Peak Performance

Why organisations work with Jim Dowdall He has run safety on productions where a missed call ends a career or a life, and he can describe how those calls are made without the language losing its edge in a corporate room. He chaired the British Stunt Register, the body that governs professional stunt work in the UK, which gives him authority on how a regulated, safety-critical industry sets and enforces standards. His credit list includes Saving Private Ryan, multiple James Bond films, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and a decade as stunt coordinator for Top Gear and The Grand Tour, so the case studies are recognisable to a non-specialist audience. He combines a Parachute Regiment background, an armourer’s technical training, and a coordinator’s governance role, which gives the talk three angles on the same problem rather than a single career arc. Biography highlights Former chair of the British Stunt Register; long-standing member. Stunt coordinator and performer on more than 200 film and television titles, including Saving Private Ryan, Skyfall, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, The World Is Not Enough, Octopussy, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars IV and V, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Stunt coordinator for Top Gear and The Grand Tour. Co-author of “Man on Fire: The Life and Other Accidents of Jim Dowdall, Stuntman” (Graham Scott, 2019), foreword by James May. Author of “Brassey’s Military Small Arms of the World” (1973), written during his early career as a film armourer. Member of BAFTA; invited to speak at Academy film seminars. Former soldier, Parachute Regiment. Biography A film set built around an explosion, a fall, or a high-speed crash is one of the most tightly governed working environments in any commercial industry. The standards are written down, the risk is priced, and the chain of command is unambiguous. Jim Dowdall has operated at the centre of that system for more than four decades. His credits run from Octopussy and The Spy Who Loved Me through Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Star Wars original trilogy, and on to Skyfall, Die Another Day, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He spent ten years as stunt coordinator for Top Gear and The Grand Tour. He has doubled Harrison Ford, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, and Timothy Dalton. The institutional weight matters as much as the credit list. Dowdall is a former chair of the British Stunt Register, the body that licenses and governs UK stunt work, and a member of BAFTA. His co-authored memoir “Man on Fire”, with a foreword by James May, sets out how high-consequence sequences are actually planned, briefed, and run, including the unglamorous detail that separates a controlled set-piece from an injury report. For a leadership audience, the value is not the anecdote. It is the structure underneath it: how a competent team agrees what an acceptable risk looks like, how it walks back from one that has been priced wrongly, and how a coordinator holds discipline when budget, talent, and time pressure all push the other way. Key speaking topics Risk management in high-consequence environments Decision-making under pressure Team coordination on complex productions Safety culture and operational discipline Leadership lessons from the film industry Performance in safety-critical settings Ideal for Operations, safety, and risk leaders in regulated or safety-critical industries Senior leadership teams looking at how their organisation handles high-stakes decisions Project, programme, and transformation leads running complex, time-pressured delivery Conferences and offsites where a credible outside-in voice on risk is wanted Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how a regulated, safety-critical industry sets and enforces standards in practice. A working model for how senior coordinators price risk, brief teams, and make stop-or-go calls under pressure. Recognisable case studies from films and television that translate cleanly into board-level questions about risk and accountability. Sharper instinct for the warning signs that precede a serious incident, drawn from a 40-year operational record.

Why organisations work with Jermaine Harris A Sports Psychology MSc with Distinction sits behind the talk, so the resilience content rests on academic grounding rather than slogans. The Empowered Results Programme gives audiences a defined process to take away, not a one-off emotional lift that fades by Monday. His own near-amputation and recovery story is used as evidence for behaviour-change technique, which is why Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, and PGA EuroPro Group have brought him in. Audiences leave with usable mental tools drawn from his reading of more than 380 self-help titles, distilled by someone trained to assess what actually works. He is comfortable in front of mixed audiences from frontline staff to leadership, which makes him useful for company-wide kick-offs and sales conferences where a single speaker has to land across the room. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) and MSc (Distinction) in Sports Psychology ICF accredited Professional Coach and certified Firewalk Instructor Author of The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life! Founder of The Empowered Results Programme Corporate engagements with Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes Fundraiser and advocate for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, following his son’s diagnosis in 2015 Biography Resilience is one of the most over-claimed words in corporate wellbeing. The challenge for an HR or culture lead is to find a voice on the topic who can move beyond the language and actually shift how people behave on Monday morning. Jermaine Harris built his speaking practice around exactly that gap. His starting point was personal. A serious car accident and the threat of losing a leg ended a phase of heavy drinking and gambling. The interesting decision came next: he completed a BSc and an MSc with Distinction in Sports Psychology and used that training to study what actually changes behaviour. The Empowered Results Programme is the consolidated output of that work. Two published books, The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life!, give audiences something to take home, and an ICF coaching credential underpins the one-to-one work he runs alongside the keynotes. Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes have used him for company events where the brief is morale, motivation, and personal performance. What sets the work apart from standard motivational fare is the combination of an academic frame, a worked methodology, and a credible personal account of recovery. He also fundraises for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a cause connected to his son’s diagnosis at four weeks old in 2015. Key speaking topics Mindset and personal performance Resilience after setback Overcoming self-imposed limits Confidence and self-belief Behaviour change and habit formation Team motivation and morale Purpose and direction at work Ideal for HR and culture leads planning company-wide kick-offs, sales conferences, and morale events Frontline and customer-service organisations where motivation directly affects performance Wellbeing and L and D leads looking for resilience content with an academic underpin Sales and revenue teams running incentive or annual meetings Audience outcomes A defined process for resetting after a personal or professional setback Specific techniques for managing self-talk, fear, and limiting belief A short list of habit changes that translate into measurable daily behaviour A renewed sense of agency over career, health, and finance decisions Energy and lift, paired with content audiences can apply the next morning

Why organisations work with Jeff Grout Operator-grade leadership content. He ran Robert Half UK as Managing Director through a period in which the business grew from 12 staff to over 360, which gives his account of leadership and recruitment a grounding that most speakers on the same topic cannot offer. Inside access to an elite sporting campaign. As business manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, he saw England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup preparation and performance culture from the inside, which translates into specific examples rather than generic sporting analogies. One of the senior interviewers on the UK circuit. His public interview work includes Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Dave Brailsford, Charles Handy, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke, and he is regularly booked as conference chair where a board-level audience needs a senior host. Eight books on leadership, performance and recruitment, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007) and The Adventure Capitalists. The work is published, not just performed on the stage. A repeat client list that includes Amazon, BT, British Airways, HSBC, Barclays, LinkedIn, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Harrods and UK Sport. Biography highlights Former UK Managing Director of Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy. Built the UK business from two offices and 12 staff to £65 million turnover, 19 offices and over 360 staff during a 21-year tenure. Business Manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, spanning England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. Graduate of the London School of Economics. Co-author of eight business books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007), The Adventure Capitalists (Kogan Page), Mind Games, Recruiting Excellence and What You Need to Know About Leadership. Public interviewer of senior figures including Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington, Sir Stuart Rose and Greg Dyke. Collaborated with the BBC to produce an interview training video, and has delivered leadership and executive skills workshops for clients including BT, HSBC, British Airways, Virgin, Harrods, Amazon, LinkedIn, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Biography Plenty has been written about what makes a good leader. Much less has been written about what leaders do on the day a quarter misses, or on the morning after a senior resignation. The working reality of leadership is where most senior teams need help, and where generic advice tends to fail. That working reality is the ground Jeff Grout has operated on for most of his career. He spent 21 years inside Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy, eventually running its UK business as Managing Director until 2000. Under his leadership, the operation grew from two offices and 12 staff to a £65 million business with 19 offices and more than 360 staff. That is the grounding behind his current work with senior teams on leadership, recruitment and high-performance culture. From 2002 to 2006, he was business manager to Sir Clive Woodward, through the years surrounding England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. That sustained access to an elite sporting campaign at its peak gives his work on high-performance culture a different weight. He saw the detail of how a winning environment is built and defended, up close and over time, not as a single anecdote deployed for colour. For senior buyers, he is typically booked either as a keynote speaker on leadership and high performance, or as the conference chair and interviewer who can hold a board-level room. His written work spans eight books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? and The Adventure Capitalists. His interview subjects have included Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke. Key speaking topics Leadership in practice Building high-performance teams Peak performance lessons from elite sport Leading change Recruitment, retention and talent strategy Executive interviewing and conference chairing The characteristics of success Ideal for Senior leadership teams who want a practical, operator-grounded account of leadership rather than an academic framework CHROs, talent directors and senior HR leaders focused on recruitment, retention and high-performance team design Conference organisers who need a senior chair or public interviewer for a board-level audience Sales leadership and high-performance culture off-sites Audience outcomes A sharper vocabulary for describing what effective leaders actually do day to day Specific examples, drawn from elite business and sporting environments, of how high-performance teams get built and held together under pressure New questions to ask about recruitment and retention, from an operator who ran a 360-person business A more confident view of the behaviours that separate consistent performers from occasional ones

Why organisations work with Jean Todt He took over a Ferrari racing operation that had not won a Drivers’ Championship in twenty-one years and produced five consecutive titles for Michael Schumacher between 2000 and 2004. Few living executives can speak to a turnaround at that scale and that level of public scrutiny. He has run three different kinds of high-stakes organisation, a manufacturer racing programme at Peugeot, a listed sports car business at Ferrari, and a 145-country federation at the FIA. The leadership lessons translate across commercial, governance, and political environments. He holds a live UN mandate. As Special Envoy for Road Safety since 2015, he negotiates directly with heads of state on a public health crisis that kills roughly 1.19 million people a year. Boards working on ESG, public-private partnership, or regulated-industry strategy get a practitioner, not a commentator. He co-founded the Paris Brain Institute with neurosurgeon Gerard Saillant, putting institutional capital and racing-industry networks behind one of Europe’s largest neuroscience research centres. The pattern, building durable institutions from convening power, is rare. Biography highlights Director of Peugeot Talbot Sport, 1981 to 1993, delivering four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. General Manager of Ferrari’s Racing Division from 1993; CEO of Ferrari S.p.A. from 2004 to 2008. Ninth President of the FIA, 2009 to 2021, three full terms; now FIA Honorary President. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015, reconfirmed under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Co-founder and board member, Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant. Author, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” Assouline. Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur. Recipient of the Olympic Order. Biography Scuderia Ferrari had not won a Formula One Drivers’ Championship since 1979 when Jean Todt arrived in 1993 as General Manager of the Racing Division. He brought in Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn, and Rory Byrne, rebuilt the technical organisation around them, and produced the most dominant run in modern Formula One: five consecutive Drivers’ titles between 2000 and 2004 and six Constructors’ titles in seven years. In 2004 he was promoted to CEO of Ferrari S.p.A., responsible for the road car business as well as the racing operation, until 2008. The Ferrari work followed a twelve-year stint at Peugeot Talbot Sport from 1981, where he built the rally programme that produced four World Rally Championship titles, four Paris-Dakar wins, and two Le Mans 24 Hours victories. The pattern across both jobs was the same: take a manufacturer’s competition arm, set a clear technical direction, and hold it long enough for compounding to work. Elected ninth President of the FIA in 2009, Todt served three four-year terms running motor sport’s global governing body across 145 national federations and 245 member organisations. He launched the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign in 2011, which became the platform for his next role: in April 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him Special Envoy for Road Safety, a brief he still holds, working with governments to halve road deaths by 2030. Outside motor sport, Todt co-founded the Paris Brain Institute, ICM, with Professor Gerard Saillant; the institute is now one of the largest neuroscience research centres in Europe. He is a Grand-Croix de la Legion d’Honneur and a recipient of the Olympic Order. His most recent book, “The Silent Pandemic On the Road,” collects more than fifty road safety case studies from the partners and governments he has worked with as UN Envoy. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in legacy organisations High-performance team building under public scrutiny Sports governance and federation reform Global road safety policy Public-private partnership for social outcomes Building institutions: from racing to neuroscience Crisis management and decision-making at speed Ideal for CEOs and executive committees running multi-year turnarounds where culture and technical excellence both have to move Boards and chairs working on governance reform, federation oversight, or regulated-industry strategy ESG, public affairs, and sustainability leaders building credible public-private programmes Automotive, mobility, and insurance leadership audiences working on safety, risk, and the energy transition Audience outcomes A working model for rebuilding a senior team when the inherited talent and the public narrative are both against you A clearer view of how political authority, technical authority, and commercial authority interact in regulated industries A first-hand account of negotiating with heads of state on a public health mandate, with the mechanisms that have moved policy and the ones that have not A serious answer to the question of how a leader sustains performance across forty years and three very different institutional roles

Why organisations work with Jamil Qureshi Six individuals to world number one, five Ryder Cup captains advised, 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. The track record in elite sport is operationally specific, not rhetorical. He has designed and embedded long-running change programmes at scale: Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. He has run transformation inside organisations, not only spoken about it. He translates the psychology of sustained pressure from environments where the cost of failure is public and immediate (Premier League, Ryder Cup) into boardrooms where it usually is not. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. The framework has been pressure-tested in domains most speakers can only describe. Biography highlights First-ever official psychologist appointed to the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam in 2006; has since worked with five Ryder Cup captains. Has worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50, with Premier League players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, with Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, and with members of the 2009 England Ashes-winning cricket team. Designed and delivered board-level leadership and change programmes for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK, and Lloyds Banking Group. Author of The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, on the psychological foundations of personal and professional performance. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. Listed by GQ Magazine among the most influential figures in British sport (2009); named in The Daily Mirror’s top 100 coaches in the world (2023). Biography At the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, Europe beat the United States by a record-equalling margin. Captain Ian Woosnam had done something no Ryder Cup captain had done before: he appointed an official psychologist to the team. That psychologist was Jamil Qureshi. Sport had been treating mindset as decisive for years. Most boards still treat it as a soft skill, even as senior leaders increasingly face the conditions of elite athletes: sustained scrutiny and very narrow margins for error. Qureshi has spent two decades closing that gap. He has helped six individuals reach world number one in their sport, advised five Ryder Cup captains, and worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. Premier League players at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea sit on the same client list as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK and Lloyds Banking Group. In business, the work goes well beyond keynotes. Qureshi designed and embedded leadership and change programmes for Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s cultural separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. Through Covid he ran extensive work with global leadership teams at SAS, GSK, Janssen, NHS England and Protiviti as they reset around remote and hybrid leadership. His book, The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, sets out the psychological foundations he applies in both worlds. Skill gets people to the top. What keeps them there, and what determines whether the team around them performs when it matters, is something organisations rarely build deliberately. That is what Qureshi is asked in to do. Key speaking topics Performance psychology in business High-performing teams Leadership under sustained pressure Mindset and behavioural change Cultural change and transformation Translating elite sport into business performance Hybrid and remote leadership Ideal for Boards and CEO leadership teams setting expectations for performance under sustained pressure Sales and commercial leadership teams where individual mindset shapes pipeline outcomes HR and L&D directors building leadership programmes that need psychological substance, not theory Senior leadership conferences where elite-sport credibility opens the room Audience outcomes Specific behaviours for performing under sustained pressure, drawn from how elite athletes actually train A sharper view of where individual mindset constrains team output, and what to do about it Language for leaders to talk about psychology without it sounding soft A more honest read on the gap between intent and execution in their own teams

Why organisations work with Jamie Andrew He speaks from a lived reinvention most audiences will never encounter: five nights trapped on Les Droites, the loss of all four limbs, and a decade of returning to elite mountaineering, including a Matterhorn summit. His story gives wellbeing and resilience programmes something concrete to anchor to, rather than another framework slide that no one remembers after the offsite. He writes as well as he speaks. Life and Limb won the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature, which places him in a different category from most adventure-circuit speakers. He has delivered in more than 40 countries for audiences at Microsoft, Vodafone, Roche, PepsiCo, Procter and Gamble, Toyota and Tetra Pak, which means he reads corporate rooms and adapts to them. Biography highlights Author of Life and Limb (Portrait, 2004), winner of the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize. First quadruple amputee to summit the Matterhorn (2016), climb Mont Blanc (2002) and Kilimanjaro, and to complete the London Marathon (2001) and an Ironman triathlon. Keynote experience in more than 40 countries across five continents, with clients including Microsoft, Toyota, Vodafone, Roche, Danone, Procter and Gamble, PepsiCo and Tetra Pak. Appointed OBE for services to charity. Biography In January 1999, a storm pinned two climbers to the north face of Les Droites in the French Alps for five nights. One did not come home. The survivor, severely frostbitten, reached hospital in septic shock and lost both hands and both feet. That survivor later walked up Blackford Hill in Edinburgh, learned to run on prosthetics, and then went back to the mountains. The practical point for organisations is not the drama of the accident. It is what happened afterwards. Jamie Andrew has climbed Mont Blanc, Kilimanjaro and the Matterhorn as a quadruple amputee. He finished the London Marathon in 2001 and an Ironman triathlon. Each of those took years of structured relearning, and each required a different approach to preparation, risk, and what a team can reasonably be asked to carry. The written record matters here. Life and Limb, published by Portrait in 2004, won the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize. It is a careful book by someone who has examined what actually held him together through rehabilitation and what did not. Andrew’s audiences tend to be in the middle of something hard: a restructure, a performance reset, a wellbeing programme that is not landing. He gives those rooms a point of reference that is not abstract. The stories are specific, the lessons are tested against a life that kept going, and the register is matter-of-fact rather than inspirational in the usual sense. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes conditions Risk, judgement and decision-making Goal setting across long time horizons Motivation and sustained effort Change and personal reinvention Leadership through adversity Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing resilience, mental health and engagement programmes that need a credible human anchor Leadership teams navigating a major change, restructure or performance reset Sales, operations and frontline audiences where motivation and long-horizon effort are the performance issue Employee conferences, kick-offs and offsites that need a keynote the room remembers the following Monday Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for what resilience looks like when the stakes are real, not rhetorical A clearer sense of what teams owe one another when conditions deteriorate Language for talking about recovery, setbacks and reinvention without resorting to slogans A sharper view of the difference between motivation that lasts and motivation that fades by the following week

Why organisations work with James Ketchell His credibility is forensically specific: two verified world firsts – completing what media dubbed the “Ultimate Triathlon” and the first FAI-ratified gyroplane circumnavigation of the globe – give his message about incremental progress a factual foundation that generic resilience content cannot match. The “ten steps at a time” approach he developed on Everest and has applied across five major expeditions gives teams a transferable, named model for breaking complex goals into sustained, manageable action – not a metaphor, but a method he has stress-tested at altitude, at sea, and in the air. His backstory runs in the opposite direction to most adventure speakers: teenage depression, no school qualifications, fired from five jobs, and a motorcycle accident that threatened permanent disability. That starting point makes his message about potential accessible to audiences who do not identify with elite athletic backgrounds. He has spoken at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, PwC, GSK, eBay, and RBS – organisations that set a high bar for relevance and credibility. His ability to adapt the same core content to military leadership, financial services, and pharma audiences is verified across named client feedback. Biography highlights First and only person to complete the “Ultimate Triathlon”: solo Atlantic row (2010), Everest summit (2011), unsupported 18,000-mile global cycle (2013–14) Guinness World Record holder: first person to circumnavigate the globe in an open-cockpit gyroplane, certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (2019) Winner of the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy (2020), awarded for outstanding skill, courage and initiative Author of two books: The Ultimate Triathlon (2016, endorsed by Bear Grylls) and It’s All Mental (2021) UK Scouting Ambassador; ambassador for children’s charity Over The Wall Speaking clients include eBay, PwC, GSK, RBS, and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy Biography James Ketchell is the only person to have rowed solo across the Atlantic, summited Everest, and cycled 18,000 miles around the world – a sequence the media named the “Ultimate Triathlon” – and in 2019 became the first person to fly an open-cockpit gyroplane around the globe, a journey of 24,000 nautical miles in 175 days, ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and recognised by Guinness World Records. The Royal Automobile Club awarded him the Segrave Trophy for the achievement in 2020. None of this was a trajectory anyone predicted. Ketchell left school without qualifications, was fired from five jobs, struggled with depression as a teenager, and in 2008 sustained a motorcycle accident that left him with broken legs, a shattered ankle, and a prognosis of permanent disability. His response to that diagnosis became the architecture of everything that followed: break the goal into the smallest possible steps, prioritise ruthlessly, and keep moving. The principle he articulates most precisely came at 8,000 metres on Everest – the last few hundred metres completed ten steps at a time. That isn’t a metaphor he applies to business; it is a documented method he has used to cross oceans, cycle continents, and fly around the world. His second book, It’s All Mental, makes the case that the obstacles to extraordinary performance are almost never physical. His talks draw on five major expeditions, two mid-ocean rescues, and a recovery from near-permanent disability to give organisations something they rarely get from a speaker: a framework for sustained performance that has been tested at the point of actual failure. The organisations that bring him in – PwC, GSK, eBay, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, RBS – are not looking for inspiration as an emotion. They are looking for something their teams can use. Ketchell delivers that. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme pressure Incremental goal-setting and performance Leadership mindset and self-discipline Overcoming adversity and setback Mental toughness and sustained focus Expedition planning and risk management Ideal for Leadership teams and senior executives preparing for significant organisational change or uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience and performance programmes Sales, commercial, and operational teams where sustained motivation and goal delivery under pressure is a strategic priority Military, emergency services, and high-stakes professional audiences (Ketchell has a verified track record with Sandhurst) Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework for breaking large or daunting goals into sustained, achievable steps A recalibrated view of setback as structural information rather than failure – drawn from Ketchell’s own documented experience of failed expeditions alongside record-breaking ones Practical language for discussing mental resilience and performance that avoids wellness cliché A reference point for goal prioritisation under resource and time constraints, developed across expeditions where those constraints were life-critical Greater confidence that high performance is method-driven, not talent-dependent

Why organisations work with James Cracknell He has won at the highest level twice in a four-person team, in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, with crews that included Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. The lessons on team selection, internal standards and competing with teammates are first-hand. He is one of very few senior speakers who has lived through a severe traumatic brain injury and rebuilt a public-facing career afterwards. Audiences get an honest account of recovery, identity and what high performance looks like when the baseline changes. At 46 he returned to elite rowing and won the 2019 Boat Race for Cambridge, the oldest competitor in the race’s 190-year history. The story maps directly onto conversations about late-career reinvention and standards under age, fatigue and doubt. He pairs athletic authority with an academic lens: an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies from Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a working programme for business teams (Muto, co-founded with James Tansey) built on elite-performance science. Biography highlights Olympic gold medals in the coxless four at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, racing with Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles across coxless four, coxless pair and coxed pair. Appointed OBE in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to sport. MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. Oldest rower in Boat Race history at age 46, winning for Cambridge in 2019. Co-author of “The Crossing” (Atlantic Books, 2006) with Ben Fogle and “Touching Distance” (Random House, 2012) with Beverley Turner; BBC and Discovery commentator for major rowing events. Biography Two Olympic golds in the coxless four, four years apart, against different crews in different conditions. That is the core achievement. Cracknell won in Sydney 2000 alongside Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and Tim Foster, and again in Athens 2004 with Pinsent, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles sit alongside those golds. What he offers corporate audiences is the working knowledge of those crews: how selection decisions were made, how standards were held when the crew was under-performing, how a team with strong personalities agreed on what mattered and what did not. He speaks about internal competition as a tool, not a threat. The OBE, awarded in 2005 for services to sport, sits inside that record. In July 2010, while cycling across Arizona in a Los Angeles to New York endurance attempt, Cracknell was struck by the wing mirror of a fuel tanker at 65mph. He spent around ten days in an induced coma in Phoenix. The brain injury that followed, and the long rebuild through epilepsy, changed sense of smell and taste, and an altered personality, is the subject of “Touching Distance”, written with Beverley Turner. He is honest about the years that followed and what they taught him about identity under damage. The late chapter is the one that surprises audiences most. At 46, already a father of three, he enrolled at Peterhouse, Cambridge for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies and rowed in the 2019 Boat Race, becoming the oldest competitor in the event’s 190-year history and winning. He now runs Muto, an elite-performance programme for business teams co-founded with entrepreneur James Tansey, built on the argument that the mindset and habits of top athletes are learnable by senior professionals. Key speaking topics Peak performance and elite team habits Resilience and recovery after setback Team leadership under pressure High-performance culture and internal standards Mindset, motivation and reinvention Endurance, adventure and risk Ideal for Leadership teams holding delivery through a long, difficult programme or transformation CHROs and L and D leaders shaping high-performance and resilience programmes Sales, trading and operations teams where individual output and team trust both have to hold Board, executive and all-hands sessions that need a sharp, human anchor for a performance or culture message Audience outcomes A working picture of how a winning team actually selects, challenges and holds standards for each other An honest account of recovery from serious setback, usable by anyone leading through personal or organisational adversity Specific habits from elite sport that translate to corporate performance, drawn from the Muto programme Renewed appetite for late-career reinvention, grounded in the 2019 Boat Race and Cambridge MPhil

Why organisations work with Howard Webb His concept of «anonymously competent», the trained reflex to seek invisibility rather than make the decisive, visible call, names a leadership trap that senior audiences recognise on first hearing as a live problem in their own organisations – not a sports metaphor, but a precise description of how their institutions reward the wrong behaviour. His career after the pitch, spanning Technical Director at PGMOL, General Manager at the Professional Referee Organization in North America, and now Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL, is itself a case study in reforming institutional standards under sustained public pressure. Most sports speakers offer a performing career; Webb offers both. He led the rollout of VAR in North American soccer and returned to England to reform how the Premier League applies the same technology, giving him direct cross-jurisdictional experience in managing the gap between contested innovation and stakeholder trust. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013, his credentials hold in any boardroom that includes serious sports people, which makes the leadership translation sharper and harder to dismiss. His direct experience of a governance model where every decision is publicly logged, graded, and contested translates to regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply to senior leaders. Biography highlights The only referee in history to officiate both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year (2010) Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013; MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to football First-ever Chief Refereeing Officer, PGMOL (2022), responsible for more than 600 match officials across English professional football Former General Manager, Professional Referee Organization (PRO), leading the match official programme across Major League Soccer and North American football, including the introduction of VAR Approximately 296 Premier League matches as a professional referee (2003-2014); FIFA international referee across nine major tournaments including two FIFA World Cups Former sergeant, South Yorkshire Police; broadcast analyst with BT Sport and ITV Biography Howard Webb became a Premier League referee in 2003 and a FIFA international referee two years later. By 2010, he had officiated both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year. No referee in the sport’s history had achieved that combination before, or has since. His career after the pitch is equally instructive. As Technical Director at PGMOL and then General Manager of the Professional Referee Organization in North America, Webb led the introduction of VAR across Major League Soccer, managing the institutional resistance, stakeholder scepticism, and communication challenges that accompany contested technological change in any professional environment. His appointment in 2022 as the first-ever Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL placed him at the head of a reform programme for more than 600 match officials across the English professional game. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013 and awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours, his on-field record gives credibility to the broader argument. His concept of «anonymously competent», the trap of seeking invisibility over decisive action, names a tension that senior leadership audiences recognise immediately in their own organisations. Webb has spoken at forums including the HR Directors Business Summit. The direct parallel is between officiating, where every decision is logged, graded, and publicly contested, and leadership in regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Leadership under public scrutiny Accountability and governance in professional organisations High-performance team standards Institutional reform and standards development Technology adoption and stakeholder trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite forums in regulated industries including financial services, healthcare, and professional services Boards and governance committees addressing public accountability and decision-making under scrutiny HR and L&D leaders building executive development programmes Sports organisations and governing bodies addressing officiating standards, governance, and reform Audience outcomes A concrete framework for understanding the gap between private competence and public accountability Practical perspective on what it means to make decisive calls when decisions are irreversible and publicly visible Insight into building institutional cultures that sustain performance under contested, public scrutiny A transferable case study in introducing contested technology into a resistant professional community The «anonymously competent» concept as a diagnostic for identifying leadership cultures that reward invisibility over action

Why organisations work with Heinz-Harald Frentzen Ten seasons in Formula One across Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows give him a first-hand account of how winning operations differ from losing ones at the same level of talent and budget. He finished second in the 1997 Drivers’ Championship and third in 1999 with Jordan, in both cases against better-resourced rivals. The lesson he carries into a room is about execution, not hierarchy. His HHF hybrid racing project, which completed the first fully electric lap of the Nordschleife at the 2008 Nurburgring 24 Hours, gives him a credible voice on sustainable engineering as a performance problem, not a compliance one. He is comfortable in both motivational and technical registers, which is unusual for an ex-driver. Engineering and R&D audiences get substance; commercial audiences get the human story behind it. Biography highlights Formula One driver from 1994 to 2003 for Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows. Runner-up in the 1997 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship with Williams. Three Grand Prix wins: San Marino 1997, French 1999 and Italian 1999. Finished third in the 1999 Drivers’ Championship with Jordan on 54 points, with two wins and six podiums. Conceived and built the HHF hybrid race car, which recorded the first electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife during the 2008 24 Hours race. Winner of the ROC Legends Cup at the 2011 Race of Champions; raced in DTM from 2004 to 2006 and competed at the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans with Aston Martin Racing. Biography The 1997 San Marino Grand Prix was Frentzen’s first Formula One victory. It came in his debut season at Williams, against a teammate, Jacques Villeneuve, who would take the title that year. He finished the season second in the championship. It is the decision-making that sits underneath a result like that, not the result itself, that organisations bring him in to talk about. Across a decade in Formula One with Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows, Frentzen operated inside five different team cultures. Some produced wins with fewer resources. Some did not. His vantage point is not the champion’s, which is often misread as pure individual brilliance. It is the vantage point of a driver who watched up close what separates a team that executes from one that does not. His most distinctive post-racing work is the HHF hybrid project. Using a Gumpert Apollo chassis and a battery system he developed himself, he completed the first fully electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife at the 2008 24 Hours, co-driving with Dirk Muller. Gearbox failures kept the car out of the classification, but the hybrid powertrain finished the race. It is one of the earlier serious attempts to treat electrification as a performance engineering problem in endurance racing. That combination of cockpit experience and hands-on technical development is what he draws on now. Audiences get a specific account of how sharp teams make sharp decisions under time pressure, and what it takes to keep a programme moving when the technology, the strategy and the people all have to improve at once. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from Formula One Sustainable engineering and hybrid technology Resilience and focus in elite performance Risk, trust and communication in high-stakes environments Ideal for Executive leadership offsites and board awaydays focused on performance culture Engineering, R&D and innovation functions in automotive, mobility and advanced manufacturing Sales kick-offs and annual conferences wanting a credible motorsport voice alongside business content After-dinner and gala audiences where racing pedigree adds weight to the evening Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how elite motorsport teams align driver, engineer and strategist in real time A sharper view of what separates teams that execute under pressure from teams that do not Useable lessons on focus, preparation and trust, grounded in named races and named teams A credible perspective on hybrid and electrified engineering as a performance discipline, not a compliance exercise

Why organisations work with Guillaume Nery He has held four constant weight freediving world records and won the AIDA individual world title in 2011, so the performance authority is earned in a discipline where a lapse in attention has physical consequences. His material on breath work is specific and practical, not metaphorical: audiences leave with techniques he uses himself before a dive to -125 metres. He speaks from the full arc of elite performance, including a career-ending accident in 2015 that forced a public reinvention as a filmmaker and storyteller. His underwater films with Julie Gautier, including Free Fall and One Breath Around the World, have reached tens of millions of viewers and give his talks a visual language most sport speakers do not have. He is a TED main-stage speaker, which most corporate audiences recognise as a filter for delivery quality before the first slide. Biography highlights Four-time AIDA constant weight world record holder, with a personal best of -126m set in Cyprus in 2015. AIDA Individual World Champion, Kalamata, 2011, with a -117m dive. AIDA Team World Champion with the French national freediving team. TED main-stage speaker, “The exhilarating peace of freediving”, 2015. Co-director, with Julie Gautier, of Free Fall, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. Profiled by National Geographic, CNN and South China Morning Post Style. Biography A freediver on a single breath has no second chance to reset. The dive is planned on the surface, executed in silence, and any break in focus on the way down or up carries a real physical cost. Guillaume Nery spent more than a decade operating in that environment at world-championship level. He set his first constant weight world record at 19 and went on to break it three more times, reaching a personal best of -126m in Cyprus. In 2011, in Kalamata, he won the AIDA individual world title on a -117m dive. With the French national team, he added a team world championship. The ending was not clean. At the 2015 world championships in Cyprus the dive line was mis-set, sending him to -139m instead of the planned -129m. He blacked out near the surface, suffered a lung barotrauma and retired from competition. That break point is now part of the talk, not a footnote to it. Since retiring he has worked as a filmmaker with Julie Gautier, producing Free Fall at Dean’s Blue Hole, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. His TED talk on freediving has reached a wide corporate audience. The material he brings to a keynote is grounded in what he actually does before a deep dive: breath work, attention control, and the discipline of staying calm when the margin for error is small. Key speaking topics Breath work and physiological self-regulation Performance under extreme pressure Attention and composure in high-stakes moments Recovery and reinvention after a career-defining setback Elite sport psychology applied to business Visual storytelling and ocean exploration Ideal for Leadership offsites focused on composure and decision quality under pressure Wellbeing, resilience and peak-performance programmes for senior teams Sales, trading and operations groups whose work involves sustained concentration in high-stakes windows Conference main-stage slots that need a visually strong, narrative keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how breath directly changes physiological and cognitive state. Specific techniques the speaker uses himself to prepare for extreme performance, translated to a meeting-room context. A reframed view of setbacks, drawn from a public career-ending accident and the reinvention that followed. A visual reference point, from the underwater films, that audiences remember and repeat.

Why organisations work with Erik Weihenmayer A first-hand operating model for making decisions without full visibility, drawn from summiting Everest and kayaking 277 miles of Grand Canyon whitewater rather than from theory A tested argument about rope-team leadership: how trust, role clarity, and communication protocols hold a team together when one member’s judgement has to carry the rest A named framework, the No Barriers Life, backed by a published book and a working nonprofit, not a single keynote built around a single mountain Credibility with audiences who have heard every generic resilience talk, because the proof points are specific, verifiable, and unusual: Everest, the Eight Summits, Leadville 100 on a tandem, Colorado River source to sea Biography highlights First blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, May 25, 2001; featured on the cover of Time magazine that June Completed the Seven Summits in 2002 and the Eight Summits in 2008 with Carstensz Pyramid Kayaked the full 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 2014 Co-founder of No Barriers USA, serving people with disabilities, veterans, youth, and caregivers Author of “Touch the Top of the World,” published in 9 languages, and co-author of “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” with Buddy Levy Recipient of an ESPY Award, Nike’s Casey Martin Award, and the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement Award Biography The path down Everest is more dangerous than the path up. On the descent in May 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to summit the mountain, was moving on a rope team whose margin for error had effectively closed. The instruction he had been given by expedition leader Pasquale Scaturro on the way home set the next two decades of his work: do not let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do. What followed was not a sequence of stunts. It was the construction of an argument about how teams operate when the environment does not cooperate. The Seven Summits by 2002, Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on a tandem in 2010, and in 2014 the full 277-mile kayak descent of the Grand Canyon with blinded Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell. Each expedition is a case study in role assignment, communication discipline, and trust allocation under degraded information. The intellectual output sits alongside the physical one. “Touch the Top of the World” was published in twelve countries and nine languages and became the basis of a documentary that won first prize at 21 international film festivals. “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon,” co-written with Buddy Levy, took an Honorable Mention at the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards and a 2018 Colorado Book Awards finalist spot. “The Adversity Advantage,” co-written with Paul Stoltz, moves the same material into an explicit business register. In 2005, Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA, a nonprofit that now works with veterans, youth, people with disabilities, and full-time caregivers. It is where the speaking work connects back to a working practice: the No Barriers Life is not a slogan, it is the operating code the organisation teaches and the argument the book defends. Key speaking topics Decision-making under incomplete information Rope-team leadership and trust allocation The No Barriers Life as an organisational operating code Resilience as a team discipline, not an individual trait Innovation and problem-solving under constraint Inclusive leadership and diverse-ability teams Navigating reinvention after a defining achievement Ideal for Executive teams preparing for high-stakes decisions where the data will not be complete in time CHROs and culture leads building resilience and belonging into the organisational operating model, not bolting it on Leadership offsites for transformation, integration, or turnaround programmes Veteran-heavy, disability-community, or inclusion-focused audiences where lived authority matters Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how to lead a mixed-ability, mixed-experience team through a decision with partial information Named protocols from expedition practice that transfer directly into executive decision rooms A sharper sense of the difference between individual grit and team discipline, and why resilience only compounds when it is built into the team Permission to treat constraint as a design input rather than a deficit A concrete reference point, the No Barriers Life, that leaders can carry back into their own language