Mental Health in the Workplace speakers

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 Norliza Pavlakos Her resilience frameworks are built on a documented commercial track record: she turned a single struggling tailoring store into a five-location franchise serving the Australian Open, Melbourne Grand Prix, and Marriott Hotels – constraint tested under real conditions, not studied from a distance. Three named frameworks – The Conviction Effect, The One-Day Reset, and The Power of Nothing – give organisations structured tools for decision-making under pressure, rapid performance recovery, and reframing resource constraint as a strategic asset. She built the mental health infrastructure before the speaking career. The Support Pages (formerly Mind Hub) is a mental health directory used by GPs across Australia, where clients can review therapist profiles before booking support. The depth is operational, not rhetorical. The 2021 Toastmasters Golden Gavel – awarded annually since 1959, with previous recipients including Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and Muhammad Yunus – is an independently verified platform credential, not a bureau-issued ranking. Dell, Microsoft, Zurich, Emirates Airlines, and Coca-Cola have booked her for leadership sessions, not general motivation events – consistent evidence that the frameworks land at a corporate, not personal-development, level. Biography highlights 2021 Toastmasters International Golden Gavel recipient – the organisation’s most prestigious annual honour, previously awarded to Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and Muhammad Yunus Built Finest Alterations from a single struggling store to a five-location tailoring franchise, with clients including the Australian Open, Melbourne Grand Prix, and Marriott Hotels Founder of The Support Pages (formerly Mind Hub), a mental health directory used by GPs across Australia to refer patients to vetted therapists Founded Australia’s first Miss India International Pageant from zero start-up capital at age 23, drawing 4,000 attendees Founder of the Liza Pavlakos Foundation, a registered Australian charity Author of Conviction (memoir, 2023) and The Indefatigable Entrepreneur (business memoir, 2026) Biography The assumption built into most resilience training is that someone has studied pressure from a safe distance. Pavlakos built five businesses from zero capital, including a tailoring franchise that grew from one struggling store to five locations serving the Australian Open and the Melbourne Grand Prix. Toastmasters International awarded her the 2021 Golden Gavel, the organisation’s most prestigious annual honour, previously given to Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and Muhammad Yunus. The award recognises communication and leadership, not survival. It reflects what she does with the experience, not simply that she has it. Her mental health work is structural. The Support Pages, formerly Mind Hub, is a mental health directory used by GPs across Australia, where clients can review therapist profiles before booking support. The platform exists because she built it, not because she talked about the need for one. From that experience, she developed three named frameworks: The Conviction Effect, which addresses analysis paralysis when pressure compresses time and information; The One-Day Reset, a rapid recovery protocol when burnout or setback threatens performance continuity; and The Power of Nothing, which reframes severe resource constraint as decision-making advantage. Dell, Microsoft, Zurich, and Emirates Airlines have booked her for leadership sessions, not general motivation events. Key speaking topics Decision-making and leadership conviction under pressure Resilience and performance recovery Mental health infrastructure and workplace wellbeing Entrepreneurial leadership and operating under constraint Personal narrative and organisational mindset High-performance team culture Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive programmes where decision quality under sustained pressure is a live operational concern CHROs and wellbeing leads building psychological resilience into the leadership pipeline Women in leadership conferences where the intersection of commercial achievement and extreme adversity carries specific weight High-performance teams in fast-moving industries where recovery speed after setback is a measurable business outcome Audience outcomes A named model for eliminating analysis paralysis and making faster, cleaner decisions under conditions of incomplete information (The Conviction Effect) A practical 24-hour recovery protocol for maintaining performance through setbacks without extended downtime (The One-Day Reset) A concrete reframe of resource constraint and underestimation as leadership advantage, with specific application to uncertain operating conditions (The Power of Nothing) Clearer understanding of where and how decision quality degrades under sustained pressure, and what structural responses are available Awareness of what genuine mental health infrastructure looks like in practice, from a founder who built it

Why organisations work with Oliver Burkeman His «efficiency trap» argument; that pursuing greater efficiency increases the demands made on time rather than reducing them, gives leaders a named, evidence-based explanation for why their productivity programmes are making things worse. This is not a motivational reframe; it is a structural diagnosis. Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals are already in the hands of senior leaders and knowledge workers. A session with Burkeman builds on a shared conceptual vocabulary rather than introducing one from scratch, which shortens the distance from insight to action. His «imperfectionism» framework, developed in Meditations for Mortals, gives teams a practical operating principle: that meaningful action does not require ideal conditions, and that waiting for control is itself the performance problem. He approaches this as a journalist with fourteen years of empirical investigation into the psychology of time and attention, not as a consultant with a methodology to sell. His arguments are critical rather than prescriptive, which gives them greater durability in boardroom and executive conversations. Two national bestsellers, two TEDx talks, and a decade-long BBC Radio 4 presenting record mean his material has been tested across audiences, formats, and cultures without dilution. Biography highlights Author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; named one of the best books of 2021 by the Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, Audible, Time, and Barnes & Noble Author of Meditations for Mortals (2024, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – national bestseller; introduces his operational philosophy of «imperfectionism» Former staff writer and weekly columnist at The Guardian; «This Column Will Change Your Life» ran for fourteen years (2006–2020) Writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher Winner, Foreign Press Association Young Journalist of the Year Award (2002); shortlisted, Orwell Prize (2006); FPA science story of the year (2015) Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge (BA Social and Political Sciences) Presenter of BBC Radio 4 series including «Oliver Burkeman is Busy» and «Living with the News» TEDx talks: «How to stop fighting against time» (TEDxUniversityofNicosia) and «Why patience is a superpower» (TEDxManchester) Biography Most senior leaders know their organisations are overloaded. Fewer can explain why every investment in productivity appears to make it worse. Oliver Burkeman spent fourteen years as a columnist and journalist at The Guardian investigating exactly this tension, and his conclusion was not a better system, but a structural critique of the system itself. His 2021 New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals names this «the efficiency trap»: the more capacity organisations and individuals create, the more demands expand to fill it. The book argues that the premise of eventually getting on top of everything is not a problem to be solved with better methods, but a structural illusion that drives the overload it promises to end. For leaders navigating performance culture debates, it provides intellectual grounding that goes well beyond the self-help category. His 2024 follow-up, Meditations for Mortals, develops a named operational philosophy, «imperfectionism» as a practical alternative. The argument is not that people should do less, but that taking meaningful action requires abandoning the precondition that conditions be ideal first. This gives teams and their leaders a durable, non-sentimental vocabulary for moving from awareness of overload to genuinely different behaviour. Burkeman trained at Christ’s College, Cambridge, reported from London, Washington, and New York, and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New Philosopher, and he presents BBC Radio 4 series alongside his newsletter, The Imperfectionist, which has built a substantial professional following. Key speaking topics Productivity culture and the efficiency trap Time, attention, and human finitude Imperfectionism as an organisational operating philosophy Burnout, overload, and performance culture Meaningful work and prioritisation under constraint The psychology of distraction and focus Patience as a strategic capability Ideal for CHROs and People directors addressing burnout, overload, and performance culture Senior leadership teams reviewing the assumptions underlying their productivity and ways-of-working programmes Conference audiences in knowledge-intensive sectors where attention, prioritisation, and sustainable output are live strategic concerns Boards and executive teams examining the relationship between culture, wellbeing, and long-term organisational performance Audience outcomes A named framework (the efficiency trap) for explaining why productivity investment can increase rather than reduce overload, applicable immediately in leadership conversations Clearer language for the tension between performance expectations and human limits, reducing the vagueness that makes wellbeing conversations difficult to act on Familiarity with «imperfectionism» as a practical operating principle for individuals and teams working under conditions of permanent overload A reframing of prioritisation: not as a time management technique, but as the fundamental capability that determines organisational focus Greater confidence in decisions to stop, delay, or deprioritise – backed by a rigorous philosophical and psychological argument rather than sentiment

Why organisations work with Owen O’Kane A clinical record that buyers can trust. Former NHS Clinical Lead for a London mental health service, with twenty-five years of frontline practice across palliative care and psychotherapy. That credential separates substantive mental health work from the wellness market. Four Sunday Times bestsellers, including Addicted to Anxiety and Ten to Zen, give him a body of public-facing work that audiences have already read. Sessions land faster because people arrive with context. A method built from CBT, mindfulness, psychotherapy and EMDR, condensed into practical daily techniques people use the same week. Not aspirational, usable. Broadcast fluency from his role on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life and resident slot on BBC Radio 5 Live. He communicates clinical content to non-clinical audiences without losing the substance. Credibility with sceptical workforces. The combination of an Irish working-class background, openness about his own mental health, and a clinician’s vocabulary lets him reach senior leaders and frontline staff in the same room. Biography highlights Former NHS Clinical Lead for mental health in London; previously Palliative Care Lead and Cognitive Psychotherapist, West Middlesex Hospital Sunday Times bestselling author: Ten to Zen, Ten Times Happier, How to Be Your Own Therapist (HarperCollins/HQ), and Addicted to Anxiety (Penguin, 2025) Featured psychotherapist on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life with Matt and Emma Willis Resident expert on BBC Radio 5 Live; former Attitude magazine columnist Corporate clients include Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, BBC Worldwide and Universal Content Group Trained across cognitive psychotherapy, mindfulness, CBT and EMDR Biography Workplace mental health has become a budget line, not a result. Engagement scores stall, sickness absence climbs, and the most loaded staff quietly disengage. The honest question for senior leaders is whether the support on offer would actually help someone in real distress, or whether it is reassurance theatre for the people commissioning it. Owen O’Kane has spent twenty-five years working at the harder end of that question. Trained as a cognitive psychotherapist after early years in palliative care, he went on to lead clinical mental health services inside the NHS, including roles at West Middlesex Hospital and within the London mental health system. The clinical training underwrites everything that follows. His books, Ten to Zen, Ten Times Happier, How to Be Your Own Therapist and Addicted to Anxiety, are all Sunday Times bestsellers and share a single discipline: take the evidence base from CBT, mindfulness, psychotherapy and EMDR, and translate it into something a busy person can use in ten minutes. Addicted to Anxiety, published by Penguin in 2025, treats chronic anxiety as a learned habit rather than a permanent state, which is the argument he brings into corporate rooms. He is one of four therapists featured on BBC One’s Change Your Mind, Change Your Life, hosted by Matt and Emma Willis, and a resident expert on BBC Radio 5 Live. That broadcast fluency matters in keynotes: he can hold a room of senior leaders and a room of frontline staff with the same material, without diluting the clinical content for either. Key speaking topics Workplace anxiety and burnout Mental health for leaders and high-pressure teams Practical psychotherapy techniques for daily use Resilience and emotional regulation Stress management and recovery Building cultures that support genuine mental health Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing mental health and wellbeing strategy beyond box-ticking provision Executive teams and senior leaders carrying chronic decision pressure High-pressure functions including legal, finance, sales, clinical and frontline operations Internal wellbeing leads who need a credentialed clinical voice to anchor a campaign or summit Audience outcomes A clear distinction between everyday stress and the clinical signals that need different action A short daily practice drawn from CBT, mindfulness and psychotherapy that people can run inside ten minutes Permission for senior leaders to name anxiety and pressure out loud, supported by evidence rather than slogans Language for managers to have better conversations about mental health with their teams A more honest internal assessment of whether existing wellbeing provision matches the level of distress staff actually carry

Why organisations work with Paul de Gelder He has lived the full arc of catastrophic shock and operational return, from the moment of injury through six months of rehabilitation back to instructing Navy divers. Few speakers can describe recovery from inside the experience with this specificity. His military discipline gives the talk operational substance. The framework is the Australian Defence Force mantra Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, applied to the practical question of how a leader makes decisions when the original capability is gone. He has built a second career advocating for the species that nearly killed him, hosting more than 20 Discovery Channel Shark Week documentaries since 2013. The choice itself is the lesson: fear converted into purpose, on camera, repeatedly. He has been trusted to coach Will Smith, Ronda Rousey, and Mike Tyson through shark dives. Audiences see a speaker who teaches composure to people who already perform under pressure. He has addressed the United Nations and Fortune 500 leadership audiences across the US, China, the UK, Vietnam, and New Zealand, with a message that travels across cultures and sectors. Biography highlights Australian Army paratrooper, then Australian Navy clearance diver, specialising in bomb disposal and counter-terrorism diving operations. Survived a bull shark attack in Sydney Harbour in February 2009 that took his right hand and right leg, returning to full-time Navy service after six months. Continued instructing Australian Navy divers for three years post-injury before leaving full-time service in August 2012. Host of more than 20 Discovery Channel Shark Week documentaries since 2013. Author of Uncaged (autobiography), Tough AF (training and mindset), and Shark: Why we need to save the world’s most misunderstood predator (HarperCollins, 2022). Speaking platforms include the United Nations and Fortune 500 corporate audiences across five continents. Biography A bull shark closed on a Navy diver in Sydney Harbour in February 2009. The diver was Paul de Gelder, on a counter-terrorism exercise. He lost his right hand and right leg. Six months later he was back in uniform. That return is the substance of the work. De Gelder served as an Australian Army paratrooper, then qualified as a Navy clearance diver in bomb disposal, before the attack. After it, he continued instructing Navy divers for three years and left full-time service in August 2012. The discipline that carried him through rehabilitation is the same discipline he now translates for leaders facing forced reinvention: improvise, adapt, overcome, applied to capability that has actually changed. His second act is the more unusual proof of the argument. Since 2013 de Gelder has hosted more than 20 Discovery Channel Shark Week documentaries and written Shark: Why we need to save the world’s most misunderstood predator, published by HarperCollins in 2022. He has guided Will Smith, Ronda Rousey, and Mike Tyson through dives with the same species that nearly killed him. Fear, in his account, is not something a leader masters once. It is something a leader keeps walking toward. The work resonates because it refuses metaphor. He addresses leadership audiences from the United Nations to Fortune 500 boardrooms with a single, operational claim: composure under shock is a trainable capacity, and the people you lead will calibrate their response to yours. Key speaking topics Resilience after catastrophic shock Self-leadership under extreme pressure Fear, risk, and decision-making Adaptation and operational return Mental fortitude and recovery Purpose and reinvention Ocean conservation and shark advocacy Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating restructure, market shock, or capability loss Sales, operations, and frontline teams facing high-stakes decisions under pressure Wellbeing and mental health audiences focused on substantive recovery, not soft motivation Conferences seeking a credible keynote on resilience with a verifiable lived foundation Audience outcomes A direct account of recovery and return from someone who has lived it, not theorised it The Improvise, Adapt, Overcome framework as a usable decision discipline under pressure A reframing of fear as a signal to engage with, not suppress A credible argument that capability change is not capability loss Renewed conviction that composure is a learned, repeatable practice

Why organisations work with Perri Shakes-Drayton She offers a first-person account of returning to elite performance four years after a career-altering injury, useful to leaders managing teams through prolonged recovery rather than single-event setbacks. Her story is grounded in a verifiable competitive record at the highest level: 4x400m relay silver at the 2017 World Championships in London, on the same track where the 2013 injury happened. She speaks credibly about the difference between motivation and discipline, drawing on a coaching relationship and a return-to-sport pathway, not generic mindset language. The narrative arc is unusually clean for buyers programming a values or culture moment: ranked second in the world, injury, surgery, four-year absence, return at the top level. Specific, dated, evidenced. Biography highlights 2013 European Indoor Champion in the 400m, and gold medallist in the 4x400m relay at the same championships in Gothenburg. 2012 World Indoor 4x400m relay gold medallist; 2017 World Championships 4x400m relay silver medallist in London. Personal best of 53.67 seconds in the 400m hurdles, the second-fastest by a British woman, behind only Sally Gunnell. Four-time British Athletics Champion in the 400m hurdles (2008, 2011, 2012, 2013). BSc Sports Science, Brunel University. Nike-sponsored athlete since 2005. Member of Victoria Park Harriers and Tower Hamlets Athletics Club. Founder of Train with PSD, a London-based fitness initiative running outdoor sessions at venues including The Shard and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Biography The 2013 World Championship 400m hurdles final in Moscow ended at the first hurdle. Perri Shakes-Drayton, ranked second in the world that season with a personal best of 53.67 seconds, landed awkwardly and ruptured the ligaments and cartilage in her left knee. She finished seventh. The surgeon’s instruction afterwards was direct: no more hurdles. What followed was not a comeback story in the conventional sense. It was four years of surgery, rehabilitation, relearning movement, and rebuilding a competitive base in a different event. She returned to the 400m flat, made the Great Britain relay squad for the 2017 World Championships in London, and ran on the team that took silver in front of a home crowd on the track where her injury had happened. The athletic record is verifiable and serious. European Indoor Champion in the 400m in 2013. Gold in the 4x400m relay at the same championships and at the 2012 World Indoors. Four-time British Athletics Champion over 400m hurdles. Second-fastest British woman in history over the distance behind Sally Gunnell, the Olympic and world champion. A Nike-sponsored athlete since 2005, trained out of Victoria Park Harriers in east London, BSc in Sports Science from Brunel. For senior audiences, the value of her account lies in the part most resilience speakers skip: the middle. The years between the injury and the return, where progress is invisible and the question of whether to continue gets asked repeatedly. That is the conversation she is credible on, and the one most leadership programmes are not equipped to host. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setback Self-leadership and discipline under sustained pressure Goal-setting and the practical content of long-term focus Mental health and athlete wellbeing Team dynamics in high-performance environments Diversity and representation in elite sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams and offsites focused on resilience, recovery and decision-making after a setback HR, talent and wellbeing leads programming culture and mental health moments Employee networks, ERGs and diversity events seeking a credible elite-sport voice Conference openers and after-dinner audiences where the brief is story-led rather than thesis-led Audience outcomes A first-hand reference point for what sustained recovery looks like over years, not weeks A working distinction between motivation and discipline that audiences can use the next day A concrete example of returning to a top level after a four-year absence, useful as a benchmark for teams under pressure A reset on what is realistic to ask of people coming back from professional or personal disruption

Why organisations work with Pete Cann He shifts the energy of a conference room in minutes, which is what event owners are actually buying when they book a wellbeing slot after lunch or before a heavy strategy session. He gives a wellbeing message a physical experience, not a slide. Audiences leave having done the thing, not having been told about it. He is comfortable across formats most keynote speakers will not touch: opener, closer, after-dinner, awards host, virtual energiser, team-building lead. The brand is unusually defensible. There is no other UK speaker selling laughter yoga at this scale into corporate audiences, which removes the comparison shop for buyers commissioning a wellbeing or culture moment. Biography highlights Founder of Canned Laughter (2019), the corporate laughter yoga practice trading as Pete Cann “The Laughter Man”. Managing Director and co-founder of The Chef Tree, a UK chef recruitment business he built with his wife Chloe before launching the speaking practice. International corporate client base spanning the UK, the USA and India, delivered in-person and virtually. Host of the podcast “Laughter & Positivity with Pete” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Featured on Britain’s Got Talent as a laughter yoga teacher. Active YouTube channel and Laughter Club community under the “The Laughter Man” brand. Biography Most corporate wellbeing content is delivered as instruction. People sit, take notes about resilience, and return to their desks unchanged. Pete Cann sells the opposite product. The audience laughs for fifteen minutes and leaves the room with a different nervous system than the one they walked in with. He came to this from business, not from wellness. Pete and his wife Chloe built The Chef Tree, a chef recruitment company, from a spare room into a multi-office operation, where he remains Managing Director. The laughter yoga practice started after a session at a summer wellness festival, and in 2019 he launched Canned Laughter as a separate corporate-facing brand. Since then the work has scaled internationally. Clients book him in the UK, the USA and India, in person and on video, for conference openers, after-lunch resets, awards hosting, team-building days and wellbeing programmes. His podcast “Laughter & Positivity with Pete” runs alongside the keynote work, and a Britain’s Got Talent appearance gave the brand a national audience. What he is selling is unusual in the bureau market. It is not a keynote on resilience theory. It is a physical wellbeing intervention that doubles as event energy, delivered by an operator who understands what it costs to run a business with a payroll attached. Key speaking topics Laughter yoga in the workplace Corporate wellbeing and stress reduction Team energy and engagement Mental health at work Event hosting and audience activation Hybrid and virtual team connection Ideal for Conference organisers booking a wellbeing slot, an opener, a post-lunch reset or an after-dinner act HR, internal communications and culture leads running wellbeing weeks or mental health awareness moments Sales kickoffs, awards nights and town halls that need an energiser rather than a strategy keynote Distributed teams running virtual culture or connection sessions Audience outcomes A measurable shift in room energy that carries into the next session of the agenda Direct experience of laughter as a stress and tension release, not a description of it A simple set of practices people can use on their own when they need to reset A shared moment that breaks formality and helps a group connect across hierarchy A wellbeing message that lands without lecturing

Why organisations work with Petra Velzeboer A clinical practitioner, not a wellbeing personality. She holds an MSc in Psychodynamics of Human Development from Birkbeck and works as a qualified psychotherapist, which gives her recommendations weight with sceptical executive audiences. She runs the consultancy she speaks from. PVL serves named corporate clients including PwC, Novartis, Accenture, Herbert Smith Freehills, Monzo, and Channel 4, so the case material in the room is current, not anecdotal. A first-person account of recovery from a high-control religious group and addiction, used to draw direct, uncomfortable parallels with corporate cultures that suppress dissent. This is the argument of her book Begin With You, published by Kogan Page. Comfortable across formats. Keynote, masterclass, panel chair, and leadership programme design, which suits clients building a multi-touch internal wellbeing strategy rather than a one-off event. Her TEDx talks and the Adversity to Advantage podcast give organisations a recognisable external voice to anchor internal campaigns around. Biography highlights CEO and founder of PVL, a mental health consultancy working with large employers including PwC, Novartis, Accenture, Herbert Smith Freehills, Monzo, and Channel 4. Author of Begin With You: Invest in Your Mental Wellbeing and Satisfaction at Work (Kogan Page). Finalist, 2024 International Book Awards (Business: Motivational), and finalist, Goody Business Book Award 2024 (Self-Help: Personal Transformation). TEDx speaker. Talks include “Three Ways to Live the Life You Want” and “Reframing Diagnosis and the Road to Recovery.” Qualified psychotherapist with an MSc in Psychodynamics of Human Development, Birkbeck, University of London. Host of the podcast Adversity to Advantage. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are organised around the wrong question. They ask how to support people who are already exhausted, when the harder question is what in the operating culture is exhausting them. Petra Velzeboer built PVL around that distinction. The consultancy works with large employers, including PwC, Novartis, Accenture, Herbert Smith Freehills, Monzo, and Channel 4, advising on the cultural conditions that determine whether a wellbeing strategy lands or quietly fails. Her credibility rests on two unusual lines at once. She is a qualified psychotherapist with an MSc in Psychodynamics of Human Development from Birkbeck, University of London, which keeps the clinical content honest. She also lived through a recovery story that gives her an unusual angle on organisational culture, having grown up inside the Children of God, a high-control religious group, and worked her way back through addiction and depression. Her book Begin With You: Invest in Your Mental Wellbeing and Satisfaction at Work was published by Kogan Page and was a finalist for the 2024 International Book Awards in Business: Motivational. The argument she makes to senior teams is direct. Cultures that punish dissent, reward overwork, and treat vulnerability as weakness produce predictable mental health outcomes, and no amount of mindfulness app subscription will offset them. Her TEDx talks and the Adversity to Advantage podcast extend that case to a wider audience, which is useful when an internal programme needs an external anchor. She is most useful inside boards, executive offsites, and leadership cohorts where the wellbeing conversation has stalled at the level of perks and posters. Her work pushes it back to the design choices that leaders actually control: how teams are structured, how performance is measured, and what behaviour the culture quietly rewards. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health strategy Organisational culture and toxic behaviours Resilience and recovery from adversity Leadership and vulnerability Burnout prevention Future of work and employee wellbeing Digital wellbeing and focus Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and heads of wellbeing are redesigning a stalled mental health programme. Executive teams and boards are examining the cultural drivers of attrition and burnout. Leadership development cohorts are being trained to manage hybrid, high-pressure, change-fatigued teams. Internal Mental Health Awareness Week, ERG, or culture-change events that need a credible external voice. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which cultural behaviours, not which benefits, drive mental health outcomes inside their own organisation. Practical language for talking about mental health at work without slipping into either clinical jargon or corporate platitude. A reframing of resilience as an organisational design problem, not a personal deficiency. Specific prompts leaders can use with their teams the following week, drawn from clinical practice and Velzeboer’s consulting work.

Why organisations work with Rachel Clarkson She is a Health and Care Professions Council registered dietitian, not a nutritionist or wellness coach, which puts her workplace content inside the standard of evidence that clinical and benefits leaders can stand behind. Her nutrigenomics specialism, built through King’s College London training and a clinical partnership with Nutrigenomix at the University of Toronto, lets her translate gene-nutrient interaction into practical eating guidance for non-clinical audiences. The Eat The DNA Way framework gives corporate audiences a structured way to think about personalised nutrition, rather than the rotating list of trends that wellbeing programmes usually offer. Media credibility is established in outlets benefits and comms teams already trust, including BBC Future, The Guardian, Vogue and Healthista, which makes internal positioning of her sessions straightforward. She speaks as a clinician who runs a Harley Street practice, so audience questions on weight management, gut health, hormones and energy land with practical, individual-level answers rather than generic talking points. Biography highlights Founder of The DNA Dietitian, a Harley Street consultancy focused on nutrigenomics and personalised nutrition. MSc Nutritional Science and Postgraduate Diploma in Dietetics, King’s College London. Former Clinical Dietitian at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust, with rotational training across the Royal Marsden, Imperial College Healthcare and St Thomas’s. Guest Lecturer on the MSc programme at St Mary’s University, London. Clinical partner of Nutrigenomix, the genetic testing company founded at the University of Toronto. Featured in BBC Future, The Guardian, Vogue, Tatler, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Women’s Health and Men’s Health. Biography Corporate wellbeing spend has risen for a decade, and most workforces still feel tired, distracted and unsure what to eat. The gap is not awareness. It is specificity. Generic nutrition advice cannot account for how different people actually metabolise caffeine, respond to saturated fat, or tolerate carbohydrate, which is why so much wellbeing content fails to translate into behaviour change. That is the gap nutrigenomics closes, and it is the territory Rachel Clarkson works in. Trained as a dietitian at King’s College London and clinically grounded through NHS rotations at Chelsea and Westminster, the Royal Marsden, Imperial College Healthcare and St Thomas’s, she now runs The DNA Dietitian from Harley Street. Her clinical partnership with Nutrigenomix, the testing company founded at the University of Toronto, sits behind a method she calls Eat The DNA Way. She holds a guest lecturing position at St Mary’s University, London, where she teaches nutrigenomics on the MSc programme, and she contributes to literature in the field. The combination, regulated clinical credentials plus a specialism most general nutrition speakers do not have, is what makes her credible to a board-level audience asking whether wellbeing budget can be made to do real work. In rooms of HR, benefits and people leaders, she translates a complex science into practical guidance her audience can act on the same week, with the same evidential standard she applies in clinic. That is rare in the workplace wellbeing market, and it is the basis on which her work has been picked up across BBC Future, The Guardian, Vogue and Healthista. Key speaking topics Personalised nutrition and nutrigenomics Corporate wellbeing programme design Workplace energy, focus and cognitive performance Weight management and cardiometabolic health Gut health, IBS and digestion Hormonal health across the working life Longevity and healthspan in the workforce Ideal for CHROs, heads of people and benefits leaders reviewing their wellbeing strategy Internal health, safety and wellbeing committees commissioning content for staff Professional services and finance firms with high-performance cultures and energy management questions Women’s networks and ERGs running hormonal health, menopause or energy programming Audience outcomes A working understanding of how nutrigenomics differs from generic nutrition advice and where it can usefully apply at work Specific, evidence-based answers to the questions employees most often ask about weight, energy, gut health and hormones A clinical frame of reference for assessing wellbeing vendors and content offered to the workforce Personal next steps each attendee can apply to their own eating pattern within the week

Why organisations work with Rachel Sheerin Speaks to burnout as a performance problem, not a wellness problem, which lets senior teams act on it without rebranding it as HR theatre. Behavioural-analyst training underpins the work, so the content has a diagnostic spine rather than relying on personal-story keynote tropes. TEDx talk “How to Burnout and Be Successful” reached a wide audience and gives the topic a recognisable hook for internal marketing of an event. Hospitality and sales operating background means she reads the room of a client-facing workforce accurately, including Ritz-Carlton, Marriott and SHRM audiences. Doubles as a tested conference emcee, which is useful when the buyer wants a single voice to anchor a multi-day programme rather than a one-off keynote. Biography highlights Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst. TEDx speaker: “How to Burnout and Be Successful,” TEDxPuntaCanaWomen. Author, “Better All The Time” (2024) and “BETTER: How to live, lead and succeed” (Hawthorn Road Press, 2023). Named NACE Speaker of the Year, 2019. Featured in Inc. Magazine; host of the podcast “F THIS S with Rachel Sheerin.” Clients include The Ritz-Carlton, Marriott International, Walmart, Freddie Mac, Berkshire Hathaway, SHRM and the James Beard Foundation. Biography Burnout has become the workforce conversation that organisations cannot afford to keep handling at the edges. The cost shows up first in the highest performers, the people whose output the rest of the operation is built on. Standard wellbeing benefits do not move that needle. Rachel Sheerin works in that gap. A Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst with a former career in hospitality and events sales leadership, she treats burnout as a behavioural and operational problem rather than a feelings problem. Her TEDx talk “How to Burnout and Be Successful” framed the territory for a wide audience and remains the most-cited entry point into her work. Her two books, “BETTER: How to live, lead and succeed” (Hawthorn Road Press, 2023) and “Better All The Time” (2024), set out a practical method for high performers who keep over-extending themselves. The same content reaches a recurring audience through the podcast “F THIS S with Rachel Sheerin” and through coverage in Inc. Magazine. She was named Speaker of the Year by NACE in 2019, and now works regularly with clients including The Ritz-Carlton, Marriott International, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, Freddie Mac, SHRM and the James Beard Foundation. The audiences are typically sales, service and operating leaders inside organisations that depend on people performing at a high level in customer-facing roles. Key speaking topics Burnout prevention and recovery Self-leadership and energy management Employee engagement High-performer psychology Sales authenticity and motivation Workplace culture and wellbeing Conference emcee and event hosting Ideal for CHROs, heads of people and chief wellbeing officers in service, hospitality and sales-driven organisations Sales leadership audiences in client-facing industries Annual conferences for associations and franchises that need a keynote plus emcee in a single voice Post-merger or post-restructure events where the workforce is visibly fatigued Audience outcomes A clearer read on where burnout is showing up inside the team and what is driving it Practical language for talking about workload, energy and recovery in a working environment Tools high performers can apply without giving up the standard they hold themselves to Renewed engagement and focus in audiences entering a demanding quarter or season

Why organisations work with Dr Ranj Singh Clinical authority on health and wellbeing, drawn from active NHS paediatric emergency practice and membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, not a wellness brand. A broadcast track record that translates into the room: five years as resident doctor on ITV’s This Morning, two BAFTA Children’s Awards for Get Well Soon, and a Sunday Times bestseller in Save Money Lose Weight. First-person credibility on LGBTQ+ inclusion as a Sikh-heritage gay clinician, recognised with the 2019 Attitude Award for advocacy on ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ representation. A communicator who has spent a career simplifying medical information for non-specialist audiences, including pandemic misinformation work, which means complex health and inclusion content lands with employees who would tune out a textbook talk. Biography highlights NHS clinician specialising in paediatric emergency medicine; member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health since 2007. Resident doctor on ITV’s This Morning, 2016 to 2021. Co-creator and host of CBeebies’ Get Well Soon and Get Well Soon Hospital; winner of BAFTA Children’s Awards in 2016 and 2018. Sunday Times bestselling author of Save Money Lose Weight (Transworld, 2019); children’s titles with Oxford University Press and Hachette. Attitude Award winner, 2019, for representation of ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ people in media. Honorary doctorate from Canterbury Christ Church University, February 2025, for contributions to public life and medical science. Biography Most workforces have heard the wellbeing message before. They have sat through resilience modules, downloaded the meditation app, and still report record sickness absence. The reason is rarely the content. It is who is delivering it. That is the problem Singh’s profile is built to solve. He is a working NHS paediatric emergency doctor and a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, with the clinical grounding to talk about physical and mental health without slipping into the language of corporate wellness. Five years as the resident doctor on ITV’s This Morning, alongside two BAFTA Children’s Awards for Get Well Soon, gave him the rarer skill of making medicine intelligible to viewers who are not patients yet. The same mix shapes his work on inclusion. As a gay clinician from a Sikh background, Singh writes and speaks about LGBTQ+ representation with the authority of someone who has lived the question. The Attitude Award in 2019 recognised that body of media advocacy. His Sunday Times bestseller Save Money Lose Weight, columns for Attitude and NetDoctor, and his pandemic work countering health misinformation extend the same instinct into print and public health. In February 2025 Canterbury Christ Church University awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contribution to public life and medical science, a useful marker of how seriously the clinical and academic community takes the broadcast persona. Key speaking topics Employee mental health and wellbeing Health communication for non-clinical audiences LGBTQ+ inclusion and intersectional identity Burnout and pressure in high-stakes professions Public health, misinformation and trust Diversity, representation and lived experience Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing and DEI leads building credible mental health and inclusion programmes Healthcare, life sciences and public-sector audiences seeking a clinician’s voice Internal conferences and employee networks marking Pride, Mental Health Awareness Week, or South Asian heritage moments Leadership audiences in regulated industries where trust and communication matter as much as policy Audience outcomes A clearer language for talking about mental and physical health at work, grounded in clinical reality rather than wellness slogans Sharper understanding of how identity, family expectation and culture shape who speaks up about health and who stays silent Practical reframes for managers on supporting LGBTQ+ employees and ethnic minority staff without performative gestures Confidence to address health misinformation in workforces, including on vaccines, diet and mental health A more honest conversation in the room about pressure, burnout and asking for help

Why organisations work with Rashmi Airan She has lived the failure she now teaches against. A Columbia-trained lawyer who went to federal prison for fraud tied to the housing crisis is a different category of voice on judgement under pressure than a consultant or compliance trainer. Her Clarity Loop gives leadership teams a four-question, sixty-second discipline they can actually run inside a real decision, not a values poster they nod at and forget. She names the specific mechanisms that erode judgement, rationalisation, normalisation, silence, group pressure, and urgency, from the inside, because they are the ones that took down her own career. Her work connects judgement, resilience, and mental health, which makes her relevant to leaders under sustained strain rather than only to the compliance function. Biography highlights Columbia Law School graduate, with honours; undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill; former Wall Street investment banker. Served six months in federal prison for fraud tied to the US housing crisis, after a conspiracy conviction as a closing attorney. Creator of the Clarity Loop, a four-question decision framework, and the RISE Through It® process for recovering judgement after setback. Author of ALL RISE: A Lawyer’s Evolution from Prison to Purpose, endorsed by Marshall Goldsmith. TEDx speaker, Against the Slippery Slope (TEDxGreenville), on ethical blind spots and decision-making under pressure. Has delivered keynotes for leaders at Deloitte, Coca-Cola, Merck, Comcast, Cardinal Health, and Medtronic. Media appearances on ABC, PBS, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal; board director, Overtown Youth Center and Alonzo Mourning Foundation. Biography Most damaging decisions in business are not made by reckless people. They are made by capable, experienced leaders under pressure, one reasonable-seeming compromise at a time. Rashmi Airan knows the pattern from the inside. A Columbia Law School graduate and former Wall Street investment banker, she built a successful legal career before a conspiracy conviction tied to the housing crisis sent her to federal prison. That collapse became the subject of her work rather than a footnote to it. For more than a decade she has studied how speed, incentives, and the stories leaders tell themselves quietly bend judgement, and how to interrupt that drift before it hardens into damage. Her central idea is that integrity needs infrastructure: strong values are necessary but not sufficient under real pressure. The practical answer she teaches is the Clarity Loop, a four-question pause that takes about sixty seconds and forces a leader to name the pressure, examine their incentives, find the blind spot, and check the decision before acting. Her longer RISE Through It® process, Reframe, Identify, Surrender, Evolve, addresses the harder climb back after a setback. She has brought both to leadership teams at Deloitte, Coca-Cola, Merck, Comcast, Cardinal Health, and Medtronic. She is the author of ALL RISE: A Lawyer’s Evolution from Prison to Purpose, and her story has been covered by ABC, PBS, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She serves on the board of the Overtown Youth Center and the Alonzo Mourning Foundation and is an ambassador for The Key Clubhouse, work rooted in mental health and second-chance opportunity, the ground she had to rebuild on herself. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Values-based leadership Resilience after professional setback Decision drift and the conditions for ethical lapse Behavioural science and judgement Mental health and senior leadership Risk awareness for boards and executive teams Ideal for Boards, general counsel, and compliance leadership setting the ethical operating standard for the organisation. Partner groups in law, accounting, banking, and professional services where individual judgement carries firm-wide risk. Senior leadership development programmes inside Fortune-scale companies focused on decision quality and resilience. Women’s leadership forums and emerging-leader cohorts where authority, voice, and self-knowledge are central. Audience outcomes A four-question method, the Clarity Loop, they can run inside a real decision before they act. The vocabulary to name decision drift as it happens in their teams, rather than after the damage. A more honest account of how pressure, incentives, and culture combine to bend capable people’s judgement. Permission to treat mental health, fear, and self-doubt as leadership issues rather than private weakness. A first-person reference point that leaders carry back into their own teams when the pressure starts to rise.