Mental Health in the Workplace

Why organisations work with Jonny Wilkinson A first-person account of what elite pressure does to judgement, body, and identity, drawn from the kick that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup and the years that followed it. Authority on performance and mental health that comes with a CBE, World Rugby Hall of Fame induction, and 91 England caps, not a consultant’s reframing of athlete clichés. A founder’s perspective from One Living, the B Corp drinks business he built around his own recovery, giving the talk commercial substance beyond the sporting story. Long-form work on presence and human potential through the I Am… podcast and two books, which means the content is developed, not improvised on stage. Biography highlights 91 caps for England, two British and Irish Lions tours, scorer of the drop goal that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup final against Australia. BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2003; IRB International Player of the Year 2003; OBE 2003; CBE 2015. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. Author of Jonny: My Autobiography and Tackling Life, the latter co-authored with long-time mentor Steve Black. Founder of One Living, a B Corp certified kombucha and functional drinks business stocked nationally in Tesco. Host of the I Am… With Jonny Wilkinson podcast, in conversation with thought leaders on performance, presence and mental health since 2022. Biography The drop goal that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup is one of the most replayed sporting moments in British memory. The man who struck it spent the next decade trying to explain to himself why it did not feel like the answer. Wilkinson’s body broke down through repeated injury, and the perfectionism that had driven the career became the thing he had to dismantle to live well. That second act is what gives his speaking content its weight. He writes and talks about presence, fear, and the relationship between high performance and mental health, drawing on his own recovery rather than secondhand frameworks. Tackling Life, written with his long-time mentor Steve Black, set the early ground. The I Am… podcast, running since 2022, has extended it into a body of conversation with global thinkers on potential and self-awareness. The credentials are not in doubt. 91 England caps, two Lions tours, the 2003 BBC Sports Personality award, the 2003 IRB International Player of the Year, an OBE the same year, a CBE in 2015, and induction into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. As a founder he has built One Living, a B Corp certified drinks brand born directly out of his own work on gut health, mental health and recovery. For a corporate audience, the value sits in the honesty about what elite pressure costs and how composure is rebuilt afterwards. The story is recognisable to anyone responsible for performance under public scrutiny, and the takeaways are practical rather than motivational. Key speaking topics Performing under pressure Mental health and recovery after high performance Presence and self-leadership Resilience and reinvention after a defining career Founder lessons from One Living Mindset, fear and the cost of perfectionism Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under pressure is the practical theme CHRO and people director audiences focused on mental health, wellbeing and high-performing cultures Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking a credible performance keynote with intellectual depth Awards dinners, panel moderation and after-dinner appearances where rugby authority and on-stage authenticity carry the room Audience outcomes A grounded account of what perfectionism and fear do to performance at the top, and how that pattern is changed Specific habits Wilkinson uses for presence, focus and recovery, drawn from his own practice rather than a generic framework A reframing of mental health as a leadership capability, not an HR concern Permission to talk openly about the gap between visible success and private cost

Why organisations work with John McCarthy First-hand authority on sustained psychological endurance, not borrowed from research but from 1,943 days in captivity in Lebanon as Britain’s longest-held hostage. A journalist’s craft applied to his own story: he can articulate what most people who survive extreme experience cannot put into words for an audience. A specific lesson rooted in cellmate friendship with Brian Keenan: how two people sustain each other’s morale, humour, and reason when the institutions around them have failed. A bestselling memoir, “Some Other Rainbow”, and a follow-up travel book with Keenan, “Between Extremes”, that gave him a long public platform beyond the captivity story itself. Honoured with a CBE in 1992 and an honorary D.Litt from the University of Hull, with subsequent BBC television and radio work that demonstrates broadcast-grade clarity in front of an audience. Biography highlights Kidnapped in Beirut on 17 April 1986 while working for United Press International Television News; released on 8 August 1991 after more than five years in captivity. Britain’s longest-held hostage in Lebanon, sharing a cell for much of that period with the Irish writer Brian Keenan. Appointed CBE in the 1992 New Year Honours List. Co-author of the bestselling memoir “Some Other Rainbow” (1993, with Jill Morrell), and of “Between Extremes” (1999, with Brian Keenan). Author of “A Ghost Upon Your Path” (2010) and “You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Palestine” (2013), both published by Transworld. BBC television and radio credits include “Island Race” with Sandi Toksvig (1995) and BBC Radio 4’s “Excess Baggage”. Patron of Freedom from Torture. Biography On 17 April 1986, a young television journalist on his first foreign posting was driving to Beirut airport when his car was stopped by gunmen. John McCarthy, working for United Press International Television News, would not be free again until 8 August 1991. He became Britain’s longest-held hostage in Lebanon. For most of those years he was held alongside the Irish writer Brian Keenan. The two men kept each other functional through humour, argument, invented routines, and a stubborn refusal to give the captors their interior lives. When McCarthy speaks to senior audiences, this is the material that lands hardest: not the abduction or the release, but the daily mechanics of how two people hold a mind together when nothing outside the cell is in their control. After release he wrote, with Jill Morrell, the bestselling memoir “Some Other Rainbow” (Bantam Press, 1993). With Keenan he later co-wrote “Between Extremes” (1999), the account of a journey through Patagonia and Chile that the two men had imagined while in captivity. Two further books followed, “A Ghost Upon Your Path” and “You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Palestine”. He sailed around the British coastline with Sandi Toksvig for the BBC series “Island Race” and co-presented BBC Radio 4’s “Excess Baggage”. He was appointed CBE in 1992 and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull. The work he is most often asked to do for organisations is not motivational in the soft sense; it is precise testimony about endurance, hope, and the difference between giving up and continuing, delivered by someone who has earned every word. Key speaking topics Resilience under prolonged pressure Hope and morale in extended uncertainty Decision-making in extreme circumstances Recovery and reintegration after crisis Friendship, humour, and survival Leadership lessons from captivity Ideal for Senior leadership audiences facing sustained, multi-year disruption rather than acute one-off crises Risk, security, and crisis management functions that need a human counterpart to their procedural training Organisations marking a milestone, anniversary, or after-dinner moment that calls for substance over showmanship Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what sustains morale and judgement when a situation will not resolve quickly A first-hand account of how relationships, humour, and small routines become survival tools under pressure Specific, memorable detail from a captivity experience that audiences will repeat to colleagues afterwards Reflection on what hope is, and what it is not, when the timeline is unknown

Why organisations work with Jermaine Harris A Sports Psychology MSc with Distinction sits behind the talk, so the resilience content rests on academic grounding rather than slogans. The Empowered Results Programme gives audiences a defined process to take away, not a one-off emotional lift that fades by Monday. His own near-amputation and recovery story is used as evidence for behaviour-change technique, which is why Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, and PGA EuroPro Group have brought him in. Audiences leave with usable mental tools drawn from his reading of more than 380 self-help titles, distilled by someone trained to assess what actually works. He is comfortable in front of mixed audiences from frontline staff to leadership, which makes him useful for company-wide kick-offs and sales conferences where a single speaker has to land across the room. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) and MSc (Distinction) in Sports Psychology ICF accredited Professional Coach and certified Firewalk Instructor Author of The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life! Founder of The Empowered Results Programme Corporate engagements with Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes Fundraiser and advocate for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, following his son’s diagnosis in 2015 Biography Resilience is one of the most over-claimed words in corporate wellbeing. The challenge for an HR or culture lead is to find a voice on the topic who can move beyond the language and actually shift how people behave on Monday morning. Jermaine Harris built his speaking practice around exactly that gap. His starting point was personal. A serious car accident and the threat of losing a leg ended a phase of heavy drinking and gambling. The interesting decision came next: he completed a BSc and an MSc with Distinction in Sports Psychology and used that training to study what actually changes behaviour. The Empowered Results Programme is the consolidated output of that work. Two published books, The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life!, give audiences something to take home, and an ICF coaching credential underpins the one-to-one work he runs alongside the keynotes. Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes have used him for company events where the brief is morale, motivation, and personal performance. What sets the work apart from standard motivational fare is the combination of an academic frame, a worked methodology, and a credible personal account of recovery. He also fundraises for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a cause connected to his son’s diagnosis at four weeks old in 2015. Key speaking topics Mindset and personal performance Resilience after setback Overcoming self-imposed limits Confidence and self-belief Behaviour change and habit formation Team motivation and morale Purpose and direction at work Ideal for HR and culture leads planning company-wide kick-offs, sales conferences, and morale events Frontline and customer-service organisations where motivation directly affects performance Wellbeing and L and D leads looking for resilience content with an academic underpin Sales and revenue teams running incentive or annual meetings Audience outcomes A defined process for resetting after a personal or professional setback Specific techniques for managing self-talk, fear, and limiting belief A short list of habit changes that translate into measurable daily behaviour A renewed sense of agency over career, health, and finance decisions Energy and lift, paired with content audiences can apply the next morning

Why organisations work with Ed Jackson He turns resilience from a slogan into a method. Jackson rebuilt movement, identity and career after a C6/C7 spinal injury, and the incremental decision logic he used is directly translatable to teams managing prolonged uncertainty. His credibility sits on two separate careers, not one. Professional rugby captaincy at England U16 and U18 level, followed by a second career as a Channel 4 Paralympics and rugby presenter, charity founder and author. He wrote the book, literally. “Lucky” (HarperCollins) became a Sunday Times bestseller and is the primary source text for his keynote material, not a marketing tie-in. His charity work is operational, not ornamental. Millimetres 2 Mountains, which he co-founded, delivers structured recovery programmes for people facing physical or psychological trauma, giving him a working frame for how individuals rebuild after rupture. The feature documentary “The Mountain Within Me,” released by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment in 2024, gives audiences a shared reference before he walks on stage, which shortens the distance between story and application. Biography highlights Former professional rugby union No. 8 for Bath, Doncaster Knights, London Welsh, Wasps and Newport Gwent Dragons. England captain at U16 and U18 level; part of the U18 Four Nations-winning squad. Author of “Lucky” (HarperCollins), a Sunday Times bestselling autobiography. Subject of “The Mountain Within Me,” a feature documentary distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Co-founder of Millimetres 2 Mountains, a registered charity supporting survivors of physical and psychological trauma. Channel 4 presenter for the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, European Champions Cup rugby highlights, and Six Nations commentary. Biography In April 2017, a dive into a shallow swimming pool fractured the C6 and C7 vertebrae of a 28-year-old professional rugby player. The diagnosis was Brown-Sequard Syndrome. The prognosis was that he would not walk again. Within a year, he stood on the summit of Snowdon. That compressed span between medical certainty and physical fact is the working material of the keynote. Before the injury, Jackson had already built a full career. He captained England at U16 and U18, won the U18 Four Nations in 2006, and played professionally for Bath, Doncaster Knights, London Welsh, Wasps and Newport Gwent Dragons. The second career began from a hospital bed, and it has been more public. “Lucky,” published by HarperCollins, reached the Sunday Times bestseller list. The 2024 feature documentary “The Mountain Within Me,” released by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment after premiering at Edinburgh International Film Festival, took the same story to cinema audiences. Alongside the speaking and writing, he co-founded Millimetres 2 Mountains with his wife Lois and former England international Olly Barkley. The charity runs structured outdoor recovery programmes for survivors of physical and psychological trauma. This matters for corporate audiences because Jackson is not describing resilience from a single data point. He is watching the same process play out across other people, every year, and refining what actually works. The Channel 4 broadcasting work, Paris 2024 Paralympics, Tokyo 2020, European Champions Cup, Six Nations, gives him a second professional register. He is used to speaking in front of cameras on live transmission to a national audience. For a corporate client that means a speaker who does not need to be managed on stage, and who has spent eight years refining how to make a recovery story useful to the person listening. Key speaking topics Resilience under prolonged pressure High performance after adversity Team trust and captaincy Rebuilding identity through change Mental and physical recovery Goal setting under constraint Purpose and motivation Ideal for Leadership offsites and all-hands events during periods of restructure or sustained change CHRO and wellbeing leads designing resilience and mental health programmes Sales kick-offs and commercial conferences where sustained performance under pressure is the theme Boardroom and executive team sessions on recovery, reputation and rebuilding after a difficult year Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience grounded in specific recovery decisions, not abstraction A usable model for continuing to perform when long-term outcomes are uncertain Language for talking about setback, mental health and vulnerability inside a professional team A shared reference point that teams continue to discuss after the event

Why organisations work with Chester Elton His frameworks are grounded in the largest empirical base of any comparable culture speaker: studies of more than one million working adults, anchored by a 300,000-person study conducted with Towers Watson for All In – giving boards and HR leaders data they can defend internally. The Carrot Principle and Anxiety at Work sit at opposite ends of the engagement challenge; his ability to address both recognition strategy and workplace anxiety within a single coherent body of work means organisations do not need two different conversations. As a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, his executive coaching practice carries independent third-party validation that extends his value beyond the main stage. His work provides a specific, operational diagnosis – the breakdown between what leaders say they value and what managers actually do day to day – and a toolkit that works at every level of the organisation, not just the C-suite. Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts and consistently ranked among the world’s top organisational culture authorities by Global Gurus (2017–2025), his standing is validated by named external bodies rather than self-reported credentials. Biography highlights Co-author of five New York Times bestselling books, including The Carrot Principle, All In, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work (Harper Business), co-written with Adrian Gostick Books sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide; translated into more than 30 languages Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership (SCL) Certified Executive Coach Global Gurus research organisation: ranked consistently among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts, 2017–2025 Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts (October 2025) Co-founder, The Culture Works, a global leadership and culture consultancy Media: NBC Today, CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC; quoted in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, Financial Times Biography Culture does not fail organisations because leaders lack values. It fails because most managers do not know how to make those values visible in the daily behaviours of their teams. Chester Elton has spent more than two decades building the research base that explains this gap, and identifying what high-performing organisations do differently. His work draws on studies of more than one million working adults, compiled across several large-scale research partnerships. The Carrot Principle established the direct, measurable link between purposeful employee recognition and business outcomes including retention, productivity, and customer satisfaction. All In, produced with research firm Towers Watson, drew on a 300,000-person study to identify the seven practices that generate genuine organisational buy-in. Anxiety at Work – published by Harper Business and the most recent of his five New York Times bestsellers – addressed the other side of the same equation: what happens when uncertainty goes unmanaged and workplace anxiety erodes the culture leaders worked to build. Taken together, these books form one of the most evidence-based frameworks available to executives on how culture is created, sustained, and recovered. Elton is a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner, a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, and a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership certified executive coach. Global Gurus has ranked him among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts every year from 2017 to 2025. Inc. named him to its 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts list. He is co-founder of The Culture Works and has consulted with organisations including American Express, The World Bank, and the New Jersey Devils. What distinguishes him is the range the research covers. Most speakers in this space address either motivation or stress. Elton’s body of work addresses both, and the connection between them. Key speaking topics Employee recognition and culture-building Organisational culture and high-performance teams Workplace anxiety and psychological safety Leading with gratitude Employee engagement strategy Multigenerational workforce leadership Manager capability and team trust Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing, resetting, or embedding organisational culture programmes CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating workforce anxiety, change, or post-transformation culture repair Talent and leadership development functions seeking research-grounded frameworks for manager effectiveness HR and management associations and industry conferences where practitioner credibility and data-backed content are audience expectations Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where culture commitment breaks down between leadership intent and frontline management behaviour Recognition practices tied directly to engagement and retention outcomes, grounded in large-scale empirical research rather than anecdote Practical strategies for identifying workplace anxiety early – before it affects team performance, absenteeism, or attrition A shared organisational vocabulary for discussing culture, gratitude, and psychological safety in operational rather than abstract terms Immediate, actionable steps that managers at any level can apply to strengthen trust and discretionary effort within their teams

Why organisations work with Blake Mycoskie He built a consumer brand that sold 50% to Bain Capital at a $625 million valuation in 2014. When he talks about purpose-led growth, he is talking from the operator seat. His 2016 Harvard Business Review piece, “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission,” is one of the few founder accounts of what breaks when purpose meets scale and how to rebuild a mission after its original story stops working. TOMS famously ran on almost no traditional advertising, relying on customers as marketers and the Argentina origin story as the brand’s centre of gravity. For CMOs and brand leaders working on authentic purpose positioning, that is a working case from the person who ran the experiment. He speaks openly about the founder arc after the exit: loss of purpose and the long work of rebuilding. For senior leadership audiences where executive mental health has moved from taboo to agenda item, he is genuinely useful. He is currently building ENOUGH, a nonprofit-owned mental health brand launched in 2026, alongside his $100 million psychedelic research philanthropy anchored at Johns Hopkins. His material stays live. Biography highlights Founder of TOMS Shoes; creator of the One for One business model Sold 50% of TOMS to Bain Capital in 2014 at a reported $625 million valuation Author of the New York Times bestseller “Start Something That Matters” (Spiegel & Grau, 2011) Harvard Business Review contributor: “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission” (January/February 2016 issue) Recipient of the Secretary of State’s 2009 Award of Corporate Excellence from Hillary Clinton; invited by Richard Branson to join The B Team alongside Paul Polman and Muhammad Yunus Anchor donor to the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research; founder of ENOUGH (2026), a nonprofit-owned consumer brand supporting NAMI, Active Minds and other mental health partners Biography TOMS was one of the first consumer brands to make giving the centre of its commercial engine. For every pair of shoes sold, a pair was given away. The model scaled globally on the back of customer advocacy and almost no advertising spend, and TOMS gave more than 100 million pairs over its first decade. Blake Mycoskie built that company from a trip to Argentina in 2006. By 2014, Bain Capital had bought 50% of it at a $625 million valuation. What started as one founder’s shoe business had become a reference case for purpose-driven commerce, studied at Harvard Business School and written up across the business press. He has since been unusually open about what broke. In the January/February 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review, he wrote “The Founder of TOMS on Reimagining the Company’s Mission.” It remains among the most candid founder accounts of what happens when a purpose-led business scales past its origin story. Operations become routine and the brand loses touch with its why. The whole thing has to be rebuilt from the inside, which is not a familiar subject for founders at that scale to publish on. The arc has pushed further since. After leaving TOMS in 2019, Mycoskie went through a serious depression, which he now discusses openly, and has pivoted his philanthropy and new ventures toward mental health. He is an anchor donor to the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and a member of Richard Branson’s B Team. His newest venture is ENOUGH, a 2026 nonprofit-owned consumer brand that directs 100% of profit to mental health partners including NAMI and Active Minds. For audiences working on purpose-led brand building, or on the long arc of founder leadership, he offers what most case studies stop before: what happens after the exit. Key speaking topics Social entrepreneurship and purpose-driven business One for One and buy-one-give-one business models Conscious capitalism and stakeholder value Purpose-led brand building and customer advocacy Founder journeys from startup to exit and beyond Mental health for senior leaders Catalytic philanthropy and mission investing Ideal for C-suite and founder audiences in consumer and brand-led B2C businesses thinking about purpose as commercial strategy CMO and brand leadership teams working on authentic purpose positioning and customer advocacy Business schools, executive education programmes, and founder/CEO cohorts working on venture creation and scale Leadership offsites where executive mental health and founder identity are on the agenda Audience outcomes An inside view of how One for One worked commercially: the role of customer advocacy in place of advertising spend, and the mechanics of scaling a purpose-led consumer brand An honest assessment of where the model hit its limits, including what Mycoskie published in Harvard Business Review about rebuilding TOMS’ mission after the original story lost its energy Language for talking about executive mental health and founder identity, drawn from a CEO who has put both on record publicly A reference case for putting giving at the commercial core of a consumer brand, from someone who built the category-defining example

Why organisations work with Alastair Campbell Direct experience of running government communications through general elections, war, and the daily pressure of Downing Street, applied to corporate equivalents: contested deals, regulatory crises, leadership transitions. A working method for handling hostile media and political environments that has been tested at the centre of UK government, not theorised about. Author of Winners: And How They Succeed, drawing named lessons from political, business, and sporting leaders that translate directly into how senior teams plan, decide, and execute. One of the UK’s most prominent voices on workplace mental health, with lived experience and the institutional credibility of an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. A platform that reaches senior decision-makers at scale: The Rest Is Politics runs at around eight million downloads a month, giving him a current read on the political and economic context boards are trying to interpret. Biography highlights Director of Communications and Strategy for Prime Minister Tony Blair, 1997 to 2003, after running Blair’s communications in opposition from 1994. Co-host with Rory Stewart of The Rest Is Politics, one of the most-listened-to political podcasts in the UK and the leading politics show on YouTube during the 2024 general election. Bestselling author of The Blair Years, Winners: And How They Succeed, Living Better, and But What Can I Do?, alongside the All In The Mind novels. Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; former Mind Champion of the Year; co-founder of Equality4MentalHealth. Editor-at-large of The New European and a long-standing political columnist and broadcaster. Senior journalism background at the Daily Mirror and Today before moving into political communications. Biography Communication inside government is judged on the days when something has gone wrong. For nine years from 1994, Alastair Campbell sat at the centre of those days for Tony Blair, first as press secretary, then as Director of Communications and Strategy, through the 1997 election, the early years of devolution, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Iraq. The job was not press handling. It was the operational core of how a government decided what to say, to whom, and when. That experience now sits behind a second career as an author, broadcaster, and advisor. Winners: And How They Succeed set out a working theory of strategic leadership drawn from named figures across politics, business, and elite sport. The Blair Years and his subsequent diaries are the most detailed account of decision-making inside a modern UK government. His work is read by leaders who have to make calls under the same kind of scrutiny, in different sectors. The mental health work is the second strand. Living Better is an account of his depression and the systems, clinical and personal, he has used to manage it. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a former Mind Champion of the Year, and a co-founder of Equality4MentalHealth, the cross-party campaign that secured an additional 600 million pounds for UK mental health services. For corporate audiences, this is not an add-on topic. It is a senior leader who has built a public discipline around a private struggle. The Rest Is Politics, his podcast with former Conservative minister Rory Stewart, reaches several million listeners a month and led the UK politics charts through the 2024 election. The podcast is an unusual asset for a speaker: a current, weekly read on the geopolitical and domestic context in which boards and executive teams are now operating. Key speaking topics Communications strategy under pressure Leadership and decision-making in crisis Political risk and the geopolitical operating context Workplace mental health and senior leader resilience Lessons from winners across politics, business, and sport Media, scrutiny, and reputation management Campaign strategy and persuasion Ideal for CEOs, chairs, and executive committees facing contested decisions, regulatory scrutiny, or leadership transitions Communications, public affairs, and corporate affairs leaders responsible for crisis and reputation HR and people leaders building senior-level mental health and resilience programmes Leadership development audiences and partner conferences in professional services, financial services, and regulated sectors Audience outcomes A clearer view of how to make and communicate decisions when scrutiny is hostile and information is incomplete. Specific, named lessons from inside government and elite performance environments on what separates winners from competent operators. A more honest framework for senior leaders to think about their own resilience, including mental health, as a strategic variable rather than a personal weakness. A current read on the political and geopolitical environment shaping commercial decisions over the next cycle. Practical reference points for handling media, public scrutiny, and internal communication under pressure.

Why organisations work with Nick Baylis He brings the academic spine of well-being science into the room. Co-editor of The Science of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2005) and co-convenor of the Royal Society’s first conference on the topic, alongside Daniel Kahneman and Sir Harry Kroto. He was the UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology, teaching the subject at Cambridge for eight years before the wellness industry existed in its current form. That sequencing matters when a workforce has heard every claim before. His writing has reached a public audience without losing its evidence base: 100 Dr FeelGood columns for The Times, The Rough Guide to Happiness for Penguin, and the trade volume Learning from Wonderful Lives. He works comfortably across audiences, from board-level leadership groups to whole-school populations at Wellington College and Rugby School, with the same underlying material translated for the room. He treats well-being as a daily skill set, not a feel-good intervention. The frame is performance and resilience grounded in research, which lands with sceptical commercial audiences. Biography highlights PhD from Jesus College, University of Cambridge, 1999. The UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology and the Science of Well-Being, Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 2001 to 2008. Co-editor of The Science of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2005) with Felicia Huppert and Barry Keverne. Co-convenor of the Royal Society of London’s first three-day conference on the Science of Well-Being. Author of The Rough Guide to Happiness (Rough Guides / Penguin) and Learning from Wonderful Lives (Cambridge Well-being Books, 2005). Wrote 100 weekly Dr FeelGood columns on the science of happiness for The Times, syndicated by The Australian. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Associate of the Royal Society of Medicine; Chartered Psychologist. Biography The science of human well-being is a young field, and most of what shows up in corporate wellness programmes was research before it was product. Nick Baylis is one of a small group of academics who shaped the underlying evidence base and then took the trouble to translate it for a non-academic audience. He earned his PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1999, and in 2001 became the UK’s first Lecturer in Positive Psychology and the Science of Well-Being. Over eight years lecturing at Cambridge, he helped build the academic infrastructure for the field. He co-convened the Royal Society of London’s first conference on the Science of Well-Being, and co-edited the resulting volume for Oxford University Press in 2005, alongside Felicia Huppert and Barry Keverne, with Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Sir Harry Kroto involved in the convening. The book remains a standard reference for the discipline. Outside the academy, his work has reached a public readership without losing the evidence base. He wrote 100 weekly Dr FeelGood columns for The Times, syndicated by The Australian, and authored The Rough Guide to Happiness for Penguin and Learning from Wonderful Lives, the latter built on extended interviews with figures including Kate Adie, Gary Lineker, Jamie Oliver, and Martha Lane Fox. His client work spans corporate leadership groups, healthcare organisations, and senior schools, including extended programmes with Wellington College and Rugby School. The throughline is unchanged across audiences: well-being treated as a daily set of skills with a research foundation, not a poster campaign. Key speaking topics The science of well-being in the workplace Resilience and sustained performance under pressure Positive psychology applied to organisational life Mental health and the working environment Well-being and leadership effectiveness Building well-being capability across schools and educational institutions The everyday skills of psychological flourishing Ideal for CHROs and people directors rebuilding the substance behind a well-being strategy Senior leadership teams working through periods of fatigue, change, or sustained pressure Heads of school and trustees designing whole-institution well-being programmes Healthcare and professional services organisations facing chronic workforce stress Audience outcomes A working understanding of what well-being research actually supports, separated from wellness-industry claims A small set of daily psychological skills that hold up under workplace pressure A sharper view of how leadership behaviour shapes the well-being of a team Confidence to interrogate well-being investments and ask better questions of providers Language for talking about resilience and mental health that does not sound borrowed from a brochure

Why organisations work with Jason Fox He speaks with the authority of someone who ran hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations at Sergeant rank in the Special Boat Service, not someone interpreting that world from outside it. His account of complex PTSD and recovery, set out in the Sunday Times number one bestseller Battle Scars, gives senior leaders a usable frame for talking about mental health with people who will not respond to standard corporate wellbeing language. He translates the team standards that kept SBS troops alive into the behaviours that hold a leadership team together during restructures, market shocks and public failure. The vocabulary is operational, not motivational. Organisations that have put him in front of their teams get a speaker who has also led a Guinness-record Atlantic row and a 1,980-mile unsupported Yukon kayak, which means the lessons on preparation, teamwork and composure come from current practice as well as past service. Biography highlights Royal Marine Commando from age 16; Sergeant in the Special Boat Service; approximately 20 years in UK Special Forces before medical discharge in 2012. Longest-serving directing staff on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; former directing staff on SAS Australia. Presenter of Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, filmed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Author of Battle Scars (Sunday Times number one bestseller, Bantam Press) and Life Under Fire (Penguin Random House). Co-founder of Rock2Recovery, providing mental health support to serving personnel, veterans and their families. Guinness World Record holder with Team Essence for the first unsupported east-to-west Atlantic row, Lagos to Venezuela, 50 days, 2016; led an unsupported 1,980-mile Yukon River kayak expedition in 2019. Biography Hostage rescue, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics work in the Special Boat Service demand a style of leadership that most organisations only discover they lack once something has already gone wrong. Fox spent two decades inside that environment, joining the Royal Marines at sixteen and reaching Sergeant rank in the SBS before a complex PTSD diagnosis forced a medical discharge in 2012. The second half of his career has been about translating that experience into language corporate leaders can actually use. His first book, Battle Scars, reached number one on the Sunday Times list and opened a serious conversation about how elite operators break, recover and rebuild. Life Under Fire, published by Penguin Random House, sets out the team habits and personal disciplines he saw work under fire. Audiences know him from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he has served as the longest-standing directing staff, and from the Channel 4 documentary series Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, in which he reported from cartel-affected communities across Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Alongside television and writing, he co-founded Rock2Recovery with fellow former Royal Marine Jamie Sanderson to give veterans faster routes into mental health support. The adventures reinforce the argument rather than decorate it. In 2016 Fox was part of Team Essence, which set the Guinness World Record as the first team to row the Atlantic unsupported east-to-west from mainland Europe to mainland South America, 3,308 nautical miles in fifty days. In 2019 he kayaked the Yukon River, 1,980 miles unsupported, in aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. Both are reference points he uses with leadership teams to make the case that composure, preparation and team trust are trained, not inherited. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes environments Resilience and recovery from operational trauma Mental health and PTSD in high-performing populations Risk assessment and mission planning Accountability and standards inside elite teams Ideal for Executive and senior leadership teams navigating restructures, crisis response or reputational pressure Boards and operating committees rebuilding trust after a serious incident Safety-critical and frontline-heavy organisations (defence, energy, logistics, emergency services) where team decision-making is the core asset CHRO and wellbeing leads building a mental health programme that needs credibility with male-heavy or frontline workforces Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite military teams run planning, rehearsal and after-action review, and where those practices map onto corporate leadership A usable vocabulary for discussing mental health with people who dismiss standard wellbeing language Sharper thinking on what individual composure and team standards look like when conditions actually deteriorate A first-person account of PTSD and recovery that makes the business case for early intervention concrete rather than abstract

Why organisations work with Conn Bertish He built his resilience method from the inside of a rare adult brain cancer diagnosis, then road-tested it with oncologists at Groote Schuur, Red Cross Children’s Hospital, and Mediclinic before using it on corporate audiences. His Cancer Dojo platform is one of the only resilience tools that has been medically reviewed for use with patients under active treatment, which gives his frameworks a clinical credibility most motivational survivor stories lack. Twenty years inside top-tier creative agencies, including as executive creative director at JWT Cape Town and a member of the JWT Global Creative Council, means he can talk to leadership teams about creativity as an operating method, not a mood. His Cannes Lions record as speaker, judge, and award winner gives marketing and brand organisations a speaker who understands their craft from inside the jury room. He brings two distinct lenses, creative strategy and survival, to the same question: how do teams keep making good decisions when the ground is moving. Biography highlights Founder of Cancer Dojo, a mobile resilience platform for cancer patients, built with a clinical advisory team drawn from Groote Schuur, Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and Mediclinic. Former executive creative director at JWT Cape Town and former member of the JWT Global Creative Council. Cannes Lions speaker, juror, and award winner; has worked with Google, Airbnb, Nestlé, Merck, Standard Chartered, Coca-Cola, and Pfizer. Creator of the Happy People Are Harder To Kill and Never Fight The Ocean talk series, delivered to corporate, clinical, and creative-industry audiences. Creative Director for the Cape Town World Design Capital programme and steering committee partner at the Cape Town Design Network. Survivor of a rare form of adult brain cancer, Red Bull big wave surfer, downhill skateboarder, and winner of South Africa’s first Fear Factor. Biography Cancer Dojo began as a workbook that Bertish made for himself during treatment for a rare adult brain cancer. It became a mobile platform, reviewed by a panel of South African oncologists and psychologists, now used by patients across several countries. That is the unusual provenance of the resilience method he brings to corporate rooms. Before cancer, he spent two decades in advertising. He was executive creative director at JWT Cape Town, sat on the JWT Global Creative Council, and represented South Africa at Cannes Lions as a speaker, juror, and award winner. He walked away from a Chief Creative Officer role to build Cancer Dojo in 2015. Clients now include Google, Airbnb, Nestlé, Merck, Standard Chartered, Coca-Cola, and Pfizer. The talks sit under two series, Happy People Are Harder To Kill and Never Fight The Ocean, and they cover creative leadership under pressure, purpose inside teams, and mental health at work. What he offers a leadership audience is the collision of three things most speakers cannot combine credibly: senior creative-industry craft, clinical-grade resilience content, and a personal history of extreme pressure that stopped being metaphor in 2006. The Red Bull big wave record and the Fear Factor win are true, but the more useful fact is that his resilience curriculum has been signed off by the people treating cancer patients at Groote Schuur. Key speaking topics Creative leadership under pressure Resilience as a teachable organisational skill Mental health and performance at work Purpose-driven teams and collaboration Creativity as a strategic method, not a mood Leading through personal and organisational crisis Ideal for CEOs and executive teams navigating restructuring, layoffs, or sustained uncertainty CHROs and wellbeing leads designing resilience and mental health programmes with clinical credibility Chief Marketing Officers and creative leadership groups, particularly in agencies and brand organisations Leadership offsites where the brief is human performance under real pressure, not inspirational content Audience outcomes A practical vocabulary for talking about resilience as a skill their teams can build, not a personality trait Specific tools drawn from the Cancer Dojo workbook, adapted for workplace use A sharper view of how creative thinking functions as a decision-making method when conditions deteriorate An unusually honest account of what fear, crisis, and recovery look like from inside, useful for leaders holding the room through hard moments Language for connecting purpose, mental health, and performance without slipping into wellness cliché

Why organisations work with Elia Gourgouris Eighteen years of private clinical psychology practice behind the keynote. When he talks about mental health and workplace wellbeing, the substance is clinical experience translated for a corporate audience. A named framework in 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, now published in Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek editions. Audiences leave with a structured model they can put into operational practice the following week. A dedicated crisis playbook in 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos for pandemic-era and crisis conditions. Useful when leaders need wellbeing guidance that still works when the ground is moving. Active across the US and Europe, with recent keynotes at KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium and the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service in Greece. A practical option for organisations with European operations that want a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures. Works with leaders between events, not only from the stage. An active executive coaching practice means the keynote is grounded in current client work, and follow-up coaching is available when an organisation needs more than a one-off session. Biography highlights President of The Happiness Center, a positive psychology practice focused on corporate wellness and personal success. Founding Partner at The Global Institute of Thought Leadership. Author of 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, Amazon bestseller translated into Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek. Co-author with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos of 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics and Other Disasters. Keynote engagements include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences. BA in Psychology from UCLA, followed by MA and PhD in psychology, and eighteen years in private clinical practice before moving into executive coaching and keynote work. Regular contributor to Thrive Global; co-host of The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast. Biography Workplace wellbeing programmes often fail at the join between clinical insight and operational reality. Clinicians know what changes behaviour under pressure. Boards know what gets funded. Most corporate well-being work lives in the first category without translation to the second. Eighteen years as a clinical psychologist in private practice sit behind Dr. Gourgouris’s current work as an executive coach and keynote speaker. His 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness framework, published in 2015 and now available in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Greek editions, is the practitioner synthesis of that clinical career. The second book, 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos, extends the framework to acute conditions. It was written during the pandemic and has since been used across corporate transitions and personal adversity. Recent corporate keynotes include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences. Outside the corporate practice, Gourgouris was Executive Producer of the reality series Cash Cowboys and is developing a new series, The Kindness Givers. He contributes regularly to Thrive Global and co-hosts The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast. The media work reaches audiences that the HR briefing rarely does, and carries the same clinical argument across. Key speaking topics Positive leadership Corporate wellbeing and mental health Workplace culture and trust Resilience and agility Crisis navigation and recovery Employee engagement and retention Ideal for CHROs and people leaders are rebuilding culture after a period of change or organisational distress. CEOs and senior leadership teams where burnout and retention have become board-level issues. Wellbeing and mental health function leaders looking to add clinical credibility to in-house programmes. Corporate audiences in Greece and wider Europe, where a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures adds value. Audience outcomes The 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness model is applied to personal practice and to how a team is run. Language and evidence to argue for wellbeing and mental health as measurable business inputs. Specific techniques for building team resilience and trust that can be used in the next team meeting. A clinical perspective on what actually changes behaviour under pressure, and what tends to fail.

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