Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Duncan Wardle His Theory of Creativity™ is a named, commercially tested framework – not a philosophy but a practical toolkit developed and stress-tested across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks before being applied with post-Disney clients including Apple, the NBA, Coca-Cola, and NBCUniversal. He treats creativity as a repeatable operational habit rather than a talent or a culture programme – giving leadership teams a concrete, tool-based answer to the question of how to make innovation everyone’s job, not a department’s. Specific tools within the framework – the “What If” method and the “Rivers of Thinking” model – address the cognitive and structural barriers that prevent established organisations from generating genuinely new ideas. These are actionable instruments audiences can use immediately, not post-event reading lists. He is one of the few speakers in this space who built an innovation function from the inside of a major global brand, rather than studying one from outside – a distinction that matters to senior audiences who have heard the Disney case study told at second hand. Author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation (2024), a practitioner resource designed to be used independently by organisations after an engagement, extending the shelf life of the session beyond the room. Biography highlights VP of Innovation and Creativity at The Walt Disney Company; previous VP roles include VP Global Public Relations and VP International Marketing and Sales, with postings across London, Paris, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Shanghai Founded Disney’s Creative Catalyst Team, responsible for embedding innovation across Imagineering, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks Founder and CEO of iD8 & innov8, a design thinking consultancy; clients include Apple, Coca-Cola, NBA, PepsiCo, IBM, NBCUniversal, and Spotify Author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation (Benbella Books, 2024) Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company; member of the Fast Company Executive Board Multiple TEDx speaker, including “The Theory of Creativity” (TEDxAUK) and “Creating Relationship Magic” (TEDxBocaRaton) Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration, Edinburgh Napier University (2014); White House American Citizen Award (2008); Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award; 2022 Nordic Business Forum Speaker Contest Winner Teaches Innovation Masterclasses at Yale and Harvard Biography Duncan Wardle joined The Walt Disney Company as an intern in the London office in 1987. Over the following 30 years he progressed through VP roles in global public relations, international marketing and sales, and ultimately VP of Innovation and Creativity – the function he built from scratch, founding Disney’s Creative Catalyst Team and deploying it across Imagineering, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Disney Parks. His central argument is that creativity is not a talent distributed unevenly across the workforce. It is a capability that corporate structures systematically suppress – and one that can be restored with the right tools. The framework he developed inside Disney, the Theory of Creativity™, includes specific instruments: the “What If” method, used by Walt Disney himself to pivot the company from an animation studio to an entertainment and theme park pioneer, and the “Rivers of Thinking” model, which identifies the expertise-driven habits that stop large organisations from generating genuinely new ideas. Since founding iD8 & innov8, Wardle has applied these methods with clients including Apple, Coca-Cola, the NBA, PepsiCo, and NBCUniversal – demonstrating that a toolkit built for an entertainment brand translates across sectors where creative problem-solving is structurally harder. His 2024 book, The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation, packages the methodology as a practical resource organisations can use independently. He also contributes to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company, and teaches Innovation Masterclasses at Yale and Harvard. His formal recognition includes a White House American Citizen Award (2008), an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from Edinburgh Napier University (2014), a Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award, and the 2022 Nordic Business Forum Speaker Contest. He is a multiple TEDx speaker, with talks including “The Theory of Creativity” and “Creating Relationship Magic.” Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and the Theory of Creativity™ Design thinking and creative problem-solving Organisational barriers to creative thinking Customer experience innovation Human creativity and competitive advantage in the age of AI Building innovation culture at scale Creative leadership and entrepreneurial thinking Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams responsible for growth and competitive strategy Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads Large organisations seeking to embed innovation beyond a dedicated function Conference audiences in technology, consumer, media, and professional services sectors Audience outcomes A named set of practical innovation tools – including the “What If” method and the “Rivers of Thinking” model – that teams can apply immediately A framework for identifying and removing the cognitive and structural barriers that block creative thinking in established organisations Clarity on how to separate the creative process from the operational process, and why the two must be managed differently An understanding of why human creativity is not threatened by AI – and how to build it as a source of commercial competitive advantage Concrete methods for making innovation a daily habit rather than a quarterly initiative

Why organisations work with Dunja Hayali A working anchor on ZDF’s flagship heute-journal and main presenter of ZDF-Morgenmagazin, which means boards and conference organisers are hiring the same journalistic judgement that reaches millions of German viewers every morning. Trained to interview politicians, CEOs and activists on live television without losing the thread, an asset when a panel includes genuinely opposing positions or a keynote speaker the room wants pressed. Carries public recognition for civic engagement, including the Bundesverdienstkreuz and the Goldene Kamera Integration award, which signals to international audiences that the chair on stage has standing beyond the broadcast booth. Works fluently in German and English, useful for DAX-30, EU-level and cross-border corporate forums that need a single moderator across languages. Author of “Haymatland” (Ullstein, 2018), a published argument on belonging, migration and social cohesion that she can draw on directly when a brief calls for substantive contribution as well as stage craft. Biography highlights Main presenter, ZDF-Morgenmagazin (since 2010); joined the heute-journal presenting team in 2023. Former host, “dunja hayali” talk show on ZDF (2017-2020), and co-presenter of das aktuelle sportstudio (2018-2023). Recipient of the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit, 2018) for engagement against racism and online hate. Goldene Kamera 2016, Integration category. Author, “Haymatland: Wie wollen wir zusammenleben?” (Ullstein, 2018); co-author, “Ist’ was, Dog?” (Ullstein, 2014). UNICEF supporter and active with the initiative “Gesicht Zeigen! Fuer ein weltoffenes Deutschland”. Biography Live television is where reputations get made or broken in real time. For most of the last two decades, Dunja Hayali has been one of the German journalists entrusted with that responsibility, first on ZDF’s morning news strand and now also on the evening flagship heute-journal. That role is the anchor of her speaking work. When a corporate conference, political forum or industry gala books her, they are not buying a keynote lecture. They are buying the same interviewer who questions ministers before breakfast and the same composure that keeps a studio conversation on track when a guest tries to pull it elsewhere. Her publishing and civic work give that stage presence a specific edge. “Haymatland” (Ullstein, 2018) sets out her thinking on migration, belonging and social cohesion, drawing on her own Iraqi-German background. The Bundesverdienstkreuz followed in 2018 for her public stand against racism and online abuse, recognition anchored by her long association with Gesicht Zeigen! and UNICEF. The practical case for organisations is narrow and strong. When an event puts senior leaders, politicians or campaigners on the same panel and the room will not settle for bland, Hayali is one of the few moderators in the German market with the journalistic standing, bilingual reach and on-stage authority to run it cleanly. Key speaking topics Live event moderation and panel chairing Political and current affairs interviews Media, journalism and public discourse Social cohesion, integration and belonging Civic engagement and countering online hate Sport and public broadcasting Bilingual (German / English) corporate moderation Ideal for Corporate and industry conferences needing a senior moderator for keynotes, panels and plenaries with politicians, CEOs or regulators in the room. Award ceremonies, galas and anniversary events that require an anchor-grade host rather than an entertainer. CSR, DEI and civic-themed summits where the moderator’s own public record on integration and anti-racism adds credibility. Bilingual German / English forums in DAX-30, EU policy and cross-border corporate settings. Audience outcomes Conversations that stay on the agenda the organiser actually wanted, including the difficult questions. Senior speakers handled with the same level of preparation and follow-up they would expect from a flagship news interview. A neutral, credible chair presence that lets sensitive topics (migration, political polarisation, corporate controversy) be discussed without tipping into spectacle. Clear narrative threading across a multi-speaker programme, so that plenaries, panels and Q and A feel like one event rather than a sequence of slots.

Why organisations work with Ed Jordan He treats executive presence as a teachable craft, not a personality trait, drawing on 25 years in front of cameras and microphones to coach how leaders actually land in a room. He pairs that stagecraft with a Gordon Institute of Business Science coaching qualification and a decade inside Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking, so the language is recognisable to senior commercial audiences. He has been named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA UK and Ireland, an industry-judged award by working speakers, not a marketing claim. He works fluently across formats: keynote, executive coaching, on-camera training, moderation and event hosting, which makes him useful when a leadership event needs a single anchor, not a roster. His moderating roster includes Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, evidence he can hold a room with figures more senior than the audience. Biography highlights Certified Business Coach, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). PSA Professional Speaker of the Year, UK and Ireland. 25 years as a South African TV presenter (Deal or No Deal, Popstars, Fast Forward, The Wedding Show) and Kaya FM Breakfast Show host. Multi-platinum recording artist; performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Decade inside Financial Services since 2014, in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. Hosting and moderating credits with Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank and Investec, including platform conversations with Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy. Biography Presence is now part of the job description for senior leaders. Quarterly all-hands events, board updates, investor calls and internal video are not occasional performances. They are the medium through which leadership decisions are received, judged and remembered. Ed Jordan worked that medium for 25 years before he taught it. As a South African television presenter on Deal or No Deal, Popstars and Fast Forward, and as Kaya FM’s Breakfast Show host, he learned how to hold a room in real time, on camera, without a second take. He is also a multi-platinum recording artist who performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. In 2014 he moved into Financial Services, spending a decade in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. That gave him fluency with the audience he now coaches. He qualified as a Business Coach through the Gordon Institute of Business Science and built a leadership practice that translates stagecraft into a discipline senior executives can practise. The work is most useful when leaders inherit a wider remit than the skills that earned them the role. Jordan was named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA in the UK and Ireland, and is regularly trusted to moderate platforms with figures including Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, holding the room when the room is senior. Key speaking topics Executive presence and on-camera communication Self-leadership and personal effectiveness Leadership development for newly senior leaders Purpose and values alignment at work Virtual and hybrid communication craft Moderation and platform conversation Ideal for CEOs and executive teams preparing for high-stakes platform moments Senior leaders moving into broader, more visible roles Learning and leadership development heads designing executive programmes Internal communications and corporate affairs leaders rebuilding leader visibility Audience outcomes A working method for executive presence on stage, on camera and in the room Specific techniques for self-leadership under pressure that hold up in live settings A vocabulary for purpose and values that senior commercial audiences will engage with Concrete improvements in how leaders prepare for and recover from high-stakes communication moments

Why organisations work with Ed Stafford He has done something measurable that no one else has done. The 860-day Amazon walk gives every resilience argument he makes a verifiable ceiling, not a rhetorical one. His military service, from Sandhurst to command in South Armagh, grounds his leadership content in operational judgement rather than motivational framing. He speaks credibly to risk tolerance and expedition planning, including how small, slow decisions compound into outcomes that look inevitable only in retrospect. His Discovery and Channel 4 work, from Left for Dead to 60 Days on the Streets, means he brings on-camera narrative discipline, useful for plenary sessions that need pace. Biography highlights First person recognised by Guinness World Records to walk the Amazon River from source to sea, 860 days, completed August 2010. National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2010; European Adventurer of the Year 2011. Former captain, British Army. Commissioned into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment after Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Served in Northern Ireland. Author of Walking the Amazon and Naked and Marooned, both published under Penguin Random House imprints. Presenter of Discovery series Naked and Marooned, Marooned with Ed Stafford, Into the Unknown, Left for Dead and First Man Out. Presenter of Channel 4’s 60 Days on the Streets, a three-part documentary on homelessness in Manchester, London and Glasgow. Biography The Amazon had never been walked in full when Ed Stafford set off from the Peruvian coast in April 2008. Twenty-eight months later, having covered more than four thousand miles on foot through Peru, Colombia and Brazil, he arrived at the Atlantic. Guinness World Records recognised him as the first person to do it. The expedition is the obvious credential, but the useful one for organisations is what it took to sustain: a decision framework applied every day for 860 days, under physical duress, logistical collapse and team change. That discipline did not come from adventure. It came from Sandhurst, a commission into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, and command responsibility in South Armagh before he was 25. Between military service and broadcast, Stafford led conservation and community expeditions in Belize, Guatemala and Borneo, worked as a UN contractor in Afghanistan, and set up a BBC Natural History Unit base in the Guyanese rainforest. His television work, including Discovery’s Naked and Marooned, Left for Dead and First Man Out, and Channel 4’s 60 Days on the Streets, has turned the same operating instincts into filmed case studies in judgement under scarcity. National Geographic named him Adventurer of the Year in 2010. He was awarded European Adventurer of the Year in Stockholm the following year. For leadership audiences, the value is not the record. It is a working account of how composure, planning and willingness to reset a plan mid-execution hold up when the environment refuses to cooperate. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Decision-making in ambiguous environments Resilience and recovery after setback Risk tolerance and expedition-grade planning Team dynamics in remote and hostile conditions Performance when conditions refuse to stabilise Ideal for Leadership offsites where senior teams are preparing for a period of operational uncertainty CEO and executive-committee sessions on risk appetite and decision discipline Transformation programmes where stamina, not strategy, is the binding constraint Awards, conference plenaries and all-hands events that need a credible human story with operational substance Audience outcomes A sharper picture of how experienced operators actually decide when information is incomplete A usable vocabulary for discussing risk tolerance and pacing on long, hard initiatives Specific, named examples of when to hold a plan and when to break it A reset on what resilience looks like in practice, distinct from how it is marketed

Why organisations work with Eddie Jones Thirty years of head-coach experience at the top of international sport, tested against the sharpest public scrutiny three national rugby unions can apply. A working account, set out in his 2021 book “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby”, of how to raise standards, rebuild confidence, and hold a team accountable when results are not yet on the board. Authored the single most studied upset in modern rugby: Japan’s 34-32 win over South Africa at the 2015 World Cup, the “Brighton Miracle”, built over three years of culture and conditioning work. World Rugby Coach of the Year 2017, after leading England to a Grand Slam and a record run of consecutive Test wins. A rare speaker who has built and rebuilt teams in three different national cultures (Japanese, Australian, English) and can translate between them for executive audiences. Biography highlights Head coach of England 2015 to 2022: first non-British coach, two Six Nations titles, 2016 Grand Slam, 2019 Rugby World Cup final. World Rugby Coach of the Year, 2017. Head coach of Japan 2012 to 2015, re-appointed December 2023. Head coach of Australia 2001 to 2005, leading the Wallabies to the 2003 Rugby World Cup final. Head coach of the ACT Brumbies, Super Rugby champions 2001. Technical adviser to the Springboks’ 2007 Rugby World Cup-winning squad. Author of “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby” (Macmillan, 2021) and “My Life and Rugby: The Autobiography” (Macmillan, 2019). Biography Japan beat South Africa 34-32 in Brighton in September 2015. The squad had been together three years, trained to a schedule their opponents would not recognise, and made the late call to turn down a draw for a winning try. The head coach was Eddie Jones. That match is the cleanest single case study in his career, but not the only one. Jones has held senior head-coach roles with Japan, Australia, and England, reached two Rugby World Cup finals, served as technical adviser to a third World Cup-winning team, and won a Super Rugby title with the Brumbies in 2001. The through line is not a single style. It is a method for taking on teams that are underperforming relative to their resources, setting a higher standard than the group thinks it can meet, and holding it. His 2021 book, “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby”, makes that method explicit. It draws on the 2015 Japan campaign, the 2016 England turnaround, and the failures in between to argue that elite performance is a daily discipline of selection, feedback, and standard-setting, not a product of talent or motivation. Jones was named World Rugby Coach of the Year in 2017 after leading England to a Grand Slam and a run of consecutive Test wins second only to the All Blacks. For a senior audience, the value is in the translation. Three national cultures, three turnarounds, one argument about how leaders behave when the team is not yet winning. That is what he brings into a room. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure and public scrutiny Building and turning around elite teams Standards, accountability, and high-performance culture Decision-making in compressed time frames Cross-cultural leadership across international organisations Talent development and succession Ideal for Boards and executive committees leading a turnaround or performance reset CEO and C-suite offsites on standards and accountability CHRO and people leaders working on high-performance culture at scale Sales and commercial leadership teams operating in competitive, results-measured environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates elite teams from good ones in day-to-day behaviour Specific examples of how standards are set, reinforced, and recovered when they slip A model for leading through scrutiny without losing the team Practical reference points from three national turnarounds, not one Language for talking to executives about accountability without euphemism

Why organisations work with Eddie Obeng He has spent thirty years on a single, consequential argument: that the management playbook built for a slower world now actively harms organisations trying to move at current speed. Boards get a framework, not a pep talk. His project typology (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) gives leadership teams a language for matching management style to the kind of uncertainty a project actually contains, instead of defaulting to one method for every initiative. He built and runs QUBE, one of the earliest avatar-based virtual campuses, used to teach and coach distributed executive teams. He is speaking about distributed leadership from inside a working example, not from theory. The 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award from the Association for Project Management recognises a lifetime contribution to how organisations deliver complex work, which is the substance underneath his keynotes. He is genuinely provocative in a room. The Financial Times called him “an agent provocateur” for a reason; he is comfortable telling a senior audience that what they are doing will not work. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Director of Pentacle (The Virtual Business School), established 1994. Professor at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation; previously Executive Director at Ashridge Business School. 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement, Association for Project Management. Author of All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook (Financial Times Pearson), Perfect Projects, Making Re-Engineering Happen and New Rules for the New World. TED Global 2012 speaker, “Smart failure for a fast-changing world”. Creator of QUBE, a virtual learning and collaboration environment covered by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Biography The gap between how quickly the world changes and how quickly organisations learn has been widening for three decades. Eddie Obeng has built a career arguing that this gap, more than any single technology or disruption, is the defining problem of modern management. He calls the condition the “New World After Midnight”. Pentacle, the business school he founded in 1994, was an early attempt to answer the problem practically. Its teaching is built around immediate application rather than case-study reflection, and it runs on QUBE, an avatar-based virtual campus Pentacle developed in 2010 that The Wall Street Journal described in its coverage of virtual workplaces and The Economist flagged as a future digital place to work. Running it means he has been leading distributed teams for longer than most of the organisations he advises. The intellectual spine of his work sits in project management, where he is credited with the four-type model (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) that reframes delivery around how much is known at the start rather than how big the budget is. The Association for Project Management gave him its Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. His books, beginning with All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook in 1995, translate that model for practising leaders. He also holds a chair at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and has sat on the UK Design Council board. In front of an audience he is sharp and direct; the Financial Times has used the words “leading revolutionary” and “agent provocateur”, which is closer to the experience of being in the room than the usual speaker billing. Key speaking topics Leading organisations in a fast-changing environment Project leadership and delivery under uncertainty Distributed and virtual team leadership Innovation and smart failure Organisational change and transformation The future of work and digital collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting a change agenda that their current operating model cannot support Transformation, strategy and innovation leaders responsible for delivery across distributed teams Project and programme leadership communities inside large, complex organisations Partner meetings and leadership offsites where the brief is to unsettle assumptions, not confirm them Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the types of change a leadership team is actually managing, rather than treating every initiative as the same problem A sharper view of why current planning and governance rituals slow organisations down in fast-moving conditions Permission and structure for “smart failure” as a deliberate mechanism for learning, not a slogan A working sense of what leading a distributed team looks like when it is built from scratch, not retrofitted onto office norms A harder question to take back into the next executive meeting

Why organisations work with Edie Lush She has conducted thousands of interviews at Davos, the UN General Assembly and COP summits, so she can run a senior panel at the level buyers actually book her for. Her coaching is built from journalistic craft: structuring a story for a listener, handling a difficult question, holding a point under pressure. Leaders leave with technique, not affirmation. She co-wrote How To Speak With Confidence in Public with Charlotte McDougall, published by Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint in 2016, giving clients a named body of work to draw on. Her Global GoalsCast work, recognised with the 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award at the UN, gives her credibility to moderate sustainability, climate and SDG conversations without needing a briefing to sound informed. She reads a room and a panel in real time, keeping senior speakers on the agenda rather than letting a programme drift into set pieces. Biography highlights Executive Editor, Hub Culture, covering Davos, the UN General Assembly and COP climate summits. Co-host and co-creator of Global GoalsCast, distributed by CBS News Digital. 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award, presented at the United Nations. Co-author, How To Speak With Confidence in Public, Pan Macmillan (Bluebird), 2016. Former Economics and Political Correspondent, Bloomberg Television; columnist, The Week; Associate Editor, Spectator Business. Chair, British American Project; board member, Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers. BA Political Science, UCLA; MA International Relations, Yale University. Has interviewed and moderated senior figures including George Osborne, Christiana Figueres and Muhammad Yunus, at platforms from Davos to the Future Investment Initiative and India Global Forum. Biography Most senior leaders can brief a board, but freeze when the format changes. Put the same person on a live panel, a podcast, a camera at Davos or a climate summit platform, and the craft that got them into the room stops helping them. Journalists notice this quickly, because they sit on the other side of it all day. Edie Lush has sat on that side for a long time. At Bloomberg Television she covered economics and politics. She went on to write a column at The Week and serve as Associate Editor of Spectator Business. She is now Executive Editor of Hub Culture, where she produces interview content from Davos, the UN General Assembly and the COP climate summits. The common thread is interviewing serious people under time pressure and making the result land for a general audience. That interviewer’s discipline is what clients hire her coaching practice to transfer. How To Speak With Confidence in Public, co-written with Charlotte McDougall and published by Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint in 2016, sets out the method: structure a story for a listener, manage the energy in a room, hold a point under challenge. She applies the same toolkit on stage, most recently chairing sessions at Davos 2026 with figures including George Osborne and Professor Douglas McCauley, and as co-host of Global GoalsCast, the CBS News Digital podcast that earned her the 2018 Media for Social Impact Leadership Council Award at the UN. The work now reaches two audiences. One is organisers of serious events who need a chair who can keep a sustainability, policy or tech conversation on the agenda rather than letting it wander. The other is executives and founders who have to carry their company’s voice in public and know they are a draft short of doing it well. Key speaking topics Executive communication and public speaking Moderation and panel craft for senior audiences Sustainable Development Goals and climate communication Storytelling for leaders and founders On-camera and podcast presence for executives Women in leadership and public platforms Ideal for CEOs, founders and C-suite leaders preparing for investor days, town halls, earnings calls and keynote moments. Heads of Communications and Corporate Affairs briefing spokespeople for stage, camera and podcast. Organisers of senior conferences, summits and board offsites who need a chair who can hold a room of principals. Sustainability, health and policy leads running SDG, climate, global-health or development events in front of mixed government and corporate audiences. Audience outcomes A clearer method for structuring a talk or panel answer so the point lands on first hearing. Practical techniques for managing nerves, energy and presence on stage and on camera. A sharper read on how journalists and moderators hear executive messaging, and how to adjust. For events she chairs: a programme that stays on agenda, with senior speakers pushed past their prepared lines.

Why organisations work with Elena Boheme She has run the full development lifecycle, from hotel operator design management and fit-out contracting through to property M&A and family office advisory. That breadth is rare; most advisors sit on one side of the design, build, or operate split. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in the Kingdom, and sits on the advisory board of RED Summit KSA and the Modern Building Summit KSA. That places her inside the rooms where Saudi development decisions are made, not adjacent to them. She works credibly across the capital stack, advising AETOS MFO on luxury asset and yacht financing and Triversa Holding at executive board level. International family offices use her to translate Gulf real estate exposure into something they can actually govern. She operates in English, French, and Russian fluently, with working Arabic and Mandarin, and has executed projects in China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Cross-cultural deal structuring is a practised skill, not a claim. Biography highlights Co-founder and Development Director, Metrix Projects; co-founder, Metrix Advisory and AETOS MFO. Executive Board Member, Triversa Holding. Strategic Advisor on Project Management, Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. Advisory Board member, RED Summit KSA, and Advisory Board member plus moderator, Modern Building Summit KSA 2025. Speaker and moderator across AlMashtal Knowledge of Design 2024, Cityscape Saudi Arabia 2024, Hospitality Leadership and F&B Forum UAE 2025, Furtech Show Dubai 2025, and Women in Private Equity Forum London 2025. Host of LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues and author of the LinkedIn newsletter Project Within. Biography Saudi Arabia’s development pipeline is the largest in the world and the least forgiving. International capital arrives expecting Dubai and discovers a market with its own regulatory architecture, its own localisation requirements, and its own definition of what delivered means. Elena Boheme’s work sits inside that translation problem. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in Riyadh to do one specific job: take hospitality and residential developments from concept through to operational handover without the gaps that quietly consume budget. Before that, she spent a decade on hotel operator design management, fit-out contracting, and property development across China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, and the UAE, including hospitality projects valued at over two billion US dollars in Korea and Macau. A second strand of her work runs through capital. She co-founded AETOS MFO, a multi-family office advising on luxury real estate and yacht financing, and sits as an executive board member at Triversa Holding and strategic advisor on project management to Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. The combination matters: developers usually understand bricks, family offices usually understand money, and Saudi-bound investors need someone who can hold both sides of the conversation at once. She moderates and chairs across the Kingdom’s main industry platforms, including the RED Summit KSA advisory board, the Modern Building Summit KSA, Cityscape Saudi Arabia, and AlMashtal Knowledge of Design, and hosts the LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues. The track record is operational rather than academic. For a leadership team weighing a Vision 2030 entry, that is the more useful kind of credibility. Key speaking topics Project deliverability in Saudi Arabia Localisation and market entry strategy for the Kingdom Real estate development lifecycle, from design through operations Cross-cultural deal structuring in the Gulf Women in real estate development and leadership Family office exposure to Gulf real estate Ideal for International hospitality operators and developers planning entry into Saudi Arabia Family offices and private investors building Gulf real estate exposure Boards of project management, design, and construction firms expanding into the Kingdom C-suite teams at firms shifting from regional MENA presence to substantive KSA delivery Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what separates a signed Saudi deal from a delivered asset The localisation choices that decide whether a foreign operator can actually execute in the Kingdom A working map of how design, build, operate, and capital decisions interact across a Gulf development Specific failure modes she has seen at the hand-off between international design teams and local execution A perspective on Saudi development from someone embedded in it, not commenting from outside

Why organisations work with Elia Gourgouris Eighteen years of private clinical psychology practice behind the keynote. When he talks about mental health and workplace wellbeing, the substance is clinical experience translated for a corporate audience. A named framework in 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, now published in Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek editions. Audiences leave with a structured model they can put into operational practice the following week. A dedicated crisis playbook in 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos for pandemic-era and crisis conditions. Useful when leaders need wellbeing guidance that still works when the ground is moving. Active across the US and Europe, with recent keynotes at KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium and the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service in Greece. A practical option for organisations with European operations that want a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures. Works with leaders between events, not only from the stage. An active executive coaching practice means the keynote is grounded in current client work, and follow-up coaching is available when an organisation needs more than a one-off session. Biography highlights President of The Happiness Center, a positive psychology practice focused on corporate wellness and personal success. Founding Partner at The Global Institute of Thought Leadership. Author of 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, Amazon bestseller translated into Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek. Co-author with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos of 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics and Other Disasters. Keynote engagements include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences. BA in Psychology from UCLA, followed by MA and PhD in psychology, and eighteen years in private clinical practice before moving into executive coaching and keynote work. Regular contributor to Thrive Global; co-host of The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast. Biography Workplace wellbeing programmes often fail at the join between clinical insight and operational reality. Clinicians know what changes behaviour under pressure. Boards know what gets funded. Most corporate well-being work lives in the first category without translation to the second. Eighteen years as a clinical psychologist in private practice sit behind Dr. Gourgouris’s current work as an executive coach and keynote speaker. His 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness framework, published in 2015 and now available in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Greek editions, is the practitioner synthesis of that clinical career. The second book, 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos, extends the framework to acute conditions. It was written during the pandemic and has since been used across corporate transitions and personal adversity. Recent corporate keynotes include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences. Outside the corporate practice, Gourgouris was Executive Producer of the reality series Cash Cowboys and is developing a new series, The Kindness Givers. He contributes regularly to Thrive Global and co-hosts The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast. The media work reaches audiences that the HR briefing rarely does, and carries the same clinical argument across. Key speaking topics Positive leadership Corporate wellbeing and mental health Workplace culture and trust Resilience and agility Crisis navigation and recovery Employee engagement and retention Ideal for CHROs and people leaders are rebuilding culture after a period of change or organisational distress. CEOs and senior leadership teams where burnout and retention have become board-level issues. Wellbeing and mental health function leaders looking to add clinical credibility to in-house programmes. Corporate audiences in Greece and wider Europe, where a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures adds value. Audience outcomes The 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness model is applied to personal practice and to how a team is run. Language and evidence to argue for wellbeing and mental health as measurable business inputs. Specific techniques for building team resilience and trust that can be used in the next team meeting. A clinical perspective on what actually changes behaviour under pressure, and what tends to fail.

Why organisations work with Eliza VanCort A working method for executive presence rooted in Meisner acting technique, not generic confidence coaching. Voice, posture and physicality are treated as trainable instruments, not personality traits. An intersectional lens that takes inclusion past slogans. Her sessions address how mansplaining, interruption, and microaggression actually move through a meeting, and what a leader can do in the moment. A bestselling book, A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, that gives delegates a structured framework before and after the room, with named behaviours and language. Mainstream media reach. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC give her work cultural traction outside corporate L&D, which travels with audiences. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, building emotional intelligence and cross-difference communication tools used inside organisations. Biography highlights Author of A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard, Berrett-Koehler, May 2021. Cook House Fellow, Cornell University. TEDxRochester speaker, “Women, Power and Revolutionizing Speech”. Founder of The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, a Meisner Technique studio. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil. Featured in The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company, CNBC, and Success magazine. Biography Most executive presence work treats authority as a personality trait. Eliza VanCort treats it as a craft. Her starting point is that voice, posture and language are trainable instruments, the same way an actor’s are, and that women and underrepresented leaders are routinely operating those instruments inside rooms that were not built for them. That argument has a specific origin. She founded The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, the region’s Meisner Technique studio, and spent years teaching how performers hold a stage. She then applied the same discipline to meeting rooms and boardrooms. A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, published by Berrett-Koehler in 2021, sets out the framework: five behaviours that shift how a leader is read, from posture and vocal placement to ending self-sabotage and building cross-difference coalitions. The work has reach beyond corporate L&D. Her TEDxRochester talk on women, power and speech has been viewed widely. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC have built a public audience of more than 250,000 followers. Inside organisations, she co-founded Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, to translate the same material into emotional intelligence and communication tools teams can use across difference. She is a Cook House Fellow at Cornell University and an advisory board member of Performing Arts for Social Change. The intellectual frame is intersectional: most of her organisational work is about what happens to people with less institutional power when they intersect with structures designed around someone else’s authority. The output is concrete. Delegates leave with named behaviours, specific language and a vocabulary for the dynamics they have been navigating without naming for years. Key speaking topics Executive presence and communication craft Women in leadership and the politics of voice Anti-racist and cross-difference communication Emotional intelligence in senior teams Inclusion under pressure Confidence, posture and physicality for leaders Power dynamics in everyday workplace interaction Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers building executive-presence programmes for senior women Leadership-development leads designing high-potential and sponsorship pathways ERG sponsors and DEI heads commissioning substantive, non-performative inclusion content Senior women’s leadership summits, partner-track development programmes, and emerging-leader cohorts Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the meeting-room behaviours that quietly cost women authority, and language to interrupt them in the moment Specific techniques for voice, posture and physicality drawn from Meisner training, applied to senior business settings A framework from A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space delegates can carry back into their teams Practical anti-racist and cross-difference communication moves that work inside live conversations, not only in policy documents A clearer reading of how power moves through an organisation’s everyday talk, and where to act on it

Why organisations work with Ellis Watson He has run a ten-year transformation of a family-owned media group, DC Thomson, including the digital reinvention of brands like The Beano, with full P&L accountability. Few keynote speakers can show that length of tenure inside a turnaround. He has held the top operating role in three different content businesses, newspapers, global TV formats and family-owned media, so the change playbook he offers is sector-tested, not theoretical. His current seat as Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland gives him a live view of how policy, regulation and capital are shaping the conditions executive teams are actually working in. He is direct in a room. Boards and executive audiences book him when they want candour about cost, culture and pace, not a motivational set piece. Biography highlights Chief Business Advisor to the First Minister of Scotland, appointed January 2023. CEO and later Executive Chairman of DC Thomson, 2011 to 2020, leading the modernisation of titles including The Beano and The Press and Journal. Global CEO of Syco Entertainment under Simon Cowell in 2010, with responsibility for the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. CEO of Celador International from 2000, oversaw the international rollout of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to around 100 territories. Managing Director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 2003 to 2005, accountable for five national and around 240 regional titles. Non-executive director of FirstGroup plc from 2009, with North American Greyhound responsibility, and a former Marketing Director of News International reporting to Rupert Murdoch. Biography DC Thomson is the kind of business that does not usually survive a digital decade. A family-owned publisher in Dundee, built on print titles like The Beano, The Sunday Post and The Press and Journal, it carried a cost base shaped by an industry that no longer existed. Between 2011 and 2020 it was rebuilt from the inside, with a third of the staff gone and the consumer brands repositioned for digital. Ellis Watson ran that decade as CEO and then Executive Chairman. That was not an unfamiliar problem to him. He had already taken Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? out to roughly 100 territories as CEO of Celador, run five national newspapers and around 240 regional titles at the Mirror Group, and spent 2010 as global CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment, holding the X Factor and Got Talent franchises. The earlier ground had been News International, as Marketing Director reporting to Rupert Murdoch. What that career produces, in a board context, is an unusually long lens on the same problem. Legacy businesses tend to be governed by people who have never personally rebuilt one. Ellis has, in three sectors, and he is now sitting inside Scottish Government as the First Minister’s Chief Business Advisor, a role created in January 2023 to bring private sector judgement into policy decisions. The result is a speaker who is most useful to executive teams in the middle of structural change, where the questions are about cost, talent and tempo, and where a generic transformation framework is not enough. Key speaking topics Leadership through structural change in legacy businesses Turnaround and brand revitalisation Building and holding high-performance cultures Engaging younger workforces inside traditional organisations Disruption as an operating discipline, not a slogan Governance and stakeholder trust during transformation Ideal for Boards and executive teams of legacy or family-owned businesses facing structural decline CEOs, COOs and transformation directors running cost and culture programmes in parallel CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding engagement during restructure Senior leadership audiences in media, publishing, transport and consumer brands Audience outcomes A clear-eyed read on how long real turnaround actually takes inside a legacy business Specific operator decisions, on cost, talent and brand, drawn from DC Thomson, Mirror, Celador and Syco A working argument for why culture is the binding constraint in any transformation, not strategy A view from inside government on the conditions UK businesses are operating against A different vocabulary for talking about disruption with a board, less abstract, more accountable

Why organisations work with Eloïne Barry She runs the infrastructure, not just the advice. African Media Agency’s wire service was the first of its kind built for the continent, and it gives any organisation she works with direct distribution into hundreds of African newsrooms rather than a slide deck about how to reach them. Her client record is the proof point buyers care about: campaigns delivered for the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, not a pitch deck of hypothetical case studies. She translates between the European and North American boardroom and the African newsroom. That crossover, learned at PR Newswire across France, Germany and the EMEA region before she moved the operation south, is rare at a senior level. She has been recognised by the industry on its own terms: SABRE Africa, ASCOM Grand Prix Excellence, New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential, and Bizcommunity’s PR personalities to watch list for 2026. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, African Media Agency (AMA), Abidjan, with operations across 30+ African countries and hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Built the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck. Winner, SABRE Africa Western Africa award 2026 (Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” campaign); African SABRE Certificate of Excellence in Media Relations 2021; Grand Prix Excellence, ASCOM Abidjan 2019. Named in New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Africans 2022; recognised by MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) in 2018. Tony Elumelu Foundation mentor; board member, Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter. Biography Most multinationals that try to reach African audiences at scale run into the same problem. A campaign built for London or New York lands in Lagos, Nairobi or Abidjan and does not move. The media maps are different, the gatekeepers are different, and the ground truth changes by country. African Media Agency was built to close that gap, and Eloine Barry built African Media Agency. AMA is the Abidjan-headquartered firm behind the first pan-African press-release wire distribution service. It now reaches hundreds of newsrooms across more than 30 African countries, with operational hubs in Abidjan, Johannesburg and Durban. Clients include the African Development Bank, IFC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard, Western Union and Merck, alongside governments and African-founded organisations. The agency’s work sits across three arms: AMA Wire for distribution, AMA PR for campaigns and advisory, and AMA Academy for journalist and communications training. Her own route into the work matters. Born in Lyon to a Senegalese mother and a Guinea-Bissauan father, she began her career at PR Newswire, running media relations across France, Germany, and later the wider EMEA and India region. That trajectory is why she is effective with European and American boards and with African newsrooms in the same week; she has sat on both sides of the brief. The industry has recognised the operating record. AMA won a SABRE Africa Western Africa award in 2026 for its Bluemind Foundation “Heal by Hair” mental health campaign, which scaled a Cameroonian-founded initiative into a partnership network spanning health ministries in Togo and Cote d’Ivoire and research groups at Paris Saclay and Santa Clara. Barry herself sits on the boards of Africa Communications Week and Africa No Filter, mentors on the Tony Elumelu Foundation programme, and was named by Bizcommunity among the ten PR personalities to watch in 2026. Key speaking topics Growth strategy for African markets Pan-African media and communications Government and public-sector communications in Africa African diaspora and return-to-Africa strategy Cross-cultural leadership between European, North American and African organisations Building and scaling media infrastructure in emerging markets Ideal for CMOs and heads of corporate affairs at multinationals planning or expanding African operations. CEOs and country leads of development institutions, foundations and NGOs running continent-wide campaigns. Government communications directors and ministries engaging African diaspora audiences. Founders and boards of African-built companies preparing for international visibility. Audience outcomes A clear read on why standard global PR playbooks fail in African markets and what replaces them. A grounded view of the African media landscape across anglophone, francophone and lusophone regions. Practical starting points for building credibility with African newsrooms, diaspora audiences and local regulators. A sharper sense of how communications strategy sits inside a broader market-entry or growth plan for the continent.