Executive Development

Why organisations work with Niven Postma She gives executive teams a vocabulary and method for organisational politics that most leadership programmes refuse to address directly, anchored in her Harvard Business Review article and her best-selling book on the subject. She has run the function from the inside: Head of Leadership and Culture at Standard Bank Group, Head of the South African Reserve Bank Academy, CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa. Her work travels across financial services, retail, media, transport and manufacturing, so the politics framework is tested against very different operating environments rather than one sector’s habits. She holds a recognised platform in African leadership development as Programme Director of the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship, run by the African Leadership Institute in partnership with Oxford University. She codified her approach into a LinkedIn Learning course aimed at senior leaders, which means the content is structured for executive use, not anecdote-driven keynote material. Biography highlights Author, If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You (2020). Harvard Business Review contributor; “You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics” (2021), selected for HBR Press collection Bosses, Coworkers and Building Great Relationships (2024). LinkedIn Learning instructor, Navigating Organizational Politics as a Senior Leader. Former CEO, Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa; former Head, South African Reserve Bank Academy; former Head of Leadership and Culture, Standard Bank Group. 2007 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow; Programme Director of the Tutu Fellowship Programme from 2025 (African Leadership Institute, with Oxford University). Lecturer at Henley Business School and managing director of Niven Postma Inc. Biography Office politics are usually treated as something serious leaders should rise above. Niven Postma’s argument, set out in her Harvard Business Review article and her 2020 book If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You, is the opposite. At senior levels, politics is the work. Influence capital and relationship currency decide which strategies get resourced, which leaders get promoted, and which decisions actually stick. Her credibility on the subject comes from having held the seat. She was Head of Leadership and Culture for Standard Bank Group, the largest bank by assets in Africa, after running the South African Reserve Bank Academy and serving as the founding CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa. From those roles, she saw which executives understood how organisations really work and which ones did not, and built her practice around closing that gap. Today she advises executive teams across financial services, retail, media, transport and manufacturing through her firm Niven Postma Inc., lectures at Henley Business School, and teaches Navigating Organizational Politics as a Senior Leader on LinkedIn Learning. Her HBR piece “You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics” was selected for the HBR Press collection Bosses, Coworkers and Building Great Relationships in 2024. In 2025 she became Programme Director of the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship, the African Leadership Institute’s flagship programme run with Oxford University, having been a Fellow herself in 2007. That role situates her work in a wider conversation about how African senior leaders develop the practical political judgement complex organisations require. Key speaking topics Organisational politics for senior leaders Leadership and culture in complex organisations Executive presence and influence Women’s leadership and systemic gender equity Leading through disruption and change Culture transformation in financial services and large enterprises Ideal for C-suite and executive committees in banking, insurance and large regulated enterprises CHROs, chief people officers and heads of leadership development are designing senior-leader curricula High-potential leadership cohorts and women’s executive networks Boards and management teams operating across multiple geographies or post-merger contexts Audience outcomes A direct, non-euphemistic vocabulary for the political dynamics that shape decisions in their organisation A practical reading of where their own influence capital sits and which relationships are under-invested A framework for engaging in politics ethically without retreating into “I just focus on the work” Sharper judgement about how strategy, culture and politics interact at the top of complex organisations Specific moves senior leaders can use the next week, drawn from her HBR work and the LinkedIn Learning course

Why organisations work with Savvas Trichas A working academic record in the field he speaks on: peer-reviewed publication in The Leadership Quarterly on how facial expression shapes leadership perception, co-authored with Birgit Schyns. Certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), one of a small group qualified to read facial muscle activity to research standard, applied to executive communication. Guest lecturer for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on deception detection, giving leaders a credible voice on lie detection that does not rely on stage tricks. A practitioner’s grasp of negotiation drawn from Harvard and MIT-tradition material, paired with a researcher’s discipline on what the body signals during a deal. Material is built for boards and executive teams that already know what to say and want to know why they are not being heard. Biography highlights PhD in Human Resource Management and Marketing. Co-author, “The face of leadership: perceiving leaders from facial expression,” The Leadership Quarterly, 2012. Three-time TEDx speaker (Las Vegas, Lausanne, Athens). Certified coder, Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Manuscript reviewer, The Leadership Quarterly. Guest lecturer, FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus Police, on management, communication, and deception detection. Biography Most leadership training teaches what to say. Trichas works on the harder question of why audiences accept it. His peer-reviewed research with Birgit Schyns in The Leadership Quarterly examined how a leader’s facial expression shapes followers’ trust and judgements of effectiveness, a finding that sits underneath every senior communication moment, from a board update to a negotiation. That research base separates him from most communication speakers. He is a certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System, the anatomical method developed for the precise analysis of facial muscle movement, and he reviews manuscripts for The Leadership Quarterly. The science is not a credential dropped into a keynote; it is the source of the material. The applied work runs across persuasion, storytelling, negotiation, and deception detection. Trichas lectures for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on communication and deception, and has built a parallel track on negotiation drawn from the Harvard and MIT canon. Three TEDx appearances and a bestseller, “The Power of Communication,” sit alongside corporate work for organisations including PwC, Coca-Cola, and MDRT. The argument he offers a board is unfashionable and useful. Strategy and message are necessary but not sufficient. Whether a leader is trusted, whether a negotiation closes, whether a transformation lands, often turns on signals that operate below the words, and those signals are now well enough understood to teach. Key speaking topics Nonverbal communication and leadership perception Negotiation and persuasion Executive presence and credibility Storytelling for senior leaders Deception detection in business contexts Servant leadership and empathy Public speaking for executives Leading transformation through communication Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for high-stakes external communication: investor updates, M&A, regulatory testimony. CHROs and leadership development heads designing programmes for newly senior leaders on presence and credibility. CCOs, heads of negotiation, and commercial leaders responsible for high-value deals. Sales leadership conferences where persuasion and trust signals carry commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A research-grounded view of how leaders are read, not just heard, in board and town hall settings. Specific cues from the Facial Action Coding System tradition that leaders can use to read counterparts in negotiation and meetings. A working framework for credibility that separates persuasion, narrative, and nonverbal channels rather than collapsing them into “communication skills.” A more disciplined view of deception detection, what the evidence supports and what it does not, useful for interviewing, due diligence, and negotiation. Confidence that the speaker’s claims rest on peer-reviewed research and applied work with law enforcement, not stage technique.

Why organisations work with Kim Campbell She has held the top job. Few speakers can describe cabinet decision-making, defence policy, and the politics of succession from inside the Prime Minister’s office of a G7 country. She was the first woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state, which gives boards a substantive perspective on gender, authority, and security policy that does not collapse into commentary. She built a working leadership institution from scratch: the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, where she served as Founding Principal from 2014 to 2018. She has spent two decades inside the leading global networks for former heads of government and democratic reform, including Club de Madrid, where she was Secretary General, and the World Movement for Democracy, where she chaired the steering committee. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, recognising lifetime contribution rather than a single role. Biography highlights 19th Prime Minister of Canada and the first woman to hold the office. First woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state. Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; passed reforms to gun control and the law of sexual assault. Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, 1996 to 2000. Taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2001 to 2004. Founding Principal, Peter Lougheed Leadership College, University of Alberta, 2014 to 2018. Secretary General of Club de Madrid, 2004 to 2006; founding member of the organisation. Chair, Council of Women World Leaders, 1999 to 2003. President, International Women’s Forum, 2003 to 2005. Companion of the Order of Canada (2008); Order of British Columbia (2012). Author of Time and Chance: The Political Memoirs of Canada’s First Woman Prime Minister. Biography Most discussions of leadership skip the part that matters most to boards: what happens when authority meets resistance, and the leader is held accountable for the result. Kim Campbell has lived that sequence. She became Canada’s 19th Prime Minister in June 1993, lost the autumn election in one of the heaviest defeats in Canadian political history, and then spent the following three decades doing the harder work of building the institutions that produce the next generation of leaders. Before the premiership she ran two of the most demanding portfolios in any cabinet. As Minister of Justice and Attorney General she carried gun control reform and a substantive overhaul of sexual assault law through Parliament. As Minister of National Defence in 1993 she became the first woman to hold that role in any NATO country, attending the alliance’s defence ministers’ meetings during a period of rapid post-Cold War repositioning. The post-government work is what gives her current perspective its weight. She served as Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2001 to 2004, and chaired the Council of Women World Leaders. As a founding member and later Secretary General of Club de Madrid, she sits inside the world’s principal network of former heads of government working on democratic reform. She chaired the World Movement for Democracy’s steering committee from 2008 to 2015. Her most concrete recent project is institutional. From 2014 to 2018 she was Founding Principal of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, designing and launching an undergraduate leadership programme intended to compete with the best in the world. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Order of British Columbia. Key speaking topics Political leadership and executive decision-making Democratic institutions and the conditions for legitimacy Gender, authority, and women in political leadership Defence and security policy Climate change as a governance and stability problem Leadership formation and the design of leadership programmes Canadian and international politics Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against political risk Government, civil service, and public sector leadership programmes Audiences building or sponsoring leadership development institutions Conferences on women’s leadership where the brief calls for first-hand executive experience Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how cabinets, central government, and party politics actually decide A substantive view on gender and political authority from the first woman to lead a G7 country A working framework for what makes leadership legitimate when institutions are under strain A grounded read on democratic backsliding from someone who has worked inside the leading reform networks for two decades

Why organisations work with Dame Katherine Grainger Her perspective on high performance is not borrowed from sport – it is built from two decades of competing at the Olympic level and then eight years as the senior leader responsible for the entire British elite sport system as Chair of UK Sport. The result is a rare, system-level view of what makes performance culture work. She completed a PhD at King’s College London – in law, on whole life sentencing – while training for and winning Olympic gold. That combination is not incidental. It gives her a credible argument about how sustained focus, long-term discipline, and intellectual rigour reinforce rather than compete with each other. Her autobiography Dreams Do Come True is built around the specific psychology of returning to compete after three consecutive near-misses. For any organisation struggling with how to sustain commitment after a setback, or how to build a team that performs when the moment actually comes, this is directly applicable material. As the first female Chair of the British Olympic Association in its 120-year history – and a crossbench Life Peer since 2025 – she carries institutional authority that extends well beyond the speaking circuit. Boards and senior leadership teams treat her not as an external voice but as a peer. She speaks to the leadership question that Olympic sport uniquely tests: how do you create the conditions for someone else to succeed, rather than performing yourself? Her shift from competing to governing elite sport is the lived version of a challenge every senior leader faces. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist (London 2012) and four-time Olympic silver medallist – the only British woman to win medals at five consecutive Olympic Games (2000-2016) Six-time World Champion with eight World Championship medals; voted Britain’s first “Olympians’ Olympian” by fellow Olympians Chair of UK Sport 2017-2025; Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025 – the first female chair in the BOA’s 120-year history DBE 2017 for services to sport and charity; Life Peer (Baroness Grainger, crossbench) from 2025 PhD in law (the sentencing of homicide), King’s College London; Fellow of King’s College London; first female Chancellor of the University of Glasgow (2020-) Author of Dreams Do Come True (2013), self-written autobiography reviewed by the Financial Times and The Observer; BBC broadcaster for Rowing World Cup coverage and the 2014 Commonwealth Games Biography Katherine Grainger won an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 – alongside Anna Watkins, setting an Olympic record in the double sculls – after three consecutive Olympic silvers. She then returned to the water, two years after considering retirement, and won a fourth silver in Rio in 2016. Across those sixteen years, she also completed three law degrees, including a PhD at King’s College London, written during the same period she was training for Olympic gold. That combination is her argument. The discipline required to stay in pursuit of a goal across multiple cycles of failure and recommitment – and to do so while building intellectual capability in parallel – is not an athletic phenomenon. It is a leadership one. Her speaking draws directly on that experience: not as inspiration, but as a practical framework for what organisations actually need to sustain performance at the highest level. Her post-competitive career has given that argument institutional weight. As Chair of UK Sport from 2017 to 2025, she was responsible for the strategy and governance of British elite sport as a whole – funding decisions, performance standards, safeguarding, inclusion. As Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025, the first woman in the role since the BOA’s founding in 1905, she now leads the organisation that governs Team GB’s Olympic programme. She is also Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and, since 2025, a crossbench Life Peer. The result is a speaker who can address boards and senior leadership teams not as a visiting athlete with a story, but as a serious institutional figure with a tested view of what leadership culture requires at the level where it actually matters. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and long-cycle leadership Resilience and recommitment after setback High-performance team culture Leadership in governance and elite institutions The parallel demands of intellectual and physical excellence Women in leadership and sport governance Purpose, values, and legacy in leadership Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with questions of culture, sustained performance, and long-term strategic commitment CHROs and people leaders building high-performance frameworks that endure beyond individual leadership cycles Leadership development programmes for senior executives seeking a model of performance that integrates governance, accountability, and personal resilience Organisations navigating leadership transition, post-merger culture alignment, or the challenge of maintaining standards after a period of peak achievement Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why most performance cultures produce one-off results rather than sustained excellence – and the specific conditions that change that Practical perspective on how to lead a team through extended periods of uncertainty and near-miss, without losing commitment or direction A reframed view of setback as structural to high performance, not a deviation from it – with concrete examples of how elite athletes and institutions manage that cycle Insight into what governance of high-performance systems actually requires, drawn from eight years leading UK Sport Renewed clarity on the relationship between personal discipline, intellectual rigour, and sustained team performance

Why organisations work with Isabel Aguilera Navarro She has run the Iberian or Southern European business of three of the most scrutinised multinationals in the world (Dell, Google, GE) and can speak from the CEO chair, not the consultant’s deck. She sits on the boards of five listed and regulated companies spanning cement, real estate, biotech, digital advertising and water, giving her a cross-sector read on how governance and transformation actually play out at board level. She chairs the Audit and Control Committee of Lar Espana, a role that forces her to translate strategic ambition into numbers, risk and control, which is exactly the language CFOs and chairs want to hear from a speaker. She has held an Executive in Residence position at Esade Business School in Strategy and General Management for over two decades, so the frameworks she uses are taught as well as lived. She wrote a full book on intelligent digital transformation, Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui, giving audiences a defined thesis rather than a collection of anecdotes. Biography highlights President, General Electric Spain and Portugal (2008 to 2009). General Manager, Google Spain and Portugal (2006 to 2008), leading the set-up of Google Iberia. CEO, Dell Computer for Spain, Italy and Portugal (1997 to 2002). Operations Director, NH Hotel Group (2002 to 2005). Independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science; chair of the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. Executive in Residence, Department of Strategy and General Management, Esade Business School; former President of the Social Council of the University of Seville. Author of Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui: Secretos de la transformacion digital inteligente (LID Editorial, 2016). Biography Most transformation programmes fail in the gap between the boardroom and the country P&L. Isabel Aguilera Navarro has spent her career working in that gap. She stood up Google’s operation in Spain and Portugal, then moved across to run General Electric in the same region, having earlier led Dell’s Iberian and Italian business through the years in which Dell took the top of the PC market in Europe. That sequence, Dell then NH Hoteles then Google then GE, is unusual. It put her inside a Silicon Valley growth company, a Spanish hospitality group, a consumer technology brand at its commercial peak and an American industrial conglomerate, each at the moment the business model was being rewritten. The operating lessons translate directly into how she now advises boards. Today she sits as an independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science, chairing the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. The mix is deliberate: heavy industry, commercial real estate, biotech, a regulated water utility and a digital advertising firm. Few speakers can move between those governance contexts with credibility, and fewer still have done so while also holding an Executive in Residence role at Esade Business School. Her book Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui argues that the digital transformation leaders were preparing for has already arrived, and the remaining work is organisational rather than technological. Financial Times and Fortune have both included her in their European and global rankings of senior women in business, and the Wall Street Journal named her among the 30 Most Influential Business Women in Europe in 2001 for her work at Dell. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board strategy Digital transformation in established businesses Leadership across industries and operating models Strategy and competitive positioning Innovation inside large organisations Technology company operating culture Ideal for Boards and nominating committees preparing for a strategy refresh or a digital transformation programme. CEOs and executive committees of large, multi-country businesses navigating technology and operating-model change. Audit and risk committees looking to translate strategic ambition into governance, numbers and control. Leadership programmes for senior women in business and cross-sector executive development audiences. Audience outcomes A board-level view of where digital transformation programmes tend to break inside real P&Ls, drawn from three country-CEO seats. A clearer sense of how governance structures can either accelerate or stall strategic change, from someone who chairs an audit and control committee. Specific contrasts between how Silicon Valley, American industrials and European operators approach the same strategic problem. Frameworks from Esade’s Strategy and General Management faculty, tested against sitting boards in cement, real estate, biotech and water. Reference points from her book on intelligent digital transformation that audiences can take back into their own planning cycles.

Why organisations work with Herminia Ibarra She supplies the missing operating manual for executive transitions. Her research names the specific trap, clinging to a proven identity, that causes capable leaders to stall in bigger roles. She owns a published, citable framework. “Outsight”, the principle that leaders think their way into new behaviours by acting first, gives a leadership team a shared vocabulary it can actually use on a Monday morning. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” reframed a live boardroom debate. It is one of the few pieces of leadership writing that gives senior teams permission to experiment with styles that do not yet feel like “them”. She sits at the top of the field by external measure, not self-description. Fellow of the British Academy, multi-cycle Thinkers50 listee, 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, Charles Handy Chair at LBS. She speaks to succession, sponsorship, and women’s advancement with the same empirical grounding, which matters for organisations running serious talent and inclusion agendas rather than performative ones. Biography highlights Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School; prior faculty posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2019). Multi-cycle Thinkers50 ranked thinker; winner of the Thinkers50 Leadership Award, 2013. Author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press) and Working Identity (Harvard Business Press), translated into 16 languages. Judge, Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award; member, World Economic Forum Expert Network; Governor of London Business School. Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour, Yale University (National Science Fellow). Biography Capable executives often stall in their first genuinely senior role. The research by Herminia Ibarra explains why: they try to think their way into the new job from the inside, when the only reliable route is the opposite. Act first, reflect later, and let the new behaviours gradually reshape how you see yourself. That argument, captured in her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in the “outsight” principle, is what most distinguishes her work. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” extended the case into one of the thorniest topics in executive development, how leaders can experiment with unfamiliar styles without feeling like frauds. Working Identity, her earlier book, has been translated into 16 languages and sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics list. Ibarra holds the Charles Handy Chair at London Business School, with prior tenured posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a multi-cycle Thinkers50 honoree, winner of the 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, and a Governor of LBS. She also judges the Financial Times Business Book of the Year and sits in the World Economic Forum Expert Network. For a leadership team wrestling with succession, executive transitions, or the gap between the leader a company has and the leader it now needs, few academics anywhere offer a more precise diagnosis or a more usable set of moves. Key speaking topics Executive transitions and stepping up to bigger roles Leadership identity and the authenticity paradox Career reinvention and the “outsight” principle Leadership in the age of AI Sponsorship, succession, and women’s advancement Authentic leadership development Organisational reinvention under change Ideal for CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning executive development and succession pipelines CEOs and boards planning leadership transitions at the top team Senior leaders stepping into enterprise-wide or first-time general management roles Inclusion, sponsorship, and high-potential programmes for underrepresented senior talent Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of why smart executives stall in bigger roles and what to do about it Language and examples for leading through a change in identity, not just a change in strategy A usable principle, “outsight”, that senior leaders can apply to their own weekly calendar A sharper view of authenticity that replaces “be yourself” with a more workable standard for growth Practical cues for building sponsorship and succession conversations that actually move careers

Why organisations work with Heather McGregor She has built the institutional machinery that other organisations cite. The Taylor Bennett Foundation, which she founded in 2008, remains a reference point for ethnic diversity in UK communications, and the 30% Club steering committee she helped found reshaped how FTSE boards talk about women’s representation. She speaks from the inside of a listed-company boardroom, not from the outside. She has served as Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member at IGT since 2017, which means her governance and risk arguments are tested against fiduciary duty. She runs a business school, having moved from Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School to Provost and Vice Principal of Heriot-Watt University Dubai. Her view on executive development is shaped by curriculum decisions, not anecdote. She has 17 years of weekly Financial Times writing as Mrs Moneypenny behind her, plus three Penguin books on careers and personal finance. The clarity of argument is built in. A Dame and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with prior CBE for services to diversity. These are credentials that travel in board conversations where credibility is the constraint. Biography highlights Provost and Vice Principal, Heriot-Watt University Dubai; previously Executive Dean, Edinburgh Business School. DBE, 2023 New Year Honours, for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland; CBE, 2015, for services to business and diversity. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member, International Game Technology PLC, since March 2017. Founder, Taylor Bennett Foundation; founding member, 30% Club steering committee. Financial Times columnist as Mrs Moneypenny for 17 years; author of three books published by Penguin and Portfolio. Biography The Taylor Bennett Foundation was set up in 2008 to address a specific failure: the UK communications industry was hiring from a narrow demographic and could not explain the pattern of its own succession. Heather McGregor founded it from inside her own executive search firm, alongside University of East London and Brunswick Group. It is now cited by more than 200 supporting organisations and remains one of the most concrete institutional answers to a problem most companies still describe as aspirational. That instinct to convert intent into operating practice runs through her career. She spent eight years as a sell-side analyst with ABN Amro across London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, then bought and ran the executive search firm Taylor Bennett for seventeen years. Her Financial Times column under the name Mrs Moneypenny ran weekly for the same period, alongside three Penguin books on personal finance and women’s careers, including the bestselling Career Advice for Ambitious Women. In 2016 she moved into higher education as Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University, and now serves as Provost and Vice Principal of the university’s Dubai campus. The portfolio also includes a non-executive directorship at IGT (now Brightstar Lottery), where she sits on the Audit Committee, and earlier work chairing Career Academies UK. The Royal Society of Edinburgh elected her a Fellow, and she was made a Dame in 2023 for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland. What she brings to a leadership room is the rare combination of practitioner, governor and educator on a single set of questions: how organisations actually promote, govern and allocate capital, and how those choices either widen the talent pool or quietly narrow it. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and women’s progression Board governance and audit committee priorities Executive development and the modern MBA Diversity as a measurable operating outcome Personal financial literacy and women’s wealth Leadership careers across sectors and geographies Ideal for FTSE and listed-company boards, nomination and audit committees CHROs and heads of talent owning succession and diversity targets Business school audiences, MBA cohorts, executive education programmes Senior women’s leadership networks and ambitious mid-career professionals Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what diversity programmes need to look like to survive board scrutiny A working view of how governance, audit, and remuneration shape who actually rises in an organisation Practical reference points from the Taylor Bennett Foundation and 30% Club on what has and has not worked A direct read on financial literacy as a leadership capability, not a personal-finance topic Confidence to make the case for the next promotion, board seat, or capital decision

Why organisations work with Edie Lush She has conducted thousands of interviews at Davos, the UN General Assembly and COP summits, so she can run a senior panel at the level buyers actually book her for. Her coaching is built from journalistic craft: structuring a story for a listener, handling a difficult question, holding a point under pressure. Leaders leave with technique, not affirmation. She co-wrote How To Speak With Confidence in Public with Charlotte McDougall, published by Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint in 2016, giving clients a named body of work to draw on. Her Global GoalsCast work, recognised with the 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award at the UN, gives her credibility to moderate sustainability, climate and SDG conversations without needing a briefing to sound informed. She reads a room and a panel in real time, keeping senior speakers on the agenda rather than letting a programme drift into set pieces. Biography highlights Executive Editor, Hub Culture, covering Davos, the UN General Assembly and COP climate summits. Co-host and co-creator of Global GoalsCast, distributed by CBS News Digital. 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award, presented at the United Nations. Co-author, How To Speak With Confidence in Public, Pan Macmillan (Bluebird), 2016. Former Economics and Political Correspondent, Bloomberg Television; columnist, The Week; Associate Editor, Spectator Business. Chair, British American Project; board member, Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers. BA Political Science, UCLA; MA International Relations, Yale University. Has interviewed and moderated senior figures including George Osborne, Christiana Figueres and Muhammad Yunus, at platforms from Davos to the Future Investment Initiative and India Global Forum. Biography Most senior leaders can brief a board, but freeze when the format changes. Put the same person on a live panel, a podcast, a camera at Davos or a climate summit platform, and the craft that got them into the room stops helping them. Journalists notice this quickly, because they sit on the other side of it all day. Edie Lush has sat on that side for a long time. At Bloomberg Television she covered economics and politics. She went on to write a column at The Week and serve as Associate Editor of Spectator Business. She is now Executive Editor of Hub Culture, where she produces interview content from Davos, the UN General Assembly and the COP climate summits. The common thread is interviewing serious people under time pressure and making the result land for a general audience. That interviewer’s discipline is what clients hire her coaching practice to transfer. How To Speak With Confidence in Public, co-written with Charlotte McDougall and published by Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint in 2016, sets out the method: structure a story for a listener, manage the energy in a room, hold a point under challenge. She applies the same toolkit on stage, most recently chairing sessions at Davos 2026 with figures including George Osborne and Professor Douglas McCauley, and as co-host of Global GoalsCast, the CBS News Digital podcast that earned her the 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award at the UN. The work now reaches two audiences. One is organisers of serious events who need a chair who can keep a sustainability, policy or tech conversation on the agenda rather than letting it wander. The other is executives and founders who have to carry their company’s voice in public and know they are a draft short of doing it well. Key speaking topics Executive communication and public speaking Moderation and panel craft for senior audiences Sustainable Development Goals and climate communication Storytelling for leaders and founders On-camera and podcast presence for executives Women in leadership and public platforms Ideal for CEOs, founders and C-suite leaders preparing for investor days, town halls, earnings calls and keynote moments. Heads of Communications and Corporate Affairs briefing spokespeople for stage, camera and podcast. Organisers of senior conferences, summits and board offsites who need a chair who can hold a room of principals. Sustainability, health and policy leads running SDG, climate, global-health or development events in front of mixed government and corporate audiences. Audience outcomes A clearer method for structuring a talk or panel answer so the point lands on first hearing. Practical techniques for managing nerves, energy and presence on stage and on camera. A sharper read on how journalists and moderators hear executive messaging, and how to adjust. For events she chairs: a programme that stays on agenda, with senior speakers pushed past their prepared lines.

Why organisations work with Dorie Clark A defined methodology, Content Creation, Social Proof, and Network, that turns reputation-building from a vague aspiration into a sequenced commercial discipline. Author of The Long Game, the HBR Press book that reframed strategic thinking as a multi-year horizon problem, used by leaders managing pressure to deliver short-term results. Named #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards, an external benchmark of the craft she teaches. Direct experience advising Google, Microsoft, FedEx, Fidelity, the World Bank, Morgan Stanley, the IMF, the Ford Foundation, and Yale University on thought leadership and brand positioning. A 2M+ view TED talk, four Thinkers50 listings, and a Wall Street Journal bestseller in The Long Game signal a body of work that has compounded credibility, the same outcome she teaches clients to build. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of The Long Game, and author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out, all published by Harvard Business Review Press. Four-time Thinkers50 ranked among the top 50 management thinkers in the world, most recently in 2025. Named #1 Communication Coach by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. TED speaker. “The Real Reason You Feel So Busy (and What to Do About It)” has over 2 million views. Stand Out named #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine and a Washington Post bestseller. Frequent Harvard Business Review contributor since 2010; clients include Google, Microsoft, FedEx, Fidelity, the World Bank, Morgan Stanley, the IMF, and the Ford Foundation. Biography Most strategy advice rewards the immediate move: the quarter, the launch, the campaign. The Long Game, Clark’s HBR Press book, argues the opposite case. Senior leaders who outperform over a decade make small, deliberate bets that compound, and they accept long stretches where the work is invisible. That argument is the spine of how Clark advises both individuals and the organisations that employ them. The argument is backed by an unusual depth of credentials for a personal-brand and thought-leadership speaker. Clark previously taught executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and at Columbia Business School. Thinkers50 has ranked her among the world’s top 50 management thinkers four times, most recently in 2025. The Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards named her the #1 Communication Coach in the world. She is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author. The Long Game, Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out are all published by Harvard Business Review Press and translated into more than ten languages. Stand Out was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. and was a Washington Post bestseller. Her TED talk, “The Real Reason You Feel So Busy (and What to Do About It),” has over 2 million views. She has been a Harvard Business Review contributor since 2010 and has been quoted by NPR, the BBC, and the New York Times, which described her as “an expert in self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” The client list is where the work becomes operational: Google, Microsoft, the World Bank, Morgan Stanley, the Ford Foundation, Yale. Through her Recognized Expert curriculum she has codified a three-part method, Content Creation, Social Proof, and Network, that organisations and senior individuals use to turn deep expertise into recognised market position. Key speaking topics Long-term strategic thinking Personal branding and reputation Thought leadership and content strategy Self-reinvention and career strategy Recognised expertise as a commercial asset Communication and executive presence Entrepreneurial career models Ideal for CEOs, founders, and partners building firm reputation as a growth channel CMOs and heads of communications shaping enterprise thought-leadership programmes CHROs and learning leaders running senior executive development on visibility and influence Professional services and partner-led firms where individual reputation drives pipeline Audience outcomes A method for sequencing reputation-building work over a multi-year horizon, not a campaign cycle A clearer view of which content, networks, and proof points actually convert into client trust Direct exposure to The Long Game thesis and its application to senior decision-making Tools for leaders to position themselves as recognised voices in their domain without performative visibility

Why organisations work with Dr. Diane Hamilton She turns curiosity from a soft cultural aspiration into a measurable diagnostic. The Curiosity Code Index gives leaders a named set of inhibitors, fear, assumptions, technology, environment, that can be addressed with specific interventions rather than slogans. Her work connects directly to the business outcomes leaders are already accountable for: engagement, innovation rate, learning velocity, retention. The framing makes curiosity legible to a CFO, not only to an L&D team. Thinkers50 Radar selection (2020) places her among a small group of behavioural thinkers being actively translated into corporate practice. The recognition signals her credibility to boards reviewing speaker rosters. A Forbes column and five years interviewing thousands of senior leaders on her nationally syndicated radio show mean she walks into a boardroom already fluent in the language of the C-suite. Four decades of business experience, an MBA program chair role, and certifications in Myers-Briggs and EQ-i give her the assessment vocabulary HR leaders trust, without the academic distance that limits some behavioural speakers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Tonerra, a management consulting and training business focused on curiosity, perception, and behavioural assessment. Creator of the Curiosity Code Index and the Perception Power Index, both validated organisational assessments with associated certification programmes. Thinkers50 Radar 2020 selection, the annual list of management thinkers most likely to influence organisational practice. Fulbright Specialist and faculty member at Duke Corporate Education, the executive education arm of Duke University, and former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Author of Cracking the Curiosity Code, Curiosity Unleashed, and The Power of Perception (with Dr. Maja Zelihic), with a fourth title, Adaptive Curiosity, forthcoming from Wiley. Host of Take the Lead, a nationally syndicated radio show, where she interviewed thousands of senior leaders including Steve Forbes, Naveen Jain, and Craig Newmark. Forbes contributor on workplace behaviour, leadership, and innovation. Biography Curiosity is one of the most cited drivers of organisational performance and one of the least precisely measured. Diane Hamilton built her career on closing that gap. The Curiosity Code Index, which she created and validated, identifies the four factors that suppress curiosity inside organisations: fear, assumptions, technology, and environment. The framework, known as FATE, gives leaders a diagnostic rather than a slogan. Hamilton brings the assessment vocabulary HR functions trust. She holds a PhD in business management and is a certified Myers-Briggs and EQ-i practitioner. She teaches leadership as faculty at Duke Corporate Education and previously chaired the MBA programme at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Her consulting firm, Tonerra, applies the Curiosity Code Index alongside the Perception Power Index, a second validated instrument she developed with Dr. Maja Zelihic and set out in their book The Power of Perception. Thinkers50 named her to its 2020 Radar, the annual cohort of management thinkers shaping organisational practice. She writes for Forbes on workplace behaviour. Over five years hosting Take the Lead, her nationally syndicated radio show, she interviewed thousands of senior figures, including Steve Forbes and Craig Newmark. As a Fulbright Specialist she speaks and teaches internationally, with recent engagements in the United States, Luxembourg, and Dubai. For a corporate audience, the practical value is the move from cultural rhetoric to behavioural intervention. Hamilton names the specific structures and assumptions that suppress curiosity inside a given organisation, then prescribes the changes that follow. Her forthcoming book, Adaptive Curiosity, extends that work to the question now facing every leadership team: what stays distinctly valuable in people as intelligent machines absorb more of the work. Key speaking topics Curiosity as an organisational capability Perception and global leadership Emotional intelligence in senior roles Future-proofing the workforce in the age of AI Innovation culture and employee engagement Behavioural assessment in leadership development Multigenerational workforce dynamics Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding engagement and learning culture Heads of L&D commissioning behavioural assessment programmes Innovation and transformation leads diagnosing why initiatives stall Executive teams investing in EQ and behavioural development for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A named diagnostic, FATE, for identifying what specifically suppresses curiosity in their organisation A framework for connecting curiosity to engagement, innovation, and retention metrics leaders already track Tools to assess and develop emotional intelligence and perception in senior teams A clearer view of how personality and generational differences shape team performance A practical sense of which behavioural interventions move the needle and which produce activity without change

Why organisations work with Diana Renner Her book Not Knowing (CMI Management Book of the Year, translated into 15+ languages) makes a specific, counterintuitive argument: that the pressure to project expertise and have answers actively impairs leadership in genuinely complex situations. This is a diagnosis most leadership development programmes avoid, and a conversation senior leadership teams rarely have with rigour. She works at the intersection of three distinct bodies of knowledge – adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology – a combination that addresses not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders must develop as people. This is not available from single-discipline practitioners. Her guest faculty roles at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government confirm that her frameworks hold up in rigorous, peer-reviewed executive education settings alongside practitioner application. Through the Uncharted Leadership Institute and programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management, she has built and tested leadership development approaches across commercial, government, and community contexts at scale. Her personal biography – leaving Romania in 1987, professional reinvention across law, refugee advocacy, and leadership development – gives the Not Knowing framework lived authority that purely academic treatments of the same topic cannot match. Biography highlights Co-author of Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity (LID Publishing) – CMI Management Book of the Year 2015; translated into 15+ languages Co-author of Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (LID Publishing, 2018) Director and co-founder, Uncharted Leadership Institute (est. 2016); creator, Not Knowing Lab Senior Lecturer, Monash University; adjunct lecturer, University of Adelaide; associate, Melbourne Business School Guest faculty, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and University of Texas LBJ School of Government 2017 Monash University Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (Global Challenges Honours Program teaching team) Biography Diana Renner’s book Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity, co-written with Steven D’Souza, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2015. Its thesis is direct: the pressure to project expertise and certainty is often what makes complex adaptive challenges harder to navigate, not easier. Translated into more than fifteen languages, it has become a reference for leadership development practitioners and senior teams working with genuine strategic uncertainty. The book draws on a distinction most leadership frameworks collapse: technical problems can be solved with existing expertise, while adaptive challenges require new thinking and development. Renner’s work through the Uncharted Leadership Institute, which she co-founded in 2016, is built around helping senior leaders recognise which they are facing – and develop the capacity to engage productively with the latter. Her practice draws on three distinct disciplines: adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology. Together, these address not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders need to develop as people to lead well in conditions of genuine uncertainty. Programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management have tested these frameworks across commercial, government, and community contexts. Renner holds a Senior Lectureship at Monash University and has served as guest faculty at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government. Her second book, Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (2018), extends the Not Knowing argument into the territory of executive effectiveness – examining how excessive busyness and compulsive doing undermine the quality of leadership in complex environments. Key speaking topics Adaptive leadership in uncertainty and complexity Not Knowing – leading beyond expertise Not Doing – effortless action and the limits of busyness Distinguishing adaptive from technical challenges Adult development theory and leadership growth Deliberately developmental organisational cultures Complexity theory and strategic resilience Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives leading organisations through complex change or strategic inflection points CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior leadership programmes Senior executives and leadership teams in government and public sector organisations Board-level strategy and scenario planning forums Audience outcomes A clear distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, with practical language for applying it in real organisational conversations Greater self-awareness about how the pressure to have answers shapes individual leadership behaviour and team dynamics Practical frameworks from Not Knowing and Not Doing for leading through uncertainty without forcing premature resolution A more explicit understanding of how adult development theory applies to the daily practice of leadership Approaches to building team and organisational cultures that can hold complexity and sustain productive engagement over time

Why organisations work with Dame Denise Lewis A first-hand account of winning at the highest level in the hardest conditions: Olympic gold at Sydney 2000, secured while competing through an Achilles injury that threatened every event. Governance perspective from the top of a national sport, currently leading UK Athletics through a period of public financial difficulty and reform. Fifteen years of live broadcast analysis at BBC Sport, reading performance in real time across four Olympic Games and four Commonwealth Games. A view of high performance that moves between the individual and the system: what athletes owe their coaches, what leaders owe their teams, and where accountability actually sits. Credibility with audiences who have heard every sports keynote; the current presidencies (UK Athletics, Commonwealth Games England) put her in a different category from retired-athlete speakers. Biography highlights Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, Sydney 2000; Olympic bronze medallist, Atlanta 1996. Commonwealth Games heptathlon champion in 1994 and 2002; European champion 1998; World Championships silver 1997 and 1999. Appointed DBE in the 2023 New Year Honours; previously OBE (2001) and MBE (1999). President of UK Athletics, elected 2024. President of Commonwealth Games England, extended to Victoria 2026. BBC Sport athletics pundit from 2009 to Paris 2024, covering four Olympic cycles and four Commonwealth Games. Author, “Personal Best: The Autobiography” (2001). President of Sparks children’s medical research charity. Biography The Sydney 2000 heptathlon came down to the final 800 metres, with an Achilles injury that had threatened every event before it. Denise Lewis finished third in that race, hobbled across the line, and scored 6,584 points to become the first European Olympic heptathlon champion. The day was often described as character; closer up, it was preparation meeting a refusal to stop. That composure has defined the career since. Between 2009 and Paris 2024, Lewis was the analytical voice of BBC athletics coverage, reading elite performance in real time across four Olympic Games and four Commonwealth Games. The work demanded a different discipline from competing: quick judgement, live to camera, about people whose careers she understood from the inside. In 2024 she was elected President of UK Athletics, a governance role that began in the middle of a declared financial crisis at the national body. The remit is reform, public accountability and the long-term health of the sport. She also serves as President of Commonwealth Games England, extended through Victoria 2026, and as President of Sparks, the children’s medical research charity. For senior audiences, the value is the composite view: the competitor who held her nerve on the biggest stage, the analyst who has watched hundreds of others succeed and fail under the same pressure, and the administrator now answerable for a system rather than a single performance. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure High-performance culture and standards Resilience and competitive mindset Governance and accountability in elite sport Team performance and coaching relationships Transition from elite competition to leadership Women in leadership and sport Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting performance standards for the wider organisation. Senior leadership offsites focused on pressure, judgement and decision-making. CHROs and talent leaders shaping high-performance culture programmes. Sport, media and national-body audiences looking at governance and reform. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what holding standards looks like when the conditions are against you, not in theory. Language for the coach-athlete-administrator triangle that transfers directly to leader-team-board dynamics. A clearer read on the difference between motivation and preparation at the top of a competitive field. A first-hand perspective on governance responsibility: what a president actually answers for when a system is under strain.