Leadership speakers

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

Why organisations work with Karen Carney She chaired the UK Government’s Independent Review into Women’s Football, a policy artefact whose recommendations were accepted by Government and now sit behind professionalisation standards across the WSL and Women’s Championship. That is named institutional credibility, not generalised sport authority. She speaks from 144 international caps and a 14-year career across Arsenal, Birmingham City, Chicago Red Stars and Chelsea, which gives her the right to talk about composure, recovery and team alignment with leaders who have heard the sport-to-business analogy too many times. She has worked publicly through depression, online abuse and the consequences of injury, which gives the mental health and resilience content specific personal reference points rather than generic advocacy. As lead female analyst across Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports, she is rehearsed in live communication under scrutiny, which is a useful asset for a moderator or panel chair as well as a keynote. Biography highlights 144 England caps, third-most capped Lioness; four FIFA Women’s World Cups and four UEFA Women’s Championships. Olympian, Team GB, London 2012. Chair, Future of Women’s Football Review for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2022 to 2023; recommendations accepted by Government. MBE 2017 for services to football; OBE 2024 King’s Birthday Honours for services to association football. Inductee, National Football Museum Hall of Fame, 2021. Lead female football analyst, Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports; winner, Strictly Come Dancing 2025. Biography Most organisations talk about high performance and mean motivation. Elite sport means something more specific: a set of daily operating habits that hold up when the team is tired, beaten, or in public view. Karen Carney spent 14 years inside those habits at the top of international football and has spent the years since explaining what they actually consist of. She earned 144 caps for England between 2005 and 2019, making her the third-most capped Lioness of all time, with appearances at four World Cups, four European Championships and the London 2012 Olympics. Her club career took her through Arsenal’s 2006 to 2007 quadruple-winning side, Birmingham City, Chicago Red Stars and a Chelsea captaincy that ended in an FA Women’s Cup win. The work that has done most to shape her current credibility is the Future of Women’s Football Review, which she chaired for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Published in July 2023, the review set out professionalisation standards for the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship, covering minimum operating conditions, mental and physical health provision, parental care and transition support. The Government accepted the recommendations and announced a 30 million pound investment to follow. She works the same material as a broadcaster. As lead female football analyst across Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports, she is on screen weekly through Premier League, WSL and major tournament coverage; in late 2025 she won Strictly Come Dancing, becoming the first footballer to do so. Her honours, MBE in 2017 and OBE in 2024, sit alongside induction to the National Football Museum Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics High-performance culture in elite sport and its operating analogues in business Leadership under public scrutiny Mental health and recovery in performance environments Inclusion and the commercial case for women’s sport Governance and professionalisation of women’s football Team alignment under fatigue and setback Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through cultural change, performance reset or post-restructure alignment HR, talent and DEI leaders building substantive inclusion strategy rather than messaging Sport, media, sponsorship and consumer brands engaging with the commercial growth of women’s sport Conference moderation and panel chairing where live broadcast discipline is an asset Audience outcomes A concrete picture of what elite-sport operating discipline looks like day to day, not as metaphor Language for talking about mental health and recovery in performance environments without slipping into wellness generalities A clearer read of the commercial and governance trajectory of women’s sport, drawn from her own review work A sharper view of how senior leaders hold composure when results, scrutiny or fatigue are working against them

Why organisations work with Karen Eber She has run culture and learning inside two of the largest professional environments in the world, GE and Deloitte, so her storytelling work is built around how decisions actually get made in a 90,000-person organisation. Her Perfect Story method is grounded in neuroscience, including how attention, empathy, and trust are formed in the brain during a story, giving leaders a defensible reason to invest in communication craft beyond presentation polish. She works fluently across storytelling for leadership, storytelling for change, and storytelling with data, which means a single engagement can serve a town hall, a board update, and a sales conversation. Her book carries genuine third-party validation: Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medal, International Book Awards winner, and Next Big Ideas Club selection, signalling editorial quality rather than self-published reach. Biography highlights Author of The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire, HarperCollins Leadership / Harper Horizon. TED speaker: “How your brain responds to stories, and why they’re crucial for leaders”. Former Head of Culture and Head of Leadership Development at General Electric. Former Chief Learning Officer / Head of Leadership Development at Deloitte. Guest lecturer at London Business School, MIT, and Stanford. Featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, NPR, CNBC, Quartz, and Business Insider. Biography Most internal communication inside large organisations is information transfer in slide form. Strategy is announced, change is rolled out, performance is reported, and almost none of it changes how a manager behaves on a Tuesday morning. Karen Eber’s work begins from that problem. She spent two decades inside the kind of environment where this matters most. At General Electric she led Culture and Leadership Development across a global workforce. At Deloitte she ran leadership development for the firm. Those roles required her to land complex messages, on diverse audiences, in cultures that were already crowded with corporate noise. Her book The Perfect Story sets out a practical neuroscience-based method for how leaders find, shape, and deliver stories that hold attention and shift behaviour. It has been recognised with an Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medal, an International Book Awards win, and a Next Big Ideas Club “Must-Read” selection. Her TED talk on the neuroscience of leadership storytelling extended the argument to a public audience. What buyers tend to remember from her sessions is that the craft is teachable. She separates storytelling from charisma, breaks down the brain mechanics of attention and trust, and gives senior people specific tools they can use the same week, whether the audience is a board, a sales team, or a hundred frontline managers reading a town hall transcript on a phone. Key speaking topics Storytelling for leadership and influence Storytelling with data Culture change and communication Executive presence and communication craft Neuroscience of attention, trust, and persuasion Employee engagement and internal communication Ideal for CHROs, Chief Learning Officers, and Heads of Leadership Development designing executive communication and culture programmes. Chief Communications Officers and internal communication leaders responsible for change narratives and town hall content. Sales and marketing leadership teams who need to convert data into narrative buyers act on. Senior leadership teams preparing for major strategy, restructure, or integration announcements. Audience outcomes A working neuroscience-based model for how stories hold attention and create trust. Specific techniques for turning data and strategy slides into narratives that move an audience. A clearer separation between what is rhetoric, what is communication craft, and what is leadership behaviour. Tools senior leaders can apply immediately to town halls, board updates, and customer conversations.

Why organisations work with Karl Dickson He has refereed at the level where every call is reviewed in slow motion by millions, including the 2023 Rugby World Cup final on the touchline, and translates that into how leaders hold a decision when it is being second-guessed in real time. He brings a rare dual perspective: a Premiership winner with Harlequins and a current PGMOT international official, so he can speak credibly to both the player under instruction and the official making the call. His material on communication is grounded in a discipline where being unclear costs you the room within seconds, useful for executives whose audiences increasingly behave the same way. He addresses public mistakes head-on. Refereeing offers no place to hide a wrong decision, and the recovery skill he teaches is directly applicable to leadership populations who fear visible error. Biography highlights 169 appearances for Harlequins as a scrum-half between 2009 and 2017 Replacement in the 2011 to 2012 Premiership final, won by Harlequins against Leicester Tigers Called into the senior England squad during the 2012 Six Nations and South Africa tour Member of the RFU Professional Game Match Officials Team since 2017 Quarter-final referee at Rugby World Cup 2023 (Wales v Argentina) and assistant referee for the final (South Africa v New Zealand) Six Nations referee, including the opening fixture of the 2024 Championship (France v Ireland) Biography Most leadership content treats decision-making under pressure as a mindset. In elite refereeing it is a practised skill, made under load, on camera, with no opportunity to consult, and with the entire stadium reacting before the decision has finished being made. Karl Dickson works at exactly that level. He refereed a Rugby World Cup quarter-final in 2023 and stood as assistant referee in the final between South Africa and New Zealand. He arrived at officiating from inside the game. Eight seasons at Harlequins, 169 appearances as a scrum-half, and a Premiership title in 2012 give him a player’s reading of the moment. England squad call-ups in 2012 and a near-cap mark the upper edge of that career. Few officials at his level have lived the other side of the decision so recently. His speaking work draws directly from that dual experience. He talks about the discipline of being decisive when the right answer is not yet obvious, the communication craft of holding a room of thirty professional athletes to a call they disagree with, and the recovery skill required when the replay shows you were wrong. Those are not metaphors for leadership. They are the same problems senior teams face when a market moves, a stakeholder pushes back, or a strategy turns out to have been mistimed. What he gives a corporate audience is a working operator’s view of public judgement. Premiership and Six Nations seasons run year-round; the 2024 Six Nations opener, France v Ireland in Marseille, was his. He is not retired. He is mid-career at the top of his sport, and the material is current. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Communication in high-stakes environments Composure and confidence in public roles Resilience after visible mistakes High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from elite sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-scrutiny moments: results announcements, regulatory hearings, restructure communications Sales, customer-facing, and front-line management populations whose decisions are visible and contested Executive development programmes focused on judgement, communication, and presence Annual conferences where the audience benefits from a credible voice on pressure and recovery Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what trained composure looks like, drawn from a domain where it is a job requirement Practical communication discipline for moments when an audience is sceptical, hostile, or impatient A more honest framework for handling visible mistakes, separating the error from the recovery Renewed confidence that decisiveness can be developed, not just born into

Why organisations work with Karl Lillrud He speaks about AI from the seat of someone who has run digital commerce businesses since the late nineties and is currently building one. PodManager AI, his AI-driven podcast production platform, is shipping to paying customers as he speaks about AI to other operators. His work connects AI directly to revenue mechanics: pricing, conversion, retention, and customer acquisition, the parts of the P&L the C-suite is actually accountable for. Nine published books, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct», give leadership teams a shared language for the second-order effects of AI on work, governance, and customer trust, beyond the productivity headlines. Membership of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council and recognition in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings signal that the perspective travels at board level, not just at the developer conference. The client footprint, including Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, and 3, gives him pattern recognition across regulated and consumer-facing businesses that few AI speakers can match. Biography highlights Founder of PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform he is currently building. Founder of Pricelizer, a Swedish e-commerce startup named to CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. Author of nine books on AI and digital business, including «You, Me and AI» and «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct». Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council since August 2024. Two-time TEDx speaker. Recognised across multiple years in Thinkers360’s AI thought-leader rankings and Global Gurus’ Top 30 Motivational Speakers list. Public engagement footprint includes Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, 3, Tele2, and TUI. Biography Most AI keynote speakers have never run a checkout flow at scale. Karl Lillrud has. He has been building digital businesses since the late nineties, founded Pricelizer in 2013 to solve the abandoned-cart problem he kept hitting as an operator, and watched it land on CNBC’s 20 hottest startups list in 2015. He is now building PodManager AI, an AI-driven podcast production platform shipping to paying customers. That operator history, still in present tense, is the through-line for everything he says about artificial intelligence. His books reflect the same instinct. «You, Me and AI» treats the technology across 54 chapters covering work, creativity, education, governance, and the human-machine boundary, rather than as a productivity story. «AI, Your Second Brain: Evolve or Go Extinct» focuses on how leaders and their teams should actually integrate the tools day to day. The two sit inside a wider catalogue of nine published books, written for people who have to make decisions, not people studying the field. The institutional signals followed the work. Thinkers360 has recognised him across its AI thought-leader rankings. Global Gurus has placed him repeatedly in its Top 30 Motivational Speakers ranking. In August 2024 he joined the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Volvo, Spotify, Klarna, H&M, AstraZeneca, Qliro, and 3 sit on a public client list that runs across consumer retail, telecoms, and pharma. What a buyer is paying for is the translation layer between board ambition and operating reality. Lillrud has been the person trying to ship the next quarter’s numbers, and he is still in the chair, building an AI product while advising executives who have AI strategies they cannot yet execute. The argument lands because he has been on both sides of the table. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the C-suite agenda AI in retail and consumer experience Digital commerce and customer acquisition Innovation and business model reinvention Leadership in technology-driven organisations AI ethics and governance Future of work in the AI era Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI strategy approval to execution. CEOs, CMOs, and chief digital or commerce officers in retail, telecoms, and consumer brands. Innovation, transformation, and AI leads inside large enterprises building the operating model for AI. Founder and growth-stage leadership teams using AI as a commercial wedge. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which AI use cases move commercial metrics and which are theatre. A vocabulary for discussing AI’s second-order effects on customers, employees, and brand trust at board level. Concrete reference points from operators who have shipped AI inside consumer-facing businesses. A clearer view of where leadership attention should sit next versus where it can wait. Confidence to challenge vendor narratives and refocus internal AI portfolios on revenue impact.

Why organisations work with Karren Brady She has actually done the job leaders are usually only asked to talk about: turning round a loss-making business, taking it public, and selling it for a reported 82 million pounds. Few speakers can talk credibly about boardroom decision-making, parliamentary scrutiny and front-page media pressure in the same session. She has lived all three at West Ham, in the House of Lords, and through a televised public role. She brings hard-edged commercial honesty to topics that often get softened, including women in leadership, where her position is built on a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business, not slogan. Her profile, sustained through 16 years on The Apprentice and weekly columns in The Sun and Women & Home, makes her one of the few UK business voices a non-business audience already trusts. Biography highlights Appointed Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club at 23; oversaw the 1997 London Stock Exchange flotation, the youngest MD of a UK plc at the time. Vice-Chair of West Ham United from 2010 to 2026; led the negotiation behind the move to the London Stadium. Conservative life peer; took her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Brady in November 2014. CBE in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship and women in business. Lord Sugar’s aide on BBC’s The Apprentice since 2009. Author of Strong Woman: The Truth About Getting to the Top and Playing to Win: 10 Steps to Achieving Your Goals; columnist for The Sun and Women & Home. Biography Birmingham City Football Club was loss-making and barely solvent when Karren Brady was made Managing Director in 1993. She was 23. Four years later, the club was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and she had become the youngest managing director of a UK plc. It was sold in 2009 for a reported 82 million pounds. That trajectory is the foundation of how she talks about leadership. The commercial discipline came first; the public profile came second. By the time she joined West Ham United as Vice-Chair in 2010, she was operating in one of the most politically exposed boardrooms in British sport. She negotiated and defended the club’s move from the Boleyn Ground to the London Stadium, a decision that drew sustained criticism from supporters, parliamentarians and the press, and held the role for 16 years. In 2014 she was made a CBE for services to entrepreneurship and women in business and took her seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer. She had already served as the UK government’s Small Business Ambassador, sat as a non-executive director on the board of Channel 4, and would later chair Taveta Investments, the parent company of the Arcadia Group, before resigning in 2019 over governance concerns. Few UK business voices have operated across that range of corporate, political and public pressure. Her broadcast and editorial presence sharpens the commercial offer rather than dilutes it. She has been Lord Sugar’s aide on The Apprentice since 2009 and writes weekly for The Sun and Women & Home, with two business books behind her, Strong Woman and Playing to Win. Senior teams book her because she has run real organisations through real scrutiny, and she will say what she actually thinks in front of a room. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under public scrutiny Boardroom governance and accountability Women in business and routes to senior leadership Building and selling a business Commercial strategy in highly visible sectors Resilience and reputation in regulated industries Ideal for Boards and executive committees navigating high-visibility decisions or external scrutiny. CEO and senior leadership offsites where the agenda is commercial discipline rather than inspirational content. Conferences on women in leadership, entrepreneurship and governance that want a speaker with named operating credentials. After-dinner, awards and panel formats where a recognised business name with broadcast presence is the brief. Audience outcomes A clearer view of what board-level decision-making actually looks like when stakeholders, media and politics are all in the room. A practical sense of how senior leaders defend commercial decisions publicly without backing away from them. A grounded read on women in senior leadership from someone who has been the only woman on the board, not the panel discussion about it. A sharper instinct for separating reputation management from substance when an organisation is under pressure.

Why organisations work with Karun Chandhok He has lived inside two of the most exposed environments in elite sport: the cockpit of a backmarker F1 team trying to build a car around him, and a Sky Sports broadcast booth analysing the same paddock in real time. He sits on the Motorsport UK Board and the FIA Drivers’ Commission, so the governance, safety and DEI conversations he brings into the room are ones he is actively shaping, not commenting on from the outside. He translates how F1 teams turn millions of data points per race into decisive calls that engineers, strategists and a driver all act on within seconds, with examples a non-motorsport audience can follow. He is one of only two Indians ever to race in Formula One, which gives weight to his work on talent pipelines, representation and what it takes to break into a closed competitive system. He is a working broadcaster for a global audience, so the keynote is paced and structured for the room rather than delivered as a career retrospective. Biography highlights 11 Formula One Grand Prix starts for Hispania Racing in 2010 and Team Lotus in 2011. Sky Sports F1 analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter, full-time since 2019. Board Director, Motorsport UK, and member of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Founding member of the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013, with further roles on the FIA Single Seater Commission and Driver Grading Committee. Williams Heritage driver since 2016, demonstrating the team’s championship-winning cars. Author of “Drive to Victory: Incredible True Stories from the Fastest Sport in the World”, Hachette Children’s, 2025. Biography A modern Formula One team is roughly a thousand engineers, strategists and operations staff who have to redesign their product every two weeks, inside a moving regulatory frame, while a driver they have never met executes the result on television. Karun Chandhok has been the driver in that picture, the analyst describing it for Sky Sports F1, and a director on the boards that write the rules around it. He raced 11 Grands Prix for Hispania Racing and Team Lotus, becoming the second Indian to compete in the championship. From there he moved into the FIA World Endurance Championship and five starts at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, then drove for Mahindra Racing in the inaugural Formula E season. The breadth matters: very few people have raced across the three categories actively reshaping motorsport’s relationship with technology, sustainability and global audiences. Since 2019 he has been part of the core Sky Sports F1 line-up as analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter. The role is unusual because it sits between the engineers and the public; he has to read live telemetry, strategy calls and team radio quickly enough to explain them on air, and accurately enough that the paddock will keep talking to him next weekend. His governance work gives the keynote its third dimension. He has served on the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013 and joined the Motorsport UK board in 2021, where he sits on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Those seats are why his material on talent pipelines, safety reform and competitive integrity carries authority that most sports speakers cannot match. Key speaking topics Decision-making in high-pressure performance environments Leadership and team coordination in elite motorsport Data, technology and human judgement in Formula One Safety, governance and regulatory change Diversity, inclusion and talent pipelines in closed competitive systems Continuous transformation under external pressure Global sport as a commercial and operational system Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through sustained operational or regulatory change. CHROs, DEI leads and talent functions building pipelines into historically closed industries. Engineering, technology and data leadership audiences interested in how F1 turns data into action. Sales conferences and client events where a credible, broadcast-quality headline speaker is needed. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain judgement and coordination when conditions keep shifting. A working sense of how F1 organisations turn data and technology into faster human decisions. Specific examples of how regulation, safety and competitive performance trade against each other inside a sport. A more honest picture of what genuine inclusion looks like in a sector that historically locked talent out.

Why organisations work with Katie Hilborn She has spent two decades making high-stakes calls in environments where missing a signal carried immediate human cost, so her account of judgment under pressure is operational, not theoretical. The Architect’s Read gives leaders a repeatable way to trace a problem from surface event to root structure, rather than a set of principles to admire and forget. As founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, she is building AI infrastructure in practice, which makes her credible on the human judgment the technology cannot replace. Recognition includes a Silver Anthem Award in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, multiple Telly Awards, and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Compass Rose International, the nonprofit behind the Girls INpowerment Center in Nepal, which holds the GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency. Founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, developing AI data centres powered by renewable energy and governed by community trusts, with a first site under way in Nepal. Led 13 aid missions in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake; uncovered and reported a child-trafficking ring during relief operations. 10x award-winning humanitarian, including a Silver Anthem Award in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, multiple Telly Awards, and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement (AmeriCorps); member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council. Has spoken at RegenWorld, EarthX, the Global Family Office Investment Summit, and Northern Illinois University; featured in New York Magazine, NBC, and ABC. B.A., Colorado Mesa University; M.Ed., Grand Canyon University; certified secondary teacher. Biography The 2015 Nepal earthquakes flattened entire villages in minutes. Katie Hilborn flew in with no organisation behind her, led 13 aid missions across remote districts, and read what the relief effort had dismissed as chaos for what it was: a child-trafficking network preying on displaced girls. Spotting it was the easy part. Tracing it to the structure producing it, and building something that addressed it at the source, became the work of the next decade. That skill has a name in her work: pattern recognition under pressure. It is the ability to catch the weak signal everyone else rationalises away and to act while acting is still cheap. As organisations hand routine decisions to AI, this is the judgment that does not automate, and the one leaders need most when the stakes are highest. Hilborn now applies the same read at infrastructure scale. As founder of Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings, she is developing AI data centres powered by renewable energy and governed by community trusts, with a first site under way in Nepal. She continues to lead Compass Rose International, the nonprofit behind the Girls INpowerment Center, which holds the Guidestar Platinum Seal of Transparency. Her flagship keynote, Seeing What Others Miss, turns this into The Architect’s Read: a method for catching a problem at the surface, tracing it to the structure beneath, and acting where it resolves. The credibility behind it is a field record built under real operational stakes. She is a Silver Anthem Award winner recognised in the same cycle as the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall, holds multiple Telly Awards and the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Achievement, and sits on the Forbes Nonprofit Council. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven culture and leadership Heart-centric leadership through change Resilience and decision-making under pressure Social entrepreneurship and impact at scale Intuition and leadership judgment Employee engagement and meaning at work Humanitarian leadership lessons for business Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement after restructure or mission drift CEOs and executive teams setting culture through integration, transformation, or strategic reset Foundations, family offices, and impact investors framing purpose for portfolio leadership teams All-hands and emerging-leader audiences where the brief is conviction and resilience, not content depth on a technical topic Audience outcomes A working definition of purpose that survives contact with budget, headcount, and reorganisation decisions A specific lens, drawn from frontline humanitarian operations, for making heart-led decisions that still hold up to scrutiny Renewed belief among leaders that conviction is a strategic asset, not a soft skill, with examples to back it up A vocabulary for talking about meaning at work that does not collapse into cliche when senior leaders use it Practical takeaways from Compass Rose’s operating record on building and sustaining mission-led teams

Why organisations work with Katja Schipperheijn A named model for leading in the in-between, the period when the old operating logic has broken and the new one has not arrived. Liminal leadership gives executives a way to hold a team together through transition instead of waiting for a certainty that is not coming. The Learning Mindset Amplifier, her own diagnostic, measures how ready a leadership team is to adapt and keep deciding well under AI-driven change. Run it before the keynote and she builds the anonymised results into the session, so the organisation gets a baseline, a talk aimed at its actual position, and a follow-up structure rather than a one-off event. A credible read on agentic AI from the human side: what happens to decision-making and accountability when systems act on their own, and how leaders keep human agency rather than ceding it by default. A definition of leadership as self-leadership, taking the lead in your own learning and development and drawing others in through a shared story rather than a hierarchy of followers, which travels better through repeated change than command does. Two Kogan Page books, Learning Ecosystems and the getAbstract-awarded The Learning Mindset, that put the argument in language a CEO, a board, and a CIO can use in the same room. Through Habit of Improvement and The Learning Mindset Organization, she advises organisations from start-ups to national governments, which keeps each keynote grounded in problems she is actively helping clients solve. Biography highlights Author of The Learning Mindset (Kogan Page, 2024), winner of the getAbstract International Book Award 2025 in the Learning Impact category. Highly commended for Best Thought Leadership Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2025. Author of Learning Ecosystems (Kogan Page), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in the International Book category and published in English, Arabic, Mongolian, and Dutch. A rewritten second edition publishes in November 2026. Originator of liminal leadership, Cognitive Learning Ecosystems, and the Learning Maturity Model for Organizations, and developer of the Learning Mindset Amplifier and the algorithm beneath it. Founder of Habit of Improvement and co-founder of The Learning Mindset Organization, which publishes the Learning Mindset Amplifier. Advises governments, multinationals, and start-ups across Europe, the Gulf, and Asia. Delivered the keynote “A Learning Mindset: Curiosity and Innovation for Tomorrow” at a Majlis Mohamed bin Zayed session in Abu Dhabi, alongside panellists from the Education, Human Development and Community Development Council and Higher Colleges of Technology. MIT Sloan programmes in Algorithmic Business Thinking and Learning Technologies, a BSc in Applied Economics, and an International MBA from Antwerp Management School. Biography The hardest phase of any change is the middle, when the old operating model has stopped working and the next one has not arrived. Katja Schipperheijn calls this the liminal space, and she has built her advisory work around how leaders hold people steady inside it. For Katja, leadership is self-leadership: taking the lead in your own learning and development, and drawing others in through a shared story rather than a hierarchy of followers. Her book The Learning Mindset argues that the competences this demands; curiosity and imagination among them, can be built deliberately rather than left to instinct. Her method for this is phronesis, the practical wisdom that pulls knowledge, experience, values, and imagination into a single judgement when the data runs out. The evidence comes from the work itself, advising clients from start-ups to national governments. Learning Ecosystems drew on companies including Etihad Airways, ING, and FedEx; its second edition, published by Kogan Page in November 2026, adds cognitive learning ecosystems and a chapter on what agentic AI does to how knowledge moves through an organisation. The Learning Mindset Amplifier, her own diagnostic, measures how ready a team is to keep deciding well under pressure, and can run before a session so the content reflects that specific room. Her grounding is more technical than the field norm. Behind the human-centred argument sit MIT Sloan programmes in Algorithmic Business Thinking and Learning Technologies, and a degree in applied economics. That range lets her take a leadership team from how a large language model actually behaves to what it does to their authority. Key speaking topics Liminal leadership Leadership through AI-driven change Human agency and agentic AI Self-leadership in transition The learning mindset as a leadership capability Strategic foresight and future readiness Innovation under uncertainty Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting direction as AI reshapes how decisions get made Boards weighing AI adoption against accountability and human agency Chief transformation, digital, and innovation officers leading teams through prolonged change Audience outcomes A name and a working definition for the phase their organisation is in, and what leading through it takes A clear view of which leadership tasks survive agentic AI and which ones the systems absorb A test for when human judgement should override an automated decision, and how to build that habit into teams Shared language a CEO, a board, and a CIO can use to discuss AI and human agency in one conversation The option to measure their own readiness with the Learning Mindset Amplifier

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