Mental Health in the Workplace speakers

Why organisations work with Réka Deák She brings a fifteen-year transformation consulting track record at KPMG, PA Consulting, The Hackett Group, Implement and Novartis, then applies it to wellbeing as a system rather than a programme. She built the model now used inside her own consultancy Wellbeing Designers, and tests it at scale in her current role as Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group. She is one of a small number of practitioners who can speak in the same room to CFOs, CHROs and operating leaders, because the substrate of her argument is measurement, not mindfulness. Her recognition as LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company give her cross-industry credibility that goes beyond a single sector or function. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wellbeing Designers. Head of People Resilience and Inclusion, Zurich Insurance Group. Former Affiliate Senior Advisor, The Josh Bersin Company. Fifteen years of transformation consulting across KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group, and Novartis as Global Leadership Development Engagement Lead. LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development; Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series. Brain-Based Coach (NeuroLeadership Institute), ACC-certified coach (International Coach Federation), MSc Corporate Finance and MSc Education from Corvinus University of Budapest. Creator and host of the Wellbeing Designers podcast. Biography Most wellbeing initiatives sit at the wrong layer of the organisation. They live inside benefits, communications or HR, with a budget that competes against other line items and a vocabulary that does not connect to the operating conversation. The result is a decade of programmes that improve perception scores and barely move retention, productivity or burnout. Réka Deák works the layer underneath that. After fifteen years inside transformation consulting at KPMG, PA Consulting Group, The Hackett Group, Implement Consulting Group and a global leadership development role at Novartis, she founded Wellbeing Designers to treat wellbeing the way serious organisations treat change: as a system with a measurement model, a culture intervention, and a leadership behaviour standard. She is now Head of People Resilience and Inclusion at Zurich Insurance Group, running the same logic at enterprise scale. Her advisory work with The Josh Bersin Company put her in front of HR leaders across industries who recognised that the wellbeing question had outgrown its toolkit. Her recognition as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership Development and her selection as a Wisdom Weaver in the ICF Thought Leadership Institute’s Future of Wellbeing series reflect the same shift. Boards are now asking wellbeing leaders to defend their work in business terms, and there are few people who can do it credibly. What she gives senior audiences is the bridge that most wellbeing keynotes refuse to build. She is comfortable with the science, the practice, and the operating reality of running a function. She speaks to people whose KPIs include retention, productivity and engagement, and gives them a way to talk about wellbeing that does not embarrass them in front of their CFO. Key speaking topics Wellbeing culture as a measurable operating capability Human-centric leadership at scale Sustainable performance and human sustainability Wellbeing measurement, indices and strategy Wellbeing inside large-organisation transformation Inclusive wellbeing and DEIB The emerging role of the senior wellbeing leader Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of Wellbeing building or defending a wellbeing function CEOs and boards reframing wellbeing as a retention and productivity question Transformation, culture and DEIB leaders integrating wellbeing into change programmes Senior HR audiences at industry summits on the future of work Audience outcomes A working definition of wellbeing culture that survives a CFO conversation A view of what separates a wellbeing programme from a wellbeing operating system A reference model for measuring wellbeing alongside engagement, retention and productivity A clearer brief for the senior wellbeing role inside large organisations Practical next moves for embedding wellbeing into existing leadership and change agendas

Why organisations work with Rob Halford A first-person account of addiction and 40 years of sobriety from a public figure who chose to speak about it rather than manage it privately. Lived experience of coming out in 1998 in an industry built on machismo, which gives weight to inclusion conversations that policy slides cannot. A memoir, Confess, named a Best Music Book of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews, that anchors his talks in a published account audiences can read alongside. A Grammy-winning career across five decades, which earns him the attention of a room before he has said a word about the harder material. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Judas Priest, Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band. Author of Confess: The Autobiography, Headline Publishing Group, 2020, co-written with Ian Gittins. Named one of the Best Music Books of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews. First openly gay heavy metal musician of his stature, coming out publicly in 1998. Marked 40 years of sobriety in January 2026, having spoken openly about addiction and recovery in NME, Rolling Stone, Louder Sound and Fox News. Side projects across his career include Fight, 2wo and the solo project Halford. Biography The metal world in the 1980s did not invite confession. Rob Halford had built one of its biggest voices, fronting Judas Priest through the band’s commercial peak, while privately working through alcoholism and a sexuality he could not name in public. The break came in early 1986. Halford got sober and has now marked four decades without a drink. He has spoken about that decision in interviews with NME, Louder Sound and Fox News, framing it in plain language about humility, honesty and living one day at a time. In 1998 he came out, the first heavy metal singer of his stature to do so. Confess, his 2020 memoir written with Ian Gittins and published by Headline, set the full account on record. Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews named it a Best Music Book of the year. For corporate audiences, the value is the voice behind the story. Mental health, addiction and inclusion conversations land differently when the person at the front has lived all three and is willing to talk about them without softening the edges. Key speaking topics Addiction and recovery Mental health and resilience LGBTQ+ inclusion in hostile environments Life and career lessons from five decades in music Coming out and identity at work Sustained sobriety as a daily practice Ideal for Employee resource group events and Pride programming Wellbeing, mental health and recovery awareness days Leadership offsites where a human story is the anchor of the day After-dinner and conference keynote slots for large mixed audiences Audience outcomes A first-person reference point on addiction and long-term recovery that policy material rarely provides. A more honest baseline for internal conversations about mental health and what disclosure costs. A grounded account of what inclusion looks like from the inside of a hostile industry. A memorable session that signals the organisation takes these topics seriously enough to put a public figure in front of staff.

Why organisations work with Rob Hosking He has made decisions in 999 response situations where the cost of a poor call is measured in lives, and he can translate that experience into language a leadership team or frontline workforce will actually listen to His own breakdown, suicide plan and PTSD diagnosis sit at the centre of his keynote, which is why men’s forums, wellbeing networks and emergency-services audiences book him to start conversations that other speakers can only describe The “What’s in Your Vest?” framework gives audiences a concrete tool, built from a real police equipment vest, for thinking about the communication, composure and curiosity they carry into pressure Chris Evans nicknamed him “The Mighty Motivator” on national radio, and that platform, alongside Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News, has built the public profile that lets him land in front of senior corporate audiences at the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s and Heathrow Biography highlights Former frontline Police Officer with Police Scotland TEDx speaker, “Always Choose Happiness”, TEDxUWE Author of Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness (Fisher King Publishing) Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards Featured on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show (Virgin Radio), Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News Co-founder of Rise of Happiness, Contributor to The Growth Hub, Associate Trainer for Wellity, trained mental health first aider Worked with the NHS, Kellogg’s, London Stock Exchange, Heathrow Airport, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, LetterOne, NI Water and Bedfordshire Police Biography Most workplace conversations about pressure are theoretical. Rob Hosking spent his early career as a frontline officer with Police Scotland, attending 999 calls where every decision had a tight clock and a real consequence. The practical question for any leader, of how people stay clear-headed, communicate well and keep performing when the operating environment is hostile, is the question his career was built to answer. Hosking left policing after a single shift in which he witnessed a young man take his own life and a colleague die of a heart attack. Months earlier, in July 2018, he had planned to take his own life and was interrupted by his dog. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and trained as a mental health first aider. That sequence is the substance of his keynote, not its preamble, and it is what allows him to speak to men’s networks, emergency services and leadership audiences with a credibility that policy and academic content cannot match. The work has earned a public platform. Chris Evans dubbed him “The Mighty Motivator” on Virgin Radio, and he has appeared on Channel 4, Talk TV and GB News. His TEDx talk “Always Choose Happiness” was delivered at TEDxUWE, and his book Lessons from the Frontline – Your Unexpected Guide to True Happiness was published by Fisher King Publishing. He was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the 2024 Speaker Awards. His “What’s in Your Vest?” framework uses the contents of an officer’s equipment vest as a way of asking audiences what tools they carry into pressure, including communication, composure, clarity and curiosity. He has delivered this material for the London Stock Exchange, Kellogg’s, Heathrow Airport, the NHS, Parker Meggitt, Secret Escapes, NI Water, LetterOne and Bedfordshire Police, with men’s mental health, wellbeing, resilience and adaptability as the recurring themes. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Adaptability and managing change Mental health in the workplace Resilience and stress management Psychologically safe leadership Decision-making in high-stakes environments Workplace wellbeing culture Ideal for HR, wellbeing and DEI leads programming mental health, resilience or men’s network events Leadership and management teams operating in high-tempo, high-consequence environments such as emergency services, healthcare, transport and infrastructure Internal conferences, all-hands and away-days where the brief is to open up the conversation on pressure and performance Wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness campaigns and employee network launches Audience outcomes A frank vocabulary for talking about pressure, trauma and mental health at work, drawn from a speaker who has lived it The “What’s in Your Vest?” model as a shared reference point teams can return to after the session A clearer view of how sustained stress degrades judgement, communication and team trust Specific habits and behaviours, taken from operational policing, for staying decisive when conditions are unstable Permission, particularly in male-heavy environments, to speak earlier when something is wrong

Why organisations work with Robert Holden His Be Happy programme is one of the few wellbeing interventions to have been independently tested by academic scientists on national television, giving HR and culture leaders a credible, evidence-grounded answer to the “is any of this real” question from finance and the board. Twenty years of corporate work with Dove on the Real Beauty Campaign and Unilever on brand purpose across 400 brands means he speaks to wellbeing and purpose as commercial, not pastoral, conversations. Success Intelligence reframes high performance for senior teams who have hit their targets and are quietly running on empty, an audience that generic resilience speakers do not credibly reach. A back catalogue of 14 books with Hay House and Penguin Random House, two BBC documentaries, two TEDx talks and a long Oprah association gives him cultural recognition that lifts an internal event out of a routine wellness slot. Biography highlights Ph.D. in psychology and spirituality; founder of The Happiness Project (1994), originally NHS-sponsored. Subject of two BBC documentaries, The Happiness Formula and How to Be Happy, shown in 20 countries to more than 30 million viewers. Be Happy programme was independently tested by Professor Michael Argyle (Oxford) and Professor Richard Davidson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for the BBC QED science strand. Appointed team coach to the leaders of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign in 2005; later led brand-purpose work with Unilever across its 400 brands. New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, including Happiness NOW!, Authentic Success, Loveability, Life Loves You (with Louise Hay) and Higher Purpose. Two TEDx talks (Destination Addiction, The Tea Meditation); featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, and PBS. Biography The Happiness Project began in 1994 as an NHS-sponsored clinic in west London, treating happiness as a clinical question rather than a self-help category. Two years later, the BBC built a QED science documentary around its eight-week programme, with Oxford’s Michael Argyle and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Richard Davidson measuring outcomes. The documentary reached more than 30 million viewers in 20 countries and gave Robert Holden a platform other wellbeing voices have struggled to match. From that base, Holden built Success Intelligence, a consulting practice working with senior teams on the version of high performance that does not quietly burn people out. In 2005 he was appointed team coach to the leaders of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, and the brand-purpose work that followed extended into Unilever’s broader portfolio. His books, fourteen of them across Hay House and Penguin Random House, sit on the same line of inquiry: Happiness NOW!, Authentic Success, Loveability, Life Loves You with Louise Hay, and Higher Purpose. Two TEDx talks and a long association with Oprah have kept the audience wide. What organisations get from Holden is a serious, non-corporate voice on questions HR and senior teams now have to answer in commercial language: why people commit, what purpose actually means inside a P&L, and why happiness, properly defined, is closer to a leadership variable than a benefit. Key speaking topics Happiness and wellbeing at work Success Intelligence and authentic success Purpose-led leadership and brand purpose Resilience and burnout in senior teams Creative thinking through change Coaching and personal development Mental health and positive psychology Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture rebuilding wellbeing strategies that have to land with finance and the board. Senior leadership offsites where high-performing teams are quietly fatigued and need a different framing of success. Brand and marketing leadership working through purpose, authenticity and customer trust. Conferences on the future of work, employee engagement, and mental health in the workplace. Audience outcomes A clearer, evidence-backed view of what happiness at work actually is, and what it is not. Language to talk about wellbeing and purpose with commercial credibility, not pastoral softness. Practical inquiries from Success Intelligence that senior leaders can apply to their own working patterns. A sharper account of why purpose work succeeds inside some organisations and fails inside others. Permission, particularly for senior audiences, to take the question of meaning at work seriously.

Why organisations work with Robin Horsfall Inside account of Operation Nimrod, the 1980 Iranian Embassy hostage rescue, from a member of the assault team. Few speakers can describe high-stakes coordinated action with this level of first-hand authority. Permission to talk about fear at senior level. Horsfall’s book Fighting Scared is built around the argument that competence and fear coexist, which lands differently in a room of executives than standard resilience material. A career arc that puts setback at the centre rather than the margin. Boy soldier, SAS operator, bodyguard, karate school founder, broken neck, cancer survivor, mature undergraduate at Surrey. Useful for audiences in restructure, post-shock recovery or repeated reinvention. Live military analysis credibility. His ongoing commentary on the Russia-Ukraine war has built a substantial public following and is grounded in operational experience, not punditry. A direct, unsentimental voice. He is not a corporate keynote in uniform. He pushes back, takes questions hard, and gives a room something to argue about on the way home. Biography highlights Joined the British Army at 15; full member of the Parachute Regiment from 1974, with three operational tours of Northern Ireland. Badged to B Squadron, 22 SAS in May 1979; part of the assault team on the Iranian Embassy in London on 5 May 1980 that rescued 19 hostages. Author of Fighting Scared: My Life in the SAS (Cassell Military, 2002) and the trilogy The Words of the Wise Old Paratrooper. Author of Slava Ukraini. Who Dares Shares! (2023), an observational diary of the first 18 months of the Russia-Ukraine war. Featured in the BAFTA-winning documentary SAS Embassy Siege. BA (Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing, University of Surrey, 2:1, as a mature undergraduate. 6th Dan Shukokai karate; founder of London Shukokai Karate (1994) and London Karate Limited (1999). Biography The Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate was held for six days in 1980 before the SAS went in. Robin Horsfall was 23, badged to B Squadron the year before, and part of the assault team that ended the siege in roughly seventeen minutes and freed 19 hostages. That single operation is one of the most studied hostage rescues in modern policing and special forces history, and it gives his work with leadership audiences an evidence base most speakers in the resilience category do not have. Before Princes Gate he had already done three tours of Northern Ireland with the Parachute Regiment, having joined the army at 15. After it he served further tours, qualified as an emergency medical technician and as a sniper, and left the regular army in 1984. The next decade put him through territory most corporate audiences only hear about: close protection work in the Middle East, contract soldiering, building and running a medical reception centre in Guyana, founding a karate school in London that he ran for almost two decades. His book Fighting Scared (Cassell Military, 2002) is the spine of the keynote. The thesis is not that elite soldiers are unafraid. It is that fear, properly handled, is part of the discipline. He brings the same argument to senior teams facing restructure, public scrutiny, or decisions they cannot delay. Audiences hear how operators are actually trained to absorb shock, recover and act, and what that means for the way executives prepare themselves and the people around them. The later chapters of his story are also part of why he resonates with serious leadership audiences. He broke his neck in 2012, took a 2:1 in English Literature at Surrey as a mature undergraduate, survived bladder cancer in 2018, and built a large public following through his daily analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war. The career is unusual. The throughline, composure under pressure and a refusal to let setback define the next decision, is what executive audiences end up taking with them. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Composure and self-leadership in crisis Resilience after physical and personal setback Lessons from elite military teams for high-performance cultures Fear, courage and the realities of operational performance Recovery, reinvention and lifelong learning Russia-Ukraine war and the lived experience of conflict Ideal for Senior leadership offsites focused on composure, crisis decision-making and team performance Executive development programmes for newly senior leaders being tested under live pressure Sales, operations and frontline leadership conferences where performance under stress is the theme Veterans, public service and security sector audiences engaging with leadership and recovery Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for fear, preparation and recovery that senior leaders can use with their own teams A clearer view of how elite teams actually train for the first minutes of a crisis, and what transfers into corporate decision-making A reset on what resilience means when separated from wellness industry framing Specific reference points from Operation Nimrod and post-military reinvention that audiences can carry into their own context

Why organisations work with Robin Ince Sixteen years co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox gave him a working method for translating serious ideas into language a general audience can act on. Few speakers have practised that craft at that scale. His account of late-diagnosed ADHD in Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal is one of the most widely read first-person treatments of adult neurodiversity from a recognisably high-functioning public figure. That makes him useful to leadership audiences who do not see themselves in standard neurodiversity training. He brings genuine comedy timing to material that is usually delivered flat. Boards and senior leadership offsites can absorb difficult content from him that they would resist from a clinical speaker. He carries credentials that survive scrutiny in any room: Honorary Fellow at UCL, honorary doctorate from Royal Holloway, Fellow of the British Science Association, Booksellers Association Author of the Year. Biography highlights Co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox, 2009 to 2025; the show won the 2011 Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme. Honorary Fellow of University College London and honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. Author of I’m a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested, Bibliomaniac, and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity; co-author with Brian Cox of How to Build a Universe. Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 2022; Time Out Outstanding Contribution to Comedy, 2006; multiple Chortle Awards including Best Compere. Co-founder of the Cosmic Shambles Network and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, the annual science variety show that has run since 2008. Public advocate on adult ADHD and neurodiversity following his own late diagnosis, anchoring his current touring show The Universe and the Neurodiverse. Biography The Infinite Monkey Cage ran on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years and won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme along the way. Robin Ince co-presented it with the physicist Brian Cox throughout, and the working method he developed there sits at the centre of what he now offers organisations: serious science, philosophy and literature delivered in language a general audience will actually use. That method has produced four solo books and one co-authored with Cox. The Importance of Being Interested and Bibliomaniac established him as a writer on curiosity and reading culture. Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, published by Macmillan in 2025, did something different. Following his own late ADHD diagnosis, he wrote a first-person account of adult neurodiversity that has been unusually well received by readers who do not see themselves in standard workplace material on the subject. The credentials behind the work are real. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College London and an Honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway. He is a Fellow of the British Science Association and was Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2022. He co-founded the Cosmic Shambles Network and has curated the Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People science variety show every December since 2008. For corporate audiences the proposition is specific. He is useful when a leadership team wants to talk seriously about neurodiversity and curiosity without flattening either into HR language, and he is one of very few speakers who can take a room from a research finding to a usable insight to a genuine laugh in the same minute. Key speaking topics Adult neurodiversity and late ADHD diagnosis Scientific curiosity as a habit of mind Communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences Humour and humanity Reading culture and the value of attention Science, music and comedy as a single conversation Ideal for Leadership teams and HR directors building neurodiversity work that goes beyond policy Boards and senior offsites looking for substantive content delivered with comedy timing Innovation, R&D and learning functions who want to reset what curiosity looks like in practice Conference organisers programming a science, culture or curiosity strand Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about adult ADHD and neurodiversity in senior settings A clearer sense of why attention, not information, is the scarce resource in their organisation Specific examples from sixteen years of putting scientists in front of general audiences, with the lessons that translate Permission to be more interested in their own work, which most leaders need more than they admit

Why organisations work with Ronan Harrington He has built and tested the Resilient Performance Method directly with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG, so the model arrives in the room already pressure-tested by the firms that advise on the same problems. His foresight background at the UK Foreign Office gives leaders a credible reading of why the operating environment has changed, before he gets to what to do about it personally and as a team. He is a guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme, which makes him a familiar choice for executive development teams looking for a speaker who works alongside their existing leadership curriculum. His chronic illness and political burnout story is verifiable and used as evidence, not as theatre, which lets the resilience argument land with senior audiences who are usually allergic to motivational content. Buyers report a practical takeaway: leaders leave with a small set of decisions about how they spend energy, attention and team time, rather than a generic call to look after themselves. Biography highlights Former Futurist to the UK Foreign Office, authoring a long-range outlook on the world of 2030 and advising senior officials on geopolitical risk. Creator of the Resilient Performance Method, developed with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG. Guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme and at Oxford University. Founder of Alter Ego, a global network of progressive leaders. Former strategic lead at RethinkX, leading narrative work on the “Rethinking Humanity” report. LinkedIn Top Voice on Public Speaking and Top 5 Best Storyteller at the 2023 Speaker Awards. Biography Most resilience content sounds the same once a senior audience has heard it twice. Harrington is interesting because his track record is in foresight, not in sport psychology, and the model he teaches was built with the firms that advise the same boards he now speaks to. He worked as a Futurist at the UK Foreign Office, advising on geopolitical risk and authoring a long-range outlook on the world of 2030. The brief gave him a structural view of why the operating environment has shifted from cyclical pressure to permanent volatility, which is the frame he now brings to executive audiences. The Resilient Performance Method was developed with Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG, and Harrington is a guest teacher on the KPMG C-Suite Leadership Programme. The method covers how senior leaders allocate energy, attention and team capacity through restructure, AI rollouts and prolonged uncertainty. It is taught as practice, not as inspiration. The personal story is load-bearing rather than decorative. After a period operating at national political level he was diagnosed with a lifetime chronic pain condition, and seven years of managing that condition is what gives his content on energy, recovery and pace its specificity. Clients including L’Oreal, Siemens Energy, Sky, Aviva, IHG, TUI, Sage, Kimberly-Clark, A&O Shearman, DLA Piper, the UK Treasury and Oxford University use him as the speaker who makes the resilience conversation operational at executive level. Key speaking topics Resilient high performance under sustained pressure Leadership through restructuring and prolonged uncertainty Burnout prevention in senior teams Human-first leadership in the AI transition Psychological safety and candour at executive level Energy and attention management for leaders Mental health and recovery for senior professionals Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership offsites where the agenda is performance, not wellbeing as a side topic. Partner and director audiences in professional services facing prolonged client and restructuring pressure. Heads of executive development and leadership programmes building resilience modules into senior curricula. Transformation and change leads running multi-year AI or restructuring programmes that are fatiguing leadership populations. Audience outcomes A working definition of resilient performance that goes beyond personal wellbeing into team-level decisions. A specific read on which signals of burnout to act on early in a senior population. Practical decisions about how leaders allocate energy, attention and team time during sustained pressure. A reframe of human capability under AI-driven change, focused on judgement, candour and recovery rather than tooling. A vocabulary leadership teams can carry into their own meetings about pace, candour and what they will stop doing.

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 Rose Eskafi Combines an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the work is grounded in clinical evidence, not generic wellness language Brings trauma-informed practice into corporate settings, which most workplace wellbeing providers are not trained to do Has built and run wellbeing for a working organisation as Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, so understands the operational reality of HR teams, not just the content Track record delivering for consumer brands including LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike, where workforce demographics, creative pressure, and identity questions all sit on the table at once Biography highlights Founder, Still Chill, a workplace wellbeing consultancy focused on mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed culture Former Head of People and Wellbeing, gal-dem MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion; BSc in Psychology Delivered programmes for LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike Teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines Listed expert with Canvas8 Biography Most workplace wellbeing offers are pitched at the wrong layer. They sit between perk and content and rarely touch the conditions that produce burnout, disengagement, or attrition. Rose Eskafi’s work starts at that deeper layer, where stress regulation, identity, and culture meet. She is the founder of Still Chill, a consultancy that designs mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed programmes for corporate teams. Clients have included LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike. The approach pairs an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the practical tools are anchored in clinical evidence rather than wellness language. Before Still Chill, she was Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, where she ran the people function for a working organisation rather than consulting from the outside. That operating background shapes the work. Programmes are designed to fit how HR and people teams actually deliver, not as set-piece talks that leave the room when the speaker does. She teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines and is trained in self-compassion and racial trauma, which gives her a clearer line on the questions corporate wellbeing usually avoids: how identity, pressure, and belonging interact for the people sitting in the room. Key speaking topics Workplace mindfulness and stress regulation Self-compassion and emotional regulation Trauma-informed approaches to corporate wellbeing Authentic and mindful leadership Neuroinclusion and neurodiversity at work Imposter syndrome and the inner critic Culture, identity, and belonging in organisations Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People building or re-platforming a wellbeing programme that has lost credibility DEI and ERG leads where identity, belonging, and mental health intersect Founders and creative leadership teams in consumer, media, and design organisations Learning and development leads commissioning content for high-pressure or high-attrition functions Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of wellbeing that goes beyond perks and resilience training Practical mindfulness and self-compassion tools usable inside the working day A frame for how trauma-informed practice changes the way managers run conversations Language for talking about identity, belonging, and pressure without defaulting to compliance scripts A sharper view of where the organisation’s current wellbeing offer is doing real work and where it is not

Why organisations work with Ruth Pearson She speaks to hidden disability from inside it. A leader who built a 25-year senior education career while managing lupus brings a credibility on long-term illness at work that policy decks and HR training cannot manufacture. Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, set out in Say Yes To New Opportunities!, gives line managers and individuals a shared vocabulary for the conversations they usually avoid: stress, capacity, and reasonable adjustment. She has stood in the room with both audiences a wellbeing strategy is meant to serve: senior leadership teams who set the policy, and frontline staff who have to live inside it. She translates between them. As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed wellbeing claims against organisational reality, which sharpens how she diagnoses the gap between intent and behaviour. Her broadcast work with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting Tomorrow News Today, gives her a register that holds a non-specialist audience, useful for all-staff sessions where the room is mixed seniority and mixed engagement. Biography highlights Founder of Listening To Your Voice Ltd, a wellbeing, coaching and training consultancy serving business and education leaders. Former Deputy Headteacher with over 25 years in UK secondary education. Author of Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. (2015), which introduces the 5STEPS2LEARN coaching strategy, and Listening for God’s Voice. Television presenter and broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, host of Tomorrow News Today. Verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter; founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services. Has spoken at The Business Show, ExCeL London. Biography The hardest wellbeing problem in most organisations is not absence. It is the senior employee who never goes off sick, but who is quietly running at half capacity through a condition no one knows about. Lupus is one such condition. Ruth Pearson has lived with it since 1996 and continued, through that period, to lead teams in UK secondary schools up to deputy headteacher level. That experience is the spine of her work. Through Listening To Your Voice, she coaches leaders, runs sessions for boards and frontline teams, and writes for managers who want a vocabulary for the conversations wellbeing policy assumes are already happening. Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, is set out in her 2015 book Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. and is built around motivation, capacity and the practical mechanics of asking for help at work. Her credibility on workplace standards is not only personal. As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed how organisations actually deliver against the wellbeing claims they publish, which informs how she diagnoses the gap between policy and behaviour. She is also a founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services and a regular broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting the live show Tomorrow News Today. She is most useful to organisations that already have a wellbeing strategy on paper and want to know why it is not landing with the people it was written for. The answer is usually behavioural, not structural, and it tends to surface most clearly in how managers talk to employees with conditions they cannot see. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing and burnout prevention Hidden disabilities and chronic illness at work Stress, resilience and personal capacity Motivation and engagement through change Inclusive leadership in education and corporate settings Communication between managers and employees on health Personal narrative as a workplace inclusion tool Ideal for HR and wellbeing leads designing or relaunching a wellbeing strategy DEI and inclusion leads addressing hidden disability and chronic illness Education sector leaders, MAT executives and headteachers All-staff or whole-school events where the room is mixed seniority and engagement Audience outcomes A clearer view of what hidden disability looks like at senior levels and where current policy misses it. A working vocabulary, drawn from 5STEPS2LEARN, for the manager-employee conversations stress and chronic illness require. A sharper read on why their existing wellbeing strategy lands well in some teams and not in others. Renewed energy and a sense of permission, especially for staff currently managing a condition they have not disclosed at work.

Why organisations work with Ryan Campbell He turns a story most audiences expect to be inspirational into a working framework. The Joy Audit gives leaders and teams a specific weekly practice for protecting attention, recovery, and engagement. He speaks to burnout from inside it. Campbell has publicly described a period when, despite physical recovery and external success, his mental health was at its worst, which gives the keynote an honesty that resilience theatre lacks. The 1960 pink Cadillac is not a stage prop, it is the structural anchor of his argument. Audiences leave with a single concrete image that survives the flight home and the inbox. His credentials are independently verifiable: Guinness World Record for the youngest solo circumnavigation, Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year, recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers. He is comfortable speaking to safety-critical and high-performance industries. Aviation, healthcare, and emergency services audiences recognise a speaker who has sat in the rehab ward and the cockpit. Biography highlights Youngest pilot in history to fly solo around the world, age 19, completing 24,000 nautical miles in 70 days from Wollongong, NSW. Australian Geographic Society’s Young Adventurer of the Year, 2013. Recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers (Trailblazers exhibition). Author of Born to Fly (HarperCollins Australia). Returned to commercial flying as an incomplete paraplegic after a Tiger Moth crash in 2015. Featured on 60 Minutes and NBC’s Today. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are designed for the average week, not the weeks that break people. They assume the problem is information, when in practice it is attention. Campbell’s keynote starts from that gap. The credentials behind the talk are uncommonly concrete. At 19 he became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world, a 70-day, 24,000-nautical-mile flight from Wollongong, NSW that earned a Guinness World Record and Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year. The Australian Museum included him among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers in its Trailblazers exhibition. He wrote the journey up in Born to Fly, published by HarperCollins Australia. Two years later, an engine-out in a Tiger Moth ended in a crash that left him an incomplete paraplegic. He spent six months in spinal rehab, then returned to flying, eventually qualifying as a commercial helicopter pilot with modified controls. The arc is well-documented in Australian Geographic and on long-form podcasts, including Beyond the Crucible. The keynote is not the crash. The keynote is what he learned about burnout in the years after, when his mental health was worse than at any point in the rehab ward. The Joy Audit and the “What’s Your Pink Cadillac?” framework came out of that period. They are deliberately small, weekly, and operational, which is why corporate audiences in safety-critical industries take them seriously. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Burnout and recovery Resilience and performance under pressure Workplace wellbeing and culture Motivation and lived-experience leadership Aviation and high-stakes decision-making Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reviewing wellbeing strategy and burnout response. Leadership offsites and senior team meetings in safety-critical industries (aviation, healthcare, emergency services, energy). All-hands and annual conferences where the brief is to reset the conversation on mental health without a generic awareness talk. Sales kickoffs and high-pressure commercial teams operate through sustained intensity. Audience outcomes A clear, named framework (the Joy Audit) that audiences can apply in the week after the keynote. A specific argument for treating recovery and joy as performance inputs, not benefits-package items. A vocabulary for raising mental health inside high-performance teams without softening the standard. A memorable single image, the 1960 pink Cadillac, that anchors the message past the event itself.

Why organisations work with Ryan Thomas Recognition that opens a room. Sixteen years on Coronation Street, a Celebrity Big Brother win and a Dancing on Ice title give Thomas an audience-warmth most corporate hosts cannot manufacture. A credible voice on men’s mental health. His sustained work with CALM, including the ten-marathons-in-ten-days fundraiser, places him in the small group of UK television figures who speak about suicide prevention with substance. Hosting craft built on live television. Awards, gala dinners, internal recognition events and panel facilitation are his primary booking categories, and he can move between scripted hosting and unscripted audience interaction without losing pace. Cross-generational reach inside a UK workforce. Coronation Street and reality-format wins give him recognition across age brackets that a single-demographic celebrity rarely matches. Biography highlights Played Jason Grimshaw in Coronation Street from 2000 to 2016, returning to the role in 2025 Winner of Celebrity Big Brother (2018) and ITV’s Dancing on Ice (2024) Ambassador for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, a UK suicide prevention charity Walked ten marathons in ten days in 2021 to fundraise for CALM Co-host of the Mancs on the Mic podcast with brothers Adam and Scott Thomas Appeared on Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls (2017) and Celebrity MasterChef (2022) Biography Men’s mental health remains one of the most stubborn challenges inside UK organisations. Suicide is still the largest cause of death for men under fifty in the country, and the workforce demographics most affected, men in trade, sales, operations and middle management, are the hardest to reach with formal wellbeing programmes. CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, works directly on that audience, and Ryan Thomas has been one of its most visible ambassadors. Thomas reached that audience through television, not through advocacy. He played Jason Grimshaw on Coronation Street for sixteen years, then won Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 and Dancing on Ice in 2024. The Coronation Street audience is the same demographic CALM is trying to reach, and his standing inside it gives him a credibility on the subject that policy-led speakers cannot easily replicate. In 2021 he walked ten marathons in ten days for the charity, a fundraising effort that reframed his public profile from soap actor to active campaigner. He co-hosts the Mancs on the Mic podcast with his brothers Adam and Scott, which has built a parallel audience inside the same demographic. For corporate clients, Thomas is most commonly booked as a host, awards presenter or after-dinner speaker, with the mental health content available as a substantive secondary anchor when the brief calls for it. Buyers commission him because the room recognises him before he opens his mouth, and because he can carry a conversation about suicide prevention without flattening it. Key speaking topics Men’s mental health and suicide prevention CALM advocacy and the male workplace Event hosting, awards presenting and MC work Resilience and reinvention in a public career Television, reality formats and public profile Brotherhood, family and the Mancs on the Mic podcast Ideal for Internal recognition events, awards dinners and conference plenaries seeking a recognised UK host HR, wellbeing and EAP leads commissioning men’s mental health content for predominantly male workforces Charity galas and fundraising events with a CALM, suicide prevention or men’s health angle Sales, trade and operations audiences where a soap-and-reality television profile lands harder than a policy speaker Audience outcomes A live conversation about men’s mental health that lands with audiences usually closed to the subject Permission to talk about suicide prevention at work, anchored by a recognisable advocate A confident, paced host or MC presence across awards, recognition and gala formats A first-hand account of the CALM ten marathons fundraiser and what motivated it