Leadership

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 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 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 Keira Walsh She has held the central midfield role in two winning European finals for England, including as Player of the Match at Wembley in 2022, which is a specific position about reading risk and keeping a team in shape under pressure. Her career carries the weight of a world-record transfer fee, which is a useful frame for any leader being asked to perform after a step-change in expectation, scrutiny or investment. She offers an inside account of an elite team culture, the Lionesses under Sarina Wiegman, that has now won back-to-back European Championships and reached a World Cup final. Her move from Barcelona to Chelsea in January 2025 is a recent, deliberate case study in choosing environment and ambition over comfort, told first-hand. Biography highlights MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours for services to association football. UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 final Player of the Match; UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 winner with England. World-record transfer fee in women’s football when Barcelona signed her from Manchester City in September 2022. Two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles with FC Barcelona. Chelsea midfielder since January 2025 on a four-and-a-half-year deal. Over 100 senior England caps; ever-present in Sarina Wiegman’s midfield through two winning European Championship campaigns. Biography Holding midfield in a winning international final is, in football terms, the most exposed leadership job on the pitch. It is the role that connects defence to attack, absorbs pressure when the opposition raises tempo, and decides which risks the team can afford in the last twenty minutes. Walsh has now done that job twice, at Euro 2022 and Euro 2025, in the two most scrutinised matches in the women’s game. The 2022 final at Wembley was the case study. England were level with Germany when Walsh produced the assist for Ella Toone’s opening goal and was named Player of the Match. UEFA’s technical observers noted that she “balanced the team throughout the game” and rarely lost possession. Three years later she was back in the starting line-up for the Euro 2025 final in Basel, helping England retain the title in a penalty shoot-out against Spain. Her club career has carried a comparable weight of expectation. Barcelona paid a reported 400,000 pounds for her in September 2022, a world record in women’s football, and she went on to win two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles and a domestic continental quadruple. In January 2025 she returned to England with Chelsea on a four-and-a-half-year contract, signed explicitly to help the club convert domestic dominance into European success. For corporate audiences, the substance is composure under exposure. Walsh is a working professional who has been the named senior player in a unit twice asked to win a continental final, and a transfer asset twice priced at the top of her market. The MBE awarded in the 2026 New Year Honours marks the public record. The more useful material is the operating detail behind it. Key speaking topics Composure and decision-making under pressure Elite team culture and cohesion Resilience after setback and injury Performing after a step-change in expectation Women’s sport and the commercial reset of the game Leadership in the holding role Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for a high-scrutiny year: post-IPO, post-acquisition, new mandate CHROs and culture leads building cohesion in senior teams under sustained pressure Conference audiences in sport, media and consumer brands engaging with the growth of women’s football Employee and partner events where the brief is human performance rather than technical content Audience outcomes A first-hand picture of how a winning international squad makes decisions in the final twenty minutes of a closely fought match. A working definition of composure that is usable by senior leaders, not motivational language. A concrete example of what changes when an individual is priced and expected to operate at the very top of their market. An honest account of leaving a winning environment for a harder one, and the reasoning behind it.