Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with James Lawrence He carries two verifiable Guinness World Records and the only completed 100-in-100 full Ironman challenge, which gives any resilience talk an evidence base most motivational speakers cannot match. His 50.50.50 and Conquer 100 attempts are documented on film, in book form with Matt Fitzgerald, and across CNN and Sports Illustrated coverage. The story has been independently verified, so the room does not have to take it on trust. He breaks down what looks like a superhuman feat into operating mechanics that translate to working teams: daily milestones, small repeatable actions, role of the support crew, recovery as part of the work. He has a credible after-dinner and conference-stage presence built on a story arc that lands with mixed audiences, from sales kick-offs to leadership offsites. Biography highlights Two Guinness World Records: 22 half-Ironman-distance races in a year (2010/2011) and 30 full Ironman-distance races in a year (2012). Completed the 50.50.50 in 2015: 50 full Ironman-distance triathlons in 50 consecutive days across 50 US states. Completed Conquer 100 in 2021: 100 consecutive full-distance triathlons over 100 days, extended to 101, totalling 14,060 miles. Subject of the feature documentary Iron Cowboy: The Story of the 50.50.50, distributed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. Author of Iron Cowboy: Redefine Impossible, co-written with sports writer Matt Fitzgerald and published by Regan Arts in 2017. Conquer 100 proceeds were directed to Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-trafficking non-profit. Biography Most resilience content in the corporate market is theoretical. The work behind James Lawrence’s keynotes is not. In 2015 he completed 50 full-distance Ironman triathlons in 50 consecutive days across 50 US states. In 2021 he repeated the logic at twice the length, finishing 101 consecutive full-distance triathlons over 101 days, more than 14,000 miles of swimming, cycling and running. Both attempts are independently documented. The two events sit on top of a longer track record. He held a Guinness World Record for 22 half-Ironman races in one year, then set a second for 30 full Ironman-distance races inside a calendar year. The endurance community uses him as a reference point for what one human, supported correctly, can sustain. What he brings to a stage is not the spectacle but the system underneath it. Daily milestones rather than the total mileage. A clear support model: physiologist, athletic trainer, nutritionist, running partner, family. Recovery treated as part of the workload, not a reward for completing it. The argument transfers cleanly to teams doing long programmes of change, integration, restructuring or sustained client delivery, where the issue is not whether the goal is possible but whether anyone can keep showing up. He documented the 50.50.50 attempt in Iron Cowboy: Redefine Impossible, co-written with Matt Fitzgerald and published by Regan Arts in 2017, and in the feature documentary of the same period. Proceeds from Conquer 100 were committed to Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-trafficking non-profit. The cause framing matters: the records were not the point on their own. Key speaking topics Endurance and human performance Personal resilience under sustained pressure Goal setting and daily execution Mental strength and overcoming self-doubt Team and support-system design Leadership through long, hard programmes Ideal for Sales kick-offs and annual conferences where the year ahead is being framed as a long campaign Leadership offsites focused on resilience, burnout and sustained performance After-dinner slots at client and partner events where the audience is mixed and a strong narrative is needed Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for what disciplined daily execution looks like under fatigue A working language for breaking long, hard programmes into daily milestones A specific account of how a support system around a high performer is structured and used Renewed confidence that targets framed as impossible are often a sequence of solved daily problems

Why organisations work with James McCabe He brings primary training in dramatic literature, not communications consulting, which gives the work a different starting point: structure, character, suspense and resolution as operating tools, not metaphors. His applied focus is the moments where corporate language usually fails most visibly, namely M&A integration, transformation programmes and AI roll-out, where employees disengage from the official storyline within weeks. He works directly with senior communication leaders at named global organisations including Allianz and Siemens, with engagement framed around outcomes for the business, not the comms function. His Fable workshop format compresses the craft into a working session that produces a usable narrative artefact for the leadership team, not a theory lecture. The intellectual lineage is unusually deep for the topic: an Oxford doctorate in literature, the British Council Millennium Prize, and twenty-five years of pattern recognition across European, American and Asian engagements. Biography highlights Doctorate in literature from St John’s College, Oxford, and a Double First from University College Dublin. British Council Millennium Prize for doctoral research. Twenty-five years applying classical narrative design at enterprise level across Europe, the US, and Asia. Engagements with Allianz and Siemens at Group Communications level. Founder of Fable, an artist collective of poets, designers, and filmmakers for corporate narrative work. Guest on industry storytelling podcasts including Business of Story and Storytelling for Business. Biography The standard corporate communication toolkit is rhetoric: slogans, value statements, change decks. It is designed to persuade in the moment and forgotten by the next quarter. Classical narrative is built differently. It is the form humans have used for three thousand years to make complex change feel inevitable, and most organisations are not using it. That gap is what McCabe has spent twenty-five years closing. He came to the work as a poet and literary scholar, with a doctorate from St John’s College, Oxford and the British Council Millennium Prize, before any of it touched the inside of a boardroom. The discipline he brought across is structural: how stories actually move audiences, why suspense and reversal matter more than messaging, and how character functions in a corporate cast. The applied work is concentrated in the moments where corporate language tends to break: mergers and acquisitions, restructures, AI roll-outs and sustainability programmes. Group Communications functions at organisations including Allianz and Siemens have used him to design the through-line of those programmes rather than the deck. His Fable workshop format takes a leadership team through a compressed version of that craft and produces a narrative artefact the team can use. What makes the offer unusual is the lineage. Most commercial storytelling consultants come from advertising or PR. McCabe’s frame of reference is dramatic literature, which is why the diagnosis tends to be sharper than the topic suggests: it is not about better stories, it is about whether the organisation has a structurally coherent one at all. Key speaking topics Corporate narrative strategy Storytelling for mergers and acquisitions Brand and reputation through narrative design Narrative for AI and digital transformation Sustainability storytelling Leadership communication and executive presence Culture and engagement through story Ideal for CCOs, Heads of Group Communications and brand leadership teams M&A integration leads and post-deal communication owners CEOs and CHROs running enterprise transformation or AI programmes Marketing and brand teams under pressure to differentiate in saturated categories Audience outcomes A working understanding of how dramatic narrative differs from corporate rhetoric, and why one travels and the other does not. The structural elements of a usable enterprise story: protagonist, stakes, reversal, resolution. A diagnostic for where the organisation’s existing story is failing, in M&A, AI roll-out, transformation or brand. A method for designing leadership communication around narrative architecture rather than message points.

Why organisations work with Jamie Anderson He brings a working academic’s command of strategy and innovation research, not a recycled consultancy deck. His articles sit in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and Business Strategy Review, and he teaches the material at Antwerp Management School. His Lady Gaga and contemporary-art case work is the rare strategy content that lands with mixed senior audiences. It is taken seriously by London Business School’s journal yet readable for a leadership team without an MBA. He has built and taught executive programmes at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin and Indian School of Business, which means his frame of reference is global executive practice, not one country or one sector. He is a Case Centre top-50 bestselling author, with a Nespresso case among the global prize winners. Buyers get a speaker whose teaching cases are actually used by other faculty. Financial Times named him a “management guru”; Business Strategy Review placed him among the world’s top 25 management thinkers. The credentialling is from named bodies, not bureau description. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Innovation, Antwerp Management School. Faculty and visiting positions at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin, and Indian School of Business. Co-author, The Fine Art of Success (Wiley), and author of the Gaganomics / Strategy Gaga case work. Articles in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. The Case Centre Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors (No. 33 in 2021/22; No. 28 in 2020/21); winner of a global case prize for his Nespresso case. Named “management guru” by the Financial Times; listed among the world’s top 25 management thinkers by Business Strategy Review. Biography The classic strategy textbook assumed advantage was something a firm could build and defend. The leaders running large organisations now treat that assumption as a liability. The question is no longer how to protect a position, but how to keep generating new ones at the cadence the market demands. Anderson’s work sits inside that question. As Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Antwerp Management School, with faculty experience at London Business School, IMD, INSEAD, ESMT Berlin and Indian School of Business, he has spent two decades translating innovation research into language operating leaders can use. His articles in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are the same material he teaches in executive programmes, written for practitioners. The signature of his work is its source material. Where most strategy speakers reach for the same handful of case studies, Anderson has built much of his teaching from artists and pop-culture figures, most famously his Lady Gaga case (Strategy Gaga / Gaganomics) and the book The Fine Art of Success. Business Strategy Review named the Lady Gaga article one of the top pieces of its year. The cases work because the underlying strategy is rigorous, and the surface is readable for a non-specialist audience. The recognition is from named bodies. The Financial Times has called him a management guru. Business Strategy Review put him among the top 25 management thinkers. The Case Centre lists him as a top-50 bestselling case author across multiple years, which is the closest the academic strategy world gets to a market test of whether other faculty actually use your work. Key speaking topics Strategic innovation and business model design Sustaining competitive advantage in mature industries Creativity and the strategy of contemporary brands Digital transformation and customer experience Leadership for innovation Personal strategy and career reinvention Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding the innovation pipeline behind a mature core business CSOs, heads of strategy and corporate development teams in large incumbents CMOs and CXOs working on brand and customer-experience reinvention Senior leadership offsites where strategy content needs to land with a mixed, non-specialist audience Audience outcomes A clearer read on why traditional sources of competitive advantage are eroding, and what is replacing them Concrete cases of organisations and brands that have engineered new advantage in mature markets A working vocabulary for strategic innovation drawn from current management research, not consultancy framing A perspective on creativity and brand strategy that connects to operating decisions, not just marketing Energy. The Lady Gaga, Madonna and contemporary-art material is the rare strategy content senior audiences actually quote afterwards

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Jamie Roberts He carries 94 Wales caps, two Lions tours and a 2009 Lions Player of the Series award, with the operational vocabulary that goes with it: selection, cycle planning, recovery, accountability inside a small group. He completed a Cardiff University medical degree, a Cambridge MPhil in Medical Science and a Loughborough MBA while playing professional rugby, giving him a credible voice on dual-career discipline that most athlete speakers cannot match. As an Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, he speaks from current governance experience, not retired anecdote. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries and published by Hodder and Stoughton, gives buyers a sourced, on-record account of the moments he draws on from stage. Biography highlights 94 Wales caps and two British and Irish Lions tours (2009, 2013); named Lions Player of the Series in South Africa, 2009. Two Six Nations Grand Slams (2008, 2012) and the 2013 Six Nations Championship title. BSc Sport and Exercise Science from Cardiff Met, MBBCh in Medicine from Cardiff University, MPhil in Medical Science from Queens’ College, Cambridge, and MBA from Loughborough University. Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, appointed October 2023. Author of Centre Stage (Hodder and Stoughton, 2021), co-written with Ross Harries. Honorary Fellow of Cardiff Metropolitan University (2023); started NHS Foundation training in Cardiff and Vale Health Board in 2025. Biography Inside elite rugby, the gap between training and Test match is small, public and unforgiving. Selection lasts a week. Recovery windows are measured in hours. The same group has to perform again, in front of cameras, after the last result has been dissected on television. That is the operational world Jamie Roberts lived in for seventeen years. He won 94 caps for Wales between 2008 and 2017, lifted Grand Slams in 2008 and 2012, took the Six Nations title in 2013 and toured twice with the British and Irish Lions. On the 2009 tour to South Africa he was named Player of the Series alongside Brian O’Driscoll in midfield. Most athletes at that level commit fully and exclusively to the game. Roberts was qualifying as a doctor at the same time. He completed his medical degree at Cardiff University in 2013, an MPhil in Medical Science at Queens’ College, Cambridge in 2017 and an MBA at Loughborough in 2020. The combination is unusual and useful. It gives him a vocabulary for performance that translates easily to clinical settings, board agendas and commercial teams, without leaning on rugby metaphor. Since 2023 he has sat on the Welsh Rugby Union Board as an Independent Non-Executive Director, a role he took during a difficult period for the governing body. He began NHS Foundation training in Cardiff in 2025. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries, is the on-record source for the stories audiences hear from him: selection, injury, the loss of a Wales place after a decade, and what holds a senior group together when the result is public. Key speaking topics Team performance under public pressure Leadership inside elite small groups Dual-career discipline and identity Resilience after setback and reinvention Sport, medicine and governance crossovers Mental approach to high-stakes selection Ideal for Senior leadership teams under sustained external scrutiny Sales, partnership and trading floors operating on short performance cycles Healthcare, professional services and regulated organisations interested in dual-career and clinical-leader perspectives Conferences and dinners seeking a credible, articulate sports voice with substantive content beyond playing anecdote Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain performance across a long competitive cycle, not a single peak Practical reference points for composure when results are visible and immediate A frank account of what selection, demotion and recovery feel like inside a high-performing group Insight into how a serious second discipline can sit alongside, rather than dilute, a primary role A grounded perspective on leadership and governance from someone currently inside both clinical and rugby boardroom settings

Why organisations work with Jamie Siminoff He has the full founder arc on the record: invented a product category in a garage, pitched it on national television and walked out without a deal, rebuilt from near-bankruptcy, and sold to Amazon for about 1 billion dollars. He has run the acquired business inside Big Tech, giving buyers a rare view of what integration, reporting lines, and product autonomy look like after a landmark exit. He has repeated the cycle: founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc., took the CEO seat at the acquirer, then returned to Amazon as a VP running Ring and adjacent smart home units. Most speakers have one exit story; he has a sequence. The Shark Tank rejection is specific and documented, which makes the resilience material credible rather than motivational. It is cited by the Sharks themselves as one of the biggest misses in the show’s history. He co-authored “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door” with Andrew Postman, published in November 2025, which gives buyers a named, durable reference point for the material. Biography highlights Founder and original CEO of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018 for approximately 1 billion dollars. Pitched DoorBot on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2013 and left without a deal; returned to the show as a guest Shark in 2018. Earlier founder of PhoneTag, the first voicemail to text service, and Unsubscribe.com, both acquired. Founder of Honest Day’s Work, acquired by Latch Inc. in 2023; subsequently appointed CEO of Latch. Rejoined Amazon in 2025 as Vice President running Ring and related smart home businesses, leading a pivot to AI. Babson College, Class of 1999, and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson in 2021, where he delivered the undergraduate commencement address. Co-author with Andrew Postman of “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door,” published November 2025. Biography Ring began as DoorBot, a Wi-Fi video doorbell built in a garage in 2011. By 2013 it was on Shark Tank, where every investor passed. The company was close to running out of money. Seven years later, Amazon bought it for roughly 1 billion dollars. That arc is the material Siminoff brings to the stage, and he brings it with the receipts. The more useful part of the story for serious operators is what happened between the rejection and the exit. Siminoff rebuilt the product and the brand, raised from Kleiner Perkins, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DFJ Growth and Sir Richard Branson, and built Ring into a category defining consumer technology business. After the Amazon acquisition he stayed inside the company for five years, running Ring alongside Blink, Amazon Key and adjacent smart home lines. Most founder talks stop at the exit. His continues through integration. He has since extended the pattern. He founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc. in 2023, stepped in as Latch’s CEO, and in 2025 rejoined Amazon as a Vice President running Ring and nearby smart home units, now pivoting the category toward AI. In November 2025 he published “Ding Dong” with Andrew Postman, the first full account of how Ring actually got built. A Babson graduate and Honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution, he is one of a small group of founders who can speak to rejection, category creation, acquisition, and re-entry as connected stages of one working life. Key speaking topics Consumer technology product invention and category creation Scaling from prototype to acquisition Founder resilience through investor rejection Operating an acquired business inside Big Tech Smart home, connected devices, and AI in consumer hardware Brand building in hardware startups Hiring and team building in early stage companies Ideal for Founders, CEOs and product leaders in consumer technology and connected hardware Corporate innovation, strategy and M and A teams working on acquisition integration Investor audiences and startup ecosystems running portfolio or founder programmes Entrepreneurship centres and executive education audiences in business schools Audience outcomes A concrete, non-generic view of what it takes to get a hardware startup from prototype to billion-dollar exit. A working model for how to treat a high-profile rejection as distribution rather than a verdict. Specific insight into how an acquired category runs inside a company like Amazon, and what that means for teams going through similar integrations. A clear read on where consumer smart home and home security technology are heading as AI becomes the core layer of the product. Hiring and early team construction principles drawn from building Ring from a Craigslist hire list to a company sold for 1 billion dollars.

Why organisations work with Jamil Qureshi Six individuals to world number one, five Ryder Cup captains advised, 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. The track record in elite sport is operationally specific, not rhetorical. He has designed and embedded long-running change programmes at scale: Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. He has run transformation inside organisations, not only spoken about it. He translates the psychology of sustained pressure from environments where the cost of failure is public and immediate (Premier League, Ryder Cup) into boardrooms where it usually is not. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. The framework has been pressure-tested in domains most speakers can only describe. Biography highlights First-ever official psychologist appointed to the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam in 2006; has since worked with five Ryder Cup captains. Has worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50, with Premier League players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, with Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, and with members of the 2009 England Ashes-winning cricket team. Designed and delivered board-level leadership and change programmes for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK, and Lloyds Banking Group. Author of The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, on the psychological foundations of personal and professional performance. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. Listed by GQ Magazine among the most influential figures in British sport (2009); named in The Daily Mirror’s top 100 coaches in the world (2023). Biography At the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, Europe beat the United States by a record-equalling margin. Captain Ian Woosnam had done something no Ryder Cup captain had done before: he appointed an official psychologist to the team. That psychologist was Jamil Qureshi. Sport had been treating mindset as decisive for years. Most boards still treat it as a soft skill, even as senior leaders increasingly face the conditions of elite athletes: sustained scrutiny and very narrow margins for error. Qureshi has spent two decades closing that gap. He has helped six individuals reach world number one in their sport, advised five Ryder Cup captains, and worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. Premier League players at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea sit on the same client list as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK and Lloyds Banking Group. In business, the work goes well beyond keynotes. Qureshi designed and embedded leadership and change programmes for Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s cultural separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. Through Covid he ran extensive work with global leadership teams at SAS, GSK, Janssen, NHS England and Protiviti as they reset around remote and hybrid leadership. His book, The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, sets out the psychological foundations he applies in both worlds. Skill gets people to the top. What keeps them there, and what determines whether the team around them performs when it matters, is something organisations rarely build deliberately. That is what Qureshi is asked in to do. Key speaking topics Performance psychology in business High-performing teams Leadership under sustained pressure Mindset and behavioural change Cultural change and transformation Translating elite sport into business performance Hybrid and remote leadership Ideal for Boards and CEO leadership teams setting expectations for performance under sustained pressure Sales and commercial leadership teams where individual mindset shapes pipeline outcomes HR and L&D directors building leadership programmes that need psychological substance, not theory Senior leadership conferences where elite-sport credibility opens the room Audience outcomes Specific behaviours for performing under sustained pressure, drawn from how elite athletes actually train A sharper view of where individual mindset constrains team output, and what to do about it Language for leaders to talk about psychology without it sounding soft A more honest read on the gap between intent and execution in their own teams

Why organisations work with Jason Fox He speaks with the authority of someone who ran hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations at Sergeant rank in the Special Boat Service, not someone interpreting that world from outside it. His account of complex PTSD and recovery, set out in the Sunday Times number one bestseller Battle Scars, gives senior leaders a usable frame for talking about mental health with people who will not respond to standard corporate wellbeing language. He translates the team standards that kept SBS troops alive into the behaviours that hold a leadership team together during restructures, market shocks and public failure. The vocabulary is operational, not motivational. Organisations that have put him in front of their teams get a speaker who has also led a Guinness-record Atlantic row and a 1,980-mile unsupported Yukon kayak, which means the lessons on preparation, teamwork and composure come from current practice as well as past service. Biography highlights Royal Marine Commando from age 16; Sergeant in the Special Boat Service; approximately 20 years in UK Special Forces before medical discharge in 2012. Longest-serving directing staff on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; former directing staff on SAS Australia. Presenter of Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, filmed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Author of Battle Scars (Sunday Times number one bestseller, Bantam Press) and Life Under Fire (Penguin Random House). Co-founder of Rock2Recovery, providing mental health support to serving personnel, veterans and their families. Guinness World Record holder with Team Essence for the first unsupported east-to-west Atlantic row, Lagos to Venezuela, 50 days, 2016; led an unsupported 1,980-mile Yukon River kayak expedition in 2019. Biography Hostage rescue, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics work in the Special Boat Service demand a style of leadership that most organisations only discover they lack once something has already gone wrong. Fox spent two decades inside that environment, joining the Royal Marines at sixteen and reaching Sergeant rank in the SBS before a complex PTSD diagnosis forced a medical discharge in 2012. The second half of his career has been about translating that experience into language corporate leaders can actually use. His first book, Battle Scars, reached number one on the Sunday Times list and opened a serious conversation about how elite operators break, recover and rebuild. Life Under Fire, published by Penguin Random House, sets out the team habits and personal disciplines he saw work under fire. Audiences know him from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he has served as the longest-standing directing staff, and from the Channel 4 documentary series Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, in which he reported from cartel-affected communities across Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Alongside television and writing, he co-founded Rock2Recovery with fellow former Royal Marine Jamie Sanderson to give veterans faster routes into mental health support. The adventures reinforce the argument rather than decorate it. In 2016 Fox was part of Team Essence, which set the Guinness World Record as the first team to row the Atlantic unsupported east-to-west from mainland Europe to mainland South America, 3,308 nautical miles in fifty days. In 2019 he kayaked the Yukon River, 1,980 miles unsupported, in aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. Both are reference points he uses with leadership teams to make the case that composure, preparation and team trust are trained, not inherited. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes environments Resilience and recovery from operational trauma Mental health and PTSD in high-performing populations Risk assessment and mission planning Accountability and standards inside elite teams Ideal for Executive and senior leadership teams navigating restructures, crisis response or reputational pressure Boards and operating committees rebuilding trust after a serious incident Safety-critical and frontline-heavy organisations (defence, energy, logistics, emergency services) where team decision-making is the core asset CHRO and wellbeing leads building a mental health programme that needs credibility with male-heavy or frontline workforces Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite military teams run planning, rehearsal and after-action review, and where those practices map onto corporate leadership A usable vocabulary for discussing mental health with people who dismiss standard wellbeing language Sharper thinking on what individual composure and team standards look like when conditions actually deteriorate A first-person account of PTSD and recovery that makes the business case for early intervention concrete rather than abstract

Why organisations work with Jason Harris He brings a working framework, No Fail Trust, that he has applied with Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, not a set of war stories repackaged as leadership lessons. His operational credibility is current. He still flies commercial widebody aircraft for American Airlines, so the standards he teaches are standards he is still held to. He commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has run a real organisation with real accountability for safety, performance and people, not only led from the cockpit. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy, which gives the framework an academic spine that most ex-military speakers do not have. His material translates cleanly to civilian teams under restructure, hybrid working strain or post-incident recovery, where the question is whether trust will hold when conditions degrade. Biography highlights Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, nearly 30 years of service across active duty and the Air Force Reserve Command, concluding as a flying Squadron Commander. US Air Force Academy graduate, later instructor in the Academy’s Military and Strategic Studies department. 11 combat deployments, 470 combat sorties, more than 2,000 combat hours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Co-author of “Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership” (RTI Press, 2022), reviewed in the USAFA Journal of Character and Leadership Development. Commercial pilot with American Airlines, type-rated on the Airbus A320 family and Boeing 757, 767 and 777. Featured in Forbes and on the History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters”. Biography A cargo aircraft taking fire on approach is not the place to discover that a crew does not trust each other. The cost of unspoken doubt in that environment is measurable in seconds and lives. Jason Harris flew 470 combat sorties in environments where that calculation was not theoretical. That operating context shaped a leadership method, not a memoir. The No Fail Trust framework codifies what high-functioning aircrews actually do: the habits of disclosure, calibration and accountability that hold a team together when conditions degrade. He has carried it into Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, where the trust problem looks different on the surface but obeys the same logic underneath. Harris also brings the structural side. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy and commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has been responsible for organisational design, safety culture and people decisions, not only flight operations. His co-authored book “Aiming Higher” (RTI Press, 2022) was reviewed in the Academy’s Journal of Character and Leadership Development, which is rare for a bureau speaker working in this lane. He still flies. As an American Airlines pilot type-rated across the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 757, 767 and 777, the standards he asks corporate teams to consider are standards he is still operating under in the next week’s flight schedule. Key speaking topics Trust as an operational capability Leadership under high-consequence pressure Team performance in distributed and hybrid environments Psychological safety and crew resource management Decision-making under uncertainty Culture in safety-critical organisations Leading after restructure or incident Ideal for Boards and executive teams confronting a trust gap after restructure, leadership change or a public incident CHROs and culture leads designing for safety-critical or distributed teams Operational leadership cohorts in regulated sectors: aviation, energy, defence, logistics, financial services Sales kick-offs and leadership summits where the brief calls for credibility under pressure rather than motivational lift Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that can be observed, measured and rebuilt, rather than asserted A method for surfacing unspoken doubt inside senior teams before it becomes an operational cost A clearer view of how psychological safety, accountability and decision speed reinforce each other under pressure Specific behavioural habits drawn from aircrew practice that translate to civilian operating environments A sharper read on what leadership presence looks like when conditions are not stable

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 Jean Todt He took over a Ferrari racing operation that had not won a Drivers’ Championship in twenty-one years and produced five consecutive titles for Michael Schumacher between 2000 and 2004. Few living executives can speak to a turnaround at that scale and that level of public scrutiny. He has run three different kinds of high-stakes organisation, a manufacturer racing programme at Peugeot, a listed sports car business at Ferrari, and a 145-country federation at the FIA. The leadership lessons translate across commercial, governance, and political environments. He holds a live UN mandate. As Special Envoy for Road Safety since 2015, he negotiates directly with heads of state on a public health crisis that kills roughly 1.19 million people a year. Boards working on ESG, public-private partnership, or regulated-industry strategy get a practitioner, not a commentator. He co-founded the Paris Brain Institute with neurosurgeon Gerard Saillant, putting institutional capital and racing-industry networks behind one of Europe’s largest neuroscience research centres. The pattern, building durable institutions from convening power, is rare. Biography highlights Director of Peugeot Talbot Sport, 1981 to 1993, delivering four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. General Manager of Ferrari’s Racing Division from 1993; CEO of Ferrari S.p.A. from 2004 to 2008. Ninth President of the FIA, 2009 to 2021, three full terms; now FIA Honorary President. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015, reconfirmed under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Co-founder and board member, Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant. Author, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” Assouline. Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur. Recipient of the Olympic Order. Biography Scuderia Ferrari had not won a Formula One Drivers’ Championship since 1979 when Jean Todt arrived in 1993 as General Manager of the Racing Division. He brought in Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn, and Rory Byrne, rebuilt the technical organisation around them, and produced the most dominant run in modern Formula One: five consecutive Drivers’ titles between 2000 and 2004 and six Constructors’ titles in seven years. In 2004 he was promoted to CEO of Ferrari S.p.A., responsible for the road car business as well as the racing operation, until 2008. The Ferrari work followed a twelve-year stint at Peugeot Talbot Sport from 1981, where he built the rally programme that produced four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. The pattern across both jobs was the same: take a manufacturer’s competition arm, set a clear technical direction, and hold it long enough for compounding to work. Elected ninth President of the FIA in 2009, Todt served three four-year terms running motor sport’s global governing body across 145 national federations and 245 member organisations. He launched the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign in 2011, which became the platform for his next role: in April 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him Special Envoy for Road Safety, a brief he still holds, working with governments to halve road deaths by 2030. Outside motor sport, Todt co-founded the Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant; the institute is now one of the largest neuroscience research centres in Europe. He is a Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur and a recipient of the Olympic Order. His most recent book, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” collects more than fifty road safety case studies from the partners and governments he has worked with as UN Envoy. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in legacy organisations High-performance team building under public scrutiny Sports governance and federation reform Global road safety policy Public-private partnership for social outcomes Building institutions: from racing to neuroscience Crisis management and decision-making at speed Ideal for CEOs and executive committees running multi-year turnarounds where culture and technical excellence both have to move Boards and chairs working on governance reform, federation oversight, or regulated-industry strategy ESG, public affairs, and sustainability leaders building credible public-private programmes Automotive, mobility, and insurance leadership audiences working on safety, risk, and the energy transition Audience outcomes A working model for rebuilding a senior team when the inherited talent and the public narrative are both against you A clearer view of how political authority, technical authority, and commercial authority interact in regulated industries A first-hand account of negotiating with heads of state on a public health mandate, with the mechanisms that have moved policy and the ones that have not A serious answer to the question of how a leader sustains performance across forty years and three very different institutional roles

Why organisations work with Jean-Francois Manzoni Named a pattern managers now use to describe their own mistakes. The “set-up-to-fail syndrome”, introduced in his 1998 Harvard Business Review article and the 2002 Harvard Business School Press book with Jean-Louis Barsoux, is one of the few leadership concepts that has entered standard corporate vocabulary and is still taught on MBA and executive programmes worldwide. Works on the problem leadership development rarely solves. His current research focuses on the “knowing-doing gap”, the reason senior leaders leave off-sites full of energy and revert to old habits within weeks. Seven years running IMD gives him operational credibility that most academic speakers lack. As President from 2017 to 2024, he led the school through COVID and a revenue collapse from 130 million to 90 million Swiss francs in a single year. Governance expertise is practice, not theory. He served as Independent Director of Keppel Ltd from 2018 to 2024 and chaired its Nominations Committee during the period in which the company transformed from an industrial conglomerate to a global asset manager and won Best Managed Board at the 2023 Singapore Corporate Awards. Stays in live conversation with sitting CEOs. Through IMD’s CEO Dialogue series, he interviews the leaders of ABB, ASML, Vodafone, Hindustan Unilever, Mars, HEINEKEN, Tata Steel, Temasek and Keppel, keeping his material current against the challenges they are actually facing. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance at IMD (Lausanne), where he served as President and Nestlé Chaired Professor from 2017 to 2024 Co-author with Jean-Louis Barsoux of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (Harvard Business School Press), winner of two Book of the Year awards Author of the Harvard Business Review article that introduced the “set-up-to-fail syndrome” concept (March/April 1998); contributor to HBR and the Financial Times Author of 30+ business case studies; four received Case of the Year awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Centre Recipient of the Research Award on Leadership and Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants; invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos (2014, 2016) Independent Director and Chair of the Nominations Committee at Keppel Ltd (2018-2024); Fellow and Senior Accredited Board Director of the Singapore Institute of Directors; Doctorate from Harvard Business School Biography When a capable employee starts under-performing, the instinctive explanation is that something has changed in them. A 1998 Harvard Business Review article argued the opposite: most of the time, the boss’s tightened monitoring and visible loss of confidence caused the decline. The authors called it the set-up-to-fail syndrome, and the term entered management vocabulary. Jean-Francois Manzoni co-wrote that article with Jean-Louis Barsoux, and the 2002 Harvard Business School Press book that followed won two Book of the Year awards. The book belongs to a larger body of work on why organisations struggle to change and why leaders struggle to behave differently once pressure returns. Manzoni is Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance at IMD. He has written more than thirty business cases, four of which received Case of the Year awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Centre. Separate research on interpersonal dynamics in diverse boardrooms won the Research Award on Leadership and Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. The research focus in recent years has narrowed to what he calls the “knowing-doing gap”. Senior leaders increasingly know what good leadership looks like. Most internalise it poorly. Development programmes generate intention; the habits they target return within weeks. Manzoni’s work examines why this happens and what designs, including technology-mediated interventions, actually change behaviour for longer. Academic insight of this kind rarely comes with operating experience. Manzoni’s does. He served as IMD President and Nestlé Chaired Professor from 2017 to 2024. During COVID, he restructured the school’s executive education model and held the institution together through a revenue collapse from 130 million to 90 million Swiss francs. Board-level practice ran in parallel. He was the Independent Director of Keppel Ltd from 2018 to 2024 and chaired its Nominations Committee. Over that period, Keppel transformed from an industrial conglomerate to a global asset manager and took Best Managed Board at the 2023 Singapore Corporate Awards. Key speaking topics Leadership development and sustained behaviour change The knowing-doing gap in executive practice Organisational change and high-performance work environments Corporate governance and boardroom interpersonal dynamics The set-up-to-fail syndrome and boss-subordinate relationships Executive development and leadership programme design Change management at individual and organisational levels Ideal for CEOs, presidents and C-suite leaders are responsible for shaping senior leadership behaviour and organisational culture Board chairs, nominations committees and directors examining the interpersonal dynamics that determine oversight quality CHROs and heads of leadership development are reassessing whether their programmes actually produce sustained behaviour change Executive committees preparing for or inside significant organisational change Audience outcomes A sharper vocabulary for the performance dynamics they are already creating without noticing, including the specific behaviours that cause capable people to disengage A realistic view of why leadership development programmes fail to produce sustained behaviour change and what design choices make new habits stick Evidence from boardrooms where diversity has increased but interpersonal maturity has not, and a clearer sense of how to close that gap A usable sense of the distance between what senior leaders say they value and what their behaviour signals once pressure returns