Leadership

Why organisations work with Jean Todt He took over a Ferrari racing operation that had not won a Drivers’ Championship in twenty-one years and produced five consecutive titles for Michael Schumacher between 2000 and 2004. Few living executives can speak to a turnaround at that scale and that level of public scrutiny. He has run three different kinds of high-stakes organisation, a manufacturer racing programme at Peugeot, a listed sports car business at Ferrari, and a 145-country federation at the FIA. The leadership lessons translate across commercial, governance, and political environments. He holds a live UN mandate. As Special Envoy for Road Safety since 2015, he negotiates directly with heads of state on a public health crisis that kills roughly 1.19 million people a year. Boards working on ESG, public-private partnership, or regulated-industry strategy get a practitioner, not a commentator. He co-founded the Paris Brain Institute with neurosurgeon Gerard Saillant, putting institutional capital and racing-industry networks behind one of Europe’s largest neuroscience research centres. The pattern, building durable institutions from convening power, is rare. Biography highlights Director of Peugeot Talbot Sport, 1981 to 1993, delivering four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. General Manager of Ferrari’s Racing Division from 1993; CEO of Ferrari S.p.A. from 2004 to 2008. Ninth President of the FIA, 2009 to 2021, three full terms; now FIA Honorary President. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015, reconfirmed under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Co-founder and board member, Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant. Author, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” Assouline. Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur. Recipient of the Olympic Order. Biography Scuderia Ferrari had not won a Formula One Drivers’ Championship since 1979 when Jean Todt arrived in 1993 as General Manager of the Racing Division. He brought in Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn, and Rory Byrne, rebuilt the technical organisation around them, and produced the most dominant run in modern Formula One: five consecutive Drivers’ titles between 2000 and 2004 and six Constructors’ titles in seven years. In 2004 he was promoted to CEO of Ferrari S.p.A., responsible for the road car business as well as the racing operation, until 2008. The Ferrari work followed a twelve-year stint at Peugeot Talbot Sport from 1981, where he built the rally programme that produced four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. The pattern across both jobs was the same: take a manufacturer’s competition arm, set a clear technical direction, and hold it long enough for compounding to work. Elected ninth President of the FIA in 2009, Todt served three four-year terms running motor sport’s global governing body across 145 national federations and 245 member organisations. He launched the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign in 2011, which became the platform for his next role: in April 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him Special Envoy for Road Safety, a brief he still holds, working with governments to halve road deaths by 2030. Outside motor sport, Todt co-founded the Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant; the institute is now one of the largest neuroscience research centres in Europe. He is a Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur and a recipient of the Olympic Order. His most recent book, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” collects more than fifty road safety case studies from the partners and governments he has worked with as UN Envoy. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in legacy organisations High-performance team building under public scrutiny Sports governance and federation reform Global road safety policy Public-private partnership for social outcomes Building institutions: from racing to neuroscience Crisis management and decision-making at speed Ideal for CEOs and executive committees running multi-year turnarounds where culture and technical excellence both have to move Boards and chairs working on governance reform, federation oversight, or regulated-industry strategy ESG, public affairs, and sustainability leaders building credible public-private programmes Automotive, mobility, and insurance leadership audiences working on safety, risk, and the energy transition Audience outcomes A working model for rebuilding a senior team when the inherited talent and the public narrative are both against you A clearer view of how political authority, technical authority, and commercial authority interact in regulated industries A first-hand account of negotiating with heads of state on a public health mandate, with the mechanisms that have moved policy and the ones that have not A serious answer to the question of how a leader sustains performance across forty years and three very different institutional roles

Why organisations work with Jamil Qureshi Six individuals to world number one, five Ryder Cup captains advised, 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. The track record in elite sport is operationally specific, not rhetorical. He has designed and embedded long-running change programmes at scale: Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. He has run transformation inside organisations, not only spoken about it. He translates the psychology of sustained pressure from environments where the cost of failure is public and immediate (Premier League, Ryder Cup) into boardrooms where it usually is not. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. The framework has been pressure-tested in domains most speakers can only describe. Biography highlights First-ever official psychologist appointed to the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam in 2006; has since worked with five Ryder Cup captains. Has worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50, with Premier League players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, with Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, and with members of the 2009 England Ashes-winning cricket team. Designed and delivered board-level leadership and change programmes for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK, and Lloyds Banking Group. Author of The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, on the psychological foundations of personal and professional performance. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. Listed by GQ Magazine among the most influential figures in British sport (2009); named in The Daily Mirror’s top 100 coaches in the world (2023). Biography At the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, Europe beat the United States by a record-equalling margin. Captain Ian Woosnam had done something no Ryder Cup captain had done before: he appointed an official psychologist to the team. That psychologist was Jamil Qureshi. Sport had been treating mindset as decisive for years. Most boards still treat it as a soft skill, even as senior leaders increasingly face the conditions of elite athletes: sustained scrutiny and very narrow margins for error. Qureshi has spent two decades closing that gap. He has helped six individuals reach world number one in their sport, advised five Ryder Cup captains, and worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. Premier League players at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea sit on the same client list as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK and Lloyds Banking Group. In business, the work goes well beyond keynotes. Qureshi designed and embedded leadership and change programmes for Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s cultural separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. Through Covid he ran extensive work with global leadership teams at SAS, GSK, Janssen, NHS England and Protiviti as they reset around remote and hybrid leadership. His book, The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, sets out the psychological foundations he applies in both worlds. Skill gets people to the top. What keeps them there, and what determines whether the team around them performs when it matters, is something organisations rarely build deliberately. That is what Qureshi is asked in to do. Key speaking topics Performance psychology in business High-performing teams Leadership under sustained pressure Mindset and behavioural change Cultural change and transformation Translating elite sport into business performance Hybrid and remote leadership Ideal for Boards and CEO leadership teams setting expectations for performance under sustained pressure Sales and commercial leadership teams where individual mindset shapes pipeline outcomes HR and L&D directors building leadership programmes that need psychological substance, not theory Senior leadership conferences where elite-sport credibility opens the room Audience outcomes Specific behaviours for performing under sustained pressure, drawn from how elite athletes actually train A sharper view of where individual mindset constrains team output, and what to do about it Language for leaders to talk about psychology without it sounding soft A more honest read on the gap between intent and execution in their own teams

Why organisations work with James Ketchell His credibility is forensically specific: two verified world firsts – completing what media dubbed the “Ultimate Triathlon” and the first FAI-ratified gyroplane circumnavigation of the globe – give his message about incremental progress a factual foundation that generic resilience content cannot match. The “ten steps at a time” approach he developed on Everest and has applied across five major expeditions gives teams a transferable, named model for breaking complex goals into sustained, manageable action – not a metaphor, but a method he has stress-tested at altitude, at sea, and in the air. His backstory runs in the opposite direction to most adventure speakers: teenage depression, no school qualifications, fired from five jobs, and a motorcycle accident that threatened permanent disability. That starting point makes his message about potential accessible to audiences who do not identify with elite athletic backgrounds. He has spoken at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, PwC, GSK, eBay, and RBS – organisations that set a high bar for relevance and credibility. His ability to adapt the same core content to military leadership, financial services, and pharma audiences is verified across named client feedback. Biography highlights First and only person to complete the “Ultimate Triathlon”: solo Atlantic row (2010), Everest summit (2011), unsupported 18,000-mile global cycle (2013–14) Guinness World Record holder: first person to circumnavigate the globe in an open-cockpit gyroplane, certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (2019) Winner of the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy (2020), awarded for outstanding skill, courage and initiative Author of two books: The Ultimate Triathlon (2016, endorsed by Bear Grylls) and It’s All Mental (2021) UK Scouting Ambassador; ambassador for children’s charity Over The Wall Speaking clients include eBay, PwC, GSK, RBS, and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy Biography James Ketchell is the only person to have rowed solo across the Atlantic, summited Everest, and cycled 18,000 miles around the world – a sequence the media named the “Ultimate Triathlon” – and in 2019 became the first person to fly an open-cockpit gyroplane around the globe, a journey of 24,000 nautical miles in 175 days, ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and recognised by Guinness World Records. The Royal Automobile Club awarded him the Segrave Trophy for the achievement in 2020. None of this was a trajectory anyone predicted. Ketchell left school without qualifications, was fired from five jobs, struggled with depression as a teenager, and in 2008 sustained a motorcycle accident that left him with broken legs, a shattered ankle, and a prognosis of permanent disability. His response to that diagnosis became the architecture of everything that followed: break the goal into the smallest possible steps, prioritise ruthlessly, and keep moving. The principle he articulates most precisely came at 8,000 metres on Everest – the last few hundred metres completed ten steps at a time. That isn’t a metaphor he applies to business; it is a documented method he has used to cross oceans, cycle continents, and fly around the world. His second book, It’s All Mental, makes the case that the obstacles to extraordinary performance are almost never physical. His talks draw on five major expeditions, two mid-ocean rescues, and a recovery from near-permanent disability to give organisations something they rarely get from a speaker: a framework for sustained performance that has been tested at the point of actual failure. The organisations that bring him in – PwC, GSK, eBay, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, RBS – are not looking for inspiration as an emotion. They are looking for something their teams can use. Ketchell delivers that. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme pressure Incremental goal-setting and performance Leadership mindset and self-discipline Overcoming adversity and setback Mental toughness and sustained focus Expedition planning and risk management Ideal for Leadership teams and senior executives preparing for significant organisational change or uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience and performance programmes Sales, commercial, and operational teams where sustained motivation and goal delivery under pressure is a strategic priority Military, emergency services, and high-stakes professional audiences (Ketchell has a verified track record with Sandhurst) Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework for breaking large or daunting goals into sustained, achievable steps A recalibrated view of setback as structural information rather than failure – drawn from Ketchell’s own documented experience of failed expeditions alongside record-breaking ones Practical language for discussing mental resilience and performance that avoids wellness cliché A reference point for goal prioritisation under resource and time constraints, developed across expeditions where those constraints were life-critical Greater confidence that high performance is method-driven, not talent-dependent

James Averdieck’s Background He built the brand with passion and sold it for £32 million. James is compelling and unique as a keynote speaker, as he delivers the message that at the heart of entrepreneurialism lies the idea, the journey, not the exit strategy, and not the final sale price. The entrepreneur, conveys a strong message about the value of loving your business. Speaking from experience, he shares his innovative ideas about entrepreneurship; simplifying business and using creative agility to make your dreams achievable. He shares the ups and downs of running a business with a raw candour, offering a true insight into the rocky road to success. The combination of James’ credibility and transparency, mean important and real lessons can be learned from his keynote speeches. Charismatic, intelligent and thoughtful, James is an ideal speaker for the business circuit. Born in Yorkshire in 1965, James was educated at Uppingham School before studying Economics at Durham University. Following University, James joined the graduate programme at strategy consultants Arthur D. Little, where he learnt about the key drivers to a successful business, this sparked a fire within him to learn more. James spent 9 years in the Food industry working for Safeway and St Ivel and learnt about Sales and Marketing and running businesses. With St Ivel he moved to Belgium and became a convert to Belgian gastronomy and, as he says, ‘went native on the chocolate front’. It was in Brussels that the seed was sown for his UK chocolate venture. James saw the opportunity of marrying high-quality chocolate patisserie with efficient UK supermarket distribution. Spotting a gap in the market, James saw that consumers wanted artisanal products and there was a backlash forming against mass produced big brands. He wanted to deliver high-quality products using the best raw materials. Gü, the brand, is about chocolate extremism – evoking nostalgic memories and magical smells of baking with chocolate. The brand was embraced with love by the supermarkets, launching first in Sainsburys and Waitrose with the others following apace. James has turned his attentions now to a healthier brand, The Coconut Collective, a non-dairy based brand. As a speaker, James’ knowledge combined with natural story-telling makes him an ideal choice for any audience looking to be inspired. James Averdieck is the man who built and sold Gü! A master entrepreneur who realised his dream, harnessed his strengths and pioneered a leading brand, his bumpy journey means he has invaluable lessons to impart.

Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude. The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market. His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms. The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority. Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace). Biography highlights Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021 Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast Biography Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists. His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data. The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions. Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series. Key speaking topics Future-ready leadership Vulnerability and trust in organisations Employee experience strategy Leadership in the age of AI Future of work Organisational culture and performance Executive development and people strategy Ideal for CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks Audience outcomes A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it

Why organisations work with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Five years running NATO through Afghanistan, the 2008 Bucharest summit, Russia-Georgia, and the alliance’s 60th-anniversary reset. Few living speakers can describe transatlantic decision-making from the chair. Direct line of sight into the machinery that shapes risk for multinationals: defence spending, sanctions architecture, Article 5, enlargement politics, EU-US friction. Dutch Foreign Minister during the Iraq War and OSCE Chair in 2003. He has operated at the national capital level and the multilateral level on the same files. Chaired the Netherlands’ Advisory Council on International Affairs for seven years, meaning his read on policy is current, not retrospective. Holds the Pieter Kooijmans Chair at Leiden and sits with the Trilateral Commission, Friends of Europe, and the European Leadership Network. The analysis is anchored in live institutional conversation, not memoir. Biography highlights 11th Secretary General of NATO, 2004 to 2009, and Chair of the North Atlantic Council. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2002 to 2003, and OSCE Chairman-in-Office during the Dutch chairmanship. Leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal, 1997 to 2001; Member of the House of Representatives, 1986 to 2002. Pieter Kooijmans Chair for Peace, Law and Security, Leiden University, from 2009; Distinguished Fellow, Leiden University College The Hague. Chair of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), 2014 to 2021; Minister of State of the Netherlands from 2018. Non-executive Director, Air France-KLM, 2011 to 2020; Trustee, Friends of Europe; European Group of the Trilateral Commission. Biography NATO took on the lead security role in Afghanistan in October 2006 under a Secretary General who had started the job two years earlier with a fractured alliance and a disputed war in Iraq still on the table. That was de Hoop Scheffer’s first decisive test at the head of the North Atlantic Council, and it set the pattern for how he ran the alliance through Bucharest, the Russia-Georgia war, and the 60th-anniversary summit. Before NATO he was Dutch Foreign Minister under Jan Peter Balkenende and Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE in the Netherlands’ 2003 chairmanship. That sequence, national capital to multilateral chair to alliance lead, is what gives his reading of geopolitics its weight: he has operated at each level on the same files, and made calls at each level that had consequences for the others. The post-NATO work has kept him inside the policy conversation rather than above it. He holds the Pieter Kooijmans Chair for Peace, Law and Security at Leiden University, chaired the Advisory Council on International Affairs for the Dutch government from 2014 to 2021, and sits with the Trilateral Commission’s European Group, Friends of Europe, and the European Leadership Network. He served as a non-executive director at Air France-KLM for nearly a decade, which is where the geopolitical view meets the board agenda in practice. What boards get is a former alliance chief who can map a specific decision, a specific summit, a specific red line, onto the risk exposure a company is carrying today. In 2018 he was granted the honorary title of Minister of State, a recognition reserved in the Netherlands for senior former officials whose judgement the state continues to draw on. Key speaking topics Transatlantic security and the future of NATO European defence, enlargement, and the Russia question Geopolitical risk for multinational business Afghanistan, intervention, and the lessons for alliances Multilateral diplomacy and the G7/OSCE system EU-US relations and the Indo-Pacific pivot Ideal for Boards and audit committees pricing geopolitical and sanctions exposure into strategy CEOs and executive teams in defence, aerospace, energy, and critical infrastructure Government affairs, political risk, and corporate security leaders Investor and shareholder forums needing a senior read on alliance and policy direction Audience outcomes A sharper map of where transatlantic security policy is heading and what moves it A direct account of how NATO decisions are made, from someone who made them Concrete read on Russia, Ukraine, enlargement, and the European defence build-out Named risks and inflection points a board can carry into its next strategy review Confidence in distinguishing signal from noise in a daily news cycle dominated by geopolitics

Why organisations work with Howard Webb His concept of «anonymously competent», the trained reflex to seek invisibility rather than make the decisive, visible call, names a leadership trap that senior audiences recognise on first hearing as a live problem in their own organisations – not a sports metaphor, but a precise description of how their institutions reward the wrong behaviour. His career after the pitch, spanning Technical Director at PGMOL, General Manager at the Professional Referee Organization in North America, and now Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL, is itself a case study in reforming institutional standards under sustained public pressure. Most sports speakers offer a performing career; Webb offers both. He led the rollout of VAR in North American soccer and returned to England to reform how the Premier League applies the same technology, giving him direct cross-jurisdictional experience in managing the gap between contested innovation and stakeholder trust. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013, his credentials hold in any boardroom that includes serious sports people, which makes the leadership translation sharper and harder to dismiss. His direct experience of a governance model where every decision is publicly logged, graded, and contested translates to regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply to senior leaders. Biography highlights The only referee in history to officiate both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year (2010) Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013; MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to football First-ever Chief Refereeing Officer, PGMOL (2022), responsible for more than 600 match officials across English professional football Former General Manager, Professional Referee Organization (PRO), leading the match official programme across Major League Soccer and North American football, including the introduction of VAR Approximately 296 Premier League matches as a professional referee (2003-2014); FIFA international referee across nine major tournaments including two FIFA World Cups Former sergeant, South Yorkshire Police; broadcast analyst with BT Sport and ITV Biography Howard Webb became a Premier League referee in 2003 and a FIFA international referee two years later. By 2010, he had officiated both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year. No referee in the sport’s history had achieved that combination before, or has since. His career after the pitch is equally instructive. As Technical Director at PGMOL and then General Manager of the Professional Referee Organization in North America, Webb led the introduction of VAR across Major League Soccer, managing the institutional resistance, stakeholder scepticism, and communication challenges that accompany contested technological change in any professional environment. His appointment in 2022 as the first-ever Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL placed him at the head of a reform programme for more than 600 match officials across the English professional game. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013 and awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours, his on-field record gives credibility to the broader argument. His concept of «anonymously competent», the trap of seeking invisibility over decisive action, names a tension that senior leadership audiences recognise immediately in their own organisations. Webb has spoken at forums including the HR Directors Business Summit. The direct parallel is between officiating, where every decision is logged, graded, and publicly contested, and leadership in regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Leadership under public scrutiny Accountability and governance in professional organisations High-performance team standards Institutional reform and standards development Technology adoption and stakeholder trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite forums in regulated industries including financial services, healthcare, and professional services Boards and governance committees addressing public accountability and decision-making under scrutiny HR and L&D leaders building executive development programmes Sports organisations and governing bodies addressing officiating standards, governance, and reform Audience outcomes A concrete framework for understanding the gap between private competence and public accountability Practical perspective on what it means to make decisive calls when decisions are irreversible and publicly visible Insight into building institutional cultures that sustain performance under contested, public scrutiny A transferable case study in introducing contested technology into a resistant professional community The «anonymously competent» concept as a diagnostic for identifying leadership cultures that reward invisibility over action

Why organisations work with Herman Van Rompuy He chaired the European Council through the sovereign debt crisis and can explain, from the inside, how decisions on the euro, the Fiscal Compact, and the European Stability Mechanism were actually brokered between 27 national capitals. He is a trained economist, not a career politician alone; his National Bank of Belgium background means he reads monetary policy, bank regulation and fiscal governance with technical fluency most former heads of state lack. His 2012 report to the European Council laid the blueprint for Banking Union; leaders get direct authorship perspective on the supervisory and resolution architecture their treasury and risk teams now operate inside. He remains plugged into the current debate as President of the Board of the College of Europe and Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, so the analysis is live, not a memoir. The Charlemagne Prize is awarded for mediation and consensus-building in Europe, which is precisely what he does on stage: he translates a 27-country bargaining dynamic into language a corporate board can act on. Biography highlights First full-time President of the European Council, 2009-2014, re-elected unanimously for a second term in 2012. Prime Minister of Belgium, 2008-2009; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 2007-2008; Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Budget, 1993-1999. Recipient of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, 2014. President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe (Bruges); Honorary President of the European Policy Centre; visiting fellow at Bruegel. Author of nine books, including “Europe in the Storm: Promise and Prejudice” (Davidsfonds, 2014) on the eurozone crisis years. Holds a Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven; former economist at the National Bank of Belgium. Biography When the euro came close to breaking apart in 2011 and 2012, the meetings that kept it together were chaired by one man. Herman Van Rompuy had taken up the newly created post of permanent President of the European Council in January 2010, and within months the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts were on his desk. Over five years he presided over twenty-eight European Councils and eleven Euro summits, and emerged with the architecture that still governs the single currency. The substance of that period matters more than the title. Under his chairmanship the European Council agreed the European Stability Mechanism, the Fiscal Compact, and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack rules on national budgets. His June 2012 report, prepared with the Presidents of the Commission, the ECB and the Eurogroup, set out the blueprint for Banking Union; the Single Supervisory Mechanism and Single Resolution Mechanism followed. Companies doing business in Europe now operate inside the framework he helped draft. He came to the role as an economist first. A Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven and an early career at the National Bank of Belgium gave him a fluency in monetary and fiscal detail that distinguishes him from most former heads of government. Belgian voters knew him as a technocratic budget minister in the 1990s before he became Prime Minister in the 2008 financial crisis, and he brought the same style to Brussels: quiet, methodical, consensus-driven. That approach has kept him inside the European debate. He is President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe in Bruges, Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, and a visiting fellow at Bruegel. The International Charlemagne Prize, awarded in 2014, cited him as a mediator and driving force behind European unification, which is the working mode boards encounter when he sits with them on the state of the Union. Key speaking topics European Union governance and institutional reform Eurozone economic policy and monetary cooperation Banking Union and European financial stability Geopolitical risk in the European neighbourhood Crisis decision-making at heads-of-government level EU enlargement and the future of integration Belgium and the politics of coalition government Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with material euro-area exposure CFO and treasury leadership working under EU financial regulation Government affairs, strategy and political risk functions in multinationals Banking, insurance and asset management audiences operating inside Banking Union rules Audience outcomes A clearer read of how EU-level decisions are actually made between national capitals, institutions and the ECB A grounded view of where eurozone integration is heading and which political constraints are binding First-hand perspective on crisis leadership at the top of European politics Sharper framing of European political risk for board-level and investment committee discussions

Why organisations work with Henry Timms He has operated at the top of two of the most scrutinised cultural institutions in the United States, Lincoln Center and 92nd Street Y, and can speak to legacy transformation from inside the seat, not from a consulting deck. “New Power,” co-written with Jeremy Heimans, was a Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year finalist and is now one of the standard references for leaders thinking about participatory influence. Buyers get the author, not a secondary interpreter. He built GivingTuesday from a single idea at 92Y into a movement operating in 100 countries that has generated over $13 billion in giving. That is hard evidence of how the framework works in practice. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on exactly the reputational and influence problems the framework was built to address, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, Brunswick Group (2024 to present) President and CEO, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (2019 to 2024); oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall Co-founder of GivingTuesday (2012), active in 100 countries Co-author, “New Power” (2018, Doubleday), Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts and to philanthropy (2022) Hauser Leader, Harvard Kennedy School; Senior Fellow, Stanford University and the United Nations Foundation; member, Council on Foreign Relations Biography Most legacy institutions are not structured for participation. They are structured for authority that flows one way, from the board and the executive outward, and that structure is now breaking in public. The problem Henry Timms works on is what leaders do about it. Timms and Jeremy Heimans gave the shift a name in their 2018 book “New Power,” shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Old power, in their argument, is held like a currency: hoarded, closed, pushed down. New power operates like a current: open, participatory, shaped by the many. The point is not that one replaces the other. It is that serious leaders now have to run both systems at once. He has done this in practice. At 92nd Street Y he co-founded GivingTuesday in 2012, a movement that now operates in 100 countries and has generated over $13 billion for charitable causes. At Lincoln Center, where he was President and CEO from 2019 to 2024, he oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall and repositioned one of America’s most visible cultural institutions for a more participatory era. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on reputation, influence and institutional trust, with affiliations at Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford, Oxford and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for services to the arts and to philanthropy. Key speaking topics New power and the shift in how influence operates Leading legacy institutions through transformation Building and scaling participatory movements Reputation and trust in a networked era AI and the future of institutional authority Philanthropy, purpose and stakeholder engagement Ideal for CEOs and boards of legacy institutions facing relevance or trust challenges Chief communications, marketing and brand officers rethinking stakeholder influence Foundation and nonprofit leadership teams designing participatory programmes Senior leadership offsites on culture, reputation and institutional change Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for distinguishing old power and new power inside their own organisation Named examples of how global institutions have built participatory strategies without surrendering discipline A clearer read on where their organisation’s authority is eroding and where it can be rebuilt Practical reference points from GivingTuesday, Lincoln Center and Brunswick client work

Why organisations work with Heinz-Harald Frentzen Ten seasons in Formula One across Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows give him a first-hand account of how winning operations differ from losing ones at the same level of talent and budget. He finished second in the 1997 Drivers’ Championship and third in 1999 with Jordan, in both cases against better-resourced rivals. The lesson he carries into a room is about execution, not hierarchy. His HHF hybrid racing project, which completed the first fully electric lap of the Nordschleife at the 2008 Nurburgring 24 Hours, gives him a credible voice on sustainable engineering as a performance problem, not a compliance one. He is comfortable in both motivational and technical registers, which is unusual for an ex-driver. Engineering and R&D audiences get substance; commercial audiences get the human story behind it. Biography highlights Formula One driver from 1994 to 2003 for Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows. Runner-up in the 1997 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship with Williams. Three Grand Prix wins: San Marino 1997, French 1999 and Italian 1999. Finished third in the 1999 Drivers’ Championship with Jordan on 54 points, with two wins and six podiums. Conceived and built the HHF hybrid race car, which recorded the first electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife during the 2008 24 Hours race. Winner of the ROC Legends Cup at the 2011 Race of Champions; raced in DTM from 2004 to 2006 and competed at the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans with Aston Martin Racing. Biography The 1997 San Marino Grand Prix was Frentzen’s first Formula One victory. It came in his debut season at Williams, against a teammate, Jacques Villeneuve, who would take the title that year. He finished the season second in the championship. It is the decision-making that sits underneath a result like that, not the result itself, that organisations bring him in to talk about. Across a decade in Formula One with Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows, Frentzen operated inside five different team cultures. Some produced wins with fewer resources. Some did not. His vantage point is not the champion’s, which is often misread as pure individual brilliance. It is the vantage point of a driver who watched up close what separates a team that executes from one that does not. His most distinctive post-racing work is the HHF hybrid project. Using a Gumpert Apollo chassis and a battery system he developed himself, he completed the first fully electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife at the 2008 24 Hours, co-driving with Dirk Muller. Gearbox failures kept the car out of the classification, but the hybrid powertrain finished the race. It is one of the earlier serious attempts to treat electrification as a performance engineering problem in endurance racing. That combination of cockpit experience and hands-on technical development is what he draws on now. Audiences get a specific account of how sharp teams make sharp decisions under time pressure, and what it takes to keep a programme moving when the technology, the strategy and the people all have to improve at once. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from Formula One Sustainable engineering and hybrid technology Resilience and focus in elite performance Risk, trust and communication in high-stakes environments Ideal for Executive leadership offsites and board awaydays focused on performance culture Engineering, R&D and innovation functions in automotive, mobility and advanced manufacturing Sales kick-offs and annual conferences wanting a credible motorsport voice alongside business content After-dinner and gala audiences where racing pedigree adds weight to the evening Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how elite motorsport teams align driver, engineer and strategist in real time A sharper view of what separates teams that execute under pressure from teams that do not Useable lessons on focus, preparation and trust, grounded in named races and named teams A credible perspective on hybrid and electrified engineering as a performance discipline, not a compliance exercise

Why organisations work with Hamish Taylor Operator authority across three unrelated industries at CEO level: aviation brand at British Airways, cross-border rail at Eurostar, and retail banking at Sainsbury’s Bank, all reached before he turned 40. A specific innovation method, not a generic call to think differently. The “Masterthief” approach pairs a defined business problem with an unrelated sector that has already solved a structurally similar problem, then translates the mechanism back. Concrete cross-sector transfers he can talk through end to end: yacht interior designers brought into British Airways cabin design, Disney queue management applied to airport experience, rugby refereeing brought into banking risk and compliance. Senior advisory standing that matches the room. Chairs the EMEA advisory board for Emory University, Non-Executive Director of Chartered Brands, Trustee of the Robert T Jones scholarship, and recipient of Emory’s Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award. Works the full audience range, from board and CEO level to frontline operating staff, with the same material translated for each layer rather than a single fixed deck. Biography highlights Former CEO of Eurostar Group, having joined as Managing Director of Eurostar (UK) Ltd in 1997 with a remit to reverse heavy losses. Former CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank, the joint venture between J Sainsbury plc and the Bank of Scotland. Former Head of Brand Management at British Airways, responsible for First, Club World, Club Europe, Concorde and Shuttle, including the introduction of flat beds. Rail Professional Business Manager of the Year, 1998, for results at Eurostar. Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award, Emory University; Chair of Emory’s EMEA advisory board. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Transport. Biography Eurostar was three years old and losing money heavily when Hamish Taylor took over as Managing Director of the UK business in 1997. Within two years he was running the Eurostar Group across the UK, France and Belgium, and had been named Rail Professional Business Manager of the Year. At 36, he had already been Head of Brand Management at British Airways, where the relaunch of Club World, Club Europe and First Class included the introduction of flat beds. By the end of 1999 he had moved again, this time to run Sainsbury’s Bank as CEO, the joint venture between J Sainsbury and the Bank of Scotland. Three industries, three CEO-level remits, all before he turned 40. The pattern across them was the same: an organisation that had stopped looking outside its own sector for answers, and a customer proposition that had drifted from what the customer actually valued. That pattern is the basis of his current work. The Inspired Leaders Network titled him “Masterthief” for the way he runs innovation as a translation exercise. Yacht interior designers helped redesign aircraft cabins. Disney’s queue management informed airport experience. Rugby refereeing logic was applied to banking risk and compliance. Each transfer was a structural match between a problem and a sector that had already solved something equivalent. Today he advises corporations and governments on innovation, customer focus and people leadership, chairs the EMEA advisory board for Emory University, sits as a Non-Executive Director of Chartered Brands, and is a Trustee of the Robert T Jones memorial scholarship. Emory has recognised the work with its Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award. Key speaking topics Cross-sector innovation and idea transfer Customer-led business transformation Brand strategy and customer proposition design Leadership of organisational change Service innovation in regulated industries Growth strategy after a turnaround Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding a customer proposition after a structural shift in their market CMOs, brand and customer experience leaders translating strategy into operating reality Innovation, transformation and strategy leads who need a working method, not a culture talk Boards in regulated sectors looking for an external operator’s view on customer and growth Audience outcomes A specific technique for sourcing innovation from outside the sector, with worked examples from aviation, rail and banking. A clearer view of where their organisation’s customer proposition has drifted from the customer’s actual definition of value. Concrete language to describe the difference between sector benchmarking and structural problem matching. Reference cases from BA, Eurostar and Sainsbury’s Bank that translate into their own context rather than sit as anecdotes.

Why organisations work with Hal Gregersen A specific, teachable method for recasting strategic problems: the four-minute “Question Burst,” published in Harvard Business Review and used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, the foundational research identifying the five behaviours, including questioning, that separate disruptive innovators from ordinary executives. A perspective shaped by 200-plus structured interviews with catalytic questioners, including founders and CEOs, plus a behavioural database of more than 25,000 leaders. MIT Sloan and former MIT Leadership Center director credentials that give his frameworks weight in C-suite and board settings, not just innovation labs. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list across five cycles, peaking at #16, and winner of the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management. Former Executive Director, MIT Leadership Center. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” (Harvard Business Review Press) and author of “Questions Are the Answer” (Harper Business, 2018). 2017 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership; ranked Thinkers50 #16 in 2019. Senior Fellow at Innosight; co-founder of the Innovator’s DNA consulting group. Previous faculty roles at INSEAD, London Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Aalto University. Biography The most consequential strategic mistakes rarely come from missing data. They come from accepting a flawed framing of the problem. The leaders who break that pattern share a behavioural habit, asking catalytic questions, that can be researched, isolated, and taught. That argument runs through twenty years of work at MIT Sloan, where Hal Gregersen serves as Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies and previously led the MIT Leadership Center. With Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, he co-authored “The Innovator’s DNA,” the research project that identified the five discovery skills, including questioning, observing, and experimenting, that separate disruptive innovators from competent operators. His subsequent book, “Questions Are the Answer,” drew on more than 200 interviews to formalise the practice. Out of that work came the “Question Burst,” a four-minute structured method published in Harvard Business Review’s “Better Brainstorming” and now used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia to reframe stuck problems before solutions are debated. The Thinkers50 ranking, peaking at #16 globally in 2019, and the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership reflect what senior teams actually take from his sessions: a transferable discipline for changing the questions in the room before changing the strategy. Key speaking topics Inquiry-driven leadership The Innovator’s DNA and the five discovery skills The Question Burst methodology Building cultures of constructive questioning Disruptive innovation as a leadership behaviour AI and the future of catalytic inquiry Leading through transitions Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams setting strategy under deep uncertainty. Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads building innovation capability beyond pilot programmes. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a research-grounded behavioural framework rather than a values statement. Audience outcomes A working command of the Question Burst method, applied live to a real organisational problem. The five Innovator’s DNA behaviours mapped onto the audience’s own roles, with a clear view of where they default to answering rather than questioning. A diagnostic for spotting the questions a leadership team is currently avoiding, and the strategic cost of that avoidance. Concrete language for embedding catalytic questioning into operating rhythms, board reviews, and innovation portfolios.