Leadership

Why organisations work with Dee Snider He has a verifiable, on-the-record case study of standing alone in front of a hostile Senate committee and winning the argument, used as a live example of composure under public pressure. His material is built on four decades of reinvention across music, film, voice acting and production, giving audiences a concrete arc rather than a generic resilience pitch. He delivers a celebrity main-stage presence that conference organisers can use to lift the energy of a sales kick-off, anniversary dinner or awards night without losing substance. His free-speech story sits inside a serious cultural moment, the PMRC hearings, and lands with senior audiences who lived through it. Biography highlights Lead singer of Twisted Sister, writer of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, both certified rock anthems of the 1980s. Testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in September 1985 against the Parents Music Resource Center, alongside Frank Zappa and John Denver. Author of the autobiography “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic”, published by Gallery Books. Screenwriter of the cult horror feature “Strangeland” and President of production company Defiant Artists. Keynote speaker at “The World’s Most Dangerous Meeting” in Gothenburg, drawing on career lessons for a corporate audience. Voice actor and on-camera presence across film, television and video games, with collaborators including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gordon Ramsay. Biography In September 1985 a U.S. Senate committee called three musicians to testify on the moral content of rock lyrics. Frank Zappa, John Denver and the leather-clad lead singer of Twisted Sister sat in front of the cameras and refused to apologise. The hearing became the founding moment of the modern free-speech argument over music. That afternoon is the spine of Snider’s speaking career. He was 30 years old, painted, and treated by the room as a public enemy. He stayed calm, dismantled the accusations against “We’re Not Gonna Take It” line by line, and walked out with the cultural argument largely intact. Forty years later the moment is still used in journalism and law classes as a case study in composure under public attack. The career around it gives the story weight. Twisted Sister sold millions of records. Snider went on to write the horror film “Strangeland”, run a production company in Defiant Artists, voice video game and animated characters, and publish “Shut Up and Give Me the Mic” with Gallery Books. The through-line is reinvention without softening the original position. For corporate audiences he uses that material to talk about holding a line under public pressure, surviving repeated career reinvention, and the practical content of not backing down when the room wants you to. The delivery is funny, profane and self-deprecating. The argument underneath is serious. Key speaking topics Free speech and standing by a position under public attack Self-leadership and composure under pressure Career reinvention across four decades Creative resilience Storytelling for senior audiences The 1985 PMRC hearings as a leadership case study Ideal for Sales kick-offs, anniversary dinners and awards nights looking for a celebrity main-stage presence with a serious underlying argument Leadership offsites using personal-resilience case studies to anchor a session on composure Communications, brand and public affairs teams studying how to defend a position in hostile public settings Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the 1985 PMRC Senate hearings from one of the three musicians who testified A concrete personal example of holding a position under sustained public attack A four-decade case study of career reinvention without abandoning the original work An entertaining, profane and self-deprecating main-stage set that lifts the energy of a corporate room

Why organisations work with Rachel Stone A coach’s diagnostic eye rather than a speaker’s set piece. She reads what is actually happening between a leader and their team and names it, then offers next steps the leader can act on the same week. Direct experience of the operator’s chair. Commercial buying, retail management at Safeways PLC, classroom teaching and senior college leadership, before twelve years coaching 130-plus companies. The advice lands because it is grounded in those rooms. A clear behavioural model. The “breathe life into people” frame and the Kindness Economy (People, Planet, Profit) give leaders a vocabulary for what trust-based leadership looks like day to day. Tools that travel back to the workplace. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone diagnostics give audiences something concrete to use with their own teams, not just a takeaway feeling. Biography highlights Founder of Rachel Stone Coaching Ltd, established 2012. Author of “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders” (2024), foreword by Professor Damian Hughes. Accredited ICQ Global DISC Profile and Growth Zone Practitioner. Qualified business coach via The Coaching Academy. Coached 130-plus companies and 250-plus leaders across construction, retail, education, manufacturing and professional services. Earlier career: commercial buyer in electronics, retail manager at Safeways PLC, Business Studies teacher and senior college manager. Biography Most managers are promoted for being good at the job they used to do. The job they now have is different, and the gap between the two is where engagement breaks, conflict festers and culture quietly drifts. Stone built her practice around closing that gap. She works with business owners and senior teams on the small behavioural shifts that change how a team performs, not on abstract leadership theory. Her route into coaching was unusual. After commercial buying in electronics and retail management at Safeways PLC, she retrained as a Business Studies teacher, took on senior college management, and in 2012 left to start her own coaching business. Twelve years later the client list runs to more than 130 companies across construction, retail, education and manufacturing, with over 250 individual leaders coached. The work spans board-level transformation, embedding coaching cultures, and middle-management development. The intellectual frame is set out in her 2024 book “Spend Time With Me: A Story to Inspire Transformational Leaders”, with a foreword by Professor Damian Hughes of the High Performance podcast. The book pairs her own story with the principles she teaches: trust as a leadership currency, the “Kindness Economy” of People, Planet and Profit, and the idea that leaders “breathe life into people” rather than extract performance from them. Audiences leave with usable language and a diagnostic. ICQ Global DISC and Growth Zone tools give leaders a way to read their own behaviour and their team’s. The delivery is pacey and pragmatic; the focus is on what a leader can do differently on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Transformational leadership Coaching cultures and coaching as a leadership skill Trust and team performance Communication and conflict in teams Employee engagement and burnout Resilience and self-management for leaders The Kindness Economy: People, Planet, Profit Workplace culture in hybrid and growing businesses Ideal for Business owners and founder-CEOs scaling beyond a hands-on operating model. Senior leadership teams in mid-market and SME organisations who need a behavioural reset, not a strategy day. HR and L&D leads commissioning manager development or embedding a coaching culture. Leadership groups in sectors that promote technically (construction, manufacturing, professional services, education). Audience outcomes A clearer read on how their own behaviour shapes their team’s engagement and output. Practical coaching techniques managers can use in one-to-ones and team conversations from the next working day. A shared vocabulary for trust, conflict and culture that survives beyond the session. Tools to spot early signs of burnout and disengagement before they cost the business people. A working definition of transformational leadership grounded in behaviour, not theory.

Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence in leadership Leadership performance under pressure Team effectiveness High-stakes communication Personal leadership accountability Momentum and performance habits Executive presence and influence Ideal for Senior leaders and executives Leadership teams People managers Organisations focused on performance and culture Audience outcomes A practical framework for managing high-pressure leadership moments Clear strategies to strengthen emotional intelligence in the workplace Tools to improve communication and relationship management Greater awareness of personal leadership impact Practical habits to build performance momentum Why organisations work with Steve Gutzler Combines keynote delivery with executive coaching expertise Provides a structured, repeatable framework for leadership under pressure Aligns emotional intelligence with measurable performance improvement Brings experience working with global brands and professional sports organisations Delivers commercially relevant leadership insights for corporate audiences Biography Steve Gutzler works with organisations seeking to strengthen leadership performance, emotional intelligence, and team effectiveness in high-pressure environments. As President of Leadership Quest, he partners with senior leaders and executive teams to improve how they lead, communicate, and perform when it matters most. His work centres on the practical application of emotional intelligence in business. Through his “17% moments” framework, Steve helps leaders manage critical interactions, reduce reactive behaviour, and build stronger relationships that directly impact performance and culture. A keynote speaker and executive coach, he brings a structured, repeatable approach to leadership development that resonates with board-level audiences, HR leaders, and growth-focused organisations. His programmes are designed to translate insight into measurable behavioural change across teams. Steve is the author of Splash: The Ten Remarkable Traits to Build Momentum in Life and Leadership and co-author of Lead with No Fear. His published materials also include a guided Life & Leadership journal, reinforcing his focus on practical tools for sustained leadership growth. He has delivered presentations for organisations including Microsoft, Starbucks, the Seattle Seahawks, Spotify, Boeing, Cisco, Starwood Hotels, Ritz-Carlton, and the U.S. Department of Commerce, supporting leaders across corporate, government, and professional environments.

Why organisations work with Mark Sanborn The Fred Factor is a recognised internal language for service standards. Costco, FedEx, Harley-Davidson and ServiceMaster have used the book and keynote to give frontline employees a shared definition of what extraordinary looks like. He treats leadership as a behaviour, not a role. You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader gives organisations a way to mobilise discretionary effort from people who will never sit on an executive team. The Potential Matrix from The Potential Principle is a named framework for closing the gap between current performance and capacity, structured around four domains and four tools that managers can apply without consultants. Hall of Fame credentials with weight. Past President of the National Speakers Association, holder of the Cavett Award and a CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame member, the three highest distinctions the profession confers. Leadership Expert in Residence at High Point University since 2019, an active academic affiliation that grounds the keynote content in current student and faculty work. Biography highlights Author of The Fred Factor, over two million copies sold in 20-plus languages, a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and BusinessWeek bestseller. Eight books in total, including You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader, The Potential Principle and The Intention Imperative, published by Currency, Crown Business and Thomas Nelson. Leadership Expert in Residence, High Point University. Past President, National Speakers Association; CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame; Certified Speaking Professional. Cavett Award recipient, the NSA’s highest honour. Leadership programmes taught in 90 countries via Crestcom International; client list includes Costco, FedEx, Harley-Davidson, Cisco, IBM, KPMG, ESPN, General Motors and Toyota Financial Services. Biography Postal carrier Fred Shea delivered mail in Denver with such care that he became the subject of a book that has sold over two million copies in more than twenty languages. The Fred Factor turned a single neighbourhood story into a corporate standard for service, and gave Mark Sanborn the platform from which a much broader body of leadership work has been built. The work treats leadership as a daily behaviour rather than a position. You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader argues that organisations underestimate the influence of people without formal authority, and overestimate the influence of those who only have it. The argument lands with operating leaders because it maps onto the gap they already feel between strategy and execution. Subsequent books extend the same thesis into structured frameworks. The Potential Principle sets out the Potential Matrix, four domains (thinking, performing, learning, reflecting) crossed with four tools (disrupt, refocus, engage, expand), for closing the distance between current and capable performance. The Intention Imperative argues that culture, inspiration and emotion are the three deliberate practices of the modern leader, not the soft consequences of good strategy. The credentials are unusually concentrated. Past President of the National Speakers Association, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame member, holder of the Cavett Award, Leadership Expert in Residence at High Point University, and creator of training programmes taught in 90 countries through Crestcom International. Costco, FedEx, Harley-Davidson and IBM return to the same body of work because it makes service and leadership behaviour teachable at scale. Key speaking topics Everyday leadership without formal authority Service excellence and customer experience standards Organisational performance and accountability cultures Personal and team potential Intentional culture and engagement Leadership legacy and succession Ideal for CEOs and operating leaders setting service or culture standards across a distributed workforce CHROs and learning leaders building scalable leadership development for non-managerial staff Customer experience and service leaders in retail, hospitality, logistics and financial services Franchise and dealer networks where brand experience depends on people the corporate centre does not employ Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for what extraordinary service looks like inside their own organisation A practical model for developing leadership behaviour in employees who hold no formal authority The Potential Matrix as a working tool for identifying where individual and team performance is capped A clearer view of culture, inspiration and emotion as deliberate leadership practices, not side effects Specific behavioural changes that frontline managers and individual contributors can apply the next working day

Why organisations work with Jim Knight Twenty years inside Hard Rock International leading global training, not a consultant looking in from outside. The frameworks he teaches were stress-tested across cafes, hotels, and casinos in fifty-plus countries. A culture and service argument anchored in three books (Culture That Rocks, Leadership That Rocks, Service That Rocks), the last two Amazon No. 1 bestsellers, with a consistent thesis rather than a topic catalogue. Practical fluency in the operating mechanics of training, onboarding, and frontline development. The work translates for hospitality, retail, franchise, and any business where the customer meets the brand through a junior employee. A delivery style built for energy-driven audiences. Knight’s background as a music teacher and his Hard Rock pedigree mean conference and franchise audiences treat him as a peer, not an academic visitor. Biography highlights Twenty years leading Global Training and Development for Hard Rock International, including Corporate University, e-learning, and leadership transition programmes. Founder and CEO of Knight Speaker, delivering culture, leadership, service, and engagement programmes worldwide. Author of Culture That Rocks (third edition), Leadership That Rocks (Amazon No. 1), and Service That Rocks (Amazon No. 1). Contributing member of the Rolling Stone Culture Council since 2020. Co-host of the Thoughts That Rock leadership podcast with Brant Menswar. Multiple Telly Awards for corporate training video, plus Brandon Hall Gold Best in Class for service recovery e-learning. Lifetime member of CHART. Biography Hard Rock built a global brand on the idea that the cafe, the hotel, and the casino should each feel like a live show. Holding that standard across more than fifty countries is not a marketing job. It is a training job. For two decades, Jim Knight ran that training function. That experience sits behind the Culture That Rocks series. The first book argued that culture is the operating system, not the wallpaper, and was named by Entrepreneur Magazine among the books most likely to change how a business is run. Leadership That Rocks and Service That Rocks extended the thesis into how leaders behave and how the customer actually feels the brand. Both reached Amazon’s No. 1 spot. The work translates particularly well for organisations whose product is delivered by frontline staff at scale: hospitality, retail, franchise systems, healthcare networks, and any consumer brand where a twenty-year-old in a uniform is the face of a billion-dollar logo. Knight speaks to those audiences as someone who has trained that workforce, not theorised about it. Beyond the speaking practice, he co-hosts the Thoughts That Rock podcast with Brant Menswar, contributes to the Rolling Stone Culture Council, and supports No Kid Hungry and Cannonball Kids’ Cancer through book and speaking proceeds. Among bureau-circuit culture speakers, the rarity is the operator pedigree. Most started as consultants. Knight started inside the room. Key speaking topics Organisational culture Customer experience and service differentiation Employee engagement and retention Leadership development Team building and frontline talent Hospitality, franchise, and consumer-brand operations Ideal for CHROs, learning and development leaders, and culture leads in consumer-facing organisations Franchise systems and multi-site operators where culture must scale across independent owners Hospitality, retail, and service-brand leadership audiences Conference and annual-meeting audiences looking for a high-energy culture keynote with operating substance Audience outcomes A working definition of culture as an operating system, with the mechanisms that hold it in place at scale Specific moves on hiring, onboarding, and frontline development drawn from Hard Rock’s training playbook A service-design lens for separating a brand experience from competitor parity Language and structure leaders can use to talk about engagement without falling into wellness-industry generalities

Joe Mull: Inspiring Leaders to Build Commitment and Engagement Known as a dynamic and captivating speaker, Joe Mull, M.Ed, CSP, is on a mission to fill workplaces with better bosses who keep top talent in the new age of work. He is the author of three books: Cure for the Common Leader; No More Team Drama; and his latest, Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work. He is the host of the globally popular Boss Better Now podcast, ranked in the Top 100 of all management podcasts and recently named by SHRM as a “can’t miss show for leaders”. His podcast was also a finalist for the People’s Choice award in the Business / Management category. As a thought leader and subject matter expert, Joe brings decades of real-world experience to his writing and speaking. He previously served as head of Learning and Development for Physician Services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), where he directed learning strategy and implementation for one of the largest physician groups in the United States. Prior to his years of service in healthcare, he spent a decade working in leadership and program development roles in student affairs in higher education and taught leadership courses at two major universities. Joe’s work as a leadership expert and engagement strategist has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and more. Joe holds the coveted Certified Speaking Professional™ (CSP®) designation from the National Speakers Association (NSA). Held by fewer than 20% of professional speakers worldwide, the CSP is the speaking profession’s international measure of speaking excellence. Joe resides in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife, three children, and a needy Dalmatian named Flash.

Why organisations work with Alex Staniforth Both of Staniforth’s Everest attempts (2014, 2015) ended in catastrophe, which means his argument about resilience, failure, and redefining success is not constructed from triumph. That credibility is difficult to replicate. His personal mental health disclosure; depression, anxiety, eating disorders, epilepsy, and a lifelong stammer, is specific and public. It allows him to reach parts of a leadership audience that pure performance speakers cannot, including people who are privately struggling. The ‘Resilience Rucksack’ gives audiences a named, practical framework to take away: not just an inspiring story, but a set of tools mapped to real workplace pressures. As co-founder of Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity combining outdoor experience with professional mental health support, he brings an institutional track record to conversations about psychological safety that extends well beyond the stage. His Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Chester, awarded in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, positions him credibly across both the performance and the clinical ends of the wellbeing conversation. Biography highlights Survived the 2014 Khumbu Icefall avalanche and the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the two most significant disasters in Everest history, on consecutive attempts, as a teenager First and fastest person to complete all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales under human power in 45 days; fastest ever ascent of all 100 UK county tops (72 days) Author of Icefall (Coventry House Publishing, 2016) and Another Peak (2019) Co-founder, Mind Over Mountains: national UK charity restoring mental health through therapeutic outdoor programmes (est. 2020) Honorary Doctorate (DLitt), University of Chester, 2025: for outstanding contribution to young people’s mental health services Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, 2023; Pride of Britain Granada Reports Fundraiser of the Year, 2017; over £150,000 raised for charity across endurance challenges Biography Everest has a way of clarifying what resilience actually means. Alex Staniforth attempted the summit twice – the 2014 season ended by the Khumbu Icefall avalanche, the 2015 attempt halted by the Nepal earthquake – and returned from neither having reached the top. Both experiences form the foundation of his argument to organisations: that the most useful preparation is not for success, but for what happens when things go wrong. Since those expeditions, Staniforth has completed a series of documented endurance records. He is the first and fastest person to run and cycle all 446 Nuttall mountains in England and Wales in 45 days and holds the record for the fastest ascent of all 100 UK county tops. He is the author of Icefall and Another Peak, and in 2020 co-founded Mind Over Mountains, a national UK charity that combines outdoor experience with professional mental health support. What separates his contribution from most adventure-based speaking is where it goes beyond the summit metaphor. Staniforth has spoken publicly about depression, anxiety, and eating disorders experienced as an endurance athlete: alongside epilepsy and a lifelong stammer. This specificity allows him to speak credibly in mental health conversations where most performance speakers cannot go. His practical framework, the ‘Resilience Rucksack’, translates that experience into tools that leadership audiences can name and apply. His keynotes have been delivered to Rolls-Royce Submarines, Samsung, Bank of America, Accenture, FedEx, and the NHS, among others. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) by the University of Chester in 2025 for his contribution to young people’s mental health, and received the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award in 2023. He is an ICF-trained coach and certified Gazing Red2Blue practitioner. Key speaking topics Resilience under pressure Mental fitness and sustainable performance Leadership through adversity and change Burnout prevention and psychological safety Goal setting and redefining success Team performance in uncertainty Wellbeing as a performance foundation Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating organisational change or post-disruption recovery CHROs and people leads building mental health or wellbeing programmes with senior buy-in Leadership development and high-potential programmes requiring a resilience anchor Corporate conferences where performance and wellbeing are a combined agenda item Audience outcomes A practical, named framework (the ‘Resilience Rucksack’) for maintaining performance during setbacks, change, and high pressure A more specific understanding of the relationship between mental fitness and sustained performance – not as a trade-off, but as the same investment Increased confidence among leaders in modelling openness around mental health, and in recognising early warning signs in their teams A shift in how failure and setback are framed – from evidence of inadequacy to material for growth Reference points from extreme conditions that translate directly to the pressures of demanding professional environments

Why organisations work with Troy Deeney He speaks from a verifiable record of collapse and recovery: prison in 2012, back in the Watford team within weeks of release, club captain inside two years, and the side’s all-time leading Premier League scorer by the end of his Watford career. His material on mental health is not theoretical. He has written publicly about counselling, grief and identity in Redemption: My Story, and brings that into the room without the polish that usually sands the substance off. He has run a real campaign, not just commented on one. Where’s My History? involved a YouGov teacher survey, a 50,000-signature petition, a Channel 4 documentary and direct engagement with the Department for Education. He is a working broadcaster, which means the room gets a confident communicator. Sky Sports EFL, TalkSport, BBC Sounds and the Deeney Talks podcast are part of his weekly diet. He works well in fireside and Q&A formats, which suits clients who want a real conversation with a senior audience rather than a scripted keynote. Biography highlights Made 500+ professional appearances and scored 160+ career goals across Watford, Birmingham City and Forest Green Rovers. Captain of Watford for the second half of his career there; club record Premier League scorer; FA Cup finalist and promotion winner. Author of Troy Deeney: Redemption: My Story (Hachette / Octopus), reviewed widely and named “Footie book of the year” by The Sun. Fronted Troy Deeney: Where’s My History? on Channel 4 (2022), a 60-minute documentary on the lack of Black, Asian and minority ethnic content in the UK school curriculum. Pundit on Sky Sports EFL, regular on TalkSport, co-host of BBC Sounds’ Football Firsts with Jermain Defoe, and host of the Deeney Talks podcast. Served as head coach of Forest Green Rovers after a player-coach role, holding a UEFA A coaching licence. Biography Watford were 2-1 down to Leicester in the 2013 Championship play-off semi-final when Troy Deeney scored in the 97th minute to put them in the final. The goal is still played on highlight reels. Eighteen months earlier he had been in HMP Birmingham, serving time for affray, and had assumed his career was finished. That gap, between prison cell and one of the most famous goals in modern English football, is what gives his speaking material weight. Redemption: My Story, published by Hachette in 2021, is his own account of the road between the two: a childhood on one of Europe’s largest council estates, a father who dealt drugs and went in and out of prison, three months inside, counselling, and the discipline of rebuilding. The Sun named it football book of the year. It is unusually candid about mental health, grief and the specific work of recovery. Since retiring from playing, Deeney has built a parallel career as a broadcaster and campaigner. He is a Sky Sports EFL pundit, a regular voice on TalkSport, and co-hosts BBC Sounds’ Football Firsts with Jermain Defoe. He fronted Where’s My History?, a Channel 4 documentary on the absence of Black, Asian and minority ethnic content in the national curriculum, supported by a YouGov teacher survey, a public petition and an open letter to the Secretary of State for Education. He spent a season as player-coach and then head coach at Forest Green Rovers in 2023 to 2024. For senior audiences the value is specific. He talks about what actually changed in counselling, how he handled a dressing room, why public failure is survivable, and what the inside of a serious personal reset looks like. The register is plain, unsanitised and grown-up, which is rare in the speaker market for this kind of material. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after public failure Self-leadership under pressure Mental health, identity and life after sport Captaincy and leading a dressing room Race, education and social change in the UK Storytelling and authentic communication Ideal for Leadership offsites and senior team away days where a candid personal-story session is more useful than another expert lecture Employee engagement, DEI and mental health programmes that need a credible male voice on vulnerability and recovery Sales kick-offs, customer events and after-dinner formats wanting a sports-world figure with substance, not just anecdotes Sport, media, education and youth-focused organisations working on race, opportunity and curriculum Audience outcomes A clearer view of what recovery from public failure actually requires, beyond motivational language. Practical insight into how a captain holds a dressing room together through pressure, scrutiny and bad results. A more honest framework for talking about mental health with senior male audiences who tend to discount the subject. A specific case study in turning personal experience into an evidenced public campaign, useful for organisations thinking about advocacy and voice.

Why organisations work with Philipp Kristian He treats trust as an operating variable in digital and AI transformation, not a soft cultural theme, and equips leaders with language to discuss it at board level. His thesis predates the current AI debate. The Trust Economy was published in 2017 and has since been translated into German by Springer Gabler, giving his framework a longer track record than most current AI-trust voices. He brings an Asia-anchored view of technology adoption, drawing on a decade of work with Fortune 500s in Singapore and across JAPAC, which most Western-based speakers in this space cannot offer. He has lectured inside INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore, so executive audiences encounter material that has been pressure-tested with senior cohorts. Biography highlights Author of The Trust Economy (Marshall Cavendish, 2017) and RESET: Rethinking Our World And Creating A Different Future (World Scientific, 2021). German edition of The Trust Economy published by Springer Gabler in 2018. Faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and Civil Service College Singapore. World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Kairos Society Fellow, and Leader of Tomorrow at the St Gallen Symposium. TEDx speaker, with keynote audiences including Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, P&G, and Zillow. Based in Singapore, with a decade of innovation work across Asia for Fortune 500 corporations and high-growth scale-ups. Biography Trust is the part of digital transformation that the engineering plan does not solve. AI rollouts stall, data products fail to land, and customer adoption flattens for reasons that sit outside the technology stack. Philipp Kristian has spent more than a decade arguing that this is the real bottleneck, and that organisations need a strategy for it. His 2017 book The Trust Economy, published by Marshall Cavendish and later translated into German by Springer Gabler, set out an early framework for how digital businesses earn and lose trust at scale. RESET, published by World Scientific in 2021, extends the argument into the post-pandemic shift in how people relate to institutions, technology, and each other. The work has been refined inside executive classrooms. He has held faculty and lecturer engagements at INSEAD Executive Education, CEDEP, Singapore Management University, and the Civil Service College in Singapore, where the material is taught to senior public and private sector cohorts. The World Economic Forum named him a Global Shaper; the Kairos Society named him a Fellow; the St Gallen Symposium named him a Leader of Tomorrow. Based in Singapore, he brings a non-Western reading of how trust travels through markets, regulators, and customer bases that most boards no longer treat as peripheral. Keynote audiences include Meta, BCG, EY, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, Salesforce, LVMH, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Zillow. Key speaking topics Trust in AI and data systems Digital transformation and adoption Customer experience in digital businesses Future of work and human-technology collaboration Leadership in the digital economy Brand trust and reputation under technological change Ideal for Boards and executive committees overseeing AI, data, and digital transformation programmes CIO, CTO, CDO, and Chief Trust Officer functions working through adoption and governance questions CMO and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand credibility in digital channels Financial services, professional services, and regulated industries facing trust and reputation pressure from AI deployment Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing trust as an operating asset in digital and AI strategy at board level A reading of why AI and data initiatives lose momentum at the adoption stage, with the levers leaders can use to keep them moving An Asia-anchored perspective on how trust is built and broken across regulators, customers, and employees in fast-digitising markets Specific examples drawn from a decade of innovation work with Fortune 500 corporations and scale-ups in Singapore and across JAPAC

Why organisations work with Hollie Castro Operating record across the moments that test a people function: IPO transition at YETI, take-private of BMC Software under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and VC-backed scale-up at Miro under Accel and ICONIQ. Sits credibly in the boardroom on AI and the workforce, co-chairing the NACD Austin chapter and leading director-level sessions on GenAI governance and the multigenerational workforce. Has actually run HR at global scale: workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, 25-plus acquisitions integrated. Bridges Fortune 500 and late-stage start-up worlds, including current advisory work with HR-focused AI founders at Series A through her firm HC Advice. Recognised externally where it counts: Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates and the HR Transformation award at Silicon Valley’s High Tech Symposium. Biography highlights Five-time CHRO and Chief Administration Officer: YETI, BMC Software, Talisman Energy, Miro, Kony. Co-Chair, Austin Advisory Board, National Association of Corporate Directors. Advisory Board Member, Texas A&M Mays School of Business Center for Human Resources. Stanford University and NACD certified Corporate Director; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates; HR Transformation award, Silicon Valley High Tech Symposium. Published in Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards; featured at HR Retail and on the Revenue Builders podcast. Biography Few HR leaders have sat in the seat across as many high-pressure transitions. As CHRO, Castro took YETI through its IPO from private equity ownership at Cortec, led BMC Software through its take-private under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and ran people strategy at Miro and Kony alongside Accel and ICONIQ Capital. The thread across those mandates is the same: HR as an operating discipline tied to capital events, not a support function. Her scope has been unusually broad. Workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, operations in 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, and more than 25 acquisitions integrated. That range includes the cultural architecture work that ESG and compensation committees now ask for, as well as the harder M&A integration calls that decide whether a deal earns its thesis. The board work has become a second discipline. Castro co-chairs the Austin advisory board of the National Association of Corporate Directors and led the 2024 NACD Director Summit conversation on how boards govern GenAI alongside a five-generation workforce. She is a Stanford and NACD certified Corporate Director, a Thunderbird MBA, and was named to the Financial Times Group’s Top 100 Board Candidates. Today she advises HR-focused AI founders at Series A through HC Advice and writes for Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards on the governance questions that follow when HR is asked to deploy AI at scale. Key speaking topics The CHRO as a strategic business partner Generative AI in HR and talent acquisition Global HR strategy and M&A integration Board governance of AI and the workforce Scaling people functions through IPO and take-private events ESG, compensation, and human capital in the boardroom The multigenerational workforce Agile HR and design thinking Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CPO-track HR leaders preparing for board-facing roles. Boards, compensation committees, and audit committees engaging with AI, human capital, and ESG oversight. CEOs and executive teams in private equity portfolio companies or scale-ups preparing for IPO, M&A, or take-private events. Leadership programmes for senior women in operating and director roles. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what boards now expect from HR on AI, talent risk, and human capital reporting. Specific reference points on integrating HR through IPO, take-private, and cross-border M&A. A working view of how generative AI is changing talent acquisition and the CHRO operating model. Director-level language for governing AI ethics, workforce design, and compensation in tandem.

Why organisations work with Gordon Hewitt Direct intellectual lineage from C.K. Prahalad at Michigan Ross, applied for two decades to live board agendas at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, HSBC, Sony, and Deutsche Post/DHL. A working method that treats strategy as a thinking system for senior teams, not a planning cycle, so boards leave with sharper questions about value creation, not a deck. Demonstrated range across pharma, financial services, consumer goods, telecoms, and logistics, which lets him connect cross-industry disruption patterns most sector specialists miss. CBE for services to management and international business, plus Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, signal a level of institutional credibility boards trust at chair and CEO level. A genuine practitioner-academic: still teaching at Michigan Ross and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School while advising sitting CEOs. Biography highlights CBE for services to management and international business, 2007 New Year Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Visiting Distinguished Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor of Strategy Practice, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy, Duke Corporate Education. Long collaboration with the late C.K. Prahalad on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation. Advised CEOs and boards at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, Philips, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Verizon, Ericsson, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Syngenta, Biocon, and Deutsche Post/DHL. Biography Most strategy frameworks assume the rules of the industry hold still long enough for a plan to play out. They no longer do. The companies that struggle are often the ones that ran the previous playbook best. Gordon Hewitt has spent two decades helping senior leaders work in that more unstable terrain. At the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, he formed a long partnership with the late C.K. Prahalad, working at the front edge of thinking on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation in what they described as a game-changing world. That body of work continues to anchor how he talks to boards. The list of organisations he has advised reads like a cross-industry map of where disruption hits hardest: Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pharma, IBM and Verizon in technology, HSBC and Credit Suisse in financial services, Sony, PepsiCo, and Time Warner in consumer-facing businesses, Deutsche Post/DHL in logistics. He chairs CEO and chairman peer groups in Europe and the United States on the future of corporate strategy and governance. He was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to management and international business, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continues to hold appointments at Michigan Ross, Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, and Duke Corporate Education, which is unusual for a working board advisor and is one of the reasons CEOs treat him as a serious thinking partner rather than a speaker. Key speaking topics Strategy under industry disruption Corporate value creation in complex markets Innovation as a discipline Strategic transformation in incumbent businesses Strategic collaboration and ecosystem strategy Overcoming industry and organisational orthodoxies The CEO and board agenda in a game-changing world Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees of incumbent businesses facing rule-changing competition. CSOs, heads of strategy, and transformation leads. Pharma, financial services, telecoms, consumer goods, and logistics leadership teams contending with cross-industry disruption. Senior leadership development programmes that want a serious strategy voice rather than a motivational one. Audience outcomes A sharper account of how value is created and lost when industry rules are being rewritten. A working language for separating planning from strategic thinking inside their own executive team. Cross-sector patterns of disruption they can test against their own market. A clearer view of where current orthodoxies inside their organisation are quietly working against them. Specific provocations for the next board strategy conversation, not generic frameworks.

Why organisations work with Jason Harris He brings a working framework, No Fail Trust, that he has applied with Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, not a set of war stories repackaged as leadership lessons. His operational credibility is current. He still flies commercial widebody aircraft for American Airlines, so the standards he teaches are standards he is still held to. He commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has run a real organisation with real accountability for safety, performance and people, not only led from the cockpit. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy, which gives the framework an academic spine that most ex-military speakers do not have. His material translates cleanly to civilian teams under restructure, hybrid working strain or post-incident recovery, where the question is whether trust will hold when conditions degrade. Biography highlights Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, nearly 30 years of service across active duty and the Air Force Reserve Command, concluding as a flying Squadron Commander. US Air Force Academy graduate, later instructor in the Academy’s Military and Strategic Studies department. 11 combat deployments, 470 combat sorties, more than 2,000 combat hours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Co-author of “Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership” (RTI Press, 2022), reviewed in the USAFA Journal of Character and Leadership Development. Commercial pilot with American Airlines, type-rated on the Airbus A320 family and Boeing 757, 767 and 777. Featured in Forbes and on the History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters”. Biography A cargo aircraft taking fire on approach is not the place to discover that a crew does not trust each other. The cost of unspoken doubt in that environment is measurable in seconds and lives. Jason Harris flew 470 combat sorties in environments where that calculation was not theoretical. That operating context shaped a leadership method, not a memoir. The No Fail Trust framework codifies what high-functioning aircrews actually do: the habits of disclosure, calibration and accountability that hold a team together when conditions degrade. He has carried it into Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, where the trust problem looks different on the surface but obeys the same logic underneath. Harris also brings the structural side. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy and commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has been responsible for organisational design, safety culture and people decisions, not only flight operations. His co-authored book “Aiming Higher” (RTI Press, 2022) was reviewed in the Academy’s Journal of Character and Leadership Development, which is rare for a bureau speaker working in this lane. He still flies. As an American Airlines pilot type-rated across the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 757, 767 and 777, the standards he asks corporate teams to consider are standards he is still operating under in the next week’s flight schedule. Key speaking topics Trust as an operational capability Leadership under high-consequence pressure Team performance in distributed and hybrid environments Psychological safety and crew resource management Decision-making under uncertainty Culture in safety-critical organisations Leading after restructure or incident Ideal for Boards and executive teams confronting a trust gap after restructure, leadership change or a public incident CHROs and culture leads designing for safety-critical or distributed teams Operational leadership cohorts in regulated sectors: aviation, energy, defence, logistics, financial services Sales kick-offs and leadership summits where the brief calls for credibility under pressure rather than motivational lift Audience outcomes A working definition of trust that can be observed, measured and rebuilt, rather than asserted A method for surfacing unspoken doubt inside senior teams before it becomes an operational cost A clearer view of how psychological safety, accountability and decision speed reinforce each other under pressure Specific behavioural habits drawn from aircrew practice that translate to civilian operating environments A sharper read on what leadership presence looks like when conditions are not stable