Executive Development speakers

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 Henman The pressure he performed under was not generic high-stakes pressure. It was sustained, nationally televised, and deeply personal, with British tennis’s entire public narrative resting on each Wimbledon fortnight for nearly a decade. That specific form of high-visibility, high-expectation performance is directly legible to leaders who carry organisational reputation on their results. His record demonstrates competitive consistency rather than isolated peaks: six Grand Slam semi-finals across all four major surfaces, across two distinct periods of competitive form, while sustaining a top-10 ATP ranking across multiple seasons. The argument he makes about sustained performance is grounded in measurable, verifiable results. As an AELTC board member, he speaks from a position few sports speakers occupy; not only as a former competitor, but as an active participant in the governance of one of the world’s most scrutinised sporting institutions, with direct experience of its most consequential decisions. His 2020 captaincy of Great Britain at the inaugural ATP Cup provides specific, recent experience of leading a team of elite, independent individuals in a compressed, high-pressure competition: a format with obvious organisational parallels for senior leaders managing high-performing, high-ego teams. Two decades immersed in Wimbledon – as competitor, board member, and BBC commentator – means he speaks from the inside of a complex sporting and commercial operation across all its dimensions, not from match-day memory alone. Biography highlights Former ATP world No. 4 in men’s singles; British No. 1 continuously from 1999 to 2005 Six Grand Slam semi-finals: four at Wimbledon (1998, 1999, 2001, 2002), plus the French Open and US Open (both 2004) 11 ATP singles titles, including the 2003 Paris Masters (ATP Masters 1000); 4 ATP doubles titles (15 combined) Olympic silver medallist, men’s doubles, 1996 Atlanta Games (with Neil Broad) OBE, 2004 New Year Honours, for services to tennis Board member, All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), the governing body of Wimbledon BBC Wimbledon commentator and analyst since 2008 Great Britain captain, inaugural ATP Cup, Sydney, 2020 Founder, Tim Henman Foundation (education and health support for disadvantaged young people) Biography For a decade, every British summer began with the same question: would this be Tim Henman’s year? The weight of expectation he carried – sustained, public, and deeply personal – shaped him as a competitor in ways that resonate directly with leaders. As Britain’s world No. 4 and British No. 1 from 1999 to 2005, he performed year after year under conditions few professional athletes encounter and fewer corporate high-performers can imagine. His record spans six Grand Slam semi-finals across all four major surfaces: four at Wimbledon, and semi-final runs at both the French Open and US Open in 2004, the latter confirming a second competitive peak well into his career. His 2003 Paris Masters title, won with consecutive victories over three top-ten players, remains one of British tennis’s landmark single-tournament performances. That consistency, sustained across two distinct periods and multiple surfaces, is the foundation of what he brings to the platform. Since retiring in 2007, Henman has not stepped back from elite sport. He joined the board of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, contributing to institutional decisions, including the management of the 2020 cancellation and the transition to AI-assisted line-calling, from inside Wimbledon’s governance. He captained Great Britain at the inaugural ATP Cup in Sydney in 2020, leading a squad that included Andy Murray. He has been a BBC Wimbledon commentator since 2008, translating elite performance for broad audiences across more than fifteen competitive cycles. The Tim Henman Foundation, which he founded to support disadvantaged young people through education and health, reflects a commitment that stretches well beyond the results sheet. Key speaking topics Performing under pressure Competitive resilience and mental discipline Sustained high performance National representation and public expectation Team dynamics in high-stakes competition Athletic-to-leadership transition Preparation, focus, and decision-making under scrutiny Ideal for Senior leadership and executive conferences where competitive mindset, performance culture, and resilience under pressure are central themes Sales and commercial leadership events where the parallels between elite sport and high-stakes commercial performance are directly applicable Sports industry forums, Wimbledon-adjacent hospitality, and British-market events where his cultural profile adds immediate resonance HR and people leadership audiences exploring what sustained high performance looks like in practice, and how organisations can build environments that produce it Audience outcomes A first-person, evidence-grounded perspective on how elite performers maintain output under sustained, high-visibility pressure – not as a set of techniques, but as a practised, testable discipline Understanding of how competitive consistency is built over time: through preparation, surface adaptation, and the ability to perform across conditions rather than only in ideal circumstances Insight into the specific mental challenges of carrying high expectation: when it fuels performance, and when it becomes a liability Practical reflection on what the shift from individual competitor to team leader requires, drawing on experience as both a Davis Cup player and ATP Cup captain A perspective on elite sport that extends beyond the athlete’s experience into institutional governance, offering audiences a more complete picture of what world-class performance systems actually look like from the inside

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

Why organisations work with Tom Clark He works inside one of the most demanding performance environments in elite sport, around 250 days a year on the road with an F1 driver, and brings that operating reality directly into the room. His doctoral research at Liverpool John Moores University on jet lag and travel fatigue in F1 gives him a defensible scientific position on a topic most peak-performance speakers handle anecdotally. He has been part of a Hungarian Grand Prix victory at the level of preparation and recovery, so the marginal-gains argument is grounded in a specific outcome rather than a general claim. He translates Hintsa Performance methodology, the system that shaped modern F1 conditioning, into language and tools senior leaders can apply to their own travel and decision schedules. Biography highlights Head of Performance for Esteban Ocon at Alpine F1, since 2020. Professional Doctorate in Applied Sport and Exercise Science, Liverpool John Moores University, focused on jet lag and travel fatigue in elite motorsport. MSc Athletic Development and Peak Performance, Solent University; BSc Health and Exercise Science, First Class Honours, Solent University. Former performance coach at Hintsa Performance, the consultancy behind much of modern F1 athlete development. Worked alongside Esteban Ocon at his maiden Formula One race win, the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix. Adapted the LJMU Jet Lag Questionnaire into a digital monitoring platform used across an F1 season. Biography A Formula 1 season runs to roughly two dozen races across five continents. The driver is expected to perform at the limit of human reaction time on each one, often within forty-eight hours of landing. Tom Clark is the person who designs the conditions under which that is possible. As Head of Performance for Esteban Ocon at Alpine F1, Clark is responsible for the sleep, training, nutrition, and recovery system that holds a driver’s output steady across a calendar engineered for fatigue. He came into the sport through Hintsa Performance, the consultancy that built the modern playbook for F1 conditioning, and joined Alpine as Senior Performance Coach in 2020. He was part of the team at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ocon’s first Formula One race victory. His doctoral research at Liverpool John Moores University, supervised by Dr Ben Edwards, focuses on jet lag and travel fatigue in elite motorsport. With LJMU colleagues, Clark adapted the university’s Jet Lag Questionnaire into a digital tool used across the F1 season, turning a clinical instrument into operating data. That research connects directly to what senior business audiences face: cumulative time-zone shifts, compressed sleep, and the gap between feeling capable and being capable. What distinguishes him from the wider peak-performance category is the specificity. He is not a former athlete reflecting on a finished career. He is an operator describing a system he runs every weekend, with a named driver, in measurable conditions, and grounding it in published science. Key speaking topics Performance science in elite motorsport Jet lag and travel fatigue in high-stakes environments Circadian rhythms and sleep as performance variables Marginal gains and Formula 1 preparation methodology Mental resilience under continuous competition Routine design for sustained executive output Ideal for C-suite leaders and senior executives whose schedules involve frequent long-haul travel and sustained decision load Sales and commercial leadership teams operating across multiple time zones High-performance teams in finance, professional services, and global operations where output cannot drop with the calendar Leadership development programmes drawing on elite-sport methodology Audience outcomes A working understanding of how circadian disruption affects judgement, mood, and reaction time, and what the data actually shows Specific protocols used inside an F1 team to manage jet lag, sleep, and recovery across long-haul travel A clearer line between preparation and performance, drawn from Formula 1 race weekends rather than business analogy Practical adjustments to routine, light exposure, training, and nutrition that senior leaders can apply inside an existing schedule An honest sense of where marginal gains move the needle and where they do not

Why organisations work with Tom Flatau He brings formal NeuroLeadership Institute accreditation into client rooms, so the brain science behind his coaching is grounded in a recognised body of research rather than self-styled commentary. His firm’s programmes are quality-assured by the Institute of Leadership and Management, which gives L and D buyers a credentialed delivery standard alongside the keynote. Two decades of repeat work with HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates and the BBC means the material has been pressure-tested across regulated finance, consumer goods, engineering, luxury retail and broadcast. He translates neuroplasticity, threat response and bias research into specific leadership practice on negotiation, change communication and team collaboration, so audiences leave with mechanism, not metaphor. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Teamworking International, with custom leadership programmes quality-assured by the Institute of Leadership and Management. Accredited brain and behaviour specialist trained by the NeuroLeadership Institute. Master’s in Business Analysis and Systems Design; Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management. Long-standing client roster including HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates, American Express, Qatar Airways, British American Tobacco and the BBC. Conference speaker for bodies including the Chartered Institute of Building and the Institute of Directors. Signature keynote portfolio covering the inner game of leadership, the neuroscience of unconscious bias, leading through change, team collaboration, sales mastery and black belt negotiation. Biography Most behaviour change in organisations fails because it stops at the conscious mind. Leaders are taught new frameworks and new vocabulary, then return to the same threat responses, biases and habits the moment a quarter goes sideways. Tom Flatau built Teamworking International around a different premise: that leadership behaviour shifts when the brain underneath it shifts. The credentials matter here. Flatau is an accredited brain and behaviour specialist trained by the NeuroLeadership Institute, holds a Master’s in Business Analysis and Systems Design, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management. His firm’s programmes are quality-assured by the ILM, which is unusual in a market crowded with self-styled neuroscience commentators. For more than two decades, the work has been delivered into HSBC, Unilever, Siemens, Louis Vuitton, Emirates, American Express, Qatar Airways, British American Tobacco and the BBC. Across regulated banking, consumer goods, engineering, luxury and broadcast, the same patterns surface: leaders making decisions under threat, teams misreading each other’s intent, salespeople reverting to scripts. His material translates the relevant brain research into practice for each. His keynote portfolio sits along that line. “The inner game of leadership” examines the subconscious behaviours that erode senior credibility. “The neuroscience of unconscious bias” treats bias as a wiring problem with intervention points, not a values lecture. “Black belt negotiation” and “Sales mastery: hello science, goodbye myths” apply the same lens to deal-making. The throughline is mechanism: what is happening in the brain, and what to do about it. Key speaking topics Applied neuroscience for leadership Neuroscience of unconscious bias Leading through change Executive coaching and the inner game of leadership Mindset and team collaboration Negotiation and influence Sales behaviour and buyer psychology Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and senior leadership teams are responsible for behaviour change at the top of the organisation CHROs, L and D directors and heads of leadership development, designing accredited leadership pipelines Sales and commercial leadership teams looking to upgrade negotiation and buyer engagement Diversity and inclusion leads who want a brain-science framing of bias rather than a values framing Audience outcomes A working understanding of how stress, threat and reward responses shape leadership decisions in real time Specific mechanisms for interrupting unconscious bias in hiring, promotion and day-to-day team interactions Practical communication moves for leading people through change without losing trust Sharper read on the neuroscience of negotiation and how buyer brains actually respond to influence attempts

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 Tony Martignetti He gives senior leaders a working method for staying composed under chaos, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, drawn from coaching thousands of executives through transition and reinvention. His work draws on a finance and strategy career inside life sciences, so the conversation with a CEO or CFO is operator-to-operator, not coach-to-client. He has built one of the most listened-to long-form leadership interview shows, The Virtual Campfire, and brings 200+ executive conversations into his keynotes as material rather than anecdote. He is published by Routledge on the use of personal narrative in leadership, with a third book on integrated, multidimensional leadership due in 2026, a depth of authorship rare in the resilience and purpose category. He is equally credible with a founder team mid-scale-up and a Fortune 500 leadership group mid-restructure, because the underlying problem, leading from grounded clarity, is the same. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer, Inspired Purpose Partners, after a finance and strategy career across high-tech and life sciences. TEDx speaker whose talk “Don’t Check Yourself at the Door” has passed two million views. Author of “Climbing the Right Mountain” (2021) and “Campfire Lessons for Leaders” (Routledge, 2024), with “Illuminating Hidden Brilliance” forthcoming in 2026. Host of The Virtual Campfire podcast, 200+ episodes of long-form leadership interviews. ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC); MBA, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University. Writes a regular leadership column for Inc., and has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, CEOWORLD, and Life Science Leader; named a Top Voice in Leadership by Thinkers360. Biography Composure is now part of the senior leader’s job description. Decisions are sharper, cycles are shorter, and the people in the room read the leader for steadiness before they read the strategy. That is the territory Tony Martignetti works in. He came to it through operations, not theory. Before founding Inspired Purpose Partners, he spent a finance and strategy career across high-tech and life sciences companies, ran a financial consulting practice, and worked alongside founders and boards through capital events and reinvention. The coaching is shaped by that operator’s instinct for what actually moves a decision under pressure. His work runs on two linked ideas. The 6Cs of Grounded Leadership give senior leaders a frame for composure under sustained pressure. Multidimensional leadership, his own term, names a pattern he sees often: capable people fragment themselves to perform, and their sharpest thinking goes dormant. He developed both across two books, including “Campfire Lessons for Leaders,” published by Routledge in 2024, and more than 200 long-form interviews on his podcast, The Virtual Campfire. The audience is the senior leader who has the credentials, the team, and the strategy, and still needs a steadier internal frame to lead from. What they recognise is the substance: a clear, usable practice for leading well when conditions will not settle. That practice has travelled. He writes a regular leadership column for Inc., and his work appears in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes. Thinkers360 names him among its Top Voices in Leadership, and his TEDx talk “Don’t Check Yourself at the Door” has passed two million views. Key speaking topics Grounded leadership under chaos Composure and decision-making for senior leaders Multidimensional leadership Purpose and direction for executives in transition Personal narrative as a leadership instrument Reinvention for founders and senior teams Coaching culture inside leadership teams Ideal for C-suite teams working through reorganisation, integration, or strategic reset Founder and scale-up CEOs entering a new operating phase Senior leadership programmes inside life sciences, technology, and professional services Executive offsites where the brief is composure, clarity, and direction Audience outcomes A working method, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, that a senior leader can apply on Monday morning Sharper criteria for which decisions deserve the leader’s attention and which do not A clearer read on the leader’s own ambition, and whether the current mountain is the right one Practical use of personal story as a tool for trust, alignment, and team direction Language for steadiness that travels across the leadership team, not just the individual

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 Urs Meier He has made the kind of decision most executives describe in hypothetical terms: a single judgement call, contested by 50 million viewers, with no replay, no committee, and no time. The Euro 2004 England vs Portugal aftermath is the case study. He refereed 883 matches, including the 2002 Champions League final and a 2002 World Cup semi-final, and can show how the discipline of decision-making is rehearsed long before the moment arrives. His book Du bist die Entscheidung sets out a working method for acting quickly under uncertainty, drawing on a body of practice rather than borrowed management theory. Two decades as ZDF’s senior football analyst have given him a second skill leaders rarely train: explaining a contested decision clearly, in public, while it is still being argued about. He works in German and English, with a delivery style Süddeutsche Zeitung described as humorous and self-deprecating, useful when the topic is high-stakes mistakes and how to recover from them. Biography highlights FIFA international referee, 1994 to 2004, with 883 senior matches officiated. Referee, 2002 UEFA Champions League final, Real Madrid vs Bayer Leverkusen. Referee, 2002 FIFA World Cup semi-final, Germany vs South Korea. Referee, Euro 2004 quarter-final, England vs Portugal. Author, Du bist die Entscheidung. Schnell und entschlossen handeln, S. Fischer Verlag, 2008. Lead football analyst, ZDF German television, 2005 to 2021. Biography The decision a referee makes in the 90th minute is judged by people who have replays, slow motion, and time. The referee had none of those. That asymmetry, between how a call is made and how it is judged, is the territory Urs Meier has worked in for forty years, first on the pitch and then in front of a camera explaining other referees’ decisions to a national audience. He spent 27 years in active officiating, retiring in December 2004 after 883 matches. The career carried him through a 1998 World Cup, the 2002 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen, and the 2002 World Cup semi-final between Germany and South Korea. Each of those games turned on calls made in seconds, defended for years. His Euro 2004 quarter-final between England and Portugal is the moment that makes the talk land in a corporate room. He disallowed a late Sol Campbell header. The next morning he had roughly 16,000 abusive emails, most from England, and was placed under police protection. He later said he had not seen the foul, but had trusted twenty years of pattern recognition to know one had occurred. That gap, between the visible reasoning and the deeper basis for a call, is exactly what senior leaders wrestle with when they are asked to justify a judgement after the fact. The 2008 book Du bist die Entscheidung sets the practice down on paper: the role of evidence, intuition, and self-trust in fast decisions, and how to convince others once the call is made. He has since worked as ZDF’s senior football pundit through World Cups and European Championships, runs his own Swiss business, and advises on the professionalisation of officiating. The throughline is unusual: a working method for making and explaining hard calls, tested under conditions most leadership case studies have to invent. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Self-leadership and composure Resilience after public criticism Leadership of high-performing teams Fair play and ethics in business Motivation and personal performance Ideal for Executive teams and boards facing high-stakes, time-pressured calls Senior leaders preparing for visible scrutiny, regulator engagement, or media exposure Sales and client-facing leadership groups operating in adversarial environments Annual conferences seeking a substantive keynote on judgement and resilience Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating the act of deciding from the act of being right Concrete examples of how trained intuition complements analysis under time pressure A method for defending a contested decision in public without rewriting it Recognition of how to recover composure and authority after a publicly criticised call Renewed confidence to commit when the information will never be complete

Why organisations work with Vicki Anstey She has tested her own thesis in conditions most leaders will never face: 60 days unsupported across the Pacific, 11 days in the Chilean Andes on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, the Race Across America cycled in under seven days. The frameworks she brings into a boardroom are not theoretical. She translates extreme-environment behaviour into specific decisions a leadership team can act on: how to lead when the team is fatigued, how to make defensible calls under acute stress, how to protect judgment when the operating window narrows. Her commercial track record, two decades in advertising including senior marketing at Eurostar, and a London studio business she has run since 2009, gives her credibility with audiences who default to scepticism about adventurer-speakers. She works with audiences where the stakes are concrete. Booked client list includes JP Morgan, Google, Meta, Avanade, Virgin Media O2 and the LTA, organisations not in the market for inspirational stories detached from operating reality. The Pin Drop Podcast and her TEDxKingstonUponThames talk give buyers and AI tools a verifiable body of public work to reference, beyond the testimonial layer. Biography highlights Two Guinness World Records: unsupported Pacific Ocean row (San Francisco to Hawaii, 2021, with the Girls Who Dare team) and Race Across America (3,000 miles, 6 days 19 hours, 2024). Final stages of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, 2019, among the first female finalists in the show’s history. TEDxKingstonUponThames speaker, “Why fear is a choice”, January 2020. Founder of Barreworks, a London barre studio opened in 2009 after a 20-year career in advertising and senior marketing at Eurostar. Host of The Pin Drop Podcast, interviewing operators and leaders on how they perform at the edge. UK Ambassador for Inspiring Girls International. Biography Most leadership development programmes treat composure as a personality trait. It is closer to a craft. The discipline of staying useful when conditions are bad, when recovery time is short and when the cost of a poor call is real, is teachable, but only by people who have been tested by something harder than a workshop. Vicki Anstey arrived at that argument through a long detour. Two decades in advertising, including a senior marketing role at Eurostar, taught her how high-functioning teams hold together under commercial pressure. Founding Barreworks in London during the 2009 recession taught her how an operator behaves when the business is the only safety net. The endurance work came later and is the evidence base she now draws on with leadership audiences. Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2019, the Pacific Ocean rowed unsupported with the Girls Who Dare team in 2021, the Race Across America cycled in under seven days in 2024. Two Guinness World Records, each set in conditions where the failure mode is not embarrassment but injury or worse. What she does with that material in a corporate room is the work. She breaks down how high-performing teams handle fear, fatigue and disagreement under load, how individuals protect their judgment when the operating window narrows, and what separates the people who keep functioning at the edge from those who freeze. Her TEDxKingstonUponThames talk and The Pin Drop Podcast extend the same argument for buyers who want to see the thinking before they book. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under sustained pressure High-performance team behaviours in extreme environments Psychological safety and trust under load Fear, decision-making and the cost of hesitation Resilience as a trainable capability Female leadership and performance Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams entering periods of acute pressure: restructuring, integration, crisis response, major commercial bets. Sales, trading and front-line client teams whose performance is gated on composure under repeated rejection or volatility. Leadership development programmes for high-potential managers stepping into roles where the stress profile changes faster than the skill set. Audiences where the brief calls for credibility with sceptical senior operators, not generic motivation. Audience outcomes A working model of how composure is built and lost, with named behaviours leaders can practise rather than aspire to. Specific tactics for protecting decision quality when teams are fatigued or fearful. A concrete view of what high-performing teams do differently when conditions deteriorate. An honest account of failure, recovery and the actual cost of operating at the edge, drawn from named expeditions rather than generic anecdote.

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 Vlatka Hlupic A single, evidence-led system of organisational transformation, built from more than two decades of research and field application across companies including GlaxoSmithKline, BP, SAP, Burberry, and the European Commission A measurable diagnostic, the Organisational Health Scan (developed from her 6 Box Leadership instrument), that lets a leadership team baseline its current culture, identify the constraints holding performance back, and track shift over time The intellectual authority of an academic who chairs a faculty position at Hult Ashridge and has published in Harvard Business Review, paired with the practitioner credibility of a CEO running her own consultancy A clear position on what comes after command-and-control management, set out in two books that have been recognised by Forbes, the Axiom Business Book Awards, and the CMI Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Management, Hult Ashridge Executive Education Founder and CEO, Management Shift Solutions Ltd; Founder, Drucker Society London Author of “The Management Shift” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “Humane Capital” (Bloomsbury) “The Management Shift” listed by Forbes among the top eight business books of 2014; winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and CMI Management Articles of the Year 2015 Damehood (non-UK) received 2025 for contribution to humanising business; Think Global People “80 Outstanding Global Women 2025” Featured in Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, and at the Global Peter Drucker Forum Biography Most large organisations are still managed through assumptions that were set in a different industrial cycle. Hierarchy, central control, and extrinsic incentives delivered scale in the twentieth century, but they produce diminishing returns when the work is knowledge-intensive and the workforce expects autonomy. Hlupic’s research argues that the gap between how leaders say they want their organisations to behave and how those organisations actually operate is the single largest drag on engagement and innovation today. Her response is the Management Shift, a five-level model of organisational culture developed across more than a decade of longitudinal research and set out in two books, “The Management Shift” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “Humane Capital” (Bloomsbury). The model describes the steps an organisation moves through as it leaves command-and-control behind, and it sits on top of a diagnostic, the Organisational Health Scan (developed from her 6 Box Leadership instrument), that senior teams use to measure where they actually are. The credentials sit behind the argument, not in front of it. Hlupic is Professor of Leadership and Management at Hult Ashridge Executive Education, Founder and CEO of Management Shift Solutions, and Founder of the Drucker Society London. Her work has been applied inside organisations including GlaxoSmithKline, BP, SAP, Burberry, the European Commission, and the House of Commons. She has contributed to Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, and the Global Peter Drucker Forum. In 2025 she received a non-UK damehood for her contribution to humanising business. Forbes listed “The Management Shift” among the top eight business books of 2014, and the work has since picked up the Axiom Business Book Award and the CMI Management Articles of the Year. The throughline across the academic publications, the books, and the client work is the same: a board that wants better engagement, better innovation, and a more durable culture has to change how it leads, and there is now a tested way to do that. Key speaking topics Conscious leadership and the post-command-and-control organisation The Management Shift framework Organisational culture transformation Employee engagement and human-centric leadership Innovation in knowledge-intensive organisations Future of work and digital transformation Humane capitalism and purpose-driven business Culture due diligence for mergers and acquisitions Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and boards re-examining their operating model after restructure, merger, or digital transformation CHROs and chief people officers leading culture change at enterprise scale Senior leadership teams using diagnostic instruments to baseline culture before and after major change programmes Executive education and leadership development functions in large multinationals Audience outcomes A clear five-level map of organisational culture and where their own organisation currently sits on it Specific behaviours that move a team from compliance-driven to engagement-driven performance Evidence from multinationals that have used the Management Shift approach, and what it changed in measurable terms A view of leadership beyond authority, drawn from her HBR work and longitudinal research Language and frame to take into their own executive conversations on culture, engagement, and innovation