Inclusive Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Naya Antoniou She brings dual training in organisational psychology and integrative psychotherapy to workplace mental health, which sharpens her work on burnout beyond surface-level wellbeing programmes. Her career-transition practice with vulnerable populations through Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas gives her direct evidence of how work loss, identity and recovery interact, which translates into how she advises corporate clients on restructuring with humanity. She works across the full multigenerational stack, from Gen Z entrants to senior leaders, and treats generational tension as a culture-design question, not a stereotype-management exercise. As a Lean In Greece Circle Leader and Women on Top mentor, she has a substantive track record on women in workplace mental health and HR, useful for organisations whose inclusion work has stalled at policy level. Biography highlights Postgraduate Degree in Organisational Psychology Postgraduate Degree in Career, Executive and Business Coaching MSc in International Relations, University of Piraeus Evidence-Based Coaching certification, Athens Coaching Institute Circle Leader, Lean In Greece Network (Mental Health and HR circle) Career coach with Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas career transition programmes Biography Burnout has stopped being an individual diagnosis. Organisations now carry it as an operating cost: turnover, presenteeism, project slippage, the quiet attrition of people who never quite leave. Naya Antoniou’s work sits inside that operating cost, with the tools of organisational psychology and evidence-based coaching applied directly to how teams are structured, led and supported. Her training combines a postgraduate degree in Organisational Psychology with a postgraduate qualification in Career, Executive and Business Coaching, anchored by an MSc in International Relations from the University of Piraeus. Ongoing postgraduate training in Integrative Psychotherapy gives her practice a clinical grounding that is unusual in corporate coaching. The applied work spans corporate culture transformation, leadership development, and career transition programmes. With Doctors of the World, she has coached women asylum seekers rebuilding work identities from zero. With ActionAid Hellas, she has run career transition programmes for vulnerable groups facing displacement from the labour market. That work shapes how she advises corporate clients on restructure, redeployment and the human side of workforce change. Within Greece, she leads the Mental Health and HR circle of Lean In Greece and mentors with Women on Top on workplace equality. The through-line across her practice is concrete: cultures hold people when they are designed to, and fall apart when wellbeing is treated as a benefit rather than a system. Her speaking work brings that argument into rooms where leaders are deciding which to choose. Key speaking topics Multigenerational teams and Gen Z engagement Burnout and workplace mental health Psychological safety as a leadership practice Culture change in high-performance organisations Future skills for emerging leaders Career transition and workforce change Women in mental health and HR Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning engagement strategy across five generations Leadership teams managing burnout risk during restructure or rapid growth HR and DEI leads building culture programmes that move past policy statements Founders and senior leaders of mid-sized organisations in Southern Europe scaling their first formal people function Audience outcomes A clearer view of how generational expectations shape engagement, retention and management overhead Specific moves leaders can make to install psychological safety as a working condition, not an annual survey question A working diagnostic for burnout that distinguishes individual recovery from structural cause Practical reframing of culture change as a design problem with measurable inputs

Why organisations work with Nayla Al Khaja She is the first woman to direct a feature film in the UAE, which means her observations on inclusion in restrictive professional cultures come from lived practice, not commentary. She built and runs her own production company, Nayla Al Khaja Films, and founded The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, giving her a track record of standing up creative institutions where none existed. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA, evidence of commercial credibility alongside cultural pioneering. Variety named her one of the 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema, a useful external marker for buyers who want a credentialled voice on the Gulf creative economy. She works in Arabic and English at native level, which makes her usable for regional events in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as well as international audiences. Biography highlights First female film director in the United Arab Emirates and CEO of Nayla Al Khaja Films since 2005. BA in film studies, Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Canada, on a UAE government scholarship. Founder of The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, established 2007. Director of Three (2024), her debut feature, which premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA. Director of BAAB, scored by two-time Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman, with cinematography by Rogier Stoffers ASC. Named to Variety’s 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema (2020); Visionary of the Year, Arabian Business Awards (2011); TEDx speaker on women in Arab cinema. Biography The UAE had no female film director before Nayla Al Khaja. She became the first, then built the production company, the film club and the audience that the country needed for a domestic film industry to be possible at all. That is the work she draws on when she speaks. Al Khaja studied mass communication at Dubai Women’s College, then took a UAE government scholarship to Ryerson University in Toronto for a degree in film studies. She returned and founded what is now Nayla Al Khaja Films in 2005, and in 2007 opened The Scene Club, the country’s first independent film society. Both still operate. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December 2023 and released across the GCC and wider MENA region in early 2024. Her second feature, BAAB, was scored by A.R. Rahman and shot by Rogier Stoffers ASC, two collaborators with serious international standing. Variety placed her in its 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema. For corporate audiences, her usefulness is direct. She is asked how a woman builds a career inside an industry that has no women in it, how a creative business gets capitalised in a market that does not yet exist, and how cultural representation actually shifts when someone takes the job rather than waits for the policy. Her answers come from doing it. Key speaking topics Women in male-dominated industries Creative entrepreneurship in the Gulf Cultural representation in film and media Building a career under restrictive cultural conditions The UAE and Saudi creative economy Storytelling and brand communication Resilience and the long arc of a creative career Ideal for Conferences on women in leadership and inclusion, particularly in the GCC and Levant Corporate diversity, talent and ERG events for organisations operating across the Middle East Creative industry summits, brand and marketing leadership audiences Regional government, tourism and cultural authority programmes on the Gulf creative economy Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how women break through in industries where there is no precedent for them. A clearer view of how the Gulf creative economy actually functions, from someone who built inside it. Specific stories about getting a feature film made in a market that did not previously support one. Practical observations on cultural representation that are usable for brand, marketing and communications teams. A keynote presence that audiences in the region recognise and respond to.

Why organisations work with Neelu Kaur She treats workplace silence as a structural problem. Most speakers in this space coach individuals to be more confident; her intervention sits in meeting design and the conversational rules that decide who gets to challenge a senior idea. The Self-Trust Recession is her named diagnosis of the moment: capable leaders, surrounded by AI and competing opinion, are second-guessing themselves and outsourcing decision authority. Her Self-Trust Reset framework is the way back. Her cross-cultural lens, the collective “we” she was raised in meeting the individualistic “I” of American corporate life, makes her credible to global and AAPI audiences who have lived that gap themselves. Her tools combine cognitive and body-based techniques. The pairing of organisational psychology training (Columbia, NYU Stern) and sixteen years of yoga and Ayurveda teaching produces practical methods her audiences can apply in the next meeting they walk into. Be Your Own Cheerleader, published by Post Hill Press in January 2023, gives her work a published thesis a senior buyer can read before commissioning. Biography highlights Author of Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, 2023), a guide to self-advocacy that addresses the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms. MA in Social and Organizational Psychology, Columbia University, and BS from NYU Stern School of Business. Certified NLP Master Practitioner and Coach, NLP Center of New York. Client list includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies. Featured on Morning Brew’s Good Work and TV Asia / SEEMA Network’s Sundays with Seema. Chief Guide at Chief (NYC), with over sixteen years as a yoga teacher and Ayurveda practitioner. Biography Most organisations have more talent than they have contribution. Capable people stay quiet at exactly the moments their judgement is most needed, and what looks like alignment is often silence. This is the tension Neelu Kaur takes on. Trained as an organisational psychologist at Columbia and with an undergraduate degree from NYU Stern, she has spent over fifteen years inside Fortune 500 organisations. The question her work returns to is why capable people stay quiet in the moments that matter. Her client list, which includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies, gives her a view across financial services, consulting, and tech. Her current diagnosis is what she calls the Self-Trust Recession. Leaders are surrounded by AI tools and competing opinion, and the quiet effect is that capable people are outsourcing their own judgement. The Self-Trust Reset framework she has built around this idea is a way to recognise when fear is shaping a decision and rebuild internal authority before acting on it. The earlier strand of her work runs through Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, January 2023). She wrote the book out of her own experience growing up between two cultures: Indian at home, American at work. It examines why people raised in collective ‘we’ cultures struggle to advocate for themselves in workplaces built around the individualistic ‘I’. That cultural lens still shapes her work and is part of what makes her credible to global teams and AAPI audiences who have lived the same code-switch. Key speaking topics Self-trust and decision-making in high-pressure environments Self-advocacy in the workplace Cross-cultural communication in global teams The cost of consensus and over-collaboration AAPI and underrepresented voices in corporate life Burnout and sustainable leadership Ideal for Leadership teams in Fortune 500 environments where decision speed and contribution quality are the bottleneck CHROs, Chief Learning Officers, and L&D leaders building cultures of voice and accountability DEI, AAPI, and Employee Resource Group programmes looking for content that goes beyond representation language High-potential talent and mid-career professionals working across cultures in global organisations Audience outcomes A clear way to recognise when fear, perfectionism, or comparison is shaping a decision instead of judgement Behavioural tools to speak up in high-stakes moments without overshooting or shutting down A vocabulary for the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms, useful for global team conversations A diagnostic for where consensus and over-discussion are slowing the team’s decisions

Why organisations work with Nicklas Pyrdol He brings a working sport psychology background, including consulting to Olympians and world champions, into the language of corporate hiring and team performance, which most HR-stage speakers cannot. His operator track record is unusual for a speaker in this space: Executive HR Manager inside a tech company and partner in a tech startup, so the recommendations land for line leaders, not just HR. The client list is a credibility anchor on its own. LEGO Group, Maersk, Novo Nordisk, Orsted, Lundbeck, HubSpot, Dynatrace, SimCorp and Vivino have used him for the same recurring problem: serious hiring that holds up under scale. Through Beyond Talents and “The Recruitment Equation” podcast with Pil Byriel, he is in continuous dialogue with senior talent acquisition leaders, including Lundbeck’s Head of Global Talent Acquisition, which keeps the material current rather than recycled. He treats inclusion as a hiring quality issue, not a politics issue, which is the framing senior buyers want when DEI has become contested ground inside their own organisations. Biography highlights Founder of Beyond Talents, a Copenhagen-based talent acquisition advisory and speaking practice. Former sport psychology consultant to Olympians and world champions before moving into corporate HR leadership. Co-host of “The Recruitment Equation” podcast with Pil Byriel, featuring senior talent acquisition leaders from companies including Lundbeck. Co-author of a Danish book on motivation, “Motivation. Naa i maal med din traening”. Published academic work on talent development environments, including the Ajax Amsterdam academy, using the holistic ecological approach. Engaged as a keynote speaker by HubSpot, Dynatrace, SimCorp, Vivino, Maersk, LEGO Group, Lundbeck, Novo Nordisk and Orsted across Europe, Asia and the United States. Biography Hiring is where most organisations leak their strategy. Pipelines are narrow, interview panels reward familiarity, and the people who arrive cannot deliver what the plan assumed. Pyrdol’s career has been a long argument that this is fixable, and that the fix is mostly process and psychology rather than budget. His starting point was elite sport. Before moving into business, he worked as a sport psychology consultant with Olympians and world champions, and published research on talent development environments using the holistic ecological approach, including work on the Ajax Amsterdam academy. The premise from that period stayed with him: talent is a function of environment, not a fixed property of the individual. He then moved inside companies, first as an Executive HR Manager in a tech firm and then as a partner in a tech startup, before founding Beyond Talents in Copenhagen. From that base, he advises senior leaders at HubSpot, Dynatrace, SimCorp, Vivino, Maersk, LEGO Group, Lundbeck, Novo Nordisk and Orsted on recruitment, retention, inclusion and the everyday psychological safety that lets teams actually use the talent they hire. The current output runs across formats. He co-hosts “The Recruitment Equation” with Pil Byriel, where guests include Lundbeck’s Head of Global Talent Acquisition, Cassie Wu and Fairec’s Morten Gerner on AI and bias; he co-authored a Danish book on motivation; he writes regularly for HR audiences. The through-line is consistent. Recruitment, inclusion and engagement are operational disciplines, and senior leaders should hold them to operational standards. Key speaking topics Talent acquisition and inclusive recruitment Employee engagement and retention Psychological safety in teams Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging Performance psychology in business Mindset during organisational transformation HR leadership capability Ideal for CHROs, talent acquisition leaders and heads of people are rebuilding hiring under pressure. Executive teams whose strategy depends on attracting and keeping scarce specialist talent. HR and recruitment functions reworking inclusion programmes for substance over signalling. Leadership audiences in scale-up tech and large enterprises managing distributed, multigenerational teams. Audience outcomes A sharper diagnosis of where their current hiring process is filtering out the talent they say they want. Concrete moves to widen the funnel and reduce bias without weakening the hiring bar. A working definition of psychological safety that distinguishes it from comfort, agreement or low standards. A view of engagement and retention as a continuous design problem owned by leaders, not a survey owned by HR. Language for talking to executives about inclusion in commercial terms when the political conversation has stalled.

Why organisations work with Nicky Abdinor Clinical credibility behind the message: trained in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy at the Albert Ellis Institute and in Schema Therapy, with twenty years in practice, so the resilience content is therapy-grade rather than motivational. A live demonstration of inclusion that reframes how teams talk about disability: born without arms and with shortened legs, she founded Nicky’s Drive to fund vehicle adaptations across South Africa, and the lived case sharpens every claim she makes about ability and adjustment. Recognised authority on the speaking circuit: 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame recipient from PSASA and a TEDxTableMountain speaker whose “Driving Dreams” talk drew international engagements across Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Australia. Eight years lecturing psychology at Varsity College, which means the frameworks she teaches travel from keynote stage into workshop and masterclass formats without losing rigour. Biography highlights Registered Clinical Psychologist, HPCSA PS0087157, in independent practice for two decades. TEDxTableMountain speaker, “Driving Dreams,” November 2013. 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame Award, Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa. Founder and chairperson of Nicky’s Drive, a registered South African non-profit funding adapted vehicles for people with disabilities. Trained at the Albert Ellis Institute (REBT, Primary and Advanced Practicums) and the South African Institute of Schema Therapy. Eight years lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate psychology at Varsity College, Cape Town. Biography Resilience has become one of the most over-claimed words in corporate language. Most of what passes for resilience training is mood management dressed up as psychology. The clinical version is something else. It is a set of techniques, drawn from cognitive-behavioural therapy, rational emotive behaviour therapy and schema therapy, that change how a person interprets pressure and adversity. That is the territory Nicky Abdinor works in. Two decades of clinical practice, training accredited by the Albert Ellis Institute in New York, a Diploma in Schema Therapy, and eight years lecturing psychology at Varsity College in Cape Town give her the technical foundation. The keynote work translates that material for non-clinical audiences without softening it. Her own story sharpens the case. Born without arms and with shortened legs, she has built a private practice, founded the non-profit Nicky’s Drive to fund adapted vehicles for people with disabilities across South Africa, and become one of the most decorated speakers in the region, recognised with the 2022 Speakers Hall of Fame Award by PSASA. Her TEDxTableMountain talk “Driving Dreams” carried that perspective onto international stages. For organisations, the value is direct. Wellbeing programmes that lean on generic motivation tend to wear off. Abdinor brings the clinical mechanics, the language of cognitive reframe, schema work, and self-compassion, alongside a lived case that makes inclusion feel less like compliance and more like capability. The room leaves with vocabulary it can use the next day. Key speaking topics Resilience and adversity Cognitive-behavioural therapy in everyday life Optimism and mindset Disability inclusion and the abilities of people with disabilities Self-compassion and emotional wellbeing Mental health in the workplace Tolerating uncertainty Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads building substantive mental health programmes DEI and inclusion teams looking for a credible voice on disability Leadership audiences facing prolonged pressure or change fatigue Conference programmes seeking a closing keynote that combines clinical content with personal narrative Audience outcomes Plain-language tools from CBT and schema therapy that audiences can apply to their own thinking A reframed view of disability and ability that reaches beyond compliance language Specific cognitive techniques for tolerating uncertainty and recovering from setback Vocabulary for self-compassion that managers can carry into team conversations A more demanding standard for what wellbeing content should deliver

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

Why organisations work with Nicola Green She brings firsthand observation of how power, identity and leadership operate at the highest level, drawn from sustained artistic access to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Jonathan Sacks. Her work is held in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center, which gives any inclusion conversation she leads an authority that consultancy-led sessions cannot match. She treats allyship as a discipline with daily behaviours, not as a values statement, which lands with senior leaders who are tired of slogans and want something they can act on. She founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme and co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, so the institution-building she talks about is institution-building she has actually done. Biography highlights Co-founder and director, Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017), with David A. Bailey, David Lammy and Peter Clayton. In Seven Days…, her artistic record of the 2008 Obama campaign, is held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Obama Presidential Center and the UK Government Art Collection. Encounters, a fifty-portrait series with Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Justin Welby, Jonathan Sacks, Ali Gomaa and Desmond Tutu, exhibited at St Martin-in-the-Fields; book published by Brepols. Founder, Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity, addressing underrepresentation of Black and minority ethnic communities in the creative industries. Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, a UK-wide public art project on racial justice and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Co-founder and Chair, Sophia Point Rainforest Research Centre, Guyana. Biography Allyship has become one of the most used and least understood words in the workplace. Many leaders have signed up to it in principle while still being unsure what it asks of them in practice. Green’s work begins in that gap. Drawing on a decade of direct access to the figures who define modern leadership and faith, she treats allyship as something senior leaders do, not something they declare. Her portrait series In Seven Days… documented Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign from the Democratic Convention through to the inauguration. Sets are held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center. A second body of work, Encounters, sat her across the table from Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Justin Welby and Jonathan Sacks. The accompanying book, Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue, was published by Brepols. Beyond the studio, Green has built institutions for the conversation she leads on stage. She co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, featuring twenty-two artists from culturally diverse backgrounds, and founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity in memory of her mentee, the artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. As Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, she created public work confronting the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade across the UK. For senior teams, the value is that Green has spent twenty years studying how leaders actually behave around questions of identity, power and faith. She does not arrive with a framework borrowed from elsewhere. She arrives with primary observation, recorded in works that now sit inside the national collections of two countries. Key speaking topics Allyship as leadership practice Identity, race and power in organisations Inclusive leadership Visual storytelling and narrative change Diversity in the creative industries Representation and institution-building Interfaith dialogue and leadership Ideal for Chief executives, CHROs and DEI leads rebuilding inclusion strategy after the post-2020 backlash. Boards and executive committees setting tone on identity, representation and culture. Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, media and the public sector. Cultural institutions, universities and faith-based organisations working on representation and access. Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of allyship, expressed as behaviours leaders can hold each other to. A direct view of how high-stakes leaders, political and religious, handle identity and power in practice. A sharper sense of how visual culture and representation shape what an organisation looks like from the outside. Practical reference points for inclusion work that has stalled or lost credibility internally.

Why organisations work with Nicolas Hamilton First disabled driver to compete in the BTCC, a UK series where the field has won at Le Mans and Formula One; the credential is verifiable and singular. Brings a working operator’s view of high-performance teamwork from inside a competitive racing garage, not a retired-career retrospective. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention with Radar, an Octopus imprint, structured around seven applied lessons rather than memoir, which gives corporate audiences usable material. Speaks from the experience of being told as a child he would not walk and building a professional racing career anyway; the story carries weight without rhetorical lift. Has delivered to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK across financial services, healthcare, and consumer industries. Biography highlights First disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, debuting in 2015 with AmD Tuning. Scored his first BTCC championship point in 2020 with ROKiT Racing and Team HARD, and his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown. Channel 4 Formula One analyst from 2016. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, Radar / Octopus Books, 2024, acquired in a seven-way publisher auction. Subject of the BBC documentary Racing with the Hamiltons: Nic in the Driving Seat. Has spoken at Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, Shell Energy UK, and Active Care Group. Biography Most leadership stories about overcoming odds end with the protagonist’s achievement. Nicolas Hamilton’s begins with it. Told as a toddler he would never walk because of cerebral palsy, he became the first disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, the same series whose alumni have won at Le Mans and reached Formula One. The racing itself is the substance, not the symbol. Hamilton entered the BTCC in 2015 with AmD Tuning in an Audi S3, returned with ROKiT Racing and Motorbase in 2019, scored his first championship point in 2020 with Team HARD, and posted his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown in a Cupra Leon. He continues to race competitively, sharing grids with reigning champions. That working knowledge of a professional racing garage is what corporate audiences buy. Hamilton speaks from inside an environment where preparation, recovery, and competitive feedback are non-negotiable and where his physical setup has to be engineered differently from every other driver on the grid. He has been a Channel 4 Formula One analyst since 2016 and has spoken to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK. His book, Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, was acquired by Radar at Octopus Books in a seven-way auction and published in 2024. It is structured as applied lessons, not memoir, which is how he treats his keynotes too: a working argument about what high performance demands when the conditions are not on your side. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained constraint High-performance teamwork in elite motorsport Self-leadership and mental strength Disability and representation in competitive environments Goal-setting and long-horizon ambition Inclusion in high-performance cultures Ideal for Senior leadership teams running multi-year change or transformation programmes HR, talent, and L&D leaders shaping resilience and inclusion programmes Sales conferences and commercial kick-offs anchoring a growth-mindset theme Disability employee resource groups and DEI council audiences Audience outcomes A working frame for what sustained performance looks like when conditions cannot be improved, only adapted to. Specific lessons from elite motorsport on teamwork, preparation, and feedback cycles. A sharper view of what disability representation looks like inside a high-performance environment rather than a policy conversation. A reset on the gap between what people are told they can do and what is actually possible under disciplined effort.

Why organisations work with Nicole DuBois A practising CHRO of a 600-person child welfare nonprofit, not a former operator. The HR strategy advice is current, not retrospective. A first-person account of an MS diagnosis, divorce and reinvention published as Unparalyzed, brought into corporate rooms by someone whose day job is running people strategy. Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional by OnConferences across multiple years, alongside membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council. A specific point of view on what authentic leadership costs women in senior roles, anchored in her own decision to publish under her real name after using a pseudonym. Useful to organisations whose own internal HR conversations on illness, caregiving and identity have outgrown the standard wellbeing vendor script. Biography highlights Chief Human Resources Officer, Graham Windham (NYC), responsible for HR strategy across talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement for around 600 employees. Author of Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis, originally published as Danielle M. Bryan and later reclaimed under her own name. Named a Top 100 HR Professional in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025. Connector Award, New Jersey Human Resources Council (2024); Joint Legislative Commendation, State of New Jersey. Bachelor’s in Psychology and Urban Studies from Fordham, Master’s in Mental Health Counselling from NYU, Executive Education for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School. Member of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council. Biography Most organisations now talk openly about wellbeing, inclusion and authentic leadership. Fewer have senior people who can speak about those subjects in the first person without breaking the corporate register. Nicole DuBois sits in that smaller group. Her day job is running people strategy at Graham Windham, a New York child welfare nonprofit with around 600 employees. As Chief Human Resources Officer she leads talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement, and she has done so since 2006. The work is operational and current, not a retired executive’s view of how HR used to function. The second layer is her memoir, Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis. It tracks an MS diagnosis, a divorce after seventeen years of marriage, and a deliberate reinvention. The book was first published under a pseudonym at her publisher’s legal advice, and she has since chosen to reclaim it under her own name. That choice is the spine of her keynote on what authentic leadership actually costs women in senior roles. Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional, the Connector Award from the New Jersey Human Resources Council, and membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council place her inside the professional HR community her audiences are typically drawn from. Her education runs from Fordham and NYU through executive nonprofit work at Columbia Business School. The combination gives organisations a speaker who can hold an HR strategy conversation in the morning and a wellbeing keynote in the afternoon without either feeling rehearsed. Key speaking topics Authentic leadership for women in senior roles Employee wellbeing and the corporate response to chronic illness Engagement and retention in mission-driven organisations Multigenerational workforces Non-linear career paths and personal reinvention Coaching, mentoring and sponsorship inside HR-led talent strategies Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of HR shaping wellbeing, engagement and DEI strategies ERG leaders and women’s networks looking for a senior voice on authentic leadership Nonprofit and mission-driven employers managing retention in lean workforces Internal leadership development programmes for high-potential women Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what authentic leadership looks like in practice when the leader is also living through chronic illness, caregiving or major personal change A current CHRO view on what employee wellbeing programmes get right and where they still miss the people they are aimed at Language and confidence to raise invisible health conditions inside leadership conversations A reframing of non-linear careers as a credibility asset rather than a gap to be explained

Why organisations work with Nihal Arthanayake A daily-broadcast interviewer’s instinct for live conversation. Over eight years presenting the BBC Radio 5 Live afternoon show, plus the Headliners interview series, mean panel craft built across thousands of hours of unscripted live radio. A named winner at the 2019 BBC Radio & Music Awards for Interview of the Year. The room can feel the difference when an interviewer can actually draw out a senior guest, not just read questions in order. The author of a serious trade book on conversation. Let’s Talk (Hachette, 2022) is built on interviews with figures from Mary McAleese to hostage negotiators, which gives Nihal a content keynote that other hosts simply cannot offer. Twenty-five years of cultural fluency across BBC, MTV, Channel 4 and BBC Two. Comfortable on a Hugo Boss or Mercedes stage and equally credible chairing a panel on race, identity or media. Few hosts cover both rooms. Public-trust credentials that travel well into sponsor-sensitive briefs. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board alongside Sir Lenny Henry and Dame Floella Benjamin; trustee at HOME Manchester; ambassador for the British Asian Trust. Biography highlights BBC Radio 5 Live presenter; eight-plus years on the afternoon show; current host of the Headliners interview series. Winner of Interview of the Year, 2019 BBC Radio & Music Awards. Author of Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations (Hachette, 2022). BBC Radio 1 alumnus; co-host of Asian Beats (Sony Radio Award winner) and host of Review with Nihal. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board in 2014 by the BBC Director General. Trustee, HOME Manchester. Former trustee, Southbank Centre and British Council. Ambassador, British Asian Trust. Biography Live conversation is harder than it looks on a run sheet. A guarded executive answers in talking points. A four-person panel splinters. An awards stage drifts by the third category. The job of the host is to recover all of that without the audience noticing. That is the craft Nihal Arthanayake has spent twenty-five years building. Eight years presenting the afternoon show on BBC Radio 5 Live, plus the Sunday interview series Headliners, mean a live-radio interviewer who reads a room in real time. The 2019 BBC Radio & Music Award for Interview of the Year recognised the same skill in a different setting: a candid, on-the-record conversation that other interviewers could not have got. That craft is the subject of his 2022 Hachette book, Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations. The book draws on conversations with former Irish president Mary McAleese, Professor Tanya Byron, Lorraine Kelly and Johann Hari, plus hostage negotiators and clinicians, to ask what actually changes when two people listen to each other properly. It gives organisations a content keynote on dialogue, listening and disagreement that most hosts cannot offer. The broader public-trust footprint is what makes the work travel into sponsor-sensitive briefs. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board in 2014 by the Director General, alongside Sir Lenny Henry, George the Poet and Dame Floella Benjamin. Trustee at HOME Manchester. Ambassador for the British Asian Trust. Corporate hosting clients include Adobe, Google, X, GQ, Hugo Boss, Mercedes-Benz, Tottenham Hotspur and Boots. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing The craft of conversation and dialogue Communication and listening as leadership skills Diversity, representation and identity in media Cultural commentary and the public conversation Ideal for Senior corporate awards, summits and gala dinners that need a host who can carry a long-form running order Town halls, leadership conferences and offsites where a CEO or chair will be interviewed live on stage Panel sessions on culture, identity or representation that need an experienced moderator on contested ground Internal communication, L&D and people-team events on listening, dialogue and conversation skills Audience outcomes A live event that holds energy from welcome to close, with senior guests drawn out rather than read at A clearer practical sense of what makes a conversation actually work, drawn from Let’s Talk and twenty-five years of interviewing A panel that moves, with a moderator who reads the room and lets the strongest contributions land A host who is credible on both commercial and culture-and-identity briefs, without switching register awkwardly between them

Why organisations work with Parm Sandhu A first-hand command perspective on incidents the public watched unfold, including the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich and senior organising responsibility during the London 2012 Olympics. A serving leader’s account of how institutional culture excludes capable people, evidenced by her settled discrimination case against the Metropolitan Police and her memoir Black and Blue. Operational fluency in counter-terrorism, public order, anti-corruption and crisis response, drawn from 30 years across the Met rather than from secondary research. A current education brief as Managing Director of the London Policing College and Associate Lecturer at the University of West London, which keeps her thinking close to how leadership and ethics are actually taught to the next generation. Comfort in front of cameras and senior audiences, built from regular analysis on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography highlights Former Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police Service; first and only Asian female officer promoted through the ranks to that grade. Borough Commander for Richmond and senior officer with operational responsibilities during the London 2012 Olympics and on duty during the Lee Rigby murder in Greenwich. Author of Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice, Atlantic Books, co-written with Stuart Prebble. Managing Director, London Policing College; Associate Lecturer, University of West London. Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of West London, for contribution to public service and police education. Public Sector Award, Asian Women of Achievement Awards. Regular on-air contributor for BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4, Channel 5, LBC, Times Radio and Good Morning Britain. Biography The Lee Rigby murder happened on a residential street in Greenwich in 2013. Parm Sandhu was the superintendent on duty. That kind of moment, where command judgement is made quickly and reviewed slowly, sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership. Thirty years inside the Metropolitan Police gave her the operational range to back it up: counter-terrorism, anti-corruption, public order, and a senior organising role during the London 2012 Olympics. She finished as a Chief Superintendent and Borough Commander for Richmond, the first and only Asian woman in the force’s history to be promoted through the ranks to that grade. She also wrote about what it cost. Black and Blue, published by Atlantic Books with journalist Stuart Prebble, is a serving officer’s account of how institutional culture decides who gets believed and who gets through. Her later discrimination case against the Met, settled confidentially, made the same argument in a different register. Audiences hear both sides of the same career, the command decisions and the cultural ones. Today she runs the London Policing College and lectures at the University of West London, where she holds an honorary Doctorate of Letters for her contribution to public service. The combination of senior operational command, public commentary on BBC News, Sky News, ITV News and LBC, and a settled record on discrimination is rare. It is also why she lands with leadership audiences who are tired of being told that culture and performance are separate problems. Key speaking topics Crisis command and decision-making under public scrutiny Counter-terrorism and major incident leadership Institutional culture and organisational integrity Inclusive leadership in hierarchical institutions Women’s safety and violence against women and girls Resilience and personal recovery from adversity Ethics, accountability and public trust Ideal for Boards and executive committees of institutions where culture, scrutiny and public trust are commercial risks, including financial services, healthcare and regulated public bodies. Senior leadership programmes for police, military, civil service and other hierarchical organisations. CHRO and Chief People Officer audiences working on inclusion outcomes rather than inclusion communications. Conferences on women in leadership and on safeguarding, where a commander-rank perspective is genuinely uncommon. Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what command judgement actually looks like when an incident is live and the public is watching. A practical view of how culture quietly suppresses talent, and what senior leaders can do about it before it reaches a tribunal. A frame for thinking about resilience that is grounded in 30 years of operational policing rather than in self-help language. A direct, named account of how institutional discrimination operates in practice, with implications for any organisation under similar scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Paula Stone Williams A first-person comparative account of professional life as a senior man and a senior woman, drawing on lived experience that almost no other speaker can offer at the executive level. A memoir published by Simon & Schuster (As a Woman, 2021), four TED talks with combined viewership over nine million, and sustained coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and CNN. Substantive content on the mechanics of allyship for male leaders, framed as a practical capability rather than a values statement. A speaker who can address gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the same keynote without flattening either, useful to organisations where these conversations are usually held in separate rooms. Biography highlights Author of As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned (Simon & Schuster, 2021), optioned by Cannonball Productions for a limited series. Co-author of She’s My Dad with her son Jonathan Williams. TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh speaker; four talks with combined viewership over nine million. Featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, ABC Primetime News, Good Morning America, People Magazine and Red Table Talk. Pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church, Longmont, Colorado. Pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways; doctorate in counseling. Biography Most workplace gender equity programmes are designed by people who have only ever held authority inside one set of expectations. Paula Stone Williams has held senior roles as both a man and a woman, and her keynote work is built on the comparative material that produced. The argument is empirical rather than rhetorical: the same person, the same competence, two markedly different professional experiences. Her memoir As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021 and has been optioned by Cannonball Productions. Her TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh talks have together passed nine million views. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Good Morning America and People Magazine have covered her work. Alongside the keynote practice she is a pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways and pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church in Longmont, Colorado. The counseling background shapes how she handles the room, which matters in this subject area; audiences leave with material they can act on rather than only feelings they have processed. The most useful thing she gives a corporate audience is a precise account of how allyship behaves in practice. Male leaders who want to support women and LGBTQ+ colleagues are often unsure what the substantive ask actually is. Williams names it directly, with examples, and treats it as a capability that can be learned. Key speaking topics Workplace gender equity LGBTQ+ inclusion in corporate environments Allyship as a practical capability for senior leaders Authority, voice and credibility across gender Storytelling and narrative communication Resilience through identity and career change Bridging cultural and religious divides Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing substantive inclusion work after initial awareness programmes. Senior leadership offsites where male executives are the intended audience for an allyship conversation. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs commissioning an external voice on workplace parity. Universities, professional services firms and faith-adjacent institutions navigating LGBTQ+ inclusion under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A first-person frame of reference for how authority is extended differently to men and women in the same senior role. A concrete vocabulary for what allyship looks like inside a meeting, a hiring decision and a promotion conversation. A view of LGBTQ+ inclusion grounded in lived experience rather than abstract policy language. Material that male leaders, in particular, can repeat back to their teams without feeling they are reciting a script.