Organizational Agility speakers

Why organisations work with Blaire Palmer She brings a BBC journalist’s instinct for the question leaders are avoiding, then makes the boardroom answer it in plain language. Her book Punks in Suits gives organisations a shared vocabulary for why old management habits, not strategy, are the real brake on growth. She has coached boards and executive teams across Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so the challenge lands with commercial credibility. She runs That People Thing as her own consultancy, which means the keynote is the leading edge of a deeper body of work on leadership transformation, not a standalone act. Biography highlights Chief Executive and founder of That People Thing, a leadership consultancy working with boards and executive teams on culture and change. Author of four books including Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation (Rethink Press, 2024) and What’s Wrong with Work? (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). Former producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where she spent a decade in UK news and current affairs. Trained as one of Europe’s first accredited executive coaches after leaving the BBC. Named clients include Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Govia Thameslink Railway, and Centre for Army Leadership. Regular contributor to Medium and Authority Magazine on leadership and the future of work. Biography Most organisations are not structured to change. They are structured to protect the habits that made them successful, and the people defending those habits are often the most senior in the room. Palmer’s work starts from that observation and builds out. She spent a decade as a producer on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, interrogating ministers and chief executives at eight minutes past seven in the morning. The habit of asking the uncomfortable question did not leave her when she moved into coaching at 29. It became the method. Since then she has spent more than two decades advising boards and executive teams at Airbus, Roche, Mattel, Santander, The FA, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She founded That People Thing to house that work. Her fourth book, Punks in Suits: How to Lead the Workplace Reformation, published by Rethink Press in 2024, sets out the argument that entrenched management orthodoxy, not competitive pressure, is what stalls most organisations trying to evolve. What a senior team gets from her is rare in the category. She has the reporter’s ability to cut through executive language, the coach’s patience to stay with a difficult conversation, and a published thesis specific enough to be argued with. That makes the keynote a starting point for a real internal debate rather than a motivational interval. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and change Workplace reformation and culture Trust and candour in senior teams Future of work Decision-making under pressure Leadership myths and orthodoxies Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing a culture or performance inflection point. CHROs and chief people officers leading leadership development at scale. CEOs integrating acquisitions or navigating a strategic reset. Leadership conferences for senior management populations. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership habits are acting as a ceiling on organisational performance. A specific argument, drawn from Punks in Suits, that senior teams can take back into their own decision forums. Language for the conversations leaders have been avoiding with peers and direct reports. Recognition that culture and strategy move together, and a concrete starting point for aligning them.

Why organisations work with Brian Keating His argument about incentive systems is not borrowed from management theory. He conceived a Nobel-contending experiment, experienced a public retraction, served as a Nobel nominator, and co-founded the Simons Observatory: a $100M project involving 380+ scientists across 40+ institutions. The authority is operational. Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018) makes a specific structural case that endorsers including Brian Greene and reviewers in Nature, Science, and Scientific American have engaged with seriously: the systems organisations use to reward individuals actively prevent the inclusive, rigorous, collaborative work that produces real discovery. Into the Impossible (2021) draws from first-person conversations with 11 Nobel laureates to identify the specific mental habits (disciplined curiosity, tolerance for failure, sustained collaboration), that distinguish people who achieve genuine breakthroughs from those who optimise for recognition. He gives boards and senior leaders a precise structural vocabulary for why innovation programmes underperform: not insufficient ambition or budget, but reward architecture that was never designed for collaborative, long-horizon work. As co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, he bridges frontier scientific thinking and the broader question of how organisations cultivate the conditions for original thought. Biography highlights Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California San Diego Principal Investigator and co-founder, Simons Observatory – a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert involving 380+ scientists and engineers from 40+ institutions, with approximately $100M in funding raised Inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) telescope; co-leads the POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments Author of Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018), reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by theoretical physicist Brian Greene Author of Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), drawing on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics, economics, and beyond U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; Fellow of the American Physical Society; Buchalter Cosmology Prize; 2022 Legend of Flight, International Air & Space Hall of Fame Host of the Into the Impossible podcast – long-form conversations with Nobel laureates, scientists, and technologists – with more than 200,000 subscribers Biography Organisations that fund innovation but reward speed tend to get neither. The dynamic is structural, not cultural: when recognition flows to individuals who move fast and announce loudly, the slow, rigorous, collaborative work that genuine breakthroughs require becomes a career liability. Brian Keating has spent more than two decades inside that tension. Not observing it from the outside, but navigating it at the frontier of experimental cosmology. Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, a four-telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert that he co-founded in 2016. The project grew to involve more than 380 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, with Keating raising approximately $100 million in funding from the Simons Foundation. Keating teaches undergraduate quantum mechanics at UC San Diego in the same weeks he records long-form conversations with Nobel laureates on the Into the Impossible podcast. Guests have included Roger Penrose, Frank Wilczek, Sara Seager, and Andrei Linde. Active experimental research alongside sustained engagement with the field’s most consequential thinkers is the working basis from which he addresses two questions senior audiences are now asking him directly: what AI does to the scientific method, and what is happening to the research university as a credentialing and funding institution. Managing that collaboration across disciplines, institutions, competitive pressures, and high-stakes scientific uncertainty is the practical foundation on which his speeches rest. That argument appears explicitly in Losing the Nobel Prize (W.W. Norton, 2018). Keating, who conceived the original BICEP telescope and was closely involved in the BICEP2 collaboration whose findings made global headlines before being retracted, uses the experience to make a case that extends well beyond physics: the Nobel Prize, as structured, rewards individual speed and competition while punishing the inclusive, methodical, collaborative work that real discoveries require. Reviewed in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, and endorsed by physicist Brian Greene, the book gives senior audiences a precise structural vocabulary for a problem most organisations recognise but struggle to name. The follow-up volumes, Into the Impossible (2021) and Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (2025), draw on first-person interviews with Nobel laureates across physics and economics to identify the working habits that distinguish genuine breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition. Keating is also co-director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination at UC San Diego, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a 2022 Legend of Flight inductee at the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. His podcast, also titled Into the Impossible, has reached more than 200,000 subscribers and has hosted over 11 Nobel Prize winners. Key speaking topics Incentive systems, innovation culture, and the structural conditions for breakthrough Large-scale scientific collaboration and high-stakes research leadership AI and the future of scientific discovery, peer review, and the research workflow The structural future of higher education and the research university Cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, and the science of the early universe The culture of ambition and discovery in high-performance environments Failure, resilience, and the creative habits of exceptional thinkers The future of curiosity-driven research in an era of AI and data Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leaders, and boards wrestling with why innovation programmes underdeliver Senior executive teams in science- and technology-intensive industries (pharma, aerospace, deep tech, energy) where collaboration at scale is a strategic challenge University presidents, provosts, and trustee boards addressing the AI-driven restructuring of higher education and the legitimacy questions facing research institutions Foundations, philanthropic funders of science, and policy bodies designing the next generation of research grants, prizes, and incentive structures Audience outcomes A clear structural diagnosis of why incentive systems that reward individual speed and visibility tend to suppress the collaborative, rigorous work that genuine breakthroughs require Practical examples – drawn from one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the past decade – of how large, distributed collaborations can be designed and sustained under uncertainty A set of mental habits and working practices, sourced from conversations with Nobel laureates, that distinguish breakthrough thinkers from those who optimise for recognition A more precise vocabulary for discussing innovation culture with boards and leadership teams – one grounded in evidence, not aspiration Perspective on how organisational ambition can be redirected from visible short-term wins toward the patient, inclusive work that produces durable results

Why organisations work with Caspar Berry Berry’s argument has a mathematical foundation, not just a motivational one: every decision is an allocation of scarce resources under uncertainty, and the mathematics of that process produce outcomes that are counterintuitive and consistently misread by leaders operating on instinct and habit. He makes the case, grounded in decision-making science, not poker storytelling, that risk aversion is not conservatism but a measurable source of underperformance; organisations leave value on the table not by taking too many risks but by taking the wrong ones for the wrong reasons. The poker metaphor functions as a precision instrument: it makes uncertainty undeniable in a way that corporate language typically suppresses, which creates genuine permission for leaders to reexamine how they decide rather than simply defending what they have always done. Berry has taken this framework to audiences at RiskMinds International (the senior financial risk conference) and to the UK Home Office leadership, demonstrating that the argument holds at both the technically demanding and the culturally complex ends of the risk conversation. Over 400 Mind Gym training sessions and more than 2,500 keynotes across 30 countries have stress-tested and refined the material against organisations from Google and KPMG to Morgan Stanley and Barclays, audiences where the argument must be robust, not just engaging. Biography highlights MA in Economics and Anthropology, Cambridge University Professional poker player, Las Vegas: three years competing against leading professionals on the circuit Co-founded Twenty First Century Media; built to 40 people; sold to Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps Plc in 2008 Poker adviser on the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale; co-presenter of Sky Poker and host of Poker Night Live Trainer, The Mind Gym: over 400 sessions delivered to 100+ companies Contributor, Financial Risks Today, on behavioural risk and decision-making, for financial risk professionals TEDxAcademy: “Dealing with Uncertainty”; featured speaker, RiskMinds International ‘Best New Speaker’, Academy of Chief Executives, 2008; Fellow of the RSA Over 2,500 speeches and workshops in 30+ countries; clients include Google, IBM, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, PayPal, Shell and the UK Home Office Biography Caspar Berry studied economics at Cambridge, spent three years as a professional poker player in Las Vegas, built and sold a media company, and then built one of the more rigorous arguments in the speaking world for why most organisations are making worse decisions than they think. The career arc is unusual. The intellectual case it produces is the point. The core argument is mathematical before it is motivational. Berry treats every decision as an investment; an allocation of scarce resources under conditions of uncertainty. Decision-making science, he argues, reveals a set of counterintuitive implications that consistently lead intelligent leaders astray: some decisions that feel prudent are quantifiably expensive; some that feel reckless are simply the rational choice. Poker, where uncertainty is undeniable and unambiguous, is the vehicle through which those implications become accessible. After Las Vegas, Berry co-founded Twenty First Century Media, built it to 40 staff and sold it to Ten Alps Plc. He spent several years as a trainer at The Mind Gym (over 400 sessions across more than 100 companies) before establishing his own practice. He has since delivered over 2,500 keynotes and workshops in more than 30 countries, for clients ranging from Google, IBM and PayPal to Morgan Stanley, Barclays and the UK Home Office. He has spoken at RiskMinds International alongside senior financial risk professionals and contributes to Financial Risks Today on behavioural risk and decision-making. Berry holds a Fellowship of the RSA and was named Best New Speaker by the Academy of Chief Executives in 2008. His TEDxAcademy talk on uncertainty has been cited by investment firms as a reference point for decision-making under ambiguity. The argument is neither a poker book nor a leadership manifesto. It is a framework for thinking about risk – and it is specific enough to be genuinely useful. Key speaking topics Risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty The mathematics and psychology of risk Organisational risk culture and innovation Intuition, judgement and cognitive bias in high-stakes decisions Calculated risk as competitive strategy Fear of failure and long-term performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive boards examining risk appetite, innovation culture, or strategic decision-making Strategy and transformation leads responsible for shifting how their organisations act under uncertainty Financial services, professional services, and consulting firms where risk literacy is commercially material Conference programmers building around leadership, performance, or organisational resilience Audience outcomes A reframing of risk: from a hazard to be minimised to a resource to be understood and allocated deliberately Working understanding of how decision-making science applies to everyday business choices; including the counterintuitive implications most leaders have never been taught Greater awareness of how intuition and cognitive bias distort risk assessment, and practical means of compensating Organisational language and permission to discuss risk appetite at leadership level with precision rather than generality A renewed confidence to act under uncertainty rather than waiting for a certainty that will not arrive

Why organisations work with Caspar Craven His Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle give leadership teams a named, structured framework for changing how they think and act under pressure, not a set of borrowed principles, but a system built and tested through his own experience of pursuing extreme goals in commercial and offshore environments. His background as a KPMG Associate Director and CFO, including a technology business exit to a listed company, grounds the material in commercial and financial reality, making it credible with boards, finance teams and senior executive audiences, not only culture or L&D audiences. The argument he makes is unusual: that the behaviours required to hold a team together on a two-year ocean voyage are the same behaviours that determine whether a leadership team delivers or stalls, and he can evidence that claim from both sides of the equation. The Big Bold Circle’s 20 principles connect individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, giving buyers a framework that extends beyond the event into coaching, offsites and leadership programmes. Organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group and Burberry rebook him, evidence that the material holds up under repeated use with commercially sophisticated audiences. Biography highlights Author of three Bloomsbury-published books: Where the Magic Happens, Be More Human: Rethinking the Rules of High-Performance Teamwork, and The Big Bold Mindset: Re-thinking the Rules of Leadership Former Associate Director at KPMG; former CFO in the technology sector, including a business sold to Private Equity Built, scaled and sold a technology business to a stock market listed company Team leader on trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01) Captain of family circumnavigation (2014/16), leading a crew that included three children under ten Speaker for global organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry, Standard Life and BAE Systems Biography Most leadership teams do not lack ambition. They lack the thinking that holds when ambition meets sustained pressure. Caspar Craven has spent three decades studying that gap, in FTSE-boardroom pressure, in the execution risk of building and selling a technology business, and in the conditions of offshore sailing, and building the frameworks that close it. His commercial background is foundational. As an Associate Director at KPMG and then CFO of a technology business sold to Private Equity, Craven worked inside the financial and strategic pressures that boards and senior leadership teams actually face. He then built and exited his own technology company, selling it to a listed firm for a seven-figure sum. That sequence – corporate discipline, then ownership, then entrepreneurial risk – is the basis of his credibility with finance, commercial and executive audiences. The two round-the-world sailing voyages are not adventure narrative. The first, as a team leader on a trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01), tested leadership under competitive pressure and physical exhaustion. The second (2014/16), as captain of a family crew including three young children, tested something harder: sustaining shared values, clear roles and collaborative decision-making over two years in an environment where the cost of poor leadership is immediate and real. Both voyages provided the evidence base for the frameworks he now teaches. That evidence base is formalised in the Big Bold Mindset® and the Big Bold Circle, 20 principles connecting individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, published across three Bloomsbury books. The framework has been applied with leadership teams at Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry and Standard Life, among others. The core argument is practical: that the gap between ambitious goals and actual delivery is a thinking and behaviour problem, and that it can be addressed systematically. Key speaking topics Leadership mindset and behavioural change High-performance team dynamics Goal-setting and execution under pressure Decision-making in uncertainty Resilience and organisational adaptability Entrepreneurship and business growth Culture change and human-centred leadership Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees setting ambitious growth or transformation targets CHROs and L&D leaders designing leadership development programmes, particularly for high-potential talent or senior cohorts Commercial and sales organisations at annual kick-offs or strategic resets Boards and C-suite audiences navigating significant change, M&A, or sustained performance pressure Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (The Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle) applicable immediately to their own goals, team dynamics and leadership behaviours Clearer understanding of why leadership teams stall under pressure, and what specifically needs to change in how they think and make decisions Practical approaches to aligning teams around ambitious goals, reducing execution friction and sustaining momentum through setbacks A shared vocabulary for discussing leadership mindset and team behaviour that moves beyond generic or abstract concepts Renewed confidence in pursuing bold goals, grounded in evidence and principle rather than motivation alone

Why organisations work with Cathy O’Dowd Her central argument that internal team dynamics, not the external environment, are the primary source of failure in high-performing groups, is drawn from specific, documented expeditions and maps directly onto the decisions senior leadership teams are already wrestling with. The 1996 South African Everest expedition provides one of the most detailed public case studies of a high-performing team collapsing through ego and power-play, then recovering to reach the summit. That arc of breakdown, diagnosis and recommitment is the substance of the work. Her participation in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat (a first ascent of a 10-kilometre ridgeline that had defeated ten previous international expeditions) provides a tested model for executing ambitious objectives when the plan meets an unpredictable environment and must adapt in real time. She makes a specific, counterintuitive claim: that most failures in extreme environments are self-created. This challenges how many organisations locate and manage risk, and gives leaders a different set of questions to ask of their own teams. As a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its highest honour, the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she brings the structural rigour of a career speaker to content that has been tested in front of senior corporate audiences across 46+ countries. Biography highlights First woman to summit Everest from both its south (1996) and north (1999) sides – an unmatched record in mountaineering history First South African to summit Everest; member of the First South African Everest Expedition (1996) Fourth woman to climb Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2000) Participant in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat – a first ascent of one of the last major unclimbed lines on an 8,000-metre peak; the summit pair were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or Author of Just for the Love of It; co-author of Everest: Free to Decide Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland; recipient of the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, the PSA’s highest honour Master’s degree in Journalism, Rhodes University; former university lecturer Professional speaker for 27+ years; presented to organisations in 46+ countries on six continents Biography Most teams of ambitious, capable people contain the seeds of their own failure. Not because the external environment defeats them, but because the competition between high-performers: the very drive that brought them to the room, erodes the collaboration they need to succeed. Cathy O’Dowd watched this happen in real time, at altitude, with lives in the balance. O’Dowd became the first woman to summit Everest from both its south and north sides, completing the south-side ascent in 1996 and returning for the north in 1999. What formed her thinking was not the summits but the crisis that preceded the first: the in-fighting, power-plays, and near-disintegration of a team that had every credential to succeed. Her analysis of that expedition: what broke, what was rebuilt, and how the team reached the top despite itself, is the foundation of her corporate work. Her second major case study is the 2012 Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, a 10-kilometre Himalayan ridgeline that had repelled ten previous international expeditions. The six-person team committed to a first ascent with no existing blueprint and had to adapt in real time as the plan met a complex, unforgiving environment. Two teammates completed the ascent and were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or, mountaineering’s most prestigious prize. O’Dowd uses this expedition as a model for executing ambitious objectives when certainty is unavailable and the original plan cannot hold. A Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she has presented in 46+ countries over 27 years. She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University, where she also lectured. Her presentations are built not on inspiration but on diagnosis: specific, transferable analysis of why high-performing groups succeed and fail under pressure. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership in high-stakes environments Executing ambitious plans under uncertainty Resilience, failure, and recovery Risk, responsibility, and the limits of control Adapting strategy when execution meets reality Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes decisions under uncertainty Organisations running ambitious transformation, innovation, or change programmes Leadership conferences centred on team performance and organisational resilience Boards and executive committees examining risk, accountability, and decision-making frameworks Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic framework for understanding why high-performing teams fail from within, not from outside Practical analysis of how ego, competition, and communication breakdown manifest under pressure, and how to interrupt those patterns A case-study model for adapting ambitious plans when execution meets an unpredictable environment A reframed understanding of organisational risk: internal dynamics as a primary variable, not just external conditions Greater clarity on what leadership under genuine uncertainty looks and feels like, drawn from real decisions with irreversible consequences

Why organisations work with Cedric Dumont His performance model comes from environments where a lapse in judgement is fatal. More than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps sit behind what he teaches about decision-making under pressure. A degree in High Performance Psychology gives him the mechanism behind the experience: what a fear response does to attention, and what conditions restore it. In wingsuit flight, flow is the operating condition for survival. He teaches leaders the attention and emotional-regulation practices that produce it. The Courage, Focus and Trust framework he speaks on has been in print since Dare to Jump in 2020, so organisations can embed it in a development programme rather than treating the keynote as a one-off. He works in English, French and Dutch, which makes him practical for European leadership events that cross language and market. Biography highlights Red Bull athlete since 2000 and a pioneer of BASE jumping and wingsuit flying, with more than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps, three X Games appearances, third place in the Skysurfing World Cup and a win at the Brazilian Open of Skysurfing Records include the first BASE jump from the Vilnius TV Tower, Lithuania’s tallest structure, in 2009, the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado (384m) and the Jin-Mao Tower in Shanghai (431m) Flew the first wingsuit flight witnessed by the Great Pyramids of Giza in January 2015, filmed by Red Bull as Leap of Wonder Degree in High Performance Psychology, with over a decade coaching elite athletes and advising organisations Author of Dare to Jump (Lannoo Campus, 2020) and Defy Gravity (Lannoo Campus, 2025, distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster) Clients include PwC Belgium, Brussels Airport, Le Pain Quotidien, Spadel and Groupe Mestdagh Biography Vilnius TV Tower had never been BASE jumped before 2009. Cedric Dumont went off it with a toilet roll as his only means of reading the wind, falling for four seconds before the parachute opened. Shanghai’s Jin-Mao Tower at 431 metres and the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado followed, and in January 2015 he flew the first wingsuit flight witnessed by the Great Pyramids of Giza. More than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps sit behind those records. He has been a Red Bull athlete since 2000 and holds a degree in High Performance Psychology. Three decades in environments with almost no margin for error have gone into working out why some people think clearly there and others do not. In wingsuit flight, flow is the condition under which the jump is survivable. Dare to Jump, published by Lannoo Campus in 2020, sets out three skills he argues are trainable: a boundless mindset, sharp focus, and trust inside a team. Defy Gravity followed in 2025, distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster. The claim across both books is that emotional regulation and sustained attention under stress are built deliberately, the way an athlete builds them. He has taken this work to CEOs and senior teams across Europe, including PwC Belgium, Brussels Airport, Le Pain Quotidien, Spadel and Groupe Mestdagh. His TEDx talks are “You flow or you die” at TEDxUHasselt and “When Women Succeed, We All Win” on TED.com. He works in English, French and Dutch. Key speaking topics High-performance psychology under pressure Flow state and peak cognitive performance Fear management and intelligent risk-taking Decision-making under pressure Resilience and emotional regulation Attention management and deep focus Energy management and sustainable performance Trust and team performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams carrying an organisation through transformation or prolonged uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads building performance and resilience capability across a leadership population High-potential cohorts in executive development programmes Intact leadership teams where trust and candour are the constraint on performance Audience outcomes A model of what stress does to attention and judgement, and what reverses it Emotional-regulation techniques for use in high-stakes meetings and decisions A working definition of flow and the conditions that reliably produce it Language for building trust inside a team so that problems surface early A clearer view of the gap between knowing what to do and doing it under pressure, and methods for closing it

Why organisations work with Chris Roebuck He designed and ran the leadership programme for UBS’s top 500 that is now taught at Harvard Business School as UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm. Few speakers can point to a live HBS case as evidence that their approach works at scale. He coined the corporate application of entrepreneurial leadership and has spent twenty years refining it in banks, government, healthcare, and the military. The Wikipedia entry on entrepreneurial leadership cites his definition. He operates as a practitioner first and a speaker second: former British Army officer, Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank, Global Head of Leadership at UBS, Head of Culture Change at London Underground. The credibility in a boardroom is built in. HR Magazine named him one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, and inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame in 2025. That is the longest sustained recognition of any thinker on the list. Biography highlights Global Head of Leadership and Talent, UBS (2004 onward), leading the development programme for the bank’s top 500 leaders that became Harvard Business School case UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership, Cass Business School (2009–2021, the institution later rebranded Bayes) Inducted into the HR Hall of Fame by HR Magazine, July 2025; named one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers ten times between 2009 and 2021, a record on the list Author of five leadership books, including Lead to Succeed (2014) and Strategic Leadership Development, co-authored with Professor Colin Carnall Expert panel member for the UK Government’s Engaging for Success review (2009), and author of The King’s Fund report on NHS leadership (2011) Contributor to Newsweek; quoted on leadership and organisational performance in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review China; 350+ television interviews across BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Sky, and Al Jazeera Biography UBS between 2002 and 2006 is a useful place to start. A newly integrated global bank, 70,000 staff, a top team of 500 whose behaviour had to shift if the merger was going to hold. Chris Roebuck was the person, as Global Head of Leadership and Talent, who designed and ran the programme that got that behavioural shift. The work is now a Harvard Business School case study, UBS: Towards the Integrated Firm, and it is where the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, taking the behaviours of successful entrepreneurs and transplanting them into a large corporate, was first systematically applied in the corporate world. That practitioner record sits behind everything he now says from a stage. Before UBS, he was Head of Management Development at HSBC Investment Bank and ran culture change at London Underground during the partial privatisation. After UBS, he was commissioned by The King’s Fund to report to the UK Government on leadership in the NHS, and sat on the expert panel behind Engaging for Success, the UK Government’s review of employee engagement. He was Honorary Visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership at Cass Business School, now Bayes, from 2009 to 2021. The argument Roebuck brings to senior audiences is a hard one, because it refuses the usual levers. He tells leaders that the performance they are looking for is not hiding in a new strategy, a new tech stack, or a restructure. It is hiding in the way their top 200 people behave on a Tuesday morning. His Accelerate Your Success approach is built to make that behavioural gap visible, then close it, with the bottom line as the test. HR Magazine has named him one of its Most Influential Thinkers ten times; in July 2025 it inducted him into the HR Hall of Fame. The rare thing he does is connect that leadership argument to hard numbers. He is a trained economist, not a behavioural coach; he served as an officer in the British Army before moving into business; he has run programmes inside a global bank, the UK Civil Service, and a 1.4-million-person healthcare system. When he says ten percent of organisational performance is sitting unused, the claim is backed by work done at UBS, in the NHS, and at KPMG rather than by a slide deck. Key speaking topics Leadership during integration, transformation, and culture change Entrepreneurial leadership in large organisations Senior team behaviour and executive performance Talent identification and leadership pipelines Employee engagement as an organisational lever Leadership in conditions of uncertainty Human leadership in the AI era Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and C-suite teams running integrations, post-merger transformations, or major operating model change CHROs and Chief People Officers building a leadership and talent strategy that senior business leaders will take seriously Board and executive committee offsites where the subject is how top leadership needs to behave differently for the organisation to perform Public sector and military audiences looking at leadership reform in large, complex institutions Audience outcomes A clear view of where performance is being lost inside their own organisation, and which leadership behaviours are causing it The specific mechanics of how entrepreneurial leadership was built at UBS, and which elements transfer to their own sector A short set of actions senior leaders can take in the weeks after the session, tied to business outcomes rather than general development A more useful language for talking about leadership with their board, their HR function, and their top 100

Why organisations work with Christian Horner He rebuilt Red Bull Racing’s championship standing twice. The two dominant eras – 2010 to 2013 and 2021 to 2023 – are separated by eight years of Mercedes dominance, making his leadership record one of the few in elite sport that spans genuine decline and recovery, not just a single peak. His pivotal talent decisions include recruiting Adrian Newey from McLaren, developing Sebastian Vettel through the junior system, and promoting Max Verstappen mid-season at 18 – each a bold call taken before the outcome was certain, with verifiable long-term consequences. He ran an independent, UK-based team against factory-backed rivals with greater institutional resources and outcompeted them twice, on culture, structure, and strategic clarity rather than budget. His tenure included real organisational pressures – an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022, the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024, and sustained management conflict at parent company level – providing concrete case material on keeping an organisation competitive through reputational and structural challenge. He initiated Red Bull Powertrains and a long-term technical partnership with Ford – a decision to internalise a critical competitive dependency, taken while actively defending championship positions, with consequences measured in performance and cost over a decade. Biography highlights Former Team Principal and CEO, Red Bull Racing, 2005-2025 – longest-serving team principal in the sport during that period 14 Formula 1 World Championship titles: 8 Drivers’ Championships and 6 Constructors’, plus 124 Grand Prix victories Appointed youngest Team Principal in Formula 1 history at age 31 – a record unbroken at the point of his departure in 2025 Founded Arden International; led the team to three consecutive International Formula 3000 teams’ championships (2002-2004) before entering Formula 1 management OBE (2013) and CBE (2024) for services to motorsport Key verified talent decisions include recruiting chief designer Adrian Newey from McLaren and promoting Max Verstappen to the senior team mid-season at 18 Biography Red Bull Racing won its first Formula 1 World Championship in 2010 and its most recent in 2023 – thirteen years apart, with eight years of Mercedes dominance in between. Christian Horner CBE was Team Principal and CEO for all of it. Building the team from an uncompetitive acquisition into a championship operation required bold early decisions. Horner recruited Adrian Newey from McLaren as chief technical architect and developed Sebastian Vettel through the Red Bull junior system. Within five seasons, the team had moved from the back of the grid to world champions. The second era required different thinking. When regulation changes in 2014 ended the first dominant run, Horner navigated nearly eight years without a championship before switching engine supplier from Renault to Honda and promoting Max Verstappen from the junior team mid-season at 18. The four consecutive Drivers’ Championships from 2021 followed from decisions taken when those outcomes were far from certain. Horner led the organisation through an FIA budget cap penalty in 2022 and the departure of lead technical architect Newey in 2024. His CBE (2024), following an OBE (2013), marks national recognition for a record of 14 World Championships and 124 Grand Prix victories built across two decades. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Decision-making under competitive pressure Talent identification, succession, and bold recruitment Competitive strategy across long performance cycles Organisational culture in elite performance environments Leading through regulatory and structural change Sustaining resilience across extended performance cycles Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards responsible for multi-year performance strategy CHROs and people leaders building talent pipelines in high-competition environments CEOs and managing directors leading organisations through competitive disruption or market shifts Transformation leads managing capability builds across multiple cycles Audience outcomes A concrete framework for distinguishing a performance system from a performance moment, and what it takes to build the former. Insight into talent decisions that compound over multiple competitive cycles, drawn from specific, verifiable recruitment and succession calls. Practical lessons in leading through genuine organisational crises – reputational, structural, and competitive – without losing competitive function. Clarity on the leadership differences between building for a first win and sustaining advantage when rivals close the gap. Case examples drawn from 20 years of high-stakes decisions with traceable long-term consequences.

Why organisations work with Costas Andriopoulos He has built one of the most cited academic foundations for organisational ambidexterity, the discipline of running exploitation and exploration in parallel, and translates it into language a leadership team can act on rather than admire. His 2009 Organization Science paper with Marianne Lewis is on most senior reading lists in the field, which gives the boardroom conversation a defensible reference point when innovation budgets come under pressure. “Purposeful Curiosity” gives leaders a working method for the awkward middle of an innovation cycle, where the question is not whether to explore but how to keep the inquiry productive when results are slow. As founder of Bayes X, he runs a live research programme on disruption with corporate partners, so the case material he brings to a session is current rather than historical. He has acted as thematic advisor on the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF, giving him a working view of how capital markets currently price the very disruption that operating leaders are trying to manage. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bayes Business School, City, University of London Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, Bayes Business School Founder and Director, Bayes X, the school’s Research Centre for Innovation and Disruption Director, Avyssos Advisors Ltd., innovation management consultancy Author, “Purposeful Curiosity” (Yellow Kite/Hachette, 2022), endorsed by Adam Grant Co-author, “Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation” (5th edition, Sage, 2024) Research published in Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, and California Management Review Thematic advisor to the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF Biography The hardest problem inside an established firm is not whether to innovate. It is how to keep the innovation agenda alive against the gravitational pull of the existing business. Costas Andriopoulos has spent two decades building the academic and practical answer to that question. His 2009 paper with Marianne Lewis in Organization Science set out how ambidextrous firms hold exploitation and exploration in productive tension rather than collapsing one into the other. The work has become a reference point for how senior teams discuss the paradox of running today’s business while building tomorrow’s. He has continued that line of research through articles in Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning and California Management Review. At Bayes Business School he holds the chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, serves as Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, and founded the Bayes X Centre for Innovation and Disruption. Through Avyssos Advisors he works with founders and corporate leadership teams; through the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF advisory work he sees the same disruption priced by capital markets. “Purposeful Curiosity,” published by Yellow Kite in 2022 and endorsed by Adam Grant, took that research base to a wider audience. Its argument is operational rather than inspirational: curiosity becomes useful only when it is structured, directed, and protected against the day-to-day demands that crowd it out. That is the brief he brings into a leadership room. Key speaking topics Organisational ambidexterity Disruptive innovation in established firms Purposeful curiosity as a leadership discipline Innovation portfolio management Entrepreneurial mindset inside corporates Leading creative teams The paradox of exploitation and exploration Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding both a profitability and a growth mandate Chief Innovation Officers and heads of R&D under board pressure to show returns from exploration CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development programmes that include innovation capability Founders and senior leadership teams of scale-ups moving from a single product to a portfolio Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the paradox of running today’s business while building the next one A defensible reference framework, drawn from peer-reviewed research, for protecting the exploration agenda inside an established firm A working method for converting individual curiosity into a managed organisational practice Examples of how ambidextrous firms structure decisions, incentives and team design to hold both modes at once

Why organisations work with Costas Markides His “Fast Second” argument runs directly counter to first-mover advantage orthodoxy: established firms should let small entrepreneurial companies take the risk of discovering new markets, then move in as consolidators once a market has been validated. That counter-intuitive thesis – developed with Paul Geroski and shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year – changes how organisations think about where to place innovation investment. His framework for “playing two business models at the same time” addresses a structural problem that most strategy advice sidesteps: how a firm competes in its existing market while also contesting the model that is disrupting it. He identifies specific conditions under which this works, and the organisational reasons why it usually fails. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact case study credits his work as the first to identify the “business model” as a concept distinct from product innovation – a distinction that gives organisations a more precise lens for analysing competitive threats and deciding which type of response a given disruption actually demands. His ideas on business model innovation have been formally adopted by Nestlé, Roche, and If Insurance as the basis for executive transformation programmes – documented in the REF 2014 public record, not claimed from a speaker circuit. He has appeared on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers every year since 2005, and was ranked 31st in 2011 – a sustained peer recognition that reflects a body of work rather than a single book cycle. Biography highlights Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School (since 1990) MBA and DBA, Harvard Business School; BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics, Boston University Thinkers50 listing every year since 2005; ranked 31st in 2011; named in Forbes.com “Most Influential Management Gurus” 2009 Author of six books including Fast Second (shortlisted FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year 2005) and All the Right Moves (shortlisted Igor Ansoff Strategic Management Award 2000) Published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal Board of Directors, Strategic Management Society; World Economic Forum participant, Davos Biography The hardest question for an established company facing disruption is not whether to respond – it is which response will not destroy the model that made it successful. Costas Markides has spent three decades at London Business School studying exactly that problem, building a body of research that challenges the accepted wisdom on disruption at almost every point. His most counter-intuitive contribution is the “Fast Second” thesis, developed with Paul Geroski: large established companies are structurally poor at discovering radical new markets and should not try to be first. Their role is to move in once a market has been validated – as consolidators, not pioneers. That argument, shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year, reframes how organisations think about where innovation investment belongs. His subsequent research sharpened the strategic question further. Game-Changing Strategies (2008) and Business Model Innovation (2023) identify the conditions under which an established firm can disrupt its own disruptor – and the structural reasons most firms fail when they try. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact assessment credits his work as the first to distinguish “business model innovation” from product innovation as a separate strategic concept – a distinction now embedded in how companies like Nestlé and Roche have approached their own transformation programmes. Markides holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership and has held a faculty position at LBS since 1990. His appearance on the Thinkers50 list every year since 2005 reflects continuity of contribution rather than a single publication; his most recent book, Diversification in the World of Data and AI (2025), extends his long-running framework into the context of AI-driven market change. Key speaking topics Business model innovation for established firms Strategic response to disruption Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation culture Strategic innovation and new market creation Growth strategy for incumbents Managing two business models simultaneously Diversification strategy in the age of AI Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams at large established companies facing competitive disruption Boards and senior executive teams evaluating major decisions about business model change or market entry Executive education cohorts focused on corporate strategy, innovation leadership, and competitive positioning Transformation leads and heads of innovation at organisations initiating enterprise-wide strategic renewal Audience outcomes A framework for categorising the type of disruption the organisation faces and the range of available responses Understanding of why the most commonly reached-for responses to disruption tend to fail, based on documented research rather than case-study selection bias A practical structure for assessing when and how to pursue two business models simultaneously without fracturing the existing one Clearer distinction between business model innovation and product innovation as strategic challenges requiring different organisational approaches A more accurate mental model of when large established firms can realistically pioneer new markets – and when they should not try

Why organisations work with Dame Katherine Grainger Her perspective on high performance is not borrowed from sport – it is built from two decades of competing at the Olympic level and then eight years as the senior leader responsible for the entire British elite sport system as Chair of UK Sport. The result is a rare, system-level view of what makes performance culture work. She completed a PhD at King’s College London – in law, on whole life sentencing – while training for and winning Olympic gold. That combination is not incidental. It gives her a credible argument about how sustained focus, long-term discipline, and intellectual rigour reinforce rather than compete with each other. Her autobiography Dreams Do Come True is built around the specific psychology of returning to compete after three consecutive near-misses. For any organisation struggling with how to sustain commitment after a setback, or how to build a team that performs when the moment actually comes, this is directly applicable material. As the first female Chair of the British Olympic Association in its 120-year history – and a crossbench Life Peer since 2025 – she carries institutional authority that extends well beyond the speaking circuit. Boards and senior leadership teams treat her not as an external voice but as a peer. She speaks to the leadership question that Olympic sport uniquely tests: how do you create the conditions for someone else to succeed, rather than performing yourself? Her shift from competing to governing elite sport is the lived version of a challenge every senior leader faces. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist (London 2012) and four-time Olympic silver medallist – the only British woman to win medals at five consecutive Olympic Games (2000-2016) Six-time World Champion with eight World Championship medals; voted Britain’s first “Olympians’ Olympian” by fellow Olympians Chair of UK Sport 2017-2025; Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025 – the first female chair in the BOA’s 120-year history DBE 2017 for services to sport and charity; Life Peer (Baroness Grainger, crossbench) from 2025 PhD in law (the sentencing of homicide), King’s College London; Fellow of King’s College London; first female Chancellor of the University of Glasgow (2020-) Author of Dreams Do Come True (2013), self-written autobiography reviewed by the Financial Times and The Observer; BBC broadcaster for Rowing World Cup coverage and the 2014 Commonwealth Games Biography Katherine Grainger won an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 – alongside Anna Watkins, setting an Olympic record in the double sculls – after three consecutive Olympic silvers. She then returned to the water, two years after considering retirement, and won a fourth silver in Rio in 2016. Across those sixteen years, she also completed three law degrees, including a PhD at King’s College London, written during the same period she was training for Olympic gold. That combination is her argument. The discipline required to stay in pursuit of a goal across multiple cycles of failure and recommitment – and to do so while building intellectual capability in parallel – is not an athletic phenomenon. It is a leadership one. Her speaking draws directly on that experience: not as inspiration, but as a practical framework for what organisations actually need to sustain performance at the highest level. Her post-competitive career has given that argument institutional weight. As Chair of UK Sport from 2017 to 2025, she was responsible for the strategy and governance of British elite sport as a whole – funding decisions, performance standards, safeguarding, inclusion. As Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025, the first woman in the role since the BOA’s founding in 1905, she now leads the organisation that governs Team GB’s Olympic programme. She is also Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and, since 2025, a crossbench Life Peer. The result is a speaker who can address boards and senior leadership teams not as a visiting athlete with a story, but as a serious institutional figure with a tested view of what leadership culture requires at the level where it actually matters. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and long-cycle leadership Resilience and recommitment after setback High-performance team culture Leadership in governance and elite institutions The parallel demands of intellectual and physical excellence Women in leadership and sport governance Purpose, values, and legacy in leadership Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with questions of culture, sustained performance, and long-term strategic commitment CHROs and people leaders building high-performance frameworks that endure beyond individual leadership cycles Leadership development programmes for senior executives seeking a model of performance that integrates governance, accountability, and personal resilience Organisations navigating leadership transition, post-merger culture alignment, or the challenge of maintaining standards after a period of peak achievement Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why most performance cultures produce one-off results rather than sustained excellence – and the specific conditions that change that Practical perspective on how to lead a team through extended periods of uncertainty and near-miss, without losing commitment or direction A reframed view of setback as structural to high performance, not a deviation from it – with concrete examples of how elite athletes and institutions manage that cycle Insight into what governance of high-performance systems actually requires, drawn from eight years leading UK Sport Renewed clarity on the relationship between personal discipline, intellectual rigour, and sustained team performance

Why organisations work with Danah Zohar She gave the field two of its named ideas. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management are her frameworks, not borrowed labels, and they sit on a substantial body of published work. Her management thinking is built on physics and complexity science, not from organisational behaviour. That gives her a different starting point from most leadership voices, and a model that holds up when the operating environment becomes genuinely non-linear. The Haier group in China rebuilt its management system around her concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, giving her work a named operating reference at one of the world’s largest appliance manufacturers. She brings credentials that are hard to assemble in one speaker: MIT, Harvard, Oxford’s Strategic Leadership Programme, Cranfield, Tsinghua, and induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2022. Biography highlights Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2022. Named in the 2002 Financial Times Prentice Hall Business Minds anthology of the world’s 50 greatest management thinkers. Teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Said Business School; Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and the China Academy of Art; entrepreneurial mentor at Haier. Author of The Quantum Self, ReWiring the Corporate Brain, SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, Spiritual Capital, The Quantum Leader, and Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age. Educated in Physics and Philosophy at MIT, with postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion and Psychology at Harvard. Biography Newtonian management assumes that organisations behave like machines: predictable parts, fixed structures, control flowing from the top. The physics it is built on was superseded a hundred years ago. Danah Zohar has spent her career arguing that the management model needs to catch up, and showing senior leaders what a quantum and complexity-based alternative looks like in practice. Her two named contributions, Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and Quantum Management, treat organisations as complex adaptive systems and treat people as carriers of meaning and purpose, not units of labour. The 12 Principles of SQ, set out in SQ: Spiritual Intelligence, the Ultimate Intelligence and developed further in Spiritual Capital, are drawn directly from the properties of living quantum systems. The work has been picked up where it matters. Haier, one of China’s largest industrial groups, restructured its management system around Zohar’s concept of “zero distance” between employee and customer, the basis of Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She teaches in the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, holds a visiting fellowship at Cranfield, and visiting professorships at Tsinghua and the China Academy of Art. For boards and executive teams, the practical question is how to lead a workforce and a strategy when the old assumptions of stability, hierarchy and pure financial logic no longer carry the weight they once did. Zohar offers a coherent answer, built from physics rather than rhetoric, and tested at scale inside one of the most ambitious corporate reorganisations of the last decade. Key speaking topics Quantum Management and the post-Newtonian organisation Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) and the 12 Principles Spiritual capital and purpose-driven leadership Complex adaptive systems applied to corporate strategy Meaning, motivation and the future of work Sustainable capitalism and the role of business in society Leading transformation at scale, with reference to the Haier model Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are redesigning operating models for higher autonomy and faster customer response Boards and senior leaders working through purpose, values and the social licence of the business Transformation leads and CHROs running culture and structure change in parallel Strategy and innovation leaders looking for a complexity-based alternative to classical planning Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for treating the organisation as a complex adaptive system, with concrete implications for structure, decision rights and information flow. A clearer link between purpose, meaning and commercial performance, beyond statement-of-values exercises. The Haier “zero distance” case as a worked reference for radical decentralisation at scale. Sharper questions for the executive team about where Newtonian assumptions still shape their planning, structure and incentives. An informed view of where Spiritual Intelligence sits alongside IQ and EQ in leadership development.