Leadership

Why organisations work with Rich Diviney He brings a published, named framework, the 25 Attributes, drawn from designing and running selection for one of the most demanding assessment processes in the world. Senior teams leave with a vocabulary for talent decisions that does not collapse under pressure. He separates skills from attributes in a way that changes how boards and executive teams think about hiring, succession, and team composition. Skills tell you what someone has done; attributes tell you how they will behave when the script breaks. He has translated SEAL selection science into operating practice for Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. The frameworks have been stress-tested in commercial environments, not just military ones. His second book, Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025), gives leaders a method for performing through chaos rather than recovering from it. The argument moves the conversation from resilience as recovery to composure as a deliberate, trainable capability. Biography highlights Retired Navy SEAL commander with more than 20 years of service and 13+ overseas deployments, 11 to Iraq and Afghanistan. Officer in charge of selection, assessment, and training for a specialized SEAL command. Led the creation of the SEALs’ “Mind Gym” for cognitive performance training in high-stress environments. Author of The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021), a bestselling book. Author of Masters of Uncertainty: The Navy SEAL Way to Turn Stress into Success for You and Your Team (Amplify Publishing, 2025). Featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series; founder and CEO of The Attributes Inc. Biography Selection is where most organisations get talent decisions wrong. The candidates with the cleanest resumes wash out under stress; the ones who looked unremarkable on paper hold the team together when the plan falls apart. Rich Diviney spent the back half of his Navy career running the selection, assessment, and training pipeline for a specialized SEAL command, watching that pattern repeat at the top of one of the most demanding evaluation systems in the world. The framework he built from that work is now in two books and a consulting practice. The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021) names the innate traits, things like adaptability, cunning, narcissism, courage, that predict performance when skills run out. Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025) extends the argument into a method for staying composed and decisive when conditions are chaotic. Both treat performance as something you can engineer in advance through how you select and develop people, not something you hope shows up on the day. The substance has translated. Since leaving the Navy in 2017, Diviney has worked with Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. He was featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series on the thesis that attributes, not skills, decide whether someone makes the cut. The pattern across his clients is consistent: they are organisations whose top teams operate at the edge of their capacity and need a sharper way to choose, build, and lead the people who get sent in first. What makes him useful in a boardroom is not the SEAL biography. It is that he has a tested vocabulary for the part of leadership most frameworks gloss over: how human beings actually behave when certainty disappears. Key speaking topics The Attributes framework for individual and team performance Selection, assessment, and team composition Performing under uncertainty and stress High-performing team dynamics Trust as an operating discipline Leadership in elite and high-pressure environments Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive teams responsible for performance through volatile conditions. CHROs and talent leaders rethinking selection, succession, and team composition. Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, composure, and decision-making under pressure. High-stakes operating teams in financial services, professional services, sport, aviation, and defence-adjacent industries. Audience outcomes A working distinction between skills and attributes that changes how leaders evaluate talent. A vocabulary of 25 named attributes leaders can use immediately in selection, succession, and team-building conversations. A method for staying composed and decisive in conditions where the plan has stopped working. A clearer view of what trust actually consists of inside a high-performing team, and how to build it deliberately. A reframe of resilience: from recovery after shock to performance through it.

Why organisations work with Lars Ulrich He has run, with three bandmates, one of the most commercially successful independent creative businesses of the last forty years, with more than 125 million albums sold and full ownership of the master recordings. He led the Napster confrontation in 2000, the first artist-led legal challenge to peer-to-peer file sharing, which set much of the licensing groundwork that streaming platforms operate on today. He speaks from inside a band whose business model has been rebuilt at least three times, from major-label act to self-owned record company to direct-to-fan operator across a 60 million-strong social following. He chairs, with his bandmates, the All Within My Hands Foundation, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, useful only as evidence that the work has been recognised by serious institutions outside the music industry. Biography highlights Co-founder and drummer of Metallica, formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the first Danish artist to receive the honour. Ten Grammy Awards from 26 nominations, including six Best Metal Performance wins. Testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in Metallica v. Napster, 11 July 2000. Co-founder of the All Within My Hands Foundation, established 2017, supporting workforce education, food security and disaster relief. Awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2017. Biography Metallica has outsold most of the labels it has ever worked with. The band Lars Ulrich co-founded in 1981 has shipped more than 125 million records, won ten Grammy Awards, and now owns its entire master catalogue. It has done all of that without ever softening its sound to fit the commercial moment, and without ever being acquired, merged or absorbed. The interesting business question is how. Ulrich is one of the few people who can answer it from the inside. His account covers the decisions that mattered: refusing to chase trends with the Black Album, suing Napster in 2000 when the rest of the industry was paralysed, eventually buying back the masters, and rebuilding the band as its own record company, touring operation and direct-to-fan platform across more than 60 million followers. The Napster confrontation in particular is studied in business and law schools as a case in how an independent creative business defends its commercial rights against a technology shift. Ulrich’s Senate testimony in July 2000 became the artist-side argument that streaming services were eventually built around. He is candid about what the band got wrong in the public framing of that fight, and clear about what it preserved. Outside the band, he co-founded the All Within My Hands Foundation in 2017, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II in 2017, the same year the foundation launched. Key speaking topics Independent brand longevity Creative discipline at scale Business model reinvention Artist rights and the economics of digital distribution Partnership selectivity and brand integrity Philanthropy and foundation governance Team longevity and creative conflict Ideal for CEOs and founders running owner-led creative or brand-driven businesses CMOs and brand leads navigating partnership decisions and licensing Boards considering long-horizon brand strategy and succession Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is reinvention without losing identity Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a four-person creative business has stayed commercially independent for four decades. The reasoning behind Metallica’s decision to sue Napster, and what it produced for the wider industry. A clearer view of when to say no to brand partnerships, even profitable ones. A working sense of how creative conflict inside a senior team can be managed without breaking the team.

Why organisations work with Kevin Keegan He is one of only four players to win European Footballer of the Year twice, alongside Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, and Cruyff, which gives any leadership message he delivers immediate authority with a senior audience. He has carried the captaincy of a national team and the weight of managing it, so his account of pressure is operational rather than theoretical. As a manager he is the first person in the Premier League era to win the Football League title with two different clubs, Newcastle United and Manchester City, evidence of repeatable team-building rather than a single peak. His after-dinner style is warm, self-aware, and quotable, which makes him a reliable fit for awards nights, gala dinners, and senior client hospitality where the brief is engagement rather than instruction. Biography highlights Two-time Ballon d’Or winner (European Footballer of the Year), 1978 and 1979, at SV Hamburg 63 England caps, 21 international goals, captained England 31 times including UEFA Euro 1980 Won three First Division titles, two UEFA Cups, an FA Cup, and the European Cup with Liverpool under Shankly and Paisley Awarded the OBE in 1982; PFA Players’ Player of the Year, 1982; FWA Footballer of the Year, 1976 Managed Newcastle United, Fulham, England, and Manchester City; only manager in the Premier League era to win the Football League title with two different clubs Inducted into the inaugural English Football Hall of Fame in 2002; author of the Sunday Times bestselling autobiography “My Life in Football” (Pan Macmillan, 2018) Biography Hamburg signed Keegan from Liverpool in 1977, and within two seasons he had been named European Footballer of the Year twice. Before him, only Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, and Cruyff had managed that. The move was the first by a leading British player to a major continental club at his peak, and it reset what an English footballer’s career could look like. Liverpool was where the platform was built. Six seasons under Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley produced three league titles, two UEFA Cups, an FA Cup, and a European Cup. England rewarded the form with the captaincy. He led the side 31 times, including at Euro 1980, and finished with 63 caps and 21 goals. Management followed playing. Keegan returned to Newcastle United as manager in 1992, took the club out of the second tier, and pushed it to two Premier League runner-up finishes. He went on to manage Fulham, England, and Manchester City, and remains the only manager in the Premier League era to have won the Football League title with two different clubs. On stage he works the same material his career produced: the tactics rooms at Liverpool and Hamburg, the dressing rooms he ran as a manager, and the moments the public watched live, from the 1996 title race with Manchester United to managing England at Wembley. The 2018 autobiography “My Life in Football”, co-written with Daniel Taylor, set the version of those stories he now tells from the floor. Key speaking topics Leadership under public pressure Team building and squad management Motivation and high performance Lessons from elite sport for business Handling setbacks and reinvention After-dinner storytelling Ideal for Sales kick-offs, awards dinners, and gala evenings where senior clients are the audience Leadership and management offsites looking for a credible outsider voice on team performance Hospitality and entertainment programmes around major sporting fixtures Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how elite teams are built, recover from losing form, and hold their nerve in title races Concrete stories about taking the captaincy and the manager’s seat for England, and what that exposure teaches about leadership in public A view of the manager-player relationship that translates to senior leaders managing senior talent An evening of warm, self-deprecating storytelling that reliably lands with mixed corporate audiences

Why organisations work with Dan Hunt He has built the performance engine, not just coached inside one. The GB women’s endurance programme he took over in 2005 went from uncompetitive to delivering Olympic medals in under three years. His career is a rare controlled experiment in whether performance infrastructure transfers. He has run it in track cycling, professional road cycling at Team Sky, Premier League academy football, Olympic snow sports, and now GB Surfing. Q Division, the innovation unit he set up at British Ski and Snowboard, is a concrete example of how a small, properly scoped R and D function finds gains a larger organisation would miss. He speaks with specific case material from environments where the scoreboard is public and unforgiving, which is closer to the conditions a senior leadership team actually operates in than most sport-to-business framing allows. Biography highlights Led the turnaround of the Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme from 2005, contributing to Olympic medals at Beijing 2008. Coached the GB men’s team pursuit to Olympic gold at London 2012. Appointed Sports Director at Team Sky for the 2013 season, during the period of consecutive Tour de France wins. Head of Elite Performance at the Premier League, working on academy performance systems. Performance Director at British Ski and Snowboard across alpine, freestyle, snowboard, cross-country, ski jumping, speed skiing and telemark; founded Q Division, the federation’s innovation unit. Executive Performance Director of GB Surfing from 2023. Biography Most organisations can point to a period of good results. Far fewer can explain why those results held, or why they did not. The distinction matters because the job of a senior leader is rarely to produce a single peak. It is to build the thing that produces peaks repeatedly. That is the problem Hunt has spent his career on. In 2005 he took over a Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme that was not competitive, and inside three years it was delivering Olympic medals. He then switched to the men’s team pursuit and the group won gold at London 2012. The common thread across both was not a single charismatic intervention. It was an explicit, transferable system for how talent, coaching, data and decision rights fit together. Team Sky appointed him Sports Director for the 2013 season, a period that coincided with consecutive Tour de France wins. He went on to run elite performance at the Premier League, working on academy-stage talent systems, and then joined British Ski and Snowboard as Performance Director. There he built Q Division, a small innovation unit focused on the kind of marginal gains that a federation structure usually cannot produce on its own. In 2023 he took on the Executive Performance Director role at GB Surfing, now building the same architecture in a sport with almost no existing elite infrastructure in Britain. What makes Hunt useful in a boardroom is not a stock set of sport analogies. It is that he has rebuilt performance systems in five very different contexts, and can be specific about what travels, what does not, and why senior teams routinely misread the difference. Key speaking topics High-performance systems design Leadership under competitive pressure Talent pathways and academy development Culture change in medal-winning environments Marginal gains and performance innovation units Coaching teams through succession and reinvention Transfer of elite-sport practice to business leadership Ideal for CEO and board offsites framing a multi-year performance or culture reset CHROs and talent leads rebuilding pathways, academies, or internal development systems Leadership teams under acute competitive pressure where results are public Transformation leads accountable for sustained, not one-off, performance uplift Audience outcomes A sharper distinction between one-off results and a system that produces them repeatedly Specific case material from five elite programmes, not generic sport-to-business analogy A clearer view of how small innovation units earn their keep inside a larger organisation A working mental model for the handover points where high-performance cultures most often break

Why organisations work with Julian Fisher He brings a working practitioner’s account of how influence is actually built, from twenty years inside diplomatic, military and commercial intelligence operations, not a second-hand interpretation of the field. His nine HUMINT skills and six “Spy-Style” archetypes give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the parts of executive work that usually go unnamed: reading rooms, recruiting allies, eliciting information without interrogating. He has done the corporate translation already, running security intelligence for HSBC and leading Aegis Defence Services’ Africa practice, so the material lands as commercial practice rather than war story. His book with Headline (Hachette UK) and his lead-trainer role on Channel 4’s Spies give him a public reference point that clients and audiences recognise before he walks into the room. Biography highlights Author, Think Like a Spy: Master the Art of Influence and Build Life-Changing Alliances, Headline (Hachette UK), 2024. Lead trainer, Channel 4 series Spies, 2017. Founder, Africa Integrity Services Ltd, a private intelligence boutique covering the African continent. Former Head of Africa, Aegis Defence Services. Former Head of Security Intelligence, HSBC. Former British Diplomatic Service, with operational postings in East and Southern Africa; PPE, Oxford University. Biography Influence is the part of senior leadership that rarely gets taught directly. Boards and executives are expected to win allies, read intentions and extract honest information from people whose interests do not align with theirs, without the structure of a formal hierarchy to fall back on. The intelligence world has spent decades studying exactly this problem, under conditions where getting it wrong has consequences. That is the body of practice Julian Fisher draws on. He served in a specialist branch of the British Diplomatic Service, with postings in East and Southern Africa, before running operations for Aegis Defence Services as its Head of Africa and leading security intelligence for HSBC. He later founded Africa Integrity Services, a boutique that builds human-source intelligence networks across the continent for corporate and government clients. His 2024 book with Headline, Think Like a Spy: Master the Art of Influence and Build Life-Changing Alliances, sets out the nine skills of Human Intelligence in a form designed for civilian use. The argument is that espionage at its core is relationship work: recruiting, persuading, eliciting, holding trust under strain. Fisher worked through the same material publicly as the lead trainer on Channel 4’s Spies in 2017, putting sixteen members of the public through the recruitment and assessment process. For corporate audiences he reframes that practice as a leadership discipline. Reading a room, identifying the right ally before a vote, asking the question that surfaces the real objection, holding composure in a negotiation where the other side has information you do not, these are the moments his frameworks address, and the moments that decide most senior outcomes. Key speaking topics Influence and persuasion in senior leadership Human intelligence (HUMINT) tradecraft for business Alliance-building and stakeholder negotiation Geopolitical and security risk for boards Elicitation, questioning and reading people Africa-focused political and commercial risk Resilience and decision-making under uncertainty Ideal for C-suite leadership teams and boards working on negotiation, influence and stakeholder strategy Sales, business development and partnerships leaders building long-cycle relationships Heads of security, risk and compliance briefing executive teams on geopolitical exposure Senior leadership programmes covering executive presence, persuasion and judgement under pressure Audience outcomes A practitioner’s vocabulary for the parts of leadership that usually go unsaid: recruitment, elicitation, alliance-building. The nine HUMINT skills as a working framework, not as theory, with examples drawn from real operations. The six “Spy-Style” archetypes as a tool for matching influence approach to counterpart. A sharper sense of how to ask questions, listen and hold composure when interests are not aligned. A first-hand read on how intelligence services think about risk, trust and information, applied to the boardroom.

Why organisations work with Ömer Atiker Three decades of running digital agencies, not advising on them. He has founded, scaled, and sold internet ventures since 1996, which gives his keynote content the texture of an operator rather than a commentator. Author of four German-language reference books on digital transformation, including titles with Wiley and Campus, used inside companies as practical handbooks rather than thought-leadership accessories. Works in German, English, and Dutch at conference register, which makes him a credible booking for DACH-headquartered firms with international leadership audiences. Client list spans regulated industrials (BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius), platform technology (Amazon, Google, Adobe), and consumer-facing operators (Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi), so the examples on stage match the room. Sits at the intersection of digital marketing, AI deployment, and change leadership, which is the precise zone where most enterprise transformation programmes get stuck. Biography highlights Industrial engineer from the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT), with a master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. Founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, in 1996. Founder and CEO of Click Effect, a Freiburg-based digital marketing and transformation consultancy, since 2006. Author of four books on digital transformation, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020. Worked alongside Frithjof Bergmann, the originator of the New Work concept, during a sabbatical period. Keynote clients include BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Amazon, Google, Adobe, Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi, and John Deere. Biography Digital transformation has never been short of strategy. The bottleneck sits further down the operating stack, in the daily handover between leadership intent, technology choices, and the people who have to do the work differently on Monday. Atiker has spent thirty years inside that handover. He studied industrial engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and wrote his master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. In 1996 he founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, and sold it after the dotcom cycle. In 2006 he founded Click Effect in Freiburg, the digital marketing and transformation consultancy he still runs. Between agencies he took a sabbatical and worked with Frithjof Bergmann, the philosopher who originated the New Work concept. That period sits behind the leadership and culture material in his keynotes, which treats digital change as a problem of human adoption first and technology second. His four books, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020, function as practical playbooks for German-speaking enterprises rather than airport thought-leadership. The client list reads as a cross-section of the European industrial and platform economy: BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Singapore Airlines, Amazon, Google, Adobe, John Deere, Mitsubishi. He works in German, English, and Dutch, which makes him a natural fit for DACH-headquartered companies running international leadership programmes around AI and digital execution. Key speaking topics Digital transformation execution AI in the enterprise Digital and remote leadership Customer centricity and digital marketing Corporate culture and digital adoption Innovation under operating constraints Personal development in the digital age Ideal for DACH-headquartered enterprises running multi-year digital and AI transformation programmes CDOs, CMOs, and transformation leads responsible for moving from pilot to operational deployment Industrial and life-sciences boards translating digital strategy into customer-facing change Senior leadership offsites where the audience needs an operator’s view, not a consultant’s frame Audience outcomes A practitioner’s reading of where their own transformation programme is most likely to stall Concrete examples of digital and AI deployment from regulated industrials and platform companies A clearer separation between technology decisions and the leadership behaviour those decisions require Language and reference points senior leaders can use with their own organisations after the session

Why organisations work with Eddie Obeng He has spent thirty years on a single, consequential argument: that the management playbook built for a slower world now actively harms organisations trying to move at current speed. Boards get a framework, not a pep talk. His project typology (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) gives leadership teams a language for matching management style to the kind of uncertainty a project actually contains, instead of defaulting to one method for every initiative. He built and runs QUBE, one of the earliest avatar-based virtual campuses, used to teach and coach distributed executive teams. He is speaking about distributed leadership from inside a working example, not from theory. The 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award from the Association for Project Management recognises a lifetime contribution to how organisations deliver complex work, which is the substance underneath his keynotes. He is genuinely provocative in a room. The Financial Times called him “an agent provocateur” for a reason; he is comfortable telling a senior audience that what they are doing will not work. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Director of Pentacle (The Virtual Business School), established 1994. Professor at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation; previously Executive Director at Ashridge Business School. 2011 Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement, Association for Project Management. Author of All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook (Financial Times Pearson), Perfect Projects, Making Re-Engineering Happen and New Rules for the New World. TED Global 2012 speaker, “Smart failure for a fast-changing world”. Creator of QUBE, a virtual learning and collaboration environment covered by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Biography The gap between how quickly the world changes and how quickly organisations learn has been widening for three decades. Eddie Obeng has built a career arguing that this gap, more than any single technology or disruption, is the defining problem of modern management. He calls the condition the “New World After Midnight”. Pentacle, the business school he founded in 1994, was an early attempt to answer the problem practically. Its teaching is built around immediate application rather than case-study reflection, and it runs on QUBE, an avatar-based virtual campus Pentacle developed in 2010 that The Wall Street Journal described in its coverage of virtual workplaces and The Economist flagged as a future digital place to work. Running it means he has been leading distributed teams for longer than most of the organisations he advises. The intellectual spine of his work sits in project management, where he is credited with the four-type model (Painting by Numbers, Quest, Film, Foggy Project) that reframes delivery around how much is known at the start rather than how big the budget is. The Association for Project Management gave him its Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. His books, beginning with All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook in 1995, translate that model for practising leaders. He also holds a chair at Henley Business School’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and has sat on the UK Design Council board. In front of an audience he is sharp and direct; the Financial Times has used the words “leading revolutionary” and “agent provocateur”, which is closer to the experience of being in the room than the usual speaker billing. Key speaking topics Leading organisations in a fast-changing environment Project leadership and delivery under uncertainty Distributed and virtual team leadership Innovation and smart failure Organisational change and transformation The future of work and digital collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting a change agenda that their current operating model cannot support Transformation, strategy and innovation leaders responsible for delivery across distributed teams Project and programme leadership communities inside large, complex organisations Partner meetings and leadership offsites where the brief is to unsettle assumptions, not confirm them Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the types of change a leadership team is actually managing, rather than treating every initiative as the same problem A sharper view of why current planning and governance rituals slow organisations down in fast-moving conditions Permission and structure for “smart failure” as a deliberate mechanism for learning, not a slogan A working sense of what leading a distributed team looks like when it is built from scratch, not retrofitted onto office norms A harder question to take back into the next executive meeting

Why organisations work with Nick Clegg He has sat on both sides of the table that defines tech policy: as the head of global affairs at Meta facing regulators, and as a head-of-government negotiator setting policy for a G7 economy. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet lays out a specific argument about how democracies, Silicon Valley and authoritarian states are pulling the internet apart, and what a workable settlement would look like. Boards get the thesis and the evidence behind it. He can map how Brussels, Washington and Beijing actually behave on AI and platform rules from direct experience of all three, not from secondary commentary. His coalition government experience gives him a working language for decision-making when no single party controls the outcome, which is the practical condition most boards now face on tech policy. Biography highlights Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 2010 to 2015, in Britain’s first post-war coalition government. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, 2007 to 2015; Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam, 2005 to 2017. President for Global Affairs at Meta Platforms, 2018 to January 2025, leading the company’s policy and regulatory engagement worldwide. Author of How to Save the Internet (Bodley Head/Penguin, 2025), Politics: Between the Extremes (2016), How to Stop Brexit (2017), and The Responsibilities of Democracy (2019, with Sir John Major). Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands, 1999 to 2004; earlier career at the European Commission. Knighted in 2018; recipient of the Financial Times David Thomas Prize, 1993. Biography The most consequential rules now shaping AI, data and the global internet are being written by a small number of governments that no longer agree with each other. Nick Clegg has worked at the centre of that argument from both sides. As Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015, he helped run a coalition government through the eurozone crisis. As President of Global Affairs at Meta from 2018 to early 2025, he led the company’s policy engagement with the US, EU, UK, India and beyond. Few people have moved between those two seats. The combination matters because tech policy is no longer a niche regulatory file. It is a board-level question of capital allocation, market access and operational risk. Clegg’s value to a senior audience is that he understands how the political logic of Brussels, the commercial logic of Silicon Valley and the strategic logic of Washington and Beijing actually collide. His 2025 book How to Save the Internet, published by The Bodley Head, sets out the argument in full. He proposes a “digital democracies alliance” to prevent the global internet fragmenting into incompatible national systems, and he is candid about where Big Tech, including his former employer, has misread the public mood. Earlier books, including Politics: Between the Extremes and The Responsibilities of Democracy with Sir John Major, focus on coalition, compromise and democratic resilience under stress. The throughline is governance under conditions where no one is fully in charge. That is the working environment for any senior leader trying to plan around AI rules, content liability, data flows and the geopolitics of semiconductors. Clegg has been in the room when those decisions were taken, on both sides of the regulator and the platform. Key speaking topics AI policy and regulation across the US, EU and UK The geopolitics of the global internet Big Tech, content moderation and platform governance Coalition government and political decision-making under uncertainty Democratic resilience in the age of social media and AI UK and EU relations after Brexit Trust, public discourse and the future of democratic institutions Ideal for Boards and executive teams of companies materially exposed to AI, data, content or platform regulation General Counsel, Chief Policy Officers and Heads of Government Affairs in multinationals CEO and CTO audiences planning AI deployment under divergent regulatory regimes Senior public sector and policy audiences working on tech, digital and AI strategy Audience outcomes A clearer read of where AI and platform regulation is heading in the EU, US and UK over the next planning cycle A working framework for how Silicon Valley, Washington, Brussels and Beijing each think about the internet, and where their positions are converging or diverging An informed view of the argument in How to Save the Internet, including the case for a digital democracies alliance A grounded sense of how senior decisions get made inside coalition governments and inside large global platforms, from someone who has done both

Why organisations work with Tim Kröger Two Whitbread Round the World podiums (1993/94 second, 1997/98 third) and a Mumm 36 World Championship give him direct, named experience of multi-week competitive performance, not generic adventure narrative. Author of Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept (Delius Klasing, 2013), a published thesis on how international crews are built and held together, which he uses as the spine of his corporate sessions. Two America’s Cup challenger campaigns (Le Defi Areva and Shosholoza) give him operating experience inside multinational, multilingual professional teams under heavy sponsor and media scrutiny. Holds a working coaching role with the German Sailing Association on the Olympic Mixed Offshore discipline, so the material is current, not retired-athlete reminiscence. Awarded the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt in 1983 alongside the German Admiral’s Cup team, anchoring credibility at national level rather than only within sailing circles. Biography highlights Whitbread Round the World Race: second place 1993/94 aboard Intrum Justitia, third place 1997/98 aboard Swedish Match. Admiral’s Cup winner with the German team, 1983; recipient of the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt the same year. Mumm 36 World Champion, 1995, aboard Corum. America’s Cup challenger campaigns with Le Defi Areva (France) and Shosholoza (South Africa). Author of Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept (Delius Klasing, 2013) and Abgerechnet wird im Ziel (2001). Trainer for the Mixed Offshore Olympic discipline with the German Sailing Association; Race Crew Manager in J Class yacht programmes. Biography The Whitbread Round the World Race runs nine months. A crew sails roughly 32,000 nautical miles, much of it in the Southern Ocean. Tim Kröger has finished it twice on the podium: second on Intrum Justitia in 1993/94 under Lawrie Smith, third on Swedish Match in 1997/98 as watch captain. That is the operating environment his corporate work draws from. In 1993 he became the first German to make professional offshore sailing his primary career. The decade after produced a Mumm 36 world title aboard Corum in 1995 and two America’s Cup challenger campaigns: the French Le Defi Areva syndicate from 2001 to 2003, and the South African Shosholoza programme from 2005 to 2007. Both involved running the operational seam between sailors, shore crew, designers and sponsors. His book Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept, published by Delius Klasing in 2013, sets out how a crew is actually built and held together: who decides, how watches hand over, how mistakes are handled while the boat is still moving. The argument carries because the crews he describes are named ones he sailed in, not composite illustrations. He continues to work as a trainer for the German Sailing Association in the Mixed Offshore Olympic discipline and as Race Crew Manager in J Class yacht programmes. The Admiral’s Cup win in 1983 brought him the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, Germany’s highest sporting honour, awarded by the Federal President. Key speaking topics High-performance team dynamics Leadership under sustained pressure Decision-making in offshore racing Communication across multinational crews Accountability inside small expert teams Resilience and recovery on long campaigns Building and managing elite crews Ideal for Executive teams and ExCos preparing for sustained operational pressure (transformations, integrations, restructures) Leadership offsites where the brief is team behaviour, not strategy content Sales and operations conferences seeking a credible narrative anchor with serious substance behind it After-dinner and incentive audiences in DACH and international corporate settings Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how elite crews hold decision quality when conditions deteriorate Specific techniques for handover, watch discipline and post-error recovery, drawn from named campaigns A clearer view of what accountability looks like in practice inside small expert teams A reframed sense of what sustained pressure does to communication, and what disciplined crews do about it

Why organisations work with Benedikt Böhm A working CEO, not a retired one. He runs an international outdoor brand and continues to ski 8,000-metre peaks, so the leadership material is current and tested, not memoir. A documented record in the most unforgiving operating environment in sport. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without oxygen are public, verifiable proof points for the arguments he makes about preparation, role clarity and team recovery. A peer-reviewed intellectual platform. His Routledge book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl frames the work as leadership scholarship, which gives the content credibility with HR, executive development and L&D buyers who screen out motivational content. A live test case for sustainability as commercial strategy. The DYNAFIT lifetime guarantee and the Helping Band WWF partnership are operating decisions, not communications. Survivor and rescuer in the 2012 Manaslu avalanche. The account of decision-making in and after that event is one of the few first-hand executive narratives of catastrophic shock and sustained recovery. Biography highlights International Managing Director of DYNAFIT, the ski-touring brand he led from insolvency in 2003 to global category leadership. Co-author with Professor Stefan Gröschl of ESSEC Business School of “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom” (Routledge, 2019). Speed records on Muztagata (7,546m, 2005) and Gasherbrum II (8,035m, 2006) with Sebastian Haag; speed ascent and ski descent of Manaslu (8,163m, 2012) without supplemental oxygen. WWF Foundation ambassador for the Himalaya region and snow leopards. Founder of Helping Band, a wristband initiative committing approximately 60,000 euros per year to WWF. Former member of the German national ski mountaineering team. Biography DYNAFIT was effectively insolvent when Benedikt Böhm joined its marketing team in 2003. Two decades later the brand is the international category leader in ski touring, with a lifetime product guarantee and an institutional partnership with WWF that he built personally. The arc is unusual because it has been run in parallel with an active expedition career at 8,000 metres. That second career is the source of his leadership material. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without supplemental oxygen require a precision of role allocation, recovery management and judgement under hypoxia that ordinary corporate planning does not test for. Böhm has spent twenty years moving between the two settings, and the comparison is what makes the work substantive. His 2019 book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl, “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom,” published by Routledge, is the formal statement of that work. The book sits deliberately outside the usual business-and-management canon, drawing on research into fear, pain, suffering and failure to argue that conventional models of executive resilience are too clean to describe how senior leaders actually behave under sustained pressure. The 2012 Manaslu avalanche, which killed eleven climbers and which Böhm and his climbing partner survived and helped rescue from, anchors much of the recovery and decision-making content. It is the rare case where the speaker has lived the catastrophic-shock material he discusses, and continued, after a deliberate pause, to operate at the same altitude and at the head of the same company. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Resilience and recovery after operational shock Team performance in high-stakes environments Risk management and the discipline of preparation Sustainability as commercial strategy Change leadership and organisational reinvention Personal performance and self-leadership at executive level Ideal for Executive committees and boards rebuilding after restructure, crisis or sustained pressure CHROs and heads of executive development designing leadership programmes with substance under the keynote CEOs and senior commercial leaders wrestling with sustainability as an operating decision rather than a communications line Senior teams preparing for major change, market entry or expedition-style strategic bets Audience outcomes A language for separating preparation, role discipline and recovery as three distinct leadership capabilities rather than one blurred idea of “resilience” A clearer view of how senior teams should behave in the first hours and days after a serious operational shock A working example of a CEO who has run sustainability as a product decision, not as a marketing position A grounded counterweight to motivational adventure content, with named expeditions, named outcomes and a named peer-reviewed text behind the argument

Why organisations work with Mike Brown Twenty years at the top of a brutally competitive professional sport, with 382 appearances for Harlequins and 72 England caps, gives leaders a credible voice on what it takes to keep performing through injury, deselection, and reinvention. Named 2014 Six Nations Player of the Championship, the only England player ever to win the award, alongside 2014 Premiership Player of the Season, evidence of standards held at the very top, not a single peak season. Lived experience of the back end of a career: leaving Harlequins after sixteen years, two seasons at Newcastle, finishing at Leicester, and retiring with the fourth most Premiership appearances of all time. Useful for audiences thinking about late-career identity, transition, and what high standards look like once the spotlight moves. Speaks from within elite team cultures under Eddie Jones, Stuart Lancaster, and Conor O’Shea, not as an outside observer. Biography highlights 72 England caps, 2007 to 2018, three Six Nations titles 382 appearances for Harlequins over sixteen seasons, two Premiership titles, one European Challenge Cup 2014 RBS Six Nations Player of the Championship and 2014 Premiership Rugby Player of the Season Retired at the end of the 2024 to 2025 season, the fourth most Premiership appearances in the league’s history Recurring co-host on RugbyPass Offload, one of the most-listened rugby podcasts Appointed Sporting Director at Esher RFC in December 2025 Biography Few players in the modern professional era have stayed at the top for as long as Mike Brown. Sixteen seasons at Harlequins, 72 caps for England, three Six Nations titles, and a career that ended with the fourth most appearances in the history of Premiership Rugby. The longevity matters because rugby does not allow it by accident. The 2014 Six Nations was the season that defined him. He was named Player of the Championship, the only Englishman ever to win the award, and Premiership Player of the Season in the same year. The recognition came after a decade of work that started with a debut in a record defeat to South Africa and ran through deselection, injury, and the public end of his Harlequins career in 2021. What Brown brings to a corporate audience is not the highlight reel, it is the sustained standard. He played under Eddie Jones, Stuart Lancaster and Conor O’Shea, and has been candid in interviews on RugbyPass Offload about the cost of holding his own performance to that standard for so long. Leaders responsible for tired teams recognise the territory. Since retirement he has moved into rugby media as a regular voice on RugbyPass Offload and into a Sporting Director role at Esher RFC. The second act sharpens the keynote material. He is now talking about high performance from both sides of the line, as the player who lived it and the executive who has to build it again from the ground up. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance Resilience and recovery from setback Team standards and accountability Elite team culture Career transition and reinvention Mental discipline under public pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards working through sustained pressure or restructure Sales and commercial teams under repeated quarterly performance demands HR and L&D programmes on resilience, standards, and high-performance culture Sports, broadcast, and member-organisation audiences Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what it takes to hold elite standards across a twenty-year career, not a single season Lived perspective on managing setback, public scrutiny, and deselection without losing competitive edge A working view of how elite team cultures actually function under high-profile coaches Reference points senior leaders can use when their own teams are fatigued by repeated change

Why organisations work with Andy Goode A name and voice that audiences already know from broadcast rugby coverage, which shortens the trust-building gap between the speaker and the room on the night. Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame status and a five-title Leicester Tigers career give the credibility a rugby audience tests for in the first two minutes of any after-dinner slot. Co-hosts The Rugby Pod with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar, so he brings live, current insight into the modern professional game, not nostalgia from a finished career. Comfortable across formats: keynote, after-dinner, awards host, panel moderator, Q&A with current players, which suits sponsors and hospitality programmes that need one person across a full event. When the brief calls for it, he speaks substantively on team performance, recovery from setback and reinvention after sport, drawing on a career that included two retirements, multiple club moves and a post-playing media reinvention. Biography highlights Five English Premiership titles with Leicester Tigers (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007). Two Heineken Cup winners’ medals (2001, 2002). 17 England caps between 2005 and 2009, debut against Italy in the Six Nations. 423 senior club appearances and 3,934 points across Leicester Tigers, Saracens, CA Brive, the Sharks, Worcester Warriors, Wasps and Newcastle Falcons. Second-highest points scorer in Premiership Rugby history and former record holder. Inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame, June 2021. Co-host of The Rugby Pod with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar; rugby pundit and analyst for major UK broadcasters including BT Sport and TalkSport. Biography Few fly-halves have stood in front of a Premiership pack across as many seasons as Andy Goode. He arrived at Leicester Tigers from school in 1998 and was inside the squad through the club’s record run of four straight Premiership titles, then returned for a second spell that produced a fifth title in 2007 and made him the all-time leading points scorer in the league, a record he held until Charlie Hodgson overtook him. The career that followed is what gives the after-dinner material its range. Saracens, then Brive in the French Top 14, a short spell with the Sharks in Super Rugby, then Worcester Warriors, Wasps and Newcastle Falcons. Across 423 senior games he scored 3,934 points and earned 17 England caps between 2005 and 2009. He was inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame in 2021. The second career has been built on the same instincts that ran a back line for nearly two decades. Goode reads the game on air the way he ran it on the pitch, which is why The Rugby Pod, co-hosted with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar, has become the most-listened-to rugby podcast in the world. He works as a pundit and analyst across major UK broadcasters and is a familiar voice to anyone following the modern professional game. For corporate audiences he is most often booked as a host, after-dinner speaker or awards MC for events where rugby is the hospitality currency. The substance, when the brief asks for it, is the same substance the playing career rested on: a team’s habits under pressure, the discipline of recovery from setback, and what an elite career looks like when the playing chapter ends. Key speaking topics Professional rugby and the modern game Team performance under pressure Career reinvention after elite sport After-dinner speaking and event hosting Awards and ceremony hosting Panel moderation and player Q&A Ideal for Corporate hospitality programmes built around rugby (Six Nations, Premiership Rugby, Rugby World Cup) Sponsor activations and client dinners during the rugby calendar Industry award ceremonies and gala dinners requiring a recognisable sports host Sports clubs, rugby unions and member organisations running fundraising events Audience outcomes A room that warms up quickly because the host already has the audience’s recognition A credible voice on the current state of the professional game, not generic sports anecdotes A storyteller who can hold the centre of a long-format dinner without slipping into stand-up For motivational briefs: a first-person account of resilience, repeated reinvention and elite-sport team culture