Mental Health in the Workplace

Why organisations work with Alvin Law A resilience keynote built on six decades of lived practice, not a framework borrowed from research. Born without arms, he has worked, broadcast, performed music, and raised a family by inventing methods most people assume cannot exist. Hall of Fame platform craft. Inducted into the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS) in 2009 and one of the under-ten-percent of professional speakers globally to hold the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation. A trained broadcaster’s command of room, pacing, and message. The keynote is built for large internal audiences, sales kick-offs, and association main stages where a speaker has to reset attention, not just hold it. Subject of three internationally distributed documentaries by John Zaritsky and an Emmy-winning ABC FrontRunners segment, which gives the booking a level of cultural recognition that travels beyond the room. Inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2018 and recipient of the Peter Legge Philanthropic Award in 2022, signalling a track record of substantive contribution rather than platform alone. Biography highlights Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and inductee, Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS), 2009. Inductee, Canadian Disability Hall of Fame, 2018. Author, Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything. Subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries: Broken Promises (1989), Extraordinary People (1993), and No Limits: The Thalidomide Saga (2016). Vanier Award for Outstanding Young Canadians (1982); Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal (2002); Peter Legge Philanthropic Award (2022). Trained broadcaster, Mount Royal College (graduated with honours, 1980), with a professional radio career at CFMQ FM Regina before founding AJL Communications Ltd. in 1988. Biography Resilience is the variable that quietly decides how organisations come through repeated change. When it thins, every other leadership tool gets harder to use. The keynote that restores it cannot be theoretical; it has to be earned in front of the audience. That is the room Alvin Law has been built for. Born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 1960 without arms, the result of his birth mother’s exposure to thalidomide, Law was placed for adoption at five days old and raised by Hilda and Jack Law. He learned to use his feet for tasks most people associate with hands, including playing trombone and drumming, and trained as a broadcaster at Mount Royal College, graduating with honours in 1980. A radio career at CFMQ FM in Regina followed, then full-time speaking from 1988 through AJL Communications Ltd. The credentials are unusually concrete for the resilience category. Law holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, sits in the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS, 2009) and the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame (2018), and was named a Vanier Outstanding Young Canadian in 1982. He is the author of Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything and the subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries, including the Emmy-recognised FrontRunners segment on ABC. What buyers actually book is platform craft applied to a workforce problem. Law uses broadcasting discipline, drumming, and direct storytelling to move a room from spectator to participant inside an hour, which is why association main stages, sales kick-offs, and large internal town halls return to him. Key speaking topics Resilience and adversity Mindset and personal agency Motivation and inspiration Storytelling and stagecraft Workforce engagement after change Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Disability advocacy and inclusion Ideal for Sales kick-offs, association annual conferences, and large internal town halls reopening after restructuring or repeated change. CHROs and culture leads commissioning a credible, non-clinical voice on resilience for a whole-workforce moment. Healthcare, education, and not-for-profit audiences where lived experience carries more weight than corporate framing. Internal communications and event leads briefing a main-stage opener or closer that needs to reset attention across a wide demographic. Audience outcomes A reset on what the room treats as a real obstacle versus a story about one. Specific, repeatable mental habits for keeping composure when conditions stay difficult. A renewed sense of personal agency, including in roles where people feel acted upon by change. A shared experience that managers can refer back to in team conversations months later.

Why organisations work with Alison Canavan She turns wellbeing from a benefits line item into something employees do during the working day. Her signature 5-Minute Journal practice and short mindfulness routines are designed for people who say they have no time for wellbeing. She brings a UCLA Semel Institute mindfulness credential into rooms that would otherwise be sceptical of meditation language, which gives HR and people leaders a defensible programme to stand behind. She built a structured wellbeing series for an airline, Aer Lingus, on a workforce known for shift fatigue and circadian disruption. That kind of operational application travels well into other shift-heavy and high-pressure environments. She speaks from a lived recovery narrative, postnatal depression, addiction, single parenthood, without turning the talk into therapy. Audiences disclose more honestly afterwards, which is what HR teams say they need. She is comfortable with both a 200-person town hall and an executive offsite, which matters for organisations rolling a single wellbeing voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights UCLA-trained Mindfulness Facilitator, Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior Author of Minding Mum: It’s Time to Take Care of You, published by Gill Books, Ireland Master NLP Practitioner, HeartMath facilitator, and graduate of the Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health (Advanced Diploma in Diet and Nutrition Therapeutics) Creator of the Wellbeing in the Skies series for Aer Lingus Corporate keynote and workshop work cited with Google, YouTube, Deloitte, Coinbase, Allianz, Bank of Ireland, PayPal, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deutsche Telekom and Vitality Regular contributor to Irish broadsheet and broadcast media on mental health and wellbeing, including The Sunday Independent and Ireland AM Biography Most wellbeing programmes inside organisations underperform for the same reason. They treat stress and mental health as a benefits category rather than something that happens minute by minute during the working day. Alison Canavan’s corporate work is built around closing that gap. She trained as a Mindfulness Facilitator at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and combines that with practitioner-level work in NLP, HeartMath and nutrition. The point of stacking those disciplines is practical. Different parts of a workforce respond to different entry points, and her programmes are designed to give people a route in that does not require them to call it meditation if they do not want to. Her book Minding Mum, published by Gill Books in Ireland, established her early authority on postnatal mental health and self-care. The corporate work has since broadened into stress, burnout, anxiety, hybrid working pressure, and the slow erosion of attention that senior teams now describe as their biggest people problem. Her Wellbeing in the Skies series, built for Aer Lingus cabin crew, is one example of a structured programme designed for a workforce that cannot easily step away from the job to look after itself. What audiences tend to take from her sessions is not a concept but a habit. The 5-Minute Journal practice she teaches is the most cited example. It is short enough to survive a real working week, which is the only test that matters for workplace wellbeing content. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health and burnout Mindfulness and daily practice for high-pressure teams Stress, anxiety and recovery Hybrid working and return-to-office wellbeing Self-leadership and emotional regulation Resilience and sustainable performance Postnatal mental health and parental wellbeing Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing the next iteration of their wellbeing strategy Wellbeing, DEI and employee experience leads commissioning company-wide programmes Operational leaders of shift-based or high-pressure workforces (airlines, healthcare, financial services, contact centres) Leadership offsites and senior team meetings where stress and personal capacity have become a strategic conversation Audience outcomes A daily practice, anchored in the 5-Minute Journal method, that survives a real working week A clearer language for stress, burnout and anxiety that employees and managers can actually use with each other Specific techniques for nervous system regulation that work in the gaps between meetings A more honest conversation about mental health inside the room, which most HR teams report as the single hardest thing to engineer

Why organisations work with Lisa Feldman Barrett She has reshaped the scientific consensus on emotion. Her theory of constructed emotion is now taught in psychology, neuroscience and affective computing curricula, and it directly contradicts the assumptions baked into most corporate EQ training and emotion-detection AI. She translates first-tier neuroscience for boardrooms without diluting it. Her two trade books, How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, are written for general readers but cite the same primary research she publishes in Science and Nature Neuroscience. Her work has been adopted by audiences that need it to be right, including FBI behavioural analysts, the legal community through her role as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and senior medical faculties at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. A leader who books her gets a researcher with NIH Pioneer Award and Guggenheim credentials, not a popular-science communicator working from secondary sources. Biography highlights University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Chief Science Officer, Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. TED speaker, with the talk “You Aren’t at the Mercy of Your Emotions” passing 6.5 million views. NIH Director’s Pioneer Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award; APS William James Fellow Award. Past President of the Association for Psychological Science; co-founder of the Society for Affective Science; over 275 peer-reviewed publications. Biography The textbook view of emotion, that anger, fear and joy are hard-wired circuits with universal facial signatures, dominated psychology, psychiatry and product design for most of the last century. It is also wrong. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s laboratory at Northeastern has spent twenty-five years showing that the brain constructs emotion in the moment, drawing on past experience, bodily state and cultural learning. Her theory of constructed emotion has reshaped affective science and is now reaching the institutions that depend on getting emotion right. She advises the FBI on behavioural analysis, serves as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and her work is cited in debates over emotion-detection AI and courtroom evidence. Barrett holds a University Distinguished Professorship at Northeastern, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed papers, sits among the top 0.1 percent most-cited scientists in the world, and has received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. For senior leaders, the practical payoff is a sharper model of how their own brains, and their people’s, actually work under uncertainty. That model contradicts a great deal of what corporate wellbeing, EQ training and emotion-aware technology currently sell. Key speaking topics The science of emotion in the workplace Brain, prediction and decision-making under uncertainty Stress, allostasis and the body budget The neuroscience of self-regulation for senior leaders Emotion-detection AI and the limits of affective computing Mental health and the construction of experience Communication and influence grounded in brain science Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior leadership teams reassessing wellbeing, EQ training and performance management Boards and risk committees evaluating emotion-recognition AI, behavioural surveillance, or affective computing investments Healthcare, legal and security organisations whose decisions hinge on interpreting human behaviour Senior leaders wanting a substantive, science-led perspective on stress, resilience and decision quality Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain predicts and constructs emotion, replacing the “universal emotions” model that underpins most corporate EQ content. A clearer view of what emotion-detection technology can and cannot reliably do, useful for evaluating vendors and policy. Practical implications for stress, recovery and senior decision-making, grounded in the brain’s energy regulation rather than pop-psychology. Sharper questions about how performance reviews, hiring assessments and customer research read emotional signals.

Why organisations work with Clover Hogan She turns climate anxiety from a cultural backdrop into a measurable pressure point on recruitment, retention, and stakeholder trust, with specific evidence from Force of Nature’s work with young people in more than fifty countries. She has moved between youth movements and Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, which means she can translate Gen Z expectations into language a sustainability committee can act on. Her TED talk “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable” has been viewed close to two million times, giving her a rare ability to hold a mixed audience, including sceptics, on a subject most speakers polarise. She founded Force of Nature at nineteen and built it into an internationally recognised organisation before handing over leadership, which gives her direct operating experience of building a climate programme rather than only commenting on one. Forbes 30 Under 30 listing and features in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue place her in the small group of climate voices that board-level audiences already know by name. Biography highlights Founder of Force of Nature, a youth non-profit mobilising mindsets for climate action, founded at age nineteen. Former Executive Director of Force of Nature; now advisor and chair of the board after a formal leadership handover in 2024. TED speaker, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” with close to two million views. Recognised on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list at age twenty-two. Host of the Force of Nature podcast, in conversation with figures including lawyers behind landmark climate agreements and Nobel Peace Prize nominees. Has advised Fortune 50 companies including PepsiCo and Unilever on Gen Z climate expectations; interviewed the 14th Dalai Lama and shared platforms with Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva. Featured in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue. Biography The climate conversation inside most large organisations has quietly shifted. It used to be a reporting question. It is now a hiring question, a customer question, and a boardroom legitimacy question. Force of Nature, the non-profit Clover Hogan founded at nineteen, has spent the last several years mapping that shift from the other side of the table, working with young people in more than fifty countries on what they actually expect from the companies they join, buy from, and vote with. Hogan treats eco-anxiety as a serious operating variable, not a feeling. Her TED talk, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” has reached close to two million viewers by refusing both doom and false optimism, and by naming what people are actually experiencing. Inside Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, she translates that same research into a direct question for leadership teams: what are you asking your people to defend, and can you defend it yourself. Her authority comes from operating experience. She built Force of Nature into an internationally recognised youth organisation, managed a formal handover to new leadership in 2024, and now sits as chair of the board while advising organisations and speaking internationally. The Force of Nature podcast has put her in extended conversation with figures ranging from Nobel Peace Prize nominees to the lawyers behind landmark climate agreements, and with Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, and the 14th Dalai Lama. The effect in a room of senior leaders is specific. She will not make the climate crisis smaller than it is, and she will not let it become an abstraction. She returns the conversation to the concrete group of people, inside and outside the organisation, whose trust the next decade of climate strategy has to earn. Key speaking topics Climate leadership and corporate accountability Eco-anxiety and climate psychology Gen Z expectations of employers and brands Youth engagement and movement building ESG credibility and the gap between commitments and delivery Storytelling and public communication on the climate crisis Purpose and values in modern organisations Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads defending or rebuilding climate strategy against tougher stakeholder scrutiny. CHROs and talent leaders whose recruitment and retention now runs through how credible the organisation looks on climate. Boards and executive committees setting the next phase of sustainability commitments and the communications around them. Brand, marketing, and corporate affairs leaders whose audiences are increasingly Gen Z and increasingly unforgiving of gaps between claim and practice. Audience outcomes A sharper read on what younger employees and consumers are actually asking of organisations on climate, beyond the survey headlines. Language for discussing eco-anxiety as a workforce and stakeholder factor rather than a private sentiment. A more honest internal test for where the organisation’s climate commitments are holding up and where they are exposed. Confidence to lead climate conversations with staff, customers, and boards without retreating into either doom or marketing gloss. A clearer sense of how youth movements, media scrutiny, and investor pressure are converging into a single reputational frontier.

Why organisations work with Nicole Vignola She brings a credentialed neuroscience grounding, BSc Neuroscience and MSc Organisational Psychology, into a field where most wellbeing speakers operate from lived experience alone. Her work translates synaptic plasticity and stress physiology into specific behavioural routines that managers and teams can run during a working week. Rewire (Penguin Michael Joseph UK, Harper One US) has been licensed into more than a dozen territories, giving her published intellectual property that buyers can read before booking. Her client base spans regulated finance, consulting and consumer brands: Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap, UCLA. The same material lands in very different operating cultures. The Mental Currency Method, her signature framework now under contract with Hay House, gives organisations a named system rather than a one-off talk. Biography highlights BSc Neuroscience, University of Bristol. MSc Organisational Psychology, University of the West of England. Author of Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change, Penguin Michael Joseph (UK) and Harper One (US), with more than a dozen translation deals. Forthcoming book with Hay House built around her Mental Currency Method framework. Corporate clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap and UCLA. Named “Instagram’s favourite brain expert” by Women’s Health magazine. Runs a large public platform across Instagram, YouTube and Substack used by general audiences and corporate L&D teams. Biography Wellbeing budgets have grown faster than wellbeing outcomes. Stress, sleep debt and decision fatigue keep showing up in engagement data even after the resilience workshop has run. The reason is biological. Telling people to manage stress does not change the neural circuitry that drives habit, attention and recovery. Behaviour change does. Nicole Vignola works in exactly that gap. With a BSc in Neuroscience from Bristol and an MSc in Organisational Psychology from the University of the West of England, she translates synaptic plasticity, dopamine regulation and stress physiology into routines that fit a working day. The material is grounded in published neuroscience, not borrowed metaphor. Her book Rewire, published by Penguin Michael Joseph in the UK and Harper One in the US, sets out the operating principles. It has been licensed into more than a dozen territories and is widely used by readers outside corporate audiences, which gives her platform unusual reach for a workplace specialist. A second book with Hay House extends the same logic into the Mental Currency Method, her signature framework. In corporate work she has been used by Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap and UCLA, organisations with very different cultures and stress profiles. That breadth matters. It shows the material survives translation from a consumer brand to a regulated bank and still produces specific changes in how teams handle workload, recovery and decisions under pressure. Key speaking topics Behaviour change and neuroplasticity at work Decision-making under pressure Stress physiology and recovery Mental performance and focus Workplace wellbeing as a strategic capability Habit formation in high-performing teams Ideal for CHROs, heads of people and L&D leaders designing the next wellbeing strategy Senior leadership teams in regulated and high-load industries: finance, consulting, professional services Heads of talent and engagement looking for substance beyond awareness campaigns Sales, trading and operations leaders whose teams work under sustained cognitive pressure Audience outcomes A working understanding of how habits and stress responses are biologically formed and changed Specific behavioural routines for focus, recovery and decision quality during the working day Sharper language for distinguishing wellbeing theatre from interventions that change behaviour A clearer view of where neuroscience-grounded practice fits inside a broader people strategy

Why organisations work with Nicolas Hamilton First disabled driver to compete in the BTCC, a UK series where the field has won at Le Mans and Formula One; the credential is verifiable and singular. Brings a working operator’s view of high-performance teamwork from inside a competitive racing garage, not a retired-career retrospective. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention with Radar, an Octopus imprint, structured around seven applied lessons rather than memoir, which gives corporate audiences usable material. Speaks from the experience of being told as a child he would not walk and building a professional racing career anyway; the story carries weight without rhetorical lift. Has delivered to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK across financial services, healthcare, and consumer industries. Biography highlights First disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, debuting in 2015 with AmD Tuning. Scored his first BTCC championship point in 2020 with ROKiT Racing and Team HARD, and his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown. Channel 4 Formula One analyst from 2016. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, Radar / Octopus Books, 2024, acquired in a seven-way publisher auction. Subject of the BBC documentary Racing with the Hamiltons: Nic in the Driving Seat. Has spoken at Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, Shell Energy UK, and Active Care Group. Biography Most leadership stories about overcoming odds end with the protagonist’s achievement. Nicolas Hamilton’s begins with it. Told as a toddler he would never walk because of cerebral palsy, he became the first disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, the same series whose alumni have won at Le Mans and reached Formula One. The racing itself is the substance, not the symbol. Hamilton entered the BTCC in 2015 with AmD Tuning in an Audi S3, returned with ROKiT Racing and Motorbase in 2019, scored his first championship point in 2020 with Team HARD, and posted his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown in a Cupra Leon. He continues to race competitively, sharing grids with reigning champions. That working knowledge of a professional racing garage is what corporate audiences buy. Hamilton speaks from inside an environment where preparation, recovery, and competitive feedback are non-negotiable and where his physical setup has to be engineered differently from every other driver on the grid. He has been a Channel 4 Formula One analyst since 2016 and has spoken to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK. His book, Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, was acquired by Radar at Octopus Books in a seven-way auction and published in 2024. It is structured as applied lessons, not memoir, which is how he treats his keynotes too: a working argument about what high performance demands when the conditions are not on your side. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained constraint High-performance teamwork in elite motorsport Self-leadership and mental strength Disability and representation in competitive environments Goal-setting and long-horizon ambition Inclusion in high-performance cultures Ideal for Senior leadership teams running multi-year change or transformation programmes HR, talent, and L&D leaders shaping resilience and inclusion programmes Sales conferences and commercial kick-offs anchoring a growth-mindset theme Disability employee resource groups and DEI council audiences Audience outcomes A working frame for what sustained performance looks like when conditions cannot be improved, only adapted to. Specific lessons from elite motorsport on teamwork, preparation, and feedback cycles. A sharper view of what disability representation looks like inside a high-performance environment rather than a policy conversation. A reset on the gap between what people are told they can do and what is actually possible under disciplined effort.

Why organisations work with Mohsin Zaidi He speaks about inclusion from inside the institutions that struggle most with it: the English Bar, the UK Supreme Court, magic-circle law, and a global strategic advisory firm. The argument carries because the credentials are the audience’s own. A Dutiful Boy is the only memoir to win both the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize while also being named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ and New Statesman. That literary standing changes how a corporate audience receives a personal story. His subject is the specific friction between social mobility, faith, race and sexuality, not a single identity strand. Useful for organisations whose inclusion conversations have plateaued on single-axis framing. He has done the unglamorous work alongside the writing: trustee of Stonewall, former board member of London Pride, named on The Lawyer Hot 100 and the FT future LGBT leaders list. The advocacy is institutional, not performative. He translates lived experience into questions a leadership team can act on, particularly on mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities, where most corporate wellbeing programmes are weakest. Biography highlights Author of A Dutiful Boy (Penguin, 2020), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize. Book of the Year selections from The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. BA Law with European Legal Studies, Keble College, Oxford; qualified as a solicitor at Linklaters and a New York attorney. Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson at the UK Supreme Court; criminal barrister at 6 King’s Bench Walk. Management consultant at Hakluyt & Company since 2021. Trustee of Stonewall; Financial Times top future LGBT leader; The Lawyer Hot 100. Biography Walthamstow to Keble College, Oxford was the first improbable journey. Linklaters, then the UK Supreme Court as Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson, then the criminal Bar at 6 King’s Bench Walk, were the next. The institutions Mohsin Zaidi passed through are the same institutions that most struggle to retain people who look and sound like him. A Dutiful Boy, published by Penguin in 2020, is the memoir of how those journeys actually felt from the inside. It won the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize, and was named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. The literary reception matters because it sets the register: this is not a corporate diversity talk dressed up as a story. The argument Zaidi makes to organisations is narrow and useful. Single-axis inclusion frameworks (race, or class, or sexuality, or faith) miss what most people from minority backgrounds actually carry into work, which is the interaction effect. He is direct on mental health stigma inside ethnic minority communities, an area corporate wellbeing programmes routinely under-serve. He is a trustee of Stonewall and a former board member of London Pride, so the institutional knowledge sits alongside the personal one. Since 2021 he has been a management consultant at Hakluyt & Company, alongside his writing and advocacy. The combination is what makes the work travel into senior commercial rooms: he is asking the same questions the partners and executives in front of him are asking, from a position that takes their context seriously. Key speaking topics Intersectionality at work Social mobility in professional services Mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities LGBTQ+ inclusion in conservative cultures Race, faith and workplace identity Belonging and authenticity in elite institutions Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and culture leads at professional services firms Law firm and financial services leadership audiences working on retention of minority talent ERGs, Pride networks and multicultural networks at large corporates Executive committees reviewing the substance, rather than the optics, of their inclusion programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of how race, faith, class and sexuality interact in the daily experience of minority staff. Specific language for talking about mental health in communities where the topic is stigmatised. A sharper sense of why retention of senior minority talent stalls in firms that recruit well. Permission for senior leaders to engage personal identity as a leadership question, not a compliance one.

Why organisations work with Lorraine Heggessey She has led turnarounds across three very different sectors: a flagship public broadcaster, a private-equity-backed independent producer, and a senior royal charity. Few speakers can compare an operating challenge across that range and be credible on each. She commissioned the decisions that defined a generation of British television, including the revival of Doctor Who and the launch of Strictly Come Dancing. Audiences trust her on risk because she has personally backed the calls that institutions hesitate to make. She built Boom Pictures from a private equity start into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer in three years, then exited to ITV. She speaks on scale-up and exit with operator detail, not investor abstraction. As CEO of The Royal Foundation, she professionalised a venture philanthropy model addressing mental health and veteran support, working directly with the principals. She is one of a small number of speakers credible on both commercial leadership and complex stakeholder organisations. She is forthright on the practical content of leading women into senior roles, drawing on her own progression to one of British broadcasting’s most scrutinised jobs. The argument is operational, not motivational. Biography highlights First female Controller of BBC One, 2000 to 2005, commissioning Doctor Who (revival), Strictly Come Dancing, Spooks, and Waking the Dead. CEO of TalkbackThames, 2005 onwards, launching Britain’s Got Talent and growing profits by more than 50% in two years. Executive Chair of Boom Pictures, founded in 2012, grown into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and acquired by ITV in 2015. CEO of The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, 2017 to 2019. Chair of the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre (since 2022) and Chair of The Grierson Trust (2014 to 2025). Fellow of the Royal Television Society; Woman of the Year, Women in Film and Television UK Awards, 2005; Peabody Award winner. Biography BBC One was losing to ITV1 in audience share when a new Controller took over in November 2000. Five years later the channel had recommissioned Doctor Who after a sixteen-year absence, launched Strictly Come Dancing, and reclaimed the position of Britain’s most-watched channel. Lorraine Heggessey, the first woman to hold the role, made the commissioning calls that shifted the institutional culture around risk. She left the BBC in 2005 to run TalkbackThames, where Britain’s Got Talent and Take Me Out drove a profit increase of more than fifty per cent inside two years. In 2012 she raised private equity to start Boom Pictures, which within three years was the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and was sold to ITV in 2015. Few UK operators have moved from running a public-service broadcaster to founding and exiting a commercial production business at that scale. In 2017 she became CEO of The Royal Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with a brief to professionalise its venture philanthropy approach to mental health, veterans, and conservation. She left in 2019, having institutionalised a model that the principals could continue to grow. Her current platforms are the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, which she chairs, and Channel 4’s Growth Fund, which she has advised for nearly a decade. She is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and a regular BAFTA and RTS judge. Her authority on change and on senior leadership is grounded in repeated operating experience, not in a single signature thesis. Key speaking topics Leading organisational turnaround Risk-taking and commissioning under public scrutiny Scale-up leadership and exit Intrapreneurial culture inside large organisations Women in senior leadership Mental health at work Stakeholder-heavy non-profit leadership Ideal for CEO, CHRO, and board audiences working through structural change or repositioning. Senior leadership programmes inside large public-service or regulated organisations. Women’s leadership and high-potential talent forums seeking operational, not motivational, content. Founders and scale-up leadership teams preparing for institutional growth or exit. Audience outcomes A direct account of how a senior leader changes the risk appetite of a cautious institution. A working view of intrapreneurial culture from inside organisations that have to deliver under public scrutiny. An operator’s perspective on building and exiting a media business, including the decisions that determine value at sale. A grounded position on women’s progression to the most senior roles, based on lived experience rather than advocacy. A practical frame for addressing mental health at work, drawn from involvement in the Heads Together campaign.

Why organisations work with Aaron Balick He sits at an uncommon intersection: clinical psychotherapy experience, a former directorship of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a foundational book on the psychology of social media that is still cited in practitioner and academic literature. His media record gives audiences a speaker whose voice they already know: longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery, alongside regular appearances on BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His published writing runs from serious academic work to accessible self-help, which lets him move between main-stage keynote and in-depth workshop without dropping register. As founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he built across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich, he developed his reading of digital life from inside an operating organisation, not only from a consulting desk. His framing of AI and social media is psychological rather than technical, which is exactly the angle most executive teams are missing when making decisions about generative AI and platform strategy. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, an international applied-psychology hub formerly with locations in London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich Former director of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex; continues as associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies Psychotherapist in private practice in London, with over 20 years of clinical experience Author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking (Karnac), The Little Book of Calm and Keep Your Cool Longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery Regular BBC Radio 4 contributor; published in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek Biography The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, published by Karnac Books, remains one of the most widely cited practitioner texts on how the platforms senior leaders are now running their strategies through actually affect the people using them. Aaron Balick wrote it at a point when most commentary on social media was still either evangelical or dismissive, and the book set the register for a more serious psychological reading of digital life. His work sits at the seam between clinical practice and public commentary. He has maintained a private psychotherapy practice in London for more than two decades, trained in depth psychology and psychoanalysis, and formerly directed the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, where he continues as an associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies. The applied side of that work ran through Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he founded and led across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich. The media presence anchors him inside a mainstream audience. He was the longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek. Alongside his academic book, he has published two accessible titles, The Little Book of Calm and the children’s book Keep Your Cool. For organisations making senior decisions about generative AI, platform strategy, employee wellbeing or customer engagement, Balick brings something their technology advisers do not: a trained clinical reading of what digital experience actually does to the people on the other side of it. That perspective is increasingly what the better boards want on the table. Key speaking topics Psychology of social media, AI and digital connectivity Digital wellbeing and hyperconnectivity at work The psychologically intelligent workplace Personal leadership and authenticity Mental health in technology-mediated environments Ethics and psychology of generative AI Ideal for Executive teams and boards making decisions on AI deployment, platform strategy or digital customer experience CHROs, wellbeing leads and chief people officers designing mental health and engagement strategy Technology, media and platform leadership teams looking for a psychological voice on product and user impact Conferences and leadership events needing a media-recognised speaker who can connect AI, wellbeing and culture Audience outcomes A working psychological framework for understanding social-media and AI effects on people and behaviour Specific implications for wellbeing, engagement and customer experience strategy A clearer language for the ethical questions senior teams are quietly asking about generative AI Reference material from The Psychodynamics of Social Networking and his BBC contributions for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Laura Bates Over 200,000 firsthand testimonies collected through the Everyday Sexism Project give her an evidence base on workplace and institutional sexism that no consultancy or HR function can replicate. Two years of undercover research inside incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, published as Men Who Hate Women, means she can speak credibly about how online radicalisation enters workplaces through younger employees and customers. Her work has produced operational outcomes, not just commentary: Facebook policy changes on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education added to the national curriculum, and revised British Transport Police protocols on sexual violence. She translates a politically charged subject into language senior leaders can act on, with the credibility of a BEM, a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and ten years of reporting in The Guardian and The New York Times behind her. Biography highlights Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, with over 200,000 testimonies collected globally since 2012. Author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Men Who Hate Women, and Fix the System, Not the Women. British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge; Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular contributor to The New York Times and The Guardian; named one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women and Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red and The Sunday Times Magazine. Recipient of the Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Biography Workplace sexism is rarely a single visible incident. It is the accumulation of small, normalised behaviours that policies on paper do not catch, and that employees, especially women and younger staff, stop reporting because they have learned reports go nowhere. The Everyday Sexism Project, founded in 2012, was built to make that accumulation visible. More than 200,000 testimonies later, it has become one of the largest qualitative datasets on gender inequality in existence. The project’s founder, Laura Bates, has spent over a decade translating those testimonies into work that organisations can use. Her books, Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Misogynation, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women, move from individual experience to institutional pattern. The work has produced concrete policy outcomes: Facebook revised its rules on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education entered the national curriculum, and British Transport Police updated how it handles reports of sexual violence on public transport. A second strand of her work is investigative. For Men Who Hate Women, Bates spent two years undercover in incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, mapping how extreme misogyny is now produced and distributed online. That work matters for organisations because the audience for it is in classrooms now and entering workforces within a few years; HR leaders and school heads cannot afford to be unfamiliar with it. The credentials are serious. A British Empire Medal in 2015 for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular columns in The New York Times and The Guardian. The Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute, shared with Tim Berners-Lee. The work has been judged on substance by serious institutions, which is what allows a sceptical executive committee to take the argument seriously. Key speaking topics Everyday sexism and institutional inequality Workplace harassment and bystander response Male allyship and positive masculinity Online misogyny, incels and the manosphere Gender, consent and education Media representation of women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and culture leads designing policy that will hold up under scrutiny Senior leadership teams and boards examining harassment, retention and reputational risk Heads of school, university leadership and education policymakers Internal employee networks and male allyship programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how harassment patterns form in their own organisation, drawn from the largest qualitative dataset on the subject. Specific language for talking to men about allyship without defensiveness shutting the conversation down. A working understanding of incel and manosphere content that is influencing employees, students and customers. Confidence to challenge policies and processes that look good on paper but fail in practice.

Why organisations work with Rory Cowlam His 2020 book The Secret Life of a Vet (Hodder & Stoughton) makes a specific structural argument: that mental health breakdown in demanding professions is driven by systemic design – appointment length, absence of emotional processing time, cultural silence – not individual weakness. This gives audiences a framework, not just a story. As Clinical Director and co-founder of Pickles Vets, he has built a wellbeing-first practice model from the ground up, which means his arguments about workplace culture come with operational proof, not just principles. His own experience of dyslexia – sustained across a high-stakes clinical career – gives him a credibility on neurodiversity that is qualitatively different from speakers who come to the topic from coaching or consultancy. His platform as Blue Peter’s resident vet and regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and ITV’s Lorraine demonstrates an unusual ability to translate clinical complexity into plain, accessible language – directly relevant for organisations communicating sensitive topics to broad internal audiences. As a co-founder of VidiVet, a digital platform designed to extend veterinary access and reduce pressure on overstretched clinical teams, he brings a practical, innovation-oriented lens to workforce sustainability. Biography highlights Clinical Director and co-founder, Pickles Vets, Fulham, London – an RCVS-registered, wellbeing-first membership veterinary practice Graduate of the Royal Veterinary College, London (BVetMed PgCert MRCVS), qualified 2015 Author of The Secret Life of a Vet (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020) – Amazon bestseller addressing mental health in clinical professions Lead talent and presenter, The Pets Factor, CBBC; resident vet, Blue Peter (BBC, since 2019); regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and ITV’s Lorraine Ambassador, British Dyslexia Association and StreetVet; RSPCA ambassador Co-founder, VidiVet – a digital veterinary advice platform designed to improve access and reduce workload pressure on clinical teams Nominated, Vet of the Year, Animal Star Awards (2018 and 2019) Biography The veterinary profession has one of the highest rates of burnout and mental health difficulty of any skilled workforce in the UK. Rory Cowlam has been arguing, publicly and with clinical authority, that this is not a coincidence – and not a personal failing. It is what happens when a system is designed around throughput rather than people. His 2020 book The Secret Life of a Vet, published by Hodder & Stoughton and an Amazon bestseller, made that argument in direct, first-person terms. It did not frame mental health as a welfare footnote; it placed it at the centre of what makes or breaks professional culture in high-pressure environments. As Clinical Director and co-founder of Pickles Vets in London, Cowlam has since built a practice model that tests those arguments in practice – longer appointments, staffed-to-capacity teams, and transparency on pricing as foundations for a working environment that retains talented clinicians rather than burning them out. His own dyslexia, navigated through a demanding clinical training and a broadcast career spanning The Pets Factor (CBBC), Blue Peter, BBC Breakfast, and ITV’s Lorraine, gives him a lived, professionally grounded perspective on neurodiversity that organisations rarely encounter from a speaker. He does not speak about dyslexia as a historical obstacle overcome; he speaks about it as a continuing factor in how he works, leads, and communicates. A graduate of the Royal Veterinary College and co-founder of VidiVet, a digital platform extending veterinary access, Cowlam sits at a distinctive intersection: practising clinician, published author, broadcast communicator, and operational founder. For organisations wrestling with retention, neurodiversity inclusion, and the gap between wellbeing policy and workplace reality, he offers something specific – a structural diagnosis, not a motivational remedy. Key speaking topics Mental health and burnout in high-pressure professions Neurodiversity and dyslexia in professional environments Wellbeing by design – structural approaches to workforce sustainability Veterinary practice and the realities of clinical leadership Communicating complex expertise to public audiences Animal welfare, charity engagement, and purpose at work Ideal for CHROs and people directors in healthcare, clinical, and high-pressure professional services organisations Wellbeing leads and occupational health teams Early careers and graduate development audiences in clinical and technical professions Diversity and inclusion leads focused on neurodiversity strategy Audience outcomes A reframing of mental health from individual issue to structural design question – with practical implications for how teams are built and managed Clearer language for discussing neurodiversity in professional settings, grounded in lived clinical experience rather than theory An understanding of what a wellbeing-first workplace model looks like operationally, drawn from Cowlam’s own practice at Pickles Vets Greater confidence in communicating specialist expertise to non-specialist audiences – a skill Cowlam models directly in his broadcast work Honest perspective on what high-pressure career paths actually demand, useful for early careers programmes and talent retention conversations

Why organisations work with Simon Alexander Ong A serious, published thesis on energy management as a leadership and workforce capability, anchored in Energize (Penguin, 2022) and recognised as Business Book of the Year for Wellness and Wellbeing in 2023. Direct credibility with global employers on people and culture briefs, with named keynote work for Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever, EY, Adobe and Barclays. A coaching practice behind the content, with qualifications from The Coaching Academy and NLP training, so the material survives contact with senior audiences, not just town-hall settings. Endorsements from Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith, giving HR and communications leads confident reference points when pitching internally. Biography highlights Bestselling author of Energize: Make the Most of Every Moment (Penguin Life, 2022). Winner, Business Book of the Year, Wellness and Wellbeing, Business Book Awards 2023. Endorsed by Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith. Keynote engagements with Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever, EY, Adobe, Barclays and DocuSign. Featured on Sky News, BBC Radio London and LBC, with written contributions in Forbes, HuffPost, Virgin and The Guardian. BSc Economics, London School of Economics; coaching qualifications from The Coaching Academy. Biography Most organisations now accept that burnout, disengagement and quiet exit are not edge cases. They are showing up across leadership teams, middle management and frontline staff at the same time. The argument in Energize, published by Penguin in 2022 and named Business Book of the Year for Wellness and Wellbeing in 2023, is that this is an energy problem before it is a wellbeing problem. Simon Alexander Ong treats energy as a managed resource. His work asks leaders to look at how attention, recovery, relationships and purpose are organised across a working week, then to redesign the parts that drain people without producing anything. The same lens is then turned on teams and on the wider employee experience. The practitioner side keeps the material grounded. Ong is a qualified coach through The Coaching Academy, trained in NLP, and works one-to-one with senior leaders alongside the speaking work. That is why a keynote at Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever or EY tends to land as a conversation with the room rather than a motivational set piece. Endorsements from Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith have helped place him on the same shelf as the leadership and performance authors that senior HR and culture functions already trust. For boards thinking about engagement, retention and the human cost of permanent change, his content gives a language and a set of moves that staff and leaders can actually use. Key speaking topics Energy management for leaders and teams Sustainable high performance Employee engagement and wellbeing Purposeful leadership Focus and attention in a noisy work environment Mindset and personal growth Coaching cultures inside organisations Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of employee experience designing wellbeing and engagement strategy Leadership development and learning teams running senior offsites and high-potential programmes Internal communications and culture leads planning all-hands and kick-off events Sales and commercial leadership audiences working under sustained pressure and target intensity Audience outcomes A clear language for energy as a managed resource at individual, team and organisational level Specific practices for protecting focus and recovery inside an existing diary, not in addition to it A more honest view of where current wellbeing efforts are working and where they are decorative Renewed sense of purpose and ownership for senior leaders carrying long change agendas Practical prompts a manager can use with a team the following Monday