Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Andy Lopata He reframes networking as a leadership discipline. The argument lands with executives who have dismissed the topic as junior or transactional, and gives them a structured way to think about who supports them, how, and why. The Relationship Matrix gives leaders a tangible way to audit their professional support system, identify where it is thin, and decide where to invest. Few speakers in this space work at that level of operational specificity. His mentoring work, anchored in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell, gives organisations a serious reference point for designing mentoring programmes that retain senior talent. Twenty-five years inside the topic, recognition from the Financial Times and Forbes, and a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist place him in a small group of speakers who have built genuine institutional credibility on professional relationships. He works with the cultural problem behind the leadership one: why senior people will not ask for help, and what it costs the organisation when they do not. Biography highlights Author of six books, including Connected Leadership (2020) and The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring (Pearson, 2024, with Dr Ruth Gotian). Shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award. Two-time board member and former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland; holder of the PSAE, the PSA’s Hall of Fame distinction. Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute; member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Meetings Industry Association. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today; host of The Connected Leadership Podcast. Clients include PayPal, Google, Harrods, BBC, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Allen and Overy, Saïd Business School and Brother International Europe. Biography Most senior leaders rise on technical and commercial credibility, then hit a level where the job is mostly relational. They under-invest in mentors, hesitate to ask for help, and end up isolated at exactly the point where their decisions carry the most weight. That gap is what Lopata’s work addresses. For more than twenty-five years he has worked on professional relationships as an executive capability rather than a soft skill. The Financial Times has called him one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists; Forbes has described him as a true master of networking. The label undersells the work. His Relationship Matrix gives leaders a structured way to audit who supports them, where the gaps are, and where to invest. Frameworks like the Seven Stages of Professional Relationships and The Influence Wheel extend that work into stakeholder mapping, influence and senior mentoring practice. His books map the territory in detail. Connected Leadership argues that executive success is built on a deliberate web of relationships, and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2021. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell Medicine in 2024, gives organisations a reference text for treating mentoring as a strategic retention and development tool. The book was a runner-up for Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Leadership Awards. The institutional weight follows the work. He is a former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland and holds its PSAE Hall of Fame distinction. He was shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award, contributes to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and has worked with PayPal, Google, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, the BBC and Saïd Business School on the same underlying problem: how senior people stop performing in isolation and start leading through the relationships around them. Key speaking topics Professional relationships as a leadership capability Mentoring strategy and programme design Asking for help and the cost of not asking Vulnerable leadership Referral and influence networks Connected leadership and executive support systems Psychological safety and speaking up at senior level Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and partners moving into senior leadership roles where the work becomes relational CHROs and learning leaders designing mentoring, succession and retention programmes Professional services and partner-track populations where business development depends on relationship quality Sales leaders rebuilding referral networks and account relationships Audience outcomes A clear framework, the Relationship Matrix, for auditing the professional support system around a senior role A different language for mentoring as a strategic asset rather than a benefit programme Specific shifts in how leaders approach asking for help, and why most do not A more honest read on where executive isolation is costing the organisation in retention, succession and decision quality Practical adjustments to how teams use referrals, networks and senior relationships in commercial contexts

Why organisations work with Andy Storch He has facilitated talent and leadership programmes for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co., which means he has tested his career-ownership material against the most demanding corporate L&D functions in the market. He runs the room where his buyers meet each other. The Talent Development Think Tank conference, community, and podcast give him a working view of what CHROs and L&D leaders are actually trying to fix, before they brief a speaker. His thesis is concrete and actionable: career ownership is a learnable practice, not a slogan. Own Your Career Own Your Life breaks it into specific steps employees and managers can apply on Monday. His 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, gives organisations a practical handle on personal brand as a retention and internal mobility lever, not a LinkedIn exercise. He works equally credibly as a keynote, workshop facilitator, and community host. For talent functions running multi-day events, that flexibility is rare. Biography highlights Author of Own Your Career Own Your Life (2020) and co-author with Mike Kim of Own Your Brand, Own Your Career (2025). Founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, conference, and community, sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Has consulted, taught, or facilitated for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, State Farm, Red Bull, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, HP, Sony, Cisco, and Tiffany & Co. MBA, USC Marshall School of Business (President of the MBA programme); BS, University of Florida. Host of three podcasts: The Talent Development Hot Seat, Own Your Career, and My NFT Journey. Workshop facilitator for global enterprises since 2011. Biography Career development inside large organisations has become a quiet contract failure. Employees assume their employer will plot the path; employers assume employees will take initiative; the middle is where engagement and retention disappear. Storch built a practice around closing that gap from both sides. His book Own Your Career Own Your Life sets out a step-by-step approach to career ownership for individual contributors and managers. The 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, extends the argument into personal brand as an internal-mobility and retention lever rather than an external marketing exercise. Both books are direct and operational, not motivational. The proof point most relevant to corporate buyers is who he works with. Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co. have used him to facilitate leadership and talent programmes. He has been running these workshops since 2011, which is what allows the keynote material to land in language a senior L&D function recognises. The Talent Development Think Tank, his podcast, conference, and community, gives him an unusual position in the market. He is not commenting on the talent development field from outside it; he is the convener inside it. For a CHRO or head of L&D, that means the speaker on stage has heard, in private, the same problems they are trying to solve. Key speaking topics Career ownership and employee development Talent development strategy Personal brand and internal mobility Leadership for managers of professionals Employee engagement and retention Future of work and talent trends Ideal for CHROs, heads of L&D, and talent development leaders running enterprise development programmes Annual talent and leadership offsites for managers of professionals Employee resource groups and internal high-potential cohorts Sales and account leadership conferences focused on retention and growth of top performers Audience outcomes A working definition of career ownership that managers and employees can apply to weekly conversations Specific tools to make personal brand work as an internal mobility and retention asset A clearer line between what the employer owes the employee and what the employee owes their own career Language to frame development conversations that does not collapse into performance review template A view of where talent development practice is heading, drawn from a sitting community of CHROs and L&D leaders

Why organisations work with Angela Oguntala Her Futurecasting process is a replicable leadership methodology for distinguishing structural change from cyclical noise, giving strategy teams something to use after the keynote, not just a perspective to carry home. She brings a practitioner’s decade-long track record: foresight and innovation work with Google, IKEA, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Microsoft, and Deloitte, across sectors from healthcare to luxury to financial services. Her background spans foresight research and business strategy, which lets her connect technology shifts and the changing nature of work in a single frame that sector specialists rarely produce. She was named a Future Innovator by the United Nations, a designation that extends her credibility beyond the speaking circuit into formal expert recognition. Her central argument, that the future is not predictable but can be actively shaped, moves executive audiences from defensive risk-management to purposeful strategic action. Biography highlights Spent a decade as founding partner of Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy Named a Future Innovator by the United Nations Salzburg Global Fellow for leaders challenged to shape a better world Advisory and keynote engagements with Google, IKEA, Microsoft, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, and Deloitte, across healthcare, technology, luxury, and financial services TED talk, Re-imagine the future, on how the assumptions we hold about what is possible either constrain or expand the strategies we are willing to pursue Featured as a strategic foresight expert on outlets including NPR and Sky Biography The hardest thing about strategy is not analysing the present. It is imagining a future that does not yet exist, and committing resources to it before certainty arrives. Angela Oguntala built her career around exactly this problem. She spent a decade as a founding partner of Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy, working across industries from healthcare and financial services to luxury and technology. The work was consistent: helping leadership teams read structural change and identify where to innovate. She now advises companies, governments, and senior leaders worldwide on strategic foresight and innovation. Her clients include Google, IKEA, Microsoft, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, and Deloitte. Her named methodology, Futurecasting, is a structured process for mapping the forces reshaping an organisation’s context, surfacing risks and opportunities across a range of possible outcomes, and building strategy around where and how to act, giving leadership teams the capacity to navigate complexity and innovate, not just respond. Named a Future Innovator by the United Nations, and a Salzburg Global Fellow, Oguntala speaks on the TED platform and has been featured as a strategic foresight expert on outlets including NPR and Sky. Her TED talk, Re-imagine the future, addresses the blindspots that prevent organisations and individuals from seeing the full range of what is genuinely possible, and acting on it. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and Futurecasting Innovation under uncertainty Emerging technology impacts Leadership and organisational foresight Sustainability and resilience Future of work Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams whose planning models cannot keep pace with compounding change CEOs and executive boards making high-stakes bets as technology, consumer behaviour, and market structure shift simultaneously Chief Innovation Officers and heads of transformation identifying where real innovation opportunity lies amid constant noise Government and institutional leaders working on long-horizon policy and societal change Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between structural change and cyclical noise, and an understanding of how to act on that distinction at leadership level Practical familiarity with the Futurecasting methodology as a replicable process for strategic decision-making under uncertainty A more integrated view of how emerging technologies, global uncertainty, and shifting social expectations interact, rather than treating each as a separate workstream A reframed relationship with uncertainty: from something to manage defensively to something that can be met with intention Approaches to building organisations that can generate and act on genuinely new ideas rather than optimise existing ones

Why organisations work with Angie McQuillin Gives technically strong managers the specific behavioural tools to hold difficult conversations they currently avoid, not a theory of why those conversations matter. Works the seam between imposter syndrome and assertiveness where most confidence training stops short: what to say, how to say it, and how to hold the line when pushed back on. Psychology degree and MBTI-certified, with 15+ years inside corporate HR at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot, so the behavioural science lands in language an operating leader recognises. Track record as a keynote for mixed senior and emerging-leader audiences, including the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference and in-house programmes at Disney, EasyJet, Amazon, Barclays and KPMG. Sessions are designed as interactive workshops, not lectures, so participants leave with scripts and techniques they can test the next working day. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) in Psychology and certified MBTI Practitioner. 15+ years in corporate HR and international staffing, including roles across Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot. Keynote speaker and workshop lead for Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and Norcan Petroleum. Announced keynote speaker at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference, Birmingham. Coaching practice focused on confidence, assertiveness, imposter syndrome, conflict resolution and leadership communication. Biography Most confidence programmes stop at the mindset. They tell people to back themselves and leave them there. The harder problem, what to actually say in the moment a senior colleague pushes back, a peer oversteps, or a direct report underperforms, is where careers get made or quietly stall. Angie McQuillin builds her work at exactly that point. Trained in psychology with a BSc (Hons) and certified as an MBTI Practitioner, she spent 15 years inside corporate HR and international staffing at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot before moving full time into coaching and speaking. That HR background matters. She has sat in the rooms where promotion decisions get made and watched capable people lose ground because they could not have one specific conversation. Her sessions translate that pattern into behaviour. Managers and emerging leaders learn how to raise a concern without apologising for it, handle pushback without escalating, and hold a position under pressure. Imposter syndrome, assertiveness and conflict are treated as linked problems rather than separate workshops. Client rosters reflect the range: Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and the keynote slot at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference in Birmingham. The register is interactive rather than inspirational. Audiences leave with scripts and techniques they can test in their next meeting, which is the test that matters to the HR directors and L&D leads who hire her. Key speaking topics Self-confidence and imposter syndrome Assertive communication Leadership communication Conflict resolution and difficult conversations Growth mindset Resilience under pressure Personal impact and influence Ideal for CHROs, L&D directors and talent leads building emerging-leader and first-time manager programmes. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs addressing confidence, voice and visibility. Technical and functional leadership populations where communication is the bottleneck to promotion. Organisations running culture work on feedback, psychological safety and conflict norms. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the conversations they currently avoid, including pushback, performance and boundary-setting. Specific techniques for handling imposter syndrome as it arrives, not as an abstract concept. A clearer read of their own communication defaults under stress and what to adjust first. Confidence grounded in behaviour they can repeat, not a temporary lift from the room.

Why organisations work with Ann Daniels She holds a Guinness World Record that has not been repeated: first women’s team, with Caroline Hamilton, to ski to both the North and South Poles, a credential that sits behind every claim she makes about decision-making under pressure. She led ice operations for all three Catlin Arctic Survey expeditions with Pen Hadow, a rare example of an explorer whose field leadership has been trusted by peer-reviewed science programmes working with NASA and the European Space Agency. Her career arc, from NatWest assistant bank manager and mother of triplets to polar team leader, gives her credibility with audiences who are sceptical of exploration narratives delivered by lifelong adventurers. She speaks with operational specificity: route-finding on moving ice, calling a team member off the ice with frostbite, swimming open leads in survival suits. Senior audiences recognise these as decisions, not anecdotes. She is listed by The Daily Telegraph among the Top 20 Great British Adventurers of all time, which shortens the credibility conversation with boards and external audiences. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder: first women’s team, with Caroline Hamilton, to ski to both the North and South Poles (1 June 2002). Head of ice operations and navigator for all three Catlin Arctic Survey expeditions (2009, 2010, 2011), led by Pen Hadow. Arctic scientific collaborations with NASA, the European Space Agency, NOAA and the University of Washington. Honorary DUniv, Staffordshire University (2007). Castaway on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs (January 2007). Named in The Daily Telegraph’s Top 20 Great British Adventurers of all time. Biography Route-finding on the Arctic Ocean is decision-making in its purest form. The ice moves under you, the weather closes without warning, and the team’s survival depends on whether the person in front is reading the ground correctly. Ann Daniels has done that job for more than two decades, including three consecutive Catlin Arctic Survey expeditions with Pen Hadow, where she was head of ice operations for scientists working with NASA and the European Space Agency. She came to it from an unlikely starting point. Daniels was an assistant bank manager at NatWest and a mother of triplets when she was selected, from more than two hundred applicants, for the 1997 McVities Penguin Polar Relay. She had no prior outdoor experience. Five years later, on 1 June 2002, she and Caroline Hamilton became the first women to reach both the North and South Poles as part of all-women teams, a Guinness record that has not been repeated. The Catlin work reframed her practice. Between 2009 and 2011 she led teams of scientists across hundreds of miles of drifting sea ice to manually measure its thickness, feeding data into the climate record. Later expeditions extended that into collaborations with the European Space Agency, NOAA and the University of Washington. She is the rare field leader whose decisions have been trusted inside a peer-reviewed research programme. What she offers senior audiences is the texture of that work. She can describe calling a team-mate off the ice with frostbite, swimming an open lead in a survival suit, and choosing a route across fracturing ice when the satellite image is already twelve hours old. The Daily Telegraph has named her among the Top 20 Great British Adventurers of all time; Staffordshire University awarded her an honorary DUniv in 2007. Key speaking topics Decision-making under uncertainty Team leadership in extreme environments Resilience and recovery after setback Women in leadership and exploration Climate change and the Arctic Career reinvention Ideal for Executive teams running strategic change programmes where the plan will keep adjusting Operational and transformation leaders responsible for decisions on partial information Leadership development cohorts and senior high-potential groups Conferences focused on resilience, climate, or women in leadership Audience outcomes A clearer language for making decisions when the data is incomplete and the cost of waiting is rising Specific, transferable lessons on holding a team together when conditions deteriorate A harder test for what resilience actually looks like in practice, drawn from named events on the ice Renewed confidence that significant career reinvention is possible without a conventional starting point

Why organisations work with Annemarie Steen A working method for adaptability rather than a talk about it. Her keynotes ask the room to practise the behaviours she names, so leadership teams leave with something they have already tried, not only heard Faculty credibility on two sides of the discipline: senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam and award-winning MBA visiting lecturer at Estonian Business School on Creative and Playful Leadership A clear thesis on why composure and openness matter to commercial decisions, not as soft skills but as the conditions under which good judgement actually happens One of the few European speakers who can hold a serious leadership audience while running an interactive room, useful when a client wants a keynote that does not flatten into a lecture Biography highlights Owner of SteenTrain since 2009, a leadership development practice built around playful, applied-improvisation methods Founder of Play-Break, a concept for short recovery and creativity practices used inside teams and at events Senior facilitator at THNK School of Creative Leadership, Amsterdam Partner at The Core Story, a strategic narrative and storytelling consultancy Visiting lecturer in Creative and Playful Leadership at Estonian Business School for around nine years, awarded Best Visiting Lecturer for the MBA course TEDx speaker (Tallaght, Dublin, 2014, “What happens when you press PLAY”); client work has included the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys Biography Most leadership teams know the language of agility and innovation. Far fewer have a working method for the behaviours those words refer to. Steen’s practice fills that gap. She treats playfulness as a discipline, not a mood, and trains senior groups in how to read a room, hold uncertainty without seizing up, and make a decision that is open to revision. The foundation is applied improvisation, taken seriously. At THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam, where she is a senior facilitator, the methods are used to develop founders and senior leaders running ventures in complex markets. At Estonian Business School, her course on Creative and Playful Leadership has run for around nine years on the MBA, and was awarded Best Visiting Lecturer. The work travels because it is built around behaviours that hold up under business pressure, not just classroom exercises. Her client list reflects that reach. The Netherlands Ministry of Defence, KPMG Estonia, the Estonian Employers Confederation, Vlerick Business School and Fontys have all used her with senior groups. A 2014 TEDx talk in Tallaght, “What happens when you press PLAY”, sets out the underlying argument: that organisations lose access to their own intelligence when they over-perform seriousness, and that recovering creative range is a leadership decision, not a perk. What clients tend to book her for is the combination of a keynote and a room that actually does something. Steen runs the talk as an interactive frame, so a leadership audience leaves having rehearsed presence, listening and response under mild pressure, rather than having taken notes about them. Key speaking topics Playful leadership and leading under uncertainty Applied improvisation for senior teams Creativity, innovation and design thinking in practice Storytelling for business and executive communication Presence, listening and connection at senior level Recovery, attention and team energy at work Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to shift behaviour, not deliver information HR, learning and OD leads commissioning executive development on adaptability and creative range Conference organisers looking for an interactive keynote or moderator who can hold a serious leadership room Audience outcomes A direct experience of the behaviours that make a leadership team adaptable, not only a description of them Specific practices for presence, listening and response that can be used inside their own meetings A practical argument for why creative range is a commercial capability, not an HR theme Renewed attention to recovery and energy as inputs to senior decision-making

Why organisations work with Annie Lush She has led from inside the crew on the Volvo Ocean Race and The Ocean Race Europe, where a wrong call at 3am in the Southern Ocean is not a case study, it is a survival event. Leaders hear an operator, not a commentator. She was part of Team SCA in 2015, the first all-female crew to win a leg of the Volvo Ocean Race in 25 years. The lessons on what the crew built internally to close that gap translate directly to leadership teams rebuilding performance from behind. She has raced with Offshore Team Germany in mixed international IMOCA crews, giving her concrete material on how diverse, multilingual teams actually resolve disagreement at speed, rather than in the abstract. She is a match racing world champion and a 2012 Olympian, so the content on head-to-head tactical decision-making is first-hand, not borrowed. She speaks in English and Spanish and works in European, UK and international programmes without an interpreter layer. Biography highlights London 2012 Olympian, Women’s Elliott 6m match racing (7th, with Lucy and Kate MacGregor). ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Champion, Newport 2010, with further world-champion titles earlier in her match racing career. Member of Team SCA in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race; crew of the first all-female Leg 8 win (Lisbon to Lorient) in a quarter century. Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 with Team Brunel; The Ocean Race Europe 2021 and 2025 with Offshore Team Germany aboard the IMOCA “Einstein”. Cambridge Blue in rowing, sailing and rugby; member of the Cambridge crew that won the 2001 Women’s Boat Race by the narrowest margin in the race’s history. Works in English and Spanish. Biography A Volvo Ocean Race crew is four or five sailors living inside a 65-foot boat for weeks at a time, making dozens of consequential decisions a day on half-sleep. When Team SCA crossed the line at Lorient in June 2015, it was the first leg win by an all-female crew in 25 years of the race. Annie Lush was on board. That context matters for a boardroom because the sailing is the secondary story. The primary story is how a small, mixed, multilingual crew decides together when the weather model is wrong, the rival boat has picked the other side of a front, and the person on watch has been awake for 20 hours. Lush has been inside that decision loop across four offshore campaigns, including two Volvo Ocean Races and The Ocean Race Europe in 2021 and 2025 with Offshore Team Germany. Her match racing record sharpens the tactical side. She is a world champion in the Women’s Match Racing class and a London 2012 Olympian in the Elliott 6m, a boat-on-boat discipline where the reading of the opposing skipper is as important as the boat speed. Before any of that, she was a Cambridge Blue in three sports and part of the crew that won the 2001 Women’s Boat Race by the smallest margin in its history. What leaders take from her is not a metaphor about sailing. It is a working account of how trust inside a small team is built before the pressure arrives, how followership is a skill in its own right, and how a crew handles the gap between the plan on the chart table and what the sea actually does. Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork under sustained pressure Decision-making with incomplete information Leadership and followership in small mixed teams Resilience and mental endurance in extreme environments Building trust inside a crew before it is tested Performance culture and learning from losing legs Women in elite mixed-gender professional environments Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams heading into a period of sustained operational pressure Transformation leads and programme directors running long-duration, multi-country teams Sales and commercial leadership offsites where decision quality under load is the theme CHROs and culture leads working on trust, followership and mixed-team performance Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how an elite offshore crew rebuilds trust after a bad leg, transferable to a team after a missed quarter Language for the difference between leadership and followership, and why strong teams need both inside the same person A usable test for when to change plan at sea, and how that maps to changing plan mid-quarter in business A more honest view of diversity in high-pressure teams, drawn from mixed international IMOCA crews rather than policy decks Specific examples of decisions made with thin data and short sleep that senior leaders recognise from their own weeks

Why organisations work with Sir AP McCoy Twenty consecutive Champion Jockey titles give him a specific, unmatched claim on the question every leadership team asks: how do you avoid complacency when you are already winning. He speaks from a sport where the downside is injury, not a missed quarter, which makes his account of risk, recovery and getting back on the horse substantive rather than rhetorical. The 2010 Grand National win on Don’t Push It, at his fifteenth attempt, is a concrete case study in long-horizon goal discipline that audiences remember and cite. His current work as ITV Racing pundit, Times columnist and President of the Injured Jockeys Fund means he is a current public figure, not a retired athlete telling old stories. Biography highlights 4,358 career winners, a record for a National Hunt jockey. Champion Jockey in the United Kingdom twenty seasons in a row, from 1995/96 to 2014/15. 2010 BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the first jockey to win the award. OBE in 2010, Knighthood in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to horse racing. Winner of the Grand National, Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase and King George VI Chase. President of the Injured Jockeys Fund, ITV Racing pundit and author of the autobiography Winner: My Racing Life. Biography Twenty consecutive Champion Jockey titles is not a record that rewards talent alone. It rewards a decision, taken every morning for two decades, to ride through injuries, weight constraints and pain that would retire most athletes inside a year. That is the ground from which Sir AP McCoy speaks to organisations. The numerical case is straightforward. 4,358 winners, a British season record of 289 wins in 2001/02, and 1,040 weeks at the top of his sport, longer than any other athlete in any discipline. The harder case is the one boardrooms actually need: how a performer keeps renewing the motivation to win when the trophy is already on the shelf. The Grand National answers part of that question. McCoy had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Champion Hurdle, the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the King George VI Chase before Aintree finally relented. The 2010 win on Don’t Push It, at his fifteenth attempt, made him the first jockey to take the main BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, with 41.98% of the public vote. The discipline behind that result, not the result itself, is what translates. Post-retirement he is a working broadcaster rather than a retired athlete. He is a pundit on ITV Racing, a columnist for The Times and President of the Injured Jockeys Fund, the charity that looks after the riders who are not as lucky as he was. His autobiography Winner: My Racing Life was published by Orion in 2015. The Knighthood followed in the 2016 New Year Honours. Key speaking topics Sustained elite performance Resilience and recovery from setback Goal discipline over long horizons Leadership under physical and mental pressure Motivation after success Lessons from National Hunt racing for business High-performance mindset Ideal for Senior leadership teams facing the complacency risk that follows sustained success Sales and commercial organisations where year-on-year renewal of performance is the central challenge Financial and professional services firms hosting flagship client or partner events Board and executive offsites where a concrete, non-theoretical account of resilience is useful Audience outcomes A specific account of what it takes to stay hungry once winning has already been achieved A memorable case study in long-horizon goal discipline through the fifteen-year pursuit of the Grand National Direct insight from the rider’s own words on how to absorb setback, injury and public failure without losing the next race A measured, credible view on when to stop competing and how to rebuild a second career

Why organisations work with Archie Norman He ran the Asda turnaround from 1991 and sold the business to Walmart in 1999 at eight times the starting share price, a reference point that still defines UK retail recovery. He has chaired three FTSE-scale boards in very different states of repair: Asda, ITV and Marks & Spencer. Few speakers can discuss board, CEO and shareholder dynamics from all three seats. He sits at the intersection of commercial leadership and public policy, having served as Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, Chief Executive of the Conservative Party, and Lead Non-Executive at BEIS. He co-founded Policy Exchange in 2001, a think tank that shaped UK economic and public service reform, which gives his commentary on business and government real weight. The Institute for Turnaround awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 for practitioner work on corporate recovery, not for commentary on it. Biography highlights Chairman of Marks & Spencer since September 2017. Chairman of ITV plc from 2010 to 2016. Chief Executive then Chairman of Asda from 1991 to 1999, sold to Walmart in July 1999. Co-founder of the Policy Exchange think tank with Francis Maude in 2001. Lead Non-Executive Board Member at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2016 to 2020. Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells 1997-2005; Chief Executive of the Conservative Party 1998-1999. Institute for Turnaround Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010. Biography Asda was close to collapse when Archie Norman arrived as Chief Executive in 1991. Over the following eight years, he and Allan Leighton rebuilt the operating model, the culture and the commercial pitch. The business was sold to Walmart in 1999 at eight times the starting share price, and the story is still used as a practitioner case at Harvard Business School. What distinguishes his perspective is the seat he has held since. Chairman of ITV from 2010 to 2016 through a hard pivot in the broadcast market. Chairman of Marks & Spencer since 2017, running a multi-year reset of stores, supply chain and digital. Three listed boards, three different forms of inertia, one consistent operating philosophy about how change actually happens inside a large company. The public policy side matters commercially. He was Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, Chief Executive of the Conservative Party under William Hague, and Lead Non-Executive at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2016 to 2020. He co-founded the Policy Exchange think tank with Francis Maude in 2001. That background shapes how he reads the interaction between regulators, ministers and boards, which is useful for any chair or CEO managing that perimeter. Youngest partner ever at McKinsey at 28, group finance director at Kingfisher at 32, and recipient of the Institute for Turnaround’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. The point of the sequence is not the speed of it. It is that by the time he arrives in a boardroom to discuss a stalled transformation, he has seen the same patterns from the inside at every scale a UK board is likely to be operating at. Key speaking topics Corporate turnaround and organisational recovery Board and chair leadership Retail strategy and transformation Culture change inside listed companies Business and government Executive leadership under pressure Ideal for Chairs, CEOs and senior independent directors navigating a turnaround or strategic reset. Retail and consumer sector leadership teams. Boards and executive committees managing cultural resistance to change. Senior leaders in regulated industries where government relations shape commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A concrete view of what the first 100 days of a serious turnaround actually look like at board and operating level. A sharper read on where cultural inertia sits inside a listed business and how to move it. A practitioner perspective on how chair, CEO and shareholder dynamics succeed or fail in a crisis. A clearer picture of how the business-government perimeter is managed in practice, from both sides.

Why organisations work with Arsène Wenger He is the only senior practitioner in any field who built and led a team through an entire unbeaten top-flight league season – a 38-game case study in what sustained, system-level performance actually requires, fully documented and independently verifiable. His most instructive period for organisations is arguably not the Invincibles season but the decade that followed: leading under financial constraint, serial talent loss, and rivals with structurally larger budgets, while still maintaining Champions League qualification and winning trophies. This is the pressure most organisations recognise. His framework for leadership – distinguishing clearly between the structural long-term work of the manager and the motivational short-term work of the coach, and insisting both must operate simultaneously – gives senior leaders a concrete architecture for their own role, not a motivational analogy. Cross-cultural management experience across France, Japan, and England, combined with an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, means his account of how performance systems are built is structural and comparative, not anecdotal. His current role at FIFA – overseeing global coaching standards, the IFAB rules-making body, and technical analysis of international tournaments – extends his perspective from club performance to institutional design and global governance, a dimension no other speaker in this market shares. Biography highlights Managed Arsenal for 22 years (1996-2018) – the longest tenure in the club’s history and in the history of the Premier League; won 3 Premier League titles and a then-record 7 FA Cups Architect of the 2003-04 Arsenal “Invincibles” – the only team to complete an unbeaten top-flight English league season in the modern era (38 matches) Previously managed AS Monaco (Ligue 1 title 1988; Coupe de France 1991) and Nagoya Grampus Eight, Japan (Emperor’s Cup; J-League Manager of the Year, 1995) Three-time Premier League Manager of the Season (1997-98, 2001-02, 2003-04) FIFA Chief of Global Football Development (appointed 2019); chairs the FIFA Technical Study Group and oversees IFAB and global coaching education Awarded the Légion d’honneur (2002) and an Honorary OBE (2003); inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame (2006) Autobiography My Life in Red and White (Orion, 2020) – Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller; the second football manager ever to reach No. 1 overall Economics degree, University of Strasbourg; fluent in six languages Biography The 2003-04 Arsenal season – 38 Premier League matches, zero defeats – remains the only unbeaten campaign in English football’s modern era. What made it possible was not an exceptional squad alone, but a system: nutritional standards that transformed player fitness, analytical scouting methods, and a culture whose values were defined by players and coaching staff together at the start of each season. Arsène Wenger’s career was cross-cultural long before that was a leadership virtue. He won the French league title with AS Monaco in 1988, then moved deliberately to Japan – taking Nagoya Grampus Eight to the Emperor’s Cup and the J-League Manager of the Year award in 1995. Managing across France, Japan, and England gave him a comparative framework for what in performance systems is universal, and what depends on context. At Arsenal, the decade after the Invincibles season is often more instructive for organisations than the unbeaten campaign itself. Wenger sustained Champions League qualification and FA Cup success while operating under severe financial constraint and losing key talent to better-funded rivals – conditions organisations recognise more readily than an anomalous trophy season. His autobiography, My Life in Red and White (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, 2020), and public appearances – including at the Bank of America Global Investor Summit and the Gartner IT Symposium – return consistently to a single structural argument: effective leadership requires the manager’s long-term, institutional work and the coach’s short-term, motivational work to operate simultaneously, not in sequence. Since 2019, Wenger has served as FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, overseeing global coaching education, the IFAB rules-making panel, and technical analysis of international tournaments. He holds an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, France’s Légion d’honneur, an Honorary OBE, and a place in the English Football Hall of Fame. His perspective on competitive sustainability is drawn from specific, verifiable decisions made under extreme and sustained pressure – which is precisely what distinguishes it. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and competitive advantage Talent identification, development, and succession systems Organisational culture and values-based leadership Long-term strategy under short-term performance pressure Cross-cultural team management Performance science and the modernisation of professional sport Global football governance and institutional development Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders accountable for long-term competitive positioning CHROs and people directors designing talent development and succession pipelines Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, and sport Transformation leaders managing performance culture through periods of resource constraint or competitive disruption Audience outcomes A clear, applicable distinction between managing (structural, long-term) and coaching (motivational, short-term) – and why both must run in parallel rather than sequence A concrete, verified case study in what sustained competitive advantage looks like in practice: the talent, culture, and decision-making systems behind it Practical perspectives on leading through constraint and transition – not just peak success – drawn from a decade of performing under significant competitive disadvantage An understanding of how cross-cultural experience informs more resilient, adaptive performance systems A framework for building culture from the inside: how shared values, standards, and accountability are established, maintained, and renewed across successive generations of people

Why organisations work with Ashwin Gulati A founder’s-eye view drawn from 100+ ventures in four countries, not a single startup story extrapolated into a thesis Hands-on experience as interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence inside companies in crisis, not commentary from the sidelines Author of Soul Venture, a 16-year project that documents the human and psychological mechanics of startup failure that most business books edit out Comfortable in the room with boards, family offices and first-time founders, and switches register accordingly Bilingual operator across US and European venture cultures, useful when expansion crosses regulatory and capital-market boundaries Biography highlights 30+ years guiding founders, CEOs and boards across 100+ ventures in the US, UK, Spain and France Founder of Match Point Ventures, working with boards, family offices and executive teams as strategic advisor, interim executive and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Author of Soul Venture: A True Life and Death Journey Into the Startup Culture (Match Point Press) Featured at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on the unspoken truths of entrepreneurship Quoted and published in Chief Executive, Authority Magazine, Grit Daily, StartupNation, CEO World and LeadershipNow BA in Economics and Mathematics from Claremont McKenna College, with study at King’s College London and the London School of Economics Biography Ninety-seven of every hundred startups fail. The interesting question is not why most fail, but what the survivors paid to get through, and why so little of that cost is ever named in public. Ashwin Gulati has spent three decades inside that question, working alongside founders, CEOs and boards through launches, pivots, expansions and exits in the US, UK, Spain and France. His work spans more than 100 ventures, from early-stage technology companies to family-office-backed operating businesses. Through Match Point Ventures he steps in as strategic advisor, interim executive or Entrepreneur-in-Residence, running diagnostic assessments on capital structure, business model, leadership alignment and market position. The role is not theoretical. It usually begins when something is breaking. Soul Venture, his debut book, took 16 years to write because it does what most entrepreneurship literature avoids. It traces the psychological and human costs that sit alongside the spreadsheet view of company building. The book is part memoir, part field guide, drawn from his own ventures and from the founders he has worked beside. It has been featured by Chief Executive, Grit Daily and Authority Magazine, and anchors his speaking on what he calls the X-factors that separate real builders from the rest. He addresses three moments in venture life with equal seriousness. The take-off, where most founders mistake hustle for traction. The flight, where scaling exposes who can actually lead. And the landing, where exits, succession and legacy decide what the work was for. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder journey Scale-up leadership across stages Venture launch and operational sustainability Exit, succession and founder legacy Self-leadership and founder resilience Cross-border venture building Ideal for Founder communities, incubators and accelerators briefing first-time and serial entrepreneurs Boards, family offices and investor networks evaluating venture portfolios Executive teams inside scale-ups confronting transition or crisis Business schools and entrepreneurship programmes building founder development tracks Audience outcomes A clearer map of the launch, scale and exit decisions that decide a venture’s outcome Specific failure mechanics drawn from 100+ companies, not founder mythology Language for the human cost of building, useful in boardrooms that usually avoid it A working frame for legacy and succession that goes beyond the financial exit

Why organisations work with Axel Alletru He offers a rare verifiable proof point for resilience: the first paraplegic driver to win a category at the Dakar Rally, beating able-bodied competitors in the SSV T3S class in 2020. His career crosses three elite disciplines (motocross, para swimming, rally-raid), which lets him speak credibly about rebuilding capability from zero rather than delivering a single-sport anecdote. He works regularly with CAC40 companies, SMEs and business clubs, having delivered more than 400 keynotes since 2017, so his corporate register is already tuned for leadership and all-hands audiences. His two published books, “28 Principes pour rebondir” and “Et toujours rebondir” (Albin Michel), give organisations a structured vocabulary for recovery that extends beyond the keynote itself. Bilingual delivery in French and English makes him directly usable for multi-country leadership events across European and global teams. Biography highlights First disabled driver to win a category at the Dakar Rally: SSV T3S class, January 2020, competing against able-bodied teams. Former MX2 World Championship motocross rider, rated one of France’s strongest prospects in the discipline before his 2010 crash. Three-time European BMX champion and junior world runner-up earlier in his career. 12-time French Handisport swimming champion and European Masters Games gold medallist in 50m and 100m freestyle. Author of “28 Principes pour rebondir” (2018) and “Et toujours rebondir” (Albin Michel, 2024). Subject of the Canal+ documentary “Holeshot, un virage pour la vie”. Biography The 2010 MX2 World Championship season ended for one French rider with a crash that took away the use of his legs at age 20. A full motocross career, built from European BMX titles and a junior world runner-up result, stopped in a single weekend. The question was no longer how to win. It was whether competitive sport was finished. Ten years later, Axel Alletru crossed a Dakar Rally finish line in Saudi Arabia first in the SSV T3S category and seventh in the overall SSV class, making him the first disabled driver to win a Dakar category against able-bodied competitors. Between those two points sat a 12-time French Handisport swimming title, a European Masters Games gold in freestyle, and years of rebuilding physical capacity that doctors had not expected to return. That arc is what corporate audiences actually buy. It gives him a specific answer to the question leadership teams keep landing on: how do people and organisations recover usable performance after a hard stop, not just morale. He has turned the answer into two published works, “28 Principes pour rebondir” and “Et toujours rebondir” with Albin Michel, and into a speaking practice that covers more than 400 engagements since 2017 for CAC40 groups, mid-market firms and business clubs. He delivers in French and English, and his preferred frame is practical rather than inspirational. Teams leave with a working model for how reinvention happens under constraint, anchored in a career that has had to produce results in three elite disciplines rather than one. Key speaking topics Resilience after serious setback High performance under constraint Mental strength and recovery Team and collective performance Sport lessons applied to business leadership Reinvention and career rebuilds Disability and performance Ideal for Executive leadership teams facing restructuring, failed launches or strategic reset All-company events where leaders want a credible frame for resilience rather than generic motivation Sales, operations and transformation groups under sustained performance pressure HR, talent and employee engagement leads programming flagship annual events Audience outcomes A concrete language for recovery that leaders can carry back into their own teams A working model for how people rebuild capability after a hard stop, drawn from three elite disciplines Renewed belief that ambitious targets remain reachable after disruption, supported by specific evidence rather than slogans Stronger read on the role collective structure plays in individual comebacks, relevant to team design and leadership