Peak Performance speakers

Why organisations work with Robyn Benincasa She gives leadership teams a named, eight-part operating model for extreme teamwork, including Adversity Management, Relinquishment of Ego and Kinetic Leadership, that buyers can install as shared internal language rather than a one-time motivational story. Her credibility is built from active operational roles, not retrospective storytelling: 23 years in the San Diego Fire Department, three Guinness records in 24-hour paddling, and World Championship wins at the Eco-Challenge Borneo and the Raid Gauloises. How Winning Works (HarperCollins/Harlequin) gives buyers a published, peer-reviewable artefact to point at internally when asking a leadership team to adopt the model. She founded the Project Athena Foundation and was named a 2014 CNN Hero for it, which gives her a substance-led reputation outside the speaking circuit and makes her credible to audiences allergic to motivational packaging. She is one of a small group of speakers who can hold both an operations audience (firefighters, healthcare, manufacturing, military-adjacent) and a corporate leadership audience without changing register. Biography highlights World Champion adventure racer; member of the winning Team Eco-Internet at the 2000 Eco-Challenge in Borneo and 1998 Raid Gauloises champion. Three Guinness World Records in 24-hour endurance paddling, including 371.92 km on the Yukon River. Raced at the front of the sport for 17 years as part of one of adventure racing’s most prolific and consistent world champion teams. 23-year veteran of the San Diego Fire Department; part of America’s first all-female full-time fire crew. Author of How Winning Works: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth (HarperCollins/Harlequin). Founder of the Project Athena Foundation and 2014 CNN Hero. Her adventure racing team was profiled in Fast Company’s “Xtreme Teams,” which examined the world’s most consistently high-performing teams alongside NASA and Industrial Light & Magic. Biography A four-person team has been moving for thirty hours through jungle. One member is hypothermic, another has stopped speaking, the map is wrong, and the next checkpoint is six hours away. The behaviours that hold the team together at that moment are the ones senior leadership teams need when a year-long programme is failing in front of their board. That is the territory Robyn Benincasa works in. She is one of a small number of people who arrived at corporate teamwork through repeated exposure to it under pressure. Her team won two World Championships, at the 2000 Eco-Challenge in Borneo and the 1998 Raid Gauloises, and stayed at the front of the sport for 17 years as one of its most consistent winners. Fast Company studied that record in a feature called “Xtreme Teams,” placing her squad alongside NASA and Industrial Light & Magic as cases of sustained performance under pressure. Across the same years she served 23 years in the San Diego Fire Department, including time on America’s first all-female full-time fire crew, and set three Guinness world records in 24-hour paddling. The lasting contribution is the model she set out in her New York Times bestseller, How Winning Works: the eight elements of extreme teamwork, from Total Commitment and Adversity Management through We Thinking, Relinquishment of Ego and Kinetic Leadership. Each one is a behaviour a senior team can name, train and install, which is why HR and leadership development functions across healthcare, technology, retail and manufacturing have used it. She founded the Project Athena Foundation after two hip replacements forced her to rebuild her own athletic life, and was named a 2014 CNN Hero for it. She describes the payoff of all this as human synergy, the effect of a connected team reaching a goal no group of individuals could reach alone. That is what keeps her being booked into senior leadership rooms: operational credibility, a published framework, and a delivery that translates extreme conditions into board-level lessons without tipping into motivational performance. Key speaking topics Team performance under sustained pressure Leadership in adversity and operational crisis Building World Class Teams Resilience and recovery after setback Cross-functional collaboration in high-stakes environments Women in operational and frontline leadership Change leadership when the plan has failed Ideal for CEOs and executive teams entering a sustained period of operational stress, restructure or transformation COOs, CHROs and leadership development heads installing a shared team-performance vocabulary Healthcare, emergency services, energy, manufacturing and technology leadership audiences Conferences for senior women in operational, technical and frontline industries Audience outcomes A named eight-part vocabulary for the behaviours that hold teams together under pressure, useable in leadership conversations the following week. A working definition of Adversity Management as a leadership skill, separate from generic resilience language. A clearer view of when ego and ownership become operational risks rather than personality traits. Concrete examples of how decisions, trust and pace hold up when a team is exhausted and the plan has failed.

Why organisations work with Roger Black A first-hand account of finishing second to Michael Johnson at Atlanta 1996, used not as an anecdote but as a working case on how elite performers handle the gap between effort and outcome. Twelve years inside a Great Britain 4x400m relay team that won World, European and Commonwealth gold, with concrete material on how high-trust units actually function under pressure. A career interrupted by a serious heart condition diagnosed in 1989, which gives the resilience content a verifiable substance most sports speakers cannot match. Co-founder of BackleyBlack LLP with Steve Backley, delivering structured workshops including the “Olympic Experience” programme rather than only after-dinner keynotes. Two decades of BBC Sport broadcasting since 1998, which makes him fluent on stage, comfortable with senior audiences, and credible as a host or interviewer alongside the keynote slot. Biography highlights Olympic silver medallist, 400m, Atlanta 1996 Olympic silver medallist, 4x400m relay, Atlanta 1996; relay bronze, Barcelona 1992 World Championships 4x400m relay gold, Tokyo 1991 and Athens 1997 European 400m champion, Stuttgart 1986 and Split 1990; Commonwealth 400m champion, Edinburgh 1986 Awarded MBE for services to athletics, 1992 BBC Sport broadcaster since 1998; co-founder of BackleyBlack LLP, 2008 Biography The 400 metres is a race where the second half hurts. Atlanta 1996 put Roger Black on the line against Michael Johnson at the peak of his career, and Black ran 44.41 seconds for silver. The substance of his work with senior teams comes out of races like that, and the years of training that made them possible. Black’s career was not a clean upward line. A heart condition diagnosed in 1989 forced him out of the sport for almost two seasons, and injury cost him repeated selections. Around that, he assembled a record that includes World and European 4x400m relay gold, two European individual 400m titles, Commonwealth gold in Edinburgh, and an MBE in 1992. The relay record matters in particular: he ran inside one of the most consistent international units British athletics has produced. Since 1998 he has been a regular BBC Sport presenter, covering Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European championships. In 2008 he founded BackleyBlack with javelin Olympian Steve Backley, building structured corporate programmes including the “Olympic Experience” workshop alongside individual keynotes. His autobiography “How Long’s the Course?”, written with Mike Rowbottom, is the source text for much of the speaking material on setback and recovery. What he gives a senior audience is direct testimony from the inside of an elite performance system, delivered by someone who has spent more than twenty years explaining sport to non-specialist audiences on national television. The talk is not a metaphor exercise. It is a working description of how a small group of professionals prepared to compete at the limit of their ability against the best in the world. Key speaking topics High-performance teams Resilience and recovery from setback Self-leadership under pressure Peak performance behaviours Motivation and goal setting Lessons from elite sport for business Ideal for Senior leadership offsites focused on team performance Sales and commercial conferences requiring a credible high-performance keynote Award dinners and corporate hospitality where a former Olympian and broadcaster is the right register Internal change programmes seeking a non-business voice on resilience and accountability Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for how elite teams handle the gap between preparation and result A working description of how Olympic athletes recover from injury, illness and selection setback A vocabulary for resilience and accountability that lands without sounding like business jargon A memorable shared experience for the room, anchored in race footage from named championship finals

Why organisations work with Roger Federer He brings a counterintuitive statistical framework that reframes how leaders think about failure: in winning nearly 80% of career matches, he won only 54% of points – a figure that challenges any organisation confusing short-term setbacks with structural decline. His argument that “effortless is a myth” gives boards and executive teams a rigorous, credible case against talent mythology – and for the disciplines of preparation that happen before performance becomes visible. He is one of the few athlete speakers whose post-competition record strengthens rather than dilutes his authority: co-founding TEAM8, co-creating the Laver Cup as a sanctioned ATP property, and reaching Forbes billionaire status in 2025 gives him standing in commercial and entrepreneurial conversations that purely competitive athletes cannot match. The Roger Federer Foundation – reaching over 3.1 million children and more than 59,000 teachers across six African nations and Switzerland – demonstrates that his stated commitment to purpose and long-term impact is operational, not rhetorical. Five Laureus World Sportsman of the Year awards across 14 years, not clustered at a career peak, make the case for sustained excellence in a way a single extraordinary season cannot. Biography highlights 20 Grand Slam men’s singles titles; 310 weeks ranked ATP world No. 1, including 237 consecutive weeks – both Open Era records Eight-time Wimbledon singles champion – the Open Era record Five-time Laureus World Sportsman of the Year (2005–2008, 2018); also won the Laureus Comeback of the Year award in 2018 Co-founder of TEAM8 sports and entertainment agency (2013) and co-creator of the Laver Cup, now a sanctioned ATP Tour event Founder and President of the Roger Federer Foundation: over 3.1 million children and 59,000+ teachers reached across six African countries and Switzerland since 2003 Honorary doctorate and commencement speaker, Dartmouth College, 2024 Named to Forbes World Billionaires list (2025); one of a small number of athletes ever to reach that threshold Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year Award (2006 and 2013); UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Biography Roger Federer held the world No. 1 ATP ranking for 310 weeks, won 20 Grand Slam singles titles across 24 years of professional competition, and remains the most successful men’s singles player in Wimbledon’s Open Era. Those are the competitive facts. The more useful question for organisations is not what he achieved but how he maintained it – across generations of rivals, repeated major injuries, and a career long enough to have been written off and recovered from multiple times. At his 2024 Dartmouth commencement address – where he received an honorary doctorate – Federer offered a precise answer to that question. In winning nearly 80% of career matches, he won only 54% of the points played. The insight he draws from that data is direct: high performance is not about avoiding failure, it is about learning not to compound it. The mental discipline he calls “it’s only a point” is both a competitive practice and an organisational philosophy – one with clear application to how leadership teams manage quarterly reversals, strategic miscalculations, and the pressure of sustained expectation. His post-competition record extends that credibility into commercial and institutional territory. In 2013, Federer co-founded TEAM8 with agent Tony Godsick – a boutique sports and entertainment company that also created the Laver Cup, now a sanctioned ATP Tour event. His Roger Federer Foundation, which he founded in 2003 at the age of 22, has reached over 3.1 million children and trained more than 59,000 teachers across six African nations and Switzerland. In 2025, Forbes recognised him as a billionaire – one of the smallest group of athletes in history to reach that threshold. For senior leadership audiences, what Federer offers is structural rather than motivational: three documented frameworks, a statistical foundation for how he thought about failure, and a body of work – competitive, entrepreneurial, philanthropic – broad enough to make the argument that sustained excellence is a design choice, not an accident of talent. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and career longevity Resilience and recovery under competitive pressure The psychology of preparation and deliberate practice Failure as a structural component of peak performance Purpose, legacy, and leadership beyond the primary mission Athlete-led entrepreneurship and institutional building Philanthropic strategy and long-term impact at scale Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite audiences seeking a substantive framework for sustained organisational performance, not motivational content CHROs and talent directors building high-performance cultures over extended time horizons Chief executives navigating competitive reversal, strategic reset, or the pressure of multi-year performance expectations Global corporate events requiring a speaker of rare international standing who can anchor a serious conversation about excellence, resilience, and purpose Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of resilience as designed-in preparation, not post-failure recovery The “54% of points” framework for separating short-term setbacks from long-term performance trajectory – applicable to individuals, teams, and organisations Specific, named principles for sustaining excellence across decades rather than individual seasons or peaks A credible case study in building purpose-driven institutions alongside – and after – a career at the highest competitive level Perspective on the transition from individual elite performance to entrepreneurial and institutional leadership

Roy Hodgson’s background Having been a youth player at Crystal Palace, Roy spent the rest of his playing days in non-league football before beginning his managerial career in 1976. Throughout his career, Roy managed 16 different teams in eight countries, beginning in Sweden with Halmstads BK in the 1976 season. He later guided the Switzerland national team to the last 16 of the 1994 World Cup and qualification for Euro 1996; Switzerland had not qualified for a major tournament since the 1960s. From 2006 to 2007, he managed the Finland national team, guiding them to their highest-ever FIFA ranking of 33rd place and coming close to qualifying for a major tournament for the first time in their history. He managed the England national team from 2012 to 2016, taking the England job shortly before Euro 2012. ‘Roy’s England’ won all 10 matches in qualifying for Euro 2016, but he stepped down after a 2-1 last-16 defeat by Iceland left him with a record of three victories from 11 games in major tournaments. Other clubs that Roy has managed include Inter Milan, Malmö FF, Grasshoppers, FC Copenhagen, and Udinese. He has also been in charge of Blackburn Rovers, Liverpool, West Bromwich Albion, Fulham and, most recently, Crystal Palace, in the Premier League; guiding the Cottagers to the Europa League final in 2010. As of the end of the 2021 football season, Roy will step down from managing Crystal Palace, to retire from football. Roy served several times as a member of UEFA’s technical study group at the European Championships and was also a member of the FIFA technical study group at the 2006 World Cup. Roy speaks five languages and has worked as a television pundit in several of the countries in which he has coached. Hodgson was made a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland in September 2012. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of York on 22 January 2016 and is an alumnus of the University of Greenwich, having graduated from Avery Hill College in 1972 with a Cert ED. In 2018 Hodgson was made a Freeman of the Borough of Croydon.

Why organisations work with Ruth Buscombe She has run live race strategy from the pit wall at Ferrari, Haas and Sauber, so the material is operating practice from elite competition, not a borrowed sports metaphor. She led the strategy function during Sauber’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022, the team’s best result in a decade against far better-resourced rivals, a credible reference point for performance under budget constraint. Her Cambridge engineering background (first-class honours, FIA-supervised thesis on the Drag Reduction System) means technical and analytical audiences extend her credit fast. She is one of a very small number of women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, which gives her STEM and inclusion content lived authority rather than allyship framing. As an F1 TV analyst, she explains decisions to a live general audience every race weekend, so she is unusually fluent at translating specialist judgement into language a board can act on. Biography highlights First-class honours in Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering, University of Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA. Race strategist at Scuderia Ferrari (2013 to 2015), based at Maranello, supporting drivers including Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. Strategy engineer at Haas F1 during the team’s debut Formula 1 season. Head of Race Strategy at Sauber/Alfa Romeo, leading the strategy function through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022. On-air strategy analyst and presenter for F1 TV. Ambassador since 2016 for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative. Biography The pit wall is one of the few working environments where leaders make consequential calls in public, on a clock, with information that is partial and changing. Ruth Buscombe has spent her career on that wall. As a race strategist at Ferrari, then Haas, then as Head of Race Strategy at Sauber, she has owned decisions where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in championship points within the same hour. Her credibility starts with the technical foundation. A first-class honours engineering degree from Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA, gave her the analytical grounding to be taken seriously inside Maranello at twenty-two. She joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2012, was promoted to race strategist within a year, and worked through Sebastian Vettel’s first Ferrari victory before moving to Haas for the team’s debut season. The defining body of work came at Sauber. Running the strategy function for a midfield team against rivals with far larger budgets, she led the call sheet through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ Championship finish in 2022, its best result in a decade. That is the substance she brings to corporate audiences: how to design decision protocols that hold up when conditions change mid-race, how to allocate scarce attention under live pressure, how to disagree productively inside a senior team in the seconds before a call has to be made. She is also one of the very few women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, and has been an ambassador for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative, since 2016. As an F1 TV analyst she now explains the same decision logic to a live audience every race weekend, which is why her keynote lands with general management audiences as cleanly as it does with engineers. Key speaking topics Real-time decision-making under pressure High-performance team operating models Race strategy and competitive advantage under constraint Data-led judgement in elite sport Women in motorsport and STEM Engineering leadership Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams running high-stakes operating decisions on short cycles Strategy, operations and risk leaders responsible for live decision protocols Engineering and technical organisations where analytical credibility is the price of entry Diversity, inclusion and STEM programmes seeking a credible operator rather than an advocate Audience outcomes A clearer mental model for how elite teams separate the call from the data behind it A working sense of how decision rights, role clarity and rehearsal change behaviour under live pressure Specific examples of how a smaller, smarter team can outperform a better-resourced rival Confidence to make and defend a call when information is incomplete and time has run out A credible, non-tokenistic reference for women considering senior technical careers

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

Why organisations work with Ruth Hinks She is the first woman to win UK Chocolate Masters and produced the highest UK finish on record at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, a credential that lands in any room. She has built and run Cocoa Black since 2008 across retail, production, cafe, and a chocolate and pastry school, giving her a working operator’s view of a specialist food business rather than a theory of one. She brings hands-on culinary content to client hospitality and product launches, which most keynote speakers cannot offer. Her career has run from Head Pastry Chef at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne and the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh to international competition and television, giving her credibility across hospitality, retail, and broadcast settings. Biography highlights First woman to win UK Chocolate Masters, 2012. Top-five finish at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, 2013, the highest UK result recorded at the time. Founder of Cocoa Black, Peebles, established 2008; chocolate and pastry school opened by HRH Prince Edward in 2016. Former Head Pastry Chef at the Windsor Hotel, Melbourne and the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh. Named Australian Pastry Chef of the Year early in her Melbourne career. Expert judge, BBC Two’s The Hairy Bikers’ Chocolate Challenge; featured in Netflix’s Extreme Chocolate Makers. Biography Cocoa Black opened in Peebles in 2008. From a single Scottish border town it has grown into a chocolate and patisserie business that runs retail, production, a cafe, and a school, with international competition credibility behind it. The founder has held every line in the operation. Ruth Hinks made her name in competition before the business expanded. In 2012 she became the first woman to win UK Chocolate Masters. A year later she finished in the top five at the World Chocolate Masters final in Paris, the strongest UK result on record at that time. The result put a small Peebles operation on the international map for the craft. Her hospitality grounding came earlier. She was named Australian Pastry Chef of the Year in Melbourne, where she ran the pastry kitchen at the 5-star Windsor Hotel, then moved to head the pastry section at the Sheraton Grand Hotel Edinburgh. She trained with Cacao Barry and studied under Albert Roux, technical roots that show up in Cocoa Black’s product range and in the school’s curriculum. The Pastry School in Peebles was opened by HRH Prince Edward in 2016. Hinks has appeared as expert judge on BBC Two’s The Hairy Bikers’ Chocolate Challenge and produced a chocolate showpiece for Chatsworth House in Netflix’s Extreme Chocolate Makers, work that has put a specialist craft business in front of a far larger audience than the trade alone. Key speaking topics Building a specialist food and drink brand Entrepreneurship in craft-led businesses Competition standards in chocolate and patisserie Hospitality leadership in 5-star kitchens Product innovation and chocolate development Skills development and culinary education Women in elite culinary competition Ideal for Food and beverage industry conferences and supplier events Hospitality leadership teams and luxury hotel groups Corporate client hospitality, gala dinners, and product launches that benefit from craft content alongside a keynote Founder and entrepreneur audiences in specialist consumer businesses Audience outcomes A close-range view of what international competition standards demand of a craft operator. A founder’s account of building a specialist food business across retail, production, and education from a small town base. Specific examples of how product, brand, and training can sit inside a single small business. Hospitality and kitchen leadership lessons drawn from 5-star pastry roles.

Why organisations work with Ryan Campbell He turns a story most audiences expect to be inspirational into a working framework. The Joy Audit gives leaders and teams a specific weekly practice for protecting attention, recovery, and engagement. He speaks to burnout from inside it. Campbell has publicly described a period when, despite physical recovery and external success, his mental health was at its worst, which gives the keynote an honesty that resilience theatre lacks. The 1960 pink Cadillac is not a stage prop, it is the structural anchor of his argument. Audiences leave with a single concrete image that survives the flight home and the inbox. His credentials are independently verifiable: Guinness World Record for the youngest solo circumnavigation, Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year, recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers. He is comfortable speaking to safety-critical and high-performance industries. Aviation, healthcare, and emergency services audiences recognise a speaker who has sat in the rehab ward and the cockpit. Biography highlights Youngest pilot in history to fly solo around the world, age 19, completing 24,000 nautical miles in 70 days from Wollongong, NSW. Australian Geographic Society’s Young Adventurer of the Year, 2013. Recognised by the Australian Museum among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers (Trailblazers exhibition). Author of Born to Fly (HarperCollins Australia). Returned to commercial flying as an incomplete paraplegic after a Tiger Moth crash in 2015. Featured on 60 Minutes and NBC’s Today. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are designed for the average week, not the weeks that break people. They assume the problem is information, when in practice it is attention. Campbell’s keynote starts from that gap. The credentials behind the talk are uncommonly concrete. At 19 he became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world, a 70-day, 24,000-nautical-mile flight from Wollongong, NSW that earned a Guinness World Record and Australian Geographic Society’s 2013 Young Adventurer of the Year. The Australian Museum included him among Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers in its Trailblazers exhibition. He wrote the journey up in Born to Fly, published by HarperCollins Australia. Two years later, an engine-out in a Tiger Moth ended in a crash that left him an incomplete paraplegic. He spent six months in spinal rehab, then returned to flying, eventually qualifying as a commercial helicopter pilot with modified controls. The arc is well-documented in Australian Geographic and on long-form podcasts, including Beyond the Crucible. The keynote is not the crash. The keynote is what he learned about burnout in the years after, when his mental health was worse than at any point in the rehab ward. The Joy Audit and the “What’s Your Pink Cadillac?” framework came out of that period. They are deliberately small, weekly, and operational, which is why corporate audiences in safety-critical industries take them seriously. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Burnout and recovery Resilience and performance under pressure Workplace wellbeing and culture Motivation and lived-experience leadership Aviation and high-stakes decision-making Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reviewing wellbeing strategy and burnout response. Leadership offsites and senior team meetings in safety-critical industries (aviation, healthcare, emergency services, energy). All-hands and annual conferences where the brief is to reset the conversation on mental health without a generic awareness talk. Sales kickoffs and high-pressure commercial teams operate through sustained intensity. Audience outcomes A clear, named framework (the Joy Audit) that audiences can apply in the week after the keynote. A specific argument for treating recovery and joy as performance inputs, not benefits-package items. A vocabulary for raising mental health inside high-performance teams without softening the standard. A memorable single image, the 1960 pink Cadillac, that anchors the message past the event itself.

Why organisations work with Sally Gunnell The only woman in history to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 400m hurdles titles plus the world record, which gives wellbeing and performance content a level of competitive proof very few speakers can match. Runs an ongoing corporate wellbeing programme rather than a single keynote, with a network of coaches, nutritionists and advisors that allows the message to be embedded inside a client’s existing health and engagement workstreams. Translates elite preparation into specific workplace habits around recovery, mental fitness, goal setting and pressure management, in language that lands with non-athlete employee audiences. Over a decade as a BBC Sport athletics presenter and four published books on fitness, wellbeing and self-fulfilment, which means she communicates to mixed corporate audiences with broadcast-trained clarity. A credible figure for senior sponsors of wellbeing and culture programmes who need an external voice their CEO will respect and their wider employee base will actually listen to. Biography highlights Olympic 400m hurdles gold medallist, Barcelona 1992. World record holder at 52.74 seconds, set winning the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart. Only woman to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 400m hurdles titles plus the world record. Appointed MBE in 1993, OBE in 1998, and Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex in 2011. BBC Sport athletics presenter for over ten years; co-hosted ITV’s Body Heat 1994 to 1996. Author of four books on health, fitness and wellbeing, including Be Your Best and Ten Hurdles in Life. Biography The gap between elite performance language and what actually changes behaviour inside a workforce is wider than most wellbeing programmes admit. Sally Gunnell’s corporate practice is built around closing it. She runs an ongoing wellbeing programme with a network of coaches, nutritionists and advisors, designed to sit alongside a client’s existing leadership, engagement and health agenda rather than land as a one-off keynote. The competitive record behind that work is unusual. At Barcelona 1992 she won Olympic gold in the 400m hurdles, becoming the first British woman to win an Olympic track gold since Ann Packer in 1964. The following year in Stuttgart she set a world record of 52.74 seconds to take the World Championship, and remains the only woman to have concurrently held Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles in the event plus the world record. Her communication base was built outside athletics. She spent over a decade with BBC Sport as an athletics presenter, co-hosted ITV’s Body Heat in the mid-1990s, and has written four books on fitness, wellbeing and self-fulfilment, including Be Your Best and Ten Hurdles in Life. That combined broadcasting and authorship background is why her sessions translate cleanly to mixed corporate audiences rather than reading as sports anecdote. She was appointed MBE in 1993, OBE in 1998, and Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex in 2011. For organisations whose wellbeing and high-performance work has plateaued, she gives the agenda a credible external voice and a programmatic structure to attach it to. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing programmes Mental fitness and resilience High-performance habits Goal setting and personal accountability Sustained performance under pressure Health and lifestyle in the workplace Teamwork and motivation Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing scoping multi-year mental health and performance programmes. Internal communications and engagement leads anchoring a company-wide wellbeing or culture campaign. Sales, operations and frontline leadership teams working on resilience and sustained performance. Conference organisers building a wellbeing or high-performance track for a mixed corporate audience. Audience outcomes A clearer model of what elite preparation, recovery and pressure management look like translated into office and frontline work. Specific habits to take into goal setting, mental fitness routines and managing setbacks. A shared organisational vocabulary linking individual wellbeing to team and business performance. Renewed motivation grounded in a verifiable competitive record, not generic inspiration.

Why organisations work with Sam Quek A first-hand account of how a team becomes the first British women’s hockey side to win Olympic gold, told from inside the defensive line that held the Netherlands in a penalty shootout final. Credibility on composure under pressure that comes from two careers, 125 international caps and a live broadcasting schedule across the BBC, Channel 5, and TNT Sports. A perspective on team culture shaped by a squad that won European gold, captained England with two broken ribs, and converted four years of preparation into a single result. Hosting and moderation experience suited to awards nights, conference panels, and high-profile event presentation, including the Eurovision 2023 opening ceremony. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Rio 2016, women’s hockey, Great Britain. MBE, 2017 New Year Honours, for services to hockey. 125 international caps for England and Great Britain; captained England at the 2014 Champions Trophy. First permanent female team captain on BBC One’s A Question of Sport, alongside Ugo Monye. Co-host of BBC One’s Morning Live with Gethin Jones; co-anchor of BBC’s Olympic Breakfast for Tokyo 2020. Author of Hope and a Hockey Stick (2018) and Roar: A Celebration of Great Sporting Women (Allen and Unwin, 2024). Biography The British women’s hockey team had never won an Olympic gold medal until August 2016. They beat the Netherlands, the reigning world and Olympic champions, on penalties after a 3-3 draw in Rio. Quek played in the defensive line that kept the score close enough for the shootout to matter. Her playing career produced 125 international caps, a European Championship gold in 2015, and a stretch captaining England through the 2014 Champions Trophy with two broken ribs that she did not know she had until the tournament ended. The MBE followed in the 2017 New Year Honours. The second career began almost immediately. By 2021 she was the first permanent female team captain on A Question of Sport. In 2022 she joined Morning Live as co-host. The broadcasting roster now spans NFL on Channel 5, hockey on TNT Sports, football on Channel 4 and LFC TV, and a stint on BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606. She co-anchored BBC’s Olympic Breakfast for Tokyo and co-hosted the Eurovision 2023 opening ceremony. For corporate audiences, that combination provides something unusual. The Olympic experience is direct evidence of what high-performing teams do under terminal pressure. The broadcasting career adds the discipline of live performance, daily, without the option of a second take. Both feed the same material when she works with organisations on resilience, team culture, and composure when the stakes are visible. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Team culture in high-stakes environments Olympic preparation and the four-year cycle Women in elite sport and broadcasting Career transition from athlete to broadcaster Self-leadership and composure Event hosting and panel moderation Ideal for Conference and awards hosting briefs requiring a recognised broadcaster. Sales kick-offs and all-hands events focused on team performance and resilience. Leadership programmes addressing composure and high-pressure decision-making. Diversity and women in leadership audiences seeking a senior sporting voice. Audience outcomes A specific account of what a winning team does in the hours and minutes before a terminal moment. A working sense of how composure is built before it is needed. Language for talking about team culture grounded in elite sport rather than business abstraction. Energy and credibility from a speaker comfortable in front of large rooms and television cameras.

Why organisations work with Sarah Furness The H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) formula gives leaders a structured, repeatable system for sustaining performance under pressure – not a set of principles, but a behavioural methodology built from combat aviation and formal human factors instruction. Her “Practise Scared” methodology reframes discomfort as a development mechanism directly addressing the conditions under which most leadership training fails to stick. Her argument in The Uni-tasking Revolution, that focus is a competitive performance variable that organisations are systematically destroying through multitasking culture, gives senior teams a specific, actionable lens for redesigning how work gets done. She brings an instructor’s precision, not only a practitioner’s story: she taught human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, which means the frameworks she delivers have been built and tested in a formal training environment, not assembled retrospectively for a speaking career. Her status as the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq is not a biographical detail, it is evidence of what her approach to fear, credibility, and inclusion in high-performance cultures actually looks like in practice. Biography highlights RAF Squadron Leader; approximately 20 years of service including operational combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan First female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq Graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University (Natural Sciences and Theology) Instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham Creator of the H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) performance framework and the “Practise Scared” methodology Author of two Amazon no.1 bestselling books: Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution Founder of Well Be It, an executive coaching and leadership development practice (est. 2020) Qualified mindfulness coach and human factors facilitator; trained in cognitive behavioural techniques Biography Most performance under pressure research stays theoretical. Sarah Furness spent two decades testing it as a Cambridge-educated RAF helicopter pilot, then as a Squadron Leader leading combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then as the first female pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq. That operational record informs everything she brings to organisations. But it is not the point of the work. The point is that she identified, in conditions of genuine risk, that resilience and performance under pressure are not instinctive. They are skills. And skills can be built. This observation – simple in articulation, significant in implication – is the foundation of her H.A.B.I.T.S. framework and her “Practise Scared” methodology, both of which sit at the centre of her leadership development work. Before founding Well Be It in 2020, Furness formalised that thinking as an instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK. That background gives her frameworks a rigour that distinguishes them from testimony alone: these are methods that were built in a professional military training environment before they were taken to the boardroom. Her two no.1 bestselling books, Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution, extend the argument into self-leadership and organisational focus respectively. Together, they represent a coherent intellectual position: that the gap between how capable leaders look and how they actually perform under pressure is a structural problem, and that closing it requires deliberate behavioural practice, not motivation. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Resilience and mental performance Human factors in high-stakes decision-making Focus, attention, and uni-tasking as a performance strategy Psychological safety and growth culture Inclusive leadership and leading in the new era Decision-making and gut instinct under pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-stakes change or transformation CHROs and L&D leaders building performance and resilience programmes Executive development audiences where the gap between visible capability and felt confidence is a recognised issue Organisations in sectors where pressure, speed, and accountability are structural features – professional services, financial services, defence, manufacturing, engineering Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why performance under pressure is a trainable skill, not a personality trait, with a framework for developing it Practical application of the H.A.B.I.T.S. formula and “Practise Scared” methodology to real workplace conditions A concrete argument for redesigning how attention and focus are managed at team and organisational level Greater leader confidence in decision-making under time pressure and ambiguity A reframe of fear, failure, and discomfort as development data rather than performance problems

Why organisations work with Sarah Marquis Her resilience framework is built from 20,000 kilometres of solo survival across six countries – not organisational theory or athletic competition, but multi-year immersion in conditions where poor decisions had direct physical consequences The mental tools she teaches – anticipating failure, adapting without external support, maintaining decision quality under depletion – are documented in Wild by Nature, her Macmillan-published account of the Siberia-to-Australia expedition, giving audiences a framework they can return to and apply National Geographic’s formal recognition of her as Adventurer of the Year 2014 and resident explorer in 2015 is a credibility anchor that travels across cultures, sectors, and geographies – rare in the resilience speaker category Her human-nature connection argument gives organisations a sustainability and purpose narrative grounded in decades of firsthand field evidence – a usable complement to ESG conversations that otherwise rely on data and policy With 500+ talks delivered in English and French to audiences ranging from the Swiss Army and Tetra Laval to the Olympic Museum, she brings a track record across defence, corporate, and cultural institutions that few speakers working the resilience topic can match Biography highlights National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2014; named resident National Geographic Explorer in 2015 Author of Wild by Nature (Macmillan), the English-language account of a 20,000 km solo expedition from Siberia to Australia European Adventurer of the Year 2013 TED speaker (2011); has addressed the Geographical Society 500+ talks delivered in English and French globally, including the Olympic Museum, Tetra Laval, and the Swiss Army Profiled in The New York Times Magazine and by National Geographic Biography The most honest test of resilience is not how people respond to a single crisis. It is how they function when pressure extends for months, the plan has failed more than once, and there is no team behind them. Most organisations have no direct experience of what that actually requires – and their resilience frameworks rarely reflect it. Sarah Marquis has that experience in documented form. From 2010 to 2013, she walked 20,000 kilometres alone from Siberia through the Gobi Desert, into China, Laos, Thailand, and across Australia. Her book Wild by Nature, published by Macmillan, is the detailed account of surviving dengue fever in the Laos jungle, temperatures of -49°C in Mongolia, and over 1,000 consecutive nights in a tent across six countries. The mental tools she describes – failure anticipation, adaptation without support, instinctive decision-making under physical depletion – are specific, practised, and written down. National Geographic named her Adventurer of the Year in 2014 and a resident explorer in 2015. She has given more than 500 talks in English and French to corporate and institutional audiences including Tetra Laval, the Swiss Army, and the Olympic Museum, and has spoken for TED and the Geographical Society. The New York Times Magazine has profiled her work. Her more recent expeditions – a survival traverse of the Kimberley in north-west Australia in 2015, a solo three-month crossing of the Tasmanian primary rainforest in 2018, and a return to the Great Victoria and Gibson Deserts in 2023 – mean her material is current. It is not a retrospective account of one significant achievement. It is a body of evidence that continues to grow. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Mental tools for extreme performance Adaptive decision-making under adversity Solo survival and self-reliance Human-nature connection Overcoming adversity and fear Sustainability and environmental awareness Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-stakes transformation or extended operational pressure C-suite and board-level audiences focused on organisational resilience and performance under uncertainty HR and L&D leaders designing resilience and peak performance programmes Corporate sustainability teams seeking a purpose narrative grounded in firsthand environmental evidence Audience outcomes A specific, practised framework for building resilience that holds under sustained pressure – not just acute crisis Practical mental tools for maintaining decision quality when plans fail and external support is unavailable, drawn from documented multi-year field conditions A reframe of fear and discomfort as navigable data rather than obstacles, grounded in expedition experience rather than theory Greater clarity on the gap between conceptual resilience and practised resilience, with concrete starting points for closing it A credible, experience-based narrative for connecting organisational purpose to sustainability and the natural environment