Multigenerational Workplace

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.

Why organisations work with Niluka Kavanagh She co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit, giving her a practitioner’s understanding of how psychological insight can be embedded in organisational design: not cited in a presentation, but built into real structures inside a global firm. The KPMG FutureThinkers initiative she co-founded, convening speakers from the BBC, HSBC, and others, gives her direct insight into how large organisations signal innovation internally, and where those signals fall short. Through The Modern CEO, her leadership framework for organisations, she takes the multigenerational engagement debate out of HR theory and into the specifics of daily leadership communication, psychological safety, and behavioural design across teams. She has operated inside large organisations and built independent businesses, so she can speak to the intrapreneurship and autonomy conversation from both sides of the corporate boundary. Operating experience across fourteen countries, with a community of more than a thousand independent founders behind her, gives her a working understanding of what trust, engagement, and team performance look like when conventional structures of co-location and hierarchy do not apply. Biography highlights Opened the 2026 Learning Technologies conference programme on the human side of the future of work, at Europe’s largest workplace learning event Co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit and the KPMG FutureThinkers initiative during nearly five years as a consultant and project lead at the firm Advised organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, the London Stock Exchange Group, and Lloyds Bank Published in The World Financial Review on the application of behavioural science to customer experience design, and featured in MSN’s “Top 10 Leading Speakers to Follow” (2025) Member of the UN Innovation Network (UNIN) Graduate of the University of Oxford (English, Somerville College) and an Alumni Ambassador for the college; has guest lectured at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh Founder of ImagineThat, a global community for entrepreneurs with more than 1,000 members across multiple countries Biography Most organisations still use presence as a proxy for productivity and hierarchy as a proxy for trust. Neither assumption holds for the workforce that is now entering and increasingly leaving corporate life. Niluka Kavanagh’s work sits precisely at that fault line: the widening gap between how organisations are designed and what the people inside them now expect. Her grounding in this is practical. At KPMG, she spent nearly five years consulting for organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, and the London Stock Exchange Group, co-founding both the firm’s Behavioural Science Unit and its FutureThinkers initiative. Both projects were about the same thing: applying psychological and behavioural insight to how organisations lead change, design experiences, and engage the people doing the work. She now takes that thinking to the stage. In 2026 she opened the Learning Technologies conference, Europe’s largest workplace learning event, on the human side of the future of work, and she is a member of the UN Innovation Network. Her writing on behavioural science and customer experience has appeared in The World Financial Review. That work rests on an unusual operating base. Three businesses, fourteen countries of operating experience, and a community of more than a thousand independent founders gave her the empirical foundation for The Modern CEO, a leadership framework focused on engagement, communication, psychological safety, and intrapreneurship across multigenerational teams. She works with senior leaders to move organisations beyond outdated management models towards cultures built on clarity, trust, and sustainable performance. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce transformation The Modern CEO framework for multigenerational leadership Behavioural science in organisational design Multigenerational leadership and team engagement Intrapreneurship and internal innovation Human-centric leadership and trust structures Leadership communication and psychological safety Ideal for CHROs and people leaders managing generational shifts in workforce expectation and culture CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking to align organisational structure with modern ways of working Transformation leads and change teams working on culture, engagement, and talent retention Professional services and entrepreneurial firms navigating the shift to more autonomous, distributed, or flexible operating models Audience outcomes A working understanding of how generational values are reshaping expectations around autonomy, leadership, and work design, and where the organisational cost is already showing up The Modern CEO framework as a practical model for engagement, intrapreneurship, communication, and psychological safety across multigenerational teams Concrete approaches to unlocking intrapreneurial thinking in teams, drawn from real experience building innovation initiatives inside a global consultancy A clearer sense of how behavioural science applies to culture and leadership challenges beyond the theoretical, grounded in organisational practice Practical questions to apply to their own organisation’s structure, communication norms, and talent strategy

Why organisations work with Eric M. Bailey He turns cognitive neuroscience into 22 named tools managers can use the next morning, not a worldview to adopt over time. The methodology is called the Principles of Human Understanding. His client list spans Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, and the Phoenix Police Department. Few communication speakers translate across that range of cultures. The Cure for Stupidity gives an organisation a shared vocabulary for irrational workplace behaviour. Once a team has read it, conflict conversations get shorter. He works the room across analytical and emotional registers. Engineering audiences and frontline service teams both come away with the same takeaways, which is rare. Biography highlights President of Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, a communication and organisational development consultancy. Bestselling author of The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work. Creator of the Principles of Human Understanding methodology, used in keynote, facilitation, and coaching engagements. Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Development, Saint Louis University. Client work with Google, US Air Force, Los Angeles County, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, City of Phoenix, Phoenix Police Department. Media features on CNN, Forbes, and HuffPost. Speaker on the Workhuman Live conference programme. Biography Most conflict at work is not about the issue on the table. It is about two people running different software on the same conversation. Bailey has built a career mapping that mismatch and giving leaders a way to talk about it without making anyone feel stupid. His book The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work sets out the argument. Irrational behaviour is usually rational once you understand what the brain is protecting against. The book seeded a methodology, the Principles of Human Understanding, which now anchors his keynote and consulting work through Bailey Strategic Innovation Group. The client list is the proof. Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the City of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Police Department have all brought him in. These are organisations with very different tolerance for soft language, which forces the material to do real work. The Master’s from Saint Louis University in Leadership and Organizational Development is the academic underpinning. The 22 tools are what audiences actually leave with. What sets Bailey apart from other neuroscience-of-work voices is that he writes for the manager who has eleven things to do today, not for the reader who wants a theory of mind. The framework is built to be used inside a difficult conversation, not admired from a distance. Key speaking topics Brain science of workplace communication Generational dynamics and intergenerational friction Diversity, equity and inclusion under contested conditions Change management and the neuroscience of resistance Team trust and functional team design Leadership development for first-line and mid-level managers Ideal for CHROs and people leaders dealing with persistent team conflict and engagement decay Heads of L&D commissioning manager development at scale DEI leads who need a frame for inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences Public sector and uniformed leadership teams (law enforcement, military, municipal government) needing communication training that travels across rank Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming the cognitive patterns that drive workplace friction Specific tools, drawn from the Principles of Human Understanding, that can be used in a difficult conversation the same week A reframe of irrational behaviour as predictable, not personal, which lowers the temperature of recurring conflicts A working model for how the brain interprets change, status, and difference, applied to current team dynamics

Why organisations work with Jahkini Bisselink She sits inside Whetston Strategic Foresight, a practice built for long-range corporate planning, which means her insights arrive as briefable strategy inputs rather than generational commentary. She is one of the few speakers who is both a member of Generation Z and a trained foresight researcher of it, which closes the gap between authentic voice and analytical distance. Her UN Youth Representative work involved structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people, giving her data depth most generational speakers cannot match. Senior clients including Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, and Lloyds Banking Group have used her to shape leadership conversations about Gen Z, not as a panel novelty. She works in English and Dutch, and she presents to boards, HR functions, and customer experience teams without translating the message between them. Biography highlights Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, 2017 to 2019, elected through open national election. First UN General Assembly speech delivered at age 18. Youth expert at Whetston Strategic Foresight, Amsterdam, since 2020. TEDxYouth@Maastricht speaker, March 2019, “Why Youth Participation is Key”. Named in MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) Class of 2023. Corporate clients include Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, R/GA, and AVEVA. Biography A quarter of the workforce is now Generation Z, and most leadership teams are still describing them in language borrowed from coverage of millennials a decade earlier. The result is a steady mismatch between what organisations design for younger employees and customers, and what those groups actually want. Closing that gap is now a board-level problem, not an HR one. Bisselink works inside Whetston Strategic Foresight in Amsterdam, where her job is to translate generational research into corporate strategy. Whetston is a foresight practice, not a marketing agency, which shapes how her work lands: she briefs leadership teams the way a strategy consultant would, with a defined argument and named implications, rather than offering generational colour. Her credibility on Gen Z is built on two layers. She is a member of the generation, born in Amsterdam in 1999. She also spent two years as the Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, running structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people across the country and presenting their views at the UN General Assembly in New York. That fieldwork, conducted before she joined Whetston, is the data foundation under her current commercial work. Boards and HR functions at Deutsche Telekom, Lloyds Banking Group, the European Parliament, and Rabobank have used her to pressure-test assumptions about how their next generation of employees and customers actually decide. She was recognised in the MIPAD Class of 2023 for the same body of work. Key speaking topics Generation Z in the workforce The multigenerational workplace Future of customer experience Strategic foresight and generational trends Corporate purpose and youth activism Talent attraction and retention for the next generation Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent rebuilding attraction and retention strategies around a Gen Z-majority workforce CMOs and customer experience leaders whose growth segment is now Gen Z Executive teams and boards reviewing workforce, culture, and brand strategy through a generational lens Public sector and policy bodies that need a credible Gen Z voice in stakeholder conversations Audience outcomes A clearer read on what Gen Z employees and customers actually decide on, separated from common media generalisations. Specific implications for how attraction, retention, and customer strategy need to change inside the audience’s own organisation. A working understanding of the friction points between four working generations and where leaders are still managing on outdated assumptions. Direct exposure to a Gen Z researcher whose evidence base is consultation work, not commentary.

Why organisations work with Naya Antoniou She brings dual training in organisational psychology and integrative psychotherapy to workplace mental health, which sharpens her work on burnout beyond surface-level wellbeing programmes. Her career-transition practice with vulnerable populations through Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas gives her direct evidence of how work loss, identity and recovery interact, which translates into how she advises corporate clients on restructuring with humanity. She works across the full multigenerational stack, from Gen Z entrants to senior leaders, and treats generational tension as a culture-design question, not a stereotype-management exercise. As a Lean In Greece Circle Leader and Women on Top mentor, she has a substantive track record on women in workplace mental health and HR, useful for organisations whose inclusion work has stalled at policy level. Biography highlights Postgraduate Degree in Organisational Psychology Postgraduate Degree in Career, Executive and Business Coaching MSc in International Relations, University of Piraeus Evidence-Based Coaching certification, Athens Coaching Institute Circle Leader, Lean In Greece Network (Mental Health and HR circle) Career coach with Doctors of the World and ActionAid Hellas career transition programmes Biography Burnout has stopped being an individual diagnosis. Organisations now carry it as an operating cost: turnover, presenteeism, project slippage, the quiet attrition of people who never quite leave. Naya Antoniou’s work sits inside that operating cost, with the tools of organisational psychology and evidence-based coaching applied directly to how teams are structured, led and supported. Her training combines a postgraduate degree in Organisational Psychology with a postgraduate qualification in Career, Executive and Business Coaching, anchored by an MSc in International Relations from the University of Piraeus. Ongoing postgraduate training in Integrative Psychotherapy gives her practice a clinical grounding that is unusual in corporate coaching. The applied work spans corporate culture transformation, leadership development, and career transition programmes. With Doctors of the World, she has coached women asylum seekers rebuilding work identities from zero. With ActionAid Hellas, she has run career transition programmes for vulnerable groups facing displacement from the labour market. That work shapes how she advises corporate clients on restructure, redeployment and the human side of workforce change. Within Greece, she leads the Mental Health and HR circle of Lean In Greece and mentors with Women on Top on workplace equality. The through-line across her practice is concrete: cultures hold people when they are designed to, and fall apart when wellbeing is treated as a benefit rather than a system. Her speaking work brings that argument into rooms where leaders are deciding which to choose. Key speaking topics Multigenerational teams and Gen Z engagement Burnout and workplace mental health Psychological safety as a leadership practice Culture change in high-performance organisations Future skills for emerging leaders Career transition and workforce change Women in mental health and HR Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning engagement strategy across five generations Leadership teams managing burnout risk during restructure or rapid growth HR and DEI leads building culture programmes that move past policy statements Founders and senior leaders of mid-sized organisations in Southern Europe scaling their first formal people function Audience outcomes A clearer view of how generational expectations shape engagement, retention and management overhead Specific moves leaders can make to install psychological safety as a working condition, not an annual survey question A working diagnostic for burnout that distinguishes individual recovery from structural cause Practical reframing of culture change as a design problem with measurable inputs

Why organisations work with Amanda Hamilton A clinical nutrition practitioner who can hold a corporate audience. The combination of qualified therapist credentials and 25 years of mainstream BBC presenting is what allows her to land technical content on gut health, fasting and longevity without losing the room. Genuine subject authority on women’s mid-life health, an area most wellbeing programmes underserve. The Women’s Reset programme is built specifically around women aged 40+, the cohort employers are most often losing. A bestselling thesis on the gut-health-and-weight relationship, The G Plan Diet, that pre-dated the mainstream gut microbiome conversation and is still in print. Practical, non-dogmatic translation of biohacking, fasting and longevity science. Audiences leave with things they can actually do on Monday, not a manifesto. Biography highlights Nutritional therapist with 25+ years’ practice; member of the British Association of Nutritional Therapists and associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine. Co-host of the BBC’s Something for the Weekend with Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer, and presenter on How to Live Longer, The Truth About… and The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses. Author of The G Plan Diet (2017, with Hannah Ebelthite), Eat, Fast, Slim (Watkins, 2013), Life-Changing Weight Loss (Piatkus, 2008) and LifeDetox (Piatkus, 2007). Founder of The Women’s Reset, an app-based programme on nutrition, exercise, mindset and healthcare for women aged 40+. Currently pursuing an MSc in Obesity Science at Robert Gordon University. Past corporate and consulting work spans Marbella Club, MyFitnessPal, Nairns and OakNorth, alongside Harley Street longevity practice. Biography Most corporate wellness content fails the credibility test the moment a clinically literate employee asks a follow-up question. Amanda Hamilton has built a 25-year career on the opposite premise: that workforce audiences will engage seriously with nutrition, longevity and gut health, but only when the speaker can hold the science as well as the room. Her clinical grounding sits with the British Association of Nutritional Therapists and the Royal Society of Medicine, and she is currently pursuing an MSc in Obesity Science at Robert Gordon University. Her broadcast career, including years co-hosting the BBC’s Something for the Weekend and presenting How to Live Longer, taught her how to make that science conversational without watering it down. The G Plan Diet, published in 2017 with Hannah Ebelthite, brought the gut-weight relationship into the mainstream conversation before the microbiome became a wellness category in its own right. Earlier books with Piatkus and Watkins covered fasting, weight loss and detox protocols, work she has since extended through retreats, the Women’s Reset programme for women aged 40+, and Harley Street longevity practice. For corporate audiences this resolves a familiar problem. Wellbeing programmes lose authority when they over-promise; they lose engagement when they under-deliver. She works in the narrow band between clinical caution and practical usefulness, which is why she lands well with mid-life cohorts that have heard the generic version too many times. Key speaking topics Nutrition and gut health Longevity and healthspan Women’s mid-life health and menopause Corporate wellbeing and workforce vitality Fasting and metabolic health Biohacking and human optimisation Ideal for Heads of HR, reward and benefits, and wellbeing leads designing or refreshing employee health programmes Companies focused on retaining and supporting women aged 40+, including senior female talent Health, hospitality and wellness brands seeking a clinically credible voice on consumer-facing nutrition Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workplace health interventions are evidence-backed and which are not A practical understanding of how nutrition, sleep and fasting protocols affect energy and performance A more informed conversation about women’s mid-life health that goes beyond menopause headlines Specific, lifestyle-level changes employees can apply without needing a clinical referral

Why organisations work with Peter Rios He brings a published research base on Latinx leadership in higher education that few DEI advisers can match. Untold Stories (Wipf & Stock, with Juan F. Martinez) is one of the first academic studies of Latinx administrators in Christian higher education and gives his diagnosis weight no consultant deck can. He works in two doctoral disciplines, intercultural studies (Fuller) and strategic leadership (Regent), so his prescriptions sit inside organisational structure and incentives, not alongside them. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for organisations with bilingual workforces or Latin American operations where translated DEI content typically loses its edge. His operator credibility is genuine. He held vice presidential roles at two universities and ran teams as a pastor for a decade before moving into consulting, so his sessions speak to leaders carrying P&L and people responsibility, not just HR. Biography highlights Author of Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education (Wipf & Stock, 2022), co-written with Juan F. Martinez. Author of Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential. Lecturer in leadership at Penn State University; former adjunct at Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University. PhD in Intercultural Studies, Fuller Graduate Schools; Doctorate in Strategic Leadership, Regent University School of Business and Leadership; doctoral coursework at USC Rossier School of Education; MA, Northeastern Seminary. Founder of Peter Rios Consulting, advising clients across business, government, higher education and faith-based institutions on leadership and inclusion. US Marine Corps veteran; bilingual in English and Spanish. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a value and treat it as a programme. The leaders who carry it inside the building, particularly Latinx leaders in white-dominated institutions, often experience something else: invisibility, code-switching, and a slow drain on the energy needed to do the job. Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education, written by Peter Rios with Juan F. Martinez and published by Wipf & Stock, was one of the first academic studies to document that gap inside Christian higher education. Rios writes from inside the systems he studies. He served as vice president at two universities, taught at Penn State, Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University, and built Peter Rios Consulting to advise organisations on leadership development, organisational change and DEI integration. Clients sit across business, government, higher education, non-profits and faith-based institutions. His credentials sit in two disciplines on purpose. The PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Graduate Schools gives him the language of identity, power and belonging. The Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Regent University gives him the language of structure, decision-making and organisational design. That dual lens is what allows him to translate inclusion from values statement into management practice. His second book, Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential, sits alongside the consulting work as a leadership development resource. He delivers in English and Spanish, draws on his US Marine Corps service and a decade in pastoral ministry, and is a frequent podcast guest on shows including Les Brown and Cafe con Pam. Key speaking topics Inclusive and values-based leadership Latinx leadership and representation Leadership development and executive coaching Organisational change and culture Identity, power dynamics and belonging at work Generational diversity in the workplace Personal leadership and peak performance Ideal for Heads of HR, CHROs and DEI leads in organisations where inclusion programmes are stalling at the leadership pipeline University presidents, provosts and trustees navigating Latinx student growth and faculty representation Bilingual or pan-American organisations seeking leadership development that works in English and Spanish Faith-based institutions and non-profits revisiting how leadership is identified and developed across cultural lines Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion language and leadership practice diverge inside their own organisation Specific moves leaders can make to retain and promote underrepresented talent rather than just hire it A framework drawn from Rios’s research and consulting for surfacing the lived experience of Latinx and other underrepresented leaders Personal leadership reflection grounded in the twelve principles of Maximize!

Why organisations work with Lisa Walden She translates over a decade of qualitative research on generational sociology into culture decisions a CHRO can actually defend at board level, not survey commentary. Two published books, including The Future of Work is Human and the Wiley “For Dummies” field guide on managing millennials, give her arguments a public, citable spine. She tackles the contested ground of hybrid work, return-to-office friction and Gen Z expectations without retreating into either nostalgia or hype. Her work on trust and psychological safety reads as operational, not therapeutic: barriers named, ingredients specified, applied across in-person, virtual and hybrid teams. She customises through pre-event interviews with client teams, so the keynote lands on the organisation’s specific cultural tension rather than a generic future-of-work narrative. Biography highlights Co-founder of Good Company Consulting, a workplace culture and future-of-work advisory firm. Co-author of The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World (with Hannah L. Ubl). Co-author of Managing Millennials for Dummies, part of Wiley’s “For Dummies” series. Advisor to organisations including BMW, Siemens, HP, Syntellis, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Texas A&M University System. Over a decade of qualitative research on generational dynamics and employee experience. Speaker on culture, trust, hybrid work, AI and human judgement, and cross-generational collaboration. Biography Five generations now share the same payroll, and the cultural assumptions each one brought to work have stopped quietly cohabiting. Trust expectations differ. Communication norms differ. The unwritten contract between employer and employee, the one that held through most of the late twentieth century, no longer carries the room. This is the territory Lisa Walden has spent more than a decade studying as a generational sociologist and workplace strategist. As co-founder of Good Company Consulting, Walden advises organisations on how to redesign culture for a workforce that no longer agrees on what work is for. Her clients include BMW, Siemens, HP, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Syntellis and Texas A&M University System. The work focuses on the connective tissue of an organisation: trust, psychological safety, communication norms, and the specific operating shifts that make a hybrid or multigenerational workforce coherent rather than fractious. Her two books anchor the public argument. The Future of Work is Human, co-authored with Hannah Ubl, sets out a post-pandemic culture playbook built around compassionate leadership and person-first management. Managing Millennials for Dummies, published in Wiley’s “For Dummies” series, gave her the early platform on generational management and remains a working reference for HR and people leaders. What distinguishes her on a stage is the refusal to default to either the wellness register or the technology register when discussing culture. She treats generational difference as a design input for operating decisions, not a personality theme, and she addresses the friction points that senior teams usually avoid in public: return-to-office disagreement, Gen Z expectations of managers, and what AI adoption does to the human texture of a team. Key speaking topics Future of work and post-pandemic culture Multigenerational workplace dynamics Trust and psychological safety Hybrid and remote work design Employee engagement and motivation Human-centred AI adoption Leadership communication across generations Ideal for CHROs, people leaders and heads of culture redesigning post-pandemic operating norms. Executive teams confronting return-to-office friction and hybrid policy disagreement. Boards and CEOs of organisations with significant Gen Z and millennial workforces. Leadership development and talent programmes inside large, multi-generational employers. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where generational friction is actually costing the organisation, and where it is noise. A working vocabulary for trust and psychological safety that managers can apply on Monday. Specific operating moves for hybrid and in-person team design, not policy slogans. A way to talk about AI adoption that treats human judgement as a capability, not a leftover. Confidence to make culture decisions defensible to both a board and a Gen Z hire.

Why organisations work with Hannah Ubl She runs primary research on generational cohorts, including original work comparing Early Millennials, Recessionist Millennials and Gen Z, and brings the data into the room rather than recycling commentary She wrote the operating manual on the first wave of this problem. Managing Millennials For Dummies (Wiley, 2017) is still the most-cited mass-market field guide for line managers running mixed-generation teams Her follow-up book, The Future of Work is Human, gives HR and people leaders a framework for rebuilding trust, psychological safety and belonging when half the workforce is remote and the other half is fatigued She speaks to the layer most generational speakers skip. Audiences from new hires to C-suite at Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo and Springer Nature, with the same material translating across all of them A decade inside BridgeWorks as Research Director, then six years building Good Company Consulting, gives her the rare combination of researcher discipline and operator instinct on culture problems Biography highlights Co-founder, Good Company Consulting Co-author, Managing Millennials For Dummies (Wiley, 2017) with Lisa X. Walden and Debra Arbit Co-author, The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World, with Lisa X. Walden Former Director of Research and Director of Keynote Speaking, BridgeWorks BS, Communications Studies (Advertising), Boston University Clients include Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo, Springer Nature, Applied Materials and NACS Biography Five generations now work alongside one another, and the assumptions each generation brings about communication, authority and loyalty no longer overlap. That gap is where Good Company Consulting was built. Ubl co-founded the firm after a decade at BridgeWorks, where she ran the national research programme comparing how millennial sub-cohorts and Gen Z behave inside organisations. The research feeds the keynotes directly. Managing Millennials For Dummies, written with Lisa X. Walden and Debra Arbit and published by Wiley in 2017, set the early reference text for line managers handling mixed-age teams. The Future of Work is Human, her second book with Walden, picks up the thread post-pandemic and reframes culture work as a question of trust, psychological safety and belonging across hybrid teams. What buyers commission her for is the translation layer. She turns cohort data into specific manager moves: how to give Gen Z feedback that lands, how to redesign hybrid rituals so they produce connection rather than performance, how to talk about AI without losing the human contract that holds a team together. Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo and Springer Nature have all used her to do the same job inside very different cultures. The reason her work travels is research discipline rather than charisma. She earned her stripes inside a research firm before she earned them on stage, and audiences from new hires to senior executives respond to the same material because the underlying argument is empirical, not motivational. Key speaking topics Generational integration in mixed-age teams Gen Z in the workplace Hybrid work and the rebuild of psychological safety Manager capability across generations Employee engagement and the post-pandemic social contract Compassionate leadership in practice Human connection in the age of AI Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding engagement and manager capability across generations Leadership development and L&D teams designing programmes for new and mid-level managers Internal communications and culture leads redesigning hybrid rituals Sector audiences with five-generation workforces, including healthcare systems, retail, hospitality and manufacturing Audience outcomes A working understanding of what Gen Z actually wants from an employer, separated from the social media caricature Specific manager behaviours that close the friction between generational cohorts in day-to-day work A clearer view of which hybrid-work rituals build trust and which performatively waste time Language for talking about AI and automation without breaking the employee social contract A research-grounded position to take back to the executive team on engagement and culture investment

Why organisations work with Scott Lesnick He has spent 24 years inside Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 business, before moving into speaking, so the change, retention and communication material is delivered from operating experience, not a consultancy framework. His multigenerational workplace content draws on a five-year practitioner survey and converts it into seven concrete strategies for recruiting, retaining and integrating Millennials, Gen Z and the incoming Generation Alpha. The Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from the National Speakers Association, plus a term as Dean of the NSA Academy for Professional Speakers, is a credential of speaking craft, not of subject expertise, and it shows up in the quality of room-handling for plenary keynotes. The Kidjacked story (recovering his two children after international abduction) gives him a non-negotiable platform for keynotes on resilience and persistence under sustained pressure, used by clients including UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven and SHRM. Biography highlights 24 years in sales and management leadership at Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 company. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association. Former Dean of the Academy for Professional Speakers, National Speakers Association. TEDx speaker, TEDx Oshkosh: “Limited Resources or Unlimited Resourcefulness”. Author of Kidjacked: A Father’s Story and Lifejacked: Life Lessons on Leadership. Named client list includes UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven, SHRM, the Financial Planning Association and the American Association of Orthodontists. Biography For the first time in working memory, five generations are sharing the same office, the same Slack channel and the same performance review system. Traditionalists are exiting, Generation Alpha is starting to arrive, and managers in between are running engagement playbooks built for a workforce that no longer exists. Scott Lesnick built his speaking practice on that problem. After 24 years leading sales and management teams at Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway Fortune 500 business, he moved into keynote work full time and built a multigenerational workplace programme around a five-year practitioner survey. The output is a set of seven concrete strategies for recruiting, retaining and integrating workers across Millennials, Gen Z and the incoming cohorts. The resilience material runs alongside it. Lesnick’s memoir Kidjacked tells the story of locating and recovering his two young children after they were abducted to the Middle East, and his second book, Lifejacked, collects interviews with people who came through serious adversity and went on to lead. Both feed into the change, burnout and persistence content he is most often booked for. He holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from the National Speakers Association, served as Dean of the NSA Academy for Professional Speakers, and delivered a TEDx talk on doing more with less at TEDx Oshkosh. Named clients include UPS Freight, US Bank, 7-Eleven, SHRM, the Financial Planning Association and the American Association of Orthodontists. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace strategy Leading through organisational change Employee engagement and retention Resilience and burnout Communication across generational cohorts Hybrid workplace dynamics Ideal for CHROs, talent and people leaders rebuilding engagement across a five-generation workforce. Sales and commercial leaders managing teams through restructure or market change. Healthcare, financial services and trade associations running practitioner conferences with mixed-cohort audiences. Internal leadership development programmes for newly promoted managers leading older and younger reports. Audience outcomes Seven practitioner strategies for blending and retaining multiple generations on the same team. A clearer read on what Millennials, Gen Z and Generation Alpha actually respond to in recruitment and engagement design. Specific tools for reducing burnout and protecting decision quality during periods of sustained change. A working vocabulary for inclusion and communication that is portable across the organisation.

Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from. A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle. Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor). Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo. A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press. Biography highlights Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets. Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024). Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing. Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC). Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation. Biography Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work. His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline. His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC. What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers. Key speaking topics Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour Purpose-led marketing and brand activism Cultural intelligence and foresight Marketing for social change The future workforce and generational diversity Brand communities and the creator economy Innovation, imagination and creativity Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention Audience outcomes A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research. A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks. A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up. Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.

Why organisations work with Hayley Mulenda She has been booked into the rooms where retention strategy is set, including Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Unilever’s C-suite under Leena Nair, and Meta MENA’s leadership. Her TEDxLSE talk «The Danger of Being a Role Model» frames a specific argument about authenticity that translates directly into how organisations think about leadership visibility and reverse mentoring. She holds an active operating seat as Brand Board Member at Wagamama, so the inclusion and culture content is informed by board-level decision-making, not consultancy at arm’s length. Her work on the gap between C-suite intent and Gen Z lived experience addresses a problem most leadership teams can name but few can resolve. Her book «The ABCs to Student Success» and her TEDx platform give her a public body of work that buyers can read before booking. Biography highlights TEDxLSE speaker, «The Danger of Being a Role Model» Author, «The ABCs to Student Success» Brand Board Member, Wagamama Keynote and consulting work with Microsoft, Unilever, JP Morgan, Google, Meta MENA, Chanel, Bloomberg Media, Harrods, Clifford Chance, Cabinet Office UK Spoken at Wembley Arena, Oslo Spektrum, and the UK Houses of Parliament Named one of 25 Black entrepreneurs to watch in 2024, The Black Business Show x HSBC Biography The cost of failing to engage a younger workforce is now measured at executive committee level. Retention has become a leadership question rather than an HR one. Hayley Mulenda’s work sits at the point where mental health, inclusion, and generational change converge inside that question. She came to the work through her own experience. After a suicide attempt at 18, she rebuilt her life around the practical mechanics of mental health and self-worth, and turned that into a public body of work. Her TEDxLSE talk, «The Danger of Being a Role Model», argues that organisations and leaders default to curated personas when employees actually need authenticity, and that the difference is what determines trust. Her client list reflects how that argument lands inside large organisations. Microsoft brought her to Redmond. Unilever’s then Chief HR Officer Leena Nair, now CEO of Chanel, has worked with her. Meta MENA, JP Morgan, Bloomberg Media, Clifford Chance, Google, the Cabinet Office, and Teach First have all booked her on briefs covering wellbeing, inclusion, and reverse mentoring. Wagamama appointed her to its brand board. The «ABCs to Student Success» gives her a published framework. The board seat keeps the work close to operating decisions. Together, they explain why she is booked less as a wellbeing speaker and more as a translator between senior leaders and the workforce now reporting to them. Key speaking topics Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Reverse mentoring and generational engagement Diversity, equity and inclusion Employee retention and the social contract of work Authentic leadership and personal branding Workplace culture across the MENA region Ideal for CHROs and people directors managing retention of Gen Z and millennial talent Inclusion and culture leads building reverse mentoring or ERG programmes Executive teams reviewing employee engagement and wellbeing strategy Conferences and offsites where leadership wants a credible voice on mental health rather than a generic one Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between leader visibility and leader authenticity, and why one drives engagement and the other does not A direct view of what younger employees actually want from senior leaders A reframing of mental health from a wellbeing programme into a retention lever Practical reference points for designing reverse mentoring that produces decisions, not optics