Motivation and Inspiration

Why organisations work with Guillaume Nery He has held four constant weight freediving world records and won the AIDA individual world title in 2011, so the performance authority is earned in a discipline where a lapse in attention has physical consequences. His material on breath work is specific and practical, not metaphorical: audiences leave with techniques he uses himself before a dive to -125 metres. He speaks from the full arc of elite performance, including a career-ending accident in 2015 that forced a public reinvention as a filmmaker and storyteller. His underwater films with Julie Gautier, including Free Fall and One Breath Around the World, have reached tens of millions of viewers and give his talks a visual language most sport speakers do not have. He is a TED main-stage speaker, which most corporate audiences recognise as a filter for delivery quality before the first slide. Biography highlights Four-time AIDA constant weight world record holder, with a personal best of -126m set in Cyprus in 2015. AIDA Individual World Champion, Kalamata, 2011, with a -117m dive. AIDA Team World Champion with the French national freediving team. TED main-stage speaker, “The exhilarating peace of freediving”, 2015. Co-director, with Julie Gautier, of Free Fall, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. Profiled by National Geographic, CNN and South China Morning Post Style. Biography A freediver on a single breath has no second chance to reset. The dive is planned on the surface, executed in silence, and any break in focus on the way down or up carries a real physical cost. Guillaume Nery spent more than a decade operating in that environment at world-championship level. He set his first constant weight world record at 19 and went on to break it three more times, reaching a personal best of -126m in Cyprus. In 2011, in Kalamata, he won the AIDA individual world title on a -117m dive. With the French national team, he added a team world championship. The ending was not clean. At the 2015 world championships in Cyprus the dive line was mis-set, sending him to -139m instead of the planned -129m. He blacked out near the surface, suffered a lung barotrauma and retired from competition. That break point is now part of the talk, not a footnote to it. Since retiring he has worked as a filmmaker with Julie Gautier, producing Free Fall at Dean’s Blue Hole, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. His TED talk on freediving has reached a wide corporate audience. The material he brings to a keynote is grounded in what he actually does before a deep dive: breath work, attention control, and the discipline of staying calm when the margin for error is small. Key speaking topics Breath work and physiological self-regulation Performance under extreme pressure Attention and composure in high-stakes moments Recovery and reinvention after a career-defining setback Elite sport psychology applied to business Visual storytelling and ocean exploration Ideal for Leadership offsites focused on composure and decision quality under pressure Wellbeing, resilience and peak-performance programmes for senior teams Sales, trading and operations groups whose work involves sustained concentration in high-stakes windows Conference main-stage slots that need a visually strong, narrative keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how breath directly changes physiological and cognitive state. Specific techniques the speaker uses himself to prepare for extreme performance, translated to a meeting-room context. A reframed view of setbacks, drawn from a public career-ending accident and the reinvention that followed. A visual reference point, from the underwater films, that audiences remember and repeat.

Why organisations work with Erik Weihenmayer A first-hand operating model for making decisions without full visibility, drawn from summiting Everest and kayaking 277 miles of Grand Canyon whitewater rather than from theory A tested argument about rope-team leadership: how trust, role clarity, and communication protocols hold a team together when one member’s judgement has to carry the rest A named framework, the No Barriers Life, backed by a published book and a working nonprofit, not a single keynote built around a single mountain Credibility with audiences who have heard every generic resilience talk, because the proof points are specific, verifiable, and unusual: Everest, the Eight Summits, Leadville 100 on a tandem, Colorado River source to sea Biography highlights First blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, May 25, 2001; featured on the cover of Time magazine that June Completed the Seven Summits in 2002 and the Eight Summits in 2008 with Carstensz Pyramid Kayaked the full 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 2014 Co-founder of No Barriers USA, serving people with disabilities, veterans, youth, and caregivers Author of “Touch the Top of the World,” published in 9 languages, and co-author of “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” with Buddy Levy Recipient of an ESPY Award, Nike’s Casey Martin Award, and the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement Award Biography The path down Everest is more dangerous than the path up. On the descent in May 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to summit the mountain, was moving on a rope team whose margin for error had effectively closed. The instruction he had been given by expedition leader Pasquale Scaturro on the way home set the next two decades of his work: do not let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do. What followed was not a sequence of stunts. It was the construction of an argument about how teams operate when the environment does not cooperate. The Seven Summits by 2002, Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on a tandem in 2010, and in 2014 the full 277-mile kayak descent of the Grand Canyon with blinded Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell. Each expedition is a case study in role assignment, communication discipline, and trust allocation under degraded information. The intellectual output sits alongside the physical one. “Touch the Top of the World” was published in twelve countries and nine languages and became the basis of a documentary that won first prize at 21 international film festivals. “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon,” co-written with Buddy Levy, took an Honorable Mention at the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards and a 2018 Colorado Book Awards finalist spot. “The Adversity Advantage,” co-written with Paul Stoltz, moves the same material into an explicit business register. In 2005, Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA, a nonprofit that now works with veterans, youth, people with disabilities, and full-time caregivers. It is where the speaking work connects back to a working practice: the No Barriers Life is not a slogan, it is the operating code the organisation teaches and the argument the book defends. Key speaking topics Decision-making under incomplete information Rope-team leadership and trust allocation The No Barriers Life as an organisational operating code Resilience as a team discipline, not an individual trait Innovation and problem-solving under constraint Inclusive leadership and diverse-ability teams Navigating reinvention after a defining achievement Ideal for Executive teams preparing for high-stakes decisions where the data will not be complete in time CHROs and culture leads building resilience and belonging into the organisational operating model, not bolting it on Leadership offsites for transformation, integration, or turnaround programmes Veteran-heavy, disability-community, or inclusion-focused audiences where lived authority matters Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how to lead a mixed-ability, mixed-experience team through a decision with partial information Named protocols from expedition practice that transfer directly into executive decision rooms A sharper sense of the difference between individual grit and team discipline, and why resilience only compounds when it is built into the team Permission to treat constraint as a design input rather than a deficit A concrete reference point, the No Barriers Life, that leaders can carry back into their own language

Why organisations work with Erik Wahl A live speed-painting keynote that converts creativity from an abstract value into a visible act on stage, giving leaders a shared reference point they can take back into the business. A thesis grounded in two trade-published books, Unthink (Crown, 2013) and The Spark and the Grind (TarcherPerigee, 2017), that argues creativity is a discipline, not a personality trait. A client list that reads as validation for risk-averse buyers: Disney, Microsoft, AT&T, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Ernst and Young, XPrize, London Business School. TED2012 selection and a keynote slot at Ernst and Young’s World Entrepreneur of the Year, signalling that the content stands up in front of rigorous business audiences. A philanthropic record of over USD 1.5 million raised through art auctions, which gives the performance a credible backbone beyond corporate entertainment. Biography highlights Author of Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius, Crown Business / Random House, 2013. Named CEO Reads Book of the Year. Author of The Spark and the Grind: Ignite the Power of Disciplined Creativity, TarcherPerigee, 2017. Selected speaker for TED2012: Full Spectrum. Keynote speaker at Ernst and Young’s World Entrepreneur of the Year and Entrepreneur Magazine’s Growth Conference. Clients include Disney, Microsoft, AT&T, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Ernst and Young, XPrize, London Business School. Raised over USD 1.5 million for charitable causes through art auctions including One Fund Boston, Linda’s Voice, and Miracle-Ear Foundation. Biography Creativity is the one capability most organisations claim to prize and systematically suppress. Erik Wahl spent eight years inside a corporate firm, rising to partner, before the dot-com collapse made that point unavoidable. He rebuilt his working life around the question: why is the thing everyone says they want the hardest thing for companies to actually do? The answer became a two-book argument. Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius, published by Crown in 2013, took the position that creativity is a recoverable discipline, not a fixed trait, and was named CEO Reads Book of the Year. The Spark and the Grind, published by TarcherPerigee in 2017, extended the thesis into the operational layer: how leaders pair inspiration with the unglamorous work of sustained execution. The keynote is where the argument becomes legible. Wahl paints live on stage, usually a recognisable face such as Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan, while making the case that organisations need to rebuild the muscle their systems quietly erode. The format has carried him to TED2012 and to client rooms at Disney, Microsoft, AT&T, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Ernst and Young, XPrize, and London Business School. It is also how he has raised over USD 1.5 million for charity through auctioned work, including One Fund Boston and Linda’s Voice. What he gives a leadership audience is not motivation. It is a disciplined case for why the innovation strategy on the wall keeps failing, and a visible demonstration of the capacity the room has forgotten it has. Key speaking topics Disciplined creativity in large organisations Innovation capacity and execution Creative leadership Change and reinvention Peak performance and creative discipline Storytelling and business communication Ideal for CEO, COO, and strategy leaders running innovation or transformation mandates Sales and commercial leadership conferences opening a new growth cycle Talent and learning leaders building creative capability at scale Annual kick-off audiences where the brief calls for a sharp creative reset rather than a process lecture Audience outcomes A concrete argument for why creativity is a business discipline, not a personality asset Language and imagery leaders can reuse back in the business to frame innovation conversations A direct experience of what creative risk looks like when it is executed, not described A set of practical habits drawn from The Spark and the Grind for pairing ideas with sustained execution

Why organisations work with Eddie Jones Thirty years of head-coach experience at the top of international sport, tested against the sharpest public scrutiny three national rugby unions can apply. A working account, set out in his 2021 book “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby”, of how to raise standards, rebuild confidence, and hold a team accountable when results are not yet on the board. Authored the single most studied upset in modern rugby: Japan’s 34-32 win over South Africa at the 2015 World Cup, the “Brighton Miracle”, built over three years of culture and conditioning work. World Rugby Coach of the Year 2017, after leading England to a Grand Slam and a record run of consecutive Test wins. A rare speaker who has built and rebuilt teams in three different national cultures (Japanese, Australian, English) and can translate between them for executive audiences. Biography highlights Head coach of England 2015 to 2022: first non-British coach, two Six Nations titles, 2016 Grand Slam, 2019 Rugby World Cup final. World Rugby Coach of the Year, 2017. Head coach of Japan 2012 to 2015, re-appointed December 2023. Head coach of Australia 2001 to 2005, leading the Wallabies to the 2003 Rugby World Cup final. Head coach of the ACT Brumbies, Super Rugby champions 2001. Technical adviser to the Springboks’ 2007 Rugby World Cup-winning squad. Author of “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby” (Macmillan, 2021) and “My Life and Rugby: The Autobiography” (Macmillan, 2019). Biography Japan beat South Africa 34-32 in Brighton in September 2015. The squad had been together three years, trained to a schedule their opponents would not recognise, and made the late call to turn down a draw for a winning try. The head coach was Eddie Jones. That match is the cleanest single case study in his career, but not the only one. Jones has held senior head-coach roles with Japan, Australia, and England, reached two Rugby World Cup finals, served as technical adviser to a third World Cup-winning team, and won a Super Rugby title with the Brumbies in 2001. The through line is not a single style. It is a method for taking on teams that are underperforming relative to their resources, setting a higher standard than the group thinks it can meet, and holding it. His 2021 book, “Leadership: Lessons From My Life in Rugby”, makes that method explicit. It draws on the 2015 Japan campaign, the 2016 England turnaround, and the failures in between to argue that elite performance is a daily discipline of selection, feedback, and standard-setting, not a product of talent or motivation. Jones was named World Rugby Coach of the Year in 2017 after leading England to a Grand Slam and a run of consecutive Test wins second only to the All Blacks. For a senior audience, the value is in the translation. Three national cultures, three turnarounds, one argument about how leaders behave when the team is not yet winning. That is what he brings into a room. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure and public scrutiny Building and turning around elite teams Standards, accountability, and high-performance culture Decision-making in compressed time frames Cross-cultural leadership across international organisations Talent development and succession Ideal for Boards and executive committees leading a turnaround or performance reset CEO and C-suite offsites on standards and accountability CHRO and people leaders working on high-performance culture at scale Sales and commercial leadership teams operating in competitive, results-measured environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates elite teams from good ones in day-to-day behaviour Specific examples of how standards are set, reinforced, and recovered when they slip A model for leading through scrutiny without losing the team Practical reference points from three national turnarounds, not one Language for talking to executives about accountability without euphemism

Why organisations work with Ed Stafford He has done something measurable that no one else has done. The 860-day Amazon walk gives every resilience argument he makes a verifiable ceiling, not a rhetorical one. His military service, from Sandhurst to command in South Armagh, grounds his leadership content in operational judgement rather than motivational framing. He speaks credibly to risk tolerance and expedition planning, including how small, slow decisions compound into outcomes that look inevitable only in retrospect. His Discovery and Channel 4 work, from Left for Dead to 60 Days on the Streets, means he brings on-camera narrative discipline, useful for plenary sessions that need pace. Biography highlights First person recognised by Guinness World Records to walk the Amazon River from source to sea, 860 days, completed August 2010. National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2010; European Adventurer of the Year 2011. Former captain, British Army. Commissioned into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment after Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Served in Northern Ireland. Author of Walking the Amazon and Naked and Marooned, both published under Penguin Random House imprints. Presenter of Discovery series Naked and Marooned, Marooned with Ed Stafford, Into the Unknown, Left for Dead and First Man Out. Presenter of Channel 4’s 60 Days on the Streets, a three-part documentary on homelessness in Manchester, London and Glasgow. Biography The Amazon had never been walked in full when Ed Stafford set off from the Peruvian coast in April 2008. Twenty-eight months later, having covered more than four thousand miles on foot through Peru, Colombia and Brazil, he arrived at the Atlantic. Guinness World Records recognised him as the first person to do it. The expedition is the obvious credential, but the useful one for organisations is what it took to sustain: a decision framework applied every day for 860 days, under physical duress, logistical collapse and team change. That discipline did not come from adventure. It came from Sandhurst, a commission into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, and command responsibility in South Armagh before he was 25. Between military service and broadcast, Stafford led conservation and community expeditions in Belize, Guatemala and Borneo, worked as a UN contractor in Afghanistan, and set up a BBC Natural History Unit base in the Guyanese rainforest. His television work, including Discovery’s Naked and Marooned, Left for Dead and First Man Out, and Channel 4’s 60 Days on the Streets, has turned the same operating instincts into filmed case studies in judgement under scarcity. National Geographic named him Adventurer of the Year in 2010. He was awarded European Adventurer of the Year in Stockholm the following year. For leadership audiences, the value is not the record. It is a working account of how composure, planning and willingness to reset a plan mid-execution hold up when the environment refuses to cooperate. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Decision-making in ambiguous environments Resilience and recovery after setback Risk tolerance and expedition-grade planning Team dynamics in remote and hostile conditions Performance when conditions refuse to stabilise Ideal for Leadership offsites where senior teams are preparing for a period of operational uncertainty CEO and executive-committee sessions on risk appetite and decision discipline Transformation programmes where stamina, not strategy, is the binding constraint Awards, conference plenaries and all-hands events that need a credible human story with operational substance Audience outcomes A sharper picture of how experienced operators actually decide when information is incomplete A usable vocabulary for discussing risk tolerance and pacing on long, hard initiatives Specific, named examples of when to hold a plan and when to break it A reset on what resilience looks like in practice, distinct from how it is marketed

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

Why organisations work with Eamonn Holmes Four decades of live broadcasting at GMTV, Sky News Sunrise, This Morning and GB News, which means a stage, a teleprompter glitch, or an off-script guest is not a problem he has to think about. TRIC Awards News Presenter of the Year and three consecutive Best News Programme wins for GB News Breakfast, giving organisations a current, in-demand broadcast name on the bill. Interviewing range built across breakfast news, daytime ITV and political broadcasting, useful when a corporate event requires a sharp on-stage Q&A with a CEO, minister or sports figure. A face the audience already knows. For UK corporate audiences, Holmes carries instant recognition that warms a cold room before the agenda starts. Comfortable across awards hosting, after-dinner speaking, panel moderation and conference chairing; one booking covers most of the formats senior teams build events around. Biography highlights OBE for services to broadcasting, 2018 New Year Honours. Co-presenter, GMTV, 1993 to 2005. Lead presenter, Sky News Sunrise, 2005 to 2016. Co-presenter, This Morning on ITV, 2006 to 2021. Presenter, GB News Breakfast, 2022 to present. TRIC Awards News Presenter of the Year; GB News Breakfast won Best News Programme three years running. Biography GMTV launched on 1 January 1993, and Holmes was on air for the first edition. He stayed twelve years. That is the foundation: a presenter who learned live television in the discipline of breakfast news, where the autocue fails, the guest is late, and the producer is in your ear with thirty seconds to fill. From GMTV he moved to Sky News Sunrise for eleven years, then to ITV’s This Morning, where he and Ruth Langsford presented the Friday edition for fifteen years. Since 2022 he has anchored GB News Breakfast, which has won Best News Programme at the TRIC Awards three years in a row. He was appointed OBE for services to broadcasting in 2018. For senior buyers, the value is straightforward. A host who has logged thousands of live broadcast hours brings something a conference moderator pulled from a one-off panel cannot: composure when the AV fails, a sense of timing in the room, and the interviewing instinct to push a guest without alienating them. Awards ceremonies, internal conferences and after-dinner formats all benefit from that craft. He works across hosting, moderating, panel chairing and after-dinner formats, with an interviewing range that runs from breakfast soft-news to political accountability. For organisations choosing the face of their flagship event, he is a known name with the live broadcast experience to carry it. Key speaking topics Awards hosting Conference and event moderation On-stage interviewing After-dinner speaking Panel chairing Broadcast media and journalism Ideal for Corporate awards ceremonies and gala dinners. Internal conferences, town halls and leadership summits requiring a recognised host. Industry conferences needing a senior moderator for keynote interviews and panels. Brand or sponsor events where on-stage Q&A with named guests is central. Audience outcomes An event that runs to time with a host who can absorb agenda changes without showing it. Sharper on-stage interviews with senior guests, drawing out content the audience came to hear. Higher audience engagement from a recognised broadcast presence on stage. A confident handover between agenda items, sponsors and award categories.

Why organisations work with Duncan Goodhew His personal story is not simply inspirational. It is instructive. Two named conditions (alopecia universalis from age ten, dyslexia diagnosed at thirteen) that could have ended ambition became the foundation of a specific discipline: redefining success on individual terms rather than defaulting to external expectation. That argument is directly usable by organisations managing performance under pressure. His published thesis, developed in Sink or Swim (co-written with Victoria Hislop), is that success is an entirely individual matter; a claim with direct implications for how organisations set targets, evaluate performance, and retain people who do not fit a standard template. He co-founded the Youth Sport Trust in 1994 with Sir John Beckwith, securing £2 million in initial funding; the organisation now operates across every primary school in England. This is institution-building at scale, not just personal achievement. The corporate organisations that have engaged him; IBM, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Express, and Barclays were not buying an Olympic story. They were working on a shared problem: how to maintain consistent human performance under commercial pressure. As President of Swimathon, which has raised more than £34 million for national charities, he brings direct experience of building and sustaining large-scale movements, not simply motivating individuals in a room. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, 100m breaststroke, and bronze medallist, 4×100m medley relay, 1980 Moscow Olympics Captain of the Great Britain swimming team, 1978-1980; three silver medals at the 1978 Commonwealth Games, Edmonton MBE awarded 1983 for services to sport Co-founder, Youth Sport Trust (1994), now active across every primary school in England President of Swimathon, which has raised more than £34 million for charity across its history Author of Sink or Swim and Fix Your Life – Now!, both co-written with Victoria Hislop Inducted into the Swim England Hall of Fame, 2019 Biography Duncan Goodhew won Olympic gold in Moscow in 1980, competing as a young man who had been bald since the age of ten and formally diagnosed with dyslexia at thirteen. His published work, developed in Sink or Swim (co-written with Victoria Hislop), makes a specific claim: sustained high performance depends on one insight above all others – success is an individual matter. People who perform consistently under pressure are almost always those who have stopped competing against someone else’s definition of what winning looks like. For organisations managing performance through disruption or change, that has practical implications for how targets are set and how people are evaluated. His record beyond the speaking circuit is equally concrete. He co-founded the Youth Sport Trust in 1994 with Sir John Beckwith, securing £2 million in initial funding; the organisation now operates across every primary school in England. As President of Swimathon, he has overseen an organisation that has raised more than £34 million for national charities. The organisations that have engaged him over the course of his career; IBM, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Express, Barclays were working on a consistent underlying challenge: how to maintain human performance when conditions are difficult, stakes are high, and the outcome is not guaranteed. That is the question his work is designed to answer. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Overcoming adversity and personal reinvention Individual definitions of success and goal-setting Mental toughness in high-stakes environments Leadership through uncertainty and change Team motivation and sustained engagement Youth sport, physical activity, and long-term wellbeing Ideal for Senior leadership and C-suite audiences navigating organisational change or sustained commercial pressure HR, talent, and people leaders responsible for employee engagement, resilience, and retention Sales, commercial, and operational teams where consistent performance in demanding conditions is a strategic priority Corporate conferences where a credible, evidence-grounded narrative around resilience and peak performance is the brief Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of what peak performance actually requires, and why individually defined success criteria outperform externally imposed targets Practical insight into how elite athletes manage sustained pressure, maintain motivation, and continue performing through extended adversity A clearer sense of how personal disadvantage or difference can be converted from liability into competitive foundation Reflection on whether their organisation’s definitions of success are genuinely motivating the people they most want to retain A memorable, evidence-backed narrative around resilience that individuals and teams can carry into their own work

Why organisations work with David Weir A track record of winning at the highest level across two decades and seven Paralympic Games. Few speakers can draw on that span of sustained elite output when talking to a leadership team about consistency. Four gold medals in nine days at London 2012, on home ground, under the closest possible scrutiny. The story behind that fortnight is a serious case study in preparing for peak moments. Direct, lived authority on inclusion. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded with coach Jenny Archer, is an operating organisation that gets young disabled athletes into sport, not a cause he lends a name to. A career that includes quitting the sport after Atlanta 1996 and returning. That arc gives the resilience content real texture rather than the usual highlight reel. Biography highlights Six Paralympic gold medals (two at Beijing 2008, four at London 2012) and ten Paralympic medals in total across Games from Atlanta 1996 to Paris 2024. Eight-time winner of the London Marathon men’s wheelchair race. Appointed CBE in the 2013 New Year Honours, MBE in 2009. Author of “Weirwolf: My Story”, published by Constable and Robinson in 2013 with David Bond. Co-founder of the Weir Archer Academy at Kingsmeadow, Kingston, launched April 2013. Inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. Biography Four gold medals in nine days at the London 2012 Paralympics, 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon, put Weir at the centre of the most watched disability sport event ever staged. He won on home ground in front of a British crowd that had, by the end of those Games, a different frame of reference for what Paralympic sport was. The arc before that is what gives the story weight. Weir made his Paralympic debut at Atlanta in 1996 at seventeen, came away unimpressed, and quit the sport. He came back, built a partnership with coach Jenny Archer that still runs, and compiled six Paralympic golds and eight London Marathon wins across more than two decades at the top of T54 wheelchair racing. The public work beyond racing is substantive. “Weirwolf: My Story”, written with journalist David Bond and published in 2013, is an unvarnished account of racing, disability, and the training regime behind sustained elite output. The Weir Archer Academy, co-founded the same year at Kingsmeadow in Kingston, exists to get the next generation of disabled athletes into sport rather than to decorate a Paralympian’s post-career CV. Weir retired from Paralympic competition after Paris 2024, closing a run of seven Games. He was appointed CBE in 2013 and inducted into the Stoke Mandeville Hall of Fame in 2014. The corporate audience gets a speaker whose material on performance under pressure, coming back from a year that went wrong, and inclusion inside elite sport is drawn from the record, not constructed around it. Key speaking topics Resilience and comeback after setback Peak performance under pressure Sustained excellence across a long career Disability, inclusion and changing public attitudes Coach and athlete partnerships Goal setting over multi-year cycles Ideal for CHROs and inclusion leads building disability and accessibility into workforce strategy Sales and commercial leadership kick-offs framed around performance under pressure Sports industry, governing body and event organiser conferences Employee network and wellbeing programme events, particularly around mental health and sustained performance Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what consistency at the top actually costs, told through two decades of T54 racing A usable frame for recovering from a setback that does not resolve on its own timetable Specific detail on preparing for a single high-visibility moment, drawn from London 2012 A grounded view of disability inclusion from inside elite sport, rather than from policy language Material on coach and athlete trust that transfers to senior manager and team relationships

Why organisations work with David Thomas Measurable cognitive credentials that a buyer can name in one sentence: Guinness record for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits, International Grandmaster of Memory, US Memory Champion. Most motivational speakers cannot point to anything comparable. A lived story of reinvention from a troubled start and 11 years in the Fire Service to a global speaking career, which lands with audiences who are themselves being asked to reinvent roles, teams, and businesses. A practical toolkit, not a biography. Audiences leave with specific techniques for recall, preparation, and presenting under pressure that they can apply the next morning. 30 years of professional speaking across more than 30 countries, including after-dinner, keynote, and executive coaching formats, which gives the booker flexibility on room, tone, and length. A rare bridge between motivational storytelling and hard cognitive science, useful for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and learning events where a generic inspirational keynote would fall flat. Biography highlights Guinness World Record holder for reciting Pi to 22,500 digits from memory (1998), breaking an 18-year-old record. International Grandmaster of Memory and 2007 US Memory Champion; world record holder for memorising 100 individually shuffled packs of playing cards. Former operational firefighter with the UK Fire Service for 11 years before his speaking career. Author of “Improving Your Memory” in the DK Essential Managers series, published by Dorling Kindersley / Penguin Random House. Featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2003, with further coverage cited across BBC World Service, Wall Street Journal and The Times. Has delivered keynotes, workshops and after-dinner talks in more than 30 countries, with venues including Caesar’s Palace, Wembley and the Tower of London. Biography Most organisations treat memory and attention as personality traits. They are not. They are trainable, measurable disciplines, and the people who treat them that way outperform the ones who do not. David Thomas built a career on that distinction. The shift from the UK Fire Service to the World Memory Championships happened in under a year. Eight months after buying his first memory book to help him pass exams, Thomas placed fourth at the Championships. On 1 May 1998 he recited Pi to 22,500 digits, breaking an 18-year Guinness World Record. He later became an International Grandmaster of Memory, a US Memory Champion, and a world record holder for memorising 100 shuffled packs of playing cards. Those credentials matter because they separate him from the generic motivational field. When he talks about change, resilience, or performance under pressure, he is not borrowing language from the leadership canon. He is describing a discipline he has competed in at world level, published on through the DK Essential Managers series, and taught to more than 250,000 people across 30 countries. The work in the room is practical. Audiences leave with techniques they can use that week: how to remember names in a sales context, how to hold a room without notes, how to prepare when the stakes are real. It is why he still gets booked for sales kick-offs, leadership offsites, and after-dinner events nearly 30 years into the career, including a 2003 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that took the message to a global audience. Key speaking topics Memory and cognitive performance Resilience and personal reinvention Change and adaptability Presentation and communication skills Peak performance under pressure Motivation and mindset Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial conferences where recall of product, client, and context is a direct revenue lever. Leadership offsites and learning events where a keynote needs to bridge inspiration with practical cognitive skills. After-dinner and awards audiences looking for a serious credential paired with a human story rather than generic motivational fare. Learning and development leaders building programmes on performance habits, attention, and executive presence. Audience outcomes Specific, named memory techniques audiences can apply the next day to recall names, data, and presentation content. A sharper sense of what trainable performance actually looks like, anchored in world-record discipline rather than slogans. Renewed appetite for personal reinvention, drawn from a first-person story of moving from the Fire Service to world-level competition. Practical approaches to preparing for and performing in high-stakes rooms, from boardroom pitches to stage presentations.

Why organisations work with David Aguilar He holds a Guinness World Record for the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm and has built five iterations, MK-I through MK-V, giving any conversation on inclusion a concrete engineering artefact rather than a general narrative. He translates a congenital condition, Poland syndrome, into a design problem and a product line under the Hand Solo brand, which reframes accessibility as a market and a capability question for R&D, HR, and product teams. He is a UIC Barcelona bioengineering graduate and recipient of the university’s Bioengineering Innovation Prize, so the engineering credibility is not improvised around the story. He carries unusual cultural reach for an inventor: winner of LEGO Masters France, subject of the Filmax documentary Mr. Hand Solo (Boston Sci-Fi Festival, Best Documentary Feature), and a face of LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld global campaign. He speaks in English and Spanish and pairs well with technology, healthcare, and culture audiences who want an innovation voice that is not another Silicon Valley founder. Biography highlights Guinness World Records title holder, first functional LEGO prosthetic arm (MK-I); Guinness Hall of Fame inductee. Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona); recipient of the UIC Bioengineering Innovation Prize, 2018. Author of Piece by Piece: How I Built My Life (No Instructions Required), with Ferran Aguilar; Amazon Crossing (English), Penguin Random House (Spanish). Subject of Mr. Hand Solo (Filmax, 2021), Best Documentary Feature, Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. Winner, LEGO Masters France. Featured by Great Big Story (CNN Worldwide), WIPO Magazine, and in LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld global campaign. Biography Poland syndrome is a rare congenital condition that prevents the full development of muscles on one side of the body. David Aguilar was born with it, and built his first LEGO prosthesis at nine. By eighteen, working from a LEGO Technic Rescue Helicopter set, he had built MK-I, the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm that Guinness has recognised. The work has continued in versions, not anecdotes. MK-I to MK-V move from mechanical grabber to motorised five-finger hand controlled by residual-arm movement. He has since built an arm for an eight-year-old and launched Hand Solo as a brand aimed at accessible, affordable prosthetics. UIC Barcelona awarded him its Bioengineering Innovation Prize and a place to complete the degree. The story travels because it behaves like both engineering and culture. The documentary Mr. Hand Solo won Best Documentary Feature at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. His memoir Piece by Piece, co-written with his father Ferran, sits on both trade and children’s lists. LEGO cast him in the global #RebuildTheWorld campaign, and he won LEGO Masters France on primetime television. For serious organisations, the relevance is practical. He gives inclusion teams a product, gives R&D teams a user who is also a builder, and gives leadership audiences a single question to take back to their own operating model: who inside this company is quietly solving a problem we never designed around, and what would it take to give them the bricks? Key speaking topics Inclusive innovation and design Accessibility and assistive technology Bioengineering and prosthetics STEAM education and youth invention Resilience through engineering Purpose-driven entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of DEI building an inclusion agenda that produces outputs, not statements. R&D, product, and healthcare leaders working on accessibility as a market rather than a compliance question. STEAM education programmes, universities, and youth-focused foundations. Corporate culture and internal-innovation audiences where the brief calls for a builder rather than a consultant. Audience outcomes A working example of how a constraint becomes a product, not a motivational metaphor. A sharper brief for what accessible design looks like when the user is the engineer. A named set of artefacts (MK-I to MK-V, Hand Solo) that teams can reference back in their own work. A reset on what inclusion programmes should produce, measured in things built rather than campaigns run. A concrete answer to what young engineers inside the organisation might do with permission and materials.

Why organisations work with Danny Bent His argument that performance improves when people stop masking who they are is backed by his own experience building communities at scale – including a 3,328-mile relay across the United States that raised approximately $600,000 in weeks, organised by someone with no events infrastructure and a great deal of conviction. That is not a theoretical model; it is evidence. He produces an emotional shift in a room, not just intellectual content. Audiences at HSBC, Nike, and Google have described his sessions as physically changing the atmosphere within an hour – the kind of result most culture and engagement programmes take months to attempt. His willingness to speak openly about dyslexia, therapy, and the parts of himself he spent years performing around gives him rare credibility with audiences resistant to culture messaging. A Guinness World Record holder and BBC Special Forces finalist talking honestly about hiding and shame tends to disarm people who would tune out a conventional wellbeing speaker. His four named talk frameworks give event planners clear, differentiated choices across distinct use cases – personal identity, team belonging, leadership culture, and breaking default behaviour – without requiring bespoke development. His lived experience of building radically inclusive communities – Project Awesome across UK cities, multi-country running relays attracting thousands – gives HR and culture leads a concrete reference point for what genuine belonging actually looks and feels like, not just what it looks like in a framework. Biography highlights Author of “You’ve Gone Too Far This Time Sir” (account of cycling 9,000 miles from London to India; described as an international bestseller) and “Not All Superheroes Wear Capes” (about One Run for Boston and its impact on thousands of Americans) Two Guinness World Records, including for the I Move London Relay – 4,000 miles run by 2,000 participants across London in 2018 Organised One Run for Boston (2013) – a 3,328-mile continuous running relay from Los Angeles to Boston following the Marathon bombings, raising approximately $600,000 for victims Second overall on the BBC’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week; one of only three competitors to complete the programme TEDx speaker on the power of community; 100+ talks delivered at organisations including Google, HSBC, Nike, National Geographic, and the Royal Geographic Society Founder of Project Awesome, a free fitness community that has mobilised tens of thousands of participants across UK cities Former Great Britain triathlete Biography What happened after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 is, at one level, a story about running. A 3,328-mile relay from Los Angeles to Boston, organised in days, ran by thousands of Americans who had no relationship with each other beyond a shared need to do something. It raised approximately $600,000 for victims and demonstrated something specific about what people are capable of when they feel permission to show up honestly. Danny Bent organised that relay. He also cycled 9,000 miles from London to India, founded Project Awesome (a free fitness community across UK cities) and broke two Guinness World Records. He came second in the BBC’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week. These achievements are real, but they are not the point. The point is the human pattern underneath them: what happens to people, and to teams, when they are trusted and given a reason to be honest. Danny is dyslexic, a former Great Britain triathlete, and the author of two books. He spent years performing a version of himself that looked capable and cheerful while keeping quieter parts hidden. His decision to change that shaped his current speaking directly. He has built four named talk frameworks: The Happiness in Being You, The Power of a Tribe Mentality, The All-Powerful You, and Breaking Free from Autopilot, each addressing a different aspect of what shifts when people stop masking who they are at work. He has delivered 100+ talks at organisations including Google, HSBC, Nike, National Geographic, and the Royal Geographic Society, and given a TEDx talk on the power of community. Audiences have consistently described his sessions not as explaining something but as changing something in the atmosphere, in the conversation, in what people say to each other afterward. Key speaking topics Belonging and psychological safety at work Authentic identity and self-permission Community building and collective purpose Team culture and trust Resilience through shared challenge Leadership through enabling others Storytelling as a tool for connection Ideal for CHROs, People Directors, and culture leads building engagement or belonging programmes where intellectual content alone is unlikely to shift behaviour Senior leadership teams and executive offsites where trust, openness, and team cohesion are the underlying agenda Company-wide away days and conferences that need a session capable of shifting energy and atmosphere, not just delivering content Sales, marketing, or client-facing team events where authentic connection and discretionary effort are performance drivers Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of the personal and organisational cost of masking authentic identity at work, expressed through direct, lived experience rather than framework Specific language for talking about belonging, psychological safety, and trust within their own teams Awareness of the default behaviours and autopilot patterns that limit individual and collective performance A reference point – grounded in real community-building at scale – for what genuine belonging actually feels like, not just what it looks like in a policy document A personal prompt to take one specific action toward showing up more honestly, in work or in life