Executive Development

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.

Why organisations work with Annemarie Steen A working method for adaptability rather than a talk about it. Her keynotes ask the room to practise the behaviours she names, so leadership teams leave with something they have already tried, not only heard Faculty credibility on two sides of the discipline: senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam and award-winning MBA visiting lecturer at Estonian Business School on Creative and Playful Leadership A clear thesis on why composure and openness matter to commercial decisions, not as soft skills but as the conditions under which good judgement actually happens One of the few European speakers who can hold a serious leadership audience while running an interactive room, useful when a client wants a keynote that does not flatten into a lecture Biography highlights Owner of SteenTrain since 2009, a leadership development practice built around playful, applied-improvisation methods Founder of Play-Break, a concept for short recovery and creativity practices used inside teams and at events Senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership, Amsterdam Partner at The Core Story, a strategic narrative and storytelling consultancy Visiting lecturer in Creative and Playful Leadership at Estonian Business School for around nine years, awarded Best Visiting Lecturer for the MBA course TEDx speaker (Tallaght, Dublin, 2014, “What happens when you press PLAY”); client work has included the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys Biography Most leadership teams know the language of agility and innovation. Far fewer have a working method for the behaviours those words refer to. Steen’s practice fills that gap. She treats playfulness as a discipline, not a mood, and trains senior groups in how to read a room, hold uncertainty without seizing up, and make a decision that is open to revision. The foundation is applied improvisation, taken seriously. At THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam, where she is a senior facilitator, the methods are used to develop founders and senior leaders running ventures in complex markets. At Estonian Business School, her course on Creative and Playful Leadership has run for around nine years on the MBA, and was awarded Best Visiting Lecturer. The work travels because it is built around behaviours that hold up under business pressure, not just classroom exercises. Her client list reflects that reach. The Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys have all used her with senior groups. A 2014 TEDx talk in Tallaght, “What happens when you press PLAY”, sets out the underlying argument: that organisations lose access to their own intelligence when they over-perform seriousness, and that recovering creative range is a leadership decision, not a perk. What clients tend to book her for is the combination of a keynote and a room that actually does something. Steen runs the talk as an interactive frame, so a leadership audience leaves having rehearsed presence, listening and response under mild pressure, rather than having taken notes about them. Key speaking topics Playful leadership and leading under uncertainty Applied improvisation for senior teams Creativity, innovation and design thinking in practice Storytelling for business and executive communication Presence, listening and connection at senior level Recovery, attention and team energy at work Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver information HR, learning and OD leads commissioning executive development on adaptability and creative range Conference organisers looking for an interactive keynote or moderator who can hold a serious leadership room Audience outcomes A direct experience of the behaviours that make a leadership team adaptable, not only a description of them Specific practices for presence, listening and response that can be used inside their own meetings A practical argument for why creative range is a commercial capability, not an HR theme Renewed attention to recovery and energy as inputs to senior decision-making

Why organisations work with Amy Williams She won Britain’s only medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics by 0.56 seconds, in a sport she had taken up eight years earlier, which gives her a concrete account of building elite performance from a standing start that boards and sales leaders respond to. Her book “Talent to Triumph” draws on Dame Sarah Storey, Helen Glover, Colin Jackson, Ellie Simmonds, Rebecca Adlington and Professor Greg Whyte, so the material she brings into corporate rooms is a composite view of how performance is actually built, not a single medal story. She works fluently across BBC commentary, “Ski Sunday” presenting and Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show”, which makes her a reliable booking for events that need a keynote and a host in the same person. The subject she owns is preparation and composure in short execution windows, which translates directly into board, sales kick-off and transformation settings where the moment to perform is finite. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, women’s skeleton, Vancouver 2010, winning margin 0.56 seconds. MBE, 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours; first female Honorary Freeman of the City of Bath. Author of “Talent to Triumph: How Athletes Turn Potential into High Performance”, Sequoia Books, 2021. BBC skeleton and bobsleigh commentator; co-presenter of BBC Two’s “Ski Sunday” since 2013. Presenter of Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show” since 2014. Honorary Doctorate of Laws, University of Bath, 2017; first Ambassador of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, 2019. Biography The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics produced a single British medal. Amy Williams took it, winning women’s skeleton by 0.56 seconds and becoming the first British solo Winter Olympic champion for three decades. She had switched from 400-metre running to skeleton at the University of Bath only eight years earlier, after shin splints ended her track career. Williams retired in 2012 with a ruptured knee and a slipped disc from the ice at Altenberg. What followed was a deliberate second career. She moved into BBC commentary on skeleton and bobsleigh, joined “Ski Sunday” as co-presenter in 2013 and took over as a presenter on Channel 5’s “The Gadget Show” in 2014. That record matters to conference organisers, because it means she is comfortable holding a room and an autocue, not only telling a medal story. In 2021 she published “Talent to Triumph” with Sequoia Books, a working manual on how elite performers turn ability into results. The book pulls in Dame Sarah Storey, Helen Glover, Colin Jackson, Ellie Simmonds, Rebecca Adlington, Jade Jones and Professor Greg Whyte, which is why the material she brings to corporate audiences sounds less like a sporting autobiography and more like a composite view of what high performance requires. The through line for leadership audiences is specific. Skeleton is a sport where preparation runs for years, the run lasts around a minute, and the result is public. That is the shape of most executive moments that matter, and it is the frame Williams uses when she walks a board or a sales team through how composure, marginal gains and trained resilience hold up when the window to execute is short. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery from setback Preparation and discipline under pressure Marginal gains and incremental performance Mindset and confidence in high-stakes moments Team dynamics behind individual performance Olympic-standard goal setting After-dinner speaking and event hosting Ideal for Sales kick-offs and annual conferences that need a performance narrative alongside a keynote host. CHROs and talent leaders running leadership development or high-potential programmes built around resilience. Transformation and change teams about to enter a short, visible execution window. Boards and executive committees looking for an outside voice on composure under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how elite performers build composure into training, not only into mindset. Specific language for marginal gains drawn from Olympic skeleton preparation, not from cliche. A sharper read on the difference between motivation, which fluctuates, and trained discipline, which holds. Stories drawn from named athletes and coaches in “Talent to Triumph” that leaders can repurpose inside their own teams.

Why organisations work with Amy Edmondson She is the original source of the psychological safety research now cited by Google, the NHS, and most leading management programmes, not a downstream interpreter of it. Her frameworks come from two decades of field research inside hospitals, manufacturing plants, and Fortune 500 teams, not from theory or anecdote. She translates an idea that leaders often misread as softness into operational language about error rates, learning speed, and innovation throughput. Her Right Kind of Wrong work gives executives a practical taxonomy of failure types, separating the failures organisations should prevent from the failures they should encourage. Thinkers50 ranked her the world’s number one management thinker in both 2021 and 2023, which signals her standing among the practitioners and academics buyers most respect. Biography highlights Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021 and 2023. Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong. Author of seven books, including The Fearless Organization, Teaming, and Right Kind of Wrong. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award (2019) and Talent Award (2017). PhD in Organizational Behavior, AM in Psychology, AB in Engineering Sciences, Harvard University. Biography The most expensive errors inside large organisations are rarely caused by people who do not know what to do. They are caused by people who know, and choose not to say. Decades of research at Harvard Business School have made that pattern visible, and have given senior leaders a vocabulary for it: psychological safety. Amy Edmondson built that vocabulary. As Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, she has spent more than twenty years studying teams in hospitals, manufacturing operations, technology firms, and government. Her 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly is the academic anchor for an idea now used inside Google’s people analytics, NHS quality improvement work, and most credible executive education curricula. The work has expanded from a single concept into a coherent body. Teaming examined how cross-functional groups learn fast enough to keep up with the work in front of them. The Fearless Organization gave leaders a step-by-step model for making honest contribution the norm, not the exception. Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023, separates the failures organisations should engineer against from the failures they should be willing to commission. Thinkers50 has ranked her since 2011 and named her the world’s number one management thinker in 2021 and again in 2023. That recognition matters because it tracks how often working executives, not academics, cite her frameworks when they describe what they are trying to change inside their own organisations. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and team performance Learning from intelligent failure Teaming in cross-functional and high-stakes work Leadership in high-reliability environments Organisational learning Innovation cultures and candour Leading through error and recovery Ideal for C-suite and board audiences in healthcare, aviation, financial services, and other high-stakes industries CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning culture and capability programmes Heads of innovation and R&D leaders building teams that need to fail intelligently Executive education and leadership development cohorts inside large organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that separates it from comfort, niceness, or lowered standards A taxonomy of failure types that leaders can apply to their own portfolio of decisions Specific leader behaviours that increase the rate at which problems surface early A clearer language for talking about error, candour, and accountability inside the organisation Evidence-based responses to the common executive objection that psychological safety reduces performance pressure

Why organisations work with Allyson Stewart-Allen She has worked with more than 260 businesses across 27 countries, including named clients such as BAE Systems, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, Shell, Burberry and Chanel, which means her advice is calibrated against live transatlantic deal flow rather than secondary research. Working with Americans, now in its second edition with Routledge, is the most specific practitioner handbook on US business culture from a non-American authority, and it gives organisations a shared reference point before she walks into the room. She is the first two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes delivered with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd, which is rare independent recognition of how her work lands in executive development. Her teaching affiliations at Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge) place her inside the senior-executive programmes her audiences attend; she speaks to issues she also teaches on. Her media track record, including BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal, makes her a credible voice for high-profile internal events and externally facing client conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners Co-author of Working with Americans: How to Build Profitable Business Relationships (Routledge, second edition) First two-time winner of the European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Award, for programmes with Lufthansa (London Business School, 2009) and BAE Systems (Saïd Business School, Oxford, 2012) MBA from the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University, where she studied under Peter Drucker; BSc International Business, University of Southern California Teaching affiliations with Saïd Business School (Oxford) and the Møller Institute (Cambridge) Regular commentator for BBC, CNN, Sky News, Financial Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Biography US market entry is one of the most consistently over-promised and under-delivered strategic moves a European or Asian company can make. Allyson Stewart-Allen has spent her career working on the other side of that problem. As CEO and founder of International Marketing Partners, she has advised more than 260 organisations in 27 countries on how to internationalise their brand, their sales approach and their leadership style without losing what made them work at home. Her grounding is unusual. An MBA from the Drucker School under Peter Drucker himself, a BSc in International Business from USC, and a London-based practice that has worked with Accenture, BAE Systems, Burberry, Chanel, HSBC, Lufthansa, NBCUniversal, SABMiller and Shell. The resulting point of view is specific rather than diplomatic: most companies fail internationally for reasons that were visible at the approval stage and deferred by the people in the room. Her book Working with Americans, co-authored with Lanie Denslow and published by Routledge in a second edition, is the practitioner text in its category. It remains the reference most widely used by European and Asian professionals trying to build durable commercial relationships with US counterparts. The programme work is comparable in scale: she is the first two-time winner of the EFMD Excellence in Practice Award, for leadership programmes with Lufthansa at London Business School and BAE Systems at Oxford Saïd. The teaching continues at Saïd Business School and the Møller Institute at Cambridge, alongside non-executive and advisory roles at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the British Business Excellence Awards and the Chief of Staff Association. For organisations planning significant international moves, that combination is unusual: an operator with an academic footprint, a published author in the room, and a commentator whose voice their leadership team has already seen on the BBC or FT. Key speaking topics International growth strategy and market entry US market entry and transatlantic commercial culture Global brand building and brand internationalisation Corporate diplomacy and cross-cultural leadership Reputation strategy for globally facing organisations Building and running international teams Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and CMOs committing to US or multi-market expansion Boards and executive committees pressure-testing an international growth plan before approval Heads of international, regional presidents and business unit leaders operating across US, UK, EU and Asia Leadership development and talent functions designing programmes for globally mobile executives Audience outcomes A practical diagnostic of where a planned international expansion is most likely to fail, based on patterns from 260-plus client engagements Specific frameworks for US market entry and working across US-international commercial relationships, drawn from Working with Americans A sharper view of how global brand decisions translate into local commercial outcomes Reference points from named client programmes recognised by the EFMD, applicable to the audience’s own sector

Why organisations work with Vinh Giang His communication framework is rooted in the psychology of illusion; specifically, how professional magicians manage audience perception, belief, and attention. This gives organisations access to a model of influence that is empirically grounded in audience psychology, not generic presentation technique. His signature concept: that every professional has a habitual voice, not a natural one, and that this voice can be deliberately rebuilt, gives individuals a concrete, actionable framework rather than general advice about confidence or impact. He built 52Kards, an online magic education platform that reached 800,000 students globally, demonstrating that he has applied the same principles of skill transfer and engagement he teaches to others at commercial scale. The STAGE Academy programme translates his performance methodology into structured organisational training, giving companies a repeatable development pathway, not a one-off motivational event. He was named South Australia’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and has delivered over 80 live events internationally, including a TEDx appearance at Macquarie University: his credibility is practitioner-built, not academic. Biography highlights Co-founder of 52Kards (formerly Encyclopedia of Magic), an online education platform with over 800,000 enrolled students worldwide CEO of Luminary Productions, a training, development, and video production company Creator of the STAGE Academy, a structured public speaking and communication programme for professionals South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013) Multiple award-winning performer at the Adelaide Fringe Festival: Top Voted Show and Top Reviewed Show, three consecutive years (2012-2014) TEDx speaker, Macquarie University, on communication and professional performance Biography Vinh Giang’s central argument is that most professionals communicate well below the standard their thinking deserves, and that the gap between expertise and expression is a learned problem with a learnable fix. His methodology doesn’t come from corporate training or academic research. It comes from 15 years of studying what professional magicians do: how they control attention, manage belief, and shape the experience of an audience in real time. The insight he took from performance is precise. Robert-Houdin’s principle: that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, reframes communication as a discipline of craft, not personality. Applied to business, this means that a leader’s authority in a room is not fixed. It is a set of habits, many of them inherited from childhood, that can be replaced with deliberate ones. That argument is the foundation of the STAGE Academy, his structured communication programme for professionals. Giang is not a theorist. He dropped out of a commerce and law degree at the University of Adelaide to build 52Kards, an online magic education platform that eventually reached over 800,000 students worldwide. That business – built before the term “creator economy” existed – earned him the South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. His performance work at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where his shows won Top Voted and Top Reviewed for three consecutive years, gave him a practical laboratory for the same principles he now teaches to senior professionals. His clients have included Microsoft, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The organisations that engage him are not looking for motivational uplift; they are investing in a measurable upgrade in how their people present, persuade, and lead under pressure. Key speaking topics Performance-based communication for leaders The psychology of influence and audience perception Vocal presence and professional authority Storytelling and high-stakes persuasion Confidence and mindset in professional communication Communication as a teachable skill set Entrepreneurship and the business of building trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives seeking to sharpen influence and executive presence Sales and commercial leaders whose teams communicate and persuade in high-stakes environments CHROs and L&D leads commissioning communication capability programmes Conference audiences drawn from professional services, financial services, or technology – where credibility depends on the ability to make complex ideas land clearly Audience outcomes A concrete model for understanding why their current communication habits underperform, and what specifically to change Practical tools for rebuilding vocal presence and delivery authority, drawn from professional performance training A framework for structuring high-stakes communication; presentations, negotiations, and leadership conversations, that moves audiences to action Greater awareness of the gap between how they intend to come across and how they are actually received A shift from treating communication as a soft skill to treating it as a professional discipline with measurable standards

Why organisations work with Travis Bradberry His four-quadrant EQ model – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management – gives HR and L&D teams a structured, easy-to-assess framework that can be integrated into existing leadership development and performance programmes, rather than treated as a standalone concept. TalentSmart’s reach into more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies means Bradberry’s frameworks have been stress-tested at enterprise scale across sectors and leadership levels, rather than drawn from a single industry or a handful of client cases. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 has sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 28 languages – a degree of market validation that signals genuine professional resonance, and that typically eases internal buy-in when positioning an EQ-based leadership initiative. His dual Ph.D. spanning both Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology grounds a high-profile popular message in the research disciplines most directly relevant to behavioural change at work; a combination few speakers in the EQ space hold. With 2.5 million LinkedIn followers and Top Voice designation, his platform reflects an active, senior professional audience and demonstrates Bradberry’s credibility. Biography highlights Dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology, California School of Professional Psychology Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – the bestselling EQ title in its category, with over 3 million copies sold and translated into 28 languages across 150+ countries Co-founder and President of TalentSmart (later TalentSmartEQ) – the EQ assessment and training business embedded in more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies Author of subsequent titles including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence; total book sales across all titles exceed 5 million copies Chief People Scientist at LEADx, a mobile-first leadership development platform applying behavioural science and AI to EQ training at scale LinkedIn Top Voice with over 2.5 million followers; written for or covered by Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and TIME Biography The performance gap that most leadership development programmes fail to close is not a knowledge gap. Leaders who derail by alienating teams, making reactive decisions under pressure, or losing influence at senior levels, rarely lack technical expertise. The pattern that consistently predicts who performs and who struggles sits elsewhere: in the ability to perceive, regulate, and apply emotional information at the moments that matter most. Dr. Travis Bradberry holds a dual Ph.D. in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology and has spent his career making that domain measurable and actionable for organisations. As co-founder of TalentSmart, he built the dominant infrastructure for EQ assessment and training, working with more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. The company’s proprietary Emotional Intelligence Appraisal and associated training programmes embedded EQ into leadership development at a scale most researchers and authors never reach. His co-authored book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 became one of the most widely read management titles of its generation, selling over 3 million copies and appearing in 28 languages across 150 countries. The book’s four-quadrant model gave organisations a structured, assessable framework rather than an abstract aspiration. Subsequent works including Emotional Intelligence Habits and The New Emotional Intelligence extend that framework with more recent research in neuroscience and habit formation. As Chief People Scientist at LEADx, Bradberry’s current work focuses on applying EQ research through AI-assisted behavioural coaching at scale; a model increasingly relevant to organisations that need leadership development to produce lasting behavioural change beyond the classroom. His writing has reached a global executive audience through Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence and leadership performance Self-awareness and self-management at work Measuring and developing EQ in organisations Behavioural science of decision-making under pressure Leadership effectiveness and derailment Talent development through emotional intelligence Performance culture and workplace behaviour Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing or refreshing leadership development programmes Executive teams and senior leadership cohorts working on behavioural effectiveness and team dynamics L&D leads building EQ capability into management pipelines Organisations implementing performance culture or investing in measurable behaviour change Audience outcomes A clear understanding of the four-quadrant EQ model and how each domain directly affects leadership behaviour and organisational outcomes Awareness of how EQ predicts performance across roles and levels, grounded in TalentSmart’s enterprise-scale data Practical strategies for developing self-awareness and self-management under pressure – applicable immediately in leadership practice Frameworks for integrating EQ assessment into existing coaching, development, and performance programmes A sharper distinction between EQ as an abstract concept and EQ as a measurable, developable capability – with implications for how organisations design and evaluate leadership investment

Why organisations work with Tom Gimbel Twenty-six years running a staffing firm gives him unusually direct visibility into why employees actually leave: it shows up in his content as specific tactical guidance, not generalised culture theory. He treats middle managers as the operating layer where culture is either built or broken, and gives leadership teams a practical agenda for upgrading that layer. His perspective on hiring, onboarding and retention is the perspective of a CEO who has had to make payroll, not a consultant selling frameworks. Inc. 5000 recognition for twelve consecutive years and a Staffing Industry Analysts Staffing 100 listing back the credibility of his operating record on talent. Biography highlights Founder of LaSalle Network, a national staffing, recruiting and culture firm headquartered in Chicago. LaSalle Network named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for 12 consecutive years. Named to Staffing Industry Analysts’ Staffing 100 list of the most influential people in staffing, multiple years. Inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame; named to Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40. Regular media commentator on hiring, careers and company culture across CNBC Squawk Box, TODAY, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times and Entrepreneur. Board roles include American Staffing Association and Start Early; member of YPO, the Economic Club of Chicago and Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Biography People do not quit companies. They quit managers. That observation, which sits at the centre of Tom Gimbel’s work, sounds simple but is uncomfortable for most executive teams, because it locates the retention problem in the layer of the organisation where the least leadership development happens. Gimbel founded LaSalle Network in Chicago in 1998 and ran it as CEO for 26 years. The firm reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for 12 consecutive years and was repeatedly named to “best places to work” lists by Glassdoor, Fortune, Inc. and Crain’s Chicago Business. He was named to Staffing Industry Analysts’ Staffing 100 list of the most influential people in the industry. That operating record is what makes his content credible to senior buyers. He is a regular commentator on hiring and culture for CNBC, TODAY, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times and Entrepreneur, and his core argument is consistent across those appearances: middle-manager capability is the real engine of retention, and most companies underinvest in it. Gimbel’s keynote material focuses on the practical levers a leadership team can pull, hiring discipline, onboarding, manager development, the often-overlooked “B player” cohort, and how to build a retention-focused culture that survives growth. The audience is the CEO, COO and CHRO who already know they have a culture problem and want a sharp operator’s view on what to do about it. Key speaking topics Company culture and retention Middle-manager development Hiring, onboarding and talent strategy Employee engagement Building and protecting workplace culture through growth The labour market and the future of work Ideal for CEOs, COOs and CHROs leading high-growth or post-acquisition organisations facing retention pressure. Executive teams looking to upgrade their middle-manager population as a strategic priority. HR and talent leadership communities at industry conferences and association events. Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of why retention numbers move and which decisions actually shift them. A specific agenda for upgrading middle managers from individual contributors to people leaders. Tactical guidance on hiring and onboarding processes that protect culture as headcount scales. An operator’s perspective on company culture, distinct from consulting frameworks.

Why organisations work with Tim Foster He has coached at the elite level of two distinct high-pressure domains, Olympic rowing and Premier League football management, and can speak credibly to either room. He sat inside the Sydney 2000 coxless four with Redgrave, Pinsent and Cracknell, and writes and speaks honestly about the conflict, ego and near-collapse that preceded the gold medal, not the sanitised version. As Head of Performance at the League Managers Association he advises serving managers in the Premier League, EFL and WSL on their own performance, which is a vanishingly rare vantage point on leadership at the top of a public, results-driven business. He pairs that operational depth with an Oxford Saïd Executive MBA, so the language and frame translate cleanly into board and executive education contexts. His coaching career, as Head Coach of the Swiss national rowing team from 2007 to 2012 and earlier within the GB programme, gives him the rebuild-and-sustain story, not just the peak-moment story. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, men’s coxless four, Sydney 2000. Olympic bronze medallist, men’s coxless four, Atlanta 1996. Nine World Championship medals across a Great Britain career spanning three Olympic Games. Co-author, Four Men in a Boat: The Inside Story of the Sydney 2000 Coxless Four (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004). Head Coach, Swiss National Rowing Team, 2007 to 2012. Head of Performance, League Managers Association, advising managers in the Premier League, EFL and WSL. MBE, 2001 New Year Honours; Executive MBA, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Biography The coxless four that won gold in Sydney in 2000 is now part of British sporting folklore. Inside the boat it nearly came apart. Four strong-minded athletes, including Steve Redgrave chasing a fifth Olympic gold, spent four years managing each other as much as the racing. Tim Foster sat in the two seat, and his book Four Men in a Boat tells the version that does not make the highlight reel. That experience is the spine of the speaking work. The argument is not that elite sport maps neatly onto business; it is that the human mechanics of holding a small, ambitious team together under sustained pressure are the same. Standards drift, conflict gets postponed, and somebody has to be honest enough to call it. Foster has carried that practice into two further chapters of senior coaching. As Head Coach of the Swiss national rowing team from 2007 to 2012 he rebuilt a programme that had been adrift for years. As Head of Performance at the League Managers Association he now advises serving Premier League, EFL and Women’s Super League managers on their own leadership and career development, a counsel role inside one of the most exposed leadership jobs in British public life. He completed his Executive MBA at Saïd Business School after the coaching career was already well established, and now teaches and convenes at Saïd and Oxford Brookes alongside the consultancy work. The combination is unusual: a coach who has won at the highest level, who has rebuilt a national programme, who currently advises elite managers under public scrutiny, and who has the formal business education to speak to a board in its own language. Key speaking topics High-performance team dynamics Leadership under sustained pressure Coaching and talent development Performance culture Resilience and sustained excellence Lessons from elite sport for senior business teams Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership offsites focused on team performance High-potential and succession development programmes CHRO and people-function leadership convenings Sales leadership and commercial leadership conferences with a performance frame Audience outcomes A clearer view of what actually holds an elite team together when pressure rises Specific, named examples from inside the Sydney 2000 crew that illustrate how conflict was managed, not avoided A frame for diagnosing where standards are drifting in their own teams A working language for coaching senior people who are not used to being coached Permission to address the human mechanics of performance directly, rather than through proxies

Why organisations work with Tim Collins He has commanded under live fire. The lessons on composure, communication, and accountability are drawn from running the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group in Iraq, not a leadership model. His eve-of-battle speech is one of the most studied pieces of leadership communication of the last twenty years, hung in the Oval Office and quoted in business schools. Few speakers can talk about leadership communication from that position. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, gives him a vocabulary on small-team performance, selection, and trust that very few corporate speakers can match credibly. He builds the talk around the audience’s actual leadership tension. The military stories are evidence, not the point. Biography highlights Commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including service as Operations Officer. Appointed OBE in 2003 for service in Iraq. Author of Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict (Headline, 2006). Co-founder and Chairman of New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security services firm working with government clients since 2006. Regular media commentator and columnist on defence and security, with bylines in the Telegraph and other UK national press. Biography The eve-of-battle address to the Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group, delivered in Kuwait on 19 March 2003, was extemporised and recorded in shorthand by a single journalist. President George W. Bush later had a copy hung in the Oval Office. It is now a fixture on leadership reading lists, taught for what it does in five minutes: set the moral frame, give the team something to hold onto, and accept the weight of command without flinching. The speech is not why senior leaders book Collins, but it explains what they get. He commanded a battalion in combat, with all that implies for accountability, communication, and the long shadow that command throws over a career. He came back to allegations of war crimes, cleared his name, and was promoted to colonel. That sequence, command, scrutiny, recovery, is the substance of what he teaches. Before Iraq, Collins served eight years in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, and led troops through Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Cyprus. The earlier work shapes how he talks about selection, small-team trust, and what actually holds a unit together when the plan fails. His memoir Rules of Engagement (Headline, 2006) is the long-form version. Since retiring from the army in 2004 he has built New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security firm working largely with government, and become a regular commentator on defence and security in the UK national press. The corporate keynote work draws on all of it: the command experience, the public scrutiny, the second career building a business with a payroll and contracts. Key speaking topics Command leadership under pressure Leadership communication in high-stakes moments Small-team performance and trust Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and the weight of command Resilience after public scrutiny Lessons from operational command for civilian leaders Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and divisional MDs preparing teams for high-stakes operational moments Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders taking on command-level accountability Sales and operations conferences where the central leadership question is composure under pressure Board offsites focused on crisis readiness, succession, or the human side of restructure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what leadership communication actually does in the moment that counts. Practical handles on composure, accountability, and team trust, drawn from command experience rather than theory. A more honest reading of what holds a team together when the plan changes. A reference point, the eve-of-battle speech, that audiences carry back into their own leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Sydney Finkelstein His work is grounded in two decade-long research programmes: one into executive failure, published as Why Smart Executives Fail, and one into talent-generating leaders, published as Superbosses. Both give clients an evidence base that a typical leadership keynote does not. As Steven Roth Professor of Management at Dartmouth Tuck and Director of the Tuck Executive Program, he is embedded in the executive development the organisations he speaks to actually attend. Thinkers50 recognition, Fellowship of the Academy of Management, and multiple Best Paper Awards provide the independent external validation that boards and chief people officers look for before investing in a headline speaker. His client list, including American Express, Barclays, Boeing, Chevron, Deutsche Bank, GE, Glaxo and Heinz, means his material has been tested in front of some of the same leadership teams his audiences sit in. He presents research-heavy material in plain English, a point the Wall Street Journal called out explicitly in its review of Why Smart Executives Fail. Biography highlights Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College Director of the Tuck Executive Program Author of Superbosses (Penguin Portfolio, 2016) and Why Smart Executives Fail (Penguin Portfolio, 2003), among 20-plus books and 90-plus articles Thinkers50 ranked management thinker Fellow of the Academy of Management; Academy of Management Executive Best Paper Awards (1997, 2004) Regular BBC contributor; consulting clients including American Express, Barclays, Boeing, Chevron, Deutsche Bank, GE, Glaxo and Heinz Biography Why executives fail is a more answerable question than most organisations assume. Sydney Finkelstein’s career has been built around answering it. As Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and Director of the Tuck Executive Program, he has spent two decades combining academic rigour with the specifics of named corporate failures, a body of work that is now a standard reference in leadership and strategy literature. Why Smart Executives Fail, published in 2003 by Penguin Portfolio, remains the book that sets out the diagnostic pattern. The Wall Street Journal described it as «a marvel, a jargon-free business book based on serious research». His subsequent book, Superbosses, took the opposite question, why some leaders produce more outstanding talent than their peers, and spent ten years answering it through figures ranging from Ralph Lauren, Lorne Michaels and George Lucas to hedge fund founder Julian Robertson and chef Alice Waters. The thesis has since shaped how senior HR and CEO succession teams think about talent generation at the top of organisations. Finkelstein is one of the recurring names on the Thinkers50 list, a Fellow of the Academy of Management and the recipient of multiple Academy of Management Executive Best Paper Awards in 1997 and 2004. His writing extends beyond books to more than 90 articles, and he contributes regularly to the BBC. The consulting and speaking work sits with organisations including American Express, Barclays, Boeing, Chevron, Deutsche Bank, GE, Glaxo and Heinz. For boards and executive teams facing difficult succession, integration or leadership-change questions, the useful thing about Finkelstein is the combination of research archive and plain-language delivery. He arrives with frameworks his audiences have probably read in HBR, but with the corporate case material to apply them without slipping into abstraction. Key speaking topics Why smart executives fail Superbosses and talent-generating leadership Leadership decision-making under pressure Strategic renewal and «built to change» organisations Succession, talent pipelines and HR strategy for the C-suite Innovation leadership Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees working through succession, turnaround or post-M&A leadership decisions CHROs and heads of executive development designing senior leadership and succession programmes Corporate universities and executive education programmes looking for a Thinkers50 headliner with teaching credentials Industry conferences and CEO summits where research-grade leadership content is expected Audience outcomes A specific framework for identifying the decision patterns that precede executive failure The Superbosses model of talent generation, translated into practical leadership behaviours Named case material drawn from high-profile corporate failures and successes, usable in the audience’s own context Reference points that connect academic research with clients including American Express, Barclays, Boeing and GE A sharper view of the link between leadership behaviour, talent pipeline and long-run organisational performance