Peak Performance speakers

Why organisations work with Jose Manuel Calderon Fourteen NBA seasons across seven franchises, each requiring a different role, system, and relationship with coaching staff. Few speakers can describe reinvention at that frequency from inside the experience. Captained the Spain national team through its most decorated era, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. Holds the NBA single-season free throw record at 98.05 percent. The story behind that statistic is a precise account of preparation, repetition, and composure that translates directly to high-stakes performance. Now operates inside the business of sport as Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to technology firm Sngular, and co-founder of sport technology venture OWQLO. The post-playing view is operational, not nostalgic. Biography highlights 14 NBA seasons with Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Atlanta Hawks, and Cleveland Cavaliers. NBA single-season free throw record holder at 98.05 percent (2008-09, Toronto Raptors). 2006 FIBA World Cup champion and 2011 EuroBasket champion with Spain. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008, silver in 2012, bronze in 2016. Special Assistant to the Executive Director at the National Basketball Players Association from 2019. Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to Sngular, co-founder of OWQLO, UNICEF Ambassador. Biography Fourteen seasons in the NBA is not a tenure. It is seven different working environments, seven coaching philosophies, and a constant negotiation of role. Across Toronto, Detroit, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the work was the same every season: arrive, read the room, and become useful to a group of people who did not pick you. That career line is the substance behind Jose Manuel Calderon’s speaking. He captained the Spain national team through the most decorated period in its history, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. The Spanish “golden generation” is studied because it sustained excellence across more than a decade, with changing coaches, ageing key players, and rising rivals. Calderon was a central figure in how that group held together. The detail that travels well into corporate rooms is his free throw record. In 2008-09 he made 151 of 154 attempts, a 98.05 percent season that still stands as the NBA’s highest. The talk that emerges from it is about repeatable performance, not natural talent, and it lands cleanly with audiences who are measured on consistency rather than peaks. After retiring, Calderon moved directly into the business of sport. He served as Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the NBA Players Association from 2019, advises the Cleveland Cavaliers, sits on the advisory board of Spanish technology firm Sngular, and co-founded sport technology venture OWQLO. He is also a UNICEF Ambassador. The result is a speaker who can speak to senior teams in the language they use, drawing on a playing career that is genuinely rare at the level it reached. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Team performance across changing line-ups High-stakes decision-making Captaincy and standards Inclusion and identity in elite sport Reinvention across cultures and systems The business of professional sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams under prolonged performance pressure CHROs and people leaders building cohesion across changing structures Sales and commercial leaders who manage on consistency rather than peaks Board and executive offsites looking for a credible outside voice on team dynamics Audience outcomes A practical account of how elite teams hold standards through line-up change, coaching turnover, and external scrutiny. A clear picture of what daily preparation looks like at the level that produces records, not anecdotes about motivation. A working language for captaincy, the responsibility of senior players inside a team, and how that maps to senior leaders inside an organisation. A perspective on inclusion built from a long career across multiple national, cultural, and locker-room contexts.

Why organisations work with JP Pawliw-Fry He has named and quantified a problem most executive teams recognise but cannot articulate: the 7.56% of what matters most that people withhold in high-pressure moments, drawn from IHHP research with over 34,000 professionals. His Last 8% framework was placed in Harvard Business Review in September 2025, giving senior audiences a model with editorial credibility, not a motivational concept. He combines two registers most speakers do not: empirical research at scale (40,000+ surveyed monthly through IHHP) and direct coaching of Olympic athletes, Fortune 100 executives, and U.S. military leaders. Performing Under Pressure, co-authored with Hendrie Weisinger, sits as a New York Times bestseller and Inc. Magazine Best Business Book of the Year, and has been used inside Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and HSBC as a shared language for pressure performance. His teaching has been rated among the highest-scoring at Kellogg Executive Education, which means he can hold a room of senior leaders for serious content, not surface delivery. Biography highlights Co-author, Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most (NYT bestseller, Inc. Magazine Best Business Book of the Year, published in 65 countries). Author, “The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team,” Harvard Business Review, September 2025. Co-founder and President, Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP), founded 1996; recognised as a Profit 100 Fastest Growing Company. Highest-rated lecturer at Kellogg School of Management Executive Education, Northwestern University. Advisor and keynote speaker for Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, HSBC, Intel, Coca-Cola, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines, NASA, plus NFL and NBA franchises. Host of the Last 8% Morning podcast. Biography The hardest part of any senior conversation is rarely the 92 percent that gets said. It is the final stretch, the feedback held back, the decision deferred, the risk left on the table. IHHP research with more than 34,000 professionals puts the average gap at 7.56 percent of what matters most. Closing that gap is the work that JP Pawliw-Fry has built his career around. As co-founder and president of the Institute for Health and Human Potential, he runs an ongoing research programme that surveys more than 40,000 people each month on how leaders behave under pressure. That data set fed Performing Under Pressure, the New York Times bestseller he co-authored with Hendrie Weisinger, named one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Business Books of the Year and now in print across 65 countries. He is also one of the highest-rated lecturers at Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education programme. That matters because his audiences are usually executive committees, board offsites, and partner conferences, where the bar is set by what people will repeat in their next 1:1, not by what felt good in the room. The work has moved on. His September 2025 Harvard Business Review article, “The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team,” set out the Last 8% framework: a model for how courageous organisations combine high accountability with high care, and the cultural conditions that let leaders step into hard conversations rather than around them. The same model now sits behind IHHP work with Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, HSBC, the U.S. Navy and Marines, NASA, and NFL and NBA franchises. Key speaking topics The Last 8 Percent: leadership under pressure Performing under pressure High-performing teams and psychological safety Emotional intelligence in senior leadership Courageous conversations and accountability Risk-taking and decision-making in high-stakes moments Ideal for Executive committees and board offsites where avoidance and unspoken disagreement are slowing decisions. CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior-leader programmes on accountability, feedback culture, and resilience. Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on high-stakes negotiation and performance under pressure. Partner and managing director audiences in professional services, banking, and law where the cost of an avoided conversation is large and visible. Audience outcomes A named, testable model for the moment performance breaks down under pressure, drawn from research with more than 34,000 leaders. A common language for the 8 percent that goes unsaid, usable inside a leadership team within days. Specific behavioural moves leaders can rehearse for the next high-stakes conversation, decision, or piece of feedback. A clearer read on how their own organisation balances accountability with care, and where that balance is breaking. Renewed permission to take the interpersonal risk most senior leaders know they should be taking.

Why organisations work with Juan Pablo Montoya One of three drivers in history to win at the top tier of Formula 1, IndyCar, and the NASCAR Cup Series, giving him a rare lens on how elite teams differ across cultures and disciplines. Operated inside the highest-stakes performance environments in sport: Williams and McLaren in Formula 1, Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar, Team Penske in IndyCar and IMSA. Audiences hear about team execution from inside those organisations, not as commentary. A first-hand account of decision-making at 300 km/h, where the cost of a mistake is immediate, which translates directly for leaders managing high-pressure commercial calls. Bilingual (English and Spanish) and Latin American, which makes him relevant for global organisations with significant Hispanic markets or workforces. Biography highlights 1999 CART Series Champion with Chip Ganassi Racing, the youngest CART champion at the time at age 24. Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, in 2000 and 2015. Won the 2000 race on his first attempt. Formula 1 career across Williams and McLaren: 7 wins, 30 podiums, 13 pole positions, and third in the 2002 and 2003 World Drivers’ Championships. Three-time winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona. 2019 IMSA SportsCar Championship with Team Penske. One of only three drivers to win races in Formula 1, IndyCar, and the NASCAR Cup Series. Biography The seat of a Formula 1 car is one of the most unforgiving leadership environments in sport. Decisions arrive at hundreds of kilometres per hour, the team behind the driver runs into the hundreds, and the margin between winning and crashing is measured in tenths. Juan Pablo Montoya spent two decades inside that environment, at the top of every major motorsport discipline. He won the CART championship in 1999 as a rookie with Chip Ganassi Racing, then won the Indianapolis 500 the following year on his first attempt. Formula 1 followed: seven Grand Prix wins and 30 podiums across Williams and McLaren, including a Monaco win in 2003 and back-to-back third-place finishes in the World Drivers’ Championship in 2002 and 2003. He then crossed disciplines that almost nobody else has crossed at the top tier. Wins in the NASCAR Cup Series. A second Indianapolis 500 in 2015 with Team Penske. Three victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 2019 IMSA SportsCar Championship. Only two other drivers in history have won at the top of Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR. That cross-discipline record is what gives his keynote substance. He has worked inside Williams, McLaren, Ganassi, and Penske, four of the most demanding performance organisations in sport, and can speak directly to how they differ in how they prepare drivers, manage teams, and recover from failure. Key speaking topics High-performance team execution Composure and decision-making under pressure Cross-cultural team leadership in elite sport Resilience and reinvention across careers Motorsport, Formula 1, and IndyCar Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes Sales kick-offs and high-performance commercial team events Organisations with a Latin American footprint or Hispanic audience Automotive, technology, and sponsorship-aligned brand events Audience outcomes A first-hand view of how Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR teams prepare for and recover from high-stakes moments. A clearer sense of what composure looks like in practice when decisions cannot be deferred. Specific examples of how trust between a driver and their team is built, tested, and rebuilt. Cross-cultural perspective on what separates elite teams in different national sporting cultures.

Why organisations work with Julie Gautier A first-hand discipline of working under physiological pressure that few keynote speakers can credibly claim. Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 68 metres on a single breath, are evidence of a practice, not an anecdote. A creative body of work that translates the discipline into something an audience can feel. Ama, shot in a single breath in the world’s deepest pool, has reached a wide international audience and has become a reference point for how breath, focus and stillness are cultivated. Direct relevance to leadership audiences asking how to stay composed under public scrutiny, scrutiny markets, board pressure or crisis. The mechanism she describes is concrete: how the breath is trained, how attention is held, how panic is metabolised before it becomes decision. A second register of value for organisations working on creativity, environmental purpose, or the relationship between people and the natural world. Her films sit inside that conversation rather than next to it. Biography highlights Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 65 metres (2006) and minus 68 metres (2007). Co-founder of Les Films Engloutis, the production label behind her underwater work. Writer and director of Ama, performed in a single breath in the Y-40 deep pool, Italy. Co-director and writer of the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” (2015). Director of One Breath Around the World, featured in National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. TEDxLausanneWomen speaker, December 2019, “Inspiration in the Absence of Breath”. Biography Holding the breath is a trained skill, not a held-back reflex. Gautier worked on it for nine years as a competitive freediver, including two French national records in constant weight, before stepping out of the sport in 2009. The discipline she learned, working with the breath rather than against it, is the substance she now brings to leadership audiences. Her second career has been as a director and performer in underwater cinema. With Guillaume Néry, she co-founded Les Films Engloutis, the label behind films including Narcose, Ocean Gravity and One Breath Around the World, the last of which was carried by National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. She also co-directed and wrote the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. Ama, released on International Women’s Day in 2018, is the work that brought the practice into the cultural conversation. It is a single-breath performance in the Y-40 deep pool in Italy, choreographed and performed by Gautier herself. It has been read as a piece on grief, on women’s resilience, on the management of pressure, on the value of stillness. It is not a metaphor for any of those things. It is the discipline made visible. For a corporate audience, the relevance is direct. Senior leaders are working in conditions where composure has become a performance variable. Gautier’s contribution is not motivational language. It is a description of how a person who has practised breath and attention under real physiological constraint actually does it, and what transfers when the audience walks out of the room. Key speaking topics Breath, focus and composure under pressure Self-leadership and emotional regulation Creativity drawn from natural environments Personal discipline and long-form practice Ocean storytelling and environmental purpose Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under public pressure is a stated theme Cultural and inspirational segments of conferences for boards, executive committees and partner audiences Wellbeing, performance and people-function summits looking for substantive content on breath and attention Brand, creative and sustainability events where ocean storytelling has natural anchor Audience outcomes A concrete account of how breath is trained as a tool for focus, not as a wellness motif A vocabulary for talking about composure as a learned practice rather than a personal trait Visual material, drawn from her films, that audiences continue to discuss after the session A working frame for how stillness, patience and humility translate into professional performance

Why organisations work with Julien Simon-Chautemps He has run live, multi-million-pound decisions across 265 Grands Prix, where the cost of a wrong call is measured in tenths of a second and broadcast to a global audience. Few speakers operate from that altitude of pressure. He explains the F1 pit wall as a working management system: how information flows from car to engineer to strategist to driver, what gets filtered, and how the team avoids the two failure modes of analysis paralysis and over-reaction. He sat next to one of the most demanding drivers in modern F1 history, Kimi Raikkonen, and can describe in concrete terms how to communicate with high-performers who do not want managing, only useful input. He is still active in the sport as a Canal+ and F1 TV technical analyst, which keeps the case material current rather than nostalgic. The session does not rely on the 2007 Toyota years to make its point. He brings the engineer’s view, not the driver’s. Audiences get the side of the cockpit where the strategy, the data, and the team coordination actually happen. Biography highlights 14 seasons as a Formula 1 race engineer across Toyota, Lotus/Caterham, Renault/Lotus Renault, and Sauber/Alfa Romeo 265 Grands Prix attended trackside between 2007 and 2022 Race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen at Alfa Romeo through his final F1 seasons; previously worked with him at Lotus Engineered drivers including Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado, Vitaly Petrov, Jolyon Palmer, and Marcus Ericsson Founder of JSC7 Engineering Ltd (2022), providing motorsport consultancy, race strategy, and data analysis services Technical analyst for Canal+ and on-air pundit for F1 TV; aerospace engineering graduate of IPSA Paris (2002) Biography The pit wall in Formula 1 is one of the most concentrated decision environments in any industry. Tyre choices, fuel loads, safety-car responses, and pit-stop calls all happen on a clock that does not negotiate. Julien Simon-Chautemps spent fourteen seasons running that environment as a race engineer, including the final F1 chapter of Kimi Raikkonen’s career at Alfa Romeo. His route into the cockpit conversation was technical, not glamorous. He trained as an aerospace and aeronautical engineer at IPSA in Paris, then ran junior single-seater programmes at Prema Powerteam and Trident before stepping onto the F1 grid with Toyota in 2007. By the time he retired from trackside duties in 2022, he had attended 265 Grands Prix across Toyota, Lotus, Caterham, Renault, Sauber, and Alfa Romeo. The drivers he worked with were not interchangeable personalities. Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Vitaly Petrov, Pastor Maldonado, Jolyon Palmer, Marcus Ericsson, and Raikkonen each demanded a different style of communication. That range is what gives his sessions their texture: he is talking about how to lead and inform high-performers who will not tolerate noise, not how to motivate average teams. Today he runs JSC7 Engineering Ltd, a motorsport and automotive consultancy he founded in 2022, and contributes technical analysis to Canal+ and F1 TV. The keynote work draws on the same source material the consultancy does. Senior teams hear how an F1 garage actually coordinates, where the failure points sit, and what leaders in regulated, high-stakes industries can take from a sport built around the discipline of tenths. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team coordination Real-time communication between technical and executive functions Leadership of elite individual performers Operating rhythms in high-stakes, regulated environments Data, instinct, and the limits of each in live decisions Resilience and recovery in competitive cycles Ideal for COOs, transformation leads, and operational executives running time-critical functions Senior leadership teams in regulated or safety-critical industries (aviation, energy, financial markets, healthcare) Engineering and technology leaders building decision systems around live data Sales, trading, and front-line teams whose performance depends on second-by-second judgement Audience outcomes A working picture of how an F1 team turns live data into a single coordinated decision, with named examples from the pit wall Sharper language for the difference between a fast decision and a rushed one A feel for how high-performers actually want to be communicated with under pressure, drawn from years alongside Raikkonen and Grosjean Specific habits leaders can install before high-pressure moments rather than improvise during them A closer view of the sport itself: what the audience hears on the radio is the surface of a much larger system

Why organisations work with Justin Hughes His BETTUR (Better Understanding of Reality) model gives teams a structured, named framework for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity and pressure – one tested in military aviation and refined across corporate and public sector organisations on multiple continents. The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016) advances a specific argument – that consistent high performance is a systems problem, built around people, capability, and delivery – giving his advisory work an intellectual foundation that separates it from standard high-performance keynote content. His advisory work spans genuinely diverse high-stakes environments: BP’s global safety operations programme, Mercedes Formula 1, the United Nations, and Microsoft – meaning the principles he applies have been stress-tested well beyond the military analogy. As current CEO of a biotech startup operating under real commercial pressure, he holds practitioner credibility that most speakers with a military or aviation background left behind long ago. His diagnostic starting point – that cognitive and motivational biases distort individual and team judgement under pressure in predictable, addressable ways – gives organisations a more honest and specific entry point than generic resilience or leadership development typically provides. Biography highlights Former RAF fighter pilot; served as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows, flying more than 250 displays across three international tours Founder of Mission Excellence, an organisational performance consultancy; strategic adviser to Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 Regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme Author of The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016), a performance framework built around people, capability, and delivery; endorsed by Paddy Lowe, Executive Director of Mercedes Grand Prix Profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Director Magazine, and the London Evening Standard; interviewed on BBC World Talking Business, BBC Breakfast, and GB News MBA with Distinction, London Business School; MSt with Distinction in International Relations, University of Cambridge Biography The Business of Excellence, published by Bloomsbury in 2016, makes a specific claim: consistent high performance is not a talent question. It is a question of systems, behaviours, and the decision-making habits that hold up when conditions deteriorate. Justin Hughes wrote that book after twelve years as an RAF fighter pilot and three as Executive Officer of the Red Arrows. Since leaving the RAF, Hughes has operated in the environments his book describes. As founder of Mission Excellence, he has advised Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 on organisational effectiveness. He is also a regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme – a safety-critical context where the gap between intended and actual decision-making carries serious consequences. The practical instrument of that advisory work is the BETTUR model – an acronym for Better Understanding of Reality. It gives organisations a structured approach to planning, executing, and adapting under ambiguity and pressure. The model addresses a specific failure mode: the cognitive and motivational biases that cause individual and team judgement to degrade when information is incomplete and stakes are high. Hughes holds an MBA with Distinction from London Business School and an MSt with Distinction in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. As CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, a biotech company developing alternatives to synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, he retains active operating responsibility alongside his advisory and speaking work. He has been profiled in the Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and Director Magazine, and interviewed on BBC World Talking Business and BBC Breakfast. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Decision-making in high-stakes environments High-performance team design Organisational effectiveness and execution Risk and cognitive bias in judgement Performance culture Strategic resilience Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams building high-performance cultures in complex, high-reliability, or fast-changing organisations Operations, safety, and transformation leaders in sectors where the cost of poor judgement is high – energy, aerospace, financial services, and healthcare CHROs and L&D directors commissioning leadership development that goes beyond standard competency frameworks C-suite and board audiences addressing the gap between strategic intent and operational execution Audience outcomes A named framework – the BETTUR model – for planning, executing, and adapting under conditions of ambiguity, incomplete information, and time pressure A clearer diagnosis of why high-performance intentions break down under operational stress, and what structural factors – not individual failings – drive that gap Practical principles for building teams that maintain standards and accountability without relying on close supervision or ideal conditions A more rigorous understanding of how cognitive and motivational biases affect individual and team judgement, and what processes reduce their impact Directly applicable approaches to debrief discipline, decision protocols, and leadership behaviour in their own organisations

Why organisations work with Justin Roethlingshoefer He brings the performance science used to keep professional hockey players on the ice into the language of P&L, calendar pressure and executive fatigue, with frameworks tested over a fifteen-year career across NCAA and NHL environments. His method starts from individual biological data, including bloodwork, HRV and DNA inputs, so the room leaves with personalised next actions rather than a generic wellness playbook. He has built and runs OWN IT Coaching, which means the content is informed by what is currently working with paying executive clients, not theory drawn from a former career. His book The Power of Ownership gives audiences a structured reference point after the keynote, extending the conversation beyond the event. Biography highlights Founder of OWN IT Coaching, a health and performance company serving founders, executives and corporate teams. Fifteen years in elite sport across NCAA and professional hockey, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. Author of four books, including The Power of Ownership, listed as a USA Today bestseller. Master’s in Human Development with a Sport Performance concentration; postgraduate work in HRV, sleep and recovery science. Host of The OWN IT Show podcast and a regular contributor on SimpliFaster and Muscle & Strength. Featured in Fox News, Esquire, USA Today, LiveScience and Well+Good. Biography The cost of high-performance leadership tends to show up in the body before it shows up in the numbers. Sleep degrades, recovery collapses, decisions get slower and shorter, and the wellbeing programme on the company intranet does not touch any of it. That is the gap Justin Roethlingshoefer’s work addresses. He spent fifteen years inside elite hockey, first in the NCAA and then in the professional system, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls in the AHL and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. His job was to keep human beings playing at their physical ceiling across a punishing season, using data on load, fatigue, sleep and recovery. He brought that operating model out of the locker room and into the office. OWN IT Coaching, the company he founded, applies the same approach to executives, founders and corporate teams. The starting point is individual biology, bloodwork, HRV, wearables and DNA testing, with structured coaching on the back of it. His four books, including the USA Today bestseller The Power of Ownership, set out the underlying argument: health is an ownership decision, and senior leaders who treat it that way protect the asset their organisations depend on most. His sports-science training sits behind everything he says, which is what separates him from the wider wellness category. The case he makes to a senior audience is concrete: the same monitoring that keeps a Stanley Cup contender on the ice can keep a CEO sharp through a year that was not built for human pacing. Key speaking topics Executive health and performance Burnout prevention in senior leadership Sleep, recovery and HRV in high-pressure roles Wearables, biometric data and personalised health Ownership as a personal operating principle Health risk in founder-led and high-growth organisations Team performance and resilience Ideal for CEOs, founders and executive committees carrying sustained operational load CHROs and heads of people designing senior leader wellbeing and retention Leadership offsites and partner retreats in professional services Sales and high-performance teams working under structured pressure Audience outcomes A clear separation between generic wellness advice and the variables that actually move executive performance A working understanding of how sleep, HRV, recovery and load data translate into leadership capacity Personal next actions framed as ownership decisions rather than corporate programme tweaks Language to discuss executive health as an organisational asset with boards and HR A reference framework drawn from The Power of Ownership to extend the conversation after the event

Why organisations work with Jutta Kleinschmidt She is the only woman ever to win the Dakar Rally outright, a fact buyers can repeat without qualification, in a field where most “first woman” credentials require footnotes. She brings a physics-engineering mind to a topic, high-pressure performance, that is usually dominated by intuition and anecdote. Audiences get the mechanics, not just the story. Her current FIA role gives her a serving leadership platform in international motorsport, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. She speaks credibly to mixed audiences on team performance, risk tolerance and the practical limits of preparation, drawing on a 17-attempt Dakar career across motorcycles and cars. She works fluently in English and German, which matters for German-speaking corporates booking a global-grade keynote without losing the original voice. Biography highlights First and only woman to win the Dakar Rally outright, in 2001, driving a Mitsubishi Pajero with co-driver Andreas Schulz. President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission since 2019. Inaugural Championship Driver for the Extreme E electric off-road series; raced for ABT Cupra XE in 2021. Trained physicist (Isny University of Applied Sciences) and former BMW vehicle development engineer. Author of the autobiography “My Victory at the Dakar.” Recipient of the Monaco World Sports Legends Award (2018), FIM Legend status (2013) and the Lord Wakefield Trophy from the British Women Racing Drivers Club. Biography The Dakar Rally runs for two weeks across some of the most punishing terrain on the planet, with no second chances and no controlled environment. In January 2001, a German driver in a Mitsubishi Pajero crossed the line in Dakar 2 minutes 39 seconds ahead of her teammate. That driver was Jutta Kleinschmidt, and she remains the only woman ever to have won the event outright. Her route to that result is what makes her useful to senior teams. She studied physics at Isny University of Applied Sciences, completed her diploma thesis at BMW, and spent five years as a vehicle development engineer there before going professional in motorsport in 1993. She first contested Dakar in 1988 on a BMW motorcycle, switched to cars in 1994, took her first stage win in 1997, and stood on the podium in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2005 across 17 starts. Since 2018 she has been Senior Advisor for Cross Country Rally at the FIA, and since 2019 President of the FIA Cross Country Rally Commission, where she has pushed the discipline toward more sustainable technologies. She joined the Extreme E electric series as its inaugural Championship Driver and Advisor in 2021, racing for ABT Cupra XE. For business audiences, her material is the engineer’s read on what actually drives outcomes when conditions turn hostile: how to build a team that can absorb a hit and keep deciding, what preparation is worth and what is theatre, and how to keep a clear head when the equipment, the weather and the field are all working against you. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in endurance environments Risk management and preparation Resilience and recovery from setback Women in male-dominated industries Sustainable mobility and the future of motorsport Leadership in mixed-discipline, high-stakes teams Ideal for Boards and executive teams running performance, safety or operational risk agendas Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on competitive edge Senior leadership programmes building resilience and decision quality Engineering, automotive and mobility audiences working on the energy transition Audience outcomes A working language for what high performers actually do when the plan fails A sharper view of where preparation pays off and where it stops Specific examples of team coordination under physical and time pressure A credible counterweight to the assumption that elite performance is mostly talent Confidence that high-stakes decisions can be trained, not just hired for

Why organisations work with Kadeena Cox A first-hand account of rebuilding performance from zero after a stroke and an MS diagnosis at 23, then competing at world-record level across two different Paralympic sports. Substantive content on inclusion in elite environments, drawn from founding and running the KC Academy in partnership with the Rapha Foundation and SportsAid. A track record that is publicly verifiable at the highest level of British sport: golds at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024, plus OBE in 2022. Direct experience of the daily decision-making required when a body and a schedule cannot be relied on, which translates cleanly into leadership audiences operating under sustained uncertainty. Biography highlights Five-time Paralympic gold medallist (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024) in athletics and cycling First British Paralympian since 1984 to win golds in two different sports at the same Games OBE for services to athletics and cycling (2022); MBE (2017) Founder of the KC Academy, in partnership with the Rapha Foundation and SportsAid Winner, BBC Celebrity MasterChef Series 16 (2021) World record holder, C4 500m time trial Biography The Rio 2016 Paralympics produced an outcome no British athlete had achieved in 32 years. Kadeena Cox won gold in two different sports at the same Games, in T38 400m athletics and C4-5 500m cycling, two years after a stroke and a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at the age of 23. The cycling time was faster than any able-bodied Team GB rider had produced at an Olympic or Paralympic Games. Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 added further golds, including a world record in the C4 500m time trial and a team sprint title alongside Jaco van Gass and Jody Cundy. The arc matters less for the medal count than for what it required operationally: training programmes built around a condition that does not behave predictably, and a competitive schedule that had to absorb that reality without losing edge. In 2021 Cox founded the KC Academy, which works with SportsAid and is supported by the Rapha Foundation to identify and fund cyclists from ethnically diverse backgrounds entering the British high-performance pathway. She is the only Black British cyclist to have won Olympic or Paralympic gold, and the Academy is her response to the structural reasons that statistic exists. Her speaking work draws on both strands: the discipline of competing when the body is unreliable, and the institutional work of changing who gets to be in the room at elite level. She was appointed OBE in 2022 for services to athletics and cycling, having received the MBE in 2017. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after diagnosis Composure and decision-making under physical and competitive pressure Inclusion as a high-performance capability Building structures for underrepresented talent Mental health and sustained performance Adapting goals when conditions change Ideal for Leadership offsites and conferences focused on resilience, change, or sustained performance under pressure DEI, talent and culture leads working on inclusion in high-performance settings Employee resource groups, particularly disability, race, and wellbeing networks Internal events marking transitions, restructures, or recovery moments Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what resilience looks like as a daily operational practice, not a value statement A reframed view of inclusion as a performance lever, grounded in the KC Academy’s specific work Honest language for talking about mental health and physical limits inside high-pressure teams Renewed confidence in setting ambitious goals when the operating environment is unstable

Why organisations work with Karen Carney She chaired the UK Government’s Independent Review into Women’s Football, a policy artefact whose recommendations were accepted by Government and now sit behind professionalisation standards across the WSL and Women’s Championship. That is named institutional credibility, not generalised sport authority. She speaks from 144 international caps and a 14-year career across Arsenal, Birmingham City, Chicago Red Stars and Chelsea, which gives her the right to talk about composure, recovery and team alignment with leaders who have heard the sport-to-business analogy too many times. She has worked publicly through depression, online abuse and the consequences of injury, which gives the mental health and resilience content specific personal reference points rather than generic advocacy. As lead female analyst across Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports, she is rehearsed in live communication under scrutiny, which is a useful asset for a moderator or panel chair as well as a keynote. Biography highlights 144 England caps, third-most capped Lioness; four FIFA Women’s World Cups and four UEFA Women’s Championships. Olympian, Team GB, London 2012. Chair, Future of Women’s Football Review for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2022 to 2023; recommendations accepted by Government. MBE 2017 for services to football; OBE 2024 King’s Birthday Honours for services to association football. Inductee, National Football Museum Hall of Fame, 2021. Lead female football analyst, Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports; winner, Strictly Come Dancing 2025. Biography Most organisations talk about high performance and mean motivation. Elite sport means something more specific: a set of daily operating habits that hold up when the team is tired, beaten, or in public view. Karen Carney spent 14 years inside those habits at the top of international football and has spent the years since explaining what they actually consist of. She earned 144 caps for England between 2005 and 2019, making her the third-most capped Lioness of all time, with appearances at four World Cups, four European Championships and the London 2012 Olympics. Her club career took her through Arsenal’s 2006 to 2007 quadruple-winning side, Birmingham City, Chicago Red Stars and a Chelsea captaincy that ended in an FA Women’s Cup win. The work that has done most to shape her current credibility is the Future of Women’s Football Review, which she chaired for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Published in July 2023, the review set out professionalisation standards for the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship, covering minimum operating conditions, mental and physical health provision, parental care and transition support. The Government accepted the recommendations and announced a 30 million pound investment to follow. She works the same material as a broadcaster. As lead female football analyst across Sky Sports, ITV and TNT Sports, she is on screen weekly through Premier League, WSL and major tournament coverage; in late 2025 she won Strictly Come Dancing, becoming the first footballer to do so. Her honours, MBE in 2017 and OBE in 2024, sit alongside induction to the National Football Museum Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics High-performance culture in elite sport and its operating analogues in business Leadership under public scrutiny Mental health and recovery in performance environments Inclusion and the commercial case for women’s sport Governance and professionalisation of women’s football Team alignment under fatigue and setback Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through cultural change, performance reset or post-restructure alignment HR, talent and DEI leaders building substantive inclusion strategy rather than messaging Sport, media, sponsorship and consumer brands engaging with the commercial growth of women’s sport Conference moderation and panel chairing where live broadcast discipline is an asset Audience outcomes A concrete picture of what elite-sport operating discipline looks like day to day, not as metaphor Language for talking about mental health and recovery in performance environments without slipping into wellness generalities A clearer read of the commercial and governance trajectory of women’s sport, drawn from her own review work A sharper view of how senior leaders hold composure when results, scrutiny or fatigue are working against them

Why organisations work with Karenjeet Kaur Bains She holds a Guinness World Record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, set against a male equivalent of 34) and a Commonwealth gold, which gives her claims about pressure and preparation a weight that motivational speakers without competitive credentials cannot match. She is the first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World powerlifting championships, which makes her a credible voice on what representation actually costs and produces inside an institution. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant and spent six years in audit at KPMG, so she speaks to professional services and corporate audiences in their own language rather than from outside it. She combines a primetime BBC platform as Athena on Gladiators with a serious athletic and professional record, which lands with employee networks, ERGs, and graduate populations in a way a single-track speaker rarely does. Biography highlights Commonwealth Powerlifting Champion; first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at European and World championships. Guinness World Record holder, most bodyweight squats by a woman in one minute (42 reps, 2022). ACA Chartered Accountant; six years at KPMG in audit before moving into charity finance. Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year, 2023 and 2024. Listed keynote speaker at the ICAEW Annual Conference. Biography Powerlifting is one of the smallest, most demographically narrow sports in Britain. The first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World championships is also a Commonwealth gold medallist and a Guinness World Record holder. That combination is what Karenjeet Kaur Bains brings into a room. Her route to elite strength sport ran through, not around, a professional services career. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant, spent six years at KPMG in audit, and trained for international competition in the hours either side of a working day. The Guinness record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, against a male equivalent of 34) was set in two weeks of preparation while she held a full-time charity finance role. Her account of how high performers actually structure their lives is grounded, not theoretical. Since 2024 she has appeared as Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, which has put her in front of a household audience without softening the technical seriousness of her sport. ICAEW lists her as a keynote speaker at its Annual Conference, and she has been recognised as British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year in 2023 and 2024. For HR, DEI and employee engagement leaders, the value is specific. She speaks to what it takes for someone visibly different to stay, perform, and be seen inside institutions that did not previously include her, and what employers, networks and managers can usefully do about it. Key speaking topics Representation and identity in elite environments Performance under pressure and recovery from injury South Asian women in sport and professional life Breaking cultural and gender stereotypes Resilience and the psychology of high performance Inclusive culture in professional services Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads, and employee network sponsors planning Heritage Month, IWD, or culture moments. Professional services firms briefing graduate, qualified-accountant, and women’s network audiences. Leadership and high-performance offsites looking for a credentialled athlete voice over a generic motivational one. Audience outcomes A grounded picture of what visible representation costs and produces inside an institution. A practical sense of how high performers structure preparation, recovery, and the routine work around a peak. Language for ERGs and managers on how to support employees who are first or only in their roles. A reframing of “strength”, physical and professional, that audiences can use in their own teams.

Why organisations work with Karl Dickson He has refereed at the level where every call is reviewed in slow motion by millions, including the 2023 Rugby World Cup final on the touchline, and translates that into how leaders hold a decision when it is being second-guessed in real time. He brings a rare dual perspective: a Premiership winner with Harlequins and a current PGMOT international official, so he can speak credibly to both the player under instruction and the official making the call. His material on communication is grounded in a discipline where being unclear costs you the room within seconds, useful for executives whose audiences increasingly behave the same way. He addresses public mistakes head-on. Refereeing offers no place to hide a wrong decision, and the recovery skill he teaches is directly applicable to leadership populations who fear visible error. Biography highlights 169 appearances for Harlequins as a scrum-half between 2009 and 2017 Replacement in the 2011 to 2012 Premiership final, won by Harlequins against Leicester Tigers Called into the senior England squad during the 2012 Six Nations and South Africa tour Member of the RFU Professional Game Match Officials Team since 2017 Quarter-final referee at Rugby World Cup 2023 (Wales v Argentina) and assistant referee for the final (South Africa v New Zealand) Six Nations referee, including the opening fixture of the 2024 Championship (France v Ireland) Biography Most leadership content treats decision-making under pressure as a mindset. In elite refereeing it is a practised skill, made under load, on camera, with no opportunity to consult, and with the entire stadium reacting before the decision has finished being made. Karl Dickson works at exactly that level. He refereed a Rugby World Cup quarter-final in 2023 and stood as assistant referee in the final between South Africa and New Zealand. He arrived at officiating from inside the game. Eight seasons at Harlequins, 169 appearances as a scrum-half, and a Premiership title in 2012 give him a player’s reading of the moment. England squad call-ups in 2012 and a near-cap mark the upper edge of that career. Few officials at his level have lived the other side of the decision so recently. His speaking work draws directly from that dual experience. He talks about the discipline of being decisive when the right answer is not yet obvious, the communication craft of holding a room of thirty professional athletes to a call they disagree with, and the recovery skill required when the replay shows you were wrong. Those are not metaphors for leadership. They are the same problems senior teams face when a market moves, a stakeholder pushes back, or a strategy turns out to have been mistimed. What he gives a corporate audience is a working operator’s view of public judgement. Premiership and Six Nations seasons run year-round; the 2024 Six Nations opener, France v Ireland in Marseille, was his. He is not retired. He is mid-career at the top of his sport, and the material is current. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Communication in high-stakes environments Composure and confidence in public roles Resilience after visible mistakes High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from elite sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-scrutiny moments: results announcements, regulatory hearings, restructure communications Sales, customer-facing, and front-line management populations whose decisions are visible and contested Executive development programmes focused on judgement, communication, and presence Annual conferences where the audience benefits from a credible voice on pressure and recovery Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what trained composure looks like, drawn from a domain where it is a job requirement Practical communication discipline for moments when an audience is sceptical, hostile, or impatient A more honest framework for handling visible mistakes, separating the error from the recovery Renewed confidence that decisiveness can be developed, not just born into