Leadership

Why organisations work with Sasha De Sola Two decades of live, unedited high-stakes performance at one of the world’s top ballet companies, with the recovery patterns and pre-performance discipline that go with it. A perspective on creative work as a managed practice, not an inspiration: rehearsal, mentorship and craft repetition as the actual mechanism behind so-called artistry. Credibility on resilience earned through specific recoveries, including injury and the prolonged shutdown of live performance during the pandemic, not abstract theory. An inaugural fellow of San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders programme, currently being developed as a future arts leader through executive coaching and an international placement at the Royal Swedish Ballet. A bilingual Venezuelan American voice on belonging, mentorship and the long arc from selective mutism in childhood to lead casting on a global stage. Biography highlights Principal Dancer, San Francisco Ballet (2017 to present); named Diane B. Wilsey Principal Dancer in 2020. Trained at the Kirov Academy of Ballet, Washington D.C., on full merit scholarship, and at the Paris Opera Ballet School. BA in Performing Arts, Summa Cum Laude, Saint Mary’s College of California; completed Harvard Business School’s Crossover Into Business programme. Inaugural fellow, San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders artist-development programme (2024 to 2026), with a placement at the Royal Swedish Ballet under Nicolas Le Riche. Medallist at Varna, World and USA International Ballet Competitions. Co-founder of The Ascendant, a charitable initiative supporting Dancin Power and San Francisco Ballet; board member, Dancin Power; advisory board, Pointe Magazine. Biography A dancer who has carried lead roles in Swan Lake, Giselle and The Sleeping Beauty does not get there on talent. She gets there on the discipline of repeating small corrections until the body holds them under stage lights, with an audience watching, on a night when the knee is not quite right. That is the territory Sasha De Sola speaks from. She was named an apprentice at San Francisco Ballet in 2006, joined the corps in 2007, was promoted to soloist in 2012 and to Principal Dancer in 2017. In 2020 she was appointed the Diane B. Wilsey Principal Dancer, one of the company’s named principal positions. Her training is classical: the Kirov Academy in Washington D.C. on full merit scholarship, with a 2004 scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School and medals at Varna, World and USA International Ballet Competitions. The intellectual frame she brings to leadership audiences was built deliberately. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Saint Mary’s College of California with a BA in Performing Arts and completed Harvard Business School’s Crossover Into Business programme in 2022. In 2024 she was named one of two inaugural fellows of San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders programme, a two-year curriculum that pairs executive coaching with an international placement shadowing Nicolas Le Riche at the Royal Swedish Ballet. What she gives a room is the practical content of staying composed when the conditions move. Recovery from injury. Performing through the prolonged closure of live theatre. The long mentorship work that, away from the stage, sits behind every confident debut. A Venezuelan American who was diagnosed with selective mutism as a child, she also speaks credibly on belonging and on the slow craft of building a voice in a setting that initially feels foreign. Key speaking topics Composure and recovery under sustained performance pressure Creative discipline as a managed practice Mentorship and craft development across long careers Resilience after injury and prolonged disruption Cross-cultural identity and belonging in high-performance settings Leadership lessons from elite artistic environments Ideal for Leadership offsites and senior-team retreats focused on performance under pressure CHRO and people-leader conferences on talent development, mentorship and craft Women’s leadership programmes and ERG events on resilience and belonging Cultural, arts and philanthropic audiences seeking a credible artist-leader voice Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what composure looks like in practice, not as a trait Specific examples of how recovery from setback is structured, not improvised A more honest read on what mentorship costs and what it produces in elite environments A counterweight to the language of “talent” with the language of repeated craft

Why organisations work with Jean Alesi A decade at the front of Formula One with Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan, racing wheel to wheel with Senna, Prost and Schumacher. The reference points are first-hand, not researched. A record that names the exact problem leaders are buying for: 32 podiums and one Grand Prix win from 201 starts, including the joint F1 record for most podiums before a first victory. Composure across years of near misses, not a single highlight reel. Operated inside Ferrari from 1991 to 1995, one of the most scrutinised high-performance environments in sport. Useful for leaders dealing with intense external pressure, internal politics and constant public judgement. Continued at elite level after F1 across the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500. A practical case study in reinventing a career when the original platform ends. Knight of the Legion of Honour (France, 2006) and Pirelli ambassador since 2013. Credible to senior European audiences without needing translation. Biography highlights 201 Formula One Grand Prix starts between 1989 and 2001 for Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan. Winner of the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix for Ferrari; 32 career podiums; joint F1 record holder for most podium finishes before a first win. 1989 International Formula 3000 Champion with Eddie Jordan Racing; 1987 French Formula Three Champion. Five race wins in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with Mercedes between 2002 and 2006. Knight of the Legion of Honour, awarded by the French Republic in 2006. Pirelli ambassador since 2013 and co-founder of the Jean Alesi Esports Academy with Matteo Bobbi. Biography Most public-facing roles are evaluated on outcomes that are obvious to outsiders. Formula One is one of the few where the audience watches the process in real time, every fortnight, for years on end. That is the discipline Jean Alesi grew up inside. Alesi raced 201 Grands Prix between 1989 and 2001 for Tyrrell, Ferrari, Benetton, Sauber, Prost and Jordan. He took one victory, at the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix for Ferrari, alongside 32 podiums. He also holds the joint Formula One record for most podiums before a first win. Read together, those numbers describe a long career of being a few decisions or a few seconds short of the result, and continuing to perform at the front anyway. The Ferrari years gave him something most speakers on resilience do not have: five seasons inside one of the most scrutinised teams in professional sport, in an era that included Senna, Prost and Schumacher. The work was not only driving. It was holding personal performance steady inside a public organisation under constant internal change and external judgement. After Formula One he won races in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with Mercedes, returned to Le Mans with AF Corse, and entered the 2012 Indianapolis 500. France made him a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2006. Today, as a Pirelli ambassador and co-founder of the Jean Alesi Esports Academy, his focus is on developing the next generation of competitors, which is the same problem senior leaders face when their job moves from doing the work to building the people who will. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained competitive pressure Composure and decision-making at the limit High-performance team dynamics inside elite organisations Recovery from public setback and near miss Career reinvention after a defining role ends Mentoring and developing next-generation talent Ideal for C-suite and board audiences responsible for the tone of an organisation under scrutiny Sales leadership and commercial teams operating against measurable competitors High-performance environments inside automotive, sport, luxury and engineering Talent and leadership development programmes focused on succession and reinvention Audience outcomes A first-person account of operating at the front of Formula One across the Senna, Prost and Schumacher era A clear view of how elite teams hold composure when results do not come on the expected timeline Specific reference points for handling external pressure, internal change and public judgement at once A working model for moving from individual performance to building the next generation of performers

Why organisations work with Riccardo Agostini Eight national and international titles across single-seater and GT racing, including three consecutive Italian GT Sprint championships and the Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final. The credibility is documented, not narrated. A working understanding of how a small, specialised team performs under repeated time pressure. Pit crew, race engineer, and driver decisions land in the same second, and Agostini speaks to how that coordination is built and held. Instructor experience at Centro Internazionale Guida Sicura, the Italian advanced driving school. He coaches as well as competes, which translates into a session that can teach, not only inspire. Italian and English delivery for European corporate audiences without translation overhead. Biography highlights Three-time Italian GT Sprint champion (2019, 2020, 2021) and 2021 Italian GT Endurance champion. 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America champion and Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final winner. 2015 Porsche Carrera Cup Italia champion; 2012 Italian Formula Three champion (European and Italian series). Tested a Ferrari Formula One car in November 2012 as the Italian F3 rookie prize. Current factory-supported driver competing for Richard Mille AF Corse in the 2025 European Le Mans Series and the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans. Development driver and instructor at Centro Internazionale Guida Sicura, founded by former F1 driver Andrea De Adamich. Biography A GT car at racing speed sends information to the driver faster than most people can read a single line of text. The driver acts on it, the engineer on the pit wall reads telemetry from the same lap, and the crew prepares the stop. Three roles, one decision, repeated for two hours. That is the working environment Agostini has competed in since 2015. His titles span four manufacturer programmes. Porsche Carrera Cup Italia in 2015. Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America and the Super Trofeo World Final in 2017. Italian GT Sprint with Audi Sport Italia in 2019, 2020, and 2021, alongside the Italian GT Endurance title in 2021. He now races a Ferrari 296 GT3 for Richard Mille AF Corse in the European Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The relevance to leadership audiences sits in two places. The first is composure: how a driver handles a bad lap, a strategy call that goes against him, or a mechanical failure with thirty minutes still to run. The second is coordination: how a driver, engineer, and crew of specialists make a sequence of decisions in compressed time without re-litigating each one. Both translate cleanly to senior teams operating in markets where the response window has shrunk. Agostini also coaches. As an instructor at Centro Internazionale Guida Sicura, the high-performance driving school founded by former F1 driver Andrea De Adamich, he develops younger drivers and corporate clients. That teaching role is what differentiates him from a circuit-only speaker. He has practised the translation from the cockpit to the classroom, which is the part that most motorsport profiles describe but few have actually done. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team coordination in compressed decision windows Recovery from mistakes and setbacks Coaching and talent development Discipline and preparation as competitive advantage Resilience through career uncertainty Cross-cultural team leadership in international motorsport Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership teams operating in high-frequency decision environments Operations and manufacturing leaders building cross-functional team coordination Talent and L&D directors designing high-performance coaching programmes Corporate hospitality programmes for automotive, engineering, and luxury brand audiences Audience outcomes A working model for how composure is built and held, drawn from cockpit experience rather than theory Specific examples of how driver, engineer, and crew compress decisions into seconds without losing alignment A view of how mistakes are processed inside a race weekend so that the next session is not compromised A coach’s perspective on developing younger team members under demanding conditions

Why organisations work with Tracey Neville She has the rare credential of turning a chronically second-tier national team into a major-tournament winner inside one Games cycle, against opponents with deeper systems and bigger budgets. She speaks credibly about selection, the hardest part of senior leadership, because she made the call to drop senior England players whose form had slipped, and held the room through it. Her coaching record holds up to scrutiny: Superleague titles at Manchester Thunder, three Netball Europe Open Championships, World Cup medals at both ends of her England tenure, and gold at the Commonwealth Games. An MBE for services to netball and a continuing senior coaching role in Australia’s Super Netball mean her authority is current, not retrospective. Biography highlights Head Coach, England Netball, 2015 to 2019. Gold medal, 2018 Commonwealth Games. Bronze medals, 2015 and 2019 Netball World Cups, as Head Coach. Head Coach, Manchester Thunder; Netball Superleague champions, 2012 and 2014. MBE, 2016, for services to netball. 81 senior caps for England as a player; bronze at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and 1999 World Championships. Sky Sports netball pundit; Vitality ambassador; current senior coaching role in Australia’s Super Netball. Biography England had never beaten Australia or New Zealand to win a major netball title. In April 2018, on the Gold Coast, the team Tracey Neville had taken over three years earlier as an interim appointment beat Australia in the final by a single goal. That result reset the order of a sport that two countries had owned for forty years. The job she walked into in 2015 was a programme that had earned bronzes and lost finals. Neville had a Superleague pedigree from Manchester Thunder, where she had won the domestic title twice, and 81 England caps as a player, but no senior international head coaching record. She made the appointment permanent inside six months by taking England to bronze at the 2015 World Cup, then spent the next two years rebuilding selection, fitness standards, and the squad’s tolerance for being told it was not yet good enough. What she offers corporate audiences is the substance of how that rebuild was done. The recognisable parts of high-performance coaching, marginal gains and culture work, sit underneath harder questions about who plays, who is dropped, who is told the truth about their form, and how a head coach holds the room when those decisions are unpopular. She is direct about the cost of those calls, including her own, which gives senior leaders a usable account of selection and accountability rather than a motivational set piece. Her authority is also current. After leaving England in 2019 she moved into senior coaching roles in Australia’s Super Netball, the strongest domestic league in the sport, which is the same competitive environment she beat at the Commonwealth Games. She holds an MBE for services to netball and continues as a Sky Sports pundit on the international game. Key speaking topics High-performance team building under competitive pressure Selection and accountability in senior leadership Leading through transition and interim mandates Resilience and composure in decisive moments Inclusive team culture in elite environments Succession and bench strength Ideal for Executive teams rebuilding standards after a period of underperformance HR and talent leaders working on selection, succession, and bench depth Sales and commercial leaders running through a major competitive cycle Women’s leadership programmes and senior development cohorts Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a head coach makes and communicates hard selection decisions A working model of building winning culture without abandoning standards under pressure Honest perspective on the personal cost of accountability at the top of a programme Practical reference points for leading a team through a defined competitive cycle

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 Nicholas Webb He has filed and won more than 40 US patents in healthcare, consumer, and industrial technologies. The advice on innovation comes from someone who has run the full cycle from invention to commercial product, not from a researcher reporting on it. The Innovation Mandate and What Customers Crave are used inside operating companies as design references for innovation programmes and customer experience strategy, not as airport reading. Global Gurus has named him a Top 30 customer service authority for multiple consecutive years, a credential held alongside a working consulting practice with boards of multibillion-dollar companies through LeaderLogic. His healthcare work is unusually concrete for a speaker in this space: a documentary, The Healthcare Cure, that won the Sedona International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award, plus recent AI patent filings in patient monitoring. He builds keynotes around a specific commercial problem the buyer names, rather than a fixed deck. Useful when a board wants a session calibrated to an actual strategic decision, not a generic future-of overview. Biography highlights More than 40 US patents granted, spanning healthcare devices, consumer products, and industrial technologies, including one of the world’s smallest medical implants for ocular surface disease. Author of What Customers Crave, The Innovation Mandate, What Customers Hate, Happy Work, Lucid Leadership, and The Healthcare Mandate. CEO of LeaderLogic LLC, advising boards of multibillion-dollar companies on innovation and customer strategy. Named to Global Gurus’ Top 30 Customer Service authorities list for multiple consecutive years. Director of The Healthcare Cure, a documentary on US healthcare reform that won the Audience Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival in 2021. Former Chief Innovation Officer and adjunct professor at a leading US medical school, awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for contributions to healthcare. Biography A patent is a useful filter. It is one of the few credentials in this field that requires a working invention, a defensible claim, and the discipline to take an idea through to a commercial product. Nicholas Webb has more than 40 of them, across healthcare devices, consumer goods, and industrial technologies, including one of the world’s smallest medical implants for ocular surface disease and an early wearable. That track record sits behind everything he says about innovation. He runs LeaderLogic LLC, a consulting practice that works with boards of multibillion-dollar companies on innovation strategy and customer experience. His books, including The Innovation Mandate, What Customers Crave, What Customers Hate, and Lucid Leadership, function as design references for those engagements rather than standalone trade titles. Global Gurus has placed him among the world’s top 30 customer service authorities for multiple consecutive years. The healthcare work runs in parallel and gives the rest of his thinking a useful test bed. He directed The Healthcare Cure, a documentary on the structural failures of US healthcare that won the Audience Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival in 2021, and continues to file AI patents in patient monitoring and mood-state analysis. Healthcare is where his views on innovation, customer experience, and AI are stress-tested in a high-stakes operating environment. For SA clients the practical value is this: a speaker who can sit with a board, take in a specific commercial question, and respond with a session built around the inventor’s logic of constraints, hypotheses, prototypes, and evidence. The output is not inspiration. It is a clearer view of where innovation pays and where customer experience is quietly costing the business growth. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed commercial discipline Customer experience and the growth agenda AI in operating strategy Healthcare transformation and patient experience Leadership clarity under hyper-complexity Workforce engagement and talent retention Board-level innovation governance Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing innovation strategy or customer experience performance CEOs, CCOs, and CMOs accountable for growth in mature or commoditised categories Healthcare executives and provider networks navigating clinical, workforce, and AI transformation simultaneously Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads building an internal innovation operating model Audience outcomes A clearer view of where current innovation activity is producing returns and where it is absorbing resource without compounding effect A practical model for customer experience design grounded in identifying what specific customer types love and hate, rather than aggregate satisfaction scores A board-level reading of AI as an operating discipline, with examples from healthcare and consumer technology A working definition of leadership clarity that holds up under complexity, drawn from Lucid Leadership Language and structure to take innovation conversations out of culture talk and into commercial governance

Why organisations work with Willie Kirk He has done the work that most leadership speakers describe. Four head-coach appointments across the women’s professional game, each with a different brief: build, promote, contend, restructure. He speaks from inside the professionalisation of women’s football, one of the fastest organisational transitions in modern sport. The lessons on growth without losing coherence are first-hand, not theoretical. He won a domestic cup in his first full season at Hibernian and was named Scottish Women’s Football Manager of the Year in 2013, which is a useful early signal that the results travel with him. He took Everton Women to a 2020 FA Cup Final from a position outside the elite tier, the kind of overperformance that buyers want to understand mechanically, not anecdotally. Biography highlights UEFA Pro Licence coach with over 15 years in senior management Former head coach of Hibernian, Bristol City, Everton and Leicester City Women Scottish Cup winner and Scottish Women’s Premier League Cup winner with Hibernian Scottish Women’s Football Manager of the Year, 2013 FA Women’s Super League Manager of the Month, November 2019 (Everton) 2020 FA Cup finalist as Everton head coach Current head coach, Djurgardens IF Women, Swedish Damallsvenskan Biography Bristol City Women had just been relegated from the Women’s Super League when Willie Kirk took the job in 2015. A year later they were promoted back. That sequence, inheriting a side at its lowest point and returning it to the top flight, is the pattern that has defined the rest of his career. He is a turnaround manager who arrives where the standards have slipped and the dressing room has stopped believing in itself. He had done it earlier at Hibernian Women, where his first season produced a Scottish Cup and where he was later named Scottish Women’s Football Manager of the Year. He did it again at Everton, reaching the 2020 FA Cup Final with a club that had been a long way off that conversation, and picking up a WSL Manager of the Month award in the process. The work is repeatable because the method is repeatable. What organisations get from him is the operating detail of that method. How to read a room of senior performers who have stopped trusting each other. How to set standards that hold under pressure rather than collapse on the first hard week. How to grow a function quickly without losing the discipline that made it work in the first place, which is the live problem facing any business scaling a high-performing team. His career has run alongside the most rapid professionalisation any sport has seen in a generation. Women’s football has gone from semi-professional to broadcast asset inside his coaching lifetime. He speaks from inside that change, with the credibility of someone who has had to manage talent, expectations and infrastructure all at once. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in underperforming teams Building team culture under scrutiny High performance and accountability Talent development in fast-growing organisations Resilience and composure for senior leaders Standards-setting and behaviour in elite environments Ideal for CEOs and executive teams inheriting underperforming functions HR and talent leaders responsible for performance culture Sales leadership and commercial teams under quota pressure Leadership development programmes for mid-to-senior managers Audience outcomes A clear picture of what high-performance culture actually requires in practice, not in slogan The specific behaviours a leader uses to reset standards without losing the team A working sense of how elite coaches manage performance, recovery and pressure across a season Permission to lead with clarity in environments where ambiguity has become the default

Why organisations work with Jonathan Morgan He took Leicester City Women from a regional fourth tier into the FA Women’s Super League, a multi-season programme of promotion and culture change that maps directly onto how organisations actually move performance. He carries the LMA Championship Manager of the Year award for the 2020–21 season, a peer-judged recognition from the body that governs professional football management in England. He speaks from the manager’s chair rather than the player’s, which is unusual in the sport-to-business category and more useful to executives running teams of their own. His media work for BBC Radio Leicester and Sky Sports has trained him to deliver tactical analysis in plain language to non-specialist audiences, which carries directly into corporate stages. Biography highlights Head coach, Sheffield United Women (2023–2024). Head coach, Burnley Women (2022–2023); team unbeaten for the first 16 league matches of the season. Head coach, Leicester City Women (2014–2021); led the club from FA Women’s Midlands Division One into the FA Women’s Super League for 2021–22. LMA Championship Manager of the Year, 2020–21. UEFA A Licence holder; UEFA Pro Licence candidate. Co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and pundit work for Sky Sports. Biography Leicester City Women were a regional side outside the top three tiers of English football when Jonathan Morgan took over as head coach in 2014. Seven seasons later they were in the FA Women’s Super League for the first time, with Morgan named LMA Championship Manager of the Year for the 2020–21 promotion campaign. That arc is the substance of what he carries into a business room. Building a senior team across a long programme of promotions, in a sport where budgets, scrutiny and the public scoreline all move at the same time, is closer to what most executives are trying to do than a single championship-winning season tends to be. He has held head coach roles since at Burnley Women, where his side began the 2022–23 campaign on a 16-match unbeaten league run, and at Sheffield United Women. Alongside the coaching career he has worked as a co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and as a Sky Sports pundit, which shapes the way he speaks on stage: a manager’s read of the game in language a non-specialist can follow. The corporate brief he handles best is leadership under pressure: how to hold a group together through losing periods, how to absorb scrutiny without losing the room, and how to plan a multi-year build when the league table will not wait for you. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Building a high-performing team from a low base Culture and standards inside elite sport Managing scrutiny and external noise Decision-making in losing periods Long-cycle programmes and promotion campaigns Communication and man-management Ideal for Sales and operational leaders running teams through long performance cycles. Executive offsites and conferences where leadership is the headline theme. After-dinner audiences at sector conferences and customer events. HR and people directors examining culture-building inside high-pressure teams. Audience outcomes A working picture of how an elite coach handles losing weeks, public criticism and squad morale at the same time. Specific examples from an FA Women’s Super League promotion campaign, with the decisions and trade-offs named. A usable language for talking about standards and culture inside a team, rather than as a slogan on a wall. A view of leadership from the manager’s seat, not the player’s, that translates more directly to the audience’s own roles.

Why organisations work with Chip Conley He turned a single boutique hotel into a 50-property group as CEO of Joie de Vivre, then mentored Brian Chesky through Airbnb’s hospitality build-out. Few speakers can speak from inside both an independent operator and a category-defining platform. His Modern Elder thesis gives leadership teams a usable language for intergenerational collaboration at a moment when most companies are still treating age as a liability rather than a capability. He applied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to corporate strategy in his book Peak and his 2010 TED talk, and the framework still reads as one of the more durable arguments for measuring culture, employee engagement, and customer experience as connected variables. The Modern Elder Academy he founded in 2018 is the only midlife wisdom school running at scale, with over 2,000 alumni and a second campus, which gives him real operating data on how mid-career professionals reset, retrain, and re-enter organisations. He is a New York Times bestselling author and three-time TED speaker, with books published across two decades that track the same throughline: human meaning as the underlying engine of commercial performance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he built from a single property in 1987 into a portfolio of around 50 boutique hotels. Former Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb, mentor to CEO Brian Chesky during the company’s expansion to hosts in 191 countries. Founder and Executive Chairman of Modern Elder Academy, with campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and more than 2,000 alumni. Three-time TED speaker, including “Measuring what makes life worthwhile” (2010) and his 2023 talk on the midlife chrysalis. New York Times bestselling author of Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, alongside Peak, Emotional Equations, The Rebel Rules, and Marketing That Matters. Stanford BA and MBA. Named Most Innovative CEO in the Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times and recipient of the hospitality industry’s 2012 Pioneer Award. Biography The conventional career arc treats age as a depreciation curve. Chip Conley has spent two decades arguing the opposite, and building the institutions to prove it. He founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality in San Francisco in 1987, ran it for nearly 24 years, and grew it into one of California’s largest boutique hotel groups, around 50 properties at its peak. The book that came out of that period, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, applied Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to employee, customer, and investor relationships, and remains the most cited articulation of his commercial argument that human meaning is the engine, not the decoration, of business performance. In 2013, Airbnb’s three founders asked him to become Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. He mentored Brian Chesky and helped translate a tech platform into a hospitality company operating with hosts in 191 countries. The label he picked up there, “modern elder”, became the seed of his next institution. The Modern Elder Academy, which he founded in 2018, has campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and has now run more than 2,000 mid-career professionals through structured programmes on transition, longevity, and the social contract between generations at work. His more recent books, Wisdom@Work and Learning to Love Midlife, push that thesis into the corporate agenda directly: age as a category of workforce diversity, midlife as a strategic asset, and the intergenerational team as a more accurate model of how organisations actually learn. The argument is grounded in operating experience, not commentary, which is why boards and executive teams increasingly book him to challenge the assumptions inside their own talent strategy. Key speaking topics The multigenerational workplace and the case for age as workforce diversity Modern Elder leadership and the redesign of mid-career Culture and employee engagement built on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Disruptive innovation in hospitality and platform businesses Customer experience as a function of internal culture Emotional intelligence in leadership Midlife transition, longevity, and workforce retention Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning talent strategy across five generations at work CEOs and boards facing attrition of senior expertise and weak intergenerational knowledge transfer Hospitality, travel, and consumer-facing leadership teams rebuilding culture as a commercial asset Executive development and leadership academy programmes focused on mid-career renewal and senior transition Audience outcomes A clearer operating definition of intergenerational collaboration, with concrete language for treating age as a diversity and capability question A reframed view of mid-career and senior employees as a strategic asset rather than a cost line A working model, drawn from Peak and Maslow, for connecting employee meaning, customer experience, and financial performance Specific, named examples from Joie de Vivre, Airbnb, and Modern Elder Academy that translate into practical policy and culture changes A more honest conversation inside the leadership team about ageism, longevity, and what wisdom is actually worth in commercial terms

Why organisations work with Martin Roll He wrote the reference text on Asian brand strategy. “Asian Brand Strategy”, named one of Strategy+Business’s Best Business Books on Marketing the year after publication, is still the credential boards reach for when they need someone who has thought seriously about brand building outside the Western frame. He sits inside the family enterprise field, not next to it. As INSEAD Distinguished Fellow at the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, he advises principals and next-generation leaders on succession, governance, and strategy with a practitioner’s view, not an academic’s distance. McKinsey retains him as a senior advisor on family business and family office mandates. That is a hard credential to fake, and a useful signal for boards that want strategy advice with the rigour of a tier-one firm and the candour of an outside operator. He moves credibly between two audiences most speakers cannot bridge: C-suites at multinational consumer companies looking at Asian growth, and principals of family-controlled enterprises wrestling with continuity. The same frame, branded value creation under contested ownership conditions, applies to both. Biography highlights Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD’s Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise; Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD. Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company on family business and family office strategy. Author of “Asian Brand Strategy” (Palgrave Macmillan), named a Strategy+Business Best Business Book on Marketing. Co-author of “The Future of Branding” with Kevin Lane Keller, Don E. Schultz and Rajendra K. Srivastava. Faculty across INSEAD, CEIBS and Nanyang Business School; guest lecturer at Harvard, Wharton, ESSEC, IE. Columnist at INSEAD Knowledge and Harvard Business Review; editor and host of the INSEAD Family Business Podcast. Biography Asian companies spent two decades being told that brand-building was a discipline they would eventually import. The argument in “Asian Brand Strategy” was the opposite. The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan and named a Best Business Book on Marketing by Strategy+Business, made the case that Asian firms would build global brands on their own terms, with their own founder dynamics, their own ownership structures, and their own customer logic. Two decades of work since then has tracked that thesis as it played out across consumer goods, luxury, and family-controlled conglomerates. That work runs through Martin Roll Company, the Singapore advisory firm Roll founded after 25 years of board and C-suite counsel to multinationals, Asian corporates, and global business families. He is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company on family business and family office strategy, and Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD’s Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise, where he leads research and teaching on the strategy and governance questions that decide whether family enterprises survive succession. His teaching reach is unusually wide. He sits on the faculty at INSEAD, CEIBS and Nanyang Business School and guest lectures at Harvard, Wharton, ESSEC, and IE. His writing appears regularly in INSEAD Knowledge and Harvard Business Review, and he edits and hosts the INSEAD Family Business Podcast, which has become one of the more substantive channels for next-generation leaders working through governance and continuity in private. The combined record matters because the questions he answers, how to build a brand outside the Western default, how to professionalise a family enterprise without breaking what made it work, are the kind boards usually meet through three different specialists. Roll holds the brief in one place, and writes about it with the discipline of someone who has had to deliver on it. Key speaking topics Asian brand strategy and global brand building Family business strategy and succession Family office governance and capital strategy Luxury brand management Leadership of family-controlled enterprises Asia growth strategy for multinational corporates Brand-led value creation Ideal for Boards and CEOs of consumer and luxury businesses pursuing Asian growth Principals and next-generation leaders of family-controlled enterprises Family office leadership and investment committees CMOs and brand strategy leadership at multinationals expanding in Asia Audience outcomes A clearer view of how Asian brand-building actually works, including where Western playbooks fail and where they translate. A practical frame for the strategy and governance decisions that determine whether a family enterprise survives the next generation. A sharper read on brand as a commercial asset on the balance sheet, not a marketing line item. A grounded view of what professionalising a family business requires, beyond org-chart changes.

Why organisations work with Gary Foote He is a current F1 Chief Information Officer, now at GM Performance Power Units, building the technology function for the Cadillac F1 power unit programme from the ground up. He ran the IT and digital operation at Haas F1 for a decade, taking the team from a start-up entry in 2016 to a competitive, data-driven constructor with global infrastructure. His remit at Haas covered IT, digital, facilities, operations, ESG and business continuity, which gives boards a realistic view of how sustainability and technology intersect inside a performance business. He has been named in the UK CIO 100 for five consecutive years and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, so the credibility holds up in a room of sitting CIOs. His track record spans Cosworth, Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes Grand Prix, covering six motorsport world championships, which lets him speak to high-performance culture without leaning on abstract frameworks. Biography highlights Chief Information Officer, GM Performance Power Units, the General Motors and TWG Global company delivering the Cadillac F1 power unit. Former CIO and Director of Sustainability at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, a role held for approximately ten years. Earlier senior technology roles at Mercedes Grand Prix, Brawn GP, Honda Racing F1 and Cosworth Technology. Fellow of the British Computer Society. Named in the UK CIO 100 five years running, 2021 to 2025. Trustee at Tove Learning Trust and active advocate for STEM education. Biography Haas F1 arrived on the grid in 2016 with two cars, a lean headcount and a blank technology estate. Gary Foote built the IT and digital backbone that made that entry possible, then spent a decade scaling it into the stack of a competitive constructor. His brief at Haas eventually covered IT, digital, facilities, ESG and business continuity, which is a wider surface than most corporate CIO roles carry. That is the frame he brings to boards: technology strategy shaped by the realities of logistics, carbon reporting, risk and culture inside one business. Today he is CIO at GM Performance Power Units, the General Motors and TWG Global company set up to build the Cadillac F1 power unit. He is doing again what most CIOs never get the chance to do once, which is stand up an elite-sport technology function from a clean sheet while the competitive clock is already running. The credentials back the story. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and has been listed in the UK CIO 100 five years in a row. He writes and speaks in named industry outlets including Computer Weekly, Infosecurity Magazine and Celonis, and he sits on the board of Tove Learning Trust. Key speaking topics Technology leadership in high-performance sport Artificial intelligence and data strategy in Formula 1 Cybersecurity in time-critical operations Digital transformation inside elite teams Sustainability and ESG in motorsport Scaling an IT function from start-up to championship contender High-performance culture and cross-functional operations Ideal for CIO, CTO and CDO audiences looking at AI, data and infrastructure investment decisions Boards and executive teams benchmarking their operating model against high-tempo performance businesses Sustainability and ESG leaders in industrial and logistics-heavy sectors Audience outcomes A working picture of how a Formula 1 team uses data, AI and cloud infrastructure to compete race by race. A sharper view of how technology, facilities and ESG sit inside one leadership remit rather than separate silos. Practical reference points for scaling an IT function quickly without accruing legacy risk. A candid read on cybersecurity and business continuity in an environment where downtime is visible to the world.

Why organisations work with Claire Rafferty Lived experience of operating at the top of two unrelated industries simultaneously, elite international football and investment banking at Deutsche Bank, where most speakers offer one or the other. A specific, named recovery story. Two anterior cruciate ligament injuries during her career, including a second in 2011, followed by a return to international football and a starting place at a World Cup semi-final. A current operating role in the football industry through TransferRoom, where she works on global transfer activity, plus a board seat at Lewes FC, the only professional club paying its men’s and women’s teams equally. Audiences hear someone still inside the commercial mechanics of the sport, not retired from it. Practised broadcast presence across BBC, BT Sport, Sky Sports News, talkSPORT and ITV News, which translates into clean delivery on stage and confidence under live questioning. Biography highlights 18 senior caps for England between 2010 and 2017, including starting left-back at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup where England finished third. 2012 Team GB Olympian at the London Games. 101 senior appearances for Chelsea FC across eleven seasons; FA WSL champion in 2015 and 2017 to 18, FA Women’s Cup winner in 2014 to 15 and 2017 to 18. Economics degree, Loughborough University, 2011; analyst at Deutsche Bank from 2012, held in parallel with her playing career. Senior Customer Success Manager, TransferRoom; Non-Executive Director, Lewes FC. Regular pundit and contributor across BBC, BT Sport, Sky Sports News, talkSPORT, BBC 5 Live and ITV News. Biography Two anterior cruciate ligament injuries can end a career. Claire Rafferty came back from one as a teenager at Millwall Lionesses, then from a second in 2011 to win starting selection for England’s run to third place at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The story sits at the centre of her speaking content because she has not stylised it. Recovery is presented as long, dull, repeatable work, not a redemption arc. Her career also broke a common pattern in elite sport. Through most of her playing years at Chelsea, where she made 101 appearances and finished as the club’s longest-serving player, Rafferty worked as an analyst at Deutsche Bank. The dual track was not a sponsored side project; it was a deliberate choice to keep a professional identity outside football, made before women’s full-time contracts were standard in the English game. Since retiring from West Ham at the end of the 2018 to 19 season, she has stayed inside the commercial machinery of the sport. At TransferRoom she works on global transfer activity across men’s and women’s football. At Lewes FC, on the board since January 2020, she sits inside the only professional club paying its men’s and women’s first teams from a single equal budget. Both roles give her current material, not retrospective material. The broadcasting work runs alongside this. Rafferty contributes to BBC, BT Sport, Sky Sports News, talkSPORT and ITV News, and covered the 2019 Women’s World Cup on multiple platforms. The cumulative effect for an audience is a speaker who can speak about pressure, recovery and parallel careers from the inside of two industries that rarely overlap. Key speaking topics Resilience after physical and professional setback Parallel careers in elite sport and the City Performing under sustained competitive pressure Women in football and equal pay in professional sport Career transition after a defined competitive peak Team performance and high-trust environments Ideal for Leadership offsites and conferences seeking a voice on resilience grounded in elite competition rather than executive theory. Financial services audiences, where the Deutsche Bank parallel career is directly recognisable. Sports business, federation and broadcast audiences working on women’s football, commercialisation and equal-pay structures. ERG and Women in Leadership programmes, particularly those addressing dual-career pressure and recovery from setback. Audience outcomes A concrete account of recovery from career-threatening injury, told in operational rather than motivational terms. A working model for sustaining two professional identities at the same time, drawn from football and investment banking. A current view of the commercial and structural state of women’s football from inside the industry, not from the press box. Renewed credibility for the claim that competitive performance and equal investment can coexist, evidenced by the Lewes FC model.