Leadership

Why organisations work with Levison Wood He has tested leadership and team principles under conditions where failure has a real cost, including a 4,250-mile walk along the Nile and a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula through Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. His military background as a Parachute Regiment captain in Afghanistan gives him a working framework for decision-making under pressure that translates cleanly into commercial settings. “The Art of Exploration” sets out a usable structure on curiosity, resilience and team behaviour that boards and senior teams can apply, rather than a set of war stories. He brings a credible outside perspective on geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar environments, drawn from on-the-ground work in regions most leaders only read about. Bureau-listed clients including Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin indicate a track record with senior commercial audiences rather than only event circuits. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Chancellor of Staffordshire University, installed May 2024. Honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham. Author of bestselling titles including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Arabia”, “The Last Giants” and “The Art of Exploration”. “Walking the Himalayas” named Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the 2016 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Producer and presenter of major documentary series for Channel 4, including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Walking the Americas” and “Arabia with Levison Wood”. Biography The first ever expedition to walk the length of the Nile began in December 2013, in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, and finished nine months and 4,250 miles later in the Mediterranean. The walker was Levison Wood, a former Parachute Regiment captain who had served in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, and who had decided that exploration was a more honest test of the same disciplines. What separates his work from adventure storytelling is the operating logic underneath it. Walking through Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the Empty Quarter and the Darien Gap forces specific decisions about risk, team composition, local intelligence and when to abandon a plan. Those decisions are recognisable to anyone running a complex programme in a volatile environment. He has put the framework on paper. “The Art of Exploration”, published in 2021, sets out how curiosity, resilience and small-team discipline operate when the route is unknown, and is the basis of his keynote of the same name. His other books, including “Walking the Himalayas”, which won the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Book of the Year in 2016, and “Arabia”, treat the expeditions as case material rather than autobiography. The institutions have followed. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, holds honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham, and was installed as Chancellor of Staffordshire University in May 2024. Senior corporate audiences at Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin have booked the same body of work. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in complex environments Team performance and small-team discipline Resilience and recovery from setback Risk assessment and mitigation Curiosity as a leadership practice Geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar regions Ideal for CEOs and executive teams setting strategy in volatile or unfamiliar markets. Operations, transformation and programme leaders responsible for delivery under shifting conditions. Leadership development audiences in financial services, industrials and consumer businesses. Boards and senior offsites looking for an outside perspective on risk and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working sense of how experienced operators make decisions when information is incomplete and the environment keeps moving. Specific examples of how small teams hold together under sustained pressure, drawn from named expeditions across the Nile, the Himalayas and the Arabian Peninsula. A sharper view of how to identify, weigh and live with material risk rather than try to remove it. A reframed sense of curiosity and adaptability as operational disciplines, not personality traits. A vocabulary for talking about resilience that does not collapse into motivational language.

Why organisations work with Nick Fry He ran the management buyout of Honda’s F1 team for a nominal sum in 2009, then won both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships that same season. There are very few executives anywhere who can speak from inside a turnaround that extreme. He has led at two distinct scales of performance organisation: a 700-person independent team operating on survival economics, and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 as a global OEM works operation. Most senior teams need both lenses. His career predates F1 by 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including running Aston Martin Lagonda through the DB7 launch. He speaks credibly to industrial leaders, not only to motorsport audiences. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador under Prime Ministers Brown and Cameron, giving him a working view of how British engineering competes globally. His book “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone, sets out the Brawn GP year in operational detail rather than as motorsport nostalgia. Biography highlights CEO of Brawn GP, the team that won the 2009 Formula One Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championships in its only season. CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 from 2010 to 2013, following Mercedes’ acquisition of Brawn GP. Co-author of “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. UK Business Ambassador appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, appointed October 2021. 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 programme. Biography In late 2008, Honda withdrew from Formula One with almost no notice. The team based in Brackley had weeks to find a buyer or close. The CEO, with technical director Ross Brawn, negotiated a management buyout for a nominal sum, secured an interim engine supply from Mercedes, and ran the operation through the winter on a fraction of its previous budget. The team won both World Championships the following season, with Jenson Button taking the Drivers’ title. Brawn GP existed for one year, and won everything available to it. That season is the central case Nick Fry now teaches. He set it out in “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), co-written with Ed Gorman and with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. The book is a working account of how leadership decisions are made when the organisation has no margin, not a victory memoir. Mercedes acquired the team in 2010 and Fry stayed on as CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 until 2013, taking a 700-person independent operation into integration with a global OEM works programme. Before Formula One, he spent 24 years at Ford Motor Company. Roles included product planning on the Ford Escort RS Cosworth and the RS200, and Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 launch and the move from handbuilt-only production at Newport Pagnell to higher-volume manufacturing at Bloxham. He then ran Prodrive as Managing Director from 2001, before joining BAR and Honda in Formula One. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador, appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He is currently Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, the company awarded the FIA contract for the 2026 Formula One engine control system, and Chairman of the esports organisation Fnatic. Key speaking topics Leadership under existential pressure Turnaround and restructure in high-performance organisations Decision-making with incomplete information Integration of a small operation into a global parent British engineering and high-performance manufacturing Formula One as an operating model Ideal for CEOs and senior executives facing a forced restructure, funding shock, or major integration Boards weighing the leadership profile required for a turnaround Industrial, engineering, and manufacturing leadership teams Operating committees in performance-driven cultures, including motorsport, aerospace, and elite engineering Audience outcomes A working account of how a senior team made decisions during a survival period in which conventional planning was not possible. A clear view of how leadership behaviours need to change between a small independent organisation and an integrated works operation inside a global OEM. Specific examples of which Brawn GP decisions worked, which did not, and what the CEO would do differently with hindsight. A more honest reading of what Formula One actually demonstrates about high-performance management, separated from the marketing version.

Why organisations work with Leland Melvin He has lived two career-ending events and returned from both. A hamstring injury ended his NFL prospects; a training accident left him partially deaf and medically grounded before he was cleared to fly. Leaders running fatigued teams listen to him because the material is earned. He is the only person drafted into the NFL who has flown in space, and he uses that arc as a working case study on reinvention, not as a curiosity. The narrative carries weight in rooms that have heard most astronaut and athlete talks before. He ran NASA Education as Associate Administrator and co-chaired the White House STEM Task Force. He speaks credibly to boards and CHROs on future skills and pipeline strategy, not only on inspiration. His STS-122 mission delivered Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS. The crew was American, French, German, and led a delicate international handover. He draws on that for executives managing multinational teams under public scrutiny. Author of Chasing Space with HarperCollins, with a Young Readers edition still in active use across US school systems. The book is a working reference for the keynote, not a souvenir. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, mission specialist on STS-122 and STS-129 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, with over 565 hours in space. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and head of NASA’s education portfolio at the Senior Executive Service level. Co-chair of the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force and chair of the International Space Education Board. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986; the only person drafted into the NFL to have flown in space. BSc Chemistry, University of Richmond; MSc Materials Science Engineering, University of Virginia. Specialist in optical fibre sensors at NASA Langley before astronaut selection. Author of Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2017). Biography A training tank at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston ended Leland Melvin’s astronaut career before it started. A water-pressure incident during EVA training left him partially deaf and medically disqualified from flight. NASA assigned him to its education office. Three years later, a flight surgeon cleared him on a waiver, and he flew to the International Space Station on STS-122 to deliver the Columbus laboratory module. The path to that flight ran through two earlier identities. Chemistry at the University of Richmond on a football scholarship. A masters in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. A research career at NASA Langley working on optical fibre sensors for composite structures, while training camps with the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Toronto Argonauts closed one by one through hamstring injuries. Selection as a NASA astronaut came in 1998. Two missions followed, STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009, totalling more than 565 hours in orbit. What gives the speaking work its weight is what came after the flights. As NASA Associate Administrator for Education from 2010 to 2014, Melvin oversaw the agency’s national education portfolio and co-chaired the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. He sat at the senior level on US STEM policy. Chasing Space, published by HarperCollins in 2017, took the personal account into wider circulation and remains in use as a school text in its Young Readers edition. He works now with executive audiences on the operating content of resilience: how a leader keeps a fatigued team functioning when the people in it are quietly carrying serious setbacks, and how to design a pipeline that pulls talent from places most organisations do not yet look. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setbacks High-performing teams in high-consequence operating environments Inclusive leadership and multinational crew dynamics STEM education, future skills, and pipeline strategy Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and learning leaders building resilience and inclusion programmes with substance Senior teams emerging from restructure, redundancy, or burnout cycles Education, public sector, and STEM-focused organisations setting talent pipeline strategy Conferences seeking a credentialed plenary voice on inspiration that withstands scrutiny Audience outcomes A working sense of what resilience looks like as a leadership behaviour, not a personal trait A specific account of how international crew performance is built and maintained under pressure A clearer view of the pipeline question: where future technical talent is found and what blocks it A vivid Earth-observation perspective that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with David Brownlee Practical playbooks aimed at the frontline rep and the floor manager, not the boardroom. The content is built to be used on Monday morning, not filed in a strategy deck. Cross-sector range: the same core method has been delivered inside Harley-Davidson, McDonald’s, HP, Oakley, Google and LinkedIn, which is unusual in customer-service speaking. A named book with a commercial publisher (Morgan James) and a defined method, the Rockstar Customer Service Training Program, that organisations can extend beyond a single keynote. Direct lineage from Tony Robbins coaching, which shows in the delivery: high-energy, audience-driving, designed to land with sales floors and service teams rather than analysts. Concrete techniques on the two things service teams ask for most: building rapport in the first 30 seconds of a call, and recovering an upset customer without escalating cost. Biography highlights CEO of The Brownlee Group Consulting and founder of the Rockstar Customer Service Training Program. Author of “Rockstar Service. Rockstar Profits” (Morgan James Publishing) and “Customer Service Success: The 6 Keys To Deliver A World-Class Experience”. Former business coach and seminar leader for Tony Robbins, with more than 7,500 one-on-one coaching sessions on record. Clients include Harley-Davidson, HP, Oakley, McDonald’s, Google and LinkedIn, with testimonials from named executives at each. Featured in Time, People and Success magazines, and across ABC, NBC, ESPN and CBS. LinkedIn Learning instructor with courses on customer service, remote work and leadership. Biography The cost of poor customer service is rarely on a single line in a P&L. It shows up as churn, refund volume, escalations to senior management, and the slow erosion of repeat business that quietly resets the cost of acquisition. David Brownlee built a career around the part of that problem leaders can actually move: the behaviour of the person on the phone, in the showroom, behind the counter. He is CEO of The Brownlee Group and the founder of the Rockstar Customer Service Training Program. His book “Rockstar Service. Rockstar Profits”, published by Morgan James, sets out a method for building rapport quickly, handling unhappy customers without inflating the resolution cost, and turning routine transactions into repeat ones. A second title, “Customer Service Success”, extends the same logic into a six-key framework for service operations. Earlier in his career he worked as a business coach and seminar leader inside Tony Robbins’ organisation, and that delivery DNA is visible in the work. The keynotes are practical and high-energy, and they are designed to be used the next day by the people who actually serve customers. His client base spans Harley-Davidson, McDonald’s, HP, Oakley, Google and LinkedIn, with named executive testimonials from each. For organisations whose growth depends on frontline behaviour rather than abstract strategy, his contribution is straightforward: a structured, repeatable way to make service interactions a source of revenue rather than a cost line. Key speaking topics Customer service excellence Customer experience and retention Sales rapport and communication Frontline team training Leadership of service organisations Peak performance for sales teams Ideal for Heads of customer service, contact centre directors and operations leaders Sales leaders running B2C and dealer-network teams Franchise and multi-site service businesses (retail, hospitality, automotive, restaurants) Sales and customer-service kick-off events for frontline staff and their managers Audience outcomes A specific method for building rapport with a customer in 30 seconds or less. A repeatable approach to handling upset customers that lowers escalation and refund costs. Sharper distinction between what drives short-term satisfaction and what drives repeat purchase. A shared service language that managers and frontline staff can use after the event. Practical talking points to take into the next team huddle or sales meeting.

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.

Why organisations work with Simon Keith A lived case study in decision-making when the cost of failure is absolute, drawn from two heart transplants, a kidney transplant and a return to professional sport. Member of the Order of Canada, awarded in 2022 for organ donation advocacy, signalling national-level credibility well beyond the speaker circuit. A second-act career as an operator who has built and sold companies and led turnarounds, which means the room hears the sporting story through a business lens. Author of Heart For The Game, with a foreword by Steve Nash, giving conference organisers a tangible artefact to put in delegates’ hands. A speaker who has addressed the White House Organ Summit, the Canadian Parliament and the British Parliament, which sets the calibre of the rooms he is comfortable holding. Biography highlights First professional athlete in the world to play after a heart transplant, following his 1986 surgery at Papworth Hospital under Sir Terence English. No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, selected by the Cleveland Crunch in 1989. Member of the Order of Canada (2022), for advocacy of organ donation and support for transplant recipients. Founder and CEO of the Simon Keith Foundation, supporting young transplant recipients returning to active life. Author of Heart For The Game: The Incredible Saga of Simon Keith (2012), co-written with Jason Cole and Don Yaeger, foreword by Steve Nash. Speaker at the inaugural White House Organ Summit (2016), and at both the Canadian and British Parliaments. Biography Most leaders will never face the moment Simon Keith faced at twenty-one. In July 1986, at Papworth Hospital outside London, he received the heart of a seventeen-year-old donor named Jonathan Edward. Three years later he was the No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, the first athlete in the world to play professional sport after a heart transplant. That single fact tends to dominate the room. What gives it commercial weight is what he did with the thirty-five years that followed. He played in the MISL with the Cleveland Crunch, retired into business, and built and sold companies across multiple industries. He has led turnarounds and run operating roles in healthcare and organ procurement, which is the world that gave him his life back. In March 2019, his body rejected the 1986 heart. He received a second heart transplant and a kidney transplant in San Diego, and returned to work. In December 2022, Governor General Mary Simon appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada for his advocacy of organ donation and for his support of transplant recipients through the Simon Keith Foundation, which he founded to fund young organ recipients returning to active life. On stage, the story carries the credentials. He is direct, unsentimental, and more interested in what an audience does on Monday morning than in how they felt on Friday afternoon. He works in two registers: the close, personal account of decision-making under existential pressure, and the operating perspective of someone who has run companies and knows what a leadership team is actually asking for when they ask for resilience. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under existential pressure Resilience and recovery after personal or professional shock High-performance leadership Team trust and culture Organ donation, transplantation and patient advocacy Business turnaround leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams and senior leaders facing prolonged pressure or restructure High-performance sales, operations and field leadership conferences Healthcare, life sciences and medical device audiences Annual all-company kickoffs where the organisation is asking for composure, not just energy Audience outcomes A frame of reference for the difference between coping with pressure and leading through it A clearer view of what self-belief looks like as an operational discipline, not a slogan Renewed willingness to make decisions when the conditions are not yet stable A specific account of how a leader rebuilds after a setback the team has watched in real time

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Bernie Collins She ran race strategy at Aston Martin F1, a role that required committing several hundred engineers to a single decision in under thirty seconds, with the result televised live. Very few speakers have carried that kind of accountability. Her book with Maurice Hamilton, How to Win a Grand Prix, translates the mechanics of F1 decision making into a framework leaders can apply to their own operating rhythm. She brings a working broadcaster’s clarity. As Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, she explains complex trade-offs to a lay audience every race weekend, which transfers directly to boardroom and all-hands contexts. Her perspective on diversity in engineering is grounded in her own path through a male-dominated paddock, not in consultancy talking points. She is Irish, plain-spoken, and unafraid to be specific about what went wrong on a given decision. That honesty is rare in sports-adjacent keynotes. Biography highlights Former Head of Race Strategy, Aston Martin F1, 2020 to 2022. Performance and strategy engineer at Force India, Racing Point, and Aston Martin from 2015, working with Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg. Began her F1 career at McLaren in 2009 as a graduate trainee, becoming performance engineer to Jenson Button. Formula 1 strategy analyst for Sky Sports F1 and F1TV. Author of How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium with Maurice Hamilton, Quercus, 2024. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, Manufacturing and Industry, 2016. Honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast, 2023. Biography An F1 race strategist has around thirty seconds to recommend a tyre change that commits the team for the rest of the Grand Prix. Bernie Collins spent more than a decade in that seat, ending as Head of Race Strategy at Aston Martin F1, where she called the race at Sergio Perez’s maiden victory at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. Her route there ran through McLaren, where she arrived as a graduate from Queen’s University Belfast in 2009 and eventually worked trackside with Jenson Button, and then Force India, where she moved into strategy alongside Nico Hulkenberg and Perez. The team rebranded twice while she stayed in the same chair, which gave her an unusual view of how a technical organisation holds its culture together through ownership changes. What makes Collins useful to senior audiences is the structure of the F1 strategy job itself. A pit-wall call blends incomplete telemetry, weather models, competitor behaviour, and driver feedback into a single recommendation, made under time pressure, with the outcome visible on live television within minutes. In How to Win a Grand Prix, her 2024 book with journalist Maurice Hamilton, she sets out how that decision is actually made, and what organisations elsewhere tend to get wrong about it. She now works as Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, explaining those decisions in real time to a mass audience. The broadcaster’s discipline, saying what matters in plain language without hedging, carries into her speaking. Queen’s University Belfast awarded her an honorary degree in 2023. Key speaking topics Decision making under time pressure High-performance team culture Strategy in complex, data-rich environments Leadership in distributed technical organisations Women in engineering and motorsport Risk and safety in regulated, high-stakes settings Ideal for Executive leadership teams in fast-moving competitive markets Engineering, technology, and operations organisations Strategy, risk, and transformation functions Conferences on performance, decision making, and team culture Audience outcomes A clearer model of how high-performing teams decide when evidence is incomplete A frank look at what accountability actually feels like when your call is public Specific examples of how F1 teams align hundreds of people on a single decision in seconds A useful perspective on women in technical roles from someone who sat at the top of one

Why organisations work with Peter Baines His authority on crisis leadership is operational, not theoretical. He led international forensic teams in Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami and held senior roles in the response to the Bali bombings, the 2010 Jeddah floods and the 2011 Japan tsunami. Few speakers can talk credibly about international counter-terrorism work from the inside. He spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, advising Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime across South East Asia. He brings a 20 year, AUD 40 million case study in purpose at scale through Hands Across the Water, which lets him talk about values, culture and CSR with real numbers behind him rather than slogans. He has published with Wiley twice on the substance of his work, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), giving organisations a coherent body of thinking to engage with beyond the keynote. He carries an Order of Australia Medal and a royal Thai honour, which gives the talk a level of public standing that lands credibly with boards, philanthropic committees and senior leadership audiences. Biography highlights 22 year career as a forensic investigator with NSW Police, holding qualifications in Law, Forensic Science, and postgraduate Management, with leadership roles in the response to the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand Spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, advising Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in South East Asia Founder of Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand since 2005 Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2014 for international humanitarian work, and the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn by the King of Thailand in 2016 First Australian to receive the Rotary International Professional Excellence Award (2008), a NSW finalist for Australian of the Year (2010), and recognised in 2025 as one of the top five most influential Australians working in Thailand Author of four books: Hands Across the Water (Pan Macmillan, 2011), Doing Good By Doing Good (Wiley, 2014), Leadership Matters (Wiley, 2023), and Together We Can: 33 Marathons in 26 Days (2025) In December 2024, ran 1,400 km across Thailand in 26 days, the equivalent of 33 marathons, in support of Hands Across the Water Biography The bodies were still being recovered in Thai temples when the question of leadership stopped being abstract. In the weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Australian and international forensic teams operating out of Phuket and Khao Lak had to identify thousands of victims with limited infrastructure, exhausted personnel and grieving families waiting for answers. The leader running multiple rotations of that operation was a NSW Police forensic investigator on secondment. That investigator was Peter Baines. Before leaving the force, he had also worked through the Bali bombings, spent his final police years seconded to the National Institute of Forensic Science on counter-terrorism and leadership capacity building, and advised Interpol in France and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime across South East Asia. The Saudi government later engaged him to review the response to the Jeddah floods. He was deployed again after the 2011 Japan tsunami. The leadership argument he draws from that work is simple but unfashionable: authority comes from how you behave when nobody is keeping score, and culture is what survives a bad day. He set out to test it in practice. In 2005 he founded Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has now raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand and supported 46 of them through university degrees. He has written it up in two Wiley books, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), and most recently in Together We Can (2025), the account of his 1,400 km, 26 day run across Thailand at age 57. The Order of Australia Medal and the King of Thailand’s Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn followed, but the real proof point is that the operation he started in a tent of orphaned children in 2005 is still functioning, and growing, twenty years later. Key speaking topics Leadership in crisis and disaster response Decision-making under uncertainty and operational pressure Purpose-driven leadership and culture Corporate social responsibility and shared value Resilience and recovery after shock Building and sustaining high performing teams Storytelling and humanitarian impact Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding leadership credibility after a crisis, restructure or reputational shock CHROs, CSOs and culture leads designing values-based leadership programmes with substance behind them CSR, sustainability and foundation leads who need a credible voice on shared value and authentic purpose Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences in professional services, financial services and complex operating environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what authority actually looks like when titles, scripts and procedures stop helping Specific reference points for decision-making under fatigue, ambiguity and public scrutiny A practical model for connecting organisational purpose to measurable community outcomes, not slogans Renewed appetite to hold leadership teams to a higher standard of behaviour in ordinary, not just exceptional, conditions A repertoire of concrete stories, tested in disaster response and humanitarian work, that senior leaders can carry into their own teams

Why organisations work with Julian Placino Practitioner credibility: nearly two decades inside corporate recruiting, including seven years leading talent acquisition at Bottle Rocket, a Dallas mobile development firm with an outsized reputation for hiring quality. Operating-level content. His recruiting talks address the working mechanics buyers ask about: employer value proposition, candidate pipeline, referral systems, hiring manager discipline. Not HR theory. Doubles as a host. With 220+ episodes of The Pathways to Success podcast under his belt, he is comfortable interviewing leaders on stage and moderating panels, useful when an event needs both a keynote and a host. Personal-brand and resilience material that translates for sales, recruiting, and frontline audiences who need a motivational anchor rather than a leadership framework. Biography highlights Former Head of Recruiting, Bottle Rocket (seven-year tenure) Earlier recruiting leadership at ReachLocal (Gannett) Founder, Pathways Media and the Recruitment Masterclass training programme Host and creator, The Pathways to Success podcast (220+ episodes, Apple Podcasts and Spotify) BBA, University of North Texas Commercial actor and voice-over artist with named campaigns including Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and the NFL Biography Most companies treat recruiting as an administrative function until a critical hire stalls. Then it becomes a board-level problem. Placino built his career inside that gap. As Head of Recruiting at Bottle Rocket, he spent seven years scaling a hiring operation at a Dallas mobile development firm whose product work for Fortune 500 clients depended on the quality of its engineering bench. That operating background is what he brings to the stage. His core keynote, Mastering the Talent Puzzle, treats employer brand and recruiting strategy as a system that can be deliberately built, not a function of headcount or agency spend. The argument is grounded in what worked inside a high-pressure tech recruiting environment, including how to design an employment value proposition, how to mobilise existing employees as a pipeline, and how to make hiring managers accountable for the people they bring in. Beyond the recruiting material, Placino runs The Pathways to Success podcast, where he has interviewed more than 220 leaders across business, sport, and the creative industries. The format gives him a working interviewer’s craft, which he extends into event hosting and panel moderation. He also delivers talks on personal branding, resilience, and stewardship, drawn from his own path as a first-generation Filipino American who built a recruiting career, a media company, and a parallel commercial acting line that includes Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and NFL campaigns. He is based in Dallas and holds a BBA from the University of North Texas. He is represented by multiple bureaus across the US in addition to Speakers Associates internationally. Key speaking topics Recruitment strategy and employer brand Talent acquisition operating models Personal branding and reputation Resilience and adaptability Stewardship-based leadership Event hosting and interview-format moderation Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent Acquisition rebuilding in-house recruiting capability Talent and recruiting team offsites Sales and revenue kickoffs that need a personal-brand or motivation anchor Conferences requiring a keynote speaker who can also host or moderate Audience outcomes A working model for designing an employer value proposition that survives contact with the labour market A specific approach to turning current employees into a recruiting pipeline Language for separating personal brand from job title, useful for sales and client-facing roles A reframing model for adversity and change drawn from the speaker’s own career history

Why organisations work with Mark DeVolder A practising change consultant with a named methodology, Empowered Change, used inside organisations from NASA to Coca-Cola, not a motivational speaker who borrows the language of change. Author of Perpetual Pivot, a book-length argument that continuous adaptation is now the default operating condition, with a defined construct leaders can apply to repeated reinvention. Holds a research doctorate on unity, diversity and synergy from Fuller, which gives the work an evidence base most change keynotes lack. Has worked with leadership teams in regulated, high-stakes environments such as Pfizer, Qatar Petroleum, Siemens and the US Air Force, where the cost of badly handled change is operational, not theoretical. Brings a Target Zero safety-culture frame for clients in industrial and engineering sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not engagement scores. Biography highlights Doctorate, Fuller, with dissertation on unity, diversity and synergy. Founder of the Empowered Change methodology, used in client engagements across five continents. Author of Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change and Get Engaged! on employee engagement. Has spoken in over 25 countries to clients including NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Qatar Petroleum and the US Air Force. Signature talks on change, resilience, employee engagement and Target Zero safety culture. Biography Change has become the operating condition of large organisations, not the event between strategies. The leaders who hold their teams through repeated restructure, integration and digital reset are not the ones with the most polished communications plan. They are the ones who understand how people move through transition and can hold the line on engagement when the next wave arrives. This is the territory Mark DeVolder has worked in for two decades. His Empowered Change methodology and the wider argument set out in Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change treat continuous adaptation as the default state of senior leadership. The work is built on a doctorate from Fuller on unity, diversity and synergy, which gives the practice a research base rather than a personality base. Client engagements have included leadership teams at NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Qatar Petroleum, alongside the US Air Force. The work spans corporate integration, regulated industry, industrial safety and public-sector transformation, which means the methodology has been tested against very different definitions of what a failed change actually costs. For industrial and engineering clients, DeVolder also runs a Target Zero programme that frames change leadership as a safety-culture problem. In those settings the test of good change leadership is not employee survey scores; it is whether the operating environment becomes safer or more dangerous through the transition. That is a sharper test than most change keynotes are built to pass. Key speaking topics Change management and organisational transition Leadership through continuous restructure Resilience and decision-making under pressure Employee engagement during transformation Safety culture and high-performance operating environments Adapting to exponential change Ideal for Boards and executive teams entering or recovering from major restructure, M&A integration or digital reset. CHROs and transformation leads accountable for retaining trust and discretionary effort through repeated change. Operating leaders in regulated, industrial or safety-critical sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not survey scores. Senior leadership development programmes building change-leadership capability across cohorts. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why repeated change erodes capability and what to protect first. A practical model, the Empowered Change journey-map, for diagnosing where a workforce sits in a transition. Specific behaviours senior leaders can adopt during continuous restructure to hold trust and engagement. Language to talk to a workforce about change without slipping into corporate abstraction. For industrial clients, a route to connect change leadership directly to safety performance.

Why organisations work with Zoe Harrison A current, contracted international whose authority on performance under pressure is live, not retrospective. She kicked four conversions in the 2025 World Cup final the same year she walked into the room. The fly-half perspective on team performance: the position responsible for game management, tempo and the next decision after a mistake. Translated for senior leaders who own the equivalent calls inside their organisations. Saracens-era discipline was brought into a corporate setting. Two consecutive Premier 15s titles and the dominant club culture of that period sit behind her view of what a winning team actually looks like day to day. A serious England career built through visible setbacks, including a period out of the starting side before returning to win the World Cup. Useful for audiences whose recent story is recovery, not uninterrupted success. Biography highlights 65 caps for England; 242 international points. Starting fly-half for England at the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, won by the Red Roses against Canada (33-13). Saracens Women regular since 2016-17; Players’ Player of the Season in her first senior year. Started the 2018 and 2019 Premier 15s finals, scoring two tries in the 2019 final. 2019 Six Nations Grand Slam winner with England; full-time England contract from January 2019. Trained through the Hartpury AASE Girls Rugby Programme; Sports Rehabilitation and Exercise studies at Middlesex University. Biography The Red Roses won the 2025 World Cup at Twickenham against Canada. Zoe Harrison started at fly-half and kicked four conversions in the final. That detail matters because the fly-half is the position that runs the game, sets the tempo, and makes the next call after a mistake. It is the closest on-field equivalent to the role a senior leader plays inside their organisation. Harrison has been a Saracens first-team regular since 2016-17, named Players’ Player of the Season in her debut senior year. She started both the 2018 and 2019 Premier 15s finals and scored two tries in the 2019 win. England honoured her with a full-time contract in January 2019 and a Six Nations Grand Slam followed that year. Across 65 caps, she has scored 242 international points. Her authority for corporate audiences is built on a specific kind of experience. She has held the playmaker role in a sustained winning culture at Saracens, lost and regained the England starting shirt, and stood over the kicking tee in a World Cup final. That arc is more useful to senior teams than an uninterrupted highlight reel, because most boardrooms now operate after a setback rather than before one. She is most credible on what a fly-half actually does: read pressure, pick the next play, hold the team’s composure when the score has just moved. Translated for a leadership audience, that is the practical content of self-leadership and team behaviour in moments where the cost of the wrong call is public. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team behaviour in high-stakes environments Composure and decision-making in the next moment Elite team culture and standards Resilience after setbacks Women in elite sport and the changing professional game Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering a high-visibility year (IPO, restructure, public scrutiny) Sales and commercial conferences where the audience owns the next-call decisions All-company kickoffs anchoring a year on standards, behaviour and pace Networks and ERGs centred on women in leadership and performance environments Audience outcomes A clear picture of what composure looks like in practice, drawn from the position on the pitch responsible for it. Specific language for the moments inside a team where the next decision sets the tone, and how an elite environment handles them. A working definition of standards in a winning team that is not generic, drawn from a sustained Saracens and England culture. An honest account of losing form and regaining it at the highest level, useful for teams whose recent story is recovery.