Inclusive Leadership

Why organisations work with Heather McGregor She has built the institutional machinery that other organisations cite. The Taylor Bennett Foundation, which she founded in 2008, remains a reference point for ethnic diversity in UK communications, and the 30% Club steering committee she helped found reshaped how FTSE boards talk about women’s representation. She speaks from the inside of a listed-company boardroom, not from the outside. She has served as Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member at IGT since 2017, which means her governance and risk arguments are tested against fiduciary duty. She runs a business school, having moved from Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School to Provost and Vice Principal of Heriot-Watt University Dubai. Her view on executive development is shaped by curriculum decisions, not anecdote. She has 17 years of weekly Financial Times writing as Mrs Moneypenny behind her, plus three Penguin books on careers and personal finance. The clarity of argument is built in. A Dame and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with prior CBE for services to diversity. These are credentials that travel in board conversations where credibility is the constraint. Biography highlights Provost and Vice Principal, Heriot-Watt University Dubai; previously Executive Dean, Edinburgh Business School. DBE, 2023 New Year Honours, for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland; CBE, 2015, for services to business and diversity. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member, International Game Technology PLC, since March 2017. Founder, Taylor Bennett Foundation; founding member, 30% Club steering committee. Financial Times columnist as Mrs Moneypenny for 17 years; author of three books published by Penguin and Portfolio. Biography The Taylor Bennett Foundation was set up in 2008 to address a specific failure: the UK communications industry was hiring from a narrow demographic and could not explain the pattern of its own succession. Heather McGregor founded it from inside her own executive search firm, alongside University of East London and Brunswick Group. It is now cited by more than 200 supporting organisations and remains one of the most concrete institutional answers to a problem most companies still describe as aspirational. That instinct to convert intent into operating practice runs through her career. She spent eight years as a sell-side analyst with ABN Amro across London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, then bought and ran the executive search firm Taylor Bennett for seventeen years. Her Financial Times column under the name Mrs Moneypenny ran weekly for the same period, alongside three Penguin books on personal finance and women’s careers, including the bestselling Career Advice for Ambitious Women. In 2016 she moved into higher education as Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University, and now serves as Provost and Vice Principal of the university’s Dubai campus. The portfolio also includes a non-executive directorship at IGT (now Brightstar Lottery), where she sits on the Audit Committee, and earlier work chairing Career Academies UK. The Royal Society of Edinburgh elected her a Fellow, and she was made a Dame in 2023 for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland. What she brings to a leadership room is the rare combination of practitioner, governor and educator on a single set of questions: how organisations actually promote, govern and allocate capital, and how those choices either widen the talent pool or quietly narrow it. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and women’s progression Board governance and audit committee priorities Executive development and the modern MBA Diversity as a measurable operating outcome Personal financial literacy and women’s wealth Leadership careers across sectors and geographies Ideal for FTSE and listed-company boards, nomination and audit committees CHROs and heads of talent owning succession and diversity targets Business school audiences, MBA cohorts, executive education programmes Senior women’s leadership networks and ambitious mid-career professionals Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what diversity programmes need to look like to survive board scrutiny A working view of how governance, audit, and remuneration shape who actually rises in an organisation Practical reference points from the Taylor Bennett Foundation and 30% Club on what has and has not worked A direct read on financial literacy as a leadership capability, not a personal-finance topic Confidence to make the case for the next promotion, board seat, or capital decision

Why organisations work with Hayley Barnard Two decades advising executive boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte and Lidl on how inclusion changes the decisions leaders actually make about hiring and promotion. Through Mix Works, her 2025 AI and culture transformation firm, she advises leaders on responsible AI adoption and on where bias enters both human and machine decisions. Treats bias as a decision-quality problem, so leaders leave with checks they can apply in the next hiring round or AI deployment rather than a values statement. Uses her own endurance record, a solo English Channel swim and a Baffin Island traverse, as working material on decision-making under pressure. Co-designed the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, a gender-balance campaign that ran as a verifiable all-female expedition. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Mix Diversity Developers (2014); founder and CEO, Mix Works (2025), an AI and culture transformation firm. Founder of MixLEARN, a digital DEI learning platform. Non-Executive Director, YHA; Trustee, UFI VocTech Trust (appointed March 2025). Clients include Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte, Capital One, Lidl, Diageo, GSK, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge across Baffin Island, a DEI campaign built on a live all-female expedition. Solo English Channel swim (14h 12m, no wetsuit); 20 Bridges 46km Manhattan Island swim. Biography A hiring manager shortens a shortlist. A committee weighs two candidates for promotion. Increasingly, a screening tool ranks the first round before any human sees it. The biases that shaped those calls for decades are now being trained into the systems meant to remove them. This is the territory Hayley Barnard has worked in for two decades. As founder and CEO of Mix Diversity, the consultancy she started in 2014, she advises boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz and Lidl on inclusive leadership, unconscious bias and gender balance. The brief is operational: change how decisions get made, not add another module to the intranet. In 2025 she founded Mix Works to take that question into AI. The firm helps enterprises adopt AI responsibly and examines where bias enters automated decisions, the issue leaders now face as hiring and performance tools move into machine hands. It extends twenty years of work on human judgement into how machines make the call. Her route in was unusual. She ran Sir Chay Blyth’s Challenge Business at 23 and co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, an all-female Baffin Island traverse that doubled as the company’s gender-balance campaign. The throughline is decision-making under fatigue and pressure, the same problem on an ice cap as in a promotion committee. She has since swum the English Channel solo, no wetsuit, in 14 hours and 12 minutes. Key speaking topics Bias in human and AI-driven decisions Responsible AI adoption and governance Inclusive leadership Decision quality and fairness Gender balance and women’s leadership pipelines Leadership resilience under pressure Cross-cultural team performance Ideal for Executive boards and CEO-level teams setting direction on inclusion and on responsible AI. CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent accountable for hiring and promotion outcomes. Leadership teams introducing AI into hiring, performance or customer decisions. International Women’s Day and gender-balance programmes at enterprise scale. Audience outcomes A read on where bias enters their decisions, including the ones now made by AI tools, with the moments named. Behavioural checks leaders can apply in the next hiring or promotion cycle. Questions to ask before trusting an AI-driven hiring or performance decision. A commercial case for gender balance that holds up in a board conversation. Language to challenge inclusion theatre without stalling real change.

Why organisations work with Francesca Martinez She fronted the WOW petition that crossed 100,000 signatures and forced a main-chamber debate in the House of Commons in 2014, which is a concrete democratic outcome rather than an inclusion talking point. Her debut play All Of Us opened at the National Theatre’s Dorfman in 2022 under Ian Rickson, putting disability and welfare politics in front of a mainstream theatre audience, with Francesca shortlisted for the George Devine Award. What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House) gives the room a single shared reference point on identity and difference that holds up outside the corporate inclusion vocabulary. She speaks from inside the experience, not about it, which removes the discomfort senior audiences often feel when an external consultant lectures them on disability. She works the room as a stand-up first, which means the message lands in audiences that are sceptical of conventional DEI keynotes. Biography highlights First and only female winner of the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival (2000), and winner of the Edinburgh Fringe Media Network Award (2011). Author of What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House, 2014); Bread and Roses Award runner-up and Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee. Wrote and starred in All of Us, National Theatre (Dorfman), 2022, directed by Ian Rickson; shortlisted for the George Devine Award. Her June 2019 Question Time appearance was called the show’s “best ever moment”, reaching 11 million views in its first week. The first disabled woman to perform on BBC Two’s Live at the Apollo, opening Series 11 in 2015; later featured in the BBC’s Access All Areas special. Fronted the WOW petition and secured a House of Commons main-chamber debate, February 2014. TEDxHousesOfParliament speaker (“Being Happy is a Political Act”) and performer at the World Economic Forum in Davos alongside Emma Thompson. Named to the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power List (2014) and awarded two honorary doctorates for work on equality and inclusion. Biography Most inclusion programmes are written in a language that the people they are meant to help do not use. Francesca Martinez calls herself “wobbly”, refuses the medical vocabulary around cerebral palsy, and has spent twenty years showing what happens when someone with a disability narrates their own experience rather than being narrated about. The reframing sounds small. The downstream effect on a room of senior leaders is not. The credentials sit in unusual places for a speaker on this topic. She was the first and only woman to win the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival, in 2000, and went on to write What the **** Is Normal?!, published by Virgin Books, which was a runner-up for the Bread and Roses Award and a Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee. Her debut play All Of Us, directed by Ian Rickson, opened in the Dorfman at the National Theatre in 2022, and Francesca was shortlisted for the George Devine Award for it. The activism is the part most relevant to senior buyers thinking about substance over messaging. As the public face of the WOW (War on Welfare) campaign, she drove a petition past 100,000 signatures and forced a debate in the main chamber of the House of Commons in 2014, the first time disabled people had secured a main-chamber debate on an agenda of their own choosing. That is a measurable political result, not an inclusion narrative. For an organisation, the value of booking her is specific. Senior audiences hear a writer and performer with mainstream theatrical and broadcast credentials make an argument about identity and belonging that has already been tested in Parliament and at the National Theatre. The conversation that follows tends to be about whether the company’s own inclusion work would survive that kind of scrutiny. Key speaking topics Disability and inclusion at work Identity, difference and self-acceptance Resilience and lived experience Advocacy and the politics of welfare Storytelling as a tool for cultural change Mental health and wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and ERG sponsors building inclusion programmes that engage sceptical audiences. Leadership offsites and culture events where the goal is to move beyond inclusion language into behaviour change. International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Mental Health Awareness Week and similar moments where credibility of the speaker matters more than topic coverage. Audience outcomes A sharper sense of how disabled and neurodivergent colleagues actually experience the workplace, narrated from the inside. A reference point (the book, the play, the WOW campaign) the audience can carry back into their own inclusion conversations. Permission to question the corporate vocabulary of inclusion without abandoning the work. A break from the standard motivational register; the room laughs first and then commits.

Why organisations work with Ellie Simmonds She speaks to inclusion from inside the experience, not from a research deck. Teams hear what belonging actually requires, from someone whose career was built in environments that were not designed for her. Her documentary work, including the BAFTA-winning “Finding My Secret Family”, gives her a vocabulary for difficult conversations about disability, identity and adoption that most speakers do not have. She brings elite high-performance credibility alongside the inclusion content. Audiences get eight Paralympic medals and the discipline behind them, without the detachment of a pure sports keynote. She is a working BBC Sport broadcaster, so she handles panels, Q and A and hosting at a professional standard, not as a one-off favour. Biography highlights Five Paralympic gold medals across Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016; eight Paralympic medals in total across four Games Appointed MBE in 2009 aged 14, the youngest recipient of the honour at the time; promoted to OBE in 2013 for services to Paralympic sport BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, 2008 Subject and presenter of “Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family” (ITV, 2023), winner of the BAFTA for Single Documentary, 2024 First contestant with dwarfism on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, series 20, 2022 Broadcaster for BBC Sport, including Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and Paris 2024 Paralympics Biography At thirteen, Simmonds was the youngest British athlete at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics and left with two gold medals. The story could have ended as a prodigy footnote. Instead it became the first chapter of a fifteen-year career across four Paralympic Games, eight medals, and a public role that has stretched well beyond the pool. What made her visible beyond sport was the clarity with which she has always spoken about living with achondroplasia. The discipline that produced the medals is the same discipline she brings to conversations about difference, adoption and what inclusion actually asks of institutions. Her 2023 ITV documentary “Finding My Secret Family” followed her search for her birth mother and surfaced the historical attitudes to disability that shaped that adoption. It won the BAFTA for Single Documentary in 2024. She retired from competition after Tokyo 2020 and has built a second career as a broadcaster with BBC Sport, including coverage of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the Paris 2024 Paralympics. She was the first contestant with dwarfism on Strictly Come Dancing in 2022, a piece of visibility she treated with the same seriousness as her racing. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She offers a first-person account of what inclusion feels like when it works and when it does not, backed by the credibility of an elite career and the communication range of a working broadcaster. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and belonging in the workplace High-performance mindset and sustained excellence Resilience under public scrutiny Adoption, identity and family Representation in sport and media Managing transition out of an elite career Ideal for Chief People Officers and DEI leads building inclusion programmes that need more than policy language Employee resource groups focused on disability, neurodiversity or family and adoption Leadership development audiences looking at performance over a long career Organisations marking International Day of Persons with Disabilities, International Women’s Day or similar moments with substance Audience outcomes A first-person account of what daily inclusion requires, from someone who has navigated it in elite and public settings A clearer sense of how high performance is sustained across a decade and a half, and what falls away when it ends A vocabulary for talking about disability and difference at work without defaulting to either discomfort or platitude Language for leaders on representation that goes beyond visibility metrics

Why organisations work with Dr. Diane Hamilton She turns curiosity from a soft cultural aspiration into a measurable diagnostic. The Curiosity Code Index gives leaders a named set of inhibitors, fear, assumptions, technology, environment, that can be addressed with specific interventions rather than slogans. Her work connects directly to the business outcomes leaders are already accountable for: engagement, innovation rate, learning velocity, retention. The framing makes curiosity legible to a CFO, not only to an L&D team. Thinkers50 Radar selection (2020) places her among a small group of behavioural thinkers being actively translated into corporate practice. The recognition signals her credibility to boards reviewing speaker rosters. A Forbes column and five years interviewing thousands of senior leaders on her nationally syndicated radio show mean she walks into a boardroom already fluent in the language of the C-suite. Four decades of business experience, an MBA program chair role, and certifications in Myers-Briggs and EQ-i give her the assessment vocabulary HR leaders trust, without the academic distance that limits some behavioural speakers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Tonerra, a management consulting and training business focused on curiosity, perception, and behavioural assessment. Creator of the Curiosity Code Index and the Perception Power Index, both validated organisational assessments with associated certification programmes. Thinkers50 Radar 2020 selection, the annual list of management thinkers most likely to influence organisational practice. Fulbright Specialist and faculty member at Duke Corporate Education, the executive education arm of Duke University, and former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Author of Cracking the Curiosity Code, Curiosity Unleashed, and The Power of Perception (with Dr. Maja Zelihic), with a fourth title, Adaptive Curiosity, forthcoming from Wiley. Host of Take the Lead, a nationally syndicated radio show, where she interviewed thousands of senior leaders including Steve Forbes, Naveen Jain, and Craig Newmark. Forbes contributor on workplace behaviour, leadership, and innovation. Biography Curiosity is one of the most cited drivers of organisational performance and one of the least precisely measured. Diane Hamilton built her career on closing that gap. The Curiosity Code Index, which she created and validated, identifies the four factors that suppress curiosity inside organisations: fear, assumptions, technology, and environment. The framework, known as FATE, gives leaders a diagnostic rather than a slogan. Hamilton brings the assessment vocabulary HR functions trust. She holds a PhD in business management and is a certified Myers-Briggs and EQ-i practitioner. She teaches leadership as faculty at Duke Corporate Education and previously chaired the MBA programme at the Forbes School of Business and Technology. Her consulting firm, Tonerra, applies the Curiosity Code Index alongside the Perception Power Index, a second validated instrument she developed with Dr. Maja Zelihic and set out in their book The Power of Perception. Thinkers50 named her to its 2020 Radar, the annual cohort of management thinkers shaping organisational practice. She writes for Forbes on workplace behaviour. Over five years hosting Take the Lead, her nationally syndicated radio show, she interviewed thousands of senior figures, including Steve Forbes and Craig Newmark. As a Fulbright Specialist she speaks and teaches internationally, with recent engagements in the United States, Luxembourg, and Dubai. For a corporate audience, the practical value is the move from cultural rhetoric to behavioural intervention. Hamilton names the specific structures and assumptions that suppress curiosity inside a given organisation, then prescribes the changes that follow. Her forthcoming book, Adaptive Curiosity, extends that work to the question now facing every leadership team: what stays distinctly valuable in people as intelligent machines absorb more of the work. Key speaking topics Curiosity as an organisational capability Perception and global leadership Emotional intelligence in senior roles Future-proofing the workforce in the age of AI Innovation culture and employee engagement Behavioural assessment in leadership development Multigenerational workforce dynamics Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding engagement and learning culture Heads of L&D commissioning behavioural assessment programmes Innovation and transformation leads diagnosing why initiatives stall Executive teams investing in EQ and behavioural development for senior cohorts Audience outcomes A named diagnostic, FATE, for identifying what specifically suppresses curiosity in their organisation A framework for connecting curiosity to engagement, innovation, and retention metrics leaders already track Tools to assess and develop emotional intelligence and perception in senior teams A clearer view of how personality and generational differences shape team performance A practical sense of which behavioural interventions move the needle and which produce activity without change

Why organisations work with Debbie Wosskow Three exits as founding CEO across PR, the sharing economy, and the women’s network category, giving boards a rare interlocutor who has personally taken capital, scaled a team, and sold the business. Co-Chair of the UK government’s Invest in Women Taskforce, which closed over £255m of committed capital for female founders in November 2024, the largest pool of its kind globally. Author of the 2014 government review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy”, the regulatory frame that legitimised platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar in the UK market. Operates inside the institutions that allocate capital and reputation: Senior Advisor at McKinsey, Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board. Co-author with Anna Jones of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019), the playbook that emerged from the AllBright Academy and continues to anchor her keynote material on women in leadership. Biography highlights Founder and exited CEO of three businesses: Mantra (sold to Loewy Group), Love Home Swap (sold to Wyndham Destination Networks, $53m, 2017) and AllBright (co-founded with Anna Jones, exited 2022). Co-Chair, Invest in Women Taskforce, appointed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Non-Executive Director, Channel 4, since January 2024. Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company. OBE for services to business; Freedom of the City of London. Author of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019) with Anna Jones, and the UK government’s “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” review. Biography The UK economy loses roughly £250bn a year because women start and scale businesses at a fraction of the rate of men. Debbie Wosskow has spent two decades building inside that gap, first as a founder and now as the operator who sits at the table where institutional capital is reassigned. The Invest in Women Taskforce she co-chairs closed over £255m of committed funding for female founders in November 2024, the largest dedicated pool of its kind anywhere. Her authority on the topic is not theoretical. Wosskow founded and sold Mantra in her twenties, built Love Home Swap into a subscription business that Wyndham Destination Networks bought for $53m in 2017, and co-founded AllBright with Anna Jones in 2016, exiting in 2022. Each business was venture-backed and each exit was completed under her as CEO. Government and regulators use her as a translator between policy and operating reality. She wrote the 2014 review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the document that shaped how the UK regulates platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar. She now sits as Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and Executive Chair of The Better Menopause, with a board seat on the Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board. For senior audiences, the proposition is specific: an operator who has built and sold three companies, written the rules for one of the largest new market categories of the last decade, and now controls one of the most consequential pools of growth capital aimed at women in the UK. Her co-authored Penguin title “Believe. Build. Become” remains the public expression of that argument. Key speaking topics Female entrepreneurship and access to capital Scaling and exiting venture-backed businesses The sharing economy and platform regulation Women in leadership and the AllBright thesis Investing in women as economic strategy Building and selling businesses at pace Boardroom voice for entrepreneurs Ideal for Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious operator voice on female founders, capital allocation, and the economics of inclusion. CEOs, CFOs and investment committees rethinking how growth capital reaches female-led businesses. Financial services, professional services and corporate venture audiences seeking a credible UK policy and operator perspective. Female leadership networks and executive development programmes within FTSE-listed and global organisations. Audience outcomes A clearer operator account of what scaling and exiting a venture-backed business actually requires, drawn from three completed exits. A working understanding of the £255m Invest in Women Taskforce model and what it signals for corporate capital strategy. The argument and the evidence base behind investing in female founders as a growth lever, not a CSR line. Practical perspectives from “Believe. Build. Become” on building career and leadership capital as a woman in a senior commercial role. A direct read on how Westminster, the City and corporate boards are currently moving on female entrepreneurship.

Why organisations work with Clare Balding Three decades of unrehearsed live broadcasting – seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games, royal ceremonies, national events – provide a practitioner’s account of composure under pressure that few corporate speakers can match from direct professional experience. As a former Champion Lady Rider who competed at elite amateur level before entering broadcasting, she brings dual insider authority to performance psychology: participant and narrator, not observer alone. The framework she offers is drawn from experience inside elite performance, not commentary on it. Her personal navigation of a historically male industry as an openly gay woman in an era when both were unusual means her arguments on inclusion carry the weight of direct professional experience rather than secondhand advocacy. Her National Book Award-winning memoir My Animals and Other Family (Penguin, 2012) signals a narrative intelligence that distinguishes her from broadcast-only speakers – she holds credibility across literary, corporate and sporting contexts simultaneously. Corporate clients visible on her official website include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Amazon and the Football Association – indicating an established track record well beyond the sport-and-hospitality circuit. Biography highlights MA (Cantab) in English, Newnham College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of Newnham (2014) Former amateur flat jockey; Champion Lady Rider (1990); lead BBC horse-racing presenter from 1998 Broadcaster across seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games and five Winter Olympics for BBC and Channel 4 BAFTA Special Award (2013); OBE (2013) for services to broadcasting and journalism; CBE (2022) for services to sport and charity RTS Sports Presenter of the Year (2003 and 2012); National Book Award for Biography/Autobiography of the Year for My Animals and Other Family (2012) President of the Rugby Football League (2020-2022) Biography Most professional communication is rehearsed. The moments that test leadership credibility – a live crisis statement, an all-hands that goes off-script, a board announcement under external scrutiny – are not. Clare Balding has spent three decades developing the specific discipline that bridges that gap, across seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games and major national ceremonies for the BBC. Her route into broadcasting began not in a media training room but on a racetrack. Between 1988 and 1993, she competed as an amateur flat jockey, winning the Champion Lady Rider title in 1990, before reading English at Newnham College, Cambridge. That background as a trained athlete who understands performance pressure from the inside gives her account of preparation and composure a direct authority that separates her from presenters who have only observed elite performance. The recognition of her contribution spans multiple domains: BAFTA Special Award for factual television, RTS Sports Presenter of the Year twice, National Book Award for My Animals and Other Family (Penguin, 2012). She was appointed OBE in 2013 for services to broadcasting and journalism, and CBE in 2022 for services to sport and charity. Newnham College, Cambridge, made her an Honorary Fellow in 2014. In corporate settings she speaks on the mental disciplines that produce performance under genuine pressure, on gender equality and inclusion drawn from direct experience in a traditionally male industry, and on career adaptability when professional identities shift. Clients including Goldman Sachs, Amazon and the Football Association engage her both as a host of major events and as a substantive contributor to leadership conversations. Key speaking topics Performance under live pressure Elite sports psychology and mental preparation Executive communication and presence Resilience and career adaptability Women in sport and gender equality Inclusion and diversity leadership Storytelling and narrative communication Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams focused on communication, presence and performance under pressure Organisations running gender equality, women’s leadership or inclusion programmes Sports industry bodies, governing organisations and national sporting federations Corporate hospitality and client entertainment events tied to major sporting occasions Audience outcomes A practitioner’s framework for the specific preparation habits that produce composure under live, uncontrolled conditions First-hand insight into the mental disciplines used at elite sporting and broadcast level, applied directly to leadership and professional performance Practical perspective on communicating with authority across different audiences and formats A grounded understanding of what inclusion requires in practice, drawn from personal experience navigating exclusion at the highest professional level Renewed perspective on career adaptability, illustrated through Balding’s own transitions from competitive sport to journalism, television presenting and authorship

Why organisations work with Charlotte Sweeney She has the rare credential of having written a UK government-commissioned policy review on women on boards, the 2014 Sweeney Review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which directly shaped the Enhanced Code for executive search firms. Leaders FIRST gives her a named diagnostic framework, drawn from work with more than 3,000 senior leaders, that identifies the five reasons inclusion change actually stalls inside a business. That is unusual in a field dominated by training products without a thesis. Her co-authored book Inclusive Leadership, published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2018, gives executive audiences a substantive reference rather than a slide deck. Twelve years of running Charlotte Sweeney Associates means she briefs at C-suite level on what has actually worked, and what has quietly failed, across financial services, FMCG, luxury, healthcare, and professional services. She is credible in the current climate where DEI is contested. She talks about inclusion as a leadership discipline, not a political position, which is what most boards now need. Biography highlights OBE, 2017 New Year Honours, for services to Women and Equalities. Author of the 2014 Independent Review of the Voluntary Code of Conduct for Executive Search Firms, commissioned by the UK Business Secretary. Co-author, Inclusive Leadership (FT Publishing, 2016), shortlisted for CMI Management Book of the Year 2018. Founder and CEO, Charlotte Sweeney Associates, established 2012. Chartered Management Consultant; 2025 MCA Inclusion Award winner; finalist, Times Management Consultant of the Year 2025. Named among HR’s Most Influential Thinkers; former member of the Forbes HR Council. Biography Most inclusion programmes fail at the same point. The strategy is signed off, the metrics get published, and within eighteen months the leadership team has rotated, the budget has been clipped, and the work has lost its centre of gravity. Sweeney has spent more than two decades watching this pattern, first inside global financial services, then through her own firm. She founded Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012 and has since advised C-suites and boards across financial services, FMCG, luxury, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. The firm’s signature framework, Leaders FIRST, was built from input from more than 3,000 senior leaders and isolates the five barriers that actually stop inclusion work landing: fear, ignorance, relinquishing responsibility, systemic inertia, and time. Her credibility on policy is not theoretical. In 2014 she authored the independent review for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, commissioned by Business Secretary Vince Cable, into the executive search firms’ Voluntary Code of Conduct on women on boards. The review directly shaped the Enhanced Code that followed. She received an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to Women and Equalities. The book she co-authored with Fleur Bothwick, Inclusive Leadership, was published by FT Publishing and shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year 2018. It is the reference she leaves with executive teams who want a serious working text rather than a training deck. In 2025, the Management Consultancies Association named her firm winner of its Inclusion Award, and the Times shortlisted her for Management Consultant of the Year. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership at board and C-suite level Diversity, equity and inclusion strategy Culture transformation Women on boards and senior pipeline Leaders FIRST: barriers to culture change Wellbeing in the workplace Inclusion in a contested political climate Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Chief Inclusion Officers redesigning DEI strategy after political and budget pressure Boards and executive committees holding the line on inclusion as a governance issue, not a campaign Executive search and talent functions reviewing pipeline practice for senior appointments CEOs leading culture transformation where prior inclusion programmes have lost momentum Audience outcomes A clear read on why most DEI programmes lose executive support, drawn from named patterns across sectors The Leaders FIRST diagnostic, which gives leaders a shared language for the five barriers to culture change A defensible position on inclusion that holds up under board scrutiny in the current political environment Practical reference points from a UK government policy review and a decade of C-suite advisory work A senior peer voice on what separates inclusion theatre from inclusion as an operating discipline

Why organisations work with Bonnie Greer She has sat on both sides of the table that boards rarely bridge: working artist and critic, and Deputy Chairman of the British Museum. That shapes how she reads institutional risk. Her five years as Chancellor of Kingston University give her a direct view of how younger cohorts now test the legitimacy of large institutions. As a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of a Langston Hughes biography, she brings a historical reading of race, class and representation that resists slogan-level answers. Her BBC Question Time and Newsnight Review record means she is practised at holding a position under pressure in front of a sceptical audience, which is what most boardrooms now need to rehearse. Biography highlights OBE for services to the Arts, 2010 Birthday Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected July 2022. Deputy Chairman, Board of Trustees, the British Museum, from 2009; Trustee from 2005. Chancellor, Kingston University, from 2013. Author of Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction (2011) and the memoir A Parallel Life (2014). Regular BBC Question Time panellist and contributor to BBC Newsnight Review. Biography Culture is no longer a soft topic on the board agenda. It is where reputational risk, workforce expectation and public trust now meet, and it is the area where leadership teams most often find they are underprepared. Bonnie Greer has spent a career at that intersection, as a working playwright and critic and as a senior governor of two of the UK’s most scrutinised public institutions. She was appointed to the British Museum’s Board of Trustees in 2005 and served as its Deputy Chairman from 2009, through a period when museums were being forced to rethink their relationship with history, acquisition and audience. She went on to serve as Chancellor of Kingston University from 2013, which gave her a sustained view of how the next generation of graduates now read institutional legitimacy. Her authorial work sharpens the same themes. Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction, published in 2011, is a study of a writer who refused to resolve the contradictions of American race and class into a usable slogan. Her 2014 memoir A Parallel Life traces her own route from the South Side of Chicago to British public life. The Royal Society of Literature elected her a Fellow in 2022. She is one of the most recognised commentators on BBC Question Time and was a regular contributor to Newsnight Review, including the 2009 Question Time edition opposite Nick Griffin that became a reference point for how public institutions handle hostile argument on live television. Key speaking topics Culture, representation and institutional credibility Public discourse and the management of contested argument Governance of cultural and educational institutions Race, class and history in organisational life Storytelling as a leadership tool Creativity and freedom of expression at work Ideal for Boards and executive committees of cultural, educational and public-facing institutions CHROs and Chief People Officers working on inclusion, representation and workforce voice Communications and corporate affairs leaders preparing for contested public conversations University leadership teams and professional services partners with significant public-sector exposure Audience outcomes A sharper reading of how culture and representation now shape institutional reputation Confidence to hold a position on contested social questions without defaulting to compliance language A more historical frame for current debates on race, class and public trust A clearer sense of where governance, artistic voice and public accountability intersect

Why organisations work with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf She has held the CHRO seat at Dayforce, Cohesity, Symantec and Silver Spring Networks, including taking Silver Spring Networks public on the NYSE in 2013. Her HR career runs from Frito-Lay and The Walt Disney Company through Sun Microsystems and Cisco, so she can speak credibly to consumer, entertainment and enterprise tech leadership teams in their own language. At Dayforce she runs people strategy at an HR technology vendor and acts as “Customer Zero” for the company’s AI-powered HR releases, which gives her an unusually concrete view of where AI lands in real HR operations. She works at board and committee level on talent and rewards, currently as Compensation Committee Chair at Softchoice and as a director or advisor at D-Wave Quantum, Betterworks and Wellist. Recognised externally on people and tech leadership: National Diversity Council Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology, Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, and the Forbes Human Resources Council. Biography highlights EVP and Chief People Officer, Dayforce, since April 2024. Former CHRO at Cohesity, Symantec and Silver Spring Networks; led people strategy through Silver Spring Networks’ 2013 IPO. Earlier senior HR roles at Cisco Systems (2001 to 2009), Sun Microsystems, The Walt Disney Company and Frito-Lay (PepsiCo). Compensation Committee Chair at Softchoice (TSX: SFTC); board and advisory roles at D-Wave Quantum, Betterworks and Wellist. Forbes Human Resources Council member since 2018; National Diversity Council Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology. Inducted into the Roll of Distinguished Alumni, WVU’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics, in 2019. Biography Few CHROs have stood in the room for a Cisco-era leadership build, a Disney creative organisation, a Symantec security business and a Silver Spring Networks IPO. Amy Cappellanti-Wolf has. That cross-section is what gives her practical authority on what culture and talent actually take when a company changes shape. Her current seat sharpens the point. As EVP and Chief People Officer at Dayforce, she runs people strategy inside an HR technology vendor and uses Dayforce’s own platform as “Customer Zero” for AI-powered HR releases. That gives her a working view of where AI lands in payroll, performance and workforce planning, not as a forecast but as a live deployment. Boards use her where rewards, governance and people risk meet. She chairs the Compensation Committee at Softchoice, sits on the board at D-Wave Quantum, and advises Betterworks and Wellist. Her recognition track record, Forbes HR Council, the National Diversity Council Top 50 in Technology, Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, sits alongside the operating record, not in place of it. For senior buyers, the practical value is specific. She can talk credibly to a CHRO planning an IPO, a CEO integrating an acquisition, an HR team rebuilding engagement after a restructure, or a board asking what AI in HR really changes. The answers come from having done it, not from observing it. Key speaking topics People strategy through IPO, M&A and divestiture AI in HR and the future of the people function High-performance culture in scaling tech companies Diversity, equity and inclusion as an operating discipline Leadership and talent for enterprise transformation The CHRO as a board-level voice on people risk Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders preparing for IPO, M&A or large-scale restructure CEOs and boards weighing the people implications of AI deployment in core operations Compensation and talent committees considering rewards, succession and culture risk Technology, consumer and entertainment leadership teams running concurrent transformations Audience outcomes A clear sense of how to sequence people priorities through IPO, integration and restructure A practical view of where AI changes HR operations now, drawn from a live enterprise deployment Sharper questions for boards and executive teams on culture, rewards and talent risk Concrete language for inclusion outcomes that survive a politically contested environment

Why organisations work with Shane Feldman He built Count Me In from a high-school project into a global incubator that has initiated more than 30,000 community ventures across 104 countries. The operator credentials are unusual in the engagement space. His research is field-built, not desk-built. Feldman has embedded himself in more than 100 cities across six continents to study how communities form, hold, and break, and translates that fieldwork into corporate retention frameworks. His client list (Google, Disney, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, PwC, TD Bank, Kaiser Permanente, Netflix, Coca-Cola, YPO) signals a buyer base of large, complex employers who use him for substantive HR and culture interventions, not motivational filler. He carries genuine media credibility (A&E “Undercover High”, coverage by Forbes, People, Larry King, Oprah) that lifts the marketing weight of the engagement around a keynote. Recognised by the White House, the United Nations, and the Prime Minister of Canada for community leadership work, which makes the substantive claim on community expertise defensible rather than rhetorical. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Count Me In, a social entrepreneurship incubator with more than 30,000 ventures launched across 104 countries. Author of “A Kids Book About Community” (A Kids Co., 2020). Cast member of A&E docuseries “Undercover High” (2018), an embedded social experiment in a US public high school. Recognised by the White House, the United Nations, and the Prime Minister of Canada for achievements in community leadership. Keynote speaker for Google, Disney, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, PwC, YPO, TD Bank, Shopify, Kaiser Permanente, Netflix, and Coca-Cola. Featured by Forbes, People Magazine, Larry King, and Oprah. Biography Most large employers now lose people not for reasons their engagement surveys can name. Compensation, perks, and policy are not the friction point. Belonging is. The organisations that retain talent in this environment are the ones treating workplace community as an operating problem rather than a soft one. Shane Feldman’s career has been an unusually direct route into that problem. He founded Count Me In in 2008 as a teenager in Toronto after a difficult school transition; the organisation has since grown into a social entrepreneurship incubator with members across 104 countries and more than 30,000 ventures initiated. The work has been recognised by the White House, the United Nations, and the Prime Minister of Canada. The frameworks he brings to corporate audiences come from two sources that rarely sit together. One is operator experience running a global organisation built around commitment, service, and retention. The other is field research; Feldman has embedded in more than 100 cities across six continents to study how communities form and hold. He translates that into structured tools for HR, sales, and leadership audiences, packaged as “Passport” keynotes covering team retention, customer loyalty, future-of-work, and AI integration. The corporate roster reflects how the work travels. Google, Disney, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, PwC, YPO, TD Bank, Shopify, Kaiser Permanente, Netflix, and Coca-Cola have all booked him on engagement, culture, and retention briefs. Key speaking topics Workplace community and belonging Employee engagement and retention Customer loyalty and relationship-driven sales Future of work and hybrid team performance Humanising AI in the workplace Inclusive and community-centred leadership Talent attraction and culture design Ideal for CHROs and CPOs running engagement, retention, and culture programmes Sales and customer success leaders rebuilding loyalty in low-trust markets Conferences focused on the future of work, hybrid productivity, and AI integration Membership organisations (YPO, EO, professional bodies) addressing community and connection Audience outcomes A clear read on why engagement and retention initiatives fail when they treat community as a soft outcome. Practical mechanisms for building belonging at team and organisation level, drawn from Count Me In’s operating playbook. A vocabulary for talking about workplace community that connects people strategy to commercial outcomes. A set of usable frames for integrating AI into work without eroding the human relationships that drive retention.

Why organisations work with René Carayol His SPIKE framework (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) gives leadership teams a diagnostic for identifying the two or three individual strengths that drive high performance, rather than a generic conversation about development areas. It changes how teams are built, not just how leaders think. His case for inclusive leadership is grounded in firsthand board experience, including appointment as a Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue in 2001, at a time when no diversity representation existed at that level in UK public institutions. The argument carries a credibility that cannot be borrowed from research alone. Coaching and advisory engagements with senior leaders across business and government: clients and counterparts include Ralph Hamers (former CEO, ING and UBS), Sir Richard Branson, and Sir Tony Blair His “Everybody In, Nobody Out” framing positions inclusion as a performance architecture rather than an HR compliance function, directly relevant to organisations where DEI has stalled because it has not been connected to business outcomes. His executive and governance track from Marks & Spencer, PepsiCo, and IPC Media to Inland Revenue board and Computacenter plc, means his observations on leadership culture are drawn from the inside of institutions, not from coaching their periphery. His academic teaching (Cass Business School, MSc in Management) and media fluency (BBC, Channel 4, Sky News) mean he can move between rigorous argument and compelling narrative in a single session. His events consistently produce behavioural commitments rather than inspiration that dissipates. Biography highlights Decade-long career at Marks & Spencer (Senior IT Manager); IT Systems Director, PepsiCo; CIO then Managing Director of IPC Electric, IPC Magazines, driving Europe’s largest MBO at £860m, culminating in the sale to AOL Time Warner Non-Executive Director, Inland Revenue (appointed 2001); current Independent Non-Executive Director, Computacenter plc (FTSE-listed), sitting on Audit, Nomination and Remuneration Committees Executive Vice President for ESG, Medallia; member of the Global Executive Leadership Team Visiting Professor, Cass Business School; lectured on MSc in Management programme MBE (2004), services to the business community; undergraduate degree, London School of Economics; Honorary Doctorate, University of Roehampton Author, SPIKE: What Are You Great At?; co-author, Corporate Voodoo (third edition) and My Voodoo Broadcaster and commentator: BBC Two, Channel 4, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, Sky News; former Sunday Telegraph Business Reporter columnist Biography Most leadership cultures are built around a small number of star performers at the top. SPIKE, René Carayol’s published strengths framework, challenges that model directly. The argument comes from someone who has led, governed, and coached at the highest levels of British and international business. Carayol spent a decade at Marks & Spencer in senior IT roles, then moved to PepsiCo as IT Systems Director before joining IPC Magazines as CIO. He rose to Managing Director of IPC Electric, the internet business at the centre of Europe’s largest MBO, a £860 million transaction that ended with the sale to AOL Time Warner. He went on to serve as Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue through its merger into HMRC, and currently sits on the board of FTSE-listed Computacenter plc. SPIKE (Strengths Positively Identified Kick-Start Excellence) is the framework that emerged from this experience. Its core argument: every person carries at least one genuine strength, and organisations that build around those strengths consistently outperform those that manage around weaknesses. For Carayol, this is inseparable from the business case for inclusive leadership. His mantra, “Everybody In, Nobody Out,” frames inclusion as a performance imperative, a position he holds with authority as one of the first Black men to serve at board level in a major UK institution. As Visiting Professor at Cass Business School and a regular voice on BBC Radio 4, Sky News, and Channel 4, his thinking reaches well beyond the conference circuit. His books, SPIKE: What Are You Great At? and the co-authored Corporate Voodoo, now in its third edition, extend his frameworks to leadership teams at scale. He was awarded an MBE in 2004 for services to the business community. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Inclusive leadership and culture Leadership and business transformation Collaborative leadership Corporate culture and performance Executive coaching and personal effectiveness Diversity, equity and inclusion Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organisations navigating culture change or post-merger integration CHROs and Chief People Officers building inclusive, high-performance leadership cultures Board directors and non-executive directors focused on governance, leadership accountability, and succession Transformation leads and executive development programmes where the shift from management to leadership is the central challenge Audience outcomes A working understanding of the SPIKE framework and how to apply it to individual development, team design, and succession planning A reframed case for inclusive leadership as a performance architecture, not a compliance exercise – with the language to make that argument inside their own organisations Practical distinctions between management and leadership behaviours, grounded in frontline C-suite and board experience Insight drawn from Carayol’s direct coaching relationships with named CEOs and institution heads; World Bank, Barclays, ING, Generali, rather than theoretical constructs Clarity on how culture and leadership interact in practice, and what leaders can do immediately to change the pattern