Future Skills speakers

Why organisations work with Jay Samit His framework for disruption is derived from operating on both sides of it: he led digital transformation at EMI and Sony when their core business models were collapsing, then went on to build and advise companies that were doing the disrupting. That dual vantage point is not common among innovation speakers. Disrupt You! provides a replicable method for identifying where value will migrate in a given industry, applicable at both the organisational and individual leadership level, giving teams a shared vocabulary and process, not just inspiration. His Deloitte advisory work means the framework has been stress-tested against the specific constraints of large, publicly accountable organisations, not just start-up environments. He translates exponential technology trends including AI, spatial computing, blockchain, automation into commercial and competitive decisions, rather than presenting technology as the end in itself. His Fortune column and WSJ documentary series give him a current, credible public presence that amplifies the authority he brings into a room; senior audiences have typically encountered his thinking before the engagement begins. Biography highlights Former Independent Vice Chairman, Deloitte Digital; led enterprise consulting across AI, robotics, IoT, and digital transformation Author of Disrupt You! (Flatiron Books, 2015), published in 12 languages, and Future Proofing You (2021) Global President of Digital Distribution, EMI / Capitol Records; led the label from negligible digital presence to industry benchmark for digital transition Creator and General Manager, Sony Connect; Executive Vice President, Sony Regular contributor to Fortune (bi-weekly column on exponential technologies), Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review Adjunct Professor, USC Viterbi School of Engineering; UCLA Presidential Fellowship graduate, magna cum laude Advised LinkedIn and eBay pre-IPO; CEO of NASDAQ-listed SeaChange International Biography Most organisations understand disruption as something that happens to them. The harder strategic question is whether an organisation can develop the internal capability to anticipate market shifts and capture value from them before competitors or new entrants do, and what that requires structurally, culturally, and at the leadership level. Jay Samit has occupied both sides of that problem. As Global President of Digital Distribution at EMI and as the executive brought in to lead Sony’s digital transformation, he operated inside institutions whose core revenue models were being destroyed by technologies they could see but could not commercialise fast enough. Those experiences inform Disrupt You!, his internationally published framework for applying disruptor logic inside established organisations, which argues that the methods used to build new markets are the same methods available to incumbents willing to challenge their own assumptions. His subsequent role as Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital extended that work across industries and at scale, applying AI, robotics, and data analytics to the operational and competitive challenges of major global enterprises. That trajectory – from operator to adviser to author to investor – gives his arguments about disruption an empirical base that distinguishes them from frameworks developed in academic or consultancy settings alone. His writing appears regularly in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, and he teaches innovation at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. Senior leadership teams engaging with his work gain not only a model for reading competitive environments, but a practical method for building the internal conditions that allow large organisations to act on what they see. Key speaking topics Disruption strategy for established enterprises Business model innovation and value migration Entrepreneurial thinking inside large organisations Exponential technologies and commercial strategy AI, automation, and competitive positioning Data analytics as competitive advantage Future-proofing careers and leadership capability Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating competitive disruption or industry transition Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Innovation Officers building internal innovation capability Boards and senior leadership in media, financial services, retail, and technology sectors facing structural change Transformation leads and digital strategy functions tasked with operationalising change at enterprise scale Audience outcomes A structured way of thinking about where value will migrate in their industry, and how to position ahead of it rather than responding after the fact Practical methods drawn from Samit’s Disrupt You! framework for identifying market gaps and turning internal constraints into innovation triggers Clearer understanding of how exponential technologies (AI, automation, spatial computing) translate into specific commercial and competitive decisions A reframe of disruption as a strategic tool available to incumbents, not just start-ups – with examples from Samit’s own operational experience Greater confidence in communicating a growth and innovation agenda internally, using a common language and set of principles

Why organisations work with Kayleigh Fazan Her training population is store teams and frontline managers at PVH, ASICS, Rituals, Hunkemöller, B&Q and Skechers. TIRA’s field trainers work in store, alongside the people who serve the customer. Unscripted resolves into four behaviours a person can practise: Awareness, Connection, Confidence and Contribution. TIRA delivers the same material as Leadership Coaching Days, so a keynote can be the front end of a programme with the same teams. She argues the people case in commercial language. TIRA’s client programmes are built and tracked around conversion, average transaction value, membership acquisition and retention. She has lived the disruption her keynote addresses. Twenty years of career built from a £3.25-an-hour shop floor job, redundancy in 2020, and The International Retail Academy founded the same year. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of The International Retail Academy, a retail training and consulting firm working with Rituals, ASICS, Hunkemöller, Skechers, B&Q, Tommy Hilfiger, Gap and Crocs. Two decades in retail operations before founding TIRA, from Concession Manager at Debenhams at 19 to Area Manager and Head of Franchise across Europe and the Middle East. Hosted the closing session of the 10th Global DIY-Summit in Rome, and shared a Retail Week Live fireside in London with André Pedersen, COO of Intersport Nordics, on focusing store teams on what matters most. Also billed at the Retail Technology Show, House of Retail, and the SingularityU South Africa Summit, which ran online in 2021. Contributor to Retail Jeweller and Bizcommunity, and guest on the Shiny Happy People podcast. Co-author of Women Who Inspire, contributing the chapter “Embracing Discomfort”, and writing her first solo book. Profiled by CIO Business World in its 2025 feature “The 10 Most Iconic Women Leaders Revamping the Future”. Biography The International Retail Academy exists because retailers spend heavily on systems and thinly on the people using them. Kayleigh Fazan founded it in 2020, mid-pandemic, after twenty years running stores, areas and franchise operations across Europe and the Middle East. The method is deliberately bottom-up. TIRA’s field trainers work in store alongside store leaders, moving them from supervising tasks to coaching behaviour. Programmes are tracked in conversion, average transaction value, membership acquisition and retention. Her argument is that being hard to replace is trainable. The signature keynote, Unscripted: How to Thrive When Everything Else Gets Automated, breaks that into four behaviours a person can be coached in. The stages have been mostly retail and franchise: the closing session of the 10th Global DIY-Summit in Rome, and a Retail Week Live fireside in London on focusing store teams on what matters most. Her keynote on The Retail Revolution went out online, to the SingularityU South Africa Summit in 2021. She started at 16 on a New Look shop floor in Barrow-in-Furness, earning £3.25 an hour, and was running a Debenhams concession by 19. Redundancy in 2020 ended the international career she had built. Her speaking fees part-fund her work supporting children living in poverty, a commitment she traces to having lived in a hostel as a child. Key speaking topics Human capability in an automating workplace Frontline behaviour and customer experience Service culture and its commercial results Leadership of store and frontline teams Confidence and presence at work Employee retention in high-turnover roles Retail transformation from the shop floor up Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors accountable for capability in large frontline workforces Chief Customer Officers, retail directors and heads of store operations Conference programmers in retail, franchise and consumer-facing sectors looking for a main stage or closing session Brand and franchise leadership teams at offsites, kick-off meetings and sales conferences Audience outcomes Four behaviours they can practise the next morning: Awareness, Connection, Confidence and Contribution An answer to what their own role becomes once the specifiable parts of it are automated The case for why the person in front of the customer is the brand, and what that changes about how teams are managed Managers able to describe the difference between supervising tasks and coaching behaviour

Why organisations work with Kevin Green A career arc that has tested his own frameworks in three different operating environments: professional kitchens, classroom education and corporate keynote delivery. The 3P Framework (Purpose, Passion, Potential) gives audiences a single, repeatable structure for moving from feeling stuck to taking action, useful for leaders managing people through reinvention. A teaching style built on practical demonstration, not abstraction. He came up running real kitchens and competing on Food Network’s Chopped, and brings that operator instinct to the stage. Strong fit for student and early-career audiences as well as corporate teams, with documented work with the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Department of Education and Pellissippi State Community College. Biography highlights Founder of Kevin Green Elevates, a keynote and workshop practice focused on leadership alignment and personal execution. Competitor on Food Network’s Chopped. Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Lipscomb University, Nashville. Built and ran Chef Kevin Culinary, a personal chef business spanning private dinners, cooking classes and culinary education. Speaking clients and partners include the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Department of Education, Pellissippi State Community College and Toastmasters. Reported keynote speaker for the IASP 2026 Global Conference, with a talk titled “Do It Scared”. Biography Most teams do not lack effort. They lack alignment. Priorities pile up, ownership drifts, and people work hard on the wrong things. That is the problem Kevin Green built his keynote practice around, drawing on a career that has crossed kitchens, classrooms and corporate rooms. His operator background is unusual for a speaker on this topic. He trained as a chef, ran his own personal chef business in Knoxville, Tennessee, taught culinary arts to teenagers, and competed on Food Network’s Chopped. Each of those environments forced him to translate intent into clean, repeatable execution under pressure, and that is the frame he brings to leaders. His core teaching tool is the 3P Framework, Purpose, Passion, Potential. It gives audiences a simple structure for separating what they actually want from what they have inherited, and then for moving from clarity into action. He uses it with college students choosing direction, with early-career professionals at crossroads, and with corporate teams trying to get priorities, roles and expectations into the same shape. He is known for energy on stage and for breaking complex ideas into language a working audience can use the next morning. Clients include the University of Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Education and Pellissippi State Community College, and he was named to open the IASP 2026 Global Conference with a keynote titled “Do It Scared”. Key speaking topics Purpose, passion and potential as a personal operating framework Leadership and team alignment Personal execution and follow-through Resilience and self-leadership at career crossroads Authentic working life and identity at work Presence, body language and vocal delivery Ideal for Corporate leadership offsites and all-hands events focused on execution and ownership Sales kick-offs and culture days where energy and clarity matter as much as content University and college audiences, including career services, student life and athletic departments Early-career and high-potential cohorts navigating career direction Audience outcomes A clearer personal answer to what they are working towards and why A simple framework, the 3P method, that survives the trip back to the desk A sharper read on where their own priorities, roles and expectations are out of alignment Renewed momentum, with concrete actions to take in the days after the event Practical language for talking about presence, voice and how they show up at work

Why organisations work with Kimberly Bryant She built Black Girls CODE from a single San Francisco workshop into an organisation that reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, which gives her concrete authority on what scales in early-career technical pipeline work and what does not. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures, puts her in active deal flow with founders working in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, so her view of inclusive innovation is grounded in capital decisions, not advocacy. The Black Girlboss Paradox is her own framework for the specific leadership progression problem Black women hit at senior levels, and it gives audiences a usable concept rather than a general DEI message. A 20-plus year engineering career at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer means she can hold a serious conversation with technical leaders about pipeline, R&D culture, and progression in regulated, complex organisations. Recognition by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion and a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award places her in a small group of named, vetted voices on this subject for senior audiences. Biography highlights Founder, Black Girls CODE (2011), reaching more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa. Founder and CEO, Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, based in Memphis on the historic Griggs College campus, investing in Black founders in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech. White House Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion, 2013. Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, 2014. BE Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 1989. Twenty-plus year career in engineering leadership roles at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. Forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House, autumn 2027. Biography In 2011 a Memphis-born electrical engineer ran a coding workshop for fourteen girls in San Francisco because her own daughter could not find a class that looked like her. The workshop became Black Girls CODE. Inside a decade it had reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, with Smithsonian and White House recognition attached. Kimberly Bryant came to that work after twenty years as an engineering manager inside Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. That matters for buyers, because her view of inclusion is shaped by R&D budgets, validation cycles, and Fortune 100 promotion ladders, not by the language of advocacy alone. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, is based on the historic Griggs College campus in her hometown of Memphis. The fund writes cheques into Black-led companies in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, which keeps her thesis on inclusive innovation tied to live capital decisions. The framework she now brings to senior audiences is the Black Girlboss Paradox: the structural reason Black women who reach the threshold of executive power encounter heightened scrutiny, narrower capital access, and confinement to lower-leverage roles. It is also the subject of her forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, from Tiny Reparations Books at Penguin Random House, due in autumn 2027. Key speaking topics Institutional accountability in leadership Inclusive innovation and venture capital Founder journeys and entrepreneurship at scale Black women’s leadership progression and the Black Girlboss Paradox Organisational design and who holds power Inclusive AI development and AI for social impact Ideal for CHROs and chief diversity officers responsible for moving senior representation, not just hiring numbers Boards and executive teams reviewing the credibility of their inclusion strategy Heads of innovation, R&D, and venture units allocating capital to underrepresented founders Women in leadership programmes, particularly those focused on senior progression for women of colour Audience outcomes A clear, named framework, the Black Girlboss Paradox, for the leadership-progression problem that generic DEI language misses A practitioner view of what scales in tech-equity work, drawn from running an organisation that reached 100,000 students Specific signals to apply when assessing inclusive innovation strategies, sourced from active venture practice A re-set on the difference between access initiatives and structural change in promotion, capital, and culture

Why organisations work with Laura Bates Over 200,000 firsthand testimonies collected through the Everyday Sexism Project give her an evidence base on workplace and institutional sexism that no consultancy or HR function can replicate. Two years of undercover research inside incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, published as Men Who Hate Women, means she can speak credibly about how online radicalisation enters workplaces through younger employees and customers. Her work has produced operational outcomes, not just commentary: Facebook policy changes on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education added to the national curriculum, and revised British Transport Police protocols on sexual violence. She translates a politically charged subject into language senior leaders can act on, with the credibility of a BEM, a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and ten years of reporting in The Guardian and The New York Times behind her. Biography highlights Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, with over 200,000 testimonies collected globally since 2012. Author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Men Who Hate Women, and Fix the System, Not the Women. British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge; Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular contributor to The New York Times and The Guardian; named one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women and Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red and The Sunday Times Magazine. Recipient of the Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Biography Workplace sexism is rarely a single visible incident. It is the accumulation of small, normalised behaviours that policies on paper do not catch, and that employees, especially women and younger staff, stop reporting because they have learned reports go nowhere. The Everyday Sexism Project, founded in 2012, was built to make that accumulation visible. More than 200,000 testimonies later, it has become one of the largest qualitative datasets on gender inequality in existence. The project’s founder, Laura Bates, has spent over a decade translating those testimonies into work that organisations can use. Her books, Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Misogynation, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women, move from individual experience to institutional pattern. The work has produced concrete policy outcomes: Facebook revised its rules on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education entered the national curriculum, and British Transport Police updated how it handles reports of sexual violence on public transport. A second strand of her work is investigative. For Men Who Hate Women, Bates spent two years undercover in incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, mapping how extreme misogyny is now produced and distributed online. That work matters for organisations because the audience for it is in classrooms now and entering workforces within a few years; HR leaders and school heads cannot afford to be unfamiliar with it. The credentials are serious. A British Empire Medal in 2015 for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular columns in The New York Times and The Guardian. The Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute, shared with Tim Berners-Lee. The work has been judged on substance by serious institutions, which is what allows a sceptical executive committee to take the argument seriously. Key speaking topics Everyday sexism and institutional inequality Workplace harassment and bystander response Male allyship and positive masculinity Online misogyny, incels and the manosphere Gender, consent and education Media representation of women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and culture leads designing policy that will hold up under scrutiny Senior leadership teams and boards examining harassment, retention and reputational risk Heads of school, university leadership and education policymakers Internal employee networks and male allyship programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how harassment patterns form in their own organisation, drawn from the largest qualitative dataset on the subject. Specific language for talking to men about allyship without defensiveness shutting the conversation down. A working understanding of incel and manosphere content that is influencing employees, students and customers. Confidence to challenge policies and processes that look good on paper but fail in practice.

Why organisations work with Laura Muir A medal record across three Olympic cycles (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 silver, Paris 2024 fifth with a Scottish record) that demonstrates sustained performance rather than a single peak moment. The only British athlete to win five European Indoor Championship golds, evidence of a planning and preparation system that produces results year after year. Lived experience of running a parallel high-stakes track: completed her veterinary medicine degree at Glasgow while training at world-class level, a story of capacity management rather than balance. Direct access to the methods behind composure in finals where the British record, an Olympic medal, and global attention are decided inside four minutes. Biography highlights Olympic 1500m silver medallist, Tokyo 2020, in a British record 3:54.50. Two-time outdoor European 1500m champion (Berlin 2018, Munich 2022) and 2022 World Championships 1500m bronze medallist. Five European Indoor Championship gold medals, a British record, including a 1500m and 3000m double in Glasgow 2019. 2022 Commonwealth Games 1500m gold and 800m bronze for Team Scotland. Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow, graduated 2018. MBE for services to athletics, 2019 New Year Honours. Biography The 1500 metres is decided in just under four minutes. There is no second leg, no team-mate to hand off to, and no plausible recovery from a poor tactical call inside the final lap. The athletes who medal repeatedly at that distance are the ones who have built a system that holds when the stakes are at their highest. Laura Muir has medalled at three Olympic cycles in that event, including silver at Tokyo 2020 in a British record of 3:54.50 and a fifth-place Scottish record in the Paris 2024 final. She holds five European Indoor Championship gold medals, the most of any British athlete, and is a two-time outdoor European champion. The 2022 World Championships in Eugene added a bronze, and the same year brought Commonwealth Games gold in the 1500m and bronze over 800m. That run of results comes from a planning culture more than from inspiration. The same period covered her veterinary medicine degree at the University of Glasgow, completed in 2018, and an MBE for services to athletics the following year. The discipline she describes when talking about competition is the discipline she used to run two careers in parallel. For senior audiences, the relevant content is not the medals themselves but the operating method behind them: how a small team builds a season around a single race, how composure is rehearsed rather than summoned, and how recovery from a disappointing championship becomes the input to the next cycle’s plan. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Goal setting and long-range planning Resilience and recovery from setback Composure in high-stakes moments Capacity management across parallel commitments Team and coach relationships in individual sport Motivation and discipline over a long career Ideal for Senior leaders and executive teams under sustained performance scrutiny Sales, trading, and commercial functions where individual high-stakes moments determine results Talent and learning leaders designing development programmes for high-potential staff Conference audiences at annual kickoffs, partner meetings, and recognition events Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite performers plan and rehearse for moments that last minutes but define a year. Specific methods for managing composure when the audience and the cost of error are both large. A credible account of how to sustain output across multiple cycles, not a single peak. A clear view of what capacity management looks like when two demanding tracks are being run at once.

Why organisations work with Leland Melvin He has lived two career-ending events and returned from both. A hamstring injury ended his NFL prospects; a training accident left him partially deaf and medically grounded before he was cleared to fly. Leaders running fatigued teams listen to him because the material is earned. He is the only person drafted into the NFL who has flown in space, and he uses that arc as a working case study on reinvention, not as a curiosity. The narrative carries weight in rooms that have heard most astronaut and athlete talks before. He ran NASA Education as Associate Administrator and co-chaired the White House STEM Task Force. He speaks credibly to boards and CHROs on future skills and pipeline strategy, not only on inspiration. His STS-122 mission delivered Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS. The crew was American, French, German, and led a delicate international handover. He draws on that for executives managing multinational teams under public scrutiny. Author of Chasing Space with HarperCollins, with a Young Readers edition still in active use across US school systems. The book is a working reference for the keynote, not a souvenir. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, mission specialist on STS-122 and STS-129 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, with over 565 hours in space. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and head of NASA’s education portfolio at the Senior Executive Service level. Co-chair of the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force and chair of the International Space Education Board. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986; the only person drafted into the NFL to have flown in space. BSc Chemistry, University of Richmond; MSc Materials Science Engineering, University of Virginia. Specialist in optical fibre sensors at NASA Langley before astronaut selection. Author of Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2017). Biography A training tank at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston ended Leland Melvin’s astronaut career before it started. A water-pressure incident during EVA training left him partially deaf and medically disqualified from flight. NASA assigned him to its education office. Three years later, a flight surgeon cleared him on a waiver, and he flew to the International Space Station on STS-122 to deliver the Columbus laboratory module. The path to that flight ran through two earlier identities. Chemistry at the University of Richmond on a football scholarship. A masters in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. A research career at NASA Langley working on optical fibre sensors for composite structures, while training camps with the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Toronto Argonauts closed one by one through hamstring injuries. Selection as a NASA astronaut came in 1998. Two missions followed, STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009, totalling more than 565 hours in orbit. What gives the speaking work its weight is what came after the flights. As NASA Associate Administrator for Education from 2010 to 2014, Melvin oversaw the agency’s national education portfolio and co-chaired the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. He sat at the senior level on US STEM policy. Chasing Space, published by HarperCollins in 2017, took the personal account into wider circulation and remains in use as a school text in its Young Readers edition. He works now with executive audiences on the operating content of resilience: how a leader keeps a fatigued team functioning when the people in it are quietly carrying serious setbacks, and how to design a pipeline that pulls talent from places most organisations do not yet look. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setbacks High-performing teams in high-consequence operating environments Inclusive leadership and multinational crew dynamics STEM education, future skills, and pipeline strategy Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and learning leaders building resilience and inclusion programmes with substance Senior teams emerging from restructure, redundancy, or burnout cycles Education, public sector, and STEM-focused organisations setting talent pipeline strategy Conferences seeking a credentialed plenary voice on inspiration that withstands scrutiny Audience outcomes A working sense of what resilience looks like as a leadership behaviour, not a personal trait A specific account of how international crew performance is built and maintained under pressure A clearer view of the pipeline question: where future technical talent is found and what blocks it A vivid Earth-observation perspective that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with Liz Wiseman She runs two distinct, primary-research-backed frameworks, Multipliers and Impact Players, that name behaviours leaders can change on Monday morning, not abstractions they have to translate. Her Accidental Diminisher diagnostic gives senior leaders a mirror most are not expecting: the well-intentioned habits, rescuing, idea-spraying, pacesetting, that quietly shrink their teams. The Impact Players research, drawn from 170 executives across ten countries, isolates the behaviours of the contributors managers actually depend on, which CHROs use to recalibrate performance criteria and promotion decisions. Seventeen years inside Oracle, including VP of Oracle University, mean she frames leadership in operating terms a senior corporate audience recognises immediately. Named the top-ranked leadership thinker by Thinkers50 in 2019 and recipient of the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023, with continued presence on the ranking. Biography highlights CEO of The Wiseman Group, Silicon Valley leadership research and executive development firm. Author of Multipliers (New York Times bestseller), Rookie Smarts (Wall Street Journal bestseller), and Impact Players (Wall Street Journal bestseller). Thinkers50 Leadership Award winner (2019); Thinkers50 Talent Award winner (2023). Former Vice President of Oracle University and global leader for Human Resource Development across a 17-year Oracle career. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fortune; guest lecturer at Brigham Young University and Stanford University. Advises and speaks for clients including Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, and Tesla. Biography The leader who is the smartest person in the room is often the reason no one else in the room is contributing. Liz Wiseman’s research into what she calls Multipliers and Diminishers, published in Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, isolates the specific habits that determine which one a manager becomes, often without realising. The Accidental Diminisher diagnostic that accompanies the work is now used by leadership teams across global corporations. Before The Wiseman Group, she spent seventeen years inside Oracle, latterly as Vice President of Oracle University and global head of Human Resource Development. That operating background runs through the work. Her frameworks are written for executives who have to act on them, not academics describing them. Impact Players, drawn from interviews with 170 executives across ten countries and surveys of 350 managers, asks a different question: what distinguishes the individual contributors that senior leaders actually rely on in high-stakes moments? The findings reshape how CHROs think about promotion, performance criteria, and the behaviours organisations should be selecting for. She was named the top-ranked leadership thinker on the Thinkers50 list in 2019 and received the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. She contributes to Harvard Business Review and Fortune, and lectures at Brigham Young University and Stanford. Her client roster, Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, reflects an unusual fact: organisations with deep internal leadership capability still bring her in. Key speaking topics Multiplier leadership and the Diminisher effect Accidental Diminisher behaviours in senior leaders Impact Players and high-contribution mindsets Leveraging collective intelligence inside teams Rookie Smarts and learning agility under uncertainty Talent identification, promotion, and performance criteria Executive development and leadership capability building Ideal for CHROs redesigning leadership development, promotion criteria, or performance frameworks CEOs and senior leadership teams reviewing how they get more from existing talent Heads of talent and L&D building enterprise leadership programmes Leadership offsites for executive committees and senior management cohorts Audience outcomes Recognition of the specific Diminisher behaviours senior leaders default to under pressure A working vocabulary for the team behaviours that drive disproportionate impact Diagnostic tools, including the Accidental Diminisher profile, that leaders can apply to their own management style Criteria for identifying and developing high-contribution individual contributors A revised view of where untapped capacity sits inside the existing workforce

Why organisations work with Maggie Aderin-Pocock She has built optical instruments that flew on ESA satellites and sit inside major ground-based telescopes, so her authority on STEM careers comes from doing the work, not commenting on it. She is one of a small group of scientists who can hold a prime-time television audience, which is why The Sky at Night has kept her on air since 2014. Internal communications teams use her to make technical strategy land with the rest of the business. The Institute of Physics awarded her the 2020 Kelvin Medal for public engagement, the first time a Black woman has received a gold medal from the IoP. That credential gives diversity and inclusion programmes a credible scientific anchor. Through Science Innovation Ltd she has run STEM outreach for more than 350,000 students, giving her practical evidence about what actually moves under-represented young people into technical careers, not just theory. She speaks openly about being diagnosed with dyslexia at eight and the assumptions teachers made about her, which lets leadership audiences hear an inclusion argument grounded in lived experience rather than policy language. Biography highlights BSc in Physics and PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London. Honorary research associate, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London. Chancellor of the University of Leicester. Co-presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night, the world’s longest-running television science programme. Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), 2024, for services to science education and diversity. 2020 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics. Author of The Sky at Night: Book of the Moon, A Guide to Our Closest Neighbour (Penguin / BBC Books). Biography The instruments that measure wind from space, or split starlight into its component frequencies on a Chilean mountaintop, are built by small teams of engineers most people will never hear of. Maggie Aderin-Pocock has spent her career inside those teams. She managed the observation instruments for the European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite at Astrium, and led a group of seventeen engineers building a high-resolution spectrograph for the Gemini telescope in Chile. That hands-on instrumentation career sits underneath everything else she does. It is why a BBC commissioner trusted her with The Sky at Night, the longest-running television science programme in the world, and why universities and government bodies treat her science communication as substantive rather than decorative. Imperial College trained her as a physicist and mechanical engineer; University College London hosts her as an honorary research associate; the University of Leicester appointed her Chancellor in 2023. Public engagement is the second strand of the work, and it has been institutionally recognised. The Institute of Physics awarded her its 2020 Kelvin Medal for exceptional services to science education and physics communication. She was the first Black woman to receive a gold medal from the IoP. Through her social enterprise Science Innovation Ltd she has run hands-on STEM outreach for more than 350,000 students, much of it in inner-city schools that conventional pipelines do not reach. She talks publicly about being diagnosed with dyslexia at eight and being assumed to be heading for a career other than science. That is not autobiography for its own sake, it is the evidence base for how she argues about inclusion: leaders who want a wider technical pipeline have to look at where the system filters people out, not only where it lets them in. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024 for services to science education and diversity. Key speaking topics Diversity and inclusion in STEM Science communication for non-specialist audiences Space science, satellites, and astronomy The future of space exploration STEM education and the technical talent pipeline Curiosity and creativity in technical organisations Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent building technical and STEM pipelines Heads of internal communications translating engineering or science strategy to general audiences DEI leads working on retention and progression of under-represented technical staff Leaders running large customer or employee events that need a credible science voice Audience outcomes A clearer view of where standard recruiting and education pipelines filter out under-represented technical talent, and what actually changes that. Practical language for explaining complex technical work to non-technical colleagues, customers, or boards. A current picture of where space science and satellite technology are heading and what that means for adjacent industries. Renewed conviction among technical staff that their work matters beyond the lab, told through someone who has built instruments that flew.

Why organisations work with Marcel Pesch He runs a structured AI executive education programme, MMAI, with practitioner faculty drawn from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, Strategyzer, and academic and legal specialists. Few keynote speakers come with their own curriculum. His material covers the full operating stack: generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, automation and agents, and leadership in the AI era. Audiences leave with a managerial map, not a tour of tools. He treats fairness, bias, and equality of opportunity as operating problems for organisations deploying AI, not as a separate ethics conversation. Fifteen years of coaching practice underpins the keynote register. Sessions translate into how managers behave on Monday, not just what they understood on Friday. Active member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), with a stated engagement in AI standards and ethical guidelines. Biography highlights Founder of academy4.ai, an AI education and training organisation Designer of the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, a nine-module cohort-based course covering AI strategy, compliance, and deployment Faculty network on MMAI includes Prof. Dr. Johannes Stübinger (HS Coburg), Dr. Kristina Schreiber (LOSCHELDER), and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer Member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband) Over 15 years of professional coaching experience with individuals and organisations Keynote topics include “AI on Steroids”, “AI & Diversity and Inclusion”, “AI & Inequality of Opportunity”, and “AI & the Workforce of Tomorrow” Biography Most companies have already bought into AI. The harder question is whether their managers can use it well: govern its decisions, interrogate its outputs, and redesign work around it. That is the gap Marcel Pesch built academy4.ai to close. Through the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, Pesch and his faculty take working professionals through nine modules covering generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, marketing and sales applications, automation and agentic systems, sustainability, project management, and leadership in the AI era. Faculty draw on academic specialists, legal experts at LOSCHELDER, and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer. Alongside the curriculum, Pesch speaks publicly on the harder political content of AI deployment: bias in algorithmic systems, equality of opportunity, and the way AI is reshaping who gets which jobs. He is a member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), engaged in standards and ethical guidelines for the field. Fifteen years of coaching shape his keynote register. Sessions are designed to leave senior audiences with a managerial map of where AI changes their work, where it does not, and where the next governance and fairness decisions will sit. Key speaking topics AI literacy for managers and executives Operationalising AI beyond pilots AI Act and regulatory compliance for business leaders Bias and equality of opportunity in algorithmic systems Automation and agentic systems in the workplace The AI-era workforce and future skills Leading teams in AI-augmented organisations Ideal for C-suite teams and senior managers preparing to deploy AI across operations Heads of HR, transformation, and learning planning AI workforce upskilling Boards seeking a structured view of AI governance, compliance, and risk DEI and ethics leads working with technical teams on algorithmic fairness Audience outcomes A practical map of where AI changes managerial work and where it does not Sharper language for governing AI decisions, model outputs, and vendor claims A clearer view of bias and equality-of-opportunity questions in algorithmic systems A workable next step for AI literacy across leadership and team levels

Why organisations work with Mark Williams He brings the evidence base that most performance and leadership content lacks. His research on perceptual-cognitive skill, decision-making and expertise is among the most cited in the field worldwide. He has translated that science into practice at the highest level of sport, advising FIFA, UEFA, the IOC, The FA, and teams across the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. The lessons travel directly into how executives think about talent and pressure. His book with Tim Wigmore, “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made”, gives leaders a shared language for what separates the very best from the merely good, built on interviews with athletes like Steph Curry, Pete Sampras and Marcus Rashford. He is Editor-in-Chief of three of the discipline’s leading journals, including the Journal of Sports Sciences. When he tells a board what the research says, it is not a summary of someone else’s work. He is unusually direct for an academic of his standing. The science is rigorous, the delivery is plain. Biography highlights Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC); formerly Professor and Chair, Department of Health, Kinesiology and Recreation, University of Utah. Co-author of “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made” (2020), with Telegraph and New York Times sports writer Tim Wigmore. Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sports Sciences, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, and Human Movement Science. Distinguished Scholar Awards from the International Society of Sport Psychology and the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity. Consultant to FIFA, UEFA, the IOC, The FA, and professional teams in the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the National Academy of Kinesiology, and the European College of Sport Science. Biography The reason one team performs under pressure and another collapses is rarely the talent on the pitch. It is what was built into the players, the coaching staff and the decisions long before kick-off. Mark Williams has spent more than three decades studying that question, and turning the answers into something coaches, federations and executives can use. His research focuses on the neural and psychological mechanisms behind expertise: how perception, decision-making and motor skill develop, and what separates a world-class performer from a very good one. The work has shaped programmes at FIFA, UEFA, the IOC and The FA, and inside teams across the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sports Sciences, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, and Human Movement Science. His book with Tim Wigmore, “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made”, brought that body of research to a wider audience through interviews with figures including Steph Curry, Pete Sampras, Kurt Warner and Marcus Rashford. The argument is built on evidence rather than anecdote: the conditions that produce sustained excellence can be described, designed and reproduced. For senior leaders, the value is the translation. The science of how people learn complex skills, hold their nerve in unfamiliar conditions and make better decisions under time pressure does not stop at the touchline. It is the same problem a board faces when it asks why a strategy works for one team and not for the next. Key speaking topics The science of expertise and skill acquisition Talent identification and development Decision-making under pressure Building high-performing teams The psychology of excellence Coaching, learning environments and instructional design Ideal for Executive teams and CHROs designing leadership and talent pipelines Learning and development leaders rebuilding how the organisation teaches complex skills Board and senior conferences focused on performance, culture and decision-making Sports federations, performance directors and coaching staff Audience outcomes A clearer view of what the evidence actually says about how expertise is built, and where most talent programmes go wrong. Specific cues for spotting the perceptual and decision-making skills that distinguish top performers from the rest. Practical principles for designing learning environments that produce skill, not just activity. A shared vocabulary for talking about pressure, decision-making and team performance that holds up under scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?