Executive Development

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. 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 as moderator and MC, 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, ESG and policy leads running SDG, climate 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.

Why organisations work with Deborah Rowland Her 2015/16 global research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries, quantified that leader inner capacities account for over half the success or failure of large complex change – a finding that directly challenges how most organisations design transformation programmes. The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model give organisations a specific diagnostic language for the leadership dimension of change: eight interconnected skills with a clear evidence base, not another generic competency framework. She spent the first half of her career inside the systems she now advises, as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide. She understands the constraints of the position, not just its theory. Four Wiley-published books, articles in the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, and papers accepted at the Academy of Management give her frameworks independent credibility beyond the consulting relationship. Her most recent book, From Ought to Is (Wiley, 2025), applies the Still Moving thinking directly to polarisation and systemic inertia – relevant to organisations managing post-merger integration, contested cultural change, or restructuring in divided environments. Biography highlights Author of Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change (Wiley, 2017, bestseller) and From Ought to Is: Catalysing Change and Movement in a Polarised World (Wiley, 2025); co-author with Professor Malcolm Higgs of Sustaining Change: Leadership That Works (Wiley, 2008) Named on Thinkers50 Radar 2017; ranked 31st on HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers list 2021 Contributor to Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review; original research accepted at the 2016 Academy of Management and 2019 European Academy of Management Former VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo; Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell; People Director at BBC Worldwide; earlier senior roles at Gucci Group Founder of Still Moving change consultancy; advisory clients include RWE, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, Diageo, Unilever and De Beers Faculty contributor at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath business schools; Advisory Board member, International Institute for Leadership and Safety Culture Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University Biography Most large-scale transformation programmes fall short not because the strategy is wrong, but because the leaders running them revert to familiar patterns when complexity peaks. Deborah Rowland has devoted three decades to studying that specific failure mode. Her research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries and geographies, found that four inner capacities of the leader – staying present, responding intentionally, tuning into the system, and acknowledging the whole – explained over half the reason why big complex change either succeeds or fails. That research was not produced from the outside. Rowland spent the first half of her career as a practitioner, serving as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide, with earlier senior roles at Gucci Group. She has led major restructurings from within, and understands directly the conditions under which change leaders default to unhelpful patterns. That experience is embedded in every practical element of the Still Moving framework she subsequently developed. The intellectual architecture behind the framework spans four published Wiley books. Sustaining Change (2008, with Professor Malcolm Higgs) identified four external practices of effective change leadership. Still Moving (2017) showed that four inner capacities must precede those practices – and that this inner dimension accounted for over half the variance in change success. From Ought to Is (2025) extends the argument to address polarisation and systemic inertia as the specific obstacles leaders now face. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2017 and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, she has also taught at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath. She holds a Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University – a training in systemic observation that continues to shape how she reads organisations and the people leading them. Key speaking topics Large-scale organisational transformation The inner capacities of change leadership The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model Systemic change approaches Leading through polarisation and organisational inertia Culture change and movement Executive leadership development in complex environments Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards sponsoring or overseeing major transformation programmes CHROs and senior HR leadership communities Leaders at the top of organisations navigating post-merger integration, major restructuring, or contested cultural change Business school executive education participants on leadership and change programmes Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why leader inner state – not change methodology – is the primary driver of transformation success or failure Practical exposure to the Still Moving eight-skill framework and Change Vitality model as a leadership diagnostic tool Ability to identify specific leadership behaviours that correlate with success in large and complex change Approaches for leading systemic change without defaulting to controlling or directive patterns under pressure A more honest assessment of personal leadership habits that may be slowing organisational change

Why organisations work with Danah Zohar She gave the field two of its named ideas. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management are her frameworks, not borrowed labels, and they sit on a substantial body of published work. Her management thinking is built on physics and complexity science, not from organisational behaviour. That gives her a different starting point from most leadership voices, and a model that holds up when the operating environment becomes genuinely non-linear. The Haier group in China rebuilt its management system around her concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, giving her work a named operating reference at one of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers. She brings credentials that are hard to assemble in one speaker: MIT, Harvard, Oxford’s Strategic Leadership Programme, Cranfield, Tsinghua, and induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Biography highlights Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2022. Named in the 2002 Financial Times Prentice Hall Business Minds anthology of the world’s 50 greatest management thinkers. Teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School; Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and the China Academy of Art; entrepreneurial mentor at Haier. Author of The Quantum Self, ReWiring the Corporate Brain, SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, Spiritual Capital, The Quantum Leader, and Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age. Educated in Physics and Philosophy at MIT, with postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion and Psychology at Harvard. Biography Newtonian management assumes that organisations behave like machines: predictable parts, fixed structures, control flowing from the top. The physics it is built on was superseded a hundred years ago. Danah Zohar has spent her career arguing that the management model needs to catch up, and showing senior leaders what a quantum and complexity-based alternative looks like in practice. Her two named contributions, Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management, treat organisations as complex adaptive systems and treat people as carriers of meaning and purpose, not units of labour. The 12 Principles of SQ, set out in SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, the Ultimate Intelligence and developed further in Spiritual Capital, are drawn directly from the properties of living quantum systems. The work has been picked up where it matters. Haier, one of China’s largest industrial groups, restructured its management system around Zohar’s concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, the basis of Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, holds a visiting fellowship at Cranfield, and visiting professorships at Tsinghua and the China Academy of Art. For boards and executive teams, the practical question is how to lead a workforce and a strategy when the old assumptions of stability, hierarchy and pure financial logic no longer carry the weight they once did. Zohar offers a coherent answer, built from physics rather than rhetoric, and tested at scale inside one of the most ambitious corporate reorganisations of the last decade. Key speaking topics Quantum Management and the post-Newtonian organisation Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and the 12 Principles Spiritual capital and purpose-driven leadership Complex adaptive systems applied to corporate strategy Meaning, motivation and the future of work Sustainable capitalism and the role of business in society Leading transformation at scale, with reference to the Haier model Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are redesigning operating models for higher autonomy and faster customer response Boards and senior leaders working through purpose, values and the social licence of the business Transformation leads and CHROs running culture and structure change in parallel Strategy and innovation leaders looking for a complexity-based alternative to classical planning Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for treating the organisation as a complex adaptive system, with concrete implications for structure, decision rights and information flow. A clearer link between purpose, meaning and commercial performance, beyond statement-of-values exercises. The Haier “zero distance” case as a worked reference for radical decentralisation at scale. Sharper questions for the executive team about where Newtonian assumptions still shape their planning, structure and incentives. An informed view of where Spiritual Intelligence sits alongside IQ and EQ in leadership development.

Why organisations work with Connie Dieken The Influence360° assessment is the only validated psychometric instrument built specifically to measure how individual leaders influence stakeholders. Organisations gain hard data on a capability they have previously only been able to assess anecdotally – or not at all. The Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, developed through more than 15 years of research with over 20,000 participants, gives leadership teams a shared, actionable language for a problem most organisations misdiagnose as a personality issue rather than a learnable skill gap. Twenty years interviewing presidents and global CEOs for ABC and NBC gave Dieken direct observational data on how influence operates under pressure and at scale. That empirical foundation is not available from the executive coaching mainstream. Her training programmes are licensed in corporate universities worldwide and both her Wiley books reached No. 1 on Amazon and Audible – which means her frameworks carry weight in the room before she enters it. Membership of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, a highly selective global practitioner community, places her within the most rigorously vetted executive coaching cohort in the world and signals peer-level recognition, not self-designation. Biography highlights Founder of Influence360°, a validated leadership influence assessment, and The Dieken Group, a C-suite executive advisory firm operating on five continents Author of two Wiley bestsellers: Talk Less, Say More (Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology) and Become the Real Deal (Three Layers of Presence and Return on Influence® framework) Five-time Emmy Award winner and inductee of the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame Named Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches (2019) Guest lecturer in executive education and MBA programmes at Case Western University, Indiana University, and Ohio State University Thought leadership featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times Biography Most leaders believe they are more persuasive than others experience them. Connie Dieken, a broadcast journalist for ABC and NBC for two decades, built her career on closing that gap. Interviewing presidents and global CEOs, she identified the patterns that divided leaders who drove genuine action from those who merely spoke at people. That observation became a research project. Fifteen years of structured study involving more than 20,000 participants produced the Influence360° assessment, a validated instrument for measuring how leaders influence stakeholders. Two Wiley bestsellers followed: Talk Less, Say More, built on the Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, and Become the Real Deal, which introduced the Three Layers of Presence and the Return on Influence® concept. The Dieken Group now advises C-suite executives at organisations including Coca-Cola, HP, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, and The Cleveland Clinic. Her influence training programmes are licensed in corporate universities on five continents. She is a guest lecturer in executive education at Case Western, Indiana, and Ohio State universities, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. Dieken has been inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame. She has been named a Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation and has delivered keynotes on four continents to audiences numbering in the thousands. Key speaking topics Leadership influence and stakeholder commitment Executive presence and authentic authority Influential communication under pressure Change leadership and stakeholder buy-in Human influence and decision-making in AI-shaped organisations Presentation strategy and persuasion Leadership assessment and behavioural diagnostics Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating change, mergers, or strategic realignment where stakeholder buy-in is the critical variable CHROs and talent leaders designing executive development programmes where influence and presence are identified capability gaps Sales leadership and commercial functions where the ability to earn commitment is a direct performance driver Boards and executive committees seeking a research-grounded framework for developing leadership effectiveness at the top Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic of their personal influence pattern, including where they are most likely to lose stakeholder commitment and why A three-step methodology – Connect, Convey, Convince – they can apply immediately to high-stakes conversations, presentations, and change initiatives Understanding of the Three Layers of Presence and how inner, outer, and verbal presence affect their credibility with senior stakeholders Frameworks to distinguish between genuine influence and manipulation, and to lead without coercion or compliance-seeking Practical tools for navigating resistance from difficult stakeholders, including those who are dominant, anxious, or disengaged

Why organisations work with Carole Gaskell Her use of Motivational Mapping gives organisations something a standard engagement survey does not: a diagnostic map of where individual and team energy is being lost and why, before it becomes a performance or retention problem. As a Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps, she brings three complementary frameworks to the same conversation, addressing how people think, what drives them, and how they communicate under pressure. Her book Full Potential Leadership sets out the case for coaching-led culture change: that leaders who cannot identify what motivates their people are operating with a structural blind spot, not a skills gap. Her executive background – Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, involved in both flotation and the sale of the business – gives her credibility in C-suite conversations about performance as a commercial issue rather than a wellbeing one. Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards and consistent recognition for personal impact on CEO-level audiences reflect a track record of shifting thinking in rooms where change is genuinely hard. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Full Potential Group, one of the UK’s longest-established leadership and executive coaching firms, founded in the late 1990s Author of four books: Full Potential Leadership, Full Potential Coach, Transform Your Life, and Your Pocket Life Coach Master Certified Practitioner in Neuro-agility, Insights Discovery and Motivational Maps Five Outperformer of the Year speaker awards; voted speaker with the most personal impact on CEO and senior leadership audiences Keynote and facilitation work spanning Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, Nationwide Building Society, Heinz, Lend Lease, JLL, Roche, Urenco and Starbucks, among others Speaker at CIPD conferences in the UK and Asia Pacific, Vistage CEO groups and international investment forums Former Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc; involved in flotation and the eventual sale of the business Biography Leadership development spending has grown steadily for decades. Engagement numbers have not kept pace. Carole Gaskell, founder of Full Potential Group, has spent more than 25 years working on the reason – and what leadership teams can actually do about it. The diagnostic tools she deploys are specific and measurable. Motivational Mapping identifies nine intrinsic motivators at individual and team level, giving leaders a way to see where energy is being generated and where it is being lost. Insights Discovery profiling and Neuro-agility assessment address the other half of the picture: how people process information, communicate under pressure, and learn. Carole is a Master Certified Practitioner across all three frameworks. Her book Full Potential Leadership argues that high-performing cultures cannot be designed around strategy alone. Leaders who do not understand what motivates their people are solving a human problem with structural tools – and wondering why the results do not last. She makes that argument with organisations, not just to them. Her client work spans Mercer, Tesco, PwC, NHS, JLL and Nationwide Building Society. Conference delivery includes CIPD events in the UK and Asia Pacific and Vistage CEO forums internationally. Before founding Full Potential Group, Carole served as Marketing and Acquisitions Director at a UK Plc, working through flotation and eventual sale. That background sets the frame for how she talks about performance: not as a leadership ideal, but as a commercial outcome that depends on getting the people conditions right. Key speaking topics Motivational intelligence and workforce engagement Leadership culture and high-performance team design Coaching as an organisational capability Neuro-agility and cognitive performance at work Team diagnostics and motivational profiling Employee energy, wellbeing and sustainable performance The future of leadership in changing organisations Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and people directors building engagement and performance strategies that go beyond the annual survey CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking measurable approaches to culture and people performance L&D leaders designing programmes that address motivation and mindset, not just skills Boards and executive teams preparing for significant change where people commitment is the critical variable Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding the nine intrinsic motivators and identifying dominant drivers in themselves and their teams A diagnostic language for motivation that can be applied immediately in 1:1s, team reviews and performance conversations Specific leadership behaviours that build high-performance cultures, and the common patterns that undermine them Practical tools for sustaining motivation and energy through change, pressure and uncertainty A clearer distinction between engagement – a feeling that surveys can capture – and motivation, a variable that can be tracked and acted on

Why organisations work with Barbara Oakley Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework gives L&D teams a named, neuroscience-backed model for redesigning how training is structured, not just what it covers. It establishes that structured recovery and retrieval practice matter as much as instruction time, a claim with direct implications for how organisations budget and sequence learning investment. “Learning How to Learn,” co-created with Salk Institute neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, has been taken by over 4 million people on Coursera. That scale of real-world adoption gives her frameworks empirical grounding that no controlled study can fully replicate. Her personal trajectory from U.S. Army linguist to engineering professor, achieved through deliberate adult retraining, is the primary evidence for her central argument that capability can be built at any career stage. For organisations running reskilling programmes, that is more persuasive than theory from a researcher who has never made the journey themselves. “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestseller translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold, means her frameworks already have traction well beyond corporate learning circles. Audiences often arrive familiar with her work, reducing the credibility gap that typically slows training adoption. The 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and widely considered the field’s most prestigious award, recognised Oakley as the inaugural winner in a new Lifelong Learning category – independent confirmation that her contribution to continuous capability development is field-defining. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Oakland University; Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Inaugural winner of the 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education (Lifelong Learning category), administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Co-creator (with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute) of “Learning How to Learn” on Coursera – over 4 million enrolled, one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education Author of “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestselling science book translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold; subsequent titles include “Mindshift” (2017), “Uncommon Sense Teaching” (2021), and “Learn Like a Pro” (2021) Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal; Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year (2018) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor” Former U.S. Army Captain; recognised as Distinguished Military Scholar Biography In 2014, a Coursera course called “Learning How to Learn” attracted over 300,000 students in its first three runs. It now has over 4 million enrolled, making it one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education. That appetite reflects a gap most organisational training does not close: a practical understanding of how capability is actually built. Barbara Oakley created that course with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. She came to the research through direct experience: a former U.S. Army Captain trained as a linguist, she retaught herself mathematics and engineering entirely as an adult. Her own career transition is the most direct demonstration of her central argument – that capability is genuinely malleable, and that the brain can acquire new domains of expertise at any career stage. Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework, named in “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), gives organisations a practical model for how concentration, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process. The book reached New York Times bestseller status and has been translated into 13 languages. Subsequent titles including “Mindshift,” “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” and “Learn Like a Pro” extend the framework into career reinvention, teaching design, and AI-era learning. In 2023, she received the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, the most prestigious award in the field, as inaugural winner in a newly created Lifelong Learning category. She is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and holds a concurrent appointment as Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of effective learning and skill retention Workforce reskilling and adult capability development Learning frameworks for the age of AI Building organisational learning culture Career reinvention and professional mindset The science of effective training design Cognitive performance and focus at work Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors designing or auditing workforce capability programmes CEOs and executive teams navigating AI-driven workforce transition and reskilling investment Corporate universities and internal learning academies benchmarking training effectiveness Boards and transformation leads sponsoring large-scale reskilling or career transition initiatives Audience outcomes A named neuroscience framework (focused vs. diffuse mode) for understanding how attention, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process Evidence-based techniques (retrieval practice, spaced repetition, the Pomodoro method) that individuals and teams can apply immediately to improve learning retention A reframe of learning ability from fixed trait to trainable skill, with direct implications for how organisations identify, develop, and retain talent Clarity on why conventional training approaches consistently underdeliver, and what research-supported alternatives look like in practice A grounded argument for why adult capability development is achievable at any career stage, drawn from both neuroscience and the speaker’s own documented transition

Why organisations work with Ayse Birsel She brings a method, not a mood. Deconstruction: Reconstruction is a four-step process (deconstruct, point of view, reconstruct, express) developed across two decades of paid client work, and groups can run it on a real problem in the room. Her design credentials are commercial, not theoretical: products and systems for Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, IKEA, Knoll, GE and Colgate-Palmolive, with Resolve for Herman Miller named by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years. She bridges product innovation and people innovation. The same method behind the Zoë Washlet for TOTO underpins Design the Work You Love, which is why teams leave with a tool they can apply to org design, not just to creativity. She is one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and the cohort itself was formed inside her Design the Life You Love process. That credential signals trust from the most senior coaching network in business. Recognised by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business and by Thinkers50 on its Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. Biography highlights Co-founder and Creative Director, Birsel + Seck, New York. Master’s in Industrial Design, Pratt Institute, on a Fulbright Scholarship; undergraduate in Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University. Author of “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (Running Press, 2022). Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. One of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2017); member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches. Work in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; clients include Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, GE, IKEA, Knoll, Staples, Colgate-Palmolive and TOTO. Biography Most organisations treat innovation as a personality trait. Ayse Birsel treats it as a process. Deconstruction: Reconstruction, the method she has used at Birsel + Seck for two decades, is built around four steps: take the problem apart, change the point of view, put it back together within real constraints, and give the result a clean form. It is the same logic she has applied to a Herman Miller workstation, a Toyota concept car and a TOTO washlet. Her credentials are commercial. Birsel + Seck, the New York studio she runs with Bibi Seck, has produced work for Amazon, GE, IKEA, Staples, Knoll and Colgate-Palmolive. The Resolve System for Herman Miller has been cited by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years, and her work sits in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She trained at Middle East Technical University and took a master’s at Pratt Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship. The translation from product to people came through her books. “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (2022) take the same four-step method and apply it to careers, relationships and ageing well. Marshall Goldsmith ran the program himself, and the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches network was formed inside it. She is a member of that cohort and on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations. For corporate audiences, this matters because the method is the product. Teams do not leave with a story about creativity. They leave having deconstructed a real brief, tested a different point of view and reconstructed an option they can take back to the operating model on Monday. Key speaking topics Innovation method and design thinking in practice Deconstruction: Reconstruction as a creative process for teams Designing the work, not just the workplace Life design and career reinvention for senior leaders Creativity under constraint Human-centred product and service design Long-life and longevity design Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product leaders looking for a repeatable creative method. CHROs and learning leaders running senior leadership offsites or executive development programs. Boards and executive teams working through reinvention, succession and second-act questions. Design, marketing and customer experience functions translate creativity into operating decisions. Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the four-step Deconstruction: Reconstruction process applied to a real organisational brief. A different point of view on a problem the team came in with, tested in the room. Language and structure for talking about creativity that does not depend on individual talent. A personal life-design or career-design artefact that senior leaders can take away from the session. Confidence that innovation can be run as a discipline, not staged as a culture programme.