Motivation and Inspiration

Why organisations work with Jon Carmichael He brings a single, verifiable feat that anchors every claim he makes about creative ambition: the 2017 “108” photograph, captured aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368 after the captain secured FAA approval to perform five 180-degree turns mid-flight. The story has been covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Inc., which gives the keynote external validation few inspirational speakers can match. He has presented at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester, two audiences with low tolerance for thin material, which signals he can hold a room of senior or technical attendees. His “Eclipse Mindset” gives sales conferences, innovation summits, and culture events a non-corporate frame for talking about ambition, alignment, and risk without sounding like internal-comms language. Biography highlights Astrophotographer; sixteen years documenting corporate and political events. Photographed the 2017 total solar eclipse from 39,000 feet aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368, image titled “108”. Has spoken at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester to an audience of around 2,500. Eclipse work featured by Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc., and Weather.com. Visual storytelling engagements with Twitter, Dell and ESPN; collectors of his fine art work include Sir Elton John. Unveiled the “108” image at a Twitter company event at the invitation of Jack Dorsey. Biography In August 2017, a commercial Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to St. Louis made five 180-degree turns at 39,000 feet so a single passenger in seat 1A could photograph a total solar eclipse over the Snake River. That passenger had spent two years mapping flight paths against the moon’s shadow, persuading an airline and a captain to accept the risk, and securing FAA approval the morning of the flight. The resulting image, titled “108”, is the spine of Jon Carmichael’s keynote work. Buyers do not commission him for technical photography. They commission him for what the project demonstrates about how teams attempt things that are not yet possible. The “Eclipse Mindset” he draws from the story is a practical frame, not a metaphor: identify the constraint, recruit unlikely partners, accept that the plan will change in execution, and prepare so that when conditions narrow to a two-minute window, the team can act. His credibility for serious audiences comes from where the work has been received. The image was covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. and Weather.com. He was invited to present at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium, with the talk broadcast to other NASA centres, and at TEDxManchester to roughly 2,500 attendees. Jack Dorsey invited him to unveil the photograph at a Twitter company event. For sales conferences, innovation kick-offs and culture moments where the brief is to lift the room without resorting to standard motivational fare, Carmichael offers a verifiable feat, a named project, and a usable frame, anchored by a story that audiences can recall and repeat months later. Key speaking topics The Eclipse Mindset Creativity and perspective shift Bold execution under constraint Visual storytelling Innovation through ambition Team alignment around a high-stakes vision Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs seeking a non-corporate opening or closing keynote Innovation, R&D, and product leadership offsites Culture, brand and marketing events CMOs and creative leadership audiences Audience outcomes A specific story they can quote, with named brands and dates, to anchor internal conversations about ambition A practical frame (“Eclipse Mindset”) for identifying which constraints are real and which are inherited Renewed appetite for projects that require unlikely partners and mid-execution adjustment A reminder that bold work is rarely solo: the eclipse image required an airline, a captain, a regulator, and years of preparation

Ryan Campbell: Mental Health and Resilience Speaker Ryan Campbell is one of the world’s leading mental health and resilience keynote speakers. His gripping story of adventure and adversity leaves audiences in laughter, tears, and inspired into action. As a teenager, Ryan became the youngest solo pilot to fly around the world and was named one of Australia’s 50 great explorers. But everything changed after a tragic plane crash that left him with a paraplegic diagnosis, told he would never walk again. Over the next several years, Ryan’s incredible recovery back to walking and flying again defied the odds. While he ticked the boxes that defined success, his mental health had never been worse. Like many in today’s world, Ryan was struggling with burnout, anxiety, and depression. His missing puzzle piece wasn’t found in a massive global expedition or  miraculous recovery. Ryan’s greatest lesson was parked right in his driveway. Today, Ryan speaks to organizations around the world about the life-changing power of prioritizing joy. Through the story of his Elvis-inspired 1960 pink Cadillac, he shares accessible and attainable frameworks that will immediately improve mental health, fuel performance, and transform culture. Through harnessing the power of joy, Ryan helps audiences shift their thinking so that they can step back in order to show up better. All by asking one simple question… What’s Your Pink Cadillac?

Why organisations work with Mark Franklin He names the specific barriers founders carry into their businesses: not being ready, not being good enough, not having enough time, and fear of failure. Audiences recognise themselves in the language and leave with a vocabulary for what was previously unspoken. His Four Fears framework is trademarked and structured, not improvised motivation. It gives small-business audiences a model they can apply to a stalled product launch, a pricing decision, or a hiring step. Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner credentials, including Havening and Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured), give the work a clinical grounding that ordinary business-mindset talks lack. He uses live drumming as a working metaphor for rhythm, action and recovery in business, which makes the session memorable for audiences who have sat through standard keynotes. Recognition as Highly Commended Rising Star and Finalist for Emerging Coach of the Year at the National Coaching Awards 2025 marks him as a credible voice within the UK coaching profession. Biography highlights Founder of The Four Fears, a trademarked mindset coaching framework for small business owners and creative professionals. Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner, Level One Havening Coach, Level One Limitless Light Practitioner, and Practitioner in Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured). National Coaching Awards 2025: Highly Commended, Rising Star; Finalist, Emerging Coach of the Year. Former Managing Director of Usborne Books at Home, previously Marketing Director. Speaker, coach and emcee, with podcast appearances including The Next 100 Days (Ep. 408) and LiveTrue (Ep. 011). Author of a forthcoming book on the Four Fears of business ownership. Biography Most small businesses do not fail because the market turned. They fail because the owner stopped acting on the things that mattered. Procrastination, perfectionism, imposter feelings and fear of failure are the everyday barriers that quietly drain founders, and they are rarely addressed by ordinary business advice. The Four Fears, Franklin’s trademarked framework, names these four barriers and gives owners a shared language for what is happening inside their own decision-making. The work is built on Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner training, including Havening and Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured), which roots the approach in neuroscience-informed coaching practice rather than generic motivation. His credibility is anchored in two careers. He led Usborne Books at Home as Managing Director after several years as its Marketing Director, which gives him an operator’s read on what running a small enterprise actually feels like. He moved into full-time coaching and speaking and was recognised in 2025 with two National Coaching Awards shortlistings, Highly Commended Rising Star and Finalist for Emerging Coach of the Year. On stage, Franklin works with a drum kit as part of the talk. The drumming is not theatrics; it stands in for rhythm, deliberate action and recovery, the same patterns he asks owners to recognise in their businesses. Audiences leave with a framework, a vocabulary, and an unusually concrete sense of what bravery looks like when applied to a real commercial decision. Key speaking topics Small business mindset and the Four Fears Entrepreneurial procrastination and perfectionism Imposter feelings in founders and creative professionals Action and rhythm in business decision-making Bravery and clarity in self-employment Coaching-led personal development for owner-operators Ideal for Small-business and entrepreneur audiences at conferences, association events and network gatherings Creative professionals, freelancers and independent operators looking for honest mindset content Franchise networks, direct-sales organisations and SME communities running annual or regional events After-dinner and emcee briefs where a speaker also needs to host or moderate the room Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the four psychological barriers that most often stall small-business owners A practical sense of how to spot which of the four fears is currently in play, in themselves and in colleagues A grounded view of bravery as a working practice in business, not a personality trait Energy and a memorable creative device, the drum kit, that anchors the message after the room empties

Why organisations work with Heather Moyse She has competed at Olympic level in three sports she did not start as a child, including learning bobsleigh from scratch and winning gold in her first Games. That gives her a credible voice on rapid capability acquisition under high stakes. Her occupational therapy training (Master’s, University of Toronto) gives her a clinical frame for human performance rather than the standard motivational-athlete narrative. She talks about the mechanics of resilience, not the feeling of it. She is the first Canadian woman inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame and one of only two Canadians inducted. The credential is rare enough to anchor a senior audience that has heard many Olympic stories. She has worked with senior corporate audiences including CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, and the Canadian Armed Forces, so the translation from sport to commercial leadership is already calibrated. Biography highlights Two-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s bobsleigh (Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, pilot Kaillie Humphries). Four-time Olympian. World Rugby Hall of Fame, inducted 2016. First Canadian woman, second Canadian overall. Master’s in Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto. BSc (Honours Kinesiology), University of Waterloo. Author, Redefining ‘Realistic’ (2017), with foreword by John C. Maxwell. Order of Prince Edward Island (2014); inaugural Randy Starkman Olympian Humanitarian Award (2014). Biography Bobsleigh is not a sport you take up casually. Heather Moyse was recruited into the Canadian programme as an adult, learned the discipline from a standing start, and won Olympic gold in Vancouver in 2010 with pilot Kaillie Humphries. Four years later, in Sochi, the same pair defended the title. She is also a World Rugby Hall of Famer, one of two Canadians ever inducted, and competed internationally in track cycling after taking up the sport during a rugby injury recovery. Three sports, all picked up later than the orthodox path allows, all carried to international level. The story is not about innate talent. It is about how a person decides what is realistic. That decision sits at the centre of her work with organisations. Her keynote and coaching content draws on a Master’s in Occupational Therapy from the University of Toronto, which gives her a clinical vocabulary for performance most athletes do not have. She talks about how leaders narrow their own range of options under pressure, how recovery is engineered rather than waited for, and how the gap between current capability and the next required capability is closed in practice. Her book Redefining ‘Realistic’ sets out the argument in long form, with a foreword by John C. Maxwell. The corporate work, with audiences at CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Canadian Armed Forces and others, applies it to leaders who are being asked to recalibrate their assumptions about what their teams can do, and how quickly. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure High-performance mindset and recovery Resilience as an operational discipline Goal-setting and capability acquisition Leading through uncertainty and setback Personal accountability and authentic leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams facing prolonged change or post-restructure recovery Sales and commercial leadership audiences where sustained performance under pressure is the central question Senior women’s leadership programmes and high-potential development cohorts Conferences where the closing keynote needs an authority voice on composure and reinvention Audience outcomes A direct account of how elite performers manage themselves before, during, and after high-stakes moments A working definition of what counts as “realistic” and how that judgment limits or extends what teams attempt Specific tools for breaking large objectives into the next executable step under time pressure A clearer view of how recovery and preparation interact, drawn from Olympic-level practice rather than metaphor

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

Why organisations work with Jenson Button A first-hand account of winning a world title with a team that did not exist eighteen months earlier, when Honda withdrew and the Brawn GP outfit was rebuilt from the wreckage. The temperament side of elite performance, drawn from 306 Grand Prix starts: how a driver and a team hold their nerve when the result is twenty seconds away and there are no second chances. A current insider voice on Formula 1 strategy and team dynamics, with active roles at Williams Racing and Sky Sports F1 that keep the perspective live, not retrospective. Credibility across disciplines: F1 World Champion, Super GT GT500 champion in Japan, and FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar driver with Hertz Team JOTA. Biography highlights 2009 FIA Formula 1 World Drivers’ Champion with Brawn GP. 15 Grand Prix victories, 50 podiums, 8 pole positions across 18 F1 seasons with Williams, Renault, BAR, Honda, Brawn GP, and McLaren. MBE for services to motorsport, 2010 New Year Honours. Senior Advisor, Williams Racing, working with the team and its driver academy. Lead pundit and expert analyst on the Sky Sports F1 broadcast team. 2018 Super GT GT500 Series Champion (Japan); 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar driver with Hertz Team JOTA. Author of “Life to the Limit: My Autobiography” (2017), longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2018. Biography Honda walked away from Formula 1 at the end of 2008. The team Button had been driving for had no engine, no sponsor, and no certainty it would make the grid. By March it had become Brawn GP. By November he was World Champion. The story is well known in the paddock; the lesson, less so. Button won the 2009 title because the discipline he had built across nine seasons of underperforming machinery transferred intact to a car that finally matched him. Across 18 F1 seasons and 306 Grand Prix starts, Button took 15 victories, 50 podiums, and the 2009 World Drivers’ Championship. He raced for Williams, Benetton-Renault, BAR, Honda, Brawn GP, and McLaren, partnering Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, and Rubens Barrichello. He was awarded an MBE for services to motorsport in 2010. The career did not end with F1. Button won the 2018 Super GT GT500 series in Japan, raced at the 2023 Le Mans 24 Hours with the NASCAR Garage 56 entry, and contested the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2024 with Hertz Team JOTA in a Porsche 963 Hypercar. He is Senior Advisor to Williams Racing, where he works with the team and its driver academy, and a lead expert on Sky Sports F1’s broadcast team. For organisations, the value sits in the practical content of composure under pressure: how a driver makes decisions in tenths of a second with championship implications, how a team holds together when results stop arriving, and how performance is sustained across two decades of repeated reinvention. His autobiography, “Life to the Limit”, set out the same argument in 2017: the title was won as much in the head as in the car. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Decision-making at speed Team dynamics in elite environments Resilience across long careers Formula 1 strategy and competition Mental preparation and composure Ideal for Leadership teams facing a high-stakes execution moment, product launch, transformation milestone, or competitive deadline. Sales, performance, and operations groups where individual composure compounds into team result. After-dinner audiences at corporate hospitality, championship-night events, and senior leadership offsites. Organisations using motorsport partnerships (sponsors, suppliers, hospitality programmes) to anchor a leadership narrative. Audience outcomes A working account of how a championship-winning driver prepares for and executes under pressure. A close-quarters view of the Brawn GP turnaround as a case in team performance after structural collapse. A current read on Formula 1’s competitive dynamics, drawn from active Williams and Sky Sports roles. A clear connection between the discipline of elite sport and the discipline required to lead a senior team through a difficult cycle.

Why organisations work with Liz McConaghy A first-person account of operational PTSD from someone who survived a suicide attempt, not a clinical overview of mental health from a third-party expert. Seventeen years on the Chinook Fleet, including ten Afghanistan deployments and MERT casualty recovery under fire. The credibility on high-stakes teamwork is earned, not theoretical. 2023 Inspirational Woman in Defence Award, recognising her public advocacy on PTSD and recovery among veterans. A bestselling book (Chinook Crew ‘Chick’) that gives audiences a durable artefact to take back into the organisation after the talk. Direct relevance for organisations with armed-forces-connected workforces, high-stress operating teams, or active mental health and resilience programmes. Biography highlights Longest-serving female crewman on the RAF Chinook Fleet, with over 3,000 flying hours across a 17-year career. Two Iraq deployments and ten Afghanistan deployments under Operation Herrick, including service on the Medical Emergency Response Team. Author of Chinook Crew ‘Chick’ (Pen and Sword, 2022), Amazon Bestseller within three weeks of release. 2023 Inspirational Woman in Defence Award winner. Mental health and PTSD ambassador for veterans, drawing on her own near-fatal post-service crisis. Featured speaker for the Institute of Leadership and a regular contributor on military leadership and recovery. Biography The Medical Emergency Response Team flew casualty recovery under fire in Helmand. Soldiers died and were resuscitated on the cabin floor of the Chinook. Liz McConaghy spent ten deployments on that aircraft, and the operational cost of it caught up with her years later, not in service. She joined the RAF at 19, deployed to Iraq at 21, and stayed on the Chinook Fleet for 17 years. Three thousand flying hours, two Iraq tours, ten Afghanistan tours, and four years as the only female crewman on the wing. She left in 2019, and in August 2020 attempted suicide. What followed was the work she now brings into organisations. A bestselling autobiography, Chinook Crew ‘Chick’, published by Pen and Sword in 2022. The 2023 Inspirational Woman in Defence Award. An ambassadorship for veteran mental health, built on the argument that PTSD is a chapter of a life, not the definition of one. For organisations carrying the cost of psychological strain on their people, the value is the source. McConaghy speaks as someone who has been through the failure mode that mental health programmes are meant to prevent, and who is articulate about what brought her back. Key speaking topics Mental health and PTSD in high-pressure roles Resilience after operational and personal trauma Team leadership in extreme operating environments Self-leadership and recovery Women in male-dominated workplaces Veteran transition and post-service identity Ideal for CHROs, wellbeing leads, and ER teams running mental health and resilience programmes at scale Organisations with armed-forces-connected workforces, including defence primes, security contractors, and emergency services Leadership offsites where the agenda includes psychological safety, burnout, or sustained performance under load Employee network groups and ERGs focused on women, veterans, or mental health Audience outcomes A first-person reference point for what operational PTSD looks like, and what recovery from it actually involves Practical language for opening internal conversations about suicide risk and post-service mental health A clearer view of how high-functioning teams in extreme environments sustain themselves, and where they fail Renewed permission, particularly for senior leaders, to treat their own mental health as an operating variable

Why organisations work with Willie Jolley Cavett Award winner, the National Speakers Association’s highest honour and an award given to one peer-elected member per year. Few keynote speakers active today carry that level of inside-the-profession validation. Worked with Ford Motor Company during its 2006 to 2009 turnaround period; former Ford CEO Alan Mulally endorsed the book that came out of that work. A named framework, Setback to Comeback, that gives leadership teams a shared language for how to behave when the business is under pressure, not just inspiration in the room. Sustained media platform on SiriusXM and Radio One puts him in front of senior business audiences weekly, so his frame is already familiar to many of the executives he speaks to. Equally credible with a senior executive room and a wider all-employee audience, which matters for clients running town halls, sales kickoffs and culture events off the back of restructure. Biography highlights Cavett Award, National Speakers Association, 2023; first African American man to receive it. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, January 2023, for sustained voluntary service. Inductee, NSA Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE Council of Peers Award of Excellence). Author of five books including A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback and Turn Setbacks Into Greenbacks, the latter endorsed by former Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Host, The Willie Jolley Wealthy Ways Show on SiriusXM Channel 141, with companion podcast distributed on iHeart Radio, C-Suite Radio, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Engaged by Ford Motor Company during the Mulally era turnaround; corporate client list includes Walmart, Verizon, Marriott, Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola and Prudential. Biography Ford was burning through cash in 2006 when Alan Mulally arrived as CEO. The turnaround that followed is now a business school case. Jolley was inside that period as a regular speaker to Ford teams, and the work formed the spine of Turn Setbacks Into Greenbacks, a book Mulally went on to endorse. That engagement still defines how serious operators read his work: practical content for leaders managing pressure, not a stage act. His core proposition is a framework called Setback to Comeback. Across five books, including A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback and An Attitude of Excellence, he treats resilience as a leadership discipline that can be taught, with named steps. Vision. Decision. Action. Desire. That gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for how to behave when the numbers are bad and the workforce has stopped trusting the announcements. The credibility inside the speaking profession is unusual. In 2023 the National Speakers Association awarded him the Cavett, its highest honour, voted by peers and given to one member a year. He was the first African American man to receive it. The same year he received the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for voluntary service. Earlier in his career, Toastmasters International named him one of the outstanding five speakers in the world. The platform compounds the message. The Willie Jolley Wealthy Ways Show runs weekly on SiriusXM, interviewing business leaders and operators. By the time he walks on a corporate stage, the framework is already in circulation with the audience. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after organisational setback Leadership through change and restructure Attitude and performance in high-pressure teams Personal effectiveness and self-leadership Workplace culture and engagement Sales force motivation and renewal Excellence as an operating discipline Ideal for Leadership teams running restructure, integration or cost programmes that have fatigued the workforce CHROs and culture leads booking all-employee town halls or post-restructure resets Sales leaders running annual kickoffs where the team needs renewed conviction, not new product slides Public sector and faith-aligned audiences where a motivational frame is welcomed alongside leadership substance Audience outcomes A named four-step framework, Vision, Decision, Action, Desire, that leaders can apply to their own situation the same week A reset in how the audience reads setback inside their own organisation Specific behavioural moves a manager can take with a struggling team A lift in collective conviction at the moment a leadership team most needs it A shared reference point that survives past the event and into team conversations

Why organisations work with Carina Bruwer She draws on parallel high-performance careers in elite endurance sport, a SAMA-winning music business, and a technology platform she built and recently rebuilt, so the lessons on composure and decision-making land as operating principles a leadership team can apply. Her swims are credentialed by named bodies (WOWSA’s 2019 list of the World’s 50 Most Adventurous Open Water Women, and the Lewis Pugh Trophy for South Africa’s Outstanding Swim of the Year), which gives the resilience material a verifiable spine rather than motivational generality. Rebuilding Gigster, her events-technology platform, in 2026 put her back in the position of a beginner, which gives her reinvention material a current, first-hand reference point and not just a historical one. Through Swim For Hope, she has run a fifteen-year fundraising platform that has cleared R1 million for South African causes, which gives her credibility on values-led leadership without needing to reach for the language. She is one of the few keynote voices who can sit with a sales team in the morning and a leadership offsite in the afternoon and speak with first-hand authority in both rooms. Biography highlights Crossed the English Channel (36km) in 12h03 in 2005; held the female world record for the Strait of Gibraltar at the time and set numerous other records, including on iconic swims such as Robben Island, Cape Point, False Bay, Nelson Mandela Bay and Cape Agulhas. The only person to have completed a crossing of shark-infested Walker Bay, and the pioneer of a triple-country swim linking France, Monaco and Italy; the only person to have rounded both the northernmost and southernmost points of Africa. Featured on CNN; named in WOWSA’s 2019 list of the World’s 50 Most Adventurous Open Water Women; recipient of the Lewis Pugh Trophy for South Africa’s Outstanding Swim of the Year. Founder of Five Seasons Entertainment (2002), one of South Africa’s largest artist management agencies, and of the instrumental trio Sterling EQ (2007), winner of a South African Music Award in 2011. Founder of Gigster (2015), a live-events booking platform she rebuilt in 2026 as a technology marketplace with AI-assisted supplier tools. Founder of Swim For Hope (2014), which has raised over R1 million for beneficiaries including the Little Fighters Cancer Trust, Muzukidz and the Tribuo Fund. Biography The English Channel crossing in August 2005 took twelve hours and three minutes in unpredictable water. Carina Bruwer was twenty-three years into a competitive swimming life by then, and the swim placed her among a small group of South Africans who have completed the route. The records that followed are the spine of why senior audiences listen when she talks about preparation and composure. They include the female world record on the Strait of Gibraltar at the time, the only recorded crossing of shark-patrolled Walker Bay, and a triple-country swim linking France, Monaco and Italy. The swimming is only part of why a corporate room listens. While building the open water record, she founded Five Seasons Entertainment in 2002 and grew it into one of South Africa’s largest artist management agencies. In 2007 she launched the instrumental pop trio Sterling EQ, produced the live concert film that won a South African Music Award in 2011, and led the group through more than 2,000 performances across 20 countries. In 2015 she founded the live-events booking platform Gigster, and in 2026 rebuilt it from the ground up as a technology marketplace with AI-assisted supplier profiles and built-in quoting and contracting. The rebuild meant becoming a beginner again, an established performer and record-holder learning an unfamiliar discipline in public. It is the reason her reinvention material reads as current rather than retrospective: she is describing a choice she made this year, not a feat from the archive. The common thread is operating discipline under conditions that do not relent. The swimming supplies the language of preparation and composure; the businesses supply the language of building and rebuilding commercially, which is how she talks to leaders about the cost of staying decisive when conditions keep moving. Through Swim For Hope, founded in 2014, she has raised over R1 million for South African beneficiaries including the Little Fighters Cancer Trust and the Tribuo Fund. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under extreme pressure Resilience and recovery Composure and decision-making in volatile conditions High performance across parallel careers Entrepreneurship and creative enterprise Purpose, values and personal courage Goal setting and long-horizon execution Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes Sales kick-offs and high-performance commercial teams Conference plenaries on resilience, change and personal leadership Women’s leadership networks and ERG events Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what composure looks like as a practised skill, not a personality trait A clearer model for how to prepare for high-stakes performance moments inside the day-to-day calendar Permission to take ambitious personal goals seriously alongside the demands of a senior role A direct, lived case for how resilience is rebuilt after physical, commercial or emotional setback

Why organisations work with Heather J. Crider Pairs neuroscience-based performance content with live percussion through her Everyday Rockstar collaboration with drummer Mark Schulman, a format conference programmers book specifically to reset audience energy in long event agendas. Uses the Impact Index, a proprietary assessment she co-created with Schulman, to give teams a measurable read on how they show up for colleagues and clients, so the keynote leaves a tool behind rather than only a feeling. Translates research on stress, attention, and recovery into short-form micro-practices that fit inside an executive day, designed for audiences who have already been through the standard wellness curriculum. Brings 15 years of conference keynoting and a working podcast platform, Go Reflect Yourself, to her sessions, so delivery quality is a known quantity for nervous programme leads. Wrote the 2024 book Believe In Yourself More Than Your Grandma, which gives audiences a take-home extension of the keynote material and a credible authorial anchor. Biography highlights Author, Believe In Yourself More Than Your Grandma: Unleash Your Superpower Through Simple Neuroscience, 2024. Co-founder of Everyday Rockstar with Mark Schulman, drummer for P!nk and Billy Idol. Co-creator of the Impact Index, a validated assessment of how individuals show up for others. Host of the Go Reflect Yourself Podcast. Headline keynote at Anthology Together 2024 and the 2025 CPI Certified Instructors’ Conference. Featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Brainz Magazine, and Thrive Global. Biography The standard playbook for workforce wellbeing has run its course. Steps challenges, mindfulness apps, and resilience workshops have not stopped the climb in burnout and disengagement. Heather J. Crider’s work begins from that observation. She designs brain-based protocols for leaders and teams who already know they are tired and want a method, not another inspirational reset. The signature format pairs her neuroperformance keynote with Mark Schulman, the drummer behind P!nk and Billy Idol. Together they co-founded Everyday Rockstar and co-created the Impact Index, an assessment that gives audiences a measurable read on how they affect the people around them. The combination, live percussion and applied neuroscience, is the reason conference programmers book the duo to reset energy across full agendas. Crider’s individual practice sits inside this broader system. She published Believe In Yourself More Than Your Grandma: Unleash Your Superpower Through Simple Neuroscience in 2024, hosts the Go Reflect Yourself Podcast, and works through coaching programmes informed by neuroscience research. She has been featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Brainz Magazine, and Thrive Global, and headlined Anthology Together 2024 alongside Schulman to address EdTech leadership audiences on bold action under pressure. The argument she makes to senior buyers is straightforward. If workforces are tired, the intervention has to change the underlying inputs to attention, recovery, and emotional regulation, not the surface activity. Her keynotes give executive audiences a small set of brain-aware practices, paired with an assessment that lets a team see, in numbers, whether anything has shifted afterwards. Key speaking topics Neuroperformance and burnout prevention Resilience and stress management for senior teams Emotional intelligence and self-regulation under pressure Confidence and team engagement Music and neuroscience as a performance pairing Peak performance habits Ideal for CHROs and heads of learning addressing burnout and engagement in fatigued teams Conference programmers seeking a high-energy keynote that delivers an applied tool, not only a mood lift Executive leadership offsites focused on resilience, focus, and recovery Sales and customer-facing teams under sustained performance pressure Audience outcomes Specific brain-based micro-practices audiences can apply the next working day A measurable read on personal and team impact through the Impact Index Language for talking about burnout and recovery with credibility inside their organisation Renewed energy in the room, anchored in a method rather than novelty

Why organisations work with Jade Simmons A mainstage moment that combines a Steinway, live performance and a structured keynote, rather than a podium talk. Few speakers can carry that format credibly at scale. A classical performance pedigree that holds up under scrutiny: Sphinx Medal of Excellence, performances at the White House and the US Supreme Court, repertoire from Rachmaninoff to contemporary crossover work. Author of an Amazon bestseller, Audacious Prayers for World Changers, and host of American Public Media’s Decomposed, a podcast named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. A track record headlining for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada at sales kick-offs, leadership summits and culture events. Biography highlights Recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, with the ceremony hosted at the US Supreme Court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Concert performances at the White House, Ravinia, Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall, New York’s Town Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Host of Decomposed on American Public Media, recognised by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. Author of Audacious Prayers for World Changers (Amazon bestseller, English and Spanish editions) and Purpose the Remix. CEO and founder of Jade Media Global; ran as an independent candidate for US President in 2020. Northwestern University undergraduate; Master’s as a Provost Fellow at Rice University; first runner-up at Miss America 2000. Biography Corporate audiences sit through more keynotes in a year than most of them care to count. The hardest brief a programme committee inherits is the opening or closing slot at a large convening, where the room needs to lift, not settle. A piano on stage and a performer who can also hold a leadership argument is one of the few formats that reliably moves a thousand people from neutral attention to engagement. Simmons built that format from the classical concert hall. She holds the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, awarded in a ceremony at the US Supreme Court hosted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her concert resume includes the White House, Ravinia, the Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall and New York’s Town Hall. She trained at Northwestern and Rice, where she held a Provost Fellowship. The keynote work extends the performance into a structured message about purpose, reinvention and what she calls “Maverick Behavior.” She has headlined for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada. Her book Audacious Prayers for World Changers is an Amazon bestseller in English and Spanish, and her American Public Media podcast Decomposed has been named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. She also runs Jade Media Global, the company that produces her live experiences and content. Buyers commission her when the brief is to make a single moment in a long agenda the one people remember. Key speaking topics Purpose and reinvention Leadership and self-leadership Creativity and personal innovation Performance and mainstage entertainment Diversity and inclusion as a culture lever Personal branding and creative identity Resilience and breakthrough Ideal for CEO town halls, sales kick-offs and annual leadership conferences that need a mainstage opener or closer Chief People Officers and culture leads programming purpose, inclusion or engagement events Awards nights, customer summits and recognition events where the room needs to feel something specific Industries booking marquee music-led keynotes (financial services, pharma, tech, professional services) Audience outcomes A shared mainstage moment the room references for the rest of the agenda A direct, personal message on purpose, reinvention and creative courage A live concert performance that sits inside, not alongside, the keynote argument Practical language for leaders to talk about reinvention with their own teams