Leadership

Joanne Lockwood: The Inclusive Culture Expert Joanne Lockwood, the trailblazing Founder and CEO of SEE Change Happen, embodies transformative change in the realm of Inclusive Cultures. As an Inclusive Culture Expert and International Keynote Speaker, Joanne is not just a speaker and consultant; she is a beacon of inspiration, redefining the landscape of diversity and inclusion. Her life journey as a transgender woman amplifies her voice, making her an authentic and heartfelt mentor in the mission for building inclusive organisational cultures where everyone can thrive. Why Joanne? Are you seeking a transformative experience for your organisation? Joanne’s philosophy extends beyond mere compliance, creating deeply rooted, sustainable change that nurtures Positive People Experiences. Her collaborations with HR professionals, Talent Acquisition leaders, and Learning & Development experts do more than just address exclusion and bias; they reimagine Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, embedding these values into the very fabric of organisations. The Journey Joanne’s career transition is a narrative of courage and vision. From serving in the Royal Air Force and running a thriving IT business, she pivoted towards HR and People Consulting, driven by her passion for inclusivity. Guided by her mantra “Smile | Engage | Educate,” she partners with “People People” to foster environments where empathy, understanding, and inclusivity thrive. Accolades and Impact Joanne’s influence extends beyond consultancy. As a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, her expertise is widely recognised. Her documentary feature on Channel 4’s “The Making of Me,” her ‘Inclusion Bites’ podcast, and her role as a former Trustee for the LGBT+ Youth Homeless Charity, akt, showcase her multifaceted impact. Transformative Keynotes Joanne’s engaging keynotes resonate globally, transforming how audiences think, act, and feel about inclusivity. Her storytelling ability grips listeners, guiding them to overcome imposter syndrome, dismantle societal prejudices, and foster thriving environments. Whether it is an after-dinner event or an international seminar, Joanne’s insights leave a lasting, tangible impact. The Invitation Engage with Joanne Lockwood and embark on a transformative journey towards a truly inclusive workplace. Her passion, expertise, and personal narrative will light the way to meaningful change, making her an indispensable ally in your quest for inclusivity.  

Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Formula 1 team management Competitive strategy in elite sport Organisational transformation Governance and regulatory environments Engineering leadership Operational excellence under pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams Executive and board-level audiences Engineering and technical organisations High-performance and elite sport conferences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how Formula 1 teams are structured and led Practical insights into building and sustaining high-performance cultures Perspective on managing performance under regulatory and competitive constraints Lessons in operational leadership during periods of organisational transition Real-world examples of strategic decision-making in complex environments Why organisations work with Otmar Szafnauer Direct experience leading multiple Formula 1 teams at board and team principal level. Proven track record of guiding teams through ownership transitions and competitive rebuilding. Combines engineering expertise with executive-level commercial and governance experience. Brings practical insight from operating in one of the world’s most competitive and regulated sporting environments. Biography Otmar Szafnauer brings decades of senior leadership experience from the pinnacle of global motorsport, where performance, governance and operational precision determine competitive success. He has held team principal and executive roles across multiple Formula 1 organisations, leading complex teams in one of the most demanding and regulated environments in sport. At the Silverstone-based Formula 1 team that evolved from Force India to Racing Point and Aston Martin, he served in senior leadership for more than a decade, including as Team Principal and CEO. During this period, the team progressed to regular points-scoring performance, achieved a 4th place finish in the Constructors’ Championship, and secured a Formula 1 race victory. He later led the BWT Alpine Formula 1 Team as Team Principal, guiding the organisation to a 4th place Constructors’ Championship finish under the Alpine name. His leadership experience spans competitive rebuilding, ownership transition and performance management at board and operational level. Earlier in his career, Szafnauer held senior roles within Honda’s Formula 1 programme, rising to Vice President of Honda Racing Development. His responsibilities included executive leadership and involvement in regulatory-facing work within the sport’s governance structures. An engineer by training, he holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Wayne State University and a master’s degree in business and finance from the University of Detroit Mercy. He began his career at Ford Motor Company before moving into Formula 1 leadership roles in the late 1990s. Alongside his motorsport career, he founded the software company Soft Pauer and serves as its chairman, reflecting his continued interest in technology and data-driven performance.

Why organisations work with Bradley Scanes Five seasons inside the Red Bull Racing operation during four consecutive Verstappen world titles, with direct ownership of preparation, recovery, sleep, nutrition, and rehabilitation. The reference point is operational, not anecdotal. A career that crosses Olympic gymnastics, Olympic basketball, Premier League football medical leadership, and motorsport, which means his framing of high performance is not tied to one sport’s culture. Clinical foundations through the NHS plus two postgraduate physiotherapy degrees, which gives him a physiological grounding most performance speakers in this category do not have. Active current practice with endurance racing teams at Le Mans and Daytona and with Ironman World Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay, so the examples are current, not retrospective. Biography highlights Five-year tenure as Human Performance Consultant and Physiotherapist at Red Bull Racing, working directly with Max Verstappen, 2019 to 2024 Four-year Olympic cycle as performance coach with British Gymnastics, including work with Max Whitlock Four years with Team GB Olympic Basketball Former Head of Medical at Southend United FC; clinical foundation in the NHS BSc Sport and Exercise Science (Loughborough); MSc Physiotherapy; MSc Advanced Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy and Research (distinction) Founder and Director of Elite Formula PT; creator of the Complete Sports Practitioner mentorship programme and the Formula 1 Series Course Biography Formula 1 has the shortest feedback loop in elite performance. Decisions made on Thursday show up in a stopwatch on Sunday, and the operating environment inside a top team is built around removing every variable that could cost a tenth of a second. For five seasons, that environment was Bradley Scanes’ workplace. As Human Performance Consultant and Physiotherapist at Red Bull Racing from 2019 to 2024, he was responsible for Max Verstappen’s physical preparation, recovery, sleep, nutrition, and rehabilitation across the four world championship campaigns that defined the team’s modern era. The work sat inside an organisation of more than 1,800 staff where a pit stop is measured in tenths and a tyre temperature is a strategic input. The route in was unusual. Loughborough sport science, then a Masters in physiotherapy, then a second Masters in advanced musculoskeletal physiotherapy with distinction. NHS clinical work. Head of Medical at Southend United FC. Four years with Team GB Olympic Basketball and a full Olympic cycle with British Gymnastics, including campaigns with Max Whitlock. By the time he reached Red Bull, the question of how athletes perform under pressure had been examined from five different sports and two clinical settings. He now runs Elite Formula PT, coaches Ironman World Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay, and works across endurance racing teams competing at Le Mans and Daytona. The training programmes he has written for the next generation of sports practitioners, including the Formula 1 Series Course, are taught from inside that current practice, which is why senior corporate audiences come away with operating language they can actually use the following Monday. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Recovery and sleep as performance variables Team execution under pressure Marginal gains and continuous improvement Safety, risk and learning culture in elite sport Leadership lessons from Formula 1 Composure and decision-making under load Ideal for Executive leadership teams stress-testing how they perform under sustained pressure Operations and transformation leaders looking at cycle time, error rate, and team execution Sales and commercial leadership teams preparing for high-stakes quarters People and talent leaders rebuilding cultures around recovery, focus and sustained output Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for recovery, sleep, and composure as measurable inputs to senior performance A concrete picture of how a top F1 team reduces error and increases cycle precision under time pressure Reference points from Olympic and motorsport environments that translate to corporate execution A sharper sense of how elite teams treat safety, risk and learning culture as performance levers rather than compliance

Why organisations work with Harmeen Mehta She has run digital and AI transformation as an operator inside three of the world’s largest technology and telecoms incumbents (Equinix, BT Group, Bharti Airtel), not as an external advisor. She has built and scaled new digital businesses, including Airtel Payments Bank and Airtel’s cloud and security units, giving her credibility on revenue creation, not only cost out. Her board work at Lloyds Banking Group, including the IT and Cyber Advisory Forum, gives her direct line of sight on how non-executive directors expect technology risk and AI governance to be discussed. Recipient of the 2018 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award and the TM Forum Global CIO of the Year, both peer-judged on execution. Biography highlights Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, Equinix (from April 2025). Former Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT Group (March 2021 to September 2024). Former Global CIO and CEO of Cloud and Security Business, Bharti Airtel (seven years). Earlier CIO positions at BBVA, HSBC, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Independent Non-Executive Director, Lloyds Banking Group; Vice-Chair and Board member, TM Forum. 2018 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award; TM Forum Global CIO of the Year; Women Economic Forum “Woman of the Decade in Innovation and Leadership.” Biography The gap between AI pilot and AI in production is where most enterprise value is currently lost. Boards want commercial outcomes; CIOs are still cleaning up legacy estate. Mehta has spent the last decade operating exactly in that gap, and her career arc is unusual because she has done it across three sectors. At Bharti Airtel, as Global CIO and head of the cloud and security business, she launched Airtel Payments Bank and built standalone cloud and security units serving hundreds of millions of customers. This is operating P&L experience, not advisory work. At BT Group, as the first Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, she ran a Group-wide programme that simplified a complex IT estate, scaled digital channels, and put AI into production across customer operations. Earlier CIO roles at BBVA, HSBC, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch gave her grounding in regulated environments, where governance, cyber risk, and resilience are not afterthoughts. That perspective now feeds her board work at Lloyds Banking Group, where she sits on the IT and Cyber Advisory Forum, and at TM Forum, where she is Vice-Chair and chairs the Appointments and Governance Committee. In April 2025 she joined Equinix as Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, reporting to CEO Adaire Fox-Martin. The 2018 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award and the TM Forum Global CIO of the Year recognise the same thing the boards she serves on do: she is judged on what she ships, not what she proposes. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and operational deployment Digital transformation in complex incumbents Cybersecurity and technology risk at board level Data strategy and the commercial value of data Cloud, platforms, and modern engineering operating models Women in technology and senior STEM leadership Building new digital businesses inside large groups Ideal for Boards and audit, risk, and technology committees commissioning conversations on AI governance and cyber resilience. CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, and transformation leads moving AI from pilot to production. Telecoms, financial services, and digital infrastructure leadership teams confronting legacy estate and platform redesign. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI investment converts to commercial value and where it stalls. An operator’s perspective on what good AI governance looks like inside a regulated, board-supervised business. A practical read on how digital channels and platforms produce revenue, not only cost reduction. Sharper questions to ask the executive team about AI, cyber, and data risk.

Key speaking topics In extremis leadership Leadership in crisis and high-risk environments Leader development in higher education Military leadership principles for business Organisational leadership capability building Executive coaching and performance under pressure Ideal for Senior executives and C-suite leaders Boards and governance groups Leadership development and talent teams Organisations operating in high-risk or high-stakes sectors Audience outcomes Clear understanding of leadership principles in extreme conditions Practical frameworks for leading under pressure Insight into structured leader development models Greater clarity on building leadership capability across institutions Why organisations work with Thomas Kolditz Combines senior military command experience with academic leadership and research expertise. Brings cross-sector credibility spanning defence, higher education, and executive coaching. Provides structured, research-informed approaches to leadership development. Offers practical insight into preparing leaders for complex, high-consequence environments. Biography Thomas Kolditz brings together senior military command, academic leadership and executive coaching to help organisations strengthen leadership capability in high-stakes environments. A retired U.S. Army Brigadier General and social psychologist, he is widely recognised for his work on leadership in extreme and crisis conditions. He is the founding Director of Rice University’s Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders, where he shaped a comprehensive, institution-wide approach to developing leadership at scale. His work in higher education also includes serving as Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Director of the Leadership Development Program at Yale School of Management. Earlier in his career, he led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, overseeing the development of leadership education within one of the world’s most established military institutions. His experience also includes service in Pentagon policy analysis and concept development roles focused on leadership and human performance. Kolditz is the author of In Extremis Leadership, a study of leading in life-threatening and high-risk situations, and co-author of Leadership Reckoning, which examines how higher education can more effectively develop the leaders society requires. His research includes work conducted during combat operations in Iraq and has contributed to the understanding of leadership under pressure. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, he is a recipient of the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal and the Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership. He holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Missouri, a BA from Vanderbilt University, three Master’s degrees, and an ICF coaching credential, and has received an honorary doctorate from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Through Saxon Castle LLC, he advises senior leaders and institutions on building resilient, principled leadership in complex, high-consequence contexts.

Why organisations work with Stephanie Davies A working method that gets cynical adult audiences to engage with behaviour change without the eye-rolling that usually accompanies culture training. A track record on hard conversations, with a programme at HSBC training more than 500 leaders to handle performance and feedback without flinching. A point of view on engagement grounded in published psychology, set out in her book Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter (Crown House). Two decades inside corporate culture work across HSBC, Nespresso, Nando’s, and government, so the content lands as practitioner advice rather than commentary. A delivery style that holds the room. The comedy training is a tool for retention and recall, not a gimmick layered on top of the content. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Laughology, founded 2006. Author of Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, Crown House Publishing. Master’s-level training in psychology, focused on humour and organisational performance. Designed and delivered performance-conversation training at HSBC for 500+ leaders. Culture and behaviour programmes with Nespresso, Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and UK government departments. Regular columnist for Training Journal; previously an award-winning stand-up comedian. Biography Most culture programmes lose the room in the first ten minutes. Adults arrive sceptical, the language is corporate, and the behaviours being asked of them feel performative. Laughology was built to solve that delivery problem. Stephanie Davies founded it in 2006 to pair applied psychology with the craft of stand-up, and uses humour as a mechanism for behaviour change rather than as decoration. The substance sits behind the style. Her book, Laughology: Improve Your Life with the Science of Laughter, sets out humour as a thinking skill, drawing on positive psychology and the cognitive research on how laughter shifts perspective and learning retention. Her master’s-level work in psychology runs through the firm’s programmes on engagement, leadership behaviour, and feedback. The client list reflects the practical bias. HSBC commissioned performance-conversation training for more than 500 leaders. Nespresso brought her in to strengthen retail leadership. Nando’s, Virgin, O2, and government departments have used Laughology for culture and behaviour work. Across these, the brief is consistent: get people to commit to a change in how they behave, not just understand why it matters. That practitioner record is what distinguishes her in a crowded happiness-at-work category. Most speakers in the space arrive from coaching, HR, or pop-psychology. Davies arrives from a working comedy career and a psychology specialism in humour, with twenty years of corporate delivery behind her. Key speaking topics Workplace engagement and culture change Psychology of humour at work Performance and feedback conversations Behaviour change in large organisations Leadership development and team culture Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Resilience and positive psychology Ideal for CHROs and people directors running engagement or culture change agendas. L&D and OD leads commissioning leadership, feedback, or behaviour-change programmes. Boards and executive teams looking for a substantive culture session that an internal audience will actually engage with. Conference organisers programming a keynote that has to do real work on a wellbeing or culture theme. Audience outcomes A working model of humour as a behaviour-change tool, not as entertainment. Language and techniques for running performance and feedback conversations without avoidance. A clearer view of what drives engagement at the level of daily behaviour. Practical positive-psychology techniques for resilience and team morale. A session people actually remember, which is the precondition for any of the above changing behaviour.

About Greg Orme Greg is an award-winning author and thinker on leadership development and organisational transformation in the digital economy. He delivers value to global clients as a C-Suite advisor, keynote speaker, educator, coach, and facilitator who’s delivered more than 400 talks to executive audiences around the world. He helps leaders and teams thrive in a world of accelerating change through creative thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit. Greg was named as one of HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers in 2022. His book The Human Edge, How Curiosity and Creativity are your Superpowers in The Digital Economy (Pearson) won Business Book of The Year 2020 and has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean. He leads organisational change and leadership development programmes with global clients in telecoms, engineering, banking & insurance, automotive, FMCG, manufacturing and technology. Clients include Arup, Microsoft, BMW, Accenture, Novo Nordisk, Virgin Media 02, Sunrise UPC, Tata Steel, EY, Sky, International Olympic Committee, ING, Sberbank, Faurecia Group, Ogilvy, eBay, The World Economic Forum, Kantar Group, YPO, Randstad Group, Cognizant, PVH Group and Arcadia He was the founding CEO of London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business. Greg has appeared on BBC World News and in The Financial Times and is a regular contributor to Forbes. He published his first acclaimed book in 2014: The Spark, how to ignite and lead business creativity (FT Publishing).

Why organisations work with Terry Lundgren He executed one of the largest retail mergers in US history and rebranded more than 400 regional stores under a single national brand inside twelve months, a case study in integration that boards rarely get to hear from the person who ran it. He led a Fortune 100 retailer through the early omnichannel transition, making capital and organisational decisions that other CEOs were still debating. He sits on the board of Procter and Gamble and chairs its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, which gives him a current view of how blue-chip boards are thinking about CEO succession and operating performance. His Deming Cup citation from Columbia Business School recognises sustained continuous improvement at scale, not a single transformation moment, which is the harder leadership question for most enterprises. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. from 2003 to 2017; executive chairman until January 2018. Led the 2005 Federated/May acquisition, the largest US retail transaction at the time, creating a single national Macy’s brand from more than 400 regional stores. Director of The Procter & Gamble Company since 2013; chair of the Compensation and Leadership Development Committee. Executive in Residence, Columbia Business School; namesake of the Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona. Recipient of the National Retail Federation Gold Medal Award (2008) and the Columbia Business School Deming Cup (2012). Named one of Barron’s Top 30 CEOs in the World (2015) and WWD Newsmaker of the Year (2014). Biography Federated’s USD 11 billion acquisition of The May Department Stores Company in 2005 was, at the time, the largest retail transaction in US history. Inside a year, more than 400 regional department stores across the country had been rebranded under the Macy’s name. Terry Lundgren was the CEO who ran that integration. He had joined Federated in 1975, run Bullocks Wilshire at 35, served as Chairman and CEO of Neiman Marcus, and returned to Federated in 1994. By the time he became CEO of Macy’s, Inc. in 2003, he had spent almost three decades inside the operating layer of American retail. The fourteen years that followed are the substance of his speaking work. He launched the “My Macy’s” localisation programme in 2008, an early answer to the question of how a national chain competes with category specialists. He made the capital and organisational decisions that pulled Macy’s into omnichannel before most peers had committed. By his final year as CEO in fiscal 2016, the company was running sales of roughly USD 26 billion with about 140,000 employees. Since stepping down he has sat on the board of Procter and Gamble, chairing its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, and served as an Executive in Residence at Columbia Business School. The Deming Cup citation from Columbia, awarded for continuous improvement at scale, is the credential that distinguishes him from CEOs known for a single defining moment. Key speaking topics Large-scale merger integration CEO leadership through structural change Omnichannel and the reinvention of retail Continuous improvement at enterprise scale Brand strategy and national brand building CEO succession and board-level talent decisions Ideal for CEO and board audiences working through merger integration or major restructuring. CHROs and Chief Talent Officers focused on CEO succession, executive development, and operating discipline. Retail, consumer, and consumer-adjacent leadership teams navigating channel transitions and brand consolidation. Senior leadership programmes inside large enterprises where the case studies need to come from someone who ran the company. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what merger integration costs an organisation operationally, culturally, and in customer experience. A clearer view of the decisions a CEO actually faces when committing capital to a channel transition. Reference points from a fourteen-year tenure for how continuous improvement is institutionalised, not just announced. A board-level perspective on what compensation, succession, and leadership development look like inside a current Fortune 50 company.

Why organisations work with Jesse Israel He has run mass meditations for arena-sized audiences, including stops on Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision tour with WW. Few speakers can hold the attention of 15,000 people in silence; he can, and that capability translates directly into all-hands and conference settings. His Amplified Quiet Framework gives leaders a usable structure for cutting through external, mental and physical noise, rather than a generic “mindfulness 101” overview. He bridges cultural credibility and corporate utility: Audible distribution, collaborations with Deepak Chopra, and a roster of corporate clients including Google, American Express, Aetna, Ford and Charles Schwab. He came to meditation from inside a high-pressure commercial career (Cantora Records, MGMT), which gives him a language senior teams accept: performance, focus, recovery, output. Biography highlights Founder of The Big Quiet, a mass meditation movement that has run sold-out arena gatherings and global virtual events. Personally invited by Oprah Winfrey to keynote her 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus arena tour with WW. Co-host of virtual mass meditation broadcasts with Deepak Chopra. Five-time Audible bestseller through a worldwide distribution deal with Audible Originals under The Big Quiet imprint. Co-founded Cantora Records at NYU in 2005, the independent label that signed MGMT and released Time to Pretend. Corporate keynote clients include Google, American Express, Aetna, Ford and Charles Schwab; work covered in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, The New York Times and AdWeek. Biography The hardest thing to deliver inside a high-performing organisation right now is not information. It is attention. Workforces are saturated with input, and the cost shows up as burnout, shallow thinking and meetings that leave teams more depleted than aligned. Jesse Israel built a career around fixing exactly that. He founded The Big Quiet, a mass meditation movement that has filled arenas with thousands of people sitting in silence together, and he was personally invited by Oprah Winfrey to keynote each stop of her 2020 Vision arena tour with WW, where he led roughly 15,000 people through guided meditations per show. His Amplified Quiet Framework is the version of that work designed for leadership teams. It treats stillness as a performance practice: a way of quieting external noise, mental noise and physical noise so that judgement, presence and recovery can return. Through a worldwide deal with Audible, five of his Big Quiet originals have become Audible top 10 bestsellers, and he has co-hosted global meditations with Deepak Chopra. What makes him different from most wellbeing speakers is the route in. He co-founded Cantora Records out of an NYU dorm room in 2005, signing MGMT and helping launch their breakout release Time to Pretend. He built and ran that label for nine years before turning to meditation, and corporate clients including Google, American Express, Aetna, Ford and Charles Schwab now book him to bring that same operator’s lens to wellbeing inside their organisations. Key speaking topics Mindfulness and meditation in the workplace Mental performance and resilience under pressure Leadership presence and attention Burnout, stress and recovery Designing large-scale shared experiences Career reinvention and personal change Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing designing the next iteration of their mental health and resilience strategy Leadership teams and senior offsites looking for a high-credibility wellbeing intervention rather than a clinical one All-company conferences and town halls where a calm, focused collective moment is part of the design Sales and high-performance teams under sustained pressure to perform through uncertainty Audience outcomes A working framework for quieting external, mental and physical noise that leaders can apply the same week A direct experience of guided meditation at scale, often the first time senior audiences have tried it in a work setting Sharper language for talking about attention, focus and recovery as performance issues, not soft topics Practical entry points for embedding short stillness practices into team routines, offsites and large gatherings

Why organisations work with Bobby Umar He treats connection as a teachable skill, not a personality trait. The 5 C’s of Connection framework, drawn from his TEDxUWO talk, gives leaders and employees a structured way to build trust, credibility and influence inside and outside the organisation. His background is unusually broad for the topic: engineering at Bombardier, brand marketing at Kraft and Unilever, and Second City improv training. That mix shows up in how the work lands, structured enough for senior audiences, performative enough to hold a room. He is a recognised authority on LinkedIn as a professional channel. Multiple LinkedIn Top Voice designations, including an early Presentation Skills badge, mean leaders learn from someone who has built an audience the way they are being asked to. Inc. Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker and five-time TEDx speaker, which gives senior audiences confidence that the craft and delivery will match the content. Biography highlights Five-time TEDx speaker, including “The 5 C’s of Connection” (TEDxUWO) and “School: Learning to Fly” (TEDxUTSC). Inc. Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker, listed alongside Richard Branson and Brené Brown. LinkedIn Top Voice, with early badges for Presentation Skills, Thought Leadership and Personal Branding. Author of How to Network Anytime, Anywhere, With Anyone (#1 on three Amazon bestseller lists). Founder of DYPB (Discover Your Personal Brand), described as North America’s largest personal branding event, with 60 experts and over 300 delegates. Career background spans Bombardier (engineering), Kraft and Unilever (brand marketing) and Second City (performing arts). B.Eng., McGill University; MBA, McMaster University. Biography Most leadership development still treats connection as a soft skill that either comes naturally or does not. Bobby Umar’s work argues the opposite. His 5 C’s of Connection framework, popularised through a viral TEDxUWO talk, breaks authentic relationship-building into components that can be taught to engineers, sales teams, senior executives and entry-level employees alike. That argument is grounded in an unusual professional path. Before becoming a speaker, Umar trained as an engineer at McGill, ran brand marketing for Kraft and Unilever, took an MBA at McMaster and studied improv at Second City. The result is a practitioner who can move between the analytical and the performative without losing either audience. His credentials inside the speaking and creator economy are deep. Five TEDx talks. Inc. Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. LinkedIn Top Voice across several categories. Author of How to Network Anytime, Anywhere, With Anyone, a #1 Amazon bestseller. Founder of DYPB, the personal branding conference that became the largest of its kind in North America. What makes him commercially useful to organisations is the translation step. Personal branding, networking, social audio, vulnerable storytelling: these are not pitched as marketing tactics but as the connective infrastructure of modern professional life. For organisations trying to develop influential leaders, engaged employees and externally visible experts, Umar offers a practical, structured account of how connection actually works. Key speaking topics Authentic networking and relationship-building Personal branding for leaders and employees LinkedIn presence and professional digital reputation Vulnerable storytelling and leadership communication Heart-centred leadership Employee advocacy and internal brand-building Connection skills in hybrid and remote teams Ideal for CHROs, talent and L&D leaders investing in employee engagement, advocacy and internal communication. Marketing, communications and executive leaders building external thought leadership programmes for senior teams. Sales and business development functions where individual networking capability drives revenue. Conference organisers building agendas on leadership, future of work, employee experience or culture. Audience outcomes A working language for connection, anchored in the 5 C’s framework, that audiences can apply immediately to internal and external relationships. A clearer view of how personal branding intersects with leadership credibility, especially on LinkedIn. Practical methods for using storytelling, vulnerability and digital channels to build trust at scale. A reframing of networking as a professional discipline, not a transactional activity reserved for extroverts. Confidence to put senior leaders and frontline employees on visible platforms without sounding scripted.

Why organisations work with Alison Levine A leadership curriculum tested in two unforgiving classrooms: the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership at West Point, and the death zone above 8,000 metres on Everest. A bestseller, On the Edge, with a substantive thesis on decision-making under uncertainty, endorsed by Mike Krzyzewski and named 800-CEO-READ Best Business Book in the leadership category. A board seat at the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke, which gives her direct line of sight into how the most-studied executive teams in sport and business actually behave under stress. A track record across the Seven Summits, both Poles, and a 600-mile West Antarctic traverse, which lets her speak about cohesion and risk from inside the conditions, not as commentary on them. Biography highlights Team captain, first American Women’s Everest Expedition. Completed the Adventure Grand Slam: Seven Summits plus skiing to both Poles. Fewer than forty people have done it. Adjunct professor for four years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership. Board member and former Senior Fellow, Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, Duke University. MBA, Duke. New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of On the Edge: Leadership Lessons from Mount Everest and Other Extreme Environments, foreword by Mike Krzyzewski. Executive producer of Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest (2022), which screened at 45 festivals and won 20 awards. Biography The orthodox leadership playbook still assumes a degree of environmental stability that most senior leaders no longer recognise from their own week. Conditions change before plans land. Information is partial, teams are tired, and the cost of a wrong call rises while the time to make it shrinks. This is the territory Levine has spent twenty years in, first on expedition and later in a West Point classroom. She served as team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, has summited the highest peak on each continent, skied to both Poles, and in 2008 completed a 600-mile traverse across West Antarctica hauling a 150-pound sled. She did all of this while managing Raynaud’s disease and the aftermath of three heart surgeries. The expeditions are not the message. They are the laboratory. For four years she taught leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership, before transitioning to the Thayer Leader Development Group. She sits on the board of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke, where she earned her MBA, and was a Senior Fellow there. On the Edge, her bestseller, distils what holds and what fails when teams operate at the edge of capacity, and was named Best Business Book of the Year by 800-CEO-READ in the leadership category. What buyers get is a serious operator with a serious classroom record, who can describe the precise mechanics of decision-making, team cohesion, and the strategic use of fear in conditions where being wrong is final. Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest, the documentary she executive-produced about Nepal’s first female Everest summiter, sits alongside the rest of the work as evidence that her interest in leadership extends beyond her own expeditions. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in extreme environments Team cohesion under pressure Risk, fear, and ego in senior leadership Resilience and recovery from setback Inclusive and values-based leadership Personal performance under physiological constraint Ideal for Boards and executive committees navigating sustained volatility Senior leadership offsites for operating teams in regulated, safety-critical, or capital-intensive sectors Military, law enforcement, emergency services and first-responder leadership programmes CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development curricula Audience outcomes A working model for making sound decisions when information is incomplete and conditions are deteriorating. A clearer view of how high-performing teams hold cohesion under fatigue, fear and disagreement. Specific tools for separating useful fear from career-limiting risk aversion. A reframe of setbacks and physical limitations as data, not as identity. Confidence that leadership lessons from the death zone translate into board-level decision practice, not metaphor.

Why organisations work with Simon T. Bailey Original research on workforce resilience. His State of Working America: Thriving in Resilience and Brilliance study surveyed over 1,000 US workers and underpins his keynotes with current data rather than received wisdom. A customer experience playbook rooted in operational reality. His SPARK methodology distils what he learned as Sales Director of the Disney Institute into practices that frontline teams can apply. Award-winning published work. Resilience@Work won both the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award, signalling editorial credibility beyond bureau-circuit hype. Reach that translates into recognition inside client organisations. His 14 LinkedIn Learning courses have reached more than 400,000 professionals, so audiences often arrive already familiar with the material. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Brilliance Institute, Inc. Former Sales Director, Disney Institute (seven years as a Disney cast member). Author of 11 books, including Release Your Brilliance (HarperCollins), ranked No. 17 by 800-CEO-Read among the top 100 books being read by corporate America. Resilience@Work recipient of the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award. Named to Success magazine’s Top 25 thought leaders alongside Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey. 14 LinkedIn Learning courses with a combined audience of 400,000+ professionals. Executive MBA, University of East London; three honorary doctorates, most recently a Doctorate of Science in Business Administration from Cleary University. Biography Disney spent decades teaching the world that service is a system, not a personality trait. Bailey was inside that system as Sales Director of the Disney Institute, and his work since has carried that operating discipline into the wider corporate world. The premise of his current research is straightforward. Engagement scores plateaued during the pandemic and have not recovered. His State of Working America: Thriving in Resilience and Brilliance report, drawn from over 1,000 US workers, gives leaders an evidence base for why and what to do about it. Resilience@Work, the book built on that research, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Press Award. The intellectual through-line across his 11 books is the connection between how people feel about their work and what customers experience at the other end. Release Your Brilliance, published by HarperCollins, was ranked among the top 100 books being read by corporate America. His SPARK methodology turns that thesis into operating practice for frontline teams. His reach inside organisations is unusual for a keynote author. 14 LinkedIn Learning courses have placed his material in front of 400,000+ professionals, which is why Success magazine listed him among its Top 25 thought leaders, in the company of Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey. Key speaking topics Workforce resilience Employee engagement and retention Customer experience and service culture Leadership development Personal and professional brilliance Inclusive and values-based leadership Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement after sustained workforce fatigue Customer experience and service leaders translating brand promise into frontline behaviour Sales and commercial leadership teams looking to renew energy and conviction HR and L&D summits, organisational town halls, and customer-facing field events Audience outcomes A current evidence base, drawn from Bailey’s State of Working America research, on what is driving disengagement and what restores it. The SPARK service framework, translated into specific behaviours frontline teams can adopt the following week. Renewed conviction in the link between how employees feel and what customers experience. A vocabulary leaders can use to talk about resilience and brilliance without slipping into wellness platitudes.