Future of Work

Why organisations work with Christian Wehner He runs innovation strategy inside SAP Brand & Creative, so the perspective is from a serving operator at a Fortune 100 software company, not a former practitioner. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt gives audiences a citable thesis on where adult organisational thinking has narrowed, and what to do about it. His “Kidult” framework reframes creativity as a recoverable adult capability, not a personality trait, which lands with executives who have written off creativity training. He is a LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation, with a public body of work that audiences can extend after the keynote. He works fluently in English and German, which matters for DACH-region leadership programmes and EU-headquartered corporate audiences. Biography highlights Senior Director, Innovation Strategy, SAP Brand & Creative. SPIEGEL bestselling author, Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt (Conte Verlag). TEDx speaker on the “Kidult” mindset. LinkedIn TopVoice for Creativity and Innovation. Guest lecturer, Brand Academy, EBS University Oestrich-Winkel. Ambassador, School of Future Skills. Biography Most large companies are not short of intelligence. They are short of the willingness to ask naive questions inside rooms full of expertise. That gap is the one Christian Wehner has spent his career closing, first in radio and start-up environments, now as Senior Director of Innovation Strategy at SAP Brand & Creative. His thesis is direct. The skills that make organisations creative, curiosity, comfort with not-knowing, and the ability to be wrong out loud, are the skills most adults stop practising once they enter corporate life. His SPIEGEL bestselling book Alles, was du im Leben wissen musst, hast du schon im Kindergarten gelernt sets out the argument in book form. His TEDx talk gives it a name, the “Kidult” mindset. In keynote settings, he turns this into an executive question rather than a self-help one. What does an organisation lose when its senior people optimise for being right? Where in the operating model does AI-era automation make childlike thinking more valuable, not less? Audiences leave with a defensible reason to protect curiosity inside performance cultures, and language to do it with their own teams. The credentials read as a portfolio of platforms rather than titles: a serving SAP innovation role, a guest lectureship at EBS University’s Brand Academy, an ambassadorship with the School of Future Skills, and a steady editorial presence on LinkedIn that has earned him TopVoice status in both Creativity and Innovation. The combination is unusual: an operator inside one of Europe’s largest software companies who writes and speaks publicly about how big companies stop being creative. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and creative recovery in established organisations The “Kidult” mindset: curiosity as an executive capability Future skills in the age of AI Leadership and intuition under algorithmic decision-making Brand and creative strategy inside large enterprises Collaboration and the transparency revolution Ideal for Chief innovation, strategy and brand officers responsible for the next product cycle Executive leadership teams confronting AI-driven workforce redesign Corporate transformation, learning and culture lead inside DACH and EU-headquartered organisations Sales, marketing and customer experience leadership programmes looking for a creative-strategy keynote rather than a tools session Audience outcomes A working argument for why creative capability is a board-level concern in the AI era A language and framework (“Kidult”) for protecting curiosity inside performance-driven cultures A clearer view of which adult corporate habits suppress innovation and which can be retrained Concrete prompts for leaders to use with their own teams the next working day A bilingual perspective from inside a Fortune 100 European software company, useful for cross-border programmes

Why organisations work with Sina Kahen He has shipped a regulated, complex technology product into a sceptical market. Commercialising Celito, named publicly as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot, gives him operator credibility that very few AI speakers carry. He runs a generative AI company today. VAICE, where he is co-founder and CEO, builds workplace productivity software, which means his views on enterprise AI come from active build decisions, not commentary. His book “The Promised Land of AI” gives leaders a usable strategic playbook for AI adoption, structured around use-case discovery, data readiness, and the build, buy or partner question that most boards stall on. He teaches AI strategy at Imperial College Business School, so the material is tested against MBA cohorts and senior executives every term, not assembled for the stage. He brings a working language for ethics, philosophy and human judgement in AI, drawing on his published philosophical work, without drifting into abstraction that leaves an operating team with nothing to do on Monday. Biography highlights MBA, Imperial College Business School; degree in Biomedical Sciences Guest Lecturer in AI, healthcare and corporate innovation, Imperial College Business School Co-founder and CEO, VAICE, building generative AI software for workplace productivity Former Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical; led commercialisation of Celito, publicly described as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot Author of “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business” and “Brief Insights on Medical Robotics” Engagements and clients include Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, Imperial College, InterSystems, Juniper Networks, Ipsen Pharma and Novateur Ventures Biography Celito was the UK’s first orthopaedic robot. Sina Kahen, then Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical, was the person responsible for bringing it through commercialisation into operating theatres. That work, taking a regulated, high-stakes technology from concept into the hands of surgeons, is the experience he now applies to a different problem: enterprise adoption of generative AI. The current vehicle for that work is VAICE, a company he co-founded and runs as CEO, building generative AI software for workplace productivity. Around it sits his book “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business”, a Guest Lectureship at Imperial College Business School, and engagements with organisations including Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, InterSystems and Ipsen Pharma. The argument running through all of it is operational. Most companies have proved AI can do something useful. The harder questions, which buyers are now ready to confront, are about strategy: which use cases actually compound, whether to build, buy or partner, how to make data and people ready, and how to govern decisions that cannot be fully explained. Kahen has trained as a Biomedical Scientist and holds an MBA from Imperial, which is one reason his framing of these questions feels closer to medicine than marketing: rigorous about evidence, blunt about what is not yet known. He is also the author of several books on Jewish philosophy, and that interest shows up in the AI work as a refusal to let the human and ethical questions float free of operating practice. Boards do not need another AI ethics policy. They need a way to make defensible AI decisions inside their existing governance, and to take their workforce with them. That is the territory Kahen occupies. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy for enterprise AI adoption and operating performance AI in healthcare and life sciences Responsible AI and AI governance Build, buy or partner decisions in AI sourcing Innovation and intrapreneurship inside large organisations Philosophy, ethics and the human side of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning enterprise-wide AI strategy CIOs, CTOs, Chief Data Officers and Chief AI Officers translating pilots into operating systems Healthcare and life sciences leadership confronting AI, robotics and regulated innovation Heads of Innovation and transformation leads structuring AI portfolios across business units Audience outcomes A working framework for moving AI from pilot into measurable operating performance A clearer view on when to build, buy or partner for AI capability Sharper questions to ask of internal teams and external vendors on data readiness, governance and use-case selection A practical position on AI ethics that holds up inside real operating decisions, not slide decks Language and reference points senior leaders can use to bring the rest of the organisation with them

Why organisations work with Costantino Roselli He treats the avatar economy as an operating model, not a marketing channel. His core argument to boards is that avatar-native businesses need their own P&L, audience strategy, and creative pipeline, separate from the corporate website. He runs NTZNS as a working laboratory for the thesis, so the case studies he brings are commercial rather than conceptual. The Gabby digital fashion case, generating around $25,000 monthly within 18 months, is the worked example he uses to show what a single avatar-native operator can produce. He sits inside the institutional conversation through the Metaverse Fashion Council advisory board and the Metaverse Standards Forum, which gives boards a sense of where industry consensus is forming on interoperability, identity, and IP. He is one of the few speakers in this category who connects transmedia storytelling craft to commercial outcomes, which matters for brands that need narrative depth across owned channels, gaming, and creator platforms. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of NTZNS (NeTiZeNS), an immersive innovation studio building avatar-economy ventures. Advisory board member, Metaverse Fashion Council. Member, Metaverse Standards Forum. Speaker, Delphi Economic Forum IX, on the panel “Beyond the Hype: The Metaverse and its Future Hurdles”. Author of Million Dollar Chest: Pick Yourself and Become Unstoppable (2018). Founder of Weird Authentic People, an early digital branding agency using avatars and AI-led storytelling for client communication. Biography The avatar economy is mostly being run by the wrong people inside large companies. Marketing teams that built corporate websites are being asked to design digital fashion drops, transmedia worlds, and creator-led revenue lines, and the results read as expensive experiments rather than businesses. Roselli’s central argument is that this is structural. Avatar-first commerce demands its own operating unit. NTZNS, the studio he founded and leads, is the working test of that thesis. The company builds avatar-native ventures, mentors digital-only creators, and packages the playbook for brands trying to move past pilots. The reference case Roselli cites publicly, a fifteen-year-old creator in Argentina generating around $25,000 a month through an avatar-led fashion line, is used as a deliberate provocation to boards: a single distributed operator can already produce material revenue from this category. His institutional footprint gives the argument standing. He sits on the advisory board of the Metaverse Fashion Council, holds a seat in the Metaverse Standards Forum, and speaks regularly inside the policy circuit, including the Delphi Economic Forum panel on the metaverse and its hurdles in 2024. The point of those affiliations, in his framing, is to track where interoperability, identity, and IP standards are settling, because those are the variables that determine whether avatar businesses are durable. What separates Roselli from most metaverse commentators is that he treats storytelling as a commercial discipline. Transmedia worldbuilding, in his account, is not creative dressing on top of a technology stack. It is how avatar-native ventures earn audience loyalty across gaming, social, and owned channels at the same time, and it is the variable most brands fail to invest in seriously when they enter the category. Key speaking topics Avatar economy as an operating model Transmedia storytelling for consumer brands Generative AI in worldbuilding and creator economies Digital fashion and luxury in immersive environments Future of work, identity, and digital citizenship Metaverse standards, interoperability, and IP Ideal for CMOs, chief brand officers, and digital strategy leads at consumer brands evaluating digital fashion, gaming, and creator-led commerce. Innovation and venture teams inside fashion, luxury, beauty, entertainment, and media groups. Foresight and strategy teams looking for a substantive, commercially grounded view of the metaverse beyond the 2022 hype cycle. Audience outcomes A clear operating distinction between metaverse marketing, where existing functions can deliver, and avatar-native business, where they cannot. A specific revenue lens on digital fashion, creator commerce, and avatar IP, with named examples of what working models look like. A framework for deciding which categories of audience and revenue justify a dedicated avatar-native unit. A practical view of where standards work on interoperability and identity is heading, and what that means for long-term IP decisions.

Why organisations work with Jim McKelvey He built the only company on record to beat Amazon in a head-to-head product fight, and turned that experience into a transferable framework leadership teams can apply to their own categories. He sits at the rare intersection of operator and macroeconomic policymaker, currently chairing the board of the St. Louis Fed while still building companies; few speakers can move credibly between Square’s product decisions and the rate environment shaping them. His Innovation Stack thesis gives strategy teams a sharper diagnostic than the standard moat conversation: not what protects your business today, but how many interlocking decisions a rival would need to replicate to dislodge you. He brings a public, named example of how to think about workforce reinvention through LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 non-traditional candidates into technology roles at Mastercard, Boeing and others. Biography highlights Co-founder of Square (now Block, Inc.), launched with Jack Dorsey in 2009; original card reader held in the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, Portfolio/Penguin, 2020. Chair of the board of directors, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, designated 2022 and redesignated 2023; Class C Independent Director since 2017. Founder of LaunchCode, a non-profit that has placed over 4,000 people into technology careers across 500-plus hiring partners. Founder and CEO of Invisibly, rebuilding the economics between publishers, readers and data. McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis named in his honour in 2019 following a $15 million gift. Biography Amazon launched a payments product designed to kill Square. It undercut on price, leaned on its scale, and inside a year quietly withdrew. That contest is the substrate of Jim McKelvey’s argument: when a category is genuinely new, single innovations do not protect you. Stacks of them do. The Innovation Stack, published by Portfolio in 2020, formalises what McKelvey lived through as Square’s co-founder. The thesis is that companies which expand markets, rather than capture them, are built from chains of decisions where each new solution forces the next. Competitors who copy one element fail because the system, not the feature, is the moat. It is the working theory boards reach for when they want a sharper alternative to the conventional advantage conversation. McKelvey’s authority on this question is not solely literary. He chairs the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a Class C Independent Director seat held since 2017 and the chair role designated for 2022 and 2023, which gives him a continuous view of the macro environment in which capital and category decisions are made. He also founded LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 people into engineering jobs at firms including Mastercard and Boeing by treating the talent gap as a system problem, not a training one. His current company, Invisibly, is an attempt to rebuild the economic contract between publishers, readers and the platforms that mediate them. Like Square in 2009, it is a wager on a category that does not yet exist in the form it needs to. That is the work McKelvey is recognisably good at, and the work he can teach leadership teams to see in their own organisations. Key speaking topics The Innovation Stack as a strategy framework Category creation versus category capture Defending against larger incumbents Entrepreneurship at scale Workforce reinvention and technology talent Payments, fintech and the economics of money Boards, capital and the macro environment Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rethinking competitive moat Strategy and corporate development leaders evaluating new categories Founders and scale-up leadership teams beyond product-market fit Boards and innovation committees revisiting growth assumptions Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the Innovation Stack and how to map their own organisation’s stack A specific lens for assessing whether a current advantage is replicable or systemic Sharper questions to bring to category bets, M&A targets, and adjacency moves An operator’s account of beating a larger incumbent without matching its resources A clearer view of how monetary and capital conditions shape commercial strategy

Why organisations work with Diana Ospina and Oscar Lemus They bring an instrument, not a philosophy. BhiPRO produces a quantified Business Happiness Index across 35 indicators with a reported 94% reliability, the kind of evidence a board will fund against. The methodology has earned external academic validation. Harvard Business School teaches a BhiPRO case based on its deployment at Lanco Medical Group, which signals serious analytical credibility for a culture topic that usually trades on anecdote. They speak as a duo with two distinct lenses: Diana on applied neuroscience and culture practice, Oscar on the financial and operational economics of happiness. The split lets them address a CHRO and a CFO in the same room. They are the leading Spanish-language voices on workplace happiness measurement in Latin America, with deployments across 70+ companies and an open study spanning 29 countries. For multinationals with significant LatAm operations, they offer regional substance most international speakers cannot. Their book “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” is prologued by Néstor Braidot, the leading Spanish-language neuroscientist on applied business neuroscience, anchoring their work in a credible scientific tradition. Biography highlights Co-creators of BhiPRO (Business Happiness Index Program), a 35-indicator scientific methodology for measuring organisational happiness, climate and wellbeing. BhiPRO featured as an MBA teaching case at Harvard Business School, based on the Lanco Medical Group implementation. Co-founders of Mide la Felicidad, the Colombian firm that has applied the methodology to 70+ companies in Latin America since 2015. Co-authors of “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” and “Metodología Científica BhiPRO: Cómo Medir la Felicidad Organizacional,” with prologue by neuroscientist Néstor Braidot. Diana Ospina: TEDx speaker (“Monitoreando Felicidad Laboral”, TEDxSanJosédeDavid), NLP practitioner and applied neuroscience specialist. Oscar Rodríguez Lemus: Honorary Doctorate in Human Development and Leadership (2023), trained in Applied Neurosciences and Brain Gym at the Braidot Institute, with two decades in capital markets and finance before his work on workplace happiness. Biography Most organisations cannot answer a basic question about their own culture: how happy are our people, in numbers a finance director would accept. Pulse surveys and engagement indices give partial answers. They do not link wellbeing to performance with enough rigour to defend a culture budget through a downturn. The instrument has been missing. BhiPRO was built to close that gap. Diana Ospina Campuzano and Oscar Rodríguez Lemus spent more than a decade developing a 35-indicator measurement system covering happiness, climate, wellbeing, culture and sustainability, reporting 94% reliability. The methodology now anchors a Harvard Business School MBA case, based on its application at Lanco Medical Group, and has been deployed across more than 70 companies in Latin America since their firm Mide la Felicidad was founded in Colombia in 2014. The duo work in complementary modes. Diana came to the topic through applied neuroscience, NLP and executive coaching, and is a TEDx speaker on workplace happiness. Oscar’s background sits in capital markets and international economic relations, which gives the partnership a financial vocabulary that culture work usually lacks. Together they published “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional,” prologued by the neuroscientist Néstor Braidot, and the companion methodology volume on how to measure organisational happiness. For executive teams the value is concrete. A Spanish-language duo who can stand in front of a Latin American leadership team, present a quantified diagnostic of how their culture is actually performing, and link the gaps to specific operational moves. The Harvard case is the credibility marker. The 35-indicator instrument is the working tool. Key speaking topics Measuring organisational happiness with the BhiPRO methodology Workplace wellbeing and employee engagement Applied neuroscience and workplace happiness Organisational culture transformation Talent retention and human loyalty The economics of happiness at work Entrepreneurship and partnership Ideal for CHROs, Chief Happiness Officers and culture leads in Latin American or Spanish-speaking organisations commissioning a quantified culture diagnostic CEOs and CFOs evaluating the financial case for wellbeing and engagement investment Multinationals with significant Latin American operations seeking regionally credible culture expertise HR conferences and leadership summits in Spanish-language markets Audience outcomes A clear understanding of what an audit-grade happiness measurement actually contains and how it differs from a pulse survey The five dimensions and headline indicators that drive the BhiPRO index, and how each links to operational outcomes An evidence-based read on what Latin American workforce data says about engagement, retention and culture Practical entry points for moving a culture programme from narrative to measurement A neuroscience-informed view of why workplace happiness behaves the way it does, drawn from Braidot Institute training

Why organisations work with Mark van Rijmenam He gives boards a named decision framework, WAVE (Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower), drawn from his book Now What?, now built into an operating diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness against its own industry and regulatory context. The framework translates futurist material into something a planning cycle can actually use. His research base spans AI, blockchain and the metaverse across six books, so the technology view is not a single-trend pitch but a structured map of how these layers interact for an operating business. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, which gives buyers an external credibility marker beyond bureau ranking. He has built and run technology platforms himself, Datafloq and Futurwise, and has turned the WAVE framework into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, so the perspective is informed by building the tools, not only commenting on them. Format range is unusually wide for a futurist: he delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens via digital twin, and runs sessions in person, virtually and as holographic delivery when the brief calls for it. Biography highlights PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change Founder of Datafloq and of Futurwise, an AI-powered insights platform Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Global Speaking Fellow Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI Delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality (2020) and a TEDx talk in Athens via digital twin (2023) Biography The hardest question for a board right now is not whether AI matters. It is what to commit to, when most of the technology in front of them will be obsolete in eighteen months. Van Rijmenam works on that question. His latest book, Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, sets out the WAVE framework: Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower. The framework is built to be used by an executive team in a planning cycle, not admired from a stage. The credibility behind that work is structural. A PhD in management from the University of Technology Sydney sits alongside six published books that span big data, blockchain, the metaverse and now generative AI. Step into the Metaverse was published by Wiley in 2022. Future Visions, written in five days as an experiment in human-AI co-authorship with ChatGPT, came the following year. The body of work treats each technology layer as part of a connected operating reality, not as standalone trends. He builds the tools he talks about. Datafloq curates emerging-technology intelligence for executives. Futurwise is an AI-powered learning environment he founded to give organisations a structured way to track signal across technology, regulation and culture. He has since turned WAVE into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, a diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness, surfaces the gap between what the C-suite believes and what management experiences, and returns a 90-day action plan. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation has admitted him as a Global Speaking Fellow, a designation held by fewer than fifty people worldwide. The format choices reinforce the argument. He delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality in 2020, and a TEDx in Athens in 2023 through a digital twin. For a buyer, the relevant signal is not the novelty. It is that the speaker is using the technologies he is asking leadership teams to make decisions about. Key speaking topics Generative AI and enterprise deployment Strategic foresight and scenario planning Decision architecture under exponential change The metaverse and immersive business models Blockchain and distributed-ledger applications AI ethics and governance Future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences Leadership offsites and planning cycles where a structured foresight method is needed Audience outcomes A working decision architecture (WAVE) that an executive team can apply to its own AI and technology bets, with the option of a structured readiness diagnostic that benchmarks the team against its industry A structured map of how AI, blockchain and immersive technologies interact across the operating model A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge on AI, including early preparedness for AGI-level systems Specific examples of organisations that have moved from technology pilots into operational advantage

Why organisations work with Sara Ross A named, proprietary framework. LeadFULL gives leadership teams a shared operating language for shifting out of effort management and into capacity management, grounded in her own multi-year workplace vitality research. A book with a thesis, not a brand. Dear Work, Something Has to Change sets out a specific argument about why current wellbeing interventions fail and what replaces them, which gives leaders something to act on after the keynote. Independent recognition from named bodies. Global Gurus ranked her among its Top 10 Keynote Speakers for 2026, Real Leaders named her a Top Impact Speaker, and SUCCESS Magazine made her a 2023 Woman of Influence, the kind of third-party validation buyers use to defend a shortlist. A working track record in high-pressure organisations. Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, and the U.S. Navy have used her work in environments where fatigue carries a direct operational cost. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Vitality Officer, BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm. Author of the bestselling Dear Work, Something Has to Change, built on a three-year Workplace Vitality Study of over 10,000 people. Global Gurus Top 10 Keynote Speakers (2026), Real Leaders Top Impact Speaker, and LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. 2023 Woman of Influence, SUCCESS Magazine. Featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, and Psychology Today, with more than 500 engagements delivered. Former executive with nearly two decades in leadership research and development; client work spans Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Deloitte, the U.S. Navy, and Stanford Health Care. Biography Wellbeing has been a corporate priority for a decade, and most senior teams are no closer to fixing the underlying problem. Capable people are still leaving, performance is still uneven, and the cost of fatigue is now showing up in decisions, not just disengagement scores. Sara Ross’s work begins with that observation. She is the founder of BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm, and author of Dear Work, Something Has to Change, which draws on her own multi-year study of workplace vitality. The book makes a specific argument: leaders have been taught to manage effort, when what now matters is managing state. Capacity, not endurance, becomes the operating variable. Out of that research she built LeadFULL, a framework she uses with senior teams to translate the argument into practical leadership behaviour. It sits at the intersection of emotional intelligence, behavioural science, and organisational culture, areas she has worked in for close to two decades, most recently as a global head of leadership innovation before founding BrainAMPED. The work has earned external recognition: a Top 10 Global Gurus keynote ranking for 2026, a Top Impact Speaker listing from Real Leaders, and a 2023 Woman of Influence award from SUCCESS Magazine. Her writing appears in Fast Company, Forbes, and Psychology Today. Across more than 500 engagements, her clients include Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, and the U.S. Navy, where fatigue carries a direct operational cost. Key speaking topics Workplace vitality and sustainable high performance Leadership in the age of burnout and fatigue Change leadership and future-ready resilience Human-centred leadership in the age of AI Emotional intelligence at senior levels The future of work and hybrid-era engagement Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning engagement and wellbeing strategy beyond the wellness-vendor cycle. CEOs and senior leadership teams carrying the cost of leadership fatigue and sustained operational pressure. Transformation and change leaders whose workforces are fatigued by repeated restructuring and AI-driven change. Heads of leadership development running flagship programmes for senior and high-potential leaders. Audience outcomes A clear, named distinction between managing effort and managing state, and why the second is the strategic variable. Specific leadership behaviours that reduce fatigue without lowering performance expectations. A practical reading of why current wellbeing initiatives stall, and what shifts the curve. Language senior teams can use with each other to talk about capacity, recovery, and sustained output without it sounding soft.

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Miriam Meckel She runs the leadership academy that European boards turn to when they need their executive layer fluent in AI, quantum and adjacent technologies, which gives her a live read on where senior teams actually get stuck. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, is one of the most cited German-language treatments of generative AI for business audiences, anchored in regulation, labour markets and governance rather than hype. She combines a serious academic chair at the University of St. Gallen with two decades inside business media, including the editorship of WirtschaftsWoche, so her framing is built for executive audiences rather than translated for them. Her work on brain-computer interfaces and cognitive enhancement gives her unusual range when the conversation moves from current AI deployment to the next horizon of human-machine integration. She holds the 2025 Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille for Best Media Communication, a recognition explicitly tied to making complex future technologies practical for executive audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of ada Learning GmbH, the AI and transformation academy spun out of Handelsblatt Media Group with Lea Steinacker and Verena Pausder. Professor of Communication Management and Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management, University of St. Gallen. Co-author of “Alles uberall auf einmal” (Rowohlt, 2024) on artificial intelligence; author of “Mein Kopf gehort mir” (Piper, 2018) on brain-computer interfaces. Former editor-in-chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche, the first woman to lead the title. Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; board member of Swiss media group Tamedia. Recipient of the Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille (2025), Ernst Schneider Prize, Cicero Speaker’s Prize for Science, Eisenhower Fellowship and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship. Biography Generative AI sits on most executive agendas and inside very few operating models. The space between those two facts is where European leadership teams currently lose months. Miriam Meckel works in that gap, professionally and intellectually. As co-founder and CEO of ada Learning, she runs the academy that puts senior managers from major European companies through structured programmes on AI, quantum and the technologies reshaping their industries. The work is concrete: how a CFO should think about model risk, how an HR leader should redesign roles around AI capability, how a CEO should commission and challenge an AI strategy. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, argues that AI is best understood as a data-driven human amplifier, a framing that cuts through both utopian and apocalyptic readings of the technology. Her authority comes from holding two distinct positions at the same time. She is Professor of Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and Director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, with research credentials reaching back to Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. She is also a working operator who edited WirtschaftsWoche, sits on the Tamedia board, and has built ada into a recognised institution in the German-speaking executive market. Her 2018 book “Mein Kopf gehort mir” took the same operator-academic approach to brain-computer interfaces, with first-person experiments inside the laboratories developing them. For boards confronting AI, she offers something the consultancy reports cannot: a researcher who teaches the technology to executives every week and reports back what they understand, what they resist, and what actually moves once they leave the room. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business strategy AI governance, regulation and ethics The future of work in an AI-enabled economy Brain-computer interfaces and human enhancement Quantum computing for executive audiences Digital transformation and leadership Media, communication and information overload Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning AI strategy and asking whether their AI position has any operational substance. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning workforce capability around AI. CEOs and strategy leaders in regulated European industries balancing AI ambition with the EU AI Act and national supervision. Senior leadership programmes and executive offsites at the point of confronting AI seriously rather than in passing. Audience outcomes A working mental model of where generative AI is already operational, where it remains pilot, and where it is still speculative. A clear read on the EU, US and Chinese regulatory environments and what they mean for European firms. Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal AI teams and consultants, grounded in how the technology actually behaves. An honest sense of what AI will do to roles, teams and decision rights inside their own organisation over the next three to five years. A bridge between today’s deployment questions and the next horizon of human-machine integration, including neural interfaces and quantum.

Why organisations work with James Poulter Operator credibility. He built and sold a voice AI company (Vixen Labs to House 337, 2023) before becoming a speaker. The frameworks come from running the work, not commenting on it. A named implementation model. The AI Nervous System framework, published in AI @ Work (Bloomsbury, 2026), gives leadership teams a structure for embedding AI across functions rather than treating it as a tools procurement question. Inside view of how a global brand actually adopts emerging tech. As Head of Emerging Platforms at LEGO, he led LEGO Life and the GIPHY partnership at consumer scale, so the case material is concrete. Comfortable with the ethics conversation without losing the commercial argument. He has advised the Church of England Digital Board alongside corporate clients, which signals range when the AI question shifts from productivity to governance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Vixen Labs, acquired by House 337 in December 2023. Founder of ThreePoint Labs; Head of AI at Dunham & Company, Dallas. Former Head of Emerging Platforms, The LEGO Group, leading LEGO Life and the LEGO GIPHY channel. Author of AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026). Advisor to the Church of England Digital Board; board roles with Christian Aid and Raiser. Client and advisory work cited with Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music. Biography The hard part of corporate AI is rarely the model. It is what happens once a leadership team agrees to use one. Procurement, legal, brand, product, and people functions each have a stake, and most organisations have no shared structure for resolving the trade-offs between them. This is the territory James Poulter has worked in for the past decade. At The LEGO Group, as Head of Emerging Platforms, he led LEGO Life and managed the brand’s GIPHY partnership, learning at consumer scale how a heritage business absorbs new technology without breaking its existing one. He then founded Vixen Labs, a UK voice and conversational AI consultancy, scaled it through the pandemic, and sold it to House 337 in December 2023. His current work sits inside that operator lineage. Through ThreePoint Labs and as Head of AI at Dallas-based Dunham & Company, he advises leadership teams on how to move from isolated AI pilots to a coherent operating capability. His forthcoming book, AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026), sets out the AI Nervous System framework, a model for connecting model choice, team design, ethics, and decision rights across the business. The client list spans Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music, alongside advisory work with the Church of England Digital Board. The range matters: Poulter is comfortable when the conversation is about productivity gains, and equally comfortable when it shifts to governance, values, and what an organisation should refuse to automate. Key speaking topics AI implementation across the enterprise The AI Nervous System framework Conversational and voice AI in commercial strategy AI ethics and responsible deployment Innovation culture inside established organisations The future of work in an AI-native business Emerging platforms and consumer technology adoption Ideal for CEOs and executive teams sponsoring an enterprise AI agenda CTOs, CIOs and Chief AI Officers moving from pilots to operating capability CHROs and people leaders redesigning teams around AI capability Boards and advisory groups grappling with AI ethics and governance Audience outcomes A structured way to assess where their organisation actually is on AI adoption, rather than where the vendor deck claims it is A working vocabulary for the AI Nervous System framework and how its components map to real decisions Worked examples from LEGO, Vixen Labs and named enterprise clients, not generic case studies A clearer position on the ethics calls leadership has to own rather than delegate to a working group

Why organisations work with Jason Lauritsen He turns the manager-employee relationship into a working model, not a slogan, through The Check-In Method, a named and published approach leaders can install the week after the keynote. His research seat at Quantum Workplace gave him visibility across thousands of employers and millions of engagement responses, which grounds every claim in pattern data rather than anecdote. His book Unlocking High Performance reframes performance management as a relationship discipline, endorsed by Daniel H. Pink, and is used by HR leaders as a practical redesign guide. He speaks fluently to both the CHRO and the frontline manager, which is rare. The same session lands with executives rethinking policy and with line leaders rethinking their next one-to-one. He brings the credibility of an operator who has run the system from both sides: corporate HR leadership where he helped double revenue per employee and halve turnover, and now CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising executive teams on the same problem at the source. Biography highlights CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising CEOs and executive teams on the performance systems that turn strategy into execution. Creator of the Connected Performance System, a framework for leadership clarity, alignment, and performance enablement, with original research presented at Workhuman Live Orlando 2026. Author of Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018), a performance-management redesign endorsed by Daniel H. Pink. Co-author with Joe Gerstandt of Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. As a corporate executive, helped double revenue per employee while cutting employee turnover in half. Former Director of Best Places to Work at Quantum Workplace, leading research across thousands of participating organisations. Biography Engagement has been one of the most measured aspects of corporate life for two decades, and it has barely moved. The data is rich, the pulse surveys run quarterly, and most managers still cannot describe what actually changes a disengaged employee’s trajectory. That gap between measurement and behaviour is the terrain Jason Lauritsen works in. Earlier in his career, as a corporate executive, he helped double revenue per employee while cutting turnover in half. He then led the research team for the Best Places to Work programme at Quantum Workplace, which gave him a cross-sectional view of engagement data across thousands of employers. The conclusion he draws from both sides is direct: employees do not experience work as a contract or a process, they experience it as a relationship, and they leave when the relationship fails. That thesis runs through two books. Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018) argues that performance management collapses when it is built as a compliance process and works when it is built around conversation. Social Gravity, co-authored with Joe Gerstandt, maps the laws that govern how workplace relationships actually form. The Check-In Method, the framework he is best known for, translates the relationship argument into the specific moments managers can do differently on a Monday morning. As CEO of Connected Performance Group, his current work goes one layer up. The Connected Performance System treats connection as the operating mechanism through which strategy turns into execution, and locates the leadership, cultural, and operational conditions that strengthen or erode it. Cited across Forbes, Fast Company, HR Executive, Talent Management, and SHRM, his sessions give CHROs and executive teams a named system to install, not just an argument to agree with. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Connection as a performance driver Performance management redesign The manager-employee relationship Employee experience Talent retention Workplace culture Ideal for CHROs and VPs of People rethinking engagement or performance strategy HR and people-team leaders preparing a manager-effectiveness programme Executive teams whose engagement scores have plateaued and whose attrition is climbing Line manager audiences at leadership summits, where the goal is behaviour change, not theory Audience outcomes A clear model for treating the manager-employee bond as a relationship, with the specific manager behaviours that sustain it. The Check-In Method as an installable practice, including the questions managers can use in their next one-to-one. A diagnosis for why performance management processes fail, and what to redesign rather than patch. A sharper read of engagement data, so leaders stop optimising scores and start changing the experience behind them. Language HR and line leaders can share, which closes the gap between policy intent and what employees actually feel.

Why organisations work with Flex He has built United View from a personal channel into a 130,000-plus subscriber football media brand without a broadcaster behind him, and can describe what actually retains an audience week to week. He sits inside English football’s broadcast ecosystem (Sky Sports, talkSPORT, DR Sports Media) while running an independent platform, which gives him a working view of where legacy media and creator media now compete and overlap. His perspective on inclusion is grounded in lived experience as a Black broadcaster, including a publicly reported racist-abuse incident outside Old Trafford that he chose to confront on the record rather than absorb privately. His career, from SEN teacher to elite-game broadcaster, gives him concrete material on reinvention and on speaking to young audiences, rather than abstract claims about purpose. One of YouTube’s UK Black Voices Class of 2022, a curated cohort selected and developed by the platform itself. Biography highlights Founder and presenter of United View, an independent Manchester United-focused YouTube channel with more than 130,000 subscribers. Presenter and broadcaster for Sky Sports (including Good Morning Transfers), talkSPORT and DR Sports Media. Selected for the YouTube UK Black Voices Creator Class of 2022. Host of the BTEC Awards and of UK Black Business Week; BTEC Ambassador. Former Special Educational Needs teacher; basketball player formerly contracted to the London Lions (previously MK Lions). Working R&B and Garage DJ alongside his broadcast and creator work. Biography Independent fan media has moved from a hobby tier to a structural part of how football is consumed. United View, the channel Flex founded in 2021 and grew past 130,000 subscribers, sits inside that shift. It runs without a broadcaster’s infrastructure and earns its audience by being closer to the matchday experience than legacy outlets can be. That operator vantage point is what makes him useful to a business audience. He can talk concretely about what holds an online community together, how trust is built when there is no studio behind you, and where independent creators and traditional broadcasters now compete for the same attention. His parallel work with Sky Sports, talkSPORT and DR Sports Media gives him a view from both sides of that line. Inclusion is the other live thread. As a Black broadcaster in English football he has had to address racism in his work directly, including a publicly reported incident outside Old Trafford in November 2024 that he chose to put on the record rather than carry quietly. His selection for YouTube’s UK Black Voices Creator Class of 2022 and his hosting roles at UK Black Business Week and the BTEC Awards place him inside the institutional side of that conversation as well. He came to broadcasting via a Special Educational Needs teaching career, basketball at the London Lions, and a continuing life as an R&B and Garage DJ. That track gives him substantive material for audiences thinking about reinvention, young talent and the route into creator-led careers, beyond the football frame. Key speaking topics Audience and community building in the creator economy Independent media and the future of sports broadcasting Diversity and inclusion in sport, media and the workplace Confronting racism in public-facing work Reinvention and non-linear careers Engaging young and digital-native audiences Hosting, panel facilitation and event presenting in sport and culture Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and internal culture teams looking for a credible voice on inclusion that is grounded in lived experience rather than slideware. Marketing, brand and audience leaders working through the shift from broadcast to creator-led media. Employee network and ERG events, particularly around Black History Month, anti-racism programming and early-careers outreach. Sports, media and entertainment organisations briefing teams on how independent creators are changing fan and consumer behaviour. Audience outcomes A clearer working picture of how independent creators earn and keep audience trust, and what that means for in-house content and brand teams. A more honest framing of inclusion at work, from someone who has had to handle racism in public rather than discuss it in abstract. Material on building careers and platforms outside conventional broadcast and corporate routes, usable in early-careers and emerging-talent programmes. Sharper questions about where legacy media authority sits now that fans and employees increasingly trust people, not institutions.