Mental Health in the Workplace

Why organisations work with Zara Janjua She brings broadcast-grade interviewing into corporate rooms, drawing on more than 500 live hours of television and national news experience across BBC, ITV and STV. She is the host NatWest chose for its Women in Business podcast, its skills development series, and its internal What’s The Chat? podcast, which makes her a credible anchor for organisations building long-running internal communications platforms, not one-off events. She has chaired the Financial Alliance for Women Summit and the EBRD Conference on Skills Development in Central Asia, so she is briefed on how senior delegates expect inclusion and skills conversations to be handled at international level. As a Scottish Pakistani broadcaster who reported from the New York Times Climate Hub at COP26 with interviewees including John Kerry and Al Gore, she carries cultural range and journalistic credibility into rooms where both are tested. She is an appointed member of NatWest’s Ethnicity Advisory Council, which gives her a working view of how a major institution actually moves on inclusion, not just how it speaks about it. Biography highlights BAFTA, NTA and RTS award-winning broadcaster across BBC, ITV and STV. Reporter for the New York Times Climate Hub at COP26. Host of NatWest’s Women in Business podcast and What’s The Chat? internal communications podcast. Highly Commended finalist, Women of the Future Awards, sponsored by Oxford University and the Financial Times. Named in Scotland’s Top 100 Business Women, 2024. Columnist for The Scottish Sun and contributor to The Guardian; founder of Scottistani Productions. Biography The corporate stage rewards a specific kind of host. Someone who can interview a senior leader without flattening them, hold a panel to its actual argument, and carry an audience through difficult subject matter without performing concern. Janjua has spent more than fifteen years building that craft in live television and national news. Her broadcasting career runs across BBC, ITV and STV, with national news, daytime and comedy credits, and more than 500 live hours of TV. She reported for the New York Times Climate Hub at COP26, securing interviews with John Kerry, Al Gore, Stella McCartney and Vanessa Nakate. That same interviewing discipline now shapes how she chairs summits and moderates panels for commercial clients. NatWest is the clearest signal of how she is used inside organisations. She hosts the bank’s Women in Business podcast, its skills development series and its internal What’s The Chat? podcast, and sits on its Ethnicity Advisory Council. That mix, external editorial work and internal communications anchoring, is the working pattern her corporate clients buy into. She has also chaired the Financial Alliance for Women Summit and the EBRD Conference on Skills Development in Central Asia, and she was named a Highly Commended finalist for the Women of the Future Awards, sponsored by Oxford University and the Financial Times. Her recurring subject matter, women’s progression, inclusion, mental health and engagement, is held together by a journalist’s instinct for the question that actually advances the conversation. Key speaking topics Event hosting and moderation Panel chairing and interviewing Internal communications and employee engagement podcasts Women in business and women’s progression Diversity, equity and inclusion Mental health in the workplace Storytelling and business communication Ideal for CHROs, internal communications leads and DEI directors anchoring long-running internal channels. Boards, summit organisers and awards committees commissioning a host for inclusion, women in business or skills conferences. Financial services, professional services and public-sector organisations briefing a moderator on senior international panels. International Women’s Day, employee resource group and culture-led event sponsors. Audience outcomes A panel or summit that lands its argument rather than drifting between speakers. An internal communications moment that employees actually listen to, anchored by a broadcaster they recognise as credible. Senior speakers drawn out on substance, not left to recite prepared lines. Sensitive subject matter on inclusion, mental health or women’s progression handled with editorial care.

Why organisations work with Victoria Pendleton A measurable performance record at the top of an objectively scored sport: two Olympic golds, an Olympic silver, and a record-equalling six individual sprint world titles between 2005 and 2012. An unusually candid account of what happens after high performance, including a public testimony on depression and suicidal thoughts that lifts the conversation beyond standard wellness language. Direct experience of the British Cycling marginal-gains environment, useful for leadership teams trying to understand what disciplined, repeatable performance design actually looks like inside an organisation. A second-career proof point in a different sport entirely, racing as an amateur jockey under trainer Paul Nicholls and finishing fifth in the 2016 Foxhunter Chase, which gives her credibility on reinvention rather than on retirement. Biography highlights Olympic sprint gold (Beijing 2008), Olympic keirin gold and sprint silver (London 2012). Nine UCI Track Cycling World Championship titles, including six individual sprint world titles between 2005 and 2012. Appointed MBE in 2009 and CBE in 2013, both for services to cycling. Author of “Between the Lines: My Autobiography”, HarperSport, 2012, co-written with Donald McRae. Trained as an amateur jockey under Paul Nicholls; fifth in the 2016 Foxhunter Chase at the Cheltenham Festival on Pacha Du Polder. 2018 Everest expedition for the British Red Cross with Ben Fogle and Kenton Cool, abandoned at Camp 2 due to hypoxia, later the subject of a published account of post-expedition depression. Biography Track sprint cycling is decided in fractions of a second by athletes whose preparation is measured to the gram, the heart rate, and the watt. Inside that environment, Pendleton won two Olympic gold medals, an Olympic silver, and nine world titles, including six individual sprint world titles in seven years. She is one of the most decorated track cyclists Britain has produced. The performance record is the qualification, not the talk. The talk is what she learned holding her nerve in an Olympic final, and what happened to her psychologically when the structure of elite sport was withdrawn. Her 2012 autobiography “Between the Lines”, co-written with Donald McRae, is unusually direct on the emotional cost of competing at that level. She returned to the public account several years later, describing severe depression and suicidal thoughts following her abandoned 2018 Everest expedition with Ben Fogle. That candour is why corporate audiences book her now. She is not delivering a generic resilience keynote. She is naming what happens to high performers when the supports come off and is willing to discuss it without softening. For leaders managing teams under sustained pressure, or thinking about what comes after a major delivery, that is rare material. She has also rebuilt outside cycling. After retirement she trained as an amateur jockey under Paul Nicholls and rode Pacha Du Polder to fifth place in the 2016 Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham, having raced competitively for less than a year. Reinvention here is a documented sporting result, not a slogan. Key speaking topics Elite performance and marginal gains Composure under high-stakes pressure Recovery and identity after peak achievement Mental health and depression in high-performing populations Reinvention across careers Goal setting in objectively measured environments Team dynamics inside elite sport Ideal for Leadership conferences and executive offsites focused on performance under pressure Organisations with sales, trading, or delivery teams operating to short-cycle measured outcomes HR and wellbeing leads commissioning serious mental health content rather than wellness theatre Programmes for senior leaders navigating a major transition or post-success identity shift Audience outcomes A first-hand account of the preparation discipline behind two Olympic gold medals and what it costs A clearer view of how composure is engineered, not summoned, in the moments that decide a result A serious frame for thinking about post-peak recovery, including the version that goes badly An honest reference point for leaders who are sceptical of wellness language but recognise the underlying problem

Why organisations work with Tania de Jong A working body of evidence that creativity is buildable inside an organisation, drawn from six businesses and four charities she has founded, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia and The Song Room. Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind Australia’s 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, the first national framework of its kind in the world. A keynote format that pairs argument with live performance, used at Thinkers50 European Business Forum in Denmark and the International Forum on Consciousness in the United States, and tested across more than 40 countries. Eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, awarded Corporate Event of the Year at the global Eventex Awards, giving her direct exposure to how international leaders are framing innovation, AI, wellbeing and the future of work. A position on social inclusion through the With One Voice programme that is grounded in operating practice, not theory, having reached thousands of participants across community choirs in Australia. Biography highlights Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 2008, for service to the arts and to music and arts enrichment programmes in schools and communities. Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind the world-first 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA in Australia for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. Founder of Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, Creative Innovation Global, The Song Room, MTA Entertainment & Events, Dimension5 and Pot-Pourri. TEDxMelbourne speaker, “How singing together changes the brain”. Keynote speaker, Thinkers50 European Business Forum, Denmark, 2018, and the International Forum on Consciousness, United States, 2019. Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year; Churchill Fellow; AGSE Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, Swinburne University; Bachelor of Law (Honours), University of Melbourne. Biography Australia became the first country in the world to reschedule psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of depression and PTSD in 2023. Mind Medicine Australia, co-founded by Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt, did the regulatory and clinical groundwork that made it possible. That outcome is the clearest statement of how de Jong tends to work: a long-running campaign to change a system that most assume cannot be moved. The same pattern runs through the rest of her record. Six businesses and four charities, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia, The Song Room and Creative Innovation Global, each built around a specific argument about creativity, inclusion or social repair. The Song Room alone has reached over a million Australian students through music programmes in schools that would not otherwise access them. Her speaking work is unusual in form. She is a classically trained soprano who has performed in over 40 countries, and her keynotes weave argument with live singing. Thinkers50 invited her to keynote its European Business Forum in 2018. Her TEDxMelbourne talk on the neuroscience of group singing has been viewed widely and is often cited in workplace wellbeing literature. The substantive claim underneath all of it is that creativity and collective purpose are operating disciplines. The Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, which she has run eight times and which won Corporate Event of the Year at the Eventex Awards, is the working venue for that argument across AI, leadership, wellbeing and the future of work. Key speaking topics Creativity as a strategic discipline Innovation culture and the future of work Entrepreneurship and social enterprise Mental health, wellbeing and the neuroscience of connection Diversity, inclusion and collective purpose Leadership in disruption and reinvention Storytelling and performance in business communication Ideal for CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing and inclusion programmes that need to land beyond the slide deck. Innovation leads, transformation directors and strategy teams looking to move creativity from training programme to operating practice. CEOs and boards in sectors facing structural reinvention, where the soft conditions of change are as material as the hard ones. Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines argument with live performance and high audience engagement. Audience outcomes A specific case for treating creativity as a leadership capability, not a workshop output. A working view of how social inclusion and collective practice change individual and team performance, drawn from the With One Voice programme and supporting neuroscience. An updated read on the global innovation agenda, informed by eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Forum. Exposure to one of the few global voices arguing for psychedelic-assisted therapy as a serious instrument of mental health policy, with evidence from the Australian rescheduling. A keynote experience that uses live performance to shift the energy of a room, useful for conferences that need a tonal lift alongside content.

Why organisations work with Suzy Walton Triple-chartered credentials (Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist, Chartered Scientist) that few governance speakers in the UK can match, paired with active board service across more than fifteen organisations. Direct Whitehall experience, including the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and a 2025 Cabinet Office policy appointment by the Prime Minister. Operational military psychology background, including PhD research on suicide within the Armed Forces and lecturing at NATO events on terrorist profiling and behaviour under extreme stress. Nearly a decade as the longest-serving board member of the Institute of Directors, now a strategic advisor and chair of the IoD Accreditation and Standards Committee, giving boards a benchmark voice on director standards. A perspective on resilience grounded in real biographical fact: long-term widowhood, raising seven children, and a career rebuilt from the West End stage through to the Cabinet Office. Biography highlights Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist. PhD, Cranfield University, on suicide within the Armed Forces. Former senior civil servant: Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Vice-President, Combat Stress; former Vice-President, Royal Society of Medicine (2019 to 2021). Longest-serving member on the Institute of Directors main board, 2013 to 2022; current strategic advisor. Honorary Doctorate, University of Hertfordshire, 2026; BSc and MSc in Psychology from the same institution. Former West End actress (Children of a Lesser God), BBC Television presenter and Sky News reporter. Biography The standard governance speaker tends to come from one track: City, Big Four, executive search. Suzy Walton arrives at four. She is a Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist, qualifications usually distributed across three different professions, and she has used all three in active board service. Her doctorate, awarded by Cranfield University, was on suicide within the Armed Forces and was initially classified. As a serving military psychologist, she designed Resistance to Interrogation training, built recruitment systems for classified roles, and lectured at NATO events on terrorist profiling and human behaviour under extreme stress. Senior civil service postings in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit followed, and in 2025, the Prime Minister appointed her to a fresh policy role in the Cabinet Office. The board record is long and substantive. She was the longest-serving member of the main board of the Institute of Directors, from 2013 to 2022, and now sits as strategic advisor and chair of its Accreditation and Standards Committee. She has held positions at ACCA, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Internet Watch Foundation, the University of Westminster, the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the State Honours Committee. She is Vice-President of Combat Stress. What she draws on in front of a senior audience is the unusual width of that record set against an unusual personal one: a former West End actress in Children of a Lesser God, BBC and Sky News broadcaster, mother of seven, widowed for many years. Boards interested in honest governance and serious resilience tend to be the ones that book her. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board effectiveness Director of Standards and Chartered Practice Resilience and behaviour under extreme stress Women on boards and inclusive governance Public service leadership and civil service strategy Veterans’ mental health and Combat Stress Multi-role careers and reinvention Ideal for Boards, NEDs and chairs raising the standard of director practice Senior civil service, regulatory and public-sector leadership audiences CHROs, talent and inclusion leads working on women into board roles Healthcare, professional body and charity leadership audiences Audience outcomes A clearer benchmark for what good director conduct looks like, drawn from a chartered framework. A direct view of how Whitehall actually makes policy decisions, from someone who has been in the room. A grounded model of resilience that is not motivational but operational, built from military psychology and personal biography. Practical reference points for boards trying to take women, diversity and governance standards seriously at the same time.

Why organisations work with Susan Greenfield She framed the question. Her “Mind Change” thesis treats prolonged exposure to digital technology as a force on human cognition comparable in scale to climate change, and has shaped a decade of mainstream debate on screens, attention and identity. The science behind the argument is hers. Two hundred peer-reviewed papers, mostly from her Oxford lab, sit beneath her claims about attention, empathy and identity in the digital age. As founder and CEO of Neuro-Bio, the Oxford biotech she launched in 2013 to pursue a novel theory of Alzheimer’s based on the T14 peptide, she speaks from inside an active research programme. She has spent decades translating brain science for senior non-specialist audiences. That includes twelve years leading the Royal Institution of Great Britain as its first woman director, and ten years as a Forum Fellow at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Neuro-Bio Ltd, the Oxford biotech developing a novel approach to Alzheimer’s based on the T14 peptide Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, and former Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology, University of Oxford Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain from 1998 to 2010, the first woman to hold the post; first woman to give the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (1994) Author of Mind Change, The Private Life of the Brain, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, and A Day in the Life of the Brain, published by Penguin and Random House Crossbench Life Peer in the House of Lords since 2001 as Baroness Greenfield, of Ot Moor Honours include CBE, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Australian Society for Medical Research Medal, Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and 32 honorary degrees Biography In a 2009 House of Lords debate, a question was raised that the technology industry has never fully answered. If the human brain adapts to its environment, and the environment is now digital, what is happening to the brain at scale? The argument that grew from that question, developed across the next decade, has shaped how serious organisations think about screens and cognition. Greenfield’s standing to ask the question came from a long career in brain science. Two hundred peer-reviewed papers from Oxford, where she became Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology, sit behind it. So does her tenure as the first woman director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the post she held from 1998 to 2010, and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures she delivered there in 1994. In 2001, she was created a Life Peer as Baroness Greenfield, of Ot Moor. Mind Change, published in 2014, set out the case. The technologies surrounding a young brain shape its development. This is uncontroversial neuroscience. What is contested is the scale of the effect when those technologies are engineered to capture attention and to be returned to. Greenfield’s argument is that the consequences show up in places leaders care about: in how people sustain focus, and in how they form empathy and construct identity. She still runs the science. In 2013, she founded Neuro-Bio, the Oxford biotech she leads as CEO, developing a novel approach to Alzheimer’s based on her research into a peptide called T14. Her lab has linked T14 to neurodegeneration upstream of the amyloid pathway, and is working on a saliva-based diagnostic test the company hopes will detect Alzheimer’s decades before symptoms appear. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of digital technology and the human mind Consciousness, identity and the physical basis of the mind Attention, empathy and the cognitive shift between digital generations The neuroscience of creativity Alzheimer’s, dementia and the future of brain health Women in science, engineering and technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, technology, media and consumer-facing sectors CHROs and learning leaders are working on attention and digital fatigue in the workforce Strategy and innovation teams whose customers are the first generation to grow up entirely in a digital environment Education and policy audiences engaging with the science of cognition and the workforce of the future Audience outcomes A defensible vocabulary for what digital technology is doing to attention, empathy and identity A working distinction between what brain science actually shows and what is loosely attributed to “neuroscience” in popular commentary A view of where Alzheimer’s and dementia research is heading from a scientist actively pursuing a novel theory A perspective on the cognitive differences between digital natives and the workforce that came before them, grounded in published evidence

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

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