Multigenerational Workplace

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Jeff Havens A defined thesis on generational workplaces, set out in his Pearson FT Press book “Us vs. Them,” that there are not four or five generations at work and that most generational training reinforces the problem it claims to solve. A keynote portfolio that covers four distinct organisational tensions, change (“Conquering Tomorrow”), leadership (“Unleash Your Inner Tyrant”), innovation (“Uncrapify Your Future”) and generations (“Us vs. Them”), each anchored in a published book or a defined argument. Built and runs Levity University, a microlearning platform of more than 400 courses serving over half a million learners a year, so the keynote sits on top of an operating training business, not just a speaking practice. A working comedian’s structure applied to a serious management argument, which is why CNBC and Fox Business book him as a recurring guest and why named clients including Ford, General Electric, JP Morgan, McDonald’s and Berkshire Hathaway use him at conferences where attention fatigue is the main risk. Biography highlights Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University. Author of “Us vs. Them” (Pearson FT Press), “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!” and “Uncrapify Your Life!” Founder of The Jeff Havens Company and Levity University, with 400+ microlearning courses and 500,000+ annual learners. Recurring guest on Fox Business (including The Willis Report) and CNBC. Published in The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and BusinessWeek. Delivered over 1,000 keynotes to organisations including General Electric, Ford, US Bank, McDonald’s, JP Morgan, Honeywell, Berkshire Hathaway and Caesars. Biography Generational training is one of the most-bought and least-effective categories of corporate learning. Most of it asks employees to memorise the supposed traits of Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, then sends them back to the same teams with the same friction. The conflict is real. The frame is wrong. That is the argument behind “Us vs. Them,” published by Pearson FT Press, in which Jeff Havens makes the case that there are not four or five distinct generations in the workplace, and that the visible conflict is better explained by age and life stage than by birth cohort. The book sits alongside “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!” on leadership behaviour and “Uncrapify Your Life!” on innovation, three published positions on three of the most-requested categories in corporate keynotes. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt and a former high school English teacher, Havens works at the intersection of stand-up comedy and management argument. The result is a presentation craft that holds a senior audience for a full hour. CNBC and Fox Business book him as a recurring guest for the same reason. His client list, General Electric, Ford, US Bank, McDonald’s, JP Morgan, Honeywell, Berkshire Hathaway, Caesars, is a list of organisations that buy attention as a scarce resource at their conferences. Beyond the keynote, he runs Levity University, a microlearning platform with over 400 courses and more than 500,000 annual learners. That operating business gives the speaking work a depth that pure-platform speakers rarely match: he is a practitioner who tests his content against a paying audience every week. Key speaking topics Generational dynamics in the workplace Leadership behaviour and management failure modes Innovation as an everyday discipline Change management and resistance Customer experience Corporate culture and communication Ideal for HR and L&D leaders running generational, culture or engagement programmes at scale Senior leadership conferences where attention fatigue across a long agenda is the main risk to the message CEO and divisional offsites looking to anchor a change, innovation or culture theme with a memorable plenary Industry association conferences (SHRM, ATD, MPI and equivalents) where mixed-seniority audiences need a single keynote that lands across the room Audience outcomes A working argument for why standard four-generations training does not reduce workplace friction, and what to do instead A clear language for naming leadership behaviours that quietly damage teams, drawn from “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant” A practical view of innovation as a habit available to every employee, not a function reserved for an R&D group A more confident stance for managers asked to lead change against fatigue and resistance A shared reference point, and shared humour, that a leadership team can take back into the room the next morning

Why organisations work with Chip Conley He turned a single boutique hotel into a 50-property group as CEO of Joie de Vivre, then mentored Brian Chesky through Airbnb’s hospitality build-out. Few speakers can speak from inside both an independent operator and a category-defining platform. His Modern Elder thesis gives leadership teams a usable language for intergenerational collaboration at a moment when most companies are still treating age as a liability rather than a capability. He applied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to corporate strategy in his book Peak and his 2010 TED talk, and the framework still reads as one of the more durable arguments for measuring culture, employee engagement, and customer experience as connected variables. The Modern Elder Academy he founded in 2018 is the only midlife wisdom school running at scale, with over 2,000 alumni and a second campus, which gives him real operating data on how mid-career professionals reset, retrain, and re-enter organisations. He is a New York Times bestselling author and three-time TED speaker, with books published across two decades that track the same throughline: human meaning as the underlying engine of commercial performance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he built from a single property in 1987 into a portfolio of around 50 boutique hotels. Former Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb, mentor to CEO Brian Chesky during the company’s expansion to hosts in 191 countries. Founder and Executive Chairman of Modern Elder Academy, with campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and more than 2,000 alumni. Three-time TED speaker, including “Measuring what makes life worthwhile” (2010) and his 2023 talk on the midlife chrysalis. New York Times bestselling author of Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, alongside Peak, Emotional Equations, The Rebel Rules, and Marketing That Matters. Stanford BA and MBA. Named Most Innovative CEO in the Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times and recipient of the hospitality industry’s 2012 Pioneer Award. Biography The conventional career arc treats age as a depreciation curve. Chip Conley has spent two decades arguing the opposite, and building the institutions to prove it. He founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality in San Francisco in 1987, ran it for nearly 24 years, and grew it into one of California’s largest boutique hotel groups, around 50 properties at its peak. The book that came out of that period, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, applied Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to employee, customer, and investor relationships, and remains the most cited articulation of his commercial argument that human meaning is the engine, not the decoration, of business performance. In 2013, Airbnb’s three founders asked him to become Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. He mentored Brian Chesky and helped translate a tech platform into a hospitality company operating with hosts in 191 countries. The label he picked up there, “modern elder”, became the seed of his next institution. The Modern Elder Academy, which he founded in 2018, has campuses in Baja California Sur and Santa Fe and has now run more than 2,000 mid-career professionals through structured programmes on transition, longevity, and the social contract between generations at work. His more recent books, Wisdom@Work and Learning to Love Midlife, push that thesis into the corporate agenda directly: age as a category of workforce diversity, midlife as a strategic asset, and the intergenerational team as a more accurate model of how organisations actually learn. The argument is grounded in operating experience, not commentary, which is why boards and executive teams increasingly book him to challenge the assumptions inside their own talent strategy. Key speaking topics The multigenerational workplace and the case for age as workforce diversity Modern Elder leadership and the redesign of mid-career Culture and employee engagement built on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Disruptive innovation in hospitality and platform businesses Customer experience as a function of internal culture Emotional intelligence in leadership Midlife transition, longevity, and workforce retention Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning talent strategy across five generations at work CEOs and boards facing attrition of senior expertise and weak intergenerational knowledge transfer Hospitality, travel, and consumer-facing leadership teams rebuilding culture as a commercial asset Executive development and leadership academy programmes focused on mid-career renewal and senior transition Audience outcomes A clearer operating definition of intergenerational collaboration, with concrete language for treating age as a diversity and capability question A reframed view of mid-career and senior employees as a strategic asset rather than a cost line A working model, drawn from Peak and Maslow, for connecting employee meaning, customer experience, and financial performance Specific, named examples from Joie de Vivre, Airbnb, and Modern Elder Academy that translate into practical policy and culture changes A more honest conversation inside the leadership team about ageism, longevity, and what wisdom is actually worth in commercial terms

Why organisations work with Kelly Somers A live host who has worked the biggest moments in English football, including becoming the sixth woman to present Match of the Day, and brings that calibre of broadcast craft to a corporate stage. A trusted facilitator for the sport ecosystem itself. The Premier League, The FA, EFL, LMA and Barclays use her on their own conferences, awards and leadership events, which is the strongest possible reference for any sponsor or partner of those bodies. A practitioner voice on gender inclusion in industries coded male for generations, drawn from her own working life across football broadcasting, not from secondary research. Interview range across elite athletes, managers and executives, with the discipline of live broadcast applied to panels, fireside chats and on-stage Q and A. Biography highlights Sports presenter and reporter across BBC Sport, including Final Score, Football Focus, The Women’s Football Show and BBC 5Live. Sixth woman to present Match of the Day, covering the 2020 FA Community Shield. Match reporter and presenter at UEFA Euro 2020, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and UEFA Euro 2024. Presenter for Amazon Prime’s Premier League coverage and Channel 4’s UEFA Nations League output. Corporate event host for the Premier League, Barclays, The FA, EFL and LMA. Postgraduate in broadcast journalism, Nottingham Trent University, following undergraduate studies at Loughborough University. Biography Live football broadcasting is a discipline most corporate stages underestimate. The presenter has to absorb a fast-moving situation, keep multiple guests coherent, manage time to the second, and make the whole thing feel calm. Kelly Somers has done that across the BBC, Amazon Prime and Channel 4 for more than a decade. Her CV inside the BBC includes Final Score, Football Focus, The Women’s Football Show and BBC 5Live, and reporting from England’s campaigns at UEFA Euro 2020, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and UEFA Euro 2024. In August 2020 she became the sixth woman in the programme’s history to present Match of the Day, covering the FA Community Shield. That broadcast track record is what brings her into corporate work. The Premier League, Barclays, The FA, EFL and the League Managers Association use her to host their own conferences, awards and leadership events, which is the highest reference any sport-adjacent client could ask for. The same discipline travels to keynote stages outside sport, where boards and leadership teams need a host who can keep a complex programme moving without losing the audience. When Somers speaks from the stage rather than hosting it, her subject is the one she has lived: how women earn credibility, hold a room, and change the everyday texture of a male-coded industry. She trained in broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University after Loughborough, started in the media department at AFC Bournemouth as the club rose into the Premier League, and built the broadcast career from there. The story is specific, not theoretical, and that is what makes it useful inside organisations trying to do the same work. Key speaking topics Football broadcasting and live event hosting Gender inclusion in male-dominated industries Building a career in sports media Interviewing elite performers under pressure Communicating with multi-generational audiences in digital media Sport, sponsorship and brand storytelling Ideal for Sponsors and partners of the Premier League, EFL, FA and LMA convening their own conferences, awards or hospitality programmes. Leadership teams in male-coded industries (financial services, engineering, construction, energy) running inclusion or women-in-leadership programming. Corporate awards, fireside chats and panels that need a broadcast-trained host rather than a celebrity name. Sport, media and broadcast businesses programming internal leadership and culture events. Audience outcomes A live event that runs to broadcast standard, with a host who keeps the room with her and the programme to time. A first-person account of building credibility as a woman inside elite football broadcasting, with the practical detail intact. Useable language for talking about gender inclusion that does not collapse into policy or slogan. Interview craft transferred to internal stages: how to prepare a guest, structure a conversation, and read a room in real time.

Why organisations work with Jenk Oz A live daily feed of Gen Z behaviour. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages across 220+ countries and territories, feeding his brand advice with first-party data instead of commissioned surveys. Consulting credibility built on named client work. Thred Media has advised Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, and Ogilvy on Gen Z strategy, so executive audiences engage with a working commercial operator. Primary-source Gen Z insight. Thred’s editorial team is almost entirely Gen Z, which grounds brand strategy work in lived cohort behaviour. A structural edge in data. The combination of publishing arm, Change Maker Discord community, and consulting practice generates zero- and first-party signals on emerging youth culture that traditional agencies do not hold. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Thred Media, the Gen Z publishing and consulting business headquartered in London. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages, reaches audiences in 220+ countries and territories, and generates approximately 350,000 monthly article reads alongside 200,000+ social followers. Consulting clients include Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, Hilton, Meta, Universal Music Group, and Epic Games. Named on Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), winner of Digiday’s Future Leader Award and Greater Good Award, and recipient of a Webby/Anthem Young Leader Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Member of the Google Z-Council, Oracle for Startups, and the Microsoft Surface young entrepreneur programme. Delivered three TEDx talks and has spoken at 90+ international conferences, including Amazon AWS Summit London (where he interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels), Forbes Summit Cincinnati, Vox YMS New York, Oxford University Model UN, and Brand Week Istanbul. Biography Most brand advice about Gen Z is produced from outside the generation it describes. Survey data and panel research reach brand teams after the fact, often long after the behaviour they track has moved on. Thred Media was built on the opposite principle. What became Thred Media began with a school show-and-tell by an eight-year-old Jenk Oz about the activities he was doing outside class. That project grew into iCoolKid, which was rebranded and repositioned as Thred Media in 2019. Today, Thred.com publishes in 17 languages and reaches audiences in 220+ countries, giving the business a live first-party read on what young consumers are actually doing and buying. The consulting arm applies that feed to commercial questions. Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, and Hilton have used Thred Media for Gen Z strategy work that draws on live behaviour from the Change Maker Discord community and the editorial desk. Recognition has followed: Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), the Digiday Future Leader Award, a Webby/Anthem Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. The commercial distinction is straightforward. He runs a functioning Gen Z business that advises major consumer brands, and he belongs to the generation he is paid to interpret. He has delivered three TEDx talks, interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels at AWS Summit London, and been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Fortune, and the Evening Standard. Key speaking topics Gen Z consumer behaviour Brand relevance and the Gen Z market Gen Z marketing strategy Youth culture and social change Digital activism and clicktivism Youth entrepreneurship The future of work through a Gen Z lens Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand directors, and consumer strategy teams are trying to close the relevance gap with Gen Z consumers. Agencies and consultancies whose clients are asking sharper questions about youth audiences than internal research can answer. Corporate innovation and growth teams are building commercial plans that depend on reaching emerging consumer cohorts. Board and executive audiences wanting a primary source on Gen Z behaviour, not secondhand interpretation. Audience outcomes A live view of how Gen Z is actually behaving across purchase and media decisions, drawn from Thred.com’s daily publishing feed and Change Maker community. Recalibrated assumptions about the signals brands use to judge youth relevance, with examples from named client work. Specific examples of where established brands are winning and losing Gen Z attention, drawn from Thred Media’s advisory engagements. A direct read on how social change and purpose shape purchase decisions in the generation that now accounts for the largest share of emerging consumer spend.

Why organisations work with Clover Hogan She turns climate anxiety from a cultural backdrop into a measurable pressure point on recruitment, retention, and stakeholder trust, with specific evidence from Force of Nature’s work with young people in more than fifty countries. She has moved between youth movements and Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, which means she can translate Gen Z expectations into language a sustainability committee can act on. Her TED talk “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable” has been viewed close to two million times, giving her a rare ability to hold a mixed audience, including sceptics, on a subject most speakers polarise. She founded Force of Nature at nineteen and built it into an internationally recognised organisation before handing over leadership, which gives her direct operating experience of building a climate programme rather than only commenting on one. Forbes 30 Under 30 listing and features in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue place her in the small group of climate voices that board-level audiences already know by name. Biography highlights Founder of Force of Nature, a youth non-profit mobilising mindsets for climate action, founded at age nineteen. Former Executive Director of Force of Nature; now advisor and chair of the board after a formal leadership handover in 2024. TED speaker, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” with close to two million views. Recognised on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list at age twenty-two. Host of the Force of Nature podcast, in conversation with figures including lawyers behind landmark climate agreements and Nobel Peace Prize nominees. Has advised Fortune 50 companies including PepsiCo and Unilever on Gen Z climate expectations; interviewed the 14th Dalai Lama and shared platforms with Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva. Featured in the Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, National Geographic, and Vogue. Biography The climate conversation inside most large organisations has quietly shifted. It used to be a reporting question. It is now a hiring question, a customer question, and a boardroom legitimacy question. Force of Nature, the non-profit Clover Hogan founded at nineteen, has spent the last several years mapping that shift from the other side of the table, working with young people in more than fifty countries on what they actually expect from the companies they join, buy from, and vote with. Hogan treats eco-anxiety as a serious operating variable, not a feeling. Her TED talk, “What to do when climate change feels unstoppable,” has reached close to two million viewers by refusing both doom and false optimism, and by naming what people are actually experiencing. Inside Fortune 50 boardrooms, including PepsiCo and Unilever, she translates that same research into a direct question for leadership teams: what are you asking your people to defend, and can you defend it yourself. Her authority comes from operating experience. She built Force of Nature into an internationally recognised youth organisation, managed a formal handover to new leadership in 2024, and now sits as chair of the board while advising organisations and speaking internationally. The Force of Nature podcast has put her in extended conversation with figures ranging from Nobel Peace Prize nominees to the lawyers behind landmark climate agreements, and with Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, and the 14th Dalai Lama. The effect in a room of senior leaders is specific. She will not make the climate crisis smaller than it is, and she will not let it become an abstraction. She returns the conversation to the concrete group of people, inside and outside the organisation, whose trust the next decade of climate strategy has to earn. Key speaking topics Climate leadership and corporate accountability Eco-anxiety and climate psychology Gen Z expectations of employers and brands Youth engagement and movement building ESG credibility and the gap between commitments and delivery Storytelling and public communication on the climate crisis Purpose and values in modern organisations Ideal for Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads defending or rebuilding climate strategy against tougher stakeholder scrutiny. CHROs and talent leaders whose recruitment and retention now runs through how credible the organisation looks on climate. Boards and executive committees setting the next phase of sustainability commitments and the communications around them. Brand, marketing, and corporate affairs leaders whose audiences are increasingly Gen Z and increasingly unforgiving of gaps between claim and practice. Audience outcomes A sharper read on what younger employees and consumers are actually asking of organisations on climate, beyond the survey headlines. Language for discussing eco-anxiety as a workforce and stakeholder factor rather than a private sentiment. A more honest internal test for where the organisation’s climate commitments are holding up and where they are exposed. Confidence to lead climate conversations with staff, customers, and boards without retreating into either doom or marketing gloss. A clearer sense of how youth movements, media scrutiny, and investor pressure are converging into a single reputational frontier.

Why organisations work with Kate Ancketill A ten-year run delivering the trends keynote at the NRF Big Show, the largest retail technology event in the world, makes her the reference voice for what major retailers are about to do next. Twenty-five years inside GDR Creative Intelligence working with P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Lego and Moet Hennessy, which means her examples are drawn from live client work, not desk research. A three-to-five year forecasting horizon that is short enough to commit budget against, longer than the next quarter, and grounded in case examples rather than abstract futures. 2025 Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, and a BizTech Top 30 IT Influencer listing, which gives buyers an external read on quality before they commission. Biography highlights CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, a London-based futures and innovation consultancy founded in 1992. Ten consecutive years as trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York. Named clients include P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. 2025 Speaker Awards: Best AI and Future Technology Speaker. BizTech Magazine Top 30 IT Influencers, 2024. Regular broadcast and conference commentator on AI, retail, high street decline, and consumer behaviour. Biography The retail and consumer industries are running two clocks. One is quarterly, governed by trading, footfall, and conversion. The other is the three to five year horizon on which AI, automation, and Gen Z consumer behaviour are quietly rewriting the operating model. Boards are being asked to commit capital against the second clock with the analytical habits of the first. Kate Ancketill has spent twenty-five years inside that gap. As CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, she has worked as the innovation partner to a roster of consumer brands that includes P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. The work is granular, weekly tracking of the innovations that are reshaping retail, hospitality, brand and technology, then translated into specific commercial implications for clients planning two and three product cycles out. That practitioner base is what makes her platform work. For ten consecutive years she has delivered the headline trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York, the industry’s most-watched stage for what major retailers are about to commit to. Martin Reardon, NRF’s CMO, attributes the repeat invitation to her audience scores. In 2025 she was named Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, the year after BizTech Magazine listed her among its top thirty IT influencers. Her current work centres on what consumer-facing AI does to customer experience, brand, and the economics of the store. The argument runs against both extremes: AI is not a productivity bolt-on, and it is not an existential threat, it is the substrate on which the next generation of retail and consumer business models will be built. The job for senior leaders is to read the early signal accurately enough to commit capital before the pattern is obvious. Key speaking topics Business futurism on a three to five year horizon Consumer-facing AI in retail and brand The future of customer experience Innovation and disruptive business models in consumer industries Gen Z and Generation Alpha consumer behaviour Sustainability and the future of consumer brands Trends and innovation at the NRF Big Show The future of the high street and physical retail Ideal for Retail, consumer goods and hospitality boards making three-to-five year capital and format decisions CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand and CX around AI Innovation and strategy leads inside major consumer brands Conferences where the audience is operators, not technologists, but the agenda is technology-driven Audience outcomes A clear read on which retail and consumer innovations are signal and which are noise Specific case examples of how named global brands are already deploying AI in customer-facing roles A working three-to-five year horizon for board and CMO planning, not a ten-year futurology piece A sharper view of Gen Z and Generation Alpha as commercial customers, not as demographic abstractions

Why organisations work with Paul Redmond He brings a five-generation diagnostic, not a Millennials-versus-Boomers cliche, that gives HR and commercial leaders a working language for friction they can already feel. His employability research, built across senior roles at the University of Liverpool, lets him speak credibly to graduate-recruitment, early-careers, and talent-pipeline audiences other generational speakers cannot. His Zombie Jobs thesis, anchored in his 2019 TED Talk and 2024 Trotman book on the AI age, gives leadership audiences a sharp, named frame for which roles AI hollows out and which it does not. He moves comfortably between commercial keynotes and broadcast work, including BBC and ITV current affairs, which translates into a polished platform presence for high-stakes events. Biography highlights Director of Student Experience and Enhancement, University of Liverpool, with continuing lecturing responsibilities. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2010), awarded for writing and research. Author of The Graduate Jobs Formula, Talking about my Generation, A Parent’s Guide to Graduate Jobs, and The Graduate’s Guide to Future-Proofing Your Career (Trotman, 2024). TED speaker: Zombie Careers: Will You Lose Your Job to AI? (2019). Regular contributor to BBC and ITV current affairs; collaborator on the BBC and Tiger Aspect documentary Who Gets the Best Jobs? Speaks across financial services, technology, healthcare, and travel, with named clients including Google, Hargreaves Lansdown, Janus Henderson, Royal London, the NHS, and ABTA. Biography Five working generations now sit inside the same organisation. Each one learned to work under a different economy, a different communication norm, and a different settlement with the employer. The friction this produces shows up in engagement scores, retention numbers, and customer outcomes. Redmond’s work names that friction and gives leaders a way to act on it. His vantage is unusual. As Director of Student Experience and Enhancement at the University of Liverpool, he has spent years inside the machinery that produces the next generation of the workforce, and in continuous research conversation with the employers buying that talent. That has made his commentary on Gen Z and the post-Covid graduate market a regular fixture on BBC and ITV current affairs, and a reference point for HR and early-careers teams across UK plc. The future-of-work strand runs alongside it. His TED Talk Zombie Careers, published in 2019, set out the roles most exposed to AI and robotics, and the cognitive and human skills that survive automation. The Graduate’s Guide to Future-Proofing Your Career, published by Trotman in 2024, extends that argument into a working guide for the AI age. The thesis lands because it is grounded in named research, not in tech-keynote futurism. His books include The Graduate Jobs Formula, Talking about my Generation, A Parent’s Guide to Graduate Jobs, and Making it Happen. In 2010 he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts for his writing and research. Key speaking topics The multigenerational workplace Gen Z and the post-Covid workforce The future of work and AI exposure Graduate recruitment and early-careers strategy Selling and marketing across generations Wellbeing and the staff-customer link Employability and career resilience Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and early-careers leads designing pipelines around Gen Z and a five-generation workforce. Commercial and marketing leaders building proposition and channel strategy across generational customer segments. Executive teams stress-testing which roles AI will hollow out and which human capabilities to invest in. Boards and leadership conferences in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services. Audience outcomes A working language for the five generations now in the workforce and the specific friction points each pair produces. A named view of which roles are most exposed to AI and robotics, and which capabilities buyers and employers should be investing in. Practical engagement and retention moves calibrated to Gen Z and post-Covid graduate expectations. A sharper read on how generational difference shows up on the customer side, in buying behaviour and channel preference.

Why organisations work with Catherine Mayer She has reported on power at the most senior editorial level, as Europe Editor and Editor at Large of TIME, and then tried to rebuild it, by founding a national political party. Few speakers on inclusion have done both. Her book Attack of the Fifty Foot Women reframes gender equality as an economic and institutional argument, not a values statement, which makes it usable in a boardroom conversation about strategy and risk. She can talk about royal institutions, political parties and global newsrooms from the inside, which gives senior audiences a sharper read on how hierarchical organisations actually work. Her writing on ageing (Amortality) and grief (Good Grief) gives her authority on two subjects most workplaces handle badly: longer working lives and bereavement in the workforce. She is a working journalist by training, which shows in the room. Arguments are specific, sourced and willing to be challenged. Biography highlights Senior editor at TIME magazine from 2004 to 2015, serving as London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and Editor at Large. Co-founder, with Sandi Toksvig, of the UK Women’s Equality Party in March 2015, and its President. Author of Attack of the Fifty Foot Women, Amortality, Charles: The Heart of a King and Good Grief. Winner of the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» award, 2010, and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, 2011. Co-founder of the Primadonna Festival of ideas, writing and music, and advisory board member of NOON. Former President of the Foreign Press Association in London, 2003 to 2005; began her career at The Economist. Biography Gender equality inside large institutions has become a paradox. Reports, networks and policies have multiplied, yet the shape of senior power has moved far less than the paperwork suggests. Catherine Mayer has spent her career watching this pattern from two very different sides. For more than a decade at TIME magazine, she reported on presidents, prime ministers and royal courts as Europe Editor and Editor at Large, with her 2010 cover story on David Cameron’s first US visit winning the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» and her writing shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011. Her biography Charles: The Heart of a King drew on years of access to the British royal household and generated international headlines for what it revealed about how closed institutions actually operate. In March 2015, with Sandi Toksvig, she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party and served as its President until the party was dissolved in 2024. Attack of the Fifty Foot Women grew out of that work and argues, in hard economic and political terms, that closing the gender gap is the single largest lever available to most societies. Amortality examines the other structural story reshaping workplaces: longer lives and the collapse of age-based expectations about careers. Good Grief, written with her mother Anne Mayer Bird after they were widowed within 41 days of each other at the start of the pandemic, has made her one of the more candid public voices on bereavement at work. She co-founded the Primadonna Festival in Suffolk in 2019 and sits on the advisory board of NOON. Senior teams book her when they want an argument about institutional change that has been tested against real media, real politics and real loss. Key speaking topics Gender equality as institutional and economic strategy Power, hierarchy and how closed institutions operate Media, journalism and political accountability Ageing, longevity and the multigenerational workforce Grief and bereavement in the workplace Founding and running a new political organisation Culture change inside legacy organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing gender, inclusion and cultural change strategy CHROs and Chief People Officers looking beyond policy to institutional redesign Leadership conferences on media, politics and public trust Employee network summits and international women’s events with a senior audience Audience outcomes A sharper account of why most inclusion programmes stall, drawn from politics, media and royal institutions, not consultancy theory An economic and institutional case for gender equality that a CFO or board member can use A clearer view of how longer lives and multigenerational workforces change talent strategy Usable language for how organisations should talk to staff about grief and bereavement A journalist’s scepticism about the difference between corporate announcement and actual structural change

Why organisations work with Adam Kingl A decade-plus of original research into how Generation Y expects to work and be led, conducted while at London Business School and Duke Corporate Education, now applied to advising boards on talent and culture strategy. Author of two books from mainstream business publishers (Next Generation Leadership with HarperCollins, Sparking Success with Kogan Page), the second shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 in the Smart Thinking category. Primary research inside the creative industries (Carnegie Hall, Disney Imagineering, Broadway theatre, the writers’ room of Friends) translated into leadership practice for companies including Pixar, Panasonic, Bosch and Netflix. Very few leadership speakers work from that source base. Adjunct teaching at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge, Imperial College Business School and the Møller Institute at Churchill College, Cambridge. These appointments come through competitive academic review and carry live executive programme responsibility. A decade as Executive Director of Thought Leadership at London Business School and Regional Managing Director (Europe) at Duke Corporate Education. He has designed and run executive development at scale, which shapes how he reads a boardroom. Biography highlights Author of Next Generation Leadership (HarperCollins, 2020) and Sparking Success (Kogan Page, 2023), the second shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 in the Smart Thinking category Former Executive Director of Thought Leadership and Learning Solutions at London Business School (nearly a decade in post) Former Regional Managing Director (Europe) at Duke Corporate Education, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University Adjunct Faculty at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge International Business School and Imperial College Business School Associate of the Møller Institute at Churchill College, University of Cambridge Contributor and interviewee for the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian, Fast Company and The Sunday Times Biography 80% of CEOs name innovation and creativity among their top three priorities. In the same surveyed organisations, 94% of employees rate their company as poor at both. That gap, between what executives say matters and what their organisations actually produce, is the starting point for most of Adam Kingl’s work. Kingl spent nearly a decade as Executive Director of Thought Leadership at London Business School, then led Duke Corporate Education’s European business as Regional Managing Director. He now teaches at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge, Imperial College Business School and the Møller Institute at Churchill College, Cambridge. His material is built and tested inside those programmes before it reaches any commercial audience. Next Generation Leadership (HarperCollins, 2020) grew out of a decade of original research into how Generation Y expects to work and be led. It treats generational change as a management design problem. Kingl’s argument is that the old playbook, built on hierarchy and productivity, produces the disengagement and attrition the same playbook is then used to diagnose. Sparking Success (Kogan Page, 2023), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in the Smart Thinking category, goes inside the arts. Carnegie Hall, Disney Imagineering, Broadway theatre and the writers’ room of Friends are interviewed on how they produce creative output under commercial pressure. Those habits are then mapped into corporate practice at Pixar, Bosch, Panasonic and Netflix. His advisory work spans the BBC, BP, Disney, HSBC, LVMH, Shell and the European Central Bank. Key speaking topics Generational paradigms in leadership Creativity and creative mindset in business Culture and talent strategy Future of work Leadership and management innovation Executive education and capability building Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reshaping leadership development for a multigenerational workforce CEOs and executive committees where stated innovation and engagement ambitions are outrunning the culture and talent practices meant to deliver them Boards and executive education programmes investing in next-generation leadership capability Learning and development leaders designing curricula for leadership at mid-career and senior level Audience outcomes A sharper diagnostic for why stated priorities on innovation and engagement keep failing to show up in organisational behaviour A set of creative practices borrowed from arts organisations (including how Pixar, Disney Imagineering and the Friends writers’ room actually work) and a route to adopting them in a corporate setting A clearer read on what younger talent actually expects from work, and which of those expectations are non-negotiable for retention A vocabulary for talking about generational differences in the workplace that avoids the usual folklore about “millennials” and “Gen Z”

Why organisations work with Dr Alex George He brings a clinician’s framework to workplace wellbeing, grounding corporate mental health conversations in the same preventative medicine thinking used on an emergency medicine ward. His policy work as the UK Government’s Youth Mental Health Ambassador gives him rare authority on what structural mental health support actually looks like at scale, from curriculum design to Early Support Hubs. Two Sunday Times bestsellers, Live Well Every Day and The Mind Manual, give his sessions a concrete toolkit audiences can take away, not a set of slogans. He connects the wellbeing agenda to the emerging workforce, with direct credibility on Gen Z mental health, early career burnout, and the intergenerational shift inside organisations. He speaks publicly about losing his brother Llyr to suicide in 2020, which turns the topic from corporate compliance into a conversation leaders feel obligated to lead. Biography highlights NHS-trained emergency medicine doctor, University Hospital Lewisham, London Medical degree, University of Exeter Medical School (2015); honorary degree from the University of Exeter (2024) First UK Government Youth Mental Health Ambassador, appointed by the Prime Minister, Department for Education (2021-2024) Author of Sunday Times bestsellers Live Well Every Day and The Mind Manual Host of Stompcast and The Waiting Room, walking and health interview podcasts Campaigner behind the Early Support Hubs initiative, which secured nearly 5 million pounds of UK government funding for open-access youth mental health drop-ins Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are built by committees. Dr Alex George builds them the way an emergency medicine doctor assesses a patient: triage the real risks first, then design habits that people will actually repeat. That clinical instinct sits underneath everything he does on stage. Training at the University of Exeter Medical School and working in emergency medicine at University Hospital Lewisham gave him a direct view of how mental and physical health present together, and how late most people arrive for help. His public profile opened a second track. In February 2021 the Prime Minister appointed him the UK’s first Youth Mental Health Ambassador, based in the Department for Education, where he spent four years shaping policy on school and college support, curriculum, and early intervention. The campaign that defines that period is Early Support Hubs. Working with the Fund the Hubs Coalition, Mind, and YoungMinds, he pushed for walk-in mental health services for young people and helped secure nearly 5 million pounds of initial UK government investment. The same logic drives his writing. Live Well Every Day and The Mind Manual, both Sunday Times bestsellers, turn clinical ideas into daily practice for a non-medical reader. For corporate audiences, that body of work translates into an unusually practical session: clinician-grade framing of the mental health risks inside a workforce, paired with habits leaders can install this quarter. In 2024 the University of Exeter awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of the campaigning. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health and employee wellbeing Preventative health and mental fitness Youth mental health and the Gen Z workforce Burnout, resilience, and recovery Public health communication and behaviour change Suicide prevention and mental health literacy for leaders Ideal for CHROs and Chief Wellbeing Officers redesigning mental health provision beyond EAP minimums Leadership teams accountable for burnout, attrition, and engagement metrics Early careers, graduate, and Gen Z talent programmes Healthcare, education, and public sector organisations with frontline workforce pressures Audience outcomes A clinician’s read on which mental health risks are most material to their workforce right now A concrete set of daily habits, drawn from his books, that leaders can model and cascade A sharper understanding of how Gen Z employees experience mental health differently, and what that means for policy and line management Practical language for leaders to open mental health conversations without overstepping into clinical territory A clear view of what structural mental health support looks like, drawn from his government policy work

Why organisations work with Lecyca Curiel A first-person Gen Z voice grounded in anthropological field research, rather than a marketing-agency reading of survey data. Affiliation with WHETSTON, the Dutch strategic foresight house that briefs senior leaders across Europe, gives her work analytical weight beyond the usual “young person on stage” booking. Track record of putting the Gen Z question in front of buyers who are unusually demanding: Walmart international executives, Google marketing managers, the European Parliament Youth Outreach Unit, BDO Norway. Recognised by Het Financieele Dagblad in its 2019 list of 50 most promising young talents in the Netherlands, a credential that signals she was taken seriously inside Dutch business media before the speaking circuit picked her up. Brings an inclusion lens shaped by Indonesian and Dutch Caribbean heritage and a Humanity in Action fellowship, so DEI inside her sessions reads as substance, not decoration. Biography highlights Generation Z researcher and keynote speaker with WHETSTON, the strategic foresight think tank founded by Thimon de Jong. Selected by Het Financieele Dagblad as one of 50 promising young talents in the Netherlands, 2019. Studied Liberal Arts and Sciences with a Cultural Anthropology focus at Erasmus University College, Rotterdam. 2019 Amsterdam Fellow with Humanity in Action; co-author of an action project on inclusive Dutch national remembrance. Speaking clients include Walmart, Google, the European Parliament Youth Outreach Unit, BDO Norway, FRED Leadership Forum, and Institute for the Future. Working anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, with projects on cultural heritage, decolonisation, and intergenerational memory. Biography Generation Z is the first cohort that grew up entirely inside the platforms most companies are still learning to manage. The numbers are familiar to any CHRO. The interpretation of those numbers, almost without exception, is filtered through people who are not part of the cohort. Lecyca Curiel works on the other side of that filter. She joined WHETSTON, the Amsterdam-based strategic foresight think tank founded by Thimon de Jong, after he scouted her at age seventeen following a public talk at the IMC Weekendschool. She has been delivering keynote work and strategic research for the firm since, with clients that include Walmart international executives, Google marketing managers, the European Parliament Youth Outreach Unit, BDO Norway, and FRED Leadership Forum. Het Financieele Dagblad named her one of 50 promising young talents in the Netherlands in 2019. Her academic grounding is in Cultural Anthropology at Erasmus University College, and she works in parallel as a documentary filmmaker on questions of heritage, memory, and decolonisation. As a 2019 Amsterdam Fellow with Humanity in Action she co-led a project on whether Dutch national remembrance is genuinely inclusive. The combination matters in the room. When she discusses what young employees actually want from work, it lands as field observation, not opinion. The argument she brings to leadership teams is narrower and harder than the usual generational keynote. Stereotypes about Gen Z are inexpensive to repeat and expensive to act on. What organisations need, on her reading, is a working model of intergenerational collaboration that makes sense to a 58-year-old executive and a 24-year-old engineer in the same conversation. That is the work she does on stage and in the strategy rooms WHETSTON is invited into. Key speaking topics Generation Z in the workforce Intergenerational collaboration Diversity, equity and inclusion from a Gen Z perspective Mental health across generations Future of work and talent retention Strategic foresight on cultural and demographic change Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent designing retention and engagement strategy for a multigenerational workforce. Boards and executive committees stress-testing assumptions about younger consumers and younger employees. DEI leads moving from awareness programmes to operational change. Leadership development teams building cross-generational management capability. Audience outcomes A clearer, evidence-based picture of what Gen Z employees and consumers actually expect, sourced from inside the cohort. Specific entry points for retention and engagement work in organisations with four or five active generations. A working language for intergenerational conversations that does not collapse into stereotype. A sharper read on where DEI commitments stall between stated policy and daily management.