Leadership

Meet David Brownlee David Brownlee is a customer experience, communication, and leadership expert. He is the CEO of The Brownlee Group, LLC and founder of the Rockstar Customer Service Training Program. He is a two-time, number one, best-selling author of Rockstar Service, Rockstar Profits and Customer Service Success and has been featured in Time Magazine, People Magazine and others. He is a former business coach and seminar leader for Tony Robbins and has conducted over 5,000 one-on-one coaching sessions with business owners and executives. He has trained over 2M businesses and individuals from his online courses, keynotes, live events and coaching programs. His clients range from small businesses to large companies – from Harley-Davidson, and Oakley to Google and LinkedIn. David is a serial entrepreneur and sold his first company in 2005. He then moved to Central America with his wife to take a break and learn his 3 s’s…Spanish, Salsa and Surfing. One night when coming home from dinner in a taxicab, David and his wife were kidnapped at gunpoint. David was robbed, beaten and stabbed in the leg. After making it through that horrific experience, David decided in that moment, that life is short and dedicated himself to helping others. He looks at this life event as a “blessing” because it has led him down the path to be here with you on your journey. David believes that we all deserve to be successful in life and business. He also believes that each one of us has the power to create a positive ripple effect of kindness and respect for one another through our interactions. We make this impact, one person at a time. He currently lives in San Diego, CA with his wife and two children. Fun fact: David is the biggest winner in the history of the Hollywood Squares Game Show on CBS with Whoopi Goldberg.

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

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

Why organisations work with Sara Ross A named, proprietary framework. LeadFULL gives leadership teams a shared operating language for shifting out of effort management and into capacity management, grounded in her own multi-year workplace vitality research. A book with a thesis, not a brand. Dear Work, Something Has to Change sets out a specific argument about why current wellbeing interventions fail and what replaces them, which gives leaders something to act on after the keynote. Independent recognition from credible bodies. Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers (2025) and SUCCESS Magazine’s 2023 Woman of Influence place her on lists that buyers use for shortlist defence. A working track record with high-pressure organisations. Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, and the U.S. Navy SEALs have used her work in environments where the cost of burnout is operational, not just cultural. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Vitality Officer, BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm. Author of the bestselling Dear Work, Something Has to Change, built on a multi-year workplace vitality study. Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers, 2025. 2023 Woman of Influence, SUCCESS Magazine. Former Vice President and Global Head of Leadership Innovation, Research and Education at a global leadership development firm. Guest lecturer in executive leadership programmes at Smith College; client work includes Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Deloitte, and the U.S. Navy SEALs. Biography Wellbeing has been a corporate priority for a decade, and most senior teams are no closer to fixing the underlying problem. Capable people are still leaving, performance is still uneven, and the cost of fatigue is now showing up in decisions, not just disengagement scores. Sara Ross’s work begins with that observation. She is the founder of BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm, and author of Dear Work, Something Has to Change, which draws on her own multi-year study of workplace vitality. The book makes a specific argument: leaders have been taught to manage effort, when what now matters is managing state. Capacity, not endurance, becomes the operating variable. Out of that research she built LeadFULL, a framework she uses with senior teams to translate the argument into practical leadership behaviour. It sits at the intersection of emotional intelligence, behavioural science, and organisational culture, areas she has worked in for close to two decades, most recently as a global head of leadership innovation before founding BrainAMPED. The work has earned external validation. Global Gurus placed her on its Top 30 Motivational Speakers list for 2025, and SUCCESS Magazine named her a Woman of Influence in 2023. Her client roster runs from Microsoft, Cisco, and PepsiCo through to the U.S. Navy SEALs, organisations where the consequences of running people on empty are not abstract. Key speaking topics Workplace vitality and sustainable high performance Leadership in the age of burnout and fatigue Emotional intelligence at senior levels Building team and personal resilience The future of work and hybrid-era engagement Confidence, recovery, and decision-making under pressure Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning engagement and wellbeing strategy beyond the wellness vendor cycle. CEOs and senior leadership teams worried about leadership fatigue and the cost of sustained operational pressure. Heads of leadership development running flagship programmes for senior and high-potential leaders. Women’s leadership networks and conference programmes where the brief is substance over inspiration. Audience outcomes A clear, named distinction between managing effort and managing state, and why the second is the strategic variable. Specific leadership behaviours that reduce fatigue without lowering performance expectations. A practical reading of why current wellbeing initiatives stall, and what shifts the curve. Language senior teams can use with each other to talk about capacity, recovery, and sustained output without it sounding soft.

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

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

Why organisations work with Dominic O’Connell He chairs financial services flagship events at the level institutions trust with their reputation, including two editions of TISA’s Annual Flagship Conference. He interviews executives the way a working business journalist does, with the framing of someone who has spent twenty years inside UK corporate stories at The Sunday Times, the BBC and The Times. He won the Wincott Award in 2017, the most credible signal in UK business journalism, which buyers in financial services and the City recognise on sight. He moves between hosting, on-stage interviewing, and panel moderating without flattening any of them, which is what complex multi-stream conferences need. Biography highlights Business presenter, Times Radio (from November 2021, the station’s first business correspondent). Saturday business columnist, The Times. Business presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme for five years from 2016, with regular appearances across BBC television. Business Editor, The Sunday Times, 2010 to 2016; joined the paper in 2001. Wincott Award winner, 2017. Contributing author on “Grit, Rigour & Humour: The INEOS Story” (Penguin, 2023), appraising the INEOS business alongside contributors including Sebastian Coe and Andrew Likierman. Biography UK business journalism has produced a small group of people who can chair a flagship financial services conference, interview a sitting CEO live on national radio, and write a Saturday newspaper column on the same week. Dominic O’Connell is one of them. He currently anchors business coverage on Times Radio and writes the Saturday business column for The Times. Before Times Radio he spent five years as business presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where corporate Britain went on the record before breakfast and where preparation and composure are the price of entry. He joined the BBC in 2016 from The Sunday Times, where he was business editor for six years and a senior writer on the paper from 2001. The Wincott Award in 2017, UK business journalism’s premier prize, sits behind the work. So does a longer body of corporate reporting recognised inside the City and Westminster. In 2023 he was the journalist Penguin commissioned to appraise INEOS at twenty-five in “Grit, Rigour & Humour”, alongside contributors including Sebastian Coe and Andrew Likierman. That track record is why financial services institutions hire him to chair the rooms where their boards, regulators and clients are watching. He has twice chaired TISA’s Annual Flagship Conference and has worked with firms including RSMR. The product is not a keynote thesis. It is a working business journalist running the room and keeping the agenda honest. Key speaking topics UK and global business news Financial services and investment Equity markets and corporate strategy Macroeconomics and policy Corporate leadership and CEO interviews The City of London and UK plc Ideal for Annual flagship conferences hosted by financial services trade bodies and asset managers Investor days, AGMs and capital markets events Corporate leadership summits, board offsites and CEO panels Industry awards, gala dinners and after-dinner business audiences Audience outcomes A conference programme that holds together as one editorial narrative across the day Panels that go past the prepared statements and produce something quotable A chair who can press a CEO without losing the room or the speaker Coverage that lands cleanly with a business-literate audience, on stage and in any subsequent write-up

Why organisations work with Peter Baines His authority on crisis leadership is operational, not theoretical. He led international forensic teams in Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami and held senior roles in the response to the Bali bombings, the 2010 Jeddah floods and the 2011 Japan tsunami. He is one of the very few speakers who can talk credibly about leading in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risk, having led an Interpol counter terrorism project on CBRN threats in Lyon. He brings a 20-year, AUD 40 million case study in purpose at scale through Hands Across the Water, which lets him talk about values, culture and CSR with real numbers behind him rather than slogans. He has published with Wiley twice on the substance of his work, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), giving organisations a coherent body of thinking to engage with beyond the keynote. He carries an Order of Australia Medal and a royal Thai honour, which gives the talk a level of public standing that lands credibly with boards, philanthropic committees and senior leadership audiences. Biography highlights 22-year career as a forensic investigator with NSW Police, including leadership roles in the response to the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand Seconded to Interpol in Lyon to lead an international counter terrorism project on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats Founder of Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand since 2005 Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2014 for international humanitarian work, and the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn by the King of Thailand in 2016 Author of four books, including Doing Good By Doing Good (Wiley, 2014), Leadership Matters (Wiley, 2023), and Together We Can: 33 Marathons in 26 Days (2025) In December 2024, ran 1,400 km across Thailand in 26 days, the equivalent of 33 marathons, in support of Hands Across the Water Biography The bodies were still being recovered in Thai temples when the question of leadership stopped being abstract. In the weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Australian and international forensic teams operating out of Phuket and Khao Lak had to identify thousands of victims with limited infrastructure, exhausted personnel and grieving families waiting for answers. The leader running multiple rotations of that operation was a NSW Police forensic investigator on secondment. That investigator was Peter Baines. By the time he resigned from the force in 2009, he had also worked through the Bali bombings, been seconded to Interpol in Lyon to run an international counter terrorism project on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, and worked with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia. The Saudi government later engaged him to review the response to the Jeddah floods. He was deployed again after the 2011 Japan tsunami. The leadership argument he draws from that work is simple but unfashionable: authority comes from how you behave when nobody is keeping score, and culture is what survives a bad day. He set out to test it in practice. In 2005, he founded Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has now raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand and supported 46 of them through university degrees. He has written it up in two Wiley books, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), and most recently in Together We Can (2025), the account of his 1,400 km, 26-day run across Thailand at age 57. The Order of Australia Medal and the King of Thailand’s Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn followed, but the real proof point is that the operation he started in a tent of orphaned children in 2005 is still functioning, and growing, twenty years later. Key speaking topics Leadership in crisis and disaster response Decision-making under uncertainty and operational pressure Purpose-driven leadership and culture Corporate social responsibility and shared value Resilience and recovery after shock Building and sustaining high performing teams Storytelling and humanitarian impact Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding leadership credibility after a crisis, restructuring, or reputational shock CHROs, CSOs and culture leads designing values-based leadership programmes with substance behind them CSR, sustainability and foundation leads who need a credible voice on shared value and authentic purpose Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences in professional services, financial services and complex operating environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what authority actually looks like when titles, scripts and procedures stop helping Specific reference points for decision-making under fatigue, ambiguity and public scrutiny A practical model for connecting organisational purpose to measurable community outcomes, not slogans Renewed appetite to hold leadership teams to a higher standard of behaviour in ordinary, not just exceptional, conditions A repertoire of concrete stories, tested in disaster response and humanitarian work, that senior leaders can carry into their own teams

About Jeff Havens Jeff Havens is not your typical business growth expert. His uncanny ability to provide actionable answers to today’s business challenges in an undeniably entertaining and impactful way has put him in front of over 1,000 eager audiences across North America and Asia. Delivering well-researched and relevant business insight is something a lot of keynote speakers do, but combining that with the entertainment value of a comedy show is not. Engaging, charismatic, and full of energy, Jeff Havens is the only business growth expert who provides serious solutions in a seriously funny way. But even more than that, Jeff makes things easy. All of us are constantly being asked to do more with less, so the last thing you need is someone to tell you how difficult your challenges are. Jeff has a unique ability to simplify seemingly complex problems in a way that will provide your audience with a fresh perspective, one that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the business world. He’ll show you that we’re not actually creating a completely new type of person every 15 years, that being innovative is not something only a few special people know how to do, and that both exceptional leadership and exceptional customer experiences are built on surprisingly slender foundations. You will leave Jeff’s keynotes refreshed, relaxed, happy, and more confident than ever that you are prepared for the road ahead.

About Helen Clark Helen Clark is a global leader on sustainable development, gender equality and international cooperation. She was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1999-2008 and served as the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from 2009-2017. She is an active member of several global organizations, including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), where she serves as Chair of the Board, and Chatham House, where she serves as President. Helen Clark became the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program in April 2009 and the Chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues. She was the first woman to assume these positions, which she held for a full two terms and eight years before standing down in April 2017. Helen Clark’s tenure coincided with a period of increased worldwide volatility, which included the aftermath of the financial crisis, uprisings in the Arab States’ region, increasing extreme weather events and disasters, and a growth in the number of deadly conflicts and the associated forced displacement crises. Helen Clark refocused and reformed UNDP into a more transparent, efficient, and accountable organization which could better respond to the new environment while also ensuring that it kept its long term focus on human and sustainable development. Helen Clark is a champion of inclusive and sustainable development. She has ensured that UNDP’s work on poverty eradication is closely linked with its governance and environmental portfolios. She has advocated for the full inclusion and empowerment of women in development – and within UNDP itself where during her tenure the ratio of women to men reached fifty percent. Helen Clark advocates for sexual reproductive health and rights, an end to violence against women and for LGBTQIA+ rights. She has long advocated for those living with HIV and AIDS, and for effective prevention and treatment. At UNDP Helen Clark became known as an early adopter of social media platforms, speaking directly to the public and being ranked as the UN’s most influential leader on social media. Prior to her appointment with UNDP, Helen Clark was the first woman elected as Prime Minister of New Zealand, serving three successive terms from 1999 to 2008. Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, she engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social, environmental, and cultural spheres. Under her leadership, New Zealand achieved significant economic growth, low levels of unemployment, and high levels of investment in education, health, and the well-being of families and older citizens. She and her government prioritized reconciliation and the settlement of historical grievances with indigenous people, and the development of an inclusive multicultural and multi-faith society. She advocated strongly for New Zealand’s comprehensive programme on sustainability, including on addressing climate change. Helen Clark held ministerial responsibility during her nine years as Prime Minister for the portfolios of arts, culture and heritage, human and signals intelligence, and ministerial services. She was a strong promoter of the role of arts, culture and heritage in expressing the unique identity of New Zealand. Helen Clark came to the role of Prime Minister after an extensive parliamentary and ministerial career. First elected to Parliament in 1981, Clark was re-elected to her multicultural, inner city Auckland constituency for the tenth time in November 2008. Between 1987 and 1990, she was a Minister responsible for first, the portfolios of Conservation and Housing, and then Health and Labour. She was Deputy Prime Minister between 1989 and 1990, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and of the New Zealand Labour Party from 1990 to 1993, and then Leader of the Opposition and of the Labour Party until becoming Prime Minister after the 1999 General Election. Prior to entering the New Zealand Parliament, Helen Clark taught in the Political Studies Department of the University of Auckland. She graduated from the University of Auckland with a BA in 1971, and an MA with First Class Honours in 1974. Helen Clark has been an OGP Ambassador since October 2017. In 2019 Helen Clark became patron of The Helen Clark Foundation. She is an active member of various international organisations.

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

Why organisations work with 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