Executive Development

Why organisations work with Alex Staniforth Both of Staniforth’s Everest attempts (2014, 2015) ended in catastrophe, which means his argument about resilience, failure, and redefining success is not constructed from triumph. That credibility is difficult to replicate. His personal mental health disclosure; depression, anxiety, eating disorders, epilepsy, and a lifelong stammer, is specific and public. It allows him to reach parts of a leadership audience that pure performance speakers cannot, including people who are privately struggling. The ‘Resilience Rucksack’ gives audiences a named, practical framework to take away: not just an inspiring story, but a set of tools mapped to real workplace pressures. As co-founder of Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity combining outdoor experience with professional mental health support, he brings an institutional track record to conversations about psychological safety that extends well beyond the stage. His Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Chester, awarded in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, positions him credibly across both the performance and the clinical ends of the wellbeing conversation. Biography highlights Survived the 2014 Khumbu Icefall avalanche and the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the two most significant disasters in Everest history, on consecutive attempts, as a teenager First and fastest person to complete all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales under human power in 45 days; fastest ever ascent of all 100 UK county tops (72 days) Author of Icefall (Coventry House Publishing, 2016) and Another Peak (2019) Co-founder, Mind Over Mountains: national UK charity restoring mental health through therapeutic outdoor programmes (est. 2020) Honorary Doctorate (DLitt), University of Chester, 2025: for outstanding contribution to young people’s mental health services Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, 2023; Pride of Britain Granada Reports Fundraiser of the Year, 2017; over £150,000 raised for charity across endurance challenges Biography Everest has a way of clarifying what resilience actually means. Alex Staniforth attempted the summit twice – the 2014 season ended by the Khumbu Icefall avalanche, the 2015 attempt halted by the Nepal earthquake – and returned from neither having reached the top. Both experiences form the foundation of his argument to organisations: that the most useful preparation is not for success, but for what happens when things go wrong. Since those expeditions, Staniforth has completed a series of documented endurance records. He is the first and fastest person to run and cycle all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales in 45 days and holds the record for the fastest ascent of all 100 UK county tops. He is the author of Icefall and Another Peak, and in 2020 co-founded Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity that combines outdoor experience with professional mental health support. What separates his contribution from most adventure-based speaking is where it goes beyond the summit metaphor. Staniforth has spoken publicly about depression, anxiety, and eating disorders experienced as an endurance athlete: alongside epilepsy and a lifelong stammer. This specificity allows him to speak credibly in mental health conversations where most performance speakers cannot go. His practical framework, the ‘Resilience Rucksack’, translates that experience into tools that leadership audiences can name and apply. His keynotes have been delivered to Rolls-Royce Submarines, Samsung, Bank of America, Accenture, FedEx, and the NHS, among others. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) by the University of Chester in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, and received the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award in 2023. He is an ICF-trained coach and certified Gazing Red2Blue practitioner. Key speaking topics Resilience under pressure Mental fitness and sustainable performance Leadership through adversity and change Burnout prevention and psychological safety Goal setting and redefining success Team performance in uncertainty Wellbeing as a performance foundation Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating organisational change or post-disruption recovery CHROs and people leads building mental health or wellbeing programmes with senior buy-in Leadership development and high-potential programmes requiring a resilience anchor Corporate conferences where performance and wellbeing are a combined agenda item Audience outcomes A practical, named framework (the ‘Resilience Rucksack’) for maintaining performance during setbacks, change, and high pressure A more specific understanding of the relationship between mental fitness and sustained performance – not as a trade-off, but as the same investment Increased confidence among leaders in modelling openness around mental health, and in recognising early warning signs in their teams A shift in how failure and setback are framed – from evidence of inadequacy to material for growth Reference points from extreme conditions that translate directly to the pressures of demanding professional environments

Why organisations work with Roger Steare His ethicability RIGHT framework was adopted by BP into its 2011 Code of Conduct after Deepwater Horizon, and the programme was later recognised by the US Department of Justice in BP’s US$20.8 billion Consent Agreement. Few decision frameworks have been stress-tested at that scale. The MoralDNA psychometric, co-designed with psychologist Pavlos Stamboulides, has profiled more than 180,000 people across 200 countries. It gives boards a measurable language for ethical culture rather than a values poster. He has built ethical leadership programmes for BP, Citigroup, HSBC, PwC, the Financial Services Authority and the Serious Fraud Office. His client list is the regulator and the regulated, which is rare. He writes for the Financial Times as a columnist and reports for the Chartered Management Institute on the link between moral character and organisational performance. The argument is empirical, not aspirational. He brings the same ethical reasoning to AI governance that he applied to banking and energy. Boards confronting AI deployment get a method, not a moral panic. Biography highlights Honorary Visiting Professor of Organisational Ethics, Cass Business School (now Bayes), City, University of London Visiting Professor of European Studies, College of Europe, Bruges Co-designer of MoralDNA, used by more than 180,000 people in over 200 countries Author of Ethicability (5th edition) and Thinking Outside the Inbox; author of The MoralDNA of Performance for the Chartered Management Institute Designer of BP’s global ethical leadership programme for 4,000 leaders following Deepwater Horizon; framework cited in BP’s US Department of Justice Consent Agreement Financial Times columnist; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Biography Most ethics work in large organisations is theatre. Codes of conduct sit on intranets, e-learning modules are completed quickly, and the actual decisions get made the same way they always were. The MoralDNA work, built with psychologist Pavlos Stamboulides and now profiling over 180,000 people across 200 countries, was designed to interrupt that pattern. It measures how people actually reason about right and wrong, not what they say they value. The ethicability RIGHT framework took the same logic into operational decision-making. After Deepwater Horizon, BP incorporated it into the 2011 Code of Conduct and rolled an associated programme out to 4,000 leaders. In 2016 the US Department of Justice cited that programme as part of BP’s US$20.8 billion Consent Agreement. It is one of very few ethical decision tools stress-tested under genuine regulatory and reputational fire. The broader client list spans Citigroup, HSBC, PwC, Nationwide, Openreach, the Financial Services Authority and the Serious Fraud Office. As Honorary Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (now Bayes) he taught the same material to Executive MBA cohorts, and as Visiting Professor at the College of Europe he extended the work into European public policy. His Financial Times column and his Chartered Management Institute report, The MoralDNA of Performance, argue that moral character is correlated with measurable organisational outcomes. That argument now extends to AI. The questions a board faces about model deployment, accountability and bias are not new ethical questions, they are old ones in faster machinery. The work he brings to AI governance is the same reasoning he brought to banking after 2008 and to oil after 2010: a tested method for deciding what is right when commercial, legal and moral answers diverge. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership and ethical decision-making AI ethics and responsible technology governance Organisational culture and integrity Trust and the social contract of business Moral reasoning at board level Ethics in financial services and regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing ethical or reputational exposure Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officers shaping culture beyond compliance Senior leaders in regulated sectors: financial services, energy, healthcare, defence Heads of AI, Chief Data Officers and technology leaders setting deployment standards Audience outcomes A tested method (ethicability RIGHT) for making decisions when commercial, legal and ethical pressures conflict A common language for ethical culture grounded in the MoralDNA evidence base A clearer account of why values-based leadership is correlated with organisational performance A practical framing for AI governance questions that boards can act on

Why organisations work with Hollie Castro Operating record across the moments that test a people function: IPO transition at YETI, take-private of BMC Software under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and VC-backed scale-up at Miro under Accel and ICONIQ. Sits credibly in the boardroom on AI and the workforce, co-chairing the NACD Austin chapter and leading director-level sessions on GenAI governance and the multigenerational workforce. Has actually run HR at global scale: workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, 25-plus acquisitions integrated. Bridges Fortune 500 and late-stage start-up worlds, including current advisory work with HR-focused AI founders at Series A through her firm HC Advice. Recognised externally where it counts: Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates and the HR Transformation award at Silicon Valley’s High Tech Symposium. Biography highlights Five-time CHRO and Chief Administration Officer: YETI, BMC Software, Talisman Energy, Miro, Kony. Co-Chair, Austin Advisory Board, National Association of Corporate Directors. Advisory Board Member, Texas A&M Mays School of Business Center for Human Resources. Stanford University and NACD certified Corporate Director; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates; HR Transformation award, Silicon Valley High Tech Symposium. Published in Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards; featured at HR Retail and on the Revenue Builders podcast. Biography Few HR leaders have sat in the seat across as many high-pressure transitions. As CHRO, Castro took YETI through its IPO from private equity ownership at Cortec, led BMC Software through its take-private under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and ran people strategy at Miro and Kony alongside Accel and ICONIQ Capital. The thread across those mandates is the same: HR as an operating discipline tied to capital events, not a support function. Her scope has been unusually broad. Workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, operations in 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, and more than 25 acquisitions integrated. That range includes the cultural architecture work that ESG and compensation committees now ask for, as well as the harder M&A integration calls that decide whether a deal earns its thesis. The board work has become a second discipline. Castro co-chairs the Austin advisory board of the National Association of Corporate Directors and led the 2024 NACD Director Summit conversation on how boards govern GenAI alongside a five-generation workforce. She is a Stanford and NACD certified Corporate Director, a Thunderbird MBA, and was named to the Financial Times Group’s Top 100 Board Candidates. Today she advises HR-focused AI founders at Series A through HC Advice and writes for Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards on the governance questions that follow when HR is asked to deploy AI at scale. Key speaking topics The CHRO as a strategic business partner Generative AI in HR and talent acquisition Global HR strategy and M&A integration Board governance of AI and the workforce Scaling people functions through IPO and take-private events ESG, compensation, and human capital in the boardroom The multigenerational workforce Agile HR and design thinking Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CPO-track HR leaders preparing for board-facing roles. Boards, compensation committees, and audit committees engaging with AI, human capital, and ESG oversight. CEOs and executive teams in private equity portfolio companies or scale-ups preparing for IPO, M&A, or take-private events. Leadership programmes for senior women in operating and director roles. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what boards now expect from HR on AI, talent risk, and human capital reporting. Specific reference points on integrating HR through IPO, take-private, and cross-border M&A. A working view of how generative AI is changing talent acquisition and the CHRO operating model. Director-level language for governing AI ethics, workforce design, and compensation in tandem.

Why organisations work with Gordon Hewitt Direct intellectual lineage from C.K. Prahalad at Michigan Ross, applied for two decades to live board agendas at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, HSBC, Sony, and Deutsche Post/DHL. A working method that treats strategy as a thinking system for senior teams, not a planning cycle, so boards leave with sharper questions about value creation, not a deck. Demonstrated range across pharma, financial services, consumer goods, telecoms, and logistics, which lets him connect cross-industry disruption patterns most sector specialists miss. CBE for services to management and international business, plus Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, signal a level of institutional credibility boards trust at chair and CEO level. A genuine practitioner-academic: still teaching at Michigan Ross and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School while advising sitting CEOs. Biography highlights CBE for services to management and international business, 2007 New Year Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Visiting Distinguished Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor of Strategy Practice, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy, Duke Corporate Education. Long collaboration with the late C.K. Prahalad on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation. Advised CEOs and boards at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, Philips, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Verizon, Ericsson, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Syngenta, Biocon, and Deutsche Post/DHL. Biography Most strategy frameworks assume the rules of the industry hold still long enough for a plan to play out. They no longer do. The companies that struggle are often the ones that ran the previous playbook best. Gordon Hewitt has spent two decades helping senior leaders work in that more unstable terrain. At the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, he formed a long partnership with the late C.K. Prahalad, working at the front edge of thinking on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation in what they described as a game-changing world. That body of work continues to anchor how he talks to boards. The list of organisations he has advised reads like a cross-industry map of where disruption hits hardest: Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pharma, IBM and Verizon in technology, HSBC and Credit Suisse in financial services, Sony, PepsiCo, and Time Warner in consumer-facing businesses, Deutsche Post/DHL in logistics. He chairs CEO and chairman peer groups in Europe and the United States on the future of corporate strategy and governance. He was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to management and international business, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continues to hold appointments at Michigan Ross, Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, and Duke Corporate Education, which is unusual for a working board advisor and is one of the reasons CEOs treat him as a serious thinking partner rather than a speaker. Key speaking topics Strategy under industry disruption Corporate value creation in complex markets Innovation as a discipline Strategic transformation in incumbent businesses Strategic collaboration and ecosystem strategy Overcoming industry and organisational orthodoxies The CEO and board agenda in a game-changing world Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees of incumbent businesses facing rule-changing competition. CSOs, heads of strategy, and transformation leads. Pharma, financial services, telecoms, consumer goods, and logistics leadership teams contending with cross-industry disruption. Senior leadership development programmes that want a serious strategy voice rather than a motivational one. Audience outcomes A sharper account of how value is created and lost when industry rules are being rewritten. A working language for separating planning from strategic thinking inside their own executive team. Cross-sector patterns of disruption they can test against their own market. A clearer view of where current orthodoxies inside their organisation are quietly working against them. Specific provocations for the next board strategy conversation, not generic frameworks.

Why organisations work with Jason Harris He brings a working framework, No Fail Trust, that he has applied with Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, not a set of war stories repackaged as leadership lessons. His operational credibility is current. He still flies commercial widebody aircraft for American Airlines, so the standards he teaches are standards he is still held to. He commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has run a real organisation with real accountability for safety, performance and people, not only led from the cockpit. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy, which gives the framework an academic spine that most ex-military speakers do not have. His material translates cleanly to civilian teams under restructure, hybrid working strain or post-incident recovery, where the question is whether trust will hold when conditions degrade. Biography highlights Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, nearly 30 years of service across active duty and the Air Force Reserve Command, concluding as a flying Squadron Commander. US Air Force Academy graduate, later instructor in the Academy’s Military and Strategic Studies department. 11 combat deployments, 470 combat sorties, more than 2,000 combat hours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Co-author of “Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership” (RTI Press, 2022), reviewed in the USAFA Journal of Character and Leadership Development. Commercial pilot with American Airlines, type-rated on the Airbus A320 family and Boeing 757, 767 and 777. Featured in Forbes and on the History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters”. Biography A cargo aircraft taking fire on approach is not the place to discover that a crew does not trust each other. The cost of unspoken doubt in that environment is measurable in seconds and lives. Jason Harris flew 470 combat sorties in environments where that calculation was not theoretical. That operating context shaped a leadership method, not a memoir. The No Fail Trust framework codifies what high-functioning aircrews actually do: the habits of disclosure, calibration and accountability that hold a team together when conditions degrade. He has carried it into Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, where the trust problem looks different on the surface but obeys the same logic underneath. Harris also brings the structural side. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy and commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has been responsible for organisational design, safety culture and people decisions, not only flight operations. His co-authored book “Aiming Higher” (RTI Press, 2022) was reviewed in the Academy’s Journal of Character and Leadership Development, which is rare for a bureau speaker working in this lane. He still flies. As an American Airlines pilot type-rated across the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 757, 767 and 777, the standards he asks corporate teams to consider are standards he is still operating under in the next week’s flight schedule. Key speaking topics Trust as an operational capability Leadership under high-consequence pressure Team performance in distributed and hybrid environments Psychological safety and crew resource management Decision-making under uncertainty Culture in safety-critical organisations Leading after restructure or incident Ideal for Boards and executive teams confronting a trust gap after restructure, leadership change or a public incident CHROs and culture leads designing for safety-critical or distributed teams Operational leadership cohorts in regulated sectors: aviation, energy, defence, logistics, financial services Sales kick-offs and leadership summits where the brief calls for credibility under pressure rather than motivational lift Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that can be observed, measured and rebuilt, rather than asserted A method for surfacing unspoken doubt inside senior teams before it becomes an operational cost A clearer view of how psychological safety, accountability and decision speed reinforce each other under pressure Specific behavioural habits drawn from aircrew practice that translate to civilian operating environments A sharper read on what leadership presence looks like when conditions are not stable

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

Beatrice Ngalula Kabutakapua is an inspiring trainer and genius storyteller who speaks on a range of topics including leadership, business storytelling, employee engagement and story-based communication with incredible energy. Having been an award-winning international journalist, Beatrice has the great ability to train people in how to tell better stories even if they have never done it before so that they can enhance communication and be inspiring. Her unique approach to business storytelling is innovative because she focuses on internal stories within organisations to foster a positive company culture. Using her coaching skills, knowledge of human behaviour, and empathy, Beatrice doubles employee’s confidence in writing stories that are targeted to specific audiences. People who have worked with her shared that their ability to apply stories to their workplace as well as training people in storytelling has increased exponentially. Her clients in DEI, People and Culture, L&D departments have referred to her work as being “thought-provoking”, “genius” and “empowering”. Through her content, speeches and training, Beatrice has reached more than 10,000 people from Los Angeles to Istanbul and in three different languages: French, English and Italian. Beatrice is currently working on her first book on leadership and storytelling, which is a guide to help leaders transform their lived experiences into their leadership superpowers.

Why organisations work with Anton Gunn He has operated at the level his audiences operate at. Advising a President on national health policy and running diversity and external affairs inside a federal department is not a case study he read; it is the room he was in. His World-Class Culture framework gives executives a named, structured approach to retention and culture rather than another values poster. It has been applied inside Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, HCA Healthcare and Mercedes-Benz Vans. He talks about inclusion as an operating capability, not a political position. For boards navigating contested ground on DEI, that distinction is the reason he gets booked. His credibility carries on both sides of the executive table: a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow with a Certified Speaking Professional designation, an MSW, and seven years inside senior healthcare leadership at MUSC. Biography highlights Former senior advisor to President Barack Obama; Director of External Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading stakeholder engagement for Affordable Care Act implementation Former Executive Director and Chief Diversity Officer, Medical University of South Carolina Resident Fellow, Harvard Institute of Politics Bestselling author of Just Lead, The Presidential Principles, and The Audacity of Leadership Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by fewer than 10 percent of professional speakers worldwide Featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, BBC and Good Morning America Biography The Affordable Care Act needed people to believe in it before it could function. As Director of External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Anton Gunn led the stakeholder engagement that turned a contested federal statute into something hospitals, employers and citizens could act on. That work, advising President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, is the reference point his clients hire him for. He has since spent close to a decade translating that experience into a body of executive practice. As Chief Diversity Officer and Executive Director at the Medical University of South Carolina, he ran inclusion as an operating function inside a complex healthcare institution, not as a communications exercise. His framework, World-Class Culture, codifies the seven behaviours he saw separate retention-positive cultures from the rest. His three books trace the same argument from different angles. The Audacity of Leadership set out the principles. The Presidential Principles distilled what he learned watching Obama lead in real time. Just Lead, his 2022 bestseller, gave operators 44 specific actions for retention and culture. Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, T-Mobile, SHRM and Mercedes-Benz Vans have all brought him in to apply that work. He is a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow and a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by under 10 percent of speakers globally. The combination buyers respond to is rarer than either credential alone: a former White House operator who has also run culture and inclusion inside a 17,000-person institution, and who can talk to a board in the language of accountability rather than aspiration. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership Workplace culture and retention Inclusive leadership Trust as an executive capability Crisis leadership and recovery Talent strategy in healthcare and regulated industries Ideal for Boards and CEOs navigating culture and retention under restructure CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers building inclusion as an operating discipline Senior leadership teams in healthcare, financial services and regulated industries Public sector and policy audiences working at the boundary of government and enterprise Audience outcomes A named, repeatable framework for diagnosing and rebuilding workplace culture A clearer view of where executive trust is earned and where it is forfeited Concrete actions for retention drawn from the Just Lead framework A working definition of inclusive leadership that holds up in front of a sceptical board An inside view of decision-making at the senior levels of the Obama administration

Why organisations work with Dr Tess Morris-Paterson She has carried the same performance methodology through three of the most demanding operating environments in the world: Premier League football, NASA-aligned spaceflight research, and a Royal Engineers command. Few practitioners have a comparable triangulation. She designs the actual selection criteria for human spaceflight, so her view on how to assess composure, judgement and team fit is grounded in systems that are used to decide who flies. Her research on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program. She talks to executives the way she talks to operators, with no astronaut mythology and no sports-cliche residue. The transfer to commercial settings is direct. She is credible on inclusion in male-dominated environments without leaving the performance frame: five years as one of three women in the Premier League, and an officer corps that is roughly five percent female. Biography highlights Chartered Scientist; PhD, King’s College London, Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences. Visiting scientist, NASA Ames Research Center; alumna of the International Space University. Founder of a consultancy supporting international space agencies on astronaut selection and training. Award recipient of the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program; named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. Former Head of Performance across Premier League football, the Football Association, Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. British Army Reserve Officer, Royal Engineers, with command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. Biography Astronaut crews are not the most talented people in the room. They are the people most likely to make the right call on the worst day of the mission, and the selection process is built to find that. Morris-Paterson designs that kind of process for international space agencies, and the same logic now informs how she advises commercial leadership teams. She came to spaceflight through elite sport. For five years she was one of three women operating at Head of Performance level in the Premier League, with later work spanning the Football Association, the Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. The shared question across those settings was always the same: what conditions reliably produce a good decision when there is no margin for a bad one. That question carried into her research. As a chartered scientist trained at NASA Ames Research Center and the International Space University, her work on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program, and she was named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. She now runs a consultancy that supports astronaut selection and training for international space agencies. A third operating environment sharpens the picture. As a British Army Reserve Officer in the Royal Engineers, she has held command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. The combination matters because her arguments about leadership under pressure are not assembled from secondary sources. They come from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is direct, measurable, and sometimes irreversible. Key speaking topics Performance under extreme conditions Astronaut selection, training and human spaceflight Team design and decision-making in elite sport Leadership in male-dominated operating environments Resilience and recovery in high-stakes work Translating elite-performance methodology into commercial settings Ideal for Executive teams and boards facing decisions where error cost is high and recovery time is short CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning selection, assessment and leadership-development pipelines Leadership audiences in defence, aerospace, energy, financial services and elite sport Programmes focused on women progressing in male-dominated technical or operational fields Audience outcomes A working model for how high-stakes operators are selected, not just trained Specific selection signals that predict composure and judgement under load A clearer view of how elite teams in sport and spaceflight handle feedback, recovery and the cost of error Evidence-based language for talking about inclusion in technical environments without losing the performance frame Transferable practices from astronaut, Premier League and military preparation that hold up in commercial settings

Why organisations work with Alan Stein Jr. Direct working access to Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant during their formative years gives him firsthand observation of how the highest performers in modern basketball actually prepare, not the version told in interviews. Three published books (Raise Your Game, Sustain Your Game, Next Play) form a connected curriculum on individual performance, sustained output without burnout, and focus discipline. Leaders can extend a keynote into a longer programme. Translates athletic preparation into language a corporate audience already uses. Sales teams, retail operators, and frontline managers leave with habits they can run on Monday morning. Repeat client list crosses retail, financial services, healthcare, and franchise operations: American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, Orangetheory Fitness. The material travels across sectors. Biography highlights Performance coach at the LeBron James Skills Academy and the Jordan Brand Classic Trained Stephen Curry in the month before the 2009 NBA Draft Author of Raise Your Game (Hachette), Sustain Your Game (Hachette Book Group), and Next Play (Amplify Publishing, 2025) Foreword to Raise Your Game by ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, who also features on the Next Play audiobook Corporate clients include American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, Orangetheory Fitness Host of the Raise Your Game podcast Biography The best basketball players in the world are not the most physically gifted people in the room. They are the most prepared. Alan Stein Jr. spent fifteen years inside that preparation as a basketball performance coach, training Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant during the years their habits were being formed. That access is the substance of his work. As a coach at the LeBron James Skills Academy, the Jordan Brand Classic, and Mike Jones’s DeMatha programme, Stein watched how elite players approached the unseen hours: warm-ups, recovery, film, the same drills repeated for years. The behaviours were unglamorous and learnable. He now teaches them to senior leaders and their teams. His three books map a single argument across individual, sustained, and focused performance. Raise Your Game (Hachette), with a foreword by ESPN’s Jay Bilas, sets out the habits. Sustain Your Game (Hachette Book Group) addresses stress, stagnation, and burnout. Next Play (Amplify Publishing, 2025) takes Coach K’s two-word philosophy and turns it into a discipline for what to do after a mistake or a win. Corporate clients use the material because it crosses sectors without losing specificity. American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, and Orangetheory Fitness have all booked him. The vocabulary is athletic, but the application is operational: how a sales team prepares for a quarter, how a frontline manager recovers from a bad week, how a leader sets a daily standard the team can see. Key speaking topics Peak performance habits for senior leaders Self-leadership and preparation under pressure Team cohesion and high-performance culture Stress, burnout, and sustained output Sales performance mindset Lessons from elite athletes for corporate leaders Ideal for Sales leaders and chief revenue officers running performance offsites CHROs and L&D leads building leadership development programmes Franchise and retail operations leaders running annual conferences Senior leadership teams resetting standards after a difficult quarter or year Audience outcomes A clear set of preparation habits modelled on how elite athletes actually train Specific routines for managing stress and sustaining performance over a full year, not a quarter A shared vocabulary for accountability and standard-setting that a leadership team can use the next day Concrete examples from named NBA players that make the principles memorable for frontline staff A reframe of “talent” as habit and preparation, useful for managers building younger teams

Why organisations work with Karim Ellis A John Maxwell Team founding partner, which puts him inside the most widely sold leadership development network in the US corporate market and gives buyers a recognised pedigree to point to internally. Corporate training experience across Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS and the US Department of Defense, so he is calibrated for large, regulated, blue-collar and white-collar audiences in the same brief. A signature framework, GPS My Success, published as a book and built around five named principles for translating individual vision into action, which gives organisers a structured deliverable rather than a generic motivational set. A platform style trained directly under Les Brown, certified at Platinum level, which is what a programme committee is buying when they want an energising US-style closing keynote that lifts a room. Biography highlights Founding partner of the John Maxwell Team. Author of GPS My Success: The Address You Input In Life Determines Your Destination (2020). Two-time TEDx speaker, including TEDx Cincinnati. Les Brown Certified Platinum Speaker. 2022 Speakercon Motivational Speaker of the Year. Corporate clients include Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS, SHRM and the US Department of Defense. Biography Large organisations spend significant budgets on leadership and engagement programmes that fail to move the dial on day-to-day behaviour. People are inspired in the room, then the routine resumes. The problem is rarely talent or content. It is the absence of a shared, repeatable language for what good looks like and how individuals contribute to it. Karim Ellis works in that gap. As a founding partner of the John Maxwell Team, he trained inside the leadership network John C. Maxwell built, then developed his own framework, GPS My Success, around five principles for turning individual vision into a destination the rest of the organisation can recognise. The book of the same name, published in 2020, is the spine of his corporate keynote. His audiences are mainstream US corporate: Ford, Honda, Toyota, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Kroger, USPS and the US Department of Defense, alongside SHRM and the National Urban League. The brief is consistent. Lift the room, give people a structured way to talk about ambition and accountability, and send them back to work with something they can use on Monday. The platform craft sits on top of formal training with Les Brown, where Ellis holds Platinum certification, and two TEDx appearances. Speakercon named him its 2022 Motivational Speaker of the Year. The work is built for events that need an energising US-style keynote backed by a defined leadership and personal-development model, not a strategy lecture. Key speaking topics Leadership development Vision and goal-setting Personal effectiveness and peak performance Motivation and audience engagement Communication and presence Sales and customer service mindset Ideal for Internal leadership development conferences and L and D programmes. Annual sales kick-offs and field-force events seeking an energising main-stage keynote. Diversity, employee engagement and culture events looking for a US motivational headliner with corporate fluency. Audience outcomes A named five-part framework, GPS My Success, that individuals can apply to their own goals after the session. A shared language for vision, ambition and accountability that managers can carry back into team conversations. A renewed sense of personal agency on performance, grounded in concrete principles rather than slogans. A high-energy closing or opening moment that lifts engagement scores for the event.

Why organisations work with Julia Gentry A coaching track record concentrated in growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band, where the founder and the leadership team are the same people and personal capacity is the binding constraint. A signature D.R.E.A.M. framework she uses with executive teams to close the gap between stated ambition and the daily decisions that contradict it. Direct authority with women leaders navigating the specific tension between professional ambition and the rest of their lives, written about in her book Dream – I Dare You. A strong following in the US residential real estate sector, where she is repeatedly booked back into the same firms and conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., leading a team of eight. Author of Dream – I Dare You: A Wake-Up Call to Greater Alignment in Your Faith, Family, Career, and Community and the companion Dream – Workbook. More than a decade coaching executive teams at companies grossing $10 to $100 million annually. Co-founder of six businesses across 16 years as an entrepreneur, including a real estate operation. Named client engagements include Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams agents and brokerages. Creator of the D.R.E.A.M. framework, used in keynote sessions, group coaching and an eight-week curriculum. Biography Most leadership burnout is not a wellness problem. It is a clarity problem. The leader knows what the next quarter requires, but cannot remember what the next decade is for. That is the gap Julia Gentry works in. She is the CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., a coaching practice she built after a career in residential real estate that ended, by her own account, in burnout in her early thirties. Over the past decade, she has coached executive teams at growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue range, where the leadership group and the founders are usually the same small set of people. Her book Dream – I Dare You is the written form of that work. It argues that alignment across professional ambition, family life, and personal conviction is the precondition for sustained senior performance, not a soft add-on to it. The companion Dream – Workbook turns the same argument into a working tool for leadership teams and small groups. Her commercial track record is strongest in the US residential real estate sector, where firms including Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams brokerages have brought her back to work with leaders and agents. The D.R.E.A.M. framework she developed is now used in keynote settings, in an eight-week curriculum, and in direct executive coaching with founders who have stopped enjoying the company they built. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and burnout recovery Women in senior leadership Purpose and alignment in growth-stage businesses Limiting beliefs in executive teams Leadership in real estate and entrepreneur-led firms Faith-aligned leadership Ideal for Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band Women leadership networks and senior women’s events Real estate brokerages, agent groups and franchise leadership conferences Faith-aligned corporate and entrepreneurial audiences Audience outcomes A clear read on where personal capacity is the bottleneck in the business, not the strategy Language for the gap between stated ambition and actual decision-making in the leadership team A practical structure, the D.R.E.A.M. framework, for resetting that gap Permission and a method for women leaders to redefine what success in the role looks like A direct challenge to grind-culture assumptions about what senior leadership requires