Peak Performance

Tori James is the first Welsh woman, and youngest British woman (at the time), to climb to the summit of Mount Everest which she achieved aged just 25. She is a record-breaking adventurer who has skied to the Magnetic North Pole, cycled the length of New Zealand and holds the record for the longest sea kayak in UK waters. Tori’s outstanding storytelling ability is engaging and uplifting. She talks about risk, resilience and how you and your team can realise your potential. Tori is an accomplished speaker who has delivered over 600 keynote presentations inspiring audiences across the globe. Tori talks about what it takes to be a high performing team and deliver under pressure, exploring the strategies, mindsets and beliefs that contributed to her team’s success. Speaking at team development days, sales kickoff events and annual conferences she shares her experiences of life in extreme environments in a way that is inspiring and utterly compelling to listen to. Tori starred in the BBC documentary ‘On Top of the World’ which was produced using footage she captured on her Everest climb. In 2025, Tori launched the First Females podcast, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first female ascent of Everest by sharing stories of pioneering climbers worldwide. She also climbed Yala Peak in Nepal, retracing the steps of Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Everest. Tori’s Beeline Britain challenge is documented in the multi award-winning documentary film called ‘As The Crow Flies’ and her book ‘Peak Performance’ describes the incredible journey she took from growing up in Wales to reaching the summit of Mount Everest.  Tori holds a ‘Points of Light’ Award, awarded by the Prime Minister in recognition of her outstanding volunteering and fundraising and is a member of the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame. Tori is an advocate for active travel initiatives and passionately promotes school ‘bike buses’ enabling children to cycle to school and experience everyday adventures by bike. Tori is the President of Girlguiding in Wales, an ambassador for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and a Fellow of British Exploring.  

Why organisations work with Laura Muir A medal record across three Olympic cycles (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 silver, Paris 2024 fifth with a Scottish record) that demonstrates sustained performance rather than a single peak moment. The only British athlete to win five European Indoor Championship golds, evidence of a planning and preparation system that produces results year after year. Lived experience of running a parallel high-stakes track: completed her veterinary medicine degree at Glasgow while training at world-class level, a story of capacity management rather than balance. Direct access to the methods behind composure in finals where the British record, an Olympic medal, and global attention are decided inside four minutes. Biography highlights Olympic 1500m silver medallist, Tokyo 2020, in a British record 3:54.50. Two-time outdoor European 1500m champion (Berlin 2018, Munich 2022) and 2022 World Championships 1500m bronze medallist. Five European Indoor Championship gold medals, a British record, including a 1500m and 3000m double in Glasgow 2019. 2022 Commonwealth Games 1500m gold and 800m bronze for Team Scotland. Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow, graduated 2018. MBE for services to athletics, 2019 New Year Honours. Biography The 1500 metres is decided in just under four minutes. There is no second leg, no team-mate to hand off to, and no plausible recovery from a poor tactical call inside the final lap. The athletes who medal repeatedly at that distance are the ones who have built a system that holds when the stakes are at their highest. Laura Muir has medalled at three Olympic cycles in that event, including silver at Tokyo 2020 in a British record of 3:54.50 and a fifth-place Scottish record in the Paris 2024 final. She holds five European Indoor Championship gold medals, the most of any British athlete, and is a two-time outdoor European champion. The 2022 World Championships in Eugene added a bronze, and the same year brought Commonwealth Games gold in the 1500m and bronze over 800m. That run of results comes from a planning culture more than from inspiration. The same period covered her veterinary medicine degree at the University of Glasgow, completed in 2018, and an MBE for services to athletics the following year. The discipline she describes when talking about competition is the discipline she used to run two careers in parallel. For senior audiences, the relevant content is not the medals themselves but the operating method behind them: how a small team builds a season around a single race, how composure is rehearsed rather than summoned, and how recovery from a disappointing championship becomes the input to the next cycle’s plan. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Goal setting and long-range planning Resilience and recovery from setback Composure in high-stakes moments Capacity management across parallel commitments Team and coach relationships in individual sport Motivation and discipline over a long career Ideal for Senior leaders and executive teams under sustained performance scrutiny Sales, trading, and commercial functions where individual high-stakes moments determine results Talent and learning leaders designing development programmes for high-potential staff Conference audiences at annual kickoffs, partner meetings, and recognition events Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite performers plan and rehearse for moments that last minutes but define a year. Specific methods for managing composure when the audience and the cost of error are both large. A credible account of how to sustain output across multiple cycles, not a single peak. A clear view of what capacity management looks like when two demanding tracks are being run at once.

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 Jodie Burrage She speaks from inside the experience of considering whether to walk away, then choosing not to. That is a different conversation from generic motivational content, and audiences feel the difference. Her examples are dated, specific and verifiable: a top-five win over Paula Badosa, a Wimbledon main-draw debut victory, an all-British WTA final, and a near full ankle ligament rupture in training that cost her a Grand Slam season. She covers mental health from the position of someone who broke down in a training session in 2024 and went back the next day. The credibility on pressure and stress comes from the record, not from a wellness framework. She is a current player, not a retired figurehead. The recovery story is live, which makes the material useful to teams facing their own in-flight setbacks rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Career-high WTA singles ranking of world No. 85, reached in September 2023 Reached the 2023 Nottingham Open final, the first all-British WTA final since 1977 WTA Tour doubles champion at the 2023 Transylvania Open with Jil Teichmann First Grand Slam main-draw singles win at Wimbledon 2023 against Caty McNally Top-five career win over Paula Badosa at the 2022 Eastbourne International Represented Great Britain in the Billie Jean King Cup including the 2026 qualifier against Australia in Melbourne Biography Three ankle surgeries before the age of twenty would have ended most playing careers. Burrage came back from them, broke into the world top 100 in 2023, and reached an all-British WTA final at Nottingham against Katie Boulter, the first of its kind since 1977. The same year she recorded her first Grand Slam main-draw singles win at Wimbledon against Caty McNally and lifted a WTA Tour doubles title in Cluj-Napoca with Jil Teichmann. The 2024 season is the part of the story audiences tend to remember. Wrist surgery in February was followed, just as she was returning, by a near full rupture of her ATFL ankle ligament in a training session with Boulter. She missed the French Open, the grass-court season and Wimbledon. She has since said publicly that she considered retirement during that recovery and broke down mid-session asking how much fight she had left. The material she brings to corporate audiences is built on that ground. The career-high ranking of No. 85, the top-five win over Paula Badosa at Eastbourne in 2022, and her Billie Jean King Cup appearances for Great Britain through to the 2026 qualifier against Australia all sit inside a record of repeated injury and return. She talks about pressure, public accountability and the daily decision to keep going as someone still actively making that decision on the WTA Tour. For leaders who have to ask teams to perform through restructure, setback or sustained uncertainty, the value is the realism. Burrage does not present resilience as a state. She describes it as a series of small choices made on bad days, with the scoreboard public the following week. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Mental health in high-performance environments Goal setting and personal accountability Performing in the public eye Team environments and individual responsibility Ideal for Sales, trading and other performance-measured teams operating under public or visible scorecards HR, talent and L&D leaders building wellbeing and mental health content with credibility beyond the wellness sector Leaders running organisations through restructure, layoffs or sustained operational pressure Early-career and high-potential audiences facing first encounters with public failure Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a current professional athlete makes the decision to continue after setback, rather than an abstract framework Language for talking about mental health in performance settings without softening it into wellness A working definition of accountability when results are visible and the next attempt is days away A reference point for resilience grounded in dated, verifiable career events rather than metaphor

Why organisations work with Annabell Fuller A live competitor’s account of decision-making under public pressure, drawn from major championship cuts at Carnoustie and a top-three finish at a USD 5 million LET event, not retrospective reflection from a retired career. Specific, sport-grounded language for what self-leadership looks like in the seconds before a high-stakes call, useful for leaders briefing teams on composure rather than wellbeing. A credible voice on the gap between physical preparation and competitive output, drawn from CrossFit-led conditioning work integrated into a professional golf schedule. A generational perspective on performing in public view at twenty-three, relevant to organisations thinking about early-career talent expected to operate under scrutiny. Biography highlights Ladies European Tour professional since 2024; tied 5th at LET Q-School to earn her card. 3rd place at the PIF Saudi Ladies International 2025, a USD 5 million LET event. Made the cut at the 2021 AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie as one of only three amateurs that year. Three-time Curtis Cup player for Great Britain and Ireland (2018, 2021, 2022). Two-time European Ladies’ Team Championship gold medallist for England (2021, 2022). 2020 English Women’s Open Amateur Stroke Play Champion; University of Florida NCAA golfer 2020 to 2023. Biography A senior team will commit hundreds of hours of training to a decision that takes two seconds to execute in public. The question of what holds a performer together in that window is rarely treated as a discipline. Annabell Fuller has spent her career inside it. Fuller earned her Ladies European Tour card at Q-School in December 2023 with a tied-5th finish, then spent her rookie 2024 season learning to convert preparation into tour-level scoring. Her strongest result so far, third place at the PIF Saudi Ladies International in 2025, came at a USD 5 million LET event where the field included most of the tour’s established names. The amateur record behind her is the credential most useful to a board audience. She made the cut at the 2021 Women’s British Open at Carnoustie as one of only three amateurs, won the English Women’s Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 2020, and represented Great Britain and Ireland three times in the Curtis Cup. At the University of Florida she won the Florida Gator Invitational and reached the world’s top 25 in the amateur rankings. What sits underneath those results, and what she speaks about, is the conditioning behind composure: how a competitor builds a decision process that survives the moment a tournament tightens. The talks lean on CrossFit-integrated physical preparation, public accountability at twenty-three, and the specific discipline of recovering from a poor shot quickly enough to compete on the next one. Key speaking topics Composure and decision-making under public pressure Self-leadership in elite competition Physical preparation and performance conditioning Resilience after setback Team performance in individual sport Early-career performance under scrutiny Ideal for Sales leadership conferences focused on quota delivery under pressure Early-career and high-potential talent programmes inside large organisations Executive offsites built around composure and decision-making rather than strategy Employee networks and ERG events on women in performance environments Audience outcomes A working language for what composure under pressure actually involves, drawn from competition rather than coaching theory. A clearer picture of how physical conditioning links to mental performance in a demanding role. Specific examples of recovering from public setbacks fast enough to perform on the next attempt. A credible account of operating under public scrutiny at the start of a career.

Why organisations work with Georgia-Mae Fenton She has won the same individual event at consecutive Commonwealth Games, four years apart, the first gymnast in the discipline to do so. That is direct experience of defending a peak, which is harder than reaching one. Her team’s World Championship silver in Liverpool in 2022 was the best result by a British women’s artistic gymnastics team in the history of the World Championships. She can speak credibly to what changes inside a high-performing group at the moment the standard moves. She made her Olympic debut at Paris 2024 in her mid-twenties after several years of being the established figure in the squad. The arc is later than most assume, and that is the substance of her recovery and persistence material. East London based, comfortable in school, community and corporate audiences without changing register. Useful for organisations that want a high-profile athlete who reads the room. Biography highlights Commonwealth Games gold, uneven bars and team, Birmingham 2022. Commonwealth Games gold, uneven bars, Gold Coast 2018. World Championships silver, team, Liverpool 2022, with Great Britain. Team GB women’s artistic gymnastics, Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Trained from age five at South Essex Gymnastics Club; competes for Great Britain and England. Represented by Forte Model Management alongside her competitive career. Biography The uneven bars demand absolute composure inside an eight-second routine where one missed catch ends the competition. Georgia-Mae Fenton has stood on the top of the Commonwealth podium for that event twice, four years apart, in Gold Coast and Birmingham. That is a rare thing in any sport: holding a championship standard across a full Olympic cycle of injury risk, selection politics and shifting code requirements. The Liverpool World Championships in 2022 was the broader inflection point. Fenton was part of the five-woman Great Britain team that took silver, the strongest result a British women’s artistic gymnastics team has ever produced at a World Championship. That medal also booked the team’s quota place for Paris 2024. At Paris she made her Olympic debut as one of the more experienced figures in a young Team GB quintet that finished fourth, edged off the podium by Brazil in the final rotation. The arc from junior British champion at fifteen, to Commonwealth gold at seventeen, to Olympian at twenty-three, is the substance she draws on when she speaks about persistence and re-entry after long stretches of work with no obvious return. She works with corporate, school and community audiences from her base in East London. The material is grounded in what she has actually done: holding a routine when it counts, going back to the same event a second time after winning it once, and recovering form after the years when the medals do not come. Key speaking topics Composure under high-stakes performance pressure Defending a peak across long performance cycles Recovery and re-entry after setback Discipline and goal-setting in elite sport Team dynamics inside a high-performing squad Mental health and stress management for young performers Role models and visibility in women’s sport Ideal for Corporate audiences in sectors with high-pressure delivery cycles (sales, trading, professional services) HR and talent leaders programming on resilience, wellbeing and early-career performance Schools, universities and youth-facing organisations focused on aspiration and persistence Women’s networks and ERGs commissioning speakers on visibility in sport Audience outcomes A concrete view of what composure looks like inside an eight-second performance window, told by someone who has executed it on the world stage The mechanics of preparing to defend a title, which is different in kind from preparing to win one Honest material on the years when the medals do not come and the work continues A grounded perspective on managing public expectation as a young woman in elite sport

Why organisations work with Jade Jones She is the only athlete to have won Olympic taekwondo gold for Britain, and she did it twice, at 19 and at 23, against the world’s best Korean and Chinese fighters in their own sport. She speaks from a 13-year competitive career at the top of a sport with no margin for off-days, which gives weight when she talks about pressure, preparation, and the psychology of repeat performance. Her trajectory through Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 first-round exits, then a complete sport change to professional boxing at 31, gives her a credible vocabulary on setback and reinvention that most decorated athletes do not have. Awarded both an MBE and an OBE by the Crown for services to taekwondo and sport, recognition that signals public-record stature rather than bureau framing. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, women’s 57 kg taekwondo: London 2012 and Rio 2016. World Champion, 57 kg, Manchester 2019. Three-time European Champion (2016, 2018, 2021). Two-time European Games champion (2015, 2023). Ten career gold medals across World Taekwondo Grand Prix events between 2014 and 2023. MBE (2013) and OBE (2020) for services to taekwondo and sport. Twice named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year (2012, 2016); Flint Pavilion Leisure Centre renamed in her honour. Professional boxing debut, 7 March 2026, Misfits Duel 2 in Derby; second-round knockout victory over Egypt Criss. Biography Team GB had never won an Olympic taekwondo medal of any colour when Jones walked into the ExCeL arena for the women’s 57 kg final at London 2012. She walked out at 19 as Team GB’s first taekwondo Olympic champion and the youngest member of that Games’ British gold cohort. Four years later in Rio, she defended the title against Spain’s Eva Calvo, beating her 16-7 to become the only British fighter ever to win two Olympic taekwondo golds. The two-Games haul is the headline. The career underneath it is the substance. She won her first World Championship in Manchester in 2019 against the defending champion. She holds three European titles and two European Games titles. She collected ten World Grand Prix golds across nearly a decade of competition, the kind of record that requires a person to be peaking on demand at three or four major events a year for most of their twenties. That record also includes the two losses that matter. First-round exits at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, after a year of training in her own garage during the pandemic and a second cycle as the marked favourite. The recovery vocabulary she uses on stage is not borrowed; it is what she did to keep competing after each of them. In March 2025 she retired from taekwondo and signed with former professional boxer Stephen Smith to train for a boxing career. Her stated target is to become a world champion in two sports. She made her professional debut at Misfits Duel 2 in Derby on 7 March 2026 and won by second-round knockout. The point for a corporate audience is the willingness to start again from the bottom of a different sport at 31 after one of the most decorated careers in British combat sport. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure at elite level Repeat peak performance across a long career Recovery and reinvention after public setback Mental health in high-stakes environments Long-term goal setting and focus Women in sport and underrepresented disciplines Career transition and starting again Ideal for Sales, trading and leadership teams whose performance is measured event by event Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, succession, and renewal after a hard year Company-wide kickoffs and recognition events looking for credible Olympic-calibre proof of what discipline produces Diversity, women’s networks and ERG events where a high-profile woman in a male-dominated combat sport adds substance Audience outcomes A concrete sense of what daily discipline looks like over a decade of competitive peaks A working definition of pressure that comes from inside an Olympic final, not a metaphor Permission to treat setback as an operational fact rather than a personal failing A first-hand account of changing direction late, told by someone doing it now in public

Why organisations work with Adam Gemili A world title earned by a four-man relay quartet, not an individual final, gives him direct material on how teams hold technique together when one mistake ends the race. Fourteen years at the top of British sprinting, including European 200m gold and an Olympic 200m final, evidence a long performance arc rather than a single peak moment. His current role as sprint coach at Chelsea FC academy means his content on performance habits is being actively tested against developing professional athletes, not retold from memory. He is the first British man to run sub-10 in the 100m and sub-20 in the 200m, a credential that opens corporate audiences and supports the discipline-and-marginal-gains content many performance speakers claim without proof. Biography highlights World Champion, men’s 4x100m relay, IAAF World Championships London 2017 (37.47, national and European record). European Champion, 200m, 2014; three-time European Champion in the 4x100m relay. Olympic 200m finalist, Rio 2016, finishing fourth. First British male sprinter to run sub-10 seconds in the 100m and sub-20 seconds in the 200m. Sprint and speed coach, Chelsea FC academy, from 2026. Degree in Sports & Exercise Science with Human Biology. Biography The Great Britain men’s 4x100m team had spent years carrying the memory of a botched handover at London 2012. Five years later, in the same stadium, they ran 37.47 seconds and beat the United States to the world title. Gemili ran the second leg. That race is the strongest single anchor in his speaking material. It is also the most accurate frame for what he offers a corporate room: a story about four people executing a technical task in front of 60,000 spectators, where the result depends on the handover as much as the speed. His individual record runs in parallel. European 200m champion in 2014, Olympic finalist in Rio in 2016, fourth at the 2019 World Championships in Doha as the highest-placed European. He is the first British man to run sub-10 in the 100m and sub-20 in the 200m, a credential that signals range across both events rather than a single specialism. In March 2026 he retired from elite athletics and returned to Chelsea FC, where he had spent seven years as a youth player before switching codes, this time as a sprint and speed coach for the academy. The crossover gives his content on performance, recovery, and team behaviour a current operational anchor, not just a competitive past. Key speaking topics High-performance teams under pressure Composure and execution in high-stakes moments Resilience after setback and injury Goal-setting and the long performance arc Mental health in elite environments Diversity and representation in sport Coaching and developing young talent Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on performance behaviours Employee engagement, kick-off and town hall events where a corporate audience benefits from a non-corporate voice HR and people leaders programming content on resilience and mental health for high-pressure teams After-dinner and awards programmes wanting a credible British sporting figure rather than a generic motivational slot Audience outcomes A specific account of how a four-person team won a world title where any single error ends the race A working definition of composure under public scrutiny, drawn from someone who lived it across major championships Honest material on setback, injury, and competitive disappointment from a fourteen-year career, not a highlight reel A credible, recent perspective on coaching and developing young athletes inside a Premier League academy

Why organisations work with Christophe Fox Headline entertainment that doubles as a content vehicle. The mentalism set is built for a corporate room, with company branding, brief framing and a takeaway message that ties back to the event theme. Emcee craft for high-stakes internal events. Fox holds the room across a multi-session agenda, manages energy between speakers and reduces the load on internal hosts at sales kickoffs, anniversaries and client gatherings. A motivational keynote anchored in a personal arc. “Performing Under Pressure” uses Fox’s stage-fright-to-stage transformation as the spine, paired with live demonstrations rather than slides. A reception product, not just a stage product. Mix-and-mingle mentalism gives organisations a way to make networking sessions and hospitality moments deliberately memorable rather than incidental. A client list that signals corporate-grade reliability. Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon have all booked Fox, alongside named work for PBS and the Jordan Royal Family. Biography highlights Corporate clients include Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon. Television appearances on CBS, ABC, Fox and MSNBC, plus a TEDx appearance. Featured in Modern Luxury Magazine and Yahoo News. Social audience of more than one million followers and over 100 million views of his work. Performs in English and French. Named client testimonial from Princess Ghida Talal of the Jordanian Royal Family. Biography Most corporate events are built around content the audience will forget. The harder design problem is the moment in the room that people retell on Monday morning, and that still carries the message leadership wanted to land. Christophe Fox builds that moment as a product. Fox is a corporate mentalist and emcee who works almost exclusively in the Fortune-100 event circuit. His headline set uses mind reading, suggestion and audience participation to put the audience inside the demonstration rather than in front of it. The same craft scales down to mix-and-mingle receptions and up to multi-session emcee work across sales kickoffs, anniversaries, product launches and client appreciation events. His keynote, “Performing Under Pressure,” runs a different lane. The content draws on his own transition from paralysing stage fright to full-time performer for clients including Deloitte, JP Morgan, Boston Scientific, Wells Fargo and Amazon. Mentalism demonstrations carry the message rather than slide decks, which is why the talk lands with audiences that have sat through a long agenda of conventional speakers. The body of public work sits on television (CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC), a TEDx appearance, features in Modern Luxury Magazine and Yahoo News, and a social audience above one million followers with 100 million plus views. For a senior buyer, the relevant signal is reliability at scale: a performer who can hold the room at a Fortune-100 sales kickoff, brand the set to the event, and leave the audience with a shared moment that reinforces, rather than competes with, the leadership message. Key speaking topics Corporate mentalism and interactive entertainment Event emcee and hosting Mix-and-mingle reception performance Performing under pressure Mindset and overcoming stage fright Customer experience as a designed moment Audience engagement at large internal events Ideal for Heads of internal communications and event leads planning sales kickoffs, all-hands, anniversaries and client appreciation events. Chief marketing officers and brand teams designing customer events, product launches and hospitality experiences. Conference organisers booking an emcee who can hold a multi-session agenda and absorb load from internal hosts. Audience outcomes A shared, retold moment from the event that ties back to the message leadership wanted to land. Higher energy and attention through the second half of the agenda when audiences typically fade. A reception or networking session that feels deliberate and branded, not incidental. For keynote bookings: a personal narrative about composure and stage fright that audiences relate to without it feeling like a lecture.

Why organisations work with Ruth Gotian Her research base is unusual in the leadership field: in-person interviews with named peak performers including Anthony Fauci, Nobel laureate Mike Brown, former NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, and Steve Kerr, not aggregated case studies pulled from secondary sources. Thinkers50 named her the #1 emerging management thinker in the world in 2021, placed her on the Coaches50 list in 2024, and shortlisted her in 2025 for the Coaching and Mentoring Award, one of eight thought leaders globally. Few executive development voices hold all three. For 29 years inside Weill Cornell Medicine, most recently as Chief Learning Officer, she built and ran the mentoring infrastructure her frameworks describe. The work is operational, not theoretical. Her four-attribute model from The Success Factor (intrinsic motivation, perseverance, strong foundation, constant informal learning) gives leadership teams a shared, testable language for what they are actually selecting and promoting for. Her mentoring work is structural, including how to recognise toxic mentorship and where to find mentors outside the obvious channels, which is what large organisations actually struggle with when formal programmes stall. Biography highlights Faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University, teaching graduate-level courses on high achievement based on her research. Previously Chief Learning Officer and Associate Professor of Education in Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, over a 29-year career. Author of The Success Factor (Kogan Page, 2022), co-author of The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring with Andy Lopata (Pearson/FT, 2024), and co-author of Mentoring in Healthcare with Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint (2025). Thinkers50 Radar Award, 2021 (#1 emerging management thinker); Coaches50, 2024; shortlisted for the Coaching and Mentoring Award, 2025 (top eight globally). Cited as a leadership expert by The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and NBC News; named a top mentor by Nature, The Wall Street Journal, and Columbia University. Contributing author at Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Fast Company; LinkedIn Top Voice in Mentoring, 2023. Semi-finalist for the Forbes 50 Over 50 list. Biography The four attributes that distinguish Nobel laureates, astronauts, Olympic champions, and world-class CEOs are not the ones senior leaders typically optimise for. Intrinsic motivation, perseverance, a strong foundation, and constant informal learning, all running at once. That is the central finding behind The Success Factor, the book that put Ruth Gotian on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2021 as the world’s #1 emerging management thinker. The research is what gives the work its weight. The book is built on direct interviews with named figures, including Anthony Fauci, Nobel laureate Mike Brown, former NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, Build-A-Bear founder Maxine Clark, and Steve Kerr. The conclusions are not extrapolated from secondary case studies, which is the standard pattern in the success and performance category. For 29 years inside Weill Cornell Medicine, most recently as Chief Learning Officer and Associate Professor of Education in Anesthesiology, she built and ran the institution’s mentoring infrastructure. That operational base is what separates her advice on building mentoring capability from the lighter material in the field. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Andy Lopata, is the practical companion volume; Mentoring in Healthcare, co-authored with Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint, extends the work into the sector that taught her the discipline. She now sits on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she earned her doctorate in adult learning and leadership, teaching graduate-level courses on high achievement built on the same research. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Fast Company, and was named a LinkedIn Top Voice in Mentoring in 2023. Nature, The Wall Street Journal, and Columbia University have each named her among the top mentors in the world; The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and NBC News have called on her as a leadership expert. The 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist placed her among eight thought leaders globally on the discipline she has spent her career inside. Key speaking topics High performance and the science of extreme success Mentorship as a leadership discipline Executive coaching and senior talent development Authentic professional networks Leadership behaviours of Nobel laureates, astronauts, and Olympic champions Retention of high performers Organisational learning and chief learning officer practice Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers building leadership and mentoring capability Boards and executive committees thinking through succession and senior talent retention Partner-track and director-level cohorts inside professional services and healthcare Women’s leadership and executive development programmes inside large enterprises Audience outcomes A defined model for what high performance actually consists of, usable inside promotion and selection conversations A practical method for spotting and avoiding toxic mentorship inside formal programmes Concrete language for how senior leaders can develop people, not just deliver results A clearer view of how peak performers maintain momentum after early success Specific examples drawn from named Nobel laureates, astronauts, and CEOs that audiences can cite the next day

Why organisations work with Jaco van Gass A first-hand account of what happens between catastrophic loss and elite-level performance, from a speaker who has lived both ends of that arc rather than studied them. Demonstrated ability to translate military and Paralympic experience into language senior teams use, with named clients including Investec and the British Forces Foundation. Credibility built on verifiable results, including Paralympic gold at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 and a world record of 3:15.488 in the C3 3000m pursuit, not motivational anecdote. A serving counterweight to the corporate resilience industry: the message is grounded in 11 operations, two Paralympic cycles and a polar expedition, not in a wellness model. Biography highlights Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), 2025 New Year Honours, for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022. Multiple-time Paralympic gold medallist across Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, with podium finishes across pursuit, team sprint and time trial events. World record holder in the C3 3000m individual pursuit, 3:15.488, set during Paris 2024 qualifying. Author of Unequivocal: My Story (2022), published in hardback and ebook; ghostwritten with Eleanor Updegraff. Member of the 2011 Walking with the Wounded North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Walking with the Wounded Everest summit team. Former British Army Parachute Regiment soldier, wounded in action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2009. Biography The 2009 RPG strike in Helmand should have been the end of the story. It removed Jaco van Gass’s left arm at the elbow, collapsed a lung, broke his tibia and put him through 11 operations. The interest, for a senior audience, is what came next, and how. Recovery did not look like a return to baseline. It looked like a rebuilt operating system. Jaco joined Walking with the Wounded for the 2011 North Pole expedition with Prince Harry, and the 2012 Everest summit team, before moving into elite para-cycling. By Tokyo 2020, he was a Paralympic gold medallist in the C3 3000m pursuit and the mixed team sprint. By Paris 2024, he had retained the pursuit title with a world record of 3:15.488, having raced a week after being hit by a car in training. The book Unequivocal, published in 2022, gives the spine of the argument: that recovery is a deliberate practice, not a personality trait, and that the gap between “I cannot do this” and “I can do this differently” is closed by specific decisions made under fatigue. He was appointed OBE in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to cycling, an upgrade from the MBE awarded in 2022. For corporate audiences, the value is precise. Jaco is not delivering motivation. He is describing what composure under sustained pressure costs, what it produces, and how it is rebuilt when the original conditions of success no longer apply. Key speaking topics Resilience after catastrophic setback Self-leadership under sustained pressure High-performance recovery and rehabilitation Goal-setting when the original plan is gone Team performance under extreme conditions Disability, inclusion and adaptive performance Ideal for Leadership and senior teams facing prolonged operational pressure or post-crisis recovery HR, talent and wellbeing leads commissioning serious content on resilience rather than wellness theatre Sales conferences and annual kick-offs, where the agenda needs a credible counterpoint to commercial content Veteran, public-sector and emergency-service audiences with a direct cultural bridge to his story Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience grounded in lived recovery, not framework language A clearer view of the difference between motivation and decision-making under fatigue A concrete account of how high-performance teams, military and athletic, function when conditions deteriorate Renewed reference points for goal-setting when circumstances force a full reset