Peak Performance

Why organisations work with Urs Meier He has made the kind of decision most executives describe in hypothetical terms: a single judgement call, contested by 50 million viewers, with no replay, no committee, and no time. The Euro 2004 England vs Portugal aftermath is the case study. He refereed 883 matches, including the 2002 Champions League final and a 2002 World Cup semi-final, and can show how the discipline of decision-making is rehearsed long before the moment arrives. His book Du bist die Entscheidung sets out a working method for acting quickly under uncertainty, drawing on a body of practice rather than borrowed management theory. Two decades as ZDF’s senior football analyst have given him a second skill leaders rarely train: explaining a contested decision clearly, in public, while it is still being argued about. He works in German and English, with a delivery style Süddeutsche Zeitung described as humorous and self-deprecating, useful when the topic is high-stakes mistakes and how to recover from them. Biography highlights FIFA international referee, 1994 to 2004, with 883 senior matches officiated. Referee, 2002 UEFA Champions League final, Real Madrid vs Bayer Leverkusen. Referee, 2002 FIFA World Cup semi-final, Germany vs South Korea. Referee, Euro 2004 quarter-final, England vs Portugal. Author, Du bist die Entscheidung. Schnell und entschlossen handeln, S. Fischer Verlag, 2008. Lead football analyst, ZDF German television, 2005 to 2021. Biography The decision a referee makes in the 90th minute is judged by people who have replays, slow motion, and time. The referee had none of those. That asymmetry, between how a call is made and how it is judged, is the territory Urs Meier has worked in for forty years, first on the pitch and then in front of a camera explaining other referees’ decisions to a national audience. He spent 27 years in active officiating, retiring in December 2004 after 883 matches. The career carried him through a 1998 World Cup, the 2002 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen, and the 2002 World Cup semi-final between Germany and South Korea. Each of those games turned on calls made in seconds, defended for years. His Euro 2004 quarter-final between England and Portugal is the moment that makes the talk land in a corporate room. He disallowed a late Sol Campbell header. The next morning he had roughly 16,000 abusive emails, most from England, and was placed under police protection. He later said he had not seen the foul, but had trusted twenty years of pattern recognition to know one had occurred. That gap, between the visible reasoning and the deeper basis for a call, is exactly what senior leaders wrestle with when they are asked to justify a judgement after the fact. The 2008 book Du bist die Entscheidung sets the practice down on paper: the role of evidence, intuition, and self-trust in fast decisions, and how to convince others once the call is made. He has since worked as ZDF’s senior football pundit through World Cups and European Championships, runs his own Swiss business, and advises on the professionalisation of officiating. The throughline is unusual: a working method for making and explaining hard calls, tested under conditions most leadership case studies have to invent. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Self-leadership and composure Resilience after public criticism Leadership of high-performing teams Fair play and ethics in business Motivation and personal performance Ideal for Executive teams and boards facing high-stakes, time-pressured calls Senior leaders preparing for visible scrutiny, regulator engagement, or media exposure Sales and client-facing leadership groups operating in adversarial environments Annual conferences seeking a substantive keynote on judgement and resilience Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating the act of deciding from the act of being right Concrete examples of how trained intuition complements analysis under time pressure A method for defending a contested decision in public without rewriting it Recognition of how to recover composure and authority after a publicly criticised call Renewed confidence to commit when the information will never be complete

Why organisations work with Rich Diviney He brings a published, named framework, the 25 Attributes, drawn from designing and running selection for one of the most demanding assessment processes in the world. Senior teams leave with a vocabulary for talent decisions that does not collapse under pressure. He separates skills from attributes in a way that changes how boards and executive teams think about hiring, succession, and team composition. Skills tell you what someone has done; attributes tell you how they will behave when the script breaks. He has translated SEAL selection science into operating practice for Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. The frameworks have been stress-tested in commercial environments, not just military ones. His second book, Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025), gives leaders a method for performing through chaos rather than recovering from it. The argument moves the conversation from resilience as recovery to composure as a deliberate, trainable capability. Biography highlights Retired Navy SEAL commander with more than 20 years of service and 13+ overseas deployments, 11 to Iraq and Afghanistan. Officer in charge of selection, assessment, and training for a specialized SEAL command. Led the creation of the SEALs’ “Mind Gym” for cognitive performance training in high-stress environments. Author of The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021), a bestselling book. Author of Masters of Uncertainty: The Navy SEAL Way to Turn Stress into Success for You and Your Team (Amplify Publishing, 2025). Featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series; founder and CEO of The Attributes Inc. Biography Selection is where most organisations get talent decisions wrong. The candidates with the cleanest resumes wash out under stress; the ones who looked unremarkable on paper hold the team together when the plan falls apart. Rich Diviney spent the back half of his Navy career running the selection, assessment, and training pipeline for a specialized SEAL command, watching that pattern repeat at the top of one of the most demanding evaluation systems in the world. The framework he built from that work is now in two books and a consulting practice. The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021) names the innate traits, things like adaptability, cunning, narcissism, courage, that predict performance when skills run out. Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025) extends the argument into a method for staying composed and decisive when conditions are chaotic. Both treat performance as something you can engineer in advance through how you select and develop people, not something you hope shows up on the day. The substance has translated. Since leaving the Navy in 2017, Diviney has worked with Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. He was featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series on the thesis that attributes, not skills, decide whether someone makes the cut. The pattern across his clients is consistent: they are organisations whose top teams operate at the edge of their capacity and need a sharper way to choose, build, and lead the people who get sent in first. What makes him useful in a boardroom is not the SEAL biography. It is that he has a tested vocabulary for the part of leadership most frameworks gloss over: how human beings actually behave when certainty disappears. Key speaking topics The Attributes framework for individual and team performance Selection, assessment, and team composition Performing under uncertainty and stress High-performing team dynamics Trust as an operating discipline Leadership in elite and high-pressure environments Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive teams responsible for performance through volatile conditions. CHROs and talent leaders rethinking selection, succession, and team composition. Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, composure, and decision-making under pressure. High-stakes operating teams in financial services, professional services, sport, aviation, and defence-adjacent industries. Audience outcomes A working distinction between skills and attributes that changes how leaders evaluate talent. A vocabulary of 25 named attributes leaders can use immediately in selection, succession, and team-building conversations. A method for staying composed and decisive in conditions where the plan has stopped working. A clearer view of what trust actually consists of inside a high-performing team, and how to build it deliberately. A reframe of resilience: from recovery after shock to performance through it.

Why organisations work with Kevin Keegan He is one of only four players to win European Footballer of the Year twice, alongside Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, and Cruyff, which gives any leadership message he delivers immediate authority with a senior audience. He has carried the captaincy of a national team and the weight of managing it, so his account of pressure is operational rather than theoretical. As a manager he is the first person in the Premier League era to win the Football League title with two different clubs, Newcastle United and Manchester City, evidence of repeatable team-building rather than a single peak. His after-dinner style is warm, self-aware, and quotable, which makes him a reliable fit for awards nights, gala dinners, and senior client hospitality where the brief is engagement rather than instruction. Biography highlights Two-time Ballon d’Or winner (European Footballer of the Year), 1978 and 1979, at SV Hamburg 63 England caps, 21 international goals, captained England 31 times including UEFA Euro 1980 Won three First Division titles, two UEFA Cups, an FA Cup, and the European Cup with Liverpool under Shankly and Paisley Awarded the OBE in 1982; PFA Players’ Player of the Year, 1982; FWA Footballer of the Year, 1976 Managed Newcastle United, Fulham, England, and Manchester City; only manager in the Premier League era to win the Football League title with two different clubs Inducted into the inaugural English Football Hall of Fame in 2002; author of the Sunday Times bestselling autobiography “My Life in Football” (Pan Macmillan, 2018) Biography Hamburg signed Keegan from Liverpool in 1977, and within two seasons he had been named European Footballer of the Year twice. Before him, only Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, and Cruyff had managed that. The move was the first by a leading British player to a major continental club at his peak, and it reset what an English footballer’s career could look like. Liverpool was where the platform was built. Six seasons under Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley produced three league titles, two UEFA Cups, an FA Cup, and a European Cup. England rewarded the form with the captaincy. He led the side 31 times, including at Euro 1980, and finished with 63 caps and 21 goals. Management followed playing. Keegan returned to Newcastle United as manager in 1992, took the club out of the second tier, and pushed it to two Premier League runner-up finishes. He went on to manage Fulham, England, and Manchester City, and remains the only manager in the Premier League era to have won the Football League title with two different clubs. On stage he works the same material his career produced: the tactics rooms at Liverpool and Hamburg, the dressing rooms he ran as a manager, and the moments the public watched live, from the 1996 title race with Manchester United to managing England at Wembley. The 2018 autobiography “My Life in Football”, co-written with Daniel Taylor, set the version of those stories he now tells from the floor. Key speaking topics Leadership under public pressure Team building and squad management Motivation and high performance Lessons from elite sport for business Handling setbacks and reinvention After-dinner storytelling Ideal for Sales kick-offs, awards dinners, and gala evenings where senior clients are the audience Leadership and management offsites looking for a credible outsider voice on team performance Hospitality and entertainment programmes around major sporting fixtures Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how elite teams are built, recover from losing form, and hold their nerve in title races Concrete stories about taking the captaincy and the manager’s seat for England, and what that exposure teaches about leadership in public A view of the manager-player relationship that translates to senior leaders managing senior talent An evening of warm, self-deprecating storytelling that reliably lands with mixed corporate audiences

Why organisations work with Dan Hunt He has built the performance engine, not just coached inside one. The GB women’s endurance programme he took over in 2005 went from uncompetitive to delivering Olympic medals in under three years. His career is a rare controlled experiment in whether performance infrastructure transfers. He has run it in track cycling, professional road cycling at Team Sky, Premier League academy football, Olympic snow sports, and now GB Surfing. Q Division, the innovation unit he set up at British Ski and Snowboard, is a concrete example of how a small, properly scoped R and D function finds gains a larger organisation would miss. He speaks with specific case material from environments where the scoreboard is public and unforgiving, which is closer to the conditions a senior leadership team actually operates in than most sport-to-business framing allows. Biography highlights Led the turnaround of the Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme from 2005, contributing to Olympic medals at Beijing 2008. Coached the GB men’s team pursuit to Olympic gold at London 2012. Appointed Sports Director at Team Sky for the 2013 season, during the period of consecutive Tour de France wins. Head of Elite Performance at the Premier League, working on academy performance systems. Performance Director at British Ski and Snowboard across alpine, freestyle, snowboard, cross-country, ski jumping, speed skiing and telemark; founded Q Division, the federation’s innovation unit. Executive Performance Director of GB Surfing from 2023. Biography Most organisations can point to a period of good results. Far fewer can explain why those results held, or why they did not. The distinction matters because the job of a senior leader is rarely to produce a single peak. It is to build the thing that produces peaks repeatedly. That is the problem Hunt has spent his career on. In 2005 he took over a Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme that was not competitive, and inside three years it was delivering Olympic medals. He then switched to the men’s team pursuit and the group won gold at London 2012. The common thread across both was not a single charismatic intervention. It was an explicit, transferable system for how talent, coaching, data and decision rights fit together. Team Sky appointed him Sports Director for the 2013 season, a period that coincided with consecutive Tour de France wins. He went on to run elite performance at the Premier League, working on academy-stage talent systems, and then joined British Ski and Snowboard as Performance Director. There he built Q Division, a small innovation unit focused on the kind of marginal gains that a federation structure usually cannot produce on its own. In 2023 he took on the Executive Performance Director role at GB Surfing, now building the same architecture in a sport with almost no existing elite infrastructure in Britain. What makes Hunt useful in a boardroom is not a stock set of sport analogies. It is that he has rebuilt performance systems in five very different contexts, and can be specific about what travels, what does not, and why senior teams routinely misread the difference. Key speaking topics High-performance systems design Leadership under competitive pressure Talent pathways and academy development Culture change in medal-winning environments Marginal gains and performance innovation units Coaching teams through succession and reinvention Transfer of elite-sport practice to business leadership Ideal for CEO and board offsites framing a multi-year performance or culture reset CHROs and talent leads rebuilding pathways, academies, or internal development systems Leadership teams under acute competitive pressure where results are public Transformation leads accountable for sustained, not one-off, performance uplift Audience outcomes A sharper distinction between one-off results and a system that produces them repeatedly Specific case material from five elite programmes, not generic sport-to-business analogy A clearer view of how small innovation units earn their keep inside a larger organisation A working mental model for the handover points where high-performance cultures most often break

Why organisations work with Dominic Inglot He competed at the highest level of doubles tennis, a discipline that is structurally about two people making correct decisions together in real time under crowd, ranking, and result pressure. That experience translates directly to leadership pairs and small executive teams. He sat inside Great Britain’s 2015 Davis Cup squad, the country’s first title in 79 years, and can speak first-hand to what a team does in the weeks and minutes before a result that has eluded the institution for a generation. Eighteen years on the ATP tour, including Grand Slam semi-finals at the US Open and Wimbledon and an Olympic appearance, gives him a long-arc view on sustained performance, loss of form, and how players rebuild after defeats that would end most careers. His post-tennis work as a BBC and ATP commentator means he reads competitive performance for a living; he is unusually articulate about what is happening inside a match, which gives the keynote substance beyond the personal narrative. Biography highlights Career-high doubles ranking of World No. 18; former British No. 1 in doubles. 14 ATP Tour doubles titles, including Citi Open and Swiss Indoors; 27 ATP finals across an 18-year professional career. Member of the 2015 Great Britain Davis Cup winning squad; awarded BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year. Grand Slam doubles semi-finalist at the 2015 US Open and 2018 Wimbledon; three Australian Open quarter-finals. 2016 Rio Olympian for Team GB in men’s doubles. University of Virginia Finance graduate; 2009 NCAA Men’s Doubles Champion. Tennis commentator for BBC at Wimbledon and for the ATP and WTA world feeds. Biography Great Britain had not won the Davis Cup in seventy-nine years when the 2015 squad arrived in Ghent for the final against Belgium. Inglot was part of that squad. The team won. That fact frames everything else about what he brings to a corporate audience, because the interesting question is not the win, it is the eleven months of preparation, the weight of expectation, and the daily decisions inside a small group of people that produced it. The wider career sits alongside that moment as proof. World No. 18 in doubles, fourteen ATP titles, semi-finals at the US Open and Wimbledon, an Olympic appearance in Rio. Doubles, more than singles, is the closest sporting analogue to a senior executive pair: two people, complementary skills, real-time decisions, no time to caucus. The discipline of that partnership is what he speaks to. Since retiring in 2022, Inglot has worked as a commentator for BBC at Wimbledon and for the ATP and WTA world feeds. That second career matters here because he reads performance for a living. He is articulate about what composure looks like from the outside, what trust between teammates actually consists of in the seconds before a critical point, and why some players keep deciding when the result is uncertain while others stop. His University of Virginia Finance degree and NCAA doubles title sit at the start of the story rather than the end. The argument is not that elite sport is a metaphor for business. It is that elite sport is one of the few environments where the qualities leadership development tries to teach are stress-tested in public every week, and a leader can learn from watching them tested. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team trust and partnership Decision-making in real time Career transition and reinvention Resilience after setback Mental discipline in elite sport Lessons from doubles tennis for leadership pairs Ideal for Executive teams and leadership pairs whose effectiveness depends on real-time decisions and trust under pressure. Sales leadership and commercial teams approaching a high-stakes period (year-end, pitch, transaction close). Corporate offsites, annual conferences, and Davis Cup or Wimbledon hospitality activations. After-dinner audiences at industry events where a strong personal story carries the room. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of what composure looks like under genuine pressure, drawn from inside a Davis Cup campaign. A working language for how trust between two senior people is built and tested in real time. A view of career transition that does not flatten the difficulty of leaving a defining identity behind. A renewed standard for what high performance asks of preparation, not only execution.

Why organisations work with Martina Navratilova Open Era record holder for Grand Slam titles, with the longevity to back any conversation about high performance held over decades, not a single peak. A genuine first-mover on visibility: came out in 1981 when the cost was immediate and financial, and stayed in the public conversation on equality for forty years. Distinctive credibility on the cost of conviction. Few speakers can describe trading endorsement income for a values stance from personal experience. A working broadcaster and commentator across Tennis Channel, BBC Wimbledon and Sky Sports, comfortable with live-format conversations, Q and A, and interview settings as well as keynote. Honorary Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and recipient of the ITF Philippe Chatrier Award, the sport’s highest honour for service beyond the game. Biography highlights 59 Grand Slam titles across singles, doubles and mixed doubles, the Open Era record. Nine Wimbledon singles titles, an all-time record for any player. 167 singles titles and 1,442 match wins, both Open Era records. Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame; recipient of the ITF Philippe Chatrier Award and BBC Sports Personality Lifetime Achievement Award. Honorary Fellow, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. Author of “Martina Navratilova: Being Myself” and three published mystery novels. Biography Few athletes have had to decide whether to spend their earnings on a public position. In 1981, after a New York Daily News interview, Navratilova became one of the first global sports stars to be openly gay. The financial cost was immediate and measured in lost endorsements. She kept playing, kept winning, and kept the position. The tennis record itself is the foundation. 18 singles majors, 31 women’s doubles majors, 10 in mixed doubles, nine Wimbledon singles titles, 1,442 career match wins. She played her final match at the 2006 US Open, winning the mixed doubles a month short of her fiftieth birthday. The longevity is unmatched in the modern game. What she brings to organisations is the rarer asset behind that record: the discipline to hold a position publicly while continuing to perform at the highest professional level. She has spoken and written about the cost of that, including a public breast cancer diagnosis in 2010 and the decision to coach with the trans pioneer Renée Richards in the early 1980s. She is direct about what conviction costs and what it returns. Beyond the playing career, she is a working broadcaster across the Tennis Channel, BBC and Sky Sports, an author of fiction and non-fiction, an Honorary Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and the recipient of the sport’s Philippe Chatrier Award. The breadth is unusual; the consistency of the underlying argument across all of it is what serious audiences respond to. Key speaking topics Resilience and sustained high performance Conviction and visibility at professional cost LGBTQ advocacy and the history of athlete activism Peak performance and longevity in elite careers Health, recovery and return after illness Equality, diversity and inclusive leadership Ideal for Senior leadership audiences where a values-based message needs the weight of personal experience behind it DEI, Pride and ERG keynotes where credibility matters more than topical commentary Sales conferences, partner summits and incentive audiences where an iconic athlete anchor is the brief Boards and executive teams thinking about sustained performance under public scrutiny Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what conviction actually costs and what it builds over time A working frame for performance held over decades, not over a quarter Direct insight into the experience of being a first-mover on visibility in a hostile environment A renewed argument for equality and inclusion rooted in lived experience rather than policy language

Why organisations work with Chris Griffiths He brings a named, tested method. GRASP and the Solution Finder process, published across The Creative Thinking Handbook and GRASP The Solution, give teams a four-step route from problem to decision that can be run again without him in the room. He has built the tooling, not just the theory. OpenGenius turned the mind mapping method into Ayoa, a commercial platform used across Pfizer, the NHS, the European Commission and the State Bank of India, which gives his frameworks an operating record outside the keynote. He treats neurodiversity as a creative asset. Through the Inspire Genius Foundation and Ayoa’s neuroinclusive design, he connects creative thinking to the way neurodivergent minds actually work, giving leaders a practical angle on inclusion that is tied to output rather than compliance. He has run the playbook at scale. With Tony Buzan he built a global network of more than 1,000 licensed instructors operating inside Sony, the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, which is unusual evidence that his method transfers beyond the author. His work has been stress-tested in serious rooms. He facilitated a Nobel Laureate brainstorm at the Petra Nobel Conference convened by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan, and has coached senior teams at the European Commission. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of OpenGenius, the company behind the Ayoa mind mapping and productivity platform. Author of The Creative Thinking Handbook (Kogan Page), GRASP The Solution, and Mind Maps for Business (with Tony Buzan), with titles translated across more than 15 countries. Co-creator, with Tony Buzan, of the ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor Course, a global network of more than 1,000 accredited mind mapping instructors. Founder of start-ups that have ranked in the Deloitte European Fast 50 and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100. Facilitator of a brainstorming session with Nobel Laureates at the Petra Nobel Conference, hosted by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan. Contributor and cited expert in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, BBC, The Telegraph and GQ. Biography Creativity inside most organisations is still treated as a talent rather than a process. Chris Griffiths has spent nearly three decades arguing the opposite, and building the books, frameworks and software to prove it. His published work sets out a specific method. The Creative Thinking Handbook, published by Kogan Page and now available in more than ten languages, lays out the Solution Finder model. GRASP The Solution distils a four-step process that teams can run on any live business problem. Mind Maps for Business, co-authored with Tony Buzan, remains a standard text on applied visual thinking. The frameworks have a commercial track record attached. As founder and CEO of OpenGenius, he turned the method into Ayoa, a mind mapping and productivity platform used inside Pfizer, the NHS, the European Commission and the State Bank of India. With Tony Buzan he built the ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor Course into a network of over 1,000 accredited instructors operating inside Sony, the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, a rare piece of evidence that the method works without the author in the room. His businesses have ranked in the Deloitte European Fast 50 and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100. He has facilitated a Nobel Laureate brainstorm convened by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan at the Petra Nobel Conference, and through the Inspire Genius Foundation he funds young neurodivergent entrepreneurs, the group Ayoa’s neuroinclusive design was built around. Key speaking topics Applied creative thinking in business Systematic innovation and problem solving Mind mapping for leadership and strategy AI as a creative partner for human teams Productivity and focus for knowledge workers Neuroinclusive approaches to innovation Entrepreneurship and venture building Ideal for CEOs, founders and senior leadership teams who want a shared method for problem solving across the executive group. Chief Innovation Officers, Heads of Strategy and transformation leads tasked with making innovation repeatable rather than episodic. L&D and People leaders building creative-thinking capability and neuroinclusive practice across the workforce. R&D, product and commercial teams preparing for a specific planning cycle, offsite or innovation sprint. Audience outcomes A named four-step process (GRASP) that leaders can apply to a live business problem the day after the session. A working grasp of the Solution Finder model from The Creative Thinking Handbook and how to run it with a team. A practical introduction to mind mapping as a decision tool, not a sticky-note exercise. A view of where AI fits alongside human creativity, drawn from the design choices inside Ayoa. A clearer read on how neurodivergent thinkers contribute to creative output and how to design sessions that use that.

Why organisations work with Andreas Kuffner He has lived the precise problem most leadership teams describe in abstract terms: eight people, one boat, no room for individual heroics, sixteen years of preparation collapsing or holding in a six-minute window. That is the case he draws on, not a metaphor for it. He pairs that experience with a formal systemic coaching practice (ECA-certified) and a master’s in business engineering, so the language he uses with executives is operational, not inspirational. He works inside corporate change programmes at Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC, advising on team coherence and resilience rather than delivering one-off motivational sets. His framing of resilience is specific: coherence between meaning, self-efficacy and belonging, sustained when results stop confirming the strategy. That is a working model leaders can act on, not a slogan. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, men’s eight, London 2012, ending a 24-year German drought in the event Olympic silver medallist, men’s eight, Rio 2016 World champion, men’s eight, Bled 2011; European champion 2014 Recipient of the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, Germany’s highest sporting honour, awarded twice Certified systemic personal and business coach (European Coaching Association) Master’s degree in business engineering, completed while competing at elite level Advises corporate clients including Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC Biography The German eight had not won Olympic gold for 24 years before the crew Kuffner rowed in took the title in London in 2012. Four years later, the same boat took silver in Rio. The interesting fact is not the medal count. It is what an eight-person crew has to do, technically and psychologically, to put six minutes of synchronised output on the water when one micro-deviation ends the race. That problem is closer to what senior leadership teams face than the usual sports-keynote framing suggests. Coherence under pressure is a measurable thing, not a mood. It can be designed, rehearsed and rebuilt when it breaks. Kuffner spent 16 years inside that discipline at the highest level, and he now works with corporate teams on the same mechanics. His credentials outside the boat matter for that reason. A master’s degree in business engineering, completed alongside Olympic training. Certification as a systemic personal and business coach through the European Coaching Association. Active consulting work with Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC on team development, change and resilience. The vocabulary is operational, and the engagements run beyond the stage. What he offers a leadership team is a working language for performance that does not collapse the first time results turn against the strategy. Resilience as a structural property of how a team is held together, not a personal virtue. That is the conversation a boardroom needs when the next quarter looks harder than the last. Key speaking topics Resilience and team coherence under sustained pressure High-performance team development Leadership through change and setback Composure and decision-making in elite environments Building trust and collective discipline in senior teams Corporate culture and value creation Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams navigating restructure or sustained performance pressure CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team trust after acquisition, reorganisation or repeated change cycles Boards and operating committees seeking a working model of team coherence rather than a motivational input Audience outcomes A specific working model of team coherence drawn from elite rowing and applied to corporate operating teams A clearer view of resilience as a structural condition of the team, not a personality trait of its members Concrete language for how meaning, self-efficacy and belonging hold performance together when results turn A frame for distinguishing motivation from discipline in how leaders respond to setbacks

Why organisations work with Tim Kröger Two Whitbread Round the World podiums (1993/94 second, 1997/98 third) and a Mumm 36 World Championship give him direct, named experience of multi-week competitive performance, not generic adventure narrative. Author of Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept (Delius Klasing, 2013), a published thesis on how international crews are built and held together, which he uses as the spine of his corporate sessions. Two America’s Cup challenger campaigns (Le Defi Areva and Shosholoza) give him operating experience inside multinational, multilingual professional teams under heavy sponsor and media scrutiny. Holds a working coaching role with the German Sailing Association on the Olympic Mixed Offshore discipline, so the material is current, not retired-athlete reminiscence. Awarded the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt in 1983 alongside the German Admiral’s Cup team, anchoring credibility at national level rather than only within sailing circles. Biography highlights Whitbread Round the World Race: second place 1993/94 aboard Intrum Justitia, third place 1997/98 aboard Swedish Match. Admiral’s Cup winner with the German team, 1983; recipient of the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt the same year. Mumm 36 World Champion, 1995, aboard Corum. America’s Cup challenger campaigns with Le Defi Areva (France) and Shosholoza (South Africa). Author of Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept (Delius Klasing, 2013) and Abgerechnet wird im Ziel (2001). Trainer for the Mixed Offshore Olympic discipline with the German Sailing Association; Race Crew Manager in J Class yacht programmes. Biography The Whitbread Round the World Race runs nine months. A crew sails roughly 32,000 nautical miles, much of it in the Southern Ocean. Tim Kröger has finished it twice on the podium: second on Intrum Justitia in 1993/94 under Lawrie Smith, third on Swedish Match in 1997/98 as watch captain. That is the operating environment his corporate work draws from. In 1993 he became the first German to make professional offshore sailing his primary career. The decade after produced a Mumm 36 world title aboard Corum in 1995 and two America’s Cup challenger campaigns: the French Le Defi Areva syndicate from 2001 to 2003, and the South African Shosholoza programme from 2005 to 2007. Both involved running the operational seam between sailors, shore crew, designers and sponsors. His book Ich bin wir, das Crew-Konzept, published by Delius Klasing in 2013, sets out how a crew is actually built and held together: who decides, how watches hand over, how mistakes are handled while the boat is still moving. The argument carries because the crews he describes are named ones he sailed in, not composite illustrations. He continues to work as a trainer for the German Sailing Association in the Mixed Offshore Olympic discipline and as Race Crew Manager in J Class yacht programmes. The Admiral’s Cup win in 1983 brought him the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, Germany’s highest sporting honour, awarded by the Federal President. Key speaking topics High-performance team dynamics Leadership under sustained pressure Decision-making in offshore racing Communication across multinational crews Accountability inside small expert teams Resilience and recovery on long campaigns Building and managing elite crews Ideal for Executive teams and ExCos preparing for sustained operational pressure (transformations, integrations, restructures) Leadership offsites where the brief is team behaviour, not strategy content Sales and operations conferences seeking a credible narrative anchor with serious substance behind it After-dinner and incentive audiences in DACH and international corporate settings Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how elite crews hold decision quality when conditions deteriorate Specific techniques for handover, watch discipline and post-error recovery, drawn from named campaigns A clearer view of what accountability looks like in practice inside small expert teams A reframed sense of what sustained pressure does to communication, and what disciplined crews do about it

Why organisations work with Benedikt Böhm A working CEO, not a retired one. He runs an international outdoor brand and continues to ski 8,000-metre peaks, so the leadership material is current and tested, not memoir. A documented record in the most unforgiving operating environment in sport. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without oxygen are public, verifiable proof points for the arguments he makes about preparation, role clarity and team recovery. A peer-reviewed intellectual platform. His Routledge book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl frames the work as leadership scholarship, which gives the content credibility with HR, executive development and L&D buyers who screen out motivational content. A live test case for sustainability as commercial strategy. The DYNAFIT lifetime guarantee and the Helping Band WWF partnership are operating decisions, not communications. Survivor and rescuer in the 2012 Manaslu avalanche. The account of decision-making in and after that event is one of the few first-hand executive narratives of catastrophic shock and sustained recovery. Biography highlights International Managing Director of DYNAFIT, the ski-touring brand he led from insolvency in 2003 to global category leadership. Co-author with Professor Stefan Gröschl of ESSEC Business School of “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom” (Routledge, 2019). Speed records on Muztagata (7,546m, 2005) and Gasherbrum II (8,035m, 2006) with Sebastian Haag; speed ascent and ski descent of Manaslu (8,163m, 2012) without supplemental oxygen. WWF Foundation ambassador for the Himalaya region and snow leopards. Founder of Helping Band, a wristband initiative committing approximately 60,000 euros per year to WWF. Former member of the German national ski mountaineering team. Biography DYNAFIT was effectively insolvent when Benedikt Böhm joined its marketing team in 2003. Two decades later the brand is the international category leader in ski touring, with a lifetime product guarantee and an institutional partnership with WWF that he built personally. The arc is unusual because it has been run in parallel with an active expedition career at 8,000 metres. That second career is the source of his leadership material. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without supplemental oxygen require a precision of role allocation, recovery management and judgement under hypoxia that ordinary corporate planning does not test for. Böhm has spent twenty years moving between the two settings, and the comparison is what makes the work substantive. His 2019 book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl, “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom,” published by Routledge, is the formal statement of that work. The book sits deliberately outside the usual business-and-management canon, drawing on research into fear, pain, suffering and failure to argue that conventional models of executive resilience are too clean to describe how senior leaders actually behave under sustained pressure. The 2012 Manaslu avalanche, which killed eleven climbers and which Böhm and his climbing partner survived and helped rescue from, anchors much of the recovery and decision-making content. It is the rare case where the speaker has lived the catastrophic-shock material he discusses, and continued, after a deliberate pause, to operate at the same altitude and at the head of the same company. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Resilience and recovery after operational shock Team performance in high-stakes environments Risk management and the discipline of preparation Sustainability as commercial strategy Change leadership and organisational reinvention Personal performance and self-leadership at executive level Ideal for Executive committees and boards rebuilding after restructure, crisis or sustained pressure CHROs and heads of executive development designing leadership programmes with substance under the keynote CEOs and senior commercial leaders wrestling with sustainability as an operating decision rather than a communications line Senior teams preparing for major change, market entry or expedition-style strategic bets Audience outcomes A language for separating preparation, role discipline and recovery as three distinct leadership capabilities rather than one blurred idea of “resilience” A clearer view of how senior teams should behave in the first hours and days after a serious operational shock A working example of a CEO who has run sustainability as a product decision, not as a marketing position A grounded counterweight to motivational adventure content, with named expeditions, named outcomes and a named peer-reviewed text behind the argument

Why organisations work with Mike Brown Twenty years at the top of a brutally competitive professional sport, with 382 appearances for Harlequins and 72 England caps, gives leaders a credible voice on what it takes to keep performing through injury, deselection, and reinvention. Named 2014 Six Nations Player of the Championship, the only England player ever to win the award, alongside 2014 Premiership Player of the Season, evidence of standards held at the very top, not a single peak season. Lived experience of the back end of a career: leaving Harlequins after sixteen years, two seasons at Newcastle, finishing at Leicester, and retiring with the fourth most Premiership appearances of all time. Useful for audiences thinking about late-career identity, transition, and what high standards look like once the spotlight moves. Speaks from within elite team cultures under Eddie Jones, Stuart Lancaster, and Conor O’Shea, not as an outside observer. Biography highlights 72 England caps, 2007 to 2018, three Six Nations titles 382 appearances for Harlequins over sixteen seasons, two Premiership titles, one European Challenge Cup 2014 RBS Six Nations Player of the Championship and 2014 Premiership Rugby Player of the Season Retired at the end of the 2024 to 2025 season, the fourth most Premiership appearances in the league’s history Recurring co-host on RugbyPass Offload, one of the most-listened rugby podcasts Appointed Sporting Director at Esher RFC in December 2025 Biography Few players in the modern professional era have stayed at the top for as long as Mike Brown. Sixteen seasons at Harlequins, 72 caps for England, three Six Nations titles, and a career that ended with the fourth most appearances in the history of Premiership Rugby. The longevity matters because rugby does not allow it by accident. The 2014 Six Nations was the season that defined him. He was named Player of the Championship, the only Englishman ever to win the award, and Premiership Player of the Season in the same year. The recognition came after a decade of work that started with a debut in a record defeat to South Africa and ran through deselection, injury, and the public end of his Harlequins career in 2021. What Brown brings to a corporate audience is not the highlight reel, it is the sustained standard. He played under Eddie Jones, Stuart Lancaster and Conor O’Shea, and has been candid in interviews on RugbyPass Offload about the cost of holding his own performance to that standard for so long. Leaders responsible for tired teams recognise the territory. Since retirement he has moved into rugby media as a regular voice on RugbyPass Offload and into a Sporting Director role at Esher RFC. The second act sharpens the keynote material. He is now talking about high performance from both sides of the line, as the player who lived it and the executive who has to build it again from the ground up. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance Resilience and recovery from setback Team standards and accountability Elite team culture Career transition and reinvention Mental discipline under public pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards working through sustained pressure or restructure Sales and commercial teams under repeated quarterly performance demands HR and L&D programmes on resilience, standards, and high-performance culture Sports, broadcast, and member-organisation audiences Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what it takes to hold elite standards across a twenty-year career, not a single season Lived perspective on managing setback, public scrutiny, and deselection without losing competitive edge A working view of how elite team cultures actually function under high-profile coaches Reference points senior leaders can use when their own teams are fatigued by repeated change

Why organisations work with Andy Goode A name and voice that audiences already know from broadcast rugby coverage, which shortens the trust-building gap between the speaker and the room on the night. Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame status and a five-title Leicester Tigers career give the credibility a rugby audience tests for in the first two minutes of any after-dinner slot. Co-hosts The Rugby Pod with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar, so he brings live, current insight into the modern professional game, not nostalgia from a finished career. Comfortable across formats: keynote, after-dinner, awards host, panel moderator, Q&A with current players, which suits sponsors and hospitality programmes that need one person across a full event. When the brief calls for it, he speaks substantively on team performance, recovery from setback and reinvention after sport, drawing on a career that included two retirements, multiple club moves and a post-playing media reinvention. Biography highlights Five English Premiership titles with Leicester Tigers (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007). Two Heineken Cup winners’ medals (2001, 2002). 17 England caps between 2005 and 2009, debut against Italy in the Six Nations. 423 senior club appearances and 3,934 points across Leicester Tigers, Saracens, CA Brive, the Sharks, Worcester Warriors, Wasps and Newcastle Falcons. Second-highest points scorer in Premiership Rugby history and former record holder. Inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame, June 2021. Co-host of The Rugby Pod with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar; rugby pundit and analyst for major UK broadcasters including BT Sport and TalkSport. Biography Few fly-halves have stood in front of a Premiership pack across as many seasons as Andy Goode. He arrived at Leicester Tigers from school in 1998 and was inside the squad through the club’s record run of four straight Premiership titles, then returned for a second spell that produced a fifth title in 2007 and made him the all-time leading points scorer in the league, a record he held until Charlie Hodgson overtook him. The career that followed is what gives the after-dinner material its range. Saracens, then Brive in the French Top 14, a short spell with the Sharks in Super Rugby, then Worcester Warriors, Wasps and Newcastle Falcons. Across 423 senior games he scored 3,934 points and earned 17 England caps between 2005 and 2009. He was inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame in 2021. The second career has been built on the same instincts that ran a back line for nearly two decades. Goode reads the game on air the way he ran it on the pitch, which is why The Rugby Pod, co-hosted with Jim Hamilton and Dan Biggar, has become the most-listened-to rugby podcast in the world. He works as a pundit and analyst across major UK broadcasters and is a familiar voice to anyone following the modern professional game. For corporate audiences he is most often booked as a host, after-dinner speaker or awards MC for events where rugby is the hospitality currency. The substance, when the brief asks for it, is the same substance the playing career rested on: a team’s habits under pressure, the discipline of recovery from setback, and what an elite career looks like when the playing chapter ends. Key speaking topics Professional rugby and the modern game Team performance under pressure Career reinvention after elite sport After-dinner speaking and event hosting Awards and ceremony hosting Panel moderation and player Q&A Ideal for Corporate hospitality programmes built around rugby (Six Nations, Premiership Rugby, Rugby World Cup) Sponsor activations and client dinners during the rugby calendar Industry award ceremonies and gala dinners requiring a recognisable sports host Sports clubs, rugby unions and member organisations running fundraising events Audience outcomes A room that warms up quickly because the host already has the audience’s recognition A credible voice on the current state of the professional game, not generic sports anecdotes A storyteller who can hold the centre of a long-format dinner without slipping into stand-up For motivational briefs: a first-person account of resilience, repeated reinvention and elite-sport team culture