Mental Health in the Workplace speakers

Why organisations work with Sally Gunnell The only woman in history to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 400m hurdles titles plus the world record, which gives wellbeing and performance content a level of competitive proof very few speakers can match. Runs an ongoing corporate wellbeing programme rather than a single keynote, with a network of coaches, nutritionists and advisors that allows the message to be embedded inside a client’s existing health and engagement workstreams. Translates elite preparation into specific workplace habits around recovery, mental fitness, goal setting and pressure management, in language that lands with non-athlete employee audiences. Over a decade as a BBC Sport athletics presenter and four published books on fitness, wellbeing and self-fulfilment, which means she communicates to mixed corporate audiences with broadcast-trained clarity. A credible figure for senior sponsors of wellbeing and culture programmes who need an external voice their CEO will respect and their wider employee base will actually listen to. Biography highlights Olympic 400m hurdles gold medallist, Barcelona 1992. World record holder at 52.74 seconds, set winning the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart. Only woman to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 400m hurdles titles plus the world record. Appointed MBE in 1993, OBE in 1998, and Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex in 2011. BBC Sport athletics presenter for over ten years; co-hosted ITV’s Body Heat 1994 to 1996. Author of four books on health, fitness and wellbeing, including Be Your Best and Ten Hurdles in Life. Biography The gap between elite performance language and what actually changes behaviour inside a workforce is wider than most wellbeing programmes admit. Sally Gunnell’s corporate practice is built around closing it. She runs an ongoing wellbeing programme with a network of coaches, nutritionists and advisors, designed to sit alongside a client’s existing leadership, engagement and health agenda rather than land as a one-off keynote. The competitive record behind that work is unusual. At Barcelona 1992 she won Olympic gold in the 400m hurdles, becoming the first British woman to win an Olympic track gold since Ann Packer in 1964. The following year in Stuttgart she set a world record of 52.74 seconds to take the World Championship, and remains the only woman to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles in the event plus the world record. Her communication base was built outside athletics. She spent over a decade with BBC Sport as an athletics presenter, co-hosted ITV’s Body Heat in the mid-1990s, and has written four books on fitness, wellbeing and self-fulfilment, including Be Your Best and Ten Hurdles in Life. That combined broadcasting and authorship background is why her sessions translate cleanly to mixed corporate audiences rather than reading as sports anecdote. She was appointed MBE in 1993, OBE in 1998, and Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex in 2011. For organisations whose wellbeing and high-performance work has plateaued, she gives the agenda a credible external voice and a programmatic structure to attach it to. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing programmes Mental fitness and resilience High-performance habits Goal setting and personal accountability Sustained performance under pressure Health and lifestyle in the workplace Teamwork and motivation Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing scoping multi-year mental health and performance programmes. Internal communications and engagement leads anchoring a company-wide wellbeing or culture campaign. Sales, operations and frontline leadership teams working on resilience and sustained performance. Conference organisers building a wellbeing or high-performance track for a mixed corporate audience. Audience outcomes A clearer model of what elite preparation, recovery and pressure management look like translated into office and frontline work. Specific habits to take into goal setting, mental fitness routines and managing setbacks. A shared organisational vocabulary linking individual wellbeing to team and business performance. Renewed motivation grounded in a verifiable competitive record, not generic inspiration.

Why organisations work with Sarah Ann Macklin Her book Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard, an instant Sunday Times bestseller with Penguin, argues from eight years of research that how people speak to themselves changes their stress hormones and digestion. That puts hard science under a wellbeing agenda that usually runs on good intentions. Across more than 500 episodes of Live Well Be Well, ranked among Spotify’s most-shared shows of 2025, she has questioned the world’s leading health scientists directly. Audiences get current science from someone who interrogates it for a living. Scouted as a model at 16 and hospitalised with burnout at 23, she speaks about the human cost of optimisation culture from direct experience, which carries unusual weight with high-pressure workforces. Her credibility is institutional, built through a Harley Street clinic advising C-suite clients, a mental health CIC she founded, and findings on type 2 diabetes she presented to the European Parliament. Biography highlights Author of Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard (Penguin / Bantam Press, 2026), an instant Sunday Times bestseller with a foreword by Dr Stacy Sims. Host of the Live Well Be Well podcast: 500+ episodes, a YouTube channel past 100,000 subscribers, and one of Spotify’s most-shared shows of 2025. Registered Associate Nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition, holding a First-Class BSc in Human Nutrition from London Metropolitan University. Founder and CEO of Be Well Collective, a mental health Community Interest Company focused on prevention. Presented findings on dietary guidelines and type 2 diabetes to the European Parliament (2018); TEDx speaker, Are Models Role Models? Nutrition and wellness contributor to Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Health, Esquire, and the Evening Standard; named “the Jamie Oliver of nutrition” by Marie Claire. Biography The global wellness industry is worth $8.5 trillion, and by most measures people are getting less healthy, not more. Sarah Ann Macklin spent years inside that industry before she could explain why. Scouted as a model at 16, she worked across London and New York for brands including Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana. She pursued the ideal body until burnout put her in hospital at 23. That reckoning sent her back to study. She earned a first-class degree in Human Nutrition from London Metropolitan University, having nearly dropped out when dyslexia was identified mid-course. A decade of clinical work followed, including a Harley Street practice whose clients ranged from magazine editors to C-suite executives. The pattern she saw in the clinic became her argument. Her clients were informed and motivated, yet defeated by the pressure to optimise every meal and metric. In Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard, her Penguin debut and an instant Sunday Times bestseller, she makes an unusual case. Self-compassion changes physiology, altering stress hormones and even how the body absorbs nutrients. For organisations, this reframes the wellbeing budget. Macklin’s case is that resilience training layered onto a culture of relentless optimisation adds to the very load it is meant to lift. Her platform gives the argument reach: the Live Well Be Well podcast has passed 500 episodes with leading health scientists and ranked among Spotify’s most-shared shows in 2025. Key speaking topics Self-compassion and sustainable health The psychology of optimisation culture and burnout Nutrition and the mind-body connection Employee wellbeing and workplace mental health Preventive mental health Neurodiversity and dyslexia at work Women’s health and role models in high-pressure industries Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding wellbeing strategy after high spend and low impact Organisations in high-pressure sectors such as finance, law, media, and fashion with rising burnout Employee wellbeing, DEI, and mental health leads planning awareness events with genuine substance Conferences and leadership offsites seeking a science-grounded health voice with clinical credibility Audience outcomes Why rising wellbeing budgets often fail to reduce burnout, and what actually shifts it How chronic stress and self-criticism affect the body, from digestion to sleep A way to frame employee wellbeing that lowers pressure on people instead of adding targets A credible case, backed by research, that rest and self-compassion belong inside a high-performance culture

Why organisations work with Sarah Moshman Her documentary Nevertheless is in active use as a sexual harassment prevention tool by employers and educators through distributor Indieflix, giving HR and DEI leads a piece of external content that has survived independent review. The Empowerment Project has been screened more than 700 times for corporate and education audiences and has been picked up as programming by Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab, which is a working track record for women’s leadership events rather than a speculative pitch. She brings a regional Emmy in the Human Interest category and a NASA CineSpace first-place win for UNBOUND, which gives her credibility as a maker, not only as a speaker telling stories about her own life. She has been booked into difficult rooms, including a US Air Force women’s symposium at Hill Air Force Base and the opening keynote at the PEI Women Conference, where the audience is not the converted. Her commercial film work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel means she understands the brief from a marketing buyer’s side and can speak credibly to internal communications and brand teams about storytelling that performs. Biography highlights Emmy Award winner, NATAS Chicago/Midwest Chapter, 2013, for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. Director of three feature documentaries: The Empowerment Project (2014), Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) and Nevertheless (2020). UNBOUND won First Place at NASA’s CineSpace Global Short Film Competition. Author of Empowered Filmmaking: How To Make a Documentary On Your Own Terms (2020). Branded content work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel. Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Marie Claire, Upworthy and PBS; TEDx speaker; adjunct professor in documentary film. Biography Compliance-led harassment training is the work environment most employees have come to mistrust. The films Sarah Moshman has made for the same audience take the opposite route. Nevertheless, her 2020 feature documentary, follows seven survivors across industries from a tech CEO to a 911 dispatcher, and is now distributed by Indieflix as part of structured prevention education in workplaces and schools. That outsider craft is what organisations are actually booking. The Empowerment Project, her 2014 feature on women in leadership across the US, has been screened more than 700 times for audiences from corporates to schools, and has carried sponsorship from Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab. Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) follows four women rowing more than 8,000 miles across the Pacific and gives her a second register: endurance and team performance under conditions where every easy out has been removed. The credentials behind the work are specific. A regional Emmy in 2013 for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. First place at NASA’s CineSpace competition for the short UNBOUND. A book, Empowered Filmmaking, that documents how the films were funded, made and licensed to Netflix. Branded content commissions from SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel that confirm she can produce inside a marketing brief, not only on her own terms. In a room, she works from her own footage. The PEI Women Conference opened with her in 2019, the US Air Force hosted her at the Hill women’s symposium, and her TEDx delivery is on public record. The result is the rare speaker on these topics whose primary asset is film that an organisation can keep using long after the keynote ends. Key speaking topics Workplace sexual harassment prevention Women’s leadership and the next generation pipeline Storytelling for brand and internal communications Inclusion and allyship after #MeToo Courage and risk-taking in early careers Documentary craft and the business of independent film Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and ER teams running harassment prevention or culture programmes Internal communications and employer brand leaders looking for narrative content Women’s leadership networks and ERG anchor events CMOs and brand teams interested in long-form storytelling as a commercial asset Audience outcomes A documentary screening or curated clips package that gives employees a shared piece of content to discuss, rather than a slide-led training A clear account of how the Nevertheless survivors describe what allyship looked like in practice, including from peers and managers Specific examples of how women profiled in The Empowerment Project moved into senior roles, useful as case material for internal mentoring conversations A working method for using story to make uncomfortable workplace conversations possible without defensiveness

Why organisations work with Shirley Ballas A live-television presence with nearly a decade on the Strictly judging panel, comfortable hosting awards nights, fundraisers and after-dinner sessions on the same scale as the corporate audiences in front of her. Forty years of performing at the highest level of competitive Latin dance, including ten US Latin American titles and three British Open World titles, gives her a credible voice on sustaining standards over a long career. A working ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Suicide and Co, with a personal account of losing her brother to suicide that gives weight to mental health programming inside organisations. President of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, the institutional credential that distinguishes her from celebrity speakers without a substantive professional body behind them. Biography highlights Head Judge, BBC One Strictly Come Dancing, since 2017. Three-time British Open to the World Latin American Champion; ten-time United States Latin American Champion; 17-time British Open finalist. President of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. Author of Behind the Sequins: My Life (John Blake, 2020). Ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Suicide and Co; Appeal Ambassador for Alder Hey Children’s Charity 7in10 Mental Health campaign. Inducted into the United States and Great Britain Dance Halls of Fame; three-time recipient of the Carl Alan Award. Biography Competitive Latin dance is a brutal long-game discipline. Most champions peak briefly and disappear. By 21, Shirley Ballas had already won nearly every major Latin title available, and she stayed at the top of the international circuit until retiring from competition in 1996. That career produced three British Open World Latin Championships, ten US Latin American titles, and 17 British Open finals across a single division. It also produced the credibility that took her into adjudication and coaching at the highest international level, and on into the President’s chair at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. Since 2017, Ballas has been the Head Judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the role Len Goodman vacated. The BBC seat is the live-television equivalent of her competitive career: scored every week by an audience of millions, with no margin for an off night. Her 2020 autobiography Behind the Sequins covers the cost of that life, including a working-class start in Wallasey, two marriages, and the loss of her brother David to suicide in 2003. That loss is the basis for her public mental health work. Ballas is an ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and for Suicide and Co, and an Appeal Ambassador for Alder Hey Children’s Charity’s 7in10 mental health campaign. Inside corporate rooms her draw is the combination of celebrity recognition and a serious, lived account of resilience and male-suicide awareness. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery from personal loss Performance under pressure Mental health advocacy and male suicide awareness Sustained excellence across a long career Live broadcast and high-profile judgement Event hosting, Q&A and after-dinner Ideal for Awards nights, gala dinners and charity fundraisers seeking a recognisable host with a substantive personal story. Internal corporate events on resilience, wellbeing or mental health, particularly programmes addressing male mental health. Employee engagement and recognition events looking for a high-profile broadcast personality for Q&A or fireside formats. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of staying at standard across four decades of competitive performance and live television. A direct personal perspective on grief, suicide loss and the work of CALM and Suicide and Co. A Q&A or fireside conversation that lands with audiences who know her from Strictly Come Dancing. A glamorous and confident hosting presence for awards, gala or recognition formats.

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

Why organisations work with Simon Jack His position as sitting BBC Business Editor gives direct, current insight into how major financial and corporate stories are selected, framed and brought to national audiences – not historical analysis, but active editorial intelligence A decade in investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda means he interrogates market events and corporate decisions from inside knowledge, not observation; financial audiences notice the difference Uniquely placed to explain the mechanics of media-corporate accountability, how organisations end up on the wrong side of a headline, and what that process actually looks like from within a national broadcaster The Good Bad Billionaire podcast (Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024) demonstrates an ability to make wealth, power and business ethics accessible and genuinely engaging for broad audiences – a value signal for any organisation wanting sharp facilitation, not just informed commentary His BBC Panorama film on male suicide brings personal authority to mental health discussions in business contexts that few speakers in this space can match Biography highlights BBC Business Editor since 2016, holding the role previously occupied by Robert Peston, Jeff Randall and Kamal Ahmed Decade in corporate and investment banking across London, New York and Bermuda before joining the BBC PPE, St John’s College, Oxford Lead BBC correspondent for the 2008 financial crisis: Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG bailout, Lloyds TSB/HBOS Co-presenter of Good Bad Billionaire (BBC World Service) – Best Business Podcast, British Podcast Awards 2024 Presented BBC Panorama «A Suicide in the Family» (2015), a personal investigation into male suicide and the death of his father Biography When a major financial institution collapses, a rate decision lands, or a FTSE company comes under scrutiny, the story that reaches boardrooms and living rooms alike passes through a small number of editorial gatekeepers. Understanding how that process works – what gets reported, what gets simplified, what gets missed – is increasingly relevant to any senior leader operating in a complex economic environment. Simon Jack has spent two decades sitting at that interface. Appointed BBC Business Editor in 2016, he leads the corporation’s coverage of business, markets and economic policy across television, radio and digital platforms (a role previously held by Robert Peston). Before entering journalism, he spent a decade in corporate and investment banking in London, New York and Bermuda, building a working understanding of how financial institutions operate, how risk is managed, and how decisions are made under pressure that journalists who came up through newsrooms simply do not have. The dual experience of practitioner then investigator, gives Jack a particular kind of credibility. He has reported from inside major market events, including the 2008 financial crisis across Lehman Brothers, the AIG bailout and the HBOS collapse. He co-presents Good Bad Billionaire for BBC World Service, which won Best Business Podcast at the 2024 British Podcast Awards, demonstrating an ability to make the economics and ethics of extreme wealth engaging for audiences well beyond the specialist. He also presented the BBC Panorama film «A Suicide in the Family» – a personal and investigative piece on male suicide – which established him as a credible voice on mental health in a way that is unusual for a business journalist of his seniority. His value to organisations is not analysis from a distance. It is the perspective of someone who has been inside the financial system, run editorial coverage of it, and understands how the story between those two worlds gets told. Key speaking topics Global financial markets and economic developments Banking, investment banking and institutional risk Media accountability and corporate reputation Business journalism and editorial decision-making Wealth, power and business ethics Male mental health in professional contexts Ideal for Financial services, banking and insurance sector conferences seeking credible external perspective on market dynamics and media coverage Senior leadership and board-level events where understanding the media-corporate interface is strategically relevant Corporate communications, investor relations and policy teams navigating how economic narratives are formed Organisations seeking a facilitator or moderator with genuine financial literacy and broadcast authority Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how major financial and economic events are selected, shaped and communicated by national media, and what that means for organisational decision-making Insight into the practical gap between financial reality and public narrative, drawn from experience on both sides Greater literacy in reading market events and economic signals, without requiring specialist background A more grounded perspective on how corporate institutions appear under editorial scrutiny, and what factors shape that For events that include the mental health strand: a serious, personally grounded framing of male wellbeing in high-pressure professional environments

Why organisations work with Sonny Kalar Three decades of Metropolitan Police service, including five years as a counter-terrorism control room supervisor at Heathrow Airport, give him direct authority on what sustained operational pressure asks of people. Personal recovery from sepsis, multi-organ failure, and two episodes of temporary blindness gives him a concrete reference point for workplace mental health that does not sit at a remove from the experience. Lands credibly in environments where polished corporate wellbeing language tends not to, particularly frontline and blue-light teams. Available for one-to-one coaching alongside speaking, which suits clients who want a follow-up engagement rather than a single event. Biography highlights Served 30 years in the Metropolitan Police, retiring in 2023 with the rank of sergeant after an unblemished service record. Five years as a Counter-Terrorism National Ports control room supervisor at Heathrow Airport, with prior service in SO15 and blue-light response. Earned an MSc while serving on the front-line. Self-published author of more than 20 books across fiction and personal development. 2nd Degree Black Belt in Kung Fu and former Chief Instructor of his own clubs. Runs three YouTube channels with a combined audience above 150,000 subscribers, focused on motivation and coaching content. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are written for office workers. They land less well in environments where critical incidents are the working day, not the exception. Sonny Kalar spent three decades on that side of the gap. Kalar joined the Metropolitan Police at nineteen and retired in 2023 as a sergeant. He spent five years as a counter-terrorism control room supervisor at Heathrow Airport, having previously worked in SO15 and on blue-light response teams. He completed an MSc while serving. Outside the uniform, Kalar has lived through what most resilience speakers describe second-hand. He survived sepsis and multi-organ failure with CRP markers far above the level that usually proves fatal, recovering after weeks in hospital. He lost his sight on two separate occasions following severe eye infections, and continued to compete in tournament squash with stage-four bone-on-bone knee damage. That history is the basis for his current work. He speaks to organisations on workplace mental health and sustained performance under pressure, and offers one-to-one coaching alongside the keynote. Audiences in frontline and operational settings respond to the credibility of someone who has done the job and lived the consequences. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health Resilience under sustained operational pressure Recovery from physical and mental health setbacks Personal motivation and mindset under adversity Performance and wellbeing in frontline and high-pressure roles Ideal for Frontline and blue-light services addressing workforce mental health and retention HR and wellbeing leads in operational sectors where standard programmes fail to land Public sector leadership teams responsible for sustained-pressure workforces Conferences and team events centred on personal resilience, recovery, and motivation Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what sustained operational pressure does to people over decades, useful as a reference point for leaders trying to address it. Greater confidence to open conversations about mental health in environments where the topic is usually treated as a weakness. Specific examples of how he kept showing up through illness, recovery, and the demands of frontline policing. A view of recovery that does not assume the option of stepping out of the pressure.

Why organisations work with Stacey Dooley A working method built over more than 100 BBC documentaries on trafficking, domestic abuse, extremism and fashion industry pollution, which gives her an unusual ability to discuss difficult subjects on a corporate stage without sanitising them. Recipient of the Grierson Trustees’ Award 2024, the youngest person ever to receive it, for outstanding contribution to documentary. A credential that audiences and journalists recognise immediately. A track record of taking serious subject matter to younger audiences, the demographic most internal communications teams struggle to reach with mental health, wellbeing and ethics content. Equally credible as an event host, on-stage interviewer and keynote speaker, which makes her a flexible booking for awards nights, conferences and internal leadership events on women, mental health or social impact. Biography highlights BBC documentary presenter, with more than 100 films across BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three. MBE for services to broadcasting, 2018 Birthday Honours. Grierson Trustees’ Award 2024, youngest recipient. One World Media Award (Popular Features) for Stacey Dooley: Face to Face with Isis, 2018. Sunday Times bestselling author: On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back (2018), Are You Really OK? (2022), Dear Minnie (2025). Winner, Strictly Come Dancing 2018 (BBC One); presenter of Glow Up and Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over. Biography Most corporate conversations about mental health, exploitation or domestic abuse fail the people they are about. The language is too cautious, the staging too clean, and the lived reality goes missing. Stacey Dooley has built a 17-year BBC career closing exactly that gap, on screen and in print, and audiences notice the difference. She came up through Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts on BBC Three in 2008, with no journalism background, and went on to make more than 100 documentaries under the Stacey Dooley Investigates banner. The subjects span sex trafficking, domestic violence, extremism, fashion industry pollution, the illegal narcotics trade and Britain’s mental health emergency. Stacey Dooley: Face to Face with Isis won the Popular Features Award at the One World Media Awards in 2018. The Grierson Trust gave her its Trustees’ Award in 2024 for outstanding contribution to documentary, citing her ability to bring difficult subjects to younger viewers and to ask direct, uncomfortable questions of people in authority. She is the youngest person ever to receive the award. She holds an MBE for services to broadcasting and is a Sunday Times bestselling author three times over, most recently with Dear Minnie: Conversations with Remarkable Mothers (Penguin, 2025). For organisations, the value is twofold. As a host or on-stage interviewer, she can carry subject matter that defeats more traditional MCs. As a keynote speaker, she draws on documentary work that audiences already know, which lends weight to internal conversations on women’s safety, mental health and ethical practice that often struggle to land. Key speaking topics Investigative documentary and storytelling Women’s experience, safety and rights Mental health and the limits of public conversation Ethical journalism on sensitive subjects Domestic abuse and coercive control Labour conditions and exploitation in global supply chains Career routes outside traditional media gatekeeping Ideal for Corporate awards nights, gala dinners and conferences seeking a recognisable BBC host with editorial range. Internal leadership events on mental health, wellbeing or women’s safety where a corporate MC would feel mismatched. CHRO and Head of Internal Communications audiences planning campaigns on domestic abuse, mental health or supply chain ethics. Public sector, charity and NGO conferences on social impact, women’s rights or violence against women and girls. Audience outcomes A documentary-maker’s view of how to talk about hard subjects without flattening them. Specific case material from BBC investigations into trafficking, domestic abuse, extremism and mental health. A more honest internal benchmark for what good journalism looks like on the issues organisations are increasingly asked to comment on. Permission to be more direct in internal communications about mental health and women’s experiences.

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

Why organisations work with Steve Peters A clinical psychiatrist’s model of how the mind actually behaves under stress, not a coaching framework borrowed from adjacent fields. The Chimp Model has been pressure-tested with British Cycling, Sky ProCycling, Liverpool FC and more than twenty Olympic and national sports programmes, where the cost of a wrong decision is immediate and public. Author of The Chimp Paradox, with over 1.4 million copies sold, plus three further books extending the model into resilience, child development and daily practice. Equips leaders with a shared vocabulary for emotional regulation that travels into the executive team and downward through the organisation, not a one-off motivational hit. Senior academic standing at Sheffield Medical School and Expert Advisor status with the World Anti-Doping Agency anchor the work in formal medicine and ethics, not pop psychology. Biography highlights Consultant psychiatrist and CEO of Chimp Management Ltd. Undergraduate Dean and Senior Clinical Lecturer, Sheffield University Medical School, since 1994. Former Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Rampton High Security Hospital. Author of The Chimp Paradox (Vermilion, 2012), My Hidden Chimp, The Silent Guides and A Path Through the Jungle. Consultant to British Cycling, Sky ProCycling, Liverpool FC, GB Taekwondo, England Rugby, England Football, British Swimming and UK Track and Field. Expert Advisor to the World Anti-Doping Agency; long-serving examination panellist for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Biography The most expensive moments in a leader’s career are the ones where the emotional brain takes over and the rational mind catches up too late. The reaction in the meeting, the email sent at midnight, the call made under fatigue. These are not character flaws. They are predictable outputs of how the human mind is structured. Steve Peters spent more than two decades as a consultant psychiatrist before that observation became a model. His Chimp Model, set out in The Chimp Paradox, separates the emotional system of the brain from the rational one and gives people a working vocabulary for managing the gap between them. The book has sold more than 1.4 million copies and remains a fixture on UK self-development lists more than a decade after publication. The model earned its reputation in elite sport. Peters worked with British Cycling through its dominant Olympic period, with Sky ProCycling at the top of professional road racing, and with Liverpool FC, GB Taekwondo, England Rugby and England Football. Athletes including Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Adam Peaty have credited him by name. The point is not the celebrity roster. It is that the model has been used in environments where a single emotional misfire is captured on camera and replayed millions of times. His standing in the formal medical world gives the work a different weight from most performance content. Peters is Undergraduate Dean and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Sheffield University Medical School, was Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at Rampton High Security Hospital, and serves as an Expert Advisor to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Leaders come away with something rare in this category: a clinically anchored model of their own mind that they can still use the morning after the keynote. Key speaking topics Mind management and the Chimp Model Emotional regulation under pressure Resilience and psychological robustness High performance under scrutiny Self-leadership for senior executives Mental health in the workplace Team dynamics and interpersonal conflict Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards facing high-stakes decision-making cycles CHROs and Heads of Talent commissioning substantive wellbeing and resilience programmes Leadership development directors building executive presence in newly senior leaders Sales, trading and operating teams whose performance is shaped by composure under pressure Audience outcomes A working model of how the emotional mind behaves under pressure, in a vocabulary that survives Monday morning A method for separating impulsive reactions from considered decisions in the moment Specific tools for managing fear, conflict, fatigue and post-event recovery A shared organisational language that makes mental performance discussable rather than private Confidence that the content is grounded in clinical psychiatry, not motivational reframing

Why organisations work with Steven Laureys He brings the working brain into board-level conversations on performance and wellbeing, grounded in clinical neurology rather than wellness orthodoxy. He runs one of the few research groups in the world studying consciousness across coma, anaesthesia, sleep, hypnosis, and meditation, which gives audiences a single coherent framework for thinking about attention and recovery. His Francqui Prize and Canada Excellence Research Chair give a buyer hard evidence of scientific standing in a field crowded with popularisers. He has translated his research into a bestselling popular book on meditation, so audiences get a scientist who can talk to non-scientists without losing accuracy. He works in English, French, and Dutch, which makes him directly usable across European leadership audiences without an interpreter. Biography highlights Founder and head of the Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège. Canada Excellence Research Chair in Neuroplasticity, Laval University and CERVO Brain Research Centre. Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). Winner of the Francqui Prize 2017 and the Generet Prize 2019. Author of The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, an international bestseller published by Bloomsbury and translated into multiple languages. TEDx speaker at TEDxBrussels and TEDxLiège, with research featured across major international media. Biography Most of what is sold to organisations as “wellbeing” is built on intuition. The brain that is meant to be helping is the most expensive and least understood asset on the payroll. Steven Laureys studies the brain for a living, and his work has spent two decades pushing the boundary of what can be measured in coma, sleep, anaesthesia, hypnosis, and meditation. He founded the Coma Science Group within GIGA Consciousness at the University of Liège in 2014, and now also holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Neuroplasticity at Laval University, based at the CERVO Brain Research Centre. He is a Research Director at Belgium’s FNRS and a clinical professor of neurology, board-certified in neurology and in palliative medicine. The Francqui Prize, Belgium’s highest scientific honour, was awarded to him in 2017 for his work on disorders of consciousness. His public reach is unusual for a clinician of this seniority. The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, published by Bloomsbury, became an international bestseller and made the case for meditation in the language of neuroimaging rather than spirituality. He has spoken at TEDxBrussels and TEDxLiège, and his research has been picked up across mainstream international media. For corporate audiences, he turns the same instruments he uses on coma patients and Buddhist monks toward the working brain: attention, stress, sleep, cognitive recovery, and the conditions under which people make good decisions. The argument he brings is simple. The science is now specific enough to act on, and most organisations are not yet using it. Key speaking topics Neuroscience of attention and focus Stress and cognitive recovery Sleep and performance Meditation and the brain Mental wellbeing in the workplace Human intelligence and artificial intelligence Consciousness, anaesthesia, and altered states Neuroplasticity and lifestyle interventions Ideal for CHROs and chief wellbeing officers are building credible mental health and performance programmes. Executive teams and boards are considering attention, sleep, and stress as performance variables. Leadership development audiences in healthcare, professional services, and high-stakes operating environments. Innovation and R&D leaders interested in the brain science behind creativity and cognitive load. Audience outcomes A clinician’s view of what neuroscience can and cannot yet say about attention, stress, sleep, and meditation. Specific, evidence-based practices that senior people can use on themselves and inside their teams. A clearer line between credible neuroscience and the wellness industry’s claims. Confidence to challenge wellbeing programmes that rest on intuition rather than evidence. A working mental model of the brain under load that maps onto real organisational decisions.

Why organisations work with Steven MacGregor He has built a single, named methodology, the Sustaining Executive Performance programme, and tested it on more than 20,000 executives in person across markets ranging from Peru to Qatar. The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform gives senior teams an operating model for sustaining leadership performance under pressure, delivered inside Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle. He founded the General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel partnered with Pinsent Masons and shortlisted for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year at the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026, evidence the platform holds up in one of the highest-pressure leadership populations. A decade-long trilogy, Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), and The Daily Reset (2024), gives him a coherent body of work that connects performance science, organisational design, and behavioural change. He sits inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice as a Senior Advisor, so the work is calibrated to how serious operating companies actually run. Biography highlights Founder, Chief Wellbeing Officer (CWO) leadership development platform, delivered to executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle Founder, General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel with chapters across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East Founder and CEO, Leadership Academy of Barcelona (LAB) Senior Advisor, People and Organizational Performance practice, McKinsey & Company Honorary Professor of Health and Wellbeing, Glasgow School of Art Faculty experience at IESE, IE Business School, IMD (Lausanne and Singapore), and CEIBS (Shanghai and Jakarta) Author of Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018, with Rory Simpson), and The Daily Reset (2024) Biography Most senior leaders today are running a workload their predecessors would not recognise. Decision volume has compounded, recovery time has collapsed, and the pressure is no longer episodic. The harder question is what organisations actually invest in to make that sustainable. That is the line of work Steven MacGregor has spent two decades building, first inside business schools, then through the Leadership Academy of Barcelona, and now through the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform and as a Senior Advisor inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice. The Sustaining Executive Performance programme started as an applied research project drawing on elite sport, including time with FC Barcelona’s athletics team, and elements of human-centred design. It has since been delivered to more than 20,000 executives in person, from Peru to Qatar. Today the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform sits on top of that foundation, and is delivered inside executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle, with teaching at IESE, IE, IMD, CEIBS, and the Glasgow School of Art. The decade-long trilogy gives the work its intellectual spine. Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015) set out the evidence-based link between wellbeing and decision-making, clarity, and long-term execution. Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), written with former Telefónica Chief Learning Officer Rory Simpson, formalised the argument that wellbeing needs an owner at the top table, with metrics, budget, and authority. The Daily Reset (2024) translates behavioural science and habit formation into the everyday practices that make performance stick. The General Counsel Wellbeing Network, which MacGregor founded in 2024, is where the platform meets one of the most pressured leadership populations in business. It now operates across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East, with a partnership with Pinsent Masons and a Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026 shortlisting for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year. His training is unusual for the field: a doctorate in engineering design management with research periods at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, and an Honorary Professorship at the Glasgow School of Art. That background shapes the work. The focus is less on motivation and more on the design of work itself, which is what makes the material useful to senior teams trying to convert wellbeing language into operating change. Key speaking topics Sustainable leadership performance under pressure Executive resilience, clarity, and recovery Workplace wellbeing as an operating discipline The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform Personal energy and recovery for senior leaders Health, performance, and the design of work Behaviour change inside corporate environments Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Chief Wellbeing Officers building enterprise-wide leadership performance and wellbeing strategies Executive committees and boards reviewing burnout, attrition, and human-capital risk General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, and senior in-house counsel managing performance under chronic load Partner groups in professional services and law firms managing performance under chronic load Audience outcomes A working definition of what wellbeing means as a leadership performance discipline, not a benefit category The Sustaining Executive Performance framework as a concrete tool for senior leaders to apply to themselves and their teams A view on where the Chief Wellbeing Officer function sits in an operating model, with named accountabilities Practical habit-formation tools drawn from elite sport, behavioural science, and design that senior leaders can adopt in their own week