Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Emil Dobrovolschi He is a working airline captain and EASA-certified examiner, so the discipline he teaches around briefings, checklists and crew coordination is the discipline he is held to in the cockpit. Co-author of Dark Cockpit with Octavian Pantis, a published thesis that gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a calm, fully functioning operating state and the behaviours that produce it. Three decades inside a national flag carrier, including time as Director of Flight Operations, give him a frank view of what command, accountability and quiet discipline look like in a regulated organisation. The pilots he has trained as a Type Rating Instructor have gone on to fly as captains for at least twelve international airlines, evidence that his teaching method travels and holds up under examination. The aviation material is concrete. Audiences leave with named behaviours, not metaphors: how a brief is structured, how a challenge is raised, how a captain hands over control. Biography highlights Captain, instructor and examiner at TAROM since 1994, across Antonov 24, ATR 42/72, Airbus A320 and A310. Former Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, TAROM. EASA-certified Type Rating Examiner; Type Rating Instructor since 2001. Commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. Co-author of Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain (with Octavian Pantis). TEDx speaker (TEDxBaiaMare, “Gata de decolare”). Biography A commercial flight deck is one of the few corporate settings where bad communication is logged, debriefed and corrected by regulation. Aviation does not assume good leaders happen. It produces them through briefings, checklists, standard calls and a regulated training cycle. Emil Dobrovolschi has spent his career inside that system. He joined TAROM, the Romanian flag carrier, in 1994 and worked through every rank from Antonov 24 co-pilot to Airbus A320 and A310 captain, instructor and examiner. As a Type Rating Instructor since 2001 and an EASA-certified examiner, he has trained pilots who now hold left-seat command at twelve or more international carriers. Inside TAROM he served as Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, and as commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. The corporate work grew out of that. With consultant and author Octavian Pantis he co-wrote Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain. The dark cockpit is the aviation term for the state in which no caution lights are on, the aircraft is functioning, and the crew can do its job. The book translates that into a leadership thesis: the conditions for clarity, command and trust are designed in, not improvised when something goes wrong. In keynotes, that translation is concrete. He shows how a captain runs a pre-flight brief, how a junior officer is trained to challenge a senior one, and what changes when control is formally handed over. Senior teams use the material to look at their own briefings, escalation paths and quiet failures of communication. The authority behind it is straightforward: he is still the captain in the room. Key speaking topics Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Communication and crew resource management Decision-making under pressure Teamwork, hierarchy and the freedom to speak up Crisis management and recovery Building professional standards inside an operating culture Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing how decisions are taken when the situation tightens CHROs and leadership development leads designing programmes for newly senior managers Operations, safety and risk leaders in regulated industries (energy, healthcare, financial services, transport) Corporate offsites and leadership weeks looking for an external voice with operational credibility, not consulting language Audience outcomes A vocabulary borrowed from the cockpit (brief, checklist, challenge, handover) that makes everyday leadership behaviours explicit. A clearer view of where their own organisation tolerates ambiguous communication that aviation would not. Specific practices for raising a concern up a hierarchy and for receiving one. A working definition of composure under pressure as a trained behaviour, not a personality trait. A frame for distinguishing routine operations from genuine crisis, and for behaving differently in each.

Why organisations work with Emma Hayes She has built two elite teams from different starting points: a Chelsea side she took from mid-table to seven Women’s Super League titles, and a US national team she led to Olympic gold within ten matches of taking charge. Her leadership thesis is published and tested. A Completely Different Game sets out a working method built around team, staff and standards, not personality. She speaks from a current operational seat, not a retired one. Buyers get a working head coach describing live decisions under pressure, not retrospective career narrative. Named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach (2021) and winner of the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy (2024); the formal recognition tracks the operational record. She is fluent in the language of senior business audiences from regular broadcast and conference work, including Sky and BBC punditry and the Leaders in Sport platform. Biography highlights Head Coach, United States Women’s National Team, 2024 to present. Manager, Chelsea FC Women, 2012 to 2024; seven WSL titles, five FA Cups, five domestic doubles. Olympic gold medal with the USWNT, Paris 2024. The Best FIFA Women’s Coach, 2021; inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy, 2024. OBE (2022) and MBE (2016) for services to football. Author, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook (2024), expanded from the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn. Biography Chelsea FC Women were a mid-table side in 2012. By the time Emma Hayes left in 2024, they had won seven Women’s Super League titles, including five in a row, alongside five FA Cups and multiple League Cups. The rebuild was not the result of a single tactical idea. It was the product of how she organised the staff around her, the standards she held, and the way she handled players, ownership and scrutiny over twelve seasons. The work translated directly. Appointed Head Coach of the United States Women’s National Team in 2024, she led the side to Olympic gold in Paris in her tenth match in charge, winning every knockout game 1-0. The body of evidence sits across two contexts, club and country, with very different constraints. The leadership method travelled. Her book, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook, sets out the underlying argument. Published in 2024 as the print expansion of the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn, written with Michael Calvin, it dismantles the idea of the lone great leader. Sustained performance, she argues, is built by the staff around the leader and the culture the leader is willing to enforce. The book is grounded in operational practice, not theory. Formal recognition has followed the record. She was named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach in 2021, won the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy for the best women’s coach in the world in 2024, and was appointed OBE in 2022 after an MBE in 2016. She continues to coach at the top of the international game, which is what gives her speaking work its weight: the material is live, not retrospective. Key speaking topics Building high-performance teams Leadership through sustained change Culture and standards in elite organisations Decision-making under pressure Women in leadership Coaching as a leadership discipline Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams rebuilding performance after underperformance or restructure CHROs and chief people officers working on leadership development and high-performance culture Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on standards, accountability and team design Audience outcomes A working model for how senior leaders set and hold standards through cycles of pressure A clear view of how culture is built deliberately, not absorbed by accident Concrete examples of decisions made under scrutiny, with the trade-offs named A reframing of leadership away from individual heroics towards staff, team and system design

Why organisations work with Enda Kenny He ran a national economy through its deepest post-war crisis and handed it over as the fastest-growing in the EU, with unemployment below 5 percent and full market access restored. He chaired the Council of the European Union during the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework negotiation, which gives him a working view of how Brussels, the Parliament, and national capitals actually reach agreement. He called and won the 2015 marriage equality referendum, the first national vote of its kind anywhere, and built the Citizens’ Assembly model that other democracies now study. He sits inside the Global Leadership Foundation alongside former heads of state and chairs the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital, so his current reading of Europe is informed by active advisory work rather than memoir. Biography highlights Taoiseach of Ireland, March 2011 to June 2017; first Fine Gael Taoiseach in history to be re-elected. Leader of Fine Gael, 2002 to 2017, the longest tenure of any leader in the party. Chaired the Council of the European Union during Ireland’s 2013 Presidency, delivering agreement on the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework, Erasmus+, and a negotiating mandate for TTIP. Elected to Dail Eireann at age 24 in 1975, re-elected in every subsequent general election until his retirement in 2020. Chair of the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital and its Impact Ireland fund. Member of the Global Leadership Foundation; recipient of the Golden Victoria European of the Year (2012) and the inaugural Trinity European Laureate Award (2025). Biography Ireland entered 2011 in an EU-IMF assistance programme with unemployment above 15 percent and sovereign borrowing rates near distressed levels. Six years later the country was the fastest-growing economy in the European Union, with rates on ten-year borrowing at zero and unemployment under 5 percent. Enda Kenny was Taoiseach for all of it. He led Fine Gael for fifteen years, the longest tenure in the party’s history, and became the first Fine Gael Taoiseach to win re-election. The substance of the government’s work was fiscal stabilisation, bank restructuring, and the orderly exit from the troika programme; the political work was holding a coalition together while doing it. In 2013 he chaired the Council of the European Union during Ireland’s Presidency, brokering the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework, the Erasmus+ settlement, a negotiating mandate for TTIP, and reforms of the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies. The same government called the 2015 marriage equality referendum, the first national vote anywhere to legalise same-sex marriage, and established the Citizens’ Assembly as a deliberative route for constitutional questions. He now chairs the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital and its Impact Ireland fund, sits within the Global Leadership Foundation alongside other former heads of state, and in 2025 received the inaugural Trinity European Laureate Award from Trinity College Dublin and Teneo for his contribution to European ideals. Key speaking topics European Union governance and the politics of the single market Economic recovery and fiscal stabilisation after crisis Political leadership in coalition and minority government Sovereign market confidence and investor relations Constitutional reform and citizen deliberation Ireland, the UK, and the post-Brexit settlement Impact investment and national economic strategy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with material European exposure Financial services, asset managers, and sovereign-facing investors Policy, regulatory, and public affairs conferences focused on Europe CEO forums and leadership programmes addressing crisis and recovery Audience outcomes A working account of how a national government executes fiscal consolidation without losing the coalition or the electorate A first-hand read on how Brussels, the European Parliament, and national capitals actually negotiate multi-year budgets A clear view of the political mechanics behind the 2015 marriage equality vote and the Citizens’ Assembly model A sharper sense of where Ireland and the wider EU sit in the transatlantic relationship after Brexit Direct reflections on what holds under pressure when a country is being asked to take painful decisions quickly

Why organisations work with Enrico Letta He authored the defining European policy document of the decade. The Letta Report, commissioned by the European Council in 2024, now frames every serious conversation in Brussels on capital markets, industrial strategy, and the Savings and Investments Union. He has run a G7 government. Leaders in a room with him get a view of European decision-making from inside the Council chamber, not from a commentator’s distance. He sits at the centre of the institutional network that matters. President of the Jacques Delors Institute, Dean at IE University, former Dean at Sciences Po: the same network that produces the people who will implement what he has proposed. He brings a defensible point of view on the one question boards cannot answer on their own. What European reform will actually ship, and what that means for capital allocation, M&A strategy, and regulatory exposure in the next three years. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Italy, April 2013 to February 2014, leading a national unity coalition. Author of “Much More Than a Market,” the April 2024 report to the European Council on the future of the EU Single Market. Dean, IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, IE University, Madrid. President, Jacques Delors Institute, Paris, since 2016. Former Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, 2015 to 2021. Commander of the French Legion of Honour; Gran Cruz of the Order of Civil Merit, Kingdom of Spain. Biography The Letta Report landed on the European Council’s desk in April 2024 and changed the terms of the argument. Commissioned by EU heads of state and written by a former Prime Minister of Italy, “Much More Than a Market” proposed a Savings and Investments Union, a Fifth Freedom for research and innovation, and a Single Market designed for scale rather than fragmentation. It is now the reference document for every serious policy file in Brussels touching capital markets, industrial strategy, and competitiveness. Enrico Letta ran a G7 government through one of the most difficult passages in recent Italian politics, serving as Prime Minister from April 2013 to February 2014 at the head of a national unity coalition. Before the premiership he held portfolios for European Affairs and for Industry, Commerce and Crafts, and sat in the Chamber of Deputies across multiple terms. The experience gives him a particular kind of authority: he has written policy and he has had to deliver it against a political calendar. He now anchors the European institutional network from the inside. As Dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs at IE University, Madrid, and as President of the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris since 2016, Letta works at the intersection of policy formation and executive education. He was Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po from 2015 to 2021 and served as President of APSIA, the Washington-based association of professional schools of international affairs. The recognition is from the institutions that matter to the argument. France made him a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 2017. Spain awarded him the Gran Cruz of the Order of Civil Merit. He chairs the Diplomatic Forum of GESDA in Geneva and speaks in English, French, and Italian. For a board trying to understand where European policy is going, few speakers can say, with evidence, that they have written the document everyone in the room will be working from. Key speaking topics European Union policy and strategic direction The future of the EU Single Market Capital markets, the Savings and Investments Union, and European competitiveness European industrial strategy in a US and China context Transatlantic relations and geopolitical positioning for European business Coalition government and political decision-making at the national level Ideal for CEOs, CFOs, and boards of multinationals with material EU exposure weighing capital allocation against regulatory direction. Heads of European public affairs, government relations, and regulatory strategy at financial institutions, industrial groups, and technology platforms. Investment committees, asset managers, and private equity leadership teams tracking the Savings and Investments Union and capital markets reform. University, think-tank, and policy audiences working on European integration and transatlantic relations. Audience outcomes A specific read on which elements of the Letta Report are likely to move through the Council and Parliament, and on what timeline. A clearer view of how European industrial strategy is repositioning against US and Chinese competition, and what that implies for cross-border M&A and supply chain strategy. A sharper grasp of the political mechanics inside the European Council, from someone who has sat at that table as a head of government. A framework for thinking about European competitiveness that goes beyond the usual binary of Brussels versus national capitals.

Why organisations work with Eric Ries He authored the operating method most used by modern product teams. When a CFO asks how an innovation portfolio should be measured and governed, the answer most large companies reach for is his. He has tested the method inside GE, IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government, not just early-stage startups, so the case studies he draws on are at enterprise scale. He founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, a SEC-approved national securities exchange. That gives him a working perspective on how ownership structure and reporting cadence shape executive behaviour, well beyond a consultant’s view. His new book Incorruptible reframes corporate governance as a strategic act, addressing why successful companies drift from the principles that built them. Useful for boards under pressure on mission, accountability, and long-term value. Biography highlights Author of The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and Incorruptible (Authors Equity, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2026). Founder and Executive Chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, approved by the SEC in 2019. Architect of GE’s FastWorks program under CEO Jeff Immelt, applied across thousands of GE executives. Former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School and IDEO Fellow; advisor to Pivotal. Ranked #12 on the Thinkers50 list (2019); The Lean Startup on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist (2023). Biography Most large companies are excellent at running the business they already have and unreliable at building the next one. The systems that govern the core business, budgets, milestones, quarterly review, were not designed for ventures whose value is mostly unknown at the point of funding. Eric Ries spent two decades turning that mismatch into a working method. The Lean Startup, published in 2011, codified validated learning, the minimum viable product, and innovation accounting as a portable management discipline. The book has been translated into more than thirty languages and now sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist. Its follow-up, The Startup Way, captured what happens when those ideas are pushed into established companies. The case studies are drawn from inside GE, where Ries worked with CEO Jeff Immelt on the FastWorks program, alongside engagements with IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government. The governance question runs through all of his work. In 2015 he proposed the Long-Term Stock Exchange in The Lean Startup; the SEC approved LTSE as a national securities exchange in 2019, and Ries serves as Executive Chairman. His 2026 book Incorruptible, published by Authors Equity and distributed by Simon & Schuster, argues that good companies fail predictably because ownership, incentives, and accountability quietly reshape behaviour as they scale. The book was selected for the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist. What separates Ries from other innovation speakers is range. He has authored the methodology, run the corporate transformations that test it, and built a regulated capital-markets venue to address the structural problem his books diagnose. For senior teams that want innovation handled as a portfolio discipline, not a culture programme, he is the source. Key speaking topics Lean Startup methodology Innovation accounting and the management of internal ventures Entrepreneurial management inside established companies Corporate governance and long-term value AI applied to product validation and customer acquisition The Long-Term Stock Exchange and capital-markets reform Ideal for CEOs and boards of public companies wrestling with quarterly pressure versus long-horizon investment. Chief innovation, strategy, and transformation officers responsible for portfolios of new ventures inside large organisations. Founders and senior leaders of scale-up companies preparing for institutional ownership. Corporate development and venture teams looking to apply validated-learning discipline to internal investment decisions. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for measuring new ventures separately from the core business, drawn directly from innovation accounting. A clear diagnosis of why most corporate innovation programmes fail at the governance layer rather than the creativity layer. A view of how ownership structure, board cadence, and reporting rules quietly shape executive behaviour over time. Specific case material from GE, IBM, Intuit, and US federal agencies that audiences can map onto their own structures.

Why organisations work with Eric Termuende He gives leadership teams a working language for incremental change. The “one-degree shift” framework reframes culture work as a sequence of small, low-resistance moves teams can actually make, instead of a programme to be launched. His research base is original. Rethink Work and the surveys behind it focus on what attracts and retains the right people for a specific workplace, not the best people in the abstract, which is a more useful question for most CHROs. He pitches at team level, not enterprise level. Most future-of-work speakers operate at workforce-strategy altitude. Termuende speaks to the manager and the leader of leaders, which is where engagement and retention are actually won or lost. He has tested the material against operating environments at Amazon, IBM, Coca-Cola, Toyota, and Nokia. The keynotes have been refined through repeated commercial use, not built for the stage. Biography highlights Co-Founder of NoW of Work, a workplace innovation and leadership consultancy. Author of Rethink Work (Barlow Books), an Amazon best-seller on engagement and retention. Named to American Express’s Top 100 Emerging Innovators under 35. 2022 Arch Award for Early Career Achievement, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. TEDx speaker (TEDxBCIT, “Bigger than Work”) and Walrus Talks contributor. Host of the One Degree Shift podcast, interviewing operators and executives on incremental team change. Biography Most culture programmes fail not because the diagnosis is wrong, but because the prescribed change is too big to land. Teams are asked to adopt new behaviours on top of existing workload, and the new behaviours do not survive the first quarter. Eric Termuende’s work begins from this observation. The argument running through Rethink Work and the surveys behind it is that engagement and retention are decided at the team level, by a small number of recurring behaviours, and that the right intervention is operational rather than aspirational. NoW of Work, the consultancy Termuende co-founded, is built around that premise. The “one-degree shift” framework is its working vocabulary: small, specific behaviour changes designed to reduce friction and build trust without triggering another transformation initiative. The credentials sit underneath the argument. American Express named him to its Top 100 Emerging Innovators. The University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business gave him its Arch Award for Early Career Achievement in 2022. The material has been refined in front of audiences at Amazon, IBM, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nokia, and Zoom, and on TEDx and Walrus stages. For senior people leaders, the proposition is unusually concrete. Termuende leaves an audience with a way to act on Monday morning, not a thesis to debate. That is rare in the future-of-work category, where most speakers operate one level too high to be useful to the line managers who actually run the teams. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce design Team performance and trust Talent attraction and retention Workplace culture and engagement Multigenerational teams Leadership in uncertainty AI and the manager’s role Ideal for CHROs and people leaders responsible for engagement and retention strategy Leadership development and learning teams designing manager curricula Operations and divisional leaders running multigenerational teams under change Executive offsites focused on culture and talent in growth or post-merger contexts Audience outcomes A working framework for designing small behavioural shifts that hold at team level A clearer answer to which people the organisation should be attracting, not just how to attract more Practical positions on the multigenerational workforce that line managers can apply A reframing of culture work as operational practice, not communications activity

Why organisations work with Erik Weihenmayer A first-hand operating model for making decisions without full visibility, drawn from summiting Everest and kayaking 277 miles of Grand Canyon whitewater rather than from theory A tested argument about rope-team leadership: how trust, role clarity, and communication protocols hold a team together when one member’s judgement has to carry the rest A named framework, the No Barriers Life, backed by a published book and a working nonprofit, not a single keynote built around a single mountain Credibility with audiences who have heard every generic resilience talk, because the proof points are specific, verifiable, and unusual: Everest, the Eight Summits, Leadville 100 on a tandem, Colorado River source to sea Biography highlights First blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, May 25, 2001; featured on the cover of Time magazine that June Completed the Seven Summits in 2002 and the Eight Summits in 2008 with Carstensz Pyramid Kayaked the full 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 2014 Co-founder of No Barriers USA, serving people with disabilities, veterans, youth, and caregivers Author of “Touch the Top of the World,” published in 9 languages, and co-author of “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” with Buddy Levy Recipient of an ESPY Award, Nike’s Casey Martin Award, and the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement Award Biography The path down Everest is more dangerous than the path up. On the descent in May 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to summit the mountain, was moving on a rope team whose margin for error had effectively closed. The instruction he had been given by expedition leader Pasquale Scaturro on the way home set the next two decades of his work: do not let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do. What followed was not a sequence of stunts. It was the construction of an argument about how teams operate when the environment does not cooperate. The Seven Summits by 2002, Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on a tandem in 2010, and in 2014 the full 277-mile kayak descent of the Grand Canyon with blinded Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell. Each expedition is a case study in role assignment, communication discipline, and trust allocation under degraded information. The intellectual output sits alongside the physical one. “Touch the Top of the World” was published in twelve countries and nine languages and became the basis of a documentary that won first prize at 21 international film festivals. “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon,” co-written with Buddy Levy, took an Honorable Mention at the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards and a 2018 Colorado Book Awards finalist spot. “The Adversity Advantage,” co-written with Paul Stoltz, moves the same material into an explicit business register. In 2005, Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA, a nonprofit that now works with veterans, youth, people with disabilities, and full-time caregivers. It is where the speaking work connects back to a working practice: the No Barriers Life is not a slogan, it is the operating code the organisation teaches and the argument the book defends. Key speaking topics Decision-making under incomplete information Rope-team leadership and trust allocation The No Barriers Life as an organisational operating code Resilience as a team discipline, not an individual trait Innovation and problem-solving under constraint Inclusive leadership and diverse-ability teams Navigating reinvention after a defining achievement Ideal for Executive teams preparing for high-stakes decisions where the data will not be complete in time CHROs and culture leads building resilience and belonging into the organisational operating model, not bolting it on Leadership offsites for transformation, integration, or turnaround programmes Veteran-heavy, disability-community, or inclusion-focused audiences where lived authority matters Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how to lead a mixed-ability, mixed-experience team through a decision with partial information Named protocols from expedition practice that transfer directly into executive decision rooms A sharper sense of the difference between individual grit and team discipline, and why resilience only compounds when it is built into the team Permission to treat constraint as a design input rather than a deficit A concrete reference point, the No Barriers Life, that leaders can carry back into their own language

Why organisations work with Farah Nanji A working framework for high-pressure performance built from a decade inside Formula 1 culture and a decade as the touring artist NINJA, two domains where small lapses are publicly visible. A founder’s view of building a private leadership community, Regents Racing, that uses motorsport psychology as a development tool for executives and members. A rare first-person account of rewiring cognitive function around dyspraxia, delivered as a TEDx keynote at the Luxembourg Philharmonie and translated into practical lessons on neurodivergence at work. A reference network drawn from Mission Makers, the podcast she founded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which has hosted leaders across music, motorsport and business. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Regents Racing, a private leadership community using motorsport psychology, with roots at Regent’s University London. CEO of The Formula Mind, Regents Racing’s executive-facing subsidiary exploring Formula 1 as a lens for leadership and peak performance. TEDx speaker at TEDxLuxembourgCity, 2019, delivered at the Luxembourg Philharmonie. Producer and host of Mission Makers, a podcast launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Lecturer at Regent’s University London and Point Blank Music School. Performing artist as NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, Goodwood Festival of Speed, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum. Biography Formula 1 teams treat composure as an engineered system. Sleep, nutrition, debrief routines and pre-race protocols are sequenced so that the driver can make sound decisions when the cost of a wrong one is highest. Regents Racing was built to translate that discipline into a leadership setting, taking senior executives and members through experiences that pressure-test how they prepare, recover and decide. The organisation began in 2011 at Regent’s University London as a community of competitive drivers and has grown into a private network with programming around Formula 1 weekends in Monaco, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, the Goodwood Festival of Speed and factory tours. Its executive-facing subsidiary, The Formula Mind, sits closer to senior leadership development. A second strand of the work comes from a personal record. Diagnosed with dyspraxia at 15, Nanji built a parallel career as the touring artist NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum. Her TEDx talk at the Luxembourg Philharmonie in 2019 set out how she rewired cognitive function around the condition, and that account is now a core part of her keynote work on neurodivergence and resilience. The third strand is Mission Makers, the podcast she launched during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020. The show has interviewed leaders across music, motorsport and business, and it doubles as her research engine: the conversations feed the frameworks she brings into the room when she speaks. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under pressure Formula 1 psychology and peak performance Resilience and self-leadership Neurodivergence and dyspraxia at work High-performance teams Entrepreneurship and founding a community-based business Music, creativity and performance discipline Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes focused on composure and decision-making under pressure Boards and ExCo audiences exploring high-performance culture DEI, talent and HR audiences working on neurodivergence and inclusive performance Conferences seeking a hybrid keynote and live performance from a single artist Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what high-performance preparation, recovery and debrief actually look like in Formula 1, and where the parallels to executive work hold A first-person account of building cognitive routines around dyspraxia, with direct application for neurodivergent talent in the workforce A clearer sense of how leaders sustain composure when the margin for error is thin A founder’s perspective on building a private community business that crosses motorsport, music and leadership

Why organisations work with Farrah Storr She has repositioned three major consumer media brands through structural decline in print and can speak with evidence about what actually protects audience, authority, and commercial performance when the category is shrinking. She launched Women’s Health UK from a three-person team with minimal budget into what industry records call the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, a concrete case of building inside a constraint. She crossed from legacy publishing to Substack and now runs its international writer business, so she has operator experience on both sides of the media disruption that most leaders only read about. Her book The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method give her a published leadership argument on how individuals and teams perform in conditions most organisations try to engineer away. Her MBE for services to Media and Diversity, her Social Mobility Commissioner role and her National Theatre board seat give her a public record on social mobility and diversity in creative industries that goes beyond corporate talking points. Biography highlights Head of Substack International, previously Head of Writer Partnerships at Substack UK. Editor-in-Chief, ELLE UK, 2019 to 2021. Editor-in-Chief, Cosmopolitan UK, 2015 to 2019, where the title became the UK’s number-one women’s glossy. Launch Editor-in-Chief, Women’s Health UK, from 2012. MBE, 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to Media and Diversity. Commissioner, Social Mobility Commission, from 2018; Board Member, National Theatre, from 2021. Author, The Discomfort Zone: How to Get What You Want by Living Fearlessly, Piatkus, 2018. BSME Editor of the Year 2012, 2018, 2020; PPA Editor of the Year 2018, 2019. TEDxExeter speaker, 2018, “The Discomfort Zone”. Biography Women’s Health UK was a three-person team with almost no budget when Farrah Storr launched it in 2012. By industry count it became the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, and the pattern repeated at the titles that followed. Cosmopolitan UK, where she was Editor-in-Chief from 2015, became the country’s number-one women’s glossy inside her tenure. In 2019 she moved to ELLE UK to do a similar job on the luxury end of the same portfolio. Her argument as an operator is that consumer brands hold their authority through hard editorial judgement under constraint, not through more budget. That case is easier to make now because she has left the category she was running. In 2021 she joined Substack as the first Head of Writer Partnerships in the UK, building the writer base that anchors the platform in this market, and has since stepped up to lead Substack International. That arc, from print consumer titles into the paid newsletter platform that is reshaping them, is unusually clean. It gives her a credible view on what moves with a writer, what stays with a brand, and what the economics of direct subscription actually demand from a team. Her book The Discomfort Zone, published by Piatkus in 2018, sets out the BMD method, her shorthand for Brief Moments of Discomfort as a training discipline for individuals and teams. It is read alongside the public work: her 2018 appointment as a Commissioner on the Social Mobility Commission, her 2021 appointment to the board of the National Theatre, and the 2024 MBE for services to Media and Diversity. Key speaking topics Brand reinvention in consumer media Leading through structural change and category decline Platform economics and the paid newsletter shift The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method Social mobility and diversity in creative industries Women in leadership Editorial judgement as commercial discipline Ideal for CMOs, editorial leaders and heads of content in consumer brands, publishing, and media CEOs and executive teams running heritage brands through audience and format change CHROs and leadership programmes focused on leading in constrained, shrinking or contested categories Networks and conferences on women’s leadership, social mobility and diversity in creative industries Audience outcomes A named operator’s read on what actually protects brand authority when a category is contracting. A working view of the paid newsletter shift from the inside of the platform now reshaping consumer media. A concrete account of launching and repositioning brands on small teams and tight budgets. A usable leadership argument from the Discomfort Zone on how people and teams perform in uncomfortable conditions. A credible perspective on social mobility and diversity in the creative industries, grounded in public roles and personal record.

Why organisations work with Frits van Paasschen Two Fortune 500 CEO seats, Coors Brewing and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, give him a perspective most disruption speakers do not have: he has actually run the kind of company being disrupted, with shareholders, a board, and a quarter to report. Author of The Disruptors’ Feast, a book built from travel to more than 100 countries and interviews with operators rather than academics, which gives board conversations a concrete evidence base rather than a theoretical one. Still sits inside the rooms he advises. Current directorships at Amadeus, Williams-Sonoma, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder mean his view of governance under disruption is current, not retrospective. Credible on the international dimension in a way US-centric speakers are not. Dutch-American, ran Nike’s EMEA business out of the Netherlands, speaks five languages, led Starwood during its China expansion. A Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellowship and a Harvard MBA Teaching Fellowship in Economics signal the same thing his book does: he treats the CEO job as an intellectual problem, not a performance. Biography highlights President and CEO, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 2007 to 2015 President and CEO, Coors Brewing Company, 2005 to 2007 Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nike Author, The Disruptors’ Feast: How to Avoid Being Devoured in Today’s Rapidly Changing Global Economy Current directorships at Amadeus IT Group, Williams-Sonoma (Chair, Audit and Finance Committee), dsm-firmenich, and Sonder Holdings Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute; MBA, Harvard Business School; BA Economics and Biology, Amherst College Biography Starwood Hotels and Resorts was acquired by Marriott in 2016. In the years immediately before that, the company was navigating Airbnb, the rise of China as its fastest-growing market, a mobile-first guest, and an activist investor. Frits van Paasschen ran it through most of that period, from 2007 to 2015, having arrived from the CEO seat at Coors Brewing and, before that, Nike’s EMEA business. Three different consumer industries, three different disruption stories, one operator. That operating lineage is what makes his view on disruption unusual. The Disruptors’ Feast, his 2017 book, is not a consultant’s map of “the future of” anything. It is reporting, drawn from more than 100 countries he has worked in or travelled to, on how the combination of connectivity, demographic shift, and capital flows actually lands inside companies. The argument is that most incumbents do not lose to a single disruptor; they lose to the compounding of several forces they treated as separate problems. He remains inside the governance conversation rather than outside commentating on it. He chairs the Audit and Finance Committee at Williams-Sonoma, sits on the boards of Amadeus, dsm-firmenich, and Sonder, and recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute. That combination matters for a speaking audience of directors and C-suite leaders: when he talks about how a board should read a strategic threat or a management succession under pressure, he is describing the seat he is currently in. The value for a serious leadership audience is not the disruption taxonomy. It is watching a former public-company CEO think out loud about the decisions he got right, the ones he did not, and what a director should actually be asking when the operating model starts to strain. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Global strategy and international expansion Board governance in volatile markets Consumer and hospitality business transformation CEO decision-making and accountability Cross-cultural leadership of global organisations Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors working through strategic threats to the core business CEO and C-suite offsites where the agenda is how to lead an incumbent through sustained disruption Global consumer, retail, hospitality, and travel-industry leadership audiences Senior strategy, transformation, and corporate development teams inside multinationals Audience outcomes A sharper read on which disruptive forces compound inside an incumbent and which are noise A working vocabulary for how boards and CEOs should talk about risk, governance, and pace of change together rather than separately Specific, named examples from Starwood, Coors, Nike, and the companies he now sits on the boards of, rather than generic case studies A more honest framework for what a global leadership role actually requires, from someone who has run one on three continents

Why organisations work with Gamal Fahnbulleh A working news anchor on ITV Granada Reports and ITV National News bulletins, which means the room gets the real calibre of live interviewer, not a retired name lending their profile. Chairs major sector conferences on the record, including the Advertising Association’s LEAD North and the Great Northern Conference at Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield, which tells a booker he can hold a senior business audience. Comfortable across formats that most speakers are not: panel moderation, awards hosting, after-dinner remarks, keynote conversation, fireside Q and A, and virtual hybrid sessions. Brings a serious journalistic backbone to the hosting role: Manchester politics and international politics graduate, postgraduate broadcast journalism at City, an embed with the British Army in Afghanistan behind him, so the room trusts him on substantive subject matter. Recognised by his own industry for presenting craft: a 2021 Royal Television Society nomination for Best Regional Presenter, and a contributor to ITV Granada’s RTS North West Award for Best Regional Story in 2010. Biography highlights Co-presenter of ITV Granada Reports for North West England and the Isle of Man, anchoring alongside Lucy Meacock since January 2021. Relief presenter on ITV National News bulletins, including News at Ten. Former Sky News anchor across Sky News Breakfast, Sky News Tonight and Sky News at Ten. Chair and host at the Advertising Association’s LEAD North conference and the Great Northern Conference 2021 at Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield. Nominated for Best Regional Presenter, Royal Television Society, 2021. Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism, City, University of London; BA Honours in Politics and History and MA in International Politics, University of Manchester. Biography Most conference agendas collapse at the join between sessions. The keynote lands, the panel files on, and the conversation loses altitude because no one in the chair knows how to translate energy from one format into the next. That translation is the craft a working news anchor brings to a live room, and it is why senior booker teams at the Advertising Association’s LEAD North and the Great Northern Conference in Sheffield have handed Gamal Fahnbulleh the microphone. He is a working journalist first. He co-presents ITV Granada Reports for the North West of England and the Isle of Man with Lucy Meacock, anchors relief shifts on ITV National News bulletins, and previously held anchor positions across Sky News Breakfast, Sky News Tonight and Sky News at Ten. His industry nominated him for Best Regional Presenter at the Royal Television Society Awards in 2021. The journalistic authority is earned. He read Politics and History at the University of Manchester, added an MA in International Politics, and trained in broadcast journalism at City, University of London before winning one of ten places on the ITV News Group Bursary Scheme. He later embedded with the 1st Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment on a tour of Afghanistan, contributing to ITV Granada’s RTS North West Award for Best Regional Story in 2010. For corporate clients, the practical value is simple. He can host an awards night, chair a panel of chief executives, conduct a fireside interview, and moderate a hybrid session without the room feeling a change in gear. He is booked for hosting craft, and he treats every brief as live television. Key speaking topics Conference chairing and panel moderation Awards night and after-dinner hosting Fireside interviews with senior leaders Broadcast journalism and live news craft Reporting from conflict zones and embedded military journalism Regional economic and leadership conversations International affairs and global news context Ideal for Annual conferences requiring a chair who can hold a senior executive audience for a full day. Awards ceremonies and gala dinners that need a host with live-broadcast pacing and on-camera presence. Panel events where CEOs, investors or public-sector leaders expect real questions rather than polite ones. Media, advertising and regional-growth conferences where journalistic credibility matters to the room. Audience outcomes A tightly run agenda that stays on time across keynote, panel and audience-Q-and-A transitions. Sharper panel conversations, because the chair knows when to follow up and when to move on. Senior speakers drawn out on the specific points the audience came to hear, not the ones they rehearsed. A room that leaves feeling the event was serious, not stage-managed.

Why organisations work with Garry Kasparov He is the person who sat across the board from Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997. When he talks about AI and human judgement, the source material is his own. He turns chess into a working vocabulary for executive decision-making, separating strategy from tactics in a way senior leaders can use the next morning. As a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and long-time Security Ambassador for Avast, he speaks about AI, cybersecurity and privacy from inside the conversation, not as a commentator on it. His books “How Life Imitates Chess” and “Deep Thinking” give audiences a durable framework and a shared reference point after the session ends. He brings a second register that few speakers in this space can match: a first-hand view of Russia, Putin and the fragility of democratic institutions, grounded in decades of activism and the book “Winter Is Coming.” Biography highlights Youngest undisputed World Chess Champion at 22, in 1985, after defeating Anatoly Karpov. Held the world number one ranking from 1986 until his retirement from professional chess in 2005. Played IBM’s Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997, the first reigning world champion to lose a match to a computer under tournament conditions. Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, working on human-machine collaboration. Founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative; former chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Author of “How Life Imitates Chess,” “Winter Is Coming” and “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.” Biography In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion under tournament conditions for the first time in history. The champion on the other side of the board was Garry Kasparov. Nearly three decades later, the questions that match raised about human judgement and machine intelligence are now the everyday questions of corporate strategy. Kasparov has spent the years since making those questions usable for leaders. At the Oxford Martin School, where he is a Senior Visiting Fellow, he works on the evolving relationship between humans and technology. As Security Ambassador for Avast, he has spent nearly a decade inside the cybersecurity and AI debate, not commenting from outside it. His book “Deep Thinking,” written with Mig Greengard, argues that machines that think are not the end of human creativity but a forcing function for it. The chess career underwrites all of it. Becoming the youngest undisputed world champion at 22, holding the number one ranking for almost twenty years, and defending the title across multiple cycles against Anatoly Karpov gave him a working vocabulary for strategy, tactics, preparation and competitive psychology. “How Life Imitates Chess” is the book executives quote back to him. The distinction he draws between long-term strategy and short-term tactics is one of the most portable ideas a senior team can bring out of a keynote. There is a second strand to the work, and buyers should know it is there. Kasparov founded the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017 and chaired the Human Rights Foundation for over a decade. His book “Winter Is Coming” was one of the earliest serious warnings about Vladimir Putin’s intentions, written well before events made that view consensus. For audiences who want a voice on geopolitical risk alongside the AI and strategy material, he delivers it with the same directness. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and human-machine collaboration Strategic thinking and decision-making under pressure Cybersecurity, privacy and digital freedom The future of work in an age of intelligent machines Russia, Putin and the defence of democratic institutions Leadership, preparation and competitive performance Ideal for CEOs, boards and executive teams rethinking strategy and decision rights as AI moves deeper into the business. CIOs, CISOs and technology leaders navigating cybersecurity, AI adoption and trust. Leadership and talent events where audiences want a working model for strategy versus tactics, not a motivational talk. Policy, risk and government affairs audiences who want an informed voice on Russia and the state of liberal democracy. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between strategy and tactics that senior teams can apply to their own decisions the week after the session. A realistic view of what AI changes in knowledge work, from a speaker who lived the original turning point. Sharper questions about where human judgement still adds value, and where defending it is a waste of effort. A first-hand perspective on Russia and authoritarian risk that frames geopolitical uncertainty in concrete terms. A shared reference point, drawn from chess, that stays useful in strategy conversations long after the event.