Mental Health in the Workplace

Why organisations work with Yuvaraj S Lingappa A clinician in the room, not a wellness commentator. Three decades of frontline medical practice sit behind every recommendation on stress, sleep and weight. Formal obesity-medicine credential from the World Obesity Federation (SCOPE Certified), which few corporate wellbeing speakers hold. Built and runs SlimIsEasy, a working consumer weight-management product, so the content is grounded in what actually shifts behaviour at scale, not workshop theory. Author of Easy Guide to Stress Relief, a short-form workplace stress book designed for time-poor corporate readers. Biography highlights Physician trained at Madras Medical College, Chennai. Over 30 years in clinical practice including paediatrics and family medicine at Victoria Hospital, St Lucia. SCOPE Certified by the World Obesity Federation, London. Author of Easy Guide to Stress Relief. Co-founder of the SlimIsEasy weight-management app. Speaker and corporate trainer on stress management, weight, and peak performance for executive and employee audiences. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes treat stress and weight as soft topics. The clinical reality is different. Both are measurable drivers of attention, decision quality, absence and attrition, and both respond to specific interventions rather than general encouragement. That is the territory Yuvaraj S Lingappa works in. He trained as a physician at Madras Medical College and practised for more than three decades, including a long tenure as a paediatrician and family practitioner at Victoria Hospital in St Lucia. The clinical grounding shapes the way he talks to corporate audiences: he treats stress as a physiological condition and obesity as a medical one, not as a motivational problem to be willed away. The obesity work carries a formal credential. He is SCOPE Certified by the World Obesity Federation in London, the international body’s professional standard for obesity care. Alongside the speaking and coaching practice, he co-founded SlimIsEasy, a consumer weight-management app, which gives him a live view of what behaviour change looks like outside the seminar room. His book Easy Guide to Stress Relief is written for corporate readers who will not finish a longer text. The same instinct runs through the speaking work: short, clinically grounded sessions that give an executive audience something to act on before the end of the week. Key speaking topics Workplace stress management Clinical approaches to weight and metabolic health Sleep, energy and executive performance Behaviour change at scale Health as a workforce productivity lever Peak performance for high-pressure roles Ideal for CHROs and heads of employee wellbeing reviewing the clinical substance of their wellness offer. Executive and leadership audiences where stress, sleep and weight are degrading performance. HR and benefits leaders in healthcare, professional services, financial services and high-pressure operating environments. Internal health and wellbeing weeks and leadership offsites that need a medically credentialed voice. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how stress and weight actually affect workforce performance, from a clinician’s standpoint. Specific, low-friction techniques for managing stress that work inside a normal corporate day. A grounded view of what serious weight and metabolic intervention looks like, and what most workplace programmes miss. Practical steps individuals can take in the week after the session, rather than aspirational targets.

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

Why organisations work with David Woods Bartley Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the three QPR steps directly in his talks, so a manager leaves knowing how to ask the question and make the referral. Lived experience of severe depression, a suicide attempt at the Foresthill Bridge, and recovery through electroconvulsive therapy. The story carries the stigma-breaking weight that clinical presenters rarely match. Named 2021 Mental Health Champion by the Steinberg Institute, a credential anchored to a recognised advocacy body rather than bureau superlatives. Two TEDx talks in active distribution, including “How connection saved my life” on TED.com, which gives programme leads a vetted preview of voice and content before booking. Works across corporate, public sector, healthcare, education, and law enforcement audiences. Material has been delivered to sheriff’s departments, universities, and veterans’ health services, not only corporate wellness events. Biography highlights 2021 Mental Health Champion, Steinberg Institute. Two TEDx speaker: “How connection saved my life” (TEDxLosGatos) and “How to save a life by sitting down” (TEDxFolsom). Trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer); certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. Member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, International Association for Youth Mental Health, National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. Founder and former director of a nationally recognised animal sanctuary that housed up to 100 special-needs animals. Designer of “A Lesson in Mental Health,” a whole-school programme that trains students, teachers, and parents in a single day. Biography Most organisations have a mental health policy. Very few have trained the average manager to spot a colleague in distress and say something that helps. That gap is the work David Woods Bartley has been doing for over a decade, in more than 800 sessions across the United States, Canada, Central America, and India. His authority rests on two things that rarely appear together. The first is lived experience: a fight with treatment-resistant depression that took him to the edge of the Foresthill Bridge, and a recovery that included electroconvulsive therapy and the human connection that, in his telling, kept him alive long enough to get there. The second is formal training. He is trained in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) and certified in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth and in safeTALK. He teaches the QPR steps in his sessions, so audiences leave with a protocol they can put to use. The Steinberg Institute named him a 2021 Mental Health Champion. His two TEDx talks, “How connection saved my life” at TEDxLosGatos and “How to save a life by sitting down” at TEDxFolsom, are in active distribution on TED and YouTube. He is a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the International Association for Youth Mental Health, the National Storytelling Network’s Healing Story Alliance, and Active Minds. What he gives a room is a practical shift. Bartley uses a framework he calls Whole Person Care, animal stories drawn from two decades running a sanctuary, and the blunt honesty of someone who has stood on the bridge. Managers walk out knowing how to sit down next to a colleague who is not alright, ask a direct question, and get them to the next step. Key speaking topics Suicide prevention and the QPR approach Workplace mental health literacy Psychological safety and supportive conversations Human connection and isolation Whole Person Care Lived experience of depression and recovery Mental health education for schools and communities Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people function leaders building mental health capability across a workforce Line managers, team leaders, and EAP programme owners responsible for early intervention Public sector, healthcare, and education leaders tasked with staff and community mental health Law enforcement, first responder, and veterans’ services leadership addressing occupational risk Audience outcomes A named protocol for asking direct questions when a colleague shows signs of distress, drawn from the QPR method. Language for starting mental health conversations without fearing the wrong word. A clearer sense of what recovery actually looks like, from someone who has been through severe depression and ECT. Reduced stigma around suicide as a topic that can be raised at work, supported by specific recognition cues and response steps. A self-care and wellness planning frame managers can apply to themselves before applying it to a team.

Why organisations work with Zoe Fragou She brings a clinical psychologist’s diagnostic discipline into corporate culture work, which most coaches and consultants in this space cannot. Her doctoral research at EU Business School Geneva is specifically on corporate culture psychometrics, giving organisations a measurement frame rather than a values poster. She actively trains public health leaders for the WHO Regional Office for Europe, including in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, so her leadership content is tested in the hardest operating conditions, not only corporate ones. Her work covers burnout, psychological safety, feedback culture and inclusion as connected mechanisms inside the same system, rather than as separate wellness initiatives. Recognised externally as a credible coaching authority, ranked No. 7 globally on Thinkers360 for coaching and named Best Career Coach at the 2021 Global Coaching Conference. Biography highlights Organisational psychologist with a clinical psychology licence and an MSc in Human Resources Management from Athens University of Economics and Business. Doctoral candidate at EU Business School Geneva, researching the psychometrics of corporate culture. Trainer for the WHO Regional Office for Europe on the Public Health Leadership course since September 2023. Ranked No. 7 Global Thought Leader on Coaching by Thinkers360; featured on the Top 50 Coaching rankings for 2024 and 2025. Voted Best Career Coach at the Global Coaching Conference 2021; named Top 15 Coaches in Athens 2023. Founder of Fragoulous Minds, an Athens-based consulting collective working with private and corporate clients globally; mentor with Women On Top, 100mentors and Lean In. Biography Most wellbeing programmes are designed to manage symptoms. They sit alongside the operating model that produced the burnout in the first place. The work of changing the underlying culture sits with people who rarely have a clinical lens to see what is actually happening inside teams under pressure. Zoe Fragou occupies that gap. She is a licensed clinical psychologist who works at the organisational level, holding an MSc in Human Resources Management from Athens University of Economics and Business and pursuing a doctorate at EU Business School Geneva on the psychometrics of corporate culture. Her practice covers culture transformation, executive coaching, feedback culture and psychological safety for private and corporate clients across Europe, Asia and Africa. Since 2023 she has trained public health leaders for the WHO Regional Office for Europe on its Public Health Leadership course, working with cohorts from countries including Kazakhstan and Ukraine. That work places her leadership material in genuinely fragile operating environments, not only in well-resourced corporates, and informs how she frames resilience, decision-making and team dynamics for senior audiences. External recognition reflects the same focus. Thinkers360 ranks her at No. 7 globally on Coaching and lists her on its 2024 and 2025 Top 50 Coaching rosters. She was voted Best Career Coach at the 2021 Global Coaching Conference and named among the Top 15 Coaches in Athens in 2023. Through Fragoulous Minds, the practice she founded, she leads culture and leadership engagements for organisations that want to treat burnout and engagement as a system problem rather than a perks problem. Key speaking topics Corporate culture transformation Burnout and psychological safety at work Feedback culture and growth mindset Leadership development under pressure Diversity, equity and inclusion Mental health in the workplace Women’s leadership Executive coaching and personal development Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding culture after restructure or rapid growth Boards and executive teams accountable for engagement, attrition and wellbeing metrics Public sector and global health leaders operating in high-pressure or fragile contexts Senior leadership groups in regulated, professional services or post-merger organisations Audience outcomes A clinical reading of how burnout actually develops inside teams, and which organisational levers shift it A working definition of feedback culture that connects to growth mindset rather than performance management ritual A more honest frame for DEI work, anchored in psychological mechanisms of bias and belonging Language for senior leaders to talk about psychological safety without slipping into wellness platitudes A clear view of where wellbeing programmes stop working and culture redesign has to start

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

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

Why organisations work with Kemba Smith Pradia She brings a story that has been independently verified by Congress, the United Nations, two presidents and a feature film, which gives DEI and values conversations a level of moral authority that internal speakers cannot replicate. She has worked inside the system she critiques. Service on the Virginia Parole Board and Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission gives her policy fluency that pure advocacy speakers lack. Her memoir Poster Child and the BET+ film KEMBA give audiences a shared cultural reference point before she walks on stage, which compresses the time needed to land a serious message about fairness and institutional accountability. She speaks to domestic violence, coercive relationships and self-esteem with the same first-person credibility she brings to incarceration, which makes her useful to organisations running employee resource groups and wellbeing programmes that need substance rather than awareness theatre. A presidential pardon from Joe Biden in January 2025 closes a loop that has been open in public for thirty years. Few speakers carry that arc of personal and institutional resolution into a room. Biography highlights Founder, The Kemba Smith Foundation, 501(c)(3) focused on criminal justice education and youth advocacy. Author, Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story. Executive producer, KEMBA (2024), feature film on BET+. Appointed to the Virginia Parole Board by Governor Ralph Northam in 2019; former member of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. Former State Advocacy Campaigns Director, ACLU of Virginia. Bachelor of Social Work, Virginia Union University. Testified before the United States Congress and the United Nations; featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Court TV, Nightline, Essence, Glamour, People, Emerge and Jet. Sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton in December 2000; full pardon granted by President Joe Biden in January 2025. Biography In 1994 a twenty-three-year-old college student with no prior criminal record was sentenced to 24.5 years in federal prison for a non-violent drug conspiracy tied to a former boyfriend. The case became one of the most cited examples of the human cost of mandatory minimum sentencing in the United States, covered in Emerge, The Washington Post and on Nightline, and used by the Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU as a reference point for federal sentencing reform. President Bill Clinton commuted that sentence in December 2000 after six and a half years inside. Kemba Smith Pradia then completed a Bachelor of Social Work at Virginia Union University and began a decades-long second career in advocacy, founding The Kemba Smith Foundation, working as State Advocacy Campaigns Director for the ACLU of Virginia, and testifying before Congress and the United Nations on incarceration, drug policy and the treatment of women in the criminal legal system. In 2019 Governor Ralph Northam appointed her to the Virginia Parole Board, and she also served on the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. That inside-the-system service is what separates her from most lived-experience speakers in this space: she has read the case files, voted on parole decisions, and sat on the commission that sets sentencing policy. Her memoir Poster Child and the 2024 BET+ feature film KEMBA, on which she served as executive producer, give organisations a substantive cultural and documentary record to work from. On 19 January 2025 President Joe Biden issued her a full pardon, closing a public arc that began with the 1996 Emerge cover story “Kemba’s Nightmare.” Organisations book her when they need a serious, named voice on resilience, domestic abuse, inclusion and the practical content of values-based leadership, delivered by someone who has lived every part of the argument and helped change the policy that produced it. Key speaking topics Criminal justice reform and mandatory sentencing policy Resilience and recovery after institutional failure Values-based and inclusive leadership Domestic violence, coercive control and self-worth Women, race and the United States criminal legal system Personal responsibility and consequence Youth advocacy and civic engagement Ideal for Chief diversity officers, employee resource group leads and culture leaders running inclusion programmes that need substance over signalling. Heads of wellbeing and employee support designing serious conversations on domestic abuse and resilience. Universities, law schools, and public-policy audiences working on criminal justice, sentencing and policy reform. Leadership development programmes building values-based leadership content beyond business case studies. Audience outcomes A named, verifiable example of how mandatory minimum sentencing reshapes individual lives and the policy choices that follow. Language for talking about inclusion, dignity and fairness at work that survives political contestation. A direct account of coercive relationships and self-worth that audiences can use in employee resource group and wellbeing settings. A clearer sense of what personal responsibility, institutional accountability and second chances look like in practice rather than as abstractions.

Why organisations work with Charlene Douglas A clinically trained therapist, not a wellbeing presenter. Diplomas in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychosexual Studies (2018), BACP-registered, with a private practice in London behind every session she delivers. Public credibility from Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK gives her unusual reach into employee audiences who would tune out a more traditional speaker, without diluting the substance of what she covers. Author of Come Closer (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024), a published synthesis of the communication, intimacy and self-awareness frameworks she uses with clients, available as anchor content for follow-on workshops. Talks about boundaries, communication and stress with the directness of a working therapist, which lands differently inside organisations than corporate wellbeing language usually does. Brings a Black woman entrepreneur’s lens to belonging and imposter syndrome conversations, drawn from her own practice rather than from a DEI framework deck. Biography highlights Sex and relationship therapist on Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK since 2021. Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Highgate Counselling Centre (2018). Diploma in Psychosexual Studies, Centre of Psychosexual Health (2018). Registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Author of Come Closer: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Sex and Relationship Therapist (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024). Founder of private practice The Intimacy Coach; broadcast and podcast credits include Good Morning Britain, Steph’s Packed Lunch, E4’s The Sex Clinic, and The Referral with Dr Karan. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are built around the individual. The relationships people are inside, with managers, peers, and themselves, are where the strain actually shows. That is the territory Charlene Douglas has worked in for almost a decade as a clinically trained therapist, and it translates more directly into team performance than the wellbeing industry usually admits. Douglas qualified through the Highgate Counselling Centre in psychodynamic counselling and the Centre of Psychosexual Health in psychosexual studies, both in 2018. She is registered with the BACP and runs The Intimacy Coach, a private practice working with individuals and couples in London and online. The clinical grounding is what separates her from the broader category of relationship commentators. Channel 4 brought her onto the expert panel of Married at First Sight UK in 2021, which has given her a public platform that few therapists with comparable credentials have. She has used it to publish Come Closer with Penguin Random House in 2024, a book that captures the communication and self-awareness work she does with couples and adapts it for a general reader. For corporate audiences, she draws on the same clinical material to talk about boundaries, communication, stress, and the quiet ways relationships at work erode under pressure. Her own experience as a Black woman building a private practice and a public profile feeds directly into how she handles questions of belonging, voice, and confidence with senior audiences. Key speaking topics Communication and boundaries at work Stress, self-care and burnout prevention Resilience, wellbeing and mental health Team dynamics and psychological safety Belonging and imposter syndrome Leadership with empathy Inclusion and the lived experience of difference Ideal for HR, People and Culture leaders building wellbeing programmes that need clinical credibility Employee resource groups and women’s networks, including events centred on women of colour Internal communications and town hall events seeking a recognisable name with substantive content Leadership development cohorts working on empathy, listening and difficult conversations Audience outcomes A clearer language for what good and bad communication look like in everyday work relationships Practical boundary-setting techniques drawn from clinical practice rather than self-help Direct frameworks for managing stress and protecting personal capacity under sustained pressure A more honest conversation about belonging and confidence that does not retreat into corporate DEI vocabulary

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

Why organisations work with Kristel Bauer A medical practitioner’s lens on workplace wellbeing. Her clinical background in integrative psychiatry means audiences hear evidence-based content on stress, sleep, and mental health, not motivational generalities. A published thesis on work-life harmony. Work-Life Tango (John Murray Business, 2024) replaces the binary of balance with a more usable operating model for hybrid teams. Credibility with both wellbeing leads and commercial leadership. Bauer translates clinical evidence into language that resonates with operations and people functions in the same room. Track record across regulated and Fortune 500 environments, including AbbVie, Bank of America, bp, General Mills, Home Depot, Santander, TIAA, and the U.S. Census Bureau. Media reach that extends authority beyond the keynote. Forbes, Entrepreneur, NBC News Daily, ABC News Live, and the Live Greatly podcast give clients a speaker whose ideas circulate well after the event. Biography highlights Author of Work-Life Tango: Finding Happiness, Harmony and Peak Performance Wherever You Work (John Murray Business, 2024) Integrative Medicine Fellow and former Physician Assistant with clinical experience in integrative psychiatry Creator and host of the Live Greatly Podcast, ranked in the top tier of self-improvement category globally Contributing writer for Entrepreneur; named a Forbes Top 10 Social Media Influencer 2026 Top Impact Speaker, Real Leaders Broadcast features on NBC News Daily, ABC News Live, FOX Weather, ABC 7 Chicago, WGN Daytime Chicago TEDx speaker: “Redefining Work-Life Balance in a COVID-19 World” Corporate clients include AbbVie, Bank of America, bp, Cognizant, General Mills, Home Depot, Northwestern University, Santander, TIAA, U.S. Census Bureau Biography Workplace wellbeing has become an operating cost line that few organisations know how to manage. Engagement scores stay flat, mental health claims rise, and the hybrid debate consumes leadership attention. The clinical evidence on what actually moves the dial sits outside most HR functions. Kristel Bauer brings that evidence into the room. She practised as a Physician Assistant with clinical experience in integrative psychiatry and completed an Integrative Medicine Fellowship before founding Live Greatly in 2019 to focus full time on workplace wellbeing and performance. Her book, Work-Life Tango: Finding Happiness, Harmony and Peak Performance Wherever You Work, was published by John Murray Business in November 2024. The thesis replaces the static idea of balance with a more dynamic operating model: harmony as something teams design for, not something individuals struggle to achieve. The Live Greatly podcast has carried that argument into a wider audience, with conversations across leadership, behavioural science, and performance. Bauer has presented for AbbVie, Bank of America, bp, Cognizant, General Mills, Home Depot, Santander, TIAA, and the U.S. Census Bureau, among others. She is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, a Forbes Top 10 Social Media Influencer, a 2026 Top Impact Speaker by Real Leaders, and a TEDx speaker. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing as an operational discipline Mental health and stress at work Peak performance and high-performance habits Work-life harmony in hybrid and distributed teams Burnout prevention and recovery Leadership and emotional intelligence Employee engagement and culture Ideal for CHROs, heads of people, and wellbeing leads commissioning credible mental health content Learning and development functions building manager capability around stress and performance Leadership offsites where wellbeing needs clinical grounding, not motivational framing Sales kick-offs and all-hands events that need a high-energy, evidence-led performance keynote Audience outcomes A clinically grounded model for distinguishing healthy pressure from harmful stress at work A practical operating definition of work-life harmony that managers can apply with their teams Specific habit-level interventions for sustained performance under sustained load Language for talking about mental health at work that lands with commercial as well as people leaders Confidence to treat workplace wellbeing as a measurable strategic lever, not a perks question

Why organisations work with Juan Campoo A proprietary, named model. The Mind Canvas gives audiences a concrete mental framework rather than a list of wellbeing tips, which is what makes the content stick after the keynote. Recognised practitioner credibility. Best Wellness Coach 2023 at the CoachAwards is an external mark from a coaching-industry body, not self-applied bureau language. Useful for both populations. The same underlying model has been adapted for general employee audiences (“Accelerate Your Inner Development”) and for people leaders (“Accelerate The Leader Within”), so HR can run a coherent programme across cohorts. A practitioner voice, not an academic one. Campoo built the work after his own burnout in a corporate role, which gives the room a different register from a researcher presenting findings. Trilingual delivery. Working in English, Spanish and Dutch makes him unusually portable for European employee programmes that span sites. Biography highlights Author of The Mind Canvas: A Revolutionary Approach to Personal Mastery (2022), an Amazon best-seller, with a contribution from values-based leadership author Richard Barrett. TEDx speaker on personal development and wellbeing. Best Wellness Coach 2023, CoachAwards. Developer of the Mind Canvas method, applied in keynotes, workshops and one-to-one coaching. Works in English, Spanish and Dutch across European corporate audiences. Based in The Netherlands; born and raised in Argentina. Biography Workplace wellbeing programmes have a credibility problem. They consume budget, generate engagement-survey questions, and rarely change how a stressed manager actually responds at 4pm on a Thursday. The gap is not effort, it is that most interventions never reach the level of how people regulate their own thinking under pressure. This is the territory Juan Campoo works in. His Mind Canvas method, set out in his 2022 Amazon best-seller The Mind Canvas: A Revolutionary Approach to Personal Mastery, gives audiences a single visual model for understanding how thoughts, emotions and behaviours interact, and what to do with that understanding in real working conditions. Richard Barrett, the values-based leadership author, contributed to the book. Campoo’s authority on this comes from practice rather than theory. He hit burnout and depression early in his own corporate career, then spent more than a decade studying mindset and behaviour change and building a coaching and training practice across Europe. The CoachAwards named him Best Wellness Coach in 2023. His two anchor talks, “Accelerate Your Inner Development” and “Accelerate The Leader Within”, apply the same model to two audiences: staff who need better emotional regulation, and leaders whose behaviour shapes whether psychological safety actually exists in their teams. He delivers in English, Spanish and Dutch. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence at work Mindset and behaviour change Wellbeing and burnout prevention Psychological safety Personal mastery and self-regulation Leadership behaviour and influence Stress and resilience Ideal for HR, People and L&D leads designing wellbeing or emotional intelligence programmes for staff People managers and team leaders working on psychological safety and team behaviour Leadership development cohorts inside European multinationals, particularly multilingual sites Employee conferences and culture days where the brief is practical self-development, not corporate strategy Audience outcomes A working mental model (Mind Canvas) for how thoughts, emotions and behaviour connect Specific daily practices for self-regulation under pressure A clearer view of what psychological safety looks like in everyday team behaviour, not policy Language for talking about stress and burnout that managers can actually use with their teams Renewed individual ownership of wellbeing rather than waiting for the organisation to fix it

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