Leadership

Why organisations work with Macer Gifford He has built two functioning units from nothing, a Combat Medical Unit with Kurdish forces in Syria and Operation Golden Hour in Ukraine, both still saving lives. That is a rare proof point on creating capability under pressure. He has fought alongside Kurdish and Syriac forces against Islamic State and now serves as a reconnaissance infantryman and medic in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion’s 131st Battalion. The material is firsthand, not interpreted. His talks translate combat decision-making into language a board, a transformation team or a frontline manager can actually use, without the bravado that typically comes with the genre. He brings credible standing on two of the defining conflicts of the era, with published work in The Spectator and The Telegraph and regular appearances on BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Channel 4. He is the author of “Fighting Evil” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, foreword by Andy McNab), a sustained piece of writing about why an ordinary person chooses to act when most do not. Biography highlights Volunteer fighter with the Kurdish YPG and a Syriac Christian unit in Syria, mid-2015 to 2017, including the Manbij offensive and the siege of Raqqa. Founder of a Combat Medical Unit with Kurdish forces in Syria, still operational, and of Operation Golden Hour, a battlefield first-aid training programme for Ukrainian and international volunteers. Reconnaissance infantryman and medic with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion’s 131st Battalion and the International Cossacks Expeditionary Force; awarded a medal by the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Author of “Fighting Evil: The Ordinary Man who went to War Against ISIS”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, with a foreword by Andy McNab. Contributor to The Spectator and The Telegraph; regular interviewee on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Channel 4, ITV, Sky News and LBC. Reading for a Master’s in Security, Peace-building and Diplomacy at Loughborough University London. Biography A foreign exchange trader from Cambridge with no military background flew to northern Syria in 2015 and joined the Kurdish YPG. Over the next three years, that decision became one of the longest tours by any British international volunteer in the war against Islamic State, ending at the siege of Raqqa. The interesting question is not why he went, it is what he learned about command, fear and group cohesion when the people around him were untrained, frightened and being killed. Out of that experience came a Combat Medical Unit, built from nothing with Kurdish forces, that still operates in north-east Syria. He repeated the pattern in 2022. Ten days before Russia’s full-scale invasion he was on the ground in Ukraine, and within weeks he had launched Operation Golden Hour, a battlefield first-aid programme that has trained domestic and international volunteers across the conflict. He now serves as a reconnaissance infantryman and medic with the 131st Battalion, was decorated in connection with the liberation of Kherson, and writes about the war for outlets including The Spectator and The Telegraph. His memoir, “Fighting Evil”, carries a foreword by Andy McNab and sits alongside regular appearances on BBC, CNN, MSNBC and Channel 4. For an organisation thinking seriously about leadership when the systems break, the practical question is simple: who actually has done it, and can explain it. Gifford can. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Building teams and capability from scratch in hostile conditions Courage, fear and individual moral choice Frontline lessons from Syria and Ukraine Humanitarian action and combat medicine in conflict zones The fight against Islamic State and the war in Ukraine Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO forums focused on resilience and crisis decision-making Transformation, change and operations leaders dealing with high ambiguity and human risk Defence, security, NGO and public-sector audiences working in unstable environments Conferences and dinners that need a serious, firsthand voice on the conflicts shaping the decade Audience outcomes A direct account of how trust, command and morale actually function when conditions deteriorate A practical view of how small groups build capability quickly when no system supports them A frame for thinking about courage and individual responsibility that does not collapse into cliche A clear-eyed sense of what is happening on the ground in Syria and Ukraine, from someone still serving there

Why organisations work with Yan Lefort He has done the work commercial teams are usually only theorising about: replacing a category that funded an entire industry, in his case tobacco in Formula 1, with sponsors that pass modern scrutiny. As Commercial & Marketing Director of Sauber Motorsport from 2018 to 2022, he sat on the management board and was directly responsible for landing the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership and the Orlen title sponsorship that anchored the team’s finances. He has run the partner side and the rights-holder side of the same deal. At IWC Schaffhausen he built the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 partnership during the Hamilton era; at Sauber he sold the property. Few speakers can credibly describe both seats. His operating context is one of the most commercially exposed environments in business, where every quarter the product performs in public and sponsors decide whether to renew. That discipline transfers to any organisation whose revenue depends on relationship renewals under pressure. Biography highlights Commercial & Marketing Director, Sauber Motorsport AG, 2018 to 2022, and member of the Alfa Romeo Racing F1 management board Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR at IWC Schaffhausen, leading the IWC partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team Global PR Manager for the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda Six years at Rothmans managing the sponsorship of the Williams F1 team Ran an independent commercial and sponsorship consultancy serving OEM automotive clients including Toyota’s F1 team, sponsors, rights holders and F1 drivers Speaker, International Sports Convention, Geneva Biography When tobacco sponsorship was banned from Formula 1 in 2005, the sport lost the category that had paid most of its bills for thirty years. Teams, rights holders and agencies had to rebuild their commercial books from scratch. Yan Lefort had spent the previous decade inside that commercial machine, six years at Rothmans on the Williams F1 sponsorship and seven as Global PR Manager of the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda. He set up his own consultancy and spent the next five years rewiring sponsorship strategies for OEM clients including Toyota’s F1 team, plus a range of sponsors, rights holders and drivers. In 2011 he joined IWC Schaffhausen as Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR, where he ran the luxury watchmaker’s partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team through the period of Lewis Hamilton’s dominance. That gave him the brand-side view of the most demanding partner relationship in motorsport. At the start of 2018 he moved to Sauber Motorsport as Commercial & Marketing Director and joined the team’s management board. The team had no title sponsor and a weak commercial position. By the time he left in 2022 he had landed the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership that rebranded the team and the title sponsorship from the Polish energy company Orlen. During those years he worked closely with World Champion Kimi Raikkonen and ten-time Grand Prix winner Valtteri Bottas. That sequence, rights-holder to sponsor to rights-holder, agency to brand to team, gives him a practical reading of how partnership revenue is actually built and defended. He speaks to that work directly, drawing on named deals and named counterparts rather than abstractions about engagement or storytelling. Key speaking topics Sponsorship and partnership strategy Commercial leadership in Formula 1 Sports marketing and brand activation Rebuilding revenue after category disruption Luxury brand partnerships in regulated environments High-performance team commercial operations Ideal for CCOs, CMOs and heads of partnerships at sponsors and rights holders Boards of sports properties, federations and motorsport teams Brand and partnership leaders inside luxury, automotive and energy companies Commercial leadership teams whose revenue model relies on long-cycle partner renewals Audience outcomes A working view of how a modern F1 team builds and defends its sponsorship book A specific account of how a banned-category sport rebuilt its commercial model, with lessons for any industry facing regulatory or reputational disruption to its revenue base The brand-side and rights-holder-side perspectives on the same partnership, drawn from IWC’s relationship with Mercedes-AMG F1 and Sauber’s relationship with Alfa Romeo and Orlen A clearer test for whether a partnership is commercial substance or marketing decoration

Why organisations work with Tima Deryan A first-person account of summiting Everest in one of the deadliest seasons on the mountain, used as concrete material for how leaders prepare for, recover from, and execute under conditions where mistakes cost lives. A track record of physical first-ever achievements, including Everest, the Seven Summits, the South Pole, and Ojos del Salado, that gives weight to her arguments on goal-setting and persistence beyond the usual motivational register. A working coaching practice, not a one-off speaking circuit; she runs Mountain Gipsy as an ongoing platform, which means content is sharpened by repeated client work rather than rehearsed from a single book. A founder track record alongside the mountaineering, including the sustainable fashion brand Feministiya and earlier ventures, which gives her credibility on women’s leadership and entrepreneurship topics where bureaus often field speakers with only one of those two profiles. Biography highlights First Lebanese woman and youngest Arab to summit Mount Everest, 22 May 2019, age 26. First Lebanese woman to ski the last degree to the South Pole, December 2022. Completed the Seven Summits; first Arab woman to summit Ojos del Salado, the world’s highest active volcano. Founder and CEO of Mountain Gipsy; founder of Feministiya, a sustainability-focused fashion brand. Author of Curly Adventures: Mount Everest, a children’s book on her ascent. Certified mindset coach with a corporate keynote client list spanning multinationals across consumer goods, energy, and pharmaceuticals. Biography The 2019 Everest season was one of the deadliest on record. On 22 May, Tima Deryan reached the summit at 7:21 am, becoming the first Lebanese woman and the youngest Arab to do so. The technical and psychological work that produced that morning is what she now teaches. Deryan has since added the South Pole, the Seven Summits, and Ojos del Salado to a sustained record of high-altitude objectives. She is pursuing the Explorer Grand Slam, a list completed by fewer than 75 people globally and by only 15 women. The achievements matter for the keynote because the lessons are drawn from environments where decisions cannot be undone, not from a metaphor. Outside the mountains, she runs Mountain Gipsy as a coaching and speaking platform and founded Feministiya, a sustainable fashion brand focused on women’s rights and gender equality. That second track gives her substantive material on entrepreneurship and women’s leadership rather than the borrowed credibility some adventure speakers rely on. She is also a best-selling author of Curly Adventures: Mount Everest, a children’s book recounting her climb. Her corporate work includes keynotes and workshops for Procter & Gamble, Merck, Ford, Adidas, Henkel, Swarovski, Shell, and ADNOC. The repeated booking pattern across consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and energy reflects what she is most often commissioned for: a high-stakes story used as working material on goal-setting, team dynamics, and composure under pressure. Key speaking topics Goal-setting in low-margin environments Mindset and self-leadership under pressure Decision-making in high-stakes uncertainty Team dynamics on extended expeditions Women’s leadership and breaking first-ever barriers Entrepreneurship and sustainability Resilience and recovery from setback Ideal for CHROs and L&D leaders commissioning a high-stakes keynote on resilience and goal-setting Sales and commercial leadership teams working through stretch targets Women’s leadership networks and ERGs inside large multinationals Off-site events for senior teams that need a working narrative on composure under pressure, not a generic motivational session Audience outcomes A working framework for setting and pursuing objectives where failure has real cost A first-person account of how preparation, composure, and team trust hold up in extreme conditions A clearer view of what self-leadership looks like in environments without external validation A direct argument for persistence in goals that look unreasonable from the starting line

Why organisations work with Philip Keil He brings the operating discipline of Crew Resource Management, the framework airlines use to prevent crew failure under pressure, into language a leadership team can actually apply on Monday morning. He has been the captain in command during a genuine in-flight emergency with nearly 200 passengers on board, so his content on composure and decision-making is grounded in a specific event, not a hypothetical. His books You are the pilot! and The inner compass give him a published position on intuition and self-leadership, which extends a keynote into a longer programme for executive development. He delivers in English and German at a senior corporate level across more than 20 countries, which suits multinational audiences without an interpreter compromise. He is an active TV aviation expert in Germany, which means he is fluent at explaining technical environments to non-technical audiences without losing the senior register. Biography highlights Qualified as a Lufthansa-trained airline pilot at 22, one of the youngest in Germany. Over 9,000 hours of commercial flying across four continents. Author of You are the pilot! (2019) and The inner compass (2022). Listed in Europe’s TOP 100 Excellent Keynote Speakers since 2017. Two-time nominee for the Red Fox Award, Germany’s Keynote Speaker of the Year (2019, 2020). Recurring aviation expert across ZDF, RTL, Pro 7, Sat.1, WELT, and ntv. Biography The aviation industry has spent four decades engineering away a single problem: capable people, working together, still making fatal decisions. The framework that emerged is called Crew Resource Management, and it is the operating discipline behind the modern cockpit. It assumes that a senior captain can be wrong, that a junior co-pilot must be heard, and that error must surface before it compounds. Philip Keil works inside that framework professionally. He qualified as an airline pilot at 22 after training at Lufthansa in Bremen, and has since logged more than 9,000 flying hours over four continents. On 24 February 2009 he was the captain in command when a routine flight with around 200 passengers became an emergency landing, an event he has used as the empirical anchor for his work on composure and decision-making ever since. His books extend the cockpit material into something more useful for a senior leader. You are the pilot! (2019) is a study in self-leadership and confidence under load. The inner compass (2022) addresses the role of intuition in high-stakes decisions, the part of judgement that does not appear on a spreadsheet. Both have given him a published intellectual position rather than a single-incident speaker hook. That position has been recognised commercially. Keil has been listed in Europe’s TOP 100 Excellent Keynote Speakers since 2017, was nominated as Germany’s Keynote Speaker of the Year in 2019 and 2020, and is the recurring aviation voice across the major German broadcasters. He works in English and German, which is what a multinational leadership audience actually needs. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Crew Resource Management for executive teams Error culture and accountability Self-leadership and composure Crisis communication and command Team coordination across hierarchy Ideal for Executive committees and boards facing high-consequence decisions under time pressure COOs, CHROs, and operational leaders rebuilding accountability and error reporting culture Leadership development programmes for newly appointed senior managers Safety-critical, regulated, or operationally complex industries (aviation, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, financial services) Audience outcomes A working vocabulary from Crew Resource Management that they can apply to their own leadership meetings A specific model for how to surface bad news up a hierarchy before it becomes a crisis A clearer view of what composure looks like as an operational skill, not a personality trait A repeatable approach to making the next decision when the information is incomplete

Why organisations work with Kian Gohar Brings primary research, not commentary. The Ferrazzi-Gohar study of 2,000 leaders during the pandemic and his Stanford-partnered four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming give boards an evidence base for decisions, not anecdote. Co-author of a Wall Street Journal bestseller, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, translated into seven languages), with a working framework for high-return team practices that leaders can apply directly. Operational track record from inside XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he ran innovation programmes for Fortune 500s and helped design corporate moonshot work, so the advice connects to how large organisations actually execute. Published in Harvard Business Review on the failure modes of generative AI in team creativity, with specific guidance on how to redesign ideation workflows so AI raises output rather than flattening it. Speaks five languages and has built innovation programmes across the US, Europe, and China, which translates into sharper sessions for global leadership teams than a US-only perspective offers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Geolab, a research lab on Human-AI collaboration, future of work, and innovation. Co-author with Keith Ferrazzi of “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller in seven languages. Co-author of “Don’t Let Gen AI Limit Your Team’s Creativity,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2024, with Jeremy Utley of Stanford. Former Executive Director, XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Henry Luce Scholar in Shanghai; alumnus of Northwestern, London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. Research and commentary featured in the Financial Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. Biography Most teams adopted hybrid work and generative AI inside the same eighteen months, and most leaders are still guessing at what good looks like. Kian Gohar’s research sits in that gap. With Keith Ferrazzi he interviewed more than 2,000 leaders during the pandemic; the resulting book, “Competing in the New World of Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and was translated into seven languages. His more recent work moves the same lens onto AI. With Jeremy Utley of Stanford, he ran a four-company experiment on AI-assisted brainstorming and published the findings in Harvard Business Review in 2024. The headline is uncomfortable for vendors: teams using generative AI produced only modestly more ideas, and several underperformed. The article gives leaders a specific diagnosis of why and what to change in the ideation workflow. Before Geolab, Gohar was Executive Director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, where he built corporate moonshot and innovation programmes for Fortune 500 leadership teams. That operational background is why his keynotes carry weight in boardrooms; the advice is grounded in running real programmes, not modelling them. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Luce Scholar, and a graduate of Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School. For a senior team trying to work out how to make hybrid actually productive and how to introduce AI without quietly degrading creativity, Gohar offers a rare combination of evidence and operating instinct. Key speaking topics Radical adaptability and high-return team practices Human-AI collaboration in knowledge work Generative AI and team creativity Hybrid and remote workplace design Innovation strategy and corporate moonshots Future of work and workforce transformation Leadership through structural change Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning hybrid operating models Chief strategy and chief innovation officers integrating generative AI into team workflows Executive teams running enterprise-wide transformation programmes Boards and senior leadership groups setting an AI and future-of-work agenda Audience outcomes A clear read on what 2,000 leaders learned about hybrid work that actually raises team performance. Specific reasons teams underperform with generative AI and the workflow changes that reverse it. A working vocabulary for radical adaptability that senior teams can use to evaluate their own practices. Concrete examples from XPRIZE moonshot work showing how ambitious goals get organised inside large companies. A sharper sense of which AI and future-of-work investments will compound, and which will not.

Why organisations work with Dr Helena Boschi She brings neuroscience into the room with the credibility of someone who has sat on the executive side of HR. Senior roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals and Serono SA mean she speaks to leadership problems from inside, not from a lab. Her book Why We Do What We Do (Wiley, 2020) gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for why people behave as they do under pressure, which lasts beyond the event. She works at the intersection of chronic stress and cognitive performance, an area most leadership speakers skim and few treat as a board-level risk. She is a member of the British Psychological Society and has built Chequered Leopard Ltd since 2004 specifically to translate peer-reviewed research into operational practice, not keynote theatre. She is unusually sharp on the behavioural cost of hybrid working: trust erosion, risk attitudes, attention, empathy. Useful for any leadership team still making assumptions about what remote does to a workforce. Biography highlights Founder of Chequered Leopard Ltd (since 2004), a consultancy applying neuroscience to leadership, change and workplace behaviour. Author of Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Our Brain to Get the Best Out of Ourselves and Others (Wiley, 2020). Former Vice President of Talent Management at Shire Pharmaceuticals. Former Corporate Director and Head of Global Organisation Development at Serono SA (now part of Merck KGaA). Member of the British Psychological Society. Research interests include the impact of chronic, work-induced stress on cognitive ability in the workplace. Biography Most change programmes fail on the same fault line. Leaders model behaviour as a matter of willingness, when the brain is actually running on threat detection, bias and habit. Helena Boschi has built a twenty-year practice around closing that gap, translating applied neuroscience into the decisions senior teams actually have to make. Her consultancy, Chequered Leopard Ltd, was founded in 2004 after senior corporate roles inside Shire Pharmaceuticals, where she was Vice President of Talent Management, and Serono SA, where she led global organisation development. That sequence matters. She is not a researcher who later discovered business. She ran the people function at scale in listed multinationals and turned to neuroscience because the tools available to her were not explaining what she was seeing. Her book Why We Do What We Do, published by Wiley in 2020, sets out how the brain communicates, remembers, attends, leads and decides, and what organisations can do to stop working against it. The work that sits beneath it, including her interest in chronic work-induced stress and cognitive function, informs keynotes on change, cognitive bias, psychological safety, hybrid working and innovation. She is a member of the British Psychological Society. The argument she leaves in the room is specific. Most of what organisations call a culture problem is a biology problem being asked to behave. Once leaders see that, the interventions change. Key speaking topics Applied neuroscience at work The neuroscience of change Cognitive bias and decision-making Psychological safety and fear at work Trust, risk and hybrid working The neuroscience of innovation Chronic stress and cognitive performance Neuroplasticity and cognitive agility in an AI-driven world Ideal for CEOs, executive teams and boards working through sustained change or transformation programmes. CHROs, CPOs and senior HR, talent and organisation development leaders. Leadership development and learning teams designing programmes for senior cohorts. Cross-cultural and international leadership groups operating in hybrid conditions. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of why people resist, withdraw or underperform during change, grounded in how the brain responds to uncertainty. Named cognitive biases leaders can spot in their own decisions and in the decisions their teams make for them. A practical read on what hybrid working is doing to trust, empathy and risk appetite inside their organisation. Specific behavioural levers for psychological safety, rather than slogans. Language and evidence leaders can take back into their own teams without needing to cite academic research.

Why organisations work with Chris Hirst He has actually run a 10,000-person global P&L. The leadership argument comes from a CEO seat, not a research role. He took Grey London from underperformer to a business that tripled in size and quadrupled profit in five years, then took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three. That is the exact operating story most boards are asking for. No Bullsh*t Leadership won UK Business Book of the Year, an independently awarded credential rather than self-published positioning. The argument now runs across three books, on leadership, change, and career, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. His content travels into operating environments because it was built for one. Recent clients include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Deloitte, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He gives leadership teams a shared language for the small, repeatable behaviours that determine whether change actually happens, not another model to put on a slide. Biography highlights Former Global CEO, Havas Creative Group, leading more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries. Took Havas from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global network rankings in three years; shortlisted by Campaign as Global CEO of the Year, 2022. Former UK CEO of Grey London (WPP); the agency tripled in size and quadrupled profit during his tenure. Author of three books, No Bullsht Leadership (UK Business Book of the Year 2020), No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable (Pan Macmillan), together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. Host of the No Bullsht Leadership podcast (with Intelligence Squared), more than 500,000 downloads, and founder of the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Now a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies; graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford (Engineering Science) and Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. Biography Grey London was a struggling agency inside WPP when Chris Hirst took over as UK CEO. Five years later it had tripled in size and quadrupled profit. He then ran Havas Creative Group globally, more than 10,000 people across more than 100 countries, taking the network from also-ran to second in Campaign Magazine’s global rankings in three years. Campaign shortlisted him as Global CEO of the Year in 2022. That operating record is the foundation of his leadership work. No Bullsht Leadership, published by Profile Books in 2019, was named UK Business Book of the Year 2020. It argues that leadership is a small set of repeatable behaviours, not a personality type, and is written for people running things rather than studying them. The argument now runs across three books, No Bullsht Leadership, No Bullsht Change, and Indispensable, together selling more than 100,000 copies in seven languages. It also reaches a podcast made with Intelligence Squared, a monthly Management Today column, and the No Bullsht Leadership Academy. Organisations that have worked with him include Google, PepsiCo, PwC, Nissan, and Warner Music Group. He still runs businesses too, now as a Fractional Chair and Non-Executive Director to scaling companies. What he gives a serious audience is rare on the leadership circuit: a former Global CEO who reduces leadership to behaviours a team can use the same week. His own equation, Impact equals Clarity times Action, is the spine of it, tested across more than a decade of running businesses and a billion-dollar global P&L. Key speaking topics Practical leadership and decision-making Leading transformational change Building high-performing cultures Turnaround and growth leadership Leading teams through AI-driven change Executive presence and credibility The behaviours of effective CEOs Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and executive teams running through restructure or growth Senior leadership populations inside large organisations rebuilding culture High-potential leadership programmes and talent cohorts Boards and partner groups in professional services and agencies Audience outcomes A working definition of leadership stripped of jargon and slogans His core equation for impact, Clarity times Action, and what it means when either side falls to zero A way to read culture as the behaviour of leadership, not a values poster, and to spot a culture problem before it becomes a performance one The 40/70 rule for making decisions without waiting for complete information A direct, occasionally uncomfortable challenge to current leadership habits

Why organisations work with Steve Gaskin Direct senior operational experience at Scotland Yard. DCI rank with homicide and counter-terrorism case exposure is uncommon in the speaker market, where “former detective” often means a junior career repackaged. Pattern recognition that translates between domains. His sales-focused talk shows how the structure of a police suspect interview can be applied directly to a customer conversion conversation, as a working method. Current broadcast credibility. Contributions to Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight and ITV’s Playboy Bunny Club Murders keep his analysis grounded in cases audiences may have followed. Decision-making content shaped by real consequences. The material is built from environments where wrong calls had immediate legal and human stakes, which gives it a weight classroom case studies cannot match. Biography highlights Former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, based at New Scotland Yard, with more than 25 years of service. Case experience spans homicide, counter-terrorism-related operations and serious drug trafficking, including undercover deployment at New Scotland Yard. Contributor to UK true-crime documentary programming, including Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight. Director of Huxley Events Ltd and The Crime Lab Ltd, both delivering corporate crime-themed events and consultancy. BSc in Psychology and Mathematics; executive programme at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management; Associate Tutor at Anglia Ruskin University. Biography Senior detectives at Scotland Yard make calls under pressure, where errors carry immediate legal and human stakes. Structured interviewing and evidence-led decision-making, the disciplines that hold up in those conditions, are learned by practice on real cases. Steve Gaskin spent more than 25 years in that environment and retired as a Detective Chief Inspector. His case experience runs from early 1980s work on the Hyde Park bombing investigation through to homicide and counter-terrorism-related operations. He also served in serious drug trafficking work at New Scotland Yard, including undercover deployment. The connecting thread is decision-making at the point where evidence is incomplete and the cost of waiting is real. That is the foundation of his corporate work. His talks draw structural parallels: police suspect interview frameworks mapped onto sales conversations, and murder squad management compared with leading teams under pressure. The result is applied technique an audience can use the next day. He contributes regularly to UK broadcast crime journalism, including Channel 5’s Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight and ITV’s Playboy Bunny Club Murders. The cases he discusses on screen are often the same ones that surface in his corporate keynotes. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Investigative interviewing technique Leadership in high-stakes operational environments Workplace psychopathy and personality reading Sales conversation structure drawn from suspect interviewing Crime-based corporate storytelling Ideal for Sales leadership teams looking to apply structured suspect interviewing techniques to prospecting and conversion Senior leadership groups working on decision-making, team management and risk under pressure Corporate audiences seeking substantive after-dinner content with operational credibility Conferences in financial services, professional services and risk-focused sectors Audience outcomes A method for structuring interviews where information accuracy matters, applicable to either suspect interrogation or sales discovery Names and behavioural markers for the personality patterns most likely to disrupt a workplace, drawn from criminal psychology Concrete examples of how operational teams are led through high-pressure investigations Material drawn from recent high-profile cases he has analysed for UK broadcast

Why organisations work with John Ridding He ran the playbook the rest of the news industry copied. The FT moved to a paywall in 2002, a metered model in 2007, and trial-led subscriptions in 2015, reaching one million subscribers in 2019 and 2.9 million paying users by 2023. He brings the inside view of a cross-border acquisition that worked. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei is one of the cleanest examples of a Japanese parent acquiring a Western media asset without breaking it. He has signed the first UK national publisher licensing deal with OpenAI, which gives him a current operator perspective on how content businesses negotiate with foundation model companies, not a commentator’s view. He spent 35 years inside one institution and ran it for almost 20. That tenure is unusual at his level and gives him a coherent argument about long-horizon transformation rather than a sequence of quarterly bets. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of the FT Group, May 2006 to June 2025. Special Executive Director of Nikkei, parent company of the Financial Times since 2015. Honorary Chairman of the Financial Times following his transition from CEO. Previously Publisher of FT Asia and Chairman of Pearson Asia, 2003 to 2006. Foreign correspondent for the FT in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong, with reporting from China, Japan, India and Indonesia. First-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University. Biography The reader-revenue model now treated as orthodoxy across global news media did not exist as a serious commercial strategy when the Financial Times began charging for online journalism in 2002. The decision was contested inside the building and dismissed outside it. Two decades later, it is the model the New York Times, the Washington Post and most of the European broadsheets have adopted in some form. John Ridding ran that experiment to scale. As CEO of the FT Group from 2006 to 2025, he took the paper from print-led economics to a paying audience of 2.9 million and revenues of GBP 500m, with more than two-thirds of revenue from digital subscriptions. The headline numbers matter, but the operating choices behind them are what executives in other sectors find useful: how to price confidently when the market expects free, how to redesign the product around habit rather than transactions, how to build a direct data relationship with a reader. He also managed two structural events most CEOs never face. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei moved a British editorial institution into Japanese ownership without disturbing the journalism. In April 2024 the FT became the first UK national publisher to license its content to OpenAI, an early test of how content owners negotiate with foundation model companies on terms rather than waiting to be scraped. Before running the business he reported from it. Postings in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong covered the Asian financial crisis, the rise of China as a commercial power, and the early years of the Eurozone. That reporter background is the throughline. He talks about the digital subscription business the way a foreign correspondent talks about a country, in specifics, not abstractions. Key speaking topics Subscription and reader-revenue business models Digital transformation of legacy businesses AI and the future of content, media and intellectual property Cross-border M&A and post-acquisition integration Global business through the lens of news and capital flows Leadership of long-horizon transformation The economics of trust in a fragmented information market Ideal for CEOs and CFOs of subscription, media, publishing and content businesses Boards of legacy companies designing direct customer-revenue strategies Chief Strategy and Chief Commercial Officers wrestling with pricing in commoditising markets Senior teams negotiating content, IP or data licensing terms with AI platforms Audience outcomes A clear account of how a legacy business shifted from advertising to direct customer revenue, with the sequencing decisions that made it work A framework for thinking about pricing, product and data as one operating system rather than three departments An informed read on what content owners are actually negotiating with foundation model companies, beyond the headlines A view on cross-border integration that treats culture and editorial autonomy as commercial assets, not soft factors

Why organisations work with Nadira Tudor She moderates at the level of the World Economic Forum at Davos, IBC Amsterdam, GITEX Global Dubai and the Future Investment Initiative, which means clients commissioning her are buying the same on-stage standard those programmes demand. She runs Euronews’ Baku Bureau, anchoring and producing the network’s news output from the region, so her interviewing instincts are tested daily on live international news, not refreshed once a year on the speaker circuit. Her on-camera presenting for branded content is recognised at industry award level, including a Silver Telly Award for the Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series with ReutersPlus and a Bronze Award for IDA Ireland’s film on the country’s semiconductors cluster, with regular further work for the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter. She trains military and government communicators, including NATO, UK MOD and the Royal Navy, which sharpens her judgement on stage when conversations turn to security, geopolitics or regulated industries. Her academic seat at Cardiff JOMEC and her master’s in intercultural communication from Birkbeck give her a working theory of cross-cultural audience response, which matters for global summits where the audience is not a single market. Biography highlights Bureau Chief, Baku, for Euronews, running the bureau and its sponsored programmes hub with editorial responsibility for the full news output. Broadcast career across BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, BBC 5 Live, BBC News, BBC Wales and BBC Asian Network, with a further spell at BBC News and Programmes (2023 to 2025), launch-team roles at News UK across Times Radio and TalkTV (2020 to 2023), and international experience at ITN, Channel 5 and Al Arabiya English. Award-winning ReutersPlus branded-content presenter: Silver Telly Award (Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series) and Bronze Award (IDA Ireland semiconductors film). Regular further branded-content work for the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter. Visiting Lecturer at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC); master’s in Intercultural Communication for Business and Professions, Birkbeck, University of London. Moderation credits include the World Economic Forum (Davos 2023 and 2024), GITEX Global Dubai, GITEX Africa, IBC Amsterdam, Future Investment Initiative, GMIS and T20. Communications training for NATO, UK MOD, the Royal Navy and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps; 2015 Asian Professional Award for Media and BBC Innovation Award. Biography Most leadership content fails on stage long before the strategy fails in the market. The interview misfires, the panel drifts, the senior voice in the room sounds defensive, and the audience remembers the discomfort, not the message. The person holding the microphone decides whether that happens. Her current post is Bureau Chief in Baku for Euronews, where she runs the bureau and its sponsored programmes hub, anchors and produces key programmes for the region, and is responsible for the full news output. She came up through the BBC across Radio 4, Radio 1 and 1Xtra, 5 Live, News, Wales and the Asian Network, with a further spell at BBC News and Programmes from 2023 to 2025, and was part of the launch teams for both Times Radio and TalkTV at News UK between 2020 and 2023. International newsroom experience runs through ITN, Channel 5 and Al Arabiya English. She moderates at the most senior end of the global conference circuit, including the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2023 and 2024, IBC Amsterdam, GITEX Global, the Future Investment Initiative, the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit and the T20. The same craft underpins her communications training for NATO, the UK MOD, the Royal Navy and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, where leadership communication is a security issue, not a presentation skill. The intellectual underpinning is her master’s in Intercultural Communication for Business and Professions from Birkbeck, University of London, and a Visiting Lecturer seat at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture. She also fronts award-winning branded content for ReutersPlus, the Financial Times, ITN Business and Business Reporter, with a Silver Telly Award for the Shell “Decarbonisation: From What to How” interview series and a Bronze Award for IDA Ireland’s film on the country’s semiconductors cluster. The 2015 Asian Professional Award for Media and an earlier BBC Innovation Award round out a record that rests on disciplined interviewing more than on stage presence. Key speaking topics Conference moderation and on-stage interviewing Executive communication for senior leaders Crisis and reputation communication Media and on-camera training Intercultural communication in global organisations Awards and gala hosting Panel and debate facilitation Ideal for Chief Communications Officers and Heads of Corporate Affairs commissioning a senior moderator for global summits, leadership offsites or investor days. Heads of Internal Communications running CEO town halls, all-hands and quarterly leadership broadcasts. Event directors at industry conferences who need an interviewer who can carry a multi-track programme across sectors in a single day. Public sector and defence communications leads briefing senior teams on media engagement under scrutiny. Audience outcomes A live demonstration of how a sharp interviewer turns a panel from a sequence of statements into a substantive conversation. Practical handles for senior leaders on how to answer hard questions on stage without retreating into corporate language. A clearer view of how cultural and audience context changes what counts as a strong answer, drawn from her global moderation work. For internal communications teams, a working sense of what good looks like when the CEO is in front of the room.

Why organisations work with Phillippa Mole She brings the practical content of executive presence into the room: how leaders hold themselves in a pitch, a board meeting, or a difficult conversation, taught as craft rather than as personality. Her coaching combines elite-sport performance psychology with certified executive coaching credentials, including Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach and ICF PCC accreditation, giving the work a defensible technical base. She is the first UK qualified practitioner of Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which gives her unusual range when working with leaders carrying real career or personal load. Her broadcast background, including BBC and GMTV presenting, sharpens the work on how senior people communicate when the stakes and the camera are both live. Clients have included Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with applications spanning bid pitches, capital raises and senior team development. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Fresh Air Coaching, established 2007. Master Executive Coach (Association for Coaching) and ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC). NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer; first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories for PTSS. MSc Sport Science and Performance Psychology, Loughborough University. Former lecturer in Performance Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Former BBC and GMTV network broadcaster and Sunday Telegraph columnist. Biography Composure is rarely the line item in a leadership development plan, but it is what senior people are actually judged on when the room turns difficult. Phillippa Mole’s coaching practice is built around that observation. Fresh Air Coaching, the firm she founded in 2007, works with senior leaders and teams on the behavioural mechanics of presence, influence and decision-making under pressure. The technical base is unusual. She holds an MSc in Sport Science and Performance Psychology from Loughborough and lectured in performance psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University before moving into executive coaching full time. Her certifications run from Association for Coaching Master Executive Coach to ICF PCC, with NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer status alongside. She is named as the first UK practitioner certified in Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories techniques for post-traumatic stress, which extends her range into work that touches genuine personal load. Before coaching, she competed in sprint hurdles for the South of England and represented Great Britain in bobsleigh, then spent years in front of a camera as a network broadcaster for the BBC and GMTV, including coverage of the Commonwealth Games, and as a Sunday Telegraph columnist. That background informs the way she teaches presence: the work is granular and physical, closer to a directing note than a leadership homily. Named clients include Deloitte, Dell, Sandtoft and Wienerberger, with engagements on bid pitches, capital raising and senior team performance. Buyers describe her as a “secret weapon” in those high-stakes settings, language that reflects what the work actually does, which is to make a small set of senior people materially better at the moments their reputation rests on. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence Self-leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence in senior teams Performance psychology applied to business Communication and persuasion craft Resilience and recovery for senior leaders Ideal for CEOs, managing partners and board members preparing for high-stakes pitches, capital raises or contested set-pieces Senior leadership teams investing in presence, influence and team performance ahead of restructure or growth Newly promoted executives stepping into roles where credibility is judged in moments rather than over months HR directors and L&D leads commissioning behavioural development for the top layer rather than generic wellbeing content Audience outcomes A clearer, behaviourally specific picture of what executive presence is and how to build it Practical methods for holding composure in pitches, boardrooms and difficult conversations A working model for using emotional intelligence to read a room and shift a dynamic in real time Language for naming and addressing the pressure points that quietly reduce senior performance Renewed personal confidence in the moments where reputation is actually decided

Why organisations work with Monica Verma Operational CISO experience that informs every recommendation. Three CISO appointments, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health, mean her advice on AI risk comes from someone who has actually run the response. A hacker’s view of AI threats paired with a CISO’s view of governance. She started in offensive security finding web application vulnerabilities. She now advises boards on AI trust and accountability. Both perspectives in the same conversation. A proprietary maturity model. Her Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, introduced in 2020, gives executive teams a way to locate themselves on the cyber and AI maturity curve. Credibility with technical and commercial audiences. Booked by FT Live in Luxembourg, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, and WCM 2025 in Brazil for an audience of 2,000 leaders. A clear point of view on the most contested question in the boardroom right now: how to adopt AI without breaking trust and governance. She has built her current keynote portfolio around it. Biography highlights Three-time Chief Information Security Officer with prior CISO appointments at Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet, Helfo, POBO). Director, International Cybersecurity & Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton (2024). Recognised as Top #3 CISO in EMEA (2023), Top 50 Women in Tech (2022), and Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s Outstanding Security Performance Awards (2019). Board-certified Qualified Technology Expert (QTE) and former board member of Cloud Security Alliance Norway and Women in Cybersecurity Norway. Founder and CEO of Monica Talks Cyber and Cyber Foyer. Host of The Monica Talks Cyber Show podcast and author of The Predictability Factor newsletter. Contributor to Dark Reading. Featured speaker at FT Live, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, WCM Brazil, Cyber Root Malta, and the Norwegian Tax Authority’s IT Tech conference. Biography AI is now in the boardroom and in the threat model at the same time. Most leadership teams have someone who can speak credibly about one or the other. Few have someone with three CISO appointments behind them and an active AI advisory practice on top. Monica Verma’s career has run through both. The starting point was offensive security, finding vulnerabilities in web applications and cloud environments before attackers could. Three CISO appointments followed, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. By 2024 she was Director of International Cybersecurity and Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton. Her published work bridges the same divide. The Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, which she introduced in 2020, adapts the technology adoption curve to give executive teams a usable map of their cyber maturity. Her current keynote portfolio takes that lens into the AI era: Innovating with AI Without Breaking Trust and Governing AI Before It Hacks You. The credentials track. Top #3 CISO in EMEA in 2023, Top 50 Women in Tech in 2022, Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s OSPAs in 2019. The booking pattern says more. FT Live brought her in for the European fund management industry in Luxembourg. The ACFE chose her to open its 2025 Fraud Conference Europe to ca. 500 anti-fraud executives. WCM Brazil put her in front of 2,000 leaders at one of the world’s largest strategy and leadership conferences. Key speaking topics AI security and governance Cyber resilience in the AI era AI risk and trust for the enterprise Cybersecurity leadership at board level The evolution of cybercrime AI-enabled fraud and threat response Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI adoption decisions where governance and security are not yet aligned. CISOs, CIOs and CTOs whose teams are being asked to defend against AI-enabled threats while adopting AI internally. Financial services, healthcare and public sector organisations facing high regulatory exposure on both AI and cybersecurity. Audience outcomes Specific examples of how AI is currently breaking enterprise trust in regulated industries. A maturity check against the Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model that locates where the organisation sits. The questions a board needs to ask before approving its next major AI initiative. A view of how attackers are using AI today and which enterprise defences are still holding.