Executive Development speakers

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

Why organisations work with Nicholas Janni His Leader as Healer framework provides a named, structured diagnosis – the dominant “leader-as-executor” model produces measurable fragmentation in organisations – and a practical developmental map for what replaces it, validated by a major book award and embedded in IMD executive programmes. His background as a RADA-trained theatre director is the methodological foundation of his work, not a biographical detail – it is why his approach to embodied leadership presence and performance under pressure has a rigour that purely cognitive or academic development lacks. He bridges executive education at one of the world’s leading business schools (IMD) and direct coaching with senior leadership teams, reaching the level of intellectual rigour and applied practice that board-level audiences require. He addresses the specific failure mode that formal leadership development typically cannot: the gap between a leader’s strategic intelligence and their actual capacity to create trust, genuine engagement and high performance in a room. Biography highlights Author of Leader as Healer (LID Publishing, 2022), winner of Business Book of the Year and Leadership Book of the Year at the Business Book Awards 2023, selected from over 300 nominated titles Visiting Professor of Leadership at IMD Business School, Lausanne; previously Associate Fellow at Oxford Said Business School (2010-15); continues to teach regularly at Oxford Said Former theatre director who taught acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London Co-founded Olivier Mythodrama (2001), an arts-based leadership development consultancy; founded CORE PRESENCE (2013); co-founded Matrix Development (2023) Previous Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management Clients have included Rolls-Royce, Swiss Re, Intel, Microsoft, FedEx and senior UK government figures including Permanent Secretaries Biography Leadership competence and leadership presence are not the same thing. Organisations invest heavily in the former – analytical capability, strategic clarity, execution discipline – and then discover that the latter is what determines whether a team actually performs. This gap is the problem Nicholas Janni has spent his career addressing. His book Leader as Healer (LID Publishing) was named Business Book of the Year at the Business Book Awards 2023. It makes a specific argument: the dominant “leader-as-executor” model, built around rational analysis and transactional relationships, produces fragmentation rather than coherence. The antidote is not softer management but a more complete form of leadership – one that integrates “being” with “doing”, emotional intelligence with analytical rigour, presence with performance. As Visiting Professor of Leadership at IMD Business School, Janni works with senior executives inside some of the world’s most demanding executive education programmes. His methodology draws on 30 years of research into peak performance and human potential. It began in his first career as a theatre director: he taught acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and directed his own company, developing a rigorous, practical understanding of presence and performance that he has since applied directly to executive leadership. The practical result is a distinctive approach to developing leaders – one that expands perceptual bandwidth, emotional coherence and depth of presence alongside strategic capability. He co-founded Olivier Mythodrama, a pioneering arts-based leadership consultancy, before building CORE PRESENCE and, most recently, co-founding Matrix Development, a practice dedicated to transformational executive coaching and coach training. Key speaking topics Leadership presence and embodied performance The Leader as Healer framework Transformational leadership and inner development Emotional intelligence and regulation in leadership Peak performance and the integration of being and doing Mindfulness and presence practices for executive audiences Building high-performance team cultures Creativity and the conditions for innovation Ideal for C-suite executives and senior leadership teams seeking to develop the inner dimensions of leadership performance CHROs and executive development leads designing high-level leadership programmes Business school executive education programmes and corporate leadership academies Organisations navigating sustained complexity where the quality of leadership presence is a performance-critical factor Audience outcomes A clear understanding of the “leader-as-executor” versus “leader-as-healer” distinction, and what it means practically for their own leadership approach Practical techniques for developing presence, deep listening and emotional coherence in high-stakes leadership contexts A framework for distinguishing between “doing” and “being” as leadership modes, and how integrating both drives sustained performance Greater self-awareness of how personal perceptual and emotional patterns affect team culture, trust and decision quality Specific practices drawn from Janni’s work that can be applied independently after the session

Why organisations work with Nick Jankel He works with senior executives as a peer rather than an outsider. His position lets him challenge leadership teams in the room and stay engaged across the programmes that follow, which is the difference between a keynote that lands and a keynote that fades by the next quarter. Bio-Transformation® (BTX®) is one of the few leadership frameworks built from medical science and philosophy of science rather than consulting practice. The argument that change fails when leaders apply machine logic to living systems is a defensible intellectual position, not a packaging exercise. His Cambridge Triple First in Medicine and Philosophy of Science, combined with twenty-five years applying the framework inside organisations, gives senior leaders a rare combination: a scientist’s argument about human behaviour and a practitioner’s instinct for what works in the room. Across roughly 250 executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel, the methodology has shaped the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives. His keynotes are designed as interventions: customised, experiential, and built to move leaders toward leading change, AI transition, or transformation, rather than simply describing why it matters. Biography highlights Cambridge Triple First (summa cum laude) in Medicine and Philosophy of Science; clinical medicine at UCL Co-founder and CEO of Switch On Leadership, designer of executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel Creator of the Bio-Transformation® (BTX) methodology, a neuroscience-based framework for individual, team, and organisational change Roughly 250 executive leadership development and transformation programmes designed and delivered, shaping the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives Author of multiple books on leadership and transformation, including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014); work translated into Chinese Lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley; media coverage in the Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian Transformation coach on BBC and MTV television series; spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit Biography Most senior leaders are now asked to lead change, AI transition, and transformation in parallel, often without the time to recover between cycles. The standard answer is to equip them with better strategy. The harder answer, and the one Nick Jankel has spent twenty-five years working on, is that under pressure most leaders default to protecting rather than adapting, and no amount of strategic clarity rewrites that biology. Jankel arrived at this argument by an unusual route. He studied medicine and philosophy of science at Cambridge, graduating with a Triple First, before training in clinical medicine at UCL. He then moved into brand strategy at TBWA/Chiat Day on accounts including PlayStation and Nike. Bio-Transformation® (BTX®), the methodology he later built, draws on all three: a clinician’s view of human systems, a philosopher’s account of how knowledge changes under pressure, and a practitioner’s understanding of how people actually choose. As co-founder of Switch On Leadership, Jankel applies BTX through senior executive interventions, leadership team development, and enterprise-wide programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel. Roughly 250 programmes and 100,000 leaders have been built around the methodology to date. He has explored the underlying ideas in books including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014), and lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley. What separates his keynote work is the deliberate refusal to treat the keynote as a speech. The session is designed as an intervention, customised to a leadership group’s actual change agenda and built to move people, not only inform them. The Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian have covered his work; he has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit, and hosted transformation-focused series for the BBC and MTV. Key speaking topics Executive leadership development under pressure Leading change, AI transition, and transformation Neuroscience of organisational change and human adaptation Adaptive leadership and senior team capability Leadership for the age of generative AI Bio-Transformation® methodology and applied complexity science Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams leading transformation, AI transition, or large-scale organisational change CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning executive leadership development programmes at top-50, top-100, or top-500 leader scale Boards and executive committees seeking a science-backed perspective on why standard leadership development underdelivers in conditions of sustained pressure Innovation, transformation, and AI leads in regulated or complex sectors including pharma, financial services, and government Audience outcomes Senior leaders leave with a working understanding of why their organisation’s last change programme stalled at the human level, framed through the Control-and-Protect vs Create-and-Connect distinction at the heart of BTX® Practical tools for regulating stress responses and shifting leadership defaults under live pressure, applicable inside the room and after the event A shared language for naming the human dynamics of change at senior team level, so the work continues without him A clearer view of what generative AI specifically asks of leaders, distinct from what it asks of technology functions Visible movement, not only information: the session is designed to leave leaders ready to lead the next phase of change, not only to think about it

Why organisations work with Nick Tasler He gives leaders a working model of change, Change, Grow, Win, drawn from five books on decision science and his 2025 book Your Year of Wonders, and tested with senior teams at Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, 3M, and Accenture. He names the failure mode most change programmes miss: the strongest performers often resist change hardest, recasting fear as a reasoned objection. He calls it FOFO (Fear Of Falling Off), and shows leaders how to read it and reverse it. He reframes resilience itself, arguing that returning to your original form is the wrong goal after a shock. Buyers get a sharper definition of adaptation than the usual “stay strong” message. His ideas are pre-edited for working leaders through Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, so keynote content arrives tested on the audience it is meant for. He runs Decision Pulse, an assessment platform, so the keynote connects to a diagnostic and a workshop rather than ending at the stage. Biography highlights Organizational psychologist and founder of Decision Pulse, advising senior leaders on change and decision-making. Author of five books, including Your Year of Wonders (2025), which sets out his Change to Grow to Win framework. Leadership columnist for Harvard Business Review; contributor to Psychology Today and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Former Director of Research and Development at TalentSmart, the source of his first book, The Impulse Factor. Keynote work with Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, 3M, Accenture, Wells Fargo, Dell, Royal Bank of Canada, the Wharton School, and Yale University. Biography Change programmes stall at the level of individual decisions, not strategy decks. The people who stall them are frequently the strongest performers, the ones with the most to lose, who recast their fear as a reasoned objection to the plan. Most leaders read that as a skills gap and spend on training that was never the problem. Tasler’s name for the fear is FOFO (Fear Of Falling Off), and naming it is half the fix. His wider model, Change, Grow, Win, is set out in his 2025 book Your Year of Wonders and built on four earlier books on decision science, from The Impulse Factor to Ricochet. The throughline across all five: leaders and teams who decide well under uncertainty grow faster than those who wait for clarity. The credentials are operational. He began at Accenture, ran research and development at TalentSmart, the consultancy behind The Impulse Factor, and now writes for Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, translating decision science for working managers. He has lectured at the Wharton School and Yale. His edge in a crowded change field is the diagnostic posture. Decision Pulse, the consultancy he founded, pairs each keynote with an assessment and a workshop, so a leadership team leaves with specific decisions to make and a way to measure them. The claim a board can act on: resistance from your best people is rarely a capability problem, and it shifts faster than any training budget can. Key speaking topics Leading organisational change The psychology of change resistance Decision-making under uncertainty High-performer engagement through change Behavioural science for leaders Resilience and adaptation Strategy-to-execution Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams entering or mid-way through a major transition. CHROs and chief transformation officers responsible for change adoption. Leadership development programmes for high-potential and newly senior managers. Sales and revenue leadership teams whose top performers face new rules or markets. Audience outcomes A shared model, Change, Grow, Win, a team can apply to a change already underway. A way to spot FOFO (Fear Of Falling Off) in their strongest people, and a method to reverse it without a training programme. A sharper definition of resilience, drawn from Ricochet, aimed at adaptation instead of a return to the old form. Specific decisions to make on Monday, attached to the change in front of them.

Why organisations work with Nicky Moffat Direct experience of leading 4,500 officers and soldiers at the Army Personnel Centre, giving her a practical authority on leadership at scale that few civilian speakers can match. A working definition of inclusive leadership built inside an institution where she was, for years, the only woman in the room at her level. Not a theoretical position. A track record of supporting ministerial decision-making during live operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, which translates into credibility with senior leaders facing high-stakes calls under public scrutiny. Story-led delivery grounded in named events and decisions, so the leadership argument lands as a worked example rather than a model on a slide. Biography highlights Brigadier, British Army, 2009 to 2012; highest-ranking woman in the service during that period. Appointed CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours. Former military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon. Named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014. Primary instructor on BBC’s Secret Agent Selection: WW2 (2018), released on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Founder of What Good Leadership Looks Like, working with organisations in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. Biography Leading 4,500 people through continuous restructure tests every assumption a leader has about authority, communication and the limits of their own composure. Nicky Moffat did exactly that as the most senior woman the British Army had, running the Army Personnel Centre and serving as Brigadier from 2009 to 2012. Her career before that was unusual in its proximity to live decisions. As military Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, she was in the room as ministers made calls on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, and during the UK’s Foot and Mouth response. That work shaped a view of leadership as something that has to function under public scrutiny, not in a workshop. She was appointed CBE in 2012. Since leaving the Army she has built What Good Leadership Looks Like, a practice that works with senior teams in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media. The work centres on a question most large organisations now have to answer: how do you keep a workforce engaged and performing through restructure after restructure? She approaches inclusion as part of the answer rather than a parallel conversation, having spent much of her own career as the only woman of her rank in the room. She was named among BBC’s 100 Women in 2014 and was the primary instructor on the BBC series Secret Agent Selection: WW2, broadcast in 2018 and released internationally on Netflix as Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Leading through transformational change Building leadership culture at scale High-performing teams Career transition and self-leadership Women in senior leadership Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding the line through restructure CHROs and people directors rebuilding leadership benches Senior women’s networks and emerging leader programmes Boards and partnerships in financial services, energy, law, healthcare, construction, transport and media Audience outcomes A sharper read on what inclusive leadership actually requires of senior leaders, beyond statements of intent Specific behaviours to keep teams engaged through repeated structural change A reference point for leading at scale drawn from inside one of the UK’s largest hierarchical institutions Practical language for the harder parts of senior leadership, including being the only one of your kind in the room

Why organisations work with Nicolas Krauze He has run the live experiment that most executives only theorise about: leading rooms of 60 to 100 specialists, in real time, with no second take, across more than 20 years of professional practice. Conducting the National Philharmonic of Ukraine and the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe gives him a credible vantage on what holds a team together when conditions are unstable, including the period leading into and through the war in Ukraine. He has worked with named soloists at the top of the global classical scene, including Renaud Capucon and Alexandre Kantorow, which gives executives a working answer to managing high-status individual talent inside a collective performance. The Sciences Po background means his corporate conferences are framed for senior commercial audiences, not as a music appreciation event. Clients including KPMG France, Groupe Chargeurs and Bluelink have hosted him with their global leadership groups. He works in French and English with equal precision, useful for European and multinational audiences who want a senior keynote that holds the room in either language. Biography highlights Principal Guest Conductor, National Philharmonic of Ukraine, 2018 to 2022, the first foreigner to hold the role. Musical and Artistic Director, Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe, with more than 400 concerts leading the ensemble. Graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with five first prizes, and of the Moscow Gnessin Institute. Conducting studies under Zsolt Nagy and Christoph Eschenbach. Has conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Wiener Concert-Verein, Arena di Verona Symphony, Athens State Symphony, and Lviv State Philharmonic, among others. Degree from Sciences Po Paris; works as a corporate speaker in French and English. Biography A symphony orchestra is one of the few professional environments where 80 people have to make a single coordinated decision every second, without speaking, in front of a paying audience. Nicolas Krauze has run that environment for two decades. The leadership question he addresses for organisations comes out of that practice directly: how do you get expert individuals to subordinate their judgement to a shared interpretation without losing what makes them expert in the first place. His conducting career covers the full institutional range. He is Musical and Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe in Paris, where he has led more than 400 concerts. From 2018 to 2022 he was Principal Guest Conductor of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the first foreigner to hold the position. He has conducted orchestras including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Wiener Concert-Verein, the Arena di Verona Symphony and the Athens State Symphony, and has worked with soloists at the level of Renaud Capucon and Alexandre Kantorow. He trained at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he earned five first prizes, and at the Moscow Gnessin Institute, under conductors including Zsolt Nagy and Christoph Eschenbach. He also holds a degree from Sciences Po Paris, which shapes how he frames his work for executive audiences. His corporate conferences, delivered since 2018 in French and English, have been booked by KPMG France, Groupe Chargeurs and Bluelink, among others. What he gives executives is not a metaphor exercise. The conductor’s job is to set the interpretation, hold the tempo, signal the entries, manage individual ego inside a collective sound, and recover when something goes wrong in front of an audience. Those are the same problems a chief executive faces in a senior team. Krauze translates the craft, not the imagery. Key speaking topics Leadership and management Team cohesion and collective performance Motivation inside high-expertise groups Diversity of talent inside a single shared outcome Trust, delegation and dialogue at senior level Performance under live conditions Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams who want to sharpen how they actually work together HR and L&D leaders running offsites focused on team cohesion or collective performance CEO and chair-level audiences at client events where the brief calls for a memorable keynote with senior substance Multinational audiences requiring a speaker who works at executive level in French and English Audience outcomes A working model of what trust, tempo and clear signalling look like inside a high-performing team A sharper sense of how a leader manages high-status individual talent without losing collective coherence Specific reference points from professional conducting that executives can carry back into their own meetings and decision rhythms A keynote experience that is unusual enough to be remembered and discussed inside the organisation afterwards

Why organisations work with Nigel Risner He gives senior leaders a working language for personality difference inside their own teams, the Zoo Keeper model of Lions, Monkeys, Elephants, and Dolphins, that they can use in the next leadership meeting. He is one of six UK holders of the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence (PSAE) from the Professional Speakers Association, a peer-judged credential that signals platform craft of a different order from a typical motivational keynote. He is the only speaker named Speaker of the Year by all four major CEO peer-advisory networks in Europe (Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, TEC, and Footdown), which is the closest thing the CEO peer-group market has to a buying signal. His material is built from running a brokerage as one of the UK’s youngest CEOs and rebuilding after the late-1980s financial crash, so the leadership content is grounded in operating experience, not theory. He works at any audience size, from a 12-person CEO peer group to conference rooms of several thousand, with the same delivery discipline. Biography highlights Author of “The Impact Code: Live the Life You Deserve” (Capstone) and its follow-up “The Impact Code at Work”. Author of “It’s a Zoo Around Here: The new rules for better communication”, the source text of his Zoo Keeper personality framework. Author of “You Had Me at Hello: The new rules for better networking”. One of six UK speakers awarded the PSAE (Professional Speaking Award of Excellence) by the Professional Speakers Association. Speaker of the Year for Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, The Executive Committee, and Footdown. Client work spans BT, BSkyB, Pfizer, GSK, Siemens, HSBC, Pepsi, British Airways, Marks and Spencer, and Royal Bank of Scotland. Biography Most leadership problems inside large organisations look strategic and turn out to be communicative. A capable executive briefs a team, the team agrees in the room, and three weeks later the work has not moved. The diagnosis is usually that the leader spoke in their own dominant style and assumed the rest of the room would translate. Nigel Risner has built a twenty-year speaking career around fixing exactly that gap. His Zoo Keeper framework, drawn from his book “It’s a Zoo Around Here: The new rules for better communication”, gives leaders a fast, memorable way to read the personalities in front of them: Lions who want results, Monkeys who want energy, Elephants who want detail, Dolphins who want harmony. The point is operational. A leader who can flex into all four registers gets decisions made in the meeting rather than relitigated by email afterwards. The credential layer is unusual for a motivational speaker. Risner holds the PSAE from the Professional Speakers Association, a peer-judged award held by only six UK speakers, and is the only speaker in Europe to have been named Speaker of the Year by Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, The Executive Committee, and Footdown. Those four bodies are the gatekeepers for CEO peer-advisory work in Europe, which is why his material reads as built for boards and executive teams rather than for general audiences. His later books, “The Impact Code: Live the Life You Deserve” and “The Impact Code at Work”, widen the same argument into executive presence and personal credibility. The throughline is consistent. Senior leaders are paid for the impact they have on other people in a room, and that impact is a learnable craft, not an inherited trait. Key speaking topics Leadership communication and executive presence Personality and behavioural styles in teams Building high-trust senior teams Influence and personal impact for senior leaders Leading through change and disruption Networking and first-impression effectiveness Motivation and peak performance for executive groups Ideal for CEO peer-advisory groups (Vistage, Academy for Chief Executives, YPO style forums) where the audience is operating leaders Senior leadership offsites where the brief is “we are not communicating well as a team” Sales and client-facing leadership conferences focused on influence and presence Newly promoted senior leaders in formal executive development programmes Audience outcomes A practical model for identifying the four dominant personality styles in their own team and adjusting how they brief, sell, and decide A clearer read on which behaviours are reducing their personal impact at senior level Specific habits for opening meetings, opening conversations, and opening relationships in the first ten seconds Renewed appetite for leading the team rather than working around it A shared vocabulary the leadership team can carry into the next 90 days of meetings

Why organisations work with Nikki Bhamra Her frameworks for identifying blind spots and challenging assumptions come directly from twenty years of investigative work in human trafficking and serious organised crime – professional contexts where flawed judgement had irreversible consequences, not theoretical ones. She makes a specific, teachable argument: that most leadership failures are not information problems but reasoning problems caused by how leaders question, filter, and challenge what they already know. As a certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner, she combines forensic thinking with structured behavioural profiling, enabling her to work at depth on team dynamics and communication, not only from the keynote stage. Her work has been applied in regulated, high-accountability environments: the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and financial services: organisations where decision quality and trust are operational risks, not soft skills. She has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme, applying her investigative-informed approach to decision quality and trust to senior leadership development. Biography highlights Senior Crime Investigator for over two decades, leading complex operations into human trafficking and serious organised crime in UK law enforcement Founder and CEO of Peak Potential Group, a bespoke leadership development company Certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner CIPD-qualified; member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Professional Speaking Association Has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme TEDx speaker; Highly Commended, Speaker Bookers Choice, Speaker Awards Clients include Metro Bank, the NHS, and the Crown Prosecution Service Biography Nikki Bhamra spent over two decades as a Senior Crime Investigator in UK law enforcement, leading operations into human trafficking and serious organised crime. In that environment, an unchallenged assumption or a question left unasked could have irreversible consequences. The discipline required to surface the truth – not the convenient version – is the foundation of everything she now brings to organisations. Her central argument is precise and useful: most leadership errors are not caused by a lack of information. They are caused by how leaders question, filter, and challenge the information already in front of them. Blind spots, confirmation bias, and the absence of psychological safety allow flawed thinking to compound quietly, in everyday conversations, not only in moments of obvious crisis. The cost shows up in decisions, culture, and trust. Bhamra is a certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner and CIPD-qualified, which means she operates at both the conceptual and structural levels: forensic questioning frameworks alongside behavioural profiling, tailored to the specific dynamics of a leadership team. She is Founder and CEO of Peak Potential Group, through which she delivers bespoke leadership programmes as well as keynotes. Her work has been applied in regulated, high-accountability environments: the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and financial services. She has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme. She is a TEDx speaker and was recognised as Highly Commended in the Speaker Bookers Choice category at the Speaker Awards. Key speaking topics Leadership decision-making under pressure Blind spots, bias, and judgement errors Forensic questioning and evidence-based reasoning Trust-building in high-stakes environments Psychological safety and speaking up High-performance team dynamics Communication in complex and regulated environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive cohorts in high-pressure, complex, or regulated industries Risk, compliance, and governance functions where decision quality and trust are operationally critical CHROs and L&D leaders building leadership capability programmes with a behavioural science foundation Boards and transformation leads treating decision quality and leadership culture as measurable strategic risks Audience outcomes A practical framework for identifying blind spots and surfacing unchecked assumptions before they affect decisions or culture Structured questioning techniques drawn from investigative practice, applicable immediately to leadership conversations and team dynamics Greater understanding of how confirmation bias, selective attention, and faulty assumption affect judgement – and what to do about it Concrete approaches to building psychological safety and trust in teams, grounded in behavioural evidence rather than aspiration Increased awareness of the everyday communication patterns that either strengthen or erode credibility and leadership effectiveness under pressure

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

Why organisations work with Noah St. John He owns a named, trademarked methodology, AFFORMATIONS, that gives leadership audiences a concrete cognitive tool rather than abstract mindset language. His Power Habits framework targets the unconscious patterns behind executive decision-making, an angle most leadership content treats as out of scope. He is one of very few authors with books carried by HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, and Nightingale-Conant, a catalogue that reflects sustained editorial credibility across mainstream, business, and personal development publishing. He has built a body of work specifically for leaders trying to translate self-awareness into changed behaviour, which is the gap most senior development programmes leave open. Biography highlights PhD in Pastoral Counseling Psychology; founder and CEO of SuccessClinic.com since 1997. Creator of AFFORMATIONS, a trademarked questioning-based method, and the Power Habits System. Author of 27 books translated into 18 languages, including Power Habits (Nightingale-Conant), The Book of Afformations, and Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money. Published by HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, Nightingale-Conant, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher. TEDx speaker: «Done with Head Trash: A New Way to Think About Thinking» (TEDxMizner, Boca Raton). Media appearances and features across ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Parade, SUCCESS Magazine, and Entrepreneur. Biography Most leadership development assumes the bottleneck is knowledge. Senior leaders almost always know what good looks like. The harder problem is that decisions, energy, and recovery under pressure run on internal scripts that were never deliberately chosen, and rarely change through more information. Noah St. John has spent nearly three decades inside that gap. In 1997 he coined AFFORMATIONS, a method that replaces traditional affirmation with empowering questions designed to bypass the brain’s habitual rejection of unearned positive statements. The technique is now trademarked and forms the spine of his Power Habits System, a framework aimed at the unconscious patterns that govern how high performers behave when stretched. His written work spans 27 books in 18 languages, with editorial homes at HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, Nightingale-Conant, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher. Power Habits, his Nightingale-Conant title, sets out the operating model. Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money applies it to the financial decisions and self-talk that quietly shape leader behaviour. He holds a PhD in Pastoral Counseling Psychology and runs SuccessClinic.com as its founder and CEO. His TEDx talk, «Done with Head Trash: A New Way to Think About Thinking,» compresses the argument: knowledge alone does not change behaviour, but a better question often does. Key speaking topics AFFORMATIONS and the cognitive science of empowering questions Power Habits for executive performance Self-talk, decision quality, and the unconscious mind Sales mindset and revenue performance Leadership under pressure and personal resilience Mindset and the human side of AI adoption Ideal for CEOs, founders, and senior operators looking to translate self-awareness into changed behaviour Sales leadership and high-performing revenue teams Leadership development programmes that want a behavioural-change tool, not another conceptual framework Conferences seeking a peak-performance keynote with a named, owned methodology Audience outcomes A working knowledge of AFFORMATIONS as a daily cognitive practice, with the mechanics for applying it A clearer view of which unconscious habits are driving current decisions and results Specific shifts in self-talk language that audiences can take into the next week of work A sharper read on the gap between what they intend as leaders and how they actually behave under load

Why organisations work with Oleg Konovalov He has codified vision as a working leadership skill in The Vision Code (Wiley, 2021), drawing on primary interviews with senior visionary leaders rather than abstracted theory. He was named #1 Global Leading Coach at the Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Awards, a credible signal of standing among working executive coaches. His Visionary Leadership Framework gives boards and executive committees a shared vocabulary for diagnosing where a vision is failing, before it shows up in numbers. He works on the C-suite side of the desk: the brief is usually about getting senior teams aligned and credible to their own organisations, not motivational set pieces. His earlier books on organisational anatomy and corporate culture mean he can connect a vision conversation to the structural and cultural conditions that allow it to land. Biography highlights Doctoral degree, Durham University Business School. Author of The Vision Code (Wiley, 2021), with foreword by Marshall Goldsmith. Author of LEADEROLOGY, Corporate Superpower, Organisational Anatomy, Hidden Russia, and The Fisherman’s Path to Leadership. Named #1 Global Leading Coach, Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Awards. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Award in Leadership, 2021. Listed in Global Gurus Top 30 in Leadership; Forbes contributor. Biography Most corporate visions do not survive contact with the operating year. They sit on a wall, get quoted in townhalls, and quietly disconnect from the decisions executives actually make. Oleg Konovalov’s work begins from that disconnect, and treats vision as a measurable leadership skill rather than a communications artefact. The Vision Code, published by Wiley in 2021 with a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith, set out his Visionary Leadership Framework. The book is built on primary interviews with senior leaders across industries, including Garry Ridge of WD-40 and the branding strategist Martin Lindstrom, and it argues that vision can be diagnosed, taught, and executed with the same rigour as any other senior capability. His earlier books, including LEADEROLOGY, Organisational Anatomy, and Corporate Superpower, sit alongside that work and connect the vision conversation to organisational design and culture. He holds a doctorate from Durham University Business School and writes regularly for Forbes. The recognition reflects working credibility with senior leaders rather than a media profile alone. He was named #1 Global Leading Coach at the Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Awards, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Award in Leadership, and listed in the Global Gurus Top 30 in Leadership. Key speaking topics Visionary leadership Vision execution and strategy alignment Corporate culture in the digital era Leadership in disruption Organisational diagnosis Executive coaching and C-suite development Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting or resetting strategic direction Board chairs and non-executive directors assessing senior leadership capability CHROs and chief learning officers designing senior leadership development Founders and scale-up leaders translating ambition into an operating vision Audience outcomes A working definition of vision that can be tested against the organisation’s current direction A diagnostic for where a stated vision is failing inside the leadership team A clearer view of how culture, structure, and vision interact in execution Practical questions senior leaders can take into their next strategy or board conversation

Why organisations work with Oliver Bierhoff His perspective is executive, not athletic. He spent 18 years running one of world football’s most scrutinised national programmes – managing coaching changes, institutional restructuring, and major tournament cycles – as a director, not a player. He has managed through both sides of accountability. He was part of Germany’s 2014 World Cup-winning operation and was the senior official who left following the 2022 Qatar group-stage exit. Few speakers can speak with equal authority about sustaining success and owning failure. The structural reform he led at the DFB – unifying men’s football, women’s football, and the national academy under one strategy for the first time in German football history – is a transferable case study in how large institutions resist and achieve meaningful integration. His current advisory roles span strategy consulting (McKinsey & Company), American professional sport (New England Patriots), and sports investment (FINVIA Sports GmbH) – he is operating at the intersection of sport, finance, and organisational strategy, not stepping back from it. He holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business economics and conducted his studies by correspondence during his playing career, a signal of intellectual intent that goes beyond the typical athlete-to-speaker trajectory. Biography highlights Scored the first «Golden Goal» in major international football history – Germany’s Euro 96 final – and earned 70 caps, scoring 37 goals for the national team Serie A top scorer in 1997–98 (27 goals); Serie A champion with AC Milan in 1998–99; holds the league record for most headed goals in a single season (15) Appointed Germany’s first national team manager in 2004; part of the management structure that delivered the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2017 Confederations Cup Served as DFB Director of National Teams & Academy from 2018–2022; first to unify women’s football, men’s football, and the national academy under a single organisational strategy in German football history Business Advisor to the New England Patriots (DACH region); Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company; Chairman and Co-Founder of FINVIA Sports GmbH Diplom-Kaufmann in business economics, University of Hagen, completed by correspondence during his professional playing career Biography Oliver Bierhoff scored the first Golden Goal in major international football history in Euro 96 and went on to become Serie A’s leading scorer, a champion with AC Milan, and a 70-cap Germany international. Most sports speakers stop there. What followed was the more instructive part of his career. In 2004, he was appointed Germany’s first national team manager – a role created specifically to bridge players, coaches, sponsors, and the football association across multiple coaching cycles. He held that responsibility through the 2014 FIFA World Cup win in Brazil and the 2017 Confederations Cup, before being elevated to Director of National Teams & Academy in 2018. In this role, he integrated men’s football, women’s football, and the DFB Academy under a single department and unified strategy – the first time this had been done in German football history – and launched the «Project Future» youth development programme in partnership with the German Football League. That tenure ended in December 2022, when Germany were eliminated in the group stage of the Qatar World Cup. Bierhoff accepted accountability and left by mutual agreement. That willingness to be held responsible for outcomes – not just processes – is the thread that runs through everything he says about performance culture and leadership under scrutiny. Since leaving the DFB, he has moved into strategic advisory work at a level that goes beyond sport: Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company, Business Advisor to the New England Patriots for their DACH market expansion, and Chairman and Co-Founder of FINVIA Sports GmbH, a sports investment vehicle. He holds a business economics degree completed by correspondence during his playing career. The organisations that work with him are not looking for a former footballer with motivational stories. They are looking for someone who built systems, owned consequences, and kept operating. Key speaking topics Building performance cultures in institutional organisations Leadership continuity across coaching and management transitions Accountability and decision-making under public scrutiny Structural integration and organisational reform in complex institutions Translating elite team sport into business performance frameworks Pressure, resilience, and the psychology of competitive environments The business of sport: investment, strategy, and international expansion Ideal for Executive leadership teams and C-suite audiences focused on performance culture and organisational resilience CHROs, Chief People Officers, and transformation leads navigating structural change Organisations rebuilding or reorienting after public setbacks or leadership transitions Sports business, private equity, and investment audiences interested in the intersection of elite sport and institutional strategy Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing performance culture from performance results, and why the gap between them causes most high-profile failures Practical perspective on managing accountability across leadership transitions without sacrificing stability Insight into how institutional restructuring actually works at executive level: what changes, what resists, and what determines whether integration sticks A more honest lens on public failure: what it demands of leaders, how to process it, and how to use it without being defined by it Transferable lessons from an 18-year executive career in one of world sport’s most scrutinised environments