Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Dean Leak A working language for productive disagreement at the top of the house, captured in his “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask), that teams can use the day after the session Direct operating experience inside Olympic gold-medal environments at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting, not theory borrowed from sport A mentorship lineage to Professor Steve Peters and the Chimp Management model, applied with discipline to executive behaviour rather than repackaged as motivation Comfort moving between board rooms, military commanders, and elite athletes, which translates into a sharper read of how senior leaders actually behave under load Biography highlights Worked directly with Olympic gold medallists including Jade Jones and Joe Clarke Held senior leadership roles at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting Mentored by Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox, over a five-year period Graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme Corporate clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Specsavers, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government Author of the “3 A’s” disagreement framework and the “Human iOS” model of behaviour change Member, Association for Coaching Biography Gold medals are not won by teams that agree with each other. They are won by teams that can disagree, in the room, on the day, without the relationship breaking. That observation is the foundation of Dean Leak’s work with senior leadership teams. Leak spent more than a decade inside Olympic programmes, in roles that combined psychological skills coaching with operational leadership. He worked under Professor Steve Peters using the Chimp Management model, then took senior positions at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting. The athletes he supported include Olympic gold medallists Jade Jones and Joe Clarke. The corporate work followed the same logic. Boards and executive teams behave like elite squads under pressure: they need composure, role clarity, and a way to surface friction without retreating into politeness. Leak’s “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask) gives teams a reusable structure for disagreeing well. His “Human iOS” framework treats change as a problem of biology and attention, not slogans, which is why his sessions tend to stick with operators who have already heard the standard transformation script. Clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government. He is a member of the Association for Coaching and a graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Productive disagreement and healthy conflict Leadership under pressure Change leadership Team performance Psychological safety Imposter syndrome at senior levels Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through restructure, integration, or strategic disagreement CHROs and chief people officers redesigning culture around performance, not engagement scores Leadership development directors briefing partner-track or senior management cohorts High-pressure operational environments (legal, professional services, elite teams) where stakes are personal and decisions are time-bound Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming and routing disagreement instead of avoiding it A clearer read on the behaviours that distinguish gold-medal teams from competent ones The 3 A’s method as a portable practice for senior conversations the next week A sharper view of where the team’s culture rewards comfort over accuracy Practical handles for managing personal composure under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk Biography highlights Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon) TEDx speaker MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte Biography Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action. His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau. He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Leadership decision-making under uncertainty Innovation as organisational capability Strategic transformation and competitive advantage The BANI operating environment Antifragility and organisational resilience Human-technology collaboration Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight Audience outcomes A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise

Why organisations work with Debra Searle The Choose Your Attitude Toolkit is a named, practical framework, not a motivational narrative. It gives teams repeatable tools for maintaining focus and performance when conditions are working against them. Debra’s 111 days alone at sea were unplanned and unsupported. She was not a trained athlete or military professional. That specificity matters: the resilience she describes is genuinely transferable to ordinary professionals facing ordinary pressure, not a feat designed to impress. She has founded five companies, including the diversity and inclusion consultancy MIX Diversity Developers, and has held board-level governance roles. She speaks to the organisational realities of change from direct commercial experience, not observation. The research basis she references, that 75% of top performer success is attributable to attitude rather than skillset, gives people leaders and HR teams a frame for workforce conversations that goes beyond inspiration. Her audience feedback is unusually concrete: perfect scores at IBM events (170 delegates, 5 out of 5), ranked best speaker at a major conference above heads of state and global business figures. Biography highlights Rowed 3,300 miles solo across the Atlantic Ocean over 111 days in 2001-2002, after her husband was rescued eight days into the crossing; she was a novice rower at the time Appointed MBE by Her Majesty The Queen in 2002; appointed Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 2014 for services to The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Youngest ever Trustee of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, serving a decade alongside HRH Prince Philip and HRH Prince Edward Founder of five companies including MIX Diversity Developers, a diversity and inclusion consultancy BBC presenter across 40+ programmes including Grandstand and Extreme Lives Ranked in Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers list multiple years; consistently identified as the highest-ranking female speaker in the global ranking Over 1,300 keynote appearances across 40 countries; three books published including “Rowing It Alone” and “The Choose Your Attitude Journal” Biography Debra Searle spent 111 days alone in a 23-foot plywood boat rowing the Atlantic Ocean. She had not planned to do it solo. When her husband was rescued eight days in, she continued; a novice rower, no support vessel, in conditions most professional athletes would not accept. That experience became the foundation of a practical body of work on resilience and mindset that she has spent over two decades translating into organisational tools. The central argument of her work is precise: research suggests that roughly 75% of top-performer success traces to attitude rather than skill. Her Choose Your Attitude Toolkit distils the mental strategies she used at sea into a framework organisations can deploy with teams under pressure; not as inspiration, but as repeatable practice. The toolkit addresses what happens when conditions change faster than plans, when there is no clear end to the difficulty, and when leaders must model steadiness they do not fully feel. Searle’s commercial life runs alongside her expeditions rather than being separate from them. She founded five companies, including MIX Diversity Developers, a diversity and inclusion consultancy, and spent a decade as a Trustee of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, the youngest person ever appointed to the board. That combination of extreme personal experience and working organisational life is what distinguishes her within the resilience and leadership space. Her work is recognised beyond the speaking circuit. The Queen recognised her twice; with an MBE in 2002 and an MVO in 2014. Global Gurus has ranked her among the world’s top motivational speakers multiple years. She has delivered over 1,300 keynote addresses across 40 countries, and her audience feedback, including perfect scores at IBM events, is among the most consistent in the field. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Mindset and attitude as organisational tools Leading through change and adversity Women in leadership Motivation and peak performance Entrepreneurship and board-level leadership Ideal for CHROs and people leaders designing resilience or wellbeing programmes Leadership teams navigating significant organisational change or sustained uncertainty Women in leadership conferences and female talent development programmes All-staff or large-format events requiring a keynote that is both commercially credible and personally compelling Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (the Choose Your Attitude Toolkit) that individuals can apply to maintain performance when under pressure A clearer understanding of the psychological difference between coping and adapting, and practical tools to move from one to the other Language and strategies for managing mindset in the absence of certainty, relevant to leaders who must communicate confidence before they feel it Renewed motivation and a reframe of what is genuinely achievable, grounded in a specific and verifiable story rather than abstract optimism

Why organisations work with Dee Caffari The westabout solo circumnavigation of 2006, 178 days against prevailing winds and currents and completed by only six men in history, gives Caffari a standing in the territory of sustained solo leadership under real pressure that no training environment can replicate and no other speaker in this space can match. As skipper of Turn the Tide on Plastic in the Volvo Ocean Race 2017/18, she led the first mixed-gender, youth-focused international crew formed in partnership with the UN Environment Programme, delivering competitive performance and a global environmental mandate simultaneously. She has direct, tested experience of building high-performance diverse teams when the stakes are visible and the scrutiny is real. Her autobiography “Against the Flow” (Adlard Coles Nautical), published in 2007 and translated into French, Italian, and German, documents the mental framework she developed across her record-setting voyages, evidence that the leadership disciplines she draws from offshore sailing translate across cultural and organisational contexts. As Vice Chair of World Sailing’s Oceanic and Offshore Committee, and previously inaugural Chair of the World Sailing Trust and a decade-long member of the RNLI Operations Committee, she connects frontline leadership experience in extreme environments to the governance and institutional accountability that senior audiences recognise. She has spoken to executive audiences at organisations including Sky, London Business School, Aviva, Citywire, Oracle, and Barry Callebaut, with client evaluation scores consistently at 9/10 and above across independent post-event surveys. Biography highlights Only woman to sail solo, non-stop around the world westabout, against prevailing winds and currents, completing the voyage in 178 days in 2006 and setting a world record Only woman to complete solo, non-stop circumnavigations in both directions; finished 6th from 30 starters in the Vendée Globe 2008/09, known in sailing as the Everest of the seas Only woman to have sailed non-stop around the world four times; seven circumnavigations in total, most recently as co-skipper of The Famous Project, the first all-female crew to complete a non-stop circumnavigation, in January 2026 Skipper, Turn the Tide on Plastic, Volvo Ocean Race 2017/18, mixed-gender, youth-focused international crew formed in partnership with the UN Environment Programme’s Clean Seas campaign MBE, 2007 Birthday Honours, for services to sailing; Honorary Commander RNR (Royal Naval Reserve), appointed September 2011; inaugural Chair, World Sailing Trust (2018 to 2024); ten-year member of the RNLI Operations Committee; Vice Chair, Oceanic and Offshore Committee, World Sailing Autobiography “Against the Flow” (Adlard Coles Nautical, 2007), translated into French, Italian, and German; shortlisted, World Sailing Rolex World Sailor of the Year, 2006 and 2011 Biography Solo decision-making in genuinely hostile conditions, without consultation and without the option to pause, is the environment in which Dee Caffari MBE built her leadership record. She has circumnavigated the globe seven times, including four solo or co-skippered non-stop voyages. No other woman has done this. Few people in history have. The westabout circumnavigation of 2006, completed in 178 days against prevailing winds and currents, set a world record and earned her an MBE. She returned to solo racing in the Vendée Globe (2008/09), finishing 6th from 30 starters in a race the sailing world calls the Everest of the seas. That finish confirmed that the judgment and resilience she had built were not situational; they held across different modes of pressure, different time horizons, and different conditions. The team dimension of her leadership is equally tested. As skipper of Turn the Tide on Plastic in the Volvo Ocean Race 2017/18, she led a mixed-gender, youth-focused international crew in partnership with the UN Environment Programme. Managing competitive performance alongside a global environmental mandate, under sustained media and competitive scrutiny, required the same disciplines she had practised in isolation: clear decision-making, built trust, and accountability that did not depend on favourable conditions. In January 2026, as co-skipper of The Famous Project, she completed the first all-female non-stop circumnavigation of the globe aboard IDEC Sport. Her autobiography “Against the Flow” (Adlard Coles Nautical), translated into French, Italian, and German, captures the mental framework developed across these voyages. She served as inaugural Chair of the World Sailing Trust from 2018 to 2024 and now sits as Vice Chair of World Sailing’s Oceanic and Offshore Committee. Combined with a decade on the RNLI Operations Committee, those roles extend her experience of leadership from the individual to the institutional. She has addressed senior audiences at Sky, London Business School, Aviva, Citywire, and Barry Callebaut, drawing on experience that executive development programmes rarely put under conditions close to the real thing. Key speaking topics Leadership under extreme and sustained pressure High-performance team-building in hostile environments Resilience and mental endurance Risk assessment and decision-making under uncertainty Diversity, inclusion, and mixed-team performance Ocean sustainability and purpose-driven leadership Goal-setting and long-horizon execution Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite audiences preparing for high-stakes or high-change environments CHROs and people directors focused on resilience, team accountability, and diversity in performance Boards and executive committees where sustainability, governance, and leadership credibility intersect Transformation leads and global teams navigating extended pressure or organisational uncertainty Audience outcomes A concrete framework for maintaining clarity and decision-making quality when conditions deteriorate and information is incomplete Practical understanding of how trust and accountability function in diverse, high-pressure teams – and what breaks them Perspective on the relationship between preparation, mental endurance, and sustained performance over long time horizons Insight into leading teams whose purpose extends beyond competitive performance to a broader organisational or environmental mission A personally compelling reference point for resilience that bypasses generic advice and is grounded in verifiable, extreme-condition experience

Why organisations work with Dee Snider He has a verifiable, on-the-record case study of standing alone in front of a hostile Senate committee and winning the argument, used as a live example of composure under public pressure. His material is built on four decades of reinvention across music, film, voice acting and production, giving audiences a concrete arc rather than a generic resilience pitch. He delivers a celebrity main-stage presence that conference organisers can use to lift the energy of a sales kick-off, anniversary dinner or awards night without losing substance. His free-speech story sits inside a serious cultural moment, the PMRC hearings, and lands with senior audiences who lived through it. Biography highlights Lead singer of Twisted Sister, writer of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, both certified rock anthems of the 1980s. Testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in September 1985 against the Parents Music Resource Center, alongside Frank Zappa and John Denver. Author of the autobiography “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic”, published by Gallery Books. Screenwriter of the cult horror feature “Strangeland” and President of production company Defiant Artists. Keynote speaker at “The World’s Most Dangerous Meeting” in Gothenburg, drawing on career lessons for a corporate audience. Voice actor and on-camera presence across film, television and video games, with collaborators including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gordon Ramsay. Biography In September 1985 a U.S. Senate committee called three musicians to testify on the moral content of rock lyrics. Frank Zappa, John Denver and the leather-clad lead singer of Twisted Sister sat in front of the cameras and refused to apologise. The hearing became the founding moment of the modern free-speech argument over music. That afternoon is the spine of Snider’s speaking career. He was 30 years old, painted, and treated by the room as a public enemy. He stayed calm, dismantled the accusations against “We’re Not Gonna Take It” line by line, and walked out with the cultural argument largely intact. Forty years later the moment is still used in journalism and law classes as a case study in composure under public attack. The career around it gives the story weight. Twisted Sister sold millions of records. Snider went on to write the horror film “Strangeland”, run a production company in Defiant Artists, voice video game and animated characters, and publish “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic” with Gallery Books. The through-line is reinvention without softening the original position. For corporate audiences he uses that material to talk about holding a line under public pressure, surviving repeated career reinvention, and the practical content of not backing down when the room wants you to. The delivery is funny, profane and self-deprecating. The argument underneath is serious. Key speaking topics Free speech and standing by a position under public attack Self-leadership and composure under pressure Career reinvention across four decades Creative resilience Storytelling for senior audiences The 1985 PMRC hearings as a leadership case study Ideal for Sales kick-offs, anniversary dinners and awards nights looking for a celebrity main-stage presence with a serious underlying argument Leadership offsites using personal-resilience case studies to anchor a session on composure Communications, brand and public affairs teams studying how to defend a position in hostile public settings Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the 1985 PMRC Senate hearings from one of the three musicians who testified A concrete personal example of holding a position under sustained public attack A four-decade case study of career reinvention without abandoning the original work An entertaining, profane and self-deprecating main-stage set that lifts the energy of a corporate room

Why organisations work with Dame Denise Lewis A first-hand account of winning at the highest level in the hardest conditions: Olympic gold at Sydney 2000, secured while competing through an Achilles injury that threatened every event. Governance perspective from the top of a national sport, currently leading UK Athletics through a period of public financial difficulty and reform. Fifteen years of live broadcast analysis at BBC Sport, reading performance in real time across four Olympic Games and four Commonwealth Games. A view of high performance that moves between the individual and the system: what athletes owe their coaches, what leaders owe their teams, and where accountability actually sits. Credibility with audiences who have heard every sports keynote; the current presidencies (UK Athletics, Commonwealth Games England) put her in a different category from retired-athlete speakers. Biography highlights Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, Sydney 2000; Olympic bronze medallist, Atlanta 1996. Commonwealth Games heptathlon champion in 1994 and 2002; European champion 1998; World Championships silver 1997 and 1999. Appointed DBE in the 2023 New Year Honours; previously OBE (2001) and MBE (1999). President of UK Athletics, elected 2024. President of Commonwealth Games England, extended to Victoria 2026. BBC Sport athletics pundit from 2009 to Paris 2024, covering four Olympic cycles and four Commonwealth Games. Author, “Personal Best: The Autobiography” (2001). President of Sparks children’s medical research charity. Biography The Sydney 2000 heptathlon came down to the final 800 metres, with an Achilles injury that had threatened every event before it. Denise Lewis finished third in that race, hobbled across the line, and scored 6,584 points to become the first European Olympic heptathlon champion. The day was often described as character; closer up, it was preparation meeting a refusal to stop. That composure has defined the career since. Between 2009 and Paris 2024, Lewis was the analytical voice of BBC athletics coverage, reading elite performance in real time across four Olympic Games and four Commonwealth Games. The work demanded a different discipline from competing: quick judgement, live to camera, about people whose careers she understood from the inside. In 2024 she was elected President of UK Athletics, a governance role that began in the middle of a declared financial crisis at the national body. The remit is reform, public accountability and the long-term health of the sport. She also serves as President of Commonwealth Games England, extended through Victoria 2026, and as President of Sparks, the children’s medical research charity. For senior audiences, the value is the composite view: the competitor who held her nerve on the biggest stage, the analyst who has watched hundreds of others succeed and fail under the same pressure, and the administrator now answerable for a system rather than a single performance. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure High-performance culture and standards Resilience and competitive mindset Governance and accountability in elite sport Team performance and coaching relationships Transition from elite competition to leadership Women in leadership and sport Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting performance standards for the wider organisation. Senior leadership offsites focused on pressure, judgement and decision-making. CHROs and talent leaders shaping high-performance culture programmes. Sport, media and national-body audiences looking at governance and reform. Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what holding standards looks like when the conditions are against you, not in theory. Language for the coach-athlete-administrator triangle that transfers directly to leader-team-board dynamics. A clearer read on the difference between motivation and preparation at the top of a competitive field. A first-hand perspective on governance responsibility: what a president actually answers for when a system is under strain.

Why organisations work with Diana Nyad She offers a studied, first-person account of what it takes to keep a team aligned across four failed attempts and a decade of setbacks, which is closer to the reality of most major transformations than single-peak success stories. Her material is built on a specific, documented pursuit: five attempts to swim from Havana to Key West, culminating in a 53-hour crossing at age 64. Organisations get a concrete case study, not a motivational abstraction. She speaks from a long second career in serious journalism (NPR, ABC Wide World of Sports, New York Times, CBS News Sunday Morning), which means she can argue a point, not only tell a story. Her TEDWomen 2013 talk “Never, ever give up” is one of the most widely circulated speeches on long-horizon perseverance, giving audiences a reference point before she enters the room. Her story has been examined at length in Knopf’s Find a Way and dramatised in Netflix’s 2023 Nyad, which means her case is unusually well known to senior audiences before a keynote begins. Biography highlights Completed a swim from Havana to Key West in September 2013, approximately 110 miles in roughly 53 hours, on her fifth attempt at age 64. Circumnavigated Manhattan Island in 1975 in 7 hours 57 minutes, breaking a record that had stood for 48 years. Inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame (1978) and the National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame (1986). Sports and culture journalist at ABC’s Wide World of Sports, NPR, CBS News Sunday Morning, The New York Times, and Newsweek. Host of NPR’s The Savvy Traveler, 2001 to 2004. Author of Other Shores (1978), Basic Training for Women (1981), Boss of Me (1999), and Find a Way (Knopf, 2015). Subject of the 2013 documentary The Other Shore and the 2023 Netflix biopic Nyad. Biography The Havana to Key West crossing took five attempts and more than three decades between the first try and the one that finished. The 2013 swim ran roughly 110 miles and took about 53 hours in open water. The story most organisations know from the TED talk is the ending; the part that matters to leaders is the four attempts before it, and the team that kept assembling after each one. Nyad was already an accomplished marathon swimmer well before Cuba. In 1975 she circled Manhattan Island in 7 hours 57 minutes, breaking a record that had stood since 1927. She was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame in 1978 and the National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1986. That era produced a particular kind of athlete: one who had to build, fund, and lead her own campaigns, because no federation was going to do it for her. The second career is what makes her unusual in this category. She spent roughly thirty years as a sports and culture journalist at ABC’s Wide World of Sports, NPR, CBS News Sunday Morning, The New York Times, and Newsweek, and hosted NPR’s The Savvy Traveler from 2001 to 2004. She is a writer before she is a motivator, and her books, including Knopf’s Find a Way in 2015, argue a case rather than recite a highlight reel. For senior audiences, the Cuba project is useful because it is legible as a management problem. A non-negotiable goal, a team that changes between attempts, four public failures, a shifting set of physical and logistical obstacles, and the question of when to stop. She is also clear-eyed about the ratification questions that followed the 2013 swim, which matters: the material she brings is about method and persistence, not an untouchable record. Key speaking topics Sustained pursuit of long-horizon goals Leading teams across repeated failure Decision-making under physical and psychological duress Resilience as a practised discipline Women in leadership and late-career reinvention Storytelling and the journalism of performance Ideal for Senior leadership offsites dealing with multi-year transformation programmes where setbacks are expected CEO and board sessions framing a non-negotiable strategic objective Sales and commercial leadership kick-offs anchored on persistence and team discipline Culture and people events for organisations rebuilding after a public failure or missed target Audience outcomes A concrete reference case for what a decade-long pursuit looks like from inside the team A clearer frame for the difference between motivation and method when a goal keeps slipping Language for talking to a team about the cost of the next attempt after a visible failure A usable argument that age, tenure, and timing are not the constraints they are usually treated as A reminder, grounded in a specific campaign, that solitary-looking achievements are almost always team outputs

Why organisations work with Diana Renner Her book Not Knowing (CMI Management Book of the Year, translated into 15+ languages) makes a specific, counterintuitive argument: that the pressure to project expertise and have answers actively impairs leadership in genuinely complex situations. This is a diagnosis most leadership development programmes avoid, and a conversation senior leadership teams rarely have with rigour. She works at the intersection of three distinct bodies of knowledge – adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology – a combination that addresses not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders must develop as people. This is not available from single-discipline practitioners. Her guest faculty roles at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government confirm that her frameworks hold up in rigorous, peer-reviewed executive education settings alongside practitioner application. Through the Uncharted Leadership Institute and programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management, she has built and tested leadership development approaches across commercial, government, and community contexts at scale. Her personal biography – leaving Romania in 1987, professional reinvention across law, refugee advocacy, and leadership development – gives the Not Knowing framework lived authority that purely academic treatments of the same topic cannot match. Biography highlights Co-author of Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity (LID Publishing) – CMI Management Book of the Year 2015; translated into 15+ languages Co-author of Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (LID Publishing, 2018) Director and co-founder, Uncharted Leadership Institute (est. 2016); creator, Not Knowing Lab Senior Lecturer, Monash University; adjunct lecturer, University of Adelaide; associate, Melbourne Business School Guest faculty, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and University of Texas LBJ School of Government 2017 Monash University Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (Global Challenges Honours Program teaching team) Biography Diana Renner’s book Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity, co-written with Steven D’Souza, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2015. Its thesis is direct: the pressure to project expertise and certainty is often what makes complex adaptive challenges harder to navigate, not easier. Translated into more than fifteen languages, it has become a reference for leadership development practitioners and senior teams working with genuine strategic uncertainty. The book draws on a distinction most leadership frameworks collapse: technical problems can be solved with existing expertise, while adaptive challenges require new thinking and development. Renner’s work through the Uncharted Leadership Institute, which she co-founded in 2016, is built around helping senior leaders recognise which they are facing – and develop the capacity to engage productively with the latter. Her practice draws on three distinct disciplines: adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology. Together, these address not only what organisations need to do differently, but how leaders need to develop as people to lead well in conditions of genuine uncertainty. Programme partnerships with Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Police Management have tested these frameworks across commercial, government, and community contexts. Renner holds a Senior Lectureship at Monash University and has served as guest faculty at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Texas LBJ School of Government. Her second book, Not Doing: The Art of Effortless Action (2018), extends the Not Knowing argument into the territory of executive effectiveness – examining how excessive busyness and compulsive doing undermine the quality of leadership in complex environments. Key speaking topics Adaptive leadership in uncertainty and complexity Not Knowing – leading beyond expertise Not Doing – effortless action and the limits of busyness Distinguishing adaptive from technical challenges Adult development theory and leadership growth Deliberately developmental organisational cultures Complexity theory and strategic resilience Ideal for CEOs and C-suite executives leading organisations through complex change or strategic inflection points CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior leadership programmes Senior executives and leadership teams in government and public sector organisations Board-level strategy and scenario planning forums Audience outcomes A clear distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, with practical language for applying it in real organisational conversations Greater self-awareness about how the pressure to have answers shapes individual leadership behaviour and team dynamics Practical frameworks from Not Knowing and Not Doing for leading through uncertainty without forcing premature resolution A more explicit understanding of how adult development theory applies to the daily practice of leadership Approaches to building team and organisational cultures that can hold complexity and sustain productive engagement over time

Why organisations work with Didier Cossin He is the named author of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness, a governance methodology in active use at IMD’s Global Board Center and applied to over 3,000 board members worldwide. His advisory client list, which spans the UN, ECB, World Bank, IOC, PIF, ADQ and Temasek, gives him a reference set that very few governance voices can match. He treats stewardship as an operating discipline for senior leaders, not a values statement, and has built a body of work, including the book with Stewardship Asia, that codifies what that looks like in practice. The second edition of High Performance Boards extends the framework into cyber, ESG metrics, geopolitical risk and board activism, the live agenda for chairs and lead independent directors in 2026. Biography highlights Founder and Director, IMD Global Board Center; holds the UBS Chair in Banking and Finance at IMD. PhD, Harvard University, under the Robert C. Merton Chair; two Derek Bok Awards for teaching excellence at Harvard. Originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology. Author of High Performance Boards (Wiley, second edition 2024) and Inspiring Stewardship (Wiley, 2016). Senior Advisor in Governance to UNICEF and the International Organization for Standardization. Advisor to the UN, ECB, World Bank, IFC, IOC and sovereign wealth funds including PIF, ADQ and Temasek. Biography The hardest problems a board faces rarely arrive labelled as governance problems. They arrive as a cyber breach, a regulatory letter, an activist shareholder, a geopolitical exposure no one had modelled. The board’s job is to make a decision before the situation forces one. The capacity to do that is what Cossin has spent two decades studying, codifying and teaching. At IMD, he founded the Global Board Center and developed the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness, a methodology now used to evaluate and rebuild boards across corporates, sovereign wealth funds and supranational institutions. The framework treats board performance as a function of four interacting variables: the quality and diversity of the people in the room, the information they receive, the structures they operate within, and the dynamics that shape how they argue and decide. The advisory work tests the framework in unusual settings. He is Senior Advisor in Governance to UNICEF and to the International Organization for Standardization, and has worked with the UN, ECB, World Bank, IFC and IOC alongside sovereign investors including PIF, ADQ and Temasek. The same questions surface across these institutions: how to keep oversight credible as scale and complexity rise, how to protect long-term stewardship when short-term pressure intensifies. His two books, High Performance Boards (Wiley, second edition 2024) and Inspiring Stewardship (Wiley, 2016), turn that field experience into method. The newer edition adds cyber risk, ESG operating substance, board activism and geopolitical exposure to the original framework, which is now the live agenda for any chair preparing the board calendar for the year ahead. Key speaking topics Board effectiveness and governance Stewardship and long-term value creation Decision-making at the top of organisations Cyber and AI risk at board level ESG and sustainability governance Sovereign wealth and institutional investor governance Geopolitical risk and board oversight Ideal for Chairs, lead independent directors and non-executive directors CEOs and executive committees preparing for board scrutiny on cyber, AI, ESG or geopolitical exposure Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and institutional investors Family-owned businesses and family offices building governance for succession Audience outcomes A working diagnostic for assessing their own board against the Four Pillars A view of how leading sovereign investors and supranational bodies structure governance under scrutiny A clearer separation between the board’s stewardship role and management’s operating role Specific reference points on cyber, ESG and geopolitical risk at board level, drawn from named institutions

Why organisations work with Didier Marlier Co-author of Engaging Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), which set out the Logos, Ethos and Pathos framework now used inside executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode and Fundação Dom Cabral. Three decades of close work with European industrials, financial institutions and professional service firms, including BASF, Credit Suisse, Bank Julius Baer, Dow Chemical, Firmenich, KPMG and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Founded and ran the Enablers Network for almost thirty years before donating the brand to an independent association in 2024, an unusual signal of operating from conviction rather than commercial capture. Teaches change leadership across four continents in French, English and Portuguese, with deep practical exposure to Brazilian as well as European corporate cultures. Brings the same engagement methodology into professional sports environments, where the cost of disengagement is measurable on the scoreboard, and translates those lessons back into corporate boardrooms. Biography highlights Co-author of Engaging Leadership: Three Agendas for Sustaining Achievement, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Faculty and guest professor on executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode, NEOMA and Fundação Dom Cabral. Founder of the Enablers Network, a European partnership of leadership and change practitioners, donated to the Enablers Association in 2024. MBA from IMD; law degree from Université de Lausanne. TEDx speaker and keynote at the GBTA Europe Conference 2013 in Prague. Long-standing client work with BASF, Credit Suisse, Dow Chemical, KPMG, Bank Julius Baer, Firmenich, Solvay, SAP and Total. Biography Strategy decks rarely fail on their logic. They fail because the people expected to deliver them never genuinely sign up. That gap, between the intellectual case for change and the behavioural reality of an organisation, is the territory Didier Marlier has worked in for three decades. His framework, set out with Chris Parker in Engaging Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), borrows from classical rhetoric. Logos is the strategic argument. Ethos is the behaviour and tone leaders model day to day. Pathos is the emotional commitment that turns compliance into ownership. The book argues that serious change requires all three running together, not strategy first and culture later. The client list reflects the breadth of that idea in practice: BASF, Credit Suisse, Bank Julius Baer, Dow Chemical, Firmenich, KPMG, Solvay and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer among them. He teaches the same material on executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode and Fundação Dom Cabral, which gives him an unusually direct read on how European and Latin American executives experience change differently. In 2024 he donated the Enablers Network brand, which he had built over almost thirty years, to an independent association, and now works through DMD. He also applies the same engagement methodology inside professional sports teams, where disengagement shows up immediately in performance data and feeds back into how he advises corporate clients. Key speaking topics Leadership in the disruption economy Engagement through strategic, behavioural and emotional change Post-merger and post-acquisition integration Cultural transformation in multinational organisations Board and executive team effectiveness Change leadership across European and Latin American contexts Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards leading strategic, cultural or post-merger transformation CHROs and transformation leads responsible for behavioural adoption of new strategies Senior leadership programmes in multinational organisations with cross-cultural workforces Professional service firm partnerships managing change without command authority Audience outcomes A working language for diagnosing why a current change initiative is stalling A clearer line of sight between the strategic case for change and the day-to-day behaviour leaders must model Specific signals to watch for when intellectual buy-in masks emotional disengagement Cross-cultural reference points from European and Brazilian corporate practice

Why organisations work with Digby Jones He has sat in both chairs that most business audiences only see from outside: head of the CBI and Minister of State for Trade. Very few speakers can tell a boardroom what the other side of the table is actually thinking. As Trade Minister he made 45 overseas visits to 31 countries in 15 months. That is a working map of how UK plc sells itself abroad, not a theory about it. His two Wiley books, Fixing Britain (2011) and Fixing Business (2017), set out a consistent argument about competitiveness, skills and responsible profit that still frames how he talks to boards today. He is a crossbencher by choice and a non-aligned voice in public life. For audiences tired of partisan framing, that independence is the point. The New Troubleshooter, his 2014 BBC Two series, put him inside three real British SMEs to diagnose and fix them on camera. It is a rare speaker credential: public evidence of how he actually thinks through a business problem. Biography highlights Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, 2000 to 2006. Minister of State for Trade and Investment, 2007 to 2008, jointly in BERR and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Life peer as Baron Jones of Birmingham, 2007; crossbencher in the House of Lords until retirement in 2020. Knight Bachelor, 2005 New Year Honours, for services to Business. Author of Fixing Britain (Wiley, 2011) and Fixing Business (Wiley, 2017); Fixing Britain shortlisted for the 2012 CMI Management Book of the Year. Presenter of BBC Two’s Digby Jones: The New Troubleshooter, 2014. Senior Partner at Edge & Ellison, Birmingham, 1995 to 1998, after two decades as a corporate lawyer in the West Midlands. Biography The CBI is where British business tells the government what it needs. The Department for Business is where the government tells British business what it is prepared to do. Digby Jones has run the first and served in the second. That combined vantage is what a boardroom is buying when it brings him in. He was Director General of the CBI from 2000 to 2006, then accepted an invitation from Gordon Brown to serve as Minister of State for Trade and Investment from 2007 to 2008, joining the Lords as a crossbencher to take the post. In 15 months he made 45 overseas visits to 31 countries, pitching the UK as a place to invest and British firms as firms to buy from. He sat as a non-aligned peer until retiring from the Lords in 2020. The two books are where his argument lives. Fixing Britain (Wiley, 2011), shortlisted for the 2012 CMI Management Book of the Year, is a working plan for national competitiveness: skills, infrastructure, a functioning relationship between Whitehall and the wealth creators. Fixing Business (Wiley, 2017) extends the argument into how profitable companies can justify themselves to the societies they operate in. The thesis is consistent and it is his own. Before politics, he spent twenty years at Edge & Ellison in Birmingham, becoming senior partner, brokering deals for mid-market companies in a region that lives or dies by manufacturing. That is the register he still speaks in. On the BBC Two series The New Troubleshooter in 2014 he spent three episodes inside three British SMEs, arguing with owners and staff about pricing, exports and focus. A senior audience watching him work sees the same person they will meet on stage: direct, specific, unafraid to name the problem. Key speaking topics UK competitiveness and the business-government relationship Trade, exports and inward investment British economic policy and the view from Westminster Skills, productivity and the domestic labour market Responsible business and the case for profit Leadership from the employers’ side of the table Ideal for Board and executive committee offsites debating UK exposure, investment or political risk CEO and CFO audiences at trade associations, industry bodies and chambers of commerce Senior audiences at professional services and financial firms briefing clients on the UK economy After-dinner and conference keynotes where a non-partisan senior voice on British business is the draw Audience outcomes A candid read on where the UK economy and UK business policy actually stand, from someone who has worked both sides A clearer view of what government decisions mean for investment, exports and hiring A sharper argument for why skills and productivity remain the binding constraint on British growth A usable sense of how to talk about profit, responsibility and national interest in the same sentence Direct answers in Q&A: a working conversation with a senior practitioner, not a rehearsed set piece

Why organisations work with Dominic Alldis His sessions place executives inside a live orchestra or jazz band, making the dynamics of leadership – alignment, trust, listening under pressure – physically felt rather than conceptually described. No other leadership format uses professional live performance as the working medium in this way. The classical-vs-jazz framework gives organisations a precise vocabulary for a problem most struggle to name: when to follow the score and when to improvise – the alignment-versus-autonomy tension that runs through every complex team. The Orchestra Experience has been part of Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008, with endorsement from the programme’s Kravis Professor of Business – giving his approach academic standing alongside conference-format delivery. As an active professional musician and faculty member at the Royal Academy of Music since 1991, he brings current, first-person experience of high-performance ensembles – not a career retrospective applied to business. His client base runs from Microsoft, Google and Deutsche Bank to the United Nations, with executive education work at INSEAD, IMD Lausanne, London Business School and Columbia – evidence of trust from serious institutions across sectors and formats. Biography highlights Jazz pianist, orchestral conductor, arranger and singer; professional career began in Paris in 1982 and spans jazz clubs, concert halls and festival stages internationally Founder and Director of Music & Management, delivering music-based leadership development programmes for corporations and business schools worldwide Faculty member at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1991, teaching jazz improvisation to classical pianists and opera singers; Honorary Associate since 2000; Steinway Artist since 2010 Music & Management has delivered the Orchestra Experience to Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008; executive education work also includes INSEAD/CEDEP, IMD Lausanne and London Business School Corporate clients include senior teams at Microsoft, WPP, Google, eBay, Deutsche Bank, LVMH, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, BCG, PwC, Mandarin Oriental and the United Nations Author of two books published by Hal Leonard Corporation: «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony» and «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Improvisation» Founder of the Canzona Chamber Orchestra (2010), performing classical repertoire and jazz crossover projects Biography The tension between structure and spontaneity runs through every high-performing team. An orchestra delivers the score with precision; a jazz band improvises around shared norms. Dominic Alldis is a jazz pianist, conductor, and founder of Music & Management and has spent more than two decades translating this contrast into a direct learning experience for executives. The question he brings to business audiences is concrete: when should a team follow the score, and when should it improvise? His framework draws from a professional career that spans both traditions. Alldis studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, played jazz residencies in Paris and London, conducted orchestras across four continents, and has taught improvisation to classical pianists and opera singers at the Royal Academy of Music in London (where he holds the title of Honorary Associate) since 1991. That dual expertise is the engine of his practice: not music as illustration, but musical performance as a live laboratory for the dynamics organisations actually need to develop. Music & Management has embedded the Orchestra Experience in Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008 – endorsed by Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor of Business. Corporate clients include senior teams at Microsoft, WPP, Google, Deutsche Bank, LVMH and the United Nations. His executive education work spans INSEAD, IMD Lausanne and London Business School. Testimonials from CHROs, managing partners and CEOs consistently name the sessions as the most memorable leadership experience their organisations have produced. His books – «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony» and «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Improvisation», both published by Hal Leonard Corporation – reflect the same bridging instinct: rigorous musical thinking made accessible to practitioners who come from a different tradition. Key speaking topics Leadership through musical performance Classical and jazz models of organisational alignment Collaboration and collective decision-making Listening as a leadership competency Creativity and improvisation in organisations Change and adaptability in complex environments Team dynamics and organisational trust Ideal for Senior executive teams at strategic off-sites, leadership summits, and cultural transformation programmes CHROs and L&D Directors designing experiential leadership development at executive level Business schools and executive education programmes seeking immersive, non-traditional learning formats CEOs and boards seeking a high-impact, memorable format that connects music, leadership, and organisational performance Audience outcomes A direct, experiential encounter with how alignment, trust, and collective decision-making operate in real time – not as concepts, but as felt dynamics A working vocabulary for the tension between structured coordination and creative autonomy in teams Greater awareness of listening as an operational leadership practice, not only a communication skill New perspective on how change and improvisation can be navigated without losing coherent direction Personal observations about their own leadership behaviour, prompted by the musical experience rather than delivered through instruction