Leadership

Why organisations work with Savvas Trichas A working academic record in the field he speaks on: peer-reviewed publication in The Leadership Quarterly on how facial expression shapes leadership perception, co-authored with Birgit Schyns. Certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), one of a small group qualified to read facial muscle activity to research standard, applied to executive communication. Guest lecturer for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on deception detection, giving leaders a credible voice on lie detection that does not rely on stage tricks. A practitioner’s grasp of negotiation drawn from Harvard and MIT-tradition material, paired with a researcher’s discipline on what the body signals during a deal. Material is built for boards and executive teams that already know what to say and want to know why they are not being heard. Biography highlights PhD in Human Resource Management and Marketing. Co-author, “The face of leadership: perceiving leaders from facial expression,” The Leadership Quarterly, 2012. Three-time TEDx speaker (Las Vegas, Lausanne, Athens). Certified coder, Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Manuscript reviewer, The Leadership Quarterly. Guest lecturer, FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus Police, on management, communication, and deception detection. Biography Most leadership training teaches what to say. Trichas works on the harder question of why audiences accept it. His peer-reviewed research with Birgit Schyns in The Leadership Quarterly examined how a leader’s facial expression shapes followers’ trust and judgements of effectiveness, a finding that sits underneath every senior communication moment, from a board update to a negotiation. That research base separates him from most communication speakers. He is a certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System, the anatomical method developed for the precise analysis of facial muscle movement, and he reviews manuscripts for The Leadership Quarterly. The science is not a credential dropped into a keynote; it is the source of the material. The applied work runs across persuasion, storytelling, negotiation, and deception detection. Trichas lectures for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on communication and deception, and has built a parallel track on negotiation drawn from the Harvard and MIT canon. Three TEDx appearances and a bestseller, “The Power of Communication,” sit alongside corporate work for organisations including PwC, Coca-Cola, and MDRT. The argument he offers a board is unfashionable and useful. Strategy and message are necessary but not sufficient. Whether a leader is trusted, whether a negotiation closes, whether a transformation lands, often turns on signals that operate below the words, and those signals are now well enough understood to teach. Key speaking topics Nonverbal communication and leadership perception Negotiation and persuasion Executive presence and credibility Storytelling for senior leaders Deception detection in business contexts Servant leadership and empathy Public speaking for executives Leading transformation through communication Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for high-stakes external communication: investor updates, M&A, regulatory testimony. CHROs and leadership development heads designing programmes for newly senior leaders on presence and credibility. CCOs, heads of negotiation, and commercial leaders responsible for high-value deals. Sales leadership conferences where persuasion and trust signals carry commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A research-grounded view of how leaders are read, not just heard, in board and town hall settings. Specific cues from the Facial Action Coding System tradition that leaders can use to read counterparts in negotiation and meetings. A working framework for credibility that separates persuasion, narrative, and nonverbal channels rather than collapsing them into “communication skills.” A more disciplined view of deception detection, what the evidence supports and what it does not, useful for interviewing, due diligence, and negotiation. Confidence that the speaker’s claims rest on peer-reviewed research and applied work with law enforcement, not stage technique.

About Lene Gammelgaard Known as ‘the speaker who’s more than just talk’, Lene Gammelgaard climbed her way to fame on Mount Everest, becoming the 35th woman to reach the summit. THE EVEREST WAY Keynotes, presentations,  workshops and webinars – innovate Heart-Core Vision – renewed hope and continuous stamina and resilience – Leadership for radical times. Lene works with a wide range from global organizations to local family owned business. Co-innovating with leaders and individuals, teams and companies – to become self-motivating communities where employees = people thrive and flourish through the commitment that is awakened – by individuals contributing to meaningful visions and products that the world really need. Give people opportunity to unfold their potential – and they engage in your business. THE EVEREST WAY is a mental disciplining transformation method to mobilize a vision, and the GPS waypoints needed to establish momentum, ongoing stamina and progress. First Scandinavian woman to conquer Mount Everest Highly successful motivational speaker. Business strategy innovator& Award Winner. Human entrepreneur. Over 25 years experience as an executive trainer at Fortune 500 companies Author of numerous popular books, including Climbing High: A Woman’s Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (1999) Live-a-board Sailor. Currently living on her Reinke S11-planning to untie the lines and sail for the rest of her life. In 2019 – received the EU Business Award – for scandinavians most innovative sustainable business strategy developments. Lock-down etc. naturally also affected Lene’s business and life. She decided to abandon life on land with Icelandic horses and are now living o her Blue-Ocean-Sailboat with her 3 teenagers. Speaking Style Lene Gammelgaard has fought to achieve her aspirations and are passionate to mobilizeas many people as possible to do the same. Catriona this sentence doesn’t make sense: how can you learn to achieve your aspirations? Lene innovated a self-programming experiment to potentially become able to summit and survive Everest. THE EVEREST WAY is a mental disciplining transformation method to mobilize a vision, and the GPS waypoints needed to establish momentum, ongoing stamina and progress. Focusing on disciplining and strengthening mind-sets and preparing for rough challenges, Lene mobilize others to brace through tough times THE EVEREST WAY. During the past 3 years Lene has tested the mental survival strategy of THE EVEREST WAY.  And her experiences has rekindled her commitment to shar this survival strategy with leaders and organizations. Given the contemporary turbulent circumstances – business leaders and individuals suffer from a tendency to quietly resign to powerlessness and exhaustion. Those seeking to lead effectively during turbulent times can utilize the proactive mental expansion and basic survival skills that are the foundation for THE EVEREST WAY. We have choices. We shape the future – One brain at the time! Navigating the uncertainty of today with DECENCY LEADERSHIP & HUMAN INNOVATION- THE EVEREST WAY. Background/History On the tenth of May 1996, Lene Gammelgaard reached the summit of Everest via the mountains Southeast Ridge. She was a member of the Sagamartha Environmental Expedition led by Scott Fischer, who tragically lost his life on the mountain. These experiences formed the basis for her popular book, Climbing High: A Woman’s Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy, which was published in 1999 and has been translated into thirteen languages. Available on amazon. Gammelgaard founded Lene Gammelgaard – HUMAN INNOVATION in order to innovate leadership skills in individuals and businesses to be co-innovators of a live-worthy tomorrow. DECENCY LEADERSHIP & HUMAN INNOVATION are simple solutions to the complex challenges we are confronted with. With the current global prospects – it is of fundamental importance to innovate leadership – so that companies and organizations become co-creating communities where employees = people thrive and flourish through the commitment that is awakened – by individuals contributing to meaningful visions and products that we – PEOPLE and the world really need. Give people opportunity to unfold their potential – and they engage in your business. In most of the world – poverty is the norm. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the West’s progress will continue, as we had come to take for granted … Geopolitical interests cause existential uncertainty. Regardless of fear of war and personal political attitude – there is a common denominator – we are people and fellow human beings! We have to live as full a life as possible and we need to create business! Just now it seems like a snowball effect has been started, no one knows the exit and the consequences of …. The contemporary upheavals demand well-balanced DECENCY LEADERSHIP. So we run our companies steadily – despite circumstances that are constantly producing new disruptions. When does digitalization enrich human life – and when does digitization lead to dehumanization? We need to maintain proportions when implementing digitization and discipline humaneness as GPS, to secure that the technical innovations and AI are created for humans. We must decide that the inventions are used to create better life for more people. Why else invest in technology? Leaders, managers, employees are confronted with the phenomenon of resignation – Quiet Quitting: Employees who are no longer motivated by the company’s goals and their tasks – deciding to limit their efforts to meet the minimum requirements – only for not losing the job. DECENCY LEADERSHIP & HUMAN INNOVATION is the sustainable path in the 21st century! Lene’s love of adventure did not start with mountaineering after completing her law degree, Lene decided to break from the life that was expected of her by travelling, first to the Caribbean. After working around boats and ships, Gammelgaard decided to pursue a dream, which had once felt impossible along with six others, she crossed the Atlantic. During these times of self-discovery, she also worked with Greenpeace, making a stand for the things in which she believed. In doing so she learned that dreams are not impossible fantasies. They can be realised and can exceed even the greatest expectations. Lene Gammelgaard dedicates her passion to innovate mental methods to develop leadership, that engages co-workers by uncovering a company heart-core vision. And accelerate result achievement THE EVEREST WAY. The loss of her brother when she was in her early twenties and the later loss of her friend Scott Fischer enabled her to see the importance of individuals realizing their potential and not holding back. Life is short and we should make the best of all our opportunities. Bringing such experience based passions to her motivational speaking mobilize the people, who listen to hers speaks. Gammelgaard really does prove inspirational, also mobilizing listeners and the leaders she is in ongoing dialogue with, to transform the foundation of inner resources to support their future success. She seeks to ask people whether they feel as if they have achieved their goals, or are on the path to do so, and if they died within 24 hours, would they be satisfied in their life’s work. These difficult questions need to be faced in order to set about changing lives for the better. As well as running her business, preparing Seawind for longer-distance sailing, Gammelgaard is a firm supporter of the Sherpa Educational Fund in Nepal, which assists the children of deceased Sherpas with the cost of education. And in 2020 she became PEACE AMBASSADOR for UNIVERSAL PEACE FEDERATION.

Why organisations work with Lauren Steadman She has reinvented her elite career twice, from Paralympic swimmer to gold-medal paratriathlete, which gives her a precise vocabulary for what changing disciplines actually costs and what it returns. She speaks with the authority of medals at three consecutive Paralympic Games and competition across five, not a single peak moment, so the resilience argument is built on sustained output across sixteen years. Her Master’s in Business and Management from Portsmouth means she translates training-floor language into the operating language of strategy, KPIs and talent, rather than leaving the audience to do the work. Mainstream broadcast credibility from Strictly Come Dancing and SAS: Who Dares Wins makes her instantly recognisable to a mixed corporate audience without diluting the seriousness of the sporting record. An MBE for services to triathlon and a body of charity work through her wellness brand Sizu give the wellbeing material a real foundation rather than a borrowed one. Biography highlights Five-time Paralympian: Beijing 2008 and London 2012 in swimming; Rio 2016 silver, Tokyo 2020 gold and Paris 2024 bronze in paratriathlon. Three-time World Paratriathlon Champion (Edmonton 2014, Chicago 2015, Gold Coast 2018) and eight-time European Champion. Appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to triathlon. BSc (Hons) Psychology and MSc Business and Management, University of Portsmouth. Strictly Come Dancing 2018 semi-finalist and joint winner of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. Co-founder of Sizu, a wellness apparel brand whose proceeds support mental health and children’s charities. Biography Most elite athletes peak in one sport. Lauren Steadman has done it in two, taking podium finishes as a Paralympic swimmer at Beijing 2008 and London 2012 before switching disciplines and going on to win paratriathlon medals at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. Five Paralympic Games across sixteen years is the rare kind of record that lets a speaker talk about reinvention from the inside. The intellectual frame she brings to that record matters as much as the medals. A first-class psychology degree and an MSc in Business and Management from the University of Portsmouth give her a working language for how organisations actually run. She is not borrowing business metaphors. She is using a vocabulary she has studied and tested. Her TV work, a Strictly Come Dancing semi-final with AJ Pritchard and a joint win on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, has put her in front of audiences far beyond sport. The result is a speaker who is recognisable to a generalist boardroom and credible to a high-performance one. An MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours sits alongside her co-founding of Sizu, a wellness brand that channels proceeds into mental health and children’s charities. The argument for booking her is straightforward. When the question is how a team holds its standards through a change of discipline, three Paralympic cycles of medal-winning evidence is a sharper answer than most. Key speaking topics Performance and reinvention through career change Resilience under sustained pressure Mindset and preparation in elite environments Mental health and athlete wellbeing Goal setting across long horizons Adapting standards when the discipline changes Women in high-performance careers Ideal for Leadership offsites and senior conferences focused on change and reinvention Sales kick-offs and performance events where sustained output is the brief Talent and people functions running wellbeing or resilience programmes Graduate, early-career and women-in-business audiences Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of what resilience looks like across years, not weeks. Specific reference points for how to hold standards through a change of role or discipline. A grounded view on the relationship between mental health and high performance. Confidence that reinvention is a process with named stages, not a personality trait. Language that connects elite preparation to the everyday rhythm of corporate work.

Why organisations work with Kim Campbell She has held the top job. Few speakers can describe cabinet decision-making, defence policy, and the politics of succession from inside the Prime Minister’s office of a G7 country. She was the first woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state, which gives boards a substantive perspective on gender, authority, and security policy that does not collapse into commentary. She built a working leadership institution from scratch: the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, where she served as Founding Principal from 2014 to 2018. She has spent two decades inside the leading global networks for former heads of government and democratic reform, including Club de Madrid, where she was Secretary General, and the World Movement for Democracy, where she chaired the steering committee. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, recognising lifetime contribution rather than a single role. Biography highlights 19th Prime Minister of Canada and the first woman to hold the office. First woman to serve as Defence Minister of any NATO member state. Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; passed reforms to gun control and the law of sexual assault. Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, 1996 to 2000. Taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2001 to 2004. Founding Principal, Peter Lougheed Leadership College, University of Alberta, 2014 to 2018. Secretary General of Club de Madrid, 2004 to 2006; founding member of the organisation. Chair, Council of Women World Leaders, 1999 to 2003. President, International Women’s Forum, 2003 to 2005. Companion of the Order of Canada (2008); Order of British Columbia (2012). Author of Time and Chance: The Political Memoirs of Canada’s First Woman Prime Minister. Biography Most discussions of leadership skip the part that matters most to boards: what happens when authority meets resistance, and the leader is held accountable for the result. Kim Campbell has lived that sequence. She became Canada’s 19th Prime Minister in June 1993, lost the autumn election in one of the heaviest defeats in Canadian political history, and then spent the following three decades doing the harder work of building the institutions that produce the next generation of leaders. Before the premiership she ran two of the most demanding portfolios in any cabinet. As Minister of Justice and Attorney General she carried gun control reform and a substantive overhaul of sexual assault law through Parliament. As Minister of National Defence in 1993 she became the first woman to hold that role in any NATO country, attending the alliance’s defence ministers’ meetings during a period of rapid post-Cold War repositioning. The post-government work is what gives her current perspective its weight. She served as Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles, taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2001 to 2004, and chaired the Council of Women World Leaders. As a founding member and later Secretary General of Club de Madrid, she sits inside the world’s principal network of former heads of government working on democratic reform. She chaired the World Movement for Democracy’s steering committee from 2008 to 2015. Her most concrete recent project is institutional. From 2014 to 2018 she was Founding Principal of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, designing and launching an undergraduate leadership programme intended to compete with the best in the world. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Order of British Columbia. Key speaking topics Political leadership and executive decision-making Democratic institutions and the conditions for legitimacy Gender, authority, and women in political leadership Defence and security policy Climate change as a governance and stability problem Leadership formation and the design of leadership programmes Canadian and international politics Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against political risk Government, civil service, and public sector leadership programmes Audiences building or sponsoring leadership development institutions Conferences on women’s leadership where the brief calls for first-hand executive experience Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how cabinets, central government, and party politics actually decide A substantive view on gender and political authority from the first woman to lead a G7 country A working framework for what makes leadership legitimate when institutions are under strain A grounded read on democratic backsliding from someone who has worked inside the leading reform networks for two decades

Why organisations work with Isabel Behncke Her evidence base is unusually direct. More than 3,000 kilometres tracking wild bonobos in Congo gave her the first comprehensive field study of adult play in our closest living relatives, which anchors every claim she makes about creativity and social bonding in observed behaviour rather than metaphor. She translates evolutionary biology into practical arguments about culture. Her framing of play as a core adult competence, not a perk, gives leaders a defensible language for investing in creativity, psychological safety and informal connection inside performance-driven cultures. She moves between serious scientific and serious commercial settings. TED main stage twice, WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20, which means she is used to calibrating the same argument for scientists, policymakers and executives. She holds institutional credibility across three continents. Oxford DPhil, Gruter Institute fellowship, PERC board seat and a research post at Universidad del Desarrollo’s Social Complexity Research Center, plus advisory work on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She sits outside the behavioural economics cohort. Her discipline is field ethology, which gives her arguments about trust, risk and collaboration a biological depth that lands differently with leaders who have already heard the standard behavioural science keynote. Biography highlights DPhil in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Oxford, with the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos at the Wamba research site in Congo. MPhil in Human Evolution from the University of Cambridge; BSc in Zoology and MSc in Wildlife Conservation from University College London. TED Fellow and TED Resident; two main-stage TED talks including «Evolution’s gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans» and «Does nature have a sense of humor?». Researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center (CICS), Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago; Fellow of the Gruter Institute for research on human behavior and institutions; board member at PERC. Advisory roles in Chile’s long-term strategy for science, technology, innovation and knowledge, with affiliations including the Centro de Estudios Publicos. Platform work includes WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the United Nations General Assembly, the House of Lords and the G20, alongside features in BBC and National Geographic documentaries and The Tim Ferriss Show. Biography Most organisations talk about creativity and collaboration as if they were cultural aspirations. Field ethology treats them as biological functions. Isabel Behncke built her career studying how social mammals, and specifically wild bonobos in the Congo, generate trust, creativity and resilience through play, risk-taking and informal bonding. Her DPhil at Oxford produced the first comprehensive scientific study of adult play behaviour in wild bonobos, based on more than 3,000 kilometres of field observation at the Wamba research site. That field base shapes how she works with organisations. Her argument is that adult play is not a soft concept but an adaptive mechanism that underpins learning, social bonding and innovation in every species that depends on flexible behaviour, humans included. Leaders hear a case for culture that is rooted in evolutionary evidence rather than slogans, delivered by someone who has watched these behaviours in the wild. Her institutional footprint runs across science, policy and public platforms. She is a researcher at the Social Complexity Research Center at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, a Fellow of the Gruter Institute, a board member at PERC and an adviser on Chile’s long-term science and innovation strategy. She is a TED Fellow and TED Resident, has spoken twice from the main TED stage, and has appeared at WIRED, Google Zeitgeist, SXSW, the House of Lords, the United Nations General Assembly and the G20. For senior leaders grappling with how to build adaptive, creative teams under pressure, she offers a rare combination: the rigour of a field scientist, the clarity of a seasoned public communicator, and a set of questions most boards have never asked about why their best work tends to happen in their least controlled rooms. Key speaking topics Play as a driver of adult creativity and adaptation Trust, risk-taking and social bonding inside teams Evolutionary perspectives on organisational culture Human behaviour, complexity and change Creativity and the science of collaboration Rituals and informal structure in working life Ideal for CEOs, Chief People Officers and culture leads rethinking collaboration, creativity or psychological safety Leadership and talent development programmes that want a serious scientific frame rather than another behavioural economics keynote Innovation, R&D and design leaders examining how team environments shape creative output Organisations rebuilding rituals and informal structure after hybrid and remote disruption Audience outcomes A clear evolutionary case for why adult play, humour and informal bonding shape performance, not just morale Language for talking about trust, risk and creativity that rests on observed behaviour in social mammals A sharper read on which cultural habits accelerate adaptation and which quietly suppress it Fresh questions to ask about how teams learn, collaborate and recover under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Dame Katherine Grainger Her perspective on high performance is not borrowed from sport – it is built from two decades of competing at the Olympic level and then eight years as the senior leader responsible for the entire British elite sport system as Chair of UK Sport. The result is a rare, system-level view of what makes performance culture work. She completed a PhD at King’s College London – in law, on whole life sentencing – while training for and winning Olympic gold. That combination is not incidental. It gives her a credible argument about how sustained focus, long-term discipline, and intellectual rigour reinforce rather than compete with each other. Her autobiography Dreams Do Come True is built around the specific psychology of returning to compete after three consecutive near-misses. For any organisation struggling with how to sustain commitment after a setback, or how to build a team that performs when the moment actually comes, this is directly applicable material. As the first female Chair of the British Olympic Association in its 120-year history – and a crossbench Life Peer since 2025 – she carries institutional authority that extends well beyond the speaking circuit. Boards and senior leadership teams treat her not as an external voice but as a peer. She speaks to the leadership question that Olympic sport uniquely tests: how do you create the conditions for someone else to succeed, rather than performing yourself? Her shift from competing to governing elite sport is the lived version of a challenge every senior leader faces. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist (London 2012) and four-time Olympic silver medallist – the only British woman to win medals at five consecutive Olympic Games (2000-2016) Six-time World Champion with eight World Championship medals; voted Britain’s first “Olympians’ Olympian” by fellow Olympians Chair of UK Sport 2017-2025; Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025 – the first female chair in the BOA’s 120-year history DBE 2017 for services to sport and charity; Life Peer (Baroness Grainger, crossbench) from 2025 PhD in law (the sentencing of homicide), King’s College London; Fellow of King’s College London; first female Chancellor of the University of Glasgow (2020-) Author of Dreams Do Come True (2013), self-written autobiography reviewed by the Financial Times and The Observer; BBC broadcaster for Rowing World Cup coverage and the 2014 Commonwealth Games Biography Katherine Grainger won an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 – alongside Anna Watkins, setting an Olympic record in the double sculls – after three consecutive Olympic silvers. She then returned to the water, two years after considering retirement, and won a fourth silver in Rio in 2016. Across those sixteen years, she also completed three law degrees, including a PhD at King’s College London, written during the same period she was training for Olympic gold. That combination is her argument. The discipline required to stay in pursuit of a goal across multiple cycles of failure and recommitment – and to do so while building intellectual capability in parallel – is not an athletic phenomenon. It is a leadership one. Her speaking draws directly on that experience: not as inspiration, but as a practical framework for what organisations actually need to sustain performance at the highest level. Her post-competitive career has given that argument institutional weight. As Chair of UK Sport from 2017 to 2025, she was responsible for the strategy and governance of British elite sport as a whole – funding decisions, performance standards, safeguarding, inclusion. As Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025, the first woman in the role since the BOA’s founding in 1905, she now leads the organisation that governs Team GB’s Olympic programme. She is also Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and, since 2025, a crossbench Life Peer. The result is a speaker who can address boards and senior leadership teams not as a visiting athlete with a story, but as a serious institutional figure with a tested view of what leadership culture requires at the level where it actually matters. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and long-cycle leadership Resilience and recommitment after setback High-performance team culture Leadership in governance and elite institutions The parallel demands of intellectual and physical excellence Women in leadership and sport governance Purpose, values, and legacy in leadership Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with questions of culture, sustained performance, and long-term strategic commitment CHROs and people leaders building high-performance frameworks that endure beyond individual leadership cycles Leadership development programmes for senior executives seeking a model of performance that integrates governance, accountability, and personal resilience Organisations navigating leadership transition, post-merger culture alignment, or the challenge of maintaining standards after a period of peak achievement Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why most performance cultures produce one-off results rather than sustained excellence – and the specific conditions that change that Practical perspective on how to lead a team through extended periods of uncertainty and near-miss, without losing commitment or direction A reframed view of setback as structural to high performance, not a deviation from it – with concrete examples of how elite athletes and institutions manage that cycle Insight into what governance of high-performance systems actually requires, drawn from eight years leading UK Sport Renewed clarity on the relationship between personal discipline, intellectual rigour, and sustained team performance

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.

Meet Josephine Fairley Jo Fairley is a serial entrepreneur, best known for co-creating the Green & Black’s brand in 1991 – the world’s first organic chocolate and the first-ever product to carry the UK Fairtrade Mark. In 2005, Green & Black’s was acquired by Cadbury’s in 2005, becoming a global ethical name; Jo remains a ‘Chocolate Ambassador’ and consultant to the brand. Also a multi-award-winning author & journalist, Jo has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines from The Times to The Mail on Sunday’s YOU Magazine, and as a ‘Wonder Woman’ business guru for Telegraph Woman Online. Jo has also appeared as Lauren Laverne’s guest on ‘Desert Island Discs.’ Jo is in demand as a brand consultant for start-ups and for ethical businesses, alongside her own ventures which have included an organic bakery and natural food store and a nine-room wellbeing centre in her home town of Hastings.

Why organisations work with Jessica Ennis-Hill Her experience of performing as the public face of a home Olympics – carrying national expectation while managing injury recovery and a multi-discipline competition – gives leaders a concrete, pressure-tested model of composure under scrutiny that no training programme replicates. As founder of Jennis, she has applied elite athletic methodology to a commercial problem – closing the gender data gap in sport and exercise science – giving her credibility in conversations about evidence-based decision-making and innovation, not just personal achievement. Her perspective on women’s health and female performance, backed by clinical collaboration with physiologist Dr Emma Ross and a funded femtech business, adds substance to DEI and wellbeing conversations that goes well beyond lived experience. She has maintained a high-profile public platform post-retirement – BBC lead analyst across four Olympic cycles, Times columnist, podcast host – which means audiences arrive with recognition and trust already established. Her career narrative – career-threatening injury before Beijing 2008, gold in London 2012, return from maternity leave to World Championship gold in 2015 – gives her a specific, sequenced story about recovery and reinvention that senior leaders find directly applicable to organisational context. Biography highlights Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, London 2012; silver medallist, Rio 2016; three-time World Heptathlon Champion; European Champion; World Indoor Pentathlon Champion Appointed DBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to athletics BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, 2017 – second woman and first British woman to receive the award Founder of Jennis, a femtech platform using CycleMapping technology developed with women’s health physiologist Dr Emma Ross; raised £1M in pre-seed funding, 2021 Regular BBC athletics analyst: Olympic Games 2020 and 2024, World Athletics Championships 2019, 2022 and 2023, Commonwealth Games 2018 and 2022 Columnist for The Times; host of Gold Minds podcast (High Performance network); author of autobiography Unbelievable Psychology graduate, University of Sheffield Named in Forbes 30 Most Influential Under 30s in Europe, 2016 Biography Jessica Ennis-Hill won Olympic heptathlon gold at London 2012 as the publicly designated face of the Games – carrying a level of expectation that few athletes at any level have been asked to manage. That she delivered one of the most complete performances in the event’s history, having missed the Beijing Games entirely through injury four years earlier, is the foundation of everything she brings to a business audience. The comeback from a career-threatening stress fracture, the return from maternity leave to win the World Championship in Beijing in 2015, and the silver medal in Rio in 2016 give her career a specific structure – repeated reinvention under constraint – that organisations find more useful than a single triumph. The discipline behind those performances: meticulous preparation, managing uncertainty, performing at the moment that matters, is the substance of her speaking work. Post-retirement, she has built a second career with genuine intellectual weight. As founder of Jennis, she identified a specific commercial and scientific gap – most sport and exercise research is conducted on male subjects, leaving women without evidence-based training guidance – and built a femtech business to address it, in clinical partnership with physiologist Dr Emma Ross and backed by institutional investment. That work sits inside a broader argument about female performance and health that she has developed as a BBC analyst, Times columnist, and podcast host. For organisations, she represents something specific: a high-performer who has tested the connection between preparation, recovery, and execution across multiple high-stakes moments, and who has since applied that understanding to build a credible entrepreneurial venture. That combination – elite athletic credential plus founder experience plus sustained media presence – is what separates her from the broader field of sports motivational speakers. Key speaking topics Peak performance under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Leading through reinvention and uncertainty Women’s health and the gender data gap in performance science Preparation, process, and high-stakes execution Entrepreneurship and building from elite expertise Mindset and mental performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive conferences seeking a performance mindset frame grounded in real-world pressure CHROs and people leadership forums addressing female talent, wellbeing, and the conditions that enable sustained high performance Organisations navigating periods of change or recovery who need a credible, non-generic narrative around reinvention Boards and C-suite audiences where public recognition and media credibility matter alongside substantive content Audience outcomes A concrete, sequenced model of how elite performers build resilience – not as a trait but as a practiced discipline – that teams can apply to their own context Greater clarity on the specific role preparation and process play in sustaining performance under public scrutiny, with direct organisational parallels An evidence-based perspective on women’s health and performance science that gives HR and people leaders new language and framing for wellbeing conversations Sharper thinking on what recovery from setback actually requires, drawn from a career defined by structured comebacks rather than uninterrupted success A founder’s account of translating elite expertise into commercial impact – relevant to innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth conversations

Why organisations work with Isabel Aguilera Navarro She has run the Iberian or Southern European business of three of the most scrutinised multinationals in the world (Dell, Google, GE) and can speak from the CEO chair, not the consultant’s deck. She sits on the boards of five listed and regulated companies spanning cement, real estate, biotech, digital advertising and water, giving her a cross-sector read on how governance and transformation actually play out at board level. She chairs the Audit and Control Committee of Lar Espana, a role that forces her to translate strategic ambition into numbers, risk and control, which is exactly the language CFOs and chairs want to hear from a speaker. She has held an Executive in Residence position at Esade Business School in Strategy and General Management for over two decades, so the frameworks she uses are taught as well as lived. She wrote a full book on intelligent digital transformation, Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui, giving audiences a defined thesis rather than a collection of anecdotes. Biography highlights President, General Electric Spain and Portugal (2008 to 2009). General Manager, Google Spain and Portugal (2006 to 2008), leading the set-up of Google Iberia. CEO, Dell Computer for Spain, Italy and Portugal (1997 to 2002). Operations Director, NH Hotel Group (2002 to 2005). Independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science; chair of the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. Executive in Residence, Department of Strategy and General Management, Esade Business School; former President of the Social Council of the University of Seville. Author of Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui: Secretos de la transformacion digital inteligente (LID Editorial, 2016). Biography Most transformation programmes fail in the gap between the boardroom and the country P&L. Isabel Aguilera Navarro has spent her career working in that gap. She stood up Google’s operation in Spain and Portugal, then moved across to run General Electric in the same region, having earlier led Dell’s Iberian and Italian business through the years in which Dell took the top of the PC market in Europe. That sequence, Dell then NH Hoteles then Google then GE, is unusual. It put her inside a Silicon Valley growth company, a Spanish hospitality group, a consumer technology brand at its commercial peak and an American industrial conglomerate, each at the moment the business model was being rewritten. The operating lessons translate directly into how she now advises boards. Today she sits as an independent director of Cemex, Lar Espana, Oryzon Genomics, Canal de Isabel II and Making Science, chairing the Audit and Control Committee at Lar Espana. The mix is deliberate: heavy industry, commercial real estate, biotech, a regulated water utility and a digital advertising firm. Few speakers can move between those governance contexts with credibility, and fewer still have done so while also holding an Executive in Residence role at Esade Business School. Her book Lo que estaba por llegar ya esta aqui argues that the digital transformation leaders were preparing for has already arrived, and the remaining work is organisational rather than technological. Financial Times and Fortune have both included her in their European and global rankings of senior women in business, and the Wall Street Journal named her among the 30 Most Influential Business Women in Europe in 2001 for her work at Dell. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board strategy Digital transformation in established businesses Leadership across industries and operating models Strategy and competitive positioning Innovation inside large organisations Technology company operating culture Ideal for Boards and nominating committees preparing for a strategy refresh or a digital transformation programme. CEOs and executive committees of large, multi-country businesses navigating technology and operating-model change. Audit and risk committees looking to translate strategic ambition into governance, numbers and control. Leadership programmes for senior women in business and cross-sector executive development audiences. Audience outcomes A board-level view of where digital transformation programmes tend to break inside real P&Ls, drawn from three country-CEO seats. A clearer sense of how governance structures can either accelerate or stall strategic change, from someone who chairs an audit and control committee. Specific contrasts between how Silicon Valley, American industrials and European operators approach the same strategic problem. Frameworks from Esade’s Strategy and General Management faculty, tested against sitting boards in cement, real estate, biotech and water. Reference points from her book on intelligent digital transformation that audiences can take back into their own planning cycles.

Why organisations work with Ingrid Betancourt Lived authority on operating under conditions no executive training can simulate: six and a half years in captivity, then a return to public life, politics, and scholarship. A first-hand account of how identity, values, and decision-making hold up when external structure is stripped away, told without sentimentality. Credibility across two worlds senior audiences rarely hear combined: frontline political leadership in a fragile democracy and sustained reflection on human dignity from inside a research fellowship at Oxford. The Prince of Asturias Award for Concord and the French Legion of Honour signal an argument about freedom and human rights that serious international audiences already recognise. A voice on resilience that does not traffic in motivational language: the material is concrete, specific, and consequential. Biography highlights Former Colombian senator (1998-2002) and two-time presidential candidate, first in 2002 and again in 2022. Held hostage by FARC for more than six years after her abduction on 23 February 2002; released on 2 July 2008 in Operation Jaque. Laureate of the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, awarded by the Princess of Asturias Foundation. Appointed to the French Legion of Honour following her release. Author of Even Silence Has an End (2010), a New York Times bestselling memoir, and The Blue Line (Penguin Press, 2016), a novel set during Argentina’s Dirty War. Research Fellow in Theology at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; DPhil in Theology awarded by the University of Oxford in 2023. Biography On 23 February 2002, a presidential candidate walked into FARC-controlled territory in southern Colombia and did not come out for six and a half years. That candidate was Ingrid Betancourt, then a sitting Colombian senator who had built her political career on a direct challenge to institutional corruption. Her release in July 2008, through the Colombian military intelligence operation known as Operation Jaque, returned her to a public life she had to rebuild in full view of an international audience. The 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord and her appointment to the French Legion of Honour recognised not the ordeal, but the argument she had begun to make about democracy, dignity, and the conditions under which human freedom survives. What she has produced since is a body of work that takes that argument seriously. Her memoir Even Silence Has an End became a New York Times bestseller. Her novel The Blue Line, published by Penguin Press, examined political violence in Argentina. In 2023 the University of Oxford awarded her a DPhil in Theology for a thesis on the concept of the non-person in the writings of the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, and she now holds a research fellowship at Harris Manchester College. For senior audiences, the relevance is practical. Leadership in normal conditions rewards competence and pattern recognition. Leadership when the structure breaks, when the information is hostile, when the horizon is no longer yours to set, rewards something else: a clear sense of what will not be traded, and the discipline to hold it. That is the ground Betancourt speaks from, and very few working speakers can speak from it with her authority. Key speaking topics Resilience and decision-making under extreme pressure Leadership when institutions and information fail Human dignity and democratic values Ethical conduct in high-stakes environments Freedom, captivity, and the inner life of leaders Political courage and anti-corruption Reconciliation after violent conflict Ideal for Board, CEO, and executive committee offsites focused on resilience and crisis leadership Leadership development programmes addressing judgement under sustained pressure International affairs, human rights, and public policy forums Values-led leadership summits at universities and foundations Audience outcomes A sharper sense of which commitments a leader needs to name before a crisis, not during one A concrete account of what resilience looks like when it is not a slogan A more honest reading of how authority, dignity, and ethical conduct interact when external structure disappears A frame for thinking about freedom and human rights that senior audiences can take into policy and strategy conversations Material for their own reflection on leadership character that does not rely on motivational abstraction

Why organisations work with Herminia Ibarra She supplies the missing operating manual for executive transitions. Her research names the specific trap, clinging to a proven identity, that causes capable leaders to stall in bigger roles. She owns a published, citable framework. “Outsight”, the principle that leaders think their way into new behaviours by acting first, gives a leadership team a shared vocabulary it can actually use on a Monday morning. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” reframed a live boardroom debate. It is one of the few pieces of leadership writing that gives senior teams permission to experiment with styles that do not yet feel like “them”. She sits at the top of the field by external measure, not self-description. Fellow of the British Academy, multi-cycle Thinkers50 listee, 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, Charles Handy Chair at LBS. She speaks to succession, sponsorship, and women’s advancement with the same empirical grounding, which matters for organisations running serious talent and inclusion agendas rather than performative ones. Biography highlights Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School; prior faculty posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2019). Multi-cycle Thinkers50 ranked thinker; winner of the Thinkers50 Leadership Award, 2013. Author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press) and Working Identity (Harvard Business Press), translated into 16 languages. Judge, Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award; member, World Economic Forum Expert Network; Governor of London Business School. Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour, Yale University (National Science Fellow). Biography Capable executives often stall in their first genuinely senior role. The research by Herminia Ibarra explains why: they try to think their way into the new job from the inside, when the only reliable route is the opposite. Act first, reflect later, and let the new behaviours gradually reshape how you see yourself. That argument, captured in her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in the “outsight” principle, is what most distinguishes her work. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” extended the case into one of the thorniest topics in executive development, how leaders can experiment with unfamiliar styles without feeling like frauds. Working Identity, her earlier book, has been translated into 16 languages and sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics list. Ibarra holds the Charles Handy Chair at London Business School, with prior tenured posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a multi-cycle Thinkers50 honoree, winner of the 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, and a Governor of LBS. She also judges the Financial Times Business Book of the Year and sits in the World Economic Forum Expert Network. For a leadership team wrestling with succession, executive transitions, or the gap between the leader a company has and the leader it now needs, few academics anywhere offer a more precise diagnosis or a more usable set of moves. Key speaking topics Executive transitions and stepping up to bigger roles Leadership identity and the authenticity paradox Career reinvention and the “outsight” principle Leadership in the age of AI Sponsorship, succession, and women’s advancement Authentic leadership development Organisational reinvention under change Ideal for CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning executive development and succession pipelines CEOs and boards planning leadership transitions at the top team Senior leaders stepping into enterprise-wide or first-time general management roles Inclusion, sponsorship, and high-potential programmes for underrepresented senior talent Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of why smart executives stall in bigger roles and what to do about it Language and examples for leading through a change in identity, not just a change in strategy A usable principle, “outsight”, that senior leaders can apply to their own weekly calendar A sharper view of authenticity that replaces “be yourself” with a more workable standard for growth Practical cues for building sponsorship and succession conversations that actually move careers