Peak Performance speakers

Why organisations work with Les Hewitt A coaching method that has been deployed inside more than 300 companies, including Wells Fargo, RBC, FedEx, RE/MAX and the Million Dollar Round Table, with a focus on sales-led and franchise organisations rather than abstract leadership theory. Co-authorship of The Power of Focus with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, a book that has sold more than 825,000 copies in North America and given Hewitt a recognisable thesis his audiences have often already encountered. Three decades of building and running The Power of Focus coaching program, including more than 900 delivered workshops, so the content is operating practice and not a recycled keynote. A clear diagnostic for why senior teams underperform: unclear future targets, leaders not protecting their top objectives, weak internal communication, and habits that quietly cost productivity. Built specifically for sales leaders, owner-operators and franchise networks, audiences that are usually underserved by leadership-development speakers pitched at corporate HQ. Biography highlights Co-author with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of The Power of Focus, an international bestseller translated into more than 20 languages. Founder of The Power of Focus Coaching Program, used by more than 300 companies across North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, the Gulf, Singapore and Russia. Named clients include Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, Cameron Inc., Nexen Energy, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Investors Group and the Million Dollar Round Table. Author of further titles in the series, including The Power of Focus for Women, The Power of Faithful Focus and The Power of Focus for College Students. Built and ran Achievers Canada, the seminar business that delivered more than 450 leadership and sales programs before evolving into the current coaching practice. Originally from Belfast; rose to top salesperson in an international network marketing company before moving into coaching and authorship. Biography Most senior teams are not failing on strategy. They are failing on follow-through. Targets get diluted by competing demands, the highest-value work slips down the calendar, and the habits that quietly govern productivity go unexamined. Hewitt has spent more than thirty years building a coaching practice around that gap. The Power of Focus, the book he co-authored with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was the first articulation of his method outside the workshop room. It became a long-running international bestseller, has been translated into more than twenty languages, and seeded the coaching program that now carries the same name. The book gave him a public thesis. The coaching business gave him the operating evidence behind it. That coaching business has been deployed inside more than 300 organisations, including Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Cameron Inc. and the Million Dollar Round Table. The work concentrates on a specific cohort: sales-led and franchise organisations where individual leader habits and team focus translate directly into commercial results. More than 900 workshops have been delivered, so the material is tested under load. Hewitt’s distinctive value is the combination of a recognisable book and a long working catalogue of what actually changes inside companies when leaders narrow their targets and protect their top priorities. Audiences leave with concrete habits and language to install on Monday, not a framework to file away. Key speaking topics Focus and follow-through for senior leaders Goal clarity and execution discipline Productivity habits in sales-led organisations Leadership effectiveness and self-management High-performance team behaviour Ideal for CEOs and owner-operators of mid-market and growth-stage businesses Sales leaders, franchise principals and broker networks Senior leadership teams running annual planning and offsite resets Member organisations such as MDRT, RE/MAX, Royal LePage and similar producer networks Audience outcomes A clearer set of personal and team targets, written down and prioritised before they leave the room. Specific habits to protect the highest-value hours of the working week. A common language for accountability that the team can keep using after the event. Practical tactics drawn from sales and entrepreneurial environments rather than abstract leadership theory.

Why organisations work with Lizzy Yarnold One of two athletes in history to defend an Olympic skeleton title, and the only British Winter Olympian ever to retain a gold. The credibility of repeating the result, not just achieving it once, is the central proof point. Speaks from a sport where mistakes are measured in hundredths of a second and decisions happen at 80mph. The transfer to high-stakes commercial decision-making is direct, not metaphorical. Brings the inside view of UK Sport’s Girls4Gold talent-identification programme, a system designed to find and develop performers from outside the obvious pipeline. Useful for HR and talent leaders thinking about non-traditional pathways. Comfortable in honest territory: she retired after a vestibular disorder, a chest infection at the Games, and surgery on her knee and back. The story of what high performance costs is part of the offer, not glossed over. Sits on the British Olympic Association athlete commission and works as a BBC analyst, so the perspective is current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Olympic gold, women’s skeleton, Sochi 2014 – winning margin of 0.97 seconds, the largest in Winter Olympic skeleton history. Olympic gold, women’s skeleton, PyeongChang 2018 – the first British athlete to retain a Winter Olympic title. World Championship gold (Winterberg, 2015) and European Championship gold (Igls, 2015), completing skeleton’s grand slam alongside Olympic and World Cup titles. Overall Skeleton World Cup winner, 2013-14 season. OBE for services to skeleton (2018), upgraded from MBE awarded in 2014. Honorary doctorate of science, University of Kent (2018). BBC analyst for Winter Olympic skeleton and luge coverage. Member of the British Olympic Association athlete commission. Biography The 2014 Sochi gold was won by 0.97 seconds. In a sport where podium positions are usually settled by hundredths, that margin is closer to a different category of performance than a different result. Lizzy Yarnold won that race after fewer than four years on the international circuit. Then she did it again in PyeongChang, the first British athlete to retain a Winter Olympic title. The route in is worth noting. Yarnold was a club-level heptathlete identified by UK Sport’s Girls4Gold programme in 2008, a scheme built specifically to find Olympic-level athletes from outside the established sporting pipeline. She went from sled debut to Olympic champion in roughly five years, trained at Team Bath, and read Geography and Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Gloucestershire. What organisations get from her is the part of high performance that does not photograph well. The 2018 campaign was run through a vestibular disorder that affected her balance, a chest infection during the Games, and surgery on her knee and back shortly afterwards. The lesson she draws from it is operational rather than inspirational: how to keep making the right small decision when the conditions for the right big one have disappeared. Since retiring she has worked as a BBC analyst for Winter Olympic skeleton and luge coverage and sat on the British Olympic Association athlete commission. Corporate audiences have included Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, Eli Lilly, The Pipeline, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance Resilience under pressure Talent identification and non-traditional pathways Goal setting and execution discipline Team performance in elite environments Leadership through preparation Managing change after peak success Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering a second strategic cycle after a major win High-performance and sales teams operating in narrow-margin environments HR and talent leaders rethinking pipelines and identification Graduate, leadership development and emerging-talent programmes Audience outcomes A grounded view of what defending a position takes once the original conditions have changed A specific account of how elite athletes structure preparation, recovery and competition decisions An honest framing of the cost of high performance, useful for wellbeing and retention conversations A model for talent identification drawn from a programme designed to find outliers, not develop incumbents A compelling, named-stakes story of two Olympic finals, told first-hand

Why organisations work with Lord Sebastian Coe He has led, end to end, one of the largest peacetime delivery programmes a UK organisation has ever attempted: the London 2012 bid, build, and Games. Few speakers can talk about institutional execution at that scale from inside the room. As President of World Athletics since 2015, he has run a global federation through doping scandals, Russian sanctions, prize-money reform, and gender-eligibility policy. The case material is contemporary, contested, and useful to any board navigating reputational risk. He moves credibly between elite performance, political office, and institutional governance. That breadth lets him address both the human side of leadership and the structural side without flattening either. He brings a working operator’s view of stakeholder management: IOC, host governments, sponsors, broadcasters, athletes, media. Buyers wrestling with multi-principal accountability get a practitioner, not a commentator. Biography highlights President of World Athletics since 2015; member of the International Olympic Committee since 2020. Chair of the London 2012 bid and of LOCOG, the organising committee that delivered the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Chairman of the British Olympic Association, 2012 to 2016. Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, 1992 to 1997; Chief of Staff to William Hague as Leader of the Opposition; created Baron Coe of Ranmore in 2000. Two-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist (Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984); set twelve world records across middle-distance events. KBE (2006), Companion of Honour (2013); author of Running My Life: The Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). Biography The London 2012 bid was three points behind Paris in the final IOC stretch. The committee changed chairs, brought in a new presentation, and won the host vote in Singapore on 6 July 2005. The work that followed, seven years of build, contracts, security, transport, and ceremony, finished on time and inside its public envelope. That is the institutional record buyers come to hear about. What sits behind it is unusual. Coe was an Olympic 1500m champion in 1980 and 1984 and held twelve world records before he left the track. He then served as a Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne, became Chief of Staff to William Hague, and was created a life peer in 2000. By the time he chaired LOCOG he had already worked at close range on how political institutions actually function under stress. Since 2015 he has been President of World Athletics. The federation he inherited was in the middle of the Russian doping crisis and faced an open question about whether its own governance was credible. The decade since has involved sanctions, reform of integrity systems, the introduction of prize money at the Olympic Games, and contested decisions on transgender and DSD eligibility in elite competition. None of those calls were uncontested; all of them were made. He brings to a corporate audience a working knowledge of leadership where the stakeholders are not aligned, the deadline does not move, and the public verdict arrives the same week as the decision. That is the part of the experience that translates. Key speaking topics Leadership of complex institutions under public scrutiny Delivering large-scale programmes against fixed deadlines Governance reform and integrity in international organisations Stakeholder management across political, commercial, and civic principals Building and sustaining high-performance cultures Legacy, reputation, and long-horizon decision-making Transitioning from individual performance to institutional leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams running multi-stakeholder organisations where regulators, governments, and the public are all in the room CEOs and transformation leads delivering large programmes against fixed external deadlines Public-sector and federated bodies facing reform under reputational pressure Senior leadership audiences in sport, broadcasting, infrastructure, and major-event delivery Audience outcomes A working frame for setting and holding direction when stakeholders do not share interests Specific case material from London 2012 and a decade at World Athletics on integrity, reform, and crisis response Sharper sense of how to manage the gap between elite performance and institutional leadership Perspective on legacy, reputation, and the trade-offs that surface late in long programmes A direct read on what high-stakes accountability looks like from the inside of the room

Why organisations work with Loris Spinelli A live factory contract with Lamborghini Squadra Corse, the kind of role only a handful of drivers in the world hold at any one time, gives audiences direct access to how a global manufacturer engineers performance under public pressure. Five Lamborghini Super Trofeo championships across European and North American series, plus the 2023 IMSA GTD class win at Petit Le Mans, give him verifiable proof points rather than career anecdotes. Endurance racing experience at Daytona and Spa, where outcomes hinge on hours of driver rotation, fatigue management and team radio discipline, lends itself to genuine cross-over conversations on team performance. Speaks fluent English and Italian and is based in the United States, which makes him a workable fit for European and US corporate audiences without translation. Biography highlights Lamborghini Squadra Corse factory GT3 driver since the 2024 season. Five-time Lamborghini Super Trofeo champion across Europe Pro, Europe Pro-Am and North America Pro classes, 2015 to 2023. GTD class winner at the 2023 Motul Petit Le Mans with Forte Racing; runner-up in GTD at Petit Le Mans 2024. KF2 karting World Cup winner, 2011. Competes in the IMSA SportsCar Championship and GT World Challenge Europe series. Italian, based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Biography GT3 endurance racing is one of the few professional environments where a small group of people, working under physical strain and live television coverage, has to take coordinated decisions every few seconds for hours at a time. Loris Spinelli has built a career inside that environment. Since 2024 he has been a factory driver for Lamborghini Squadra Corse, the manufacturer’s works GT3 programme, having come through its junior driver development pipeline. His record on track is specific and verifiable. He has won five Lamborghini Super Trofeo championships across European and North American series between 2015 and 2023, and took the GTD class win at the 2023 Motul Petit Le Mans with Forte Racing, recovering from three drive-through penalties to do so. The same crew finished second in class at Petit Le Mans in 2024 by under a second. That body of work gives him a usable language for corporate audiences on the things motorsport actually teaches: how a factory team prepares for races it cannot fully predict, how drivers handle the gap between data and judgement, how composure under sustained pressure is built rather than summoned. He works in English and Italian and is based in Florida, which makes him accessible to both US and European programmes. His most useful contribution to a leadership audience is not the racing footage. It is the description, from someone currently inside it, of how a global performance organisation routinely turns long preparation into a few seconds of execution and then debriefs honestly enough to do it again the following weekend. Key speaking topics High-performance culture inside a factory motorsport team Composure and decision-making under pressure Preparation, debrief and continuous improvement Team trust and communication in endurance racing Resilience after setbacks and penalties Italian motorsport and the Lamborghini Squadra Corse programme Ideal for Sales kick-offs and incentive events where a credible elite performer is the anchor Leadership offsites focused on composure, recovery and team discipline Automotive, luxury and hospitality clients with a brand affinity to motorsport Italian and bilingual European audiences Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how a current factory GT3 driver prepares for high-stakes endurance races. A working definition of team trust drawn from driver-engineer-pit communication, not a generic team metaphor. A specific example of recovering from setbacks during a race, anchored in the 2023 Petit Le Mans win. Practical reflections on what high-performance culture looks like inside a global manufacturer’s works programme.

Why organisations work with Luke Donald A live, repeatable case study in winning team leadership: back-to-back Ryder Cup victories as captain in 2023 and 2025, the second at Bethpage Black against a hostile American gallery, with a third captaincy confirmed for 2027. Operational specifics on selection, pairings, and communication inside a high-stakes team built from elite individuals, drawn from a role he has done at the top of his sport, not adapted from a different career. A rare combination on the speaker market: a former World Number One with 56 weeks at the top, and the first player to win both the PGA Tour and European Tour money lists in the same year, who has since proven himself in the captain’s seat as well as the player’s. A working insight on doing things differently to win. Donald’s playing career was built on precision rather than power; his captaincy has been built on detail and preparation rather than rhetoric. Both translate cleanly into how serious organisations compete without the biggest budget in the room. Biography highlights Former World Number One in the Official World Golf Ranking, with 56 cumulative weeks at the top. First golfer to win both the PGA Tour money list and the European Tour Race to Dubai in the same season (2011); first Englishman to be named PGA Tour Player of the Year. European Ryder Cup winning captain in 2023 (Rome) and 2025 (Bethpage Black); confirmed for a third captaincy in 2027 at Adare Manor. Played in four Ryder Cups, on the winning side every time, including the 2012 “Miracle of Medinah”. MBE for services to golf (2012); honorary life member of the European Tour. Won the 1999 NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship at Northwestern, breaking the scoring record previously held by Tiger Woods. Biography Bethpage Black was set up to make Europe lose. The gallery was loud, the course was American, the run of home wins stretched back over a decade. Europe won 15 to 13. The captain was Luke Donald, doing the job for the second time in two years. The first time was Rome in 2023, a 16.5 to 11.5 win against a United States team many had favoured. The combination, Rome then Bethpage, made Donald the first European captain since Tony Jacklin in the 1980s to win consecutive Ryder Cups. In March 2026 he accepted a third captaincy for 2027 at Adare Manor, with the chance to become the first captain ever to win three in a row. The playing record behind the captaincy is its own argument for the depth of the content. Donald reached World Number One in 2011 after winning the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and held the ranking across a cumulative 56 weeks. The same year he became the first golfer to top both the PGA Tour money list and the European Tour Race to Dubai, was named PGA Tour Player of the Year, and won the Vardon Trophy. He was appointed MBE in 2012. Before all of that, in 1999, he won the NCAA individual championship at Northwestern, breaking a scoring record held by Tiger Woods. What organisations get on stage is the working content of leading elite individuals through a short, public, high-stakes window. Selection. Pairings. The decisions captains make at 6am and at midnight. The detail behind a result that looks, from the outside, like inevitability. Key speaking topics Building and sustaining high-performance teams from elite individuals Leadership and decision-making under pressure Selection, pairings, and the mechanics of team composition Continuous improvement and competing without the biggest physical advantage Strategy and preparation in short, public, high-stakes windows Captaincy lessons from back-to-back Ryder Cup wins Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and conferences where the brief is performance, composure, and team execution Boards and executive teams entering a defining short-window moment such as integration, launch, or campaign Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership events where competing against a larger incumbent is the strategic reality Major corporate dinners and anniversary moments requiring a recognisable, current, on-brief keynote presence Audience outcomes A direct account of how a captain turns elite individuals into a team that performs in a hostile environment Specific, named decisions behind two consecutive Ryder Cup wins, including selection and pairings logic A working view on the role of preparation, detail, and composure when the stakes are short, public, and binary A practical case for competing on precision and preparation rather than raw advantage

Why organisations work with Luke Tyburski He talks about depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation from the inside, which lets internal wellbeing leads open conversations that polished clinical content does not reach. He pairs the personal material with two named frameworks, K.E.N. for resilience and View-Think-Act for daily mindset, so audiences leave with a structure rather than a story. The 2,000km Morocco-to-Monaco Ultimate Triathlon is a documented world-first with an award-winning film attached, giving the proof point credibility that generic “extreme athlete” billing does not. He has been booked by national sporting teams, embassies and global companies across 16 countries, which signals he can read a senior corporate room as well as a sports audience. He is an accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), which means the resilience and mindset frameworks he delivers from stage are the same ones he uses in one-to-one work with senior leaders, not repackaged motivational content. Biography highlights Former professional footballer whose career ended after seven surgeries. Created and completed the world-first 2,000km Ultimate Triathlon from Morocco to Monaco in 12 days, filmed as the award-winning documentary “The Ultimate Triathlon” (2016) and recounted in his book “Chasing Extreme”. 2023 TEDx speaker, “Generate Momentum With 1% Thinking”. Has spoken in 16 countries across five continents, including for national sporting bodies, embassies and global companies. Accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), working one-to-one with executives, founders and senior leadership teams. Featured on The Rich Roll Podcast and Michael Gervais’s Finding Mastery, and in The Guardian and The Huffington Post. Biography Most mental health content for executives lives in two registers: clinical advice from professionals who have not experienced what they describe, and motivational stories that stop at “I came through it.” Luke Tyburski works the gap between the two. He talks about his own depression, eating disorder and two moments standing on bridges in plain language, then turns the experience into corporate frameworks that wellbeing leads can use after he leaves the room. The platform for that work is unusual. A football career ending in seven surgeries pushed him into ultra-endurance, where he ran the Sahara, descended Everest, crossed a Chinese forest without food or water, and built a 2,000km, 12-day triathlon from Morocco to Monaco that became the basis of the 2016 documentary “The Ultimate Triathlon”. He wrote about the project in his book “Chasing Extreme”. The speaking work draws on that material but is structured around two named tools. As an accredited executive coach (ICF and EMCC), he uses the same frameworks in one-to-one work with executives and leadership teams that he brings to the stage. K.E.N. is his resilience framework for individuals and teams under sustained pressure. View-Think-Act, the spine of his “Mastering Mindset” keynote, breaks daily performance into how people read a situation, what they tell themselves about it, and what they do next. He presented the underlying ideas in a 2023 TEDx talk, “Generate Momentum With 1% Thinking”. The audience has widened well beyond sport. Over more than a decade he has worked with national sporting teams, embassies and global companies across 16 countries on five continents. The through-line is the same: a usable language for performance and mental health that does not collapse when the conversation gets serious. Key speaking topics Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Resilience and recovery under sustained pressure Performance mindset and daily habits Self-leadership through setback and injury Lived experience of depression and suicidality Endurance and adventure as corporate metaphor Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing serious mental health programmes beyond awareness campaigns Sales and high-performance teams operating under sustained targets and travel pressure Leadership offsites where the brief includes resilience and personal sustainability Conferences in sport, insurance, finance and professional services that want a credible mental health voice Audience outcomes A clearer language for talking about mental health internally without it becoming a clinical or HR conversation The K.E.N. framework as a shared reference for how teams respond to setback and pressure View-Think-Act as a daily structure for individual performance Permission to acknowledge that high performers can be unwell, and a model for what to do about it A concrete account of what sustained recovery looks like from inside it

Why organisations work with Maggie Alphonsi A first-hand account of what seven consecutive Six Nations titles and a World Cup actually required, told by someone who was on the field for all of it. Inclusion grounded in lived institutional experience: the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award in its 50-year history, the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV, an elected RFU Council member working inside the governance structure she came up through. A published account, “Winning the Fight,” shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards, that grounds the cultural narrative in specific decisions, not platitudes. A practitioner view of high-performance teams that names the mechanics behind sustained dominance, not the highlight reel. Biography highlights 74 caps and 28 tries for England between 2003 and 2014, playing flanker for Saracens. Member of the England squad that won the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup; named in the tournament’s Dream Team. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in November 2016. MBE for services to rugby, 2012 Birthday Honours. First female recipient of the Rugby Union Writers’ Club Pat Marshall Award (2011); first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV (2015 Rugby World Cup). Elected member of the Rugby Football Union Council, active on the RFU Diversity and Inclusion steering group; author of “Winning the Fight” (Polaris, 2023). Biography Seven consecutive Six Nations titles, six of them Grand Slams, plus a Rugby World Cup. That is the England team Maggie Alphonsi played in between 2003 and 2014. The achievement was structural, not accidental, and she has spent the years since explaining what that kind of sustained performance actually requires inside a team environment. The credentials line up. 74 caps, 28 tries, MBE in 2012, World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. What matters more for organisational audiences is what she did next. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award from the Rugby Union Writers’ Club, ahead of Richie McCaw, in the prize’s 50-year history. In 2015, she became the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV. In 2016, she was elected to the Rugby Football Union Council and joined its Diversity and Inclusion steering group. Each of those firsts came inside an institution that had not previously built a place for someone like her. Her 2023 autobiography, “Winning the Fight,” sets out the specifics: a club foot at birth, North London council estates, racism and sexism encountered along the way, and the operational decisions that produced a World Cup. The book was shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards. For senior leaders working on inclusion, performance culture, or how teams hold standards across long cycles, she brings the rare combination of having executed at the top of her sport and then sat on the governance body that runs it. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture Inclusion in male-dominated institutions Sustained excellence under pressure Diversity and inclusion in sport and business Resilience and identity through career change Breaking institutional norms Mentoring and developing emerging talent Ideal for CHROs and heads of D&I building inclusion programmes that have to produce measurable cultural change, not optics. Leadership teams responsible for sustained high performance over multi-year cycles. Boards and senior leaders confronting representation gaps in their governance structures. Talent and learning leaders running development programmes for women and underrepresented groups. Audience outcomes A working picture of what produced seven Six Nations titles and a World Cup, drawn from inside the squad. A first-hand account of being the first woman in three different institutional settings and what that took week to week. Specific reference points for how inclusion and high performance reinforce each other in practice. Frank perspective on the gap between stated organisational values and lived employee experience.

Why organisations work with Maisie Summers-Newton A defended Paralympic title is a rare proof of consistency. She won double gold at Tokyo 2020, then did it again at Paris 2024 in the same two events, three years later. Her 200m individual medley SM6 world record, 2:56.68, was set under maximum pressure at her first Paralympic Games. That is the kind of result organisations want to understand when they talk about delivering at the moment that counts. She speaks credibly on disability and visible difference from a position of public authority, not advocacy alone. The MBE was awarded for services to swimming, and her platform on achondroplasia and language reaches audiences that DEI presentations rarely do. She runs a parallel career as a primary school teacher. That dual life gives her something most elite athletes do not have on a stage: a working perspective on time, attention, and what consistent performance looks like outside the pool. Biography highlights Paralympic gold medallist in the 200m individual medley SM6 and 100m breaststroke SB6 at Tokyo 2020, defended both at Paris 2024. World record holder in the SM6 200m individual medley (2:56.68, Tokyo 2020). MBE for services to swimming, 2022 New Year Honours. Gold medallist, Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022, 100m breaststroke SB6. Multiple World Para Swimming Championship golds across 2019, 2022 and 2023. Graduate of the University of Northampton; works as a primary school teacher alongside elite competition. Biography Defending a Paralympic title is harder than winning the first one. The race is the same length, but everything around it has changed: expectation, public attention, and the slow accumulation of three years of training against people who have studied your last performance. Maisie Summers-Newton did it twice at Paris 2024, retaining her 200m individual medley SM6 and 100m breaststroke SB6 titles from Tokyo 2020. The Tokyo wins were already remarkable. She set a world record of 2:56.68 in the 200m medley on her Paralympic debut, having broken her first world record at 15. The Paris defences happened with a different kind of pressure on her shoulders, the kind that asks whether the first set of results were a moment or a method. The answer turned out to be a method. Her platform is broader than the medal table. She was appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to swimming, and has used her public position to speak directly about achondroplasia, language and how visible difference is treated in everyday settings. She graduated from the University of Northampton and works as a primary school teacher, a working life that sits unusually close to the audiences she addresses. What organisations get from her is rarely framed as theory. It is a working account of what it takes to perform when the result is binary and public, and an honest perspective on inclusion from someone who lives it rather than presents on it. Key speaking topics Composure and performance under pressure Defending success and sustaining high performance Goal setting in long-cycle, high-stakes environments Resilience through setback and injury Disability inclusion and lived experience Language, visibility and difference at work Team dynamics in elite environments Ideal for Senior leadership and high-performance teams preparing for a defining year or event HR, DEI and ERG audiences focused on substantive disability inclusion rather than awareness alone Sales, commercial and delivery teams working to a binary, deadline-driven target Conferences and internal events seeking a credible voice on resilience supported by named results Audience outcomes A concrete picture of what consistency under pressure looks like over a multi-year cycle, not a single performance. A first-person account of disability inclusion that audiences can take back into team conversations. A clearer sense of how elite preparation translates into routine choices about time, attention and recovery. A more honest reading of what resilience requires when results are public and binary.

Why organisations work with Mallory Weggemann A first-person account of high-stakes performance after catastrophic setback, drawn from four Paralympic Games across sixteen years, not a single comeback story. A specific framework, Small Steps, Big Impact, that translates incremental progress into a leadership method teams can use the next week, including how to treat setbacks as team-building inputs rather than morale costs. Credibility on adaptation through repeated injury. The 2014 arm injury required two reconstructive surgeries and reshaped her training and competition method ahead of Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. A media and production track record beyond athletics, including an Emmy-winning NBC Sports hosting role and co-leadership of TFA Group, which lends executive register to the resilience material. Author of Limitless (Nelson Books, 2021), which gives senior audiences a published, citable source for the ideas they will hear in the room. Biography highlights Four-time Paralympian for Team USA; seven-time Paralympic medallist across London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024. Has held 15 world records and 34 American records in Para Swimming. Author of Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance (Nelson Books, 2021), with a film adaptation in development at Morning Moon Productions. Co-Founder and Co-CEO of TFA Group, a social impact agency and production studio. Emmy Award-winning broadcast host for NBC Sports, with correspondent and host roles across the 2018, 2022, and 2024 Games. ESPY Award winner; three-time USA Swimming Disabled Swimmer of the Year. Biography In January 2008, an epidural injection administered for back pain left an eighteen-year-old competitive swimmer paralysed from the waist down. Three months later, she was back in the pool. Inside two years, she had broken eight world records. The story matters not because it is dramatic, but because it set the operating pattern for everything that followed: progress measured in small, repeatable steps under conditions that would justify stopping. By the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Mallory Weggemann held fifteen world records and thirty-four American records. A 2014 arm injury required two reconstructive surgeries and forced a rebuild of her stroke and her training method. She returned to competition, medalled at the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships, and went on to win two golds and a silver at Tokyo 2020 and a further gold and silver at Paris 2024. Across four Games, the through-line is sustained recovery, not a single comeback. Outside the pool, Weggemann is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of TFA Group, a social impact agency and production studio. She is an Emmy Award-winning NBC Sports broadcaster, with correspondent roles at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Paralympics and a hosting debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Her 2021 memoir, Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance, is in development as a film with Morning Moon Productions. Her speaking work translates that pattern into a leadership method. The argument is that resilience is not character. It is a sequence of small, deliberate decisions made consistently under pressure, and a discipline that teams can adopt rather than admire. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after shock Self-leadership under sustained pressure Incremental progress as a leadership discipline Team behaviour after setback Inclusive leadership and disability in the workplace Peak performance under constraint Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through restructure, market shock, or sustained operational stress. CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement and team resilience after repeated change cycles. Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders learning to operate under pressure. Annual conferences and sales kick-offs that need a substantive resilience anchor rather than a generic inspirational keynote. Audience outcomes A working method for breaking down stalled or overwhelming goals into a sequence of executable steps. A more useful definition of resilience that senior leaders can apply to their own decision-making, not just attribute to others. A reframe of setbacks as team-formation inputs, with examples of how that has worked under elite-performance conditions. A citable example, drawn from Paralympic competition and broadcast media, that audiences can take back into board and team conversations.

Why organisations work with Mandy Hickson Combat-tested authority on decision-making in time-critical, high-consequence environments, drawn from three operational tours and around 45 missions over Iraq. Formal Human Factors training as a Civil Aviation Authority facilitator, which translates cockpit Crew Resource Management (authority gradient, threat and error management, communication failure) into a vocabulary boards and operational leaders can actually use. A specific argument about how high-performing teams handle ambiguity, debrief honestly, and challenge senior voices, grounded in fast-jet practice rather than generic teamwork content. A track record of being one of two women on her squadron, which gives substance to sessions on inclusion and authority without resorting to slogans. A Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Aviation Ambassador for the Department for Transport, with an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Winchester to anchor the credentials. Biography highlights First woman to fly the RAF Tornado GR4 on a front-line squadron, No. II(AC) Squadron, after joining the RAF in 1994. Three operational tours and roughly 45 missions over Iraq, including No Fly Zone patrols. Trained Human Factors facilitator with the UK Civil Aviation Authority, working on Crew Resource Management. Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS) and Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester. Aviation Ambassador for the UK Department for Transport; Trustee of the RAF Charitable Trust and the Victory Services Club. Author of An Officer, Not a Gentleman (2020), TEDx speaker, and named “Inspiration of the Year” at the Veterans Business Awards. Biography Combat aircrew do not have the luxury of a long meeting to weigh options. They have seconds, partial information, an authority gradient between cockpit seats, and a debrief afterwards that is brutally honest about what happened and why. That operating model is the source material Mandy Hickson brings to corporate audiences. She joined the RAF in 1994, failed the pilot aptitude tests twice, served as an air traffic controller, and refused to leave it there. She qualified as a fast-jet pilot and went on to fly the Tornado GR4 on No. II(AC) Squadron, completing three operational tours and around 45 missions over Iraq, including patrols of the No Fly Zone. She was the first woman to do that job on a front-line squadron. After leaving front-line service, she trained as a Human Factors facilitator with the UK Civil Aviation Authority. That credential is the part that matters for business audiences. Crew Resource Management gives her a structured vocabulary for the things organisations talk around: authority gradient, threat and error management, communication breakdown, fatigue, the difference between a confident decision and a defensive one. She is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester, Aviation Ambassador for the Department for Transport, and a trustee of the RAF Charitable Trust and the Victory Services Club. Her book, An Officer, Not a Gentleman, was published in 2020 and tells the story without the gloss; the discipline she has built around it is what leadership teams actually buy. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Crew Resource Management and Human Factors in business High-performing team behaviour Calculated risk and risk literacy for leaders Honest debriefs and learning from failure Inclusion and authority in male-dominated environments Resilience and composure for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive teams facing decisions with incomplete information and short timelines Operational leadership in safety-critical industries: aviation, energy, healthcare, infrastructure, financial services Transformation, risk and crisis management leads building decision protocols for their organisations Women’s leadership programmes and mixed audiences working on inclusion as a performance issue, not a compliance one Audience outcomes A working vocabulary from Crew Resource Management for talking about decisions, authority and error inside their own teams A sharper view of what an honest debrief looks like and why most corporate post-mortems avoid the real questions Specific behaviours that distinguish high-pressure teams that perform from those that fragment A more useful definition of calculated risk than the one most leadership decks default to Confidence to challenge upwards and to invite challenge downwards, with a clear reason why it matters

Why organisations work with Marc Priestley He spent a decade inside McLaren Racing during a Drivers’ Championship-winning era, and can describe how a thirty-second pit-stop is engineered, rehearsed and recovered when something goes wrong. Few speakers have lived that operational tempo. His material is structured around the actual mechanics of high-performance teams: role clarity, debrief culture, marginal gains, and how senior figures handle blame after a public failure. Not motivational; operational. His broadcast work for BBC, Sky Sports F1 and ESPN, plus Discovery’s Wheeler Dealers, makes him a natural choice when the brief calls for a speaker who can also host, moderate or anchor a programme. His two books, The Mechanic and Pitlane Lessons, give a senior audience a written through-line they can recommend internally after the session. Biography highlights McLaren Racing F1 mechanic, 2000-2009, including Number One Mechanic and pit-stop crew duties. Part of the McLaren team during Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 Drivers’ Championship season. Author of The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane (Yellow Jersey, 2017). Author of Pitlane Lessons: What F1 Can Teach You About Life and Work, foreword by Jake Humphrey. Co-host of Wheeler Dealers on Discovery alongside Mike Brewer. Broadcaster and pundit for BBC, Sky Sports F1 and ESPN; founder of the Pitlane Life Lessons Podcast. Biography A McLaren pit-stop in 2008 took just under three seconds. The crew had rehearsed it thousands of times, knew exactly what each pair of hands would do, and had a debrief structure for every error. Marc Priestley spent a decade inside that environment, working his way up to Number One Mechanic before leaving the team in 2009. What he carried out of the paddock was a precise model of how a high-performance operation actually runs. Role design, communication protocols, blameless debriefs, recovery discipline after a public mistake. His keynote work translates those mechanics for senior leaders who recognise the pattern in their own teams: the failure under pressure that nobody had stress-tested for. Two books anchor the material. The Mechanic, published by Yellow Jersey, is a behind-the-scenes account of life inside an F1 team. Pitlane Lessons, with a foreword by Jake Humphrey, applies the operating principles to leadership and work. Both give buyers a written reference point alongside the keynote. The broadcasting career runs parallel. Priestley is an analyst and pit-lane reporter for Sky Sports F1, has worked for the BBC and ESPN, hosts the Pitlane Life Lessons Podcast and co-presents Discovery’s Wheeler Dealers with Mike Brewer. That range is why corporate clients book him for keynotes, panel chairing and full-event hosting from the same brief. Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork under time pressure Communication in operationally complex environments Marginal gains and continuous improvement Debrief culture and recovery after failure Decision-making in time-critical settings Leadership lessons from elite motorsport Event hosting, moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Senior leadership teams looking to stress-test how their organisation behaves under operational pressure. COOs, transformation leads and operations directors responsible for complex, time-critical execution. Sales and engineering leadership groups using offsites to reset team standards and feedback culture. Conference organisers who need a speaker who can also host, moderate or anchor the programme. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how elite teams design roles so individuals can act fast without waiting for permission. A practical reference for blameless debriefs and how senior people respond after a public error. Named examples from inside an F1 team that translate to corporate operational settings. A framework for thinking about marginal gains as a discipline, not a slogan.

Why organisations work with Marcus Buckingham He is the source, not a secondary interpreter, of the strengths-based management research that now sits inside most large engagement and performance programmes. His HBR cover story with Ashley Goodall, “The Feedback Fallacy,” was named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century, and gives executives a defensible reason to dismantle conventional review cycles. He brings a working evidence base from the ADP Research Institute, which gives boards a global, current dataset on engagement and team performance rather than another set of opinions. First, Break All the Rules is one of the most widely read management books in circulation; senior audiences arrive already familiar with the argument, which lets a session move quickly from premise to application. Few speakers can stand on a body of work that has reshaped how Cisco, Deloitte and other large employers redesigned performance management; Buckingham is one of them. Biography highlights Co-author of First, Break All the Rules (1999) and Now, Discover Your Strengths (2001), foundational texts of strengths-based management and the basis for the StrengthsFinder assessment. Head of People and Performance Research at the ADP Research Institute. Co-author with Ashley Goodall of Nine Lies About Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019), named best management book of 2019 by Strategy+Business. HBR cover authorship includes “Reinventing Performance Management” (April 2015) and “The Feedback Fallacy” (March/April 2019), the latter selected by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first hundred years. Author of Love + Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Thinkers50 ranked thinker, peaking at #8 in 2011 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award the same year. Cambridge University, MA in Social and Political Sciences. Biography The orthodoxy of corporate performance management is built on premises that the evidence does not support. Marcus Buckingham’s research at Gallup, and later at the ADP Research Institute, has spent more than three decades testing those premises against what the highest-performing teams actually do. His finding, in short form, is that performance is local, individual and rooted in what people do best, not in what an annual review tells them to fix. That argument first reached scale through First, Break All the Rules, co-written with Curt Coffman in 1999 and built on Gallup’s global manager interviews. Now, Discover Your Strengths followed in 2001 with Donald O. Clifton and introduced the StrengthsFinder assessment. Together they reframed the conversation in HR from competency gaps to talent deployment. The work has continued to land where senior leaders are paying attention. “Reinventing Performance Management,” his 2015 HBR cover with Ashley Goodall, documented Deloitte’s redesign of its review system. “The Feedback Fallacy,” their 2019 cover, was later named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century. Their book Nine Lies About Work was named best management book of the year by Strategy+Business. Buckingham now heads people and performance research at ADP, with access to one of the larger live datasets on engagement and team behaviour anywhere in business. His most recent book, Love + Work, published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2022, extends the strengths argument into the question of how individuals build careers around the activities that genuinely energise them. The work in front of leaders today is the same work that produced StrengthsFinder: identify what each person does best, then organise around it. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Performance management redesign Employee engagement and team effectiveness Future of work and workforce research Talent strategy and career design Manager development Ideal for CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding performance management or engagement frameworks Executive teams whose growth strategy depends on retaining and deploying skilled talent Boards reviewing the evidence base behind their human capital reporting Leadership development audiences inside large, multi-location workforces Audience outcomes A clear account of which assumptions inside conventional performance management the data actually supports, and which it does not. Specific design principles, drawn from Gallup and ADP research, for how teams should be measured and led. A working definition of strengths that is operational at the level of an individual conversation, not just a slogan. An evidence-based case for replacing annual feedback rituals with a different cadence of attention from managers.