Leadership

Why organisations work with Jade Simmons A mainstage moment that combines a Steinway, live performance and a structured keynote, rather than a podium talk. Few speakers can carry that format credibly at scale. A classical performance pedigree that holds up under scrutiny: Sphinx Medal of Excellence, performances at the White House and the US Supreme Court, repertoire from Rachmaninoff to contemporary crossover work. Author of an Amazon bestseller, Audacious Prayers for World Changers, and host of American Public Media’s Decomposed, a podcast named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. A track record headlining for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada at sales kick-offs, leadership summits and culture events. Biography highlights Recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, with the ceremony hosted at the US Supreme Court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Concert performances at the White House, Ravinia, Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall, New York’s Town Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Host of Decomposed on American Public Media, recognised by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. Author of Audacious Prayers for World Changers (Amazon bestseller, English and Spanish editions) and Purpose the Remix. CEO and founder of Jade Media Global; ran as an independent candidate for US President in 2020. Northwestern University undergraduate; Master’s as a Provost Fellow at Rice University; first runner-up at Miss America 2000. Biography Corporate audiences sit through more keynotes in a year than most of them care to count. The hardest brief a programme committee inherits is the opening or closing slot at a large convening, where the room needs to lift, not settle. A piano on stage and a performer who can also hold a leadership argument is one of the few formats that reliably moves a thousand people from neutral attention to engagement. Simmons built that format from the classical concert hall. She holds the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, awarded in a ceremony at the US Supreme Court hosted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her concert resume includes the White House, Ravinia, the Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall and New York’s Town Hall. She trained at Northwestern and Rice, where she held a Provost Fellowship. The keynote work extends the performance into a structured message about purpose, reinvention and what she calls “Maverick Behavior.” She has headlined for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada. Her book Audacious Prayers for World Changers is an Amazon bestseller in English and Spanish, and her American Public Media podcast Decomposed has been named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. She also runs Jade Media Global, the company that produces her live experiences and content. Buyers commission her when the brief is to make a single moment in a long agenda the one people remember. Key speaking topics Purpose and reinvention Leadership and self-leadership Creativity and personal innovation Performance and mainstage entertainment Diversity and inclusion as a culture lever Personal branding and creative identity Resilience and breakthrough Ideal for CEO town halls, sales kick-offs and annual leadership conferences that need a mainstage opener or closer Chief People Officers and culture leads programming purpose, inclusion or engagement events Awards nights, customer summits and recognition events where the room needs to feel something specific Industries booking marquee music-led keynotes (financial services, pharma, tech, professional services) Audience outcomes A shared mainstage moment the room references for the rest of the agenda A direct, personal message on purpose, reinvention and creative courage A live concert performance that sits inside, not alongside, the keynote argument Practical language for leaders to talk about reinvention with their own teams

Why organisations work with Cameron Atlas He delivers the message through an unusual format. Original songs written for the keynote, an argument about human performance built around the music, and a setup that scales to the room, from solo piano or guitar to a full band or string quartet. It is one of very few keynote products where the medium itself reinforces the message. His TEDxRoma talk, “What Future Are We Creating?”, featured on TED.com, brought 80 musicians from 40 countries onto one stage. It is the cleanest public proof point of his ability to organise creative collaboration at scale. His content is built for leadership audiences in environments where change has become continuous. The talks address composure, clarity and decision-making, not abstract motivation. His content is already commissioned beyond the stage. The Edge of Possible Leadership Program runs with executive teams and one to one with founders and CEOs, so the keynote is drawn from work that organisations pay to implement, not from the conference circuit alone. He is a credible choice when a conference programme needs a closing keynote with emotional weight, where a conventional speaker would leave the room flat. Biography highlights Delivered the closing talk at TEDxRoma, “What Future Are We Creating?”, now featured on TED.com Host of The Edge of Possible, a top 100 self-improvement podcast on Apple Podcasts National Geographic Explorer Original songs heard across 195 countries; performs them live on grand piano and acoustic guitar during keynotes Runs The Edge of Possible Leadership Program, delivered to executive teams and as a private engagement for founders and CEOs Grew up on a farm in outback Australia in a graduating class of 11; now speaks internationally with live music as the keynote spine Biography Most leadership keynotes ask an audience to absorb an argument. A small number ask them to feel it. Cameron Atlas works in the second category. His keynotes are built around original music played live on a grand piano, with the argument about resilience, focus and decision-making woven into the performance rather than delivered alongside it. The substantive content is straightforward. After more than 15 years running The Edge of Possible Leadership Program with CEOs, founders and senior teams, he addresses what senior leaders actually need when they are running organisations through continuous change: composure, clarity, and the ability to make decisions when the conditions keep moving. The music is the carrier, not the point. His clearest public proof point is the TEDxRoma talk “What Future Are We Creating?”, now featured on TED.com, which assembled 80 musicians from 40 countries into a single collaborative performance. He has since taken the format to keynote stages internationally, and his songs have been heard across 195 countries. He hosts The Edge of Possible, which Apple Podcasts has ranked among the top 100 in self-improvement, and works with a roster of high-performing operators between speaking engagements. The category he belongs to is small. Most keynote speakers who use music use it as ornament. The format here is the product, and it earns its place because the audiences he serves, leadership teams that have heard every conventional resilience talk, tend to remember the room differently afterwards. Key speaking topics Resilience and decision-making under sustained change Composure and clarity for senior leaders Adaptability as a performance discipline Creative collaboration at scale The role of focus in distraction-heavy environments Live-music keynote experiences for leadership audiences Ideal for CEOs, founders and executive teams running through continuous restructure or strategic change Leadership conferences and annual summits looking for a closing keynote with emotional weight Sales kick-offs and partner events where audiences arrive saturated with conventional content HR and people-function audiences working on resilience, wellbeing and high-performance culture Audience outcomes A clearer language for what composure under pressure looks like in senior roles A reset on the difference between motion and focus when teams are exhausted by change A live demonstration of how creative collaboration can hold a room of unfamiliar people together A keynote experience that audiences remember and refer back to, which matters when the surrounding programme is dense

Why organisations work with René Meulensteen He spent six years inside the Ferguson dressing room during one of the most studied winning runs in modern sport, and can describe how standards, feedback, and selection were actually managed day to day. He developed and ran the individual technical and finishing programme that Cristiano Ronaldo credits for the shift from winger to record goalscorer, a working example of how senior performers are coached, not managed. His book “United, Sir Alex and Me”, with a foreword by Ferguson, gives him a documented and endorsed account of the methodology behind a sustained elite culture. As Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos, he has carried the same operating model into a different country, league, and squad and reached the World Cup knockout stage with it. Biography highlights First Team Coach at Manchester United from 2007 to 2013 under Sir Alex Ferguson. Three Premier League titles, one UEFA Champions League and one FIFA Club World Cup during his First Team Coach tenure. Twelve years at Manchester United in total, beginning in 2001 as Youth Technical Skills Development Coach. Author of “United, Sir Alex and Me: My Life in Football” (2023), foreword by Sir Alex Ferguson. Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos, contributing to qualification and Round of 16 progression at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Former Head Coach of Fulham FC in the English Premier League. Biography Manchester United won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and a FIFA Club World Cup in the years René Meulensteen spent as First Team Coach under Sir Alex Ferguson. The interesting question is not what was won. It is how a squad of senior internationals kept raising standards once they had already won everything. Meulensteen joined the club in 2001 as a youth technical skills development coach, working with academy players on the kind of detail that usually disappears once a player turns professional. By 2007 he was working with the first team, running individual development sessions with players including Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs. The Ronaldo finishing programme, run during a suspension early in the 2007-08 season, is one of the few publicly documented cases of an elite forward being rebuilt as a goalscorer by deliberate coaching design. After Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, Meulensteen took head coach roles at Anzhi Makhachkala and Fulham FC in the Premier League, then moved into international football. Since 2018 he has been Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos under Graham Arnold, including the squad’s progression to the knockout stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. His book “United, Sir Alex and Me”, co-written with Wayne Barton and with a foreword by Ferguson, sets out the working methodology behind that period: how standards were set, how individuals were stretched, how a culture was held together across generations of senior players. That is the material organisations engage him to translate. Key speaking topics Building and sustaining a winning culture Coaching senior performers through individual development Leadership transition and succession in elite environments Standards, feedback and accountability inside high performance teams Translating elite sport methodology into executive teams Team cohesion across generations and personalities Ideal for Executive teams and boards seeking to maintain performance after a founder, CEO or long-tenured leader transitions out Sales leadership, partner groups and senior performer cohorts where individual development is the unlock Talent and people leaders responsible for high performance culture, succession and leadership pipeline Leadership offsites and conferences focused on team cohesion and sustained excellence Audience outcomes A working understanding of how Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United actually operated day to day, told from inside the coaching staff A concrete model of how senior performers are developed individually, drawn from the Ronaldo finishing programme Specific language for the standards, feedback and accountability practices that hold an elite culture together A clearer view of the leadership behaviours that survive a change at the top, and the ones that do not

Why organisations work with Richard Nugee He wrote the climate strategy that a national defence ministry now operates against. That is a different order of evidence from advocacy work; he has done the institutional translation himself. He links climate to the things boards actually argue about: supply chain exposure, energy security, geopolitical instability, capital allocation under long horizons. He carries the credibility of a Lieutenant General with operational service in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, which lands with audiences that tune out conventional sustainability messaging. He sits inside the policy machinery as the MoD’s Non-Executive Director for Climate Change and Sustainability, and advises the International Military Council on Climate and Security and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, so his framing reflects current government and alliance thinking. Biography highlights Lieutenant General (Retd), British Army, 36-year career in the Royal Artillery Chief of Defence People, Ministry of Defence, 2016 to 2020 Author, Ministry of Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach, published March 2021 Non-Executive Director for Climate Change and Sustainability, Ministry of Defence Chief Executive, The Scar Free Foundation; Chair, Royal NAAFI Board Senior advisor, International Military Council on Climate and Security; advisor to the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and the University of Oxford Climate Change & (In)Security Project CB, CVO, CBE; US Legion of Merit (2014) Biography The Ministry of Defence published its first formal climate strategy in March 2021. The author was a serving Lieutenant General who had spent the previous year inside the department turning climate from an environmental concern into a defence planning question. That strategy now shapes how UK Defence approaches emissions, estate, capability and resilience over a thirty-year horizon. Richard Nugee’s military career ran for thirty-six years in the Royal Artillery, with operational tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Cyprus and Afghanistan. As Chief of Defence People from 2016 to 2020 he was responsible for personnel policy across the armed forces, the civil service side of Defence, and the veteran community. His honours include the CB, CVO and CBE, and the US Legion of Merit for service in Afghanistan. The climate review changed his second career. Since 2021 he has held the Non-Executive Director seat for Climate Change and Sustainability at the Ministry of Defence, and advises the International Military Council on Climate and Security, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and the University of Oxford Climate Change & (In)Security Project. He is also Chief Executive of The Scar Free Foundation, the medical research charity, and Chair of the Royal NAAFI Board. What he offers commercial audiences is the discipline of a defence planner applied to climate. He talks about resource competition, supply chain fragility, infrastructure exposure and the cost of inaction in language that boards used to hearing risk papers, not green narratives. The argument lands because it comes from someone who has had to make it stick inside a department that does not tolerate vague claims. Key speaking topics Climate change as a national security risk Defence and sustainability strategy Geopolitical implications of climate Supply chain and resource resilience Net zero and capital allocation Leadership in large, change-resistant institutions Veterans, personnel and people strategy Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting climate, ESG and net zero strategy with real capital at stake CSOs, sustainability leads and risk officers wanting to reframe climate as security and operating risk Defence, aerospace, energy and critical infrastructure organisations with exposure to geopolitical and resource volatility Leadership audiences in large, regulated or change-resistant institutions Audience outcomes A working definition of climate as a security and supply chain risk, not a compliance or PR issue Specific examples of how a national defence ministry has translated climate into planning, capability and capital decisions A sharper view of the geopolitical second-order effects of climate, from resource competition to migration to alliance pressure Language for talking about climate to audiences that are sceptical of standard sustainability framing

Why organisations work with Tony Martignetti He gives senior leaders a working method for staying composed under chaos, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, drawn from coaching thousands of executives through transition and reinvention. His work draws on a finance and strategy career inside life sciences, so the conversation with a CEO or CFO is operator-to-operator, not coach-to-client. He has built one of the most listened-to long-form leadership interview shows, The Virtual Campfire, and brings 200+ executive conversations into his keynotes as material rather than anecdote. He is published by Routledge on the substantive use of personal narrative in leadership, a credential rare among speakers in the resilience and purpose category. He is equally credible with a founder team mid-scale-up and a Fortune 500 leadership group mid-restructure, because the underlying problem, leading from grounded clarity, is the same. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer, Inspired Purpose Partners. Author of “Climbing the Right Mountain” (2021) and “Campfire Lessons for Leaders” (Routledge, 2024). Host of The Virtual Campfire podcast, 200+ episodes of long-form leadership interviews. ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC); MBA, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University. Recognised by Thinkers360 as a Top Voice in Leadership; listed by LeadersHum among Biggest Voices in Leadership. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, CEOWORLD, and Life Science Leader. Biography Composure is now part of the senior leader’s job description. Decisions are sharper, cycles are shorter, and the people in the room are reading the leader for steadiness before they read the strategy. That is the territory Tony Martignetti works in. He came to it through operations, not through theory. Before founding Inspired Purpose Partners, he spent a finance and strategy career inside life sciences companies, ran a financial consulting practice, and worked alongside founders and boards through capital events and reinvention. The coaching work is shaped by that operator’s instinct for what actually moves a decision under pressure. His method is captured in the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership and developed across two books, “Climbing the Right Mountain” on aligning leaders with the right ambition, and “Campfire Lessons for Leaders,” published by Routledge in 2024, on how a leader’s own story becomes the material for clearer decisions. The books are built on more than 200 long-form interviews with senior executives, conducted on his podcast The Virtual Campfire. The audience is the senior leader who has the credentials, the team, and the strategy, and who still needs a steadier internal frame to lead from. Thinkers360 has named him among its Top Voices in Leadership; his work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes. The substance of the work is what executives recognise: a clear, useable practice for leading well when the conditions will not settle. Key speaking topics Grounded leadership under chaos Composure and decision-making for senior leaders Purpose and direction for executives in transition Personal narrative as a leadership instrument Reinvention for founders and senior teams Coaching culture inside leadership teams Ideal for C-suite teams working through reorganisation, integration, or strategic reset Founder and scale-up CEOs entering a new operating phase Senior leadership programmes inside life sciences, technology, and professional services Executive offsites where the brief is composure, clarity, and direction Audience outcomes A working method, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, that a senior leader can apply on Monday morning Sharper criteria for which decisions deserve the leader’s attention and which do not A clearer read on the leader’s own ambition, and whether the current mountain is the right one Practical use of personal story as a tool for trust, alignment, and team direction Language for steadiness that travels across the leadership team, not just the individual

Why organisations work with Dominique Gisin A first-hand account of nine knee surgeries followed by an Olympic gold, used not as a story arc but as material for how leaders sustain commitment when each new attempt carries diminishing odds. A rare combination of elite sporting pedigree with a scientific frame of reference: a Sochi 2014 gold medal alongside an ETH Zurich MSc in Physics, which lifts the conversation above motivational anecdote. Co-delivery with Dr Christian Marcolli, her long-time sports psychologist, gives organisations a paired performance-and-psychology view in a single keynote rather than a one-voice talk. Operational credibility outside sport: CEO tenure at Schweizer Sporthilfe and a current role as a commercial First Officer, both anchoring the talk in real decision environments. Bilingual delivery in German and English, with strong relevance to Swiss, German-speaking, and international corporate audiences. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Alpine Skiing Downhill, Sochi 2014, in the first ever Olympic alpine tie for gold (with Tina Maze). Swiss Sportswoman of the Year, 2014. Member of the Swiss National Alpine Ski Team, 2007 to 2015, with multiple World Cup podiums in downhill and super-G. MSc in Physics, ETH Zurich, 2022. CEO of Schweizer Sporthilfe (Swiss Sports Aid Foundation) from October 2018. Commercial pilot licence holder; First Officer with Swiss airline Fly7. Biography The downhill at Sochi 2014 produced the first tie for gold in Olympic alpine history. Dominique Gisin shared the podium with Tina Maze on identical times to the hundredth, ending a thirty-year wait for a Swiss women’s downhill gold. The medal arrived after nine knee surgeries and a career that had been written off more than once. What gives the talk its weight is what happened after. Gisin retired from the World Cup circuit in 2015 and was admitted to ETH Zurich, completing an MSc in Physics in 2022. She qualified as a commercial pilot in 2019 and now flies as a First Officer for the Swiss carrier Fly7. Between 2018 and her later transitions, she served as CEO of Schweizer Sporthilfe, the foundation that funds Swiss athlete development. For senior audiences, the relevant content is not the medal itself. It is the discipline of repeated comeback under thin evidence, paired with a working understanding of how performance, physiology, and decision pressure interact. Her keynote “Making It Happen” is co-delivered with sports psychologist Dr Christian Marcolli, which moves the material beyond personal narrative into a structured account of how composure is built and rebuilt. The pairing of Olympic-level performance, scientific training, and operational responsibility in two further professions is unusual. It gives leadership audiences something specific to take away: a credible read on what it takes to keep deciding well when the body, the data, or the team are all giving reasons to stop. Key speaking topics Resilience after serious setback Composure and decision-making under pressure Elite performance psychology Career reinvention and second-act leadership Team trust and individual accountability Inspiration from elite sport for corporate audiences Ideal for Executive leadership offsites and board awaydays facing a turnaround or post-shock phase HR, talent and L&D leaders running senior development programmes on resilience and performance Sales and commercial conferences anchored on sustained motivation through difficult cycles Audience outcomes A concrete account of how elite athletes prepare for, absorb, and recover from setback, applied to leadership decisions Language for talking about composure as a built capability rather than a personality trait A working frame, drawn from sports psychology, for how individuals and teams stay committed when results are slow to arrive A second-perspective view through Dr Christian Marcolli when the keynote is booked as a duo

Why organisations work with Sílvia Vidal She offers a first-person account of high-stakes performance with no team, no rescue, and no communication, often for 30 to 50 days at a time, that translates directly into senior conversations about judgement under pressure. She holds international recognition at the top of her sport: a Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021 in Briancon for two decades of solo big wall climbing, and Spain’s Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022. She speaks credibly about fear and uncertainty as managed working conditions rather than abstractions, drawing on first ascents in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalayas, and the Brooks Range of Alaska. She is unusual in choosing complete communication blackout: no radio, no phone, no GPS, no weather forecasts. The lessons come from sustained commitment, not from a single dramatic moment. She presents in English and Spanish to corporate and festival audiences across Europe, Canada, and Peru, with more than 25 years of stage experience. Biography highlights Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021, Briancon, for outstanding contribution to solo big wall climbing over two decades Spanish Piolet de Oro (1996), Spanish Mountain Federation, for the solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit (2022), Spanish High Council of Sports Honorary Member of the Spanish Geographic Society (2023) First ascents include Sincronia Magica (Cerro Chileno Grande, Patagonia, 33 days solo) and Un pas mes (Arrigetch, Alaska, 53 days solo) Master’s degree in Physical Education, INEFC-Barcelona Biography The west face of Cerro Chileno Grande in Patagonian Chile is a 1,200-metre granite wall in one of the least visited corners of the Aysen region. In 2020 Sílvia Vidal spent 33 days alone on it, opening a new route called Sincronia Magica in capsule style, with no radio, no phone, no GPS, and no weather forecasts. The Piolets d’Or jury cited that climb, and the two decades behind it, when they awarded her a Special Mention in Briancon in 2021. Vidal was born in Barcelona in 1970, came into climbing through adventure racing during a Master’s in Physical Education at INEFC-Barcelona, and within a couple of years was climbing at A5. The 1996 solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias in northern Spain earned her the Spanish Piolet de Oro from the Spanish Mountain Federation. Since then she has put up first ascents on remote walls in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalayas, and Alaska, including Un pas mes in the Arrigetch range, where she spent 53 days alone in 2017. What separates her from most extreme-environment speakers is the choice of complete communication blackout. She hauls her own gear, lives on the wall for weeks, and has no contact with the outside world until she walks out. Spain’s High Council of Sports awarded her the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022, and the Spanish Geographic Society made her an Honorary Member in 2023. Across more than 25 years she has presented to corporate and festival audiences in Europe, Canada, and Peru in English and Spanish. The argument she brings to a leadership audience is concrete. Composure under pressure is not a personality trait. It is built before the wall, tested every day on it, and rebuilt every time fear arrives without warning. The lessons that come back down with her are about preparation, self-honesty, and the difference between solitude and loneliness when there is genuinely no help available. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible commitment Composure and self-leadership under sustained pressure Working with fear and uncertainty Preparation as the foundation of high-stakes performance Solitude, focus, and self-reliance Resilience in extreme environments Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement and composure under pressure Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want a practitioner-level account, not a metaphor Company-wide events looking for credible inspiration anchored in a verifiable record Leadership development programmes on resilience, self-management, and decision-making Audience outcomes A concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires A practical relationship with fear and uncertainty as working conditions, not obstacles Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry into their own decisions A model of resilience built on routine and self-honesty rather than willpower A reset on what self-leadership looks like when no one is watching and no help is available

Why organisations work with Ryan Tillman Conflict and de-escalation content built from real shifts on patrol and in crisis negotiation, not adapted from a corporate training module. A direct, lived perspective on bias and inclusion from someone who once distrusted policing and chose to join it, which lands with audiences who have tuned out of standard DEI sessions. Author of Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, giving the keynote a published spine that leaders can read and pass on. Founder of Breaking Barriers United, a programme used by law enforcement agencies and corporate clients to rebuild communication between groups that have stopped trusting each other. Significant earned reach through the #ITSNEEDED podcast and a social audience that has accumulated over 100 million views, which lifts internal engagement before and after the event. Biography highlights Police Officer, Chino Police Department, Southern California, since 2013. Founder and CEO, Breaking Barriers United LLC. Author, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, foreword by Dak Prescott, afterword by Gordon Graham, endorsed by Michael Strahan. Host, #ITSNEEDED podcast, with more than one million downloads. Featured on FOX 11 Los Angeles, NBC Los Angeles, ABC News and Voyage LA. Training and content partnerships with Lexipol, Open Sesame and the Heal America Movement. Biography Most organisational fractures begin as a communication problem. A manager misreads a team member, a customer interaction tips into hostility, a difficult conversation gets postponed until it becomes a grievance. The skills that prevent those failures are the same ones a patrol officer learns in the first minute of a call, and they are rarely taught inside corporate training. Ryan Tillman built his career inside that gap. A serving officer with the Chino Police Department in Southern California, he founded Breaking Barriers United to address what he saw on both sides of the badge: a breakdown in trust between people who needed to understand each other to function. The work began in policing and quickly moved into workplaces, where the underlying dynamics, bias, fear, misread intent, were identical. His book, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, sets out the operating philosophy: meet people where they are, lead with respect, and use empathy as a practical tool rather than a slogan. The #ITSNEEDED podcast has carried that material into more than a million downloads, and his social channels have accumulated over 100 million views across appearances on FOX 11 LA, NBC Los Angeles and ABC News. What he brings into a corporate room is not motivation. It is a working method for the conversations that decide whether a culture holds together: how to read a situation before it escalates, how to disagree without losing trust, how to lead across difference without retreating into policy. Senior teams take from him the same thing his colleagues do on patrol, a steadier set of instincts for the moments that matter most. Key speaking topics Communication and trust at work De-escalation and conflict resolution Bias, inclusion and bridging divides Leadership under pressure Crisis response and personal safety Culture change in operational environments Empathy as a practical leadership skill Ideal for CHROs, heads of culture and DEI sponsors looking for content on inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences. Safety, security and risk leaders responsible for de-escalation, customer-facing conflict and frontline workforce protection. Senior leadership teams in operationally complex sectors (healthcare, retail, transport, public services) where communication failures carry real cost. Internal events focused on rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure, layoffs or visible cultural strain. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how everyday interactions either build or erode trust inside a team. Specific techniques for de-escalating conflict before it becomes a formal incident. A more confident vocabulary for talking about bias and difference without defaulting to slogans. A practical model for leading across viewpoints that disagree, drawn from policing and negotiation practice. A renewed sense among managers that culture is set in their own conversations, not in the policy document.

Why organisations work with Mark Wilkinson Pairs an operational safety credential, Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health, with personality diversity practice through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework. That combination is unusual on the speaker circuit, where wellbeing voices rarely carry frontline safety standing. Translates personality difference into safety behaviour. The argument that an extroverted risk-taker and a cautious analyst will hear the same toolbox talk in opposite ways gives leaders a concrete way to redesign briefings, supervision and incident review. Lived recovery from collapse, addiction, bankruptcy and depression gives the resilience material first-hand authority. The story is supported by a published book, Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Works comfortably across heavy industry, energy and corporate audiences, including engagements such as Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, and adapts the same material for a leadership offsite or a frontline safety stand-down. Brings the production craft of a former Ministry of Sound resident DJ into the room. Music, video and live elements are part of the delivery, which lands with audiences who switch off during conventional keynotes. Biography highlights Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health (CMIOSH) and Fellow of the Institute of Leadership (FIoL). Certified E-Colours personality diversity practitioner through Equilibria, working with leadership teams across energy, sport and corporate sectors. Author of Life Remixed: Looking Beyond The Dance To Face The Music, published 2021, with foreword endorsements from Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Host of the Life Remixed podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Former international house music DJ with a Ministry of Sound residency, performances in 65 countries and a UK Top 10 chart entry as part of Dab Hands with the remix of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love”. Speaker at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival and across health, safety and leadership programmes for industrial and corporate clients. Biography Behavioural safety has a translation problem. Two people on the same site, given the same briefing, will walk away with different versions of what was said and different views of the risk in front of them. Wilkinson’s working argument is that personality difference is a structural variable in safety and engagement, not a soft factor to be managed around. He works that argument through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework, where he is a certified practitioner, and through his Chartered standing with the Institute of Safety and Health. The combination matters: the diagnostic of human difference is paired with operational health and safety credibility, which is what gives the work purchase in heavy industry and energy clients rather than only in leadership development settings. The personal story sits behind the professional one. A former Ministry of Sound resident DJ with a UK Top 10 chart credit, Wilkinson collapsed at 33 and lost income, home and relationship across an 18-month recovery. He rebuilt through health and safety work and personal development study, and wrote Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff, as the account of that rebuild. For organisations, that biography is useful because it lets him hold a room of frontline operators and a room of senior leaders with the same material. The safety and personality work gives the talk its operational edge. The recovery narrative gives it the emotional weight that makes the safety message actually stick. Key speaking topics Behavioural safety and human factors Personality diversity in the workplace Resilience and personal recovery Mental wellbeing and mindset Leadership communication across personality types Engagement in high-risk operational environments Ideal for Heads of HSE, safety leadership teams and operational directors in energy, construction, aviation and manufacturing HR and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing or behavioural change programmes Leadership and learning teams running offsites that need a credible voice on personal resilience Frontline conferences and toolbox events where a conventional academic keynote will lose the room Audience outcomes A working model for why the same safety message lands differently across a workforce and what to change about briefings as a result A vocabulary for personality difference that supervisors and team leads can use without specialist training A first-hand account of recovery from collapse and addiction that opens room for honest conversation about wellbeing A reframe of behavioural safety as a leadership and communication problem, not only a compliance one

Why organisations work with Chris Baréz-Brown Twenty-five years working the commercial creativity brief as an operator, first agency-side and then running his own firm. The view is from inside the work, not from a research perch. Five Penguin titles set out a coherent published thesis on creativity as a learnable behaviour, so buyers can read the argument before booking the room. His Unilever programme was written up in Harvard Business Review, a rare credential in this territory. He ships a behaviour-change tool with the keynote. TiO and the Elvis Energy Lab let the room run the method the next morning, not just remember the speech. A repeat-booking record on the brand side that other creativity speakers don’t match. Biography highlights Founder of Upping Your Elvis, a creativity and energy consultancy working with global brands. Former director at innovation consultancy ?What If!, leading offices in London, New York and Sydney. Author of five Penguin books: Shine, Wake Up!, Free!, How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas, and Upping Your Elvis. Penguin’s bestselling author in 2014. Creator of TiO, a workplace mental wellbeing app with research from the University of Bristol. Featured in Harvard Business Review for the impact of his work with Unilever. Media appearances include the BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Fast Company and Calm. Biography Most creativity programmes inside large organisations fail at the same point. The room leaves energised, the workstreams revert, and within a quarter the operating model has absorbed the change. The problem is rarely a shortage of ideas. It is the absence of a daily practice that lets ordinary employees produce original work under commercial pressure. This is the territory Chris Baréz-Brown has worked in for twenty-five years. He spent over a decade as a director at ?What If!, the innovation consultancy, running the business across London, New York and Sydney before founding Upping Your Elvis in 2010. The premise of the firm is that human energy, not strategy decks, is the variable that determines whether a creative culture survives contact with the operating model. His five Penguin titles, including the bestseller Upping Your Elvis, set out a body of practice that treats creativity as a learnable behaviour rather than a personality trait. The work has run inside Nike, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Unilever, Roche, Microsoft and the WPP agency network on the brand side, with Harvard Business Review featuring the impact of the Unilever programme. What sets the offer apart from a standard creativity keynote is the post-event mechanism. Through TiO, an app developed with research from the University of Bristol, and the Elvis Energy Lab, audiences leave with a method they can run themselves. The thesis underneath all of it is commercial: brave thinking is a function of human state, and human state can be designed for. Key speaking topics Commercial creativity and innovation practice Energy management and human performance at work Mental and emotional wellbeing in high-pressure roles Leadership of creative teams Behaviour change and habit design inside organisations Brand-side innovation case studies Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders looking to lift creative output across marketing organisations Heads of innovation and R&D in consumer-facing businesses Senior HR and people leaders responsible for engagement and wellbeing strategy Leadership offsites where the brief is renewal of energy and creative confidence, not a strategy refresh Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as daily practice, not occasional inspiration Specific behavioural tools, including TiO, that audiences can use the next morning A sharper read on how their own energy state is shaping the quality of their commercial decisions Case material on what holds up when a creative culture meets the operating model