Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Jose Ucar A structured methodology for cross-cultural influence, set out in Global Influence, shortlisted by The Institute of Leadership for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year. Direct experience operating across four continents and two working languages, with delivery for Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, and Chiesi Pharmaceuticals. A practical lens on the gap between what senior leaders intend to communicate and what their international counterparts actually receive. Material that travels: the same frameworks land with a UK board, a Spanish-speaking sales team, and a multinational engineering function. Biography highlights Author of Global Influence: How business leaders can simplify, improve, and amplify their international impact, shortlisted for The Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year 2024. TEDx speaker and host, including talks at TEDxSheffieldHallamUniversity and TEDxUniversityofSalford. Founder of Jose Ucar Ltd and the World-Class Communicator online programme. Delivered to Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, Oral-B, UK Research and Innovation, the NHS, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Featured in LA Weekly, Yahoo Finance, Thrive Global, and Authority Magazine. Works fluently in English and Spanish; has lived, studied, and worked across Venezuela, Sweden, the UK, and beyond. Biography Most senior leaders are competent communicators in their home market and surprisingly ineffective the moment the room shifts language, culture, or hierarchy. Global Influence, Ucar’s book, is built around that gap. The Institute of Leadership shortlisted it for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year, a recognition specifically tied to leadership practice rather than communications craft. His starting point is that international influence is a learnable discipline, not a personality trait. The frameworks set out in the book and on stage are designed to be portable across countries and functions, so a UK executive can use the same approach with a Spanish sales team, a German engineering function, and a US investor without re-engineering their style each time. That portability shows up in the client list. Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, UK Research and Innovation, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have all booked him to work with leaders who carry international remits. The common brief is consistent: senior people whose technical authority is established and whose cross-border influence is not yet where it needs to be. His own background sits behind the work. Born in Venezuela, schooled in Sweden from sixteen, based in the UK, fluent in English and Spanish, with delivery experience across four continents. He uses that lived experience as evidence rather than ornament, which is what separates the material from generic communication training. Key speaking topics Cross-cultural communication and influence International leadership and global business Executive presence across cultures Communication and storytelling for senior leaders Personal brand and authentic leadership Resilience and mindset in international roles Ideal for CEOs, MDs, and country leaders with multi-market remits Senior commercial, sales, and partnership leaders working across borders HR, talent, and L&D leaders investing in international leadership capability Global teams in regulated, technical, or engineering-led industries where communication failure carries commercial cost Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how their current communication style lands in unfamiliar cultural contexts A working framework for adapting message, delivery, and presence without losing authenticity Specific language for the cross-cultural moments that most often derail senior conversations Renewed confidence to lead difficult conversations across markets, languages, and hierarchies

Why organisations work with Joy Poole Joy addresses a gap most leadership development programmes leave entirely open: not what leaders should do under pressure, but how they actually operate internally when clarity is scarce, the stakes are high, and the team is watching. Her background at Meta, in large-scale consulting environments, and across high-growth technology companies gives her a working knowledge of the specific pressures that senior audiences are navigating. As a credentialed executive coach with a practice built around leaders under sustained load, she brings a level of depth and practical tool-transfer that most leadership keynote speakers cannot replicate from the stage. The sailing narrative, crewing an ocean circumnavigation as part of a team, is not an adventure story bolted onto a leadership talk. It provides an environment in which the same principles about self-leadership under pressure have been tested and proven. Joy customises her engagements as a matter of principle. A leadership team at a fintech navigating rapid growth is not the same audience as a professional services firm managing restructuring, and she treats them accordingly. Biography highlights 20 years in senior sales, consulting and leadership roles across Google, Facebook/Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen Certified Professional Coach, Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC); Master Practitioner of the Energy Leadership Index; Transitions Dynamics Specialist Executive Programme certificates from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics Speaker at internal leadership forums for Meta and at industry conferences across technology, media, and financial services Completed a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation – her second parallel environment for testing how leaders perform when conditions are extreme Biography Senior leadership in fast-moving technology and consulting organisations teaches you a great deal about performance under pressure. It teaches you rather less about what is actually happening inside a leader while all of that performance is required. Joy Poole spent two decades at the centre of that tension in senior roles at Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen, before building a practice around the gap she identified. Her core argument is precise: when organisations face uncertainty, change, or sustained pressure, the variable that most determines leadership quality is not expertise or experience alone. It is how clearly and calmly a leader can operate within themselves; how they think when the picture is incomplete, how they make decisions when there is no clean answer, and how they show up for their teams while also carrying their own uncertainty. This is self-leadership, and she treats it as a practical capability, not a motivational concept. Joy holds executive credentials from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics alongside certification from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. She brings to the stage what most leadership speakers cannot: a decade of operational experience at genuine scale, combined with years of coaching senior executives through exactly the internal dynamics she speaks about. An unusual secondary proof point sits alongside her professional record. Joy is currently completing a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation; an environment that applies the same conditions her leadership audiences face, stripped to their essentials. The lessons from both settings reinforce the same argument: what determines performance under pressure is not position or preparation. It is the quality of self-leadership. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure and uncertainty Decision-making in ambiguous conditions Composure and credibility under sustained organisational load Leadership during restructuring and change Confidence and presence for senior leaders Trust as a leadership capability Ideal for HR and L&D directors commissioning leadership development sessions for offsites, internal forums, or away-days during periods of significant organisational change: restructuring, reorganisation, or high-growth phases Executive and senior leadership programme managers looking for a session that is grounded and practical rather than motivational Senior leadership teams in technology, financial services, professional services, and consulting where pace and pressure are structural features of the environment Audience outcomes A clearer, more honest account of how they actually operate under pressure, not how they think they should operate Practical tools for improving self-leadership composure in high-stakes situations that can be applied immediately A reframe of uncertainty and incomplete information as conditions to be navigated rather than problems to be solved Greater understanding of how their own internal state affects team performance and organisational credibility A shared vocabulary for a leadership conversation that most organisations do not currently have language for

Why organisations work with JP Pawliw-Fry He has named and quantified a problem most executive teams recognise but cannot articulate: the 7.56% of what matters most that people withhold in high-pressure moments, drawn from IHHP research with over 34,000 professionals. His Last 8% framework was placed in Harvard Business Review in September 2025, giving senior audiences a model with editorial credibility, not a motivational concept. He combines two registers most speakers do not: empirical research at scale (40,000+ surveyed monthly through IHHP) and direct coaching of Olympic athletes, Fortune 100 executives, and U.S. military leaders. Performing Under Pressure, co-authored with Hendrie Weisinger, sits as a New York Times bestseller and Inc. Magazine Best Business Book of the Year, and has been used inside Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and HSBC as a shared language for pressure performance. His teaching has been rated among the highest-scoring at Kellogg Executive Education, which means he can hold a room of senior leaders for serious content, not surface delivery. Biography highlights Co-author, Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most (NYT bestseller, Inc. Magazine Best Business Book of the Year, published in 65 countries). Author, “The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team,” Harvard Business Review, September 2025. Co-founder and President, Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP), founded 1996; recognised as a Profit 100 Fastest Growing Company. Highest-rated lecturer at Kellogg School of Management Executive Education, Northwestern University. Advisor and keynote speaker for Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, HSBC, Intel, Coca-Cola, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines, NASA, plus NFL and NBA franchises. Host of the Last 8% Morning podcast. Biography The hardest part of any senior conversation is rarely the 92 percent that gets said. It is the final stretch, the feedback held back, the decision deferred, the risk left on the table. IHHP research with more than 34,000 professionals puts the average gap at 7.56 percent of what matters most. Closing that gap is the work that JP Pawliw-Fry has built his career around. As co-founder and president of the Institute for Health and Human Potential, he runs an ongoing research programme that surveys more than 40,000 people each month on how leaders behave under pressure. That data set fed Performing Under Pressure, the New York Times bestseller he co-authored with Hendrie Weisinger, named one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Business Books of the Year and now in print across 65 countries. He is also one of the highest-rated lecturers at Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education programme. That matters because his audiences are usually executive committees, board offsites, and partner conferences, where the bar is set by what people will repeat in their next 1:1, not by what felt good in the room. The work has moved on. His September 2025 Harvard Business Review article, “The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team,” set out the Last 8% framework: a model for how courageous organisations combine high accountability with high care, and the cultural conditions that let leaders step into hard conversations rather than around them. The same model now sits behind IHHP work with Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, HSBC, the U.S. Navy and Marines, NASA, and NFL and NBA franchises. Key speaking topics The Last 8 Percent: leadership under pressure Performing under pressure High-performing teams and psychological safety Emotional intelligence in senior leadership Courageous conversations and accountability Risk-taking and decision-making in high-stakes moments Ideal for Executive committees and board offsites where avoidance and unspoken disagreement are slowing decisions. CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior-leader programmes on accountability, feedback culture, and resilience. Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on high-stakes negotiation and performance under pressure. Partner and managing director audiences in professional services, banking, and law where the cost of an avoided conversation is large and visible. Audience outcomes A named, testable model for the moment performance breaks down under pressure, drawn from research with more than 34,000 leaders. A common language for the 8 percent that goes unsaid, usable inside a leadership team within days. Specific behavioural moves leaders can rehearse for the next high-stakes conversation, decision, or piece of feedback. A clearer read on how their own organisation balances accountability with care, and where that balance is breaking. Renewed permission to take the interpersonal risk most senior leaders know they should be taking.

Why organisations work with Julia Gentry A coaching track record concentrated in growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band, where the founder and the leadership team are the same people and personal capacity is the binding constraint. A signature D.R.E.A.M. framework she uses with executive teams to close the gap between stated ambition and the daily decisions that contradict it. Direct authority with women leaders navigating the specific tension between professional ambition and the rest of their lives, written about in her book Dream – I Dare You. A strong following in the US residential real estate sector, where she is repeatedly booked back into the same firms and conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., leading a team of eight. Author of Dream – I Dare You: A Wake-Up Call to Greater Alignment in Your Faith, Family, Career, and Community and the companion Dream – Workbook. More than a decade coaching executive teams at companies grossing $10 to $100 million annually. Co-founder of six businesses across 16 years as an entrepreneur, including a real estate operation. Named client engagements include Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams agents and brokerages. Creator of the D.R.E.A.M. framework, used in keynote sessions, group coaching and an eight-week curriculum. Biography Most leadership burnout is not a wellness problem. It is a clarity problem. The leader knows what the next quarter requires, but cannot remember what the next decade is for. That is the gap Julia Gentry works in. She is the CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., a coaching practice she built after a career in residential real estate that ended, by her own account, in burnout in her early thirties. Over the past decade, she has coached executive teams at growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue range, where the leadership group and the founders are usually the same small set of people. Her book Dream – I Dare You is the written form of that work. It argues that alignment across professional ambition, family life, and personal conviction is the precondition for sustained senior performance, not a soft add-on to it. The companion Dream – Workbook turns the same argument into a working tool for leadership teams and small groups. Her commercial track record is strongest in the US residential real estate sector, where firms including Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams brokerages have brought her back to work with leaders and agents. The D.R.E.A.M. framework she developed is now used in keynote settings, in an eight-week curriculum, and in direct executive coaching with founders who have stopped enjoying the company they built. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and burnout recovery Women in senior leadership Purpose and alignment in growth-stage businesses Limiting beliefs in executive teams Leadership in real estate and entrepreneur-led firms Faith-aligned leadership Ideal for Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band Women leadership networks and senior women’s events Real estate brokerages, agent groups and franchise leadership conferences Faith-aligned corporate and entrepreneurial audiences Audience outcomes A clear read on where personal capacity is the bottleneck in the business, not the strategy Language for the gap between stated ambition and actual decision-making in the leadership team A practical structure, the D.R.E.A.M. framework, for resetting that gap Permission and a method for women leaders to redefine what success in the role looks like A direct challenge to grind-culture assumptions about what senior leadership requires

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 Julian Placino Practitioner credibility: nearly two decades inside corporate recruiting, including seven years leading talent acquisition at Bottle Rocket, a Dallas mobile development firm with an outsized reputation for hiring quality. Operating-level content. His recruiting talks address the working mechanics buyers ask about: employer value proposition, candidate pipeline, referral systems, hiring manager discipline. Not HR theory. Doubles as a host. With 220+ episodes of The Pathways to Success podcast under his belt, he is comfortable interviewing leaders on stage and moderating panels, useful when an event needs both a keynote and a host. Personal-brand and resilience material that translates for sales, recruiting, and frontline audiences who need a motivational anchor rather than a leadership framework. Biography highlights Former Head of Recruiting, Bottle Rocket (seven-year tenure) Earlier recruiting leadership at ReachLocal (Gannett) Founder, Pathways Media and the Recruitment Masterclass training programme Host and creator, The Pathways to Success podcast (220+ episodes, Apple Podcasts and Spotify) BBA, University of North Texas Commercial actor and voice-over artist with named campaigns including Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and the NFL Biography Most companies treat recruiting as an administrative function until a critical hire stalls. Then it becomes a board-level problem. Placino built his career inside that gap. As Head of Recruiting at Bottle Rocket, he spent seven years scaling a hiring operation at a Dallas mobile development firm whose product work for Fortune 500 clients depended on the quality of its engineering bench. That operating background is what he brings to the stage. His core keynote, Mastering the Talent Puzzle, treats employer brand and recruiting strategy as a system that can be deliberately built, not a function of headcount or agency spend. The argument is grounded in what worked inside a high-pressure tech recruiting environment, including how to design an employment value proposition, how to mobilise existing employees as a pipeline, and how to make hiring managers accountable for the people they bring in. Beyond the recruiting material, Placino runs The Pathways to Success podcast, where he has interviewed more than 220 leaders across business, sport, and the creative industries. The format gives him a working interviewer’s craft, which he extends into event hosting and panel moderation. He also delivers talks on personal branding, resilience, and stewardship, drawn from his own path as a first-generation Filipino American who built a recruiting career, a media company, and a parallel commercial acting line that includes Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and NFL campaigns. He is based in Dallas and holds a BBA from the University of North Texas. He is represented by multiple bureaus across the US in addition to Speakers Associates internationally. Key speaking topics Recruitment strategy and employer brand Talent acquisition operating models Personal branding and reputation Resilience and adaptability Stewardship-based leadership Event hosting and interview-format moderation Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent Acquisition rebuilding in-house recruiting capability Talent and recruiting team offsites Sales and revenue kickoffs that need a personal-brand or motivation anchor Conferences requiring a keynote speaker who can also host or moderate Audience outcomes A working model for designing an employer value proposition that survives contact with the labour market A specific approach to turning current employees into a recruiting pipeline Language for separating personal brand from job title, useful for sales and client-facing roles A reframing model for adversity and change drawn from the speaker’s own career history

Why organisations work with Julian Treasure He has run an operating consultancy, The Sound Agency, advising global brands on retail, office and public-space sound for two decades. The work has commercial outcomes attached, not theory. His TED catalogue is one of the most viewed of any speaker on any subject, which gives senior audiences a shared starting point before he steps on stage. He treats listening as a leadership capability with a teachable structure, and his book How to Be Heard sets out the model in detail. He covers the rarely combined territory of personal communication craft and the sonic design of physical workplaces, so he is credible with HR, brand and facilities audiences in the same room. Awards from Toastmasters International and the International Listening Association place him inside the formal communication and listening professions, not just the speaker circuit. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of The Sound Agency, audio branding consultancy Five TED talks; combined views above 160 million; “How to Speak So That People Want to Listen” is TED’s sixth most-viewed talk Author of Sound Business (2014), How to Be Heard (2017) and Sound Affects (2025) Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award; International Listening Association Special Recognition Award Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Marketors Founded and sold UK customer magazine publisher TPD Group; former chairman of the UK Association of Publishing Agencies; PPA Chairman’s Award (2002) Biography Sound is the most underused operating variable in most organisations. Retailers play music chosen by the manager on shift. Offices design for visual brand and acoustic accident. Leaders speak without ever auditing how they are heard. The financial cost is real and the cultural cost is larger. The Sound Agency was built around that gap. Founded by a former publisher and musician with a Cambridge economics degree, the consultancy has spent two decades advising global brands on retail soundscapes, office acoustics and audio identity, with measurable effects on sales, wellbeing and behaviour. The argument is that sound is a commercial system, designed or accidental, and most organisations choose accidental. The communication work is the second half of the same proposition. Three books, Sound Business, How to Be Heard and Sound Affects, set out a structured model for speaking and listening as leadership skills rather than soft attributes. The TED catalogue, five talks above 160 million combined views, has made the speaking talk one of the most watched pieces of business communication content ever recorded. The Toastmasters Golden Gavel and the International Listening Association Special Recognition Award place him inside the formal disciplines, not adjacent to them. For senior teams, he offers something specific: a working theory of how attention, voice and environment shape commercial and cultural outcomes, and the operating experience to back it up. The Royal Society of Arts fellowship and the Worshipful Company of Marketors livery are part of a wider institutional footprint that signals durability rather than novelty. Key speaking topics Conscious listening as a leadership skill Powerful speaking and executive voice Audio branding and sonic identity Sound design in workplaces and retail environments Communication and engagement in distracted organisations Wellbeing effects of sound and noise Trust and credibility in senior communication Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership rethinking customer experience beyond the visual HR, internal communications and culture leads working on listening and engagement Retail, hospitality and property leadership designing customer-facing environments Senior leaders preparing for high-stakes speaking, board, investor or media Audience outcomes A working model for listening as a measurable leadership capability Specific techniques for executive voice, structure and presence in high-stakes settings A new lens on the commercial and cultural cost of accidental sound in workplaces and retail A shared vocabulary for communication quality across HR, brand and facilities functions Concrete next steps that connect personal communication craft to organisational outcomes

Why organisations work with Justin Hughes His BETTUR (Better Understanding of Reality) model gives teams a structured, named framework for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity and pressure – one tested in military aviation and refined across corporate and public sector organisations on multiple continents. The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016) advances a specific argument – that consistent high performance is a systems problem, built around people, capability, and delivery – giving his advisory work an intellectual foundation that separates it from standard high-performance keynote content. His advisory work spans genuinely diverse high-stakes environments: BP’s global safety operations programme, Mercedes Formula 1, the United Nations, and Microsoft – meaning the principles he applies have been stress-tested well beyond the military analogy. As current CEO of a biotech startup operating under real commercial pressure, he holds practitioner credibility that most speakers with a military or aviation background left behind long ago. His diagnostic starting point – that cognitive and motivational biases distort individual and team judgement under pressure in predictable, addressable ways – gives organisations a more honest and specific entry point than generic resilience or leadership development typically provides. Biography highlights Former RAF fighter pilot; served as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows, flying more than 250 displays across three international tours Founder of Mission Excellence, an organisational performance consultancy; strategic adviser to Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 Regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme Author of The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016), a performance framework built around people, capability, and delivery; endorsed by Paddy Lowe, Executive Director of Mercedes Grand Prix Profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Director Magazine, and the London Evening Standard; interviewed on BBC World Talking Business, BBC Breakfast, and GB News MBA with Distinction, London Business School; MSt with Distinction in International Relations, University of Cambridge Biography The Business of Excellence, published by Bloomsbury in 2016, makes a specific claim: consistent high performance is not a talent question. It is a question of systems, behaviours, and the decision-making habits that hold up when conditions deteriorate. Justin Hughes wrote that book after twelve years as an RAF fighter pilot and three as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows. Since leaving the RAF, Hughes has operated in the environments his book describes. As founder of Mission Excellence, he has advised Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 on organisational effectiveness. He is also a regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme – a safety-critical context where the gap between intended and actual decision-making carries serious consequences. The practical instrument of that advisory work is the BETTUR model – an acronym for Better Understanding of Reality. It gives organisations a structured approach to planning, executing, and adapting under ambiguity and pressure. The model addresses a specific failure mode: the cognitive and motivational biases that cause individual and team judgement to degrade when information is incomplete and stakes are high. Hughes holds an MBA with Distinction from London Business School and an MSt with Distinction in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. As CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, a biotech company developing alternatives to synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, he retains active operating responsibility alongside his advisory and speaking work. He has been profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and Director Magazine, and interviewed on BBC World Talking Business and BBC Breakfast. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Decision-making in high-stakes environments High-performance team design Organisational effectiveness and execution Risk and cognitive bias in judgement Performance culture Strategic resilience Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams building high-performance cultures in complex, high-reliability, or fast-changing organisations Operations, safety, and transformation leaders in sectors where the cost of poor judgement is high – energy, aerospace, financial services, and healthcare CHROs and L&D directors commissioning leadership development that goes beyond standard competency frameworks C-suite and board audiences addressing the gap between strategic intent and operational execution Audience outcomes A named framework – the BETTUR model – for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity, incomplete information, and time pressure A clearer diagnosis of why high-performance intentions break down under operational stress, and what structural factors – not individual failings – drive that gap Practical principles for building teams that maintain standards and accountability without relying on close supervision or ideal conditions A more rigorous understanding of how cognitive and motivational biases affect individual and team judgement, and what processes reduce their impact Directly applicable approaches to debrief discipline, decision protocols, and leadership behaviour in their own organisations

Why organisations work with Justin King A first-hand, decade-long account of running a FTSE 100 retailer through competitive attack, recession and the shift to online, with named results: 36 consecutive quarters of like-for-like growth, tripled underlying profit, and an 85 per cent total shareholder return by the time he stepped down. The “Making Sainsbury’s Great Again” playbook talked through by the CEO who wrote it, with concrete decisions on price, fresh food, colleague engagement and the Paralympic sponsorship that reset the brand. An active cross-portfolio operating perspective from the Chair seats at Allwyn Entertainment, Dexters and Itsu Grocery, plus the recent OVO Energy chairmanship through the sector’s difficult patch, so the material is current rather than retrospective. A credible record on purpose-led commercial leadership, evidenced through Sainsbury’s Comic Relief partnership of £1 for every £10 donated, the first dedicated Paralympic sponsorship of London 2012, and Made by Sport, the charity he founded in 2019 that raised over £6m for community organisations before transferring to Sported. A leadership framework, the ten Cs, that has been pressure-tested against a real CEO seat rather than developed in a classroom, and is delivered with the candour of someone who has had to defend results to a board. Biography highlights CEO of J Sainsbury plc, 2004 to 2014, ten years that took the business from third place and falling sales to 36 consecutive quarters of like-for-like growth and an 85 per cent total shareholder return. Chair of Allwyn Entertainment and Dexters; Non-Executive Chair of Itsu Grocery; recent Chair of OVO Energy. Non-Executive Director of Marks and Spencer plc, January 2019 to September 2025; member of the PwC Public Interest Body, 2015 to 2022. Vice Chairman and Senior Adviser at Terra Firma Capital Partners, 2015 to 2021; interim Chairman of the Manor Racing F1 team during its 2014-2015 restructuring. Member of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and its audit committee, with Sainsbury’s the first dedicated Paralympic sponsor of London 2012. Founder of Made by Sport, 2019 to 2023, raising over £6m for community sport organisations. CBE for services to the retail industry, 2011 Birthday Honours; Honorary DBA, University of Bath, 2009; Most Admired Business Leader, Management Today; Britain’s Most Impressive Businessman, IPSOS-MORI Captains of Industry Report. Biography Sainsbury’s was the third-place supermarket with falling sales when Justin King took the CEO seat in March 2004. The City viewed the appointment as the company’s last chance to remain independent. Within six months he had launched “Making Sainsbury’s Great Again”, a recovery plan built on fresh food, colleague engagement and a re-priced shelf. The plan’s headline target, a £2.5 billion sales uplift, was hit three months early. Over his ten years as CEO, the business delivered 36 consecutive quarters of like-for-like growth, tripled underlying profit from £252m to £756m, and returned 85 per cent to shareholders. The brand was rebuilt around the first dedicated Paralympic sponsorship of London 2012, and the long-standing Comic Relief partnership of £1 for every £10 donated. Sainsbury’s regained second place in UK grocery and he stepped down in 2014 with the longest unbroken growth run of any major UK supermarket CEO of the era. He arrived at Sainsbury’s with three decades in consumer businesses behind him, including senior roles at M&S Food, Asda and Häagen-Dazs UK. After leaving the CEO seat he held the Vice Chairman and Senior Adviser role at Terra Firma Capital Partners from 2015 to 2021, sat on the PwC Public Interest Body from 2015 to 2022, and served as a Non-Executive Director of Marks and Spencer from January 2019 until September 2025. He chaired the Manor Racing F1 team through its 2014-2015 restructuring. He is Chair of Allwyn Entertainment, Chair of Dexters, and Non-Executive Chair of Itsu Grocery, with adviser seats at Snappy Shopper and Rezolve. He chaired OVO Energy through the post-energy-crisis period to August 2025. The purpose thread runs through the record: he founded Made by Sport in 2019, which raised over £6m for community sport organisations before the campaign was handed to Sported in 2023. He was appointed CBE in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to retail, named Most Admired Business Leader by Management Today, and topped the IPSOS-MORI Captains of Industry Report. The University of Bath conferred an Honorary DBA in 2009, and he served on the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group from 2010 to 2012. Key speaking topics Retail leadership and the long-cycle turnaround Consumer behaviour and brand reinvention Customer and colleague-led growth Purpose-led commercial leadership and responsible business Boardroom decision-making under competitive pressure Sponsorship and purpose, drawn from London 2012 Cross-portfolio non-executive leadership Ideal for FTSE and large-cap consumer business leadership teams managing a multi-year turnaround Retail, hospitality and consumer goods boards weighing strategy against operational execution Chief executives, COOs and store or operations directors in customer-facing sectors Boards and leadership teams looking to embed purpose into commercial performance rather than treat it as a side function Audience outcomes A working view of how a CEO sequences price, range, colleagues and brand through a decade-long recovery rather than a single reset. Specific lessons from London 2012, the Comic Relief partnership and Made by Sport on how purpose can shift commercial performance. A frank account of what holds boards together when results are slow, competitors aggressive and shareholders impatient. A leadership lens, the ten Cs, applied to the audience’s own operating questions during Q&A.

Why organisations work with Justin Roethlingshoefer He brings the performance science used to keep professional hockey players on the ice into the language of P&L, calendar pressure and executive fatigue, with frameworks tested over a fifteen-year career across NCAA and NHL environments. His method starts from individual biological data, including bloodwork, HRV and DNA inputs, so the room leaves with personalised next actions rather than a generic wellness playbook. He has built and runs OWN IT Coaching, which means the content is informed by what is currently working with paying executive clients, not theory drawn from a former career. His book The Power of Ownership gives audiences a structured reference point after the keynote, extending the conversation beyond the event. Biography highlights Founder of OWN IT Coaching, a health and performance company serving founders, executives and corporate teams. Fifteen years in elite sport across NCAA and professional hockey, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. Author of four books, including The Power of Ownership, listed as a USA Today bestseller. Master’s in Human Development with a Sport Performance concentration; postgraduate work in HRV, sleep and recovery science. Host of The OWN IT Show podcast and a regular contributor on SimpliFaster and Muscle & Strength. Featured in Fox News, Esquire, USA Today, LiveScience and Well+Good. Biography The cost of high-performance leadership tends to show up in the body before it shows up in the numbers. Sleep degrades, recovery collapses, decisions get slower and shorter, and the wellbeing programme on the company intranet does not touch any of it. That is the gap Justin Roethlingshoefer’s work addresses. He spent fifteen years inside elite hockey, first in the NCAA and then in the professional system, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls in the AHL and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. His job was to keep human beings playing at their physical ceiling across a punishing season, using data on load, fatigue, sleep and recovery. He brought that operating model out of the locker room and into the office. OWN IT Coaching, the company he founded, applies the same approach to executives, founders and corporate teams. The starting point is individual biology, bloodwork, HRV, wearables and DNA testing, with structured coaching on the back of it. His four books, including the USA Today bestseller The Power of Ownership, set out the underlying argument: health is an ownership decision, and senior leaders who treat it that way protect the asset their organisations depend on most. His sports-science training sits behind everything he says, which is what separates him from the wider wellness category. The case he makes to a senior audience is concrete: the same monitoring that keeps a Stanley Cup contender on the ice can keep a CEO sharp through a year that was not built for human pacing. Key speaking topics Executive health and performance Burnout prevention in senior leadership Sleep, recovery and HRV in high-pressure roles Wearables, biometric data and personalised health Ownership as a personal operating principle Health risk in founder-led and high-growth organisations Team performance and resilience Ideal for CEOs, founders and executive committees carrying sustained operational load CHROs and heads of people designing senior leader wellbeing and retention Leadership offsites and partner retreats in professional services Sales and high-performance teams working under structured pressure Audience outcomes A clear separation between generic wellness advice and the variables that actually move executive performance A working understanding of how sleep, HRV, recovery and load data translate into leadership capacity Personal next actions framed as ownership decisions rather than corporate programme tweaks Language to discuss executive health as an organisational asset with boards and HR A reference framework drawn from The Power of Ownership to extend the conversation after the event

Why organisations work with Jutta Kleinschmidt She is the only woman ever to win the Dakar Rally outright, a fact buyers can repeat without qualification, in a field where most “first woman” credentials require footnotes. She brings a physics-engineering mind to a topic, high-pressure performance, that is usually dominated by intuition and anecdote. Audiences get the mechanics, not just the story. Her current FIA role gives her a serving leadership platform in international motorsport, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. She speaks credibly to mixed audiences on team performance, risk tolerance and the practical limits of preparation, drawing on a 17-attempt Dakar career across motorcycles and cars. She works fluently in English and German, which matters for German-speaking corporates booking a global-grade keynote without losing the original voice. Biography highlights First and only woman to win the Dakar Rally outright, in 2001, driving a Mitsubishi Pajero with co-driver Andreas Schulz. President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission since 2019. Inaugural Championship Driver for the Extreme E electric off-road series; raced for ABT Cupra XE in 2021. Trained physicist (Isny University of Applied Sciences) and former BMW vehicle development engineer. Author of the autobiography “My Victory at the Dakar.” Recipient of the Monaco World Sports Legends Award (2018), FIM Legend status (2013) and the Lord Wakefield Trophy from the British Women Racing Drivers Club. Biography The Dakar Rally runs for two weeks across some of the most punishing terrain on the planet, with no second chances and no controlled environment. In January 2001, a German driver in a Mitsubishi Pajero crossed the line in Dakar 2 minutes 39 seconds ahead of her teammate. That driver was Jutta Kleinschmidt, and she remains the only woman ever to have won the event outright. Her route to that result is what makes her useful to senior teams. She studied physics at Isny University of Applied Sciences, completed her diploma thesis at BMW, and spent five years as a vehicle development engineer there before going professional in motorsport in 1993. She first contested Dakar in 1988 on a BMW motorcycle, switched to cars in 1994, took her first stage win in 1997, and stood on the podium in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005 across 17 starts. Since 2018 she has been Senior Advisor for Cross Country Rally at the FIA, and since 2019 President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission, where she has pushed the discipline toward more sustainable technologies. She joined the Extreme E electric series as its inaugural Championship Driver and Advisor in 2021, racing for ABT Cupra XE. For business audiences, her material is the engineer’s read on what actually drives outcomes when conditions turn hostile: how to build a team that can absorb a hit and keep deciding, what preparation is worth and what is theatre, and how to keep a clear head when the equipment, the weather and the field are all working against you. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in endurance environments Risk management and preparation Resilience and recovery from setback Women in male-dominated industries Sustainable mobility and the future of motorsport Leadership in mixed-discipline, high-stakes teams Ideal for Boards and executive teams running performance, safety or operational risk agendas Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on competitive edge Senior leadership programmes building resilience and decision quality Engineering, automotive and mobility audiences working on the energy transition Audience outcomes A working language for what high performers actually do when the plan fails A sharper view of where preparation pays off and where it stops Specific examples of team coordination under physical and time pressure A credible counterweight to the assumption that elite performance is mostly talent Confidence that high-stakes decisions can be trained, not just hired for

Why organisations work with K D Adamson She has named and framed the shift. Her concept of “nobleization” – the argument that the next phase of business is not globalisation but morally accountable, purpose-led value creation – gives leadership teams a precise, shareable thesis rather than a trend briefing. She challenges the techno-optimist default from a position of intellectual rigour. When AI, automation and digital transformation dominate the conversation, Adamson’s argument that tomorrow is a value problem, not a technology problem reframes the strategic question at board level. This is a harder case to make but her broadcast record on BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN and the Financial Times confirms it holds up under interrogation. Her “Seismotectonic” model gives leaders a practical foresight tool, not just a perspective. The three-movement framework of what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, what appears not to change at all is actionable in strategic planning contexts and transfers directly from a keynote into workshop and executive briefing formats. Her client base spans sectors where the future-of-value argument has immediate strategic urgency including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, and PwC, which gives her the commercial credibility to speak to mixed leadership audiences without being narrowed to a single industry vertical. Her ecocentrist positioning is analytically distinct. Placing ecological systems rather than human enterprise at the centre of value creation is not rhetorical positioning. It is the foundation of her ESG and circular economy arguments, and it produces conclusions that differ meaningfully from those of speakers whose sustainability work begins and ends with reporting frameworks. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO, Futurenautics Group; former Futurist, The Futures Agency Author of Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), the foundational foresight text on digital transformation in the shipping and maritime industry Broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, Financial Times, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, and BBC R4 Today Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts; stated member of Chatham House, The Aristotelian Society, the Society of Antiquaries, CERN Open Quantum Institute, and the International Society for the Circular Economy Global client roster includes Google, Airbus, Mastercard, CHANEL, Allianz, PwC, Deloitte, Capgemini, Rolls-Royce, Vodafone, Oracle, and Pfizer Biography The thesis K D Adamson has built over two decades is a direct challenge to the most widely held corporate assumption about the future: that it is, above all, a technology problem. In a landscape where most foresight is organised around what AI, automation, or quantum computing will do to a given industry, Adamson argues that what actually determines where organisations end up is what they believe about value, about purpose, and about who business is ultimately for. Her concept of “nobleization” names this argument precisely. Where globalisation provided the operating logic of the late twentieth century, Adamson contends that the defining shift of the current era is from a global business to a noble one, where ESG, the circular economy, and purpose-led strategy are not peripheral compliance exercises but the competitive architecture of the world arriving. The implication for leadership is significant: the strategic planning tools built for the previous era are no longer sufficient guides. Adamson founded and led Futurenautics Group, where her work on the digital transformation of the shipping and maritime industry made her the sector’s authoritative futurist – a standing substantiated by Shipping and the 800-lb Gorilla (2017), which set the analytical agenda for how one of the world’s most conservative global industries understood its own disruption. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a regular broadcast commentator for BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNN, the Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, which means her frameworks are tested in real time against the hardest current questions, not only in controlled conference settings. Her “Seismotectonic” model of change, mapping three simultaneous rates of disruption: what changes rapidly, what changes slowly, and what appears not to change at all, gives senior teams a working tool for strategy under deep uncertainty. It is this combination of named intellectual frameworks, commercial range across clients including Google, Airbus, Mastercard, and CHANEL, and the ecocentrist perspective that places ecology rather than enterprise at the centre of value analysis, that separates Adamson from speakers covering adjacent territory. Key speaking topics Future of business value and sustainable transformation The limits of techno-optimism ESG as competitive strategy, not compliance Geopolitics and the end of globalisation AI: belief, systemic risk, and organisational response Leadership beyond control Strategic foresight and scenario planning Ideal for C-suite and board audiences navigating how to reframe business strategy as stakeholder expectations, geopolitical pressures, and ecological imperatives converge Chief Sustainability Officers and strategy leads responsible for translating ESG from reporting obligation into organisational design Global leadership conferences convening senior executives across multiple sectors and geographies, where a macro-systemic perspective is required rather than a sector-specific one Executive leadership teams of multinationals at significant inflection points – where the question is not only operational but concerns organisational identity and the long-term logic of value creation Audience outcomes A named conceptual framework, “nobleization”, for articulating why business strategy must move beyond profit primacy, framed as competitive logic rather than ideology Clarity on why the next wave of disruption is a value problem rather than a technology problem, and what that distinction means for strategic planning and capital allocation A working model for reading simultaneous, differently-paced change: the Seismotectonic framework, applicable in strategy sessions and scenario planning processes A more rigorous way to frame AI risk: focused on collective belief and systemic dependency rather than technical capability alone Greater confidence in articulating an alternative vision of organisational purpose to boards, investors, and internal leadership audiences