Trumps Strategy” (2016), “Performance Management for the 21st Century” (2018), and “Bad Bosses” (2019) Companion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development – the highest membership grade in the UK’s principal HR professional body Former Chairman of the Board, Institute for Employment Studies; former Commissioner, Equal Opportunities Commission; former Vice President of the CIPD for Organisation and Development Recipient of the Sam Walton Award for driving Excellence in People Policies MBA, Henley Management College; BA Business, Sheffield Hallam University Biography Most large organisations treat culture as a byproduct of leadership behaviour – something that forms over time, rather than something that is actively built. David Smith’s 15 years at Asda, where the people-led turnaround from near-bankruptcy to the UK’s No.1 Best Place to Work took roughly a decade and a half, produced a different conclusion: that culture is an engineered system, and that the principles governing it are specific and reproducible. His first book, “Asda Magic: The 7 Principles of Building a High-Performance Culture” (2012), translated that experience into a practical framework. Its argument – that employee engagement is the product of specific managed behaviours, not general sentiment – gave HR directors and CEOs a diagnostic tool rather than an aspiration. “Culture Trumps Strategy” (2016) extended the thesis: that organisations consistently over-invest in strategy and structure while underinvesting in the cultural conditions that determine whether strategy executes. Two further books addressed adjacent dysfunction. “Performance Management for the 21st Century” (2018) made the case against annual review-based systems, arguing that only regular performance coaching – not periodic appraisal – actually changes behaviour at scale. “Bad Bosses” (2019) drew on interviews with more than 200 CEOs and executives to document the leadership pitfalls that consistently destroy engagement from inside an organisation. A Companion of the CIPD and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Employment Studies, Smith bridges executive credibility and evidence-based people practice. His audiences include CHROs, chief executives, and transformation programme leads asking why significant investment in organisational change is not translating into measurable performance. Key speaking topics High-performance culture and employee engagement Performance management and performance coaching Culture transformation and change leadership Leadership in tough times The relationship between culture and commercial performance Communication as an organisational performance lever Managing and retaining talent in a high-performance environment Ideal for CHROs and HR directors leading culture or engagement programmes CEOs and executive teams mid-transformation seeking a cultural diagnostic Board-level and C-suite leadership development programmes Senior leaders in large, complex, or multi-site organisations Audience outcomes A specific, practical framework for diagnosing the cultural gap between stated values and daily managed reality A clearer understanding of why performance management systems fail – and what a coaching-based alternative requires Named leadership behaviours that most predictably drive disengagement – and the organisational cost of tolerating them A case study with traceable outcomes that makes the business case for culture investment to a commercially focused audience Practical language for communicating culture and engagement priorities to boards and executive teams

Why organisations work with Baroness Ruth Hunt She ran the organisation that most large UK employers used as their inclusion benchmark, which means her advice to a C-suite team carries direct operational memory, not theory. She has spent the years since Stonewall inside the House of Lords as a Crossbench peer, watching how legislation, regulation and public mood shape the room a CEO walks into. Her consultancy Deeds and Words is built around collective leadership and humble inquiry as practical methods, giving executive teams a way to make inclusion an operating discipline rather than a statement. She edited The Book of Queer Prophets for William Collins, which gives her a public intellectual register useful when boards want a serious conversation, not a training module. She is comfortable on contested ground. Boards facing trans policy, religious freedom or campaign-group pressure get an adviser who has lived inside the argument from the inside of a national institution. Biography highlights Chief Executive, Stonewall, 2014 to 2019; led campaigns including Rainbow Laces with the Premier League and the No Bystanders schools programme. Crossbench peer, House of Lords, since October 2019, as Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green. Co-founder and Director, Deeds and Words, advising C-suite teams on collective and inclusive leadership. Visiting Fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge, elected 2023. Editor, The Book of Queer Prophets: 24 Writers on Sexuality and Religion, William Collins, 2020. Named No. 1 on the Independent Pride Power List, 2019; speaker platforms include the Oxford Union, the NHS and Talks At Google. Biography Stonewall under Ruth Hunt’s leadership became the standard against which large UK employers measured their own inclusion work. The Workplace Equality Index and Diversity Champions programme moved inclusion from charity advocacy into employer practice, which is why her audience for serious leadership conversations is now the C-suite, not the diversity function. Since leaving Stonewall in 2019 she has taken a Crossbench seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green, the youngest Crossbench peer at the time of her appointment. The Lords work gives her a continuous read on how legislation and public mood reshape the operating environment for organisations, particularly on the contested edges of equality policy. Through Deeds and Words, the consultancy she co-founded with Caroline Ellis, she works with senior teams on collective leadership and humble inquiry as practical methods. The argument is that inclusive leadership is a way of running an organisation, not an HR position, and that the leaders who treat it as the latter tend to lose ground when the politics gets harder. Her published work runs alongside the advisory practice. She edited The Book of Queer Prophets for William Collins in 2020, a collection of 24 essays on sexuality and religion that signalled an interest in difficult ground rather than safe ground. In 2023 she was elected a Visiting Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where she has spoken on faith, identity and public leadership. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in a contested political environment Collective leadership and humble inquiry as executive practice Building credible culture change in large organisations LGBTQ+ rights, politics and the new culture wars Allyship as a workplace discipline Faith, identity and public life Ideal for CEOs and executive committees who need to take a credible position on inclusion under public and political pressure Chief People Officers and Chief Diversity Officers moving from advocacy framing to operating discipline Board directors handling reputational risk on equality, faith or values-based policy Public sector and uniformed service leaders managing inclusion in hierarchical, mission-led organisations Audience outcomes A sharper read on why the inclusion consensus of the 2010s has fractured and what that means for leadership decisions A working definition of collective and inclusive leadership that a senior team can actually use the following week A clearer view of where allyship adds operating value and where it becomes performance A more confident position on how to hold contested ground without retreating into corporate neutrality

Why organisations work with Susan David She is the named originator of Emotional Agility, a peer-reviewed psychological framework that Harvard Business Review designated a Management Idea of the Year and Thinkers50 awarded its Breakthrough Idea Award. Her authority sits at Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, which means leadership teams get clinical psychology, not motivational content dressed as science. She gives senior leaders a usable method for operating under pressure: working with hard emotions as signal rather than noise, and translating values into decisions when stakes are high. Her research base spans more than two decades of work on emotion, resilience and change, and her writing in HBR, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal puts her in front of the same readership a board does. She is South African, trained at Yale, and brings a register that travels across global executive audiences without the wellness-industry tone that often blunts this material. Biography highlights Faculty psychologist, Harvard Medical School. Cofounder and co-director, Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. CEO, Evidence Based Psychology. Author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Emotional Agility, translated into more than 30 languages. Winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award; named to the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. TED Talk “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage” delivered at TEDWomen 2017, with more than 11 million views on TED.com. Biography Most leadership advice asks senior people to stay positive under pressure. The clinical evidence says the opposite. Suppressing difficult emotion narrows judgement, erodes decision quality and corrodes trust over time. That gap, between the slogan and the science, is where Susan David built her work. She is a faculty psychologist at Harvard Medical School and cofounder of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. Her framework, Emotional Agility, was named a Management Idea of the Year by Harvard Business Review and won the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. The book of the same title was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into more than 30 languages. The framework treats emotions as data on values, not as performance problems. It gives leaders a way to notice what they are feeling, label it accurately, separate the feeling from the impulse to act on it, and then make a values-based choice. It is a discipline, not a mood, and it scales from individual executive judgement to how cultures handle hard conversations, conflict and change. Her work has reached management readers through HBR, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and a wider audience through her TEDWomen 2017 talk. The audiences that book her are usually executive teams under sustained pressure: leadership groups mid-restructure, partner cohorts in professional services, and senior teams trying to rebuild trust after shock. They leave with a method, not a mood-lift. Key speaking topics Emotional agility Self-leadership under pressure Resilience and change Decision-making under stress Values-based leadership Workplace mental health and wellbeing Culture and emotional honesty at work Ideal for CEOs, C-suite teams and boards leading through restructure, integration or sustained pressure. CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after change. Partner groups and senior cohorts in professional services, finance and law. Executive development and high-potential leadership programmes. Audience outcomes A working definition of emotional agility, with the four steps that turn it from idea into practice. A way to read difficult emotions as data on values rather than as problems to suppress. Language to lead hard conversations without retreating into positivity or performance. A method for staying decisive under pressure, including in moments of public scrutiny or internal conflict. A clearer link between personal values and the day-to-day choices a leadership role demands.

Why organisations work with Tim Munden His “inner and outer game” framework gives leadership teams a practical diagnostic for the gap between leadership intent and leadership behaviour – and a structured path to close it He built and ran global leadership development for Unilever’s 135,000-person workforce, including pipeline programmes for the most senior roles in the organisation; he knows what works at enterprise scale, not just in the classroom Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, which he designed and led, reached 56,000 employees and was validated through randomised controlled trials – a level of rigour that most leadership interventions never reach He co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health, giving him a credible and practical perspective on the link between psychological safety, energy, and sustained organisational performance His Senior Associate role at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership connects his leadership frameworks to the strategic context – purpose, resilience, and transformation for the longer term – that boards increasingly expect their senior teams to navigate Biography highlights Former Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing, Unilever – responsible for leadership development and learning across a 135,000-person global workforce Former HR Vice President, Unilever UK & Ireland – a €2.5bn business unit Senior Associate, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge Founder and Director, Kairon – an executive leadership and culture consultancy Co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health; represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council Developed Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, reaching 56,000 employees with outcomes validated through randomised controlled trials Joined Unilever as a graduate trainee in 1993; career spans roles across the Netherlands, Belgium, the US, and the UK Holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Manchester and Manchester School of Management Biography Leadership development in large organisations has a persistent failure mode: it develops individuals in isolation from the organisational culture that will either enable or undermine everything they have learned. Tim Munden spent the better part of three decades inside one of the world’s most complex multinationals working on both sides of that problem simultaneously. As Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing at Unilever, Munden was accountable for leadership capability across a 135,000-person workforce. His approach centred on what he describes as the “inner and outer game” of leadership – the inner being the psychological clarity, purpose, and resilience that allows a leader to act under pressure; the outer being the cultural architecture and organisational design that gives people the conditions to perform. Neither works without the other. That dual framework now shapes how he advises executive teams and consults with organisations across financial services, technology, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. The practical rigour behind his work is verifiable. The “Discover Your Purpose” programme Munden designed at Unilever was completed by 56,000 employees, with outcomes – including improved psychological safety, work fulfilment, and discretionary effort – tested through randomised controlled trials. He also co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health and represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council, establishing workplace wellbeing not as a wellbeing initiative but as a leadership strategy with measurable business consequences. Since leaving Unilever, Munden has continued this work through Kairon, his consulting practice, and as a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership – where the connection between leadership capability and long-term organisational resilience is a central research concern. He brings to boards and senior leadership teams the rare combination of having operated at CLO level inside a global organisation and having built the frameworks to explain – and replicate – what makes leadership development work in practice. Key speaking topics Leadership capability for disruption and transformation Purpose-driven culture and organisations The inner and outer game of leadership Workplace wellbeing as a performance strategy Leadership development at enterprise scale Psychological safety and organisational agility Future of leadership in complex organisations Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and senior HR leadership teams designing enterprise leadership strategy CEOs and executive committees navigating significant transformation or cultural change Learning and development leaders building or evaluating large-scale leadership programmes Boards and remuneration committees examining the link between leadership culture and long-term organisational resilience Audience outcomes A clear model – the inner and outer game – for diagnosing where leadership capability is breaking down and what to do about it Practical understanding of how purpose can be embedded in organisational culture at scale, with evidence from a large, tested programme A more precise vocabulary for the link between psychological safety, wellbeing, and sustained performance – moving the conversation beyond wellbeing as an HR initiative Insight into what enterprise-scale leadership development actually requires, drawn from direct experience at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies Clearer thinking on the leadership capabilities most needed to maintain performance in periods of sustained uncertainty