Motivation and Inspiration

Why organisations work with Annie Emmerson A live event host who can carry a main-stage running order with the timing of a BBC Olympic broadcaster, then close the day with a personal keynote from elite sport. First-hand authority on managing anxiety and self-doubt during selection and qualification cycles, drawn from competing at the top of triathlon and duathlon under Brett Sutton. A credible voice for women’s leadership sessions, having built an elite career and a broadcast career in two male-dominated industries without making that the only story she tells. Practical, unshowy fluency in mental health conversations earned through years co-hosting Her Spirit with Louise Minchin and The Be Braver podcast. Biography highlights Retired in 2006 as the world’s number one ranked duathlete. Represented Great Britain in triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. BBC commentator across three Olympic Games, most recently Paris 2024, and Commonwealth Games coverage. Lead reporter and commentator for Super League Triathlon since 2018. Co-host of the Her Spirit podcast (2019 to 2021) with Louise Minchin and co-host of The Be Braver podcast. MC and host for Le Blanq cycling tours since 2020 and Channel 4 sports reporter. Biography Most people who reach the top of an endurance sport start young. Annie Emmerson did not. She came into triathlon late, trained under Brett Sutton, and retired in 2006 as the world’s number one duathlete after representing Great Britain across triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. That route shapes the content she now brings to corporate audiences. The pressure of late-career qualification, the management of injury, and the experience of being one of the only women in a coaching environment dominated by men became the working material for her speaking on resilience, mental health, and women in high-performance settings. Broadcasting is where she now spends most of her professional life. She has commentated on three Olympic Games for the BBC, including Paris 2024, covered Commonwealth Games, and been a lead voice on Super League Triathlon since 2018. She reports for Channel 4 and hosts Le Blanq cycling tours. Two podcasts sit alongside the broadcast work. Her Spirit, co-hosted with Louise Minchin from 2019 to 2021, focused on women’s mental health and physical activity. The Be Braver podcast continues that thread. The combined effect is a speaker and host who can hold a main-stage room with broadcast pacing, then talk about anxiety, scrutiny, and recovery with the credibility of someone who has lived through them. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Mental health and anxiety in high-performance environments Women in male-dominated industries Motivation and late-career reinvention Event hosting and moderation Sport, performance, and recovery Ideal for Leadership conferences and women’s networks looking for a keynote anchored in lived performance, not theory Wellbeing and mental health summits seeking a speaker who can talk about anxiety credibly without clinical framing Annual conferences and awards evenings needing an MC who can host the day and deliver a personal keynote in the same brief Sports, endurance, and cycling brand events seeking a recognised BBC broadcast voice Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what resilience looks like as a daily working practice rather than a slogan Permission to talk about anxiety and self-doubt in performance settings without treating them as weakness A concrete account of how a woman built authority inside two male-dominated industries Sharper appreciation of the link between physical practice, recovery, and sustained mental performance

Why organisations work with Jason Redman A named decision framework, Get Off the X, that translates combat crisis response into language a commercial team can use when a project, customer or market situation collapses. A New York Times bestselling author of The Trident and Overcome, the second built on interviews with Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal and Jocko Willink. Combat credibility that is specific and documented: wounded by machine gun fire outside Fallujah in 2007, awarded the Bronze Star with Valor and the Purple Heart, returned to active duty and commanded again. Works with Fortune 500 audiences including NASCAR, NFL and MLB organisations, Dell and McDonald’s, which gives him a tested range across corporate, sports and operational cultures. Founded Wounded Wear and the Combat Wounded Coalition, so the resilience content is not theoretical. He has built and run an organisation whose entire purpose was helping people rebuild after catastrophic loss. Biography highlights Retired US Navy SEAL Lieutenant, 21 years of service, 11 enlisted and roughly 10 as an officer. Awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor, the Purple Heart and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal; holder of the US Army Ranger Tab. New York Times bestselling author of The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader (William Morrow). Author of Overcome: Crush Adversity with the Leadership Techniques of America’s Toughest Warriors (Center Street, 2019). Founder of Wounded Wear, which evolved into the Combat Wounded Coalition, a non-profit supporting combat-wounded warriors and families of the fallen. Keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organisations including NASCAR, the NFL and MLB, and global employers such as Dell and McDonald’s. Biography Outside Fallujah in September 2007, a SEAL assault team walked into heavy machine gun fire. Their commander was hit multiple times, including a round to the face. He kept directing the fight. That commander was Jason Redman, and the next several years of surgeries, rehabilitation and return to duty became the foundation of the leadership method he now teaches to corporate and sporting organisations. Redman spent 21 years in the US Navy, 11 as an enlisted SEAL and nearly a decade as a SEAL officer. His decorations include the Bronze Star Medal with Valor and the Purple Heart. His first book, The Trident, is a New York Times bestseller and is unusual among military memoirs for the candour with which he documents early leadership failure. The book works because he describes being broken as a leader before he describes being rebuilt as one. His second book, Overcome, moves the argument out of his own story and into a wider frame. He interviews Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal, Jocko Willink and others to draw out the specific mental and behavioural patterns that let people function in catastrophic conditions. The result is a usable framework rather than a war story. That framework, anchored by Get Off the X and the REACT model, is what he teaches when organisations bring him in to work on crisis response, decision quality and team accountability. The programmes sit on top of operating experience. He founded Wounded Wear, which became the Combat Wounded Coalition, to help combat-wounded service members and Gold Star families rebuild. He also runs Pointman for Life and Get Off the X coaching work. Fortune 500 organisations, including Dell and McDonald’s, and major sporting bodies across the NFL, MLB and NASCAR, have used him to put a language around leadership under pressure that their own teams can carry into the next difficult quarter. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Crisis response and decision-making Team accountability and ownership Resilience after setback High-performance team culture Mission planning and execution Personal and organisational recovery Ideal for CEO, COO and senior operating leaders facing a live crisis, restructure or turnaround. Executive teams rebuilding after a failed strategy, product or market entry. Sales, trading and high-pressure commercial functions where decision quality under stress is the core job. Professional sports and performance organisations where team culture and recovery from loss shape the season. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for crisis response, anchored by Get Off the X and the REACT model, that leaders can use in live situations. A sharper view of what personal accountability looks like when the plan has failed and blame is the easier option. A usable model for rebuilding a team after a public setback, drawn from Redman’s own command experience and recovery. A clearer understanding of how elite operators think about preparation so that the first decision in a crisis is not the worst one.

Why organisations work with Charlotte Richardson She works live on national radio and television every week, including TalkSport, BBC Final Score, Times Radio Breakfast and Charlton TV, which is the same craft that internal conferences and awards evenings need on stage. She is TalkSport’s first female commentator and the first woman to commentate for TalkSport at a Women’s World Cup, which gives a content keynote on inclusion in male-dominated industries genuine first-person material rather than a borrowed argument. She moves between formats inside a single booking: opening host, panel moderator, on-stage interviewer of a senior leader, awards announcer, after-dinner host. For organisations programming a women in sport or inclusion strand alongside an event, she can host the day and deliver the keynote, which removes a second booking and keeps tone consistent. Biography highlights TalkSport’s first female commentator, covering the men’s football pyramid, the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championship across TalkSport and TalkSport 2. Reporter on BBC Final Score, the BBC’s prime-time Saturday afternoon football results programme. Sports analyst and contributor on Times Radio Breakfast. Co-host of In The Box, the England Football podcast produced with the FA’s grassroots football team. Pitch-side presenter and live broadcast host for Charlton Athletic’s Charlton TV at The Valley. Began her career on the operator side of the industry in sports marketing and communications before moving into broadcasting via BBC local radio. Biography Live football radio is unforgiving. The match does not pause for a missed cue, the crowd noise does not let a commentator catch a breath, and the audience can tell within thirty seconds whether the voice on air knows the game. Charlotte Richardson commentates on it weekly for TalkSport, the UK’s largest commercial sports network, and was the first woman the station put in that chair. Her broadcasting career started in BBC local radio and progressed to Final Score, the BBC’s Saturday afternoon football programme, before TalkSport. She now covers the full men’s pyramid, the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championship across TalkSport and TalkSport 2, reports on Times Radio Breakfast, and hosts pitch-side and live coverage for Charlton Athletic’s Charlton TV. With Tom Lee she co-presents In The Box, the FA’s England Football podcast on grassroots football. That mix of live commentary, pitch-side presenting and studio analysis is the relevant credential for corporate work. Awards evenings, customer conferences and internal events run on the same skills: pace, recovery, the right question to a senior leader on stage, the ability to cover a gap in the running order without showing it. Richardson does that work in front of national audiences every week. She also has a content keynote that most hosts do not. Becoming the first woman to commentate for TalkSport at a Women’s World Cup, and on the men’s football pyramid more broadly, gives her a first-person account of inclusion in a male-dominated industry that an organisation programming a women’s network event, an International Women’s Day moment, or a sports-themed internal day can build a session around. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing Women in sport Inclusion in male-dominated industries Sports broadcasting and live event craft Ideal for Internal women’s network events and International Women’s Day programmes Annual customer and partner conferences requiring a host and moderator Internal awards and recognition evenings Sponsor and hospitality events around football and major sporting fixtures Audience outcomes A live event that holds pace, recovers cleanly when something slips, and lands its recognition moments. Panels and senior leader interviews that produce direct answers rather than rehearsed lines. A first-person account of breaking into a male-dominated industry that an inclusion strand can be built around.

Why organisations work with Rahul Kapoor A mindset framework taught inside IIM Bangalore’s Executive General Management Programme since 2009, not a stage routine reverse-engineered into a workshop. Two published books with Times Group Books and a long catalogue of corporate engagements with Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung give buyers a track record across multinational audiences. Content is built for the personal layer of leadership performance: focus, self-direction, recovery, decision discipline. The brief that fits is “our senior people are running on empty,” not “we need a lecture on strategy.” Delivers in English and Hindi across South and Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and North America, which is rare for the South Asian executive audience segment. Biography highlights Guest faculty, IIM Bangalore, since 2009, leading the “Bond and Learn” programme for EGMP, Entrepreneurs & Family Businesses, and Armed Forces cohorts. Author of Workwise: Lessons in Excellence for Young Professionals (Times Group Books) and Dad and I. Outstanding Young Persons of India Award (2010); Young Achievers Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2016). Corporate engagements with Accenture, Amazon, Adobe, American Express, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, SAP Labs, Nestle Nutrition Institute. Contributor to The Times of India (Education Times), Dainik Bhaskar, and Feelings Magazine. Bilingual delivery in English and Hindi, with engagement track record across India, the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and North America. Biography Most senior professionals reach a ceiling that has nothing to do with skill. Their calendars are full, their results are visible, and yet the personal layer underneath, the capacity to think clearly and recover quickly, is no longer keeping up with the role. Rahul Kapoor’s body of work addresses that layer directly. He has been guest faculty at IIM Bangalore since 2009, where his “Bond and Learn” sessions sit inside the Executive General Management Programme, the Entrepreneurs and Family Businesses Programme, and the Armed Forces Programme. The institutional context matters: the same content that runs as a keynote in a corporate room has been refined inside one of India’s most rigorous executive education environments for over a decade. His book Workwise: Lessons in Excellence for Young Professionals, published by Times Group Books, codifies the framework. Dad and I, a second book aimed at younger readers, extends it. Two awards, the Outstanding Young Persons of India and the Young Achievers Award for Social Entrepreneurship, recognise the contribution to early-career and youth audiences alongside the corporate work. The corporate roster reads like a global technology and professional services list: Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Adobe, American Express, SAP Labs. What buyers in those rooms are commissioning is not a strategy lecture. It is a confident, bilingual practitioner who can shift the internal state of a senior audience inside ninety minutes and leave them with a usable mental model afterwards. Key speaking topics Mindset and self-leadership Personal performance and goal achievement Purpose, values, and work-life integration Resilience and emotional regulation under pressure Team motivation and engagement Executive development for early- and mid-career leaders Ideal for CEO and CHRO audiences commissioning an opening or closing keynote at leadership offsites Sales and revenue teams entering a high-stakes quarter or post-restructure period Executive education and high-potential cohorts inside multinationals operating in South and Southeast Asia Family business and entrepreneur networks looking for a serious mindset and values session Audience outcomes A direct framework for self-direction and personal performance that survives contact with a real working week Renewed clarity on individual purpose and how it maps onto current organisational role Practical tools for emotional regulation and recovery under sustained pressure A shared language inside the team for discipline, focus, and follow-through

Why organisations work with Scott Burrows A first-person account of recovery from a C6-C7 spinal cord injury that translates directly into how individuals make decisions when their assumptions collapse, not a generic resilience metaphor. Vision, Mindset, Grit, the framework behind his book of the same name, gives sales and leadership teams a simple shared language for goal-setting, response to rejection and persistence through downturn. Rare combination of elite-athlete background (Florida State football under Bobby Bowden, ESPN-broadcast kickboxing) and elite commercial performance (Million Dollar Round Table qualifier), which gives the talk credibility with sales and financial services audiences specifically. Track record with Fortune 500 buyers including Prudential, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Thermo Fisher, Walgreens and Coca-Cola, and with national association audiences across healthcare, insurance and financial services. Biography highlights Walk-on wide receiver at Florida State University under head coach Bobby Bowden. Black-belt kickboxing champion whose final fight was broadcast on ESPN. Survived a car accident on 3 November 1984 that fractured the C6 and C7 vertebrae and left him paralysed from the chest down at age 19. Returned to higher education and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. Qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table during a career in insurance and financial services. Author of Vision, Mindset, Grit: How to Stand Up When Life Paralyzes You; co-founder of a golf course fertiliser business operating in Southeast Asia. Biography Elite athletes are taught to hold their composure under physical pressure. What they are rarely taught is what happens when the body itself becomes the constraint. On 3 November 1984, a car accident left Scott Burrows, then a Florida State University walk-on wide receiver under Bobby Bowden and a black-belt kickboxing champion whose last fight had been broadcast on ESPN, with two broken vertebrae in his neck and a quadriplegia diagnosis at 19. The interest for senior audiences is not the diagnosis. It is what he did with the years after it. He returned to higher education, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance, and competed in wheelchair rugby, the Paralympic discipline known as Murderball. He then built a career in insurance and financial services that qualified him for the Million Dollar Round Table, the global standard reserved for the top tier of life insurance and financial services producers. That commercial record matters because it is what makes the keynote land in front of revenue-carrying teams. Vision, Mindset, Grit, the title of his bestselling book and the spine of his talks, is a personal-leadership framework that names the three things he had to rebuild deliberately: a goal worth pursuing, a way of thinking that could absorb setbacks, and the daily discipline to keep moving when the original plan was no longer available. He has used that material with audiences at Prudential, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Thermo Fisher, Walgreens, Coca-Cola and a long list of national associations across healthcare, insurance and financial services. The talk is most useful for organisations going through a period in which the previous playbook has stopped working and leaders need their people to keep performing while a new one is being written. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after setback Peak performance under pressure Sales performance and overcoming rejection Goal-setting and personal leadership Adapting to industry change Mindset and motivation for commercial teams Ideal for Sales kick-offs, top-producer summits and incentive events, particularly in insurance, financial services and healthcare Leadership offsites where senior teams are navigating restructure, market shift or sustained pressure National association annual conferences seeking a credible opening or closing keynote on resilience and performance All-hands and town-hall settings during periods of significant organisational change Audience outcomes A shared language, Vision, Mindset, Grit, that teams can carry back into pipeline reviews, goal-setting and one-to-ones A reset on how individuals respond to rejection, missed targets and unexpected setback Specific examples of how to hold composure and decision quality when external conditions deteriorate Renewed energy and commitment heading into a sales cycle, fiscal year or strategic reset

Why organisations work with Phil Olley He gives leadership groups a working method for personal composure under pressure, not a generic resilience talk. The NEXUS Code is his own framework, refined over more than two decades of client work. His credibility rests on operating experience: six years as a Royal Navy officer, a sales and financial planning career, and a coaching practice founded in 1999. He speaks to commercial audiences as a peer, not an academic. He has a documented recovery story, a near-death incident in March 1999, which anchors his material on adversity and decision-making in something specific rather than rhetorical. He has been retained by Shell, PepsiCo, Mars, Kellogg’s, The Wood Group and IOSH, which signals that operating businesses, not just conferences, find the material useful. He has authored three books, including RESULT! published by Pearson, giving him a body of written work that buyers can read before commissioning. Biography highlights Former Royal Navy officer, six years’ service. Founded his performance coaching practice in 1999. Author of three books: Counting Chickens, RESULT! Think Decisively, Take Action and Get Results (Pearson, 2013), and Reflections from the White Tunnel (FCM Publishing, 2017). Creator of The NEXUS Code framework. Named corporate clients include Shell, PepsiCo, Mars (Masterfoods), Kellogg’s, The Wood Group, IOSH and Blevins Franks International. Media appearances include The Richard and Judy Show, BBC Radio 4 and The Times. Biography Most leadership advice on resilience starts from a model. Olley starts from an event. On 18 March 1999 he collapsed on a pavement and was revived by paramedics. The same year, he closed his sales and financial planning career and built a coaching practice around a single question: what actually holds people steady when the ground moves. That question became The NEXUS Code, a working framework on self-leadership, focus and execution that he has refined over more than two decades of client engagements. It is not a research model. It is a practitioner’s method, built and tested in front of sales teams, leadership groups and business owners under real commercial pressure. The body of written work backs the speaking. RESULT! Think Decisively, Take Action and Get Results was published by Pearson in 2013. Counting Chickens preceded it. Reflections from the White Tunnel, his most personal book, was published by FCM Publishing in 2017 and ties the recovery story directly to the framework. Three books give a buyer something concrete to read before commissioning a session. The career arc behind all of this matters for credibility with commercial audiences. Six years as a Royal Navy officer, then a sales and financial planning career, then his own business. Clients have included Shell, PepsiCo, Mars, Kellogg’s, The Wood Group and IOSH. He talks to leaders as someone who has carried a number and led a team, not as someone observing from a faculty position. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Mental toughness and resilience Goal setting and execution Performance coaching for leaders and teams Leading through change and adversity Employee engagement in difficult conditions Ideal for Sales leadership conferences and annual kick-offs. Leadership offsites for senior teams under restructuring or pressure. Owner-managed businesses and senior commercial functions in larger organisations. Professional services and financial services audiences working to lift execution and accountability. Audience outcomes A working method for holding composure and focus when conditions are difficult. A clearer view of where personal performance is being lost to noise rather than effort. Specific language and habits for converting goals into delivered results. A reset on how to lead a team through repeated change without losing momentum.

Why organisations work with Victoria Humphries A lived account of decision-making in life-threatening conditions, including falling through Arctic ice, that translates directly to how senior teams behave when the stakes are real and the recovery margin is thin. An executive track record across teaching, governance, consulting and running an EdTech business, so the resilience material lands as commercial advice, not adventure storytelling. A specific focus on the leadership behaviours that hold workforces together through repeated restructure: small steps, visible composure, recovery from setback. Co-author of Frigid Women, the published account of the 1997 first all-female North Pole expedition, which gives the keynote a documentary anchor rather than a retold anecdote. Repeat use by leadership-development and change programmes at AkzoNobel, Tarmac, Coventry Building Society, COBIS, Pfizer and ServiceNow. Biography highlights Member of the first all-female relay expedition to the North Pole, 1997. Co-author of Frigid Women, published by Eye Books, written with her mother, Sue Riches. Three-time Guinness World Record holder, as cited on her speaker profiles. 25-plus years across education, governance and commercial leadership, including managing director of an EdTech company. Keynote and workshop client list including AkzoNobel, Coventry Building Society, British Telecom, AQA Education, Tarmac Springboard, Pfizer, ServiceNow and COBIS. Biography The 1997 expedition to the North Pole was twenty women in a relay across shifting Arctic ice, in temperatures around minus 40, with rescue dependent on aircraft that could only land in a narrow weather window. Victoria Humphries was one of them. She and her mother Sue went through the ice into the Arctic Ocean at one point and got themselves out. That story sits underneath the rest of her work as a leadership speaker. The expedition is documented in Frigid Women, the book she co-wrote with her mother and published through Eye Books. It is not a motivational text. It is an account of how a non-professional team prepared for, survived and recovered from a sustained ordeal, and what each person had to manage in their own head to keep going. That makes it useful source material for organisations dealing with fatigue and repeated change, rather than a one-off shock. The commercial track record is what allows the polar story to do useful work in a corporate room. Twenty-five years of teaching, governance, consultancy and running an EdTech business gives her the language of leadership development, restructure and team performance. Programmes she has delivered for AkzoNobel, Coventry Building Society, Tarmac, Pfizer, COBIS and ServiceNow are positioned as resilience and change content, not adventure speeches. Her signature talks, Managing Change in a Changing World, One Step at a Time and Be Bold, Be Brave, Be You, take the same idea into different audiences. The argument is consistent: when conditions stay hard for a long time, what holds a team together are small, visible acts of composure from the people leading it. Key speaking topics Resilience and stress management Leading through sustained change Self-leadership under pressure Team leadership in difficult conditions Women in business and leadership Motivation and self-belief Diversity, equity and inclusion Ideal for Leadership development programmes for newly senior managers, including high-potential and emerging-leader cohorts. HR, talent and learning teams are designing resilience or change-readiness content into a wider curriculum. Conferences and town halls during or after a restructure, integration, or sustained period of operational pressure. Women’s leadership networks and inclusion programmes that want a speaker with a substantive professional record alongside the personal story. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how composure under pressure shows up as a leadership behaviour, not a personality trait. A method for breaking long, uncertain change into the next single step a team can act on. A frame for recovering from a setback at work without losing the team’s commitment to the next phase. A more honest read on personal capability, particularly for people who have under-rated their own resilience.

Why organisations work with Levison Wood He has tested leadership and team principles under conditions where failure has a real cost, including a 4,250-mile walk along the Nile and a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula through Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. His military background as a Parachute Regiment captain in Afghanistan gives him a working framework for decision-making under pressure that translates cleanly into commercial settings. “The Art of Exploration” sets out a usable structure on curiosity, resilience and team behaviour that boards and senior teams can apply, rather than a set of war stories. He brings a credible outside perspective on geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar environments, drawn from on-the-ground work in regions most leaders only read about. Bureau-listed clients including Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin indicate a track record with senior commercial audiences rather than only event circuits. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Chancellor of Staffordshire University, installed May 2024. Honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham. Author of bestselling titles including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Arabia”, “The Last Giants” and “The Art of Exploration”. “Walking the Himalayas” named Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the 2016 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Producer and presenter of major documentary series for Channel 4, including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Walking the Americas” and “Arabia with Levison Wood”. Biography The first ever expedition to walk the length of the Nile began in December 2013, in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, and finished nine months and 4,250 miles later in the Mediterranean. The walker was Levison Wood, a former Parachute Regiment captain who had served in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, and who had decided that exploration was a more honest test of the same disciplines. What separates his work from adventure storytelling is the operating logic underneath it. Walking through Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the Empty Quarter and the Darien Gap forces specific decisions about risk, team composition, local intelligence and when to abandon a plan. Those decisions are recognisable to anyone running a complex programme in a volatile environment. He has put the framework on paper. “The Art of Exploration”, published in 2021, sets out how curiosity, resilience and small-team discipline operate when the route is unknown, and is the basis of his keynote of the same name. His other books, including “Walking the Himalayas”, which won the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Book of the Year in 2016, and “Arabia”, treat the expeditions as case material rather than autobiography. The institutions have followed. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, holds honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham, and was installed as Chancellor of Staffordshire University in May 2024. Senior corporate audiences at Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin have booked the same body of work. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in complex environments Team performance and small-team discipline Resilience and recovery from setback Risk assessment and mitigation Curiosity as a leadership practice Geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar regions Ideal for CEOs and executive teams setting strategy in volatile or unfamiliar markets. Operations, transformation and programme leaders responsible for delivery under shifting conditions. Leadership development audiences in financial services, industrials and consumer businesses. Boards and senior offsites looking for an outside perspective on risk and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working sense of how experienced operators make decisions when information is incomplete and the environment keeps moving. Specific examples of how small teams hold together under sustained pressure, drawn from named expeditions across the Nile, the Himalayas and the Arabian Peninsula. A sharper view of how to identify, weigh and live with material risk rather than try to remove it. A reframed sense of curiosity and adaptability as operational disciplines, not personality traits. A vocabulary for talking about resilience that does not collapse into motivational language.

Why organisations work with Candice Brathwaite Two Sunday Times bestsellers built on different theses. I Am Not Your Baby Mother (2020) reshaped national conversations on Black British motherhood. Manifest(o) (2024) became an instant bestseller on intention and self-belief, and took her on a sold-out international tour across the UK, US and Canada. Lived authority on inclusion and representation in a moment when most DEI speakers have either lost the room or become politically performative. Her debut was the first book by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library. A speaker who can hold uncomfortable conversations and keep audiences listening. Liberty London described her keynote as “the best we have ever put on in 150 years of the store.” Cross-sector keynote track record across financial services, professional services, retail and tech: NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London and the Cambridge Union. The timing and craft of a working broadcaster, drawn from regular appearances on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch, her role as Contributing Editor at Grazia, and writing across the Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar and Stylist. Biography highlights Two-time Sunday Times bestselling author: I Am Not Your Baby Mother (Quercus, 2020) and Manifest(o) (Quercus, 2024) First book by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library Founder of Make Motherhood Diverse, the campaign challenging stereotyped representations of parenthood in British media Contributing Editor at Grazia and regular UK television presenter on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch Host of Conversations with Candice (Acast, 2026), following the multi-million-download Closet Confessions Keynote clients include NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London, the Royal College of Midwives and the Cambridge Union Biography Most corporate conversations about inclusion have stopped landing. The language is familiar, the speakers cautious, and the audiences switched off. The substance still matters; the form has stopped working. In 2016 a blog post asked where the Black mothers were in British parenting media, and started building an answer. The blog became Make Motherhood Diverse. The platform became a book. I Am Not Your Baby Mother (2020) was a Sunday Times bestseller and the first book written by a Black British woman about Black British motherhood to enter the British Library. A second Sunday Times bestseller followed in Manifest(o) (2024), with a sold-out international tour across the UK, US and Canada. Alongside the books came regular presenting work on ITV’s Lorraine and Steph’s Packed Lunch, a Contributing Editor role at Grazia, and two podcasts. The corporate keynote diary expanded with it: NatWest, Barclays, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ralph Lauren, Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo, Liberty London and the Cambridge Union. Buyers tend to book her for the same reason. Inclusion, ambition and the lived reality of working parents are subjects where most speakers either over-perform or under-deliver. Liberty London described her keynote as “the best we have ever put on in 150 years of the store.” That is the response organisations come back for. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion Personal brand building and visibility Modern motherhood and the working parent Motivation and self-belief Manifestation and intentional living Storytelling and cultural commentary Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and DEI leads designing inclusion programming that audiences will actually engage with rather than tolerate Internal communications, ERG sponsors and culture teams running events on representation, belonging and the experience of working parents Leadership development and event teams looking for a closing keynote that drives genuine post-event conversation Brand, marketing and creative leadership teams thinking about voice, visibility and cultural authenticity Audience outcomes A direct, honest perspective on inclusion that audiences will repeat back to their colleagues A sharper sense of what genuine representation looks like in the everyday operation of a business, beyond statements and campaigns Language and permission to talk about visibility, ambition and working parenthood as serious organisational concerns The energy and confidence to act on something they have been postponing in their own careers

Why organisations work with Kevin Olusola He performs the argument rather than narrating it. The “Foundation +1” idea (start with one simple element, add one layer at a time) is built live on stage through cello and beatbox, so the audience sees the method before they hear the framing. Three Grammys with Pentatonix and a Sony recording contract give him a credibility profile most innovation speakers cannot match, particularly with audiences sceptical of corporate creativity content. His route into music sits next to a Yale East Asian Studies degree and extended fellowship time in Beijing, which gives the cross-cultural innovation material genuine personal weight rather than a borrowed example. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was hand-picked by Quincy Jones for the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, alongside Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. He has worked at the level of stage where corporate audiences notice. Biography highlights Three-time Grammy winner with Pentatonix: Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella (2015 and 2016) and Best Country Duo/Group Performance (2017 with Dolly Parton). Won NBC’s The Sing-Off season three with Pentatonix, leading to a Sony Music Entertainment contract. Opened TED2014 in Vancouver with a celloboxing performance. Selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. Yale University, East Asian Studies, with pre-med coursework. Spent extended fellowship time in Beijing and became fluent in Mandarin. Pioneered celloboxing, the simultaneous playing of cello and beatboxing; his viral 2011 video of Mark Summer’s “Julie-O” led directly to his Pentatonix recruitment. Biography The first time most audiences see Olusola on stage they are watching a method, not a performance. A single scale on the cello, a single percussive sound, then another, then another, until a Daft Punk medley or a Pharrell track is built in front of them out of parts that were obviously small a minute ago. He calls the underlying idea “Foundation +1”, and it is the spine of his corporate keynote work. The performance credentials sit behind the method. Pentatonix have won three Grammys, signed with Sony Music Entertainment after winning NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011, and built one of the largest a cappella audiences on YouTube. Olusola opened TED2014 in Vancouver and was selected by Quincy Jones to represent him at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival, on a programme with Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. The cross-cultural material runs in parallel. Olusola read East Asian Studies at Yale with pre-med coursework, and spent extended fellowship time in Beijing where he became fluent in Mandarin. The idea of “celloboxing” itself came from a teacher in China, who asked him whether he had ever considered playing cello and beatboxing at the same time. The biographical detail is doing real work in the keynote: it gives a specific story for how stepping into an unrelated domain produced an original artistic form. For senior teams, Olusola is closer to a performing keynote than to a conventional management speaker. The intellectual content is light, the demonstration is heavy, and the value sits in how an audience leaves thinking about creative method and ambition. He suits openings, closings, and offsite moments where the brief is to shift the room rather than to teach a framework. Key speaking topics Creativity as a working method Cross-disciplinary innovation Ambitious goal-setting and execution Cross-cultural perspective and collaboration Team dynamics in creative work Performance keynote and corporate entertainment Ideal for Annual kick-off and conference opening or closing slots Leadership offsites focused on creativity, innovation, or culture Awards dinners and high-profile client events Internal events where a sceptical senior audience needs a non-standard creative input Audience outcomes A shared, memorable reference point for breaking ambitious goals into a starting move A concrete example of how cross-disciplinary thinking produces original output A genuine performance moment that anchors the rest of the agenda A reframing of creativity as practice rather than personality

Why organisations work with Leland Melvin He has lived two career-ending events and returned from both. A hamstring injury ended his NFL prospects; a training accident left him partially deaf and medically grounded before he was cleared to fly. Leaders running fatigued teams listen to him because the material is earned. He is the only person drafted into the NFL who has flown in space, and he uses that arc as a working case study on reinvention, not as a curiosity. The narrative carries weight in rooms that have heard most astronaut and athlete talks before. He ran NASA Education as Associate Administrator and co-chaired the White House STEM Task Force. He speaks credibly to boards and CHROs on future skills and pipeline strategy, not only on inspiration. His STS-122 mission delivered Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS. The crew was American, French, German, and led a delicate international handover. He draws on that for executives managing multinational teams under public scrutiny. Author of Chasing Space with HarperCollins, with a Young Readers edition still in active use across US school systems. The book is a working reference for the keynote, not a souvenir. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, mission specialist on STS-122 and STS-129 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, with over 565 hours in space. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and head of NASA’s education portfolio at the Senior Executive Service level. Co-chair of the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force and chair of the International Space Education Board. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986; the only person drafted into the NFL to have flown in space. BSc Chemistry, University of Richmond; MSc Materials Science Engineering, University of Virginia. Specialist in optical fibre sensors at NASA Langley before astronaut selection. Author of Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2017). Biography A training tank at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston ended Leland Melvin’s astronaut career before it started. A water-pressure incident during EVA training left him partially deaf and medically disqualified from flight. NASA assigned him to its education office. Three years later, a flight surgeon cleared him on a waiver, and he flew to the International Space Station on STS-122 to deliver the Columbus laboratory module. The path to that flight ran through two earlier identities. Chemistry at the University of Richmond on a football scholarship. A masters in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. A research career at NASA Langley working on optical fibre sensors for composite structures, while training camps with the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Toronto Argonauts closed one by one through hamstring injuries. Selection as a NASA astronaut came in 1998. Two missions followed, STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009, totalling more than 565 hours in orbit. What gives the speaking work its weight is what came after the flights. As NASA Associate Administrator for Education from 2010 to 2014, Melvin oversaw the agency’s national education portfolio and co-chaired the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. He sat at the senior level on US STEM policy. Chasing Space, published by HarperCollins in 2017, took the personal account into wider circulation and remains in use as a school text in its Young Readers edition. He works now with executive audiences on the operating content of resilience: how a leader keeps a fatigued team functioning when the people in it are quietly carrying serious setbacks, and how to design a pipeline that pulls talent from places most organisations do not yet look. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setbacks High-performing teams in high-consequence operating environments Inclusive leadership and multinational crew dynamics STEM education, future skills, and pipeline strategy Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and learning leaders building resilience and inclusion programmes with substance Senior teams emerging from restructure, redundancy, or burnout cycles Education, public sector, and STEM-focused organisations setting talent pipeline strategy Conferences seeking a credentialed plenary voice on inspiration that withstands scrutiny Audience outcomes A working sense of what resilience looks like as a leadership behaviour, not a personal trait A specific account of how international crew performance is built and maintained under pressure A clearer view of the pipeline question: where future technical talent is found and what blocks it A vivid Earth-observation perspective that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with Diana Ospina and Oscar Lemus They bring an instrument, not a philosophy. BhiPRO produces a quantified Business Happiness Index across 35 indicators with a reported 94% reliability, the kind of evidence a board will fund against. The methodology has earned external academic validation. Harvard Business School teaches a BhiPRO case based on its deployment at Lanco Medical Group, which signals serious analytical credibility for a culture topic that usually trades on anecdote. They speak as a duo with two distinct lenses: Diana on applied neuroscience and culture practice, Oscar on the financial and operational economics of happiness. The split lets them address a CHRO and a CFO in the same room. They are the leading Spanish-language voices on workplace happiness measurement in Latin America, with deployments across 70+ companies and an open study spanning 29 countries. For multinationals with significant LatAm operations, they offer regional substance most international speakers cannot. Their book “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” is prologued by Néstor Braidot, the leading Spanish-language neuroscientist on applied business neuroscience, anchoring their work in a credible scientific tradition. Biography highlights Co-creators of BhiPRO (Business Happiness Index Program), a 35-indicator scientific methodology for measuring organisational happiness, climate and wellbeing. BhiPRO featured as an MBA teaching case at Harvard Business School, based on the Lanco Medical Group implementation. Co-founders of Mide la Felicidad, the Colombian firm that has applied the methodology to 70+ companies in Latin America since 2015. Co-authors of “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional” and “Metodología Científica BhiPRO: Cómo Medir la Felicidad Organizacional,” with prologue by neuroscientist Néstor Braidot. Diana Ospina: TEDx speaker (“Monitoreando Felicidad Laboral”, TEDxSanJosédeDavid), NLP practitioner and applied neuroscience specialist. Oscar Rodríguez Lemus: Honorary Doctorate in Human Development and Leadership (2023), trained in Applied Neurosciences and Brain Gym at the Braidot Institute, with two decades in capital markets and finance before his work on workplace happiness. Biography Most organisations cannot answer a basic question about their own culture: how happy are our people, in numbers a finance director would accept. Pulse surveys and engagement indices give partial answers. They do not link wellbeing to performance with enough rigour to defend a culture budget through a downturn. The instrument has been missing. BhiPRO was built to close that gap. Diana Ospina Campuzano and Oscar Rodríguez Lemus spent more than a decade developing a 35-indicator measurement system covering happiness, climate, wellbeing, culture and sustainability, reporting 94% reliability. The methodology now anchors a Harvard Business School MBA case, based on its application at Lanco Medical Group, and has been deployed across more than 70 companies in Latin America since their firm Mide la Felicidad was founded in Colombia in 2014. The duo work in complementary modes. Diana came to the topic through applied neuroscience, NLP and executive coaching, and is a TEDx speaker on workplace happiness. Oscar’s background sits in capital markets and international economic relations, which gives the partnership a financial vocabulary that culture work usually lacks. Together they published “Signos Vitales de la Felicidad Organizacional,” prologued by the neuroscientist Néstor Braidot, and the companion methodology volume on how to measure organisational happiness. For executive teams the value is concrete. A Spanish-language duo who can stand in front of a Latin American leadership team, present a quantified diagnostic of how their culture is actually performing, and link the gaps to specific operational moves. The Harvard case is the credibility marker. The 35-indicator instrument is the working tool. Key speaking topics Measuring organisational happiness with the BhiPRO methodology Workplace wellbeing and employee engagement Applied neuroscience and workplace happiness Organisational culture transformation Talent retention and human loyalty The economics of happiness at work Entrepreneurship and partnership Ideal for CHROs, Chief Happiness Officers and culture leads in Latin American or Spanish-speaking organisations commissioning a quantified culture diagnostic CEOs and CFOs evaluating the financial case for wellbeing and engagement investment Multinationals with significant Latin American operations seeking regionally credible culture expertise HR conferences and leadership summits in Spanish-language markets Audience outcomes A clear understanding of what an audit-grade happiness measurement actually contains and how it differs from a pulse survey The five dimensions and headline indicators that drive the BhiPRO index, and how each links to operational outcomes An evidence-based read on what Latin American workforce data says about engagement, retention and culture Practical entry points for moving a culture programme from narrative to measurement A neuroscience-informed view of why workplace happiness behaves the way it does, drawn from Braidot Institute training